The norm of reciprocity has only been considered and experimentally demonstrated between two individuals. However, comments from several authors invite the consideration of an expanded form of this norm. 120 passersby, randomly assigned to 3 conditions, were asked to watch a confederate’s belongings. Depending on the condition, they had either previously been given a gift or not. In addition, the gift was offered by either the confederate making the target request or by a second confederate, not initially involved. First, results (...) show that passersby are significantly more likely to comply with the target request if they were offered a gift than if they weren’t no matter who the confederate was. Second, the confederate offering the gift gets significantly more compliance than the one not initially involved. Results are discussed in terms of self-presentation theory, internalization of norm and positive mood induction. (shrink)

We address three fundamental questions: What does it mean for an entity to be living? What is the role of inter-organismic collaboration in evolution? What is a biological individual? Our central argument is that life arises when lineage-forming entities collaborate in metabolism. By conceiving of metabolism as a collaborative process performed by functional wholes, which are associations of a variety of lineage-forming entities, we avoid the standard tension between reproduction and metabolism in discussions of life – a tension particularly evident (...) in discussions of whether viruses are alive. Our perspective assumes no sharp distinction between life and non-life, and does not equate life exclusively with cellular or organismal status. We reach this conclusion through an analysis of the capabilities of a spectrum of biological entities, in which we include the pivotal case of viruses as well as prions, plasmids, organelles, intracellular and extracellular symbionts, unicellular and multicellular life-forms. The usual criterion for classifying many of the entities of our continuum as non-living is autonomy. This emphasis on autonomy is problematic, however, because even paradigmatic biological individuals, such as large animals, are dependent on symbiotic associations with many other organisms. These composite individuals constitute the metabolic wholes on which selection acts. Finally, our account treats cooperation and competition not as polar opposites but as points on a continuum of collaboration. We suggest that competitive relations are a transitional state, with multi-lineage metabolic wholes eventually outcompeting selfish competitors, and that this process sometimes leads to the emergence of new types or levels of wholes. Our view of life as a continuum of variably structured collaborative systems leaves open the possibility that a variety of forms of organized matter – from chemical systems to ecosystems – might be usefully understood as living entities. (shrink)

Alice Crary is a moral and social philosopher who has written widely on issues in metaethics, moral psychology and normative ethics, philosophy and feminism, critical animal studies, critical disability studies, critical philosophy of race, philosophy and literature, and Critical Theory. She has written on philosophers such as John L. Austin, Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, John McDowell, Iris Murdoch and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This is the first of two parts of the interview with Crary conducted in a single exchange in the first (...) weeks of January 2022, where she discusses ordinary language philosophy and feminism, Wittgenstein’s conception of mind and its relation to feminist ethics, the link between Wittgenstein and Critical Theory, and her own views about efforts to bring about social and political transformations. The second part on “Wittgenstein and Critical Theory” is published in the regular volume 11 of NWR. (shrink)

Recently, novel lines of research have developed to study the influence of identity processes in sport-related behaviours. Yet, whereas emotions in sport are the result of a complex psychosocial process, little attention has been paid to examining the mechanisms that underlie how group membership influences athletes’ emotional experiences. The present narrative review aims at complementing the comprehensive review produced by Rees et al. (2015) on social identity in sport by reporting specific work on identity-based emotions in sport. To that end, (...) we firstly overview the different terminology currently used in the field of emotions in groups to clarify the distinct nature of emotions that result from an individual’s social identity. Secondly, we discuss key concepts of social identity to better understand the mechanisms underlying identity-based emotions. Thirdly, we address existing knowledge on identity-based emotions in sport. We close the present narrative review by suggesting future research perspectives based on existing meta-theories of social identity. Evidence from the social psychology literature is discussed alongside existing works from the sport literature to propose a crucial theoretical approach to better understand emotions in sport. (shrink)

Dans L’Anti-Œdipe, Deleuze s’oppose violemment à la psychanalyse freudienne. Il l’accuse de n’être au fond qu’un processus participant à la répression du désir. En lieu et place de la psychanalyse, Deleuze veut fonder la schizo-analyse. Celle-ci aurait la spécificité d’éviter la répression des machines désirantes par le signifiant. Elle se focaliserait plus sur la manière dont marchent les machines désirantes de chacun que sur une analyse schématique. Mais la nature exacte de cette schizo-analyse deleuzienne demeure difficile à déterminer.

