Krister Segerberg proposed irrevocable belief revision, to be contrasted with standard belief revision, in a setting wherein belief of propositional formulas is modelled explicitly. This suggests that in standard belief revision is revocable: one should be able to unmake (‘revoke’) the fresh belief in the revision formula, given yet further information that contradicts it. In a dynamic epistemic logical setting for belief revision, for multiple agents, we investigate what the requirements are for revocable belief revision. By this we not merely (...) mean recovering belief in non-modal propositions, as in the recovery principle for belief contraction, but recovering belief in modal propositions: beliefs about beliefs. These requirements are almost never met, a surprising result. (shrink)

The article provides a brief overview on Hans Mayer’s life and work and his several stays in Jerusalem and with Stéphane Mosès.

Video surveillance is an omnipresent phenomenon in today’s metropolitan life. Mainly intended to solve crimes, to prevent them by realtime-monitoring or simply as a deterrent, video surveillance has also become interesting in economical contexts; e.g. to create customer profiles and analyse patterns of their shopping behaviour. The extensive use of video surveillance is challenged by legal claims and societal norms like not putting everybody under generalised suspicion or not recording people without their consent. In this work we propose a technological (...) solution to balance the positive and negative effects of video surveillance. With automatic image recognition algorithms on the rise, we suggest to use that technology to not just automatically identify people but blacken their images. This blackening is done with a cryptographic procedure allowing to revoke it with an appropriate key. Many of the legal and ethical objections to video surveillance could thereby be accommodated. In commercial scenarios, the operator of a customer profiling program could offer enticements for voluntarily renouncing one’s anonymity. Customers could e.g. wear a small infrared LED to signal their agreement to being tracked. After explaining the implementation details, this work outlines a multidisciplinary discussion incorporating an economic, ethical and legal viewpoint. (shrink)

We present a generic denotational semantic framework for protocols for dialogs between rational and autonomous agents over action which allows for retraction and revocation of proposals for action. The semantic framework views participants in a deliberation dialog as jointly and incrementally manipulating the contents of shared spaces of action-intention tokens. The framework extends prior work by decoupling the identity of an agent who first articulates a proposal for action from the identity of any agent then empowered to retract or (...) revoke the proposal, thereby permitting proposals, entreaties, commands, promises, etc., to be distinguished semantically. (shrink)

In the academic setting as in any organization legal norms prevail and are assumed to be congruent with ethical norms. Nevertheless, there are cases when the ratio of ethical and legal norms is inadequate and disproportional, especially those dealing with socially responsible decisions in academia. For this reason, the aim here is to analyse incongruences of ethical and legal norms related to the revocation of doctoral degrees in Lithuania, illustrated with examples of deviant behaviour by academic degree holders in (...) terms of decisions of the courts and the ombudsman for academic ethics. Lithuania, being a Member State of the European Union, is currently facing the challenge of implementing newly-adopted laws related to the revocation of doctoral degrees. Accordingly, data were collected from available online official sources to gain more comprehensive evidence, and then analysed using the inductive approach of qualitative content analysis. Research findings show that there is still a thin line between ethical and legal norms, and this line fluctuates depending on nuanced considerations. This is to say that it is still problematical to dress ethical principles in legal clothing. (shrink)

This text is an examination of the democratic public sphere in relation to the presently dominating crisis discourse. More precisely, we endeavor to expose assumptions, aims and consequences entailed by the discourse of crisis, hereafter considered as a rhetorical apparatus asserting that crisis reveals an unambiguous and mandatory nature of things imposing self-evident and thus non deliberative decisions concerning both singular existence and communities. The crisis discourse serves to endorse indisputable certainty and therefore to blur or even suppress indeterminacy. Nevertheless, (...) and it is our guiding allegation formulated mainly in reference to Claude Lefort’s political thought, the possibility of democracy and of its public sphere depends constitutively on a unique indeterminacy. Our analysis proves that restoring certainty cannot but go along with a naturalist fallacy and an abuse of rhetoric power postponing deliberative-shaped democratic practices. This line of reasoning comes to define public sphere as a rhetorical counter-power strategy meant to reassert democratic indeterminacy. (shrink)

The case of the revocation of ordination from the two pastors by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (hereafter, ELCSA) in the Gauteng Province, Pretoria, South Africa has motivated the present conversation. In order to respond appropriately to the scenario mentioned earlier, the research will dialogue with Paul’s teaching on spiritual gifts in Romans 11:29–32. The document released by the High Court of South Africa, Gauteng Division, Pretoria (hereafter, HCoSAP) ruled that ELCSA acted against the law and ordered (...) that the revocation of the ordination be reversed (Case No: 62810/2018). The study comprises three main layers as follows: (1) analysis of ordination in the biblical text, including a dialogue with Paul’s view of calling and spiritual gifts in 11:29–32, (2) a ruling by the HCoSAP, and (3) a critique of ELCSA. Documentary analysis, ethnography, and participant observation are employed as methodological approaches.Contribution: The contribution of this research is two-fold. Firstly, the readership in general and believing communities in particular should adhere to the rules of the game as prescribed by the biblical text so that they will mitigate both conflict and confrontation with other congregants. Secondly, the study aims to educate societies that no one is above the law. Members of the sacred institution can appear at the high court either when their constitutional right is violated or as suspects of crime. (shrink)

À partir de l'analyse de la diversité des réactions réformées à l'édit de Fontainebleau, cet article se propose de suivre l'avènement de deux des concepts fondateurs de la modernité politique, la distinction des sphères religieuse et politique d'une part, la souveraineté populaire d'autre part. Toutefois, l'analyse généalogique soulignera l'émergence distincte de ces deux notions, en fonction de logiques croisées et apparemment paradoxales dont il faudra chercher la cohérence dans les positions anthropologiques qui les sous-tendent. L'étude des débats théologiques modernes dessine (...) de la sorte l'une des voies par laquelle les concepts politiques modernes ont été formés. (shrink)

Why is consent revocable? In other words, why must we respect someone's present dissent at the expense of her past consent? This essay argues against act-based explanations and in favor of a rule-based explanation. A rule prioritizing present consent will serve our interests the best, in light of our interests in having flexibility over our consent and in minimizing the possibility of error in people's judgments about whether we consent.

