The chance discovery in 1991 close to the fortress of Hollm (SE Albania) of a coin hoard consisting almost exclusively of silver Aiginetic staters, contained in a bronze oinochoe of Rhodian type, pro vides an opportunity to examine our present state of knowledge about the issues of Aiginetic "tortoises" struck between ca 520 and ca 300 B. C. The 394 staters in the hoard attest for the first time the penetration of Aiginetic coinage in Illyria. To judge from its composition (...) the hoard must have been hidden in the years around 420. A possible explanation for its unusual presence in Albania could be the diaspora of the Aiginetans after 432, when a group of those expelled took part in the foundation of Damastion (Strabo, VIII 6,16). (shrink)

The relationship between language and conceptual thought is an unresolved problem in both philosophy and psychology. It remains unclear whether linguistic structure plays a role in our cognitive processes. This special issue brings together cognitive scientists and philosophers to focus on the role of language in numerical cognition: because of their universality and variability across languages, number words can serve as a fruitful test case to investigate claims of linguistic relativism.

BackgroundThe spread of COVID-19 has disrupted the lifestyles of the world’s population. In the workplace, the pandemic has affected all sectors and has changed the way work is organized and carried out. The health sector has been severely impacted by the pandemic and has faced enormous challenges in maintaining healthcare services while providing care to those infected by the virus. At the heart of this battle, healthcare managers were key players in ensuring the orchestration of operations and the physical and (...) mental availability of employees during the crisis. Although few studies have been conducted to identify organizational practices or leadership skills to be adopted in a crisis context, the concrete behaviors of managers have not been documented yet. Therefore, this study aims at filling this gap by studying middle managers’ behaviors facing COVID-19 crisis in the healthcare sector.MethodsUsing a qualitative approach, eight focus groups were conducted online during the pandemic with 37 middle managers from the healthcare community of a Quebec health establishment from April to June 2020. Thematic analyses were conducted, and a mixed-methods approach was used to analyse the data based on Viitala’s hierarchical model of management skills.ResultsBased on the six managerial skills proposed in the model of Viitala, 21 specific management behaviors were identified as having been deployed by middle managers at the beginning of the pandemic. Considering that the health sector has been profoundly shaken by this health crisis, in addition to being an environment likely to experience other crises, managers need to develop practical skills in various crisis management situations. Thus, the results guide practitioners by highlighting the importance of team-oriented management behaviors, especially in a crisis context. (shrink)

Inspired by a postgraduate French studies conference (University of Nottingham, 10 September 2008), this volume explores linguistic form and content in relation to a variety of contexts, considering language alongside music, images, theatre, human experience of the world, and another language. Each essay asks what it is to understand language in a given context, and how, in spite of divergent expressive possibilities, a linguistic situation interacts with other contexts, renegotiating boundaries and redefining understanding. The book lies at the intersection of (...) linguistics and hermeneutics, seeking to (a) contextualise philosophical and linguistic discussions of communication across a range of media and (b) illustrate their intimate relations, despite differing strategies or emphases. Puisant son inspiration dans un colloque de French studies pour doctorants (Université de Nottingham, 10 septembre 2008), cet ouvrage étudie forme et contenu linguistiques en relation avec différents contextes, considérant le langage conjointement avec la musique, les images, le théâtre, l'expérience du monde et un autre langage. Chaque chapitre dissèque la compréhension du langage dans un contexte donné, et se demande comment, en dépit de possibilités expressives divergentes, une situation linguistique interagit avec d'autres contextes, redessinant leurs frontières et redéfinissant la compréhension. Ce livre, situé à l'intersection entre la linguistique et l'herméneutique, a pour but de (a) contextualiser les discussions philosophiques et linguistiques sur la communication dans une gamme de médias et (b) démontrer leur relation intime, malgré des stratégies ou intentions différentes. (shrink)

