La fin du xixe siècle est une période difficile pour les Français. La défaite de 1871, la chute du régime impérial, les déboires de la Troisième République et le krach de 1882 les ont amenés à douter de la capacité de leurs gouvernants. La société se fragilise et se divise, favorisant la montée du boulangisme et de l’antisémitisme. Charles Maurras et l’Action française en profitent également, après le suicide du général Boulanger en 1891 et la condamnation du capitaine Dreyfus en (...) 1894. Comtien convaincu, Maurras prend régulièrement position contre Rousseau, dans lequel il voit le principal responsable de la décadence morale et politique de la France. S’ouvre alors une campagne d’une rare violence contre les valeurs morales et esthétiques du romantisme. Erigé en icône du romantisme par les partisans d’une « Nouvelle Renaissance Classique », Rousseau est accusé de tous les maux de la société moderne : l ’individualisme exacerbé, la perversion des mœurs, le cosmopolitisme, le républicanisme, le sionisme, l’anarchisme et même l’homosexualité. (shrink)

Un nouveau type de paternalisme s’est développé ces dix dernières années sous l’impulsion de travaux innovateurs de certains économistes comportementaux. Ce nouveau type de paternalisme, que j’appelle ici paternalisme comportemental, s’est popularisé grâce à la théorie du « coup de pouce » de Richard Thaler et Cass Sunstein et remet en question l’idée selon laquelle le paternalisme serait inacceptable dans nos sociétés. L’objet de cet article est d’évaluer sa légitimité morale sans, néanmoins, se limiter à son supposé libertarianisme. Les résultats (...) de mon investigation peuvent se résumer ainsi : bien que le paternalisme comportemental soit généralement reconnu pour son caractère libéral, il ne satisfait pas en fait les conditions de ce que Joel Feinberg nomme le « paternalisme mou ». Néanmoins, il possède des qualités morales sous-estimées par ses partisans. Il résiste d’abord très bien à la critique égalitariste d’Elizabeth Anderson. A la différence des formes traditionnelles de paternalisme, le paternalisme comportemental n’est pas dégradant et n’est pas ostracisant. Le paternalisme comportemental, enfin, peut se targuer d’être véritablement altruiste, à la condition, cependant, d’abandonner les hypothèses principales de Sunstein et Thaler. Classification JEL : A12, D64, I18, I31, K32. (shrink)

Un nouveau type de paternalisme s’est développé ces dix dernières années sous l’impulsion de travaux innovateurs de certains économistes comportementaux. Ce nouveau type de paternalisme, que j’appelle ici paternalisme comportemental, s’est popularisé grâce à la théorie du « coup de pouce » de Richard Thaler et Cass Sunstein et remet en question l’idée selon laquelle le paternalisme serait inacceptable dans nos sociétés. L’objet de cet article est d’évaluer sa légitimité morale sans, néanmoins, se limiter à son supposé libertarianisme. Les résultats (...) de mon investigation peuvent se résumer ainsi : bien que le paternalisme comportemental soit généralement reconnu pour son caractère libéral, il ne satisfait pas en fait les conditions de ce que Joel Feinberg nomme le « paternalisme mou ». Néanmoins, il possède des qualités morales sous-estimées par ses partisans. Il résiste d’abord très bien à la critique égalitariste d’Elizabeth Anderson. A la différence des formes traditionnelles de paternalisme, le paternalisme comportemental n’est pas dégradant et n’est pas ostracisant. Le paternalisme comportemental, enfin, peut se targuer d’être véritablement altruiste, à la condition, cependant, d’abandonner les hypothèses principales de Sunstein et Thaler. Classification JEL : A12, D64, I18, I31, K32. (shrink)

Le propos de cet ouvrage, paru dans la collection _Repères _aux éditions La Découverte_ _est d’offrir une introduction précise et nuancée à l’utilitarisme comme courant philosophique depuis Bentham jusqu’aux utilitaristes contemporains (Peter Singer, Derek Parfit notamment). Dans un petit format (128 pages dont 108 de texte et 13 de bibliographie), Christophe Salvat donne une synthèse problématisée et efficace des avancées récentes de la recherche et met en valeur leur contribution aux questions éthiques contemporaines. Dans le paysage intellectuel anglophone, (...) l’utilitarisme occupe une place spécifique depuis le début du XIX e siècle. Les idées de Jeremy Bentham, de John Stuart Mill puis de Henry Sidgwick ont été diffusées, commentées et attaquées, elles ont joué un rôle structurant dans les controverses de l’époque victorienne. Au XX e siècle, une riche tradition universitaire – notamment dans les départements de droit, de politique et de philosophie – a contribué à considérablement élarg... (shrink)

