The article addresses the question of how should scientific peers revise their beliefs (if at all) upon recognized disagreement. After presenting the basics of peer disagreement in sections 1 and 2, we focus, in section 3, on a concrete case of scientific disagreement, to wit, the dispute over the evidential status of randomized control trials in medical practice. The examination of this case motivates the idea that some scientific disagreements permit a steadfast reaction. In section 4, we support this conclusion (...) by providing a normative argument in the same direction; if we are correct, typical reasons for conciliation are absent in this kind of scientific disagreements. (shrink)

Trichromacy may result from an adaptation to the regularities in terrestrial illumination. However, we suggest that a complete characterization of the challenges faced by colour perception must include changes in surface surround and illuminant changes due to inter-reflections between surfaces in cluttered scenes. Furthermore, our trichromatic system may have evolved to allow the detection of brownish-reddish edibles against greenish backgrounds. [Shepard].

Because theories of visual perception have traditionally concentrated on form, artists have generally dealt with the problem of color through their own observation and intuition. In _Color Harmonies,_ Augusto Garau systematically investigates the role of both color and form in visual perception and presents an original theory of the aesthetic relations among colors. Garau, a painter who teaches the psychology of form, pays particular attention to the way colors behave when organized in patterns. His theory of color combination addresses two (...) principal compositional elements: the relations between figure and ground and the phenomenon of transparency. Garau meticulously analyzes the use of color in paintings by masters such as Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse to show how his theory applies to actual works of art. Containing many full-color examples, his introduction to the workings of color relations is of great practical use to art historians and critics, artists, interior decorators, fashion and set designers, and anyone who works with color to display information or convey emotions. "In an area of the psychology of art where reliable guidance is still so hard to come by, [Garau's] well-supported contributions to the theory of color composition ought to be welcomed by practitioners and scholars alike."—from the Foreword by Rudolf Arnheim. (shrink)

The metaverse is the extension of this virtual world in which our avatars and other holograms will socialize. Should we speak of incarnation when it is virtual beings that represent us rather than physical bodies?

Après avoir identifié quelques-uns des multiples biais intellectuels qui obèrent trop souvent l’analyse de la réalité économique africaine, cette introduction précise la perspective de ce numéro. Il tente de définir l’esprit d’une économie politique lucide appliquée aux pays d’Afrique, avant de présenter brièvement les articles du dossier.

Une classe capitaliste nationale peut-elle émerger dans les pays africains nouvellement indépendants? Débattue il y a quarante ans à propos du Kenya, la question se pose également pour l’Éthiopie des trois dernières décennies. Bien que ce pays n’ait jamais été colonisé, son passage il y a trente ans d’un régime militaire à un État démocratique et développeur a marqué un tournant comparable à celui des pays africains anciennement colonisés. Cette transition politique promettait d’accorder un rôle économique plus important au secteur (...) privé national, jusqu’alors très limité. Cette transition s’est toutefois accompagnée d’importantes contradictions en matière de propriété du capital, compte tenu de la centralisation de la politique industrielle par l’État éthiopien. Cet article analyse les tentatives de l’État éthiopien de stimuler la formation d’une classe capitaliste productive et autochtone, dans le secteur des métaux et de l’ingénierie, au cours de la dernière décennie. (shrink)

After more than three centuries, Molyneux's question continues to challenge our understanding of cognition and perceptual systems. Locke, the original recipient of the question, approached it as a theoretical exercise relevant to long-standing philosophical issues, such as nativism, the possibility of common sensibles, and the empiricism-rationalism debate. However, philosophers were quick to adopt the experimentalist's stance as soon as they became aware of recoveries from congenital blindness through ophtalmic surgery. Such recoveries were widely reported to support empiricist positions, suggesting that (...) the question had found its empirical answer. Contrary to this common view, we argue that studies of patients recovering from early blindness through surgery cannot provide an answer. In fact, because of the very nature of such ophtalmological interventions it is impossible to test the question in the empirical conditions outlined by Molyneux. Thus we propose that Molyneux's question be treated as an early thought experiment of a specific kind. Although thought experiments of this kind cannot be turned into actual experimental conditions, they provide a conceptual restructuring of theories. Such restructuring in turn leads to new predictions that can then be tested by normal experiments. In accord with this interpretation, we show that Molyneux's question can be analyzed into a hierarchy of specific questions about vision in its phenomenal and sensory-motor components. Some of these questions do lead to actual experimental conditions that could be studied empirically. (shrink)

