Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Résumé Ce compte rendu de Formes de vie de Jacques Fontanille cherche à montrer que l’ouvrage s’inscrit dans une certaine continuité, notamment par rapport à Pratiques sémiotiques, mais qu’il constitue aussi un nouveau tournant, qui fait évoluer la sémiotique et la positionne dans le champ des sciences humaines et sociales. D’abord, nous discutons le fait que, selon Jacques Fontanille, les formes de vie font « vaciller » la frontière entre la nature et la culture. Nous soulignons le fait que Jacques (...) Fontanille développe après Descola, Latour et Lotman les notions de régimes de croyance d’identification, de mode d’existence social et de sémiosphère. Ensuite, l’accent est mis sur le « vivre-avec » comme macro-expérience. Il s’agit de mesurer les conséquences d’un double choix qui permet de dépasser le stade de l’auto-organisation : d’une part, le rapport au monde est médié par l’actant-corps ; d’autre part, l’activité sémiotique consciente d’elle-même est une activité méta-sémiotique. Enfin, il importe d’évaluer la part du culturel dans la constitution des formes de vie. Nous nous interrogeons sur l’« instanciation » des formes de vie dans un lieu et dans un temps déterminés. (shrink)

In medical research, the ethical principle of respect for persons is operationalized into the process of informed consent. The consent tools should be contextualized and adapted to the different socio-cultural environment, especially when research crosses the traditional boundaries and reaches poor communities. We look at the challenges experienced in the malaria Quinact trial, conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and describe some lessons learned, related to the definition of acceptable representative, the role of independent witness and the impact of (...) socio-economic vulnerability. To ensure children's protection, consent is required by the parents or, in their absence, by a legally mandated representative. In our setting, children's responsibility is often entrusted permanently or temporarily to relatives or friends without a tribunal mandate. Hence, a notion of ‘culturally acceptable representative’ under supervision of the local Ethics Committee may be more suitable. To ensure protection of illiterate subjects, an independent witness is required to confirm that the consent was freely given. However, in low-literacy contexts, potential witnesses often don't have any previous relationship with patient and there may be power-unbalance in their relationship, rather than genuine dialogue. In poor communities, trial participation may be seen as an opportunity to secure access to healthcare. Poverty may also lead to ‘competition’ to access the research-related benefits, with a risk of disturbance at societal or household level. Adjusting consent procedures to sociocultural and socioeconomic realities is essential for fulfilling the underlying ethical principles. This requires a collaborative dialogue between researchers, regulators and ethics committees. (shrink)

Along with Husserl's Ideas and Heidegger's Being and Time, Being Given is one of the classic works of phenomenology in the twentieth century. Through readings of Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, and twentieth-century French phenomenology (e.g., Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Henry), it ventures a bold and decisive reappraisal of phenomenology and its possibilities. Its author's most original work to date, the book pushes phenomenology to its limits in an attempt to redefine and recover the phenomenological ideal, which the author argues has never (...) been realized in any of the historical phenomenologies. Against Husserl's reduction to consciousness and Heidegger's reduction to Dasein, the author proposes a third reduction to givenness, wherein phenomena appear unconditionally and show themselves from themselves at their own initiative. Being Given is the clearest, most systematic response to questions that have occupied its author for the better part of two decades. The book articulates a powerful set of concepts that should provoke new research in philosophy, religion, and art, as well as at the intersection of these disciplines. Some of the significant issues it treats include the phenomenological definition of the phenomenon, the redefinition of the gift in terms not of economy but of givenness, the nature of saturated phenomena, and the question “Who comes after the subject?” Throughout his consideration of these issues, the author carefully notes their significance for the increasingly popular fields of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Being Given is therefore indispensable reading for anyone interested in the question of the relation between the phenomenological and the theological in Marion and emergent French phenomenology. (shrink)

