Immunological mechanisms and therapy approaches in psychotic syndromes were recently supported by the discovery of autoantibody-associated limbic and non-limbic encephalitis. However, how clinical diagnostic procedures in psychiatry should be adapted to these new insights is still unclear. In this study, we analyzed the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and neuroimmunological alterations and their association with cerebral MRI (cMRI) and electroencephalographic (EEG) findings. From 2006 until 2013, we acquired 180 CSF samples from psychotic patients. Between 2006 and 2009, CSF examinations were only performed (...) in cases in which organic brain disease was suspected. Since then, this procedure has been integrated into our routine diagnostic workup. CSF basic diagnostics were supplemented by measuring antineuronal antibodies against intracellular synaptic antigens, antibodies against intracellular onconeural antigens, antibodies against neuronal cell surface antigens and thyroid antibodies. In addition, cMRIs and EEGs were conducted. We found white cell counts elevated in 3.4% of the cases, albumin quotient elevated in 21.8%, and protein concentration elevated in 42.2%. Evidence of intrathecal immunoglobulin synthesis was found in 7.2% of the cases. Antibodies measured against neuronal cell surface antigens were positive in 3.2%. Reactivity on antibodies against intracellular onconeural antigens were detected in 3.5%. Serum thyroid antibodies were elevated in 24.7%. Abnormalities were found in 39.5% of cMRIs and in 34.3% of EEGs. The main finding of our study was the high prevalence of CSF and autoantibody abnormalities in 54.4% of psychotic patients. In combination with cMRIs and EEGs, 75.6% showed abnormal findings. Our results are discussed with regard to the concept of immunological encephalopathy. Future studies should analyze the efficacy of immunomodulatory therapies. (shrink)

The article considers the concept of gustus spiritualis, in particular its possible historical connection with (aesthetic) taste in the seventeenth century. By ‘aesthetic’, I mean a radically modern phenomenon, attitude, sensibility, and so forth, that is, a new type of experience. Its discourse has many keywords; one of them is taste, an inner faculty by which its possessor is able to make sharp and proper distinctions, and simultaneously to enjoy fine delights. Here, I am obliged to confine myself to the (...) interpretation of some Jesuit authors within the wide tradition of gustus spiritualis: St Ignatius of Loyola, St Francis de Sales, Baltasar Gracián, and Dominique Bouhours in sequence. The latter two are usually treated in the historical narratives of aesthetics, which, however, usually take gustus/gusto/goût as if it were a purely secular (moral, political) notion in the seventeenth century, while its theological roots are ignored. Exploring the role of gustus spiritualis in the evolution of (aesthetic) taste can cast light, on the one hand, on the important fact that this entails volition, that is, the determination and enchantment of human desire and hope without constraint; and, on the other, on the historical process of the emergence of a new type of ‘beholder’ with a sensitive attitude to transcendence, and, in the same manner, to his or her worldly life as well; moreover, it is a process in which, simultaneously, the nature of transcendence is transformed into a tastable one. (shrink)

This study examines the sources that could inspire Joseph Addison’s influential ‘aesthetic’ triad of ‘great’, ‘uncommon’, and ‘beautiful’, as elaborated in his essay-series The Pleasures of the Imagination in 1712. After identifying a philological problem in the interpretative tradition which gives rise to Addison’s triad from a section of Ps Longinus’ Peri Hypsous, further three seventeenth-century texts – Thomas Burnet’s Telluris theoria sacra, Dominique Bouhours’ Les entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène, and Baltasar Gracián’s El Criticón – are presented in order (...) to reconstruct a ‘reading glass’ through which Addison could peruse and understand the Longinian section, and then could create his ‘aesthetic’ triad. As a result of this reconstruction, the possible connection between Gracián’s allegorical novel and Addison’s essay can cast more light on the complex and insufficiently discussed relationship between theology or devotional literature and the emerging modern aesthetic discourse. From this angle, Addison’s ‘man of polite imagination’, that is, the homo aestheticus in the modern sense of the adjective, seems to be the heir of Gracián’s ‘first man’ who has the privilege of regarding the created world in a new light, and, as Addison’s aesthete, of discovering its greatness, novelty and beauty in ‘innocent pleasures’. (shrink)

pt. 1. Gaston Bachelard's historical epistemology.--pt. 2. For a critique of epistemology.

