book review: Sylvain Lévi, "La dottrina del sacrificio nei Brāhmaṇa. Con tre saggi di Roberto Calasso, Charles Malamoud e Louis Renou", traduzione di Silvia D’Intino. Adelphi, Milano 2009, 224 pp.

Résumé Cet article se propose d’étudier le processus par lequel se construit puis se perpétue une renommée savante en considérant le cas de Sylvain Lévi (1863-1935), professeur de langue et littérature sanskrites au Collège de France et qui fut pendant 15 ans (1920-1935) président de l’Alliance israélite universelle. On analyse la renommée de Sylvain Lévi sur les trois plans que sont le nom propre, l’œuvre et les actions dans lesquelles il s’est engagé. On montre que la position éminente (...) de Sylvain Lévi, de son vivant, tient au fait que son double magistère d’homme de science et d’autorité morale est en pleine adéquation avec l’actualité de son temps. Mais au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les conditions historiques, politiques et sociales ne sont plus réunies pour soutenir ce type de position. La renommée de Sylvain Lévi est alors fragmentée selon les publics, et la mémoire de son nom s’efface même des reconstructions historiographiques portant sur les grandes figures intellectuelles de la première moitié du XXe siècle. (shrink)

This paper explores a specific problem within an important philosophical genre of the fourteenth century: the debates over the perfection of species. It investigates how the problem of defining limits for continuous magnitudes – a problem typical of Aristotelian physics – was integrated into these debates at the levels of genera, species, and individuals as these entities began to be conceptualized in quantitative terms. After explaining the emergence of this problem within fourteenth-century metaphysics, the paper examines the contributions of three (...) philosophers – Hugolinus of Orvieto, John of Ripa, and Paul of Venice – who offered varying solutions to the challenge of defining limits between species. It demonstrates that two primary solutions arose, inspired by continuous and discrete mathematical objects. It is shown that whereas Hugolinus of Orvieto advocates for a continuist model, John of Ripa proposes a discrete one. The last part of the paper examines Paul of Venice's hybrid approach, which combines elements from both models, facilitating a more comprehensive treatment of species particularly difficult to analyse, namely geometric figures. The conclusions of this comparative study underscore how profoundly the metaphysical reflections of the Middle Ages contributed to the analysis of the structure of the continuum and the extension of the notion of quantity to various objects. (shrink)

Intuitive predictions and judgements under uncertainty are often mediated by judgemental heuristics that sometimes lead to biases. Our micro-developmental study suggests that a presumption of rationality is justified for adult subjects, in so far as their systematic judgemental biases appear to be due to a specific executive-inhibition failure in working memory, and not necessarily to a lack of understanding of the fundamental principles of probability. This hypothesis was tested using an experimental procedure in which 60 adult subjects were trained to (...) inhibit the classical conjunction bias on a frequency judgement task derived from Tversky and Kahneman's work. Pre- and post-test performance was assessed via a probability judgement task. The data indicated a training effect, suggesting that subjects traditionally labelled as "irrational" with respect to the classical rules of inductive reasoning are in fact "inefficient inhibitors". These findings are discussed in terms of a polymorphous view of rationality. (shrink)

This paper studies ‘minority’ initiatives to organize sports games. A meta-analysis of published data in the literature identifies the formal appearance taken by each of these initiatives under the Olympic model. But it also conduces to build a number of indicators to answer a series of questions about their logic and strategies. All the initiatives studied are based on an ambivalent posture that, while based on the denunciation of a discriminating space, claim access to it. By an astonishing paradox, ‘non-normative’ (...) actors are driven to reclaim a model that, under cover of Universal, aims to establish a norm that is situated and dated. In practice, they use two types of strategies: a strategy for participation in the Olympics to transform them into a space which represents a fight against exclusion, or a strategy to create alternative events. Whatever the strategy, these initiatives are implemented according to their objectives. Differentiated in their forms—participatory or autonomy—they are also in their purpose. The comparison of these initiatives shows that ultimately, beyond strategies and logic inherent in different social, historical and organizational contexts, the mobilizations of the actors reveal the same ambivalence about the sports model conveyed by the Olympic institution. (shrink)

