Intuitive predictions and judgements under uncertainty are often mediated by judgemental heuristics that sometimes lead to biases. Our micro-developmental study suggests that a presumption of rationality is justified for adult subjects, in so far as their systematic judgemental biases appear to be due to a specific executive-inhibition failure in working memory, and not necessarily to a lack of understanding of the fundamental principles of probability. This hypothesis was tested using an experimental procedure in which 60 adult subjects were trained to (...) inhibit the classical conjunction bias on a frequency judgement task derived from Tversky and Kahneman's work. Pre- and post-test performance was assessed via a probability judgement task. The data indicated a training effect, suggesting that subjects traditionally labelled as "irrational" with respect to the classical rules of inductive reasoning are in fact "inefficient inhibitors". These findings are discussed in terms of a polymorphous view of rationality. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the intersections between Hegel’s aesthetics lec- tures and translation theory and praxis, with reference to the French-Italian translation project Hegel Art Net. Against the background of the historical recon- struction that sees Hegel repeatedly confronted with the fruition and production of translations, we intend to examine the hermeneutic, philological and political challenges that a translator of the aesthetics Nachschriften encounters today, following the “philological turn” of the 1990s and the publication of new sources documenting Hegel’s (...) Berlin lectures on the philosophy of art. (shrink)

In this paper I study two ways of transforming decision problems on the basis of previously adopted intentions, ruling out incompatible options and imposing a standard of relevance, with a particular focus on situations of strategic interaction. I show that in such situations problems arise which do not appear in the single-agent case, namely that transformation of decision problems can leave the agents with no option compatible with what they intend. I characterize conditions on the agents’ intentions which avoid such (...) problematic scenarios, in a way that requires each agent to take account of the intentions of others. (shrink)

Philosophe majeur de notre epoque, Henri Maldiney a elabore une phenomenologie de l'existence centree sur l'Ouvert. Preconisant un - retour aux choses memes -, il refute radicalement la separation instauree entre sujet et objet, insistant sur l'experience de la rencontre comme signifiance insignifiable, transpossibilite et transpassibilite, recueil et deploiement. a partir notamment de Binswanger, Straus, Freud, Szondi, Heidegger et plus largement des textes classiques grecs, allemands, chinois, accordant une importance toute particuliere a l'art, il a contribue de maniere decisive a (...) une philosophie du sentir, du rythme et de l'avenement. Lors du colloque de Cerisy, qui a reuni chercheurs, praticiens et artistes, chacun s'est mis a l'epreuve de cette oeuvre magistrale. Les contributions rassemblees ici manifestent l'evolution et l'impact de cette pensee fondamentale pour le XXIe siecle.". (shrink)

_Les philosophes face au vice, de Socrate à Augustin_ explore la manière dont les philosophes de l’Antiquité ont tracé une cartographie des vices, analysé leurs causes et leurs effets, et se sont interrogés sur leurs usages. _Les philosophes face au vice, de Socrate à Augustin_ explores how ancient philosophers described the vices, delineated their various kinds, accounted for their causes and effects, and reflected on how to use them.

Comment interpréter le regain d'intérêt pour les réflexions sur la transcendance, la quête de sens, la morale et l'éthique dans nos sociétés contemporaines? C'est ce sur quoi Lawrence Olivier et Yves Boisvert se sont penchés dans cet ouvrage ; le premier accuse les théoriciens de la postmodernité d'être de grands fabulateurs qui font la promotion de la reconfiguration des systèmes moraux, tandis que le second reproche aux nihilistes d'être de grands nostalgiques de la Vérité qui ont sombré dans un (...) fatalisme total et un individualisme radical face à l'échec du projet de la modernité. Leur désaccord portant principalement sur l'interprétation à donner à ce retour des grands questionnements sur les valeurs et le sens de la vie, l'hypothèse de base est que les individus ont besoin de croire à une certaine forme de transcendance et qu'ils ressentent un profond besoin de donner un sens à leur vie. Invités à se prononcer sur cette question, anthropologues, philosophes, politicologues, sociologues et théologiens livrent ici leurs propres analyses de cette problématique par un riche panorama des réflexions sur la sexualité, la mort, la mode, l'art, les jeunes de la rue, les activités extrêmes, la religion et la pop psycho. Sans épuiser la problématique de la transcendance contemporaine, cet ouvrage stimulera la curiosité de tous les lecteurs intéressés aux nouvelles valeurs culturelles ou aux nouveaux comportements sociétaux. (shrink)

