In this article, I examine the enduring relevance of Heinrich Wölfflin’s approach to style, in light of the renewed interest in it among “postformalist” art historians. By delving into the theoretical foundations of the Principles of Art History, I explore Wölfflin’s Goethean interpretation of Kantian epistemology, revealing a conception of style characterized by its dynamic and symbolic “inner form” rather than mere static formalism. This analysis not only highlights affinities with Max Weber’s thought but also uncovers a previously overlooked connection (...) to Wilhelm von Humboldt, offering valuable insights for current discussions on style. (shrink)

We show that MRP + MA implies that ITP(λ, ω 2 ) holds for all cardinal λ ≥ ω 2 . This generalizes a result by Weiß who showed that PFA implies that ITP(λ, ω 2 ) holds for all cardinal λ ≥ ω 2 . Consequently any of the known methods to prove MRP + MA consistent relative to some large cardinal hypothesis requires the existence of a strongly compact cardinal. Moreover if one wants to force MRP + MA (...) with a proper forcing, it requires at least a supercompact cardinal. We also study the relationship between MRP and some weak versions of square. We show that MRP implies the failure of □(λ, ω) for all λ ≥ ω 2 and we give a direct proof that MRP + MA implies the failure of □(λ, ω 1 ) for all λ ≥ ω 2. (shrink)

A motivation and a presentation of the semantics of a formal system which proceeds from von neumann's "eine axiomatisierung der mengenlehre" by taking as fundamental notions the notion of partial functions, his principles of reification on the grounds of a "method of simulation" of meaningless terms and formulas by "ideal" terms and "virtual" formulas. theory of sets appears as the end of axiomatic extensions of the theory of objects (the intermediary extensions being the theories of classes, of universes, of aggregates).

Rémi Tison Dans cet article, je traite de la nature des processus cognitifs sous-tendant nos attributions d’états mentaux aux animaux non humains. Selon la conception traditionnelle, nous n’avons qu’un accès indirect aux états mentaux d’autrui, qui doivent être inférés sur la base du comportement. Cette conception traditionnelle influence autant les débats conceptuels concernant l’esprit des animaux que les recherches empiriques sur la cognition animale. Or de récents travaux sur la cognition sociale humaine avancent plutôt une conception « interactionniste », selon (...) laquelle les états mentaux peuvent parfois être directement perçus dans le comportement. J’applique dans cet article la conception interactionniste à l’attribution d’états mentaux aux animaux. Je conclus que celle-ci rend mieux compte des attitudes du sens commun à l’égard des états mentaux des animaux et est plus féconde pour la recherche empirique sur la cognition animale que la conception traditionnelle. (shrink)

We present and contrast two accounts of cooperative communication, both based on Active Inference, a framework that unifies biological and cognitive processes. The mental alignment account, defended in Vasil et al., takes the function of cooperative communication to be the alignment of the interlocutor's mental states, and cooperative communicative behavior to be driven by an evolutionarily selected adaptive prior belief favoring the selection of action policies that promote such an alignment. We argue that the mental alignment account should be rejected (...) because it neglects the action-oriented nature of cooperative communication, which skews its view of the dynamics of communicative interaction. We introduce our own conception of cooperative communication, inspired by a more radical ecological interpretation of the active inference framework. Cooperative communication, on our ecological conception, serves to guide and constrain the dynamics of the cooperative interaction via the construction and restructuring of shared fields of affordances, in order to reach the local goals of the joint actions in which episodes of cooperative communication are embedded. We argue that our ecological conception provides a better theoretical standpoint to account for the action-oriented nature of cooperative communication in the active inference framework. (shrink)

