Cumulative technological culture (CTC) refers to the increase in the efficiency and complexity of tools and techniques in human populations over generations. A fascinating question is to understand the cognitive origins of this phenomenon. Because CTC is definitely a social phenomenon, most accounts have suggested a series of cognitive mechanisms oriented toward the social dimension (e.g., teaching, imitation, theory of mind, and metacognition), thereby minimizing the technical dimension and the potential influence of non-social, cognitive skills. What if we have failed (...) to see the elephant in the room? What if social cognitive mechanisms were only catalyzing factors and not thesufficient and necessaryconditions for the emergence of CTC? In this article, we offer an alternative, unified cognitive approach to this phenomenon by assuming that CTC originates in non-social cognitive skills, namely technical-reasoning skills which enable humans to develop the technical potential necessary to constantly acquire and improve technical information. This leads us to discuss how theory of mind and metacognition, in concert with technical reasoning, can help boost CTC. The cognitive approach developed here opens up promising new avenues for reinterpreting classical issues (e.g., innovation, emulation vs. imitation, social vs. asocial learning, cooperation, teaching, and overimitation) in a field that has so far been largely dominated by other disciplines, such as evolutionary biology, mathematics, anthropology, archeology, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

Illusionism about phenomenal consciousness is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, even though it seems to exist. This thesis is widely judged to be uniquely counterintuitive: the idea that consciousness is an illusion strikes most people as absurd, and seems almost impossible to contemplate in earnest. Defenders of illusionism should be able to explain the apparent absurdity of their own thesis, within their own framework. However, this is no trivial task: arguably, none of the illusionist theories currently on (...) the market is able to do this. I present a new theory of phenomenal introspection and argue that it might deal with the task at hand. (shrink)

Plato’s works have been the object of countless interpretations and recuperations ever since Greek antiquity. In the context of prenazi Germany, the writer Hans F.K. Günther published a work in defence of eugenic theories (aiming to improve man through authoritarian laws), allegedly based on the work of the Athenian philosopher and entitled Platon als Hüter des Lebens (“Plato as Protector of Life”). The present article tries to set forth what is at stake in that propaganda piece, its historical context, as (...) well as the disquieting implications of such an “appropriation” of classical philosophy to purely political ends. (shrink)

Phenomenal consciousness appears to be particularly normatively significant. For this reason, sentience-based conceptions of ethics are widespread. In the field of animal ethics, knowing which animals are sentient appears to be essential to decide the moral status of these animals. I argue that, given that materialism is true of the mind, phenomenal consciousness is probably not particularly normatively significant. We should face up to this probable insignificance of phenomenal consciousness and move towards an ethic without sentience.

Diversity of evidence is widely claimed to be crucial for evidence amalgamation to have distinctive epistemic merits. Bayesian epistemologists capture this idea in the variety-of-evidence thesis: ceteris paribus, the strength of confirmation of a hypothesis by an evidential set increases with the diversity of the evidential elements in that set. Yet, formal exploration of this thesis has shown that it fails to be generally true. This article demonstrates that the thesis fails in even more circumstances than recent results would lead (...) us to expect. Most importantly, it can fail whatever the chance that the evidential sources are unreliable. Our results hold for two types of degrees of variety: reliability independence and testable aspect independence. We conclude that the variety-of-evidence thesis can, at best, be interpreted as an exception-prone rule of thumb. (shrink)

The variety-of-evidence thesis has been criticized by Bovens and Hartmann. This article points to two limitations of their Bayesian model: the conceptualization of unreliable evidential sources as randomizing and the restriction to comparing full independence to full dependence. It is shown that the variety-of-evidence thesis is rehabilitated when unreliable sources are reconceptualized as systematically biased. However, it turns out that allowing for degrees of independence leads to a qualification of the variety-of-evidence thesis: as Bovens and Hartmann claimed, more independence does (...) not always imply stronger confirmation. (shrink)

