Le premier chapitre de la quatrième partie de la Théorie des sentiments moraux est surtout connu parce qu'il énonce une des occurrences de la métaphore de la « main invisible ». Il décrit egalement une forme jugée particulièrement importante des motifs de l'action : l'amour du système, que Smith oppose à la recherche de l'utilité. On montre que cette dernière désigne chez Smith l'activité laborieuse, et que l'amour du système, dans le domaine économique, n'est rien d'autre que l'accumulation du capital. (...) Celle-ci est done irréductible à l'allocation intertemporelle de l'utilité. Chapter One of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, is above all known as the place where we can find the first mention of the metaphor of the « Invisible Hand ». However, this chapter also describes an important kind of motives of action, the latter is called love of systems and Smith contrasts the love of systems to the pursuit of utility. The paper shows that the latter is nothing but labour, and the love of system, in economic matters, is nothing but an accumulation of capital. Therefore the latter is irreducible to intertemporal utility allocation. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's death in 1984 coincided with the fading away of the hopes for social transformation that characterized the postwar period. In the decades following his death, neoliberalism has triumphed and attacks on social rights have become increasingly bold. If Foucault was not a direct witness of these years, his work on neoliberalism is nonetheless prescient: the question of liberalism occupies an important place in his last works. Since his death, Foucault's conceptual apparatus has acquired a central, even dominant position (...) for a substantial segment of the world's intellectual left. However, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, Foucault's attitude towards neoliberalism was at least equivocal. Far from leading an intellectual struggle against free market orthodoxy, Foucault seems in many ways to endorse it. How is one to understand his radical critique of the welfare state, understood as an instrument of biopower? Or his support for the pandering anti-Marxism of the so-called new philosophers? Is it possible that Foucault was seduced by neoliberalism? This question is not merely of biographical interest: it forces us to confront more generally the mutations of the left since May 1968, the disillusionment of the years that followed and the profound transformations in the French intellectual field over the past thirty years. To understand the 1980s and the neoliberal triumph is to explore the most ambiguous corners of the intellectual left through one of its most important figures. (shrink)

In the philosophy of language, conceptual role semantics (hereafter CRS) is a theory of what constitutes the meanings possessed by expressions of natural languages, or the propositions expressed by their utterance. In the philosophy of mind, it is a theory of what constitutes the contents of psychological attitudes, such as beliefs or desires. CRS comes in a variety of forms, not always clearly distinguished by commentators. Such versions are known variously as functional/causal/computational role semantics, and more broadly as use-theories of (...) meaning. Nevertheless, all are united in seeking the meaning or content of an item, not in what it is made of, nor in what accompanies or is associated with it, but in what is done with it, the use it is put to. Roughly, according to CRS, the meaning or propositional content of an expression or attitude is determined by the role it plays in a person’s language or in her cognition. Currently, many view CRS as the main rival to theories that take notions such as truth or reference as central (for example, Davidson 2001), although the relationship between the two is not straightforward. The following outlines the main varieties of CRS, provides a cursory survey of its history, introduces the central arguments offered in its favor, and provisionally assesses how the variants fair against a number of prominent criticisms. (shrink)

This book offers a broad reconstruction of the modern notion of sovereignty, a comprehensive critique of state-inflicted violence, and a concept of non-coercive law for our contemporary world society.

Jeffrey (1983) proposed a generalization of conditioning as a means of updating probability distributions when new evidence drives no event to certainty. His rule requires the stability of certain conditional probabilities through time. We tested this assumption (“invariance”) from the psychological point of view. In Experiment 1 participants offered probability estimates for events in Jeffrey’s candlelight example. Two further scenarios were investigated in Experiment 2, one in which invariance seems justified, the other in which it does not. Results were in (...) rough conformity to Jeffrey (1983)’s principle. (shrink)

��People spent 5 min before sleep at home writing their stream of thought as they suppressed thoughts of a target person, thought of the person, or wrote freely after mentioning the person. These presleep references generally prompted people to report increased dreaming about the person. However, suppression instructions were particularly likely to have this in- fluence, increasing dreaming about the person as measured both by participants’ self-ratings of their dreams and by raters’ coding of mentions of the person in written (...) dream reports. This effect was observed regardless of emotional attraction to the person. (shrink)

