Institutions in France are not yet well prepared to respond to allegations of scientific misconduct. Following a serious allegation in late 1997. INSERM,* the primary organization for medical and health-related research in France, began to reflect on this subject, aided by scientists and jurists. The conclusions have resulted in establishing a procedure to be followed in cases of alleged misconduct, and also in reinforcing the application of good laboratory practices within each laboratory. Guidelines for authorship practices and scientific assessment must (...) also be considered. Even though each institution must remain responsible for responding to allegations of scientific misconduct within its doors, INSERM would like to see national, European, and international co-ordination about the methods of such response. (shrink)

In this essay, I want to begin a dialogue with the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler’s book Technics and Time. Stiegler is internationally known as the inheritor of another French philosopher whose work is currently being rediscovered worldwide: Gilbert Simondon. In Stiegler’s work, this Simondonian heritage plays itself out in the domain of continental philosophy. The thesis maintained here will be the following: there is another relation to Simondon that is possible, one that also takes up the major problems we’ve inherited (...) from the continental philosophical tradition. The double fundamental philosophical problem raised in Stiegler’s debate with Simondon is the following: A) On the one hand .. (shrink)

The practice of climbing by people with disabilities is part of a double societal dynamic, which is affected by a movement of massification, indoorization and commercialization of climbing, but also by the consequences of the law of February 2005 which aims to produce appropriate spaces and services to guarantee the needs of disabled people. This study, which is the result of a field survey conducted as part of an ethno-sociological approach in the Lyon area, describes the deployment of an ongoing (...) process of social innovation, the evolution of which is gradually shifting from a service that is not very or not at all marketable, located in the specialized environment, to more marketable services, located in shared spaces. It highlights a network of socio-technical actors who cohabit, linking or excluding each other according to its orientations and its progressive diffusion. From the case of climbing, this article reveals the complexity of the factors influencing sports consumption and the agencements that make them possible. It highlights the role of non-human actors but also intermediaries human actors who, by bringing people together, maintaining and constantly readapting the bridges created between worlds, make it possible to envisage the perpetuation of access to the consumption of these new services. (shrink)

La formule de Hobbes est bien connue, selon laquelle l'Etat est un Dieu mortel.

Dans le cadre d'une politique publique de soutien à l'innovation focalisée sur le transfert de technologies des laboratoires publics vers les entreprises, les incubateurs publics français ont été conçus comme des outils d'accompagnement de l'innovation descendante. L'incubateur multimédia Belle de Mai constitue un cas original dans le dispositif français d'incubation. Intervenant dans un domaine thématique où l'innovation horizontale est largement répandue, il a dû repenser et adapter le processus d'incubation. Alors que les dispositifs de soutien spécialisés dans les TIC se (...) multiplient, une réflexion sur les politiques et les pratiques de soutien à l'innovation dans ce secteur est nécessaire.In the context of public policy to support innovation focused on technology transfer from laboratories to businesses, public incubators French were designed as tools to support innovation down. The incubator multimedia Belle de Mai is a case in the French original of incubation. Involved in a thematic area where horizontal innovation is widespread, it has had to rethink and adapt the process of incubation. While support devices specializing in ICT multiply, a reflection on the policies and practices support innovation in this area is needed. (shrink)

Les auteurs en avertissent d’emblée : ils ne prétendent pas faire œuvre d’« historiens de la philosophie » et livrer ici un commentaire spécialisé de la République, mais rendre leur « fraîcheur » aux problèmes soulevés par Platon en en signalant les prolongements jusque dans l’actualité théorique. Si les douze chapitres du livre abordent la majeure partie des motifs classiques de la République au fil de leur apparition dans le texte (de la question morale à la théorie des Formes et (...) du terrai... (shrink)

