La réflexion philosophique, dont l'ouverture à l'univers dans lequel nous nous découvrons - avec une acuité proportionnelle à un étonnement renouvelé - n'a pas de limites, n'en est que plus tributaire des sciences et des techniques, des arts et de multiples activités qui régissent plus ou moins fructueusement notre expérience. Or, au sein des sciences humaines, privilégiées pour éclairer une condition que nous ne saurions cesser d'interpréter, peu d'oeuvres du dernier siècle auront enrichi en le précisant notre être-au-monde, comme la (...) théorie linguistique de Gustave Guillaume, assez solitaire, et les recherches multiformes de Jean Piaget - où la psychologie de l'enfant a souvent occulté la visée épistémologique et son enracinement biologique (cf Biologie et connaissance, 1967) et ses prolongements pédagogiques, voire éthiques. Le Cinquantenaire et le Trentenaire de leur disparition appelaient un hommage d'autant plus impératif qu'ils sont restés marginaux ou ignorés dans les milieux philosophiques, malgré la centralité de leurs élucidations. Leur commune orientation génétique et structurale n'ayant suscité aucun échange, pendant la contemporanéité de publications d'un tiers de siècle (1923-1960), mesurer leur complémentarité s'impose d'autant plus. S'ils peuvent aider à repenser la condition humaine, c'est qu'ils auront contribué à dissiper le "mystère de la pensée". L'un cherchant à habiliter les caractères systématique et cinétique des langues, irremplaçables moyens de penser ; l'autre dans un vis-à-vis cognitif et opératoire de Freud, en relavant sur les plans épistémologique et logique, notamment, l'élan révolutionnaire de la seconde modernité, autour de l'évolutionnisme. Mais les thèmes majeurs du constructivisme, du schème et de la symbolisation - et plus largement du temps et du langage - auront sans doute aidé à spécifier les mutations autorisées par la révolution critique. Entre l'Instant du je parle et un décentrement exigible pratiquement (éthique) comme théoriquement (épistémique), c'est bien la condition humaine dans son ensemble qui est concernée. Si repenser cette Condition s'impose en permanence, il importe de ne pas manquer des oeuvres qui, par-delà toute mode, proposent à notre expérience des fondations résistant à d'inéluctables vicissitudes. (shrink)

Guillaume Collett questions to what extent we can locate Deleuze within the Lacanian School during the late-1960s, prior to Guattari. In so doing, he offers a new, integrated reading of Deleuze's The Logic of Sense by understanding it as a 'psychoanalysis of sense', and gives a new interpretation of Deleuze's conception of philosophy itself. The Psychoanalysis of Sense shows that Deleuze was not merely aware of the debates animating the Lacanian School during the 1960s: he sought to contribute to (...) them. Emphasising his appropriation of the work of post-Lacanian Serge Leclaire, Collett explains how Deleuze constructed a more singular and immanent theory of the linguistic structure of the unconscious - granting the erogenous body a larger structuring role. (shrink)

In update logic as studied by Baltag, Moss, Solecki and van Benthem, little attention is paid to the interpretation of an action by an agent, which is just assumed to depend on the situation. This is actually a complex issue that nevertheless complies to some logical dynamics. In this paper, we tackle this topic. We also deal with actions that change propositional facts of the situation. In parallel, we propose a formalism to accurately represent an agent's epistemic state based on (...) hyperreal numbers. In that respect, we use infinitesimals to express what would surprise the agents (and by how much) by contradicting their beliefs. We also use a subjective probability to model the notion of belief. It turns out that our probabilistic update mechanism satisfies the AGM postulates of belief revision. (shrink)

