Previous works usually report greater postural stability in precise visual tasks than in stationary-gaze tasks. However, existing cognitive models do not fully support these results as they assume that performing an attention-demanding task while standing would alter postural stability because of the competition of attention between the tasks. Contrary to these cognitive models, attentional resources may increase to create a synergy between visual and postural brain processes to perform precise oculomotor behaviors. To test this hypothesis, we investigated a difficult searching (...) task and a control free-viewing task. The precise visual task required the 16 young participants to find a target in densely furnished images. The free-viewing task consisted of looking at similar images without searching anything. As expected, the participants exhibited significantly lower body displacements and a significantly higher cognitive workload in the precise visual task than in the free-viewing task. Most important, our exploration showed functional synergies between visual and postural processes in the searching task, that is, significant negative relationships showing lower head and neck displacements to reach more expended zones of fixation. These functional synergies seemed to involve a greater attentional demand because they were not significant anymore when the cognitive workload was controlled. In the free-viewing task, only significant positive relationships were found and they did not involve any change in cognitive workload. An alternative cognitive model and its potential subtended neuroscientific circuit are proposed to explain the supposedly cognitively grounded functional nature of vision–posture synergies in precise visual tasks. (shrink)

Light increment thresholds were measured on either side of one of the illusory contours of a white-on-black Kanizsa square and on the illusory contour itself. The data show that thresholds are elevated when measured on either side of the illusory border. These elevations diminish with increasing distance of the target spot from the white elements which induce the illusory figure. The most striking result, however, is that threshold elevations are considerably lower or even absent when the target is located on (...) the illusory contour itself. At an equivalent position in a control figure where no illusory contour is visible, such a threshold decrease does not occur. The present observations add empirical support to neural theories of illusory form perception. (shrink)

As the official UK COVID Inquiry is investigating the response by the government to the 2020 global pandemic, revealing the difficulties that the Johnson administration had to face and the overall lack of adequate preparedness at the top of the UK executive, people are becoming growingly aware of the many challenges that such situations pose in terms of crisis management and public governance. Beyond the somewhat sterile blame game played by leading political actors, this formal accountability forum has also revealed (...) competing narratives about the crisis that might have hampered any coherent political solution. This article proposes to focus on the ‘official’ narratives by the UK government and to analyse critically the way Boris Johnson narrativised his political response to the pandemic in order to examine how his unconventional style of leadership was deployed during a global crisis. Using a typology of crisis management inspired by crisis expert and leadership scholar Arjen Boin, the objective is to examine how ‘crisis narratives’ framed the way the UK government responded to the crisis. (shrink)

Detection thresholds for a small light spot were measured at various distances from the colinear inucer edges of white inducing elements on a dark background. The data show that thresholds are elevated when the target is located close to one or more inducing element(s). Threshold elevations diminish with increasing distance of the target from colinear edges and decreasing surface size of the inducing elements. gradients show the same tendencies. Tbe present observations add empirical support to the idea that illusory figures (...) are determined by local mechanisms that operate at early stages of perceptual information processing and decision. (shrink)

We argue that the pictorial nature of certain constructions in signs and in gestures explains surprising properties of their syntax. In several sign languages, the standard word order (e.g. SVO) gets turned into SOV (with preverbal arguments) when the predicate is a classifier, a distinguished construction with highly iconic properties (e.g. Pavlič, 2016). In silent gestures, participants also prefer an SOV order in extensional constructions, irrespective of the word order of the language they speak (Goldin-Meadow et al., 2008). But in (...) silent gestures and in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), intensional constructions can override these SOV preferences, yielding SVO instead (Schouwstra & de Swart, 2014; Napoli et al., 2017). This distinction was argued to be due to iconicity: arguments are expressed before the verb if they correspond to entities that are present before the action, otherwise they follow the verb. While agreeing with this intuition, we propose that the extensional/intensional distinction is neither empirically nor theoretically appropriate. In new data from American Sign Language, we replicate the distinction among extensional classifier predicates: for _x ate up the ball_, the ball is typically seen before the eating and a preposed object is preferred; but for _x spit out the ball_, the ball is typically seen after the spitting and a postposed object is preferred, although both _eat up_ and _spit out_ are used extensionally. We extend this finding to data involving pro-speech (= speech-replacing) gestures embedded in French sentences. We argue for a Visibility Generalization according to which arguments appear before the verb if their denotations are typically visible before the action, and we develop a new formal account within a pictorial semantics for visual animations (inspired by Greenberg and Abusch). It derives the observed word order preferences, it explains how the semantics of classifier predicates combines iconic and conventional properties, and it makes a more general point: sign language semantics combines logical semantics with pictorial semantics. (shrink)

