Despite severe amnesia, some studies showed that Alzheimer Disease patients with moderate to severe dementia keep a consistent, but impoverished representation of themselves, showing preservation of the sense of identity even at severe stages of the illness. Some studies suggest that listening to music can facilitate the reminiscence of autobiographical memories and that stimulating autobiographical memory would be relevant to support the self of these patients. Consequently, we hypothesized that repeated participation to reminiscence workshops, using excerpts of familiar songs as (...) prompts would participate to the enrichment of autobiographical memories, self-representation and sense of identity. We included a group of 20 AD patients with severe dementia residing in nursing homes. Their performances were compared to a control group of 20 matched healthy residents living in the same institutions. The experiment was conducted in three phases over a 2-week period. On phase 1, an individual assessment of sense of identity was proposed to each participant. On phase 2, participants joined musical reminiscence workshops. During the third phase, individual evaluation of autobiographical memory and a second assessment of sense of identity were proposed. Our results showed that, despite their massive amnesia syndrome, autobiographical memories of AD reached at the end of the 2 weeks the number and quality of those of matched controls. Moreover, we confirmed a continuity of self-representation in AD patients with a stable profile of the answers between the first and second individual assessments of sense of identity. However, the increase in number and episodic quality of autobiographical memories was not accompanied by an enrichment of the sense of identity. In a complementary study, new patients participated in the same paradigm, but using movie extracts as prompts, and showed very similar effects. We discuss all of these results with regard to the literature showing the significant impact of repetition on the reactivation of memory traces even in very amnestic AD patients at severe stages of the disease. (shrink)

Languages show substantial variability between their speakers, but it is currently unclear how the structure of the communicative network contributes to the patterning of this variability. While previous studies have highlighted the role of network structure in language change, the specific aspects of network structure that shape language variability remain largely unknown. To address this gap, we developed a Bayesian agent‐based model of language evolution, contrasting between two distinct scenarios: language change and language emergence. By isolating the relative effects of (...) specific global network metrics across thousands of simulations, we show that global characteristics of network structure play a critical role in shaping interindividual variation in language, while intraindividual variation is relatively unaffected. We effectively challenge the long‐held belief that size and density are the main network structural factors influencing language variation, and show that path length and clustering coefficient are the main factors driving interindividual variation. In particular, we show that variation is more likely to occur in populations where individuals are not well‐connected to each other. Additionally, variation is more likely to emerge in populations that are structured in small communities. Our study provides potentially important insights into the theoretical mechanisms underlying language variation. (shrink)

The problem of measurement is often considered an inconsistency inside the quantum formalism. Many attempts to solve it have been made since the inception of quantum mechanics. The form of these attempts depends on the philosophical position that their authors endorse. I will review some of them and analyze their relevance. The phenomenon of decoherence is often presented as a solution lying inside the pure quantum formalism and not demanding any particular philosophical assumption. Nevertheless, a widely debated question is to (...) decide between two different interpretations. The first one is to consider that the decoherence process has the effect to actually project a superposed state into one of its classically interpretable component, hence doing the same job as the reduction postulate. For the second one, decoherence is only a way to show why no macroscopic superposed state can be observed, so explaining the classical appearance of the macroscopic world, while the quantum entanglement between the system, the apparatus and the environment never disappears. In this case, explaining why only one single definite outcome is observed remains to do. In this paper, I examine the arguments that have been given for and against both interpretations and defend a new position, the “Convivial Solipsism”, according to which the outcome that is observed is relative to the observer, different but in close parallel to the Everett’s interpretation and sharing also some similarities with Rovelli’s relational interpretation and Quantum Bayesianism. I also show how “Convivial Solipsism” can help getting a new standpoint about the EPR paradox providing a way out of the seemingly unavoidable non-locality of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Biology seems to present local and transitory regularities rather than immutable laws. To account for these historically constituted regularities and to distinguish them from mathematical invariants, Montévil and Mossio (Journal of Theoretical Biology 372:179–191, 2015) have proposed to speak of constraints. In this article we analyse the causal power of these constraints in the evolution of biodiversity, i.e., their positivity, but also the modality of their action on the directions taken by evolution. We argue that to fully account for the (...) causal power of these constraints on evolution, they must be thought of in terms of normativity. In this way, we want to highlight two characteristics of the evolutionary constraints. The first, already emphasised as reported by Gould (The structure of evolutionary theory, Harvard University Press, 2002), is that these constraints are both produced by and producing biological evolution and that this circular causation creates true novelties. The second is that this specific causality, which generates unpredictability in evolution, stems not only from the historicity of biological constraints, but also from their internalisation through the practices of living beings. (shrink)

