A masterful series of interviews with Levinas, conducted by French philosopher Philippe Nemo, which provides a succinct presentation of Levinas's philosophy.

Civilisation and the white Caucasian European peoples, savagery, unreason and the "Dark Continent" synonymous with black people, this was the enlightenment in Europe at its worst. The writings in this book reflect these erroneous thought patterns.

'Humanism of the Other' argues that it is not only possible but of the highest exigency to understand one's humanity through the humanity of others.".

Reasoning research suggests that people use more stringent criteria when they evaluate others' arguments than when they produce arguments themselves. To demonstrate this “selective laziness,” we used a choice blindness manipulation. In two experiments, participants had to produce a series of arguments in response to reasoning problems, and they were then asked to evaluate other people's arguments about the same problems. Unknown to the participants, in one of the trials, they were presented with their own argument as if it was (...) someone else's. Among those participants who accepted the manipulation and thus thought they were evaluating someone else's argument, more than half rejected the arguments that were in fact their own. Moreover, participants were more likely to reject their own arguments for invalid than for valid answers. This demonstrates that people are more critical of other people's arguments than of their own, without being overly critical: They are better able to tell valid from invalid arguments when the arguments are someone else's rather than their own. (shrink)

Given a consequence relation in many-valued logic, what connectives can be defined? For instance, does there always exist a conditional operator internalizing the consequence relation, and which form should it take? In this paper, we pose this question in a multi-premise multi-conclusion setting for the class of so-called intersective mixed consequence relations, which extends the class of Tarskian relations. Using computer-aided methods, we answer extensively for 3-valued and 4-valued logics, focusing not only on conditional operators, but also on what we (...) call Gentzen-regular connectives. For arbitrary N-valued logics, we state necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of such connectives in a multi-premise multi-conclusion setting. The results show that mixed consequence relations admit all classical connectives, and among them pure consequence relations are those that admit no other Gentzen-regular connectives. Conditionals can also be found for a broader class of intersective mixed consequence relations, but with the exclusion of order-theoretic consequence relations. (shrink)

We address the problem of predicting how people will spontaneously divide into groups a set of novel items. This is a process akin to perceptual organization. We therefore employ the simplicity principle from perceptual organization to propose a simplicity model of unconstrained spontaneous grouping. The simplicity model predicts that people would prefer the categories for a set of novel items that provide the simplest encoding of these items. Classification predictions are derived from the model without information either about the number (...) of categories sought or information about the distributional properties of the objects to be classified. These features of the simplicity model distinguish it from other models in unsupervised categorization (where, for example, the number of categories sought is determined via a free parameter), and we discuss how these computational differences are related to differences in modeling objectives. The predictions of the simplicity model are validated in four experiments. We also discuss the significance of simplicity in cognitive modeling more generally. (shrink)

Wiredu’s call for democracy by consensus is illustrated by his description of traditional African consensual rationality. This description contains the attribution of immanence to African consensual rationality. This paper objects to this doctrine of immanence. More importantly, the doctrine of immanence has led to the attribution of pure rationality to traditional African consensual practices. With reference to Aristotle’s three components of persuasion, I object to deliberation as purely rational and impervious to extraneous factors. I further argue that it is because (...) deliberation is not always perfectly rational that the process of consensus can suffer three forms of social conformity: conformity to dominant players, to numerical opinion majority, and to group-centrism. These forms of conformity mean that a consensus task order could lead to decisions of more inclusive value, but not necessarily decisions of more epistemic value. The concept of agonistic inquiry is employed to tackle what I see as the dangers of conformity and complacency in the project of inclusivity, and this is to strike a crucial balance between too-consensual and purely adversarial forms of deliberation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While the first generation of the so-called Frankfurt School has promoted a strong interconnection between social critique and knowledge of the social world, contemporary critical theory seems to consider that epistemological issues don’t deserve anymore consideration. Is it really possible to elaborate a convincing theory of social critique without taking seriously the various links between social critique and knowledge? This article argues that the answer is no. In a first step, it recalls the ways in which the philosophical debate (...) about social critique is currently articulated and how it disconnects social critique and knowledge. One of the reasons for such a disconnection relates to a vision of politics as consisting mainly in a conflict between normative principles, notably between conceptions of social justice. This vision of politics is criticized in the second step of this paper. A second reason, examined in the third part of the paper, relates to the risk of epistemic violence. The shared but questionable assumption is that any sociological or philosophical attempt to produce knowledge would necessarily lead to epistemic violence rather than to epistemic empowerment. (shrink)

