This first book in English by Serge-Christophe Kolm provides an overview of his far-reaching vision of distributive justice. Kolm derives justice from considerations of rationality.

This article explores the “fair trial” as a good practice for the construction of public proof. If proof signifies closure on matter at hand, and publicness is taken to signify both “access to” and “participation in” the construction of proof by the publics concerned, the authors contend that the “fair trial” is a good example of building public proof and that its backbone constraints can be of great interest to the defenders and advocates of participative Technology Assessment, especially citizens' juries.

In international relations, reciprocity means a phenomenon based on international law that maintains equality, continuity, and stability of cooperation between states. Most of the time, the logic of contract and rationalist perspectives prevail to deal with it. Nevertheless, reciprocity does not exclusively embody a contractual mechanism that aims at a symmetrical balance between two partners. Marcel Mauss was one of the first sociologists to observe the existence of group cohesion when studying reciprocity in his gift-giving model. Beyond a dual relationship, (...) Mauss unveils an intergenerational solidarity that he calls “alternating and indirect reciprocity.” Implicitly, this refers to chains of reciprocity developed earlier by Malinowski. Yet, it enriches the notion by also including intergenerational links. This article proposes to extend the Maussian framework to the international level because sociology is not limited by borders of national societies as Mauss underlined himself. International chains of... (shrink)

La 4e de couverture indique : "Une nouvelle forme de relations internationales se dessine : un mouvement favorable à l'unité politique du monde en tant qu'aboutissement logique de l'histoire universelle. Il rompt avec les mécanismes classiques d'attraction entre les États, fondés sur la polarisation stratégique ou la séduction culturelle. Comment ce mouvement peut-il se traduire en institutions? Quelles finalités peuvent-elles leur être associées : la justice, les droits de l'homme, la paix, la république? Comment les familles de pensée politique se (...) positionnent-elles face à ce phénomène « d'attraction mondiale » qui bouleverse la façon de concevoir l’humanité dans la mondialisation. L’auteur distingue trois perspectives : celle des cosmopolitismes qui accompagnent cette attraction ; celle des pluralismes qui contestent à la fois son existence et sa pertinence, et celle des conceptions alternatives ou non occidentales qui favorisent des approches en termes de milieu. En présentant de manière didactique les controverses que soulève l’idée d’un « État universel » et les lignes de faille que creusent ces controverses au sein des grands courants contemporains, cet ouvrage se veut une introduction à la philosophie politique des relations internationales.". (shrink)

On présente trop souvent Spinoza comme le créateur de l'un des systèmes conceptuels les plus arides de l'histoire de la pensée. Loin d'être un système de plus, il s'agit en fait d'un itinéraire existentiel, de l'effort d'un homme pour se libérer du malheur, de l'ignorance, de la souffrance, lot de tout homme venant en ce monde. Pour sortir de ce bourbier où la vie s'enlise, il faut prendre la décision ferme d'y voir enfin clair sur la nature des biens que (...) nous aimons et auxquels nou nous attachons car il y va de notre bonheur et de notre malheux. Pour y parvenir, 'il convient d'abord de trouver un moyen de guérir l'entendement' et de se consacrer entièrement à la mise en œuvre de cette guérison de soi. Ces pages, nées d'une libre méditation, ont pour seul but d'attirer l'attention sur un aspect de l'œuvre et de la vie d'un homme qui fut un Sage, et don't la voix demeure aussi vivante qu'au jour où elle s'éleva pour la première fois"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Dans cette interview, Birgitta Orfali interroge Serge Moscovici sur la spécificité du regard psychosocial afin de souligner l'importance, non de théories ou de concepts disciplinaires, mais d'un regard qui permet d'appréhender à la fois l'originalité de la psychologie sociale et son impact sur des domaines autres que seulement scientifiques.

Le « néolibéralisme » français est né dans les années 1930, plus précisément lors du Colloque Walter Lippmann de 1938 organisé par le philosophe Louis Rougier, dans le contexte de l’imminence de la guerre. L’objectif de cet article est de comprendre comment, face à la menace totalitaire, la pensée néolibérale française de cette période a conçu la démocratie. On comparera pour ce faire les conceptions de deux fondateurs de ce courant : celle de Rougier, qui préférait parler de « libéralisme (...) constructeur », et celle de Louis Marlio, qui parlait de « libéralisme social ». Ces deux expressions sont-elles équivalentes et sont-elles sous-tendues par une même conception de la démocratie? (shrink)

