Despite growing internationalization, national ties have remained a structural aspect of missionary and humanitarian work. This was especially true of the Interwar period in the Middle East, where colonial powers, independent states and political ideologies competed. The beginnings of the Action Chrétienne en Orient bear witness to this: the ACO, specialized in assistance to Christian Anatolian refugees and missionary work towards Muslims, made strategic use of its national connections. It retained German and Protestant connections, while serving as a formally French (...) broker between refugees or Protestant missionary organizations and the French colonial authority. Yet as looming independence seemed to threaten the position of Christian refugees, the ACO gradually entered the ‘colonial quadrillage’ through which France exerted guidance over voluntary organizations. (shrink)

Kaplan claims in Demonstratives that no operator may manipulate the context of evaluation of natural language indexicals. We show that this is not so. In fact, attitude reports always manipulate a context parameter (or, rather, a context variable). This is shown by (i) the existence of De Se readings of attitude reports in English (which Kaplan has no account for), and (ii) the existence of a variety of indexicals across languages whose point of evaluation can be shifted, but only in (...) attitude reports. We develop an alternative account within an extensional framework with overt quantification over times, worlds and contexts. Various typological facts are discussed, esp. the distinction between English, Amharic and Ewe pronouns, and that between English and Russian tenses. (shrink)

Dumézil’s trifunctional theory applied to the only grail plot in Chrétien de Troyes’ Conte du Graal proves to be neither faithful nor worthy of credit. Philological, historical, cultural, cognitive and narratological arguments raise critical objections and question its artificial character. In fact, the incidental episode of the grail functions as a narrative drawer in a plot belonging to the global tale ATU 910B (Good precepts) relating to the part of the work regarding Perceval.

As part of a recent attempt to extend the methods of formal semantics beyond language, it has been claimed that music has an abstract truth-conditional semantics, albeit one that has more in common with iconic semantics than with standard compositional semantics. After summarizing this approach and addressing a common objection, we argue that music semantics should be enriched in three directions by incorporating insights of other areas of Super Semantics. First, it has been claimed by Abusch 2013 that visual narratives (...) make use of discourse referents akin to those we find in language. We argue that a similar conclusion extends to music, and we highlight it by investigating ways in which orchestration and dance may make cross-referential dependencies more explicit. Second, we show that by bringing music semantics closer to the semantics of visual narratives, we can give an account of the semantics of mixed visual and musical sequences. Third, it has been claimed that co-speech gestures trigger characteristic conditionalized presuppositions, called ‘cosuppositions’, and that their semantic status derives from their parasitic character relative to words. We argue that the same conclusion extends to some instances of film and cartoon music: it may trigger cosuppositions that can be revealed by embedding film excerpts or gifs in sentences so as to test presupposition projection. We further argue that under special discourse conditions, pro-speech gestures and pro-speech music alike can trigger cosuppositions as well. These results suggest that new insights can be gained not just by extending the methods of semantics to new objects, but also by drawing new connections among them. (shrink)

This paper argues that besides mechanistic explanations, there is a kind of explanation that relies upon “topological” properties of systems in order to derive the explanandum as a consequence, and which does not consider mechanisms or causal processes. I first investigate topological explanations in the case of ecological research on the stability of ecosystems. Then I contrast them with mechanistic explanations, thereby distinguishing the kind of realization they involve from the realization relations entailed by mechanistic explanations, and explain how both (...) kinds of explanations may be articulated in practice. The second section, expanding on the case of ecological stability, considers the phenomenon of robustness at all levels of the biological hierarchy in order to show that topological explanations are indeed pervasive there. Reasons are suggested for this, in which “neutral network” explanations are singled out as a form of topological explanation that spans across many levels. Finally, I appeal to the distinction of explanatory regimes to cast light on a controversy in philosophy of biology, the issue of contingence in evolution, which is shown to essentially involve issues about realization. (shrink)

