The debate on cumulative technological culture is dominated by social-learning discussions, at the expense of other cognitive processes, leading to flawed circular arguments. I welcome the authors' approach to decouple CTC from social-learning processes without minimizing their impact. Yet, this model will only be informative to understand the evolution of CTC if tested in other cultural species.

Agir en contexte est une enquête sur les pratiques ordinaires de l'éthique, en se donnant pour objectif de saisir l'aspect épistémologiquement douteux des valeurs engagées dans nos pratiques. Cette étude de la pratique ordinaire s'appuie sur deux traditions : d'une part les travaux sur l'ordinaire de filiation wittgensteinienne et d'autre part la phénoménologie husserlienne du monde de la vie. En empruntant cette double approche, nous pouvons alors saisir comment la philosophie peut conduire à perdre le monde et à manquer, dans (...) le même mouvement, l'éthique. La mise à jour de cette dynamique sceptique n'est pas une impasse, mais au contraire indique le véritable enjeu : les besoins anthropologiques. L'hypothèse centrale qui est développée est que ce sont bien ces derniers qui mettent en forme les pratiques ordinaires. C'est autour de la thématique de l'anthropologie philosophique que s'articule le coeur de cet ouvrage. C'est à la suite de l'anthropologie philosophique développée par Hans Blumenberg dans le dialogue entre Husserl et Wittgenstein que nous cherchons à articuler l'aspect théorique et pratique de l'éthique. L'anthropologie philosophique, par sa nature transversale, apparaît comme une posture essentielle pour saisir la nature de nos pratiques ordinaires, mais également pour penser ce qui est du ressort de l'inacceptable. L'attention à l'important et les travaux sur le soin constituent le prolongement naturel de ces réflexions. A l'horizon de ces travaux, c'est aussi de la question de la place de l'homme dans la philosophie dont il est question. (shrink)

William James (1842-1910) appartient à la génération de penseurs qui ont contribué à donner à la pensée nord-américaine sa tonalité propre. Philosophe canonique, il est aussi considéré comme l'un des fondateurs de la psychologie. Les Principes de psychologie, publiés en 1890, marquent une date dans l'histoire d'une discipline, alors en voie de constitution, qui mobilisait les résultats de la physiologie nerveuse et cérébrale et tentait de rompre avec la philosophie. Cette " science de la vie mentale ", ce livre la (...) restitue dans ses transformations, ses débats, ses redéfinitions en reconstruisant le point de vue de James et des acteurs de l'époque à rebours de l'histoire jugée. En s'appuyant sur les archives, la correspondance, les notes de lecture inédites de William James conservées à l'université Harvard et données en partie dans l'ample dossier critique, Thibaud Trochu nous introduit dans l'atelier de travail de James. Il réactive aussi ses tensions, ses interrogations sur les zones frontières de l'expérience humaine comme le somnambulisme, la télépathie, les états hypnotiques provoqués. 11 restitue des cas de controverses précis, comme ceux de Georges Albert Smith ou de Miss Piper dont discutait James avec ses interlocuteurs européens et états-uniens. Aux origines composites de la psychologie, une dizaine d'années avant la Science des rêves de Freud. (shrink)

En la configuración de situaciones que propenden por maneras distintas de abordar el aprendizaje y la enseñanza de las matemáticas, los escenarios de investigación están siendo ampliamente reflexionados. En este escrito se muestra la construcción participativa de escenarios de investigación a partir del despliegue de una estrategia enmarcada en la investigación acción participativa con estudiantes de educación media. Esta construcción tiene como objetivo buscar posibilidades para relacionar prácticas matemáticas de aula y prácticas sociales inherentes al mundo de la vida de (...) los estudiantes. Estas reflexiones se realizan a partir de los fundamentos teóricos de la educación matemática crítica (EMC) desarrollada por Skovsmose. (shrink)

Even though the 3Rs are widely accepted as ethical standards when evaluating research projects using animals as experimental subjects, the ethical status of the 3Rs still remains to be clarified. The 3Rs were not derived from any ethical theory, but they represented an attempt to increase humanity to animal experimentation and at the same time to improve validity of scientific data . The aim of the present article was to provide an ethical analysis of the 3Rs through Engelhardt's bioethics theory (...) . The analysis revealed the 3Rs fitted to some extent Engelhardt ethical values. But the analysis also revealed some internal contradictions between the 3Rs and Engelhardt's ethical vaules. Although the 3Rs are still valuable tools in animal ethical evaluation, the present analysis suggests that some ethical issues still remain to be clarified. (shrink)

