Au tournant du XIXe et du XXe siècle, l'ordre de la pensée, du savoir et des représentations a été ébranlé par la sociologie naissante. L'image de l'homme, de l'existence humaine, s'en est trouvée profondément bouleversée. Cette révolution sans morts ni barricades a en revanche fait de nombreuses victimes, à commencer par la philosophie. Face à l'idée d'une autonomie et d'une singularité irréductible des faits sociaux, parachevant le développement d'approches objectivistes de l'esprit humain, la philosophie s'est retrouvée acculée, sommée de se (...) redéfinir et d'abandonner à la sociologie, au moins provisoirement, les terrains de la morale et des conditions de possibilité de la connaissance. Avec Max Weber, Georg Simmel et Ferdinand Ttennies en Allemagne, Émile Durkheim et surtout Gabriel Tarde en France, la sociologie consacra, tout d'abord, le principe d'une pluralité de déterminations historiques et objectives pesant sur l'existence humaine. Elle ratifia, ensuite, l'avènement d'une conception nouvelle de la construction théorique, respectueuse de la complexité et de la force contraignante des faits ainsi que de la nature 'sociale' des catégories de pensée et des pratiques de production et de transmission des connaissances. Une grande partie de la philosophie du XXe siècle peut être lue comme une réponse à cette révolution cognitive. C'est ainsi que Henri Bergson, Georges Canguilhem, Martin Heidegger, William James, Karl Jaspers, Maurice Merleau-Ponty ou encore Bertrand Russell sont soumis, ici, à une grille d'analyse inédite. Un ouvrage aussi documenté qu'audacieux, qui offre la première histoire croisée de la sociologie et de la philosophie."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Anti-selection occurs when information asymmetry exists between insurers and applicants. When an applicant knows they are at high risk of loss, but the insurer does not, the applicant may try to use this knowledge differential to secure insurance at a lower premium that does not match risk.

Quinze ans après avoir créé le site_ Chymistry of Isaac Newton_, qui a permis la mise en ligne de nombreux manuscrits alchimiques de Newton, avec leurs commentaires et la présentation d’expériences de chimie s’y rapportant, William Newman nous offre la synthèse de ses travaux sur la science alchimique de Newton. La découverte en 1936 des manuscrits alchimiques newtoniens lors d’une vente aux enchères à Londres ébranla la communauté des historiens des sciences, qui ne comprenaient pas comment ce mathématicien génial, inventeur (...) de la théorie de la gravitation universelle et de l’optique moderne, pouvait avoir été amené à consacrer une grande partie de sa vie à l’étude d’une alchimie alors considérée, le plus souvent, comme relevant de l’ésotérisme. L’auteur commence par repousser les principales explications présentées dans la seconde moitié du XX e siècle. Non, Newton n’avait pas trouvé dans les écrits alchimiques des doctrines confortant ses théories théologiques ; i... (shrink)

