Polichinelle : Ici c’est marrant. Qu’est-ce que c’est que ces petites cages que vous avez là? C’est pour enfermer des souris? M. Dupontlagueule : Ce sont les microphones, Polichinelle. Tu parleras tout de suite dans l’un de ces microphones. Polichinelle : Que se passera-t-il alors? M. Dupontlagueule : On t’entendra dans le monde entier. Walter Benjamin, Chahut autour de Polichinelle. Walter Benjamin est, semble-t-il, l’un des rares philosophes à s’être interrogé sur la radio et sans d...

This paper argues that one can advocate a moral imperative to pursue enhancement technologies while at the same time rejecting the historical reality of progress and holding a pessimistic view of the future. The first half of the paper puts forth several arguments for why progress is illusory and why one has good reason to be pessimistic about the future of humanity (and posthumanity). The second half then argues that this is entirely consistent with also championing the futurological vision of (...) transhumanism. The claim is that, relative to the alternatives proposed, this vision actually offers the safest route into the future, even if it also entails an increase in the probability of self-annihilation. (shrink)

In the ordinary modal language, KD is the modal logic determined by the class of all serial frames. In this paper, we demonstrate that KD is nullary.

A full understanding of emotions and emotion characteristics can only be reached when their dynamic nature is taken into account. As such, a primary objective of the present study is to describe and account for variability in temporal profiles of experienced emotional intensity. Participants were asked to make detailed drawings of intensity profiles of recently experienced episodes of anger, sadness, joy and affection. Functional data analysis revealed three features that together accounted for 84% of the total variability: (i) steepness at (...) onset; (ii) skewness; and (iii) the number of peaks. Emotions differed with regard to the first two features, with the rise at onset being steeper for sadness and joy and affection being the most negatively skewed emotion under study. Individual differences regarding each of the three features were found, however, they did not strongly generalise across emotions. (shrink)

This book aims to make the pragmatist intellectual framework accessible to organization and management scholars. It presents some fundamental concepts of Pragmatism, their potential application to the study of organizations and the resulting theoretical, methodological, and practical issues.

This paper develops an account of the normative basis of priority setting in health care as combining the values which a given society holds for the common good of its members, with the universal provided by a principle of common humanity. We discuss national differences in health basket in Europe and argue that health care decision-making in complex social and moral frameworks is best thought of as anchored in such a principle by drawing on the philosophy of need. We show (...) that health care needs are ethically ‘thick’ needs whose psychological and social construction can best be understood in terms of David Wiggins’s notion of vital need: a person’s need is vital when failure to meet it leads to their harm and suffering. The moral dimension of priority setting which operates across different societies’ health care systems is located in the demands both of and on any society to avoid harm to its members. (shrink)

This study aims at justifying one of Gilbert Durand’s postulates according to which all imaginaire (as a result of mental imagery) is anchored in our physiology but by directing it rather now towards our neurophysiology. New advances in neurobiology, connectome and neurogenomics lead to rethinking the framework of psychic activity and the induction of neural images.

Philippe Descola has become one of the most important anthropologists working today, and Beyond Nature and Culture has been a major influence in European intellectual life since its French publication in 2005. Here, finally, it is brought to English-language readers. At its heart is a question central to both anthropology and philosophy: what is the relationship between nature and culture? Culture—as a collective human making, of art, language, and so forth—is often seen as essentially different from nature, which is (...) portrayed as a collective of the nonhuman world, of plants, animals, geology, and natural forces. Descola shows this essential difference to be, however, not only a specifically Western notion, but also a very recent one. Drawing on ethnographic examples from around the world and theoretical understandings from cognitive science, structural analysis, and phenomenology, he formulates a sophisticated new framework, the “four ontologies”— animism, totemism, naturalism, and analogism—to account for all the ways we relate ourselves to nature. By thinking beyond nature and culture as a simple dichotomy, Descola offers nothing short of a fundamental reformulation by which anthropologists and philosophers can see the world afresh. (shrink)

Since its origin in the early 20th century, the modern synthesis theory of evolution has grown to represent the orthodox view on the process of organic evolution. It is a powerful and successful theory. Its defining features include the prominence it accords to genes in the explanation of development and inheritance, and the role of natural selection as the cause of adaptation. Since the advent of the 21st century, however, the modern synthesis has been subject to repeated and sustained challenges. (...) In the last two decades, evolutionary biology has witnessed unprecedented growth in the understanding of those processes that underwrite the development of organisms and the inheritance of characters. The empirical advances usher in challenges to the conceptual foundations of evolutionary theory. Many current commentators charge that the new biology of the 21st century calls for a revision, extension, or wholesale rejection of the modern synthesis theory of evolution. Defenders of the modern synthesis maintain that the theory can accommodate the exciting new advances in biology, without forfeiting its central precepts. The original essays collected in this volume—by evolutionary biologists, philosophers of science, and historians of biology—survey and assess the various challenges to the modern synthesis arising from the new biology of the 21st century. Taken together, the essays cover a spectrum of views, from those that contend that the modern synthesis can rise to the challenges of the new biology, with little or no revision required, to those that call for the abandonment of the modern synthesis. (shrink)

" Mai 68, avec ses slogans parfois stupides et son jargon marxisant - déjà kitsch à l'époque -, était une période joyeuse. On s'y levait tard pour gagner moins. On faisait des pieds de nez aux statues des grands hommes. On prenait au sérieux la question du bonheur. Ceux qui haïssent Mai 68, au fond, sont à plaindre : ils avouent que déjà, à vingt ans, ils étaient des petits vieux qui regardaient passer l'avenir dans un rétroviseur. Et pourtant ce (...) sont eux les vrais utopistes. Ils croient qu'une victoire électorale suffira à faire perdre le goût de l'émancipation à celles et à ceux qui en jouissent. Si ce n'était pas si revanchard, ce serait presque émouvant de naïveté. ". (shrink)

The unification problem in a normal modal logic is to determine, given a formula.

