Dans ce livre, Malebranche expose sa philosophie à travers des entretiens avec un philosophe, un janséniste et un mandarin chinois. Il explore les différentes dimensions de la métaphysique, de la religion et de la mort et cherche à répondre aux questions fondamentales de l'existence. Tout étudiant en philosophie trouvera ce livre intéressant et instructif. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is (...) in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

(in press, under contract with MIT Press, accepted on June 30th, 2006). Attention, Information and Epistemic Perception. In Terzis, G. & Arp, R. (Eds) Information and the Living Systems: Essays in the Philosophy of Biology. The MIT Press. (14,000 words).

This study investigates the social–psychological mechanisms leading individuals in organizations to engage in environmental citizenship behaviors, which entail keeping abreast of, and participating in, the environmental affairs of a company. Informed by the corporate greening and organizational behavior literature, we suggested that an employee’s level of involvement in the management of a company’s environmental impact was the overt manifestation of his or her discretionary sense of commitment to environmental concerns in the work context, and that such commitment developed through the (...) interplay of individual, organizational, and supervisory factors. Our general findings support the idea that when environmental protection is valued and encouraged by the company and line managers, organization members are more likely to experience a volitional sense of attachment and responsibility to corporate environmental goals and values, which is enacted through citizenship behaviors. We also expected that individual ecological beliefs would strengthen the environmental commitment of employees via identification with, and adherence to, the socially responsible cause embodied by the organization and its managerial staff. But it did not. On the contrary, the data indicated that corporate environmental policy is more likely to influence an employee’s level of environmental commitment when he or she holds weak versus strong personal ecological beliefs. Theoretical and managerial implications of our findings are discussed. (shrink)

Ce volume collectif montre que l'herméneutique fictionnalisée permet de réfléchir sur les procédures de l'interprétation, de penser les limites de la fiction et de prendre en charge des discours que les disciplines savantes ne sont pas toujours en situation de produire.

In order to describe the logic of morality, "contractualist" philosophers have studied how individuals behave when they choose to follow their moral intuitions. These individuals, contractualists note, often act as if they have bargained and thus reached an agreement with others about how to distribute the benefits and burdens of mutual cooperation. Using this observation, such philosophers argue that the purpose of morality is to maximize the benefits of human interaction. The resulting "contract" analogy is both insightful and puzzling. On (...) one hand, it captures the pattern of moral intuitions, thus answering questions about human cooperation: why do humans cooperate? Why should the distribution of benefits be proportionate to each person's contribution? Why should the punishment be proportionate to the crime? Why should the rights be proportionate to the duties? On the other hand, the analogy provides a mere as-if explanation for human cooperation, saying that cooperation is "as if" people have passed a contract-but since they didn't, why should it be so? To evolutionary thinkers, the puzzle of the missing contract is immediately reminiscent of the puzzle of the missing "designer" of life-forms, a puzzle that Darwin's theory of natural selection essentially resolved. Evolutionary and contractualist theory originally intersected at the work of philosophers John Rawls and David Gauthier, who argued that moral judgments are based on a sense of fairness that has been naturally selected. In this book, Nicolas Baumard further explores the theory that morality was originally an adaptation to the biological market of cooperation, an arena in which individuals competed to be selected for cooperative interactions. In this environment, Baumard suggests, the best strategy was to treat others with impartiality and to share the costs and benefits of cooperation in a fair way, so that those who offered less than others were left out of cooperation while those who offered more were exploited by their partners. It is with this evolutionary approach that Baumard ultimately accounts for the specific structure of human morality. (shrink)

