In recent years, neurophysiological evidence has accumulated in favor of a common coding between perception and execution of action. We review findings from recent neuroimaging experiments in the action domain with three complementary perspectives: perception of action, covert action triggered by perception, and reproduction of perceived action (imitation). All studies point to the parietal cortex as a key region for body movement representation, both observed and performed.
There is converging evidence from developmental and cognitive psychology, as well as from neuroscience, to suggest that the self is both special and social, and that self-other interaction is the driving force behind self-development. We review experimental findings which demonstrate that human infants are motivated for social interactions and suggest that the development of an awareness of other minds is rooted in the implicit notion that others are like the self. We then marshal evidence from functional neuroimaging explorations of the (...) neurophysiological substrate of shared representations between the self and others, using various ecological paradigms such as mentally representing one's own actions versus others' actions, watching the actions executed by others, imitating the others' actions versus being imitated by others. We suggest that within this shared neural network the inferior parietal cortex and the prefrontal cortex in the right hemisphere play a special role in the essential ability to distinguish the self from others, and in the way the self represents the other. Interestingly, the right hemisphere develops its functions earlier than the left. (shrink)
Abstract An anonymous manuscript from the fourteenth or early fifteenth century, recently discovered, apparently transmitted Thierry of Chartres's philosophical theology to Nicholas of Cusa around 1440. Yet the author of the treatise is not endorsing Thierry's views, as both Cusanus and modern readers have assumed, but in fact is writing in order to refute them. Curiously the author never mentions Thierry's best known triad of unitas, aequalitas and conexio . But a careful comparison of the structure of (...) the author's argument to Thierry's extant works shows that the author was nevertheless quite familiar with the Breton master's writings. The reatise's author offers an incisive critique of Thierry's theory of “four modes of being“ and rejects two of the modes in particular. From this new perspective, the manuscript can be valued as the first known evidence of Thierry of Chartres's late medieval reception. (shrink)
Pierre Maquet1,2,6, Steven Laureys1,2, Philippe Peigneux1,2,3, Sonia Fuchs1, Christophe Petiau1, Christophe Phillips1,6, Joel Aerts1, Guy Del Fiore1, Christian Degueldre1, Thierry Meulemans3, André Luxen1, Georges Franck1,2, Martial Van Der Linden3, Carlyle Smith4 and Axel Cleeremans5.
We present an order-theoretic analysis of set-theoretic paradoxes. This analysis will show that a large variety of purely set-theoretic paradoxes (including the various Russell paradoxes as well as all the familiar implementations of the paradoxes of Mirimanoff and Burali-Forti) are all instances of a single limitative phenomenon.
Fifty years after his death, the thought of the French scientist and Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) continues to inspire new ways of understanding humanity’s future. Trained as a paleontologist and philosopher, Teilhard was an innovative synthesizer of science and religion, developing an idea of evolution as an unfolding of material and mental worlds into an integrated, holistic universe at what he called the Omega Point. His books, such as the bestselling The Phenomenon of Man, have influenced generations of (...) ecologists, environmentalists, planners, and others concerned with the fate of the earth.This book brings together original essays by leading experts who reflect on Teilhard’s legacy for today’s globalized world. They explore such topics as: the idea of God and the person; quantum reality and Teilhard’s vision; spiritual resources for the future; politics and economics; and a charter for co-evolution. (shrink)
Sport, in modern times, finds its roots in the mythological sources of ancient Greece, where it was born as a sacred game to be performed in the honour of Zeus in Olympia or of other gods elsewhere during the Panhellenic games. Since the beginning of the twentieth century and until the 1970s sport was mythogenic (Barthes 1975). But is sport still mythogenic in the twenty-first century? Our analysis attempts to answer two questions: (i) what has been the influence of doping (...) and sponsorship on contemporary sport; and (ii) how (if at all) have both influenced the symbolic contemporary forms of the sportsman/woman myth. We argue that modern sport has become increasingly dependent upon the industrial and entertainment worlds, thus losing along the way the imprinting of symbolic innocence that the myth conferred in the recent past. Moreover, the contemporary perception of sportsmen/women by the general public has changed in so far as it concerns the symbolic aspect of the performer. If their function as social link appears to be intact, sportsmen seem to have lost the classical Olympic symbolism that was generally accepted among spectators until a few decades ago. It does not appear that the mythical aura of sport has been lost but rather the symbols that it has previously carried. Popular admiration is nowadays more concentrated on the sportsman's capacity to acquire fame and fortune by means that appear to be in everybody's reach, including doping. Consequently, the commoner identifies him/her self with the sportsman/woman but does not see him/her any longer as a hero carrying classical moral values. (shrink)
