Dans cet article je propose la double-thèse : du caractère « vague » (tel que défini dans la littérature logico-sémantique contemporaine) de la notion de hasard (chance) par opposition au caractère « non-vague » de celle d’aléatoire (randomness) ; du lien entre la vagueness et le pouvoir explicatif du hasard et la non-vagueness et la capacité descriptive de l’aléatoire, lequel plaide en faveur d’usages distincts de ces deux notions. Pour défendre la première thèse, j’ai recours aux définitions des notions de (...) hasard et d’aléatoire et à un exemple de l’histoire des sciences (la théorie du chaos). Pour appuyer la seconde, je fais appel à des exemples scientifiques : la variation dans la théorie darwinienne de l’évolution, la mutation génétique dans la synthèse moderne et la dérive génétique dans la théorie neutraliste de l’évolution. (shrink)

UNICEF España ocupa un local bastante amplio en Mauricio Legendre, a espaldas de la estación de Chamartín y a poca distancia de la Plaza de Castilla en la capital madrileña. Un local que luce, dentro y fuera, el característico azul de la organización. Se respira, en esta sede, un ambiente de intenso trabajo� entusiasmante. Da la impresión de que quienes están en la tarea lo hacen con ilusión, con ganas. Lacalidez de la acogida y el clima de confianza facilitan una (...) entrevista muy cordial y amigable. Paloma Escudero es quien dirige estos laboriosos equipos. Una mujer joven y animosa, que llegó a UNICEF tras una larga trayectoria de éxito profesional pero también de aventuras como voluntaria alrededor del mundo� Me pregunto, sin embargo, si realmente estas organizaciones son eficaces en países como España, el los que la infancia no parece malnutrición y parece estar bien atendida en todos los aspectos. Es lo primero que planteo�. (shrink)

Cet article examine l’influence sur la première hypothèse du Parménide de deux penseurs dont l’importance a été négligée par les critiques : Mélissos et Gorgias. Après avoir observé que les prédicats attribués à l’un ainsi que la forme démonstrative sont plus représentatifs de l’éléatisme de Mélissos que de celui de Parménide, nous expliquons ce constat par le fait que Platon reprenne une partie du Traité du Non-être de Gorgias qui vise elle-même essentiellement Mélissos. Nous démontrons alors que la première hypothèse, (...) et même l’ensemble de la seconde partie du Parménide, est un pastiche du Traité du Non-être, et nous en tirons des conclusions sur le statut de l’exercice dialectique mis en œuvre dans le Parménide. (shrink)

Mediation is an alternative dispute resolution process that is becoming more and more popular particularly in English-speaking countries. In contrast to traditional litigation it has not benefited from technological advances and little research has been carried out to make this increasingly widespread practice more efficient. The study of argumentation in dispute mediation hitherto has largely been concerned with theoretical insights. The development of argumentation theories linked to computational applications opens promising new horizons since computational tools could support mediators, making sessions (...) quicker and more efficient. For this, we need tools for close analysis of mediation discourse in order to explore the argumentative activity in depth, and ultimately get an accurate image of how dialogues unfold in this particular context. This paper therefore aims at laying the foundations of a theory of close analysis for discourse in dispute mediation. Theories provided by the literature serve as a basis for argumentative analyses of transcripts of mediation sessions in order to deliver a clear image of the argumentative structure. Analyses of the argumentative strategies in mediation discourse will allow for the development of a dialogue protocol that can be used to develop operational models which can be embodied in software to help make the mediation process easier and more effective. (shrink)

Mechanisms to engage lay citizens in science and technology are currently in vogue worldwide. While some engagement exercises aim to influence policy making, research suggests that they have had little discernable impacts in this regard. We explore the potentials and challenges of facilitating citizen engagement in nanotechnology from the “topdown,” addressing the following questions: Can academics and others within institutions initiate meaningful engagement with unorganized lay citizens from the top-down? Can they facilitate effective engagement among citizens, scientists, and policy makers (...) while building citizen engagement capacities? Is it possible to create independent bottom-up citizen engagement in scientific and technological issues from the top-down, and what are the challenges in doing so? Our experiences show that although academics can build citizens' individual, collective, and political capacities to engage with each other, scientists, and policy makers, this work is enormously time and energy intensive, and institutional support is needed to sustain it. (shrink)

