In this paper, I elucidate the main points involved in the question of the non-triviality of the conventionality of simultaneity within the kinematics of special relativity. I argue that there is an important distinction to be made between the inherited component and the sui generis component of the conventionality of simultaneity. The factual core of the kinematics of special relativity is explored, and it is shown that the Round-Trip Clock Retardation effect obtains if, and only if Winnie's Passage Time Principle (...) holds. Some consequences of this fundamental fact are then explored. In particular, Grunbaum's view that the epistemological conventionality of simultaneity is logically prior to the physical inter-frame relativity of simultaneity is found to be based largely on what I call the inherited component of the former. Finally, a question is raised as to the very self-consistency of the claim, made by Ellis and Bowman, that standard signal synchrony and slow-transport synchrony are logically independent. In some concluding remarks, the author's general agreement with Grunbaum's conception of bridled conventionalism is indicated. (shrink)

A synchrony-free, velocity-independent formulation of the Lorentz transformation is derived in a very simple manner with the help of thek-calculus. The dependence of the well-known relativistic effects on the choice of simultaneity metric is put forth, and the significance of the possibility of eliminating these effects is explored. This leads to a simple analysis of the clock paradox, or round-trip clock retardation. The doctrine of the conventionality of simultaneity is brought to bear on the interpretation of this effect. It is (...) argued that such a round-trip effect constitutes a physical realization not only of the conventionality of simultaneity but of that of temporal congruence as well. Some physics perhaps vindicates a little philosophy. (shrink)

Attentional bias to threat has been almost exclusively examined after participants experienced repeated pairings between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US). This study aimed to determine whether threat-related attentional capture can result from observational learning, when participants acquire knowledge of the aversive qualities of a stimulus without themselves experiencing aversive outcomes. Non-clinical young-adult participants (N = 38) first watched a video of an individual (the demonstrator) performing a Pavlovian conditioning task in which one colour was paired (...) with shock (CS+) and another colour was neutral (CS−). They then carried out visual search for a shape-defined target. Oculomotor measures evidenced an attentional bias toward the CS+ colour, suggesting that threat-related attentional capture can ensue from observational learning. Exploratory analyses also revealed that this effect was positively correlated with empathy for the demonstrator. Our findings extend empirical and theoretical knowledge about threat-driven attention and provide valuable insights to better understand the formation of anxiety disorders. (shrink)

Three experiments explored how hypocrisy affects attributions of criminal guilt and the desire to punish hypocritical criminals. Study 1 established that via perceived hypocrisy, a hypocritical criminal was seen as more culpable and was punished more than a non-hypocritical criminal who committed an identical crime. Study 2 expanded on this, showing that negative moral emotions (anger and disgust) mediated the relationships between perceived hypocrisy, criminal guilt, and punishment. Study 3 replicated the emotion finding from Study 2 using new scenarios where (...) group agents were clearly aware of the hypocrisy of their actions, yet acted anyway. Again, perceived hypocrisy worked through moral emotions to affect criminal guilt and punishment. The current studies provide empirical support for theories relating hypocrisy and moral transgressions to moral emotions, also informing the literature on the role of moral emotions in moral reasoning and legal decision making. (shrink)

Résumé Où va la peinture est un livre de Laurent Marissal qui se présente à la fois comme un traité sur la peinture et comme une œuvre peinte. Les actions qu’il relate sont elles-mêmes revendiquées comme des actions picturales. L’article s’interroge sur ces usages hétérodoxes de la notion de « picturalité », tout d’abord au niveau de la mise en forme narrative du livre, puis à celui des actions que cette forme a pour dessein de relater. Une dernière partie (...) étudie la relation du travail de Laurent Marissal avec le courant du narrative art. (shrink)

