The starting point of this conversation with philosopher Mathieu Triclot is the issue of the causal contribution of video game playing in school shootings. Triclot explains the limitations of current psychological approaches regarding video game violence. He further develops on the peculiar features of the video game medium and how they relate to the problem of violence. Triclot eventually shows that, although players may relate to virtual violence in very different ways, violence in video games is not merely a (...) subjective phenomenon. He highlights that some “regimes of experience,” which got stable in the video game culture, cultivate a toxic relation to violence. (shrink)

In The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760-1896, Yvan Lamonde traces the province's political and intellectual development from the British Conquest to the election of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. From the individuals who formulated them, to the networks in which they circulated, to their reception, Yvan Lamonde focuses on ideas at work and their role in shaping Quebec history. The mapping of a complete intellectual circuit allows Lamonde to follow the strains of ideological debates - monarchism, liberalism, (...) republicanism, democracy, revolution, ultramontanism, nationalism - over more than a century. His work is informed by an encyclopaedic reading of the print culture of the period and the book conveys a profound and nuanced knowledge of the social context and cultural channels - educational institutions, newspapers, the book trade - in which intellectual debate occurred. Lamonde argues that while these ideas concerned politics, they went beyond the political: they were a fundamental and everyday element of civic society that was expressed in the public sphere through pamphlets, the popular press, and sermons. Lamonde's scrutiny of public opinion in Quebec allows him to place such currents of thought in the colony's international context: that of France, England, Rome, the United States, and their respective metropolises. The Social History of Ideas in Quebec, 1760-1896 covers a volatile time in the province's history - from the end of the French Regime through the American invasion, the War of 1812, and the Rebellions in Lower Canada - capturing the cultural ascension of a society and the foundations of Quebec identity. (shrink)

Interdisciplinarity is widely promulgated as beneficial to science and society. However, there are three quite serious problems which can limit the success of any interdisciplinary research collaboration. The first problem is expertise (it takes years of effort to cultivate a deep knowledge of even one discipline). The second problem is comprehensibility (experts in different disciplines do not reliably understand each other). The third problem is service (in a given interdisciplinary endeavour, it often occurs that one discipline benefits and the other (...) discipline does not benefit). This essay is an elaboration of these three problems. Parallels are drawn between translation between languages and translation between disciplines. (shrink)

À quoi attribuer le succès médiatique de Sartre à Montréal en mars 1946 ? Quelles furent les conditions de la réception de cette philosophie dans la culture québécoise ? Cette étude montre que le succès médiatique de Sartre est rendu possible principalement par l’action de journalistes et de critiques littéraires qui exploitèrent les thématiques de la philosophie sartrienne en vue d’ouvrir le climat intellectuel québécois et d’accroître leur pouvoir dans le champ intellectuel.What contributed to Sartre’s Montreal media success of March (...) 1946 ? What conditionned the enthusiastic reception of Sartre’s philosophy ? This study shows that journalists and literary critics were largely responsible for the French philosopher’s media success. They used Sartre’s philosophy for the purpose of expanding the cultural climat while extending their own power base within Quebec’s intellectual life. (shrink)

Jan Patočka is usually connected with Czech dissidence, a political movement which stood up against the communist government. We want to defend the hypothesis that the notion of dissidence is not originally a political one but, above all, a phenomenological one. Dissidence is a movement of distancing which implies a rootedness, and this movement of distancing is peculiar to human beings. Patočka calls “movement of human existence” this paradoxical rootedness which is an extramundane and mundane position. Thus, we have to (...) review the theory of the three movements of human existence. While it is tempting to separate the third movement, as a movement of transcendence, and to describe it as a political dissidence, we would like to show that the three movements, have to be understood as Dissidence. (shrink)

« Et si la médecine clinique, que Michel Foucault fait naître au croisement de la doctrine sensualiste et de la pratique anatomo-pathologique, avait éludé son lien à la méthode numérique, son histoire, déjà traversée d’accidents, détournée et retardée par de multiples discours, ne prendrait-elle pas un sens nouveau? Aussi, avant que le pouvoir des grands nombres n’intronise la méthode numérique en tant que forme majoritaire, cette dernière fut rendue minoritaire par le pouvoir des grands noms de la médecine du xix (...) e siècle. Cet article interroge les obstacles épistémologiques et les anachronismes de la méthode numérique afin de reconsidérer la place historique de cette dernière selon les conditions du dire vrai de la médecine du xix e siècle. Il propose une nouvelle lecture historique et épistémologique en affirmant que la méthode numérique constitue le double oublié de la naissance de la clinique. ». (shrink)