In their introduction to Les Guerres d'antan, Mathilde Bernard, Laurence Campa and Ninon Grangé outline the conceptual framework that led to developing this study, which crowns several years of joint research by researchers in history, literature, philosophy and history of art on the sources and models of war. This preliminary work made it possible to establish just how powerful imagination of the wars of yesteryear is in shaping contemporary wars, an observation that led to preparing a symposium in May (...) 2022. The participants of this event, for which the proceedings published here, took this premise as their starting point to query how past conflicts could return to the fore in, whether this was explicit or not, hushed up, denied, on the other hand yet still asserted, acknowledged, used knowingly and for what purpose. Different disciplines were once again highlighted to emphasize and explain the way in which past wars inform present ones. The researchers who were involved in writing this study worked on a long period of time taking a philosophical approach that goes beyond chronological boundaries, and as historians and literary scholars reflecting on a perspective that builds bridges between eras. (shrink)

Variations in language abilities, use, and production style are ubiquitous within any given population. While research on language evolution has traditionally overlooked the potential importance of such individual differences, these can have an important impact on the trajectory of language evolution and ongoing change. To address this gap, we use a group communication game for studying this mechanism in the lab, in which micro-societies of interacting participants develop and use artificial languages to successfully communicate with each other. Importantly, one participant (...) in the group is assigned a keyboard with a limited inventory of letters (simulating a speech impairment that individuals may encounter in real life), forcing them to communicate differently than the rest. We test how languages evolve in such heterogeneous groups and whether they adapt to accommodate the unique characteristics of individuals with language idiosyncrasies. Our results suggest that language evolves differently in groups where some individuals have distinct language abilities, eliciting more innovative elements at the cost of reduced communicative success and convergence. Furthermore, we observed strong partner-specific accommodation to the minority individual, which carried over to the group level. Importantly, the degree of group-wide adaptation was not uniform and depended on participants’ attachment to established language forms. Our findings provide compelling evidence that individual differences can permeate and accumulate within a linguistic community, ultimately driving changes in languages over time. They also underscore the importance of integrating individual differences into future research on language evolution. (shrink)

Des « libertés» proclamées en 1789 à la loi sur la librairie de 1810, les dynamiques qui traversent le monde de l'imprimé constituent encore un des objets les plus originaux pour renouveler l'histoire des savoirs d'une période révolutionnaire riche en bouleversements institutionnels et en mutations épistémologiques. Dans la perspective d'une histoire sociale des savoirs, l'analyse des actions construites par et dans l'imprimé permet de préciser la compréhension des transformations sociales, institutionnelles et théoriques qui caractérisent cette période. Alors que le chantier (...) reste encore largement ouvert, il s'agit de présenter ici quelques jalons d'une analyse visant à replacer l'imprimé au coeur des interrogations sur les mutations des sociabilités, des identités et des productions intellectuelles en Révolution. (shrink)

Este trabajo tiene por objeto investigar desde un punto vista histórico filosófico las consecuencias políticas de la separación entre la razón y la fe en el pensamiento de Marsilio de Padua. En él se explora la crisis que produce la aceptación irrestricta de la metafísica de Aristóteles, autor a partir del cual Marsilio realiza su análisis de la civitas, y algunas de sus consecuencias inmediatas en la filosofía política y el orden jurídico social de su tiempo: el uso de la (...) razón pura como instrumento exclusivo de análisis social, la separación de la ley humana de la ley eterna, y la búsqueda y consecución del bien común inmanente por sobre el trascendente, antecedentes que conforman el inicio del llamado liberalismo político. A modo de conclusión, se intentará demostrar que algunos de los postulados básicos que caracterizan el pensamiento liberal político moderno se encuentran virtualmente precontenidos en el pensamiento de este filósofo medieval. This work aims to investigate from a historic and philosophical point of view, the political consequences of the break up between faith and reason in Marsilius of Padua’s thought. It’s explored the crisis generated by the unrestricted acceptance of Aristotle’s metaphysics, from whom Marsilius raises his analysis of the civitas, and some of the immediate consequences in the political philosophy and the legal social order of his time: the use of pure reason as an exclusive instrument of social analysis, the separation of the human law from the eternal law, and the research and attainment of the immanent common good over the transcendent one, a background that builds the so called political liberalism. As a way to conclude, we’ll try to demonstrate that some of the basic premises that distinguish the modern liberal thought are virtually pre-held in Marsilius of Padua’s philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to offer a reparative framework for current feminist approaches, most of which seek to inhabit rather than assimilate previous forms of inclusivity or intersectionality, by vindicating the pioneering role of past feminisms. For this purpose, I will stick to a double-edged methodological tool that has been an object of dispute in feminist and literary studies for the last decades, namely, critique and postcritique, two concepts that could be said to bear witness to old (...) and new ways of doing feminism. My aim is not to dismiss recent feminist work but to render visible forgotten critiques that have been an essential heritage of feminism. To acknowledge such debts is part of the reparative reading I present here, for I hold that the desire for deep knowledge is accretive and demands a closer and more respectful attention to past practices and theoretical positions. (shrink)

