Most studies of academic inbreeding have focused on assessing its impact on scholarly practices, outputs, and outcomes. Few studies have concentrated on the other possible effects of academic inbreeding. This paper draws on a large number of studies on academic inbreeding to explore how the practice has been conceptualized, how it has emerged, and how it has been rationalized in the creation and development of higher education systems. Within this framework, the paper also explores how academic inbreeding shapes and maintains (...) a powerful academic oligarchy, leading to the stonewalling of both knowledge and institutional change to maintain social and political structures somewhat akin to those of medieval societies. The paper shows that the key to mitigating academic inbreeding practices lies in ensuring that academic recruitment processes are open, meritocratic, and transparent. However, a more difficult task is to change longstanding mentalities and disrupt a system that serves the interests of certain groups but not the advancement of knowledge or the fulfillment of universities’ social mandates. (shrink)

Resumo: Este texto parte da letra A, da sua importância e da sua centralidade na Desconstrução de Derrida. Em função dessa letra iniciática, indício da “ironia muda” da différance como sincategorema do pensamento de Derrida, tentar-se-á acompanhar o modo como se apresenta à Filosofia Contemporânea como uma espécie de sismo, de abalo e de nova propulsão. Sismografias tenta então reconhecer, na postura e no desenvolvimento dessa letra “A”, a forma como o trabalho de Derrida abala pela base o território dos (...) conceitos, convocando a urgência e a responsabilidade da filosofia, da escrita e do pensamento. Nesse sentido, trata-se aqui de acompanhar as linhas de desenvolvimento de uma letra motriz, que pontuou, do início ao fim e em todas as direções, o pensamento de Derrida como idioma, como revolução filosófica, como sismografia.: This text departs from the letter A, in its importance and its centrality in Derrida’s deconstruction. From this initiatic letter, a sign of différance’s “mute irony” as a syncategorem of Derrida’s thought, we will try to follow the way in which it presents itself to Contemporary Philosophy as a kind of earthquake, a quake and a new propulsion. Seismographies tries therefore to recognise, in the posture and development of this letter “A”, the way in which Derrida’s work shakes up at its base the domain of concepts,, summoning up the urgency and responsibility of philosophy, of writing and of thought. In this sense it is intended to follow the lines of development of a leading letter, which marked, from beginning to end and in all directions, Derrida’s thought as an idiom, as a philosophical revolution, as a seismographie. (shrink)

Theoreticians of deliberative democracy have sometimes found it hard to relate to the seemingly contradictory experimental results produced by psychologists and political scientists. We suggest that this problem may be alleviated by inserting a layer of psychological theory between the empirical results and the normative political theory. In particular, we expose the argumentative theory of reasoning that makes the observed pattern of findings more coherent. According to this theory, individual reasoning mechanisms work best when used to produce and evaluate arguments (...) during a public deliberation. It predicts that when diverse opinions are discussed, group reasoning will outperform individual reasoning. It also predicts that individuals have a strong confirmation bias. When people reason either alone or with like-minded peers, this confirmation bias leads them to reinforce their initial attitudes, explaining individual and group polarization. We suggest that the failures of reasoning are most likely to be remedied at the collective than at the individual level. (shrink)

People not only disagree about religious belief, but they disagree about what it is to disagree about religious belief; and consequently about what it would be for one religion to be uniquely true. What I shall try to do first is to characterise the nature of religious disagreement; and next to suggest in what the uniqueness of Christianity might consist.

The “post-truth” phenomenon is not primarily a cognitive problem, but a moral or existential problem, a problem of self-deception. But what does this mean? In order to clarify that, two things need to be discussed. First, if the conception of belief is rejected according to which a belief has sense in isolation from the roles it, and the holding of it, plays in our lives, then the problem of self-deception needs to be met as a problem of life. Second, a (...) problem of life is not something that individuals get into all by themselves. In other words, ways of living can be self-deceptive. The task of the text is hence to discuss some of the ways in which truth, belief and self-deception unfold on this non-individual level, specifically on the political one. Keywords: post-truth, self-deception, belief, democracy, Simone Weil. (shrink)