Heredity has been dismissed as an insignificant object in Claude Bernard’s physiology, and the topic is usually ignored by historians. Yet, thirty years ago, Jean Gayon demonstrated that Bernard did elaborate on the subject. The present paper aims at reassessing the issue of heredity in Claude Bernard’s project of a “general physiology”. My first claim is that Bernard’s interest in heredity was linked to his ambitious goal of redefining general physiology in relation to morphology. In 1867, not only was morphology (...) included within experimental physiology, but it also theoretically grounded physiological investigations. By 1878, morphology and physiology were considered as completely independent sciences, and only the latter was perceived as suitable to experimentation. My second claim is that this reversal reflected the existence of two opposite attitudes towards heredity. In the late 1860s, Bernard was convinced that heredity would soon be accessible to experimental manipulation and that new species would be produced in the laboratory exactly like organic chemistry succeeded to do for raw bodies. Ten years later, he ascertained that this was impossible. My third claim is that Bernard was epistemologically ill-equipped to address the issue of heredity. Bernard was strongly committed to a general reasoning scheme that acknowledged only three categories: determining conditions, constant laws and phenomena. This scheme was a key factor in his successes as a physiologist who was able to capture new mechanisms in living bodies. Nonetheless, it also prevented him from understanding how time and history could be endowed with a causal action that cannot be reduced to timeless parameters. (shrink)

In a chapter of his forthcoming book , Laurent Geoffroy, traces the origins of demands for a basic income to the Eighteenth Century English Quaker, Thomas Paine. An obligation to provide financial aid through taxes was quite in keeping with the spirit of the French Revolution. This Babeuf inspired passion for equality still inspires emulation..

We prove a nonstandard density result. It asserts that if a particular formula is true for functions in a set K of linear continuous functions between Banach spaces E and D, then it remains valid for functions that are limits, in the uniform convergence topology on a given class ℳ of subsets of E, of nets of vectors in K. We then apply this result to various class ℳ and setsK in the context of E-valued Bochner integrable functions defined on (...) a finite measure space. (shrink)

Au cours de notre histoire évolutive, le cerveau humain a été modelé en profondeur par et pour la vie en société. Nous sommes ainsi naturellement dotés de dispositions cognitives qui nous permettent de naviguer dans notre environnement social et contraignent la manière dont nous nous y comportons. Les sciences cognitives contemporaines nous offrent une compréhension de plus en plus détaillée des rouages de cette cognition sociale naturelle. Ces connaissances nouvelles doivent intéresser tous ceux qui cherchent à comprendre le fonctionnement et (...) les mystères de notre monde social. Il est donc temps de dépasser la méfiance que les sciences expérimentales suscitent encore trop souvent en sociologie. Proposant un parcours au travers de la psychologie cognitive, de la psychologie du développement, des neurosciences et de la primatologie, cet ouvrage expose ce que ces sciences sont susceptibles d’apporter à la sociologie. (shrink)

Adopting a sociopragmatic and interactional perspective, the paper proposes to investigate how apprentices engage in questioning practices and how trainers respond to these questions. A detailed empirical analysis of audio/video data collected in the context of Swiss training companies establishes that answers provided by trainers in response to questions do not constitute the dominant form of questioning work observed. Alternative interactional patterns that stress the tensions connected with questioning in the workplace context and the complexity of the social practices associated (...) with workplace learning are identified and described. These findings illuminate the challenges faced by apprentices when joining the workplace and underscore the importance of a sociopragmatic perspective in addressing social issues related to initial vocational education. (shrink)

Ce texte est originellement paru dans la Revue Rursus. Poétique, réception et réécriture des textes antiques, le 3 octobre 2017. Nous remercions Laurent Calvié, Arnaud Zucker et la revue Rursus de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Résumé : On a aujourd'hui tendance à souligner les libertés qu'auraient prises Martianus Capella en traduisant la rythmique d'Aristide Quintilien : on hésite même à considérer le premier comme un traducteur du second. Cela - Études grecques et latines.

