Auguste Comte! Ce nom ne dit plus rien à personne. Ceux qui le connaissent encore parlent de lui comme d'un grand philosophe : concepteur de la sociologie, du positivisme et de la théorie des trois états. On oublie cependant qu'il fut aussi à l'origine d'une religion personnelle, un culte des morts destiné à relier et rallier l'Humanité tout entière. Mais au fond, que reste-t-il de son oeuvre? Un vestige lointain d'un cours de philosophie? Une rue connue des seuls Parisiens du (...) Quartier latin?... Voilà un bien maigre héritage pour ce curieux prophète de l'ère contemporaine! Si l'influence quasi mondiale de la philosophie positive n'est plus à démontrer, comment expliquer l'échec de sa religion? Cette question, longtemps boudée par l'historiographie, trouve ici sa réponse, notamment grâce aux diverses références que l'auteur convoque tout au long de son enquête. Parmi elles : Régis Debray, Don Quichotte, Milan Kundera, Philip Roth, Dante, Marcel Jousse, Salvador Dali, Joseph Campbell, Homère, saint Paul, Michel Onfray, Marcel Proust, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Anatole France ou encore Star Wars... (shrink)

A prominent view of psychopathic moral reasoning suggests that psychopathic individuals cannot properly distinguish between moral wrongs and other types of wrongs. The present study evaluated this view by examining the extent to which 109 incarcerated offenders with varying degrees of psychopathy could distinguish between moral and conventional transgressions relative to each other and to nonincarcerated healthy controls. Using a modified version of the classic Moral/Conventional Transgressions task that uses a forced-choice format to minimize strategic responding, the present study found (...) that total psychopathy score did not predict performance on the task. Task performance was explained by some individual subfacets of psychopathy and by other variables unrelated to psychopathy, such as IQ. The authors conclude that, contrary to earlier claims, insufficient data exist to infer that psychopathic individuals cannot know what is morally wrong. (shrink)

Edited by leading experts in contemporary environmental philosophy, this anthology features the best available selections that cover the full range of positions within this rapidly developing field. Divided into four sections that delve into the vast issues of contemporary Eco-philosophy, the Fourth Edition now includes a section on Continental Environmental Philosophy that explores current topics such as the social construction of nature, and eco-phenomenology. Each section is introduced and edited by a leading philosopher in the field. For professionals with a (...) career within the environmental field including law, politics, conservation, geography, and biology. (shrink)

The Anglican Thirty Nine Articles join catholic Christendom in affirming that: There is but one living and true God…and in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

De Vries' mutation theory has not stood the test of time. The supposed mutations of Oenothera were in reality complex recombination phenomena, ultimately explicable in Mendelian terms, while instances of large-scale mutations were found wanting in other species. By 1915 the mutation theory had begun to lose its grip on the biological community; by de Vries' death in 1935 it was almost completely abandoned. Yet, as we have seen, during the first decade of the present century it achieved an enormous (...) popularity. As this paper has tried to suggest, one of the principal reasons for this was that de Vries' theory served as a banner around which a whole crowd of disaffected Darwinians or anti-Darwinians could rally. However, not all of those who favored de Vries did so for quite the same reasons. Underlying the multitude of views ran several common threads: a dissatisfaction with current Darwinian theory born out of misunderstanding natural selection, a general misunderstanding of the nature of species, and a prejudice against speculative, nontestable theories in biology.Supporters of de Vries were not the only opponents of Darwinism, nor was the mutation theory the only alternative to natural selection. In the early twentieth century a number of theories had been proposed to explain away the problems which Darwin had left unsolved. There was the idea of orthogenesis, championed by the American paleontologists Cope, Osborn and others; organic selection (or orthoplasy) was championed by M. M. Baldwin and C. Lloyd Morgan; there were the concepts of convergent evolution proposed by Hermann Friedmann, the theory of physiological selection by John George Romanes, and the concepts of reproductive divergence by H. M. Vernon. Virtually none of these men either accepted or were strong supporters of the de Vriesian theory, for each had his own particular ‘ism” to advocate as the major factor in evolution. The existence of a large number of such theories, each purporting to be the explanation, was characteristic of evolutionary theory at the turn of the century. It is to a large extent the emphasis on such fragmentary concepts that retarded development of the comprehensive theory of evolution which emerged in the 1920's and 1930's. For the historian, however, a study of these alternative theories is instructive in trying to understand the inherent difficulties which Dawwinian theory posed to biologists at the time. De Vries' mutation theory serves historically as a mirror to reflect the critical mood of a generation hostile to the theory of natural selection.It has often been claimed that it was impossible to understand the mechanism of natural selection until it could be placed in genetic and mathematical terms. It is certainly true that great strides have been made in population genetics and the treatment of evolutionary concepts with mathematical tools in the last forty years. But the very people who developed the genetical and mathematical approach to evolution were already convinced of the essential correctness of Darwinian theory before they started. Advances in an understanding of Mendelian heredity aided greatly in solving one important issue for evolutionists: the origin of variations. And the rigor with which selection acted could best be studied by observing changes in gene frequencies (calculated mathematically) over a number of generations. But as this paper has shown, two of the basic problems which biologists faced in evaluating Darwinian theory at the turn of the century-the nature of species, and the criteria of what constituted an acceptable explanation in biological science-could not be answered directly by mathematics. What mathematical and genetical theory did do was to help convince the skeptics of the validity of the Darwinian proposition.The change in explanatory criteria which many hailed as de Vries' most important contribution to evolutionary theory seems to have been part of a general emergence of twentieth-century biology from the domination of theorizers in the nineteenth. It also marked the emergence of America from the domination of biological, and particularly evolutionary, influence of Europeans. The change occurred in three areas: in the kinds of questions asked: testable versus non-testable; in the kind of data sought: quantitative versus qualitative; and in the kinds of theories proposed: analytical and reductive—the attempt to see complex processes in terms of simpler components-as opposed to synthetic and speculative. Although ultimately wrong in his idea, de Vries and his theories rode high on the wave of “experimentalism” which was the harbinger of a new era in evolutionary theory. (shrink)

