In this paper we discuss the issue of the processes potentially underlying the emergence of emotional consciousness in the light of theoretical considerations and empirical evidence. First, we argue that componential emotion models, and specifically the Component Process Model , may be better able to account for the emergence of feelings than basic emotion or dimensional models. Second, we advance the hypothesis that consciousness of emotional reactions emerges when lower levels of processing are not sufficient to cope with the event (...) and regulate the emotional process, particularly when the degree of synchronization between the components reaches a critical level and duration. Third, we review recent neuroscience evidence that bolsters our claim of the central importance of the synchronization of neuronal assemblies at different levels of processing. (shrink)

The commentary raises political questions about the ways in which data has been constituted as an object vested with certain powers, influence, and rationalities. We place the emergence and transformation of professional practices such as ‘data science’, ‘data journalism’, ‘data brokerage’, ‘data mining’, ‘data storage’, and ‘data analysis’ as part of the reconfiguration of a series of fields of power and knowledge in the public and private accumulation of data. Data politics asks questions about the ways in which data has (...) become such an object of power and explores how to critically intervene in its deployment as an object of knowledge. It is concerned with the conditions of possibility of data that involve things, language, and people that together create new worlds. We define ‘data politics’ as both the articulation of political questions about these worlds and the ways in which they provoke subjects to govern themselves and others by making rights claims. We contend that without understanding these conditions of possibility – of worlds, subjects and rights – it would be difficult to intervene in or shape data politics if by that it is meant the transformation of data subjects into data citizens. (shrink)

The processing of emotional nonlinguistic information in speech is defined as emotional prosody. This auditory nonlinguistic information is essential in the decoding of social interactions and in our capacity to adapt and react adequately by taking into account contextual information. An integrated model is proposed at the functional and brain levels, encompassing 5 main systems that involve cortical and subcortical neural networks relevant for the processing of emotional prosody in its major dimensions, including perception and sound organization; related action tendencies; (...) and associated values that integrate complex social contexts and ambiguous situations. (shrink)

Entre Nietzsche et le Saint-Suaire, qu'y a t-il de commun? Une ville : Turin. C'est là que le philosophe a passé les mois qui ont précédé son effondrement dans la démence, en mai 1888, tout près de la chapelle qui conserve le Suaire. Faut-il n'y voir qu'une coïncidence? Né de l'étonnement devant l'ignorance qui entoure ce dernier moment de la vie lucide de Nietzsche, ce livre nous fait découvrir le combat spirituel que le philosophe mène avec le Christ. Il commence (...) par une enquête historique à nouveaux frais et révèle des épisodes méconnus - voire encore inconnus - de la vie de Nietzsche à Turin. La figure de l'homme y apparaît sous un jour bien différent de la légende attachée à son nom. Puis Didier Rance présente le face à face entre celui qui s'était autoproclamé Antichrist et Jésus Christ. Les attaques de Nietzsche à l'endroit du christianisme et de son fondateur sont connues ; on les dit décisives. A travers la voix des papes contemporains qui ont tous médité devant le Suaire, il est possible de pressentir la réponse que le Crucifié apporte à la critique nietzschéenne. Une réponse fondée sur la miséricorde qui éclaire en profondeur le sens du nihilisme dont Nietzsche a voulu être le prophète, et dans lequel se trouve plongé notre monde. (shrink)

When he died in 1984, Michel Foucault was widely regarded as one of the most powerful minds of this century. Hailed by historians and lionized in America, he continues to provoke lively debate. This meticulously documented narrative debunks the many myths and rumors surrounding the brilliant philosopher to consider that all Foucault's books are "fragments of an autobiography".

Much work in care ethics and disability studies is concerned with the flourishing of human animals as an independent species. As a result, it focuses on how the built environments and the social structures that produce them restrict and exclude us. This paper addresses this problem and provides tentative first steps towards sketching an account of ethics that is structured around the interdependent nature of human and more than human life. I argue that our embodied existence places us in a (...) shared condition of vulnerability with all forms of life on earth. This allows us to conceive of caring as an essential condition of the sustainability and well-being of social and ecological life systems. To this end, I discuss the notion of anthropocentrism – and the attendant notion of Anthropocene – and argue that the conception of human animality that underwrites it posits a disembodied and homogenous ‘anthropos’ that is equally responsible for and equally affected by unsustainable social systems. Further, I examine the debate that opposes realist and constructivist accounts of nature, and I argue that it is inadequate to look at nature through the lenses of the predatory social systems that are responsible for ecological injustices in the first place. (shrink)

