Freud accuse les philosophes d'agir comme des paranoïaques qui produiraient des projections mythiques. Cette violente attaque porte sur la valeur de vérité des productions philosophiques. Mais quel est le rapport entre philosophie et mythe? Quelle est la relation entre les contenus métaphysiques et l'individu qui les produit? L'ouvrage examine l'hypothèse freudienne en trois temps. D'abord, il la reconstitue à partir des textes de Freud. Ensuite, il étudie sa cohérence logique, ses sources extérieures, ses présupposés philosophiques et épistémologiques. Enfin il applique (...) cette grille de lecture révisée aux philosophes et à Freud lui-même. Le lien métapsychologique entre la vérité métaphysique et l'individu qui la produit apparaît alors sous un jour nouveau. (shrink)

The question to know which name to attribute to the First principle is a difficult question in the Neoplatonic tradition. Indeed, as this one is situated beyond being, no term can apply to him and thus it is only in a negative way that it can be described. But the problem also settles about another aspect because, as first term, it performs a causal function. Thus it is advisable to know if certain terms turn out more appropriate than others to (...) indicate this function. By what name to indicate the First one as being a principle? We would like to show that this question is approached and answered differently throughout the Neoplatonic tradition. If Plotinus admits the existence of different names, he does not really consider that they indicate different causal functions. For Proclus, in particular in the Platonic Theology, different names refer to different manners in which the principle manifests. (shrink)

This paper studies ‘minority’ initiatives to organize sports games. A meta-analysis of published data in the literature identifies the formal appearance taken by each of these initiatives under the Olympic model. But it also conduces to build a number of indicators to answer a series of questions about their logic and strategies. All the initiatives studied are based on an ambivalent posture that, while based on the denunciation of a discriminating space, claim access to it. By an astonishing paradox, ‘non-normative’ (...) actors are driven to reclaim a model that, under cover of Universal, aims to establish a norm that is situated and dated. In practice, they use two types of strategies: a strategy for participation in the Olympics to transform them into a space which represents a fight against exclusion, or a strategy to create alternative events. Whatever the strategy, these initiatives are implemented according to their objectives. Differentiated in their forms—participatory or autonomy—they are also in their purpose. The comparison of these initiatives shows that ultimately, beyond strategies and logic inherent in different social, historical and organizational contexts, the mobilizations of the actors reveal the same ambivalence about the sports model conveyed by the Olympic institution. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, Bromberger explores the centrality of questions and predicaments they create in scientific research. He discusses the nature of explanation, theory, and the foundations of linguistics.

People meeting a robot for the first time do not know what it is capable of and therefore how to interact with it—what actions to produce, and how to produce them. Despite social robotics’ long-standing interest in the effects of robots’ appearance and conduct on users, and efforts to identify factors likely to improve human–robot interaction, little attention has been paid to how participants evaluate their robotic partner in the unfolding of actual interactions. This paper draws from qualitative analyses of (...) video-recorded interactions between a robot and groups of participants, in the framework of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. We analyse the particular ways in which participants shape their embodied actions, how they can reproduce a prior action that failed to obtain a response from the robot; and how they explore the robot’s embodied nature. We find a set of recurrent methods or practices, showing that robot-recipient design displays not only participants’ initial assumptions about the robot’s competences, but also more importantly perhaps their continuous assessment of the robot’s behaviour, and their attempts to adapt to it. Participants locally produce and constantly revise their understanding of the robot as a more or less competent co-participant, drawing from its past, current, and projected conduct and responsiveness. We discuss the implications of these findings for research in robotics and human–robot interactions, and the value of the approach to shed new light on old questions by paying attention to the quality of gesture and the sequential organisation of interaction. (shrink)

We introduce a new allocation rule, called the sequential equal surplus division for rooted forest TU-games. We provide two axiomatic characterizations for this allocation rule. The first one uses the classical property of component efficiency plus an edge deletion property. The second characterization uses standardness, an edge deletion property applied to specific rooted trees, a consistency property, and an amalgamation property. We also provide an extension of the sequential equal surplus division applied to the problem of sharing a river with (...) bifurcations. (shrink)

L’ouvrage que présente Alexandra Michalewski reprend et articule trois questions classiques dans les études plotiniennes. La première est celle des origines et des sources de la doctrine des Formes intelligibles dans la pensée de Plotin. Si cette doctrine puise dans la pensée platonicienne ses éléments principaux, elle ne peut pourtant s’expliquer entièrement par elle. Cette dernière a connu, en effet, de multiples remaniements et adaptations, elle a suscité de multiples débats, de sorte qu’e...