Este artículo explora los usos de las nuevas tecnologías digitales que realizan jóvenes de sectores populares beneficiarios del Programa estatal de alfabetización digital Conectar Igualdad (PCI) en una escuela del Gran La Plata. Sobre la base de primeras interpretaciones de una investigación en desarrollo, se intenta comprender la productividad de ciertos cursos de acción a los que la incorporación masiva de las netbooks a partir del escenario escolar habilita. En particular se enfoca en la posibilidad que ahora disponen los jóvenes (...) beneficiarios de estar permanentemente “conectados” y la asociación que éstos trazan entre la conexión y el uso extendido de las “redes sociales”. Para ello desde una estrategia metodológica que incorpora elementos de la propuesta de una etnografía virtual (Hine, 2004), se intenta describir y comprender en su positividad, y en lo que presentan de particular y de especificidad histórica, las formas emergentes de sociabilidades juveniles vinculadas a estas nuevas tecnologías digitales. (shrink)

Virtual reality allows the user to be immersed in environments in which they can experience situations and social interactions from different perspectives by means of virtual embodiment. In the context of rehabilitation of violent behaviors, a participant could experience a virtual violent confrontation from different perspectives, including that of the victim and bystanders. This approach and other virtual scenes can be used as a useful tool for the rehabilitation of intimate partner violence perpetrators, through improvement of their empathic skills or (...) for training in non-violent responses. In this perspective, we revise and discuss the use of this tool in a prison environment for the rehabilitation of IPV perpetrators with a particular focus on practical aspects based on our experience. (shrink)

Peut-on penser que l'art a tous les droits sans postuler qu'il n'a aucun rapport avec le droit? Ceux qui sont en charge de l'État ont-ils le droit d'imposer comme un art officiel des parti-pris singuliers? Sous prétexte qu'il y a un marché de l'art, tout et n'importe quoi est-il de l'art dès lors que l'État lui en a décerné le brevet? Telles sont les questions posées par l'auteur aux philosophes du droit.

Dieu, le temps, la liberte: trois manieres de poser le probleme des rapports du fini et de l'infini. Comment un etre fini peut-il etre tellement hante par l'idee de l'infini, qu'elle soit la plus originaire et l'horizon de toutes ses pensees? Si Dieu a tout cree sans ordre ni raison, l'infinite de sa puissance n'est-elle pas son unique perfection? Comment une creature finie peut-elle desirer acquerir les perfections infinies qu'elle concoit en Dieu sans s'assigner ainsi une tache infinie? Pour deduire (...) l'infinite des verites creees du petit nombre d'idees et d'axiomes qui sont innes a son entendement, ne lui faudrait-il pas un temps infini? Mais, faute d'en disposer jamais, peut-elle s'eprouver assignee a une tache infinie sans eprouver ce mauvais infini comme l'echec d'un perpetuel inachevement? En confrontant les analyses de Descartes a celles de Malebranche et de Leibniz, c'est a ces problemes que les six etudes ici reunies tentent d'apporter quelque lumiere. (shrink)

Même si l’on connaît surtout Ecce homo, l’une de ses dernières œuvres, dans laquelle Nietzsche nous livre une véritable autobiographie intellectuelle, le philosophe allemand s’est en réalité très tôt plu à la pratique de l’autobiographie. L’autoréflexion qu’il présente de son devenir fut ensuite une constante, notamment dans les Préfaces qu’il ajouta par la suite à ses plus fameux ouvrages. Mais cette constante est d’autant plus étonnante chez un auteur qui dit d’une part ne s’être jamais que médiocrement réfléchi, et d’autre (...) part qu’il ne faut pas soupçonner le moins du monde qui l’on est pour être en mesure de devenir soi. Nous tâchons ici de dépasser cette contradiction apparente en proposant une interprétation de ce geste nietzschéen de l’autobiographie et nous nous demandons en même temps si cette pratique ne constitue et ne construit pas davantage le soi à un moment donné, peut-être même à titre d’illusion, plutôt qu’elle ne le saisit véritablement. (shrink)