Illusionism about consciousness is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, but merely seems to exist. Embracing illusionism presents the theoretical advantage that one does not need to explain how consciousness arises from purely physical brains anymore, but only to explain why consciousness seems to exist while it does not. As Keith Frankish puts it, illusionism replaces the “hard problem of consciousness” with the “illusion problem.” However, a satisfying version of illusionism has to explain not only why the illusion (...) of consciousness arises, but also why it arises with its particular strength: Notably, why we are so deeply reluctant to recognize the illusory nature of consciousness. Explaining our strong intuitive resistance to illusionism means solving what I call the “illusion meta-problem,” which I think is a part of the illusion problem. In this paper, I argue that current versions of illusionism are unable to solve the illusion meta-problem. I focus on two of the most promising recent illusionist theories of consciousness, and I show why they fail to explain the peculiar reluctance we encounter whenever we try to accept that consciousness is an illusion. (shrink)

La philosophie bergsonnienne a rendu le monde de ses contemporains moins opaque, les aidant à lui trouver un sens. Si la France cartésienne coïncide avec les partisans de la démocratie parlementaire ancrée à gauche, celle de Bergson recrute ses plus gros bataillons dans la droite nationale, conservatrice, mais également dans une gauche antiparlementaire, révolutionnaire.

This article maintains that an important class of scientific generalizations should be reinterpreted: they have typically been understood as ceteris paribus laws, but are, in fact, generics. Four arguments are presented to support this thesis. One argument is that the interpretation in terms of ceteris paribus laws is a historical accident. The other three arguments draw on similarities between these generalizations and archetypal generics: they come with similar inferential commitments, they share a syntactic form, and the existing theories to make (...) sense of them are alike. Once these generalizations are properly understood as generics, the recent cognitive approach to generics can be extended to the study of the relevant sciences. The last section indicates ways in which this extension is fruitful for the two strands of research that we combine: the philosophy of science literature on generalizations and the semantics literature on generics. (shrink)

This article examines two theses formulated by Russo and Williamson in their study of causal inference in the health sciences. The two theses are assessed against evidence from a specific case in the social sciences, i.e., research on the institutional determinants of the aggregate unemployment rate. The first Russo–Williamson Thesis is that a causal claim can only be established when it is jointly supported by difference-making and mechanistic evidence. This thesis is shown not to hold. While researchers in my case (...) study draw extensively on both types of evidence, one causal claim out of the three analyzed is established even though it is exclusively supported by mechanistic evidence. The second Russo–Williamson Thesis is that standard accounts of causality fail to handle the dualist epistemology highlighted in the first Thesis. I argue that a counterfactual-manipulationist account of causality—which is endorsed by many philosophers as well as many social scientists—can perfectly make sense of the typical strategy in my case study to draw on both difference-making and mechanistic evidence; it is just an instance of the common strategy of increasing evidential variety. (shrink)

Diversity of evidence is widely claimed to be crucial for evidence amalgamation to have distinctive epistemic merits. Bayesian epistemologists capture this idea in the variety-of-evidence thesis: ceteris paribus, the strength of confirmation of a hypothesis by an evidential set increases with the diversity of the evidential elements in that set. Yet, formal exploration of this thesis has shown that it fails to be generally true. This article demonstrates that the thesis fails in even more circumstances than recent results would lead (...) us to expect. Most importantly, it can fail whatever the chance that the evidential sources are unreliable. Our results hold for two types of degrees of variety: reliability independence and testable aspect independence. We conclude that the variety-of-evidence thesis can, at best, be interpreted as an exception-prone rule of thumb. (shrink)

