Contemporary research on racial categorization is mostly encompassed by two research traditions—social constructionism and the cognitive-cum-evolutionary approach. Although both literatures have some plausible empirical evidence and some theoretical insights to contribute to a full understanding of racial categorization, there has been little contact between their proponents. In order to foster such contacts, we critically review both traditions, focusing particularly on the recent evolutionary/cognitive explanations of racial categorization. On the basis of this critical survey, we put forward a list of eleven (...) requirements that a satisfactory theory of racial categorization should satisfy. We conclude that despite some decisive progress, we are still far from having a complete theory of why humans classify people on the basis of skin color, body appearance or hair style. (shrink)

For years business ethics has limited the moral duties of enterprises to negative duties. Over the last decade it has been argued that positive duties also befall commercial agents, at least when confronted with large scale public problems and when governments fail. The argument that enterprises have positive duties is often grounded in the political nature of commercial life. It is argued that agents must sometimes take over governmental responsibilities. The German republican tradition argues along these lines as does Nien-Hé (...) Hsieh. Agents in commercial life are bound by positive duties because at some point they become citizens that must take on the responsibilities of the state. In this paper we leave undisputed the claim that corporations must acknowledge positive duties. However, we demonstrate that the political grounding fails, at least in the sense that this theory insufficiently acknowledges a long standing liberal tradition that vindicates apolitical markets and clear borderlines between politics and economics. We carve out an alternative route to the grounding of one specific positive duty—the duty to further justice. Our argument is based on the moral nature of commercial agents and tries to demonstrate that the duty to further justice ensues from liberalism. Taking a Kantian perspective, it conceptualizes the duty to further justice as a moral duty, orientated toward the political domain. It is grounded in the obligation to attain moral autonomy in the civil condition. (shrink)

In a recently published paper, we argued that theories of cultural evolution can gain explanatory power by being more pluralistic. In his reply to it, Dennett agreed that more pluralism is needed. Our paper’s main point was to urge cultural evolutionists to get their hands dirty by describing the fine details of cultural products and by striving to offer detailed and, when explanatory, varied algorithms or mechanisms to account for them. While Dennett’s latest work on cultural evolution does marvelously well (...) on the first point, it has only whet our appetite on the second. Accordingly, the present paper aims to show what an evolutionary explanation of culture that takes the variety of cultural evolution mechanisms seriously would look like. We will focus on the cultural evolution of social epistemic mechanisms and we will propose that Darwinian algorithms should be complemented with a cultural analogue of the error reduction mechanism proposed to account for human cognition, with a particular emphasis on the necessity to build independencies between different sub-systems in charge of tracking states of the world. To illustrate our point, we will present how the evolution of the legal system as epistemic systems can be understood as a process of building increasingly better independencies and how various criticisms of the actual legal system calls for building even more of them. (shrink)

In this survey of business ethics in Europe, we compare the present state of business ethics in Europe with the situation as described by Enderle (BEER 5(1):33–46, 1996 ). At that time, business ethics was still dominated by a mainly philosophical, normative analysis of business issues with a maximum of 25 chairs in business ethics all over Europe. It has since expanded dramatically in numbers as well as diversified into many different domains. We find this rich diversity in the conception (...) of business ethics back in the answers of our respondents to every single question. The concepts they propose, the courses they teach, the subjects under research as well as the training and consultancy offered to clients and even the challenges for the future all reflect this diversity. Decisive for the expansion of business ethics in Europe has been the advance of CSR and the official backing of CSR by the European Commission. We further argue that the prevalence and importance of business ethics and CSR differs throughout Europe. A rough approximation based on our survey results and literature review is that it is more important and more developed in core and Nordic European countries and somewhat less in Southern and Eastern European countries. The real East with countries like Belarus and Bulgaria remains a challenge. (shrink)