We regularly intentionally expose ourselves to fictions we take to be likely to elicit in us emotions we generally find unpleasant when prompted by actual states of affairs. This is the so-called “paradox of tragedy”. We contribute to solving the paradox of tragedy by denying that, when fiction-directed, most of these emotions are in themselves unpleasant. We first provide strong evidence that these emotions, such as fear, sadness, or pity, are often enjoyed when fiction-directed. We then advance an explanation of (...) what makes these fiction-directed emotions often not unpleasant, while their reality-directed counterparts are generally so. In the last section, we advance an explanation of what makes fiction-directed emotions often enjoyable, and argue that a complete solution to the paradox of tragedy should be pluralist. (shrink)

Means–ends decoupling, the institutionally induced implementation of ineffective practices, has become increasingly common. Extant theory suggests that means–ends decoupling has real consequences, which makes it unstable and difficult for organizations to sustain. Yet little is known of how, and with what outcomes, firms organize such means–ends decoupling. We examine organizing via multiple qualitative and longitudinal case studies of how Swedish fast fashion retailers implement and manage the collection of used garments. We find that firms combine two organizational arrangements: structural and (...) temporal core–compartment separations, which mitigate consequences of means–ends decoupling by obscuring and justifying efficiency gaps. Thereby we provide a theoretical explanation for how means–ends decoupling can persist over time. (shrink)

Gleïzès, philosophe proche des Méditateurs et des dormeuses, avait écrit une épopée pionnière du mouvement végétarien se déroulant sur la Montagne noire dans le Sud-Ouest de la France. Ce livre en main, Louise Hervé et Clovis Maillet ont été à la rencontre des maraîchers et des végétarien·nes de la région en 2023, au lendemain d’une grande manifestation contre la construction de l’autoroute Toulouse-Castres. Leur cri de ralliement était : « Moins de bitume, plus de légumes ».

In a recent paper (Zwirn in Phys Essays 30: 3, 2017), I argued against backward in time effects used by several authors to explain delayed choice experiments. I gave an explanation showing that there is no physical influence propagating from the present to the past and modifying the state of the system at a time previous to the measurement. However, though the solution is straightforward in the case of delayed choice experiments involving only one particle, it is subtler in the (...) case of experiments involving two entangled particles because they give rise to EPR-like situations. Considering that a measurement is not an actual change of the physical state of a system and is relative to the observer allows to understand that there is neither backward in time effects nor instantaneous collapse of the second system when the first one is measured, as is often postulated. This allows also to get rid of any non-locality (Zwirn in Found Phys 50:1–26, 2020). In this paper, I want to go further into the consequences of this way of considering the measurement, that I have called Convivial Solipsism, and show that even if, in the usual sense, there is no physical effect of the present or of the future on the past, we must nevertheless consider that the observer’s past is sometimes not entirely determined and that it becomes determined only when certain measurements are done latter. This apparent contradiction disappears if one understand that each observer builds, through her own measurements, her own world (that I call the phenomenal world in Convivial Solipsism) which is different from what we are used to consider as the common world shared by everybody. (shrink)