This article makes a contribution to the on-going debates about universalism and cultural relativism from the perspective of sociology. We argue that bioethics has a universal range because it relates to three shared human characteristics,—human vulnerability, institutional precariousness and scarcity of resources. These three components of our argument provide support for a related notion of ‘weak foundationalism’ that emphasizes the universality and interrelatedness of human experience, rather than their cultural differences. After presenting a theoretical position on vulnerability and human rights, (...) we draw on recent criticism of this approach in order to paint a more nuanced picture. We conclude that the dichotomy between universalism and cultural relativism has some conceptual merit, but it also has obvious limitations when we consider the political economy of health and its impact on social inequality. (shrink)

RésuméCette étude voudrait attirer ľattention sur la théorie peircéenne de la signification et, plus particulièrement, sur une notion qui paraît jouer un rôle central dans cette dernière, à savoir la notion ?on;interprétant. Médiateur entre le signe et ľobjet, l'interpretant peircéen prend tout son sens dans le cadre ?on;une theorie de la genèse des systèmes sémiotiques et ľanalyse qu'en fait Peir‐ce tente ?on;apporter, bien avant Carnap, une solution originale au problème des rapports entre sens et référence.SummaryThe purpose of this study is (...) to call the reader's attention to Peirce's theory of meaning and particularly to one notion which appears to play a decisive part in it, the notion of interpretant. The Peircean interpretant, a mediator between the sign and the object, is fully revealed within the theory of the genesis of semiotic systems and its analysis by Peirce is an attempt, long before Carnap, to propound an original solution to the problem of the relationship between meaning and reference.ZusammenfassungAnliegen dieser Studie ist es, im Rahmen der Peirceschen Theorie den Begriff der Bedeutung hervorzuheben und insbesondere das Konzept des interpretant, das eine wesentliche Rolle in dieser Theorie zu spielen scheint. Als Vermittler zwischen Zeichen und Objekt gewinnt der Peirce‐sche interpretant seine ganze Bedeutung im Rahmen einer Theorie ttber die Entstehung der semiotischen Systeme, und die Peircesche Analyse versucht lange vor Carnap eine eigene LSsung zum Problem der Beziehungen zwischen Sinn und Referenz zu erbringen. (shrink)

RésuméCentrée sur l'Objet dans ses rapports avec le Signe qui le représente et les Interprétants qui constituent le sens de ce dernier, cette étude tente d'éclairer le fonctionnement de la semiosis peircéenne et, d'une façon plus générate, de montrer l'originalitè de la théorie peircéenne de la representation et de la connaissance.SummaryCentered on the Object as related to the Sign which represents it and the Interpretants which constitute the meaning of the latter, this study attempts to cast light upon the way (...) Peirce's semiosis functions and, more generally, to show the originality of Peirce's theory of representation and knowledge.ZusammenfassungIm Mittelpunkt dieser Studie steht das Objekt in seiner Beziehung zu dem das Objekt darstel‐lenden Zeichen und dem seinen Sinn konstituierenden «Interpretant». Die Studie versucht die Wirkungsweise der Peirceschen Semiosis und allgemein die Originalität seiner Vorstellungs‐ und Erkenntnistheorie zu erläutern. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage à la mémoire de Simon Lantieri, qui fut Maître-Assistant puis Maître de Conférence au département de philosophie de l'Université de Provence de 1964 à 1986, est l'occasion de marcher sur les traces d'un philosophe du " voyage " qui aimait écrire que " le parcours est toujours vécu comme plus important que l'espace parcouru " et chez qui le voyage n'était jamais recherche d'exotisme mais dialogue, échange sans fin avec les êtres, les choses, en vue d'une connaissance qui (...) soit aussi jouissance et quête d'un mieux vivre. Vingt-quatre contributions, dues à des universitaires et chercheurs tant français qu'étrangers, venus d'horizons très divers, sont ici réunies. Du questionnement incessant de l'œuvre valéryenne aux interrogations épistémologiques, esthétiques, historiques et philosophiques sur quelques lieux marquants du parcours intellectuel de Simon Lantieri, toutes témoignent du rayonnement profond exercé par l'homme sur tous ceux qui l'ont connu et aimé. (shrink)