Tous les textes publiés dans l'ouvrage parlent directement de l'œuvre de Jean-Michel Berthelot. La première partie, " Sociologie de Jean-Michel Berthelot ", rassemble les contributions restituant des traits de son œuvre à l'aide d'études de cas précis ou de panoramas plus larges, et balise des domaines de recherche dans lesquels il s'est illustré : sociologie de l'éducation, du corps, des sciences, épistémologie des sciences sociales. La deuxième partie rend compte des perspectives ouvertes par ses travaux et de la manière dont (...) des chercheurs ont mis en œuvre ses réflexions pour leurs propres recherches. Il s'agit donc de restituer la façon dont on peut faire de la sociologie " avec " Jean-Michel Berthelot - à l'aide de ses travaux et des jalons qu'ils posent. La troisième partie est biographique en restituant l'itinéraire académique, intellectuel et humain de Berthelot, que ce soit son parcours universitaire et social, notamment à l'ENS durant mai 68, ou encore sa période " toulousaine " où sa carrière universitaire a débuté et qui en constitue une partie essentielle. Dirigé par Jean-Christophe Marcel et Olivier Martin, cet ouvrage rassemble les contributions de collaborateurs, d'anciens étudiants ou de proches collègues de Jean-Michel Berthelot. (shrink)

Joan Copjec has shown that modernity is privy to a notion of immortality all its own – one that differs fundamentally from any counterpart entertained in Greek antiquity or the Christian Middle Ages. She points to Blumenberg and Lefort as thinkers who have construed this concept in its modern guise in different ways, and ultimately opts for Lefort's paradoxical understanding of immortality as the ‘transcending of time, within time' before elaborating on a corresponding notion in Lacan's work. It can be (...) shown that Nietzsche, too, provides a distinctly modern conception of ‘immortality', articulated in relation to his notions of affirmation, singularity and eternal recurrence. In brief, this amounts to his claim that, to affirm even one single part or event in one's life entails affirming it in its entirety, and, in so doing – given the interconnectedness of events – affirming all that has ever existed. Moreover, once anything has existed, it is in a certain sense, for Nietzsche, necessary despite its temporal singularity. Therefore, to be able to rise to the task of affirming certain actions or experiences in one's own life, bestows on it not merely this kind of necessary singularity, but what he thought of as ‘eternal recurrence' – the (ethical) affirmation of the desire to embrace one's own, and together with it, all of existence ‘eternally', over and over. This, it is argued, may be understood as Nietzsche's distinctive contribution to a specifically modern notion of immortality: the ability of an individual to live in such a way that his or her singular ‘place' in society is ensured, necessarily there, even after his or her death. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 26 (1) 2007: pp. 70-84. (shrink)

Social science studies often explain the emergence of collective beliefs by reference to factors that are supposed to be part of the social context. How do these macro-factors shape the beliefs of individuals? How can structural factors provide evidence supporting a given belief? In answering these questions, I propose a link connecting macro-factors and beliefs by introducing the notion of “evidential categorization.” I expect to show that our structural explanations of beliefs often contain an analysis of the socially diffused systems (...) of reasons—an important part of what we call the “epistemic context of belief-formation”—for they partially determine our evidential categorizations. Finally, I will show by an example, how structural explanations work if they include these components. (shrink)

In a famous passage from his Logic, Kant says that three questions ultimately hang on the third one, which is the question of Man. This paper examines the nature of this special link between the very ends of philosophy and the question of Man. Its intent is to show how Culture, as receptive to Ideas, provides both the unity of the different definitions of Man given by Kant, and the condition of possibility for the questioning of philosophy. This distinctive quality (...) of man, according to Kant, is the precondition for Metaphysics, Ethics, and Religion. In the end, philosophy's principle of unity lies not in the limitation or finiteness of man, but in the fact that man, according to Kant, is always in relation with some form of infinity, whether it is that of Ideas (metaphysics), that of the Law (ethics), or that of the ultimate Good (religion). (shrink)

Our paper focuses on Stuart Kauffman’s theory from 1993 to 2004. Kauffman is looking for an explanation of the genesis of living beings by genetic networks. From interactions to cell types, Kauffman’s viewpoint is concerned with differentiation and self-organization as network’s properties. His approach of morphogenetic processes is interesting but it is insufficient. According to Sole, Fernandez and Kauffman [2003], networks would give an explanation of the diversity in patterns and cell types. Some other authors [as Perkins et al., 2004] (...) consider that it is necessary to explore interactions, not with logical methods only, but non-linear systems too. Network’s structure is related to biological diversity. It supposes genes’ power’s mediators within the cells and between them. (shrink)

