La définition platonicienne du philosophe; la philosophie comme mode de vie; rupture et continuité, le Moyen Age et les temps modernes. [SDM].

" Faire d'Aristote un Aufklârer serait méconnaître ce qu'il y a en lui de religiosité authentique, cette intuition de la transcendance et du chorismos, qui sont la raison profonde de sa prudence spéculative. Faire d'Aristote un tragique serait méconnaître cette confiance en l'homme, en sa recherche et en son action, qui tranche sur les lamentations du chœur de la tragédie et sur une certaine résignation socratique et, avant la lettre, stoïcienne. Mais Aristote exalte l'homme sans le diviniser ; il en (...) fait le centre de son éthique, mais il sait que l'éthique n'est pas ce qu'il y a de plus haut, que Dieu est au-delà des catégories éthiques, ou plutôt que l'éthique se constitue dans la distance qui sépare l'homme de Dieu. Livré à ses seules forces par un Dieu trop lointain, qui est suffisamment visible pour être désiré, mais se tient trop à distance pour être possédé, l'homme est en butte, dans la région du monde qu'il habite, à un hasard qu'il ne peut entièrement dominer. Ou plutôt la vie de l'homme se meut entre deux hasards : le Hasard fondamental de la naissance, qui fait que la bonne nature n'est pas également partagée ; le hasard résiduel de l'action, qui fait que les résultats ne sont jamais tout à fait prévisibles. Mais le hasard de la naissance est le hasard résiduel de l'action divine, et la grandeur de l'homme consiste, en prolongeant par la prudence l'action d'une Providence défaillante, à reculer le plus possible les limites de l'imprévisible et de l'inhumain. " Pierre Aubenque. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that distinguishing ‘evolutionary’ from ‘Darwinian’ medicine will help us assess the variety of roles that evolutionary explanations can play in a number of medical contexts. Because the boundaries of evolutionary and Darwinian medicine overlap to some extent, however, they are best described as distinct ‘research traditions’ rather than as competing paradigms. But while evolu- tionary medicine does not stand out as a new scientific field of its own, Darwinian medicine is united by a number of (...) distinctive theoretical and methodological claims. For example, evolutionary medicine and Darwinian medicine can be distinguished with respect to the styles of evolutionary explanations they employ. While the former primarily involves ‘forward looking’ explanations, the latter depends mostly on ‘backward looking’ explanations. A forward looking explanation tries to predict the effects of ongoing evolutionary processes on human health and disease in contem- porary environments (e.g., hospitals). In contrast, a backward looking explanation typically applies evolutionary principles from the vantage point of humans’ distant biological past in order to assess present states of health and disease. Both approaches, however, are concerned with the prevention and control of human diseases. In con- clusion, I raise some concerns about the claim that ‘nothing in medicine makes sense except in the light of evolution’. (shrink)

In a paper published in Psychological Review, Tyler Burge has offered a unified non-mentalistic account of a wide range of social cognitive developmental findings. His proposal is that far from attributing mental states, young children attribute to humans the same kind of internal generic states of sensory registration that biologists attribute to e.g. snails and ticks. Burge’s proposal deserves close attention: it is especially challenging because it departs from both the mentalistic and all the non-mentalistic accounts of the data so (...) far. Moreover Burge has been one of the leading philosophers of mind of the past 40 years and some of his writings on the objectivity of perception display a deep understanding of the relevance of science for sharpening our understanding of the mind. After taking a close look at the developmental evidence, in particular at false-belief studies, I argue that Burge’s, 409–434, 2018) account faces severe obstacles. To give one telling example: if young children can only attribute to others sensory registrations, then it is hard to explain the evidence showing that they respond differently to an agent’s ignorance and to her false belief. (shrink)

