Developmental research suggests that young children tend to value dominant individuals over subordinates. This research, however, has nearly exclusively been carried out in Western cultures, and cross-cultural research among adults has revealed cultural differences in the valuing of dominance. In particular, it seems that Japanese culture, relative to many Western cultures, values dominance less. We conducted two experiments to test whether this difference would be observed in preschoolers. In Experiment 1, preschoolers in France and in Japan were asked to identify (...) with either a dominant or a subordinate. French preschoolers identified with the dominant, but Japanese preschoolers were at chance. Experiment 2 revealed that Japanese preschoolers were more likely to believe a subordinate than a dominant individual, both compared to chance and compared to previous findings among French preschoolers. The convergent results from both experiments thus reveal an early emerging cross-cultural difference in the valuing of dominance. (shrink)

Reason, we are told, is what makes us human, the source of our knowledge and wisdom. If reason is so useful, why didn't it also evolve in other animals? If reason is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense? In their groundbreaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue with a compelling mix of real-life and experimental evidence, is not (...) geared to solitary use, to arriving at better beliefs and decisions on our own. What reason does, rather, is help us justify our beliefs and actions to others, convince them through argumentation, and evaluate the justifications and arguments that others address to us. In other words, reason helps humans better exploit their uniquely rich social environment. This interactionist interpretation explains why reason may have evolved and how it fits with other cognitive mechanisms. It makes sense of strengths and weaknesses that have long puzzled philosophers and psychologists--why reason is biased in favor of what we already believe, why it may lead to terrible ideas and yet is indispensable to spreading good ones.--. (shrink)

Cette nouvelle enquête sur le patrimoine narratif de tradition orale dans les Alpes de la Savoie s’est inscrite dans la continuité des enquêtes de Charles Joisten, commencées dès les années 1950 et qui ont donné les recueils de contes et de récits de croyance rendus disponibles au tournant de ce siècle. Seul ce type d’enquête directe s’est révélé capable de nous permettre — en tirant parti des moyens disponibles de nos jours, notamment d’enregistrement — de donner le jour à de (...) nouveaux exemplaires de cette matière de l’oralité. Nous exposerons ici les aspects de notre expérience sur plusieurs années de terrain ayant abouti à plusieurs publications. Nous mettrons l’accent sur les questions de forme narrative et de fond dans l’univers de l’oralité, tout particulièrement en ce qui concerne la narration des croyances, dans leurs contextes historiques. Our new survey on the narrative heritage from oral tradition in the Alps of Savoy has been performed in the continuity of Charles Joisten’s opus, gathered since the 50s, which was made fully available in collections of tales and belief narratives about the turn of this century. This type of direct investigation in face-to-face interaction—taking advantage of current means of recording available today—has proved to remain still nowadays the only one able to elicit new data. The main aspects of our field experience in the long term which resulted in several publications about tales and belief narratives will be questionned. While putting the emphasis on narrative form and substantive issues in the realm of orality, we will focus particularly on belief narratives in their historical contexts. (shrink)

While the paradigm of utility maximisation has formed the basis of the majority of applications in discrete choice modelling for over 40 years, its core assumptions have been questioned by work in both behavioural economics and mathematical psychology as well as more recently by developments in the RUM-oriented choice modelling community. This paper reviews the basic properties with a view to explaining the historical pre-eminence of utility maximisation and addresses the question of what departures from the paradigm may be necessary (...) or wise in order to accommodate richer behavioural patterns. We find that many, though not all, of the behavioural traits discussed in the literature can be approximated sufficiently closely by a random utility framework, allowing analysts to retain the many advantages that such an approach possesses. (shrink)

Subjectivism about well-being holds that an object contributes to one's well-being to the extent that one has a pro-attitude toward this object under certain conditions. Most subjectivists have contended that these conditions should be ideal. One reason in favor of this idea is that when people adapt their pro-attitudes to situations of oppression, the levels of well-being they may attain is diminished. Nevertheless, I first argue that appealing to idealized conditions of autonomy or any other condition to erase or replace (...) adaptive pro-attitudes is mistaken. Second, I show that the most natural version of subjectivism that does not appeal to any such idealizing condition can explain why the well-being of people having adaptive pro-attitudes should not be restricted to the fulfillment of these pro-attitudes. In sum, the existence of adaptive preferences does not militate in favor of the introduction of conditions of idealization but against it. (shrink)

