Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole were philosophers and theologians associated with Port-Royal Abbey, a centre of the Catholic Jansenist movement in seventeenth-century France. Their enormously influential Logic or the Art of Thinking, which went through five editions in their lifetimes, treats topics in logic, language, theory of knowledge and metaphysics, and also articulates the response of 'heretical' Jansenist Catholicism to orthodox Catholic and Protestant views on grace, free will and the sacraments. In attempting to combine the categorical theory of (...) the proposition with a Cartesian account of knowledge, their Logic represents the classical view of judgment which inspired the modern transformation in logic and semantic theory by Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and recent philosophers. This edition presents a new translation of the text, together with a historical introduction and suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

Attention to internal body sensations is practiced in most meditation traditions. Many traditions state that this practice results in increased awareness of internal body sensations, but scientific studies evaluating this claim are lacking. We predicted that experienced meditators would display performance superior to that of nonmeditators on heartbeat detection, a standard noninvasive measure of resting interoceptive awareness. We compared two groups of meditators (Tibetan Buddhist and Kundalini) to an age- and body mass index-matched group of nonmeditators. Contrary to our prediction, (...) we found no evidence that meditators were superior to nonmeditators in the heartbeat detection task, across several sessions and respiratory modulation conditions. Compared to nonmeditators, however, meditators consistently rated their interoceptive performance as superior and the difficulty of the task as easier. These results provide evidence against the notion that practicing attention to internal body sensations, a core feature of meditation, enhances the ability to sense the heartbeat at rest. (shrink)

Danchin argues that if scientists can reach a level of understanding of genomes, they will be able to resolve the major biological puzzle of the 21st century: the enigma of the living machine that creates the living machine.

Spiritualism designates a philosophy that lays claim to the separation of mind and body and the ontological and epistemological primacy of the former. In France, it is associated with the names of Victor Cousin and René Descartes, or more precisely with what Cousin made of Descartes as the founding father of a brittle rational psychology, closed off from the positive sciences, and as a critic in respect to the empiricist legacy of the idéologues. Moreover, by considering merely the end result, (...) severed from its polemical genesis, we are prevented from understanding how the category of experience constituted a crucial question for spiritualism itself. Through returning to the origin of these discussions in the 1826 preface to Cousin’s Fragments philosophiques, this essay pursues a threefold path: to show that the public birth of Cousinian spiritualism coincides with the affirmation of applying the experimental method, issuing from Bacon, to the study of facts of consciousness; that Cousin’s later evolution follows a process of radicalization—that is, in this context, of ontologization and of reduction; and that by recovering this genesis, we can distinguish many forms of spiritualisms committed to the experimental method, both in alliance with the early Cousin and against the later Cousin. In this way, we can rediscover the interwoven philosophical links, lost in the process of institutionalization, between metaphysical demands and empiricist concerns, or between “French” philosophy and the legacy of Condillac. (shrink)

Recent brain imaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have implicated insula and anterior cingulate cortices in the empathic response to another’s pain. However, virtually nothing is known about the impact of the voluntary generation of compassion on this network. To investigate these questions we assessed brain activity using fMRI while novice and expert meditation practitioners generated a loving-kindness-compassion meditation state. To probe affective reactivity, we presented emotional and neutral sounds during the meditation and comparison periods. Our main hypothesis (...) was that the concern for others cultivated during this form of meditation enhances affective processing, in particular in response to sounds of distress, and that this response to emotional sounds is modulated by the degree of meditation training. The presentation of the emotional sounds was associated with increased pupil diameter and activation of limbic regions (insula and cingulate cortices) during meditation (versus rest). During meditation, activation in insula was greater during presentation of negative sounds than positive or neutral sounds in expert than it was in novice meditators. The strength of activation in insula was also associated with self-reported intensity of the meditation for both groups. These results support the role of the limbic circuitry in emotion sharing. The comparison between meditation vs. rest states between experts and novices also showed increased activation in amygdala, right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), and right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) in response to all sounds, suggesting, greater detection of the emotional sounds, and enhanced mentation in response to emotional human vocalizations for experts than novices during meditation. Together these data indicate that the mental expertise to cultivate positive emotion alters the activation of circuitries previously linked to empathy and theory of mind in response to emotional stimuli.. (shrink)

