Kant insists that our actions ought to conform to objective moral rules, and that these rules apply to us regardless of whether we feel inclined to conform to them. Can he establish the truth of these claims? ;His writings on moral philosophy contain not a single answer to this question but two distinct and incompatible ones. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant argues that the basic norm that underlies our moral judgments, the Moral Law, is valid for (...) us because it is rooted in the freedom of our rational nature. But, in the Critique of Practical Reason, he argues that the Law is a fact that requires no justification and that this fact allows us to reason from morality to freedom. Is one of these arguments more convincing than the other? ;It would seem not. For each argument, I try to show, begs the question against an empirically-minded view of morality. More specifically, in the Groundwork Kant uncritically assumes that the freedom of rational agency enjoys a kind of independence from the motivational influence of sensible desires; while, in the second Critique, he similarly assumes that this motivation plays no role in an account of the validity of moral judgments. ;But I also try to show that Kant would have offered a more satisfying solution to the problems of moral theory had he modelled his views about agency more closely upon other views he holds about the self in its theoretical employment. The idea is this: Kant holds that theoretical knowledge requires a unified knowing subject, that a subject as varied as are its individual sense-experiences can never know the way the world is. I suggest that he could have defended an analogous claim about the connection between moral knowledge and the unity of agency; that is, were an agent as varied as are its individual desires, it could never know the way the world ought to be. I do not contend that this alternative solution is completely convincing, but I do hold that it offers an attractive response to central difficulties in the Groundwork and second Critique. (shrink)

Y a-t-il, et dans quelles limites, un « moment anthropologique » de la phénoménologie de Patočka? Si on ne trouve pas dans les textes de Patočka la réalisation explicite d’un projet d’anthropologie philosophique, la question du possible rapport de son œuvre à un tel domaine se pose néanmoins pour deux raisons. En premier lieu, ses textes contiennent une série d’analyses qui, tout en n’étant pas placées sous l’intitulé « anthropologie », peuvent être envisagées comme relevant de ce domaine :...

Dans son oeuvre tardive, Merleau-Ponty a souligné les convergences entre une pensée philosophique et une pensée s’exprimant par l’écriture littéraire, considérant que toutes deux répondent à une tâche commune liée à la description du monde. Ses premiers écrits théoriques – Simone de Beauvoir comme Jean-Paul Sartre l’ont souligné – sont quant à eux marqués par une distance plus nette vis-à-vis de la pratique littéraire. Pourtant, bien avant de publier ses premières monographies, Merleau-Ponty est l’auteur d’un livre écrit pour le compte (...) d’un autre : Nord. Récit de l’arctique, paru en 1928 chez Grasset. Le roman qui traite de la vie d’un explorateur dans le grand nord canadien, entre commerce de fourrures entre rencontre avec les Inuits, n’est qu’un travail de commande, que Merleau-Ponty ne revendiquera jamais. On trouve cependant dans cet écrit de jeunesse quelques motifs intéressants qui préfigurent sa pensée à venir. In his late writings, Merleau-Ponty stressed the convergences between philosophy and literature, highlighting their “common task” of describing the world. His early philosophical texts though – both Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre pointed this out – insist on demarcating themselves from literature. However, well before publishing his first monographs, Merleau-Ponty had already written a book on someone else’s behalf: Nord. Récit de l’arctique, published in 1928 by French publisher Grasset. The novel, which deals with the life of an explorer in Canada’s far north, between fur trade and encounters with the Inuit, is the result of ghostwriting, carried out for a friend. Merleau-Ponty later never stood to that book. There are nonetheless some interesting motifs in this early piece of writing that prefigure his future thinking.Nei suoi ultimi scritti, Merleau-Ponty ha sottolineato le convergenze tra filosofia e letteratura, evidenziando il loro “comune compito” nel descrivere il mondo. I suoi primi testi filosofici – lo hanno sottolineato sia Simone de Beauvoir che Jean-Paul Sartre – insistono però a distinguersi dalla letteratura. Tuttavia, ben prima di pubblicare le sue monografie, Merleau-Ponty aveva già scritto un libro per conto terzi: Nord. Récit de l’arctique, pubblicato nel 1928 per le stampe di Grasset. Per questo romanzo, che tratta della vita di un esploratore nell’estremo nord canadese, tra commercio di pellicce e incontri con gli Inuit, Merleau-Ponty fa da ‘ghostwriter’ ad un amico. Mentre ulteriormente, egli non si avvalse mai della paternità del romanzo, questo primo scritto contiene già alcuni spunti che prefigurano il suo pensiero futuro. (shrink)

