Les honoraires sont une forme de rémunération rudimentaire et mal définie, en total décalage avec l’économie actuelle du travail prise dans son ensemble. Le travail artistique se trouve au cœur d’une industrie multimilliardaire et pourtant aucune norme, convention ou réglementation ne vient encadrer la rémunération des artistes. Les artistes fournissent une force de travail. En tant que représentant de cette force de travail, W.A.G.E. demande qu’une rémunération mandatée et transparente soit fixée, correspondant au travail effectué par les artistes pour les (...) expositions, les programmes et les publications. (shrink)

The perception of time cannot be reduced to a simple percept produced by an internal clock. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the role of the individual consciousness of time on temporal judgments. In the present study, the participants’ awareness of attention-related time distortions was assessed using a metacognitive questionnaire. The participants were also required to verbally judge a series of stimulus durations in a single or a dual task condition. The results revealed that time was (...) underestimated in the dual task compared to the single task. However, the accuracy of time judgments improved in line with the participants’ individual awareness of attentional time distortion: The more aware they were of the role of attention in time perception, the lower the time distortions they exhibited. Conscious awareness of time therefore plays a role in the accuracy of the time judgments made by human beings. (shrink)

Socio-emotional impairments are key symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorders. This work proposes to analyze the neuronal activity related to the discrimination of emotional prosodies in autistic children as follows. Firstly, a database for single words uttered in Mexican Spanish by males, females, and children will be created. Then, optimal acoustic features for emotion characterization will be extracted, followed of a cubic kernel function Support Vector Machine in order to validate the speech corpus. As a result, human-specific acoustic properties of emotional (...) voice signals will be identified. Secondly, those identified acoustic properties will be modified to synthesize the recorded human emotional voices. Thirdly, both human and synthesized utterances will be used to study the electroencephalographic correlate of affective prosody processing in typically developed and autistic children. Finally, and on the basis of the outcomes, synthesized voice-enhanced environments will be created to develop an intervention based on social-robot and Social StoryTM for autistic children to improve affective prosodies discrimination. This protocol has been registered at BioMed Central under the following number: ISRCTN18117434. (shrink)

En s'inscrivant dans une problématique posée par Pierre Schaeffer à propos d'une utilisation des moyens de communication au profit de groupes sociaux d'intérêts communs, cet article présente les conditions d'émergence et de fonctionnement des réseaux spécifiques de communication sociale à partir de l'exemple concret de la radio Antélim, et il s'interroge sur une éventuelle préfiguration d'Internet. Dans un premier temps, un rappel des théorisations, recherches et expériences, menées au cours des années 1960-1970, dégagera les conditions d'une communication participative, interactive et (...) multipolaire, modèle alternatif à celui, dominant, des mass média. Puis, l'étude de l'expérimentation d'Antélim menée en France entre 1978 et 1985 avec le milieu de la marine marchande mettra en lumière l'origine du projet, sa mise en oeuvre et présentera une évaluation de l'expérience. Enfin, la question de la préfiguration d'Internet par ces réseaux spécifiques de communication sociale via la radio sera posée pour tenter de définir des parallèles possibles entre ces deux dispositifs.By entering in a problem posed by Pierre Schaeffer about a use of means of communication for the benefit of groups of common interests, this article presents the conditions for the emergence and operation of specific networks of social communication from the example of the radio Antélim, and he wondered about a possible forerunner of the Internet. At first, a reminder of the theories, research and experiments, conducted in the years 1960-1970, will identify the conditions for participatory communication, interactive and multipolar alternative model to the dominant, mass media. Then, the study of Antélim experimentation conducted in France between 1978 and 1985 with the middle of the Merchant will highlight the origin of the project, its implementation and present an evaluation of the experience. Finally, the question of the forerunner of the Internet by these specific networks of social communication via the radio will be asked to try to identify possible parallels between these two devices. (shrink)

