Le contrat social libéral distributif définit une norme d’action communicative pour l’allocation des ressources rares et la redistribution de la richesse privée. Il se compose d’activités qui mettent en œuvre une allocation des ressources Pareto-efficace unanimement préférée à un statu quo hypothétique. Ce statu quo correspond à l’allocation des ressources que l’on obtiendrait en l’absence des activités du contrat social, dans des conditions idéales de communication parfaite. Nous mettons en évidence un ensemble de conditions suffisantes générales sous lesquelles toute allocation (...) du contrat social maximise, au sein de l’ensemble des allocations réalisables, une fonction de bien-être social de Nash bien choisie. Nous montrons également que la correspondance entre les allocations du contrat social libéral et les fonctions de bien-être social de Nash qui les soutiennent est bijective si, et en général seulement si, les préférences distributives des individus sont cardinales. Dans ce dernier cas, la solution coopérative de Nash étendue à un nombre quelconque d’individus définit une norme d’action communicative unique pour l’allocation des ressources et la distribution de la richesse privée. (shrink)

The paper argues that the Nash Equilibrium Refinement Programme was less successful than its competitor, the Epistemic Programme. The prime criterion of success is the extent to which the programmes were able to reach the key objective guiding non-cooperative game theory for much of the twentieth century, namely, to develop a complete characterisation of the strategic rationality of economic agents in the form of the ultimate solution concept for any normal form and extensive game. The paper explains this (...) in terms of unjustified degrees of mathematisation in Nash Equilibrium Refinement Programme. While this programme’s mathematical models were often inspired by purely mathematical concerns rather than the economic phenomena they were intended to model, the Epistemic Programme’s models were developed with a keen eye to the role beliefs and desires play in strategic interaction between rational economic agents playing games; that is, their interactive epistemology. The Epistemic Programme succeeded in developing mathematical models formalising aspects of strategic interaction that remained implicit in the Nash Equilibrium Refinement Programme owing to an unjustified degree of mathematisation. As a result, the Epistemic Programme is the more successful theory.Keywords: Epistemic Programme; Game theory; Interactive epistemology; Mathematisation; Nash equilibrium. (shrink)

In a recent article, McClennen (2012) defends an alternative bargaining theory in response to his criticisms of the standard Nash bargaining solution as a principle of distributive justice in the context of the social contract. McClennen rejects the orthodox concept of expected individual utility maximizing behavior that underlies the Nash bargaining model in favor of what he calls full rationality, and McClennen’s full cooperation bargaining theory demands that agents select the most egalitarian strictly Pareto-optimal distributional outcome that (...) is strictly Pareto-superior to the state of nature. I argue that McClennen’s full cooperators are best described as reasonable agents whose rationality is constrained by moral considerations and that McClennen’s bargaining theory is moralized in this regard. If, by contrast, the orthodox concept of rationality is assumed and plausible assumptions are made about human nature and social cooperation, then a modified version of the standard Nash bargaining solution, which I call the stabilized Nash bargaining solution (Moehler 2010), is justified. From the perspective of rational agents, the stabilized Nash bargaining solution can accommodate McClennen’s criticisms of the standard Nash bargaining solution in the context of the social contract and, for such agents, it can serve as a principle of distributive justice in deeply morally pluralistic societies. (shrink)

It is argued that the Nash bargaining solution cannot serve as a principle of distributive justice because (i) it cannot secure stable cooperation in repeated interactions and (ii) it cannot capture our moral intuitions concerning distributive questions. In this article, I propose a solution to the first problem by amending the Nash bargaining solution so that it can maintain stable cooperation among rational bargainers. I call the resulting principle the stabilized Nash bargaining solution. (...) The principle defends justice in the form 'each according to her basic needs and above this level according to her relative bargaining power'. In response to the second problem, I argue that the stabilized Nash bargaining solution can serve as a principle of distributive justice in certain situations where moral reasoning is reduced to instrumental reasoning. In particular, I argue that rational individuals would choose the stabilized Nash bargaining solution in Rawls' original position. (shrink)

