La logique classique, qui repose sur trois principes fondamentaux (d'identité, de non-contradiction et de tiers-exclu), a pu séduire par son efficacité orientée vers l'être, elle permet d'appréhender la cohérence du réel, donc de développer les savoirs. Pour autant, sa puissance s'avère limitée dans certaines situations des limitations internes des formalismes à l'apparition de nouveaux objets paradoxaux, la science du XXe siècle a été confrontée à une crise de ses fondements dont elle n'est pas encore sortie. Or, s'affranchir de ce qui (...) vient en nous entraver la pensée a été un enjeu pour des courants soucieux de fonder leur rigueur démonstrative sur un au-delà de l'être. Dans la lignée de l'hénologie néoplatonicienne, ces modes d'explication ont néanmoins souvent été jugés irrationnels, mystiques ou simplement absurdes. À l'aide des logiques non standards contemporaines, c'est une étude systémique de ces positions qui est ici envisagée à travers la critique de l'hégémonie des trois grands principes logiques grâce à la logique intuitionniste, il devient possible de construire rigoureusement la notion de néant suressentiel; grâce aux logiques paraconsistantes, les contradictions et les paradoxes qu'une telle dialectique engendre perdent leur caractère irrationnel; enfin, grâce aux traditions logiques indiennes et japonaises, le principe d'identité peut lui-même être questionné. Cette remise en cause radicale de nos certitudes les mieux ancrées permet ultimement de dégager de nouvelles perspectives à la pensée logique."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

L’importance des sources néoplatoniciennes de la philosophie première de Jankélévitch s’inscrit dans la lignée de l’enseignement de Bréhier qui le met sur la voie d’une « négation libératrice ». La fidélité à Bergson et la lecture de Schelling ne pouvaient néanmoins que reconduire la tentative de dépassement de la logique qui en résulte à une forme d’expérience pure qui recherche la plénitude dans une adéquation à la vie. Ainsi, « l’évanouissante entrevision » à laquelle Jankélévitch nous condamne à tendre sans (...) jamais l’atteindre, rivés que nous sommes à notre finitude, marque-t‑elle tout autant une forme de distance vis-à-vis de la philosophie de Plotin. La compréhension de cet héritage critique pourra ainsi nous permettre de mieux cerner ce qui sépare le vitalisme de Jankélévitch de l’idéalisme néoplatonicien, c’est-à-dire ce qui demeure incompatible entre la logique de la vie et la dialectique de la pensée. (shrink)

L'idealisme radical de Jean-Michel Le Lannou conteste l'identification de la pensee et de la representation. Loin de soumettre a la vacuite et la mort, l'abstraction manifeste ses puissances d'exces. Plus rien ne nous oblige a persister dans notre amour du fini. Pourtant, la philosophie s'est longtemps meprise sur elle-meme. D'ou provient une telle mesentente sur le desir du penser? Montrer comment la pensee a pu ainsi se fourvoyer sur elle-meme doit permettre d'entreprendre sa liberation definitive. Les etudes reunies ici s'attachent (...) avec ambition a eclairer ce mouvement insurrectionnel d'une pensee qui refuse de se laisser retenir par la particularite et qui, dans son detachement meme, rejoint l'affirmation substantielle la plus intense. (shrink)

The article presents an overview of the intellectual trajectory of Alain Caillé, the founder and animator of the anti-utilitarian movement in the social sciences (MAUSS) in France. Going back to early influences of Claude Lefort, Karl Polanyi and Pierre Clastres, it shows the centrality of the symbolic constitution of the economy in the development of an intellectual front against rational choice. It also considers how Marcel Mauss’s famous Essay on the Gift has been developed into a ‘gift paradigm’ that aims (...) to unify the various social sciences into a comprehensive alternative to the interest paradigm. (shrink)