Nous présentons une étude originale en cours visant la compréhension des relations entre variations sociolinguistiques et réseau social. Sa démarche empirique repose sur le recueil de données sociales et langagières massives et longitudinales au sein d’une école maternelle. Environ 200 individus (enfants et adultes) sont équipés une semaine par mois pendant 3 ans de capteurs qui enregistrent en continu à la fois leurs interactions verbales et leurs contacts sociaux. Dans cet article, à visée principalement méthodologique, nous exposons les dispositifs mis (...) en place pour le recueil et les procédures mises en œuvre pour la transcription et l’annotation de données orales massives. Enfin, nous présentons les potentialités offertes par ce type de recueil pour affiner, automatiser et systématiser l’analyse variationniste des relations entre réseau social et variations sociolinguistiques. (shrink)

On a longtemps rendu compte des comportements de déplacements des hommes dans l’espace par un terme renvoyant à une logique collective et de masse, celui de migration . L’intégration dans l’observation et la compréhension de toute la palette des motifs de déplacements et l’individualisation croissante des pratiques ont amené l’usage d’un terme plus générique, emprunté aux sciences sociales et notamment à ceux qui s’intéressent à la fluidité dans l’espace social, celui de mobilité. Ce glissement n’est pas purement sémantique : il (...) exprime le passage de l’empire de la nécessité aux capacités stratégiques et aux désirs des acteurs, de la représentation aréolaire d’un territoire rassemblant une « société locale » « contenant » les déplacements de ses membres à des représentations réticulaires , multi-territoriales . Sur tous ces points, les enquêtes initiées dans les années 1960 par les ingénieurs pour alimenter leurs modèles de trafic nous ont permis, grâce à l’élaboration d’indicateurs, de concepts, de représentations nouvelles, de comprendre en profondeur la dynamique et les rôles respectifs des rationalités individuelles et de la formation de normes sociales dans le champ spécifique de la mobilité quotidienne. C’est de cette construction dont nous rendons compte dans cet article, qui livre aussi à partir des quelques résultats saillants des recherches conduites, les convictions fortes en matière de dynamique de la mobilité qui s’en dégagent et les paradigmes qu’il conviendrait de mieux explorer.Spatial behaviour was studied in the past through group concepts, such as residential or regular migrations from home to work. The will to understand travel behaviour for the full range of trip purposes and the growing personalisation of behaviour leads to adopt the term of mobility from social sciences. This change is not purely semantic. It expresses the transition from a vision based on the needs to the consideration of the strategic capabilities of the persons, from areola-based representations of a local society to network and archipelago-based representations of individual behaviours. We have used, in conjunction with the international community of travel behaviour analysts, the travel surveys introduced in the sixties to feed traffic models, to build concepts, indicators and representations of travel behaviour, to understand in depth the transformations of mobility patterns and to analyze the roles of individual rationality and social norms. The paper relates this history, highlights some key results and strong beliefs, and questions the need to explore new paradigms. (shrink)

New concepts may prove necessary to profit from the avalanche of sequence data on the genome, transcriptome, proteome and interactome and to relate this information to cell physiology. Here, we focus on the concept of large activity-based structures, or hyperstructures, in which a variety of types of molecules are brought together to perform a function. We review the evidence for the existence of hyperstructures responsible for the initiation of DNA replication, the sequestration of newly replicated origins of replication, cell division (...) and for metabolism. The processes responsible for hyperstructure formation include changes in enzyme affinities due to metabolite-induction, lipid-protein affinities, elevated local concentrations of proteins and their binding sites on DNA and RNA, and transertion. Experimental techniques exist that can be used to study hyperstructures and we review some of the ones less familiar to biologists. Finally, we speculate on how a variety of in silico approaches involving cellular automata and multi-agent systems could be combined to develop new concepts in the form of an Integrated cell (I-cell) which would undergo selection for growth and survival in a world of artificial microbiology. (shrink)

La Polonaise Apolline Hélène Massalska (1763-1815) n’est pas une inconnue en France. Née en Lituanie, orpheline de père et de mère dès 1764, elle est conduite à Paris en 1771 par son oncle qui la place au couvent très huppé de l’Abbaye-aux-Bois, rue de Sèvres, jusqu’à son mariage en 1779. Elle épouse alors le prince Charles de Ligne puis, en 1794, le prince Vincent Potocki, moyennant quelques années de concubinage, pour elle, et de bigamie, pour lui. Elle connaitra une (...) vie mondaine en Belgiqu... (shrink)

