On the basis of the Woodhouse causal axiomatics, we show that conformal proper times and an extra variable in addition to those of space and time, together give a physical justification for the ‘chronometric hypothesis’ of general relativity. Indeed, we show that, with a lack of these latter two ingredients and of this hypothesis, clock paradoxes exist for which the unparadoxical asymmetry cannot be recovered when using the ‘clock and message functions’ only. These proper times originate from a given conformal (...) structure of the spacetime when ascribing different compatible projective structures to each Woodhouse particle, and then, each defines a specific Weylian ‘sheaf structure’. In addition, the proper time parameterizations are defined via path-dependent conformal scale factors, which act like sockets for any kind of physical interaction and also represent the values of the variable associated with the extra dimension. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Work of Alterity: Bataille and LacanJean Dragon (bio)The topic of alterity may appear at first to be beyond the scope of Bataille’s work, but it is from such questioning that his practice of writing takes its full contours and questions the renewal of literary textuality.Strangely, Bataille fights against writing, an attitude that shows a will to disappear in order to reach sovereignty. Writing, in such a context, supports (...) not only certain useful figures for his particularly heterogeneous works but also the presence of alterity. Feminine imagos, set as the literary equivalent of the eradication of meaning and words, act as levers from which a character produces itself or rather disarticulates and vanishes.Bataille’s fight against writing shows strong similarities to some Lacanian notions: the subject, pleasure (“jouissance”), and, of course, woman. Before trying to map out this perilous comparison—there is no possible perfect transition between the two—we must first extract the significant elements that make it possible. To this end, we propose some reflections on Bataille’s concepts of Oedipus and castration. In so doing, we will be in a better situation to link Lacan and Bataille’s works but also to understand where Lacan has been inspired by Bataille and how Lacan distinguishes himself in his interpretation of the imaginary, the symbolic, the Law, and feminine imagos—especially in the way Lacan, contrary to Bataille, “eradicates” alterity.These questions are necessary steps in opening up a reflection inspired by the work of Bataille and in our desire to actualize purposes yet also extend unresolved polemic effects which this paper can only partially address. To present the necessity of such polemical reflections fits Bataille’s thought as well, which refuses to conclude and takes its meaning from throwing away all possible speech.Feminine imagos are an essential leitmotif in Bataille’s narratives and, more importantly, a cohesion factor for his thought that transcends all domains of writing to give a foundation to the works. 1 With themes such as transgression, subversion, and the [End Page 31] renewal of the Law, we reach an aporia not only of Bataille’s text but also, as Susan Rubin-Suleiman puts it, of literary modernity:What does appear to me certain is that there will be no genuine renewal, either in a theory of the avant-garde or in its practices, as long as every drama, whether textual or sexual, continues to be envisaged—as in Bataille’s pornography and in Harold Bloom’s theory of poetry—in terms of a confrontation between an all-powerful father and a traumatized son, a confrontation staged across and over the body of the mother.[86–87] 2Indeed, if we look at the autofictional purposes and the literary production of Bataille, we must underline an “aporia” in the subversive nature of his texts. This challenge to Bataille generally focuses on his literary works without considering his theoretical works beyond some “canonical” titles. Nevertheless, the lesser-known texts may offer another reading of Bataille’s eroticism and defuse criticism strictly centered on the supposedly pornographic and phallocentric content of novels like L’histoire de l’oeil and Madame Edwarda.Before branding the works of Bataille as “sexist,” we must consider that he was one of the first male authors of his generation to denounce the “castration” dominating society and individuals. Mario Perniola, discussing a text of Georges Bataille, 3 emphasizes his condemnation of imperialism behind the use of many terms: “the imperialist image of the eagle, even when it presents itself with the attributes of revolution, unsuccessfully hides its Promethean and Icarian pretensions.” 4 This interpretation finds an echo in another text of Bataille, “L’oeil pinéal,” where Bataille directly links the castration to the myth of Prometheus: “the legend of Prometheus is linked to the castration complex,” 5 says Bataille. Perniola’s words point directly to the patriarchal order upon which this imperialism lies, disguising itself as revolution; they show Bataille’s profound disagreement with such a social and individual foundation.It is also difficult to affirm the predominance of a phallocentric stance in Bataille. The oedipal figures, for example, are much too paradoxical in their modes... (shrink)

This paper analyzes Kierkegaard's Religiousness A sphere of existence, presented in his edifying works, and Heidegger's concept of authenticity, proposed in Being and Time, as responses to modern nihilism. While Kierkegaard argues that Religiousness A is an unsuccessful response to modern nihilism, Heidegger claims that authenticity, a secularized version of Religiousness A, is a successful response. We argue that Heidegger's secularization of Religiousness A is incomplete and unsuccessful, that Heidegger's later work offers a reconsideration of the problem of modern nihilism, (...) and that later Heidegger suggests a way out of nihilism which is compatible with Kierkegaard's Religiousness B sphere of existence. (shrink)

In this paper we study some statements similar to the Partition Principle and the Trichotomy. We prove some relationships between these statements, the Axiom of Choice, and the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis. We also prove some independence results. MSC: 03E25, 03E50, 04A25, 04A50.

