Introduction: Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) to transcranial magnetic stimulation are known to be susceptible to several sources of variability. However, conflicting evidences on individual characteristics in relatively small sample sizes have been reported. We investigated the effect of age, height, and sex on MEPs of the motor cortex and spinal roots in a large cohort. Methods: A total of 587 subjects clinically and neuroradiologically intact were included. MEPs were recorded during mild tonic contraction through a circular coil applied over the (...) “hot spot” of the first dorsal interosseous and tibialis anterior muscles, bilaterally. Central motor conduction time (CMCT) was estimated as the difference between MEP cortical latency and the peripheral motor conduction time by cervical or lumbar magnetic stimulation. Peak-to-peak MEP amplitude to cortical stimulation and right-to-left difference of each parameter were also measured. Results: After Bonferroni correction, general linear (multiple) regression analysis showed that both MEP cortical latency and peripheral motor conduction time at four limbs positively correlated with age and height. At lower limbs, an independent effect of sex on the same measures was also observed (with females showing smaller values than males). CMCT correlated with both age (negatively) and height (positively) when analyzed by a single regression; however, with a multiple regression analysis this significance disappeared, due to the correction for the multicollinearity within the dataset. Conclusions: Physical individual features need to be considered for a more accurate and meaningful MEPs interpretation. Both in clinical practice and in research setting, patients and controls should be matched for age, height, and sex. (shrink)

How a human observer perceives duration depends on the amount of events taking place during the timed interval, but also on psychological dimensions, such as emotional-wellbeing, mindfulness, impulsivity, and rumination. Here we aimed at exploring these influences on duration estimation and passage of time judgments. One hundred and seventeen healthy individuals filled out mindfulness (FFMQ), impulsivity (BIS-11), rumination (RRS), and depression (BDI-sf) questionnaires. Participants also conducted verbal estimation and production tasks in the multiple seconds range. During these timing tasks, subjects (...) were asked to read digits aloud that were presented on a computer screen. Each condition of the timing tasks differed in terms of the interval between the presentation of the digits, i.e., either short (4-s) or long (16-s). Our findings suggest that long empty intervals (16-s) are associated with a relative underestimation of duration, and to a feeling that the time passes slowly, a seemingly paradoxical result. Also, regarding more mindful individuals, such a dissociation between duration estimation and passage of time judgments was found, but only when empty intervals were short (4-s). Relatively speaking, more mindful subjects showed an increased overestimation of durations, but felt that time passed more quickly. These results provide further evidence for the dissociation between duration estimation and the feeling of the passage of time. We discuss these results in terms of an alerting effect when empty intervals are short and events are more numerous, which could mediate the effect of dispositional mindfulness. (shrink)

La théorie lockienne de la perception a été lue tantôt comme une forme de représentationnalisme, tantôt comme relevant d'un réalisme direct n'impliquant pas d'entité intermédiaire entre l'esprit et les choses. Cet article entreprend de clarifier cette question à partir des analyses de l'Essai sur la distinction et la confusion des idées. Celles-ci interrogent à la fois la nature de l'idée comme image et le fait qu'elle n'est déterminée que lorsque l'esprit lui donne un nom. Pour faire comprendre ce dernier point, (...) Locke utilise la métaphore de l'anamorphose en peinture, et plus particulièrement de l'anamorphose cylindrique. En reliant cette métaphore aux théories de la perspective du XVIIe siècle, à la camera obscura de l'esprit, et enfin à l'optique du XVIIe siècle, l'article parvient à plusieurs conclusions. Faire de l'idée une image ne conduit jamais Locke à voir en elle un objet qui s'interpose entre l'esprit et les choses. Une idée comme celle de sense data est étrangère à sa pensée. Si Locke ne met jamais en doute la réalité du monde extérieur, c'est que pour lui l'idée nous donne d'emblée accès à une extériorité, qu'il s'agit de déterminer. Enfin, la perception lockienne ne relève pas d'un modèle sémantique dont l'origine serait à trouver dans Descartes et qui préparerait celui de l'empirisme du XVIIIe siècle, faisant de l'idée un signe. Elle se rapprocherait plutôt, paradoxalement, de l'idée austinienne du silence des sens. (shrink)

L'auteur, en suivant la voie d'une généalogie du signe, repense la théorie de l'imagination qui, selon Spinoza, s'enracine dans la puissance du corps, se révélant indissociable d'une herméneutique.