RésuméCette brève étude tente de montrer comment la théorie peircienne de ľindividuation donne naissance à la première analyse moderne du nom propre. A travers une triple caractérisation, à la fois sémanique , pragmatique et sémiotique du nom propre, Peirce fournit en effet la première description véritablement éclairante des conditions sous lesquelles devient possible la désignation ?individus dans le langage, nous offrant un exemple particulièrement suggestif de ce qu'on peut concevoir comme universaux de langage.SummaryThis brief study is an attempt to show (...) how Peirce's theory of individuation gives rise to the first modern analysis of the proper noun. Through a triple characterization – semantic , pragmatic and semiotic – of the proper noun, Peirce provides the first truly enlightening description of the conditions in which it becomes possible to designate individuals in language, which gives us a particularly suggestive example of what can be understood as universals of language. (shrink)

Pacificism is not a conjunctural accident. It is not a sudden fever preceding the installation of the Persing and Cruise missiles in the NATO countries. The “double decision” of 1979 — to install missiles capable of crossing the continent if the negotiations concerning the SS20's are not concluded in 4 years — has raised protests that go beyond simple anti-militarism: these protests have upset political life in at least two countries (West Germany and the Netherlands); they have spread to all (...) of Western Europe; they have no equivalent in Eastern Europe (where a non-structured pacificist movement is weak and/or difficult to interpret) but they do have an equivalent in the U.S. in the Freeze and No-First-Strike pledge. (shrink)

Pacificism is not a conjunctural accident. It is not a sudden fever preceding the installation of the Persing and Cruise missiles in the NATO countries. The “double decision” of 1979 — to install missiles capable of crossing the continent if the negotiations concerning the SS20's are not concluded in 4 years — has raised protests that go beyond simple anti-militarism: these protests have upset political life in at least two countries (West Germany and the Netherlands); they have spread to all (...) of Western Europe; they have no equivalent in Eastern Europe (where a non-structured pacificist movement is weak and/or difficult to interpret) but they do have an equivalent in the U.S. in the Freeze and No-First-Strike pledge. (shrink)

When she was interviewed by Bernard Pivot, Marguerite Duras professed to be a “Mitterrandist” — not a socialist and she added: “Before '81 we were undergoing the crisis, now we are thinking about it.” True, the socialist government now admits its perplexity and the emptiness of its ideology. There is, as it were, a pause for breath, an attempt to conceptualize not exactly the “crisis” a catch-all word, but the sort of journey toward an unknown shore. The change of political (...) values obliges politicians and journalists to do and proclaim the opposite of their former creed. It would be a mistake to see the new mode of the “entrepreneur” (a word which seems to capture the new state of mind). (shrink)

The authors of the first constitutions of the Spanish-American world, in New Granada, were also scientists who published articles on geography, natural history, political economy, population or medicine. From this observation, the article seeks to show how these scholars understood how to apply the new naturalistic knowledge to the regeneration of society in their constitutional work. This ambition entailed the need to destroy the supposedly artificial and despotic hierarchies of the Ancien Régime, based on the genealogical transmission of dignities and (...) infamy, in order to replace them with others that were "natural". This device did not mean the constitutional triumph of equality, since, to take up a formula of Madame de Staël, equality before the law would mean nothing other than the reestablishment of natural inequalities. The article firstly deals with the works of the Enlightenment of New Granada and of Baron Humboldt to understand the assumptions of their naturalistic anthropology on the "American man", which later served to think, in revolutionary times, about certain political topics such as federalism, the rights of man and the limits of citizenship. It ends with a re-reading of the Discurso de Angostura by showing how this naturalistic knowledge, influenced Bolívar's constitutionalist thought. (shrink)

For our contemporaries, daily life is no longer the peaceful world of small concerns and minor questions. Everything becomes a problem when one can no longer explain the sense of life by reference to great ideological institutions (for example, the republican system of education) or great religious institutions. This is why it is more and more difficult to separate “intellectuals” who, alone, would have the capacity to put into question the foundations, from the “others” who would simply take the world (...) as it comes. All live in the same universe, crossed by radical questions that are posed the moment one undertakes the least action—be it as an educator, doctor, parent or activist. (shrink)

