Comment devient-on philosophe? Par quel sursaut un Aristoclès se fait-il Platon, jusqu'à s'imposer dans la liste des " auteurs philo " Il faut enquêter, non pas sur la vie privée, mais sur la vie intime : rumination intellectuelle, ton sur lequel on parle, motivations amoureuses... Ce qui fait un philosophe, c'est un immense travail sur soi, et la rencontre d'autres philosophes, vivants, de leurs problématiques. Mémoire sémantique + obsession métaphysique, voilà le code génétique du philosophe. Il débute par un attentat (...) religieux, puisqu'il commence sa carrière en niant tel ou tel sacré. Bien sûr, il vaut mieux être mâle, communiquer par les livres adopter la langue dominante, écrire quand on est célibataire. Comment gagner sa vie? Pas forcément en étant enseignant, comme c'est le cas aujourd'hui. Le profil du philosophe nous le révèle orphelin, vivant à l'étranger, souvent laid, jamais fou, et serial thinker, prêt à changer de philosophie pourvu qu'il reste, lui, à menacer le monde donnera ou donnera pas du sens à notre vie? Le philosophe est l'être inquiet qui pense inquiéter l'Être par deux trois mots bien aiguisés. (shrink)

In this paper I compare parametric and nonparametric regression models with the help of a simulated data set. Doing so, I have two main objectives. The first one is to differentiate five concepts of simplicity and assess their respective importance. The second one is to show that the scope of the existing philosophical literature on simplicity and model selection is too narrow because it does not take the nonparametric approach into account, S112–S123, 2002; Forster and Sober in The British Journal (...) for the Philosophy of Science 45, 1–35, 1994; Forster, 2001, in Philosophy of Science 74, 588–600, 2007; Hitchcock and Sober in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55, 1–34, 2004; Mikkelson in Philosophy of Science 73, 440–447, 2006; Baker 2013). More precisely, I point out that a measure of simplicity in terms of the number of adjustable parameters is inadequate to characterise nonparametric models and to compare them with parametric models. This allows me to weed out false claims about what makes a model simpler than another. Furthermore, I show that the importance of simplicity in model selection cannot be captured by the notion of parametric simplicity. ‘Simplicity’ is an umbrella term. While parametric simplicity can be ignored, there are other notions of simplicity that need to be taken into consideration when we choose a model. Such notions are not discussed in the previously mentioned literature. The latter therefore portrays an incomplete picture of why simplicity matters when we choose a model. Overall I support a pluralist view according to which we cannot give a general and interesting justification for the importance of simplicity in science. (shrink)

During the last two decades, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has become a dominant force in cultural activity ranging from taste in music and art to choices in food and lifestyles. _The Field of Cultural Production_ brings together Bourdieu's major essays on art and literature and provides the first introduction to Bourdieu's writings and theory of a cultural field that situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption. Bourdieu develops a highly original approach to the study (...) of literary and artistic works, addressing many of the key issues that have preoccupied literary art and cultural criticism in the last twentieth century: aesthetic value and canonicity, intertextuality, the institutional frameworks of cultural practice, the social role of intellectuals and artists, and structures of literary and artistic authority. Bourdieu elaborates a theory of the cultural field which situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption. He examines the individuals and institutions involved in making cultural products what they are: not only the writers and artists, but also the publishers, critics, dealers, galleries, and academies. He analyzes the structure of the cultural field itself as well as its position within the broader social structures of power. The essays in his volume examine such diverse topics as Flaubert's point of view, Manet's aesthetic revolution, the historical creation of the pure gaze, and the relationship between art and power. The Field of Cultural Porduction will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines: sociology and social theory, literature, art, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Over the last four decades, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died two years ago, he was considered to be a thinker on a par with Foucault, Barthes, and Lacan--a public intellectual as influential to his generation as Sartre was to his. Science of Science and Reflexivity will be welcomed as a companion volume to Bourdieu's now seminal An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (...) . In this posthumous work, Bourdieu declares that science is in danger of becoming a handmaiden to biotechnology, medicine, genetic engineering, and military research--that it risks falling under the control of industrial corporations that seek to exploit it for monopolies and profit. Science thus endangered can become detrimental to mankind. The line between pure and applied science, therefore, must be subjected to intense theoretical scrutiny. Bourdieu's goals in Science of Science and Reflexivity are to identify the social conditions in which science develops in order to reclaim its objectivity and to rescue it from relativism and the forces that might exploit it. In the grand tradition of scientific reflections on science, Bourdieu provides a sociological analysis of the discipline as something capable of producing transhistorical truths he presents an incisive critique of the main currents in the study of science throughout the past half century and he offers a spirited defense of science against encroaching political and economic forces. A masterful summation of the principles underlying Bourdieu's oeuvre and a memoir of his own scientific journey, Science of Science and Reflexivity is a capstone to one of the most important and prodigious careers in the field of sociology. (shrink)

