Evidence and theory ranging from traditional philosophy to contemporary cognitive research support the hypothesis that consciousness has a two-part structure: a focused region of articulated experience surrounded by a field of relatively unarticulated, vague experience.William James developed an especially useful phenomenological analysis of this "fringe" of consciousness, but its relation to, and potential value for, the study of cognition has not been explored. I propose strengthening James′ work on the fringe with a functional analysis: fringe experiences work to radically condense (...) context information in consciousness; are vague because a more explicit representation of context information would overwhelm consciousness′ limited articulation capacity; help mediate retrieval functions in consciousness; and contain a subset of monitoring and control experiences that cannot be elaborated in focal attention and are "ineffable." In general, the phenomenology of the fringe is a consequence of its cognitive functions, constrained by consciousness′ limited articulation capacity. Crucial to monitoring and control is the feeling of "rightness." Rightness functions as a summary index of cognitive integration, representing, in the fringe, the degree of positive fit between a given conscious content and its parallel, unconsciously encoded context. Rightness appears analogous to the connectionist metric of global network integration, known variously as goodness-of-fit, harmony, or minimum energy. (shrink)

Non-sensory experiences represent almost all context information in consciousness. They condition most aspects of conscious cognition including voluntary retrieval, perception, monitoring, problem solving, emotion, evaluation, meaning recognition. Many peculiar aspects of non-sensory qualia (e.g., they resist being 'grasped' by an act of attention) are explained as adaptations shaped by the cognitive functions they serve. The most important nonsensory experience is coherence or "rightness." Rightness represents degrees of context fit among contents in consciousness, and between conscious and non-conscious processes. Rightness (not (...) familiarity) is the feeling-of-knowing in implicit cognition. The experience of rightness suggests that neural mechanisms "compute" signals indicating the global dynamics of network integration. (shrink)

Après le scientisme triomphant du 19ème siècle, le 20ème siècle est marqué par la prise de conscience progressive de l'absence de coïncidence entre progrès scientifique et progrès humain. Depuis le début des années 90, dans la continuité du développement des préoccupations environnementales, se précise une nouvelle configuration des implications des savoirs scientifiques dans la société, en liaison avec la notion de risque : suite à une série de catastrophes technologiques -dont Tchernobyl, l'affaire du sang contaminé ou la crise de la (...) vache folle n'ont été que les plus médiatisées-, les sciences et techniques sont mises en cause en tant que sources d'innovations ; cependant, elles apparaissent plus que jamais indispensables pour faire face à ces risques. L'expertise scientifique à destination politique , consistant à solliciter, dans un processus de décision publique, les capacités de la science à diagnostiquer et à réguler les risques, apparaît donc comme un point clef de cette nouvelle configuration. Notre objectif sera d'une part, sans prétendre aucunement à l'exhaustivité, de reconstituer, depuis les années 60, quelques éléments importants de la filiation de la problématique de l'expertise, conçue au sens large comme l'intégration de savoirs scientifiques dans un processus de décision politique ; d'autre part, de préciser les principaux angles d'approche et enjeux de cet objet qui donne actuellement lieu à une multiplication de réflexions et de travaux, dans un champ pluridisciplinaire. (shrink)

The singular position of Montesquieu's political philosophy seems to raise the question: Isn't the opposition between republicanism and liberalism a largely artificial one? On the one hand, the description of the republican vivere civile in the Spirit of the Laws testifies to the important ties that exist between Montesquieu and the tradition of ?civic humanism?. However, this apparent theoretical proximity between Montesquieu and the British Neo-Harringtonians ought not to be taken too far, obscuring the deep divergences that differentiate their respective (...) positions, notably when it comes to the interpretation of history. Montesquieu's break from the republican tradition is exemplified by his rejection of its conception of freedom rooted in the citizens' necessary participation in power. But in the end, this does not enable us to conclude that he subscribes to a purely liberal theory. The British model shows that even if direct participation in the exercise of power is not necessary for the existence of liberty, a certain level of civic involvement and public awareness is needed. The liberal opposition between positive and negative liberty, political autonomy and enjoyment of rights without interference must therefore be transcended. (shrink)

William James’ greatest achievement is, arguably, his analysis of the fringe -- or, as he sometimes called it, transitive experience. In trying to understand this vague, elusive, often peripheral aspect of consciousness, James broke new ground. But in so doing he also began to lay down the first stratum of a radically new methodology, one that intersects first- and third-person findings in such a way that each is able to interrogate the other, and so further our understanding of both.

