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)

This text aims at presenting a general characterization of the act of perceiving a particular object, in a framework in which perception is conceived of as a mental and cognitive faculty having specific functions that other faculties such as imagination and memory do not possess. I introduce the problem of determining the occurrence of singular perception of a physical object, as opposed to the occurrence of other mental states or attitudes. I propose that clarifying this occurrence problem requires making explicit (...) the conditions of perceptual competence/faculty so as to explain the occurrence of each perceptual performance on the basis of the use of this competence. I argue then for a direct relational model according to which the singular perception of an object depends on a competence of connecting the perceiver directly with each target object. This model is compatible with a disjunctive approach to perception according to which each particular experience of an object corresponds either to a direct perceptual relation with this object or to the illusion of having the experience of this object. The arguments in favour of this relational model rest on the idea that the faculty of perception grounds the capacity to demonstratively identify physical objects. (shrink)

Y a-t-il expérience plus banale que celle que nous avons spontanément du temps et de la vie? Mais nous ne pouvons avoir d'expérience du temps que par l'attente; et nous ne nous sentons vivre qu'en nous sentant exposés à la mort. Aussi n'y a-t-il rien de plus banal que temps, la vie, l'attente et la mort pour caractériser l'originaire compréhension que nous ayons de notre existence. Mais parce que notre attente présuppose l'imagination de ce que nous attendons, on ne peut (...) guère séparer l'imaginaire de la banalité de notre existence. Non seulement il gouverne toute expérience du désir, mais encore et principalement du jeu. Ce Traité de la banalité voudrait donc n'être qu'un miroir où chacun pût voir se réfléchir tout simplement l'existence. (shrink)

Ce livre apporte un nouvel eclairage sur ce qu'il conviendrait d'appeler les commencements de la phenomenologie en France et donc, plus particulierement, sur la ...

The book that the French reader holds in his hands is one of the century’s most fascinating and liberating. It does nothing less than instigate the psychoanalytic approach as a universal method of...

How might a human communication system be bootstrapped in the absence of conventional language? We argue that motivated signs play an important role (i.e., signs that are linked to meaning by structural resemblance or by natural association). An experimental study is then reported in which participants try to communicate a range of pre-specified items to a partner using repeated non-linguistic vocalization, repeated gesture, or repeated non-linguistic vocalization plus gesture (but without using their existing language system). Gesture proved more effective (measured (...) by communication success) and more efficient (measured by the time taken to communicate) than non-linguistic vocalization across a range of item categories (emotion, object, and action). Combining gesture and vocalization did not improve performance beyond gesture alone. We experimentally demonstrate that gesture is a more effective means of bootstrapping a human communication system. We argue that gesture outperforms non-linguistic vocalization because it lends itself more naturally to the production of motivated signs. (shrink)

Discusses questions such as, what is knowledge, what qualifies as knowledge, and what does not; what does it mean to say, "I know, I understand," what is truth, ...

(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).

Sometimes I feel that Sorgner's ideas can foresee the questions I can ask about his philosophy. But I cannot claim that he is a prophet of Apollo. Instead, his latest work continues to embrace a Dionysian constant, showing the reaches of an ontology of per-manent becoming and putting into practice his own understanding of philosophy, namely an "Intellectual War of Values". Such a statement is Hera-clitean and, therefore, also Nietzschean. In this sense, Philosophy of Posthuman Art is not a work (...) independent of the author's other works, but a necessary consequence of his global intellectual production. (shrink)

L'énigma du mal -- L'imaginaire et ses jeux -- Ambiguïtés de l'art -- Qu'est-ce que le moi? -- La vie: sens et non-sens.

Can animals be agents? Do they want to be free? Can they have meaningful lives? If so, should we change the way we treat them? This paper offers an account of animal agency and of two continuums: between human and nonhuman agency, and between wildness and captivity. It describes how a wide range of human activities impede on animals’ freedom and argues that, in doing so, we deprive a wide range of animals of opportunities to exercise their agency in ways (...) that can give meaning to their lives. (shrink)

This book features 20 essays that explore how Latin medieval philosophers and theologians from Anselm to Buridan conceived of habitus, as well as detailed studies of the use of the concept by Augustine and of the reception of the medieval doctrines of habitus in Suàrez and Descartes. Habitus are defined as stable dispositions to act or think in a certain way. This definition was passed down to the medieval thinkers from Aristotle and, to a lesser extent, Augustine, and played a (...) key role in many of the philosophical and theological developments of the time. Written by leading experts in medieval and modern philosophy, the book offers a historical overview that examines the topic in light of recent advances in medieval cognitive psychology and medieval moral theory. Coverage includes such topics as the metaphysics of the soul, the definition of virtue and vice, and the epistemology of self-knowledge. The book also contains an introduction that is the first attempt at a comprehensive survey of the nature and function of habitus in medieval thought. The material will appeal to a wide audience of historians of philosophy and contemporary philosophers. It is relevant as much to the historian of ancient philosophy who wants to track the historical reception of Aristotelian ideas as it is to historians of modern philosophy who would like to study the progressive disappearance of the term “habitus” in the early modern period and the concepts that were substituted for it. In addition, the volume will also be of interest to contemporary philosophers open to historical perspectives in order to renew current trends in cognitive psychology, virtue epistemology, and virtue ethics. (shrink)