The planning/control distinction is an important tool in the study of sensorimotor transformations. However, published data from our laboratories suggest that, contrary to what is predicted by the proposed model, (1) structures in the superior parietal lobe of both monkeys and humans can be involved in movement planning; and (2) fast pointing actions can be immune to visual illusions even if they are performed without visual feedback. The planning–control model as proposed by Glover is almost certainly too schematic.

Les dynamiques de classe du changement agraire en Afrique ont fait l’objet de débats importants. Dans son ouvrage de référence, Femmes, greniers et capitaux, Meillassoux prédisait en 1975 la cannibalisation de la paysannerie, avec la domination croissante des relations capitalistes dans les campagnes. Pourtant, près d’un demi-siècle plus tard, la paysannerie reste une construction sociale, économique et politique pertinente. En s’appuyant sur le cas du Mozambique, cet article explore les significations contradictoires de la paysannerie dans le capitalisme contemporain. La première (...) section retrace la création du paysan-prolétaire en Afrique australe, en s’appuyant sur les travaux de Meillassoux sur la « communauté domestique ». La deuxième partie explore les différentes manières dont les camponeses improvisent leur subsistance à travers trois cas. L’article conclut que la paysannerie incarne un ensemble contradictoire de significations qui reflètent les processus de production de marchandises plutôt qu’un passé précapitaliste. (shrink)

Bruno Latour reconnaît l’influence de Gilbert Simondon sur son oeuvre, en particulier quant à sa compréhension de la technique. Latour semble ainsi réaliser en grande partie le programme de « non-anthropologie » de Simondon. Mais une apparente contradiction existe dans le traitement de l’énonciation par Latour : sa compréhension de la matérialité et des modes d’existence semble prendre le détour de la sémiotique. Cela a mené certains critiques à mettre en doute son approche de la matérialité. Toutefois, vue à (...) travers la lentille de l’influence que Simondon a eue sur Latour, il est possible de relire la théorie latourienne de l’énonciation en comprenant la communication comme passage de l’action d’un être à l’autre, et la signification de cette action comme résultat de sa participation à un processus de constitution des êtres. Latour est donc résolument un penseur du décentrement de l’humain.Bruno Latour recognizes the influence of Gilbert Simondon on his work, especially with respect to his understanding of technique. Latour appears, in that sense, to actualize a large proportion of Simondon’s “non-anthropology”. Yet, what appears to be a contradiction remains in his treatment of enunciation: indeed, his understanding of materiality seems to take the detour of semiotics. This has led some critics to question his approach to materiality. However, seen through the lens of Simondon’s influence on him, it is possible to revisit Latour’s theory of enunciation and to understand communication as the passage of action from one being to the next, and signification as the outcome of action’s participation to the constitution process of a being. This way, Latour is a thinker resolutely committed to de-centering the focus of research away from human beings. (shrink)

This article situates actor-network theory in the history of evolutionary anthropology. In the 1980s, this attempt at explaining the social through the mediation of nonhumans received important impulses from Bruno Latour’s conversations with primatologist Shirley Strum. In a re-articulation of social evolutionism, they proposed that the utilization of objects distinguished humans from baboons and that the use of a growing number of objects set industrialized human populations apart from hunter-gatherers, enabling the formation of larger collectives. While Strum’s and Latour’s (...) early work presented baboons as almost human and suggested that we moderns had never been modern, the Anthropocene has reawakened curiosity about the original question of anthropology: how do modern humans, including modern scientists, differ from premoderns and animals? This 18th-century question is gaining new significance and urgency as we recognize our transmutation into a super-dominant species. But the answer might not lie solely in the use of more objects. (shrink)

