Dans la jovialité particulière des discussions avec Daniel Charles, ce qui ressortait toujours était l’impressionnante densité du réseau de ses « connaissances ». Sans doute le plus grand lecteur de son époque, il mettait une égale passion à explorer l’immense maillage de ses amis et de ses relations à travers le monde. Comme il est clair à tous ceux qui l’ont connu, et pour le dire à l’aide d’un concept deleuzien qu’il admirait, il n’avait aucun « usage transcendant des (...) synthèses ». Et voil... (shrink)

In recent years, scholars have shown the fruitfulness of linking Peirce’s speculative rhetoric with the rhetorical tradition—which can be broadly construed as the art, time and again rediscovered and refined, of rendering discourses eloquent and persuasive. They have suggested many ways in which the historical development of rhetoric sheds light on the third branch of Peirce’s semiotic and further pointed out many contributions Peirce makes in turn to the field of rhetoric. However, with the notable exception of Colapietro, these authors (...) have focused almost exclusively on questions of method and discovery. They have... (shrink)

Social Catholic criticisms of Frédéric Bastiat’s thinking, notably Charles Périn’s, clarify the link between the labour theory of value and the demands for social justice. Claiming that Bastiat’s theory of value rests on a sophism, Périn rejects his view that competition is the solution to the social question. Contrary to Bastiat, indeed, he accepts the labor theory of value and apparently makes it a standard of justice: according to him, rents sanction an injustice. Social Catholics, particularly René de La (...) Tour du Pin, follow in his tracks, insisting that a specific course must be taken so as to set right the injustice of rents — the course of what will be called furtherly ‘social justice’.Les critiques portées par les catholiques sociaux à la doctrine de Frédéric Bastiat, notamment celles de Charles Périn, permettent de comprendre le lien qui unit la théorie de la valeur travail et l’exigence de justice sociale. Périn affirme que la théorie de la valeur de Bastiat repose sur un sophisme et repousse donc sa réponse à la question sociale, la concurrence. Il a adopté en effet, au contraire de Bastiat, la théorie de la valeur travail et l’a érigée, semble-t-il, en critère de justice : la rente consacre, à ses yeux, une injustice. A sa suite, les catholiques sociaux, exemplairement, René de La tour du Pin, affirmeront qu’il faut mener une action spécifique pour corriger l’injustice de la rente et l’appelleront justice sociale. (shrink)

In eighteenth-century France, scientific progress and its spreading met a growing interest among public, an enthusiasm that was to be reflected in literature. Fictional works including scientific knowledge in their narrative made their appearance, paving the ground for a genre promised to a growing success in the following centuries—science fiction. The article presents three eighteenth-century French literary works, each one centered on a different domain of science: Voltaire’s Micromégas, Charles-François Tiphaigne’s Amilec, or the Seeds of Mankind and François-Félix Nogaret’s (...) The Mirror of Current Events, or Beauty to the Highest Bidder. The first one, an iconic Enlightenment work that promotes critical thinking, relies on discoveries made in astronomy and optics. Tiphaigne de la Roche is far from sharing the fame of Voltaire, but his odd Amilec is noteworthy as it is possibly the very first science-fiction work in which biology is central. Written in the unique atmosphere of the French revolution, Nogaret’s work The Mirror of Current Events depicts androids-like interacting with humans. Our purpose is to show that these works were a precursor of the science fiction genre in literature, to describe how and what science or technology was depicted in them, and how they influenced the view of Man in eighteenth-century France. (shrink)

Cet article expose l’intérêt qu’il peut y avoir pour la recherche à éditer les notes de lecture de Leibniz dans les Sämtlichen Schriften und Briefen. Il examine à titre d’exemple un mémoire sur la politique sociale et économique que Leibniz a soumis à la cour de Prusse en 1701, deux notes de lecture sur des propositions semblables faites par d’autres ainsi que deux extraits des œuvres de Charles Davenant. Leur comparaison permet entre autres de montrer d’où Leibniz tenait ses (...) informations et comment il se rapportait à son environnement intellectuel. Dans la mesure où Leibniz formule à l’occasion de la lecture de Davenant des considérations fondamentales sur l’économie qui n’ont pas d’équivalent ailleurs dans le corpus, cet article s’emploie en même temps à saisir le rapport de Leibniz aux économistes anglais et à situer plus précisément ses conceptions dans l’histoire des idées. (shrink)

