The behaviour and roles of the microtubule network and the microfilaments following fertilization in the mouse oocyte are described. The microtubule network is organized by multiple microtubule organizing centres (MTOCs) and these play a major role in establishing spindle structure and pronuclear movement following fertilization; in contrast to sea urchin and frog eggs, the sperm centriole plays little part in organization of the post‐fertilization spindle. The microfilaments are required for spindle rotation, polar body formation, certain changes in the egg cortex, (...) and also for pronuclear movement. Influences of the chromosomes on microtubule and microfilament organisation are also discussed. (shrink)

On the Genealogy of Morality is Nietzsche's most influential book but it continues to puzzle, not least in its central claim: the invention of Christian morality is an act of revenge, and it is as such that it should arouse critical suspicion. In The Will to Nothingness, Bernard Reginster makes a fresh attempt at understanding this claim and its significance, inspired by Nietzsche's claim that moralities are 'signs' or 'symptoms' of the affective states of moral agents. The relation between (...) morality and affects is envisioned as functional, rather than expressive: the genealogy of Christian morality aims to reveal how it is well suited to serve certain emotional needs. One particular emotional need, manifested in the affect of ressentiment, plays a prominent role in the analysis of Christian morality. This is the need to have the world reflect one's will, which is rooted in a special drive toward power, or toward bending the world to one's will. Revenge is plausibly understood as aiming to bolster or restore power, and the invention of new values is a particular way to do so: by altering the agent's will, it alters what counts as power for her. By revealing how it is well suited to play such a functional role in the emotional economy of moral agents, the genealogical inquiries arouse critical suspicion toward Christian morality. The use of this moral outlook as an instrument of revenge is problematic not because it is immoral, but because it is functionally self-undermining. (shrink)

This book presents the thought of the Kyoto School in comparison with continental philosophers better known in the West and addresses the affiliation of some of its members with the militarism of the 1930s and 1940s.

Do monkeys and apes display ‘elements of rudimentary moral systems'? If these elements correspond to individual abilities, it could be misleading to label them moral. The prosocial abilities of non-human primates may just constitute the foundations necessary to the emergence of morality in human beings, yet their Darwinian significance should be explained on their own, without reference to their possible functions in human beings. On the other hand, if moral elements refer to parts of moral systems, this implies the development (...) of shared norms through cultural evolution. In this respect, the absence of communication about mental representations forbids the directional transmission of learned social rules in non-human primates. (shrink)

There are many approaches to human communication that deal with its multiple aspects at various levels of abstraction and delimit what has become the field of information and communication sciences. Telegraphic communication and orchestral communication are two terms introduced by Y. Winkin to contrast the Shannonian (“telegraphic”) and Batesonian (“orchestral”) theories of communication. The Batesonian theory of information, communication and learning remains qualitative. This chapter presents the pioneering model presented by the engineer Claude Shannon at the end of the 1940s (...) and that proposed by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson and his successors from the 1970s onwards. G. Bateson argues that any continuous learning process involves at least two levels: primary learning, where the subject receives simple information in a given context and responds conditionally to it, and deutero‐learning, where the subject shows an increasing ability to treat given contexts as if they were to be expected in their universe. (shrink)

Le sujet est-il vraiment en train de disparaître, par dissolution, fragmentation, oubli? Mais de quel sujet exactement parle-t-on? Comment son éventuelle disparition est-elle perçue, analysée et comprise par la philosophie, la psychanalyse, l'économie politique, entre autres? Ce livre rassemble les réponses des chercheurs et praticiens à cette question.

This chapter explains the notions of information, communication and learning in the context of the complex adaptive systems theory, under the version proposed by M. Gell‐Mann. Within the class of such systems, it focuses attention on complex and self‐organized natural systems as analyzed by H. Atlan. The chapter describes the epistemological context and the formal definition of self‐organization according to H. Atlan, because this definition results from a re‐interpretation of the Shannonian theorem of the noisy channel by applying it to (...) a system organized into several hierarchical levels. It is gradually restore Atlan's construction of the notion of the meaning of information in a hierarchical system, by contrasting the principles of order from noise and organizational noise and by accordingly distinguishing the concepts of complexity and complication. The principle of complexity from noise, which lies at the heart of the concept of self‐organization proposed by H. Atlan. (shrink)

The emphasis placed by H. Atlan, like G. Bateson, on the reception of messages during communication between subsystems leads to a conception of learning, and more generally of human memory, surprisingly close to that proposed by I. Rosenfield on the basis of the work of G. M. Edelman. The authors stressed the close and reciprocal link between the theory of functional localization and the conception of memory, which they have just seen, radically refuted by Rosenfield. The theory of functional localization (...) therefore considers as established the existence of a whole series of rigid relationships between specific locations in the brain and certain major functions performed by the body. Thus briefly summarized, the theory of neural Darwinism provides positive evidence in favor of the Rosenfield's theory of human memory. All these characteristics make the functioning of human memory an outstanding example of the natural complexity of a self‐organized system in the sense of Atlan. (shrink)

