An extensive analysis of all social psychology textbooks included a history chapter published in French between 1947 and 2001, provides a rich corpus for the study of the history of social psychology. Drawing upon this corpus, in this article we study the historical spaces of social psychology in order to show how the discipline was located in geographical, urban, institutional and collective spaces. We argue that spaces are essentially related to some solitary and consensual scholars' names without any informative reference (...) to their institutions, nor to any trace of collective work. Moreover, we try to highlight several styles, ways and norms of collective writing the history of this discipline. (shrink)

Par son enseignement et par ses traductions de Kant, Jean-Pierre Fussler a influencé plusieurs générations d'étudiants. Croisant les approches, ce recueil de travaux en son honneur fait dialoguer perspectives kantiennes, lectures et relectures des œuvres de Kant, commentaires de son œuvre et études de sa réception contemporaine, mais aussi, plus généralement, questions éthiques, essais phénoménologiques et diverses études philosophiques qui s'accordent toutes sur la nécessité de la méthode, la diversité du rationalisme et les impératifs de la pensée critique."--Page (...) 4 of cover. (shrink)

A Study of the History and Philosophy of Category Theory Jean-Pierre Marquis. to say that objects are dispensable in geometry. What is claimed is that the specific nature of the objects used is irrelevant. To use the terminology already ...

Here Jean-Pierre Changeux elucidates our current knowledge of the human brain, taking an interdisciplinary approach and explaining in layman's terms the complex theories and scientific breakthroughs that have significantly improved our ...

In a remarkable exchange between neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux and philosopher Paul Ricoeur, this book explores the vexed territory between these...

Jean-Pierre Vernant delineates a compelling new vision of ancient Greece that takesus far from the calm and familiar images of Polykleitos and the Parthenon, and reveals a culture ofslavery, of blood sacrifice, of perpetual and ritualized warfare, of ceremonial hunting andecstasies.In his provocative discussions of various institutions and practices including war,marriage, and the city state, Vernant unveils a complex and previously unexplored intersection ofthe religious, social, and political structures of ancient Greece. He concludes with a genealogy ofthe study (...) of myth from antiquity to the present, and offers a critique of structuralism.Jean-PierreVernant is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Study of Ancient Religions at the College de France inParis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Philosophic Foundations of Mimetic Theory and Cognitive Science(Including Artificial Intelligence)Jean-Pierre Dupuy (bio)In the mid 1970s I discovered at the same time cognitive science and mimetic theory. Being a philosopher with a scientific background, I immediately brought them together and tried to reconceptualize the latter in terms of the former. In a sense, I haven't stopped doing that in the last 45 years. That is why I (...) feel fully at home with the goals pursued by the organizers of this conference.I do not believe it is feasible or even desirable to operate the rapprochement between the two disciplines at a global level. The history of cognitive science is exceedingly involved, and the part played by artificial intelligence in it compared to the part played by the neurosciences has varied greatly over time.1 Only a piecemeal approach makes sense. I present here four short case studies that cover the whole period, from the beginnings in cybernetics to today's artificial intelligence (AI).In order to better situate these studies within a broader frame, I propose the diagram in Figure 1. To comment on it would require more time than available for my whole presentation. Let me just say the following. [End Page 1]It is essential to distinguish between two kinds of AI. The first to bear this name was launched by economist Herbert Simon and computer scientist Allan Newell at a Dartmouth conference in 1956. It was based on the premise that thinking is computing, with this computation bearing on sentences of a "language of thought" implementable in a digital computer. It turns out that this AI(1) was progressively substituted from the 1980s onward by an AI(2), which, to some extent, was a return to a fundamental result obtained by cybernetics in 1943. Neurophysiologist Warren McCulloch and mathematician Walter Pitts had constructed a mathematical model of a network of elementary calculators called "neurons" and explored its properties. The capacity to "think" was one of these. It was not situated at the elementary level, as was the case in AI(1), but it emerged at the collective level from the interactions between the neurons.This model was heavily criticized by the supporters of AI(1),2 and its first implementations, in the notorious "Perceptron" in particular (1957), were pitiful failures. However, the emergence of "second-order cybernetics" under the guidance of cybernetician Heinz von Foerster and the theory of complex, self-organizing systems that it helped develop, in cooperation and rivalry with similar efforts in the physical sciences, enabled the neural network model to come to a second life under different names: formal neurons, deep learning, big data, and the like. Together, they constitute AI(2).The following network of influences wouldn't have been possible without its stem, that is, the boxes containing the names of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. The former revolutionized logic by showing that reasoning about arithmetic and arithmetic are one and the same, insofar as it is possible to code in a 1-to-1 fashion propositions about integers (for instance, "7 is a prime number") by means of integers. The latter demonstrated that some mechanisms can self-transcend inasmuch as they generate an ensemble of outputs that cannot be defined mechanistically. Later, John von Neumann, who is credited along with Alan Turing with having invented the digital computer, would use this logical possibility to define complexity: A mechanism is complex if it is capable of generating one more complex than itself. The gate was open for the theories of complex, self-organizing systems to thrive and, by way of consequence, for AI(2) to emerge.fascination with modelsHerbert Simon (1916–2001), winner of the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on what he called "bounded rationality," is generally considered to be one [End Page 2] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.of the founders of artificial intelligence. Some cognitive scientists still rely on the computer program that he devised with Alan Newell to simulate the creative processes of human thought—a program aptly named "General Problem Solver." The title of one of his principal works, The Sciences of the... (shrink)

