During the course of evolution, variations of a protein sequence is an ongoing phenomenon however limited by the need to maintain its structural and functional integrity. Deciphering the evolutionary path of a protein is thus of fundamental interest. With the development of new methods to visualize high dimension spaces and the improvement of phylogenetic analysis tools, it is possible to study the evolutionary trajectories of proteins in the sequence space. Using the data-driven high-dimensional scaling method, we show that it is (...) possible to predict and represent potential evolutionary trajectories by representing phylogenetic trees into a 3D projection of the sequence space. With the case of the aminodeoxychorismate synthase, an enzyme involved in folate synthesis, we show that this representation raises interesting questions about the complexity of the evolution of a given biological function, in particular concerning its capacity to explore the sequence space. (shrink)

Puisqu’elles sont considérées comme des produits du monde occidental et de son modèle libéral, les églises évangéliques en Russie sont soumises à un contrôle accru des autorités gouvernementales. L’engagement politique des membres de ces églises est de ce fait souvent subi ou forcé, et il s’inscrit dans une critique à peine voilée de la société russe dans son ensemble. Cela se traduit par le recours de la part des évangéliques à des réseaux socioprofessionnels qui se développent en dehors des réseaux (...) habituels et surtout, tournés vers l’extérieur. Les individus les plus en rupture optent souvent pour l’émigration vers les pays occidentaux. (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)

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)

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.

We show that provability in the implicational fragment of relevance logic is complete for doubly exponential time, using reductions to and from coverability in branching vector addition systems.

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)

Dans des écrits datant des années 1277-79, le théologien franciscain Pierre de Jean Olivi emploie à cinq reprise le mot averroista, pour critiquer, non pas tant la doctrine de l'unicité de l'intellect possible que ses implications anthropologiques ou angélologiques. Cette critique bien informée, convergente avec d'autres attaques franciscaines, notamment les dénonciations de Roger Bacon, démontre la réalité et l'ampleur d'une entreprise philosophique menée par des maîtres ès arts, s'inspirant d'Averroès, dans les années 1260-70 ; elle indique aussi la diversité de (...) leurs points de vue. Dès son apparition, il n'y a donc pas un, mais plusieurs 'averroïsmes' latin. (shrink)

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)

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)

Peter John Olivi’s relationship to Bonaventure is intriguing.1 Outwardly, they both appear as the leading figures of two different trends of Franciscan politics: Olivi usually being qualified as a “radical” inspiring the dissidence of the Spirituals, while Bonaventure would represent a central and balanced attitude regarding Franciscan poverty. Likewise, as far as their apocalyptical expectations are concerned, Olivi is certainly an overt and avowed Joachite, whereas Bonaventure supposedly makes a more detached use of Joachim of Fiore’s works. Recent studies of (...) Olivi’s philosophical approaches present him as anticipating themes soon to be developed by Duns Scotus rather than associate him with the Bonaventurian... (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)

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)

This paper presents a version of hylomorphism that intends to solve problems faced by contemporary hylomorphism. After showing that attempts to understand form as sets or relation of essential properties fail at taking into account the dynamic development of substances, the paper suggests another version of hylomorphism able to solve these difficulties. A functionalist version of hylomorphism is then defended: the best way to understand how form can be present throughout all the developmental stages of a substance is to understand (...) it as a certain kind of function. (shrink)

We provide characterizations of the equal division values and their convex mixtures, using a new axiom on a fixed player set based on player nullification which requires that if a player becomes null, then any two other players are equally affected. Two economic applications are also introduced concerning bargaining under risk and common-pool resource appropriation.

The doctrine of the “just price” is more than often described as the core of the “economic” thinking of the Scholastics (de Roover 1958; Baldwin 1959; Wilson 1975; Worland 1977). In fact, one could hardly contest that the notion occupies a place of high importance in the economic reflections of the Medieval Doctors. It is of no doubt that their study of economic reality led them to call up very frequently the said notion of “just price”. Yet the insistence with (...) which modern historiography has itself treated this – central but particular – element of the Scholastic economic thinking conceals, to our opinion, some of its important sights and interests. An “objective” approach of the scholastic theory seems to command such an interpretation. But why is the phrase “just price” so often used and developed by the Doctors? Such a simple question cannot be answered simply by focusing on the notion. From a more “methodological” point of view, just price appears only like the final result of a complex argumentation. Little attention has been given to the fact that (1) the issue at stake is less a problem of correctness in limited bargaining than a general question of social justice; (2) the method used to deal with this vast subject in the field of economic relations is a systematic “contractual” analysis. The second point forms the main theme of this paper. (shrink)

Si le xixe siècle fut le temps de l’émergence de la figure de la “ grande voyageuse ”, on ne saurait surestimer cette innovation. La hiérarchie des genres de récits de voyage, l’importance du contre-exemple britannique, la condamnation morale de la voyageuse solitaire manifestent assez le sentiment de l’illégitimité du voyage féminin. Pourtant, pèlerines, valétudinaires et touristes se multiplièrent dans un siècle qui fut aussi celui de l’invention du voyage de noces. Cet article tente de prendre la mesure de l’ensemble (...) des normes qui ont alors commandé les pratiques, nombreuses et variées, du voyage féminin. (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)

