How can we distinguish between quasi-realist expressivism and normative realism? The most promising answer to this question is the “explanation” explanation proposed by Dreier (2004), Simpson (2018), and others: the two views might agree in their claims about truth and objectivity, or even in their attributions of semantic content to normative sentences, but they disagree about how to explain normative meaning. Realists explain meaning by invoking normative facts and properties, or representational relations between normative language and the world, the thought (...) goes, while expressivists appeal instead to desire-like mental states in their explanations of meaning. However, I argue that, if we adopt a deflationary approach to representation and other related notions, there need be no such explanatory divide between expressivism and anything recognizable as a plausible notion of normative realism. Any alleged explanatory criterion for realism will either be incompatible with deflationism, or it will fail to capture some standard versions of normative realism. I conclude that, in a deflationary framework, expressivism is compatible with genuine realism. (shrink)

John Rawls is frequently perceived as being an advocate for purely redistributive policies designed to mitigate the consequences of a capitalist economy — an assumption I challenge in this article. My objective is to elucidate the biased nature of this view and provide a comprehensive analysis of the transformation of the corporate landscape that a just society would entail within Rawls's framework. Through a meticulous examination of Rawls's delineation of economic regimes, I underscore the profound — and often unsuspected — (...) implications of liberal egalitarianism on corporate ownership and management. Rawls's proposition of a “property-owning democracy” posits that citizens should retain ownership of shares in companies throughout their lifetimes. Liberal socialism implies the nationalization of the means of production and the socialization of their management. (shrink)

L'intérêt des sciences humaines pour les rapports entre TIC, langues et savoirs n'est pas nouveau. Cependant l'intelligibilité d'une construction épistémologique des relations reste un domaine en friche dans le contexte de la mondialisation. Le présent article essaie de s'en prendre à ce vide épistémologique en interrogeant particulièrement les enjeux des langues africaines dans le travail de structuration et de dissémination du savoir global et des savoirs locaux. Ces savoirs, chacun à sa manière, tentent de se construire un statut nouveau en (...) s'insérant dans les divers marchés de la connaissance. Pour cela, ils tirent profit du renouvellement des thématiques occidentales vis-à-vis des consommateurs africains d'information scientifique. En conséquence, des politiques de productivité et de circularité des savoirs s'érigent dans des stratégies d'uniformisation épistémologique. Parallèlement, la mode de la «diversité linguistique et culturelle», censée protéger les langues et savoirs locaux, risque de les transformer en de simples objets ethnographiques.The interest of the humanities to the relationship between ICT and language knowledge is not new. However, the intelligibility of a construction epistemological relations remains a fallow field in the context of globalization. This article tries to take this empty epistemological questioning particularly the issues of African languages ​​in the work of structuring and dissemination of global knowledge and local knowledge. This knowledge, in their own way, trying to build a new status by inserting themselves into the various markets for knowledge. For this, they benefit from the renewal of western themed vis-à-vis African consumers of scientific information. As a result, productivity and political knowledge circularity themselves up in uniform epistemological strategies. Meanwhile, the fashion of the "linguistic and cultural diversity," intended to protect indigenous knowledge and languages, may turn them into mere ethnographic objects. (shrink)

Dancers and dance philosophers report on experiences of a certain form of sense making and bodily thinking through the dancing body. Yet, discussions on expertise and consciousness are often framed within canonical philosophical world-views that make it difficult to fully recognize, verbalize, and value the full variety of embodied and affective facets of subjectivity. Using qualitative interviews with five professional dancers and choreographers, I make an attempt to disclose the characteristics of what I consider to be a largely overseen state (...) of consciousness: embodied reflection. Dancers are familiar with this attentive bodily presence, which constitutes their work mode and heightens their abilities as experts. Detailed descriptions of their daily work at the theatre help us grasp the qualities and understand the enigmas of the absorbed state of bodily thinking. Husserl’s theories on reflection and Merleau-Ponty’s work on motoricity support our understanding of the structures behind embodied reflection. I believe it is a common human resource, and that whether we are experts or not, we all have the ability to reflect non-conceptually through bodily and/or affective activity. (shrink)

