What is philosophy of science? Numerous manuals, anthologies or essays provide carefully reconstructed vantage points on the discipline that have been gained through expert and piecemeal historical analyses. In this paper, we address the question from a complementary perspective: we target the content of one major journal of the field—Philosophy of Science—and apply unsupervised text-mining methods to its complete corpus, from its start in 1934 until 2015. By running topic-modeling algorithms over the full-text corpus, we identified 126 key research topics (...) that span across 82 years. We also tracked their evolution and fluctuating significance over time in the journal articles. Our results concur with and document known and lesser-known episodes of the philosophy of science, including the rise and fall of logic and language-related topics, the relative stability of a metaphysical and ontological questioning (space and time, causation, natural kinds, realism), the significance of epistemological issues about the nature of scientific knowledge as well as the rise of a recent philosophy of biology and other trends. These analyses exemplify how computational text-mining methods can be used to provide an empirical large-scale and data-driven perspective on the history of philosophy of science that is complementary to other current historical approaches. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 689 present the spirit of Catholic Christianity to contemporary man in such a way that it [Catholic Christianity, not contemporary man!] appears credible in itself and its historical development..." (emph. mine). Clearly, de Lubac's entire theology is an effort to say the opposite of what the mistranslation regrettably says. Page 46: "his articles, however, which from 1972 [typographical correction: 1942] on prepared for his works on modern (...) atheism (1944/1945)..." On pages 80 and 115, the word "mysterial" is introduced; it should be "mystical." On page 94-95, "the strict rejection of all reduction of God's living consciousness [correction: the living consciousness of God] to logical categories" is misleading because Balthasar is referring to man's living consciousness of God. Page 101: " We experience what a true theology [correction: theologian] is for de Lubac..." On the same page there are two typographical errors, adding a parenthesis and omitting quotation marks. Abbe Monchanin's De l'esthetique a la mystique (From Aesthetics to Mysticism) is mistranslated as From Asceticism to Mysticism on page 102. This 1991 edition translates Henri de Lubac's name for the first and only time as " Henry de Lubac" on page 118. Michael Waldstein's and Susan Clement's translations are fine and readable. The Catholic Universtiy of America Washington, D.C. MARK D. NAPACK Hans Urs von Balthasar. His Life and Work. Edited by DAVID L. SCHINDLER. San Francisco: Communio Books/Ignatius Press, 1991. Pp. 305. This is an important contribution to English-language scholarship on the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. As such it marks a nice complement to the volume edited by John Riches, The Analogy of Beauty: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986). Schindler's volume is a slightly edited translation of Hans Urs von Balthasar: Gestalt und Werke, edited by Karl Lehmann and Walter Kasper (Cologne: Communio, 1989). Most of the articles appeared in one or more of the many editions of Communio International Catholic Review, the periodical founded by Balthasar. The richness of the volume lies not only in the quality of individual selections but in the range of material that is covered. Many areas of Balthasar's life and work have remained little known, especially in the English-speaking world, until the appearance of this volume. The pur- 690 BOOK REVIEWS pose of the book, according to Schindler's preface, is "to help display [Balthasar's] vision and the character and range of his service to the Church and to culture" (p. xiii). There are several essays in the volume which shed new light on Balthasar's life, as well as on his philosophical position. Peter Henrici's lengthy biographical sketch is the most complete such contribution available until now, even though he calls it "preliminary and inadequate " (p. 7). It is extremely useful, in conjunction with Balthasar's own autobiographical statements, to situate the written work in the context of a large mission in the Church. It is also helpful in clarifying the relationship between Balthasar and the Jesuit order: his entry into the Society of Jesus, his studies, his departure from the Jesuits, and the attempted reconciliation with them shortly before his death. The extent of his health problems, also, only underlines the value of his literary production. Many details concerning the meeting with Adrienne von Speyr and the founding of the secular institute ]ohannesgemeinschaft are also provided. Throughout these activities and the writings that surround them, "the issue is the Church in the world, not a radiating of the Church's holiness into the profane world, but the leavening of the world from within in order to make visible God's glory which still shines in this world" (p. 24). Henrici has another essay in the collection on the philosophy of Balthasar. This is a little explored area of Balthasar's writings and Henrici's contribution is especially valuable. By clarifying Balthasar's position in relation to key figures in the history of philosophy, it provides many significant hints to facilitate the integration of Balthasar's theology within the academic milieu. Balthasar reflected on the possibilities of an encounter between Catholic theology and modern thought. By the... (shrink)

Cultural Attraction Theory (CAT), also referred to as cultural epidemiology, is an evolutionary theory of culture. It provides conceptual tools and a theoretical framework for explaining why and how ideas, practices, artifacts and other cultural items spread and persist in a community and its habitat. It states that cultural phenomena result from psychological or ecological factors of attraction.