Face à certaines expériences humaines, la morale se tient tranquille. Du moins le souhaiterait-on. Dans la guerre, la pensée est engagée, ou la pensée engage – c’est selon. Selon qu’on y participe – qu’on soit combattant – ou qu’on lutte contre l’occupation – qu’on soit résistant. Dire que la pensée s’engage tandis que la morale se tient tranquille pourrait paraître contradictoire : qu’est-ce qu’une pensée engagée, sinon une pensée qui relève aussi d’une morale ? Et en l’occurrence ici, une morale (...) de l’action ? Politique est la forme que doit prendre la pensée qui s’oriente vers l’action, et qui tente de porter les raisons collectives de l’engagement. Elle donne à la morale une réponse en forme d’évidence, parce qu’elle comporte un risque – celui de vouloir qu’une politique réponde encore, et plus que jamais, à la violence de l’aliénation, de l’oppression. Quelle serait inversement une expérience qui porterait la morale à haute intensité tandis qu’elle se refuserait à l’action ? Quelle (...). (shrink)

Le présent article s’intéresse aux arguments égalitariens qui défendent une ouverture des frontières nationales car ces dernières discriminent injustement, selon eux, les perspectives individuelles à l’échelle mondiale. Pour égaliser des opportunités aujourd’hui séparées par les frontières des États, il faudrait généraliser la liberté de mouvement transnationale. Nous confrontons cette thèse au cas de l’Union européenne où le statut des Européens circulant librement dans un autre pays leur a progressivement donné les mêmes droits sociaux que ceux dont jouissent les ressortissants du (...) pays d’accueil. Cela a contribué à égaliser les opportunités à l’échelon européen malgré l’absence d’harmonisation des systèmes de protection sociale et de leur financement. À partir de quelques arrêts de la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne, nous confrontons la thèse égalitarienne à trois réserves. La première, qui souligne la menace de la liberté de circulation pour la justice sociale intérieure, est rejetée pour des raisons empiriques. La seconde concerne la possibilité pour la liberté de circulation d’être le support de droits sociaux. Enfin, l’absence de solidarité dans l’Union européenne révèle que la défense égalitarienne d’une ouverture des frontières peut difficilement valoir sans être assortie de mécanismes distributifs au niveau européen. (shrink)

We regularly intentionally expose ourselves to fictions we take to be likely to elicit in us emotions we generally find unpleasant when prompted by actual states of affairs. This is the so-called “paradox of tragedy”. We contribute to solving the paradox of tragedy by denying that, when fiction-directed, most of these emotions are in themselves unpleasant. We first provide strong evidence that these emotions, such as fear, sadness, or pity, are often enjoyed when fiction-directed. We then advance an explanation of (...) what makes these fiction-directed emotions often not unpleasant, while their reality-directed counterparts are generally so. In the last section, we advance an explanation of what makes fiction-directed emotions often enjoyable, and argue that a complete solution to the paradox of tragedy should be pluralist. (shrink)

O mundo das afeições e das emoções ocupa um posto certamente secundário na história da filosofia. Seu caráter difuso e ambíguo não se enquadra no modelo clássico de filosofia inspirado na certeza do conhecimento matemático. De mãos dadas à irrupção da fenomenologia, tratamos de mostrar como se produz uma reabilitação do componente afetivo e corporal da existência humana; a tal afeto, tomamos em conta o significado filosófico que Heidegger e Scheler outorgam respectivamente aos sentimentos da angustia e do amor ao (...) momento de abrir e compreender o mundo. (shrink)