Au milieu des années 1960, le Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies de Birmingham devint, sous l’impulsion de Richard Hoggart et de Stuart Hall, le lieu institutionnel d’élaboration des Cultural Studies. Il s’agissait, grâce à un nouvel effort collectif, d’infléchir les études marxistes depuis deux points de tension théorique et politique : 1/ le problème du réductionnisme économique au sein des études marxistes et la subordination des dimensions culturelles et idéologiques de la vie socia...

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

In an earlier paper (Dupré 1984), I criticized a thesis sometimes defended by theorists of probabilistic causality, namely, that a probabilistic cause must raise the probability of its effect in every possible set of causally relevant background conditions (the "contextual unanimity thesis"). I also suggested that a more promising analysis of probabilistic causality might be sought in terms of statistical relevance in a fair sample. Ellery Eells (1987) has defended the contextual unanimity thesis against my objections, and also raised (...) objections of his own to my positive claims. In this paper I defend and amplify both my objections to the contextual unanimity thesis and my constructive suggestion. (shrink)

Through a comparative reading of three novels of the late nineteenth century, namely Le Disciple, A rebours and Un homme libre, the monastic hermitage has emerged as a common place in which the protagonists of the novels, in search for a spiritual space, let themselves be shaped and transformed by the materiality of places. Through the consideration of the specific features of these closed and sacred sanctuaries, as well as the identity and the dream of the end of the 19th (...) century man, a new literature searching for an ideal will appear openly. (shrink)

Peter Zumthor est aujourd’hui considéré comme « l’architecte des atmosphères ». De ce fait, son œuvre est souvent rapprochée des théorisations de la notion d’atmosphère issues de la phénoménologie allemande. L’article vise à ressaisir la singularité de la problématique de l’atmosphère chez Zumthor (liens à la théorie du projet et à la production architecturale, aux notions centrales d’image et d’histoire), ainsi qu’à revenir sur les sources de ce concept chez Aldo Rossi, cela afin de comprendre de manière synthétique la nécessité, (...) le sens et les évolutions du recours à l’atmosphère dans cette manière de penser en architecture. (shrink)

Much scientific thinking and thinking about science involves assumptions that there is a deep and pervasive order to the world that it is the business of science to disclose. A paradigmatic statement of such a view can be found in a widely discussed paper by a prominent economist, Milton Friedman (a paper which will be discussed in more detail shortly): A fundamental hypothesis of science is that appearances are deceptive and that there is a way of looking at or interpreting (...) or organizing the evidence that will reveal superficially disconnected and diverse phenomena to be manifestations of a more fundamental and relatively simple structure. (1953/1984, p.231) On the other hand, the person sometimes described as the father of modern science, Francis Bacon, wrote: The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. And though there be many things in nature which are singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them conjugates and relatives which do not exist. (1620/1960, p. 50). (shrink)

Traditional arguments against the identification of the language of thought with natural language assume a picture of natural language which is largely inconsistent with that suggested by contemporary linguistic theory. This has led certain philosophers and linguists to suggest that this identification is not as implausible as it once seemed. In this paper, I discuss the prospects for such an identification in light of these developments in linguistic theory. I raise a new challenge against the identification thesis: the existence of (...) ungrammatical but acceptable expressions seems to require a gap between thought and language. I consider what must be the case in order for this objection to be dealt with. (shrink)