One of our main goals with “Expression unleashed” was to highlight the distinctive, ostensive nature of human communication, and the many roles that ostension can play in human behavior and society. The commentaries we received forced us to be more precise about several aspects of this thesis. At the same time, no commentary challenged the central idea that the manifest diversity of human expression is underpinned by a common cognitive unity. Our reply is organized around six issues: (1) languages and (...) their cultural evolution; (2) the pervasiveness of expression in human behavior; (3) artificial intelligence and ostensive communication; (4) communication in other animals; (5) the ecology and evolution of ostensive communication; and (6) biolinguistics and pragmatics. (shrink)

Thèse. Sciences sociales. Sciences politiques. 1961.

Plusieurs épreuves peuvent être engagées avec l’image, depuis les "devinettes" du Sphinx auxquelles répond brillamment Oedipe jusqu’à la panique télévisuelle que déclenche l’entrée en eau d’Éric Moussambani aux jeux Olympiques de Sydney. Chacune des épreuves prises en compte dans cet ouvrage implique la mise en relation de l’image et du corps. Cet ouvrage se propose de mener une enquête pour tenter de comprendre comment, pour faire-image, un corps doit s’insérer dans une nouvelle configuration du sensible, à partir d’un choix d’objets (...) issus du théâtre, de la littérature, de la philosophie, du cinéma et de la télévision. Depuis Oedipe jusqu’aux Monty Pythons, de La Bruyère à Hrundi V. Bakshi, le héros du film The Party, de Blake Edwards, avec les traités de Balzac, de Barbey d’Aurevilly ou de Marcel Mauss, une "épreuve de l’image" se précise dans une nouvelle transaction des corps et de l’espace, où se déploient également de nouvelles puissances des corps. (shrink)

We point out how some Christian-Muslim comparative philosophies of religion may be enhanced with certain translations or interpretations of Christianity: a modalist view of the trinity and a high Christology. While perhaps of only limited significance, we argue in more detail that a comparison of two leading philosophers, one Islamic, the other Christian, can bring to light a shared philosophy of innate ideas or nativism, grounding moral and theological views of goodness and the divine.

Nous proposons aux lecteurs un des tout premiers ouvrages parus sur Nietzsche, et assurément le premier qui entreprend de montrer que Nietzsche est un authentique « philosophe ». Pourquoi Nietzsche n’était-il pas considéré comme un philosophe par beaucoup de ses contemporains? Et en quel sens peut-on néanmoins le déclarer philosophe? C’est notamment à ces questions que répond cet essai de Hans Vaihinger, qui fut l’un des très rares néokantiens à s’intéresser à l’œuvre de Nietzsche.

Le chef-d’oeuvre de Tillich, Le courage d’être, propose une théologie de l’affirmation de soi en Dieu en remettant en question les symboles traditionnels du théisme. Mais la foi qu’il propose, qualifiée d’« absolue », est dépourvue de symboles concrets pour ce courage d’être. Or, dans un autre texte, Tillich souligne l’inconvénient de la théologie critique qui démythologise les symboles chrétiens et il met en avant l’intérêt de la psychologie analytique (Jung) pour la théologie. Nous montrons dans cet article qu’une reprise (...) différenciée de l’archétype du Soi jungien permet de le rapprocher du « Dieu au-delà de Dieu » de la foi absolue. Sur cette base nous proposons un prolongement concret de cette foi avec l’interprétation jungienne des symboles présents dans nos rêves. (shrink)