The concepts of ‘honour and shame’ have emerged in contemporary missiological discourse as a key tool for ministry among ‘shame cultures’. While a recognition of different cultural values is an important step towards contextualisation, the soteriological models presented in these discussions are primarily based on a number of hidden assumptions which require further investigation: that shame is overcome by an outpouring of honour; that shame is a problem between humanity and God; and that the ‘honour system’ of this world is (...) a viable model in which to locate salvation. We review these assumptions and instead propose an understanding of salvation for shame based on the rejection of honour, the subversion of shame, the death of the shameful body and rebirth in new community. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Gandhi's Hope: Learning from Other Religions as a Path to PeaceChristopher Key ChappleGandhi's Hope: Learning from Other Religions as a Path to Peace. By Jay McDaniel. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005. 134 + viii pp.This book by prominent Protestant theologian Jay McDaniel suggests that Mahatma Gandhi challenged the modern world by publicly revealing that which he learned from other faith traditions and advocating this path as a way (...) for intercultural understanding. The wisdom of Gandhi holds special poignancy today, when the processes of globalization and migration have placed followers of different faiths in closer proximity than can be remembered in the past five hundred years.Jay McDaniel writes with crisp clarity and organizes his insights into bite-sized pieces. He lays out five challenges that face all the world's faiths: compassion, self-criticism, simple living, ecological awareness, and welcoming religious diversity. In approaching this decidedly postmodern list of issues, McDaniel draws from two primary resources: the experiences shared by his students at Hendrix College and the writings of Alfred North Whitehead. Along the way, he invokes the Buddhist teacher and leader Thich Nhat Hanh and several progressive Catholics, including Sister Joan Chittester and theologians Hans Küng and Paul Knitter.Continuing with a style developed in his earlier books, McDaniel latches onto a [End Page 237] metaphor and extends it to illustrate his central point—in this case, the value of diversity. In past books, he has used the image of the hunter and the hunted to underscore the need to respect animals. In Gandhi's Hope, the metaphor he employs is that of a jazz concert, with all different manner of instruments pooling their resources to create a tapestry of diverse yet harmonious music.Although the title of the book may seem to indicate that Gandhi will serve as thefocus, in fact, Whitehead anchors McDaniel's approach. Through an updated approach to Whitehead, McDaniel seeks to answer the questions regarding diversity and compassion that he has posed. He suggests that an experience of concrescence will result in the sort of heightened awareness needed to increase one's conscience and to make the ethical changes needed to respond to the current state of the world. McDaniel identifies twelve "planks" that will usher Whitehead's vision into the contemporary world. These twelve aspects seem also to be heavily influenced by McDaniel's own encounter with Buddhism: interdependence, impermanence, indeterminism, mind/matter, deep listening, value, God, creativity, persuasive power, divine empathy, many forms of salvation, and life after death. These broad categories embrace key notions found in all religious traditions. Some traditions emphasize certain aspects more than others. Buddhists cleave to impermanence and Jews to establishing a covenant with God, but Jews also recognize that all things will pass, and Buddhists revere their great teacher and many strive to emulate his experience through techniques akin to those who worship God.In order for religious traditions to maintain their urgency and relevance, McDaniel suggests that they must respond actively to the looming threat of environmental degradation. Consumer culture drives people into a state of indifference about natural resources, and arrogance prevents people from taking an interest in the life patterns and cultures of others. These tendencies lie at the root of the world's troubles. McDaniel suggests that process theology can remedy these ills by calling people into a state of compassion and can help guide people toward adopting thoughtful self-criticism, to living a more simple life, to recognizing the importance of other living beings and ecosystems, and to celebrating diversity of cultures. Echoing a refrain long associated with process thought, McDaniel writes "the universe is a creative and creating process of interdependent events, lured by but not controlled by God, such that the future is not yet decided, not even by God" (p. 71). To the extent that religions sustain themselves by reinforcing separateness and promoting a narrow cultural identity and/or an unthinking fundamentalism, they can be an impediment to peace, which, for McDaniel, is an important goal of the world's religions.When attempting to theologize about ultimate matters, McDaniel posits "four faces of the sacred," which he lists as the Abyss... (shrink)