The story of L’Homme is a true novel. Its plot weaves itself along three intersecting points: an unfinished text, a copied or plagiarised text, and a corrected text. Telling this whole and complex story helps us to understand the true place of Descartes in the history of modern anthropology and in the contemporary attempt to explain cognition, memory, sensation and human health. In a nutshell, it is probably the best way to understand the Cartesian contribution to the vast philosophical programme (...) of seeking to know oneself. (shrink)

Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Imagerie Ce´re´brale (LENA), Hoˆpital de La Salpeˆtrie`re, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

Antoine Pecquet wrote in the eighteenth century during the reign of Louis XV. Although he included Pascal among those he admired, he considered Alexander Pope his true mentor. In Part 1 of "Diverse Thoughts on Man," Pecquet reflects on Man's responsibilities as an individual: in Part 2, on Man's responsibilities as a member of society. Among these responsibilities he includes human and social concerns, such as parental and filial obligations, and the transfer of wealth between generations. In the tradition (...) of Montaigne, Pecquet intended his "Diverse Thoughts on Man" to help his readers learn more about themselves. Although he felt that those who would profit most from his book were readers who had not greatly pondered about themselves, he believed that every reader could find something of value in it. (shrink)

La reception du christianisme byzantin par l'Eglise catholique presente une sorte d'anomalie. Invoquant l'autorite de Thomas d'Aquin, les theologiens occidentaux rejettent generalement l'idee d'une distinction reelle entre l'essence et les energies divines, tout comme la notion de grace increee, laquelle joue un role essentiel dans la vision de Gregoire Palamas (XIVe siecle). D'un autre cote, ces memes theologiens ont ete nombreux a redecouvrir, durant la periode recente, la pensee de Maxime le Confesseur (VIIe siecle), voyant en celui-ci un genial precurseur (...) de Thomas d'Aquin. Or que resterait-il de la doctrine de Gregoire Palamas sans le patronage de Maxime le Confesseur? Comment meconnaitre l'un et reconnaitre l'autre au nom du meme Thomas d'Aquin? Ce qui vient ici au jour a travers l'etude des contextes et des enjeux doctrinaux, c'est la coexistence, jusqu'alors insoupconnee, de deux representations distinctes du rapport entre le cree et l'incree. L'Occident latin et l'Orient byzantin n'en finissent pas de comprendre differemment cette foi qui leur est pourtant indiscutablement commune. (shrink)

The capacity to stabilize the content of attention over time varies among individuals, and its impairment is a hallmark of several mental illnesses. Impairments in sustained attention in patients with attention disorders have been associated with increased trial-to-trial variability in reaction time and event-related potential deficits during attention tasks. At present, it is unclear whether the ability to sustain attention and its underlying brain circuitry are transformable through training. Here, we show, with dichotic listening task performance and electroencephalography, that training (...) attention, as cultivated by meditation, can improve the ability to sustain atten- tion. Three months of intensive meditation training reduced variability in attentional processing of target tones, as indicated by both enhanced theta-band phase consistency of oscillatory neural responses over anterior brain areas and reduced reaction time variability. Furthermore, those individuals who showed the greatest increase in neural response consistency showed the largest decrease in behav- ioral response variability. Notably, we also observed reduced variability in neural processing, in particular in low-frequency bands, regardless of whether the deviant tone was attended or unattended. Focused attention meditation may thus affect both distracter and target processing, perhaps by enhancing entrainment of neuronal oscillations to sensory input rhythms, a mechanism important for controlling the content of attention. These novel findings highlight the mechanisms underlying focused attention meditation and support the notion that mental training can significantly affect attention and brain function. (shrink)

