We tested whether the E-Z Reader model can be generalised to the French language. The simulation showed that the model can account for the frequency effect. The predictability effect is moreover accurate for word skipping, but not for fixation times. We think that this model is psychologically plausible for certain aspects of reading and we have used it to evaluate the performance of dyslexic readers.

Readers, please welcome the new Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology editorial team of Senior Editors and our Managing Editor. We are grateful to keep our veteran Senior Editors Tim Thornton, Nancy Potter, Mona Gupta, and Werdie van Staden. However, we are equally grateful to have our new cohort of Senior editors, Awais Aftab, Anna Bergqvist, Derek Strijbos, and Michael Wong, revitalize our efforts. Many of you already know our efficient and capable Managing Editor, Sébastien Arviset, who has been with us for (...) several years now. This new influx of talent and energy we hope will invigorate the Journal and keep our editorial operations smooth and efficient. In alphabetical order, our editors can tell you a little... (shrink)

Arab countries; intellectual life; congresses.

I offer a principled objection to arguments in favour of legalizing non-voluntary euthanasia on the basis of the principle of beneficence. The objection is that the status of death as a benefit to people who cannot formulate a desire to die is more problematic than pain management care. I ground this objection on epistemic and political arguments. Namely, I argue that death is relatively more unknowable, and the benefits it confers more subjectively debatable, than pain management. I am not primarily (...) referring to the claim that it is difficult to make comparisons between live and post-mortem states, but rather to the fact that it is epistemically and metaphysically problematic to impute a “life-worse-than-death” or a state of “suffering-calling-for-death” to people who cannot subjectively wish to die, as though this kind of suffering were a medically observable fact rather than a belief- and value-laden notion. On the contrary, people enduring similar causes of pain may have different experiences of suffering and views on how it affects the worthwhileness of their existence or the desirability of death or of continuing their lives. The projection of a “suffering-calling-for-death” onto infants or people with severe intellectual disabilities may not be indefensible, but it is more controversial than judging that pain management will improve their well-being from the perspective of beneficence. My argument also relies on our society’s liberal endeavour to avoid endorsing unverifiable beliefs about life and death or controversial conceptions of the good life. My goal is not to suggest we should not attend the suffering of cognitively disabled people. On the contrary, I only cast doubt on too quick an assumption that ending their lives is the best way of caring for them, when robust palliative treatments are available. Moreover, I express the concern that a lack of attention to distinctions between “pain-calling-for-relief” and “suffering-calling-for-death” may be based on ableist projections and assumptions. I conclude that it is imperative to continue research into the nature of pain and suffering experienced by individuals with mental or cognitive impairments preventing them from expressing autonomous wishes about the kind of treatment that would most benefit them. (shrink)

The bells tolling on 9 May 1945 were heralding peace. The question remained: what kind of peace and for whom? Thousands of us marched on a trail for many kilometers, from Mährish-Ostrau eastward, like a silent accordion, sometimes extended, sometimes compressed, chased, not knowing where we were going. The voices of the bells echoed over our column and raised hopes from whose nonfulfillment countless people would perish, not being able to bear the disappointments of the new forthcoming peace. However, it (...) was all unknown to us, we did not even know where we were going. Yet we knew where we were coming from, from the cauldron that had continuously tightened over four weeks, and from which we had definitely failed to escape on 1 May. With a wounded soldier on my back, I laid down my gun. At that point, we didn’t know yet that the Americans would hand all the prisoners that had reached the redemptive West from Bohemia and Moravia back to the Russians. So this fight had been futile and every death in vain. The dead were still lying around in countless numbers. (shrink)

Through our three-way collaboration we sought to understand Gaia and its political implications from the bottom-up and from within. Here we introduce that view of Gaia and how the dialogue between a philosopher (Bruno), a scientist (Tim), and a historian and philosopher of science (Séb) turned into a research programme. This sets in context a previously unpublished piece by Latour: ‘There is nothing simple in a feedback loop – or why goal function is not the problem of Gaia’.