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)

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)

We present a new proof of soundness/completeness of tableaux with respect to dialogical games in Classical First-Order Logic. As far as we know it is the first thorough result for dialogical games where finiteness of plays is guaranteed by means of what we call repetition ranks.

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.

Résister n'est pas seulement, pour les individus, un acte exceptionnel réservé aux temps de tragédies. Et, s'il peut prendre une tournure plus nettement politique, plus clairement dissidente, dans ces moments de crises sociales, il n'en existe pas moins une foule de menues résistances quotidiennes à l'ordre du monde. Résistances politiques, résistances du quotidien, ce livre n'a pas voulu choisir entre les unes et les autres. Les frontières peuvent être floues, quand on y regarde de prêt, entre les engagements suscités par (...) des situations dramatiques, qui ressortent souvent de décisions très intimes, et les refus du sort plus banals, qui mettent toujours en question, même sur un mode assourdi, le fonctionnement de la cité. Les contributions rassemblées dans ces pages présentent une série de cas de résistance, plus ou moins spectaculaires, qu'opposent des individus ou des groupes sociaux aux pouvoirs et aux hiérarchies qui structurent leur environnement. Appartenant à des contextes historiques et sociaux contrastés, exposées par des spécialistes de disciplines différentes, elles ont en commun d'interroger, chacune à leur manière, les raisons qui poussent les acteurs à résister, les modes de leur résistance, et finalement leur prix et leurs conséquences pour ces acteurs. Au-delà de cette réflexion croisée sur l'acte de résistance apparaît un monde social tissé de normes et de contraintes dans lequel ils luttent pour se ménager encore, même en bout de course, un espace de liberté, pour affirmer et faire reconnaître une existence et une personnalité, ou pour se conformer à des valeurs. Et c'est, en se confrontant à la conscience sociale et à la geste de ces individus résistants, à une réflexion éthique que ce livre invite son lecteur. (shrink)

The claim that the observation of a violation of a Bell inequality leads to an alleged alternative between nonlocality and non-realism is annoying because of the vagueness of the second term.

Human cognition and behavior are dominated by symbol use. This paper examines the social learning strategies that give rise to symbolic communication. Experiment 1 contrasts an individual-level account, based on observational learning and cognitive bias, with an inter-individual account, based on social coordinative learning. Participants played a referential communication game in which they tried to communicate a range of recurring meanings to a partner by drawing, but without using their conventional language. Individual-level learning, via observation and cognitive bias, was sufficient (...) to produce signs that became increasingly effective, efficient, and shared over games. However, breaking a referential precedent eliminated these benefits. The most effective, most efficient, and most shared signs arose when participants could directly interact with their partner, indicating that social coordinative learning is important to the creation of shared symbols. Experiment 2 investigated the contribution of two distinct aspects of social interaction: behavior alignment and concurrent partner feedback. Each played a complementary role in the creation of shared symbols: Behavior alignment primarily drove communication effectiveness, and partner feedback primarily drove the efficiency of the evolved signs. In conclusion, inter-individual social coordinative learning is important to the evolution of effective, efficient, and shared symbols. (shrink)

We argue that two powerful error-theoretic concepts provide a general framework that satisfactorily accounts for key aspects of the explanation of physical patterns. This method gives an objective criterion to determine which mathematical models in a class of neighboring models are just as good as the exact one. The method also emphasizes that abstraction is essential for explanation and provides a precise conceptual framework that determines whether a given abstraction is explanatorily relevant and justified. Hence, it increases our epistemological understanding (...) of how one should go about reconstructing scientific practices by making clear that, at a fundamental level, a key aspect of mathematical modeling consists in exactly solving nearby problems. (shrink)

The relatively recent increase in prominence of computer simulations in scientific inquiry gives us more reasons than ever before for asserting that mathematics is a wonderful tool. In fact, a practical knowledge of scientific computation has become essential for scientists working in all disciplines involving mathematics. Despite their incontestable success, it must be emphasized that the numerical methods subtending simulations provide at best approximate solutions and that they can also return very misleading results. Accordingly, epistemological sobriety demands that we clarify (...) the circumstances under which simulations can be relied upon. With this in mind, this paper articulates a general perspective to better understand and compare the strengths and weaknesses of various error-analysis methods. (shrink)