In these conversations with Simon Tabet, Zygmunt Bauman narrates important parts of his biographical and intellectual itineraries, from his formative years at the University of Warsaw to his Polish exile and final settlement in England, and how this influenced his sociological vision, as an ‘outsider’. Bauman considers some central concepts of his thought, his main sources of critical inspiration, and his position on such contemporary phenomena as the rise of populism and terrorism in Europe and the consequent relationship between (...) politics and insecurity. (shrink)

Algeria depends solely on publicly produced housing. Algeria’shousing industry has been lagging behind in its development. This has causedmany citizens to struggle with finding proper housing. Aside from being oneof the highest countries in terms of rent rates, construction and distribution ofpublic houses in Algeria takes more than 15 years of waiting. Despite that thequality of the housing is bad. This paper proposes Shari’ah-compliant housingcertificates, a new Islamic financial instrument that would assist in houseconstruction in Algeria. This instrument uses Istisnaʽ (...) as the underlying contractand accommodates guaranteed returns as well as negotiability for investors. Ithas great potential in contributing to solving the prolonged problem of housingin Algeria as well as countries facing problems in financing the construction ofhousing. (shrink)

Cogito, ergo sum. Ce n’est pas tiré de la plume de Descartes que cet énoncé apparaît pour la première fois dans les œuvres du philosophe. C’est en effet Caterus qui, dans la première série d’Objectiones aux Meditationes l’écrit, telle que la postérité scolaire va le considérer, comme un objet textuel autonome et digne par soi-même d’intérêt. Le fait est anecdotique, mais il est révélateur. D’abord parce que ce n’est pas Descartes qui a constitué...

I concentrate on difficulties met by Putnam's "internal" or "scientific" realism. They concern his attempt to reconcile pragmatism and realism. My line of argument is the following. A) By exploiting Putnam's argument against the "God's-eye view" and the Brains-in-a-Vat argument , it can be shown that the realism he is defending is either a too strong metaphysical realism or a too weak "residual" position. B) If it is a metaphysical position, then it contradicts Putnam's own views on GEV. C) If (...) it is a "residual" position, then in the context of a Theory of meaning for formal and natural languages, it is not more explicative than some forms of functionalism. The paper ends with an attempt to reconcile Putnam's pragmatism with a functionalist approach to epistemic features of "meaning," for the sake of a reconciliation between pragmatism and realism. (shrink)

Xavier Landes | : Happiness has become a central theme in public debates. Happiness indicators illustrate this importance. This article offers a typology of the main challenges conveyed by the elaboration of happiness indicators, where happiness can be understood as hedonia, subjective well-being, or eudaimonia. The typology is structured around four questions: what to measure?—i.e., the difficulties linked to the choice of a particular understanding of happiness for building an indicator; whom to include?—i.e., the limits of the community monitored (...) by such an indicator; how to collect the data?—i.e., the difficulties stemming from objective and subjective reporting; what to do?—i.e., the concerns about the use of happiness indicators in public policy. The major points of normative contention are discussed for each of these dimensions. The purpose of this article is to contribute in a constructive manner to happiness research by offering an overview of some major philosophical and political challenges of building happiness indicators. The conclusion underlines the importance of the strategy of diversification- hybridization, which consists in setting a variety of indicators or composite indicators that articulate different understandings of happiness. It is stressed that happiness indicators raise democratic and institutional issues with which normative thinkers should deal. | : Le bonheur est devenu un thème central dans les débats publics. Les indicateurs de bonheur illustrent cette importance. Cet article offre une typologie des principaux enjeux contenus dans le travail d’élaboration d’indicateurs de bonheur quand ce dernier est compris comme hedonia, bien-être subjectif ou eudaimonia. La typologie est structurée autour de quatre questions : 1) que mesurer?, où sont en jeu les difficultés liées au choix d’une compréhension particulière du bonheur pour construire un indicateur; 2) qui inclure?, c’est-à-dire comment tracer les limites de la communauté morale qui est l’objet d’un tel indicateur; 3) comment collecter les données?, où on interroge les difficultés propres aux techniques subjectives et objectives de collecte de données; 4) que faire?, où on soulève l’enjeu des craintes quant à l’usage d’indicateurs de bonheur dans les politiques publiques. Les points majeurs de dispute normative sont discutés pour chaque dimension. Nous espérons ainsi contribuer de manière constructive à la recherche sur le bonheur en offrant un aperçu de quelques défis philosophiques et politiques majeurs relatifs à la construction d’indicateurs de bonheur. Nous concluons en soulignant l’importance de la stratégie de diversification-hybridation qui consiste à mettre en place des indicateurs variés ou composites articulant différentes compréhensions du bonheur. Ces indicateurs soulèvent des enjeux démocratiques et institutionnels que les penseurs normatifs doivent considérer. (shrink)

