A discussão sobre a relação entre capitalismo e democracia constitui uma das mais complexas e polêmicas no interior das ciências sociais e políticas: não há dúvida de que aí se encontra engajada a compreensão dos valores mais fundamentais das sociedades ocidentais contemporâneas, quer seja a liberdade, a igualdade, o progresso, o mérito, a responsabilidade, enfim, as concepções substanciais maiores que definem a identidade subjetiva ao mesmo tempo em que a vinculam a uma forma desejável de vida coletiva. Assim, se as (...) divergências normativas se exprimem amplamente no centro de todos os debates, é necessário retornar aos pressupostos descritivos e históricos que sustentam a exploração da modernidade, e às ligações entre regime político e campo econômico. Para isso, serão apresentadas brevemente algumas teses de Cornelius Castoriadis que, ao propor uma radical disjunção principiológica dos imaginários sociais de autonomia democrática e do sistema capitalista, pretende refletir sobre as razões de seu entrelaçamento, bem como de sua complexa articulação em uma eventual superação do impasse político-econômico atual. (shrink)

The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.

Subjectivism about well-being holds that an object contributes to one's well-being to the extent that one has a pro-attitude toward this object under certain conditions. Most subjectivists have contended that these conditions should be ideal. One reason in favor of this idea is that when people adapt their pro-attitudes to situations of oppression, the levels of well-being they may attain is diminished. Nevertheless, I first argue that appealing to idealized conditions of autonomy or any other condition to erase or replace (...) adaptive pro-attitudes is mistaken. Second, I show that the most natural version of subjectivism that does not appeal to any such idealizing condition can explain why the well-being of people having adaptive pro-attitudes should not be restricted to the fulfillment of these pro-attitudes. In sum, the existence of adaptive preferences does not militate in favor of the introduction of conditions of idealization but against it. (shrink)

La théorie de la perception emprunte, chez Descartes, deux chemins différents. D’un côté, la perception interne se développe selon le paradigme visuel de l’intuitus ; de l’autre, la perception externe est pensée à l’aune d’un modèle discursif. À la présentation s’opposerait donc une signification. Or, contre les commentateurs qui ont fait de Descartes le philosophe ayant ouvert l’ère de la représentation, l’auteur montre que le modèle discursif prime sur le paradigme visuel et que bien que Descartes affirme que les idées (...) sont comme des images et des tableaux, son modèle de la perception est en fait celui de la fable, c’est-à-dire d’un texte. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the view that our knowledge of our desires is inferential and based on the consciousness we have of our emotions, and on our experiences of pain and pleasure.

If non-human animals experience wellbeing and suffering, such welfare consequences arguably should be included in a social welfare evaluation. Yet economic evaluations almost universally ignore non-human animals, in part because axiomatic social choice theory has failed to propose and characterize multi-species social welfare functions. Here we propose axioms and functional forms to fill this gap. We provide a range of alternative representations, characterizing a broad range of possibilities for multi-species social welfare. Among these, we identify a new characterization of additively-separable (...) generalized (multi-species) total utilitarianism. The multispecies setting permits a novel, weak species-level separability axiom with important consequences. We provide examples to illustrate that non-separability across species is implausible in a multi-species setting, in part because good lives for different species are at very different welfare levels. Finally, we explore the consequences for evaluating climate policy and understanding speciesism and non-climate environmental goals, such as biodiversity. (shrink)

La catégorie des anormaux, dont Foucault fait la généalogie dans son cours de 1974-1975 au Collège de France, a complètement disparu au début du XXe siècle. Par l'extension illimitée de l'anormal qu'elle permettait et par la somatisation de toutes les pathologies physiques ou mentales qui la soutenait, cette catégorie peut cependant être rapprochée de notre notion actuelle de « handicap », et tout particulièrement des handicaps psychiques. Ce rapprochement permet d'apprécier ce qui a changé dans notre rapport aux normes. L'intégration (...) sociale et la modification des anormaux a remplacé leur exclusion et contention. Mais l'inquiétude des normes est toujours aussi forte, et s'articule désormais autour d'une recherche de sécurité dont le handicap est l'expression. La méthode généalogique permet ainsi l'étude des lignes de fracture de cette notion, révélatrice des problèmes que produisent notre volonté de prendre médicalement en charge de supposés incurables. (shrink)