Spatial attention and eye-movements are tightly coupled, but the precise nature of this coupling is controversial. The influential but controversial Premotor theory of attention makes four specific predictions about the relationship between motor preparation and spatial attention. Firstly, spatial attention and motor preparation use the same neural substrates. Secondly, spatial attention is functionally equivalent to planning goal directed actions such as eye-movements (i.e. planning an action is both necessary and sufficient for a shift of spatial attention). Thirdly, planning a goal (...) directed action with any effector system is sufficient to trigger a shift of spatial attention. Fourthly, the eye-movement system has a privileged role in orienting visual spatial attention. This article reviews empirical studies that have tested these predictions. Contrary to predictions one and two there is evidence of anatomical and functional dissociations between endogenous spatial attention and motor preparation. However, there is compelling evidence that exogenous attention is reliant on activation of the oculomotor system. With respect to the third prediction, there is correlational evidence that spatial attention is directed to the endpoint of goal-directed actions but no direct evidence that this attention shift is dependent on motor preparation. The few studies to have directly tested the fourth prediction have produced conflicting results, so the extent to which the oculomotor system has a privileged role in spatial attention remains unclear. Overall, the evidence is not consistent with the view that spatial attention is functionally equivalent to motor preparation so the Premotor theory should be rejected, although a limited version of the Premotor theory in which only exogenous attention is dependent on motor preparation may still be tenable. A plausible alternative account is that activity in the motor system contributes to biased competition between different sensory representations with the winner of the competition becoming the attended item. (shrink)

Wittgenstein famously remarks that ‘the meaning of a word is its use’ (PI §43). Whether or not one views this as gesturing at a ‘theory’ of meaning, or instead as aiming primarily at dissuading us from certain misconceptions of language that are a source of puzzlement, it is clear that Wittgenstein held that for certain purposes the meaning of an expression could profitably be characterised as its use. Throughout his later writings, however, Wittgenstein’s appeal to the notion of use pulls (...) in two directions. In several places, Wittgenstein seems to connect the notion of an expression’s meaning with that of use in the sense of usage or practice. More specifically, he suggests that for an expression to possess meaning is for there to be a practice of employing it according to certain rules. ‘That’, he tells us, ‘is why there exists a correspondence between the concepts “rule” and “meaning”’ (OC §62; cf. PG 68; PO 51; RFM VI §28; VW 103). Indeed, Wittgenstein goes so far as to say, ‘The rule-governed nature of our languages permeates our life’ (RC §303). Call the view that the meaning of an expression is determined by a general principle governing its use, rulism. (shrink)

Berkeley’s appeal to a posteriori arguments for God’s existence supports belief only in a God who is finite. But by appealing to an a priori argument for God’s existence, Berkeley emphasizes God’s infinity. In this latter argument, God is not the efficient cause of particular finite things in the world, for such an explanation does not provide a justification or rationale for why the totality of finite things would exist in the first place. Instead, God is understood as the creator (...) of the total unity of all there is, the whole of creation. In this a priori argument, we should not focus on the specific objects that God creates, for that requires that we think that God knows each finite thing as distinct from every other. Rather, we should recognize how God creates all things in creating the complex, infinite totality of finite perceivings, each of which exists in virtue of the distinctions and relations it expresses. (shrink)

This monograph suggests that theories of warfare and descriptions of the evolving character of war cannot be complete without first giving credit to the nature of war itself. Looking at varied portrayals of war from literary, academic, military, and civilian strategist perspectives, this monograph offers a redefinition of "war" as an investment in organized violence by parties interested in the extension, maintenance, or appearance of their power over an unspecified time, with an unknowable risk, for an uncertain reward. In drawing (...) an analogy to painting, it suggests that "choice" is the underlying axiomatic theme of war, and it that is replayed and adapted at every scale of warfare like a classical fugue. From there, this monograph pierces the interior of Clausewitz's "trinity" description of war, and proposes that there are still more universal ways to describe conflict's breadth, depth, and context. This argument concludes that war is better understood when it is described as a "clash of the trinities." An ecology of war is proposed, in which fundamental components comprising fuel, biology, and interactions constitute a network or system undergoing entropy. It is this sense of entropy (a tendency toward social and political discontinuity and disorder) that chiefly describes war in all its varied guises and explains the political, social, and military efforts to avoid them, corral them, plan them, or fight them. (shrink)

Los materiales producidos por entidades ligadas a la salud de las infancias como la OMS, UNICEF o la OPS tienden a enumerar argumentos en contra de las tecnologías, desde los que se desalienta el “uso”, la “exposición” o el “consumo” de pantallas por parte de niñas y niños. Los diseños curriculares para la educación inicial, al contrario, se refieren a las tecnologías como parte de los saberes a enseñar, como oportunidades para la innovación, potenciales recursos para la enseñanza o incluso (...) como rasgos de las llamadas nuevas infancias. En este artículo procuraremos analizar los escenarios de encuentro entre infancias y tecnologías que surgen de ambas fuentes, sobre la hipótesis de que consideran escenarios muy diferentes: no hablan de las mismas tecnologías ni de las mismas infancias. La producción se inscribe en un estudio en curso de la Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, titulado “Infancias, tecnologías digitales y escuela: un análisis desde la educación infantil”. (shrink)

This article discusses how the words 'necessary' and 'analytic' are suitably used in philosophy. It is argued that analytic statements should not be called 'necessary'.

