Contribution à l'histoire culturelle des conceptions et des mentalités. Entre Paracelse et Montaigne, un panorama, à travers les oeuvres marquantes, de la logique et de la pratique de la faculté imaginative durant cette époque fertile en recommencements. [SDM].

La désignation de risques comme problèmes publics ainsi que la sélection et la hiérarchisation de ces risques s’expliquent souvent de trois grandes façons : soit comme le résultat d’arbitrages opérés par les autorités publiques ; soit comme le résultat de confrontations entre « société civile » et autorités publiques ; soit encore comme le résultat de la manière dont de multiples acteurs définissent et construisent les problèmes. Une des questions qui se posent est celle du statut de ces explications mobilisées (...) par des acteurs et des chercheurs. Correspondent-elles à des modes d’analyses ou bien sont-elles avant tout des discours intégrant les contraintes rhétoriques propres à tout problème public faisant l’objet de nombreuses appropriations, comme c’est le cas aujourd’hui avec les risques collectifs ?The designation of risks as public problems as well as the selection and the grading of these risks are often explained in three great ways : either like the result of arbitrations operated by the public authorities ; either like the result of confrontations between « civil society », and public authorities ; or still as the result of the way in which multiple actors define and build the problems. One of the questions which arise is that of the status of these explanations mobilized by actors and researchers. Do they correspond to modes of analyses or are they above all speeches integrating the rhetorical constraints which are specific to any public problem being the subject of many appropriations, as it is the case today with collective risks ? (shrink)

A Filosofia francesa foi fortemente influenciada por Heidegger, o que não haveria de acontecer sem algumas polémicas. Uma obra recente de D. Janicaud, Heidegger en France, traça algumas das suas peripécias. O presente artigo debruça-se sobre um ponto particular desta influência. O pensamento está desde há bastante tempo associado em França com o sentido do existir das singularidades, sobretudo pessoais; disso o existencialismo é um sinal evidente. É sem dúvida esta mesma preocupação pela existência que deu lugar a investigações fenomenológicas (...) sobre a essência do evento, palavra que traduz mais ou menos fielmente a expressão heideggeriana Ereignis. O artigo expõe, pois, o modo como o tema do Ereignis evolui na obra de Emmanuel Levinas (o evento cria uma temporalidade irredutível às sistematizações da história; a palavra trocada, dita e escutada, traz consigo uma nova temporalidade), Jean-Luc Marion (o evento não se repete, excede todo o presente e abre possibilidades ao ser humano), e Claude Romano (o evento rompe o tempo linear e instaura um mundo em que o princípio é um começo sempre novo). O artigo apresenta-se, deste modo, como uma reflexão sobre a própria essência da fenomenologia, tal qual ela actualmente se desenvolve em França. O artigo propõe ainda uma crítica de uma visão demasiado estética sobre o evento e convida o pensamento a prosseguir a sua reflexão na direcção da história concreta das liberdades. /// French philosophy has been greatly influenced by Heidegger, but not without polemics. A recent book by Janicaud, Heidegger in France, has traced its itinerary. The present article focuses on a single aspect of its influence: the attention given especially to the sense of existence in terms of personal singularities. Existentialism is a case in point. Such a concern produced phenomenological researches on the essence of the event, a word that more or less translates Ereignis. The article demonstrates how the theme of Ereignis has developed in the work of Levinas as that which creates a temporality that is irreducible to systematized history: the exchanged word carries with it a new temporality. In J.-L. Marion's work, the event does not repeat itself and exceeds the present, opening up new possibilities for humankind. For Cl. Romano, the event disrupts linear time and inaugurates a new world. Thus, the article constitutes a reflection on the very essence of phenomenology as manifested currently in France. It also proposes a critique of the overly aesthetic perspective concerning the theme of event and invites thought to pursue its reflection in the direction of the concrete history of freedoms. (shrink)