This paper investigates the ethical implications of research at the interface between biodiversity and both human and animal health. Health and sanitary crises often lead to ethical debates, especially when it comes to disruptive interventions such as forced vaccinations, quarantine, or mass culling of domestic or wild animals. In such debates, the emergence of a “Planetary health ethics” can be highlighted. Ethics and accountability principles apply to all aspects of scientific research including its technological and engineering applications, regardless of whether (...) they are considered “hard sciences”, such as state-of-the-art technology in the fields of medicine, veterinary medicine, agronomy, or environment, or “soft”, such as local or global governance, health, socio-ecosystems, and the environment. Ethical reflection in the interdisciplinary field of biodiversity and health requires the examination of relevant scientific domains, such as biology, ecology, evolution, human medicine, animal medicine, anthropology, and law, and their epistemology and representation as well as scientific pluralism, which is crucial to establish genuine interdisciplinarity. Navigating the ethics-scape necessitates going beyond the hierarchy of science by recognising that scientific knowledge has implications for both scientific and non-scientific perspectives on the study of nature. The example of a Nipah virus outbreak is used to illustrate how the so-called “modern epidemiological” approach often focuses on risk factors associated with individual behavioural characteristics or collective practices, whereas the so-called “eco-social” approach focuses on global, socio-economic, and environmental factors that are the contextual causes of the health problem affecting the community. “Modern epidemiologists” aim to “correct” individual or practice factors using a “minimal set” of ethics, whereas “eco-social” scientists have to act systemically, which requires integrated research that acknowledges scientific pluralism, avoids the hierarchy of sciences, but accepts the pluralism of ethics and values. (shrink)

This article aims to define the scope of theology in the multidisciplinary work of Fernand Dumont. Building on Dumont’s intellectual self-definition as a philosopher with no object, the main purpose here is to show that Dumont’s theology remains inseparable, theoretically and practically, from a fundamental reflection on the unpredictable future of culture in our time.

In this article we study the work and communication practices of two highly connected organizations, the members of which have all access to instant messaging on a professional basis. We document the development of a communicational genre, that of ‘quick questions’, and analyze the sequence organization of such IM conversation threads. We show how ‘quick questions’ enable the collaborative accomplishment of complex, knowledge-intensive tasks by recruiting colleagues constituted as experts capable of quickly answering information requests related to ongoing tasks. ‘Quick (...) questions’ articulate communicative practices, ‘strong’ distribution of tasks and ‘organizing’ in highly connected organizations. We argue that they enact a distinctive cognitive and moral economy based on minimal forms of interaction and exchanges, constituting a more general phenomenon. (shrink)

The recent trend in cognitive robotics experiments on language learning, symbol grounding, and related issues necessarily entails a reduction of sensorimotor aspects from those provided by a human body to those that can be realized in machines, limiting robotic models of symbol grounding in this respect. Here, we argue that there is a need for modeling work in this domain to explicitly take into account the richer human embodiment even for concrete concepts that prima facie relate merely to simple actions, (...) and illustrate this using distributional methods from computational linguistics which allow us to investigate grounding of concepts based on their actual usage. We also argue that these techniques have applications in theories and models of grounding, particularly in machine implementations thereof. Similarly, considering the grounding of concepts in human terms may be of benefit to future work in computational linguistics, in particular in going beyond “grounding” concepts in the textual modality alone. Overall, we highlight the overall potential for a mutually beneficial relationship between the two fields. (shrink)

While philosophers have, for centuries, pondered upon the relation between mind and brain, neuroscientists have only recently been able to explore the connection analytically — to peer inside the black box. This ability stems from recent advances in technology and emerging neuroimaging modalities. It is now possible not only to produce remarkably detailed images of the brain’s structure (i.e. anatomical imaging) but also to capture images of the physiology associated with mental processes (i.e. functional imaging). We are able to see (...) how specific regions of the brain ‘light up’ when activities such as reading this book are performed, and how our neurons and their elaborate cast of supporting cells organize and coordinate their tasks. As demonstrated in the other chapters of this book, the mapping of the human mind (mostly by measuring regional changes in blood flow, initially by positron emission tomography (PET) and recently by functional magnetic resonance imaging or (fMRI)) has provided insight into the functional neuroanatomy of neuropsychiatric diseases. Amazingly, the idea that regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) is related intimately to brain function goes back more than a century. As is often the case in science, this idea was initially the result of unexpected observations. The Italian physiologist Angelo Mosso first expressed the idea while studying pulsations of the living human brain that keep pace with the heartbeat (Mosso, 1881). These brain pulsations can be observed on the surface of the fontanelles in newborn children. Mosso believed that they reflected blood flow to the brain. He observed similar pulsations in an adult with a post-traumatic skull defect over the frontal lobes. While studying this subject, a peasant named Bertino, Mosso observed a sudden increase in the magnitude of the ‘brain’s heart-beats’ when the church bells signalled 12 o’clock, the time for a required prayer. The changes in brain pulsations occurred independently of any change in pulsations in the forearm.. (shrink)

