71st Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

Dear all,

For the 71st Session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, we will discuss the concept of “criticality” in finance and nuclear dynamics.

We will focus on the events of Japan since the 11th of March 2011: Earthquake, tsunami, Fukushima nuclear power plant explosions, release of radiation and global market reactions. 

Some heartbreaking pictures of the Japan events are published by New York Times, accessible at: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/12/world/asia/20110312_japan.html/?smid=fb-nytimes?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB#116


Our deepest condolences, hopes and prayers are for the Japanese people.

See you tomorrow,

Rezi & Joe

71st Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

70th Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

Dear all,

have you ever wondered about self-defense in the most general of ways?  Or how to, at least, neutralize sophistic opinions?

To celebrate the 70^th session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance (Room 5.16, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster, from 6-8pm), we will look at septuagenarian wisdom of argumentation.

Specifically, we will read and comment on a little article found by Rezi entitled, “Beyond the Basics: Seventy-Five Defenses Securities Litigators Need to Know,” by Jonathan Eisenberg, 62 Bus Law 1281 (2007), available at:  https://www.copyright.com/ccc/basicSearch.do?&operation=go&searchType=0&lastSearch=simple&all=on&titleOrStdNo=0007-6899.

As the basis for our analysis we will refer to Aristotle’s material fallacies found in his De Sophisticis Elenchis available at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/sophist_refut.html, comprising accident, affirming the consequent, converse accident, irrelevant conclusion, begging the question, false cause and fallacy of many questions.

Post facto, we will wander over to a new Lebanese restaurant to be announced in class.

Regards,

Joe and Rezi

70th Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

69th Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

Dear All,

Tonight, in the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance (6-8pm, Room 5.16, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster), Joe will introduce the argument of "superposition" from quantum mechanics and compare it to certain arguments re the impossibility of defining the reality of the One made by Plato's Parmenides . The "superposition" argument may be the important and the only argument worth understanding because it underpins our best and yet uncontroverted theory of reality--namely quantum mechanics. So, if we understand at least the FORM of the argument--much of which comes from Bell's Inequalities we may be able say something about the nature of financial and legal arguments.
Form--as in Aristotle's formal cause-- is everything in the computer driven programmatic age.

For flavour and substance, see David Albert's mesmeric "Quantum Mechanics and Experience" 1992. 26 centuries of philosophy!


Afterwards at around 8pm we will move the heat of the discussion in the bars/restaurants in the area.

See you tonight,

Rezi and Joe

69th Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

68th Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

Dear All,

For the 68th session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance (room 5.16, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster, 6-8pm) we will discus some current issues by reviewing the following articles which are an interesting read:

1.  Unemployment: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/disillusioned-99er-shares-his-disappointment-american-dream

2.  US Inflation: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/what-wrong-us-economy-here-are-10-economic-charts-will-blow-your-mind

3.  Arab Crises: http://www.economist.com/node/18180416

Any other article on the matter is welcomed. Afterwards we can go in the area for nice food, drinks and company.

Regards,

Rezi & Joe

68th Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

66th Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

Dear All, 

After 65 sessions of philosophy, I guess we can start again, that is, really BEGIN with the purest of the pure of philosophical works, Plato’s Parminedes. For a comprehensive summary, see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-parmenides/ and Jowett translation, see:http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/parmenides.html

If you are a PhD candidate and you are looking for an argument, or wondering how we can understand anything entirely, then you might try reading the Parminedes. I’ve tried many times to read this dialogue straight through but it gives me a throbbing headache within a few pages. I understand completely Parminedes’ (the old great philosopher in the dialogue) reluctance to engage in dialectic because as an old man, he thought it was just too exhausting a mental exercise.

But aside from the mental gymnastics—and it is, of all the Platonic dialogues except perhaps the Theaetetus—the toughest to comprehend, it provides a climb up a mountain with sheer drops into the abyss, free climbs to peaks of consciousness which are few and far between in the history of world literature.

One way philosophers have reacted to the Parminedes was to build the neo-Platonists mystery schools of the second century AD – see for example, Plotinus’ eternal Enneads.

