À partir de l’analyse des agendas du directeur de cabinet d’un ministre en poste dans les années 1970, il s’agit dans cet article d’analyser comment la position de directeur de cabinet est occupée au quotidien et sur le plan des pratiques. Ces agendas seront tout d’abord exploités statistiquement et qualitativement afin de saisir comment l’occupation d’un tel rôle charnière nécessite d’arbitrer entre les différentes temporalités des activités administratives, politiques et médiatiques. Sous la Ve République, le directeur de cabinet occupe, en (...) effet, une place singulière dans la division du travail en cabinet ministériel. Courroie de transmission entre plusieurs scènes sociales, il est le point focal sur lequel se réfractent les tensions propres à plusieurs sphères du travail administratif et politique. À partir d’un comptage du nombre de réunions ou de personnes rencontrées, il sera analysé quelle proportion du temps de travail est effectivement consacrée à chacune des relations de « clientèle » que le directeur de cabinet est obligé de tisser avec ces interlocuteurs très différents. Quel temps le directeur de cabinet passe-t-il dans les pas de son ministre ou dans le ministère? Il sera aussi possible d’appréhender si la répartition du temps entre ces différentes attentes est stable ou non sur la durée du mandat d’un ministre et à l’approche des élections. (shrink)

Although Pascal is a thinker of the figure of Christ, he seems to neglect the other Persons of the Trinity, in particular the Holy Spirit. This article examines the place Pascal gives to the third Person of the Trinity. It shows that, for Pascal, the Holy Spirit plays an important role in the conversion of man, insofar as he spreads in his heart the grace of Christ sent by the Father. Finally, this study comes to a difficult fragment of Pascal’s (...) in which he asks whether all Holy Scripture is dictated by the Holy Spirit, in order to propose a new reading. (shrink)

Neuroconstructivism: How the Brain Constructs Cognition proposes a unifying framework for the study of cognitive development that brings together (1) constructivism (which views development as the progressive elaboration of increasingly complex structures), (2) cognitive neuroscience (which aims to understand the neural mechanisms underlying behavior), and (3) computational modeling (which proposes formal and explicit specifications of information processing). The guiding principle of our approach is context dependence, within and (in contrast to Marr [1982]) between levels of organization. We propose that three (...) mechanisms guide the emergence of representations: competition, cooperation, and chronotopy; which themselves allow for two central processes: proactivity and progressive specialization. We suggest that the main outcome of development is partial representations, distributed across distinct functional circuits. This framework is derived by examining development at the level of single neurons, brain systems, and whole organisms. We use the terms encellment, embrainment, and embodiment to describe the higher-level contextual influences that act at each of these levels of organization. To illustrate these mechanisms in operation we provide case studies in early visual perception, infant habituation, phonological development, and object representations in infancy. Three further case studies are concerned with interactions between levels of explanation: social development, atypical development and within that, developmental dyslexia. We conclude that cognitive development arises from a dynamic, contextual change in embodied neural structures leading to partial representations across multiple brain regions and timescales, in response to proactively specified physical and social environment. (shrink)

Toute éthique, Heidegger l'a montré, est enfermée dans un paradoxe : alors qu'elle a pour objet de fonder a priori des règles universelles et nécessaires pour orienter notre comportement, l'éthique bute inéluctablement sur la particularité et la contingence des circonstances singulières. Surtout, une éthique qui dicte ainsi des principes risque fort de décharger l'être humain de sa responsabilité essentielle en le dispensant de la tâche de la pensée. Comment, alors, concevoir en conséquence notre rapport au monde? Comment repenser notre "séjour" (...) sur terre pour en faire une véritable préparation au bien-vivre, un soutien au mouvement même du désir, de l'action et de la décision? Comment ajuster notre besoin de règles universelles à l'irréductible singularité phénoménale des événements? La confrontation des philosophies de Schelling et de Heidegger permet de penser autrement l'ethos, radicalement opposé à toute tentative normative qui fixerait a priori les lois universelles censées régir la maxime de nos actions. Tel est le sens du présent essai, dont l'enjeu principal est de fonder l'ethos de l'im-possible, celui qui admet l'événement et le surgissement imprévisible du possible et y répond."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In the last two decades few topics in philosophy of science have received as much attention as mechanistic explanation. A significant motivation for these accounts is that scientists frequently use the term “mechanism” in their explanations of biological phenomena. While scientists appeal to a variety of causal concepts in their explanations, many philosophers argue or assume that all of these concepts are well understood with the single notion of mechanism. This reveals a significant problem with mainstream mechanistic accounts– although philosophers (...) use the term “mechanism” interchangeably with other causal concepts, this is not something that scientists always do. This paper analyses two causal concepts in biology–the notions of “mechanism” and “pathway”–and how they figure in biological explanation. I argue that these concepts have unique features, that they are associated with distinct strategies of causal investigation, and that they figure in importantly different types of explanation. (shrink)

