The aim of this article was to provide experimental evidence that classical dissociation between levels of consciousness associated with memory retrieval can be explained in terms of task dependency and distinctiveness of traces. In our study phase, we manipulated the level of isolation of the memory trace by means of an isolation paradigm . We then tested these two types of isolation in a series of tasks of increasing complexity: a lexical decision task, a recognition task, and a free recall (...) task. The main result of this study was that distinctiveness effects were observed as a function of the type of isolation and the nature of the task. We concluded that trace distinctiveness improves subsequent access to the trace, while the level of trace distinctiveness also appears to determine the possibility of conscious or explicit retrieval. (shrink)

Theories of knowledge as credit for true belief, or as cognitive achievement, have to face the following objection: in the famous Barn façades case, it seems that the truth of Barney's belief that he is in front of a barn is to be explained by the correct functioning of his cognitive capacities, although we are reluctant to say that he knows he is in front of a barn. Duncan Pritchard concludes from this that a safety clause, irreducible to the conditions (...) a true belief must satisfy in order to be credited to the believer, constitutes a necessary condition of knowledge. Because those who define knowledge as a cognitive achievement have not convincingly answered this objection, I intend, in the first section of this paper, to refute it by showing how practical and doxastic achievements differ. Then I defend the idea that we should also distinguish two kinds of environmental epistemic luck, and, correlatively, two kinds of safety, that are not equally incompatible with knowledge. Finally, I argue that this distinction is inevitably vague and I indicate some consequences of this vagueness for our knowledge‐intuitions. (shrink)

La présente étude rassemble les passages de l’Ab Vrbe condita de Tite-Live où un terme lié au rire est associé à un discours ou à une parole rapportée, afin de les confronter aux vues exprimées par Cicéron et Quintilien sur le rire en contexte rhétorique. Si tous les passages étudiés s’insèrent très bien dans la conception rhétorique du rire, l’historien latin s’appuie sur celle-ci pour offrir une répartition originale entre usages acceptables et formes abusives du rire qui participe à la (...) construction des portraits personnages et de l’œuvre. (shrink)

My main intention in this article is to settle the question whether having the ability to \ is, as Ryleans think, necessary for knowing how to \, and to determine the kind of role played by procedural knowledge in knowing how to \ and in acquiring and possessing the ability to \. I shall argue, in a seemingly anti-Rylean fashion, that when it comes to know-hows that are ordinarily categorised as physical skills, or—to be, for the moment, philosophically neutral—as enabling (...) one to possess such skills, it is necessary to have procedural knowledge of how to \ in order to possess those know-hows. However, I shall contend that this knowledge cannot be acquired without acquiring the kind of ability to \ in which having the skill to \ consists. And that having acquired the ability to \ is not only necessary but also sufficient for having acquired procedural knowledge of how to succeed in \-ing. (shrink)

Dans l'introduction, M. Fabre-Magnan explique que le souci majeur de C. Labrusse-Riou a toujours été que l'humanité de l'homme soit préservée, que l'homme est la fin du droit et ee l'éthique et que le juriste a un rôle spécifique à jouer pour protéger cette humanité et pour rendre possible la vie dans un corps social organisé à partir des principes fondateurs du droit et des données du droit positif. Ces écrits sont regroupés en trois parties : " La naissance (...) d'une discipline " dont certains sont devenus des textes de référence, " Les grandes questions de la bioéthique ", en particulier des réflexions sur la légitimité et la responsabilité, " L'horizon de la bioéthique ", sa nécessaire finalité qui est de sauvegarder la vie de l'homme, de défendre son humanité menacée par autrui comme par lui-même. (shrink)

Uniformism is the view that one and the same epistemology should apply for all modal knowledge. I argue that, whether or not all modal knowledge can be accounted for in terms of knowledge of essences, uniformism about knowledge of essences is untenable. I do this by showing that, while some essences are empirically discoverable, others are not. I then argue that the uniquely realisable–non-uniquely realisable distinction is a better metaphysical candidate for grounding this epistemic difference than the concrete–abstract distinction. I (...) conclude by suggesting that the task of philosophy is to identify non-empirically discoverable essences. (shrink)