Cet article interroge la question des corpus en analyse multimodale des corpus oraux d’interactions filmées dans le cadre d’une linguistique qui intègre l’étude des gestes à celle du discours pour rendre compte des pratiques langagières dans leur globalité. Ce type d’approche est traditionnellement associé à des petits corpus supports d’analyses qualitatives. À l’appui d’un tour d’horizon de recherches contemporaines en analyse multimodale des interactions orales, nous montrons que l’étude linguistique des gestes se prête à une grande variété d’approches innovantes au (...) plan méthodologique. En pratique, il reste à ce jour difficile de construire des grands corpus pour l’analyse gestuelle, parce qu’il s’agit d’une entreprise longue et coûteuse (enregistrement, transcription, annotation) : les petits corpus sont nombreux parce qu’ils sont plus faciles à construire pour un chercheur seul ou une petite équipe de recherche aux moyens limités. Cette situation tend cependant à évoluer, et ce de plusieurs manières, grâce aux collaborations nationales et internationales et aux nouveaux outils numériques. Les « petits » corpus n’en restent pas moins sources de résultats précieux en analyse gestuelle. Pour diverses raisons, les standards internationaux de l’évaluation de la recherche tendent à valoriser l’analyse quantitative aux dépens de l’analyse qualitative, faisant oublier que ces deux types d’approches ont des objectifs certes différents mais complémentaires : ils permettent de répondre à des questions de recherche différentes (étroites ou larges) et de proposer des savoirs d’origines différentes (généralisabilité des résultats ou généralisabilité des processus observés), dont la légitimité est elle aussi de nature différente (réfutabilité des résultats ou consilience des experts). Nombre de travaux récents en analyse gestuelle encouragent à remettre en question la dichotomie traditionnelle entre analyses qualitatives et quantitatives, en intégrant les deux approches de diverses manières. (shrink)

In this paper, I support a hybrid view regarding the metaphysics of worlds. I endorse Lewisian Modal Realism for possible worlds (LMR). My aim is to come up with a hybrid account of impossible worlds that provides all the plenitude of impossibilities for all fine-grained intentional contents. I raise several challenges for such a plenitudinous hybrid theory. My version of hybrid modal realism builds impossible worlds as set-theoretic constructions out of genuine individuals and sets of them, that is, as set-theoretic (...) constructions from parts and sets of parts of genuine Lewisian worlds. _Structured worlds_ are defined as sets of tuples: structured entities built out of Lewisian ‘raw material’. These structured worlds are ersatz worlds, some of which are impossible. I claim that propositions must be sets of worlds rather than members of sets. Once the construction is in place, I evaluate the proposal and show that my hybrid account is able to supply a plenitude of impossibilities and thus giving the resources to make all the hyperintensional distinctions we are looking for, whilst remaining Lewisian-conservative. (shrink)

It is often claimed that there is an explanatory divide between an expressivist account of normative discourse and a realist conception of normativity: more precisely, that expressivism and realism offer conflicting explanations of (i) the metaphysical structure of the normative realm, (ii) the connection between normative judgment and motivation, (iii) our normative beliefs and any convergence thereof, or (iv) the content of normative thoughts and claims. In this paper I argue that there need be no such explanatory conflict. Given a (...) minimalist approach to the relevant metaphysical and semantic notions, expressivism is compatible with any explanation that would be acceptable as a general criterion for realism. (shrink)

La question de la religion - de son essence, de sa fonction, de son origine - a été centrale dans la sociologie et l'anthropologie classiques. Pour la tirer des impasses et de la stagnation où elle est reléguée de nos jours, Camille Tarot propose ici un bilan critique des œuvres des meilleurs comparatistes, à travers leurs théories si contradictoires de la religion. Huit auteurs principaux sont soumis à examen : Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Mircéa Eliade, Georges Dumézil, Claude Lévi-Strauss, (...) René Girard, Pierre Bourdieu et Marcel Gauchet. L'important en la matière est d'abord d'esquiver les faux irénismes comme les querelles stériles ou haineuses, pour confronter les doctrines en profondeur et systématiquement. Ensuite, de déceler l'impensé et les refoulements que produit chaque cadre théorique, pour proposer le modèle ou l'idéal-type de la religion qui paraît le mieux fondé. Au fil de cet examen, il apparaît que l'essence du fait religieux est à rechercher à l'intersection du symbolique et du sacré, à comprendre à partir des fondations d'Emile Durkheim et de Marcel Mauss, complétées par les apports de René Girard. La possible fécondité du modèle qui se dégage ainsi s'atteste par sa capacité à relire les sources et à renouveler en profondeur les vieux problèmes des fonctions de la religion, qui n'avaient guère avancé depuis Emile Durkheim. (shrink)