Institute for Biomedical Ethics, Geneva University Medical School * Corresponding author: Médecins Sans Frontières (OCG), rue de Lausanne 78, CH-1211 Geneva 21, Switzerland. Tel.: +41 (0)22 849 89 29; Fax: +41 (0)22 849 84 88; Email: philippe_calain{at}hotmail.com ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract Outbreaks of filovirus (Ebola and Marburg) hemorrhagic fevers in Africa are typically the theater of rescue activities involving international experts and agencies tasked with reinforcing national authorities in clinical management, biological diagnosis, sanitation, (...) public health surveillance and coordination. These outbreaks can be seen as a paradigm for ethical issues posed by epidemic emergencies, through the convergence of such themes as: isolation and quarantine, privacy and confidentiality and the interpretation of ethical norms across different ethnocultural settings. With an emphasis on the boundaries between public health investigations and research, this article reviews specific challenges, past practices and current normative documents relevant to the application of ethical standards in the course of outbreaks of filovirus hemorrhagic fevers. Aside from commonly identified issues of informed consent and institutional review processes, we argue for more clarity over the specification of which communities are expected to share benefits, and we advocate for the use of collective definitions of duty to care and standard of care. We propose new elaborations around existing normative instruments, and we suggest some pathways toward more comprehensive approaches to the ethics of research in outbreak situations. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

We develop a formal semantic analysis of the alarm calls used by Campbell’s monkeys in the Tai forest and on Tiwai island —two sites that differ in the main predators that the monkeys are exposed to. Building on data discussed in Ouattara et al. :e7808, 2009a; PNAS 106: 22026–22031, 2009b and Arnold et al., we argue that on both sites alarm calls include the roots krak and hok, which can optionally be affixed with -oo, a kind of attenuating suffix; in (...) addition, sentences can start with boom boom, which indicates that the context is not one of predation. In line with Arnold et al., we show that the meaning of the roots is not quite the same in Tai and on Tiwai: krak often functions as a leopard alarm call in Tai, but as a general alarm call on Tiwai. We develop models based on a compositional semantics in which concatenation is interpreted as conjunction, roots have lexical meanings, -oo is an attenuating suffix, and an all-purpose alarm parameter is raised with each individual call. The first model accounts for the difference between Tai and Tiwai by way of different lexical entries for krak. The second model gives the same underspecified entry to krak in both locations, but it makes use of a competition mechanism akin to scalar implicatures. In Tai, strengthening yields a meaning equivalent to non-aerial dangerous predator and turns out to single out leopards. On Tiwai, strengthening yields a nearly contradictory meaning due to the absence of ground predators, and only the unstrengthened meaning is used. (shrink)

The paper develops an objection to the extensional model of time consciousness—the view that temporally extended events or processes, and their temporal properties, can be directly perceived as such. Importantly, following James, advocates of the extensional model typically insist that whole experiences of temporal relations between non-simultaneous events are distinct from mere successions of their temporal parts. This means, presumably, that there ought to be some feature(s) differentiating the former from the latter. I try to show why the extensional models (...) offers no credible ground for positing such a difference. (shrink)

According to one productive and influential approach to cognition, categorization, object recognition, and higher level cognitive processes operate on a set of fixed features, which are the output of lower level perceptual processes. In many situations, however, it is the higher level cognitive process being executed that influences the lower level features that are created. Rather than viewing the repertoire of features as being fixed by low-level processes, we present a theory in which people create features to subserve the representation (...) and categorization of objects. Two types of category learning should be distinguished. Fixed space category learning occurs when new categorizations are representable with the available feature set. Flexible space category learning occurs when new categorizations cannot be represented with the features available. Whether fixed or flexible, learning depends on the featural contrasts and similarities between the new category to be represented and the individual's existing concepts. Fixed feature approaches face one of two problems with tasks that call for new features: If the fixed features are fairly high level and directly useful for categorization, then they will not be flexible enough to represent all objects that might be relevant for a new task. If the fixed features are small, subsymbolic fragments (such as pixels), then regularities at the level of the functional features required to accomplish categorizations will not be captured by these primitives. We present evidence of flexible perceptual changes arising from category learning and theoretical arguments for the importance of this flexibility. We describe conditions that promote feature creation and argue against interpreting them in terms of fixed features. Finally, we discuss the implications of functional features for object categorization, conceptual development, chunking, constructive induction, and formal models of dimensionality reduction. Key Words: concept learning; conceptual development; features; perceptual learning; stimulus encoding. (shrink)

