There is growing interest in the effect of sound on visual motion perception. One model involves the illusion created when two identical objects moving towards each other on a two-dimensional visual display can be seen to either bounce off or stream through each other. Previous studies show that the large bias normally seen toward the streaming percept can be modulated by the presentation of an auditory event at the moment of coincidence. However, no reports to date provide sufficient evidence to (...) indicate whether the sound bounce-inducing effect is due to a perceptual binding process or merely to an explicit inference resulting from the transient auditory stimulus resembling a physical collision of two objects. In the present study, we used a novel experimental design in which a subliminal sound was presented either 150 ms before, at, or 150 ms after the moment of coincidence of two disks moving towards each other. The results showed that there was an increased perception of bouncing when the subliminal sound was presented at or 150 ms after the moment of coincidence compared to when no sound was presented. These findings provide the first empirical demonstration that activation of the human auditory system without reaching consciousness affects the perception of an ambiguous visual motion display. (shrink)

Background In this qualitative analysis we aimed to explore addiction physicians’ perspectives on safer injection education for people who inject drugs, especially: (1) on possible means of introducing safer injection education in the medical environment, (2) on the compatibility of safer injection education with each physician’s core values and goals, and (3) on possible reasons for the ethical dilemma in safer injection education. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with eleven physicians practicing addiction medicine in France in clinical and harm reduction (...) settings. Results All participants were in favor of educational interventions for people who inject drugs. Nonetheless, these interventions varied from simple advice to injection supervision and they were seen as less acceptable when they concerned the practical and material aspects of injection. Some participants found that physicians practicing in clinical settings, where patients consult mostly to stop their drug use, should not practice safer injection education. On the contrary, other participants claimed that safer injection education was essential in all settings and was not a choice but rather a duty for addiction physicians. The ethical dilemma of such intervention when delivered by medical staff was viewed as a complex phenomenon, related to the representations of intravenous drug use and to societal expectations from physicians. Conclusion Physicians’ views on safer injection education for people who inject drugs reveal an emotionally charged subject related to the structural organization of addiction management in France. Such education is marked by an arduous history of harm reduction policies in France. IRB registration: #00011928. (shrink)

The academic path of Jean Gayon (1949–2018) follows in the wake of the “French style” in epistemologyEpistemology, but he is also one of the first representatives of philosophy of biology in France. In the light of this double philosophical heritage, this chapter re-examines the relations between the works of Gayon, the tradition in which he first studied, and the one he later adopted, but not without reservations. Tracing his intellectual journey, this article explores why he naturally appears as a Canguilhemian, (...) a view against which he defends himself. Attending to the connexions that he established with the philosophers of biology will bring to light the growing tension that inhabits him, from the middle of the 1980s onwards, and which led him to identify some of the limits inherent to theHistorical epistemology matrix of historical epistemologyGayon, JeanOn historical epistemology, without disowning his first philosophical tradition. Finally, in an attempt to reconcile two approaches, I will underline the emergence in the thought of Jean Gayon of a third way seeking to overcome the opposition between a “unitarian” style that seeks to make a clear break with the history of scienceHistory of science and its philosophical past, and the “dualist” style which tends to stay above scientific debates, and which accepts a clear distinction between the work of science and the work of philosophy. Reuniting the history and the philosophy of the sciences, privileging the long durée and depths of history, where the problems of biology unfold, while also recognizing the value of analysing the conceptual puzzles which structure the contemporary life sciences, the oeuvre of Jean Gayon illustrates the complementary character of these disciplines. (shrink)

This paper supports the personal data platform cooperative as a means of bringing about John Rawls’s favoured institutional realisation of a just society, the property-owning democracy. It describes personal data platform cooperatives and applies Rawls’s political philosophy to analyse the institutional forms of a just society in relation to the economic power deriving from aggregating personal data. It argues that a society involving a significant number of personal data platform cooperatives will be more suitable to realising Rawls’s principle of fair (...) equality of opportunity. (shrink)

Several philosophers have recently tried to define natural kinds in epistemic terms only. Given the persistent problems with finding a successful metaphysical theory, these philosophers argue that we would do better to describe natural kinds solely in terms of their epistemic usefulness, such as their role in supporting inductive inferences. In this paper, I argue against these epistemology-only theories of natural kinds and in favor of, at least partly, metaphysical theories. I do so in three steps. In the first section (...) of the paper, I propose two desiderata for a theory of natural kinds. In the second section, I discuss one example of a ‘general’ epistemology-only theory, proposed by Marc Ereshefsky and Thomas Reydon, and argue that theories like theirs fail to provide adequate criteria of natural kinds. In the third section, I focus on one example of a ‘specific’ epistemology-only theory, proposed by P. D. Magnus, and use it to show why such theories cannot justify the claim that the proposed epistemic criteria account for the naturalness of kinds. (shrink)

