The definition and measurement of social welfare have been a vexed issue for the past century. This book makes a constructive, easily applicable proposal and suggests how to evaluate the economic situation of a society in a way that gives priority to the worse-off and that respects each individual's preferences over his or her own consumption, work, leisure and so on. This approach resonates with the current concern to go 'beyond the GDP' in the measurement of social progress. Compared to (...) technical studies in welfare economics, this book emphasizes constructive results rather than paradoxes and impossibilities, and shows how one can start from basic principles of efficiency and fairness and end up with concrete evaluations of policies. Compared to more philosophical treatments of social justice, this book is more precise about the definition of social welfare and reaches conclusions about concrete policies and institutions only after a rigorous derivation from clearly stated principles. (shrink)

Numéro spécial de la Revue Philosophique de Louvain. Avec des contributions de Philippe Mongin, François Maniquet, Irènne Berthonnet, Louis Larue et Thomas M. Mueller.

Over the past fifty years the philosophy of language and mind has been dominated by a nondescriptivist approach to content and reference. This book attempts to recast and systematize that approach by offering an indexical model in terms of mental files. According to Recanati, we refer through mental files, the function of which is to store information derived through certain types of contextual relation the subject bears to objects in his or her environment. The reference of a file is determined (...) relationally, not satisfactionally, so a file is not to be equated to the body of (mis-)information it contains. Mental files are the mental equivalent of singular terms, and the reference of linguistic expressions is inherited from that of the files we associate with them. On this approach, mental files, the vehicles of singular thought, do all the work of so-called 'modes of presentation' in Fregean and neo-Russellian theories. (shrink)

Il est assez rare qu’un concept philosophique s’échappe de l’arène académique. C’est pourtant le cas du concept de spécisme, qui a fait une entrée remarquée dans la sphère publique au cours de la dernière décennie. Il est désormais au cœur du débat de société sur nos devoirs envers les animaux non humains. Hélas, ce concept et les enjeux qu’il soulève sont souvent mal compris. Nombreux sont les auteurs qui contestent sa légitimité alors qu’ils le maitrisent mal. D’autres l’utilisent plus volontiers (...) sans toutefois mieux le comprendre. Les confusions qui entourent cette notion l’empêche de contribuer à la discussion autant qu’elle le pourrait. Le présent ouvrage entend remédier à cet état de faits en donnant de la notion de spécisme une présentation à la fois assez précise pour rendre justice aux discussions philosophiques dont elle fait l’objet et suffisamment claire pour être accessible à quiconque s’intéresse au statut moral des animaux. Il se divise en deux parties. La première aborde des questions ontologiques : Qu’est-ce exactement que le spécisme ? À quelles conditions existe-t-il ? Ces conditions sont-elles remplies dans les faits ? Quant à la seconde, elle porte sur des questions éthiques : Le spécisme peut-il être justifié ? Faut-il au contraire le condamner au même titre que le racisme et le sexisme ? (shrink)

Common sense has it that animals matter considerably less than humans; the welfare and suffering of a cow, a chicken or a fish are important but not as much as the welfare and suffering of a human being. Most animal ethicists reject this “speciesist” view as mere prejudice. In their opinion, there is no difference between humans and other animals that could justify such unequal consideration. In the opposite camp, advocates of speciesism have long tried to identify a difference that (...) would fit the bill, but they have consistently seemed to fail. In light of this, some naturally began to appeal to Moorean arguments: the case against speciesism must be flawed somehow, these philosophers maintain, because speciesism is supported by a strong and widespread intuition. This chapter draws on recent findings in social psychology to criticize this defence of speciesism. It argues that the strong and widespread intuition that humans count more than animals is epistemically defective because it is causally shaped by a pair of irrelevant influences: cognitive dissonance and tribalism. Accordingly, it is no suitable basis for a Moorean argument. (shrink)

I argue that immunity to error through misidentification primarily characterizes thoughts that are 'implicitly' de se, as opposed to thoughts that involve an explicit self-identification. Thoughts that are implicitly de se involve no reference to the self at the level of content: what makes them de se is simply the fact that the content of the thought is evaluated with respect to the thinking subject. Or, to put it in familiar terms : the content of the thought is a property (...) which the thinking subject self-ascribes (as in the Loar/Lewis/Chisholm analysis). After answering an objection (to the effect that immunity can affect explicit de se thoughts), I extend the analysis to demonstrative thoughts, which also exhibit the property of immunity to error through misidentification. (shrink)

La philosophie bergsonnienne a rendu le monde de ses contemporains moins opaque, les aidant à lui trouver un sens. Si la France cartésienne coïncide avec les partisans de la démocratie parlementaire ancrée à gauche, celle de Bergson recrute ses plus gros bataillons dans la droite nationale, conservatrice, mais également dans une gauche antiparlementaire, révolutionnaire.