This article offers an analysis of ecologist Charles Elton’s “functional” concept of the niche and of the notion of function implicitly associated with it. It does so in part by situating Elton’s niche concept within the broader context of the “functionalist-interactionist” approach to ecology he introduced, and in relation to his views on the relationship between ecology and evolution. This involves criticizing the common claim that Elton’s idea of species as fulfilling functional roles within ecological communities committed him to an (...) idea of communities as units of selection. While such a claim implicitly attributes to Elton an understanding of function along the lines of the selected-effects theory of function advocated by many biologists and philosophers of biology, Elton’s use of the niche concept, I maintain, involves an understanding of function more along the lines of alternative nonselectionist theories such as the causal-role, goal-contribution, and organizational theories. I also briefly discuss how ecologists after Elton also tend to have typically adopted a nonselectionist understanding of the function concept, similar to his. (shrink)

This paper discusses Millstein’s criticism of the consensus view formed against selected-effects ecological functions. I argue that Millstein’s defense of coevolution-based selected-effects ecological functions applies to a notion of function as an activity, whereas proponents of the consensus view are concerned with a notion of ecological function as the contribution of an organism, population, species, or abiotic item to the maintenance of its community and/or the functioning of its ecosystem. Millstein’s arguments hence do not invalidate the consensus view but draw (...) attention to a notion of function that has been neglected in philosophical discussions and that deserves more attention. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the presumption that there are distinct ethical differences between the supposedly ‘Anglo-Saxon liberal’ and ‘Latin (Southern European) paternalist’ ethical traditions. The predominance of the bioethical paradigm (principalism) is measured by a comparative analysis of regional moral opinion reflected in nation-state health laws. By looking at the way the ethico-legal concept figures into various national ordinances, we attempt to ascertain the extent and nature of variation (if any) between localities by exploring the understanding and application of principalism’s (...) keystone: patient autonomy. (shrink)

This paper criticizes Jerome Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction analysis of disorder by arguing that the conceptual linkage it establishes between the medical concepts of health and disorder and the prudential notions of well-being and harm makes the account inapplicable to nonsentient organisms, such as plants, fungi, and many invertebrate animals. Drawing on a previous formulation of this criticism by Christopher Boorse, and noting that Wakefield could avoid it if he adopted a partly biofunction-based account of interests like that often advocated in (...) the field of environmental ethics, I argue that integrating such an account of interests into the HDA would generate serious concerns. Specifically, it would make dysfunction sufficient for disorder and so reestablish between dysfunction and disorder precisely the kind of sufficiency relation that harm-requiring accounts of disorder strive to avoid; blur the line between the HDA’s dysfunction and harm components and, in so doing, deprive the HDA of its alleged main advantage over monistic dysfunction-based accounts of disorders like Boorse’s; and tie the HDA to an understanding of harm that is in itself problematic. I argue that these three concerns, and the dilemmas they generate, rob the HDA of much of its prima facie appeal, ultimately indicating that a satisfactory account of disorder should most likely eschew all references to prudential notions of well-being and harm. (shrink)

In the following article, starting from a progressive understanding of his own subjectivity, a determining factor in developing his capacity to listen to adolescents, the author puts forward the hypothesis that a professional position he describes as "in-between" requires rigor and flexibility, enabling professionals to remain permeable to the unconscious mobilizations of the adolescent-subjects as well as to his own. The author will draw on the results of a longitudinal, partnership-based study that he conducted with ten adolescents, from 2015 to (...) 2020, involving a team of specialized prevention educators. More specifically, the author will retrospectively analyze some excerpts from his encounter with one of the teenagers to reveal possible ways in which a "professional of the social bond" might adopt a rigorous in-between position. (shrink)

Publie en 1683 comme un preambule a la refutation du Traite de la nature et de la grace de Nicolas Malebranche, l'ouvrage Vraies et fausses idees d'Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694) a connu un etonnant destin. Cette defense tres argumentee de la conception cartesienne des idees est peu a peu devenue un texte incontournable dans les debats de philosophie de la connaissance, cite et commente aussi bien par les auteurs classiques que dans les debats anglosaxons contemporains. Ce volume en propose la (...) premiere edition critique annotee en francais. Des annexes apportent en outre quelques outils pour se reperer dans l'important corpus de textes de philosophie de la connaissance rediges par Arnauld. (shrink)