Le concept de self a effectué une lente migration non seulement géographique, depuis l’Europe jusqu’aux États-Unis, mais aussi disciplinaire, depuis les rives de la philosophie jusqu’à la sociologie en transitant par la psychologie sociale. D’abord analysé par David Hume dans les livres I et II du Traité de la nature humaine et Adam Smith dans La théorie des sentiments moraux, il constitue la pièce motrice de leur compréhension sociale de l’esprit humain : le soi se construit dans les interac...

Rightness, not familiarity, is the feeling of knowing. Rightness and familiarity are distinct at both the functional and phenomenological levels of analysis. In problem solving, for example, an unfamiliar solution can still feel right. Rightness is the fringe experience permeating all cases of felt meaning in consciousness, and can occur even when the retrieval of specific content is for whatever reason blocked (e.g., in a tip of the tongue experience). For the most extensive published treatment of rightness and fringe experience, (...) see Mangan (2003): "The conscious 'fringe': Bringing William James up to date" in Essential Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness, MIT press. (shrink)

The ability to reflect on and monitor memory processes is one of the most investigated metamemory functions, and one of the important ways consciousnesses interacts with memory. The feeling-of-knowing is one task used to evaluate individual’s capacity to monitor their memory. We examined this reflective function of metacognition in older adults. We explored the contribution of metacognition to episodic memory impairment, in relation to the idea that older adults show a reduction in memory awareness characteristic of episodic memory. A first (...) experiment showed that age affects the accuracy of FOK when predictions are made on an episodic memory task but not on a semantic memory task, suggesting a particular role for episodic memory awareness in metacognitive evaluations. A second experiment showed that the age-difference in episodic FOK accuracy was removed if one took into account subjective reports of memory awareness, or recollection. We argue that the FOK deficit specific to episodic memory is based on a lack of memory awareness manifest as a recollection deficit. (shrink)

Little is gained, and much lost, by casting an empirical theory of consciousness in a "functionalist" philosophical mold. Consciousness Explained is an instructive failure. It resurrects various behaviorist dogmas; it denies consciousness any distinct cognitive ontology; it obliquely adopts many long-standing research positions relating parallel and sequential processing to consciousness, yet denies the core assumption which produced this research; it takes parallel processing to be incompatible with educated common-sense views of consciousness , while in fact parallel processing is compatible with (...) some Cartesian Theater views. Contrary to Dennett, the Cartesian Theater does not necessarily imply that contents must fully "arrive" in consciousness at a single, specifiable instant; criticism of the Cartesian Theater based on this attribution is thus without force. And if consciousness is a distinct information-bearing medium, functionalist attempts to "explain" consciousness are inherently inadequate. (shrink)

This paper analyses the nature of the relationship between risk and responsibility. Since neither the concept of risk nor the concept of responsibility has an unequivocal definition, it is obvious that there is no single interpretation of their relationship. After introducing the different meanings of responsibility used in this paper, we analyse four conceptions of risk. This allows us to make their link with responsibility explicit and to determine if a shift in the connection between risk and responsibility can be (...) outlined. (1) In the engineer’s paradigm, the quantitative conception of risk does not include any concept of responsibility. Their relationship is indirect, the locus of responsibility being risk management. (2) In Mary Douglas’ cultural theory, risks are constructed through the responsibilities they engage. (3) Rayner and (4) Wolff go further by integrating forms of responsibility in the definition of risk itself. Analysis of these four frameworks shows that the concepts of risk and responsibility are increasingly intertwined. This tendency is reinforced by increasing public awareness and a call for the integration of a moral dimension in risk management. Therefore, we suggest that a form of virtue-responsibility should also be integrated in the concept of risk. (shrink)

This essay aims to show that implicit biases should not be conceived of as “inside the head” of individuals, but rather as embodied and social. My argument unfolds in three stages. First, I make the case for conceiving of implicit biases as perceptual habits. Second, I argue that we should think of perceptual habits and, by extension, implicit biases, as located in the body. Third, I claim that individual habits are shaped by the social world in which we find ourselves (...) and that the social world is itself shaped by our habitual ways of interacting with and perceiving others. This suggests that implicit biases are part of the fabric of the social world. Thus, I conclude that implicit biases should be understood as embodied and social. (shrink)

