La relation entre la philosophie et la mystique forme une question " à la limite ", que la fatalité a le plus souvent déclinée en une suite d'oppositions frontales : entre le rationnel et l'émotionnel, le logique et le pathologique, le discours et l'indicible... Depuis quelques années cependant, plusieurs motifs portent à reconsidérer cette relation singulière. Une somme d'informations sans précédent sur les diverses traditions mystiques, sur leurs variabilités historiques et géographiques est désormais accessible. En outre, la mystique est devenue (...) un objet œcuménique et interreligieux de premier plan qui invite à reposer la question de l'essence du religieux dans la traversée herméneutique des différences confessionnelles. Enfin, on enregistre une forte demande de redressement spéculatif face à l'essor actuel des sectes et au développement des syncrétismes religieux. Mais le philosophe est-il qualifié pour comprendre la mystique? A quelles conditions? De son côté, le mystique n'a-t-il point tendance à cacher sa dette à l'égard de l'expérience de la pensée, voire des concepts philosophiques? Plus profondément encore, faut-il lier la mystique au seul " religieux "? La philosophie n'est-elle pas un exercice spirituel, une expérience? C'est justement par cette entrée " expérientielle " dans la question que le présent ouvrage trouve son originalité. Grâce aux contributions de spécialistes qu'il réunit, il répond à trois tâches précises : redéfinir le concept d'expérience dès lors qu'il est assigné à la philosophie et au religieux ; évoquer dans une perspective critique les grands figures historiques, témoins et acteurs de l'intersection des deux champs, philosophique et mystique ; mettre à l'épreuve, selon une perspective systématique et au voisinage des œuvres majeures de Simone Weil, Franz Rosenzweig, Emmanuel Lévinas, Éric Weil et Maurice Blondel, les différentes théorisations d'une relation finalement plus présente qu'on ne le dit, dans la structuration du pensable contemporain. (shrink)

Controversy swept the U.K. in January of 2000 over public disclosure of the fact that a Scottish surgeon named Robert Smith had amputated the limbs of two able-bodied individuals who reportedly suffered from a condition known as apotemnophilia. The patients, both of whom had sought and consented to the surgery, claimed they had desperately desired for years to live as amputees and had been unable, despite considerable efforts, to reconcile themselves psychologically to living with the bodies with which they were (...) born. Both surgeries were successful, and both patients, who had undergone psychiatric evaluation prior to the amputations, subsequently reported having no regrets. In the wake of a wave of sensationalistic stories in the media, the hospital at which the surgeries had been performed, the Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary, banned any future surgeries of the kind. Outraged local politicians promptly announced their intention to pass laws banning the procedure outright. One member of Scottish Parliament declared the surgery obscene and asserted that the whole thing is repugnant and legislation needs to be brought in now to outlaw this. (shrink)

Controversy swept the U.K. in January of 2000 over public disclosure of the fact that a Scottish surgeon named Robert Smith had amputated the limbs of two able-bodied individuals who reportedly suffered from a condition known as apotemnophilia. The patients, both of whom had sought and consented to the surgery, claimed they had desperately desired for years to live as amputees and had been unable, despite considerable efforts, to reconcile themselves psychologically to living with the bodies with which they were (...) born. Both surgeries were successful, and both patients, who had undergone psychiatric evaluation prior to the amputations, subsequently reported having no regrets. In the wake of a wave of sensationalistic stories in the media, the hospital at which the surgeries had been performed, the Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary, banned any future surgeries of the kind. Outraged local politicians promptly announced their intention to pass laws banning the procedure outright. One member of Scottish Parliament declared the surgery obscene and asserted that the whole thing is repugnant and legislation needs to be brought in now to outlaw this. (shrink)

In part 1 of Enquiry 12, Hume presents a skeptical argument against belief in external existence. The argument involves a perceptual relativity argument that seems to conclude straightaway the double existence of objects and perceptions, where objects cause and resemble perceptions. In Treatise 1.4.2, Hume claimed that the belief in double existence arises from imaginative invention, not reasoning about perceptual relativity. I dissolve this tension by distinguishing the effects of natural instinct and showing that some ofthese effects supplement the Enquiry’s (...) perceptual relativity argument. The Enquiry’s skeptical argument thus reveals the fundamental involvement of natural instinct in any belief in external existence. (shrink)

