The aim of the paper is to develop the notion of partial probability distributions as being more realistic models of belief systems than the standard accounts. We formulate the theory of partial probability functions independently of any classical semantic notions. We use the partial probability distributions to develop a formal semantics for partial propositional calculi, with extensions to predicate logic and higher order languages. We give a proof theory for the partial logics and obtain soundness and completeness results.

Pour un arbitrage entre la théorie cognitive de l’esprit et la phénoménologie de l’intersubjectivité la technologie simule une situation de croisement perceptif dans un espace virtuel, où la reconnaissance par un agent de la présence d’un autre repose uniquement sur l’interaction comportementale. À la justification de Merleau-Ponty et Varela quant au caractère non représentationnel ni inférentiel de la reconnaissance d’autrui, en dissociant celle-ci d’avec une détermination spatiale, on ajoutera un analogon technologique de l’expérience du « visage » comme halo de (...) présence non objectivable, d’après Levinas. (shrink)

Using the Chinese Ring Puzzle (Kotovsky & Simon, Citation1990; P. J. Reber & Kotovsky, Citation1997), we studied the effect on rule discovery of having to plan actions or not in order to reach a goal state. This was done by asking participants to predict legal moves as in implicit learning tasks (Experiment 1) and by asking participants to make legal moves as in problem-solving tasks (Experiment 2). Our hypothesis was that having a specific goal state to reach has a dual (...) effect on rule discovery. The first effect is positive and related to feedback from moves done in order to attain the goal: generalising the results of action and associating them to the conditions in which they were obtained allows discovery of the rule and learning it. The second effect is negative. In attempting to reach a specific goal, participants first tend to reduce the distance that separates the current state from the goal state (hill climbing) and so neglect the kind of exploration that facilitates rule and procedure discovery because this would seem to be a detour from the goal. Results show that having to plan actions improved performance in implicit learning tasks (Experiment 1), yet it impaired performance in problem-solving tasks (Experiment 2). Although implicit learning and problem solving are based on rule discovery, and entail noticing regularities in the material, in both cases, rule discovery processes appear to be task-dependent. (shrink)

Résumé Charles Wolfe vient de publier Lire le matérialisme (ENS Éditions, 2020), où il esquisse une histoire des différentes formes de matérialisme, y compris le matérialisme vitaliste et les versions du XXe et du XXIe siècle. Pierre-François Moreau, auteur de la préface de l’ouvrage, entame ici une discussion sur les problèmes et les ressources d’une telle histoire.

We re-evaluate existing data that demonstrate a large amount of variability in the content of categories considering the fact that these data have been obtained in a specific task: the production of features of single isolated categories. We present new data that reveal a large consensus when participants have to judge whether or not a given feature is characteristic of a category and we show that classification tasks produce an intermediate level of consensus. We argue that the differences observed between (...) tasks are due to the extent of implied context and we propose a reinterpretation of typicality effects, demonstrating that they are compatible with the existence of a stable conceptual core. In order to explain how the existence of a conceptual core is consistent with variability due to context, we present a theory of categorisation based on a property tree organisation. Within a domain of description, we distinguish between semantic implications (flying → moving) and empirical implications (flying → having wings) as well as between properties used to describe objects. Semantic implications serve to build property lines and Galois lattices are used to reveal category structures according to empirical implications. We show that variability in the category content may be explained by the fact that some properties are emphasised while others are masked according to the context. (shrink)

A general model of problem‐solving processes based on misconception elimination is presented to simulate both impasses and solving processes. The model operates on goal‐related rules and a set of constraint rules in the form of “if (state or goal), do not (Action)” for the explicit constraints in the instructions and the implicit constraints that come from misconceptions of legal moves. When impasses occur, a constraint elimination mechanism is applied. Because successive eliminations of implicit constraints enlarge the problem space and have (...) an effect on planning, the model integrates “plan‐based” and “constraint‐based” approaches to problem‐solving behavior.Simulating individual protocols of Tower of Hanoi situations shows that the model, which has a proper set of constraints, predicts a single move with no alternative on about 61% of the movements and that protocols are quite successfully simulated movement by movement. Finally, it is shown that many features of previous models are embedded in the constraint elimination model. (shrink)