Jakob Friedrich Fries estime que Kant a fait de funestes concessions au dogmatisme philosophique, dont il avait pourtant mieux que quiconque mis au jour les contradictions. Ainsi n’a-t-il pas distingué de façon suffisamment rigoureuse la connaissance transcendantale (qui est une connaissance de connaissances) de son objet (à savoir la connaissance a priori à laquelle elle se rapporte). Il en a conclu que la connaissance transcendantale était elle aussi a priori et a cherché à fonder les jugements synthétiques a priori sur (...) des connaissances elles-mêmes a priori. Kant a ainsi été victime d’un « préjugé de la preuve » auquel il a donné la forme spécifique d’un « préjugé du transcendantal » : dans la mesure où la « déduction transcendantale » cherche à donner une « preuve transcendantale » de la validité de nos connaissances, la théorie kantienne de la connaissance est donc menacée par un cercle logique. Aussi la déduction transcendantale bien comprise ne peut-elle être, selon Fries, qu’une déduction subjective, psychologique ou anthropologique, ce qui ne signifie pas pour autant que Fries entende réduire la philosophie à la psychologie, contrairement à ce que lui reprocheront les contempteurs de son psychologisme. (shrink)

This article reviews and corrects frequent misunderstandings of somaesthetics, the multidisciplinary field of study of the lived body conceived by Richard Shusterman. After responding to an article published in Contemporary Pragmatism, I extend the discussion to cover larger topics of discussion related to somaesthetics and misapprehensions by its critics, including the nature of somatic experience, the role of pleasure, and the relevance of culture. In rectifying mistakes of understanding, it is hoped the effort will foster better understanding and better critique.

Selon Fries, il existe d’autres procédures de justification que celle de la preuve et la théorie de la justification doit dépasser le « préjugé de la preuve ». Kant a lui-même été la victime de ce préjugé faute d’avoir distingué entre la connaissance transcendantale et son objet (la connaissance a priori à laquelle elle se rapporte). Fries estime que la critique peut être empirique ou a posteriori sans que cela affecte le moins du monde le statut a priori de son (...) objet. La théorie friesienne de la justification comporte également une théorie originale de l’induction. (shrink)

A Boolean algebra B that has a well-founded sublattice L which generates B is called a well-generated Boolean algebra. If in addition, L is generated by a complete set of representatives for B , then B is said to be canonically well-generated .Every WG Boolean algebra is superatomic. We construct two basic examples of superatomic non well-generated Boolean algebras. Their cardinal sequences are 1,0,1,1 and 0,0,20,1.Assuming MA , we show that every algebra with one of the cardinal sequences , α<1, (...) λ<20, or 0,20,1,1 is CWG.Assuming CH, or alternatively assuming MA , we determine which cardinal sequences admit only WG Boolean algebras.We find a necessary and sufficient condition for the canonical well-generatedness of algebras whose cardinal sequence has the form , α<1. We conclude that if such an algebra is CWG, then all of its quotients are CWG. We show that the above is not true for general Boolean algebras. We also conclude that if the cardinality of such an algebra is less than the cardinal defined below, then it is CWG. The cardinal is the least cardinality of an unbounded subset of {f f : ω → ω}.We investigate questions concerning embeddability, quotients and subalgebras of WG and CWG Boolean algebras, and construct various counter-examples. (shrink)