The concept of “life” certainly is of some use to distinguish birds and beavers from water and stones. This pragmatic usefulness has led to its construal as a categorical predicate that can sift out living entities from non-living ones depending on their possessing specific properties—reproduction, metabolism, evolvability etc. In this paper, we argue against this binary construal of life. Using text-mining methods across over 30,000 scientific articles, we defend instead a degrees-of-life view and show how these methods can contribute to (...) experimental philosophy of science and concept explication. We apply topic-modeling algorithms to identify which specific properties are attributed to a target set of entities (bacteria, archaea, viruses, prions, plasmids, phages and the molecule of adenine). Eight major clusters of properties were identified together with their relative relevance for each target entity (two that relate to metabolism and catalysis, one to genetics, one to evolvability, one to structure, and—rather unexpectedly—three that concern interactions with the environment broadly construed). While aligning with intuitions—for instance about viruses being less alive than bacteria—these quantitative results also reveal differential degrees of performance that have so far remained elusive or overlooked. Taken together, these analyses provide a conceptual “lifeness space” that makes it possible to move away from a categorical construal of life by empirically assessing the relative lifeness of more-or-less alive entities. (shrink)

La catégorie du banquet public existait dans la société romaine qui opposait convivium privatum et convivium publicum. Contrairement à l’idée reçue, le terme latin epulum ne désignait pas toujours, et pas seulement, le banquet public, car les mots convivium et cena pouvaient aussi s’y appliquer. À l’origine, les banquets publics – banquets rituels ou banquets d’investiture des prêtres et magistrats (cena aditialis) – ne concernaient que les prêtres et les magistrats, parfois les sénateurs (Epulum Iovis). Ces participants disposaient du epulandi (...) publice ius. En 217, le banquet des Saturnales fut ouvert au populus, mais ce cas resta isolé dans le cadre rituel. En revanche, à partir du début du IIe siècle, les nobles prirent l’habitude d’offrir des banquets au peuple lors de leurs funérailles familiales, puis au Ier siècle, les imperatores le firent d’abord lors de la Dîme d’Hercule puis lors de leurs triomphes. Dans ces circonstances, le convivium publicum devenait alors l’epulum populi romani et l’epulandi publice ius concernait les membres du populus, sans doute répertoriés sur une liste.Une telle évolution montre que la présence du populus n’était pas, sous la République, consubstantielle au banquet public. Elle montre aussi que le caractère public d’un banquet n’était pas déterminé par le statut du donateur ou l’origine des fonds mais par la qualité de représentants de la cité des bénéficiaires (magistrats, sénateurs ou citoyens), ainsi que par sa localisation dans un lieu public. (shrink)

Though only established as a discipline since the 1970s, philosophy of biology has already triggered investigations about its own history The Oxford handbook of philosophy of biology, Oxford University Press, New York, pp 11–33, 2008). When it comes to assessing the road since travelled—the research questions that have been pursued—manuals and ontologies also offer specific viewpoints, highlighting dedicated domains of inquiry and select work. In this article, we propose to approach the history of the philosophy of biology with a complementary (...) data-driven perspective that makes use of statistical algorithms applied to the complete full-text corpus of one major journal of the field—Biology and Philosophy—from its launch in 1986 up until 2017. By running text-mining and topic-modeling algorithms, we identified 67 key research topics that span across these 32 years. We also investigated the evolution of these topics over time and their fluctuating significance in the journal articles. Our results concur with known episodes or traits of the discipline—for instance, the significance of evolution-related topics or the decrease of articles with a marked historical dimension—but also highlight a diversity of topics that is much richer than what is usually acknowledged. (shrink)

Le présent dossier s’inscrit dans la continuité des travaux menés au sein du projet : « Histoire du post- et néokantisme » au sein de l’axe 3 des Archives Poincaré, projet mené en étroite collaboration avec l’Académie Helmholtz présidée par Gerhard Heinzmann, et de nombreux partenaires universitaires, enseignants et doctorants, qui travaillent sur l’histoire de la philosophie allemande d’inspiration kantienne. Dans un précédent volume de _Philosophia Scientiæ_ (20-1) paru en 2016, _Le kantisme hors des écoles kantiennes_, dirigé par Oliver Schlaudt (...) et moi-même, nous nous étions intéressés à la réception du kantisme chez des auteurs qui n’étaient pas inscrits dans une ligne de pensée directement kantienne, mais dont les critiques constructives à l’égard du kantisme jouaient un rôle très dynamique et fécond, infléchissant l’héritage de Kant dans de nouvelles directions. Dans le présent dossier, il s’agit cette fois de manifester la variété des courants rangés sous l’appellation générique d... (shrink)