This paper anticipates a peril involved in Catholic writing on trans issues, which I call perlocutionary dominion: the empowerment of cisgender voices, and disempowerment of transgender voices within our theological communities through perlocutionary acts. It finds an example of this peril in Helen Watt's paper, ‘Gender Transition: The Moral Meaning of Bodily and Social Presentation’, focusing specifically on the use of negative themes; as well as the less obvious, positive-affective feature of gestures of care. It then looks to Pope Francis's (...) ‘four principles’ in Evangelii gaudium as the basis for a methodological principle that can help to avoid it. It argues that Francis's principles exhort us towards a project of community building that embraces alterity and invites critical engagement with our own convictions, while reflecting honestly on how our speech shapes that community in ways beyond their constative function. It concludes by suggesting the principle, ‘Everything About Us, For Us’, which encapsulates the kinds of behaviours required by this project. (shrink)

Cognitive test batteries are widely used in diverse research fields, such as cognitive training, cognitive disorder assessment, or brain mechanism understanding. Although they need flexibility according to their usage objectives, most test batteries are not available as open-source software and are not be tuned by researchers in detail. The present study introduces an open-source cognitive test battery to assess attention and memory, using a javascript library, p5.js. Because of the ubiquitous nature of dynamic attention in our daily lives, it is (...) crucial to have tools for its assessment or training. For that purpose, our test battery includes seven cognitive tasks, common in cognitive science literature. By using the test battery, we conducted an online experiment to collect the benchmark data. Results conducted on 2 separate days showed the high cross-day reliability. Specifically, the task performance did not largely change with the different days. Besides, our test battery captures diverse individual differences and can evaluate them based on the cognitive factors extracted from latent factor analysis. Since we share our source code as open-source software, users can expand and manipulate experimental conditions flexibly. Our test battery is also flexible in terms of the experimental environment, i.e., it is possible to experiment either online or in a laboratory environment. (shrink)

This entry describes the semiotic thought in the Early Modern Period through three groups of authors: Late Scholastics who developed original theories within a traditional Aristotelian and Augustinian framework; John Locke and the authors of Port-Royal who follow the lines of a linguistic paradigm; Thomas Hobbes, Pierre Gassendi, and Pierre Bayle who built a renewed semiotic theory headed towards epistemology.

Depuis la Renaissance, une série de textes témoignent de l’intérêt des artistes pour l’informe, d’un passage du Traité de la peinture de Léonard de Vinci à Degas, Danse, Dessin de Valéry. Léonard de Vinci, Alexander Cozens ou Paul Valéry proposent des « exercice[s] par l’informe», selon l’expression de Valéry. Il s’agit bien d’« exercice[s] », d’activités répétées pour aiguiser les facultés de l’esprit. Ces exercices s’adressent avant tout aux artistes et plus particulièrement aux dessinateurs et aux peintres ; ils constituent (...) une préparation à la création artistique. Ils n’ont généralement pas pour but d’appréhender l’informe ; c’est pourquoi Valéry emploie la tournure « exercice[s] par l’informe» : travailler l’informe est un moyen, une activité qui a le plus souvent pour fin une œuvre qui manifeste un rapport renouvelé aux formes. Comme les « exercices spirituels » dont Pierre Hadot a montré l’importance dans la philosophie antique, ces exercices reposent sur une pratique plutôt que sur une théorie ; comme eux, ils engagent l’esprit — l’entraînement d’une faculté particulière réclame en fait le concours de plusieurs. Cette pratique, qui n’est jamais définitivement acquise, doit par conséquent être répétée. En effet, chacun de ces exercices possède une fonction critique et la critique doit être reconduite tant que perdure l’habitude ou l’illusion qu’elle combat. La différence essentielle tient à la visée de l’exercice : les pratiques que nous étudierons ne tendent pas à réformer le mode de vie du sujet et ainsi à transformer le sujet lui-même, mais à produire une œuvre. Vinci, Cozens et Valéry proposent des exercices artistiques. Si l’exercice spirituel est « une pratique destinée à opérer un changement radical de l’être », selon l’expression d’Hadot, l’exercice artistique possède sans doute un but plus modeste : il vise à développer les facultés fondamentales pour la création artistique, telles que l’imagination, « les capacités d’invention », selon l’expression de Cozens, ou la sensibilité. Les exercices spirituels tendent à apprendre à vivre, tandis que les exercices artistiques ont pour but d’apprendre à créer. Parmi ceux-ci, les exercices par l’informe se distinguent par leur radicalité. D’abord, ils jouent souvent un rôle liminaire : ils exercent l’esprit et dans certains cas le corps en vue de la première étape de la création artistique, l’invention. Mais surtout, ils exercent des facultés fondamentales pour la création artistique, en particulier dans le domaine des arts visuels, pour lesquels écrivent non seulement Vinci et Cozens mais aussi Valéry : les exercices par l’informe ont pour enjeu non seulement d’apprendre à créer, mais aussi d’apprendre à voir. (shrink)

