L’interprétation reçue de la pensée politique de Thomas d’Aquin la situe dans une prise de distance à l’égard de l’héritage augustinien, et en particulier vis-à-vis d’un usage politique du thème de la cité de Dieu. Afin de vérifier la pertinence d’un tel jugement, rien ne valait un examen attentif, d’une part, de tous les usages que Thomas d’Aquin fait du thème des deux cités tel qu’il se trouve présent dans la Cité de Dieu, et d’autre part de toutes les références (...) à la Cité de Dieu qui ont une portée politique pour Thomas d’Aquin. Le résultat de ce repérage textuel est formel : une cité de Dieu à usage politique est effectivement introuvable chez Thomas d’Aquin, et la référence à la Cité de Dieu est un moyen pour Thomas d’Aquin de puiser à la source antique en matière politique, aux antipodes, donc, de toute forme d’« augustinisme politique ». (shrink)

In this paper I discuss an intriguing and relatively little studied symptomatic expression of schizophrenia known as experiences of activity in which patients form the delusion that they can control some external events by the sole means of their mind. I argue that experiences of activity result from patients being prone to aberrantly infer causal relations between unrelated events in a retrospective way owing to widespread predictive deficits. Moreover, I suggest that such deficits may, in addition, lead to an aberrant (...) intentional binding effect i.e., the subjective compression of the temporal interval between an intentional action and its external effects. In particular, it might be that patient’s thoughts are bound to the external events they aimed to control producing, arguably, a temporal contiguity between these two components. Such temporal contiguity would reinforce or sustain the feeling that the patient mind is directly causally efficient. (shrink)

Imagine that in entering a café, you are struck by the absence of Pierre, with whom you have an appointment. Or imagine that you realize that your keys are missing because they are not hanging from the usual ring-holder. What is the nature of these absence experiences? In this article, we discuss a recent view defended by Farennikova (2012) according to which we literally perceive absences of things in much the same way as we perceive present things. We criticize and (...) reject the perceptual interpretation of absence experiences but we also reject the cognitive view which reduces them to beliefs. We propose an intermediary, metacognitive account according to which absence experiences belong to a specific kind of affective experience, involving the feeling of surprise. (shrink)

We argue that thought insertion primarily involves a disruption of the sense of ownership for thoughts and that the lack of a sense of agency is but a consequence of this disruption. We defend the hypothesis that this disruption of the sense of ownership stems from a fail- ure in the online integration of the contextual information related to a thought, in partic- ular contextual information concerning the different causal factors that may be implicated in their production. Loss of unity (...) of consciousness, manifested by incoherent subjective experiences is a general phenomenal characteristic of schizophrenia. This loss of coherence has been hypothesized to reflect a generalized deficit of contextual information integration not conveyed by, but related to, a target event. This deficit is manifested across many cog- nitive domains. We argue that it is also manifested in the process of thinking itself, result- ing in causally decontextualized thoughts that are experienced as inserted thoughts. (shrink)

Sensory substitution devices make use of one substituting modality to get access to environmental information normally accessed through another modality . Based on behavioural and neuroimaging data, some authors have claimed that using a vision-substituting device results in visual perception. Reviewing these data, we contend that this claim is untenable. We argue that the kind of information processed by a SSD is metamodal, so that it can be accessed through any sensory modality and that the phenomenology associated with the use (...) of a SSD is best described in terms of spatial phenomenology, only. (shrink)

The view that infants possess a full-fledged propositional language-of-thought (LoT) is appealing, providing a unifying account for infants’ precocious reasoning skills in many domains. However, careful appraisal of empirical evidence suggests that there is still no convincing evidence that infants possess discrete representations of abstract relations, suggesting that infants’ LoT remains incomplete. Parallel arguments hold for perception.

