Le constat semble s'imposer du caractère éphémère de toute existence. La brièveté de la vie nous obligerait à nous dépêcher, à courir, à construire, à jeter les fondements de ce qui nous survivra, à produire cela même qui défiera le temps en un simulacre d'éternité : l'art, la culture... Mais une telle existence - gagner et dépenser, conquérir et perdre, jouir et déprimer - il faut bien avouer que ce n'est pas une vie! C'est qu'il y a autre chose que (...) le constat de l'éphémère. L'acte le plus léger est lesté d'éternité. L'oeuvre la plus fragile accueille l'absolu. Et c'est cela la culture. C'est peut-être là ce qu'on nomme « incarnation » : la Vie faite chair, sentiment, angoisse, action, épreuve... La Vie inscrite dans les sursauts du corps, dans ses tremblements, dans ses élans. Inscrite et non pas assignée. L'incarnation n'est pas une incarcération. Elle est la Vie qui informe la matière pour la faire chair, pour l'ouvrir au-delà d'elle-même, pour l'ourler d'un débord, pour lui donner de naître, infiniment. Elle est la Vie qu'accueille chacun de nos souffles, chacune de nos paroles, le moindre de nos gestes, la moindre de nos pensées. Alors, dans ce dessaisissement de soi qui est déjà accueil plénier de la Vie se laisse entendre une promesse, autant dire un envoi : rien ne nous sera repris de ce qui nous a été donné. Toute grâce est irrévocable. Donné, c'est donné. Pour la Vie! (shrink)

This two-volume set provides a comprehensive overview of the multidisciplinary field of Embodied Cognition. With contributions from internationally acknowledged researchers from a variety of fields, _Foundations of Embodied Cognition_ reveals how intelligent behaviour emerges from the interplay between brain, body and environment. Covering early research and emerging trends in embodied cognition, Volume 1 _Perceptual and Emotional Embodiment_ is divided into four distinct parts, bringing together a number of influential perspectives and new ideas. Part one opens the volume with an overview (...) of theoretical perspectives and the neural basis of embodiment, before part two considers body representation and its links with action. Part three examines how actions constrain perception of the environment, and part four explores how emotions can be shaped and structured by the body and its activity. Building on the idea that knowledge acquisition, retention and retrieval are intimately interconnected with sensory and motor processes, _Foundations of Embodied Cognition_ is a landmark publication in the field. It will be of great interest to researchers and advanced students from across the cognitive sciences, including those specialising in psychology, neuroscience, intelligent systems and robotics, philosophy, linguistics and anthropology. (shrink)

This two-volume set provides a comprehensive overview of the multidisciplinary field of Embodied Cognition. With contributions from internationally acknowledged researchers from a variety of fields, Foundations of Embodied Cognition reveals how intelligent behaviour emerges from the interplay between brain, body and environment. Drawing on the most recent theoretical and empirical findings in embodied cognition, Volume 2 _Conceptual and Interactive Embodiment_ is divided into four distinct parts, bringing together a number of influential perspectives and new ideas. Part one introduces the field (...) of embodied language processing, before part two presents recent developments in our understanding of embodied conceptual understanding. The final two parts look at the applied nature of embodied cognition, exploring the embodied nature of social co-ordination as well as the emerging field of artificial embodiment. Building on the idea that knowledge acquisition, retention and retrieval are intimately interconnected with sensory and motor processes, _Foundations of Embodied Cognition_ is a landmark publication in the field. It will be of great interest to researchers and advanced students from across the cognitive sciences, including those specialising in psychology, neuroscience, intelligent systems and robotics, philosophy, linguistics and anthropology. (shrink)

De manière étonnante, la philosophique occidentale a toujours eu du mal à penser la vie. Elle a toujours eu bien des choses à nous dire sur la vie heureuse, la vie politique, la vie animale, l’éthique de la vie, la vie des hommes illustres… il lui est même arrivé de se risquer plus avant pour nous parler du vivant, voire du vécu. Et pourtant, ce qu’il en est de la vie elle-même, non pas de la vie en certaines de ses (...) manifestations régionales, mais de la vie en tant que telle, voilà ce qui pou... (shrink)

