At the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, change was fast and furious: the exploration of coastal Africa by the Portuguese, the exploration of the West Indies by the Spanish, the extermination of the island Indians, the importation of black slaves to the Iberian peninsula, then the expansion of the slave trade to the American colonies - in short, the much-heralded inauguration of European colonization overseas, with all of its attendant horrors. All of this is adequately known, it seems; (...) the purpose of the present article is not to rehearse this history, even in summary. But if chronology has any value here, it is in making clear that, while the massacre of the Arawaks and the Caribbean Indians quickly attracted attention, eliciting protests that were to be renewed in the following centuries, the black slave trade and black slavery began somewhat discreetly, as if it took quite some time for the esprits libres in Europe to take notice of it. Over the three centuries leading up to the French revolution, blacks were transferred from their native countries to the American colonies. In Europe, these three centuries saw the development of Enlightenment thought, the revolt against domination by the Church, the call for human rights, and the will to democracy. The parallel is superficial, but troubling nevertheless: four facts appear to be linked together, and not merely chronologically: the massacre or de facto subjugation of the Indians, the trade and enslavement of blacks, and colonization. Is the last of these not the cause of and the key to understanding the other three - as well as a number of other phenomena? (shrink)

A contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics,” this article examines the diverse types of imaginary that support sortition, which is currently at the heart of important debates on the reform of existing democratic institutions. Different and often diametrically opposed actors now advocate sortition as a tool for addressing crises of political representation. How are we to understand this convergence? Over the past two decades, the field of experience and the horizon of expectation of citizens in the global North have (...) profoundly changed, and this article seeks to assess those changes in the context of three ideal types that advocate the use of randomly selected minipublics. This article analyzes, each in turn, the attraction of sortition for supporters and theorists of deliberative democracy, antipolitical democracy, and radical democracy, outlining the elements that unite and divide these imaginaries to help explain the astonishing convergence of voices in defense of sortition in politics. (shrink)

L’idéal de transparence semble s’imposer à tous les esprits comme une évidence. Toute opacité est suspecte de cacher des pratiques douteuses (népotisme, corruption, détournement, abus) en faisant obstacle à une indispensable soif de vérité. Prenant à contre-pied cette aspiration commune à tout rendre transparent, on s’efforce ici de souligner certains des coûts, des écueils et des victimes collatérales de l’impératif de transparence agité aujourd’hui de façon irréfléchie dans nos discours publics.

A proof is presented showing that there is no paraconsistent logics with a standard implication which have a three-valued characteristic matrix, and in which the replacement principle holds.

Contradiction is often confused with contrariety. We propose to disentangle contrariety from contradiction using the hexagon of opposition, providing a clear and distinct characterization of three notions: contrariety, contradiction, incompatibility. At the same time, this hexagonal structure describes and explains the relations between them.

After explaining the interdisciplinary aspect of the series of events organized around the square of opposition since 2007, we discuss papers related to the 4th World Congress on the Square of Opposition which was organized in the Vatican at the Pontifical Lateran University in 2014. We distinguish three categories of work: those dealing with the evolution and development of the theory of opposition, those using the square as a metalogical tool to give a better understanding of various systems of logic (...) and those related with applications of the theory of opposition to conceptual analysis and pedagogy. (shrink)

Many-valued logics are standardly defined by logical matrices. They are truth-functional. In this paper non truth-functional many-valued semantics are presented, in a philosophical and mathematical perspective.

Universal Logic is not a new logic, but a general theory of logics, considered as mathematical structures. The name was introduced about ten years ago, but the subject is as old as the beginning of modern logic: Alfred Tarski and other Polish logicians such as Adolf Lindenbaum developed a general theory of logics at the end of the 1920s based on consequence operations and logical matrices. The subject was revived after the flowering of thousands of new logics during the last (...) thirty years: there was a need for a systematic theory of logics to put some order in this chaotic multiplicity. This bo. (shrink)

En 1723, la Charte fondatrice de la Grande Loge de Londres donne à l'ordre Maçonnique pour projet de devenir le « centre de l'union et le moyen de nouer une amitié fidèle parmi des hommes qui sans cela seraient restés à perpétuelle distance ». De cette aspiration à relever Babel procèdent les tentatives pour cartographier la République maçonnique, mettre sur pied un réseau de correspondance et une langue véritablement universels - ce dernier chantier menant à l'espéranto. L'ordre Maçonnique a décliné (...) tout au long du XVIIIe siècle cette utopie planétaire sur le mode d'une véritable citoyenneté de la République maçonnique avec son passeport, ses droits et ses devoirs. Puis il a dû répondre aux formidables bouleversements issus de 1789 et de l'éveil des nationalités, en s'orientant vers une conception plus engagée de la République universelle des francs-maçons, sensible aux idées libérales et à lémancipation des peuples, au risque de donner des arguments à ses détracteurs, qui lui reprochent de se rendre coupable d'un crime d'indifférenciation. (shrink)