Analyzing the way computer technologies are used is crucial for their development. Such analyses make it possible to evaluate these technologies and enhance their evolution. The present article presents some ideas drawn from the development of a cooperation platform for elementary school children (10–11 years old). On the basis of an obvious ergonomic requirement, we worked on two other dimensions: cultural aspects and the teaching scenario. The goal was to set up observation situations and analyze the conversations produced during those (...) situations, in order to understand what using the platform meant to both the pupils and their teachers. (shrink)

Contributors: Steven Barbone, Laurent Bove, Edwin Curley, Valérie Debuiche, Michael Della Rocca, Simon B. Duffy, Daniel Garber, Pascale Gillot, Céline Hervet, Jonathan Israel, Chantal Jaquet, Mogens Lærke, Jacqueline Lagrée, Martin Lin, Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Pierre-François Moreau, Steven Nadler, Knox Peden, Alison Peterman, Charles Ramond, Michael A. Rosenthal, Pascal Sévérac, Hasana Sharp, Jack Stetter, Ariel Suhamy, Lorenzo Vinciguerra.

Jean Gayon can be defined a philosopher of biology with a historical approach to epistemic issues. Evidence for this statement may come from reconsidering his Darwinism’sDarwinismStruggle for Survival (Gayon, Darwinism’s struggle for survival: Heredity and the hypothesis of natural selection, Cambridge University Press, 1998 [1992]), which he presented as “a scenario of rational reconstructionRational reconstruction.” He was essentially interested in developmental perspectives on concepts, theories and analytic procedures, but the reconstructions he considered had to undergo the test of fitting with (...) a historical analysis of the antagonistic theories that developed and succeeded that of DarwinDarwin, Charles. The rigorous and successful methodology Gayon applied in this major work and several others may account for the lasting value of his reconstitution of the transformation phases that the Darwinian hypothesisHypothesis of evolution by natural selectionSelection underwent up to the advent of the evolutionary synthesis. (shrink)

Putnam is known for having demonstated the existence of a new form of context-dependence, namely that which characterizes natural kind terms. Terms like ‘tiger' and ‘water' are indexical, Putnam says, since their conditions of application varies with the context of use — in a suitably broad sense of ‘context'. In this talk I focus on the relation between Putnam's semantics and a body of views I call ‘contextualism'. Contextualism generalizes context-sensitivity : it claims that sentences carry contents only in the (...) context of a speech act. This view was put forward by ordinary language philosophers in the mid-twentieth century, and it has re-surfaced in recent times in the works of philosophers like John Searle, Charles Travis, and myself. In the talk I argue that Putnam's semantics has strong affinities with contextualism. (shrink)

Importante contribution à l’histoire d’une guerre si longtemps « sans nom », la publication des actes du colloque international organisé par l’Université de Montpellier III et le Centre d’études d’histoire de la défense (CEHD) propose un ensemble de travaux revisitant la guerre d’Algérie. Ce travail, commencé en 1988 avec le colloque « La Guerre d’Algérie et les Français », poursuivi en contrechamp quelques années plus tard avec « La guerre d’Algérie et les Algériens », vient donc, non pas ac...

