L'idée que comprendre permet de prévoir est une idée moderne. Elle est fondée sur la découverte, que le monde physique obéit à des lois (Galilée, et surtout Newton). Elle a mis fin à la pensée magique, et elle est à la base de la révolution scientifique et du monde moderne. Or nous assistons à la dissociation de ces deux choses. D'une part, on réalise par exemple que les lois mathématiques de certains phénomènes, mêmes parfaitement connues, sont si sensibles à la (...) moindre imprécision dans les données que cela rend la prévision impossible en pratique. C'est le fameux "effet papillon" : un battement d'ailes à Rio pourrait être la cause d'une tornade au Texas. D'un autre côté, la puissance des big data rendrait inutile, selon certains essayistes et quelques scientifiques, le raisonnement théorique. On n'aurait plus besoin de comprendre les causalités puisque la corrélation suffirait. Un retour au CASSINI Moyen Age en somme, aux recettes qui ont marché, mais avec des données des millions de fois plus nombreuses. En termes économiques, on a découvert avec la révolution scientifique qu'une explication théorique coûtait moins cher que certaines observations : Newton avait prévu l'aplatissement de la Terre sans qu'on ait besoin d'aller voir aux pôles ; aujourd'hui grâce à la rapidité des ordinateurs et des réseaux, les termes de la comparaison s'inversent. A ceci, Hubert Krivine répond notamment que les big data et l'intelligence artificielle qui se fonde sur elles sont conservatrices, et que si elles conviennent aux assureurs, elles ne peuvent pas prévoir des choses nouvelles et extraordinaires. Les ordinateurs composent aujourd'hui sur demande du Mozart ou des ballades celtiques, aucun n'invente de musique nouvelle. Ils conduisent des voitures, mais aucun n'explique le mystère de la "matière noire". La machine peut aider l'homme, elle ne le remplacera pas. (shrink)

The ArgumentDevelopments in theoretical physics, even when they are revolutionary for physics, usually donotenter public awareness. The reaction to the special relativity theory is one of the few exceptions. The conceptual changes brought by special relativity to our notions of space and time, induced a lively debate not only within intellectual circles but in many strata of the educated middle class. In this article, I focus on a particular moment of public reaction to special and general relativity theory and to (...) its creator Albert Einstein. I try to paint a picture of the anti-Einstein campaign in Germany of 1920, with finer brush strokes than those applied previously by others. My aim is to embed the campaign into the cultural and political climate of the Weimar republic. Without leaving the realm of physics only a superficial understanding of what happened seems possible. My thesis is that the anti-Einstein-campaign was organized, and the physicists involved in it used, mainly in order to rally support for one of the German right-wing parties, the Deutschnationale Volkspartei. (shrink)

The creation and consolidation of a memory can rest on the integration of any number of disparate features and contexts. How is it that these bind together to form a coherent memory? This book offers an unrivalled overview of one of the most debated hotspots of modern memory research: binding, and will instigate innovative and pioneering ideas for future research.

A Critique of Artificial Reason Hubert L. Dreyfus . HUBERT L. DREYFUS What Computers Still Can't Do Thi s One XZKQ-GSY-8KDG What. WHAT COMPUTERS STILL CAN'T DO Front Cover.