When the first r lower extreme order statistics of a sample of large size n, 1 < r < s < n, are observed, asymptotic predictive intervals of the future extreme order statistic with a rank s are constructed. The only assumption that we adopt is that the first failure time is attracted to the Weibull distribution. In addition, we suggest an efficient point estimator of its shape parameter and then a confidence interval is constructed for it. Moreover, new interesting (...) asymptotic properties of the distributions that belong to the minimum domain of attraction of the Weibull distribution are revealed. Furthermore, extensive simulation studies are conducted to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed methods. Two real datasets are analyzed to illustrate and corroborate the obtained results. The main results concern large samples. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 4, April 2022.

Towards the conclusion of his interesting remarks on the meaning of the Homeric phrase, τ δ' πτερος πλετο μθος, Professor J. A. K. Thomson writes, ‘When a classical author uses the word πτερος it means “wingless” or “featherless” and nothing else,’ and he accordingly rejects Headlam's interpretation of πτερος φτις at Aesch. Ag. 288 together with the same scholar's proposal to read at P. V. 707 πτερος for the unmetrical απνδιος It may be true that the phrase, πτρ τάχει, which (...) Headlam adduced in his note on the Agam. passage in support of his rendering, is not by itself convincing, but there are other considerations which Professor Thomson has, I imagine, overlooked. What follows is not an attempt to demonstrate that πτερος does mean ‘wing-swift’ in Aeschylus, but only to suggest that there is evidence to show that the word could bear that meaning in classical Greek authors, and that Headlam's interpretation and emendation should therefore not be rejected out of hand. (shrink)

The target articles in this special section shed new light on the old question whether and how emotions influence action. However, what is missing is a straightforward motivational analysis—considering what we have learned from the science of explaining the “why” and “how” of behavior. I posit that emotions can influence the motivation process and thus action by fulfilling at least three functions: First, being grounded in needs, experienced emotions can function as strong need-like motivational states. Second, anticipated emotions can function (...) as incentives and justify action. Third, emotions can inform about progress in goal pursuit permitting behavior calibration. In summary, there is little doubt that emotions influence action. They can do so because they are hypo-phenomena of motivation. (shrink)

"Nous sommes en guerre", déclare au soir du 13 novembre 2015 le président de la République. Mais quelle est cette guerre au juste? La contre-histoire du capitalisme que nous proposons ici vise à recouvrer la réalité des guerres qui nous sont infligées et déniées : non pas la guerre idéale des philosophes, mais les guerres de classe, de race, de sexe ou de genre, les guerres de civilisation et environnementales, les guerres de subjectivité qui font rage au sein des populations (...) et constituent le moteur secret de la gouvern731933ementalité libérale. En nommant l'ennemi (le réfugié, le migrant, le musulman), les nouveaux fascismes établissent leur hégémonie sur les processus de subjectivation politique réduits à des mots d'ordre racistes, sexistes, xénophobes qui attisent la guerre entre les pauvres et entretiennent la philosophie de guerre totale du néolibéralisme. Parce que la guerre et le fascisme sont le refoulé de la pensée post-68, nous n'avons pas seulement lu l'histoire du capital à travers la guerre, mais également cette dernière à travers l'étrange révolution de 68 qui seule rend possible le passage de la guerre aux lierres - et de celles-ci à la construction de nouvelles machines de guerre contre la financiarisation contemporaine. Il s'agit donc de pousser la "pensée 68" au-delà de ses propres limites et de la réorienter vers une nouvelle pragmatique des luttes, en prise sur la guerre continuée du Capital. C'est dire qu'il s'agit surtout de nous préparer à ces batailles que nous devons mener si nous ne voulons pas être toujours vaincus."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Resenha: KARASCH, Mary C. Before Brasília: frontier life in Central Brazil. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016.

ARE HUMAN beings material substances? If not, are they made of material stuff? And is the world otherwise materialistic? These are ancient questions for which the dominant intellectual framework of our age compels us toward affirmative answers. In this paper, I want to reinterpret the questions, critically examine the currently most popular way of making the case for the affirmative answers, and argue for a somewhat novel way of casting negative answers in search of a more adequate philosophical understanding of (...) human beings, minds, and persons. (shrink)