What might Adam Smith have learned from Jane Austen and other novelists of his moment? This paper finds and examines a serious problem at the center of Adam Smith’s moral psychology, stemming from an unacknowledged tension between the effort of the spectator to sympathize with the feelings of the agent and that of the agent to moderate her feelings. The agent’s efforts will result in her opacity to spectators, blocking their attempts to read her emotions. I argue that we can (...) resolve this tension by looking to developments in eighteenth-century literature, as perfected in the hands of Jane Austen. I focus on two techniques, focalization and free indirect style, and I show that the problems for spectatorship diminish when we see that good Smithian spectators are savvy readers. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, Bromberger explores the centrality of questions and predicaments they create in scientific research. He discusses the nature of explanation, theory, and the foundations of linguistics.

This research investigates the potential for a “fair” co-branding operation. A major corporate brand is fictitiously allied with a Fair Trade labelling organization brand. The sample for the study is composed of 540 respondents, representative of the French population. By considering commercial brands and Fair Trade labels as dissimilar in terms of customers’ perceived Fair Trade orientations, this article studies how this lack of similarity impacts perceived congruence between both entities and how prior brand attitudes and congruence influence customers’ evaluation (...) of the co-branded product. The results of this research demonstrate that: Consumer prior brand attitudes toward the partner brands influence very little customers’ evaluation. Perceived similarity of the partner brands has a strong influence toward congruence of the co-branding operation. Results also indicate that congruence has a strong influence upon customers’ evaluation. An inverted U-shaped relationship exists between perceived similarity and relevancy of the alliance, and between expectancy and customers’ evaluation. The results obtained through the test of a partial least square model, and inverted U-shaped hypothesis, represent a new insight into co-branding theory. The high discursive power of fair co-branding is a key issue: the corporate brand provides the alliance with its leading position, while the Fair Trade brand provides the ethical attribute. (shrink)

This opinion paper takes aim at an error made recently by Clarivate Analytics in which it sent out an email that congratulated academics for becoming exclusive members of academia’s most cited elite, the Highly Cited Researchers. However, that email was sent out to an undisclosed number of non-HCRs, who were offered an apology shortly after, through a bulk mail, which tried to down-play the importance of the error, all the while praising the true HCRs. When Clarivate Analytics senior management was (...) contacted, the company declined to offer an indication of the number of academics who had been contacted and erroneously awarded the HCR status. We believe that this regrettable blunder, together with the opacity offered by the company, fortify the corporate attitude about the value of the journal impact factor, and what it represents, namely a marketing tool that is falsely used to equate citations with quality, worth, or influence. The continued commercialization of metrics such as the JIF is at the heart of their use to assess the “quality” of a researcher, their work, or a journal, and contributes to a great extent to driving scientific activities towards a futile endeavor. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Corporate social responsibility has been hailed as a new means to address gender inequality, particularly by facilitating women’s empowerment. Women are frequently and forcefully positioned as saviours of economies or communities and proponents of sustainability. Using vignettes drawn from a CSR women’s empowerment programme in Ghana, this conceptual article explores unexpected programme outcomes enacted by women managers and farmers. It is argued that a feminist Foucauldian reading of power as relational and productive can help explain this since those involved are (...) engaged in ongoing processes of resistance and self-making. This raises questions about the assumptions made about women and what is it that such CSR programmes aim to empower them ‘from’ or ‘to.’ Empowerment, when viewed as an ethic of care for the self, is better understood as a self-directed process, rather than a corporate-led strategy. This has implications for how we can imagine the achievement of gender equality through CSR. (shrink)

This chapter highlights the complexity of the relationship between enhancement of mood and cognition on the one hand and the improvement of people's well‐being on the other. To do so, two psychiatric conditions, Asperger's syndrome and bipolar disorder, are presented in the chapter. Even though there are both negative and positive aspects to Asperger's syndrome or to bipolar disorders, taking away even these negative aspects would not necessarily promote well‐being. It might also be impossible to isolate the positive aspects of (...) these disorders. An increase in specific forms of cognition might be intrinsically connected to a decrease in specific aspects of mood. A decrease in specific aspects of mood might be intrinsically connected to an increase in creativity. Neither is necessarily linked to any changes in some general form of “well‐being.”. (shrink)

The God who runs after your friendship -- A short note on gender and language for God -- Clothing -- Smell -- Bread and vine -- Laboring woman -- Laughter -- Flame -- In this poverty of expression, thou findest that He is all -- Dingbat -- A short note from the women's prison -- A bookshelf.

