Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 77-80.

L’enjeu de cette édition : révéler qu’il y avait, dissimulée derrière ce corpus, une séquence de textes à laquelle on peut restituer une unité. Les conséquences de cette restitution sont des plus intéressantes. D’abord, on assiste à « un changement essentiel dans les données matérielles de la discussion [sur le droit de la guerre rousseauiste] : le corpus textuel à considérer est redéfini, et son statut requalifié » de manière à produire un « renouvellement interprétatif » (20). De fait, ce (...) qui semblait un point aveugle dans la pensée politique de Rousseau, la question de la guerre, trouverait désormais son lieu propre. Du même coup, une sorte d’énigme laissée en exergue du Contrat social et réitérée dans un endroit des Confessions et dans une lettre à Marc-Michel Rey se verrait résolue : le projet annoncé de la publication d’un ouvrage portant sur les relations externes des États, intitulé Principes du droit de la guerre, pour lequel aucun texte ne semblait disponible, arrive à terme avec cette édition. (shrink)

The singular position of Montesquieu's political philosophy seems to raise the question: Isn't the opposition between republicanism and liberalism a largely artificial one? On the one hand, the description of the republican vivere civile in the Spirit of the Laws testifies to the important ties that exist between Montesquieu and the tradition of ?civic humanism?. However, this apparent theoretical proximity between Montesquieu and the British Neo-Harringtonians ought not to be taken too far, obscuring the deep divergences that differentiate their respective (...) positions, notably when it comes to the interpretation of history. Montesquieu's break from the republican tradition is exemplified by his rejection of its conception of freedom rooted in the citizens' necessary participation in power. But in the end, this does not enable us to conclude that he subscribes to a purely liberal theory. The British model shows that even if direct participation in the exercise of power is not necessary for the existence of liberty, a certain level of civic involvement and public awareness is needed. The liberal opposition between positive and negative liberty, political autonomy and enjoyment of rights without interference must therefore be transcended. (shrink)

Malgré son ambition, la philosophie politique n'est jamais parvenue à prouver qu'il est rationnel (bon, avantageux pour l'individu autant que pour la collectivité) d'être juste. Ce livre entend évoquer les " personnages conceptuels " ou les " figures " théâtrales mises en scène par les philosophes eux-mêmes afin de mettre à l'épreuve leur théorie de la justice : de tels personnages viennent contredire le discours rationnel du philosophe, et souvent l'accuser d'idéalisme. Cette thèse philosophique s'accompagne d'une thèse sur le présent (...) : la théorie politique contemporaine dominante tend depuis les années 1970 à réduire la figure du " mal " politique, en l'assimilant, sous couvert de théorie du choix rationnel, au " passager clandestin ", qui ne contribue pas à la coopération sociale à la mesure de ce qu'il profite. Or un tel choix est pour le moins contestable, dans la mesure où il laisse dans l'ombre des figures plus " extrêmes " du mal politique : le nazi, le criminel de guerre, le terroriste. A cet égard, la philosophie politique moderne, quoique décidément rationaliste, a mieux cerné le risque que fait courir à la philosophie elle-même l'" Insensé " ou le " raisonneur violent ". Face au risque d'irénisme encouru par la théorie politique, sociale et morale contemporaine, dont le monde semble parfois peuplé de " zombies raisonnables ", il nous faut restituer le rôle de l'expérience tragique au coeur de la philosophie politique. (shrink)

A modern critique of modernity -- Popular sovereignty and the general will -- Political legitimacy and applied politics -- Morality and education -- Metaphysics and religion -- Economic philosophy -- War and peace -- After Rousseau.

Since it is Hume who famously asked how an "ought" can ever possibly be deduced from an "is," it is Hume who is typically cast as the representative of empiricism's inadequacy for doing the work of ethics. Yet, as I will show, in his description of the proper functioning of the passions that necessarily involve other persons and their evaluations of us, Hume provides a naturalistic description that is not reductive of value, but rather incorporates values into the very ground (...) of empirical description. Contemporary moral philosophers who dismiss Hume's complex account of the passions as unnecessary for understanding his account of morals, and then fault the account of morals for its failure to move beyond mere description to any kind of normative assessment, ignore how the detail of Hume's own account of the passions suggests a way that an empirical account can in fact be value-laden, as we shall see. (shrink)

Including an edited transcription of a colloquium on Sander's life and work, this title contains plates selected from the J. Paul Getty Museum's collection. Sander's works exemplify the contradictory nature of early 20th century Germany.