In contemporary society, information unsurprisingly morphed into commodity. The IT industry that functions in the market economy and that perceives information as commodity encountered numerous problems that are related to specific features of information. These problems triggered two parallel developments aiming at the protection of intellectual property claimed for the creation of informational contents. On the one side, traditional intellectual property laws were expanded to cover certain aspects of privately owned or privately claimed cultural information. On the other side, new (...) technological devices were developed to provide technological protection for information defined as private property. Tensions and rivalry between both areas of regulation, legal and technological, became particularly visible within the debate about Digital Rights Management (DRM). This debate emerged as a response to institutionalized legal protection of intellectual property that was frequently perceived in the concerned industry as rigid and inadequate. Nowadays, tensions between legal and technological means of protection remain problematic in the emerging law of information. These tensions are rooted in mutually excluding economic interests, yet also in the concepts in which they are expressed and regulated. Therefore, this essay analyzes processes of concept creation in the named approaches to information perceived as commodity. It shows that the adequate solution of regulatory problems depends upon the clarification of conceptualization processes in legislative initiatives rather than on compromises related to economic interests of stakeholders taking part in the debate about the appropriate attribution of digital property rights. This essay concludes upon the idea that legislative measures constitute the most efficient mechanism to regulate social conflicts, not only in the area of digital law. As a further consequence of this finding, the author proposes an overhaul of the concept of copyright as the first step towards a better conceptual framing of the law of cultural contents. (shrink)

Preference is a basic notion in human behaviour, underlying such varied phenomena as individual rationality in the philosophy of action and game theory, obligations in deontic logic (we should aim for the best of all possible worlds), or collective decisions in social choice theory. Also, in a more abstract sense, preference orderings are used in conditional logic or non-monotonic reasoning as a way of arranging worlds into more or less plausible ones. The field of preference logic (cf. Hansson [10]) studies (...) formal systems that can express and analyze notions of preference between various sorts of entities: worlds, actions, or propositions. The art is of course to design a language that combines perspicuity and low complexity with reasonable expressive power. In this paper, we take a particularly simple approach. As preferences are binary relations between worlds, they naturally support standard unary modalities. In particular, our key modality ♦ϕ will just say that is ϕ true in some world which is at least as good as the current one. Of course, this notion can also be indexed to separate agents. The essence of this language is already in [4], but our semantics is more general, and so are our applications and later language extensions. Our modal language can express a variety of preference notions between propositions. Moreover, as already suggested in [9], it can “deconstruct” standard conditionals, providing an embedding of conditional logic into more standard modal logics. Next, we take the language to the analysis of games, where some sort of preference logic is evidently needed ([23] has a binary modal analysis different from ours). We show how a qualitative unary preference modality suffices for defining Nash Equilibrium in strategic games, and also the Backward Induction solution for finite extensive games. Finally, from a technical perspective, our treatment adds a new twist. Each application considered in this paper suggests the need for some additional access to worlds before the preference modality can unfold its true power.. (shrink)

Virtual bargaining theory suggests that social agents aim to resolve non-cooperative games by identifying the strategy profile which they would agree to play if they could openly bargain. The theory thus offers an explanation of how social agents resolve games with multiple Nash equilibria. One of the main questions pertaining to this theory is how the principles of the bargaining theory could be applied in the analysis of hypothetical bargaining in non-cooperative games. I propose a bargaining model based on (...) the benefit-equilibrating bargaining solution concept for non-cooperative games, broadly in line with the principles underlying Conley and Wilkie's ordinal egalitarian solution for Pareto optimal point selection problems with finite choice sets. I provide formal characterizations of the ordinal and the cardinal versions of BES, discuss their application to n-player games, and compare model's theoretical predictions with the data available from several experiments involving `pie games'. (shrink)