Selfish, dishonest or malicious agents may find an interest in manipulating others. While many works deal with designing robust systems or manipulative strategies, few works are interested in defining in a broad sense what is a manipulation and how we can reason with such a notion. In this article, based on a social science literature, we give a general definition of manipulation for multi-agent systems. A manipulation is a deliberate effect of an agent – called manipulator – to instrumentalize another (...) agent – called victim – while making sure to conceal that effect. We present then a logical framework, called KBE, to express and reason about manipulations. Since manipulation relies on deliberate effects, KBE introduces a deliberate BIAT operator which abstracts deliberate consequences of actions. We prove that this logic is sound and complete. Furthermore,we express related notions such as coercion, persuasion, or deception. (shrink)

Preview: /Review: Satoshi Higuchi, Somaesthetics and the Philosophy of Culture: Projects in Japan (New York, NY; Oxford, England: Routledge, 2021), 138 pages./ Satoshi Higuchi’s Somaesthetics and the Philosophy of Culture is a succinct and innovative work in aesthetics and philosophy of education, despite what the title may otherwise imply. Indeed, the title may be the only shortcoming in this work, for it does not convey the scope of the concepts covered. It may be better titled Somaesthetics and the Philosophy of (...) Education, but even this does not express the important and fascinating discussions on the aesthetics of sports contained herein; and “education” is perhaps too narrow to encompass the range of application of the ideas (especially in the final part of the book). However, when the reader looks past the title, they will find a nicely organized work introducing readers to the topic of the aesthetics of sport, its application for improving pedagogy, and several avenues for further development in these areas. Higuchi’s previous work is a tireless series of granting legitimacy to the study of sports. Somaesthetics and the Philosophy of Culture is another important step in this project. Readers need not be familiar with Richard Shusterman’s multidisciplinary project of somaesthetics for, when it is necessary, Higuchi provides the relevant details. Readers who are familiar with somaesthetics will very quickly see how the ideas here complement it well. (shrink)

A disturbing portrait of a society deliriously dreaming itself as eternal, instantaneous, and infinite. At least for the time being, we humans are still finite and mortal--but death isn't what it used to be. As the body is technologically extended in space and time, we are split between our finitude and our doubled presence in a limitless web of signs, an "immortal" world of information. After Death offers a penetrating philosophical diagnosis of our contemporary condition, describing not only an anesthesia, (...) but an amnesia in which the compulsions of a hyper-present colonize both past and future, prevailing over any sense of duration, becoming, or appreciation of the "thickness of the real. "Are we living in a kind of counterfeit eternity in which we are effectively already dead?". Against the anxiety of the constant present, how can we hope to return to the experience of being in time and facing death. After Death is a disturbing portrait of a society deliriously dreaming itself as eternal, instantaneous, and infinite. (shrink)

Comme l’indique le sous-titre, ce livre n’est pas une biographie, mais une enquête sur la disparition dans la mémoire collective d’une grande résistante, une des six femmes Compagnons de la Libération, Laure Diebold-Mutschler. Engagée dès 1940 dans la Résistance, à l’âge de vingt-cinq ans, elle est notamment agent de liaison du réseau Mithridate avant d’entrer à Lyon dans les Forces Françaises libres et de devenir la secrétaire de Jean Moulin. Elle sera arrêtée le 24 septembre 1943 à Paris, a...

Balancing Change and Tradition in Global Education Reform is an invaluable resource for policymakers, faculty, students, and anyone interested in how decisions made about the education system ultimately affect the quality of education, educational access, and social justice.

Résumé — Au début du traité Della ragione di Stato, Boreto déclare son opposition résolue au machiavélisme. Il récuse en effet une conception de la raison d’État fondée sur l’immoralisme, sur la transgression répétée des commandements divins. Mais Botero ne prône pas un simple retour à une fondation théologique du politique. Il reprend plutôt à son compte, sous le nom de raison d’État, une conception du politique délivrée de toute relation à la moralité transcendante venue de Dieu, une conception amorale (...) telle que Machiavel l’envisageait déjà. Et dans cette perspective il introduit la distinction entre raison d’État ordinaire et raison d’État extraordinaire et prétend montrer de quelle manière une raison d’État ordinaire, pourtant conduite par le seul désir de domination, peut employer des moyens tout à fait compatibles avec les exigences de la morale chrétienne.— At the beginning of the treatise Della ragione di Stato, Botero claims his determined opposition to Machiavellism. He impugns any notion of the reason of State that would be based on immorality, that is on constant transgression of God’s prescriptions. But Botero doesn’t advocate the return to a theological foundation of politics. He uses the expression ragione di Stato to denote a notion of politics released from every relation to transcendent morality coming from God, an amoral notion that Machiavelli was already contemplating. In this matter, it is necessary to distinguish the ordinary from the extraordinary reason of State, because Botero shows how an ordinary reason of State, even looking for the only domination, is able to work in a way which is in full accordance with Christian morality. (shrink)