An important topic in the evolution of language is the kinds of grammars that can be computed by humans and other animals. Fitch and Hauser () approached this question by assessing the ability of different species to learn 2 grammars, (AB)n and An Bn. An Bn was taken to indicate a phrase structure grammar, eliciting a center‐embedded pattern. (AB)n indicates a grammar whose strings entail only local relations between the categories of constituents. F&H's data suggest that humans, but not tamarin (...) monkeys, learn an An Bn grammar, whereas both learn a simpler (AB)n grammar (). In their experiments, the A constituents were syllables pronounced by a female voice, whereas the B constituents were syllables pronounced by a male voice. This study proposes that what characterizes the An Bn exemplars is the distributional regularities of the syllables pronounced by either a male or a female rather than the underlying, more abstract patterns. This article replicates F&H's data and reports new controls using either categories similar to those in F&H or less salient ones. This article shows that distributional regularities explain the data better than grammar learning. Indeed, when familiarized with An Bn exemplars, participants failed to discriminate A3 B2 and A2 B3 from An Bn items, missing the crucial feature that the number of As must equal the number of Bs. Therefore, contrary to F&H, this study concludes that no syntactic rules implementing embedded nonadjacent dependencies were learned in these experiments. The difference between human linguistic abilities and the putative precursors in monkeys deserves further exploration. (shrink)

We investigate the nature of the sense of presence that usually accompanies perceptual experience. We show that the notion of a sense of presence can be interpreted in two ways, corresponding to the sense that we are acquainted with an object, and the sense that the object is real. In this essay, we focus on the sense of reality. Drawing on several case studies such as derealization disorder, Parkinson’s disease and virtual reality, we argue that the sense of reality is (...) two-way independent from the spatial and sensory contents of experience. We suggest that the sense of reality is an affective experience akin to a metacognitive feeling. Finally, we present a potentially important implication of our account for the current debate between Intentionalism and Naïve Realism. Since perception is “opaque” with respect to the reality of what is perceived, Intentionalism cannot refer to the sense of reality as what differentiates perception from sensory-like experiences such as imaginings. In contrast, Naïve Realism has an independent explanation of the specificity of perception. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences have been construed either as representational mental states—Representationalism—or as direct mental relations to the external world—Disjunctivism. Both conceptions are critical reactions to the so-called ‘Argument from Hallucination’, according to which perceptions cannot be about the external world, since they are subjectively indiscriminable from other, hallucinatory experiences, which are about sense-data ormind-dependent entities. Representationalism agrees that perceptions and hallucinations share their most specific mental kind, but accounts for hallucinations as misrepresentations of the external world. According to Disjunctivism, the phenomenal (...) character of perceptions is exhausted by worldly objects and features, and thus must be different from the phenomenal character of hallucinations. Disjunctivism claims that subjective indiscriminability is not the result of a common experiential ground, but is because of our inability to discriminate, from the inside, hallucinations from perceptions. At first sight, Representationalism is more congenial to the way cognitive science deals with perception. However, empirically oriented revisions of Disjunctivism could be developed and tested by giving a metacognitive account of hallucinations. Two versions of this account can be formulated, depending on whether metacognition is understood as explicit metarepresentation or as implicit monitoring of first-order informational states. The first version faces serious objections, but the second is more promising, as it embodies a more realistic view of perceptual phenomenology as having both sensory and affective aspects. Affectbased phenomenology is constituted by various metacognitive feelings, such as the feeling of being perceptually confronted with the world itself, rather than with pictures or mere representations. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the application of foundational ontologies, i.e., formal ontological theories in the philosophical sense, to provide a theoretically sound foun...

While the formulation of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow, including the experience dimensions, has remained stable since its introduction in 1975, its dedicated measurement tools, research methodologies, and fields of application, have evolved considerably. Among these, education stands out as one of the most active. In recent years, researchers have examined flow in the context of other theoretical constructs such as motivation. The resulting work in the field of education has led to the development of a new model for understanding (...) flow experience in education, specifically dedicated to adult learning. As a result of both a meticulous analysis of existing models and consideration of more recent developments, a new flow scale has thus been developed. The aim of this study is therefore twofold: to validate the new flow measurement scale dedicated to the educational environment, EduFlow-2, and to test a new theoretical model. Students taking a course, some on-site and others in a MOOC, participated. Several scales were administered online at the end of the participants' course during the 2017 academic year. The factor structure of EduFlow-2 was tested using Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling. Several models were tested. The model with a second-order factor best fit the data. We tested the invariance of the flow scale measure for gender and for the type of training. We were able to show that the flow scale is invariant of the modalities of these two variables. Results revealed good psychometric qualities for the scale, making it suitable for both on-site and distance learning. The analysis also revealed significant relationships with the classic variables of motivation, self-efficacy, learning climate, and life satisfaction. Furthermore, all four dimensions of the model were found to be adequate and consistent with the underlying theoretical arguments. In the end, this new, short flow scale and the theoretical model were demonstrated to be promising for future studies in the field of education. (shrink)

