We provide a retrospective of 25 years of the International Conference on AI and Law, which was first held in 1987. Fifty papers have been selected from the thirteen conferences and each of them is described in a short subsection individually written by one of the 24 authors. These subsections attempt to place the paper discussed in the context of the development of AI and Law, while often offering some personal reactions and reflections. As a whole, the subsections build into (...) a history of the last quarter century of the field, and provide some insights into where it has come from, where it is now, and where it might go. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the philosophical fragment found in 1977 in the Bactrian city of Aï Khanum. Both its content and origin are still a matter of dispute among scholars. I provide first a new edition of the three remaining columns of the fragment, based on a new reading of its photographic reproductions. The second part of this paper deals with the difficult problem of its origin. I give new evidence in favour of the hypothesis according to which the (...) transmitted text is a piece of the second book of Aristotle’s lost dialogue Περὶ φιλοσοφίας. First, the comparison between this fragment and the opening lines of Theophrastus’ so-calledMetaphysicssuggests that both of them were written shortly after Plato’s death in the same historical and philosophical context, viz inside the Assos circle. Then, I examine the hypothesis of Louis Robert and Paul Bernard according to which an epigram written at the end of a list of Delphic maxims also found in Aï Khanum must be attributed to Clearchus of Soli, the pupil of Aristotle during the Assos period. The close connection between Clearchus’ main philosophical interests and the first book of Aristotle’s lost dialogue explains why he chose to bring it with him during his journey through the East, and left it in Aï Khanum. Finally, the reconstruction of the general structure of the Περὶ φιλοσοφίας leads to the conclusion that the fragment must come from its second book. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 125.1 (2004) 148-152 [Access article in PDF] Paul W. Ludwig. Eros and Polis: Desire and Community in Greek Political Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xiv + 398 pp. Cloth, $65. This is a very ambitious and very important, but also importantly flawed, book. It issues from an excellent stable, the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, and admirably maintains that (...) stable's thoroughbred tradition of sophisticated interdisciplinarity and equally sophisticated interfacing between the ancient subject matter and the target contemporary readership. It aims not merely to interpret the ancient world but also to change the modern. It takes for its subject matter rival constructions of eros (unitalicized, since this is mostly not used as a mere transliteration of the Greek word): a sometimes deadly, sometimes fructifying, amalgam of altruistic and selfish passion, emotion, and reasonable calculation. The flaws lie not so much in the conception as in the execution. This is one of those books in which the whole is palpably less than the sum of its parts, some of which are quite exceptionally thoughtful and thought-provoking. It is partial, too, in that it selects its source texts very precisely and deliberately but neglects others that a less partial (in another sense) reader might have expected the author to tackle at comparable length and with comparable assiduity. It suffers, probably, from an overlong period of gestation. It would have benefited, certainly, from a Maxwell Perkins in the editorial cutting room.Eros is currently, if the pun may be permitted, a sexy topic in ancient or classical studies. Ludwig's own generally accurate listing of works cited (381-92—not, he stresses, xiii, a "bibliography") includes nearly a score of articles and books in the titles of which "eros" or "erotic" appears, one of them a translated article by Freud (Ludwig cites in all eight Freudian works, having no truck with feminist or other rejections of any or all versions of Freudian psychodynamic theory). To these could be added (exempli gratia) Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr.'s Symposia: Plato, the Erotic and Moral Value(which appeared early enough, in 1999, for Ludwig to have taken it into account) or Thomas F. Scanlon's Eros and Greek Athleticsand Victoria Wohl's Love Among the Ruins. The Erotics of Democracy(which did not—they were also published in 2002). It is odd, however, that Ludwig seems to have overlooked Wohl's 1999 article, "The Eros of Alcibiades," which treats a subject that Ludwig himself could hardly not treat, and unfortunate that he did, in that the article appears in revised form in Wohl's new book, the chief premise of which is that "the erotics of democracy is not merely a trope but a dense point of convergence within Athenian social relations and subjectivity."Both Plato's Symposiumand Greek athletics bulk large in Ludwig's account, the former understandably more so than the latter. Indeed, Ludwig begins with a minutely detailed account of—just one speech from—the Symposium, that attributed to "Aristophanes," to which he counterpoints the views that he thinks he can confidently attribute to the "real" Aristophanes, the author of the extant comedies (on which Ludwig concentrates especially, including Clouds, Wasps, and Birds; he promises to return to Lysistrataand Ecclesiazusae). Besides [End Page 148] Plato and Aristophanes, Ludwig's author of choice is Thucydides, at any rate the Thucydides of the Periclean Funeral Oration and of the account of the Athenians' "erotic" decision to go to war in and over Sicily in 415. As for Wohl's claim (above), Ludwig could not agree more. The devil, however, is in the details.And, this is a very detailed book indeed. Ludwig first defines what he means and understands by eros in a variety of subtle and acute ways. It is a "predicament to be experienced and perhaps ameliorated rather than a problem to be solved once and for all" (18); it "occurs in cases in which the desire, whether sexual or not, becomes obsessional" (13, my emphasis); and it was... (shrink)

