Laurent Stern here provides a concise account of the difficulties that arise within the interpretive process and in the context of interpretive conflict. Speakers and agents are expected by others to be occasionally insincere. Attempting to be tolerant of alternative interpretations, and dealing with the insincerity of others, often motivates interpreters themselves to become insincere. Accordingly, moral issues emerge for both speakers and interpreters. Interpretive Reasoning discusses such issues in the literature on interpretation. Stern offers a carefully argued account (...) of the very idea of interpretation. What are the constraints on interpretations? What are our grounds for demanding that others agree with our interpretations? How do we support our interpretations? What are the types of interpretations we encounter? How are problems of first-person authority and self-knowledge connected with interpreting? While the author argues for interpretations supported by principles rather than by the consensus of interpreters, he also shows that even well-supported interpretations may be mistaken, and that some interpretive conflicts are interminable. Although this is a book in philosophy, scholars and students in the humanities, the social sciences, and disciplines concerned with interpretive reasoning can read it profitably. (shrink)
This is the first volume of a two-volume project whose aim is to publish all the known Middle English manuscript translations of the French Somme le mi, a thirteenth-century manual of religious instruction offering teaching on the Decalogue, the seven deadly sins and their remedies, compiled by the Dominican friar Laurent of Orleans. The project extends and deepens our knowledge of the influence of this popular French text, known today only from the versions entitled The Ayen bite of Inwit (...) and The Book of Vices and Virtues, published in 1866 and 1942, respectively. This volume presents the versions extant in BL MSS Royal 18. A. x and Add. 37677; the second will cover the versions in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 494, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1286, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS e Musaeo 23. The texts of both volumes have been prepared with the help of the recently-published edition of the French text, a circumstance from which the earlier English editions were unable to benefit. It is likely that the versions edited here for the first time will make a considerable contribution to our understanding of the processes of textual transmission and to that of translation itself in English literary circles of the fifteenth century. (shrink)
Dubreuil provocatively proposes an extremist rethinking of the limits of politics - toward a break from politics, the political and policies. He calls for a refusal of politics, suggesting a form of apolitics that would make our lives more liveable. The first chapter situates the refusal of politics in relation to different contemporary theoretical attempts to renew politics, and makes the case for a greater rupture. The second moment takes up what is liveable in life by way of apolitical experience, (...) in contrast to appropriations of the collective, including a discussion of the arts. Finally, Laurent Dubreuil draws up an incomplete inventory of means, forms of existence - often frail and fleeting - that make an exit toward atopia. (shrink)
Concealing information requires that adolescents manage the information that they share, which requires cognitive skills, for example, theory of mind. This study explored motivations for concealment that early adolescents endorsed concealing or disclosing to friends and parents, in relation to their theory of mind. We found that adolescents broadly endorsed disclosure to both parents and friends, even when it might mean they would face consequences, be impolite, or face negative identity-related emotions. We found that ToM ability was associated with a (...) tendency to endorse being forthcoming and sharing information with both friends and parents. These findings provide new insight into how the relation between ToM and concealment may change with age, specifically how in early adolescence it may foster open communication rather than concealment as is the case in early and middle childhood. (shrink)
This article argues that many situations in social life can be analyzed by their requirement for the justification of action. It is in particular in situations of dispute that a need arises to explicate the grounds on which responsibility for errors is distributed and on which new agreement can be reached. Since a plurality of mutually incompatible modes of justification exists, disputes can be understood as disagreements either about whether the accepted rule of justification has not been violated or about (...) which mode of justification to apply at all. The article develops a grammar of such modes of justification, called orders of worth, and argues that the human capacity for criticism becomes visible in the daily occurrence of disputes over criteria for justification. At the same time, it is underlined that not all social situations can be interpreted with the help of such a sense of justice, which resides on a notion of equivalence. Regimes of love, of violence or of familiarity are systematically distinct from regimes of justification. (shrink)
