Open peer commentary on the article “The Plasticity of the Bodily Self: Head Movements in Bodily Illusions and Their Relation to Gallagher’s Body Image and Body Schema” by Marte Roel Lesur, Michael Gaebler, Philippe Bertrand & Bigna Lenggenhager.: In my commentary, I raise some questions about the applicability of Gallagher’s distinction between body image and body schema to the experimental research reported and discussed in the target article. I suggest that the distinction between body image and body schema is (...) of limited help in this context, and that Gallagher’s distinction between sense of ownership and sense of agency provides a more natural and fruitful theoretical framework to discuss that research. (shrink)

On discerne habituellement trois grands moments dans l’histoire du thomisme : les cent cinquante années qui suivirent la mort de Thomas d’Aquin , les efflorescences des XVIe-XVIIIe siècles, et le temps qui suivit l’encyclique Aeterna Patris de Léon XIII. A quoi s’ajoute un quatrième moment, celui des dernières décennies, dont rend compte dans ce dossier J.-P. Torrell. La contribution de Ph. Lécrivain s’en tient à ce moment où, poussés par l’humanisme et l’ « évangélisme », les théologiens souhaitent une (...) authentique rénovation de leur discipline. Pour cela, ils abandonnent les jeux subtils de la dialectique décadente pour en revenir aux sources, la Bible et les Pères. Le parcours historique se fait ici en trois parties : l’avènement de la « Somme théologique » comme texte classique chez les Dominicains aux prises avec la Renaissance et la Réforme ; les grandes heures des écoles salmantines et leur enfermement ; enfin, la désagrégation de la théologie sous les assauts d’une nouvelle rationalité.The history of Thomism is usually divided into three great periods: the hundred and fifty years that followed the death of Thomas of Aquinas , the blooming of Thomism in the 16th-18th centuries, and the period following the encyclical Aeterna Patris of Leo XIII. A fourth period may be added to this – the last few decades – which J.-P. Torrell reviews in this report. P. Lécrivain’s contribution centers on this period when, spurred by humanism and “evangelism”, theologians wanted to achieve a genuine renovation of their discipline. To do so, they abandoned the subtle games of decadent dialectic to come back to the sources: the Bible and the Fathers. This historical journey takes place here in three parts: the arrival of the “Summa Theologica” as a classical text for the Dominicans who were at grips with the Renaissance and the Reformation; the heyday of the Salamanca schools and their subsequent closing; and finally, the break up of theology under the attack of a new rationality. (shrink)

Les oeuvres de Gersonide (Levi b. Gershom ou Gerson, Leon de Bagnols, philosophe juif provencal 1288-1344) portent essentiellement sur quatre domaines: les commentaires qu'il a consacres aux commentaires d'Averroes, les questions philosophiques et theologico-philosophiques (livres I a IV, VI des Guerres du Seigneur), les commentaires biblioques et des travaux astronomiques (dont le livre V des Guerres). Dans les trois premiers domaines, la maniere dont il a travaille, l'ordonnancement des idees et leur mise en oeuvre sont ici compares a ceux qui (...) furent utilises par ses contemporains scolastiques. Alors que son activite astronomique a amene Gersonide a la frequentation des savants de la cour du Pape a Avignon, il ne cite, dans les oeuvres etudiees, aucun auteur ni aucun texte latin. La maniere dont Gersonide fait de la philosophie, sa methode d'etude et de resolution des problemes, sa conception de l'exegese biblioque comme science et les procedes adoptes dans les commentaires bibliques le rapprochent cependant du monde latin intellectuel de son temps. Ce sont ces ressemblances, mais aussi les dissemblances, qui sont discutees ici. (shrink)