Let NBG be von Neumann-Bernays-Gödel set theory without the axiom of choice and let NBGA be the modification which allows atoms. In this paper we consider some of the well-known class or global forms of the wellordering theorem, the axiom of choice, and maximal principles which are known to be equivalent in NBG and show they are not equivalent in NBGA.

Trichoderma ATCC 20476 based biofungicides have been marketed continuously on a small scale for 20 years. A more recently developed application for these biofungicides is the treatment of strawberries against the gray mold Botrytis cinerea. That application is examined in terms of Lockwood's criteria for ethics in biological control. Unaddressed risks resulting from the current scramble for market share in northern Europe are pointed out.

Biomedical images and ontologies are closely related conceptually, yet currently they are studied in isolation. Biomedical ontologies provide a representation of the canonical entities considered in biomedical research and clinical observations, and the relations among them. Images reveal instances of those entities and, taken in aggregate, inform the construction of ontologies describing the pertinent domain content revealed in the images. The article by Fielding and Marwede (2011) notes the differences between the ontology of the body and the ontology of the (...) image, developing toward an application of ontology of the psychiatric domain. Although such ontology development is important for knowledge representation .. (shrink)

I shall speak of ghost [revenant], of flame and of ashes.And of what, for Heidegger, avoiding means.What is avoiding? Heidegger on several occasions uses the common word Vermeiden: to avoid, to flee, to dodge. What might he have meant when it comes to “spirit” or the “spiritual”? I specify immediately: not spirit or the spiritual but Geist, geistig, geistlich, for this question will be, through and through, that of language. Do these German words allow themselves to be translated? In another (...) sense: are they avoidable?Sein und Zeit : what does Heidegger say at that time? He announces and he prescribes. He warns [avertit]: a certain number of terms will have to be avoided . Among them, spirit . In 1953, more than twenty-five years later—and this was not just any quarter-century—in the great text devoted to Georg Trakl, Heidegger notes that Trakl always took care to avoid the word geistig. And, visibly, Heidegger approves him in this; he thinks the same. But this time, it is not Geist nor even geistlich that is to be avoided, but geistig.How are we to delimit the difference, and what has happened? What of this meantime? How are we to explain that in twenty-five years, between these two warning signals , Heidegger made a frequent, regular, marked use of all this vocabulary, including the adjective geistig? And that he often spoke not only of the word “spirit” but, sometimes yielding to the emphatic mode, in the name of spirit? Jacques Derrida is Directeur d’Études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and also teaches at the University of California, Irvine. His most recent contribution to Critical Inquiry is “Like the Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell: Paul de Man’s War” . An English translation of De l’espirit: Heidegger et la question is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press. Geoff Bennington, author of Lyotard: Writing the Event, is a lecturer in French at the University of Sussex. Rachel Bowlby, author of Virginia Woolf: Feminist Destinations, is a lecturer in English at the University of Sussex. (shrink)

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a consortium that comprises leading informaticians, biologists, clinicians, and ontologists, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap, to develop innovative technology and methods that allow scientists to record, manage, and disseminate biomedical information and knowledge in machine-processable form. The goals of the Center are (1) to help unify the divergent and isolated efforts in ontology development by promoting high quality open-source, standards-based tools to create, manage, and use ontologies, (2) to create (...) new software tools so that scientists can use ontologies to annotate and analyze biomedical data, (3) to provide a national resource for the ongoing evaluation, integration, and evolution of biomedical ontologies and associated tools and theories in the context of driving biomedical projects (DBPs), and (4) to disseminate the tools and resources of the Center and to identify, evaluate, and communicate best practices of ontology development to the biomedical community. Through the research activities within the Center, collaborations with the DBPs, and interactions with the biomedical community, our goal is to help scientists to work more effectively in the e-science paradigm, enhancing experiment design, experiment execution, data analysis, information synthesis, hypothesis generation and testing, and understand human disease. (shrink)

Morality is not declining in the modern world. Instead, a new morality is replacing the previous one. Centered on individual self-fulfillment, and linked to administrative government, it permits things the old morality forbid, like sex for pleasure, but forbids things the old morality allowed, like intolerance and equality of opportunity.