The purpose of this research is to study the different roles of inner experience and the inner sense in Empiricism, especially from argumentative and methodological perspectives. The research studies the philosophies of the three classical Empiricists, Locke, Berkeley and Hume, as well as that of Thomas Reid, Hume’s contemporary and the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, who embraces the experiential methodology of the Empiricists while criticizing many of their epistemological presumptions. The study shows that Empiricism, supposedly a (...) methodology for studying the external world, paradoxically becomes a discussion focusing on inner experience and states of consciousness. Special attention in this research is given to methodological discussions in Empiricism pertaining to the roles and status of the inner sense, and to actual arguments which rely on inner experience. In this, the research portrays types of relations that exists between epistemology, methodology and argumentation, as different aspects of theory and praxis in philosophy. As a study of philosophical argumentation, the research presents a typology of informal arguments that rely on inner experience. In general, this study is a broad discussion of British Empiricism from the perspective of inner experience as a vital epistemological and methodological consideration. The epistemological discussion focuses on issues such as differentiating between inner and outer experience, the phenomenological classification of experience in general, and the distinction between consciousness and reflection. This study also touches on a number of meta-philosophical questions: the relation between theory and praxis in philosophy; does philosophy produce knowledge; and whether philosophers have special argumentative tools. These questions are discussed throughout the particular chapters, and the aim of this research is to provide partial answers to them. (shrink)

It is well known that Aristotle tries to make room for self-motion – an idea he inherits to some extent from Plato – within his other commitments to causal determinism while at the same time modifying the idea. However, one argument in Physics VII 1 seems to pose a problem for the bare possibility of self-motion; in it he seems to argue that everything that moves must be moved by something else. The text in which this argument appears is itself (...) vexed on a number of fronts, because it is not clear how Physics VII fits with the rest of the Physics, and also because there are two distinct manuscript traditions for Physics VII. So the argument in Physics VII 1 has not been adequately taken into account in discussions of self-motion. I argue for a new and charitable reading of Aristotle’s Physics VII 1 α241b35-242a49 / β241b25-242a15. I show that the argument is compatible with Aristotle’s endorsements of self-motion; I defend the argument’s most controversial premise; and I argue that my reading has some useful implications for understanding Aristotelian self-motion. (shrink)

The essays trace carefully the histories of the influences of earlier thinkers and their legacies upon later thinkers.

This interview was conducted over two sittings, on October 21, 2009 and January 8, 2010 respectively. What appears below is a reproduction of the interview through notes on the first session, and a recording of the second. I would like to thank Professor Taylor for his understanding of the technological problems that occurred during the first sitting, as well as for taking the time to meet twice and review those sections of the interview not transcribed from a recording. I would (...) also like to thank my wife, Janelle, for listening to the recording, and reviewing the transcribed sections. (shrink)

This introduction to logic, which aims to reflect recent advances in the field, focuses on natural language, analyzing the structure of arguments conducted in English. The text includes problems with which students can test their skills.

A glance at the sky raises my probability of rain to .7. As it happens, the conditional probabilities of each state given rain remain the same, and similarly for their conditional probabilities given no rain. As Jeffrey (1983, Ch. 11) points out, my new distribution P2 is therefore fixed by the law of total probability. For example, P2(RC) = P2(RC | R)P2(R)+P2(RC | ¯.

The authors examined how a perceiver’s identification of a target person’s actions covaries with attributions of mind to the target. The authors found in Study 1 that the attribution of intentionality and cognition to a target was associated with identifying the target’s action in terms of high-level effects rather than low-level details. In Study 2, both action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, and in Study 3, they were reduced for a target suffering misfortune. In Study (...) 4, it was again found that action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, but like that for the self or a liked other, positive actions were identified at higher levels than negative actions, with the reverse being true for disliked others. In Study 5, the authors found that instructing participants to adopt the target’s perspective did not affect mind attribution but did lead to higher level identifications of the.. (shrink)

Review essay of Infinite Mobilization, by Peter Sloterdijk, translated by Sandra Berjan, Cambridge, Polity, 2020, 240 pp., $24.95, ISBN: 978-1-509-51847-0.