Qu'un interet renouvele se manifeste aujourd'hui pour la versant epistemologique de l'oeuvre de Gaston Bachelard peut se comprendre au regard de l'histoire contemporaine de la philosophie des sciences. Cette histoire a ete dominee durant la plus grande partie du XXe siecle par une doctrine - celle de l'empirisme (ou positivisme) logique - promue a Vienne a la fin des annees 1920 par une institution originale, le Cercle de Vienne qui publie son manifeste en 1929, et s'organise comme un mouvement a (...) visee universelle et progressiste - celui de la conception scientifique du monde. La tradition francaise de la philosophie des sciences a pris d'entree de jeu un tout autre chemin. Si elle ne les a pas ignorees, elle a refuse de souscrire aux theses majeures du positivisme logique lorsqu'il s'est presente a elle. Elle a toujours lie etroitement philosophie et histoire des sciences. Dans le titre de ce petit livre ecrit durant l'annee universitaire 1967-1968 sous la direction de Georges Canquilhem, Dominique Lecourt a avance l'expression d'epistemologie historique pour signaler, a propos de Gaston Bachelard, cette particularite. (shrink)

The present essay is a compact form of the results obtained during many decades of research into the primeval foundations of the collective fields of force, both social and of consciousness. Since everything is determined by their origins, and the collective forces arise from the mind, we had to explore the ultimate origins of mind. We have come to recognize the law of interactions as the law and necessity which determine the primeval origins of mind. It also determines the substance (...) and essence of the Universe and the modes of its existence and functioning. The present essay is a concise form of results obtained during many decades of research in the primeval foundations of collective, both social and consciousness fields. I point out that a yet unknown type of forces existed in the Golden Age, which I termed as collective force. In the Golden Age mankind lived in communities which had a full unity. The communal life developed its collective forms, of which the most significant are the development of human speech, of language, share of work and the development of the communal fests. The law determining the primeval origins of mind is the cosmic law of interactions. It defines the substance of the Universe and the ways of its existence and activity. A detailed analysis is presented on the nature of the lay of interaction here. One consequence of this fundamental principle is the general prevalence of the principle of mutuality, which plays a basic role in the understanding of the unfolding and degeneration of consciousness. The principle of mutuality determines the changes of every levels of life. The laws of the generation of consciousness in the ages of evolution toward Homo and the Golden Age are analysed. I presented some evidences indicating the factual existence of the Golden Age, as well as its destruction, which was necessarily accompanied by the overthrow of the consciousness of the Golden Age, its repression and replacement by the newly developed rational, upper or superficial mind. Starting from the consideration that our mind is a product of our history, the phenomenon of the 'double mind' is recognised, the largely antagonistic duality of human mind. It is succeeded to solve the riddle of the double mind and determining its substance. Our double mind, consisting of the ‘upper’ or rational mind and the ‘deep-mind’, is a creature of the two fundamental ages of mankind, that of the age of power domination and the Golden Age. Therefore it expresses the duality of our history. We attempted to explore the heritage of the Golden Age embedded into our world of instincts, sexuality, emotional and sensual world, and the expressions of this heritage according to the different periods of our lives. If we will succeed in enlightening the deep-mind it may make it possible to give back the long-forgotten collective fields of forces to mankind, unavailable to the surface mind at present, and would expand the all-pervasive power of the conscious mind significantly. Hopefully, our results open up new vistas for the research of the collective fields and the double nature of the human mind, and may enable us to know and complete ourselves more deeply and thoroughly. (shrink)