The effectiveness of complaint handling and service recovery policies in customer retention has been the focus of both scholars and service organizations. In the past decade, Justice Theory has provided the basis of the dominant theoretical framework for complaint management and service recovery. However, it does not explicitly address unfair trade practices, which constitute an ethical issue. Favorable outcomes in complaint handling may not be able to restore the reputation of a company and the potential harm perceived by consumers. Using (...) face-to-face interviews, this study applies Fairness Theory to explore the psychological responses of consumers in the post-complaint phase, particularly in ethical judgment. The findings suggest that an unfavorable outcome in the post-complaint stage leads to counterfactual thinking by the consumer about the consumer's state of well-being. The complaint must be due to the discretionary actions of the service provider whose accountability is assessed. Those harmful actions are then judged against an ethical standard. Explanations can reduce blame, and their effectiveness is moderated by outcome favorability but not ethical judgment. Favorable outcome, captured by "Would Perception," has only limited influence on Perceived Potential Harm (PPH), which is an important determinant of ethical judgment. This study makes both theoretical and practical contributions. It is the first study to validate Fairness Theory empirically and apply it to complaint handling as a complement of Justice Theory in the information and communication technology (ICT) service context. The study indicates that customers may condemn a service provider because of PPH even though the outcome is favorable. Unfair trade practices are what make customers hate ICT service providers. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest pogłębiona analiza przyczyn i konsekwencji rozdwojenia sejmiku wiszeńskiego w 1597 r. z naciskiem na relacje polityczno-społeczne obejmujące teren dawnego województwa ruskiego oraz głównych politycznych aktorów zdarzeń: Stanisława Stadnickiego z Łańcuta, Stanisława Żółkiewskiego i Jana Zamoyskiego. Pomimo stosunkowo obfitego materiału źródłowego w postaci listów, protestacji i sejmowych diariuszy jedyna poważna próba zbadania tego tematu podjęta przez Jana Rzońcę okazała się dalece niewystarczająca, zawężając temat rozbicia sejmiku jedynie do obszaru wpływu na późniejsze obrady sejmu oraz ogólną kondycję państwa. Przeprowadzona (...) w artykule krytyczna analiza zachowanych źródeł pozwoliła w dużym stopniu zrekonstruować obrady tytułowego sejmiku, ustalić dokładne przyczyny jego rozbicia oraz powiązać zaszłe na nim zdarzenia z politycznym przesileniem, do którego doszło w województwie ruskim pod koniec roku 1597 w postaci lokalnego sojuszu Jana Zamoyskiego ze Stanisławem Stadnickim z Łańcuta. Poznanie kulis zawarcia powyższego porozumienia oraz powodów jego fiaska pozwoliło natomiast lepiej zrozumieć mechanizmy funkcjonowania stronnictwa kanclerskiego pod koniec XVI w. i stanu, w jakim się wówczas znalazło. W artykule podjęta została ponadto próba rozwikłania problemu uczestnictwa w sejmiku żołnierzy kwarcianych/prywatnych oraz zbadania ich rzeczywistego wpływu na obrady sejmiku w Wiszni. Bezrefleksyjnie przyjmowana do tej pory teoria personalnie obarczająca winą za rozbicie sejmiku hetmana polnego Stanisława Żółkiewskiego wydaje się co najmniej przesadzona, zupełnie pomijając własnowolność służących w wojsku żołnierzy oraz przysługujące im jako szlachcie prawa do uczestnictwa w życiu publicznym Rzeczypospolitej. (shrink)

Rousseau has always had an uncertain relationship with the theory of constituent power. On the one hand, his distrust of political representation and support for popular sovereignty seem consistent with the idea of the people as a legally unlimited constitution-maker. On the other hand, if, from those views about representation and sovereignty, it follows that Rousseau is a proponent of direct democracy, then there seems to be no place in his thought for a theory that presupposes, above all, a separation (...) between those who exercise a delegated authority and those who possess an original constitution-making power. In a legal order in which all laws must be directly made by the people, such a separation is absent: the constituent and the legislative body are one and the same. It is therefore not surprising that Rousseau’s name is largely absent from contemporary literature on constituent power. In this article, however, I will show that once Rousseau’s particular conception of law, as well as his distinction between sovereignty and government, are properly understood, one finds in his work not only the first major formulation of the theory of constituent power, but also a careful exploration of its implications for actual constitutional practice. (shrink)