The paper first introduces a cube of opposition that associates the traditional square of opposition with the dual square obtained by Piaget’s reciprocation. It is then pointed out that Blanché’s extension of the square-of-opposition structure into an conceptual hexagonal structure always relies on an abstract tripartition. Considering quadripartitions leads to organize the 16 binary connectives into a regular tetrahedron. Lastly, the cube of opposition, once interpreted in modal terms, is shown to account for a recent generalization of formal concept analysis, (...) where noticeable hexagons are also laid bare. This generalization of formal concept analysis is motivated by a parallel with bipolar possibility theory. The latter, albeit graded, is indeed based on four graded set functions that can be organized in a similar structure. (shrink)

In France, some institutions seem to call for the engineer’s sense of social responsibility. However, this call is scarcely heard. Still, engineering students have been given the opportunity to gain a general education through courses in literature, law, economics, since the nineteenth century. But, such courses have long been offered only in the top ranked engineering schools. In this paper, we intend to show that the wish to increase engineering students’ social responsibility is an old concern. We also aim at (...) highlighting some macro social factors which shaped the answer to the call for social responsibility in the French engineering “Grandes Ecoles”. In the first part, we provide an overview of the scarce attention given to the engineering curriculum in the scholarly literature in France. In the second part, we analyse one century of discourses about the definition of the “complete engineer” and the consequent role of non technical education. In the third part, we focus on the characteristics of the corpus which has been institutionalized. Our main finding is that despite the many changes which occurred in engineering education during one century, the “other formation” remains grounded on a non academic “way of knowing”, and aims at increasing the reputation of the schools, more than enhancing engineering students’ social awareness. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to extend the previous research on ethics in retailing. Prior research of Dornoff and Tankersley (1985–1976), Gifford and Norris (1987), Norris and Gifford (1988), and Burns and Rayman (1989) examined the ethics orientation of retail sales persons, sales managers, and business school students. These studies found the college students less ethically-oriented than retail sales people and retail managers. The present study attempts to extend the research on ethics formation to a geographically and academically diverse (...) sample, and to determine if retail management experience in the form of a professional practicum or internship, or entry level management training programs, such as experienced by recent graduates, are critical factors in the formation of business ethics. The sample consisted of thirty-three students majoring in Human Ecology with a concentration in Retail Merchandising and 51 recent graduates of the retail Merchandising program. The series of fourteen vignettes developed by Dornoff and Tankersley (1975–1976) was used. An acknowledged limitation of this study is the validity of the questionnaire developed by Dornoff and Tankersley due to the method of development and new laws concerning warranties and credit etc. which have occurred since 1976. The instrument was used, however, to maintain consistency with earlier studies for the purpose of comparison of groups. No significant differences were found in the students' perceptions of the fourteen actions presented in the vignettes, but the range of the responses in the post-internship tests increased in many cases. The alumni appeared to be slightly more ethical than the students but not as ethical as the managers surveyed in 1986 by Norris and Gifford. Indications are that the critical point of ethics formation may be at the mid-management level and that internships and management training programs have little effect on the ethical perceptions of participants. These findings are consistent with studies such as Gable and Topol (1988), and Jordan and Davis (1990) which showed high Machiavellian scores among young retailing executives, often buyers, as opposed to upper level retailing management. Scales with measure Machiavellianism, or manipulativeness, have been used as an alternative method of examining business ethics. (shrink)

A critical view of the alleged significance of Belnap four-valued logic for reasoning under inconsistent and incomplete information is provided. The difficulty lies in the confusion between truth-values and information states, when reasoning about Boolean propositions. So our critique is along the lines of previous debates on the relevance of many-valued logics and especially of the extension of the Boolean truth-tables to more than two values as a tool for reasoning about uncertainty. The critique also questions the significance of partial (...) logic. (shrink)

