How do you connect the discipline of anthropology to both philosophy and geography? What about history, sociology, and other applied and theoretical forms of knowledge? In Earth Ways: Framing Geographical Meanings, Gary Backhaus and John Murungi challenge contributors to find the organizing component, or "framings," that enables them to bridge their own work to philosophy and geography. What emerges are truly creative contributions to interdisciplinary thought.

Meditation refers to a family of self-regulation practices that focuses on training attention and awareness to foster psycho-emotional well-being and to develop specific capacities such as calmness, clarity, and concentration. We report a prospective convenience-controlled study in which we analyzed the effect of two components of Preksha Dhyāna – buzzing bee sound meditation and color meditation on healthy college students. Mahapran and leśya dhyāna are two Preksha Dhyāna practices that are based on sound and green color, respectively. The study population (...) represents a suitable target as college students experience different stress factors during the school year. This study measures the individual and combined effects of two techniques, on short-term memory, attention, and affect, in novice meditators. We used a battery of cognitive, performance, and compared results with baseline and control values. We found improved cognition, especially attention, short-term memory, and affect in terms of positivity and reduced negativity. Overall, the two techniques produced variable benefits and subjects showed improved scores over baseline for short-term memory, cognitive function, and overall wellbeing. Further studies are required to understand underlying mechanisms for the observed differences between the two techniques and to elucidate mechanisms underlying the more pronounced and global benefits observed with the combined techniques. These results underscore a need to examine individual components of meditation practices in order to individualize treatment approaches for attention disorders in young adults.Clinical Trail Registration:ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03779269. (shrink)

Illusionism is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, but merely seems to exist. Many opponents to the thesis take it to be obviously false. They think that they can reject illusionism, even if they conceded that it is coherent and supported by strong arguments. David Chalmers has articulated this reaction to illusionism in terms of a “Moorean” argument against illusionism. This argument contends that illusionism is false, because it is obviously true that we have phenomenal experiences. I argue (...) that this argument fails by showing that its defenders cannot maintain that its crucial premise has the kind of support needed for the argument to work, without begging the question against illusionism. (shrink)

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements (...) usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase. (shrink)

In this incisive and thought-provoking book, Francois Venter illuminates the issues arising from the fact that the current language of constitutional law is strongly premised on a particular worldview rooted in the history of the states around the North Atlantic Ocean. Highlighting how this terminological hegemony is being challenged from various directions, Venter explores the problem that all constitutional comparatists face: that they all must use the same words to express different meanings. Offering a compact but comprehensive constitutional history, Venter (...) investigates the ways in which the standard vocabulary does not fit comfortably in many contemporary constitutional orders, as well as examining how its cogency is increasingly being questioned. Chapters contextualize comparative constitutional methods to demonstrate how the language choices made by comparatists are shaped by their own perspectives, arguing that careful explanation of the meanings attached to constitutional terms is imperative in order to be persuasive or even understood. Tackling the foundational elements of the field, this book will be a critical read for constitutional scholars across the globe. It will also be of interest to high-level practitioners of constitutional law and political scientists for its investigation of terminology that is crucial to their work. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage traite de la question capitale : qui est Dieu? Il aborde les problèmes les plus fondamentaux posés par l'homme d'aujourd'hui : est-il possible de connaître Dieu? Quel sens ont nos mots pour dire Dieu? Quel sens a la recherche de Dieu? Que peut-on dire de lui? Dieu et la souffrance, la nôtre, et la sienne? Ces questions essentielles sont toujours traitées avec justesse et rigueur, avec une connaissance sérieuse des positions en présence, avec un sens exact des équilibres (...) à maintenir et des limites à ne pas franchir. Pour un lecteur honnête c'est un livre qui compte. A l'homme d'aujourd'hui, c'est un livre qui doit parler. Il est en contact aussi bien avec les interrogations politiques posées au christianisme qu'avec les principaux courants littéraires ou spirituels qui constituent notre culture. Sans abuser des citations, l'auteur a su mettre en place quelques textes particulièrement significatifs. Ainsi cette œuvre de réflexions est aussi la tentative très personnelle d'un homme qui cherche à ramasser son expérience, menée constamment dans un dialogue avec ses contemporains. Peut-être quelques-uns trouveront-ils que le choix marque certaines orientations et que tous les courants n'y sont pas également représentés ; mais une somme complète des positions actuelles, en faisant de cet ouvrage un traité didactique, lui aurait fait perdre son caractère personnel. Un des grands mérites de l'auteur est d'allier la rigueur du développement, le souci du lecteur et de son attention, à l'accent personnel de l'option et de l'expérience spirituelle. Philosophie, théologie, doctrine spirituelle sont unies sans se confondre. (shrink)