Despite severe amnesia, some studies showed that Alzheimer Disease patients with moderate to severe dementia keep a consistent, but impoverished representation of themselves, showing preservation of the sense of identity even at severe stages of the illness. Some studies suggest that listening to music can facilitate the reminiscence of autobiographical memories and that stimulating autobiographical memory would be relevant to support the self of these patients. Consequently, we hypothesized that repeated participation to reminiscence workshops, using excerpts of familiar songs as (...) prompts would participate to the enrichment of autobiographical memories, self-representation and sense of identity. We included a group of 20 AD patients with severe dementia residing in nursing homes. Their performances were compared to a control group of 20 matched healthy residents living in the same institutions. The experiment was conducted in three phases over a 2-week period. On phase 1, an individual assessment of sense of identity was proposed to each participant. On phase 2, participants joined musical reminiscence workshops. During the third phase, individual evaluation of autobiographical memory and a second assessment of sense of identity were proposed. Our results showed that, despite their massive amnesia syndrome, autobiographical memories of AD reached at the end of the 2 weeks the number and quality of those of matched controls. Moreover, we confirmed a continuity of self-representation in AD patients with a stable profile of the answers between the first and second individual assessments of sense of identity. However, the increase in number and episodic quality of autobiographical memories was not accompanied by an enrichment of the sense of identity. In a complementary study, new patients participated in the same paradigm, but using movie extracts as prompts, and showed very similar effects. We discuss all of these results with regard to the literature showing the significant impact of repetition on the reactivation of memory traces even in very amnestic AD patients at severe stages of the disease. (shrink)

Cet article est consacré à un emploi singulier des descriptions définies dans la presse people sur Internet. De nombreuses descriptions définies, telles le mari de Jill Biden, pour désigner Joe Biden, et le mari de Melania, pour désigner Donald Trump, y apparaissent sans lien avec le propos des articles, et cela parfois dans des contextes où un pronom personnel serait plus approprié qu’une expression nominale. Nous soulignerons d’abord combien ces descriptions définies s’écartent des emplois ordinaires des expressions référentielles très spécifiées (...) en général et des descriptions définies en particulier et quels risques certaines d’entre elles, relevant de la catégorie des « anaphores présuppositionnelles » de Milner, peuvent présenter pour la bonne interprétation référentielle. Nous spécifierons ensuite leur fonction, fonction liée à la fois à la coloration « people » de ce type de presse et à son support numérique. (shrink)

Fruit d’une collaboration entre deux spécialistes de l’histoire de la naissance et de l’enfance, pour le Moyen Âge et l’époque moderne, ce livre doit à Caroline Lefebvre une très belle iconographie. L’allaitement : une scène, des gestes dont les représentations sont nombreuses et variées à travers le temps, comme le montre cet ouvrage de belle facture qui s’organise en cinq chapitres. On y découvre la richesse et la diversité des images autour d’une pratique universelle qui s’inscrit dans l’h...

J’ai rencontré Marie-Jeanne Bérère à Lyon en 1994. C’était une petite femme vive, à la parole claire et précise, avec un bel accent bourguignon. Elle avait accepté une interview, à son domicile lyonnais, le 23 mars 1995. Je souhaitais la revoir pour ce numéro de CLIO, Histoire, Femmes et Sociétés sur les Chrétiennes mais elle est décédée dans l’été 2000, à 73 ans, sans avoir eu le temps de rédiger ses mémoires. Son itinéraire de femme engagée dans l’Église catholique (...) est celui d’une chrétienn... (shrink)

La pensée d'une violence intrinsèque au logos demeure largement marginale dans les sciences du langage. Ce livre, à vocation à la fois archéologique et prospective, réévalue le potentiel de cette violence du logos en faisant dialoguer spécialistes de philosophie, de sciences du texte et de littérature.

Cet ouvrage est issu d'un colloque de l'Association française de Sociologie religieuse sur « Femmes et religions » qui s'est tenu les 6-7 février 1995 à Paris à l'IRESCO. Il présente une sorte d'état des lieux sur les recherches conduites en sociologie et en histoire sur une thématique qu'avait abordé le numéro 2 de CLIO (lequel est plusieurs fois cité). Organisée autour de quatre thèmes (« enjeux de la construction et de la maîtrise des représentations féminines », « La difficile (...) marc.. (shrink)

Ce volumineux ouvrage est né d'une thèse dirigée par Antoine Prost qui en signe la préface. Il retrace l'histoire d'un mouvement né en 1923 dans lequel l'auteure a été personnellement très engagée : entrée chez les Guides de France à 16 ans, elle en a été la commissaire générale de 1953 à 1979. Mais nous sommes bien ici dans le registre de l'histoire et non du témoignage. L'ampleur des sources utilisées ­ archives du mouvement dont Marie-Thérèse Chéroutre a contribué (...) à la sauvegarde ai... (shrink)

Book MARY, André. Os antropólogos e a religião. Trad. Lúcia Mathilde Endlich Orth. São Paulo: Ideias e Letras, 2014. ISBN 978-85-6589-369-5.

