In evolutionary biology changes in population structure are explained by citing trait fitness distribution. I distinguish three interpretations of fitness explanations—the Two‐Factor Model, the Single‐Factor Model, and the Statistical Interpretation—and argue for the last of these. These interpretations differ in their degrees of causal commitment. The first two hold that trait fitness distribution causes population change. Trait fitness explanations, according to these interpretations, are causal explanations. The last maintains that trait fitness distribution correlates with population change but does not cause (...) it. My defense of the Statistical Interpretation relies on a distinctive feature of causation. Causes conform to the Sure Thing Principle. Trait fitness distributions, I argue, do not. *Received July 2009; revised October 2009. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy/Institute for the History, Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, Victoria College, 91 Charles Street West, Toronto, ON M5S 1K7, Canada; e‐mail: denis[email protected]. (shrink)

What is Life? This is the question asked by Denis Noble in this very personal and at times deeply lyrical book. Noble is a renowned physiologist and systems biologist, and he argues that the genome is not life itself: to understand what life is, we must view it at a variety of different levels, all interacting with each other in a complex web. It is that emergent web, full of feedback between levels, from the gene to the wider environment, (...) that is life. (shrink)

Dès sa parution en 1953, le Descartes de Martial Gueroult a suscité de vives discussions, toutes liées à une conception singulière, à la fois stricte et peu explicite, de l’« ordre des raisons » d’où les Méditations métaphysiques seraient issues. La présente étude s’intéresse moins aux problèmes les plus classiques soulevés par l’interprétation de Gueroult qu’aux chapitres finaux de l’ouvrage, qui concernent la médecine et surtout la morale. Quelle relation entre la morale cartésienne et l’ordre des raisons? Cette morale a-t-elle (...) ou non statut de science? Qu’elle soit science ou « succédané » de science, comment la caractériser dans son objet? Les limites des réponses apportées à de telles questions marquent celles d’une entreprise critique dont la puissance et le prestige ne peuvent masquer les apories. (shrink)

Denis McManus presents a novel account of Martin Heidegger's early vision of our subjectivity and the world we inhabit. He explores key elements of Heidegger's philosophy, and argues that Heidegger's central claims identify genuine demands that must be met if we are to achieve the feat of thinking determinate thoughts about the world around us.

Robert Pippin's new book, The Culmination, examines Heidegger's reading and critique of Kant and Hegel. Since Pippin is perhaps best known as one of the most influential contemporary advocates for the importance of engaging with the difficult work of Hegel in particular, it will no doubt surprise quite a few of his readers that, on some fundamental points, the book concludes that “Heidegger is right” (p. xi). In the present piece, I explore some intriguing issues that Pippin's book raises. Although (...) the disagreement between his principal parties is obviously central to his discussion, my main focus is on a possible point of important agreement that that discussion also opens up, in light of which Heidegger might be fruitfully interpreted as pursuing a variant of a Kantian/Hegelian project, though this will also lead me to make a number of critical points about Pippin's reading of Heidegger: although there are grounds for thinking that Pippin's Heidegger does subscribe to such a project, some of the considerations that Pippin advances in arguing that “Heidegger is right” sit uncomfortably—it seems to me—with that project. (shrink)

The modern world is confronted with a series of global problems, exacerbated by technological advancements. In this context, concerns arise in the public consciousness regarding the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to surpass humans in intellectual and creative activities. The topic of AI creativity becomes pertinent and sparks debates within the scientific community regarding its creative potential. In response to these challenges, members of the Club of Rome in 2018 propose the concept of a new Enlightenment and the principle of (...) balance as a response to the demands of technological development. These ideas underscore the need for a balanced approach to technical progress, taking into account global values and ethical principles. I explore the definitions of creativity and AI, formulate criteria for assessing creativity, and analyse recent achievements in modelling creative processes in AI. I also focus on the utilisation of various algorithms for implementing diverse forms of creative activities, including text, image and music generation. Additionally, I present diverse opinions of researchers regarding creativity in AI. To systematise these perspectives, I propose a classification which allows their ranking. The conclusion emphasises that currently the issue of evaluating the creative potential of AI lacks a definitive solution, underscoring the relevance of further research. The future outlook may alter this situation, prompting the necessity to focus on predicting potential consequences of technological developments and developing mechanisms for controlling AI activities; humans, after all, bear responsibility for AI actions. Such an approach aligns with the concept of a new Enlightenment which seeks a balance between technological advancements and the preservation of global harmony. (shrink)