The current metaphysical race debate is very much focused on the realism question whether races exist. In this paper I argue against the importance of this question. Philosophers, biologists and anthropologists expect that answering this question will tell them something substantive about the metaphysics of racial classifications, and will help them to decide whether it is justified to use racial categories in scientific research and public policy. I argue that there are two reasons why these expectations are not fulfilled. First (...) of all, the realism question about race leads to a very broad philosophical debate about the semantics of general terms and the criteria for real kinds, rather than to a debate about the metaphysics of racial categories specifically. Secondly, there is a type of race realism that is so toothless that it is almost completely uninformative about the metaphysics of race. In response to these worries, I argue that the metaphysical race debate should rather be focused on the question in what way and to what extent ‘racial’ distinctions can ground the epistemic practices of various scientific disciplines. I spell out what I mean by this and go on to demonstrate that trying to answer this question leads to a more fruitful metaphysical debate. (shrink)

The paper aims at clarifying the distinctions and relations between pain and suffering. Three negative theses are defended: 1. Pain and suffering are not identical. 2. Pain is not a species of suffering, nor is suffering a species of pain, nor are pain and suffering of a common (proximate) genus. 3. Suffering cannot be defined as the perception of a pain’s badness, nor can pain be defined as a suffered bodily sensation. Three positive theses are endorsed: 4. Pain and suffering (...) are categorically distinct: pain is a localised bodily episode, suffering is a non-localised affective attitude. 5. Suffering can be expressed, pains cannot. As a consequence, we can have compassion for the suffering of others, not for their pains. 6. The relation between pain and suffering is akin to the relation between danger and fear, injustice and indignation, wrongdoing and guilt: suffering is the correct reaction to pain. One upshot is that both the influential view that the experience of pain is incorrigible and the influential view that the ordinary conception of pain is paradoxical are false. (shrink)

The objective of this longitudinal study is to analyze the intrinsic drivers and values underlying managers’ organizational citizenship behaviors for the environment from a developmental psychology perspective based on measuring the stages of consciousness that shape the meaning-making systems of individuals. At time 1, the stages of consciousness of 138 managers were qualitatively assessed using the Leader Development Profile test. At time 2, a quantitative survey measured the environmental beliefs and OCBEs of these managers. The links between stages of consciousness, (...) environmental beliefs, and OCBEs were analyzed using hierarchical regressions. The main findings show that managers’ stages of consciousness positively influence two types of OCBEs, namely eco-initiatives and eco-helping, while environmental beliefs influence eco-helping and eco-civic engagement but do not appear to be connected with the stage of consciousness development. This paper first contributes to the literature on corporate greening by shedding more light on the aspects of behavioral and developmental psychology that underlie environmental leadership. Second, it bridges the gap between theories that have developed separately by showing the interconnectedness between the managers’ stage of consciousness and the more concrete environmental behaviors in the workplace that could have emulative effects throughout the organization. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with extensions of geometric stability theory to some nonelementary classes. We prove the following theorem:Theorem. Let [Formula: see text] be a large homogeneous model of a stable diagram D. Let p, q ∈ SD(A), where p is quasiminimal and q unbounded. Let [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. Suppose that there exists an integer n < ω such that [Formula: see text] for any independent a1, …, an∈ P and finite subset C ⊆ Q, but (...) [Formula: see text] for some independent a1, …, an, an+1∈ P and some finite subset C ⊆ Q.Then [Formula: see text] interprets a group G which acts on the geometry P′ obtained from P. Furthermore, either [Formula: see text] interprets a non-classical group, or n = 1,2,3 and•If n = 1 then G is abelian and acts regularly on P′.•If n = 2 the action of G on P′ is isomorphic to the affine action of K ⋊ K* on the algebraically closed field K.•If n = 3 the action of G on P′ is isomorphic to the action of PGL2(K) on the projective line ℙ1(K) of the algebraically closed field K.We prove a similar result for excellent classes. (shrink)

