Essayer de degager l'esprit de la philosophie medievale c'etait se condamner a fournir la preuve de son existence ou a avouer qu'elle n'a jamais existe. C'est en cherchant a la definir dans son essence propre que je me suis vu conduit a la presenter comme la philosophie chretienne par excellence. Il se trouve donc que cet ouvrage converge vers cette conclusion, que le Moyen Age a produit, outre une litterature chretienne et un art chretien, une philosophie chretienne, ce dont on (...) dispute. Mais il ne s'agit pas de soutenir qu'il a cree cette philosophie de rien, pas plus qu'il n'a tire du neant son art et sa litterature. L'esprit de la philosophie medievale, tel qu'on l'entend ici, c'est l'esprit chretien, penetrant la tradition grecque, la travaillant du dedans et lui faisant produire une vue du monde, une Weltanschauung specifiquement chretienne. (shrink)

As popular food writers and activists urge consumers to express their social, political, and ethical commitments through their food choices, the imperative to ‘vote with your fork’ has become a common slogan of emerging food movements in the US. I interrogate the conception of responsibility embedded in this dictate, which has become a de facto model for how to comport ourselves ethically with respect to food. I argue that it implicitly endorses a narrow and problematic understanding of responsibility. To contextualize (...) this claim, I utilize Iris Marion Young’s critique of a “liability model” of responsibility to demonstrate that voting with one’s fork is insufficient as model for taking responsibility for food-related injustices. Instead, I suggest that Young’s social connection model of responsibility is best suited for taking stock of responsibility for food and agriculture related injustices since they are structural and systemic ones. I conclude that although consumer choices and purchases may be important dimensions of our conduct with respect to food and eating, imagining responsibility to be centered on this type of conduct—consumer behavior—is detrimental to attempts to develop a more just food system. (shrink)

Philosophy of science has undergone a naturalistic turn, moving away from traditional idealized concerns with the logical structure of scientific theories and toward focusing on real-world scientific practice, especially in domains such as modeling and experimentation. As part of this shift, recent work has explored how the project of philosophically understanding science as a natural phenomenon can be enriched by drawing from different fields and disciplines, including niche construction theory in evolutionary biology, on the one hand, and ecological and enactive (...) views in embodied cognitive science, on the other. But these insights have so far been explored in separation from each other, without clear indication of whether they can work together. Moreover, the focus on particular practices, however insightful, has tended to lack consideration of potential further implications for a naturalized understanding of science as a whole (i.e., above and beyond those particular practices). Motivated by these developments, here we sketch a broad-ranging view of science, scientific practice and scientific knowledge in terms of ecological-enactive co-construction. The view we propose situates science in the biological, evolutionary context of human embodied cognitive activity aimed at addressing the demands of life. This motivates reframing theory as practice, and reconceptualizing scientific knowledge in ecological terms, as relational and world-involving. Our view also brings to the forefront of attention the fundamental link between ideas about the nature of mind, of science and of nature itself, which we explore by outlining how our proposal differs from more conservative, and narrower, conceptions of “cognitive niche construction.”. (shrink)

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)

This essay argues that dominant responses to the COVID-19 pandemic redouble disparities in vulnerability to harms because these responses simply attempt to return to conditions prior to the outbreak of the virus. Although the widespread impact of COVID-19 has made interdependence more vivid, the underlying sociocultural devaluation of vulnerability, relationality, and dependency has intensified structural inequalities. People who were already disempowered and disadvantaged have been consigned to even more precarious conditions. A feminist ethical perspective avows vulnerability, relationality, and dependency as (...) conditions that are both unavoidable and central to life. Such a perspective thus provides insight into why some dominant responses to the virus are unjust and what more ethical and more socially just responses to the pandemic, which foster social health as well as physical health, might look like. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to discuss the meaning of Lacan's uses of the structural paradigm. The investigation will emphasize the function of this use in terms of relations between psychoanalysis and history of sciences. Freud, in order to establish the epistemological identity for psychoanalyses was impelled to choose between Naturwissenschaften or Geisteswissenschaften. By assuming the natural sciences model Freud has created what one can call a certain epistemological discomfort: model and object seems not to fit each other. (...) The influence of Koyre's work is here remarkable. Lacan's uses of structural paradigm may be seemed as a strategy to create a new space for psychoanalysis in science. Only a structuralist science could formulate a conception of the subject that is nor naturalistic, nor psychological. This is showed particularly in what concerns the category of cause. (shrink)

Cumulative technological culture can be defined as the progressive diversification, complexification, and enhancement of technological traits through generations. An outstanding issue is to specify the cognitive bases of this phenomenon. Based on the literature, we identified four potential cognitive factors: namely, theory-of-mind, technical-reasoning, creativity, and fluid-cognitive skills. The goal of the present study was to test which of these factors—or a combination thereof—best predicted the cumulative performance in two experimental, micro-society conditions differing in the nature of the interaction allowed between (...) participants. The task was to build the highest possible tower. Participants were also assessed on the four aforementioned cognitive factors in order to predict cumulative performance and attractiveness. Our findings indicate that technical-reasoning skills are the best predictor of cumulative performance, even if their role may be restricted to the specific technological domain. Theory-of-mind skills may have a facilitator role, particularly in the Communication condition. Creativity can also help in the generation of novel ideas, but it is not sufficient to support innovation. Finally, fluid cognition is not involved in cumulative technological culture. Taken together, these findings suggest that domain-specific knowledge remains critical for explaining cumulative technological culture. (shrink)