Le but de cet article est, à travers l’histoire des relations entre science et philosophie du temps, de retracer l’archéologie épistémologique du temps pensé comme progrès linéaire. Nous voudrions montrer : 1. que la pensée du « temps » évolue avec le temps, 2. que cette évolution peut se lire en même temps en science et en philosophie sans qu’il soit nécessaire d opposer l’une à l’autre, 3. qu’elle n’est pas réductible à une opposition entre réversibilité ou irréversibilité ; 4. (...) qu’elle s’exprime à travers trois « métaphores épistémiques » distinctes : cercle, ligne ou réseau — à l’intérieur desquels l’antinomie entre conception « idéaliste » ou « réaliste » de la temporalité ne cesse de se rejouer ; 5. qu’il est possible de dépasser cette antinomie par l’idée régulatrice d’une fonction cosmologique de la temporalité définie comme la forme de l’interaction entre événements physiques et lois naturelles. (shrink)

Transcrire des écrits scolaires : entre philologie et génétique textuelle Cet article propose une réflexion épistémologique sur les problèmes posés par la transcription d’écrits scolaires pour la constitution d’un corpus informatisé. Il interroge l’opération de transcription de manuscrits dans deux cadres théoriques : la philologie et la génétique textuelle. On examine les modèles proposés dans ces deux cadres, les possibilités mais aussi les problèmes rencontrés pour la transcription d’écrits parfois non normés comme le sont les écrits d’élèves. À partir d’exemples (...) de productions d’élèves, on aborde plusieurs difficultés récurrentes : la transcription des éléments non verbaux des manuscrits, de la topographie de l’écrit ou encore des énoncés métadiscursifs. (shrink)

D’où vient la transparence et où va-t-elle? Quelles sont ses méthodes? Quels types de savoirs doivent être constitués pour nous la fournir? Cet article propose la description d’un tableau de bord informationnel, c’est-à-dire d’une interface de plus en plus souvent déployée dans les initiatives relevant de la transparence. Cet Index des Clés Performatives aide à percevoir l’emprise des régimes de mesure et de gestion de performance sur notre monde. Pour expliquer le parcours allant de la transparence à la gestion de (...) performance à travers les tableaux de bord, cet article revient sur un scandale récent de la politique britannique qui a déclenché une nouvelle poussée d’appels à la transparence, et finalement à la multiplication des tableaux de bords. (shrink)

Avec les consommations d’énergies fossiles et les émissions de gaz à effet de serre reparties à la hausse, le « monde d’après » ressemble terriblement à l’extractivisme d’avant. Et pourtant, des paramètres se sont déplacés à l’occasion de la pandémie et de son confinement planétaire. Une mutation s’est précipitée dans notre rapport aux énergies fossile.

Après avoir passé en revue la diversité des politiques nationales en matière de transition énergétique, cet entretien fait le point sur ce que l’Union européenne a déjà pu et pourra apporter aux multiples redimensionnements en cours. Alors que les politiques nationales restent obnubilées par une conception centralisatrice de la production énergétique, le nouveau monde de la parité-réseau et des consommateurs-producteurs redistribue les cartes selon des échelles sensiblement différentes. Une coordination européenne entre initiatives locales peut devenir un atout, pour autant que (...) des mesures de redistribution sachent prévenir une nouvelle « lutte des classes énergétiques » qu’exaspèrent nos inégalités actuelles. (shrink)

La question du nihilisme a une longue histoire. Elle émerge au sein de l'idéalisme allemand, se déploie ensuite dans l'intelligentsia et la littérature russes, puis trouve chez Nietzsche et Heidegger ses explorations les plus influentes. Si le mot semble moins courant depuis un demi-siècle -- comme d'autres termes aussi chargés, pensons à celui d'aliénation -- les enjeux qu'il soulève demeurent toutefois au cœur de la pensée contemporaine. Les risques environnementaux nourrissent d'ailleurs plus que jamais l'inquiétante intuition que de puissantes dynamiques (...) de dévalorisation du réel sont à l'œuvre dans les sociétés modernes. Ces douze essais, qui font largement entendre la voix d'une nouvelle génération, n'ont pourtant pas pour but de défendre une thèse commune. Ils explorent plutôt les multiples aspects du nihilisme et se confrontent à ses grandes interprétations. Sont ainsi proposées autant de pistes pour rejoindre les débats sur le capitalisme, la technique, l'éducation, le patriarcat, le roman ou la démocratie. Pluralité revendiquée, qui illustre néanmoins un même ancrage dans les défis du monde actuel. (shrink)