C’est selon la perspective de l’image comme représentation que nous examinons et mettons en parallèle les œuvres de Marcel Duchamp et de Francis Bacon. Duchamp s’extirpe de l’univers de la peinture, émancipe l’art de son champ exclusivement pictural, « rétinien ». Bacon emprunte une voie intermédiaire : celle de la « forme sensible », de la « Figure », c’est-à-dire du « figural ». Qu’il s’agisse de la déformation avec Bacon ou de la transformation avec Duchamp, la représentation n’est telle (...) que parce qu’elle témoigne d’un quelque chose, irreprésentable ou imprésentable, qui l’excède : l’événement de la Figure se nomme ainsi dé-figure et trans-figure. (shrink)

For many economists, including those who have made the most marked contribution to the development of the discipline, their work has to be understood in the context of the rhetorical strategy they were pursuing – what they wanted to persuade us of and how they wanted to do it. The paper identifies two fundamental rhetorical strategies of laissez-faire resting on entirely distinct ontological foundations. What distinguishes these two strategies is the way they articulate the individual with the general interest, how (...) they relate the micro to the macro. The two strategies discussed in the paper are characterised by the stance they take on a fundamental ontological issue, the way in which the things which appear to us in the world are related to the things or matters which compose them. A reductionist approach suggests that we can understand an entity at one level as a congeries. An entity in this view is just an aggregate of entities at a lower, substrate level – a purely external unity. The properties and behaviour of an entity can then be understood in terms of the properties and behaviour of the constituent lower-level components, taken in isolation. In this approach, phenomena at some level are regarded as having just the qualities enjoyed by its lower-level, substrate elements, writ large. The contrary, holistic, stance is to view the qualities of phenomena at one level as emergent at that level, and to assert that an entity can be understood as a product of the inter-relations between its component parts. We have, then, a pair of contrasted approaches: a polarity which is productive in the study of schools of thought, of competing methodologies, and of rhetorical strategies in economics. The paper applies this approach to the work of Smith, Keynes, Hayek, Lucas and Friedman. (shrink)

Como é possível ter experiências de memória presente de coisas que, sendo passadas, não são mais experimentadas no presente? Uma resposta possível a esta pergunta filosófica de longa data é o que eu chamo de "visão da idealidade do tempo", ou seja, a visão de que a sucessão temporal é irreal. Neste artigo, esboço a ideia por trás da versão de Brentano da visão da idealidade do tempo. Além disso, eu a contrasto com a versão de Hume, sugerindo que, apesar (...) das diferenças significativas, ela pode, no entanto, ser interpretada como humeana em sentido amplo. (shrink)

L’expérience est la plupart du temps entendue selon la vulgate philosophique et épistémologique comme une expérimentation technoscientifique. Mais cette acception oublie un sens plus originaire de l’experientia. Ce sens est le temps. Or si l’on regarde ce que signifie l’expérience « temporale », c’est-à-dire extatique, on s’aperçoit qu’elle est une mise à l’épreuve, un éprouver hors de soi, c’est-à-dire l’expérience affectuelle d’un irreprésentable. C’est de cela dont témoignent les artistes, et spécialement les écrivains Clarice Lispector avec le « é da (...) coisa » et Samuel Beckett avec l’« Innommable ». Ces mots, à l’épreuve de l’échec, témoignent de ce qui, dans la vie comme existence, est plus que la vie, ouvrant aux autres mondes et aux nouveaux possibles. (shrink)

Mon objectif dans cette étude est de montrer l'influence que la philosophie positive d'Auguste Comte a exercée sur la pensée du jeune Brentano durant la période de Würzburg (1866-1874). J'examine d'abord quelques-uns des facteurs qui ont amené Brentano à s'intéresser à la philosophie de Comte et je résume, dans un deuxième temps, les grandes lignes de l'article de Brentano sur Comte dont la version française est reproduite dans ce numéro. Dans la troisième partie de cette étude, je commente brièvement quelques (...) passages de la Psychologie d'un point de vue empirique où Brentano discute de thèmes comtiens. Je conclue cette étude par quelques remarques sur les traces laissées par le positivisme de Comte dans l'œuvre de Brentano. (shrink)