Perhaps only Tar Baby is as enigmatic and compelling a figure from Afro-American mythic discourse as is that oxymoron, the Signifying Monkey.3 The ironic reversal of a received racist image of the black as simianlike, the Signifying Monkey—he who dwells at the margins of discourse, ever punning, ever troping, ever embodying the ambiguities of language—is our trope for repetition and revision, indeed, is our trope of chiasmus itself, repeating and simultaneously reversing in one deft, discursive act. If Vico and Burke, (...) or Nietzsche, Paul de Man, and Harold Bloom, are correct in identifying “master tropes,” then we might think of these as the “master’s tropes,” and of signifying as the slave’s trope, the trope of tropes, as Bloom characterizes metalepsis, “a trope-reversing trope, a figure of a figure.” Signifying is a trope that subsumes other rhetorical tropes, including metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, and also hyberbole, litotes, and metalepsis. To this list, we could easily add aporia, chiasmus, and catachresis, all of which are used in the ritual of signifying.The black tradition has its own subdivisions of signifying, which we could readily identify with the typology of figures received from classical and medieval rhetoric, as Bloom has done with his “maps of misprision.” In black discourse “signifying” means modes of figuration itself. When one signifies, as Kimberly W. Benston puns, one “tropes-a-dope.” The black rhetorical tropes subsumed under signifying would include “marking,” “loud-talking,” “specifying,” “testifying,” “calling out”, “sounding,” “rapping,” and “playing the dozens.”4 3. On Tar Baby, see Ralph Ellison, “Hidden Man and Complex Fate: A Writer’s Experience in the United States,” Shadow and Act, p. 147, and Toni Morrison, Tar Baby. On the black as quasi-simian, see Jean Bodin, Method for the Easy Comprehension of History, trans. Beatrice Reynolds, p. 105; Aristotle Historia Animalium 606b; Thomas Herbert, Some Years Travels, pp. 16-17; and John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 8th ed., 2 vols., 2:53.4. Geneva Smitherman defines these and other black tropes and then traces their use in several black texts. Smitherman’s work, like that of Claudia Mitchell-Kernan and Abrahams, is especially significant for literary theory. See Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America, pp. 101-66. See also nn. 13 and 14 below. (shrink)

La pensée chrétienne est le plus souvent mal perçue, mal considérée, caricaturée et même défigurée, parce que mal comprise. Il appartenait à René Girard de remettre les pendules à l'heure en montrant qu'elle a porté au plus haut point la religion comme mode de gestion de la violence ou 'science de la violence', comme dénonciation de la violence- programmation d'autant plus salutaire dans un monde de plus en plus violent. Cette grille de lecture permit à René Girard d'éclairer d'un jour (...) nouveau l'esprit du christianisme, du judaïsme et même du paganisme. Elle nous invite à reconsidérer la pensée chrétienne par l'appel, à titre d'exemples, à quelques séquences significatives, celles de Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Joseph de Maistre et Louis de Bonald, celles de Hegel, Claude Tresmontant et Dostoïevski. (shrink)