Les écrits de Gilbert Simondon sont tellement denses et touffus qu'en faire une présentation dans un petit volume de cette collection était un tour de force. Muriel Combes l'a bien réussi en explicitant les principaux thèmes de la problématique simondonienne. Dans ce compte rendu mon intention est de me concentrer sur les aspects saillants mis en évidence par Combes dans ses interprétations sans omettre au passage de traiter pour elles-mêmes de quelques thèses de Simondon. Bien au-delà du Simondon dont (...) le premier ouvrage s'intitulait Du mode d'existence des objets techniques, et donc de ce que Combes appelle «notre soi-disant penseur-de-la-technique», il convenait d'inaugurer l'exposé comme elle le fait par l'évocation de l'ontologie—ou même, ainsi qu'elle dira, «d'une voie de renouvellement de la métaphysique»—comme propos moteur des investigations de Simondon. Elle montre bien que le problème de l'ontologie tel que repris par lui nous reconduit à celui de l'individuation et qu'il est chez lui complètement reformulé à partir de ce fait que, notamment chez Aristote dans l'hylémorphisme, ce qui est pensé ce n'est pas l'individuation comme opération, mais comme la possession d'une forme déjà achevée et complète. Le reste s'ensuit. Dans la tradition logique accoutumée l'induction et la déduction sont des notions-clés. La critique de Simondon consiste à expliquer que ces deux notions supposent elles aussi une forme réalisée, idéale et parfaite. Il leur substitue une notion, chez lui centrale, de transduction qui décrit aussi bien dans les êtres que dans la pensée un réel qui se constitue et qui devient. Un intérêt de la présentation de Combes à cet égard consiste en ceci qu'elle expose que la critique de Simondon vise non seulement l'hylémorphisme aristotélicien, mais aussi la doctrine kantienne «qui sépare les formes a priori de la sensibilité de la matière donnée a posteriori, [...]» ; elle nous fait ainsi assister au repérage d'un hylémorphisme kantien et à sa modification, et à une autre conséquence des thèses de Simondon, relativement à la tradition, à savoir que la priorité accordée à la raison dans l'hégélianisme est également exposée; ainsi, «là où pour Hegel c'est du côté de la pensée que s'effectue l'identité de la pensée et de l'être, une telle identité repose dans la philosophie de Simondon sur le fond transductif de l'être, fond transductif dont la pensée procède». En fait chez Hegel le mouvement de l'être «n'est "que" celui de l'esprit». Je remarque qu'en insistant sur l'individuation, sur l'être comme devenir, Combes fait sentir à quel point Simondon donnait un contenu fécond à un dire existentialiste plutôt vague formulé à cette époque selon lequel «l'existence précède l'essence». (shrink)

"Dans les années 1960, Gilbert Durand, marqué par Gaston Bachelard, a développé une conception globale, complexe, transdisciplinaire de l'imagination, centrée sur le mythe langagier et les langages visuels. Parallèlement à Claude Lévi-Strauss, qui mettait en avant la notion de structure mythique et d'enracinement neuronal de la culture, G. Durand opta pour un "structuralisme figuratif" où la signification des images, tout en s'enracinant dans le biologique, relevait aussi d'une symbolisation, plus proche des psychanalyses et de G. Bachelard que de (...) la sémiotique. L'imagination et ses œuvres individuelles et collectives sont la résultante d'un "trajet anthropologique" qui s'étend des soubassements neurobiologiques aux matrices des mythes sociaux et religieux et vice versa. Plus de cinquante ans après, les avancées des sciences physiques et biologiques, neurologiques et cognitives permettent de jeter un regard nouveau sur l'ensemble des fonctions mentales, ainsi que sur les théories modernes du vivant et du cerveau. En quoi ces savoirs nouveaux éclairent-ils l'imagination et l'imaginaire, dans quelle mesure viennent-ils converger avec les références anciennes de G. Durand, quelle nouvelle anthropologie post-durandienne de l'imaginaire peut-on voir émerger?"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Husserl saw the Cartesian critique of scepticism as one of the eternal merits of Descartes’ philosophy. In doing so, he accepted the legitimacy of the very idea of a universal doubt, and sought to present as an alternative to it a renewed, specifically phenomenological concept of self-evidence, making it possible to obtain an unshakable foundation for the edifice of knowledge. This acceptance of the skeptical problem underlies his entire conceptual framework, both before and after the transcendental turn, and especially the (...) immanence/transcendence distinction, i.e., the very basis of intentionality. In taking as its starting point an analysis of perception, the article puts forth a certain number of phenomenological arguments in order to put into question the validity of the skeptical problem and, therefore, of the Husserlian conceptual framework; it defends, in the first place, a disjunctive conception of perception and, in the second place, a holism of experience. (shrink)

In _Reliable Reasoning_, Gilbert Harman and Sanjeev Kulkarni -- a philosopher and an engineer -- argue that philosophy and cognitive science can benefit from statistical learning theory, the theory that lies behind recent advances in machine learning. The philosophical problem of induction, for example, is in part about the reliability of inductive reasoning, where the reliability of a method is measured by its statistically expected percentage of errors -- a central topic in SLT. After discussing philosophical attempts to evade (...) the problem of induction, Harman and Kulkarni provide an admirably clear account of the basic framework of SLT and its implications for inductive reasoning. They explain the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension of a set of hypotheses and distinguish two kinds of inductive reasoning. The authors discuss various topics in machine learning, including nearest-neighbor methods, neural networks, and support vector machines. Finally, they describe transductive reasoning and suggest possible new models of human reasoning suggested by developments in SLT. (shrink)

If morality concerns the question how to live then can it be a science? Can there be a science of how to live? Hilary Putnam who poses this question answers it thus:1 logically impossible. But, he reassures us, . In the meantime moral reasoning must engage . This is developed through in literature. If the computer takes over, of course, then . So too, he says, may science, not because redundant but because complete in its explanatory and predictive power.