Ce billet a déjà été publié dans Rouge, études diachroniques. Regards croisés de l'art préhistorique à l'art contemporain le 24 juin 2018. Nous remercions Mathilde Buratti de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Kupka, artiste complet du XXe siècle notamment connu pour ses abstractions colorées, est à l'honneur au Grand Palais jusqu'au 30 juillet 2018. Cette rétrospective met en avant la conception originale du peintre. Tout au long de sa carrière, tant dans ses productions abstraites que - Arts (...) plastiques et autres – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Mary Shepherd's An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, first published in 1824, was a pioneering work in metaphysics and epistemology. Together with her 1827 Essays on the Perception of an External Universe, they make her one of the most important philosophers of her era. Although widely neglected by the history of philosophy in the decades after her death, her works have recently begun to attract the attention and sustained study they deserve. In the course of her writings, (...) Shepherd offers trenchant and detailed rebuttals of the arguments and conclusions of many prominent predecessors-including George Berkeley, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, William Lawrence, and especially David Hume-but she is no merely negative thinker. On the contrary, her critiques are always in the service of her own distinctive and highly original doctrines, which are of striking contemporary interest. Appearing two hundred years after its original publication, this is the first full modern edition of her first book, which presents and defends the theory of causation and scientific knowledge that constitutes the cornerstone of her entire philosophy. The edition includes an extensive introduction and scholarly notes throughout that provide historical and philosophical context while explaining the central ideas of the work. It also includes Shepherd's two essays published in 1828 and all of her known letters-all but one of them published here for the first time-which shed significant additional light on her philosophical ideas. (shrink)

Mediation is an alternative dispute resolution process that is becoming more and more popular particularly in English-speaking countries. In contrast to traditional litigation it has not benefited from technological advances and little research has been carried out to make this increasingly widespread practice more efficient. The study of argumentation in dispute mediation hitherto has largely been concerned with theoretical insights. The development of argumentation theories linked to computational applications opens promising new horizons since computational tools could support mediators, making sessions (...) quicker and more efficient. For this, we need tools for close analysis of mediation discourse in order to explore the argumentative activity in depth, and ultimately get an accurate image of how dialogues unfold in this particular context. This paper therefore aims at laying the foundations of a theory of close analysis for discourse in dispute mediation. Theories provided by the literature serve as a basis for argumentative analyses of transcripts of mediation sessions in order to deliver a clear image of the argumentative structure. Analyses of the argumentative strategies in mediation discourse will allow for the development of a dialogue protocol that can be used to develop operational models which can be embodied in software to help make the mediation process easier and more effective. (shrink)

« Faire l’histoire de la contraception et de l’avortement, du milieu des années 1950 à la fin des années 1970, c’est faire l’histoire de l’un des changements majeurs du second xxe siècle dans ce pays », nous dit l’auteure de ce livre issu d’une thèse de doctorat d’histoire soutenue à l’Institut d’Études politiques de Paris en 2010. Bibia Pavard est partie d’une question simple : « Comment le changement a-t-il été possible? » et a cherché à faire une place aux (...) actrices et acteurs de ce proces... (shrink)

This research investigated the effect of divided attention at encoding on feeling-of-knowing . Participants had to learn a 60 word-pair list under two experimental conditions, one with full attention and one with divided attention . After that, they were administered episodic FOK tasks with a cued-recall phase, a FOK phase and a recognition phase. Our results showed that DA at encoding altered not only memory performance, but also FOK judgments and FOK accuracy. These findings throw some light on the central (...) role of the quality of memory encoding to make accurate FOK judgments and provide new evidence supporting the relationship between memory and metamemory judgments. (shrink)