Local sustainable food systems have captured the popular imagination as a progressive, if not radical, pillar of a sustainable food future. Yet these grassroots innovations are embedded in a dominant food regime that reflects productivist, industrial, and neoliberal policies and institutions. Understanding the relationship between these emerging grassroots efforts and the dominant food regime is of central importance in any transition to a more sustainable food system. In this study, we examine the encounters of direct farm marketers with food safety (...) regulations and other government policies and the role of this interface in shaping the potential of local food in a wider transition to sustainable agri-food systems. This mixed methods research involved interview and survey data with farmers and ranchers in both the USA and Canada and an in-depth case study in the province of Manitoba. We identified four distinct types of interactions between government and farmers: containing, coopting, contesting, and collaborating. The inconsistent enforcement of food safety regulations is found to contain progressive efforts to change food systems. While government support programs for local food were helpful in some regards, they were often considered to be inadequate or inappropriate and thus served to coopt discourse and practice by primarily supporting initiatives that conform to more mainstream approaches. Farmers and other grassroots actors contested these food safety regulations and inadequate government support programs through both individual and collective action. Finally, farmers found ways to collaborate with governments to work towards mutually defined solutions. While containing and coopting reflect technologies of governmentality that reinforce the status quo, both collaborating and contesting reflect opportunities to affect or even transform the dominant regime by engaging in alternative economic activities as part of the ‘politics of possibility’. Developing a better understanding of the nature of these interactions will help grassroots movements to create effective strategies for achieving more sustainable and just food systems. (shrink)

Since at least the mid-1980s claims have been made for rationality in rats. For example, that rats are capable of inferential reasoning (Blaisdell, Sawa, Leising, & Waldmann, 2006; Bunsey & Eichenbaum, 1996), or that they can make adaptive decisions about future behavior (Foote & Crystal, 2007), or that they are capable of knowledge in propositional-like form (Dickinson, 1985). The stakes are rather high, because these capacities imply concept possession and on some views (e.g., Rödl, 2007; Savanah, 2012) rationality indicates self-consciousness. (...) I evaluate the case for rat rationality by analyzing 5 key research paradigms: spatial navigation, metacognition, transitive inference, causal reasoning, and goal orientation. I conclude that the observed behaviors need not imply rationality by the subjects. Rather, the behavior can be accounted for by noncognitive processes such as hard-wired species typical predispositions or associative learning or (nonconceptual) affordance detection. These mechanisms do not necessarily require or implicate the capacity for rationality. As such there is as yet insufficient evidence that rats can reason. I end by proposing the ‘Staircase Test,’ an experiment designed to provide convincing evidence of rationality in rats. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a reductive account of intentions which I call a gate-based reductive account. In contrast with other reductive accounts, however, the reductive basis of this account is not limited to desires, beliefs and judgments. I suggest that an intention is a complex state in which a predominant desire toward a plan is not inhibited by a gate mechanism whose function is to assess the comparison of our desires given the stakes at hand. To vindicate this account, (...) I rely on several considerations: the similarity between epistemic feelings and the feeling of being decided that tells us that we have an intention, the necessity of postulating a gate mechanism to explain our hesitating behavior, and the tight link that exists between the realization of our actions and our desires. In agreement with non-reductivists, I nevertheless acknowledge that intentions encompass plans, although I emphasize that the planning capacity must also be dependent on our motivational life and the general evaluative mechanisms that explains our emotions. (shrink)

The basic premise of the host‐defense theory is that genomic imprinting, the parent‐of‐origin expression of a subset of mammalian genes, derives from mechanisms originally dedicated to silencing repeated and retroviral‐like sequences that deeply colonized mammalian genomes. We propose that large clusters of tandemly‐repeated C/D‐box small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) or microRNAs represent a novel category of sequences recognized as “genomic parasites”, contributing to the emergence of genomic imprinting in a subset of chromosomal regions that contain them. Such a view is supported (...) by evidence derived from studies of the imprinted snoRNA‐ and/or miRNA‐encoding Dlk1‐Dio3, Snurf‐Snrpn, Sfbmt2, and C19MC domains. While adding a new piece to the challenging puzzle of mammalian genome history, this hypothesis also reinforces the notion that dissecting the features and molecular mechanisms that discriminate between “foreign” and “endogenous” sequences is of crucial importance in the field of mammalian epigenetics. (shrink)

Dans cette étude, nous examinons l'influence de quelques éléments caractéristiques des doctrines psychologique et eschatologique de Porphyre, dont certains correspondent à des idées de Plotin, sur l'analyse qu'Augustin propose des différentes sortes de visiones dans le De Trinitate et le De Genesi ad litteram.This study focuses on the influence of Porphyry's psychology and eschatology on Augustine's account of the different kinds of visiones, as it is set out in the treatises De Trinitate and De Genesi ad litteram.