Dans quelle mesure les techniques des instruments modernes d'observation et d'imagerie optique ou numérique développées en physique, biologie et médecine transforment-elles les conceptions philosophiques de l'observation, et le rapport entre cette dernière et la théorie? La philosophie des sciences a conduit ces dernières décennies une réflexion sur le rôle des instruments dans l'observation en s'appuyant essentiellement sur des appareils traditionnels comme les microscopes et télescopes. Le...

Comprendre ce que les philosophes du XVIIe siècle entendaient par représentation est essentiel à l'intelligence de leurs conceptions des idées et de la vérité. Ce livre renouvelle notre approche du problème à travers des lectures de Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Pascal, en reliant leurs analyses philosophiques à leurs textes scientifiques. Les figures de la Dioptrique et de la Géométrie éclairent chez Descartes le contenu de l'idée sensible, le rapport du clair et du confus, la nature de la couleur et celle de (...) l'existence. Les anamorphoses de l'Essai sur l'entendement humain de Locke donnent à voir comment les idées renvoient aux choses. Et l'hexagramme pascalien raconte l'herméneutique des Pensées. La représentation classique s'avère l'effet d'une transformation qui affecte en même temps la science et la philosophie. À l'encontre des lectures qui ont insisté sur les filiations avec les pensées médiévales et tenté de réduire la nouveauté de la pensée classique, ce livre retrouve une thèse essentielle de Michel Foucault dans Les Mots et les Choses sur la rupture inaugurant l'âge classique. Mais il découvre dans cette rupture l'effet d'une opération matérielle, qui conduit à un nouveau mode d'existence concret des images et des signes dans les textes du savoir, analysable à l'intérieur de dispositifs textuels. Ce qui l'amène enfin à déplacer profondément les analyses de Foucault et à interroger les présupposés de son archéologie du savoir. (shrink)

L’alpinisme, pour Pierre-Henri Frangne, est d’abord une expérience. Spécialiste de philosophie de l’art, professeur à l’université de Rennes, auteur d’ouvrages sur la photographie et le cinéma, Monteverdi et Mallarmé, il pratique cette activité tous les étés depuis près d’une vingtaine d’années. Ses domaines de recherche l’ont déjà amené à écrire sur la montagne comme objet esthétique et sur la photographie de montagne. Mais ce nouvel ouvrage est cette fois d’abord une interrogation, à la pre...

An important debate in the current literature is whether “all truth-conditional effects of extra-linguistic context can be traced to [a variable at; LM] logical form” (Stanley, ‘Context and Logical Form’, Linguistics and Philosophy, 23 (2000) 391). That is, according to Stanley, the only truth-conditional effects that extra-linguistic context has are localizable in (potentially silent) variable-denoting pronouns or pronoun-like items, which are represented in the syntax/at logical form (pure indexicals like I or today are put aside in this discussion). According to (...) Recanati (‘Unarticulated Constituents’, Linguistics and Philosophy, 25 (2002) 299), extra-linguistic context can have additional truth-conditional effects, in the form of optional pragmatic processes like ‘free enrichment’. This paper shows that Recanati’s position is not warranted, since there is an alternative line of analysis that obviates the need to assume free enrichment. In the alternative analysis, we need Stanley’s variables, but we need to give them the freedom to be or not to be generated in the syntax/present at logical form, a kind of optionality that has nothing to do with the pragmatics-related optionality of free enrichment. (shrink)