In a recently published paper, we argued that theories of cultural evolution can gain explanatory power by being more pluralistic. In his reply to it, Dennett agreed that more pluralism is needed. Our paper’s main point was to urge cultural evolutionists to get their hands dirty by describing the fine details of cultural products and by striving to offer detailed and, when explanatory, varied algorithms or mechanisms to account for them. While Dennett’s latest work on cultural evolution does marvelously well (...) on the first point, it has only whet our appetite on the second. Accordingly, the present paper aims to show what an evolutionary explanation of culture that takes the variety of cultural evolution mechanisms seriously would look like. We will focus on the cultural evolution of social epistemic mechanisms and we will propose that Darwinian algorithms should be complemented with a cultural analogue of the error reduction mechanism proposed to account for human cognition, with a particular emphasis on the necessity to build independencies between different sub-systems in charge of tracking states of the world. To illustrate our point, we will present how the evolution of the legal system as epistemic systems can be understood as a process of building increasingly better independencies and how various criticisms of the actual legal system calls for building even more of them. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Hippocrates With and Against Philosophy Alexandrian Medicine and the Hellenistic Philosophical Schools The Theoretical Audacity of the Medical Schools Medicine and Skepticism Ethics and Medicine Bibliography.

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 was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. 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. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. 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)

Gaining momentum during the last third of the twentieth century, the philosophy of biology is now a distinct field with its own debates, journals, audiences, and professional societies. This professionalization came along with the forging of an intellectual identity based on the existence of disciplinary frontiers that demarcated philosophy of biology from neighboring disciplines such as philosophy of medicine, history of biology, or general philosophy of science. Here, I argue that the identity of this emerging philosophy of biology also excluded (...) Continental traditions often called “biological philosophy” or “historical epistemology of the life sciences”. Going back to the 60s and 70s, I explore the emergence of the philosophy of biology at a time when its identity was still in flux and its analytic orientation debated. To do so, I focus primarily on the works of David Hull and Marjorie Grene, and I draw on their unpublished correspondence. Although Grene’s intellectual contribution to the philosophy of biology has been widely acknowledged, her coming from a different philosophical universe created tensions with the identity Hull and others sought to establish. Overall, this chapter raises a question about the historical conditions that make fields such as the philosophy of biology possible, and calls attention to the exclusions that permeated the philosophy of biology from its inception and what this involves in terms of the proper relation between philosophy and science, especially biology. (shrink)

We show that if κ is an infinite successor cardinal, and λ > κ a cardinal of cofinality less than κ satisfying certain conditions, then no ideal on Pκ is weakly λ+-saturated. © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Les émotions ont un rôle important dans nos interactions sociales. Sans émotions, nous avons du mal à faire des choix. Quand notre environnement déçoit nos attentes de manière répétée, nos émotions nous signalent qu'il serait rationnel de changer nos attentes, c'est-à-dire de procéder à des révisions. Le partage des émotions, qui est la clé de notre sentiment d'appartenance à une communauté, nous amène à révéler nos valeurs, parce qu'il permet de résister face à un monde décevant. Si même une fois (...) révisées nos croyances, nos émotions se maintiennent, elles manifestent alors des attentes bien enracinées, qui sont nos valeurs réelles. Pour étudier les valeurs collectives, il faut donc étudier les émotions, la manière dont elles incitent à des révisions, et comment leur partage collectif renforce nos résistances. La rationalité morale s'appuie sur les émotions. Celles-ci sont sensibles aux détails des situations, et cette rationalité dépend des contextes, si bien qu'elle propose des arguments qui restent révisables quand le contexte change. Ne résistent à toute révision que nos sentiments d'injustice. L'originalité de ce livre est donc d'étudier les émotions et les valeurs, individuelles et collectives, dans la dynamique de leurs changements, de leurs révisions et de leurs résistances, et d'utiliser ce lien entre émotions et révisions pour mieux définir la spécificité d'une rationalité morale. (shrink)

The article is an instructive exposition of the central problem of scholastic metaphysics, namely: the problem of analogia entis. The author sees the origin of this idea in a historical development, which began with late neoplatonism, continued with Arabic philosophy and ended with medieval authors, especially S. Thomas Aquinas.

