When Andre Bazin's most important essays on film were collected together in a single volume and titled What is Cinema? they raised a question that Bazin did not answer. Nor did he intend to. Nor has it been answered by any of the other theorists who have written what now seem to be the major works on film theory and who now seem the most influential spokesmen for the art. Rudolf Arnheim, Andre Bazin, Stanley Cavell, S. M. Einstein, Siegfried Kracauer, (...) Christian Metz, Hugo Munsterberg, Erwin Panofsky, and Gene Youngblood have failed to define what cinema essentially is.1 Unlike Ionesco's comically methodical Logician, they have been less than careful about posing the problem correctly. As a result they have been less than successful and less than precise with a deceptively difficult and complicated issue. They have defined some kinds of cinema, they have defined some of the qualities unique to those kinds of cinema, they have defined the characteristics and devices they find most valuable in some of those kinds of cinema, they simply have not defined cinema. · 1. Relevant sections of all these theorists can be found in Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings . Gerald Mast, associate professor of humanities at Richmond College of the City University of New York, has written A Short History of the Movies, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies, Filmguide to the Rules of the Game, and Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings . This article is part of a forthcoming book, What Isn't Cinema? He has also contributed "Kracauer's Two Tendencies and the Early History of Film Narrative" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

Experiences of absence are common in everyday life, but have received little philosophical attention until recently, when two positions regarding the nature of such experiences surfaced in the literature. According to the Perceptual View, experiences of absence are perceptual in nature. This is denied by the Surprise-Based View, according to which experiences of absence belong together with cases of surprise. In this paper, I show that there is a kind of experience of absence—which I call frustrating absences—that has been overlooked (...) by the Perceptual View and by the Surprise Based-View and that cannot be adequately explained by them. I offer an alternative account to deal with frustrating absences, one according to which experiencing frustrating absences is a matter of subjects having desires for something to be present frustrated by the world. Finally, I argue that there may well be different kinds of experiences of absence. (shrink)

This paper advances the conception of social entrepreneurs as caring entrepreneurs. We argue that the care ethics of social entrepreneurs, implying the pursuit of caring goals through caring processes, can be challenged when they engage in the process of scaling up their ventures. We propose that social entrepreneurs can sustain their care ethics as the essential dimension of their venture only if they are able to build a caring enterprise. Organizational care designates the set of organizing principles that facilitate the (...) embedding of care ethics at an organizational level, beyond the imprinting induced by social entrepreneurs’ personal ethics. (shrink)

The interplay between computability and randomness has been an active area of research in recent years, reflected by ample funding in the USA, numerous workshops, and publications on the subject. The complexity and the randomness aspect of a set of natural numbers are closely related. Traditionally, computability theory is concerned with the complexity aspect. However, computability theoretic tools can also be used to introduce mathematical counterparts for the intuitive notion of randomness of a set. Recent research shows that, conversely, concepts (...) and methods originating from randomness enrich computability theory.The book covers topics such as lowness and highness properties, Kolmogorov complexity, betting strategies and higher computability. Both the basics and recent research results are desribed, providing a very readable introduction to the exciting interface of computability and randomness for graduates and researchers in computability theory, theoretical computer science, and measure theory. (shrink)

The survival of some masterpieces of literature across the ages is still an unexplained mystery. Deeply rooted in their time, they reflect the preoccupations of a given historical period and have an impact, by means of their testimony, on future generations. They bring into play images, drives and phantoms which have remained unchanged from prehistoric time to our day. The perfection of their form has remained unequaled; their examples incite us to meditation and creativity.

The philosophy problem of identity and the related problem of change go back to the ancient Greek philosophers and fascinated later figures including Leibniz, Locke and Hume. Heraclitus argued that one could not swim in the same river twice because new waters were ever flowing in. When is a river not the same river? If one removes one plank at a time when is a ship no longer a ship? What is the basic nature of identity and persistence? This book (...) introduces and asseses the philosophical puzzles posed by things persisting through time. Beginning with essential historical background to the problem it explores the following key topics and debates: mereology and identity, including 'Leibniz's Law' the constitution view of identity the 'relative identity' argument concerning identity temporary identity four-dimensionalism, counterpart and mulitiple counterpart theory supervenience the problem of temporary intrinsics the necessity of identity presentism ontological and epistemological criteria for persistence and the difference between them. Including chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary this book is essential reading for anyone seeking a clear and informative introduction to and assessement of the metaphysics of identity. (shrink)

Burge famously argued that one can have thoughts involving a concept C even if one’s understanding of C is incomplete. Even though this view has been extremely influential, it has also been taken by critics as less than clear. The aim of this paper is to show that the cases imagined by Burge as being ones in which incomplete understanding of concepts is involved can be made clearer given an account of direct concept ascriptions—such as “Peter has the concept of (...) arthritis”—according to which these ascriptions are to be analysed in terms of ascriptions of the knowledge of what something is. The upshot is that the cases imagined by Burge can be explained is terms of the idea of subjects knowing in part what something is. (shrink)

Burns proposes an intriguing hypothesis by suggesting that the “schizophrenia genes” might not be regulatory genes themselves, but rather closely associated with regulatory genes directly involved in the proper growth of the social brain. We point out that this account would benefit from incorporating the effects of localized lesions and aberrant hemispheric asymmetry on cortical connectivity underlying the social brain. In addition, we argue that the evolutionary framework is superfluous.