A far-reaching reinterpretation of Plato’s Timaeus and its engagement with time, eternity, body, and soul that in its original French edition profoundly influenced Derrida The Tomb of the Artisan God provides a radical rereading of Timaeus, Plato’s metaphysical text on time, eternity, and the relationship between soul and body. First published in French in 1995, the original edition of Serge Margel’s book included an extensive introductory essay by Jacques Derrida, who drew on Margel’s insights in developing his own concepts (...) of time, the promise, the world, and khōra. Now available in English with a new preface by Margel, this engagement with Platonic thought proceeds from two questions that span the history of philosophy: What is time? What is the body? Margel’s twinned interrogation centers around Plato’s concept of the demiurge (divine artisan or craftsman): its body, its anthropomorphic attributes, its productive capacities and regulatory functions in the ordering/organization/assembling of the world. He posits that this paradoxical figure is not merely a cosmological metaphor for the living body but also the site of its destruction, dissolution, and disappearance. Torn between the finite and the infinite, being and becoming, the concept of demiurge also poses metaphysical questions about time, time before time, and the end of time. The ontological status of the demiurge’s body, Margel argues, would become increasingly decisive in the history of philosophy, particularly in Christianity and the dogma of incarnation. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce que la conscience? Un chemin pour se connaître. La question de la conscience est sans doute la plus importante de la philosophie, mais aussi la plus essentielle dans nos vies : sans la conscience, il n'y a pas de philosophie et nous n'existons plus! Dans cet ouvrage magistral, Serge Carfantan pose la question de la conscience en s'appuyant sur les philosophes orientaux et occidentaux. Des auteurs classiques sont convoqués : Pascal, Hegel, Descartes, Kant, Husserl, Bergson, Sartre, Maine de (...) Biran, Freud, Simone Weil mais aussi des maîtres indiens, des enseignants spirituels ou des poètes : Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Swami Prajnanpad, Krisnamurti, René Daumal, Jean Klein, Steve Jourdain... L'auteur distingue les différents états de conscience, donne la signification de l'éveil spirituel, de la conscience pure, et propose un véritable chemin de connaissance de soi. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans M. Capasso, F. de Martino, P. Rosati, Studi di filosofia preplatonica, Napoli, Bibliopolis, 1985, p. 159-172. On le trouvera en ligne, ainsi que de très nombreux autres travaux de Serge Mouraviev, également ici. Cratyle l'Athénien, dont la tradition fait un héraclitéen et le premier maître à penser de Platon, avait-il une « philosophie » à lui ? Rien ne l'atteste, et nous ne serions guère étonnés d'apprendre qu'il n'en avait aucun. Partisan convaincu d'Héraclite, (...) il pouvait - Études grecques et latines – Nouvel article. (shrink)

In 1926, François Machon, a Swiss physician who lived for many years in Argentina, organised the restitution of a religious garment that had been stolen from the cathedral of Paraguay in the late 1860s and was kept in the Swiss Musée d'ethnographie de Neuchâtel (MEN) in exchange for a small part of his ethnographic collection. In the following decade, he donated more of his own collections to the MEN, but also negotiated as a go-between for the donation of his son (...) Roger's collections. On one occasion he managed, again, to arrange the exchange of a proto-historic Swiss lake-dweller axe for a small collection of Amerindian artefacts. The Machons' case sheds light on the logics of donations of a private collection holder, his tactics and strategies of persuasion, and his entangled web of affects, straddling two countries and two networks of fidelity in a context of migration. It also helps us understand the complex rationalities of acquisition and the polysemy of a peripheral municipal cultural institution. This case informs us about the rationales of a peripheral museum and on the criteria used to assess the quality of donators and their collections; it illustrates the asymmetry of the exchange values of European and South American, ancient and contemporary, artefacts, and the unequal vocality of the different actors. Similarly, it gives us a perspective on the rationales that were mobilised to justify giving away parts of its collections. The exchange of artefacts between the Machons and the MEN helps us understand museums not only as patrimonial of scientific institutions, but also as economic actors, whose agents convince, gamble, bargain, and negotiate, and try to make best use of their resources, symbolic and monetary, to increase their assets and social benefits. (shrink)