The Influence of turbulence on nutrient fluxes towards phytoplankton cells has been previously estimated, but those studies did not take into account the intermittent nature of turbulent processes. This has been investigated here comparing the nutrient fluxes obtained using both mean and instantaneous turbulent energy dissipation rates. This approach shows that the size of cell potentially influenced by turbulence is lower than previously indicated, and that the spectral average estimate of the turbulence effect overestimates the flux. The capacity of cell (...) to use such intermittent flux is then discussed. (shrink)

This article discusses a concept introduced by art theorist Philip Galanter in several publications over the past decade: complexism is a notion that looks at both past and future while aiming to reconcile (post) modern aesthetics with the cybernetic and biological paradigms. This article focuses on the re-evaluation of the performance arts within the framework of this theory, favouring the idea that every artwork necessarily resists attempts of subordination through language and scientific discourses. By referring to the dispositive, a notion (...) that considers complexism as a conceptual matrix, the author argues that it can be described in terms of pulsion and computation. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus is an effective treatment for the motor symptoms of movement disorders including Parkinson's Disease. Despite its therapeutic benefits, STN-DBS has been associated with adverse effects on mood and cognition. Specifically, apathy, which is defined as a loss of motivation, has been reported to emerge or to worsen following STN-DBS. However, it is often challenging to disentangle the effects of STN-DBSper sefrom concurrent reduction of dopamine replacement therapy, from underlying PD pathology or from disease (...) progression. To this end, pre-clinical models allow for the dissociation of each of these factors, and to establish neural substrates underlying the emergence of motivational symptoms following STN-DBS. Here, we performed a systematic analysis of rodent studies assessing the effects of STN-DBS on reward seeking, reward motivation and reward consumption across a variety of behavioral paradigms. We find that STN-DBS decreases reward seeking in the majority of experiments, and we outline how design of the behavioral task and DBS parameters can influence experimental outcomes. While an early hypothesis posited that DBS acts as a “functional lesion,” an analysis of lesions and inhibition of the STN revealed no consistent pattern on reward-related behavior. Thus, we discuss alternative mechanisms that could contribute to the amotivational effects of STN-DBS. We also argue that optogenetic-assisted circuit dissection could yield important insight into the effects of the STN on motivated behavior in health and disease. Understanding the mechanisms underlying the effects of STN-DBS on motivated behavior-will be critical for optimizing the clinical application of STN-DBS. (shrink)

Bringing Pierre Bourdieu to Science and Technology Studies Content Type Journal Article Pages 263-273 DOI 10.1007/s11024-011-9174-2 Authors Mathieu Albert, Wilson Centre and Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 200 Elizabeth Street , Eaton-South 1-581, Toronto, ON M5G 2C4, Canada Daniel Lee Kleinman, Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 348 Agricultural Hall 1450 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA Journal Minerva Online ISSN 1573-1871 Print ISSN 0026-4695 Journal Volume Volume 49 Journal Issue Volume 49, (...) Number 3. (shrink)

What is ‘counterintuitive’? There is general agreement that it refers to a violation of previously held knowledge, but the precise definition seems to vary with every author and study. The aim of this paper is to deconstruct the notion of ‘counterintuitive’ and provide a more philosophically rigorous definition congruent with the history of psychology, recent experimental work in ‘minimally counterintuitive’ concepts, the science vs. religion debate, and the developmental and evolutionary background of human beings. We conclude that previous definitions of (...) counterintuitiveness have been flawed and did not resolve the conflict between a believer’s conception of the supernatural entity (an atypical “real kind”) and the non-believer’s conception (empty name/fictional). Furthermore, too much emphasis has been placed on the universality and (presumed) innateness of intuitive concepts (and hence the criteria for what is counterintuitive)—and far too little attention paid to learning and expertise. We argue that many putatively universal concepts are not innate, but mostly learned and defeasible—part of a religious believer’s repertoire of expert knowledge. Nonetheless, the results from empirical studies about the memorability of counterintuitive concepts have been convincing and it is difficult to improve on existing designs and methodologies. However, future studies in counterintuitive concepts need to embed their work in research about context effects, typicality, the psychology of learning and expertise (for example, the formation of expert templates and range defaults), with more attention to the sources of knowledge (direct and indirect knowledge) and a better idea of what ‘default’ knowledge really is. (shrink)