Over the last decade, businesses, policymakers, and researchers alike have advocated the need for value creation through inter-organizational collaboration. Researchers have widely argued that organizations that are engaged in collaborative processes create value. Because researchers have tended to focus on the identification of organizational motivations and on key success factors for collaboration, however, both the nature and processes of value creation in inter-organizational collaboration have yet to be examined. A recent theory by Austin and Seitanidi :726–758, 2012a; Nonprofit Volunt Sect (...) Q 41:929–968, 2012b) has proposed an analytical framework for analyzing value creation in inter-organizational collaboration, based on four types of value. The purpose of this current study is to empirically test this framework, and to provide key pointers for analyzing the nature of value, particularly in relation to learning. Our detailed empirical research is based on a 6-year retrospective case study of an inter-organizational partnership within an international development project for local economic development in Guatemala. The study’s contributions are twofold. First, it provides evidence of the critical path of the creation of diverse types of values in a collaborative process; second, it links the different types of value creation with the types of learning that occur in an inter-organizational process. (shrink)

This paper begins by defending the twofold relevance, political and theoretical, of the notion of social suffering. Social suffering is a notion politics cannot do without today, as it seems indispensable to describe all the aspects of contemporary injustice. As such, it has been taken up in a number of significant research programmes in different social sciences (sociology, anthropology, social psychology). The notion however poses significant conceptual problems as it challenges disciplinary boundaries traditionally set up to demarcate individual and social (...) phenomena. I argue that philosophy has a role to play in the attempt to integrate the diverging perspectives stemming from the social sciences. I attempt to show that, as it engages with the social sciences to account for the conceptual and normative issues thrown open by the question of social suffering, philosophy in fact retrieves the very idea of critical theory, as a conjugated critique of social reality and of its knowledge. I conclude by showing how the question of social suffering then becomes a useful criterion to distinguish between the different existing approaches in critical theory. (shrink)

Olsson and his collaborators have proposed an extension of Belief Revision Theory where an epistemic state is modeled as a triple S=⟨K_,E,A_⟩ , where A_ is a research agenda, i.e. a set of research questions. Contraction and expansion apply to states, and affect the agenda. We propose an alternative characterization of the problem of agenda updating, where research questions are viewed as blueprints for research strategies. We offer a unified solution to this problem, and prove it equivalent to Olsson’s own. (...) We conclude arguing that: (i) our solution makes the idea of ‘minimal change’ in questions and agendas clearer; (ii) can be extended in ways the original theory was not, and may help better realize the aims this theory was proposed for; (iii) unveils some limitations of the initial approach, yet opening a way to overcome them. (shrink)

La théorie deweyenne de la nature humaine permet de clarifier le sens du naturalisme deweyen ainsi que ses implications politiques. La première partie de l’article analyse la manière dont Dewey défend une conception processuelle, interactionnelle et intégrative de la nature humaine. La deuxième partie analyse la fonction classificatoire du concept de nature humaine et la troisième la manière dont Dewey attribue une fonction explicative à ce concept en discutant les références politiques conservatrices ou progressistes, voire révolutionnaires, à la nature humaine.

Fake news can originate from an ordinary person carelessly posting what turns out to be false information or from the intentional actions of fake news factory workers, but broadly speaking it can also originate from scientific fraud. In the latter case, the article can be retracted upon discovery of the fraud. A case study shows, however, that such fake science can be visible in Google even after the article was retracted, in fact more visible than the retraction notice. We hypothesize (...) that the reason for this lies in the popularity-based logic governing Google, in particular its foundational PageRank algorithm, in conjunction with a psychological law which we refer to as the “law of retraction”: a retraction notice is typically taken to be less interesting and therefore less popular with internet users than the original content retracted. We conduct an empirical study drawing on records of articles retracted due to fraud in the Retraction Watch public database. The study tests the extent to which such retracted scientific articles are still highly ranked in Google –and more so than information about the retraction. We find, among other things, that both Google Search and Google Scholar more often than not ranked a link to the original article higher than a link indicating that the article has been retracted. Surprisingly, Google Scholar did not perform better in this regard than Google Search.We also found cases in which Google did not track the retraction of an article on the first result page at all. We conclude that both Google Search and Google Scholar run the risk of disseminating fake science through their ranking algorithms. (shrink)

According to Wiredu, the Akan profess secular esteem rather than religious worship to supra-natural beings, who they perceive in an empirical sense. He backs this up by re-reading what he sees as the Akan general ontology in a way that denies them of the concepts of the supernatural, the transcendental, the mental, the spiritual, and an ontologically distinct mind. At the end of denying the three criteria of worship as well as all of these other concepts which might otherwise be (...) available to the Akan, one might struggle to find any evidence that the Akan even had a religion. I dispute this secular reading, and I more generally demonstrate that the characterizations of the Akan attitude to divinity as non-worshipping, non-supernatural, non-transcendent, and non-spiritual, are either conceptually flawed, factually incorrect, or both. (shrink)

Ce texte d'une conférence prononcée en 1982, l'année de publication du recueil "De Dieu qui vient à l'idée", appartient à la dernière période et à la dernière manière du philosophe. Prolongeant l'inspiration des oeuvres précédentes, il affirme vigoureusement la radicalité de l'éthique qu'il pense, antèrieurement à toute morale, comme philosophie première.

