That Maurice Merleau-Ponty derived important inspirations from Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms for his theory of perception is obviously, yet is has so far hardly been studied systematically. This paper attempts to fill this gap, and develops the thesis that Merleau-Ponty's readings mistook in part the potential in Cassirer's theory of the subject and by no means exhausted it.

A fact ignored or underestimated by most of the specialist of the work and thought of Merleau-Ponty is the debt h is phenomenology of perception has to Ernst Cassirer’s own phenomenology. The articulation of an actual dialogue between the two thinkers is here anchored in Cassirer’s _concept of symbolic pregnance; which will have further development in Merleau’s Phenomenology of Perception, especially in the chapter he dedicated to the concept of expression. The elements of a possible discussion between the two concepts (...) are here presented as a fruitful basis to renew the reflection on the Lebenswelt problematic. (shrink)

This book presents the framework for a new, comprehensive approach to cognitive science. The proposed paradigm, enaction, offers an alternative to cognitive science's classical, first-generation Computational Theory of Mind. _Enaction_, first articulated by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in _The Embodied Mind_, breaks from CTM's formalisms of information processing and symbolic representations to view cognition as grounded in the sensorimotor dynamics of the interactions between a living organism and its environment. A living organism enacts the world it lives in; its embodied (...) action in the world constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition. _Enaction_ offers a range of perspectives on this exciting new approach to embodied cognitive science. Some chapters offer manifestos for the enaction paradigm; others address specific areas of research, including artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, neuroscience, language, phenomenology, and culture and cognition. Three themes emerge as testimony to the originality and specificity of enaction as a paradigm: the relation between first-person lived experience and third-person natural science; the ambition to provide an encompassing framework applicable at levels from the cell to society; and the difficulties of reflexivity. Taken together, the chapters offer nothing less than the framework for a far-reaching renewal of cognitive science. Contributors: Renaud Barbaras, Didier Bottineau, Giovanna Colombetti, Diego Cosmelli, Hanne De Jaegher, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo. Andreas K. Engel, Olivier Gapenne, Véronique Havelange, Edwin Hutchins, Michel Le Van Quyen, Rafael E. Núñez, Marieke Rohde, Benny Shanon, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Adam Sheya, Linda B. Smith, John Stewart, Evan Thompson. (shrink)

In this article, we first describe our general inhibitory-control theory and, then, we describe how we have tested its specific hypotheses on reasoning with brain imaging techniques in adults and children. The innovative part of this perspective lies in its attempt to come up with a brain-based synthesis of Jean Piaget’s theory on logical algorithms and Daniel Kahneman’s theory on intuitive heuristics.

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 2 Seiten: 762-765.

I challenge two points in Cohen Kadosh & Walsh's (CK & W) argument: First, the definition of abstraction is too restricted; second, the distinction between representations and operations is too clear-cut. For example, taking Jean Piaget's I propose that another way to avoid orthodoxy in the field of numerical cognition is to consider inhibition as an alternative idea of abstraction.

When Henri Poincaré reviewed the then competing theories of electrodynamics in the 1890s, he required their compatibility with two principles of mechanical origin—the reaction principle and the relativity principle. Historians of relativity theory have usually focused on the relativity principle and neglected or misinterpreted Poincaré’s concern with the reaction principle. In particular, most of them have interpreted his crucial article of 1900 on “Lorentz’s theory and the principle of reaction” as an attempt to save this principle by assuming an electromagnetic (...) momentum in addition to the momentum of matter. The purpose of this article is to dismiss this interpretation and show that Poincaré had the opposite intention as he spelled out the paradoxical consequences of Lorentz’s violation of the reaction principle. In doing so, he formally introduced a quantity that could later be interpreted as a genuine electromagnetic momentum, developed a fundamentally new understanding of Lorentz’s transformations in relation with the relativity principle and identified the paradoxes that Einstein would later solve by assuming the inertia of energy. (shrink)

For several decades, Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The book series is international in orientation and reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The series is led by an international team of editors.

L’expression équilibre naturel est largement utilisée dans les médias et par les militants écologistes pour sensibiliser le grand public aux conséquences néfastes des activités humaines sur l’environnement. Pourtant, alors qu’elle était relativement plébiscitée par les scientifiques au xixe et au début du xxe siècle, la quasi-totalité des écologues n’emploie plus cette expression. Dans cet article, nous visons à montrer que cette expression n’a pas été abandonnée à cause d’une réfutation de l’idée qu’elle recouvrait mais à cause d’une tombée en désuétude. (...) Nous avançons deux causes possibles à cette tombée en désuétude et nous défendons que les termes actuels de stabilité et de résilience renvoient à la même idée qui persiste et se précise. (shrink)

Local sentences and the formal languages they define were introduced by Ressayre in. We prove that locally finite ω‐languages and effective analytic sets have the same topological complexity: the Borel and Wadge hierarchies of the class of locally finite ω‐languages are equal to the Borel and Wadge hierarchies of the class of effective analytic sets. In particular, for each non‐null recursive ordinal there exist some ‐complete and some ‐complete locally finite ω‐languages, and the supremum of the set of Borel ranks (...) of locally finite ω‐languages is the ordinal, which is strictly greater than the first non‐recursive ordinal. This gives an answer to the question of the topological complexity of locally finite ω‐languages, which was asked by Simonnet and also by Duparc, Finkel, and Ressayre in. Moreover we show that the topological complexity of a locally finite ω‐language defined by a local sentence φ may depend on the models of the Zermelo‐Fraenkel axiomatic system. Using similar constructions as in the proof of the above results we also show that the equivalence, the inclusion, and the universality problems for locally finite ω‐languages are ‐complete, hence highly undecidable. (shrink)