Une envie de transmettre, d'expliquer. De s'expliquer aussi. Sur la cohérence d'une pensée que l'apparente dispersion et variété des sujets qu'il a abordés avait, en partie, masquée. Bruno Latour s'est livré à cette série d'entretiens avec une simplicité, une jubilation et une puissance qui n'adviennent que dans les moments où l'on sait que la vie, et notamment celle de l'esprit, se condense. Un apaisement lié au sentiment d'urgence, une immanence indissociable de l'imminence et de la nécessité à tout concentrer, (...) résumer, déployer. Un souci de clarté, un plaisir de la conversation, un art de la performance. Comme si tout s'éclaircissait alors que la fin approchait"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Las reflexiones que conforman el presente artículo intentan brindar un aporte a la cuestión de la naturaleza y de la problemática medioambiental desde el punto de vista de lo que denominaremos una filosofía del suelo. Se emprenderá dicha tarea a través de los planteos de una serie de autores y autoras pertenecientes a la contemporaneidad filosófica, que se han preocupado, en distinta medida y de modos muy diferentes, por la problemática de la tierra o el suelo: Donna Haraway, Tim Ingold (...) y Bruno Latour. Para esto, nos serviremos de una serie de elementos que extraeremos de la experiencia visual y táctil de las Líneas de Nazca, legado de nuestro pasado amerindio en el desierto peruano. El trabajo se dividirá en tres partes, dedicada cada una de ellas a explicitar ciertas reflexiones de los autores que puedan asociarse a una filosofía como la que pretendemos mentar. El enfoque priorizará los entrelazos entre los mismos y el desarrollo de elementos que nos permitan un entrecruzamiento de sus respectivas teorías. (shrink)

Translator's introduction : At the end of July 2014 there was a week-long workshop held at the Ecole des Mines in Paris, Bruno Latour's former work-place. This was a final workshop, convened by Latour's project, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, which was not only a book, but a website that was an experiment in interactive metaphysics that had been going on for four years. About 30 participants gathered to workshop and rewrite some key contested areas that had been (...) challenged on the site with discussions and counter-examples. One of the round tables working away during the week, occasionally with changes in personnel, was on Nature. Their job (like the other round tables on Politics, Diplomacy, Religion and Economics) was to ‘reboot’ or reinstitute a concept close to the heart of the Moderns. The assumption was that the traditional concept of nature, as developed through modern European history, would no longer be adequate to a future beset by environmental crises. The main people working on a draft were Didier Debaise, Pablo Jensen, Pierre Montebello, Nicolas Prignot, Isabelle Stengers and Aline Wiame. When they finished the draft, I translated it and it was presented, in French and English, in a final two-day public session at Science Po, to a group of seven international scholars designated as “chargés d'affaires,” or “diplomats from the future” whose job was to assess the results of our labours in terms of how they might be met by Gaia, the ur-representative of future planetary crises. The text, originally under the title of Our “Nature,” was as follows. [Stephen Muecke]. (shrink)

“Medico, filosofo e matematico di gran dottrina et inventione, raro nel’architettura, erudito di lettere greche, che ha già composto molti libri di proprio e non alieno intelletto”, così Federico Cesi, il princeps dell’Accademia dei Lincei, presentò nel 1612 a Galileo il nuovo adepto Nicola Antonio Stigliola, conterraneo e compagno di gioventù Giordano Bruno.

The Mongols’ Middle East: Continuity and Transformation in Ilkhanid Iran. Edited by Bruno De Nicola and Charles Melville. Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 127. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Pp. xiii + 346. $149, €115.