This paper studies ‘minority’ initiatives to organize sports games. A meta-analysis of published data in the literature identifies the formal appearance taken by each of these initiatives under the Olympic model. But it also conduces to build a number of indicators to answer a series of questions about their logic and strategies. All the initiatives studied are based on an ambivalent posture that, while based on the denunciation of a discriminating space, claim access to it. By an astonishing paradox, ‘non-normative’ (...) actors are driven to reclaim a model that, under cover of Universal, aims to establish a norm that is situated and dated. In practice, they use two types of strategies: a strategy for participation in the Olympics to transform them into a space which represents a fight against exclusion, or a strategy to create alternative events. Whatever the strategy, these initiatives are implemented according to their objectives. Differentiated in their forms—participatory or autonomy—they are also in their purpose. The comparison of these initiatives shows that ultimately, beyond strategies and logic inherent in different social, historical and organizational contexts, the mobilizations of the actors reveal the same ambivalence about the sports model conveyed by the Olympic institution. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a form of epistemic insensitivity that occurs when someone fails to make proper use of the epistemic tools at their disposal in order to bring their beliefs in line with epistemically relevant evidence that is available to them. I call this kind of insensitivity agential insensitivity because it stems from the epistemic behavior of an individual agent. Agential insensitivity can manifest as a failure to either attend to relevant and available evidence, or appropriately interpret evidence (...) that is attended to. The concept of agential insensitivity allows us to conceptualize the kind of not-knowing involved in forms of ignorance that are cultivated and maintained by individual agents, especially when this ignorance is enabled or encouraged by social structures. I use the skepticism about racial disparities in policing practices that is displayed by many white Americans as a lens for exploring this connection. Understanding agential insensitivity thus provides insight into both social and epistemic phenomena. (shrink)

CorpusReader est un dispositif expérimental permettant d'articuler plusieurs instruments pour construire des corpus multi-annotés. L'objectif de ce dispositif est la description de corrélations entre niveaux de description pour caractériser des normes, comme par exemple des discours ou des genres. Dans ce cadre, toute annotation est une interprétation et le contexte est défini comme une pluralité d'interprétations réifiées dans un codage commun. CorpusReader permet à la fois de construire cette annotation contextualisante puis d'en extraire des sous-ensembles et des quantifications pour des (...) analyses quantitatives. (shrink)

CorpusReader est un dispositif expérimental permettant d'articuler plusieurs instruments pour construire des corpus multi-annotés. L'objectif de ce dispositif est la description de corrélations entre niveaux de description pour caractériser des normes, comme par exemple des discours ou des genres. Dans ce cadre, toute annotation est une interprétation et le contexte est défini comme une pluralité d'interprétations réifiées dans un codage commun. CorpusReader permet à la fois de construire cette annotation contextualisante puis d'en extraire des sous-ensembles et des quantifications pour des (...) analyses quantitatives. (shrink)

Kaplan and Craver claim that all explanations in neuroscience appeal to mechanisms. They extend this view to the use of mathematical models in neuroscience and propose a constraint such models must meet in order to be explanatory. I analyze a mathematical model used to provide explanations in dynamical systems neuroscience and indicate how this explanation cannot be accommodated by the mechanist framework. I argue that this explanation is well characterized by Batterman’s account of minimal model explanations and that it demonstrates (...) how relationships between explanatory models in neuroscience and the systems they represent is more complex than has been appreciated. (shrink)

As clinical trials end, little is understood about how participants exiting from clinical trials approach decisions related to the removal or post-trial use of investigational brain implants, such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices. This empirical bioethics study examines how research participants experience the process of exit from research at the end of clinical trials of implanted neural devices. Using a modified grounded theory study design, we conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 16 former research participants from clinical trials of DBS (...) and responsive neurostimulation (RNS). Open-ended questions elicited motivations for joining the trial, understanding of study procedures at the time of initial informed consent, the process of exiting from research, and decisions about device removal or post-trial device use. Thematic analysis identified categories related to: limited preparedness for the end of research participation, straightforwardness of decisions to explant or keep the device, reconciling with the end of research participation, reconciling post-trial expectations, and achieving a sense of closure after exit from research. A preliminary theoretical model describes contextual factors influencing the process and experience of exit from research. Experiences of clinical trial participants should guide research practices to enhance the ethical design and conduct of clinical trials in DBS and other brain devices. (shrink)

According to mainstream philosophical views causal explanation in biology and neuroscience is mechanistic. As the term ‘mechanism’ gets regular use in these fields it is unsurprising that philosophers consider it important to scientific explanation. What is surprising is that they consider it the only causal term of importance. This paper provides an analysis of a new causal concept—it examines the cascade concept in science and the causal structure it refers to. I argue that this concept is importantly different from the (...) notion of mechanism and that this difference matters for our understanding of causation and explanation in science. (shrink)