Representationalism—the view that scientific modeling is best understood in representational terms—is the received view in contemporary philosophy of science. Contributions to this literature have focused on a number of puzzles concerning the nature of representation and the epistemic role of misrepresentation, without considering whether these puzzles are the product of an inadequate analytical framework. The goal of this paper is to suggest that this possibility should be taken seriously. The argument has two parts, employing the “can’t have” and “don’t need” (...) tactics drawn from philosophy of mind. On the one hand, I propose that representationalism doesn’t work: different ways to flesh out representationalism create a tension between its ontological and epistemological components and thereby undermine the view. On the other hand, I propose that representationalism is not needed in the first place—a position I articulate based on a pragmatic stance on the success of scientific research and on the feasibility of alternative philosophical frameworks. I conclude that representationalism is untenable and unnecessary, a philosophical dead end. A new way of thinking is called for if we are to make progress in our understanding of scientific modeling. (shrink)

Este texto tem a intenção de percorrer panoramicamente alguns pontos de referência importantes no debate contemporâneo sobre o problema da motivação moral no contexto da discussão entre posições cognitivistas e não-cognitivistas em ética. A idéia básica é a de que o não-cognitivismo encontrou tradicionalmente um apoio importante nos argumentos internalistas, os quais, por sua vez, retiram sua força da percepção comum de que as considerações morais não são inertes, ou seja, possuem, em algum sentido, uma capacidade motivadora que dificilmente podemos (...) ignorar. Se, agora, quisermos confrontar a posição não-cognitivista, inevitavelmente seremos levados a confrontar-nos também com os argumentos internalistas. O que tentamos fazer aqui foi simplesmente apresentar panoramicamente os problemas e as alternativas que podemos encontrar ao longo desses enfrentamentos. (shrink)

Quelle est donc la lecon des faits? Qu'Abelard fut le premier homme moderne? Qu'Heloise fut la premiere femme moderne? Nous nous contenterions de bien moins: qu'au moment d'enfermer le Moyen Age ou la Renaissance dans une de ces definitions brillantes qui leur sont cheres, les historiens de la litterature se souviennent de cette folle petite Francaise, hantee par l'ideal de la grandeur romaine comme par celle de la grandeur chretienne, qui ne sut jamais au juste si elle etait l'Eustochium d'un (...) nouveau Saint Jerome ou la Cornelie d'un nouveau Pompee, et qui, prenant le voile a Argenteuil pour l'amour d'un homme, se consacra pour toujours a Dieu en recitant des vers de la Pharsale. Car enfin, ce drame passionnel est bien une histoire du XIIe siecle. On peut le lire comme une histoire chretienne et c'en est veritablement une. (shrink)

Le present livre repose sur la conviction profonde et inveteree chez son auteur, que l'art n'est pas une facon de connaissance, mais qu'il releve au contraire d'un ordre distinct de celui du connaitre, qui est l'ordre du faire ou, s'il est permis de s'exprimer ainsi, de la factivite. Il s'agit donc ici uniquement de philosophie, en commencant par le commencement, qui consiste a chercher, au moins brievement, quel genre de question de philosophie doit se poser au sujet de l'art. A (...) partir de la, reflechissant en metaphysicien a la lumiere des premiers principes, on s'est efforce d'eclaircir successivement les notions principales a mesure qu'elles s'offraient a l'esprit. (shrink)

Cette étude n'est pas une introduction philosophique à la peinture mais, au contraire, une introduction picturale à la philosophie, c'est-à-dire en quoi la peinture donne à penser. On a tenté de philosopher à partir d'un certain ordre de faits, qui sont les tableaux, pour en inférer des conclusions d'ordre philosophique et ainsi nommer "ontologie de la peinture" l'ordre de recherche proposé.

A popular trend in the sciences of the mind is to understand cognition as embodied, embedded, enactive, ecological, and so on. While some of the work under the label of “embodied cognition” takes for granted key commitments of traditional cognitive science, other projects coincide in treating embodiment as the starting point for an entirely different way of investigating all of cognition. Focusing on the latter, this paper discusses how embodied cognitive science can be made more reflexive and more sensitive to (...) the implications that our views of cognition have for how we understand scientific practice, including our own theorizing about cognition. Inspired by the “strong programme” in the sociology of scientific knowledge, I explore the prospect of an analogously “strong” program in embodied cognitive science. I first draw from Dewey’s transactional notion of “situation” to identify a broad sense in which embodied cognitive science takes cognition, as an embodied phenomenon, to be _situated_. I then sketch a perspective I call _situated reflexivity_, which extends the Deweyan analysis to understand scientific practice in the same terms, and thereby illustrates what research in line with a strong program in embodied cognitive science can look like. This move, I propose, has the potential of setting up a new inquiry situation that makes more salient the embodiment of scientific practice and that, through this, can help organize our own embodied cognitive activities as we try to make sense of scientific work, including our own. (shrink)

Explanatory diversity is a salient feature of the sciences of the mind, where different projects focus on neural, psychological, cognitive, social or other explanations. The same happens within embodied cognitive science, where ecological, enactive, dynamical, phenomenological and other approaches differ from each other in their explanations of the embodied mind. As traditionally conceived, explanatory diversity is philosophically problematic, fueling debates about whether the different explanations are competing, compatible, or tangential. In contrast, this paper takes the perspective of embodied cognitive science (...) as its starting point and accordingly approaches explanatory diversity not as a problem to be solved, but as a phenomenon to be understood. Recent work has explored how the view of cognition as embodied motivates reflexively viewing science as a situated embodied cognitive practice. Here I argue that this reflexive turn motivates adopting a pluralistic stance when it comes to questions about theoretical and methodological disagreements. In particular, it motivates moving away from thinking in terms of explanations as disembodied entities that compete with one another, and instead thinking in terms of different explanatory styles as embodied practices of explaining, many of which might be legitimate and warranted independently of whether and how the explanations themselves relate to one another. (shrink)