We argue that a fashionable interpretation of the theory of natural selection as a claim exclusively about populations is mistaken. The interpretation rests on adopting an analysis of fitness as a probabilistic propensity which cannot be substantiated, draws parallels with thermodynamics which are without foundations, and fails to do justice to the fundamental distinction between drift and selection. This distinction requires a notion of fitness as a pairwise comparison between individuals taken two at a time, and so vitiates the interpretation (...) of the theory as one about populations exclusively. (shrink)

The idea that deep brain stimulation (DBS) induces changes to personality, identity, agency, authenticity, autonomy and self (PIAAAS) is so deeply entrenched within neuroethics discourses that it has become an unchallenged narrative. In this article, we critically assess evidence about putative effects of DBS on PIAAAS. We conducted a literature review of more than 1535 articles to investigate the prevalence of scientific evidence regarding these potential DBS-induced changes. While we observed an increase in the number of publications in theoretical neuroethics (...) that mention putative DBS-induced changes to patients’ postoperative PIAAAS, we found a critical lack of primary empirical studies corroborating these claims. Our findings strongly suggest that the theoretical neuroethics debate on putative effects of DBS relies on very limited empirical evidence and is, instead, reliant on unsubstantiated speculative assumptions probablyin lieuof robust evidence. As such, this may reflect the likelihood of a speculative neuroethics bubble that may need to be deflated. Nevertheless, despite the low number of first-hand primary studies and large number of marginal and single case reports, potential postoperative DBS changes experienced by patients remain a critical ethical concern. We recommend further empirical research in order to enhance theoretical neuroethics work in the area. In particular, we call for the development of better instruments capable of capturing potential postoperative variations of PIAAAS. (shrink)

Frederic Lee sets out the foundations of a post-Keynesian price theory through developing an empirically grounded production schema. The administered, normal cost and mark-up price doctrines are explained in parts I-III of the book, as many of their theoretical arguments are important for developing the foundations. This involves discussing the work of Gardiner Means, Philip Andrews, and Michal Kalecki as well as the developers of the doctrines, such as Edwin Nourse, Paolo Sylos Labini, Harry Edwards, Josef Steindl and Alfred Eisner. (...) Drawing upon the arguments and formal modelling offered by the doctrines, in conjunction with empirical evidence from one hundred studies on pricing and production, Dr Lee develops an empirically grounded pricing model and production schema. He argues that the model and the schema together constitute the foundations for post-Keynesian price theory. (shrink)

Nikolai Lossky is key to the history of the Husserl-Rezeption in Russia. He was the first to publish a review of the Russian translation of Husserl’s first volume of the Logische Untersuchungen that appeared in 1909. He also published a presentation and criticism of Husserl’s transcendental idealism in 1939. An English translation of both of Lossky’s publications is offered in this volume for the first time. The present paper, which is intended as an introduction to these documents, situates Lossky within (...) the Rezeptionsgeschichte of Husserl in Russia and explains why he is central to it. It also explains what Lossky principally found in Husserl: he saw in the latter’s critique of psychologism support for his own ontology, epistemology, and axiology. Lossky characterizes his ontology as an ideal-realism. According to ideal-realism, both the realm of ideal beings and the realm of real beings are mind-independent. Per his epistemology, which he calls “intuitivism,” real beings are intuited by sensual intuition and ideal beings by intellectual intuition. The realm of ideal beings includes the subrealm of values, which is intuited by axiological intuition. This thoroughly realist conception contrasted sharply with the subjectivist tendencies of the time. So, when Lossky took cognizance of Husserl’s critique of psychologism, he thereupon found an ally in his battle against the various subjectivisms. But, when Husserl took the transcendental idealist turn, Lossky was at the forefront of the backlash against the new direction Husserl wanted to give to phenomenology. (shrink)

La dynamique des sciences se deploie selon des temporalites multiples qui possedent leurs propres rythmes. De ce point de vue, l'exercice qui consiste a scander en decennies l'histoire de la logique et des sciences formelles est perilleux. Peut-on aller au-dela et tenter de donner sens a cette decennie des annees trente? La fin du logicisme, l'avenement de nouvelles logiques, le developpement du formalisme, ses limitations internes, sa critique externe et les approches formelles du langage sont six traits caracteristiques explores dans (...) ce recueil d'articles qui font apparaitre l'eloignement ainsi que la proximite des annees trente et de cette fin de siecle. (shrink)

