A fascinating property of germ cells is their ability to maintain totipotency throughout development. At fertilization, this totipotency is unleashed and the egg generates all the cell types needed to make a brand new organism. Occasionally, germ cells differentiate precociously in the embryo or in the gonads and form teratomas, tumors containing many differentiated somatic cell types. Until recently, the genetic basis for teratoma formation was not known. The unexpected discovery of a teratoma in a C. elegans double mutant points (...) to translational control as a key mechanism to maintain totipotency in developing germ cells. BioEssays 28: 865–867, 2006. © 2006 Wiley periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

During the set-up phase of an international study of genetic influences on outcomes from sepsis, we aimed to characterise potential differences in ethics approval processes and outcomes in participating European countries. Between 2005 and 2007 of the FP6-funded international Genetics Of Sepsis and Septic Shock project, we asked national coordinators to complete a structured survey of research ethic committee approval structures and processes in their countries, and linked these data to outcomes. Survey findings were reconfirmed or modified in 2017. Eighteen (...) countries participated in the study, recruiting 2257 patients from 160 ICUs. National practices differed widely in terms of composition of RECs, procedures and duration of the ethics approval process. Eight countries used a single centralised process for approval, seven required approval by an ethics committee in each participating hospital, and three required both. Outcomes of the application process differed widely between countries because of differences in national legislation, and differed within countries because of interpretation of the ethics of conducting research in patients lacking capacity. The RECs in four countries had no lay representation. The median time from submission to final decision was 1.5 months; in nine approval was received within 1 month; six took over 6 months, and in one 24 months; had all countries been able to match the most efficient approvals processes, an additional 74 months of country or institution-level recruitment would have been available. In three countries, rejection of the application by some local RECs resulted in loss of centres; and one country rejected the application outright. The potential benefits of the single application portal offered by the European Clinical Trials Regulation will not be realised without harmonisation of research ethics committee practices as well as national legislation. (shrink)

Aucun mot grec ou latin ne correspond au terme moderne de sexualité, qui n’appartient pas, de fait, aux catégories intellectuelles de l’Antiquité, mais l’étude de la sexualité antique n’en connaît pas moins un grand dynamisme depuis les travaux pionniers de Michel Foucault et Paul Veyne, au début des années 1980. Maître de conférences de littérature latine à l’Université de Bordeaux iii, Géraldine Puccini-Delbey nous en livre le bilan dans un ouvrage consacré à la vie sexuelle des Romains, ré...

This paper explores the notion of ‘relational values’ from a phenomenological point of view. In the first place, it stresses that in order to make full sense of relational values, we need to approach them through a relational ontology that surpasses dualistic descriptions of the world structured around the subject and the object. With this aim, the paper turns to ecophenomenology's attempt to apprehend values from a first-person perspective embedded in the lifeworld, where our entanglement with other beings is not (...) a theoretical construction but a palpable reality. Overall, the article's main purpose is to show that, in our direct and raw experience, values do not appear as subjective judgments or as objective properties but as events in which we participate alongside other human and non-human beings. (shrink)

Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a pervasive difficulty affecting number processing and arithmetic. It is encountered in around 6% of school-aged children. While previous studies have mainly focused on general cognitive functions, the present paper aims to further investigate the hypothesis of a specific numerical deficit in dyscalculia. The performance of 10- and 11-year-old children with DD characterised by a weakness in arithmetic facts retrieval and age-matched control children was compared on various number comparison tasks. Participants were asked to compare a (...) quantity presented in either a symbolic (Arabic numerals, number words, canonical dots patterns) or a nonsymbolic format (noncanonical dots patterns, and random sticks patterns) to the reference quantity 5. DD children showed a greater numerical distance effect than control children, irrespective of the number format. This favours a deficit in the specialised cognitive system underlying the processing of number magnitude in children with DD. Results are discussed in terms of access and representation deficit hypotheses. (shrink)