Ce livre étudie, à travers une série d'épisodes allant de la philosophie des Lumières à notre époque, le problème du matérialisme dans l'histoire de la philosophie et l’histoire des sciences. Comment comprendre les spécificités de l’histoire du matérialisme, des Lumières à nos jours, au sein de la grande histoire de la philosophie et de l’histoire des sciences ? Quelle est l’actualité de l’opposition classique entre le corps et l’esprit ? Qu’est-ce que le rire ou le rêve peuvent nous apprendre du (...) matérialisme ? En traversant l’histoire de ce concept jusqu’à l’émergence d’un « nouveau matérialisme » contemporain, l’ouvrage vise à revitaliser le matérialisme et sa lecture. -/- . (shrink)

I argue that Kant thought his Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts could reach skeptical empiricists like Hume by providing an overlooked explanation of the mind's a priori relation to the objects of experience. And he thought empiricists may be motivated to listen to this explanation because of an instability and dissatisfaction inherent to empiricism.

Les sociétés démocratiques sont confrontées à l'émergence d'enjeux environnementaux décisifs qui concernent tant les modes de production, d'échange et de consommation que l'habitat, les transports, l'agriculture, l'industrie et même nos modes de vie. La prise en charge de ces enjeux ne saurait s'opérer simplement par des mesures ponctuelles ou locales. Elle doit aujourd'hui être repensée la temporalité de l'action politique, confrontée à une urgence qui ne cessera de s'accroître dans les prochaines années.

We propose a model of physics that blends Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics (RQM) interpretation with the language of finite information quantities (FIQs), defined by Gisin and Del Santo in the spirit of intuitionistic mathematics. We discuss deficiencies of using real numbers to model physical systems in general, and particularly under the RQM interpretation. With this motivation for an alternative mathematical language, we propose the use of FIQs to model the world under the RQM interpretation, wherein we view the propensities that (...) make up a FIQ as quantifications of potential interaction. Under this model, the stable facts, relative facts, and shifting perspectives that make up the relational interpretation correspond to shifting digits and propensities of the FIQs. The model’s predictions agree with those of both classical and quantum physics, and it is indeterministic. We also propose explanations, with examples, for how the propensities of a FIQ are distributed, and how its digits become actualized. This is equivalent to the notion of the measurement problem, and the question of what causes wave function collapse. In short, by stepping through the “new door” opened by the language of FIQs, we attempt to describe the world under the relational interpretation. (shrink)

In this revised edition of his 1979 classic Political Theory and International Relations, Charles Beitz rejects two highly influential conceptions of international theory as empirically inaccurate and theoretically misleading. In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference. Beitz postulates that a theory of international (...) politics should include a revised principle of state autonomy based on the justice of a state’s domestic institutions, and a principle of international distributive justice to establish a fair division of resources and wealth among persons situated in diverse national societies. (shrink)

A militância de Voltaire em favor da tolerância parece um truísmo, dado o conhecimento do caráter sistemático de sua luta contra o fanatismo religioso e a reabilitação dos condenados que essa mesma luta logrou. Mas é forçoso reconhecer que, em seu combate contra o fanatismo, Voltaire parece mais interessado pelos efeitos produzidos no nível prático do combate, e notadamente pelo sucesso obtido em favor dos defendidos, muitas vezes póstumo, infelizmente, que pela preocupação de convencer teoricamente seus adversários. A prova está (...) no fato de que o Tratado sobre a tolerância tem apenas uma pequena parte argumentativa, o essencial reside em mostrar por meio de exemplos os estragos do fanatismo, particularmente o religioso, durante o curso da história. Contudo, Voltaire não é alheio a uma verdadeira reflexão teórica sobre o conceito de tolerância, mas esta lhe parece ineficaz ou incapaz de conquistar a convicção da maioria de seus contemporâneos que prefere a denúncia das injustiças apresentada em termos de fatos mais do que em termos de direito. Resta que Voltaire não se restringe à exposição dos fatos, ele sabe que a filosofia e o direito têm sua palavra sobre o assunto, e que a teoria influi sobre a prática como esta sobre a primeira. Daí porque, parece-me, a reflexão de Voltaire sobre a noção de tolerância não permanece somente no nível das tomadas de posição do filósofo de Ferney a respeito deste ou daquele sujeito cujos direitos foram agredidos, mas que ela deve também ser apreendida no nível teórico, pois, sobre este ponto também, a posição de Voltaire é ao mesmo tempo original e sem concessão, rompendo radicalmente com aquela de um de seus mestres ingleses, John Locke. (shrink)