Insurance is pervasive in many social settings. As a cooperative device based on risk pooling, it serves to attenuate the adverse consequences of various risks by offering policyholders coverage against the losses implied by adverse events in exchange for the payment of premiums. In the insurance industry, the concept of actuarial fairness serves to establish what could be adequate, fair premiums. Accordingly, premiums paid by policyholders should match as closely as possible their risk exposure. Such premiums are the product of (...) the probabilities of losses and the expected losses. This article presents a discussion of the fairness of actuarial fairness through three steps: defining the concept based on its formulation within the insurance industry; determining in which sense it may be about fairness; and raising some objections to the actual fairness of actuarial fairness. The necessity of a normative evaluation of actuarial fairness is justified by the influence of the concept on the current reforms of public insurance systems and the fact that it highlights the question of the repartition of the gains and burdens of social cooperation. (shrink)

In Racial Prescriptions, Jonathan Xavier Inda offers a critical and timely analysis of the making of BiDil, the first (and only) drug that was marketed exclusively to African Americans. Sibille Merz speaks to him about the re-articulation of racial politics under neoliberalism, the legacies of scientific racism and the molecularization of biopolitics in the genomic age.

This paper reports completeness results for dyadic deontic logics in the tradition of Hansson’s systems. There are two ways to understand the core notion of best antecedent-worlds, which underpins such systems. One is in terms of maximality, and the other in terms of optimality. Depending on the choice being made, one gets different evaluation rules for the deontic modalities, but also different versions of the so-called limit assumption. Four of them are disentangled, and compared. The main observation of this paper (...) is that, even in the partial order case, the contrast between maximality and optimality is not as significant as one could expect, because the logic remains the same whatever notion of best is used. This is established by showing that, given analogous properties for the betterness relation, the same system is sound and complete with respect to its intended modelling. The chief result of this paper concerns Åqvist’s system F supplemented with the principle of cautious monotony. It is established that, under the maximality rule, F + is sound and complete with respect to the class of models in which the betterness relation is required be reflexive and smooth . From this, a number of spin-off results are obtained. First and foremost, it is shown that a similar determination result holds for optimality; that is, under the optimality rule, F + is also sound and complete with respect to the class of models in which the betterness relation is reflexive and smooth . Other spin-off results concern classes of models in which further constraints are placed on the betterness relation, like totalness and transitivity. (shrink)

Xavier Labbée dirige l'Institut du Droit et de l'Ethique.

resumo: Enquanto as duas teses defendidas por Simondon em 1958 relevam o problema da individuação humana na sua dimensão psicossocial e técnica, a publicação nos últimos anos do conjunto do corpus simondoniano sugere que outro tema constitui o fio condutor do pensamento de Simondon por três décadas, dos anos 50 ao início dos anos 80: aquele da vida. Ora, enquanto o problema da individuação humana poderia ser interpretado na ótica de uma reflexão política, notadamente através do conceito de “transindividualidade” desenvolvido (...) nas teses e efetivamente considerado pelos comentadores como o conceito chave da política simondoniana, a questão de se saber o que se torna essa política simondoniana coloca-se, precisamente, no momento em que o deslocamento do acento em direção a uma filosofia da vida é operado. Na medida em que o conceito de transindividualidade desaparece dos escritos posteriores às teses, a questão coloca-se ainda mais. Como compreender esta centralidade do tema da vida, enquanto que aquele do homem e de seus modos de ser no mundo parecia privilegiado nas teses? Em qual medida este deslocamento de acento conduz Simondon a abandonar a reflexão política proposta nas teses em prol de uma antropologia biológica que, cabe perguntar-se, flertaria com o programa da sociobiologia dos anos 70? Este artigo propõe elementos em resposta a essas duas questões. abstract: Whereas the two theses defended by Simondon in 1958 highlight the problem of human individuation in its psychosocial and technical dimension, the publication in the last years of the set of the Simondonian corpus suggests that another theme constitutes the leading thread of Simondon’s thought for three decades, from the 1950s to the early 1980s: that of life. Now, whereas the problem of human individuation could be interpreted in the view of a political reflection, mostly through the concept of “transindividuality” developed in the theses and effectively considered by the commentators as the key concept of Simondonian politics, the question of knowing what makes this Simondonian politics is put forth precisely at the moment in which is operated the displacement of the accent towards a philosophy of life. As the concept of transindividuality disappears from the manuscripts posterior to the theses, the question is even more pressing. How can one comprehend this centrality of the theme of life, whereas that of man and its modes of being in the world would seem to be privileged in the theses? To which extent does this displacement of accent lead Simondon to abandon the political reflection proposed in the theses towards a biological anthropology that, one may ask, would flirt with the sociobiology program of the 1970s? This paper provides some elements to answer these two questions. (shrink)