Standard rationales for the illegality of markets in votes are based on concerns over the undue influence of wealth and the erosion of civic responsibility that would result from the commodification of votes. I present an alternative rationale based on how the mere alienability of votes alters the strategic setting faced by political actors. The inalienability of votes ensure the strict secrecy of voting, that is, the inability of voters to communicate credibly to others the content of their votes. In (...) doing so, it diminishes the credibility of all political actors’ clientelistic promises to reciprocate. By drastically reducing the transaction costs of vote exchanges, the legality of markets in votes would thus exacerbate the detrimental effects of political clientelism on the quality of democratic governments. (shrink)

The causal view of categories assumes that categories are represented by features and their causal relations. To study the effect of causal knowledge on categorization, researchers have used Bayesian causal models. Within that framework, categorization may be viewed as dependent on a likelihood computation (i.e., the likelihood of an exemplar with a certain combination of features, given the category's causal model) or as a posterior computation (i.e., the probability that the exemplar belongs to the category, given its features). Across three (...) experiments, in combination with computational modeling, we offer evidence that categorization is better accounted for by assuming that people compute posteriors and not likelihoods, though both probabilities are closely related. This result contrasts with existing analyses of causal-based categorization, which assume that likelihood computations give a good approximation of human judgments. We also find that people are able to compute likelihoods in a closely related task that elicits judgments of consistency rather than category membership judgments. Our analyses show that people do use causal probabilistic information as prescribed by a Bayesian model but that they flexibly compute likelihoods or posteriors depending on the task. We discuss our results in relation to the relevant literature on the topic. (shrink)

This paper articulates an account of imperatives that sensibly supports the idea of a logic of imperative inferences. We rebuke common objections to the very possibility of such a logic, from a perspective based on recent linguistic work on the morphosyntax of imperatives. Specifically, we develop the notion that the content of an imperative sentence includes both a force operator alongside an imperational content to which the force applies. We further argue that this account of the content of imperatives constitutes (...) a plausible and flexible framework to develop a logic of imperative by examining a number of reconstructions of this idea using semantical analogs of widespread modal semantics. After studying the performance of those approaches, we conclude that progress in imperative logic has been hindered by the failure to adopt conflict-tolerant and resource-sensitive semantics, but suggest that such considerations can be incorporated in this flexible framework. Finally, we also propose a simple account of the difference between operators applying to the content of imperatives and imperative operators, in a way that sheds light on some of the issues underlying the usual antinomies. (shrink)

Syllogisms (e.g. “All A are B; All B are C; What is true about A and C?”) are a long‐studied area of human reasoning. Riesterer, Brand, and Ragni compare a variety of models to human performance and show that not only do current models have a lot of room for improvement, but more importantly a large part of this improvement must come from examining individual differences in performance.

This book is the first extensive treatment of Husserl's phenomenology of time-consciousness. Nicolas de Warren uses detailed analysis of texts by Husserl, some only recently published in German, to examine Husserl's treatment of time-consciousness and its significance for his conception of subjectivity. He traces the development of Husserl's thinking on the problem of time from Franz Brentano's descriptive psychology, and situates it in the framework of his transcendental project as a whole. Particular discussions include the significance of time-consciousness for (...) other phenomenological themes: perceptual experience, the imagination, remembrance, self-consciousness, embodiment, and the consciousness of others. The result is an illuminating exploration of how and why Husserl considered the question of time-consciousness to be the most difficult, yet also the most central, of all the challenges facing his unique philosophical enterprise"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se propone una ética de la donación a partir de la idea de donación en la fenomenología de Jean Luc Marion, junto a la noción de la acción no recíproca en Kant y la noción de don y gratuidad en Santo Tomás de Aquino. La intención de Marion es liberar al fenómeno de cualquier condición subjetiva que se le imponga; es decir, intenta darle la prioridad a los fenómenos y comprenderlos como lo que se da. De (...) ahí es que teoriza sobre el don y la donación, cuya particularidad es que están libres del intercambio y la deuda. Similarmente, que Kant afirma que el bien debe hacerse sin esperar algo a cambio, mientras que Santo Tomás afirma que el don es hacer el bien gratuitamente. Por eso se puede proponer una ética de la donación cuyos pilares fundamentales son: gratuidad, desinterés, no reciprocidad, libertad, entrega generosa, compasión y responsabilidad afectiva. (shrink)