How can an incomplete and uncertain model of the environment be used to perceive, infer, decide and act efficiently? This is the challenge that both living and artificial cognitive systems have to face. Symbolic logic is, by its nature, unable to deal with this question. The subjectivist approach to probability is an extension to logic that is designed specifically to face this challenge. In this paper, we review a number of frequently encountered cognitive issues and cast them into a common (...) Bayesian formalism. The concepts we review are ambiguities, fusion, multimodality, conflicts, modularity, hierarchies and loops. First, each of these concepts is introduced briefly using some examples from the neuroscience, psychophysics or robotics literature. Then, the concept is formalized using a template Bayesian model. The assumptions and common features of these models, as well as their major differences, are outlined and discussed. (shrink)

The problems of racism and racially motivated violence in predominantly African American communities in the United States are complex, multifactorial, and historically rooted. While these problems are also deeply morally troubling, bioethicists have not contributed substantially to addressing them. Concern for justice has been one of the core commitments of bioethics. For this and other reasons, bioethicists should contribute to addressing these problems. We consider how bioethicists can offer meaningful contributions to the public discourse, research, teaching, training, policy development, and (...) academic scholarship in response to the alarming and persistent patterns of racism and implicit biases associated with it. To make any useful contribution, bioethicists will require preparation and should expect to play a significant role through collaborative action with others. (shrink)

Marked sharply by its time and place (Paris in the 1970s), this early theological text by Jean-Luc Marion nevertheless maintains a strikingly deep resonance with his most recent, groundbreaking, and ever more widely discussed phenomenology. And while Marion will want to insist on a clear distinction between the theological and phenomenological projects, to read each in light of the other can prove illuminating for both the theological and the philosophical reader - and perhaps above all for the reader (...) who wants to read in both directions at once, the reader concerned with those points of interplay and undecidability where theology and philosophy inform, provoke, and challenge one another in endlessly complex ways." "In both his theological and his phenomenological projects Marion's central effort to free the absolute or unconditional (be it theology's God or phenomenology's phenomenon) from the various limits and preconditions of human thought and language will imply a thoroughgoing critique of all metaphysics, and above all of the modern metaphysics centered on the active, spontaneous subject who occupies modern philosophy from Descartes through Hegel and Nietzsche. (shrink)

Compared with the Greek and Latin fields, the systematic study of the concept of textual criticism in classical India has made little progress, despite the quality of work produced by specialists. And yet research of this nature would probably lead, paradoxically, to a clearer formulation of the aims and methods of modern critical editions of Indian texts.

En el presente ensayo intentaremos exponer algunos aspectos de la crítica de Graeber al capitalismo financiarizado. En el primer apartado introduciremos su concepto de alienación, clave para entender el sentido de su obra. En los apartados posteriores presentaremos las ideas principales que se pueden encontrar en Bullshit Jobs, su último libro. En él expone una teoría de los trabajos basura o inútiles, que considera uno de los pilares fundamentales de la ideología neoliberal, junto con la omnipresencia de la burocracia y (...) la moralidad de la deuda. El fenómeno social de los trabajos basura es estudiado desde diversos niveles: qué son, cómo afectan a los que los realizan, cuáles son las causas económicas y por qué nadie hace nada para acabar con ellos.In the present paper I try to delve into some of Graeber’s critiques of the financialised capitalism. In the first section, I will introduce his idea of alienation, key to understand the sense of his work. In the rest of the paper I will present the main ideas of his last book, Bullshit Jobs. There Graeber presents a theory of bullshit jobs, which he believes to be an important base of the neoliberal system, along with the bureaucracy and the debt. He analyses the social phenomenon of bullshit jobs from different perspectives: what they are, how they affect the people doing them, which are the economic causes and why nothing is done. (shrink)

Montrer que le rapport de la conversion au Souverain Bien chez Pascal nous invite à ausculter philosophiquement la notion d'émotion : c'est ce que Jean-Louis Bischoff entend montrer dans la présente étude. L'enjeu de son enquête est clair : il entend affoler et subvertir l'approche commune du mot « émotion ». Pour mener à bien son projet, l'auteur mobilise les lumières de philosophes comme Marion, Levinas, Ricoeur, Greisch ou Romano.