Aristotle’s On generation and corruption raises a vital question: how is mixture, or what we would now call chemical combination, possible? It also offers an outline of a solution to the problem and a set of criteria that a successful solution must meet. Understanding Aristotle’s solution and developing a viable peripatetic theory of chemical combination has been a source of controversy over the last two millennia. We describe seven criteria a peripatetic theory of mixture must satisfy: uniformity, (...) recoverability, potentiality, equilibrium, alteration, incompleteness, and the ability to distinguish mixture from generation, corruption, juxtaposition, augmentation, and alteration. After surveying the theories of Philoponus (d. 574), Avicenna(d. 1037), Averroes (d. 1198), and John M. Cooper (fl. circa2000), we argue for the merits of Richard Rufus of Cornwall’s theory. Rufus (fl. 1231–1256) was a little known scholastic philosopher who became a Franciscan theologian in 1238, after teaching Aristotelian natural philosophy as a secular master in Paris. Lecturing on Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione, around the year 1235, he offered his students a solution to the problem of mixture that we believe satisfies Aristotle’s seven criteria. # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This article challenges the idea that Hobbes presents a negative anthropology and shows, to the contrary, that there is a thick web of social relations in his state of nature and laws of nature. It considers the contradiction between human natural equality claimed by Hobbes, and female subjection that de facto characterizes most of his passages on gender relations. The key to this puzzle is found in comparison of the notions of conquest and consent, and of acquisition and institution, comparisons (...) that establish a similarity between paternal authority and despotic dominion. A step towards the solution is provided by the hypothesis that the divide between “vainglorious” and “moderate” is gendered, with women more disposed to moderation than men. This can be explained by the idea that, “for society’s sake,” women in the state of nature appreciate more the advantages of long-term cooperation, even at the price of some subordination. (shrink)

In cooperative Cournot oligopoly games, it is known that the β-core is equal to the α-core, and both are non-empty if every individual profit function is continuous and concave (Zhao, Games Econ Behav 27:153–168, 1999b). Following Chander and Tulkens (Int J Game Theory 26:379–401, 1997), we assume that firms react to a deviating coalition by choosing individual best reply strategies. We deal with the problem of the non-emptiness of the induced core, the γ-core, by two different approaches. The first establishes (...) that the associated Cournot oligopoly Transferable Utility (TU)-games are balanced if the inverse demand function is differentiable and every individual profit function is continuous and concave on the set of strategy profiles, which is a step forward beyond Zhao’s core existence result for this class of games. The second approach, restricted to the class of Cournot oligopoly TU-games with linear cost functions, provides a single-valued allocation rule in the γ-core called Nash Pro rata (NP)-value. This result generalizes Funaki and Yamato’s (Int J Game Theory 28:157–171, 1999) core existence result from no capacity constraint to asymmetric capacity constraints. Moreover, we provide an axiomatic characterization of this solution by means of four properties: efficiency, null firm, monotonicity, and non-cooperative fairness. (shrink)

_ The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Educational Thinkers_ comprises 128 essays by leading scholars analysing the most important, influential, innovative and interesting thinkers on education of all time. Each of the chronologically arranged entries explores why a particular thinker is significant for those who study education and explores the social, historical and political contexts in which the thinker worked. Ranging from Confucius and Montessori to Dewey and Edward de Bono, the entries form concise, accessible summaries of the greatest or most influential (...) educational thinkers of past and present times. Each essay includes the following features; concise biographical information on the individual, an outline of the individual’s key achievements and activities, an assessment of their impact and influence, a list of their major writings, suggested further reading. Carefully brought together to present a balance of gender and geographical contexts as well as areas of thought and work in the broad field of education, this substantial volume provides a unique history and overview of figures who have shaped education and educational thinking throughout the world. Combining and building upon two internationally renowned volumes, this collection is deliberately broad in scope, crossing centuries, boundaries and disciplines. The Encyclopaedia therefore provides a perfect introduction to the huge range and diversity of educational thought. Offering an accessible means of understanding the emergence and development of what is currently seen in the classroom, this Encyclopaedia is an invaluable reference guide for all students of education, including undergraduates and post-graduates in education or teacher training and students of related disciplines. (shrink)

