We have conducted an experimental study of V-type electromagnetically induced transparency in sodium. Its principles are elucidated by a simple model. Measurements show decreased fluorescence and absorption depending on the detuning of the driving and probe fields, which is in agreement with the results of numerical simulation.

The emergence of the 2009 H1N1 virus pandemic was unexpected, since it had been predicted that the next pandemic would be caused by subtype H5N1. We also had to learn that a pandemic does not necessarily require the introduction of a new virus subtype into the human population, but that it may result from antigenic shift within the same subtype. The new variant was derived from human and animal viruses by genetic reassortment in the pig, supporting the concept that this (...) animal is the mixing vessel for the generation of new human influenza viruses. Although it is generally believed that the 2009 outbreak was mild, there have been severe cases particularly among the young and the middle‐aged. Pathogenicity and host range are determined to a large extent by the polymerase, the haemagglutinin and the NS1 protein of influenza A viruses. There is evidence that mutations of these proteins may change the pathogenicity of the new virus. (shrink)

Pendant près de deux siècles, la " question sociale"s'est confondue avec la question de la propriété, ou plus exactement avec celle de sa légitimité. Tel auteur affirme que c'est l'âme de la législation. Tel autre que c'est le vol. On dispute de ses origines et de ses limites, parfois de son abolition. Mais à travers la violence de la querelle, partisans et détracteurs de l'institution s'en font la même idée : un droit absolu d'une personne sur une chose. Or il (...) se trouve que cette définition, empruntée à la dogmatique juridique, est devenue largement inopérante. Les spécialistes préfèrent désormais parler de secret, d'exclusivité ou de faisceau de droits, et certains suggèrent même la " désintégration " de la propriété. Il reste que si un dogme propriétaire s'est désintégré, la chose elle-même, sous quelque forme que ce soit, se porte fort bien, et continue de poser d'épineuses questions de justice - sociale notamment. C'est dire que s'offre enfin la chance que soit posée, dans toute sa radicalité conceptuelle, la question de savoir ce qu'est la propriété. Pour y répondre, une enquête est menée dans ce livre aux sources du droit de propriété moderne, du côté des premiers commentateurs du Code Napoléon. Au-delà des déclamations idéologiques des préfaces, elle s'aventure là où opère vraiment la créativité conceptuelle des juristes, dans l'élément technique du droit. Il apparaît alors que la propriété désigne soit une maîtrise souveraine, droit réel et absolu de l'esprit sur la matière, soit l'appartenance patrimoniale, rapport d'identité pensé dans les termes de l'avoir, soit enfin une réservation de jouissance, monopole d'exploitation octroyé en rémunération d'une activité productrice de valeur. (shrink)

À partir d’une lecture critique de Foucault, cet article revient sur l’un des premiers textes de Marx, consacré au vol de bois mort, pour analyser les liens entre le régime pénal de la sanction du vol de bois et le régime civil de la transformation de la propriété, entre la production des illégalismes et les métamorphoses de la société civile. Il en tire une vision synthétique du patrimoine considéré comme un « corps juridique artificiel », avant d’apporter un éclairage saisissant (...) sur l’incarcération de masse qui caractérise notre époque, où il suggère de voir un moyen de contrôler des populations paupérisées, caractérisées par un « patrimoine vide ». (shrink)

The human intestines are constantly under the influence of numerous pathological factors: enteropathogenic microorganisms, food antigens, physico‐chemical stress associated with digestion and bacterial metabolism, therefore it must be provided with a system of protection against adverse impact. Recent studies have shown that Paneth cells play a crucial role in maintaining homeostasis of the small intestines. Paneth cells perform many vital functions aimed at maintaining a homeostatic balance between normal microbiota, infectious pathogens and the human body, regulate the qualitative composition and (...) number of intestinal microorganisms, prevent the introduction of potentially pathogenic species, and protect stem cells from damage. Paneth cells take part in adaptive and protective‐inflammatory reactions. Paneth cells maintain dynamic balance between microbial populations, and the macroorganism, preventing the development of intestinal infections and cancer. They play a crucial role in gastrointestinal homeostasis and may be key factors in the etiopathological progression of intestinal diseases. (shrink)

Résumé — Cet article fait le pari qu’il est possible d’assigner à Rousseau une théorie cohérente de la propriété et se propose de reconstruire cette théorie en distinguant, à partir des configurations empiriques de l’institution de propriété mobilisées par l’auteur, les trois moments logiques et chronologiques d’une histoire philosophique de la propriété : la propriété commune originaire, le domaine réel des États, les propriétés dans l’état civil. Cette théorie se laisse ainsi ramener à trois propositions essentielles : la propriété, rendue (...) nécessaire par l’évolution de l’espèce, n’en est pas pour autant moralement légitime, c’est pourquoi il revient à la loi républicaine de tracer la frontière entre le domaine public et celui des particuliers, de sorte que, dans l’état civil, le droit de propriété soit inviolable et absolu, quoique certaines des jouissances qu’il offre puissent être indirectement limitées dans le but de promouvoir l’accès de tous à la propriété.Cet article se veut de surcroît une illustration de l’importance que revêt la compréhension de la signification technique des concepts légaux pour l’intelligence de questions classiques de la philosophie politique.— This paper propose a reconstruction of Rousseau’s theory of Property Rights, based on the distinction of three logical and chronological moments of the philosophical history of property drawn by Rousseau : at the origins are the commons, then the foundation of State’s territories, and last the private and public property rights in the civil state. This theory is organized around the three following essential propositions : property became necessary, due to the evolution of human societies, but has never been morally legitimate. That’s why the Statutory Law, and more precisely, the Republican Statutory Law has to draw the border between public and individual property rights. The consequence is that individual property right, considered in itself, is absolute and inviolable, but some of the utilities included in this right can be indirectly limited by the Law, in order to promote equality in the access to individual Property. This paper shows that we should be aware of the importance of understanding properly the technical meaning of legal concepts in our readings of political philosophy. (shrink)