Ce livre offre un parcours en compagnie d'ecrivains, philosophes et poetes, parmi les plus marquants de la deuxieme moitie du XXe siecle. Son point de depart est une question qui porte sur l'essence meme de la litterature: que signifie aimer avec passion une oeuvre et l'homme qui est derriere?... Comment vit-on avec? Et qu'y trouve-t-on pour vivre avec soi meme, apprendre a vivre ainsi? Il s'agit donc d'un livre ecrit a la premiere personne par un auteur qui aura eu la (...) chance de croiser le chemin de quelques grandes figures de la pensee francaise contemporaine: Edmond Jabes, Jacques Derrida et Andre du Bouchet, Maurice Blanchot de facon plus lointaine. On y trouvera pourtant une volonte clairement pedagogique. Didier Cahen reprend et etudie les enonces multiples de ces createurs de la postmodernite sur l'articulation de la pensee et de la litterature ou sur l'espace commun de la philosophie et de la poesie. Dans la foulee, il aborde des questions plus ouvertes, qui touchent a l'intuition de l'autre, au non-savoir qu'explore la face cachee de la litterature. Comme le demontrent les oeuvres singulieres de Roger Laporte et de Marcel Cohen, ecrire c'est mettre sa vie en jeu, se fier a ce qui vient, suivre l'ordre de l'Autre... en se jouant de l'etre. Indiscipline au coeur des disciplines, cet exercice de la litterature traverse ainsi les genres, engage son ecriture au-dela des lignes du livre, delivre le message qui se lit a livre ouvert. (shrink)

L'identification du site d'Aphrati (Crète centrale) avec le toponyme antique d'Arkadès, soutenue pour la première fois par D. Levi et généralement acceptée, est en réalité fort peu satisfaisante. Le « Contrat de travail » de Spensithios ainsi que plusieurs autres documents nous engagent plutôt à localiser à cet endroit la cité de Dattalla, dont le fonctionnement est étudié tant à partir des sources écrites qu'à travers les vestiges archéologiques. L'histoire de cette cité est ensuite éclairée par l'examen du contexte régional, (...) et plus particulièrement par la politique d'expansion de la cité de Lyktos dès l'époque archaïque. Cette étude dévoile une évolution des cités de Crète centrale beaucoup plus dynamique qu'on ne l'avait soupçonné jusqu'ici, attirant l'attention sur certains changements qui ont touché ces cités au VIe et au Ve s. av. J.-C. Elle fait notamment apparaître une restructuration des territoires qui trouve de nombreux parallèles contemporains dans d'autres cités du monde grec et contraint à revoir l'image d'une Crète en sommeil, entièrement tournée vers son passé, que véhiculent tant l'historiographie antique que les interprétations modernes. (shrink)

We have entered a new era of nature. What remains of the frontiers of modern thought that divided the living from the inert, subjectivity from objectivity, the apparent from the real, value from fact, and the human from the nonhuman? Can the great oppositions that presided over the modern invention of nature still claim any cogency? In _Nature as Event_, Didier Debaise shows how new narratives and cosmologies are necessary to rearticulate that which until now had been separated. Following (...) William James and Alfred North Whitehead, Debaise presents a pluralistic approach to nature. What would happen if we attributed subjectivity and potential to all beings, human and nonhuman? Why should we not consider aesthetics and affect as the fabric that binds all existence? And what if the senses of importance and value were no longer understood to be exclusively limited to the human? (shrink)

Contemporary political theory (CPT) has approached questions of plurality and diversity by drawing rather implicitly on anthropological accounts of difference. This was the case with the ‘cultural turn’, which significantly shaped theories of multiculturalism. Similarly, the current ‘ontological turn’ is gaining influence and leaving a marked impact on CPT. I examine the recent turn and assess both the possibilities it offers and the challenges it poses for decentering CPT and opening radical, decolonial avenues for thinking difference otherwise. I take Paul (...) Nadasdy's critique of the ontological turn as an invitation to reflect on the methodological precepts that inform how the field frames the scope and limits of comparison. In pursuit of this, I examine the Zapatistas’ notion of a ‘world of many worlds’, which provides a way of approaching difference that captures the generative aspects of the ontological turn while avoiding the pitfalls of relativism and political inertia. I argue that the Zapatistas’ insights offer ethical guidance towards social and ecological thriving. Ultimately, my goal is to move CPT towards a more capacious form of making sense of what is out there in the world, and thus make room for better ways of inhabiting the Earth. (shrink)