Although the concept of corporate social responsibility is fundamentally multidimensional, most studies use composite scores to assess corporate social performance. How relevant are such composite scores? How the CSR dimensions are weighted? Should the weighting scheme be the same across sectors? This article proposes an original weighting scheme of CSR strengths and concerns, at the sector level, which is proportional to media and nongovernmental organizations scrutiny. The authors show that previous CSP assessments underweight environmental and corporate governance concerns. Moreover, findings (...) suggest that firms that are exposed to the closest scrutiny are usually criticized on one single dimension: for instance, banks for bad corporate governance, and basic-resource firms for environmental damage. Composite scores based on equal weights hence misrepresent CSP and the difference in CSR between sectors. (shrink)

Recent studies of scientific interaction based on agent-based models suggest that a crucial factor conducive to efficient inquiry is what Zollman has dubbed ‘transient diversity’. It signifies a process in which a community engages in parallel exploration of rivaling theories lasting sufficiently long for the community to identify the best theory and to converge on it. But what exactly generates transient diversity? And is transient diversity a decisive factor when it comes to the efficiency of inquiry? In this paper we (...) examine the impact of different conditions on the efficiency of inquiry, as well as the relation between diversity and efficiency. This includes certain diversity-generating mechanisms previously proposed in the literature, as well as some factors that have so far been neglected. This study is obtained via an argumentation-based ABM. Our results suggest that cautious decision-making does not always have a significant impact on the efficiency of inquiry while different evaluations underlying theory-choice and different social networks do. Moreover, we find a correlation between diversity and a successful performance of agents only under specific conditions, which indicates that transient diversity is sometimes not the primary factor responsible for efficiency. Altogether, when comparing our results to those obtained by structurally different ABMs based on Zollman’s work, the impact of specific factors on efficiency of inquiry, as well as the role of transient diversity in achieving efficiency, appear to be highly dependent on the underlying model. (shrink)

Recent studies of scientific interaction based on agent-based models suggest that a crucial factor conducive to efficient inquiry is what Zollman has dubbed ‘transient diversity’. It signifies a process in which a community engages in parallel exploration of rivaling theories lasting sufficiently long for the community to identify the best theory and to converge on it. But what exactly generates transient diversity? And is transient diversity a decisive factor when it comes to the efficiency of inquiry? In this paper we (...) examine the impact of different conditions on the efficiency of inquiry, as well as the relation between diversity and efficiency. This includes certain diversity-generating mechanisms previously proposed in the literature, as well as some factors that have so far been neglected. This study is obtained via an argumentation-based ABM. Our results suggest that cautious decision-making does not always have a significant impact on the efficiency of inquiry while different evaluations underlying theory-choice and different social networks do. Moreover, we find a correlation between diversity and a successful performance of agents only under specific conditions, which indicates that transient diversity is sometimes not the primary factor responsible for efficiency. Altogether, when comparing our results to those obtained by structurally different ABMs based on Zollman’s work, the impact of specific factors on efficiency of inquiry, as well as the role of transient diversity in achieving efficiency, appear to be highly dependent on the underlying model. (shrink)

In this paper we introduce hypersequent-based frameworks for the modelling of defeasible reasoning by means of logic-based argumentation and the induced entailment relations. These structures are an extension of sequent-based argumentation frameworks, in which arguments and the attack relations among them are expressed not only by Gentzen-style sequents, but by more general expressions, called hypersequents. This generalization allows us to overcome some of the known weaknesses of logical argumentation frameworks and to prove several desirable properties of the entailments that are (...) induced by the extended frameworks. It also allows us to incorporate as the deductive base of our formalism some well-known logics, which lack cut-free sequent calculi, and so are not adequate for standard sequent-based argumentation. We show that hypersequent-based argumentation yields robust defeasible variants of these logics, with many desirable properties. (shrink)

La relation entre la philosophie et la théologie est coexistensive au mouvement du penser de Martin Heidegger. Elle n'a pas seulement fait l'objet d'une Conférence en 1927. Elle ne saurait constituer non plus un simple thème de relecture de son œuvre. Après la publication, ces deux dernières décennies, de plusieurs textes majeurs de l'auteur, restés longtemps inconnus, à l'heure du renouvellement des recherches sur ses origines sociales et intellectuelles, la question appelait un nouvel examen. Philippe Capelle met en relief (...) les trois topiques fondamentales de cette relation philosophie et théologie scripturaire, philosophie et ontothéologie, pensée de l'être et attente du dieu, ainsi que les différentes étapes de leur thématisation. Il analyse le rapport de Heidegger à la tradition théologique en faisant valoir un triple point de vue l'enracinement dans la culture catholique ; la dette vis-à-vis des schèmes fondamentaux des théologies catholique et (surtout) protestante, ainsi que de leurs principaux fondateurs : saint Paul, saint Augustin, la scolastique médiévale, Luther, Bultmann ; la provenance qui autorise paradoxalement la sortie jamais achevée de la théologie chrétienne. Rejetant toute interprétation théologique de la pensée heideggerienne, il interroge enfin le thème du " retrait " comme motif herméneutique central et comme pivot d'une approche renouvelée des rapports entre la philosophie et la théologie. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ : Dans le Traité 1.4.4, Hume a présenté au nom des philosophes modernes un argument causal qui démontre que nos impressions des qualités secondaires ne ressemblent pas aux qualités des objets eux-mêmes. Les prédécesseurs de Hume n’ont pourtant pas employé d’argument causal, mais l’argument des qualités contraires. Je soutiens que la présentation qu’en a fait Hume n’est pas simplement à mettre au compte d’une différence stylistique «gratuite» mais est une correction importante dans la foulée de ses propres découvertes philosophiques.