Les fouilles de Pompéi ont permis la découverte d’un vaste ensemble d’inscriptions électorales, les programmata, peintes sur les murs extérieurs des maisons, et par lesquelles un individu, le rogator (ou plusieurs), appelle à voter pour un ou des candidats aux élections locales. Une soixantaine de ces inscriptions comprend le nom d’une femme comme rogator. Qui furent ces femmes? Leur engagement obéissait-il à des modalités particulières? Peut-on déterminer quelles furent leurs raisons pour soutenir ces candidats? Comment expliquer, alors qu’elles n’avaient officiellement (...) aucun rôle politique, qu’elles prirent la parole publiquement pour s’adresser aux électeurs? Enfin, que nous disent en creux ces inscriptions sur les nécessités morales et narratives auxquelles se pliaient les sources littéraires et normatives du début de l’Empire? (shrink)

Exigence de justice sociale et aspirations de l'individualité sont-elles compatibles? C'est cette question de philosophie politique que développent ici trois sociologues, loin des propos catastrophistes concernant l'individualisme contemporain. Mais chacun le fait avec des orientations propres. Jacques Ion se centre sur les engagements militants. François de Singly dessine un " socialisme individualiste " plus réformiste. Et Philippe Corcuff une " social-démocratie libertaire " plus radicale. Ces synthèses font apparaître les avancées émancipatrices comme les difficultés générées par l'individualisme contemporain. De (...) la consolidation de l'autonomie individuelle et de la place de l'intimité au mal-être identitaire. Ils en tirent alors des conséquences pour la réinvention, contre le néolibéralisme économique, d'une politique émancipatrice pour le XXIè siècle. (shrink)

On a widely held characterization, triadic joint attention is the capacity to perceptually attend to an object or event together with another subject. In the last four decades, research in developmental psychology has provided increasing evidence of the crucial role that this capacity plays in socio-cognitive development, early language acquisition, and the development of perspective-taking. Yet, there is a striking discrepancy between the general agreement that joint attention is critical in various domains, and the lack of theoretical consensus on how (...) to account for it. This paper pursues three interrelated aims: (i) it examines the contrast between reductive and non-reductive views of (triadic) joint attention, by bringing into focus the notion of recursive mindreading; (ii) it assembles, advances, and discusses a number of arguments against reductive views; (iii) finally, in dialogue with some prominent non-reductive views, it outlines the case for a non-reductive view that gives pride of place to the idea that co-attenders relate to one another as a ‘you’. (shrink)

Des premiers rites baptismaux à la confession moderne, les références au christianisme sont constantes dans l'œuvre de Michel Foucault. Cette constance s'inscrit dans un questionnement philosophique plus large sur notre actualité : comprendre le rapport que nous avons aujourd'hui à nous-mêmes demande de s'interroger sur les actes de vérité que l'Occident a instaurés depuis les premiers siècles chrétiens. Que faut-il dire et manifester de soi pour être transformé dans son être, pardonné, sauvé, jugé ou guéri)? Ce livre propose une étude (...) critique de l'ensemble des lectures chrétiennes de Foucault, avec une attention particulière portée au cours Du gouvernement des vivants. Ni chronologique ni thématique, le parcours suivi espère retrouver la logique d'un travail à la fois philosophique et historique : quand et comment le christianisme a-t-il été constitué par Foucault en objet de recherche, avec quelles pratiques de lecture et quelles conséquences sur l'interprétation)? (shrink)

The paper presents a new logic for reasoning about the formation of beliefs through perception or through inference in non-omniscient resource-bounded agents. The logic distinguishes the concept of explicit belief from the concept of background knowledge. This distinction is reflected in its formal semantics and axiomatics: we use a non-standard semantics putting together a neighborhood semantics for explicit beliefs and relational semantics for background knowledge, and we have specific axioms in the logic highlighting the relationship between the two concepts. Mental (...) operations of perceptive type and inferential type, having effects on epistemic states of agents, are primitives in the object language of the logic. At the semantic level, they are modelled as special kinds of model-update operations, in the style of dynamic epistemic logic. Results about axiomatization, decidability and complexity for the logic are given in the paper. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have recently focused on the scientific activity of modeling phenomena, and explicated several of its properties, as well as the activities embedded into it. A first approach to modeling has been elaborated in terms of representing a target system: yet other epistemic functions, such as producing data or detecting phenomena, are at least as relevant. Additional useful distinctions have emerged, such as the one between phenomenological and mechanistic models. In biological sciences, besides mathematical models, models now come (...) in three forms: in vivo, in vitro and in silico. Each has been investigated separately, and many specific problems they raised have been laid out. Another relevant distinction is disciplinary: do models differ in significant ways according to the discipline involved—medicine or biology, evolutionary biology or earth science? Focusing on either this threefold distinction or the disciplinary boundaries reveals that they might not be sufficient from a philosophical perspective. On the contrary, focusing on the interaction between these various kinds of models, some interesting forms of explanation come to the fore, as is exemplified by the papers included in this issue. On the other hand, a focus on the use of models, rather than on their content, shows that the distinction between biological and medical models is theoretically sound. (shrink)