This paper examines the question of why consumers engage in ethical consumption. The authors draw on self-affirmation theory to propose that the choice of an ethical product serves a self-restorative function. Four experiments provide support for this assertion: a self-threat increases consumers’ choice of an ethical option, even when the alternative choice is objectively superior in quantity (Study 1) and product quality (Study 2). Further, restoring self-esteem through positive feedback eliminates this increase in ethical choice (Studies 2 and 3). As (...) an additional test of the robustness of our results, a final study examined the effect of self-threat on choice in a field setting (Study 4). The findings indicate that ethical purchases are not just altruistic. They hold purposeful individual value and can help in the self-restorative process. Implications for managers making decisions regarding investment in ethical product features are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce an ecological account of communication according to which acts of communication are active inferences achieved by affecting the behavior of a target organism via the modification of its field of affordances. Constraining a target organism’s behavior constitutes a mechanism of socially extended active inference, allowing organisms to proactively regulate their inner states through the behavior of other organisms. In this general conception of communication, the type of cooperative communication characteristic of human communicative interaction is a (...) way of constraining interaction dynamics toward the goals of a given joint action by constructing and altering shared fields of affordances. This account embraces a pragmatist view according to which communication is a form of action aiming to influence the behavior of a target, and stands against the traditional transmission view according to which communication fundamentally serves to convey information. Understanding acts of communication as active inference under an ecological interpretation allows us to link communicative and ultimately linguistic behavior to the biological imperative of minimizing free energy and to emphasize the action-oriented nature of communicative interaction. (shrink)

The philosophy of “ human dignity” remains a young, piecemeal endeavor with only a small, dedicated literature. And what dedicated literature exists makes for a rather slapdash mix of substantive and formal metatheory. Worse, ironically we seem compelled to treat this existing theory both charitably and casually. For how can we definitively assess any of it? Existing suggestions about the general features of dignity are necessarily contentious in virtue of being more or less blissfully uncritical of themselves. Because none of (...) the suggested features are conscientiously situated in their own right, their justification is taken to rest solely on whether each is borne out by some substantive account. But absent the sort of second-order considerations that would make for a proper metatheory, what can we do with their substantive suggestions? Of course, the concept of dignity has other forums. It figures prominently into insular analyses of either Kantian or Biblical ethics, and, to various degrees, an array of subsidiary fields of practical philosophy including human rights, bioethics, law, theories of respect, race theory, Judaic studies, feminism, care ethics, war, technology, and political philosophy. Each of these areas has an established literature. Each contributes interesting observations to the nature of dignity. But, again, ultimately, without a proper metatheory, it is unclear what to do with any of them. My goal is to remedy this, or at least reverse the trend. In doing so I will have in view one particular subfield, namely, the ever-pressing subject of human rights. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose an argumentation formalism that allows for both deductive and abductive argumentation, where ‘deduction’ is used as an umbrella term for both defeasible and strict ‘forward’ inference. Our formalism is based on an extended version of our previously proposed information graph formalism, which provides a precise account of the interplay between deductive and abductive inference and causal and evidential information. In the current version, we consider additional types of information such as abstractions which allow domain experts (...) to be more expressive in stating their knowledge, where we identify and impose constraints on the types of inferences that may be performed with the different types of information. A new notion of attack is defined that captures a crucial aspect of abductive reasoning, namely that of competition between abductively inferred alternative explanations. Our argumentation formalism generates an abstract argumentation framework and thus allows arguments to be formally evaluated. We prove that instantiations of our argumentation formalism satisfy key rationality postulates. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an account of linguistic content based on the active inference framework. While ecological and enactive theorists have rightly rejected the notion of content as a basis for cognitive processes, they must recognize the important role that it plays in the social regulation of linguistic interaction. According to an influential theory in philosophy of language, normative inferentialism, an utterance has the content that it has in virtue of its normative status, that is, in virtue of the (...) set of commitments and entitlements that the speaker undertakes by producing this utterance. This normative status is determined by the normative attitudes shared by members of the utterer’s linguistic community. I propose here an account of such normative attitudes based on the ecological interpretation of the active inference framework. I explain how social normativity can be understood in that framework as the way in which members of a group shape their social niche to make it more predictable. Finally, I apply this account of social normativity to basic communicative practices, thereby explaining how social normative expectations can emerge to regulate these communicative practices, eventually leading to the institution of the sort of normative statuses constitutive of linguistic content. (shrink)