When one tries to determine what the iconic dimension of thought consists in for Peirce and what its range is, one might have the impression that his remarks on this matter are inconsistent. For instance, on the one hand he writes the following: Remember it is by icons only that we really reason, and abstract statements are valueless in reasoning except so far as they aid us to construct diagrams. The sectaries of the opinion I am combating seem, on the (...) contrary, to suppose that reasoning is performed with abstract "judgments," and that an icon is of use only as enabling me to frame abstract statements as premisses. In an apparently similar fashion, Peirce argues that the predicate of a... (shrink)

This article shows how, starting from Schelling and Henry, one can build a radical critique of objectification and subjectification within humanities. This critique opens the way for the construction of a point of view of immanence, which is characterized by the experimentation of a constitution of affects in a process from which proceeds the subjectivity. This point of view of immanence questions the accepted attitudes in the production of social relationships and the norms that govern them, so as to increase (...) the attention to the vulnerability of these processes and their power to transform the affects. (shrink)

In his most recent books, Piketty offers a global history of inequality in its economic, social, political, and intellectual dimensions, arguing that history is moved by the struggle of ideologies. To take part in this battle of ideas, he conceives a new ideal model of society, ‘participative socialism’, as an egalitarian alternative to the dominant neoproprietarian ideology and to the dangerous resurgence of nationalism and populism. This paper provides a new interpretation of Piketty’s view of history and of his participatory (...) socialism in light of Paul Ricoeur’s study of the dialectics of ideology and utopia. First, I present Ricoeur’s singular analysis of ideology and utopia, which he sees as two inseparable facets of social imagination. Then I show how Ricoeur’s concepts can be fruitfully applied to Piketty’s conception of history and to his conception of a new form of socialism for the 21st century, drawing lessons from history and forming a ‘good’ or ‘realist’ utopia. Finally, I demonstrate that this interpretation of Piketty’s socialism can help to better understand some of the criticisms he has received. (shrink)

For F. P. Ramsey, “there is no separate problem of truth,” but, rather, substantive problems about the nature of belief and judgment and the place and function of truth in these propositional attitudes. In this paper, I expound and defend an important but largely overlooked aspect of Ramsey’s view of belief and inquiry: his thesis that truth does not intervene at all in one’s ordinary beliefs, nor in one’s ordinarily inquiring into—in the sense of wondering, or reflecting on—whether or not (...) something obtains. More specifically, I show that this thesis can solve a particularly perplexing problem that Davidson helped to bring into focus: that of explaining how it is possible for one to inquire into any empirical issue, and to form any empirical beliefs, if one takes truth to be objective. (shrink)

In this book, Benoît Dubreuil explores the creation and destruction of hierarchies in human evolution. Combining the methods of archaeology, anthropology, cognitive neuroscience and primatology, he offers a natural history of hierarchies from the point of view of both cultural and biological evolution. This volume explains why dominance hierarchies typical of primate societies disappeared in the human lineage and why the emergence of large-scale societies during the Neolithic period implied increased social differentiation, the creation of status hierarchies, and, eventually, political (...) centralisation. (shrink)

This paper studies how in his Theory of Moral Sentiments Adam Smith answered to Mandeville on the role of pride and vanity in the economic and social dynamics of commercial societies. We show why vanity supersedes pride in his analysis and how he offers a more positive view of these two passions. We study in particular the economic and social consequences of pride and vanity and describe the psychological foundations of excessive self-esteem that these passions entail.

This paper studies how in his Theory of Moral Sentiments Adam Smith answered to Mandeville on the role of pride and vanity in the economic and social dynamics of commercial societies. We show why vanity supersedes pride in his analysis and how he offers a more positive view of these two passions. We study in particular the economic and social consequences of pride and vanity and describe the psychological foundations of excessive self-esteem that these passions entail.

Benoit Mathot À partir du cadre théorique de la décoïncidence proposé par le philosophe François Jullien, cet article explore les enjeux d’humanisation des soins médicaux, ainsi que l’introduction de la dimension spirituelle dans la prise en charge des patients. Il revient enfin sur le dialogue possible entre ces réflexions contemporaines et les considérations du théologien luthérien Paul Tillich sur la santé.