What is man? “The feather of an angel was brought and tied to a donkey's tail that the donkey perhaps might turn into an angel”.Thus writes the greatest of all Persian-writing mystical poets of Islam, Maulânâ Jalâladdân Rûmî (1207-1273) in his conversations, Fîhi mâ fîhi, when pointing to the mystery of man's existence : man is able to attain a rank superior to that of the angels (who have no free will and are eternally good) provided he develops his God-given (...) faculties of reason and love; but he can sink lower than a beast if he neglects his spiritual powers and falls a prey to sensual pleasures and crimes owing to the misuse of his rational faculties. (shrink)

In the Name of the One who has no Name,He who appears before you, how ever you call Him!How does Islamic theology and Koran exegesis, some of whose representatives set out to find the most modern developments, such as the atomic bomb, in the Koran, deal with the latest interpretations of quantum physics, of Heisenberg's uncertainty relation, and with the question of whether the sub-atomic world is made up of waves or particles? How does a theologian react to the notion (...) that parts of the atom influence each other and that the observer himself plays a role in the shaping of future events? Are these discoveries compatible with the traditional idea of a God who knows all; are they compatible with the various terms for fate: qadar, qada, or qismat? (shrink)

La relation entre la métaphysique et le christianisme a fait l’objet, tout au long du XXe siècle jusqu’à aujourd’hui, de nombreux et puissants conflits d’interprétations, les unes tendant à régionaliser le christianisme dans les thèmes et les concepts de la métaphysique grecque, d’autres plaçant le discours théologique en position de science récapitulative de la quête métaphysique, d’autres encore estimant pouvoir déclarer l’hétérogénéité des deux traditions philosophique et théologique. Etienne Gilson avait certes montré tôt la part que le christianisme a effectivement (...) prise dès avant le Moyen Age dans le destin de la métaphysique et relevé les modalités par lesquelles la métaphysique avait pu favoriser l’auto-intelligibilité du christianisme. Sans doute ne suffit-il plus aujourd’hui de discuter les thèses contrastées d’une métaphysique «postchrétienne» ou d’un christianisme «postmétaphysique» ; il convient, en amont, de poser la question des conditions par lesquelles la métaphysique, surmontant ses apories théoriques et redéfinissant ses attendus, peut renouveler son interlocution avec le christianisme et réciproquement. (shrink)

L'oeuvre de Jean-Luc Marion de l'Académie française, s'est progressivement imposée sur la scène philosophique française et internationale depuis plus de trois décennies. Successeur d'Emmanuel Levinas à la chaire de métaphysique de Paris-IV Sorbonne (1995-2011) et successeur de Paul Ricoeur à l'University of Chicago (2003-2011), il occupe aujourd'hui, succédant à David Tracy, la chaire de théologie fondamentale de cette même université américaine, ainsi que la Chaire Domi- nique Dubarle : "Philosophie et théologie" de l'Institut catholique de Paris. Lorsqu'il récapitule son itinéraire (...) de recherche, J-L Marion distingue trois "moments " : les études cartésiennes, la phénoménologie et la théologie. De nombreux travaux, plusieurs thèses de doctorat lui ont été déjà consacrés dans ces différents champs où elle continue cependant de s'élaborer, suscitant l'admiration, mais aussi, le plus souvent en raison de sa haute technicité conceptuelle, de lourdes incompréhensions. Le présent ouvrage, issu d'une séance publique de débats et intégrant les "réponses" du principal intéressé, n'a pas pour seule ambition de lever celles-ci ; en ouvrant les trois volets de l'oeuvre, il engage un dialogue direct avec l'auteur, interrogeant l'une des pensées philosophiques les plus fécondes de notre temps. (shrink)