La fenomenología de la donación de Jean-Luc Marion ocupa hoy un lugar central, tanto en filosofía como en teología, desde que el anuncio del fin de la metafísica hizo posible la cuestión de Dios desde un punto de vista fenomenológico. Sin embargo, su pensamiento sobre la fenomenalidad presenta un reto formidable. Puesto que Dios ya no es el Dios de la metafísica, su fenomenalidad ya no puede basarse en una de las modalidades de la presencia, lo que nos lleva a (...) pensar en una fenomenalidad de la ausencia o del repliegue. A través de un análisis de las tres modalidades de lo invisible, el autor muestra que lejos de lo invisible y de lo que no se ve, la fenomenalidad de Dios debe ser pensada como la manifestación de una ausencia, y no a través de la negatividad de la no existencia, menos aún a través de la del no ser, sino la de la positividad paradójica de la no existencia. (shrink)

Foucault’s Forgotten Marxism. This article tries to point out several methodological issues concerning Foucault’s Surveiller et punir, such as the equivocal status of some of Foucault’s main concepts, or the assumed homogeneity of the various disciplinary institutions analyzed in this book. And it aims at suggesting that such issues might find a solution, should one consider the Marxist background on which, as the Lectures at the Collège de France of the year 1973 clearly show, Foucault’s theories were dependant. In the (...) opinion of the author, only in as much as this heritage is accepted and seriously taken into account, shall Foucault’s concepts and theses regain their political and critical pertinence. (shrink)

In _The Marriage of Aesthetics and Ethics_, fifteen authors reflect on the nature of friendship and love and on the complex relation between art and morality.

Entre les abstractions de l'anthropologie et les approximations de l'humanitarisme, il n'est qu'un seul chemin pour retrouver l'humanité qui s'éloigne: l'exactitude philosophique. La Renaissance italienne guide ces recherches, qui tentent d'imposer une clarté historique à des principes vagues et d'opposer des principes clairs à la fuite des idées.

L’enseignement de la méthodologie scientifique en Psychologie confère un rôle paradigmatique à l’opérationnalisation des « hypothèses générales » : une idée sans rapport précis à l’observation concrète se traduit par la tentative de rejeter une hypothèse statistique nulle au profit d’une hypothèse alternative, dite de recherche, qui opérationnalise l’idée générale. Cette démarche s’avère particulièrement inadaptée à la découverte de lois empiriques. Une loi empirique est définie comme un trou nomothétique émergeant d’un référentiel de la forme Ω x M(X) x M(Y), (...) où Ω est un ensemble d’événements ou d’objets datés dont certains états dans l’ensemble M(Y) sont par hypothèse impossibles étant données certaines conditions initiales décrites dans l’ensemble M(X). Cette approche permet de préciser le regard que l’historien des connaissances peut porter sur les avancées descriptives et nomothétiques de la Psychologie empirique contemporaine. (shrink)

RESUMEN A pesar de la declaración de la muerte del Sujeto en la segunda mitad del siglo XX, tanto Marion como Badiou mantienen esta categoría en el centro de sus filosofías. Sin embargo, para poder hacerlo abandonan sus determinaciones metafísicas de principio y fundamento con el fin de desplazarlo dentro de una posición secundaria de Sujeto de un acontecimiento. Así, el Sujeto, en tanto que substancia, da lugar a un proceso de subjetivación que responde a un acontecimiento que, desde siempre, (...) lo llama. En este texto se muestra que esta estructura apostólica del Sujeto contemporáneo también tiene sus raíces en cierta lectura disidente de Descartes, con la condición de que aceptemos, en una lógica derridiana, escuchar la polifonía de sus textos filosóficos. ABSTRACT Despite the death of the Subject during the second half of the 20th century, both Marion and Badiou maintain this category at the centre of their philosophies. However, in order to do so, they abandon its metaphysical determinations of principle and foundation to displace it within a secondary position of Subject of an event. Thus, the Subject as a substance is replaced by a process of subjectivation that responds to an event that since ever calls it. We show in this text that this apostolic structure of the contemporary Subject has its deep roots in a dissenting reading of Descartes, if we accept to listen, with Derrida, all the polyphonic richness of philosophical texts. (shrink)

