This paper examines the relationship between the puericulture of Adolphe Pinard and Léon Bourgeois’ solidarism. In an attempt to create a progressive and humanistic form of eugenics, Pinard links the science he was developing with the imperatives of social justice advocated by Bourgeois. This results in, on the one hand, the subordination of puericulture to principles of equality and fundamental rights for all individuals and, on the other, the idea of the need for a biological enhancement of the population (...) as a condition for the extension of liberty and solidarity. The first part of the article establishes a connection between the two authors through the neo-Lamarckian paradigm which they spoused, and details the how and the why of solidarism. A second part examines the nature of the assimilation of the “religion of humanity” into solidarity, which entails both the defence of love at a collective level and the sanctity of those deemed “abnormal”. A final part describes the solidarist-inspired levers envisaged by Pinard for preventing the degeneration of humanity. They are based on a redefinition of the criteria used to determine the value of the social function of the individual and have an impact on the family, on the one hand, and eugenic women on the other. (shrink)

Il est assez rare qu’un concept philosophique s’échappe de l’arène académique. C’est pourtant le cas du concept de spécisme, qui a fait une entrée remarquée dans la sphère publique au cours de la dernière décennie. Il est désormais au cœur du débat de société sur nos devoirs envers les animaux non humains. Hélas, ce concept et les enjeux qu’il soulève sont souvent mal compris. Nombreux sont les auteurs qui contestent sa légitimité alors qu’ils le maitrisent mal. D’autres l’utilisent plus volontiers (...) sans toutefois mieux le comprendre. Les confusions qui entourent cette notion l’empêche de contribuer à la discussion autant qu’elle le pourrait. Le présent ouvrage entend remédier à cet état de faits en donnant de la notion de spécisme une présentation à la fois assez précise pour rendre justice aux discussions philosophiques dont elle fait l’objet et suffisamment claire pour être accessible à quiconque s’intéresse au statut moral des animaux. Il se divise en deux parties. La première aborde des questions ontologiques : Qu’est-ce exactement que le spécisme ? À quelles conditions existe-t-il ? Ces conditions sont-elles remplies dans les faits ? Quant à la seconde, elle porte sur des questions éthiques : Le spécisme peut-il être justifié ? Faut-il au contraire le condamner au même titre que le racisme et le sexisme ? (shrink)

Common sense has it that animals matter considerably less than humans; the welfare and suffering of a cow, a chicken or a fish are important but not as much as the welfare and suffering of a human being. Most animal ethicists reject this “speciesist” view as mere prejudice. In their opinion, there is no difference between humans and other animals that could justify such unequal consideration. In the opposite camp, advocates of speciesism have long tried to identify a difference that (...) would fit the bill, but they have consistently seemed to fail. In light of this, some naturally began to appeal to Moorean arguments: the case against speciesism must be flawed somehow, these philosophers maintain, because speciesism is supported by a strong and widespread intuition. This chapter draws on recent findings in social psychology to criticize this defence of speciesism. It argues that the strong and widespread intuition that humans count more than animals is epistemically defective because it is causally shaped by a pair of irrelevant influences: cognitive dissonance and tribalism. Accordingly, it is no suitable basis for a Moorean argument. (shrink)

Review of Insensitive Semantics, by H. Cappelen and E. Lepore.