Written with verve and intensity (and a good bit of wordplay), this is the long-awaited study of Flaubert and the modern literary field that constitutes the ...

Examining in detail the work of consecration carried out by elite education systems, Bourdieu analyzes the distinctive forms of power—political, intellectual, bureaucratic, and economic—by means of which contemporary societies are governed.

My aim in this paper is to show how the problem of inflated effect sizes corrupts the severity measure of evidence. This has never been done. In fact, the Winner’s Curse is barely mentioned in the philosophical literature. Since the severity score is the predominant measure of evidence for frequentist tests in the philosophical literature, it is important to underscore its flaws. It is also crucial to bring the philosophical literature up to speed with the limits of classical testing. The (...) Winner’s Curse is one of them. The problem is that when a significant result is obtained by using an underpowered test, the severity score becomes particularly high for large discrepancies from the null-hypothesis. This means that such discrepancies are very well supported by the evidence according to that measure. However, it is now well documented that significant tests with low power display inflated effect sizes. They systematically show departures from the null hypothesis H0 that are much greater than they really are. From an epistemological point of view this means that a significant result produced by an underpowered test does not provide evidence for large discrepancies from H0. Therefore, the severity score is an inadequate measure of evidence. Given that we are now aware of the phenomenon of inflated effect sizes, it would be irresponsible to rely on the severity score to measure the strength of the evidence against the null. Instead, one must take appropriate measures to try and avoid using underpowered tests by setting a threshold for the sample size or by replicating the results of the experiment. (shrink)

Replete with madwomen, murderers, musicians, and mystics, "Lonely Woman" dramatically interweaves the lives of five women. It remains Takako Takahashi's most sustained and multifaceted fictional realization of her concept of "loneliness.".

It has been claimed that if statistical power and p-values are both used to measure the strength of our evidence for the null-hypothesis when the results of our tests are not significant, then they can also be used to derive inconsistent epistemic judgements as we compare two different experiments. Those problematic derivations are known as power approach paradoxes. The consensus is that we can avoid them if we abandon the idea that statistical power can measure the strength of our evidence. (...) In this paper however, I put forward a different solution. I argue that every power approach paradox rests on an equivocation on "strong evidence". The main idea is that we need to make a careful distinction between the evidence provided by the quality of the test and the evidence provided by the outcome of the test. Both provide different types of evidence and their respective strength are to be evaluated differently. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's overt alliance with the Nazis and the specific relation between this alliance and his philosophical thought - the degree to which his concepts are linked to a thoroughly disreputable set of political beliefs - have been the topic of a storm of recent debate. Written ten years before this debate, this study by France's leading sociologist and cultural theorist is both a precursor of that debate and an analysis of the institutional mechanisms involved in the production of philosophical (...) discourse. Though Heidegger is aware of and acknowledges the legitimacy of purely philosophical issues (in his references to canonic authors, traditional problems, and respect for academic taboos), Bourdieu points out that the complexity and abstraction of Heidegger's philosophical discourse stems from its situation in the cultural field, where two social and intellentual dimensions - political thought and academic thought - intersect. Bourdieu concludes by suggesting that Heidegger should not be considered as a Nazi ideologist, that there is no place in Heidegger's philosophical ideas for a racist conception of the human being. Rather, he sees Heidegger's thought as a structural equivalent in the field of philosophy of the 'conservative revolution', of which nazism is but one manifestation. (shrink)