But modern philosophers have usually tried to evade the Parminedes or have found solace in attempting to negate his most profound premises. Example, Badiou claims that his philosophy in Being & Event is an extension of Parminedes by negating Parminedes’ central position which is:
That no argument whatsoever can define the One (and for this reason, the One exists) …kinda.

If this sounds like no way to argue for the truth, then you probably have the right attitude to enter the Parminedes. All great philosophers in the Western tradition have bowed to the Parminedes. This session is to try to find out why.

Afterwards we will head to a nice place in the area for tasty food and drinks.

Regards,

Joe


Ps.: The event will take place at the usual time from 6-8pm in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster. 


Rezarte Vukatana
Attorney, LLM and PhD Candidate

London, UK
Mobile: +44(0)7861789665
Email 1: rezartavukatana@gmail.com

Email 2: rezarte.vukatana@westminster.ac.uk

66th Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

65th session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance (Friday 10 Dec, 6-8pm, Room 5.16, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster)

Dear all,

this session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance promises to be attractive for all of you who are interested or even curious about the hiring experience with an investment bank. We will be graced from 7-8PM by the presence of our special guest Patrizia Cozzoli, CFO of Barclays Capital and the person in charge of hiring. During this time Patrizia will guide us through the bank’s procedure, policies, expectations and most importantly hints regarding hiring prospective employers and interns. We highly recommend participation in this Friday’s session as one of those rare occasions where you can meet the person who really matters. 

Before the arrival of Patrizia, from 6-7PM, the subject of our talks will be "Why Law and Finance are Social Experiments Gone Wild?". We will read and comment on the New York Times article To Test Housing Program, Some Are Denied Aid, (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/nyregion/09placebo.html?_r=1&sudsredirect=true)  drawing analogies to financial product experiments in the real world. Joe will also take up Professor John Flood's ideas of "legal profession" versus "legal processes" presented at the Legal Theory seminar at the University of Westminster, School of Law, and apply the distinction to "financial profession" versus "financial practices." He will advocate the need for a fundamental theory which enlightens us on the continual discovery of "humanity" versus "machinery" in our human-to-human communications.

Best regards,

Rezi & Joe

65th session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance (Friday 10 Dec, 6-8pm, Room 5.16, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster)

64th session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance (Friday 26 Nov, 6-8pm, Room 5.16, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster)

Dear all,

As we circle in on truth, we tend to spiral out in fantasy.

All mathematical problems like objects in real life are essentially about the domestication of wild animals, the Absolute (infinity) being the wildest.

For the 64th session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, we will examine a hypothetical matheme and attempt to step back from the indefinite infinitude to the secure but still dangerous edge of a definite infinity.  The title to the investigation is:

The Entropy of Law and Finance - Towards a Principle of Uncertainty as a Definite Infinity.

Entropy may be defined as "the measure of the number of arrangements that conform to some specific recognizable criterion" [Susskind 2008 @131] or simply "the hidden information".  We will see whether we can translate this matheme into law and finance. The argument runs: (1) the pricing function in finance is analogous to the legal judgment in law, with a phenomenological certainty at the time of pricing and judgment equivalent to an entropy of 0; (2) we hypothesize the principle of uncertainty for law and finance is in the form of:

(ΔX)(ΔY)≅C

Where:

Δ is “delta” or change

X is price

Y is the judgment, and

C is a constant.

So, ΔX is a form of “price risk” and ΔY is a form of “legal risk”. Because C is a constant, the higher the value of ΔX, the lower the value of ΔY and vice versa.

This form of the Principle of Uncertainty in Law and Finance may help us glean a first approximation of the concept of “risk event” e.g. “Eurozone Risk”, “Contagion Risk” and “Systemic Risk” and the “truth procedures” that instantiate chimeras of regulations in our politically and economically hijacked media narratives.  [For illustrations of “event” and “truth procedures”, see passim Badiou’s (2005) Being and Event, and for a view of infinitudes, his “Meditation Twenty-Six: The Concept of Quantity and the Impasse of Ontology” id @ 265-280.]  