Based primarily on his 1981-1982 course, The Hermeneutics of the Subject , I contend that Michel Foucault’s robust treatment of ancient models for self-salvation answers his systematic problem of a lost spiritual art of living primarily through a sustained dichotomy between the Hellenistic-Roman and Christian models of conversion. In this way his intended recovery of an aesthetic-ascetic spiritual “resistance” is accomplished through a methodology of resistance. He relies on an accelerating arrangement of polarities between the aim and practice of immanent (...) self-return and what he takes to be the coercive discourses of transcendent self-renunciation. Though such historiography may raise questions for some readers, my aim is simply to show how, for Foucault, the dichotomizing is necessary for grounding his own understanding of the art of ”conversion.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Something Breaks Through a Little”: The Marriage of Zen and Sophia in the Life of Thomas MertonChristopher PramukThe fact that you are a Zen Buddhist and I am a Christian monk, far from separating us, makes us most like one another. How many centuries is it going to take for people to discover this fact? 1Though Merton’s “turn to the East” began well before Vatican II would turn the (...) eyes of Roman Catholics toward the ecumenical and non-Christian world, its fruits would not generally appear in published form until after the Council. In works such as Mystics and Zen Masters (1967) and Zen and the Birds of Appetite (1968), Merton spends much labor correcting caricatures of Eastern spirituality prominent in the West, especially in the American counterculture. These remain vital texts today because they give us the mature Merton at his best, pressed to the limit of discursive communication on vexatious systematic and epistemological problems—and this after more than a decade of reflection and growth with respect to interfaith dialogue. Indeed, brilliantly realized essays such as “The New Consciousness” and “A Christian Looks at Zen” reveal Merton to be much more “conservative” than conservative caricatures make him out to be, and much more “liberal” than most progressives. Merton writes with the authority of a committed Christian immersed in serious dialogue, with all its challenges and risks, and not just as one who talks about it.Few serious students of Merton’s life and writings—whether inspired by his universal scope of vision or scandalized by it—would dispute that his conception of the divine changed as he allowed deeper encounters with Eastern traditions to interrogate his faith. What is less commonly understood, however, is how closely Merton’s engagement with Zen corresponded with his internalization of a deep thread in the Christian East, namely, the Sophia tradition of Russian Orthodoxy, or “sophiology” as known in its speculative form, associated with thinkers such as Vladimir Soloviev (d. 1900), Sergius Bulgakov (d. 1944), and Paul Evdokimov (d. 1970). What attracted Merton to these thinkers was their recasting of the Christian narrative of salvation in the boldest imaginative and metaphysical terms; from biblical, patristic, and modern philosophical sources they had fashioned a “positive theology,” a theology brimming with content. Though Merton himself would never develop a formal [End Page 67] sophiology, his internalization of Russian imagery is amply evidenced in journals, letters, notes, and in seminal works such as The Behavior of Titans (1961), The New Man (1961), and New Seeds of Contemplation (1961). The prose poem Hagia Sophia (1962), still one of Merton’s most understudied and “secret” works, is by far the most realized, lyrical, and daring of his meditations on the Wisdom figure of Sophia.In this article I wish to suggest that the striking “coincidence” of Zen and Sophia in Merton’s life during the late 1950s was not merely a coincidence, but hinged in part on epistemological difficulties he was wrestling with in the midst of radically shifting cultural, ecclesial, and political horizons. While in one sense the irruption of Sophia into Merton’s consciousness in the late 1950s was just one thread woven into the larger mosaic of his “turn to the world,” it was, I believe, the golden thread that helped him to hold the fabric together, ever more centered in Christ. In other words, this “bringing together” of apparent opposites does not end with epistemology. What emerges in Merton’s concurrent study of Zen and Russian sophiology is a kind of “story-shaped” Christology, a story told through the life of Merton but haunted more and more by the mysterious figure of Sophia.2Nondualism: A Zen and Ancient Christian “Way of Seeing”In a letter dated March 12, 1959, Merton introduced himself to Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki, then known worldwide for his gift for translating the teachings of Zen Buddhism to the West.3 After receiving a warm reply and some poems from Suzuki, Merton wrote a second letter. His tone is warm and forthright, written as one might address a respected mentor or a long-time friend. What is most striking is the intimacy with which... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Periwigged Heralds":Epistemology and Intertextuality in Early American CometographyChristopher JohnsonIn the winter of 1680-81 an enormous comet appeared in the nighttime skies of Europe and the Americas.1 This "blazing star" occasioned numerous treatises, poems, pamphlets, broadsides, ballads, engravings, and woodcuts. Evaluating this cometary copia, the historian of science, Pingré, in 1783 observes:The world was inundated with writings on these phenomena, on their nature, on their significations; for there were still (...) astrologers and cometomantics [Cométomantiens]... I believe that the languages were not even as confused at the Tower of Babel, as were the sentiments concerning this famous comet.2Pingré's belated impatience with the discursive flood of "astrologers and cometomantics" echoes of course the more general Cartesian objection to the confusion of words and things, a confusion that L'Académie des sciences and Royal Society dedicated themselves to eliminating. But the arduous nature of this effort in seventeenth-century Europe is exemplified by the numerous, often-conflicting interpretations of the 1618, 1665, and 1680 comets—to say nothing of the unprecedented "new stars" or novas of 1572 and 1604, which were often treated as cometary phenomena. In this essay, though, I will trace the contours of this epistemological confusion in the Americas—specifically in [End Page 399] Mexico, Peru, and New England—where European astronomical, astrological, theological, and literary discourses concerning comets were repeated and imitated but also where they were mediated by cultural concerns unique to the New World. More particularly, by focusing on some of the intertextual aspects of the interpretation of the 1680 comet in the Americas, I suggest that the hermeneutic of signs which dominated in one way or another almost every Early American cometography is indicative of broader epistemological and rhetorical tensions that characterize the period.Popular belief in late seventeenth-century Europe generally held that a comet's appearance heralded God's wrath. In Germany the terrible "Wunder-Komet" of 1680 precipitated the publication of nearly a hundred treatises, most of which echoed the motto on a medal struck by the State Library of Zurich: "The star threatens evil things. Have faith! God will set things right."3 The devout comet-watcher could thus look forward to imminent salvation, while sinners were urged to seize a final chance to repent. Still, even many of the learned who treated comets mathematically also embraced some form of theological hermeneutic. Both Kepler and, later in his life, Newton wished to retain comets as actors in God's eschatological drama.4 Though others, like Galileo and Gassendi, saw the comet as a natural event without semiotic significance, the more astrologically inclined continued to see it not just as a sign but as the effective cause itself of ill, or less often, good fortune.5 Stanislaw Lubieniecki's1667 Theatrum cometicum thus places one comet at Jerusalem's destruction and another at Christ's birth.6 In other words, the Theatrum, like most contemporary cometographies, is fueled by the logic of analogy, for a comet was generally read as a wondrous (but usually disastrous) sign linking the microcosm and macrocosm, or alternately, as a sign legible only by translating the Book of Nature with the lexicon provided by the Book of God, the Bible.7 When it came to comets, the epistemic shift that Foucault traces in The Order of Things, from a sixteenth-century symbolic or qualitative world-view to a seventeenth-century rationalist or quantitative one, was often slowly and/or incompletely achieved. Forced to speak of a comet's "beard" or "tail," even the less mantic cometographers found themselves interrogating the analogical nature of their discourse as much as the celestial objects that excited their curiosity. [End Page 400]Especially in France and to a lesser extent England the epistemological and rhetorical assumptions associated with the idea that comets heralded misfortune were being subject to increasing scrutiny if not sometimes also outright scorn. Most famously, Pierre Bayle in his Pensées diverses; Ecrites à un Docteur de Sorbonne, à l'occasion de la comète qui parut au mois de Decembre 1680, uses the comet as a kind of floating signifier which allows him to interrogate with proto-Enlightenment rigor all manner... (shrink)