Developing countries face numerous barriers to conducting effective and efficient ethics reviews of international collaborative research. In addition to potentially overlooking important scientific and ethical considerations, inadequate or insufficiently trained ethics committees may insist on unwarranted changes to protocols that can impair a study's scientific or ethical validity. Moreover, poorly functioning review systems can impose substantial delays on the commencement of research, which needlessly undermine the development of new interventions for urgent medical needs. In response to these concerns, the Drugs (...) for Neglected Diseases Initiative, an independent nonprofit organization founded by a coalition of public sector and international organizations, developed a mechanism to facilitate more effective and efficient host country ethics review for a study of the use of fexinidazole for the treatment of late stage African Trypanosomiasis. The project involved the implementation of a novel ‘pre-review’ process of ethical oversight, conducted by an ad hoc committee of ethics committee representatives from African and European countries, in collaboration with internationally recognized scientific experts. This article examines the process and outcomes of this collaborative process. (shrink)

L’article examine la ąuestion de concept cousain de relations trinitaires exprimées par catégories d’unitrinité et triunité. Le fond des analyses est la tradition pythagoricienne et néo-platonicienne à laąuelle Nicolas de Cues se rattache, selon l’Auteur, comme l’un des représentants de la vision hénologiąue de la réalité. La specificite de l’approche presente de la philosophie de Nicolas de Cues est de l’envisager à la lumière du rapport entre l’Un et l’Être, fortement marąué par de nombreuses références à la philosophie de (...) class='Hi'>Martin Heidegger. (shrink)

Maurizio Lazzarato is an Italian sociologist and philosopher who lives and works in France. He collaborated on collective works with important figures like Antonio Negri and Yann Moulier-Boutang in the 1990s and has been a frequent contributor to the journal Multitudes in which the same two intellectuals were also leading voices. During the same period, he was closely involved as a theorist and activist in the long and inventive struggle of the intermittents du spectacle, French cultural workers defending a (...) social security regime that took particular account of their unstable employment and the way in which their creativity overflowed their periods of paid activity. This involvement fed into a broader... (shrink)

The peripersonal space is an adaptive and flexible interface between the body and the environment that fulfills a dual-motor function: preparing the body for voluntary object-oriented actions to interact with incentive stimuli and preparing the body for defensive responses when facing potentially harmful stimuli. In this position article, we provide arguments for the sensorimotor rooting of the peripersonal space representation and highlight the variables that contribute to its flexible and adaptive characteristics. We also demonstrate that peripersonal space represents a mediation (...) zone between the body and the environment contributing to not only the control of goal-directed actions but also the organization of social life. The whole of the data presented and discussed led us to the proposal of a new theoretical framework linking the peripersonal action space and the interpersonal social space and we highlight how this theoretical framework can account for social behaviors in populations with socio-emotional deficits. (shrink)

On peut inscrire les travaux de Engel dans le sillage rationaliste des Pères de la philosophie analytique, mais après le tournant naturaliste opéré par Quine. Ce sont les diverses bonnes raisons, exposées de manière non systématique par Engel, d’associer naturalisme et rationalisme que je souhaite présenter tout en cherchant à identifier la difficulté constitutive de ce programme qui ne reçoit pas de solution complète: la normativité épistémique ne semble ni éliminable, ni correctement intégrée à ce programme.

Depuis plus d’une dizaine d’années, Albert Piette travaille à renouveler les méthodes et les concepts de l’anthropologie. Cette refondation s’appuie sur ses propres travaux empiriques, notamment sur le religieux, sur l’usage de méthodes plus pointillistes comme la photographie ou la description des détails, ainsi que sur des hypothèses relatives à la différence entre Sapiens et Néandertal. Les nouvelles propositions de travail qu’il avance empruntent souvent à la philosophie comme moyen d’une réflexion épistémologique, mais aussi parfois à la métaphysique. C’est pourquoi (...) je me propose de discuter en philosophe son ouvrage Contre le relationnisme. Lettre aux anthropologues. Il ne s’agit pas de réactiver la pratique philosophique de la science ultime couronnant les autres disciplines grâce à une réflexivité plus radicale, mais de suivre la démarche de Piette dans ses motivations profondes qui, comme il l’admet lui-même, l’oblige à passer par la philosophie. (shrink)

