73rd Session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

Dear all,

For the 73rd Session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, we shall take respite from the awful world of wars-for-oil of Libya, the potential genocide of The Exploding Plutonium Corporation (TEPCO), the bankster-paid political announcement of Obama to run for a second term as President, and the ignoble lies of the US Fed which is paying 83% of the US debt, thereby, increasing systemic risk to an insane level. In this world where authoritarian cover ups and appeals to calm are used to paper over the cracks of hazardous realities, it is time that we re-discover THE WRATH of Achilles, in Homer’s immortal Iliad. It may help us wake up to the veiled wars around us.

Joe’s favourite modern translation into relatively modern English is Richard Lattimore’s (1951). The interlineal (Greek – English) translation using Lattimore’s translation can be found here: http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/homer/html/application.html

We will read Homer’s Iliad this Friday in the usual location, room 516 at the Regent Street campus of the University of Westminster, from 6 to 8pm.

Afterwards, we shall peacefully enjoy the wonderful cuisine of the Persian restaurant Galleria at 17 New Cavendish St, Marylebone, W1G 9, about £15 if you can resist to wine… “Inflaming wine, pernicious to mankind, Unnerves the limbs, and dulls the noble mind.” (The Iliad, Book 6).

Best wishes!
Joe & Laura

73rd Session of the 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)

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

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 - 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

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 50th Weekly Meeting

Dear all

To mark the 50th session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, to be held on Friday 23 April 2010, from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster), we will tackle with the uncanny theme: "Fraud in The Heart of Finance and Religion"

We will focus on a recent filing by the US Securities Exchange Commission against Goldman Sachs and a 28 year vice-president named Fabrice Tourre for securities fraud.

Although we never ask participants to prepare for class, you may be curious to read the complaint: http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2010/comp21489.pdf
We also recommend Kevin M. LaCroix blog: http://www.dandodiary.com/2010/04/articles/subprime-litigation/ok-so-the-sec-sued-goldman-sachs-now-what/
Good legal analysis can be found at: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/goldman-fraud-case-holds-risks-for-both-sides/

We will attempt to read the complaint together and comprehend a bit of US securities law. If we have time or depending on the inclination of the group, we shall then turn to the Grand Inquisitor, the 26-page classic within the Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. You can find an extract at http://www.online-literature.com/dostoevsky/2884/

The most zealous and frequent attendees to the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance may be surprised to see how group theory applies to "Fraud in The Heart of Finance and Religion": homomorphism, epimorphism, monomorphism and isomorphism will be defined and used for purposes of abstracting comparisons. (It's all in the mapping of Mx.) In a system of law, why is truth isomorphic to fraud? Only a group theory can bring them together rigorously without sounding sanctimoniously Kantian. Also, we will again emphasize the perception of seeing "devils and and angels" simultaneously everywhere for any given decision at a given time.

We shall celebrate our 50th 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 - 50th Weekly Meeting

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 49th Weekly Meeting - CHANGE OF TOPIC

Dear all

We learn that unfortunately Mr Axenov will not be able to give his talk as he could not obtain the visa. While hoping that he will visit us in the near future we revert to Descartes.

At the 49th session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance on Friday 16 April 2010, from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster), we will read further from the Discourse on Method (http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/descartes/descartes1.htm ) with Joe’s insight: “The Cogito is Entirely Impersonal”.

Descartes' meta-method outside inventing analytical geometry is to provide us with a via negativa. We eliminate the implausible, the impossible, and the uncertain, and look for that which we cannot deny. We can deny our schooling, our teachers, books, cultures, chat and cant but this effort of elimination cannot itself be denied. The cogito ergo sum ("I think therefore I am") is not a positive statement about the being (Dasein) but a reflection on the noninvertibility of the pattern of thought, which cannot itself be denied. It is a statement of three compact assertions: (1) the personal act of thinking, (2) the assertion of personal being, and (3) the assertion of the linkage between the act of thinking and the sense of personal being. This holy trinity of assertions is unmeaningful to those who have not themselves undertaken the process of elimination--to strip naked and pay back all that is borrowed. What we have left after the process, after the method, is the austere design. Is this the trivial equivalence--the obvious given duality of mind and body--or is this a version of the surprising "many is one" argument? That the List of infinite particular thoughts are equivalent to one Property of existence? As we have said before such rationalistic analytical assertions are better read as hypotheticals of what we could be. The cogito is not about you in the particular--it is about what cannot be denied about you without denying the existence in the particular that is you.

