En juin 1988, paraît dans Nature un article où est affirmée la possibilité d'un effet moléculaire sans présence physique de molécule ; l'eau se comporterait comme un support liquide sur laquelle des signaux moléculaires pourraient être enregistrés. Cette thèse est soutenue par Jacques Benveniste, un chercheur de l'Inserm alors reconnu pour ses travaux sur les médiateurs de l'allergie. Le jour de la parution de l'article, le journal Le Monde parle d'une découverte qui "pourrait bouleverser les fondements de la physique". C'est (...) le début d'une immense polémique à laquelle Luc Montagnier, prix Nobel de médecine en 2008, a redonné récemment une certaine actualité. L'objectif de ce livre est de proposer un éclairage sociologique sur cette controverse. Après une description des étapes de la controverse, l'auteur s'attache à démontrer que le contenu des arguments et des contre-arguments qui font la trame de la dispute renvoie à des conceptions divergentes des modalités de mise en oeuvre des normes au principe du jugement scientifique. Aucun des protagonistes ne remet complètement en cause ces normes, mais tous s'affrontent sur la façon dont il convient de les mettre en oeuvre. C'est à la découverte des coulisses du processus de légitimation d'une thèse scientifique que le lecteur est convié à partir de l'étude de cette controverse qui a notamment contribué à relancer les débats sur l'homéopathie. (shrink)

Continuous innovation has been built since 2020 with the development of VCDLN which is intended for developers and users of digital sources widely in Indonesia. This innovation was continued in 2024, with the support of AR and VR Technology based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed at the UPI Cibiru Campus. With the support of AR and VR experts, this innovation research product is called DCIRV (Digital Central Innovation for Robotics). This Innovation Research was carried out with a Mix-Method approach to (...) meet the needs of prototype design and educational industry products as well as expert and user testing from the Nusantara region. To measure the quality of innovation products, it has been measured by experts from Bordeaux University France, Kitakyushu University, and McGill University. The findings of the prototype and the DCIRV research findings model, it show that starting from the needs analysis stage, development stage, validation stage, evaluation, and dissemination, DCIRV research products can be recommended as a solution for expanding access, services, and adding digital learning communities throughout the archipelago and even internationally. (shrink)

Marx says of alienated labor that it does not “belong” to the worker, that it issues in a product that does not belong to her, and that it is unfulfilling, unfree, egoistically motivated, and inhuman. He seems to think, moreover, that the first of these features grounds all the others. All of these features seem quite independent, however: they can come apart; they share no obvious common cause or explanation; and if they often occur together, this seems accidental. It is (...) not clear, then, how Marx’s concept of alienated labor could possess the strong unity that he takes it to have. This article defends a reinterpretation of the concept that explains this unity. The various features of alienated labor, the article argues, all follow from a single, hitherto underappreciated feature of its formal motivational structure: the fact that such labor is motivated not by its product but by an incentive. (shrink)

The domain of “folk-economics” consists in explicit beliefs about the economy held by laypeople, untrained in economics, about such topics as, for example, the causes of the wealth of nations, the benefits or drawbacks of markets and international trade, the effects of regulation, the origins of inequality, the connection between work and wages, the economic consequences of immigration, or the possible causes of unemployment. These beliefs are crucial in forming people's political beliefs and in shaping their reception of different policies. (...) Yet, they often conflict with elementary principles of economic theory and are often described as the consequences of ignorance, irrationality, or specific biases. As we will argue, these past perspectives fail to predict the particular contents of popular folk-economic beliefs and, as a result, there is no systematic study of the cognitive factors involved in their emergence and cultural success. Here we propose that the cultural success of particular beliefs about the economy is predictable if we consider the influence of specialized, largely automatic inference systems that evolved as adaptations to ancestral human small-scale sociality. These systems, for which there is independent evidence, include free-rider detection, fairness-based partner choice, ownership intuitions, coalitional psychology, and more. Information about modern mass-market conditions activates these specific inference systems, resulting in particular intuitions, for example, that impersonal transactions are dangerous or that international trade is a zero-sum game. These intuitions in turn make specific policy proposals more likely than others to become intuitively compelling, and, as a consequence, exert a crucial influence on political choices. (shrink)