Down syndrome (DS), the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability, results from the partial or complete triplication of chromosome 21. Individuals with DS are impaired at using a high-resolution, allocentric spatial representation to learn and remember discrete locations in a controlled environment. Here, we assessed the capacity of individuals with DS to perform low-resolution spatial learning, depending on two competing memory systems: (1) the place learning system, which depends on the hippocampus and creates flexible relational representations of the environment; (...) and (2) the response learning system, which depends on the striatum and creates fixed stimulus-response representations of behavioral actions. Individuals with DS exhibited a preservation of the low-resolution spatial learning capacities subserved by these two systems. In place learning, although the average performance of individuals with DS was lower than that of typically-developing (TD) mental age-matched children and TD young adults, the number of individuals with DS performing above chance level did not differ from TD children. In response learning, the average performance of individuals with DS was lower than that of TD adults, but it did not differ from that of TD children. Moreover, the number of individuals with DS performing above chance level did not differ from TD adults, and was higher than that of TD children. In sum, whereas low-resolution place learning appears relatively preserved in individuals with DS, response learning appears facilitated. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the neural pathways supporting low-resolution place learning and response learning are relatively preserved in DS. (shrink)

Both Hippolytus of Rome and Sextus Empiricus attribute a concept of λόγος to Empedocles, relying on fragments that seem to have nothing to do with this claim. This article aims to show how the identification and clarification of their common Stoic source helps us to understand these texts better, and to reconstruct an interpretation of Empedocles’ epistemology that has not attracted critical attention so far.

Bipedalism is one of the criteria that paleoanthropologists use in order to interpret the fossil record and to determine if a specimen belongs to the human lineage. In the context of such interpretations, bipedalism is considered to be a unique characteristic of this lineage that also marks its origin. This conception has largely remained unchallenged over the last decades, in spite of fossil discoveries that led to the emergence of bipedalism in the human lineage being shifted back by several millions (...) of years. In this paper, I analyze the uses of this criterion in paleoanthropology and demonstrate that interpretative biases are at play in interpretations of hominin remains. By discussing Darwin’s hypotheses about the evolution of bipedalism, I identify major theoretical issues that need to be addressed in the current debates on hominin evolution. First, the assumption that “man alone has become a biped” is analyzed in the light of recent empirical data. Three major issues are discussed: the definition of “man”, i.e. “human”, the uniqueness of human bipedalism, and the equivocal meaning of being a “biped”. Then, I highlight some of Darwin’s remarks that may be helpful for current debates in paleoanthropology, regarding natural selection in locomotor evolution, as well as taxonomic and phylogenetic significance of functional features. Finally, I analyze two examples of how fossil discoverers referred to Darwin in the recent years and discuss his role as an intellectual support. (shrink)

Ce billet a déjà été publié dans Rouge, études diachroniques. Regards croisés de l'art préhistorique à l'art contemporain le 24 juin 2018. Nous remercions Mathilde Buratti de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Kupka, artiste complet du XXe siècle notamment connu pour ses abstractions colorées, est à l'honneur au Grand Palais jusqu'au 30 juillet 2018. Cette rétrospective met en avant la conception originale du peintre. Tout au long de sa carrière, tant dans ses productions abstraites que - Arts (...) plastiques et autres – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Valiosa antología, precedida por una exposición del positivismo europeo (Carlos Paladines Escudero) y otra sobre esa misma corriente en Ecuador (Samuel Guerra Bravo). Este último sostiene que el positivismo en el Ecuador fue 'la ideología de la burguesía comercial-bancaria de Guayaquil que 'controló' el país entre 1895 y 1934'. Los autores cuyos textos se incluyen son: Julio Endara, Juan H. Peralta, Julio Arauz y César H. Semblantes, todos del siglo XX"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Based on an ethnography of French trials for trafficking in human beings and aggravated procuring, this article seeks to contribute to the analysis of the reframing, in penal terms, of the struggles engaged in the name of social justice and women’s rights, of which anti-trafficking policies are particularly emblematic. Studying the judging practices and logics at stake during trials reveals how fantasized representations of the pimp and the victim take on substance. In particular, I argue that judges invoke a set (...) of gendered, sexualized and racialized extra-legal norms, which, along with their legal foundations, constitute their knowledge base and impose a moral and penal hierarchy among litigants. Therefore, not only does this analysis contribute to defining the contours of the elusive figures of the pimp and the victim in the penal arena, it also exposes how maintaining public order is based on the perpetuation of a gendered and sexual national order in the name of gender justice. (shrink)