"Why do we need a physics of law and finance? Because regulators and traders appear to unconsciously make Black Holes. The EURO is having a near-death experience." http://link.ft.com/r/J0VG55/ZBEK8W/2OBT4/QFM56W/KEB3KW/28h?a1=2010&a2=11&a3= 25 

Afterwards, at around 8pm we will continue our exploration on the restaurants in the area.

Best regards,

Rezi & Joe

64th session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance (Friday 26 Nov, 6-8pm, Room 5.16, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster)

63rd Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance (Friday 19 Nov, 6-8pm, Room 5.16, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster)

Dear All,

Following from Joe's association of SWOT analysis with Duns Scotus, Fiona offered to engage us in a further exploration of this instrument for thinking by asking this question: Is the SWOT Analysis an emblem for our times or is it really perhaps trying to be an engram? (engram comes from field of neuro psychology/behaviourism - a physical brain change supposed to take place as a result of experience and to represent memories - Karl Lashley)

This prompts questions such as what is the relationship between experience and knowledge, nous and pathos, the one and the many? We can then bring into the frame some of Agamben's thoughts on the scholastic philosophers and particularly Duns Scotus. We shall start with an exploration of the emblem in Western culture from the 1977 work, Stanzas, and consider allegory in relation to evil, followed up by the more metaphysical account in The Coming Community of Singularity - Principium Individuationis - looking at two lovely terms: quodlibet (translated as 'whatever' which is good given we live in a 'whatever' culture) and Fiona’s favourite - 'haecceity' meaning 'thisness'.

Agamben writes, 'Whatever is the matheme of singularity, without which it is impossible to conceive either being or the individuation of singularity...Whatever is constituted not by the indifference of common nature with respect to singularities, but by the indifference of the common and the proper, of the genus and the species, of the essential and the accidental.' (18.9)

What’s matheme? According to Joe, mathemes are the type’s math signs and symbols which certain philosophes following Badiou are using in reacting or responding to the technical mathematical-scientific thinking occurring today. For example, in Badiou's "Logics of the World", Badiou takes his mathemes from set theory to some of the technical language of algebraic topology. This is rough going if one hasn't a familiarity with the basic hieroglyphs. But the point worth making is that the nuances and precision implied by mathematical tools looks much like the creations of modern poetry. Here sign and symbols form their own networks of meaningful worlds which we may or may not draw down into our own.

All of this obviously critical to an adequate engagement with the SWOT vehicle and not always taken into account. So, Emblem or Engram, any thoughts?

Further to an exploration of the ontological significance of SWOT incorporating the scholastic notions of haecceity (thisness) and quodlibet (whatever) we will consider the symbolic of the SWOT emblem as well as its diabolic (according to Giorgio Agamben). Friday night at Joe's for a date with the devil (really).

Afterwards we can head for one of the restaurants in the area, where we can combine good company with delicious food (Italian, Korean, Japanese, British etc whatever we feel like).

Best regards,

Rezi, Fiona, Joe

63rd Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance (Friday 19 Nov, 6-8pm, Room 5.16, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster)

62d Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

Dear all,

For the 62nd session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance (Friday 12 Nov, 6-8pm, Room 5.16, 309 Regent Street, University of Westminster), we will hold our own "G-20 Conference" and ask:

What does the current currency (?) crisis mean to mere mortals? 

If we read the business and finance press, we see Ben S. Bernarke, the chairman of the US Fed very unusually arguing publicly for quantitative easing (QE2) [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/03/AR2010110307372.html] while China, Brazil, Germany [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/981ca8f4-e83e-11df-8995-00144feab49a.html#axzz14zm57rHG] and South Korea [http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/commerce/101110/qe2-global-economy] vehemently against QE2.

So far as of Nov 11th, 2010, a dozen countries have responded to Ben's QE2 with quantitative tightening [see, the Asian biz-chicks on Bloomberg television accessed at 12 midnight London time.]