Dans un contexte de compréhension de l’être humain en tant que créé à l’image et à la ressemblance divine, Nicolas de Cues a considéré que la vision et l’union avec l’Absolu conduit, d’une part, au bonheur, et implique aussi, d’autre part, l’expression de la plus grande liberté que puisse atteindre l’humain, c’est-à-dire la pleine possession de soi. Cette conviction se présente dans son œuvre, le De visione Dei, dans une ambiance mesurée par l’attitude de la personne en prière, qui s’adresse (...) à Dieu dans la recherche de soi-même, et dans l’aspiration à accéder à ce qui est sciemment inaccessible. À la fin de la Renaissance, Giordano Bruno est l’auteur qui marquera indiscutablement le tournant anthropologique dans le sens d’une subjectivité ne prétendant plus à une union avec l’Absolu, mais qui se retourne vers elle-même. Cela se produit dans un système dans lequel l’être humain et le monde s’auto-impliquent dans une totalité dynamique qui ne laisse pas de place à un Absolu transcendant. (shrink)

À l’origine de cet ouvrage, il y a le postulat que la conception historique de la laïcité « à la française » est un héritage problématique plus que dogmatique. C’est-à-dire un héritage, comme l’évoque la conclusion, « qui ne saurait être envisagé comme une question à clore, mais bien plutôt comme un champ susceptible de reconfiguration perpétuelle ». La spécificité de cet ouvrage dans ce champ repose alors quant à elle sur deux points. Il s’agit d’abord de prendre le temps (...) du recul, du suspen.. (shrink)

From the book: What is to be done with political ecology? Nothing. What is to be done? Political ecology!

We aim to do two things in this article. On the positive end, our goal is to explain how some seemingly incompatible aspects of belief live together, by presenting distinct mechanistic explanations of each of them: in particular we want to show how belief can be discerning, credulous, rational, and irrational. After clarifying our positive view, we take aim at some competitor views in the second half of the paper, particularly offering critiques of epistemic vigilance and social marketplace accounts of (...) belief. We conclude by inviting proponents to provide an architecture for belief that can be tested against existing models. (shrink)

Malebranche's Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion is in many ways the best introduction to his thought, and provides the most systematic exposition of his philosophy as a whole. In it, he presents clear and comprehensive statements of his two best-known contributions to metaphysics and epistemology, namely, the doctrines of occasionalism and vision in God; he also states his views on such central issues as self-knowledge, the existence of the external world and the problem of theodicy. His skilful handling of (...) the dialogue form enables the reader to see how he responds to objections made to his earlier work The Search after Truth. This edition presents a translation of the text which is clear, readable and more accurate than any of its predecessors, together with an introduction that analyses Malebranche's central teachings and explains the importance of the Dialogues in the context of seventeenth-century philosophy. (shrink)

This article defends a relational account of personhood. I argue that the structure of personhood consists of dyadic relations between persons who can wrong or be wronged by one another, even if some of them lack moral competence. I draw on recent work on directed duties to outline the structure of moral communities of persons. The upshot is that we can construct an inclusive theory of personhood that can accommodate nonhuman persons based on shared community membership. I argue that, once (...) we unpack the internal relation between directed duties, moral status, and flourishing, relations can ground personhood and include nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Most people believe that suffering is intrinsically bad. In conjunction with facts about our world and plausible moral principles, this yields a pro tanto obligation to reduce suffering. This is the intuitive starting point for the moral argument in favor of interventions to prevent wild animal suffering. If we accept the moral principle that we ought, pro tanto, to reduce the suffering of all sentient creatures, and we recognize the prevalence of suffering in the wild, then we seem committed to (...) the existence of such a pro tanto obligation. Of course, competing values such as the aesthetic, scientific or moral values of species, biodiversity, naturalness or wildness, might be relevant to the all-things-considered case for or against intervention. Still, many argue that, even if we were to give some weight to such values, no plausible theory could resist the conclusion that WAS is overridingly important. This article is concerned with large-scale interventions to prevent WAS and their tractability and the deep epistemic problem they raise. We concede that suffering gives us a reason to prevent it where it occurs, but we argue that the nature of ecosystems leaves us with no reason to predict that interventions would reduce, rather than exacerbate, suffering. We consider two interventions, based on gene editing technology, proposed as holding promise to prevent WAS; raise epistemic concerns about them; discuss their potential moral costs; and conclude by proposing a way forward: to justify interventions to prevent WAS, we need to develop models that predict the effects of interventions on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and animals’ well-being. (shrink)