This paper examines the discussion about false pleasures in the "Philebus" (36 c3-44 a11). After stressing the crucial importance of this discussion in the economy of the dialogue, it attempts to identify the problematic locus of the possibility of true or false pleasures. Socrates points to it by means of an analogy between pleasure and doxa. Against traditional interpretations, which reduce the distinction drawn in this passage to a distinction between doxa and pleasure on the one hand and their object (...) on the other, it is argued that, rather, Socrates distinguishes between the mere fact of having a doxa or a pleasure, on the one hand, and the content of these acts, on the other hand. Consequently, the possibility for a pleasure to be false does not concern its relation to an object, but the affective content which defines it. In order to show how the affective content of a pleasure can be false, it is necessary to examine the three species of false pleasures described by Socrates in their relation to appearance and imagination. Appearance is not identical with perception for Plato: it consists in a mixture of perception and doxa. As for imagination, it consists in "illustrating" a doxa present in the soul by means of a "quasi-perception". It is the presence of a doxa in each of these processes which makes it possible for them to be true or false, while mere perception cannot be either true or false. It is then argued that according to the "Philebus" pleasure can be false precisely because its affective content is not a mere perception, but either an appearance or an imagination. (shrink)

Neuroconstructivism: How the Brain Constructs Cognition proposes a unifying framework for the study of cognitive development that brings together (1) constructivism (which views development as the progressive elaboration of increasingly complex structures), (2) cognitive neuroscience (which aims to understand the neural mechanisms underlying behavior), and (3) computational modeling (which proposes formal and explicit specifications of information processing). The guiding principle of our approach is context dependence, within and (in contrast to Marr [1982]) between levels of organization. We propose that three (...) mechanisms guide the emergence of representations: competition, cooperation, and chronotopy; which themselves allow for two central processes: proactivity and progressive specialization. We suggest that the main outcome of development is partial representations, distributed across distinct functional circuits. This framework is derived by examining development at the level of single neurons, brain systems, and whole organisms. We use the terms encellment, embrainment, and embodiment to describe the higher-level contextual influences that act at each of these levels of organization. To illustrate these mechanisms in operation we provide case studies in early visual perception, infant habituation, phonological development, and object representations in infancy. Three further case studies are concerned with interactions between levels of explanation: social development, atypical development and within that, developmental dyslexia. We conclude that cognitive development arises from a dynamic, contextual change in embodied neural structures leading to partial representations across multiple brain regions and timescales, in response to proactively specified physical and social environment. (shrink)

In this collection of essays, Bromberger explores the centrality of questions and predicaments they create in scientific research. He discusses the nature of explanation, theory, and the foundations of linguistics.

This opinion paper takes aim at an error made recently by Clarivate Analytics in which it sent out an email that congratulated academics for becoming exclusive members of academia’s most cited elite, the Highly Cited Researchers. However, that email was sent out to an undisclosed number of non-HCRs, who were offered an apology shortly after, through a bulk mail, which tried to down-play the importance of the error, all the while praising the true HCRs. When Clarivate Analytics senior management was (...) contacted, the company declined to offer an indication of the number of academics who had been contacted and erroneously awarded the HCR status. We believe that this regrettable blunder, together with the opacity offered by the company, fortify the corporate attitude about the value of the journal impact factor, and what it represents, namely a marketing tool that is falsely used to equate citations with quality, worth, or influence. The continued commercialization of metrics such as the JIF is at the heart of their use to assess the “quality” of a researcher, their work, or a journal, and contributes to a great extent to driving scientific activities towards a futile endeavor. (shrink)

Over the last 40 years or so, there has been an explosion of cultural evolution research in anthropology and archaeology. In each discipline, cultural evolutionists investigate how interactions between individuals translate into group level patterns, with the aim of explaining the diachronic dynamics and diversity of cultural traits. However, while much attention has been given to deterministic processes, we contend that current evolutionary accounts of cultural change are limited because they do not adopt a systematic stochastic approach. First, we show (...) that, in contrast with the intense debates in ecology and population genetics, the importance of stochasticity in evolutionary processes has generated little discussion in the sciences of cultural evolution to date. Second, we speculate on the reasons, both ideological and methodological, why that should be so. Third, we highlight the inadequacy of genetically-inspired stochastic models in the context of cultural evolution modelling, and ask which fundamental stochastic processes might be more relevant to take up. We conclude that the field of cultural evolution would benefit from a stochastic revolution. For that to occur, stochastic models ought to be developed specifically for cultural data and not through a copy-pasting of neutral models from population genetics or ecology. (shrink)