An adequate interpretation of concept of the propensity to communicate will thus lead us to interpret in this concept a possible formalization of the notion of the specious present, introduced into the field of psychology by William James at the end of the 19th Century. In this chapter, the authors introduce some aspects of the concept of time that their model operates under. While situating the actors in relation to each other in the network space, their propensity to communicate also (...) indexes the future opportunities that are open to them by their past trajectories. The authors conclude with a discussion of a supposed “ancestrality's paradox”, according to which such a primacy would pay no heed to ignoring events located in a temporality prior to the appearance of any life on earth, and well before that of Homo habilis. (shrink)

Prolégomènes Notre point de départ est ici bien sûr René Descartes, dont les Méditations métaphysiques sont au fondement d’une égologie que l’on pourrait définir comme étant la croyance, aujourd’hui communément répandue, selon laquelle nous nous posons comme la source distincte de nos pensées et de nos actes, cette source étant une personne déterminée se distinguant d’autres personnes possibles, et étant capable par autoréflexion de se connaître au point d’atteindre une parfaite transparence...

Ce livre s’inscrit dans un projet d’anthropologie sensorielle de l’intime. On y montre comment l’expérience du vertige dévoile une part cachée de notre écologie corporelle : plonger dans son corps, lorsque le vertige nous prend, traduit moins un désir de disparaître en s’évanouissant qu’une sensibilité "émersant" en nous. En retournant ainsi la peau, le vertige révèle une cartographie des cavernes intérieures. Se donner le vertige en y étant contraint ou de manière volontaire est une expérience enivrante.

The inventiveness of life is at the heart of Merleau-Ponty’s ontology because by separating with behaviorism, philosophy could dialogue with the sciences of development to describe several techniques that we successively study as degrees in the normativity of the living : immanent techniques, ecological techniques, bodily intelligence, and, finally, morphogenetic techniques of development. Through this analysis, we demonstrate the thesis of an activation of the living body from its reflex reactivity to its non-intentional projections in its forms.

Paradoxalement interdite sur les réseaux sociaux alors qu'elle domine le consumérisme pornographique, l'expérience de la nudité reste taboue dans la sphère publique. Seuls des actes de revendications politiques, des manifestations de genre contre la domination masculine et des images artistiques demeurent acceptables. Cet essai explore les présupposés, les valeurs, les pratiques de la nudité au sein de la société contemporaine. Il développe le droit à la nudité dans le respect de chacune et de chacun : l'exigence de la beauté, du (...) contact avec la nature et du respect de l'intégrité de la personne font de la nudité une écologie corporelle."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Bodily modification is against the theory of substance. A new perspective involves the possibility of defining identity by using biotechnology like a bio-design, or biology as a technology of the self.

Voir son cerveau en première personne s’activer à l’occasion de la réalisation d’une tâche semble établir plus qu’une corrélation en décrivant ce qui serait un lien de causalité entre le corps et son cerveau. Le corps est une surface et un résultat dont la conscience ne perçoit le processus vivant qu’en retard sur la vitalité et la mobilité du cerveau. Nous sommes en retard sur notre cerveau mais notre conscience du présent ne peut avoir accès à la temporalité de sa (...) condition. La transparence du cerveau in vivo implique des dispositifs neuro-expérientiels. (shrink)

absorbed state. (7.7) Empirically, a state like fantasy, selective attention, absent-minded day-dreaming and probably hypnosis, in which conscious experience is unusually resistant to distraction. Theoretically, a case in which access to the Global Workspace (GW) is controlled by a coherent context hierarchy , giving little opportunity for outside information to compete for conscious access (4.32). See als ideomotor theory, access, and options context.

Distributive justice, like every other value, is not suspended in mid-air: its implementation depends on certain conditions, the well-known ‹circumstances of justice›. In this paper, I attempt to spell them out, first for justice proper , then for international justice. Those circumstances relate to the conceptual parts of justice and are four in number: scarcity, needs and merit, social cooperation, and authority of distribution. As far as international justice is concerned, there is a problem with the last circumstance: as yet (...) no international authority of distribution exists. This does not, however, mean that international justice is impossible or undesirable; only that we have the task to create such an authority. (shrink)

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The article propose a new way of looking at the relationship between content elaboration and formulation during the production of written argumentative texts. It is hypothesized, that younger students elaborate contents by formulating them, whereas in older students both processes are clearly distinguished. 8 pairs of students aged 10 and 14 and adults with academic background produce a text in a collaborative situation. Three aspects of the production of the first and the last sentence are analyzed in looking at the (...) recorded dialogues: elaboration of argumentative plans; the independant elaboration of contents; the variation of linguistic forms. The results gives the hypothesis credit and show a deep reorganisation of the production process of argumentative texts in ontogenesis. (shrink)