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)

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)

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)

De 1905 à 1922, l uvre d'Alfred North Whitehead a pour but principal de montrer comment les objets fondamentaux de la géométrie, de la physique et de la perception sont abstraits à partir d'un seul et unique type d' entités définies comme les éléments ultimes de l'expérience sensible : les événements. WHitehead développe dès lors la méthode de l'abstraction extensive : un modèle logico-mathématique qui permet d'exprimer ces différents types d'objets dans les termes mêmes des événements et de leurs relations. (...) L'élaboration d'un concept événementiel de nature constitue l'une des principales lignes de force des recherches whiteheadiennes : l'identité doit être définie dans les seuls termes des événements. (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)

The Grand Challenges literature brings under its umbrella a wide variety of disjointed phenomena but runs the risk of reinventing the wheel as well as overlooking incremental progress and past work. To avert this, scholars need to (dis)connect (dis)similar issues, build on past research on these issues, and create opportunities for generalizability through theoretical examinations.

In the model proposed by Findlay & Walker, the programming of saccadic eye movements is achieved by two parallel processes, one dedicated to the coding of saccade metrics (Where) and the other controlling saccade initiation (When). One outcome of the “winner-take-all” characteristics of the salience map, the main node of the model, is an independence between the metrics and the latency of saccades. We report on some observations, made in the head-unrestrained cat under pathological conditions, of a correlation between accuracy (...) and latency of saccadic gaze shifts. To account for such a correlation, the link between metrics specification (Where) and saccade triggering (When) should be amended in the model. (shrink)

Le spiritualisme ravaissonien ouvre l'horizon d'une refondation complète de la métaphysique au cœur du XIXe siècle français. À partir de la lecture d'Aristote, Ravaisson élabore une critique de ce que l'on peut nommer les 'métaphysiques de la séparation', dont le point de départ se trouve dans les écrits du stagirite. Il s'agira dès lors de déployer une philosophie qui affirme l'identité de l'être et de la pensée, par-delà toute transcendance et tout dualisme. C'est ainsi que le problème de la métaphysique (...) peut être posé peut-on surmonter la disjonction de l'être et de l'étant, de la nature et de l'esprit, ou encore de l'homme et de Dieu? Faut-il au contraire considérer que la séparation définit le geste inaugural de toute métaphysique? Ravaisson, en refusant cette dernière possibilité, élabore une philosophie qui s'inscrit contre l'idéalisme transcendantal de Kant ou le positivisme de Comte, et plus largement contre toute tendance matérialiste de la pensée. Ainsi, l'unité perdue de la métaphysique doit être recherchée en questionnant l'héritage d'Aristote, afin de déterminer s'il s'agit de penser avec, ou contre celui-ci."--Page 4 of cover. (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..

Cette lettre au ton bon enfant, mais de bon ton, vise à outiller le futur « éthicien » à la réalité pratique de l’exercice professionnel. Tablant sur l’expérience de son auteur, cette perspective marque le bilan de ses apprentissages bien imparfaits afin de les transmettre à la nouvelle génération.

While Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus is quite rightly considered a fully fledged response to May ’68 and as one with the radical politics of the 1970s, their 1980 follow-up, A Thousand Plateaus, has tended to provoke a more perplexed reaction. In this article, I will argue that we can nonetheless extract a definite line of argumentation serving a precise political end if we relate the text back to Foucault's mid-1970s output on power/knowledge. In particular, I will emphasise Deleuze and Guattari's (...) appropriation of the Foucaultian notion of dispositif via their concept of the assemblage, the former being understood as a concrete articulation of lines of power, knowledge and subjectivation, as well as the Foucaultian ‘diagram’, the latter being a more abstract or indeterminate stage of the dispositif whose relative indeterminacy, for Deleuze and Guattari, offers a means of escape. I will show that, making room for the assemblage's opening back onto the relative indeterminacy of its generative stages, the assemblage incorporates into itself a more immanent alternative to the dispositif that is focused on collective desire rather than power, within which resistance becomes a primary and generative dimension rather than a counter-attack. In the first section, I will outline Foucault's approach to power, knowledge and subjectivation, emphasising Deleuze's reading of Foucault though without trying to overdetermine my reading in this way. Next, I will turn to the Foucaultian diagram. In the third section, I will focus on A Thousand Plateaus, demonstrating how the notion of assemblage developed in this text responds to and builds upon Foucault's approach to power/knowledge and subjectivation in order to reconceive resistance. (shrink)