Dans l'histoire de la philosophie, la question du temps a été abordée selon deux tendances opposées : le temps de la nature avec Aristote et le temps de la conscience avec Augustin. Ces deux formes irréductibles l'une à l'autre ont vu leur relation se complexifier, notamment avec la théorie de la relativité au début du XXe siècle, puis la mécanique quantique, qui ont bousculé notre perception et compréhension du temps. Cet ouvrage, écrit par des scientifiques et des philosophes, se concentre (...) plus particulièrement sur le concept de " temps naturel ", examiné à la lumière de ses utilisations en sciences, qui semblent remettre en cause son unité. Physique, biologie, sciences cognitives, paléontologie, philosophie sont ici convoquées, chacune de ces disciplines disposant d'instruments spécifiques de mesure et de définition d'échelles de temps. Que nous apprennent-elles sur la " nature du temps ", sur ses propriétés comme la continuité ou l'irréversibilité? Quel statut doit-on donner aux différences entre les échelles utilisées pour observer les phénomènes? Telles sont quelques-unes des questions abordées dans ce livre, nouvelle incursion dans les mystères du temps. (shrink)

Though only established as a discipline since the 1970s, philosophy of biology has already triggered investigations about its own history The Oxford handbook of philosophy of biology, Oxford University Press, New York, pp 11–33, 2008). When it comes to assessing the road since travelled—the research questions that have been pursued—manuals and ontologies also offer specific viewpoints, highlighting dedicated domains of inquiry and select work. In this article, we propose to approach the history of the philosophy of biology with a complementary (...) data-driven perspective that makes use of statistical algorithms applied to the complete full-text corpus of one major journal of the field—Biology and Philosophy—from its launch in 1986 up until 2017. By running text-mining and topic-modeling algorithms, we identified 67 key research topics that span across these 32 years. We also investigated the evolution of these topics over time and their fluctuating significance in the journal articles. Our results concur with known episodes or traits of the discipline—for instance, the significance of evolution-related topics or the decrease of articles with a marked historical dimension—but also highlight a diversity of topics that is much richer than what is usually acknowledged. (shrink)

■ Evidence from functional neuroimaging studies on resting state suggests that there are two distinct anticorrelated cortical systems that mediate conscious awareness: an “extrinsic” system that encompasses lateral fronto-parietal areas and has been linked with processes of external input (external awareness), and an “intrinsic” system which encompasses mainly medial brain areas and..

L'écologie politique est souvent associée aux pensées critiques de gauche sans que ses apports spécifiques à la critique sociale soient relevés. Dans quelle mesure la pensée et les pratiques écologistes bousculent-elles certaines idées encore productivistes ou dominatrices du socialisme? Si elles héritent de certaines idées, valeurs et formes politiques du socialisme dans toute sa diversité, elle réactualise aussi ses thèmes dans le contexte d'urgence environnementale et climatique : aliénation, domination et émancipation prennent un autre sens. Les analyses écologistes de ces (...) phénomènes renouvellent l'analyse des contradictions du capitalisme. Critique du productivisme et du dualisme nature-culture, écoféminisme et écosocialisme, décroissance et autogestion: comment les idées écologistes peuvent-elles nourrir la gauche aujourd'hui?"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

From John Maynard Keynes’s prediction of a fifteen-hour workweek to present-day speculation about automation, we have not stopped forecasting the end of work. Critical theory and political philosophy have turned their attention away from the workplace to focus on other realms of domination and emancipation. But far from coming to an end, work continues to occupy a central place in our lives. This is not only because of the amount of time people spend on the job. Many of our deepest (...) hopes and fears are bound up in our labor—what jobs we perform, how we relate to others, how we might flourish. The Return of Work in Critical Theory presents a bold new account of the human significance of work and the human costs of contemporary forms of work organization. A collaboration among experts in philosophy, social theory, and clinical psychology, it brings together empirical research with incisive analysis of the political stakes of contemporary work. The Return of Work in Critical Theory begins by looking in detail at the ways in which work today fails to meet our expectations. It then sketches a phenomenological description of work and examines the normative premises that underlie the experience of work. Finally, it puts forward a novel conception of work that can renew critical theory’s engagement with work and point toward possibilities for transformation. Inspired by Max Horkheimer’s vision of critical theory as empirically informed reflection on the sources of social suffering with emancipatory intent, The Return of Work in Critical Theory is a lucid diagnosis of the malaise and pathologies of contemporary work that proposes powerful remedies. (shrink)