In this dissertation I propose a new reading of the philosophical itinerary of Hilary Putnam on the matter of realism. In essence, my purpose is to argue that there is much more continuity than is normally understood, and even a degree of permanence, in the way in which Putnam has viewed the question of realism throughout his career. To arrive at this interpretation of Putnam I essentially followed two veins in his work. First, in a volume published in the early (...) 2000s entitled Ethics without Ontology (2004), Putnam establishes a parallel between his conception of objectivity in the philosophy of mathematics and in ethics. The second vein comes from a comment he made in the introduction to the first volume of his Philosophical Papers (1975) to the effect that the kind of realism he presupposed in his work of the 1960s and 70s was the same that he upheld in the philosophy of mathematics and wished to argue for at a later date in ethics. Following the first vein makes it possible to better grasp Putnam’s general conception of objectivity, but in order to understand how such a conception of objectivity is not unique to mathematics but is instead a general conception of objectivity one must follow the second vein. There, in the 1960s and 70s, Putnam adopted the same kind of realism in the philosophy of science and in ethics as he had in the philosophy of mathematics. Following this path, one realises that there exists a very strong structural similarity between Putnam’s first realism and his internal realism. After establishing this connection between Putnam’s first and second realism, I draw on Putnam’s remarks and compare the internal realism discourse to his current realism (the natural realism of ordinary people) to demonstrate, contrary to the prevalent interpretation, that there has been a great deal of consistency in his conception of realism from the 1960s to the present day. I conclude the dissertation by demonstrating how my new interpretation of Putnam’s philosophical itinerary makes it possible to shed light on the kind of realism he wishes to champion in ethics./Dans cette thèse, je propose une lecture renouvelée de l’itinéraire philosophique d’Hilary Putnam concernant la problématique du réalisme. Mon propos consiste essentiellement à défendre l’idée selon laquelle il y aurait beaucoup plus de continuité, voir une certaine permanence, dans la manière dont Putnam a envisagé la question du réalisme tout au long de sa carrière. Pour arriver à une telle interprétation de son oeuvre, j’ai essentiellement suivi deux filons. D’abord, dans un ouvrage du début des années 2000, Ethics without Ontology (2004), Putnam établit un parallèle entre sa conception de l’objectivité en philosophie des mathématiques et en éthique. Le deuxième filon vient d’une remarque qu’il fait, dans l’introduction du premier volume de ses Philosophical Papers (1975), affirmant que la forme de réalisme qu’il présupposait dans ses travaux des années 1960-1970 était la même que celle qu’il défendait en philosophie des mathématiques et qu’il souhaitait défendre ultérieurement en éthique. En suivant le premier filon, il est possible de mieux cerner la conception générale que se fait Putnam de l’objectivité, mais pour comprendre en quel sens une telle conception de l’objectivité n’est pas propre aux mathématiques, mais constitue en réalité une conception générale de l’objectivité, il faut suivre le second filon, selon lequel Putnam aurait endossé, durant les années 1960-1970, le même type de réalisme en philosophie des sciences et en éthique qu’en philosophie des mathématiques. Suivant cette voie, on se rend compte qu’il existe une similarité structurelle très forte entre le premier réalisme de Putnam et son réalisme interne. Après avoir établi la parenté entre le premier et le second réalisme de Putnam, je montre, en m’inspirant de commentaires du philosophe ainsi qu’en comparant le discours du réalisme interne au discours de son réalisme actuel (le réalisme naturel du commun des mortels), que, contrairement à l’interprétation répandue, il existe une grande unité au sein de sa conception du réalisme depuis les années 1960 à nos jours. Je termine la thèse en montrant comment mon interprétation renouvelée de l’itinéraire philosophique de Putnam permet de jeter un certain éclairage sur la forme de réalisme que Putnam souhaite défendre en éthique. (shrink)

L’étude reprend la philosophie inaugurée par La réciprocité des consciences (1942) en fonction de philosophies plus récentes de l’intersubjectivité (E. Lévinas et F. Jacques). Après avoir montré comment le caractère fondamental de la réciprocité fonde la causalité des personnes et se fonde sur le Dieu personnel et tripersonnel, elle revient d’une manière critique sur une possible mise en tutelle d’une pensée personnaliste par une pensée religieuse. L’amour n’aurait-il pas laissé en retrait la réciprocité, la personne la relation, la communion la (...) communication, enfin l’intime le social ? On ne saurait pourtant oublier Maurice Nédoncelle. Il a défendu avec raison une priorité de la réciprocité sur l’altérité, dans l’intersubjectivité ; de la personne sur la nature, dans la théologie ; de la souffrance sur le péché, dans la théodicée. (shrink)

