Artificial stimulation of the peripheral vestibular system has been shown to improve ownership of body parts in neurological patients, suggesting vestibular contributions to bodily self-consciousness. Here, we investigated whether galvanic vestibular stimulation interferes with the mechanisms underlying ownership, touch, and the localization of one’s own hand in healthy participants by using the “rubber hand illusion” paradigm. Our results show that left anodal GVS increases illusory ownership of the fake hand and illusory location of touch. We propose that these changes are (...) due to vestibular interference with spatial and/or temporal mechanisms of visual-tactile integration leading to an enhancement of visual capture. As only left anodal GVS lead to such changes, and based on neurological data on body part ownership, we suggest that this vestibular interference is mediated by the right temporo-parietal junction and the posterior insula. (shrink)

■ Evidence from functional neuroimaging studies on resting state suggests that there are two distinct anticorrelated cortical systems that mediate conscious awareness: an “extrinsic” system that encompasses lateral fronto-parietal areas and has been linked with processes of external input (external awareness), and an “intrinsic” system which encompasses mainly medial brain areas and..

One of the starting points of Derrida’s deconstruction is the idea that metaphysics is dominated by an ontological primacy of the present. It is well known that Derrida took up this thesis of the ‘...

DMet 10: Prime matter is the origin of all quantities. Hence it is the origin of every dimension of continuous quantity whatever. ...

Though only established as a discipline since the 1970s, philosophy of biology has already triggered investigations about its own history The Oxford handbook of philosophy of biology, Oxford University Press, New York, pp 11–33, 2008). When it comes to assessing the road since travelled—the research questions that have been pursued—manuals and ontologies also offer specific viewpoints, highlighting dedicated domains of inquiry and select work. In this article, we propose to approach the history of the philosophy of biology with a complementary (...) data-driven perspective that makes use of statistical algorithms applied to the complete full-text corpus of one major journal of the field—Biology and Philosophy—from its launch in 1986 up until 2017. By running text-mining and topic-modeling algorithms, we identified 67 key research topics that span across these 32 years. We also investigated the evolution of these topics over time and their fluctuating significance in the journal articles. Our results concur with known episodes or traits of the discipline—for instance, the significance of evolution-related topics or the decrease of articles with a marked historical dimension—but also highlight a diversity of topics that is much richer than what is usually acknowledged. (shrink)

Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a pervasive difficulty affecting number processing and arithmetic. It is encountered in around 6% of school-aged children. While previous studies have mainly focused on general cognitive functions, the present paper aims to further investigate the hypothesis of a specific numerical deficit in dyscalculia. The performance of 10- and 11-year-old children with DD characterised by a weakness in arithmetic facts retrieval and age-matched control children was compared on various number comparison tasks. Participants were asked to compare a (...) quantity presented in either a symbolic (Arabic numerals, number words, canonical dots patterns) or a nonsymbolic format (noncanonical dots patterns, and random sticks patterns) to the reference quantity 5. DD children showed a greater numerical distance effect than control children, irrespective of the number format. This favours a deficit in the specialised cognitive system underlying the processing of number magnitude in children with DD. Results are discussed in terms of access and representation deficit hypotheses. (shrink)

This article examines the link between oligarchy and the notion of representative democracy, which for Castoriadis also implies the bureaucratisation of society. However, in an argument with and against Castoriadis, one has to decipher modern oligarchies before launching into a radical critique of the principle of representation. There is a diversity of representative democracies, and the complexity of modernity comes from a mixture of oligarchy, representation and democracy. Even though the idea of democracy has evolved, we do not live under (...) representative democracies but under liberal oligarchies. Direct democratic procedures and representative elements can sometimes be gathered in order to create new forms of political commitment. The main problem is avoiding a concentration of powers, which cannot create the conditions for the emergence of democratic institutions. (shrink)

If the desert was long perceived as a hostile and inhospitable territory, it was gradually conquered during the 20th century by the practice of sports and leisure activities. The aim of this articl...

