Cet article étudie la notion de « responsabilité politique » définie par Young pour répondre au problème des injustices mondiales. Il tente d’expliquer pourquoi l’auteure prend pour point de départ le modèle de la responsabilité individuelle, écartée dès le xix e siècle pour penser la solidarité sociale, et montre que la responsabilité « politique » chez Young aboutit paradoxalement à la disqualification de l’action publique.

Le présent article s’intéresse aux arguments égalitariens qui défendent une ouverture des frontières nationales car ces dernières discriminent injustement, selon eux, les perspectives individuelles à l’échelle mondiale. Pour égaliser des opportunités aujourd’hui séparées par les frontières des États, il faudrait généraliser la liberté de mouvement transnationale. Nous confrontons cette thèse au cas de l’Union européenne où le statut des Européens circulant librement dans un autre pays leur a progressivement donné les mêmes droits sociaux que ceux dont jouissent les ressortissants du (...) pays d’accueil. Cela a contribué à égaliser les opportunités à l’échelon européen malgré l’absence d’harmonisation des systèmes de protection sociale et de leur financement. À partir de quelques arrêts de la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne, nous confrontons la thèse égalitarienne à trois réserves. La première, qui souligne la menace de la liberté de circulation pour la justice sociale intérieure, est rejetée pour des raisons empiriques. La seconde concerne la possibilité pour la liberté de circulation d’être le support de droits sociaux. Enfin, l’absence de solidarité dans l’Union européenne révèle que la défense égalitarienne d’une ouverture des frontières peut difficilement valoir sans être assortie de mécanismes distributifs au niveau européen. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck, Jean-Marc Ferry et Jürgen Habermas voient dans l’Union européenne la réalisation d’une démocratie postnationale, capable de se hisser au niveau des enjeux actuels. Les signes de cette réalisation ne se font toutefois pas jour dans des valeurs abstraites, mais dans l’expérience de l’européanisation, lors des commerces transfrontaliers. Après avoir présenté ce paradoxe dans les textes, nous suggérons que l’accent mis sur les expériences ordinaires tient à la place occupée par le droit dans la construction européenne. Le contrôle des (...) libertés de circulation par la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne, caractéristique du marché intérieur, est à l’origine d’une intégration plus large, qui a étendu les droits des opérateurs économiques et forgé le statut de citoyen européen. La jurisprudence de la CJUE a en effet permis d’élargir la portée des droits transnationaux, dans la continuité du droit cosmopolitique kantien, sans dissoudre les États membres dans une association supranationale. Une affiliation postnationale, alternative au modèle de la souveraineté étatique classique, semble ainsi se concrétiser dans l’Union européenne. Cependant, nous suggérons que le crédit accordé à la construction, par la jurisprudence de la CJUE, de la citoyenneté postnationale, risque d’occulter les effets problématiques d’une intégration judiciaire vouée à être essentiellement négative. (shrink)

In this short but meaty book, Peter Unger questions the objective answers that have been given to central problems in philosophy. As Unger hypothesizes, many of these problems are unanswerable, including the problems of knowledge and scepticism, the problems of free will, and problems of causation and explanation. In each case, he argues, we arrive at one answer only relative to an assumption about the meaning of key terms, terms like "know" and like "cause," even while we arrive (...) at an opposite answer relative to quite different assumptions, but equally arbitrary assumptions, about what the key terms mean. (shrink)

Ce billet a déjà été publié dans Rouge, études diachroniques. Regards croisés de l'art préhistorique à l'art contemporain le 24 juin 2018. Nous remercions Mathilde Buratti de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Kupka, artiste complet du XXe siècle notamment connu pour ses abstractions colorées, est à l'honneur au Grand Palais jusqu'au 30 juillet 2018. Cette rétrospective met en avant la conception originale du peintre. Tout au long de sa carrière, tant dans ses productions abstraites que - Arts (...) plastiques et autres – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

