L’article étudie le mouvement vers un« grand renfermement » des « folles », notamment des « hystériques », qui culminaau tournant des xixe et xxe siècles. Les mesures de placement étaient de la responsabilité des maires et du préfet qui les confiaient aux aliénistes des asiles rouennais. La psychiatrisation des « vagabondes » contribuait ainsi au maintien de l’ordre à l’intérieur de la ville deRouen mais aussi à atténuer la « nocivité » des migrations des femmes aliénées indigentes, journalières ou (...) ouvrières du textile, autour de la capitale de la Haute-Normandie. De renommée régionale ou nationale, les aliénistes qui se succédèrent à la tête de ces asiles produisirent des études statistiques et des observations qui confortaient l’hypothèse que les pathologies féminines avaient des causes sociales et ne pouvaient trouver d’autre solution que l’isolement. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to shed light on Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) postoperative suicidality risk factors within Treatment Resistant Depression (TRD) patients, in particular by focusing on the ethical concern of enrolling patient with history of self-estrangement, suicide attempts and impulsive–aggressive inclinations. In order to illustrate these ethical issues we report and review a clinical case associated with postoperative feelings of self-estrangement, self-harm behaviours and suicide attempt leading to the removal of DBS devices. Could prospectively identifying and excluding (...) patients with suicidality risk factors from DBS experimental trials—such as history of self-estrangement, suicide attempts and impulsive–aggressive inclinations—lead to minimizing the risk of suicidality harm? (shrink)

Our intuitive assumption that only organisms are the real individuals in the natural world is at odds with developments in cell biology, ecology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and other fields. Although organisms have served for centuries as nature's paradigmatic individuals, science suggests that organisms are only one of the many ways in which the natural world could be organized. When living beings work together--as in ant colonies, beehives, and bacteria-metazoan symbiosis--new collective individuals can emerge. In this book, leading scholars consider the (...) biological and philosophical implications of the emergence of these new collective individuals from associations of living beings. The topics they consider range from metaphysical issues to biological research on natural selection, sociobiology, and symbiosis. (shrink)

An argument opposing the unrestricted use of quantification in modal logic has been put forward by Quine. Central to this argument are the two phrases, The Morning Star, The Evening Star.One form of the argument is obtained by considering the following two statements: It is necessary that the Morning Star is identical with the Morning Star. It is not necessary that the Evening Star is identical with the Morning Star.

This volume brings together contributions from leading researchers in the field of agent-based modelling and simulation. This approach has grown out of some recent and innovative ideas in the social sciences, computer sciences, life sciences, physics and game theory. It is proving helpful in understanding complexity in many domains. The opportunities it offers to explore the experimental approach to social and human behaviour is proving of theoretical and empirical value across a wide range of fields. With contributions from researchers whose (...) work has served to define this new field such as Nigel Gilbert, Robert Axtell (in economics and social science) and Jacques Ferber (in multi-agent systems), as well as practitioners who are working at the cutting edge of the new domain, this collection of essays has been assembled by two of its leading exponents: Frédéric Amblard and Denis Phan. The research, case studies and theoretical approaches discussed in this book are designed to introduce beginners and experts alike to the current state of play in this new and exciting field of social science. (shrink)

Brain transplant thought experiments figure prominently in the debate on personal identity. Such hypotheticals are usually taken to provide support for psychological continuity theories. This standard interpretation has recently been challenged by Marya Schechtman. Simon Beck argues that Schechtman's critique rests upon ‘two costly mistakes’—claiming that (1) when evaluating these cases, philosophers mistakenly try to figure out the intuitions that they think people inhabiting such a possible world ought to have, instead of pondering their own intuitions. Beck further asserts that (...) (2) brain transplant thought experiments cannot confirm any given theory of personal identity but rather they can only rule out theories. I argue on grounds of the social ontology of personhood that Beck has things back to front. Since our concept of personhood is shaped and informed by contingent de facto norms and structures of the natural world, and as such is heavily normatively laden, the conceptual genesis of personhood must be taken into account. This calls for constructing thought experiments as realistically as possible in order to trigger reliable intuitions. Furthermore, drawing on recent evidence from cognitive science, an empirically informed look at brain transplant thought experiments considering ‘Embodied Cognition’ reveals that Beck's arguments not only fall short for supporting psychological continuity theories, but also suggests an advantage of Schechtman's ‘Person Life View’. (shrink)

The idea of creation as the free, spontaneous, and joyous play (līlā) of the gods has been a pervasive motif in Indian thought since Vedic times. In the tradition of Advaita Vedānta, however, where the sole Reality is Brahman alone, divine playfulness is given an illusionistic interpretation and līlā becomes an expression of the deceptive power of māyā.

