We critique the distinction Byrne makes between strong causes and enabling conditions, and its implications, on both theoretical and empirical grounds. First, we believe that the difference is psychological, not logical. Second, we disagree that there is a strict Third, we disagree that it is easier for people to generate causes than counterfactuals.

Nous invitons ici à une véritable promenade intellectuelle qui nous conduit à creuser l'histoire de la pensée et du penser en Islam pour y retrouver des rationalistes invétérés et endurcis dont le souci fut de défendre la raison au prix de leur foi : ce sont les rationalistes qu'on appelle communément " Mu'tazila ". Très tôt, ce mouvement prit une dimension rationnelle en développant au sein de l'Islam les thèses critiques et philosophiques les plus inattendues d'une religion. Cette histoire des (...) idées que nous voulons parcourir nous mènera au " siècle des lumières en Islam " même si l'expression est quelque peu contestée par certains intellectuels musulmans qui pensent à un manque de considération pour les nouveaux penseurs de l'Islam comme si le moment de la bonne pensée n'est pas le leur. On peut leur donner raison. L'histoire ne bégaie pas toujours. Elle est parfois infidèle. Telle est malheureusement l'histoire de l'Islam. Une histoire d'hybridation et parfois d'infidélité au texte. Apparue comme une religion de salut et de raison, son image est ternie aujourd'hui par ceux qui, au prix du glaive, substituent la modernisation de la pensée islamique à une islamisation violente de la modernité. (shrink)

In questo articolo l’autore analizza il tema del muro statale a partire da una prospettiva interdisciplinare che connette ontologia, filosofia della tecnologia e filosofia politica. La tesi principale del saggio è che vi sia una differenza ontologica fra il muro e il confine su cui esso si inscrive. Dopo una breve discussione di alcune note teorie ontologiche, l’autore argomenta a favore della tesi per cui il muro non sia un oggetto sociale, bensì un artefatto. Più specificamente, il muro è un (...) “artefatto politico”, poiché è uno strumento che inscrive materialmente nello spazio una complessa relazione di potere. Al fine di concettualizzare l’emergente razionalità politica globale, gli studiosi francesi Florine Ballif e Stéphane Rosière hanno coniato un nuovo termine: teicopolitica. Il termine deriva dal greco teichos, che letteralmente significa “il muro della polis”. La teicopolitica, dunque, indica la politica di costruzione di muri, nella maggior parte dei casi per scopi securitari. Il saggio affronta alcuni aspetti della teicopolitica da un punto di vista filosofico. Nella prima parte del saggio, l’autore critica l’idea postmoderna di uno spazio globale fluido e virtuale, e la relativa idea di una consumazione storica e politica delle categorie moderne (Stato, sovranità, territorio); nella seconda parte, analizza approfonditamente la differenza ontologica fra muro e confini, nonché alcuni aspetti fenomenologici che vi si collegano; nella terza parte, mostra come e perché un muro studiato in quanto dispositivo implichi il riconoscimento di differenti forme di potere (sovrano, disciplinare, governamentale); nell’ultima parte, sostiene che il tema del muro statale debba essere affrontato attraverso quella che può essere definita una “ontologia politica degli artefatti”. (shrink)

The paper deals with the problem of the ontology of political artefacts. A political artefact is a material object that produces certain effects on the social and political environment. The philosophical question I would like to answer is if such an artefact is political because its materiality imposes a social or political norm, or because it simply describes and reproduces certain relations of power. Therefore, I discuss and criticize some of the most relevant theories (technological determinism, social constructivism, Actor-Network-Theory) that (...) deals with the problem of political artefacts and the relation between humans and things. After that, I defend an approach that I define “material contextualism”. In the conclusion, I show why a philosophical theory of the wall, namely a material object that inscribes on the space a relation of power, must be grounded on the material contextualism. (shrink)

In this article, I focus on Alain Badiou’s idiosyncratic interpretation of Jacques Lacan and highlight his conceptual points of divergence with the psychoanalyst. I elaborate on Badiou’s distinction between philosophy, antiphilosophy, and sophistry as well as the notions of sense, ab-sense, and non-sense that he proposed in the book There’s No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship: Two Lessons on Lacan as well as in his seminar on Lacan. Unlike Lacan, who affirmed that philosophy is subject to the fantasy of (...) the One, Badiou claimed that the One exists merely as a result of an operation of counting. In this manner, he contested Lacan’s conviction that philosophy forecloses the real. I argue that Badiou’s main point of divergence with Lacan is centred on the notion of the subject and on the localization of the void in relation to the subject. I also touch upon philosophy’s relation to the symbolic, namely its ability to raise powerlessness to logical impossibility. (shrink)