Culture has traditionally been considered as a set of knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, norms, and morals, acquired by a human being as a member of a group. Some anthropologists interpret this as a set of abstract representations, such as information or knowledge, while others interpret it as behavioral control mechanisms. These views assume that the contents of a particular culture must be processed by the minds of individuals, either in a direct way or by resorting to learned mental structures in (...) processes of symbolic socialization. Some critics suggest a problem with these perspectives since they do not provide a convincing explanation of the enculturation process beyond metaphorical images of transfer or internalization of symbolic cultural contents through linguistic transmission. The new embodied theories of cognition, especially enactivism, could give new ideas about what enculturation processes are like, through the concept of participatory sense-making in material culture environments. In this essay, we discuss how an enactive vision of culture could be, and what advantages it would have, as well as the challenges and weaknesses in explaining the culture and its learning processes. (shrink)

For Descartes, knowledge exists as ideas in the mind that represent the world. In a radical critique, Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor argue that knowledge consists of much more than the representations we formulate in our minds. They affirm our direct contact with reality—both the physical and the social world—and our shared understanding of it.

This book is the first to provide a sustained, coherent analysis of Foucault's work as a whole. To demonstrate the sense in which Foucault's work is beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, the authors unfold a careful, analytical exposition of his oeuvre. They argue that during the of Foucault's work became a sustained and largely successful effort to develop a new method - "interpretative analytics" - capable of explaining both the logic of structuralism's claim to be an objective science and the apparent (...) validity of the hermeneutical counterclaim that the human sciences can proceed only by understanding the deepest meaning of the subject and his tradition. (shrink)

The presence of Neoplatonism in contemporary french phenomenology has a pregnance that crosses its most relevant points. Jean-Luc Marion's work does not escape this. In this work we approach the marionian appropriation of Nicholas of Cusa's thought, in the light of his writing Certitudes négatives, with the intention of understanding the cusanu´s ignorant doctrine as a way of negative certainty. La presencia del neoplatonismo en la fenomenología francesa contemporánea posee una pregnancia que atraviesa sus puntos más relevantes. La obra de (...) Jean-Luc Marion no escapa a esto. En este trabajo abordamos la apropiación marioniana del pensamiento de Nicolás de Cusa, a la luz de su escrito Certitudes négatives, con la intención de comprender la doctrina ignorante del Cusano como un modo de certeza negativa. (shrink)

FREGE AND ŁUKASIEWICZ ON LOGICAL VALUES Our article regards the connections between the views on semantics of Gottlob Frege and Jan Łukasiewicz. We are especially focused on the problem of logical values and their ontological interpetation. The paper is composed of three parts. In the first section we point out the general tendencies in the reception of Frege’s logical theory in the Lvov-Warsaw Philosophical School. The second section is dedicated to Frege’s semantics, especially his analysis of sense and meaning of (...) propositions. In the third section we reconstruct Łukasiewicz’s propositional semantics from the period when he was inspired by Frege’s semantics. We also critically examine the widespread opinion, according to which the ontological interpretation of logical values proposed by Łukasiewicz is entirely consistent with Frege’s concept. (shrink)

Essays discuss the themes of worldliness, affectedness, understanding, and the care-structure found in Heidegger's work on the nature of existence.

I offer an account of _a fortiori_ arguments in the context of a Toulmin-style theory of argumentation schemes. _A fortiori_ arguments contain a comparison of the strength of two or more arguments involving scalar inferences. We can distinguish two kinds of _a fortiori_ arguments depending on whether those scalar inferences connect the premises and the conclusion or the backing and the warrant of the arguments. The first pattern has been studied by rhetoricians and the second pattern by legal argumentation theorists.