Rhetoric is at present the object of a rehabilitation on a grand scale, all the more as it overlaps the fields of literature, linguistics, and philosophy. Actually, if philosophy rejects and removes rhetoric, it is nevertheless, as a method of word, wholly impregnated with it. To investigate the complex relationship of mutual implication in which rhetoric and philosophy are involved is part and parcel of this plan of re-evaluation of rhetoric as “discourse art” with a view to a re-definition of (...) its field and functions. In this perspective, rhetoric articulates itself within, in relation to, and with Plato's dialogues in a much more subtle and complex manner than warranted by the process of “anti-rhetoricalness” initiated by philosophy against rhetoric after Plato. Going back to the origins of this conflict and recalling the system of oppositions supporting the official Platonic vulgate, this study begins to pave the way for a micr-reading of the Platonic text regarded as a paradigm of philosophic textuality. It is certainly true that the Phaedrus, the Gorgias, and the Symposium set up a system of oppositions between between rhetoric and dialectrics which are in contrast with each other in the word practices, in the rules and methods of discourse, and which are antinomic in their ends. This system of oppositions always seems to be referable to the opposition between “speaking fair” and “speaking the truth”. But the strategies and procedures set going in the Symposium, in particular in “Agathon's speech” and in “Diotima and Socrates' speech” betray a much closer connection between the supposed “bad rhetoric” revealed by Phaedrus and the “good rhetoric” which is dialectrics.The search for this connection is conducted through two types of reading of the Symposium. In actual fact, between the paronomasia on the agathoi and that on “Gorgias' head” (this Gorgon of rhetoric) there takes place a speech, Agathon's, whose parodied, exacerbated, and counterfeit rhetoric allows us to gauge Plato's own rhetoric in this artefact which distances itself, more or less openly, from Gorgian rhetoric. This “hyper-rhetoricalness” and “over-grammaticalness” cannot be there with the sole aim of serving as evidence against rhetoric. It is in fact possible to perceive through the web of the text the ends, quite rhetorical themselves, which preside over the structure of Agathon's speech, seen from the viewpoint of the figure of the antithesis.Thus, it is in the play of a “neo-rhetoricalness” where we must, in the last analysis, look for the spring allowing the philosophical discourse to overturn the rhetorical one. And while in Giorgias what clothes the discourse is actually the truth, in Plato it is the antinomy between “speaking fair” and “speaking the truth”, conveniently set up, which forms the basis of the function of diversion by which Socrates points out — in the complex network of the continuity and discontinuity existing between rhetoric and philosophy — the structures of reversal and the original upheavals which Plato imposes on the relation between rhetorical and dialectric discourse. Actually, dialectrics is found in “Socrates and Diotima's speech”, not as “anti-rhetoric”, but rather as a “transposition” of the rhetorical discourse, thus acquiring the traits of a “neo-rhetoric”. The analysis of this discourse, which constitutes the second reading exercise of the Symposium, allows us to pick out the aversion and inversion strategies that turn dialectrics in an overtuned rhetoric. The founding deed of this “inversion” (rather than “separation”) is recognizable in the alteration it introduces in the first plase in the type of discourse, which from a rhetorical, explicitly addressed, macrological, monological, and continuous discourse turns into a dialectical, brachylogous, dialogic discourse with partners and interlocutors, i.e. into a dialogue; in the second place, the subject of the discourse shifts from the locuteur, author and signer of the discourse to ever-present interlocutors who end up by making room for a talking and knowing speaker in a regime of anonymous subjectivity: this is an extreme alteration of the anthropological and epistemic subject, culminating in the scientific discourse of Euclidean geometry. Finally, the inversion is recognizable in the object of the discourse, whose prâgma slips from being the predicate of a qualified grammatical subject into a process of objectivation and substantivation, thereby moving from the rhetorical question “What is beautiful?” to the philosophical question “What is the beautiful?”.The hypothesis of a “neo-rhetoricalness” of dialectics, underlying this research, is therefore more Platonic than it appears, insofar as between rhetoric and dialectics there has been a tradition which has tried to wipe out the traces of its transmission, but where the neo-rhetoricalness of dialectics shows through quite clearly, taking advantage, without admitting it, from a more ancient rhetoric than it is itself. (A.T.). (shrink)

We examine when and how police officers may avoid costly errors under stress by leveraging theoretical and empirical work on the biopsychosocial (BPS) model of challenge and threat. According to the BPS model, in motivated performance contexts (e.g., test taking, athletics), the evaluation of situational and task demands in relation to one’s perceived resources available to cope with those demands engenders distinct patterns of peripheral physiological responding. Individuals experience more challenge-like states in which blood circulates more efficiently in the periphery (...) when they evaluate their coping resources as meeting or exceeding the task demands. Conversely, individuals experience more threat-like states in which blood circulates less efficiently in the periphery when they view the situation or task demands as exceeding their coping resources. Patterns of response consistent with challenge and threat states have been shown to predict important performance and decision-making outcomes in stressful contexts, and repeated experiences of threat-like patterns of physiological activity are thought to have detrimental effects on long-term cardiovascular health. To date, however, research has not used the biopsychosocial model to understand police decision-making under stress. Here, we review relevant empirical work from the perspective of the BPS model concerning how minority status and power can shape challenge and threat responding and contribute to decision making under stress. We then detail a research agenda aimed at improving the translational value of research being conducted within the BPS model for understanding complex performance and decision making in the real world, including among law enforcement personnel. (shrink)

