Inner speech has been shown to vary in form along several dimensions. Along condensation, condensed inner speech forms have been described, that are supposed to be deprived of acoustic, phonological and even syntactic qualities. Expanded forms, on the other extreme, display articulatory and auditory properties. Along dialogality, inner speech can be monologal, when we engage in internal soliloquy, or dialogal, when we recall past conversations or imagine future dialogs involving our own voice as well as that of others addressing us. (...) Along intentionality, it can be intentional (when we deliberately rehearse material in short-term memory) or it can arise unintentionally (during mind wandering). We introduce the ConDialInt model, a neurocognitive predictive control model of inner speech that accounts for its varieties along these three dimensions. ConDialInt spells out the condensation dimension by including inhibitory control at the conceptualization, formulation or articulatory planning stage. It accounts for dialogality, by assuming internal model adaptations and by speculating on neural processes underlying perspective switching. It explains the differences between intentional and spontaneous varieties in terms of monitoring. We present an fMRI study in which we probed varieties of inner speech along dialogality and intentionality, to examine the validity of the neuroanatomical correlates posited in ConDialInt. Condensation was also informally tackled. Our data support the hypothesis that expanded inner speech recruits speech production processes down to articulatory planning, resulting in a predicted signal, the inner voice, with auditory qualities. Along dialogality, covertly using an avatar’s voice resulted in the activation of right hemisphere homologs of the regions involved in internal own-voice soliloquy and in reduced cerebellar activation, consistent with internal model adaptation. Switching from first-person to third-person perspective resulted in activations in precuneus and parietal lobules. Along intentionality, compared with intentional inner speech, mind wandering with inner speech episodes was associated with greater bilateral inferior frontal activation and decreased activation in left temporal regions. This is consistent with the reported subjective evanescence and presumably reflects condensation processes. Our results provide neuroanatomical evidence compatible with predictive control and in favor of the assumptions made in the ConDialInt model. (shrink)

This volume sets out to re-imagine the theoretical and epistemological presuppositions of existing scholarship on identities. Despite a well-established body of scholarly texts that examine the concept from a wide range of perspectives, there is a surprising dearth of work on multiple, heterogeneous forms of identity. Numerous studies of ethnic, linguistic, regional and religious identities have appeared, but largely in isolation from one another. Rethinking 'Identities' is a multi-authored project that is original in providing - in distributed and granular mode (...) - a hyper-contemporary and wide-ranging applied analysis that questions notions of identity based on nation and region, language, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion or even 'the human'. The volume achieves this by mobilizing various contexts of identity (gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nation) and medium (art, cinema, literature, music, theatre, video). Emphasizing the extreme contemporary (the twenty-first century) and the challenges posed by an increasingly global society, this collection of essays builds upon existing intellectual investigations of identity with the aim of offering a fresh perspective that transcends cognitive and geographical frontiers. (shrink)

The large-scale and intensive collection and analysis of digital data (commonly called “Big Data”) has become a common, popular, and consensual research method for the social sciences, as the automation of data collection, mathematization of analysis, and digital objectification reinforce both its efficiency and truth-value. This article opens with a critical review of the literature on data collection and analysis, and summarizes current ethical discussions focusing on these technologies. A semiotic model of data production and circulation is then introduced to (...) problematize the view that digital data has ceased to stand for a formalization method (a possible kind of representation among others), and effectively “becomes the world itself” (a direct presentation of the world outperforming all other modes of representation). Following Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics and pragmaticist philosophy, we characterize digitalization as a hypersymbolic semiotic process, and we highlight the naturalization of meaning, the illusion of iconicity, and rhetorical efficiency on which data’s truth value relies within the context of its large-scale, profit-driven, and results-oriented research uses. This outlines some epistemological and ethical implications of data’s visualization, use, and authority, and indicates avenues for critical semiotics of contemporary data science and analysis. (shrink)

This article explores the critical role of emotions and bodies in the individual dynamics of engagement as well as the construction of collective identities and action in women’s groups in the 1970s in France. Much literature on emotion work in feminist organizations has tended to discuss emotions stemming from women’s dominant socialization processes as, above all, alienating, thereby as barriers to their activism. The Movement for the liberty of abortion and birth control offers essential insights into how gendered dispositions can (...) be primary determinants of feminist collective identity formation, and even spur innovative protest practices. With their specific organizational settings and action, some ‘dissident MLACs’ in Aix-en-Provence, Lille, Lyon and Paris – those which continued to practice abortion despite its legalization and in defiance of the 1975 law which forbade them to do so – mobilized reciprocal emotions and bodily experiences to sustain engagement and serve a political project. Drawing on a wide array of biographical interviews and archival sources centred on abortion practices, the article examines the distinctive emotion culture these groups constructed. Its anchoring in bodies, commitment to emotions like tenderness and compassion, but also domestic and relational skills consecrated a gendered repertoire of action which therefore notably appealed to women whose social properties did not predispose them to collective action. (shrink)