Sumário - Capítulo I. Cultura, realidade, linguagem e lógica; Capítulo II. Premissas epistemológico - jurídicas; Capítulo III. Problemas de teoria geral do direito; Capítulo IV. Sobre a revogação; Capítulo V. Alguns casos concretos de revogação no direito tributário.

In ‘belief revision’ a theory is revised with a formula φ resulting in a revised theory . Typically, is in , one has to give up belief in by a process of retraction, and φ is in . We propose to model belief revision in a dynamic epistemic logic. In this setting, we typically have an information state (pointed Kripke model) for the theory wherein the agent believes the negation of the revision formula, i.e., wherein is true. The revision with (...) φ is a program *φ that transforms this information state into a new information state. The transformation is described by a dynamic modal operator [*φ], that is interpreted as a binary relation [ [*φ] ] between information states. The next information state is computed from the current information state and the belief revision formula. If the revision is successful, the agent believes φ in the resulting state, i.e., Bφ is then true. To make this work, as information states we propose ‘doxastic epistemic models’ that represent both knowledge and degrees of belief. These are multi-modal and multi-agent Kripke models. They are constructed from preference relations for agents, and they satisfy various characterizable multi-agent frame properties. Iterated, revocable, and higher-order belief revision are all quite natural in this setting. We present, for an example, five different ways of such dynamic belief revision. One can also see that as a non-deterministic epistemic action with two alternatives, where one is preferred over the other, and there is a natural generalization to general epistemic actions with preferences. (shrink)

In ‘belief revision’ a theory\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\cal K}$$\end{document} is revised with a formula φ resulting in a revised theory \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\cal K}\ast\varphi$$\end{document}. Typically, \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\neg\varphi$$\end{document} is in \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\cal K}$$\end{document}, one has to give up belief in \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\neg\varphi$$\end{document} by a process (...) of retraction, and φ is in \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\cal K}\ast\varphi$$\end{document}. We propose to model belief revision in a dynamic epistemic logic. In this setting, we typically have an information state (pointed Kripke model) for the theory \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\cal K}$$\end{document} wherein the agent believes the negation of the revision formula, i.e., wherein \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$B\neg\varphi$$\end{document} is true. The revision with φ is a program *φ that transforms this information state into a new information state. The transformation is described by a dynamic modal operator [*φ], that is interpreted as a binary relation [ [*φ] ] between information states. The next information state is computed from the current information state and the belief revision formula. If the revision is successful, the agent believes φ in the resulting state, i.e., Bφ is then true. To make this work, as information states we propose ‘doxastic epistemic models’ that represent both knowledge and degrees of belief. These are multi-modal and multi-agent Kripke models. They are constructed from preference relations for agents, and they satisfy various characterizable multi-agent frame properties. Iterated, revocable, and higher-order belief revision are all quite natural in this setting. We present, for an example, five different ways of such dynamic belief revision. One can also see that as a non-deterministic epistemic action with two alternatives, where one is preferred over the other, and there is a natural generalization to general epistemic actions with preferences. (shrink)

This paper explores some key discrepancies between two sets of normative requirements applicable to the research use of personal data and human biological materials: the data protection regime which follows the application of the European Union General Data Protection Regulation, and the Declaration of Helsinki, CIOMS guidelines and other research ethics regulations. One source of this controversy is that the GDPR requires consent to process personal data to be clear, concise, specific and granular, freely given and revocable and therefore has (...) challenged the concept of ‘broad consent’, which has been widely applied in the context of biobanking. Another source of controversy is the interplay between regulations of research ethics and protection of personal data related to the secondary use of personal data and biological materials. In this case, the GDPR ‘research condition’ provides an alternative to re-consent for the use of previously collected personal data and biological materials. Although the mentioned controversies have been raised in the legal literature, they have not been explicitly addressed from the research ethics perspective. Should consent be regarded as a priority legal basis for personal data processing in health data research? Can broad consent still be a suitable legal ground for biobanking? What should be the role of research ethics provisions that differ from the GDPR standards, and what should be the role and function of research ethics committees in the changing environment of health data research? These are the ongoing controversies to be explored in the paper. (shrink)

