This classic work in the philosophy of physical science is an incisive and readable account of the scientific method. Pierre Duhem was one of the great figures in French science, a devoted teacher, and a distinguished scholar of the history and philosophy of science. This book represents his most mature thought on a wide range of topics.

Is calculation possible without language? Or is the human ability for arithmetic dependent on the language faculty? To clarify the relation between language and arithmetic, we studied numerical cognition in speakers of Mundurukú, an Amazonian language with a very small lexicon of number words. Although the Mundurukú lack words for numbers beyond 5, they are able to compare and add large approximate numbers that are far beyond their naming range. However, they fail in exact arithmetic with numbers larger than 4 (...) or 5. Our results imply a distinction between a nonverbal system of number approximation and a language-based counting system for exact number and arithmetic. (shrink)

Carnap's ideal of explication has become a key concept in analytic philosophy and the basis of a method of analysis which may be considered as an alternative to various forms of naturalism, including Quine's conception of a naturalized epistemology. More recently, new light has been shed on this aspect of the classical Carnap-Quine debate by contemporary philosophers. Whereas Michael Friedman articulated a notion of relativized a priori which owes much to Carnap's internal/external distinction, André Carus attempted to restate Carnap's ideal (...) of explication in a way that bridges the gap between conceptual engineering and naturalism. On the other hand, Mark Wilson argued that concepts develop in unpredictable ways and cannot be planned in the way classical analytic philosophy has assumed from Frege and Russell onwards. This book consists of a series of defences as well as critiques of Carnap's programme, setting it in its historical context, discussing specific cases of explications, and enriching the on-going debate on conceptual engineering and naturalism in analytic philosophy.Carnap's ideal of explication has become a key concept in analytic philosophy and the basis of a method of analysis which may be considered as an alternative to various forms of naturalism, including Quine's conception of a naturalized epistemology. More recently, new light has been shed on this aspect of the classical Carnap-Quine debate by contemporary philosophers. Whereas Michael Friedman articulated a notion of relativized a priori which owes much to Carnap's internal/external distinction, André Carus attempted to restate Carnap's ideal of explication in a way that bridges the gap between conceptual engineering and naturalism. On the other hand, Mark Wilson argued that concepts develop in unpredictable ways and cannot be planned in the way classical analytic philosophy has assumed from Frege and Russell onwards. This book consists of a series of defences as well as critiques of Carnap's programme, setting it in its historical context, discussing specific cases of explications, and enriching the on-going debate on conceptual engineering and naturalism in analytic philosophy. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of somatic evolution by natural selection to our understanding of cancer development. I do so in two steps. In the first part of the paper, I ask to what extent cancer cells meet the formal requirements for evolution by natural selection, relying on Godfrey-Smith’s (2009) framework of Darwinian populations. I argue that although they meet the minimal requirements for natural selection, cancer cells are not paradigmatic Darwinian populations. In the second (...) part of the paper, I examine the most important examples of adaptation in cancer cells. I argue that they are not significant accumulations of evolutionary changes, and that as a consequence natural selection plays a lesser role in their explanation. Their explanation, I argue, is best sought in the previously existing wiring of the healthy cells. (shrink)

1 Analyse sociale de la connaissance et études de cas L’épistémologie sociale est un domaine de recherche en construction. L’usage généralisé de cette expression trouve son origine dans la philosophie analytique contemporaine, bien que des auteurs en sociologie des sciences puissent également l’utiliser. L’épistémologie sociale répond à une exigence d’utilité publique, à un souci d’application de la philosophie de la connaissance à des problèmes de société. Mais son développement répond égale...

Kant argued that Euclidean geometry is synthesized on the basis of an a priori intuition of space. This proposal inspired much behavioral research probing whether spatial navigation in humans and animals conforms to the predictions of Euclidean geometry. However, Euclidean geometry also includes concepts that transcend the perceptible, such as objects that are infinitely small or infinitely large, or statements of necessity and impossibility. We tested the hypothesis that certain aspects of nonperceptible Euclidian geometry map onto intuitions of space that (...) are present in all humans, even in the absence of formal mathematical education. Our tests probed intuitions of points, lines, and surfaces in participants from an indigene group in the Amazon, the Mundurucu, as well as adults and age-matched children controls from the United States and France and younger US children without education in geometry. The responses of Mundurucu adults and children converged with that of mathematically educated adults and children and revealed an intuitive understanding of essential properties of Euclidean geometry. For instance, on a surface described to them as perfectly planar, the Mundurucu's estimations of the internal angles of triangles added up to ∼180 degrees, and when asked explicitly, they stated that there exists one single parallel line to any given line through a given point. These intuitions were also partially in place in the group of younger US participants. We conclude that, during childhood, humans develop geometrical intuitions that spontaneously accord with the principles of Euclidean geometry, even in the absence of training in mathematics. (shrink)