Deep learning techniques have revolutionised artificial systems’ performance on myriad tasks, from playing Go to medical diagnosis. Recent developments have extended such successes to natural language processing, an area once deemed beyond such systems’ reach. Despite their different goals, these successes have suggested that such systems may be pertinent to theoretical linguistics. The competence/performance distinction presents a fundamental barrier to such inferences. While DL systems are trained on linguistic performance, linguistic theories are aimed at competence. Such a barrier has traditionally (...) been sidestepped by assuming a fairly close correspondence: performance as competence plus noise. I argue this assumption is unmotivated. Competence and performance can differ arbitrarily. Thus, we should not expect DL models to illuminate linguistic theory. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the metaphysical thesis that the living world is not made up of substantial particles or things, as has often been assumed, but is rather constituted by processes. The biological domain is organised as an interdependent hierarchy of processes, which are stabilised and actively maintained at different timescales. Even entities that intuitively appear to be paradigms of things, such as organisms, are actually better understood as processes. Unlike previous attempts to articulate processual views of biology, which (...) have tended to use Alfred North Whitehead’s panpsychist metaphysics as a foundation, this book takes a naturalistic approach to metaphysics. It submits that the main motivations for replacing an ontology of substances with one of processes are to be found in the empirical findings of science. Biology provides compelling reasons for thinking that the living realm is fundamentally dynamic, and that the existence of things is always conditional on the existence of processes. The phenomenon of life cries out for theories that prioritise processes over things, and it suggests that the central explanandum of biology is not change but rather stability, or more precisely, stability attained through constant change. This edited volume brings together philosophers of science and metaphysicians interested in exploring the consequences of a processual philosophy of biology. The contributors draw on an extremely wide range of biological case studies, and employ a process perspective to cast new light on a number of traditional philosophical problems, such as identity, persistence, and individuality. (shrink)

Paulo Mendes da Rocha (né en 1928, lauréat du prix Pritzker en 2006) est l’un des grands architectes de notre temps. Auteur d’une œuvre encore mal connue hors du Brésil, il est également un théoricien de l’architecture tout à fait original. Cet article vise à présenter synthétiquement les grands thèmes de cette pensée en architecture qui entretisse sans cesse esthétique et politique sous le mot d’ordre d’une architecture « opportune ».

Résumé La pensée architecturale de Peter Zumthor, l’un des plus grands architectes contemporains (lauréat du Pritzker Price en 2009), est l’une des plus fortes de notre temps. Loin de tout sensationnalisme théorique, il développe une véritable pensée en architecture, faisant de l’« atmosphère » son déterminant essentiel. Contre l’oubli de l’histoire constitutif de la pensée moderniste, il cherche à « retrouver » l’architecture au moyen de l’exploration des données biographiques et contextuelles qui la fondent. C’est à la mise au jour (...) des éléments essentiels de cette pensée qu’est consacré cet article. (shrink)

El siguiente trabajo tiene como objetivo principal describir y analizar la percepción de Manuel Baldomero Ugarte sobre Estados Unidos. Ugarte fue literato y político, pero también fue un pensador interesado por los asuntos internacionales de América Latina. Evidencia de ello son sus propuestas integracionistas y antiimperialistas, en las cuales la presencia de Estados Unidos era evidente. Debido a lo anterior, se estima conveniente explicar qué pensó Ugarte sobre la nación norteamericana, y desde esa perspectiva, contribuir a la discusión sobre tan (...) trascendental intelectual latinoamericano. The purpose of this work is to describe and analyze the perception of Manuel Baldomero Ugarte about the United States. Ugarte was a writer and a politician, but it was also a thinker interested in the Latin America’s international affairs. Testimony of this are his integrationist and anti-imperialist proposals, in which the U.S. presence was evident. Thus, it is considered advisable to explain what he thought about the American nation, and from this perspective, to contribute to the discussion around this important Latin American intellectual. (shrink)

À l’heure des inquiétudes liées à l’habitation de l’Anthropocène et de sa cohorte de catastrophes continues, des menaces que font peser sur nous les risques pandémiques zoonotiques ou des controverses sociales répétées autour de la déconstruction toujours retardée des dominations systémiques de genre, de race et de classe, la question animale occupe aujourd’hui une place centrale dans les débats théoriques et pratiques qui agitent les différentes sphères de la vie sociale. Qu’il s’agisse de t...

