The classic essay on the "karesansui" garden by French art historian Berthier has now been translated by Graham Parkes, giving English-speaking readers a concise, thorough, and beautifully illustrated history of Zen rock gardens. 37 ...

In developmental lexical–gustatory synesthesia, specific words can trigger taste perceptions and these synesthetic associations are generally stable. We describe a case of multilingual lexical–gustatory synesthesia for whom some synesthesias were bidirectional as some tastes also triggered auditory word associations. Evoked concurrents could be gustatory but also tactile sensations. In addition to words and pseudowords, many voices were effective inducers, suggesting increased connections between cortical taste areas and both voice-selective and language-selective areas. Lasting changes in some evoked tastes occurred during childhood (...) suggesting that some plasticity can be present after the initial learning of associations. Inducers were often linked to taste concurrents phonologically or semantically, but also through identifiable childhood episodes . Several inducers were phonologically linked to episodic inducers suggesting a process of secondary acquisition for many inducers. Implications of these observations are discussed. (shrink)

Les auteurs de cet ouvrage se sont donné pour tâche de relire l'œuvre de Giorgio Agamben en refusant de la convertir en simple objet d'analyse. Ils essayent plutôt d'entendre " l'héritage de la puissance " à laquelle la littérature comme phénomène semble nous engager, en retraçant un chemin dont les haltes se situent au cœur de la méditation agambenienne sur notre époque : l'avènement possible d'un sujet qui descendrait d'une " puissance pure ", irréductible à l'identification, dépouillé de toute substance, (...) sinon du mouvement par lequel il s'approprie lui-même en tant que puissance sans objet. Chacun des auteurs tente ainsi de potentialiser certaines propositions d'Agamben à partir de ce qu'on appelle " littérature ". Comment, à l'heure où celle-ci semble faire l'épreuve d'une neutralisation de son destin historique, penser sa relation au temps messianique? Au moment où plusieurs œuvres se vouent au recueillement de l'innommé, de l'insignifiant et des heures mortes comme au seul territoire qui leur serait préservé, comment penser l'articulation philologique entre le reste et la résistance? Pourrait-on conférer à la littérature un statut d'exception politique, voire de zone d'anomie constitutive du politique? Avec la participation de Guillaume Asselin, Etienne Beaulieu, Jean-François Bourgeault, Georges- Leroux, Eric Méchoulan, Pierre Ouellet, Sarah Rocheville, Lionel Ruffel, Sylvano Santini et Jean-Pierre Vidal. (shrink)

Networks for the exchange and/or sharing of genetic data are developing in many countries. We focus here on the situations in the US and France. We highlight some recent and remarkable differences between these two countries concerning the mode of access to, and the storage and use of genetic data, particularly as concerns two-sided markets and dynamic consent or dynamic electronic informed consent. This brief overview suggests that, even though the organization and function of these two-sided markets remain open to (...) criticism, dynamic e-IC should be more widely used, especially in France, if only to determine its real effectiveness. (shrink)

Résumé Chez Samuel Beckett, François Morellet et KP Brehmer, l’art de la contrainte impose une trame formelle et logique pour mieux la trahir – l’altérer, la révéler –, renouvelant au passage l’économie de l’œuvre et son statut. Dans une double tradition littéraire et plastique, la mise au dehors du geste créateur et l’apparente désaffection des systèmes choisis produisent autant d’interférences symptomatiques dans l’œuvre et dans son contexte. Cet abandon agit comme le moyen paradoxal d’impliquer l’affect et d’ouvrir l’œuvre à des (...) résonances nouvelles. (shrink)

Guillaume d’Auvergne est l’un des auteurs les plus injustement méconnus du Moyen Âge. Sa pensée fut occultée par celles de ces grands théologiens un peu plus tardifs du XIIIe siècle, Albert le Grand, Thomas d’Aquin ou Bonaventure, qui lui doivent pourtant la première tentative de penser le christianisme au moyen de l’apport des textes grecs et arabes nouvellement traduits. Seul Roger Bacon reconnaît sa dette envers lui, mais en engageant une interprétation de ces thèses qui ajoutera encore à la (...) mécompréhension dont souffre toujours Guillaume. (shrink)