In this paper, we redefine the target of evolutionary explanations by proposing the “evosystem” as an alternative to populations, lineages and species. Evosystems account for changes in the distribution of heritable variation within individual Darwinian populations (evolution by natural selection, drift, or constructive neutral evolution), but also for changes in the networks of interactions within or between Darwinian populations and changes in the abiotic environment (whether these changes are caused by the organic entities or not). The evosystem can thereby become (...) a centerpiece for a redefined evolutionary science, that is, evolutionary studies, that apprehends through a single framework the variety of evolutionary processes that lie at various scales. To illustrate the importance of this broadened perspective on evolution, we use a case of antimicrobial resistance evolution: the spread of the blaNDM gene family and the related resistance to carbapenem antibiotics observed globally, and show how evolutionary studies can contribute to answering contemporary socially relevant challenges. (shrink)

Dans l’œuvre de Max Weber, la sexualité renferme un vaste monde d’oppositions : entre le champ du conscient et celui de l’inconscient ; au sein du monde de l’éthique, quand la religion judaïque s’élève contre la débauche des sens et le polythéisme ; au cœur de l’économie capitaliste, quand la passion des amants ravage tout jusqu’à la « communauté des frères ». Cependant, faute de représenter un fait social, elle ne fait pas l’objet d’une théorisation de la part de Max (...) Weber qui en marque la limite en la bordant d’un côté par le champ de l’instinct, qui ne relève pas de la compréhension, et de l’autre par le solipsisme des amants, qui ouvre sur la mort. (shrink)

Cécile Laborde, philosophe française établie au Royaume-Uni, est déjà l'auteure d'une œuvre fournie et essentielle. Elle s'est, dans un premier temps, inscrite au sein de la philosophie républicaine, en publiant notamment Français, encore un effort pour être républicains! (2010), ouvrage en français adapté d'un livre précédemment publié en anglais, Critical Republicanism: The Hijab Controversy and Political Philosophy (2008). En partant des controverses liées à la loi de 2004 interdisant le...

This is a truly outstanding contribution to contemporary scholarship on Leibniz’s methodology and natural philosophy. By providing the original edition of Leibnizian manuscripts dating back to the period 1676-1680, in particular the De corporum concursu, Michel Fichant has confirmed what some previous scholars had surmised—that Leibniz had substituted his new principle of conservation of vis viva for the Cartesian principle of conservation of quantity of motion measured by mv shortly after his return from France, and quite a few years before (...) the publication of the Brevis demonstratio erroris memorabilis Cartesii in the Acta Eruditorum. Fichant has conclusively shown that the turning point rightly occurs in the midst of Leibniz’s writing the De corporum concursu in January-February 1678. At the time, Leibniz was groping for a coherent system of physical and mathematical reasons to ground the mechanical laws of motion beyond the relativistic formulas which Huygens, Wallis, and Wren had provided in response to the enquiry launched by the Royal Society in 1668. (shrink)

A discussion of Frege's views concerning the meaning of 'I' and his distinction between the 'I' of soliloquy and the 'I' of conversation.

Following Panaccio, 'John believes that p' is analysed as 'For some x such that x is true if and only if p, John believes x'. On this view the complement clause 'that p' acts as a restricted existential quantifier and it contributes a higher-order property.

This book is a close reading of Jacques Lacan’s seminal essay, “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud, ” selected for the particular light it casts on Lacan’s complex relation to linguistics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. It clarifies the way Lacan renews or transforms the psychoanalytic field, through his diversion of Saussure’s theory of the sign, his radicalization of Freud’s fundamental concepts, and his subversion of dominant philosophical values. The authors argue, however, that Lacan’s discourse is (...) marked by a deep ambiguity: while he invents a new “language,” he nonetheless maintains the traditional metaphysical motifs of systemacity, foundation, and truth. (shrink)

This study deals with money, especially coins, and intends to circumscribe the place of coinage among cultural objects. Money cannot be described without a semiotics of culture. We shall consider the definitions of value in order to define the evaluative foundations of meaning, and discuss the recurring parallel between signs and coins. Using a theory of anthropic zones, we will then attempt to determine the conditions necessary for the creation of objects of value, which should lead to a typology of (...) the different orders of fascination. (shrink)

Ce chapitre est consacré à l'impartialité conçue comme une propriété des jugements moraux. Un jugement est impartial, au sens pertinent, si et seulement si son auteur y souscrirait même s’il n’occupait pas la position qu’il occupe actuellement. Les jugements moraux se doivent d'être impartiaux en ce sens en vertu de leur universalisabilité, c'est-à-dire en vertu du fait qu'ils impliquent des jugements identique pour tous les cas identiques quant à leurs propriétés universelles.

Response to Carston's paper, 'How Many Pragmatic Systems Are There'?

L'entretien présente les principales thèses exposées dans la première édition de L'Islamisme en face, (Paris, La Découverte, 1995) et répond aux questions et aux remarques formulées par la rédaction de la revue Krisis sur l'origine et les principales expressions du phénomène islamiste dans ses dimensions nationales (économiques, politiques et sociales) et internationale, au sein des sociétés arabo-musulmanes comme en Europe.