The commons is a concept increasingly used with the promise of creating new collective wealth. In the aftermath of the economic and financial crises, finance and money have been criticized and redesigned to serve the collective interest. In this article, we analyze three types of complementary currency systems: community currencies, inter-enterprise currencies, and cryptocurrencies. We investigate whether these systems can be considered as commons. To address this question, we use two main theoretical frameworks that are usually separate: the “new commons” (...) in organization studies and the “common good” in business ethics. Our findings show that these monetary systems and organizations may be considered as commons under the “common good” framework since they promote the common interest by creating new communities. Nevertheless, according to the “new commons” framework, only systems relying on collective action and self-management can be said to form commons. This allows us to suggest two new categories of commons: the “social commons,” which fit into both the “new commons” and the “common good” frameworks, and the “commercial commons,” which fit the “common good” but not the “new commons” framework. This research advances a new conceptualization of the commons and of the ethical implications of CCs. (shrink)

We all could have had better lives, yet often do not wish that our lives had gone differently, especially when we contemplate alternatives that vastly diverge from our actual life course. What, if anything, accounts for such conservative retrospective attitudes? I argue that the right answer involves the significance of our personal attachments and our biographical identity. I also examine other options, such as the absence of self-to-self connections across possible worlds and a general conservatism about value.

Starting again from Descartes' philosophy, our intention in this article is not to leave phenomenology, but to return to it in order to shed new light on how it encounters metaphysics and revives it. It is a question of inscribing French phenomenology in another history of metaphysics, one that is underground and unofficial and which lives, in truth, from that very thing that completes the other or which the other completes. Initially, we will focus on Jean-Luc Marion's reading of Descartes (...) from the paradigm offered by Heidegger. Secondly, we would like to replay the confrontation between Descartes and Pascal. Only in the third stage, then, will we be able to return to how metaphysics, most often assumed as such from its Cartesian configuration, has worked under the surface of the phenomenology its French representatives received from Husserl and Heidegger. Levinas can often serve as an exemplary figure. (shrink)

Suppose that there are objective normative facts and our beliefs about such facts are by-and-large true. How did this come to happen? This is the reliability challenge to normative realism. As has been recently noted, the challenge also applies to expressivist “quasi-realism”. I argue that expressivism is useful in the face of this challenge, in a way that has not been yet properly articulated. In dealing with epistemological issues, quasi-realists typically invoke the desire-like nature of normative judgments. However, this is (...) not enough to prevent the reliability challenge from arising, given that quasi-realists also hold that normative judgments are truth-apt beliefs. To defuse this challenge, we need to isolate a deeper sense in which normative thought is not representational. I propose that we rely on the negative functional thesis of expressivism: normative thought does not have the function of tracking normative facts, or any other kind of facts. This thesis supports an argument to the effect that it is misguided to expect an explanation of our access to normative facts akin to the explanations available in regions of thought that have a tracking function. We should be content with explanations of our reliability that take for granted certain connections between our psychology and the normative truths. (shrink)

Tantôt nous retenons que Dieu s’est donné au temps de sa venue, mais nous pensons que le don, le message et la vie du Christ sont épuisés. […] Tantôt, en sens inverse, nous oublions que Dieu s’est donné en personne, absolument, pour croire que tout est à inventer, que l’Église n’a pas d’héritage. Sartre nous offre, semble-t-il, les moyens de bien poser le problème de notre incrédulité nouvelle, pour peu qu’on n’appauvrisse pas le sens qu’il a donné à la notion (...) de « mauvaise foi ». Gardons-nou... (shrink)

