In this paper, I argue that that polysemy is a two-sided phenomenon. It can be reduced neither to pragmatic modulation nor to ambiguity, for it is a mixture of both. The senses of a polysemous expression result from pragmatic modulation but they are stored in memory, as the senses of an ambiguous expression are. The difference with straightforward ambiguity is that the modulation relations between the senses are transparent to the language users: the senses are felt as related – they (...) form a family of senses. In other words, whereas two homonymous expressions are different expressions, with the same phonological realization but distinct meanings, a polyseme is a single expression, i.e. a semantic as well as a phonological unit. It has one meaning, which should not be confused with the separate senses which it contributes in context. Different ways of thinking of that unitary meaning will be discussed, and consequences drawn for the debate between more or less radical versions of Contextualism. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper I sketch a theory of indexical concepts within a broadly epistemic framework. In the second part I discuss and dismiss an argument due to Jerry Fodor, to the effect that any epistemic approach to concept individuation (including the theory of indexical concepts I will sketch) is doomed to failure.

In the first English translation of his work, Laruelle explores the major European thinkers from Nietzsche to Derrida to define his own 'non-philosophical' ...

ArgumentThis paper challenges the use of the notion of “culture” to describe a particular organization of mathematical knowledge, shared by a few mathematicians over a short period of time in the second half of the nineteenth century. This knowledge relates to “geometrical equations,” objects that proved crucial for the mechanisms of encounters between equation theory, substitution theory, and geometry at that time, although they were not well-defined mathematical objects. The description of the mathematical collective activities linked to “geometrical equations,” and (...) especially the technical aspects of these activities, is made on the basis of a sociological definition of “culture.” More precisely, after an examination of the social organization of the group of mathematicians, I argue that these activities form an intricate system of patterns, symbols, and values, for which I suggest a characterization as a “cultural system.”. (shrink)

L'auteur consacre sa réflexion à l'amplification et à l'achèvement de la non-philosophie, en combinant science et philosophie qui sont considérées comme des variables définissant un espace ondulatoire et particulaire de l'opération de penser.

In a recent paper, Eric Schwitzgebel argues that if materialism about consciousness is true, then the United States is likely to have its own stream of phenomenal consciousness, distinct from the streams of conscious experience of the people who compose it. Indeed, most plausible forms of materialism have to grant that a certain degree of functional and behavioral complexity constitutes a sufficient condition for the ascription of phenomenal consciousness – and Schwitzgebel makes a case to show that the United States (...) as a whole fulfills this condition. One way to avoid this counter-intuitive consequence of materialism about consciousness is to adopt what Schwitzgebel calls an “anti-nesting principle”: a principle that states that there can be no nested forms of phenomenal consciousness and that therefore a conscious whole cannot have parts that are themselves conscious. However, Schwitzgebel then proceeds in his paper to draw up various objections, notably based on thought experiments, in order to dismiss these kinds of “anti-nesting” principles. My aim in this paper is to present a version of a sophisticated anti-nesting principle that avoids Schwitzgebel’s objections. This principle is reasonable, intuitive, and as non-arbitrary as possible. Moreover, it can resist the objections mounted by Schwitzgebel against simple anti-nesting principles. This principle helps materialists avoid the implication that the United States has its own stream of consciousness, while granting consciousness to some entities which, in many cases, are intuitive instantiators of phenomenal consciousness. This principle therefore constitutes a way out for a materialist who wants to deny that the United States is conscious. (shrink)

To systematically answer the generalized Kretschmann objection, I propose a mean to make operational a criterion widely recognized as allowing one to decide whether the gauge symmetry of a theory is artificial or substantial. My proposition is based on the dressing field method of gauge symmetry reduction, a new simple tool from mathematical physics. This general scheme allows one in particular to straightforwardly argue that the notion of spontaneous symmetry breaking is superfluous to the empirical success of the electroweak theory. (...) Important questions regarding the context of justification of the theory then arise. (shrink)

D'Avignon, en cette nuit du 7 mars Cher **** De nouvelles rêveries m'ont porté vers le cœur de mes structures Lorsqu'on s'y projette, on s'y trouve enveloppé du textile qui abrite mais n'enferme Ni toiles, ni filets, ce sont des jerseys lâches, des tulles diaphanes Des interfaces sensibles, qui au vent s'emplissent et se plissent, et qui bruissent aux flux, et qui vibrent à la terre Des mailles qui distillent les rosées, percolent des alcools, infusent la nuit, pénètrent le jour (...) Et qui pourtant, - Résidence numérique — François Villais. (shrink)