Dans cet article, j’entends décrire comment évolue la philosophie de la physique de Weyl au cours de la période 1918-1927. Je rappellerai en particulier qu’il développe différentes formes d’« apriorisme» entre 1918 et 1923: un apriorisme « spéculatif» avec sa théorie unifiée des champs (1918-1921), puis une conception des connaissances a priori largement inspirée de la Wesensanalyse de Husserl dans ses travaux sur le problème de l’espace (1921-1923). Je montrerai par ailleurs que le holisme de Weyl, i.e., la thèse selon (...) laquelle seule une théorie physique envisagée comme un tout peut faire l’objet de tests empiriques, occupe le devant de la scène dès 1924-1925 dans des textes qui portent sur les fondements des mathématiques. Ce holisme est étroitement lié à sa conception de la théorie physique comme construction symbolique de la réalité. Au bout du compte je caractériserai le point de vue holiste de Weyl en le comparant à certaines réflexions développées par Cassirer, Einstein et Hilbert à peu près au même moment. (shrink)

Hegel se réfère à l'ontologie traditionnelle essentiellement afin de définir, en relation à cette partie de la métaphysique, le projet original de la Science de la logique. L'ontologie traditionnelle à laquelle il pense est avant tout celle de Wolff, l'Ontologia, qu'il interprète comme « la théorie des déterminations abstraites de l'essence », c'est-à-dire l'exposition contingente de l'ensemble des concepts de l'entendement. Si la Science de la logique entend dépasser le caractère abstrait et formel de l'ontologie wolffienne, elle en reprend en (...) même temps le principe qui l'anime, l'identité de la pensée et de l'être, et le réalise de manière absolue. Héritière critique de l'Ontologia, la Logique hégélienne est ainsi la science de l'être comme être pensé, comme Concept. Hegel refers to the traditional ontology essentially to define, in relation to this part of metaphysic, the original project of the Science of logic. The traditional ontology is for Hegel Wolff's Ontologia, which he interprets as « the doctrine of the abstract determinations of essence », i.e. as the contingent exposition of all the notions of Understanding. The Science of logic tries to supersede the abstract and formal characteristics of Wolff's ontology, but at the same time, it preserves the principle of this ontology, the identity of Thought and Being, and achieves it absolutely. Resulting from a critical interpretation of Ontologia, Hegel's logic is then the science of Being as Thought, as Notion. (shrink)

As a discipline of its own, the philosophy of science can be traced back to the founding of its academic journals, some of which go back to the first half of the twentieth century. While the discipline has been the object of many historical studies, notably focusing on specific schools or major figures of the field, little work has focused on the journals themselves. Here, we investigate contemporary philosophy of science by means of computational text-mining approaches: we apply topic-modeling algorithms (...) to eight major philosophy of science journals, from the 1930s up until 2017. Based on the full-text content of some 15,897 articles, we identified 25 research themes and 8 thematic clusters that show how the research agenda of the philosophy of science has changed in its content over the course of the last eight decades, up to the philosophy of science we now know. We also show how each one of the journals contributed in its own way to this thematic evolution. (shrink)

Dans cet article l’auteur a souhaité étudier le travail de subjectivation des liens familiaux chez un auteur de violence sexuelle dans le cadre du dispositif pénal qu’est l’injonction de soins. À partir d’une recherche clinique menée sur un mode longitudinal, il propose de montrer comment le génogramme (en test, re-test) peut être un révélateur de la mise en œuvre du processus de subjectivation. Ce procédé permet de relever deux différences notables entre les deux génogrammes : dans le passage d’une place (...) fantasmatique dans les liens (celle d’un « enfant ») à celle d’une position instituée concomitante avec une affiliation intersubjective ; la présence ou l’absence de nom sur les icônes parentales. Des différences favorisées, selon nous, par le dispositif d’injonction de soins. (shrink)

We propose a class [I,S] of loss functions for modeling the imprecise preferences of the decision maker in Bayesian Decision Theory. This class is built upon two extreme loss functions I and S which reflect the limited information about the loss function. We give an approximation of the set of Bayes actions for every loss function in [I,S] and every prior in a mixture class; if the decision space is a subset of R, we obtain the exact set.

ABSTRACTThis paper introduces and transcripts two hitherto unpublished letters by the political economist David Ricardo to his neighbour and intimate friend Thomas Smith of Easton Grey. In these letters dated 11 December 1819 and 12 February 1821, Ricardo mentioned the third edition of his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, as well as his notes on the first edition of Malthus’s Principles of Political Economy Considered with a View to their Applications. Ricardo referred also to several contemporary debates in the (...) House of Commons where he seated for the borough of Minchinhampton since the early part of the year 1819. Amongst these debates are the ‘Seditious Meetings Prevention Bill’; the affair of a pamphlet anonymously published in late 1819 and entitled A Trifling Mistake; the issue of parliamentary reform; and Ricardo’s opposition to Alexander Baring on the origin of the contemporary distress as well as on his project of a return to bimetallism as a measure of relief. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to analyze the philosophy of values developed by Cornelius Castoriadis from his theory of the imaginary institution of societies. By understanding the emergence of imaginary significations, it is possible to identify their manifestations through the representations, the affects and the intentions of individuals. In this context, values correspond to a series of significations that motivate the conduct of individuals. In fact, in a specific society, individuals believe in symbols that make sense for them. The (...) presentation of the values does not reflect a moral project, but rather a socio-political construction that must be carefully described in order to identify the alteration of values over time. The article explores the way in which Castoriadis poses the problem of the persistence of past values with the risk of depending on established norms without being able to really transform them. In this perspective, Castoriadis refers to a fundamental value which is that of autonomy capable of questioning existing imaginaries. (shrink)