Préface: La politique naturelle. -L'homme. -Principes. -La civilisation. -La science politique. -La démocratie. -Les questions sociales. -Retour aux choses vivantes.

This book proposes a new paradigm for the interpretation of Plato's early and middle dialogues. Rejecting the usual assumption of a distinct 'Socratic' period in the development of Plato's thought, this view regards the earlier works as deliberate preparation for the exposition of Plato's mature philosophy. Differences between the dialogues do not represent different stages in Plato's own thinking but rather different aspects and moments in the presentation of a new and unfamiliar view of reality. Once the fictional character of (...) the Socratic genre is recognised, there is no reason to regard Plato's early dialogues as representing the philosophy of the historical Socrates. The result is a unified interpretation of all of the dialogues down to the Republic and the Phaedrus. (shrink)

A biography of the foremost Christian humanist of the Renaissance who devoted his life to uplifting man's condition through faith, reason, and education.

Peirce, Ch. S. Die Festlegung einer Überzeugung.--Peirce, Ch. S. Was heisst Pragmatismus?--James, W. Der Wille zum Glauben.--James, W. Der Wahrheitsbegriff des Pragmatismus.--Schiller, F. C. S. Humanismus.--Dewey, J. Pragmatismus und Pädagogik.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

These volumes present the text of Abū Ma’͑šar’s _Great Introduction to Astrology_ in Arabic and Greek and the divergences in the Latin translations. It provides a fully-comprehensive account of traditional astrological doctrine and its philosophical bases.

A book on the problems of ethics from the perspective of language and meaning.

This previously-unpublished essay by the late Charles W. Mills (1951–2021) seeks to demonstrate the racially-structured character of the universe created by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Written long before the popular film series, the essay critically examines Tolkien's novels and comments on the nature of fictional creation. Mills argues that Tolkien designs a racial hierarchy in the novels that recapitulates the central racist myth of European thought.

The Spirit of the Laws is, without question, one of the central texts in the history of eighteenth-century thought, yet there has been no complete, scholarly English-language edition since that of Thomas Nugent, published in 1750. This lucid translation renders Montesquieu's problematic text newly accessible to a fresh generation of students, helping them to understand quite why Montesquieu was such an important figure in the early enlightenment and why The Spirit of the Laws was, for example, such an influence upon (...) those who framed the American constitution. Fully annotated, this edition focuses attention upon Montesquieu's use of sources and his text as a whole, rather than upon those opening passages towards which critical energies have traditionally been devoted, and a select bibliography and chronology are provided for those coming to Montesquieu's work for the first time. (shrink)

This book examines the theoretical structure of Buddhist accounts of morality, defends them against objections, and discusses their implications for free will, the justification of punishment, and other issues.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Introduction to Hegel's thought for the student and general reader, emphasizing in particular his social and political thought and his continuing relevance to contemporary problems.

Canguilhem is known to have regretted, with some pathos, that Life no longer serves as an orienting question in our scientific activity. He also frequently insisted on a kind of uniqueness of organisms and/or living bodies – their inherent normativity, their value-production and overall their inherent difference from mere machines. In addition, Canguilhem acknowledged a major debt to the German neurologist-theoretician Kurt Goldstein, author most famously of The Structure of the Organism in 1934; along with Merleau-Ponty, Canguilhem was the main (...) figure who introduced the work of Goldstein and his ‘phenomenology of embodiment’ into France. In this paper I inquire if we should view Canguilhem and Goldstein as ‘biochauvinists’, that is, as thinkers who consider that there is something inherently unique about biological entities as such, and if so, of what sort. (shrink)