Introduction, Thomas McLaughlinI Literature as Writing1 Representation, W. J. T. Mitchell2 Structure, John Carlos Rowe3 Writing, Barbara Johnson4 Discourse, Paul A. Bove5 Narrative, J. Hillis Miller6 Figurative Language, Thomas McLaughlin7 Performance, Henry Sayre8 Author, Donald E. PeaseII Interpretation9 Interpretation, Steven Mailloux10 Intention, Annabel Patterson11 Unconscious, Franoise Meltzer12 Determinacy/Indeterminacy, Gerald Graff13 Value/Evaluation, Barbara Herrnstein Smith14 Influence, Louis A. Renza15 Rhetoric, Stanley FishIII Literature, Culture, Politics16 Culture, Stephen Greenblatt17 Canon, John Guillory18 Literary History, Lee Patterson19 Gender, Myra Jehlen20 (...) Race, Kwane Anthony Appiah21 Ethnicity, Werner Sollors22 Ideology, James H. KavanaghIn Place of an Afterword--Someone Reading, Frank LentricchiaReferencesList of ContributorsIndex. (shrink)

Book Review of Paul Ricœur, Être, essence et substance chez Platon et Aristote. Cours professé à l’université de Strasbourg en 1953-1954. Texte vérifié et annoté par Jean-Louis Schlegel , (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2011), 348 pp.

For enactivists and pragmatists alike, sense-making is a systemic process of bringing the organism and environment into reciprocity. Steiner (2023) distinguishes enactivism from pragmatism by arguing that intention is compatible with enactivism but not pragmatism. After reviewing Steiner’s analysis, I consider its ontological consequences and phenomenological implications which I suggest cause problems for both enactivism and pragmatism, but in two different ways. Intention is consistent with the idea of an autonomy of sense-making but reveals its latent subjectivity – which sits (...) uncomfortably with an enactivist account. The absence of intention implies the existence of states of supra-subjective consciousness but lack of such accounts is troublesome for pragmatism. Next, I introduce Material Engagement Theory. I emphasise its affinity to pragmatism and describe its role in developing clayful phenomenology, an experiential way of investigating creative practice from the perspective of the process. A case-study of a sculptural project illustrates how action, creating a construction-site atmosphere as it goes, gathers diverse materials and elements to itself: wood, clay, plaster, steel, a sculpted skull, a painting, a wall, tree trunks, scaffolding, neolithic sculptures etc. These elements draw themselves into rhythmical associations that resonate with others that are formed through and by sculptural gestures and these go onto form further gestural patterns. The project shows how a creative situation creates a sense of affective purpose by and through the act of creating itself. (shrink)

I describe how close attention to the process of sculpting clay from the perspective of Material Engagement Theory can create a detailed description of a mutable sense of agency and of self. First, I show that sculpting is associated with a loss of sense of agency and self. Second, that to sense agency as a systemic phenomenon creates anxiety. Third, that meaning in an art encounter develops in association with an anterospective viewpoint. Fourth, that within the logic of the extended (...) mind, emergent meaning becomes openly available for further exploration. Fifth, that artistic creativity is not an opaque process. It proceeds in a similar manner to other forms of human, sense-making activities. Finally, that playing seriously with clay can be used in an investigative manner—as a tool for material conceptualisation. (shrink)

Over the last twenty years, archaeologists have used various process-oriented modes of enquiry to undermine the belief that humans are special. Barad (2007) developed Bohr’s indeterminist interpretation of quantum mechanics into agential realism which offers an ontological basis for distributing agency away from humans and plays a crucial role in underwriting some posthumanist archaeological agendas. But its origins in quantum physics make agential realism difficult to understand and evaluate. Despite the challenge, the first two parts of this paper are devoted (...) to each task in turn, with limited success. Part three turns to the archaeological literature, where the evaluation of agential realism turns out to be even more inadequate and so I advise against its use in support of process-oriented approaches in archaeology. The final section turns to the activity of an art workshop and introduces a playful approach to working with clay. Clayful phenomenology is a way of investigating the relationship between gesture, material and ideation. During sculpting, phenomenological experience is not subjective, stable and external but is generated within a transient creative system where entities, ideas and agency reciprocally, emerge as ephemeral manifestations. Clayful phenomenology and agential realism are ontologically similar and both are controversial but agential realism has a wall of quantum conceptual complexity standing between it and a judgement about credibility whereas playing with clay can be assessed directly, through experience. (shrink)