Since its inception, philosophy has aroused both fascination and hostility. What is it about philosophy that provokes such contrasting emotions? Plato’s works offer a valuable opportunity to explore this question, not only because of the dialogue form, which makes it possible to present a range of attitudes toward the practice of philosophy, but also because of Plato’s persistent efforts to define, describe, and defend philosophy as a radically unique activity. In this paper, the author collects and organizes the evidence in (...) order to show that, although Plato presents a wide array of motives for hostility toward philosophy, these are all grounded upon some form of ignorance that is a source of pain. The author also shows how, in well-disposed individuals, a special kind of ignorance can become a source of love rather than hatred, and how these people experience a special kind of pleasure—the very pleasure of practicing and loving philosophy. (shrink)

This research investigates the potential for a “fair” co-branding operation. A major corporate brand is fictitiously allied with a Fair Trade labelling organization brand. The sample for the study is composed of 540 respondents, representative of the French population. By considering commercial brands and Fair Trade labels as dissimilar in terms of customers’ perceived Fair Trade orientations, this article studies how this lack of similarity impacts perceived congruence between both entities and how prior brand attitudes and congruence influence customers’ evaluation (...) of the co-branded product. The results of this research demonstrate that: Consumer prior brand attitudes toward the partner brands influence very little customers’ evaluation. Perceived similarity of the partner brands has a strong influence toward congruence of the co-branding operation. Results also indicate that congruence has a strong influence upon customers’ evaluation. An inverted U-shaped relationship exists between perceived similarity and relevancy of the alliance, and between expectancy and customers’ evaluation. The results obtained through the test of a partial least square model, and inverted U-shaped hypothesis, represent a new insight into co-branding theory. The high discursive power of fair co-branding is a key issue: the corporate brand provides the alliance with its leading position, while the Fair Trade brand provides the ethical attribute. (shrink)

Résumé La question du principe occupe une place essentielle dans la philosophie de Plotin, notamment parce qu’il lui faut penser de quelle manière l’Un peut être à l’origine de toutes les autres réalités et jouer ainsi un rôle principiel. Mais l’analyse de cette question pose un problème particulier : si l’Un est en position de principe, il perd son statut transcendant. Plotin accuse Aristote et les stoïciens d’avoir ainsi affaibli la supériorité de l’Un pour en faire un principe, mais l’affirmation (...) de la transcendance rend elle-même difficile l’établissement d’une relation entre le Principe et ce qui en provient. Comment surmonter ce qui apparaît bien comme une antinomie? Nous montrons ici par quelles voies paradoxales Plotin y parvient mais surtout que l’usage du paradoxe offre la seule solution compatible avec l’orientation générale du système plotinien. (shrink)

Neuroconstructivism: How the Brain Constructs Cognition proposes a unifying framework for the study of cognitive development that brings together (1) constructivism (which views development as the progressive elaboration of increasingly complex structures), (2) cognitive neuroscience (which aims to understand the neural mechanisms underlying behavior), and (3) computational modeling (which proposes formal and explicit specifications of information processing). The guiding principle of our approach is context dependence, within and (in contrast to Marr [1982]) between levels of organization. We propose that three (...) mechanisms guide the emergence of representations: competition, cooperation, and chronotopy; which themselves allow for two central processes: proactivity and progressive specialization. We suggest that the main outcome of development is partial representations, distributed across distinct functional circuits. This framework is derived by examining development at the level of single neurons, brain systems, and whole organisms. We use the terms encellment, embrainment, and embodiment to describe the higher-level contextual influences that act at each of these levels of organization. To illustrate these mechanisms in operation we provide case studies in early visual perception, infant habituation, phonological development, and object representations in infancy. Three further case studies are concerned with interactions between levels of explanation: social development, atypical development and within that, developmental dyslexia. We conclude that cognitive development arises from a dynamic, contextual change in embodied neural structures leading to partial representations across multiple brain regions and timescales, in response to proactively specified physical and social environment. (shrink)

This opinion paper takes aim at an error made recently by Clarivate Analytics in which it sent out an email that congratulated academics for becoming exclusive members of academia’s most cited elite, the Highly Cited Researchers. However, that email was sent out to an undisclosed number of non-HCRs, who were offered an apology shortly after, through a bulk mail, which tried to down-play the importance of the error, all the while praising the true HCRs. When Clarivate Analytics senior management was (...) contacted, the company declined to offer an indication of the number of academics who had been contacted and erroneously awarded the HCR status. We believe that this regrettable blunder, together with the opacity offered by the company, fortify the corporate attitude about the value of the journal impact factor, and what it represents, namely a marketing tool that is falsely used to equate citations with quality, worth, or influence. The continued commercialization of metrics such as the JIF is at the heart of their use to assess the “quality” of a researcher, their work, or a journal, and contributes to a great extent to driving scientific activities towards a futile endeavor. (shrink)

CorpusReader est un dispositif expérimental permettant d'articuler plusieurs instruments pour construire des corpus multi-annotés. L'objectif de ce dispositif est la description de corrélations entre niveaux de description pour caractériser des normes, comme par exemple des discours ou des genres. Dans ce cadre, toute annotation est une interprétation et le contexte est défini comme une pluralité d'interprétations réifiées dans un codage commun. CorpusReader permet à la fois de construire cette annotation contextualisante puis d'en extraire des sous-ensembles et des quantifications pour des (...) analyses quantitatives. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive commentary of the Philebus designed to shed light on the nature and function of the good in Plato’s philosophy as a whole. Topics discussed include dialectic, pleasure, epistemology, and the relations between metaphysics and ethics.