What makes science trustworthy to the public? This chapter examines one proposed answer: the trustworthiness of science is based at least in part on its independence from the idiosyncratic values, interests, and ideas of individual scientists. That is, science is trustworthy to the extent that following the scientific process would result in the same conclusions, regardless of the particular scientists involved. We analyze this "idiosyncrasy-free ideal" for science by looking at philosophical debates about inductive risk, focusing on two recent proposals (...) which offer different methods of avoiding idiosyncrasy: the high epistemic standards proposal and the democratic values proposal. (shrink)

Decision making in any brain is imperfect and costly in terms of time and energy. Operating under such constraints, an organism could be in a position to improve performance if an opportunity arose to exploit informative patterns in the environment being searched. Such an improvement of performance could entail both faster and more accurate (i.e., reward-maximizing) decisions. The present study investigated the extent to which human participants could learn to take advantage of immediate patterns in the spatial arrangement of serially (...) presented foods such that a region of space would consistently be associated with greater subjective value. Eye movements leading up to choices demonstrated rapidly induced biases in the selective allocation of visual fixation and attention that were accompanied by both faster and more accurate choices of desired goods as implicit learning occurred. However, for the control condition with its spatially balanced reward environment, these subjects exhibited preexisting lateralized biases for eye and hand movements (i.e., leftward and rightward, respectively) that could act in opposition not only to each other but also to the orienting biases elicited by the experimental manipulation, producing an asymmetry between the left and right hemifields with respect to performance. Potentially owing at least in part to learned cultural conventions (e.g., reading from left to right), the findings herein particularly revealed an intrinsic leftward bias underlying initial saccades in the midst of more immediate feedback-directed processes for which spatial biases can be learned flexibly to optimize oculomotor and manual control in value-based decision making. The present study thus replicates general findings of learned attentional biases in a novel context with inherently rewarding stimuli and goes on to further elucidate the interactions between endogenous and exogenous biases. (shrink)

While humanists have pondered the subject of love to the point of obsessiveness, philosophers have steadfastly ignored it. One might wonder whether the discipline of philosophy even recognizes love. The word philosophy means “love of wisdom,” but the absence of love from philosophical discourse is curiously glaring. So where did the love go? In The Erotic Phenomenon, Jean-Luc Marion asks this fundamental question of philosophy, while reviving inquiry into the concept of love itself. Marion begins his profound and (...) personal book with a critique of Descartes’ equation of the ego’s ability to doubt with the certainty that one exists—“I think, therefore I am”—arguing that this is worse than vain. We encounter being, he says, when we first experience love: I am loved, therefore I am; and this love is the reason I care whether I exist or not. This philosophical base allows Marion to probe several manifestations of love and its variations, including carnal excitement, self-hate, lying and perversion, fidelity, the generation of children, and the love of God. Throughout, Marion stresses that all erotic phenomena, including sentimentality, pornography, and even boasts about one’s sexual conquests, stem not from the ego as popularly understood but instead from love. A thoroughly enlightening and captivating philosophical investigation of a strangely neglected subject, The Erotic Phenomenon is certain to initiate feverish new dialogue about the philosophical meanings of that most desirable and mysterious of all concepts—love. (shrink)

In seven essays that draw from metaphysics, phenomenology, literature, Christological theology, and Biblical exegesis,Marion sketches several prolegomena to a future fuller thinking and saying of love’s paradoxical reasons, exploring evil, freedom, bedazzlement, and the loving gaze; crisis, absence, and knowing.