Although Pascal is a thinker of the figure of Christ, he seems to neglect the other Persons of the Trinity, in particular the Holy Spirit. This article examines the place Pascal gives to the third Person of the Trinity. It shows that, for Pascal, the Holy Spirit plays an important role in the conversion of man, insofar as he spreads in his heart the grace of Christ sent by the Father. Finally, this study comes to a difficult fragment of Pascal’s (...) in which he asks whether all Holy Scripture is dictated by the Holy Spirit, in order to propose a new reading. (shrink)

Cet article analyse les emplois schelérien et heideggérien de l’expression « logique du coeur ». Il revient sur l’origine de cette expression – forgée par Scheler, qui l’attribue à tort à Pascal en soulignant son opposition à la raison cartésienne – avant de reconstruire l’usage qu’en fait Heidegger. Trois phases sont mises au jour : Heidegger fait l’économie de cette expression dans ses jeunes années afin de prendre ses distances avec la doctrine schelérienne et pascalienne des sentiments ; il y (...) recourt dans les années trente et quarante pour signaler que cette doctrine est déterminée par la « logique » métaphysique cartésienne, qu’il oppose à deux logiques du coeur non métaphysiques (celles du λόγος grec héraclitéen et parménidien et du Λόγος johannique) ; dans les années cinquante, Heidegger abandonne pourtant cette expression au motif que toute logique – moderne (cartésienne) comme grecque et biblique – demeure métaphysique. (shrink)

Using the matching bias example, the aim of the present studies was to show that adults' reasoning biases are due to faulty executive inhibition programming. In the first study, the subjects were trained on Wason's classical card selection task; half were given training in how to inhibit the perceptual matching bias (experimental group) and half in logic without the inhibition component (control group). On the pre- and post-tests, their performance was assessed on the Evans conditional rule falsification task (with a (...) negation in the antecedent of the rule), a task that also involves matching bias. In addition, subjects were tested for perceptual field dependence/independence using the Embedded Figures Test. The results brought out a specific inhibition training effect, as well as a clear-cut relationship in the experimental group between receptiveness to training and perceptual field independence. In the second study, the training paradigm was the same except that on the pre- and post-tests, the negation was in the consequent of the conditional rule (in this case, the perceptual matching response corresponds to the logical response). The subjects succeeded on the pre-test, and the matching-bias inhibition training had a negative effect on post-test performance. This specific negative priming effect confirms the inhibitory impact of our experimental training and outlines the dissociation of inhibition and logical components. (shrink)

This research investigates the potential for a “fair” co-branding operation. A major corporate brand is fictitiously allied with a Fair Trade labelling organization brand. The sample for the study is composed of 540 respondents, representative of the French population. By considering commercial brands and Fair Trade labels as dissimilar in terms of customers’ perceived Fair Trade orientations, this article studies how this lack of similarity impacts perceived congruence between both entities and how prior brand attitudes and congruence influence customers’ evaluation (...) of the co-branded product. The results of this research demonstrate that: Consumer prior brand attitudes toward the partner brands influence very little customers’ evaluation. Perceived similarity of the partner brands has a strong influence toward congruence of the co-branding operation. Results also indicate that congruence has a strong influence upon customers’ evaluation. An inverted U-shaped relationship exists between perceived similarity and relevancy of the alliance, and between expectancy and customers’ evaluation. The results obtained through the test of a partial least square model, and inverted U-shaped hypothesis, represent a new insight into co-branding theory. The high discursive power of fair co-branding is a key issue: the corporate brand provides the alliance with its leading position, while the Fair Trade brand provides the ethical attribute. (shrink)

We show that provability in the implicational fragment of relevance logic is complete for doubly exponential time, using reductions to and from coverability in branching vector addition systems.

SCIENCE CHAPTER I THE CHANGING PATTERN § i THE case presented in this book is not likely to survive criticism in every detail. There never was and there ...