La philosophie peut-elle faire la guerre, comme Bernard-Henri Lévy dans un récent ouvrage le revendique pour sa propre philosophie? Les notions de guerre et de paix sont-elles ici à prendre au pied de la lettre? Ou ne sont-elles que métaphores se référant aux luttes, aux réfutations, aux disputes où peuvent s'engager les philosophes? S'il n'est guère possible de définir la philosophie comme une guerre réelle, il ne paraît pas plus pertinent de la définir comme une guerre de papier. Plutôt que (...) de tracer des lignes de combat et d'affronter des ennemis, les philosophes semblent plus soucieux de tracer des lignes souples, des "lignes de fuite" à la manière de Gilles Deleuze. Ces lignes évacuent les oppositions et les combats pour préférer les connexions entre différences et hétérogénéités. Ce sont en fait d'étranges liens d'amitié que tissent les philosophes. Et c'est bien de cela dont nous parle, depuis Platon, ce philein qui est au coeur du mot même de "philosophie". A l'arrière-plan de cette affaire d'amitié se dessine le moment socratique du non-savoir : débatteurs ou combattants, confrontés au vide du savoir, y abandonnent irrésistiblement la guerre des idées. C'est sans doute là toute la portée, modeste mais indiscutablement philosophique, d'une pratique comme celle du café-philo. (shrink)

In der transzendentalen Dialektik führt Kant die transzendentalen Ideen ein, deren systematischer Zusammenhang ambivalenter ist, als er zunächst erscheint. Das transzendentale Ideal, Kants Gottesbegriff, resultiert als eine der Ideen aus der Forderung der Vernunft, zu einem gegebenen Bedingten die vollständige Reihe der Bedingungen vorauszusetzen. Der ‚Grundsatz der durchgängigen Bestimmung‘ bildet Kant zufolge eine Variante dieses Prinzips. Außerdem beruht das Ideal, das hinsichtlich aller möglichen kontradiktorischen Prädikatenpaare bestimmt ist, auf seiner Grundlage. Entgegen Kants Darstellung wird gezeigt, dass dieser Begriff nicht durchgängig, (...) sondern nur partiell bestimmt ist, da Kant in seinem Grundsatz Prädikate transzendental und nicht logisch entgegensetzen muss und sich die transzendentalen Gegensätze nur als eine Teilmenge der logischen offenbaren. (shrink)

Les Principes de la philosophie du droit sont un grand livre, qui repense toute l'histoire politique, et qui presente l'Idee de l'Etat moderne.

" Mai 68, avec ses slogans parfois stupides et son jargon marxisant - déjà kitsch à l'époque -, était une période joyeuse. On s'y levait tard pour gagner moins. On faisait des pieds de nez aux statues des grands hommes. On prenait au sérieux la question du bonheur. Ceux qui haïssent Mai 68, au fond, sont à plaindre : ils avouent que déjà, à vingt ans, ils étaient des petits vieux qui regardaient passer l'avenir dans un rétroviseur. Et pourtant ce (...) sont eux les vrais utopistes. Ils croient qu'une victoire électorale suffira à faire perdre le goût de l'émancipation à celles et à ceux qui en jouissent. Si ce n'était pas si revanchard, ce serait presque émouvant de naïveté. ". (shrink)

