Arrow's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Condition is examined. It is shown why the standard rationale for (or against) the condition tends to be inconclusive as it fails to consider the basic ‘game’ issue in social choice. Specifically it is explained how some recent results (Gibbard-Satterthwaite) on the general non-existence of strategy-proof voting procedures provide the strongest rationale for the independence condition. Also, it is shown that this rationale was exactly the one used by Condorcet in his work on decision rules (...) for juries and elections. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage a pour enjeu de débattre du schéma théorique forgé par Alfred Schütz, promoteur de l'idée de sociologie phénoménologique (puisant son cadre analytique dans une lecture de la sociologie compréhensive weberienne, de la philosophie de la durée bergsonienne, et de la phénoménologie husserlienne). Les catégories princeps de la recherche sont dès lors celles de conscience, de temporalité et de signification. La structure phénoménologique de l'expérience sociale, l'essence de la compréhension intersubjective, les perspectives offertes par les tenants d'une sociologie formiste (...) en matière d'entendement de l'interaction, sont les thèmes majeurs de ce débat. Dans le cadre de cette lecture, Thierry Blin tente d'établir les principes d'une sociologie phénoménologique formiste ou structurale, permettant ainsi de fonder à nouveaux frais une sociologie de l'action. (shrink)

Cet article s’interroge sur les ressources caractéristiques d’une mobilisation de sans-papiers. C’est au travail symbolique de présentation de soi et de sa cause qu’il faudra s’intéresser. Le tableau de ce type de lutte implique ainsi de souligner l’importance de l’obtention d’une « légitimité émotionnelle ». Autrement dit, le désespoir social et la faiblesse deviennent des armes dans une dramaturgie où s’affrontent la Morale et le Droit. Néanmoins, bien d’autres facteurs seront nécessaires à l’obtention d’un « succès public ». La spectacularisation (...) du conflit, son florilège de personnalités de tous ordres, et son long cortège médiatique participeront activement à cette réussite. À tous les niveaux de la mobilisation, ce sera l’humanisme qui s’imposera comme code idéologique indépassable du soutien aux sans-papiers.This article addresses the resources which characterize an irregular migrant mobilization. We’ll focus on the symbolic work carried out in the setting-up of a picture of oneself and of one’s cause. As a result, this kind of struggle also implies a quest for an « emotional legitimacy ». In other words, social despair and weakness become weapons in a dramaturgy confronting Moral philosophy and Right. However, many other factors will have to be brought together to trigger a « public success ». The spectacularization of the conflict – which boasts a large number of prominent figures from all social spheres and extensive media coverage – will be actively instrumental in this success. At each level of the mobilization, humanism appears as the inescapable ideological code of the support lent to irregular migrants. (shrink)

This paper deals with various connections that are found to exist between statistical estimation methods for decision-making and rules of group choice in the social choice area. Initially the aggregation of individual opinions is formulated as a pattern recognition problem; firstly it is shown that individual preferences lead to a natural representation in terms of binary patterns. Then we proceed to show how the search for a group preference pattern can be conducted by classifying the input preference patterns into various (...) ‘pattern classes’ and using the resulting classification boundaries to define the area of mutual agreement over some of the available alternatives. This leads to a decision-theoretic problem which consists in defining a decision rule (for classification) that is least likely to lead to misrecognition of arbitrary preference patterns. A maximum likelihood solution is obtained and compared with some well-known rules of group decision-making. Other solutions are also possible, on the basis of different optimality criteria, and their social choice interpretation is suggested. Finally, a method using Coleman's linear model for attributes is applied to yield group decision rules by feature weighting of election issues. (shrink)

This is a new release of the original 1960 edition.

Gödel’s incompleteness applies to any system with recursively enumerable axioms and rules of inference. Chaitin’s approach to Gödel’s incompleteness relates the incompleteness to the amount of information contained in the axioms. Zurek’s quantum Darwinism attempts the physical description of the universe using information as one of its major components. The capacity of quantum Darwinism to describe quantum measurement in great detail without requiring ad-hoc non-unitary evolution makes it a good candidate for describing the transition from quantum to classical. A baby-universe (...) diffusion model of cosmic inflation is analyzed using quantum Darwinism. In this model cosmic inflation can be approximated as Brownian motion of a quantum field, and quantum Darwinism implies that molecular interaction during Brownian motion will make the quantum field decohere. The quantum Darwinism approach to decoherence in the baby-universe cosmic-inflation model yields the decoherence times of the baby-universes. The result is the equation relating the baby-universe’s decoherence time with the Hubble parameter, and that the decoherence time is considerably shorter than the cosmic inflation period. (shrink)

Le mouvement félibrige, dans la seconde moitié du xixe siècle, une partie de la société méridionale autour de Frédéric Mistral et de sa défense de la langue d’oc rassemble des hommes dont les opinions politiques penchent du côté conservateur. Ce cliché est sans doute destiné à avoir la vie dure car tout n’y est pas faux mais les exceptions sont nombreuses. Grâce aux travaux de Catherine Parayre (2004), on connaît un peu mieux les personnalités hors normes des félibresses Philadelphe de (...) Gerde,... (shrink)