« L’animal » n’est pas une notion au programme de philosophie, et pourtant combien nous la rencontrons dans nos cours : interpellés par les élèves, souvent moins au fait des nouveautés de l’éthologie que l’on pourrait le croire ; ou en mobilisant l’animal à l’occasion du traitement de notions. Cet article vise principalement à mettre au jour les problématiques et les références classiques et récentes qui permettent de traiter cette question en évoquant le statut de l’animalité et de l’humanité, le (...) rapport aux hypothèses nouvelles concernant les cultures animales, l’inclusion d’une pensée de l’animalité dans la conception du vivant, et enfin les perspectives non seulement morales mais politiques de l’animalité. (shrink)

One of the first frameworks developed for understanding the relation of science and technology to the economy has been the linear model of innovation. The model postulated that innovation starts with basic research, is followed by applied research and development, and ends with production and diffusion. The precise source of the model remains nebulous, having never been documented. Several authors who have used, improved, or criticized the model in the past fifty years rarely acknowledged or cited any original source. The (...) model usually was taken for granted. According to others, however, it comes directly from V. Bush’s Science: The Endless Frontier. This article traces the history of the linear model, suggesting that it developed in three steps corresponding to three scientific communities looking at science analytically. The article argues that statistics is a main reason the model is still alive despite criticisms, alternatives, and having been proclaimed dead. (shrink)

Les recompositions familiales touchent l’ensemble des liens familiaux et des liens intergénérationnels. Or, si l’on observe, tant sur le plan juridique que dans les pratiques des familles conjugales, une acception plus complexe et plus riche de la parentalité, les grands-parents restent souvent méconnus. Comment construisent-ils leurs rapports à leurs « beaux-petits-enfants »? Nous avons examiné la littérature et interrogé des « belles-grands-mères » pour tenter d’y voir plus clair. Quelles représentations le champ social offre-t-il des beaux-grands-parents? Et quelles sont concrètement (...) les conditions et les étapes qui rendent possible une identité « beau-grand-parentale »? (shrink)

The reception of René Girard’s work in France deserves book-length treatment to fully describe the heated debates, conflicting expectations, and controversy that it inspired before its lasting importance was eventually recognized. We must keep in mind that, although he lived in the US and became a citizen in 1956, he always kept his sights on his native land. He watched the transformations of French thought from the other side of the ocean; he forged his own writing strategies in response to (...) French thought; and it was within the context of French debates that he chose to formulate, through the conjoined hypotheses concerning mimetic desire, the scapegoat, and Judeo-Christian writing, the founding event of his... (shrink)

Alterations in the gut microbiome have increasingly been implicated in driving obesity and its associated diseases, but underlying mechanisms remain poorly defined. Herein, in addition to reviewing the field, we hypothesize that a highly significant causative factor of such inflammatory disease‐associated microbiome alterations is a more aggressive microbiota that encroaches upon its host, with components having high potential to activate host pro‐inflammatory gene expression in a manner that drives metabolic disease. We further hypothesize that a range of societal changes, including (...) use of antibiotics and increasing consumption of food additives, have provoked such microbiota aggression and, consequently, may be contributing factors to the increased incidence of obesity and its associated diseases. (shrink)

There clearly seems to be something problematic with certain forms of epistemic dependence. However, it has proved surprisingly difficult to articulate what this problem is exactly. My aim in this paper is to make clear when it is problematic to rely on others or on artefacts and technologies that are external to us for the acquisition and maintenance of our beliefs, and why. In order to do so, I focus on the neuromedia thought experiment. After having rejected different ways in (...) which one might want to capture the intuition in question, I argue that this device deprives us of understanding and therefore of the most valuable epistemic good. I then address the question of whether the moral of the story is that we should not develop, be equipped with, or use devices such as the neuromedia. (shrink)

The infinite pigeonhole principle for 2-partitions asserts the existence, for every set A, of an infinite subset of A or of its complement. In this paper, we study the infinite pigeonhole pr...