Le rôle majeur que jouent les sciences et les techniques dans les sociétés modernes et les mutations profondes qu’elles connaissent exigent de nouveaux moyens d’analyse. On ne peut désormais comprendre l’activité scientifique qu’en replaçant ses logiques propres dans leur contexte social. Il s’agit de saisir la pratique actuelle des sciences, en révisant les notions constitutives de leur histoire et de leur philosophie, comme l’expérimentation ou la preuve ; de penser les sciences en société, lorsqu’elles quittent le laboratoire et qu’elles interviennent (...) dans les grandes questions économiques, politiques et sociétales (OGM, nucléaire, etc.) ; de faire le point sur le statut des études récentes sur les sciences ( Science Studies ), en montrant ce qu’elles ont apporté de décisif, mais aussi ce qu’elles ignorent. Des laboratoires européens du XIXe siècle à la Silicon Valley aujourd’hui, c’est en s’appuyant sur de nombreux exemples historiques que ces études sont menées. Les savoirs scientifiques, mais aussi managériaux et économiques, participent à la mise en place de la société néolibérale, faisant surgir des questions cruciales comme celle de la possibilité d’une participation démocratique aux choix scientifiques et techniques, ou celle du sens de la notion de développement durable. C’est pourquoi la visée finale de ce livre est essentiellement politique. (shrink)

This chapter, which provides a discussion on the phenomenological foundations of predicative structure, first introduces the different steps in Edmund Husserl's argument. It is noted that not all judgements can be equated with a nexus between a conceptual function and an argument. The predicative structure shows the orientation of consciousness towards one or more objects taken as a theme of interest and utterance. The genetic phenomenological perspective posits the question of the origin of predicative judgement within a much larger context. (...) Husserl's account amounts to granting a paradigmatic character to the theory of experience of ultimate individual substrates and to the theory of perceptual judgement. Levinasian phenomenology implies a radical rethinking of the primacy of the predicative apophansis. It is noted that language can never be taken as an independent and autonomous dimension. (shrink)

This article presents the critique of cybernetics as central to the history of one of the twentieth century’s most infamous avant-garde movements: the Situationist International (SI). Bringing together and analysing a series of seemingly marginal events in the build-up to May ’68, this article shows how the SI’s portrait of cybernetics as an emerging form of social power and control foreshadows later developments in French radical thought. This little-noted trajectory in the situationist movement also highlights the ways in which aesthetics, (...) theory, and politics are inextricably tied together in the events of May ’68. (shrink)

The article compares the research programs of teaching symbolic language to chimpanzees, pointing on the dichotomy between artificial language vs. ASL, and the dichotomy between researchers who decided to establish emotional relationships between themselves and the apes, and those who have seen apes as instrumental devices. It is concluded that the experiments with the most interesting results have been both with artificial language and ASL, but with strong affiliation between researchers and animal involved in the experiments. The experiments on talking (...) apes are not so much experiments in psycholinguistics (how far can animal learn human language) but wonderful experiments in the communities of communication between human beings and great apes. (shrink)

L'Autre on a l'impression que l'on sait ce que c'est, mais en fait on ne le sait pas. C'est l'un des concepts les plus communément utilisés, et pourtant l'un des plus méconnus. On l'utilise de façon automatique, comme s'il était évident, comme si c'était un universel, alors que c'est une construction culturelle. Ce livre tente enfin de comprendre l'Autre.

Prejudiced beliefs may certainly seem like defective beliefs. But in what sense are they defective? Many will be false and harmful, but philosophers have further argued that prejudiced belief is defective also in the sense that it could only arise from distinctive kinds of epistemic irrationality: we could acquire or retain our prejudiced beliefs only by violating our epistemic responsibilities. It is also assumed that we are only morally responsible for the harms that prejudiced beliefs cause because, in forming these (...) beliefs in the first place, we are violating our epistemic responsibilities. In Prejudice, Endre Begby argues that these common convictions are misguided. His discussion shows in detail that there are many epistemically justified pathways to prejudiced belief, and that it is a mistake to lean on the concept of epistemic responsibility to articulate our ethical responsibilities. Doing so unreasonably burdens victims of prejudice with having to show that their victimizers were in a position to know better. Accordingly, Begby provides an account of moral responsibility for harm which does not depend on finding grounds for epistemic blame. This view is supported by a number of examples and case studies at individual, collective, and institutional levels of decision making. Additionally, Begby develops a systematic platform for non-ideal epistemology which would apply to a wide range of other social and epistemic phenomena of current concern, such as fake news, conspiracy theories, science scepticism, and more. (shrink)