Though only established as a discipline since the 1970s, philosophy of biology has already triggered investigations about its own history The Oxford handbook of philosophy of biology, Oxford University Press, New York, pp 11–33, 2008). When it comes to assessing the road since travelled—the research questions that have been pursued—manuals and ontologies also offer specific viewpoints, highlighting dedicated domains of inquiry and select work. In this article, we propose to approach the history of the philosophy of biology with a complementary (...) data-driven perspective that makes use of statistical algorithms applied to the complete full-text corpus of one major journal of the field—Biology and Philosophy—from its launch in 1986 up until 2017. By running text-mining and topic-modeling algorithms, we identified 67 key research topics that span across these 32 years. We also investigated the evolution of these topics over time and their fluctuating significance in the journal articles. Our results concur with known episodes or traits of the discipline—for instance, the significance of evolution-related topics or the decrease of articles with a marked historical dimension—but also highlight a diversity of topics that is much richer than what is usually acknowledged. (shrink)

The explosion of health-related costs in U.S. firms over more than a decade is a huge concern for managers. The initiation of Health and Safety programs at the firm level is an adequate Corporate Social Responsibility initiative to contain this evolution. However, in spite of their documented efficiency, firms underinvest in those programs. This appears as a puzzle for health economists. In this paper, we uncover a strong negative relation of financial leverage to the implementation of H&S programs. The negative (...) impact of debt on investment and CSR activities is generally interpreted as an efficient disciplinary effect of debt on managers. H&S are particularly well suited to revisit this evidence, given their strong profitability and homogeneity across firms. Very interestingly, the negative effect is stronger for firms with high free cash flows, for which debt is used to prevent overinvestment. This strongly suggests that debt, while disciplining managers, also discourages investments which are valuable both for firms and society. (shrink)

Les théories de la démocratie délibérative ont profondément renouvelé notre conception de la citoyenneté. La délibération collective suppose que le citoyen se conforme à un ensemble de règles procédurales et soit capable d’exposer les raisons justifiant ce qui, à ses yeux, serait la meilleure décision à prendre. Une telle aptitude à délibérer s’acquiert et fait partie de la formation du citoyen. L’objectif de cette contribution est d’apporter quelques éléments de réflexion sur la manière dont on peut apprendre à délibérer, sur (...) ce que cela signifie et sur ce qu’on doit attendre d’un tel apprentissage. Nos démocraties ont plus que jamais besoin d’une culture de la délibération qui s’exerce dès l’école et qui ne saurait se réduire à la maîtrise du raisonnement et de l’argumentation. (shrink)

La doctrine classique de la Common Law est la cible de nombreuses critiques de la part de Hobbes et de Bentham. Tous deux remettent en cause les principes qui fondent et justifient cette composante fondamentale du droit anglais. Sont notamment visés le caractère coutumier qui lui est attribué, sa prétendue rationalité ainsi que l’interprétation qu’en font les juges. Moment décisif dans l’histoire des théories du droit, cette controverse tend à faire prévaloir l’idée d’un droit créé par un acte de volonté (...) sur un droit non écrit, tiré de la coutume, que les juges s’efforcent d’appliquer et de perpétuer. Mais, au-delà de leur portée critique, les textes de Hobbes et Bentham présentent des divergences qui font apparaître deux conceptions distinctes de la Common Law et de la décision judiciaire. (shrink)

Le droit naturel soutient l’hypothèse d’une connexion nécessaire entre le droit et la morale. Pour les positivistes, cette thèse impliquerait l’invalidité de toute loi injuste. Lex iniusta non est lex. Cette maxime a malheureusement été la source de nombreux malentendus. À travers cette formule, le positivisme attribue au droit naturel une thèse que personne ne défend réellement. Notre objectif est de comprendre la genèse de ce malentendu et d’exposer la manière dont les théories contemporaines du droit naturel tentent de démêler (...) les confusions véhiculées par cette maxime. Le droit naturel ne conteste pas nécessairement la validité des lois injustes mais il permet, à partir de la signification « focale » des concepts juridiques, de comprendre en quoi ces lois sont à la fois juridiquement et moralement défectueuses. (shrink)