Ένα δεύτερο αντίτυπο της επιγραφής που αναφέρει ένα ιερό του Τίτου και της Αφροδίτης και μια κεφαλή αγάλματος, που αποδίδεται στην Αφροδίτη και χρονολογείται στα μέσα του 2ου αι. π. Χ., ανακαλύφθηκαν σε απόσταση 25 μ και 15 μ αντιστοίχως από τη βόρεια πύλη της κάτω πόλης της Αμαθούντος. Το καινούριο κείμενο επιτρέπει μια βέβαιη νέα ανάγνωση της παλιάς επιγραφής και τεκμηριώνει την ύπαρξη ενός ιερού, που ονομαζόταν «εντός των στηλών». Η έκφραση αυτή σημαίνει πιθανώς ότι τα όρια του ιερού (...) καθορίζονταν από στήλες, καθώς και ότι οι επιγραφές χαράχτηκαν σε αυτές ακριβώς τις στήλες, που οροθετούσαν το ιερό. Το νέο κείμενο στρέφει ξανά το ενδιαφέρον των μελετητών στο Λ. Βρούττιο Μάξιμο και στην αυτοκρατορική λατρεία. Η μικρή απόσταση ανάμεσα στα δύο ευρήματα μας παροτρύνει να αναζητήσουμε κοντά στον τόπο εύρεσής τους ένα ιερό της θεάς, το οποίο ίσως διαδέχθηκε, το 79/80 μ.Χ., έναν ιερό τόπο του 2ου αι. π.Χ. (shrink)

Une inscription découverte près de l'agora d'Amathonte présente de multiples intérêts. Elle mentionne au moins quatre groupes de 30 lots de terre chacun, des noms de lieux-dits de la campagne environnante, qui ont laissé des traces dans la toponymie contemporaine, et des anthroponymes. Une étude comparative montre qu'il s''agit de la revente de lots clérouchiques attribués, sans doute après 153 av.n.è., par Ptolémée VI à ses marins ou soldats (le triakontorion et la triakas ont un équipage ou un effectif de (...) trente hommes), qui s'étaient opposés victorieusement à une attaque de l'île par son frère, Ptolémée VIII Physcon. La revente, acte politique grave et exceptionnel, a sans doute été le fruit de la vengeance de Ptolémée VIII, qui accède au pouvoir sur l'île et à Alexandrie en 145, après la mort de son frère. La numérotation des lots, exceptionnelle elle aussi, suppose l'archivage, sans doute dans un temple, non seulement des registres habituels, mais aussi d'un document cadastral graphique, qui préfigure, mieux que les cadastres romains à abscisses et ordonnées, nos cadastres modernes. (shrink)

A fresh look at Aristotle's political theory with attention to the resonance of his thought for contemporary concerns.

Criticisms and rejections of representationalism are increasingly popular in 4E cognitive science, and especially in radical enactivism. But by overfocusing our attention on the debate between radical enactivism and classical representationalism, we might miss the woods for the trees, in at least two respects: first, by neglecting the relevance of other theoretical alternatives about representationalism in cognitive science; and second by not seeing how much REC and classical representationalism are in agreement concerning basic and problematic issues dealing with mental content (...) and intentionality. In order to expand and exemplify these ideas, this paper presents two heterodox positions on intentionality and on the relations between content and representation. Special attention is paid to the way REC is rejecting these positions: I argue that this rejection reveals common assumptions with classical representationalism, but also undermines the coherence of REC’s conception of intentionality. (shrink)

La fouille d’une citerne presque contiguë à la muraille Nord d’Amathonte a fourni une cruche en bronze et une tablette magique en plomb. La cruche, dénommée aporrusikeus, mot inconnu jusqu’à présent, est dédiée à Hélios Adonis, le 29 août 18 av.n.è. ou plutôt 18 de n.è., par Onésicratès, fils d’Acchaios. C’est le premier document archéologique qui vienne à l’appui d’un passage de Pausanias mentionnant un tel culte à Amathonte. Unique à Chypre en général, il témoigne de la diffusion, sous l’impulsion (...) lagide, d’un culte sans doute originaire de Byblos, qui constitue une préfiguration du syncrétisme solaire en vogue croissante sous l’Empire romain. La tabella defixionis est l’un des rares témoignages sur la magie du VIIIIe siècle de n.è. Elle se distingue des textes amathousiens du IIIe siècle par son laconisme, l’absence de référence à des divinités infernales et surtout par la figuration originale du personnage que l’on souhaite frappé d’une punition originale. Elle contribue elle aussi à notre connaissance de la langue grecque, avec trois mots nouveaux. (shrink)