Comment savons-nous distinguer le bien du mal, reconnaître que telle action est bonne ou telle règle injuste ? Comme l'écrit Adam Smith, « selon certains, le principe de l'approbation est fondé sur un sentiment d'une nature originale, sur une faculté de perception particulière que l'esprit exerce au spectacle de certaines actions ou dispositions... lls lui donnent un nom particulier et l'appellent sens moral ». L'histoire moderne du sens moral, anglaise et surtout écossaise, commence par un dilemme. L'obligation suppose une règle (...) extérieure à la conscience qui est obligée. Comment juger, si nous ne disposons pas d'une règle de justice ? Mais les partisans du sens moral objectent : comment reconnaître et nous assurer que cette règle est bien juste, si nous n'avons pas d'abord la capacité de discerner ce qui est juste, indépendamment de l'obéissance à cette règle ? De deux choses l'une : soit nous sommes d'emblée et comme naturellement sensibles aux qualité morales, soit la moralité se réduit à la conformité à un univers de conventions. Cette notion est-elle autre chose qu'une chimère de moralistes ? Son étude permet de reconstituer une histoire de la philosophie morale et des polémiques qui l'animent au XVIIIe siècle - depuis Cudworth et Locke, en passant par Shaftesbury, Bayle, Hutcheson, Hume et Smith, jusqu'à Kant et Bentham. Textes de Jean-Pierre Cléro, Michèle Cohen-Halimi, Laurent Jaffro, Alain Petit, Jean-Michel Vienne. (shrink)

This article argues that many situations in social life can be analyzed by their requirement for the justification of action. It is in particular in situations of dispute that a need arises to explicate the grounds on which responsibility for errors is distributed and on which new agreement can be reached. Since a plurality of mutually incompatible modes of justification exists, disputes can be understood as disagreements either about whether the accepted rule of justification has not been violated or about (...) which mode of justification to apply at all. The article develops a grammar of such modes of justification, called orders of worth (grandeur), and argues that the human capacity for criticism becomes visible in the daily occurrence of disputes over criteria for justification. At the same time, it is underlined that not all social situations can be interpreted with the help of such a sense of justice, which resides on a notion of equivalence. Regimes of love, of violence or of familiarity are systematically distinct from regimes of justification. (shrink)

Costuma-se dizer que a filososfia moral de Hutcheson seria tributária daquela de Shaftesbury, a ponto mesmo de ser um prolongamento do pensamento moral do filósofo inglês. O artigo busca mostrar que essa é uma visão simplista, examinando para tanto o conceito de desinteresse em Hutcheson.

Les écrits du dernier Husserl développent une théorie du monde de la vie qui s’expose dans la Krisis de 1936 et dans les nombreux textes inédits qui lui font cortège. Si cette théorie du monde de la vie ne se présente pas, à première vue, comme une éthique ou une théorie de l’éthique, elle demeure marquée par une préoccupation éthique qui scelle l’unité des analyses husserliennes. Dans cet article, on cherchera à préciser les contours et la portée de cette ultime (...) éthique husserlienne, en revenant en particulier sur le motif de l’auto-méditation que Hus-serl érige en principe de la responsabilité individuelle et sociale. (shrink)

Many contributions explained in details the various benefits from private roads. Not only they stressed the possibility of such system, but also the functioning through different historical experiences. However, they put aside an important question: how should we proceed concretely in order to privatize the road network? Our contribution tries to answer this question. It explains the consequences of a public provision and its differences with a free market order. It defines the true meaning of the privatization process: a search (...) for justice, and proposes a solution based on Rothbard’s theory of property rights. The paper concludes on some critics that we raised to alternative process of privatization.Le réseau routier constitue un bien privé qui peut faire l’objet d’une offre de la part d’entrepreneurs. Or aujourd’hui, celui-ci est géré par le secteur public. Se pose le problème de sa “désocialisation” ou de sa transmission au secteur privé par privatisation. Nous démontrons que les procédés de privatisation couramment utilisés se focalisent seulement sur un critère de rentabilité et en cela se révèlent insuffisants. La méthode par restitution se présente quant à elle comme un procédé recherchant un principe de justice, conforme à l’éthique des droits de propriété. Nous présentons alors les modalités pratiques d’une telle méthode appliquée au réseau routier. (shrink)

