This article is devoted to the description of the experience associated with listening to a sound. In the first part, we describe the method we used to gather descriptions of auditory experience and to analyse these descriptions. This work of explicitation and analysis has enabled us to identify a threefold generic structure of this experience, depending on whether the attention of the subject is directed towards the event which is at the source of the sound, the sound in itself, considered (...) independently from its source, the felt sound. In the second part of the article, we describe this structure. The third part is devoted to a discussion of these results and the paths they open up in various fields of theoretical and applied research. (shrink)

The well-known experiments of Nisbett and Wilson lead to the conclusion that we have no introspective access to our decision-making processes. Johansson et al. have recently developed an original protocol consisting in manipulating covertly the relationship between the subjects’ intended choice and the outcome they were presented with: in 79.6% of cases, they do not detect the manipulation and provide an explanation of the choice they did not make, confirming the findings of Nisbett and Wilson. We have reproduced this protocol, (...) while introducing for some choices an expert guidance to the description of this choice. The subjects who were assisted detected the manipulation in 80% of cases. Our experiment confirms Nisbett and Wilson’s findings that we are usually unaware of our decision processes, but goes further by showing that we can access them through specific mental acts. (shrink)

French journalist Claire Parnet's famous dialogues with Gilles Deleuze offer an intimate portrait of the philosopher's life and thought. Conversational in tone, their engaging discussions delve deeply into Deleuze's philosophical background and development, the major concepts that shaped his work, and the essence of some of his famous relationships, especially his long collaboration with the philosopher Félix Guattari. Deleuze reconsiders Spinoza, empiricism, and the stoics alongside literature, psychoanalysis, and politics. He returns to the notions of minor literature, deterritorialization, the (...) critical and clinical, and begins a nascent study of cinema. New to this edition is Deleuze's essay "Pericles and Verdi," which reflects on politics and historical materialism in the work of the influential French philosopher François Châtelet. An enduring record of Deleuze's unique personality and profound contributions to culture and philosophy, _Dialogues II_ is a highly personable account of the evolution of one of the greatest critics and theorists of the twentieth century. (shrink)

The implicit activities of the living body in sports (such as heart rate, involuntary gestures, stress, reflex, emotional regulation and interaction expressions) emerge in the consciousness of the lived body without our voluntary control. We demonstrate physiological emersion, and how, including in dramaturgical perception, physiological flows and processes collide with the image of a whole body. In this paper, we introduce corporeal non-property as the missing (?) link between phenomenology and neuroscience, renewed by research on the cerebral unconscious and the (...) perception of their lived body. Rather than mindfulness, physical activity obliges the subject to learn the unconscious and his motor skills from his living body: a new psychoanalysis of sport is thus established by studying what emerges from the activity of the living body up to the level of the conscious description of motor action. In this paper, we explain why that awareness occurs, and why it matters for the understanding of unconscious activity of the athlete’s living body. This is potentially interesting, although it needs, as a theory, to overcome the obvious reliance of the body on unconscious or habitual/automated physiological processes. But the incorporation of body techniques forms a habitus. (shrink)

Research using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (IPLP) has consistently shown that English‐learning children aged 2 can associate transitive argument structure with causal events. However, studies using the same methodology investigating 2‐year‐old children’s knowledge of the conjoined agent intransitive and semantic role assignment have reported inconsistent findings. The aim of the present study was to establish at what age English‐learning children have verb‐general knowledge of both transitive and intransitive argument structure using a new method: the forced‐choice pointing paradigm. The results (...) suggest that young 2‐year‐olds can associate transitive structures with causal (or externally caused) events and can use transitive structure to assign agent and patient roles correctly. However, the children were unable to associate the conjoined agent intransitive with noncausal events until aged 3;4. The results confirm the pattern from previous IPLP studies and indicate that children may develop the ability to comprehend different aspects of argument structure at different ages. The implications for theories of language acquisition and the nature of the language acquisition mechanism are discussed. (shrink)