The Japanese dry landscape garden has long attracted—and long baffled—viewers from the West. While museums across the United States are replicating these "Zen rock gardens" in their courtyards and miniature versions of the gardens are now office decorations, they remain enigmatic, their philosophical and aesthetic significance obscured. _Reading Zen in the Rocks_, the classic essay on the _karesansui_ garden by French art historian François Berthier, has now been translated by Graham Parkes, giving English-speaking readers a concise, thorough, and beautifully (...) illustrated history of these gardens. Berthier's guided tour of the famous garden of Ryoanji in Kyoto leads him into an exposition of the genre, focusing on its Chinese antecedents and affiliations with Taoist ideas and Chinese landscape painting. He traces the roles of Shinto and Zen Buddhism in the evolution of the garden and also considers how manual laborers from the lowest classes in Japan had a hand in creating some of its highest examples. Parkes contributes an equally original and substantive essay which delves into the philosophical importance of rocks and their "language of stone," delineating the difference between Chinese and Japanese rock gardens and their relationship to Buddhism. Together, the two essays compose one of the most comprehensive and elegantly written studies of this haunting garden form. _Reading Zen in the Rocks_ is fully illustrated with photographs of all the major gardens discussed, making it a handsome addition to the library of anyone interested in gardening, Eastern philosophy, and the combination of the two that the _karesansui_ so superbly represents. Praise for the French edition: "A small book of rare depth, remarkably illustrated, on one of the most celebrated and beautiful rock gardens of the monasteries of Kyoto."—_L'Humanité_ "Through _Le Jardin de Ryoanji_, Berthier teaches us to read the zen in the rocks, to discover the language offered by the garden at Ryoanji. Enigmatic, poetic, and disconcerting, an enriching journey through a work of art of surprising modernity, _Le Jardin de Ryoanji_ is a work that will interest all the amateurs of Japanese art and Eastern philosophy."—_Lien Horticole_. (shrink)