This paper investigates young children's knowledge of scalar implicatures and downward entailment. In previous experimental work, we have shown that young children access the full range of truth-conditions associated with logical words in classical logic, including the disjunction operator, as well as the indefinite article. The present study extends this research in three ways, taking disjunction as a case study. Experiment 1 draws upon the observation that scalar implicatures (SIs) are cancelled (or reversed) in downward entailing (DE) linguistic environments, e.g., (...) in the scope of negation (Chierchia, 2000). Experiment 2 was designed to determine if scalar implicatures are used by children, like adults, to influence the interpretation of disjunction in non-DE contexts, yielding an implicature of exclusivity for disjunction. Whereas adult controls always rejected assertions of the form A or B in positive (non-DE) contexts in which assertions of the form A and B were also true, many children accepted assertions with disjunction in such contexts. To provide an interpretation to the findings from Experiment 2, a new experimental technique was devised and used in Experiment 3. The new technique presents pairs of assertions to children, who are asked to judge which assertion is a ‘better’ description of the context. The findings from Experiment 3 demonstrated children's awareness that A and B is more informative than A or B in positive contexts, where both statements are true. Taken together, the findings of Experiments 2 and 3 are compatible with the view that some children lack the computational resources to apply scalar implicatures when a single assertion is presented alone (see Reinhart, 1999). (shrink)

Que lisaient les mathematiciens classiques dans une figure de geometrie, une courbe, un tableau de nombres, une combinaison de signes algebriques? En interrogeant le rapport de ce qui se lit et de ce qui se voit dans les textes mathematiques, cet ouvrage decouvre, entre l'age classique et le XIXe siecle, une transformation de la rationalite plus profonde qu'on a coutume de le penser. Entre la geometrie de Descartes, les series de Leibniz et Bernoulli, la theorie des fonctions chez Euler et (...) Lagrange, et d'autre part les geometries du XIXe siecle, la logique de Boole ou l'analyse de Cauchy, il n'y a pas seulement un progres conceptuel, il y a en verite un basculement du regime de la representation, de l'ordre du langage et des choses. Ce livre n'est pas une histoire des mathematiques. Il est une archeologie de leur discours, en un sens proche de celui que Michel Foucault donnait a ce terme. (shrink)

Social robotics entertains a particular relationship with anthropomorphism, which it neither sees as a cognitive error, nor as a sign of immaturity. Rather it considers that this common human tendency, which is hypothesized to have evolved because it favored cooperation among early humans, can be used today to facilitate social interactions between humans and a new type of cooperative and interactive agents - social robots. This approach leads social robotics to focus research on the engineering of robots that activate anthropomorphic (...) projections in users. The objective is to give robots "social presence" and "social behaviors" that are sufficiently credible for human users to engage in comfortable and potentially long-lasting relations with these machines. This choice of ’applied anthropomorphism’ as a research methodology exposes the artifacts produced by social robotics to ethical condemnation: social robots are judged to be a "cheating" technology, as they generate in users the illusion of reciprocal social and affective relations. This article takes position in this debate, not only developing a series of arguments relevant to philosophy of mind, cognitive sciences, and robotic AI, but also asking what social robotics can teach us about anthropomorphism. On this basis, we propose a theoretical perspective that characterizes anthropomorphism as a basic mechanism of interaction, and rebuts the ethical reflections that a priori condemns "anthropomorphism-based" social robots. To address the relevant ethical issues, we promote a critical experimentally based ethical approach to social robotics, "synthetic ethics," which aims at allowing humans to use social robots for two main goals: self-knowledge and moral growth. (shrink)

Instead of reading Spinoza's account of the imagination in an anthropocentric way, as dependent on the traditional doctrine of human faculties, the author considers it as a consequence of his physics and cosmology. Knowledge by signs, as Spinoza calls imagination, has to be rooted in his theory of marks and images, and concerns all beings (human and non human) that are capable of marking and being marked by other bodies in the infinite semiosis of nature.

We propose a method to associate a coalitional interval game with each strategic game. The method is based on the lower and upper values of finite two-person zero-sum games. Associating with a strategic game a coalitional interval game we avoid having to take either a pessimistic or an optimistic approach to the problem. The paper makes two contributions to the literature: It provides a theoretical foundation for the study of coalitional interval games and it also provides, studies, and characterizes a (...) natural method of associating coalitional interval games with strategic games. (shrink)