As we move around in our environment, and interact with it, many of the most important problems we face involve the processing of spatial information. We have to be able to navigate by perceiving and remembering the locations and orientations of the objects around us relative to ourself; we have to sense and act upon these objects; and we need to move through space to position ourselves in favourable locations or to avoid dangerous ones. While this appears so simple that (...) we don't even think about it, the difficulty of solving these problems has been shown in the repeated failure of artificial systems to perform these kinds of tasks efficiently. In contrast, humans and other animals routinely overcome these problems every single day. This book examines some of the neural substrates and mechanisms that support these remarkable abilities. The hippocampus and the parietal cortex have been implicated in various core spatial behaviours, such as the ability to localise an object and navigate to it. Damage to these areas in humans and animals leads to impairment of these spatial functions. This collection of papers, written by internationally recognized experts in the field, reviews the evidence that each area is involved in spatial cognition, examines the mechanisms underlying the generation of spatial behaviours, and considers the relative roles of the parietal and hippocampal areas, including how each interacts with the other. The papers integrate a wide range of theoretical and experimental approaches, and touch on broader issues relating to memory and imagery. As such, this book represents the state of the art of current research into the neural basis of spatial cognition. It should be of interest to anyone - researchers or graduate students - working in the areas of cognitive neuroscience, neuroanatomy, neuropsychology, and cognition generally. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEmotion regulation comprises attempts to influence when and how emotions are experienced and expressed. It has mostly been conceived of as proactive or reactive, but it may also be retroactive and involve memory. I term such past-oriented activity mnemonic emotion regulation and propose that it involves increasing or decreasing access to or altering the characteristics of a memory. People may increase access to a memory and make it more likely that it will be retrieved in the future, for example by (...) rehearsing a pleasant memory. They may decrease access to a memory and make it less likely that intrusions will be experienced in the future, for example by repeatedly trying to stop an unpleasant memory from being retrieved. Finally, people may alter the characteristics of a memory and change its content or context, for example by replacing a negative impression with a productive interpretation. I discuss how mnemonic emotion regulation may be i... (shrink)

While temporal considerations are of prime importance for chemical reactions, as well as for molecular stability, most chemical concepts are not explicitly formulated on a diachronic basis. It will be argued here that a formulation explicitly incorporating temporal and epistemological considerations enables us to treat chemical reactions and chemical substances on ontologically equivalent terms, instead of assigning a more fundamental status to the latter. After all, in collision theory, a chemical substance is just a collision complex that takes too long. (...) How long qualifies as “too long”, and “too long” in relation to what, are crucial questions that distinguish chemical substances from chemical reactions, and reversible reactions from irreversible ones, thereby introducing anthropocentric considerations into these distinctions. Too long for a lab chemist is very different from too long for an astrochemist studying chemical reactions between chemical substances in inter-stellar space on cosmological timescales. Examining several physical and chemical properties on the basis of which chemical substances are distinguished from one another, the role of temporal and anthropocentric considerations in defining molecular properties is emphasized. I conclude with some observations on the much-debated reduction of chemistry to other disciplines, arguing that such reduction depends on our aesthetic choices as to what kinds of observations demand explanation, and what kinds of explanation are acceptable. (shrink)