Williams (WS) and Down (DS) syndromes are neurodevelopmental disorders with distinct genetic origins and different spatial memory profiles. In real-world spatial memory tasks, where spatial information derived from all sensory modalities is available, individuals with DS demonstrate low-resolution spatial learning capacities consistent with their mental age, whereas individuals with WS are severely impaired. However, because WS is associated with severe visuo-constructive processing deficits, it is unclear whether their impairment is due to abnormal visual processing or whether it reflects an inability (...) to build a cognitive map. Here, we tested whether blindfolded individuals with WS or DS, and typically developing (TD) children with similar mental ages, could use path integration to perform an egocentric homing task and return to a starting point. We then evaluated whether they could take shortcuts and navigate along never-traveled trajectories between four objects while blindfolded, thus demonstrating the ability to build a cognitive map. In the homing task, 96% of TD children, 84% of participants with DS and 44% of participants with WS were able to use path integration to return to their starting point consistently. In the cognitive mapping task, 64% of TD children and 74% of participants with DS were able to take shortcuts and use never-traveled trajectories, the hallmark of cognitive mapping ability. In contrast, only one of eighteen participants with WS demonstrated the ability to build a cognitive map. These findings are consistent with the view that hippocampus-dependent spatial learning is severely impacted in WS, whereas it is relatively preserved in DS. (shrink)

L’attitude des historiens face à la mondialisation a été influencée depuis 1990 par les débats sur la globalisation. Celle-ci a permis, après l’histoire universelle européocentrique des années 1870-1970 et la World History des années 1960-1990, de développer des perspectives nouvelles marquées par les méthodes de l’histoire globale. Mais les résultats sont différents selon les sphères culturelles : en France et en Italie, on a privilégié l’histoire connectée ; en Allemagne et dans le monde anglo-saxon, on a insisté sur les processus (...) de globalisation ; en Russie et en Chine, on estime que la globalisation concerne le domaine économique mais non les dimensions politiques et culturelles locales qui restent en dehors du monde occidental. Enfin, les limites méthodologiques de l’histoire globale ont des conséquences sur les conceptions de la globalisation qu’on ne peut faire remonter trop loin dans le temps et amènent à concevoir une histoire de l’humanité qui dépasse celle de la seule mondialisation. (shrink)

On pourrait s’attendre à ce que la pauvreté sémantique des noms généraux et leur polyvalence référentielle en fassent d’excellents candidats aux reprises anaphoriques infidèles. Bien des contextes, néanmoins, ne se prêtent pas à une reprise par un nom général comme _chose_, _personne_ ou _individu_ d’un référent préalablement classifié. Les difficultés posées par de telles reprises ou les effets discursifs (souvent péjoratifs) qu’elles produisent sont liées à la déclassification du référent qu’elles impliquent. Les noms généraux se distinguent en effet, nous le (...) verrons, des autres noms superordonnés par leur non-classifiance. Cette propriété les rapproche en revanche des noms de qualité (au sens de Milner), qui apparaissent au plus haut du continuum de généralité dans certains exemples proposés par Halliday & Hasan. (shrink)

Cet article est consacré à un emploi singulier des descriptions définies dans la presse people sur Internet. De nombreuses descriptions définies, telles le mari de Jill Biden, pour désigner Joe Biden, et le mari de Melania, pour désigner Donald Trump, y apparaissent sans lien avec le propos des articles, et cela parfois dans des contextes où un pronom personnel serait plus approprié qu’une expression nominale. Nous soulignerons d’abord combien ces descriptions définies s’écartent des emplois ordinaires des expressions référentielles très spécifiées (...) en général et des descriptions définies en particulier et quels risques certaines d’entre elles, relevant de la catégorie des « anaphores présuppositionnelles » de Milner, peuvent présenter pour la bonne interprétation référentielle. Nous spécifierons ensuite leur fonction, fonction liée à la fois à la coloration « people » de ce type de presse et à son support numérique. (shrink)