La médiation pénale fait partie des procédures qui peuvent être proposées comme alternatives aux poursuites. Elle permet aux personnes de se réapproprier la résolution des conflits qui les concernent, en suivant une procédure plus souple et en favorisant à la fois la réparation, la responsabilisation et la resocialisation. L’article vise à analyser le sens et la portée de cette pratique à partir de la théorie pénale républicaine tirée des travaux de Philip Pettit et John Braithwaite. Une telle approche permet de (...) saisir les effets de la médiation sur la domination en lien avec l’infraction ainsi que ses vertus restauratives. Mais elle met également en lumière des formes de soumission et de dépendance qui peuvent altérer le processus de médiation. Si, dans une perspective républicaine, la médiation s’avère plus juste que la répression, elle peut aussi, dans certains cas, reproduire des rapports de domination auxquels l’institution judiciaire doit accorder une vigilance particulière. (shrink)

Many researchers consider cancer to have molecular causes, namely mutated genes that result in abnormal cell proliferation (e.g. Weinberg 1998); yet for others, the causes of cancer are to be found not at the molecular level but at the tissue level and carcinogenesis would consist in a disrupted tissue organization with downward causation effects on cells and cellular components (e.g. Sonnenschein & Soto 2008). In this contribution, I ponder how to make sense of such downward causation claims. Adopting a manipulationist (...) account of causation (Woodward 2003), I propose a formal definition of downward causation, and discuss further requirements (in light of Baumgartner 2009). I then show that such an account cannot be mobilized in support of non-reductive physicalism (contrary to Raatikainen 2010). However, I also argue that such downward causation claims might point at particularly interesting dynamic properties of causal relationships that might prove salient in characterizing causal relationships (following Woodward 2010). (shrink)

With a meta-analysis of 85 studies and 190 experiments, the authors test the relationship between socially responsible investing and financial performance to determine whether including corporate social responsibility and ethical concerns in portfolio management is more profitable than conventional investment policies. The study also analyses the influence of researcher methodologies with respect to several dimensions of SRI on the effects identified. The results indicate that the consideration of corporate social responsibility in stock market portfolios is neither a weakness nor a (...) strength compared with conventional investments; the heterogeneous results in prior studies largely reflect the SRI dimensions under study. (shrink)

Christophe Litwin | : Au sens strict, la démocratie est pour Jean-Jacques Rousseau la forme de gouvernement où les corps du gouvernement et du peuple souverain sont identiques. Rousseau jugeant cette forme de gouvernement impossible, les commentateurs opposent à cette acception du terme une acception plus large : « démocratie » désignerait non plus la forme du gouvernement, mais celle de la souveraineté populaire elle-même. Cet article réfute cette interprétation encore trop formelle. Partant du constat que la démocratie est (...) impossible comme forme de gouvernement, sauf pour « un peuple de dieux », je montre d’une part que son idée doit moins se comprendre comme forme que principe de gouvernement, et d’autre part que l’emploi du législateur s’identifie rigoureusement à la mise en application initiale de ce principe. Je dégage ensuite la relation entre ce sens principiel du concept de démocratie et la vertu politique dont Rousseau reprend de façon critique le concept à Montesquieu. Dans la dernière partie, je discute du problème que pose cette conception de la démocratie et de la vertu – qui suppose qu’on mette la loi au-dessus de l’homme – dans le contexte historique et moral de l’Europe moderne où la vertu ne peut plus s’appuyer sur un ressort religieux national. | : According to Rousseau, “democracy” in the strict sense is a specific form of government in which the bodies of government and of the sovereign people are identical. Since Rousseau considers democracy in this formal sense to require a “people of gods” to be possible, commentators often identify “democracy” in Rousseau with the broader notion of popular sovereignty. I argue that they thus substitute one formal conception of democracy for another and that democracy in Rousseau names not so much an impos-sible form of government or form of sovereignty as it does the active principle of every l egitimate state. I identify the initial enactment of this democratic principle with the action of the legislator and his ability to “make the gods speak” to the people and I show the relationship between democracy as such a principle and Montesquieu’s concept of political virtue. Then, I examine how this principle operates in Rousseau’s Project of Constitution for Corsica. Finally, I discuss the problems raised by this conception of democracy and virtue—which requires that the laws be placed above men—in the historical and moral context of modern Europe in which virtue cannot stem from a national religion. (shrink)

