This paper critically examines the relation between problems and the formation and development of concepts in Bergson’s work, as well as in Bachelard, Canguilhem and Deleuze. Building on work by Elie During, I argue that it is not only Bergson but also Deleuze who shares with the French epistemological tradition an “anti-positivist” conception of concept formation, founded upon the posing and solving of novel problems as opposed to the acquisition and verification of empirical facts. Contrary to During, however, I (...) argue that it is not Bergson but Deleuze who furnishes us with an “anti-positivist” conception of problems that is adequate to this anti-positivist conception of concept formation. Deleuze’s anti-positivist view of problems holds, firstly, that genuine problems require the creation of novel terms in which to state and solve them. He shares this view with Bergson, Bachelard and Canguilhem. Secondly, however, Deleuze holds that a problem’s “truth” is not to be evaluated with reference to its eventual solutions, nor with reference to some privileged and contentful experience of reality, but is rather a matter of its purely intrinsic productivity. (shrink)

This article analyzes the repercussions of G. Politzer’s thought on the philosophy of life elaborated by G. Canguilhem. During the first thirty years of the twentieth century, Politzer’s texts provide important material for the construction of the philosophy that Canguilhem builds on human individuality and its autonomy. The reading of Politzer constitutes for Canguilhem a motive of inspiration for his axiological, moral and political proposals. By associating the ideas of the concrete psychology that encapsulates the existence of (...) man-actor, Canguilhem reconciles two series of arguments: a). the philosophy of life cannot do without an approach to human action; b). the presence of human action becomes inseparable from the assumptions that debate its existence between the singularity of its productions, and the apprehension that can be made of it by means of the universals that are proposed by science. (shrink)

El presente artículo analiza el periodo de conformación de la filosofía de Georges Canguilhem (1926-1939). Se concentra en la elaboración temprana de sus ideas relativas a la teoría del valor y de la autonomía de la acción humana. Dos aspectos de esta filosofía son tomados en consideración. En primer lugar, el vinculo que mantiene el entendimiento con los hechos que forman parte de la realidad, observando la incidencia de esta filosofía del valor y de la acción en el dominio (...) de tres disciplinas pertenecientes a las ciencias sociales (psicología, sociología, historia). Un segundo momento del texto analiza el espacio asignado por estas elaboraciones al psicoanálisis, teoría que Canguilhem asocia a los fundamentos de la dimensión política y ética de esta filosofía. (shrink)

Si son œuvre commence aujourd’hui à faire l’objet d’études d’ensemble, il nous semble aussi possible de saisir toute l’ampleur et la richesse de la philosophie de Georges Canguilhem en s’attachant à l’interprétation qu’il propose des différentes facettes de la pensée de Descartes. Thématique de la liberté créatrice, statut de la technique, fonction du « sentiment », problématique de l’individualité biologique, interrogation sur la pertinence de l’opposition mécanisme-finalité, questionnement sur l’historique de la notion de réflexe, réflexion sur la méthode et (...) prise de position sur l’importance philosophique et morale du Cogito : autant de moments d’un panorama qui permettra de mieux comprendre le Descartes de Canguilhem, et donc, on l’espère, Canguilhem lui-même. (shrink)

Este trabajo se propone analizar y confrontar las perspectivas teóricas divergentes de G. Canguilhem y de M. Foucault en torno al estatus pistemológico de las ciencias modernas del cuerpo humano. Ambos filósofos investigaron factores extracientíficos determinantes en la constitución del objeto mismo de la fisiología: aquel cuerpo humano calificado como «normal» que la técnica médica adopta como ideal terapéutico. Sin embargo, Canguilhem apeló en sus análisis a fundamentos subjetivos y biológicos (tales como el padecimiento humano y la «normatividad (...) vital»), mientras que su discípulo otorgó mayor relevancia a los factores políticos de normalización social. (shrink)

This paper does not intend to provide an exhaustive account of Canguilhem's thinking. It will focus on his philosophical approach to the biological sciences.