The Japanese dry landscape garden has long attracted—and long baffled—viewers from the West. While museums across the United States are replicating these "Zen rock gardens" in their courtyards and miniature versions of the gardens are now office decorations, they remain enigmatic, their philosophical and aesthetic significance obscured. _Reading Zen in the Rocks_, the classic essay on the _karesansui_ garden by French art historian François Berthier, has now been translated by Graham Parkes, giving English-speaking readers a concise, thorough, and beautifully (...) illustrated history of these gardens. Berthier's guided tour of the famous garden of Ryoanji in Kyoto leads him into an exposition of the genre, focusing on its Chinese antecedents and affiliations with Taoist ideas and Chinese landscape painting. He traces the roles of Shinto and Zen Buddhism in the evolution of the garden and also considers how manual laborers from the lowest classes in Japan had a hand in creating some of its highest examples. Parkes contributes an equally original and substantive essay which delves into the philosophical importance of rocks and their "language of stone," delineating the difference between Chinese and Japanese rock gardens and their relationship to Buddhism. Together, the two essays compose one of the most comprehensive and elegantly written studies of this haunting garden form. _Reading Zen in the Rocks_ is fully illustrated with photographs of all the major gardens discussed, making it a handsome addition to the library of anyone interested in gardening, Eastern philosophy, and the combination of the two that the _karesansui_ so superbly represents. Praise for the French edition: "A small book of rare depth, remarkably illustrated, on one of the most celebrated and beautiful rock gardens of the monasteries of Kyoto."—_L'Humanité_ "Through _Le Jardin de Ryoanji_, Berthier teaches us to read the zen in the rocks, to discover the language offered by the garden at Ryoanji. Enigmatic, poetic, and disconcerting, an enriching journey through a work of art of surprising modernity, _Le Jardin de Ryoanji_ is a work that will interest all the amateurs of Japanese art and Eastern philosophy."—_Lien Horticole_. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.1 (2004) 112-122 [Access article in PDF] Being in the Dry Zen Landscape Reading Zen In The Rocks — The Japanese Dry Landscape Garden, by François Berthier, trans. with a philosophical essay by Graham Parkes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 166 pp., $20.00. The austere simplicity of Zen rock gardens is also an allusive and elusive one, as the two enjoyable essays (...) that comprise Reading Zen in the Rocks — The Japanese Dry Landscape Garden eloquently indicate. More so than the phenomena they describe, these essays appeal to a wide audience, and they read easily, invitingly, and informatively. In this textual performance, the French art-historian, François Berthier, stands side-by-side with the Scottish philosopher of comparative East-West studies, Graham Parkes, to provide a textual and visual presentation that intends, via an appropriate complementarity of content, to introduce the karesansui (dry landscape) style of Japanese garden to the general reader. Parkes — a masterful and accomplished translator — renders into English, Berthier's 1989 work, Le jardin du Ryoanji — Lire le Zen dans les pierres [The Garden of Ryoanji — Reading Zen in the Rocks], and fills some philosophical gaps with his own equal-length [End Page 112] essay, "The Role of Rock in the Japanese Dry Landscape Garden." Though judiciously focused to achieve expository economy, the two essays jointly provide a handy introduction to the complicated artistic, philosophic, religious, and cultural phenomenon popularly known as the "Zen rock garden."As a distinguishing landscape-architectural feature of many Zen monasteries in Japan and abroad, the karesansui garden reinforces the contemplative religious atmosphere and, as the frequent photographs of meditating monks quietly positioned in their rock gardens tend to suggest, they guide the perceiver into the calm and earthy mentality typical of Zen Buddhism. Berthier notes, accordingly, that the gardens provide "an image of the [Buddhistically interpreted] universe in its most condensed form" in which people can discern their "true faces" (p. 6). Ideally, one could contemplate a Zen garden and, if one were equipped with the proper background in Zen training, be stimulated to experience a Zen Buddhist enlightenment.Such are the immediate expectations elicited from a book whose cover depicts a Zen monk contemplating an expanse of bare gravel, and which sets the title word "Zen" in large letters over the monk's back. It comes as a surprise, then, that there is far less pure Zen in these essays than one would anticipate from this English-language presentation of Berthier's book. In the French version, as can be seen above, the word "Zen" appears only in the book's subtitle, and the Zen-specific anticipations are more submerged as a result.It would be an overstatement to identify the phrase "Zen rock garden" as a misnomer, but Berthier and Parkes implicitly demonstrate that the karesansui style of Japanese garden is not an exclusively Zen phenomenon, but is intimately linked with Chinese Daoism, Shintoism, not to mention versions of Buddhism that historically precede, and are significantly different from, Zen Buddhism. Perhaps unintentionally, this book raises the question, "What measure of Zen, in fact, do the paradigmatic "Zen" rock gardens such as the garden at Ryoanji (c. 1500, in Kyoto, and the archetype of Japanese dry landscape gardens) embody?"We can approach this question by considering the meaning of the Japanese word, "karesansui," which Parkes translates accurately as "dry landscape." The title of the book announces that the subject is "the Japanese dry landscape garden," but it is important to recall (as one learns briefly in the final pages) the further linguistic resonances of the prefix "kare." What does not emerge through in the usual translation of "kare" as "dry," is the added association to the English term "withered," for one would translate, for instance, the Japanese terms "kare kusa," "kare ashi," "kare giku," and "kareha," as "withered grass," "withered reed," "withered chrysanthemums," and "withered leaves," respectively. The term "kareki" (bare tree), along with the others, also indicates how the prefixed "kare" suggests wintertime, withering, drying out, something that has... (shrink)

L’article présente l’édition critique du Traité sur l’être de raison de François de Prato, précédée d’une introduction historico-philosophique. Ce traité est une des premières réactions italiennes à la diffusion de la philosophie du langage et de la logique de Guillaume d’Occam. François y argumente contre la réduction occamiste de l’être de raison aux actes de connaissance, entendus comme des entités existant ‘subjectivement’ dans l’intellect. En suivant Thomas d’Aquin et Hervé de Nédellec, il développe au contraire une théorie relationnelle et (...) ‘objective’ de l’être de raison. (shrink)