On a longtemps considéré qu'un seul archonte éponyme de Delphes avait porté le nom de Kléophanès. C'est cet état des connaissances que présente G. Daux, en 1943, malgré les remarques de R. Flacelière (Chronologie delphique L27, 172/ 1 av. J.-C.). En 1949, la publication d'un texte daté par un archonte Kléophanès et attribué au IIIe siècle relança la question du nombre des éponymes de ce nom et des textes qui pouvaient être attribués à l'année de leur magistrature. Grâce à une (...) nouvelle édition des trois textes en suspens et au réexamen des différents critères de datation disponibles, nous proposons de corriger la Chronologie delphique en ajoutant deux archontes nommés Kléophanès au IIIe siècle av. J.-C. : -G27, 2e quart du IIIe siècle (?), connu par FD III 3, 82 ; -K41, 2e moitié du IIIe siècle (?), connu par FD III 4, 427 V. Le texte BCH 63 (1939), p. 160, doit sans doute être attribué à K41 plutôt qu'à G27. L'archontat L27 demeure documenté par la liste chronologique des proxènes et par trois actes d''affranchissement, mais perd un de ses bouleutes. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est un essai libre sur la vie et l'oeuvre d'Arne Naess, philosophe norvégien, écologiste engagé et alpiniste de renom. Dons les années 1970, Naess développe un "mouvement" écologique - plutôt qu'une philosophie - très personnel : une "écosophie", c'est-ô-dire un lien à l'écosphère et à la nature, cette entité dont nous faisons partie ou même titre que les autres espèces, et non une ressource inépuisable extérieure à nous. Il s'attache donc à adopter une attitude particulière vis-à-vis de l'environnement (...) et à vivre en harmonie avec Io nature. Au-delà de sa pensée philosophique, des ouvrages théoriques et des concepts qu'il développe, Naess invite chacun à découvrir son propre rapport à la nature, dans un processus d'identification - et donc d'empathie -, afin de fonder les bases nouvelles d'une écologie qu'il nomme "profonde". Jamais dogmatique ni extrémiste, l'oeuvre de Naess incite au contraire le lecteur à mettre en oeuvre sa propre "écosophie", créative et tolérante, à s'inventer une vie plus écologique sans bouleverser complètement ses habitudes, voire en améliorant sa qualité de vie. Une perspective écologiste qui pourrait sembler évidente, une nouvelle voie pour le développement personnel, sons école de pensée. (shrink)

Volume 1 of Politics, a work in constructive social theory. Newly available, the complete work of Politicsa program for a comprehensive progressive alternative to the dominant ideologies of social democracy and neo-liberalismfrom one of the worlds leading social and political thinkers. False necessity is the central theme in the three-volume series Politics. It presents both a way of explaining society and a program for changing it. The explanation develops a radical alternative to Marxism, showing how we can account for established (...) social arrangements without denying their contingency or our freedom. The program offers a progressive alternative to the now-dominant ideological conceptions of neoliberalism and social democracy: a set of institutional innovations that would democratize markets, deepen democracy and empower individuals. For this new edition, Unger has written a comprehensive introduction that explores the limits of our understanding of society and our practice of politics, and reconsiders proposals contained in the book as special cases of a larger family of untried political possibilities. (shrink)

Languages show substantial variability between their speakers, but it is currently unclear how the structure of the communicative network contributes to the patterning of this variability. While previous studies have highlighted the role of network structure in language change, the specific aspects of network structure that shape language variability remain largely unknown. To address this gap, we developed a Bayesian agent‐based model of language evolution, contrasting between two distinct scenarios: language change and language emergence. By isolating the relative effects of (...) specific global network metrics across thousands of simulations, we show that global characteristics of network structure play a critical role in shaping interindividual variation in language, while intraindividual variation is relatively unaffected. We effectively challenge the long‐held belief that size and density are the main network structural factors influencing language variation, and show that path length and clustering coefficient are the main factors driving interindividual variation. In particular, we show that variation is more likely to occur in populations where individuals are not well‐connected to each other. Additionally, variation is more likely to emerge in populations that are structured in small communities. Our study provides potentially important insights into the theoretical mechanisms underlying language variation. (shrink)

Mediation is an alternative dispute resolution process that is becoming more and more popular particularly in English-speaking countries. In contrast to traditional litigation it has not benefited from technological advances and little research has been carried out to make this increasingly widespread practice more efficient. The study of argumentation in dispute mediation hitherto has largely been concerned with theoretical insights. The development of argumentation theories linked to computational applications opens promising new horizons since computational tools could support mediators, making sessions (...) quicker and more efficient. For this, we need tools for close analysis of mediation discourse in order to explore the argumentative activity in depth, and ultimately get an accurate image of how dialogues unfold in this particular context. This paper therefore aims at laying the foundations of a theory of close analysis for discourse in dispute mediation. Theories provided by the literature serve as a basis for argumentative analyses of transcripts of mediation sessions in order to deliver a clear image of the argumentative structure. Analyses of the argumentative strategies in mediation discourse will allow for the development of a dialogue protocol that can be used to develop operational models which can be embodied in software to help make the mediation process easier and more effective. (shrink)

