Applied Ethics has developed first in the English-Speaking world, but since the 1970's onward, the field also developed in the french part of Canada, especially Québec. This book presens three major contributions of the field in that context for a French public; in France, applied ethics is a quite recent development (1990's). Theoretical analysis of three authors is followed by interviews with the same persons to go further in the clarifications. The authors are Pierre Fortin, Guy Durand and Georges A. (...) Legault respectively from Rimouski, Montreal and Sherbrooke. (shrink)

Decision making is an area of profound importance to a wide range of specialities - for psychologists, economists, lawyers, clinicians, managers, and of course philosophers. Only relatively recently, though, have we begun to really understand how decision making processes are implemented in the brain, and how they might interact with our emotions. 'Emotion and Reason' presents a groundbreaking new approach to understanding decision making processes and their neural bases. The book presents a sweeping survey of the science of decision making. (...) It examines the brain mechanisms involved in making decisions, and controversially proposes that many of our perceptual actions are essentially decision making processes. Whether looking, listening, hearing, or moving, we choose to attend to certain stimuli, at the expense of others. In some psychiatric disorders the inability to respond selectively to certain stimuli can be harmful - such pathologies of decision making are additionally considered. Berthoz also considers how many decision making processes involve an internal dialogue with our other self, and how this dialogue with our "doppelganger" might be represented in the brain. He considers the important implications that a neuroscience of decision making can have for the judiciary - how we apportion blame and responsibility; for economics - with discussion of the growing field of neuroeconomics; and for theories of management. Lastly he examines decision making and creativity - if perception relies in part on decision making processes, how might this alter our view of the artistic process. Written by a neuroscientist of international fame and accessible for both scientists and non-scientists, this book is the most exhaustive examination of the science of decision making yet. (shrink)

"Is it meaningful to call oneself a democrat? And if so, how do you interpret the word?" In responding to this question, eight iconoclastic thinkers prove the rich potential of democracy, along with its critical weaknesses, and reconceive the practice to accommodate new political and cultural realities. Giorgio Agamben traces the tense history of constitutions and their coexistence with various governments. Alain Badiou contrasts current democratic practice with democratic communism. Daniel Bensaid ponders the institutionalization of democracy, while Wendy Brown (...) discusses the democratization of society under neoliberalism. Jean-Luc Nancy measures the difference between democracy as a form of rule and as a human end, and Jacques Rancière highlights its egalitarian nature. Kristin Ross identifies hierarchical relationships within democratic practice, and Slavoj Zizek complicates the distinction between those who desire to own the state and those who wish to do without it. Concentrating on the classical roots of democracy and its changing meaning over time and within different contexts, these essays uniquely defend what is left of the left-wing tradition after the fall of Soviet communism. They confront disincentives to active democratic participation that have caused voter turnout to decline in western countries, and they address electoral indifference by invoking and reviving the tradition of citizen involvement. Passionately written and theoretically rich, this collection speaks to all facets of modern political and democratic debate. (shrink)

Choquet integrals and capacities play a crucial role in modern decision theory. Comonotony is a central concept for these theories because the main property of a Choquet integral is its additivity for comonotone functions. We consider a Choquet integral representation of preferences showing uncertainty aversion (pessimism) and propose axioms on time consistency which yield a candidate for conditional Choquet integrals. An other axiom characterizes the role of comonotony in the use of information. We obtain two conditioning rules for capacities which (...) amount to the well-known Bayes' and Dempster–Schafer's updating rules. We are allowed to interpret both of them as a lack of confidence in information in a dynamic extension of pessimism. (shrink)

We prove two results about the embeddability relation between Borel linear orders: For $\eta$ a countable ordinal, let $2^\eta$ (resp. $2^{<\eta}$) be the set of sequences of zeros and ones of length $\eta$ (resp. $<\eta$), equipped with the lexicographic ordering. Given a Borel linear order $X$ and a countable ordinal $\xi$, we prove the following two facts. (a) Either $X$ can be embedded (in a $\triangle^1_1(X,\xi)$ way) in $2^{\omega\xi}$, or $2^{\omega\xi + 1}$ continuously embeds in $X$. (b) Either $X$ can (...) embedded (in a $\triangle^1_1(X,\xi)$ way) in $2^{\omega\xi}$, or $2^{\omega\xi}$ continuously embeds in $X$. These results extend previous work of Harrington, Shelah and Marker. (shrink)

While this article by Waldman and Newberg is correct in its main message, it is unfortunately fraught with inaccuracies and problems. To illustrate: (1) the statement that “Inner speech is also associated with lower levels of psychological distress” is invalid as a wide array of distressing psychological disorders are associated with distorted (e.g., ruminative) inner speech activity.