This paper analyzes recent attempts to reject reproduction with lineage formation as a necessary condition for evolution by means of natural selection :560–570, 2008; Stud Hist Philos Sci Part C Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci 42:106–114, 2011; Bourrat in Biol Philos 29:517–538, 2014; Br J Philos Sci 66:883–903, 2015; Charbonneau in Philos Sci 81:727–740, 2014; Doolittle and Inkpen in Proc Natl Acad Sci 115:4006–4014, 2018). Building on the strengths of these attempts and avoiding their pitfalls, it is argued that (...) a robust formulation of evolution by natural selection without reproduction can be established. The main contribution of this paper is a reformulation of Lewontin’s three principles stating that minimal evolution by natural selection occurs when two conditions are met in a population: fitness-related variation and memory. Paradigmatic evolution by natural selection, which can generate adaptations, takes place when an additional condition is present, namely regeneration. (shrink)

Content Description #Includes bibliographical references and index.

Animal ethicists have been debating the morality of speciesism for over forty years. Despite rather persuasive arguments against this form of discrimination, many philosophers continue to assign humans a higher moral status than nonhuman animals. The primary source of evidence for this position is our intuition that humans’ interests matter more than the similar interests of other animals. And it must be acknowledged that this intuition is both powerful and widespread. But should we trust it for all that? The present (...) paper defends a negative answer to that question, based on a debunking argument. The intuitive belief that humans matter more than other animals is unjustified because it results from an epistemically defective process. It is largely shaped by tribalism, our tendency to favor ingroup members as opposed to outgroup members. And this influence is distortive for two reasons. First, tribalism evolved for reasons unrelated to moral truths; hence, it would at best produce true moral beliefs accidentally. Second, tribalism generates a vast quantity of false moral beliefs, starting with racist beliefs. Once this intuition is discarded, little evidence remains that speciesism is morally acceptable. (shrink)

Common sense has it that animals matter considerably less than humans; the welfare and suffering of a cow, a chicken or a fish are important but not as much as the welfare and suffering of a human being. Most animal ethicists reject this “speciesist” view as mere prejudice. In their opinion, there is no difference between humans and other animals that could justify such unequal consideration. In the opposite camp, advocates of speciesism have long tried to identify a difference that (...) would fit the bill, but they have consistently seemed to fail. In light of this, some naturally began to appeal to Moorean arguments: the case against speciesism must be flawed somehow, these philosophers maintain, because speciesism is supported by a strong and widespread intuition. This chapter draws on recent findings in social psychology to criticize this defence of speciesism. It argues that the strong and widespread intuition that humans count more than animals is epistemically defective because it is causally shaped by a pair of irrelevant influences: cognitive dissonance and tribalism. Accordingly, it is no suitable basis for a Moorean argument. (shrink)

The prevalent view in animal ethics is that speciesism is wrong: we should weigh the interests of humans and non-humans equally. Shelly Kagan has recently questioned this claim, defending speciesism against Peter Singer’s seminal argument based on the principle of equal consideration of interests. This critique is most charitably construed as a dilemma. The principle of equal consideration can be interpreted in either of two ways. While it faces counterexamples on the first reading, it makes Singer’s argument question-begging on the (...) second. In response, Singer has grasped the first horn of this dilemma and tried to accommodate Kagan’s apparent counterexamples. In my opinion, this attempt is unpersuasive: the principle of equal consideration is inconsistent with common-sense intuitions on Kagan’s cases. Worse, Singer’s argument begs the question anyway. It therefore faces two serious objections. This is not to say that there is nothing wrong with speciesism, however. In the second half of the paper, I propose another, better argument against speciesism, which I argue is immune to both objections. According to this other argument, speciesism is wrong because it involves discriminating on the basis of a merely biological property. (shrink)