We propose a construct, the Trust Triangle, that highlights three primary mechanisms that provide ex post accountability for opportunistic behavior and motivate ex ante trust in economic relationships. The mechanisms are a society’s legal and regulatory framework, market-based discipline and reputational capital, and culture, including individual ethics and social norms. The Trust Triangle provides a framework to conceptualize the relationships between trust, corporate accountability, legal liability, reputation, and culture. We use the Trust Triangle to summarize recent developments in the empirical (...) finance literature that examine how trust is formed and how trust, or its absence, affects financial markets, firm performance, and the incidence of financial fraud. To date, most studies examine only one leg of the Trust Triangle in isolation. The evidence, however, indicates that all three legs of the Trust Triangle have first-order effects on a wide range of financial outcomes and that they are interrelated. Attempts to model trust and trustworthiness that do not incorporate all three aspects of the Trust Triangle will therefore miss essential aspects of the basic economic problem of how counterparties overcome the risks of moral hazard, asymmetric information, and opportunism to engage in mutually beneficial exchange and production activities. We focus especially on culture-related mechanisms, a recently developed area in empirical finance research that has potential to influence the more established research on laws and reputation. (shrink)

Although it is usually assumed that in Michel Foucault’s work biopolitics is a politics which has life for its object, a closer analysis of the courses he gave at the Collège de France on this topic, as well as of the other seminars and papers of this period, shows that he took a quite different direction, restricting it to the regulation of population. The aim of this article is to return to the origins of the concept and to confront the (...) issue of life as such. This implies four shifts with respect to Foucault’s theory: Politics is not only about the rules of the game of governing, but also about its stakes. More than the power over life, contemporary societies are characterized by the legitimacy they attach to life. Rather than a normalizing process, the intervention in lives is a production of inequalities. The politics of life, then, is not only a question of governmentality and technologies, but also of meaning and values. The discussion is grounded on a series of empirical investigations conducted in France and South Africa on how life and lives are treated in our world. (shrink)

Didier Zúñiga | : Le présent article examine la façon dont Charles Taylor a entrepris de poser le problème politique de la sécularisation. Plus spécifiquement, nous voudrions montrer que, si son effort pour articuler une théorie de l’aménagement de la diversité morale et religieuse a certes contribué à critiquer les régimes rigides de la laïcité, Taylor accorde une prééminence incontestable à la liberté de conscience. Or, notre analyse entend démontrer que, selon cette vue, il n’y a pas de place (...) pour l’autonomie religieuse. Notre hypothèse est qu’en présentant les conflits moraux et religieux comme des enjeux de justice, Taylor néglige l’important clivage existant entre, d’une part, les questions de reconnaissance reliées à la différence culturelle et, d’autre part, les revendications d’autorité exprimées par des groupes — et pas simplement des membres individuels — au sein de la sphère publique. | : This paper aims to challenge the assumption that Charles Taylor’s conception of political secularism is pluralist. The article argues that, although Taylor’s work provides the basis for an important critique of the most rigid forms of secularism, his theory places a strong focus on individual conscience. Yet Taylor’s almost exclusive concern for individual conscience excludes the pluralist claim to religious institutional autonomy. In addition, this article argues that Taylor presents moral and religious conflicts as questions of justice, which can be resolved with a correct interpretation of freedom of conscience. Against Taylor’s conception of “laïcité,” the article attempts to show that these problems are best grasped as conflicts between the authority of different groups—not just individuals—and that of the state. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a strong push for binding human rights due diligence (HRDD) legislation, both at the national and European levels. As empirical evidence of such legislation's impact gradually emerges, it is time to take stock. In this article, we conduct a systematic literature review to assess available empirical evidence on (1) how HRDD legislation affects the policies and practices through which companies engage with human rights; (2) how these policies and practices, in turn, affect different actors in companies’ (...) value chains. While it is too early to make conclusive judgements, existing evidence allows us to identify several worrying trends: most companies opt for managerialist and compliance-oriented approaches to HRDD; revert primarily to earlier (and flawed) private governance mechanisms; and try to cascade responsibilities and costs in their supply chain. This risks perpetuating or reinforcing marginalisation and exclusion dynamics. Based on these findings, we formulate some lessons for policy-makers. (shrink)