Psychological individualism is motivated by two taxonomic principles: (i) that psychological states are individuated by their causal powers, and (ii) that causal powers supervene upon intrinsic physiological state. I distinguish two interpretations of individualism--the 'orthodox' and the 'alternative'--each of which is consistent with these motivating principles. I argue that the alternative interpretation is legitimately individualistic on the grounds that it accurately reflects the actual taxonomic practices of bona fide individualistic sciences. The classification of homeobox genes in developmental genetics provides an (...) illustration. When applied to the taxonomy of psychological kinds, alternative individualism has some surprising consequences. In particular, externalist taxonomies of thought are consistent with the alternative interpretation, and hence consistent with individualism. I conclude, on this basis, that the individualism/externalism dispute which has long preoccupied philosophy of psychology is an empty one. (shrink)

Global climate change is one of the most daunting ethical and political challenges confronting humanity in the twenty-first century. The intergenerational and transnational ethical issues raised by climate change have been the focus of a significant body of scholarship. In this new collection of essays, leading scholars engage and respond to first-generation scholarship and argue for new ways of thinking about our ethical obligations to present and future generations. Topics addressed in these essays include moral accountability for energy consumption and (...) emissions, egalitarian and libertarian perspectives on mitigation, justice in relation to cap and trade schemes, the ethics of adaptation and the ethical dimensions of the impact of climate change on nature. (shrink)

Heidegger discusses Aristotle’s concept of ‘phronêsis’ at length at crucial junctures in the development of his concept of ‘authenticity’; and there is a widely-held suspicion that that development is indebted to those discussions. The present paper examines that suspicion in the light of an apparent tension in Aristotle’s texts between understanding phronêsis as a perceptual capacity and understanding it as a deliberative capacity. Bronwyn Finnigan has argued that some influential, recent Heideggerian scholarship on this topic emphasises the perceptual and downplays (...) the deliberative, and there is evidence in Heidegger’s texts that might suggest he does too. The present paper, however, offers an alternative to this perceptually-focused reading, which I call ‘the all-things-considered judgment reading’. It understands the exercise of phronêsis, and the authenticity which Heidegger models upon it, as deliberative feats, accommodates the evidence thought to support the perceptually-focused reading, and avoids philosophical objections that the latter reading invites. (shrink)

Around sixty years ago, Martin and Deutscher (1966) published a paper about the conditions under which an occurring mental state qualifies as episodically remembering. Recent philosophy of memory has developed this ontological interrogation in depth. But while it has significantly contributed to the ontological characterisation of episodic memory, it has also left aside an important part of it. Our memories not only occur, they also reoccur: we re-remember. This raises the ontological issue of their identity over time, along with the (...) related issue of their individuation. In the present paper, I explore this as yet uncharted territory of the ontology of episodic memories. I show first that the notion of re-remembering refers to a genuine mnemic phenomenon, and as such requires a theoretical account. I then proceed to design candidate accounts of said phenomenon, two of which, I claim, are particularly promising. (shrink)

This study aims to account for the reception of the philosophy of Carl Stumpf since the turn of the twenty-first century and to emphasize the actuality of some of the aspects of his philosophy. The present text is subdivided into several sections, each corresponding to one of the main topics discussed in the recent literature on the work of Stumpf. In the first section, I try to show, using his classification of sciences, that Stumpf's empirical work is driven by a (...) unitary philosophical program. I then examine the ramifications of this program in several areas of philosophy that have been the subject of recent commentaries and publications. I begin with the commentaries on the recent publication of Stumpf's thesis on mathematical axioms, which stress Stumpf's contribution to the philosophy of mathematics and to theory of knowledge, and more specifically to the debate on logical psychologism that Frege and Husserl will address a few years later. I conclude this section by examining the second of two major themes in the work of Stumpf that have been the subject of several recent studies, namely, on the one hand, logic and the nature of states of affairs and, on the other hand, Stumpf's contribution to the mind-body problem and to the topic of relations. The third section is divided into two parts. In the first one, I try to briefly account for the vast literature on Stumpf's contribution to psychology understood broadly enough as to include his work on the psychology of sound, Gestalt psychology, animal psychology and the psychology of child development. I provide, in the second part of this section, a summary of his studies in the area of aesthetics and musicology in general, i.e. his contribution to the history of music and its origins, to ethnomusicology, and to acoustics. Although this study does not aim at being exhaustive, it provides an overview of the important aspects of Stumpf's contribution to philosophy. (shrink)

Theoria, Volume 87, Issue 1, Page 109-135, February 2021.

