School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences

About: School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences is a facility organization based out in Villejuif, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Politics & Context (language use). The organization has 1230 authors who have published 2084 publications receiving 57740 citations. The organization is also known as: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales & EHESS.

The Anarchic Hand Syndrome and Utilization Behavior: A Window onto Agentive Self-Awareness

Abstract: Summary Two main approaches can be discerned in the literature on agentive self-awareness: a top-down approach, according to which agentive self-awareness is fundamentally holistic in nature and involves the operations of a central-systems narrator, and a bottom-up approach that sees agentive self-awareness as produced by lowlevel processes grounded in the very machinery responsible for motor production and control. Neither approach is entirely satisfactory if taken in isolation; however, the question of whether their combination would yield a full account of agentive self-awareness remains very much open. In this paper, I contrast two disorders affecting the control of voluntary action: the anarchic hand syndrome and utilization behavior. Although in both conditions patients fail to inhibit actions that are elicited by objects in the environment but inappropriate with respect to the wider context, these actions are experienced in radically different ways by the two groups of patients. I discuss how top-down and bottom-up processes involved in the generation of agentive self-awareness would have to be related in order to account for these differences.

Transmission and inequality of wealth: An empirical study of wealth mobility from 1800 to 1938 in France

Abstract: This paper endeavors to measure the intergenerational transmission of wealth inequalities over the 1800–1938 period. For this purpose, we have consulted historical data composed of wealth genealogies covering the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. The database was created from families included in the “3,000 families” survey of those individuals residing in the Loire-Inferieure departement. The empirical study reveals a relatively large degree of intergenerational immobility: those whose father had twice the average level of wealth themselves upon death leave behind 1.45 times the average wealth of their generation.

From Thatcher (and Pinochet) to Clinton? Conservative Think Tanks, Foreign Models and US Pensions Reform

Abstract: The ongoing debate among policymakers in the Western welfare states about the structure of pension systems has been framed by a conventional wisdom depicting a developing demographic time-bomb, as the aged population grows in relation to the overall population. This scenario depicts the demands of the retired and their dependants overwhelming the capacity of the state as it becomes impossible to transfer enough income from the working-age population to maintain a decent standard of living for the elderly. Various proposed solutions to this perceived problem have been put forward, with conservative analysts in particular keen to take the opportunity to champion the virtue and ̄exibility of the private sector as an alternative to what they portray as the bankruptcy of the state in both policy and ®scal terms. The centre-left's response has been to defend the integrity of state income guarantees to the elderly, yet at the same time to accept that government's role as a direct provider might need to be reduced, with a greater emphasis on the state acting as a regulator of private pension provision. Conservatives may respond that this is an inadequate response and that a commitment to a more fullȳedged privatisation is required; but in the long term they may come to see any move away from straightforward tax-funded pension schemes as a Trojan horse from which they can emerge to launch further attacks on the credibility of government-run programmes. One country where the debate about the continuing viability of the existing government-run pension system has recently intensi®ed is the United States. Given America's reputation for scepticism towards the value of state welfare programmes, this might not appear to be an unexpected development to a European audience. In some respects, however, the readiness of the US political class to take on the question of pension system reform is surprising. Social Security, as the pension system is known in the US, is commonly referred to as the `third rail' in American politicsÐ`touch it and die'Ðdue to the strong public support for the programme. Social Security is popularly understood as conforming to the social insurance model of welfarism: that is, people pay into the scheme in the expectation of being reimbursed when they retire, and the fact that the programme contains an element of income redistribution receives relatively little attention. Thus, although the issue remains extremely politically sensitive, the willingness of the major players from across the political spectrum to talk about restructuring the system suggests that they see the problem as a genuine one. An interesting feature of the debate has been the manner in which elements of the in ̄uential conservative think-tank community have pointed to developments outside the US as suggesting a way ahead. Given that the pension problem is deemed to be one universal to Western

Knowing whether A or B

Abstract: The paper examines the logic and semantics of knowledge attributions of the form “s knows whether A or B”. We analyze these constructions in an epistemic logic with alternative questions, and propose an account of the context-sensitivity of the corresponding sentences and of their presuppositions.