Biology seems to present local and transitory regularities rather than immutable laws. To account for these historically constituted regularities and to distinguish them from mathematical invariants, Montévil and Mossio (Journal of Theoretical Biology 372:179–191, 2015) have proposed to speak of constraints. In this article we analyse the causal power of these constraints in the evolution of biodiversity, i.e., their positivity, but also the modality of their action on the directions taken by evolution. We argue that to fully account for the (...) causal power of these constraints on evolution, they must be thought of in terms of normativity. In this way, we want to highlight two characteristics of the evolutionary constraints. The first, already emphasised as reported by Gould (The structure of evolutionary theory, Harvard University Press, 2002), is that these constraints are both produced by and producing biological evolution and that this circular causation creates true novelties. The second is that this specific causality, which generates unpredictability in evolution, stems not only from the historicity of biological constraints, but also from their internalisation through the practices of living beings. (shrink)

Melissus’ fragment B9, where he claims that being has no body and no thickness, raises the question of how being can be extended and full and at the same time incorporeal. Most recent interpretations tried to avoid lending to “body” the meaning of “physical body”. My aim in this paper is to reconstruct Melissus’ notion of body, by examining its connection to “thickness”. I show that Melissus meant by “thick” something that has distinct parts and therefore supports in B9 the (...) indivisibility of being. I then indicate that he relied on the contrast between soul and body for his conception of corporeality, by highlighting that by Presocratic thinkers, the soul was considered as “thin” and regarded as something that could be exempt of the division into parts. I conclude that even though Melissus’ notion of incorporeality is very different from the one Plato will develop, he made a huge step toward its conceptualization. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est un essai libre sur la vie et l'oeuvre d'Arne Naess, philosophe norvégien, écologiste engagé et alpiniste de renom. Dons les années 1970, Naess développe un "mouvement" écologique - plutôt qu'une philosophie - très personnel : une "écosophie", c'est-ô-dire un lien à l'écosphère et à la nature, cette entité dont nous faisons partie ou même titre que les autres espèces, et non une ressource inépuisable extérieure à nous. Il s'attache donc à adopter une attitude particulière vis-à-vis de l'environnement (...) et à vivre en harmonie avec Io nature. Au-delà de sa pensée philosophique, des ouvrages théoriques et des concepts qu'il développe, Naess invite chacun à découvrir son propre rapport à la nature, dans un processus d'identification - et donc d'empathie -, afin de fonder les bases nouvelles d'une écologie qu'il nomme "profonde". Jamais dogmatique ni extrémiste, l'oeuvre de Naess incite au contraire le lecteur à mettre en oeuvre sa propre "écosophie", créative et tolérante, à s'inventer une vie plus écologique sans bouleverser complètement ses habitudes, voire en améliorant sa qualité de vie. Une perspective écologiste qui pourrait sembler évidente, une nouvelle voie pour le développement personnel, sons école de pensée. (shrink)

This is the first modern edition of the works of Lady Mary Shepherd, one of the most important women philosophers of the early modern period. Shepherd has been widely neglected in the history of philosophy, but her work engaged with the dominant philosophers of the time - among them Hume, Berkeley, and Reid. In particular, her 1827 volume Essays on the Perception of an External Universe outlines a theory of causation, perception, and knowledge which Shepherd presents as an alternative to (...) what she sees as the mistaken views of Berkeley and Hume. What she ultimately presents is an original and systematic metaphysics and epistemology. Shepherd's Essays consists of two parts. The first is a theory of perception and knowledge of the external world, which is designed to rebut idealism and skepticism about the external world and show that our ordinary beliefs are based on reason. The second is a collection of essays on topics in metaphysics and epistemology, including the immateriality and eternity of the mind, the relationship between mind and body, the possibility of miracles, the association of ideas, the relationship between physical and mathematical reasoning, and the epistemology of testimony. Antonia LoLordo's edition of Shepherd's Essays includes scholarly notes throughout the text that provide historical and philosophical context and expand on the major concepts of Shepherd's system. Her extensive introduction to Shepherd's life and works surveys some of the major points of Shepherd's system, points out directions for future research, and offers guidance for readers planning to teach her work in their courses. This volume is an invaluable primary resource for scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates interested in metaphysics, epistemology, and early modern philosophy. (shrink)