Reply to eight critical reviews of my paper "Franz Brentano and Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness" in the same issue of the journal Argumentos.

Rather than simply outlining the classical and modern theories of learning, this widely adopted text brings the material to life through case studies that engage students in debates about what really happens in classrooms. Students are encouraged to test the strengths and weaknesses of each theory so that, ultimately, they will learn to formulate their own philosophies of teaching and learning. The new Fifth Edition of Perspectives on Learning features: A discussion of common sense and learning theories. A new chapter (...) on Transfer of Learning. Consideration of recent developments in brain science. A thoroughly updated list of Recommendations for Further Reading. Perspectives on Learning is one of the five books in the highly regarded Teachers College Press THINKING ABOUT EDUCATION SERIES, now in its Fifth Edition. All of the books in this series are designed to help pre- and in-service teachers bridge the gap between theory and practice. (shrink)

Developmental dyslexia is a specific learning condition characterized by severe and persistent difficulties in written word recognition, decoding and spelling that may impair both text reading fluency and text reading comprehension. Despite this, some adults with dyslexia successfully complete their university studies even though graduating from university involves intensive exposure to long and complex texts. This study examined the cognitive skills underlying both text reading comprehension and text reading fluency in a sample of 54 university students with dyslexia and 63 (...) university students without dyslexia, based on a set of tests adapted for an adult population, including listening comprehension, word reading, pseudoword reading, phonemic awareness, spelling, visual span, reading span, vocabulary, non-verbal reasoning, and general knowledge. The contribution of these skills to text reading fluency and text reading comprehension was examined using stepwise multiplicative linear regression analyses. As far as TRF is concerned, a regression model including word reading, pseudoword reading and spelling best fits the data, while a regression model including listening comprehension, general knowledge and vocabulary best fits the data obtained for text reading comprehension. Overall, these results are discussed in the light of the current literature on adults with dyslexia and both text reading fluency and text reading comprehension. (shrink)

On Barzykowski and Moulin's continuum hypothesis, déjà vu and involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) share their underpinning neurocognitive processes. A discontinuity issue for them is that familiarity and episodic recollection exhibit different neurocognitive signatures. This issue can be overcome, I say, provided the authors are ready to distinguish a déjà vécu/episodic IAM continuity and a déjà vu/semantic IAM continuity.

Care has increasingly been promoted as an element of successful management practice. However, an ethic of care is a normative theory that was initially developed in reference to intimate relationships, and it is unclear if it is an appropriate normative standard in business. The purpose of this review is to bridge the social scientific study of care with philosophical understandings of care and to provide a theoretical justification for care as a managerial value. We review the three different forms of (...) care advanced by the ethics literature: caring relations, organizational care, and care as a virtue. We compare these forms of care to the management litertature. In doing so, we integrate what has previously been a scattered, yet growing, body of research on care. Our review of the literature reveals that care has increasingly been studied in management in relation to an ethic of care. Yet, many of the properties of care have also played a role in other established research domains (e.g., leadership). We discuss and critique the management and ethics literatures on care, paying attention to areas of agreement or disagreeement between the two. We go on to provide a normative justification of care as a value in business. Finally, we close by suggesting directions for future research. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a reassessment of Brentano’s most important writings on consciousness. My starting point is the formulation of two theses on consciousness that Brentano expresses at the very beginning of the second chapter of the second book of his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, which constitute the foundation of his theory of primary and secondary objects. My working hypothesis rests on the principle of the unity of consciousness, which is the key to most problems generally associated with (...) Brentano’s theory of consciousness. In the second part of my paper, I examine three of these problems, namely, the problem of duplication, that of infinite regress, and that of complexity. In the last part of my paper, I propose an analysis of the principle of the unity of consciousness that takes into account Brentano’s writings after the publication of his Psychology, in 1874, and I briefly appraise the impact, on the atual debates regarding Brentano’s theory of consciousness, of the modifications that Brentano has subjected his theory in several lectures and manuscripts published posthumously. (shrink)