What is the effect of age on the political participation of disabled people? The various statistical analyses (multiple correspondence analysis and regression) yield contradictory results. To understand the effect of age and disability on voting, it is necessary to break down these two dimensions to identify three types of population: elderly people who have become disabled, aging disabled people, and people who have lived for a long time with a disability. Voting behavior is useful to clarify the contours of these (...) populations. This allows us to affirm that older disabled persons behave electorally as they have been socialized to do. This analysis also shows how the problem of aging is not solely related to biological age. Finally, it shows that the population of people considered administratively as disabled includes very heterogeneous categories of people, whose fates are clearly differentiated. (shrink)

En choisissant de consacrer ce numéro aux enjeux éthiques et prati­ques déontologiques du 4e pouvoir, la revue Éthique publique poursuit l’am­bition d’offrir un état des lieux quant aux dilemmes contemporains rencontrés par les acteurs d’un territoire somme toute mal connu. Soit celui où se détermine l’essentiel du premier service public qui doit être assuré en démocratie : l’information en tant que bien public.Il convient de préciser d’entrée de jeu que dans la plupart des sociétés organisée..

We employ a pragmatic model of inquiry to distinguish the epistemological character of exploratory experimentation. Exploratory experimentation is not constituted by any intrinsic characteristics of an episode of experimentation but depends on the context and aims of the experiment and the ways in which these shape decisions about how the experimental inquiry is to be conducted: its tasks, resources, and aims, as well as the critical assessment of all of these. To demonstrate the usefulness of our pragmatist model, we apply (...) it to the contrast between two kinds of searches for new physics at the Large Hadron Collider. Some searches are exploratory while others target specific Beyond Standard Model hypotheses, but this contrast can be understood only by considering the relations between these searches, their aims, and the way that these aims shape their respective experimental parameters and procedures. Our approach provides a model for establishing the epistemological significance of details of experimental practice. (shrink)

Due to the failure of the classical principles of bivalence and verifunctionality, the logic of experimental propositions relative to quantum systemscannot be interpreted in Boolean algebras. However, we cannot say neither that this logic is captured by orthomodular lattices, as claimed by many authors along the line of Birkhoff‘s and von Neumann‘s standard approach. For the alleged violation of distributivity is based on the possibility of combining statements relative to complementary contexts, which does not refer to any experience and, consequently, (...) has no meaning. Indeed, quantum logic should be interpreted in partial, transitive Boolean algebras whose compatibility relation limits the application of the connectives within each of its Boolean sub-algebras, which refer to partial, classical descriptions. Moreover, this approach of quantum logic makes it possible to deal with composite systems, which was not possible to do within the standard approach, and then to deal with the fundamental notion of quantum entanglement. The latter notion can be represented by a series of axioms of the object language that restrict the set of experimental statements bearing on a composite system, while its close link to the notion of complementarity can be expressed in the metalanguage. (shrink)

El autor se propone, en Sartre-Foucault (una oposición tergiversada) , resolver el enigma planteado por el rechazo foucaultiano de la filosofía contemporánea . Rechazo casi endógeno y no exógeno, rechazo por conocimiento interiorizado y no desconocimiento exterior. Se analizan las dos fuentes de hostilidades flagrantes. 1) El rechazo foucaultiano de los privilegios del Cogito en beneficio de una consideración de la especialización del pensamiento. 2) La evidencia que posee de la normatividad, sin moral teorizada , de esta filosofía contemporánea y (...) particularmente en el caso de Sartre, el más existencialistamente moralista de entre todos los contemporáneos citados por Foucault: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Sade, Nietzsche, Artaud, Bataille. «El pensamiento desde su forma más temprana es una acción – un acto peligroso» (Les Mots et les Choses , p. 339). También lo sabían Hegel, Marx, Freud, nos dice. El enigma surge precisamente del poder totalizante de comprensión que manifiesta con relación a este gran cuadro de la filosofía contemporánea. En general una oposición procede, en efecto, de una incomprensión del autor criticado o de una comprensión tergiversada. (shrink)