We provide characterizations of the equal division values and their convex mixtures, using a new axiom on a fixed player set based on player nullification which requires that if a player becomes null, then any two other players are equally affected. Two economic applications are also introduced concerning bargaining under risk and common-pool resource appropriation.

The controversy currently surrounding national literatures in foreign languages can be summed up by the famous statement: “to be or not to be, that is the question.”* But how is one to be oneself without having been that other whom one cannot deny (in the Marxist sense) since one sings as one grows? How, whatever effort one makes to deny one's father, can one fail to be presently what one is by separating oneself from the story of one's own birth (...) or from the birth of one's own story? (shrink)

Understanding the events that led to the emergence of the bilaterians is a daunting task, impaired by the huge evolutionary gap separating us from the pre‐Cambrian. During gastrulation, the expression of the transcription factor Brachyury is remarkably well conserved around the blastopore of bilaterians and cnidarians. Only the bilaterian Brachyury proteins, however, share a distinctive N‐terminal sequence not found in outgroups such as cnidarians, sponges or placozoans. We now know that, in vertebrates, this N‐terminal domain confers specific transcriptional activity, by (...) recruiting Smad1, the first identified co‐factor for Brachyury. Smad1 is an effector of the BMP pathway, and has been isolated in bilaterians and cnidarians. Here, I propose that the protein–protein interaction between Brachyury and Smad1 represents an evolutionary novelty of the Urbilateria. The gain of the N‐terminal domain might have been selected to spatially modulate the activity of Brachyury, thereby facilitating the establishment of bilateral symmetry during gastrulation movements. BioEssays 28: 413–420, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Le traité De radiis, ou Theorica artium magicarum, est quasi unanimement tenu pour une traduction latine faite au xii e siècle d’un traité arabe perdu d’al-Kindi. En se fondant sur le fait qu’il dépend de la tradition grammaticale relevant de Donat et Priscien, on démontre ici qu’en réalité il n’a pas été traduit de l’arabe mais qu’il a été rédigé par un auteur latin, très probablement dans les décennies 1250/1260.

People meeting a robot for the first time do not know what it is capable of and therefore how to interact with it—what actions to produce, and how to produce them. Despite social robotics’ long-standing interest in the effects of robots’ appearance and conduct on users, and efforts to identify factors likely to improve human–robot interaction, little attention has been paid to how participants evaluate their robotic partner in the unfolding of actual interactions. This paper draws from qualitative analyses of (...) video-recorded interactions between a robot and groups of participants, in the framework of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. We analyse the particular ways in which participants shape their embodied actions, how they can reproduce a prior action that failed to obtain a response from the robot; and how they explore the robot’s embodied nature. We find a set of recurrent methods or practices, showing that robot-recipient design displays not only participants’ initial assumptions about the robot’s competences, but also more importantly perhaps their continuous assessment of the robot’s behaviour, and their attempts to adapt to it. Participants locally produce and constantly revise their understanding of the robot as a more or less competent co-participant, drawing from its past, current, and projected conduct and responsiveness. We discuss the implications of these findings for research in robotics and human–robot interactions, and the value of the approach to shed new light on old questions by paying attention to the quality of gesture and the sequential organisation of interaction. (shrink)

Conspiracy theories and rumors, as forms manifesting “social thought”, share processes and functions. The few studies dealing specifically with the question of belief in rumors questioned the link between adhesion and transmission. The aim here will be to question the link between « knowledge », « adhesion » and « transmission » in conspiracy theories and rumors through two empirical studies. Can we know and transmit without adhering to? Can one know and adhere to without transmitting? Can we adhere to (...) and transmit without actually « knowing »? (shrink)

Le lien entre la philosophie de la nature et la destinée morale chez Bergson, c'est une sorte de médiation anthropologique ou sociologique, mais aussi une médiation spécifiquement philosophique, qui propose une certaine compréhension du lien entre «nature» et «esprit». Selon l'auteur, ce lien peut s'effectuer grâce à une mise en lumière de la fonction de la durée dans l'intelligence humaine et dans son rapport à la norme morale.