Corporate codes of ethics, which have spread in the last decades, have shown a limited ability to foster ethical behaviors. For instance, they have been criticized for relying too much on formal compliance, rather than taking into account sufficiently agents and their moral development, or promoting self-reflexive behaviors. We aim here at showing that a code of ethics in fact has meaning and enables ethical progress when it is interpreted and appropriated with practical wisdom. We explore a model that represents (...) an uncommon organizational code of ethics: the monastic Rule of St. Benedict, written in the sixth century and still used today. Our empirical study—conducted in several monasteries living under this rule—shows that organization members interpret this rule, both hermeneutically and ethically, to adapt it to situations. They also appropriate this rule as a way of life and treat it as a dynamic framework that helps them to follow their purpose within their organization. This exceptional code actually offers an alternative model for practicing codes of ethics, in a virtue-ethical manner, beyond mere compliance with the text. The way in which reflexive and active agents practice the code, both individually and collectively, shapes their organizational experience and fosters their moral development. (shrink)

Dans l’essai Objets intentionnels de 1894, Husserl développe en réaction à Twardowski une théorie originale de l’assomption comme solution au problème des représentations sans objet. Après avoir examiné le détail de cette théorie et en avoir soulevé les difficultés, je montre dans cet article que la solution proposée par cette théorie doit être abordée de manière indépendante de celle qui sera développée plus tard dans les Recherches logiques et j’expose dans quelle mesure elle est ancrée dans la psychologie descriptive brentanienne (...) tout en mettant à profit certains outils de la logique de Bolzano. Enfin, j’indique que Husserl continuera à développer cette théorie après les Recherches logiques, confirmant ainsi qu’elle occupe une place de choix dans la théorie phénoménologique du jugement.In his essay Intentional Objects of 1894, Husserl develops in response to Twardowski an original theory of assumptions as a solution to the problem of objectless presentations. First, I analyze in this paper the main points of his theory and point out some of the difficulties it raises. I then suggest that the solution presented in this theory must be addressed independently of the one developed by Husserl later in the Logical Investigations and try to show in which extent his theory of assumptions is rooted in the brentanian descriptive psychology, although it makes good use of some logical tools from Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre. Since Husserl continues to work on this theory even after the Logical Investigations, it confirms the important place one should give to the theory of assumptions it the phenomenological theory of judgment. (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)

The first step of the construction of Nézondet's models of finite arithmetics which are counter-models to Erdös–Woods conjecture is to add to the natural numbers the non-standard numbers generated by one of them, using addition, multiplication and divisions by a natural factor allowed in an ultrapower construction. After a review of some properties of such a structure, we show that the choice of the ultrafilter can be managed, using just the Chinese remainder's theorem, so that a model as desired is (...) obtained as early as at the first time. (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)

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)

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)

Dans cet article, je propose de relire l’épistémologie de du Châtelet à l’aune de la question de l’autorité. Je montre que les outils méthodologiques convoqués dans les premiers chapitres des Institutions de physique (1740), à savoir le principe de non-contradiction, le principe de raison suffisante, ainsi que la théorie des hypothèses du chapitre 4, peuvent être compris comme des moyens de contrôler l’usage des systèmes des grands auteurs que sont Descartes, Leibniz et Newton. Ils permettent en effet d’éviter les dangers (...) du dogmatisme que représentent l’esprit de parti et l’idolâtrie. Ce faisant, je défends que l’une des originalités de l’épistémologie de du Châtelet est d’intégrer à sa théorie de la physique une réflexion sur la meilleure manière de gérer les autorités scientifiques. Cette perspective a l’avantage de court-circuiter la question traditionnelle des influences ou des filiations de du Châtelet, pour lui préférer celle de la façon dont elle use de la tradition. (shrink)

While Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is often seen to involve voluntary and deliberative approaches such as certification, governments have recently stepped into the picture through national legislation. France’s Law on Duty of Vigilance adopted in 2017 is a landmark case of such legislation. Years of voluntary CSR certification schemes led by Civil Society were replaced by a new philosophy of fighting for mandatory CSR controlled by a judge. We depict the change of mindset and the related change of roles inside (...) the coalition of Civil Society actors represents a Machiavellian Moment. The combination of collective civil society actors’ roles (namely nongovernmental organizations and labor unions) as Machiavellian _Virtue_ with disruptive events as Machiavellian _Fortuna_ made the law’s adoption possible. Based on this case study, we provide an analysis of civil society roles in the development of CSR-related legislation. (shrink)

In this study, I discuss two main accounts of character traits within the phenomenological tradition: the so-called Austrian and Bavarian accounts. I present the first account with Franz Brentano’s views on character traits as dispositions (Sects. 9.2 and 9.3) and the second account with Else Voigtländer’s characterology, in which character traits are states of one’s person accessible through self-feelings (Selbstgefühle) (Sect. 9.4). I conclude with an evaluation of these views (Sect. 9.5), stressing their respective problems.

Pour Hegel, le sens s’élabore dans le langage, mais l’usage du langage ne fait pas nécessairement sens. Au niveau du discours, il semble même qu’un problème inévitable survienne. Si l’expérience d’un sens s’élaborant dans le langage ne s’accomplit que sous la forme d’un système autoréférent, comment ce sens peut-il se communiquer sans se contredire? Hegel n’échappe pas à ce problème si bien que l’on peut se poser la question de savoir si la dialectique du système est compatible avec les éléments (...) dialogiques (préfaces, notes, etc.) qui visent à l’instanciation de ce système? Nous montrons alors que pour nouer l’autoréférence du sens à l’idée de communication, Hegel présuppose le moyen terme d’un esprit commun, un "Nous". À partir de celui-ci, nous construisons un modèle dialogique et autoréférent qui dessine certains enjeux propres aux philosophies contemporaines de la communication. (shrink)

This article offers an overview of the risks related to some representations of epigenetics in the process of making social and medical recommendations. After exploring different representations of epigenetics in popular literature and media discourses, I identify some of the premature conclusions that could emerge from such discourses, stressing issues related to parental responsibility—especially as they relate to women—regarding the transmission of epigenetic marks. I then propose some epistemological considerations regarding developmental biology in order to draw a more nuanced picture (...) of epigenetic responsibility. I argue that such considerations are important to clarify our general understanding of epigenetic research as well as its potential translation outside the scientific area. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous livrons une analyse du statut épistémologique de l’hypothèse d’efficience des marchés. Sans juger de sa véracité ou de sa fausseté, nous montrons qu’elle ne peut, en aucun sens rigoureux, être entendue comme une proposition empirique testable. Aucune expérience n’existe permettant de la falsifier irrévocablement. A rebours, nous montrons qu’elle ne peut être entendue que comme une proposition analytique, comme inaugurant un nouveau système de définitions cohérent par lui-même. En cela, la formulation de l’hypothèse d’efficience des marchés (...) a ouvert un nouveau programme de recherche, dont nous mettons en évidence les grandes lignes directrices. (shrink)

Thinking through other minds encompasses new dimensions in computational psychiatry: social interaction and mutual sense-making. It questions the nature of psychiatric manifestations in light of recent data on social interaction in neuroscience. We propose the concept of “social physiology” in response to the call by the conceivers of TTOM for the renewal of computational psychiatry.