In this paper, we use an experimental design to compare the performance of elicitation rules for subjective beliefs. Contrary to previous works in which elicited beliefs are compared to an objective benchmark, we consider a purely subjective belief framework. The performance of different elicitation rules is assessed according to the accuracy of stated beliefs in predicting success. We measure this accuracy using two main factors: calibration and discrimination. For each of them, we propose two statistical indexes and we compare the (...) rules’ performances for each measurement. The matching probability method provides more accurate beliefs in terms of discrimination, while the quadratic scoring rule reduces overconfidence and the free rule, a simple rule with no incentives, which succeeds in eliciting accurate beliefs. Nevertheless, the matching probability appears to be the best mechanism for eliciting beliefs due to its performances in terms of calibration and discrimination, but also its ability to elicit consistent beliefs across measures and across tasks, as well as its empirical and theoretical properties. (shrink)

The development of phenomenology in nineteenth‐century German philosophy is that of a particular stream within the larger historical‐philosophical complex of Austro‐German philosophy. As the “grandfather of phenomenology” resp. the “disgusted grandfather of phenomenology,” but also as the key figure on the “Anglo‐Austrian Analytic Axis”, Brentano is at the source of the two main philosophical traditions in twentieth‐century philosophy. This chapter focuses mainly on his place in nineteenth‐century European philosophy and on the central themes and concepts in his philosophy that were (...) determinant in the development of the philosophy of his most gifted student: Edmund Husserl. Despite the variety of stances which Brentano expressed on ontology, metaphysics, and psychology over the course of his career, the five general principles remain central to his whole philosophy throughout: they have an important place in what could be called Brentano's philosophical worldview or system. By extension, they also are essential to his conception of phenomenology. (shrink)

Guillaume Fréchette | : Il est généralement admis dans la littérature analytique sur l’intuition que celle-ci est principalement, ou même fondamentalement, une attitude propositionnelle. Partant de là, elle est aussi souvent caractérisée comme une croyance que P, comme la formation d’une croyance sans inférence que P, comme une impression que P, comme une impression intellectuelle que P, comme l’attitude consistant à être poussé, mu par P. Dans tous les cas, la spécificité de l’intuition reposerait au moins en partie sur (...) les propriétés doxastiques qui la distingue d’autres attitudes propositionnelles, comme savoir que P ou douter que P.Cette caractérisation de l’intuition semble à première vue incommensurable avec le concept d’intuition discuté dans la tradition phénoménologique, où l’intuition est caractérisée comme ce type d’expérience qui rend les objets présents, et peut certes être caractérisée en termes d’attitude propositionnelle, mais ne l’est pas essentiellement.Dans ce qui suit, je soulève quelques problèmes auxquels fait face la conception de l’intuition comme attitude propositionnelle. Partant de là, j’aimerais suggérer qu’en amendant cette idée, on peut développer une théorie de l’intuition qui peut employer de manière fructueuse les ressources de la phénoménologie et de la philosophie analytique. Cette suggestion montre que l’incommensurabilité des conceptions analytiques et phénoménologiques de l’intuition est superficielle, plus superficielle que ne le laissent entendre ses défenseurs respectifs. | : It is generally acknowledged in the analytic literature on intuitions that these are generally, or even fundamentally, propositional attitudes. For this reason, intuitions are often characterized as beliefs that P, as seeming that P, as the intellectual seeming that P, or as the attitude of being pushed by P. In all cases, the specificity of intuitions would consist at least in part in the doxastic properties that distinguishes them from other propositional attitudes, such as knowing that P or doubting that P.At first glance, this characterization of intuitions seems incommensurable with the concept of intuition discussed in the phenomenological tradition, where intuition is characterized as the type of experience that make objects present to us. While intuitions in this sense may be characterized as propositional attitudes, it doesn’t imply that they fundamentally are propositional.In the following paper, I raise some problems which faces the conception of intuitions as propositional attitudes. I would suggest that amending this idea allows to develop a theory of intuition which can use fruitfully both the resources of phenomenology and analytic philosophy. As a consequence, the alleged incommensurability of analytical and phenomenological conceptions of intuitions appears to be more superficial than it is usually taken to be defenders of intuitions as propositional attitudes. (shrink)