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 lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes’ Meditations: Background Source Materials ed. by Roger Ariew, John Cottingham, and Tom SorellRichard A. WatsonRoger Ariew, John Cottingham, and Tom Sorell, editors. Descartes’ Meditations: Background Source Materials. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xviii + 170. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $18.95.This volume includes primarily source materials from authors who were contemporary to Descartes’s composition of the Meditations. Thus there are no selections from Augustine, Aquinas, and Montaigne, for (...) example, who were more influential on the Meditations than some of the authors excerpted. Of course their influence is already amply documented by such scholars as Gilson and Gouhier. Probably the most important source included is Suárez, whose role is championed by Jean-Luc Marion in several works. Readers should look for the forthcoming Index Augustino-Cartèsian: Textes et Commentaire by Zbigniew Janowski (Paris: J. Vrin) for a startling challenge to the view that Descartes is Suárezian.In the volume under review, Eustachius a Sancto Paulo is of special interest because Descartes thought of refuting him item by item (but decided exposition of his own view would be adequate). In his youth Descartes had a definite interest in Petrus Ramus, although Beeckman told him his method consisted of tired old tricks. Francisco Sanches and Pierre Charron are important for their expositions of sceptical arguments and attitudes. Christopher Clavius is Descartes’s direct predecessor in mathematical analysis, and none of Descartes’s protests that he never read the man has convinced anyone. Scipion Dupleix is a fine example of how the Old Philosophy appeared to the New Philosophers, and Marin Mersenne, of course, compiled material on every subject Descartes ever had an interest in. Pierre Gassendi exercised Descartes’s ire more than any other commentator on the Meditations, and Descartes again probably read Gassendi’s continuing criticisms even though he claimed he wouldn’t. [End Page 366]Of special interest is Jean de Silhon, an old friend of Descartes’s who published a book containing a proto-cogito three years before the Meditations appeared. François de la Mothe le Vayer represents the libertine strain many detect in Descartes’s writings, while Jean-Baptiste Morin provides fodder for those who detect Descartes’s piety, although Descartes asserts that the man is an idiot for defending the immobility of the earth. Finally, Charles Sorel provides an example of the deductive mode of exposition in a text that shows that the notion of a unified science was more than Cartesian. One contemporary who was left out and should have been included was the Augustinian Guillaume Gibieuf.But overall, this is an interesting and useful collection of works Descartes doubtless knew. [End Page 367]Richard A. WatsonWashington UniversityCopyright © 1999 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In this survey paper, I start from two classical theses of speech act theory: that speech act content is uniformly propositional and that sentence mood encodes illocutionary force. These theses have been questioned in recent work, both in philosophy and linguistics. The force/content distinction itself – a cornerstone of 20‐century philosophy of language – has come to be rejected by some theorists, unmoved by the famous ‘Frege–Geach’ argument. The paper reviews some of these debates.

This article maintains that an important class of scientific generalizations should be reinterpreted: they have typically been understood as ceteris paribus laws, but are, in fact, generics. Four arguments are presented to support this thesis. One argument is that the interpretation in terms of ceteris paribus laws is a historical accident. The other three arguments draw on similarities between these generalizations and archetypal generics: they come with similar inferential commitments, they share a syntactic form, and the existing theories to make (...) sense of them are alike. Once these generalizations are properly understood as generics, the recent cognitive approach to generics can be extended to the study of the relevant sciences. The last section indicates ways in which this extension is fruitful for the two strands of research that we combine: the philosophy of science literature on generalizations and the semantics literature on generics. (shrink)