All of this talk leads to a symmetric race to the bottom, evidenced in the 1930's as "trade wars" [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1322002/Mervyn-King-A-1930s-style-trade-war-ruinous.html] and in the current G-20 as a "currency war" [http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/11/20101111135923477349.html].

This current period is trader's paradise because there is risk symmetry between Quantitative Easing (QE) and Quantitative Tightening (QT). QE is what the US does, and QT is what the rest of the world does to protect itself from QE.

This is a period characteristic of DICTATORIAL FINANCE where sovereign states are trying to preserve their status by pledging to protect their currencies (read here economies and way of life) but are being beaten continuously by the disciplining force of the financial markets.

To understand how far and how deep the nature of dictatorial finance has reached into the regulatory realm, we will begin reading the Dodd-Frank Act, Title II, entitled the "Orderly Liquidation Authority" [sections 201 to 217] which empowers the Authority basically to segregate and strip out the good assets of a financially active company in the US and place them in a Corporation controlled by an agency of the US government. This will be done without any constitutional right to bankruptcy and only with the minimal right to judicial review based on an "arbitrary and capricious" standard.

The entirety of the Dodd-Frank Act can be found at http://www.sec.gov/about/laws/wallstreetreform-cpa.pdf.

For the afterwards dinner, we are currently indecisive about the restaurant choice but it will most likely be Korean in honour of the G-20.

Regards,
Rezi & Joe

62d Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

61st Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

Dear All,

The 61st Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance (Friday, 5 Nov, 6-8pm, room 5.17, 309 Regent Street) will be devoted to:

Overcoming Information Asymmetry in Law and Finance

with simple illustrations from entrepreneurial business plans to more complex examples from securities prospectuses.  

A very sophisticated use of information asymmetry theory can be found in http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/2010/1010/ifdp1010.pdf (Nov. 2010) where Beltram & Thomas argue that information asymmetry alone is sufficient to explain the credit crisis and to provide a criterion for judging the potential success or failure of proposed regulatory solutions to the credit crisis. Joe recommends all Corporate Finance Law and International Banking Law students read the article since it provides a particularly good review of the recent scholarly literature and shows how information asymmetry may be used in arguendo to reach surprisingly general results.  The article was spotted by Edmond Curtin. Many thanks, Edmond.

As part of our philosophical investigation we shall ask, "What are the assumptions underlying information asymmetry?"  One possible answer comes from the concept of "mutuality of information" based on the symmetric correlation of probabilities between information-communication systems. [See, Seth Lloyd (1996) “Causal Asymmetry from Statistics” in Physical Origins of Time Asymmetry edited by J.J. Halliwell, J. Perez-Mercader, and W.H. Zurek, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.] We will try to elucidate mutuality of information in relation to social phenomena and legal systems.  For example, the goal of Plato’s Laws was to attain “social amity" which could not be had unless there was a mutuality of information at every level of society.  [See, Plato's Laws, Book I.]

In class readings of Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric will continue on the forensic, epidetic and deliberate forms of enthymemes (available a http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.html).

Afterwards if we feel for pan-Asian food and good company please join us for a nice dinner at Wagamama at 101a Wigmore Street.  Please RSPV so that we can arrange for reservations.

Regards,

Rezi & Joe

61st Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

60th Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance--Examining Nuclear Financial Structures -- Covered Bonds and Business Plans

Dear All,

We have arrived at another anniversary of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance. This 60th session will bring us to examine the new risk symmetries of the post-credit crisis world.  First up will be a reading of Marco D'ercole's LLM Corporate Finance Law Dissertation on "Covered Bonds in Europe." This paper won the Watheqaa Prize for the best dissertation in 2010.  It is a remarkable piece of sophisticated legal analysis of an important segment of the asset-backed markets. Bravo Marco!  