The final part of Schopenhauer’s argument in The World as Will and Representation concerns “affirmation and negation of the will”. He argues, with a fervor that borders on the religious, that “negation of the will” is a condition of unique value, the only state that enables “true salvation, redemption from life and from suffering”. Some commentators have asserted without qualification that this condition is his “highest good.” However, Schopenhauer in fact claims that there cannot be a highest good, because 'good' (...) is always relative to sstisfaction of a will, and there is no possible final satisfaction of the will. It is only figuratively the will-lessness is the highest good. The article examines the coherence of Schopenhauer's position. Because of the relation of 'good' to willing, he appears reluctant to call will-lessness 'good' at all, despite rating it a state of superior value. The article suggests that Schopenhauer should either abandon his univocal account of 'good' as related to willing, or accept that things can be good in relation to different kinds of willing, namely egoistic and non-egoistic willing. It is argued that the latter resolution if preferable. (shrink)

Evangelical Protestant spirituality, under the influence of the Enlightenment, has assumed a somewhat modernist flavor. As a result, traditional forms of religious symbol and piety were demoted in favor of religious affections, true spirituality was now discerned by means of “heart knowledge,” and the assurance of salvation assumed a place of prominence in the emerging market of spiritual autobiography. This essay explores several ways that a non-monastic, non-modern Protestant tradition, which lives according to a community rule, can contribute to the (...) spiritual formation conversation. I begin by introducing the reader to the Amish narrative and discuss how two theological themes shape their approach to spirituality–-the cross of Christ and the relationship between faith and works, justification and sanctification. Next, I question a common view of Jesus’ ministry as being diametrically opposed to that of the Pharisees and suggest that the Sermon on the Mount deserves to be central to the enterprise of spiritual formation. I conclude this essay by revealing how the Amish put spiritual theology into practice, via a locally constructed Ordnung and while seated around the supper table. (shrink)

Bonaventure frequently identifies theology with sacred scripture, using the term “scripture” as a synonym for theology to the extent that he refers to the whole of what God has revealed for the salvation of the human race. The best place to begin to understand Bonaventure's view of sacred scripture is with the conviction that he held with other medieval believers, that God has written three books: one within, one without, and one for sinners to return home. In Bonaventure's eyes, scripture (...) is not merely the literal meaning of the text. When he speaks of scripture, he means scripture as revealed in the fullness of its meanings, above all, in its allegorical interpretation. (shrink)