Il y a une pente universitaire à s'enfermer dans les textes en perdant de vue la réalité. C'est l'aboutissement d'un vice constitutif. En effet, depuis Aristote au moins, toutes les doctrines se sont développées sur la base d'un dédoublement ontologique entre un domaine des 'idées' et un domaine de la réalité elle-même. Ce dédoublement repose sur une imagination étrangère à l'expérience. Pour y voir plus clair, il faut s'appuyer constamment sur ce qui est donné tel qu'il est donné. Pour cela, (...) il faut déplacer l'attention depuis les contenus vers la manière dont nous les saisissons consciemment en confrontant l'expérience commune et la figure scientifique corrélative"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This enlarged edition of Mario Bunge's Dictionary of Philosophy is a superb reference work for both students and professional philosophers.

Selon Spinoza, les idées appartiennent à la nature au même titre que les corps. Et pourtant ce ne sont pas des corps : seule une physique spéciale, nullement métaphorique, peut rendre compte de l'étrange univers qu'elles composent.

Cumulative technological culture (CTC) refers to the increase in the efficiency and complexity of tools and techniques in human populations over generations. A fascinating question is to understand the cognitive origins of this phenomenon. Because CTC is definitely a social phenomenon, most accounts have suggested a series of cognitive mechanisms oriented toward the social dimension (e.g., teaching, imitation, theory of mind, and metacognition), thereby minimizing the technical dimension and the potential influence of non-social, cognitive skills. What if we have failed (...) to see the elephant in the room? What if social cognitive mechanisms were only catalyzing factors and not thesufficient and necessaryconditions for the emergence of CTC? In this article, we offer an alternative, unified cognitive approach to this phenomenon by assuming that CTC originates in non-social cognitive skills, namely technical-reasoning skills which enable humans to develop the technical potential necessary to constantly acquire and improve technical information. This leads us to discuss how theory of mind and metacognition, in concert with technical reasoning, can help boost CTC. The cognitive approach developed here opens up promising new avenues for reinterpreting classical issues (e.g., innovation, emulation vs. imitation, social vs. asocial learning, cooperation, teaching, and overimitation) in a field that has so far been largely dominated by other disciplines, such as evolutionary biology, mathematics, anthropology, archeology, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

Considerations of accuracy – the epistemic good of having credences close to truth-values – have led to the justification of a host of epistemic norms. These arguments rely on specific ways of measuring accuracy. In particular, the accuracy measure should be strictly proper. However, the main argument for strict propriety supports only weak propriety. But strict propriety follows from weak propriety given strict truth directedness and additivity. So no further argument is necessary.

We investigate the processes underlying the feeling of control over one’s actions . Sense of agency may depend on internal motoric signals, and general inferences about external events. We used priming to modulate the sense of agency for voluntary and involuntary movements, by modifying the content of conscious thought prior to moving. Trials began with the presentation of one of two supraliminal primes, which corresponded to the effect of a voluntary action participants subsequently made. The perceived interval between movement and (...) effect was used as an implicit measure of sense of agency. Primes modulated perceived intervals for both voluntary and involuntary movements, but the modulation was greatest for involuntary movements. A second experiment showed that this modulation depended on prime–movement contiguity. We propose that sense of agency is based on a combination of internal motoric signals and external sensory evidence about the source of actions and effects. (shrink)

It is natural to think that there is something epistemically objectionable about avoiding evidence, at least in ideal cases. We argue that this thought is inconsistent with a kind of risk-avoidance...

Illusionism about phenomenal consciousness is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, even though it seems to exist. This thesis is widely judged to be uniquely counterintuitive: the idea that consciousness is an illusion strikes most people as absurd, and seems almost impossible to contemplate in earnest. Defenders of illusionism should be able to explain the apparent absurdity of their own thesis, within their own framework. However, this is no trivial task: arguably, none of the illusionist theories currently on (...) the market is able to do this. I present a new theory of phenomenal introspection and argue that it might deal with the task at hand. (shrink)

Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

Phenomenal consciousness appears to be particularly normatively significant. For this reason, sentience-based conceptions of ethics are widespread. In the field of animal ethics, knowing which animals are sentient appears to be essential to decide the moral status of these animals. I argue that, given that materialism is true of the mind, phenomenal consciousness is probably not particularly normatively significant. We should face up to this probable insignificance of phenomenal consciousness and move towards an ethic without sentience.