Biology seems to present local and transitory regularities rather than immutable laws. To account for these historically constituted regularities and to distinguish them from mathematical invariants, Montévil and Mossio (Journal of Theoretical Biology 372:179–191, 2015) have proposed to speak of constraints. In this article we analyse the causal power of these constraints in the evolution of biodiversity, i.e., their positivity, but also the modality of their action on the directions taken by evolution. We argue that to fully account for the (...) causal power of these constraints on evolution, they must be thought of in terms of normativity. In this way, we want to highlight two characteristics of the evolutionary constraints. The first, already emphasised as reported by Gould (The structure of evolutionary theory, Harvard University Press, 2002), is that these constraints are both produced by and producing biological evolution and that this circular causation creates true novelties. The second is that this specific causality, which generates unpredictability in evolution, stems not only from the historicity of biological constraints, but also from their internalisation through the practices of living beings. (shrink)

This research investigated the effect of divided attention at encoding on feeling-of-knowing . Participants had to learn a 60 word-pair list under two experimental conditions, one with full attention and one with divided attention . After that, they were administered episodic FOK tasks with a cued-recall phase, a FOK phase and a recognition phase. Our results showed that DA at encoding altered not only memory performance, but also FOK judgments and FOK accuracy. These findings throw some light on the central (...) role of the quality of memory encoding to make accurate FOK judgments and provide new evidence supporting the relationship between memory and metamemory judgments. (shrink)

Affiliation is both an antecedent and a consequence of emotional mimicry (i.e. imitating a counterpart’s emotional expression). Thus, interacting with a disliked partner can decrease emotional mimicry, which in turn can further decrease liking. This perpetuating circle has not been investigated in the context of mental health stigma yet. The present study tested the influence of the label “schizophrenia” on liking, interpersonal closeness, and emotional mimicry. In an online experiment (n = 201), participants recruited from the general population saw several (...) videos of actors displaying emotional expressions. Actors were described with one of four labels: “schizophrenia”, “healthy”, “diabetes”, and a negative adjective (e.g. “hot-tempered”). Emotional mimicry was measured using OpenFace 2.2. Liking and interpersonal closeness were assessed with questionnaires. Overall, compared to other labels, participants reported less liking and interpersonal closeness to the actor with the schizophrenia label. However, no effect on emotional mimicry was found. The decreased liking of the schizophrenia actors was explained by a lack of knowledge about schizophrenia and the explicit stigma of schizophrenia. Our study contributes to the literature by highlighting the need to reduce the stigma of schizophrenia. (shrink)

In this quite modestly ambitious essay, I'll generally just assume that, for the most part, our "scientifically informed" commonsense view of the world is true. Just as it is with such unthinking things as planets, plates and, I suppose, plants, too, so it also is with all earthly thinking beings, from people to pigs and pigeons; each occupies a region of space, however large or small, in which all are spatially related to each other. Or, at least, so it is (...) with the bodies of these beings. And, even as each of these ordinary entities extends through some space, so, also, each endures through some time. In line with that, each ordinary entity is at least very largely, and is perhaps entirely, an enduring physical entity (which allows that many might have certain properties that aren't purely physical properties.) Further, each ordinary enduring entity is a physically complex entity: Not only is each composed of parts, but many of these parts, whether or not absolutely all of them, are themselves enduring physical entities, and many of them also are such physically complex continuing entities. When an ordinary entity undergoes a significant change, then, at least generally, this change will involve changes concerning that entity's constituting physical parts, whether it be a rearrangement of (some of) these parts, or a loss of parts, or a gain of parts, or whatever. Often, the entity will still exist even after the change occurs. As we may well suppose, this happens when, from two strokes of an ax, an ordinary log loses just a chip of wood. As we may then say, such a change conforms with the log's "persistence conditions." Somewhat less often, such an ordinary entity undergoes a change that means an end to it: When a bomb's explosion makes our log become just so many widely scattered motes of dust, the log will no longer exist. Such a momentous change doesn't conform with the log's persistence conditions. (shrink)

Based on an ethnography of French trials for trafficking in human beings and aggravated procuring, this article seeks to contribute to the analysis of the reframing, in penal terms, of the struggles engaged in the name of social justice and women’s rights, of which anti-trafficking policies are particularly emblematic. Studying the judging practices and logics at stake during trials reveals how fantasized representations of the pimp and the victim take on substance. In particular, I argue that judges invoke a set (...) of gendered, sexualized and racialized extra-legal norms, which, along with their legal foundations, constitute their knowledge base and impose a moral and penal hierarchy among litigants. Therefore, not only does this analysis contribute to defining the contours of the elusive figures of the pimp and the victim in the penal arena, it also exposes how maintaining public order is based on the perpetuation of a gendered and sexual national order in the name of gender justice. (shrink)