Despite the fact that lie-telling is a common concern among parents, clinicians, and professionals, there has been little systematic investigation of the lies that children tell in relation to their problematic behaviors, nor of other social factors that may influence this relation. This study explored the relation between children’s problem behaviors and their lie-telling in two studies. The first examined whether children would tell an antisocial lie to an unfamiliar adult to conceal cheating behavior. The second analyzed the relation between (...) children’s problem behaviors, parenting styles, and the frequency of lies reported by parents over two weeks at home. Results suggest that children with higher levels of behavior problems are more likely to tell an antisocial lie to an unfamiliar adult and have a higher frequency of parent-reported lies. Results also indicate that parenting approaches moderate the relation between behavior problems and the frequency of lies that parents report. (shrink)
In Sociology of Culture and of Cultural Practices, Laurent Fleury presents a synthesis of research and debate from France and the United States. He traces the development of the sociology of culture from its origins and examines the major trends that have emerged in this branch of sociology. Fleury also raises issues of cultural hierarchy, distinction, and legitimate culture and mass culture and focuses on new areas of research, including the role of institutions, the reception of works of art, (...) aesthetic experience, and emancipation through art. (shrink)
With a meta-analysis of 85 studies and 190 experiments, the authors test the relationship between socially responsible investing and financial performance to determine whether including corporate social responsibility and ethical concerns in portfolio management is more profitable than conventional investment policies. The study also analyses the influence of researcher methodologies with respect to several dimensions of SRI on the effects identified. The results indicate that the consideration of corporate social responsibility in stock market portfolios is neither a weakness nor a (...) strength compared with conventional investments; the heterogeneous results in prior studies largely reflect the SRI dimensions under study. (shrink)
In the 21st century, the concept of ethics may seem outdated or obsolete. But in reality, ethics is the omnipresent, ongoing discussion going on in our global communities today. Systematically, people condemn, sanction, demonize, and freely judge one another. As a result, by addressing the simplest of questions (.
Since the 1990s, the terms “Lamarckism” and “Lamarckian” have seen a significant resurgence in biological publications. The discovery of new molecular mechanisms have been interpreted as evidence supporting the reality and efficiency of the inheritance of acquired characters, and thus the revival of Lamarckism. The present paper aims at giving a critical evaluation of such interpretations. I argue that two types of arguments allow to draw a clear distinction between the genuine Lamarckian concept of inheritance of acquired characters and transgenerational (...) epigenetic inheritance. The first concerns the explanandum of the processes under consideration: molecular mechanisms of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance are understood as evolved products of natural selection. This means that the kind of inheritance of acquired characters they might be responsible for is an obligatory emergent feature of evolution, whereas traditional Lamarckisms conceived the inheritance of acquired characters as a property inherent in living matter itself. The second argument concerns the explanans of the inheritance of acquired characters: in light of current knowledge, epigenetic mechanisms are not able to drive adaptive evolution by themselves. Emergent Lamarckian phenomena would be possible if and only if individual epigenetic variation allowed the inheritance of acquired characters to be a factor of unlimited change. This implies specific requirements for epigenetic variation, which I explicitly define and expand upon. I then show that given current knowledge, these requirements are not empirically grounded. (shrink)
“In 1968-69 I wanted to die, that is to say, stop living, being killed, but it was blocked on all sides,” wrote Hélène Cixous, esteemed French feminist, playwright, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist.Instead of suicide, she began to dream of writing a tomb for herself. This tomb became a work that is a testament to Cixous’s life and spirit and a secret book, the first book she ever authored. Originally written in 1970, _Tombe_ is a Homerian recasting of Shakespeare’s _Venus (...) and Adonis_ in the thickets of Central Park, a book Cixous provocatively calls the “all-powerful-other of all my books, it sparks them off, makes them run, it is their Messiah.” Masterfully translated by Laurent Milesi, _Tombe_ preserves the sonic complexities and intricate wordplay at the core of Cixous’s writing, and reveals the struggles, ideas, and intents at the center of her work. With a new prologue by the author, this is a necessary document in the development of Cixous’s aesthetic as a writer and theorist, and will be eagerly welcomed by readers as a crucial building block in the foundation of her later work_._. (shrink)
This book presents a state-of-the-art multidisciplinary perspective on psychological, physiological and computational approaches to understanding the ...