Christophe Vendries Une musicienne et son instrument à cordes sur une stèle funéraire de Dion en Macédoine. Enfin le nablium? p. 469-502 La présence, sur une stèle de Dion d'époque impériale, de la représentation d'un instrument à cordes accompagné de sa dénomination latine permet de préciser nos connaissances à propos du nablium, souvent cité dans la littérature grecque sous le nom de νάβλα, mais dont on ne possédait jusqu'à présent aucune représentation figurée assurée. L'inscription latine qui l'accompagne suggère que (...) la défunte, louée pour son dévouement aux Muses, était vraisemblablement une musicienne de métier. Nous sommes en présence d'un cas très rare où l'inscription sert de légende pour expliquer le décor sculpté de la tombe. (shrink)

This chapter critically analyzes evolutionary epistemology as a theoretical framework for the study of science as a historical and cultural phenomenon. As spelled out by Campbell in the 1970s, evolutionary epistemology has an ambitious goal: it aims at understanding the complex relations between bio- logical evolution, especially the biological evolution of human cognition, and the cultural evolution of scientific knowledge. It eventually aims at forming an integrated causal theory of the evolution of science, starting with the evo- lution of human (...) cognition. In this chapter, the author considers Campbell’s project and specifies why it is still today a worthwhile project for explain- ing the evolution of science as a specific case of cultural evolution. But he also criticizes Campbell’s evolutionary epistemology for assuming that blind variation and selective retention are the processes through which science evolves. This assumption, the author argues, is at odds with much of what we know about scientific cognition and the history of science. He advocates (1) dropping the methodological constraint of looking for processes of blind variation and selective retention at the expense of other constructive processes and mechanisms of knowledge production; but (2) retaining the integrative point of evolutionary epistemology, which implies taking seriously the results of evolutionary psychology; and (3) retaining the populational framework for explaining the history of science, which means questioning why some scientific beliefs and practices eventually spread and stabilize in a scientific community. We end up with an updated research program for evolutionary epistemology, which faces new challenges. (shrink)

La vie est-elle un phénomène émergent ? Traduit-elle l'apparition de propriétés nouvelles au niveau d'un tout, qui seraient irréductibles aux propriétés et à l'organisation des composants de ce tout, ou encore imprédictibles à partir de ces mêmes éléments ? Développée à la charnière des XIXe et XXe siècles comme alternative aux deux approches antinomiques du vivant que sont le vitalisme et le mécanisme, la notion philosophique d'émergence connaît aujourd'hui de nouveaux développements : avec la prise de conscience de la complexité (...) du vivant, un nouveau discours émergentiste refait surface en biologie et dans le champ scientifique des origines de la vie. Que signifie la notion d'émergence lorsqu'elle s'applique à l'apparition de la vie sur Terre ? Quelles sont sa pertinence et sa portée ? Dans ce livre, Christophe Malaterre propose une clarification conceptuelle de la notion philosophique d'émergence ; il en défend une conception épistémique et contextuelle, adossée à la notion d'explication. En s'inspirant des travaux les plus contemporains sur les origines de la vie, il montre que, selon le contexte épistémique dans lequel le phénomène est évalué, la qualification de l'apparition de la vie comme émergente est, ou non, justifiée. Il défend alors la thèse selon laquelle la caractérisation émergentiste de l'apparition de la vie n'est qu'une conséquence temporaire des limites de nos connaissances scientifiques. (shrink)

This paper explores the notion of 'relational values' from a phenomenological point of view. In the first place, it stresses that in order to make full sense of relational values, we need to approach them through a relational ontology that surpasses dualistic descriptions of the world structured around the subject and the object. With this aim, the paper turns to ecophenomenology's attempt to apprehend values from a first-person perspective embedded in the lifeworld, where our entanglement with other beings is not (...) a theoretical construction but a palpable reality. Overall, the article's main purpose is to show that, in our direct and raw experience, values do not appear as subjective judgments or as objective properties but as events in which we participate alongside other human and non-human beings. (shrink)