This paper is based on the archives of Michel Foucault collected (since 2013) at the Manuscripts Department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. Our investigation focuses in particular on a complete manuscript, until now totally unknown and entitled ‘ Phénoménologie et psychologie’ (‘Phenomenology and Psychology’). This manuscript could be the first project for a thesis devoted to ‘The Notion of the “World” in Phenomenology’, written around 1953–4, at the same time as a manuscript on Binswanger and existential psychiatry (...) and as a manuscript on philosophical anthropology. We aim to show the importance that phenomenology seems to have held for Foucault at the beginning of the 1950s and in particular the role that it could have played in Foucault’s distancing himself from a naturalist psychology and a philosophy of consciousness to which he opposes a philosophy of the world, of being and of language. Foucault thus discovers a truth of the phenomenology which rests on the radicality of the transcendental gesture and on the access to an ontology gathering the being, the meaning and the language. (shrink)

This article examines what might constitute the first manifestation of consciousness in the life of an individual, focusing on the subjective starting state of newborns. It presents evidence showing that we are born with some minimal self-awareness, a kind of awareness that might even be present in foetuses depending on the criteria used. It investigates the mechanisms that might account for how self-awareness quickly evolves from being minimal and phenomenal in the context of sensation, perception, and action and discusses the (...) innate propensity of newborns to detect sameness in the experience of things that surround them. It identifies two putative mechanisms that would support an innate propensity to detect sameness: synesthesia and the vicariousness of experience. (shrink)

Potts (2005, 2007) has argued that expressives such as honky must be analyzed using an entirely new dimension of meaning. We explore a more conservative theory in which expressives are presuppositional expressions [Macià 2002] that are indexical and attitudinal (and sometimes shiftable): they predicate something of the mental state of the agent of the context (and this need not always be the agent of the actual context). Following Stalnaker’s recent work on informative presuppositions (2002), we argue that the presuppositions triggered (...) by expressives are automatically satisfied (= ’self-fulfilling’), hence the impression that they are not standard presupposition triggers. (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)

Self-recognition by 86 children was assessed using the mirror mark test in two different social contexts. In the classic mirror task condition, only the child was marked prior to mirror exposure . In the social norm condition, the child, experimenter, and accompanying parent were marked prior to the child’s mirror exposure . Results indicate that in both conditions children pass the test in comparable proportion, with the same increase as a function of age. However, in the Norm condition, children displayed (...) significantly more hesitation while removing the mark, often touching it without removing it or, if so, promptly putting the mark back onto their forehead. In the Classic condition, only one child showed such hesitation. These results suggest that from the outset, mirror self-recognition can refer to social awareness. This link is interpreted as the trademark of human self-consciousness, a deeply rooted “looking glass” self-awareness. (shrink)

This book aims to make the pragmatist intellectual framework accessible to organization and management scholars. It presents some fundamental concepts of Pragmatism, their potential application to the study of organizations and the resulting theoretical, methodological, and practical issues.

We want to highlight the strong link between learning systems such as deep learning neural networks and neutrosophy. The latter is above all a representation considering a neutral state which is at the heart of many phenomena of reality as well as mathematical and information theories. Here, we start from the recent understanding of neural networks, which considers their internal functioning and the learning that characterizes them as based on adapted representations (both of the information to be processed and of (...) the task to be performed) that are in fact optimal compressions. Compression means discriminating the similar and the different between cases by identifying representative characteristics through focusing on the most significant and rejecting of the rest. These three operations of neural processing, learning and compression owe their existence to non-linear treatments which essentially amount to distinguishing a neutral zone between two filtered zones, corresponding to the neutrosophical approach. (shrink)

We argue that a formal semantics for music can be developed, although it will be based on very different principles from linguistic semantics and will yield less precise inferences. Our framework has the following tenets: Music cognition is continuous with normal auditory cognition. In both cases, the semantic content derived from an auditory percept can be identified with the set of inferences it licenses on its causal sources, analyzed in appropriately abstract ways. What is special about music semantics is that (...) it aggregates inferences based on normal auditory cognition with further inferences drawn on the basis of the behavior of voices in tonal pitch space. This makes it possible to define an inferential semantics but also a truth-conditional semantics for music. In particular, a voice undergoing a musical movement m is true of an object undergoing a series of events e just in case there is a certain structure-preserving map between m and e. Aspects of musical syntax might be derivable on semantic grounds from an event mereology, which also explains some cases in which tree structures are inadequate for music. Intentions and emotions may be attributed at several levels, and we speculate on possible explanations of the special relation between music and emotions. (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)

