Gilbert Romeyer Dherbey, qui avait succédé à Pierre Aubenque à la chaire de philosophie antique de Paris IV, et qui a su maintenir très haut le rayonnement international du Centre de recherches sur la pensée antique, plus familièrement appelé Centre Léon Robin, n'est pas seulement un aristotélisant subtil et exigeant. Il a toujours refusé une pure érudition qui oublierait de se relier à une pensée philosophique. Et par là même, peut-être, il déborde le cadre strictement universitaire de la spécialisation, d'abord, (...) non seulement à l'intérieur du domaine grec, avec notamment son approche des présocratiques, mais surtout comme éditeur et interprète reconnu de Maine de Biran, et aussi par son goût de la littérature, que trahit une élégance stylistique heureusement toujours féconde. C'est pour rendre hommage au professeur et à l'homme, que nous nous sommes réunis à Lyon, au printemps 2008, autour de lui, son propre professeur de khâgne, M Gourinat, son camarade de toujours, J-F Marquet, ex-collègue de Paris IV, le maître des études hégéliennes qu'est B Bourgeois, les collègues, les amis, les anciens élèves, que sont B Saint Girons, M Protopapas, A-G Wersinger, A Devarieux, J-J Duhot, J-F Mattéi, J Frère, M Rashed, A Villani, F Baghdassarian. (shrink)

"Les etudes recueillies ici ont fait l'objet de communication et de discussions durant les annees 1992-1994, dans le cadre du seminaire du Centre de recherches sur la pensee antique ('Centre Leon Robin'), equipe de l'Universite de Paris-Sorbonne associee au CNRS"--P. 4 of cover.

What is the role of conscious experience in the epistemology of perceptual knowledge: how should we characterise what is going on in seeing that o is F in order to illuminate the contribution of seeing o to their status as cases of knowing that o is F? My proposal is that seeing o involves conscious acquaintance with o itself, the concrete worldly source of the truth that o is F, in a way that may make it evident to the subject (...) that o is an instance of ‘x is F’ as she understands this, and hence evident that o is F. Seeing that o is F is thus a way of its being evident that o is F and is therefore a way of knowing that o is F. (shrink)

Bill Brewer presents an original view of the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge. He argues that perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs if there are to be any determinate beliefs at all about particular objects in the world. This fresh approach to epistemology turns away from the search for necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge and works instead from a theory of understanding in a particular area.

A taped conversational interview with Daniel Dennett and Bill Uzgalis covers a wide range of topics arising from Dennett’s thoughts about computing and human beings. The background of Dennett’s work is explored as are his views about mind-brain identity theory, artificial intelligence, functionalism, human exceptionalism, animal culture, language, pain, freedom and determinism, and quality of life.

I take it for granted that sense experiential states provide reasons for empirical beliefs; indeed this claim forms the first premise of my central argument for (CC). 1 The subsequent stages of the argument are intended to establish that a person has such a reason for believing something about the way things are in the world around him only if he is in some mental state or other with a conceptual content: a conceptual state. Thus, given that sense experiential states (...) do provide reasons for empirical beliefs, they must have conceptual content. (shrink)

L'ame, c'est-a-dire pour Aristote la vie, est ici saisie dans son immanence au corps ou elle s'incarne, et decrite dans les differentes puissances, qui vont de la sensation a l'intellect, en passant par l'imagination et la motricite.Les etudes ici reunies, qui ont fait l'objet de communications et de discussion durant le seminaire 1990-1992 du Centre de Recherches sur la Pensee Antique (Centre Leon Robin ) de l'Universite Paris-Sorbonne, abordent les problemes selon l'ordre de leur surgissement dans le texte et se (...) presentent ainsi comme un veritable commentaire continu du traite De l'ame, fondement de la psychologie et de la noetique occidentales. (shrink)

It is close to current orthodoxy that perceptual experience is to be characterized, at least in part, by its representational content, roughly, by the way it represents things as being in the world around the perceiver. Call this basic idea the content view.