Illusionists about phenomenal consciousness claim that phenomenal consciousness does not exist but merely seems to exist. At the same time, it is quite intuitive for there to be some kind of link between phenomenality and value. For example, some situations seem good or bad in virtue of the conscious experiences they feature. Illusionist views of phenomenal consciousness then face what I call the normative challenge. They have to say where they stand regarding the idea that there is a link between (...) phenomenality and value. If they accept that there is such a link, they might be committed to revisionary normative consequences (and some of them may prove to be uncomfortable). If they deny that there is such link, they might avoid revisionary normative consequences (without being guaranteed against them) but then they have to give reasons to deny that such link obtains, which is not a trivial task. The existence of the normative challenge does not show that illusionism is false, but it shows that illusionism might have important consequences in the normative domain, which have to be clarified. (shrink)

Many people believe that human interests matter much more than the like interests of non-human animals, and this “speciesist belief” plays a crucial role in the philosophical debate over the moral status of animals. In this paper, I develop a debunking argument against it. My contention is that this belief is unjustified because it is largely due to an off-track process: our attempt to reduce the cognitive dissonance generated by the “meat paradox”. Most meat-eaters believe that it is wrong to (...) harm animals unnecessarily, yet they routinely and deliberately behave in ways that cause great unnecessary suffering to animals. As recent research suggests, this practical inconsistency puts them in an unpleasant state of dissonance, which they try to escape by resolving the paradox. And they do so in part by adopting the speciesist belief—if animal suffering matters much less than human suffering, then harming animals cannot be so wrong after all. Since this belief-forming process does not track moral truth, I conclude that we are not justified in believing that human interests matter more than the similar interests of non-humans. (shrink)

The article introduces a special issue on “Rethinking Liberal Multiculturalism: Foundations, Practices and Methodologies.” The contributions presented in this special issue were discussed during the conference « Multicultural Citizenship 25 Years Later », held in Paris in November 2021. Their aim is to take stock of the legacy of Kymlicka’s contribution and to highlight new developments in theories of liberal multiculturalism and minority rights. The contributions do not purport to challenge the legitimacy of theories of multiculturalism and minority rights, they (...) rather aim at deepening our understanding of the foundations of liberal multiculturalism and of its practical implementation, sensitive to social scientific dynamics of diverse societies. Without abandoning the general idea that cultural minorities should be granted special minority rights, the essays presented raise new questions about three dimensions central to liberal multiculturalism: its normative foundations, its practical categories of minorities or groups, and its fact-sensitive methodology. Taken together they shed light on the renewed variety of theories of liberal multiculturalism highlighting their complexity and internal disagreements. To introduce these articles, the article first draws a brief historical overview of the debates on multiculturalism since the 1990s (section 1). It then highlights the distinctive aspects of Kymlicka’s contribution (section 2) and identifies recent research trends (section 3). Doing so, it explains how the articles gathered here both expand on those distinctive aspects and explore those new research avenues. The section 4 summarizes the contributions. (shrink)

The second international Chromatiques whiteheadiennes conference was devoted exclusively to the exegesis and contextualization of Whitehead's Science and the Modern World (1925). In order to elucidate the meaning and significance of this epoch-making work, the Proceedings are designed to form "companion" volume. With one paper devoted to each of its thirteen chapters, the Proceedings aim, on the one hand, to identify the specific contribution of each chapter to Whitehead's own research program - that is to say, to put its categories (...) into perspective by means of an internal analysis- and, on the other hand, to identify its global impact in the history of ideas. (shrink)

Nanotechnology is an important platform technology which will add new features like improved biocompatibility, smaller size, and more sophisticated electronics to neuro-implants improving their therapeutic potential. Especially in view of possible advantages for patients, research and development of nanotechnologically improved neuro implants is a moral obligation. However, the development of brain implants by itself touches many ethical, social and legal issues, which also apply in a specific way to devices enabled or improved by nanotechnology. For researchers developing nanotechnology such issues (...) are rather distant from their daily work in the lab, but as soon as they use their materials or devices in medical applications such as therapy of brain diseases they have to be aware of and deal with them. This paper is intended to raise sensitivity for the ethical, legal and social aspects (ELSA) involved in applying nanotechnology in brain implants or other devices by highlighting the short term problems of testing and clinical trials within the existing regulatory frameworks (A), the short and medium-term questions of risks in the application of the devices (B) and the long-term perspectives related to problems of enhancement (C). To identify and address such issues properly nanotechnologists should involve ethical, legal and social experts and regulatory bodies in their research as early as possible. This will help to remove pressure from regulatory bodies, to settle public concern and to prevent non-acceptable developments for the benefit of the patients. (shrink)