Jean-Pierre Dupuy, prophet of what he calls "enlightened doomsaying," has long warned that modern society is on a path to self-destruction. In this book, he pleads for a subversion of this crisis from within, arguing that it is our lopsided view of religion and reason that has set us on this course. In denial of our sacred origins and hubristically convinced of the powers of human reason, we cease to know our own limits: our disenchanted world leaves us (...) defenseless against a headlong rush into the abyss of global warming, nuclear holocaust, and the other catastrophes that loom on our horizon. Reviving the religious anthropology of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Marcel Mauss and in dialogue with the work of René Girard, Dupuy shows that we must remember the world's sacredness in order to keep human violence in check. A metaphysical and theological detective, he tracks the sacred in the very fields where human reason considers itself most free from everything it judges irrational: science, technology, economics, political and strategic thought. In making such claims, The Mark of the Sacred takes on religion bashers, secularists, and fundamentalists at once. Written by one of the deepest and most versatile thinkers of our time, it militates for a world where reason is no longer an enemy of faith. (shrink)

There were three such assumptions required, one explicitly stated, and two not made explicit until Bayle. The explicit one was a certain commonly accepted double understanding of ‘destruction’: a ‘natural’ version, which made it no more than a change in a particular arrangement or ‘organization’ of particles through which an aggregate was destroyed by losing its identity, and a metaphysical version, which entailed the actual annihilation of a substance. It was assumed that the latter could be accomplished only by miraculous (...) supra-natural means available only to God. Thus, if it could be shown that the soul was ‘without parts,’ it followed that the soul was ‘naturally’ indestructible and thus immortal. Bayle summarized the Cartesian argument to immortality as follows. (shrink)

A formalism is introduced to represent the connective organization of an evolving neuronal network and the effects of environment on this organization by stabilization or degeneration of labile synapses associated with functioning. Learning, or the acquisition of an associative property, is related to a characteristic variability of the connective organization: the interaction of the environment with the genetic program is printed as a particular pattern of such organization through neuronal functioning. An application of the theory to the development of the (...) neuromuscular junction is proposed and the basic selective aspect of learning emphasized. (shrink)