Ecological fitness has been suggested to provide a unifying definition of fitness. However, a metric for this notion of fitness was in most cases unavailable except by proxy with differential reproductive success. In this article, I show how differential persistence of lineages can be used as a way to assess ecological fitness. This view is inspired by a better understanding of the evolution of some clonal plants, colonial organisms, and ecosystems. Differential persistence shows the limitation of an ensemblist noncausal understanding (...) of evolution. Causal explanations are necessary to understand the evolution by natural selection of these biological systems. †To contact the author write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Montreal, P.O. Box 6128, Station Centre‐Ville, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 3J7 Canada; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This is an important new book about human motivation, about the reasons people have for their actions. What is distinctively new about it is its focus on how people see or understand their situations, options, and prospects. By taking account of people's understandings, Professor Schick is able to expand the current theory of decision and action. The author provides a perspective on the topic by outlining its history. He defends his new theory against criticism, considers its formal structure, and shows (...) at length how it resolves many currently debated problems: the problems of conflict and weakness of will, Allais' problem, Kahneman and Tversky's problems, Newcomb's problem, and others. The book will be of special interest to philosophers, psychologists, and economists. (shrink)

The phenomenological effects of deep brain stimulation (DBS) on the self of the patient remains poorly understood and under described in the literature, despite growing evidence that a significant number of patients experience postoperative neuropsychiatric changes. To address this lack of phenomenological evidence, we conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews with 17 patients with Parkinson's disease who had undergone DBS. Exploring the subjective character specific to patients' experience of being implanted gives empirical and conceptual understanding of the potential phenomenon of DBS-induced self-estrangement. (...) Our study concluded that (1) the more patients preoperatively felt alienated by their illness, the more they experienced postoperative self-estrangement, and (2) the notion of self-estrangement seems to exist in association with certain common qualitative characters, namely, loss of control, which reflects a deteriorative estrangement, and distorted perception of capacities, which reveals a restorative estrangement. These findings indicate that subjective self-reports help us to understand some aspects of the potential phenomenon of DBS-induced self-estrangement. (shrink)

l'Histoire du scepticisme d'Érasme à Spinoza de Richard H. Popkin n'est pas seulement le récit des diverses doctrines sceptiques qui traversent le XVIe et le XVIIe siècle: un fil conducteur confère à l'ensemble sa cohérence. Mieux, une conception générale de la philosophie moderne sous-tend ses analyses. Selon Popkin en effet, toute la philosophie, depuis la Renaissance jusqu'aux lumières, s'est trouvée confrontée à la tâche de surmonter la «crise pyrrhonienne», née en contexte de querelle religieuse, et qui très vite s'étend à (...) tout le savoir. Popkin a ainsi proposé une interprétation originale mais peut-être aussi parfois contestable de la modernité, en particulier dans la mesure où il ne distingue pas assez nettement le scepticisme ancien du moderne, et où il ne prend pas en compte la spécificité du fidéisme. (shrink)

Postmodernity authors have taken parts from Nietzche and Heidegger’s writings, leaving aside other parts not of their interest. So, their philosophical grounding explains itself the denying of history and their suspicion for science and technology. But, as Nietzche and Heidegger heirs, postmodernit..

