Polarization is a topic of intense interest among social scientists, but there is significant disagreement regarding the character of the phenomenon and little understanding of underlying mechanics. A first problem, we argue, is that polarization appears in the literature as not one concept but many. In the first part of the article, we distinguish nine phenomena that may be considered polarization, with suggestions of appropriate measures for each. In the second part of the article, we apply this analysis to evaluate (...) the types of polarization generated by the three major families of computational models proposing specific mechanisms of opinion polarization. (shrink)

Ontological pluralism holds that there are different ways of being. Truth pluralism holds that there are different ways of being true. Both views have received growing attention in recent literature, but so far there has been very little discussion of the connections between the views. The authors suggest that motivations typically given for truth pluralism have analogue motivations for ontological pluralism; they argue that while neither view entails the other, those who hold one view and wish to hold the other (...) will find natural routes by which to do so. The authors additionally identify some disanalogies between the views, by considering whether certain “mixed” problems commonly pressed against truth pluralism have analogues for ontological pluralism. (shrink)

Proponents of political liberalism standardly assume that the citizens of an ideal liberal society would be overwhelmingly reasonable. I argue that this assumption violates political liberalism's own constraints of realism—constraints that are necessary to frame the central problem that political liberalism aims to solve, that is, the problem of reasonable pluralism. To be consistent with these constraints, political liberalism must recognize that, as with reasonable pluralism, widespread support for unreasonable moral and political views is an inevitable feature of any liberal (...) society. I call this the fact of unreasonable pluralism. This fact threatens Rawlsian political liberalism's account of stability because an overlapping consensus cannot stably order a society pervaded by unreasonable views. My argument also raises questions about the coherence of Rawls's conception of ideal theory. (shrink)

The doxastic zoo contains many animals: belief, acceptance, belief in, belief that, certainty, conjecture, guess, conviction, denial, disbelief in, disbelief that, judgment, commitment, etc. It also contains belief’s “strange bedfellows”: credences, partial beliefs, tacit beliefs, subdoxastic states, creedal feelings, feelings of knowing, in-between believings, pathological beliefs, phobias, aliefs, delusions, biases, besires. How to order the zoo? I propose to distinguish doxastic attitudes from non-doxastic epistemic attitudes. The criterion is the existence of correctness conditions. Most bedfellows do not have such normative (...) conditions. So they should not be allowed in the Doxastic Club. (shrink)

Replication or even modelling of consciousness in machines requires some clarifications and refinements of our concept of consciousness. Design of, construction of, and interaction with artificial systems can itself assist in this conceptual development. We start with the tentative hypothesis that although the word “consciousness” has no well-defined meaning, it is used to refer to aspects of human and animal informationprocessing. We then argue that we can enhance our understanding of what these aspects might be by designing and building virtual-machine (...) architectures capturing various features of consciousness. This activity may in turn nurture the development of our concepts of consciousness, showing how an analysis based on information-processing virtual machines answers old philosophical puzzles as well enriching empirical theories. This process of developing and testing ideas by developing and testing designs leads to gradual refinement of many of our pre-theoretical concepts of mind, showing how they can be construed as implicitly “architecture-based” concepts. Understanding how humanlike robots with appropriate architectures are likely to feel puzzled about qualia may help us resolve those puzzles. The concept of “qualia” turns out to be an “architecture-based” concept, while individual qualia concepts are “architecture-driven”. (shrink)

Research on brain or cognitive/affective processes, culture, social interaction, and structural analysis are overlapping but often independent ways humans have attempted to understand the origins of their evolution, historical, and contemporary development. Each level seeks to employ its own theoretical concepts and methods for depicting human nature and categorizing objects and events in the world, and often relies on different sources of evidence to support theoretical claims. Each level makes reference to different temporal bandwidths (milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, (...) years, decades, and centuries) and focuses on different spatio-temporal activities and controlled and non-controlled stimulus conditions. Biological mechanisms and environmental pressures for survival simultaneously created a gradual intersection and enhancement of cognitive/affective skills, cultural practices, and changes in collaborative social interaction and communicative skills. The evolution of a given level of analysis is assumed to have been incremental and overlapping. These innovative and independent ways humans have learned to characterize their brain or cognitive/affective and social/economic/political life often depend on unexamined, representational re-descriptions or cognitive/affective and socio-cultural devices and forms of communication that facilitate the depiction of practices and beliefs we attribute to respondents or subjects and research colleagues. (shrink)

We present a new axiomatization of classical mereology in which the three components of the theory—ordering, composition, and decomposition prin-ciples—are neatly separated. The equivalence of our axiom system with other, more familiar systems is established by purely deductive methods, along with additional results on the relative strengths of the composition and decomposition axioms of each theory.