We hypothesize that when honesty is not motivated by selfish goals, it reveals social preferences that have evolved for convincing strategically vigilant partners that one is a person worth cooperating with. In particular, we explain how the patterns of dishonest behavior observed in recent experiments can be motivated by preferences for social and self-esteem. These preferences have evolved because they are adaptive in an environment where it is advantageous to be selected as a partner by others and where these others (...) are strategically vigilant: they efficiently evaluate the expected benefit of cooperating with specific partners and attend to their intentions. We specify the adaptive value of strategic vigilance and preferences for social and self-esteem. We argue that evolved preferences for social and self-esteem are satisfied by applying mechanisms of strategic vigilance to one's own behavior. We further argue that such cognitive processes obviate the need for the evolution of preferences for fairness and social norm compliance. (shrink)

Human expression is open-ended, versatile, and diverse, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved functions of which are the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how expression is unleashed in humans. The relevant (...) cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species' social ecology to explain how and why humans, and only humans, evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity and open-endedness in means and modes of expression. Language use is but one of these modes of expression, albeit one of manifestly high importance. We make cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only language use, but also novel behaviour in many other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, teaching, punishment, and art, all of which are ubiquitous in human societies but relatively rare in other species. Much of this diversity derives from graded aspects of human expression, which can be used to satisfy informative intentions in creative and new ways. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of the many of the most distinctive features of human behaviour, society, and culture. (shrink)

Showing a very early interest in Descartes, after having first considered him as a Christian thinker in the perspective of a deconstruction of religious life, Heidegger soon regards him as the major obstacle to the phenomenological analyses he wants to develop, as part of the first ontological search he gave himself: that of a hermeneutics of facticity. Therefore, the latter immediately takes in his work the shape of a hermeneutics of the I think, therefore I am, its author being blamed (...) for having entirely ignored the sense of being in the I am, focused as he is on the thinking ego, the ins and outs of which he develops. But the criticism also applying to Husserl, it is by laying the blame on his master, that Heidegger intends to radicalize the project of his own master, hence the necessity to throw light on the origin and the foundations of what we can call the Cartesian question in Heidegger. (shrink)

1 Historique des projets ayant contribué au présent cahier thématique Ce numéro thématique porte témoignage des projets individuels et collectifs dans lesquels les éditeurs et l’éditrice invité-es ont été engagé-es ces dernières années. Les historiens de la pensée économique Nicolas Brisset et Raphaël Fèvre ont ainsi mené, à partir de 2018, un projet intitulé Expertise et Discipline Économiques sous Vichy (EDEV), ayant pour objectif d’interroger dans un même mouvement ce que Vichy a changé da...

Nous entendons réexaminer tout un pan de l’histoire de la philosophie des sciences en France entre le milieu des années 1930 et l’immédiat après-guerre en nous appuyant sur les activités d’un réseau de scientifiques-philosophes qui s’est constitué autour de Gaston Bachelard, Jean-Louis Destouches et Ferdinand Gonseth après le congrès parisien de philosophie scientifique de septembre 1935. Ce réseau officialise sa rupture avec les positivismes logiques en organisant un colloque à Morgat en septembre 1938. Les activités de ce réseau se concrétisent (...) sous l’Occupation avec la publication en 1942 puis en 1944 de deux fascicules qui offrent une large place aux réflexions de Louis de Broglie, Jean-Louis Destouches et Paulette Destouches-Février en physique théorique, tout en traitant d’autres thématiques telles que le langage et le finalisme. Ces deux fascicules reflètent ponctuellement les engagements de l’un de ses membres, à savoir Jean Mariani, en faveur de la Révolution nationale. Si ce dernier est durement sanctionné à l’automne 1946, l’essentiel de ce réseau continue à jouer un rôle structurant en philosophie des sciences après la guerre et il gagne même en visibilité sur la scène philosophique internationale, grâce au soutien de Ferdinand Gonseth et de Stanislas Dockx. (shrink)