Cher ***, En ce temps de festival, j'ai le plaisir de te présenter l'exposition que je donne actuellement à la galerie d'Avignon. Le titre en est « Les bateaux ivres de la liberté ». Sache que je dispose de quelques bannettes pour des festivaliers en déshérence dans la ville surpeuplée. Graphisme : FW En ce ci bel été, très cher. Fr - Résidence numérique — François Villais.

Cher*** Je rentre à l'instant des « Iles d'Auvergne », d'où mon silence de ces dernières semaines. La traversée, avec « Gevaudan Airline », ne s'est pas faite sans péripéties. Je m'étendrai, sous peu, sur l'installation pilote « dénouée, déliée, déroulée, dressée » que j'ai pu élever là-bas, et dont je te donne un aperçu ci-dessous. Mais tu voudras bien, avant cela me suivre brièvement dans les étranges fantasmagories qui hantent mon avance vers l'été. « Les chiens de fer » (...) A l'approche d'Avignon, autour de - Résidence numérique — François Villais. (shrink)

Le posé-sol, Dans mes installations, touche à l'origine du mouvement qui me porte. Si je puis rêver un détail achevé, c'est bien celui de ce délicat contact. Mâture : le touché Elle pèse et appuie, mais sans bruire Un touché sans blesser Un posé, mais léger De bambous, infondés Non encastrés, enfoncés, enterrés La surface n'est ni creusée, ni troublée Le mat est creux Sa trace est — moins qu'un disque — un anneau A sa disparition, sur le gazon, ce (...) seul signe Griffe d'un visiteur fugace - Résidence numérique — François Villais. (shrink)

Cher***, Il est temps de te rapporter le « filage », cette gestuelle que j'ai donnée durant mon séjour aux « îles d'Auvergne », en cette vitalité printanière de fin de mai. Le résultat final, en frange d'univers, est autonome, inattendu, énigmatique et incongru. La structure, arrivée ce matin, repartira sous peu. Anecdote improbable dans le paysage, l'on marche à lui, en cette montagne, et je te donne ci-dessous la scène finale, en son décor naturel : A l'entrée, l'invite : (...) L'appel s'étend loin sur la - Résidence numérique — François Villais. (shrink)

Cher*** Je m'en viens te soumettre un projet d'exposition à la Galerie des Paysages, à Avignon, durant le festival de théâtre, en juillet prochain. « New York à vif » Une approche de la matière de la ville de New York, au delà du minéral, comme d'un « corps urbain », incarné, quasi charnel. Ce thème s'inscrit dans la continuité de mes travaux et installations de land-art, et de mes expositions, qui prolongent depuis 2002 ma carrière d'architecte, commencée en 1987. (...) Ces recherches sont centrées sur - Résidence numérique — François Villais. (shrink)

Cher ****, Il émane de ma Rêverie d'aujourd'hui un désir de projet de volumes dans le paysage mieux assis et assumé. Détachement progressif des modes d'insertion confortables — qui ont été néanmoins de bons leviers : M'appuyant sur le « land-art », mobiliser le génie du paysage comme plateforme pour des expressions plastiques de grande échelle afin d'en faire émerger du sens. Utiliser le paysage comme environnement harmonique à un statuaire monumental - Résidence numérique — François Villais.

Dans son Algebra de 1560, Pierre de La Ramée (1515-1572) emploie une manière originale de poser les opérations de l’algèbre sous la forme de ce que j’appellerai des « schémas de calcul ». Ces schémas constituent un aspect singulier de l’écriture mathématique de Pierre de La Ramée par rapport à celle de ses contemporains. Avec ses « schémas de calcul », La Ramée contribue à l’invention, pour les mathématiques de la modernité, d’une langue propre. Leur étude conduit donc à réfléchir (...) sur les prémisses de ce que les philosophes des mathématiques appellent parfois la « révolution symbolique » du xviie siècle. Mon but est de montrer en quoi cette révolution est liée pour une part aux possibilités offertes par l’imprimerie. Je m’appuierai pour cela sur les travaux de Walter J. Ong. (shrink)