Cet article est consacré aux emplois dits « génériques » des pronoms de deuxième personne _tu_ et _vous_, emplois dans lesquels ils peuvent concurrencer certains emplois indéfinis du pronom _on. _Selon certaines analyses, en particulier celles qui font valoir une restructuration du système pronominal français, _tu_ et _vous_ apparaissent comme de simples équivalents de _on_. Selon d’autres analyses, au contraire, le choix de _tu_ ou _vous_ à la place de _on_ n’est pas arbitraire et _tu_ et _vous_ génériques conservent une (...) valeur d’interpellation de l’interlocuteur ou de l’interlocutrice. Nous tenterons de montrer que _tu_ et _vous_ génériques, bien qu’ils ne correspondent pas nécessairement au pronom d’adresse utilisé (notamment _tu_ générique, qui peut être utilisé en contexte de vouvoiement) et qu’ils puissent être indifférents au statut de l’interlocuteur ou de l’interlocutrice (genre ou nombre de celui-/celle-ci, ceux-/celles-ci), conservent bien une valeur d’adresse. (shrink)

Cet article étudie la notion de « responsabilité politique » définie par Young pour répondre au problème des injustices mondiales. Il tente d’expliquer pourquoi l’auteure prend pour point de départ le modèle de la responsabilité individuelle, écartée dès le xix e siècle pour penser la solidarité sociale, et montre que la responsabilité « politique » chez Young aboutit paradoxalement à la disqualification de l’action publique.

On a longtemps considéré qu'un seul archonte éponyme de Delphes avait porté le nom de Kléophanès. C'est cet état des connaissances que présente G. Daux, en 1943, malgré les remarques de R. Flacelière (Chronologie delphique L27, 172/ 1 av. J.-C.). En 1949, la publication d'un texte daté par un archonte Kléophanès et attribué au IIIe siècle relança la question du nombre des éponymes de ce nom et des textes qui pouvaient être attribués à l'année de leur magistrature. Grâce à une (...) nouvelle édition des trois textes en suspens et au réexamen des différents critères de datation disponibles, nous proposons de corriger la Chronologie delphique en ajoutant deux archontes nommés Kléophanès au IIIe siècle av. J.-C. : -G27, 2e quart du IIIe siècle (?), connu par FD III 3, 82 ; -K41, 2e moitié du IIIe siècle (?), connu par FD III 4, 427 V. Le texte BCH 63 (1939), p. 160, doit sans doute être attribué à K41 plutôt qu'à G27. L'archontat L27 demeure documenté par la liste chronologique des proxènes et par trois actes d''affranchissement, mais perd un de ses bouleutes. (shrink)

Inscrite dans une période décisive pour le développement de la culture imprimée en France, l'activité de publication de Jean Goulu, supérieur d'un ordre religieux en pleine expansion et auteur de traductions philosophiques et religieuses, d'ouvrages de controverse et de piété et de pamphlets, est exemplaire des luttes autour du monde du livre qui marquent le premier XVIIe siècle. Au croisement des sphères politique, religieuse et littéraire, cet auteur met le livre au service d'une carrière, mais aussi d'une entreprise morale et (...) politique de contrôle de la production imprimée à destination du public non savant qui se développe alors, et par là même, d'une volonté de contrôle des manières de lire de ce public. L'étude des livres de Goulu et de ses choix scripturaires et éditoriaux permet ainsi de comprendre comment l'écrit imprimé représente un moyen de construire son identité et d'agir dans le monde. (shrink)

Le livre reprend les six premiers chapitres de celui que Mariette Sineau avait publié en 2001. Il est enrichi d’un chapitre, « Parité An X », qui propose un bilan des changements quantitatifs et qualitatifs liés à la législation instituant la parité. Pour mémoire, la révision constitutionnelle de 1999 a introduit, à l’article 3 de la Constitution, le fait que « la loi favorise l’égal accès des femmes et des hommes aux mandats électoraux et fonctions électives ». En conséquence, la (...) loi du 6 ju... (shrink)

Uno de los pilares del giro idealista de la fenomenología realizado por Husserl se encuentra en el parágrafo 49 del tratado Ideen I publicado en 1913. En este artículo se expo-nen sus tesis centrales y se someten a discusión.One of the mainstays of the idealistic turn of Phenomenology made by Husserl is in paragraph 49 of the treatise Ideen I, published in 1913. The aim of this paper is to expose its central theses and subject them to discussion.