Mechanisms to engage lay citizens in science and technology are currently in vogue worldwide. While some engagement exercises aim to influence policy making, research suggests that they have had little discernable impacts in this regard. We explore the potentials and challenges of facilitating citizen engagement in nanotechnology from the “topdown,” addressing the following questions: Can academics and others within institutions initiate meaningful engagement with unorganized lay citizens from the top-down? Can they facilitate effective engagement among citizens, scientists, and policy makers (...) while building citizen engagement capacities? Is it possible to create independent bottom-up citizen engagement in scientific and technological issues from the top-down, and what are the challenges in doing so? Our experiences show that although academics can build citizens' individual, collective, and political capacities to engage with each other, scientists, and policy makers, this work is enormously time and energy intensive, and institutional support is needed to sustain it. (shrink)

Les paradoxes de l’horreur et de la tragédie posent la question de savoir si, et comment, il peut être rationnel de s’exposer intentionnellement, comme nous le faisons, à des œuvres fictionnelles qu’on qualifie parfois de « douloureuses ». J’entreprends de résoudre ces paradoxes en remettant en question l’idée de valence intrinsèque des émotions sur laquelle ils sont fondés et en expliquant pourquoi les émotions dirigées vers des fictions ne sont jamais désagréables ou déplaisantes, mais sont au contraire hédoniquement positives. Il (...) est donc rationnel de s’exposer aux œuvres qui les suscitent. (shrink)

Cet article examine l’influence sur la première hypothèse du Parménide de deux penseurs dont l’importance a été négligée par les critiques : Mélissos et Gorgias. Après avoir observé que les prédicats attribués à l’un ainsi que la forme démonstrative sont plus représentatifs de l’éléatisme de Mélissos que de celui de Parménide, nous expliquons ce constat par le fait que Platon reprenne une partie du Traité du Non-être de Gorgias qui vise elle-même essentiellement Mélissos. Nous démontrons alors que la première hypothèse, (...) et même l’ensemble de la seconde partie du Parménide, est un pastiche du Traité du Non-être, et nous en tirons des conclusions sur le statut de l’exercice dialectique mis en œuvre dans le Parménide. (shrink)

Ce livre est le fruit d’un colloque organisé le 8 mars 2006, en collaboration avec l’association Archives du féminisme, à la Bibliothèque Nationale de France à Paris pour le cinquantenaire du Mouvement Français pour le Planning Familial (MFPF). Malgré son titre, l’ouvrage n’est pas un récit historique linéaire sur ce mouvement emblématique de la lutte pour les droits des femmes en France. En fait, les onze articles rédigés par des historiennes, sociologues et politistes interrogent les rappor...

Sept ans après la parution du numéro 2 de CLIO, Histoire, Femmes et Sociétés, sur Femmes et religions, nous avons voulu revenir sur le sujet avec une approche différente. Chrétiennes, le terme appelle quelques commentaires. Il s’agit d’abord de resserrer la focale sur l’une des grandes traditions religieuses de l’histoire du monde qui a marqué tout particulièrement l’Europe même si la référence à l’héritage chrétien semble s’atténuer, aujourd’hui, dans nos sociétés. On peut noter que, dans le...

La paléontologie a connu au cours du XXe siècle une « révolution paléobiologique » (Sepkoski et Ruse, 2009), en se constituant comme science théorique et intégrée à la biologie de l’évolution. Si l’histoire de la paléoanthropologie reflète un tournant similaire, la révolution paléobiologique reste, à plusieurs égards, inachevée dans cette discipline. Cet article analyse les causes de cet inachèvement, en identifiant des limites empiriques, relatives aux particularités du registre fossile de la paléoanthropologie, mais aussi des limites épistémologiques, rapportées à différentes (...) conceptions de la paléobiologie en jeu dans cette discipline. Nous montrons enfin qu’il est nécessaire de prendre en considération la spécificité anthropologique de la discipline pour apprécier la particularité du tournant paléobiologique dans le champ de l’évolution humaine. (shrink)