Citizenship status is meant to be secure, that is, inviolable. Recently, however, several democratic states have adopted or are considering adopting laws that allow them the power to revoke citizenship. This claimed right forces us to consider whether citizenship can be treated as a “conditional” status, in particular whether it can be treated as conditional on the right sort of behavior. Those who defend such a view argue that citizenship is a privilege rather than a right, and thus in principle (...) is revocable. Participating in a foreign state's military, treason, spying, or committing acts that otherwise threaten the national security of one's state may all warrant revocation. This article assesses the justifications given for the claimed power to revoke citizenship in democratic states and concludes that, ultimately, such a power is incompatible with democracy.I begin with a brief account of the claims given by contemporary democratic states for the “right to revoke.” Democratic citizenship is today commonly understood to beegalitarian, that is, it protects an equal basic package of rights for all citizens; and to be “the highest and most secure legal status,” that is, it is meant to be secure from unilateral withdrawal by the state. Formally, many democratic states have revocation laws on the books, but most of these have long been in disuse. Although I argue in this article that all revocation laws are inconsistent with democratic citizenship, I focus on the recent surge in proposed and implemented revocation laws, which are justified as essential to protecting national security.In the second section I outline three reasons to object to revocation laws. First, revocation laws discriminate between citizens based on their citizenship status. Second, since they single out those who are eligible for revocation, they apply unequal penalties for the same crime. Third, they are inadequately justified, in general, but also particularly to those who may be subject to them, because they are not adequately connected to the policy goal they are said to fulfill. I conclude with some brief observations concerning the ways in which revocation permits states to abrogate their shared responsibility for protecting the global community from dangerous individuals. (shrink)

According to James Conant, the 'revocations' made of the "Concluding Unscientific Postscript" and the "Tractatus" by their authors mean that we should view these texts as containing 'simple nonsense'. I firstly criticize the reading of the Postscript's 'revocation' which leads Conant to this conclusion. Next, I aim to show why we shall better understand the revocation's significance if we pay close attention to two factors: the pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus's description of himself as a 'humorist'; and, more importantly, (...) what the text tells us about 'humour' as an entire existential life-view; one given much less attention in Kierkegaard scholarship than the much better-known 'aesthetic', 'ethical' and 'religious' views of life. (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "La pensée et l'œuvre de Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) forment une énigme, depuis toujours objet d'un conflit des interprétations. En butte aux persécutions qui précédèrent la révocation de l'édit de Nantes, il préféra l'exil à Rotterdam. Sa revue les Nouvelles de la République des lettres constitua une des premières formes de l'espace public européen, et on a pu dire de son fascinant Dictionnaire historique et critique (1696) qu'il constitua la matrice des Lumières. Dans son Commentaire (...) philosophique, où il fait l'apologie de la tolérance, il critique l'oppression religieuse de « la France toute catholique ». Mais dans son Avis aux Réfugiés, il fustige toute sédition religieuse des protestants réfugiés. L'intrication de ces deux lignes, qui remontent de Hobbes et Machiavel, d'une part, et d'autre part de Milton et Bodin, jusque chez Calvin, aide à comprendre les paradoxes politiques, et politico-théologiques, fondateurs d'une modernité aujourd'hui en crise. En cherchant à penser ces « différends », Bayle invente un style d'écriture pluraliste, délinéarisée, qui correspond au caractère oblique de son plaidoyer pour la sincérité de l'autre.". (shrink)

When I was asked to propose a topic for my presidential address, the subject I chose, moral imperatives and conundrums of conscience, seemed to me particularly appropriate and timely. This was in part because of the problems of conscience caused for many members of the Academy by the decision to hold the annual meeting in Arizona, whose restrictive laws on immigration seemed to many to violate basic principles of right and justice and hence to warrant a boycott. Long, thoughtful, and (...) impassioned discussion of the issues revealed their complexity. Although the final decision disappointed many members, all recognized its virtue in supporting the Arizonans who were struggling to accomplish revocation of legislation they believed wrong. There was more. The crises in the leadership of the Academy during two of my years as a presidential officer raised issues of conscience and morality for all who worked to achieve equitable, just, and rational solutions to our problems and conflicts. On both issues, the site of the meeting and the governance of the Academy, colleagues adopted and defended positions that demonstrated the variety and strength of their convictions and the diversity of their reasons for holding them. (shrink)

This article is based on a keynote address delivered at the annual meetings of the North American Society for Social Philosophy. It chronicles the story of my hire as the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Marquette University, and the subsequent revocation of that deanship in reaction to pressure from conservative Catholic sources. This is a story about religion, leadership, sexuality, and politics. In these comments, I describe the case, offer an analysis of the event based on the logic (...) of a cultural politics of belonging and exclusion within a religious framework, and suggest a critique of forms of institutional power whereby diversity is intentionally cultivated in accordance with the Jesuit educational mission and then betrayed when it becomes controversial. (shrink)

This book provides a critical examination of how the choice of what to believe is represented in the standard model of belief change. In particular the use of possible worlds and infinite remainders as objects of choice is critically examined. Descriptors are introduced as a versatile tool for expressing the success conditions of belief change, addressing both local and global descriptor revision. The book presents dynamic descriptors such as Ramsey descriptors that convey how an agent’s beliefs tend to be changed (...) in response to different inputs. It also explores sentential revision and demonstrates how local and global operations of revision by a sentence can be derived as a special case of descriptor revision. Lastly, the book examines revocation, a generalization of contraction in which a specified sentence is removed in a process that may possibly also involve the addition of some new information to the belief set. (shrink)

This paper examines the neo-colonial project of Narendra Modi implemented in Kashmir after the revocation of special status on August 5, 2019. The neo-colonial infrastructure supported by the threads of re-classification of legal residents and land designations intends to significantly transform the demography of Muslim majority Kashmir into a Muslim minority, consequently destroying the Muslim identity of the state. The abrogation of Article 370 and enactment of new domicile law has extended the legal and administrative control of New Delhi, (...) making Kashmir indistinguishable from the Indian legal system and leaving no room for the local legislative assembly to make laws beneficial for the state residents. The paper asks how India is implementing the neo-colonial settler agenda in Kashmir. How and to what extent legal and military instruments are employed to disempower Kashmiris from territorial and cultural identity? The paper argues that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pursuing a neo-colonial settler agenda in Kashmir through ‘destroy and replace,’ which is supported by the neo-liberal agenda, including; new land management policy, new domicile law, spatial planning and development, new settlements of Hindus, authoritative central control, and massive militarization to carry out gross human rights abuses and repression. (shrink)