Tarot use has become increasingly popular in contemporary society. However, unlike the position afforded divination in some cultures, it is not culturally consecrated as a legitimate way of knowing in the so‐called Modern West—in large part, due to the attempted disenchantment of the world by the colonial project of modernity. This paper posits that engagement with tarot divination can be a decolonizing methodology. I explore how divination's dependence on chance, the imagination, and engagement with spirits can heal the Cartesian mental (...) models that underly modernity's hold on our society. Academic writing on divination has, until recently, largely been authored by people who are not also practitioners of divination themselves. Writing as both a scholar and practitioner of tarot, I use the cards as a form of “imaginal research” to directly assist in the creation of this paper—allowing the tarot itself to speak (as much as me speak about it). (shrink)

For a population to undergo evolution by natural selection, it is assumed that the constituents of the population form parent-offspring lineages, that is, that they must reproduce. I challenge this assumption by dividing the notion of reproduction into two subprocesses, that is, multiplication and inheritance, that produce parent-offspring lineages between the parts of a population, and I show that their population-level roles, generation and memory, respectively, can be effected by processes that do not rely on such local-level lineages. I further (...) argue that these two population-level processes, not local parent-offspring lineages, are necessary conditions for a population to undergo Darwinian evolution. (shrink)

Social grooming is an important element of social life in terrestrial primates, inducing the putative benefits of β-endorphin stimulation and group harmony and cohesion. Implicit in many analyses of grooming (e.g. biological markets) are the assumptions of costs and benefits to grooming behaviour. Here, in a review of literature, we investigate the proximate costs and benefits of grooming, as a potentially useful explanatory substrate to the well-documented ultimate (functional) explanations. We find that the hedonic benefits of grooming are well documented. (...) However, we did not find convincing evidence for costs. If proximate costs do exist, they might consist of energetic, cognitive, opportunity costs, or some combination of all of these. Nonetheless, there remains the possibility that grooming costs are negligible, or even that the provision of allogrooming is rewarding in itself. We suggest empirical research to resolve this issue. (shrink)

In this paper, elementary but hitherto overlooked connections are established between Wittgenstein's remarks on mathematics, written during his transitional period, and free-variable finitism. After giving a brief description of theTractatus Logico-Philosophicus on quantifiers and generality, I present in the first section Wittgenstein's rejection of quantification theory and his account of general arithmetical propositions, to use modern jargon, as claims (as opposed to statements). As in Skolem's primitive recursive arithmetic and Goodstein's equational calculus, Wittgenstein represented generality by the use of free (...) variables. This has the effect that negation of unbounded universal and existential propositions cannot be expressed. This is claimed in the second section to be the basis for Wittgenstein's criticism of the universal validity of the law of excluded middle. In the last section, there is a brief discussion of Wittgenstein's remarks on real numbers. These show a preference, in line with finitism, for a recursive version of the continuum. (shrink)

John Cook Wilson (1849–1915) was Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College, Oxford and the founder of ‘Oxford Realism’, a philosophical movement that flourished at Oxford during the first decades of the 20th century. Although trained as a classicist and a mathematician, his most important contribution was to the theory of knowledge, where he argued that knowledge is factive and not definable in terms of belief, and he criticized ‘hybrid’ and ‘externalist’ accounts. He also argued for direct realism in perception, (...) criticizing both empiricism and idealism, and argued for a moderate nominalist view of universals as being in rebus and only ‘apprehended’ by their particulars. His influence helped swaying Oxford away from idealism and, through figures such as H. A. Prichard, Gilbert Ryle, or J. L. Austin, his ideas were also to some extent at the origin of ‘moral intuitionism’ and ‘ordinary language philosophy’ which defined much of Oxford philosophy until the second half of the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, his name and legacy were all but forgotten for generations after World War II. Still, his views on knowledge are with us today, being in part at work in the writings of philosophers as diverse as John McDowell, Charles Travis, and Timothy Williamson. (shrink)

The use of physical models of molecular structures as research tools has been central to the development of biochemistry and molecular biology. Intriguingly, it has received little attention from scholars of science. In this paper, I argue that these physical models are not mere three-dimensional representations but that they are in fact very special research tools: they are cognitive augmentations. Despite the fact that they are external props, these models serve as cognitive tools that augment and extend the modeler’s cognitive (...) capacities and performance in molecular modeling tasks. This cognitive enhancement is obtained because of the way the modeler interacts with these models, the models’ materiality contributing to the solving of the molecule’s structure. Furthermore, I argue that these material models and their component parts were designed, built and used specifically to serve as cognitive facilitators and cognitive augmentations. (shrink)