Even though many poets have shone a light on the lives of other-than-human animals, poems remain a rich yet largely unexplored source of ethical sensitivity toward them. I will argue that an appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of animals as depicted in works by Christopher Smart (1722–1771) and William Stafford (1914–1993) can lead directly to an apprehension of the ethical significance of those animals. As captured in their poems, the beauty of animals—their embodied subjectivity and individuality—compels disinterested attention as a (...) proper mode of response in both the poet and the reader. This response generates attitudes of respect, wonder, humility, and gratitude that have powerful ethical import. Smart and Stafford present us with not only the aesthetic meaning of animals but also with the ethical significance that flows from that meaning. That significance refines and enlarges the moral imagination of their readers. (shrink)

"À l'ère postmoderne des incertitudes économiques et des défis identitaires qui sont ceux du XXIe siècle, penser l'être humain, c'est aussi explorer ou définir les univers non humains qui l'entourent. Toutefois, cette exploration est le plus souvent abstraite, figurative ou illustrative et reflète quasi exclusivement des intérêts humains. Elle instrumentalise ainsi les animaux, relégués à un rôle accessoire ou symbolique au profit d'une analyse concernée par l'humain et sa 'différence'. Cet ouvrage se départ de cette tendance pour considérer les responsabilités (...) humaines en regard des souffrances animales. Ce thème est en effet négligé par la pensée contemporaine, qui suit la trace anthropocentrique des priorités humaines d'une part, et par ailleurs rechigne à mener de front réflexion et militantisme. À travers une approche interdisciplinaire audacieuse, philosophes, vétérinaires, juristes, artistes, critiques littéraires, sociologues et historiens font ici part de leur désir de bouleverser les traditions humaines qui perpétuent l'oppression des animaux. Ils communiquent le fruit de leur expérience et de leur réflexion tout en exprimant l'urgence de leur engagement. En rompant le silence qui légitimise l'exploitation insensée de tous les êtres non humains, ils examinent certaines des conséquences de ces traditions, mais montrent également comment de nouvelles voies/x peuvent être prises, clamées et entendues afin de rendre possible la connexité de 'différents modes d'existence' (Bruno Latour)." [Source : 4e de couv.]. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Contemporary thinkers studying biopolitics find little interest in Foucault’s “vague sketch of the pastorate”. Described by Foucault as an inherently “benevolent” “power of care”, the concept seems inadequate to describe the deadly forms of carelessness that characterize the current government of life. Sovereign power, as a power of decision over life and death that works by distinguishing populations whose lives are worth affirming from social groups whose lives are not, therefore takes precedence in the examination of the governmental connection (...) between care, violence, and biopolitics. Yet, what we might call the “sovereign turn” in the field of Foucault studies is not without a significant drawback. The focus on the logic of exclusion through which governments “care about” specific groups and “take care of” them, while actively producing subjects that cannot or must not be cared for, often overshadows the analysis of how care is currently given and received. More often than not, the post-Foucauldian critique of governmental concern for life neglects the long-standing feminist critique of how support for life, in the form of care work, has historically been organized along lines of gender, race, and class. In contrast, this article argues that delving into the relationship between pastoral power and governmentality enables the development of a framework that encompass both these critiques, shedding new light on the mechanisms at play in the current “crisis of care”. (shrink)

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Review of the 2022 book by Yann Ardagna and Anne Chaillou, Les restes humains : législation, intérêt scientifique et enjeu éthique des ensembles anthropobiologiques.

Μελέτη τῶν ἰρανικῶν κυρίων ὀνομάτων πού περιέχονται στίς ἐπιγραφές τοῦ "Ἄϊ Χανούμ.

Saving Animals, a study of three different kinds of animal sanctuaries, is the first major ethnography to describe how sanctuaries “unmake” the notion of animals as property that reduces them to “bare life.” The study relies on numerous engaging narratives about rescue animals, their mutual interactions, and their interactions with the people who care for them—narratives that illustrate how the sentience and subjectivity of animals provide a firm ground for the author's ethical considerations. An animal sanctuary is ideally an intentional (...) community of cocitizens whose pragmatic and symbolic value resides in its ability to lay the foundation for a broad challenge to all violent practices of exploitation “targeted at a range of different others.” The patient, incremental work of sanctuaries has implications not only for the future of human-animal relations but more broadly for the future of humans on the planet. The ultimate vision of sanctuaries is a world outside that mirrors the world inside, a pantopia where there will be no “others,” only “us.”. (shrink)