Analogies between hearing and seeing already existed in ancient Greek theories of perception. The present paper follows the evolution of such analogies until the rise of 17th century optics, with due regard to the diversity of their origins and nature but with particular emphasis on their bearing on the physical concepts of light and sound. Whereas the old Greek analogies were only side effects of the unifying concepts of perception, the analogies of the 17th century played an important role in (...) constructing optical theories by imitation of acoustic theories, or vice versa. This transition depended on several factors including the changing relations between optics, music, mathematics, and physics, the diversity of early modern concepts of sound, and the rise of a new physics based on experimentation and mechanical explanation. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous nous proposons de mettre en évidence deux stratégies émergentistes possibles qui constituent une médiation intéressante entre les extrêmes classiques que sont le physicalisme réductionniste et le dualisme des substances. En distinguant trois niveaux de tension possibles entre monisme et dualisme — le niveau des substances, le niveau des propriétés causales et celui des prédicats — nous sommes amené à formuler deux positions philosophiques associées à deux concepts d’émergence distincts : l’émergence représentationnelle et l’émergence causale. Ces deux (...) concepts s’avèrent fidèles aux intuitions des premiers émergentistes véhiculées au travers de l’étymologie même du concept d’émergence, et permettent une interprétation non triviale de la maxime classique : « Le tout est plus que la somme des parties. »I emphasize in this paper two possible emergentist strategies that constitute interesting middle grounds between classical views that are reductive physicalism and substance dualism. By distinguishing three levels of tension between monism and dualism — the levels of substance, causal properties and predicates — one is allowed to formulate two philosophical views that may be associated with two distinct concepts of emergence : representational emergence and causal emergence. Both concepts are faithful to the intuitions of early emergentists that are conveyed in the very etymology of the concept of emergence, and they allow a non-trivial reading of the classical maxim : “the whole is more than the sum of the parts”. (shrink)

Featuring more than one hundred of his photographs in every genre, this book celebrates Hervé's work as an artist, creating images that serve not simply as records but stand as works of a singular imagination.

This paper considers the three first clauses of the Pistiros Charter. Closely connected with each other, they show the financial privileges accorded to Greek merchants by the Thracian authorities. The third clause prohibited any annulment of debts. The second may be compared to the δίκη αργυρίου in Athens and apparently concerned inheritances, which explains the recourse to the principle of kinship. In the first we have to restore an oath "purgatoire", by which the dynast denies having received funds demanded of (...) him. The three clauses are mentioned in the final oath not to confiscate sums belonging to a living or a deceased person. The second part studies certain coins in special use in transactions between Greeks and Thracians: imitations of Thracian staters and bronze triobols from Maroneia. (shrink)

La frappe de la monnaie et le timbrage des amphores relèvent d’une même technique, celle du sceau, qui est la marque d’une autorité publique. Cette étude analyse les rapprochements entre la composition des types monétaires et celle des emblèmes sur les timbres. Elle relève les nombreux exemples d’emploi de la même image. Elle étudie la signification juridique du scellement, qui a pour effet d’indiquer l’objet dokimon, agréé par la cité. Elle compare les modes de contrôle de la monnaie et des (...) amphores. Enfin, elle met en évidence les coïncidences chronologiques entre l’apparition des timbres et la réforme monétaire de 390 ainsi que le passage des timbres anciens aux timbres récents et le passage du groupe IV et au groupe V, vers 335. La prise de Thasos par Philippe V en 202 pourrait aussi marquer l’histoire des timbres et des monnaies. (shrink)

En dépit de sept lois intervenues entre 1988 et 2013 en matière de transparence dans la vie publique et de lutte contre la corruption, la France est caractérisée par un sentiment de banalisation des scandales politiques. Ces derniers, qui conduisent parfois à la démission ou à la condamnation d’un responsable politique, semblent d’abord revêtir une dimension « sacrificielle ». Or cette situation, qui aboutit à ne plus voir dans certains manquements éthiques des scandales politiques ou qui prive ceux-ci, lorsqu’ils éclatent, (...) de leur effet utile pour la construction de l’État de droit, est révélatrice d’une culture juridique française fondée sur une croyance en une « incarnation » du pouvoir. L’objet de l’article est dès lors d’expliquer les raisons de cette spécificité, avant de montrer que le système français promeut lui-même une distinction entre la fonction politique et son titulaire, et l’instauration d’un « censeur » au service de la première. (shrink)

A slight modification of Helmholtz’s metrical approach to the foundations of geometry leads to the locally Euclidian character of space without restriction of the curvature. A bolder generalization involving time measurement leads to the locally Minkowskian character of spacetime. Some philosophical consequences of these results are drawn.Keywords: Hermann Helmholtz; Space; Time; Spacetime.

Conscious awareness comprises two distinct states, autonoetic and noetic awareness. Schizophrenia impairs autonoetic, but not noetic, awareness. We investigated the strategic regulation of relevant and irrelevant contents of conscious awareness in schizophrenia using a directed forgetting paradigm. Twenty-one patients with schizophrenia and 21 normal controls were presented with words and told to learn some of them and forget others. In a subsequent test, they were asked to recognize all the words they had seen previously and give remember, know or guess (...) responses according to whether they recognized words on the basis of autonoetic awareness, noetic awareness, or guessing. Overall, patients showed the same degree of a directed forgetting effect as normal subjects. However, whereas the effect was observed both for remember and know responses in normal subjects, it was observed for know, but not for remember, responses in patients. These results indicate that patients with schizophrenia exhibit an impaired strategic regulation of contents of autonetic awareness for relevant and irrelevant information. (shrink)