Les Deux Sources de la Morale et de la Religion is not a book to leave one indifferent. Those who are persuaded by its argument or inspired by its message are prone to manifest the same enthusiasm as Georges Cattaui who praised it as one of the greatest and wisest books conceived by philo sophers. Even those who take exception to the doctrine it expounds are impelled to acknowledge its significance. It was in his critique of Les Deux (...) Sources that Jacques Maritain was moved to call the philosophy of Henri Bergson one of the most daring and profound of our time. When many years ago I opened Les Deux Sources for the first time, I turned out of curiosity to the last page and beheld these words, "l'univers... est une machine it faire des dieux." Bergson was an evolutionist, but surely this was no ordinary evolutionist speaking, I thought. What must be the moral philosophy of a man who would write these words? When much later I undertook the present study, it was this same question which con cerned me. (shrink)

This unique collection of reports encompasses a wide range of challenges and activities of business ethics in most parts of the world. In the introduction, after a brief explanation of the sixfold questionnaire and its assumptions, I try to highlight a number of striking features contained in these reports, which may help to delineate the state-of-the-art of business ethics at national and regional levels. As a result of this international comparison, the following features deserve particular attention: the relevance of semantics, (...) corruption, leadership, corporate responsibilities, the need for case studies, business ethics as a social institution, and the question as to how important international issues really are. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Chomsky's Commitment to CRTT Prospects and Problems of CRTT Technical Notions? Does Chomsky Need Intentionality? Chomsky's Dilemma.

The article examines the state of research on Michael of Ephesus as a probable author of the Commentaries on Metaphysics E–N, mainly the works of Leonardo Tarán and Concetta Luna. In spite of their opposed views, they both agree on the mediocrity of the Byzantine author. The article questions the criteria for this negative appraisal and offers some material for reconsidering Michael of Ephesus’ idea of philo­sophical culture.

This paper proposes a series of theoretical considerations on the performing styles used in contemporary theatre, according to the relationship the actor establishes with the audience. If Diderot was the first to question frontal relationship, and asked the performer to ignore the spectator, this programme will only be accomplished one hundred years later, with the emergence of the director. Later on, theoreticians such as Meyerhold, Vakhtangov or Copeau will ask for a partial return to performing facing the audience, as a (...) sign of the return to the theatrical tradition dominated by the exigencies of the stage and not by those of the truth. With Piscator and Brecht theatre rediscovered frontality, as a sign of the wish to engage the auditorium as an active partner of dialogue. The author discusses several avatars that this new frontality acquires in presentday theatre. (shrink)

Georges Rey presents a much-needed philosophical defense of Noam Chomsky's famous view of human language, as an internal, innate computational system. But he also offers a critical examination of problematic developments of this view, to do with innateness, ontology, intentionality, and other issues of interdisciplinary interest.

In her recent (2009) book, The Origins of Concepts, Susan Carey argues that what she calls ‘Quinean Bootstrapping’ and processes of analogy in children show that the expressive power of a mind can be increased in ways that refute Jerry Fodor's (1975, 2008) ‘Mad Dog’ view that all concepts are innate. I argue that it is doubtful any evidence about the manifestation of concepts in children will bear upon the logico-semantic issues of expressive power. Analogy and bootstrapping may be ways (...) to bring about the former, but only by presupposing the very expressive powers Carey is claiming they explain. Analogies must be understood, and bootstrapping involves confirmation of hypotheses already expressible; otherwise they can't select among an infinitude of hypotheses compatible with the finite data the child has encountered, a fact rendered vivid by Goodman's ‘grue’ paradox and Chomsky's poverty of stimulus argument. The problems have special application to minds, since there is no reason to expect a child's concepts to be ‘projectible’ or to correspond to mind-independent natural kinds. I conclude with an ecumenical view that concepts are reasonably regarded as both innate and often learned, and that what is learned can in fact increase what really concerns Carey, the functioning psychological expressive power of the child, even if it leaves untouched what concerns Fodor, the semantic expressive power. Less ecumenically: maybe Fodor (2008) miscast the debate, and the real issue that bothers people concerns not nativism, but an issue on which Carey and Fodor surprisingly agree, his conceptual Atomism, or the view that all mono-morphemic concepts are primitive and unanalyzable. The issue deserves further discussion independently of Mad-doggery. (shrink)