It is known today that Hegel's philosophy was at the center of the development of pragmatism. In particular, the relation of Dewey's philosophy to Hegel's has recently been studied with great attention1. Many studies have revealed that the German philosopher had a fundamental influence on the young John Dewey, particularly with regard to his theory of culture, for his logic, as well as for his psychology. These new readings propose a profoundly original view of Dewey and explain why he thought (...) of his philosophy as a "permanent Hegelian deposit".Our work aims to... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the medieval posterity of the Aristotelian and Pyrrhonian treatments of the infinite regress argument. We show that there are some possible Pyrrhonian elements in Autrecourt's epistemology when he argues that the truth of our principles is merely hypothetical. By contrast, Buridan's criticisms of Autrecourt rely heavily on Aristotelian material. Both exemplify a use of scepticism.

Human expression is open-ended, versatile, and diverse, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved functions of which are the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how expression is unleashed in humans. The relevant (...) cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species' social ecology to explain how and why humans, and only humans, evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity and open-endedness in means and modes of expression. Language use is but one of these modes of expression, albeit one of manifestly high importance. We make cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only language use, but also novel behaviour in many other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, teaching, punishment, and art, all of which are ubiquitous in human societies but relatively rare in other species. Much of this diversity derives from graded aspects of human expression, which can be used to satisfy informative intentions in creative and new ways. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of the many of the most distinctive features of human behaviour, society, and culture. (shrink)

Christophe Bouton's Time and Freedom addresses the problem of the relationship between time and freedom as a matter of practical philosophy, examining how the individual lives time and how her freedom is effective in time. Bouton first charts the history of modern philosophy's reengagement with the Aristotelian debate about future contingents, beginning with Leibniz. While Kant, Husserl, and their followers would engage time through theories of knowledge, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Kierkegaard, and, Heidegger, Sartre, and Levinas applied a phenomenological and existential (...) methodology to time, but faced a problem of the temporality of human freedom. Bouton's is the first major work of its kind since Bergson's Time and Free Will, and Bouton's "mystery of the future," in which the individual has freedom within the shifting bounds dictated by time, charts a new direction. (shrink)

If the desert was long perceived as a hostile and inhospitable territory, it was gradually conquered during the 20th century by the practice of sports and leisure activities. The aim of this articl...

« Car celui qui regarde, dans ce drame, est aussi celui qui détruit. » J.-M. G. Le Clézio, Le rêve mexicain « Le barbare, c’est d’abord celui qui croit à la barbarie. »C. Lévi-Strauss, Race et histoire « Là où dialoguent les cultures. »Slogan du Musée du quai Branly Introduction Durant plus de quatre siècles, l’altérité radicale s’est incarnée en Occident dans la figure du barbare « exotique », issu de mondes lointains et méconnus. Notre rapport à cet Autre absolu (...) a souvent trahi une fascinat... (shrink)

A l'occasion du soixantieme anniversaire d'Alain de Libera, une trentaine de collegues de France et de l'etranger ont souhaite, par une serie d'etudes d'histoire de la philosophie et de metaphysique, saluer son oeuvre scientifique et lui offrir un temoignage d'amitie. L'histoire de la metaphysique etant l'un des points cardinaux du travail philosophique d'Alain de Libera, a qui l'on doit notamment de magistraux ouvrages sur les universaux, il a semble judicieux d'etudier ces entites mineures mais neanmoins indispensables qui viennent completer la (...) substance pour constituer l'individu: les proprietes accidentelles. La question des accidents est ici etudiee sur la longue duree - d'Aristote a la metaphysique analytique contemporaine, avec une attention particuliere portee aux discussions medievales - et sous ses differents aspects: ontologique, semantique, epistemologique et psychologique. Sont ainsi abordes des problemes philosophiques aussi fondamentaux que ceux induits par les categories aristoteliciennes de qualite et de relation, les tropes, la causalite, l'individuation. (shrink)