1891. The recovered manuscript of Aristotle's Constitutional History of Athens, now for the first time given to the world from the unique text in the British...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The Histories of Anthropology Annual presents diverse perspectives on the discipline’s history within a global context, with a goal of increasing awareness and use of historical approaches in teaching, learning, and conducting anthropology. The series includes critical, comparative, analytical, and narrative studies involving all aspects and subfields of anthropology. Volume 11, Historicizing Theories, Identities, and Nations, examines the work and influence of scholars, including Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, John Dewey, Randolph Bourne, A. Irving Hallowell, and Edward Westermarck, and anthropological practices (...) and theories in Vietnam and Ukraine as well as the United States. Contributions also focus on the influence of Western thought and practice on anthropological traditions, as well as issues of relativism, physical anthropology, language, epistemology, ethnography, and social synergy. (shrink)

Malebranche's conception of imagination is often thought to be entirely contained in Book II of La Recherche de la vérité, which aims at destroying the beliefs and false theories resulting from the untempered use of that faculty. And yet Malebranche shows, in Book VI of the same work, that imagination has an essential function in the construction of science, particularly when it comes to producing geometrical models for phenomena; and it is, from the point of view of cognition, a singular (...) cunning of reason which associates the presence of corporeal affects in the mind, and ideas, which enlighten it without touching it. This conception rests upon unacknowledged quotations from the Regulae ad directionem ingenii, which Malebranche must have had at hand while working on the Recherche. At stake is, for us, the precise understanding of the relation between mathematics and imagination, first in the Regulae and then in the Recherche, in the general context of the project of a universal science or mathesis universalis. (shrink)

L’assimilation du fou, du primitif et de l’enfant a été souvent analysée comme une opposition de l’archaïque par rapport au civilisé ou du normal par rapport au pathologique. On veut montrer ici que le mystique s’ajoute à cette liste, celle-ci désignant alors plutôt des figures de l’altérité qui défient la raison. On étudie alors les liens entre la figure du primitif et celle du mystique dans la sociologie de Lévy-Bruhl, la métaphysique de Bergson et la pratique littéraire de Bataille. Par-delà (...) les divergences entre ces trois œuvres, on montre que le lien entre primitif et mystique vise à élargir le champ de l’expérience en l’ouvrant à une altérité radicale, et en même temps prépare le terrain pour cette expérience vide et formelle que pensera le structuralisme. (shrink)

I want in this paper to do two things. First, I want to respond to some studies that argue that people are often not rational: that people regularly and systematically depart from rationality. The conclusion itself does not worry me. I pressed for the same in a recent book. But the arguments seem to me wrong, and wrong in an interesting way. There may be something to be learned from seeing how and why they fail.

This paper is a critique of Kenneth Arrow's thesis concerning the logical impossibility of a constitution. I argue that one of the premises of Arrow's proof, that of the transitivity of indifference, is untenable. Several concepts of preference are introduced and counter-instances are offered to the transitivity of indifference defined along the standard lines in terms of these concepts. Alternate analyses of indifference in terms of preference are considered, and it is shown that these do not serve Arrow's purposes either. (...) Finally, it is argued that in the single special case in which indifference could plausibly be held to be transitive, Arrow's thesis is innocuous. (shrink)

Un passage biffé d’une lettre à Antoine Arnauld du 14 janvier 1688 rappelle un projet ancien chez Leibniz, celui d’augmenter l’extension de la logique démonstrative. Il écrit : « votre Art de penser contient déjà de belles méditations, qu’on peut augmenter et pousser plus avant ». Le compliment est évidemment fort ambigu, et rappelle la fonction que Leibniz donne parfois à des auteurs appartenant grosso modo au même espace intellectuel que Descartes ou Pascal, c’est-à-dire celle d’avoir comme...