Many of the most popular genres of narrative art are designed to elicit negative emotions: emotions that are experienced as painful or involving some degree of pain, which we generally avoid in our daily lives. Melodramas make us cry. Tragedies bring forth pity and fear. Conspiratorial thrillers arouse feelings of hopelessness and dread, and devotional religious art can make the believer weep in sorrow. Not only do audiences know what these artworks are supposed to do; they seek them out in (...) pursuit of prima facie painful reactions.Traditionally, the question of why people seek out such experiences of painful art has been presented as the paradox of tragedy. Most solutions to the paradox of tragedy assume that the reason we seek out tragedies, horror films, melodramas, and the like is because they afford pleasureful experiences. From there, theorists attempt to account for the source of this pleasure, a pleasure assumed to be had from representations of events from which we do not derive pleasure in real life. I argue that this assumption is suspect: the motive for seeking out devotional religious art, melodrama, tragedy, and some horror is not clearly to find pleasure. (shrink)

Recent theorists suggest that our capacity to respond affectively to fictions depends on our ability to engage in simulation: either simulating a character in the fiction, or simulating someone reading or watching the fiction as though it were fact. We argue that such accounts are quite successful at accounting for many of the basic explananda of our affective engagements in fiction. Nonetheless, we argue further that simulationist accounts ultimately fail, for simulation involves an ineliminably ego-centred element that is atypical of (...) our experience of fiction. We then draw on recent work in philosophical psychology to articulate a more psychologically plausible account of our emotional engagement with fiction. (shrink)

Perichoresis, or “mutual indwelling,” is a crucial concept in Trinitarian theology. But the philosophical underpinnings of the concept are puzzling. According to ordinary conceptions of “indwelling” or “being in,” it is incoherent to think that two entities could be in each other. In this paper, I propose a mereological way of understanding “being in,” by analogy with standard examples in contemporary metaphysics. I argue that this proposal does not conflict with the doctrine of divine simplicity, but instead affirms it. I (...) conclude by discussing how mutual indwelling relates to the concepts of unity and identity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article distinguishes nine senses of polarization and provides formal measures for each one to refine the methodology used to describe polarization in distributions of attitudes. Each distinct concept is explained through a definition, formal measures, examples, and references. We then apply these measures to GSS data regarding political views, opinions on abortion, and religiosity—topics described as revealing social polarization. Previous breakdowns of polarization include domain-specific assumptions and focus on a subset of the distribution’s features. This has conflated multiple, (...) independent features of attitude distributions. The current work aims to extract the distinct senses of polarization and demonstrate that by becoming clearer on these distinctions we can better focus our efforts on substantive issues in social phenomena. (shrink)

Constitutivist accounts of self-knowledge argue that a noncontingent, conceptual relation holds between our first-order mental states and our introspective awareness of them. I explicate a constitutivist account of our knowledge of our own beliefs and defend it against criticisms recently raised by Christopher Peacocke. According to Peacocke, constitutivism says that our second-order introspective beliefs are groundless. I show that Peacocke’s arguments apply to reliabilism not to constitutivism per se, and that by adopting a functionalist account of direct accessibility a constitutivist (...) can avoid reliabilism. I then argue that the resulting view is preferable to Peacocke’s own account of self-knowledge. (shrink)

In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant attempts to argue a priori from the indefinite divisibility of space to the indefinite metaphysical divisibility of matter. This is one type of argument from the continuity of space—purportedly established by Euclidean geometry—to the continuity of matter. I compare Kant's argument to parallel reasoning in Du Châtelet, whose work he knew. Both philosophers appeal to idealism about matter in their reasoning, yet also face difficulties in explaining why continuity, though not some other (...) properties from geometry, applies to matter. Both also risk inconsistency in adopting potentialist accounts of material parts, while also committing to realism about infinitesimals. An important difference between them is that Du Châtelet deploys at least three definitions of continuity; only one of these, amounting to indefinite divisibility, is shared with Kant. (shrink)