Apres avoir reconnu la justesse du geste henryen, consistant à placer l’individu vivant au centre de son interprétation, c’est l’atomisation voire l’approche « nominaliste » du travail qui en découle qu’Hervé Touboul met vigoureusement en question, au fil d’une analyse approfondie de la manière dont M. Henry en viendrait à méconnaitre les dialectiques, toujours à l’œuvre dans le texte de Marx, de la quantité et de la qualité, ou de la valeur d’usage et de la valeur d’échange. L’auteur pense (...) décisif d’interroger la posture henryenne : la conception réductrice du travail – comme qualité pure et refus de l’objectivité, au nom de la subjectivité transcendantale. D’où la difficulté à aborder la socialité du travail – les médiations dont elle est tissée, son anonymat irréductible à toute inter-personnalité – et au-delà, à dégager les conditions de sa répétition proprement politique. (shrink)

Affiliation is both an antecedent and a consequence of emotional mimicry (i.e. imitating a counterpart’s emotional expression). Thus, interacting with a disliked partner can decrease emotional mimicry, which in turn can further decrease liking. This perpetuating circle has not been investigated in the context of mental health stigma yet. The present study tested the influence of the label “schizophrenia” on liking, interpersonal closeness, and emotional mimicry. In an online experiment (n = 201), participants recruited from the general population saw several (...) videos of actors displaying emotional expressions. Actors were described with one of four labels: “schizophrenia”, “healthy”, “diabetes”, and a negative adjective (e.g. “hot-tempered”). Emotional mimicry was measured using OpenFace 2.2. Liking and interpersonal closeness were assessed with questionnaires. Overall, compared to other labels, participants reported less liking and interpersonal closeness to the actor with the schizophrenia label. However, no effect on emotional mimicry was found. The decreased liking of the schizophrenia actors was explained by a lack of knowledge about schizophrenia and the explicit stigma of schizophrenia. Our study contributes to the literature by highlighting the need to reduce the stigma of schizophrenia. (shrink)

Mediation is an alternative dispute resolution process that is becoming more and more popular particularly in English-speaking countries. In contrast to traditional litigation it has not benefited from technological advances and little research has been carried out to make this increasingly widespread practice more efficient. The study of argumentation in dispute mediation hitherto has largely been concerned with theoretical insights. The development of argumentation theories linked to computational applications opens promising new horizons since computational tools could support mediators, making sessions (...) quicker and more efficient. For this, we need tools for close analysis of mediation discourse in order to explore the argumentative activity in depth, and ultimately get an accurate image of how dialogues unfold in this particular context. This paper therefore aims at laying the foundations of a theory of close analysis for discourse in dispute mediation. Theories provided by the literature serve as a basis for argumentative analyses of transcripts of mediation sessions in order to deliver a clear image of the argumentative structure. Analyses of the argumentative strategies in mediation discourse will allow for the development of a dialogue protocol that can be used to develop operational models which can be embodied in software to help make the mediation process easier and more effective. (shrink)

Cet article étudie la notion de « responsabilité politique » définie par Young pour répondre au problème des injustices mondiales. Il tente d’expliquer pourquoi l’auteure prend pour point de départ le modèle de la responsabilité individuelle, écartée dès le xix e siècle pour penser la solidarité sociale, et montre que la responsabilité « politique » chez Young aboutit paradoxalement à la disqualification de l’action publique.

This research investigated the effect of divided attention at encoding on feeling-of-knowing . Participants had to learn a 60 word-pair list under two experimental conditions, one with full attention and one with divided attention . After that, they were administered episodic FOK tasks with a cued-recall phase, a FOK phase and a recognition phase. Our results showed that DA at encoding altered not only memory performance, but also FOK judgments and FOK accuracy. These findings throw some light on the central (...) role of the quality of memory encoding to make accurate FOK judgments and provide new evidence supporting the relationship between memory and metamemory judgments. (shrink)