God’s gesture. Nature and the origin of the sign in Spinoza. The Author provides the textual and conceptual elements to outline a thought of event in Spinoza’s philosophy. On the one hand necessitas and contingentia are known to exclude one another while, on the other, necessitas and contingere are not opposite. They are the same when seen in relation to the conception of libera necessitas and to the doctrine of the unity of intellect and will. Also, the unity of a (...) thought of concept and a thought of event appears in the definition of revelation, where the problem of the sign becomes crucial in separating philosophy from theology. A comparative study of the texts confirms the influence of Stoicism on the triadic model of the sign, showing that all interpreters give a pragmatic orientation to the sense of signs. The impossibility for any sign to be signum sui is not due to a defect in its nature. The idea of God, in fact, does not itself need any sign to be known, but it is also true that there is no lack of a sign for its linguistic communication. (shrink)

La théorie lockienne de la perception a été lue tantôt comme une forme de représentationnalisme, tantôt comme relevant d'un réalisme direct n'impliquant pas d'entité intermédiaire entre l'esprit et les choses. Cet article entreprend de clarifier cette question à partir des analyses de l'Essai sur la distinction et la confusion des idées. Celles-ci interrogent à la fois la nature de l'idée comme image et le fait qu'elle n'est déterminée que lorsque l'esprit lui donne un nom. Pour faire comprendre ce dernier point, (...) Locke utilise la métaphore de l'anamorphose en peinture, et plus particulièrement de l'anamorphose cylindrique. En reliant cette métaphore aux théories de la perspective du XVIIe siècle, à la camera obscura de l'esprit, et enfin à l'optique du XVIIe siècle, l'article parvient à plusieurs conclusions. Faire de l'idée une image ne conduit jamais Locke à voir en elle un objet qui s'interpose entre l'esprit et les choses. Une idée comme celle de sense data est étrangère à sa pensée. Si Locke ne met jamais en doute la réalité du monde extérieur, c'est que pour lui l'idée nous donne d'emblée accès à une extériorité, qu'il s'agit de déterminer. Enfin, la perception lockienne ne relève pas d'un modèle sémantique dont l'origine serait à trouver dans Descartes et qui préparerait celui de l'empirisme du XVIIIe siècle, faisant de l'idée un signe. Elle se rapprocherait plutôt, paradoxalement, de l'idée austinienne du silence des sens. (shrink)

El secreto en todas sus vertientes, en todas sus facetas, vericuetos, senderos. Pero sobre todo el Secreto en la literatura, pues como dice Luisa Valenzuela, en su estilo mordaz, agudo, siempre entre guinos y complicidades: "No hay literatura sin secreto."Detras de cada palabra se esconde el misterio, un laberinto en el que todo puede suceder: de la pasion a la ternura; del crimen a la sublimacion. Encontrar el hilo conductor, salvador, descifrador, o ahondar sus diversidades, es papel de quien (...) aspira a lo literario, bien como escritor, bien como lector.Precisas, directas, divertidas, las palabras de Luisa Valenzuela se deslizan sobre las paginas de un libro lleno de humor del mas fino, de ironia inteligente, como sucede en sus novelas, en sus cuentos, pero ahora provenientes del ciclo de conferencias y el dinamico taller de escritura breve que impartio en el marco de la Catedra Alfonso Reyes del Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico. (shrink)

The novel gives us access to fictional universes in a fundamentally unfinished mode, which allows the reader to give free rein to his or her imagination, in a freedom that is nevertheless monitored and controlled by rules. This article tries to understand the nature of this incompleteness, by discussing some classical readings. How does this specific dimension of fiction relate to Umberto Eco’s concept of the “open work” or to the idea, developed by the phenomenologist Roman Ingarden, that literary works (...) are “schemas” destined to be “concretized” in the consciousness of the reader? How does Hans Robert Jauss’s aesthetics of reception help us to think about the incompleteness of the work in the proper time of its different readings? Through the fruitful dialogue of these different theories, it is a question of highlighting two important points. First, these theories, while discussing the respective roles of the author and the reader, neglect a a third character who is nevertheless essential to the fictional narrative, the narrator. However, taking into account the latter sheds light on the problems encountered. Secondly, this relationship between the incompleteness of the narrative and the narrator’s position is not in itself specific to fiction. It is not absent from scientific texts, when they are thought of as narratives about reality susceptible of different readings in their history. (shrink)

