When testing primates with cognitive tasks, it is usually not considered that subjects differ markedly in terms of emotional reactivity toward the experimenter, which potentially affects a subject’s cognitive performance. We addressed this issue in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus), a monkey species in which males tend to show stronger emotional reactivity in testing situations, whereas females have been reported to outperform males in cognitive tasks. In a two-phase experiment, we first quantified the emotional reactivity of 14 subjects toward four different (...) experimenters performing a standardized behavioral action sequence and then assessed whether and how it affected the subjects’ participation and performance in a subsequent object permanence task. A test session was terminated if a subject refused to make a choice in four consecutive trials. Highly emotionally aroused individuals, particularly males, were less likely to participate in the cognitive task and completed fewer trials. However, whenever they did participate and were attentive to the task, their performance was not affected. Our results suggest that differences in emotional reactivity toward an experimenter have no major impact on cognitive performance if strict criteria are applied on when to abandon a test session and if performance is corrected for attention to the test procedure. Furthermore, they suggest that the reported sex differences in cognitive performance in marmosets may be owing to motivational and attentional factors, rather than a difference in cognitive ability per se. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to investigate the meaning of politics as a practical science in Spinoza’s Political Treatise. First, we shall indicate how Spinoza recasts classical division between theoretical sciences, practical sciences and poietical sciences. The focus is on modern dissolution of abstract oppositions between theory and practice. Then we come to the question of poiesis to check how the arts of production are reconsidered by Spinoza from the new concept that stands in the unity between theory and (...) practices. Finally, we hope to contribute for further investigations about Spinoza’s politics as a “practical science”. (shrink)

Je présente d’abord quelques notions de base de la sémantique philosophique, en particulier celles de signification linguistique, compré-hension linguistique, conditions de vérité, et “ce qui est dit”. La signi-fication linguistique ne doit pas être confondue avec “ce qui est dit” par l’énonciation littérale d’une phrase en contexte, cette dernière notion, centrale dans le contextualisme actuel, pouvant être reconstruite comme sémantique ou pragmatique selon le rôle que l’on fait jouer à la notion de signification du locuteur. J’examine ensuite de quelle façon (...) ces notions se combinent dans diverses approches ou “figures historiques”, en insistant sur la relation langage-pensée. La première est la théorie idéationnelle du langage, défendue par Arnauld et Locke. La seconde est la sémantique philosophique classique, qui se développe dans la première moitié du XXe siècle. La troisième est le contextualisme actuel, développé en parti-culier par Travis et Récanati. La comparaison révèle ceci: quant à la façon dont est reconstruite la notion de “ce qui est dit”: l’idéisme et le contex-tualisme s’accordent pour en faire une notion pragmatique, en opposition à la sémantique philosophique classique assortie de l’appareil gricéen.I first present a few basic notions of philosophical semantics, namely that of linguistic meaning, linguistic understanding, truth-con-ditions, and What Is Said. I try to show, like contextualists today urge us to, that the distinction between linguistic meaning and What Is Said by a literal utterance of a sentence in a context should not be blurred. The notion of What Is Said, of central importance for contextualism, can be construed as a semantic or a pragmatic notion according to the role played by the notion of speaker meaning in one’s favorite theory. Then I present an overview of three historical approaches in the history of the sciences of language, focusing on the language-thought relation and showing how these notions combine differently. The first is the ideational theory of language, defended by Arnauld and Locke. The sec-ond is the classical philosophical semantics developed in the first half of XXth century. The third is today’s contextualism, developed mainly by Travis and Recanati. Here is what the comparison reveals: the “way of ideas” and contextualism agree that the notion of What Is Said should be construed as a pragmatic notion, in opposition to classical philosophical semantics cum the Gricean apparatus. (shrink)