Depuis Droit, mythe et raison (1980) écrit avec Jacques Lenoble jusqu’aux récents À quoi sert le droit? Usages, fonctions et finalités (2016) ou Le droit, objet de passions (2018), François Ost ne cesse de questionner les rapports de nos sociétés au droit et la place de celui-ci dans nos sociétés contemporaines. Avec Le droit malgré tout, il s’agit de rendre hommage à l’œuvre et à la carrière d’une figure centrale de la théorie du droit contemporaine et aussi au fondateur, avec (...) le regretté Michel van de Kerchove, de ce que l’on appelle parfois « l’école de Saint-Louis ». Abordant les deux pôles de la dialectique à laquelle François Ost est si attaché - la critique et la reconstruction -, l’ouvrage propose un regard interdisciplinaire sur le droit, à travers les principaux thèmes qui ont nourri la pensée de l’auteur. Du statut épistémologique de la science du droit à un questionnement sur les fondements et l’avenir du droit et de la justice, des liens qu’entretiennent le droit et la littérature jusqu’à l’environnement saisi par le droit en passant par les « communs », les approches de ses collègues et amis sont toutes réflexives et critiques. En ce qu’elles sont soucieuses de soumettre le droit au regard des sciences sociales et, inversement, les normativités extra-juridiques au regard du droit, elles sont fidèles à la démarche de François Ost. Ce Liber Amicorum propose aussi un retour réflexif sur son œuvre par l’auteur lui-même, dans un entretien avec Manuel Atienza. Contributeurs : Yves CARTUYVELS, Robert JACOB, Mark VAN HOECKE, Jacques COMMAILLE, Isabelle HACHEZ, Laurent VAN EYNDE, Jacques LENOBLE, Benoit FRYDMAN, Alain PAPAUX, Guillaume DE STEXHE, Diane BERNARD, Antoine GARAPON, Jacques CHEVALLIER, Alain SUPIOT, Paul MARTENS, Jérémie VAN MEERBEECK, Sébastien VAN DROOGHENBROECK, Nicolas BERNARD et Françoise TULKENS, Pierre LEGRAND, Annette RUELLE, Isabelle OST, Jeanne GAAKEER, Massimo VOGLIOTTI, Denis SALAS, Pauline BÉGASSE DE DHAEM et Marie-Sophie DE CLIPPELE, Xavier DELGRANGE, Delphine MISONNE, Benoît JADOT, Alain STROWEL, Hugues DUMONT, Jean-Guy BELLEY, Antoine BAILLEU. (shrink)

In modal logic, propositions are evaluated relative to possible worlds. A proposition may be true relative to a world w, and false relative to another world w'. Relativism is the view that the relativization idea extends beyond possible worlds and modalities. Thus, in tense logic, propositions are evaluated relative to times. A proposition (e.g. the proposition that Socrates is sitting) may be true relative to a time t, and false relative to another time t'. In this paper I discuss, and (...) attempt to rebut, two classical objections to Relativism. The first objection, due to Frege, is the objection from incompleteness. I distinguish two possible relativist responses to that objection, one of which corresponds to the view I actually defend : Moderate Relativism. The second objection is due to Mark Richard, who argued that the objects of belief cannot be relativistic. I show that that objection can be met within the Moderate Relativist framework. In the last section, I deal with special forms of disagreement that have loomed large in recent discussions of Relativism. (shrink)

L'internalisme motivationnel est la théorie selon laquelle il existe une connexion nécessaire entre les jugements moraux et la motivation. Dans ce chapitre, nous distinguons un certain nombre de ses variantes et écartons celles d’entre elles qui sont moins directement intéressantes pour les grands débats métaéthiques. Nous examinons ensuite trois arguments philosophiques qui échouent à établir ou à réfuter l'internalisme. Enfin, nous présentons quelques arguments empiriques, relevant respectivement de la psychologie, des neurosciences et de la philosophie expérimentale.