We argue that the pivotal role assigned by Northoff to the principle of top-down modulation in catatonia might successfully be applied to other symptoms of schizophrenia, for example, hallucinations. Second, we propose that Northoff's account would benefit from a more comprehensive analysis of the cognitive level of explanation. Finally, contrary to Northoff, we hypothesize that “top-down modulation” might play as important a role as “horizontal modulation” in affective-behavioral alterations.

Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations (quangos) comprise a powerful organizational sector that has been criticized for its lack of accountability to governments and their citizens. These organizations are established to serve the public as a whole by targeting the needs of particular groups or fulfilling specific functions. Often they use practices adopted from the business sector, and sometimes they enter the marketplace as profitmaking enterprises. In light of the contribution of GSE Fannie Mae to the 2008 world economic (...) crisis, the impact of this sector on effective democratic government bears further examination. In this article, I present a systems model that suggests how researchers might comprehensively assess the accountability of organizations in this sector, here termed the "gray sector," with respect to their government missions. I focus on four systems dimensions: mission, organizational design, organizational outcomes, and the information feedback process. Organizational design and the nature of the sector population are cited as emerging issues of particular importance. (shrink)

Voici un ouvrage fort bien traduit dont la lecture attentive récompensera aussi bien ceux que l’éthique des Grecs passionne, ceux que le sort de la modernité inquiète et ceux que l’œuvre de Bernard Williams intéresse. Le philosophe britannique présente ici une série de conférences Sather prononcées à Berkeley en 1989 et traitant des conceptions éthiques des Grecs anciens à travers l’œuvre des poètes épiques et tragiques. L’auteur reprend dans cet ouvrage nombre de thèmes déjà présents dans ses travaux antérieurs; il (...) radicalise à certains égards ses conceptions concernant les Grecs, la modernité et leur relation, et appuie ses interprétations sur une analyse minutieuse des textes classiques. L’érudition n’est cependant pas ici une fin en soi, car Williams n’entend pas faire œuvre de spécialiste des humanités grecquesmais plutôt défendre une thèse générale fréquente depuis Nietzsche, à savoir que, «par certains aspects, les idées éthiques fondamentales des Grecs étaient différentes des nôtres, mais [elles] étaient plus valables. Par d’autres côtés [...] nous nous référons aux mêmes conceptions, mais nous ignorons jusqu’à quel point nous le faisons». Si nos conceptions éthiques modernes sont ainsi plus proches de celles des Grecs que nous le soupçonnons, en revanche nous ne partageons plus nombre de leurs croyances, en particulier les conceptions surnaturelles apparaissant par exemple dans les tragédies. «Toutes ces propositions peuvent-elles être vraies ensemble?» : voilà le problème que se pose Williams et qu’il s’efforcera ici de résoudre. Cet ouvrage présente ainsi autre chose qu’une histoire des idées de honte et de nécessité; il ne constitue pas non plus un plaidoyer nostalgique pour un retour aux Grecs: la tension entre «les Grecs et nous» est constamment maintenue et exploitée pour proposer une interprétation éclairante des Grecs et une critique décapante de la modernité. Voyons tout d’abord cette interprétation, avant que de présenter quelques critiques. (shrink)

Philosophical critiques are prone to relapse into a sort of entrenchment in which the basic elements of a philosophy are kept from exposure, so that instead of advancing, philosophy easily becomes compartmentalized into specific trends. This article thus seeks the conditions of a non-entrenched, open-field philosophical critique in general and, in particular, of an open-field critique of Harman’s OOO (object-oriented ontology). For that purpose, the idea of precariousness is introduced, which is then confronted with some ideas concerning philosophical critique and (...) practice, in particular those of François Laruelle. Since we can find in Harman’s OOO an outline of what we call here an open-field critique, the field of combat against Harman will be the one concerning the idea of an open field itself. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

Epistemic justification has been widely accepted as both a gradational and relational notion. Given those properties, a natural thought is to take degrees of epistemic justification to be probabilities. In this paper, we present a simple Bayesian framework for justification. In the first part, after putting the model in an evidentialist form, we distinguish different senses of “being evidence for” and “confirming”. Next, we argue that this conception should accommodate the two relevant kinds of qualitative confirmation or evidential support. In (...) the second part of the paper, we discuss the claim that this view is unable to satisfy the modified version of the conjunction closure for beliefs in probabilistically independent propositions. We defend that the underlying assumption on which this objection depends leads to an improper reading of the concept of epistemic probability. After providing a better interpretation of it, we put forward a rationale, which is based on the notion of conditional uncertainty, in support of a more plausible and restricted version of the closure of justification under conjunction. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

Let S∞ denote the topological group of permutations of the natural numbers. A closed subgroup G of S∞ is called oligomorphic if for each n, its natural action on n-tuples of natural numbers has onl...

Este trabalho tem por objetivo demonstrar elementos argumentativos apresentados por Kant em seu trabalho final: Opus Postumum, que comprovaria a tentativa de Kant em desenvolver ali uma dedução, contudo, demonstraremos que esta dedução em desenvolvimento no Opus articula elementos que a aproximaria significativamente da dedução transcendental de 1781. Com isto, temos a comprovação que no Opus há uma reavaliação da parte subjetiva da dedução transcendental exposta na primeira edição da Crítica, o que incide numa retomada desta investigação subjetiva por Kant, (...) buscando nesta a tentativa de preenchimento da lacuna que ele considera impedir o fechamento de seu sistema. (shrink)