Le but de cet article n'est pas de fournir une quelconque interprétation de la pensée de Deleuze ou de fournir des clés de lectures pour comprendre l'anti Oedipe. Plus modestement je tente de fournir un angle d'approche de cet ouvrage. Mon point de départ est le suivant : bien que Deleuze ait rédigé un ouvrage désormais classique sur Hume, ce dernier n'est que rarement cité parmi les sources de l'anti Oedipe. De là, j'ai esquissé quelques rapprochements afin de permettre d'éclairer (...) l'approche deleuzienne de la maladie mentale. (shrink)

The realization of dwindling fossil fuel supplies and their adverse environmental impacts has accelerated research and development activities in the domain of renewable energy sources and technologies. Global energy demand is expected to rise during the next few decades, and the majority of today's energy is based on fossil fuels. Alternative energy sources and technologies can play a vital role in lowering or eliminating our reliance on fossil fuels. However, such a transition will require a large investment and will not (...) be reversible. The benefits of hydrogen and other liquid fuels as transportation fuels are not marginal, but the real urgency in greenhouse gas reductions and fossil fuel replacement should not be translated into an energy infrastructure based on unsustainable sources in the long run. It is wise to examine each option thoroughly and objectively now and discard those with little potential so our focus and effort may be placed elsewhere. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to reveal the genesis of the concept of digital reality and its connection with the millennial Pyphagorean tradition in European philosophy and culture, based on the logic and dialectic of the number as a metaphysical entity. The article implements an attempt to historically and philosophically consider the phenomenon of digital reality: the conclusions of modern researchers are confirmed about the key importance of this philosophical tradition as a special system of thought, which defined modern (...) ideological and scientific paradigms and contributed to the formation of the social model of post-industrial, information-digital society. Scientific novelty is to reveal a modern scientific understanding of the notion that numbers can materialize the world by reflecting reality and returning it to man through knowledge derived through the programming or construction of digital reality on the basis of symbolic-applied logic. As a result of the analysis of philosophical sources, it has been proved that information in our world can be considered as another kind of movement of matter, and the Internet is not only an "information technology" but a "social form", a "universal social space" that appeared not overnight – with the invention of "breakthrough" technology, but formed by centuries of cultivated scientific knowledge. (shrink)

In this study, I propose to examine Marty's reconstruction of the general framework in which Brentano develops his theory of consciousness. My starting point is the formulation, at the very beginning of the second chapter of the second book of Brentano's Psychology, of two theses on mental phenomena, which constitute the basis of Brentano's theory of primary and secondary objects. In the second part, I examine the objection of infinite regress raised against Brentano's theory of primary and secondary objects and (...) Marty's interpretation of Brentano's theory of the unity of consciousness. The third part bears on the important distinction between implicit and explicit consciousness, which Brentano introduces in his lectures on descriptive psychology. Here, I analyse Marty's principle of individuation in light of the modifications which Brentano made to his theory of consciousness after the publication of his Psychology in 1874. The last section is an examination of Marty's conception of consciousness as self-consciousness with respect to his principle of individuation. (shrink)

In this paper the author argues that a chief problem of the evolutionary aesthetics is to reverse-engineer the manifestly human urge to both engage in creation of fictional worlds and narratives, and enjoy them. He stresses that any solution to this problem must cope with the fact that it is relatively easy to observe that works of fiction help us to cope with the world, increase our capacity for cooperation, or comfort the sick, but such explanations will remain empty unless (...) we can plausibly envisage how such coping or cooperation or comfort evolved as adaptive functions which were conducive to survival in the ancestral environment. He also argues that a thorough-going Darwinian aesthetics has to a observe specific demand: nothing can be proposed as an adaptive function of fiction unless it explains how the human appetite for fictional narratives increased, however marginally, the chances of our Pleistocene forebears to survive and procreate. Key words EVOLUTIONARY AESTHETICS, FICTION. (shrink)

L’article de Brentano « Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive » est une introduction à la philosophie de Comte. Brentano présente la distinction comtienne entre pensée théologique, métaphysique et positive. Il discute la compatibilité de la pensée positive avec certains principes fondamentaux du christianisme et de l’aristotélisme, qui sont les références majeures de Brentano lors de la rédaction de ce texte. Cet article révèle que de nombreux thèmes importants de la philosophie de Brentan...

