Les hommes ont émergé de l'animalité en dominant les choses et les animaux. Sur ce modèle, ils ont cru être encore plus puissants en dominant d'autres hommes. Ils ont imaginé que l'homme supérieur était celui qui dominait le plus. Nous vivons toujours dans cette illusion. Cette illusion n'est pas universelle mais il flotte dans l'esprit de tous une grande indécision à ce sujet. Pourtant, l'appétit de pouvoir fait de si grands dégâts, engendre de si grandes souffrances, qu'on ne peut en (...) rester à des intuitions contradictoires. Il est urgent de découvrir ce qui fait qu'un homme est un homme véritable et non une idole trompeuse. Pour cela, on n'a pas d'autre moyen que de remonter à la base ontologique, c'est-à-dire à ce qui fait la réalité de toute chose. Puisque l'homme est une partie du monde, ce qu'il a en propre ne peut s'éclairer que sur cette base commune. On croit désormais que la science suffit à répondre à cette préoccupation, nous avons à la dépasser en l'intégrant."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Il y a une pente universitaire à s'enfermer dans les textes en perdant de vue la réalité. C'est l'aboutissement d'un vice constitutif. En effet, depuis Aristote au moins, toutes les doctrines se sont développées sur la base d'un dédoublement ontologique entre un domaine des 'idées' et un domaine de la réalité elle-même. Ce dédoublement repose sur une imagination étrangère à l'expérience. Pour y voir plus clair, il faut s'appuyer constamment sur ce qui est donné tel qu'il est donné. Pour cela, (...) il faut déplacer l'attention depuis les contenus vers la manière dont nous les saisissons consciemment en confrontant l'expérience commune et la figure scientifique corrélative"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Exploring responsibility in the works of Nietzsche, Sartre, Levinas, Heidegger, and Derrida, Raffoul identifies decisive moments in the development of the concept, retrieves its origins, and explores new reflections on it.

In modal logic, propositions are evaluated relative to possible worlds. A proposition may be true relative to a world w, and false relative to another world w'. Relativism is the view that the relativization idea extends beyond possible worlds and modalities. Thus, in tense logic, propositions are evaluated relative to times. A proposition (e.g. the proposition that Socrates is sitting) may be true relative to a time t, and false relative to another time t'. In this paper I discuss, and (...) attempt to rebut, two classical objections to Relativism. The first objection, due to Frege, is the objection from incompleteness. I distinguish two possible relativist responses to that objection, one of which corresponds to the view I actually defend : Moderate Relativism. The second objection is due to Mark Richard, who argued that the objects of belief cannot be relativistic. I show that that objection can be met within the Moderate Relativist framework. In the last section, I deal with special forms of disagreement that have loomed large in recent discussions of Relativism. (shrink)

The Ainu are still in existence, but their reduced numbers, now around 20,000, indicate how marginal their presence is even in Hokkaido, their ancestral territory. Moreover, they have undergone much metissage, in both ethnic and cultural terms. Legally, the Ainu do not yet constitute an indigenous ethnic minority; they have only recently obtained some gestures of recognition from the government, such as the interruption of a dam project on a ritual site. In 1994, for the first time in history, an (...) Ainu, Kay ano Shigeru, was elected to the senate. The legislation concerning the Ainu lands, dating from 1899, has finally been revised. And with a boost from the International Year of Ethnic Minorities, in 1992, Ainu organizations managed to inflect the official Japanese doctrine that Japanese soil is home to only one community, that of the Japanese. (shrink)

In response to Mandy Simons’ defence of a classical Gricean approach to pragmatic enrichment in terms of conversational implicature, I emphasize the following contrast. Conversational implicatures are generated by a global inference which uses as a premise the fact that the speaker has said that p, but only the triggering inference is global in cases of pragmatic enrichment. What generates the correct interpretation is a process of reconstrual, which locally maps the literal meaning of a constituent to a modulated meaning (...) and composes that meaning with that of the other constituents. That process is constrained by Gricean considerations but that is true of all pragmatic aspects of interpretation, whether pre-propositional or post-propositional. Just as indexical resolution, though pragmatic and constrained by Gricean considerations, does not fit the two-stage model through which Grice accounts for conversational implicatures, so pragmatic modulation can’t be accounted for in terms of that model despite the fact that, like conversational implicatures and unlike indexical resolution, modulation is pragmatically rather than semantically triggered. (shrink)