In this essay I seek to critically evaluate some forms of holism and organicism in biological thought, as a more deflationary echo to Gilbert and Sarkar's reflection on the need for an 'umbrella' concept to convey the new vitality of holistic concepts in biology (Gilbert and Sarkar 2000). Given that some recent discussions in theoretical biology call for an organism concept (from Moreno and Mossio’s work on organization to Kirschner et al.’s research paper in Cell, 2000, building on chemistry to (...) articulate what they called “molecular vitalism,” studying the “vitalistic” properties of molecular, cellular, and organismal function, and Pepper and Herron’s suggestion in their 2008 paper that organisms define a category that evolutionary biology cannot do without), the question, what concept of organicism are they calling for? To what extent are such claims philosophically committed to a non-naturalistic concept of organism as organizing centre, as a foundational rather than heuristic concept – or possibly a “biochauvinism,” to use Di Paolo’s term (Di Paolo 2009)? My aim in this paper is to conceptually clarify the forms of holism and organicism that are involved in these cases (and I acknowledge that the study of early 20th-century holisms [Peterson 2010] indicates that not all of them were in fact ‘organicist’ or ‘biologistic’). I suggest that contemporary holists are still potentially beholden to a certain kind of vitalism or “biochauvinism”; but that when they reduce their claims to mere heuristics, conversely, they risk losing sight of a certain kind of organizational “thickness”, a “vital materiality” (Wheeler 2010) which is characteristic of biological systems (Bechtel 2007). And I ask if it is possible to articulate a concept of biological holism or organicism which is neither an empirical ‘biochauvinism’ nor a metaphysical ‘vitalism’? (shrink)

Objectophilia (also known as Objectum-Sexuality) involves romantic and sexual attraction to specific objects. Objectophiles often develop deep and enduring emotional, romantic, and sexual relations with specific inanimate (concrete or abstract) objects such as trains, bridges, cars, or words. . The determinants of objectophilia are poorly understood. The aim of this paper is to examine the determining factors of objectophilia. We examine four hypotheses about the determinants of objectophilia (pertaining to fetishism, synesthesia, cross-modal mental imagery, and autism) and argue that the (...) most likely determining factors of objectophilia are the social and non-social features of autism. Future studies on the determinants of objectophilia could enhance our understanding and potentially lessen the marginalization experienced by objectophiles. (shrink)

Intellectual history still quite commonly distinguishes between the episode we know as the Scientific Revolution, and its successor era, the Enlightenment, in terms of the calculatory and quantifying zeal of the former—the age of mechanics—and the rather scientifically lackadaisical mood of the latter, more concerned with freedom, public space and aesthetics. It is possible to challenge this distinction in a variety of ways, but the approach I examine here, in which the focus on an emerging scientific field or cluster of (...) disciplines—the ‘life sciences’, particularly natural history, medicine, and physiology —is, not Romantically anti-scientific, but resolutely anti-mathematical. Diderot bluntly states, in his Thoughts on the interpretation of nature, that “We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences. Given the taste people seem to have for morals, belles-lettres, the history of nature and experimental physics, I dare say that before a hundred years, there will not be more than three great geometricians remaining in Europe. The science will stop short where the Bernoullis, the Eulers, the Maupertuis, the Clairauts, the Fontaines and the D’Alemberts will have left it.... We will not go beyond.” Similarly, Buffon in the first discourse of his Histoire naturelle speaks of the “over-reliance on mathematical sciences,” given that mathematical truths are merely “definitional” and “demonstrative,” and thereby “abstract, intellectual and arbitrary.” Earlier in the Thoughts, Diderot judges “the thing of the mathematician” to have “as little existence in nature as that of the gambler.” Significantly, this attitude—taken by great scientists who also translated Newton or wrote careful papers on probability theory, as well as by others such as Mandeville—participates in the effort to conceptualize what we might call a new ontology for the emerging life sciences, very different from both the ‘iatromechanism’ and the ‘animism’ of earlier generations, which either failed to account for specifically living, goal-directed features of organisms, or accounted for them in supernaturalistic terms by appealing to an ‘anima’ as explanatory principle. Anti-mathematicism here is then a key component of a naturalistic, open-ended project to give a successful reductionist model of explanation in ‘natural history’, a model which is no more vitalist than it is materialist—but which is fairly far removed from early modern mechanism. (shrink)