Un de ces (syntagmes) qui… (à propos de la locution un(e) de ces […] qui) Cet article a pour objet de montrer, sur une question déjà soulevée en stylistique française, ce que nous semble pouvoir apporter la dimension des vastes corpus et des outils logiciels d’exploration assistée. La locution un(e) de ces […] qui, déjà étudiée comme stylème dix-neuviémiste (Bordas), vecteur d’exophore mémorielle (Fraser & Joly), est redéfinie comme support d’un décrochage discursif dans le cadre de la polyphonie du (...) récit (Bakhtine). Elle fait ici l’objet d’un relevé systématique dans un vaste corpus littéraire, qui permet de quantifier les proportions d’une typologie (notamment quant à la concordance aspectuo-temporelle) et d’en affiner la distribution diachronique et par auteurs. On observe alors le fonctionnement de cette locution comme filtre du vocabulaire et l’on montre que non seulement des unités isolées, mais des pôles lexico-thématiques de sa structure polycooccurrentielle (mise en évidence par l’AFC) sont significativement sur et sous-représentés dans les phrases d’emploi. On avance ainsi vers une meilleure connaissance de cette structure-frontière de la langue et du style en français. (shrink)

Un de ces (syntagmes) qui… (à propos de la locution un(e) de ces […] qui) Cet article a pour objet de montrer, sur une question déjà soulevée en stylistique française, ce que nous semble pouvoir apporter la dimension des vastes corpus et des outils logiciels d’exploration assistée. La locution un(e) de ces […] qui, déjà étudiée comme stylème dix-neuviémiste (Bordas), vecteur d’exophore mémorielle (Fraser & Joly), est redéfinie comme support d’un décrochage discursif dans le cadre de la polyphonie du (...) récit (Bakhtine). Elle fait ici l’objet d’un relevé systématique dans un vaste corpus littéraire, qui permet de quantifier les proportions d’une typologie (notamment quant à la concordance aspectuo-temporelle) et d’en affiner la distribution diachronique et par auteurs. On observe alors le fonctionnement de cette locution comme filtre du vocabulaire et l’on montre que non seulement des unités isolées, mais des pôles lexico-thématiques de sa structure polycooccurrentielle (mise en évidence par l’AFC) sont significativement sur et sous-représentés dans les phrases d’emploi. On avance ainsi vers une meilleure connaissance de cette structure-frontière de la langue et du style en français. (shrink)

In “The Possibility of Epistemic Nudging” (2021), I address a phenomenon that is widely neglected in the current literature on nudges: intentional doxastic nudging, i.e. people’s intentional influence over other people’s beliefs, rather than over their choices. I argue that, at least in brute cases, nudging is not giving reasons, but rather bypasses reasoning altogether. More specifically, nudging utilizes psychological heuristics and the nudged person’s biases in smart ways. The goal of my paper is to defend the claim that nudging, (...) even when it bypasses reasoning, can result in justified beliefs and knowledge. As I argue, it takes two things to accomplish this goal: suitable meta-epistemological views and appropriate circumstances. If a broadly reliabilist account of justified beliefs and knowledge is correct, and if the relevant belief-forming methods are externally individuated in the right way, then nudging to knowledge is possible. If, in addition, the nudger is knowledgeable, epistemically benevolent and systematically effective, then nudging to knowledge will become reality. In their replies Neil Levy (2021) and Jonathan Matheson and Valerie Joly Chock (2021), put pressure on my argument from different angles. Levy thinks that a better case can be made for his view that nudging is giving testimonial reasons, and finds my objections to this view unconvincing. Matheson and Joly Chock, on the other hand, point out that acquiring knowledge through nudging (i.e. epistemic nudging) is compatible with evidentialism, even if nudging is not giving reasons. On their view, evidentialism provides an explanation of epistemic nudging that is superior to my own account, which, according to them, also suffers from a number of counterintuitive consequences. I am grateful to my critics for raising these concerns, because considering them deepens our perspective on the target phenomenon, and has made me think harder about the relevant epistemological issues. Nevertheless, I am convinced that my core claims can be defended against these criticisms. (shrink)

Thomas E. Hill, Jr., interprets and extends Kant's moral theory in a series of essays that highlight its relevance to contemporary ethics. He introduces the major themes of Kantian ethics and explores its practical application to questions about revolution, prison reform, and forcible interventions in other countries for humanitarian purposes.