The idea of a canonical transformation emerged in 1837 in the course of Carl Jacobi's researches in analytical dynamics. To understand Jacobi's moment of discovery it is necessary to examine some background, especially the work of Joseph Lagrange and Siméon Poisson on the variation of arbitrary constants as well as some of the dynamical discoveries of William Rowan Hamilton. Significant figures following Jacobi in the middle of the century were Adolphe Desboves and William Donkin, while the delayed posthumous publication (...) in 1866 of Jacobi's full dynamical corpus was a critical event. François Tisserand's doctoral dissertation of 1868 was devoted primarily to lunar and planetary theory but placed Hamilton–Jacobi mathematical methods at the forefront of the investigation. Henri Poincaré's writings on celestial mechanics in the period 1890–1910 succeeded in making canonical transformations a fundamental part of the dynamical theory. Poincaré offered a mathematical vision of the subject that differed from Jacobi's and would become influential in subsequent research. Two prominent researchers around 1900 were Carl Charlier and Edmund Whittaker, and their books included chapters devoted explicitly to transformation theory. In the first three decades of the twentieth century Hamilton–Jacobi theory in general and canonical transformations in particular would be embraced by a range of researchers in astronomy, physics and mathematics. (shrink)

In a series of papers, Sperber provides the following analysis of the phenomenon of ill-understood belief (or 'quasi-belief', as I call it): (i) the quasi-believer has a validating meta-belief, to the effect that a certain representation is true; yet (ii) that representation does not give rise to a plain belief, because it is 'semi-propositional'. In this paper I discuss several aspects of this treatment. In particular, I deny that the representation accepted by the quasi-believer is semantically indeterminate, and I reject (...) Sperber's claim that quasi-belief is a credal attitude distinct from plain belief. (shrink)

In the first English translation of his work, Laruelle explores the major European thinkers from Nietzsche to Derrida to define his own 'non-philosophical' ...

La philosophie bergsonnienne a rendu le monde de ses contemporains moins opaque, les aidant à lui trouver un sens. Si la France cartésienne coïncide avec les partisans de la démocratie parlementaire ancrée à gauche, celle de Bergson recrute ses plus gros bataillons dans la droite nationale, conservatrice, mais également dans une gauche antiparlementaire, révolutionnaire.

I distinguish, and discuss the relations between, five types of context-shift involving indexicals. For 'intentional' indexicals - indexicals whose value depends upon the speaker's intention - we can shift the context more or less 'at will', by manifesting one's intention to do so. For other indexicals we can shift the context through pretense. Following a number of authors, I distinguish two types of context-shifting pretense, corresponding to two sets of linguistic phenomena. The fourth type of case is that of expressions (...) which are not really indexical, but perspectival, and for which we do not need to appeal to the notion of context-shift in order to account for their shifty behaviour. The fifth category I introduce and discuss is that of 'shiftable indexicals'. Do we need it, given that we already have the other four categories? My answer is a qualified 'yes'. (shrink)

The assertion that every definable set has a definable element is equivalent over to the principle, and indeed, we prove, so is the assertion merely that every Π2‐definable set has an ordinal‐definable element. Meanwhile, every model of has a forcing extension satisfying in which every Σ2‐definable set has an ordinal‐definable element. Similar results hold for and and other natural instances of.

In this paper, we redefine the target of evolutionary explanations by proposing the “evosystem” as an alternative to populations, lineages and species. Evosystems account for changes in the distribution of heritable variation within individual Darwinian populations (evolution by natural selection, drift, or constructive neutral evolution), but also for changes in the networks of interactions within or between Darwinian populations and changes in the abiotic environment (whether these changes are caused by the organic entities or not). The evosystem can thereby become (...) a centerpiece for a redefined evolutionary science, that is, evolutionary studies, that apprehends through a single framework the variety of evolutionary processes that lie at various scales. To illustrate the importance of this broadened perspective on evolution, we use a case of antimicrobial resistance evolution: the spread of the blaNDM gene family and the related resistance to carbapenem antibiotics observed globally, and show how evolutionary studies can contribute to answering contemporary socially relevant challenges. (shrink)