At 8pm we – bodies, minds, many in one, whatever you think – will aim to Vapiano (19-21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB)

See you on Friday!
Joe and Laura

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 49th Weekly Meeting - CHANGE OF TOPIC

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 49th Weekly Meeting

Dear all

The 49th session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, on Friday 16 April 2010, from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster) will receive a guest from New York.

Igor Axenov will present the talk “Wall Street?” discussing the financial system and the economy one year after the trough. Mr Axenov is a Market Risk Manager at Barclays Capital, NY, overseeing CDOs – probably one of the most important financial derivatives in the last 20 years and one of the main culprits in the credit crash.

You are all warmly invited to the event and to share food and drinks 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 - 49th Weekly Meeting

Proceedings from the 48th meeting (9 April) of the Philiosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

Dear all

Follow the proceedings from Friday 9 April meeting of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance: "Prescribing a Goal for Physical Science”.

1. At the 48th session of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, we continued to read out loud and comment on Descartes' Discourse on Method.

2. The meetings are a rare opportunity to read together outstanding texts and have a jolly about wherever they take us.

3. 12 people attended, of which 7 PhD candidates and 4 Masters students.

4. We discussed how Descartes' introduction to the Discourse on Method could be seen in terms of a strategic marketing matrix where the essential four propositions are: (1) "I = You" Identification; (2) "Believe me" Authoritative; (3) "Participate in my image" Iconic; and (4) "Let's explore together" Adventure.

5. We agreed Descartes is substantively definitely not Iconic, but a bit of (1), (4) and then (2).

6. We also reviewed a recent metaphysical argument of what must be the goal of physical sciences. We don't have a name for this argument and, provisionally, Joe dubs it the "Uniqueness Theorem".

7. The Uniqueness Theorem (informally) goes like this: (1) Everywhere we observe around us things (a,b) combine to form other unique things (ab); (2) if (1) is assumed true then there is nothing to prevent us from imagining this state of affairs all the way back to the very beginning of any and all things; (3) similarly, nothing prevents us from imagining the same state of affairs to the very end of things; (4) note that (1) to (3) can be translated to say that each and every thing that ever was, is and will be have unique identification (eg, imagine each thing having a "bar code"); and (5) since (4) is entirely metaphysical (that is, non-physical and hypothetical), the goal of physical science is to prove the physicality of (4).

8. Not only does the Uniqueness Theorem tell us what science "must do" it also helps us understand the nature of value and money in the broadest metaphysical sense.

9. For example, Picasso was once asked by an art dealer, "Do you ever worry about money?" Picasso then took the art dealer's serviette (napkin), signed it and handed it back to the man, saying, "Now, get some money."

10. Joe also thinks the Uniqueness Theorem has applications in human rights and the development of cooking, but these matters will come in other notes or through the good works of students practicing their culinary arts on this most willing experimental subject.

See you next Friday!
Best, Joe and Laura

Proceedings from the 48th meeting (9 April) of the Philiosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 46th Weekly Meeting

Dear All

At the 46th gathering of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, on Friday 26 March 2010, from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster) we will explore the concept of the groupoid and Descartes.

For those who hate vague thoughts, the groupoid allows for the specification and intra-convertibility of the singular general principle and the plural instantiation of things. The groupoid is the concept that sits between the generality of the Set and the symmetric specification of the Group, and provides us a way to think systematically without having to bother with every little detail. The groupoid is a form of strategic thinking par excellence. Even if you hate generalities, you might fall in love with the groupoid.

Joe will present a brief talk on "Risk as Non-Invertibility for 7 Year Olds" which is part of a project on "A Group Theory of Law: A Logico-Empirical Philosophical Investigation of Laws". He will introduce a cyclic-hierarchic conceptual structure and by analogy, pay homage to Plotinus, 2nd century neo-Platonist, who attempted to synthesize Platonic static ideals with the dynamic potentiality-actuality of Aristotle. We will review some concepts that help us to think (and calculate) symmetrically, i.e. groupoid, list of elements, property, binary operation, associative operation, identity, invertibility, subgroup, coset, simple group. These infantile concepts amazingly give us a way to "count" the symmetry of things and to speak precisely like aliens from physics departments in other universes – just kidding, of course. This abstraction should take us about half an hour.