A paradox, it is claimed, is a radical form of contradiction, one that produces gaps in meaning. In order to approach this idea, two senses of “separation” are distinguished: separation by something and separation by nothing. The latter does not refer to nothing in an ordinary sense, however, since in that sense what’s intended is actually less than nothing. Numerous ordinary nothings in philosophy as well as in other fields are surveyed so as to clarify the contrast. Then follows the (...) suggestion that philosophies which one would expect to have room for paradoxes actually tend either to exclude them altogether, or to dull them. There is a clear alternative, however, one that fully recognizes paradoxes and yet also strives to overcome them. (shrink)

The organism is neither a discovery like the circulation of the blood or the glycogenic function of the liver, nor a particular biological theory like epigenesis or preformationism. It is rather a concept which plays a series of roles, sometimes masked, often normative, throughout the history of biology. Indeed, it has often been presented as a key-concept in life science and its ‘theorization’, but conversely has also been the target of influential rejections: as just an instrument of transmission for the (...) selfish gene, but also, historiographically, as part of an outdated ‘vitalism’. Indeed, the organism, perhaps because it is experientially closer to the ‘body’ than to the ‘molecule’, is often the object of quasi-affective theoretical investments presenting it as essential, as the pivot of a science or a particular approach to nature, while other approaches reject or attack it with equal force, assimilating it to a mysterious ‘vitalist’ ontology of extra-causal forces, or other pseudo-scientific doctrines. I do not seek to adjudicate between these debates, either regarding scientific validity or historical coherence; nor do I return to the well-studied issue of the organism-mechanism tension in biology. Recent scholarship has begun to discuss the emergence and transformation of the organism concept, but has not emphasized the way the latter is a shifting, ‘go-between’ concept – invoked as ‘natural’ by some thinkers to justify their metaphysics, but then presented as value-laden by others, over and against the natural world. The organism as go-between concept is also a hybrid, a boundary concept or a limit case, which continues to function in different contexts – as a heuristic, an explanatory challenge, a model of order, of regulation, etc. – despite having frequently been pronounced irrelevant and reduced to molecules or genes. Yet this perpetuation is far removed from any ‘metaphysics of organism’, or organismic biology. (shrink)

Intellectual history still quite commonly distinguishes between the episode we know as the Scientific Revolution, and its successor era, the Enlightenment, in terms of the calculatory and quantifying zeal of the former—the age of mechanics—and the rather scientifically lackadaisical mood of the latter, more concerned with freedom, public space and aesthetics. It is possible to challenge this distinction in a variety of ways, but the approach I examine here, in which the focus on an emerging scientific field or cluster of (...) disciplines—the ‘life sciences’, particularly natural history, medicine, and physiology —is, not Romantically anti-scientific, but resolutely anti-mathematical. Diderot bluntly states, in his Thoughts on the interpretation of nature, that “We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences. Given the taste people seem to have for morals, belles-lettres, the history of nature and experimental physics, I dare say that before a hundred years, there will not be more than three great geometricians remaining in Europe. The science will stop short where the Bernoullis, the Eulers, the Maupertuis, the Clairauts, the Fontaines and the D’Alemberts will have left it.... We will not go beyond.” Similarly, Buffon in the first discourse of his Histoire naturelle speaks of the “over-reliance on mathematical sciences,” given that mathematical truths are merely “definitional” and “demonstrative,” and thereby “abstract, intellectual and arbitrary.” Earlier in the Thoughts, Diderot judges “the thing of the mathematician” to have “as little existence in nature as that of the gambler.” Significantly, this attitude—taken by great scientists who also translated Newton or wrote careful papers on probability theory, as well as by others such as Mandeville—participates in the effort to conceptualize what we might call a new ontology for the emerging life sciences, very different from both the ‘iatromechanism’ and the ‘animism’ of earlier generations, which either failed to account for specifically living, goal-directed features of organisms, or accounted for them in supernaturalistic terms by appealing to an ‘anima’ as explanatory principle. Anti-mathematicism here is then a key component of a naturalistic, open-ended project to give a successful reductionist model of explanation in ‘natural history’, a model which is no more vitalist than it is materialist—but which is fairly far removed from early modern mechanism. (shrink)