Par sa défense de l’esprit critique et de la tolérance, son refus de l’individualisme, sa conviction que la connaissance rationnelle peut contribuer à l’amélioration de la vie privée et sociale des individus et œuvrer au développement des possibilités de chacun, Carnap s’inscrit dans la tradition des Lumières. Loin de se préoccuper exclusivement de problèmes logiques ou épistémologiques, il tient la question philosophique des valeurs pour la plus importante de toutes et reconnaît la part essentielle de l’affectivité dans la vie humaine, (...) laquelle ne saurait être satisfaite par la seule pensée conceptuelle, comme en témoigne l’expression du « sentiment de la vie » par le poète ou le musicien. (shrink)

Civilisation.--Simplicité.--L'instinct.--La science et la politique.--La crise.--La syumpathie.--Les sociétés animales.--Intelligence et phénomènes d'adaptation.--La mémoire, l'intelligence et la raison.--La valeur de la science.--L'intuition.--L'attention et la distraction.--Phénomènes de télépathie.--L'inspiration.--La science et la croyance.--Mysticisme.--L'âme et la mémoire.--De la vie à la mort.--La sensation.--La subconsience.--La loi de Ribot.--La fin de l'univers envisagée par les matérialistes.--L'intuition et la guerre.

La raison d'État de la Renaissance émerge à partir de la transformation de l'ordre juridique médiéval. Sur les ruines du droit naturel, s'affirme une première raison d'État qui se revendique comme un droit fondé dans la nécessité. À l'opposé, le traité Della Ragione di Stato de Giovanni Botero refonde l'ordre juridique pour maîtriser cette nécessité. La raison d'État botérienne se rattache ainsi à un mouvement général de reconstruction de l'ordre juridique, auquel participent Machiavel ou Bodin.

Tout travail, y compris le travail psychique, demande de l’énergie. Pour Freud, cette énergie est fournie par la libido, l’énergie sexuelle. Mais celle-ci s’exerce bien sûr de façon différente selon la forme de sexualité qu’elle anime. L’auteur envisage ces formes une à une pour montrer comment elles interviennent, leur rôle exact et surtout les problèmes qui surviennent à la suite de blocages, de surinvestissements ou de conflits internes. La sexualité génitale joue un rôle déterminant dans les deuils de personnes proches. (...) La sexualité pulsionnelle s’en prend aux objets mis en place dans la relation. L’amour idéal est également déterminant, dans la mesure où certains des objets intériorisés dans le contact avec les proches ont acquis un poids psychique particulier : ils sont indestructibles, et c’est finalement en trouvant à les remettre en place dans d’autres circuits relationnels qu’on parvient à retrouver un équivalent adéquat à la relation disparue. Il faut toutefois veiller à ce que les tendances pulsionnelles primaires issues du ça ne viennent pas tirer le mouvement du côté de la mort. (shrink)

Le kantisme français du XIXe siècle est à la fois un corpus savant, un carrefour d'idées et une doctrine politique attrape-tout. Cette plasticité lui a permis de prendre place au coeur de l'imaginaire collectif : Renouvier ne lisait-il pas Les Misérables comme une Critique de la raison pratique mise en roman? Le kantisme est un aspect central de la naturalisation de la pensée allemande en France. Il a contribué à l'hybridation de la culture française. Les Français ont appris de Kant (...) à désarmer leurs guerres civiles et, en acclimatant le criticisme, ils ont dessiné les figures d'une civilité « cosmopolitique » et d'une laïcité morale transmises par l'école. Le kantisme est le résultat de décantations complexes qui ont enrichi le plancton de la modernité française. L'auteur analyse le public kantien dans sa diversité, ainsi que l'entrée en scène d'une intelligentsia qui, au-delà des professeurs de philosophie, a peu à peu inclus les classes moyennes instruites. (shrink)