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been regarded as an efficient and safe treatment for Parkinson’s disease (PD) since being approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1997. It is estimated that more than 150 000 patients have been implanted, with a forecasted rapid increase in uptake with population ageing. Recent longitudinal follow-up studies have reported a significant increase in postoperative survival rates of patients with PD implanted with DBS as compared with those not implanted with DBS. Although DBS (...) tends to increase life expectancy for most patients with PD, this medical benefit does not come without attendant negative consequences. For example, emerging forms of iatrogenic harms are sometimes induced—harms which were not initially expected when clinicians proposed neurosurgery and patients or their guardians consented to the treatment. We report and discuss the clinical case of a patient who was implanted with DBS more than 20 years ago (at the time of writing) and is now experiencing unexpected stages of PD. This case illustrates how extending the life span without improving quality of life may introduce a burden of harms for patients and families. As well, this case shows why we should prepare for the expanding numbers of PD-implanted patients experiencing a gain of longevity but with severe stages of disease leading to diminution in quality of life. This newly observed effect of DBS treatment requires us to explore ethical questions related to iatrogenic harms, informed consent, end of life and caregivers’ burden. (shrink)

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, is considered by many to be the most influential American jurist. The voluminous literature devoted to his writings and legal thought, however, is diverse and inconsistent. In this study, Frederic R. Kellogg follows Holmes's intellectual path from his early writings through his judicial career. He offers a fresh perspective that addresses the views of Holmes's leading critics and explains his relevance to the controversy over judicial activism and restraint. Holmes is shown to be an original legal (...) theorist who reconceived common law as a theory of social inquiry and who applied his insights to constitutional law. From his empirical and naturalist perspective on law, with its roots in American pragmatism, emerged Holmes's distinctive judicial and constitutional restraint. Kellogg distinguishes Holmes from analytical legal positivism and contrasts him with a range of thinkers. (shrink)

In this book Frederic Schick develops his challenge to standard decision theory. He argues that talk of the beliefs and desires of an agent is not sufficient to explain choices. To account for a given choice we need to take into consideration how the agent understands the problem, how he sees in a selective way the options open to him. The author applies his new logic to a host of common human predicaments. Why do people in choice experiments act so (...) often against expectations? Why do people cooperate in situations where textbook logic predicts that they won't? What exactly is weakness of will? What are people reporting when they say their lives have no meaning for them? This book questions the foundations of technical and philosophical decision theory and will appeal to all those who work in that field, be they philosophers, economists and psychologists. (shrink)

Haeusermann et al. (Citation2023) draw three overall conclusions from their study on closed loop neuromodulation and self-perception in clinical treatment of refractory epilepsy. The first is that closed-loop neuromodulation devices did not substantially change epileptic patient’s personalities or self-perception postoperatively. The second is that some patients and caregivers attributed observed changes in personality and self-perception to the epilepsy itself and not to the DBS treatments. The third is that the devices provided participants with novel ways to make sense of their (...) illness. These findings further demonstrate a misalignment between some neuroethicists’ concerns about putative postoperative changes to personality, and the empirical evidence for such changes. Haeusermann et al. nonetheless concede that “neurotechnology directed at persisting rather than episodic clinical phenomena could have greater implications for personality or self-perception, either because they operate more continuously or are directed at clinical phenomena that are more stably integrated into patients’ self-concepts” (41). We acknowledge that the hypothesis that participants did not report changes because they were only episodically and not continually stimulated offers an interesting line for future investigation. Nonetheless, we would like to propose that potential postoperative personality changes might be correlated with the pathophysiology itself, rather than the stimulation effects of the technology. Generally, we advance the view that unintended effects solely induced by the technology cannot be excluded per se. Regardless, this comment aims to highlight that ethicists’ starting premise should be that patients suffering from diverse pathophysiology, or patients who are treated with stimulation in different brain regions and with differing parameters, would likely not react in the same way to treatment. (shrink)

The article resituates critical realism within critical theory and proposes a tripartite articulation of British critical realism, German critical theory and French anti-utilitarianism. It suggests that the critique of positivism has to be enhanced with a critique of utilitarianism and makes the case that both critiques have to be grounded in a hermeneutic approach to social life. By taking the symbolic constitution of the world seriously, critical realist hermeneutics offers a via media between naturalism and anti-naturalism, explanation and interpretation, universalism (...) and relativism, materialism and idealism, realism and constructivism. (shrink)