Zygmunt Bauman’s sociology has known very divers receptions, depending on the intellectual contexts and periods of writing. Through a study of the prolific work of the author, this article aims at describing the different steps of this path, in order to grasp the process leading to such disparities. This analysis will try to explain the feeble reception of the thinker within the French intellectual sphere, as well as the several polemics engendered by his work in the English-speaking academic world. Lastly, (...) this article would like to partially define the form and status of what the author has called ‘liquid sociology’ in recent years. (shrink)

We prove strong completeness of the □-version and the ◊-version of a Gödel modal logic based on Kripke models where propositions at each world and the accessibility relation are both infinitely valued in the standard Gödel algebra [0,1]. Some asymmetries are revealed: validity in the first logic is reducible to the class of frames having two-valued accessibility relation and this logic does not enjoy the finite model property, while validity in the second logic requires truly fuzzy accessibility relations and this (...) logic has the finite model property. Analogues of the classical modal systems D, T, S4 and S5 are considered also, and the completeness results are extended to languages enriched with a discrete well ordered set of truth constants. (shrink)

We study a class of [0,1][0,1]-valued logics. The main result of the paper is a maximality theorem that characterizes these logics in terms of a model-theoretic property, namely, an extension of the omitting types theorem to uncountable languages.

This paper examines the logic of conditional obligation, which originates from the works of Hansson, Lewis, and others. Some weakened forms of transitivity of the betterness relation are studied. These are quasi-transitivity, Suzumura consistency, acyclicity and the interval order condition. The first three do not change the logic. The axiomatic system is the same whether or not they are introduced. This holds true under a rule of interpretation in terms of maximality and strong maximality. The interval order condition gives rise (...) to a new axiom. Depending on the rule of interpretation, this one changes. With the rule of maximality, one obtains the principle known as disjunctive rationality. With the rule of strong maximality, one obtains the Spohn axiom (also known as the principle of rational monotony, or Lewis’ axiom CV). A completeness theorem further substantiates these observations. For interval order, this yields the finite model property and decidability of the calculus. (shrink)

L'ouvrage Quelles doctrines constitutionnelles pour quel(s) droit(s) constitutionel(s) réuni les contributions des plus éminents spécialistes du droit constitutionnel français, mais aussi étrangers, dans le but de dresser un état des lieux scientifiques de cette discipline : qu'est-ce le droit constitutionnel aujourd'hui? Quellle est son utilité? Et quelles sont ses méthodes, ses évolutuons? Les différentes contributions ici proposées se penchent sur la possible formalisation (ou pas) d'une discipline scientifique autour d'une ou différentes écoles, ainsi que les évolutions qui travaillent les objets, (...) ou encore les domaines politiques et juridiques, mais aussi économiques, sociaux et culturels qu'il se propose d'appréhender. Cet ouvrage se révèle donc un outil précieux pour tous les juristes, mais plus largement, pour tous les citoyens qui s'intéressent aux questions de l'organisation constitutionnelle du Pouvoir au sein des Etats modernes. (shrink)

SOBRE O CONCEITO DE LIBERDADE EM AMARTYA SEN.