The premise of this brief study is an examination of the conditions in which a decentering can occur in the Blanchotian manner of the experience of listening to music. Through an exploration of these conditions of decentering, and taking as an example the first scene of the narrative Thomas the Obscure, the text probes the very notion of music, its presuppositions and prerogatives, in order to construct subsequently the hypothesis of a music free from any polar structure, of a music (...) construed as simply a given. By thus circumscribing all music between the two poles of a music comparable, on the one hand, to a landscape or natural horizon and, on the other hand, to a language, the essay foregrounds within Blanchot’s thought the basis of a possible becoming for a music which would engage the listener not as a plane of actualization but as a porous space. (shrink)

For a complete theory of Boolean algebras T, let MT denote the class of countable models of T. For B1, B2 ∈ MT, let B1 ≤ B2 mean that B1 is elementarily embeddable in B2. Theorem 1. For every complete theory of Boolean algebras T, if T ≠ Tω, then $\langle M_T, \leq\rangle$ is well-quasi-ordered. ■ We define Tω. For a Boolean algebra B, let I(B) be the ideal of all elements of the form a + s such that $B\upharpoonright (...) a$ is an atomic Boolean algebra and $B\upharpoonright s$ is an atomless Boolean algebra. The Tarski derivative of B is defined as follows: B(0) = B and B(n + 1) = B(n)/I(B(n)). Define Tω to be the theory of all Boolean algebras such that for every n ∈ ω, B(n) ≠ {0}. By Tarski [1949], Tω is complete. Recall that $\langle A, \leq\rangle$ is a partial well-quasi-ordering, if it is a partial quasi-ordering and for every $\{a_i\mid i \in \omega\} \subseteq A$ , there are $i < j < \omega$ such that ai ≤ aj. Theorem 2. $\langle M_{T_\omega}, \leq\rangle$ contains a subset M such that the partial orderings $\langle M, \leq \upharpoonright M \rangle$ and $\langle\mathscr{P}(\omega), \subseteq\rangle$ are isomorphic. ■ Let M'0 denote the class of all countable Boolean algebras. For B1, B2 ∈ M'0, let B1 ≤' B2 mean that B1 is embeddable in B2. Remark. $\langle M'_0, \leq'\rangle$ is well-quasi-ordered. ■ This follows from Laver's theorem [1971] that the class of countable linear orderings with the embeddability relation is well-quasi-ordered and the fact that every countable Boolean algebra is isomorphic to a Boolean algebra of a linear ordering. (shrink)

Jakob Friedrich Fries estime que Kant a fait de funestes concessions au dogmatisme philosophique, dont il avait pourtant mieux que quiconque mis au jour les contradictions. Ainsi n’a-t-il pas distingué de façon suffisamment rigoureuse la connaissance transcendantale de son objet. Il en a conclu que la connaissance transcendantale était elle aussi a priori et a cherché à fonder les jugements synthétiques a priori sur des connaissances elles-mêmes a priori. Kant a ainsi été victime d’un « préjugé de la preuve » (...) auquel il a donné la forme spécifique d’un « préjugé du transcendantal » : dans la mesure où la « déduction transcendantale » cherche à donner une « preuve transcendantale » de la validité de nos connaissances, la théorie kantienne de la connaissance est donc menacée par un cercle logique. Aussi la déduction transcendantale bien comprise ne peut-elle être, selon Fries, qu’une déduction subjective, psychologique ou anthropologique, ce qui ne signifie pas pour autant que Fries entende réduire la philosophie à la psychologie, contrairement à ce que lui reprocheront les contempteurs de son psychologisme. (shrink)

La publication des lettres d’Isabelle de Bourbon-Parme à sa belle-sœur l’archiduchesse Marie-Christine est un événement important. Pas seulement parce que nous avons affaire à un écrit intime d’une « princesse philosophe », dont l’intelligence et l’ouverture d’esprit sont en soi dignes de notre intérêt. Mais parce qu’il s’agit de lettres d’amour à une femme, comme nous en avons peu d’exemples au xviiie siècle, et même après. Il se pourrait même que nous ayons affaire au premier écrit de cette...