An art of the everyday? Parting from Georges Perec and Vilhelm Hammershøi Contemporary continental philosophy seems to be deeply connected to art, whether it is poetry and literature, painting or music. This connection is built upon the primacy of a trial of the invisible, which is very often a trial of the event. The aim of this article is to establish an art of the everyday freed from this contemporary "eventism". We thus examine how the researches of Georges Perec in (...) literature and of Vilhelm Hammershøi in painting meditate on the strangeness of the everyday – its flatness, its silence – which are irreducible to this aesthetic trial as it can be conceptualized by the philosophy of the life of Deleuze-Guattari and by the humanism of Levinas. This research thus beckons towards an art of the common contesting the contemporary primacy of the vital and the human. (shrink)

In this philosophical paper, I discuss and illustrate the necessary three ingredients that together could allow a collective phenomenon to be labelled as “emergent.” First, the phenomenon, as usual, requires a group of natural objects entering in a non-linear relationship and potentially entailing the existence of various semantic descriptions depending on the human scale of observation. Second, this phenomenon has to be observed by a mechanical observer instead of a human one, which has the natural capacity for temporal or spatial (...) integration, or both. Finally, for this natural observer to detect and select the collective phenomenon, it needs to do so on account of the adaptive advantage this phenomenon is responsible for. The necessity for such a teleological characterization and the presence of natural selection drive us to defend, with many authors, the idea that emergent phenomena should belong only to biology. Following a brief philosophical plea, we present a simple and illustrative computer thought experiment in which a society of agents evolves a stigmergic collective behavior as an outcome of its greater adaptive value. The three ingredients are illustrated and discussed within this experimental context. Such an inclusion of the mechanical observer and the natural selection to which this phenomenon is submitted should underlie the necessary de-subjectivation that strengthens any scientific endeavor. I shall finally show why the short paths taken by ant colonies, the collective flying of birds and the maximum consumption of nutrients by a cellular metabolism are strongly emergent. (shrink)

Background: In psychiatry, the issue of providing palliative and end-of-life care for what would be a “terminal psychiatric condition” or considering a palliative approach to severe and persistent mental health problems is still a taboo. Methodology: This question is addressed through an analysis of a case arising during a clinical ethics consultation, using Hubert Doucet’s scenario method. It is about Mrs. Sanchez, a patient over 90 years of age with a psychiatric profile, expressing the desire to die by suicidal gestures, (...) refusing the proposed treatments, and refusing as well to drink and eat. Her clinical history is told through the filter of reflexive support offered in clinical ethics to the various stakeholders. Results: The case analysis, far from responding to the challenges posed by the concept of palliative and end-of-life care in a psychiatric context, nevertheless presents an opportunity to name its main ethical issues: psychic suffering, refusal to eat and drinking as well as refusal of treatment, palliative sedation and medical assistance in dying, wishes and advanced medical directives and clinical-organizational challenges for geriatric psychiatry clients. Conclusion: There are still many challenges for professionals and decision-makers to meet the needs of older mental health clients. We call for further development of knowledge on this specific topic. (shrink)

The logical independence of two statements is tantamount to their probabilistic independence, the latter understood in a sense that derives from stochastic independence. And analogous logical and probabilistic senses of having the same factual content similarly coincide. These results are extended to notions of non-symmetrical independence and independence among more than two statements.

Si l'Encyclopédisme génétique de Simondon offre de quoi surmonter la crise du sens qui caractérise l'époque des technosciences, c'est d'abord parce qu'il présente une pensée de l'homme, de la technique et de la connaissance capable d'assumer deux paradoxes sans jamais tomber dans la contradiction. D'une part, il construit une pensée non anthropologique de la technique qui pourtant ne se présente pas comme « destinale » , dépassant par là le débat entre la sociologie des sciences et la pensée heideggérienne. D'autre (...) part, il rend possible une théorie de la connaissance qui distingue radicalement Relativité philosophique et relativisme. If Simondon's genetic Encyclopaedism offers enough to overcome the crisis of meaning which characterizes the techno-sciences times, it is indeed first because he presents man's thought processes, an approach of technique and knowledge able to come to terms with two kinds of paradoxes without ever running the risk of falling into contradiction. On the one hand, it builds a non-anthropological thought about technique which, however, doesn't seem to appear as being « destinal » , thus going beyond the traditional debate between the sociology of sciences and Heideggerian thought. On the other hand, it enables a theory of knowledge radically distinguishing between philosophical reality and relativism. (shrink)