As a continuation of previous studies about the reception of Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ in al-Andalus, this paper argues that it was common among Andalusī scholars of the Middle Ages to credit the astronomer Maslama al-Majrīṭī not only with the authorship of Rutbat al-ḥakīm and Ghāyat al-ḥakīm – now both correctly ascribed to Maslama Ibn Qāsim al-Qurṭubī – but also with the entire encyclopaedic corpus of the Rasā’il. The first part of this article seeks to explain the series of successive confusions (...) by which these three works came to be identified as forming three steps of a philosophical ladder and how this trilogy then came to be attributed to the scientist al-Majrīṭī. The second part focuses on two biographical notes found on the title pages of two manuscripts of the as-yet-unedited Rutbat al-ḥakīm. In addition to providing supplementary evidence for the spread of this misconception among medieval scholars, these documents also offer valuable and sometimes unique information about the two Maslamas, their respective writings and entourages, as well as the widespread circulation of the Rasā’il across the Peninsula. The edition, translation and commentary of these two biographical notes are here provided for the first time. (shrink)

The scholars who claim that a "black hole" appeared in the history of our philosophy are obviously violating the truth. Evidently, what they are saying is that there was no philosophy of the kind that they would call philosophy. Such an approach does not fit any theoretico-method-ological paradigm. One must study the subject, bring it under critical analysis, not declare unequivocally that there was no such thing. For this reason, I would like by way of introduction to touch upon some (...) of the theoretico-methodological preconditions of an analysis of the phenomenon under study. (shrink)

The Lodz Film School has existed since 1948.... In the year of the school's jubilee, we decided to publish five selected MA theses written by Direction Department graduates. Three of th theses, written by Krzysztof Kieślowski, Marcel Łoziński and Wojciech Wiszniewski, concern documentary film, whereas the two remainingones written by Grzegorz Królikiewicz and Edward Żebrowski refer to fiction films.... Their authors, excellent Polish film-makers, presented their auteurs' concept they had at the beginning of their artistic careers which were carried out (...) and verified by them through their work on... subsequent film projects. We decided to combine those theses with five complementary essays in which film historians and theoreticians analyse these directors' films which followed in the course of their career in the context of the concepts described by the directors in their MA theses."--English section, page 6. (shrink)

صدر عن المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات كتاب "الشرعية الديمقراطية: من التعاقد إلى التواصل، هبرماس في مواجهة رولز"، ويسلط فيه مؤلفه، عبد العزيز ركح، الضوء على أنموذجين من الإتيقا العمومية، هما النظرية الليبرالية التعاقدية كما تجسدت حصرًا في أعمال جون رولز، والنظرية التداولية القائمة على أسس فلسفة التواصل وإتيقا الحوار كما يعرضها يورغن هبرماس، والمقترحان مشروعَا شرعنة سياسية للمسار الديمقراطي، مركزًا على إبراز أوجه اختلافهما وتشابههما، مفترضًا أن الخلاف الظاهر بينهما يُخفي في العمق تداخلًا وتشابهًا كبيرين؛ إذ يمكن القول إنهما (...) أنموذج واحد صيغ بطريقتين مختلفتين، نتيجة تباين البيئتين اللتين وُضِعا فيهما، واختلاف مرجعياتهما التاريخية والثقافية. (shrink)

Islamic ethics and Koranic teaching, aspects of Islam.

Jean-Daniel Causse | Résumé : « Moi, la vérité je parle ». Par cette formule, Jacques Lacan avait désigné cette vérité qui, du lieu de l’inconscient, prend la parole alors même que le sujet ne cesse de la refouler pour ne rien en savoir. Dans un premier temps, cet article met en lumière le statut que Lacan accorde à la question de la vérité dans la théorie psychanalytique. Si la vérité parle, y compris et peut-être surtout sous son envers, (...) elle est aussi marquée par une incomplétude structurelle qui lui donne paradoxalement sa puissance. Ce parcours permet alors, dans un second temps, de reprendre le problème de la vérité dans le christianisme et de la fonction du témoin. Ici, le motif pascal occupe une fonction centrale, car il désigne une vérité soustraite au savoir que le témoin a pour charge d’énoncer. Enfin, en dialogue avec le « Moi, la vérité je parle » de Lacan, on s’interroge sur le sens du « Je suis la vérité » que prononce le Christ selon l’Évangile de Jean. |: “I, truth, speak”. Saying this, Jacques Lacan pointed to the truth which, from the seat of the Unconscious, is speaking, even though the subject keeps repressing it in order to know nothing of it. This article first highlights the status of the question of truth in psychoanalytic theory according to Lacan : if truth speaks, including and especially as its own reverse, it is also stamped with a structural incompleteness which gives it, paradoxically, its potency. We then, in a second part, question anew the problem of truth in Christianity and the function of the witness. The paschal motif is here central, as it points to a truth removed from the knowledge which the witness is responsible for sharing. In a third movement, we shall question the meaning of “I am the truth” as uttered by Christ according to John’s Gospel, in dialogue with “I, truth, speak”. (shrink)