Background Biomedicine, i.e. the application of basic sciences to medicine, has become the cornerstone for the study of etiopathogenesis and treatment of diseases. Biomedicine has enormously contributed to the progress of medicine and healthcare and has become the preferred approach to medical problems in the West. The developments in statistical inference and machine learning techniques have provided the foundation for personalised medicine where clinical management can be fully informed by biomedicine. The deployment of precision medicine may impact the autonomy and (...) self-normativity of the patients. Understanding the relationship between biomedicine and medical practice can help navigate the benefits and challenges offered by precision medicine. Methods Conventional content analysis was applied to “Le Normal and le Pathologique” (Canguilhem G. The Normal and the Pathological. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1991) and further investigated with respect to its relationship with techne and precision medicine using PubMed and Google Scholar and the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to search for the following keywords singularly or in combination: “Canguilhem”, “techne”, “episteme”, “precision medicine”, “machine learning AND medicine”. Results The Hippocratic concept of techne accounts for many characteristics of medical knowledge and practice. The advances of biomedicine, experimental medicine and, more recently, machine learning offer, in contrast, the model of a medicine based purely on episteme. I argue that Canguilhem medical epistemology establishes a framework where episteme and data-driven medicine is compatible with the promotion of patient’s autonomy and self-normativity. Conclusions Canguilhem’s medical epistemology orders the relationship of applied medicine with experimental sciences, ethics and social sciences. It provides guidance to define the scope of medicine and the boundaries of medicalization of healthy life. Finally, it sets an agenda for a safe implementation of machine learning in medicine. (shrink)

The idea of nature in medical theory and practice -- Diseases -- Health: popular concept and philosophical question -- Is a pedagogy of healing possible? -- The problem of regulation in the organism and in society.

As the work of thinkers such as Michel Foucault, François Jacob, Louis Althusser, and Pierre Bourdieu demonstrates, Georges Canguilhem has exerted tremendous influence on the philosophy of science and French philosophy more generally. In Knowledge of Life, a book that spans twenty years of his essays and lectures, Canguilhem offers a series of epistemological histories that seek to establish and clarify the stakes, ambiguities, and emergence of philosophical and biological concepts that defined the rise of modern biology. How (...) do transformations in biology and modern medicine shape conceptions of life? How do philosophical concepts feed into biological ideas and experimental practices, and how are they themselves transformed? How does knowledge "undo the experience of life so as to help man remake what life has made without him, in him or outside of him?" Knowledge of Life is Canguilhem's effort to explain how the movements of knowledge and life come to rest upon each other. Published at the dawn of the genetic revolution and still pertinent today, the book tackles the history of cell theory, the conceptual moves toward and away from mechanical understandings of the organism, the persistence of vitalism, and the nature of normality in science and its objects. (shrink)

This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.

This book presents G. A. Cohen's Gifford Lectures, delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1996. Focusing on Marxism and Rawlsian liberalism, Cohen draws a connection between these thought systems and the choices that shape a person's life. In the case of Marxism, the relevant life is his own: a communist upbringing in the 1940s in Montreal, which induced a belief in a strongly socialist egalitarian doctrine. The narrative of Cohen's reckoning with that inheritance develops through a series of sophisticated (...) engagements with the central questions of social and political philosophy. In the case of Rawlsian doctrine, Cohen looks to people's lives in general. He argues that egalitarian justice is not only, as Rawlsian liberalism teaches, a matter of rules that define the structure of society, but also a matter of personal attitude and choice. Personal attitude and choice are, moreover, the stuff of which social structure itself is made. Those truths have not informed political philosophy as much as they should, and Cohen's focus on them brings political philosophy closer to moral philosophy, and to the Judeo-Christian ethical tradition, than it has recently been. (shrink)

A highly original reading of Immanuel Kant that demonstrates his interest in the social realm of human interaction.

Containing selected papers on the fundamentals and applications of Complexity Science, this multi-disciplinary book presents new approaches for resolving complex issues that cannot be resolved using conventional mathematical or software models. Complex Systems problems can occur in a variety of areas such as physical sciences and engineering, the economy, the environment, humanities and social and political sciences. Complexity Science problems, the science of open systems consisting of large numbers of diverse components engaged in rich interaction, can occur in a variety (...) of areas such as physical sciences and engineering, the economy, the environment, humanities and social and political sciences. The global behaviour of these systems emerges from the interaction of constituent components and is unpredictable but not random. The key attribute of Complex Systems is the ability to self-organise and adapt to unpredictable changes in their environment. (shrink)

A leading figure in neuroaesthetics makes the case that aesthetic experience can be meaningfully measured by the tools of neuroscience.