. Computational chemistry grew in a new era of “desktop modeling,” which coincided with a growing demand for modeling software, especially from the pharmaceutical industry. Parameterization of models in computational chemistry is an arduous enterprise, and we argue that this activity leads, in this specific context, to tensions among scientists regarding the epistemic opacity transparency of parameterized methods and the software implementing them. We relate one flame war from the Computational Chemistry mailing List in order to assess in detail the (...) relationships between modeling methods, parameterization, software and the various forms of their enclosure or disclosure. Our claim is that parameterization issues are an important and often neglected source of epistemic opacity and that this opacity is entangled in methods and software alike. Models and software must be addressed together to understand the epistemological tensions at stake. (shrink)

At the age of twenty-five, Primo Levi was sent to Hell. Levi, an Italian chemist from Turin, was one of many swept up in the Holocaust of World War II and sent to die in the German concentration camp in Auschwitz. Of the 650 people transported to the camp in his group, only 15 men and 9 women survived. After Soviet liberation of the camp in 1945, Levi wrote books, essays, short stories, poetry, and a novel, in which he painstakingly (...) described the horrors of his experience at Auschwitz. He also spent the rest of his life struggling with the fact that he was not among those who were killed. In _Primo Levi and the Politics of Survival,_ Frederic D. Homer looks at Primo Levi's life but, more important, shows him to be a significant political philosopher. In the course of his writings, Levi asked and answered his most haunting question: can someone be brutalized by a terrifying experience and, upon return to "ordinary life," recover from the physical and moral destruction he has suffered? Levi used this question to develop a philosophy positing that although man is no match for life, he can become better prepared to contend with the tragedies in life. According to Levi, the horrors of the world occur because of the strength of human tendencies, which make relationships between human beings exceedingly fragile. He believed that we are ill-constituted beings who have tendencies toward violence and domination, dividing ourselves into Us and Them, with very shallow loyalties. He also maintained that our only refuge is in education and responsibility, which may counter these tendencies. Homer calls Levi's philosophy "optimistic pessimism." As Homer demonstrates, Levi took his past experiences into account to determine that goodwill and democratic institutions do not come easily to people. Liberal society is to be earned through discipline and responsibility toward our weaknesses. Levi's answer is "civilized liberalism." To achieve this we must counter some of our most stubborn tendencies. Homer also explores the impact of Levi's death, an apparent suicide, on the way in which his work and theories have been perceived. While several critics discount Levi's work because of the nature of his death, Homer argues that his death is consistent with his philosophy. A book rich in brutally honest philosophy, _Primo Levi and the Politics of Survival_ compels one to look at serious questions about life, tragedy, optimism, solidarity, violence, and human nature. (shrink)

This book, first published in 1997, is an introductory overview of decision theory. It is completely non-technical, without a single formula in the book. Written in a crisp and clear style it succinctly covers the full range of philosophical issues of rationality and decision theory, including game theory, social choice theory, prisoner's dilemma and much else. The book aims to expand the scope and enrich the foundations of decision theory. By addressing such issues as ambivalence, inner conflict, and the constraints (...) imposed upon us by our attachments to others, Frederic Schick reveals that our thinking is often more subtle than standard theories of rationality allow. Only a theory that respects that subtlety can illumine what is otherwise puzzling. The book contains many examples drawn from history and literature dealing with subjects such as love, war, friendship, and crime. (shrink)

La notion de «catégorie» traverse de manière centrale l�histoire de la philosophie depuis sa première formulation par Aristote. Elle tient une place importante dans la logique développée par Husserl. Cet article a pour visée de montrer comment, au-delà d�une simple exposition d�ontologie formelle, les catégories relèvent de la constitution transcendantale. Comme tout objet, réel ou idéel, les catégories sont corrélées à un ensemble structuré d�actes intentionnels qui peut rendre compte de leur émergence et de leur thématisation explicite. Cela permettra de (...) montrer que la problématique de la constitution chez Husserl, que l�on situe à partir du tournant transcendantal de 1907, est déjà bien amorcée à l�époque des Recherches logiques. (shrink)

Introduction -- 1e Intermed consid -- Marx -- Simmel -- Weber -- Lukács -- 2e intermed consid -- Horkheimer -- Adorno -- 3e intermed consid -- Habermas I -- Habermas II -- Habermas III -- Conclusion -- Postscript -- Bibliography.