This book is a sequel to Recanati’s Mental Files (OUP 2012), and pursues the exploration of the mental file framework for thinking about concepts and singular reference. Mental files are based on 'epistemically rewarding' relations to objects in the environment. Standing in such relations to objects puts the subject in a position to gain information regarding them—information which goes into the file based on the relevant relation. Files do not merely store information about objects, however. They refer to them and (...) serve as singular terms in the language of thought, with a relational (nondescriptivist) semantics. Crucially, files also play the role of ‘modes of presentation’. They are used to account for cognitive significance phenomena illustrated by so-called ‘Frege cases’. This book considers what happens to mental files in a dynamic setting. Mental files are construed as both continuants (dynamic files) and as time-slices thereof (static files). Dynamic files are needed to account for confusion, recognition and tracking. The book considers what happens to the relation of coreference de jure, central to the functional characterization of files, when one adopts a dynamic perspective. Only a weak form of coreference de jure is said to hold between stages of the same dynamic file. The second part of the book argues that communication involves interpersonal dynamic files. Special attention is paid to the communication of indexical thoughts (de se contents), and to communication using proper names. (shrink)

Cécile Laborde, philosophe française établie au Royaume-Uni, est déjà l'auteure d'une œuvre fournie et essentielle. Elle s'est, dans un premier temps, inscrite au sein de la philosophie républicaine, en publiant notamment Français, encore un effort pour être républicains! (2010), ouvrage en français adapté d'un livre précédemment publié en anglais, Critical Republicanism: The Hijab Controversy and Political Philosophy (2008). En partant des controverses liées à la loi de 2004 interdisant le...

This is a truly outstanding contribution to contemporary scholarship on Leibniz’s methodology and natural philosophy. By providing the original edition of Leibnizian manuscripts dating back to the period 1676-1680, in particular the De corporum concursu, Michel Fichant has confirmed what some previous scholars had surmised—that Leibniz had substituted his new principle of conservation of vis viva for the Cartesian principle of conservation of quantity of motion measured by mv shortly after his return from France, and quite a few years before (...) the publication of the Brevis demonstratio erroris memorabilis Cartesii in the Acta Eruditorum. Fichant has conclusively shown that the turning point rightly occurs in the midst of Leibniz’s writing the De corporum concursu in January-February 1678. At the time, Leibniz was groping for a coherent system of physical and mathematical reasons to ground the mechanical laws of motion beyond the relativistic formulas which Huygens, Wallis, and Wren had provided in response to the enquiry launched by the Royal Society in 1668. (shrink)

A brief synoptic parallel -- Taking the side of the 'modern' in philosophy -- Old and new relations between science and philosophy -- Matrices and principles -- Subtraction and superposition -- Philosophy and mathematics in the mirror -- Ontology and materiality -- Philo-fiction.

Noting how an hypothesis can turn into a truth simply by being repeated, this article examines carefully the basis for the date normally given for this sermon and the frailty of the textual tradition that is the basis for the Morin edition of this sermon. After a careful analysis of the factors that might help to date it, it is assigned an uncertain date. It remains, however, plausible to think that it was delivered ad mensam Cypriani. The analysis of the (...) transmission of this sermon includes several new manuscripts, a new stemma and several general observations about its transmission. This article concludes with comments about the content and a new edition of the Latin text of the sermon. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to propose a new perspective on the difficulty and meaning of ethical work for financial controllers. This is achieved by drawing on concepts from Michel Henry’s phenomenology of life in the field of business ethics. The French philosopher Michel Henry is distinguished by his identifying two modes of appearing: ‘intentionality’ and ‘affectivity’ . Henry suggests that relying only on abstract representations constitutes a specific ideology that causes individuals at work to ignore the actual experience (...) of being affected, and hinders the appearance of life to guide their actions, in turn hindering ethics. Empirical illustrations are provided by a case study that explores the practices of management accountants in a travel retail corporation. By observing the empirical practices of management accountants, a body of professionals whose role is largely dependent on information technology, abstraction and technical expertise to trace organisational flows and transactions, we shed light on the difficult ethical issues associated with their role of surveillance and control of other managers’ work. The case study illustrates a wide range of everyday working practices among management accountants. Some convey the impression that they lack empathy and consideration for other individuals, while others engage in close cooperation and ethical practices despite the constraining configuration of their role. A significant result of this research is that it illustrates and interprets, based on Henry’s phenomenology, a wide range of working practices. Consistent with Henry, we argue that the source of business ethics lies beyond professional standards, codes and values. (shrink)