The West African Ebola epidemic has set in motion a collective endeavour to conduct accelerated clinical trials, testing unproven but potentially lifesaving interventions in the course of a major public health crisis. This unprecedented effort was supported by the recommendations of an ad hoc ethics panel convened in August 2014 by the WHO. By considering why and on what conditions the exceptional circumstances of the Ebola epidemic justified the use of unproven interventions, the panel's recommendations have challenged conventional thinking about (...) therapeutic development and clinical research ethics. At the same time, unanswered ethical questions have emerged, in particular: the specification of exceptional circumstances, the specification of unproven interventions, the goals of interventional research in terms of individual versus collective interests, the place of adaptive trial designs and the exact meaning of compassionate use with unapproved interventions. Examination of these questions, in parallel with empirical data from research sites, will help build pragmatic foundations for disaster research ethics. Furthermore, the Ebola clinical trials signal an evolution in the current paradigms of therapeutic research, beyond the case of epidemic emergencies. (shrink)

In 1968, Michel Foucault agreed to a series of interviews with critic Claude Bonnefoy, which were to be published in book form. Bonnefoy wanted a dialogue with Foucault about his relationship to writing rather than about the content of his books. The project was abandoned, but a transcript of the initial interview survived and is now being published for the first time in English. In this brief and lively exchange, Foucault reflects on how he approached the written word throughout his (...) life, from his school days to his discovery of the pleasure of writing. Wide ranging, characteristically insightful, and unexpectedly autobiographical, the discussion is revelatory of Foucault’s intellectual development, his aims as a writer, his clinical methodology, and his interest in other authors, including Raymond Roussel and Antonin Artaud. Foucault discloses, in ways he never had previously, details about his home life, his family history, and the profound sense of obligation he feels to the act of writing. In his Introduction, Philippe Artières investigates Foucault’s engagement in various forms of oral discourse—lectures, speeches, debates, press conferences, and interviews—and their place in his work. _Speech Begins after Death_ shows Foucault adopting a new language, an innovative autobiographical communication that is neither conversation nor monologue, and is one of his most personal statements about his life and writing. (shrink)

English summary: Jean-Francois Revel (1924-2006) was an essential intellectual and author of the twentieth century. His work explored the ideological sources that fed the various forms of totalitarianism, from Communism to Islamism. The present biography sheds light on the multiple aspects of this combative thought couched in the will affirm the principals of both economic and political liberal democracy. French description: Loin de n'avoir ete qu'un polemiste de talent, Jean-Francois Revel (1924-2006) a ete, de Pourquoi des philosophes? (1957) a L'Obsession (...) antiamericaine (2002), l'auteur d'une oeuvre de premiere importance, jalonnee par de fracassants succes populaires et internationaux. Allant bien au-dela du seul engagement anticommuniste, la force et la singularite intellectuelles de sa pensee n'avaient jamais, jusqu'ici, fait l'objet d'une synthese exhaustive qui aurait permis d'en eclairer la place dans l'histoire contemporaine des idees - une beance que le present ouvrage vient enfin combler. Avant tout anime par la passion des faits, ce philosophe s'est constamment employe a pourfendre et a deconstruire les impostures ideologiques dont se sont nourries les diverses tentations totalitaires qui ont marque le XXe siecle, jusque sous leurs recents avatars de l'islamisme et de l'antiracisme devoye. Philippe Boulanger, dans cette passionnante biographie intellectuelle, expose les etapes successives et les multiples aspects de cette pensee de combat qui trouve son unite profonde dans la volonte de reaffirmer sans concession l'insigne valeur des principes d'une democratie liberale, en economie comme en politique. Chaque jour qui passe semble en rappeler l'intempestive et remarquable pertinence. (shrink)

If the new and rapidly expanding discipline of neuroethics is to have a signii cant impact on patient care, the neuroscience clinicians must become familiar with the discipline, and be competent and comfortable in applying its cognitive base and principles to clinical decisionmaking. Familiarity with and practical experience in the application of basic biomedical knowledge and principles to clinical decision- making in the neurosciences becomes the essential foundation on which to begin to integrate neuroethics into medical education. The place where (...) the building of this foundation and the initial exposure to neuroethics must begin is in the residency program. This article describes the approach developed in the neurology residency education program at the University of Calgary to move toward achieving this goal. The key elements for the development and successful implementation of the program are outlined and a brief overview of the topics covered in the sessions is described. (shrink)