This paper deals with the history of “pathogenic environments,” understood as places, regions, or environments whose characteristics are considered to be the origin of diseases in the human beings. While some specific environments were almost universally considered noxious, some others had a different trajectory. Crowded and poorly-ventilated premises as well as tropical regions were perceived as “the most unhealthy spots in the world.” However, the progressive “medicalisation” of hospitals transformed what were previously considered to be hellholes into therapeutic places. This (...) does not mean that iatrogenic diseases disappeared, but that hospitals tended to be seen in a more positive way. Similarly, European colonial expansion changed medical perspectives on tropical regions. Western physicians became increasingly convinced not only that could they prepare Europeans for long travel, but also that they could shape foreign environments. For instance, the perception of the Caribbean climate gradually changed “from deadly to healthy” from the middle of the 19th century onwards. Changes in perceptions could thus follow scientific progress, but also arise from political agendas and stigmatising narratives. Victims of the harmful influences of a pathogenic environment were often presented as responsible for their fate. For instance, some were accused of not carrying out the instructions delivered by the administrative or medical authorities. The process of (un)making pathogenic environments thus offers privileged access to the understanding of the relationship between health and environment. This paper provides situated accounts of how some places or regions came to be perceived as pathogenic or ceased to be so. It explores avenues of research, such as the study of lay perspectives on health and environment, the dangers of travel itself, and the connection between environmental health and military medicine. (shrink)

The confrontations of stakeholder visions about agriculture and food production has become a focal point in the public sphere, coinciding with a diversification of agrifood models. This study analyzes the debates stemming from the coexistence of these models, particularly during the initial term of neoliberal-centrist Emmanuel Macron’s presidency in France. Employing collective monitoring from 2017 to 2021, a corpus of 958 online news and blog articles was compiled. Using a computational analysis, we reveal the framings and controversies emerging from this (...) media discourse. The macro-structuring of discourse on model coexistence revolves around scientific, economic and political framings. Coexistence is a complex of debates based on specific frames associated with specific arenas and actor configurations: growth of organic agriculture, transformations of agrifood systems, sciences of production and impacts, livestock and meat diet controversies, agroecological innovations, CAP reform criticism, discourse of peasant agriculture and State-Profession _co-gestion_. Employing global sentiment analysis and focusing on salient controversies, namely EGAlim law, pesticide regulations, and agribashing, we show the shift from conciliation to a hardening of debates. Finally, we discuss the causes and consequences of this trend. The political will to support the transition of agriculture remains influenced by the _co-gestion_ system, an inherited configuration of decision-makers instrumental in the agricultural modernization. As a consequence, significant agricultural challenges, particularly highlighted in the scientific macro-frame, persist unresolved. This lock-in of the agrifood system is based on defensive strategies that challenge the democratic debate about food and agricultural practices. (shrink)

Cet article cherche à mettre en évidence, au sein de l’histoire du spiritualisme, la fonction transcendantale d’un possible basculement vers l’idéalisme. Au travers de la comparaison et de la confrontation des philosophies de Ravaisson, de Lachelier et de Brunschvicg, on cherchera ainsi à interroger la légitimité de ce passage. En effet, si le spiritualisme refuse dans un premier temps l’idéalisme, c’est pour le considérer ensuite comme un moyen nécessaire afin de dépasser les apories initiales de la philosophie de Ravaisson. Le (...) passage à l’idéalisme a-t-il signé la trahison du spiritualisme, ou a-t-il au contraire permis sa poursuite la plus adéquate? (shrink)