My comments on this pioneering book by Russ Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel do not focus on the descriptions of experiences that it includes, but on the very process of description, which seems to me insufficiently highlighted, described and called into question. First I will rely on a few indications given by Melanie herself, the subject interviewed by the authors, to highlight an essential difficulty which the authors only touch upon: the not immediately recognized charac-ter of lived experience. Then I will (...) look for clues about what Melanie does to come into contact with her experience and recognize it. These clues -- completed by elements of description of this act collected through explicitation interviews -- provide criteria enabling a more precise evaluation of what the authors do to guide Melanie in the real-ization of this act, and therefore the accuracy of Melanie's descrip-tions. I will defend the idea that the description of the very process of becoming aware and describing is an essential condition for the understanding, refinement, teaching, and evaluation of introspection methods, as well as for the reproducibility of their results. (shrink)

Block proposes that phenomenal experience overflows conscious access. In contrast, we propose that conscious access overflows overt report. We argue that a theory of phenomenal experience cannot discard subjective report and that Block's examples of phenomenal relate to two different types of perception. We propose that conscious access is more than simply readout of a pre-existing phenomenal experience.

Papers presented to various conferences, 2003-2006.

This article revisits Arendt’s and Foucault’s converging accounts of modern (bio)politics and the entry of biological life into politics. Agamben’s influential account of these ideas is rejected as a misrepresentation both because it de-historicizes biological/organic life and because it occludes the positivity of that life and thus the discursive appeal and performative force of biopolitics. Through attention to the genealogy of Arendt’s and Foucault’s own ideas we will see that the major point of convergence in their thinking is their insistence (...) upon understanding biological thinking from the inside, in terms of its positivity. Agamben’s assessment of modern politics is closer to Arendt’s than it is to Foucault’s and this marks a fascinating point of disagreement between Arendt and Foucault. Whereas Arendt sees the normalizing force of modern society as being in total opposition to individuality, Foucault posits totalization and individuation as processes of normation, which casts a light upon the relative import they place upon politics and ethics. (shrink)

Over the last decade, legal recognition of same-sex relationships in Canada has accelerated. By and large, same-sex cohabitants are now recognised in the same manner as opposite-sex cohabitants, and same-sex marriage was legalised in 2005. Without diminishing the struggle that lesbians and gay men have endured to secure this somewhat revolutionary legal recognition, this article troubles its narrative of progress. In particular, we investigate the terms on which recent legal struggles have advanced, as well as the ways in which resistance (...) to the legal recognition has been expressed and dealt with. We argue that to the extent that feminist critiques of marriage, familial ideology, and the privatisation of economic responsibility are marginalised, conservative and heteronormative discourses on marriage and family are reinforced. Our case studies include two pivotal moments in the quest for legislative recognition of same-sex relationships: the Hearings of the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on Bill C-23, The Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act, in 2000 and the hearings on Same-Sex Marriage in 2003. We find that the debates operated within a narrow paradigm that bolstered many existing hierarchies and exacerbated conditions for those who are economically disadvantaged. (shrink)

As an institution, the ?postmodern university? is central to the canon of today's research on higher education policy. Yet in this essay I argue that the postmodern university is a fiction that frames and inhibits our thinking about the future university. To understand why the postmodern university is a fiction, I first turn to grand theory and ask whether we can make sense of the notion of ?post?-postmodernity. Second, I turn to the UK higher education sector and show that the (...) postmodern university is a chimera, a modern artefact of competing instrumentalist, gothic, and postmodernist discourses. Third, I discuss competing visions of the future university and find that the progressive (yet modernist) agendas that re-imagine the public value of knowledge production, transmission, and contestation, are those that can move us beyond the palliative and panacea of the postmodern university. (shrink)

Individual differences in children's talk about inner states are striking, but how should they be interpreted? This study used transcripts of preschoolers’ conversations with siblings and best friends to address this question in two ways. Our first aim was to elucidate the exact nature of individual differences by contrasting categories (emotion/desire vs. cognitive state) and referents (own vs. other/shared) of inner state talk. Our second aim was to compare performance vs. competence views of inner state talk by exploring (i) the (...) stability of individual differences in inner state talk across different relationships and (ii) the cognitive correlates of inner state talk. A sample of 44 children (mean age = 4 years 3 months) was observed for 20 minutes at home playing with a sib and for 20 minutes at school playing with a best friend. Videos were transcribed and coded for the frequency and form of inner state talk (e.g., talk about different categories of inner state, or about own vs. others’ inner states). During the school visits, children completed a set of tasks tapping theory-of-mind skills and verbal ability. Individual differences in inner state talk (especially reference to others’ inner states) were stable across relationships. There was no association between individual differences in talk about cognitive vs. emotion/desire states, although both categories of inner state talk were significantly associated with individual differences in children's theory-of-mind skills. (shrink)