Blood coagulation is regulated through a complex network of biochemical reactions of blood factors. The main acting enzyme is thrombin whose propagation in blood plasma leads to fibrin clot formation. Spontaneous clot formation is normally controlled through the action of different plasma inhibitors, in particular, through the thrombin binding by antithrombin. In the current study we develop a mathematical model of clot formation both in quiescent plasma and in blood flow and determine the analytical conditions on the antithrombin concentration corresponding (...) to different regimes of blood coagulation. (shrink)

WHO II low grade glioma evolves inevitably to anaplastic transformation. Magnetic resonance imaging is a good non-invasive way to watch it, by hemodynamic and metabolic modifications, thanks to multinuclear spectroscopy 1H/31P. In this work we study a multi-scale minimal model of hemodynamics and metabolism applied to the study of gliomas. This mathematical analysis leads us to a fast-slow system. The control of the position of the stationary point brings to the concept of domain of viability. Starting from this system, the (...) equations bring to light the parameters that push glioma cells out of their domain of viability. Four fundamental factors are highlighted. The first two are cerebral blood flow and the rate of lactate transport through monocarboxylate transporters, which must be reduced in order to push glioma out of its domain of viability. Another factor is the intra arterial lactate, which must be increased. The last factor is pH, indeed a decrease of intra cellular pH could interfere with glioma growth. These reflections suggest that these four parameters could lead to new therapeutic strategies for the management of low grade gliomas. (shrink)

The French school of theoretical biology has been mainly initiated in Poitiers during the sixties by scientists like J. Besson, G. Bouligand, P. Gavaudan, M. P. Schützenberger and R. Thom, launching many new research domains on the fractal dimension, the combinatorial properties of the genetic code and related amino-acids as well as on the genetic regulation of the biological processes. Presently, the biological science knows that RNA molecules are often involved in the regulation of complex genetic networks as effectors, e.g., (...) activators, inhibitors or hybrids. Examples of such networks will be given showing that there exist RNA “relics” that have played an important role during evolution and have survived in many genomes, whose probability distribution of their sub-sequences is quantified by the Shannon entropy, and the robustness of the dynamics of the networks they regulate can be characterized by the Kolmogorov–Sinaï dynamic entropy and attractor entropy. (shrink)

Οι γεωμορφολογικές και παλυνολογικές έρευνες γύρω από την τούμπα Ντικιλί Τας βοηθούν στην καλύτερη κατανόηση των χαρακτηριστικών της χωροθέτησης του προϊστορικού οικισμού και της εξέλιξης των παλαιοπεριβαλλοντων από τη Νεότερη Νεολιθική έως το τέλος της Εποχής του Χαλκού. Ο οικισμός βρίσκεται μεταξύ των παρυφών της οροσειράς της Λεκάνης και του παλαιού έλους των Φιλίππων. Σε μεγάλη κλίμακα, η γεωμορφολογική κατάσταση εμφανίζεται πολυσύνθετη : ο σχηματισμός μιας γλώσσας στο περίγραμμα του παλαιού έλους και ένα μικρό κοίλωμα του εδάφους στους πρόποδες της (...) τούμπας επιτείνουν την πολυμορφία του τοπίου και την πολυπλοκότητα της εξέλιξης του. Οι παλυνολογικές έρευνες, παρά το υδρομορφολογικό περιβάλλον που δεν ευνόησε πάντοτε τη διατήρηση της γύρης, φωτίζουν το συσχετισμό μεταξύ τοπικής απογύμνωσης της χλωρίδας και σχετικής σταθερότητας της βλάστησης στην ευρύτερη περιοχή. (shrink)

We investigate a system of two species exploiting a common resource. We consider both abiotic and biotic resources. We are interested in the asymmetric competition where a given consumer is the locally superior resource exploiter and the other is the locally inferior resource exploiter. They also interact directly via interference competition in the sense that LIE individuals can use two opposite strategies to compete with LSE individuals: we assume, in the first case, that LIE uses an avoiding strategy, i.e. LIE (...) individuals go to a non-competition patch to avoids competition with LSE individuals, and in the second one, LIE uses an aggressive strategy, i.e. being very aggressive so that LSE individuals have to go to a non-competition patch. We further assume that there is no resource in the non-competition patch so that individuals have to come back to the competition patch for their maintenance, and the migration process acts on a fast time scale in comparison with demography and competition processes. The models show that being aggressive is efficient for LIE’s survival and even provoke global extinction of the LSE and this result does not depend on the nature of resource. (shrink)