A scholarly edition of Nicolas Malebranche's Treatise on Nature and Grace by Patrick Riley. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Since the Industrial Revolution, human societies have experienced high and sustained rates of economic growth. Recent explanations of this sudden and massive change in economic history have held that modern growth results from an acceleration of innovation. But it is unclear why the rate of innovation drastically accelerated in England in the eighteenth century. An important factor might be the alteration of individual preferences with regard to innovation resulting from the unprecedented living standards of the English during that period, for (...) two reasons. First, recent developments in economic history challenge the standard Malthusian view according to which living standards were stagnant until the Industrial Revolution. Pre-industrial England enjoyed a level of affluence that was unprecedented in history. Second, behavioral sciences have demonstrated that the human brain is designed to respond adaptively to variations in resources in the local environment. In particular, Life History Theory, a branch of evolutionary biology, suggests that a more favorable environment should trigger the expression of future-oriented preferences. In this paper, I argue that some of these psychological traits – a lower level of time discounting, a higher level of optimism, decreased materialistic orientation, and a higher level of trust in others – are likely to increase the rate of innovation. I review the evidence regarding the impact of affluence on preferences in contemporary as well as past populations, and conclude that the impact of affluence on neurocognitive systems may partly explain the modern acceleration of technological innovations and the associated economic growth. (shrink)

This book presents original translations and a penetrating analysis of hymns from the Rg Veda, the earliest literary document of the Indian tradition. For many years the Rg Veda has been a source of interest and inspiration to Western readers. Composed in the predawn of recorded history it narrates the struggle of the Aryans as they tried to unify the world around them by sharing a common vision.

Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents Abhandlungen/Articles Massimiliano Vignolo: Why Non-Factualists Should Love Conceptual Role Semantics Jeffrey Goodman: Fictionalia as Modal Artifacts Alberto Voltolini: Against Against Fictional Realism Roderick Batchelor: Grounds and Consequences Timm Lampert and Michael Baumgartner: The Problem of Validity Proofs Ish Haji: On the Direct Argument for the Incompatibility of Determinism and Moral Responsibility Matthias Neuber: Philosophie der modernen Physik ¿ Philipp Frank und Abel Rey Nicola Mössner: Testimoniale Akte neu definiert ¿ ein zentrales Problem des Zeugnisses Anderer Simon (...) Dierig: Goldmans Scheunen-Beispiel und das Problem der Vereinbarkeit von Externalismus und Selbstkenntnis Diskussionen/Discussions Essay-Wettbewerb/Essay Competition Besprechungen/Review Essays Buchnotizen/Critical Notes Eingelangte Bücher/Books Received. (shrink)

Comment identifier le« médium technique» d'un compositeur contemporain? Pour esquisser une réponse, nous nous appuyons sur une étude réalisée en collaboration avec Jacques Theureau, portant sur l'activité de composition de Philippe Leroux. En reconstituant la genèse de son œuvre Voi(rex), nous avons observé une constante interpénétration de plusieurs âges techniques et technologiques, dont une partie peut être rattachée directement aux préoccupations wébériennes. Passer par une analyse de détail des opérations compositionnelles et de leurs milieux techniques permet de saisir la dynamique (...) (re)productrice d'un médium technique encore sans nom. (shrink)

Connected devices, such as smartphones and tablets, are exposed to a large variety of attacks. Their protection is often challenged by their resource constraints in terms of CPU, memory and energy. Security chains, composed of security functions such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems and data leakage prevention mechanisms, offer new perspectives to protect these devices using software-defined networking and network function virtualization. However, the complexity and dynamics of these chains require new automation techniques to orchestrate them. This chapter describes an (...) automated orchestration methodology for security chains in order to secure connected devices and their applications. This methodology exploits process learning to establish behavioral models and infer security constraints represented as logical predicates. It then generates and merges a set of chains of security functions on the basis of these predicates. These chains are finally compiled into low-level configuration rules and deployed into the network, optimizing for the underlying topology. The benefits and limits of such a methodology combining machine learning and verification techniques are evaluated by a set of experimental results. (shrink)