As they appear to us, we separate phenomena into objects and events according to an apparently phenomenological distinction that is both radical and undisputed. The object appears according to four basic characteristics: it is predictable; it is reproducible; it results from a cause acting as an effect; and it always inscribes itself within the conditions of possibility for experience. The event appears as a reversal of these characteristics: it appears without warning; it appears once and for all, that is, without (...) the possibility of repetition or reproduction; it appears without any assignable or anterior cause; and finally it appears in defiance of the conditions of the possibility for experience—as the impossible made possible. (shrink)

Historically, "Healing Methods" (HMS) have not been based on rational theories. Of the thousands of HMs that have arisen over the ages, only a small number survive today, drawing their power and longevity mostly from their superior ability to act as a placebo within the context of modern-day culture, rather than through any other mode of action.When it comes to HMs, Western scientific culture has not yet evolved beyond a pre-scientific stage (Fancher 1995). A scientific analysis of the part played (...) by practitioner/subject empathy and other emotional influences within the healing situation is needed. Furthermore, the question "Does 'it'work?" should be reformulated as "Is 'it' an effective placebo?"Once one accepts .. (shrink)

Cet article propose d'utiliser le concept d'utopie rationnelle pour rendre compte des pratiques managériales et tout particulièrement de la production de réformes répétées dans les organisations. Dans cette perspective, après avoir décrit une décennie de transformations au sein d'une organisation publique, certaines caractéristiques de la « culture managériale » sont dégagées de sa pratique réformatrice. Dans un second temps, le concept d'utopie rationnelle est construit à partir de textes canoniques et des travaux d'« utopologues ». Dans un troisième temps, utopie (...) rationnelle et culture managériale sont comparées, afin de préciser l'apport cognitif de cet outil à la compréhension du fonctionnement des organisations. (shrink)

The problem of the limitations of or conditions for God's power was one of the most fruitful topics in medieval discussions. While debating it, medieval thinkers came to redefine the concept of the "possible." William of Auxerre's disputed questions offer an example of critical reexamination of Aristotle's conception of possibility. Parallel to the account of William's views on the topic, the article provides (from a formal point of view, so to speak) an analysis of the sequence and formulation of the (...) questions he raises, in an attempt to propose a method for reading these frequently disconcerting texts. (shrink)

La présente contribution propose un panorama des représentations géographiques des lettres à Timothée et Tite, aussi appelées les Pastorales. À l’aide du concept de « carte mentale », elle montre comment les trois lettres remanient la perception spatiale du champ d’action paulinien d’est vers l’ouest, au tournant du ier et du IIe siècle. Le déplacement spatial identifié correspond à la majorité des études historiques qui situent les trois lettres parmi les premières réceptions de Paul. Il met également en évidence les (...) soubassements géographiques de la reconfiguration de la notion d’oikos dans ces premières réceptions, souvent occultés dans les études sur l’univers domestique des Pastorales. Cet article pave ainsi la voie à l’étude de la maison romaine dans les trois lettres proposée dans ce numéro par Michael Theobald. (shrink)