In this paper we analyze how the semantics of the Alternating-time Temporal Logic ATL$^*$ deals with agents' commitments to strategies in the process of formula evaluation. In (\acro{atl}$^*$), one can express statements about the strategic ability of an agent (or a coalition of agents) to achieve a goal $\phi$ such as: ``agent $i$ can choose a strategy such that, if $i$ follows this strategy then, no matter what other agents do, $\phi$ will always be true''. However, strategies in \acro{atl} are (...) \emph{revocable} in the sense that in the evaluation of the goal $\phi$ the agent $i$ is no longer restricted by the strategy she has chosen in order to reach the state where the goal is evaluated. -/- Here we discuss some alternatives leading to amendments of that semantics. In particular, we consider variants of \acro{atl}$^*$ where strategies, on the contrary, are \emph{irrevocable}. Unlike in the standard semantics of \acro{atl}, memory plays an essential role in the semantics based on irrevocable strategies. -/- Further, we propose and discuss various syntactic and semantics mechanisms for handling commitments to strategies and release from such commitments in the semantics of ATL$^*$, leading to more expressive and semantically refined versions of that logic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How Germany Left the Republic of LettersKasper Risbjerg EskildsenA common culture of scholarship existed across Europe from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. This culture possessed its own institutions, traditions, and rituals that connected its members across borders and religious divides. A professor from Lisbon, a librarian from Hanover, and a schoolmaster from Turku would all speak nearly the same language and wear nearly the same clothing. They would (...) share many of the same dreams, celebrate many of the same heroes, and have similar memories from their youth and adult life. They were convinced that they belonged to the same cultural group and were normally willing to make personal and economic sacrifices when called upon by members of this group. Long before the emergence of European nation-states, the community of scholars formed what Benedict Anderson has called an imagined community, united by the forces of language, culture, and writing.1From around 1500, the community of scholars went by the name respublica litteraria—the Republic of Letters. Italian humanists already used the metaphor in the early fifteenth century, and with Erasmus of Rotterdam's Antibar-barorum liber, it became commonplace within Europe.2 To Erasmus and his [End Page 421] circle the Republic of Letters signified the natural community between all students of creation, divine reason, and Greek and Roman antiquity. It gathered scholars across space and time and set them apart from the hordes of ignorant barbarians. To most early modern scholars, however, respublica litteraria signified much more than a community of reason and knowledge. They used the metaphor to describe every aspect of the culture of scholarship that connected its members and demarcated them from surrounding society. Universities, academies, and secret societies were talked about as parts of the Republic of Letters. Scholarly letters and conversations tête-à-tête, books, lectures and seminars, rituals and traditions were all included. The metaphor demarcated invisible borders between learned and lay, tacitly known to insiders but rarely strictly defined.3The Republic ChallengedDuring the last decades of the seventeenth century the metaphor of the Republic of Letters lost much of its force and elasticity. Scholars used and debated the metaphor more than ever before, but these heated and emotional discussions were not necessarily—as is assumed in much of the work on the eighteenth century4 —a sign that the metaphor and the culture it represented had gained ground. The discussions were, much rather, a symptom of crisis. The end of the great religious wars and the emergence of modern centralized states forced scholars to rethink their role in society and their relationship to the new military and administrative elites. Philosophical skepticism and philological criticism threatened established academic teachings and methods.5 Debates about the Republic of Letters reveal the scholars' efforts to answer these political and intellectual challenges. In her studies of learned Huguenots who, after 1685, were spread across Europe, Anne Goldgar has described how the alienated community of scholars at the turn of the eighteenth century came increasingly under pressure.6 The Huguenots felt marginalized in their adopted [End Page 422] homes, lost income and patronage, and suffered a decline in social prestige. According to Goldgar, these external pressures resulted in stronger internal bonds, as exiled scholars rallied around the ideal of the borderless Republic of Letters. But already before Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Huguenot scholars defined a French version of the republic—La République des Lettres—in strong opposition to the forces suppressing the Protestant minority. In 1684 Pierre Bayle defiantly declared from his Dutch refuge,It is not a matter of religion, but of science: therefore one should put an end to all boundaries that divide men into different camps, and consider only that which unites them, namely their rank as noblemen in the Republic of Letters. In this sense all scholars should regard themselves as brothers, and consequently one another as family. They should say:We are all equal We are all relatives } as children of Apollo.7Protestant Northern Europe did not witness the same religious and political conflicts that France did.8 Scholars there were also ridden by crisis at the turn... (shrink)

Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) is often considered one of the staunchest defenders of toleration, especially in the domain of religion. His Commentaire philosophique, published in 1686, one year after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, argued for a broad idea of toleration, to be extended with no exceptions to all sects and religions. However, his thought can hardly be reduced to an exaltation of the “rights of the conscience,” for he realized very soon that such an exaltation risks bringing (...) forth religious fanatism, which in turn is the cause of religious wars and acts of violence. Toleration, in these conditions, is only a political remedy for the sickness of the human mind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sozzini’s Ghost: Pierre Bayle and Socinian TolerationBarbara Sher TinsleyPierre Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary (1686–87), a Huguenot exile’s response to the Revocation of Nantes, established its author as a defender of free conscience for pagans, Muslims, Jews, atheists, Catholics, Protestants, Anabaptists, and Socinians. 1 The virtues of Pagans and Atheists are most fully treated in Bayle’s work on the comet. 2 In this work pagans, Catholics (whom Bayle equated with (...) pagan idolators), and atheists were compared to the advantage of the latter, a conclusion that caused widespread scandal and for which Bayle was obliged by his church to write an apology or clarification found in his Dictionary. 3 In toleration there was no juste milieu. 4 Everyone must act according to conscience no matter how errant. Bayle reiterated a position taken in his criticism of the Jesuit Louis Maimbourg’s History of Calvinism. 5 In it Bayle first enunciated the principle that he noted frightened readers and caused a scandal, namely, that error disguised as truth must be allowed all the privileges of truth, i.e., must be permitted to be believed by those convinced they had found truth. This doctrine of errant conscience was basic to Bayle’s understanding of God and man’s search for Him; and after his death it became basic to concepts of individualism, free [End Page 609] inquiry, free speech, and inalienable rights, concepts which were all made concrete during the Enlightenment. Forcing conscience was wrong. 6Bayle’s lack of partisanship in treating religious history invited criticism from Calvinists in Holland. He wrote to Mr. Pecher, a minister at Emmerick, that in his Dictionary he had avoided passionate prejudice with respect to Jesuits or to any other subject. 7 But had he also avoided an indifference to dogma? Not according to his chief critic who was his erstwhile patron turned enemy, Pierre Jurieu, Pastor of the Reformed church of Rotterdam and theologian in the Ecole Illustre. This school, founded expressly for Bayle and Jurieu by the city council of Rotterdam, 8 allowed Bayle to teach philosophy and history. Since Jurieu thought Bayle “indifferent” to dogma, he believed him to be a covert Socinian or atheist. In 1693 he managed to have Bayle dismissed from his teaching post.Indifference was a concept that started with the ancients, particularly Stoics, Skeptics, and Cynics, who regarded everything except virtue as matters of indifference, a posture with which many of Bayle’s writings, though not all, seemed to agree. In scholastic logic indifferentism meant that things were neither particular nor universal but indifferently so according to the viewpoint from which they were regarded. Jurieu made the charge of indifferentism in 1687. 9 He remarked then of Bayle’s concept of the erring conscience that it was “developed with a view to establishing tolerance and a general indifference of all sects and even of all religions.” 10 Bayle was not indifferent to doctrine. He remained loyal to the Reformed faith, defended orthodoxy, and in a letter to his cousin protested that he was ready to show that his work on comets contained nothing that was contrary to right reason, Scripture, or the Confession of faith of the Reformed Church. 11 Paul Dibon noted that Bayle was especially consistent in his concern for divine transcendance rather than indifference. 12 Henry Kamen wrote that Bayle wrote in “complete theological indifference,” 13 a statement ignoring Bayle’s disapproval of much theological heterodoxy, the orthodoxy of others. While Bayle was usually non-partisan, he was never indifferent. Kamen’s remark contrasts [End Page 610] with Theodore Rabb’s, who wrote that Jean Bodin and Bayle took their stand on “the equality of all beliefs” 14 a statement suggesting indifference, but in a positive rather than negative way.Bodin’s own religion was particularly problematic. Tolerant for his age, a whole century before Bayle, Bodin, a Carmelite friar for several years, had already repudiated forcing conscience. In his book on the state he warned that those who do so merely create more intransigence among their already alienated subjects. 15 He also insinuated that a multiplicity of religions—“all the religions of all people”—including natural religion, Jupiter’s... (shrink)

Internet of Things-based environments pose various challenges due to their anytime/anywhere computing, and the efficient cryptographic based key management is one of the major challenges in Internet of Things. The key management life cycle consists of initialization, key generation, key registration, key backup, key update, key recovery, and key revocation. Our contribution in this paper is to summarize the state-of-the-art key management schemes and techniques in different scenarios, such as mobile ad hoc networks, wireless sensor networks, and the Internet (...) of Things environments. Further different issues related specifically to the Internet of Things environment are discussed and the causes and effects pertaining to the security breach for Internet of Things are identified. Furthermore, in this research work, we develop a novel permutation of threshold and identity-based key management schemes for the Internet of Things environment and have proposed future directions to counteract the attacks on confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and availability of security services in the Internet of Things environment and identified the two key management schemes, that is, identity and threshold schemes for Internet of Things, to resolve Internet of Things key management issues and maximum possible security services effective implementation. We evaluate our scheme with the help of mathematical and statistical techniques. (shrink)

Gifts: A Study in Comparative Law is the first broad-based study of the law governing the giving and revocation of gifts ever attempted. First, gift-giving is everywhere governed by social and customary norms before it encounters the law. Second, the giving of gifts takes place largely outside of the marketplace. As a result of these two characteristics, the law of gifts provides an optimal lens through which to examine how different legal systems confront social practice. The law of gifts (...) is well-developed both in the civil and the common laws. Richard Hyland's study provides an excellent view of the ways in which different civil and common law jurisdictions confront common issues. The legal systems discussed include principally, in the common law, those of Great Britain, the United States, and India, and, in the civil law, the private law systems of Belgium and France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Hyland also serves a critique of the dominant method in the field, which is a form of functionalism based on what is called the praesumptio similitudinis, namely the axiom that, once legal doctrine is stripped away, developed legal systems tend to reach similar practical results. His study demonstrates, to the contrary, that legal systems actually differ, not only in their approach and conceptual structure, but just as much in the results. (shrink)