A new hypothesis is put forward, linking cellular endurance with dietary consumption of stable heavy isotopes. Due to the isotope effect, biomolecules that incorporate heavier isotopes give rise to more stable molecular structures with increased resistance to damages associated with aging and age‐related disease. The inclusion of heavy isotopes might be either active (selection for heavier isotopes) or passive (incorporation reflecting the existing abundance). The hypothesis links consumption of foods relatively rich in heavy isotopes (such as 13C and D, derived (...) from C4‐plants), especially at the early stages of the organism's development, with enhanced longevity. Implications of diets and intestinal microflora are also discussed. BioEssays 29:1247–1256, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The article discusses the possibility of a naturalistic explanation of phenomenal experience (qualia). It starts with the analysis of one of the thought experiments described by D. Chalmers in his book “The Conscious Mind. In search of a fundamental theory”, namely, a zombie experiment. The article shows that the conclusions of this experiment can be recognized as correct only provided that the experimenter imagines a complete functional analogue of a human being. However, this condition is not feasible, since the experimenter (...) is required to possess the totality of knowledge about the imaginary creature. Experimenter’s imagination is in one way or another determined by the available conceptual schemes. It is concluded that the thesis of the irreducibility of qualia, based on the data of thought experiments, is a presupposition of conscious mind studies, and not their conclusion. From my point of view, this presupposition can be challenged just as N.I. Lobachevsky challenged the intuitive plausibility of Euclid’s fifth axiom. As an alternative understanding of the nature of qualia I propose J. McDowell's approach, which is called “perceptual conceptualism”. (shrink)

I argue that Alan Wertheimer’s account of unfair advantage-taking, though flawed, is more plausible than his critics believe. Indeed, I argue that his proposed model for assessing fair exchange – the friendship model – according to which a transaction’s terms are unfair to the extent that they deviate from the terms upon which we’d expect good friends to transact – is compelling and can serve as the basis for a plausible theory of wrongful exploitation. Wertheimer, I argue, was wrong to (...) think that friends would transact at “hypothetical market prices.” But he was right to think that friendship norms can provide a plausible account of fair exchange. In this paper I develop a friendship-based account of wrongful exploitation and I argue that it has important advantages over rival theories. (shrink)

There is given a short review of the most important biographical information about Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdi (d. ca. 1023), an outstanding representative of the Adab literature. Amongst his creative heritage it is emphasized the importance of the «Epistle (on Penmanship)». The conclusion is made that Adab style served in the best way the author’s intention. He was the first one who succeeded to exhaustively summarize the primary (defining) stage of the Arabic script formation, to clearly formulate the technique for preparing (...) the qalam. The “Epistle” is written in a simple manner, though it is not devoid of traditional elegance and eclecticism. Anticipating further development of the multiple types of proportional script referring to the existent schools, al-Tawḥīdi formulates common additional principles (apart from proportions), that, according to him, would constitute their aesthetics in future. In the second part of the “Epistle” there are given classic sayings and teachings, that became commonplace, regarding this type of art. Al-Tawḥīdi goes beyond his contemporaries and authors of the inner tradition. He gives the full scope of then existing knowledge regarding the discourse object. These data can be divided into rubrics depending on the subject and genre. In many of them we can trace the author's desire to zealously protect the Arab cultural heritage. It is concluded that al-Tawḥīdi strived to take out and convey further the main information, rules and techniques from the previous era of styles formation, so that they would not be lost or significantly changed. The writing contains numerous terms related to the preparation of tools and the process of script itself, which may again become relevant in the modern science of calligraphy. (shrink)

The widespread idea that infinitesimals were “eliminated” by the “great triumvirate” of Cantor, Dedekind, and Weierstrass is refuted by an uninterrupted chain of work on infinitesimal-enriched number systems. The elimination claim is an oversimplification created by triumvirate followers, who tend to view the history of analysis as a pre-ordained march toward the radiant future of Weierstrassian epsilontics. In the present text, we document distortions of the history of analysis stemming from the triumvirate ideology of ontological minimalism, which identified the continuum (...) with a single number system. Such anachronistic distortions characterize the received interpretation of Stevin, Leibniz, d’Alembert, Cauchy, and others. (shrink)

MIKHAïL XIFARAS. — Cet entretien s’inscrit comme complément d’un dossier portant sur le thème « religion et démocratie ». Il naît de l’intention de ne pas considérer les seules religions du Livre. Dans le même temps, il semble très difficile de traiter le bouddhisme de la même manière que les religions du Livre, ne serait-ce qu’en raison de la présomption..