RésuméCet article expose et analyse la notion de référentielà laquelle Gonseth avail consacré son dernier livre. II distingue un référentiel personnel qui comporte deux aspects et un référentiel de groupe qui lui aussi présente diverses modalités . Entre les référentiels personnels et les référentiels de groupe s'établit une symbiose existentielle favorisant les interactions. Cette notion de référentiel peut être utilisée avec profit pour décrire et interpréter les relations que ľhomme entretient avec ses semblables, avec les collectivités dont il fait partie (...) et avec le milieu naturel dans lequel il se trouve engagé.SummaryThis article presents and analyses the notion of reference frame, to which Gonseth devoted his last book. A personal reference frame involving two aspects is distinguished from a group reference frame which also takes various forms . Personal and group reference frames are in an existential symbiosis fostering interactions. This notion of reference frame may be used to advantage in describing and interpreting the relations between man and his fellow man, his organizations, and his natural environment. (shrink)

Gabriel Marcel is a neosocratic philosopher, a permanent questioner in search for truth. His thought, which is not existentialist in a strict sense, is addressed to the other men and tries to arouse their hope and their ability to heart to heart dialogue.

The survival of some masterpieces of literature across the ages is still an unexplained mystery. Deeply rooted in their time, they reflect the preoccupations of a given historical period and have an impact, by means of their testimony, on future generations. They bring into play images, drives and phantoms which have remained unchanged from prehistoric time to our day. The perfection of their form has remained unequaled; their examples incite us to meditation and creativity.

Esta pesquisa se propõe a ser uma forma de análise da práxis cristã, tendo como ponto de partida a experiência místico-religiosa. A resposta de Friedrich Schleiermacher ao Iluminismo tem muito a nos beneficiar, principalmente se levarmos em consideração as críticas de Rudolf Otto. A compreensão do “sentimento de dependência” em Schleiermacher, que se torna em Otto “sentimento de criatura”, e a realidade da experiência de Deus que se conecta à práxis, nos fornecem um excelente ponto de partida para compreensão daquilo (...) que move as pessoas a uma vida de renúncia, servidão e comprometimento com valores e princípios do Evangelho de Jesus Cristo. Com base em uma pesquisa de campo, foi possível perceber que existe uma conexão entre a práxis cristã e a experiência religiosa. Quando há experiência religiosa, há ações cristãs executadas com naturalidade, com maior incidência do que quando não existe tal experiência. Podemos ter muito a perder se acaso deixarmos de considerar o aspecto experiencial da fé cristã com o sagrado. Em primeiro lugar, em nossas formulações teológicas, as quais podem, em maior ou menor grau, enfatizar em demasia aspectos antropocêntricos, deixando de lado o aspecto numinoso. Em segundo lugar, perderemos a oportunidade de influenciar a igreja a vivenciar uma prática espiritual real, que considere, com toda a relevância devida, a experiência de fé e não somente aspectos catequéticos. Por fim, perderemos a possibilidade de analisar a vida de fé, tendo como ponto de partida a experiência de Deus, que pode ter sido agente influenciador número um para uma vida de exemplo de práxis cristã genuína. (shrink)

Les nouvelles formes de terrorisme nous laissent souvent en panne de vocabulaire politique et philosophique. Cet embarras n’est pas une première, si on le compare à celui des penseurs qui, depuis la Réforme jusqu’à Hegel, ont tenté de comprendre les violences politico-religieuses de leur époque. Dans cet article, nous entreprendrons de restituer l’examen critique que ces philosophes ont fait du vocabulaire de la Schwärmerei, de l’enthousiasme, du fanatisme et de la terreur, d’une part, pour en marquer l’ancrage dans les conflits (...) sociaux de leur temps, d’autre part, pour en souligner l’évolution parfois paradoxale. Nous serons ainsi conduits à souligner la modernisation de ce vocabulaire par Luther, sa naturalisation et sécularisation sous les Lumières anglaises et Kant, et enfin sa repolitisation par Hegel dans son analyse de la Terreur dans la Phénoménologie de l’esprit. Les ressources hégéliennes permettent de penser la violence terroriste comme une liberté du vide et une domination de l’abstraction, moment négatif et destructeur du devenir de l’Esprit, et en tant que tels « antipolitiques ». Sa philosophie spéculative applique aussi ce diagnostic à l’Islam, et nous terminerons par quelques remarques critiques à cet égard. (shrink)

