Reproduit quatre conférences faites en 1946 et 1947 sous ce titre au Collège de philosophie, et interroge la notion de temps comme limitation même de l'être fini ou comme relation de l'être fini à Dieu (Electre).

Reasoning research suggests that people use more stringent criteria when they evaluate others' arguments than when they produce arguments themselves. To demonstrate this “selective laziness,” we used a choice blindness manipulation. In two experiments, participants had to produce a series of arguments in response to reasoning problems, and they were then asked to evaluate other people's arguments about the same problems. Unknown to the participants, in one of the trials, they were presented with their own argument as if it was (...) someone else's. Among those participants who accepted the manipulation and thus thought they were evaluating someone else's argument, more than half rejected the arguments that were in fact their own. Moreover, participants were more likely to reject their own arguments for invalid than for valid answers. This demonstrates that people are more critical of other people's arguments than of their own, without being overly critical: They are better able to tell valid from invalid arguments when the arguments are someone else's rather than their own. (shrink)

Presupposition, vagueness, and oddness can lead to some sentences failing to have a clear truth value. The homogeneity property of plural predication with definite descriptions may also create truth-value gaps: The books are written in Dutch is true if all relevant books are in Dutch, false if none of them are, and neither true nor false if, say, half of the books are written in Dutch. We study the projection property of homogeneity by deploying methods of general interest to identify (...) truth-value gaps. Method A consists in collecting both truth judgments and, independently, falsity judgments. The second method, employed in experiment series B and C, is based on one-shot ternary judgments: completely true vs. completely false vs. neither. After a calibration of these methods, we use them to demonstrate that homogeneity projects out of negation, the scope of universal sentences and the scope of non-monotonic quantifiers such as exactly two, to some extent. We assess our results in light of different theoretical approaches to homogeneity—approaches based on presuppositions, scalar implicatures, and something like supervaluations, respectively. We identify free parameters in these theories and assess various variants of them based on our results. Our experimental paradigms may be of broader significance insofar as they can be applied to other phenomena which result in the failure of a sentence to have a definite truth value. (shrink)

Qu’est-ce qui peut venir à l’idée qui n’y soit pas déjà, en quelque façon, contenu, ou qui ne soit pas déjà à la mesure de l’idée? Ne faudrait-il pas, pour rendre pensable l’absolu – pour trouver un sens à Dieu – contester que la pensée soit coextensive à la conscience en guise d’un savoir toujours corrélatif de l’être et, dès lors, que la philosophie coïncide avec l’ontologie?Ce livre essaie de suggérer que le sens signifie non pas exclusivement sous la figure (...) de signifiants – choses, signes, mots – renvoyant à des signifiés; qu’il signifie, plus anciennement, à partir du visage humain, comme quand on dit signifier un ordre ou ordonner. Signifiance originelle du visage perçant sans cesse ses formes plastiques et représentées qui sans cesse se referme sur la voix silencieuse ou inouïe du commandement signifié! Eveil et dévotion suscités en guise d’un moi libéré de soi, libéré pour le prochain, même si l’on s’obstine à n’y trouver que représentation et conscience de soi. (shrink)

In their article ’Is Pregnancy a Disease? A Normative Approach’, Anna Smajdor and Joona Räsänen contend that, on several of the most prominent accounts of disease, pregnancy should be considered a disease. More specifically, of the five accounts they discuss, each renders pregnancy a disease or suffers serious conceptual problems otherwise. They take issue specifically with the dysfunction account of disease and argue that it suffers several theoretical difficulties. In this response, we focus on defending the dysfunction account against their (...) main objections and show why a version of the dysfunction account is viable on account of the indispensability of normativity in biology and medicine. After disarming their main objections to the dysfunction account, we briefly respond to their treatment of the normality of pregnancy and then draw a distinction between adverse symptoms and underlying causes to show why even though pregnancy may have ’disease-like’ features, it is not a disease. (shrink)

Postcolonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader sets out a timely and powerful agenda for contemporary African, Afro-Caribbean, and African American philosophy.

For a long time, Gilbert Simondon’s work was known only as either a philosophy restricted to the problem of technology or as an inspirational source for Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of difference. As Simondon’s thinking is now finally in the process of being recognized in its own right as one of the most original philosophies of the twentieth century, this also entails that some critical work needs to be done to disentangle it from an all too hasty identification with Deleuzian categories. (...) While both Simondon and Deleuze have made crucial contributions towards a theory of differential individuation that significantly diverges from other authors associated with French poststructuralism insofar as they insist on the dynamic and vital dimension of difference, they also differ on crucial points. Whereas Simondon sees the process of becoming as transductive amplification, Deleuze theorizes it as intensifying involution, leading to two notably distinct concepts of difference. (shrink)