There is a plurality of theoretical approaches, methodological tools, and explanatory strategies in the social sciences. Different fields rely on different methods and explanatory tools even when they study the very same phenomena. We illustrate this plurality of the social sciences with the studies of crowds. We show how three different takes on crowd phenomena—psychology, rational choice theory, and network theory—can complement one another. We conclude that social scientists are better described as researchers endowed with explanatory toolkits than specialists of (...) some specific social domain. Social scientists’ toolkits are adapted for identifying and specifying the role of specific causal factors among the multiple factors that produce social phenomena. These factors can be, in a nonexclusive way, economic incentives, psychological processes, the ecology, or aspects of the social and cultural environment. The plurality of methods and theories in the social sciences flies in the face of the project to unify the sciences associated with the positivists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet, the compatibility and consilience of theories and practices still have epistemic value: they enable the development of more powerful and robust theories and they allow the advent of interdisciplinary studies. We present the integrative stance as the will to improve compatibility and consilience across fields, yet recognize that the plurality of causes of social phenomena invite a diversity of methodological and theoretical tools. We conclude by characterizing naturalism as an integrative stance applied to fields that belong to the social science and to the natural sciences. (shrink)

This essay is intended to explore relations between work and subjectivity (that is, what concerns the individual subject: his or her suffering, pleasure, personal development, and so on). To this end, we shall draw on a body of theory and clinical practice that has been developing in France for some twenty years under the name of the `psychodynamics of work' and ask the three following questions. What is work? This question might seem trivial, but the clinical analysis of the relationship (...) between work and subjectivity shows that work is inseparable from suffering. Working inevitably means experiencing failure—in terms of one's know-how, technique and control of the work process. Is suffering simply an unfortunate consequence of work? We shall attempt to show that in fact it is also at the origin of intelligence and ingeniousness. Which subjectivity? Assuming that we recognise what work owes to subjectivity, we must also reverse the question and ask ourselves what subjectivity (individual development) owes to work. We shall attempt to show that work constitutes a decisive challenge for subjectivity, one that can enhance that subjectivity (self-fulfilment) or, conversely, destroy it (mental pathology). Here, we shall evoke the questions raised by mental pathologies generated by the new forms of work organisation. Subjectivity between work and action? Work is not simply an individual experience. We always work for someone. Working always means encountering others in social relations, or in other words, relations of domination and servitude. Under what conditions do men and women who work agree to cooperate with each other? What conditions allow us to ward off the violence threatening to emerge from the social relations of work? Work offers what is perhaps the most ordinary opportunity to learn about living together (in Aristotle's sense) and democracy. But it can also give rise to the worst—the instrumentalisation of human beings and barbarity. (shrink)

Human expression is open-ended, versatile, and diverse, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved functions of which are the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how expression is unleashed in humans. The relevant (...) cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species' social ecology to explain how and why humans, and only humans, evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity and open-endedness in means and modes of expression. Language use is but one of these modes of expression, albeit one of manifestly high importance. We make cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only language use, but also novel behaviour in many other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, teaching, punishment, and art, all of which are ubiquitous in human societies but relatively rare in other species. Much of this diversity derives from graded aspects of human expression, which can be used to satisfy informative intentions in creative and new ways. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of the many of the most distinctive features of human behaviour, society, and culture. (shrink)

Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a pervasive difficulty affecting number processing and arithmetic. It is encountered in around 6% of school-aged children. While previous studies have mainly focused on general cognitive functions, the present paper aims to further investigate the hypothesis of a specific numerical deficit in dyscalculia. The performance of 10- and 11-year-old children with DD characterised by a weakness in arithmetic facts retrieval and age-matched control children was compared on various number comparison tasks. Participants were asked to compare a (...) quantity presented in either a symbolic (Arabic numerals, number words, canonical dots patterns) or a nonsymbolic format (noncanonical dots patterns, and random sticks patterns) to the reference quantity 5. DD children showed a greater numerical distance effect than control children, irrespective of the number format. This favours a deficit in the specialised cognitive system underlying the processing of number magnitude in children with DD. Results are discussed in terms of access and representation deficit hypotheses. (shrink)

Christophe Perrin ABSTRACT: What does it mean to ‘make love?’ Or, rather, what are we doing when we ‘make love?’ This expression makes of love a praxis on which the history of philosophy, rather modest, has said little. Philosophy has certainly evoked love, but always as a passion, an emotion, a feeling, and rarely as an...