Social norms – rules governing which behaviours are deemed appropriate or inappropriate within a given community – are typically taken to be uniquely human. Recently, this position has been challenged by a number of philosophers, cognitive scientists, and ethologists, who have suggested that social norms may also be found in certain non-human animal communities. Such claims have elicited considerable scepticism from norm cognition researchers, who doubt that any non-human animals possess the psychological capacities necessary for normative cognition. However, there is (...) little agreement among these researchers about what these psychological prerequisites are. This makes empirical study of animal social norms difficult, since it is not clear what we are looking for and thus what should count as behavioural evidence for the presence (or absence) of social norms in animals. To break this impasse, we offer an approach that moves beyond contested psychological criteria for social norms. This approach is inspired by the animal culture research program, which has made a similar shift away from heavily psychological definitions of ‘culture’ and to become organized around a cluster of more empirically tractable concepts of culture. Here, we propose an analogous set of constructs built around the core notion of a normative regularity, which we define as a socially maintained pattern of behavioural conformity within a community. We suggest methods for studying potential normative regularities in wild and captive primates. We also discuss the broader scientific and philosophical implications of this research program with respect to questions of human uniqueness, animal welfare and conservation. (shrink)

This paper presents a version of neurophenomenology based on generative modelling techniques developed in computational neuroscience and biology. Our approach can be described as _computational phenomenology_ because it applies methods originally developed in computational modelling to provide a formal model of the descriptions of lived experience in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy (e.g., the work of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, etc.). The first section presents a brief review of the overall project to naturalize phenomenology. The second section presents and evaluates (...) philosophical objections to that project and situates our version of computational phenomenology with respect to these projects. The third section reviews the generative modelling framework. The final section presents our approach in detail. We conclude by discussing how our approach differs from previous attempts to use generative modelling to help understand consciousness. In summary, we describe a version of computational phenomenology which uses generative modelling to construct a computational model of the inferential or interpretive processes that best explain this or that kind of lived experience. (shrink)

Three Canadian institutional animal care and use committees were observed over a 1-year period to investigate animal ethical evaluation. While each protocol was evaluated, the observer collected information about the final decision, the type of protocol, and the category of invasiveness. The observer also wrote down verbatim all verbal interventions, which were coded according to the following categories: scientific, technical, politics, human analog, reduction, refinement, and replacement. The data revealed that only 16% of the comments were devoted to the 3 (...) explicit ethical categories and that most of the comments were technical. However, the analysis revealed that ethical concerns were implicit in both scientific and technical comments; either ethical norms had been translated into scientific and technical language, or some of the scientific and technical comments had an impact on the ethical treatment of animals. The results are discussed in relation to previous nonobservational research that identified potential pitfalls and bias in animal ethical evaluation. (shrink)

War After September 11 considers the just aims and legitimate limits of the United States' response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

This collection moves from COVID to Kairos, engaged with the legacy of Paul Tillich. Liminal spaces reflect ambiguous transitional moments in human consciousness and culture. In early 2020, cultures and states turned inward for protection, exacerbating intertwined health, political, racial justice, and economic crises. Tillich would have understood these overlapping challenges to be heralding a kairotic moment, reflecting simultaneous crises and opportunities. The collected essays reflect on the intersections of COVID and Kairos. Authors engage numerous ethical challenges precipitated by the (...) current Kairos moment, thinking through and with Tillich. Other essays offer reflections on our cultural moment, engaging topics from public health to video games to hate speech. Reflecting on the cultural moment, this collection offers unique insight into the Tillichian legacy for the present and future. (shrink)

Patrice Bergeron,Fabrice Blée,Marc Dumas,Raymond Lemieux,Jean Richard,Gérard Siegwalt.

La notion d'enchantement se prête à une grande diversité d'usages qui ne se réduisent pas à des antonymes du "désenchantement du monde" au sens de Max Weber. Qu'en est-il de ces approches contemporaines et quelles en seraient les vertus heuristiques? S'agit-il de poser un constat sur le monde contemporain, tour à tour enchanté et désenchanté? D'évoquer des expériences spécifiques, au caractère quelque peu magique? De s'intéresser à des lieux, scènes, processus, "modes d'être" ou régimes d'interactivité particuliers? La labilité du terme (...) ouvre à de multiples terrains d'investigation, tant théoriques que pratiques. De telles questions ont traversé un colloque organisé à Cerisy (2021) où cette notion d'enchantement a été explorée dans ses liens avec le vivant ; ses proximités avec les notions voisines d'ambiance, de présence et/ou de résonance ; la rencontre avec des fictions, des formes d'arts ou de vies alternatives ; des descriptions de fantasmagories urbaines ; ou encore au travers de quelques manifestations des puissances de l'imaginaire. (shrink)