In everything from philosophical ethics to legal argument to public activism, it has become commonplace to appeal to the idea of human dignity. In such contexts, the concept of dignity typically signifies something like the fundamental moral status belonging to all humans. Remarkably, however, it is only in the last century that this meaning of the term has become standardized. Before this, dignity was instead a concept associated with social status. Unfortunately, this transformation remains something of a mystery in existing (...) scholarship. Exactly when and why did "dignity" change its meaning? And before this change, was it truly the case that we lacked a conception of human worth akin to the one that "dignity" now represents? In this volume, leading scholars across a range of disciplines attempt to answer such questions by clarifying the presently murky history of "dignity," from classical Greek thought through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment to the present day. (shrink)

To formalize the human judgment of rhythm complexity, we used five measures from information theory and algorithmic complexity to measure the complexity of 48 artificially generated rhythmic sequences. We compared these measurements to human prediction accuracy and easiness judgments obtained from a listening experiment, in which 32 participants guessed the last beat of each sequence. We also investigated the modulating effects of musical expertise and general pattern identification ability. Entropy rate and Kolmogorov complexity were correlated with prediction accuracy, and highly (...) correlated with easiness judgments. A logistic regression showed main effects of musical training, entropy rate, and Kolmogorov complexity, and an interaction between musical training and both entropy rate and Kolmogorov complexity. These results indicate that information-theoretic concepts capture some salient features of the human judgment of rhythm complexity, and they confirm the influence of musical expertise on complexity judgments. (shrink)

This essay centralizes and explores Ernst Cassirer’s concept of style. Although it does not emerge as much as the concept of form or symbol in Cassirer’s corpus, style plays a major—if intrinsic—role throughout the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. I shall examine how Cassirer’s conception of style is derived from Goethe’s theory of art and why it is fundamental to Cassirer’s theory of knowledge. Style is considered the defining feature of the cultural sciences, as well as the sign of the anthropological (...) character of the natural sciences, and, more generally, as the creative principle underlying all objectivity. I argue that it is therefore justified to read style as the fundamental yet variable expression of our symbolic relation to reality. Indeed, style refers neither to an abstract principle nor to a predetermined truth: it is a formative force actualizing itself in the incessant diversification of its forms. In so doing, Cassirer’s underexamined concept of style proves highly relevant in our times of epistemic and cultural pluralism. (shrink)

Publication date: 16 April 2018 Source: Author: Remi Chukwudi Okeke, Desmond Okechukwu Nnamani This study interrogates the notion of an envisaged age of wisdom whereby, the current information / knowledge worker era will be succeeded by a new order, in which information and knowledge will be impregnated with purpose and principles. The study thus examines the issue of worker commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour in the assumed age of wisdom. The analytical framework of the study is the rational choice theory. (...) Precedent to the envisioned age of wisdom is the condition of putting service before self. We argued in the study that the age of wisdom-position contextually discountenances with a fundamentally contentious issue in human affairs, which has to do with whether the individual in the society is an inherently self-interested or an innately altruistic being. In the study’s re-imaginations, worker commitment and organizational citizenship behaviours will continue to be influenced by the intrinsic tendencies, in the regards of subjective rationality. In contrast to the assumed precedent-condition of putting service before self in the imminent age of wisdom, this study sees general continuity in subjective rationalities but with massive increases in universal productivity, arising from enduring human inventiveness and sundry efforts. (shrink)