According to Wiredu, the Akan profess secular esteem rather than religious worship to supra-natural beings, who they perceive in an empirical sense. He backs this up by re-reading what he sees as the Akan general ontology in a way that denies them of the concepts of the supernatural, the transcendental, the mental, the spiritual, and an ontologically distinct mind. At the end of denying the three criteria of worship as well as all of these other concepts which might otherwise be (...) available to the Akan, one might struggle to find any evidence that the Akan even had a religion. I dispute this secular reading, and I more generally demonstrate that the characterizations of the Akan attitude to divinity as non-worshipping, non-supernatural, non-transcendent, and non-spiritual, are either conceptually flawed, factually incorrect, or both. (shrink)

L’argument de base de cet article est que le débat consensuel n’a pas été une notion très significative jusqu’à présent parce que le consensus n’a pas été étudié de manière approfondie en tant que concept et que la délibération n’a pas été étudiée précisément en termes de sa propension à parvenir à un accord commun. En particulier, la délibération et les problèmes qui en découlent n’ont pas été classées en plusieurs niveaux afin d’exposer les différents défis qui se posent lorsque (...) l’on tente de parvenir à un accord et les types d’approches délibératives impliquées dans chaque catégorie. La présente recherche propose une telle catégorisation dans le but de clarifier davantage le débat. (shrink)

The paradoxical logic of transparency and mediation Transparency is the metaphor of our time. Whether in government or corporate governance, finance, technology, health or the media – it is ubiquitous today, and there is hardly a current debate that does not call for more transparency. But what does this word actually stand for and what are the consequences for the life of individuals? Can knowledge from the arts, and its play of visibility and invisibility, tell us something about the paradoxical (...) logics of transparency and mediation? This Obscure Thing Called Transparency gathers contributions by international experts who critically assess the promises and perils of transparency today. (shrink)

In his plea for consensual democracy in Africa, Kwasi Wiredu recommends unanimity about what is to be done, not what ought to be done, or unanimity on action rather than unanimity of values, beliefs and opinion. I caution the use of this procedural instrument by showing that some issues are so value-laden that a group decision cannot be value-neutral. It may sometimes be more productive to entertain value differences to keep them from going underground and becoming dangerous. However, the ability (...) to locate some common interest or ground seems to be crucial for such value confrontation. (shrink)

" Pourquoi demandons-nous avec tant d'empressement au cerveau d'expliquer ce qui nous arrive et ce que nous devons faire? On se dit, n'est-ce pas dans ses replis que nous devons désormais chercher notre sort? La philosophie peut-elle rester indifférente à un tel sujet? [...] Mais avons-nous éclairci notre monde et résolu nos questions de vie en les enracinant dans nos cerveaux? A-t-on rendu la conscience moins mystérieuse? Et penser? L'organe de la pensée va-t-il enfin nous en dispenser? " L'auteur s'interroge (...) avec une douce ironie sur les espoirs et les fragilités qui s'expriment dans cette nouvelle quête de fondement que nous avons entreprise. Qu'on ne s'attende pas à trouver ici une théorie du fonctionnement cérébral, mais mille interrogations, mille formulations des questions qui surgissent dès lors qu'on interpose l'idée de cerveau entre nous et le monde. L'ensemble compose une suite de méditations, ramassées en brefs chapitres, pour trouver une place au cerveau et varier notre distance à son égard. (shrink)

Bernard Matolino argues that the communal foundation of classical African communitarianism should be discarded if communitarian theories would be of any use to modern African political theory. He sets out to propose a theory of communitarianism that not only suits modern African realities but would also be useful to any people including non-Africans. I argue that what he ends up doing is proposing cosmopolitanism, calling into question the “Afro” designation of the title of his theory. I also argue that his (...) position on the relationship between the individual and the community is technically not communitarianism of any sort, calling into question the “communitarian” appellation in his theory. His attempt to divorce communitarianism from communalism is unsuccessful, making communitarianism as unsuitable as a theory of world relations as Matolino claims it is unsuitable for contemporary multiethnic African societies. (shrink)

Prevailing literature argues that arguing is the only appropriate mode of deliberation. The literature acknowledges bargaining, story telling, and other forms of communication, but is unwilling to describe these as deliberation, properly speaking. The claim is that describing them as such would amount to concept stretching. In this article I argue that arguing exhausts neither the legitimate modes of deliberation nor the modes for effective deliberation. To do this I delineate two basic categories of issues we normally deliberate upon, and (...) demonstrate that arguing is more appropriate for one category, not so appropriate for the other. (shrink)