My paper is divided into three parts. The first examines the different versions of phenomenology that Husserl used during the Freiburg period, including genetic phenomenology, which is considered, in Experience and Judgment, as the basis for his genealogy of logic. I also examine the doxa-episteme opposition, which is one of the central topics of this book, and I claim that Brentano's epistemic asymmetry between internal and external perception can be considered as a special case of this opposition, which Husserl seeks (...) to overcome. The second part consists in an account of the genesis of the concept of primary content, such as it was first introduced in his Habilitationsschrift in order to replace Brentano's notion of physical phenomenon, to Ideas I where Husserl seems to have abandoned this notion, and replaced it with that of hyle which he conceived in a way similar to that of traditional atomism. The third part shows that the lectures and the working manuscripts of the Freiburg period, including Experience and Judgment, dispel the impression left by Ideas I by providing an original analysis of the dimension of sensory experience. Our starting point is an analysis of the cases of misperception that serve as arguments against Brentano's theory of external perception and whose function here is to uncover several distinctions relating to the modes of consciousness which are directly related to primary contents and to the qualitative dimension of experience. I conclude on the subject of passive syntheses and argue that they refer to a multiplicity of relations that structure phenomenal experience. (shrink)

Les modèles basés sur des agents en interactions, constituent des systèmes sociaux complexes, qui peuvent être simulés par informatiques. Ils se répandent dans les sciences économiques et sociales - comme dans la plupart des sciences des systèmes complexes. Des énigmes épistémologiques (ré)apparaissent. On a souvent opposé modèles et investigations empiriques : d’un côté, on considère les sciences empiriques fondées sur une observation méthodique (enquêtes, expériences) tandis que de l’autre, on conçoit les approches théoriques et la modélisation comme s’appuyant sur une (...) approche conceptuelle ou hypothético-déductive. la simulation a de son coté souvent été comparée à une forme d’expérience ou à une méthode intermédiaire entre la théorie et l’expérience. Tesfatsion a parlé de « laboratoire computationnel » comme d’une manière d’étudier « les comportements des systèmes complexes au moyen d’expériences sous contrôle qu’on peut répéter (réplicable)» et Axelrod a proclamé que la simulation serait « une troisième manière de pratiquer la science dans les sciences sociales », entre l’induction et la déduction. Nous introduisons de nouveaux concepts épistémologiques afin de montrer dans quelle mesure les auteurs ont raison lorsqu'ils se concentrent sur une signification empirique, instrumentale ou conceptuelle de leur modèle ou simulation. La première partie du chapitre discute plus particulièrement de l'épistémologie des modèles économiques à partir des travaux d’Hausman, Guala, Mäki, Sugden, Schelling etc. pour expliquer les divergences entre modèles et simulations. En distinguant entre modèles et simulations, comme entre entre types de modèles, types de simulations informatiques et types d'empiricité obtenue par une simulation, la seconde partie donne la possibilité de comprendre plus précisément - et ensuite de justifier - la diversité des positions épistémologiques présentées dans la première partie. En utilisant les notion de sous-symbolisation (due à Smolensky) et, de hiérarchie dénotationnelle (due à Goodman), une attention particulière est accordée à la multiplicité des pouvoirs dénotationnels des symboles en jeu dans les modèles complexes et les simulations informatiques. Selon cette grille d'analyse, on peut déterminer, dans chaque cas particulier son statut épistémique et la crédibilité qui peut y être associée. -/- Ce chapitre est une traduction (par Gilles Campagnolo) réviséee et augmentée par les auteurs de : Agent-Based Models and Simulations in Economics and Social Sciences: From Conceptual Exploration to Distinct Ways of Experimenting, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 13 (1) 5 DOI: 10.18564/jasss.1532. (shrink)