Gynaecological self-help, a well-known and historical feminist practice from the Second Wave movements which aims at embodying a radical alternative to traditional reproductive politics, is resurging today in France, Switzerland and Belgium. Drawing on empirical observations and interviews, this article questions the links between feminist memory of self-help, the shaping of nostalgia and the production of a political feminist ‘we’. Born at the end of the 1960s in the United States, feminist self-help travelled internationally and was appropriated differently depending on (...) national contexts. This ‘glorious’ history of self-help and, more importantly, its narrated memory, is central to contemporary European self-help activism, as observed in the three national contexts. Drawing on this insight, this article reveals the active memory-oriented emotional work of self-help activists. It examines the ways in which nostalgia for an imagined and lost past is actively and practically produced and encouraged in social movement practices, and highlights the specificity of the kind of collective feminist identity that it shapes and promotes in contemporary self-help politics. (shrink)

Édition commentée des deux fragments de manuscrits littéraires grecs découverts dans la trésorerie du palais d'Aï-Khanoum, dans un contexte daté de 145 av. J.-C. Ces manuscrits avaient été rédigés dans des officines méditerranéennes et sont paléographiquement datables entre le milieu du IIIe et le début du IIe s. av. J.-C. Le premier texte, rédigé sur papyrus, est un dialogue philosophique platonicien ou aristotélicien relatif à la théorie platonicienne des Idées ; le second, rédigé sur parchemin en trimètres iambiques, relève peut-être (...) du genre théâtral. Leur présence à Aï Khanoum atteste l'existence d'une bibliothèque dans le palais de cette cité. (shrink)

Qu’elle soit ingrate ou réussie, la vieillesse soulève des questions incontournables : celles de la mort et de la souffrance, de la responsabilité et de la vulnérabilité. Du silence et de la parole aussi. Être vulnérable, c’est être fragile, friable ; c’est avoir besoin de son prochain. La vulnérabilité est liée, notamment, à la maladie, au grand âge, à la dépendance ou au fardeau de l’aide. Or, les personnes aidées et aidantes sont surtout des femmes. Il y a les femmes (...) du grand âge et les femmes de tous les âges, qui exécutent à leurs côtés, bénévolement, un travail domestique de santé. Faisons apparaître les obstacles au respect des droits et au pouvoir d’agir de ce « couple vulnérable » aidant-aidé, dans une perspective critique et féministe du droit et de l’éthique. Brisons le silence. (shrink)

_Inspiring new techniques for engaging students with democratic ideals_ _John Dewey and the Philosophy and Practice of Hope_ combines philosophical theory with a study of its effects in an actual classroom. To understand how Dewey, one of the century's foremost philosophers of education, understood the concept of hope, Stephen Fishman begins with theoretical questions like: What is hope? What are its objects? How can hope foster a new understanding of democracy and social justice? The book's second half is a classroom (...) study that mir-rors in practice what Fishman explores in theory, as Lucille McCarthy observes Fishman's undergraduate students reading the theorists. Illustrating students' own vital engagement with the hope literature, McCarthy reveals how the discussions deepen student understandings, simultaneously showing education's power to promote hope and turn social ideals into reality. (shrink)

Dewey's theory of happiness goes against the grain of much contemporary psychologic and popular thought by identifying the highest form of human happiness with moral behavior. Such happiness, according to Dewey, avoids being at the mercy of circumstances because it is independent of the pleasures and successes we take from experience and, instead, is dependent upon the disposition we bring to experience. It accompanies a disposition characterized by an abiding interest in objects in which all can share, one founded upon (...) a dynamic inner harmony and evolving adjustment to the world. The marks of such an expansive disposition are "stability of character, braveness of soul, and equanimity of soul," and the key to the development of these traits is what Dewey calls "ethical love." We conclude with consideration of three potential criticisms of Dewey's view of happiness and possible Deweyan rejoinders. (shrink)

In 1932, as America struggled to overcome the great economic depression and Hitler was taking power in Germany, Dewey issued a challenge to teachers. Based upon what he viewed as the principle by which to judge "the processes of education, formal and informal," he urged teachers to embrace the following goal: "Education should create an interest in all persons in furthering the general good, so that they will find their own happiness realized in what they can do to improve the (...) conditions of others" (LW 7: 243).In setting this challenge to teachers, Dewey has in mind helping students develop their character in two ways. First, teachers should nurture students' sensitivity to the impact of their speech and actions .. (shrink)

Lucid dreaming refers to a dream state characterized by the dreamers awareness of being in a dream and being able to volitionally control its content. The aim of this study was to find neurophysiological evidence for the 7 criteria of lucid dreaming proposed by Paul Tholey. Each of the criteria was analyzed separately with regard to its underlying neurocircuits. We hypothesized that not one, but many regions are involved in the state of lucid dreaming. Our results have shown a satisfactory (...) overlap of the theoretical components and the brain regions activated during a lucid dream. During lucid dreaming, a brain network seems to emerge, that is more than the sum of its parts. Further research is needed to understand the psychoneurological underpinnings of lucid dreams. (shrink)