We study shared intentions in what we call “loose groups”. These are groups that lack a codified organizational structure, and where the communication channels between group members are either unreliable or not completely open. We start by formulating two desiderata for shared intentions in such groups. We then argue that no existing account meets these two desiderata, because they assume either too strong or too weak an epistemic condition, that is, a condition on what the group members know and believe (...) about what the others intend, know, and believe. We propose an alternative, pooled knowledge, and argue that it allows formulating conditions on shared intentions that meet the two desiderata. (shrink)

The philosopher David Lewis is credited by many social scientists, including mainstream economists, with having founded the modern (game-theoretical) approach to conventions, viewed as solutions to recurrent coordination problems. Yet it is generally ignored that he revised his approach, soon after the publication of his well-known book. I suggest that this revision has deep implications (probably not perceived by Lewis himself) on the analytical links between coordination, uncertainty and rationality. Thinking anew about these issues leads me to map out an (...) alternative social scientific research programme. The traditional ontological equipment of methodological individualism should be reinforced in order to admit the existence of an “intersubjective” world beside the two familiar worlds: the “objective” world of observable things, and the “subjective” world of expectations and individual beliefs. In particular, language becomes necessary to understand coordination via conventions, rather than the other way round. That has led a group of institutionalist economists and pragmatist sociologists to develop an enlarged model of rationality, no longer isolated from questions of coordination and values. This model is the basis for the “Economics of Conventions”. (shrink)

The theoretical literature on vertical relationships usually assumes that beliefs about secret contracts take specific forms. In a recent paper, Eguia et al. (Games Econ Behav 109:465–483,2018) propose a new selection criterion that does not impose any restriction on beliefs. In this article, we extend their criterion by generalizing it to risk-averse retailers, and we show that risk aversion modifies the size of the belief subsets that support each equilibrium. We conduct an experiment which revisits that of Eguia et al. (...) (Games Econ Behav 109:465–483,2018). We design a new treatment effect on equilibrium selection depending on the retailers’ risk sensitivity. Experimental results confirm the treatment effect: the more sensitivity there is towards risk, the more the equilibrium played is consistent with passive beliefs. In addition, extending Eguia et al.’s (Games Econ Behav 109:465–483,2018) criterion to risk-averse retailers improves its predictive power on the equilibria played, especially for a population of retailers with moderate to extreme risk aversion. (shrink)

I have been asked to express in my turn the reflections which a reading of K. Satchidananda Murty's fine paper, “Philosophical Thought in India,” have inspired in me. In complying with this request, I would like, first of all, to caution the reader that my aim is not an ambitious one and that my remarks will be formulated with great modesty. They are based, to be sure, on thirty years of intellectual and spiritual contact with Indian thought, but they remain (...) nonetheless those of an analyst and observer from the outside. It is not fitting that a guest admitted into the intimacy of Indian civilization should raise his voice too high in commenting on a statement that is based on knowledge originating from within. Therefore, I propose merely to explain how the data of Indian philosophical history might appear to a mind that has been trained in the civilization of the West and that seeks to achieve a universal view; to indicate where, for such a mind, major emphases should be placed. (shrink)

Analogies between hearing and seeing already existed in ancient Greek theories of perception. The present paper follows the evolution of such analogies until the rise of 17th century optics, with due regard to the diversity of their origins and nature but with particular emphasis on their bearing on the physical concepts of light and sound. Whereas the old Greek analogies were only side effects of the unifying concepts of perception, the analogies of the 17th century played an important role in (...) constructing optical theories by imitation of acoustic theories, or vice versa. This transition depended on several factors including the changing relations between optics, music, mathematics, and physics, the diversity of early modern concepts of sound, and the rise of a new physics based on experimentation and mechanical explanation. (shrink)

Ingvar Johansson has argued that there are not only determinate universals, but also determinable ones. I here argue that this view is misguided by reviving a line of argument to the following effect: what makes determinates falling under a same determinable similar cannot be distinct from what makes them different. If true, some similarities — imperfect similarities between simple determinate properties — are not grounded in any kind of property-sharing. I suggest that determinables are better understood as maximal disjunctions of (...) brutely and imperfectly similar determinates. Such brute similarities have been thought to clash with realism about universals. I argue that this worry stems from the mistaken assumption that perfect and imperfect similarities are relations of a same kind. If exact and inexact resemblances are distinct and heterogeneous explananda, the realist about universals might explain the first thanks to property-sharing, while happily leaving imperfect similarities between properties unexplained. (shrink)