We consider metabolic networks with reversible enzymatic reactions. The model is written as a system of ordinary differential equations, possibly with inputs and outputs. We prove the global stability of the equilibrium , using techniques of monotone systems and compartmental matrices. We show that the equilibrium does not always exist. Finally, we consider a metabolic system coupled with a genetic network, and we study the dependence of the metabolic equilibrium with respect to concentrations of enzymes. We give some conclusions concerning (...) the dynamical behavior of coupled genetic/metabolic systems. (shrink)

This article examines the elements of the Seventeenth Century debate about the Cartesian body-machine theory which pitted Abbé Le Moine against Arnauld. Both theologians engaged in specific discussion of the incompatibility or, to the contrary, the compatibility of this theory with the thesis of the substantial union of the body and soul, as well as the consequences of applying mechanical laws to living beings. The origin of the disagreement is first reviewed to then analyse the works of Descartes which are (...) in question and, finally, to evaluate the respective arguments of the two authors. (shrink)

The religious intolerance that nowadays feeds a number of current conflicts leads us to rethink our modern conception of toleration, which emerged from the theological and philosophical debates accompanying or thrown up by the doctrinal controversies and politico-religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. It is defined by respect for distinct orders: that of conscience and that of the law, private and public, faith and reason. It bears the mark of religion and theology and relates to the idea of (...) human dignity which was given its ethical foundation in the 18th century by Kant’s doctrine of autonomy. Current events teach us that still today people kill and persecute in the name of faith, in the name of God, in the name of religion, because they have a different opinion or belief. If toleration, child of the Enlightenment and critical reason, has not definitively gained the upper hand in a rational, technical world, we need to ask whether it is not because we have neglected faith. To conclude from the distinction between reason and faith that they are antagonistic has not led to uprooting the human spirit’s intolerance. Might we have forgotten that peace is also the business of religion? What should we expect, what should we hope for from dialogue between religions? Could faith be the antidote to intolerance? (shrink)

L’intolérance religieuse qui alimente de nos jours de nombreux conflits contemporains nous conduit à repenser notre conception moderne de la tolérance, née des débats théologiques et philosophiques, qui ont accompagné ou qui ont été provoqués par les controverses doctrinales et les guerres politico-religieuses des XVIème et XVIIème siècles. Elle se définit par le respect des ordres distincts: celui de la conscience et celui de la loi, du privé et du public, celui de la foi et de la raison. Elle porte (...) la marque de son origine, du religieux et du théologique, et renvoie à l’idée de dignité humaine à laquelle la doctrine de l’autonomie de Kant, au XVIIIème siècle, a apporté son fondement éthique. L’actualité nous apprend qu’aujourd’hui encore on tue, on persécute au nom de la foi, au nom de Dieu, au nom de la religion, pour avoir une opinion ou une croyance différente. Si la tolérance, fille des Lumières et de la raison critique, ne s’est pas imposée définitivement dans un monde rationnel et technique, il y a lieu de se demander si ce n’est pas pour avoir négligé la foi. Il ne suffit pas de déclarer la mort de Dieu pour faire disparaître la religion. Conclure de la distinction de la raison et de la foi à leur antagonisme n’a pas conduit à déraciner l’intolérance de l’esprit humain. Aurions-nous oublié que la paix est aussi l’affaire du religieux? Que faut-il attendre, que faut-il espérer du dialogue inter-religieux? La foi serait-elle l’antidote à l’intolérance? Que peut faire la foi? (shrink)