E. J. Lowe; The problems of intrinsic change: rejoinder to Lewis, Analysis, Volume 48, Issue 2, 1 March 1988, Pages 72–77, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/48.2.7.

E. J. Lowe; Coinciding objects: in defence of the ‘standard account’, Analysis, Volume 55, Issue 3, 1 July 1995, Pages 171–178, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/5.

The responses to the questions of why? when?, how?, where?, and in what ways? business ethics should be taught in the BusinessEthics classroom inundate the scholarly literature. Yet, to date, despite some very interesting ideas, with respect to the answers givento the above question, not only has nothing even close to consensus been reached, but this particular area of pedagogy is instagnation—authors still challenge both the very idea of teaching business ethics as well as the practical value of such courses (...) for ourstudents once they graduate to the corporate world.In this paper I will suggest that the reason for this lack of pedagogical progress is that there has been a serious oversight regarding the most important teaching question of all: Who? I will show that the pedagogical issue of whom should be teaching Business Ethics has been largely ignored, skirted or answered incorrectly. I will then boldly argue that the only necessary condition for successful courses inBusiness Ethics is that they be taught by experts in ethics, i.e., Ph.D.s in philosophy. (shrink)

The responses to the questions of why? when?, how?, where?, and in what ways? business ethics should be taught in the BusinessEthics classroom inundate the scholarly literature. Yet, to date, despite some very interesting ideas, with respect to the answers givento the above question, not only has nothing even close to consensus been reached, but this particular area of pedagogy is instagnation—authors still challenge both the very idea of teaching business ethics as well as the practical value of such courses (...) for ourstudents once they graduate to the corporate world.In this paper I will suggest that the reason for this lack of pedagogical progress is that there has been a serious oversight regarding the most important teaching question of all: Who? I will show that the pedagogical issue of whom should be teaching Business Ethics has been largely ignored, skirted or answered incorrectly. I will then boldly argue that the only necessary condition for successful courses inBusiness Ethics is that they be taught by experts in ethics, i.e., Ph.D.s in philosophy. (shrink)

In light of the development of “CRISPR” technology, new promising advances in therapeutic and preventive approaches have become a reality. However, with it came many ethical challenges. The most recent worldwide condemnation of the first use of CRISPR to genetically modify a human embryo is the latest example of ethically questionable use of this new and emerging field. Monotheistic religions are very conservative about such changes to the human genome and can be considered an interference with God’s creation. Moreover, these (...) changes could cause perpetual changes to future generations. The Muslim scholars establish their decisions by addressing five foundations of Islamic law i.e. “maqāṣid al sharı̄`a”; the purposes of the law. These are dın̄, nafs, nasl, `aql and māl. To achieve this, the five principles should all be met before approval of an experiment like the Chinese embryo modifications; Qaṣd which is achieved in this case as it aims to protect the embryo from HIV. Yaqın̄ and Ḍarar were not satisfied as they require strong scientific certainty of the procedures, and evidence of safety. Ḍarūra by which the alternatives being compared; in this case more established and proven safe alternatives to protect the HIV transmission from the father are available, so this principle is not met. The final principle is `Urf, by which the social context of using any contemporary technology should be taken in consideration, and clearly this was not achieved. Collectively, germline changes are rejected from an Islamic perspective until the five principles are fulfilled. In the Chinese Twins gene editing case, there was clearly no justification or support for it according to the Muslim Jurisprudence laws. These laws and approaches can serve as an ethical checklist for such controversial research, especially in early stages of the research. (shrink)