The effects of aging on the cognitive and affective dimensions of theory of mind , and on the latter’s links with other cognitive processes, such as information processing speed, executive functions and episodic memory, are still unclear. We therefore investigated these effects in young , middle-aged and older adults , using separate subjective and objective assessment tasks. Furthermore, a novel composite task probed participants’ abilities to infer both cognitive and affective mental states in an interpersonal context. Although age affected the (...) objective ToM tests, results revealed a direct aging effect on the second-order ToM, but an indirect one on the first-order cognitive ToM, mediated mainly by age-related declines in executive functions. This study supports the notion of an age-related distinction between subjective and objective assessments of ToM, and confirms that ToM is a complex mental ability with several characteristics reliant to some extent on executive processes. (shrink)

Ce travail montre que la critique nitezschée des méthodes jusqu'lei pratiquées par les philosophes n'équivaut en rien à un refus de toute méthode. Disqualifiant l'idéal de rationalité ou de systématicité, Nietzsche repense les exigences méthodiques à partir de l'analyse de l'«esprit scientifique». Cette réflexion révèle la rigueur propre de sa démarche, et permet de comprendre le rôle qu'y jouent l'expérimentation, le sens historique, l'économie des principes et plus encore la recommendation de «prendre le corps pour fil conducteur» de l'enquête philosophique.Diese (...) Arbeit zeigt, dass Nietzsches Kritik der Methoden, die bisher von den Philosophen verfolgt wurden, keineswegs eine Zurückweisung jeder Methode bedeutet. Indem er die Ideen von Rationalität und Systematizität kritisiert, formuliert Nietzsche methodische Erfordernisse neu im Ausgang von der Analyse des "wissenschaflichen Geistes". Die Strenge dieser Reflexion ermöglicht, die Rolle des Experiments, des historischen Sinns, der Prinzipien-Sparsamkeit und vor allem der Aufforderung einzuschätzen, im Rahmen der philosophischen Arbeit "den Leib als leitfaden" zu nehmen.This paper shows that Nietzsche's criticism of traditional philosophical methods does not imply he dismisses all methodical demand. His rejection of rationality or systematicity is to be understood as a consequence of the new methodological demands which emerge from his analysis of the "scientific spirit". This reflection reveals the specific rigour of Nietzsche's approach, and makes it possible to understand the role played in this respect by experiment, historical sense, the economy of principles, and above all by Nietzsche's request to take "the body as a guiding thread" of all philosophical research. (shrink)

This paper investigates how global coherence is represented in consciousness. It summarizes various lines of research that I have developed over the last twenty years, employing a method that intersects phenomenological with bio-functional analysis. The phenomenological analysis derives from William James's treatment of the fringe, especially a component feeling he called 'right direction'and I call 'rightness'. My bio-functional analysis centres on the limitations of consciousness, and the design strategies that have evolved to finesse these limitations. I argue that fringe phenomenology, (...) in general, has been shaped by its cognitive functions. The function of rightness, in particular, is to represent degrees of fit between a conscious content and the vast body of relevant non-conscious context information. Rightness, then, signals degrees of global positive evaluation. Phenomenologically, rightness is the common element in our feeling that something is a coherent whole: that it is meaningful, correct, fits together, makes sense. It is at the heart of the Aha! experience and, when intense, aesthetic and mystical experience. This analysis also provides a new argument for the efficacy of conscious volition, and a general view of consciousness as a biological information bearing medium. (shrink)

O'Brien & Opie's (O&O's) theory demands a view of unconscious processing that is incompatible with virtually all current PDP models of neural activity. Relative to the alternatives, the theory is closer to an AI than a parallel distributed processing (PDP) perspective, and its treatment of phenomenology is ad hoc. It raises at least one important question: Could features of network relaxation be the “switch” that turns an unconscious into a conscious network?

This article discusses the way in which Catherine Colliot-Thélène addresses the issue of social law in her latest writings, in particular in Le commun de la liberté (2022). It is based on the hypothesis that social law is a point of discomfort for the Kantian and for the Marxian she is. Indeed, Colliot-Thélène recasts democracy, citizenship and, finally – since Le commun de la liberté – social law itself around the concept of subjective right, and not around the concept of (...) social law. But what is left of social law in this quest of a new foundation, which leads her to get rid of the concept of status? (shrink)

Montesquieu n’est pas considéré comme l’un des fondateurs de l’anthropologie entendue comme science de l’homme, mais comme le précurseur de la sociologie. Cette contribution entend discuter ce jugement : la science nouvelle de L’Esprit des lois repose sur une anthropologie de la force, et de l’unité de la sensibilité.