Not very long ago, Plato'sSophistwas often presented as a dialogue devoted to the problem of being and not-being, entangled with limited success in an inquiry into the nature of the sophist. Thanks to the renewal of interest in the dramatic form of Plato's dialogues, recent works have shown that this entanglement is far from ill-conceived or anecdotal. However, the inquiry into the sophist is itself introduced by another question, concerning the nature of the Stranger from Elea himself. I would like (...) to show that this question and the way in which it is raised in the prologue may themselves shed light on the relations between the many threads which run across this very complex dialogue. (shrink)

Sylvain Luquet | : On tente ici de retracer aussi fidèlement que possible les tenants et les aboutissants du célèbre débat autour du bien commun et de la personne suscité par l’attaque du Père Eschmann contre le livre de Charles De Koninck, De la primauté du bien commun contre les personnalistes . On y verra vite à quel point il s’agissait d’un débat d’idées et nullement de conflits personnels. | : We attempt here to retrace as faithfully as possible (...) the whys and wherefores of the famous debate about the common good and the person that resulted from the attack by Father Eschmann against Charles De Koninck’s book, On the Primacy of the Common Good against the Personalists . It will soon be obvious how much the core of this debate were ideas, and not at all personal conflicts. (shrink)

We provide characterizations of the equal division values and their convex mixtures, using a new axiom on a fixed player set based on player nullification which requires that if a player becomes null, then any two other players are equally affected. Two economic applications are also introduced concerning bargaining under risk and common-pool resource appropriation.

Over the last 40 years or so, there has been an explosion of cultural evolution research in anthropology and archaeology. In each discipline, cultural evolutionists investigate how interactions between individuals translate into group level patterns, with the aim of explaining the diachronic dynamics and diversity of cultural traits. However, while much attention has been given to deterministic processes, we contend that current evolutionary accounts of cultural change are limited because they do not adopt a systematic stochastic approach. First, we show (...) that, in contrast with the intense debates in ecology and population genetics, the importance of stochasticity in evolutionary processes has generated little discussion in the sciences of cultural evolution to date. Second, we speculate on the reasons, both ideological and methodological, why that should be so. Third, we highlight the inadequacy of genetically-inspired stochastic models in the context of cultural evolution modelling, and ask which fundamental stochastic processes might be more relevant to take up. We conclude that the field of cultural evolution would benefit from a stochastic revolution. For that to occur, stochastic models ought to be developed specifically for cultural data and not through a copy-pasting of neutral models from population genetics or ecology. (shrink)

This paper analyzes Paul of Venice’s theory of measurement of natural properties and changes. The main sections of the paper correspond to Paul’s analysis of the three types of accidental changes, for which the Augustinian philosopher sought to provide rules of measurement. It appears that Paul achieved an original synthesis borrowing from both Parisian and Oxfordian sources. It is also argued that, on top of this theoretical synthesis, Paul managed to elaborate a quite original theory of intensive properties that marks (...) him out not only from the nominalist framework of his Parisian sources but also from the usual realist treatments of the problem. Finally, it is shown that, to a certain extent, Paul undertook to apply the mathematical and logical tools inherited from the Calculatores tradition to empirical problems of natural philosophy, leading to reevaluate his role in the evolution of scientific thought in early 15th-century Italy. (shrink)

The management of East-Jerusalem by the occupying power is dividing citizens between as many items as possible. It deprives them of the right to mobility, and of all rights linked with citizenship. It makes them live as strangers in their own birth place. Those status differences prevent inhabitants fron7 improving their urban conditions and oblige them to wait for a global solution to the Palestinian question. The Palestinians front East-Jerusalem stay apart from the Palestinian economic renewal as from the local (...) municipal development. (shrink)

Le lien entre la philosophie de la nature et la destinée morale chez Bergson, c'est une sorte de médiation anthropologique ou sociologique, mais aussi une médiation spécifiquement philosophique, qui propose une certaine compréhension du lien entre «nature» et «esprit». Selon l'auteur, ce lien peut s'effectuer grâce à une mise en lumière de la fonction de la durée dans l'intelligence humaine et dans son rapport à la norme morale.