Government can control conflicts of interest in business firms by either issuing obligatory commands to behave in a specified way or by creating incentives to alter private behavior. In order to choose between these two approaches, we also need to know something about the nature of the subject firms and the way that they are likely to respond to particular stimuli. Legislators and legal scholars often rely on intuition to predict the behavior of firms, but this will not suffice for (...) such a complex situation. Fortunately, there is a well-developed body of scholarship that addresses organizational behavior; unfortunately, like many bodies of scholarship, it contains rival and conflicting approaches. This article discusses four of these approaches to organizational behavior: the nexus of contracts theory, an application of rational choice theory to corporations; decision theory; general systems theory and its recent autopoetic variants; and new institutionalism. It then uses each of these approaches to predict the way that firms will respond to obligatory commands and behavior incentives. The specific cases it discusses are the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Organizational Sentencing Guidelines, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and contemporary compliance theory’s idea of reasonable, responsive, or cooperative enforcement. (shrink)

Des recherches récentes dans la chôra thasienne ont apporté une éclatante confirmation du texte d'Hérodote (VI, 46-47) évoquant les ressources minières de Thasos. Sur la côte orientale, entre Potamia et Kinyra, ont été repérées de nombreuses mines réparties en trois secteurs sur le versant de la montagne. L'or est le seul métal contenu en quantité suffisante pour être exploitable dans les prélèvements de minerai. Les autres mines évoquées allusivement par Hérodote sont des mines d'or (Limenas), ou de plomb argentifère, de (...) cuivre et de fer (côté occidental de l'île). (shrink)

Political and social commentators regularly bemoan the decline of morality in the modern world. They claim that the norms and values that held society together in the past are rapidly eroding, to be replaced by permissiveness and empty hedonism. But as Edward Rubin demonstrates in this powerful account of moral transformations, these prophets of doom are missing the point. Morality is not diminishing; instead, a new morality, centered on an ethos of human self-fulfillment, is arising to replace the old (...) one. As Rubin explains, changes in morality have gone hand in hand with changes in the prevailing mode of governance throughout the course of Western history. During the Early Middle Ages, a moral system based on honor gradually developed. In a dangerous world where state power was declining, people relied on bonds of personal loyalty that were secured by generosity to their followers and violence against their enemies. That moral order, exemplified in the early feudal system and in sagas like The Song of Roland, The Song of the Cid, and the Arthurian legends has faded, but its remnants exist today in criminal organizations like the Mafia and in the rap music of the urban ghettos. When state power began to revive in the High Middle Ages through the efforts of the European monarchies, and Christianity became more institutionally effective and more spiritually intense, a new morality emerged. Described by Rubin as the morality of higher purposes, it demanded that people devote their personal efforts to achieving salvation and their social efforts to serving the emerging nation-states. It insisted on social hierarchy, confined women to subordinate roles, restricted sex to procreation, centered child-rearing on moral inculcation, and countenanced slavery and the marriage of pre-teenage girls to older men. Our modern era, which began in the late 18th century, has seen the gradual erosion of this morality of higher purposes and the rise of a new morality of self-fulfillment, one that encourages individuals to pursue the most meaningful and rewarding life-path. Far from being permissive or a moral abdication, it demands that people respect each other's choices, that sex be mutually enjoyable, that public positions be allocated according to merit, and that society provide all its members with their minimum needs so that they have the opportunity to fulfill themselves. Where people once served the state, the state now functions to serve the people. The clash between this ascending morality and the declining morality of higher purposes is the primary driver of contemporary political and cultural conflict. A sweeping, big-idea book in the vein of Francis Fukuyama's The End of History, Charles Taylor's The Secular Age, and Richard Sennett's The Fall of Public Man, Edward Rubin's new volume promises to reshape our understanding of morality, its relationship to government, and its role in shaping the emerging world of High Modernity. (shrink)

…: ainsi faict la science ; . Un titre résonne parfois comme la citation d'un autre titre. Mais dès lors qu'il nommerait autre chose, il ne citerait plus simplement, il détournerait l'autre titre à la faveur d'un homonyme. Tout cela n'irait jamais sans quelque préjudice ou usurpation.