This paper reinforces the current consensus against the applicability of the selected effect theory of function in ecology. It does so by presenting an argument which, in contrast with the usual argument invoked in support of this consensus, is not based on claims about whether ecosystems are customary units of natural selection. Instead, the argument developed here is based on observations about the use of the function concept in functional ecology, and more specifically, research into the relationship between biodiversity and (...) ecosystem functioning. It is argued that a selected effect account of ecological functions is made implausible by the fact that it would conflict with important aspects of the understanding of function and ecosystem functional organization which underpins functional ecology’s research program. Specifically, it would conflict with (1) Functional ecology’s adoption of a context-based understanding of function and its aim to study the functional equivalence between phylogenetically-divergent organisms; (2) Functional ecology’s attribution to ecosystems of a lower degree of part-whole integration than the one found in paradigm individual organisms; and (3) Functional ecology’s adoption of a physiological or metabolic perspective on ecosystems rather than an evolutionary one. (shrink)

Understanding the emergence of a tangible 4-dimensional space-time from a quantum theory of gravity promises to be a tremendously difficult task. This article makes the case that this task may not have to be carried. Space-time as we know it may be fundamental to begin with. I recall the common arguments against this possibility and review a class of recently discovered models bypassing the most serious objection. The generic solution of the measurement problem that is tied to semiclassical gravity as (...) well as the difficulty of the alternative make it a reasonable default option in the absence of decisive experimental evidence. (shrink)

In Escherichia coli, the role of lacA, the third gene of the lactose operon, has remained an enigma. I suggest that its role is the consequence of the need for cells to have safety valves that protect them from the osmotic effect created by their permeases. Safety valves allow them to cope with the buildup of osmotic pressure under accidental transient conditions. Multidrug resistance (MDR) efflux, thus named because of our anthropocentrism, is ubiquitous. Yet, the formation of simple leaks would (...) result in futile influx/efflux cycles. Versatile modification enzymes with low sensitivity solve the problem if the modified metabolite is the one exported by MDR permeases. This may account for the pervasive presence of acetyl-transferases, such as LacA, associated to acetyl-metabolite exporters. This scenario of constraints imposed by efficient influx of metabolites provides us with a model that should be followed when constructing synthetic cells. (shrink)

Zygon®, Volume 56, Issue 4, Page 846-873, December 2021.

This paper analyzes community ecologist Charles Elton’s ideas on animal communities, and situates them with respect to the classical opposition between organicist–holistic and individualistic–reductionist ecological views drawn by many historians of ecology. It is argued that Elton espoused a moderate ecological holism, which drew a middle way between the stricter ecological holism advocated by organicist ecologists and the merely aggregationist views advocated by some of their opponents. It is also argued that Elton’s moderate ecological holism resonated with his preference for (...) analogies between ecological communities and human societies over more common ones between communities and individual organisms. I discuss, on the one hand, how the functionalist-interactionist approach to community ecology introduced by Elton entailed a view of ecological communities as more or less self-maintaining functionally organized wholes, and how his ideas on this matter were incorporated into their views by organicist ecologists Frederic Clements, Victor Shelford, and Warder C. Allee et al. On the other hand, I identify some important divergences between Elton’s ecological ideas and those of organicist ecologists. Specifically, I show how Elton’s ideas on species distribution, animal migrations, and ecological succession entailed a view of animal communities as exhibiting a weaker degree of part-whole integration than that attributed to them by Clements and Shelford; and how Elton’s mixed stance on the balance of nature idea and his associated views on community stability attributed to communities a weaker form of self-regulation than that attributed to them by Allee et al. (shrink)