It is argued there is nothing special or deviant about the use of 'now' to refer to a time in the past (or about the use of 'here' to refer to a distant place) — no need to appeal to pragmatic mechanisms such as context-shifting to account for such uses. Such uses are puzzling only if one (mistakenly) maintains that 'here' and 'now' are pure indexicals. In the paper it is claimed that they are more similar to demonstratives than to (...) pure indexicals. Updated material on this can be found in *Truth-Conditional Pragmatics*, Chapter 6, 2010. (shrink)

Response to Carston's paper, 'How Many Pragmatic Systems Are There'?

This paper — a sequel to my 'Open Quotation' (Mind 2001) — is my reaction to the articles discussing open quotation in the special issue of the Belgian Journal of Linguistics edited by P. De Brabanter in 2005.

In the first part of this paper I sketch a theory of indexical concepts within a broadly epistemic framework. In the second part I discuss and dismiss an argument due to Jerry Fodor, to the effect that any epistemic approach to concept individuation (including the theory of indexical concepts I will sketch) is doomed to failure.

Current philosophical accounts of causation suggest that the same causal assertion can have different meanings. Yet, in actual social-scientific practice, the possible meanings of some causal generalisations intended to support policy prescriptions are not always spelled out. In line with a standard referentialist approach to semantics, we propose and elaborate on four questions to systematically elucidate the meaning of causal generalisations. The analysis can be useful to a host of agents, including social scientists, policy-makers, and philosophers aiming at being socially (...) relevant. To illustrate our proposal, we analyse the complexities related to the meaning of causal generalisations in the context of a concrete case of economic research which is explicitly intended to guide public policy, namely, the OECD research on the causes of unemployment. (shrink)

In the present study, we examined how the religiousness of European Muslim immigrants is related to multiple collective identities , attachment to one or both cultures, and acculturation as a process realized through a variety of domains in personal and social life. Two groups were included: young Muslims born of immigration from Muslim countries and, for comparison, young non-Muslims born of immigration from other countries. In both groups, high religiousness predicted attachment to origin identity and culture; low religiousness and religious (...) doubting predicted identification with the host country and acculturation. Interestingly, the religiousness of Muslim immigrants also predicted high identification as citizen of the world, whereas the religiousness of the other immigrants was related to low European identity. Finally, some discrepancy between claiming new identities and effectively experiencing acculturation was found. Interpretations are provided on both a general level and a contextual level. (shrink)

The central notion in this article is ‘pluriform accommodation,’ a term that we have coined to defend two lines of thought. The first is a plea for inclusive and consequential neutrality; the second is a closely linked plea for reasonable accommodation. With ‘pluriform accommodation’ we emphasize that the multicultural recognition scope should be expanded. The need for inclusive and accommodative rules, laws, and practices is a matter of principle and as such cannot be reduced to the inclusion of people with (...) an immigration background who bring with them all kinds of ethnocultural and religious practices, convictions, and traditions. Furthermore, the enshrined freedom of religion does not provide the needed protection for the multiplicity of conscientious identifications, convictions, and strong allegiances that might be central to one’s sense of self. We argue that we should not engage in (top down) debates about the rights of individuals and groups of different types and think in terms of identity hierarchies, but instead should consider the various claims being made (bottom up), aiming for common standards and criteria to assess the validity of these claims and the reasonableness of the associated accommodations. (shrink)

_Philosophical reflections on the phenomenon of globalization._.

My contribution to the 'MIMESIS, METAPHYSICS AND MAKE-BELIEVE' conference held in honour of Kendall Walton in the University of Leeds.