Is Nederland een fraudeland geworden? Na alle berichten over boekhoudschandalen en het bekend worden van illegale prijsafspraken is het terecht dat die vraag wordt gesteld. Het oplichten van aandeelhouders of van klanten gaat in tegen verschillende ethische noties. Het verstrekken van onjuiste informatie is niet alleen vanuit een utilistisch standpunt verwerpelijk vanwege de economische schade die ontstaat doordat een optimale marktwerking belemmerd wordt. Ook vanuit een deontologisch perspectief staan de ethische seinen op rood: het bedriegen van aandeelhouders of klanten getuigt (...) van weinig respect en is onrechtvaardig omdat dit zelfverrijking mogelijk maakt ten koste gaat van de stakeholders. Ook vanuit het perspectief van de deugdenethiek zijn deze praktijken verwerpelijk: het achterhouden van informatie getuigt van een gebrek aan integriteit en heeft een negatieve voorbeeldfunctie naar anderen. (shrink)

En se replongeant dans les archives d’un mouvement artistique oublié, qui se réunissait au Louvre pour méditer sur les révolutions à apporter à l’art (celui des Méditateurs et des Dormeuses) nous faisons retour sur plusieurs cas de performances mises en scène dans ce musée. Les artistes questionnent le conservatisme des institutions, proposent de les perturber et de faire de ces perturbations des œuvres d’art.

Tribe and State: The Dynamics of International Politics and the Reign of Zimri-Lim. By Adam E. Miglio. Gorgias Studies in the Ancient Near East, vol. 8. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2014. Pp. xvi + 271, maps. $95.

Ulrich Beck, Jean-Marc Ferry et Jürgen Habermas voient dans l’Union européenne la réalisation d’une démocratie postnationale, capable de se hisser au niveau des enjeux actuels. Les signes de cette réalisation ne se font toutefois pas jour dans des valeurs abstraites, mais dans l’expérience de l’européanisation, lors des commerces transfrontaliers. Après avoir présenté ce paradoxe dans les textes, nous suggérons que l’accent mis sur les expériences ordinaires tient à la place occupée par le droit dans la construction européenne. Le contrôle des (...) libertés de circulation par la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne, caractéristique du marché intérieur, est à l’origine d’une intégration plus large, qui a étendu les droits des opérateurs économiques et forgé le statut de citoyen européen. La jurisprudence de la CJUE a en effet permis d’élargir la portée des droits transnationaux, dans la continuité du droit cosmopolitique kantien, sans dissoudre les États membres dans une association supranationale. Une affiliation postnationale, alternative au modèle de la souveraineté étatique classique, semble ainsi se concrétiser dans l’Union européenne. Cependant, nous suggérons que le crédit accordé à la construction, par la jurisprudence de la CJUE, de la citoyenneté postnationale, risque d’occulter les effets problématiques d’une intégration judiciaire vouée à être essentiellement négative. (shrink)

Les paradoxes de l’horreur et de la tragédie posent la question de savoir si, et comment, il peut être rationnel de s’exposer intentionnellement, comme nous le faisons, à des œuvres fictionnelles qu’on qualifie parfois de « douloureuses ». J’entreprends de résoudre ces paradoxes en remettant en question l’idée de valence intrinsèque des émotions sur laquelle ils sont fondés et en expliquant pourquoi les émotions dirigées vers des fictions ne sont jamais désagréables ou déplaisantes, mais sont au contraire hédoniquement positives. Il (...) est donc rationnel de s’exposer aux œuvres qui les suscitent. (shrink)

Mechanisms to engage lay citizens in science and technology are currently in vogue worldwide. While some engagement exercises aim to influence policy making, research suggests that they have had little discernable impacts in this regard. We explore the potentials and challenges of facilitating citizen engagement in nanotechnology from the “topdown,” addressing the following questions: Can academics and others within institutions initiate meaningful engagement with unorganized lay citizens from the top-down? Can they facilitate effective engagement among citizens, scientists, and policy makers (...) while building citizen engagement capacities? Is it possible to create independent bottom-up citizen engagement in scientific and technological issues from the top-down, and what are the challenges in doing so? Our experiences show that although academics can build citizens' individual, collective, and political capacities to engage with each other, scientists, and policy makers, this work is enormously time and energy intensive, and institutional support is needed to sustain it. (shrink)