Sir J. C. Eccles nous propose dans The Self and Its Brain une théorie ternaire et interactionniste fort controversée dont il avait déjà posé les bases auparavant.La présente réflexion vise l'examen du bien-fondé neuropsychologique des principales thèses de cette théorie, à la lumière de données cliniques récentes dont l'auteur ne semble pas avoir su tirer toutes les conséquences.

Alain Deligne est philosophe et Professeur émérite de littérature française à l'Université de Münster (Allemagne). Ses travaux portent sur l'idéalisme allemand (Schopenhauer, Schleiermacher), sur la traduction, la littérature ainsi que sur l'image. Il est coéditeur de catalogues sur la caricature ainsi que de la revue Ridiculosa et l'auteur de la première monographie française sur C. G. Carus (La Terre qui vit - Peinture et savoirs, 2003), et de la première monographie allemande sur Weil (Ein zeitgenôssischer Philosoph, 1998). Du jeune (...) Éric Weil, recommandé par Albert Einstein à Ernst Cassirer, on connaissait son doctorat sur Pomponazzi (1932), son essai sur Plotin et Ficin (1933) et son grand article sur l'intérêt pris à l'histoire (1935). Mais nous ignorions tout d'autres écrits précédents ou contemporains. Grâce au travail d'édition bilingue d'Alain Deligne, nous avons maintenant accès à ses exposés d'étudiant, conférences, articles, interventions radiophoniques ou ses travaux en vue de futures études (1922-1936). Nous pouvons ainsi mieux saisir ce qu'Éric Weil allait devenir : le fondateur d'un système ouvert de compréhension (Logique de la philosophie, 1950) et rester : un philosophe curieux de toutes les formes de savoir. À cette fin, il fallait, sur la base d'archives, restituer ses multiples intérêts en philosophie, sciences, histoire de l'art, germanistique, Renaissance italienne et occultisme. Sa pensée plonge ses racines dans les débats politiques de la République de Weimar pré-hitlérienne. Depuis l'exil parisien de 1933, Éric Weil en affrontera toute la violence."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

The lesson of atoms. Lucretius' influence in Diderot. Diderot appreciated Lucretius' poem, which was for him an early introduction to the philosophy of the ancient atomists. He probably intended the Ręve de d'Alembert, which posits the most daring hypotheses of his own philosophy of nature, to be a modern De rerum natura. However, the influence of Lucretius on the Encyclopedist appears to be complex. If Diderot clearly contradicts certain atomist theses, notably as they concern the origin of living beings, this (...) is doubtless due to his fidelity to a profound Epicurean principle - that of the complete autonomy of natural forces - which, in his opinion, needs to be defended on new grounds. Beyond its literal statements, one can thus follow in the Ręve the principal intelligible frameworks characteristic of the De rerum natura, as well as a poetic mode of writing inspired by Lucretius and intended to arouse the speculative imagination. Mots-clé: Diderot, Lucrčce, épicurisme, atomisme, matičre, philosophie naturelle, sensibilité, transformisme. (shrink)

L’oeuvre d’Emmanuel Kant, qu’elle soit considérée dans son volet spécifiquement religieux ou dans sa globalité, a souvent mauvaise réputation en théologie. Or, certains théologiens ont utilisé ou continuent à prendre Kant comme une référence de choix afin de proposer une réflexion qui s’accorde avec les défis de leur époque. Cette contribution étudie le cas de Paul Tillich, dans son cours de philosophie de la religion de 1920, et les travaux récents de Philip Rossi, théologien américain.

Cette étude essaie de dégager certaines convergences et différences entre l’approche husserlienne de la conscience de signe dans les Recherches logiques au tournant du siècle (l’édition de 1913 ne modifie pas fondamentalement les descriptions acquises en 1901) et certains courants linguistiques issus de la révolution saussurienne dans l’analyse du langage. Pour l’essentiel nous limiterons nos références d’une part aux travaux que Benveniste, Jakobson, Martinet ont consacré au problème de l’ar...

Les Conférences sur la psychologie élémentaire du sentiment et de l’attention furent tenues par E.B. Titchener (1867-1927) à l’Université de Columbia en février 1908 et publiées en juillet de la même année à New York (The Macmillan Company). Dans ces conférences, qui traitent successivement de la sensation, du sentiment, et enfin de l’attention, Titchener (1867-1927) fait un point méticuleux de l’état de la question dans la psychologie de l’époque avant d’avancer ses propres hypothèses. Il pu...