As Paulo Freire’s education theory for social change and emancipation is being continually studied and disseminated in East Asia, it has faced skepticism as some educators are unfamiliar with its critical pedagogy or education for freedom concepts. In light of this, scholars have attempted to compare Freirean philosophies with concepts in Chinese philosophy of education as a way of bridging East and West. Diverging from previous studies that use popular Chinese philosophies (such as Confucianism) to connect with Freirean theory, this (...) paper introduces an understudied but compatible Chinese philosophical thought, Mohism, for comparison with Freirean theory. Mohism is a political philosophy for the working class that expanded into grassroots movements for people’s welfare in ancient China. The Mohist bottom-up approach echoes the grassroots emancipatory pedagogy that underlies Freirean philosophy. A comparative analysis of education concepts in both philosophies reveals that despite differences in the educational content of Freirean theory and Mohism, there are similarities in their conceptualization of education for anti-oppression and praxis for social change. Implications for utilizing Mohist philosophy to contemplate Freirean philosophy within the East Asian educational context are also explored. Ultimately this paper revives educational concepts of Mohism that aligns with Freirean philosophy to a broader audience of scholars and educators. (shrink)

Ce premier volume de La Nuit des Olympica. Essai sur le national cartésianisme (deux livres en quatre tomes) inaugure l'une des plus saines entreprises de la pensée contemporaine : que cesse le mythe Descartes! Finissons-en avec l'imagerie nationale. Suivons René Descartes dans les moments clés de sa vie, ancrons-le dans son époque de reconquête catholique et de consolidation de l'absolutisme. Traquons en ses feintes le premier de ces hommes en qui Nietzsche dénonçait un " prêtre masqué ", le philosophe. Multipliant (...) points de vue et rapprochements, enrichissant le texte de très abondantes notes, souvent surprenantes, l'auteur instruit le procès de cette source vive de la tradition française, rationaliste et spiritualiste, tant avec insolence et humour que dans une écriture aux antipodes de tout académisme. (shrink)

Not only is he lying, who speaks against his knowledge, but even more so he, who speaks against his ignorance [Nichtwissen].Augustine provided the first attempt to define lies in De Mendacio. It is central to his account that lying involves being dishonest. Many still follow Augustine in this. His definition shall serve as a background against which to contrast Nietzsche's notion of lying.2 The dishonesty definition of lying claims that telling a lie involves saying something the liar does not believe (...) to be true. Lying involves making a statement to someone else and trying to make it in such a way that the addressee does not realize the liar does not believe the statement to be true3—the liar tries to deceive the... (shrink)

We define a notion of reducibility for subsets of a second countable T 0 topological space based on relatively continuous relations and admissible representations. This notion of reducibility induces a hierarchy that refines the Baire classes and the Hausdorff–Kuratowski classes of differences. It coincides with Wadge reducibility on zero dimensional spaces. However in virtually every second countable T 0 space, it yields a hierarchy on Borel sets, namely it is well founded and antichains are of length at most 2. It (...) thus differs from the Wadge reducibility in many important cases, for example on the real line $${\mathbb{R}}$$ or the Scott Domain $${\mathcal{P}\omega}$$. (shrink)

Via a historical reconstruction, this paper primarily demonstrates how the societal debate on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) gradually extended in terms of actors involved and concerns reflected. It is argued that the implementation of recombinant DNA technology out of the laboratory and into civil society entailed a “complex of concerns.” In this complex, distinctions between environmental, agricultural, socio-economic, and ethical issues proved to be blurred. This fueled the confusion between the wider debate on genetic modification and the risk assessment of (...) transgenic crops in the European Union. In this paper, the lasting skeptical and/or ambivalent attitude of Europeans towards agro-food biotechnology is interpreted as signaling an ongoing social request – and even a quest – for an evaluation of biotechnology with Sense and Sensibility. In this (re)quest, a broader-than-scientific dimension is sought for that allows addressing the GMO debate in a more “sensible” way, whilst making “sense” of the different stances taken in it. Here, the restyling of the European regulatory frame on transgenic agro-food products and of science communication models are discussed and taken to be indicative of the (re)quest to move from a merely scientific evaluation and risk-based policy towards a socially more robust evaluation that takes the “non-scientific” concerns at stake in the GMO debate seriously. (shrink)