The Post-Modern Reader edited by Charles Jencks An Anthology of a World Movement Post-Modernism has been debated, attacked, and defended for a generation, but only in the last few years has it come into focus as a coherent way of thought embracing all areas of culture. This is the first anthology that presents the synthesising trend in all its diversity, a convergence in architecture and literature, film and cultural theory, sociology, feminism and theology, science and economics. It is however, (...) a synthesis with a difference; it is one which stresses a contested pluralism, the ‘dialogic' that underlies the growth of sciences as well as the development of other art forms such as the novel. Some of the key historical texts are reprinted in part - those of Daniel Bell on the post-industrial society and Jean-François Lyotard on the post-modern condition. The new cultural logic of contested pluralism is analysed in seminal papers by Andreas Huyssen and Jim Collins. The fundamental ideas on post-modern literature are defined by Umberto Eco, John Barth and David Lodge and the theories they present challenge the notion of post-modernism as an ultra avant-garde movement and the expression of a consumer society. New Cultural Theory Late Modernism Literature, Art, Architecture and Film Sociology, Politics and Geography Feminism Science and Religion Tito Arecchi, John Barth, Jean Baudrillard, Daniel Bell, Charles Birch, David Bohm, Jim Collins, Norman K Denzin, Umberto Eco, Edward Goldsmith, David Ray Griffin, Jürgen Habermas, David Harvey, Ihab Hassan, Linda Hutcheon, Andreas Huyssen, Charles Jencks, Heinrich Klotz, Hans Küng, David Lodge, Jean-François Lyotard, Robin Murray, Craig Owens, Paolo Portoghesi, Margaret Rose, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Edward W Soja. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:François H. Lapointe PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE: A BIBLIOGRAPHIC SURVEY ThL· survey is limited to articles written in English that have appeared in journals published between 1 January 1974 and 31 December 1976. Abbott, Don. "Marxist Influences on the Rhetorical Theory of Kenneth Burke." Philosophy and Rhetoric 7 (1974): 217-33. Abel, Lionel. "Jacques Derrida: His 'Difference' With Metaphysics." Salmagundi no. 25 (1974): 3-21. Adamowski, T. H. "Character and Consciousness: D. (...) H. Lawrence, Wilhelm Reich, and Jean-Paul Sartre." University of Toronto Quarterly 43 (1974): 31 1-34. Adams, D. J. "Style and Social Ideas in Jacques le fataliste." Studies in Voltaire & the Eighteenth Century 124 (1974): 231-48. Adams, Hazard. "Contemporary Ideas of Literature: Terrible Beauty or Rough Beast?" Contemporary Literature 17 (1976): 349-77. Adorno, Theodor W. "Lyric Poetry and Society." Telos no. 20 (1974): 56-71. Ages, Arnold. "Bonald and the Jews." Revue de l'Université d'Ottawa 44 (1974): 32-43. Allen, Diogenes. "The Experience of Existence: Jean-Paul Sartre and Iris Murdoch." International Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1974): 181-87. Allen, Marcus. "Character Development in the Oreste of Voltaire and Les Mouches of Jean-Paul Sartre." CLA Journal 18 (1974): 1-21. Alter, Jean. "A (Terrorist) System of the Novel." Diacritics 6 (1976): 10-15. Altieri, Charles. "Wittgenstein on Consciousness and Language: A Challenge to Derridean Literary Theory." MLN 91 (1976): 1397-1423. Altieri,Charles. "Wordsworth's 'Preface' as Literary Theory." Criticism 18 (1976): 122-146. [On Wordworth and Wittgenstein.] Ames, Van Meter. "Art for Art's Sake Again?" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33 (1975): 303-307. Appleman, Philip. "The Dread Factor: Eliot, Tennyson, and the Shaping of Science." Columbia Forum, N. S. 3 (1974): 32-38. Armstrong, Paul B. " E. M. Forster's Howard's End: The Existential Crisis of the Liberal Imagination." Mosaic 8 (1974): 183-99. Arnold, A. James. "La Condition humaine as Nietzschean Tragedy." Mélanges Malraux Miscellany 6 (1974): 15-24. 366 François H. Lapointe367 Aronson, Ronald. "L'Idiot de la famille: The Ultimate Sartre?" Telos no. 20 (1974): 90-107. Arthos, John. "Du Bartas, Petrarch and the Poetry of Deism." Rice University Studies 60 (1974): 1-17. Artz, Johannes. "Newman as Philosopher." International Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1976): 263-88. Ausmus, Harry J. "Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Language." The Midwest Quarterly 18 (1977): 169-86. Ayala, Francisco. "Ortega y Gasset, Literary Critic." Critical Inquiry 1 (1974): 395-414. Bakalar, H. Nicholas. "The Cartesian Legacy to the Eighteenth-century Grammarians." MLN 91 (1976): 698-721. Barnes, Hazel. "Apotheosis and Deification in Plato, Nietzsche and Huxley." Philosophy and Literature 1 (1976): 3-24. Baron, Dennis E. "Role Structure and the Language of Literature." Journal of Literary Semantics 4 (1975): 43-52. Barooskian, Vahan D. "The Aesthetics of the Russian Revolutionary Theatre 1917-1921." British Journal of Aesthetics 15 (1975): 99-117. Bart, B. F. "Hypercreativity in Stendhal and Balzac." Nineteenth Century French Studies 3 (1974-75): 18-39. Barthes, Roland. "An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative." New Literary History 6 (1975): 237-72. Bashford, Bruce. "The Rhetorical Method in Literary Criticism." Philosophy and Rhetoric 9 (1976): 133-46. Bass, Alan. "Time and the Witch: Femininity, Metapsychology and the Temporality of the Unconscious." MLN 91 (1976): 871-912. Bassett, Sharon. "Towards a Critique of Romanticism: Wordsworth, Pater and the 'Anima Mundi'." Criticism 17 (1975): 262-75. Batchelor, R. "Literature, Society and the Concept of Revolt." European Studies Review 5 (1975): 395-427. Battin, M. Pabst. "Aristotle's Definition of Tragedy in the Poetics, Part 1." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33 (1974): 155-70, and Part II in Ibid. 33 (1975): 293-302. Bauer, George. "Sartre and the 'Sugars' of History." L'Esprit Créateur 15 (1975): 377-86. Baumgarten, Murray. "The Historical Novel: Some Postulates." Clio 4 (1975): 173-82. Beauchamp, Gorman. "Gulliver's Return to the Cave: Plato's Republic and Book IV of Gulliver's Travels." The Michigan Academician 7 (1974): 201-10. Bennett, Jonathan. "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn." Philosophy 48 (1974): 123-34. Benzon, William. "Cognitive Networks and Literary Semantics." MLN 91 (1976): 952-82. Bergonzi, Bernard. "A Grid of Codes: Views of Structuralism." Encounter 45 (1975): 52-58. Berry, Wanda Warren. "The... (shrink)