L’argument de base de cet article est que le débat consensuel n’a pas été une notion très significative jusqu’à présent parce que le consensus n’a pas été étudié de manière approfondie en tant que concept et que la délibération n’a pas été étudiée précisément en termes de sa propension à parvenir à un accord commun. En particulier, la délibération et les problèmes qui en découlent n’ont pas été classées en plusieurs niveaux afin d’exposer les différents défis qui se posent lorsque (...) l’on tente de parvenir à un accord et les types d’approches délibératives impliquées dans chaque catégorie. La présente recherche propose une telle catégorisation dans le but de clarifier davantage le débat. (shrink)

Shareholder activism has become a force for good in the extant corporate governance literature. In this article, we present a case study of Nigeria to show how shareholder activism, as a corporate governance mechanism, can constitute a space for unhealthy politics and turbulent politicking, which is a reflection of the country’s brand of politics. As a result, we point out some translational challenges, and suggest more caution, in the diffusion of corporate governance practices across different institutional environments. We contribute to (...) the literature on corporate governance in Africa, whilst creating an understanding of the political embeddedness of shareholder activism in different institutional contexts—i.e. a step closer to a political theorising of shareholder activism. (shrink)

Preoccupation with multiparty aggregative democracy in Africa has produced superficial forms of political/electoral choice-making by subjects that deepen pre-existing ethnic and primordial cleavages. This is because the principles of the multiparty system presuppose that decision-making through voting should be the result of a mere aggregation of pre-existing, fixed preferences. To this kind of decision-making, I propose deliberative democracy as a supplementary approach. My reason is that deliberation, beyond mere voting, should be central to decisionmaking and that, for a decision to (...) be legitimate, it must be preceded by deliberation, not merely the aggregation of pre-existing fixed preferences. I agree with arguments that when adequate justifications are made for claims/demands/conclusions, deliberation has the potential to have a salutary effect on people’s opinions, transform/evolve preferences, better inform judgments/voting, lead to increasingly ‘common good’ decisions, have moral educative power, place more burden of account-giving on public officers, and furnish subjects/losers/outvoted with justifications for collectively binding decisions. I argue that a deliberative turn in politics in Africa will have a mitigating effect on tribal and money politics. (shrink)

We examine a special case of inquiry games and give an account of the informational import of asking questions. We focus on yes-or-no questions, which always carry information about the questioner's strategy, but never about the state of Nature, and show how strategic information reduces uncertainty through inferences about other players' goals and strategies. This uncertainty cannot always be captured by information structures of classical game theory. We conclude by discussing the connection with Gricean pragmatics and contextual constraints on interpretation.

Everything is phenomenon, everything is gift, or everything is given. This presupposition of phenomenology, which makes giveness the starting point for phenomenality, is not altogether self-evident. It is not sufficient to look merely at the reverse of the gift, but it is a matter of questioning the impossibility of even giving. Questioning the strategies of the contemporary reappropriations of Kant—radicalization, disproportion, and inversion —this text works under a fourth possibility, seldom examined and yet still envisaged by Kant: the “Extra-Phenomenal”, or (...) in other words, the “Chaos”, the “pell-mell”, the “Cinnabar”, or the “melee of sensations”. (shrink)

“What we have learned from Saussure” affirms Merleau-Ponty “is that, taken singly, signs do not signify anything, and that each one of them does not so much express a meaning as mark a divergence of meaning between itself and other signs.” While it has often been stressed that Merleau-Ponty was arguably among the earliest philosophical readers of Saussure, the real impact of this reading on Merleau-Ponty’s thinking has rarely been assessed in detail. By focusing on the middle period – the (...) years between the publication of the Phenomenology of Perception and the abandonment of the book project The Prose of the World – a special interest in language and its ideality becomes all the more evident. Now this period is crucial for understanding the turn of the later years: similarly to Saussure, who shifted the problem of meaning from a problem of referentiality to an issue of self-differentiation of the linguistic field, Merleau-Ponty shifts his account of perception from a relationship based on sensory subjects and perceived objects to an immanent differentiation of the sensible world. The genesis ofan articulated world can be conceptualized with the experience of children’s language acquisition and the phenomenon of “deflation.” At a certain point in her development, the child interrupts her incessant babbling and learns to shape pauses and silences, which are the precondition for meaningful sounds. Learning how to speak – as it were – would thus be learning how not to speak. The child may only enter a specific language by means of a phonematic restriction; to become a member of a language community is to lose the capacity to speak all languages. (shrink)

Abstract Could the ?analytic? approach take greater roots in the traditions of African Philosophy? In this contribution, I give an affirmative answer to the question. However, I also argue that the process requires a ?political will?, as it involves a clear acknowledgement of the historical impetus animating the very idea?and contemporary institutional existences?of African philosophy.