A large body of information and opinion related to COVID-19 is being shared via social media platforms. Recent reports have raised concerns about the reliability and verifiability of said information being disseminated and the way systems, processes and design of the platforms facilitates such spread. This, alongside other areas of concern, has resulted in several social media platforms taking steps towards tackling the spread of mis- and dis-information. Here we discuss approaches to online public health messaging from a range of (...) sources during COVID-19, with a focus on official and non-official sources in the United Kingdom. We highlight issues for ongoing public health decisions, and the potential impact for the future course of the pandemic. (shrink)

Much of the time, human beings seem to rely on habits. Habits are learned behaviours directly elicited by context cues, and insensitive to short-term changes in goals: therefore they are sometimes irrational. But even where habitual responses are rational, it can seem as if they are nevertheless not done for reasons. For, on a common understanding of habitual behaviour, agents’ intentions do not play any role in the coming about of such responses. This paper discusses under what conditions we can (...) say that habitual responses are, after all, done for reasons. We show how the idea that habitual behaviour cannot be understood as ‘acting for reasons’ stems from a widely but often implicitly held theoretical framework: the causal theory of action. We then propose an alternative, Anscombean understanding of intentional action, which can account for habitual responses being done for reasons. (shrink)

A well‐known typological observation is the dominance of subject‐initial word orders, SOV and SVO, across the world's languages. Recent findings from gestural language creation paradigms offer possible explanations for the prevalence of SOV. When asked to gesture transitive events with an animate agent and inanimate patient, gesturers tend to produce SOV order, regardless of their native language biases. Interestingly, when the patient is animate, gesturers shift away from SOV to use of other orders, like SVO and OSV. Two competing hypotheses (...) have been proposed for this switch: the noisy channel account (Gibson et al., 2013) and the role conflict account (Hall, Mayberry, & Ferreira, 2013). We set out to distinguish between these two hypotheses, disentangling event reversibility and patient animacy, by looking at gestural sequences for events with two inanimate participants (inanimate‐inanimate, reversible). We replicated the previous findings of a preference for SOV order when describing animate‐inanimate, irreversible events as well as a decrease in the use of SOV when presented with animate‐animate, reversible events. Accompanying the drop in SOV, in a novel condition we observed an increase in the use of SVO and OSV orders when describing events involving two animate entities. In sum, we find that the observed avoidance of SOV order in gestural language creation paradigms when the event includes an animate agent and patient is driven by the animacy of the participants rather than the reversibility of the event. We suggest that findings from gestural creation paradigms are not automatically linkable to spoken language typology. (shrink)

In A Treatise of Human Nature 1.4.2, entitled ‘Of Scepticism with Regard to the Senses’, Hume discussed the causes of belief in the existence of external objects. Philosophers, correcting the false...

Traditionally, self-control is conceptualized in terms of internal processes such as willpower or motivational mechanisms. These processes supposedly explain how agents manage to exercise self-control or, in other words, how they act on the basis of their best judgment in the face of conflicting motivation. Against the mainstream view that self-control is a mechanism or set of mechanisms realized in the brain, several authors have recently argued for the inclusion of situated factors in our understanding of self-control. In this paper, (...) we review such recent attempts from the perspective of situated accounts of cognition and argue that even though these accounts integrate situational features, they ultimately still rely on an orthodox, neurocentric view of self-control. Instead, we will argue that in order to develop a really situated account it is necessary to radically rethink what self-control is. Building on recent work on extended skill, we will develop an outline of a really situated account of self-control. (shrink)

Revered for his contributions to empiricism, skepticism and ethics, David Hume remains one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy. His first and broadest work, A Treatise of Human Nature, comprises three volumes, concerning the understanding, the passions and morals. He develops a naturalist and empiricist program, illustrating that the mind operates through the association of impressions and ideas. This Companion features essays by leading scholars that evaluate the philosophical content of the arguments in Hume's Treatise (...) while considering their historical context. The authors examine Hume's distinctive views on causation, motivation, free will, moral evaluation and the origins of justice, which continue to influence present-day philosophical debate. This collection will prove a valuable resource for students and scholars exploring Hume, British empiricism and modern philosophy. (shrink)

We may be at the brink of a Kuhnian paradigm shift when it comes to the categorical classification system of mental disorders. Reviewing more than 30 years of critical literature on the categorical classification of personality disorders, Kueger, Hopwood, Wright, and Markon conclude that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is "fundamentally broken". Just before, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health declared that the institute will no longer support research that is based on DSM categories.The (...) critique on the categorical system of mental disorders consists of several arguments that are briefly mentioned as they have been... (shrink)