Parmi les projets de Rousseau figurait un ouvrage intitule Principes du droit de la guerre. On a longtemps cru cet ouvrage perdu ou reste a l'etat d'ebauches fragmentaires. Or un travail sur des manuscrits (jusqu'alors publies separement et dans le desordre) a permis de reconstituer un texte tres abouti, qui est manifestement la premiere partie de cet ouvrage. La redecouverte de ce texte et son rapprochement avec les ecrits sur le Projet de paix perpetuelle de l'abbe de Saint-Pierre, sur lesquels (...) Rousseau a travaille immediatement apres, eclairent d'un jour nouveau sa conception des rapports entre les Etats. Les commentaires proposes degagent l'originalite et l'actualite des questions posees par Rousseau sur la nature et la genese de la guerre et sur le statut d'un droit inter-etatique. L'Etat est-il ce qui empeche les hommes de se faire la guerre ou est-il la cause de l'apparition de la guerre? La guerre peut-elle etre soumise a des regles de droit? Peut-on esperer une fin de toute guerre? A quelles conditions une forme d'institution confederale pourrait-elle assurer, par le droit, une paix perpetuelle? (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Contours of Legal Scholarship Descriptive Scholarship Prescriptive Scholarship Jurisprudence References.

L'article a pour objet le thème de la Communication que M. Blondel a présenté en août 1900 et qui fut publiée sous le titre Principe élémentaire d'une logique de la vie morale. Elle traite un problème central dans l'oeuvre blondélienne, celui des rapports entre logique et liberté.

Bolzano fut le premier philosophe à établir une distinction explicite entre les procédés déductifs qui nous permettent de parvenir à la certitude d’une vérité et ceux qui fournissent son fondement objectif. La conception que Bolzano se fait du rapport entre ce que nous appelons ici, d’une part, « conséquence subjective », à savoir la relation de raison à conséquence épistémique et, d’autre part, la « conséquence objective », c’est-à-dire la fondation , suggère toutefois que Bolzano défendait une conception « explicativiste (...) » de la preuve : les preuves par excellence sont celles qui reflètent l’ordre de la fondation objective. Dans cet article nous faisons état des problèmes liés à une telle conception et argumentons en faveur d’une démarcation plus stricte entre la préoccupation ontologique et la préoccupation épistémologique dans l’élaboration d’une théorie de la preuve.Bolzano was the first to establish an explicit distinction between the deductive methods that allow us to recognise the certainty of a given truth and those that provide its objective ground. His conception of the relation between what we, in this paper, call “subjective consequence”, i.e. the relation from epistemic reason to consequence and “objective consequence”, i.e. grounding however suggests that Bolzano advocated an “explicativist” conception of proof : proofs par excellence are those that reflect the objective order of grounding. In this paper, we expose the problems involved by such a conception and argue in favour of a more rigorous demarcation between the ontological and the epistemological concern in the elaboration of a theory of proof. (shrink)

Quelle fonction aidante le couple sollicite-t-il du thérapeute? Demande-t-il une aide à la réparation, une aide à la séparation? Qu’est-ce qu’un couple vient nouer ou dénouer avec le thérapeute? Comment se dénoue une thérapie? Une thérapie conjugale se termine quand s’atteint l’objectif contractualisé. La fin est impliquée dans le commencement. D’où l’intérêt pour le thérapeute de ne pas imposer ses propres finalités, sa propre idée du dénouement.

Beyrouth, « ville phénix », est fiévreuse ; à nouveau menacée par la guerre civile, elle se précipite dans toutes les passions. Alors qu’elle lutte pour fluidifier les trafics qui l’étranglent, ici ou là, elle s’enferme dans des villages communautaires. Des lignes de démarcation demeurent actives tandis qu’elle ne cesse de se reconstruire et d’effacer son histoire.Beirut, the “phoenix city”, is in the grip of fever; under the renewed threat of civil war, it is plunging headlong into passions of every (...) kind. Even as it battles to dissolve the various traffic bottlenecks that threaten to strangle it, its different communities are closing in on themselves. As it ceaselessly struggles to rebuild itself and erase its own history, its lines of demarcation have remained as persistent as ever. (shrink)

À partir du XIIIe siècle, le tableau clinique de l'anorexie mentale se présente sous la forme de l'anorexie mystique. L'exemple retenu est Catherine de Sienne († 1380). Une approche de psychanalyse socio-historique permet de situer sa démarche par rapport à ses conflits intrapsychiques et aux processus idéologiques de son époque. L'anorexie mystique apparaît comme liée à l'histoire personnelle de chacune dans sa constellation familiale comme à l'essor de la mystique affective féminine. On la trouve souvent marquée par une révolte personnelle (...) contre les stratégies matrimoniales des familles bourgeoises dans les cités marchandes. (shrink)