Infinite regress arguments are part of a philosopher's tool kit of argumentation. But how sharp or strong is this tool? How effectively is it used? The typical presentation of infinite regress arguments throughout history is so succinct and has so many gaps that it is often unclear how an infinite regress is derived, and why an infinite regress is logically problematic, and as a result, it is often difficult to evaluate infinite regress arguments. These consequences of our customary way of (...) using this tool indicate that there is a need for a theory to re-orient our practice. My general approach to contribute to such a theory, consists of collecting and evaluating as many infinite regress arguments as possible, comparing and contrasting many of the formal and non-formal properties, looking for recurring patterns, and identifying the properties that appeared essential to those patterns. Two very general questions guided this work: How are infinite regresses generated in infinite regress arguments? How do infinite regresses logically function as premises in an argument? In answering these questions I clarify the notion of an infinite regress; identify different logical forms of infinite regresses; describe different kinds of infinite regress arguments; distinguish the rhetoric from the logic in infinite regress arguments; and suggest ways of improving our discussion and our practice of constructing and evaluating these arguments. (shrink)

Theories of adverbial modification can be roughly distinguished into two sorts. One kind of theory takes logical form to follow surface grammatical form. Adverbs are treated as unanalyzable logical operators that turn a predicate or sentence into a different predicate or sentence respectively. And new rules of logic are stated for these operators. -/- A different kind of theory does not suppose that logical form must parallel surface grammatical form. It allows that logical form may have more to do with (...) deeper structures that might be studied in transformational grammar. Adverbs are treated as surface forms of the underlying predicates represented by corresponding adjectives and verbs. 'Slowly' is derived from 'slow'; 'intentionally' from 'intentional' or 'intend'; etc. And new rules of logic are avoided where they can be. -/- In this paper I attempt to state some of the advantages of the second sort of theory. My procedure will be this. First, I will try to say in outline what theories of logical form are. Then I will state five principles for evaluating such theories. Next, I will sketch the sorts of analyses acceptance of principles (1)-(5) leads to. In particular I will talk about adverbial phrases (e.g. locatives) that are best analyzed in terms of implicit references to events, relative modifiers (like 'large') which relate something to a comparison class, and 'that' clauses taken as names of propositions. By appealing to principles (1)-(5) I will defend these analyses against certain others, one that appeals to many logical operators, a second that treats all sentences as names of propositions, and a third that sees implicit reference to possible worlds in the language being analyzed. Finally, I will offer a pragmatic defense of my approach in terms of principles (1)-(5) as against a different approach that appeals to possible world semantics. (shrink)

Édition commentée des deux fragments de manuscrits littéraires grecs découverts dans la trésorerie du palais d'Aï-Khanoum, dans un contexte daté de 145 av. J.-C. Ces manuscrits avaient été rédigés dans des officines méditerranéennes et sont paléographiquement datables entre le milieu du IIIe et le début du IIe s. av. J.-C. Le premier texte, rédigé sur papyrus, est un dialogue philosophique platonicien ou aristotélicien relatif à la théorie platonicienne des Idées ; le second, rédigé sur parchemin en trimètres iambiques, relève peut-être (...) du genre théâtral. Leur présence à Aï Khanoum atteste l'existence d'une bibliothèque dans le palais de cette cité. (shrink)

"Les etudes recueillies ici ont fait l'objet de communication et de discussions durant les annees 1992-1994, dans le cadre du seminaire du Centre de recherches sur la pensee antique ('Centre Leon Robin'), equipe de l'Universite de Paris-Sorbonne associee au CNRS"--P. 4 of cover.

O artigo pretende investigar se há uma intencionalidade da perceção e caminhar na direção de um realismo fenmenológico.