La philosophie esthétique connaît depuis une quarantaine d'années un essor considérable, singulièrement dans la tradition phénoménologique occidentale. Elle constitue l'un des tournants majeurs de la philosophie du XXe et du début du XXIe siècle. Elle est devenue l'une des meilleures clés d'analyse et de compréhension des phénomènes humains. Le présent ouvrage se propose donc par ce biais, de fournir un choix représentatif de travaux dans le domaine esthétique et métaphysique relatif à la créativité africaine contemporaine. Il se propose en fin (...) de compte de faire découvrir un certain nombre de recherches d'une importance vitale pour la réflexion sur le concept essentialiste du "Primitivisme occidental" tel qu'il s'institue dans le discours philosophique et esthétique moderne pour appréhender et comprendre la beauté "nègre"! (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse the meaning and the implications of the comparative interpretation of Sartre’s and Ryle’s theses on imagination that Ricœur undertook in the still unpublished text of his Lectures on Imagination. These lectures were delivered at the University of Chicago in 1975. First, the article shows how Ricœur brings out a strong convergence , both in the method and in the presuppositions , of the Sartrean and Rylean conceptions of imagination : the choice of (...) a descriptive method leads the two philosophers to a common critique of the mental image . Secondly, the article analyses the properly critical side of the Ricœurian interpretation by showing how it eventually brings to light the common theoretical limitation of Sartre’s and Ryle’s theses on imagination. According to Ricœur, those theses lead to a conception of image as picture and fail to consider the image as fiction , and so they remain locked in a theory of reproductive imagination and of the primacy of perception. Résumé Cet article se propose d’analyser le sens et les enjeux de la lecture croisée des thèses de Sartre et Ryle sur l’imagination à laquelle se livre Ricœur dans le texte encore inédit des Lectures on imagination professées en 1975 à l’Université de Chicago. Dans un premier temps, il montre comment Ricœur met en relief une convergence forte , de méthode et de présupposés entre les conceptions sartrienne et rylienne de l’imagination : le choix d’une méthode descriptive conduisant les deux philosophes à une commune critique de l’image mentale . Puis, dans un second temps, il analyse le versant proprement critique de la lecture ricœurienne en montrant comment elle en vient à dénoncer une commune limitation théorique des thèses de Sartre et Ryle sur l’imagination. Selon Ricœur, ces thèses débouchent sur une conception de l’image comme tableau qui échoue à penser l’image comme fiction et elles restent de ce fait enfermées dans une théorie de l ’ imagination reproductrice et du primat de la perception. (shrink)

Standard equilibrium economic models focus on interdependencies. This text develops a theory which is based on disequilibria. The model proposed is a heuristic tool that makes it possible to explore these disequilibria in relation to Western economies.

Le passé de l’Occident reste marqué par une tache indélébile, celle de l’horreur de l’esclavage colonial. Il est certes aujourd’hui avéré que la traite atlantique ne fut que l’une des traites négrières, à côté de la traite arabe au travers du Sahara et le long des côtes de l’océan Indien, qui s’étale sur une plus longue durée, et des traites africaines internes au continent... Mais en elle s’exprime un scandale spécifique, celui de la contradiction entre une pratique et des idéaux (...) proclamés, qui furent d’abord ceux d’une religion à vocation universaliste prônant l’amour du prochain, puis ceux issus des Lumières, dont l’application fut loin d’être immédiate. En outre, concentrée sur une période de temps plus brève – en gros trois siècles et demi, du début du XVIe au milieu du XIXe siècle –, la traite atlantique a alimenté en force de travail servile non pas des sociétés à esclaves, comme le furent les sociétés arabo-musulmanes, mais des sociétés esclavagistes, dont le caractère totalitaire résultait d’un mode de production tout entier fondé sur l’utilisation d’une main-d’œuvre dégradable autant que l’exigeaient les contraintes des cultures de plantation, vouées à la satisfaction de marchés extérieurs , et donc sur une marchandisation et une réification de l’homme sans précédent. Ce qui en fait un phénomène éminemment moderne, en contrariété avec les usages antiques ou non occidentaux, caractérisé par une racialisation de l’oppression, avec la mise en place d’un préjugé de couleur qui servit de légitimation commode, sous le couvert de la nature, à une forme d’exploitation qui aurait pu paraître condamnable en fonction des valeurs religieuses et politiques officiellement affichées. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru le 21/12/2018 sur le site EspacesTemps.net. Nous remercions les auteurs et la revue EspacesTemps de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Sans rythme pas de vie Bernard Millet La ville? « Ne pas essayer trop vite de trouver une définition de la ville ; c'est beaucoup trop gros, on a toutes les chances de se tromper ». Le rythme? Comment réussir « à définir un seul et même signifiant qui véhicule tant de signifiés différents? (...) ». Et - Géographie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