Foundations of Science recently published a rebuttal to a portion of our essay it published 2 years ago. The author, G. Schubring, argues that our 2013 text treated unfairly his 2005 book, Conflicts between generalization, rigor, and intuition. He further argues that our attempt to show that Cauchy is part of a long infinitesimalist tradition confuses text with context and thereby misunderstands the significance of Cauchy’s use of infinitesimals. Here we defend our original analysis of various misconceptions and misinterpretations concerning (...) the history of infinitesimals and, in particular, the role of infinitesimals in Cauchy’s mathematics. We show that Schubring misinterprets Proclus, Leibniz, and Klein on non-Archimedean issues, ignores the Jesuit context of Moigno’s flawed critique of infinitesimals, and misrepresents, to the point of caricature, the pioneering Cauchy scholarship of D. Laugwitz. (shrink)

This thesis is about toleration as a modality of citizenship for pluralistic societies. Its central argument is that the current dissatisfaction with "mere" toleration which we find so broadly represented in our public and scholarly cultures is based on an underestimation of the capacities and attitudes that toleration entails. The liberal recasting of toleration, sophisticated and indeed invaluable though it is abets this devaluation by focusing too exclusively on public justification and on the Lockean stream of the tradition from which (...) we draw. ;The present thesis begins by tracing some of the difficulties facing the Rawlsian and Habermasian projects if we accept a vivid picture of the pluralisms amidst which we live. It then sketches the central features of a complementary tradition of toleration as it flows to us through the works of Montaigne, William James, Mikhail Bakhtin and others. An attempt is made to show where the resources drawn from this tradition might fit in to a theory of citizenship given reasonable Rawlsian qualms about "thick" public conceptions and given the fissiparous nature of a civil society like ours. The thesis ends with a pair of empirically oriented chapters which show ways in which we could conceive a praxis of toleration which might respond to the issues raised in the earlier sections of the work. (shrink)

The thesis we develop in this essay is that all humans are endowed with a moral faculty. The moral faculty enables us to produce moral judgments on the basis of the causes and consequences of actions. As an empirical research program, we follow the framework of modern linguistics.1 The spirit of the argument dates back at least to the economist Adam Smith (1759/1976) who argued for something akin to a moral grammar, and more recently, to the political philosopher John Rawls (...) (1971). The logic of the argument, however, comes from Noam Chomsky’s thinking on language specifically and the nature of knowledge more generally (Chomsky, 1986, 1988, 2000; Saporta, 1978). If the nature of moral knowledge is comparable in some way to the nature of linguistic knowledge, as defended recently by Harman (1977), Dwyer (1999, 2004), and Mikhail (2000; in press), then what should we expect to find when we look at the anatomy of our moral faculty? Is there a grammar, and if so, how can the moral grammarian uncover its structure? Are we aware of our moral grammar, its method of operation, and its moment-to-moment functioning in our judgments? Is there a universal moral grammar that allows each child to build a particular moral grammar? Once acquired, are different moral grammars mutually incomprehensible in the same way that a native Chinese speaker finds a native Italian speaker incomprehensible? How does the child acquire a particular moral grammar, especially if her experiences are impoverished relative to the moral judgments she makes? Are there certain forms of brain damage that disrupt moral competence but leave other forms of reasoning intact? And how did this machinery evolve, and for what particular adaptive function? We will have more to say about many of these questions later on, and Hauser (2006) develops others. However, in order to flesh out the key ideas and particular empirical research paths, let us turn to some of the central questions in the study of our language faculty.. (shrink)