There is a tension in Emilie Du Châtelet’s thought on mathematics. The objects of mathematics are ideal or fictional entities; nevertheless, mathematics is presented as indispensable for an account of the physical world. After outlining Du Châtelet’s position, and showing how she departs from Christian Wolff’s pessimism about Newtonian mathematical physics, I show that the tension in her position is only apparent. Du Châtelet has a worked-out defense of the explanatory and epistemic need for mathematical objects, consistent with their metaphysical (...) nonfundamentality. I conclude by sketching how Du Châtelet’s conception of mathematical indispensability differs interestingly from many contemporary approaches. (shrink)

Midrash Genesis Rabbah takes aim at a variety of ideological adversaries, but the most subtle polemic is directed at sages who went beyond standard hermeneutical practices to embrace mystical approaches to Torah learning. This essay seeks to expose the use of satire and other literary forms of critique among passages treating cosmology and Torah study. Analytic tools developed by Pierre Bourdieu, especially as they pertain to exposing the use of the symbolic language intrinsic to the establishment of systems of social (...) authority, will be employed to delineate the ideological conflict among sages developing diverse approaches to ascending the religious hierarchy within early rabbinism. (shrink)

Destiné à l'étudiant en philosophie, ou aux personnes disposant déjà d'une solide culture philosophique, cet ouvrage se présente sous la forme d'une introduction à la métaphysique. Inscrit dans la tradition thomiste, mais ouvert au dialogue avec d'autres traditions de pensée - et notamment les écrits de Maurice Blondel - il tente une défense et un essai de synthèse de sa discipline. Après une introduction discutant de la définition, des sources, de la méthode et des présupposés théologiques de la métaphysique, il (...) s'occupe, dans une première partie, de la saisie intellectuelle de l'« être » quant à ses pôles objectif et subjectif. Il approfondit ensuite la question de la possibilité d'une connaissance métaphysique et engage la discussion entre réalisme et anti-réalisme. Dans une seconde partie, il traite de l'approche rationnelle de Dieu. Il tente, à nouveaux frais, un essai de démonstration de l'existence de Dieu, avant d'approfondir la question du statut analogique de la connaissance de Dieu à laquelle l'homme peut parvenir. Il poursuit et conclut avec les questions traditionnelles de la nature divine, de l'acte créateur, du statut de la créature et de l'éventuelle prémonition rationnelle d'une pluralité en Dieu."-- Back cover. (shrink)

Several years ago I began a mentoring relationship with an undergraduate student named Sadie.1 By all traditional measures, Sadie was a common student, earning slightly above average grades and participating in all the activities one might expect of a typical undergraduate. Our relationship lasted through her third and fourth years in school, and the longer I knew her, the more I understood her uniqueness. Sadie was incredibly self-reflective and had a profound love of learning, yet she took the types of (...) academic risks that, though personally and intellectually gratifying, yielded neither a narrow disciplinary focus nor the strongest grade-point average.While Sadie's approach to her own education embodies what .. (shrink)

"Animal right" is an important political and philosophical concept that has its roots in the work of Francis Hutcheson. Developing ideas derived from his natural-law predecessors, Hutcheson stressed the category of acquired or adventitious right to explain how animals might gain rights through becoming members of a community guided by a moral sense. This theoretical innovation had consequences not just for animals, but for making sense of how all of the formerly rightless might gain rights. Examining Hutcheson's development of an (...) important, if problematic, concept allows us to think of rights not through the natural right tradition of Locke, but rather in connection with Bentham—as granted to those who become useful to the community and grounded in feeling and utility, not reason or language. (shrink)

Plutôt que de rouvrir l'éternel débat entre tenants d'une histoire analytique de la philosophie et tenants d'une approche « authentiquement historique », il vaut mieux se demander si les premiers sont réellement condamnés à la trahison historique, et les seconds à la myopie historique. La démarche consistant à aborder le passé de la philosophie d'aval en amont est compatible avec une fidélité historique dès lors qu'on est prêt à reconnaître que ce ne sont pas seulement des textes qui se transmettent (...) à l'intérieur d'une tradition, mais des arguments, et que ceux-ci peuvent passer d'une tradition à l'autre. Instead of reopening the eternal debate between the partisans of an « analytical » approach to the history of philosophy and the partisans of an « genuinely historical » approach, let us rather ask ourselves whether the former are necessarily condemned to betray history and the latter condemned to historical myopia. Approaching the past of philosophy from downstream to upstream is compatible with a fidelity to history once we acknowledge the fact that not only texts, but also arguments are passed on within a tradition and outside it. (shrink)

