簡潔性、実用性に卓越したQuineの『方法』を詳説、それに基づきG ̈odelやChurchの定理を含む、標準的な論理学を厳密に展開する。また、認識論理学の「自然演繹法」化の、1つの可能性を提案する。更に、「超実数」の必要性を強調し、それにより種々のアポリア(パラドッ クス等)の解明を試みる。.

Résumé Ce texte se compose de trois extraits de l’ouvrage de Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye. Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle, dans lequel l’auteure explore les représentations des « indigènes » non occidentaux au début du XX e siècle, entre cinéma, culture populaire et ethnographie. Elle met en évidence le rôle des images dans la perception de l’altérité à travers la notion de « troisième œil », soit l’expérience consistant à regarder tout en étant soi-même regardé comme un Autre. (...) Entre récit autobiographique, réflexion sur la relation entre histoire et narration, et une analyse des films de Zora Neale Hurston, ce texte aborde des stratégies de résistance qui déjouent les constructions occidentales du « sauvage ». (shrink)

As a traumatic event, sexual violence does not only take a physical and psychological toll on the victims, but also causes existential crisis. In this light, we cannot restore the wellbeing of victims of sexual violence without restoring their own capability to exist as human beings in wholeness. Based on that condition, this article attempts to answer two problems: (i) what kind of ethics do we need in order to help victims of sexual violence restore their own existence as whole (...) human beings? and (ii) what kind of human conception is presupposedby that ethics? To that question, this article suggests that (1) we need an ethics of compassion in order to help victims of sexual violence to restore their own existence as whole human beings and (2) it presupposes a specific conception of human being as a capable being (homo capax) in Ricoeurian perspective. Abstrak Sebagai peristiwa traumatik, kekerasan seksual tidak hanya memberikan dampak fisik dan mental, namun juga eksistensial. Karena itu, pemulihan korban kekerasan seksual menjadi penyintas adalah juga pemulihan daya eksistensial dari yang bersangkutan. Bertolak dari kondisi itu, artikel ini mengajukan pertanyaan “(i) etika seperti apakah yang memungkinkan terjadi proses pemulihan korban kekerasan seksual menjadi penyintas dan (ii) konsepsi manusia seperti apakah yang menjadi pengandaian dalam etika itu?” Terhadap pertanyaan itu, penulis mengajukan tesis bahwa (1) etika belarasa merupakan pandangan etika yang dapat membantu proses pemulihan korban kekerasan seksual menjadi penyintas dan (2) etika belarasa mengandaikan konsepsi manusia berdaya (the capable being) dalam pemikiran Paul Ricoeur. Kata-kata kunci: kekerasan seksual, diri, emosi, etika belarasa, manusia berdaya. (shrink)

Bringing together leading scholars in the fields of criminology, international law, philosophy and architectural history and theory, this book examines the interrelationships between architecture and justice, highlighting the provocative and curiously ambiguous juncture between the two. Illustrated by a range of disparate and diverse case studies, it draws out the formal language of justice, and extends the effects that architecture has on both the place of, and the individuals subject to, justice. With its multi-disciplinary perspective, the study serves as a (...) platform on which to debate the relationships between the ceremonial, legalistic, administrative and penal aspects of justice, and the spaces that constitute their settings. (shrink)

The essays in Rose Lore are a rendering of global cultural history, literature, and metaphysics, woven together in a collection that will be valuable to several disciplines. The essays present numerous qualities of the rose as a symbol with broad cultural, social, and historical meanings: from astrology, to the history of Catholicism, to the new anti-female genital mutilation global movement.

In 1885, during initial discussions of J. C. Maxwell's celebrated thermodynamic demon, Whiting (1) observed that the demon-like velocity selection of molecules can occur in a gravitationally bound gas. Recently, a gravitational Maxwell demon has been proposed which makes use of this observation [D. P. Sheehan, J. Glick, and J. D. Means, Found. Phys. 30, 1227 (2000)]. Here we report on numerical simulations that detail its microscopic phase space structure. Results verify the previously hypothesized mechanism of its paradoxical behavior. This (...) system appears to be the only example of a fully classical mechanical Maxwell demon that has not been resolved in favor of the second law of thermodynamics. (shrink)

Both classical psychophysical work and recentfunctional imaging studies have suggested acritical role for the primary visual cortex(V1) in resolving the perceptual ambiguitiesexperienced during binocular rivalry. Here weexamine, by means of single-cell recordings andoptical imaging of intrinsic signals, thespatial characteristics of suppression elicitedby rival stimuli in cat V1. We find that the interocular suppression field of V1 neuronsis centred on the same position in space and isslightly larger (by a factor of 1.3) than theminimum response field, measured through thesame eye. Suppression (...) is always strongest at asingle position corresponding very closely tothe centre of the classical receptive field,and reduces responses through the other eye byup to 90% but typically around 40%. Thespatial pattern of interocular suppression, asrevealed by optical imaging, closely matchesthe cortical representation of the stimulus,which is being suppressed, both in terms of itsorientation and the eye of origin. Theseresults indicate that interocular suppressionis directly related to the functionalarchitecture of V1; it is probably caused bydirect inhibitory interactions betweenneighbouring cortical columns of oppositeocular dominance. (shrink)