David Miller est un intellectuel de gauche britannique bien connu pour ses nombreuses et importantes publications en philosophie politique et son dernier ouvrage, Principles of Social Justice, était attendu avec impatienceDans cet ouvrage, Miller propose des principes généraux de justice sociale devant guider l’organisation des principales institutions de la société ainsi qu’une justification élaborée de ces principes. C’est ce qu’on peut appeler, à l’instar de Miller, une théorie de la justice sociale. La théorie est ambitieuse, traite des principaux aspects de (...) l’organisation de la société et contient des remarques intéressantes sur les difficultés du maintien des services sociaux et des paiements de transfert dans le contexte de la mondialisation et du multiculturalisme. L’auteur prétend que ce qui caractérise sa théorie est un plus grand souci du contexte d’application de la justice ainsi qu’une considération plus systématique des opinions des gens ordinaires. (shrink)

This is a paper about how we relate to institutions. Its aim is two-fold: accounting for what it is to ‘trust an institution’, and cashing out the right attitude to have towards public institutions. The descriptive account shows that ‘trusting institutions’ is a complex and ambivalent phenomenon, which oscillates between proper trust (as a two-place relation) and mere reliance, depending on the social function of the institution at hand. The normative proposal highlights the merit of a liberal form of trust (...) in public institutions, as opposed to totalitarian and libertarian attitudes. To do this, the paper, reviewing a large set of public and private institutions, focuses on two cases, healthcare and educational institutions. (shrink)

A meridional American space, a brief history, a rapid rythm of change and finally a specific time element, these are perhaps the fundamental elements of American history. These fundamental elements determine a conjucture. America entered the mainstream of history rather late. But America has more than fully made up for this because events and economic factors, which take place there, have an amazing ability to stamp by their shifts and changes the worldwide resultant of all specific conjunctures. To the extent (...) that, almost everywhere, the rythm of a worldwide conjuncture can be felt, whose peaks and troughs impose themselves on men and have to be forcibly taken into account by all strategies, this conjuncture, ever since America took her place in history, has borne the imprint of America. One is tempted to write that it is American. (shrink)

Among the many subjects that come within the range of social anthropology, the one dealt with in this article may at first glance seem the remotest from the border area between biology and social anthropology, the least apt “to reveal a basic problem of bio-anthropology.” Is not the realm of myth that of those incorporeal beings called gods? A realm where the laws of matter and of life are abolished? The one in which thought takes seemingly unrestricted flight and shows (...) itself capable of begetting worlds, monsters, stories without visible root in reality?But the same might be said about dreams; and the detour via dreams may bring us a glimpse of an unexpected shortcut. It is now known that sleep devoid of dreams is not restorative; if one is waked at the outset of the phase in which dreaming occurs, intolerance in both animals and humans is very rapid, and experiments upon animals have shown that this deprivation, if prolonged, can be a cause of death. Hence from the standpoint of survival, dreaming is quite as necessary as sleeping. Now, certain characteristics of myths, characteristics through which they are related to dreams, lead us to wonder whether they are not indispensable to the smooth functioning of waking thought as are dreams with respect to sleep. (shrink)

Research into the psychological characteristics of a people in the context of its so-called literary production has been frequently criticized, and not without good reason. In an article published in the Revue de Psychologie des peuples, Mr. Brossaud of the Center for the Study of Civilizations at Nanterre—a department under the direction of Professor Guy Michaud—has emphasized the difficulties presented by the literary approach in the field of ethno-psychology. If the ethno-psychologist demonstrates a certain suspicion towards anything that does not (...) represent pure ethno-psychology, this is because the interest of a poem or a play is essentially of an aesthetic nature. It would certainly be a perilous task to look for the characteristics of the French mentality, for example, in the literary works of contemporary France. (shrink)

This paper shows that the Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt test of locality of correlations which was originally designed to be used with binary observables can actually be used for any couples of quantum-like bounded continuous observables, and then for any experimental situation describable within the mathematical framework of quantum theory.

RESUMEN El artículo examina el consuelo como una cuestión filosófica en cuanto que concreción de la solicitud, y muestra los recursos que aporta para comprender al ser humano como sujeto sufriente y respondiente. Se analiza el consuelo en cuanto que fenómeno de acceso a otras dimensiones constitutivas del ser humano, como la afectividad, la apelación y el cuidado. ABSTRACT The article examines consolation as a philosophical issue insofar as it is a materialization of attentiveness, and explains the resources it offers (...) to understand human beings as suffering and caring subjects. It analyzes consolation as a phenomenon that provides access to other constitutive dimensions of the human being, such as affectivity, appeal, and care. (shrink)