Here in more than a hundred photographs is portrayed Liebling's Minnesota. During two decades marked by social, political and cultural change, Liebling travelled the state and found his largest subject -- the depiction and interpretation of commonplace human experience. The images range from the grain elevators and skid row of Minneapolis to the slaughterhouses in South St. Paul and the poor, working-class streets of St. Paul's West Side; from the Iron Range and the Red Lake Indian reservation in the north (...) to the farming towns in the south. The vision of Minnesota that emerges from the extraordinary photographs is uniquely that of the artist, yet it leads viewers effortlessly to an enhanced understanding of the places, the times, and, always, the people. (shrink)

Much of our understanding of human thinking is based on probabilistic models. This innovative book by Jerome R. Busemeyer and Peter D. Bruza argues that, actually, the underlying mathematical structures from quantum theory provide a much better account of human thinking than traditional models. They introduce the foundations for modelling probabilistic-dynamic systems using two aspects of quantum theory. The first, 'contextuality', is a way to understand interference effects found with inferences and decisions under conditions of uncertainty. The second, 'quantum (...) entanglement', allows cognitive phenomena to be modeled in non-reductionist ways. Employing these principles drawn from quantum theory allows us to view human cognition and decision in a totally new light. Introducing the basic principles in an easy-to-follow way, this book does not assume a physics background or a quantum brain and comes complete with a tutorial and fully worked-out applications in important areas of cognition and decision. (shrink)

Surely since the Enlightenment, if not before, the study of mind has centered principally on how man achieves a “true” knowledge of the world. Emphasis in this pursuit has varied, of course: empiricists have concentrated on the mind’s interplay with an external world of nature, hoping to find the key in the association of sensations and ideas, while rationalists have looked inward to the powers of mind itself for the principles of right reason. The objective, in either case, has been (...) to discover how we achieve “reality,” that is to say, how we get a reliable fix on the world, a world that is, as it were, assumed to be immutable and, as it were, “there to be observed.”This quest has, of course, had a profound effect on the development of psychology, and the empiricist and rationalist traditions have dominated our conceptions of how the mind grows and how it gets its grasp on the “real world.” Indeed, at midcentury Gestalt theory represented the rationalist wing of this enterprise and American learning theory the empiricist. Both gave accounts of mental development as proceeding in some more or less linear and uniform fashion from an initial incompetence in grasping reality to a final competence, in one case attributing it to the work out of internal processes or mental organization, and in the other to some unspecified principle of reflection by which—whether through reinforcement, association, or conditioning—we came to respond to the world “as it is.” There have always been dissidents who challenged these views, but conjectures about human mental development have been influenced far more by majoritarian rationalism and empiricism than by these dissident voices. Jerome Bruner is research professor of psychology at New York University, where he is also serving as Meyer Visiting Professor of Law. His most recent book, Acts of Meaning, appeared in 1990. In 1987 he received the Balzan Prize for “a lifetime contribution to the study of human psychology.”. (shrink)

Bruner sets forth nothing less than a new agenda for the study of the mind. He examines the irrepressibly human acts of imagination that allow us to make experience meaningful; he calls this side of mental activity the “narrative mode,” and his book makes important advances in the effort to unravel its nature.

Guides the practicing clinician or student therapist toward practical applications of imagery in a range of psychodynamic, cognitive, and behavioral therapies.

Aesthetics, both in its theoretical and empirical forms, has seen a renewed interest in the sublime, an aesthetic category dear to traditional philosophers, but quite neglected by contemporary philosophy. Our aim is to offer a novel perspective on the experience of the sublime. More precisely, our hypothesis is that the latter arises from ‘a radical limit-experience’, which is a metacognitve awareness of the limits of our cognitive capacities as we are confronted with something indefinitely greater or more powerful than us. (...) This hypothesis better explains the negative feelings involved in the experience of the sublime and accounts for its demarcation from other experiences (for example, terrible beauty). Experiences of the sublime have an overall positive valence, though. We will explore different ways in which a subject can try to overcome the negative evaluation involved in radical limit-experiences, and suggest that only one of them is appropriate to experiences of the sublime. (shrink)

In examining the puzzle of experience, and its possible solutions, Valberg discusses relevant views of Hume, Kant, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Strawson, as well as ideas from the recent philosophy of perception. Finally, he describes and analyzes a manifestation of the puzzle outside philosophy, in everyday experience.