The semantic poverty of general nouns and their referential versatility could make them excellent means to achieve a co-referential anaphora. Many contexts, however, do not allow a general noun like chose (‘thing’), personne (‘person’) or individu (‘individual’) to reiterate a previously classified referent. The difficulties of such reiterations or the (often pejorative) discursive effects they produce are linked to the referent declassification they involve. In fact, general nouns are distinguished from other superordinate nouns by their weak classifying power. This feature, (...) instead, brings them closer to quality nouns (in Milner’s sense), which appear at the top of the generality continuum in some examples proposed by Halliday & Hasan. (shrink)

Dans cet article je propose la double-thèse : du caractère « vague » (tel que défini dans la littérature logico-sémantique contemporaine) de la notion de hasard (chance) par opposition au caractère « non-vague » de celle d’aléatoire (randomness) ; du lien entre la vagueness et le pouvoir explicatif du hasard et la non-vagueness et la capacité descriptive de l’aléatoire, lequel plaide en faveur d’usages distincts de ces deux notions. Pour défendre la première thèse, j’ai recours aux définitions des notions de (...) hasard et d’aléatoire et à un exemple de l’histoire des sciences (la théorie du chaos). Pour appuyer la seconde, je fais appel à des exemples scientifiques : la variation dans la théorie darwinienne de l’évolution, la mutation génétique dans la synthèse moderne et la dérive génétique dans la théorie neutraliste de l’évolution. (shrink)

Face à certaines expériences humaines, la morale se tient tranquille. Du moins le souhaiterait-on. Dans la guerre, la pensée est engagée, ou la pensée engage – c’est selon. Selon qu’on y participe – qu’on soit combattant – ou qu’on lutte contre l’occupation – qu’on soit résistant. Dire que la pensée s’engage tandis que la morale se tient tranquille pourrait paraître contradictoire : qu’est-ce qu’une pensée engagée, sinon une pensée qui relève aussi d’une morale ? Et en l’occurrence ici, une morale (...) de l’action ? Politique est la forme que doit prendre la pensée qui s’oriente vers l’action, et qui tente de porter les raisons collectives de l’engagement. Elle donne à la morale une réponse en forme d’évidence, parce qu’elle comporte un risque – celui de vouloir qu’une politique réponde encore, et plus que jamais, à la violence de l’aliénation, de l’oppression. Quelle serait inversement une expérience qui porterait la morale à haute intensité tandis qu’elle se refuserait à l’action ? Quelle (...). (shrink)

Si la pensée de Georges Bataille, pensée limite, n'appartient exactement ni à la philosophie ni à la littérature, elle se tisse de l'une et de l'autre mobilisant en outre, suivant les époques, la sociologie, la psychanalyse, la mystique. Précaution ou jeu, face à la psychanalyse comme face à la philosophie, Bataille a toujours plaidé "coupable". Le sens de la faute, chez lui, est central: il détermine sa position à l'égard, de la pensée et des différentes disciplines qu'il mobilise. La faute (...) donne aussi le sens de ce qu'il a cherché au travers d'une communauté, dès ses premiers écrits (sur Sade notamment), et jusqu'aux ultimes (La Littérature et le mal). Au plus près des moments les plus noirs de son oeuvre et des questions théoriques les plus litigieuses qu'elle soulève, L'Art de la faute propose une lecture inédite de Georges Bataille, dans laquelle l'approche des écrits se veut autant biographique (autobiographique, même) que théorique. L'Art de la faute se tient où Bataille rencontre une lectrice singulière: le lieu du fantasme."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This paper identifies, develops, and argues for an interpretation of Mary Astell’s understanding of self-government. On this interpretation, what is essential to self-government, according to Astell, is an agent’s responsiveness to her own reasoning. The paper identifies two aspects of her theory of self-government: an ‘authenticity’ criterion of what makes our motives our own and an account of the capacities required for responsiveness to our own reasoning. The authenticity criterion states that when our motives arise from some external source without (...) validation by our own understanding of the reasons supporting them, then they are not our own. The capacities requisite for responsiveness to our own reasoning are those of examining and evaluating our own motives and of resisting the social pressure to conform to others’ opinions. An upshot of this interpretation of Astell’s theory of self-government is that it reveals her insights into the ways ‘custom’ can undermine an individual’s ability to govern oneself. (shrink)