As a general rule, whenever a hearer is justified in forming the belief that p on the basis of a speaker’s testimony, she will also be justified in assuming that the speaker has formed her belief appropriately in light of a relevantly large and representative sample of the evidence that bears on p. In simpler terms, a justification for taking someone’s testimony entails a justification for trusting her assessment of the evidence. This introduces the possibility of what I will call (...) “evidential preemption.” Evidential preemption occurs when a speaker, in addition to offering testimony that p, also warns the hearer of the likelihood that she will subsequently be confronted with apparently contrary evidence: this is done, however, not so as to encourage the hearer to temper her confidence in p in anticipation of that evidence, but rather to suggest that the (apparently) contrary evidence is in fact misleading evidence or evidence that has already been taken into account. Either way, the speaker is signalling to the hearer that the subsequent disclosure of this evidence will not require her to significantly revise her belief that p. Such preemption can effectively inoculate an audience against future contrary evidence, and thereby creates an opening for a form of exploitative manipulation that I will call “epistemic grooming.” Nonetheless, I argue, not all uses of evidential preemption are nefarious; it can also serve as an important tool for guiding epistemically limited agents though complex evidential scenarios. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage propose une approche globale des reconstructions érudites et des utilisations polémiques de la philosophie de la Renaissance dans la France du XIXe siècle en centrant l’attention sur une relecture politique de la pratique historiographique à l’époque de Victor Cousin. This book offers a comprehensive approach to scholarly reconstructions and polemical uses of Renaissance philosophy in nineteenth-century France by focusing on the political implications of historiographical practice in Victor Cousin’s time.

Bien loin de ne poser que des problèmes spécifiques dont aurait à s'occuper une éthique particulière réservée à des experts, la médecine confrontée à l'appareil technoscientifique moderne nous oblige à reprendre à la base les questions les plus générales et les plus radicales concernant l'homme et sa conduite. C'est pourquoi cet ouvrage questionne la philosophie, le droit et l'éthique jusque dans leurs fondements avant d'aborder les problèmes les plus brûlants de notre actualité médicale. Dans une perspective à la fois interdisciplinaire (...) et fondamentale, nous présentons ici trois approches - philosophique, juridique et médicale qui constituent autant d'entrées possibles. Ainsi regroupées et articulées, les différences qui existent entre les rationalités, les pratiques et les discours peuvent devenir des facteurs d'enrichissement réciproque au lieu de constituer des obstacles. (shrink)

On fait des déclarations d'amour ainsi que des déclarations de guerre ; chacun est tenu de déclarer aussi ses impôts et ses marchandises à la douane. Déclarer, c'est d'abord dévoiler un fait pour qu'il fasse lien. Ce livre " déclare " la philosophie en ce qu'il tente de la monter à l'oeuvre au cœur des sciences, des techniques et des arts aussi bien que de la religion et de la politique. On a rédigé, en un moment solennel et mémorable, une (...) " Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen.. ".. Déclarer, ce peut être affirmer une volonté pour qu'elle fasse droit, au besoin en renouvelant le droit lui-même. On trouvera ainsi dans ce recueil une incitation à poser la question philosophique des règles et des normes dont les sciences sociales et humaines ont puissamment contribué à établir l'emprise sur notre monde. (shrink)

According to a common view, prejudice always involves some form of epistemic culpability, i.e., a failure to respond to evidence in the appropriate way. I argue that the common view wrongfully assumes that prejudices always involve universal generalizations. After motivating the more plausible thesis that prejudices typically involve a species of generic judgment, I show that standard examples provide no grounds for positing a strong connection between prejudice and epistemic culpability. More generally, the common view fails to recognize the extent (...) to which prejudices are epistemically insidious: once they are internalized as background beliefs, they quite reasonably come to control the assessment and interpretation of new evidence. This property of insidiousness helps explain why prejudices are so recalcitrant to empirical counterevidence and also why they are frequently invisible to introspective reflection. (shrink)