The purpose of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer is to offer translations of the best modern German editions of Schopenhauer's work in a uniform format for Schopenhauer scholars, together with philosophical introductions and full editorial apparatus. The World as Will and Representation contains Schopenhauer's entire philosophy, ranging through epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, aesthetics and philosophy of art, to ethics, the meaning of life and the philosophy of religion. This second volume was added to the (...) work in 1844, and revised in 1859. Its chapters are officially 'supplements' to the first volume, but are indispensable for a proper appreciation of Schopenhauer's thought. Here we have his most mature reflections on many topics, including sex, death, conscious and unconscious desires, and the doctrines of salvation and liberation in Christian and Indian thought. Schopenhauer clarifies the nature of his metaphysics of the will, and synthesizes insights from a broad range of literary, scientific and scholarly sources. This new translation reflects the eloquence and power of Schopenhauer's prose, and renders philosophical terms accurately and consistently. It offers an introduction, glossary of names, bibliography, and succinct editorial notes. (shrink)

Cet article porte sur le modèle d'innovation qui préside à la conception des plateformes relationnelles sur Internet. Sous l'étiquette de « Web 2.0 » s'est développé récemment un ensemble de pratiques de conception qui associe étroitement les usagers innovateurs et les petites entreprises présentes sur Internet. On montre notamment comment cette tendance prolonge et transforme la dynamique des innovations ascendantes et le mouvement du logiciel libre. L'article s'attache à décrire deux espaces d'innovation particuliers qui permettent de réunir un réseau hétérogène (...) de concepteurs: les barcamps et les coworking places.This paper focuses on the innovation model that governs the design of relational platforms on the Internet. Under the label of "Web 2.0" has recently developed a set of design practices that closely innovative users and small businesses with an Internet presence. We show how this trend extends and transforms the dynamics of bottom-up innovations and the free software movement. The article aims to describe two areas of innovation individuals who bring together a heterogeneous network of designers: the barcamps and coworking spaces. (shrink)

Le present livre propose l'etude de la constitution, durant le haut Moyen Age latin, d'une position philosophique: le realisme de l'immanence a propos des universaux. Cette position est fondee sur la conviction qu'il existe, dans le monde qui nous entoure, certes des individus particuliers - ce tilleul, cette tortue -, mais aussi des entites universelles. Ces entites n'existent pas separees des individus, mais integralement realisees en eux, sans variation ni degre. Cet engagement philosophique resulte d'une exegese des Categories d'Aristote, reinterpretees (...) selon des philosophemes issus de la pensee de Porphyre. La genealogie de cette position est ici retracee en abordant successivement ses sources tant grecques que latines et ses ancetres patristiques (avant tout Gregoire de Nysse), puis son elaboration conceptuelle durant les premiers siecles du Moyen Age latin jusqu'a la critique qu'en donnera Pierre Abelard, et ce, par l'analyse de l'ontologie des quatre philosophes qui l'ont soutenue: Jean Scot Erigene, Anselme de Canterbury, Odon de Cambrai et Guillaume de Champeaux. Ce parcours permet de dessiner les contours d'un projet philosophique: comprendre, analyser et decrire le monde sensible au moyen des concepts issus de la logique aristotelicienne. (shrink)

La représentation devant la Cour de cassation ne peut être assurée que par certains avocats, qui ont reçu une formation spécifique et dont le nombre est volontairement limité. Ce régime particulier, dont l’origine est très ancienne, s’explique par la technicité du pourvoi en cassation et le caractère extraordinaire de cette voie de recours. Mais ses effets ne se réduisent pas à cet aspect. En rendant possibles des échanges réguliers et fluides entre la Cour et « ses » avocats, tous dépositaires (...) d’une culture commune, il permet à la première de s’appuyer sur les seconds pour mettre en œuvre les réformes qu’elle juge nécessaires, dans l’intérêt de l’ensemble de l’institution judiciaire. (shrink)

With a meta-analysis of 85 studies and 190 experiments, the authors test the relationship between socially responsible investing and financial performance to determine whether including corporate social responsibility and ethical concerns in portfolio management is more profitable than conventional investment policies. The study also analyses the influence of researcher methodologies with respect to several dimensions of SRI on the effects identified. The results indicate that the consideration of corporate social responsibility in stock market portfolios is neither a weakness nor a (...) strength compared with conventional investments; the heterogeneous results in prior studies largely reflect the SRI dimensions under study. (shrink)