Cet article analyse le sens que prend, dans l’activité théorique de Lukács des années 1930, la notion de narration, cruciale dans ses travaux ultérieurs. On y fait l’hypothèse que c’est l’événement révolutionnaire russe et ses suites qui posent directement la question du statut de la narration dans le discours politique révolutionnaire et tous les problèmes liés : continuité historique et importance de l’héritage, point de vue de l’écriture de l’histoire, etc. Lukács partage ce questionnement avec les théoriciens du réalisme socialiste, (...) alors en voie de formalisation (et de stérilisation), mais il leur confère une dimension théorique qui sera plus tard réinvestie, en premier lieu dans l’ Esthétique, et lui permettra de préciser le statut du marxisme au sein des sciences sociales. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the distribution and the interpretation of the temporal suffix -kue in Mbyá, a Guaraní language that is closely related to Paraguayan Guaraní. This suffix is attested both inside noun phrases and inside clauses. Interestingly, its nominal uses give rise to inferences that are unattested in its clausal uses. These inferences were first identified in Paraguayan Guaraní by Tonhauser, who called them the existence property and the change of state property. Tonhauser further argued that these properties (...) are built into the lexical entry of the nominal temporal marker -kue. By contrast, I argue that -kue denotes a relative past tense both in its nominal and clausal uses, and that the existence and change of state properties are pragmatic inferences that arise from the interaction of the literal meaning of -kue with general constraints on the interpretation of noun phrases, notably constraints on the topicality of the time of evaluation of noun phrases. This allows me to maintain a uniform analysis of -kue across its nominal uses and its clausal uses. The analysis of -kue in Mbyá is relevant to a number of current debates on the expression of tense crosslinguistically. Firstly, the existence of relative tenses has sometimes been called into question. Klein notably argues that relative tenses are actually combinations of tense with the perfect aspect. Others have argued that there exist true relative tenses in certain languages. I argue that facts of Mbyá support the latter view. Secondly, Klein famously defined tenses as relations between topic times and the time of utterance. I argue, on the other hand, that relative tenses only denote relations between times, and that the topicality or non-topicality of their temporal arguments depends on their context of use, including their syntactic environment. Thirdly, this paper contributes to debates on the nature and reality of nominal tenses The Oxford handbook of tense and aspect, 2012), by arguing that tense in Mbyá is a genuinely nominal category, in the sense that temporal functional projections are part of the extended projection of the noun phrase. (shrink)

(2012). DEL-sequents for regression and epistemic planning. Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics: Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 337-367. doi: 10.1080/11663081.2012.736703.

En 2021, le livre de Van Rensselaer Potter intitulé Bioethics: Bridge to the Future a célébré son cinquantième anniversaire de parution. Or, la conception de la bioéthique proposée par l’auteur diffère de celle d’André Hellegers, qui a fait école. Pourtant, conçu comme guide, Potter y présente des éléments importants pour penser la place de la bioéthique dans le contexte sociétal et le développement actuelle des connaissances. Dans le texte qui suit, nous abordons certains éléments du contexte dans lequel ce livre (...) a pris forme. Nous nous arrêterons brièvement pour décrire la perspective dominante de la bioéthique. Puis, nous ferons ressortir certains éléments importants de la conception qu’a l’auteur de ce que devrait être la bioéthique. Nous terminerons en examinant les répercussions de cette pensée dans deux dossiers : celui de l’université et celui du développement durable dans sa perspective onusienne. Cette démarche nous conduira vers un élément que nous considérons important de la pensée de l’auteur, celui de l’ouverture. Ouverture qui est offerte à la bioéthique par l’inclusion de perspectives ayant cours quant aux compréhensions variées du vivant, ouverture à la considération des savoirs ancestraux et des savoirs communs, ouverture aussi à tout autre contexte, qu’ils impliquent des situations minoritaires, des personnes défavorisées ou autres. Cette ouverture donne un sens particulier à une valeur primordiale de la bioéthique, celle du respect de la dignité humaine. (shrink)