"Le roseau pensant, les deux infinis, le pari ou le nez de Cléopâtre : les Pensées renferment tant de formules et d'images inoubliables. Pascal fut un virtuose de la langue française, mais d'abord un mathématicien et un physicien incomparable, et encore un philosophe et un théologien hors pair. Plusieurs de ses sentences sont inscrites dans le cerveau de tout Français : "Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie" ; Qui veut faire l'ange fait la bête" ; "Le coeur a (...) ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point". Au moins depuis Chateaubriand, nous négligeons que les Pensées offrent les rudiments d'une Apologie de la religion chrétienne", et Pascal représente pour nous l'homme moderne partagé entre la science et la foi, soumis au tragique du Dieu caché et à l'angoisse de la condition humaine. On devrait mettre dans le journal, moi je ne sais pas, les... Pensées de Pascal", disait le Swann de Proust. C'est un peu ce que nous avons tenté de faire dans cet Été avec Pascal."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Résumé Placée au carrefour d’influences très diverses, du catholicisme à l’idéalisme allemand en passant par le déisme des Lumières, la religion saint-simonienne pose de délicats problèmes d’interprétation. Il convient de distinguer la vision religieuse développée par Saint-Simon de celle que forgent progressivement ses disciples. L’accent mis sur l’activité spontanée de l’homme constitue en revanche un trait commun. Ces différents problèmes d’interprétation soulevés, il reste à s’interroger sur les motivations et les comportements mis en jeu par la pratique religieuse saint-simonienne. Par-delà (...) ses ambiguïtés, cette dernière témoigne de l’exigence de renouveau spirituel qui s’exprime au cours de la première moitié du xix e siècle. (shrink)

John Law left a remarkable legacy of economic concepts from a time when economic conceptualization was very much at an embryonic stage. Yet he is best known--and generally dismissed--today as a rake, duellist, and gambler. This intellectual biography offers a new approach to Law, one that shows him to have been a significant economic theorist with a vision that he attempted to implement as policy in early-eighteenth-century Europe. Law's style, marked by a clarity and use of modern terminology, stands out (...) starkly against the turgid prose of many of his contemporaries. His vision of a monetary and financial system was certainly one of a later age, for Law believed in an economy of banknotes and credit where specie had no role to play. Ultimately Law failed as a policy-maker, in part because of the entrenchment of the financiers and their aristocratic backers and in part because of theoretical flaws in his vision. His struggle for power took place against the background of Europe's first major stock boom and collapse. The collapse of the Mississippi System, which he had conceived, and the South Sea Bubble led to a lasting impression of Law as a failure. It is this impression that Antoin Murphy seeks to dispel. (shrink)

PLoS ONE 3(3): e1897. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.

Antoine Altieri Nous nous proposons dans cet article d’interroger, à la lumière de la conception henryenne de l’art telle qu’elle s’expose dans Voir l’invisible, le rapport que cette modalité particulière de l’expression entretient avec la « vie », qui est toujours vie de l’artiste. Il s’agira pour ce faire d’interroger l’antique notion de « Mimèsis », et de proposer le sens véritable qu’il faut accorder à l’« imitation » dans l’art : le propre de l’imitation étant de ne pas (...) faire oublier qu’elle est une imitation. Mais nous nous proposerons ainsi de déterminer ce qu’il en est de la « naissance » de l’artiste : l’artiste est celui qui « naît » véritablement, tel qu’en lui-même dans sa singularité, du fait de communier avec la vie de cela même qu’il représente. (shrink)

When one considers the extent and scientific and technical character of the work done in the field of communication in the past two or three decades, with a view to evolving a methodology of the social sciences there, one is struck by the impressive number and the no-less considerable diversity of factors which figure in this young, all-affecting discipline, recently freed from the hold of philosophy. Such is the case in all the social sciences and that, moreover, is why Lazarsfeld (...) rightly contends that in sociological matters it is a good idea to multiply the “partial inquiries” in order, one day, to combine them into one all-inclusive sociology. (shrink)

Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Volume 26, Issue 3, Page 243-245, July-September.