The Web 2.0, with online social technologies such as social networking services, blogs, wikis, or microbloging, has brought the vision of the Internet as a social landscape in which people are engaged in a multitude of social activities. This editorial of the special issue ‘Social Web and Identity’ discusses the importance of identity in the context of the Social Web, introducing the different papers of this special issue and the different aspects associated to these online identities. The topics covered in (...) this issue include how people define their identity in blogs and what is the articulation between online and offline identities in these systems. It also presents an article studying the privacy issues in online social networks and more specifically how these risks are perceived and how people can control their identity in this context. The next article compares privacy in two different categories of social systems (social network and collaborative workspace). Finally, another article discusses to what extent the current legislation, such the data protection regulations directive 95/46/EC, is providing the right instrument for dealing with privacy issues. (shrink)
As the need for more diversity in business ethics is becoming more pressing in our global world, we provide an historical study of a Fair Trade (FT) movement, born in rural Mexico. We first focus on the basic assumptions of its founders, which include a worker–priest, Frans van der Hoff, a group of native Indians and local farmers who formed a cooperative, and an NGO, Max Havelaar. We then review both the originalities and challenges of the FT movement and its (...) potential contributions to the current theories and practices in business ethics. (shrink)
This essay attempts to provide more evidence for the notions that there actually is a Latin (as opposed to a Greek) Neoplatonic tradition in late antiquity, that this tradition includes a systematic theory of first principles, and that this tradition and theory are influential in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. The method of the essay is intended to be novel in that, instead of examining authors or works in a chronological sequence and attempting to isolate doctrines in the traditional (...) manner, it proceeds by identifying certain philosophemes (a concept borrowed from structuralist and post-structuralist thought and here signifying certain minimal units from which philosophical “systems“ can be constructed), and then studying the combination and re-combination of these philosophemes consciously and unconsciously by a selection of important medieval writers. These philosophemes occur in Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram ; Augustine, De Trinitate ; Augustine, De Vera Religione ; Augustine, De Musica ; Macrobius, Commentarius in Somnium Scipionis ; and Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae . The sampling of medieval authors who use these philosophemes includes Eriugena, William of Conches, Thierry of Chartres, and Nicholas of Cusa. (shrink)
Emerging technologies are increasingly used in an attempt to “enhance the human body and/or mind” beyond the contemporary standards that characterize human beings. Yet, such standards are deeply controversial and it is not an easy task to determine whether the application of a given technology to an individual and its outcome can be defined as a human enhancement or not. Despite much debate on its potential or actual ethical and social impacts, human enhancement is not subject to any consensual definition. (...) This paper proposes a timely and much needed examination of the various definitions found in the literature. We classify these definitions into four main categories: the implicit approach, the therapy-enhancement distinction, the improvement of general human capacities and the increase of well-being. After commenting on these different approaches and their limitations, we propose a definition of human enhancement that focuses on individual perceptions. While acknowledging that a definition that mainly depends on personal and subjective individual perceptions raises many challenges, we suggest that a comprehensive approach to define human enhancement could constitute a useful premise to appropriately address the complexity of the ethical and social issues it generates. (shrink)
It is proved in this paper that the positive abstraction scheme is consistent with extensionality only if one drops equality out of the language. The theory obtained is then compared with GPK, a wellknown set theory based on an extended positive comprehension scheme.
This study was aimed at explaining how and under what conditions surface similarity leads to the retrieval of an analogous base problem in LTM. Some elements of a theory of the organisation of knowledge in memory are proposed. Two levels of representation are distinguished. The first level represents directly accessible, local surface properties. The second level represents more abstract information pertaining to the category with which each analogous problem can be associated. Some results will be described showing that access to (...) an analogue in LTM based on surface properties is determined by the existence of a similarity at a higher level of abstraction. This is a search-area effect, in that categorical information seems to delimit a memory search space, within which the connection between local surface properties is more likely to be made. (shrink)
Shuming has been proclaimed the forerunner of Contemporary Neo-Confucianism. However, assessing Liangâs identity appears a much more complicated task. Taking a closer look at his copious writings on religion, this paper shows how Liang conceived the role of religion at the different steps of humanityâs quest. Applying this frame of understanding to twentieth century China, Liang saw a discrepancy between the task required in our present time and what the future was holding. Therefore, while he engaged the world in a (...) certain way, he was still holding privately another belief. This secret of Liang reshuffles traditional boundaries between the secular and transcendence. (shrink)
We present a possible computational content of the negative translation of classical analysis with the Axiom of (countable) Choice. Interestingly, this interpretation uses a refinement of the realizability semantics of the absurdity proposition, which is not interpreted as the empty type here. We also show how to compute witnesses from proofs in classical analysis of ∃-statements and how to extract algorithms from proofs of ∀∃-statements. Our interpretation seems computationally more direct than the one based on Godel's Dialectica interpretation.