Cette étude vise à montrer comment Synésios de Cyrène, ayant adopté deux doctrines vraisemblablement porphyriennes (touchant l’enkuklios paideia et le pneuma en tant qu’organe de l’imagination), les articule en fonction d’une double préoccupation: celle d’un progrès intérieur de l’âme qui soit une progression ordonnée via les logoi, et celle d’une communication intime avec la divinité (voire de salut personnel), via une phantasia purifiée. Ce double souci de conversion intérieure, manifesté dans le diptyque littéraire constitué par le Dion: ou du genre (...) de vie conforme à son modèle et le traité Des songes (publiés tous deux en 405), le conduit à concevoir une forme d’écriture intime qui serait une écriture philosophiquement adéquate au mode de vie auquel, idéalement, cet homme public et ce styliste hors pair envisage alors de se consacrer. Mais dans la réalité de son existence d’homme de lettres, et donc dans la pratique de son écriture, cette conversion à l’intime ne correspond qu’à un assez bref moment d’anachorèse vouée à l’étude et donc à soi-même – ultime refuge, plus rêvé que réalisé, de l’ethos platonicien, tel qu’il se le représentait. (shrink)

The 2005 Avignon Theatre Festival sparked a vast controversy about the insistent presence of bodies (whether wounded, broken, or humiliated) on stage. Without subscribing to the reactionary critical response to the Festival, it is legitimate to return to the debate in order to question the ubiquity of the “victim body” in contemporary theatre. Such representations, far from being heterodox, are in fact part of the massive ideology of “the ethical”, as diagnosed by Alain Badiou. The oppressed body thus tends to (...) be assimilated to the body of the victim. The result is the obliteration of the resistance of subjects to their oppression, or of their active response to it, theatre being reduced to the maxims of a democratic materialism: “there are only bodies and languages”. (shrink)

L'évolution de la clinique psychiatrique a mis au centre de ses recherches l'écoute et la parole du patient. Cependant le plus souvent la parole échoit dans les discours et l'écoute se décentre vers la vérification des a priori théo­riques. L'empathie ou les règlements qui incitent le clinicien à mettre le patient au centre de ses préoccupations apportent confort et sécurité mais ratent la rencontre clinique qui échoit dans le relationnel. Une relation n'est pas une rencontre. Le contexte de...

Smallholder farmers in Rattanakmondol District, Battambang Province, Cambodia face challenges related to soil erosion, declining yields, climate change, and unsustainable tillage-based farming practices in their efforts to increase food production within maize-based systems. In 2010, research for development programs began introducing agricultural production systems based on conservation agriculture to smallholder farmers located in four communities within Rattanakmondol District as a pathway for addressing these issues. Understanding gendered practices and perspectives is integral to adapting CA technologies to the needs of local (...) communities. This research identifies how gender differences regarding farmers’ access to assets, practices, and engagement in intra-household negotiations could constrain or facilitate the dissemination of CA. Our mixed-methods approach includes focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews, famer field visits, and a household survey. Gender differences in access to key productive assets may affect men’s and women’s individual ability to adapt CA. Farmers perceive the practices and technologies of CA as labor-saving, with the potential to reduce men’s and women’s labor burden in land-preparation activities. However, when considered in relation to the full array of productive and reproductive livelihood activities, CA can disproportionately affect men’s and women’s labor. Decisions about agricultural livelihoods were not always made jointly, with socio-cultural norms and responsibilities structuring an individual’s ability to participate in intra-household negotiations. While gender differences in power relations affect intra-household decision-making, men and women household members collectively negotiate the transition to CA-based production systems. (shrink)

Foucault’s Forgotten Marxism. This article tries to point out several methodological issues concerning Foucault’s Surveiller et punir, such as the equivocal status of some of Foucault’s main concepts, or the assumed homogeneity of the various disciplinary institutions analyzed in this book. And it aims at suggesting that such issues might find a solution, should one consider the Marxist background on which, as the Lectures at the Collège de France of the year 1973 clearly show, Foucault’s theories were dependant. In the (...) opinion of the author, only in as much as this heritage is accepted and seriously taken into account, shall Foucault’s concepts and theses regain their political and critical pertinence. (shrink)