Belief polarization is widely seen to threaten havoc on our shared political lives. It is often assumed that BP is the product of epistemically irrational behaviors at the individual level. After distinguishing between BP as it occurs in intra-group and inter-group settings, this paper argues that neither process necessarily reflects individual epistemic irrationality. It is true that these processes can work in tandem to produce so-called “echo chambers.” But while echo chambers are often problematic from the point of view of (...) collective rationality, it doesn't follow that individuals are doing anything wrong, epistemically speaking, in seeking them out. In non-ideal socio-epistemic contexts, echo chamber construction might provide one's best defense against systematic misinformation and deception. (shrink)

Beliefs can cause moral wrongs, no doubt, but can they also constitute moral wrongs in their own right? This paper offers some grounds to be skeptical of the idea that there are moral norms which operate directly on belief, independently of any epistemic norms also operating on belief. The resultant skepticism is moderate in the following sense: it holds that the motivations underlying the doxastic morality approach should not be dismissed lightly; they are genuine insights and serve to bring to (...) light important new issues concerning the interaction between our notions of moral and epistemic responsibility. Nonetheless, it is also skeptical, in holding that these concerns are ultimately best voiced in more traditional categories which distinguish the epistemology of belief from the morality of action. (shrink)

What is humanity? I do not claim to answer this question; more simply, I will seek to bring to light the now-problematic character of the very concept of humanity. I will start from a basic established fact: today we cannot conceive the notion of humanity without starting from a dual tension, between a distant past and a future which is either more or less near or very remote. In whatever direction one turns, the concept of humanity is confused. It is (...) still more confused if we seek to embrace past and future together. (shrink)

Morality, as a distinctive reflection of the needs, interests, and tasks of real groups and classes, changes with the change in their historical status and functions. Such change is also characteristic of the morality of the working class, which passes through a number of stages in its development: proletarian morality under capitalism, socialist morality in socialist society, and communist morality of the developed, communist social relationships of the future. Within these three major periods it is possible to identify different phases (...) corresponding to changing conditions, concrete tasks, and needs. Thus elements of proletarian morality, which took shape in the period of free capitalist competition, undergo a definite transformation in the epoch of imperialism and also change in a period of revolutionary enthusiasm. (shrink)

Studying social phenomena is often assumed to be inherently different from studying natural science phenomena. In psychology, this assumption has led to a division of the field into social and experimental domains. The same kind of division has carried over into ecological psychology, despite the fact that Gibson clearly intended his theory for both social and natural phenomena. In this paper, we argue that the social/natural science dichotomy can be derived from a distinction between hermeneutics and science that is deeply (...) rooted in the atomistic, structuralist ontological tradition. We show that, from a process-based perspective, the central questions of hermeneutics (action of an individual within a context of possible actions), ecological psychology (behavior of an organism in an ecological niche) and physics (motion of a particle in a field) share a similar structure. Building on these ideas, we propose a common, process-based methodology for psychology that integrates field theory with insights from quantum mechanics to accommodate traditionally problematic concepts in natural science such as teleology and values. To demonstrate the feasibility of this approach, empirical findings on the paradigmatic problem of prospective control (such as gaze control in automobile driving in relation to perceptual tuning) are presented. (shrink)

Technologien haben schon lange Eingang in unseren Alltag gefunden und transformieren zahlreiche Lebensbereiche wie Politik, Wirtschaft, Bildung, Gesundheit und Pflege. Mittels Social Media pflegen wir zwischenmenschliche Beziehungen und kommunizieren miteinander, wir haben Apps zum Schlafen oder für die Ernährung und in der Medizin werden Technologien in den Körper implantiert oder zur Untersuchung des Körpers verwendet. Wearables, wie z. B. die Smart Watch, werden direkt am Körper getragen und müssen kaum noch abgenommen werden. Smart Watches messen den Puls und Herzschlag, zählen (...) unsere Schritte, melden sich, wenn man wieder aufstehen sollte und erfassen den Schlafrhythmus. Wir schlagen Wissen bei Wikipedia nach und lernen interaktiv über Smart Boards in der Schule. Über digitale Tools lässt sich das orts- und zeitunabhängige Zusammenarbeiten organisieren. Wie verändert sich das Menschsein in einer solchen technisierten Welt? Wie verändern sich die menschliche Lebenswelt, Handeln, Verantwortungsstrukturen und Identitätskonzepte? Puzio, Anna/Rutzmoser, Carolin/Endres, Eva-Maria: Menschsein in einer technisierten Welt – Einleitende Bemerkungen zu einer interdisziplinären Auseinandersetzung mit der digitalen Transformation. In: Endres, Eva-Maria/Puzio, Anna/Rutzmoser, Carolin (Hg.): Menschsein in einer technisierten Welt. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf den Menschen im Zeichen der digitalen Transformation. Wiesbaden 2022. (shrink)