For many years G. E. Moore asked himself what was wrong with sentences like ‘I went to the pictures last Tuesday, but I don't believe that I did’, or ‘I believe that he has gone out, but he has not’. He discussed the problem in 1912 in his Ethics , and was still discussing it in 1944 in a paper to the Moral Sciences Club at Cambridge—an event we know about from a letter of Wittgenstein that I shall quote in (...) a moment. Throughout these years of pondering, Moore retained a remarkably stable vocabulary for setting out his solution. Briefly, he held this: saying ‘I went to the pictures last Tuesday, but I don't believe that I did’ is absurd, but not self-contradictory. Not self-contradictory, because ‘it may quite well be true’; yet absurd, because the speaker expressly repudiates, in the second part of the sentence, a belief which he implies by uttering the first part. The panoply of distinctions which subtends this doctrine—sentence v. utterance of sentence, saying v. implying, contradiction v. absurdity—was subjected to keen scrutiny a generation or so ago, and much of it has now passed into philosophical lore as a discussion of ‘Moore's Paradox’. (shrink)

This paper deals with the notion of physico-chemical distance between the living being and its environment, as the result of their separate evolution (see Solignac VI and VIII). Then, it attempts (in vain) to understand it in the theory of information.

Leibniz propôs mais de um conceito para descrever filosoficamente a substância. Ironia instrutiva, esta pluralidade que tem por fim uma explicação unificada da realidade culminou em uma definição dos componentes fundamentais do mundo – as mônadas – como unidades que abrigam a multiplicidade. Estas substâncias, bem como a sua função essencial de se exprimirem mutuamente, apenas se tornam plenamente inteligíveis quando observamos os conceitos anteriores, de que a filosofia madura de Leibniz herdou algumas intuições. Guiando-nos pelas obras-chave do filósofo e (...) físico alemão, procuraremos retraçar esse percurso intelectual, a fim não de esboçar um hipotético sistema seu, mas de _unificar_ o tratamento que ele dispensou à _unidade_. Tal hipótese de leitura concorda fundamentalmente com aquela sustentada por Michel Fichant, mas traz pontuais acréscimos ou desacordos, que serão indicados neste artigo. (shrink)

Claiming the legacy of revolutionary of 1789, the Republicans organise at the end of nineteenth century the French school in its modern form and developpe a philosophy that is “fondationnaire” placing educational institution as foundation of the nation. The idea of the emancipation of the people by rational instruction without neglecting the moral and civic education is well located in the heart of the French school project and aims abstract rational subjects, despite their unique characteristics and affiliations. The phrase “the (...) Republic will be educator or she will not! “claim this fundamentally political intent stay up until the Second World War. After this period, the school system begin to be invested by the economy; during the period of the welfare state, an original synthesis seems to occur between “republican meritocracy, [...] social equality mass... [the] concern individualistic “(Gauchet, 2002), the rising concerns of the economy and employment, making the question of the qualifications of a concern more central. This delicate balance then seems to break during the Twenty pitiful’s years, then the school is characterized by a multiplicating of its missions, the lost of landmarks and the difficulty to make sense. The actual siginification of the scholar system will be questioned regarding to economic and anthropological influence of neo-liberalism, the requirement for long life education and its consequences, and also the education-socialization-qualification relations. (shrink)

Experiences of absence are common in everyday life, but have received little philosophical attention until recently, when two positions regarding the nature of such experiences surfaced in the literature. According to the Perceptual View, experiences of absence are perceptual in nature. This is denied by the Surprise-Based View, according to which experiences of absence belong together with cases of surprise. In this paper, I show that there is a kind of experience of absence—which I call frustrating absences—that has been overlooked (...) by the Perceptual View and by the Surprise Based-View and that cannot be adequately explained by them. I offer an alternative account to deal with frustrating absences, one according to which experiencing frustrating absences is a matter of subjects having desires for something to be present frustrated by the world. Finally, I argue that there may well be different kinds of experiences of absence. (shrink)