We regularly intentionally expose ourselves to fictions we take to be likely to elicit in us emotions we generally find unpleasant when prompted by actual states of affairs. This is the so-called “paradox of tragedy”. We contribute to solving the paradox of tragedy by denying that, when fiction-directed, most of these emotions are in themselves unpleasant. We first provide strong evidence that these emotions, such as fear, sadness, or pity, are often enjoyed when fiction-directed. We then advance an explanation of (...) what makes these fiction-directed emotions often not unpleasant, while their reality-directed counterparts are generally so. In the last section, we advance an explanation of what makes fiction-directed emotions often enjoyable, and argue that a complete solution to the paradox of tragedy should be pluralist. (shrink)

Despite their conceptual allergy to vegetal life, philosophers have used germination, growth, blossoming, fruition, reproduction, and decay as illustrations of abstract concepts; mentioned plants in passing as the natural backdrops for dialogues, letters, and other compositions; spun elaborate allegories out of flowers, trees, and even grass; and recommended appropriate medicinal, dietary, and aesthetic approaches to select species of plants. In this book, Michael Marder illuminates the vegetal centerpieces and hidden kernels that have powered theoretical discourse for centuries. Choosing twelve botanical (...) specimens that correspond to twelve significant philosophers, he recasts the development of philosophy through the evolution of human and plant relations. A philosophical history for the postmetaphysical age, The Philosopher's Plant reclaims the organic heritage of human thought. With the help of vegetal images, examples, and metaphors, the book clears a path through philosophy's tangled roots and dense undergrowth, opening up the discipline to all readers. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been regarded as an efficient and safe treatment for Parkinson’s disease (PD) since being approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1997. It is estimated that more than 150 000 patients have been implanted, with a forecasted rapid increase in uptake with population ageing. Recent longitudinal follow-up studies have reported a significant increase in postoperative survival rates of patients with PD implanted with DBS as compared with those not implanted with DBS. Although DBS (...) tends to increase life expectancy for most patients with PD, this medical benefit does not come without attendant negative consequences. For example, emerging forms of iatrogenic harms are sometimes induced—harms which were not initially expected when clinicians proposed neurosurgery and patients or their guardians consented to the treatment. We report and discuss the clinical case of a patient who was implanted with DBS more than 20 years ago (at the time of writing) and is now experiencing unexpected stages of PD. This case illustrates how extending the life span without improving quality of life may introduce a burden of harms for patients and families. As well, this case shows why we should prepare for the expanding numbers of PD-implanted patients experiencing a gain of longevity but with severe stages of disease leading to diminution in quality of life. This newly observed effect of DBS treatment requires us to explore ethical questions related to iatrogenic harms, informed consent, end of life and caregivers’ burden. (shrink)

Bipedalism is one of the criteria that paleoanthropologists use in order to interpret the fossil record and to determine if a specimen belongs to the human lineage. In the context of such interpretations, bipedalism is considered to be a unique characteristic of this lineage that also marks its origin. This conception has largely remained unchallenged over the last decades, in spite of fossil discoveries that led to the emergence of bipedalism in the human lineage being shifted back by several millions (...) of years. In this paper, I analyze the uses of this criterion in paleoanthropology and demonstrate that interpretative biases are at play in interpretations of hominin remains. By discussing Darwin’s hypotheses about the evolution of bipedalism, I identify major theoretical issues that need to be addressed in the current debates on hominin evolution. First, the assumption that “man alone has become a biped” is analyzed in the light of recent empirical data. Three major issues are discussed: the definition of “man”, i.e. “human”, the uniqueness of human bipedalism, and the equivocal meaning of being a “biped”. Then, I highlight some of Darwin’s remarks that may be helpful for current debates in paleoanthropology, regarding natural selection in locomotor evolution, as well as taxonomic and phylogenetic significance of functional features. Finally, I analyze two examples of how fossil discoverers referred to Darwin in the recent years and discuss his role as an intellectual support. (shrink)

At the close of the recent Boston Symposium, a panel discussion was held on the general theme of the conference. The following are the remarks of Professor J. N. Findlay of Yale, recorded and transcribed here with his permission.