There would be, beyond the work carried out with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe on the Jena Romantics—the first phase of German Romanticism—in The Literary Absolute (1978; trans. 1988), a “romanticism”, recurrent and yet problematised, of Jean-Luc Nancy. Set forth in a little-known text on Flaubert, this “romanticism” reveals itself to be, not of a school of thought nor of a fantasy, but of a form insofar as it is conveyed by a very new regime of thinking. Moreover, it must itself be overcome, (...) by following the infinity of sense that the fragmentation of totalities qua the world imposes. (shrink)

Le génie de Blaise Pascal séduit toujours de nombreux chercheurs. Des âmes avides d'absolu font de ses écrits leur livre de chevet. Sans doute cette notoriété a-t-elle estompé les autres membres de cette famille somme toute remarquable. Etienne, le père, est un esprit universel. Juriste, délégué de la cité, il est aussi grand mathématicien, compositeur et organiste, religieux et père admirable. Gilberte, la sœur aînée, a un talent littéraire qui s'exprimera dans La vie de M. Pascal. Les dons poétiques de (...) Jacqueline, la cadette, étonnent dès l'enfance. Etienne, le neveu, écrira un précieux témoignage sur la méthode de son oncle. Marguerite, la nièce miraculée, vivra jusqu'à quatre-vingt-sept ans et rapportera ses souvenirs dans un livre sur Blaise. Leurs lettres, peu nombreuses et trop souvent ignorées, méritent une attention d'autant plus minutieuse qu'elles nous introduisent dans l'intimité de cette famille. Ce qui domine, c'est une union exceptionnelle qui survit au-delà de la mort après avoir traversé les heurts inévitables entre ces fortes personnalités. On s'émerveille de la diversité des vocations : chaste veuvage pour Etienne, maternité et vie de famille pour Gilberte, vie religieuse pour Jacqueline, consécration à Dieu dans le monde pour Blaise, ministère presbytéral pour Louis. André Bord nous raconte cette vie de famille étonnante en nous faisant découvrir plusieurs faits inédits. (shrink)

Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

The work of Joseph Delb??uf (1831‐1896), a philosopher, psychologist, and mathematician, provides fresh insights on the relationship between agency, consciousness, and evolution. Without agency, Delb??uf argued, the distinction between the self and the external world would be impossible, the function of feelings such as pain and pleasure would be incomprehensible, and consciousness would not have evolved. Delb??uf also posited a psychological stage of evolution, preceding that of natural selection, whereby sentient organisms influence the selection of their own traits through the (...) decisions they make during their reproductive lives. In relating these ideas and others, I show how Delb??uf’s work is relevant to current scholarship on the nature and evolution of consciousness. (shrink)

Murayama and Jach offer valuable suggestions for how to integrate computational processes into motivation theory, but these processes cannot do away with motivation altogether. Rewards are only rewarding because people want and like them – that is, because of motivation. Sexual desire is not primarily a quest for rewarding information. Elucidating the interface between motivation and cognition seems a promising way forward.

Il ne faut pas sous-estimer la fonction heuristique de la notion de système dans la constitution du savoir moderne. La dénonciation du système comme clôture empêche de penser ce que contenait de théoriquement révolutionnaire la notion de dictionnaire, d'encyclopédie, de système des sciences considérée dans son rapport à l'idée problématique d'un système du présent historique et de ses tâches pratiques. La fin des systèmes laisse la pensée démunie.