__Dancing in the Rain_ offers a lively and accessible guide aimed at helping education leaders thrive under pressure by developing the inner strengths of mindfulness and self-compassion, expressing emotions wisely, and maintaining a clear focus on the values that matter most._ Jerome T. Murphy, a scholar and former dean who has written and taught about the inner life of education leaders, argues that the main barrier to thriving as leaders is not the outside pressures we face, but how we (...) respond to them inside our minds and hearts. In this concise volume, Murphy draws on a combination of Eastern contemplative traditions and Western psychology, as well as his own experience and research in the field of education leadership. He presents a series of exercises and activities to help educators take discomfort more in stride, savor the joys and satisfactions of leadership work, and thrive as effective leaders guided by heartfelt values. Every day, education leaders find themselves swamped in a maelstrom of pressures that add to the complex challenges of educating all students to a high level. With humor and compassion, _Dancing in the Rain_ shows educators how to lead lives of consequence and purpose in the face of life’s inescapable downpours. (shrink)

In this book, Jerome Kagan takes a provocative look at the mental developments underlying the startling transitions in the child's second year.It is Kagan&...

Explores the factors that make for a meaningful life.

Living in the Borderland addresses the evolution of Western consciousness and describes the emergence of the "Borderland," a spectrum of reality that is beyond the rational yet is palpable to an increasing number of individuals. Building on Jungian theory, Jerome Bernstein argues that a greater openness to transrational reality experienced by Borderland personalities allows new possibilities for understanding and healing confounding clinical and developmental enigmas." "Living in the Borderland challenges the standard clinical model, which views normality as an absence (...) of pathology and which equates normality with the rational. Jerome S. Bernstein describes how psychotherapy itself often contributes to the alienation of Borderland personalities by misperceiving the difference between the pathological and the sacred. The case studies included illustrate the potential this has for causing serious psychic and emotional damage to the patient." "This challenge to the orthodoxies and complacencies of western medicine's concept of pathology will interest Jungian Analysts, Psychotherapists, Psychiatrists and other physicians, as well as educators of children. (shrink)

This essay argues that Freud’s case of Little Hans, while complicated by Hans’ father’s dual role in the analysis and in the Oedipal drama itself, provides valuable insight into the nature of psychoanalytic evidence and argument. The case provides direct, if sometimes ambiguous, evidence concerning primal phantasies and infantile sexuality--issues of universality, the role of experience, and the nature of phantasy are explored. Four strands of Freud’s analysis of Little Hans’ horse phobia are also explored. While the toxicological theory of (...) anxiety is problematical and was subsequently abandoned by Freud himself, the other strands have great explanatory power and offer advantages over behaviorist and other alternative accounts. A kind of theoretical rigor in the concepts employed is argued to be among those advantages. The inevitably theory-laden character of observation is emphasized throughout, and it is argued that psychoanalysis provides a far more powerful theory than certain critiques would allow. (shrink)

This, the third edition of Fundamentals of Experimental Design, has five added chapters - those on regression (Chapters 12, 14, and 15), multivariate analysis (Chapter 18), and the matrix algebra appropriate to the level of presentation of this material (Chapter 13). I have noted in the preface other additions in this third edition. The added material should enhance the value of the book as a textbook and a reference. Given these additions, however, alternative approaches in using the current edition as (...) a textbook may merit consideration. It may help to note that Chapters 16 and 17 (analysis of covariance, trend analysis) do not depend on the material in Chapters 12 through 15, although the student should know something about simple linear regression to be able to understand fully the material in Chapters 16 and 17. In any event, the instructor who wants to teach only the material in the first two editions can do so by dropping the added chapters - 12 through 15, and 18 - from the syllabus. (shrink)