Cet article commence par examiner trois justifications épistémiques de la démocratie, proposées par José Luis Martí, David Estlund et Hélène Landemore. Tous trois cherchent à montrer en quoi la démocratie possède une tendance à engendrer des décisions correctes, mais font face au risque de légitimer une organisation technocratique du politique, en contradiction avec le principe d’égalité politique. Ils estiment donc que l’argument épistémique ne peut pas suffire à justifier des institutions démocratiques. Cependant, si l’on comprend la valeur «épistémique» d’une (...) décision politique à la fois d’un point de vue factuel et normatif, c’est-à-dire qu’on considère à la fois sa rationalité et son impartialité, une justification épistémique de la démocratie beaucoup plus robuste émerge. C’est cette dernière qui est explorée et défendue dans la seconde partie de cet article. (shrink)

Introduction Commencé à la demande de l’éphorie de Delphes aux lendemains des festivités du centenaire des débuts de la Grande Fouille par A. Peignard et Ph. Jockey, le récolement des sculptures de pierre conservées à Delphes, conduit par J.‑L. Martinez à partir de 1996 et H. Aurigny à partir de 2006, s’achève et s’est accompagné de l’aménagement d’une réserve dédiée, imaginée et mise en œuvre par D. Braunstein de 2006 à 2009. La base de données créée et alimentée depuis (...) vingt ans, comme ce c... (shrink)

L’histoire de la pensée sémiotique se caractérise par une oscillation entre définition large et définition étroite de son objet. Au Moyen Âge, la définition augustinienne du signe est jugée trop étroite, car elle ne concerne que le signe sensible. De nouvelles définitions tentent alors de faire des concepts des signes qui renvoient aux choses. L’Âge moderne, au contraire, affirme une volonté de rétrécissement à l’égard de la notion de signe. Cet article montrera les caractéristiques d’une telle réflexion sémiotique à travers (...) deux auteurs représentatifs d’un premier empirisme moderne : Pierre Gassendi et Thomas Hobbes. Le retour à une sémiotique étroite s’effectue par la référence aux traditions stoïcienne, sceptique et épicurienne, ainsi qu’à un Aristote renouvelé, et par une prédilection affichée pour la valeur indiciaire du signe par rapport à sa valeur sémantique. Ceci veut dire que les empiristes vont insister avant tout sur la fonction remémorative du signe et sur sa valeur de probabilité. L’indice en tant que trace sera ainsi privilégié par rapport au signe communicationnel, et il s’agira d’en défendre la validité en tant qu’il s’inscrit dans une échelle de certitude, au sommet de laquelle se situe la preuve. (shrink)

"A Helen and Kurt Wolff book." Translation of L'©♭nergie humaine.

The final volume of Teilhard's collected essays, containing two texts of key importance published for the first time: "The Heart of Matter" and "The Christic." Foreword by N. M. Wildiers; Index. Translated by René Hague. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.