Latash & Anson's intention to describe only the regularities of motor behavior is compromised by the homunculus paradigm. Although we concur on the need to redefine in atypical populations, we contend that this enterprise requires a process based functionalism. We argue for accommodating movement control and perceptual processes with physical and task constraints in a natural setting.

A propagator for a path space integral can be used to represent the and provides a natural way to model a control signal that is temporally segmented by placement of pairs of stimulating and recording electrodes. Although care must be exercised in interpreting the resulting measurement, the technique should prove useful to experimenters who study cerebellar functioning.

Dominique Lecourt argues that a counter-revolution in French intellectual life has seen the period of the master thinkers of the 1960s succeeded by an era of ...

The famous debate between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger of 1929 in Davos was set on a global stage and, yet, inherently Eurocentric. This volume explores how the hypothetical presence of the Kyoto school founder Nishida Kitarō would have overcome this limitation.

Michael B. Gill’s new book on the third Earl of Shaftesbury’s philosophy of beauty gathers his articles on the same topic of the last few years, adds new chapters to them, and gives an elegant fini...

«L'Enseignement oral de Platon» est la première grande synthèse consacrée en France à ce que l'on appelle l'École de Tübingen, c'est-à-dire une nouvelle interprétation de Platon qui a provoqué de vifs débats, un renouveau des études platoniciennes et de toute la conception de la philosophie antique.L'École de Tübingen admet que Platon a enseigné des doctrines qu'il s'était volontairement abstenu de consigner dans ses dialogues et que l'on peut reconstituer grâce aux témoignages des traditions aristotélicienne, platonicienne et doxographique. Cette hypothèse permet (...) de mieux comprendre le milieu de l'Académie platonicienne et la problématique de la pensée aristotélicienne. (shrink)

Demander une assistance médicale à la procréation, recourir à l'avortement pour des raisons diverses, contrôler après coup une conduite sexuelle à risque par une pilule du lendemain, et bientôt peut-être exiger d'être euthanasié : depuis que l'État s'est engagé dans un processus de dépénalisation de ces pratiques médicales, on peut aujourd'hui faire beaucoup de choses de son propre corps quand il s'agit du début ou de la fin de vie. Cette liberté s'exerce néanmoins à une condition, toujours la même : (...) se présenter devant un médecin. Et que vous demande ce médecin? Presque rien, semble-t-il. Il vous demande de vous asseoir et de parler de votre état, de votre demande. Bref, de ce qui vous amène là. C'est ce " presque rien " dont il est question dans cet ouvrage. Un " presque rien " qui révèle, en réalité, un nouveau système de surveillance dans lequel le médecin prodigue informations et conseils à un sujet jugé désormais capable de prendre seul des décisions souveraines en matière de vie et de mort. Un face-à-face où apparaît le malaise de ceux qui assument la délicate mission de recueillir l'expression du désir ou de la détresse. À partir d'une longue enquête dans le secret des cabinets médicaux, l'auteur explique comment la régulation juridique a laissé place à des formes de pouvoir beaucoup plus sophistiquées, un dispositif souple de gouvernement des conduites qui laisse toute sa place à l'autocontrôle et à l'intériorisation par les individus des normes sociales. Elle montre ainsi comment, du cabinet du praticien jusqu'au Comité consultatif national d'éthique, c'est une nouvelle administration du vivant qui se met en place. (shrink)

Histoire de ce traité, de sa diffusion et de son influence et étude littéraire et doctrinale. L'étude doctrinale de la triade " puissance, sagesse, bonté " telle qu'elle est formulée dans le traité, sa comparaison avec les " Theologiae " d'Abélard, invitent à réinterpréter le débat trinitaire au XIIe siècle, Hugues de Saint-Victor devant être tenu pour l'auteur de la triade.