Few themes resonate as powerfully in Heidegger as those connected to homecoming, homeland, and Heimat. This emphasis plays out most powerfully in Heidegger's reading of Hölderlin and his turn towards language, art, and poetizing as a way of thinking through the poet's relevance in the epoch of homelessness and the abandonment of the gods. As the first book-length study in English of the Heidegger-Hölderlin relation, Of an Alien Homecoming addresses the tension within Heidegger's work between his disastrous political commitments during (...) the era of National Socialism and his attempts to open a path to a German future nurtured on Hölderlin's ideal of poetic dwelling. Charles Bambach reads this work on Hölderlin from 1934–1948 in conversation with the Black Notebooks and Heidegger's metapolitics, even as he uncovers an ethical dimension within Heidegger that pervades his reading of poetry. Throughout all of these various stages on Heidegger's thought path, Hölderlin remains the poet who poetizes the possibility of finding our lost home amidst the homelessness brought about in the epoch of technological thinking. (shrink)

This article looks at the practice of educational questioning using the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans‐Georg Gadamer. It first looks at questions and statements from a hermeneutic perspective, demonstrating some of the differences and similarities between the two. It then details Gadamer's notion of the ‘true question’, asking whether it is possible for teachers to ask ‘true questions’. Then, it turns to some concrete ways to rethink educational questioning. Three themes are proposed, themes to keep in mind when educational questions are (...) used: non‐superficiality, humility, and circuitry. (shrink)

Empiricism is a claim about the contents of the mind: its classic slogan is nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu, ‘there is nothing in the mind (intellect, understanding) which is not first in the senses’. As such, it is not a claim about the fundamental nature of the world as material. I focus here on in an instance of what one might term the materialist appropriation of empiricism. One major component in the transition from a purely epistemological (...) claim about the mind and its contents, to an ontological claim about the nature of the world, is the new focus on brain-mind relations in the eighteenth century. Here I examine a Lockean trajectory as exemplified in Joseph Priestley’s 1777 Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit. But Locke explicitly ruled out that his inquiry into the logic of ideas amounted to a ‘physical consideration of the mind’. What does it mean, then, for Priestley to present himself as continuing a Lockean tradition, while presenting mental processes as tightly identified with ‘an organical structure such as that of the brain’ (although he was not making a strict identity claim as we might understand it, post-Smart and Armstrong)? One issue here is that of Priestley's source of ‘empirical data’ regarding the correlation and indeed identification of mental and cerebral processes. David Hartley’s theory in his 1749 Observations on Man was, as is well known, republished in abridged form by Priestley, but he discards Hartley's 'vibratory neurophysiology' while retaining the associationist framework, although not because he disagreed with the former. Yet Hartley was at the very least, strongly agnostic about metaphysical issues (and it is difficult to study these authors while bracketing off religious considerations). One could see Locke and Hartley as articulating programs for the study of the mind which were more or less naturalistic (more strongly so in Hartley’s case) while avoiding ‘materialism’ per se; in contrast, Priestley bit the (materialist) bullet. In this paper I examine Priestley’s appropriation and reconstruction of this ‘micro-tradition’, while emphasizing its problems. (shrink)

In this essay I renew the case for Conditional Excluded Middle in light of recent developments in the semantics of the subjunctive conditional. I argue that Michael Tooley's recent backward causation counterexample to the Stalnaker-Lewis comparative world similarity semantics undermines the strongest argument against CXM, and I offer a new, principled argument for the validity of CXM that is in no way undermined by Tooley's counterexample. Finally, I formulate a simple semantics for the subjunctive conditional that is consistent with both (...) CXM and Tooley's counterexample. (shrink)

Reflective practice in general, and the views of Carr and Kemmis on ‘action research’ in particular, have become the settled orthodoxy of much educational thinking, but can they take the load that they are being asked to bear? An analysis of ‘reflection’ is offered, which reveals what can be achieved by the operation and what cannot. This is then used to assess the coherence of Kemmis's views on the concept—the basis of Carr and Kemmis's widely-cited theoretical proposals, which they use (...) to justify their approach to action research. I then turn to an examination of the adequacy of these proposals themselves. (shrink)