Where exactly should we place Adam Smith in the cannon of classical liberalism? Smith's advocacy of free market economics and defence of religious liberty in The Wealth of Nations suffice for including him somewhere in that tradition.1 The nature and extent of Smith's liberalism, however, remain up for debate. One recent trend has been to characterise Smith as a proponent of social liberalism. This includes those like Stephen Darwall, Samuel Fleischacker and Charles Griswold, who have drawn attention to a kind (...) of descriptive moral egalitarianism in Smith.2 Humans, Smith seems to hold, are naturally disposed to valuing one another under a conception of equality. But that is not all these scholars suggest. They have also hinted at something more contentious ? the idea that, according to Smith, we value one another in a way resonant with contemporary notions of human dignity, conceived as the inherent value of persons grounding certain rights to, or restrictions on, treatment by others.3 In saying so, these scholars have hit upon something remarkable. However, I also think their arguments in this respect are both indirect and incomplete. Consequently, the full import of Smith's view remains obscure. This essay aims to bring some clarity. 1I intend this historically. I grant there are good reasons to be sceptical about the ultimate fate of liberty in capitalist society (e.g. Marxist reasons and reasons based on various postmodern critiques of enlightenment ideology). Also, the designation ?free market? should be understood loosely, as most scholars now agree it is a mistake to identify Smith with thoroughgoing laissez-faire economics. 2Darwall, S., ?Sympathetic Liberalism: Recent Work on Adam Smith?, Philosophy Fleischacker, S., A Third Concept of Liberty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) and On Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); and Griswold, C., Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Other major commentators holding some version of this view might include Raphael, D. D. The Impartial Spectator (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) and Vivienne Brown, Adam Smith's Discourse: Canonicity, Commerce and Conscience (London: Routledge, 1994). 3See e.g. Fleischacker (2004), 205; Darwall at 142, 156 and Griswold at 235?239. However, one must read Fleischacker carefully, for he also uses the adjectival ?dignified? to express Smith's concern with what is ?honourable? or ?respectable? about persons, which use does not obviously match up with the notion of inherent value (see e.g. p. 207). Darwall's argument includes by far the most explicit discussion of ?dignity? as I've defined it. But as Darwall's article is ostensibly a book review (albeit a substantive one that addresses three books at once, including Griswold's), it cannot be called a direct inquiry. Griswold never explicitly puts his interpretation in terms of ?dignity?, but that is clearly what he is after. Thus Darwall also reads him that way. (shrink)

Dans cet article, je cherche à démontrer que la dernière monographie de Heinrich Wölfflin, Italien und das deutsche Formgefühl (1931), n’a pas participé, comme on le croit souvent, au développement d’une histoire de l’art raciste à l’époque nazie. Au contraire, je suggère que Wölfflin a rejeté toute approche nationaliste de l’art : il n’a pas insisté sur sa propre germanité pour la glorifier, mais pour souligner la relativité de sa perspective d’historien de l’art suisse allemand. À la suite de Dürer, (...) Goethe et Humboldt, Wölfflin n’a jamais cessé de promouvoir la compréhension interculturelle. Selon lui, ce n’est qu’à travers le dialogue et la traduction que nous pouvons atteindre une expérience universelle de l’humanité. (shrink)

When the ancient Greeks looked up into the heavens, they saw not just sun and moon, stars and planets, but a complete, coherent universe, a model of the Good that could serve as a guide to a better life. How this view of the world came to be, and how we lost it (or turned away from it) on the way to becoming modern, make for a fascinating story, told in a highly accessible manner by Remi Brague in this wide-ranging (...) cultural history. Before the Greeks, people thought human action was required to maintain the order of the universe and so conducted rituals and sacrifices to renew and restore it. But beginning with the Hellenic Age, the universe came to be seen as existing quite apart from human action and possessing, therefore, a kind of wisdom that humanity did not. Wearing his remarkable erudition lightly, Brague traces the many ways this universal wisdom has been interpreted over the centuries, from the time of ancient Egypt to the modern era. Socratic and Muslim philosophers, Christian theologians and Jewish Kabbalists all believed that questions about the workings of the world and the meaning of life were closely intertwined and that an understanding of cosmology was crucial to making sense of human ethics. Exploring the fate of this concept in the modern day, Brague shows how modernity stripped the universe of its sacred and philosophical wisdom, transforming it into an ethically indifferent entity that no longer serves as a model for human morality. Encyclopedic and yet intimate, The Wisdom of the World offers the best sort of history: broad, learned, and completely compelling. Brague opens a window onto systems of thought radically different from our own. (shrink)