We will also begin to investigate and philosophize on a rather prevalent but critical document in the legal and financial system, which for some reason "social scientists" of the grande ecole type have completely ignored--i.e. the innocent seed of "capitalism" called the business plan.  Nobody theorizes about the philosophical foundations of "business plans" because, I suspect, social scientists are no good at writing them and because a serious business plan is not merely an ETHYMEME in the Aristotelian sense of a persuasive argument as a short-form syllogism but it is also a positive link to the great market cycles and the individuated whims of discretionary spend-investment of a ruthless global tribe sharing common valuation models and measurement.  In other words, the creation of business plans allows one to enter the vestibule of "capitalism" which is a highly accelerated and dangerous field of material creativity.  Another way to view business plans is that they are the artefacts of market nuclei--if they are successful, they create both the leisurely wealth ("otium cum dignitatis") and the pollutive systemic limits of "our world."  As Van Nordstrom said, "the essential engine of global pollution is man's inherent creativity in the Noos-sphere." The catalyst in the Noos-sphere is the business plan.

An hour on covered bonds and an hour on business plan to sharpen the mind.

At about 8’o clock we will head towards the Italian restaurant called Zizzi, at Wigmore Street where we have made a preliminary reservation for a big table. Pls RSPV if you would like to join us at this restaurant so that we make the necessary arrangements to accommodate everyone.

Regards, 

Rezi and Joe  

60th Session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance--Examining Nuclear Financial Structures -- Covered Bonds and Business Plans

59th session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

Dear All,

 

You are welcomed to join us for the 59^th session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, this Friday, 22 October 2010, from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster).

 

We will continue with a close reading of Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric (available at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.html). Last week, we asked how could Aristotle believe that forensic arguments are such that the "true and approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty"? Here we will link our investigation to the indeterminability of the law (Dr. Laura Niada's favourite transform) which in turn shall be aligned to Knopf's convergent, definitely divergent and indefinitely divergent infinities.  Our goal is to understand the use of the potential infinitudes (the truth) behind Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric.  More shall be said about Aristotle's long lost invention, the "enthymeme" and the schema of unconsciously powerful arguments.

These types of rhetoric arguments find their way in the current discourse, (e.g. yesterday’s New York Times opinion by Judith Lichtenberg “Is Pure Altruism Possible?” accessible at http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/is-pure-altruism-possible/?ref=opinion).

At about 8 o’clock, depending on whether we feel for local, mediterranean, oriental or other exotic food we will explore the area for a nice place to enjoy each other’s company.

 

Regards,

Rezi and Joe

59th session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

58th Session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

Dear All,

We would like to invite you for another engaging session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, this Friday, 15 October 2010, from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster).

 

We will read Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric (available at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.html) and consider the art of persuasion from a hypno-unconscious communication system perspective. Consider why is it that certain individuals are able to control situations with their voice, their posture and gestures.  Aristotle's genius was to establish whole fields of knowledge.  Rhetoric is a technical art, skill, useful and dangerous in the wrong hands.  In this work, Aristotle publishes a scientific account of rhetoric with little warning of its potential for abuse.

 The Art of Rhetoric was a required element in the classical tradition for over 2,300 years. It fell out of the compulsory curriculum in England in the early 20th century.  That was a mistake.  If you read Aristotle, you will get smarter and maybe even wiser.

Thereafter, at 8 o’clock we will head towards Vapiano (19-21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB) where we can test our skills of rhetoric into finding a good table and have a nice Friday evening.

Regards,

Rezi and Joe 

58th Session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

57th Session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance Updated

Dear All,

We are happy to announce that the fifty-seventh session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance will be held at the Latimer Conference Centre (for directions, see http://www.devere.co.uk/our-locations/latimer-place), with Joe leading a discussion from 6 to 7pm on "The Philosophical Foundations of Bounty-Hunting under the Dodd-Frank Act" followed by a dinner from 7 to 8pm.  In attendance will be about thirty candidates of the LLM Corporate Finance Law and two PhDs candidates.  You are welcome to attend the lecture and please RSVP to Rezi at rezartavukatana@gmail.com for the dinner, which for guests will be a nominal charge of £15.  Please also note that there is an alumni networking lunch on Oct 9th at 1 to 2:30pm where former LLM students now working in banking and finance will join us.