Professor Pompa's study of Vico has done a great deal to stimulate and inform the growing interest in the English-speaking world in this remarkable figure. It remains the only work devoted almost exclusively to an interpretation of the New Science and offers a comprehensive guide to the main theoretical problems to which the text gives rise. For this second edition Professor Pompa has responded to the reactions of reviewers and critics and added a new chapter which analyses Vico's conception of (...) the principles which govern the development of law. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to propose a precise characterization of the collective practice behind at least an important part of the phenomena named “decision by consensus”. First, I provide descriptions of the use of this rule, and give a definition of the non-opposition rule, both as a specific sequence of acts and as a stopping rule. Second, I challenge the usual way of understanding the non-opposition rule by contrast with voting, stating that the contrast between logic of approval (...) and logic of consent also has to be taken into account. Third, I examine the conditions of its use. The non-opposition rule satisfies groups whose concern is to decide without dividing. Finally, from the analytic benefit of opening up decision by consensus as the use of the non-opposition rule, I will examine, in a fourth part, whether consensus in decision-making is as democratic a procedure as is sometimes thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination by Donald Wayne Viney and George W. ShieldsLeon NiemoczynskiThe Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination. Donald Wayne Viney and George W. Shields. Anoka, MN: Process Century Press, 2020. 584 pp. $40.00 cloth.Over the past decade process philosophy has undergone a significant renaissance most notably due to the towering presence of the thought of Alfred North Whitehead in that tradition. (...) Charles Hartshorne by manner of contrast has not had such a towering presence. Part of the reason this is the case is due to a paucity of introductory literature on the thought of Charles Hartshorne—literature that might contribute to a “starter kit” so to speak in mastering Hartshorne’s massive oeuvre. The Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination by Donald Wayne Viney and George W. Shields, both former students of Hartshorne and experts in process philosophy themselves, have authored a welcome contribution to an introductory literature that will most certainly elevate awareness of Hartshorne’s importance to its rightful place alongside that of Whitehead. The book is successful in its aims of “giving a reasonably comprehensive account of Hartshorne’s philosophy with an eye of presenting his best arguments...” (the “correcting what we see as misunderstandings of his views appearing in the critical literature” part may have been best left out) and “updating Hartshorne scholarship” (viii). There are ten chapters in total, appendix essays, the aforementioned bibliography, endnotes, and name and subject indexes.The Preface situates the mind of Charles Hartshorne as spanning the twentieth century and engaging metaphysics even when it was unfashionable to do so. Hartshorne thought about a wide-ranging and diverse range of subjects in both philosophy and science, aesthetics, metaphysics, applied philosophy, and theology. He never questioned modern science or evolution and believed that while metaphysics and empirical science have different methods each ensures its own way to objectivity. One learns that Hartshorne’s process metaphysics is also called “neo-classical” philosophy or speculative philosophy. His thought “gave full weight to the dynamic, relational, processive temporal and creative, affective dimensions of the universe” (vi). Hartshorne was known as much for his “panentheism,” or view that God transcends nature but also may be found immanently within it, as he was for his critique of traditional or scholastic classical theology—especially in his logic of theism where he recreates a modal version of the ontological argument. [End Page 94]Chapter 1, “The Career and Personality of Charles Hartshorne,” discusses just that. What seemed most important to me was the discussion of Hartshorne’s formative background of reading novels and poetry by Emerson, Melville, or Camus as a way of intensely living, his studying under William Ernest Hocking, and his Sheldon Traveling Fellowship where he studied for a time with Husserl and read and reviewed Heidegger. Probably the most important biographical details are that Hartshorne was given the assignment of editing the Peirce papers along with Paul Weiss as a Research Fellow while at Harvard University and he also met and graded for Whitehead, who along with C.S. Peirce, would become the twin pillars of all his thinking as a “Peircean and Whiteheadian” (11). From Peirce, we learn that Hartshorne took “possibility is best conceived of as a continuum with no least member” and from Whitehead, “actuality is discrete and discontinuous (atomistic), composed of momentary flashes of experiences” (11). For Hartshorne process and relativity are metaphysically basic.Chapter 2 begins with Hartshorne’s idea that, “Nature comes to us as constituted by feelings, not as constituted by lifeless, insentient matter” (28). Reality has an affective tone in which there is a layered complexity of feeling and social relation. In other words, contra Locke or Hume, feeling is objectively part of an objective affective continuum and is not nominalistically “painted on bare sense impressions” (46). Such might be described as a doctrine of “panexperientialism”— “the view that the basic constituents of reality are flashes of experience” (46). Experience and feeling stretch in their continuity to meet the bounds of nature. Chapter two continues with a wonderful discussion of Hartshorne’s aesthetics: “beauty is the mean between extremes” (48).Chapter 3 provides a... (shrink)