"The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose has received a great deal of both praise and criticism. This review discusses philosophical aspects of the book that form an attack on the "strong" AI thesis. Eight different versions of this thesis are distinguished, and sources of ambiguity diagnosed, including different requirements for relationships between program and behaviour. Excessively strong versions attacked by Penrose (and Searle) are not worth defending or attacking, whereas weaker versions remain problematic. Penrose (like Searle) regards the notion (...) of an algorithm as central to AI, whereas it is argued here that for the purpose of explaining mental capabilities the architecture of an intelligent system is more important than the concept of an algorithm, using the premise that what makes something intelligent is not what it does but how it does it. What needs to be explained is also unclear: Penrose thinks we all know what consciousness is and claims that the ability to judge Go "del's formula to be true depends on it. He also suggests that quantum phenomena underly consciousness. This is rebutted by arguing that our existing concept of "consciousness" is too vague and muddled to be of use in science. This and related concepts will gradually be replaced by a more powerful theory-based taxonomy of types of mental states and processes. The central argument offered by Penrose against the strong AI thesis depends on a tempting but unjustified interpretation of Goedel's incompleteness theorem. Some critics are shown to have missed the point of his argument. A stronger criticism is mounted, and the relevance of mathematical Platonism analysed. Architectural requirements for intelligence are discussed and differences between serial and parallel implementations analysed. (shrink)

This study aimed to investigate the student-athletes' capability to face the academic, sport, and social challenges during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown and to disclose novel aspects of dual careers. A 32-item online survey encompassing demographic characteristics, sport and university engagement, support and dual-career benefits, physical activity, sitting time, and the time deemed necessary to recover the previous level of performance was developed. Four hundred sixty-seven student-athletes (males: 57%, females: 43%) from 11 countries, competing in 49 different sports (individual: (...) 63.4%, team: 36.6%) at regional (17.5%), national (43.3%), and international (39.2%) levels, and enrolled at high school (21.9%) and university (78.1%) levels completed the survey. During the lockdown, the respondents decreased the time dedicated to sport and academics, although they maintained an active lifestyle. Student-athletes from countries under severe contagion were more likely to train at home, dedicate to academics, and receive support from the coach but less likely receive support from their teachers. With respect to their team sport counterparts, athletes competing in individual sports trained more and were more likely to receive support from their coaches. International athletes showed the highest training time and support from their coaches and as student-athletes. High school students received more support from their coaches and teachers, whereas university students were more likely considering dual careers useful to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. This study substantiates the relevant role of competitive sports participation in the maintenance of active lifestyles, with student-athletes considering home training and e-learning valuable resources during the lockdown. Furthermore, their sport and academic commitments helped student-athletes cope with the emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Previous chapter Janina Wellmann's analyses are extremely valuable because they provide us with new historical evidence that can only improve our understanding of a very obscure past. But the general interpretations she proposes are quite questionable. The idea that after 1800 a “Rhythm Episteme” has dominated the field of knowledge erases the very acute conflict that broke out in the early years of the 19th century between poetic and artistic rhythmologies, inspired by a common - Sur le concept de rythme (...) – Nouvel article. (shrink)

: The March 2003 issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal was devoted to cadaveric organ procurement. All the discussed proposals for solving the severe organ shortage place a higher value on respecting individual and/or family autonomy than on maximizing recovery of organs. Because of this emphasis on autonomy and historically high refusal rates, I believe that none of the proposals is likely to achieve the goal of ensuring an adequate supply of transplantable organs. An alternative approach, conscription of (...) cadaveric organs for transplantation, reverses the rank order of these priorities by placing greater value on maximizing recovery of organs than on respect for autonomy. Although conscription of organs initially may appear to be a radical and even ridiculous proposal, careful consideration reveals that it might well solve the organ shortage in an ethically acceptable way. (shrink)

L’univers romain est peu propice en général à l’étude du sentiment, faute de matière exploitable. Les manifestations extérieures de la sphère de l’affect sont par nature exclues d’un univers au sein duquel l’émotion est considérée, au même titre que toutes les passions, comme antinomique du métier de citoyen, et, a fortiori, de celui de dirigeant. C’est l’un des fondements théoriques de l’exclusion, de la sphère du politique, aussi bien des femmes que de la jeunesse, réputées également guidée...