Three conclusions can be drawn from the study of the word ratio and its derivatives in the works of Hugh of Saint-Victor. First, the approximately 1500 occurrences present an exceptional diversity of meanings. Second, these meanings are not tightly separated from each other, but tend to tile or merge: not only are there many passages where the translator can legitimately hesitate between two or more interpretations, but the author himself plays on this malleability of significations, as if to refer his (...) reader to an original cohesion of the meanings. Third, it is therefore possible to reconstitute a complex but unified notion of reason, underlying all the uses identified; and it is surely no coincidence that this common notion corresponds very precisely to the Victorine educational program, as Hugh defined it in his Didascalicon. (shrink)

Loin d'être une « égologie cartésienne » ou un « apriorisme kantien », la phénoménologie husserlienne se veut, d'un bout à l'autre de l'œuvre, une subversion des alternatives classiques dont relèvent selon elle Descartes et Kant et par lesquelles se définit la métaphysique au sens large. S'il est vrai que Husserl revendique un « idéalisme transcendantal », c'est en approfondissant la réfutation kantienne de l'idéalisme, et cela en un geste qui, par le biais de l'intentionnalité comme autotranscendance subvertissant l'opposition principielle (...) du sujet et de l'objet, préfigure déjà l'annulation heideggérienne du « scandale » qui préoccupait encore Kant, mais selon une voie qui n'oublie pas pour autant de rendre compte de la possibilité de la connaissance. Far from being a « Cartesian egology » or a « Kantian apriorism », phenomenology is meant, from one end to another of the Husserlian work, to overthrow the traditional alternatives, i.e. metaphysics in a wider sense, including Descartes and Kant. Though Husserl asserts to be a « transcendantal idealist », one may get over the fundamental opposition between subject and object only by looking further into the Kantian refutation of idealism by the means of a reinterpretation of intentionnality as selftranscendence. Such an approach forecasts the Heideggerian cancelling of the scandal that used to bother Kant, but according to a new way not eschewing to give an account of the possibility of knowledge. (shrink)

In Hugh of St Victor the pleasure of knowledge is seen as an ‘intellectual emotion’, in that it exists at the intersection between affectivity and rationality. This is clear from various texts: from the De fructibus carnis et spiritus to the De quinque septenis and the Sententiae de divinitate, gaudium is seen as the intellectual emotion par excellence, as it is an ‘inner’ joy, a jucunditas spiritalis that produces happiness. From an anthropological point of view, joy and pleasure combine with (...) knowledge to help men abandon the pleasures of the body and devote themselves to those of the spirit. This is linked to Hugh of St Victor’s ‘hedonistic’ pedagogy, which holds that docet quod scire delectet, in that one learns more easily what is pleasant. Similarly, limited, restricted knowledge does not produce as much pleasure as extensive, wide-ranging knowledge. The essay sets these analyses in a table of Hugh’s terminology that is organized in four semantic poles: 1) pleasure and desire (delectatio, voluptas, o... (shrink)

It would be easy to oppose Peter Abelard and Hugh of Saint-Victor as two opposed types of masters: on one side the “intellectual,” in almost the modern sense of the word, and on the other side, a representative of the humanist, clerical and monastic tradition, soon to be effaced. In order to highlight the real significance of their divergences and the profound coherence of both historical and intellectual personalities, in this article the author investigated their social origins, how each one (...) conceived the relation between the individual and the group,and finally the way in which each appropriates earlier texts. Thus, in many respects Abelard and Hugh appear as opposite poles in the intellectual world of the twelfth century, but in a different perspective, thanks to the synthesis accomplished by their common students, as inseparable and complementary sources of what became the Scholastic age. (shrink)

The intention here is to propose a new critical edition of the so-called Epistula synodalis a text traditionally attributed to Amphilochius of Iconium, but which the Author considers to be spurious. Alongside the Italian translation of the letter, based on a comparative commentary with the writings of Basil, a strong dependence of this text on Cappadocian Fathers’ Trinitarian theology and pneumatology is brought to light. However, its origin is probably an anonymous work, only subsequently associated with Amphilochius.