"De Charles S. Peirce, logicien et philosophe américain (1839-1914), on sait généralement qu'il a élaboré une théorie du signe, voire qu'il est le fondateur du pragmatisme. Ce que l'on sait moins, c'est qu'il est le premier à avoir développé une conception de l'information dans le cadre de ses recherches sur la philosophie de la science. Ce livre est l'étude des fondements logiques et sémiotiques de cette conception. Il se concentre sur les années 1865-1867, durant lesquelles Peirce définit les parties principales (...) de son système philosophique et montre que la notion d'information est un élément essentiel de ce système. La question que pose Peirce est de savoir comment et dans quelle mesure les représentations sont capables d'augmenter la quantité de ce qu'elles représentent. Il découvre qu'elles peuvent le faire de deux manières, selon qu'elles participent de l'un ou l'autre des deux types d'inférences probables que sont l'induction et l'abduction. L'information est la mesure de cette croissance de la connaissance au coeur des représentations. La notion d'information s'inscrit dans le type de réalisme qui définit la première période de la philosophie de Peirce. Elle est aussi un élément précurseur de ce qu'il appellera plus tard sa "logique du vague"."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

" In the generations since, its influence has grown-today it is accepted as a classic of general jurisprudence.The work is a bold and persuasive attack on the ...

Nathanson, J. Introduction.--Arisian, K. American individualism reconceived.--Black, A. D. What it takes to be free.--Ericson, E. L. Character traits of a free people.--Friess, H. L. Confrontations and the human bond.--Nathanson, J. Who is the moral man today?

A popular idea at present is that emotions are perceptions of values. Most defenders of this idea have interpreted it as the perceptual thesis that emotions present (rather than merely represent) evaluative states of affairs in the way sensory experiences present us with sensible aspects of the world. We argue against the perceptual thesis. We show that the phenomenology of emotions is compatible with the fact that the evaluative aspect of apparent emotional contents has been incorporated from outside. We then (...) deal with the only two views that can make sense of the perceptual thesis. On the response–dependence view, emotional experiences present evaluative responsedependent properties (being fearsome, being disgusting, etc.) in the way visual experiences present response-dependent properties such as colors. On the response–independence view, emotional experiences present evaluative response-independent properties (being dangerous, being indigestible, etc.), conceived as ‘Gestalten’ independent of emotional feelings themselves. We show that neither view can make plausible the idea that emotions present values as such, i.e., in an open and transparent way. If emotions have apparent evaluative contents, this is in fact due to evaluative enrichments of the non-evaluative presentational contents of emotions. (shrink)

This book provides a much-needed critical introduction to the main doctrines of Frank Ramsey's work and assesses their contemporary significance.

In 1959 C. P. Snow delivered his now-famous Rede Lecture, 'The Two Cultures,' a reflection on the academy based on the premise that intellectual life was divided into two cultures: the arts and humanities on one side and science on the other. Since then, a third culture, generally termed 'social science' and comprised of fields such as sociology, political science, economics, and psychology, has emerged. Jerome Kagan's book describes the assumptions, vocabulary, and contributions of each of these cultures and (...) argues that the meanings of many of the concepts used by each culture are unique to it and do not apply to the others because the source of evidence for the term is special. The text summarizes the contributions of the social sciences and humanities to our understanding of human nature and questions the popular belief that biological processes are the main determinant of variation in human behavior. (shrink)