The folk picture of agency suggests that human beings have basic agency over some of their omissions. For example, someone may follow through on a decision never to support a political party without doing anything in order to make themselves omit. A number of features appear to signal their agency: the omission is not just called intentional, it is also seen as an achievement and explained in terms of the reasons for the decision. Some philosophers have tried to debunk the (...) appearance and argue that agency over omissions always proceeds from agency over actions (on the model of Ulysses ordering his crew to tie him to the mast). Others have tried to uphold the appearance by understanding basic agency over omissions on the model of their theories of action (and most often on the model of causal theories). Against both groups, I argue for a vindication of the appearance in terms of a theory of sui generis basic agency over omissions. Basic intentional omissions are the behavioral outcomes of fluent control by their agents’ intentions. When an intention to omit fluently controls for the right omission, the omission is an intentional achievement performed because of the intention. The intention appropriately regulates the agent’s behavior so as to ensure the intended omission. We can therefore see basic agency over omissions as regulative and distinct from the agency exercised over actions. (shrink)

Philippe Descola has become one of the most important anthropologists working today, and Beyond Nature and Culture has been a major influence in European intellectual life since its French publication in 2005. Here, finally, it is brought to English-language readers. At its heart is a question central to both anthropology and philosophy: what is the relationship between nature and culture? Culture—as a collective human making, of art, language, and so forth—is often seen as essentially different from nature, which is (...) portrayed as a collective of the nonhuman world, of plants, animals, geology, and natural forces. Descola shows this essential difference to be, however, not only a specifically Western notion, but also a very recent one. Drawing on ethnographic examples from around the world and theoretical understandings from cognitive science, structural analysis, and phenomenology, he formulates a sophisticated new framework, the “four ontologies”— animism, totemism, naturalism, and analogism—to account for all the ways we relate ourselves to nature. By thinking beyond nature and culture as a simple dichotomy, Descola offers nothing short of a fundamental reformulation by which anthropologists and philosophers can see the world afresh. (shrink)

La 4e de couv. indique : "La guerre peut-elle être juste? Peut-elle s'affubler d'un qualificatif juste sans injustice? Les récits cosmogoniques sont la merveilleuse monstration que les hommes se sont toujours fait la guerre. L'attitude belliqueuse de certains souverains et les atrocités des champs de bataille ont amené des analystes à définir des critères stricts pour limiter la souffrance humaine. Désormais, tout Etat qui n'observerait pas scrupuleusement les linéaments de cet édit risque d'être déclaré Hostis humani generis. Dans sa conception (...) traditionnelle in stricto sensu, la théorie de la guerre dite juste comporte, d'une part, le jus ad bellum (droit à la guerre) ou droit de faire la guerre et, d'autre part, le jus in bello qui règlemente la conduite de la guerre. Qu'en est-il de l'après-guerre et du jus post bellum? Cet ouvrage, importante contribution au débat sur la théorie de la guerre juste, répond justement à ce questionnement.". (shrink)