This paper provides an analysis of the use of axioms in Banach’s Ph.D. and their role in the progression of Banach’s mathematical thought. In order to give a precise account of the role of Banach’s axioms, we distinguish two levels of activity. The first one is devoted to the overall process of creating a new theory able to answer some prescribed problems in functional analysis. The second one concentrates on the epistemological role of axioms. In particular, the notion of norm (...) completeness, as it appears in Banach’s text, can be interpreted as an epistemic linchpin between several a priori inhomogeneous domains of mathematical thought. (shrink)

At the phenomenal level, consciousness can be described as a singular, unified field of recursive self-awareness, consistently coherent in a particualr way; that of a subject located both spatially and temporally in an egocentrically-extended domain, such that conscious self-awareness is explicitly characterized by I-ness, now-ness and here-ness. The psychological mechanism underwriting this spatiotemporal self-locatedness and its recursive processing style involves an evolutionary elaboration of the basic orientative reference frame which consistently structures ongoing spatiotemporal self-location computations as i-here-now. Cognition computes action-output (...) in the midst of ongoing movement, and consequently requires a constant self-locating spatiotemporal reference frame as basis for these computations. Over time, constant evolutionary pressures for energy efficiency have encouraged both the proliferation of anticipative feedforward processing mechansims, and the elaboration, at the apex of the sensorimotor processing hierarchy, of self-activating, highly attenuated recursively-feedforward circuitry processing the basic orientational schema independent of external action output. As the primary reference frame of active waking cognition, this recursive i-here-now processing generates a zone of subjective self-awareness in terms of which it feels like something to be oneself here and now. This is consciousness. (shrink)

Despite growing evidence that a significant number of patients living with Parkison’s disease experience neuropsychiatric changes following Deep Brain Stimulation treatment, the phenomenon remains poorly understood and largely unexplored in the literature. To shed new light on this phenomenon, we used qualitative methods grounded in phenomenology to conduct in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 17 patients living with Parkinson’s Disease who had undergone DBS. Our study found that patients appear to experience postoperative DBS-induced changes in the form of self-estrangement. Using the insights (...) from patients’ subjective perceptions of postoperative self-change provides a potent explanation of potential DBS-induced self-estrangement. (shrink)

The traditional international law of self-defense provides little indication about how far states should be willing to defend. That choice is better understood as constrained, beyond the jus in bello and the jus ad bellum, by human rights norms that implicate responsibilities of the sovereign vis-à-vis its own population. Different conceptions of human rights, however, underscore different possible theories of the extent of self-defense. The main polarity is between a conception of self-defense as protecting bare life and a conception of (...) self-defense as protecting collective self-determination. In the practice of justifying particular uses of self-defense, these foundations are constantly and dynamically rearticulated to justify fighting on, surrendering, or negotiating. This raises questions about the impact of conditions of uncertainty, different conceptions of agency, and the role of the international community. Ultimately, the article suggests that self-defense radicalizes anxieties about the foundation and finality of rights. (shrink)

According to several late medieval logicians, the use the universal quantifier ‘omnis’ creates the requirement that the sentence refers to at least three items—the principle of sufficientia appellatorum. The commitment is such that, when the quota is not fulfilled, one has to import the missing items from the realm of the nonexistent. While the central argument for this principle, whose origin is Aristotle’s De Caelo, stems from the contrast between unrestricted universal quantifiers and binary quantifiers, the discussion is often mixed (...) with another issue, concerning the requirement of a plurality of referents for universals. In this paper, we try to distinguish those different issues and map the reactions of xiii th authors to the principle of sufficientia appellatorum. (shrink)