In many respects, Mach’s arrival in Vienna in 1895 marks the beginning of a new era in Austrian philosophy, paving the way for young philosophers and scientists like Hahn and Neurath and preparing the soil for the Vienna Circle. While this understanding of Mach’s contribution to the development of Viennese philosophy seems correct to an important extent, it leaves aside the role of Brentano and his school in this development. I argue that the Brentanian and Machian moments of Austrian philosophy (...) are jointed. I propose a description of the nature of these joints based on institutional, methodological, and philosophical aspects of these phases, and suggest a diagnosis that supports what I take to be the right carving between these two moments. (shrink)

In epistemic logic, some axioms dealing with the notion of knowledge are rather convoluted and difficult to interpret intuitively, even though some of them, such as the axioms.2 and.3, are considered to be key axioms by some epistemic logicians. We show that they can be characterized in terms of understandable interaction axioms relating knowledge and belief or knowledge and conditional belief. In order to show it, we first sketch a theory dealing with the characterization of axioms in terms of interaction (...) axioms in modal logic. We then apply the main results and methods of this theory to obtain specific results related to epistemic and doxastic logics. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine Sextus Empiricus' treatise Against the geometers . We first set this treatise in the overall context of the sceptic's polemics against the liberal arts. After a discussion of Sextus' attitude to the quadrivium , we discuss the structure, the sources and the target of the Against the geometers . It appears that Euclid is not Sextus' source, and neither he, nor the professional geometers, seem to be Sextus' main targets. Of course, Sextus never really makes (...) clear his precise target, but his attacks are rather directed against geometry as a means of modelling the physical world, thus ruining the support geometry was intended to bring to the physical part of dogmatic philosophy. (shrink)

Faced with the disenchantment and disengagement expressed by their employees, business leaders are considering ways of incorporating more benevolence into managerial practices. Nevertheless, ‘benevolence’—care and concern for the well-being of others—has not yet been studied in an organizational profit-focused context. In this paper, we seek to investigate the emergence and practice of benevolence with an eye on profit and performance. We begin by investigating the main ethical approaches to benevolence—virtue ethical, utilitarian, and deontological. Then, based on an empirical study, we (...) identify two distinct types of benevolence. On the one hand, formal benevolence is defined and monitored by the organizational processes and actions of leaders; it is understood by all concerned to be bounded by organizational performance. On the other hand, informal benevolence exists at the margin of these processes, in interpersonal and discretionary relationships. We set out to analyze these two types of benevolence and the complementarity between them. We also discuss to what extent they can be managed, teasing out some implications for managers and some potential avenues for further research. (shrink)

L’auteur montre que le principe de précaution est souvent confondu avec d’autres (notamment principes de prévention ou de préparation). Sa formulation en droit français est restrictive et, même dans cette acception, son application par le législateur ou la jurisprudence est rare. Alors que le principe de précaution exige des évaluations des risques rigoureuses et continues, il est à tort invoqué pour justifier ou critiquer des décisions publiques qui n’en relèvent pas.

Le film n’est pas seulement un récit, c’est aussi un discours sur le monde. Or, trop souvent, la puissance de ce discours est surestimée et les publics caricaturés, en contradiction avec notre pratique ordinaire d’une discussion, non seulement après, mais avec les films. La tradition rhétorique et argumentative, retravaillée aujourd’hui dans une perspective pragmatique, envisage formes et contextes conjointement et permet de comprendre les liens entre le film, son discours et le spectateur. Entre formes et espace public, les analyses de (...) films, reportages et séries proposées dans cet ouvrage montrent ainsi que la démarche rhétorique permet de restituer, à côté de leur capacité mimétique, la capacité délibérative des images et des sons, fondement d’un dialogue entre le film et le spectateur. (shrink)