This book is a close reading of Jacques Lacan’s seminal essay, “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud, ” selected for the particular light it casts on Lacan’s complex relation to linguistics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. It clarifies the way Lacan renews or transforms the psychoanalytic field, through his diversion of Saussure’s theory of the sign, his radicalization of Freud’s fundamental concepts, and his subversion of dominant philosophical values. The authors argue, however, that Lacan’s discourse is (...) marked by a deep ambiguity: while he invents a new “language,” he nonetheless maintains the traditional metaphysical motifs of systemacity, foundation, and truth. (shrink)

This study deals with money, especially coins, and intends to circumscribe the place of coinage among cultural objects. Money cannot be described without a semiotics of culture. We shall consider the definitions of value in order to define the evaluative foundations of meaning, and discuss the recurring parallel between signs and coins. Using a theory of anthropic zones, we will then attempt to determine the conditions necessary for the creation of objects of value, which should lead to a typology of (...) the different orders of fascination. (shrink)

Ce chapitre est consacré à l'impartialité conçue comme une propriété des jugements moraux. Un jugement est impartial, au sens pertinent, si et seulement si son auteur y souscrirait même s’il n’occupait pas la position qu’il occupe actuellement. Les jugements moraux se doivent d'être impartiaux en ce sens en vertu de leur universalisabilité, c'est-à-dire en vertu du fait qu'ils impliquent des jugements identique pour tous les cas identiques quant à leurs propriétés universelles.

Thinking involves many elements of sound that philosophical tradition has repressed. Breathing, rhythms and collateral noises participate in the making of idealities, even the most abstract. In order to hear them, the voice needs to be considered as one sound among others and as multiple, even when it comes from the same speaker, following different protocols of enunciation. Listening to the recordings of seminars and studying the role played by modern sound technologies make it possible to hear subterranean meanings and (...) tensions at the heart of mental elaboration. Thinkers and writers could be defined by the way they handle the acoustic environments favourable to the way they speak and write, whether by selection, mixing or silence. An ‘acousmatic’ reading aims to listen to this sonic investment in texts and to hear the complex vibrations of their thought. (shrink)

Why and how does a multinational corporation adapt its strategy and organizational capabilities to address markets at the base of the pyramid? This paper builds on the results of a 3-year action research program conducted with Lafarge, a global building materials company, during which it started to consider the BOP segment as a strategic business opportunity. The article shows how pilot projects and global action networks created as part of the action research in the Indonesian subsidiary and the firm’s head (...) office contributed to this change. The paper then discusses the implications of BOP strategies in terms of organizational capabilities. (shrink)

L'entretien présente les principales thèses exposées dans la première édition de L'Islamisme en face, (Paris, La Découverte, 1995) et répond aux questions et aux remarques formulées par la rédaction de la revue Krisis sur l'origine et les principales expressions du phénomène islamiste dans ses dimensions nationales (économiques, politiques et sociales) et internationale, au sein des sociétés arabo-musulmanes comme en Europe.

Maupertuis conflates Leibnizian arguments with a form of empiricism which Locke and Newton had inspired. In physics, he applies an optimum principle in order to generate a « system » ; and his teleology of the maximum saving is meant to counterbalance apparent discontinuities within empirical properties and laws. In physiology, the Leibnizian model is put to a different use. The Vénus physique suggests that the elementary organic parts are so adapted as to combine and reproduce a living organism ; (...) and the Système de la nature fosters the analogy of the physiological « monad » as a theoretical notion. The epistemological unity of Maupertuis's theory of science depends upon the regulatory constraints he imposes on the empiricist methodology. (shrink)