Etienne Balibar, Olivier Bloch, Jean-Claude Bourdin, Isabelle Garo, Alain Gigandet, Pascale Gillot, Annie Ibrahim, Irène Pereira et André Tosel se penchent dans cet ouvrage sur les problèmes et les perpectives induites par le matérialisme althusserien. " Jamais un coup de dés n'abolira le hasard ". Althusser fait un bref commentaire de cette célèbre sentence mallarméenne dans un texte de 1982 - Le courant souterrain du matérialisme de la rencontre. II y conclut que l'histoire n'est que la révocation permanente du fait (...) accompli par le "fait à accomplir" sans qu'on sache à l'avance ni jamais, ni où, ni comment. Affaire de jeu de dés à jeter sur la table vide... Ainsi est déterminée une position en philosophie et en politique, assiette inédite qui en appelle à l'aléatoire et se donne comme un " chantier " ouvert à nos explorations. De fait, les catégories du sujet, de l'aliénation, de la dialectique, de l'idéologie, sont bradées ou ébranlées au profit du processus hasardeux et de la vicissitude des formes. Pourtant, ni le primat de la lutte des classes ni la thèse de la matérialité objective du monde ne sont sacrifiés au nouvel horizon de la conjoncture. Il se peut qu'il y ait deux voies du matérialisme, aussi légitimes l'une que l'autre - matérialisme de la nécessité et matérialisme de la rencontre. Gageons que ce dernier puisse faire que les éléments vivants d'un ensemble politique"s'accrochent " entre eux et au tout de telle sorte que ce qui est vrai en théorie le soit aussi en pratique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.1 (2005) 3-6MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Whispers of the Flesh Essays in Memory of Pierre KlossowskiIan JamesRussell Ford Pierre Klossowski—novelist, essayist, painter, and translator—was one of the most startling, original, and influential figures in twentieth-century French intellectual culture. The older brother of the well-known painter Balthus and a close associate of Georges Bataille, Klossowski's diverse oeuvre includes novels, philosophical essays, and translations, as well as paintings and films. (...) Confined thus far to an undeserved but somehow fitting shadow existence in the margins and notes of theorists who have become mainstays of Anglo-American criticism, Klossowski's own work has increasingly become a focus of critical interest for its decisive contribution to the development of thought and aesthetics in France from the 1950s onward. Born in 1905, the eldest son of Polish émigrés, Klossowski spent his first ten years in Paris in an artistic milieu, heavily influenced by the neoimpressionism of figures such as Bonnard and Derain. His father, Erich Klossowski de Rola, was a painter and art historian, the author of an important monograph on Daumier. His mother, Baladine, was also a painter and trained under Bonnard. While still a teenager Klossowski was introduced to the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, with whom he became close and who in turn introduced him to the novelist André Gide. At eighteen he became Gide's secretary and assisted him with the drafts of his famous novel Les faux-monnayeurs.Not until 1930, however, did Klossowski's own career properly begin, when he translated with Jean-Pierre Jouve a collection of poems by Friedrich Hölderlin. Throughout his life Klossowski was a prolific and influential translator from both German and Latin into French, translating amongst others Nietzsche, Kafka, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein from the German, and Suetonius, Virgil, Augustine, and Tertullian from the Latin. While working for the prominent Parisian psychoanalyst René Laforgue, Klossowski published his first philosophical essay on the Marquis de Sade in 1933 in the Revue française de la psychanalyse. Scandalized by Klossowski's Nietzschean-inflected psychoanalytic interpretation of Sade's writing, Laforgue dismissed Klossowski immediately. Throughout the 1930s Klossowski made a number of key friendships and acquaintances, most importantly with Georges Bataille, but also many others, including Walter Benjamin, André Masson, Jean Wahl, and Maurice Heine. During this period he published several articles and collaborated with Bataille on the review Acéphale and in the avant-garde experiment of the Collège de Sociologie (where, it is said, he would attend meetings dressed in a soutane). During the war years Klossowski trained in a number of Catholic seminaries, a vocation which ultimately failed and led to the writing of his first novel, La vocation suspendue. In the postwar period he married [End Page 3] a war widow, Denise Morin Sinclair, who had been interned in Ravensbrück for her activities in the Resistance and who became the model for Roberte, a key figure in much of Klossowski's fiction and painting. After the war Klossowski began to publish the influential works for which he will chiefly be remembered: literary-philosophical essays on Sade and Nietzsche (among others), as well as six important novels written between 1950 and 1965, La vocation suspendue (1950), the three works, originally published separately, which went on to form the Lois de l'hospitalité trilogy—Roberte ce soir (1954), La révocation de l'Édit de Nantes (1959) and Le souffleur ou le théâtre de société (1960)‚—and, finally, Le Baphomet (1965).Klossowski's seminal 1947 work, Sade mon prochain, was one of the first full-length literary and philosophical studies of Sade's work to be published in France and marked a decisive break from earlier accounts. Whereas earlier treatments of Sade had focused either on biographical detail or on the medical and psychosexual import of his life and writing, Klossowski's reading was concerned with the intertwined figures of law and transgression in Sade's work. After Sade mon prochain French intellectuals and writers... (shrink)