Les rapports entretenus par Le Corbusier, architecte le plus emblématique de la modernité, avec le pouvoir politique sont foncièrement ambivalents. Promoteur inlassable du bonheur pour tous à travers l’architecture, Le Corbusier a pourtant frayé avec à peu près tous les pouvoirs, apparemment sans témoigner de préférences politiques, d’une manière qui semble contradictoire avec ses propres objectifs. À travers une série de paradoxes, nous cherchons à montrer que l’attitude politique de Le Corbusier ne doit pas simplement être référée à un ensemble (...) d’arguments factuels et historiques, voire à une forme d’opportunisme consubstantiel à l’architecte en recherche de commandes, mais également à une certaine conception théorique et philosophique de la nature du pouvoir lui-même. Le pouvoir, conçu de manière purement formelle et extrêmement individualiste, n’est jamais pensé autrement que comme simple moyen ou cause efficiente visant à mettre en action la seule révolution valable pour Le Corbusier, à savoir la transformation de la culture par l’architecture. Se dessine ainsi la figure d’une pensée profonde des pouvoirs de l’architecture, en même temps que d’une singulière absence d’intelligence du politique. (shrink)

Les rapports entretenus par Le Corbusier, architecte le plus emblématique de la modernité, avec le pouvoir politique sont foncièrement ambivalents. Promoteur inlassable du bonheur pour tous à travers l’architecture, Le Corbusier a pourtant frayé avec à peu près tous les pouvoirs, apparemment sans témoigner de préférences politiques, d’une manière qui semble contradictoire avec ses propres objectifs. À travers une série de paradoxes, nous cherchons à montrer que l’attitude politique de Le Corbusier ne doit pas simplement être référée à un ensemble (...) d’arguments factuels et historiques, voire à une forme d’opportunisme consubstantiel à l’architecte en recherche de commandes, mais également à une certaine conception théorique et philosophique de la nature du pouvoir lui-même. Le pouvoir, conçu de manière purement formelle et extrêmement individualiste, n’est jamais pensé autrement que comme simple moyen ou cause efficiente visant à mettre en action la seule révolution valable pour Le Corbusier, à savoir la transformation de la culture par l’architecture. Se dessine ainsi la figure d’une pensée profonde des pouvoirs de l’architecture, en même temps que d’une singulière absence d’intelligence du politique. (shrink)

Face aux défis lancés à la réflexion urbaine par les développements de la ville contemporaine, cet article tente de reprendre le concept de « droit à la ville » thématisé par Henri Lefebvre en le confrontant à certains des éléments les plus récents de la théorie critique et de la philosophie sociale d’Axel Honneth. Il s’agit ici de partir d’une analyse de ce que l’on pourrait appeler « les pathologies urbaines du social » pour montrer que le droit à la (...) ville, en tant qu’utopie assumée et nécessaire, peut constituer un horizon normatif légitime pour repenser la ville et répondre aux maladies contemporaines de l’urbain. (shrink)

This is the second of two parts of an interview with Alice Crary conducted in a single exchange in the first weeks of January 2022, where she discusses ordinary language philosophy and feminism, Wittgenstein’s conception of mind and its relation to feminist ethics, the link between Wittgenstein and Critical Theory, and her own views about efforts to bring about social and political transformations. The first part on “Wittgenstein and Feminism” is published in the NWR Special Issue “Wittgenstein and Feminism”, forthcoming (...) later this year. (shrink)