Means–ends decoupling, the institutionally induced implementation of ineffective practices, has become increasingly common. Extant theory suggests that means–ends decoupling has real consequences, which makes it unstable and difficult for organizations to sustain. Yet little is known of how, and with what outcomes, firms organize such means–ends decoupling. We examine organizing via multiple qualitative and longitudinal case studies of how Swedish fast fashion retailers implement and manage the collection of used garments. We find that firms combine two organizational arrangements: structural and (...) temporal core–compartment separations, which mitigate consequences of means–ends decoupling by obscuring and justifying efficiency gaps. Thereby we provide a theoretical explanation for how means–ends decoupling can persist over time. (shrink)

Online supplement, "Mulsow: Additions to Notes drawn from the 2002 edition of Moderne aus dem Untergrund" full versions of nearly 300 notes that were truncated in the print edition. Hosted on H. C. Erik Midelfort's website. Martin Mulsow's seismic reinterpretation of the origins of the Enlightenment in Germany won awards and renown in its original German edition, and now H. C. Erik Midelfort's translation makes this sensational book available to English-speaking readers. In Enlightenment Underground, Mulsow shows that even in (...) the late seventeenth century some thinkers in Germany ventured to express extremely dangerous ideas, but did so as part of a secret underground. Scouring manuscript collections across northern Europe, Mulsow studied the writings of countless hitherto unknown radical jurists, theologians, historians, and dissident students who pushed for the secularization of legal, political, social, and religious knowledge. Often their works circulated in manuscript, anonymously, or as clandestinely published books. Working as a philosophical microhistorian, Mulsow has discovered the identities of several covert radicals and linked them to circles of young German scholars, many of whom were connected with the vibrant radical cultures of the Netherlands, England, and Denmark. The author reveals how radical ideas and contributions to intellectual doubt came from Socinians and Jews, church historians and biblical scholars, political theorists, and unemployed university students. He shows that misreadings of humorous or ironic works sometimes gave rise to unintended skeptical thoughts or corrosively political interpretations of Christianity. This landmark book overturns stereotypical views of the early Enlightenment in Germany as cautious, conservative, and moderate, and replaces them with a new portrait that reveals a movement far more radical, unintended, and puzzling than previously suspected. (shrink)

L'oeuvre de Pascal livre un problème majeur : l'homme se sauvera-t-il à l'aide de ses seules forces, ou son salut se réalisera-t-il avec le secours de Dieu, à savoir la grâce? Dans ses ¤¤Ecrits sur la grâce¤¤, il se révèle être le penseur de la grâce qui, face au défi de la modernité, opppose à la conception anthropocentrique de l'homme la vision christocentrique, héritée de saint Augustin.

Qu’est-ce que l’art? Qu’est-ce que le beau selon la philosophie de Hegel? La définition cherchée ne peut être donnée de suite, elle sera le résultat d’un processus. Pour aller vers cette définition il faut donc commencer ce processus de définition. Le point de départ ne peut tenir qu’à l’usage des mots ici et maintenant. La philosophie ne peut faire que cela. Le commencement du raisonnement visant à définir commence au sens du mot pris aujourd’hui et qui se donne dans un (...) usage. Cet usage ne... (shrink)

Despite the subjective experience of a continuous and coherent external world, we will argue that the perception and categorisation of visual space is constrained by the spatial resolution of the sensory systems but also and above all, by the pre-reflective representations of the body in action. Recent empirical data in cognitive neurosciences will be presented that suggest that multidimensional categorisation of perceptual space depends on body representations at both an experiential and a functional level. Results will also be resumed that (...) show that representations of the body in action are pre-reflective in nature as only some aspects of the pre-reflective states can be consciously experienced. Finally, a neuro-cognitive model based on the integration of afferent and efferent information will be described, which suggests that action simulation and associated predicted sensory consequences may represent the underlying principle that enables pre-reflective representations of the body for space categorisation and selection for action. (shrink)