Nietzsche a été continuellement malade. Or, si la maladie n'est pas l'inspiratrice de l'œuvre de Nietzsche, elle est source continuelle de réflexions et enrichit les perspectives de Nietzsche sur la santé. Les oppositions affirmatif -réactif, grégaire - solitaire, noble-vulgaire se ramènent à cette opposition santé-maladie (c'est le vécu de la maladie qui a appris à Nietzsche à se faire un point de vue sur sa santé et vice-versa). La maladie est même devenue source du renversement des valeurs et d'affirmation de (...) sa grande santé. C'est pourquoi ces expériences de la maladie qui ponctuent toute la vie de Nietzsche ont une telle importance dans la genèse et l'approfondissement de sa pensée. (shrink)

This paper argues that many so-called digital technologies can be construed as notational technologies, explored through the example of Monegraph, an art and digital asset management platform built on top of the blockchain system originally developed for the cryptocurrency bitcoin. As the paper characterizes it, a notational technology is the performance of syntactic notation within a field of reference, a technologized version of what Nelson Goodman called a “notational system.” Notational technologies produce abstracted entities through positive and reliable, or constitutive, (...) tests of socially acceptable meaning. Accordingly, this account deviates from typical narratives of blockchains, instead demonstrating that blockchain technologies are effective at managing digital assets because they produce abstracted identities through the performance of notation. Since notational technologies rely on configurations of socially acceptable meaning, this paper also provides a philosophical account of how blockchain technologies are socially embedded. (shrink)

A memoir and a meditation on individual and class identity, and the forces that keep us locked in political closets. On thinking the matter through, it doesn't seem exaggerated to assert that my coming out of the sexual closet, my desire to assume and assert my homosexuality, coincided within my personal trajectory with my shutting myself up inside what I might call a class closet. —from Returning to Reims After his father dies, Didier Eribon returns to his hometown of (...) Reims and rediscovers the working-class world he had left behind thirty years earlier. For years, Eribon had thought of his father largely in terms of the latter's intolerable homophobia. Yet his father's death provokes new reflection on Eribon's part about how multiple processes of domination intersect in a given life and in a given culture. Eribon sets out to investigate his past, the history of his family, and the trajectory of his own life. His story weaves together a set of remarkable reflections on the class system in France, on the role of the educational system in class identity, on the way both class and sexual identities are formed, and on the recent history of French politics, including the shifting voting patterns of the working classes—reflected by Eribon's own family, which changed its allegiance from the Communist Party to the National Front. Returning to Reims is a remarkable book of sociological inquiry and critical theory, of interest to anyone concerned with the direction of leftist politics in the contemporary world, and to anyone who has ever experienced how sexual identity can clash with other parts of one's identity. A huge success in France since its initial publication in 2009, Returning to Reims received enthusiastic reviews in Le Monde, Libération, L'Express, Les Inrockuptibles, and elsewhere. (shrink)

The biogenesis of RNAs and proteins is a threat to the cell. Indeed, the act of transcription and nascent RNAs challenge DNA stability. Both RNAs and nascent proteins can also initiate the formation of toxic aggregates because of their physicochemical properties. In reviewing the literature, I show that co-transcriptional and co-translational biophysical constraints can trigger DNA instability that in turn increases the likelihood that sequences that alleviate the constraints emerge over evolutionary time. These directed genetic variations rely on the biogenesis (...) of small RNAs that are transcribed directly from challenged DNA regions or processed from the transcripts that directly or indirectly generate constraints or aggregates. These small RNAs can then target the genomic regions from which they initially originate and increase the local mutation rate of the targeted loci. This mechanism is based on molecular pathways involved in anti-parasite genome defence systems, and implies that gene expression-related biophysical constraints represent a driving force of genome evolution. Are randomly generated mutations the only source of genetic variation during evolution? This paper describes the molecular mechanisms by which co-transcriptional and co-translational biophysical constraints trigger genetic variations in targeted-genomic sequences in an RNA-depending manner. This directed-mutational process that drives genome evolution is related to antiparasite genome defence systems. (shrink)

En prenant comme point de départ la proposition d’André Breton d’une « physique de la poésie », nous analyserons ici les conditions de surgissement de diverses variations qui pris forme dans la pratique surréaliste de l’objet surréaliste, depuis la Boule suspendue (1930) de Giacometti aux sculptures crées par Miró dans les années cinquante, en prenant compte de la construction des objets à fonctionnements symboliques de Dalí, à l’« Équation de l’objet trouvé», écrit fondamental de Breton, et à la célébration, en (...) 1936, de l’exposition fondationale à la Galerie Charles Ratton. (shrink)