Maupertuis conflates Leibnizian arguments with a form of empiricism which Locke and Newton had inspired. In physics, he applies an optimum principle in order to generate a « system » ; and his teleology of the maximum saving is meant to counterbalance apparent discontinuities within empirical properties and laws. In physiology, the Leibnizian model is put to a different use. The Vénus physique suggests that the elementary organic parts are so adapted as to combine and reproduce a living organism ; (...) and the Système de la nature fosters the analogy of the physiological « monad » as a theoretical notion. The epistemological unity of Maupertuis's theory of science depends upon the regulatory constraints he imposes on the empiricist methodology. (shrink)

Etre citoyen en démocratie ne consiste pas seulement à exercer le droit de vote. C'est aussi être impliqué dans le devenir d'une société dont chacun est responsable. Celle-ci se construit quotidiennement à travers des actes et des comportements qui sont inséparables de nos convictions et de nos choix. Etre citoyen, c'est donc aussi agir avec soi et sur soi. C'est être souverain sur soi. Pour être citoyen, il faut donc le vouloir, le concevoir, et trouver la bonne mesure, car nous (...) ne sommes pas souverains de droit divin. Pour le dire autrement, nous devons apprendre à être libres, au cœur même de notre finitude. (shrink)

My contribution to the 'MIMESIS, METAPHYSICS AND MAKE-BELIEVE' conference held in honour of Kendall Walton in the University of Leeds.

D'abord, la philosophie l'a longtemps délaissé ou abaissé. La pensée religieuse, sans doute mal comprise, lui a prêté son concours : le corps, source de plaisir et de péché, y était tenu alors en suspicion. Le philosophe lui a toujours opposé l'esprit. Il lui préfère " les états de conscience ". Pour lui, il lui semble plus aisé de se connaître (l'ego) que le corps. Il ne rompt pas facilement avec le mentalisme. Il abandonne volontiers le corps aux anthropologues, aux (...) ethnologues, voire aux médecins, ou pis encore, mais afin de le diminuer un peu plus, aux anatomistes (l'aspect cadavérique). (shrink)

Femmes intellectuelles, l’épithète, longtemps, parut incongrue : André Gide, quand s’ouvrirent en 1910 les Décades de Pontigny, rassemblement annuel d’intellectuels français et de toutes les nations, aurait en effet souhaité les bannir de cette sociabilité choisie. Cet ouvrage collectif entend précisément interroger les modalités (épouses suivant leurs maris ou le secondant, auditrices plus ou moins connues, conférencières, directrices de colloques) et surtout le sens de la présence féminine...

Philosophical discussions on the ways that death makes life meaningful and sacred.

The dating of the beginning of the Third Sacred War. The interpretation of the Delphic accounts revisited. The chronology proposed by CID II for the Third Sacred War is not as assured as may appear at first sight. One must keep in mind that the reconstructions proposed there constitute no more than one possibility among others. The numbering of the pylées provides an excellent example : J. Bousquet connects it to the levying of the phocidian fine in the period after (...) the Peace of Philokrates, but other readings remain possible, even preferable. Moreover, the dating of the occupation of the sanctuary to the end of the archonship of Herakleios is based on the testimony of Pausanias, on this point very much subject to caution, as well as a very slanted reading of CID II 10 and CID II 31. Only the absence of a reunion of the college under Aristoxenos in the autumn appears to constitute a certain indicator of the phocidian occupation of the sanctuary. (shrink)

The assertion that every definable set has a definable element is equivalent over to the principle, and indeed, we prove, so is the assertion merely that every Π2‐definable set has an ordinal‐definable element. Meanwhile, every model of has a forcing extension satisfying in which every Σ2‐definable set has an ordinal‐definable element. Similar results hold for and and other natural instances of.

Putnam is known for having demonstated the existence of a new form of context-dependence, namely that which characterizes natural kind terms. Terms like ‘tiger' and ‘water' are indexical, Putnam says, since their conditions of application varies with the context of use — in a suitably broad sense of ‘context'. In this talk I focus on the relation between Putnam's semantics and a body of views I call ‘contextualism'. Contextualism generalizes context-sensitivity : it claims that sentences carry contents only in the (...) context of a speech act. This view was put forward by ordinary language philosophers in the mid-twentieth century, and it has re-surfaced in recent times in the works of philosophers like John Searle, Charles Travis, and myself. In the talk I argue that Putnam's semantics has strong affinities with contextualism. (shrink)

Sabemos que a filosofia está ancorada em suas questões, e mesmo sujeita a fossilizar-se periodicamente em sua tradição. Para tentar encontrar uma margem de manobra - ou, dito de outro modo, para tentar recuperar uma iniciativa teórica - escolhi afastar-me da terra natal da filosofia - a Grécia - e ir para a China: um desvio estratégico com o objetivo de reinterrogar os pressupostos ocultos da razão européia e de remontar ao nosso impensado.