Appartient-il au philosophe de fixer strictement la compréhension de notre concept d'art, ou doit-il limiter sa tâche à celle d'une clarification de ses usages? À cette question, les textes de Jean-Pierre Cometti réunis dans ce volume répondent en choisissant la voie d'une esthétique « minimale », qui renonce aux vertiges de l'ontologie et aux ambitions définitionnelle de la philosophie analytique de l'art, tout en prenant acte du caractère caduc des grands récits spéculatifs hérités de l'esthétique idéaliste ou des (...) mirages de la déconstruction. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify the role of category theory in the foundations of mathematics. There is a good deal of confusion surrounding this issue. A standard philosophical strategy in the face of a situation of this kind is to draw various distinctions and in this way show that the confusion rests on divergent conceptions of what the foundations of mathematics ought to be. This is the strategy adopted in the present paper. It is divided into 5 (...) sections. We first show that already in the set theoretical framework, there are different dimensions to the expression foundations of. We then explore these dimensions more thoroughly. After a very short discussion of the links between these dimensions, we move to some of the arguments presented for and against category theory in the foundational landscape. We end up on a more speculative note by examining the relationships between category theory and set theory. (shrink)

An examination of the fundamental role cybernetics played in the birth of cognitive science and the light this sheds on current controversies. The conceptual history of cognitive science remains for the most part unwritten. In this groundbreaking book, Jean-Pierre Dupuy—one of the principal architects of cognitive science in France—provides an important chapter: the legacy of cybernetics. Contrary to popular belief, Dupuy argues, cybernetics represented not the anthropomorphization of the machine but the mechanization of the human. The founding fathers (...) of cybernetics—some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, including John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Warren McCulloch, and Walter Pitts—intended to construct a materialist and mechanistic science of mental behavior that would make it possible at last to resolve the ancient philosophical problem of mind and matter. The importance of cybernetics to cognitive science, Dupuy argues, lies not in its daring conception of the human mind in terms of the functioning of a machine but in the way the strengths and weaknesses of the cybernetics approach can illuminate controversies that rage today—between cognitivists and connectionists, eliminative materialists and Wittgensteinians, functionalists and anti-reductionists. Dupuy brings to life the intellectual excitement that attended the birth of cognitive science sixty years ago. He separates the promise of cybernetic ideas from the disappointment that followed as cybernetics was rejected and consigned to intellectual oblivion. The mechanization of the mind has reemerged today as an all-encompassing paradigm in the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science. The tensions, contradictions, paradoxes, and confusions Dupuy discerns in cybernetics offer a cautionary tale for future developments in cognitive science. (shrink)

For the first time this volume makes Jean-Pierre Meunier's influential thoughts on the film experience available for an English-speaking readership. Introduced and commented by specialists in film studies and philosophy, Meunier's intricate phenomenological descriptions of the spectator's engagement with fiction films, documentaries and home movies can reach the wide audience they have deserved ever since their publication in French in 1969.

Sous l'Ancien Regime, les champs semantiques de la preuve sont aussi complexes et plastiques que ses usages. La notion circule et innerve des pratiques tres diverses, parfois de maniere inattendue. La plaidoirie ou le requisitoire reorganisent les faits, creant des fables qui s'eloignent quelquefois de la realite et qui tendent a transformer la verite en mensonge et le mensonge en verite. Ces ressorts sont aussi ceux de la fiction qui exploite toutes les ressources de la probation ou preuve et signe (...) viennent a se confondre. Dans d'autres domaines, pour assurer le passage de liaisons necessaires entre des elements divers qui conduisent a la certitude, a l'analyse morale qui s'appuie sur des relations probables pour etablir l'innocence ou la culpabilite, il faut s'etre approprie un art de la demonstration qui, ayant traverse la metaphysique et les mathematiques, parvient au droit. Ce passage-la marque le role historiquement grandissant de la probabilite dans la prise de decision et dans la conception de la verite. Le present volume interroge les lineaments semantiques et les usages de la notion de preuve, du XVIe au XVIIIe siecle, essentiellement en France et en Grande-Bretagne. Les etudes qui le composent suggerent que ces divers usages constituent l'un des aspects du long processus de division des savoirs. Jean-Pierre Schandeler est charge de recherche CNRS a l'IRCL. Ses travaux portent sur les rapports entre l'histoire et les sciences morales et politiques au XVIIIe siecle. Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin est professeur a l'universite Paul-Valery Montpellier 3, specialiste de Shakespeare. Elle dirige l'Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l'age Classique et les Lumieres (UMR 5186 du CNRS). (shrink)

Fefermans argument is indeed convincing in a certain context, it can be dissolved entirely by modifying the context appropriately.