The p value is the probability under the null hypothesis of obtaining an experimental result that is at least as extreme as the one that we have actually obtained. That probability plays a crucial role in frequentist statistical inferences. But if we take the word ‘extreme’ to mean ‘improbable’, then we can show that this type of inference can be very problematic. In this paper, I argue that it is a mistake to make such an interpretation. Under minimal assumptions about (...) the alternative hypothesis, I explain why ‘extreme’ means ‘outside the most precise predicted range of experimental outcomes for a given upper bound probability of error’. Doing so, I rebut recent formulations of recurrent criticisms against the frequentist approach in statistics and underscore the importance of random variables. (shrink)

In this paper I articulate a fictionalist solution to the closure problem that affects constructive empiricism. Relying on Stephen Yablo’s recent study of closure puzzles, I show how we can partition the content of a theory in terms of its truthmakers and claim that a constructive empiricist can believe that all the observable conditions that are necessary to make a part of her theory true obtain and remain agnostic about whether or not the other truthmakers for the other parts of (...) her theory obtain. This can be done even though she asserts her theory as if it was wholly true. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare theory-laden perceptions with imputed data sets. The similarities between the two allow me to show how the phenomenon of theory-ladenness can manifest itself in statistical analyses. More importantly, elucidating the differences between them will allow me to broaden the focus of the existing literature on theory-ladenness and to introduce some much-needed nuances.

The main point of this paper is to underscore that tests with very low power will be significant only if the observations are deviant under both H0 and H1. Therefore, the results of those significant tests will generate misleadingly high severity scores for differences between H0 and H1 that are excessively overestimated. In other words, that measure of evidence is bound to fail in those cases. It will inevitably fail to adequately measure the strength of the evidence provided by tests (...) with low power. (shrink)

The main point of this paper is to underscore the link between simplicity and truth in an unsupervised machine learning context. More precisely, we argue that parametric and dimensional simplicity are not indicators of truth but the methodological principle that urges us to pay attention to such notions of simplicity is truth conducive. The truth that we are looking for are specific geometrical shapes and we know which algorithm can find which shapes provided that we pay attention to parametric and (...) dimensional simplicity. (shrink)

In 1983, in an open letter to the journal Nature, Karl Popper and David Miller set forth a particularly strong critical argument which sought to demonstrate the impossibility of inductive probability. Since its publication the argument has faced many criticisms and we argue in this article that they do not reach their objectives. We will first reconstruct the demonstration made by Popper and Miller in their initial article and then try to evaluate the main arguments against it. Although it is (...) possible to conceptualize logically the idea of induction, it is shown that it is not possible on traditional Bayesian grounds. (shrink)

In 1983, in an open letter to the journal Nature, Karl Popper and David Miller set forth a particularly strong critical argument which sought to demonstrate the impossibility of inductive probability. Since its publication the argument has faced many criticisms and we argue in this article that they do not reach their objectives. We will first reconstruct the demonstration made by Popper and Miller in their initial article and then try to evaluate the main arguments against it. Although it is (...) possible to conceptualize logically the idea of induction, it is shown that it is not possible on traditional Bayesian grounds. (shrink)

The curse of dimensionality is one of the most prominent challenge that data scientists face when trying to make valuable inferences. It is an epistemic problem that hits particularly hard in "Big Data" research contexts, where the volume of the data set is particularly large. The way in which we tackle with this problem sheds light on the notion of scientific evidence. Yet, it is virtually absent from the current philosophical literature. In this paper, I aim to broaden the focus (...) of that literature by showing that the dimensions in which the data are embedded are an integral part of scientific evidence. This is an aspect of scientific evidence that is often hidden behind the traditional observation/theory dichotomy that we often encounter in philosophy of science. Dimensions are abstract objects. They are not observables like tables and chairs, nor are they entries in a data set. Ultimately, I aim to show that empirical adequacy is not merely a matter of finding the model that best fit the relevant observational data. It is also a matter of finding the model that best fit the relevant observational data inside the relevant dimensions. (shrink)

Machine learning is a scientific discipline that can be divided into two main branches: supervised machine learning and unsupervised machine learning. In this paper, we aim to show just how simplicity matters in unsupervised contexts. This is important because unsupervised machine learning algorithms have barely received any attention in philosophy. Yet, there is a direct link between simplicity and truth in unsupervised contexts that we do not find in their supervised counterparts. This has thus far evaded philosophical discussions on simplicity.