The rise of populism and its consequences – such as democratic backsliding, the erosion of constitutional principles, and the weakening of the rule of law – are among the most pressing issues facing comparative constitutional scholars today. To address these emerging challenges, the Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment Doctrine (UCAD) has emerged as the most promising remedy for the “third counterwave of democracy”. However, a fundamental problem with UCAD is how to apply it effectively without undermining constitutional democracy, as it is (...) often criticised and deemed illegitimate from the perspective of democratic principles. (shrink)

Across a number of countries including Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, incumbent presidents in Latin America have recently sought to amend their constitutions to eliminate or weaken presidential term limits. In some cases, these efforts to extend terms have been part of broader projects to consolidate power, weaken other state institutions, and tilt the electoral playing field in favor of incumbents. From a legal perspective, these cases are interesting because they highlight the limits of tools limiting (...) constitutional change, such as eternity clauses and the unconstitutional constitutional amendment doctrine, to constrain potentially anti-democratic or anti-liberal forms of constitutional change. Although constitutional texts in most of these cases gave courts ample ammunition to reject attempts to eliminate term limits or at least to force those changes down more demanding paths, courts did not stand in the way of most of these efforts and in some cases even used the doctrines to eliminate rather than protect term limits. The case studies highlight the extent to which the “superficial” spread of doctrines controlling constitutional change may fail to block, and indeed may promote, forms of constitutional change that threaten liberal democratic constitutionalism. It also suggests possibilities for deepening the effectiveness of transnational dialogue on these issues. (shrink)

Volume 10, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 114-117.

Recently, there have been debates in Portugal regarding the morality of assisted death. One of the leading opponents in Portuguese society against assisted death are Catholics. They argue that the right to life implies that assisted death is immoral and provide four key arguments they believe justify their position. In this article, we reply to these four articles and show that they all fail.

"We believe the government’s conduct in forfeiture cases leaves much to be desired. We are certainly not the first to be ‘enormously troubled by the government’s increasing and virtually unchecked use of the civil forfeiture statutes and the disregard for due process that is buried in those statutes’" (Quoting Judge George Pratt in US v. All Assets of Statewide Auto Parts, Inc., 971 F.2d 896, 905 (2d Cir. 1992)). US v. $506,231 in U.S. Currency, 125 F.3d 442 (7th Cir. 1997).

The Supreme Court, reluctant to find constitutional rights in areas marked by divisive social and legal debate, is not likely to constitutionalize a right to assisted suicide. The Court should cleave to the tradition of discouraging suicide and criminalizing its assistance.

The world is experiencing a crisis of constitutional democracies. Populist leaders are abusing constitutional mechanisms, such as formal procedures of constitutional change, in order to erode the democratic order. The changes are, very often, gradual, incremental, and subtle. Each constitutional change, on its own, may not necessarily amount to a serious violation of essential democratic values. Yet, when examined in the context of an ongoing process, such constitutional changes may prove to be part of the incremental, gradual process of democratic (...) erosion in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This Article explores how courts can respond to such constitutional changes. We argue the Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment Doctrine should be adapted to respond to existing constitutional practices that utilize incremental and subtle amendments to dismantle the democratic order. We suggest that an aggregated judicial review should be developed. We must also rethink the automatic immunity – the result of two hundred years of revolutionary constitutional theory – provided to complete constitutional replacement from constitutional restrictions and scrutiny. Finally, as opposed to the instinct to require judicial self-restraint with respect to constitutional changes that concern the judiciary itself, we suggest that this is perhaps the type of changes that require strictest scrutiny. (shrink)

Systemic validity has been criticised based on its supposed inability to account for the validity of so-called extra systemic norms and unconstitutional statutes. The article argues that these crit...