Modern societies depend on a growing production of scientific knowledge, which is based on the functional differentiation of science into still more specialised scientific disciplines and subdisciplines. This is the basis for the paradox of scientific expertise: The growth of science leads to a fragmentation of scientific expertise. To resolve this paradox, the present paper investigates three hypotheses: 1) All scientific knowledge is perspectival. 2) The perspectival structure of science leads to specific forms of knowledge asymmetries. 3) Such perspectival knowledge (...) asymmetries must be handled through second order perspectives. We substantiate these hypotheses on the basis of a perspectivist philosophy of science grounded in Peircean semiotics and autopoietic systems theory. Perspectival knowledge asymmetries are an unavoidable and necessary part of the growth of scientific knowledge, and more awareness of this fact can help avoid blind and futile struggles between scientific perspectives, and direct efforts toward more appropriate ways of handling these fundamental knowledge asymmetries. Concretely, we show how different kinds of scientific knowledge, expertise, disagreement and learning can be correlated to the perspectival structure of science, and propose how polyocular communication based on observations of the observations made by specialised perspectives can be used to handle such perspectival knowledge asymmetries. This can help overcome the observed problems in carrying out cross-disciplinary research and in the collective use of different kinds of scientific expertise, and thereby make society better able to solve complex, real-world problems. (shrink)

Much evidence has accumulated in favor of such a dual view of reasoning. There is however some vagueness in the way the two systems are characterized. Instead of a principled distinction, we are presented with a bundle of contrasting features - slow/fast, automatic/controlled, explicit/implicit, associationist/rule based, modular/central - that, depending on the specific dual process theory, are attributed more or less exclusively to one of the two systems. As Evans states in a recent review, “it would then be helpful to (...) have some clear basis for this distinction”; he also suggests that “we might be better off talking about type 1 and type 2 processes” rather than systems. We share the intuitions that drove the development of dual system theories. Our goal here is to propose in the same spirit a principled distinction between two types of inferences: ‘intuitive inference’ and ‘reflective inference’. We ground this distinction in a massively modular view of the human mind where metarepresentational modules play an important role in explaining the peculiarities of human psychological evolution. We defend the hypothesis that the main function of reflective inference is to produce and evaluate arguments occurring in interpersonal communication. This function, we claim, helps explain important aspects of reasoning. We review some of the existing evidence and argue that it gives support to this approach. (shrink)

In “Mercier and Sperber’s Argumentative Theory of Reasoning: From Psychology of Reasoning to Argumentation Studies” (2012) Santibáñez Yañez offers constructive comments and criticisms of the argumentative theory of reasoning. The purpose of this reply is twofold. First, it seeks to clarify two points broached by Yanez: (1) the relation between reasoning (in this specific theory) and dual process accounts in general and (2) the benefits that can be derived from reasoning and argumentation (again, in this specific theory). Second, it suggests (...) one domain—the categorization of arguments—in which argumentation studies and the argumentative theory of reasoning could usefully complement each other to yield a better understanding of the processes of argumentation. (shrink)

En 1978, une loi a institué en France l'un des premiers dispositifs de protection des données personnelles. Trente ans d'application de la loi permettent aujourd'hui d'évaluer, à grands traits, la régulation que la Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés , au centre de ce dispositif, a réussi à établir et les difficultés qu'elle a rencontrées dans cette tâche. Des secteurs d'activité se sont montrés réfractaires à la nouvelle culture; le pouvoir politique est intervenu à partir du milieu des années (...) 1990, pour abaisser le niveau de protection; l'opinion publique s'est peu mobilisée pour faire valoir ses droits et les représentations sociales ont appréhendé les techniques d'information de manière de plus en plus positive.In 1978, one of the first systems for the protection of personal data was established under French law. Thirty years on, the time has come for a broad assessment of how far the CNIL, the French data protection authority at the core of the system, has succeeded in regulating the use of personal data, but also of the main difficulties it has encountered. Some branches of industry proved recalcitrant, politics intervened from the mid-1990s to lower the level of protection, public opinion slowly began to lay claim to data protection rights, while social representations of information processes became increasingly positive. (shrink)

This paper argues that the idea of creative destruction enters the social sciences by way of Friedrich Nietzsche. The term itself is first used by German economist Werner Sombart, who openly acknowledges the influence of Nietzsche on his own economic theory. The roots of creative destruction are traced back to Indian philosophy, from where the idea entered the German literary and philosophical tradition. Understanding the origins and evolution of this key concept in evolutionary economics helps clarifying the contrasts between today’s (...) standard mainstream economics and the Schumpeterian and evolutionary alternative. (shrink)