Quines són les causes del dèficit filosòfic que arrossega la cultura catalana contemporània? Aquest llibre ofereix un panorama bastant complet —i amarg— de les condicions acadèmiques i extraacadèmiques en què s’ha hagut de conrear als Països Catalans la filosofia, tota la filosofia, centrant-se, això sí, en les aventures personals i col·lectives dels qui han tingut la vel·leïtat de dedicar-se a la lògica. Hi són narrades amb amenitat i lucidesa l’estada de Bertrand Russell a Barcelona, la defenestració d’Eugeni d’Ors, les aberracions (...) docents de Josep Daurella i Rull, la breu i fulgurant trajectòria intel·lectual de Joan Crexells, les peripècies eclesiàstiques de David Garcia Bacca i Miquel Soy, l’exili de Josep Ferrater Mora i la gestació del seu voluminós Diccionario de filosofía, la marginació de Manuel Sacristan, els conflictes de la Facultat de Filosofia de València en els anys 70... El resultat és una història de la filosofia apartada en molts aspectes de la imatge «abstracta» i «idealitzada» que sol oferir la historiografia filosòfica a l’ús. (shrink)

Résumé L’écriture, la peinture et la relation à l’architecture sont les trois points d’entrée de ce rappel de l’œuvre de Claude Rutault, au travers d’une mise en parallèle avec celle de Rémy Zaugg. Sur le mode du témoignage, Xavier Douroux revient sur l’histoire du Consortium et de sa coopération avec Claude Rutault, notamment sur les expériences de peinture « en architecture » à la villa Savoye de Le Corbusier, à l’agence de Dominique Perrault, au pavillon de Mies Van der (...) Rohe, et à l’ Éclat de folie de Bernard Tschumi. (shrink)

‘Epistemic’ arguments for conservatism typically claim that given the limits of human reason, we are better off accepting some particular social practice or institution rather than trying to consciously improve it. I critically examine and defend here one such argument, claiming that there are some domains of social life in which, given the limits of our knowledge and the complexity of the social world, we ought to defer to those institutions that have robustly endured in a wide variety of circumstances (...) in the past while not being correlated with intolerable outcomes. These are domains of social life in which our ignorance of optimal institutions is radical, and there is uncertainty about the costs of error. This is an argument for the preservation of particular institutions, not particular policies or outcomes, and it specifically identifies these with the institutions that John Rawls called ‘the basic structure of society.’ The argument further implies that to the extent that there is any reason to change these institutions, changes should be calculated as far as possible to increase their ‘epistemic power.’. (shrink)

An extensions by new axioms and rules of an algebraizable logic in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi is not necessarily algebraizable if it involves new connective symbols, or it may be algebraizable in an essentially different way than the original logic. However, extension whose axioms and rules define implicitly the new connectives are algebraizable, via the same equivalence formulas and defining equations of the original logic, by enriched algebras of its equivalente quasivariety semantics. For certain strongly algebraizable logics, all (...) connectives defined implicitly by axiomatic extensions of the logic are explicitly definable. (shrink)

Cuerpo físico y cuerpo vivido no deben interpretarse como dos realidades separadas, sino que representan dos aspectos distintos de la misma experiencia corporal descrita en términos fenomenológicos. La experiencia de la corporalidad puede seguir dos direcciones: a) la primera es una dirección ascendente, que implica el desarrollo de las posibilidades de movimiento, acción y expresión del cuerpo en toda su plenitud; b) el otro camino o dirección, en contraste con el anterior, toma una senda descendente, y se halla estrechamente relacionado (...) con la experiencia del dolor, de la limitación, de la resistencia corporal que es experimentada como oposición a la propia voluntad: es el cuerpo vulnerable. Aquí reaparece un nuevo dualismo: el cuerpo poético de la expresión frente al cuerpo vulnerable de la enfermedad y el dolor. Mi contribución trata de cuestionar la idea de que el cuerpo poético de la expresión artística y el cuerpo vulnerable de la vejez, de la discapacidad o de la enfermedad, pertenezcan a esferas completamente separadas. Con este propósito, se intenta poner de relieve los múltiples puntos de intersección entre ambas perspectivas, al tiempo que se sostiene que tales intersecciones pueden llegar a ser interesantes puntos de partida de la investigación interdisciplinar. (shrink)

Discutir o peso que a cultura intelectual das elites coloniais teve nas experiências imperiais da Europa Moderna é um dos primeiros objectivos do conjunto de ensaios que constitui este número temático da revista Cultura – História e Teoria das Ideias. Tema relevante na historiografia internacional, onde são inúmeros os exemplos de reflexões em torno dos instrumentos intelectuais de que as elites coloniais dispunham, bem como a respeito dos objectos culturais por elas produzidos, ele tem sido...

Xavier Landes,Martin Andersen,Klemens Kappel.