A decision value alternative is proposed to the various formulations of the principle of utility, which counsel maimization of expected utility as utility is variously conceived. Decision value factors expected utility into causal expected utility and evidential expected utility, and it adds a third factor --- symbolic utility. This latter introduces deontological and a ‘perceived value’ elements into calculations of utility. It also suggests a solution to a lingering problem in population ethics, the so-called Repugnant Conclusion that consequentialist thinking (...) demands a vast population of people leading lives barely worth living. (shrink)

Kunnen we ons voor de drukte van de moderne tijd afsluiten door ons terug te trekken in een bibliotheek? Kunnen we ons in Arcadië wanen door ons te wentelen in het erfgoed en de beschaving van vele eeuwen? Hoe aanlokkelijk dit ook is, meent topdiplomaat Robert Cooper, een bibliotheek biedt geen ontsnappingsmogelijkheid en staat altijd midden in de wereld.

Philosophers of biology claim that function talk is consistent with naturalism. Yet recent work in biology places new pressure on this claim. An increasing number of biologists propose that the existence of functions depends on the organisation of systems. While systems are part of the domain studied by physics, they are capable of interacting with this domain through organising principles. This is to say that a full account of biological function requires teleology. Does naturalism preclude reference to teleological causes? Or (...) are organised systems precisely a naturalised form of teleology? In this paper I suggest that the biology of organised systems reveals several contradictions in the main philosophical conceptions of naturalism. To integrate organised systems with naturalism’s basic assumptions—that there is no theory-independent view for metaphysics, and that nature is intelligible—I propose an idealist solution. (shrink)

IT may be taken as a great verity of Greek syntax that ν is not construed with the present or the perfect of the indicative. Exceptions are either apparent, needing explanation, or errors in transmission, requiring correction. There are no discordant voices in the expert choir on this point, all say the same. As usual the collections of examples are most copious in Kühner-Gerth, other authorities attempting only to adduce a few new examples. Since these are so readily available there (...) is no need to review all the pertinent passages here. The apparent exceptions are either cases of confusing word-order or anacolutha. Confusing word-order occurs for example when ν attaches itself to a verb of speaking, or to a negative when it belongs logically elsewhere in the sentence. The anacolutha are principally formulaic in character, as when kaν єi is used simply as ═ kαiє and so brings an extra ν into the sentence which may seem to belong to an indicative. (shrink)

RésuméCet article examine une brève présentation catéchétique de la doctrine médicale galénique des jours critiques composée par le traducteur et penseur duixesiècle Qusṭā ibn Lūqā (m. 912/3) et que l'on a trouvée dans un manuscrit iranien. Tout d'abord, on démontre que cette œuvre a été composée à partir du traité de Galien sur les jours critiques. Ensuite, on la discute section par section, sous forme de commentaire, pour élucider les doctrines médicales proposées par Qusṭā. Enfin, l'œuvre est comparée avec une (...) tentative antérieure, celle d'al-Kindī (m.c. 870), de décrire les jours critiques d'une façon mathématique. On discute les diverses doctrines présentes à l'arrière-plan du traité, comme les diverses approches de la méthode scientifique. L'article se conclut en mettant en contraste la méthode scientifique mathématique eta priorid'al-Kindī avec la méthode empirique eta posterioride Galien et Qusṭā, et il fait des suggestions concernant la chronologie des occurrences de ces doctrines et de ces textes en langue arabe. Une transcription du texte arabe est donnée en appendice. (shrink)

James E Cooper¹, Uwe Christians², Alexander C Wiseman¹¹Division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension, Transplant Center, ²iC42 Integrated Solutions in Systems Biology for Clinical Research and Development, University of Colorado Denver, Aurora, CO, USA: Everolimus is a novel target of rapamycin -I analog that has recently been approved in combination with cyclosporine A and steroids for use in the prevention of organ rejection in kidney transplant recipients. Compared with rapamycin, everolimus is characterized by a shorter half-life and improved bioavailability. Prior to (...) US Food and Drug Administration approval, a number of Phase II and III clinical trials were undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of everolimus in combination with calcineurin inhibitors for preventing acute rejection and promoting allograft survival in kidney transplant recipients. In this report, we review the pharmacokinetic properties of everolimus, the clinical efficacy studies that led to its approval for use in kidney transplantation, as well as reported data on patient safety and tolerability associated with its use.Keywords: mTOR inhibitors, kidney transplantation, everolimus. (shrink)