La Rhétorique propose une théorie de la réception et du public, logée à l'intérieur d'une théorie de la production du discours. Cette perspective débouche sur une critique de la « manipulation » et suggère un champ d'intervention possible pour les Sic face à la prégnance de ce vocable et de cet imaginaire de la manipulation pour défendre, à l'inverse, une analyse circonstanciée des formes rhétoriques et argumentatives à l'oeuvre dans les discours médiatiques.Rhetorics can be seen as a theory of reception (...) and of the audience, within a theory of the way discourse is produced. This view leads to a critique of the "manipulation" paradigm and suggests that information and communication sciences may defend the need for a circumstantial analysis of the rhetoric and argumentative forms which are operating through mediatic discourses against the ideas and vocabulary of manipulation. (shrink)

Le manuel de sophismes politiques de Bentham se fixait pour objectif de dénoncer un certain nombre de raisonnements fallacieux destinés à entraver les propositions de réforme politique. Il définissait ainsi comme sophisme « tout argument avancé ou tout sujet de discussion suggéré afin de, ou avec la probabilité de produire l’effet de tromper ou de causer quelque opinion erronée susceptible d’être admise par toute personne dont l’esprit a pu se trouver mis en présence de cet argument ». Si Ben..

Is phenomenology nothing else than descriptive psychology? In the first edition of his Logical Investigations (LI), Husserl conceived of phenomenology as a description and analysis of the experiences of knowledge, unequivocally stating that “phenomenology is descriptive psychology.” Most interestingly, although the first edition of the LI was the reference par excellence in phenomenology for the Munich phenomenologists, they remained suspicious of this characterisationof phenomenology. The aim of this paper is to shed new light on the reception of descriptive psychology among (...) Munich phenomenologists and, at the same time, to offer a re-evaluation of their understanding of realist phenomenology. (shrink)

_A portrait of Martin Heidegger as a man and a philosopher_ In this biography of Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), now available in English, historian Guillaume Payen synthesizes the connections between the German philosopher’s life and work. Critically, but without polemics, he creates a portrait of Heidegger in his time, using all available sources—lectures, letters, and the notorious “black notebooks.” Payen chronicles Heidegger’s “changing destinies”: after the First World War, an uncompromising Catholicism gave way to a vigorous striving for a philosophical (...) revolution—fertile ground for National Socialism. The book reflects a life of light and shadow. Heidegger was a great philosopher and teacher who cultivated friendships and love affairs with Jews but also was an anti-Semitic nationalist who lamented the “Judaization of German intellectual life.”. (shrink)

Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) deals with the representation and the study in a multi-agent setting of knowledge and belief change. It can express in a uniform way epistemic statements about: 1. what is true about an initial situation 2. what is true about an event occurring in this situation 3. what is true about the resulting situation after the event has occurred. We axiomatize within the DEL framework what we can infer about (iii) given (i) and (ii). Given three formulas (...) φ,φ' and φ" describing respectively (i), (ii) and (iii), we also show how to build a formula φ ? φ' which captures all the information which can be inferred about (iii) from φ and φ'. We show how our results extend to other modal logics than K. In our proofs and definitions, we resort to a large extent to the normal form formulas for modal logic originally introduced by Kit Fine. In a companion paper (Aucher, 2012), we axiomatize what we can infer about (ii) given (i) and (iii), and what we can infer about (i) given (ii) and (iii), and show how to build two formulas φ ? φ" and φ' ? φ" which capture respectively all the information which can be inferred about (ii) from φ and φ", and all the information which can be inferred about (i) from φ' and φ". (shrink)

Galileo asked in his Dialogue of the Two New Sciences what relationship exists between the size of the set of all natural numbers and the size of the set of all square natural numbers. Although one is a proper subset of the other, suggesting that there are strictly fewer squares than natural numbers, the existence of a simple one-to-one correspondence between the two sets suggests that they have, in fact, the same size. Cantor famously based the modern notion of cardinality (...) on the second intuition, but recent advances in mathematical logic (most notably, numerosity theory) have renewed an interest in the question whether Cantor’s way out of Galileo’s paradox was the only possible one. I present a new solution to Galileo’s paradox and argue that it is a better alternative to the Cantorian solution than numerosity theory. In fact, I argue that it is the best possible way out of Galileo's Paradox that can be based on the "Euclidean" intuition that the whole is always greater than any of its proper parts. (shrink)