The history of biological systematics documents a continuing tension between classifications in terms of nested hierarchies congruent with branching diagrams (the ‘Tree of Life’) versus reticulated relations. The recognition of conflicting character distribution led to the dissolution of the scala naturae into reticulated systems, which were then transformed into phylogenetic trees by the addition of a vertical axis. The cladistic revolution in systematics resulted in a representation of phylogeny as a strictly bifurcating pattern (cladogram). Due to the ubiquity of character (...) conflict—at the genetic or morphological level, or at any level in between—some characters will necessarily have to be discarded ( qua noise) in favor of others in support of a strictly bifurcating phylogenetic tree. Pattern analysts will seek maximal congruence in the distribution of characters (ultimately of any kind) relative to a branching tree-topology; process explainers will call such tree-topologies into question by reference to incompatible evolutionary processes. Pattern analysts will argue that process explanations must not be brought to bear on pattern reconstruction; process explainers will insist that the reconstructed pattern requires a process explanation to become scientifically relevant, i.e., relevant to evolutionary theory. The core question driving the current debate about the adequacy of the ‘Tree of Life’ metaphor seems to be whether the systematic dichotomization of the living world is an adequate representation of the complex evolutionary history of global biodiversity. In ‘Questioning the Tree of Life’, it seems beneficial to draw at least four conceptual distinctions: pattern reconstruction versus process explanation as different epistemological approaches to the study of phylogeny; open versus closed systems as expressions of different kinds of population (species) structures; phylogenetic trees versus cladograms as representations of evolutionary processes versus patterns of relationships; and genes versus species as expressions of different levels of causal integration and evolutionary transformation. (shrink)

Taking its clues from Popperian philosophy of science, cladistics adopted a number of assumptions of the empiricist tradition. These include the identification of a dichotomy between observation reports and theoretical statements and its subsequent abandonment on the basis of the insight that all observation reports are theory-laden. The neglect of the ‘context of discovery’, which is the step of theory (hypothesis) generation. The emphasis on coherentism in the ‘context of justification’, which is the step of evaluation of the relative merits (...) of alternative theories. The appeal to a total evidence approach in phylogenetic inference. And finally, a silence about causation, which results in an instrumentalist approach to phylogeny reconstruction. This paper explores how these empiricist assumptions are embedded in phylogenetic systematics, and why these assumptions are problematic for cladists (or any taxonomists). (shrink)

Who is Daisaku Ikeda? At one level, he is the leader of a religious movement--Soka Gakkai--which began in Japan, where it still has its headquarters, but which now claims 12 million adherents around the world. At another level, he is a globetrotting figure whose formal conversations with diverse writers, thinkers and diplomats--including Arnold Toynbee, Joseph Rotblat and Mikhail Gorbachev--have garnered him an international profile, as well as academic recognition. Perhaps above all else, Daisaku Ikeda is viewed as a campaigner for (...) peace. And it is Ikeda's specific contribution to peacebuilding, notably through the central emphasis he has placed on the significance of dialogue, that this book explores: the first to do so in a concerted way. Olivier Urbain shows that while Soka Gakkai (the "value society") may stem from the medieval principles of Nichiren Buddhism, under Ikeda's leadership it has taken these classic wisdoms and transformed them. Now essentially classless and secularised, as well as adaptable and sensitive to modern challenges like resource shortages and climate change, this, argues the author, is a pragmatic approach to peace which has proved both popular and eminently transportable. (shrink)

The first of its kind, this book is an in-depth history of hydrodynamics from its eighteenth-century foundations to its first major successes in twentieth-century hydraulics and aeronautics. It documents the foundational role of fluid mechanics in developing a new mathematical physics. It gives full and clear accounts of the conceptual breakthroughs of physicists and engineers who tried to meet challenges in the practical worlds of hydraulics, navigation, blood circulation, meteorology, and aeronautics, and it shows how hydrodynamics at last began to (...) fulfill its early promise to unify the different worlds of flow. Richly illustrated, technically thorough, and sensitive to cross-cultural effects, this history should attract a broad range of historians, scientists, engineers, and philosophers and be a standard reference for anyone interested in fluid mechanics. (shrink)