The focus of this essay is to read the nineteenth-century theories of poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge against the twentieth century theories of chemist and philosopher of science Michael Polanyi, and Russian philologist and critic Mikhail Bakhtin, showing their intellectual similarities and contrasts. My purpose in this essay is to redeem Coleridge’s thought for rhetorical theory by linking him to modern thinkers who are respected within the field.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:After the Future. The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian CultureDmitry KhaninAfter the Future. The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture, by Mikhail Epstein; translated with an introduction by Anessa Miller-Pogacar; xvi & 394 pp. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995, $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.Mikhail Epstein, a renowned Soviet critic—his books in Russian include Paradoxes of the New (1988) and Faith and Image: The Religious (...) Subconscious in [End Page 508] Twentieth Century Russian Culture (1994)—emigrated to the U.S. in 1988. After the Future is the first collection of his major essays (written from 1986 to 1991) in English translation. It begins with the article “New Currents in Russian Poetry: Conceptualism, Metarealism, and Presentism,” which first introduced to the Soviet reader a group of postmodernist poets, just coming out (with the advent of glasnost) from the literary underground. Other articles (“Avant-Garde Art and Religion,” “After the Future: On the New Consciousness in Literature”), though first published in Russian literary journals, were shipped to Russia from “the other shore” (to use Alexander Herzen’s description of emigre writers’ whereabouts vis-à-vis their homeland). The latest studies (“Relativistic Patterns in Totalitarian Thinking: The Linguistic Games of Soviet Ideology,” “The Origins and Meaning of Russian Postmodernism”) were not only sent from the other shore but apparently produced for the other shore. Instead of analyzing the recent Russian literary crop and emerging aesthetic sensibilities, Epstein focuses on Russian historic experience in its entirety, which he somewhat didactically clarifies for the foreign reader.Despite its shifting perspectives, After the Future features a distinctive approach toward Russian postmodernism, its bona fide subject matter. Following Jean Baudrillard, Epstein defines postmodernism as simulation (“the production of reality as a series of plausible copies”) that engenders some new hyperreality and in so doing supplants “reality itself, which then becomes irrecoverable” (p. 189). The originality of Epstein’s position lies, however, in his claim that Russia as a historic and cultural entity is a postmodernist phenomenon in its own right that simulates and masterminds reality. Epstein’s claim that postmodernism is ingrained in Russian tradition is pitted specifically against those who doubt that Russia is ready to enjoy its own postmodernist bash since (contrary to the West) it never went through prior modernist phases. To prove that Russia foreshadowed postmodernism, Epstein draws on a number of historic illustrations. He cites the forceful adoption of Christianity under Prince Vladimir in 988, Peter the Great’s building of Petersburg in the “Finnish swamp” and Prince Potemkin’s infamous make-up villages as examples of the Russian tendency to forfeit the status quo for the sake of trumped-up, ersatz realities.However, Epstein’s arguments to the effect that Russia, and not the West, is the birthplace of postmodernism are not very convincing since (in accordance with his own premise) other countries can claim such a dubious distinction as well. (“Russia is the motherland of elephants”—the Russians joke about claims by zealous patriots that all great discoveries were known in their country before they appeared elsewhere.) Elsewhere, the building of the Chinese wall and the ensuing Chinese policies of isolationism, draconian enclosures of peasant land in England that led to a speedy transition to capitalism, drastic economic and social reforms after the French Revolution, and the racist policies of the Third Reich were just as arbitrary, and yet transformative of prior realities, as any of [End Page 509] Russia’s most foolhardy experiments. Ironically, Epstein’s claim that Russia is the motherland of postmodernism harks back to the turn-of-the-century controversy as to whether it is pertinent to apply Marxist theory to rustic Russia. Lenin argued that Russia can claim Marxism as its own because all of its long-suffering history was an anticipation of Marxism and leading toward it. Epstein analogously contends that there is a special, indigenous Russian route to postmodernism, a statement that evokes similar pronouncements ingrained in Russian philosophical tradition: Epstein’s thesis that Russia is “irreal” reminds one of Peter Chaadaev’s contention that Russia does not have a history; his idea that Russia is on the threshold of a cultural synthesis with the... (shrink)

This is a review of Alexandre Kojève, The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov, translated by Ilya Merlin and Mikhail Pozdniakov, Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018. This slim book is a translation of Kojève’s essay “La métaphysique religieuse de Vladimir Soloviev,” which was first published in two installments in the Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses in 1934. The French text was itself based on Kojève’s doctoral dissertation, Die religiöse Philosophie Wladimir Solowjews, defended in Heidelberg under the direction of Karl (...) Jaspers in 1926. The translation is accompanied by an introduction from the translators discussing translation issues. In this review, I summarize Kojève’s essay and editorialize on the issue of the principal influences on Solovyov’s metaphysics. Kojève claims that most of Solovyov’s metaphysics was in fact borrowed from Schelling and perhaps also to some extent from Jakob Böhme. If that is the case, then what is usually considered the prototypical Russian metaphysics is... not Russian. (shrink)

Irène Némirovsky’s novella Les Mouches d’automne paints an effective portrait of exile, of the longing for the lost home, and the disorientation that one feels when faced with a reality that is neither recognizable nor understandable. In this article, I analyse Némirovsky’s narrative strategies in relation to spatio-temporal phenomena. My analysis is based on the work of philosophers Mikhail Bakhtin and Gilles Deleuze: Bakhtin’s chronotope and Deleuze’s crystal-image illuminate how the novella’s dominant themes, exile and nostalgia for the home, (...) are irreducible to the clichés of a linear narration and to the simplistic dichotomy home/exile, past/present, and here/there. Instead, Némirovsky creates a productive tension of overlapping and coalescing space- and time-frames. The philosophical framework provided by Bakhtin and Deleuze is useful to unlock and make visible how this thematic complexity is reflected in the novella’s narrative structure. Indeed, my analysis of Les Mouches’s chronotopes and crystal images illuminates Némirovsky’s innovative experimentation in the creation of time–space crossings and a/synchronies, and also contributes to extend further our understanding of Némirovsky’s place within the contemporaneous literary panorama. (shrink)

Au milieu du bouillonnement intellectuel des années vingt en U.R.S.S., Mikhaïl Bakhtine, philosophe et critique littéraire, sʹinterroge sur les rapports entre lʹidéologie, le langage et le psychisme. Refusant la dichotomie saussurienne langue / parole, qui vide la pratique linguistique de sa substance, il affirme la nature sociale du signe et pose les fondements dʹune linguistique de lʹénonciation en tant que manifestation sociale et non individuelle. Au signe figé, réduit à nʹêtre quʹun "signal", il oppose le signe mouvant, changeant, arène où (...) se jouent les conflits sociaux. Publié en 1929 à Leningrad sous le nom de Volochinov, élève de Bakhtine, cet ouvrage paraît pour la première fois sous le nom de son véritable auteur. -- Back cover. (shrink)