High-fidelity cultural transmission, rather than brute intelligence, is the secret of our species’ success, or so many cultural evolutionists claim. It has been selected because it ensures the spread, stability and longevity of beneficial cultural traditions, and it supports cumulative cultural change. To play these roles, however, fidelity must be a causally-efficient property of cultural transmission. This is where the grain problem comes in and challenges the explanatory potency of fidelity. Assessing the degree of fidelity of any episode or mechanism (...) of cultural transmission always depends upon an investigator’s choice of grain of description at which cultural traditions are being studied. The fidelity of cultural transmission then appears to be relative to the granularity at which one approaches cultural variation, and since there is a multiplicity of grains of description by which the same tradition can be studied, there results a multiplicity of measures of fidelity for a same event or mechanism of cultural transmission. If this is correct, because fidelity is always relative to the grain of description dictated by the local and specific research interests of the investigator, then there seems to be no fact of the matter as to whether cultural transmission is faithful or not, independently from a researcher’s framework of analysis. The aims of this paper are to offer a conceptual clarification of the grain problem in cultural evolution, to assess its causes, to unpack its epistemological implications, and to examine its reach and consequences for a science of cultural evolution. (shrink)

This article focuses on defective conditionals ? namely indicative conditionals whose antecedents are false and whose truth-values therefore cannot be determined. The problem is to decide which formal connective can adequately represent this usage. Classical logic renders defective conditionals true whereas traditional mathematics dismisses them as irrelevant. This difference in treatment entails that, at the propositional level, classical logic validates some sentences that are intuitively false in plane geometry. With two proofs, I show that the same flaw is shared by (...) a family of trivalent logics. I go on to examine the strict conditional and its derivatives. This family is the only one to avoid the faulty inference but it does so without addressing the status of the truth-value assigned to defective conditionals. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum has proposed an influential interpretation of the stoic theory of the passions, which will be challenged in this article. According to Nussbaum, the Stoics view the passions as judgments, rather than as intentional states caused by previous judgments. It will be argued that Nussbaum does not distinguish the passion, which is in fact an impulse of thehegemonikon, and the judgment that causes it. Such a distinction, however, is crucial to the Stoics, as it allows them to present the (...) passion as an intentional movement having evaluative, kinetic and affective properties, while at the same time analysing the judgment that causes it. It will also be argued that Nussbaum fails to mention the existence of a first quasi-impulse, prior to the passion, which Chrysippus, Cicero and Seneca took into account in their therapy of the passions. (shrink)

Aucun point de vue particulier ou général ne peut se constituer en éthique. Par contre l'exigence d'universalisation n'implique pas un sujet impersonnel mais se réalise dans le processus d'interpellation des consciences singulières situées et interdépendantes dans leur dévoilement du monde. Comme le montre Sartre, tout projet d'une éhiquedoitreposersurd) l'assomption du fait que tout point de vue soit totalité-détotalisée et sur la reconnaissance de l'interdépendance des consciences. Dès lors, la lucidité doit remplacer la mauvaise foi originelle et la générosité doit faire (...) échec à la tentation de la violence comme refus de l'autre comme liberté.No individual or general point of view may constitute itself as an ethic. Nevertheless, the requirement of universalisation does not imply an impersonal subject, but it is lived through the process of interpellation of singular, situated and interdependent consciences. As Sartre claims, an ethic must meet two requirements : to assume the fact that every point of view is totalized-detotalized; and to recognize the interdependency of the consciences. Therefore, lucidity must replace the original bad faith and generosity must counter the temptation of violence as a refusal of the other's freedom. (shrink)

Cet article analyse la plainte en grossesse de Catherine Lespinasse contre Jean Gaudens dit Capdeville déposée aux greffes de la justice des capitouls de Toulouse le 16 juin 1742 dans laquelle la plaignante dénonce un viol commis par l’homme qu’elle fréquentait en vue d’un prochain mariage. Cette contribution expose plusieurs des obstacles légaux empêchant une femme victime de viol de porter formellement plainte pour ce crime au xviiie siècle. L’étude de ce cas démontre cependant que, comme Catherine Lespinasse, plusieurs femmes (...) usèrent consciemment de leurs capacités d’agir en justice pour dénoncer indirectement leur agresseur en utilisant le mécanisme de la plainte en grossesse qui se voulait, à la base, une procédure judiciaire paternaliste et coercitive les forçant à déclarer en justice leur grossesse illégitime. (shrink)