ArgumentRaspail’s domestic medicine method, popularized in 1840s France, has similarities with the practices of nineteenth century non-academic healers. His mass marketing of camphor as a universal treatment echoes the practices of “charlatans” and their circles. But Raspail is also very original in this history of popular care. As a scientist, a popularizer of encyclopedic knowledge and a political activist, he managed to blur traditional distinctions between science and politics and between popular and learned medicine. Raspail was a constant thorn in (...) the side of academic institutions and professional organizations, which were struggling to gain legitimacy. His work took a political turn when he combined, within a single project, his approach to treatment and his call for democratizing medical care. Raspail’s method challenged institutional norms by acknowledging the importance of the patient’s contribution to the healing process, and recognizing the necessity of thwarting the occasionally deleterious effects of monopolistic medicalization. (shrink)

The practice and development of modern medicine requires large amounts of data, particularly in the domain of cancer. The future of personalized medicine lies neither with “genomic medicine” nor with “precision medicine”, but with “data medicine”. The establishment of this DM has required far-reaching changes, to establish four essential elements connecting patients and doctors: biobanks, databases, bioinformatic platforms and genomic platforms. The “transformation” of scientific research areas, such as genetics, bioinformatics and biostatistics, into clinical specialties has generated a new vision (...) of care. Molecular tumor boards are one response to these changes and are now providing better access to next-generation sequencing and new cancer treatments to patients with inoperable or metastatic cancers, and those for whom the usual treatment has failed. However, MTB face a crucial ethical challenge: maintaining and improving the trust of patients, clinicians, researchers and industry in academic medical centers supported by private or public funding rather than providing genetic data directly to private companies. We believe that, in this era of DM, appropriate modern digital communication networks will be required to maintain this trust and to improve the organization and effectiveness of the system. There is, therefore, a need to reconsider the form and content of informed consent documents at all academic medical centers and to introduce dynamic and electronic informed consent. (shrink)

Bipedalism is one of the criteria that paleoanthropologists use in order to interpret the fossil record and to determine if a specimen belongs to the human lineage. In the context of such interpretations, bipedalism is considered to be a unique characteristic of this lineage that also marks its origin. This conception has largely remained unchallenged over the last decades, in spite of fossil discoveries that led to the emergence of bipedalism in the human lineage being shifted back by several millions (...) of years. In this paper, I analyze the uses of this criterion in paleoanthropology and demonstrate that interpretative biases (such as underdetermined inferences and circular reasoning) are at play in interpretations of hominin remains. By discussing Darwin’s hypotheses about the evolution of bipedalism, I identify major theoretical issues that need to be addressed in the current debates on hominin evolution. First, the assumption that “man alone has become a biped” (Darwin in The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex, John Murray, London, 1871) is analyzed in the light of recent empirical data. Three major issues are discussed: the definition of “man”, i.e. “human”, the uniqueness of human bipedalism, and the equivocal meaning of being a “biped”. Then, I highlight some of Darwin’s remarks that may be helpful for current debates in paleoanthropology, regarding natural selection in locomotor evolution, as well as taxonomic and phylogenetic significance of functional features. Finally, I analyze two examples of how fossil discoverers referred to Darwin in the recent years and discuss his role as an intellectual support. (shrink)