François-Xavier Amherdt La constellation sémantique autour de la notion d’arbitrage paraît paradoxale : d’un côté, le terme d’« arbitre » désigne celui ou celle qui, en sport par exemple, permet, par son impartialité et sa mise en oeuvre des lois du jeu, qu’une rencontre se déroule sans heurts. D’un autre, des décisions sont dites « arbitraires » précisément lorsqu’elles ne correspondent pas à l’observation des règles établies. À travers son expérience personnelle de 45 années d’arbitrage de football, l’auteur, prêtre (...) diocésain et professeur de théologie, propose une exégèse de la figure de Dieu comme « arbitre des nations » selon Isaïe, qui valorise la fonction arbitrale en tant que servante de la réconciliation, à condition d’échapper à tout arbitraire. Sur le terrain comme dans l’existence, si le premier est comme le reflet de la seconde. (shrink)

Adopting a communication as constitutive of organization (CCO) perspective on ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) invites us to create the conditions of a dialogue, discussion, or debate between various stakeholders, who can then try to confront their respective positions on a given issue, and possibly come to a decision regarding how a situation should be evaluated and/or responded to. As shown in this article, getting human stakeholders to voice their concerns about a specific situation is a way not only (...) to rationally confront multiple viewpoints on what should be done about it (à la Habermas) but also to allow elements of this situation to reveal themselves in a discussion. This is why any ethical decision has to experience a form of undecidability and surprisability. When beliefs and opinions can be called into question, it means that participants are ready to become attentive to what a situation might surprisingly call for. Communication is therefore a matter of ventriloquism, as human participants should also be considered the means by which elements of a situation manage to express themselves in a discussion, dictating specific courses of action over others. This concretely means that multiple voices can be heard in such a scene: not only the voices of the human stakeholders who speak to each other but also the voices of facts, principles, future generations, ecosystems, populations that are made to say things through these various turns of talk. (shrink)

We propose a new approach to the study of introspection. Instead of asking what form introspection actually takes in humans or other animals, we ask what forms it could take, in natural or artificial minds. What are the dimensions along which forms of introspection could vary? This is a relatively unexplored question, but it is one that has the potential to open new avenues of study and reveal new connections between existing ones. It may, for example, focus attention on possible (...) forms of introspection radically different from the human one and help to integrate competing theories of human introspection in a non-adversarial manner. We introduce and motivate the project, provide a preliminary mapping of the space of possible forms of introspection, and sketch a programme for interdisciplinary research on the topic. (shrink)

In 'Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness', Frankish argues for illusionism: the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, but merely seems to exist. Illusionism, he says, 'replaces the hard problem with the illusion problem -- the problem of explaining how the illusion of phenomenality arises and why it is so powerful'. The illusion of phenomenality is indeed quite powerful. In fact, it is much more powerful than any other illusion, in the sense that we face a very special and (...) unique intuitive resistance when trying to accept that phenomenality is an illusion. This is bad news for illusionists, because this means that they cannot entirely model their explanation of the illusion of consciousness on the explanation of other illusions. Explaining this unique intuitive resistance to illusionism may therefore constitute the hardest aspect of the illusion problem. However, I think that this aspect of the problem is solvable. I will outline a possible solution, which is based on the hypothesis that our (illusory) introspective representations of phenomenal states characterize them as having unique epistemological properties and as playing a special epistemological role. (shrink)