Nous montrons dans cet article comment les approches dynamiques en logique contemporaine ont retrouvé, quoique sous d ’ autres attendus, une configuration théorique qu ’ on peut attribuer à Aristote au moment de la rédaction des Topiques. Dans cette configuration, la logique et la rhétorique – ou au moins la dialectique – se complètent dans le cadre conceptuel homogène offert par la dialectique, entendue comme une certaine forme relativement codifiée de débat critique. L ’ idée principale est qu ’ aujourd (...) ’ hui, de même qu ’ alors, la dialectique est le cadre dans lequel il est possible de penser le rapport entre la logique et les formes générales de l ’ argumentation d ’ une part, et entre la logique et la théorie de la connaissance scientifique d ’ autre part. (shrink)

Bernard Mandeville is often cited as one of the most influential thinkers on the theories of spontaneous social order. According to Friedrich August Hayek, B. Mandeville, in his The fable of the Bees (1714), enables a completely transformed understanding of social order. Is the order we observe in society the product of human design or does it, conversely, come about spontaneously? Far from being the product of some kind of human intention, the order observed in society is the result of (...) a self-regulating and self-perpetuating process.Mandeville’s approach aims to invalidate any form of social constructivism. Society is therefore seen as an “edifice without an architect” (Gilles Dostaler, Le libéralisme de Hayek). Mandeville, like the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, considers social order to be the outcome of human action rather than human intention.However, neither Mandeville nor Hayek succeeds in eliminating human design in their approach of social order. This paper seeks to establish that human design is even at work in the theory of spontaneous social order. (shrink)

Since the 1990s, the terms “Lamarckism” and “Lamarckian” have seen a significant resurgence in biological publications. The discovery of new molecular mechanisms have been interpreted as evidence supporting the reality and efficiency of the inheritance of acquired characters, and thus the revival of Lamarckism. The present paper aims at giving a critical evaluation of such interpretations. I argue that two types of arguments allow to draw a clear distinction between the genuine Lamarckian concept of inheritance of acquired characters and transgenerational (...) epigenetic inheritance. The first concerns the explanandum of the processes under consideration: molecular mechanisms of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance are understood as evolved products of natural selection. This means that the kind of inheritance of acquired characters they might be responsible for is an obligatory emergent feature of evolution, whereas traditional Lamarckisms conceived the inheritance of acquired characters as a property inherent in living matter itself. The second argument concerns the explanans of the inheritance of acquired characters: in light of current knowledge, epigenetic mechanisms are not able to drive adaptive evolution by themselves. Emergent Lamarckian phenomena would be possible if and only if individual epigenetic variation allowed the inheritance of acquired characters to be a factor of unlimited change. This implies specific requirements for epigenetic variation, which I explicitly define and expand upon. I then show that given current knowledge, these requirements are not empirically grounded. (shrink)

Léon Brunschvicg présente sa philosophie comme une recherche sur la progression de l’esprit engendrée par la réflexion sur ses principes. Or l’esprit est activité et s’exprime dans l’acte d’un jugement. Si Brunschvicg n’a pas explicitement rapporté les différentes formes du jugement à l’hétérogénéité des structures de l’esprit, cette relation est toutefois présupposée dans la démarche constructiviste qui est la sienne, démarche qui a son parallèle chez les philosophes de l’école de Marbourg et qui annonce également le constructivisme de Jean Piaget. (...) Cet article, conçu comme une introduction générale à la pensée de Brunschvicg, en donne une interprétation qui croise ainsi plusieurs axes de la recherche contemporaine. (shrink)

