L’homme qui médite est un animal dépravé.J.-J. Rouseau Seul l’homme peut être bête de bêtise.J. Derrida Me voici seul sur la terre, n’ayant plus de frere, de prochain, d’ami, de société que moi-même. Le plus sociable et le plus aimant des humains en a été proscrit par un accord unanime. Bien que notre siècle n’ait pas encore débrouillé les paradoxes nouant la solitude superlative du « plus sociable et aimant » des promeneurs resté solitaire, les longs extraits qui suivent voudraient, (...) en cette.. (shrink)

Deep learning and other black-box models are becoming more and more popular today. Despite their high performance, they may not be accepted ethically or legally because of their lack of explainability. This paper presents the increasing number of legal requirements on machine learning model interpretability and explainability in the context of private and public decision making. It then explains how those legal requirements can be implemented into machine-learning models and concludes with a call for more inter-disciplinary research on explainability.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ImagesAdrien BugariAdrien Bugari is a graduate of the École Supérieure d’Art et de Design (ESAD, Reims, France). In 2007, his work was exhibited at the Salon du Meuble de Paris and the Salon d’Art et de Design Contemporain de Montrouge (France). In 2008, he worked with the Italian designer Martino Gamper and continued his studies at the École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (ECAL, Switzerland), receiving a degree in 2009. (...) His work, Round Box, appeared at the Milan Salon du Design in 2008. While his early work focuses almost exclusively on objects and their functionality, Bugari’s practice engages with contemporary art in general and design in particular. His drawings—most often done with felt tip marker or pencil—are concerned with space and matter. Bugari lives and works in Paris.www.adrienbugari.comCristalThe series, Cristal—comprising fifteen drawings on recycled paper—was completed during a stay in Ithaca, New York, in 2011.Cristal is a specimen study inspired by a reading of A Field Guide and Introduction to the Geology and Chemistry of Rocks and Minerals by Charles Sorrell. Minimally sketched, the structures are set off by white oil pastel. The substance of each drawing is produced by the contrast between the rigid outlines of each facet and the brilliance of the white pastel. The light materiality of the sketches creates a delicate effect: the transparency covers the drawn lines without minimizing their imperfections. The structure—as nothing more than the relation between parts—naturally implies a point of view. It calls into question the necessity of form and the way that differences and similarities are established. It plays with resemblances, or, les airs de famille. It asks what in the drawing is regular or continuous and what is not. And it wonders where to begin. The series, Cristal, is also a magnetic proximity, a minimalist rhythm: it creates the possibility of successive metamorphoses, until there is nothing left to say.It is no doubt possible to interpret Cristal as a geometric abstraction. I prefer to define it as a moment rather than a concept. Viewed in that light, Cristal can be said to have endured for the season of one Ithaca winter. [End Page 1] Click for larger view View full resolutionIMAGE: Adrien Bugari, CRISTAL 14Felt tip marker and oil pastel on recycled paper, 65 × 48 cm.Courtesy the artist[End Page 2]Copyright © 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

ABSTRACTResearch that dissociates different types of processes within a given task using a processing tree approach suggests that attitudes may be acquired through evaluative conditioning in the absence of explicit encoding of CS-US pairings in memory. This research distinguishes explicit memory for the CS-US pairings from CS-liking acquired without encoding of CS-US pairs in explicit memory. It has been suggested that the latter effect may be due to an implicit misattribution process that is assumed to operate when US evocativeness is (...) low. In the present research, the latter assumption was supported neither by two high-powered experiments nor by complementary meta-analytic evidence, whereas evocativeness exerted an influence on explicit memory. This pattern of findings is inconsistent with the view that CS-liking acquired without encoding of CS-US pairs in explicit memory reflects an implicit misattribution process at learning. Hence, the underlying learning process is awaiting further empirical scrutiny. (shrink)

THE PRINCIPLE OF SUPERPOSITION. The need for a quantum theory Classical mechanics has been developed continuously from the time of Newton and applied to an ...