« Vergleiche die Grammatik von “meinen” und “vouloir dire” » : c’est ainsi que Wittgenstein invite le lecteur des Philosophische Untersuchungen à comparer l’emploi du français « vouloir dire » à celui de l’allemand « meinen », suggérant ainsi que ces deux verbes, quoique proches, ne sont pas substituables l’un à l’autre. Cet article se propose de procéder à cette comparaison, ainsi que d’examiner le problème qu’elle pose à qui veut traduire en français les Philosophische Untersuchungen : comment traduire « (...) meinen » puisque la meilleure traduction en est « vouloir dire », et que cependant, en raison de leurs différences d’emploi, « vouloir dire » ne traduit pas « meinen »? (shrink)

L’importance de Ludwik Fleck pour l’épistémologie historique est maintenant reconnue. Mais nul ne semble encore avoir mis en évidence que ses conceptions, au-delà de leur champ d’origine, s’appliquent aussi très naturellement, et avec profit, à l’histoire des idées. C’est ce que l’on se propose de faire ici, en présentant leurs concepts fondamentaux, ceux de style de pensée et de collectif de pensée.

In many real-life situations, we are interested in the value of a physical quantity y that is difficult or impossible to measure directly. To estimate y, we find some easier-to-measure quantities x1, … , xn which are related to y by a known relation y = f. Measurements are never 100% accurate; hence, the measured values equation image are different from xi, and the resulting estimate equation image is different from the desired value y = f. How different can it (...) be? Traditional engineering approach to error estimation in data processing assumes that we know the probabilities of different measurement errors equation image. In many practical situations, we only know the upper bound Δi for this error; hence, after the measurement, the only information that we have about xi is that it belongs to the interval equation image. In this case, it is important to find the range y of all possible values of y = f when xi ∈ xi. We start the paper with a brief overview of the computational complexity of the corresponding interval computation problems: Most of the related problems turn out to be, in general, at least NP-hard. In this paper, we show how the use of quantum computing can speed up some computations related to interval and probabilistic uncertainty. We end the paper with speculations on whether “hypothetic” physical devices can compute NP-hard problems faster than in exponential time. Most of the paper's results were first presented at NAFIPS'2003 [30]. (shrink)

IntroductionAlthough the motor signs of Parkinson’s disease are well defined, nonmotor symptoms, including higher-level language deficits, have also been shown to be frequent in patients with PD. In the present study, we used a lexical decision task to find out whether access to the mental lexicon is impaired in patients with PD, and whether task performance is affected by bradykinesia.Materials and MethodsParticipants were 34 nondemented patients with PD, either without medication or under optimum medication. A total of 19 age-matched control (...) volunteers were also recruited. We recorded reaction times to the LDT and a simple RT task. In each task, stimuli were either visual or auditory. Statistical analyses consisted of repeated-measures analyses of variance and Tukey’s HSD post hoc tests.ResultsIn the LDT, participants with PD both off and on medication exhibited intact access to the mental lexicon in both modalities. In the visual modality, patients off medication were just as fast as controls when identifying real words, but slower when identifying pseudowords. In the visual modality of the control task, RTs for pseudowords were significantly longer for PD patients off medication than for controls, revealing an unexpected but significant lexicality effect in patients that was not observed in the auditory modality. Performances of patients on medication did not differ from those of age-matched controls.DiscussionMotor execution was not slowed in patients with PD either off or on medication, in comparison with controls. Regarding lexical access, patients off medication seemed to have difficulty inhibiting a cognitive-linguistic process when it was not required, and exhibit a specific pseudoword processing deficit in the LDT, which may have been related to impaired lateral word inhibition within the mental lexicon. These deficits seemed to be compensated by medication. (shrink)

‘It is at the heart of Heidegger that he sought to operate. At his heart, the closest, the most intimate and, at the same time, not so as to keep his distance but rather so as to inscribe this distance within proximity.’.

Será que a filosofia francesa possua um espírito de sistema?” Essa questão nos é colocada com uma habilidade que somos, por este fato mesmo, convidados a identificar, avaliar e contornar.