Apuntes para un ensayo sobre la dialéctica de la conciencia -- Entre la retama y el laurel -- Apéndice.

Epistemic logics are essential to the design of logical systems that capture elements of reasoning about knowledge. In this paper, we study the computability of unifiability and the unification types in several epistemic logics.

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)

Emotions are traditionally considered to be brief states that last for seconds or a few minutes at most. However, due to pioneering theoretical work of Frijda and recent empirical studies, it has become clear that the duration of emotions is actually highly variable with durations ranging from a few seconds to several hours, or even longer. We review research on determinants of emotion duration. Three classes of determinants are identified: features related to the (a) emotion-eliciting event (event duration and event (...) appraisal), (b) emotion itself (nature of the emotion component, nature of the emotion, and emotion intensity), and (c) emotion-experiencing person (dispositions and emotion regulatory actions). Initial evidence on the psychological and neural mechanisms that underlie their effects is discussed. (shrink)

Farabi et l'école d'Alexandrie, est la première étude consacrée à l'ensemble des thèmes de l'œuvre de celui qui fut l'un des plus grands philosophes arabes.

_ Source: _Volume 31, Issue 1, pp 48 - 74 According to Hobbes, a commonwealth can only occur when the natural multitude of men are made one thanks to a covenantal device. The artificial unity of the political community can be seen as strengthened by the use of concepts that reflect some natural unity, such as “body” or “person”. Both notions can indeed be found in Hobbes’s political treatises, but the degree of importance attached to them varies greatly. The key (...) to this evolution is to be found in _De cive_, where Hobbes explicitly dismisses the notion of a body politic and substitutes the concept of person for it. This paper examines the significance of this conceptual change by following its trajectory from _Elements of Law_ to _Leviathan_ and discussing its implications for Hobbes’s understanding of civil unity. (shrink)

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)

What reasons can a physicist have to reject the principle of a mathematical method, which he nonetheless uses and which he used frequently in his unpublished works? We are concerned here with Galileo’s doubts and objections against Cavalieri’s “geometry of indivisibles.” One may be astonished by Galileo’s behaviour: Cavalieri’s principle is implied by the Galilean mathematization of naturally accelerated motion; some Galilean demonstrations in fact hinge on it. Yet, in the Discorsi Galileo seems to be opposed to this principle. e (...) fundamental reason of Galileo’s reluctance with respect to Cavalieri’s geometry is to be sought in Galileo’s ideal of intelligibility. It is true that Galilean physics, and more particularly Galileo’s theories of motion and matter, faces deep paradoxes, which Cavalieri’s geometry succeeds to avoid, thanks to a clear determination of the concept of “aggregatum.” But while avoiding these difficulties, Cavalieri does not furnish any solution for the problems raised by Galilean physics. (shrink)

This volume handles in various perspectives the concept of function and the nature of functional explanations, topics much discussed since two major and conflicting accounts have been raised by Larry Wright and Robert Cummins’s papers in the 1970s. Here, both Wright’s ”etiological theory of functions’ and Cummins’s ”systemic’ conception of functions are refined and elaborated in the light of current scientific practice, with papers showing how the ”etiological’ theory faces several objections and may in reply be revisited, while its counterpart (...) became ever more sophisticated, as researchers discovered fresh applications for it. Relying on a firm knowledge of the original positions and debates, this volume presents cutting-edge research evincing the complexities that today pertain in function theory in various sciences. Alongside original papers from authors central to the controversy, work by emerging researchers taking novel perspectives will add to the potential avenues to be followed in the future. Not only does the book adopt no a priori assumptions about the scope of functional explanations, it also incorporates material from several very different scientific domains, e.g. neurosciences, ecology, or technology. In general, functions are implemented in mechanisms; and functional explanations in biology have often an essential relation with natural selection. These two basic claims set the stage for this book’s coverage of investigations concerning both ”functional’ explanations, and the ”metaphysics’ of functions. It casts new light on these claims, by testing them through their confrontation with scientific developments in biology, psychology, and recent developments concerning the metaphysics of realization. Rather than debating a single theory of functions, this book presents the richness of philosophical issues raised by functional discourse throughout the various sciences.​ Content Level » Research Keywords » Causal role theory of functions - Determination of content - Ecosystem selection - Etiological theory of function - Evolutionary biology - Functional explanations - Historical concepts in biology - Larry Wright - Neurosciences - New mechanism - Selected effects functions - Systemic theory of functions - William Wimsatt Related subjects » Anthropology & Archaeology - Epistemology & Philosophy of Science - Evolutionary & Developmental Biology - Neuroscience - Philosophy TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction.- Section I. Biological functions and functional explanations: genes, cells, organisms and ecosystems.- Part 1.A. Functions, organization and development in life sciences.- Chapter 1. William C. Wimsatt. Evolution and the Stability of Functional Architectures.- Chapter 2. Denis M. Walsh. Teleological Emergence: The Autonomy of Evo-Devo.- Chapter 3. Jean Gayon. Does oxygen have a function, or: where should the regress of biological functions stop?.- Part 1.B. Functional pluralism for biologists? Chapter 4. Frédéric Bouchard. How ecosystem evolution strengthens the case for functional pluralism.- Chapter 5. Robert N. Brandon. A general case for functional pluralism.- Chapter 6. Philippe Huneman. Weak realism in the etiological theory of functions.- Section 2. Section II. Psychology, philosophy of mind and technology: Functions in a man’s world.- Part 2.A. 2A. Metaphysics, function and philosophy of mind.- Chapter 7. Carl Craver. Functions and Mechanisms in Contemporary Neuroscience.- Chapter 8. Carl Gillett. Understanding the sciences through the fog of ”functionalism.’.- 2.B. Philosophy of technology, design and functions.- Chapter 9. Fran¸ coise Longy. Artifacts and Organisms: A Case for a New Etiological Theory of Functions.- Chapter 10. Pieter Vermaas and Wybo Houkes. Functions as Epistemic Highlighters: An Engineering Account of Technical, Biological and Other Functions.- Epilogue.- Larry Wright. Revising teleological explanations: reflections three decades on. (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.