Russian Marxism was fairly late to address building its own understandings of the Russian historical process. Moreover, the Bolsheviks did not have their own historiography of “Russian history” despite the fact that, beginning in 1918, they began more and more vehemently claiming not just total ideological control but also intellectual hegemony. A confrontation between “Marxist” and “non-Marxist” understandings arose. At the same time, the real disputes within the camp of Marxist historians came down to a confrontation between the versions of (...) the historical process proposed by Georgi V. Plekhanov and Mikhail N. Pokrovskii back in the 1910s. This article broadly analyzes the disputes in the Marxist camp, from pressing political implications such as attitudes toward the state to the definition of the place of “historical facts” in theory and interpretation. We also demonstrate that it was, in fact, the understandings of Plekhanov, Leon D. Trotsky, and Pokrovskii that continue, both explicitly and implicitly, the legacy of Vasily O. Klyuchevsky’s historical schema and his understanding of the “state school,” a legacy that has remained unstudied until now. (shrink)

The turn to analytic philosophy in Anglophone countries, which is still underway and is spreading elsewhere, has generally involved a retreat from ‘synoptic’ thinking and an almost complete withdrawal from ‘synthetic’ thinking, the creative thinking that in the past has been the source of the greatest contributions of philosophy to science, the humanities and civilization. Analytic philosophy’s ‘naturalistic turn’ led by Willard van Ormond Quine was really a capitulation of philosophy to mainstream reductionist science. So-called ‘continental philosophy’ when it abjures (...) naturalism, offers no real challenge to this. This paper attempts to recover a much more powerful challenge to such analytic philosophy and reductionist science, a philosophy which is naturalist but values synopsis and synthesis along with analysis: speculative naturalism. As such, this is presented as a manifesto not only for philosophy, but for science and the humanities. As Mikhail Epstein argued, the practical outcome of the humanities is the transformation of culture. To transform culture is to transform ourselves, our society and our relationship to each other and to nature. (shrink)

It is a central tenet of ethical intuitionism as defended by W. D. Ross and others that moral theory should reflect the convictions of mature moral agents. Hence, intuitionism is plausible to the extent that it corresponds to our well-considered moral judgments. After arguing for this claim, I discuss whether intuitionists offer an empirically adequate account of our moral obligations. I do this by applying recent empirical research by John Mikhail that is based on the idea of a universal (...) moral grammar to a number of claims implicit in W. D. Ross’s normative theory. I argue that the results at least partly vindicate intuitionism. (shrink)

L’exil des migrants de retour en Géorgie post-soviétique, en se doublant d’une rupture historique brutale et douloureuse avec le « temps d’avant », révèle la perception d’une autre forme d’exil, social et temporel. Cet exil temporel organise une perception du temps originale constituée de diverses ruptures qui sont mises en narration par les discours des migrants à travers la mobilisation de différents procédés narratifs destinés à restituer des parcours individuels heurtés au sein d’un temps socialement partageable. Ainsi, ces narrations laissent (...) apparaître la mise en scène du motif inaugural de la chute ainsi que le lien entre migration et peur de la fragmentation nationale. Elles révèlent également des polarités sociales que nous comprenons comme des perceptions temporelles différenciées. La dialectique rupture-continuité diffère donc selon la position sociale des enquêtés. Selon qu’on ait pu clore ou non les « années difficiles » post-soviétiques, elles sont considérées comme une transition achevée ou bien comme une crise perpétuelle en décalage avec la temporalité politique rapide du réformateur Mikhaïl Saakashvili.Ainsi, en se conjuguant aux rythmes précaires des mobilités, l’appréhension temporelle des migrants dont il est ici question se saisit au croisement de perspectives historiques et de celles des trajectoires migratoires et biographiques. (shrink)