G.E. Moore, more than either Bertrand Russell or Ludwig Wittgenstein, was chiefly responsible for the rise of the analytic method in twentieth-century philosophy. This selection of his writings shows Moore at his very best. The classic essays are crucial to major philosophical debates that still resonate today. Amongst those included are: * A Defense of Common Sense * Certainty * Sense-Data * External and Internal Relations * Hume's Theory Explained * Is Existence a Predicate? * Proof of an External World (...) In addition, this collection also contains the key early papers in which Moore signals his break with idealism, and three important previously unpublished papers from his later work which illustrate his relationship with Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Fichte assigns ‘intellectual intuition’ a new meaning after Kant. But in 1799, his doctrine of intellectual intuition is publicly deemed indefensible by Kant and nihilistic by Jacobi. I propose to defend Fichte’s doctrine against these charges, leaving aside whether it captures what he calls the ‘spirit’ of transcendental idealism. I do so by articulating three problems that motivate Fichte’s redirection of intellectual intuition from being to acting: (1) the regress problem, which states that reflecting on empirical facts of consciousness leads (...) only to further facts and so cannot yield a first principle; (2) the rhapsody problem, which states that the categories form a haphazard set and so lack necessity unless they derive from a first principle; and (3) the nihilism problem, which states that a first principle cannot lie outside our cognition of it, lest it be the cause of our cognition and, being first, the cause of all our actions, reducing us to machines. Crucially, Fichte’s three motivating problems are in fact aspects of a single problem. Leaving any aspect unsolved spoils putative solutions to the other two. Consequently, Fichte requires a single unified solution to all three, which his doctrine of intellectual intuition provides. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII Coda Appendix Acknowledgements.

Les philosophes du siècle des Lumières ont conçu le Progrès comme manifestation de la perfectibilité naturelle de l'humanité. Le XIXe siècle a vu se ternir cette image d'avenir sous l'effet de ruptures épistémologiques et de surprises techniques. Conséquences imprévisibles de l'invention et de l'emploi de la machine à vapeur, les principes de dégradation énergétique en physique, les analyses révolutionnaires des rapports d' inégalité socioéconomique dans les sociétés industrielles ont entraîné la dislocation d'une idée qui avait joué le rôle d'un principe (...) de conservation des valeurs. Chez Freud et chez Lévi-Strauss le principe de Carnot est devenu principe de jugement de l'histoire. The philosophers of Enlightenment conceived Progress as evidence of mankind's natural perfectibility. In the 19 th C. this image of the future was tarnished by abrupt epistemological changes and technical surprises. An unforeseen consequence of the invention and use of the steam engine was the breaking up of an idea that had acted as a principle for preserving values, caused by the principles of the dissipation of energy in physics and the revolutionary analyses of the relations of socioeconomic inequality in industrial societies. With Freud and Lévi-Strauss, Carnot's principle became the principle for judging history. (shrink)

A model for the ideal state includes discussions of the nature and application of justice, the role of the philosopher in society, the goals of education, and the effects of art upon character.

Em 1973, Georges Canguilhem publica, na Encyclopédie Universalis, um extenso verbete histórico do conceito “Vida” na biologia e nas ciências da vida. A seguinte tradução do verbete é baseada na segunda edição, reimpressão publicada em 1989, nas páginas 546-553.

This essay challenges the widely accepted principle that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. The author considers situations in which there are sufficient conditions for a certain choice or action to be performed by someone, So that it is impossible for the person to choose or to do otherwise, But in which these conditions do not in any way bring it about that the person chooses or acts as he (...) does. In such situations the person may well be morally responsible for what he chooses or does despite his inability to choose or to do otherwise. Finally the author considers certain suggestions for revising the principle he rejects or for replacing it with a principle of an altogether different kind. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the use of neurointerventions to reduce the risk that criminal offenders will reoffend. Commentators have raised several ethical concerns regarding this practice. One prominent concern is that, when imposed without the offender’s valid consent, neurointerventions might infringe offenders’ right to bodily integrity. While it is commonly held that we possess a moral right to bodily integrity, the extent to which this right would protect against such neurointerventions is as-yet unclear. In this paper, we will assess (...) whether, why, and how severely three forms of neurointervention might infringe the right to bodily integrity. We show that the severity of the infringement of the right to bodily integrity differs across different forms of neurointervention. Moreover, we argue that mental and behavioral effects of neurointerventions could in some cases be relevant to determining the severity of infringements of the right to bodily integrity. (shrink)