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)

There is a traditional conception of knowledge but it is not the Justified True Belief analysis Gettier attacked. On the traditional view, knowledge consists in having a belief that bears a discernible mark of truth. A mark of truth is a truth-entailing property: a property that only true beliefs can have. It is discernible if one can always tell that a belief has it, that is, a sufficiently attentive subject believes that a belief has it if and only if it (...) has it. Requiring a mark of truth makes the view infallibilist. Requiring it to be discernible makes the view internalist. I call the view Classical Infallibilism. (shrink)

El cometido que Deleuze asigna a la práctica del comentario no es otro que el de liberar al pensamiento del orden filosófico custodiado por la historiografía standard . Para ello el filósofo francés recurre a un determinado tipo de discurso, calificado como “indirecto libre”, capaz de ablandar los cercados en los que la Historia de la Filosofía ha confinado y arrinconado a los pensadores –y, con ellos, al pensamiento. Asimismo Deleuze destaca la existencia de un “devenir-filosófico”, el cual, a la (...) vez que rebasa la falsa alternativa de lo eterno y de lo histórico, alumbra y anuncia una concepción nueva ( intempestiva ) de (la historia de) la filosofía. (shrink)

La radiation électromagnétique chez Maxwell, Lorentz et Ritz.--La radiation électromagnétique et la théorie de la relativité.--La radiation électromagnetique et les principes de la physique.--La radiation électromagnétique et la matière.--La radiation électromagnétique et l'éther.

In this paper, we develop a fresh understanding of the sense in which emotions are evaluations. We argue that we should not follow mainstream accounts in locating the emotion–value connection at the level of content and that we should instead locate it at the level of attitudes or modes. We begin by explaining the contrast between content and attitude, a contrast in the light of which we review the leading contemporary accounts of the emotions. We next offer reasons to think (...) that these accounts face substantial problems since they locate the link emotions bear to values at the level of content. This provides the incentive to pursue an alternative approach according to which emotions qualify as evaluations because they are specific types of attitudes, an approach we substantiate by appealing to felt bodily stances. We conclude by considering two reasons why this approach may be resisted; they respectively pertain to the alleged impossibility of drawing the attitude–content contrast in the case of the emotions and to the suspicion that so doing raises qualia-related worries. (shrink)

Is shame social? Is it superficial? Is it a morally problematic emotion? Researchers in disciplines as different as psychology, philosophy, and anthropology have thought so. But what is the nature of shame and why are claims regarding its social nature and moral standing interesting and important? Do they tell us anything worthwhile about the value of shame and its potential legal and political applications? -/- In this book, Julien Deonna, Raffaele Rodogno, and Fabrice Teroni propose an original philosophical account (...) of shame aimed at answering these questions. The book begins with a detailed examination of the evidence and arguments that are taken to support what they call the two dogmas about shame: its alleged social nature and its morally dubious character. Their analysis is conducted against the backdrop of a novel account of shame and ultimately leads to the rejection of these two dogmas. On this account, shame involves a specific form of negative evaluation that the subject takes towards herself: a verdict of incapacity with regard to values to which she is attached. One central virtue of the account resides in the subtle manner it clarifies the ways in which the subject's identity is at stake in shame, thus shedding light on many aspects of this complex emotion and allowing for a sophisticated understanding of its moral significance. -/- This philosophical account of shame engages with all the current debates on shame as they are conducted within disciplines as varied as ethics, moral, experimental, developmental and evolutionary psychology, anthropology, legal studies, feminist studies, politics and public polic. (shrink)

The Collective Memory Reader provides a wide array of texts that underwrite the field of memory studies. Taken together, these seminal texts, hard-to-find classics, previsouly untranslated material, unusual extensions, and contemporary landmarks provide a definitive entry point into the field for students and an essential resource for scholars.

When spelled out properly infallibilism is a viable and even attractive view. Because it has long been summary dismissed, however, we need a guide on how to properly spell it out. The guide has to fulfil four tasks. The first two concern the nature of knowledge: to argue that infallible belief is necessary, and that it is sufficient, for knowledge. The other two concern the norm of belief: to argue that knowledge is necessary, and that it is sufficient, for justified (...) certainty. With such a guide in hand infallibilism can be evaluated on its own merits. The most controversial parts are the first and fourth. The idea that knowledge requires infallible belief is thought to be excessively sceptical. The idea that knowledge warrants certainty is thought to be excessively dogmatic. The present paper addresses the first. It argues that knowledge requires infallible belief. (shrink)