This book is a sustained examination of issues in the philosophy of ecology that have been a source of controversy since the emergence of ecology as an explicit scientific discipline. The controversies revolve around the idea of a balance of nature, the possibility of general ecological knowledge and the role of model-building in ecology. The Science of the Struggle for Existence is also a detailed treatment of these issues that incorporates both a comprehensive investigation of the relevant ecological literature and (...) the development of an explicit theoretical framework in the philosophy of science. It addresses issues in the philosophy of ecology that are of particular importance for the deployment of ecology in the solution of environmental problems. It will have a cross-disciplinary appeal and will interest students and professionals in science, the philosophy of science, and environmental studies as well as policy-makers. (shrink)

Les points d’accord entre Rawls et Hume vont au-delà du seul repérage des « circonstances de la justice ». Même si Hume se trouve attaché à la théorie utilitariste de l’impartialité que Rawls rejette, Hume n’est pas, selon Rawls, « à proprement parler » utilitariste : il a su reconnaître l’idée selon laquelle les institutions doivent fonctionner dans l’intérêt de chacun. L’idée d’une coopération sociale en vue de l’avantage mutuel est donc commune à ces deux auteurs. Ils partagent, en outre, (...) une attitude similaire face au « problème de la confiance » en lien avec la stabilité de la justice : l’un et l’autre ajoutent ainsi à la solution extérieure qu’est l’institution étatique, un facteur intrinsèque de stabilité, à savoir, le sens de la justice. L’idée de « justice procédurale » et le rejet, corrélatif, d’un critère indépendant du juste, les relie également ; d’où, enfin, une certaine analogie des critiques respectivement adressées à ces deux auteurs. (shrink)

Against the growing trend in philosophy toward naturalistic analysis, Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment has gained significant attention. Some scholars suggest that Kant’s insights bear on our aesthetic appreciation of nature, others on our account of the life sciences. In this paper I draw these lines of inquiry together to identify two overlooked dimensions of Kant’s project: the role of moral hope in problematizing the limits of natural science and the role of culture in providing a solution. (...) Kant argues that we cannot think consistently unless we are able to conceive of nature as a domain that is hospitable to human freedom. His response is to identify the productive capacity of the imagination to transform the material of nature into something more. While the prevailing conception of nature today is at best indifferent and at worst antagonistic to human habitation, this dimension of Kant’s work has much to bear on contemporary thought. (shrink)

Prior to the productive encounters that can be staged between Emmanuel Levinas’sthought and cinema at the level of reception, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne introducehis philosophy to their filmmaking at its moment of inception.1Luc Dardenne’s diary Audos de nos images documents their filmmaking from 1991 to 2005, and isinterspersed with brief but erudite references to Levinas’s work. While Levinasianthinking is one among many cited influences in this text, which also features quotationsfrom the writings of novelists, poets, and other philosophers, along with (...) detailedreferences to other filmmakers, his work is a signal point of inspiration and ethicalaspiration for their filmmaking. The Dardenne brothers seek permanently to unsettlereceived ideas of what cinema is. In this, their approach is bound up explicitly, but notexclusively, with the ethical underpinnings of Levinas’s thought. Levinas’s reformulationof ethics as first philosophy creates a fissure at the root of the philosophy of being. TheDardennes’ films, in turn, perform a Levinasian-inspired challenge to the being ofcinema. At its most extreme moments, to kill or not to kill is the key question that theircinema raises. This tacit rewriting of the interrogative opening to Hamlet’s infamous soliloquy, shifts attention away from a self-centered concern with being or non-being,and towards the survival of the other. The passage from being to non-being, whichwould involve the death of the subject, is displaced here by a preoccupation with killing,or failing to kill, someone else. This particular move from dying to killing lies at the heartof the Dardennes’ mortal ethics. (shrink)