Une postérité,bien connue, est née de Charles de Foucauld : des congrégations religieuses qui se sont inspirées de lui et qui ont fait surgir des ≪ tiers-ordres ≫ (Fraternités Sacerdotale et Séculière). Une autre postérité existe, née du vivant de Charles de Foucauld, une ≪UNION ≫ qu’il a fondée, rassemblant des baptises, maries ou non, ordonnes ou non, religieux ou non, qu’il a destines a être, comme lui, des ≪ missionnaires isoles ≫, disait-il, des ≪ défricheurs évangéliques≫ ; (...) mille membres existent aujourd’hui a travers le monde, qui veulent, dans leur vie quotidienne et leurs insertions, leur ≪Nazareth ≫, vivre selon cette vocation. (shrink)

This article uses Ronald Dworkin's argument for the unity of value to explore the redemptive core of modern legal order. Dworkin establishes a formal unity: all legal claims reside within a linked framework of moral justification. However, Jean-Francois Lyotard's concept of the differend exposes a lingering gap. Arguments within a moral universe do inevitably converge, but such unity is only possible due to the formative violence enactedbysuch orders. Dworkin hopes to provide the definitive statement against moral subjectivity, but in (...) its purest form, he proves precisely the opposite. The lesson to draw from Dworkin's work is that ‘justice’ is ultimately only the means by which political orders categorize and thereby sustain their own formative acts of exclusion under the guise of offering their redemption. (shrink)