BackgroundAt the start of 2021, oncologists lacked the necessary scientific knowledge to adapt their clinical practices optimally when faced with cancer patients refusing or reluctant to be vaccinated against COVID-19, despite the marked vulnerability of these patients to severe, and even fatal forms of this new viral infectious disease. Oncologists at Foch Hospital were confronted with this phenomenon, which was observed worldwide, in both the general population and the population of cancer patients.MethodsBetween April and November 2021, the Ethics and Oncology (...) Departments of Foch Hospital decided to investigate this subject, through an empirical and interdisciplinary study in bioethics. Our scientific objective was to try to identify and resolve the principal bio-ethical issues, with a view to improving clinical practices in oncology during future major pandemics of this kind, from a highly specific bio-ethical standpoint. We used a mainly qualitative methodological approach based on questionnaires and interviews.ResultsIn April 2021, 29 cancer patients refused or were reluctant to be vaccinated. Seventeen of these patients said that making vaccination mandatory would have helped them to accept vaccination. In October 2021, only 10 cancer patients continued to maintain their refusal. One of the main reasons for the decrease in refusals was probably the introduction of the “pass sanitaire” in July 2021, which rendered vaccination indispensable for many activities. However, even this was not sufficient to convince these 10 cancer patients.ConclusionWe identified a key bio-ethical issue, which we then tried to resolve: vaccination policy. We characterized a major tension between “the recommendation of anti-COVID-19 vaccination” and “free will”, and the duty to “protect each other”. Mandatory vaccination, at least in France, could resolve this tension, with positive effects on quality of life, or survival, in cancer patients initially refusing or reluctant to be vaccinated, but only if collective and individual scales are clearly distinguished. (shrink)

The perception of time cannot be reduced to a simple percept produced by an internal clock. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the role of the individual consciousness of time on temporal judgments. In the present study, the participants’ awareness of attention-related time distortions was assessed using a metacognitive questionnaire. The participants were also required to verbally judge a series of stimulus durations in a single or a dual task condition. The results revealed that time was (...) underestimated in the dual task compared to the single task. However, the accuracy of time judgments improved in line with the participants’ individual awareness of attentional time distortion: The more aware they were of the role of attention in time perception, the lower the time distortions they exhibited. Conscious awareness of time therefore plays a role in the accuracy of the time judgments made by human beings. (shrink)

Our position is critical of the dominant method in psychology, and critical of the social use of psychological models. We assert that the scientific approach in psychology must break with modernist claim, but without sinking into post-modernist relativism. We consider that the epistemology associated with experimental psychology should be a specific epistemology associated with the particular objects studied. By calling on pragmatism and realism, psychology can find the resources to use quantitative studies as an action deployed within a complex, interactive (...) and dynamic social space, and thus break with its normative practice and function. (shrink)

Despite their conceptual allergy to vegetal life, philosophers have used germination, growth, blossoming, fruition, reproduction, and decay as illustrations of abstract concepts; mentioned plants in passing as the natural backdrops for dialogues, letters, and other compositions; spun elaborate allegories out of flowers, trees, and even grass; and recommended appropriate medicinal, dietary, and aesthetic approaches to select species of plants. In this book, Michael Marder illuminates the vegetal centerpieces and hidden kernels that have powered theoretical discourse for centuries. Choosing twelve botanical (...) specimens that correspond to twelve significant philosophers, he recasts the development of philosophy through the evolution of human and plant relations. A philosophical history for the postmetaphysical age, The Philosopher's Plant reclaims the organic heritage of human thought. With the help of vegetal images, examples, and metaphors, the book clears a path through philosophy's tangled roots and dense undergrowth, opening up the discipline to all readers. (shrink)

Socio-emotional impairments are key symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorders. This work proposes to analyze the neuronal activity related to the discrimination of emotional prosodies in autistic children as follows. Firstly, a database for single words uttered in Mexican Spanish by males, females, and children will be created. Then, optimal acoustic features for emotion characterization will be extracted, followed of a cubic kernel function Support Vector Machine in order to validate the speech corpus. As a result, human-specific acoustic properties of emotional (...) voice signals will be identified. Secondly, those identified acoustic properties will be modified to synthesize the recorded human emotional voices. Thirdly, both human and synthesized utterances will be used to study the electroencephalographic correlate of affective prosody processing in typically developed and autistic children. Finally, and on the basis of the outcomes, synthesized voice-enhanced environments will be created to develop an intervention based on social-robot and Social StoryTM for autistic children to improve affective prosodies discrimination. This protocol has been registered at BioMed Central under the following number: ISRCTN18117434. (shrink)