While it is generally believed that justification is a fallible guide to the truth, there might be interesting exceptions to this general rule. In recent work on bridge-principles, an increasing number of authors have argued that truths about what a subject ought to do are truths we stand in some privileged epistemic relation to and that our justified normative beliefs are beliefs that will not lead us astray. If these bridge-principles hold, it suggests that justification might play an interesting role (...) in our normative theories. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, a value that's notoriously difficult to understand if we think of justification as but a fallible means to a desired end. We will argue that these bridge-principles will be incredibly difficult to defend. While we do not think that normative facts necessarily stand in any interesting relationship to our justified beliefs about them, there might well be a way of defending the idea that our justified beliefs about what to do won't lead us astray. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, but this way of thinking about justification and its value comes with costs few would be willing to pay. (shrink)

The phenomenon of species extinction raises more and more concern among ecologists facing the actual crisis of biodiversity. Scientific investigations of the causes and effects of extinction must be completed by a philosophical analysis of the concept of extinction that aims to clarify the meanings of the term ‘extinction’ and to analyse modalities, criteria and degrees of extinction. We will focus our attention on the apparent paradox of the possible ‘resurrection’ of species in the near future with the help of (...) genetic biotechnology and cloning techniques. The ontological background of the extinction concept is analysed in relation to the idea of species as classes. We will also show that there is no simple analogy between death and species extinction, and develop a conceptualist and dualistic system of supra-individual entities , supported by an instrumentalist approach to genetic manipulations which transform species into interactive kinds, which can go extinct and be recreated. (shrink)

Simone Weil, philosophe reconnue, engagée, mystique, ne laisse personne indifférent. Son année d'enseignement à Bourges est une année charnière, un moment de répit dans une courte vie mouvementée. Elle y réfléchit et y médite. Professeur de philosophie, elle a laissé une forte impression sur ses jeunes élèves du lycée de jeunes filles de Bourges. Ce sont ses cours, retrouvés grâce à deux anciennes élèves, que vous lirez dans cet ouvrage.

Ces quelques pages tentent de ressaisir les structures et la mobilité existentiale de l’angoisse et de la mortalité, en suivant la description phénoménologique qu’en propose Heidegger dans Sein und Zeit . On y soutient la thèse selon laquelle les analyses phénoménologiques de l’angoisse et de la mort visent une seule et même donnée phénoménale, et l’on essaie d’en mettre en évidence le caractère systématique central dans le traité de 1927. On montre enfin en quoi l’étude de la description phénoménologique de (...) l’« angoisse de la mort » permet une saisie plus profonde des concepts de finitude et d’ horizon de la temporalité. (shrink)

Repenser l'universalisme classique, ce n'est pas réveiller le démon du particularisme, de la pureté biologique et des passions fascistes, ni tomber dans le piège de l'identité comme fondement de toute légitimité, ou couper la République en deux. C'est, tout au contraire, chercher le chemin d'un humanisme à la mesure du monde. Partout, des plateaux de chaînes info aux tribunes des grands hebdomadaires, des interviews présidentielles aux phénomènes de librairies, on dresse le même constat: l'universalisme, indissociable de l'esprit français, pilier de (...) la République, ferait face à un péril mortel. Dans le récit qui structure le discours politico-médiatique en France, l'antiracisme présentable d'antan, validé par les partis de gauche pour son ambition universaliste -- lutter en même temps contre toutes les haines collectives en intégrant tout le monde -- se verrait supplanté par un antiracisme 'décolonial', 'indigéniste' et 'catégoriel', dont la grille de lecture serait 'racialisante.' Si ce nouvel antiracisme est perçu comme une menace pour l'universalisme, c'est parce que ses promoteurs joueraient avec le feu communautariste. L'antiracisme 2.0 serait ainsi un racisme déguisé, utilisant des concepts essentialisants qui ne valent guère mieux que les théories de la suprématie blanche. Idiots utiles du soft power américain ou apprentis-sorciers de la gauche radicale, ses idéologues formeraient avec l'extrême droite une 'tenaille identitaire' visant à renverser l'ordre républicain, en déclenchant rien moins qu'une guerre des races. Mais de quel universalisme parle-t-on? Dans quelle mesure le concept fait-il l'objet d'un monopole intellectuel? Pourquoi ceux qui se pensent et se disent universalistes sont-ils convaincus qu'il n'en existe qu'une seule forme -- celle qu'ils professent? Et comment expliquer l'équivalence morale entre racisme et antiracisme qui sous-tend leur 'modèle'? Telles sont les questions que pose cet essai qui se veut à la fois une critique de la raison pseudo-universaliste et une approche de l'universalisme postcolonial, ou créolisé. (shrink)