Notre réponse à la question de l'échec constitue aujourd'hui un problème pour la philosophie. Convaincus de ses prétendues vertus par des psys et des coachs pourtant peu convaincants sur ses tenants et ses aboutissants, nous nous méprenons en effet gravement sur l'échec. Dans une insatiable logique de la réussite, l'envie qui est la nôtre d'en tirer parti crée le besoin de le rendre autre qu'il n'est. Fût-il cuisant, fût-il complet, nous n'en parlons plus que comme d'un insuccès, nous ne le (...) pensons plus que comme une chance. Qui ne sait toutefois que les réussites dans la vie ne font pas forcément la réussite de la vie, ni les échecs son échec? Fermons donc l'oreille au nihilisme afin de rouvrir les yeux sur ces truismes : le bonheur n'est pas plus la réussite que la réussite le succès ; et si rater sa vie ne signifie pas nécessairement la gâcher, on ne peut manquer de la manquer au regard de l'inexorable loi de l'échec. Cela ressaisi, le seul désir qui mérite d'être cultivé ici-bas est d'échouer pour arriver, mieux : d'arriver â s'échouer. Aussi l'idée de l'échec conduit-elle in fine à entrer dans le registre de la marine, pour y envisager ex nunc notre existence comme une traversée. (shrink)

Artificial stimulation of the peripheral vestibular system has been shown to improve ownership of body parts in neurological patients, suggesting vestibular contributions to bodily self-consciousness. Here, we investigated whether galvanic vestibular stimulation interferes with the mechanisms underlying ownership, touch, and the localization of one’s own hand in healthy participants by using the “rubber hand illusion” paradigm. Our results show that left anodal GVS increases illusory ownership of the fake hand and illusory location of touch. We propose that these changes are (...) due to vestibular interference with spatial and/or temporal mechanisms of visual-tactile integration leading to an enhancement of visual capture. As only left anodal GVS lead to such changes, and based on neurological data on body part ownership, we suggest that this vestibular interference is mediated by the right temporo-parietal junction and the posterior insula. (shrink)

The notion of chemical evolution is controversially defined in reference to Darwinian evolution: for some, it is nothing but natural selection applied to chemical systems; yet, for others, it is precisely what happened before natural selection, the latter being the birthmark of life. Taking into account a plurality of evolutionary processes, I propose to construe chemical evolution as a composite theory within which natural selection might only be one of several evolutionary processes.

Physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that everything is physical. According to this thesis, everything in the world, including chemical, biological, mental, and social entities and processes, is constituted by or results from physical entities and processes. In analytic philosophy, one might say that physicalism is the claim that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical.

What is philosophy of science? Numerous manuals, anthologies or essays provide carefully reconstructed vantage points on the discipline that have been gained through expert and piecemeal historical analyses. In this paper, we address the question from a complementary perspective: we target the content of one major journal of the field—Philosophy of Science—and apply unsupervised text-mining methods to its complete corpus, from its start in 1934 until 2015. By running topic-modeling algorithms over the full-text corpus, we identified 126 key research topics (...) that span across 82 years. We also tracked their evolution and fluctuating significance over time in the journal articles. Our results concur with and document known and lesser-known episodes of the philosophy of science, including the rise and fall of logic and language-related topics, the relative stability of a metaphysical and ontological questioning (space and time, causation, natural kinds, realism), the significance of epistemological issues about the nature of scientific knowledge as well as the rise of a recent philosophy of biology and other trends. These analyses exemplify how computational text-mining methods can be used to provide an empirical large-scale and data-driven perspective on the history of philosophy of science that is complementary to other current historical approaches. (shrink)