Classical statistical inferences have been criticised for various reasons. To assess the soundness of such criticisms is a very important task because they are widely used in everyday scientific research. This is one of the reasons why the philosophy of statistics is an exciting field of study. In this paper, I focus on two such criticisms. The first one claims that the use of the p-value violates the principle of total evidence. It is a thesis that has been defended by (...) Elliott Sober and Bengt Autzen. The second one says that the result of classical tests does not only depend on the data but on the sampling plan of the experimenter also. The underlying criticism of course is that the sampling plan is not part of the evidence and that classical tests therefore violate PTE. The intentions of the experimenter should not affect the result of an inference. My aim is to show that both criticisms are unsound. Doing so, I hope to clarify the concept of p-value and the nature of the evidence in classical statistical tests. The point of my paper is to show that the identification of the evidence on which those criticisms rest is inadequate. (shrink)

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are treasured today--as they have been over the centuries--as an inexhaustible source of wisdom. And as one of the three most important expressions of Stoicism, this is an essential text for everyone interested in ancient religion and philosophy. Yet the clarity and ease of the work's style are deceptive. Pierre Hadot, eminent historian of ancient thought, uncovers new levels of meaning and expands our understanding of its underlying philosophy. Written by the Roman emperor for (...) his own private guidance and self-admonition, the Meditations set forth principles for living a good and just life. Hadot probes Marcus Aurelius's guidelines and convictions and discerns the hitherto unperceived conceptual system that grounds them. Abundantly quoting the Meditations to illustrate his analysis, the author allows Marcus Aurelius to speak directly to the reader. And Hadot unfolds for us the philosophical context of the Meditations, commenting on the philosophers Marcus Aurelius read and giving special attention to the teachings of Epictetus, whose disciple he was. The soul, the guiding principle within us, is in Marcus Aurelius's Stoic philosophy an inviolable stronghold of freedom, the "inner citadel." This spirited and engaging study of his thought offers a fresh picture of the fascinating philosopher-emperor, a fuller understanding of the tradition and doctrines of Stoicism, and rich insight on the culture of the Roman empire in the second century. Pierre Hadot has been working on Marcus Aurelius for more than twenty years; in this book he distills his analysis and conclusions with extraordinary lucidity for the general reader. (shrink)

avec de nombreux textes inédits Pierre Dugac. APPENDICE XVII Wilhelm WEBER : Brie)'e an Richard Dedekind (Cod. Ms. Richard Dedekind 14, II; Niedersàchsische Staats- und Universitàts- bibliothek Gôttingen) Gôttingen 10. Aug.

Developing earlier studies of the system of numbers in Mundurucu, this paper argues that the Mundurucu numeral system is far more complex than usually assumed. The Mundurucu numeral system provides indirect but insightful arguments for a modular approach to numbers and numerals. It is argued that distinct components must be distinguished, such as a system of representation of numbers in the format of internal magnitudes, a system of representation for individuals and sets, and one-to-one correspondences between the numerosity expressed by (...) the number and its metrics. It is shown that while many-number systems involve a compositionality of units, sets and sets composed of units, few-number languages, such as Mundurucu, do not have access to sets composed of units in the usual way. The nonconfigurational character of the Mundurucu language, which is related to a property for which we coin the term 'low compositionality power', accounts for this and explains the curious fact that Mundurucus make use of marked one-to-one correspondence strategies in order to overcome the limitations of the core system at the perceptual/motor interface of the language faculty. We develop an analysis of a particular construction, parallel numbers, which has not been studied before, elucidating the whole system. This analysis, we argue, sheds new light on classical philosophical, psychological and linguistic debates about numbers and numerals and their relation to language, and more particularly, sheds light on few-number languages. (shrink)