The study of human origins is a kaleidoscopic field, a multitude of objects, reflections, and disciplines a swirl in an ever-changing tumult. The extreme diversity of the elements of information that are indispensable to this field of study (teeth, bones, apes, genes, ancient objects, present-day objects, biomechanical factors, cultural constructions …) appears all by itself to be enough to consign any attempt at synthesis to the realm of the Utopian. It hardly seems reasonable to expect the disparate sciences that fuel (...) the field (paleoanthropology, archaeology, molecular biology, physics, psychology, and others) and the contradictory conceptions of scientific activity that they defend (human sciences, natural sciences, experimental sciences, exact sciences) to be joined with any regularity. As for formulating an overall problematics of the interdependent phenomena encountered in the field, one would have to be more than optimistic to entertain such dreams. And yet this is exactly the program that prehistory and paleoanthropology are laboring to construct tinder the label “the study of the origins of man,” an expression that includes both diachronic processes (human evolution) and activities or behaviors from particular moments, elements that are exceedingly difficult to compare given the separation of their geographic and temporal contexts. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to point out the equivalence between three notions respectively issued from recursion theory, computational complexity and finite model theory. One the one hand, the rudimentary languages are known to be characterized by the linear hierarchy. On the other hand, this complexity class can be proved to correspond to monadic second‐order logic with addition. Our viewpoint sheds some new light on the close connection between these domains: We bring together the two extremal notions by providing (...) a direct logical characterization of rudimentary languages and a representation result of second‐order logic into these languages. We use natural arithmetical tools, and our proofs contain no ingredient from computational complexity. (shrink)

Émile Meyerson (1859–1933) is an epistemologist, in the French meaning of the term: he himself introduced the word in French as a synonymous for “philo- sophy of science” in his major book of 1908 Identity and Reality. First educated as a chemist, Meyerson discovered philosophy while reading Auguste Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive. However, he strongly rejected Comte’s positivism: metaphysics, he said, penetrates science and even common sense; men, whether they are scien- tists or not, are interested in finding a (...) cause behind the stream of phenomena. This anti-positivism is justified in so far as Meyerson used the same method and pursued the same goal as Comte: the philosopher must practice an “a posteriori analysis of the products of thought”, so as to determine the laws of human mind. Consequently, Meyerson’s work is not a mere philosophy of science, it is more than an “épistémolo- gie” in the French sense. Its ambition is to reach the intellectual basis of all thought. The philosopher can resort to the resources of metaphysics to reach the psychologi- cal foundations of humanity, when he reflects on the historical products of thought. He establishes the transcendent or metaphysical logic involved in the process of thought. Meyerson’s work consequently deserves the name its author eventually gave to it in his posthumous Essais: a “philosophy of intellect”. But is such a philoso- phy wide enough to embrace the meaning of all the products of human thought? It seems that Meyerson was embarrassed and limited by his very starting point, namely Comte’s system. I argue that scientific or common conceptions may need more than the anti-positivist claim of the preservation of one substance behind phenomena. Truth to tell, men generally tend to identify a large and rich configuration of causes or substances. Only such architectonics can give an idea of what people mean by invoking their “vision of the world”. (shrink)

L’auteur du De Intellectu connaît le De Anima d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise et il offre une interprétation néoplatonicienne de ce texte dans sa considération de la doctrine noétique d’Aristote du De Anima 3.5. Cette interprétation révèle précisément cette autonomie philosophique par opposition à un examen purement philologique des textes aristotéliciens que le présent volume explore. Le De Intellectu, en raison de son caractère néoplatonicien, doit dater de quelque deux à quatre siècles après Alexandre. Il ne contient aucune référence à un Aristote de (...) Mytilène, maître d’Alexandre, contrairement à ce qui a été suggéré. (shrink)

Catastrophe now forms part of our daily lives, as though the apocalypse could hit us every morning. Yet this crazed relation to the world is legitimate, constructed and not imaginary, entirely coherent with the postmodern socius. A biopolitics of catastrophe has come into being, in the attempt to include this new given and thereby conjure away the risks that, for Ulrich Beck, compose the measuring-stick of our post-progressive societies. However, by its very practices, this biopolitics seems to block the advent (...) of an ecopolitics that could act on the causes and not the effects of the injury that we are already suffering. (shrink)