This study investigated the link between meditation, self-reported mindfulness and cognitive flexibility as well as other attentional functions. It compared a group of meditators experienced in mindfulness meditation with a meditation-naïve control group on measures of Stroop interference and the “d2-concentration and endurance test”. Overall the results suggest that attentional performance and cognitive flexibility are positively related to meditation practice and levels of mindfulness. Meditators performed significantly better than non-meditators on all measures of attention. Furthermore, self-reported mindfulness was higher in (...) meditators than non-meditators and correlations with all attention measures were of moderate to high strength. This pattern of results suggests that mindfulness is intimately linked to improvements of attentional functions and cognitive flexibility. The relevance of these findings for mental balance and well-being are discussed. (shrink)

Le Commentaire du Traité de l'âme d'Aristote par Thomas d'Aquin est le cinquième des commentaires fondamentaux des oeuvres d'Aristote traduits en langue française. Avec celui des Physiques, de la Métaphysique, de l'Interprétation et des Analytiques, il fonde l'édifice de la philosophie de Thomas d'Aquin et assure les contreforts de sa théologie. Ce traité se présente comme un vaste essai de définition de l'âme et principalement de l'âme humaine, avec en filigrane, une question lancinante : cette âme est-elle immortelle? Si ce (...) traité est l'un des plus courts d'Aristote, et selon ses propres termes, encore à l'état d'ébauche, il est construit avec une rigueur méthodologique qui en fait une sorte de modèle pour toute réflexion philosophique. Thomas propose une explication reconnue comme des plus limpides, et introduit à un livre encore loué deux millénaires plus tard par Hegel, Marx ou Darwin. Comme le reste de l'oeuvre d'Aristote, il connaît aujourd'hui un regain d'intérêt remarquable et le commentaire de Thomas offre un guide très sûr pour son intelligence. (shrink)

Illusionism about consciousness is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, but merely seems to exist. Embracing illusionism presents the theoretical advantage that one does not need to explain how consciousness arises from purely physical brains anymore, but only to explain why consciousness seems to exist while it does not. As Keith Frankish puts it, illusionism replaces the “hard problem of consciousness” with the “illusion problem.” However, a satisfying version of illusionism has to explain not only why the illusion (...) of consciousness arises, but also why it arises with its particular strength: Notably, why we are so deeply reluctant to recognize the illusory nature of consciousness. Explaining our strong intuitive resistance to illusionism means solving what I call the “illusion meta-problem,” which I think is a part of the illusion problem. In this paper, I argue that current versions of illusionism are unable to solve the illusion meta-problem. I focus on two of the most promising recent illusionist theories of consciousness, and I show why they fail to explain the peculiar reluctance we encounter whenever we try to accept that consciousness is an illusion. (shrink)

What has been the historical relationship between set theory and logic? On the one hand, Zermelo and other mathematicians developed set theory as a Hilbert-style axiomatic system. On the other hand, set theory influenced logic by suggesting to Schröder, Löwenheim and others the use of infinitely long expressions. The questions of which logic was appropriate for set theory - first-order logic, second-order logic, or an infinitary logic - culminated in a vigorous exchange between Zermelo and Gödel around 1930.