(From Liberty Fund:) The topics of church and state, religious toleration, the legal enforcement of religious practices, and religiously motivated violence on the part of individuals have once again become burning issues. Pierre Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary was a major attempt to deal with very similar problems three centuries ago. His argument is that if the orthodox have the right and duty to persecute, then every sect will persecute, since every sect considers itself orthodox. The result will be mutual slaughter, (...) something God cannot have intended. -/- The Philosophical Commentary takes its starting point from the words attributed to Jesus Christ in Luke 14:23, “And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be full.” Bayle contends that the word compel cannot mean “force.” From this perspective, he constructs his doctrine of toleration based on the singular importance of conscience. His point is not that coercion usually is ineffective in matters of faith but that, even when effective, it is wrong because it ignores the indispensability of the free conscience. (shrink)

Tied to the apron strings of the church -- Researcher, teacher, philosopher -- Philosophical discourse -- Interpretation, objectivity and nonsense -- Unitary experience and philosophical life -- Philosophical discourse as spiritual exercise -- Philosophy as life and as a quest for wisdom -- From Socrates to Foucault : a long tradition -- Inacceptable? -- The present alone is our happiness.

Pierre Bayle’ın Tarihsel ve Eleştirel Sözlük adlı eserindeki “Spinoza” maddesi, Spinoza felsefesinin temel meselelerine dair genel bir bakış sunar. Söz konusu maddenin burada çevirisi sunduğumuz “N Çıkması”nda ise Bayle, özellikle Spinoza’nın Ethica adlı eserine odaklanarak kip, değişiklik, töz ve Tanrı gibi Spinoza metafiziğinin temel kavramlarına yönelik eleştiriler getirir.

The authors develop an analysis of education. They show how education carries an essentially arbitrary cultural scheme which is actually based on power. More widely, the reproduction of culture through education is shown to play a key part in the reproduction of the whole social system.

This work by Pierre Bourdieu develops the anthropological theory which has formed the basis of his scientific research. It discusses the problems posed by "structuralist" philosophers in order to solve or dissolve them.

_Democracy Past and Future_ is the first English-language collection of Pierre Rosanvallon's most important essays on the historical origins, contemporary difficulties, and future prospects of democratic life. One of Europe's leading political thinkers, Rosanvallon proposes in these essays new readings of the history, aims, and possibilities of democratic theory and practice, and provides unique theoretical understandings of key moments in democracy's trajectory, from the French Revolution and the struggles for universal suffrage to European unification and the crises of the (...) present. In so doing, he lays out an influential new theory of how to write the history of politics. Rosanvallon's historical and philosophical approach examines the "pathologies" that have curtailed democracy's potential and challenges the antitotalitarian liberalism that has dominated recent political thought. All in all, he adroitly combines historical and theoretical analysis with an insistence on the need for a new form of democracy. Above all, he asks what democracy means when the people rule but are nowhere to be found. Throughout his career, Rosanvallon has resisted simple categorization. Rosanvallon was originally known as a primary theorist of the "second left", which hoped to stake out a non-Marxist progressive alternative to the irresistible appeal of revolutionary politics. In fact, Rosanvallon revived the theory of "civil society" even before its usage by East European dissidents made it globally popular as a non-statist politics of freedom and pluralism. His ideas have been shaped by a variety of influences, ranging from his work with an influential French union to his teachers François Furet and Claude Lefort. Well known throughout Europe as a historian, political theorist, social critic, and public intellectual, Pierre Rosanvallon was recently elected to a professorship at the Collège de France, Paris, a position held at various times by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu. _Democracy Past and Future_ begins with Rosanvallon's groundbreaking and synthetic lecture that he delivered upon joining this institution. Throughout the volume, Rosanvallon illuminates and invigorates contemporary political and democratic thought. (shrink)