La répartition habituelle des traités en théologie laisse souvent l’ecclésiologie à distance des questions touchant au pluralisme religieux et c’est davantage le christologue ou le spécialiste de la théologie fondamentale qui sont sollicités. Pourtant, les débats ayant trait à cette question ne sont pas sans répercussions sur l’ecclésiologie et spécialement sur l’articulation entre l’Église et le Règne de Dieu. Dans cette perspective, il est utile de revenir sur deux expressions qui qualifient le lien à l’Église au concile Vatican II, à (...) savoir « incorporé à » qui qualifie l’appartenance des catholiques à leur Église et l’expression « ordonnés à l’unité du Peuple de Dieu » qui s’applique à « ceux qui n’ont pas encore reçu l’Évangile ».Cette façon dont le concile a décrit le lien entre l’Église et ceux qui n’en font pas partie appelait à préciser à son tour le lien entre l’Église et le Règne de Dieu. Sur ce point, une étude généalogique permettra de percevoir l’importance de l’évolution opérée par le Magistère et la théologie à la lumière d’une réflexion sur le dialogue interreligieux. De Mystici corporis à Redemptoris Missio se met en place un abandon progressif de la problématique de « l’ordination à » pour traiter de « ceux qui n’ont pas encore reçu l’Évangile », au profit d’une articulation dynamique entre Église et Règne de Dieu. Cette évolution ouvre des pistes à la fois pour le dialogue interreligieux, mais également pour l’ecclésiologie.The usual organisation of theological treatises often leaves ecclesiology apart from questions touching on religious pluralism and leaves these issues to be handled by specialists in Christology or fundamental theology. However, the debates surrounding this issue have a repercussion on ecclesiology and especially on the articulation between the Church and the Kingdom of God. In this perspective, it is useful to come back to two expressions in Vatican II which qualify the link to the Church, that is, “incorporated in” that qualifies the way Catholics belong to their Church, and the expression “related to the unity of the People of God”, which is applied to “those who have not yet received the Gospel”.The way in which the Council described the link between the Church and those who are not yet a part of it entailed elucidating the link between the Church and the Kingdom of God. A genealogical study will enable us to see the importance of the changes carried out by the Magisterium and theology in the light of a reflection upon interreligious dialogue. From Mystici corporis to Redemptoris Missio , we see a progressive setting aside of the problematic of “those who are related to” and its replacement by “those who have not yet received the Gospel”, favouring a dynamic articulation between the Church and the Kingdom of God. This development opens up new ways of thinking for both interreligious dialogue and ecclesiology. (shrink)

For a genealogical study of the value of human rights: an opposition to historicism and racism The purpose of this article is to focus on human rights as a value in itself that has to fight against other values. We would like to show that human rights have become an intrinsic value only by following a path in human history that distinguish them from historicism. Because human rights became a value through history, it is important to be able to show (...) the lay out of this history. We will illustrate it by means of diverse philosophical theories. We will begin with Leo Strauss' philosophy of natural rights which considers human rights in their opposition to historicism. Then, with the help of Michel Foucault's genealogy we will show how human rights develop themselves against the racist theory elaborated by a fraction of the French aristocracy in the 17th century. Consequently, a tension emerges inside those rights between their natural value and their historical one, which leads to the fundamental question: what is the essence of humankind involved in human rights? (shrink)

Cognitive forms vary considerably as a human being detaches herself from what is closest and most personal and moves to communicate — in the broad sense of taking part in a common matter — across increasing relational distances. The article proposes to deal with the variety of cognitive formats which cannot `commonize' cognition to an equal degree, relating them to a set of regimes of engagement with the world that are identified in terms of the dependency between the human agent (...) and her environment. The good that engagement aims to guarantee orients how reality is grasped and specifies the format of what constitutes relevant information. This analysis offers new insight into the composition of communities as well as persons who have to cope with the plurality of cognitive formats and engagements from the very familiar to the most public. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage de L.M. trouve son origine dans une dissertation intitulée Globalizing the Sculptural Landscapes of the Sarapis and Isis Cults in Hellenistic and Roman Greece soutenue en 2016 à Duke University. Reprenant le corps de certains articles publiés depuis cette date, l’A. se propose d’explorer les concepts de groupness, self-understanding, self-fashioning et self-location afin de mieux comprendre « how Isiac communities redefined Greek ethnicity for themselves ». Le propos, qui s’inscri...

