Cet essai a été présenté à l’atelier sur La démocratie de l’espace et l’espace de la démocratie, qui a eu lieu à Newcastle, en Angleterre, le 11 janvier 2008. Une version antérieure a été présentée à l’Université de Tokyo le 13 novembre 2007. Il sera publié en néerlandais, traduit par Freek Jansens, sous le titre “het plannen van ruimtes van (on)mogelijkheid” dans une collection éditée par Maarten Hajer et Jantine Grijzen sur les questions de politique contemporaine. Il a été traduit (...) de l’anglais par Martin Blanchard et révisé par Daniel Weinstock. (shrink)

Parmi les scénarios proposés par les transhumanistes qui impliquent la survie des personnes au-delà de leur existence biologique, le téléchargement de l’esprit peut être considéré comme le moins extravagant. Dans cet article, j’établis une filiation entre la tradition philosophique des expériences de pensée dérivée de la réflexion de Locke sur l’identité personnelle et la perspective du téléchargement. Cette filiation est particulièrement importante lorsque nous discutons de ce que pourraient être des critères de succès dans un tel contexte et de ce (...) qui est requis par un véritable transfert dans ce type de cas. La défense du téléchargement de l’esprit proposée par Kenneth Hayworth est analysée dans sa relation aux données scientifiques sur lesquelles repose sa justification. Je donne des raisons de douter du bien-fondé de son optimisme en évoquant la recherche en connectomique et en simulation du cerveau. (shrink)

Dans L'animal, l'homme, la fonction symbolique , Raymond Ruyer cherchait à caractériser la spécificité de l'homme à l'intérieur du monde biologique et il en distinguait trois traits constitutifs : le rôle modifié du cerveau, la transmission ou « hérédité » culturelle, la dimension symbolique du langage. Sa thèse était qu'il faut chercher dans le maniement des symboles ce qui rend possible les diverses manifestations de la culture, et qu'en vertu de cette origine commune, ces manifestations doivent être considérées comme indissociables. (...) Mais, il y a chez Ruyer, une troisième voie entre émergence et réduction. Il a, en ce qui concerne les symboles, une dette à l'égard de Cassirer et surtout de Susanne Langer. Enfin les acquis en éthologie cognitive et les recherches contemporaines sur l'évolution de la faculté du langage permettent d'apprécier avec quelque scepticisme la position de Ruyer. In Vanimal, Vhomme, la fonction symbolique , Raymond Ruyer tried to define the specificity of man within the biological world, distinguishing three characteristic features: the modified role of the brain, cultural transmission or "heredity", the symbolic dimension of language. He argued that one had to consider the manipulation of symbols as what makes possible the manifestations of culture, and that, because of their common origin, these manifestations should be held to be intricately linked. This paper focuses on the alternative to emergence and reduction that Ruyer intends to define, and elaborates, with respect to symbols, his debt towards Ernst Cassirer and, most notably, Susanne K. Langer. Finally, it provides a skeptical examination of Ruyer's position, drawing on the results of cognitive ethology and on contemporary research on the evolution of the linguistic faculty. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill examine dans le dernier des Trois Essais sur la religion l’argument du Dessein. Ce faisant, il l’évalue selon les normes épistémiques définies dans le Système de logique en dressant un parallèle avec l’hypothèse présentée par Darwin dans L’Origine des espèces. Pour comprendre le verdict nuancé rendu par Mill, il faut faire intervenir trois niveaux d’analyse : la relation entre méthode inductive et méthode hypothétique (théorie de la connaissance), le choix du phénoménalisme qui limite l’engagement naturaliste (métaphysique), la (...) question de l’espoir raisonnable (philosophie morale). La philosophie de la religion engage ainsi l’unité de la philosophie de Mill. (shrink)

Qu’elle soit ingrate ou réussie, la vieillesse soulève des questions incontournables : celles de la mort et de la souffrance, de la responsabilité et de la vulnérabilité. Du silence et de la parole aussi. Être vulnérable, c’est être fragile, friable ; c’est avoir besoin de son prochain. La vulnérabilité est liée, notamment, à la maladie, au grand âge, à la dépendance ou au fardeau de l’aide. Or, les personnes aidées et aidantes sont surtout des femmes. Il y a les femmes (...) du grand âge et les femmes de tous les âges, qui exécutent à leurs côtés, bénévolement, un travail domestique de santé. Faisons apparaître les obstacles au respect des droits et au pouvoir d’agir de ce « couple vulnérable » aidant-aidé, dans une perspective critique et féministe du droit et de l’éthique. Brisons le silence. (shrink)