Parmi les exemples du« principe de circulation» dans l'espace européen, le phénomène huguenot est l'un des cas les plus significatifs, par sa durée, quatre siècles, son ampleur et la diversité de ses expressions. Il débute dès le XVIe siècle avec les premières persécutions des protestants français à l'origine d'une émigration en Hollande, prend toute sa dimension après la révocation de l'édit de Nantes en 1685: 200 000 protestants français se réfugient principalement en Suisse, aux Provinces-Unies, dans les Îles britanniques et (...) dans l'Allemagne protestante, continuant à avoir des liens avec leurs coreligionnaires restés à l'intérieur du royaume. Tout au long du XVIe siècle, trois réseaux, religieux, culturel et économique, en interaction constante sans pour autant se superposer, définissent une circularité huguenote qui marque l'espace européen. À l'ère des nationalismes du XVIe siècle, cette circularité s'affaiblit fortement sans disparaître totalement, en particulier chez les huguenots français. À partir de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, se produit une réactivation fondée sur la mémoire, qui conduit en France les régions huguenotes à accueillir en très grand nombre les victimes du nazisme, puis facilite les échanges religieux et culturels entre huguenots de France et du Refuge. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the Hindmarsh and Wik cases stand as crucial case studies that evidence the ongoing production of terra nullius within contemporary Australian contexts. They bring into focus the critical importance the signifiers of property, capitalist ‘productivity’ and legality within the settler-colonial state. Alongside notions of ‘civility,’ discourses surrounding ‘economic productivity’ and ‘equality before the law’ are consistently mobilised in these cases to assert white sovereignty. In contradistinction to the discourses that construct Indigenous people’s relation to (...) land as a singular and affective ‘affinity,’ media, political and legal texts script white Australian land uses such as farming and mining as ‘productive’ and necessary for economic prosperity. They are posited with ‘monetary’ output and juridical standing in order to produce the narrative that the continent was lawfully ‘settled’ by ‘illustrious’ white Australians. Moreover, these signifiers ramify within colonial law. Following these cases, the state amended the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 and the Native Title Act 1993 respectively. They ensured the material construction of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge and the revocation of specific Indigenous land rights in order to sustain the settler-colonial state’s claims to sovereignty. (shrink)

‘An understanding with the reader’ which appears as an appendix to Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript has puzzled readers by apparently ‘taking back’ everything that the pseudonymous author Climacus has said in the text that precedes it. I agree with John Lippitt that this ‘revocation’ should be read as a humorous statement; however, I disagree with Lippitt's assessment that the tone of the revocation is essentially ‘non-urgent’ and ‘modest’. I propose that a fuller picture of Climacus's character is needed (...) to understand the spirit of the revocation and its relationship to the rest of the text. (shrink)

Qu'est que la mathematique? Quel role y joue l'intuition? Sur quels principes repose-t-elle? Les Premiers ecrits de Bolzano proposent une reponse. Ils reunissent les oeuvres philosophiques, logiques et mathematiques les plus representatives de la periode de son activite publique, de 1804 a sa revocation de l'universite en 1819, et sont groupes autour de deux textes fondamentaux: les Contributions a un expose mieux fonde de la mathematique (1810) et la Demonstration purement analytique (1817), completee par des extraits de la Theorie (...) des fonctions. Les Contributions, bien que tributaires en partie de Kant, renouvellent l'heritage leibnizien en soulignant le caractere objectif de la science. Accueillies par Goethe - un petit ouvrage distingue par sa valeur et son esprit - et commentees par Husserl, elles constituent une premiere etude moderne des fondements de la mathematique, dont les notions de demonstration et d'organisation deductive du savoir sont les pivots. En annexe, Bolzano offre une critique penetrante de la philosophie de Kant. La Demonstration purement analytique, un petit classique d'histoire et de philosophie de la mathematique, inaugure avant Cauchy l'arithmetisation de l'analyse infinitesimale. Ces ecrits sont precedes d'une Introduction qui les etudie dans leurs contexte politique, culturel et scientifique. (shrink)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau devoted an important chapter of his Social Contract to the dictatorship. Carl Schmitt interpreted Rousseau’s chapter as marking the transition from ‘commissarial’ to ‘sovereign dictatorship’. This article argues that Schmitt’s interpretation is historically and conceptually inaccurate. Instead of paving the way for sovereign dictatorship, Rousseau carefully distinguished the dictatorship from the people’s sovereign authority. Taking position in the ‘debate’ between Bodin and Grotius on the relation between dictatorship and sovereignty, he argued that the dictator could provisionally suspend the (...) people’s sovereign authority, but not abolish it. More particularly, the dictator did not possess the power to make generally binding laws, which had to remain the exclusive authority of the popular assembly. However, this did not prevent Rousseau from recognizing the dictatorship as a means for democratic reform. Rousseau thus conceived of the dictatorship as a time-limited and revocable commission to protect the constitution and to provide for a more stable and effective state organization based on the principle of popular sovereignty. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Psychopathy, Other-Regarding Moral Beliefs, and ResponsibilityLloyd Fields (bio)AbstractIn this paper I seek to show that at least one kind of psychopath is incapable of forming other-regarding moral beliefs; hence that they cannot act for other-regarding moral reasons; and hence that they are not appropriate subjects for the assessment of either moral or legal responsibility. Various attempts to characterize psychopaths are considered and rejected, in particular the widely held view (...) that psychopaths are, in general, incapable of understanding moral concepts. The particular disability proposed here, the incapacity to form other-regarding moral beliefs, is then derived from an analysis of what is required for someone to be a responsible agent. This is illustrated with a detailed case history. A defect of this kind is shown to vitiate moral responsibility, because it renders the psychopath irresponsive to the social pressures which normally ensure respect for moral norms. It is also shown that the psychopath is not a suitable subject for the assessment of legal responsibility, because he lacks the capacity to act from common prudence to avoid sanctions. I conclude that the attempt to characterize particular defects from among the heterogeneity of psychopathic subjects, could lead to better targeted, and hence to more effective, management of particular cases.KeywordsCriminality, mental illness, personality disorder, blame, liability, moral beliefs, guilt, social moralityIntroductionThe term “psychopath” has been used with a wide variety of different meanings and, no doubt, covers a heterogeneous group of subjects (Criminal behaviour and mental health 1992). My aim in this paper is to argue that at least a subgroup of those subjects are characterized by an inability to form other-regarding moral beliefs—and hence, for this particular reason, are not morally responsible agents—and that they also lack the capacity for prudence, and hence are not legally responsible agents.I begin by distinguishing the particular sense in which I will be using the term “psychopathy.” I then consider some suggestions in the literature regarding the defect by which psychopaths might be characterized—that they are mentally ill, or incapable of understanding moral concepts. In rejecting these, I come to the suggestion that the relevant defect is an inability to form other-regarding moral beliefs, a defect which is graphically illustrated by a case report from the literature. I explore the implication of this kind of defect for [End Page 261] moral responsibility as a socially-embedded notion, and the implication of the psychopath’s inability to exercise prudence in relation to legal liability.Nothing in this paper should be taken to suggest that psychopaths are irredeemable. On the contrary, as I argue in an endnote, correctly characterizing the defect from which they suffer leads directly to forms of treatment whose effectiveness has acquired a measure of empirical support.The Nature of PsychopathyPsychopathy is not a homogeneous concept; there are different types of psychopaths. For example, Henderson identified a type of psychopath who he classified as “Predominantly Creative,” exemplified by such figures as T. E. Lawrence and Joan of Arc. In people of this type genius is associated with heightened sensitivity, psychosexual immaturity and emotional instability (Henderson 1939, 108–20; Henderson and Gillespie 1969, 317). Predominantly creative psychopaths do not come within my purview.By “psychopathy” I shall mean the specific form of personality disorder described by Cleckley in his book, The Mask of Sanity (Cleckley 1964). Cleckley’s description forms the basis of Hare’s Revised (20-item) Psychopathy Checklist. The Checklist includes the following personality traits and deviant behaviors:1. Glibness/superficial charm.2. Grandiose sense of self-worth.3. Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom.4. Pathological lying.5. Conning/manipulative.6. Lack of remorse or guilt.7. Shallow affect.8. Callous/lack of empathy.9. Parasitic lifestyle.10. Poor behavioral controls.11. Promiscuous sexual behavior.12. Early behavior problems.13. Lack of realistic, long-term plans.14. Impulsivity.15. Irresponsibility.16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions.17. Many short-term marital relationships.18. Juvenile delinquency.19. Revocation of conditional release.20. Criminal versatility (Hare 1986, 18). 1This conceptualization resembles in many respects the category of Antisocial Personality Disorder as described in the American Psychiatric... (shrink)