The rest of the time we will read together and comment on passages of the greatest methodological work of the modern period: Descartes’ Discourse on Method (http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/descartes/descartes1.htm). Descartes' Discourse links algebra to geometry explicitly thereby linking two different functions of the brain together for the first time! Some neuro-physiologists theorize that the brain is a "futures simulator". This vision is not possible without Descartes Method and after the Method, we start to see answers to particular problems as specific pathways in coordinate systems.

If the Discourse gets too heavy, we will reflect in the "baker's oven" with Descartes incomparably beautiful and moving Meditations (http://www.wright.edu/cola/descartes/mede.html).

After so much fluffy abstract structure, we will need the sustenance of real food and drink at 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 - 46th Weekly Meeting

Proceedings from the 44th meeting (5 March) of the Philiosophical Foundaitons of Law and Finance

Dear all

Follow the proceedings from the 44th meeting of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance seminar:

1. In the first part of the class Joe introduced his groundbreaking work-in-progress on the application of Group Theory (GT) to law and finance.

2. Philosophy, the LOVE of wisdom, from ancient times has hunted the goose with truth, symmetria and beauty. (Plato's Philebus.) The model of truth for Plato came from the perfect forms of geometry which he tried very hard to apply to social issues. Understanding the 'perfect state' (The Republic) and 'God given laws' (The Laws) was built on tiny precise arguments--always hunting the elusive goose.

3. Modernly, since the early 19th century, symmetria have become Group Theory (GT). GT is the algebraic form of ALL geometric symmetries. That is, with GT you can calculate the quantity (measure the degree) of symmetry. This is a vast improvement over Plato's Euclidean machinery and the proof is in the pudding since GT now underpins most of physics, chemistry, biology and many of the arts, architecture, design, etc. But GT has not touched the theories of law at all. Not one article has been published which even tries to establish the link between GT and the law.

4. GT is extraordinarily simple. It starts with a definition of a group as a set (collection or system) of elements, where any two elements combined form another element of the group. This definition is sometimes called the Axiom of Closure, which can be written as {G, m}, G stands for the elements of the group and m stands for the binary operation. The concept of the group is further constrained by three other Axioms (Associativity, Identity and Vertibility [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_%28mathematics%29]) which act as conditions to the qualification of a group. So, for something (anything at all) to be a group, we need to find the appropriate elements and appropriate binary operator. This is what Joe is trying to do in his paper, "Group Theory of Law and Finance--Chasing the Goose".

5. Is all the effort worth the trouble? What is clear is that if GT can be applied to law then we would have a precise view of the entirety of laws, their "structure" would have objective meaning and instead of moanfully bleating about the "complexity" of laws (which many legal theorists do), we would have some means of calculating and predicting "its" (in the most general sense) and "their" (in the most particuliarized sense) order. So much could be imported from GT for free!

6. Hopefully the technology of GT may help us get beyond Platonic aporia.

7. In the second part of the class we continued reading Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Tremble”. This time we dived in chapter one, the Panegyric Upon Abraham. K. announces his intention to ‘recall’ the binding of Isaac by Abraham in order to uphold the memory of this profoundly religious episode which presents human despair and the consolation – and predicament – of faith.