The question of the oeuvre -- The concept of Machiavellianism -- Reading The prince. First signs -- The logic of force -- The social abyss and attachment to power -- Good and evil, the stable and the unstable, the real and the imaginary -- The present and the possible -- Reading The discourses. From The prince to The discourses -- Rome and the "historical" society -- Class difference -- War, and the difference of times -- Authority and the political subject (...) -- The oeuvre, ideology, and interpretation. (shrink)

What does the ostensibly innocuous phrase “das Selbst” exactly mean in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology? Does Heidegger really have a “theory of the self ” in the same way as, say, Descartes, Locke or Husserl? This is what has been often concluded by many interpreters of Being and Time, and it is that view that the current paper attempts to challenge. Heidegger not only rejects the supposition of a substantial ego, along the lines of Descartes’ conception, but he also repudiates any (...) “self ” understood as a present-at-hand being, an inner core of Dasein, and he insists on the intrinsic connection between the “egologies,” from Descartes to Husserl, and “traditional ontology”. What seems to be at stake in the fundamental-ontological approach of Sebstheit and Selbstsein, Being-oneself, is rather a complete paradigm-shift, since both concepts refer to “ways of being” or “ways of existing” of Dasein, and no longer at all to a self-identical being of a condition of its self-identity. In trying to investigate the economy of the related existential concepts of Jemeinigkeit, Selbstheit and Man-selbst, this article makes the claim that Heidegger’s break with egology is much deeper that it has been often thought, and that the phenomenologist raises a completely new question, rather than trying to give a new response to older ones. (shrink)

"A genuinely innovative contribution to philosophical accounts of subjectivity and temporality. Romano develops what he calls an 'evential hermeneutics' that takes as its starting point the life-changing events that upend our world. He studies the structure of these events in terms of the genuine change and novelty that they open up, distinguishing them from mere occurrences, which can be explained as a subject realizing pre-existing possibilities. Because such events introduce radically new possibilities by transforming me and my world, Romano argues (...) that they must be understood as establishing a world rather than as happening in the world."--Shane Mackinlay, Catholic Theological College, University of Divinity, Melbourne. (shrink)

This text deals with the phenomenological issue of the world's ways of givenness. As is well known, on the one hand Husserl approaches this question by reducing the givenness of the world to the ego's constituing acts. On the other hand, Heidegger aims at overcoming the transcendental ego by the notion of the being-in-the-world, even if this latter still plays the role of a world-configurator. In dialogue with Husserl, Heidegger, and some other phenomenologists and analytic philosophers, I develop a new (...) framework, which I propose to call “holism of experience”, in order to address anew the question of the world's givenness. (shrink)

BonJour offers two main reasons for supposing that there is such a thing as rational insight into necessity. First, he says there are many examples in which it clearly seems that one has such insight. Second, he argues that any epistemology denying the existence of rational insight into necessity is committed to a narrow skepticism. After commenting about possible frameworks for epistemological justification, I argue against these two claims in reverse order.

It is puzzling to notice that in his 1784 essay on Enlightenment, Kant addresses every human being with his watchword « Have the courage to use your own understanding! », while at the same time he seems to restrict the access to the public discussion of matters of common interest to the learned persons. This begs the question: Is the participation in the public debate part and parcel of Kant’s conception of Aufklärung? A positive answer to this question is given (...) by Katerina Deligiorgi in her Kant and the Culture of Enlightenment. A critical assessment of this book will lead us however to consider that Kant has a differentiated approach to enlightenment depending on whether someone is educated or uneducated. Following Rousseau, Kant has come to recognize as a matter of fact this inequality toward the products of culture. Now the two-level conception of enlightenment entailed by this inequality becomes explicit in the 1790s, especially in the very last work Kant has published: The Conflict of the Faculties. (shrink)

This is the second in a sequence of three essays which axiomatize and apply Edmund Husserl's dependence ontology of parts and wholes as a non-Diodorean, non-Kantian temporal semantics for first-order predicate modal languages. The Ontology of Intentionality I introduced enough of Husserl's dependence-ontology of parts and wholes to formulate his account of order as effected by relating moments of unity, and The Ontology of Intentionality II extends that axiomatic dependence-ontology far enough to enable its semantic application. Formalizing the compatibility [Vereinbarkeit] (...) relation implicated in Husserl's notorious doctrine of impossible meanings, the essay introduces a compatibility restriction on relations to formulate Husserl's distinction between singular [einheitliche] and plural [mehrheitliche] objects, using plural relating moments to define first-order versions of Husserl's notions of relation complexes (i.e. Sachverhalte), abstracta of n-ary relation complexes, categorial relations, abstract eide as unifications of categorial relations, semantic domains as completions of abstract eide, and material regions as semantic domains which are compatibility upper bounds of categorial relations. These concepts will enable the formal dependence-ontological noetic semantics for two-valued, first-order modal languages introduced in the sequel Two-Valued Logics of Intentionality, the third essay in the sequence. (shrink)