Putnam is known for having demonstated the existence of a new form of context-dependence, namely that which characterizes natural kind terms. Terms like ‘tiger' and ‘water' are indexical, Putnam says, since their conditions of application varies with the context of use — in a suitably broad sense of ‘context'. In this talk I focus on the relation between Putnam's semantics and a body of views I call ‘contextualism'. Contextualism generalizes context-sensitivity : it claims that sentences carry contents only in the (...) context of a speech act. This view was put forward by ordinary language philosophers in the mid-twentieth century, and it has re-surfaced in recent times in the works of philosophers like John Searle, Charles Travis, and myself. In the talk I argue that Putnam's semantics has strong affinities with contextualism. (shrink)

Many liberals and secularists believe that religious schooling should not be publicly funded or that it should simply be banned. Challenging those views, I claim that although liberal states may refuse to fund and may even ban certain illiberal separate religious schools, it is impermissible, for distinctively liberal reasons, to completely ban publicly funded religious schooling. I will however argue that providing religious instruction within common public schools is more desirable than having separate religious schools. I argue that providing religious (...) instruction within common public schools is a better way to balance the educational interests of parents, children and society than banning religious schooling altogether; authorizing it but refusing to fund it; or having publicly funded separate religious schools. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel methodological approach of how to design, conduct and analyse robot-assisted play. This approach is inspired by nondirective play therapy. The experimenter participates in the experiments, but the child remains the main leader for play. Besides, beyond inspiration from non-directive play therapy, this approach enables the experimenter to regulate the interaction under specific conditions in order to guide the child or ask her questions about reasoning or affect related to the robot. This approach has been tested (...) in a long-term study with six children with autism in a school setting. An autonomous robot with zoomorphic, dog-like appearance was used in the studies. The children’s progress was analyzed according to three dimensions, namely, Play, Reasoning and Affect. Results from the case-study evaluations have shown the capability of the method to meet each child’s needs and abilities. Children who mainly played solitarily progressively experienced basic imitation games with the experimenter. Children who proactively played socially progressively experienced higher levels of play and constructed more reasoning related to the robot. They also expressed some interest in the robot, including, on occasion, affect. Keywords: Human–Robot Interaction, Robot-Mediated Therapy, Robot-Assisted Play, Non-Directive Play Therapy, Assistive Technology, Autism, Children. (shrink)

Le problème du vivant n'est plus un problème « local », il traverse et bouscule tous les domaines, depuis les fondements de l'esprit (dans le cerveau) jusqu'à la préservation de la vie (dans l'univers) en passant par le rapport de l'homme et de l'animal, le soin et le pouvoir, la littérature et l'art. Mais rien ne serait plus trom-peur que d'y voir une évidence réductrice : de la pensée aux neurones, de l'histoire à la survie, de l'éthique à la bioéthique, (...) de la littérature à la biographie, etc. C'est comme problème, à travers une diversité d'approches nouvelles, que se constitue le moment philosophique (scientifique et historique) du vivant. Le but de ce livre est d'explorer ce domaine, c'est-à-dire non seulement d'en donner une carte, mais de le parcourir en acte, de la métaphysique à l'esthétique en passant par la biologie, l'anthropologie, l'éthique et la politique. Ce ne sont pas des études « sur » le vivant comme objet extérieur, mais des interventions enga-gées et constituant ce moment par leurs relations elles-mêmes. Pages de début Présentation Première partie - Métaphysique Un moment du vivant?? L'acte du vivant Vie lacunaire et vie approfondie Vie de douleur Deuxième partie - Biologie La différence entre santé et maladie Revenir au concept de Nature Les bases d'une éthique transphylétique Le moment écologique Troisième partie - Anthropologie L'homme, exception dans la nature?? Le sophisme de l'animalité humaine La catastrophe entre vie et justice Quatrième partie - Politique Le nazisme, ou la «?vie?» comme «?norme?» Pour une autre approche de la biopolitique Politiques du vivant, politiques de la nature Biopolitique des sentinelles Cinquième partie - Éthique Répondre du vivant Vie, médecine, responsabilité Le soin maternel à la lumière de l'ontologie de la relation La vie à tout prix?? Sixième partie - Esthétique La vie de l'image comme médiation Se sentir vivant Hommes et bêtes à vif Corps.EXT RemerciementsPages de fin. (shrink)

A day in November 2005, it was a Saturday, I remember very well, my life changed, radically. I am not sure how to define this moment ; for convenience it could be called "the accident". This accident has many faces, but it is first and foremost a revolution, a return to the starting point of my relationship with language. Since it is still very difficult for me properly to conjugate verbs, I will write my story mostly in the present tense.