8. One controversial interpretation of the text was that the torrential ode to faith is in fact parodistic. There is almost sarcasm in K’s pious declamation – in presenting devoted elegies the narrator is instead caught by doubts. “No, not one shall be forgotten who was great in the world. But each was great in his own way, and each in proportion to the greatness of that which he loved. For he who loved himself became great by himself, and he who loved other men became great by his selfless devotion, but he who loved God became greater than all… It is human to lament, human to weep with them that weep, but it is greater to believe, more blessed to contemplate the believer”. Really? The narrator is full of wonder for the appalling proof of faith demanded by God to Abraham. In the end the narrator, frenzied, seems to question its very questions and declares himself and his purpose belittled by the impenetrability of the very events he aimed at upholding: “Venerable Father Abraham! In marching home from Mount Moriah thou hadst no need of a panegyric which might console thee for thy loss; for thou didst gain all and didst retain Isaac… Thousands of years have run their course since those days, but thou hast need of no tardy lover to snatch the memorial of thee from the power of oblivion, for every language calls thee to remembrance”. It can be also recalled that in the prelude K. provides four alternative accounts of the binding of Isaac (and, for example, in tale no. 2 Abraham… “offered that and returned home. . . . From that time on Abraham became old, he could not forget that God had required this of him. Isaac throve as before, but Abraham’s eyes were darkened, and he knew joy no more”), or that he writes “Fear and Trembling” under pseudonym, or that the thesis was about Socrates’ irony, which he emulated throughout the same thesis…

8. Again, honour to our brave group this time starring Alex, Roman, Francisco, Cameron, Laura, Daniela, Angelina and Gavin.

9. Unfortunately, we can anticipate that Joe is travelling to Istanbul so there will be no class next Friday. The meetings will resume on Friday 19 March.

Kind regards, Joe and Laura

Proceedings from the 44th meeting (5 March) of the Philiosophical Foundaitons of Law and Finance

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 44th Weekly Meeting

Dear all

Joe has an astoundingly structured agenda for the 44th gathering of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, on Friday 5 March 2010, from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster):

1. One of the ambitions of First Series of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, Sessions 1 - 40, was to provide a sufficient treatment of the philosophical toolkit consisting of infinity, symmetry and uncertainty. We found that snippets of Plato's Laws, Timaeus, Apology, Republic, and Aristotle's Metaphysics and Rhetoric could be re-jigged according to the following distinctions: (1) divergent versus convergent infinities (Knopp); (2) bilateral, translational and rotational symmetries (Weyl) and (3) risk (Pascal). These then gave us an apparatus to examine the sacredly unsayable (such as "justice" and "truth")) found in the works of Plotinus, Nargarjuna, Blake, Rumi, etc and the meaning of faith translated in the discourse and processes of the global financial system--which is homomorphic (maybe) to Durkheim's vision (1905) of a global religion.
Whew!

2. In Series 2, the ambition is in the same general direction as in Series 1, but our methodology will be sharpened. Instead of using the naïve but beautiful visual symmetries (as if we knew them--sigh), we will look underneath the hood so to speak, at the assumptions that compose the language of symmetry--which is Group Theory.

3. Group Theory (GT) is the algebra (precise calculation) of symmetry. I'd say even more strongly like Descartes in the Discourse of Method relating linear algebra to the two dimensional plane, that Group Theory and Symmetry are the same. Thankfully and mercifully, there are only four GT Axioms: closure, associativity, identity and invertibility. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_theory]

4. By the way, mathematicians think of Group Theory as a form of philosophy rather than maths--it's that easy!

5. Following from Session 41, I will attempt to demonstrate how metrology (scales of knowledge--the nominal, interval, ordinal and rational) is a deep question inside the Axiom of Closure. We can see how the divide between social science and "hard" science occurs in there. For those who love graphics, our questioning turns on the meaning of the abstract symbolism of {G, •}. This notation will be explained.

6. Why such an investigation? Is it worth the trouble? Well, GT gives us a way of talking about the entirety of law and finance, allowing us to make better than best-guess predictions about their structure. That's the hope and promised miraculous snake-oil cure of GT!

7. In the first hour (6 to 7pm), I'll explain point 5 above by reading and commenting on parts of a paper I'm working on.

8. From 7 to 8pm, we will continue reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling.

9. Maybe we'll find an irrational relation between the two hours.

From 8.00pm onwards you can propose topics and jokes at Vapiano (19-21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB) where we reconvene for drinks and meal.

See you on Friday!

Best,
Joe and Laura

PS If you have problems in getting into the building please text or call me at 07910 305957 and I’ll try to help. Laura

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 44th Weekly Meeting

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 43rd Weekly Meeting

Dear all

At the 43rd gathering of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, on Friday 26 February 2010, from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster), we begin to talk about the concept of God, faith, sacrifice, death – all in relation to finance and law.