The article distinguishes metaphysical from practical communitarianism. Metaphysical communitarianism is alleged to involve a concealed ideological element, which leads its adherents to stereotypes when trying to capture the essence of the modern self. The claim is examined that minorities, or other ethnic and cultural groups have collective rights, either moral or legal in nature. Justifications of collective rights resorting to the value of cultural identity are said to be in need of explaining why the proper way of protecting such value (...) is through rights. It is argued that practical communitarianism’s case for collective rights needs embracing meta-normative and normative relativism, whose application to political action yields consequences at odds with widespread ethical intuitions. (shrink)

La reflexion sur l'experience politique est au coeur de L'Esprit des lois. a l'instar de nombreux auteurs du XVIIIe siecle, Montesquieu s'interroge sur la perennite des Republiques animees par la vertu. L'essor de l'economie, dans les grands etats europeens, nuit a l'expression des vertus et - corrompt les moeurs pures -. Or en l'absence de devouement civique, les etats peuvent-ils fonder le lien social et garantir la liberte politique? La vertu patriotique, passion dominante des cites antiques, peut-elle devenir caduque sans (...) prejudice pour l'homme moderne? En revenant sur l'inscription de Montesquieu dans la tradition du liberalisme politique, cette etude explore les voies plurielles tracees par Montesquieu face au - mal politique - incarne dans le despotisme. Elle invite a approfondir la reflexion consacree au concept de societe civile.". (shrink)

According to the standard analysis of degree questions, the logical form of a degree question contains a variable that ranges over individual degrees and is bound by the degree question operator how. In contrast with this, we claim that the variable bound by the degree question operator how does not range over individual degrees but over intervals of degrees, by analogy with Schwarzschild and Wilkinson's proposal regarding the semantics of comparative clauses. Not only does the interval-based semantics predict the existence (...) of certain readings that are not predicted under the standard view, it is also able, together with other natural assumptions, to account for the sensitivity of degree questions to negative islands, as well as for the fact, uncovered by Fox and Hackl, that negative islands can be obviated by some properly placed modals. Like Fox and Hackl, we characterize negative island effects as arising from the fact that the relevant question, due to its meaning alone, can never have a maximally informative answer. Contrary to Fox and Hackl, however, we do not need to assume that scales are universally dense, nor that the notion of maximal informativity responsible for negative islands is blind to contextual parameters. (shrink)

Building on previous works which argued that scalar implicatures can be computed in embedded positions, this paper proposes a constraint on exhaustification which restricts the conditions under which an exhaustivity operator can be licensed. We show that this economy condition allows us to derive a number of generalizations, such as, in particular, the ‘Implicature Focus Generalization’: scalar implicatures can be embedded under a downward-entailing operator only if the scalar term bears pitch accent. Our economy condition also derives specific predictions regarding (...) the licensing of so-called Hurford disjunctions. (shrink)

In this article, we describe and attempt to solve a puzzle arising from the interpretation of modified numerals like less than five and between two and five. The puzzle is this: such modified numerals seem to mean different things depending on whether they combine with distributive or non-distributive predicates. When they combine with distributive predicates, they intuitively impose a kind of upper bound, whereas when they combine with non-distributive predicates, they do not. We propose and explore in detail four solutions (...) to this puzzle, each involving some notion of maximality, but differing in the type of maximality involved and in the source of maximality. While the full range of data we consider do not conclusively favor one theory over the other three, we do argue that overall the evidence goes against the view that modified numerals lexically encode a ‘standard’ maximality operator, and suggests the need for a pragmatic blocking mechanism that filters out readings of sentences that are generated by the grammar but intuitively unavailable. (shrink)

Plural definite descriptions across many languages display two well-known properties. First, they can give rise to so-called non-maximal readings, in the sense that they ‘allow for exceptions’. Second, while they tend to have a quasi-universal quantificational force in affirmative sentences, they tend to be interpreted existentially in the scope of negation. Building on previous works, we offer a theory in which sentences containing plural definite expressions trigger a family of possible interpretations, and where general principles of language use account for (...) their interpretation in various contexts and syntactic environments. Our theory solves a number of problems that these previous works encounter, and has broader empirical coverage in that it offers a precise analysis for sentences that display complex interactions between plural definites, quantifiers and bound variables, as well as for cases involving non-distributive predicates. The resulting proposal is briefly compared with an alternative proposal by Križ, which has similar coverage but is based on a very different architecture and sometimes makes subtly different predictions. (shrink)

Why is ordinary language vague? We argue that in contexts in which a cooperative speaker is not perfectly informed about the world, the use of vague expressions can offer an optimal tradeoff between truthfulness (Gricean Quality) and informativeness (Gricean Quantity). Focusing on expressions of approximation such as “around”, which are semantically vague, we show that they allow the speaker to convey indirect probabilistic information, in a way that can give the listener a more accurate representation of the information available to (...) the speaker than any more precise expression would (intervals of the form “between”). That is, vague sentences can be _more informative_ than their precise counterparts. We give a probabilistic treatment of the interpretation of “around”, and offer a model for the interpretation and use of “around”-statements within the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework. In our account the shape of the speaker’s distribution matters in ways not predicted by the Lexical Uncertainty model standardly used in the RSA framework for vague predicates. We use our approach to draw further lessons concerning the semantic flexibility of vague expressions and their irreducibility to more precise meanings. (shrink)

This article presents the design of, and students' responses to, a Web-enhanced course titled “Inquiry Methods Integrating Science, Mathematics, Technology, and Society (MSTS) in Elementary Grades.” The course was part of the pilot test of a novel approach to a compressed-time alternative pathway masters of arts in teaching degree for career-change students in elementary education. Students' responses indicated this approach to MSTS and inquiry served to unify many of the other courses in the degree program.