In this volume Martin Heidegger confronts the philosophical problems of language and begins to unfold the meaning begind his famous and little understood phrase "Language is the House of Being." The "Dialogue on Language," between Heidegger and a Japanese friend, together with the four lectures that follow, present Heidegger's central ideas on the origin, nature, and significance of language. These essays reveal how one of the most profound philosophers of our century relates language to his earlier and continuing preoccupation (...) with the nature of Being and himan being. One the Way to Language enable readers to understand how central language became to Heidegger's analysis of the nature of Being. On the Way to Language demonstrates that an interest in the meaning of language is one of the strongest bonds between analytic philosophy and Heidegger. It is an ideal source for studying his sustained interest in the problems and possibilities of human language and brilliantly underscores the originality and range of his thinking. (shrink)

L’addition, dans la cinquième édition en 1683 de La Logique ou L’Art de penser, d’un chapitre consacré à la définition générale du signe et de plusieurs chapitres relevant spécifiquement d’une analyse des signes linguistiques, a été parfois interprétée comme une apparition tardive du “problème du langage” dans le traité d’Arnauld et Nicole. Parce que la plupart de ces chapitres supplémentaires sont la transposition de passages auparavant destinés dans la Perpétuité de la foi (1669-1674) à réfuter le sens calviniste de Ceci (...) est mon corps, on a été enclin à attribuer l’importance de la question du signe et du “problème du langage” dans l’édition de 1683 à une origine théologique. J’essaie au contraire de montrer que, dès la première édition de L’Art de penser en 1662, la problématisation des écarts des expressions linguistiques avec une correspondance terme à terme entre les mots et les idées a été indissociable pour Port-Royal de l’analyse des opérations de l’esprit. Selon moi, dans la Perpétuité de la foi, la critique du sens calviniste de la formule eucharistique constitue elle-même une application de cette analyse logique du langage : les passages incorporés ensuite dans L’Art de penser sont dans le prolongement des réflexions de 1662 sur les difficultés d’adéquation entre le dire et le vouloir-dire. Je montre pour finir que la définition générale du signe à Port-Royal suppose une restructuration de la définition augustinienne du De doctrina christiana, et fonde en 1683 une identification de la relation de signification linguistique à un rapport de représentation des mots aux idées, qui vient redoubler le rapport de représentation des idées aux choses établi en 1662. (shrink)

Hume’s chapter “Of Miracles” has been widely discussed, and one issue is that Hume seems to simply beg the question. Hume has a strong but implicit naturalist bias when he argues against the existence of reliable testimony for miracles. In this article, I explain that Hume begs the question, despite what he says about the possibility of miracles occurring. e main point is that he never describes a violation of the laws of nature that could not be explained by scientific (...) theories. (shrink)

The problem of measurement is often considered an inconsistency inside the quantum formalism. Many attempts to solve it have been made since the inception of quantum mechanics. The form of these attempts depends on the philosophical position that their authors endorse. I will review some of them and analyze their relevance. The phenomenon of decoherence is often presented as a solution lying inside the pure quantum formalism and not demanding any particular philosophical assumption. Nevertheless, a widely debated question is to (...) decide between two different interpretations. The first one is to consider that the decoherence process has the effect to actually project a superposed state into one of its classically interpretable component, hence doing the same job as the reduction postulate. For the second one, decoherence is only a way to show why no macroscopic superposed state can be observed, so explaining the classical appearance of the macroscopic world, while the quantum entanglement between the system, the apparatus and the environment never disappears. In this case, explaining why only one single definite outcome is observed remains to do. In this paper, I examine the arguments that have been given for and against both interpretations and defend a new position, the “Convivial Solipsism”, according to which the outcome that is observed is relative to the observer, different but in close parallel to the Everett’s interpretation and sharing also some similarities with Rovelli’s relational interpretation and Quantum Bayesianism. I also show how “Convivial Solipsism” can help getting a new standpoint about the EPR paradox providing a way out of the seemingly unavoidable non-locality of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

In the inaugural issue of this journal, David Tyfield used some recent discussions about "meaning finitism" to conclude that the sociology of scientific knowledge is an intellectually hopeless basis on which to erect an intelligible study of science. In contrast, the authors show that Tyfield's argument rests on some profound misunderstandings of the SSK. They show that his mischaracterization of SSK is in fact systematic and is based on lines of argument that are at best incoherent.