The topic of discussion will be a continuation of Hohfeldian 'analytical jurisprudence' and Category Theory (see Conceptual Mathematics by Lawvere and Schanuel, 2009, 2ed) with application of such theories to the Whistleblower Incentives and Protection provisions (mainly sections 748 and 921-924) of the US Dodd-Frank Act 2010, also known as the "Bounty Hunting" provisions. You can access the US Dodd-Frank Act text by clicking here http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h4173enr.txt.pdf.

We will investigate the structural features of bounty-hunting in regulatory gaming space in terms of the isomorphism of time, space, greed and fear. We will also ask whether the fundamental psychological unit of risk is non-invertible (and thus, implying an invariance) across a universal regulatory space amongst gaming agents pro se. This move in the development of theory is in response to James Waters' query in the 56th session as to whether Category Theory in social science and specifically, in its applications to financial economic phenomena could be improved with the addition of "combinatorics" and "numerics". Joe's initial response in the last session was to agree with Waters' suggestion that it was in "the combination of categories" that we can see the worth of category theory in terms of practical applications of the predictive sort to legal and financial phenomena. But this practical move would merely be an implementation of a much more fundamental and general position which still needs proof and justification. The prime motivation of Category Theory as applied to law and finance generally is to hunt down structures which are not simply analogous but literally in a rigorous sense, fundamentally the same across specialist discourses.  Our hunt is Parmenidean in the sense of recovering by force of simple structures arguments in favour of the One. In the simplest terms, we wish to find the structures of law and finance, since neither discourse is equipped or motivated to do this job for us, and our suspicion is that bounty-hunting not only offers radical rewards to particular whistleblowers but that it establishes a market nucleus that has the same structural properties that make investment banking so successful.

This fifty-seventh session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance is the capstone of the introductory set of lectures for the LLM Corporate Finance Law programme, and the beginning of the Corporate Finance Law Executive Weekend which will include 18 hours of intensive instruction led by Professor Mark Watson-Gandy, module leader of Legal Aspects of Corporate Finance,  Florin Coseraru, Director of Barclays Capital & Fellow and Module Leader of Investment Banking, Dr. Dmitry Gololobov, Fellow of Corporate Criminal Law & Module Leader of Money Laundering and Corporate Fraud, Viktoria Baklanova, PhD Candidate in Law and Senior Director of Fitch, New York.

If you can't make it to the Friday session, you are most welcome to join us for the networking lunch on Saturday.

See you there!

Rezi and Joe

57th Session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance Updated

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 56th Weekly Meeting

Dear all

We are keen and delighted to announce that the 56th session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance will take place on Friday 1 October 2010, from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster).

To get us back in the mood of philosophizing about the nature of laws we will read something classical (Plato's Laws or Aristotle's Rhetoric) and develop quite independently what might be called "A Hierarchy of Algebras for Legal Analysis". Joe will set out how Hohfeld's schema of legal relations, i.e., jural opposites and jural correlatives of rights, privileges, power and immunity, can be more simply understood in terms of Category Theory.

Category Theory, born about 60 years ago is now firmly embedded in the way we think about modern algebras – it is an extremely superficial theory that can be applied to practically anything –computing networks, quarks, boxing, dish stacking menus, flights of birds, and now, hopefully, legal theory and applications.

Hohfeld in the early part of the 20th century purported to have established an "analytical jurisprudence" that could be used to unravel the mysteries of any legal problem by showing how genuinely complex any legal relation is in terms of jural opposites and correlatives. This schema has always been quite difficult to apply, but with a bit of practice, can be used to resolve many so-called problems in the interpretation of laws – or, in the so-called "practice of law".

Joe will propose to simplify Hohfeld's "field equations" into a much more compact framework, making use of monoids and the articles of faith of Category Theory. The hypothesis is that if we can show how Hohfeld's legal relations are a category, then wherever Hohfeld's analysis applies, we also have a category. Thus, this sort of legal analysis would get everything else that Category Theory has to offer for free! Further, we would have a precise way of speaking about the structure of laws as fundamental conceptions of mathematics. This sounds like a conceptual breakthrough... At this level of abstraction, fundamental conceptions of law (which is the very title and aim of Hohfeld's work) are equivalent to fundamental conceptions of mathematics – which is the title to high school level text on Category Theory. How weird and wonderful if the implied isomorphism is actually the case!