According to Scheler, since the 12th century, Europe and the West have gradually lost their way. They abandoned the Pascalian “logic of the heart”, that is, the knowledge of holy values, spiritual values and vital values through intentional feeling (Fühlen) of the heart, in favour of the logic of reason or understanding, that is, the knowledge of domination of the external world by reason. Nevertheless, Scheler notes that since that time, European thinkers have occasionally succeeded in rediscovering this knowledge of (...) the heart, and that there is even a powerful contemporary movement in this direction in Europe. The challenge for Europe, then, is to build on this momentum and rediscover the “logic of the heart” in order to achieve a harmony of knowledge forms, and then a harmony of world civilization. (shrink)

In this paper we show that the membership problem for second order non-linear Abstract Categorial Grammars is decidable. A consequence of that result is that Montague-like semantics yield to a decidable text generation problem. Furthermore the proof we propose is based on a new tool, Higher Order Intersection Signatures, which grasps statically dynamic properties of λ-terms and presents an interest in its own.

Misunderstanding of the dynamical behavior of the ventilatory system, especially under assisted ventilation, may explain the problems encountered in ventilatory support monitoring. Proportional assist ventilation (PAV) that theoretically gives a breath by breath assistance presents instability with high levels of assistance. We have constructed a mathematical model of interactions between three objects: the central respiratory pattern generator modelled by a modified Van der Pol oscillator, the mechanical respiratory system which is the passive part of the system and a controlled ventilator (...) that follows its own law. The dynamical study of our model shows the existence of two crucial behaviors, i.e. oscillations and damping, depending on only two parameters, namely the time constant of the mechanical respiratory system and a cumulative interaction index. The same result is observed in simulations of spontaneous breathing as well as of PAV. In this last case, increasing assistance leads first to an increase of the tidal volume (VT), a further increase in assistance inducing a decrease in VT, ending in damping of the whole system to an attractive fixed point. We conclude that instabilities observed in PAV may be explained by the different possible dynamical behaviors of the system rather than changes in mechanical characteristics of the respiratory system. (shrink)

The doctrine of the “just price” is more than often described as the core of the “economic” thinking of the Scholastics (de Roover 1958; Baldwin 1959; Wilson 1975; Worland 1977). In fact, one could hardly contest that the notion occupies a place of high importance in the economic reflections of the Medieval Doctors. It is of no doubt that their study of economic reality led them to call up very frequently the said notion of “just price”. Yet the insistence with (...) which modern historiography has itself treated this – central but particular – element of the Scholastic economic thinking conceals, to our opinion, some of its important sights and interests. An “objective” approach of the scholastic theory seems to command such an interpretation. But why is the phrase “just price” so often used and developed by the Doctors? Such a simple question cannot be answered simply by focusing on the notion. From a more “methodological” point of view, just price appears only like the final result of a complex argumentation. Little attention has been given to the fact that (1) the issue at stake is less a problem of correctness in limited bargaining than a general question of social justice; (2) the method used to deal with this vast subject in the field of economic relations is a systematic “contractual” analysis. The second point forms the main theme of this paper. (shrink)

Si le xixe siècle fut le temps de l’émergence de la figure de la “ grande voyageuse ”, on ne saurait surestimer cette innovation. La hiérarchie des genres de récits de voyage, l’importance du contre-exemple britannique, la condamnation morale de la voyageuse solitaire manifestent assez le sentiment de l’illégitimité du voyage féminin. Pourtant, pèlerines, valétudinaires et touristes se multiplièrent dans un siècle qui fut aussi celui de l’invention du voyage de noces. Cet article tente de prendre la mesure de l’ensemble (...) des normes qui ont alors commandé les pratiques, nombreuses et variées, du voyage féminin. (shrink)

This collection is the first book-length study to re-evaluate all of James Joyce's major fictional works through the lens of cognitive studies. Cognitive Joyce presents Joyce's relationship to the scientific knowledge and practices of his time and examines his texts in light of contemporary developments in cognitive and neuro-sciences. The chapters pursue a threefold investigation—into the author's "extended mind" at work, into his characters' complex and at times pathological perceptive and mental processes, and into the elaborate responses the work elicits (...) as we perform the act of reading. This volume not only offers comprehensive overviews of the oeuvre, but also detailed close-readings that unveil the linguistic focus of Joyce's drama of cognition. (shrink)