I argue that penal philosophy should focus more on our attitudes towards offenders, since these attitudes can shed new light on theories or principles of punishment (of which they are often expressions) and also play a significant role in changing the face of criminal justice. Building on Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment,” I define attitudes as certain ways of seeing human beings that logically include or exclude various emotional, behavioral, and linguistic responses, that can be more or less natural, and over (...) which we have some degree of voluntary control. I argue that, understood in this sense, there are broadly speaking six attitudes towards offenders: the retributive, the hostile, the moralistic, the paternalistic, the merciful, and the actuarial. After presenting each of these attitudes, I sum up my analysis by focusing on the Polanski sexual abuse case. I then introduce the concept of second-order attitudes, where egalitarianism is the attitude that consists of taking the same attitude towards all offenders, and particularism is the attitude that consists of adjusting your attitude to each offender. Finally, I briefly explain why a mix of the retributive and the merciful should be our default attitude. (shrink)

"Out of the box! ". Qui n'a pas entendu cette injonction destinée à ceux que l'on somme d'être créatif? Si nos sens délimitent sans peine des murs et des portes, de quoi se compose la boîte de laquelle on nous enjoint de sortir? Qui la construit et à quoi sert-elle? Nous avons pris au sérieux ce banal mot d'ordre managérial et avons bâti une théorie sur l'innovation. Ce n'est pas une "boîtes" que nous avons identifiée, mais trois "cubes" qui formatent (...) nos identités, nos usages et nos objets. Sujet, verbe, objet tout marché fonde en même temps un récit et s'appuie sur la même grammaire que nous avons apprise sur les bancs d'école. Les neufs dimensions réunies par les trois cubes sont des productions historiques. Elles sont le produit d'un nombre impressionnant d'acteurs : Etats, organismes administratifs, partis politiques, arts, aménagement du territoire, syndicats patronaux ou ouvriers, associations de consommateurs, médias, médecine, droit, formation, police, langue, leaders d'opinion, structures faîtières, etc. Le lecteur découvrira que l'innovation exprime un paradoxe : l'innovation est nécessaire pour les entreprises ; elle aussi est un danger pour ces dernières ; elle doit enfin être domestiquée et "cubée" pour organiser une concurrence. Si l'innovation était débridée, aucun marché n'y résisterait... Trois cubes comme paradoxes de la créativité et de la liberté ; il faut bien des murs, savoir de quoi ils sont faits et où ils sont érigés pour s'évader de temps en temps. (shrink)

La presente reflexión se propone explorar los tratamientos de antropólogo Tim Ingold en torno al concepto de ambiente. El objetivo será desprender de ellos un aporte hacia una concepción no antropocéntrica de la noción de naturaleza. Clasificaremos los planteos del autor en dos grandes teorías que estructurarán las diferentes secciones del trabajo: por un lado su “teoría de los materiales”, y por el otro, su “teoría de las líneas”. En la primera analizaremos las bases que conforman su concepción del ambiente (...) fundada en la contraposición materialidad vs. materiales. En la segunda parte analizaremos su denominada linealogía a partir de tres figuras: nudo, suelo y aire. De la conjunción de ambas teorías se deriva un concepto de naturaleza renovado que armoniza con las coordenadas de los nuevos materialismos y posthumanismos contemporáneos. Nuestra hipótesis es que en los planteos del antropólogo se trasluce una comprensión de naturaleza en términos intersticiales. Más específicamente, se pone el acento ya no en la relación entre un humano espectador y una naturaleza como escenario, sino en la tensión entre el ambiente y la experiencia, concebidas ambas esferas como mutuamente conformantes. (shrink)