The religious intolerance that nowadays feeds a number of current conflicts leads us to rethink our modern conception of toleration, which emerged from the theological and philosophical debates accompanying or thrown up by the doctrinal controversies and politico-religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. It is defined by respect for distinct orders: that of conscience and that of the law, private and public, faith and reason. It bears the mark of religion and theology and relates to the idea of (...) human dignity which was given its ethical foundation in the 18th century by Kant’s doctrine of autonomy. Current events teach us that still today people kill and persecute in the name of faith, in the name of God, in the name of religion, because they have a different opinion or belief. If toleration, child of the Enlightenment and critical reason, has not definitively gained the upper hand in a rational, technical world, we need to ask whether it is not because we have neglected faith. To conclude from the distinction between reason and faith that they are antagonistic has not led to uprooting the human spirit’s intolerance. Might we have forgotten that peace is also the business of religion? What should we expect, what should we hope for from dialogue between religions? Could faith be the antidote to intolerance? (shrink)

The following article compares the notion of the absolute in the work of Georg Cantor and in Alain Badiou’s third volume of Being and Event: The Immanence of Truths and proposes an interpretation of mathematical concepts used in the book. By describing the absolute as a universe or a place in line with the mathematical theory of large cardinals, Badiou avoided some of the paradoxes related to Cantor’s notion of the “absolutely infinite” or the set of all that is thinkable (...) in mathematics W: namely the idea that W would be a potential infinity. The article provides an elucidation of the putative criticism of the statement “mathematics is ontology” which Badiou presented at the conference Thinking the Infinite in Prague. It emphasizes the role that philosophical decision plays in the construction of Badiou’s system of mathematical ontology and portrays the relationship between philosophy and mathematics on the basis of an inductive not deductive reasoning. (shrink)

El artículo es un esbozo general de los procedimientos decisorios parafórmulas monádicas de primer grado tratados por Juan Bautista Ferro. Seinicia con una breve semblanza de Ferro. Luego trata el problema de ladecisión, y presenta los procedimientos decisorios de Quine (QS, QL y QM),Georg H. Von Wright (VW), Bernays Schonfinkel (BS), S.C. Kleene y elprocedimiento decisorio Ferro Herbrand (FH). Cada uno de estos métodos muestra el esfuerzo por reducir la lógica cuan ti ficacional monádica de primer orden a la lógica (...) proposicional; en este sentido, el método FH opera con mayores ventajas sobre los otros métodos. (shrink)

El artículo es una presentación general de la filosofía de Carnap, tanto de sus desarrollos en el campo de las ciencias formales como en el de las ciencias fácticas. En el primero, sus investigaciones están orientadas al estudio de la semiótica (construcción de lenguajes formalizados entendidos como instrumentos para el esclarecimiento de problemas filosóficos). Considera que los procedimientos teóricos de la ciencia requieren de la deducción y el cálculo para ser aplicados a las ciencias empíricas. En las ciencias fácticas, los (...) enunciados sólo expresan regularidades del mundo. Estas son: las leyes universales y las leyes estadísticas; las primeras están formuladas como proposiciones condicionales universales y las últimas se valen de la lógica de la probabilidad, que es distinta de la inducción. (shrink)

Time and Reality sets out to explore the dichotomy of unity (identity) and plurality in human thought and to show in the light of this duality what are the limits of human knowledge as far as understanding 'reality' is concerned.

1ère Partie. De l'évolution de la condition humaine -- 2ème Partie. De l'homme au crépuscule de sa vie -- 3ème Partie. La mort de Fako Kouyaba Diarra, Le testament d'Aslam.

Morin envisions the adaptive landscape of graphic codes as an unfertile valley where writing rises as an isolated peak that humans managed to reach only on four occasions throughout all of history. By exploring the different paths to cultural convergence, we suggest an alternative landscape occupied by a mountain range of visual art systems. We conclude that graphic communication through visual art worked well enough to render writing contingent but not necessary in most cases.

MATHEMATICAL RESOLUTIONS OF ZENO’s PARADOXES of motion have been offered on a regular basis since the paradoxes were first formulated. In this paper I will argue that such mathematical “solutions” miss, and always will miss, the point of Zeno’s arguments. I do not think that any mathematical solution can provide the much sought after answers to any of the paradoxes of Zeno. In fact all mathematical attempts to resolve these paradoxes share a common feature, a feature that makes them consistently (...) miss the fundamental point which is Zeno’s concern for the one-many relation, or it would be better to say, lack of relation. This takes us back to the ancient dispute between the Eleatic school and the Pluralists. The first, following Parmenide’s teaching, claimed that only the One or identical can be thought and is therefore real, the second held that the Many of becoming is rational and real.1 I will show that these mathematical “solutions” do not actually touch Zeno’s argument and make no metaphysical contribution to the problem of understanding what is motion against immobility, or multiplicity against identity, which was Zeno’s challenge. I would like to point out at this stage that my contention. (shrink)