This study assesses the impact had by institutional isomorphic pressures in the organisational fields of 185 businesses operating within the United Kingdom. The emphasis throughout is on how external institutions affect the socially and environmentally responsible aspects of an organization’s purchasing practice. Factor analyses and a linear regression model are employed to test the influence of these pressures. Initial findings suggest that what other industry participants are doing in this area is not as important in affecting the procurement practice of (...) the focal organisation as is the managers’ perception of how legitimacy is awarded by stakeholders and, indeed, if competitors with well-developed social and environmental supply chain management programs are perceived favourably in the industry. (shrink)

The paper reports two studies exploring the relationship between scholars’ self-reported publication pressure and their self-reported scientific misconduct in research. In Study 1 the participants...

Ce texte a déjà paru sur Techno-science.net. Des chercheurs découvrent la formule mathématique du rythme et avancent que notre cerveau pourrait être câblé pour y répondre. Une nouvelle étude montre que tout compositeur, de Bach à Brubeck, répète des motifs rythmiques, de sorte que la partie reproduit le tout. Une équipe de recherche dirigée par les neuroscientifiques Daniel Levitin et Vinod Menon, respectivement des universités McGill et Stanford, a analysé les partitions de quelque 2 000 compositions - Mathématiques – Nouvel (...) article. (shrink)

Contributions interdisciplinaires issues d'une journée d'études organisée en 2007 examinant les espaces philosophique et scientifique, d'une part, littéraire et esthétique d'autre part. Etudes de cas dessinant les enjeux sémantiques de l'ordre naturel à travers l'examen de ses mises en discours, théoriques ou imaginaires.

ABSTRACTTwo high-powered experiments examined the role of evaluative response production in the extinction of evaluative conditioning by positioning EC in the procedural and conceptual framewo...

Il existe deux types d'ignorance que Maurice Blondel, philosophe, sociologue et théologien français, invite tout homme à combattre énergiquement pour éviter la disparition prématurée de l'espèce humaine, mais également celle de la planète Terre. Il y a, d'une part, l'ignorance de soi-même, de son être en perpétuel devenir et, d'autre part, celle de ses semblables, de son environnement, du monde physique et de l'Unique nécessaire. Ce livre s'assigne comme objectif de vulgariser les armes pour combattre ces deux fléaux, armes présentées (...) dans sa thèse de doctorat qui l'a rendu célèbre : L'Action (1893). (shrink)

Pour son projet d'une "union européenne", suite à des guerres récurrentes entre frères du même continent, Maurice Blondel a élaboré une méthode sociologique qui permet de rassembler les membres d'une même société autour des mêmes idéaux, de les aider à s'accepter les uns les autres, malgré leurs différences, de les pousser à atteindre un excellent niveau d'organisation sociale, économique, politique et culturelle, mais surtout d'intégrer efficacement les délinquants déclarés perdus à jamais, donc bons à être guillotinés comme autrefois en France. (...) Ce petit livre s'assigne comme objectif de présenter cette méthode et de faire connaître Maurice Blondel comme sociologue de l'action et d'une Europe de la paix perpétuelle. (shrink)

Résultat de deux journées d'études, l'ouvrage analyse la dimension éthique de l'art de gouverner, les qualités nécessaires, la relation entre le gouvernant et le gouverné.

Leo Strauss (1899-1973) est certainement un penseur majeur du XXe siècle. Lui qui a rouvert des procès jugés depuis longtemps - la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, ou encore l'opposition entre la raison et la révélation - fait l'objet de commentaires contradictoires, le présentant comme un penseur tantôt fondamentalement apolitique, uniquement soucieux de redonner sens à la vie philosophique, tantôt secrètement politique, servant les forces les plus conservatrices des Etats-Unis. Ce livre entreprend d'abord de retrouver en Strauss un des (...) philosophes politiques les plus stimulants de son siècle, c'est-à-dire un philosophe soucieux de comprendre et d'éclairer les phénomènes politiques. Il faut toutefois convenir qu'abordée sous cet angle, son oeuvre présente un singulier paradoxe. Car si Strauss plaide avec force pour un retour à la compréhension classique des régimes politiques, il se montre en même temps très réticent à analyser les différents régimes et clivages du monde moderne. Plus étonnant encore, alors qu'il en appelle à une science politique qui soit fidèle à l'appréhension citoyenne des phénomènes, il ne cesse de relativiser, à propos de son époque, les différences entre communistes, progressistes et conservateurs. En somme, entre sa conception de la bonne science politique, et sa manière presqu'apolitique de traiter de la modernité, il existe un déroutant hiatus. C'est ce problème plus spécifique que nous explorons ici. (shrink)

We classify actions of groups of finite Morley rank on abelian groups of Morley rank 2: there are essentially two, namely the natural actions of SL(V) and GL(V) with V a vector space of dimension 2. We also prove an identification theorem for the natural module of SL₂ in the finite Morley rank category.