This paper investigates the semantic bases of class membership in the noun class system of Gújjolaay Eegimaa (Eegimaa henceforth), a Niger-Congo and Atlantic language of the BAK group spoken in Southern Senegal. The question of whether semantic principles underlie the overt classification of nouns in Niger-Congo languages is a controversial one. There is a common perception of Niger-Congo noun class systems as being mainly semantically arbitrary. The goal of the present paper is to show that physical properties and culture-specific factors (...) are central principles of semantic categorisation in the Eegimaa noun class system. I argue that the Eegimaa overt grammatical classification of nouns into classes is a semantic categorisation system whereby categories are structured according to prototypicality, family resemblance, metaphorical and metonymic extensions and chaining processes, as argued within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. I show that the categorisation of entities in the Eegimaa nominal classification system productively makes use of physical properties such as shape as well as using culture-specific, less productive parameters for the semantic categorisation of entities denoted by nouns. The analysis proposed here also shows that the cases of multiple morphosyntactic classifications of nouns reflect multiple conceptual categorisation strategies. A detailed examination of the formal and semantic instances of multiple classification reveals the existence of conceptual correlations between the physical properties and the culture-specific semantic parameters of categorisation used in the Eegimaa noun class system. (shrink)

Various four- and three-valued modal propositional logics are studied. The basic systems are modal extensions BK and BS4 of Belnap and Dunn's four-valued logic of firstdegree entailment. Three-valued extensions of BK and BS4 are considered as well. These logics are introduced semantically by means of relational models with two distinct evaluation relations, one for verification and the other for falsification. Axiom systems are defined and shown to be sound and complete with respect to the relational semantics and with respect to (...) twist structures over modal algebras. Sound and complete tableau calculi are presented as well. Moreover, a number of constructive non-modal logics with strong negation are faithfully embedded into BS4, into its three-valued extension B3S4, or into temporal BS4, BtS4. These logics include David Nelson's three-valued logic N3, the four-valued logic N4 bottom, the connexive logic C, and several extensions of bi-intuitionistic logic by strong negation. (shrink)

En 1517, il y a cinq cents ans, la réforme de Luther fracture l'Europe. La même année, les conquistadores espagnols s'en prennent au Mexique, qu'ils colonisent et christianisent. Ils y introduisent aussi notre façon d'écrire l'histoire. Les vainqueurs ignorent tout des sociétés indigènes. Or pour imposer leur loi, ils doivent impérativement connaître les coutumes et donc le passé des vaincus. Mais que sont l'histoire et le temps dans l'esprit des Indiens? Le temps n'est pas encore une valeur universelle. Comment les (...) Espagnols formatés dans une Europe chrétienne où l'histoire est chronologique et orientée auraient-ils pu concevoir et accepter la cosmologie méso-américaine? Civilisés contre barbares? En quelques décennies, la machine à remonter le temps des envahisseurs s'emploie à capturer les mémoires des sociétés amérindiennes pour leur fabriquer un passé qui puisse être rattaché au patrimoine antique de la chrétienté. Du côté des Indiens, le souvenir de leur monde au sein duquel les êtres, les choses et les dieux étaient liés se dilue avec le passage des générations même si, dans les codex ou dans les mystérieux cantares, subsistent quelques pans secrets de leur mémoire. Serge Gruzinski propose ici une exploration inédite des débuts de l'expansion coloniale et nous explique comment, sur le terrain, religieux et Indiens se mettent à écrire l'histoire du monde. (shrink)

Reciprocity is the basis of social relations. It permits a peaceful and free society in which people and rights are respected. The essence of families and communities, it also enables the working of markets and organisations, while correcting their main failures. Reciprocity is also a basis of politics, and it justifies social policies. Although the importance of reciprocity has been widely recognised in other social sciences, it has, until recently, been somewhat ignored in economic analysis. Over the past three decades, (...) economic theorist and moral philosopher Serge-Christophe Kolm has been at the forefront of research into the economics of the deepest aspects of societies. In Reciprocity, he provides a unique in-depth analysis of the motives, conducts, and effects of reciprocal relationships. In doing this, he explains crucial functionings of society and its economy, and the ways in which they can be improved. This book should be read by economists, sociologists, philosophers, and anyone concerned with understanding the economy of social relationships and its far-reaching consequences. (shrink)