In recent cancer research, strong and apparently conflicting epistemological stances have been advocated by different research teams in a mist of an ever-growing body of knowledge ignited by ever-more perplexing and non-conclusive experimental facts: in the past few years, an 'organicist' approach investigating cancer development at the tissue level has challenged the established and so-called 'reductionist' approach focusing on disentangling the genetic and molecular circuitry of carcinogenesis. This article reviews the ways in which 'organicism' and 'reductionism' are used and opposed (...) in this context, with an aim at clarifying the debate. Methodological, epistemological and ontological implications of both approaches are discussed. We argue that the 'organicist/reductionist' opposition in the present case of carcinogenesis is more a matter of diverging heuristics than a claim about theoretical or ontological (ir)reducibility. As a matter of fact, except for the downward causation claim, which we question, we argue that the organicist arguments are compatible with the reductionist approach. Moreover, we speculate that both approaches, which currently focus on specific entities i.e., genes versus tissues, will need to shift their conceptual frameworks to studying complex arrays of relationships potentially ranging over several levels of entities, as is the case with 'systems biology'. (shrink)

All known chimpanzee populations have been observed to hunt small mammals for meat. Detailed observations have shown, however, that hunting strategies differ considerably between populations, with some merely collecting prey that happens to pass by while others hunt in coordinated groups to chase fast-moving prey. Of all known populations, Taï chimpanzees exhibit the highest level of cooperation when hunting. Some of the group hunting roles require elaborate coordination with other hunters as well as precise anticipation of the movements of the (...) prey. The meat-sharing rules observed in this community guarantee the largest share of the meat to hunters who perform the most important roles leading to a capture. The learning time of such hunting roles is sometimes especially long. Taï chimpanzee males begin hunting monkeys at about age 10. The hunters’ progress in learning the more sophisticated hunting roles is clearly correlated with age; only after 20 years of practice are they able to perform them reliably. This lengthy learning period has also been shown in some hunter-gatherer societies and confirms the special challenge that hunting represents. (shrink)

What is philosophy of science? Numerous manuals, anthologies or essays provide carefully reconstructed vantage points on the discipline that have been gained through expert and piecemeal historical analyses. In this paper, we address the question from a complementary perspective: we target the content of one major journal of the field—Philosophy of Science—and apply unsupervised text-mining methods to its complete corpus, from its start in 1934 until 2015. By running topic-modeling algorithms over the full-text corpus, we identified 126 key research topics (...) that span across 82 years. We also tracked their evolution and fluctuating significance over time in the journal articles. Our results concur with and document known and lesser-known episodes of the philosophy of science, including the rise and fall of logic and language-related topics, the relative stability of a metaphysical and ontological questioning (space and time, causation, natural kinds, realism), the significance of epistemological issues about the nature of scientific knowledge as well as the rise of a recent philosophy of biology and other trends. These analyses exemplify how computational text-mining methods can be used to provide an empirical large-scale and data-driven perspective on the history of philosophy of science that is complementary to other current historical approaches. (shrink)

Ignoring most published evidence on wild chimpanzees, Tomasello et al.'s claim that shared goals and intentions are uniquely human amounts to a faith statement. A brief survey of chimpanzee hunting tactics shows that group hunts are compatible with a shared goals and intentions hypothesis. The disdain of observational data in experimental psychology leads some to ignore the reality of animal cognitive achievements.

Human expression is open-ended, versatile, and diverse, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved functions of which are the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how expression is unleashed in humans. The relevant (...) cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species' social ecology to explain how and why humans, and only humans, evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity and open-endedness in means and modes of expression. Language use is but one of these modes of expression, albeit one of manifestly high importance. We make cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only language use, but also novel behaviour in many other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, teaching, punishment, and art, all of which are ubiquitous in human societies but relatively rare in other species. Much of this diversity derives from graded aspects of human expression, which can be used to satisfy informative intentions in creative and new ways. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of the many of the most distinctive features of human behaviour, society, and culture. (shrink)

The author argues the following hypothesis: the medical clinic is an experimental practice, in the sense given to this term by Claude Bernard, and the clinic is its specific laboratory. Its object is not the disease, but the patient. Careful examination of the clinic attests to its very close proximity to the experimental method, and the comparison also raises a number of difficulties. The main obstacle arises from the specificity of medicine, which involves treating individual human subjects whose words cannot (...) be suppressed. Its main challenge is to combine a linguistic practice with an experimental method. (shrink)

This article offers a contribution to the history of scientific ideas by proposing an epistemological argument supporting the assumption made by Miller whereby Niels Bohr has been influenced by cubism when he developed his non-intuitive complementarity principle. More specifically, this essay will identify the Bergsonian durée as the conceptual bridge between Metzinger and Bohr. Beyond this conceptual link between the painter and the physicist, this paper aims to emphasize the key role played by art in the development of human knowledge.