Normative accounts of the correctness of belief have often been misconstrued. The norm of truth for belief is a constitutive norm which regulates our beliefs through ideals of reason. I try to show that this kind of account can meet some of the main objections which have been raised against normativism about belief: that epistemic reasons enjoy no exclusivity, that the norm of truth does not guide, and that normativism cannot account for suspension of judgement.

In this critical introduction to contemporary philosophical issues in the theory of truth Pascal Engel provides clear and authoritative exposition of recent and current ideas while providing original perspectives that advances discussion of the key issues. This book begins with a presentation of the classical conceptions of truth - the correspondence theory, the coherence theory and verificationist and pragmatist accounts - before examining so-called minimalist and deflationist conceptions that deny truth can be anything more than a thin concept holding (...) no metaphysical weight. The debates between those who favour substantive conceptions of the classical kind and those who advocate minimalist and deflationist conceptions are explored. Engel argues that, although the minimalist conception of truth is basically right, it does not follow that truth can be eliminated from our philosophical thinking as some upholders of radical deflationist views have claimed. Questions about truth and realism are examined and the author shows how the realism/anti-realism debate remains a genuine, meaningful issue for a theory of truth and has not been undermined by deflationist views. Even if a metaphysical substantive theory of truth has little chance to succeed, Engel concludes, truth can keep a central role within our thinking, as a norm or guiding value of our rational inquiries and practices, in the philosophy of knowledge and in ethics. (shrink)

Approximately a quarter of a billion people around the world suffer from malaria each year. Most cases are located in sub-Saharan Africa where Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes are the principal vectors of this public health problem. With the use of CRISPR-based gene drives, the population of mosquitoes can be modified, eventually causing their extinction. First, we discuss the moral status of the organism and argue that using genetically modified mosquitoes to combat malaria should not be abandoned based on some moral value (...) of A. gambiae. Secondly, we argue that environmental impact studies should be performed to obtain an accurate account of the possible effects of a potential eradication of the organism. However, the risks from the purposeful extinction of A. gambiae should not overtake the benefits of eradicating malaria and risk assessments should be used to determine acceptable risks. Thirdly, we argue that the eventual release of the genetically modified mosquitoes will depend on transparency, community involvement, and cooperation between different nations. (shrink)

This study investigates the social–psychological mechanisms leading individuals in organizations to engage in environmental citizenship behaviors, which entail keeping abreast of, and participating in, the environmental affairs of a company. Informed by the corporate greening and organizational behavior literature, we suggested that an employee’s level of involvement in the management of a company’s environmental impact was the overt manifestation of his or her discretionary sense of commitment to environmental concerns in the work context, and that such commitment developed through the (...) interplay of individual, organizational, and supervisory factors. Our general findings support the idea that when environmental protection is valued and encouraged by the company and line managers, organization members are more likely to experience a volitional sense of attachment and responsibility to corporate environmental goals and values, which is enacted through citizenship behaviors. We also expected that individual ecological beliefs would strengthen the environmental commitment of employees via identification with, and adherence to, the socially responsible cause embodied by the organization and its managerial staff. But it did not. On the contrary, the data indicated that corporate environmental policy is more likely to influence an employee’s level of environmental commitment when he or she holds weak versus strong personal ecological beliefs. Theoretical and managerial implications of our findings are discussed. (shrink)