A strict operational (i.e., informational) analysis of the meaning of preparing a system to realize the paradoxes of Loschmidt or Zermelo is made. Where reversal or recurrence are operationally realizable, no contradiction with the irreversible nature of macroscopic operations occurs. Paradox results either from neglecting irreversible phenomena in the means for preparing a reversed state, or from confusing elements or ensembles, which are meaningful in microstate language but meaningless operationally, with preparable macrostates, whoserepresentation in microstate language is an ensemble whose (...) very definition is incompatible with that of any paradox-generating element or ensemble. (shrink)

Everettian quantum mechanics tells us that the fundamental dynamics of the universe are deterministic. So what are the `probabilities' that the Born rule describes? One popular answer has been to treat these probabilities as rational credences. A recent alternative, Isaac Wilhelm's centered Everett Interpretation (CEI), takes the Born probabilities to be centered chances: the objective chances that some centered propositions are true. Thus, the CEI challenges the `orthodox assumption’ that fundamental physical laws concern only uncentered facts. I provide three arguments (...) against the centered Everett Interpretation. First, I argue that the CEI is in apparent tension with a significant motivation for adopting Everettian quantum mechanics: rejecting the attribution of special significance to observers or agents in fundamental physics. I suggest the CEI can avoid this tension, but only at the cost of sacrificing its central claim that there are objective chances in an Everettian multiverse. My second argument concerns the CEI’s claim that the centered Born rule is a fundamental physical law. I provide two plausible notions of fundamentality for physical laws, and I argue that the centered Born rule satisfies neither. My final argument is that the CEI’s branch-relative laws cannot explain or constrain an agent’s rational credences in the way that the CEI claims. (shrink)

Résumé La question des fondements d’un revenu garanti n’est pas une question d’experts, réservée aux spécialistes du capitalisme historique ou de la crise de l’État-providence. Par delà la caution élégante ou l’habillage théorique qu’elle peut fournir, la philosophie de Spinoza, en tant qu’elle se formule comme projet d’augmentation de la puissance d’agir, permet à la fois de comprendre tout ce peut nous apporter un revenu garanti dans la conjoncture actuelle, et de problématiser un certain nombre de débats, propositions, critiques, qui (...) se font jour autour de cette revendication. La petite fantaisie métaphysique que se permet le défenseur du RG quand il lit Spinoza l’amène à problématiser deux choses : la justification du RG, de manière générale, à partir des transformations sociétales les plus récentes (théorie du postfordisme), et, plus particulièrement, sa justification en termes de revenu primaire rémunérant l’activité au-delà du travail directement productif. (shrink)

"No soy de los que deploran la especialización; en todo caso, dudo que sea posible, aunque fuere deseable, frenar la persecución de un saber especializado, en complejas sociedades. Pero es que la filosofía del Derecho ha descansado tradicionalmente en una perspectiva muy amplia, y hay que lamentar de modo especial la pérdida de sus funciones unitivas debido a la extraordinaria necesidad presente de comprender y mejorar las instituciones jurídicas. La situación actual no clama por la desvalorización de la especialización, sino (...) que, por el contrario, desafía a los estudiosos a trascender las especializaciones de la filosofía del Derecho, y cualquiera fuere la utilidad que con ello pudiera lograrse, a construir una jusfilosofía que satisfaga más adecuadamente las presentes demandas". Jerome Hall. (shrink)

In spite of being a very public intellectual, the philosopher Imre Lakatos (who died in 1974) was little understood. His Hungarian background seemed irrelevant to his career at the London School of Economics as the colleague and then successor to Sir Karl Popper. In Imre Lakatos and The Guises of Reason, John Kadvany demonstrates the overwhelming importance of Lakatos's Hungarian background, and thereby also explains and illuminates Lakatos's philosophy. His study also demonstrates the power of Hegel's thought as the background (...) to any genuinely historical approach to philosophy, even of science and mathematics. He also provides a glimpse of the nightmare world of Stalinist Hungary, as a contribution to an explanation of Lakatos's personal and intellectual style. Kadvany's exposition does much to clarify and explain Lakatos's philosophy, thereby enhancing his reputation and also making his work, much of it still of vital significance, more accessible to a new public. (shrink)

Relying on personal experience of political European venture during the last four years, this paper aims at illustrating the role of ethics in public policy-making.Crucial importance of ethics is stressed upon at three different stages of the decision-making process: shaping a vision, devising strategy and choosing options in everyday life.

