1. ptie. La nature des choses -- 2. ptie. La réalité mentale -- 3. ptie. La vie affective -- 4. ptie. La condition humaine -- 5. ptie. Les voies de la libération.

Richard Popkin’s meticulous translation--the most complete since the eighteenth century--contains selections from thirty-nine articles, as well as from Bayle’s four Clarifications. The bulk of the major articles of philosophical and theological interest--those that influenced Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Voltaire and formed the basis for so many eighteenth-century discussions--are present, including David, Manicheans, Paulicians, Pyrrho, Rorarius, Simonides, Spinoza, and Zeno of Elea.

Analyse historique et sociologique de la connaissance scientifique.

An advanced introduction to the new philosophical anthropology and an understanding of the most contemporary developments in it.

Claude Calame nous donne ici une édition révisée de son livre désormais classique, Les Chœurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque, publié en 1977 aux éditions de l’Ateneo. Le livre était la version imprimée de sa thèse présentée pour soutenance à l’Université de Lausanne, rédigée en grande partie quand il enseignait à l’Université d’Urbino, grand centre alors de recherches sur la poétique grecque et la sémiotique. Il se présentait en deux volumes, correspondant à deux parties. Le deuxième vol...

According to a popular version of the current evolutionary attitude in cognitive science, the mind is a massive aggregate of autonomous innate computational devices, each addressing specific adaptive problems. Our aim in this paper is to show that although this version of the attitude, which we call GOFEP , does not suffer from fatal flaws that would make it incoherent or otherwise conceptually inadequate, it will nevertheless prove unacceptable to most cognitive scientists today. To show this, we raise a common (...) objection to the concept of innateness, not to mount an attack on GOFEP but to study how its proponents have attempted to meet that challenge. The aim of this move is to show that GOFEP cannot face the challenge without, as it were, losing its soul. There is, or so we will argue, something deep at the heart of GOFEP that prevents its proponents from meeting the challenge. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans L'Homme et la Société, 1988, vol. 90, n° 90, p. 15-24. Il est également accessible ici. Résumé : Les fondateurs du socialisme ont en commun de penser l'avènement d'une coupure historique, d'une révolution marquant le début d'un nouveau monde riche de rythmes temporels sans précédents. Mais leurs constructions des temps sociaux divergent profondément. Saint-Simon, puis Eugène Buret, Constantin Pecqueur, font du passé de l'Europe un temps scandé par la succession de systèmes (...) - XIXe (...) siècle – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Nothing has yet been done, and, here, in the middle of the twentieth century, it is fast becoming too late to draw up a suitable catalogue of the works of human wisdom. We are forced to project for the future the complete realization of our desires. This future will no doubt discover a conscious and effective organization of thought and action—a constant good fortune in the pursuit of legitimate satisfactions through a total mastery of natural forces—in a word, a perfect (...) and reciprocal adaptation between man and that part of the universe in which he lives. All this, or most of it, still remains to be done; but much has already been said in the five thousand years that men have been writing. An intelligent observer arriving from Sirius would doubtless be especially struck by the extraordinary gap separating here on earth what is so well said from what is so badly carried out. Or rather he would wonder how it is that beings as highly gifted as men, judging from the knowledge and wisdom they have accumulated, still make such ineffective and even harmful use of the means at their disposal. The most indulgent hypothesis would be to see in this the result of a temporary misunderstanding owing to the great speed with which human thought evolves. Our observer would resume his journey then, resolved to return after a hundred years or two, sure that he would then find that man had bridged the gap and become as great in what he does as in what he knows. (shrink)

Dans le cadre d'une réflexion sur l'expérience de la vérité, l'évocation de la crise moderniste rappelle ou précise des enjeux dont l'acuité explique, pour une part, la convocation du Concile Vatican Il. Sans nier les « avancées salutaires » de ce concile, l'auteur pose en point de départ de sa réflexion la question : Peut-on dire que le concile n'a pas empêché le retour au sein de l'Église catholique d'un « antimodernisme » ? Examinant tour à tour le rapport de (...) la vérité révélée et de la méthodologie scientifique, le problème du pluralisme dans l'Église catholique et le rapport entre dogme et herméneutique, il aboutit à une réflexion sur ce qui constitue aujourd'hui, et constituera de plus en plus, la situation du chrétien par rapport à la vérité de sa propre foi qu'il expérimentera dans un monde interreligieux; ce qui ne peut que confirmer une inévitable tension: « L'expérience effective de la vérité est celle d'une recherche méthodique, mais elle est aussi celle de l'acquiescement à un don. »In the realm of a reflection on the experience of truth, the evocation of the modernist crisis is brought to mind and focuses on what is at stake, the acuteness which explains, for one thing, the convocation of Vatican Council II. Without denying the « salutary advances » of that council, the author begins his reflection with the question : « Can one say that the council did not forestall the return, in the heart of the Catholic Church, to an «anti modernism» ? The author examines one after the other the relationship of revealed truth and scientific methodology, the problem of pluralism in the Catholic Church, and the relationship between dogma and hermeneutics. He arrives at a reflection on that which constitutes today, and will constitute more and more, the situation of the Christian in relation to the truth of his own faith, which he will experience in an irreligious world. This can only confirm an inevitable tension : «The effective expe7ience of the truth is that of a methodological research, but is also that of accepting a gift». ». (shrink)

This paper is concerned with adaptive learning and coordination processes. Implementing agent-based modeling techniques (Learning Classifier Systems, LCS), we focus on the twofold impact of cognitive and environmental complexity on learning and coordination. Within this framework, we introduce the notion of Adaptive Learning Agent with Rule-based Memory (ALARM), which is a particular class of Artificial Adaptive Agent (AAA, Holland and Miller 1991). We show that equilibrium is approached to a high degree, but never perfectly reached. We also demonstrate that memorization (...) and learning capacities depend upon the relative discordance between the cognitive complexity of agents' mental models and the degree of stability of the environment. (shrink)