Il s’agit dans cet article de dégager une certaine disposition de la philosophie russe envers la traduction comme opération fondamentale de la pensée. On considérera les cas précis des trois penseurs jouissant d’un prestige européen – Léon Chestov, Mikhaïl Bakhtine et Valery Podoroga. Cette disposition, considérée dans le geste des philosophes face à l’intraduisible, se manifesterait tout simplement par la violence, faite à l’original, de la non-hospitalité culturelle. Cette dernière est masquée parfois par l’idée reçue de l’omniréceptivité de la culture (...) russe, exprimée naguère par Dostoïevski dans son hommage à Pouchkine. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Literature: Why It Matters by Robert EaglestoneAihua ChenEaglestone, Robert. Literature: Why It Matters. Polity Press, 2019. 123pp.Is literature a worthy topic of study in an era fixated on science, technology, and information? This has become a subject of debate in recent years, especially as enrollment in college literature courses has declined. J. Hillis Miller has noted that “all who love literature are collectively anxious today about whether literature (...) matters” (13), insisting that it does since it has “three essential human functions: social critique, the pleasure of the text, and allowing a materialization of the imaginary or an endless approach to the unapproachable imaginary” (31). Other literary scholars concur with Miller, though from differing perspectives, including Dennis J. Sumara in Why Reading Literature in School Still Matters (2002) and Mark William Roche in Why Literature Matters in the 21st Century (2004). In his recent monograph, Literature: Why It Matters, Robert Eaglestone joins this discussion, offering a timely and judiciously formulated manifesto in defense of literary studies that is groundbreaking in the way it treats literature as a living object whose study can inspire ongoing conversation. Eaglestone presents his argument in four segments: “What is Literature?” “Studying Literature,” “Why Does Literature Matter?” and “What Does Literature Teach?”In his first chapter, Eaglestone reveals the limitations of traditional approaches to defining literature as fiction and narrative, that is, as something “made up.” He argues instead that literature is undefinable and exists as a kind of “living conversation” (6). For Eaglestone, literature, like a conversation, is a form of communication among many parties. In this case, the conversation engages the text, the reader, and the author in discussions of nearly everything. Learning about literature involves understanding the form of that discussion in the same way one comes to understand how speakers create meaning in dialogue with one another. And like conversation, readers’ creative response to a literary text fully engages their minds, their hearts, their feelings about the past, and their hopes for the future. In Eaglestone’s view, literature is “not timeless but time-full.” It involves “a past, visible in various ways, including the historical context of a work and the ‘family trees’ of influence and genre; a person (it’s always read now); and a future (that would be you, joining [End Page 118] the conversation)” (20). As in actual conversation, questions of equality and freedom matter a great deal since “literature is a crucial part of our constant dialogue about humanity’s ever-changing self-understanding — not about what we are but about who we are” (22).In the second chapter, Eaglestone asks questions concerning how we go about “Studying Literature.” Here, he extends the metaphor introduced in the preceding chapter of literature constituting a living conversation. He puts forward four ways of pursuing literary studies: as dialogue and dissensus, as a different model of education, as a kind of “knowledge-in-action,” and as craft and activity. For Eaglestone, literary study is an ongoing dialogue whose “aim is to help develop a continuing dissensus about the texts we study in order to root, explore and develop our own selves and distinctiveness” (29–30). He cites critics as diverse in outlook as F. R. Leavis, Q. D. Leavis, John Crowe Ransom, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Arthur Applebee in support of his claims. He further invokes Brazilian educationalist and activist Paulo Freire’s notions of critical pedagogy in forming the view that literary studies offer a different model of education. Rather than following the “banking” model of accruing knowledge and then dispensing it to students, Freire “insists that teaching must be a dialogue” (32). Eaglestone argues that literary study conforms to the image at the center of Freire’s vision of a different form of education because “in a discussion of literature, each person, teacher or student, brings themselves, their own ideas, creativity and understanding, to the discussion and, through dialogue, they invent new knowledge” (33). As for literary studies as a kind of “knowledge-in-action,” Eaglestone invokes American educational theorist Arthur Applebee’s study, Curriculum as Conversation (1996), further underscoring the importance of metaphor spotting and close reading in carrying out this sort of critical... (shrink)

To what extent do moral judgments depend on conscious reasoning from explicitly understood principles? We address this question by investigating one particular moral principle, the principle of the double effect. Using web-based technology, we collected a large data set on individuals' responses to a series of moral dilemmas, asking when harm to innocent others is permissible. Each moral dilemma presented a choice between action and inaction, both resulting in lives saved and lives lost. Results showed that: (1) patterns of moral (...) judgments were consistent with the principle of double effect and showed little variation across differences in gender, age, educational level, ethnicity, religion or national affiliation (within the limited range of our sample population) and (2) a majority of subjects failed to provide justifications that could account for their judgments. These results indicate that the principle of the double effect may be operative in our moral judgments but not open to conscious introspection. We discuss these results in light of current psychological theories of moral cognition, emphasizing the need to consider the unconscious appraisal system that mentally represents the causal and intentional properties of human action. (shrink)

: To what extent do moral judgments depend on conscious reasoning from explicitly understood principles? We address this question by investigating one particular moral principle, the principle of the double effect. Using web-based technology, we collected a large data set on individuals’ responses to a series of moral dilemmas, asking when harm to innocent others is permissible. Each moral dilemma presented a choice between action and inaction, both resulting in lives saved and lives lost. Results showed that: patterns of moral (...) judgments were consistent with the principle of double effect and showed little variation across differences in gender, age, educational level, ethnicity, religion or national affiliation and a majority of subjects failed to provide justifications that could account for their judgments. These results indicate that the principle of the double effect may be operative in our moral judgments but not open to conscious introspection. We discuss these results in light of current psychological theories of moral cognition, emphasizing the need to consider the unconscious appraisal system that mentally represents the causal and intentional properties of human action. (shrink)

D. H. Mellor; VI*—Conscious Belief, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 78, Issue 1, 1 June 1978, Pages 87–102, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian.

D. H. Mellor; VI*—Conscious Belief, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 78, Issue 1, 1 June 1978, Pages 87–102, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian.