The aim of this paper is to study anomalies of self- and world-experience in schizophrenia from a phenomenological perspective, through the use of the EASE and the EAWE interviews. Four patients with diagnoses of schizophrenia were interviewed with both EASE and EAWE. A qualitative analysis of these interviews was carried out on all the data; quantitative scores were also assigned based on the frequency and intensity of items endorsed by the subjects. For the EASE, subjects endorsed an average frequency of (...) 45% of all items. For the EAWE, subjects endorsed an average frequency of 26% of all items. Furthermore, EAWE data indicated more heterogeneous profiles of experience than the EASE. This heterogeneity is not surprising, given that the EAWE was designed to be a more broad-based or less targeted exploration of various changes likely to be associated with schizophrenia spectrum. Our data suggest that, although disturbances of world experience may always be present in schizophrenia, they may take numerous and varied forms. Because the experience of the world occurs across many different modalities, disturbances of this experience would be fundamentally less unitary, whereas the experience of the self present a more coherent and unitary gestalt. These results show certain overlapping between the scales while also indicating the potential value of combined use of the two instruments. Finally, we discussed the relationship between experiential description and behavioral observation, and their potentially complementary value in exploring the first-person perspective, particular in the case of experiences that occur at a more pre-reflective level. (shrink)

In this chapter, I put aside typical arguments from experienced evil to the belief that God does not exist. Instead, in the first section, my focus is on how experiences of evil provide epistemic support for atheism by analogy with the ways philosophers have claimed experiences allegedly of God provide support for theistic belief. In the second section, I will sketch other ways in which atheism gets support when a person experiences evil, ways not analogous to how philosophers have thought (...) of theistic experience but yet not arguments from experience of evil. (shrink)

This book is a study of Hume and Spinoza and the relationship of philosophical theories of the emotions to psychological theories of therapy. Arguing that Spinoza's cognitivist theory of emotions is closer to the truth, it is shown that that provides the beginning of an understanding of how Freudian or, more generally, analytic therapies make philosophic sense. That is, we can begin to understand how people's emotional lives might be transformed by consideration and interpretation of their memories, beliefs, fantasies; in (...) other words, how knowledge might help to make one free. (shrink)

Les honoraires de l’avocat sont la légitime rémunération du travail foruni et du service rendu par l’avocat dans l’intérêt de son client. S’ils répondent, à l’origine, de la liberté contractuelle, ils sont désormais très encadrés et font même, en certaines matières, l’objet d’une tarification. En sus de ce strict encadrement, les litiges sur l’honoraire de l’avocat répondent à une procédure spécifique : le bâtonnier est le juge de l’honoraire. Cet encadrement et ce contrôle des honoraires se sont encore renforcés sous (...) l’influence croissante du droit européen de la consommation et des décisions de la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne prises en la matière. (shrink)

Que ce soit sur le plan réglementaire ou à travers un calendrier événementiel qui leur est spécifique, les sports ont partie liée avec différentes formes de temporalités. De ce point de vue, il est possible de classer les compétitions sportives selon trois catégories de rapport au temps : les sports où le temps est systématiquement mesuré mais ne fixe pas les conditions de lʼaccomplissement de lʼépreuve, les...

Introduction i This work is a sustained argument for the rationality of belief in God based on the evidence that across various religions down through history people seem to have experienced God.1 If we conf1ne ourselves to rationality ...