Condemned to exist beyond his essence, since he is only what he does and can always become what he is not or not to be what he is any more, man is, for Sartre, condemned to freedom without condition which constitutes, not his nature, but his condition. Free of anything apart from not being free, since he chooses neither to be, nor the necessity to choose the being that he must make himself be, man, however, is always already determined by (...) his condition: thrown in to a world where he acknowledges his own condition. Far from calling into question the integrity of his autonomy of choice, this ontological conditioning is for the Being-itself the ground on which the need for his engagement appears and, therefore also the plenitude of his freedom. As tragic as that which one considers controlled by fate, for Sartre, the human condition thus means being condemned to freedom. (shrink)

S’il est bien une passion libre pour Descartes, c’est la générosité. Or, si toutes le sont pour Sartre, la générosité n’en est pas moins la passion de la liberté. On ne s’étonnera donc pas que Sartre puisse, avec Descartes, faire l’éloge de la générosité. On le fera néanmoins à le voir aussi bien, contre lui, en faire la critique. Sans doute cette ambivalence dans le traitement de la générosité par Sartre s’explique-t‑elle par l’ambiguïté de cette passion elle-même. Mais son auteur (...) n’est pas sans jouer double jeu, feignant d’être stupide dans la présentation qu’il donne de la position de Descartes relativement au problème des passions, pour que sa propre conception de celles-ci et de la liberté qui y préside paraisse d’autant plus subtile. (shrink)

DMet 10: Prime matter is the origin of all quantities. Hence it is the origin of every dimension of continuous quantity whatever. ...

L’adjectif prochain fait partie de ces adjectifs que Schnedecker (2002a) nomme « les adjectifs du troisième type ». Ni qualificatifs ni relationnels, souvent marginalisés, ces derniers possèdent des caractéristiques qui n’ont fait l’objet d’aucune étude systématique sur corpus. Nous nous proposons de combler cette lacune en réalisant une analyse distributionnelle de prochain dans différents genres textuels (oraux et écrits). Dans un premier temps, l’analyse portera sur les phénomènes de sélection lexicale qui apparaissent dans les emplois attestés et qui semblent fortement (...) conditionnés par la position de l’adjectif par rapport à son nom recteur. Nous verrons également que le nombre du nom recteur impose des contraintes d’emploi qui ont été peu détaillées dans les travaux antérieurs. Dans un deuxième temps, nous nous intéresserons aux noms recteurs, tels fois, saison et siècle, dont le fonctionnement diffère. L’étude sera l’occasion de comparer la description sur corpus avec celle proposée par Berthonneau (2002), basée sur une analyse introspective. La comparaison permettra de mettre en évidence les spécificités et les limites des deux approches. Une démarche similaire sera développée à partir des entrées de quelques dictionnaires. Au-delà de l’analyse de détail, l’article a pour objectif de présenter les bases descriptives permettant de problématiser le statut catégoriel de prochain. (shrink)

Cet article porte sur le modèle d'innovation qui préside à la conception des plateformes relationnelles sur Internet. Sous l'étiquette de « Web 2.0 » s'est développé récemment un ensemble de pratiques de conception qui associe étroitement les usagers innovateurs et les petites entreprises présentes sur Internet. On montre notamment comment cette tendance prolonge et transforme la dynamique des innovations ascendantes et le mouvement du logiciel libre. L'article s'attache à décrire deux espaces d'innovation particuliers qui permettent de réunir un réseau hétérogène (...) de concepteurs: les barcamps et les coworking places.This paper focuses on the innovation model that governs the design of relational platforms on the Internet. Under the label of "Web 2.0" has recently developed a set of design practices that closely innovative users and small businesses with an Internet presence. We show how this trend extends and transforms the dynamics of bottom-up innovations and the free software movement. The article aims to describe two areas of innovation individuals who bring together a heterogeneous network of designers: the barcamps and coworking spaces. (shrink)