This work presents a mathematical model describing the interactions between the cross-shore structure of small pelagic fish population an their exploitation by coastal and offshore fisheries. The complete model is a system of seven ODE’s governing three stocks of small pelagic fish population moving and growing between three zones. Two types of fishing fleets are inter-acting with the fish population, industrial boats, constrained to offshore area, and artisanal boats, operating from the shore. Two time scales were considered and we use (...) aggregation methods that allow us to reduce the dimension of the model and to obtain an aggregated model, which is a four dimension one. The analysis of the aggregated model is performed. We discuss the possible equilibriums and their meaning in terms of fishery management. An interesting equilibrium state can be obtained for which we can expect coexistence and a stable equilibrium state between fish stocks and fishing efforts. Some identification parameters are also given in the discussion part of the model. (shrink)

Du rural à l'urbain est un livre précieux : il rassemble autour d'une problématique qui nous concerne encore aujourd'hui (comment surgit l'urbain? sa problématique? comment en faire la théorie?) les grandes étapes de la pensée de Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991), l'un des plus grands penseurs du XXe siècle. " C'est un marxiste, Henri Lefebvre, qui a donné une méthode à mon avis simple et irréprochable pour intégrer la sociologie et l'histoire dans la perspective de la dialectique matérialiste. Cette méthode, nous la (...) croyons valable dans tous les domaines de l'anthropologie. " Jean-Paul Sartre, Questions de méthode. Dans Du rural à l'urbain, " gît un petit trésor, l'article sur la méthode qu'Henri Lefebvre a théorisée à partir de son travail sur la vallée de Campan et qui porte désormais classiquement le nom de méthode régressive-progressive " René Lourau, préface à la seconde édition de Pyrénées (Pau, Cairn, 2000). (shrink)

Dans la culture, les sciences ou la Nature, il est question de l'Être. Mais la tournure qu'il prend oblige à rétablir sa Vérité, puisqu'il est plus que jamais remis en question. Regardons les choses en face. Académiquement, il est très bien dit, et c'est peut-être le tort. Alors, qu'il faille le percevoir dans sa plus grande pureté, afin de le dévoiler. Pour autant, nos grands philosophes continuent bien sûr de nous inspirer ; et c'est surtout dans leurs interrogations restées sans (...) réponse que la plus grande attention est requise. Nous sommes face à une grave crise de la connaissance, et c'est inévitablement à une chute de notre civilisation que fatalement nous allons, à moins que nous anticipions. Aussi, il est urgent d'offrir une pensée profonde et originale sur l'Être, et de changer radicalement notre vision des sciences et de la Nature -- Editor. (shrink)

L’édition critique des œuvres de Moïse ben Sabbataï, philosophe juif actif (à Rome?) vers 1340, avait signalé, parmi d’autres sources latines lues dans les traductions en hébreu de son contemporain Juda de Rome, un exemplum présentant le sage athénien Solon sur son lit de mort en champion de la doctrine de l’élévation intellectuelle en vue de la vie éternelle. Cette note identifie comme sa source un chapitre d’Albert le Grand, De natura et origine animae II, 13, dont la traduction en (...) hébreu se trouve dans un ouvrage inédit de Juda de Rome, son Commentaire du Qaddīš et de la Qeduššāh. La traduction du chapitre est éditée, l’histoire de l’ exemplum reconstituée et son emploi par les trois auteurs, remis en contexte et interprété. (shrink)

« Pourquoi y a-t-il plusieurs arts, et non pas un seul? Cette question paraît trop simple : on pensera même qu’elle ne fait pas question. Et cependant, pour peu qu’on se dérobe à une idée romantique de l’Art majuscule, elle est de nature à déplacer toute notre manière de considérer ce qu’on appelle les arts, et avec eux d’une part les sens (et le sens de “sens”), d’autre part la technique (dont l’“art” n’est jamais que la traduction). Avec les arts, (...) c’est le sens du monde qui se trouve, à nouveau, remis en jeu. ». (shrink)