Following a previous elaboration of the concept of weak individuality and some examples of its instances in ecology and biology, the article focuses on general features of the concept, arguing that in any ontological field individuals are understood on the basis of our knowledge of interactions, through the application of these general formulas for extracting individuals from interactions. Then, the specificities of the individuality in the sense of this weak concept are examined in ecology; I conclude by addressing the differences (...) between ecosystems and organisms as they appear in the viewpoint of such concept. (shrink)

Biological individuals are usually defined by evolutionists through a reference to natural selection. This article looks for a concept of individuality that would hold at the same time for organisms and for communities or ecosystems, the latter being unaffected by natural selection. In the wake of Simon’s notion of “quasi-independence,” I elaborate a concept of “weak individuality” defined by probabilistic connections between sub-entities, read off our knowledge of their interactions. This formal scheme of connections allows one to infer what are (...) the individuals in the domain addressed by the theory of the interactions. The article argues that if ecosystems do not have strong individuality, they still possess a weak individuality, ecological theories providing the values of the variables in the formula for individuality. (shrink)

A collection of essays investigating key historical and scientific questions relating to the concept of natural purpose in Kant's philosophy of biology.

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)

There are two main approaches to the problem of donkey anaphora (e.g. If John owns a donkey , he beats it ). Proponents of dynamic approaches take the pronoun to be a logical variable, but they revise the semantics of quantifiers so as to allow them to bind variables that are not within their syntactic scope. Older dynamic approaches took this measure to apply solely to existential quantifiers; recent dynamic approaches have extended it to all quantifiers. By contrast, proponents of (...) E-type analyses take the pronoun to have the semantics of a definite description (with it ≈ the donkey, or the donkey that John owns ). While competing accounts make very different claims about the patterns of coindexation that are found in the syntax, these are not morphologically realized in spoken languages. But they are in sign language, namely through locus assignment and pointing. We make two main claims on the basis of ASL and LSF data. First, sign language data favor dynamic over E-type theories: in those cases in which the two approaches make conflicting predictions about possible patterns of coindexation, dynamic analyses are at an advantage. Second, among dynamic theories, sign language data favor recent ones because the very same formal mechanism is used irrespective of the indefinite or non-indefinite nature of the antecedent. Going beyond this debate, we argue that dynamic theories should allow pronouns to be bound across negative expressions, as long as the pronoun is presupposed to have a non-empty denotation. Finally, an appendix displays and explains subtle differences between overt sign language pronouns and all other pronouns in examples involving ‘disjunctive antecedents’, and suggests that counterparts of sign language loci might be found in spoken language. (shrink)

Evolutionary theorists often talk as if natural selection were choosing the most adapted traits, or if organisms were deciding to do the most adaptive strategy. Moreover, the payoff of those decisions often depend on what others are doing, and since Hamilton (1964), biologists possess conceptual tools such as kin selection and inclusive fitness to make sense of outcomes of evolution in these contexts, even when they seem unadaptive (such as sterility). The link between selection and adaptation through which selection or (...) organisms can be seen as agents, as well as the scope and nature of Hamiltonian conceptions of social evolution, stimulated many formal elaborations (such as, initially, Fisher’s “Fundamental theorem of natural selection”), but also raise major philosophical issues about causation and statistics, and about rationality and adaptation or selection. Two recent philosophy books, Okasha’s Agents and goals in evolution, and Birch’s Philosophy of social evolution, tackle those question. This essay reflects on them in order to think of those two issues. After having reviewed the books, I try to sketch some philosophical lessons onto which they concur. (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)

Emotions are traditionally considered to be brief states that last for seconds or a few minutes at most. However, due to pioneering theoretical work of Frijda and recent empirical studies, it has become clear that the duration of emotions is actually highly variable with durations ranging from a few seconds to several hours, or even longer. We review research on determinants of emotion duration. Three classes of determinants are identified: features related to the (a) emotion-eliciting event (event duration and event (...) appraisal), (b) emotion itself (nature of the emotion component, nature of the emotion, and emotion intensity), and (c) emotion-experiencing person (dispositions and emotion regulatory actions). Initial evidence on the psychological and neural mechanisms that underlie their effects is discussed. (shrink)