The article analyzes a variation in the conditions of production of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical thought based on joint production with Félix Guattari. The article is divided into three parts: firstly, we analyze the influence of structuralism on Deleuze’s work, mainly through the author’s own text on this current of thought and its influence on the construction of the notion of “idea” in Difference and Repetition. In a second movement, we analyze the appearance of the notion of “machines” in Guattari’s work (...) Psychoanalysis and Transversality and its protagonism in the authors’ first joint work, Anti-Oedipus. Finally, we analyze the role that machines play in defining concepts, in the authors’ latest joint work. In addition to methodological aspects, we argue that the variation from structuralism to machinism has epistemological and ontological ramifications, which are decisive for the authors’ reading. (shrink)

Cet article tente de dégager la signification de la circoncision comme signe de l’alliance avec Dieu, telle qu’elle émerge des précisions données dans les discours divins de Gn 17. Dans sa dimension individuelle, le rite demande, en vue de l’alliance, de consentir à une perte de complétude, qui fait entrer dans le manque: il permet ainsi un ajustement de la relation d’Abraham vis-à-vis de Sarah, ce qui l’ouvre à la fécondité. Dans sa dimension collective, il établit Abraham et son clan (...) dans une différence par rapport aux autres nations, consacrant l’élection en vue de la bénédiction de tous à travers des relations où sont respectées les singularités propres. Consentir à la circoncision, c’est dès lors aussi ouvrir une place, entre homme et femme et entre groupes, au Dieu qui sépare et rend fécond, précisément dans l’ajustement mutuel que rend possible la séparation. C’est donc entrer en alliance avec lui. (shrink)

The point of departure for this article is that the current white backlash over the use of the framing device “Black Lives Matter” is a correlate of the diminished capacity to make race-based claims fostered by neoliberal conceptions of race. The article attends to how President Obama, paradoxically, has deepened color-blind forms of racism and thus weakened the ability for grass-roots Black challenges to the discursive and political status quo. His implicit conception of whiteness as invisible, singular and of transcendent (...) power, is discussed as a theo-politics and assessed via two examples: the rhetoric he uses with Black audiences, and his foreign policy choices in Africa. This article hopes both to show that Obama's management of the complex conditions he inherited have not been fruitful for African Americans, the group that offered such unmitigated supported for his campaigns; and to inspire momentum against neoliberal ways of thinking about race and its concomitant color-blind whiteness. (shrink)

A recent trend in futures studies has called for strengthening the inclusion of future generations in constitutional law. This is problematic from a practical and a normative viewpoint. This paper introduces a future-oriented theory of democratic constitutionalism that overcomes originalism (which privileges the past) and living constitutionalism (which privileges the present) without resorting to the explicit constitutional protection of the yet unborn. It is divided into five sections. The first challenges the notion that the constitutional entrenchment of the non-overlapping future (...) is the best means of implementing long time horizons in democratic legal systems. The second maintains that constitutions are substantive normative expressions of the ultimate justification of authority. The third demonstrates that the substantive dimension of constitutions is cross-temporal and includes what I call ‘the objective interests in the future’ of all members of the people. The fourth connects such objective interests with rights to political participation. The final section focuses on the cross-temporal role of constitutional adjudication. Because rights to political participation include objective interests in the future and necessarily hold the status of constitutional rights in any legitimate democratic constitution, constitutional adjudication must guarantee their enforcement over government action. (shrink)

This paper outlines a method to assess the effectiveness of diagrams, from semiotic foundations. In doing so, we explore the Peircian notion of signification, as applied to diagrammatic representations. We review a history of diagrams, with particular emphasis on schematics used for representing systems, and uncover the neglect of semiotic analysis of diagrammatic representations. Through application of category theory to the Peircian triadic model, we propose a set of quantitative quality measures for diagrams, and a framework for their assessment, based (...) on the properties of their encoding, pragmatic and perceptual morphisms. These measures include diagram complexity, utility, aesthetics and expert assessment of semiotic content, together with qualitative feedback. We consider the diagrams as an aid to cognitive processes, rather than a purely communication media. This utility-focused perspective on diagram quality dimensions allows for fresh insights into the creation of effective diagrams. (shrink)

Experiences of absence are common in everyday life, but have received little philosophical attention until recently, when two positions regarding the nature of such experiences surfaced in the literature. According to the Perceptual View, experiences of absence are perceptual in nature. This is denied by the Surprise-Based View, according to which experiences of absence belong together with cases of surprise. In this paper, I show that there is a kind of experience of absence—which I call frustrating absences—that has been overlooked (...) by the Perceptual View and by the Surprise Based-View and that cannot be adequately explained by them. I offer an alternative account to deal with frustrating absences, one according to which experiencing frustrating absences is a matter of subjects having desires for something to be present frustrated by the world. Finally, I argue that there may well be different kinds of experiences of absence. (shrink)