Philosophe apatride, porte-voix des 'bons Européens' au XIXe siècle, Nietzsche se fit le représentant d'un européanisme assez contraire aux vues de son temps. Une posture intempestive et paradoxale car elle signifiait la dévalorisation des valeur suprêmes qui régissaient la vie des Européens, depuis deux millénaires. Dès lors, comment Nietzsche entendait-il 'penser l'Europe', au moment même où celle-ci menaçait, selon lui, de voir ses fondements culturels remis en question? Sans doute en prophétisant l'avènement du 'nihilisme européen', tout en remontant le cours (...) du temps et en pensant une généalogie de l'Europe pour, ensuite, dresser sa vision de 'deux siècles' à venir. C'est, en somme, une sorte de futurologie, adressée aux 'Européens d'après-demain'. Ce que nous sommes désormais. Ce livre rassemble des contributions majeures qui tentent de cerner ces 'pensées pour après-demain' et l'européanisme nietzschéen, mais aussi ce qu'ils disent de son actualité, toujours féconde pour éclairer les questions de notre temps. (shrink)

The present Festschrift was born as a tribute to the scientific production of Rémi Brague. This study collects the interventions of several thinkers, with different scientific profiles, who, fond of reality, have reflected on, and been in dialogue with his thought. Brague has explored many spheres: anthropology, metaphysics, religion, history of religions, aesthetics, ethics, politics, and cosmology – where he recalled those anchors in the sky where mankind throws its roots. We have decided to entitle this collection Europa cura (...) te ipsam! inspired by on the admonition of the famous Medice cura te ipsum. As Brague has repeatedly obser- ved, and recently with no little pessimism, it is now up to Europeans to recover their history and look to their future. We hope that the present work can be a stimulus for today’s thinkers and for generations to come, certain that the search for truth is an endless inquiry where harmony and cooperation among thinkers constitute progress. -/- Contributors: Leonardo Allodi, Rafael Alvira, Jean Baechler, Damiano Bondi, Thomas Buchheim, Virgil Ciomos, Rocio Daga Portillo, Marco Damonte, Chantal Delsol, Phil Devine, Thérèse-Anne Druart, Travis Dumsday, David C. Flatto, Michal Gierycz, Elisa Grimi, John F. X. Knasas, Hans Maier, Sante Maletta, Fr Antonio Malo, Fr Giulio Maspero, Ilaria Vigorelli, Fr Piotr Mazurkiewicz, Isabelle Moulin, José Ignacio Gómez Murillo, Maurits Potappel, John M. Rist, H. Em. Card. Angelo Scola, Hans Seitschek, Wilhelm Vossenkuhl. (shrink)

In their article “Out of nowhere: thought insertion, ownership and context-integration”, Jean-Remy Martin & Elisabeth Pacherie criticize the standard approach to thought insertion. However, their criticism is based on a misunderstanding of what the standard approach actually claims. By clarifying the notions ‘sense of ownership’ and ‘sense of agency’, I show that Martin & Pacherie’s own approach can be construed as a refined version of the standard approach.

A recently emerging view in music cognition holds that music is not only social and participatory in its production, but also in its perception, i.e. that music is in fact perceived as the sonic trace of social rela- tions between a group of real or virtual agents. While this view appears compatible with a number of intriguing music cognitive phenomena, such as the links between beat entrainment and prosocial behaviour or between strong musical emotions and empathy, direct evidence is lacking (...) that listeners are at all able to use the acoustic features of a musical interaction to infer the affiliatory or controlling nature of an underlying social intention. We created a novel experimental situation in which we asked expert music improvisers to communicate 5 types of non-musical social intentions, such as being domineering, dis- dainful or conciliatory, to one another solely using musical interaction. Using a combination of decoding studies, computational and psychoacoustical analyses, we show that both musically-trained and non musically-trained listeners can recognize relational intentions encoded in music, and that this social cognitive ability relies, to a sizeable extent, on the information processing of acoustic cues of temporal and harmonic coordination that are not present in any one of the musicians’ channels, but emerge from the dynamics of their interaction. By manipulating these cues in two-channel audio recordings and testing their impact on the social judgements of non-musician observers, we finally establish a causal relationship between the affiliation dimension of social behaviour and musical harmonic coordination on the one hand, and between the control dimension and musical temporal coordination on the other hand. These results provide novel mechanistic insights not only into the social cognition of musical interactions, but also into that of non-verbal interactions as a whole. (shrink)