Les trois conférences qui suivent continuent l’exploration et l’évaluation des rapports complexes entre les descriptions de l’esprit et du langage données par Wittgenstein et celles données par ses prédécesseurs austro-allemands, les héritiers de Brentano et de Bolzano. La première considère le rapport entre quelques distinctions et thèses qui se trouvent dans le Tractatus et quelques distinctions et thèses similaires esquissées auparavant par le phénoménologue réaliste Max Scheler. La deuxième conférence est consacrée à l’examen des descriptions des émotions, du vouloir dire, (...) du vouloir, du vouloir faire et du souvenir données par Wittgenstein et par les premiers phénoménologues — des descriptions dont les sources sont explicitées dans la première conférence. Enfin, dans la troisième conférence, la description du langage et la philosophie de la signification dans la philosophie austro-allemande sont analysées.The three lectures which follow continue the exploration and evaluation of the complex relations between the descriptions of language and the mind given by Wittgenstein and those given by his Austro-German predecessors, the heirs of Bolzano and Brentano. The first lecture considers the relation between some distinctions and theses to be found in the Tractatus and similar distinctions and theses set out earlier by the realist phenomenologist Max Scheler. The second lecture is devoted to an examination of the descriptions of emotions, meaning something, willing, intending and remembering given by Wittgenstein and the first phenomenologists ; the descriptions discussed in this lecture build on ideas set out in the first lecture. The third and last lecture analyses the description of language and the philosophy of meaning in Austro-German philosophy. (shrink)

How do I know that I am the person who is moving? According to Wittgenstein (1958), the sense of agency involves a primitive notion of the self used as subject, which does not rely on any prior perceptual identification and which is immune to error through misidentification. However, the neuroscience of action and the neuropsychology of schizophrenia show the existence of specific cognitive processes underlying the sense of agency—the ‘‘Who'' system (Georgieff & Jeannerod, 1998) which is disrupted in delusions of (...) control (Frith, 1992). Yet, we have to be careful in the interpretation of such clinical symptoms, which cannot be so easily reduced to deficit of action monitoring or to lack of action awareness. Moreover, we should refine the definition of the sense of agency by distinguishing the sense of initiation and the sense of one's own movements. A conceptual analysis of the empirical data will lead us to establish the taxonomy of the different levels of action representations. (shrink)

À partir d’une analyse de portée générale du discours politique en tant que tel (dont l’auteur s’efforce de préciser théoriquement la nature, les fonctions, les contraintes, les procédés), c’est à la fois à une réflexion sur la construction des identités, tant individuelles que collectives, et à un diagnostic prudent sur l’évolution de la médiation politique – indispensable à la cohésion minimale du « vivre ensemble » qui fait la société – dans le monde contemporain (occidental essentiellemen...

We introduce the Relational Responding Task (RRT) as a tool for capturing beliefs at the implicit level. Flemish participants were asked to respond as if they believed that Flemish people are more intelligent than immigrants (e.g., respond “true” to the statement “Flemish people are wiser than immigrants”) or to respond as if they believed that immigrants are more intelligent than Flemish people (e.g., respond “true” to the statement “Flemish people are dumber than immigrants”). The difference in performance between these two (...) tasks correlated with ratings of the extent to which participants explicitly endorsed the belief that Flemish people are more intelligent than immigrants and with questionnaire measures of subtle and blatant racism. The current study provides a first step towards validating RRT effects as a viable measure of implicit beliefs. (shrink)

A reflection on the philosophical traditions at the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon and in the city of Monterrey.