This article aims to reconstruct the intellectual, political and biographical connection between Michel Foucault and the group known as the "new philosophers". By focusing not only on their philosophical project, but also on the way in which they try to situate themselves in the new French intellectual field of the second half of the 1970s - deeply influenced by the decline of the political cycle of 1968 - we attempt to describe the boundaries of two ways of conceiving theoretical work (...) and of understanding the present that are radically different but, nevertheless, in some respects coincident. This analysis of the relationship between Foucault and the new philosophers - mainly developed around the figures of Bernard Henri-Lévy and André Glucksmann - aims, thus, to decipher not only some aspects of their philosophical proposal, but also of a particularly turbulent time crucial to understand the following decades. (shrink)

L’éthique de Wittgenstein, bien que difficile à saisir, est essentielle à sa philosophie. Afin de la comprendre, nous devons réfléchir tant à la valeur qu’au langage visant à exprimer, tandis que ce dernier échoue dans son entreprise même. Selon Wittgenstein, l’éthique est « surnaturelle » : une pleine saisie de la signification de ce terme exige une compréhension du caractère « accidentel » de tout ce qui est, i.e. qui tout ce qui appartient au monde. Nous verrons aussi comment Wittgenstein (...) utilise la notion de « solipsisme », pour signifier l’intrication entre l’individu et la réalité en tant que tout. En ce qui concerne le langage, l’impossibilité de propositions éthiques, centrale dans le Tractatus logico-philosophicus, initie, dans la Conférence sur l’éthique, un regard réflexif sur la tendance à « affronter les murs de notre cage ». Ce n’est que sur cet arrière-plan éthique que nous pouvons comprendre la place de la religion chez Wittgenstein: Dieu (comme la valeur) réside en dehors du monde et il y a une identité entre « bon » et « divin ». (shrink)

Certain questions have recurred throughout the history of philosophy. They are the big questions-about happiness and the good life, the limits of knowledge, the ultimate structure of reality, the nature of consciousness, the relation between causality and free will, the pervasiveness of suffering, and the conditions for a just and flourishing society-that thinkers in different cultures across the ages have formulated in their own terms in an attempt to make sense of their lives and the world around them. The essays (...) in this book turn to the major figures and texts of the Buddhist tradition in order to expand and enrich our thinking on these enduring questions. Examining them from a comparative and cross-cultural perspective demonstrates the value of alternative ways of addressing philosophical problems, showing how different approaches can produce new and unexpected kinds of questions and answers. Engaging with the Buddhist tradition, this book shows, helps return philosophy to its practical as well as theoretical aim: not only understanding the world but also knowing how to live in it. Featuring striking and generative comparisons of Buddhist and Western thought, Philosophy's Big Questions challenges our thinking in fundamental ways and offers readers new conceptual tools, methods, and insights for the pursuit of a good and happy life. (shrink)

N'y a-t-il pas une contradiction dans l'oeuvre d'Arendt? On y trouve une description critique du totalitarisme national-socialiste, mais aussi l'apologie de Heidegger érigé, malgré son éloge de la "vérité interne et grandeur" du mouvement nazi, en roi secret de la pensée. L'étude des Origines du totalitarisme montre qu'Arendt développe une vision heideggérienne de la modernité. Dans Condition de l'homme moderne, la conception déshumanisée de l'humanité au travail et le discrédit jeté sur nos sociétés égalitaires procèdent également de Heidegger. En outre, (...) des lettres inédites montrent qu'Arendt a décidé de marcher sur les pas de Heidegger avant leurs retrouvailles de l'année 1950. Il s'agit d'une adhésion intellectuelle, irréductible à la seule passion amoureuse, et qui mérite d'être prise au sérieux. Certes, Arendt ne partage pas l'antisémitisme exterminateur de Heidegger confirmé par ses Cahiers noirs. Que devient cependant la pensée, instrumentalisée dans l'opposition - nouveau mythe moderne - entre Heidegger, le "penseur" retiré sur les hauteurs neigeuses de sa hutte de Todtnauberg, et Eichmann, l'exécutant sans pensée, le "clown" muré dans sa cage de verre? (shrink)