“What we have learned from Saussure” affirms Merleau-Ponty “is that, taken singly, signs do not signify anything, and that each one of them does not so much express a meaning as mark a divergence of meaning between itself and other signs.” While it has often been stressed that Merleau-Ponty was arguably among the earliest philosophical readers of Saussure, the real impact of this reading on Merleau-Ponty’s thinking has rarely been assessed in detail. By focusing on the middle period – the (...) years between the publication of the Phenomenology of Perception and the abandonment of the book project The Prose of the World – a special interest in language and its ideality becomes all the more evident. Now this period is crucial for understanding the turn of the later years: similarly to Saussure, who shifted the problem of meaning from a problem of referentiality to an issue of self-differentiation of the linguistic field, Merleau-Ponty shifts his account of perception from a relationship based on sensory subjects and perceived objects to an immanent differentiation of the sensible world. The genesis ofan articulated world can be conceptualized with the experience of children’s language acquisition and the phenomenon of “deflation.” At a certain point in her development, the child interrupts her incessant babbling and learns to shape pauses and silences, which are the precondition for meaningful sounds. Learning how to speak – as it were – would thus be learning how not to speak. The child may only enter a specific language by means of a phonematic restriction; to become a member of a language community is to lose the capacity to speak all languages. (shrink)

The demand for more transparency is hardly ever questioned. When it is, it is generally questioned in the name of a protection of privacy. In a traditional liberal understanding, there is a non-alienable “right to privacy” (Warren/Brandeis, 1890). Many political struggles, however, involved ignoring such boundaries, and making public things that were meant to remain private (domestic violence, gender oppression, child abuse etc.). While holding that the distinction between private and public is necessary, it must remain mobile and subject to (...) renegotiation. Civil inattention highlights the importance of disregarding: disregarding what others we share the same public space with do, as long as it is not of public relevance; and disregarding such rules of privacy if a violation of basic human rights is taking place, in order to make such behaviour public. In some cases, disregard and ignorance can thus be a moral virtue. (shrink)

« C’est une question de point de vue… » On associe aujourd’hui la perspective à l’individualisme, à l’affirmation d’une vérité privée et indépassable. C’est oublier la tradition de la perspectiva communis, celle qui fait de la perspective le vecteur d’un horizon commun. Au croisement de la science, de l’art et de la philosophie, le livre exhume une tradition que l’on se doit de redécouvrir : le point de vue, ce n’est pas seulement ce qui divise, c’est aussi ce qui se (...) partage. Au lieu d’incriminer le perspectivisme d’avoir fait le lit de la post-vérité, et de la perte d’une référence à un monde réel, il est temps de retrouver en quoi la perspective n’est pas qu’une affaire de relativisation, mais de réalisation. C’est à la perspective que nous devons notre perspicacité : « à travers » – voilà le mot-clé pour comprendre son opération. Une mise en regard d’enjeux anciens et contemporains, où s’entrecroisent les arts visuels, l’architecture, la phénoménologie et l’anthropologie sociale. Autant de manières de faire l’éloge d’une perspective qui se décline invariablement au pluriel. (shrink)

There have been two parallel views regarding the role of voting in deliberation. The first is that deliberation before the fabrication of balloting was completely devoid of voting. The second is that voting is, not just part of deliberation, but is standard to deliberation. I argue in this article that neither of these views is correct. Implicit voting has always existed across time and space but only as a last resort in the event of a failure of natural unanimity. What (...) is relatively modern is the establishment of what I call explicit voting, namely, balloting, outside deliberation and often without deliberation. I also distinguish between natural and artificial unanimities, and clarify that artificial unanimities are products of implicit voting. I demonstrate these clarifications with some examples of deliberation. I deploy these clarifications to rid a certain debate of confusion regarding the precise role of voting in consensual deliberation. (shrink)

In recent years, the claim of the unrepresentability of the Shoah has stirred vivid debates, especially following the strong positions taken by the French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann and author of Shoah (1986). This claim of unrepresentability, it can be shown, draws part of its attraction from the fact that it oscillates undecidedly between a claim of logical impossibility (“the Shoah can’t be represented”) and a normative demand (“the Shoah shouldn’t be represented”). This essay analyzes the argumentative structure of the advocates (...) of the unrepresentability and shows why the often made connection to Kant is flawed. Although his Critique of the Power of Judgment affirms indeed that the prohibition of representation is the “perhaps most sublime passage in the Jewish Law”, turning the prohibition of representation into a supposedly Kantian claim does not hold grounds. The essay reconstructs the political framework of the debate, situates the Kantian passage in its precise philosophical context and then successively assesses the main arguments put forward by Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière and Georges Didi-Huberman in their critique of Lanzmann’s categorical imperative. While showing why the rhetoric of the “unrepresentable” bear troubling structural analogies to what they want to fight (i.e. the politics of erasure, which always also include the erasure of the traces of erasure), a certain notion of the “unrepresentable” is rescued nevertheless at the end of the essay. Representation, so it is argued by returning to a Kantian distinction, is not a matter of Kanon, but a matter of Organon, which then puts the debate about the Sublime (which took place between Lyotard and Rancière in the 90’s) into a new perspective. (shrink)