Psychiatric phenomenology emerged from the willingness to spread Husserl’s program of going back to the things themselves into the psychiatric field. However, what this initial will then became is not very clear. We show that if this will to go back to the things themselves really enabled to bring phenomenology and psychiatry together (especially by the Swiss psychiatrist L. Binswanger), the thing to whom we have to go back changed over time: first conceived as the experience lived by people with (...) a psychiatric disorder, it was then conceived as the psychiatric disorder itself. We show that both of these ideas are inadequate. Our thesis is that psychiatric phenomenology has to be considered as belonging to the hermeneutical field (as defined by Ricoeur and Gadamer). We show that this hypothesis leads to a more insightful understanding of what is psychiatric phenomenology and what status we should concede to it. (shrink)

The essential qualities of human nature, including faith, trust, repentance, forgiveness, compassion, and mercy, are discussed in this collection of writings by some of the world's great sages, both ancient and contemporary. The advice of prophets Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad, the wisdom of Confucius and Buddha, and the prudence of saints, scholars, and even cyclists provide expert guidance for those looking to improve their spiritual well-being.

Chapter 20 of Plotinus’ treatise VI, 2 [43] has received particular attention because it seems to deal with the Intellect. However, the connection of this chapter with chapter 19 is problematic insofar as the latter deals with the ways in which species are generated by the first genera. Our aim will be to show that chapter 20 can only be understood in the light of the notion of genus. More precisely, Plotinus’ aim in this chapter is to demonstrate the priority (...) of the genus over its species by means of the theory of double activity. In order to demonstrate this point, the notion of Intellect is introduced by Plotinus as a model (παράδειγμα) to conceive this priority. We will study successively these two chapters to justify this point, insisting on the link between them as well as on the reinterpretation of some key Aristotelian concepts. This study also shows that the use of the comparison with science allows Plotinus to justify the primacy of the intelligible totalities that are the Soul and the Intellect as well as the generation of their respective parts, the particular souls and the particular intellects. (shrink)

Niedenthal et al. discuss the importance of eye gaze in embodied simulation and, more globally, in the processing of emotional visual stimulation (such as facial expression). In this commentary, we illustrate the relationship between oriented eye movements, consciousness, and emotion by using the case of severely brain-injured patients recovering from coma (i.e., vegetative and minimally conscious patients).

The following scenario seems possible: a community uses concepts that play the same role in guiding actions and shaping social life as our normative concepts, and yet refer to something else. As Eklund argues, this apparent possibility poses a problem for any normative realist who aspires to vindicate the thought that reality itself favors our ways of valuing and acting. How can realists make good on this idea, given that anything they might say in support of the privileged status of (...) our normative concepts can be mirrored by the imagined community? E.g., the realist might claim that using our concepts is what we ought to do if we are to describe normative facts correctly, but members of the other community can claim the same about their concepts, using their own concept of ought. A promising approach to this challenge is to try to rule out the possibility of alternative normative concepts, by arguing that any concepts that have the same normative role must share a reference as well. In this paper I argue that normative quasi-naturalism, a view that combines expressivism about normative discourse with a naturalist metaphysics of normativity, supports referential normativity and solves the problem of alternative normative concepts. (shrink)

Building on their important findings in The Source of the River, the authors now probe even more deeply into minority underachievement at the college level. Taming the River examines the academic and social dynamics of different ethnic groups during the first two years of college. Focusing on racial differences in academic performance, the book identifies the causes of students' divergent grades and levels of personal satisfaction with their institutions. Using survey data collected from twenty-eight selective colleges and universities, Taming the (...) River considers all facets of student life, including who students date, what fields they major in, which sports they play, and how they perceive their own social and economic backgrounds. The book explores how black and Latino students experience pressures stemming from campus racial climate and "stereotype threat"--when students underperform because of anxieties tied to existing negative stereotypes. Describing the relationship between grade performance and stereotype threat, the book shows how this link is reinforced by institutional practices of affirmative action. The authors also indicate that when certain variables are controlled, minority students earn the same grades, express the same college satisfaction, and remain in school at the same rates as white students. A powerful look at how educational policies unfold in America's universities, Taming the River sheds light on the social and racial factors influencing student success. (shrink)