I write this essay from a place of thirst, discontent, dream; from being housed in the United States but not at home there; from thinking through this writing in English, a language that is not home; and from wanting to continue making a place that is not home. I think through this inquiry from a place of cohabitation with Western ways of knowing that have purposefully demonized peoples of African descent as less than human; from the tradition of Haitian thinkers (...) and resurgents who emphasize spirituality as crucial to recreating themselves endlessly; and from imagining the unseen, unfelt, and invisible powers that illuminate the process. In this place of feverishness, I sit with Haitian writer and singer Mimerose Beaubrun's monograph Nan Dòmi in order to consider the possibilities and impossibilities that might be realized through a practice of decolonial labor that bridges the known and the unknown, the seen and the unseen, the metaphysical and the material. Taking inspiration from María Lugones's phenomenological approach of decoloniality and Beaubrun's theory of nan dòmi, this essay asks: what in Beaubrun's Nan Dòmi opens decoloniality as a radical onto-epistemological terrain from which to rethink subjectivities, politics, and worlds in uneven and unjust geographies? (shrink)

Le Christianisme, autant sinon davantage que le Judaïsme, et incomparablement plus que tout autre religion, s'est confronté au " langage " des cultures et des époques qui le traversaient autant qu'il les traversait. Dans l'Occident moderne et contemporain, surtout en son versant catholique, la question dogmatique a retrouvé une vive actualité avec notamment la crise moderniste, la controverse sur le surnaturel, le débat sur l'infaillibilité…, ce qui fait émerger l'interrogation vis-à-vis du dogme comme langage normatif. Sans doute devrions-nous distinguer le (...) dogme , qui désigne tout le contenu de la Foi , et les dogmes , qui désignent des aspects de ce contenu, sans être déliés les uns des autres en vertu de l'analogie de la Foi. Mais le dogme chrétien et les dogmes de la Foi chrétienne impliquent dans leur énonciation linguistique formulée, enseignée et transmise une forme de normativité sur laquelle Pierre Gire s'interroge ici d'un point de vue philosophique .Christianity, as much as, if not more than, Judaism, and incomparably more than any other religion, has been confronted with the "language" of cultures and eras that passed through it as much as it passed through them. In the modern and contemporary West, especially among Catholics, lively interest was revived in the question of dogma, particularly as a result of the crisis of modernism, the controversy over the supernatural, the debate on infallibility, etc. This led to the emergence of questions regarding dogma as a normative language. No doubt, we should distinguish dogma , which designates everything contained in the Faith from dogmas , which designate some aspects of this content, although they remain interconnected through the analogy with the Faith. But the way the linguistic enunciation of Christian dogma and the dogmas of the Christian Faith have been formulated, taught and passed on implies a form of normativity that Pierre Gire questions here from a philosophical point of view. (shrink)

Le processus fondateur d’une alliance à une organisation radicale, la mécanique de son engrenage et les échecs de tentatives de « déradicalisation » restent souvent énigmatiques. L’auteur émet l’hypothèse que le lien d’alliance radical, tel un couplage des familles d’origine de deux partenaires, a une fonction économique psychique de remaillage inter-contenants réciproque des liens de filiation et d’affiliation entre le contenant familial de l’adepte et celui de l’organisation radicale. À partir d’une expérience clinique dans des contextes géopolitiques et des dispositifs (...) très différents, il décrit l’attaque de la filiation et la figure d’un néo-père mythique comme une caractéristique paradigmatique de l’architecture des liens structurant le maillage contenant de ces organisations groupales qu’il définit comme radicales et totalitaires. Il analyse le processus du pacte d’alliance radicale comme une néo-conversion à un néo-mythe d’auto-engendrement avec des néo-rituels à partir de la rencontre entre une demande, en résonance à une vulnérabilité, et une offre d’une organisation prédatrice totalitaire. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMany rich countries are witnessing the rise of xenophobic political parties. The opposition to immigration and global redistributive policies is high. How can we pursue global justice in such non-ideal circumstances? Whatever the way we want to pursue global justice, it seems that a change in the political ethos of citizens from rich countries will be necessary. They must come to internalize some genuine concern for foreigners and relativize national identities. Can education contribute to the promotion of such cosmopolitan ethos? (...) An overtly cosmopolitan educational agenda is not likely to be endorsed in these societies where national ties and national priority may be considered fully legitimate by the majority. Nevertheless, this paper argues, some more achievable educational aims may have desirable cosmopolitan spillover effects although it is not their primary purpose. Decentration, empathy, critical thinking, understanding of social reality and social mix can be defended as necessary for a better domestic society. Yet these aims also make the widespread development of a cosmopolitan ethos more likely. This paper thus considers the arguments that can be made for these educational aims and their potential effects on citizens’ attitudes towards foreigners. Then, it discusses a possible tension with another aspect of national civic education: national integration. (shrink)