F. Enriques and G. de Santillana have begun in collaboration the composition of a general history of scientific thought. The first volume of this work, which has been recently published, is concerned with the science of antiquity,1 and to a large extent covers the same ground as the history of ancient philosophy, as the frontiers of philosophy and natural science, at any rate until the time of Aristotle, were not yet clearly differentiated. But the two historians are interested in bringing (...) into prominence a great many problems and personalities that the history of philosophy generally leaves on one side, although they help to complete and vivify the picture of the mentality of the ancients. Mathematics, medicine, geography, astronomy, applied mechanics, and physics, in short all the particular scientific studies that were just beginning to detach themselves from the parent trunk of general philosophy are studied by the authors in their individual developments and through the personalities of their cultivators. The explanations are clear and simple and can be followed even by readers unversed in science; the information is at first hand and is supplemented by a careful discussion of sources. The scientific questions are not isolated from the historical setting of the civilization of antiquity, but are shown in relation to matters of philosophy, religion, art, and moral and political life. The bibliography, intended for the more purely scientific and technical departments of philosophy, forms a very useful and timely completion of the bibliography of philosophic thought in general. (shrink)

About a year ago some important philosophical works were published in Italy which, both in the agreement and in the divergence of the trends they indicate, may be useful for characterizing the present situation of Italian philosophy. I think it opportune, therefore, for the information of the English reader, to give a fuller notice of these books than usual. One of them is by Ugo Spirito, La vita come amore , with the subtitle “The downfall of Christian civilization ”. Ugo (...) Spirito, who was one of the most intelligent and restless pupils of Giovanni Gentile, announced his secession from idealism in 1937.In that year he published a book entitled La vita come ricerca , in which, as sole alternative to idealistic philosophy, henceforth considered untenable, he pointed to a philosophy of never concluded enquiry, which, while positing numerous problems, never solves them. The intention of the book was to conclude in the impossibility of philosophy as “system” or as “metaphysics”, on the supposition that all the possibilities of metaphysics had been exhausted in the course of its historical development, culminating in Gentile. In a certain sense this presupposition remains in the book now under examination; but here it is a question of defining positively the way that philosophy, and with it human life, ought to take, which is, according to Spirito, the way of love. (shrink)

About a year ago some important philosophical works were published in Italy which, both in the agreement and in the divergence of the trends they indicate, may be useful for characterizing the present situation of Italian philosophy. I think it opportune, therefore, for the information of the English reader, to give a fuller notice of these books than usual. One of them is by Ugo Spirito, La vita come amore, with the subtitle “The downfall of Christian civilization ”. Ugo Spirito, (...) who was one of the most intelligent and restless pupils of Giovanni Gentile, announced his secession from idealism in 1937.In that year he published a book entitled La vita come ricerca, in which, as sole alternative to idealistic philosophy, henceforth considered untenable, he pointed to a philosophy of never concluded enquiry, which, while positing numerous problems, never solves them. The intention of the book was to conclude in the impossibility of philosophy as “system” or as “metaphysics”, on the supposition that all the possibilities of metaphysics had been exhausted in the course of its historical development, culminating in Gentile. In a certain sense this presupposition remains in the book now under examination; but here it is a question of defining positively the way that philosophy, and with it human life, ought to take, which is, according to Spirito, the way of love. (shrink)

In the series Collezione di Filosofia published by Taylor of Turin since 1947, some of the most significant works on Italian existentialism have appeared. The series was inaugurated by two books by the writer of this article: Introduzione all esistenzialismo, second edition, 1947 ; and Filosofia religione scienza, 1947. These were followed by Pietro Chiodi, L'esistenzialismo di Heidegger, 1947; Armando Vedaldi, Essere gli altri, 1948; Uberto Scarpelli, Esistenzialismo e marxismo, 1949; Enzo Paci, II nulla e il problema dell'uomo, 1950; Luigi (...) Pareyson, Esistenza e persona, 1950; and Armando Vedaldi, Struttura della proprietà, 1951. (shrink)