As the prospects for a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have dwindled, Jewish scholars in the United States have increasingly invoked the concept of diaspora to counter a purported Jewish consensus regarding Zionism. In this essay, I critique prominent exponents of this approach (Judith Butler, Jonathan and Daniel Boyarin) from a diasporic (i.e., non-Zionist) standpoint. My concern is not that Butler and the Boyarins attack Israel publicly, endorse a binational solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and/or support (...) the movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions—rather, it is that they lack a compelling vision for diasporic politics. Their visions prove wanting because they contest Zionism on the terrain of Jewish identity. To loosen Zionism’s hold, Butler and the Boyarins recover alternative approaches to the attainment or grounding of Jewish identity. Yet when framed as an ethic of particular identity, diasporic thinking can neither rebut Zionism’s political arguments, nor can it develop alternative models of Jewish self-rule. Instead of theorizing Jewish identity, I argue, diasporic thinkers should envision Jewish political solidarity beyond the confines of the nation-state. (shrink)

Because physicians use scientific inference for the generalizations of individual observations and the application of general knowledge to particular situations, the Bayesian probability solution to the problem of induction has been proposed and frequently utilized. Several problems with the Bayesian approach are introduced and discussed. These include: subjectivity, the favoring of a weak hypothesis, the problem of the false hypothesis, the old evidence/new theory problem and the observation that physicians are not currently Bayesians. To the complaint that the prior (...) probability is subjective, Bayesians reply that there will be ultimate convergence, but the rebuttal to this is that there will not be uniform convergence. Secondly, since the Bayesian scheme favors a weak hypothesis, theories turn out to be a gratuitous risk. The problem with the false hypothesis comes out in the denominator of the theorem, revealing that a factor which is not a theory at all is being considered in the reasoning. On the old evidence/new theory problem old evidence cannot confirm a new theory so that the posterior probability will equal the prior probability. Finally, empiric studies have shown that current physicians are not Bayesians. But on consideration of Bayesian inference as a system of inference, it can be reasoned that physicians should be Bayesians. However, the problem of physicians' and patients' own subjectivity continue to plague this system of medical decision making. (shrink)

I offer here a solution to a mystery about William James's theory of the self. Among the many students of James who have been mystified is Gerald Myers, who expresses surprise in William James: His Life and Thought that, given the religious and mystical overtones of his later metaphysics, James did not abandon the apparent bodily self of the earlier Principles of Psychology for a “nonbodily, spiritual, and mysterious referent for the first-person pronoun,” instead of consistently adhering “to his (...) claims that the body is at the center of any experience of self, that nothing nonbodily shows itself definitely to introspection, and that nothing about using I makes a mystery of the self”. The mystery is particularly deep because James explicitly avowed the coherence of the Principles treatment of the self with the later metaphysical treatment, such as the material in Essays in Radical Empiricism. Arguing in “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?” from the Essays that a metaphysics of pure experience should replace the dichotomy between consciousness and the body, James adduces in support his earlier discussion of the self: “In my Psychology I have tried to show that we need no knower other than the ‘passing thought’.” On the other hand, Myers observes, “if telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition actually occur,” as James was disposed to think, “our everyday equation of the self with bodily experience will surely require some revision”. Then too James's religious convictions as expressed in The Varieties of Religious Experience would also seem to call for revision of the earlier equation. James wrote there, for instance, that “the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance” and that “union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end.” “Yet instead of suggesting how his psychological concept of the self might have shifted during the progression from Principles to the metaphysics of pure experience,” Myers comments with a note of puzzlement, “James wrote in his later period that this concept was a natural ally if not the original herald of that metaphysics.”. (shrink)

Old Havana: Spirit of the Living City artistically captures the architecture, people, and daily life of La Habana Vieja through the lenses of two visionary photographers and colleagues, one American and the other Cuban. Chip Cooper and Néstor Martí began collaborating in 2008, documenting the picturesque features of the oldest and most historically rich quarter in Cuba's capital city at the behest of Eusebio Leal Spengler, the historian of the city of Havana and the director of the Habana Vieja restoration (...) project. Cooper's and Martí's images highlight the spirit of change and renewal underlying the restoration of this international treasure and its revival as a vibrant business and residential area. Inspired by the work of twentieth century American photographer Walker Evans, Cooper and Martí, through perspectives both unique and deeply entwined, capture the humanity of the city, in a language at once universal and transcendent. (shrink)