Cet article vise à analyser les racines biologiques et psychopathologiques de l’antisémitisme. Il privilégie la notion de dialectique afin de comprendre la transition de l’anti-judaïsme à l’antisémitisme comme passage d’une opposition d’essence spirituelle et religieuse à un rejet d’ordre national et racial. Historiquement, ce passage est contemporain de l’émergence de la biologie de la race qui a, entre autres, cristallisé les thèmes majeurs d’une tradition mythique, ayant, pendant des siècles, structuré l’identité occidentale. L’antisémitisme proprement dit, dont le terme n’apparaît qu’en (...) 1873, a transformé une opposition dialectique à l’altérité juive en ce qu’Adorno a appelé la « dialectique négative », visant à résoudre définitivement la « question Juive » par la suppression de son objet. A travers une analyse historicoconceptuelle, cet article suggère une nouvelle approche de la genèse du racisme et de l’antisémitisme nazi, d’une part, et des rapports entre la science et l’éthique, d’autre part. (shrink)

En analysant les erreurs qui ont pu être commises dans la manière dont Africains et Européens ont cherché à se comprendre au plan culturel et religieux, l’étude souligne, à partir d’un exemple de différence en matière de représentation symbolique du couple et du groupe humains, les quiproquos toujours possibles et, à l’inverse, la fécondité, pour le dialogue interreligieux, d’une authentique différenciation des imaginaires anthropologiques.

Political and social commentators regularly bemoan the decline of morality in the modern world. They claim that the norms and values that held society together in the past are rapidly eroding, to be replaced by permissiveness and empty hedonism. But as Edward Rubin demonstrates in this powerful account of moral transformations, these prophets of doom are missing the point. Morality is not diminishing; instead, a new morality, centered on an ethos of human self-fulfillment, is arising to replace the old (...) one. As Rubin explains, changes in morality have gone hand in hand with changes in the prevailing mode of governance throughout the course of Western history. During the Early Middle Ages, a moral system based on honor gradually developed. In a dangerous world where state power was declining, people relied on bonds of personal loyalty that were secured by generosity to their followers and violence against their enemies. That moral order, exemplified in the early feudal system and in sagas like The Song of Roland, The Song of the Cid, and the Arthurian legends has faded, but its remnants exist today in criminal organizations like the Mafia and in the rap music of the urban ghettos. When state power began to revive in the High Middle Ages through the efforts of the European monarchies, and Christianity became more institutionally effective and more spiritually intense, a new morality emerged. Described by Rubin as the morality of higher purposes, it demanded that people devote their personal efforts to achieving salvation and their social efforts to serving the emerging nation-states. It insisted on social hierarchy, confined women to subordinate roles, restricted sex to procreation, centered child-rearing on moral inculcation, and countenanced slavery and the marriage of pre-teenage girls to older men. Our modern era, which began in the late 18th century, has seen the gradual erosion of this morality of higher purposes and the rise of a new morality of self-fulfillment, one that encourages individuals to pursue the most meaningful and rewarding life-path. Far from being permissive or a moral abdication, it demands that people respect each other's choices, that sex be mutually enjoyable, that public positions be allocated according to merit, and that society provide all its members with their minimum needs so that they have the opportunity to fulfill themselves. Where people once served the state, the state now functions to serve the people. The clash between this ascending morality and the declining morality of higher purposes is the primary driver of contemporary political and cultural conflict. A sweeping, big-idea book in the vein of Francis Fukuyama's The End of History, Charles Taylor's The Secular Age, and Richard Sennett's The Fall of Public Man, Edward Rubin's new volume promises to reshape our understanding of morality, its relationship to government, and its role in shaping the emerging world of High Modernity. (shrink)

When evidence-based policymaking is so often mired in disagreement and controversy, how can we know if the process is meeting its stated goals? We develop a novel mathematical model to study disagreements about adequate knowledge utilization, like those regarding wild horse culling, shark drumlines and facemask policies during pandemics. We find that, when stakeholders disagree, it is frequently impossible to tell whether any party is at fault. We demonstrate the need for a distinctive kind of transparency in evidence-based policymaking, which (...) we call transparency of reasoning. Such transparency is critical to the success of the evidence-based policy movement, as without it, we will be unable to tell whether in any instance a policy was in fact based on evidence. (shrink)