Guillaume Lejeune | : La philosophie de Bradley se présente moins comme une tentative d’importation de la pensée allemande en Angleterre que comme une volonté de régler par le recours à divers écoles les problèmes dans lesquels la tradition empiriste se dépêtre : un atomisme de la connaissance et une conception externaliste des relations qui rendraient impossible une vision unitaire de l’expérience. La critique que développe Bradley de l’association d’idées dans la mesure où elle fait ressortir les présuppositions de (...) la tradition empiriste et en rejette le bien-fondé peut se lire comme une tentative de déconstruction de celle-ci. | : Bradley’s philosophy is not a mere attempt to import German thought in Great-Britain, but a willingness to regulate the problems in which the empiricist tradition is entangled — an atomism of knowledge and an externalist conception of relation that make impossible a unitary view of experience — by borrowing ideas from various schools. According to Bradley, associationism clearly brings out the two problematic aspects of the whole empiricism. That is why his rejection has a strategic character. It can be read as an attempt to “deconstruct” the empiricist tradition. (shrink)

Face à une installation impénétrable comme face à un mur de fond de scène, l’évidence est la même : l’impasse constitue l’œuvre, qu’elle soit plastique ou théâtrale. Aujourd’hui débordée de tous côtés, cette clôture de l’œuvre est cependant assumée, voire ironiquement redoublée, dans certaines scénographies. L’impasse y prend alors une valeur paradoxale en mobilisant des puissances de perception et d’attention renouvelées : à autant d’écarts inframinces, de seuils inaperçus, comme aux échos d’autres tentatives de traversée plus directement politiques.

This article deals with English causal subordinate clauses introduced by since or as. Both these markers may convey different meanings according to contextual variations, and can express temporal relations, from which their causal value is derived. The semantic closeness between as and since whenever they express a causal relation makes it necessary to harvest a large number of attested examples in order to compare and contrast them. The recourse to large on-line corpora such as the British National Corpus gives rise (...) to specific practical difficulties, however, especially as far as as is concerned; because of the high frequency of the subordinators in question, one is confronted to thousands of examples, few of which turn out to have a clear causal value in the case of as, hence the recourse to other means in order to make up a large enough corpus of examples.The concept of presupposition is examined, as it has often been argued that causal since subordinates, unlike as subordinates, introduce a presupposed content. But when confronted to a large number of examples, this criterion falls short of accounting for the subtle differences between the two conjunctions. A more theoretical approach is required; thanks to the tools provided by A. Culioli’s Theory of Enunciative and Predicative Operations, it becomes possible to formalise the hypothesis that a since causal relationship is presented as unproblematic and is addressee-oriented, whereas an as causal relationship is felt as unproblematic, and is speaker-oriented.This difference can be felt in the fact that it seems to be easier to find examples of causal as clauses in the press, while the causal use of since is more widespread in general, and does not seem to be specific to a genre in particular. In order to put this impression to the test, I have resorted to the multi-lingual parallel corpus Intercorp. (shrink)

In this paper we study the metric spaces that are definable in a polynomially bounded o-minimal structure. We prove that the family of metric spaces definable in a given polynomially bounded o-minimal structure is characterized by the valuation field Λ of the structure. In the last section we prove that the cardinality of this family is that of Λ. In particular these two results answer a conjecture given in [SS] about the countability of the metric types of analytic germs. The (...) proof is a mixture of geometry and model theory. (shrink)

L'étude de la réflexion en optique est souvent nommée catoptrique. Le phénomène qu’elle étudie suppose plusieurs choses. D’abord, une source lumineuse d’où émane le rayon incident. Ensuite, une surface sur laquelle il se réfléchit, souvent un miroir. Enfin, un rayon qu’on appelle le rayon réfléchi. Ce n’est pas un hasard si cette notion se trouve au cœur de nombreux ouvrages des philosophes du XVIIe comme du XVIIIe siècle, puisqu’elle est liée à la fois aux découvertes scientifiques de l’époq...

This article introduces the reader to the very first complete edition and translation of Nietzsche’s poems. The hitherto published editions are in fact mere anthologies. Many of his poetical works, especially his Juvenilia, are not included in these collections, and yet they bear testimony to a primary stratum of his imagination and consequently help us to explore his use of metaphor in his thinking. This edition of the poems, which tries to be faithful to their original form, aims at shedding (...) new light on Nietzsche’s body of work by giving his poetry a central position within his philosophical writings. (shrink)

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)

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)