The perception of time cannot be reduced to a simple percept produced by an internal clock. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the role of the individual consciousness of time on temporal judgments. In the present study, the participants’ awareness of attention-related time distortions was assessed using a metacognitive questionnaire. The participants were also required to verbally judge a series of stimulus durations in a single or a dual task condition. The results revealed that time was (...) underestimated in the dual task compared to the single task. However, the accuracy of time judgments improved in line with the participants’ individual awareness of attentional time distortion: The more aware they were of the role of attention in time perception, the lower the time distortions they exhibited. Conscious awareness of time therefore plays a role in the accuracy of the time judgments made by human beings. (shrink)

Mechanisms to engage lay citizens in science and technology are currently in vogue worldwide. While some engagement exercises aim to influence policy making, research suggests that they have had little discernable impacts in this regard. We explore the potentials and challenges of facilitating citizen engagement in nanotechnology from the “topdown,” addressing the following questions: Can academics and others within institutions initiate meaningful engagement with unorganized lay citizens from the top-down? Can they facilitate effective engagement among citizens, scientists, and policy makers (...) while building citizen engagement capacities? Is it possible to create independent bottom-up citizen engagement in scientific and technological issues from the top-down, and what are the challenges in doing so? Our experiences show that although academics can build citizens' individual, collective, and political capacities to engage with each other, scientists, and policy makers, this work is enormously time and energy intensive, and institutional support is needed to sustain it. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate how Xenophanes was ‘eleaticised’, i.e. attributed theses and arguments that belong to Parmenides and Melissus. I examine texts of Plato, Aristotle and Theophrastus in order to determine if they considered Xenophanes as a philosopher and a monist. I show that neither Plato nor Aristotle regarded him as a philosopher, but rather as a pantheist poet who claimed, in a vague way, that everything is one. But Theophrastus interpreted too literally Aristotle’s claims and was the first (...) to make Xenophanes a proper monist philosopher. (shrink)

Les paradoxes de l’horreur et de la tragédie posent la question de savoir si, et comment, il peut être rationnel de s’exposer intentionnellement, comme nous le faisons, à des œuvres fictionnelles qu’on qualifie parfois de « douloureuses ». J’entreprends de résoudre ces paradoxes en remettant en question l’idée de valence intrinsèque des émotions sur laquelle ils sont fondés et en expliquant pourquoi les émotions dirigées vers des fictions ne sont jamais désagréables ou déplaisantes, mais sont au contraire hédoniquement positives. Il (...) est donc rationnel de s’exposer aux œuvres qui les suscitent. (shrink)

Is Nederland een fraudeland geworden? Na alle berichten over boekhoudschandalen en het bekend worden van illegale prijsafspraken is het terecht dat die vraag wordt gesteld. Het oplichten van aandeelhouders of van klanten gaat in tegen verschillende ethische noties. Het verstrekken van onjuiste informatie is niet alleen vanuit een utilistisch standpunt verwerpelijk vanwege de economische schade die ontstaat doordat een optimale marktwerking belemmerd wordt. Ook vanuit een deontologisch perspectief staan de ethische seinen op rood: het bedriegen van aandeelhouders of klanten getuigt (...) van weinig respect en is onrechtvaardig omdat dit zelfverrijking mogelijk maakt ten koste gaat van de stakeholders. Ook vanuit het perspectief van de deugdenethiek zijn deze praktijken verwerpelijk: het achterhouden van informatie getuigt van een gebrek aan integriteit en heeft een negatieve voorbeeldfunctie naar anderen. (shrink)

Cet article examine l’influence sur la première hypothèse du Parménide de deux penseurs dont l’importance a été négligée par les critiques : Mélissos et Gorgias. Après avoir observé que les prédicats attribués à l’un ainsi que la forme démonstrative sont plus représentatifs de l’éléatisme de Mélissos que de celui de Parménide, nous expliquons ce constat par le fait que Platon reprenne une partie du Traité du Non-être de Gorgias qui vise elle-même essentiellement Mélissos. Nous démontrons alors que la première hypothèse, (...) et même l’ensemble de la seconde partie du Parménide, est un pastiche du Traité du Non-être, et nous en tirons des conclusions sur le statut de l’exercice dialectique mis en œuvre dans le Parménide. (shrink)