The mimetic theory forged by René Girard is completely closed by its own violence. Given that human violence was contained for centuries, by the victimary mechanism, its deconstruction by the Cross has unleashed a complete and total violence, leading us to the possibility of a real Apocalypse. We show here that this closure is based on a metaphysical view of desire, guiding us from the objet to the being of the model. Since Girard is always confined into metaphysics by his (...) constant use of the paradigm of the image, the presence and, consequently, the idol, we demonstrate that there is still a way out of violence, the same way that is today the way out of metaphysics. With Jean-Luc Marion and his phenomenology of givenness, we oppose the paradigm of the icon to the one of the idol, and therefore the model of the sign to the one of the image. We demonstrate then that global mimetic violence can be stopped if we no longer desire objects and start desiring saturated phenomena, which implies a complete shift in the way we think and receive phenomena. (shrink)

Genomic imprinting is an epigenetic marking process that confers parent‐of‐origin‐dependent expression on certain genes. These imprinted genes are sometimes found in clusters, suggesting a possible involvement of higher order regulatory elements controlling expression and imprinting of genes organised in such clusters. In the distal chromosome 7 there are at least four imprinted genes: Mash2, Ins2, Igf2 and H19. Recent evidence(1) suggests that imprinting and expression of at least Igf2 and H19 may be mechanistically linked.

Our contribution concerns the continuous training of teachers that will be forming future teachers during their traineeship. It aims to describe how the professional development of the trainees’ coaches, both the training supervisors as well as the supervisors form the trainees’ schools, was used during a course proposed by a university and during meetings where practices were shared by the participants. In this manner, we identified the ideal moments for development of the trainees, as well as the most important levers (...) for the transformation of the coaches. We paid particular attention to the reflexive contract co-defined by the group, as well as to the principle of social moderation at the heart of the collaborative group’s dynamic. (shrink)

The basic premise of the host‐defense theory is that genomic imprinting, the parent‐of‐origin expression of a subset of mammalian genes, derives from mechanisms originally dedicated to silencing repeated and retroviral‐like sequences that deeply colonized mammalian genomes. We propose that large clusters of tandemly‐repeated C/D‐box small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) or microRNAs represent a novel category of sequences recognized as “genomic parasites”, contributing to the emergence of genomic imprinting in a subset of chromosomal regions that contain them. Such a view is supported (...) by evidence derived from studies of the imprinted snoRNA‐ and/or miRNA‐encoding Dlk1‐Dio3, Snurf‐Snrpn, Sfbmt2, and C19MC domains. While adding a new piece to the challenging puzzle of mammalian genome history, this hypothesis also reinforces the notion that dissecting the features and molecular mechanisms that discriminate between “foreign” and “endogenous” sequences is of crucial importance in the field of mammalian epigenetics. (shrink)

The empty set of course contains no computable point. On the other hand, surprising results due to Zaslavskiĭ, Tseĭtin, Kreisel, and Lacombe have asserted the existence of non-empty co-r. e. closed sets devoid of computable points: sets which are even “large” in the sense of positive Lebesgue measure.This leads us to investigate for various classes of computable real subsets whether they always contain a computable point.

Marsilio Ficino, fonti, testi, fortuna, convegno svoltosi à Firenze nell'ottobre del 1999, viene a chiudere la serie degli incontri internazionali coordinati dal Comitato Internazionale Marsilio Ficino e ora pubblicati a Londra e a Parigi. Il volume offre le versioni aggiornate delle conferenze pubbliche tenute all'Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento in quella occasione sull'opera ed il pensiero di Ficino, dal Quattrocento al Seicento. Il suo taglio prevalentemente filologico costituisce un imprescindibile complemento alle pubblicazioni del 1984-86, sempre in onore del Ficino, (...) di cui arrichisce le conclusioni con nuove prospettive di ricerca e nuove scoperte sul maggior filosofo del Quattrocento italiano. Un indice dei nomi agevola la consultazione del lettore, che troverà in questo libro uno strumento di ricerca fondamentale. (shrink)