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a multidisciplinary meeting held to discuss ethical issues in medical research in the developing world. Many studies, including clinical trials, are conducted in developing countries with a high burden of disease. Conditions under which this research is conducted vary because of differences in culture, public health, political, legal and social contexts specific to these countries. Research practices, including standards of care for participants, may vary as a result. It is therefore not surprising that ethical issues (...) emerge. This meeting sought to identify and discuss these issues from the perspectives of the many actors in such research, including community representatives, with a view to finding ethical and pragmatic solutions to these issues. Dialogue between these actors was also promoted, with a view to identifying the need to develop such dialogue in future. Drawing from the experiences of the speakers, the colloquium attempted to outline some answers to several key questions characterising the field today. Experiences related to epidemiologic research, vaccine trials, drug trials, diagnostic tests and to some fundamental ethical issues in health research. Speakers were from different countries, disciplines and professions. The meeting provided a forum for consultation and debate between different ethics actors. Both encouraging findings and challenges emerged. (shrink)

The concept of “life” certainly is of some use to distinguish birds and beavers from water and stones. This pragmatic usefulness has led to its construal as a categorical predicate that can sift out living entities from non-living ones depending on their possessing specific properties—reproduction, metabolism, evolvability etc. In this paper, we argue against this binary construal of life. Using text-mining methods across over 30,000 scientific articles, we defend instead a degrees-of-life view and show how these methods can contribute to (...) experimental philosophy of science and concept explication. We apply topic-modeling algorithms to identify which specific properties are attributed to a target set of entities (bacteria, archaea, viruses, prions, plasmids, phages and the molecule of adenine). Eight major clusters of properties were identified together with their relative relevance for each target entity (two that relate to metabolism and catalysis, one to genetics, one to evolvability, one to structure, and—rather unexpectedly—three that concern interactions with the environment broadly construed). While aligning with intuitions—for instance about viruses being less alive than bacteria—these quantitative results also reveal differential degrees of performance that have so far remained elusive or overlooked. Taken together, these analyses provide a conceptual “lifeness space” that makes it possible to move away from a categorical construal of life by empirically assessing the relative lifeness of more-or-less alive entities. (shrink)

This paper explores the notion of 'relational values' from a phenomenological point of view. In the first place, it stresses that in order to make full sense of relational values, we need to approach them through a relational ontology that surpasses dualistic descriptions of the world structured around the subject and the object. With this aim, the paper turns to ecophenomenology's attempt to apprehend values from a first-person perspective embedded in the lifeworld, where our entanglement with other beings is not (...) a theoretical construction but a palpable reality. Overall, the article's main purpose is to show that, in our direct and raw experience, values do not appear as subjective judgments or as objective properties but as events in which we participate alongside other human and non-human beings. (shrink)

I argue that altruistic behavior and its variation across cultures may be caused by mental cognitive mechanisms that induce cooperative behavior in contract-like situations and adapt that behavior to the kinds of contracts that exist in one's socio-cultural environment. I thus present a cognitive alternative to Henrich et al.'s motivation-based account. Rather than behaving in ways that reveal preferences, subjects interpret the experiment in ways that cue their social heuristics. In order to distinguish the respective roles of preferences and cognitive (...) processes that determine economic behavior, we need more ethnography of strategies “in the wild.”. (shrink)

Editorial: Folk Epistemology. The Cognitive Bases of Epistemic Evaluation Content Type Journal Article Pages 477-482 DOI 10.1007/s13164-010-0046-8 Authors Christophe Heintz, Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary Dario Taraborelli, Centre for Research in Social Simulation, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK Journal Review of Philosophy and Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158 Journal Volume Volume 1 Journal Issue Volume 1, Number 4.

Showing a very early interest in Descartes, after having first considered him as a Christian thinker in the perspective of a deconstruction of religious life, Heidegger soon regards him as the major obstacle to the phenomenological analyses he wants to develop, as part of the first ontological search he gave himself: that of a hermeneutics of facticity. Therefore, the latter immediately takes in his work the shape of a hermeneutics of the I think, therefore I am, its author being blamed (...) for having entirely ignored the sense of being in the I am, focused as he is on the thinking ego, the ins and outs of which he develops. But the criticism also applying to Husserl, it is by laying the blame on his master, that Heidegger intends to radicalize the project of his own master, hence the necessity to throw light on the origin and the foundations of what we can call the Cartesian question in Heidegger. (shrink)

Cultural Attraction Theory (CAT), also referred to as cultural epidemiology, is an evolutionary theory of culture. It provides conceptual tools and a theoretical framework for explaining why and how ideas, practices, artifacts and other cultural items spread and persist in a community and its habitat. It states that cultural phenomena result from psychological or ecological factors of attraction.