In 2014, the worldwide context is that the population is increasingly both expanding and aging in industrial countries. In contrast, the personal health levels of individuals could decrease. Although retirement homes and health-care centers assume most of the demand, they will most probably overflow in the next few years. One of the current solutions is e-Health, which involves biomedical monitoring but also home automation functions to compensate for disabilities that tend to increase with age. In this context, several domains have (...) to be merged while respecting the entire ecosystem: the users, their needs and environment, but also all the various actors/experts involved in this process. The issue, however, is that enormous effort is required to combine the multiple expert domains because these can be antinomic. Hence, this paper proposes a collaborative workflow that brings together these different actors and generates the control/command application. Applying model-driven engineering, this workflow makes a clear distinction between people’s health requirements, the home automation functions, and the user interface points of view. Thus, it allows experts in each field to adapt their system in terms of the user’s needs, disability, and health state. (shrink)

The humanities and social sciences (HSS) are being turned upside down by advances in artificial intelligence (AI), and their very existence could be threatened. These sciences are being profoundly destabilised by a dual process of naturalisation of social phenomena and fetishisation of numbers, accentuated by the development of AI (part 1). Both STM (science, technology, medicine) and HSS are facing major epistemological challenges, but for the latter they carry the risk of marginalisation (part 2). The humanities and social sciences remain (...) the best equipped to question the social construct represented by the development of AI. However, this essential approach is not enough. We need to ask ourselves: how can the HSS reintroduce interpretation when they have less and less control over how data is put together? Only a balanced partnership between STM and HSS is likely to meet all these challenges (part 3). Using the case of education, which has long been at the forefront of developments in other sectors of social life, we would like to show how and on what priority issues such a partnership can be built (part 4). (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ Les critiques d’ordre éthique faites à l’assistance médicale à la procréation ne tiennent généralement pas compte de l’extraordinaire efficacité des nouvelles techniques procréatives face à la souffrance des couples stériles. Mais, marquée par l’impératif technicien qui la pousse à explorer tous les possibles techniques, la médecine procréative constitue également — et paradoxalement — une puissante source de souffrances elle-même. Un nouveau discernement éthique est nécessaire, à la fois conscient des réussites de l’AMP et soucieux de ne pas tomber dans (...) une logique utilitariste. ABSTRACT Ethical objections formulated against medically assisted procreation usually do not take into account the extraordinary success of the new procreative techniques so far as sufferings undergone by sterile couples are concerned. Since procreative medicine is, however, under the technical imperative which urges it on to explore every technical possibility, it itself constitutes as well — and paradoxically — a powerful source of suffering. A new ethical discernment is necessary, which would prove to be both aware of the successes of medically assisted procreation and concerned not to fall into a utilitarian logic. (shrink)

Qu’a donc vu Pausanias dans l’Asklépieion de Messène ? Parmi les nombreuses statues qu’abrite l’aile occidentale de ce complexe, il mentionne la présence d’une Artémis Phôsphoros. Toutefois, le matériel épigraphique mis au jour dans ce secteur du sanctuaire ne fait connaître qu’une Artémis Ortheia. Qu’est-ce à dire ? Il ne semble pas que le témoignage du Périégète soit ici à remettre en cause. Il convient au contraire de se s’interroger sur les raisons qui font que Pausanias voit une Artémis Phôsphoros (...) là où les Messéniens nomment une Artémis Ortheia. Ce qui revient à poser la question de l’identification du divin, par le nom et par l’image.What did in fact see Pausanias in the Asklepieion at Messene? This complex shelters many statues, especially in the oikoi of the west stoa. Pausanias says that the statue of Artemis Phosphoros stood in one of them. Nevertheless, there is no mention of such a divinity in the epigraphic. Inscriptions mention exclusively an Artemis Ortheia. What does that mean? The Periegete’s evidence does not have to be implicate. In my opinion, it is advisable to ask why Pausanias saw a Artemis Phosphoros, where Messenians named Artemis Ortheia. This amounts to raising of the question of the identification of the divine, by name and by image. (shrink)