Qu’est-ce qu’un jeu sérieux ? Ce terme galvaudé nous semble devoir être remplacé par celui de jeu utile. Dans cet article, nous développons ce concept dans le cadre de Jeu Serai. Il s’agit d’un projet retenu à l’appel d’offres Serious Game du ministère de l’Industrie. Dans ce projet nous visons à utiliser les mécanismes fondamentaux du jeu vidéo pour évaluer les centres d’intérêts et de motivation de l’utilisateur, ainsi que la façon dont il réalise des choix afin de l’aider dans (...) sa démarche individuelle d’orientation. Le prototype développé combine un jeu à autoproduction, de type livre interactif et des mini-jeux de différents types dont les résultats servent à définir un profil psychologique du joueur. Ce travail d’introspection et de mise en situation sera effectué par la personne dans le cadre d’un accompagnement réalisé par un conseiller professionnel.What is a “serious” game? Believing that this frequently misused term should be replaced with “useful game”, we develop the idea here through a discussion of Jeu Serai. This is a project that was selected under the Ministry of the Industry’s call for Serious Game ideas. Our aim in this project is to use the basic video game mechanisms to assess the centres of interest and motivations of users and how they make choices, in order to help them make individual career decisions. The prototype we developed combines game playing with the production by players of an interactive story and different kinds of mini-games, whose results are used to define their psychological profile. A professional counsellor will accompany the person’s introspective and role-playing efforts. (shrink)

Two features are often assumed about emotions: they are intentional states and they are experiences. However, there are important reasons to consider some affective responses that are not experienced or only partly experienced as emotions. But the existence of these affective responses does not sit well with the intentionality of conscious emotions which are somehow geared towards their object. We therefore face a trilemma: either these latter affective responses do not have intentional objects and we should renounce intentionality as a (...) defining feature of emotions; or we have to explain how they actually have intentional, though unconscious, objects; or after all we must deny that they are really emotions. I suggest that the second option is the correct one: we can provide an account of the intentionality of unconscious emotions and its relation to the intentionality of conscious emotions. To do this, I rely on neuropsychological studies that distinguish two kinds of attention: salience as enriched treatment, and focus as a way of turning our attention. Then, given that only salience is always present in unconscious emotional phenomena, I suggest that emotions are intentional because they involve an object being made salient. I further argue that this feature of emotions explains why unconscious and conscious emotions can be taken as organized around their object. Finally, I defend this account against several objections, showing that the account can be applied whatever the cognitive base of the emotions may be and is not falsified by the fact that attentional aspects of emotions may vary in other dimensions. (shrink)

Is a machine running artificial intelligence algorithms a real artificial intelligence or does it only simulate the operations of an intelligent creature? After specifying the concept of a mechanical simulation of human intelligence, we propose a criterion or a test to determine in which cases a machine embedding AI technology should be considered, not as a mechanical simulator of intelligent operations, but as a real artificial intelligence: we call this test the test of deference.

Cette nouvelle enquête sur le patrimoine narratif de tradition orale dans les Alpes de la Savoie s’est inscrite dans la continuité des enquêtes de Charles Joisten, commencées dès les années 1950 et qui ont donné les recueils de contes et de récits de croyance rendus disponibles au tournant de ce siècle. Seul ce type d’enquête directe s’est révélé capable de nous permettre — en tirant parti des moyens disponibles de nos jours, notamment d’enregistrement — de donner le jour à de (...) nouveaux exemplaires de cette matière de l’oralité. Nous exposerons ici les aspects de notre expérience sur plusieurs années de terrain ayant abouti à plusieurs publications. Nous mettrons l’accent sur les questions de forme narrative et de fond dans l’univers de l’oralité, tout particulièrement en ce qui concerne la narration des croyances, dans leurs contextes historiques. Our new survey on the narrative heritage from oral tradition in the Alps of Savoy has been performed in the continuity of Charles Joisten’s opus, gathered since the 50s, which was made fully available in collections of tales and belief narratives about the turn of this century. This type of direct investigation in face-to-face interaction—taking advantage of current means of recording available today—has proved to remain still nowadays the only one able to elicit new data. The main aspects of our field experience in the long term which resulted in several publications about tales and belief narratives will be questionned. While putting the emphasis on narrative form and substantive issues in the realm of orality, we will focus particularly on belief narratives in their historical contexts. (shrink)