This study examines to what extent different types of CEOs in family firms influence external and internal stakeholder-related CSP as compared to CEOs in nonfamily firms. Linking family CEO and nonfamily CEO with CSR outcomes, we provide evidence that family CEOs are positively associated with both external and internal CSR, whereas nonfamily CEOs within family firms tend to be negatively associated with both external and internal CSR. We show that the incumbent CEO’s age moderates the above relationships, indicating the existence (...) of shifting family priorities and suggesting a tendency toward CSR conformity as the salience of succession concerns increases. (shrink)

Unlike in physics, the category of thought experiment is not very common in biology. At least there are no classic examples that are as important and as well-known as the most famous thought experiments in physics, such as Galileo’s, Maxwell’s or Einstein’s. The reasons for this are far from obvious; maybe it has to do with the fact that modern biology for the most part sees itself as a thoroughly empirical discipline that engages either in real natural history or in (...) experimenting on real organisms rather than fictive ones. While theoretical biology does exist and is recognized as part of biology, its role within biology appears to be more marginal than the role of theoretical physics within physics. It could be that this marginality of theory also affects thought experiments as sources of theoretical knowledge. Of course, none of this provides a sufficient reason for thinking that thought experiments are really unimportant in biology. It is quite possible that the common perception of this matter is wrong and that there are important theoretical considerations in biology, past or present, that deserve the title of thought experiment just as much as the standard examples from physics. Some such considerations may even be widely known and considered to be important, but were not recognized as thought experiments. In fact, as we shall see, there are reasons for thinking that what is arguably the single most important biological work ever, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, contains a number of thought experiments. There are also more recent examples both in evolutionary and non-evolutionary biology, as we will show. Part of the problem in identifying positive examples in the history of biology is the lack of agreement as to what exactly a thought experiment is. Even worse, there may not be more than a family resemblance that unifies this epistemic category. We take it that classical thought experiments show the following characteristics: They serve directly or indirectly in the non-empirical epistemic evaluation of theoretical propositions, explanations or hypotheses. Thought experiments somehow appeal to the imagination. They involve hypothetical scenarios, which may or may not be fictive. In other words, thought experiments suppose that certain states of affairs hold and then try to intuit what would happen in a world where these suppositions are true. We want to examine in the following sections if there are episodes in the history of biology that satisfy these criteria. As we will show, there are a few episodes that might satisfy all three of these criteria, and many more if the imagination criterion is dropped or understood in a lose sense. In any case, this criterion is somewhat vague in the first place, unless a specific account of the imagination is presupposed. There will also be issues as to what exactly “non-empirical” means. In general, for the sake of discussion we propose to understand the term “thought experiment” here in a broad rather than a narrow sense here. We would rather be guilty of having too wide a conception of thought experiment than of missing a whole range of really interesting examples. (shrink)

This conference was devoted to the 80 years of the Copenhagen Interpretation, and to the question of the relevance of the Copenhagen interpretation for the present understanding of quantum mechanics. It is in this framework that fundamental questions raised by quantum mechanics, especially in information theory, were discussed throughout the conference. As has become customary in our series of conference in Växjö, we were glad to welcome a fruitful assembly of theoretical physicists, experimentalists, mathematicians and even philosophers interested in the (...) foundations of probability and physics. The nature of quantum fluctuations---in the form of Stochastic Electrodynamics or in other approaches to stochastic quantum mechanics---was also a central topic discussed during the conference, especially during debates. We should also mention talks on the completeness or incompleteness of quantum mechanics; on macroscopic quantum systems; on Bell's inequality, entanglement and experiments on quantum nonlocality (and locality); on Bohmian mechanics; on the connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity; on quantum probability; on quantum computing, quantum teleportation and quantum cryptography technologies; and more generally on the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics and on the philosophical problems raised by its interpretations. (shrink)