"Margaret L. King has put together a highly representative selection of readings from most of the more significant—but by no means the most obvious—texts by the authors who made up the movement we have come to call the 'Enlightenment.' They range across much of Europe and the Americas, and from the early seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth. In the originality of the choice of texts, in its range and depth, this collection offers both wide coverage and striking (...) insights into the intellectual transformation which has done more than any other to shape the world in which we live today. It is _simply the best introduction to the subject now available_."_ —Anthony Pagden, UCLA, and author of _The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters_ Contents:_ Chronology, Introduction _Chapter One - Casting Out Idols: 1620–1697_ _Idols, or false notions: _Francis Bacon, _The New Instrument_ _I think, therefore I am: _René Descartes, Discourse on Method _God, or Nature: _Baruch Spinoza, _Ethics_ _The system of the world: _Isaac Newton, _Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy_ _He searched for truth throughout his life: _Pierre Bayle, _Historical and Critical Dictionary_ _Chapter Two - _The Learned Maid: 1638–1740 _A face raised toward heaven:_ Anna Maria van Schurman, _Whether the Study of Letters Befits a Christian Woman_ _The worlds I have made:_ Margaret Cavendish, _The Blazing World_ _A finer sort of cattle:_ Bathsua Makin, _An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen_ _I warn you of the world:_ Madame de Maintenon, _Letter: On the Education of the Demoiselles of Saint-Cyr_, and _Instruction: On the World_ _The daybreak of your reason:_ Émilie Du Châtelet, _Fundamentals of Physics_ _Chapter Three - _A State of Perfect Freedom: 1689–1695 _The chief criterion of the True Church:_ John Locke, _Letter on Toleration_ _Freedom from any superior power on earth:_ John Locke, _Second Treatise on Civil Government_ _A white paper, with nothing written on it:_ John Locke, _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_ _Let your rules be as few as possible:_ John Locke, _Some Thoughts Concerning Education_ _From death, Jesus Christ restores all to life:_ John Locke, _The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures_ _Chapter Four - All Things Made New: 1725–1784_ _In the wilderness, they are reborn:_ Giambattista Vico, _The New Science_ _Without these Names, nothing can be known,_ Carl Linnaeus, _System of Nature_ _All the clouds at last are lifted:_ Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, _The Successive Advancement of the Human Mind_ _A genealogical or encyclopedic tree of knowledge:_ Jean le Rond d’Alembert, _Preliminary Discourse_ _Dare to know! :_ Immanuel Kant, _What Is Enlightenment?_ _Chapter Five - Mind, Soul, and God: 1740–1779_ _The narrow limits of human understanding:_ David Hume, _Anof a Book Lately Published_ _The soul is but an empty word:_ Julien Offray de La Mettrie, _Man a Machine_ _All is reduced to sensation:_ Claude Adrien Helvétius, _On the Mind_ _An endless web of fantasies and falsehoods:_ Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d’Holbach, _Common Sense_ _Let each believe that his own ring is real:_ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, _Nathan the Wise_ _Chapter Six - Crush That Infamous Thing: 1733–1764_ _This is the country of sects:_ Voltaire, _Philosophical Letters_ _Disfigured by myth, until enlightenment comes:_ Voltaire, _The Culture and Spirit of Nations_ _The best of all possible worlds:_ Voltaire, _Candide_ _Are we not all children of the same God?:_ Voltaire, _Treatise on Tolerance_ _If a book displeases you, refute it! :_ Voltaire, _Philosophical Dictionary_ _Chapter Seven - Toward the Greater Good: 1748–1776_ _Things must be so ordered that power checks power,_ Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, _The Spirit of the Laws_ _Complete freedom of trade must be ensured:_ François Quesnay, _General Maxims for the Economic Management of an Agricultural Kingdom_ _The nation's war against the citizen: Cesare_ Beccaria, _On Crimes and Punishments_ _There is no peace in the absence of justice:_ Adam Ferguson, _An Essay on the History of Civil Society_ _Led by an invisible hand:_ Adam Smith, _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_ _Chapter Eight - Encountering Others: 1688–1785_ _Thus died this great man:_ Aphra Behn, _Oroonoko: or The Royal Slave_ _Not one sins the less for not being Christian: _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, _Embassy Letters_ _Do you not restore to them their liberty?:_ Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, _Philosophical and Political History of European Colonies and Commerce in the Two Indies_ _Some things which are rather interesting:_ Captain James Cook, _Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the World_ _The inner genius of my being:_ Johann Gottfried von Herder, _Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humankind_ _Chapter - Nine Citizen of Geneva: 1755–1782_ _The most cunning project ever to enter the human mind: _Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Human Inequality_ _The supreme direction of the General Will:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract _Two lovers from a small town at the foot of the Alps,_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Julie, or the New Heloise_ _Build a fence around your child’s soul:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Emile, or On Education_ _This man will be myself:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Confessions_ _Chapter Ten - Vindications of Women: 1685–1792_ _No higher design than to get her a husband:_ Mary Astell, _Reflections on Marriage_ _The days of my bondage begin:_ Anna Stanisławska, _Orphan Girl_ _A dying victim dragged to the altar:_ Denis Diderot, _The Nun_ _Created to be the toy of man:_ Mary Wollstonecraft, _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ _Man, are you capable of being just?:_ Olympe de Gouges, _Declaration of the Rights of Woman as Citizen_ _Chapter Eleven - American Reverberations: 1771–1792_ _I took upon me to assert my freedom:_ Benjamin Franklin, _Autobiography_ _Freedom has been hunted round the globe:_ Thomas Paine, _Common Sense_ _Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights:_ Thomas Jefferson and Others, _Declaration of Independence_ _A safeguard against faction and insurrection:_ James Madison, _Federalist No. 10_ _An end to government by force and fraud:_ Thomas Paine, _The Rights of Man_ _Chapter Twelve - Enlightenment's End: 1790–1794_ _A partnership of the living, the dead, and those unborn:_ Edmund Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ _The future destiny of the human species:_ Nicolas de Condorcet, _A Sketch of a Historical Portrait of the Progress of the Human Mind_ Texts and Studies, Index. 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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.