Scientific realists with traditional semantic inclinations are often pressed to explain away the distinguished series of referential failures that seem to plague our best past science. As recent debates make it particularly vivid, a central challenge is to find a reliable and principled way to assess referential success at the time a theory is still a live concern. In this paper, I argue that this is best done in the case of physics by examining whether the putative referent of a (...) term is specifiable within the limited domain delineated by the range of parameters over which the theory at stake is empirically accurate. I first implement this selective principle into a general account of reference, building on Stathis Psillos's works. Then, I show that this account offers a remarkably reliable basis to assess referential success before theory change in the case of effective theories. Finally, I briefly show that this account still works well with other physical examples and explain how it helps us to handle problematic cases in the history of physical sciences. (shrink)

Renormalisation Group (RG) methods are one of the theoretical masterpieces of postwar physics whose historical development still remains largely unexplored. This article traces the origins of Kenneth Wilson's RG from 1956 to 1965, with a particular focus on its relationship to Murray Gell-Mann and Francis Low's RG published in 1954. I argue that there is ultimately little methodological and conceptual continuity between their respective versions. The article briefly concludes with the evolution of the Wilsonian RG from 1965 to the early (...) 1970s. (shrink)

Clower, Jason: The Unlikely Buddhologist, Tiantai Buddhism in M ou Zongsan’s New Confucianism Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11712-011-9261-y Authors Sébastien Billioud, Univ Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité. UFR LCAO/East Asian Studies Department, Case 7009, 16 rue Marguerite Duras, 75205 Paris Cedex 13 Paris, France Journal Dao Online ISSN 1569-7274 Print ISSN 1540-3009.

Appartenant au registre du symbolique, la loi ne se confond nullement avec une série d’interdictions morales. Elle a pour fonction d’interdire l’accès à une complétude toujours fantasmatique de soi-même. Le récit de la Genèse met cela en scène avec l’arbre interdit, situé au centre du jardin. L’apôtre Paul y fait écho pour interpréter le drame de l’être humain qui se rêve à la source de lui-même. La loi n’est plus alors une instance qui inscrit chacun dans sa propre humanité, mais (...) elle devient l’impératif de devoir se mesurer à des figures idéalisées de soi-même. Le concept de « loi » se caractérise ainsi par une certaine ambivalence qu’il convient d’analyser dans un rapport critique à une compréhension de l’autonomie qui entend par « sujet » l’individu auto-fondé. Posant le problème d’une obéissance à la loi, qui paradoxalement peut exclure le sujet au lieu de le requérir, l’auteur relève les conditions de possibilité d’un authentique sujet de l’acte. (shrink)

Dans la crise mondiale, écologique et économique, sociale et politique que nous traversons, la coexistence juste et pacifique des hommes devient un enjeu crucial. L'ampleur des crimes commis au XXe siècle pourrait laisser sceptique quant à notre capacité à relever un tel défi. Pourtant, ce même siècle a vu surgir un recours nouveau : le pardon. Jusque-là privilège de la conscience religieuse individuelle, il s'est invité au plan politique, avec succès. Depuis 1950 en effet, de nombreux pays ont recouru au (...) pardon pour constituer un espace politique durable là où des violences destructrices avaient dominé. Trois cas attirent l'attention : l'Europe, les Commissions vérité et réconciliation et les instances juridiques internationales. Les contours d'un pardon politique se dessinent. En retour se pose la question de sa réception par chacun. La phénoménologie est convoquée : elle conduit à une distinction radicale entre coupables et victimes, privilégiant parmi elles les plus fragiles. L'herméneutique prend alors le relai d'une anthropologie devenue aporétique, esquissant avec le pardon, le geste par lequel l'homme advient. Dans ce parcours, Paul Ricoeur, interlocuteur privilégié, sera rejoint par d'autres : Jean Monnet, Maïti Girtanner, Hannah Arendt ou Simon Wiesenthal. (shrink)