Editorial: Folk Epistemology. The Cognitive Bases of Epistemic Evaluation Content Type Journal Article Pages 477-482 DOI 10.1007/s13164-010-0046-8 Authors Christophe Heintz, Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary Dario Taraborelli, Centre for Research in Social Simulation, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK Journal Review of Philosophy and Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158 Journal Volume Volume 1 Journal Issue Volume 1, Number 4.

From John Maynard Keynes’s prediction of a fifteen-hour workweek to present-day speculation about automation, we have not stopped forecasting the end of work. Critical theory and political philosophy have turned their attention away from the workplace to focus on other realms of domination and emancipation. But far from coming to an end, work continues to occupy a central place in our lives. This is not only because of the amount of time people spend on the job. Many of our deepest (...) hopes and fears are bound up in our labor—what jobs we perform, how we relate to others, how we might flourish. The Return of Work in Critical Theory presents a bold new account of the human significance of work and the human costs of contemporary forms of work organization. A collaboration among experts in philosophy, social theory, and clinical psychology, it brings together empirical research with incisive analysis of the political stakes of contemporary work. The Return of Work in Critical Theory begins by looking in detail at the ways in which work today fails to meet our expectations. It then sketches a phenomenological description of work and examines the normative premises that underlie the experience of work. Finally, it puts forward a novel conception of work that can renew critical theory’s engagement with work and point toward possibilities for transformation. Inspired by Max Horkheimer’s vision of critical theory as empirically informed reflection on the sources of social suffering with emancipatory intent, The Return of Work in Critical Theory is a lucid diagnosis of the malaise and pathologies of contemporary work that proposes powerful remedies. (shrink)

Les sciences et les techniques sont au coeur de nos vies quotidiennes et constituent les piliers de notre modernité. Elles ont transformé les modes de vie, les relations de pouvoir, nos identités et nos imaginaires. Controverses sur les OGM, enjeux du changement climatique et de sa prévision, nouveaux imaginaires véhiculés par Internet ou les jeux vidéo... Comment analyser dans ces cas qui font l'actualité les liens inextricables entre ce que l'on sait du monde, ce que l'on souhaite y faire et (...) la façon dont on le gouverne? Les théories et approches dominantes de l'économie, de la sociologie, de l'histoire ou de la science politique ont souvent ignoré ces enchevêtrements complexes. Cet ouvrage propose un panorama du champ "sciences, techniques et société", très interdisciplinaire, qui s'est justement donné pour objet l'étude des transformations récentes et conjointes des façons de savoir, des formes d'expertise, des marchés, des espaces publics et des formes de gouvernement. (shrink)

The book intends to manifest the fertility of Alfred Adler's psychology, focusing on three points: his original resumption of certain philosophical currents; his constructive criticism of Freudian psychoanalysis; his posterity in Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Une vie à Königsberg -- Son œuvre philsophique -- Kant, trahi ou servi par ses héritiers?

Pour Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), la philosophie s'occupe de trois questions fondamentales, qui correspondent aux trois intérêts principaux de la raison humaine : "Que puis-je savoir?" ; "Que dois-je faire?" ; "Que m'est-il permis d'espérer?" En montrant que notre connaissance est limitée à une expérience de type sensible, Kant semble ruiner la métaphysique comme science du suprasensible, tournée vers les objets qui ne tombent pas sous les sens (Dieu, l'âme, la liberté, la question des limites du monde, par exemple). Or, rien (...) ne serait plus injuste que de voir en Kant le fossoyeur de la métaphysique. Si cette discipline n'est pas possible sur le plan théorique, montre-t-il, elle est en revanche possible (et même nécessaire) sur le plan "pratique". Cela veut dire que l'usage de certains énoncés métaphysiques nous permet seul de mener à bien certaines opérations dirigées vers des buts rationnels. En critiquant et en réformant la métaphysique, Kant en consacre le renouveau. Il inaugure une métaphysique d'un style bien particulier, que nous nommons la métaphysique du "comme si." C'est à élucider le statut et la fonction de cette métaphysique nouvelle que ce livre est consacré. (shrink)