The paper presents a new logic for reasoning about the formation of beliefs through perception or through inference in non-omniscient resource-bounded agents. The logic distinguishes the concept of explicit belief from the concept of background knowledge. This distinction is reflected in its formal semantics and axiomatics: we use a non-standard semantics putting together a neighborhood semantics for explicit beliefs and relational semantics for background knowledge, and we have specific axioms in the logic highlighting the relationship between the two concepts. Mental (...) operations of perceptive type and inferential type, having effects on epistemic states of agents, are primitives in the object language of the logic. At the semantic level, they are modelled as special kinds of model-update operations, in the style of dynamic epistemic logic. Results about axiomatization, decidability and complexity for the logic are given in the paper. (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.

Dans cet article, on montre que l’hypothèse de la « matière pensante » introduite spéculativement dans le livre IV de l’Essai sur l’Entendement humain, n’est pas seulement l’instrument d’une critique épistémologique destinée à souligner les limitations de notre connaissance, elle est aussi révélatrice des inclinations métaphysiques réelles de Locke. S’il est impossible de s’assurer par la connaissance de la nature de la substance pensante, il est permis néanmoins d’entretenir à son égard une opinion fondée sur des arguments probables. La croyance (...) est en effet aux yeux de Locke un champ d’exercice légitime de la rationalité, un champ qu’il sera particulièrement nécessaire de cultiver lorsque la connaissance manquera et qu’il s’agira de se déterminer sur des questions cruciales – au nombre desquelles il faut compter assurément celle de la substance et de la destination de l’âme. On examine ici les textes et les arguments qui ont conduit la plupart des interprètes de Locke à lui prêter une croyance « dualiste » de type cartésien, favorisant l’opinion de l’immatérialité de l’esprit humain. On montre que ces textes et ces arguments non seulement ne sont pas concluants mais peuvent même être mis au service de la thèse adverse. Que Locke ait cru en la probable matérialité de l’âme humaine est d'autant plus plausible que les arguments donnés dans la troisième lettre à Stillingfleet en faveur de la concevabilité de l'hypothèse, fonctionnent aussi tacitement comme des arguments de probabilité : l'hypothèse ne contredit pas le message scripturaire, elle permet une meilleure conception de l'analogie générale du vivant, elle est mieux conforme aux requisits ontologiques de l'existence et de l'identité. (shrink)

In this paper, we show that the implication fragment of classical propositional logic is finitary for unification with parameters.

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)

Les philosophes ne rient pas, ou pas souvent. Le sage ne rit qu'en tremblant, dit le proverbe. Non ridere, sed intelligere ; il ne faut pas rire, mais comprendre, écrivait Spinoza. Les rares moments où les philosophes «lâchent prise» et se laissent aller à la plaisanterie sont d'autant plus intéressants. En voici quelques-uns. Ce livre ne vise pas à l'exhaustivité. Il n'a qu'une ambition : celle d'instruire en amusant.

Ecology in principle is tied to evolution, since communities and ecosystems result from evolution and ecological conditions determine fitness values. Yet the two disciplines of evolution and ecology were not unified in the twentieth-century. The architects of the Modern Synthesis, and especially Julian Huxley, constantly pushed for such integration, but the major ideas of the Synthesis—namely, the privileged role of selection and the key role of gene frequencies in evolution—did not directly or immediately translate into ecological science. In this paper (...) I consider five stages through which the Synthesis was integrated into ecology and distinguish between various ways in which a possible integration was gained. I start with Elton’s animal ecology, then consider successively Ford’s ecological genetics in the 1940s, the major textbook Principles of animal ecology edited by Allee et al., and the debates over the role of competition in population regulation in the 1950s, ending with Hutchinson’s niche concept and McArthur and Wilson’s Principles of Island Biogeography viewed as a formal transposition of Modern Synthesis explanatory schemes. I will emphasize the key role of founders of the Synthesis at each stage of this very nonlinear history. (shrink)

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