A socioeconomic and demographic analysis of U.S. Google Trends for queries about Business Ethics and Greed is proposed in the context of the 2008 financial crisis. The framework is grounded in the ethical decision-making literature. Two models using micro and macro-type variables are tested using GLM and GEE regression techniques. The frequency of these Google queries varies positively with the ratio of females, educational attainment, younger adult age, some measures of economic hardship or inequalities, and the lesser the weight of (...) the finance industry represented in each State. The frequency of queries intensifies for these same socioeconomic and demographic categories, in the aftermath of the financial crisis. This article is the first to study the salience of business ethics as an issue in the empirical literature using a nationwide database. It also provides a first empirical study in the specialized literature on “ethics in a time of crisis”. This study lays a preliminary groundwork to identify pro-ethical reform segments of the population, with practical use for financial regulatory agencies. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Sinicized Asia, justice, conceptualized and institutionalized in its current form on a Western mold is part of a singular and ancient Confucian legal tradition.In this paper, it will be argued that Confucians initially articulated the concept of justice in relation to their own explanation of the world and their ideal, which distinguishes and rewards men’s actions according to their merits and social condition.It will be shown that Confucius’s thinking is primarily political and suggests ways of harmoniously organizing and reforming (...) society in which justice is conceived both as a principle of government, a principle of social conduct and one of the essential virtues, or a ‘moral sense’ that everyone must possess, while, in practice, Confucian justice will put forward the imperatives of retributive justice. This, despite its philosophical aversion for sanctions and for what upsets harmony. (shrink)

It is known today that Hegel's philosophy was at the center of the development of pragmatism. In particular, the relation of Dewey's philosophy to Hegel's has recently been studied with great attention1. Many studies have revealed that the German philosopher had a fundamental influence on the young John Dewey, particularly with regard to his theory of culture, for his logic, as well as for his psychology. These new readings propose a profoundly original view of Dewey and explain why he thought (...) of his philosophy as a "permanent Hegelian deposit".Our work aims to... (shrink)

Depuis le début du XXe siècle jusqu’à la fin des années 1960, l’unité de la philosophie oxonienne est garantie par l’adhésion à une certaine forme de réalisme, « Oxford Realism », dont les deux principes sont la primauté de la connaissance sur la croyance et l’absolue indépendance de l’objet connu. On examinera l’histoire de la critique de Hume par le réalisme de l’école d’Oxford de Cook Wilson à Austin, en passant par Price.

Résumé : De 1870 à 1888, Nietzsche a souvent rappelé les différences fondamentales entre la rythmique grecque et la rythmique moderne. Son analyse du rythme grec se fonde sur trois sources principales : les métriciens modernes, les Anciens, et les théories de Wagner. En 1870–1871, Nietzsche étudie les Elementa rythmica d'Aristoxène de Tarente pour critiquer les théories des philologues modernes ; il accorde en particulier une place centrale au concept rythmique d'alogia, qu'il oppose à l'eurythmie, - XIXe siècle – Nouvel (...) article. (shrink)

Résumé On attribue souvent à John Stuart Mill une théorie de la liberté fondée sur un principe de non-nuisance qui conduirait à une critique radicale du paternalisme politique et juridique. Cependant, en analysant de plus près la portée de ce principe ainsi que son mode de justification, il est possible d’en donner une interprétation qui soit compatible avec certaines formes de paternalisme. On peut ainsi considérer De la liberté comme une des sources du paternalisme libéral et plus précisément d’un paternalisme (...) perfectionniste visant à préserver et à promouvoir l’autonomie des individus. (shrink)

"Join up, they said! It’s a man’s life, they said!"Cartesian Lineage and Tradition in Being and Nothingness While Descartes is literally present in 27 of 722 pages that Being and Nothingness counts, Hegel appears in 43, Husserl in 46 and Heidegger in 47 of them. Without asserting, and thus without infirming the obvious influence of these three German thinkers on it, one year after his essay of phenomenological ontology, it is nevertheless the filiation and the manner of only the French (...) philosopher that Sartre claims in front of Pierre Lorquet. So, which relative and which model is Descartes for him? And what relationship does Sartre exactly maintain with him? Following the track of the latter in the 1943 treatise, I want to ensure that “the individual of existentialism is Descartes’s true heir”. (shrink)