The eminent French biologist and historian of biology, François Jacob, once notoriously declared “On n’interroge plus la vie dans les laboratoires”: laboratory research no longer inquires into the notion of ‘Life’. Nowadays, as David Hull puts it, “both scientists and philosophers take ontological reduction for granted… Organisms are ‘nothing but’ atoms, and that is that.” In the mid-twentieth century, from the immediate post-war period to the late 1960s, French philosophers of science such as Georges Canguilhem, Raymond Ruyer and Gilbert Simondon (...) returned to Jacob’s statement with an odd kind of pathos: they were determined to reverse course. Not by imposing a different kind of research program in laboratories, but by an unusual combination of historical and philosophical inquiry into the foundations of the life sciences (particularly medicine, physiology and the cluster of activities that were termed ‘biology’ in the early 1800s). Even in as straightforwardly scholarly a work as La formation du concept de réflexe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (1955), Canguilhem speaks oddly of “defending vitalist biology,” and declares that Life cannot be grasped by logic (or at least, “la vie déconcerte la logique”). Was all this historical and philosophical work merely a reassertion of ‘mysterian’, magical vitalism? In order to answer this question we need to achieve some perspective on Canguilhem’s ‘vitalism’, notably with respect to its philosophical influences such as Kurt Goldstein. (shrink)

The essays in this collection honor Professor Ellis Sandoz, Hermann Moyse Jr. Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Louisiana State University, and founding director of the Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies, an institute located at Louisiana State University and devoted to research and publication in the fields of political philosophy, constitutional law, and Voegelin studies. Without the tireless leadership—both academic and economic—of Ellis Sandoz, who was one of Eric Voegelin’s early students and his first American doctoral candidate at the (...) University of Munich, the thirty-four volumes of _The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin _would never have neared completion within only twenty years of Voegelin’s death. The authors of the essays, some of the most respected scholars in the field of political philosophy, hail from Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, and the United States. They have known Sandoz in a variety of ways: as former students, as beneficiaries of his work on constitutionalism, as fellow participants in the publication of _The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin_, as philosophical colleagues, as participating members of the Eric Voegelin Society, and finally as friends. The essays, each written especially for this volume, are grouped into the disciplines of philosophy, literature, and politics and range widely across these subjects, exploring writers as diverse as Xenophon, Natsume Soseki, Freud, and George Santayana and topics ranging from the leadership style of François Mitterrand and the Velvet Revolution to the nature of the Law and of the Political. _Philosophy, Literature, and Politics _is a fitting tribute to a man whose life’s work has been formed by commitment to the philosophical enterprise and by a conviction in Eric Voegelin’s contribution to that enterprise. The seventeen essays in this collection will be of particular interest to scholars of politics, comparative government, Japanese studies, political philosophy, and literary criticism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: GEORGES CANGUILHEM’S BIOPHILOSOPHY The eminent French biologist and historian of biology, François Jacob, once notoriously declared «On n’interroge plus la vie dans les laboratoires»: laboratory research no longer inquires into the notion of “Life”. Certain influential French philosophers of science of the mid‐century such as Georges Canguilhem would disagree, or at least seek to resist some of Jacob’s diagnosis. Not by imposing a different kind of research program in laboratories, but by an unusual combination of historical and philosophical inquiry (...) into the foundations of the life sciences. Canguilhem speaks of «defending vitalist biology» and declares that Life cannot be grasped by logic. Is this history and philosophy of biology? Is it vitalism? It definitely is a different project from current philosophy of biology. One short‐lived term for it was “biophilosophy”. In this paper I explore the content of this term as it relates to the above questions. (shrink)

This article reports on a historical investigation carried out on the conical object MIN000-3519 preserved in the mineralogy collections of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle at Paris (France). The mineralogist René-Just Haüy (1743-1822) included this object, cut in a single pyrite (FeS2) crystal, in his working collection with the references ‘Sulphured iron, mirror of the Incas, of Peru, M. de Jussieu’. All of the research lines followed lead the author to Joseph de Jussieu (1704-1779) and his shipments of botanical specimens (...) and various other samples from South America. As a member of the Godin-La Condamine-Bouguer geodesic expedition on the equator (1735-1743), he returned to France only after 36 years (1771), ill, exhausted and dispossessed of the scientific product of his Andean collections. This pyrite mirror is important because, in addition to appearing to be the only archaeological object that can be linked to Joseph's peregrinations in America, it resembles other specimens found at sites of the Cañaris culture (500-1500 AD) in Ecuador. Preserved within the de Jussieu family, this object would presumably have been given to Haüy by Joseph's heirs, his nephews Antoine-Laurent (1748-1836) or Laurent-Pierre (1792-1866), with whom he had close ties. (shrink)