Cet ouvrage synthétise les actes d’un colloque organisé par l’Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 et la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme de Grenoble, en mai 2008. Il s’interroge sur les conditions sexuées d’émergence et de développement des pratiques de montagne et répond à la thématique de la construction des masculinités et des féminités, ainsi que des rapports hiérarchiques de genre dans les disciplines alpines. L’ouvrage est essentiellement historique, mais des contributions sociologiques, psy...

In ihrem 2013 erschienenen Buch „Vertrauensfragen. Eine Obsession der Moderne“ beschreibt die Historikerin Ute Frevert, wie verbreitet das Thema des Vertrauens besonders seit dem 18. Jahrhundert gewesen ist. Vertrauen wird in vielen Bereichen des privaten und des öffentlichen Lebens thematisiert, versprochen und geschenkt, gefordert und beschworen und nicht selten enttäuscht und verloren. Ökonomische, soziale und politische Krisen, aber auch Beziehungskrisen werden dann vermehrt als Krisen des Vertrauens verstanden und dargestellt. Hierbei verweist Frevert auf die Ambivalenz des Begriffs, der als Gefühl (...) oder Kalkül, als asymmetrische Treue einem Elternteil oder einem charismatischen Führer gegenüber, als gegenseitige Erwartungshaltung im sozialen Feld oder sogar als Werbemittel in deregulierten Märkten verstanden werden kann, der aber auch die Grundlage von Missbrauch in manchen pädagogischen Beziehungen bildet. (shrink)

La philosophie critique de Kant serait marquée, selon Michel Foucault, par son enfermement dans le transcendantal, pensé comme immuable. Il faudrait prendre conscience de l'historicité de l'esprit, pour tenter cette épreuve de liberté qu'est la création de soi. Or, le présent ouvrage montre que c'est précisément dans la philosophie transcendantale, interprétée ici dans un tout autre sens que celui proposé par Michel Foucault, que se manifeste, chez Kant, le pouvoir d'une liberté proprement humaine, soit la vie transcendantale d'un esprit capable, (...) à chaque instant, de se transformer dans la conscience de son devoir. (shrink)

C'est en mettant en oeuvre l'Idée de la philosophie comme métaphysique scientifique que Kant met au jour l'"être" de l'homme, c'est-à-dire l'a priori transcendantal qui fonde l'existence proprement humaine. Il y aurait donc cooriginarité de l'existence de l'homme et de l'essence de la "philosophie". De ce point de vue, l'existence, à proprement parler, est"philosophique". Ainsi, 1'"éthique" existentielle peut être pensée comme l'Idée même de la "vérité", "vérité" de l'homme, "être" - "devoir-être" qui fonde la représentation de toute "vérité" théorique, esthétique (...) et pratique. Mais comment penser l'origine même de cette Idée d'une "vérité" de l'existence humaine, c'est-à-dire d'un "propre" de l'homme? Donc l'origine de l'Idée même de "philosophie"? Ce qui est le plus originaire, ne serait-ce pas la résolution d'exister (et de concevoir l'existence) d'une manière spécifique, que nous qualifions de "philosophique"? Mais si l'Idée de l'existence humaine se conçoit en termes de décisionnisme "philosophique", quel est le "sens" de ce décisionnisme? Autrement dit, puisque la question "qu'est-ce que l'homme" est, comme le soutient Kant, la question de la "philosophie", qu'est-ce donc que la "philosophie"? (shrink)

Exposé présenté lors du séminaire de l'axe de recherche « Rythmologies », organisé par Luc Gwiazdzinski à la MSH-Alpes de Grenoble, le 23 juin 2020. J'aimerais vous présenter les principales raisons qui m'ont amené à concevoir et développer un programme de recherche rythmologique. Je vais essayer, à partir de mon expérience personnelle mais aussi au travers d'une analyse plus large du contexte, de vous montrer pourquoi une rythmologie est devenue aujourd'hui plus que nécessaire. Comme vous le savez - Sur le (...) concept de rythme – Nouvel article. (shrink)

本书主要内容包括:关于思维和风格的思考;没有上帝的人的不幸;论赌博的必要性;信仰的手段;公正和效果的动机;哲学家等。.