Ce volume contient la transcription de plusieurs entretiens radiophoniques : La Tribune de Paris (1946-1948), La Tribune des Temps Modernes (1947), Les Entretiens sur la philosophie (1950-52), et les longs Entretiens avec Georges Charbonnier (1959). Alors que les premiers sont malheureusement donnés sans les interventions des tiers (Sartre, Hyppolite, etc.), qui sont résumées, ceux avec Charbonnier sont livrés in extenso, y compris avec les chutes non retenues lors des émissions radio. Enfin, s’ajoutent à cet ensemble des textes de la main (...) de Merleau-Ponty, il s’agit des interventions dans le Forum de L’Express (1954-54) qui n’avaient pas été retenues par l’auteur lorsqu’il a composé les « Propos » de Signes (1960). L’essentiel du volume est consacré à la politique, et permet de préciser le rôle que Merleau-Ponty assignait au philosophe dans la cité : celui d’un analyste qui ne cherche pas seulement à dévoiler les mensonges des idéologies, mais à montrer ce que les situations peuvent avoir d’ambigu, sans pour autant renoncer à l’idéal de liberté et de justice, par un mélange de pragmatisme et de discours de vérité qui s’adresse directement à la conscience des citoyens et non à telle classe sociale. This volume contains the transcripts of several radio interviews: La Tribune de Paris (1946-1948), La Tribune des Temps Modernes (1947), Les Entretiens sur la philosophie (1950-52), and the lengthy Entretiens avec Georges Charbonnier (1959). While the first few are unfortunately presented without the other person’s responses (Sartre, Hyppolite, etc.), which are summarized, those with Charbonnier are presented verbatim, including the slips not retained in the radio broadcasts. Finally, texts by Merleau-Ponty’s own hand are added to this collection. They are the responses in the Forum of L’Express (1954-54) that had not been retained by the author when he composed the “Propos” of Signs (1960). The bulk of the volume is dedicated to politics and enables the clarification of the role that Merleau-Ponty assigned to the philosopher in the city: that of an analyst who does not just seek to expose the falsehoods of ideologies, but to reveal the potential ambiguity in situations through a mixture of pragmatism and truth speaking that addresses itself directly to the conscience of citizens and not to a particular social class, and all of this without renouncing the ideal of liberty and justice. Questo volume contiene la trascrizione di diverse interviste e colloqui radiofonici: La Tribune de Paris (1946-1948), La Tribune des Temps Modernes (1947), Les Entretiens sur la philosophie (1950-52), e le lunghe interviste di Merleau-Ponty con Georges Charbonnier (1959). Mentre i primi colloqui sono restituiti purtroppo senza gli interventi di terzi (come ad esempio Sartre e Hyppolite, etc.), che vi si trovano solamente riassunti, le interviste con Charbonnier sono invece riportate per esteso, ivi compresi gli errori che erano stati eliminati nelle trasmissioni via radio. Completa il volume una selezione di testi di Merleau-Ponty, in cui sono raccolti gli interventi apparsi nella rubrica Forum de L’Express (1954-54), che non erano confluiti nella sezione « Propos » pubblicata dall’autore in Segni (1960). L’insieme del volume è essenzialmente dedicato alla tematica politica e permette di comprendere il ruolo che Merleau-Ponty assegnava al filosofo rispetto alla città : quello di un analista che non cerca solamente di smascherare le menzogne delle ideologie, ma anche di mostrare l’ambiguità delle circostanze, senza però rinunciare ad un ideale di libertà e di giustizia, con un miscuglio di pragmatismo e di discorso di verità che si rivolge direttamente alla coscienza dei cittadini e non a una certa classe sociale. (shrink)

Purpose. The purpose of the article is to understand the issue of gender strategies of political leadership. Theoretical basis. The works of Ukrainian and foreign scholars helped to find out the specifics of male and female leadership. The article applied the latest methodology of androgyny-analysis. According to this methodology, sex has not only a biological, psychological and social, but also an existential dimension. So, the existential dimension of gender is soulfulness as an existential femininity and spirituality as an existential masculinity. (...) These two beginnings may conflict and may be in harmony. Depending on this, we have constructive or destructive strategies for the development of both the personality and the relations between individuals. Constructiveness here means not only gender equality, but also gender partnership. Originality. In the context of modern gender anthropology and androgyny-analysis, it is found that as a result of the implementation of the strategy of existential sexism and existential hermaphroditism, political leadership becomes authoritarian, and sometimes also totalitarian, while the strategy of androgynism associated with gender partnership gives rise to constructive political leadership. Conclusions. Androgynous personality of a political leader, which balances the existential and psychological qualities of men and women, is able to reform the society and change the country for better. (shrink)