Les organisations du tiers secteur, notamment celles spécialisées dans les services solidaires, sont souvent considérées comme des organisations capables de promouvoir de nouvelles formes de participation politique et d'engagement dans l'espace public. En effet, en créant des espaces intermédiaires entre l'espace domestique et l'espace public, elles permettraient de mobiliser les exclus et redessineraient les frontières entre le public et le privé. Cependant, ce texte défend l'idée que pour évaluer ce rôle politique potentiel, il est tout d'abord nécessaire de s'intéresser à (...) leurs modes d'organisation, à leur mode effectif de prise de décision et à leur capacité à construire leur légitimité vis-à-vis des autres types d'organisations politiques. La sociologie politique offre les outils théoriques permettant d'évaluer ces trois éléments.Third-sector organizations - and especially those specialized in solidarity services - are often considered capable of promoting new forms of political participation and involvement in the public sphere. Indeed, by mobilizing marginalized social groups on the borderline between domestic issues, registers of proximity and political action, they re-shape the boundaries between what is considered as being « public » and « private ». Nevertheless, this article argues that in order to evaluate their potential political role, it is first necessary to focus on their modes of organization and leadership and their ability to construct their legitimacy against other forms of political organizations. And political sociology provides the tools required to obtain a realistic view of these organizations. (shrink)

The emotions are at the centre of our lives and, for better or worse, imbue them with much of their significance. The philosophical problems stirred up by the existence of the emotions, over which many great philosophers of the past have laboured, revolve around attempts to understand what this significance amounts to. Are emotions feelings, thoughts, or experiences? If they are experiences, what are they experiences of? Are emotions rational? In what sense do emotions give meaning to what surrounds us? (...) -/- The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction introduces and explores these questions in a clear and accessible way. The authors discuss the following key topics: -/- the diversity and unity of the emotions the relations between emotion, belief and desire the nature of values the relations between emotions and perceptions emotions viewed as evaluative attitudes the link between emotions and evaluative knowledge the nature of moods, sentiments, and character traits. -/- Including chapter summaries and guides to further reading, The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction is an ideal starting point for any philosopher or student studying the emotions. It will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as psychology and the social sciences. (shrink)

One puzzle concerning highly idealized models is whether they explain. Some suggest they provide so-called ‘how-possibly explanations’. However, this raises an important question about the nature of how-possibly explanations, namely what distinguishes them from ‘normal’, or how-actually, explanations? I provide an account of how-possibly explanations that clarifies their nature in the context of solving the puzzle of model-based explanation. I argue that the modal notions of actuality and possibility provide the relevant dividing lines between how-possibly and how-actually explanations. Whereas how-possibly (...) explanations establish claims of possible explanations, how-actually explanations establish claims of actual ones. Models, in turn, simply provide evidence for these claims. (shrink)

Since Saul Kripke’s influential work in the 1970s, the revisionary approach to semantic paradox—the idea that semantic paradoxes must be solved by weakening classical logic—has been increasingly popular. In this paper, we present a new revenge argument to the effect that the main revisionary approaches breed new paradoxes that they are unable to block.

Cet ouvrage interroge l'expérience de pensée, rapportée aux textes de philosophie et d'histoire naturelle du xviiie siècle. À travers un corpus étendu mais représentatif, il s'agit de questionner les procédés qui légitiment ou non le recours à ce procédé, en spécifiant les textes par une typologie nouvelle.

In this paper, we contrast the different ways in which the representationalist and the attitudinalist in the theory of emotions account for the fact that emotions have evaluative correctness conditions. We argue that the attitudinalist has the resources to defend her view against recent attacks from the representationalist. To this end, we elaborate on the idea that emotional attitudes have a rich profile and explain how it supports the claim that these attitudes generate the wished-for evaluative correctness conditions. Our argument (...) rests on the idea that emotional attitudes manifest a sensitivity to evaluative evidence and that this sensitivity secures the kind of normativity we expect of the emotions. We bring our discussion to a close by assessing whether the psychological underpinnings of this sensitivity to evaluative evidence are such as to threaten the foundation of attitudinalism: the idea that emotions do not represent values. Given the available models of how we might access values prior to emotional experience, we conclude that the attitudinalist is still in the game. (shrink)

This paper is an early draft of something that we've polished up and posted above: n-1 Guilty Men. Check that one out, if interested.

To what level are invisible stimuli processed by the brain in the absence of conscious awareness? It is widely accepted that simple visual properties of invisible stimuli are processed; however, the existence of higher-level unconscious processing (e.g., involving semantic or executive functions) remains a matter of debate. Several methodological factors may underlie the discrepancies found in the literature, such as different levels of conservativeness in the definition of "unconscious" or different dependent measures of unconscious processing. In this research topic, we (...) are particularly interested in yet another factor: inherent differences in the amount of information let through by different suppression techniques. In the same conditions of well-controlled, conservatively established invisibility, can we show that some of the techniques in the "psychophysical magic" arsenal (e.g., masking, but also visual crowding, attentional blink, etc.) reliably lead to higher-level unconscious processing than others (e.g., interocular suppression)? Some authors have started investigating this question, using multiple techniques in similar settings. We argue that this approach should be extended and refined. Indeed, in order to delineate the frontiers of the unconscious mind using a contrastive method, one has to disentangle the limits attributable to unawareness itself, and those attributable to the technique inducing unawareness. The scope of this research topic is to provide a platform for scientists to contribute insights and further experiments addressing this fundamental question. (shrink)