In the third book in the trilogy that includes Reduction and Givenness and Being Given. Marion renews his argument for a phenomenology of givenness, with penetrating analyses of the phenomena of event, idol, flesh, and icon. Turning explicitly to hermeneutical dimensions of the debate, Marion masterfully draws together issues emerging from his close reading of Descartes and Pascal, Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas and Henry. Concluding with a revised version of his response to Derrida, In the Name: How to (...) Avoid Speaking of It, Marion powerfully re-articulates the theological possibilities of phenomenology. (shrink)

Events in the US in 2020 have laid bare the reality that racism and its effects continue to take a heavy toll on the lives of Black Americans. The three articles in this issue of AJOB each provide...

Un des débats les plus intéressants et les plus passionnés qui traversent la période du XVIIè et XVIIIè siècle concerne la finalité et les causes finales. L'importance du sujet se conçoit aisément si l'on songe à l'étendue et à la profondeur de ses implications. Par ses enjeux, le problème concerne les domaines épistémologique, esthétique, métaphysique et théologique. Comment doit-on penser, comprendre et étudier la nature? La philosophie s'interroge alors sur la scientificité non seulement des explications qu'elle donne, mais aussi des (...) questions qu'elle pose. Peut-on encore faire une théodicée, c'est-à-dire justifier d'un ordre final et providentiel de l'univers? La question porte tout autant sur la nature et Dieu que sur les pouvoirs de la raison humaine. L'étude de ces deux siècles de débats permet de comprendre la genèse de nos conceptions contemporaines de la nature. (shrink)

Estudio sobre la ironía, como modo de entender la vida y la filosofía. Ùltimo texto de Richard J. Bernstein.

This paper sheds light on the role of digital platform labour in the development of today’s artificial intelligence, predicated on data-intensive machine learning algorithms. Focus is on the specific ways in which outsourcing of data tasks to myriad ‘micro-workers’, recruited and managed through specialized platforms, powers virtual assistants, self-driving vehicles and connected objects. Using qualitative data from multiple sources, we show that micro-work performs a variety of functions, between three poles that we label, respectively, ‘artificial intelligence preparation’, ‘artificial intelligence verification’ (...) and ‘artificial intelligence impersonation’. Because of the wide scope of application of micro-work, it is a structural component of contemporary artificial intelligence production processes – not an ephemeral form of support that may vanish once the technology reaches maturity stage. Through the lens of micro-work, we prefigure the policy implications of a future in which data technologies do not replace human workforce but imply its marginalization and precariousness. (shrink)

This essay discusses the nature of collective responsibility and explores various controversies associated with its possibility and normative value.

The possible and revelation -- The saturated phenomenon -- Metaphysics and phenomenology: a relief for theology -- "Christian philosophy": hermeneutic or heuristic? -- Sketch of a phenomenological concept of the gift -- What cannot be said: Apophasis and the discourse of love -- The banality of saturation -- Faith and reason.

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Afin de clarifier la réalité elle-même, Nietzsche rapporte généalogiquement le « conatus » spinoziste à une volonté de statisme à laquelle il oppose la dynamique expansive de la volonté de puissance. Pourtant, on peut montrer que Nietzsche rejette moins la conservation qu’il ne la réinterprète dans l’ordre d’une grandeur à produire, indissociable du tragique.

Family members can provide crucial support to individuals participating in clinical trials. In research on the “newest frontier” of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)—the use of DBS for psychiatric conditions—family member support is frequently listed as a criterion for trial enrollment. Despite the significance of family members, qualitative ethics research on DBS for psychiatric conditions has focused almost exclusively on the perspectives and experiences of DBS recipients. This qualitative study is one of the first to include both DBS recipients and their (...) family members as interview participants. Using dyadic thematic analysis—an approach that takes both the individuals and the relationship as units of analyses—this study analyzes the complex ways in which family relationships can affect DBS trial participation, and how DBS trial participation in turn influences family relationships. Based on these findings, we propose ways to improve study designs to better take family relationships into account, and better support family members in taking on the complex, essential roles that they play in DBS trials for psychiatric conditions. (shrink)