Religions “in the wild” are the varied set of religious activities that occurred before the emergence of organized religions with doctrines, or that persist at the margins of those organized traditions. These religious activities mostly focus on misfortune; on how to remedy specific cases of illness, accidents, failures; and on how to prevent them. I present a general model to account for the cross-cultural recurrence of these particular themes. The model is based on features of human psychology—namely, epistemic vigilance, the (...) set of systems whereby we evaluate the quality of information and of sources of information, and threat-detection psychology, the set of evolved systems geared at detecting potential danger in the environment. Given these two sets of systems, the dynamics of communication will favor particular types of messages about misfortune. This makes it possible to predict recurrent features of religious systems, such as the focus on nonphysical agents, the focus on particular cases rather than general aspects of misfortune, and the emergence of specialists. The model could illuminate not just why such representations are culturally successful, but also why people are motivated to formulate them in the first place. (shrink)

Recent work in biology, cognitive psychology, and archaeology has renewed evolutionary perspectives on the role of natural selection in the emergence and recurrent forms of religious thought and behavior, i.e., mental representations of supernatural agents, as well as artifacts, ritual practices, moral systems, ethnic markers, and specific experiences associated with these representations. One perspective, inspired from behavioral ecology, attempts to measure the fitness effects of religious practices. Another set of models, representative of evolutionary psychology, explain religious thought and behavior as (...) the output of cognitive systems (e.g., animacy detection, social cognition, precautionary reasoning) that are not exclusive to the religious domain. In both perpectives, the question remains open, whether religious thought and behavior constitute an adaptation or a by-product of adaptive cognitive function. (shrink)

The diversity of interpretations of Aristotle’s treatment of chance and luck springs from an apparent contradiction between the claims that “chance events are for the sake of something” and that “chance events are not for the sake of their outcome.” Chance seems to entail the denial of an end. Yet Aristotle systematically refers it to what is for the sake of an end. This paper suggests that, in order to give an account of chance, a reference to “per accidens causes” (...) is not sufficient. Chance occurs as a parody of teleology; it is a“for-no-purpose” that looks like a purpose. The notion of “irony” is suggested as a way of accounting for a situation that keeps an ambiguity open. The fact that chance is thought of in relation to teleology does not mean that it is “reappropriated” by teleology. Rather,chance reveals a hiatus that betrays the limitation of a language concerned with substances to account for events. (shrink)

Pascal Engel | : À partir d’une typologie des formes de connaissance, je soutiens qu’il y a trois formes principales de connaissance littéraire : cognitive propositionnelle, affective et pratique. La conception propositionnelle est erronée : la littérature ne fournit pas directement une forme de savoir que. La conception affective ou expressiviste peut au mieux dire qu’il y a des effets cognitifs des oeuvres littéraires. La conception pratique a le plus de chances d’être correcte, mais seulement si l’on accepte l’idée (...) que le savoir pratique est en partie basé sur le savoir propositionnel. | : Starting from a typology of kinds of knowledge, I argue that there are three basic conceptions of literary knowledge : cognitive propositional, affective , and practical. The cognitive conception is misguided : literary knowledge cannot be directly a form of knowledge that. The affective or expressivist conception is too weak : it can at best amount to the idea that there are cognitive effects of literary works. The practical conception is the most promising, but only if one accepts that knowing how is partly based on knowing that and propositional knowledge. (shrink)

This paper tries to say in what sense truth is a norm, a thesis that Donald Davidson, whose view are examined, denies. After skteching his conception of rationality, it is argued that truth is a norm in only the sense that we ought to believe what we believe is true, not that we all to believe everything which is true. This minimal norm of truth is isolated and defended.

The master argument posits a metaphysical thesis: Diodorus does away with Aristotle’s dunamis understood as a power simultaneously oriented toward being and non-being and proclaims that possibilities that fail to actualize are simply nothing. My contention is that this claim is not a mere application of Diodorus’ contribution to modal logic. Rather, Diodorus creates an ontologico-temporal concept of possibility and impossibility. Diodorus envisions the future as the past that the future will become. Since what will have been can never be (...) the accomplishment of a possibility that did not obtain, and since the future is destined to become past, any futural possibility that doesn’t actualize is neither futural nor even possible. (shrink)