La théorie étiologique définit les fonctions biologiques en faisant référence à l'action passée de la sélection naturelle. Elle peut ainsi permettre de définir les pathologies comme des dysfonctionnements : il y a pathologie lorsqu'un composant x de l'organisme ne fait plus ce qu'il est censé faire et qui a conduit à le retenir dans le passé de l'histoire évolutive. On peut distinguer trois problèmes qui attendent les partisans de cette solution. Le premier est celui de la conciliation entre deux visées (...) différentes : la théorie de l'évolution peut-elle à la fois contribuer à l'explication du fait récurrent de la maladie (ce que vise une « médecine darwinienne ») et permettre une démarcation entre normal et pathologique ? Le second problème est celui des exceptions : en certains cas, une incapacité acquise a bien valeur de pathologie, mais la présence de la capacité correspondante ne s'explique pas par la sélection, ce qui ôte à la proposition initiale son caractère de nécessité conceptuelle. Enfin, la réalisation d'un trait peut être à la fois atypique et adaptative, ce qui fragilise la notion de normalité biologique impliquée par la théorie étiologique. Ces problèmes sont sérieux et l'article examine pour conclure si un autre concept de fonction, le concept systémique, ne pourrait pas mieux convenir moyennant quelques ajustements, à la philosophie de la médecine. Etiological theory defines biological functions in reference to the past action of natural selection. Accordingly, it may define pathological states as dysfunctional states : component x being in a pathological state would mean x no longer does what it is still supposed to do, that is, what it has been designed to do in past evolutionary history. There are three problems with this solution. First, it may prove difficult to reconcile the evolutionary explanation of the recurring fact of disease (the purpose of a « Darwinian medicine ») and the suggested demarcation between the normal and the pathological. Second, we may think of cases where a certain capacity is impaired, this impairment being clearly a pathology, and where, nonetheless, the explanation of why the corresponding capacity is there is by no means selective. This weakens the initial proposition because it thereby loses its alleged conceptual necessity. Thirdly, a biological feature may be expressed in a way that is both atypical and adaptive, i.e. a challenge to the idea of biological normality involved in etiological theory. These seem to be quite serious problems and one may ask if another concept of function, the systemic concept with a number of adjustments, would not be better suited to the ends of the philosophy of medicine. (shrink)

L’idée de ce numéro nous est venue à l’occasion d’une conférence de Karen Neander donnée à l’Université de Heidelberg en janvier 20071. Aujourd’hui professeur à l’Université de Duke, aux États-Unis, Karen Neander est l’auteur de travaux importants en philosophie de la biologie. À l’idée d’une traduction de son texte en français, alors qu’il est encore inédit dans..

Humanity is made of technical objects. Despite of this fact, technique is not considered as a cultural matter especially in engineering schools where it should be taught. As teachers and searchers at the INSA Lyon, we have experienced the way and the difficulties to develop this technical culture.

Sparkling woodsprites flutter in the forest and bioluminescent willow tendrils illuminate the strange ritual that ends Avatar. Human Jake lies head to head with his human–Na'vi hybrid avatar. Through the biological–spiritual ritual, Jake's human mind is transferred to his Na'vi body. Some viewers might see Avatar as advocating science and biotechnology as the salvation of a doomed humanity. If this view is correct, the movie would be reflecting the techno‐utopian philosophy known as transhumanism. Like transhumanism, though for different reasons, (...) Avatar views the human species as corrupted and endangered. Moreover, both transhumanism and Avatar hold out the promise of some form of transcendence or salvation for the human race. Exalting spiritualism, pantheism, and nature while sounding alarm bells about the dangers of technology and scientific materialism, Avatar ultimately endorses a positive philosophy, antithetical to transhumanism. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroscience indicate that analysis of bio-signals such as rest state electroencephalogram and eye-tracking data can provide more reliable evaluation of children autism spectrum disorder than traditional methods of behavior measurement relying on scales do. However, the effectiveness of the new approaches still lags behind the increasing requirement in clinical or educational practices as the “bio-marker” information carried by the bio-signal of a single-modality is likely insufficient or distorted. This study proposes an approach to joint analysis of EEG (...) and eye-tracking for children ASD evaluation. The approach focuses on deep fusion of the features in two modalities as no explicit correlations between the original bio-signals are available, which also limits the performance of existing methods along this direction. First, the synchronization measures, information entropy, and time-frequency features of the multi-channel EEG are derived. Then a random forest applies to the eye-tracking recordings of the same subjects to single out the most significant features. A graph convolutional network model then naturally fuses the two group of features to differentiate the children with ASD from the typically developed subjects. Experiments have been carried out on the two types of the bio-signals collected from 42 children. The results indicate that the proposed approach can achieve an accuracy of 95% in ASD detection, and strong correlations exist between the two bio-signals collected even asynchronously, in particular the EEG synchronization against the face related/joint attentions in terms of covariance. (shrink)

