René Girard’s Reflections on Modern Jihadism: An Introduction

This paper aims to offer a comprehensive overview of René Girard’s reflections on the issue of modern jihadism. It addresses three key aspects of his reasoning: (I) the rise of Islamic terrorism in the context of a globalization of resentment; (II) modern jihadism understood as an “event internal to the development of technology;” (III) the hypothesis that modern jihadism “is both linked to Islam and different from it.

Jihadism: What is a Terror Apparatus? Interview with Jacob Rogozinski

In the present interview, Jacob Rogozinski elucidates the main concepts and theses he developed in his latest book dedicated to the issue of modern jihadism. On this occasion, he explains his disagreements with other philosophical (Badiou, Baudrillard, Žižek) and anthropological (Girard) accounts of Islamic terrorism. Rogozinski also explains that although jihadism betrays Islam, it nonetheless has everything to do with Islam. Eventually, he describes his own philosophical journey which led him from a phenomenological study of the ego and the flesh to the study of past (witch-hunts, French Reign of Terror) and contemporary (jihadism) terror apparatuses

Asymptotic Delsarte cliques in distance-regular graphs

We give a new bound on the parameter $\lambda$ (number of common neighbors of a pair of adjacent vertices) in a distance-regular graph $G$, improving and generalizing bounds for strongly regular graphs by Spielman (1996) and Pyber (2014). The new bound is one of the ingredients of recent progress on the complexity of testing isomorphism of strongly regular graphs (Babai, Chen, Sun, Teng, Wilmes 2013). The proof is based on a clique geometry found by Metsch (1991) under certain constraints on the parameters. We also give a simplified proof of the following asymptotic consequence of Metsch's result: if $k\mu = o(\lambda^2)$ then each edge of $G$ belongs to a unique maximal clique of size asymptotically equal to $\lambda$, and all other cliques have size $o(\lambda)$. Here $k$ denotes the degree and $\mu$ the number of common neighbors of a pair of vertices at distance 2. We point out that Metsch's cliques are "asymptotically Delsarte" when $k\mu = o(\lambda^2)$, so families of distance-regular graphs with parameters satisfying $k\mu = o(\lambda^2)$ are "asymptotically Delsarte-geometric."Comment: 10 page

René Girard and Philosophy: An Interview with Paul Dumouchel

What was René Girard’s attitude towards philosophy? What philosophers influenced him? What stance did he take in the philosophical debates of his time? What are the philosophical questions raised by René Girard’s anthropology? In this interview, Paul Dumouchel sheds light on these issues

Primer for the algebraic geometry of sandpiles

The Abelian Sandpile Model (ASM) is a game played on a graph realizing the dynamics implicit in the discrete Laplacian matrix of the graph. The purpose of this primer is to apply the theory of lattice ideals from algebraic geometry to the Laplacian matrix, drawing out connections with the ASM. An extended summary of the ASM and of the required algebraic geometry is provided. New results include a characterization of graphs whose Laplacian lattice ideals are complete intersection ideals; a new construction of arithmetically Gorenstein ideals; a generalization to directed multigraphs of a duality theorem between elements of the sandpile group of a graph and the graph's superstable configurations (parking functions); and a characterization of the top Betti number of the minimal free resolution of the Laplacian lattice ideal as the number of elements of the sandpile group of least degree. A characterization of all the Betti numbers is conjectured.Comment: 45 pages, 14 figures. v2: corrected typo

Le concept de psychopathie est-il cohérent ? Bases cérébrales et responsabilité morale

Although many psychiatrists regard psychopathy as a coherent scientific construction, some clinicians and philosophers regard it as irrelevant. According to the latter, psychopathy is nothing more than a means of social control. The present study focuses on the issues of the neurological bases and moral responsibility related to psychopathy. While neuroscience aims to identify dysfunctions in psychopaths, action theory and ethics tend to vindicate the hypothesis of the moral irresponsibility of the psychopath. However, rather than reinforcing the concept of psychopathy, recent results in neuroscience tend to stress its incoherence. Philosophical speculations on psychopaths’ responsibility are not sufficiently empirically informed and seem to announce endless ethical debates

Sweat or threat? a look into the ethics of sweatshops

Often times, individuals are faced with situations that present clouded truths of the happenings in business. They must uncover the realities of these situations, most times ending in methods dependent on ethical decision making. The academic world has presented some models to theoretically explain these issues. Its issue-contingent model and behavior add significantly to the understanding of moral processes (Jones 1991). These moral issues can be very difficult to define and explain, considering each individual develops differing approaches to the situations. When given the words “ethics†and “sweatshops,†many people are unable to pair the two words together. The distaste of some for the unethical treatment of workers can greatly affect the study of moral intensity. However, with other factors held constant, their opinions and attitudes will be studied accordingly. Some view sweatshops in a positive light, supplying families with an adequate income. Goldberg (2001) argues sweatshops are a good thing and that the “anti-sweatshop movement is a war on development.†Still others see sweatshops as a business that regularly violates wage, child labor, safety or health laws designed to protect employees from exploitation (Redden and Beyer 1993). This situation can be seen as one that is subjective and open to one’s own interpretation. Therefore, using sweatshops for research on moral intensity is one that will adequately supply conclusions to the study

The Changing Shape of Artemisia Scholarship

UMKC Honors Colleg