Is there an independent legal method separate from the political process for handling a constitutional amendment that may be inconsistent with, or contrary to, the basic structure and rights the Federal Constitution currently inaugurates, or are courts stuck with having to accept the amendment on its face? This problem is not unique to the United States. Nor is it the same problem as whether a state constitutional amendment may violate the Federal Constitution. While I initially focus on the U.S. Constitution, (...) I plan, before the end of this piece, to broaden out to other national constitutions as well, and certainly some of the arguments might also apply to state constitutional amendments, as we see with the controversy over the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8. In this vein, it will make sense to consider cases from other nations, like Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala, in which the Supreme Court of India held that the judiciary could strike down amendments to the constitution passed by Parliament that conflict with the constitution’s “basic structure.” The U.S. Supreme Court has never addressed what constitutes the basic structure of the U.S. Constitution. This is the question addressed in this article. (shrink)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) presents a nightmarish vision of an America, metaphorically and literally devouring itself. ‘Home, sweet, home’ becomes the slaughterhouse and consumers become the consumed as ‘cannibalistic capitalism’ (embodied by a family of unemployed but murderous abattoir workers), wreaks havoc on the lives of a hedonistic group of youths, as the ‘Age of Aquarius’ comes to a bloody end. Chain Saw offers a model of horror that is both deeply rooted in American ideology, (...) taboos, and the key (and interdependent) institutions of the family, the worker and capitalism, yet produces aberrant and transgressive versions of these same social units. In this paper, the film’s representation of ‘cannibalistic capitalism’ will be explored in relation to Georges Bataille’s theory of taboo and transgression. While Bataille asserts that the ‘main function of all taboos is to combat violence’ (thus maintaining the power, integrity and conformity of social institutions), he also suggests that the taboo paradoxically begets its own violent transgression. In The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , capitalism’s transgressive excesses both ignite the taboo’s prohibitive power while revelling in and glorifying its violation. This paper offers a ‘taste’ of a Bataillean approach to the theorising of horror and the spectatorial ‘pleasures’ of submitting to the anguish it provokes. (shrink)

The author believes it tobe one ofthe duties Christians have to accept the state ofthe basic Iaw as a matter of their own concern. This acceptance has a character of critical solidarity with an order needy and capable of improvement. It includes the willingness to cooperate in three tasks: the rejection of falsifications and erosions of essential structural elements in constitutional law, the bridging of the gap between constitutional standard and constitutional reality and the further development ofthe constitutional order (...) in a future-oriented way. The fundamental structural principles of the constitution - the principle of democracy, the concept of a state based on the rule oflaw, and the concept of a social welfare state - are used to illustrate these tasks more thoroughly. (shrink)

Evolution seems tobe a perfect example of a historical process: It began with the earliest “living” units, progressed to massive diversity and disparity, and resulted in our recent lifeworld, the subject-matter of the evolutionary biologist. Yet some irritation remains considering the logical grammar of “history”, as it seems to introduce non-functional aspects into evolutionary theory – which is often addressed as contingency in evolutionary biology. But even reducing the “historical” aspect of evolutionary biology to a functional understanding of lifeworld, (...) we have to consider the specific historicity of the epistemic situation of the evolutionary biologist. This paper argues for the relevance of the explication of this peculiar epistemic situation, taking into account the recent systemic transformations of evolutionary theory.The argument is developed in three steps: first, a revision of the use of temporal expressions in (bio-)sciences, revealing the prevalence of a non-modal understanding of time, which leads to “thin” temporal characterizations of biological processes. Second, based upon biology’s shift toward system paradigms, the formal structure of recent evolutionary approaches is shown to result in a “loss of historicity”. Finally, the consequences for the self-understanding of humans as evolutionary lifeforms are explicated.This reconstruction of the difference between historical and evolutionary judgment emphasizes the relevance of the modal aspects of temporality, which is demonstrated by considering a significant shift of the underlying temporal frames. Accordingly to human beings as historical entities, the differences between natural history, prehistory and history proper are relocated within the concept of history itself. (shrink)

The conundrum of the unconstitutional constitution -- The quest for a compelling unity -- The permeability of constitutional borders -- The sounds of silence : militant and acquiescent constitutionalism -- "The first page of the constitution" : family, state, and identity.

Being a pragmatic and not a referential approach tosemantics, the dialogical formulation ofparaconsistency allows the following semantic idea tobe expressed within a semi-formal system: In anargumentation it sometimes makes sense to distinguishbetween the contradiction of one of the argumentationpartners with himself (internal contradiction) and thecontradiction between the partners (externalcontradiction). The idea is that externalcontradiction may involve different semantic contextsin which, say A and ¬A have been asserted.The dialogical approach suggests a way of studying thedynamic process of contradictions through which (...) thetwo contexts evolve for the sake of argumentation intoone system containing both contexts.More technically, we show a new, dialogical, way tobuild paraconsistent systems for propositional andfirst-order logic with classical and intuitionisticfeatures (i.e. paraconsistency both with and withouttertium non-datur) and present theircorresponding tableaux. (shrink)

Democracy is not only a form of government. It is also the moral aspiration for a society of self-governing political equals who disagree about politics. Citizens are called on to be active democratic participants, but they must also acknowledge one another's political equality. Democracy thus involves an ethic of civility among opposed citizens. Upholding this ethic is more difficult than it may look. When the political stakes are high, the opposition seems to us tobe advocating injustice. Sustaining Democracy poses (...) the question: why should we uphold democratic relations with those whose politics we despise? (shrink)