A summary of François Recanati's book Literal Meaning, followed by his response to the critical reviews of the same book by Stefano Predelli and Manuel García-Carpintero. /// Este texto da respuesta a los que, en este mismo número, Predelli y García-Carpintero dedican a mi libro Literal Meaning. En la primera seccíon hago un breve resumen de esta obra; en la segunda respondo a los comentarios críticos de Predelli y en la tercera a los de García-Carpintero.

Recueil de contributions sur la connaissance du monde par Dieu et sur le statut des vérités objectives de la science montrant la diversité des approches proposées par des philosophes tels que Thomas d'Aquin, Duns Scot, Guillaume d'Ockham, François de Meyronnes, Nicolas Malebranche, Pierre Bayle...

The Phenomenal Concept Strategy is a popular strategy used to support physicalism in the realm of conscious experience. This Strategy accounts for dualist intuitions but uses the ways in which we think about our experiences to explain these intuitions in a physicalist framework, without any appeal to ontological dualism. In this paper, I will raise two issues related to the currently available versions of the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. First, most of the theories belonging to the Phenomenal Concept Strategy posit that (...) phenomenal concepts are exceptional and sui generis concepts, and these theories can be shown to be largely ad hoc. Second, these theories may explain the existence of anti-physicalist intuitions, but they do not explain their persistence. My aim is to put forward a new theory of phenomenal concepts that can rise up to these challenges to the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. In my view, phenomenal concepts are not independent and sui generis concepts. On the contrary, they are closely related to our other epistemic concepts, especially our concepts of “justification”. Thinking about an experience means thinking about a specific kind of justification – an unjustified justification, or, in other words, an “ultimate seeming”. I will show why this explains the existence and the persistence of antiphysicalist intuitions in a non-ad hoc way. (shrink)

. This article analyzes the epistemic contributions of models by distinguishing three roles that they might play: an evidential role, a revealing role and a stimulating role. By using an account of learning based on the philosophical understanding of propositional knowledge as true justified belief, the paper provides the conditions to be fulfilled by a model in order to play a determined role. A case study of an economic model of the labor market—the DMP model—illustrates the usefulness of these conditions (...) in articulating debates over the epistemic contributions of a given model. (shrink)

Phenomenology was born as an attack against the false constructions of traditional philosophy. Nevertheless, it soon discovered that it had an important bond to Plato’s, Descartes’ or Kant’s philosophical systems. As I show in this paper, both in Heidegger and in Husserl’s last writings, the philosophical endeavor is interpreted as a retrieval of earlier philosophical intentions. However, this does not lead them to a common interpretation of the meaning of philosophy’s history.

Contribution au numéro spécial de la Revue Internationale de Philosophie sur John Searle.

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)