L'intitulé du présent ouvrage a été choisi pour faire écho à la critique formulée naguère par Jean-François Lyotard à l'encontre d'Adorno : Lyotard réclamait, pour aborder les musiques qu'il estimait susceptibles de participer authentiquement à la " réécriture de la modernité ", que l'on abandonnât l'" alternative " définie par cet auteur ; n'étant " ni apparence, musica ficta, ni connaissance laborieuse, musica fingens ", l'œuvre (ou la non-œuvre) " littérale ", povera, serait " jeu métamorphique d'intensités sonores, travail parodique (...) de rien, musica figura ". On s'est donc efforcé, d'enquêter sur l'élaboration de la " catégorie postmodernité " prise in statu nascendi, c'est-à-dire à sa source musicale. Cela permettait de faire droit à la relative complexité sémantique du mot fiction. Celui-ci n'est pas seulement synonyme de " fabrication ", car au latin fabricare, le fingere ajoute la nuance d'une " feinte ". Et " feinte " nous expédie vers l'eirôneia des Grecs " ironie " et postmodernité ne peuvent que s'entendre. Mais le premier des ironistes postmodernes n'est autre que le premier musicien vraiment répétitif : Nietzsche. Son Fragment an sich, un morceau de piano de 22 mesures daté de 1871, comporte en effet un Da Capo non chiffré : illimité! La fiction musicale de la postmodernité, ne serait-ce pas dès lors la ritournelle, figure (figura) de l'éternel retour? (shrink)

Philosophy of biology before biology -/- Edited by Cécilia Bognon-Küss & Charles T. Wolfe -/- Table of contents -/- Cécilia Bognon-Küss & Charles T. Wolfe. Introduction -/- 1. Cécilia Bognon-Küss & Charles T. Wolfe. The idea of “philosophy of biology before biology”: a methodological provocation -/- Part I. FORM AND DEVELOPMENT -/- 2. Stéphane Schmitt. Buffon’s theories of generation and the changing dialectics of molds and molecules 3. Phillip Sloan. Metaphysics and “Vital” Materialism: The Gabrielle Du Châtelet (...) Circle and French Vitalism 4. John Zammito. The Philosophical Reception of C. F. Wolff’s Epigenesis in Germany, 1770-1790: Herder, Tetens and Kant -/- Part II. ORGANISM & ORGANIZATION 5. François Duchesneau. Senebier and the Advent of General Physiology 6. Tobias Cheung. Organization and Process. Living Systems Between Inner and Outer Worlds: Cuvier, Hufeland, Cabanis. -/- Part III. SYSTEMS 7. Georg Toepfer. Philosophy of Ecology Long Before Ecology: Kant’s Idea of an Organized System of Organized Beings 8. Ina Goy. "All is leaf". Goethe's plant philosophy and poetry 9. Snait Gissis. ‘Biology’, Lamarck, Lamarckisms -/- POSTSCRIPTS 1. Lynn Nyhart. A Historical Proposal Around Prepositions -/- 2. Philippe Huneman. Philosophy after Philosophy of Biology before Biology -/- Cécilia Bognon-Küss and Charles T. Wolfe. Conclusion . (shrink)

We examine aspects of Canguilhem’s philosophy of biology, concerning the knowledge of life and its consequences on science and vitalism. His concept of life stems from the idea of a living individual endowed with creative subjectivity and norms, a Kantian view which “disconcerts logic.” In contrast, we examine two naturalistic perspectives in the 1970s exploring the logic of life (JacobJacob, François) and the logic of the living individual (MaturanaMaturana, Humberto and VarelaVarela, Francisco). Canguilhem can be considered to be a precursor (...) of the second view, but there are divergences; for example, unlike them, he does not dismiss vitalism, often referring to it in his work, and even at times describing himself as a vitalist. The reason may lie in their different views of science. (shrink)