Many authors hold that collectives, as well as individuals can be the subjects of obligations. Typically these authors have focussed on the obligations of highly structured groups, and of small, informal groups. One might wonder, however, whether there could also be collective obligations which fall on everyone – what I shall call ' global collective obligations '. One reason for thinking that this is not possible has to do with considerations about agency : it seems as though an entity can (...) only be the subject of obligations if it is an agent. In this paper, I try to show that the argument from agency is not a good reason for being sceptical about the existence of global collective obligations : it derives whatever plausibility it has from the idea that claims about obligation need to be addressable to some agent. My suggestion is that we should accept this principle about the addressability of obligations, but deny that the addressee of an obligation need be the subject of that obligation. The collective obligations of unstructured collections of individuals, including global collective obligations, meet the addressability requirement insofar as they require something of the individuals who make up the collective. (shrink)

Alors que Platon était à Athènes un citoyen à part entière, issu d'une ancienne et noble famille, Aristote était un métèque, c'est-à-dire un étranger domicilié dans la Cité, et comme tel n'ayant pas le droit de participer à sa vie politique. Un certain nombre d'éléments biographiques, de fragments ou de passages de son œuvre montrent qu' Aristote, isolé à Athènes et en butte à de nombreux ennemis, souffrit de cette privation de citoyenneté ; elle l'amena peut-être à concevoir autrement que (...) Platon les rapports entre la philosophie et la politique ; elle retentit sans nul doute sur sa conception du langage puisque le langage, dans la démocratie athénienne, était le levier du pouvoir politique et l'instrument même de la participation du citoyen à la chose publique. Whereas in Athens Plato was a full citizen of ancient and noble stock, Aristotle was a metic, a foreigner residing in the City, and as such was denied the right of partaking in its political life. Several biographical data and passages from his works reveal that Aristotle, a stranger in Athens, harassed by many an enemy, suffered from not enjoying full citizenship, which may have led him to share Plato's conception of the relationship between philosophy and politics and no doubt also influenced his conception of language — since language in the Athenian democracy was the lever of political power and the very instrument of the citizens participation in the commonwealth. (shrink)

We perceive things in the external world as spatially located both with respect to each other and to ourselves, such that they are in principle accessible from where we seem to be. I hear the door bang behind me; I feel the pen on the desk over to my right; and I see you walking beneath the line of pictures, from left to right in front of me. By displaying these spatial relations between its objects and us, the perceivers, perception (...) places us in the perceived world: our world and the world we perceive are one. Clearly this is not achieved by our continually perceiving ourselves along with the things around us, and thus recovering our position with respect to them. Indeed I shall argue that there are serious difficulties with the suggestion that this might be the basic mechanism for perceptual self- location. Furthermore, I shall argue that our existence as an element of the objective order cannot be inferred from the raw given in sense perception. Hence it cannot even be on the right lines as an answer to the question 'What is it for perception to represent its objects as environmental to the subject?', that it should present these objects, along with the perceiving subject himself, or along with something from which his existence in the perceived world could be deduced, in the very same frame so to speak. Nevertheless it yields him an awareness of himself as there in the wings of that scene, genuinely located with respect to the action, yet somehow not normally quite getting onto the stage. And I shall argue here, that perceptual contents succeed in being self-locating in this way in.. (shrink)

Based on fieldwork among Islamic bankers globally, this book questions the equivalence between money and ethnography and asks whether money can ever be adequate to the value backing it. "I enjoyed this book mightily.

June grass at sunset, Indian grass at sunrise, hawk moths and monarch butterflies nectaring on purple fringed orchids and rough blazing star, little bluestem and saw-tooth sunflowers and butterfly milkweed in hill prairies and sand prairies, and blue skies and one bright rainbow arching over them all. Bill Witt has been photographing Iowa’s wild places for more than thirty years, and the result is this collection of splendid images that reveal the glorious beauty and diversity of the state’s prairie (...) remnants. Witt gives us close-ups of pasque flower shoots covered with ice in spring, coneflowers dancing in a summer breeze, and prairie dropseed in its autumn colors as well as such prairie companions as sandhill cranes, northern harriers, and bison. His panoramic visions of prairie landscapes in all seasons focus on the personal pleasure and spiritual sustenance that connecting with prairies, even small and neglected ones, can bring us. Osha Davidson’s essay compares today’s prairie remnants with yesterday’s expanses and calls for us to restore balance to this damaged landscape. Altogether, Enchanted by Prairie celebrates today’s prairie landscape and encourages us, in Davidson’s words, to restore its “beauty and scents and textures and sounds.”. (shrink)

Written by renowned data science experts Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett, Data Science for Business introduces the fundamental principles of data science, and walks you through the "data-analytic thinking" necessary for extracting useful knowledge and business value from the data you collect. This guide also helps you understand the many data-mining techniques in use today.