Niccolò Machiavelli is the most prominent and notorious theorist of violence in the history of European political thought - prominent, because he is the first to candidly discuss the role of violence in politics; and notorious, because he treats violence as virtue rather than as vice. In this original interpretation, Yves Winter reconstructs Machiavelli's theory of violence and shows how it challenges moral and metaphysical ideas. Winter attributes two central theses to Machiavelli: first, violence is not a generic technology (...) of government but a strategy that tends to correlate with inequality and class conflict; and second, violence is best understood not in terms of conventional notions of law enforcement, coercion, or the proverbial 'last resort', but as performance. Most political violence is effective not because it physically compels another agent who is thus coerced; rather, it produces political effects by appealing to an audience. As such, this book shows how in Machiavelli's world, violence is designed to be perceived, experienced, remembered, and narrated. (shrink)

This article defends four claims. The first is that in the last few decades, two waves of democratic innovation based on random selection must be differentiated by their partly different concrete devices, embodying different social dynamics and pointing toward different kinds of democracy. The second claim is that the rationale of the first wave, based on randomly selected minipublics, largely differs from the dynamic of political sortition in Athens, as it points toward deliberative democracy rather than radical democracy. Conversely, empowered (...) sortition processes that have emerged during the second wave capture better the spirit of radical Athenian democratic traditions. The third claim is normative: these empowered sortition processes are more promising for a real democratization of democracy. The last claim is that any proposal of a legislature by lot must rely on this lesson when trying to defend a normatively convincing and politically realistic perspective. (shrink)

Presents essays describing the author's impressions of art and architectural works.

The popularity of the stakeholder model has been achieved thanks to its powerful visual scheme and its very simplicity. Stakeholder management has become an important tool to transfer ethics to management practice and strategy. Nevertheless, legitimate criticism continues to insist on clarification and emphasises on the perfectible nature of the model. Here, rather than building on the discussion from a philosophical or theoretical point of view, a different and innovative approach has been chosen: the analysis will return to the origin (...) of stakeholder theory and will keep the graphical framework firmly in perspective. It will confront the stakeholder model’s graphical representation to the discussion on stakeholder definition, stakeholder identification and categorisation, to re-centre the debate to the strategic origin of the stakeholder model. The ambiguity and the vagueness of the stakeholder concept are discussed from managerial and legal approaches. The impacts of two major shortcomings of the popular stakeholder framework are examined: the boundaries and the level of the firm’s environment, and the ambivalent position of pressure groups and regulators. Working pragmatically, with a focus on the managerial and organisational perspective, an attempt is made to clarify the categorisations and classifications by introducing new terminology with a distinction between stakeholders, stakewatchers and stakekeepers. The analysis will finally lead to a proposed upgraded and refined version of the stakeholder model, with incremental ameliorations close to Freeman’s original model and a return of focus to its essence, the managerial implications in a strategic approach. (shrink)

Recent academic articles point to an increased vagueness and overlap in concepts related to business ethics and corporate responsibility. Further, the perception of these notions can differ in the smallbusiness world from the original academic definitions. This article focuses on the cognition of small-business owner-managers. Given the impact of small-business owner-managers on their ventures, corporate responsibility and ethical issues can take a different route in SMEs. The small-business owner-manager is able to shape the corporate culture and to enact values other (...) than profit. Adopting a cognitive perspective, we have identified how the small-business owner-manager makes sense of notions linked to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics. The concept of sensemaking has recently been applied to CSR (Basu and Pallazzo, 2008; Cramer et al., 2006). Applying a cognitive perspective to small-business owners may help in explaining specific phenomena found within smallbusiness ownership. For this research, the Repertory Grid Technique (RGT) is used, a method that has not previously been widely applied in the business and society field. Our findings to an extent invalidate the confusion in terminology found in the academic literature. Smallbusiness owner-managers, pragmatically and rather clearly, differentiate among the various concepts related to corporate responsibility and business ethics but, at the same time, they recognise the interrelationships and interdependencies of these concepts. These findings contribute to a better understanding of how small-business owners think and integrate corporate responsibility and ethical issues into their decisionmaking. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory advocates that firms bear responsibility for the implications of their actions. However, while a firm affects or can affect stakeholders, stakeholders can also affect the corporation. Previous stakeholder theorising has neglected the reciprocal nature of responsibility. The question can be asked whether—in a spirit of reciprocity, loyalty and fairness—stakeholders should treat the corporation in a fair and responsible way. This study based on different definitions of stakeholders argues that various stakeholder attributes differ for different categories of stakeholders. This (...) analysis presumes that the attribute of stakeholder reciprocity can probably be restricted to real stakeholders, labelled stakeowners: genuine stakeholders with a legitimate stake, the loyal partners who strive for mutual benefits. Stakeowners own and deserve a stake in the firm. Stakeholder reciprocity could be an innovative criterion in the corporate governance debate as to who should be accorded representation on the board. Corporate social responsibility should imply corporate stakeholder responsibility. (shrink)