This paper argues that the concept and role of ‘institutional racism’ in contemporary discussions of race should be reconsidered. It starts by distinguishing between ‘intrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their constitutive features, and ‘extrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their negative effects. It accepts intrinsic institutional racism, but argues that a ‘disparate impact’ conception of extrinsic conception faces a number of objections, the most serious being that it (...) has no plausible account of what it is that makes extrinsically racist institutions racist. It also argues that claims about the explanatory indispensability of institutional racism are overstated (individual racism is at least as important), critiques structural approaches to racial inequality, and suggests that there is reason to doubt whether institutional reform can provide us with all that morality may require in the racial domain. (shrink)

Maria Lugones and other writers of post-colonial discourse emphasize hybrid over univocal identities. I argue that a significantly expanded version of Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of “dialogized heteroglossia” reveals that the linguistic community and the “voives” at play in the latter constitute a form of dialogic hybridity. This view of the linguistic community offers an alternative to the notion of pure identities and the politics of exclusion that it has supported either overtly or tacitly. Moreover, a political principle - “the (...) interplay of equally audible voices” - can be derived from this view; it permits us simultaneously to affirmmulticulturalism and to deny racism, sexism, classism and other exclusionary discourses the right to become policy-making voices.Maria Lugones et d’autres théoriciens du discours post-colonial mettent l’accent sur les identités hybrides par opposition à univoques. Je soutiens qu’une version significativement plus large de la notion bakhtinienne d’“hétéroglossie dialogisée” fait ressortir que la communauté linguistique et les “voix” en jeu dans cette dernière constituent une forme d’hybridité dialogique. Cette conception de lacommunauté linguistique offre une alternative à la notion d’identité pure et à la politique d’exclusion qu’elle a défendue, ouvertement ou de façon tacite. De plus, un principe politique - “le jeu de voix audibles au même degré” - peut être tiré de cette conception, lequel permettrait à la fois d’affirmer le multiculturalisme et d’empêcher que le racisme, le sexisme, le classicisme et tout autre discours d’exclusion puissent devenir des voix qui déterminent fes pofitiques du jour. (shrink)

Robert Coover’s Novel, The Public Buming, merges fantasy, history, and popular myth to respond to the American Cold War culture surrounding the trial of Ethal and Julius Rosenberg. While serving as a postmodern response to, and rewrite of, the Cold War ideological narratives, Coover’s novel also raises theoretical and practical questions concerning the author’s agency in the twentieth century. This article makes use of the language theories of Bruce Andrews, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Charles Peirce to consider how Coover’s fiction (...) addresses the conflict between the public and private self, authorial discourse and collective ideological discourse. Coover’s novel reflects on these tensions, foregrounding the erosion of an autonomous concept of self and a Romantic notion of autotelic creation. At the same time, it employs a range of strategies (recovery of alternative voices, dismantling of polarities, rewriting) as a form of resistance against the monologic narratives of the Cold War.Le roman de Robert Coover, The Public Buming, combine I’imaginaire, I’histoire, et le mythe populaire pour repondre ala culture de la guerre froide américaine dans laquelle baigne le procès d’Ethal et de Julius Rosenberg. Bien qu’il serve de reponse aux narrations ideologiques de la guerre froide et de réécriture de celles-ci, le roman de Coover soulève aussi des questions théoriques et pratiques relativement à I’action de I’auteur au vingtième siècle. Le présent article utilise les théories du langage de Bruce Andrews, Mikhail Bakhtin, et Charles Peirce afin d’analyser la façon dont le roman-fiction de Coover aborde le conflit entre le soi public et privé et entre le discours de I’auteur et le discours idéologique collectif. Le roman de Coover médite sur ces tensions en mettant I’accent sur I’erosion du concept autonome de soi et de la notion romantique de création autotélique. À la même occasion, il emploie un éventail de stratégies (recouvrement de contre-voix, démantèlement des polarités, réécriture) en tant que résistances aux narrations monoloqigues de la guerre froide. (shrink)

Robert Coover’s Novel, The Public Buming, merges fantasy, history, and popular myth to respond to the American Cold War culture surrounding the trial of Ethal and Julius Rosenberg. While serving as a postmodern response to, and rewrite of, the Cold War ideological narratives, Coover’s novel also raises theoretical and practical questions concerning the author’s agency in the twentieth century. This article makes use of the language theories of Bruce Andrews, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Charles Peirce to consider how Coover’s fiction (...) addresses the conflict between the public and private self, authorial discourse and collective ideological discourse. Coover’s novel reflects on these tensions, foregrounding the erosion of an autonomous concept of self and a Romantic notion of autotelic creation. At the same time, it employs a range of strategies (recovery of alternative voices, dismantling of polarities, rewriting) as a form of resistance against the monologic narratives of the Cold War.Le roman de Robert Coover, The Public Buming, combine I’imaginaire, I’histoire, et le mythe populaire pour repondre ala culture de la guerre froide américaine dans laquelle baigne le procès d’Ethal et de Julius Rosenberg. Bien qu’il serve de reponse aux narrations ideologiques de la guerre froide et de réécriture de celles-ci, le roman de Coover soulève aussi des questions théoriques et pratiques relativement à I’action de I’auteur au vingtième siècle. Le présent article utilise les théories du langage de Bruce Andrews, Mikhail Bakhtin, et Charles Peirce afin d’analyser la façon dont le roman-fiction de Coover aborde le conflit entre le soi public et privé et entre le discours de I’auteur et le discours idéologique collectif. Le roman de Coover médite sur ces tensions en mettant I’accent sur I’erosion du concept autonome de soi et de la notion romantique de création autotélique. À la même occasion, il emploie un éventail de stratégies (recouvrement de contre-voix, démantèlement des polarités, réécriture) en tant que résistances aux narrations monoloqigues de la guerre froide. (shrink)