This commentary came from within the framework of integrating the humanities in medicine and from accompanying research on disease-related issues by teams involving clinicians and researchers in medical humanities. The purpose is to reflect on the challenges faced by researchers when conducting emotionally laden research and on how they impact observations and subsequent research findings. This commentary is furthermore a call to action since it promotes the institutionalization of a supportive context for medical humanities researchers who have not been trained (...) to cope with sensitive medical topics in research. To that end, concrete recommendations regarding training and supervision were formulated. (shrink)

Dans les années 1980 et 1990, le concept de communauté était au cœur des débats entre les communautariens et les libéraux anglo-saxons. En France, il a joué (et joue encore) un rôle important dans les débats sur la république et le « communautarisme ». Le contexte dans lequel il est remis en scène aujourd’hui est celui de la résurgence du nationalisme et des revendications identitaires. La crise de l’idéal cosmopolitique et de l’idée du multicul...

La réception de la théologie politique schmittienne a été différente en Allemagne et en Italie, en particulier dans le groupe de philosophes connu sous le nom de « l’École de Ritter » et chez les postmarxistes italiens issus de l’opéraïsme, dans les années 1970 et 1980. Cet article examine cette réception philosophiquement et politiquement contrastée. Il expose aussi les emprunts essentiels que les philosophes italiens comme Tronti, Marramao ou Esposito ont faits à leurs collègues allemands. Alors qu’outre-rhin l’École de Ritter (...) interprète la théologie politique schmittienne comme une simple enquête généalogique et considère que la dépolitisation de la religion est l’un des pricipaux acquis des Lumières, aux philosophes italiens cette dépolitisation semble en partie un mythe politique. Les uns se tournent vers le paradigme du droit naturel ou de la religion civile, les autres engagent une réflexion métapolitique qui souligne le lien entre théologie politique et philosophie politique. (shrink)

Now unknown or forgotten, influential schoolmasters took the game of association football to many parts of England. They had several roles: they brought the game to individual schools, they established regional and national leagues and associations, and they founded professional football clubs. They also exported the game around the world, working as moral missionaries, passionate players and energetic entrepreneurs. The role of teachers in association football is a much neglected aspect of English cultural history. It is a story that deserves (...) to be told because it allows a fundamental reappraisal of the status and position of these teachers in late nineteenth century and early twentieth century society. This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal _Soccer and Society_. (shrink)

This work, by one of the most innovative and challenging of contemporary thinkers, pivots on a _Remark_ added by Hegel in 1831 to the second edition of his _Science of Logic_. As a model of close reading applied both to philosophical texts and the making of philosophical systems, _The Speculative Remark_ played a significant role in transforming the practice of philosophy away from system building to analysis of specific linguistic detail, with meticulous attention to etymological, philological, and rhetorical nuance. Nancy (...) uses his extended examination of the _Remark_ to delineate certain overall strategies in several Hegelian texts that militate for language-oriented readings of Hegel, as shown in Nancy's redefinition of such key terms as _Aufhebung_, _mediation_, and _speculation_. Nancy's reading progresses from speculative words and propositions to registering the speculative itself. While he avoids analyzing Hegel's system as such, Nancy reconstructs the Hegelian trajectory on a basis of tropes, building from propositions rather than structures, elements, and cycles. The overview that emerges in the final chapter and epilogue constitutes a broad statement about Hegel's practice and significance, one nuanced by close attention to his deployment of rhetoric and linguistic play. _The Speculative Remark_ thus furnishes a model for a theoretically aware approach to all systematic philosophy, while providing a significant historical contribution to the evolution of contemporary critical theory. (shrink)

“Body positivity” refers to the movement to accept our bodies, regardless of size, shape, skin tone, gender, and physical abilities. The movement is often implicitly understood as the effort to celebrate diversity in bodily aesthetics and to expand our narrow beauty standards beyond their present-day confines. Like other feminists, I question whether the push to broaden beauty norms should occupy as central a role as it does now in the movement’s mainstream incarnations, and I believe that, beyond challenging confining beauty (...) standards, body positivity should teach us that all bodies are worthy—for example, of care and respect. My aim in this paper is to offer a general account of body positivity. I argue that body positivity should be understood as the transition from limiting body shame to proper body pride. I adopt a pluralistic approach to body positivity, incorporating the idea that we should not only expand aesthetic standards, but also celebrate such aspects of embodiment as our capacity for bodily pleasure or our bodily abilities. What is common to these different ways of developing empowering relations to our bodies is the move to resist all forms of body shame that limit our flourishing and to cultivate proper pride in one’s body. I conclude by considering several avenues toward embodying such pride and, thus, embracing body positivity: expanding beauty ideals; promoting equal access to physical activities and celebrating the accomplishments of all athletes, regardless of body size or level of ability; and consciousness-raising. (shrink)