La paléontologie a connu au cours du XXe siècle une « révolution paléobiologique » (Sepkoski et Ruse, 2009), en se constituant comme science théorique et intégrée à la biologie de l’évolution. Si l’histoire de la paléoanthropologie reflète un tournant similaire, la révolution paléobiologique reste, à plusieurs égards, inachevée dans cette discipline. Cet article analyse les causes de cet inachèvement, en identifiant des limites empiriques, relatives aux particularités du registre fossile de la paléoanthropologie, mais aussi des limites épistémologiques, rapportées à différentes (...) conceptions de la paléobiologie en jeu dans cette discipline. Nous montrons enfin qu’il est nécessaire de prendre en considération la spécificité anthropologique de la discipline pour apprécier la particularité du tournant paléobiologique dans le champ de l’évolution humaine. (shrink)

Several studies have approached sense perception in the encyclopaedias of Thomas of Cantimpré, Bartholomew the Englishman and Vincent of Beauvais. Yet a systematic overview and comparison of the arrangement of sense perception in these encyclopaedias is still lacking. The overview offered here shows that all encyclopaedias place sense perception beside expositions on psychology and anatomy. There are, however, significant differences in how they treat the objects of sensation. In the case of Bartholomew and Vincent, I argue, these differences reflect two (...) different readings of Aristotle. (shrink)

Several studies have approached sense perception in the encyclopaedias of Thomas of Cantimpré, Bartholomew the Englishman, and Vincent of Beauvais. A comparative analysis of these encyclopaedias shows that all of them arrange sense perception in accordance with the expositions on the soul and with human and animal anatomy. Yet there are significant differences in how they treat the objects of sensation: Thomas does not refer to them at all, Bartholomew considers them to be “accidents,” and Vincent deals with them separately (...) when discussing the features of the sensible world. These differences, I argue, respond to two different readings of Aristotle. (shrink)

The semantic poverty of general nouns and their referential versatility could make them excellent means to achieve a co-referential anaphora. Many contexts, however, do not allow a general noun like chose (‘thing’), personne (‘person’) or individu (‘individual’) to reiterate a previously classified referent. The difficulties of such reiterations or the (often pejorative) discursive effects they produce are linked to the referent declassification they involve. In fact, general nouns are distinguished from other superordinate nouns by their weak classifying power. This feature, (...) instead, brings them closer to quality nouns (in Milner’s sense), which appear at the top of the generality continuum in some examples proposed by Halliday & Hasan. (shrink)

Biology seems to present local and transitory regularities rather than immutable laws. To account for these historically constituted regularities and to distinguish them from mathematical invariants, Montévil and Mossio (Journal of Theoretical Biology 372:179–191, 2015) have proposed to speak of constraints. In this article we analyse the causal power of these constraints in the evolution of biodiversity, i.e., their positivity, but also the modality of their action on the directions taken by evolution. We argue that to fully account for the (...) causal power of these constraints on evolution, they must be thought of in terms of normativity. In this way, we want to highlight two characteristics of the evolutionary constraints. The first, already emphasised as reported by Gould (The structure of evolutionary theory, Harvard University Press, 2002), is that these constraints are both produced by and producing biological evolution and that this circular causation creates true novelties. The second is that this specific causality, which generates unpredictability in evolution, stems not only from the historicity of biological constraints, but also from their internalisation through the practices of living beings. (shrink)

This research investigated the effect of divided attention at encoding on feeling-of-knowing . Participants had to learn a 60 word-pair list under two experimental conditions, one with full attention and one with divided attention . After that, they were administered episodic FOK tasks with a cued-recall phase, a FOK phase and a recognition phase. Our results showed that DA at encoding altered not only memory performance, but also FOK judgments and FOK accuracy. These findings throw some light on the central (...) role of the quality of memory encoding to make accurate FOK judgments and provide new evidence supporting the relationship between memory and metamemory judgments. (shrink)

The perception of time cannot be reduced to a simple percept produced by an internal clock. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the role of the individual consciousness of time on temporal judgments. In the present study, the participants’ awareness of attention-related time distortions was assessed using a metacognitive questionnaire. The participants were also required to verbally judge a series of stimulus durations in a single or a dual task condition. The results revealed that time was (...) underestimated in the dual task compared to the single task. However, the accuracy of time judgments improved in line with the participants’ individual awareness of attentional time distortion: The more aware they were of the role of attention in time perception, the lower the time distortions they exhibited. Conscious awareness of time therefore plays a role in the accuracy of the time judgments made by human beings. (shrink)