Natural kinds is a widely used and pivotal concept in philosophy – the idea being that the classifications and taxonomies employed by science correspond to the real kinds in nature. Natural kinds are often opposed to the idea of kinds in the human and social sciences, which are typically seen as social constructions, characterised by changing norms and resisting scientific reduction. Yet human beings are also a subject of scientific study.Does this mean humans fall into corresponding kinds of their own? (...) In The Epistemology and Morality of Human Kinds Marion Godman defends the idea of human kinds. She first examines the scientific use and nature of human kinds, considering the arguments of key philosophers whose work bears upon human kinds, such as Ian Hacking, John Searle, Richard Boyd and Ruth Millikan. Using the examples of gender, ethnic minorities and Buddhism she then argues that human kinds are a result of ongoing historical reproduction, chiefly due to pre-existing cultural models and social learning. Her novel argument shifts the focus away from the reductionism characteristic of research about human kinds. Instead, she argues that they are “multiply projectable” and deserving of scientific study not in spite of, but because of their role in explaining our identity, injustice and the emergence of group rights. (shrink)

In the countries with a strong muslim immigration, the practice and the organization of Islam represent a national and international politica! stake. The Belgian state, which recognizes and supports the most important cults financially, recognized Islam in 1974. But this cult doesn't still obtain this state support and the questions concerning its organization are more complex than ever. Thelegislation is insufficient and its application almost non-existent. The debates on 'integrism' and hijab have confronted us with the problem of the integrating (...) role of Islam. The Belgian political world seems today to fear the influence of foreign countries on immigrants. All these factors throw light on the history and the present state of the Belgian legislation on the organization of the islamic cult, which this article analyses. (shrink)

The Pauṣkara briefly discusses the meaning-expressing nature of śabda (constituted of phonemes, varṇa) and the means to the cognition of word and sentence meaning. According to this dualistic Śaiva Tantra, meaning is denoted by nāda, a capacity of varṇas. Varṇas also are the means to the cognition of meaning through a capacity (saṃskāra) manifested in them. Although the meaning-denoting capacity is natural to varṇas, the relation of words (which are nothing but groups of varṇas) with objects is fixed by convention. (...) This article translates and analyzes the relevant passages from the sixth and eighth chapters. Certain arguments of plagiarism levelled against the eighth chapter of the Pauṣkara are examined in the concluding part of the article. (shrink)

The dualist Śaiva doctrine considers that mala is that which obstructs the true nature of the self and sets in motion the operation of bondage. Though many dualist Śaiva tantras discuss the concept of mala, only the Pauṣkara presents a detailed exposition supported by numerous arguments. This article aims to closely report those arguments and to search within the Pauṣkara for answers to certain questions that the concept provokes.

In recent years, development practice has seen that microfinance institutions are starting to consider their environmental bottom line in addition to their financial and social objectives. Yet, little is known about the characteristics of institutions involved in environmental management. This paper empirically identifies the characteristics of these MFIs for the first time using a sample of 160 microfinance institutions worldwide. Basing our analysis on various econometric tests, we find that larger MFIs and MFIs registered as banks tend to perform better (...) in environmental policy and environmental risk assessment. Furthermore, more mature MFIs tend to have better environmental performances, in particular in providing green microcredit and environmental non-financial services. On the other hand, financial performance is not significantly related to environmental performance, suggesting that ‘green’ MFIs are not more or less profitable than other microfinance institutions. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage rassemble les textes des interventions prononcées lors du colloque Cornelius Castoriadis. Réinventer l'autonomie qui s'est déroulé aux universités de Paris-VIII et de Cergy-Pontoise en mars 2007.