A compromise is an agreement that involves mutual concessions. Each party gets less than it feels entitled to, but agrees to it because the situation it anticipates under the deal is better than the one it expects in the absence of a deal: conflict, exit or arbitration by a third party. Some compromises, however, are bad, and others are good. This article discusses three conjectures about what it is that makes a compromise good. Is a good compromise an honourable compromise, (...) one that enables each party to save face? Is it rather a fair compromise, one that contributes to the progress of justice independently defined? Or is it a Pareto-improving compromise, one that changes things in such a way that it ends up making everyone better off than under the status quo? A compromise is never as good as a consensus, but it is generally better than nothing, and often achievable when a consensus is not. And when it is, trying to make it as good as possible in each of the three ways described is always worthwhile. © 2012 Government and Opposition Ltd. (shrink)

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the division between nature and culture has been fundamental to Western thought. In this groundbreaking work, renowned anthropologist Philippe Descola seeks to break down this divide, arguing for a departure from the anthropocentric model and its rigid dualistic conception of nature and culture as distinct phenomena. In its stead, Descola proposes a radical new worldview, in which beings and objects, human and nonhuman, are understood through the complex relationships that they possess with (...) one another. The Ecology of Others presents a compelling challenge to anthropologists, ecologists, and environmental studies scholars to rethink the way we conceive of humans, objects, and the environment. Thought-provoking and engagingly written, it will be required reading for all those interested in moving beyond the moving beyond the confines of this fascinating debate." --Publisher's note. (shrink)

The sense of shared values is a specific aspect of human sociality. It originates from reciprocal social exchanges that include imitation, and empathy, but also negotiation from which meanings, values and norms are eventually constructed with others. Research suggests that this process starts from birth via imitation and mirroring processes that are important foundations of sociality providing a basic sense of social connectedness and mutual acknowledgment with others. From the second month, mirroring, imitative and other contagious responses are bypassed. Neonatal (...) imitation gives way to first signs of reciprocation (primary intersubjectivity), and joint attention in reference to objects (secondary intersubjectivity). We review this development and propose a third level of intersubjectivity, that is the emergence of values that are jointly represented and negotiated with others, as well as the development of an ethical stance accompanying emerging theories of mind from about 4 years of age. We propose that tertiary intersubjectivity is an ontogenetically new process of value negotiation and mutual recognition that are the cardinal trademarks of human sociality. (shrink)

Les frontières entre philosophie et théologie sont redessinées pour permettre le dialogue. L'ouvrage est structuré en trois parties : délimitation des frontières, puis analyse de la place de la philosophie au sein de l'institution confessionnelle, et enfin évocation de quelques figures contemporaines qui ont essayé de jeter des ponts entre ces deux pôles.

En Occident le statut du corps est inséparable de l’histoire du dualisme métaphysique. Or dans ce contexte le corps est relégué. Au mieux il est reconnu comme ce qui nous lie à la Nature et ce qui nous contraint à prendre en considération le monde. Dans ces conditions, et même si le dualisme présente une dimension artificielle, il semble que toute tentative de revenir vers le corps comme ce qui nous est le plus propre et le plus essentiel soit voué (...) à l’échec. Penser le corps, n’est-ce pas, en effet, l’insérer dans une démarche qui par avance implique son dépassement? (shrink)

Au monde harmonieux des Anciens, la science moderne a substitué un univers régi par des forces matérielles indifférentes à nos sentiments et nos valeurs. Tandis que certains déplorent ce désenchantement du monde, Spinoza (1632-1677) a voulu montrer que la connaissance rationnelle de la nature pouvait néanmoins conduire au bonheur le plus parfait. Mais comment concilier l'affirmation de l'universalité du déterminisme avec l'idée de liberté humaine? En quoi aborder les sentiments comme des figures géométriques permet-il d'en devenir maître? Cet ouvrage propose (...) d'éclairer les paradoxes de la philosophie de Spinoza et de montrer comment, jusque dans l'abstraction de son mode d'exposition géométrique, elle enrichit notre compréhension de la vie humaine."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Luther, comme beaucoup d’autres, a eu une pratique de la prédication et un discours sur la prédication. En héritant du programme barthien d’une « théologie de la Parole de Dieu » (Wort-Gottes-Theologie), la Lutherforschung a semblé creuser l’écart entre cette pratique et ce discours. Aujourd’hui, les attendus dogmatiques de la Wort-Gottes-Theologie (définition de la théologie comme kérygme) comme ses revendications pratiques (la prédication au centre de l’action ecclésiale) déterminent et barrent en partie l’accès à plusieurs opérations de pensée significatives des (...) recherches de Luther dans les décennies 1510-1530. Certaines d’entre elles se heurtent délibérément aux exigences universitaires que la théologie, jusqu’à Luther, avait accepté de se laisser imposer. On en examinera trois : transformations de l’exégèse de Rm 10, 17, fides ex auditu ; mise au point d’un concept du prêchable comme indice du vrai en théologie ; définition d’un scopus generalis de toute prédication. Ces trois opérations furent des tentatives ; elles ne furent pas toutes couronnées de succès. Elles inaugurent cependant le programme d’une recherche à mener sur l’objet de la prédication dans les premières théologies de la Réforme. (shrink)