In this paper, I introduce the idea that some important parts of contemporary pure mathematics are moving away from what I call the extensional point of view. More specifically, these fields are based on criteria of identity that are not extensional. After presenting a few cases, I concentrate on homotopy theory where the situation is particularly clear. Moreover, homotopy types are arguably fundamental entities of geometry, thus of a large portion of mathematics, and potentially to all mathematics, at least according (...) to some speculative research programs. (shrink)

Αυτό το αγγείο είναι ένα «κοχλιάριο» από στεατίτη, που χρονολογείται στη ΜΜ ΙΙΙ-ΤΜ Ι περίοδο, με όλα τα κρητικά του παράλληλα από τόπους λατρείας. Η επιγραφή αποτελείται από τρία σημεία, που αν δεχθούν τη φωνητική αξία των ομοιόμορφων σημείων της Γραμμικής Β Γραφής διαβάζονται DA-MA-TE. Μοιάζει δύσκολο να μη δει κανείς το όνομα μιας μινωικής θεάς, της οποίας διατήρησε την ονομασία η ελληνική θεά Δημήτηρ.

In this paper, we argue that, contrary to the view held by most philosophers of mathematics, Bourbaki’s technical conception of mathematical structuralism is relevant to philosophy of mathematics. In fact, we believe that Bourbaki has captured the core of any mathematical structuralism.

« Toute activité se laisse discerner et définir dans la mesure où elle prend forme, où elle inscrit sa courbe dans l’espace et le temps. La vie agit essentiellement comme créatrice de formes. La vie est forme, et la forme est le mode de la vie » (Henri Focillon). Formes de la géométrie et du cosmos, formes de la vie et de la pensée, formes architecturales, musicales et littéraires, formes fixes ou métamorphoses : le concept de forme est omniprésent dans (...) les sciences et dans les arts. C’est à une exploration de cette notion de forme que le Collège de France a consacré en octobre 2011 son colloque multidisciplinaire de rentrée : sa définition en philosophie chez Platon et Aristote, ses applications en mathématiques et en astrophysique, en chimie et en biologie, ses conséquences en psychologie et en linguistique, en anthropologie, en droit et dans les arts. Ces débats ont été aussi l’occasion de se tourner vers des pensées où elle joue un rôle particulièrement important, comme le structuralisme de Claude Lévi-Strauss ou l’histoire de l’art d’André Chastel. Jean-Pierre Changeux est professeur honoraire au Collège de France, chaire de Communications cellulaires. Il a dirigé la publication de trois colloques précédents du Collège de France : La Vérité dans les sciences (2003), Gènes et culture (2003) et L’Homme artificiel(2007). Contributions de Antoine Compagnon, Claude Debru, Stanislas Dehaene, Mireille Delmas-Marty, Philippe Descola, Anne Fagot-Largeault, Marcel Hénaff, Michel Hochmann, Jean-Jacques Hublin, François-Bernard Mâche, Jean-François Mangin, Jean-Claude Pecker, Jacques Reisse, John Scheid, Jesper Svenbro. (shrink)

Que se passe-t-il dans le cerveau de l'artiste lorsque celui-ci crée? Quels mécanismes régissent l'activité cérébrale au moment de la contemplation d'un tableau? D'où vient cette étrange et si puissante émotion, le plaisir esthétique? Peut-on l'expliquer? Longtemps la création artistique est demeurée un mystère. Depuis une vingtaine d'années, cependant, grâce à l'apport des neurosciences et de la psychologie cognitive, loin de s'épaissir, le mystère peu à peu se dissipe. Explorateur du cerveau et grand collectionneur, c'est à une fantastique « aventure (...) philosophique» au cœur du processus créatif que nous convie Jean-Pierre Changeux, dans ce livre illustré par des chefs-d'œuvre peu connus de l'art français et étranger. (shrink)

En 2006 a paru chez Jérôme Millon une nouvelle édition de l’ Histoire littéraire d’Henri Bremond. Elle comporte des inédits et contient plusieurs études importantes par des spécialistes. Cette publication a offert l’occasion d’une relecture de l’ensemble, en soulignant quelques points saillants de l’œuvre, des apports de la réédition, et aussi un certain nombre de remarques personnelles, voire de critiques faites dans la gratitude et l’admiration.