Pour projeter de la lumière dans de nombreux coins et recoins obscurs de la logique pure de Husserl et dans les rapports entre sa logique formelle et sa logique transcendantale, et combler des lacunes empêchant qu’on arrive à une appréciation juste de sa Mannigfaltigkeitslehre, ou théorie de multiplicités, on examine comment, en prônant une théorie des systèmes déductifs, ou systèmes d’axiomes, comme tâche suprême de la logique pure, Husserl cherchait à résoudre certains problèmes épineux auxquels il s’était heurté en écrivant (...) Philosophie de l’arithmétique. Ces problèmes sont décrits. Ensuite, on rassemble les éléments nécessaires pour caractériser ce que Husserl, à travers les textes présentement disponibles, voulait dire des Mannigfaltigkeiten. Pour conclure, il est indiqué comment Husserl pouvait considérer que sa théorie représentait une solution aux problèmes qui avaient conduit à son élaboration.To shed light on the numerous dark areas surrounding Husserl’s ideas about pure logic and the relationship between his formal logic and his transcendental logic, and so provide an accurate characterisation of his Mannigfaltigkeitslehre, a close look is taken at how, by advocating a theory of deductive systems, or axiomatic systems as the highest task of pure logic, Husserl sought to resolve certain thorny problems he encountered when writing the Philosophy of Arithmetic. Those problems are described. Then, his ideas about axiomatization and manifolds are drawn together from the various sources now available to provide a more complete picture of his Mannigfaltigkeitslehre. In conclusion, it is shown how Husserl considered his theory to be a solution to the problems leading to its development. (shrink)

The article by Froese, Gould and Seth is a survey rather than a commentary, dealing with the intertwined issues of the validity of first- person reports and of their interest for a science of consciousness. While acknowledging that experiential research has already produced promising results, the authors find that it has not yet produced 'killer experiments' providing a definitively positive answer to these two questions, and wonder what kind of experiment would allow it. Our response will address these two questions (...) successively. (shrink)

Dans la première ethnographie sur les Juifs de Russie (1861), Moïseï Berlin décrit les rituels du mariage et les rôles respectifs des hommes et des femmes. En gommant les aspects les plus folkloriques et en insistant sur la virginité de la femme et l’observance stricte des codes moraux et rituels religieux, il s’efforce de donner du judaïsme et de la population juive une image respectable, pour favoriser leur acceptation au sein de la société et l’Empire russe.

This article aims to characterise the visions of ecologisation found within scientific approaches embraced by different epistemic communities, and which have inspired empirical work and public action on agrifood system transitions. Based on comparative readings of works anchored in our two disciplinary fields (ecology and sociology), we identified six large ensembles of epistemic communities as well as their points of convergence and divergence. We identify six ideotypical visions of ecologisation based on the types of ‘relationships to nature’ embedded in these (...) large sets of epistemic communities: protectionism, functionalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, relational and pragmatist-experience-based. We suggest that pragmatist-experience-based approaches allow us to transcend two classical oppositions: between realism and constructivism, and between a conception of nature as passive and external as opposed to active and relational. Without claiming to offer a detailed analysis of these approaches, we hope that our work can be used as a tool to support reflection among scientists and other actors involved in agrifood system transitions. (shrink)

Les huit contributions rassemblées dans cet ouvrage par l’historienne espagnole Cristina Borderías, professeure au département d’histoire contemporaine de l’université de Barcelone, sont le fruit d’un travail collectif mené par le groupe de recherche « Travail, Institutions et Genre » (TIG). À première vue, la thématique traitée ici n’est pas très novatrice tant il existe déjà, en Espagne et ailleurs, de publications portant sur la division sexuelle du travail au cours de l’histoire ; cependa...