Despite the recent increase in interest in corporate social responsibility and the propagation of corporate governance in both business and academic literature, from observations of actual practice, the author has seen at all company levels, in everyday operations, instances of non-ethical behaviour vis-à-vis the whole gamut of stakeholders. This state of affairs is linked with: pressure from stakeholders, short-term tactics, hegemony of financial considerations, ‘juridisation’ of business, the tyranny of communications and the media and the difficulties in translating strategy into (...) practical implementation. The paper scrutinises the motivation and the psychology of entrepreneurs and business people, and their behaviour is compared to other professional groups and confronted with the decline in ethics in society as described by some important observers. The conclusion drawn is that the recent positive evolutions do not provide sufficient ethical guidelines for the day-to-day activities of middle managers and entrepreneurs in the present competitive environment. Managers will always be confronted by difficult choices with ethical dilemmas. There will always be a tension between theory and pragmatism, but progress can be made with the effective implementation of the ethical discourse in companies. To achieve this, ethical management should not be confined to the large strategic issues but also applied to the small practical matters of everyday business life. Ethics in business and entrepreneurship requires more than corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR). (shrink)

Yves R. Simon explores moral virtue in this piece through identifying three moral positions common in modernity that attempt to substitute the traditional concept of virtue, as well as discussing the distinction between nature and use of sources of good or evil. He also discusses the distinctions between habits and opinions, as well as the virtue and science. He gives clear examples that make this book enjoyable for readers of all levels to understand moral virtue.

In his Florentine Histories, Machiavelli offers an ambivalent portrayal of the revolt of the textile workers in late fourteenth-century Florence, known as the tumult of the Ciompi. On the face of it, Machiavelli's depiction of the insurgent workers is not exactly flattering. Yet this picture is undermined by a firebrand speech, which Machiavelli invents and attributes to an unnamed leader of the plebeian revolt. I interpret this speech as a radical and egalitarian vector of thought opened up by Machiavelli's text. (...) The revolutionary address reveals an untimely and not entirely self-conscious political radicalism, a plebeian politics that repudiates the logic of oligarchic privilege and is simultaneously not available for subsumption under the mantle of civic republicanism. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Beyond Dissociations Reassembling the mind-brain after all? Yves Rossetti Antti Revonsuo "Comme des banes de poissons de meme espece, ...

This article reviews experimental evidence for a specific sensorimotor function which can be dissociated from higher level representations of space. It attempts to delineate this function on the basis of results obtained by psychophysical experiments performed with brain damaged and healthy subjects. Eye and hand movement control exhibit automatic features, such that they are incompatible with conscious control. In addition, they rely on a reference frame different from the one used by conscious perception. Neuropsychological cases provide a strong support for (...) this specific motor representation of space, which can be spared in patients with lesions of primary sensory systems who have lost conscious perception of visual, tactile or proprioceptive stimuli. Observation of these patients also showed that their motor behavior can be ''attracted'' by a goal only under specific conditions, that is, when the response is immediate and when no cognitive representation of this goal is elaborated at the same time. Beyond the issue of the dissociation between an implicit motor representation and more cognitive processing of spatial information, the issue of the interaction between these two systems is thus a matter of interest. It is suggested that the conscious, cognitive representation of a stimulus can contaminate or override the short-lived motor representation, but no reciprocal influence seem to occur. The interaction observed in patients can also be investigated in normals. The literature provides examples of interaction between sensorimotor and cognitive framing of space, which confirm that immediate action is not mediated by the same system as delayed action, and that elaborating a categorial representation of the action goal prevents the expression of the short-lived sensorimotor representation. It is concluded that action can be controlled by a sensory system which is specialized for on-line processing of relevant goal characteristics. The temporal constraints of this system are such that it can affect the action before a full sensory analysis of this goal has been completed. The performance obtained on the basis of this spatial sensory processing suggests that short-lived motor representations may rather be considered as real ''presentation'' of the action world, which share its metric properties. (shrink)