Ce dossier porte sur une thématique qui n’a pas encore été abordée centralement dans la revue et qui l’est de manière dispersée en sociologie politique autour de problématiques distinctes que l’on se propose ici de rapprocher. Partant d’une conception large de la notion de démocratie comme se rapportant à un ensemble d’activités fondées simultanément sur la souveraineté populaire et l’État de droit et spécifiquement dédiées au gouvernement de la société, deux dimensions doivent être soulignées. D’une part, ces activités se déploient (...) dans des institutions particulières, soit des organes de l’État (parlement, gouvernement, tribunaux) dans lesquels s’exerce un pouvoir de décision susceptible d’orienter l’action publique menée dans l’ensemble de la société. D’autre part, elles s’inscrivent dans une compétition réglée, dont l’enjeu est précisément la conquête des pouvoirs d’État que détiennent ces autorités politiques. Comme tel, l’espace politique démocratique manifeste une ambivalence... (shrink)

The last decade has seen a rise in big data approaches, including in the humanities, whereby large quantities of data are collected and analysed. In this paper, we discuss long-form audio recordings that result from individuals wearing a recording device for many hours. Linguists, psychologists and anthropologists can use them, for example, to study infants’ or adults’ linguistic behaviour. In the past, recorded individuals and communities have resided in high-income countries (HICs) almost exclusively. Recognising the need for better representation of (...) all cultures and linguistic experiences, researchers have more recently started to collect long-form audio recordings in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We aim to help researchers to collect, analyse and use these recordings ethically. To do so, we identify four main ethical challenges linked to research that relies on long-form recordings in LMICs. We provide recommendations to overcome these challenges. These considerations should be useful to researchers employing other big data techniques collected via wearables. (shrink)

Based on an ethnography of French trials for trafficking in human beings and aggravated procuring, this article seeks to contribute to the analysis of the reframing, in penal terms, of the struggles engaged in the name of social justice and women’s rights, of which anti-trafficking policies are particularly emblematic. Studying the judging practices and logics at stake during trials reveals how fantasized representations of the pimp and the victim take on substance. In particular, I argue that judges invoke a set (...) of gendered, sexualized and racialized extra-legal norms, which, along with their legal foundations, constitute their knowledge base and impose a moral and penal hierarchy among litigants. Therefore, not only does this analysis contribute to defining the contours of the elusive figures of the pimp and the victim in the penal arena, it also exposes how maintaining public order is based on the perpetuation of a gendered and sexual national order in the name of gender justice. (shrink)

Trust is a key ingredient of business activities. Scams are spectacular betrayals of trust. When the victim is a powerful organization that does not look vulnerable at first sight, we can suspect that this organization has developed an excessive trust, or over-trust. In this article, we take over-trust as the result of the intentional production of gullibility by the scammer. The analysis of a historically famous scam case, the Elf “Great Sniffer Hoax,” suggests that the victim is made gullible by (...) the scammer through a range of seduction and protection maneuvers that prevent the victim from developing doubts and suspicions. An integrated framework of the production of gullibility in organizations is proposed in order to further our understanding of over-trust. We discuss how these insights might be extended, beyond the case of scams, to more ordinary contexts of business activities. (shrink)

Lorsqu'en 1843 Marx commente la philosophie du droit de Hegel il ne commente que le chapitre final sur l’État. Curieusement le chapitre dont on pourra dire après coup, lisant l'ensemble de l'œuvre de Marx, qu'il était le plus proche de lui n'est pas commenté. La raison de cela peut être parfaitement contingente, manque de temps à l'époque où il met en marche cette critique de Hegel et aussi plus tard. Dans la préface aux Manuscrits de 1844 il met en avant (...) la lourdeur qu'un tel travail critiqu... (shrink)