Dans cet article, j’étudie la façon dont Pierre de La Ramée aborde la question de l’analyse mathématique, d’abord dans ses écrits de logicien, puis dans ses traités mathématiques. Dans les Scholae mathematicae, en reprenant un argumentaire qui lui avait servi dans les controverses des années 1550 concernant la « méthode unique», il est conduit à la conclusion que l’analyse n’a aucune valeur démonstrative. Ses recherches sur les significations diverses du mot analysis et sur la nature de l’analyse dans les mathématiques (...) grecques m’apparaissent pourtant comme une condition préalable pour que soit reconnue au xviie siècle la fécondité de la méthode analytique en géométrie. (shrink)

L’œuvre mathématique de La Ramée est constituée d’ouvrages publiés tout au long de sa carrière. Les éditions abrégées des Éléments d'Euclide, ses manuels d’arithmétique et de géométrie plusieurs fois remaniés, un court traité d’algèbre ainsi que les Scholae mathematicae de 1569 sont autant d’ouvrages dans lequels il met en œuvre une réforme des mathématiques héritées et de leur enseignement. Des justifications de cette réforme apparaissent dans les trois livres d’un Prooemium mathematicum portant sur l’histoire des mathématiques, la défense de leur (...) « utilité » et une critique sévère de l’exposé euclidien. Pour autant, l’œuvre mathématique de La Ramée ne doit pas être mise à part de l’œuvre philosophique qu’il élabore par ailleurs. Dans cet article, je m’efforce de le montrer en m’interrogeant d’abord sur les raisons qui ont poussé La Ramée à se tourner, au début de sa carrière, vers les mathématiques ; l’examen du livre I du Prooemium mathematicum me permet ensuite d’examiner le rôle que jouent Platon, Aristote et Euclide dans son histoire des mathématiques. Finalement, je suis amené, en abordant la critique raméenne de l’ « abstraction » pythagoricienne, à chercher dans les éditions de la Dialectica et les Scholae in liberales artes les éléments d’une « philosophie des mathématiques » – conception originale de la nature des objets mathématiques et de la façon dont on accède à leur connaissance – qui offre une certaine lumière sur la réforme des mathématiques qu’entreprend La Ramée. (shrink)

This article forms part of a study which was inspired by the ever-growing need for significance expressed both by my life coaching and pastoral therapy clients as well as the need for existential meaning reported both in the lay press and academic literature. The study reflected on a life that matters with a group of co-researchers in a participatory action research relationship. The study has been positioned within pastoral theology and invited the theological discourse into a reflection of existential meaning. (...) Adopting a critical relational constructionist epistemology, the research was positioned within a postmodern paradigm. The implications for meaning and research were explored and described. This article tells the story of how spirituality was positioned in the narratives of meaning by my fellow researchers. (shrink)

A defence of the 'pragmatic' theory of anaphora (which stresses the analogy between anaphora and deixis) against an argument put forward by Gareth Evans.

In this paper, I argue that the notion of ‘context' that has to be used in the study of indexicals is far from univocal. A first distinction has to be made between the real context of speech and the context in which the speech act is supposed to take place — only the latter notion being relevant when it comes to determining the semantic values of indexicals. Second, we need to draw a distinction between the context of the locutionary act (...) and the context of the illocutionary act: contrary to a standard assumption of speech act theory, they can diverge, and their possible divergence explains a number of puzzling phenomena involving indexicals. (shrink)

Response to Alex Byrne's paper 'Knowing what I see'.

Precis of "Truth-Conditional Pragmatics" (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Language and judicial activities are both signs of the existence of a society. There is, therefore, good reason for a dialogue between the science of language and the science of law. This article applies a linguistic theory of the Paris School (semiotics) to the examination of a legal text, namely a contract. The author points to some eIements shared by legal and other texts, and demonstrates how a semiotic interpretation can provide interesting and unexpected insights into the deeper levels of (...) a legal text. He concludes that a similar approach could fruitfully be used with other types of legal text. (shrink)