This essay explores both the appeal and the difficulties of Derrida’s “democratic Romanticism.” Derrida’s broader philosophical project seeks to make explicit the paradoxes or aporias that are embedded in practical experience. In unveiling these aporias, Derrida pleads, particularly in his later writings, for a transformation of democracy and religion so as to make them hospitable to difference. However, I will argue that Derrida’s reduction of the great variety of moral-political and religious situations to one aporetic logic runs into conceptual problems (...) and risks undoing the moral tissue that makes hospitality possible in the first place. (shrink)

In Naissance de la clinique, Michel Foucault develops a theory of the socialization of perception called “archaeology of the medical gaze.” According to this model, the everyday gaze is conditioned by a perceptual code that determines both the features worthy of attention and the meaning to be attributed to them, called “regimes of visibility.” The aim of this article is to describe the interests and difficulties of such a project. I will show that Foucault does not develop any real theory (...) of perception, which weakens his model in two ways: first, at the theoretical level, it leaves aside the question of the transformation of the perceptual code that has been brought to light; second, at the empirical level, it is unable to account for contemporary ethnographies of medical practice. (shrink)

Are human beings essentially good or evil? Immanuel Kant responds, “[H]e [man] is as much the one as the other, partly good, partly bad.” Given this, I’d like to explore the following: What does Kant mean by human nature and how is it possible to be both good and evil? What is “original sin” and does it place limits on free will? In what respect might Kant’s views be significant for non-believers? More specifically, is Kant saying that human beings need (...) God in order to be good or is morality possible without faith? (shrink)

While often presented as promising assistive technologies for motor-impaired users, electroencephalography (EEG)-based Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) remain barely used outside laboratories due to low reliability in real-life conditions. There is thus a need to design long-term reliable BCIs that can be used outside-of-the-lab by end-users, e.g., severely motor-impaired ones. Therefore, we propose and evaluate the design of a multi-class Mental Task (MT)-based BCI for longitudinal training (20 sessions over 3 months) of a tetraplegic user for the CYBATHLON BCI series 2019. In (...) this BCI championship, tetraplegic pilots are mentally driving a virtual car in a racing video game. We aimed at combining a progressive user MT-BCI training with a newly designed machine learning pipeline based on adaptive Riemannian classifiers shown to be promising for real-life applications. We followed a two step training process: the first 11 sessions served to train the user to control a 2-class MT-BCI by performing either two cognitive tasks (REST and MENTAL SUBTRACTION) or two motor-imagery tasks (LEFT-HAND and RIGHT-HAND). The second training step (9 remaining sessions) applied an adaptive, session-independent Riemannian classifier that combined all 4 MT classes used before. Moreover, as our Riemannian classifier was incrementally updated in an unsupervised way it would capture both within and between-session non-stationarity. Experimental evidences confirm the effectiveness of this approach. Namely, the classification accuracy improved by about 30% at the end of the training compared to initial sessions. We also studied the neural correlates of this performance improvement. Using a newly proposed BCI user learning metric, we could show our user learned to improve his BCI control by producing EEG signals matching increasingly more the BCI classifier training data distribution, rather than by improving his EEG class discrimination. However, the resulting improvement was effective only on synchronous (cue-based) BCI and it did not translate into improved CYBATHLON BCI game performances. For the sake of overcoming this in the future, we unveil possible reasons for these limited gaming performances and identify a number of promising future research directions. Importantly, we also report on the evolution of the user's neurophysiological patterns and user experience throughout the BCI training and competition. (shrink)

The agroecological transition of agriculture not only requires changes in practices but also in ways of thinking and in their underlying values. Agroecology proposes broad scientific principles that need to be adapted to the singularities of each farm. This contextualization leads to the identification of agroecological practices that work locally and could serve as evidence-based practices to be transferred to local practitioners. This strategy was tested in a 4-year experiment conducted with dairy-sheep farmers in the South of France. The aim (...) was to collectively engage in the agroecological transition. Our work focused on the creation of a diagnostic tool that was used to analyze local farms and identify virtuous practices to be promoted locally as evidence-based practices. But this strategy came up against the complexity and singularity of the situations to be transformed: not only was no evidence found but the construction of the diagnostic tool itself led to controversy concerning the models of agriculture to be promoted. The experiment then took a pragmatic turn: on-farm workshops were organized to enable farmers to benefit from the professional judgment of peer farmers who were willing to help their colleagues accomplish their agroecological transition. The diagnostic tool, which was designed to be prescriptive, was then used to judge the social acceptability of solutions that made sense in each farmer’s own situation. Our experiment led us to conclude that managing the agro-ecological transition of farmers and their farming system is better conceived as a value-based process than as an evidence-based one. (shrink)