L’ambiguïté qui existe entre l’interprétation du principe de différence par le maximin ou par le leximin est reconsidérée. Le maximin satisfait seulement le principe de Pareto-faible (x>y ssi chaque composante de x > la composante correspondante de y), tandis que le leximin satisfait le principe de Pareto-fort. À la différence du maximin, le leximin n’est pas représentable par des courbes d’indifférence. Dans la position originelle, le choix leximin l’emporterait sur le choix maximin ((2, 4) > (2,3)), qui semble plus proche (...) des formulations de Rawls. Plusieurs solutions de l’ambiguïté sont évoquées, notamment celle que propose Alain Boyer, qui consiste à distinguer le maximin et le principe de différence en précisant que le second est le premier couplé à une règle tierce, la minimisation de l’inégalité. Cette solution, qui s’appuie par ailleurs sur un raisonnement suspect de Rawls sur la possibilité de trouver un troisième vecteur en enlevant n au plus riche, ce qui semble présupposer, comme le fait Boyer, que l’existence du fisc redistributeur est reconnue comme une possibilité dans la position originelle, est jugée insuffisante, en ce qu’elle ne vaut que pour le cas de deux individus (même si Rawls parle de deux classes). On suggère d’utiliser, pour les cas où le nombre des individus ou des classes est >2, un critère tel que la variance. Mais cela s’avère toujours insuffisant, et non justifiable dans la position originelle, et l’on fait appel à la théorie de la décision proposée par Gilboa et Schmeidler (1989 ; 1997) pour suggérer, par exemple, que le choix juste à faire entre (1, 2, 3) et (0, 3, 3) se porte sur le second état (où le plus pauvre a moins que dans l’autre cas). Cette règle demeure cependant plus proche du maximin (généralisé) que du leximin, peut être rapprochée de ce que l’on appelle le prioritarisme, et peut donc conserver une coloration appréciablement rawlsienne. (shrink)

Les photos de ce portfolio ont été prises par Philippe Carta, Julien Goetz, Francis Guermann, Bernard Muscat et Michel Noirez. Projecteur et enrouleur 35 mm mobiles installés dans le vestibule de l’Opéra-Théâtre pour la projection de Moïse et Aaron – 24 mars 2011. Avant la projection de Moïse et Aaron, Jean-Marie Straub, debout face à l’écran de l’Opéra-Théâtre, vérifie la qualité de l’image et du son. François Narboni et Régine Palucci présentent Moïse et Aaron. A...

Kripke’s theory of truth succeeded in providing a trivalent semantics for a language that contains its own truth predicate and means of self-reference; but it did so by radically restricting the expressive power of the logic. In Kripke’s analysis, the Liar (e.g. This very sentence is not true) receives the indeterminate truth value; but the logic cannot express the fact that the Liar is something other than true: in order to do so, a weak negation not* would be needed, but (...) it would also make the logic inconsistent (because the ‘Super Liar’ This very sentence is not* true could not be assigned any truth value). Taking a hint from the quantificational form of the problematic sentences (… is something other than true), we define a hierarchy of negations which each quantifies over a domain of truth values, assimilated to ordinals. The resulting logic has as many negations and truth values as there are ordinals. Unlike Kripke’s logic, it enjoys a form of expressive completeness. And although the logic is not monotonic, we show that under broad conditions we can construct a variety of fixed points; one of them emulates Kripke’s ‘least fixed point’, while another one assigns a different truth value to each Super Liar. (shrink)

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the division between nature and culture has been fundamental to Western thought. In this groundbreaking work, renowned anthropologist Philippe Descola seeks to break down this divide, arguing for a departure from the anthropocentric model and its rigid dualistic conception of nature and culture as distinct phenomena. In its stead, Descola proposes a radical new worldview, in which beings and objects, human and nonhuman, are understood through the complex relationships that they possess with (...) one another. The Ecology of Others presents a compelling challenge to anthropologists, ecologists, and environmental studies scholars to rethink the way we conceive of humans, objects, and the environment. Thought-provoking and engagingly written, it will be required reading for all those interested in moving beyond the moving beyond the confines of this fascinating debate." --Publisher's note. (shrink)