La doctrine philosophique préparée par la révolution copernicienne ne semble pas faire sa part au politique. En effet, le système de la philosophie se divise en liberté et nature, le politique ne pouvant être réduit ni à l'autre. Cependant, on peut dégager l'originalité du politique chez Kant précisément à partir de cette difficulté d'accommodation. On verra alors s'esquisser un rapprochement stylistique entre Kant et l'idéalisme allemand: dans les deux cas, l'intelligibilité du présent est rapportée à la médiation entre normativité et (...) expérience. It seems that there is no place to politics in the philosophical doctrine orchestrated by the Copernican revolution. Indeed, none of the two parts of the philosophical system — nature and freedom — can alone give a satisfactory account of politics. However, it is arguable that by reflecting on this topical difficulty one could detect the originality of Kant's approach to the political. By proceeding in this way one is also able to recognize a stylistic nearness between Kant and the philosophers of German Idealism: in both cases, the intelligibility of the present is related to the mediation between normativity and experience. (shrink)

resumo : Redescoberta a partir da década de 1990, a obra de Gilbert Simondon coloca a técnica em uma posição central na reflexão filosófica. Mais do que uma faculdade do humano, a técnica aparece em Simondon como uma afecção determinante para todo regime do coletivo e do psíquico, fundadora de configuração do modo de estar no mundo. Este artigo visa retraçar o caminho pelo qual Simondon encontra a técnica como um problema filosófico antigo e escamoteado, cuja recuperação se torna urgente (...) com a contemporânea imbricação entre a tecnologia e o devir do fenômeno humano. abstract : The work of Gilbert Simondon, recovered in the 1990s, places technicity in a central position for philosophical thought. More than a human faculty, technicity appears in Simondon as a determinant affection for the entire regime of collective and psychic existence. It finds thus a plethora of configurations of the modalities of being in the world. This essay seeks to retrace the ways in which Simondon discovers technicity as an ancient philosophical problem that has been veiled, the recovery of which becomes ever more urgent given the contemporary interpenetration between technology and the becoming of the human phenomenon. (shrink)

In this paper we attempt to analyze the physical and philosophical meaning of quantum contextuality. In the first part we will argue that a general confusion within the literature comes from the improper "scrambling" of two different meanings of quantum contextuality. The first one is related to an epistemic interpretation of contextuality, introduced by Bohr, which stresses the incompatibility of quantum measurements. The second, is related to an ontic notion of contextuality, exposed through the Kochen-Specker theorem, which focuses on the (...) constraints to discuss about actual properties within the orthodox formalism of QM. We will show how these two notions have been scrambled together creating an "omelette of contextuality" which has been fully widespread through a popularized "epistemic explanation" of the KS theorem according to which: The outcome of the observable A when mea- sured together with B or together with C will necessarily differ in case [A,B] = [A,C] = 0, and [B,C] ̸= 0. We will show why this statement is not only improperly scrambling epistemic and ontic perspectives, but is also physically and philosophically meaningless. In the second part of the paper, we will analyse the relation between ‘classical contexts’ and QM. We will show that three accepted presuppositions found within the orthodox literature are, in general, false. Namely: that quantum contextuality does not preclude an objective description of physical reality, that the choice of a context restores a classical description of reality, and that the choice of a context is a necessary condition for accounting for empirical statements in QM. (shrink)

In his posthumously published Living Up to Death Paul Ricoeur left an impressive testimony on what it means to live at a high old age with death approaching. In this article I present him as a teacher who reminds us of valuable lessons taught by patients in palliative care and their caretakers who accompany them on their way to death, and also as a guide in our search for a modern ars moriendi, after—what many at least experience as—the breakdown of (...) traditional religious belief in a personal afterlife. These lessons can be summarized in the following theses. ‘Living up to death, one cannot experience one’s own death. Therefore, never consider someone dying as moribund’. ‘Though everybody is alone in dying, nobody should die alone.’ ‘The preparation for death is an affirmation of life’. ‘Life experienced as a gift can be given up’. The plausibility of the last thesis, however, may go beyond the confines of austere philosophical thinking. (shrink)