This chapter sketches a model of deliberation that is anchored in plan-like commitments of the agent, commitments that constitute a form of valuing. These anchors need not be inescapable, they can sensibly vary from person to person, they can stand in complex relations to judgments about the good, and they play basic roles in the coss-temporal organization of practical thought and action. And deliberation so understood is, I conjecture, central to autonomy and self-government. The model sketched here is located in (...) the space between Frankfurtian appeals to volitional necessity and Platonic appeals to judgments about the best. It sees anchors for deliberation as valuings that have agential authority, are potentially revocable, can diverge across rational agents, and bear complex relations to judgments about the best. Their reasonable stability involves defeasible presumptions both against reconsideration and against revision, presumptions characteristic of plan-like commitments and supported by considerations of cross-temporal instrumentality, integrity and autonomy. And this support for stability by connections to cross-temporal organization goes in part by way of the connection between cross-temporal organization and agential authority. (shrink)

State Medical Boards (SMBs) can take severe disciplinary actions (e.g., license revocation or suspension) against physicians who commit egregious wrongdoing in order to protect the public. However, there is noteworthy variability in the extent to which SMBs impose severe disciplinary action. In this manuscript, we present and synthesize a subset of 11 recommendations based on findings from our team’s larger consensus-building project that identified a list of 56 policies and legal provisions SMBs can use to better protect patients from (...) egregious wrongdoing by physicians. (shrink)

Duncan MacIntosh has argued that David Gauthier's notion of a constrained maximization disposition faces a dilemma. For if such a disposition is revocable, it is no longer rational come the time to act on it, and so acting on it is not (as Gauthier argues) rational; but if it is not revocable, acting on it is not voluntary. This paper is a response to MacIntosh's dilemma. I introduce an account of rational intention of a type which has become increasingly and (...) independently prominent in the literature, and argue that, on this account, rational and voluntary constraint is possible. (shrink)

RésuméDuncan Macintosh a soutenu que l'idée d'une disposition à imposer des contraintes à la maximisation, qu'a défendue David Gauthier, fait face à un dilemme. Car si cette disposition est révocable, il n'est plus rationnel de s'y conformer quand vient le temps d'agir, et agir en conformité avec elle n'est done pas un comportement rationnel; mais si elle n'est pas révocable, agir en conformité avec elle n'est pas un comportement volontaire. Cet article se veut une réponse au dilemme de Macintosh. Je (...) recours pour cela à un type d'approche de l'intention rationnelle qui est — indépendamment — devenu de plus en plus saillant dans la littérature, et je soutiens que dans cette approche, une contrainte rationnelle et volontaire est possible. (shrink)