Kagan ponders a series of important nodes of debate while challenging us to examine what we know and why we know it. Most critically he presents an elegant argument for functions of mind that cannot be replaced with sentences about brains while acknowledging that mind emerges from brain activity. He relies on the evidence to argue that thoughts and emotions are distinct from their biological and genetic bases. In separate chapters he deals with the meaning of words, kinds of knowing, (...) the powerful influence of social class, the functions of education, emotion, morality, and other issues. And without fail he sheds light on these ideas while remaining honest to their complexity." -- Publisher's description. (shrink)

This essay uses plays by Ibsen and O’Neill to consider whether self-deception is always a bad thing, and whether undeceiving others is always a good (or easy) thing. There is a focus on the question of the possibility of mistake about one’s own present happiness, involving a consideration of the nature of happiness. There is a further focus on the role of collusion by others in self-deception, using a distinction between two types of self-deception: one characterized by inner conflict and (...) another by a contrast between self-perception and external views. The work of Sartre and Freud is used to illuminate these two types of self-deception and the conditions for overcoming them. (shrink)

In chapter 5 of Knowledge and its Limits, T. Williamson formulates an argument against the principle (KK) of epistemic transparency, or luminosity of knowledge, namely “that if one knows something, then one knows that one knows it”. Williamson’s argument proceeds by reductio: from the description of a situation of approximate knowledge, he shows that a contradiction can be derived on the basis of principle (KK) and additional epistemic principles that he claims are better grounded. One of them is a reflective (...) form of the margin for error principle defended by Williamson in his account of knowledge. We argue that Williamson’s reductio rests on the inappropriate identification of distinct forms of knowledge. More specifically, an important distinction between perceptual knowledge and non-perceptual knowledge is wanting in his statement and analysis of the puzzle. We present an alternative account of this puzzle, based on a modular conception of knowledge: the (KK) principle and the margin for error principle can coexist, provided their domain of application is referred to the right sort of knowledge. (shrink)

C’est en philosophe que Jan Patočka entreprend de répondre à la crise de l’Europe et aux désastres de l’histoire auxquels il est confronté, en revenant à la naissance de la philosophie, non pas dans un simple souci d’histoire, mais en vue d’un nouveau commencement. Il s’appuiera pour cela sur Platon (« Le platonisme négatif », Platon et l’Europe) puis sur les présocratiques (notamment sur Héraclite, dans ses Essais hérétiques sur la philosophie de l’histoire). C’est alors qu’il peut montrer comment la (...) crise s’inscrit dans la physis et pas seulement dans l’histoire, mais aussi comment, dans l’histoire, des hommes peuvent se dresser pour atteindre un « plus-haut ». (shrink)

South Africa has adopted a paternalistic stance on the minimum age of enrolment for HIV vaccine trials, and on the level of compensation for trial participants. Whilst this approach has presumably been taken to protect the interests of research participants an over-protective approach, however well-intended, does not always serve the interests of the particularly vulnerable. It will be argued that an inclusive approach, based on the principles of beneficence and justice, can better guide research in such a way that the (...) necessary data are generated while also furthering the interests of the particularly vulnerable members of a study population. (shrink)

Les réactions européennes de politique économique au choc du coronavirus contrastent de manière saisissante avec l’organisation des politiques économiques qui prévalait depuis la création de l’euro. Les règles de discipline budgétaire et le ciblage prioritaire de l’inflation ont été mis entre parenthèses, après avoir été fragilisés par la précédente crise mondiale de 2007-2009. N’ayant pas su prévenir la succession des crises de grande ampleur, les autorités publiques ont donc adopté des politiques ultra-expansionnistes. Leur logique elle-même a changé : si la (...) prévention des déficits excessifs a échoué et que la discipline budgétaire n’a aucun sens durant la crise, il faut tout mettre en œuvre pour en atténuer les effets et pour en sortir au plus vite et durablement. Le principe de précaution semble donc animer les autorités publiques. Ce chapitre décrit la transition vers l’application de ce principe et discute de ses effets et de ses risques attendus sur l’économie. (shrink)