Au détour de l'ordre géométrique, dans un scolie de la Quatrième partie de l'Éthique faisant suite à l'énoncé de la règle fondamentale qui associe l'utilité du corps humain, et par conséquent le bien de l'individu, à la recherche d'une constance fondamentale dans le rapport de ses parties, surgit un scolie baroque, où passe l'ombre de la mort et qui débouche sur d'inquiétantes possibilités de mutation, voire de transmutation de l'identité : « Il arrive qu'un homme subit de tels changements, que (...) je ne dirai pas aisément qu'il est le même. C'est ce que j'ai entendu raconter de certain poète espagnol qui avait été atteint de maladie et qui, bien qu'il en fût guéri, demeura cependant dans un tel oubli de sa vie passée, qu'il ne croyait pas que les nouvelles et les tragédies qu'il avait faites fussent de lui ; et certes on eût pu le tenir pour un nourrisson adulte, s'il eût oublié aussi sa langue maternelle... » De ce texte perturbateur et de sa « contradiction » centrale, qui ont semé le trouble chez les commentateurs, François Zourabichvili qui en propose une explication systématique fait le fil conducteur d'une relecture complète des relations qui associent la métaphysique spinozienne à son anthropologie et à sa politique, centrée sur la question de la transformation comme « oubli », voire amnésie d'une forme antérieure, et « imagination », chimérique ou non, d'une nouvelle aptitude du corps. Il démontre ainsi la rigoureuse correspondance qui, d'un bout à l'autre de l'œuvre, associe la question d'une sortie de l'enfance à celle d'une émancipation de l'imaginaire monarchique. A l'encontre d'une lecture naïvement « révolutionnaire » du spinozisme, surgit alors ce qu'on peut appeler un conservatisme : mais dont le paradoxe est éclatant, car il tend moins à préserver l'état de choses existant qu'à inventer les conditions d'une vraie conservation de soi (neutralisation de la mort et de la servitude). Pages de début Avertissement Introduction Première étude. Envelopper une autre nature / envelopper la nature Introduction 1. La transition éthique dans le Court traité 2. La transition éthique dans le Traité de la réforme de l'entendement Deuxième étude. L'image rectifiée de l'enfance Introduction 3. La figure de l'infans adultus 4. Enfance et philosophie 5. Enfance et mémoire Conclusion sur le rapport à l'enfance Troisième étude. Puissance de Dieu et puissance des rois Introduction 6. La confusion des deux puissances et la dérive baroque du cartésianisme 7. Le rêve transformiste de la monarchie absolue 8. Qu'est-cequ'une multitude libre? Guerre et civilisation Bibliographie Index. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently attempted to justify particular belief revision procedures by arguing that they are the optimal means towards the epistemic end of accurate credences. These attempts, however, presuppose that means should be evaluated according to classical expected utility theory; and there is a long tradition maintaining that expected utility theory is too restrictive as a theory of means–end rationality, ruling out too many natural ways of taking risk into account. In this paper, we investigate what belief-revision procedures are supported (...) by accuracy-theoretic considerations once we depart from expected utility theory to allow agents to be risk-sensitive. We argue that if accuracy-theoretic considerations tell risk-sensitive agents anything about belief-revision, they tell them the same thing they tell risk-neutral agents: they should conditionalize. (shrink)

A prevailing view is that while human communication has an ‘ostensive-inferential’ or ‘Gricean’ intentional structure, animal communication does not. This would make the psychological states that support human and animal forms of communication fundamentally different. Against this view, I argue that there are grounds to expect ostensive communication in non-human clades. This is because it is sufficient for ostensive communication that one intentionally address one’s utterance to one’s intended interlocutor – something that is both a functional pre-requisite of successful communication (...) and cognitively undemanding. Furthermore, while ostension is an important feature of intentional communication, the inferences required in Gricean communication may be minimal: ostension and inference may come apart. The grounds for holding that animal communication could not be Gricean are therefore weak. I finish by defending the idea that a ‘minimally Gricean’ model of communication is a valuable tool for characterising the communicative interactions of many animal species. (shrink)

This paper contrasts the normative foundations of the stakeholder and shareholder theories of the firm. It demonstrates how the shareholder theory of the firm appears to have at least as much normative support as stakeholder theory and suggests that a way forward may be for a variant of pure shareholder theory to emerge.

This paper analyzes recent attempts to reject reproduction with lineage formation as a necessary condition for evolution by means of natural selection :560–570, 2008; Stud Hist Philos Sci Part C Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci 42:106–114, 2011; Bourrat in Biol Philos 29:517–538, 2014; Br J Philos Sci 66:883–903, 2015; Charbonneau in Philos Sci 81:727–740, 2014; Doolittle and Inkpen in Proc Natl Acad Sci 115:4006–4014, 2018). Building on the strengths of these attempts and avoiding their pitfalls, it is argued that (...) a robust formulation of evolution by natural selection without reproduction can be established. The main contribution of this paper is a reformulation of Lewontin’s three principles stating that minimal evolution by natural selection occurs when two conditions are met in a population: fitness-related variation and memory. Paradigmatic evolution by natural selection, which can generate adaptations, takes place when an additional condition is present, namely regeneration. (shrink)

We present a new proposal for what to do at limits in the revision theory. The usual criterion for a limit stage is that it should agree with any definite verdicts that have been brought about before that stage. We suggest that one should not only consider definite verdicts that have been brought about but also more general properties; in fact any closed property can be considered. This more general framework is required if we move to considering revision theories for (...) concepts that are concerned with real numbers, but also has consequences for more traditional revision theories such as the revision theory of truth. (shrink)