Considering the urgency of addressing grand challenges that affect human health and achieving the ambitious health targets set by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, the role of business in improving health has become critical. Yet, our systematic review of the business–health literature reveals that business research focuses primarily on occupational health and safety, health care organizations, and health regulations. To embrace the health externalities generated by business activities, we propose that future research should investigate the conditions under which business (...) articulates and participates in health challenges, engages in multilevel actions toward tackling health challenges, and improves health outcomes and its impact on the health of external stakeholders, including customers and local communities. We also urge business scholars to engage with the public health research community to increase impact. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt a un problème avec la philosophie. Si elle en joue et provoque, le trait s’avère constant, tout au long de sa vie, publique comme privée. Jamais elle ne cacha son peu d’appétence pour les « diseur[s] professionnel[s] de vérité »1. Elle poussa même le vice jusqu’à déclarer, en réponse à Günther Gauss qui, lors d’une célèbre entrevue datant de 1964 et tel le frais cabri qui, avec candeur et bonheur, se dirige guilleret, primesautier, vers la surprise party que (...) donne le loup en son... (shrink)

Consumer-based datasets are the products of data brokerage firms that agglomerate millions of personal records on the adult US population. This big data commodity is purchased by both companies and individual clients for purposes such as marketing, risk prevention, and identity searches. The sheer magnitude and population coverage of available consumer-based datasets and the opacity of the business practices that create these datasets pose emergent ethical challenges within the computational social sciences that have begun to incorporate consumer-based datasets into empirical (...) research. To directly engage with the core ethical debates around the use of consumer-based datasets within social science research, I first consider two case study applications of consumer-based dataset-based scholarship. I then focus on three primary ethical dilemmas within consumer-based datasets regarding human subject research, participant privacy, and informed consent in conversation with the principles of the seminal Belmont Report. (shrink)

Many prominent scholars of Hume's philosophy have suggested that Hume eventually abandoned his associationist account of sympathy, which he made so much of in the Treatise, by the time he came to write the second Enquiry. In this paper I reconsider the seeming disappearance of the associationist account of sympathy, but with the ultimate aim of defending a no-change hypothesis. That is, I’ll argue that careful analysis reveals that Hume not only retained the associationist theory of sympathy in his later (...) work, he made no substantive changes to this theory, including in particular, in EPM. (shrink)

La philosophie de la Nature et du Temps chez Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) n’a peut-être pas assez retenu l’attention des scientifiques, en particulier en France. On sait que ce mathématicien-philosophe collaborant avec Bertrand Russell pour l’écriture des Principia Mathematica (1910-1913) a insisté sur le caractère abstrait des points d’espace dans la fondation de la géométrie. A partir de 1911, il étend cette observation aux instants de temps, et développe progressivement, à partir de là, une vision de l’ontologie du monde comme (...) une succession de « concrescences d’entités actuelles » dont chacune apporte avec elle une brique de temps finie. Ces concrescences ne sont pas sans rappeler les réductions du paquet d’ondes dans les opérations de mesure en mécanique quantique ; en fait, Whitehead a suivi de près le développement de cette théorie, comme il a suivi de près le développement de la relativité. Par ailleurs, sa philosophie de la Nature, ou comme il le dit sa philosophie de l’organisme, prévoit une solidarité globale des entités actuelles qui par certains côtés rappelle l’intrication quantique. On examine plus en profondeur cette similarité et ses limites, et aborde les relations esprit-matière chez cet auteur. Malgré ses défauts, la métaphysique de Whitehead, en en particulier la négation de l’instant a mis en lumière, à mon sens, la complexité du temps de la nature (chez Whitehead le process), bien au-delà de la variable continue t des physiciens. Une large part de cet article est basée sur mon livre Whitehead, Philosophe du Temps (auteur, 2020, à paraître). (shrink)

Les Actes apocryphes des apôtres sont souvent considérés comme des avatars des Actes des apôtres canoniques. En guise de preuve, on invoque généralement le fait que ces récits apocryphes narrent la destinée d'apôtres, qu'ils font voyager leurs héros, qu'ils contiennent des passages en " nous " et qu'ils s'intitulent " Actes ". Ces arguments sont particulièrement problématiques pour les six Actes anciens . The apocryphal Acts of the Apostles are often considered as avatars of the canonical Acts. By way of (...) proof, one generally refers to the fact that the apocryphal stories relate the fate of the apostles, deal with the journeys of their hero's, have passages with " we ", and are entitled " Acts ". These arguments are particularly problematic as far as the six ancient Acts are concerned. (shrink)