L'ŒIL, Observatoire d'Ethique Interculturelle de Lyon, a pour objectif de préserver la dimension éthique de notre société démocratique et pluraliste dans son approche de l'homme. De nouveaux savoirs et techniques, le dynamisme de la recherche scientifique, les forces du marché, le souci de juste allocation des ressources, ainsi que les demandes de la société, mettent les acteurs des systèmes de santé dans des situations confuses. Cet ouvrage est le premier témoignage des rencontres et des recherches décidées par ces auteurs venus (...) d'horizons divers, engagés dans l'ensemble du monde francophone à partir de Lyon où se sont tenues les Premières Journées internationales francophones d'Ethique interculturelle, en 2004. Pour les auteurs de cet ouvrage, l'humanité peut mieux se constituer en s'ouvrant sur le différent, sur le multiple. Par regards croisés, ils questionnent la place relative du progrès, abandonnant le mythe simpliste selon lequel seul le progrès techno-économique entraîne les progrès sociaux, politiques et moraux... Au contraire, ils adoptent les principes d'incertitude et de complexité. Ils s'interrogent sur l'éthique interculturelle résultant d'une interaction à géométrie variable entre nos appartenances à différents groupes humains - culturels, sociaux, professionnels... sur le bon usage de la vie qui peut présupposer d'avoir en tête un archétype de la vie humaine, une vie exprimée dans sa plénitude. Certaines cultures ont exalté le héros, le chevalier ou le saint, avant de mettre en avant l'homme engagé ou l'entrepreneur accompli. Ils partagent la conviction que l'univers, la vie en général et la vie humaine en particulier ne sont pas des réalités monolithiques, mais résultent de l'interaction entre des polarités apparemment opposées, mais complémentaires. En effet, chaque être humain résulte des relations tissées avec l'Autre, s'enrichissant personnellement à travers chacune d'entre elles, s'ouvrant ainsi progressivement à toute l'humanité dans sa diversité. Nous construisons notre singularité en fonction de notre ouverture sur l'universel. Ce livre multidisciplinaire intéressera médecins et autres soignants, philosophes, spécialistes des sciences humaines et de l'éducation, des sciences exactes, voire responsables politiques. (shrink)

Giordano Bruno's notorious public death in 1600, at the hands of the Inquisition in Rome, marked the transition from Renaissance philosophy to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. In his philosophical works he addressed such delicate issues as the role of Christ as mediator and the distinction, in human beings, between soul and matter. This volume presents new translations of Cause, Principle and Unity, in which he challenges Aristotelian accounts of causality and spells out the implications of Copernicanism (...) for a new theory of an infinite universe, and of two essays on magic, On Magic and A General Account of Bonding, in which he interprets earlier theories about magical events in the light of the unusual powers of natural phenomena. (shrink)

In this article we argue that the social value of health research should be conceptualized as a function of both the expected benefits of the research and the priority that the beneficiaries deserve. People deserve greater priority the worse off they are. This conception of social value can be applied for at least two important purposes: in health research priority setting when research funders, policy-makers, or researchers decide between alternative research projects; and in evaluating the ethics of proposed research proposals (...) when research ethics committees assess whether the social value of the research is sufficient to justify the risks and burdens to research participants and others. In assessing how far a proposed research project will advance the interests of people who are more disadvantaged, research priority setters and RECs should examine the diseases that the research targets and the type of research. Just as certain diseases impose a greater burden on people who are more disadvantaged, so certain types of intervention and forms of research are more likely to benefit people who are more disadvantaged. We outline which populations are likely to be representative of the global worst off and identify what types of health research, and which disease categories, are priorities for these populations. (shrink)

L'origine dell'anima umana secondo Dante.--La dottrina d'Alberto Magno sull'Inchoatio formae.--Alberto Magno e san Tommaso.--La posizione di Alberto Magno di fronte all'averroismo.--L'anima umana secondo Sigieri.--Anima e corpo nel pensiero di san Tommaso.--L'aristotelismo della scolastica e i francescani.--Individualità e immortalità nell'averroismo e nel tomismo.