Intuitive predictions and judgements under uncertainty are often mediated by judgemental heuristics that sometimes lead to biases. Our micro-developmental study suggests that a presumption of rationality is justified for adult subjects, in so far as their systematic judgemental biases appear to be due to a specific executive-inhibition failure in working memory, and not necessarily to a lack of understanding of the fundamental principles of probability. This hypothesis was tested using an experimental procedure in which 60 adult subjects were trained to (...) inhibit the classical conjunction bias on a frequency judgement task derived from Tversky and Kahneman's work. Pre- and post-test performance was assessed via a probability judgement task. The data indicated a training effect, suggesting that subjects traditionally labelled as "irrational" with respect to the classical rules of inductive reasoning are in fact "inefficient inhibitors". These findings are discussed in terms of a polymorphous view of rationality. (shrink)

Cet article analyse les emplois schelérien et heideggérien de l’expression « logique du coeur ». Il revient sur l’origine de cette expression – forgée par Scheler, qui l’attribue à tort à Pascal en soulignant son opposition à la raison cartésienne – avant de reconstruire l’usage qu’en fait Heidegger. Trois phases sont mises au jour : Heidegger fait l’économie de cette expression dans ses jeunes années afin de prendre ses distances avec la doctrine schelérienne et pascalienne des sentiments ; il y (...) recourt dans les années trente et quarante pour signaler que cette doctrine est déterminée par la « logique » métaphysique cartésienne, qu’il oppose à deux logiques du coeur non métaphysiques (celles du λόγος grec héraclitéen et parménidien et du Λόγος johannique) ; dans les années cinquante, Heidegger abandonne pourtant cette expression au motif que toute logique – moderne (cartésienne) comme grecque et biblique – demeure métaphysique. (shrink)

This paper examines the discussion about false pleasures in the "Philebus" (36 c3-44 a11). After stressing the crucial importance of this discussion in the economy of the dialogue, it attempts to identify the problematic locus of the possibility of true or false pleasures. Socrates points to it by means of an analogy between pleasure and doxa. Against traditional interpretations, which reduce the distinction drawn in this passage to a distinction between doxa and pleasure on the one hand and their object (...) on the other, it is argued that, rather, Socrates distinguishes between the mere fact of having a doxa or a pleasure, on the one hand, and the content of these acts, on the other hand. Consequently, the possibility for a pleasure to be false does not concern its relation to an object, but the affective content which defines it. In order to show how the affective content of a pleasure can be false, it is necessary to examine the three species of false pleasures described by Socrates in their relation to appearance and imagination. Appearance is not identical with perception for Plato: it consists in a mixture of perception and doxa. As for imagination, it consists in "illustrating" a doxa present in the soul by means of a "quasi-perception". It is the presence of a doxa in each of these processes which makes it possible for them to be true or false, while mere perception cannot be either true or false. It is then argued that according to the "Philebus" pleasure can be false precisely because its affective content is not a mere perception, but either an appearance or an imagination. (shrink)

Causal selection has to do with the distinction we make between background conditions and “the” true cause or causes of some outcome of interest. A longstanding consensus in philosophy views causal selection as lacking any objective rationale and as guided, instead, by arbitrary, pragmatic, and non-scientific considerations. I argue against this position in the context of causal selection for disease traits. In this domain, causes are selected on the basis of the type of causal control they exhibit over a disease (...) of interest. My analysis clarifies the principled rationale that guides this selection and how it involves both pragmatic and objective considerations, which have been overlooked in the extant literature. (shrink)

This article discusses the new reproductive technology of egg freezing in the context of existing literature on gender, medicalization, and infertility. What is unique about this technology is its use by women who are not currently infertile but who may anticipate a future diagnosis. This circumstance gives rise to a new ontological category of “anticipated infertility.” The author draws on participant observation and a qualitative analysis of scientific, mainstream, and marketing literature to identify and compare the representation of two different (...) candidates for egg freezing: women with cancer and healthy young women. Although both populations experience anticipated infertility, their dichotomous portrayals as appropriate candidates are demonstrative of gender norms linking women to motherhood. Egg freezing is a concise illustration of how the medicalization of women’s bodies and bodily processes masks a host of cultural anxieties about aging, illness, reproduction, and risk. (shrink)

This paper explores a distinction among causal relationships that has yet to receive attention in the philosophical literature, namely, whether causal relationships are reversible or irreversible. We provide an analysis of this distinction and show how it has important implications for causal inference and modeling. This work also clarifies how various familiar puzzles involving preemption and over-determination play out differently depending on whether the causation involved is reversible.