Quel rôle joue le concept de vie quotidienne dans le scepticisme de Sextus Empiricus? À partir d’une analyse du concept de βιωτικὴ τήρησις, il s’agit de faire apparaître, d’une part (i) que la vie quotidienne, par opposition à la vie philosophique, est un fait empirique qui permet au sceptique d’agir sans pour autant avoir d’opinions et d’autre part que (ii) la vie quotidienne est une valeur qui donne sens à la philosophie sceptique. Bien que ces deux approches paraissent contradictoires, le (...) but de cet article est de montrer que le scepticisme philosophique proposé par Sextus les rend compatibles. (shrink)

Since at least the mid-1980s claims have been made for rationality in rats. For example, that rats are capable of inferential reasoning (Blaisdell, Sawa, Leising, & Waldmann, 2006; Bunsey & Eichenbaum, 1996), or that they can make adaptive decisions about future behavior (Foote & Crystal, 2007), or that they are capable of knowledge in propositional-like form (Dickinson, 1985). The stakes are rather high, because these capacities imply concept possession and on some views (e.g., Rödl, 2007; Savanah, 2012) rationality indicates self-consciousness. (...) I evaluate the case for rat rationality by analyzing 5 key research paradigms: spatial navigation, metacognition, transitive inference, causal reasoning, and goal orientation. I conclude that the observed behaviors need not imply rationality by the subjects. Rather, the behavior can be accounted for by noncognitive processes such as hard-wired species typical predispositions or associative learning or (nonconceptual) affordance detection. These mechanisms do not necessarily require or implicate the capacity for rationality. As such there is as yet insufficient evidence that rats can reason. I end by proposing the ‘Staircase Test,’ an experiment designed to provide convincing evidence of rationality in rats. (shrink)

En la construcción de la teoría del deseo mimético, Girard comenta en diversas ocasiones la obra de Freud. De hecho, casi la totalidad de los temas tratados por Girard tienen resonancia en el psicoanálisis; deseo, mimetismo, violencia, homicidio colectivo, el surgimiento de la cultura: cada uno de estos temas existe en la obra de Freud. Sin embargo, la lectura girardiana siempre opera un desplazamiento de estos conceptos para pensarlos a la luz de un mecanismo único que no introduce ninguna ruptura (...) ni discontinuidad. En este texto muestro cómo, para Girard, los conceptos freudianos padecen de una dificultad originaria que yace en el hecho que Freud nunca pudo salir de una concepción objetual del deseo. (shrink)

Following Meinong, many philosophers have been attracted by the view that emotions have intrinsically evaluative correctness conditions. On one version of this view, emotions have evaluative contents. On another version, emotions are evaluative attitudes; they are evaluative at the level of intentional mode rather than content. We raise objections against the latter version, showing that the only two ways of implementing it are hopeless. Either emotions are manifestly evaluative or they are not. In the former case, the Attitudinal View threatens (...) to collapse into the Perception View or any other view according to which emotions are evaluative at the level of content. In the latter case, the Attitudinal View does not stand up to an obvious alternative, namely that emotions can only be assessed with respect to extrinsic norms or conditions of correctness. (shrink)

L’invention de la théorie de l’inconscient, sur fond de Vaterkomplex non liquidé, semble avoir opéré chez Sigmund Freud – « Juif sans Dieu » revendiquant son athéisme –, comme un symptôme (Nom-du-Père) lui ayant garanti une « fidélité hérétique » dans son rapport contrasté au judaïsme. Peut-être bien que L’homme Moïse et la religion monothéiste (1939), œuvre testamentaire mise en chantier dans le contexte de la montée du nazisme en Europe, aurait à sa manière permis au fondateur de la psychanalyse (...) – au terme d’une méditation métapsychologique serrée sur la genèse et le devenir de l’identité juive –, l’esquisse d’une transfiguration par l’exil. (shrink)

We should not understand in this title "What does not return to the same" the announcement of a return to Levinas, but rather of what the word or concept of "return" could mean in Levinas's work. There is perhaps no better way of misunderstanding Levinas than imposing on his philosophical gesture the interpretative grid of a "horizon of return". This article will attempt to dismantle the strategies of reading which stipulate that Levinas's philosophy is one of "return". In this way (...) we shall reveal the complexity of Levinasian thought, and that, beyond the numerous slogans, there are the ones of a "return" or of its simple contrary, the ones of a "philosophy of exile". (shrink)