Le travail et la formation des adultes sont aujourd’hui traversés de syntagmes mobilisés par une idéologie managériale dévoyant les termes d’autonomie, de responsabilité ou de capacité. À partir d’une analyse critique, l’article se propose de resituer ces glissements sémantiques dans le champ des recherches et des pratiques actuelles de la formation. Le recours aux travaux de Ricoeur et d’Honneth permet ensuite d’aborder leurs contributions respectives pour prolonger ces questions et leurs apports, en particulier, pour penser la reconnaissance. L’article se termine (...) par l’ouverture que permettent ces travaux pour les fondements de la formation, vers l’horizon d’une « vie bonne ». (shrink)

The authors of It Is Right and Just bring to the public’s attention serious questions of political thought and practice. That they do so from the standpoint of theology provides an opportunity for a fresh look at the American founding and the American regime. Though the questions raised are important, the authors unfortunately do not provide a helpful foundation for fruitful reflection. Instead, the book makes sweeping claims without adequate evidence. It Is Right and Just will disappoint any serious student (...) of American politics and, worse, may mislead well-intended American Catholics searching for a more just polity for themselves and their children. (shrink)

If an alleged experience of God can constitute evidence for God’s existence, then it must be possible for God to be a perceptual particular, that is, a substantive, enduring object of perception. Furthermore, if several such experiences are to be cumulative evidence for God’s existence, then it must be possible to reidentify God from experience to experience. I examine both a "conceptual" and an "epistemological" argument against these possibilities that is derived from the work of Richard Gale. I argue that (...) neither of these arguments is successful. For God to be a perceptual particular, he must have an inner life; for God to be reidentified across experiences, he need not exist in dimensions analogous to the spatiotemporal. (shrink)

« Dans la sphère économique, un acte, une habitude, une institution, une loi n’engendrent pas seulement un effet, mais une série d’effets. De ces effets, le premier seul est immédiat ; il se manifeste simultanément avec sa cause, on le voit. Les autres ne se déroulent que successivement, on ne les voit pas, heureux si on les prévoit. Entre un mauvais et un bon Economiste, voici toute la différence : l’un s’en tient à l’effet visible, l’autre tient compte et de (...) l’effet qu’on voit et de ceux qu’il faut prévoir. » Frédéric Bastiat (1850), Ce qu’on voit, ce qu’on ne voit pas. Abstract: Outre l’économiste érudit, le spécialiste de l’école autrichienne et de la théorie du Public Choice, Bertrand Lemennicier se passionnait pour la prévision en général et la prévision politique en particulier. Dans cet article en forme d’hommage, nous proposons de faire un point d’étape sur les méthodes de prévision électorale, en allant des méthodes non quantitatives aux méthodes quantitatives au sein desquelles les modèles de vote politico-économiques occupent une place éminente. En l’espèce, nous évoquerons la contribution de Bertrand Lemennicier à « l’art » de la prévision électorale. (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)

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)

Résumé Le cheminement de la pensée occidentale, depuis plus d’un siècle, a vu : la mort de Dieu, la chute des idéologies politiques qui semblaient avoir pris le relais des valeurs « divines », la solitude de l’individu désorienté. Le malaise de l’individu serait le symptôme d’une remise en question de la notion même d’être humain. En reprenant la critiques de l’humanisme introduite par Nietzsche, Sloterdijk fait ressortir que l’homme aurait échappé à la bestialité par les moyens mêmes qu’il emploie (...) pour apprivoiser les animaux et les mettre à son service. Que dire de ce que la recherche permet actuellement de faire sur l’être humain? La manipulation du vivant a fait émerger la possibilité d’une fabrique de l’être humain. Les choix que nous avons à faire quant au devenir de l’humain restent éminemment politiques. Le terme d’humanisme est complexe : il est deux types d’humanisme. Celui qui conçoit l’humain comme une essence. La seconde forme considère qu’il n’y a pas de nature humaine, que l’on devient humain. Le monde humain est ouvert à la création, mais fragilisé parce que placé sous notre responsabilité. (shrink)