In the lead article, Vardoulakis argues that Heidegger elides and occludes animportant difference between two senses of what it means for something to becalculable. On the one hand, there is‘that which can be calculated with somecertainty’, which Vardoulakis dubs the‘calculated’. On the other, there is‘calculating’, the process of proceeding‘even though we know that such acalculation can never be certain or secure as it lacks a determinate measurement’.Iwant to suggest, however, that such a distinction does play a significant role inHeidegger’s work, (...) albeit in an unexpected place: his analyses of time. I will traceout what I consider to be two likely manifestations of the different senses of thecalculable. Turningfirst toBeing and Time, I will propose that we can read therelationship between world-time and now-time through this lens. For Heidegger,the pernicious factor that gives rise to the ordinary conception of time is not time’scalculability as such, but rather the dominance of what Vardoulakis calls thecalculated. Secondly, I want to draw out the role that the dynamic betweencalculating and calculated can be seen to play in Heidegger’s analyses of theAnaximander fragment, especially the way he distinguishes time’s‘allocationcharacter’(Zuweisungscharakter) from mere‘numerability’. (shrink)

In 2012, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed capping the size of sugary beverages that could be sold in the city’s restaurants, sporting and entertainment facilities and food carts. After a lawsuit and multiple appeals, the proposal died in June 2014, deemed an unconstitutional overreach. In dissecting the saga of the proposed soda cap, we highlight both the political perils of certain anti-obesity efforts and, more broadly, the challenges to public health when issues of consumer choice and the (...) threat of paternalism are involved. (shrink)

Recently, extremist ‘populist’ parties have succeeded in obtaining large enough democratic electoral mandates both to legally make substantive changes to the law and constitution and to legally eliminate avenues to challenge their control over the government. Extremists place committed liberal democrats in an awkward position as they work to legally revolutionize their constitutions and turn them into ‘illiberal democracies’. This article analyses political responses to this problem. It argues that the twin phenomena of legal revolution and illiberal democracy reveal a (...) latent tension between the constitutional commitments to democracy and liberalism, that is, the equal chance to have one’s political goals enacted into law and individual basic rights. Political extremists make the latent tension real when they use the procedures of democratic legal change to abrogate constitutional commitments to liberalism, among other things. Although the two commitments normally coexist side by side, exceptional times raise an existential dilemma for liberal democracies: is it constitutional to democratically amend liberalism out of the constitution? After analysing the moral legitimacy of both the democratic and liberal arguments, this article concludes that liberal constitutionalism is constitutive of genuine democracy. In other words, it is unconstitutional to abrogate basic liberal commitments and it is legitimate to adopt constitutional mechanisms to guarantee liberalism – even if it means constraining democracy to do so. This article then situates ‘constrained democracy’ within the liberal current as a way to conceive of and respond to this pressing problem. It concludes by discussing four constitutional mechanisms – inspired by the German Grundgesetz – to guarantee liberalism: unambiguous lexically prior commitment to liberalism, limits on negative majorities, the eternity clause and party bans. It concludes that constrained democracy is an important constitutional guarantee of liberal democracy and that the four mechanisms, among others, are essential to enact constrained democracy. (shrink)

The ancient practice of metzitzah b'peh, direct oral suction, is still practiced by ultra-Orthodox Jews as part of the religious rite of male newborn circumcision. Between 2000 and 2011, 11 children have died in New York and New Jersey, following infection by herpes simplex virus, presumably from infected practitioners. The City responded by requiring signed parental consent before oral suction, with parents being warned of the dangers of the practice. This essay argues that informed consent is not an appropriate response (...) to this problem. An outright ban would a better response to a practice that is dangerous to children, but might prove unconstitutional under New York State law. (shrink)

Canada is six years into a new era of legalized medical assistance in dying (MAiD). The law continues to evolve, following a pattern in which Canadian courts rule that legal restrictions on eligibility for MAiD are unconstitutional and Parliament responds by gradually expanding eligibility for MAiD. The central tension underlying this dialogue between courts and government has focused on two conceptions of how to best promote and protect the interests of people who are vulnerable by virtue of intolerable and (...) irremediable suffering due to an illness, disease, or disability. Do we, as a society, have a duty to protect vulnerable people from seeking certain medical procedures that are contrary to their interests, as those are perceived by others? Or do we have a duty to uphold their rights to autonomy, including the right to make choices within a range that may be constrained by many factors, some of which may be socially unjust? This is a recurrent problem in bioethics and medical law, which we explore through the lens of how Canadian courts and Parliament have grappled with defining eligibility for MAiD. (shrink)