Récompensé par trois prix en 2014 (Prix Darlene Clark Hine de l’Organization of American Historians, Prix Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra de la Western Association of Women Historians, et Prix Emily Toth venant des Popular Culture and American Associations), l’ouvrage d’Estelle B. Freedman, professeur d’histoire des États-Unis à l’université de Stanford et spécialiste de l’histoire des femmes et de la sexualité en Amérique du Nord, Redefining Rape : sexual violence in the era of suffrage and...

Among ethicists and engineers within robotics there is an ongoing discussion as to whether ethical robots are possible or even desirable. We answer both of these questions in the positive, based on an extensive literature study of existing arguments. Our contribution consists in bringing together and reinterpreting pieces of information from a variety of sources. One of the conclusions drawn is that artifactual morality must come in degrees and depend on the level of agency, autonomy and intelligence of the machine. (...) Moral concerns for agents such as intelligent search machines are relatively simple, while highly intelligent and autonomous artifacts with significant impact and complex modes of agency must be equipped with more advanced ethical capabilities. Systems like cognitive robots are being developed that are expected to become part of our everyday lives in future decades. Thus, it is necessary to ensure that their behaviour is adequate. In an analogy with artificial intelligence, which is the ability of a machine to perform activities that would require intelligence in humans, artificial morality is considered to be the ability of a machine to perform activities that would require morality in humans. The capacity for artificial (artifactual) morality, such as artifactual agency, artifactual responsibility, artificial intentions, artificial (synthetic) emotions, etc., come in varying degrees and depend on the type of agent. As an illustration, we address the assurance of safety in modern High Reliability Organizations through responsibility distribution. In the same way that the concept of agency is generalized in the case of artificial agents, the concept of moral agency, including responsibility, is generalized too. We propose to look at artificial moral agents as having functional responsibilities within a network of distributed responsibilities in a socio-technological system. This does not take away the responsibilities of the other stakeholders in the system, but facilitates an understanding and regulation of such networks. It should be pointed out that the process of development must assume an evolutionary form with a number of iterations because the emergent properties of artifacts must be tested in real world situations with agents of increasing intelligence and moral competence. We see this paper as a contribution to the macro-level Requirement Engineering through discussion and analysis of general requirements for design of ethical robots. (shrink)

This new edition of Baran and Davis's successful text provides a comprehensive, historically based, introduction to mass communication theory. Clearly written with examples, graphics, and other materials to illustrate key theories, this edition traces the emergence of two main bodies of mass communication theory: social, behavioral and critical, cultural. The authors emphasize that media theories are human creations that typically are intended to address specific problems or issues.

It was only progressively, by confronting their spiritual experience and the cultural conditions of their apostolate, that Ignatius and his companions were led to found a new order and then to recognize the importance of teaching in colleges. This article sets out the different stages of that progressive discovery. It recalls how Ignatius passed from his chivalrous desires to those of service of and in the Church, by attending to the interior experience of the Spiritual Exercises and to their being (...) set down in writing. The experience of liberty and an objectifying putting down in writing were two poles, characteristic of modernity, that formed the main bases for inventing Jesuit colleges. Moreover, they were also bases which supported the writing of the Constitutions of the Society. For the Jesuits of today they remain ever innovative points of reference for discernment. (shrink)

Local theories of consciousness state that one is conscious of a feature if it is adequately represented and processed in sensory brain areas, given some background conditions. We challenge the core prediction of local theories based on long-lasting postdictive effects demonstrating that features can be represented for hundreds of milliseconds in perceptual areas without being consciously perceived. Unlike previous empirical data aimed against local theories, localists cannot explain these effects away by conjecturing that subjects are phenomenally conscious of features that (...) they cannot report. We also discuss alternative explanations that localists could offer. (shrink)