This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the study of generics and pursues the enterprise of the influential Generic Book edited by Gregory Carlson and Jeffry Pelletier, which was published in 1995. Genericity is a key notion in the study of human cognition as it reveals our capacity to organize our perceived reality into classes and to describe regularities. The generic can be expressed at the level of a word or phrase (ie the potato in The Irish economy became dependent (...) upon the potato) or an entire sentence (eg in John smokes a cigar after dinner, the generic aspect is a property of the expression, rather than any single word or phrase within it). This book gathers new work from senior and young researchers to reconsider the notion of genericity, examining the distinct contributions made by the determiner phrase (eg the notions of kind/individual) and the verbal predicate (eg the notions of permanency, disposition, ability, habituality, and plurality). Finally, in connection with the whole sentence, the analytic/synthetic distinction is discussed as well as the notion of normality. The book will appeal to both students and scholars in linguistics, philosophy and cognitive science. (shrink)

International humanitarian law and international human rights law both prohibit the use of child soldiers in armed conflict. The protection afforded to children is problematic because the age a child may become a soldier and what constitutes child “soldiering” fluctuates between States and cultures. Differing levels of children soldiers’ protection leave them vulnerable to particular abuses. This paper examines some different attitudes and approaches towards the use of child soldiers and concludes that international human rights law and international humanitarian law (...) does not adequately protect children. (shrink)

In several places, Levinas identifies the problem that concerns him as a “ crisis of humanism.” This problem finds its seeds in modernity but comes to fruition in the inhumanities of the 20 th century. Like his philosophical predecessors, Levinas offers an educational model as a solution to a problem he has identified. But this model--Jewish education—is uniquely different from those offered by those who came before him. This essay examines Levinas‘s interest in Jewish education as a solution to this (...) crisis in humanism and considers what the implications of this solution are for his project as a whole. (shrink)

"L'usage substantivé du mot 'soi' est intriguant. Le pronom tonique 'soi' ne pose pas de problème particulier dans les expressions comme 'prendre soin de soi', 'compter sur soi' ou 'être hors de soi'. Mais parler d'un 'soi', c'est aller au-delà de la réalité grammaticale et supposer une identité personnelle à travers la diversité des expériences. Or, l'idée de soi et la croyance en l'identité personnelle ont été mises en question par David Hume, dont les arguments résonnent toujours dans la philosophie (...) contemporaine. Le but de ce livre est double : montrer, en historiens de la philosophie, de quelle façon le philosophe britannique a répondu à ces problèmes, et évaluer la fécondité de ces résultats pour les sciences de l'esprit."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Il y a deux types d'absence. S'ensuivant de quelque perte ou de quelque attente caractérisée, la première se rapporte à un objet déterminé. Tout à l'inverse, plus générale et plus fondamentale, la seconde est si indéterminée qu'elle nous laisse désemparés de ne pas même savoir ce qui nous manque. C'est elle qui est à l'origine aussi bien des désespoirs amoureux que de l'espérance philosophique, et qui explique qu'il y ait en nous, comme disait Malebranche, 'toujours du mouvement pour aller plus (...) loin'. C'est elle aussi qui suscite la question de Faust dans l'opéra de Berlioz, que nul ne peut s'empêcher de poser et qui sert de fil directeur au présent essai: 'où trouver ce qui manque à ma vie?'"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Au moment où paraît l’Anatomie de la Mélancolie de Robert Burton (1e édition en 1621), l’humorisme se trouve sérieusement remis en cause par les découvertes du contemporain de Burton, William Harvey, concernant la circulation du sang. Comment expliquer alors la parution de cet ouvrage qui se présente comme une somme de toutes les connaissances médicales, philosophiques ou historiques accumulées au sujet de la mélancolie depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’à la fin de la Renaissance ? L’article se donne pour objectif de comprendre quel (...) peut être l’intérêt stratégique d’un recours au discours mélancolique et à la théorie des humeurs, lesquels deviennent sous la plume de Burton des instruments idéals permettant d’attirer l’attention sur la crise politique, sociale, économique et religieuse que traverse la monarchie anglaise de Jacques Ier. (shrink)