A pesar de los matices y variaciones de significado, el concepto husserliano de intencionalidad no deja de estar al servicio de la idea clásica de la verdad como adaequatio, finalmente adaptada al orden monádico de la conciencia trascendental. Veremos, sin embargo, que en los análisis de Husserl sobre la conciencia interna del tiempo se manifiesta toda la dificultad para interpretar intencionalmente la esfera pasiva de la conciencia, peligrando la peculiar vocación a la verdad de la misma intencionalidad. Intentaremos, mediante las (...) últimas ideas husserlianas sobre la constitución eidética, encontrar una génesis pasiva del sentido ideal intencional sin perder su referencia egológica. Abstract: Despite the nuances and differences of meaning, the husserlian’s concept of intentionality supplies coherently that of classic true as adaequatio, even if adapted to the monadic order of transcendental conscience. We will show how Husserl’s analysis of inner time consciousness shows all the difficulties for an intentional interpretation of the passive sphere of consciousness, altering the peculiar vocation of intentionality to truth. Through the latest husserlian ideas on constitution, we will try to find a passive genesis to the ideal meaning of intentionality without losing its egologic reference. -/- . (shrink)

For those of us who are sympathetic to the research program of cognitive science, it is especially useful to face the deepest and sharpest critic of that program. Charles Taylor, who defines himself as a ‘hedgehog’ whose ‘single rather tightly related agenda’ fits into a very ancient and rather elusive debate between naturalism and anti-naturalism, may well be that critic. My ambition in this paper is to distill Taylor’s central objection to the cognitive science approach to agency and the self (...) as it is expressed throughout Human Agency and Language. After trying to set out the core of this objection, I want to remark on some rather curious aspects of the dispute of which it is a part, and then sketch, in relation to one or two examples, what I take to be the most promising line of resistance to Taylor’s attack. I conclude with a proposal as to how Taylor may – narrowly – escape one logical consequence of his position, according to which he should stop knocking the cognitive science program and instead go to work building a robot. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Flament Fultot, Lin Nie & Claudia Carello. Upshot: The aim of my commentary is to complement some of the main points defended in the target article. In particular, I want to explore further the central role of agent-level explanations and of evolution for our understanding of a meaningful environment. I finish by wondering whether an excessive focus on ontological questions could be problematic for a proper defence of (...) ecological psychology. (shrink)

The involvement of children in non-beneficial clinical research is extremely important for improving pediatric care, but its ethical acceptability is still disputed. Therefore, various pro-research justifications have been proposed throughout the years. The present essay aims at contributing to the on-going discussion surrounding children’s participation in non-beneficial clinical research. Building on Wendler’s ‘contribution to a valuable project’ justification, but going beyond a risk/benefit analysis, it articulates a pro-research argument which appeals to a phenomenological view on the body and vulnerability. It (...) is claimed that children’s bodies are not mere physical objects, but body-subjects due to which children, as persons, can contribute to research that may hold no direct clinical benefit to them even before they can give informed consent. (shrink)

Sophisticated dispositionalism proposes a naturalist reduction of mental content by claiming that the semantic content of a mental symbol is determined by the causes of the occurrence of this symbol under ideal conditions, i.e., conditions under which only the referent of a symbol can cause its tokening. However, Paul Boghossian developed the open-endedness objection in order to show that it is not possible to specify these ideal conditions in non-semantic terms, entailing that the naturalist reduction of mental content proposed by (...) sophisticated dispositionalism is not viable. My goal in this paper is to argue that the open-endedness objection is flawed. (shrink)