Is medieval logic formal? And if yes, in what sense? There are striking affinities between medieval and contemporary theories of language. Authors from the two periods share formal ambitions and maintain complex, and at time uneasy, relations with natural language. However, modern scholars became careful not to overlook the specificities of theories developed more than five hundred years apart, in particular with respect to their 'formal' character. In 1972, Alfonso Maieru noted that the efforts of medieval logicians to identify logical (...) structures in language which are formal enough to become objects of scientific consideration. He also stressed that the language investigated is a historical one, Latin, so that one can legitimately wonder to which extent... one is allowed to speak of 'formal logic' in the middle ages. In other words, medieval logic is characterized by a tension between 'formalist ambitions' and constraints proper to natural language. Today, our knowledge of the field has considerably expanded, calling for a new assessment of the question. (shrink)
A vital and underappreciated dimension of social interaction is the way individuals justify their actions to others, instinctively drawing on their experience to appeal to principles they hope will command respect. Individuals, however, often misread situations, and many disagreements can be explained by people appealing, knowingly and unknowingly, to different principles. On Justification is the first English translation of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot's ambitious theoretical examination of these phenomena, a book that has already had a huge impact on (...) French sociology and is likely to have a similar influence in the English-speaking world. In this foundational work of post-Bourdieu sociology, the authors examine a wide range of situations where people justify their actions. The authors argue that justifications fall into six main logics exemplified by six authors: civic (Rousseau), market (Adam Smith), industrial (Saint-Simon), domestic (Bossuet), inspiration (Augustine), and fame (Hobbes). The authors show how these justifications conflict, as people compete to legitimize their views of a situation. On Justification is likely to spark important debates across the social sciences. (shrink)
Cognitive forms vary considerably as a human being detaches herself from what is closest and most personal and moves to communicate — in the broad sense of taking part in a common matter — across increasing relational distances. The article proposes to deal with the variety of cognitive formats which cannot `commonize' cognition to an equal degree, relating them to a set of regimes of engagement with the world that are identified in terms of the dependency between the human agent (...) and her environment. The good that engagement aims to guarantee orients how reality is grasped and specifies the format of what constitutes relevant information. This analysis offers new insight into the composition of communities as well as persons who have to cope with the plurality of cognitive formats and engagements from the very familiar to the most public. (shrink)
L’article expose et discute l’interprétation de l’immatérialisme de Berkeley par James Frederick Ferrier. Dans deux articles denses , contre l’historiographie reidienne dominante, celui-ci rejette la thèse selon laquelle Berkeley souscrit à la méthode des idées et par là aux principes élémentaires du représentationnalisme. Loin de défendre l’idéalisme subjectif, Berkeley adhère à une forme de réalisme direct. Dans les Institutes of Metaphysic , Ferrier va plus loin et se sert du « maître argument » de Berkeley pour risquer ses propres thèses (...) métaphysiques.The paper sets out and discusses James Frederick Ferrier’s interpretation of Berkeley’s immaterialism. In two dense papers , against the prevailing Reidean historiography, Ferrier rejects the claim that Berkeley subscribes to the way of ideas and thus to the basis tenets of representationalism. Far from defending subjective idealism, Berkeley holds some form of direct realism. In his Institutes of Metaphysic , Ferrier goes further and draws on Berkeley’s master argument to venture his own metaphysical views. (shrink)
In the first part of this contribution, we review the development of the theory of scale relativity and its geometric framework constructed in terms of a fractal and nondifferentiable continuous space-time. This theory leads (i) to a generalization of possible physically relevant fractal laws, written as partial differential equation acting in the space of scales, and (ii) to a new geometric foundation of quantum mechanics and gauge field theories and their possible generalisations. In the second part, we discuss some examples (...) of application of the theory to various sciences, in particular in cases when the theoretical predictions have been validated by new or updated observational and experimental data. This includes predictions in physics and cosmology (value of the QCD coupling and of the cosmological constant), to astrophysics and gravitational structure formation (distances of extrasolar planets to their stars, of Kuiper belt objects, value of solar and solar-like star cycles), to sciences of life (log-periodic law for species punctuated evolution, human development and society evolution), to Earth sciences (log-periodic deceleration of the rate of California earthquakes and of Sichuan earthquake replicas, critical law for the arctic sea ice extent) and tentative applications to systems biology. (shrink)