AESTHETICS OF “PURE SIGN” ADORNO, MERLEAU-PONTY AND ART AS AN ENDLESS REINVENTION OF REALITY Contemporary painting has often dealt with signs, graffiti, calligraphy, and more precisely with aesthetic objects that take the form and appearance of signs, but which do not belong to any existing alphabet. These are forms that imitate signs but are what we might call “pure signs”, i.e. signifiers without a signified. This form of artistic experimentation has elicited parallel and convergent analyses by Merleau-Ponty and Adorno. These (...) authors show the ways in which this kind of artistic experimentation at once renews reflection on language and reflection on art, through a more fundamental reflection on the cognitive actions that they necessarily share, namely deciphering and interpretation. By asking how signs that have no conventional meaning can still be identified as signs–the “decryption” of which is therefore impossible–we re-actualize a question that goes back to Plato and Augustine. How can we begin to investigate and understand what we do not know yet? How does the decryption and interpretation process arise for one who does not yet know if there is something to understand? This type of artwork actually has a meaning, but not in the traditional sense. Although they are unreadable and untranslatable, such works clarifying the meaning of interpretation for us, they free us from a naive and simplistic conception of the process of understanding. They show us that interpretation is always a process of inventing and producing a new meaning, but never of actually finding a pre-existing meaning. In doing so, these kinds of artwork are inseparable from ontological and political issues. Against a conservative view of our relationship to reality, they make us aware that the sense of reality is never simply given nor definitive, and that our relationship to reality contains much more potential than we commonly believe. (shrink)

On associe habituellement Rousseau à la tradition républicaine, opposée schématiquement à la tradition libérale. Sans remettre en cause globalement cette thèse, il peut être intéressant de déplacer les termes de la problématique, en présentant la critique rousseauiste du libéralisme comme une critique menée de l’intérieur, plutôt que de l’extérieur. On peut en effet, à l’exemple de John Pocock, identifier un tronc commun aux pensées républicaine et libérale ou, à l’exemple de Charles Larmore, voir dans le républicanisme « une formulation plus (...) lucide de la théorie libérale ». Cela se traduit chez Rousseau par une stratégie consistant à se réapproprier les promesses contenues dans les prémisses du libéralisme, pour mieux en dénoncer les conséquences dogmatiques. De fait, on trouve chez Rousseau une défense des droits individuels, un souci de l’indépendance individuelle dans les relations économiques et plus généralement dans les rapports sociaux, une justification jusnaturaliste de la propriété privée, et même des emprunts à l’idée selon laquelle la mise en concurrence permettrait de définir les conditions d’un choix optimal. Cependant l’analyse de certains textes de l’Émile montre que Rousseau vise en définitive à dissiper l’illusion d’une autorégulation optimale des rapports sociaux et économiques : l’opacité et les distorsions des rapports économiques ainsi que l’usage spontanément irrationnel de la liberté individuelle impliquent la nécessité de gouverner la liberté, par l’éducation et par la législation. (shrink)

L’Émile met en scène deux leçons de choses visant à initier l’élève à la science économique : l’une concernant le fondement du droit de propriété, l’autre concernant l’échange marchand et la division sociale du travail. Ces deux moments éducatifs donnent un précieux éclairage sur la pensée économique de Rousseau, pensée plus complexe et informée qu’on ne le considère communément. Mais c’est également dans les décisions existentielles d’émile que sont abordées philosophiquement les conditions d’un choix rationnel, la maximisation de la satisfaction (...) et les vertus supposées de la concurrence. Par ces différents biais, Rousseau met à l’épreuve et critique les thèses de la science économique, annonciatrices du libéralisme, qui s’ébauchent à son époque.Two practical lessons, in Émile, aim to introduce the pupil to economics. The first one concerns the foundation of the right to property ; the second one concerns trade and the social division of work. Both of these educational moments show Rousseau’s economic thought to be more complex and informed than we often believe. But Émile’s existential decisions are also occasions for philosophical investigations on the conditions of rational choice, the maximization of satisfaction and the supposed benefits of competition between bids. Through these differents issues, Rousseau puts to the test and critically examines the free market principles which are starting to take shape just then. (shrink)