Structurally, cognitive and biological evolution are highly similar. Random variation and constant but blind selection drive evolution within biology as well as within cognition. However, evolution of cognitive programs, and in particular of grammar systems, is not a subclass of biological evolution but a domain of its own. The abstract evolutionary principles, however, are akin in cognitive and biological evolution. In other words, insights gained in the biological domain can be cautiously applied to the cognitive domain. This paper claims that (...) the cognitively encapsulated, i.e. consciously inaccessible, aspects of grammars as cognitively represented systems, that is, the procedural and structural parts of grammars, are subject to, and results of, Darwinian evolution, applying to a domain-specific cognitive program. Other, consciously accessible aspects of language do not fall under Darwinian evolutionary principles, but are mostly instances of social changes. (shrink)

The paper points out that the modern formulation of Bohm’s quantum theory known as Bohmian mechanics is committed only to particles’ positions and a law of motion. We explain how this view can avoid the open questions that the traditional view faces according to which Bohm’s theory is committed to a wave-function that is a physical entity over and above the particles, although it is defined on configuration space instead of three-dimensional space. We then enquire into the status of the (...) law of motion, elaborating on how the main philosophical options to ground a law of motion, namely Humeanism and dispositionalism, can be applied to Bohmian mechanics. In conclusion, we sketch out how these options apply to primitive ontology approaches to quantum mechanics in general. (shrink)

Society in the Self: A Theory of Identity in Democracy shows how society is working in the deeper regions of self and identity. This book is an exploration of the democratic potentials of self and identity in a globalizing and localizing society.

_Internet_ is een van de eerste boeken waarin het filosofische inzicht -van Plato tot Kierkegaard - betrokken wordt op het debat over de mogelijkheden en onmogelijkheden van het internet. Dreyfus laat zien dat de onstoffelijke, 'vrij zwevende' websurfer zijn oorsprong vindt in Descartes' scheiding van geest en lichaam, en hoe Kierkegaards inzichten in de opkomst van het moderne leespubliek vooruitlopen op de nieuwsgierige, maar elk risico vermijdende internet-junkie. Uitgaande van recente onderzoeken naar het isolement dat veel internetgebruikers ervaren, toont Dreyfus (...) aan hoe het internet, door zijn nadruk op privé-ervaringen, gebruikers berooft van wezenlijke, belichaamde vermogens zoals vertrouwen, stemmingen en betrokkenheid bij met anderen gedeelde lokale aangelegenheden. _Internet_ is verplichte kost voor iedereen die on line is en is geïnteressseerd in onze plaats in de 'e-revolutie'. (shrink)

The article discusses the connection between theory formation and historical research in the study of religion. It presupposes that the study of religion is conceived of as an empirical discipline. The empirical basis of theories is provided primarily by historical research, including research in the very recent past, that is, the present time. Research in the history of religions, therefore, is an indispensable part of the study of religion. However, in recent discussions on the methods, aims, and theoretical presuppositions of (...) the discipline, research in the history of religions largely is ignored. To shed some light on this blind spot, the article builds on the philosophy of science of Critical Realism. While the first part deals with the role of historical research in theoretical discourses of the discipline, the second part explains fundamental ontological and epistemological positions of Critical Realism and their implications for empirical research. On this basis, some methodological problems of theory formation in the study of religion are discussed in the third part. In particular, it is argued that it is impossible to validate empirically theories of religion that aim to explain what religion is. The concluding part sketches ways of theory formation in the study of religion that does not take religion as the explanandum but as the theoretical perspective that guides research. (shrink)

Le propos de cet article est de revenir sur un présupposé « écologique » assez évident de la clinique médicale, mais qu’on tend à ne plus prendre au sérieux lorsqu’on se laisse obnubiler par les capacités d’objectivation des sciences et surtout les projets philosophiques de naturalisation qui s’en réclament. Réactivant notamment l’héritage de Georges Canguilhem et de la phénoménologie clinique, nous rappelons la profonde ambiguïté sémantique des concepts de santé et de maladie, afin d’indiquer le champ légitime de leur application (...) et de montrer qu’ils ne sont pas indépendants des rapports de pouvoir inhérents à toute existence sociale. (shrink)