Tome I. Quatre essais sur les régimes conceptuels -- Tome 2. Quatre essais sur la connaissance de l'Humain.

Viruses are major drivers of global biogeochemistry and the etiological agents of many diseases. They are also the winners in the game of life: there are more viruses on the planet than cellular organisms and they encode most of the genetic diversity on the planet. In fact, it is reasonable to view life as a viral incubator. Nevertheless, most ecological and evolutionary theories were developed, and continue to be developed, without considering the virosphere. This means these theories need to be (...) to reinterpreted in light of viral knowledge or we need to develop new theory from the viral point-of-view. Here we briefly introduce our viral planet and then address a major outstanding question in biology: why is most of life viral? A key insight is that during an infection cycle the original virus is completely broken down and only the associated information is passed on to the next generation. This is different for cellular organisms, which must pass on some physical part of themselves from generation to generation. Based on this premise, it is proposed that the thermodynamic consequences of physical information (e.g., Landauer’s principle) are observed in natural viral populations. This link between physical and genetic information is then used to develop the Viral Information Hypothesis, which states that genetic information replicates itself to the detriment of system energy efficiency (i.e., is viral in nature). Finally, we show how viral information can be tested, and illustrate how this novel view can explain existing ecological and evolutionary theories from more fundamental principles. (shrink)

This paper analyses the importance of the forest in understanding the Old French Partonopeus de Blois. The forest embodies the dual nature of the romance, mixing religious and supernatural elements. It provides a structural framework for the action, as both parts of the romance start with a journey into the forest: it is the passage to the Otherworld, the frontier between reality and the unknown. Placed at the limit of the civilised world, the forest is the (...) space of perigrinations and of reconciliation, both with other characters and with God. In Partonopeus the forest also leads to the sea, the next step in the journey to the Otherworld, and the passage from one realm of reality to the other is achieved with the help of an animal. The author also reflects on the otherworldly roles of Melior and Uraque, in the traditions of the fairy lover and the healing fairy. (shrink)

Explores the topic of ethics in sports, including stories of good sportsmanship in action, playing by the rules, and game preparation.

In _Buddhists, Brahmins, and Belief_, Dan Arnold examines how the Brahmanical tradition of Purva Mimamsa and the writings of the seventh-century Buddhist Madhyamika philosopher Candrakirti challenged dominant Indian Buddhist views of epistemology. Arnold retrieves these two very different but equally important voices of philosophical dissent, showing them to have developed highly sophisticated and cogent critiques of influential Buddhist epistemologists such as Dignaga and Dharmakirti. His analysis--developed in conversation with modern Western philosophers like William Alston and J. L. Austin--offers an innovative (...) reinterpretation of the Indian philosophical tradition, while suggesting that pre-modern Indian thinkers have much to contribute to contemporary philosophical debates. In logically distinct ways, Purva Mimamsa and Candrakirti's Madhyamaka opposed the influential Buddhist school of thought that emphasized the foundational character of perception. Arnold argues that Mimamsaka arguments concerning the "intrinsic validity" of the earliest Vedic scriptures are best understood as a critique of the tradition of Buddhist philosophy stemming from Dignaga. Though often dismissed as antithetical to "real philosophy," Mimamsaka thought has affinities with the reformed epistemology that has recently influenced contemporary philosophy of religion. Candrakirti's arguments, in contrast, amount to a principled refusal of epistemology. Arnold contends that Candrakirti marshals against Buddhist foundationalism an approach that resembles twentieth-century ordinary language philosophy--and does so by employing what are finally best understood as transcendental arguments. The conclusion that Candrakirti's arguments thus support a metaphysical claim represents a bold new understanding of Madhyamaka. (shrink)