Empirical research is largely supportive of the assertion of instrumental stakeholder theory that a positive relationship exists between “managing for stakeholders” and firm performance. However, despite considerable debate on the subject, the amount of variation across firm investments in stakeholders (stakeholder management performance) has not been adequately investigated. We address this gap using a sample of more than eighteen thousand firm-level observations over ten years. We find evidence to support an inverted U–shaped relationship between variation in stakeholder management performance and (...) Tobin’sq, suggesting that firms that have some imbalance in their stakeholder management, but not too much, perform best. We discuss the implications of our study for instrumental stakeholder theory and managerial practice. (shrink)

Peter John Olivi is oft characterized as having a particularly radical view, concerning the activity of the soul in cognition/appetite, where the soul’s cognitive and appetitive powers are the proper efficient causes from which even their most basic acts are produced; in contrast, external corporeal objects are insufficient to produce any direct effect on these “higher” powers. Olivi’s view can appear to be untenable, either leaving external objects completely outside of psychological explanation or requiring some novel type of cause outside (...) of the typical medieval-Aristotelian causal framework. However, in this paper, I seek to alleviate this concern by considering Olivi’s response that the object can still be considered a “broadly efficient cause”; in particular, I look at how Olivi’s same view is endorsed by Gonsalvus of Spain, one of Olivi’s students. I argue that Gonsalvus takes a more diplomatic approach, despite endorsing essentially the same view, which shows that their shared active view of cognition/appetite can safely fit into a wider medieval-Aristotelian causal framework with some further explanation. As I explain, this interpretation of Olivi, alongside Gonsalvus, helps put later active views of cognition/appetite (e.g., from John Duns Scotus), and their own qualifications, into a more complete context. (shrink)

ResumoTomando como referência o campo dos estudos sobre deficiência (disability studies) e a conceitualização de capacitismo – forma particular de marginalização das pessoas com deficiência –, o artigo investiga a ligação entre as ideias eugenistas e o surgimento de uma modalidade de educação destinada a essas pessoas, a educação especial. Nesse sentido, as ciências biomédicas, ao operarem uma separação entre normalidade e anormalidade ofereceram as bases necessárias para a distinção entre capazes e incapazes, tornando estes inferiores àqueles. Por sua vez, (...) isso leva a pôr em questão as matrizes epistemológicas que subjazem tais distinções, considerando-as como participantes nos fundamentos do pensamento ocidental e, portanto, implicadas nos projetos políticos que desembocaram em segregação racial, social e desumanização de diferentes grupos.Palavras-chave: Estudos sobre Deficiência. Capacitismo. Educação. Educação Especial. AbstractTaking as reference the field of disability studies and the conceptualization of ableism - a particular form of marginalization of people with disabilities - this article investigates the connection between eugenic ideas and the emergence of a modality of education aimed at these people: special education. In this sense, the biomedical sciences offered, by operating a separation between normality and abnormality, the necessary basis for the distinction between capable and incapable, making these inferior to those. In turn, this leads us to question the epistemological matrices that underlie such distinctions, considering them as participants in the foundations of Western thought and, therefore, implicated in the political projects that led to racial, social segregation and dehumanization of different groups.Keywords: Disability Studies. Ableism. Education. Special Education. (shrink)

I first give a very short characterization of contextualism in the philosophy of language; then I present the traditional debate about the question whether “exists” is a first or second order predicate, to conclude, firstly, that there is a first order as well as a second order use for that predicate, with no ambiguity, and, secondly, that the debate was couched in too restrictive terms. I defend that there is a huge variety of contexts to be scrutinized, and that a (...) contextualist approach could be useful in that discussion. I close the paper with a critical note to what I call “serious ontology”. Key words: existence as a predicate, contextualism, ontology, philosophy of language. (shrink)