Over the last decade, personalized medicine has become a buzz word, which covers a broad spectrum of meanings and generates many different opinions. The purpose of this article is to achieve a better understanding of the reasons why personalized medicine gives rise to such conflicting opinions. We show that a major issue of personalized medicine is the gap existing between its claims and its reality. We then present and analyze different possible reasons for this gap. We propose an hypothesis inspired (...) by the Windelband’s distinction between nomothetic and idiographic methodology. We argue that the fuzzy situation of personalized medicine results from a mix between idiographic claims and nomothetic methodological procedures. Hence we suggest that the current quandary about personalized medicine cannot be solved without getting involved in a discussion about the complex epistemological and methodological status of medicine. To conclude, we show that the Gadamer’s view of medicine as a dialogical process can be fruitfully used and reveals that personalization is not a theoretical task, but a practical one, which takes place within the clinical encounter. (shrink)

It has been argued that there is something morally objectionable about moral realism: for instance, according to realism, we are justified in believing that genocide is wrong only if a certain moral fact obtains, but it is objectionable to hold our moral commitments hostage to metaphysics in this way. In this paper, I argue that no version of this moral argument against realism is likely to succeed. More precisely, minimal realism―the kind of realism on which realist theses are understood as (...) internal to moral discourse―is immune to this challenge, contrary to what some proponents of the moral argument have suggested, while robust non-naturalist realists might have good answers to all versions of the argument as well, at least if they adopt a certain stance on how to form metaphysical beliefs in the moral domain. (shrink)

How can we rationally make peace with our past moral failings, while committing to avoid similar mistakes in the future? Is it because we cannot do anything about the past, while the future is still open? Or is it that regret for our past mistakes is psychologically harmful, and we need to forgive ourselves in order to be able to move on? Or is it because moral mistakes enable our moral growth? I argue that these and other answers do not (...) properly resolve the problem of temporal asymmetry in our attitudes toward moral imperfection, and I defend an alternative response, centered on our personal attachments and our biographical identity. (shrink)

Michel Henry recognized himself within Maine de Biran’s work, while rejecting the French spiritualistic tradition to which this one was attached. However, without occulting the great differences which separate him from this tradition, it seems that we find in Bergson’s first book, more than in Maine de Biran, the premises of an ontological dualism, such as he supported, which announces an authentic philosophy of the conscience, beyond any intentionality. In return, as if Michel Henry had emphasized a tendency already present (...) in Time and Free Will, we could read again Bergson’s first book in the light of material phenomenology itself. (shrink)

Simone Weil's ideas proved fundamental for Iris Murdoch, opening up a difficult path of thought for one rooted in the British philosophical tradition in the 1950s (Sim 1985, Bok 2005, Lovibond 2011a, Panizza 2022a, Mac Cumhaill and Wiseman 2022). Grasping the Weilian-inspired moral theory of attention sketched by Iris Murdoch is a prerequisite for comprehending the development of her moral ideas (Panizza 2015, Broackes 2012) and the form they may take in her literary writings (Griffin 1993, Morgan 2006). This paper (...) argues that we can read an expression of Simone Weil in Iris Murdoch's novels which articulate her notions of grace and gravity, but also convey the Weilian insights that shape Murdoch's moral perfectionism. It investigates three of Murdoch's well-known male protagonists, i.e., Bradley Pearson, Charles Arrowby and Hilary Burde, so as to comprehend how their moral failures relate to a defective implementation of the concepts of love and attention as theorised by Simone Weil as leading to goodness. Hence, it offers a new examination of the way in which the Murdochian literary staging of inattention as a cause of moral deficiency reveals its Weilian-based ethics of attention. (shrink)