_H. C. for Life, That Is to Say..._ is Derrida's literary critical recollection of his lifelong friendship with Hélène Cixous. The main figure that informs Derrida's reading here is that of "taking sides." While Hélène Cixous in her life and work takes the side of life, "for life," Derrida admits always feeling drawn to the side of death. Rather than being an obvious choice, taking the side of life is an act of faith, by wagering one's life on life. _H. (...) C. for Life_ sets up and explores this interminable "argument" between Derrida and Cixous as to what death has in store deep within life itself, before the end. In addition to being a memoir, it is also a theoretical confrontation—for example about the meaning of "might" and "omnipotence," and a philosophical and philological analysis of the crypts within the vast oeuvre of Hélène Cixous. Finally, the book is Derrida's tribute to the thought of the woman whom he regards as one of the great French poets, writers, and thinkers of our time. (shrink)
L'article expose et discute l'interprétation de l'immatérialisme de Berkeley par James Frederick Ferrier. Dans deux articles denses (1842, 1847), contre l'historiographie reidienne dominante, celui-ci rejette la thèse selon laquelle Berkeley souscrit à la méthode des idées et par là aux principes élémentaires du représentationnalisme. Loin de défendre l'idéalisme subjectif, Berkeley adhère à une forme de réalisme direct. Dans les Institutes of Metaphysic (1854), Ferrier va plus loin et se sert du « maître argument » de Berkeley pour risquer ses propres (...) thèses métaphysiques. The paper sets out and discusses James Frederick Ferrier's interpretation of Berkeley's immaterialism. In two dense papers (1842, 1847), against the prevailing Reidean historiography, Ferrier rejects the claim that Berkeley subscribes to the way of ideas and thus to the basis tenets of representationalism. Far from defending subjective idealism, Berkeley holds some form of direct realism. In his Institutes of Metaphysic (1854), Ferrier goes further and draws on Berkeley's master argument to venture his own metaphysical views. (shrink)
We present here a modal version of the structure seeking dialogues that were introduced in [Rahman & Keiff 2004]. For this purpose, we use a semantics that corresponds to the semantics of non normal modal systems.RésuméNous présentons ici une version modale des dialogues de recherche de conditions que nous avons introduits dans [Rahman & Keiff 2004]. La sémantique utilisée correspond à celle des systèmes modaux non normaux.
Language expert and psychologist, Laurent Danon-Boileau, has spent a lifetime trying to release silent children's ability to communicate. This book describes his treatment of six patients, all of whom were able to begin normal schooling after treatment: it is a landmark in the field.Children who speak late are a source of anxiety to parents and evoke conflicting responses from professionals. Professor Danon-Boileau argues that language disorders are too often considered from the perspective of either psychology or neurology and that (...) the key to understanding lies in investigating the interactions of developmental, social, and neurobiological factors.The Silent Child allows the reader to meet the children as they are gently guided by the author towards communication, first without language, using toys and games, and then gradually to the ability to talk. (shrink)
This article introduces a framework which aims at capturing the complexity of economic organizations. The analysis of most legitimate conventions of coordination results in a new approach to the firm as a compromising device between several modes of coordination which engage different repertoires of evaluation. This contribution to the Économie des conventions offers an analytical tool to operate comparative research on firms, intermediate regulatory committees or public policies.
_Zero's Neighbour_ is Hélène Cixous's tribute to the minimalist genius of the artist in exile who courted nothingness in his writing like nobody else: Samuel Beckett. In this unabashedly personal odyssey through a sizeable range of his novels, plays and poems, Cixous celebrates Beckett’s linguistic flair and the poignant, powerful thrust of his stylistic terseness, and passionately declares her love for his unrivalled expression of the meaningless ‘precious little’ of life, its unfathomable banality ending in chaos and death. Poised between (...) a critical essay and a textual performance across two languages adapting Beckett's own literary vein, this book will appeal to scholars, critics and creative writers as well as students of the ‘grey self-Sam’. Its allusive intertextual insights will also prove to be of critical relevance to readers of Dante and Proust, among other literary figures, as much as to those appreciative of Cixous’s own inimitable genius for dissecting the quintessence of the life and works of a ‘neighbourly’ artist. (shrink)
Laurent Le Bon, directeur du Centre Pompidou-Metz, dévoile au cours d’un entretien avec Roland Huesca l’histoire, les atours et les enjeux de l’écriture de plusieurs catalogues d’expositions : à l’affiche Dada, Chefs-d’œuvre ?..
L’objectif du présent essai est de soutenir que l’horizon de la philosophie moderne est circonscrit par un dilemme inéluctable, qui gouverne toutes les instances de la raison critique depuis les Méditations métaphysiques de René Descartes. Ce dilemme est le suivant: ou bien nous assumons l’exercice du doute radical de manière à le surmonter dans une ontologie du «sujet transcendantal», et nous sommes alors confrontés à des apories insurmontables, ou bien nous outrepassons la possibilité du doute radical en adoptant pour point (...) de départ notre relation «effective» au monde, et nous sommes alors contraints d’admettre la contingence possible des structures de l’expérience – ce que nous pourrions appeler le «problème de la facticité». En ce sens, nous indiquerons comment ce dilemme détermine le passage de Descartes à Kant, puis de Husserl à Heidegger, c’est-à-dire aussi bien le «tournant critique» que ce qu’il convient d’appeler le «tournant existentiel de la phénoménologie». (shrink)