The subject of lament in the NT has not received as much attention as it deserves. Some scholars have taken note of this fact, even calling on evangelicals to take up the charge. The present article is a response to such a charge and focuses on the book of 2 Corinthians, where one finds several instances that point to a pattern of lament, revealing a true, back-and-forth covenant interaction with God, rather than one that allows only for praise. After a (...) brief introduction to the concept of biblical lament, a few key passages in 2 Corinthians are examined that, while not formal laments, do provide certain glimpses of lament. These examples encourage a move beyond the one-sidedness of a “doxology-only” faith and toward one that is more robust, able to hold both praise and lament in tension. (shrink)

It is commonly believed that Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), well known as the founder of phenomenology and as the teacher of Heidegger, was unable to free himself from the framework of a classical metaphysics of subjectivity. Supposedly, he never abandoned the view that the world and the Other are constituted by a pure transcendental subject, and his thinking in consequence remains Cartesian, idealistic, and solipsistic. The continuing publication of Husserl’s manuscripts has made it necessary to revise such an interpretation. Drawing upon (...) both Husserl’s published works and posthumous material, Husserl’s Phenomenology incorporates the results of the most recent Husserl research. It is divided into three parts, roughly following the chronological development of Husserl’s thought, from his early analyses of logic and intentionality, through his mature transcendental-philosophical analyses of reduction and constitution, to his late analyses of intersubjectivity and lifeworld. It can consequently serve as a concise and updated introduction to his thinking. (shrink)

... Let me start my investigation by taking a brief look at the way in which self-awareness is expressed linguistically, as in the sentences "I am tired" or ...

From the one-room chapel in a prairie town to the grandiose cathedral on a city street, churches stand at the heart of the Minnesota landscape.

Not turned upside down, as Marx did to Hegel, but « inverted » by the mere contact with speaking beings, the Cartesian order of reasons becomes, according to Antonia Birnbaum, a device which generates both the subject and its environment, all at once, determining them as elements of the political - which has however already become « accidental » due to this invention, which exposes the speaking being to the world, and confronts it with the haecceity of the event. Cartesian (...) « politics » thus takes place in the forest, the privileged figure of the philosopher and the sign of the absence of any orientation, the truth of which Antonia Birnbaum tends to identify in and through Beckett s Molloy: far from being an possible community, it is full of « good things ». (shrink)

This article develops a theory of simulation as a nation building mechanism by exploring the production of national belonging in Massad, a Jewish-American summer camp that operated in the Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania, between 1941 and 1981. Trying to inspire campers to Zionism, the camp organizers shaped Massad as a “mini Israel.” This simulation engendered national attachments by lending credence to the belief that others, in Israel, experience more authentic national belonging. Rather than tempting campers to imagine the nation as a (...) “horizontal camaraderie” (Anderson 1991), national simulations allow members to account for their distinct and often ambivalent position from within the nation. From this perspective, nation building is not simply a matter of relativizing internal differences and dramatizing differences between the groups that make up the nation and “outsiders.” Instead, nation building also is centrally a matter of creating institutional routines and practices that allow members to account for their differential position from within the nation. (shrink)

The current study is conducted to examine the following research questions: - Examine how knowledge acquisition and knowledge dissemination are associated with academic staff’s job satisfaction and teaching motivation - Examine whether job satisfaction mediates the relationship between knowledge acquisition, knowledge dissemination and teaching motivation.

Do carbon-offsetting schemes morally offset emissions? The moral equivalence thesis is the claim that the combination of emitting greenhouse gasses and offsetting those emissions is morally equivalent to not emitting at all. This thesis implies that in response to climate change, we need not make any lifestyle changes to reduce our emissions as long as we offset them. An influential argument in favor of this thesis is premised on two claims, one empirical and the other normative: (1) When you emit (...) + offset, the net result is the same as that of not emitting. (2) With emissions, the net result is what matters morally. I argue against both premises. The net result of emitting + offsetting is never equivalent to that of not emitting, and even if it were equivalent, the net result is not the only thing that matters morally. My conclusion is that although we should offset our emissions, avoiding emissions is morally preferable. This conclusion supports a stronger claim: that carbon offsets cannot relieve us of our duty to make significant lifestyle changes so as to reduce emissions and thus lesson our contribution to the harms of climate change. (shrink)

In this entry, I tackle the phenomenon known as "faultless disagreement", considered by many authors to pose a challenge to the main views on the semantics of subjective expressions. I first present the phenomenon and the challenge, then review the main answers given by contextualist, absolutist and relativist approaches to the expressions in question. I end with signaling two issues that might shape future discussions about the role played by faultless disagreement in semantics.

