Créée par Éric Rochant, Le Bureau des légendes (Canal +, 2015-2020) explore le monde du renseignement en décrivant le travail du service des agents clandestins de la DGSE. Face aux incertitudes et aux complexités géopolitiques du monde contemporain, elle fait le choix d’une immersion au cœur du « renseignement humain ». Cet article envisage l’hypothèse selon laquelle une telle fiction permet de restaurer la confiance des spectateurs vis-à-vis de la capacité d’une démocratie à lutter contre ce qui la menace. En (...) plongeant son spectateur dans les coulisses du renseignement, en le familiarisant avec des personnages complexes, la série questionne la légitimité de la confiance qu’il est possible d’accorder à un service de renseignement. La faillibilité des agents, mise en scène de façon détaillée, réfléchie par la série elle-même, rassure parce qu’elle permet de comprendre et de partager une forme de vie spécifique qui est celle de l’action secrète. L’espionnage, le contre-espionnage et le contre-terrorisme apparaissent alors comme des pratiques reposant en dernier ressort, non pas sur une maîtrise absolue, mais sur la décision de faire confiance ou au contraire de se méfier. Mobilisant les recherches de la sociologie contemporaine à propos de la confiance (Giddens, 1994 et Luhmann 2006), il s’agit de décrire Le Bureau des légendes comme une fiction projetant sur nos écrans, la possibilité d’une restauration de la confiance ou pour le dire à la manière de Stanley Cavell, une issue possible au scepticisme. (shrink)

We define and study the notion of quantum polarity, which is a kind of geometric Fourier transform between sets of positions and sets of momenta. Extending previous work of ours, we show that the orthogonal projections of the covariance ellipsoid of a quantum state on the configuration and momentum spaces form what we call a dual quantum pair. We thereafter show that quantum polarity allows solving the Pauli reconstruction problem for Gaussian wavefunctions. The notion of quantum polarity exhibits a strong (...) interplay between the uncertainty principle and symplectic and convex geometry and our approach could therefore pave the way for a geometric and topological version of quantum indeterminacy. We relate our results to the Blaschke–Santaló inequality and to the Mahler conjecture. We also discuss the Hardy uncertainty principle and the less-known Donoho–Stark principle from the point of view of quantum polarity. (shrink)

The _Matter of the Mind_ addresses and illuminates the relationship between psychology and neuroscience by focusing on the topic of reduction. Written by leading philosophers in the field Discusses recent theorizing in the mind-brain sciences and reviews and weighs the evidence in favour of reductionism against the backdrop of recent important advances within psychology and the neurosciences Collects the latest work on central topics where neuroscience is now making inroads in traditional psychological terrain, such as adaptive behaviour, reward systems, consciousness, (...) and social cognition. (shrink)

The Matter of the Mind addresses and illuminates the relationship between psychology and neuroscience by focusing on the topic of reduction. Written by leading philosophers in the field Discusses recent theorizing in the mind-brain sciences and reviews and weighs the evidence in favour of reductionism against the backdrop of recent important advances within psychology and the neurosciences Collects the latest work on central topics where neuroscience is now making inroads in traditional psychological terrain, such as adaptive behaviour, reward systems, consciousness, (...) and social cognition. (shrink)

We argue in this paper that so-called new wave reductionism fails to capture the nature of the interlevel relations between psychology and neuroscience. Bickle (1995, Psychoneural reduction of the genuinely cognitive: some accomplished facts, Philosophical Psychology, 8, 265-285; 1998, Psychoneural reduction: the new wave, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) has claimed that a (bottom-up) reduction of the psychological concepts of learning and memory to the concepts of neuroscience has in fact already been accomplished. An investigation of current research on the phenomenon (...) of long-term potentiation reveals that this claim overstates the facts. Both the psychological and the neural concepts involved have not yet stabilized and face further correction under the influence of both bottom-up and top-down selection pressures. In addition, psychological concepts often refer to functions, and functions are indispensable and irreducible. Function ascriptions pick out objective patterns involving historical factors and distal goals. This view of functions implies that psychological facts cannot be simply read off from the neurophysiological facts. Although psychological theorizing is constrained by neurophysiology (and vice versa), psychology remains distinct at least to some degree. (shrink)

The object of the book is to meet and combat false conceptions, to co-ordinate true notions, and so to furnish the reader with some general information on the old and the new scholasticism. The advantage of the book is its two-sided perspective that contains historical investigations about the ancient sources of the scholastic philosophy and the decline from it. But it contains also a systematic perspective by which the doctrines of the scholastic philosophizing are collected systematically. Therefore this book is (...) an scholarly introduction into the scholastic philosophy dedicated for undergraduate’s. (shrink)

The doctrine of eliminative materialism holds that belief-desire psychology is massively referentially disconnected. We claim, however, that it is not at all obvious what it means to be referentially (dis)connected. The two major accounts of reference both lead to serious difficulties for eliminativism: it seems that elimination is either impossible or omnipresent. We explore the idea that reference fixation is a much more local, partial, and context-dependent process than was supposed by the classical accounts. This pragmatic view suggests that elimination (...) is not the prime model for understanding the complex relations between the mind and brain sciences, and that we have little ground for concluding that in general psychological kinds do not exist. We suggest that reference changes are better seen as continuous rather than completely eliminative. (shrink)

Gold & Stoljar are right in rejecting the radical neuron doctrine, but we argue that their distinction between determination and explanation is not principled enough to support their conclusion. We claim that the notions of multiple supervenience and screening-off offer a more precise construal of the dissociation between explanation and determination that lies at the heart of the antireductionist position.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Nearly fifteen years after the Council of Europe first called for a pan‐European convention on issues in bioethics to harmonize disparate national regulations, in November 1996 the council's Committee of Ministers approved the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine for formal adoption. The draft convention, released in July 1994, provoked strong public, professional, and governmental debate among European nations, particularly regarding provisions for biomedical research with subjects unable to give informed consent. If ratified, the “bioethics convention” will become the first (...) such document to have binding force internationally. (shrink)

The imprints left by quantum mechanics in classical (Hamiltonian) mechanics are much more numerous than is usually believed. We show that the Schrödinger equation for a nonrelativistic spinless particle is a classical equation which is equivalent to Hamilton’s equations. Our discussion is quite general, and incorporates time-dependent systems. This gives us the opportunity of discussing the group of Hamiltonian canonical transformations which is a non-linear variant of the usual symplectic group.

Quantum blobs are the smallest phase space units of phase space compatible with the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics and having the symplectic group as group of symmetries. Quantum blobs are in a bijective correspondence with the squeezed coherent states from standard quantum mechanics, of which they are a phase space picture. This allows us to propose a substitute for phase space in quantum mechanics. We study the relationship between quantum blobs with a certain class of level sets defined by (...) Fermi for the purpose of representing geometrically quantum states. (shrink)

La série Hippocrate place au cœur de son récit de jeunes internes en médecine qui se découvrent tout aussi vulnérables que compétents. Parmi les séries médicales, Hippocrate développe donc une critique de la faculté de soigner de jeunes médecins, pris au piège d’un hôpital public malade de ses contradictions. Regarder Hippocrate revient ainsi à affronter la question : quelle société pour prendre soin de ceux qui prennent soin de nous?