China’s extensive media presence in Africa aims to distinguish itself through the use of constructive journalism in contrast with the perceived dominance of conflict journalism by Western media outlets. However, many scholars have raised questions of consistency surrounding Chinese media’s use of constructive journalism in representing Africa (e.g. Marsh, Citation2016). With perspectives from Galtung’s (Citation1987, p. 1998) conflict and peace journalism, this research applies Critical Discourse Analysis to examine Chinese media’s representation of Africa to an international audience. Using linguistic data (...) from China Radio International’s Today, it challenges the distinctions among peace journalism, solutions journalism and constructive journalism. The findings show that China’s claim of constructive journalism strongly favors the coverage of China, yet is largely absent in the coverage of the African continent. It suggests that while Chinese state-sponsored media utilizes the so-called constructive journalism when presenting information about a specific region to that region, these representations are not consistent across their international coverage. Hence, Africa remains a victim of conflict journalism. (shrink)

A generalization of the standard n-person game is presented, with flexible information requirements suitable for players constrained by bounded rationality. Strategies (complete contingency plans) are replaced by "policies," i. e., end-mean pairs of candidate goals and "controls" (partial contingency plans). The existence of individual objective functions over the joint policy choice set is axiomatized in terms of primitive preference and probability orders. Conditions are given for the existence of pure policy Nash equilibrium points in n-person games, and pure policy (...) Nash bargaining and equilibrium threat solutions in 2-person policy games. Connectedness of the policy and payoff sets is not required. (shrink)

The author examines the question of Galen's affinity with astrology, in view of Galen's extended astrological discussion in the De diebus decretoriis . The critical passages from Galen are examined, and shown to be superficial in understanding. The author performs a lexical sounding of Galen's corpus, using key terms with astrological valences drawn from the Critical Days, and assesses their absence in Galen's other works. He compares Galen's astrology with the astrology of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, and evaluates their respective strategies of (...) scientific reasoning. Three types of inference are introduced and applied to Galen's astrology. Finally, he concludes that the empirical side of Galen's science does not depend upon astrological methods or concepts, but that these were introduced for their rhetorical effect in presenting his new medical methodology. It is suggested that continued attention to Galen's astrology has obscured the truly important empirical scientific method that Galen developed. (shrink)

Sometimes the simplest forms are the most difficult to explain. Perhaps the reason for this is that one estimates the problems involved as being too simple, too obvious, and does not seek, therefore, to penetrate to their core. Besides, there is an aura of the primitive and underivative about a literary form we are used to considering as popular; we hardly dare profane it by dry, objective analysis. As the tradition of a community, it shares the anonymity of the latter. (...) Seeking the traces of creative and tradition-conscious personages, we find only an amorphous mass of the unknown. No wonder that the riddle has been relegated back to prehistoric times, permitting us to conceal its problems behind a veil of mystery. (shrink)

The Liberal Arts model of undergraduate education within small, internationally-focused University Colleges is becoming increasingly popular in Europe. This trend is most notable in the Netherlands, where the liberal arts model is acclaimed as filling a gap in Dutch undergraduate education at conventional research universities. This paper explores the status of the Dutch University College as simultaneously continuing the liberal arts tradition of the US, with its civic and pedagogic values, and providing a truly modern education preparing students to find (...) innovative and inter-disciplinary solutions to the complex problems which define contemporary society. It concludes that the traditional role of a liberal arts education in cultivating intellectual rather than vocation skills does not have to exclude its appeal as providing the skills necessary for professional success in global sectors of the 21 st century knowledge economy. (shrink)