Geographical features and cultural traits influence the character of big-mountain tourism in Alaska. This research considers the intersectionality of wilderness and frontier concepts on tourism culture, examines guides’ and clients’ motivations for participation, and relates these influences to the larger phenomena of tourism generally and nature tourism specifically. The findings show that Alaska’s big-mountain tourism is globalized in its political and economic scope. Guides imagine themselves as pioneers on a last frontier of mountain pursuits, notions that relate well to images (...) depicted of the region in literature and promoted by the tourism industry. Clients, on the other hand, come to Alaska because of its exceptional geography and unique mountain sporting culture, but are not as enamored with the mythos of the frontier. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I present data involving the use of the Romanian slur ‘țigan’, consideration of which leads to the postulation of a sui-generis, irreducible type of use of slurs. This type of use is potentially problematic for extant theories of slurs. In addition, together with other well-established uses, it shows that there is more variation in the use of slurs than previously acknowledged. I explain this variation by construing slurs as polysemous. To implement this idea, I appeal to (...) a rich-lexicon account of polysemy. I show how such a theory can be applied to slurs and discuss several important issues that arise. (shrink)

In this chapter, we focus on the debate over publicly maintained racist monuments as it manifests in the mid-2010s Anglosphere, primarily in the United States and South Africa. After pointing to some representative examples of racist monuments, we discuss ways a monument can be thought racist and neutrally categorize removalist and preservationist arguments heard in the monument debate. We suggest that both extremist and moderate removalist goals are likely to be self-defeating and that when concerns of civic sustainability are put (...) on moral par with those of fairness and justice, something like a Mandela-era preservationist policy is best: one which removes the most offensive of the minor racist monuments, but which focuses on closing the monumentary gap between peoples and reframing existing racist monuments. (shrink)

Premodern Buddhists are sometimes characterized as veritable "mind scientists" whose insights anticipate modern research on the brain and mind. Aiming to complicate this story, Dan Arnold confronts a significant obstacle to popular attempts at harmonizing classical Buddhist and modern scientific thought: since most Indian Buddhists held that the mental continuum is uninterrupted by death, they would have no truck with the idea that everything about the mental can be explained in terms of brain events. Nevertheless, a predominant stream of Indian (...) Buddhist thought, associated with the seventh-century thinker Dharmakirti, turns out to be vulnerable to arguments modern philosophers have leveled against physicalism. By characterizing the philosophical problems commonly faced by Dharmakirti and contemporary philosophers such as Jerry Fodor and Daniel Dennett, Arnold seeks to advance an understanding of both first-millennium Indian arguments and contemporary debates on the philosophy of mind. The issues center on what modern philosophers have called _intentionality_--the fact that the mind can be about other things. Tracing an account of intentionality through Kant, Wilfrid Sellars, and John McDowell, Arnold argues that intentionality cannot, in principle, be explained in causal terms. Elaborating some of Dharmakirti's central commitments, Arnold shows that despite his concern to refute physicalism, Dharmakirti's causal explanations of the mental mean that modern arguments from intentionality cut as much against his project as they do against physicalist philosophies of mind. This is evident in the arguments of some of Dharmakirti's contemporaneous Indian critics, whose critiques exemplify the same logic as modern arguments from intentionality. Elaborating these various strands of thought, Arnold shows that seemingly arcane arguments among first-millennium Indian thinkers can illuminate matters still very much at the heart of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Using the concept of social denial, this article puts the American Psychological Association's (APA’s) pattern of willful blindness, identified by independent reviewer David Hoffman, in historical context by examining the contributions of Cold War social scientists to the CIA's KUBARK torture manual, and discusses the implications of this history for the reform of the APA's ethics policies. David Hoffman found that the leadership of the APA colluded with Department of Defense (DoD) to ensure that the APA's ethical policies were no (...) stronger than those issued by the DoD. While the independent reviewer did not find evidence of collaboration between the CIA and the APA, this was not due to a lack of effort on the part of the APA, which was anxious to establish good relations and so promote the use of psychology in the national security arena. While Hoffman did not find that the APA knew that its collaborations would facilitate the development of abusive interrogation techniques, it showed a marked, motivated lack of interest in whether or not the DoD or CIA was abusing prisoners. The APA maintained its strategic ignorance even while engaging in a public relations campaign designed to give the impression that it was deeply concerned about multiple reports of psychologist involvement in a system of torture. This willful ignorance was not unprecedented and follows a predictable pattern of knowing and not-knowing to which all psychologists should attend. (shrink)