1. The most significant popular philosopher post-Kant is Kierkegaard. He is the most approachable for his passion and examination of the subcutaneous doubt that nicks our daily stream of consciousness.

2. Kierkegaard also fits the Heideggerian programme of reaching into the originary meanings – and in Joe’s opinion, he is much better than Heidegger at achieving a synthesis of Greek meaning and method applied to the modern period where questions of faith are translated into the expected sameness and certainty of global financial transactions. He captures the ultimate unconscious fear that what we do every day is on the brink of fatal collapse.

3. We will begin reading Fear and Trembling, see: http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=2068

As usual at 8.00pm we will move to Vapiano (19-21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB) seeking relief from such mystifying meditations.

See you on Friday!

Best,

Joe and Laura

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 43rd Weekly Meeting

19 February PFLF: Proceedings

Dear all,

Follow the proceedings from the 42nd meeting of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance seminar, on Being and Finance

1) Honour to our group of philosophers: Roman, Alexey, Galo, Fiona, Rezarte, Omar, Slim, Daniela, Zhu, Marco, Francisco, and Laura. Impressively proactive to the loaded philosophical agenda of this Friday.

2) Before introducing us to Heidegger, Joe presented the metrology of knowledge. Metrology identifies a scale of knowledge. Simplifying, at the ‘nominal scale’, knowing is naming; at the ‘interval scale’ knowing is distinguishing entities, incorporating the nominal with greater and less than relations; at the ‘ordinal scale’ knowing incorporating both the nominal and interval scale with the addition of ‘order’ or ‘sequence’; at the ‘ratio-nal’ or ‘ratio-scale’ knowing is based on a perfect description of a real fact, such as, absolute zero being the absolute fact that underpins all temperature. In typical Joe’s style, the theme of the prologue shall re-emerge in all its meaning later on…

3) We consequently turned to a close reading of Martin Heidegger’s “Introduction to Metaphysics”. Heidegger’s metaphysics centre a big haunting idea: “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?”. Heidegger is philosophically sublime in posing his question: “What is put into question comes into relation with a ground. But because we are questioning, it remains an open question whether the ground is truly grounding, foundation-effecting, originary ground; whether the ground refuses to provide a foundation, and so is an abyss; or whether the ground is neither one nor the other, but merely offers the perhaps necessary illusion of a foundation and is thus an unground”.

4) But Heidegger’s affection for Being is not abstract. His yearning is – I’d say – moralist, aesthetic and political: “This Europe, in its unholy blindness always on the point of cutting its own throat This Europe, in its unholy blindness always on the point of cutting its own throat, lies today in the great pincers between Russia on the one side and America on the other. Russia and America, seen metaphysically, are both the same: the same hopeless frenzy of unchained technology and of the rootless organization of the average man. When the farthest corner of the globe has been conquered technologically and can be exploited economically; when any incident you like, at any time you like, becomes as fast as you like; when you can simultaneously ‘experience’ an assassination attempt against a king in France and a symphony concert in Tokyo; when time is nothing but rapidity, instantaneity and simultaneity, and time as history has vanished from all Dasein [Being] of all people; when a boxer counts as the great man of a people; when the tallies of millions at mass meetings are a triumph, yes then, there still looms like a spectre over all this uproar the question: what for – where to – and what then?''. Is the previous passage, ceteris paribus, not familiar to you perchance? Fiona and Daniela read in it the very contemporary critique from globalisation and media studies…

5) Thus Heidegger seems to oppose Nietzsche’s critique to the ‘decadent’ as too decadent itself. According to Nietzsche, the highest concepts such as Being are “the final wisp of evaporating reality”. Heidegger instead investigates whether “Is ‘Being’ a mere word and its meaning vapour, or is it the spiritual fate of the West”? Thence he wishes to “repeat and retrieve the inception of our historical-spiritual Dasein”… “Introduction to Metaphysics” is based on lectures delivered in Freiburg in 1935. We all know where the fetish for history and identity led Germany in the 1930s and 1940s…

6) What has it all to do with finance? Is finance Being? Moving from ontology to epistemology (and consequently back from epistemology to ontology…): What can you know about finance? Recalling the metrology scale of knowledge, can you name ‘finance’ (nominal scale)? Perhaps it depends on what do you mean with finance, which in fact has multiple manifestations. So is there such a thing as finance? Can you classify finance and its concepts (interval scale)? Can you quantify finance (ordinal scale)? This is the state in which most of the advanced financial models are today – it’s about the quants’ job namely… And finally, can you know with absolute precision about finance (rational scale)? There is no rational scale in finance – there are no apparent invariances – and the technical patches are very badly applied. For example, the use of copulas for asset backed securities pre-credit crisis contributed to their disastrous mis-valuation. If you knew finance at the rational scale, as Joe quipped, you would make a trillion, probably not sit in the classroom or if you did you’d keep quiet and be sympathetic.