An important Christian philosopher contends that if human energy is channeled in the right direction, "upward and outward," spiritual energy as a motor force in the universe will outdistance technological advance. Index. Translated by Rene Hague. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.

These essays derive from Teilhard's concern to reveal the true meaning of our age and to stimulate the "sense of man and sense of the Christian." The controversial essay "The Evolution of Chastity" was published here in its entirety for the first time. Foreword by N. M. Wildiers; Index. Translated by René Hague. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.

Le catalogue des Belles Lettres s’est enrichi en 2016 d’une nouvelle traduction de deux œuvres parmi les plus importantes de la philosophie et de la rhétorique, le Gorgias de Platon et l’Éloge d’Hélène de Gorgias, réunies dans un volume unique, accessible, dense, et riche d’un notable travail de synthèse. Cette traduction en langue française rejoint donc celles d’É. Chambry (1912), d’A. Croiset (1923), de L. Robin (1940) et de M. Canto (1987) pour le Gorgias, et celles de J.-L. Poirier (...) (1988)... (shrink)

The famous Epistola Luciferi, written in late 1351 or early 1352, caused quite a stir in the Avignon of Pope Clement vi, quickly became a medieval best-seller, and thereafter remained topical, being copied and printed down to the present day. Traditionally ascribed to Nicole Oresme or Henry of Langenstein, the letter was attributed to the Cistercian Pierre Ceffons by Damasus Trapp in 1957. Trapp merely took Ceffons’ authorship for granted, however, and in the most thorough study of the Epistola (...) Luciferi and of the entire genre of Devil’s letters, her 1982 PhD dissertation, Helen C. Feng rejected the attribution. Presenting codices and works of Ceffons of which Trapp was unaware, this article argues in favor of Ceffons’ responsibility for the Epistola Luciferi, while offering a new critical edition of the letter, an English translation, and a supplemental list of manuscripts and editions. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 56, Issue 1-2, pp 126 - 175 The famous _Epistola Luciferi_, written in late 1351 or early 1352, caused quite a stir in the Avignon of Pope Clement VI, quickly became a medieval best-seller, and thereafter remained topical, being copied and printed down to the present day. Traditionally ascribed to Nicole Oresme or Henry of Langenstein, the letter was attributed to the Cistercian Pierre Ceffons by Damasus Trapp in 1957. Trapp merely took Ceffons’ authorship for granted, (...) however, and in the most thorough study of the _Epistola Luciferi_ and of the entire genre of Devil’s letters, her 1982 PhD dissertation, Helen C. Feng rejected the attribution. Presenting codices and works of Ceffons of which Trapp was unaware, this article argues in favor of Ceffons’ responsibility for the _Epistola Luciferi_, while offering a new critical edition of the letter, an English translation, and a supplemental list of manuscripts and editions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe idea that the crowd could ever be intelligent is a counterintuitive one. Our modern, Western faith in experts and bureaucracies is rooted in the notion that political competence is the purview of the select few. Here, as in my book Democratic Reason, I defend the opposite view: that the diverse many are often smarter than a group of select elites because of the different cognitive tools, perspectives, heuristics, and knowledge they bring to political problem solving and prediction. In this (...) essay I defend my epistemic argument against proceduralist democrats; the value of model thinking against empiricists; the bracketing of fundamental value diversity against critics who see such diversity as an essential feature of politics; the intelligence of the masses in the face of voter ignorance and systematic biases; and the normative priority of democracy over market mechanisms. I also consider challenges to my use of Hong and Page's formal results, the epistemically proper selection method for representatives, and the role of deliberation in problem solving. I finally chart three avenues for further research. (shrink)