Languages show substantial variability between their speakers, but it is currently unclear how the structure of the communicative network contributes to the patterning of this variability. While previous studies have highlighted the role of network structure in language change, the specific aspects of network structure that shape language variability remain largely unknown. To address this gap, we developed a Bayesian agent‐based model of language evolution, contrasting between two distinct scenarios: language change and language emergence. By isolating the relative effects of (...) specific global network metrics across thousands of simulations, we show that global characteristics of network structure play a critical role in shaping interindividual variation in language, while intraindividual variation is relatively unaffected. We effectively challenge the long‐held belief that size and density are the main network structural factors influencing language variation, and show that path length and clustering coefficient are the main factors driving interindividual variation. In particular, we show that variation is more likely to occur in populations where individuals are not well‐connected to each other. Additionally, variation is more likely to emerge in populations that are structured in small communities. Our study provides potentially important insights into the theoretical mechanisms underlying language variation. (shrink)

Affiliation is both an antecedent and a consequence of emotional mimicry (i.e. imitating a counterpart’s emotional expression). Thus, interacting with a disliked partner can decrease emotional mimicry, which in turn can further decrease liking. This perpetuating circle has not been investigated in the context of mental health stigma yet. The present study tested the influence of the label “schizophrenia” on liking, interpersonal closeness, and emotional mimicry. In an online experiment (n = 201), participants recruited from the general population saw several (...) videos of actors displaying emotional expressions. Actors were described with one of four labels: “schizophrenia”, “healthy”, “diabetes”, and a negative adjective (e.g. “hot-tempered”). Emotional mimicry was measured using OpenFace 2.2. Liking and interpersonal closeness were assessed with questionnaires. Overall, compared to other labels, participants reported less liking and interpersonal closeness to the actor with the schizophrenia label. However, no effect on emotional mimicry was found. The decreased liking of the schizophrenia actors was explained by a lack of knowledge about schizophrenia and the explicit stigma of schizophrenia. Our study contributes to the literature by highlighting the need to reduce the stigma of schizophrenia. (shrink)

Williams (WS) and Down (DS) syndromes are neurodevelopmental disorders with distinct genetic origins and different spatial memory profiles. In real-world spatial memory tasks, where spatial information derived from all sensory modalities is available, individuals with DS demonstrate low-resolution spatial learning capacities consistent with their mental age, whereas individuals with WS are severely impaired. However, because WS is associated with severe visuo-constructive processing deficits, it is unclear whether their impairment is due to abnormal visual processing or whether it reflects an inability (...) to build a cognitive map. Here, we tested whether blindfolded individuals with WS or DS, and typically developing (TD) children with similar mental ages, could use path integration to perform an egocentric homing task and return to a starting point. We then evaluated whether they could take shortcuts and navigate along never-traveled trajectories between four objects while blindfolded, thus demonstrating the ability to build a cognitive map. In the homing task, 96% of TD children, 84% of participants with DS and 44% of participants with WS were able to use path integration to return to their starting point consistently. In the cognitive mapping task, 64% of TD children and 74% of participants with DS were able to take shortcuts and use never-traveled trajectories, the hallmark of cognitive mapping ability. In contrast, only one of eighteen participants with WS demonstrated the ability to build a cognitive map. These findings are consistent with the view that hippocampus-dependent spatial learning is severely impacted in WS, whereas it is relatively preserved in DS. (shrink)

Melissus’ fragment B9, where he claims that being has no body and no thickness, raises the question of how being can be extended and full and at the same time incorporeal. Most recent interpretations tried to avoid lending to “body” the meaning of “physical body”. My aim in this paper is to reconstruct Melissus’ notion of body, by examining its connection to “thickness”. I show that Melissus meant by “thick” something that has distinct parts and therefore supports in B9 the (...) indivisibility of being. I then indicate that he relied on the contrast between soul and body for his conception of corporeality, by highlighting that by Presocratic thinkers, the soul was considered as “thin” and regarded as something that could be exempt of the division into parts. I conclude that even though Melissus’ notion of incorporeality is very different from the one Plato will develop, he made a huge step toward its conceptualization. (shrink)