Résumé Malgré le réquisitoire de Simone de Beauvoir contre Henry de Montherlant, qu’elle taxe de misogynie, le dialogue entre les deux écrivains n’a pas eu lieu. Il est toutefois possible de mieux comprendre ce qui les oppose en s’intéressant au regard respectif qu’ils jettent sur le mariage de Tolstoï, notamment sur les journaux intimes du couple. Les perspectives différentes qu’ils adoptent sur ce « ménage » permettent de mieux mesurer le fossé qui les sépare, et ce, en dépit parfois de (...) conclusions similaires. (shrink)

Transcrire des écrits scolaires : entre philologie et génétique textuelle Cet article propose une réflexion épistémologique sur les problèmes posés par la transcription d’écrits scolaires pour la constitution d’un corpus informatisé. Il interroge l’opération de transcription de manuscrits dans deux cadres théoriques : la philologie et la génétique textuelle. On examine les modèles proposés dans ces deux cadres, les possibilités mais aussi les problèmes rencontrés pour la transcription d’écrits parfois non normés comme le sont les écrits d’élèves. À partir d’exemples (...) de productions d’élèves, on aborde plusieurs difficultés récurrentes : la transcription des éléments non verbaux des manuscrits, de la topographie de l’écrit ou encore des énoncés métadiscursifs. (shrink)

De plus en plus procédurale, normée et digitalisée, la société contemporaine est en voie de pétrification du point de vue de l'action, de la parole et de la pensée. Pour tenter d'y remédier, cet essai invite à recourir à l'imagination, en s'appuyant sur la philosophie développée sur ce thème par Paul Ricœur. Après en avoir présenté les grandes articulations, l'auteur met en lumière les perspectives ouvertes par Ricœur en introduisant l'imagination comme ressource anthropologique fondamentale. Il le fait sous la forme (...) de mises en dialogue entre Ricœur et un autre philosophe - Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, Kant, Wittgenstein - ou une tradition philosophique, telles que l'utilitarisme ou le libéralisme politique. En définitive, cette réflexion invite chacun de nous à œuvrer à un climat de confiance qui accrédite l'imagination, les deux étant liés."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In the 1920s, Carnap and Schlick both made an important use of definitions in their main publications: Schlick, in his Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (1918, 2nd ed. 1925) and Carnap in Der logische Aufbau der Welt (1928, mostly written by 1925). In this paper, we first provide an analysis of the kinds of definitions that are distinguished in these books and a few other papers, and we then propose a systematic comparison of Schlick’s and Carnap’s diverging conceptions of definitions in the 1920s, (...) relating them, in both cases, to their respective philosophical projects in the Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre and in Der logische Aufbau der Welt. (shrink)

Bien que Carnap soit surtout connu pour son appartenance à l’empirisme logique, qui rejette le synthétique a priori et la métaphysique kantienne en général, sa thèse sur l’espace (1922) fut rédigée dans le double contexte des multiples variétés du néokantisme et d’une réflexion mathématique, physique et philosophique sur le concept d’espace. Dans cette thèse et dans le mémoire de 1920 sur la géométrie, il s’efforce de surmonter les difficultés soulevées par le concept d’espace en en distinguant plusieurs significations et plusieurs (...) sortes. Ce faisant, il défend une position originale qui emprunte aux différentes formes du néokantisme de l’époque sans se réduire pour autant à aucune d’elles. (shrink)

What makes one individual’s experience vicarious is that it is both similar to, and caused by, another’s psychological state. Vicarious responses are mediated by the observation of another’s goal-directed or expressive action. While the evidence from cognitive neuroscience suggests the ubiquity of vicarious responses to others’ goals, intentions, sensations and emotions, the question is: is the general function of vicarious responses to understand another’s mind? In this paper, I argue for a dual view of the function of vicarious responses: while (...) empathetic responses are other-directed, contagious responses are self-centered. (shrink)

While Chomsky subscribes to methodological naturalism, he rejects both metaphysical naturalism and an externalist conception of meaning. This chapter explores some of Chomsky's grounds for rejecting both metaphysical naturalism and meaning externalism, in particular his peculiar attitude towards ontological physicalism and his arguments for an internalist approach to meaning.