Species are generally considered to be the basic units of evolution, and hence to constitute spatio-temporally bounded entities. In addition, it has been argued that species also instantiate a natural kind. Evolution is fundamentally about change. The question then is how species can remain the same through evolutionary change. Proponents of the species qua individuals thesis individuate species through their unique evolutionary origin. Individuals, or spatio-temporally located particulars in general, can be bodies, objects, events, or processes, or a combination of (...) these. It is here argued that species are best understood as open or closed, causally integrated processual systems that also instantiate an historically conditioned homeostatic property cluster natural kind. (shrink)

The concept that renders morphology a tool for phylogeny reconstruction is homology. The concept of homology is rooted in pre-evolutionary idealistic morphology. The claim that the goal of idealistic morphology was the seriability of form may sound paradoxical given that this discipline proceeded within a framework of strictly delimited types. But the types only demarcate where seriability starts and where it comes to an end. Carl Gegenbaur’s was recognized as a milestone in idealistic morphology. A comparison with the second edition (...) of 1870 illustrates Gegenbaur’s turn to evolutionary morphology. The methodology remained the same–seriability of form–but the series was no longer merely descriptive or conceptual but now a historical, evolutionary one. Gegenbaur emphasized that seriability of form was possible not only between species of the same type, but also between parts of organisms of the same type. Pursuing this project, he found that different parts of organisms evolve at different rates, resulting in an incongruence between the series of parts relative to the series of species under comparison. This incongrence was called chevauchement des spécialisations by Louis Dollo, Spezialisationskreuzungen by Othenio Abel, and heterobathmy of characters by Armen Takhtajan. Willi Hennig, the founder of modern methods in phylogenetic systematics, discovered that the heterobathmy of characters was a precondition for the establishment of the phylogenetic relationships based on shared derived characters. The result was a replacement of the search for ancestors by a search for relative degrees of phylogenetic relationships. (shrink)

The main contention of this article is that current approaches to ontological emergence are not comprehensive, in that they share a common bias that make them blind to some conceptual space available to emergence. In this article, I devise an alternative perspective on ontological emergence called ‘flat emergence’, which is free of such a bias. The motivation is twofold: not only does flat emergence constitute another viable way to fulfill the initial emergentist promise, but it also allows for making sense (...) of some emergence ascriptions that traditional accounts are unable to accommodate. (shrink)

Touch seems to enjoy some epistemic advantage over the other senses when it comes to attest to the reality of external objects. The question is not whether only what appears in tactile experiences is real. It is that only whether appears in tactile experiences feels real to the subject. In this chapter we first clarify how exactly the rather vague idea of an epistemic advantage of touch over the other senses should be interpreted. We then defend a “muscular thesis”, to (...) the effect that only the experience of resistance to our motor efforts, as it arises in effortful touch, presents us with the independent existence of some causally empowered object. We finally consider whether this muscular thesis applies to the perception of our own body. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of ethical value congruence on a manager sample's attitudes and behaviors using polynomial regression analysis. The results indicate a general lack of support for congruence effects. However, main effects of perceived organizational ethical values are found for all outcomes; how managers perceive their organization's values is directly associated with organizational commitment, job satisfaction, perceived procedural justice, adaptive behaviors, and turnover intentions. Implications for the impact of ethical values are drawn from the findings.

Any advanced theory of physics contains modules defined as essential components that are themselves theories with different domains of application. Different kinds of modules can be distinguished according to the way in which they fit in the symbolic and interpretive apparatus of a theory. The number and kind of the modules of a given theory vary as the theory evolves in time. The relative stability of modules and the variability of their insertion in other theories play a vital role in (...) the application, comparison, construction, and communication of theories. Modularity conveys some global unity to physics through the sharing of modules by diverse theories. This alternative to rigid hierarchies and holistic totalities permits a dynamical, plastic, and symbiotic approach to physical theory. (shrink)

A translation of the renowned French reference book, Vocabulaire de sciences cognitives , the Dictionary of Cognitive Science presents comprehensive definitions of more than 120 terms. The editor and advisory board of specialists have brought together 60 internationally recognized scholars to give the reader a comprehensive understanding of the most current and dynamic thinking in cognitive science. Topics range from Abduction to Writing, and each entry covers its subject from as many perspectives as possible within the domains of psychology, artificial (...) intelligence, neuroscience, philosophy, and linguistics. This multidisciplinary work is an invaluable resource for all collections. (shrink)