We shall consequently test the application of Category Theory to our traditional banqueting session at Vapiano (19-21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB), from 8pm onwards.

See you on Friday!
Joe, Rezarte and Laura

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 56th Weekly Meeting

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 55th Weekly Meeting

Dear all

Joe is back for the 55th session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, on Friday 18 June 2010, from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster).

Joe will talk about Craig Callender’s article “Is Time an Illusion” published in the June 2010 issue of the Scientific American (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-time-an-illusion), and relate the distinction Callender makes between timelike causality and spacelike acausality to various concepts of law and finance. Joe will go over the essentials of special relativity, and how the so-called progress in modern scientific physical theory has been a sequence of incrementally outsourcing the various attributes of “time”. Timelike causal and spacelike acausal properties abound in jurisprudence and finance.

We will then begin to read the Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor (http://www.online-literature.com/dostoevsky/2884/) , which as one of Joe’s friends and long-term editor of the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto says, is “only the most important book in Western civilization”.

Timelike causality will have us leaving at 8pm, acausally, probably, to Vapiano (19-21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB).

See you on Friday!
Joe and Laura

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 55th Weekly Meeting

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 54th Weekly Meeting

Dear all

At the 54th session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance on Friday 28 May 2010, from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster), Ms Rezarte Vukatana, PhD student at the University of Westminster, will give a presentation on “Intermediated Securities”.

The concept of “intermediated securities” is as old as that of ‘securities’ and ‘intermediaries’, yet it is still in pursuit of its own identity. Those who attended the 52nd session of the PFLF may recall that Mr Andrea Calvi in his lecture on “Rome I and II Regulation: the Impact of Recent Developments in Conflict of Laws (in Contract and Tort) over Financial Intermediation” discussed the problems of conflict of law in the financial intermediation arena. Rezarte looks at the same area, but from the perspective of the substantial nature of securities once they have entered the financial intermediation circuit.

During her presentation, Rezarte will briefly describe how the metamorphosis of the securities from tangible into intangible asset has transformed the markets into this complex, inflated, uncontrollable, ‘necessary evil’ creature that is controlling and defining our financial expectations. She will unveil before us both a macro and micro view of the securities in the hands of the intermediaries followed by a discussion of the current legal reforms on this subject matter. Finally Rezarte will formulate critical questions as to the effectiveness of the fragmented approaches of the legislators worldwide towards the global phenomenon of the intermediated securities system.

Without further intermediation, at 8.00pm we will head to Vapiano (19-21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB).

Lastly, I grab the occasion to start advertising the 2010 Westminster Graduate Conference on “Law and Politics: Democracy, Human Rights and Power” which will take place on Friday 11 June from 9.00am to 8.00pm in room 3.58, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster). Please find all details at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=122493041115411 . Attendance is free but you may reserve a seat by emailing Samantha King S.King5@westminster.ac.uk. For more information please email Laura at l.niada@my.westminster.ac.uk

See you on Friday!
Laura

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 54th Weekly Meeting

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 53rd Weekly Meeting

Dear all

At the 53rd session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance on Friday 21 May 2010, from 6.00 to 8.80pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster) we will be glad to host Ardeshir Atai, PhD candidate in International Investment Law at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London, who will kindly present his research on “Islamic Financial Investment: Reconciling Theory and Reality”.

Ardeshir will firstly provide an overview of the Islamic finance tools. Islamic finance has been presented as an alternative to Western intangible, crumbling capitalism. The main idea behind devising Islamic financial instruments is the promotion of social responsibility and economic justice as mandated by the Divine Law. Islamic investment is based on the principle of partnership and profit and risk sharing (PRS). It forbids Riba (interest) and Gharar (uncertainty) and requires the investment to be physical and asset-based. The main Islamic instruments are Musharaka, Murabah, Mudarabah, Istisna, Salam, Sukuk, Ijarah.