This study examined the effect of the pique technique preceded by a disrupting process. Passersby in the street were asked for money, either for a common amount of change (control) or 37 cents (pique technique). In half of the cases, the requester added a disrupting sentence at the beginning of the request. Results showed that the pique technique alone and the disrupting technique alone increased compliance with the request. Adding a first disrupting sentence to the pique also increased compliance compared (...) with the other three conditions. These results support the theoretical explanation that the initial disrupting sentence associated with the pique could reduce the influence of the refusal script activated by the money request. (shrink)

This research applies the notion of sustainability (Barney, 1991; Braa, Monteiro, & Sahay, 2004) to the mechanisms used by socially responsible investment(SRI) firms with respect to their stakeholders (investors and target firms). A contrast is developed between US and UK SRI firms. It is noted that screens, while maintaining a strong investor base, are less sustainable from the perspective of the firms targeted by SRI funds, whereas advocacy has stronger elements of sustainability with respect to the relations with corporations.

Ancré en sociologie, ce texte vise à clarifier l’emploi du concept d’arrangements de famille dans les sciences sociales de langue française et anglaise et précise son intérêt par rapport au terme concurrent de négociation pour décrire la prise collective de décisions par des personnes apparentées. Cette conceptualisation permet de penser la production plus ou moins formalisée d’un consensus entre des personnes apparentées qui ont éventuellement des intérêts contradictoires et sont prises localement dans des rapports de pouvoir, et plus généralement dans (...) des rapports de domination qui les dépassent. L’article insiste sur la dimension temporelle de ces arrangements qui sont tout à la fois un processus et un résultat. (shrink)

Cet article entend montrer que Nietzsche conçoit l’histoire comme n’étant pas simplement une pure discipline théorique, mais comme une dimension spécifique de l’existence humaine, impliquant une manière singulière de se rapporter au réel. Pour cette raison, elle doit être repensée en tant que « sens historique », plutôt que seulement comme science historique. À condition d’être convenablement pensé et maîtrisé, le sens historique est aux yeux de Nietzsche tout à la fois une condition du possible retour à la santé de (...) l’homme moderne, et une vertu nécessaire du philosophe authentique, vertu qui apparaît pour finir comme un élément constitutif de la notion de « généalogie » que Nietzsche met en place en 1887. (shrink)

Depuis les années soixante-dix et le corpus de Montréal (Sankoff et al., 1976), les corpus oraux et multimodaux ont été au cœur des transformations technologiques, méthodologiques et théoriques de la linguistique sur corpus numériques, reconfigurant les attentes en matière de conservation des documents sonores. Les outils et instruments de transcription, d’annotation, de traitement du signal, de textométrie, de visualisation, et plus généralement tous les outils du TAL et du traitement de don...

My overall aim here is to intersect two issues central to Max Velmans' wide-ranging paper. The first concerns one of the most vexing problems in consciousness research — how best to approach the terms 'mental' and 'physical'. The second looks at the phenomenology of volition, and the degree to which information presumably necessary for making voluntary conscious decisions is, or is not, present in consciousness. Velmans offers three general reasons to motivate his position: the physical world is 'causally closed' to (...) the influence of consciousness; consciousness does not contain the information necessary for making volitional decisions; conscious feelings of volition occur before the acts they supposedly cause. It seems to me that none of this holds up well under scrutiny. I will concentrate on the first two reasons, since I think they involve more basic and widespread aspects of consciousness research. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering takes a distinctively normative and reconstructive approach to our conceptual repertoire. This approach is congenial to the ideas defended by philosophers belonging to the multifaceted tradition of American and Cambridge Pragmatism. This special issue is devoted to the investigation and development of these connections. Our introduction maps some of the historical and theoretical entanglements between the two fields and gives a short overview of the contributions to the special issue.

In this article, I draw an important distinction between two kinds of inquiry. “Framed inquiries” take for granted and use a conceptual framework in order to ask and answer questions, while “framing inquiries” require the creation, revision, or expansion of the conceptual framework itself in order to address the problem at hand. This distinction has been largely ignored in epistemology, and collapsed by two radically opposed philosophical camps: representationalism and antirepresentationalism. While the former takes all inquiries to be in the (...) business of discovering mind-independent facts, the latter takes all inquiries to be primarily governed by pragmatic considerations. Against the objections raised by both camps, I defend a pragmatist and substantive distinction between framed and framing inquiry, inspired by Rudolf Carnap’s distinction between internal and external questions and reformulated in terms of John Dewey’s theory of inquiry. (shrink)