Recent molecular biology has seen the development of genomics as a successor to traditional genetics. This paper offers an overview of the structure, epistemology, and history of contemporary genomics. A particular focus is on the question to what extent the genome contains, or is composed of, anything that corresponds to traditional conceptions of genes. It is concluded that the only interpretation of genes that has much contemporary scientific relevance is what is described as the "developmental defect" gene concept. However, developmental (...) defect genes typically only correspond to general areas of the genome and not to precise chemical structures . The parts of the genome to be identified for an account of the processes of normal development are highly diverse, little correlated with traditional genes, and act in ways that are highly dependent on the cellular and higher level environment. Despite its historical development out of genetics, genomics represents a radically different kind of scientific project. (shrink)

Analytic metaphysics has recently discovered biology as a means of grounding metaphysical theories. This has resulted in long-standing metaphysical puzzles, such as the problems of personal identity and material constitution, being increasingly addressed by appeal to a biological understanding of identity. This development within metaphysics is in significant tension with the growing tendency amongst philosophers of biology to regard biological identity as a deep puzzle in its own right, especially following recent advances in our understanding of symbiosis, the evolution of (...) multi-cellular organisms and the inherently dynamical character of living systems. Moreover, and building on these biological insights, the broadly substance ontological framework of metaphysical theories of biological identity appears problematic to a growing number of philosophers of biology who invoke process ontology instead. This volume addresses this tension, exploring to what extent it can be dissolved. For this purpose, the volume presents the first selection of essays exclusively focused on biological identity and written by experts in metaphysics, the philosophy of biology and biology. The resulting cross-disciplinary dialogue paves the way for a convincing account of biological identity that is both metaphysically constructive and scientifically informed, and will be of interest to metaphysicians, philosophers of biology and theoretical biologists. (shrink)

Standard microbial evolutionary ontology is organized according to a nested hierarchy of entities at various levels of biological organization. It typically detects and defines these entities in relation to the most stable aspects of evolutionary processes, by identifying lineages evolving by a process of vertical inheritance from an ancestral entity. However, recent advances in microbiology indicate that such an ontology has important limitations. The various dynamics detected within microbiological systems reveal that a focus on the most stable entities (or features (...) of entities) over time inevitably underestimates the extent and nature of microbial diversity. These dynamics are not the outcome of the process of vertical descent alone. Other processes, often involving causal interactions between entities from distinct levels of biological organisation, or operating at different time scales, are responsible not only for the destabilisation of pre-existing entities, but also for the emergence and stabilisation of novel entities in the microbial world. In this article we consider microbial entities as more or less stabilised functional wholes, and sketch a network-based ontology that can represent a diverse set of processes including, for example, as well as phylogenetic relations, interactions that stabilise or destabilise the interacting entities, spatial relations, ecological connections, and genetic exchanges. We use this pluralistic framework for evaluating (i) the existing ontological assumptions in evolution (e.g. whether currently recognized entities are adequate for understanding the causes of change and stabilisation in the microbial world), and (ii) for identifying hidden ontological kinds, essentially invisible from within a more limited perspective. We propose to recognize additional classes of entities that provide new insights into the structure of the microbial world, namely “processually equivalent” entities, “processually versatile” entities, and “stabilized” entities. (shrink)

It has notoriously been supposed that the doctrine of determinism conflicts with the belief in human freedom. Yet it is not readily apparent how indeterminism, the denial of determinism, makes human freedom any less problematic. It has sometimes been suggested that the arrival of quantum mechanics should immediately have solved the problem of free will and determinism. It was proposed, perhaps more often by scientists than by philosophers, that the brain would need only to be fitted with a device for (...) amplifying indeterministic quantum phenomena for the bogey of determinism to be defeated. Acts of free will could then be those that were initiated by such indeterministic nudges. Recently there has been some inclination to revive such a story as part of the fallout from the trend for chaos theory. Chaotic systems in the brain, being indefinitely sensitive to the precise details of initial conditions, seem to provide fine candidates for the hypothetical amplifiers of quantum events. (shrink)