The problem of lying to, or deceiving oneself is currently one of the most debated in analytical philosophy. Now, since analytical philosophers are aware that Sartre defined "bad faith" as lying to oneself, as self-deception, and since moreover they find relatively coherent arguments in Sartre's text, they do not hesitate to include these arguments in their debates, if only to contest them. "To be dead is to be a prey for the living," one reads in Being and Nothing- ness* (p. (...) 695). One imagines Sartre rolling over in his grave. For this philosophy of mind is truly the Other of Sartre's philosophy. Yet, at the price of a treacherous translation, this philosophy gets some thing from Sartre, and perhaps gives him something in return. In a slightly surreal, perhaps even monstrous way, I am going to make the two philosophies engage in a dialogue on the prob lem of lying to oneself. (shrink)

Le réalisme scientifique occupe une place centrale dans le système philosophique de Mario Bunge. Au cœur de cette thèse, on trouve l’affirmation selon laquelle nous pouvons connaître le monde partiellement. Il s’ensuit que les théories scientifiques ne sont pas totalement vraies ou totalement fausses, mais plutôt partiellement vraies et partiellement fausses. Ces énoncés sur la connaissance scientifique, à première vue plausible pour quiconque est familier avec la pratique scientifique, demandent néanmoins à être clarifiés, précisés et, ultimement, à être inclus dans (...) un cadre théorique plus large et rigoureux. Depuis ses toutes premières publications sur ces questions et jusqu’à récemment, Mario Bunge n’a cessé d’interpeller les philosophes afin qu’ils développent une théorie, au sens propre du terme, de la vérité partielle afin de clarifier les enjeux épistémologiques liés au réalisme scientifique. Bunge a lui-même proposé plusieurs parties de cette théorie au fil des années, mais aucune de ces propositions ne l’a satisfait pleinement et la construction de cette théorie demeure un problème entier. Dans ce texte, nous passerons rapidement en revue certaines des approches proposées par Bunge dans ses publications et nous esquisserons certaines pistes qui devraient servir à tout le moins de desiderata pour la construction d’une théorie de la vérité partielle. (shrink)

Les grands paradigmes des sciences humaines ont été constitués, au fil de l’histoire, par l’éviction progressive de la dimension affective des objets et méthodes scientifiques. Après un long désintérêt, pour partie dû à la préoccupation de l’objectivation des phénomènes retenus par l’analyse sociologique, mais aussi à l’hypostase du social, qui a trouvé notamment chez Durkheim un accomplissement encore plus accentué que dans la plupart des conceptions holistes, la question des émotions est l’...

1 INSERM-CEA Unit 562, Cognitive Neuroimaging, Service Hospitalier Fre´de´ric Joliot, Orsay, France, 2 CNRS URA2182 Re´cepteurs and Cognition, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France.

Structuralism has recently moved center stage in philosophy of mathematics. One of the issues discussed is the underlying logic of mathematical structuralism. In this paper, I want to look at the dual question, namely the underlying structures of logic. Indeed, from a mathematical structuralist standpoint, it makes perfect sense to try to identify the abstract structures underlying logic. We claim that one answer to this question is provided by categorical logic. In fact, we claim that the latter can be seen—and (...) probably should be seen—as being a structuralist approach to logic and it is from this angle that categorical logic is best understood. (shrink)

Ils s’embrassaient tous les deux pour le moment et pour toujours mais le cavalier n’avait plus sa tête, rien qu’une ouverture au-dessus du cou, avec du sang dedans qui mijotait en glouglous comme de la confiture dans la marmite.Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Folio », 2008, p. 17. Embarras du discours Je souhaite interroger la notion de barbarie en l’illustrant par des cas concrets empruntés au théâtre occidental, en particulier au spectacle vivant...