7) Thus Joe has drawn the following autograph conclusion: “The ultimate tension being individual (trivial) daseins and the great Dasein is the movement between the extremes of Nominalism (nominal--mere naming prattle scale) and the perfect convergence of mind-thought-word-reality in the actions-summa-intentions-of-all-that-is. Because of this universalistic generality, those not party to Philosophy tend to over-estimate its ability to do. Heiddegger, rather, sees genuine philosophy as recessive, moody-broody, in the background, profoundly stirring up the potential of Dasein across the centuries. Scholars beware that their work is less than superficial--it does not even meet the criteria of Nietzche's ‘wisps evaporating into reality’ because scholarship, unfortunately, does not aim at Dasein, of the absolute facticity, of that which imbues our thoughts, but merely catalogues and models dead objects. Philosophy supports the entire movement of Dasein through historicity, through facticity, skimming the appearances of every dimension, and then diving by pure selection to the originary meanings--disappearing below the waves of the day.”

8) More on Heidegger, Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche and others to come – the group has tested with success, I believe, the weaning from the classic philosophers encountered in the first 40-classes cycle of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance

9) A serious thank to Joe for taking us throughout the metaphysics of finance – Joe is talent…

See you next Friday!

Best, Laura

19 February PFLF: Proceedings

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance--42nd Meeting

Dear all,

For the 42nd gathering of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, on Friday 19 February 2010, from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 5.16, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster), I pass on you a firsthand note by Joe…

1. For the Second Series of Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance (Sessions 41 to 80), we began on February 12th, 2010, with session 41 with a lecture, presentation and short article by Viktoria Baklanova, PhD candidate and senior director of Fitch, New York, who uncovered some deep secrets about the most ordinary legal and financial certainty in the global financial system, i.e. the innocuous and ordinary money market fund. MMFs are paradoxical for their certainty of payment and their concentration of power. For those who
paid attention, the gift came from an understanding of phusis (the Greek) of that which grows and makes grow--from an initial fund of $300,000 in 1972 to the monster $5.8 trillion of 2008. Without an understanding of MMFs, we understand nothing of the credit crisis of 2006-08, nor do we understand how should financial regulations be formed so that you and I can enjoy the immediacy of absolute cash from our ATMs.

2. In many ways, what we experience in finance is what Heiddegger may have called the Dasein (being) of our lives. Finance, money and how the burden of their meanings threaten and compel us in our extraordinary meditations of the extraordinary events is philosophy in its intimate essence.

3. Therefore, to kick off the fireworks and the long-song of the second series of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance, we will read Heiddegger's Introduction to Metaphysics translated by G Fried and Polt.

4. I will bring a few copies to the Friday session as gifts to those who promise to read it.

Let us be, then, at Vapiano (19-21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB) at 8.00pm for meal and drinks.

See you on Friday!

Laura

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance--42nd Meeting

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 41st Weekly Meeting

NOTE: CHANGE OF VENUE, last update 10 February

Dear all

We are well in 2010 and it is high time to recommence gathering for the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance. The next 40-lecture cycle – yes, we are turning to the 41st – will start on Friday 12 February and will be inaugurated by Viktoria Baklanova presenting a paper on

“European Money Market Funds: ‘Definition in the Heart of Darkness’”

Viktoria is a PhD Candidate at the University of Westminster, School of Law and Senior Director at Fitch Ratings, New York.

The meeting will take place from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 358, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster). We will adjourn at Vapiano (19-21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB) at 8.00pm for meal and drinks.

I look forward to seeing you in one week!

Warm regards,
Laura

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 41st Weekly Meeting