This essay discusses the fascist collaboration of Mustafa Merlika Kruja, Albania’s prime minister from 1941 to 1943. In textbooks published before 1990, Kruja was called the Albanian Quisling and his very name was associated with treason. Yet even in publications after the 1990s Kruja was seen as Albania’s black sheep and only few sources viewed him objectively. Aiming to unite Albania with Kosovo, he stressed the need to fight communism, which for him was synonymous with antinationalism and, which he believed, (...) would bring Albania to ruin. Thus Kruja used anticommunism and nationalism as his main political weapon to gain support for his collaboration with fascist Italy and with Albanian nationalists. (shrink)

In the present essay we analyse the role of philosophical investigation for the interdisciplinary research field of the Border Studies. The main thesis of the paper is that a border cannot be ontologically considered as an object, and neither metaphorically as a simple line. Indeed, these approaches tend to extremely simplify the very nature of borders and bordering processes. Here we argue that borders are complex social phenomena produced by the coherent combination of several different elements. Therefore, we suggest that (...) a fruitful way in order to conceptualize the nature of the border is the concept of dispositive, provided by Michel Foucault. The paper is structured as follows: in the first and second paragraph we show why the analysis of borders are increasingly a crucial topic both for scientific and public debate; in the third paragraph we criticize the approach provided by social ontology, focused on the conceptualization of the border as an object; in the fourth paragraph, starting from a Rousseau’s suggestion, we analyse the phenomenology of bordering practices, and we argue that a border should be understood as a complex articulation of material and immaterial elements; in the fifth paragraph we introduce the notion of dispositive in order to catch the complex nature of borders; in the conclusions we summarize the main results of the paper and we sketch possible further lines of research. (shrink)

El artículo es un esbozo general de los procedimientos decisorios parafórmulas monádicas de primer grado tratados por Juan Bautista Ferro. Seinicia con una breve semblanza de Ferro. Luego trata el problema de ladecisión, y presenta los procedimientos decisorios de Quine (QS, QL y QM),Georg H. Von Wright (VW), Bernays Schonfinkel (BS), S.C. Kleene y elprocedimiento decisorio Ferro Herbrand (FH). Cada uno de estos métodos muestra el esfuerzo por reducir la lógica cuan ti ficacional monádica de primer orden a la lógica (...) proposicional; en este sentido, el método FH opera con mayores ventajas sobre los otros métodos. (shrink)

El artículo es una presentación general de la filosofía de Carnap, tanto de sus desarrollos en el campo de las ciencias formales como en el de las ciencias fácticas. En el primero, sus investigaciones están orientadas al estudio de la semiótica (construcción de lenguajes formalizados entendidos como instrumentos para el esclarecimiento de problemas filosóficos). Considera que los procedimientos teóricos de la ciencia requieren de la deducción y el cálculo para ser aplicados a las ciencias empíricas. En las ciencias fácticas, los (...) enunciados sólo expresan regularidades del mundo. Estas son: las leyes universales y las leyes estadísticas; las primeras están formuladas como proposiciones condicionales universales y las últimas se valen de la lógica de la probabilidad, que es distinta de la inducción. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to introduce an exceptional document preserved at the Louvre Museum under the mark MAO 2098. The manuscript is a calligraphic genealogical scroll relating to the Ḫwāğas, members of a Sufi Naqšbandi lineage of East Turkestan which was extremely powerful during the 17th and the 18th centuries. Striving to join the dots literally as well as figuratively, I propose to read the šağara in several different ways. Most obviously, the text provides some limited new information (...) on members of the Āfāqi branch of the Ḫwāğa family. At the same time, we can read the text as a communicative device serving to advance two intertwined social practices: family strategies and the construction of power. Produced within a forum of competition with other aristocratic households, prestigious Sufi lineages in particular, the scroll serves to highlight both the Šarīfian origin of the family and the hereditary succession of its spiritual leaders. At the same time, the manuscript’s remarkable aesthetic qualities served to impress upon those who saw in it the numinous force of the Ḫwāğas’ supernatural authority. (shrink)