Selon une formule célèbre d?Alfred Schütz, les constructions des sciences sociales doivent être considérées et élaborées comme « des constructions du second degré, c?est-à-dire des constructions de constructions faites par les acteurs sur la scène sociale 1 ». C?est la spécificité épistémo­logique qui découle de cette position que le présent texte voudrait tenter de ressaisir. Pour ce faire nous repartirons d?abord du projet phénoménologique qui est celui de Schütz ? celui d?une phénoménologie non transcendantale du monde de la vie ? (...) puisqu?il n?est pas sans conséquences, et détermine même directement ses positions épistémo­logiques et méthodologiques. Une phénoménologie de l?attitude naturelle Dès son premier ouvrage (le seul publié de son vivant), Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (1932) 2 , Schütz montre qu?une analyse phénoménologique du monde social passe par le renoncement à la posture transcendantale. L?objectif de Schütz est de décrire la structure de la Lebenswelt , du monde-de-la-vie, en tant qu?elle est expérimentée par des hommes dans leur attitude naturelle : « par des hommes, c?est-à-dire, par des hommes qui sont nés dans ce monde socioculturel, qui doivent y définir leurs attitudes, et doivent les réaliser 3 ». Pour l?homme qui vit dans l?attitude naturelle, le monde est d?emblée intersubjectif, pratique, pragmatique. En outre, Schütz indique qu?en portant. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 212 Seiten: 155-178.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder frequently associated with immoral behaviors. Previous behavioral studies on the influence of psychopathy on moral decision have yielded contradictory results, possibly because they focused either on judgment (abstract evaluation) or on choice of hypothetical action, two processes that may rely on different mechanisms. In this study, we explored the influence of the level of psychopathic traits on judgment and choice of hypothetical action during moral dilemma evaluation. A population of 102 students completed a questionnaire with (...) ten moral dilemmas and nine non-moral dilemmas. The task included questions targeting both judgment (“Is it acceptable to … in order to …?”) and choice of hypothetical action (“Would you … in order to …?”). The level of psychopathic traits of each participant was evaluated with the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy (LSRP) scale. Logistic regression fitted with the generalized estimating equations method analyses were conducted using responses to the judgment and choice tasks as the dependent variables and psychopathy scores as predictor. Results show that a high level of psychopathic traits, and more specifically those related to affective deficit, predicted a greater proportion of utilitarian responses for the choice but not for the judgment question. There was no first-order interaction between the level of psychopathic traits and other potential predictors. The relation between a high level of psychopathic traits and increased utilitarianism in choice of action but not in moral judgment may explain the contradictory results of previous studies where these two processes were not contrasted. It also gives further support to the hypothesis that choice of action endorsement and abstract judgment during moral dilemma evaluation are partially distinct neural and psychological processes. We propose that this distinction should be better taken into account in the evaluation of psychopathic behaviors. (shrink)

Whether unconscious stimuli can modulate the preparation of a cognitive task is still controversial. Using a backward masking paradigm, we investigated whether the modulation could be observed even if the prime was made unconscious in 100% of the trials. In two behavioral experiments, subjects were instructed to initiate a phonological or semantic task on an upcoming word, following an explicit instruction and an unconscious prime. When the SOA between prime and instruction was sufficiently long , primes congruent with the task (...) set instruction led to speedier responses than incongruent primes. In the other condition , no task set priming was observed. Repetition priming had the opposite tendency, suggesting the observed task set facilitation cannot be ascribed solely to perceptual repetition priming. Our results therefore confirm that unconscious information can modulate cognitive control for currently active task sets, providing sufficient time is available before the conscious decision. (shrink)