Eigenfeatures are created by the principal component approach (PCA) used on objects described by a low-level code (i.e., pixels, Gabor jets). We suggest that eigenfeatures act like the flexible features described by Schyns et al. They are particularly suited for face processing and give rise to class-specific effects such as the other-race effect. The PCA approach can be modified to accommodate top-down constraints.

Restituer la pensée d'Aristote c'est retrouver les problèmes qu'il s'était lui-même posés, sans avoir le souci de ce que la postérité pourrait y trouver par la suite pour éclairer ses propres problèmes. Le Corpus de l'œuvre d'Aristote est constitué de notes de cours inédits, qui furent probablement corrigées et augmentées tout au long d'une carrière d'un enseignant chercheur. Elles n'étaient pas destinées à la publication. Quand on les étudie aujourd'hui, il faut donc s'armer de la conviction qu'Aristote, même s'il a (...) dépassé son temps, puisque son œuvre a été exhumée presque trois siècles après sa mort, appartient néanmoins à son époque, à la fois par sa formation et par les auditeurs ou lecteurs qu'il pouvait y trouver. Son œuvre, élaborée dans un climat platonicien qu'elle critique, propose une réforme de la pensée, qui est intéressante en elle-même, même si elle s'est trouvée reprise ou, au contraire, rejetée au cours des âges qui l'ont suivie. Pour l'apprécier vraiment, il faut se garder de tout anachronisme, c'est-à-dire de la projection des problèmes d'un temps sur un temps antérieur, où ces problèmes n'étaient pas apparus. Si un auteur est grand, c'est sans doute parce que la postérité peut s'y instruire, mais on se ferait une fausse idée de cette grandeur si on la réduisait à l'usage qu'on a pu déjà en faire ou qu'on peut en faire aujourd'hui. La vraie grandeur réside dans les pas que cet auteur a accomplis en son temps, et qui ne dispensent pas d'en fournir d'autres, même si l'exemple ancien est digne d'être retenu. (shrink)

Dans l’entretien qu’il a accordé à ThéoRèmes, Jacques Bouveresse nous dit ceci, entre parenthèses, comme en passant : (Quoi que l’on puisse penser de la position de Wittgenstein sur la question de la religion, il est généralement plus subtil et l’est même, d’une certaine façon, presque trop.) Il est en effet délicat de présenter les idées de Wittgenstein sur les religions et sur les croyances religieuses. Il faut à la fois tenir compte d’une absence de prise de position nette sur (...) un certain... (shrink)

Penser le miracle oblige à repenser le sens que nous pouvons et désirons encore lui donner. Qu’il puisse exister des miracles apparaîtra aisément comme une éventualité dépassée, parce que nous serions devenus plus lucides, plus éclairés, moins fascinés par le merveilleux et le surnaturel. Pourtant, la contestation habituelle de la possibilité des miracles risque de reposer sur une conception des miracles trop simplifiée et par conséquent incompatible avec les exigences de la pensée qu’elle so...

Examinant la pertinence des travaux d’Edgar Morin dans la gestion des organisations productives et, plus particulièrement pour l’accroissement de l’efficacité collective, cet article propose des outils de réflexion opérationnels aux responsables d’organisations, s’appuyant sur six notions de la pensée complexe exposée dans La Méthode : les principes hologrammatique, d’auto-organisation, de la variété requise, de co-évolution, dialogique et de récursivité.Examining the relevance of the work of Edgar Morin in the management of productive organizations, and in particular for increasing collective efficacy, this (...) article proposes tools for reflection operational managers of organizations, based on six concepts complex thinking outlined in Method: hologrammatic principles, self-organization, requisite variety, co-evolution, dialogic and recursion. (shrink)

Résumé À la fin de sa vie missionnaire en Inde, l’Abbé Jules Monchanin (1895-1957) remit en chantier l’étude de la problématique de l’un et du multiple qui avait occupé sa réflexion dans les années 1930 à Lyon. Dans une note restée inédite, il mit en parallèle le déploiement de cette question philosophique chez les Grecs, de Parménide à Plotin, et dans la tradition indienne des Upanishads et de Shankara.

The contributors represent the complete spectrum of positions between a relativism that challenges the very concept of a single world and the idea that there are ascertainable, objective universals.