The distinction between philosophical and prophetic revelation, the separation between philosophy and theology, the theory of truth and certainty, and the passages of the KV dedicated to divine revelation all depend on signs. The Platonic etymology that combines sema and soma links the philosophical destiny of the sign to that of the body, providing the fundamental opening to the long history of dualism between body and soul. Spinoza stresses the importance of distinguishing between imagination and intellection. To think of Spinoza's (...) epistemology means to insert correctly the infinite bodies modified in infinite ways into the ontological and cosmological framework. Spinoza's definition of images lies in the physical essence of the mark. Spinoza's semiotics will then appear perhaps less anomalous than it could have seemed at a first sight, even if, for this reason, no less original. (shrink)

L’histoire des mathématiques présente une singularité qui a souvent été remarquée par les historiens : contrairement à la physique, cette histoire ne procède pas essentiellement par conjectures et réfutations, mais par une succession d’enchaînements intégrant le passé dans le présent en le réinterprétant. Cette opération implique un acte de lecture du passé par le présent. En partant des thèses de Husserl dans L’origine de la géométrie sur le rôle de l’écriture dans l’historicité des mathématiques, l’article analyse les conditions de possibilité (...) de cette lecture, liées à la nature du texte mathématique : cette dernière doit être pensée à partir de trois partages opérés par le regard du lecteur : entre le vrai et le faux, entre l’écriture et l’image, entre ce qui est mathématique et ce qui n’en relève pas. L’article prend pour exemple le statut de l’équation dans la Géométrie de Descartes. Il montre la solidarité profonde entre cette dernière et les idées que développe le philosophe sur la lecture et la nature du signe. Et il met en évidence comment il est possible à partir de ces idées de reconstituer la manière dont Descartes pouvait lire un texte mathématique, et de comprendre en quoi cela a déterminé en partie ses conceptions dans sa Géométrie, mais aussi en quoi d’autres lectures de la Géométrie peuvent l’insérer dans les mathématiques des siècles ultérieurs. (shrink)

Argues that affirming the irreducible differences between men and women can lead to more transformative politics than the struggle for abstract equality between the sexes. In The Symbolic Order of the Mother Luisa Muraro identifies the bond between mother and child as ontologically fundamental to the development of culture and politics, and therefore as key to achieving truly emancipatory political change. Both corporeal development and language acquisition, which are the sources of all thinking, begin in this relationship. However, Western (...) civilization has been defined by men, and Muraro recalls the admiration and envy she felt for the great philosophers as she strove to become one herself, as well as the desire for independence that opposed her to her mother. This conflict between philosophy and culture on the one hand and the relationship with the mother on the other constitutes the root of patriarchy’s symbolic disorder, which blocks women’s (and men’s) access to genuine freedom. Muraro appeals to the feminist practice of gratitude to the mother and the recognition of her authority as a model of unconditional nurture and support that must be restored. This, she argues, is the symbolic order of the mother that must overcome the disorder of patriarchy. The mediating power of the mother tongue constitutes a symbolic order that comes before all others, for both women and men. Luisa Muraro is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Verona, Italy. Francesca Novello is an instructor at the University of Oklahoma. Timothy S. Murphy is Houston-Truax-Wentz Professor and Regents Professor of English at Oklahoma State University. (shrink)

En su infancia Mohamed Chukri se ve arrastrado por la miseria, la violencia intrafamiliar, consume prostitución y se prostituye, fuma kif, trasnocha en los bares, roba y trabaja con contrabandistas. Todo ello lo narra en la novela El pan a secas (1973). En este artículo se analiza la novela en clave de esperanza/desesperanza. La novela se divide en dos: episodios de infancia (negativos, desesperanza) y de adolescencia (positivos, esperanza recuperada). Resiliencia, libertad y esperanza están íntimamente ligadas.

"Cover " -- "Title Page " -- "Copyright " -- "Contents " -- "Preface to the English Edition" -- "Introduction" -- "1. The Substitute" -- "2. Animals, Machines, Cyborgs, and the Taxi " -- "3. Mind, Emotions, and Artificial Empathy " -- "4. The Other Otherwise " -- "5. From Moral and Lethal Machines to Synthetic Ethics " -- "Notes" -- "Works Cited" -- "Acknowledgments" -- "Credits.