Even the simplest narratives combine multiple strands of information, integrating different characters and their actions by expressing multiple perspectives of events. We examined the emergence of referential shift devices, which indicate changes among these perspectives, in Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL). Sign languages, like spoken languages, mark referential shift grammatically with a shift in deictic perspective. In addition, sign languages can mark the shift with a point or a movement of the body to a specified spatial location in the three-dimensional space (...) in front of the signer, capitalizing on the spatial affordances of the manual modality. We asked whether the use of space to mark referential shift emerges early in a new sign language by comparing the first two age cohorts of deaf signers of NSL. Eight first-cohort signers and ten second-cohort signers watched video vignettes and described them in NSL. Narratives were coded for lexical (use of words) and spatial (use of signing space) devices. Although the cohorts did not differ significantly in the number of perspectives represented, second-cohort signers used referential shift devices to explicitly mark a shift in perspective in more of their narratives. Furthermore, while there was no significant difference between cohorts in the use of non-spatial, lexical devices, there was a difference in spatial devices, with second-cohort signers using them in significantly more of their narratives. This suggests that spatial devices have only recently increased as systematic markers of referential shift. Spatial referential shift devices may have emerged more slowly because they depend on the establishment of fundamental spatial conventions in the language. While the modality of sign languages can ultimately engender the syntactic use of three-dimensional space, we propose that a language must first develop systematic spatial distinctions before harnessing space for grammatical functions. (shrink)

In this paper, we use online search engines and archive collections to examine the popularity of socially responsible investing (SRI) in newspapers and academic journals. A simple content analysis suggests that most of the papers on SRI focus on financial performance. This profusion of research is somewhat puzzling as most of the studies used roughly the same methodology and obtained very similar results. So, why are there so many studies on SRI financial performance? We argue that the academic literature on (...) SRI is mostly data driven: the famous ‘looking for the keys under the lamppost’ syndrome. The question of the financial performance of the SRI funds is certainly relevant but maybe too much attention has been paid to this issue, whereas more research is needed on a conceptual and theoretical ground, in particular the aspirations of SRI investors, the relationship between regulation and SRI as well as the assessment of extra-financial performances. (shrink)

Stories about corporate social responsibility have become very frequent over the past decade, and managers can no longer ignore their impact on firm value. In this paper, we investigate the extent and the determinants of the stock market’s reaction following ordinary news related to environmental, social and governance issues—the so-called ESG factors. To that purpose, we use an original database provided by Covalence EthicalQuote. Our empirical analysis is based on about 33,000 ESG news, targeting one hundred listed companies over the (...) period 2002–2010. On average, firms facing negative events experience a drop in their market value of 0.1%, whereas companies gain nothing on average from positive announcements. We find also that market participants are responsive to the media, but they do not react to firms’ press releases or to NGOs’ disclosures. Moreover, our results indicate that sector’s reputation mitigates the loss and that cultural proximity and lexical contents of ESG disclosures play a significant role in the magnitude of the impact. (shrink)

In this paper, we use online search engines and archive collections to examine the popularity of socially responsible investing (SRI) in newspapers and academic journals. A simple content analysis suggests that most of the papers on SRI focus on financial performance. This profusion of research is somewhat puzzling as most of the studies used roughly the same methodology and obtained very similar results. So, why are there so many studies on SRI financial performance? We argue that the academic literature on (...) SRI is mostly data driven: the famous ‘looking for the keys under the lamppost’ syndrome. The question of the financial performance of the SRI funds is certainly relevant but maybe too much attention has been paid to this issue, whereas more research is needed on a conceptual and theoretical ground, in particular the aspirations of SRI investors, the relationship between regulation and SRI as well as the assessment of extra‐financial performances. (shrink)

In his 1963 response to an open letter from eight white religious leaders chastising his involvement in Birmingham, Martin Luther King, Jr. explained that civil rights activists’ blatant breaking of some laws while obeying others was the result of two types of laws: just laws and unjust laws. Civil rights activists believed they had a legal responsibility to obey just laws and a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Today, new civil rights struggles continue to challenge unjust laws that shred (...) the fabric of democracy that America espouses. Drawing upon both the Civil Rights Movement and the contemporary Movement for Black Lives, this article argues that unjust laws and practices must be broken and challenged before a just society is established. It identifies four ethical strategies for social activism: collective work and responsibility, strategic timing and economic disconnection, political mobilization, and faithful perseverance. (shrink)