Summary This article intends to propose new hypotheses concerning the origin of the ?Principe général? of mechanics of Jean Le Rond D'Alembert expressed in its Traité de dynamique in 1743. The examination of the statics of Pierre Varignon and its inheritance suggests that D'Alembert retains, through a case of oblique collision on a hard surface, a method of decomposition and equilibrium of forces which is close to its principle. On the other hand, this principle requires a definition of the equilibrium (...) widely spread in the 17th and 18th centuries, D'Alembert seeming then more to innovate from an epistemological point of view that on a technical one. Finally, the determination of rules of collision based at the same time on decompositions of movements at the level of the centre of mass and on appeal to a principle of relativity constitutes a know-how at the beginning of the 18th century which can be moved closer to methods developed by D'Alembert. These three aspects try then to replace the science of D'Alembert in a context by insisting on the essential role of the collisions of body and on that of the notion of equilibrium concerning the birth of its principle. (shrink)

As a discipline of its own, the philosophy of science can be traced back to the founding of its academic journals, some of which go back to the first half of the twentieth century. While the discipline has been the object of many historical studies, notably focusing on specific schools or major figures of the field, little work has focused on the journals themselves. Here, we investigate contemporary philosophy of science by means of computational text-mining approaches: we apply topic-modeling algorithms (...) to eight major philosophy of science journals, from the 1930s up until 2017. Based on the full-text content of some 15,897 articles, we identified 25 research themes and 8 thematic clusters that show how the research agenda of the philosophy of science has changed in its content over the course of the last eight decades, up to the philosophy of science we now know. We also show how each one of the journals contributed in its own way to this thematic evolution. (shrink)

We hypothesize that when honesty is not motivated by selfish goals, it reveals social preferences that have evolved for convincing strategically vigilant partners that one is a person worth cooperating with. In particular, we explain how the patterns of dishonest behavior observed in recent experiments can be motivated by preferences for social and self-esteem. These preferences have evolved because they are adaptive in an environment where it is advantageous to be selected as a partner by others and where these others (...) are strategically vigilant: they efficiently evaluate the expected benefit of cooperating with specific partners and attend to their intentions. We specify the adaptive value of strategic vigilance and preferences for social and self-esteem. We argue that evolved preferences for social and self-esteem are satisfied by applying mechanisms of strategic vigilance to one's own behavior. We further argue that such cognitive processes obviate the need for the evolution of preferences for fairness and social norm compliance. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous entendons montrer que les principes d’invariance interviennent de manière essentielle pour caractériser les lois de la nature en physique. Pour ce faire, nous nous focaliserons sur les réflexions épistémologiques que Weyl et Wigner consacrent aux symétries. Nous proposerons une analyse conceptuelle de l’invariance en indiquant qu’elle permet de généraliser la première analogie de l’expérience de Kant (le principe de permanence de la substance). Nous analyserons de plus l’argument de Weyl selon lequel les principes d’invariance constituent des (...) connaissances a priori en un sens relativisé. Nous indiquerons pour finir qu’aux yeux de Wigner, les « symétries » constituent des conditions qui nous permettent de structurer notre compréhension de la réalité empirique. (shrink)

This article deals with the question of whether Ernst Jünger's long story Auf den Marmorklippen (1939)—the publication of the text itself as well as its contents—should be interpreted as political action or quietist retreat. The author examines the notions that the text advocates fatalism and escapism, both of which could be seen as tenets of (anti-)Catholic Quietism, of which Fénelon is cited as a practitioner. A close reading shows that Jünger's protagonists value their carefree and quiet lives before the story's (...) wars and only join the militant Mauretanian order because of its promise of serene detachment. Jünger's world is imbued with manifestations of the divine—much unlike the Quietists'—and as such is worthy of the protagonists' sustained intellectual attention. They arrive at a thorough appreciation of the prevailing social and political situation and develop a new language to capture it. They understand that resistance against the ruling party is futile but do not reject their own responsibility for their friends and neighbors. The article concludes that Jünger presents the protagonists' escape at the end of the story as a temporary solution. He writes a complex narrative that leaves its interpretation and application to his readers. He neither fashions himself as a national redeemer-poet nor do his protagonists content themselves with a reclusive life forgetful of their surroundings. (shrink)

Plusieurs épreuves peuvent être engagées avec l’image, depuis les "devinettes" du Sphinx auxquelles répond brillamment Oedipe jusqu’à la panique télévisuelle que déclenche l’entrée en eau d’Éric Moussambani aux jeux Olympiques de Sydney. Chacune des épreuves prises en compte dans cet ouvrage implique la mise en relation de l’image et du corps. Cet ouvrage se propose de mener une enquête pour tenter de comprendre comment, pour faire-image, un corps doit s’insérer dans une nouvelle configuration du sensible, à partir d’un choix d’objets (...) issus du théâtre, de la littérature, de la philosophie, du cinéma et de la télévision. Depuis Oedipe jusqu’aux Monty Pythons, de La Bruyère à Hrundi V. Bakshi, le héros du film The Party, de Blake Edwards, avec les traités de Balzac, de Barbey d’Aurevilly ou de Marcel Mauss, une "épreuve de l’image" se précise dans une nouvelle transaction des corps et de l’espace, où se déploient également de nouvelles puissances des corps. (shrink)