Pierre Bayles "Dictionnaire historique et critique" (1. Aufl. 1697) ist als die "Bibel" oder, in den Worten Wilhelm Diltheys, als die "Rüstkammer der Aufklärung" bezeichnet worden. Die Attraktion, die es nicht nur auf die zeitgenössischen Leser ausübte, beruht in erster Linie auf dem Geist nüchterner, vorurteilsfreier Prüfung, der das ganze Werk durchzieht. Diese Grundhaltung traf den Nerv und das Lebensgefühl des 18. Jahrhunderts, das sich nach Kants Worten nur dem verpflichtet fühlte, was vor dem "Richterstuhl der Vernunft" legitimiert worden (...) war. Bayle steht am Anfang dieser Entwicklung und pocht unbeirrbar auf die Rechte der Vernunft, die sich für ihn in einer schonungslosen Prüfung des überlieferten Wissenstandes manifestieren. Im Jahr 2003 haben die Herausgeber aus den mehr als 2000 Artikeln des Wörterbuchs einen ersten Band mit einer Auswahl von gut 30 Artikeln sowie mit den vier "Klarstellungen" Bayles in neuer Übersetzung innerhalb der Philosophischen Bibliothek (PhB 542) vorgelegt. Infolge der positiven Resonanz erscheint anläßlich des 300. Todestages Bayles jetzt der zweite und abschließende Teil der Auswahlausgabe. Der Schwerpunkt liegt wiederum auf den philosophischen Artikeln des 'Dictionnaire'. Zusammen mit den bereits vorliegenden Texten vermitteln die hier präsentierten gut 30 weiteren Artikel einen Eindruck von Bayles philosophischem Denken. (shrink)

Les émotions ont un rôle important dans nos interactions sociales. Sans émotions, nous avons du mal à faire des choix. Quand notre environnement déçoit nos attentes de manière répétée, nos émotions nous signalent qu'il serait rationnel de changer nos attentes, c'est-à-dire de procéder à des révisions. Le partage des émotions, qui est la clé de notre sentiment d'appartenance à une communauté, nous amène à révéler nos valeurs, parce qu'il permet de résister face à un monde décevant. Si même une fois (...) révisées nos croyances, nos émotions se maintiennent, elles manifestent alors des attentes bien enracinées, qui sont nos valeurs réelles. Pour étudier les valeurs collectives, il faut donc étudier les émotions, la manière dont elles incitent à des révisions, et comment leur partage collectif renforce nos résistances. La rationalité morale s'appuie sur les émotions. Celles-ci sont sensibles aux détails des situations, et cette rationalité dépend des contextes, si bien qu'elle propose des arguments qui restent révisables quand le contexte change. Ne résistent à toute révision que nos sentiments d'injustice. L'originalité de ce livre est donc d'étudier les émotions et les valeurs, individuelles et collectives, dans la dynamique de leurs changements, de leurs révisions et de leurs résistances, et d'utiliser ce lien entre émotions et révisions pour mieux définir la spécificité d'une rationalité morale. (shrink)

An English translation of Pierre Bayle's posthumous last book, Entretiens de Maxime et de Themiste (1707), in which Bayle defends his skeptical position on the problem of the evil. This book is often cited and attacked by G.W. Leibniz in his Theodicy (1710). Over one hundred pages of original philosophical and historical material introduce the translation, providing it with context and establishing the work's importance.

A lot of attention has been devoted to the study of discoveries in high energy physics, but less on measurements aiming at improving an existing theory like the standard model of particle physics, getting more precise values for the parameters of the theory or establishing relationships between them. This paper provides a detailed and critical study of how measurements are performed in recent HEP experiments, taking examples from differential cross section measurements with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. This study (...) will be used to provide an elucidation of the concept of event used in HEP, in order to determine what constitutes an observation and what does not. It will highlight the essential place taken by theory-ladenness in order to produce observational facts, and will show how uncertainty and sensitivity estimates constitute an operational approach to robustness, inside the practice of science, avoiding potential circularity problem traditionally implied by theory-ladenness. This is in contrast to robustness analyses typically considered in the literature. A careful analysis of systematic uncertainty estimates and of statistical tests used to set empirical conclusions from the observations will however demonstrate that quantitative statements obtained from these statistical tests cannot be more than simple guiding arguments for the production of knowledge, but do not determine it. This indicates that the frontier between theory and observation is blurry and that the dichotomy theory-experiment should be revised. (shrink)