Thomas Reid introduced the notion of social operation of mind in the theory of mind and language. Hhis friend James Gregory developed this notion and gave it a meaningful role in classical Uuniversal Grammar, especially in the General Theory of the Mmoods of Vverbs. Bbefore Reid and Gregory, the classical Philosophical Grammar presupposes, inter alia, that the mind is self-contained; in other words, that mental contents and operations are all independent from the natural and social environment. Ssome of these operations (...) have a modus/dictum structure corresponding, grosso modo, to the actual distinction between psychological mode and conceptual mental content, also analogous to the distinction between illocutionary force and propositional content, which is partially reflected in the system of verbal moods of natural languages. The famous Grammaire de Port-Royal already pointed to a serious limitation of this model. Arnauld & Lancelot wrote: “Oon ne se commande pas proprement à soi-même” (“Oone does not command properly to oneself”). I will try to show that Reid realized clearly that what we call today “individualism” does not allow us to characterize adequately the social aspects of language, and consequently headed for a different conception of the mind, an anti-individualist one. The notion of social operation of the mind is the cornerstone of that reform undertaken by Reid in the philosophy of mind. Furthermore, he and Gregory defended that natural languages were created especially to expresses those social aspects of language and mind. (shrink)

Nosso objetivo é identificar; na filosofia de nosso seculo, 0 que ha de tipicamente platonista. Para tanto, eu dou uma definiciio do platonismo como uma tese ontologica e gnoseologica, que reconhece a existencia de entidades niio sensiveis, que niio podem ser tocadas, nem vistas, nem ouvidas, etc, mas que so podem ser conhecidas gracas a uma intuiciio de um tipo um pouco especial, que certos filosofos de nosso seculo, como Husserl, chama ram de "intuiciio categorial", ou "intuiciio das essencias". Depois, (...) eu faco um sobrevoo, comecando pela filosofia da matemdtica, principalmente a de Frege, em seguida, examino afilosofia da linguagem e da logica, a ontologia (principalmente a "teoria dos objetos" de Meinong) e a epistemologia (sobretudo, 0 "objetivismo" de Popper). Por fim, eu examino 0 programa naturalista e sua significaciio para a etica, mostrando que nada impede, ainda hoje, de sustentar as ideias de Platiio em diversos campos da Filosofia. (shrink)

Le Foss ou logiciel libre, est un mouvement de fond qui valorise le partage de l'effort collectif dans la production logicielle et lutte ainsi contre l'appropriation intellectuelle de toute création humaine que les grandes industries de l'information cherchent à imposer. Le gouvernement brésilien a choisit de favoriser le Foss dans toute la société brésilienne.The Foss , or free software, is a fundamental movement that promotes the sharing of effort in software production and fight against and intellectual ownership of any human (...) creation that major information industries seek to impose. The Brazilian government has chosen to promote the Foss throughout Brazilian society. (shrink)

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo, apresentar a resposta que Medellín deu ao continente americano sob a luz do Vaticano II, em relação aos graves problemas que caracterizam a vida de seu povo. Por um lado, a miséria, opressão, dependência econômica, política e cultural, e, de outro, um desejo e clamor de misericórdia e libertação, de um povo impaciente por mudanças e transformações. O homem e a mulher são sujeitos da transformação do continente, como a Igreja pode ajudá-los; qual é a (...) sua missão? A metodologia dessa pesquisa faz referência bibliográfica aos principais títulos sobre o assunto. O caminho a ser percorrido será: análise da história e da realidade, reflexão de conceitos e desdobramentos práticos e pastorais. A Igreja não poderá nunca se esquecer que: “As alegrias e as esperanças, as tristezas e as angústias dos homens de hoje, sobretudo dos pobres e dos que sofrem, são também as alegrias e as esperanças, as tristezas e as angústias dos discípulos de Cristo; e não há realidade alguma verdadeiramente humana que não encontre eco no seu coração.”. (shrink)