La thèse que présuppose ce livre est la suivante : la modernité, que l'on dit "désenchantée", est triste, parce que désenchantée. Les textes qui y sont rassemblés veulent mettre en présence, mais aussi en question, les deux sens du mot "désenchantement" : l'idée que l'avancement de la "raison instrumentale" (C Taylor)s'est accompagné du recul du domaine du magique, du merveilleux, du mythe, et celle selon laquelle la modernité est morose. Mais il s'agit ici de penser moins la morosité que la (...) joie liée à ce que pourrait être une philosophie du réenchantement du monde. Non pas tant, donc, replonger dans les thèses sur le désenchantement qu'imaginer ce que pourrait être un certain réenchantement. A cet égard, on a voulu porter un regard privilégié sur l'enfance, "terre de l'humain" (T De Koninck), comme sur une manière d'idéal qui pointerait vers la question du sens d'une existence qui vaille d'être vécue. Le pari de ce projet est en définitive qu'une philosophie du réenchantement du monde témoignera que la vie peut être une aventure exaltante, passionnante, un parcours sensé et par conséquent rempli d'espoir, comme dans ces contes pour enfants qui jadis faisaient notre joie. (shrink)

Nous tenterons ici d’élucider le sens de la référence quelque peu surprenante de H. G. Gadamer à la doctrine médiévale des transcendantaux à la fin de Vérité et méthode. Le concept d’appartenance signifie pour Gadamer l’insertion de la connaissance dans l’être. Nous soutenons que la thèse fondamentale de Gadamer, l’être susceptible d’être compris est langage, ne signifie pas que l’être soit «soumis» au langage, mais suggère plutôt une certaine intelligibilité de l’être auquel l’homme participe par le biais de la connaissance. (...) Ceci nous reconduit à deux doctrines clés issues de la philosophie médiévale en ce qui concerne le problème de la vérité, soit les transcendantaux et la définition classique de la vérité comme adaequatio rei et intellectus. (shrink)

A Polish space is not always homeomorphic to a computably presented Polish space. In this article, we examine degrees of non-computability of presenting homeomorphic copies of compact Polish spaces. We show that there exists a $\mathbf {0}'$ -computable low $_3$ compact Polish space which is not homeomorphic to a computable one, and that, for any natural number $n\geq 2$, there exists a Polish space $X_n$ such that exactly the high $_{n}$ -degrees are required to present the homeomorphism type of $X_n$. (...) Along the way we investigate the computable aspects of Čech homology groups. We also show that no compact Polish space has a least presentation with respect to Turing reducibility. (shrink)

We propose a logic of abduction that (i) provides an appropriate formalization of the explanatory conditional, and that (ii) captures the defeasible nature of abductive inference. For (i), we argue that explanatory conditionals are non-classical, and rely on Brian Chellas’s work on conditional logics for providing an alternative formalization of the explanatory conditional. For (ii), we make use of the adaptive logics framework for modeling defeasible reasoning. We show how our proposal allows for a more natural reading of explanatory relations, (...) and how it overcomes problems faced by other systems in the literature. (shrink)

Plagiarism is a crime against academy. It deceives readers, hurts plagiarized authors, and gets the plagiarist undeserved benefits. However, even though these arguments do show that copying other people’s intellectual contribution is wrong, they do not apply to the copying of words. Copying a few sentences that contain no original idea (e.g. in the introduction) is of marginal importance compared to stealing the ideas of others. The two must be clearly distinguished, and the ‘plagiarism’ label should not be used for (...) deeds which are very different in nature and importance. (shrink)

The original book chapter does not have an abstract. However, I have written an abstract for this repository: Religious life encompasses a wide diversity of situations for which the emotional tone is on a continuum from extreme euphoria to extreme dysphoria. In this book chapter, we propose the novel hypothesis that euphoria and dysphoria have distinctly separate functional consequences for religious evolution and survivability. This is due to the differential cognitive states that are created in euphoric and dysphoric situations. Based (...) on readings from religious studies and cognitive psychology, we propose that euphoria in religion is conducive to social bonding and situations needing lateral thinking and creativity; whereas dysphoria in religion is conducive to situations where precision and analogical reasoning are necessary. (shrink)

Direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, and reputation are important interrelated topics in the evolution of sociality. This non-mathematical review is a summary of each. Direct reciprocity (the positive kind) has a straightforward structure (e.g., "A rewards B, then rewards A") but the allocation might differ from the process that enabled it (e.g., whether it is true reciprocity or some form of mutualism). Indirect reciprocity (the positive kind) occurs when person (B) is rewarded by a third party (A) after doing a good (...) deed towards somebody else (C) — with the structure "A observes B help C, therefore A helps B." Here too, the allocation differs from the process: if there is underlying cognition, then indirect reciprocity is based on some ability to keep track of the reputations of others (to remember that "B helped C"). Reputation is a kind of social impression based on typicality, derived from three channels of experience (direct encounters, bystander observation, and gossip). Although non-human animals cannot gossip verbally, they can eavesdrop on third parties and learn vicariously. This paper ends with a proposal to investigate the topic of social expertise as a model for understanding how animals understand and utilise observed information within their social groups. (shrink)