Illusionism is the thesis that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, but merely seems to exist. Many opponents to the thesis take it to be obviously false. They think that they can reject illusionism, even if they conceded that it is coherent and supported by strong arguments. David Chalmers has articulated this reaction to illusionism in terms of a “Moorean” argument against illusionism. This argument contends that illusionism is false, because it is obviously true that we have phenomenal experiences. I argue (...) that this argument fails by showing that its defenders cannot maintain that its crucial premise has the kind of support needed for the argument to work, without begging the question against illusionism. (shrink)

. This article analyzes the epistemic contributions of models by distinguishing three roles that they might play: an evidential role, a revealing role and a stimulating role. By using an account of learning based on the philosophical understanding of propositional knowledge as true justified belief, the paper provides the conditions to be fulfilled by a model in order to play a determined role. A case study of an economic model of the labor market—the DMP model—illustrates the usefulness of these conditions (...) in articulating debates over the epistemic contributions of a given model. (shrink)

Explores how the French theory of philosophy, which became popular during the last three decades of the twentieth century, spread to America and examines the critical practices that French theory inspired.

Oscar Horta has argued that speciesism is wrong by definition. In his view, there can be no more substantive debate about the justification of speciesism than there can be about the legality of murder, for it stems from the definition of “speciesism” that speciesism is unjustified just as it stems from the definition of “murder” that murder is illegal. The present paper is a case against this conception. I distinguish two issues: one is descriptive and the other normative. Relying on (...) philosophers’ use of the term, I first answer the descriptive question negatively: speciesism is a purely descriptive concept. Then, based on both its main functions in the philosophical and public debates and an analogy with racism, I answer the normative question negatively: speciesism should remain a purely descriptive concept. If I am correct, then speciesism neither is nor should be wrong by definition. (shrink)

In this strikingly original contribution to our understanding of Chinese philosophy,Françle;ois Julien, a French sinologist whose work has not yet appeared in English usesthe Chinese concept of shi - meaning disposition or circumstance, power or potential - as atouchstone to explore Chinese culture and to uncover the intricate and coherent structure underlyingChinese modes of thinking.A Hegelian prejudice still haunts studies of ancient Chinese civilization:Chinese thought, never able to evolve beyond a cosmological point of view, with an indifference toany notion of (...) telos, sought to interpret reality solely on the basis of itself. In thisgroundbreaking study, prejudices toward the simplicity and "naiveté" of Chinese thought, Hegelianand otherwise, are dismantled one by one to reveal the intricate and coherent structure underlyingChinese modes of thinking and representing reality.Jullien begins with a single Chinese term, shi,whose very ambivalence and disconcerting polysemy, on the one hand, and simple efficacy, on theother, defy the order of a concept. Yet shi insinuates itself into the ordering and conditioning ofreality in all its manifold and complex representations. Because shi neither gave rise to anycoherent, general analysis nor figured as one of the major concepts among Chinese thinkers, Jullienfollows its appearance from one field to another: from military strategy to politics; from theaesthetics of calligraphy and painting to the theory of literature; and from reflection on historyto "first philosophy."At the point where these various domains intersect, a fundamental intuitionassumed self-evident for centuries emerges, namely, that reality - every kind of reality - may beperceived as a particular deployment or arrangement of things to be relied upon and worked to one'sadvantage. Art or wisdom, as conceived by the Chinese, lies in strategically exploiting thepropensity that emanates from this particular configuration of reality. (shrink)

According to philosophical orthodoxy, the parties to moral or legal disputes genuinely disagree only if their uses of key normative terms in the dispute express the same meaning. Recently, however, this orthodoxy has been challenged. According to an influential alternative view, genuine moral and legal disagreements should be understood as metalinguistic negotiations over which meaning a given term should have. In this paper, we argue that the shared meaning view is motivated by much deeper considerations than its recent critics recognize, (...) and that much would be lost in opting for the explanation of normative disputes as metalinguistic negotiations. (shrink)