In his preface to Human, Too Human Nietzsche wrote: ‘My books have been labelled the school of suspicion … ‘ Predicted and desired by Nietzsche, the age of suspicion does seem to be one of the labels that best characterize the century that has just closed. And symptomatically it was used a few decades later in France to describe writers’ interrogations about the novel as a literary genre, its facilities and conventions, its easy determinisms, as well as the exorbitant power (...) of the novelist-demiurge. Is it necessary to recall that the forerunner to the nouveau roman, written by Nathalie Sarraute in the 1930s, was in fact entitled L’Ère du soupçon? It is impossible to emphasize enough this close concordance between philosophical questioning and aesthetic interrogations, particularly in the notion of avant-garde, which is indispensable for thinking about intellectual and political renewal. It is true that the 20th century was the century of the universal declaration of human rights, but also the century of rejection of norms inherited from philosophical, literary, cultural, religious or scientific traditions, which came to be suspected of providing only off-the-peg elements for thought and action at a time when the world was changing and required new forms of thinking. (shrink)

La question du risque transparaît dans toute l’œuvre de Kierkegaard. En plus de lui apporter dynamisme et profondeur, elle permet au penseur danois d’articuler philosophie de l’existence et philosophie de la foi. Précisément, le risque chrétien, en tant que risque « intellectuel » et « existentiel », oriente l’individu vers soi-même, et plus exactement, vers ce paradigme de l’identité qu’est le Christ en tant qu’homme-Dieu. Nous nous proposons donc ici d’analyser cette notion éminemment kierkegaardienne en insistant notamment sur deux modalités (...) du risque : le risque comme catégorie « polémique », vis-à-vis de la chrétienté en tant qu’avatar de la mondanité, et le risque comme catégorie « théologico-existentielle », en ceci qu’il détermine, positivement ou négativement, l’existence de l’individu. (shrink)

This volume focuses on the role language plays at all levels of the argumentation process. It explores the effects that specific linguistic choices may have in the production and the reception of arguments and in doing so, it moves beyond the first, necessary, descriptive stance provided by current literature on the topic. Each chapter provides an original take illuminating one or more of the following three issues: the range of linguistic resources language users draw on as they argue; how cognitive (...) processes of meaning construction may influence argumentative practices; and which discursive devices can be used to fulfil a number of argumentative goals. The volume includes theoretical and empirical or applied stances, providing the reader both with state-of-the-art reflections on the relationship between argumentation and language, and with concrete examples of how this relationship plays out in naturally occurring argumentative practices, such as classroom interaction, and political, parliamentary or journalistic discourse. This is a very original, timely and welcome contribution to the study of argumentation conducted with the tools of the language sciences. The collection of papers relevantly tackles key linguistic, discursive and cognitive aspects of argumentative practices whose treatment is underrepresented in mainstream argumentation studies by offering new and exciting linguistically-grounded theoretical accounts. As such, the volume testifies both to the vigour of the linguistic current within the discipline and to the high standards of scholarly commitment and quality that the younger generation is pushing forward. Without question, this book marks an important milestone in the relationships between linguistics and argumentation theory. Christian Plantin, Professor Emeritus. (shrink)

Within Jean Paul Sartre’s atheistic program, he objected to Christian mysticism as a delusory desire for substantive being. I suggest that a Christian mystic might reply to Sartre’s attack by claiming that Sartre indeed grasps something right about the human condition but falls short of fully understanding what he grasps. Then I argue that the true basis of Sartre’s atheism is neither philosophical nor existentialist, but rather mystical. Sartre had an early mystical atheistic intuition that later developed into atheistic mystical (...) experience. Sartre experienced the nonexistence of God. (shrink)