Current theories suggest that the brain is the sole source of mental illness. However, affective disorders, and major depressive disorder (MDD) in particular, may be better conceptualized as brain-body disorders that involve peripheral systems as well. This perspective emphasizes the embodied, multifaceted physiology of well-being, and suggests that afferent signals from the body may contribute to cognitive and emotional states. In this review, we focus on evidence from preclinical and clinical studies suggesting that afferent thermosensory signals contribute to well-being and (...) depression. Although thermoregulatory systems have traditionally been conceptualized as serving primarily homeostatic functions, increasing evidence suggests neural pathways responsible for regulating body temperature may be linked more closely with emotional states than previously recognized, an affective warmth hypothesis. Human studies indicate that increasing physical warmth activates brain circuits associated with cognitive and affective functions, promotes interpersonal warmth and prosocial behavior, and has antidepressant effects. Consistent with these effects, preclinical studies in rodents demonstrate that physical warmth activates brain serotonergic neurons implicated in antidepressant-like effects. Together, these studies suggest that (1) thermosensory pathways interact with brain systems that control affective function, (2) these pathways are dysregulated in affective disorders, and (3) activating warm thermosensory pathways promotes a sense of well-being and has therapeutic potential in the treatment of affective disorders. (shrink)

My topic is the materialist appropriation of empiricism—as conveyed in the ‘minimal credo’ nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu. That is, canonical empiricists like Locke go out of their way to state that their project to investigate and articulate the ‘logic of ideas’ is not a scientific project: “I shall not at present meddle with the Physical consideration of the Mind”. Indeed, I have suggested elsewhere, contrary to a prevalent reading of Locke, that the Essay is not (...) the extension to the study of the mind of the methods of natural philosophy; that he is actually not the “underlabourer” of Newton and Boyle he claims politely to be in the Epistle to the Reader. Rather, Locke says quite directly if we pay heed to such passages, “Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our Conduct”. There would be more to say here about what this implies for our understanding of empiricism, but instead I shall focus on a different aspect of this episode: how a non-naturalistic claim which falls under what we now call epistemology becomes an ontology—materialism. That is, how an empiricist claim could shift from being about the sources of knowledge to being about the nature of reality.. Put differently, I want to examine the shift from the logic of ideas in the seventeenth century to an eighteenth-century focus on what kind of ‘world’ the senses give us, to an assertion that there is only one substance in the universe, and that we need an account of the material substrate of mental life. This is neither a ‘scientific empiricism’ nor a linear developmental process from philosophical empiricism to natural science, but something else again: the unpredictable emergence of an ontology on empiricist grounds. (shrink)