BackgroundCurrent preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) technologies enable embryo genotyping across the whole genome. This has led to the development of polygenic risk scoring of human embryos (PGT-P). Recent implementation of PGT-P, including screening for intelligence, has been extensively covered by media reports, raising major controversy. Considering the increasing demand for assisted reproduction, we evaluated how information about PGT-P is communicated in press media and explored the diversity of ethical themes present in the public debate.MethodsLexisNexis Academic database and Google News were (...) searched to identify articles about polygenic embryo screening. This led to 535 news articles. 59 original articles met the inclusion criteria. Inductive content analysis was used to analyse these articles.Results8.8% of articles gave embryo polygenic scoring a positive portrayal, while 36.8% expressed a negative attitude. 54.4% were neutral, mostly highlighting limited practical value of the technology in in vitro fertilization settings. We identified five main ethical themes that are also present in academic literature and the broader debate on reproductive technologies: a slippery slope towards designer babies, well-being of the child and parents, impact on society, deliberate choice and societal readiness.ConclusionsImplementation of embryo polygenic profiling engenders a need for specific recommendations. Current media analysis discloses important ethical themes to consider when creating future guidelines for PGT-P. (shrink)

Critical evaluations of the current movement of corporate social responsibility commodification have neglected an important question: How do CSR professionals manage the tensions resulting from the search for both profit and social responsibility? This article addresses this question by analyzing the discourse of CSR consultants with the aim of understanding how they deal with such tensions through identity work. Our findings suggest that people who claim, or who are ascribed, paradoxical professional identities may engage in ‘paradoxical identity mitigation’ – a (...) process whereby the concomitant and paradoxical use of linguistic strategies is aimed at simultaneously embracing and distancing oneself from contradictory identity demands. In uncovering how CSR professionals discursively manage the tensions engendered by CSR commodification, our results also advance current knowledge of CSR by shedding light on the underlying processes whereby new ‘hybrid’ identities are constituted and mobilized by actors to make sense of their professional activities. (shrink)

Evolutionary adaptation has been suggested as the hallmark of life that best accounts for life’s creativity. However, current evolutionary approaches still fail to give an adequate account of it, even if they are able to explain both the origin of novelties and the proliferation of certain traits in a population. Although modern-synthesis Darwinism is today usually appraised as too narrow a position to cope with all the complexities of developmental and structural biology—not to say biosemiotic phenomena—, Darwinism need not be (...) if we separate metaphor from reality in natural selection in order to show the axiological complexity of this concept. This can shed light on the relationship between biosemiotics and biological evolution. (shrink)

In ethology, and more generally in the study of animal behavior, observations are _theory-laden_. A review of theories of animal behavior reveals that the animal is a variable _object_, shaped by variable levels of causality. This approach to animal behavior, which differs radically from the way psychology studies human behavior, is a consequence of the difficulty of treating animals as _subjects_ in ethology, where they are most often studied _in the third person_. However, there is a subjectivist tradition in the (...) study of animal behavior, influenced by a phenomenological background. Our aim to promote a _at first person_ approach has led us to propose an etho-phenomenology based on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, Francisco Varela’s enaction theory and constructivist psychology. However, in order to legitimize this approach to animal behavior, we apply it here to behaviors that seem abnormal according to traditional explanatory frameworks, such as actospatiality, tail carrying in mice or expressing ambivalence displayed through color in octopuses. Furthermore, to explore issues such as human-animal communication, the etho-phenomenological perspective is combined with the notion of participatory sense-making, leading us to propose a theory of emotional hybridization. (shrink)