Ardi’s talk subsequently addresses the following captivating question: why do Sharia-compliant investments appeal more to investors than conventional banking which is perceived as economically efficient when in reality they incur extra costs to meet their formal requirements?

After the seminar tradition shall take us to Vapiano (19-21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB), from 8.00pm onwards.

See you on Friday!
Joe and Laura

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 53rd Weekly Meeting

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 52nd Weekly Meeting

Dear all

At the 52nd session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance on Friday 14 May 2010, from 6.00 to 7.30pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster), Mr Andrea Calvi will give a lecture on “Rome I and II Regulations: the Impact of Recent Developments in Conflict of Laws (in Contract and Tort) over Financial Intermediation”

Mr Calvi is a partner of Loiacono e Associati, and a leading expert in complex financial litigation in Italy. His talk will discuss the ‘European international private law revolution’ taking us through the EU regulatory framework created by the EC Treaty, Rome I and Rome II Regulations on the law applicable to contractual and non-contractual obligations. Mr Calvi will argue that the EU institutions, by regulating the conflicts of laws, have followed Constantine’s strategy when he institutionalized Christianity within the Roman Empire: “if you cannot fight an enemy, make him your friend”.

Mr Calvi consequently identifies the potential and limits of the EU regulation and analyses in particular the case of financial intermediation. His lecture will deal with questions such as: against a derivative contract governed by English law: (i) What if a Swedish municipality opposes ex post its legal incapacity under its own administrative law to execute derivative transactions? (ii) What if an Italian middle-size bank claims a breach of Continental European bona fide before an English Court that is familiar with caveat emptor? (iii) What if that contract would be eligible to claw back under the law governing the insolvency proceeding, but not under its governing law?

All roads, after the seminar, lead to Vapiano (19-21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB) for Italian-style refreshments.

Furthermore, we would like to invite you to join the Linkedin group “Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance”. You can access the group at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?homeNewMember=&gid=3034190&trk=eml-grp-sub (for any enquiry please email Laura Niada at l.niada@my.westminster.ac.uk)

See you on Friday!
Joe and Laura

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 52nd Weekly Meeting

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 51st Weekly Meeting

Dear all

The 51st meeting of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance on Friday 7 May 2010, from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster) will deal with globalisation and exceptionality in the financial regulation.

It is obvious that Goldman is losing the public relations war and that Blankfein should lose his job as a matter of answering the public call for blood. When the Financial Reform Bill passes with the Volcher rule, GS and the other Wall St investment banks will continue in much stronger fashion. The regulatory cut off line of $50bn with the FDIC managing banks below and the Fed Reserve managing those above means that big banks (not taxpayers!) will be "protected" by a tax which is triflingly meaningless in comparison to the size of trading. The regulators have forgotten the first lesson of Plato's Laws – absolute population size matters.

When we study law without philosophy we are undertaking a service for the dark discipline of destroying the many-leaves of inner-life. Beware of the media mandating the categories of our subjectivities! On Friday, the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance suggest two options for enlightening the legal debates on financial regulation.

We can start reading neo-Marxists like Hardt and Negri (2000, Empire, Harvard University Press. Available at http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/negri/) to appreciate the "meanings" of global regulations as instruments of controlling the inner subjectivities of biopolitics. Also, systemic risk from a neo-global Empire perspective is enforced by the exceptionality of regulations – that is, in regulations being justified in the name of these so-called "emergency situations" whose magnitude and probability are mediagenically amplified by social network gossip. We cannot extract ourselves from this chat once we get in. Systems communication a la Luhmann is that the power projected through the media organises, re-orders, and sets out risk symmetries that trap us all. The Greek tragedy and the Goldman farce re-order our thoughts to bow to the communicative power of Empire. We should shelter ourselves because our outer material world could be a lot better as our inner world becomes more narrowly sliced and diced by digital communication systems.

Alternatively, we can get a great introduction to the concept of globalization by beginning reading Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor (http://www.online-literature.com/dostoevsky/2884/)

Either way, we shall gather at Vapiano (19-21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB) from 8pm onwards.

See you on Friday!
Joe and Laura

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 51st Weekly Meeting