This paper investigates the late medieval controversy over the causal role of substantial forms in the generation of new substances. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, when there were two basic positions in this debate (section II), an original position was defended by Walter Burley and Peter Auriol, according to which accidents alone—by their own power—can generate substantial forms (section III). The paper presents how this view was received by the next generation of philosophers, i.e., around 1350 (section IV), (...) and how, even though some of the initial theoretical motivations for this view were quickly abandoned, the view was still defended by several philosophers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (section V). It is finally shown that this theory, still discussed by Suárez and early modern scholastics, and despite being generally rejected, contributed in its own way to the evolution of hylomorphism in the late Middle Ages and, to a certain extent, its gradual decline (section VI). (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)

Le Liber ostensor quod adesse festinant tempora, rédigé en 1356 dans la prison du Soudan à Avignon, est le plus important des écrits conservés du visionnaire et prophète et franciscain Jean de Roquetaillade. Son édition, par une équipe dirigée par A. Vauchez, offre des matériaux très riches pour l'histoire religieuse et culturelle du XIVe siècle. On note toutefois quelques lacunes dans la bibliographie et l'identification des sources, et notamment dans la notice consacrée aux emprunts faits à Pierre de Jean Olivi. (...) Au-delà des citations explicites, on peut mettre en évidence une dépendance bien plus grande, que masque pour partie une stratégie d'écriture carcérale. (shrink)

Misunderstanding of the dynamical behavior of the ventilatory system, especially under assisted ventilation, may explain the problems encountered in ventilatory support monitoring. Proportional assist ventilation (PAV) that theoretically gives a breath by breath assistance presents instability with high levels of assistance. We have constructed a mathematical model of interactions between three objects: the central respiratory pattern generator modelled by a modified Van der Pol oscillator, the mechanical respiratory system which is the passive part of the system and a controlled ventilator (...) that follows its own law. The dynamical study of our model shows the existence of two crucial behaviors, i.e. oscillations and damping, depending on only two parameters, namely the time constant of the mechanical respiratory system and a cumulative interaction index. The same result is observed in simulations of spontaneous breathing as well as of PAV. In this last case, increasing assistance leads first to an increase of the tidal volume (VT), a further increase in assistance inducing a decrease in VT, ending in damping of the whole system to an attractive fixed point. We conclude that instabilities observed in PAV may be explained by the different possible dynamical behaviors of the system rather than changes in mechanical characteristics of the respiratory system. (shrink)

This paper aims at tracking down, by looking at late medieval and early modern discussions over the ontological status of artifacts, the main steps of the process through which nature became theorized on a mechanistic model in the early 17th century. The adopted methodology consists in examining how inventions such as mechanical clocks and automata forced philosophers to modify traditional criteria based on an intrinsic principle of motion and rest for defining natural beings. The paper studies different strategies designed in (...) the transitional period 1300–1600 for making these inventions compatible with classical definitions of nature and artifacts. In the first part of the paper, it is shown that, even if virtually all medieval philosophers acknowledged an ontological distinction between artifacts and natural beings, these different strategies demonstrate a growing concern about the consistency of the art/nature distinction. The next part of the paper studies how mechanical clocks, even before the Scientific Revolution, served as theoretical models for applying mechanistic views to different objects (be they cosmological, physical or biological). The epistemological function of clocks appears to stem from different factors (like the specific manufacturing of late medieval clocks as well as the evolution of 16th-century mechanics) that are listed in this second part of the paper. These factors, combined with the definitional issues raised by automata, explain that clocks became the symbol of a new approach to natural philosophy, characterized by the collapse of the art/nature distinction and the “mechanization of nature”. (shrink)

This paper offers an overview of the history of the axiom forma dat esse, which was commonly quoted during the Middle Ages to describe formal causality. The first part of the paper studies the origin of this principle, and recalls how the ambiguity of Boethius’s first formulation of it in the De Trinitate was variously interpreted by the members of the School of Chartres. Then, the paper examines the various declensions of the axiom that existed in the late Middle Ages, (...) and shows how its evolution significantly follows the progressive decline of the Aristotelian model of formal causality. (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)

The controversy currently surrounding national literatures in foreign languages can be summed up by the famous statement: “to be or not to be, that is the question.”* But how is one to be oneself without having been that other whom one cannot deny (in the Marxist sense) since one sings as one grows? How, whatever effort one makes to deny one's father, can one fail to be presently what one is by separating oneself from the story of one's own birth (...) or from the birth of one's own story? (shrink)

Using the matching bias example, the aim of the present studies was to show that adults' reasoning biases are due to faulty executive inhibition programming. In the first study, the subjects were trained on Wason's classical card selection task; half were given training in how to inhibit the perceptual matching bias (experimental group) and half in logic without the inhibition component (control group). On the pre- and post-tests, their performance was assessed on the Evans conditional rule falsification task (with a (...) negation in the antecedent of the rule), a task that also involves matching bias. In addition, subjects were tested for perceptual field dependence/independence using the Embedded Figures Test. The results brought out a specific inhibition training effect, as well as a clear-cut relationship in the experimental group between receptiveness to training and perceptual field independence. In the second study, the training paradigm was the same except that on the pre- and post-tests, the negation was in the consequent of the conditional rule (in this case, the perceptual matching response corresponds to the logical response). The subjects succeeded on the pre-test, and the matching-bias inhibition training had a negative effect on post-test performance. This specific negative priming effect confirms the inhibitory impact of our experimental training and outlines the dissociation of inhibition and logical components. (shrink)