This work demonstrates that Diderot was an original scientific theorist who knew how to navigate the irreducible diversity of the sciences, in both theory and practice, compare different perspectives, and draw out their philosophical implications. The complex epistemology that he developed is remarkably rich.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 33.2 (2005) 42-70 [Access article in PDF] "O Happy Living Things" Frankenfoods and the Bounds of Wordsworthian Natural Piety Anne-Lise François With all the flowers Fancy e'er could feignWho breeding flowers will never breed the same. —John Keats, "Ode to Psyche" And I could wish my days to beBound each to each in natural piety. —William Wordsworth, "My heart leaps up" O happy living things! no tongue (...) Their beauty might declare:A spring of love gusht from my heart, And I bless'd them unaware!Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I bless'd them unaware. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" "O happy living things!"—vitamin-enriched grains; potatoes equipped to kill their predators; silk-producing goats; fast-growing salmon that hardly require feeding. Is it possible to predicate the breathless exclamation that escapes Coleridge's mariner, unaware not of water snakes but of the fantastic array of genetically modified creatures—animals and plants—currently under design or production by biotech industries? Already in May 2000 a New York Times article was announcing the imminent arrival of "fast-growing trout and catfish, oysters that can withstand viruses, and an 'Enviropig,' whose feces are less harmful to the environment because they contain less phosphorus." An article inset describes the emergent production of "pharm-animals":These domesticated beasts—cows, pigs, goats, sheep, and chickens—have been given the ability to produce pharmaceuticals and other valuable substances in their milk, eggs or semen. Endowed by scientists with foreign genes, often taken from humans, these animals, or bioreactors, as they are also known, earn their keep as living chemical factories. Two companies, the Genzyme Corporation of Cambridge, Mass., and PPL Therapeutics, a Scottish company, already have products from pharm animals being tested in clinical trials supervised by the Food and Drug Administration. Many other animals are [End Page 42] still in the development stage. For example, Nexia Biotechnologies in Canada is working on a goat that carries a gene from spiders allowing it to produce spider silk in its milk. When the spider silk, which consists of extremely strong, light proteins, is extracted from the goat's milk, the substance, potentially, can be used in applications like bulletproof vests. [Yoon] This last sentence is intriguing. The genetic revolution often bills itself as a second green revolution that will prevent starvation and alleviate disease, promising to feed the world's growing population in terms that tend to essentialize poverty and hunger as inevitable symptoms of a human condition, rather than understand them through the lens of specific colonial and postcolonial histories. But bulletproof vests? The indignant leftist response here would be to deride the collusion between biotechnology and the military-industrial complex—bulletproof vests leaving little doubt as to whose desires count as universal, timeless needs. Yet such a response is perhaps too quick to attribute reason to these genetic experiments in cross-species breeding, and too quick to accept the terms in which biotechnicians present themselves—as the instruments of reason, whether of global capitalism or universal human progress. Part of what this essay wishes to suggest is that to dream up such things and to think of wanting to do them—make a goat produce spider silk in its milk—involve particular fantasies, fantasies not simply about recreating the world in one's image, but about learning to desire the world again, to be excited by it or "surprised" by its existence, to borrow a phrase from Stanley Cavell. The journalist's parenthetical "potentially" indicates that no use has yet been determined, no burning need fuels such experiments, and hints at the boredom behind them—what William Wordsworth might have called the "state of almost savage torpor" in which desire itself has to be invented.As the New York Times writer's double metaphor of animal as laborer- and factory-in-one suggests—"these animals, or bioreactors, as they are also known, earn their keep as living chemical factories"—the binaries animal-human, machine-animal... (shrink)

Response to Pelletier's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop.

Un conte de Noël réalisé par Arnaud Desplechin en 2007, raconte un Noël familial dans une petite ville de province du nord de la France (Roubaix). Chacun revient dans la maison de son enfance à cette occasion alors que la mère est atteinte d’une maladie orpheline qui la condamne à court terme et que le frère aîné, Henri est haï par sa sœur et banni de la famille depuis cinq années. L’article analyse ce film où les rapports de genre, s’ils (...) sont constitutifs des relations, n’en restent pas moins soumis au dispositif plus large de la névrose familiale. Il tente de montrer comment le cinéma traduit la complexité des affects et les contradictions tendres et brutales des rapports familiaux. (shrink)

This article is a plea for the idea of society in sociological theory. Even though the industrial national societies no longer exist, the successive crises that we have encountered show that we need a general concept to account for social life. Thus sociology should be enabled to remain a moral and political philosophy.