Objective—To determine the prevalence of, and attitudes towards, observed and personal research misconduct among newly appointed medical consultants. Design—Questionnaire study.Setting—Mersey region, United Kingdom.Participants—Medical consultants appointed between Jan 1995 and Jan 2000 in seven different hospital trusts (from lists provided by each hospital's personnel department). Main outcome measures—Reported observed misconduct, reported past personal misconduct and reported possible future misconduct.Results—One hundred and ninety-four replies were received (a response rate of 63.6%); 55.7% of respondents had observed some form of research misconduct; 5.7% of (...) respondents admitted to past personal misconduct; 18% of respondents were either willing to commit or unsure about possible future research misconduct. Only 17% of the respondents reported having received any training in research ethics. Anaesthetists reported a lower incidence of observed research misconduct (33.3%) than the rest of the respondents (61.5%) (p<0.05). Conclusion—There is a higher prevalence of observed and possible future misconduct among newly appointed consultants in the UK than in the comparable study of biomedical trainees in California. Although there is a need for more extensive studies, this survey suggests that there is a real and potential problem of research misconduct in the UK. (shrink)

It was proposed that the data from Monte Carlo statistical investigations be subjected to analysis of variance methods rather than the conventional techniques of tabling, graphing, and inspecting the data. Two examples in which analysis of variance methods were applied to published Monte Carlo studies were presented. It was suggested that balanced factorial designs should be used whenever possible in Monte Carlo studies so that analysis of variance methods would be directly applicable. Finally, three advantages of analysis of variance methods (...) over conventional techniques were described and analysis of variance methods were contrasted with a possible alternative analytical method, multiple regression analysis. (shrink)

This is Part 1 of a paper on fibred semantics and combination of logics. It aims to present a methodology for combining arbitrary logical systems L i , i ∈ I, to form a new system L I . The methodology `fibres' the semantics K i of L i into a semantics for L I , and `weaves' the proof theory (axiomatics) of L i into a proof system of L I . There are various ways of doing this, we (...) distinguish by different names such as `fibring', `dovetailing' etc, yielding different systems, denoted by L F I , L D I etc. Once the logics are `weaved', further `interaction' axioms can be geometrically motivated and added, and then systematically studied. The methodology is general and is applied to modal and intuitionistic logics as well as to general algebraic logics. We obtain general results on bulk, in the sense that we develop standard combining techniques and refinements which can be applied to any family of initial logics to obtain further combined logics. The main results of this paper is a construction for combining arbitrary, (possibly not normal) modal or intermediate logics, each complete for a class of (not necessarily frame) Kripke models. We show transfer of recursive axiomatisability, decidability and finite model property. Some results on combining logics (normal modal extensions of K) have recently been introduced by Kracht and Wolter, Goranko and Passy and by Fine and Schurz as well as a multitude of special combined systems existing in the literature of the past 20-30 years. We hope our methodology will help organise the field systematically. (shrink)

Purpose. The research is devoted to the analysis of the urgent problem of the information society: the overload of a person with information and, as a result, the impossibility of adequate formation and development of the personality; as well as the problem of "digitization" of human existence and the formation of a new reality of dataism. Theoretical basis. A lot of modern scientific works are devoted to the analysis of the information society, its problems and features. The information society is (...) a logical continuation of the scientific and technological revolution, which led to the rapid growth of scientific knowledge and the technology development. In the 20th century, technologies have touched the sphere of knowledge and information, as a result of which the formation and development of the information society, or "knowledge society", takes place. Information becomes the main resource in it, and, one way or another, a person’s life is inextricably connected with the information space. With the information society formation, the problem of information search and processing becomes one of the most urgent. It turns out that despite the abundance and availability of information, it is very difficult to determine its relevance. A lot of effort is spent on developing information retrieval algorithms. Another problem is related to the person’s inability to process large amounts of data. This situation begins to influence not only the education process and professional activity, but also the formation of a person’s personality. A person is "lost" in the information space and gradually loses his/her "I". Algorithms for data analysis come to the rescue, but gradually, instead of giving a person material for thought, they begin to make decisions on their own, and therefore, live life instead of a person. With the advent of Big Data processing algorithms, a new ideological paradigm appears – dataism, which predicts the merger of a person with the general data flow. Originality. The authors make assumptions that the dataistic future is "natural". A lot of works, including in the framework of philosophy, are focused on the problem of "dissolving" a person in the information space and finding ways to overcome it. But, in our opinion, this process is a completely logical continuation of human evolution. Conclusions. Existence of a person as a data flow is not a problem and a threat, but a new dimension of his/her being, and, therefore, requires a careful study and formulation of the main principles of this form of existence. (shrink)