Les récents débats autour du délit de manipulation mentale amènent à s'interroger sur la notion d'influence et sur l'impact des recherches faites dans ce domaine. Ce délit repose sur l'idée que des techniques de manipulation efficaces existent et que par leur utilisation, on pourrait manipuler autrui. Suivant cette conception asymétrique de l'influence, la cible devient l'instrument du désir de la source et dans ce cas, il est nécessaire de se protéger de ces influences qui peuvent être néfastes. Si des travaux (...) expérimentaux de psychologie sociale montrent l'efficacité de certaines techniques d'influence et de manipulation, ils doivent cependant être mis en perspective. Nombre d'expériences et de théories montrent que l'influence n'est fondamentalement pas un rapport asymétrique. Mais hélas, ces travaux sont négligés tant ils ne cadrent pas avec ce prototype de l'influence qui domine à la fois en psychologie sociale et dans le sens commun.Recent debate on the abuse of mental manipulation has raised questions about the concept of influence and the impact of the research in this field. This abuse is based on the idea that with effective techniques of manipulation can be used to mentally control others. According to this asymmetrical model of influence, the target becomes the instrument of the desire of the source and therefore must be protected from such dangerous and negative influences. If certain experiments in social psychology show the effectiveness of certain techniques of influence and manipulation, such effects must be analyzed with due care. Many experiments and theories show that influence is not essentially asymmetrical. Unfortunately, such studies tend to be ignored because they differ from the accepted model of influence which dominates both in social psychology and in common sense. (shrink)

We should not understand in this title "What does not return to the same" the announcement of a return to Levinas, but rather of what the word or concept of "return" could mean in Levinas's work. There is perhaps no better way of misunderstanding Levinas than imposing on his philosophical gesture the interpretative grid of a "horizon of return". This article will attempt to dismantle the strategies of reading which stipulate that Levinas's philosophy is one of "return". In this way (...) we shall reveal the complexity of Levinasian thought, and that, beyond the numerous slogans, there are the ones of a "return" or of its simple contrary, the ones of a "philosophy of exile". (shrink)

In what sense could discourse ethics be linked with normative problems raised by the ecological crisis? Even if Apel and Habermas have not really addressed this question extensively, and even if their position in moral philosophy seems to develop and reinforce a neo-Kantian anthropocentric point of view, one can find in their works some evidence for the possibility of connecting a dialogical view with an ecological one. In order to defend the philosophical interest in highlighting this possibility, this essay analyses (...) Habermas' position concerning the moral and ontological status of animality in particular, and attempts to situate this position within the history of Critical Theory. (shrink)

L’article relève les occurrences du terme « aliénation » dans l’analyse hégélienne de la modernité propre à la Phénoménologie de l’esprit. Il analyse la signification du réseau terminologique et sémantique ainsi constitué au regard de la thématique ultérieure (par exemple marxienne) de la critique de la modernité.

C’est dans les premiers essais théoriques d’Erich Fromm publiés par la Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung au début des années 1930 que l’on trouve une première élaboration des notions de « personnalité autoritaire » et de « caractère autoritaire ». Une sociologie psychanalytique, explique Fromm, ne saurait se ramener, comme le suggère une..

The 1844 Manuscripts manifest two discordant tendencies. On the one hand, Marx develops the existing thematics of alienation. To do so, the notion is referred back to its (Hegelian, Feuerbachian) sources in the analysis of the dispossession of the products of labour. On the other hand, Marx seeks to formulate a more immanent approach, focusing on certain specific, pathological forms of life, characterised by a condition of subjective suffering and by the objective limitation of the activities and interests of the (...) individual. It is this immanent approach to alienation which today appears to us to be the most promising, in terms of social theory. The approach must however be coupled with an inquiry which addresses questions of living and questions of health to which Marx did not himself propose the elements of a response. (shrink)

In various ways, Marx ascribes a central role to the body in his theoretical and political system. In both his philosophy of praxis and his critique of political economy, the body is presented as a site of forces and needs. This enables Marx to provide a naturalist ground for the dynamics of praxis. It also enables him to define a critical perspective in terms of the effects registered in the body of a structure of domination and exploitation. The aim of (...) the article is to present these themes and to discuss their subsequent treatment by authors such as Merleau-Ponty, Bourdieu and Foucault, while reflecting on the way recent transformations of capitalism have led to their reformulation and to the emergence of two new critical tropes: the body as commodity and as an ideology. (shrink)