This article examines Gerald Odonis' view on the nature of place as found in his commentary on the Sentences (Sent. II, d. 2, qq. 3-5) and in an anonymous question (Utrum locus sit ultima superficies corporis ambientis immobile primum) extant in manuscript Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, 4229. Both texts defend a thoroughly un-Aristotelian conception of place as three-dimensional space. Odonis not only deviates from Aristotle's definition of place as the inner surface of a surrounding body, but also from the positions of (...) his contemporaries, including fellow Franciscans. Despite some remarkable doctrinal similarities between Odonis' view and that of Renaissance innovators like Francesco Patrizi and Bernardino Telesio, it seems unlikely that Gerald played a role in the rise of new conceptions of place in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. An edition of the anonymous Quaestio de loco is given in an appendix. (shrink)

Hysteria has been the subject of controversy for many years, with theorists arguing about whether it is best explained by a hidden organic cause or by malingering and deception. However, it has been shown that hysterical paralysis cannot be explained in any of these terms. With the recent development of cognitive psychiatry, one may understand psychiatric and organic delusions within the same conceptual framework. Here I contrast hysterical conversion with anosognosia. They are indeed remarkably similar, though the content of their (...) respective delusions is the opposite. In hysterical paralysis, patients are not aware of their preserved ability, whereas in anosognosia for hemiplegia, patients are not aware of their disability. Four main explanations have been provided to account for anosognosia: metacognitive, attentional, motor, and motivational views. I will apply each of these accounts to hysterical paralysis and show that, at each level, hysterical conversion is the reverse of anosognosia. I will suggest that hysterical paralysis results from the interaction between attentional somatosensory amplification and affective inhibition of action. (shrink)

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is one of the most influential theories of consciousness, mainly due to its claim of mathematically formalizing consciousness in a measurable way. However, the theory, as it is formulated, does not account for contextual observations that are crucial for understanding consciousness. Here we put forth three possible difficulties for its current version, which could be interpreted as a trilemma. Either consciousness is contextual or not. If contextual, either IIT needs revisions to its axioms to include contextuality, (...) or it is inconsistent. If consciousness is not contextual, then IIT faces an empirical challenge. Therefore, we argue that IIT in its current version is inadequate. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Going Beyond Theory: Constructivism and Empirical Phenomenology” by Urban Kordeš. Upshot: I propose that getting the empirical study of subjective experience off to a good start requires an intersubjective approach, in both theory and method, where intersubjectivity is understood not in the standard science way of verification by others, but rather as participation in the investigation of how experience transforms when examining it together. I argue that this will greatly help do justice to and (...) respect experience’s special transforming and transformative nature. (shrink)

Definitions Axioms Prop. I. Substance is by nature prior to its modifications Prop. II. Two substances, whose attributes are different, have nothing in common Prop III. Things, which have nothing in common, cannot be one the cause of the other Prop. IV. Two or more distinct things are distinguished one from the other either by the difference of the attributes of the substance, or by the differences of their modifications Prop. V. There cannot exist in the universe two or more (...) substances having the same nature or attribute Prop. VI. One substance cannot be produced by another substance Prop. VII. Existence belongs to the nature of substance Prop. VIII. Every substance is necessarily infinite Prop. IX. The more reality or being a thing has, the greater the number of its attributes Prop. X. Each particular attribute of the one substance must be conceived through itself Prop. XI. God, or substance consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists Prop. XII. No attribute of substance can be conceived, from which it would follow that substance can be divided Prop. XIII. Substance absolutely infinite is indivisible Prop. XIV. Besides God no substance can be granted or conceived Prop. XV. Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived Prop. XVI. From the necessity of the divine nature must follow an infinite number of things in infinite ways--that is, all things which fall within the sphere of infinite intellect Prop. XVII. God acts solely by the laws of his own nature and is not constrained by anyone Prop. XVIII. God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things Prop. XIX. God and all the attributes of God are eternal Prop. XX. The existence of God and his essence are one and the same Prop. XXI. All things, which follow from the absolute nature of any attribute of God, must always exist and be infinite, or, in other words, are eternal and infinite through the said attribute Prop.. (shrink)