Alf Ross propose une théorie juridique qu’il veut “véritablement” réaliste, c’est-à-dire susceptible de dissoudre les problèmes auxquels se heurtent la théorie normativiste de Kelsen et la théorie réaliste américaine et de reconstruire leur discours de manière scientifique. L’originalité de Ross réside dans son concept de norme de compétence que Ross analyse, avant d’autres et notamment Searle, comme des règles constitutives. Contrairement à ce que de nombreux commentateurs ont soutenu, ce concept de norme constitutive ne contredit pas la théorie réaliste de (...) Ross. Éclairées à la lumière des premiers écrits de Ross, les normes de compétence sont des rationalisations capables d’exprimer la prédisposition des destinataires des normes à reconnaître certains faits comme droit. Ross peut dès lors apparaître comme un précurseur du postpositivisme. (shrink)

Ne serait-ce que par son titre, dont l’oxymore est d’emblée assumée (p.11) et dont les protagonistes sont associés d’une manière qui ne laisse de surprendre, l’ouvrage de Julien Boudon publié dans la collection « Les sens du droit » des éditions Dalloz, mériterait de retenir l’attention.Dans ce court opus, l’auteur entend, à travers un examen qui puise tout à la fois aux sources de l’histoire, de la philosophie, du droit, de la science politique, et qui emprunte à la fois au (...) style de la monog.. (shrink)

In the 1990s, large insurance companies failed in virtually every major market, prompting a fierce and ongoing debate about how to better protect policyholders. Drawing lessons from the failures of four insurance companies, When Insurers Go Bust dramatically advances this debate by arguing that the current approach to insurance regulation should be replaced with mechanisms that replicate the governance of non-financial firms.Rather than immediately addressing the minutiae of supervision, Guillaume Plantin and Jean-Charles Rochet first identify a fundamental economic rationale (...) for supervising the solvency of insurance companies: policyholders are the "bankers" of insurance companies. But because policyholders are too dispersed to effectively monitor insurers, it might be efficient to delegate monitoring to an institution--a prudential authority. Applying recent developments in corporate finance theory and the economic theory of organizations, the authors describe in practical terms how such authorities could be created and given the incentives to behave exactly like bankers behave toward borrowers, as "tough" claimholders. (shrink)

A collection of essays on the approaches and applications of Deleuze's philosophy to the bodyUsing a variety of contemporary cultural, scientific and philosophical lines of enquiry, the contributors produce a truly multidisciplinary view of the Deleuzian body, inviting us to look afresh at art, movement and literature.The Deleuzian body is not necessarily a human body, but the lines of enquiry here all illuminate the idea of the human body and thinking about formation, origins and becoming in relation to power, creativity (...) and affect. (shrink)

L’essai d'Albino Lanciani s'intitule « phénoménologie et sciences cognitives » mais l’on se serait satisfait d’un tout autre titre : « phénoménologie versus sciences cognitives », ou peut-être même plus légitimement, « Albino Lanciani contre les sciences cognitives ». Il ne s’agit en effet pas là d’une simple revue des points de désaccord entre approches cognitiviste et phénoménologique, mais d’un véritable bombardement du champ cognitiviste d’où la réflexion phénoménologique semble totalemen...

Ce texte a déjà paru le 21/12/2018 sur le site EspacesTemps.net. Nous remercions les auteurs et la revue EspacesTemps de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Sans rythme pas de vie Bernard Millet La ville? « Ne pas essayer trop vite de trouver une définition de la ville ; c'est beaucoup trop gros, on a toutes les chances de se tromper ». Le rythme? Comment réussir « à définir un seul et même signifiant qui véhicule tant de signifiés différents? (...) ». Et - Géographie – Nouvel article. (shrink)