Bipedalism is one of the criteria that paleoanthropologists use in order to interpret the fossil record and to determine if a specimen belongs to the human lineage. In the context of such interpretations, bipedalism is considered to be a unique characteristic of this lineage that also marks its origin. This conception has largely remained unchallenged over the last decades, in spite of fossil discoveries that led to the emergence of bipedalism in the human lineage being shifted back by several millions (...) of years. In this paper, I analyze the uses of this criterion in paleoanthropology and demonstrate that interpretative biases (such as underdetermined inferences and circular reasoning) are at play in interpretations of hominin remains. By discussing Darwin’s hypotheses about the evolution of bipedalism, I identify major theoretical issues that need to be addressed in the current debates on hominin evolution. First, the assumption that “man alone has become a biped” (Darwin in The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex, John Murray, London, 1871) is analyzed in the light of recent empirical data. Three major issues are discussed: the definition of “man”, i.e. “human”, the uniqueness of human bipedalism, and the equivocal meaning of being a “biped”. Then, I highlight some of Darwin’s remarks that may be helpful for current debates in paleoanthropology, regarding natural selection in locomotor evolution, as well as taxonomic and phylogenetic significance of functional features. Finally, I analyze two examples of how fossil discoverers referred to Darwin in the recent years and discuss his role as an intellectual support. (shrink)

On pourrait s’attendre à ce que la pauvreté sémantique des noms généraux et leur polyvalence référentielle en fassent d’excellents candidats aux reprises anaphoriques infidèles. Bien des contextes, néanmoins, ne se prêtent pas à une reprise par un nom général comme _chose_, _personne_ ou _individu_ d’un référent préalablement classifié. Les difficultés posées par de telles reprises ou les effets discursifs (souvent péjoratifs) qu’elles produisent sont liées à la déclassification du référent qu’elles impliquent. Les noms généraux se distinguent en effet, nous le (...) verrons, des autres noms superordonnés par leur non-classifiance. Cette propriété les rapproche en revanche des noms de qualité (au sens de Milner), qui apparaissent au plus haut du continuum de généralité dans certains exemples proposés par Halliday & Hasan. (shrink)

Cet article est consacré à un emploi singulier des descriptions définies dans la presse people sur Internet. De nombreuses descriptions définies, telles le mari de Jill Biden, pour désigner Joe Biden, et le mari de Melania, pour désigner Donald Trump, y apparaissent sans lien avec le propos des articles, et cela parfois dans des contextes où un pronom personnel serait plus approprié qu’une expression nominale. Nous soulignerons d’abord combien ces descriptions définies s’écartent des emplois ordinaires des expressions référentielles très spécifiées (...) en général et des descriptions définies en particulier et quels risques certaines d’entre elles, relevant de la catégorie des « anaphores présuppositionnelles » de Milner, peuvent présenter pour la bonne interprétation référentielle. Nous spécifierons ensuite leur fonction, fonction liée à la fois à la coloration « people » de ce type de presse et à son support numérique. (shrink)

Both Hippolytus of Rome and Sextus Empiricus attribute a concept of λόγος to Empedocles, relying on fragments that seem to have nothing to do with this claim. This article aims to show how the identification and clarification of their common Stoic source helps us to understand these texts better, and to reconstruct an interpretation of Empedocles’ epistemology that has not attracted critical attention so far.

Bipedalism is one of the criteria that paleoanthropologists use in order to interpret the fossil record and to determine if a specimen belongs to the human lineage. In the context of such interpretations, bipedalism is considered to be a unique characteristic of this lineage that also marks its origin. This conception has largely remained unchallenged over the last decades, in spite of fossil discoveries that led to the emergence of bipedalism in the human lineage being shifted back by several millions (...) of years. In this paper, I analyze the uses of this criterion in paleoanthropology and demonstrate that interpretative biases are at play in interpretations of hominin remains. By discussing Darwin’s hypotheses about the evolution of bipedalism, I identify major theoretical issues that need to be addressed in the current debates on hominin evolution. First, the assumption that “man alone has become a biped” is analyzed in the light of recent empirical data. Three major issues are discussed: the definition of “man”, i.e. “human”, the uniqueness of human bipedalism, and the equivocal meaning of being a “biped”. Then, I highlight some of Darwin’s remarks that may be helpful for current debates in paleoanthropology, regarding natural selection in locomotor evolution, as well as taxonomic and phylogenetic significance of functional features. Finally, I analyze two examples of how fossil discoverers referred to Darwin in the recent years and discuss his role as an intellectual support. (shrink)