In 2011 the IAAF introduced the Hyperandrogenism Regulations in an attempt to deal with a difficult problem; that of ensuring ‘fair’ competition in female athletics as a result of athletes with differences in sexual development competing against women without such conditions. In 2015, following a challenge to those regulations by Indian athlete, Dutee Chand, The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) considered the merit of the regulations and determined that there was insufficient scientific evidence to justify their imposition. The regulations (...) were suspended by the CAS, until more convincing evidence could be provided (CAS 2014/A/3759 _Chand v AFI and IAAF_). The IAAF duly commissioned further research (Bermon and Garnier, 2017) and introduced amended regulations (the Eligibility Regulations for Female Classification (the DSD Regulations)). Although not universal, the IAAF has faced significant criticism from several angles about its approach to the problem. In particular, there has been criticism of the value of the scientific research on which the regulations are based (Franklin et al., 2018; Karkazis et al., 2012; Koh et al., 2018; Sőnksen et al., 2018; Tucker, 2017, Pielke, Tucker & Boye 2019) and also from those in the ethical and human rights fields seeking to ensure that the rights of individual athletes are protected (Adair, 2011; Buzuvis, 2016; Koh et al., 2018). In light of such criticism, this paper considers the IAAF’s approach in dealing with the perceived problem and considers its conduct against an objective framework of ‘good sporting governance’ (Geeraert, 2013; Henry and Lee 2004). It is this paper’s contention that the IAAF’s approach to rule creation in this area demonstrates less than ideal governance practice and, in doing so, notes the role of historical, cultural and institutional barriers as well as an over-reliance on insufficiently conclusive scientific evidence to provide a seemingly objective solution to a fundamentally more complex problem. (shrink)

Alison L. Spedding es la antropóloga y novelista que fue arrestada en marzo de 1998 por las autoridades bolivianas bajo el cargo de tráfico de drogas, que ella niega fuertemente. Al momento de ser impreso este número, se había eliminado el cargo de tráfico por falta de evidencia, pero se estaba ..

It is a common complaint against moral philosophers that their abstract theorising bears little relation to the practical problems of everyday life. Professor Braithwaite believes that this criticism need not be inevitable. With the help of the Theory of Games he shows how arbitration is possible between two neighbours, a jazz trumpeter and a classical pianist, whose performances are a source of mutual discord. The solution of the problem in the lecture is geometrical, and is based on the formal (...) analogy between the logic of the situation and the geometry of a parabola. But an appendix provides the alternative algebraic treatment of a general two-person collaboration situation. (shrink)

In contemporary film theory, body and mind have been central to explorations of film form, representation, and spectatorship. While the soul may seem to have no place here, the history of film theory and its legacy to the present suggest otherwise. From the origins of film theory - from Hugo Münsterberg through French Impressionism to writings of the Weimar Republic - to the mid-twentieth century work of Henri Agel and Amédée Ayfre and Henri Agel, as well as Edgar Morin, the (...) soul emerges as a multi-faceted, if contested, concept. By revisiting such key moments in the history of film theory, and tracing the survival of this concept through to a range of cutting-edge debates today, from the work of Vivian Sobchack to Jean-Luc Nancy, Gilles Deleuze to Torben Grodal, The Soul of Film Theory tells the heretofore tacit tale of the relation between cinema and the soul, from classical to contemporary times, in dialogue with philosophy, religion, and science. (shrink)

This article looks at the history of the stem cell as an experimental life-form and situates it within the context of biological theories of cellular ageing which emerged in the 1960s, under the banner of ‘biogerontology’. The field of biogerontology, I argue, is crucially concerned not only with the internal limits to a cell's lifespan, but also with the possibility of overcoming limits. Hence, the sense of ‘revolution’ that has surrounded the isolation of human embryonic stem cells. The article goes (...) on to situate the problematic of cellular ageing within the larger historical transition from Fordist to post-Fordist modes of production – a transition whose effects on the life sciences have been insufficiently theorized – and points to resonances between the concerns of biogerontology and an emerging political rhetoric on the crisis of ageing and limits to growth. Having surfaced in parallel with the neo-liberal euphoria of the 1990s, the field of regenerative medicine presents itself as a biomedical solution to the problem of limits to growth. What is at stake in the contemporary biosciences, I suggest, is not so much the mass commodification of life itself as its transformation into a source of speculative surplus value. (shrink)