-/- Table des matières Remerciements 1 -/- INTRODUCTION 2 -/- PREMIERE PARTIE LE VIVANT ET LA REVOLUTION SCIENTIFIQUE 7 -/- ONTOLOGIE DU VIVANT OU BIOLOGIE ? LE CAS DE LA RÉVOLUTION SCIENTIFIQUE 8 -/- Introduction 8 La vie et le vivant sont-ils des thèmes de controverse explicites dans la philosophie naturelle de l’âge classique ? 18 Machines de la nature, ferments et métaphysique chimique 28 Crisis, what crisis ? 42 Conclusion 45 -/- LE MÉCANIQUE FACE AU VIVANT 49 -/- Introduction (...) 49 Que signifie : réduire l’homme (ou le vivant) à l’automate ? 51 Qu’est-ce qu’un vivant ? Un mécanisme élargi 56 Le vivant structuro-fonctionnel 64 Conclusion : l’automate affectif 70 -/- UN MATÉRIALISME VITAL ? 73 -/- Introduction : matérialisme et corps 73 Ontologie matérialiste de la Vie ou constitution progressive de la biologie ? 74 Un matérialisme vital 78 Conclusion 84 -/- DEUXIEME PARTIE MATÉRIALISMES ET VIE 87 -/- DÉTERMINISME MENTAL ET NATURALISATION DE L’ESPRIT, DE LOCKE A DIDEROT 88 -/- Introduction 89 Le déterminisme à l’âge classique et son interprétation 89 L’Âme Matérielle et le Traité de la liberté de l’âme : un déterminisme cérébral 94 Locke : la détermination est une perfection 101 Collins : suspendre son vouloir, c’est encore vouloir 105 Diderot : les « causes propres à l’homme » 111 Conclusion 115 -/- LA METTRIE : LA MÉDICALISATION DE LA MORALE ET L’APPROCHE MATÉRIALISTE DU CORPS 117 -/- Introduction 117 Une morale médicale ? 117 La réduction médicale de la morale 120 L’épicurisme médical 125 Une éthique machinale 130 Conclusion 132 -/- DES MOLÉCULES « INTELLIGENTES » A L’ORGANISATION ÉMERGENTE : LE DÉBAT MAUPERTUIS-DIDEROT 134 -/- Introduction 134 Le contexte newtonien et leibnizien 137 L’argument de Maupertuis 139 La critique de Diderot 143 La réponse de Maupertuis 145 Conclusion : enjeux de la discussion 147 -/- UNE BIOLOGIE CLANDESTINE ? LE PROJET D’UN SPINOZISME BIOLOGIQUE CHEZ DIDEROT 150 -/- Introduction 150 Diderot et la biologie 152 Excursus : la naissance de la biologie 155 Spinozistes anciens et modernes 161 Spinozisme et spinosisme 166 Conclusion 168 -/- TROISIEME PARTIE VITALISME 170 -/- ORGANISATION OU ORGANISME ? L’INDIVIDUATION ORGANIQUE SELON LE VITALISME MONTPELLIÉRAIN 171 -/- Introduction : pour introduire au vitalisme de Montpellier 171 Machine et organisation 174 Le concept vitaliste d’organisation, entre Vie et vies 179 Quelle individualité organique ? 186 Organisation ou organisme 190 Conclusion 197 -/- LES ANALOGIES NEWTONIENNES DANS LES SCIENCES DE LA VIE AU XVIIIE SIÈCLE : VITALISME ET PROCÉDÉS EXPLICATIFS PROVISOIREMENT INEXPLICABLES 200 -/- Introduction 200 Le newtonianisme médical littéral 206 Les transpositions non-littérales de la méthode newtonienne : Buffon, Maupertuis et Hartley 212 Haller : une physiologie de « noms d’attente » 216 Le vitalisme du XVIIIe siècle, un « positivisme prudent » plutôt qu’une « métaphysique impénitente » 220 L’antimathématisme de Mandeville et de Diderot 233 Conclusion 240 -/- VITALISME ET VIVISECTION : APPROCHES VITALISTES DE L’EXPÉRIMENTATION ANIMALE 245 -/- Introduction 245 Considérations préliminaires sur le XVIIe siècle 248 L’École de Montpellier 251 Ménuret de Chambaud 255 Un intermezzo sur Diderot 260 Fouquet et Bordeu contre Haller 263 Conclusion 267 -/- LE CHARME DISCRET DU VITALISME SANS MÉTAPHYSIQUE, XVIIIe - XXe SIÈCLES 272 -/- Introduction 272 Vitalisme substantiel et vitalisme fonctionnel 274 Vitalisme et biologie 279 Conclusion 283 -/- QUATRIEME PARTIE ORGANISME ET BIOPHILOSOPHIE 285 -/- L’ORGANISME : CONCEPT HYBRIDE ET POLÉMIQUE 285 -/- Introduction 286 L’organisme, un hybride 287 L’organisme comme individualité 290 Organisme et organicisme 296 L’organisme vitaliste 301 Ontologie de l’organisme 303 Conclusion 305 -/- LE RETOUR DU VITALISME : CANGUILHEM ET LE PROJET D’UNE BIOPHILOSOPHIE 307 -/- Introduction 307 Un vitalisme passe-partout 308 L’organisme entre épistémologie et ontologie 312 Une métaphysique de l’oursin ? Bioexceptionalisme et biochauvinisme 313 Vitalisme versus mysticisme de la chair 317 Conclusion 323 -/- HOLISME, ORGANICISME ET BIOCHAUVINISME 327 -/- Introduction : organicismes forts et faibles 327 Le holisme et l’organicisme plurivoques 329 Deux remarques critiques au sujet de deux périls étrangement connexes de la théorie holiste-organiciste 333 Holisme, biochauvinisme et subjectivité 337 Conclusion 341 -/- CONCLUSION : LA PHILOSOPHIE DE LA BIOLOGIE AVANT LA BIOLOGIE 345 -/- Bibliographie 350 Index 404. (shrink)