La communauté francophone de l'Océanie insulaire se limite à quatre membres, la Nouvelle-Calédonie, la Polynésie française, le Vanuatu et Wallis-et-Futuna, dispersés entre la Mélanésie et la Polynésie. La langue française ne joue pas un rôle de lingua franca puisque ce sont plusieurs dizaines de langues autochtones mélanésiennes et polynésiennes, auxquelles on peut ajouter les langues des minorités asiatiques ainsi que l'anglais et le bichlamar , qui assurent la communication orale entre les différents groupes, clans et royaumes. Les solidarités et les (...) dynamiques endogènes de ce groupe francophone sont finalement très limitées. Le Vanuatu, avec son développement humain moyen, est là pour le rappeler. Si la francophonie océanienne doit plus son existence au hasard de l'histoire et de la géographie, révèle-t-elle pour autant une véritable aspiration de ses habitants à partager un héritage colonial commun?The French-Speaking community of insular Oceania is made up of only four members, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Vanuatu and Wallis-and-Futuna which are scattered between Melanesia and Polynesia. The French language does not play the role of a lingua franca, since the different groups, clans and kingdoms communicate orally in several dozens of indigenous Melanesian and Polynesian languages along with the languages of the Asian minorities, English and Bichlamar . The endogenous dynamics and solidarities of this French-Speaking unit are very limited. Vanuatu, with its rather mediocre human development, is a good example. If the existence of an Oceanian French-Speaking Community is due more to a coincidence of history and geography, does it nonetheless reveal a true aspiration of its inhabitants to share a common colonial heritage? (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)

To systematically answer the generalized Kretschmann objection, I propose a mean to make operational a criterion widely recognized as allowing one to decide whether the gauge symmetry of a theory is artificial or substantial. My proposition is based on the dressing field method of gauge symmetry reduction, a new simple tool from mathematical physics. This general scheme allows one in particular to straightforwardly argue that the notion of spontaneous symmetry breaking is superfluous to the empirical success of the electroweak theory. (...) Important questions regarding the context of justification of the theory then arise. (shrink)

I distinguish, and discuss the relations between, five types of context-shift involving indexicals. For 'intentional' indexicals - indexicals whose value depends upon the speaker's intention - we can shift the context more or less 'at will', by manifesting one's intention to do so. For other indexicals we can shift the context through pretense. Following a number of authors, I distinguish two types of context-shifting pretense, corresponding to two sets of linguistic phenomena. The fourth type of case is that of expressions (...) which are not really indexical, but perspectival, and for which we do not need to appeal to the notion of context-shift in order to account for their shifty behaviour. The fifth category I introduce and discuss is that of 'shiftable indexicals'. Do we need it, given that we already have the other four categories? My answer is a qualified 'yes'. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

On distingue différents types de "contextes" à l'oeuvre dans l'interprétation des expressions indexicales, de façon à rendre compte du style indirect libre et de phénomènes apparentés.

Réponse aux objections soulevées par Oswald Ducrot à l'encontre de mon approche "gricéenne" de la performativité.

Response to Egré's contribution in the proceedings of the Granada workshop.

The received view about meteorological predicates like ‘rain' is that they carry an argument slot for a location which can be filled explicitly or implicitly. The view assumes that ‘rain', in the absence of an explicit location, demands that the context provide a specific location. In an earlier article, I have provided a counter-example to that claim, viz. a context in which ‘it is raining' receives a location-indefinite interpretation. On the basis of that example, I have argued that when there (...) is tacit reference to a location, it takes place for pragmatic reasons and casts no light on the semantics of meteorological predicates. But several authors have reanalysed the counter-example, so as to make it compatible with the standard view. I discuss those attempts, and argue that my account is better. Methodological considerations concerning the relations between pragmatics and logical form are offered along the way. (shrink)

1 Pragmatics and ordinary language philosophy 2 Speech acts 3 Contextual implications 4 Non-truth-conditional aspects of meaning 5 Indexicals 6 Levels of meaning 7 Open texture 8 The semantics/pragmatics distinction 9 Context and propositional attitudes 10 Presupposition 11 Interpretation and context-change 12 The strategic importance of conversational implicatures 13 Communicative intentions 14 The intentional-inferential model 15 Pragmatics and modularity 16 Cognitive science and contextualism.

Nous vivons une période étrange, probablement même périlleuse à bien des égards. Les avancées de la science, de la médecine et des technologies sont telles qu'elles posent désormais la question de l'avenir de notre commune humanité. Mon corps est-il ma personne ou est-il une chose? S'agit-il simplement d'un ensemble de pièces que l'on peut remplacer, ou d'une enveloppe que l'on pourrait changer? Notre destin est-il, tout entier, inscrit dans nos gènes? Avec le développement des techniques de procréation médicalement assistée, l'enfant (...) demeure-t-il un sujet de droit ou devient-il un objet auquel on aurait droit? L'aventure humaine est-elle réellement menacée par le posthumanisme? Que penser enfin des promesses d'un homme manipulé et amélioré par le transhumanisme, grâce aux nanotechnologies, aux biotechnologies, à l'informatique et aux sciences cognitives... Jean-François Mattei nous propose un retour à une culture du doute, nécessaire pour armer notre pensée face aux défis à venir. Nous invitant à une réflexion éthique, philosophique et politique, il nous amène à nous demander si, modifiant notre humanité, nous pourrions néanmoins rester humains... (shrink)

Should we consider irony as a good thing for democratic life? As it is portrayed in the classical texts through which we know Socrates, eirōneia appears as a humble manifestation of self-consciousn...

Can we solve the problem of the essential indexical, and account for de se belief, by appealing to 'relativized propositions' (functions from rich indices to truth-values)? According to John Perry, we cannot. This paper offers a detailed examination and a critique of Perry's argument.

In this article I have tried to analize the constitution of the notion of internai sensibility, before Reil’s and Cabanis’s works. Amongst the questions raised by this notion, I mainly discuss the question of the unity or diversity of internai sensations, and the question of their unconsciousness. As it appears, the notion is worked out in an anticartesian perspective, both in philosophy and physiology.

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.

[Some notes on the Emergence of the Problem of Belief in the Philosophy of Mind].