A key aspect of the educator's responsibility as understood by Hannah Arendt is its dual character. Educators are responsible for both the life and development of the child and the continuance of the world, as Arendt puts it in “The Crisis in Education.” Moreover, these aspects of responsibility are in tension with each other. Arendt's own accounts of responsibility in her political writings are, in a similar way, riddled with tension. What should we conclude from this about the nature of (...) educational responsibility? To address this question, Julien Kloeg and Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens first reconstruct the meaning of responsibility in Arendt's political writings. They find a broad distinction between political responsibility and personal responsibility: the former consists in contributing to a community (by extension, the world), and the latter in the “two-in-one” of silent self-dialogue. While political responsibility is close to Arendt's description of the responsibility of the educator (for the continuance of the world), personal responsibility does not find an obvious home in her educational thought. From this ambiguous situation of education and Arendt's own theme of the “in-between” arises the possibility of introducing a concept of educational responsibility that further develops Arendt's position. Kloeg and Noordegraaf-Eelens's concept of educational responsibility suggests a theory and practice of navigating tensions between conflicting commitments. In their view, this is both an appropriate extension and reform of Arendt's educational work and an insight that does justice to the practical situation of educators in the modern world. (shrink)

On a widespread naturalist view, the meanings of mathematical terms are determined, and can only be determined, by the way we use mathematical language—in particular, by the basic mathematical principles we’re disposed to accept. But it’s mysterious how this can be so, since, as is well known, minimally strong first-order theories are non-categorical and so are compatible with countless non-isomorphic interpretations. As for second-order theories: though they typically enjoy categoricity results—for instance, Dedekind’s categoricity theorem for second-order and Zermelo’s quasi-categoricity theorem (...) for second-order —these results require full second-order logic. So appealing to these results seems only to push the problem back, since the principles of second-order logic are themselves non-categorical: those principles are compatible with restricted interpretations of the second-order quantifiers on which Dedekind’s and Zermelo’s results are no longer available. In this paper, we provide a naturalist-friendly, non-revisionary solution to an analogous but seemingly more basic problem—Carnap’s Categoricity Problem for propositional and first-order logic—and show that our solution generalizes, giving us full second-order logic and thereby securing the categoricity or quasi-categoricity of second-order mathematical theories. Briefly, the first-order quantifiers have their intended interpretation, we claim, because we’re disposed to follow the quantifier rules in an open-ended way. As we show, given this open-endedness, the interpretation of the quantifiers must be permutation-invariant and so, by a theorem recently proved by Bonnay and Westerståhl, must be the standard interpretation. Analogously for the second-order case: we prove, by generalizing Bonnay and Westerståhl’s theorem, that the permutation invariance of the interpretation of the second-order quantifiers, guaranteed once again by the open-endedness of our inferential dispositions, suffices to yield full second-order logic. (shrink)

Knowledge-first evidentialism combines the view that it is rational to believe what is supported by one's evidence with the view that one's evidence is what one knows. While there is much to be said for the view, it is widely perceived to fail in the face of cases of reasonable error—particularly extreme ones like new Evil Demon scenarios (Wedgwood, 2002). One reply has been to say that even in such cases what one knows supports the target rational belief (Lord, 201x, (...) this volume). I spell out two versions of the strategy. The direct one uses what one knows as the input to principles of rationality such as conditionalization, dominance avoidance, etc. I argue that it fails in hybrid cases that are Good with respect to one belief and Bad with respect to another. The indirect strategy uses what one knows to determine a body of supported propositions that is in turn the input to principles of rationality. I sketch a simple formal implementation of the indirect strategy and show that it avoids the difficulty. I conclude that the indirect strategy offers the most promising way for knowledge-first evidentialists to deal with the New Evil Demon problem. (shrink)

This article is concerned with a statistical proposal due to James R. Beebe for how to solve the generality problem for process reliabilism. The proposal is highlighted by Alvin I. Goldman as an interesting candidate solution. However, Goldman raises the worry that the proposal may not always yield a determinate result. We address this worry by proving a dilemma: either the statistical approach does not yield a determinate result or it leads to trivialization, i.e. reliability collapses into truth (and anti-reliability (...) into falsehood). Various strategies for avoiding this predicament are considered, including revising the statistical rule or restricting its application to natural kinds. All amendments are seen to have serious problems of their own. We conclude that reliabilists need to look elsewhere for a convincing solution to the generality problem. (shrink)