In order to study the relationship between genes and diseases, the increasing availability and sharing of phenotypic and genotypic data have been promoted as an imperative within the scientific community. In parallel with data sharing practices by clinicians and researchers, recent initiatives have been observed in which individuals are sharing personal genomic data. The involvement of individuals in such initiatives is facilitated by the increased accessibility of personal genomic data, offered by private test providers along with availability of online networks. (...) Personal webpages and on-line data sharing platforms such as Consent to Research, Free the Data, and Genomes Unzipped are being utilized to host and share genotypes, electronic health records and family history uploaded by individuals. Although personal genomic data sharing initiatives vary in nature, the emphasis on the individuals’ control on their data in order to benefit research and ultimately health care has seen as a key theme across these initiatives. In line with the growing practice of personal genomic data sharing, this paper aims to shed light on the potential challenges surrounding these initiatives. As in the course of these initiatives individuals are solicited to individually balance the risks and benefits of sharing their genomic data, their awareness of the implications of personal genomic data sharing for themselves and their family members is a necessity. Furthermore, given the sensitivity of genomic data and the controversies around their complete de-identifiability, potential privacy risks and harms originating from unintended uses of data have to be taken into consideration. (shrink)

Milgram’s experiments have had a considerable influence on the historical study of genocidal behavior, which originated with Christopher Browning’s groundbreaking book Ordinary Men. The purpose of my article is to examine and critically assess the following theory which is often taken somewhat for granted: “Relevance thesis: findings in social psychology, most notably Milgram’s findings about obedience behavior, are causally relevant to explaining perpetrators’ behaviors.” The relevance theory presupposes that certain paradigmatic studies in social psychology have both internal and external validity. (...) In the context of the replication crisis which has affected many recent findings in social psychology, it seems crucial to discuss this presupposition. I shall argue that the evidence is mixed. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify some issues about what is usually called “doxastic voluntarism”. This phrase often hides a confusion between two separate (although connected) issues: whether beliefis or can be, as a matter of psychological fact, under the control of the will, on the one hand, and whether we can have practical reasons to believe something, or whether our beliefs are subject to any sort of “ought”, on the other hand. The first issue -- which I prefer to call (...) the issue of volitionism about belief -- is psychological, and I take the answer to be negative, along the lines of the conceptual arguments against believing at will adduced by writers such as Bernard Williams. The second issue -- which I call voluntarism proper -- is normative, and the answer that I give is a qualified yes. Belief is not a matter of the will, although there are certain things that we ought to believe. (shrink)

It is often argued that a radical interpretation procedure for the analysis of thought (especially davidson's) is committed to the thesis that thoughts are essentially structured entities, And is therefore false because many structures of thought do not match linguistic or semantic structures. The author attempts to defend davidson's theory of radical interpretation against such criticisms and to show that the interdependence of thought and language presupposed by this theory does not mean a primacy of either one over the other.

Existentialist philosophy offers an understanding of how trying to eliminate ambiguities that inevitably mark the human condition only seemingly leads to freedom. This existentialist outlook can also serve to shed light on how democratic politics may similarly show tendencies which aim at overcoming immanent tensions. Such tendencies in democratic politics can be clarified using Sartre’s notion of ignorance – and truth as its counterpart. His concept of ignorance goes beyond merely facts or knowledge and refers to a mode of being. (...) It expresses a subject’s desire to avoid, rather than confront, resistances stemming from the world. Based on a distinction of different forms in which this orientation can manifest itself, this article shows how democratic politics, too, can be threatened by ignorance as a way of doing politics. This ignorance comes in different guises which all express a desire to eliminate tensions that democratic politics cannot overcome without undermining itself. (shrink)

Kant révolutionne la manière de penser en philosophie. Penser, ce n'est plus réfléchir sur l'homme, c'est fonder et mettre en œuvre une existence proprement humaine. L'humanité se révèle être impossible à définir. Elle se constitue comme un mouvement incessant vers un universel qui n'est jamais donné. L'homme est donc tout entier mystère. Mystère d'une liberté qui fait signe à la fois vers Dieu et vers le monde. Mystère d'une origine et d'une destination. Mystère d'une confiance et d'une espérance fondées dans (...) l'indéterminable. Tel est le sens de l'éthique : instituer une existence qui doit habiter le monde en faisant à chaque instant l'épreuve de son humanité."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