The Diggers, or yet the « true levellers », appropriation of the parochial terrain of the St George’s Hill close to London, might be considered, in the midst of the English revolution, as the proclamation of a constituer power in action. Theorist of this adventure, Gerard Winstanley has left behind him a singular oeuvre in the constellation of« biblical communisms ». Animated by harsh inner tensions, molded by an archaism indissociable from its modernity, it constitutes, at the same time, an (...) accomplishment, an absolute dead end, and, perhaps, a point of departure : it might end up in Spinoza as well as in « real communism ». (shrink)

Debate over the place of Christianity in European politics and society has made an important come-back. The Convention on the Future of Europe’s deliberations over the EU Constitution has thrown into relief the role of religion in defining ‘Europeanness’. In the context of a secularized Europe, Christianity is fighting for its institutional recognition and space in the public sphere. Religion may offer a cultural identity and work both to resist and to accommodate change. However, the Christian mobilization has been challenged (...) by those who defend the secular order. The debate over whether Christianity should be seen as constitutive of European identity has been framed by wider concerns about collective identities and memories in Europe. (shrink)

This paper describes Alfred Clebsch’s 1871 article that gave a geometrical interpretation of elements of the theory of the general algebraic equation of degree 5. Clebsch’s approach is used here to illuminate the relations between geometry, intuition, figures, and visualization at the time. In this paper, we try to delineate clearly what he perceived as geometric in his approach, and to show that Clebsch’s use of geometrical objects and techniques is not intended to aid visualization matters, but rather is a (...) way of directing algebraic calculations. We also discuss the possible reasons why the article of Clebsch has been eventually completely forgotten by the historiography. (shrink)

Nanomaterials have attracted much interest in the medical field and related applications as their distinct properties in the nanorange enable new and improved diagnosis and therapies. Owing to these properties and their potential interactions with the human body and the environment, the impact of nanomaterials on humans and their potential toxicity have been regarded a very significant issue. Consequently, nanomaterials are the subject of a wide range of cutting-edge research efforts in the medical and related fields to thoroughly probe their (...) potential beneficial utilizations and their more negative effects. We posit that the lack of standardization in the field is a serious shortcoming as it has led to the establishment of methods and results that do not ensure sufficient consistency and thus in our view can possibly result in research outputs that are not as robust as they should be. The main aim of this article is to present how NanoDiaRA, a large FP7 European multidisciplinary project that seeks to investigate and develop nanotechnology-based diagnostic systems, has developed and implemented robust, standardized methods to support research practices involving the engineering and manipulation of nanomaterials. First, to contextualize this research, an overview of the measures defined by different regulatory bodies concerning nanosafety is presented. Although these authorities have been very active in the past several years, many questions remain unanswered in our view. Second, a number of national and international projects that attempted to ensure more reliable exchanges of methods and results are discussed. However, the frequent lack of publication of procedures and protocols in research can often be a hindrance for sharing those good practices. Subsequently, the efforts made through NanoDiaRA to introduce standardized methods and techniques to support the development and utilization of nanomaterials are discussed in depth. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with the partners of this project, and the interviews were analyzed thematically to highlight the determined efforts of the researchers to standardize their methods. Finally, some recommendations are made toward the setting up of well-defined methods to support the high-quality work of collaborative nanoparticle-based research and development projects and to enhance standardization processes. (shrink)

Trois rapports de la déontologie et du droit sont proposés pour saisir les relations, toujours ambiguës, entre ces deux champs normatifs. Ces rapports sont ici baptisés déontologies personnelle, professionnelle et publique. La première correspond à une morale privée, dont l’objectif est de garantir le bien commun, tandis que la deuxième renvoie à un corpus normatif spontané produit par une profession pour ses propres besoins, et la troisième consiste en une appropriation des deux autres par la puissance publique. La déontologie se (...) trouve donc désormais confondue avec le droit qui en déforme la vision originelle indifférente à la question disciplinaire, révélant ainsi l’actuelle moralisation du corpus juridique, lequel incarne un repère moral pour les individus. (shrink)