The recent literature on social norms has stressed the centrality of emotions in explaining punishment and norm enforcement. This article discusses four negative emotions (righteous anger, indignation, contempt, and disgust) and examines their relationship to punitive behavior. I argue that righteous anger and indignation are both punitive emotions strictly speaking, but induce punishments of different intensity and have distinct elicitors. Contempt and disgust, for their part, cannot be straightforwardly considered punitive emotions, although they often blend with a colder form of (...) indignation to favor low-cost, indirect, and collective forms of punishment such as mockery, exclusion, and ostracism. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that humans have specific abilities for cooperation and culture that evolved since their split with their last common ancestor with chimpanzees. Many uncertainties remain, however, about the exact moment in the human lineage when these abilities evolved. This article argues that cooperation and culture did not evolve in one step in the human lineage and that the capacity to stick to long-term and risky cooperative arrangements evolved before properly modern culture. I present evidence that Homo heidelbergensis (...) became increasingly able to secure contributions form others in two demanding Paleolithic public good games (PPGGs): cooperative feeding and cooperative breeding. I argue that the temptation to defect is high in these PPGGs and that the evolution of human cooperation in Homo heidelberngensis is best explained by the emergence of modern-like abilities for inhibitory control and goal maintenance. These executive functions are localized in the prefrontal cortex and allow humans to stick to social norms in the face of competing motivations. This scenario is consistent with data on brain evolution that indicate that the largest growth of the prefrontal cortex in human evolution occurred in Homo heidelbergensis and was followed by relative stasis in this part of the brain. One implication of this argument is that subsequent behavioral innovations, including the evolution of symbolism, art, and properly cumulative culture in modern Homo sapiens , are unlikely to be related to a reorganization of the prefrontal cortex, despite frequent claims to the contrary in the literature on the evolution of human culture and cognition. (shrink)

According to Timothy Williamson, philosophy is not a mere conceptual investigation and does not involve a specific cognitive ability, different in nature from those involved in acquiring scientific or ordinary knowledge of the world. The author holds that Williamson does not succeed in explaining how it is possible for us to acquire, through thought experiments, the type of knowledge that, according to him, philosophy predominantly aims to acquire—namely, knowledge of metaphysical modality. More specifically, the author considers in detail Russell’s stopped (...) clock and Locke’s prince and the cobbler thought experiments, and argues that Williamson has not shown how the kind of thought experiment of which they are instances, and which is typically encountered in philosophy, can be the instrument of knowledge of metaphysical modality that he takes this kind of thought experiment to be. More positively, the author advances that the modal conclusions of such thought experiments are drawn through conceptual investigation. (shrink)

This is a critical essay of Claude Gamel's theory of social justice and liberal utopia exposed in his book "Esquisse d'un libéralisme soutenable".

There exist two main notions of typicality in computability theory, namely, Cohen genericity and randomness. In this article, we introduce a new notion of genericity, called partition genericity, which is at the intersection of these two notions of typicality, and show that many basis theorems apply to partition genericity. More precisely, we prove that every co-hyperimmune set and every Kurtz random is partition generic, and that every partition generic set admits weak infinite subsets, for various notions of weakness. In particular, (...) we answer a question of Kjos-Hanssen and Liu by showing that every Kurtz random admits an infinite subset which does not compute any set of positive effective Hausdorff dimension. Partition genericity is a partition regular notion, so these results imply many existing pigeonhole basis theorems. (shrink)

The progressive dominance of historical-critical methods in the reading of ancient Chinese classics has led scholars to privilege micro levels of textual analysis. Consequently, the question as to whether laws of composition could be identified in this corpus has often been ignored, or considered irrelevant. Working on Chinese number symbolism as well as on rules governing “ring composition” in other cultural contexts, this article aims at fashioning anew the question of the possibility of an ancient Chinese “structural rhetoric” and at (...) envisioning the patterns that might have governed it. It specifically applies the approach it propounds to Huainanzi 淮南子, showing how numerology frames its structure and argument, the text being built after the image of the “roundness” of the Way and of the Ruler. It then endeavors to apply these results to the unearthing of “inter-structural” patterns that would help us to locate Huainanzi, Lüshi Chunqiu 呂氏春秋, the versions at hand of Zhuangzi 莊子, Lunyu 論語, or yet Laozi 老子 into a textual universe that shares correlated rhetorical features. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to elucidate the nature of a form of intellectual and practical neutrality that is not covered by existing accounts of suspension of judgment. After rejecting some inadequate characterizations of this attitude of neutrality, I provide a positive characterization of it: it is a successful effort to resist certain tendencies that are part of the dispositional profile of the doxastic state one is in on a given issue. I conclude by saying a few words about (...) the reasons for which this effort can be made, and by answering in the negative the question of whether all the attitudes that can be characterized as attitudes of committed neutrality are of the same type. (shrink)