First published in 1986, Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft remains the only analysis of indigenous discourse about an African belief system undertaken from within the framework of Anglo-American analytical philosophy. Taking as its point of departure W. V. O. Quine's thesis about the indeterminacy of translation, the book investigates questions of Yoruba epistemology and of how knowledge is conceived in an oral culture.

The New Evil Demon problem has been hotly debated since the case was introduced in the early 1980’s (e.g. Lehrer and Cohen 1983; Cohen 1984), and there seems to be recent increased interest in the topic. In a forthcoming collection of papers on the New Evil Demon problem (Dutant and Dorsch, forthcoming), at least two of the papers, both by prominent epistemologists, attempt to resist the problem by appealing to the distinction between justification and excuses. My primary aim here is (...) to critically evaluate this new excuse maneuver as a response to the New Evil Demon problem. -/- Their response attempts to give us reason to reject the idea that victims of the New Evil Demon have justification for believing as they do. I shall argue that this approach is ultimately unsuccessful, however much of value can be learned from these attempts. In particular, progress in the debate can be made by following those who advance the excuse maneuver and make explicit the connection between epistemic justification and epistemic norms. By doing so, the questions being debated are clarified, as is the methodology being used to attempt to answer them. (shrink)

This volume brings together the central works of recent scholarship on the nature of rights, with contributions by some of the most prominent contemporary theorists in moral, legal, and political philosophy. With approaches ranging from the political to the historical, and from the analytical to the critical, this collection touches on the major conceptual and practical questions of this important field and also offers useful introductions to emerging issues in rights theory.

What happened to the theories of Europe developed by the Enlightenment? Following a pluridisciplinary perspective, this book examines the way in which the projects conceived in the 18th century were reinvested both in the founding texts of the European Union and in contemporary political theory.

The authors in this edited volume reflect on their experiences with culturally relevant pedagogy-as students, as teachers, as researchers-and how these experiences were often at odds with their backgrounds and/or expectations.

Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 4, Page 765-781, August 2022.

There are various equivalent formulations of the Church-Turing thesis. A common one is that every effective computation can be carried out by a Turing machine. The Church-Turing thesis is often misunderstood, particularly in recent writing in the philosophy of mind.

This paper examines human planning abilities, using as its inspiration planning techniques developed in artificial intelligence. AI research has shown that in certain problems partial‐order planners, which manipulate partial plans while not committing to a particular ordering of those partial plans, are more efficient than total‐order planners, which represent all partial plans as totally ordered. This research asks whether total‐order planning and/or partial‐order planning are accurate descriptions of human planning, and if different populations use different planning techniques. Using a simple (...) planning task modeled after tasks designed in artificial intelligence we tested 7–8 year‐old children, 11–13 year‐old children, adult controls, and adults with damage to the prefrontal cortex. We found that adults and older children exhibited performance on planning tasks of varying complexity which matched that of artificial partial‐order planners, and that this pattern of performance did not vary with multiple presentations of the planning task. In contrast, young children and adults with damage to the prefrontal cortex exhibited performance matching that of artificial total‐order planners. This pattern of performance did vary, however, with multiple presentations of the planning task, with the young children and adults with cortical damage displaying aspects of total‐order planning. In a further study we found that adolescents who had sustained damage to the prefrontal cortex as children displayed two different patterns of performance; when measures of reaction time were analyzed they revealed a pattern of performance suggestive of partial‐order plan representations. However, analyses of the adolescents' protocols revealed a pattern of performance suggestive of total‐order plan representations. The significance of these results to psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence are discussed. (shrink)

Structural priming is a powerful method to inform linguistic theories. We argue that this method extends nicely beyond syntax to theories of meaning. Priming, however, should still be seen as only one of the tools available for linguistic data collection. Specifically, because priming can occur at different, potentially conflicting levels, it cannot detect every aspect of linguistic representations.

Book reviewed in this article: Philosophy in Medicine: Conceptual and Ethical Problems in Medicine and Psychiatry. By Charles M. Culver and Bernard Gert. Psychiatric Ethics. Edited by Sidney Block and Paul Chodoff. Man, Mind, and Morality: The Ethics of Behavior Control. By Ruth Macklin.