"Open Democracy envisions what true government by mass leadership could look like."—Nathan Heller, New Yorker How a new model of democracy that opens up power to ordinary citizens could strengthen inclusiveness, responsiveness, and accountability in modern societies To the ancient Greeks, democracy meant gathering in public and debating laws set by a randomly selected assembly of several hundred citizens. To the Icelandic Vikings, democracy meant meeting every summer in a field to discuss issues until consensus was reached. Our contemporary representative (...) democracies are very different. Modern parliaments are gated and guarded, and it seems as if only certain people—with the right suit, accent, wealth, and connections—are welcome. Diagnosing what is wrong with representative government and aiming to recover some of the lost openness of ancient democracies, Open Democracy presents a new paradigm of democracy in which power is genuinely accessible to ordinary citizens. Hélène Landemore favors the ideal of “representing and being represented in turn” over direct-democracy approaches. Supporting a fresh nonelectoral understanding of democratic representation, Landemore recommends centering political institutions around the “open mini-public”—a large, jury-like body of randomly selected citizens gathered to define laws and policies for the polity, in connection with the larger public. She also defends five institutional principles as the foundations of an open democracy: participatory rights, deliberation, the majoritarian principle, democratic representation, and transparency. Open Democracy demonstrates that placing ordinary citizens, rather than elites, at the heart of democratic power is not only the true meaning of a government of, by, and for the people, but also feasible and, today more than ever, urgently needed. (shrink)

This paper argues in favor of the epistemic properties of inclusiveness in the context of democratic deliberative assemblies and derives the implications of this argument in terms of the epistemically superior mode of selection of representatives. The paper makes the general case that, all other things being equal and under some reasonable assumptions, more is smarter. When applied to deliberative assemblies of representatives, where there is an upper limit to the number of people that can be included in the group, (...) the argument translates into a defense of a specific selection mode of participants: random selection. (shrink)

Developmental dyslexia is a specific learning condition characterized by severe and persistent difficulties in written word recognition, decoding and spelling that may impair both text reading fluency and text reading comprehension. Despite this, some adults with dyslexia successfully complete their university studies even though graduating from university involves intensive exposure to long and complex texts. This study examined the cognitive skills underlying both text reading comprehension and text reading fluency in a sample of 54 university students with dyslexia and 63 (...) university students without dyslexia, based on a set of tests adapted for an adult population, including listening comprehension, word reading, pseudoword reading, phonemic awareness, spelling, visual span, reading span, vocabulary, non-verbal reasoning, and general knowledge. The contribution of these skills to text reading fluency and text reading comprehension was examined using stepwise multiplicative linear regression analyses. As far as TRF is concerned, a regression model including word reading, pseudoword reading and spelling best fits the data, while a regression model including listening comprehension, general knowledge and vocabulary best fits the data obtained for text reading comprehension. Overall, these results are discussed in the light of the current literature on adults with dyslexia and both text reading fluency and text reading comprehension. (shrink)

Dans le cadre de la Théorie de la Relation Interlocutive, nous proposons que l’interprétation sémantique et pragmatique de excuse me et sorry, qui ne sont pas, par essence, des marqueurs d’excuse, s’effectue en fonction de deux types de relation interlocutive différents qui conduisent à plusieurs interprétations possibles d’un événement perturbateur. Excuse me est considéré comme marqueur duophonique, c’est-à-dire comme une forme qui impose un désaccord entre un pôle émetteur et un pôle récepteur. On pourra y voir une demande de coopération (...) de l’allocutaire par politesse, pour tenter de réparer un manquement à l’étiquette, ou, bien au contraire, un moyen d’accentuer la nature conflictuelle d’une situation dans un contexte autre qu’un contexte d’excuse. A l’inverse, nous faisons l’hypothèse que sorry est une forme monophonique qui s’emploie pour rétablir l’harmonie interlocutive entre les deux pôles. Avec ce marqueur, la coopération de l’allocutaire est considérée comme acquise, ce qui a pour effet de minimiser le conflit dans des situations d’excuse ou autres. (shrink)

_Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing_ is a poetic, insightful, and ultimately moving exploration of 'the strange science of writing.' In a magnetic, irresistible narrative, Cixous reflects on the writing process and explores three distinct areas essential for 'great' writing: _The School of the Dead_--the notion that something or someone must die in order for good writing to be born; _The School of Dreams_--the crucial role dreams play in literary inspiration and output; and _The School of Roots_--the importance of (...) depth in the 'nether realms' in all aspects of writing. Cixous's love of language and passion for the written word is evident on every page. Her emotive style draws heavily on the writers she most admires: the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, the Austrian novelists Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard, Dostoyevsky and, most of all, Kafka. (shrink)

This article furnishes a philosophical background for the current debate about responsibility and culpability for war crimes by referring to ideas from three important just war thinkers: Augustine, Francisco de Vitoria, and Michael Walzer. It combines lessons from these three thinkers with perspectives on current problems in the ethics of war, distinguishes between legal culpability, moral culpability, and moral responsibility, and stresses that even lower-ranking soldiers must in many cases assume moral responsibility for their acts, even though they are part (...) of a military hierarchy and act under orders. The questions addressed in this article are arguably among the hardest and most muddled in military ethics and deserve close philosophical analysis and scrutiny. (shrink)

In Insister, Hlne Cixous brings a unique mixture of theoretical speculation, breath-taking textual explication and scholarly erudition to an extremely close reading of Derrida's work, always attentive to the details of his thinking. At the same time, Insister is an extraordinarily poetic meditation, a work of literature and of mourning for Jacques Derrida the person, who was a close friend and accomplice of Cixous's from the beginning of their careers.

This book uncovers and explores the constant tension between the historical and the transcendental that lies at the heart of Michel Foucault's work. In the process, it also assesses the philosophical foundations of his thought by examining his theoretical borrowings from Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, who each provided him with tools to critically rethink the status of the transcendental. Given Foucault's constant focus on the question of the possibility for knowledge, the author argues that his philosophical itinerary can be understood (...) as a series of attempts to historicize the transcendental. In so doing, he seeks to uncover a specific level that would identify these conditions without falling either into an excess of idealism or of materialism. The author concludes that, although this problem does unify Foucault's work and gives it its specifically philosophical dimension, none of the concepts successively provided manages to name these conditions without falling into the pitfalls that Foucault originally denounced as characteristic of the "anthropological sleep"--various forms of confusion between the historical and the transcendental. Although Foucault's work provides us with a highly illuminating analysis of the major problems of post-Kantian philosophies, ultimately it remains aporetic in that it also fails to overcome them. (shrink)

Consensus plays an ambiguous role in deliberative democracy. While it formed the horizon of early deliberative theories, many now denounce it as an empirically unachievable outcome, a logically impossible stopping rule, and a normatively undesirable ideal. Deliberative disagreement, by contrast, is celebrated not just as an empirically unavoidable outcome but also as a democratically sound and normatively desirable goal of deliberation. Majority rule has generally displaced unanimity as the ideal way of bringing deliberation to a close. This article offers an (...) epistemic perspective on this question of consensus versus disagreement. For ensuring the production of better decisions, we argue, the normative appeal of consensus varies depending on the deliberative task – whether it entails problem solving or prediction. We argue that in pure problem-solving contexts, consensus retains a strong normative appeal and forms the ideal deliberative outcome of deliberation. In contrast, on predictive tasks, consensus should generally not be used as a stopping rule noris it likely to be epistemically desirable as an outcome. Instead deliberators may be better served by ending the deliberation with a form of deliberative disagreement we call ‘positive dissensus’, which paves the way for more accurate aggregate predictions. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to Ibn Sinn's text deals with two distinct, though closely related, subjects. First he considers the classification of problems, founded on the logical criteria which are the number and degree of indetermination of the solutions and the number of hypotheses and their possible independence. This classification does not replace the Hellenistic one, which remains relevant insofar as it purports to solve geometrical problems, but complements it and has a different frame of reference, applying principally to algebra, (...) that new born science. Ibn Sinn to bestow more importance on the role played by analysis in the course of the proof, the only role left to synthesis being to check that all implications involved in the course of analysis are in fact equivalences. This method will prove to be productive in algebra too, so much so that some algebraists will explicitly identify algebra with analysis. (shrink)