Le droit naturel soutient l’hypothèse d’une connexion nécessaire entre le droit et la morale. Pour les positivistes, cette thèse impliquerait l’invalidité de toute loi injuste. Lex iniusta non est lex. Cette maxime a malheureusement été la source de nombreux malentendus. À travers cette formule, le positivisme attribue au droit naturel une thèse que personne ne défend réellement. Notre objectif est de comprendre la genèse de ce malentendu et d’exposer la manière dont les théories contemporaines du droit naturel tentent de démêler (...) les confusions véhiculées par cette maxime. Le droit naturel ne conteste pas nécessairement la validité des lois injustes mais il permet, à partir de la signification « focale » des concepts juridiques, de comprendre en quoi ces lois sont à la fois juridiquement et moralement défectueuses. (shrink)

La construcción de la historia moderna depende en parte de los valores y de las herramientas políticas que la personas tienen a su alcance como individuos: la democracia y los derechos humanos. Utilizando la paz como punto inicial y moviéndose a través de la evolución más reciente, este artículo explora conexiones entre la democracia, los derechos humanos y la paz, describiendo las distintas herramientas disponibles en sus respectivas y mutuas evoluciones. El lugar que la paz puede ocupar en las constituciones (...) se explora en este artículo, junto a la posibilidad y la ventaja que tiene concebir dicha paz como un derecho humano. En tanto que «el progreso está en camino», el artículo muestra las avenidas transitables y los diferentes caminos disponibles para participar en esta evolución. (shrink)

The sacrilegious proposition of the existence of cultures in whales and dolphins should open the discussion of cultures in other animals, allowing us to find what is unique in human cultures. The ethnographic approach used by all anthropologists is the key in this investigation and revealed that cultural differences are present in animals and could result from different learning mechanisms.

Si la laïcité est un terme qui plaît au débat public ordinaire depuis près de cent cinquante ans, elle n’est pas pour autant devenue un des grands concepts de la philosophie morale et politique, à la différence par exemple d’autres notions comme celles de justice, de devoir ou de tolérance. Or s’il est bien un concept qui structure spécifiquement la communauté politique républicaine française depuis près d’un siècle et demi, c’est celui de laïcité. Au point que la définition la plus (...) élémentaire de la laïcité pourrait consister à énoncer qu’elle est ce par quoi les citoyens font communauté. Au sens républicain du terme, la laïcité résonne du son d’un supposé admis vivre-ensemble dont elle tient lieu de principe fondateur évident. Ce texte se propose de questionner cette forme de communauté politique singulière qu’est la communauté républicaine des citoyens à l’aune du concept de laïcité en essayant de définir progressivement ce qu’est une communauté civique laïque. (shrink)

Handbooks of political science aften refer to the minister and the civil service as actors in the policy process. In theory, this representation is correct. However, in Belgium and in Flanders ministers construct a ministerial cabinet around them. The cabinet takes over different tasks from policy preparation to evaluation. In this respect, it reduces the civil service to an office that is only responsible for the implementation of policy. Frequently political-historical reasons are used to explain the existence of the system (...) of ministerial cabinets. Nevertheless, these are not the only reasons. Ministerial cabinets also exist because of organisational and cultural reasons. Understanding the ministerial cabinet, means understanding the way ministers want to work. This article highlights the way ministerial cabinets work, with a focus on Human Resources aspects. This gives information in which direction the civil service should move to fulfil the role of a good partner for the minister. (shrink)

We hypothesize that when honesty is not motivated by selfish goals, it reveals social preferences that have evolved for convincing strategically vigilant partners that one is a person worth cooperating with. In particular, we explain how the patterns of dishonest behavior observed in recent experiments can be motivated by preferences for social and self-esteem. These preferences have evolved because they are adaptive in an environment where it is advantageous to be selected as a partner by others and where these others (...) are strategically vigilant: they efficiently evaluate the expected benefit of cooperating with specific partners and attend to their intentions. We specify the adaptive value of strategic vigilance and preferences for social and self-esteem. We argue that evolved preferences for social and self-esteem are satisfied by applying mechanisms of strategic vigilance to one's own behavior. We further argue that such cognitive processes obviate the need for the evolution of preferences for fairness and social norm compliance. (shrink)