L’amateur – qui aime une chose, développe une activité pour son plaisir – est une figure qui dessine le paysage artistique contemporain. Le champ artistique étant soumis aux injonctions à la professionnalisation, réfléchir l’art en tant que manière d’être et d’agir en amateur, permet de repenser la pratique artistique. Engager celle-ci dans la sphère de l’amateurisme signifie alors remettre en question les attentes de production, d’efficacité et de visibilité, critiquer la notion de travail, pour prendre le temps de faire, expérimenter (...) et développer une pratique peut-être plus sincère, certainement plus amoureuse. Cette double figure de l’artiste amateur de et amateur en, offre ainsi un positionnement critique des plus pertinents au tournant du xxi e siècle. (shrink)

Franz Rosenzweig nos ofrece en su obra maestra, La estrella de la Redención, una lectura original del ateísmo de Nietzsche, ya que lo considera como el primer ateo genuino de la historia de la filosofía. Mientras Hegel, así como toda la tradición filosófica que le precede, une de manera indisoluble a Dios y al mundo, impidiendo así una comprensión verdadera de la existencia divina, Nietzsche termina con todos los substitutos de Dios y afronta a Dios mismo, es decir, a su (...) intolerable libertad. (shrink)

Rnd3/RhoE has two distinct functions, regulating the actin cytoskeleton and cell proliferation. This might explain why its expression is often altered in cancer and by multiple stimuli during development and disease. Rnd3 together with its relatives Rnd1 and Rnd2 are atypical members of the Rho GTPase family in that they do not hydrolyse GTP. Rnd3 and Rnd1 both antagonise RhoA/ROCK‐mediated actomyosin contractility, thereby regulating cell migration, smooth muscle contractility and neurite extension. In addition, Rnd3 has been shown to have a (...) separate role in inhibiting cell cycle progression by reducing translation of cell cycle regulators, including cyclin D1 and Myc. We propose that Rnd3 could act as a tumour suppressor to limit proliferation, but when mutations bypass this activity of Rnd3, it can promote cancer invasion through its effects in the actin cytoskeleton. (shrink)

Dans une note de son ouvrage consacré à Henry, P. Audi affirme qu’« il n’y a pas de philosophie de l’histoire à proprement parler chez Henry ». Nous ambitionnons de rappeler ici que Henry a néanmoins donné un contenu au concept d’histoire et posé les conditions épistémologiques pour construire une phénoménologie radicale de l’histoire. Cette thématique, il est vrai, est généralement ignorée de la littérature secondaire. À son corps défendant, on est obligé de reconnaître que la question de l’...

The following article is the result of a collaboration between a painter and a woman philosopher. They worked previously on an experimental documentary film about objects and art objects, which was realized at Palais de Tokyo. The painter had illustrated in black and white fictions of philosophy, written during a festival on lost films organized by UNdocumenta in South Korea, and then he made photographs of oil paintings of the English translation. This article about painting and philosophical ethics is their (...) first common text. It aims to show that there is no interdiscipline or passage known between the philosophical work and the painting. The philosopher can not imitate the recognition of the painter nor the painter to repair the philosophical non-encounter. The question then is: What can ethics in this non-symmetrical space? Rather than being a product of philosophy, it is what organizes this space between recognition and non-encounter. It is an ethics for philosophy, rather than the other way around. Ethics force to greet the other philosophers without the grudge of the loss necessary to the invention and allows the painter to know the distances that make him feel the recognition. This ethical space is unknown and can not be covered by the artist's philosophy of access or pre-nomination by indexes. Ethics is this unknown, i.e. it is a sense-without-sign, it is without rules-said but process of indexation and acceptance of the loss. (shrink)

La réception de la théologie politique de Johann Baptist Metz est un fait d’interprétation. Cette contribution présente tout d’abord la périodisation, apparue dans les années 1980, de l’oeuvre de Metz en trois phases: la période de la théologie transcendantale; la première phase de la théologie politique ainsi que sa deuxième phase. Décrire deux phases de la théologie politique délimitées par la formulation de la thèse centrale de l’oeuvre de Metz, selon laquelle la foi est mémoire de la souffrance de l’humanité, (...) permet de mettre en lumière la signification et les enjeux de la théologie politique. La deuxième partie de l’article s’intéresse à un aspect encore sujet à discussions de la réception de l’oeuvre de Metz: en réponse au refus postmoderne des grands récits, Metz et ses disciples présentent la théologie politique comme une théologie négative. Cependant, une telle réponse peut-elle être séparée d’autres affirmations déterminantes pour la théologie politique, en particulier celle selon laquelle le temps a une fin? (shrink)