La frappe de la monnaie et le timbrage des amphores relèvent d’une même technique, celle du sceau, qui est la marque d’une autorité publique. Cette étude analyse les rapprochements entre la composition des types monétaires et celle des emblèmes sur les timbres. Elle relève les nombreux exemples d’emploi de la même image. Elle étudie la signification juridique du scellement, qui a pour effet d’indiquer l’objet dokimon, agréé par la cité. Elle compare les modes de contrôle de la monnaie et des (...) amphores. Enfin, elle met en évidence les coïncidences chronologiques entre l’apparition des timbres et la réforme monétaire de 390 ainsi que le passage des timbres anciens aux timbres récents et le passage du groupe IV et au groupe V, vers 335. La prise de Thasos par Philippe V en 202 pourrait aussi marquer l’histoire des timbres et des monnaies. (shrink)

In the current article and contrary to a widespread assumption, I argue that Humeanism and ontological emergence can peacefully coexist. Such a coexistence can be established by reviving elements of John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of science, in which an idiosyncratic account of diachronic emergence is associated with extensions of the Humean mosaic and the correlative coming into being of new best system laws, which have the peculiarity of being temporally indexed. Incidentally, this reconciliation of Humeanism and emergence allows for conceiving (...) the autonomy of the special sciences in an interesting way, consistently with the reductionist ideal of a unified science. (shrink)

Apprendre, c'est d'abord élever et s'élever puisque, en français, apprendre a toujours le sens passif (s'instruire) et actif (instruire). Apprendre, c'est ensuite enseigner : il s'agit d'une éducation, intentionnelle, méthodique, programmée. Apprendre, c'est aussi former. Ce verbe correspond avant tout à l'apprentissage d'un métier. Apprendre, c'est enfin échanger, imiter, s'initier, apprendre à être. Tels sont les enjeux de cette réflexion sur les valeurs de l'éducation conçue comme apprentissage de l'humanité.

En dépit de sept lois intervenues entre 1988 et 2013 en matière de transparence dans la vie publique et de lutte contre la corruption, la France est caractérisée par un sentiment de banalisation des scandales politiques. Ces derniers, qui conduisent parfois à la démission ou à la condamnation d’un responsable politique, semblent d’abord revêtir une dimension « sacrificielle ». Or cette situation, qui aboutit à ne plus voir dans certains manquements éthiques des scandales politiques ou qui prive ceux-ci, lorsqu’ils éclatent, (...) de leur effet utile pour la construction de l’État de droit, est révélatrice d’une culture juridique française fondée sur une croyance en une « incarnation » du pouvoir. L’objet de l’article est dès lors d’expliquer les raisons de cette spécificité, avant de montrer que le système français promeut lui-même une distinction entre la fonction politique et son titulaire, et l’instauration d’un « censeur » au service de la première. (shrink)

L'actualité sociolinguistique des Départements français de la Caraïbe et de l'Océan indien illustre les contradictions internes qui agitent les sociétés créoles. Elle souligne également la difficulté que rencontrent ces territoires pour envisager leurs rapports entre eux. L'action de l'État destinée à valoriser les langues et cultures régionales dans la République, a relancé le débat public sur la question linguistique dans les aires créolophones françaises. L'existence d'un ou plusieurs créoles, les modalités de son écriture, les critères de sa généralisation dans le (...) cadre de son enseignement comme langue, sont au coeur du débat. Les défenseurs du créole écrit chercheraient à substituer une langue déviante et savante aux langues vernaculaires, niant de fait les particularités linguistiques de chaque territoire au profit d'un espéranto créole. L'analyse du développement d'un mouvement de revendications linguistique et culturelle dans les aires créoles françaises montre l'existence d'une dynamique identitaire revisitée à partir de la diversité culturelle de ces territoiresFrom a sociolinguistic standpoint the French “Departments” of the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean currently illustrate internal contradictions within Creole societies. These territories are also confronted with difficulties in establishing relationships between themselves. State action destined to promote regional languages and cultures in France has renewed public debate on the linguistic issue in French Creole speaking areas. The existence of one or several varieties of Creole, their modes of writing, the criteria of their generalisation in the context of how they are taught as a language, are all at the very centre of the debate. It is possible that the defenders of written Creole try to substitute a deviant and academic language for vernacular languages thus denying in fact the linguistic particularities of each territory in favour of a kind of Creole esperanto. The analysis of the development of a linguistic and cultural movement claiming a better status in French Creole areas shows the existence of revisited identity dynamics from the cultural diversity in those territories. (shrink)