C'est en mettant en oeuvre l'Idée de la philosophie comme métaphysique scientifique que Kant met au jour l'"être" de l'homme, c'est-à-dire l'a priori transcendantal qui fonde l'existence proprement humaine. Il y aurait donc cooriginarité de l'existence de l'homme et de l'essence de la "philosophie". De ce point de vue, l'existence, à proprement parler, est"philosophique". Ainsi, 1'"éthique" existentielle peut être pensée comme l'Idée même de la "vérité", "vérité" de l'homme, "être" - "devoir-être" qui fonde la représentation de toute "vérité" théorique, esthétique (...) et pratique. Mais comment penser l'origine même de cette Idée d'une "vérité" de l'existence humaine, c'est-à-dire d'un "propre" de l'homme? Donc l'origine de l'Idée même de "philosophie"? Ce qui est le plus originaire, ne serait-ce pas la résolution d'exister (et de concevoir l'existence) d'une manière spécifique, que nous qualifions de "philosophique"? Mais si l'Idée de l'existence humaine se conçoit en termes de décisionnisme "philosophique", quel est le "sens" de ce décisionnisme? Autrement dit, puisque la question "qu'est-ce que l'homme" est, comme le soutient Kant, la question de la "philosophie", qu'est-ce donc que la "philosophie"? (shrink)

La logique occupe dans la pensée contemporaine une place privilégiée : elle est, pour certains, une méthode universelle et, pour d'autres, l'accomplissement d'une rationalité arrogante.Pascal Engel montre combien les questions philosophiques que soulève la logique sont, au-delà de leur apparente technicité, des plus classiques. La logique, en effet, circonscrit le domaine du vrai : quelle est la nature des vérités logiques? En quoi se distinguent-elles des autres vérités et sont-elles «nécessaires» ou «a priori»? Décrivent-elles les lois d'un univers immuable (...) ou sont-elles des règles et des conventions linguistiques que nous pourrions changer à notre guise? Les inférences dont traite la logique et que l'on dit souvent triviales peuvent-elles être fécondes, comme le soutenait Leibniz, par la seule «force de la forme»? Et qu'est-ce qu'une forme logique?Faire une philosophie de la logique, ce n'est pas seulement inventorier des formes, c'est surtout analyser leurs conditions d'application au langage, à la pensée et à la réalité. Ainsi la logique retrouve-t-elle sa place : celle d'une théorie des conditions normatives de la rationalité, d'une norme du vrai. (shrink)

Une relecture de ce philosophe anglais (1676-1729), à la lumière de ce que disaient de et contre lui ses adversaires théologiens (Clarke, Berkeley), et surtout, de ce qu'il disait de lui-même. Pour ce libre-penseur, le concept de Dieu est vide de sens ou contradictoire, le dualisme créationniste une hypothèse intenable, et le christianisme un simple produit du besoin anthropologique de croire.

Olivier HANSE, Rythme et civilisation dans la pensée allemande autour de 1900, thèse de Doctorat en Études germaniques, 2007. À paraître bientôt aux Presses Universitaires de Saint-Étienne. Voir la présentation ici. La thèse d'Olivier Hanse apporte une contribution de très grande valeur à notre connaissance de l'Allemagne des années 1900-1940, tout particulièrement de ces mouvements de réforme de la vie qui ont constitué l'un des terreaux du - Études germaniques – Nouvel article.

Extrait de P. Michon, Rythmes, pouvoir, mondialisation, Paris, PUF, 2005, p. 51-57. Dans son grand livre Les Nuer, Evans-Pritchard apporte tout un ensemble de matériaux qui permettent de porter encore un peu plus loin notre réflexion sur les rythmes de l'individuation. Grâce à lui, nous disposons du portrait psycho-sociologique d'une population archaïque établi par une observation de terrain. Or, le résultat est saisissant. Mauss avait déjà montré que l'idée traditionnelle au XIXe siècle – - Anthropologie.