From time to time we explain what people do by referring to their habits. We explain somebody’s putting the kettle on in the morning as done through “force of habit”. We explain somebody’s missing a turning by saying that she carried straight on “out of habit”. And we explain somebody’s biting her nails as a manifestation of “a bad habit”. These are all examples of what will be referred to here as habit explanations. Roughly speaking, they explain by referring to (...) a pattern of a particular kind of behaviour which is regularly performed in characteristic circumstances, and has become automatic for that agent due to this repetition. (shrink)

How do legal texts determine legal content? A standard answer to this question—sometimes called “the standard picture”—is that legal texts communicate something and what they communicate is identical to legal content. Mark Greenberg criticizes the standard picture and offers in its place his own “moral impact theory.” My goal here is to respond to Greenberg by showing how the standard picture better explains legal practice than the moral impact theory does. To that end, I first clarify certain aspects of the (...) moral impact theory. I then critique the theory, focusing on its inability to explain (i) why practitioners reason about legal content as they do and (ii) why they agree on legal content as often as they do. Finally, I refine the standard picture and demonstrate how it explains what the moral impact theory cannot. (shrink)

How do issues of form and content shape the documentary film? What role does visual evidence play in relation to a documentary’s arguments about the world we live in? In what ways do documentaries abide by or subvert ethical expectations? Are mockumentaries a form of subversion? Can the documentary be an aesthetic experience and at the same time have political or social impact? And how can such impacts be empirically measured? Pioneering film scholar Bill Nichols investigates the ways documentaries (...) strive for accuracy and truthfulness and simultaneously fabricate a form that shapes reality. Such films may rely on reenactment to re-create the past, storytelling to provide satisfying narratives, and rhetorical figures such as metaphor or devices such as irony to make a point. Documentaries are truly a fiction unlike any other. With clarity and passion, Nichols offers incisive commentaries on the basic questions of documentary’s distinct relationship to the reality it represents, as well as close readings of provocative documentaries from this form's earliest days to its most recent incarnations. These essays offer a definitive account of what makes documentary film such a vital part of our cultural landscape. (shrink)

Early modern empiricists thought that the nature of perceptual experience is given by citing the object presented to the mind in that experience. Hallucination and illusion suggest that this requires untenable mind-dependent objects. Current orthodoxy replaces the appeal to direct objects with the claim that perceptual experience is characterized instead by its representational content. This paper argues that the move to content is problematic, and reclaims the early modern empiricist insight as perfectly consistent, even in cases of illusion, with the (...) realist contention that these direct objects of perception are the persisting mind-independent physical objects we all know and love. (shrink)

This paper argues that the desirable features of postmodernism identified by Ronald Green are not exclusive to postmodernism; that to the extent these features are postmodern, they are not necessarily features of business ethics; that, with qualification, these are desirable features to include in business ethics; that the best way to accomplish this inclusion is by appealing to an Aristotelian model; and that post-modernism has implications for the legal environment of business.

Is the God of Calvin a fountain of blessing, or a forceful tyrant? Is Calvin's view of God coercive, leaving no place for the human qua human in redemption? These are perennial questions about Calvin's theology which have been given new life by Gift theologians such as John Milbank, Graham Ward, and Stephen Webb.J. Todd Billings addresses these questions by exploring Calvin's theology of `participation in Christ'. He argues that Calvin's theology of `participation' gives a positive place to the human, (...) such that grace fulfils rather than destroys nature, affirming a differentiated union of God and humanity in creation and redemption. Calvin's trinitarian theology of participation extends to his view of prayer, sacraments, the law, and the ecclesial and civil orders. In light of Calvin's doctrine of participation, Billings reframes the critiques of Calvin in the Gift discussion and opens up new possibilities for contemporary theology, ecumenical theology, and Calvin scholarship as well. (shrink)