In a world dominated by things, we must work hard to account for one another's personhood. Drawing a diverse set of thought leaders, Paul Louis Metzger helps us navigate a pluralistic world through a personalist moral framework, addressing issues such as abortion, genetic engineering, immigration, drone warfare, and more.

La synagogue.--Conversion.--Formation de la théorie de la substance.--Premiers traités.--Les "Principes de la philosophie de Descartes."--Traités de théologie et de politique.--L'"Ethique."--Spinoza.

In this contemporary classic originally published in 1963, Paul Lehmann answers the central question posed time and again to Christians throughout the ages: what am I as a believer in Jesus Christ and a member of his church to do? Lehmann argues that while principles for moral action can be rules of thumb, there are no absolute moral norms beyond the general norm of love. Lehmann contends that Christians are to act in every situation in ways that are consistent (...) with God's humanizing purposes, but what that means changes from context to context and requires strong, faith-shaped discernment.The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic works in the field. (shrink)

This research examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and company stock valuation across three regions of the world. After a brief introduction, the article gives an overview of the evolving definition of CSR as well as a discussion of the ways in which this construct has been operationalized. Presentation of the potential impact of corporate social performance on firm financial performance follows, including investor characteristics, the rationale behind their choices, and their influence on the marketplace for securities worldwide. (...) The unique method used to select socially responsible investments is then provided that also includes a description of the quantitative techniques employed in the analyses. Results are offered subsequently, and the close describes implications for global enterprises as socially responsible investments. (shrink)

Trust is central to our social lives. We know by trusting what others tell us. We act on that basis, and on the basis of trust in their promises and implicit commitments. So trust underpins both epistemic and practical cooperation and is key to philosophical debates on the conditions of its possibility. It is difficult to overstate the significance of these issues. On the practical side, discussions of cooperation address what makes society possible—of how it is that life is not (...) a Hobbesian war of all against all. On the epistemic side, discussions of cooperation address what makes the pooling of knowledge possible—and so the edifice that is science. But trust is not merely central to our lives instrumentally; trusting relations are themselves of great value and, in trusting others, we realize distinctive forms of value. What are these forms of value, and how is trust central to our lives? These questions are explored and developed in this volume, which collects fifteen new essays on the philosophy of trust. They develop and extend existing philosophical discussion of trust and will provide a reference point for future work on trust. (shrink)

The target article by Christopher Meyers concerning justification of deception for clinical ethicists is both well-reasoned and plausible. Clearly grounded in utilitarian considerations, its...

The Gamer’s Dilemma challenges us to justify the moral difference between enacting virtual murder and virtual child molestation in video games. The Dilemma relies for its argumentative force on the claim that there is an intuitive moral difference between these acts, with the former intuited as morally acceptable and the latter as morally unacceptable. However, there has been no empirical investigation of these claims. To explore these issues, we developed an experimental survey study in which participants were asked to reflect (...) on imaginary video game scenarios as part of a 2 (undertake virtual murder or molestation) X 2 (against an adult or child) X 2 (in a high or low realism virtual environment) factorial design. We found that there was a significant difference between people’s views about virtual murder and virtual molestation. Whether the virtual act was performed against an adult or child was non-significant in most conditions, whereas whether it was performed in a high or low realism virtual environment was significant in most conditions. Gender did not impact these results, whereas perceived gaming experience, hours of video game play per week, and integrity did. These results provide an empirical grounding for future discussions of the Gamer's Dilemma. (shrink)