We combine philosophical theories with quantitative analyses of online data to propose a sophisticated approach to social media influencers. Identifying influencers as communication systems emerging from a dialectic interactional process between content creators and in-development audiences, we define them mainly using the composition of their audience and the type of publications they use to communicate. To examine these two parameters, we analyse the audiences of 619 Instagram accounts of French, English, and American influencers and 2,400 of their publications in light (...) of Girard’s mimetic theory and McLuhan’s media theory. We observe meaningful differences in influencers’ profiles, typical audiences, and content type across influencers’ classes, supporting the claim that such communication systems are articulated around ‘reading contracts’ upon which influencers’ image is based and from which their influence derives. While the upkeep of their influence relies on them sticking to this contract, we observe that successful influencers shift their content type when growing their audiences and explain the strategies they implement to address this double bind. Different types of contract breaches then lead to distinct outcomes, which we identify by analysing various types of followers’ feedback. In mediating social interactions, digital platforms reshape society in various ways; this interdisciplinary study helps understand how the digitalisation of social influencers affects reciprocity and mimetic behaviours. (shrink)

Autonomous vehicle moral dilemmas matter less for the particular outcomes of potential accidents than for their role in defining the values of the society we wish to live in. Different approaches have been suggested to determine the ethical settings that autonomous vehicles should be implemented in and identify the legitimate agents for making such decisions. Most of these, however, fail on theoretical grounds, facing severe issues related to moral justifications and compliance to the law, or on practical grounds, being insufficiently (...) universal, action-guiding, or technically viable to be implemented. The analogy with the “trolley problem” has been extensively discussed. However, researchers have rarely tried to adapt this framework to autonomous vehicle cases or investigate how it could be used to address these issues. In doing so, this paper aims to answer the two key problems of autonomous vehicle dilemmas. With regards to the decision-maker, it rejects autonomous vehicle users’ choice-based models, showing the absurdity of both switch of control and adaptative preferences and arguing for common legislator-determined ethical settings. With regards to the decisions themselves, it criticizes both utilitarian views and those based on individuals’ criteria to suggest a deontologist rights-based approach. This allows for the defence of a morally coherent, regulatory compliant, explainable, and easily implementable framework capable of addressing all autonomous vehicle moral dilemma scenarios present in the literature. (shrink)

Participants acting as mock jurors made inferences about whether a person was a suspect in a murder based on an expert's testimony about the presence of objects at the crime scene and the disclosure that the testimony was true or false. Experiment 1 showed that participants made more correct inferences, and made inferences more quickly, when the truth or falsity of the expert's testimony was disclosed immediately after the testimony rather than when the disclosure was delayed. Experiment 2 showed no (...) advantage for prior disclosure over immediate disclosure. Experiment 3 showed that the pattern of inferences when there was no disclosure mirrored the pattern when it was disclosed that the expert's testimony was true rather than false. Participants made more correct inferences from true conjunctions than disjunctions, and from false disjunctions than conjunctions. We discuss the implications for theories of the mental representations and cognitive processes that underlie human reasoning. (shrink)

Que l'âme ne soit pas séparée du corps est une affaire entendue. Mais a-t-on pris la juste mesure de notre incarnation quand on cherche l'esprit dans le cerveau, comme on s'attend à trouver le génie dans la lampe? À rebours de cette conception, cet ouvrage, au carrefour de la philosophie phénoménologique et de la clinique, propose de prendre au sérieux l'idée d'un corps animé. Aux côtés du langage, le corps est d'abord un lieu privilégié de l'expression de l'esprit. Grâce à (...) lui nous entrons dans une entente de ce que le monde veut nous dire et c'est par son entremise que nous connaissons une transaction vivante avec ce que le monde exige de nous. Cet itinéraire dans le silence de la vie intentionnelle du corps se termine par quelques perspectives cliniques, parce qu'il faut bien admettre que nous n'aurions rien à quoi remédier si nous n'étions au risque de voir cette transaction fléchir dans la maladie. (shrink)