Despite the similarities between Keane's approach (Keane, 1987) and ours (Ripoll, 1998), there are critical theoretical and empirical differences which are discussed.
The popularity of alliances in business has exploded over the past few years along with an increasing interest in the role of trust in economic transactions. This paper details the nature of alliances and the crucial role played by trust in creating and managing alliances. Evidence of the emergence of trust are further given within the context of alliances established by small and medium-sized Swiss enterprises where both planning and mutual trust constitute essential ingredients.
PRÉFACE Joël Biard et Thierry Gontier La figure de Pietro Pomponazzi est représentative de la profusion et de l'inventivité de la culture universitaire du ...
“Religion” is usually thought of as a Western concept that has penetrated into China in the modern era. This paper, however, argues that the modern concept of religion was in fact shaped through the mutual exchange between the West and China. Three moments of this exchange are examined: (1) the late-Ming and early-Qing periods, when Western missionaries discovered in China a reality that compelled them to invent the term of “civil religion”; (2) the Enlightenment in Europe, which seized and transformed (...) the new concept; finally, (3) the end of Qing dynasty and Republican era in China, when the concept of religion was re-introduced. This historical enquiry may help us to examine critically the boundaries usually fixed between the secular and the religious. (shrink)
The focus of this paper is employee ownership, specifically the role of employee ownership in value creation. Based on a sample of 163 French companies, we have measured the impact of employee share ownership on value creation for both shareholders and stakeholders. Only companies with a sustained employee ownership policy over a 5-year period (from 2001 to 2005), as defined by the French Federation of Employee and Former Employee Shareholders (FAS), have been considered. The results indicate that employee share ownership (...) plans have no effect on shareholders’ or stakeholders’ value creation. (shrink)
We investigate sequent calculi for the weak modal (propositional) system reduced to the equivalence rule and extensions of it up to the full Kripke system containing monotonicity, conjunction and necessitation rules. The calculi have cut elimination and we concentrate on the inversion of rules to give in each case an effective procedure which for every sequent either furnishes a proof or a finite countermodel of it. Applications to the cardinality of countermodels, the inversion of rules and the derivability of Löb (...) rules are given. (shrink)
Fascism, modernism and modernity -- The Jew as anti-artist : Georges Sorel and the aesthetics of the anti- Enlightenment -- La Cité française : Georges Valois, Le Corbusier and fascist theories of urbanism -- Machine primitives : Philippe Lamour and the fascist cult of youth -- Classical violence : Thierry Maulnier and the legacy of the Cercle Proudhon.
The aim of this paper is to study the monotonicity properties with respect to the probability distribution of the state processes, of optimal decisions in bandit decision problems. Orderings of dynamic discrete projects are provided by extending the notion of stochastic dominance to stochastic processes.
In order to implement cost-benefit analysis of protective actions to reduce radiological exposures, one needs to attribute a monetary value to the avoided exposure. Recently, the International Commission on Radiological Protection has stressed the need to take into consideration not only the collective exposure to ionising radiation but also its dispersion in the population. In this paper, by using some well known and some recent results in the economics of uncertainty, we discuss how to integrate these recommendations in the valuation (...) of the benefit of protection. (shrink)
Fossil remains witness the relationship between the appearance of the middle ear and the expansion of the brain in early mammals. Nevertheless, the lack of detachment of ear ossicles in the mammaliaform Morganucodon, despite brain enlargement, points to other factors that triggered brain expansion in early mammals. Moreover, brain expansion in some early mammalian groups seems to have favored brain regions other than the cortex.
Several aspects of human life are pervaded with images and symbols that often belong to what Jung (1981) called archetypes, characteristics of the mind with a profound influence on most aspects of culture and sport. The rationality introduced into our society, as the fruit of both the positivist concept of progress and the rapid development of technology, has, albeit while driving out excessiveness due to irrational explanations and often knavery, also disregarded the importance of images and symbols in everyday life. (...) Yet a number of these inevitably still exist, since they are archetypal. With this observation as a starting point, the present work has been designed to analyse whether it is still possible to find ancient images and symbols in modern sport activities. The a priori reason for such a question arises from the acceptance that modern and ancient sports are profoundly different. This has been historically proved in terms of organisation and quantification, among other characteristics (Guttmann 1978). The present analysis refers to a limited number of images and symbols concerning ancient and modern sport, which include a primordial Ur-symbol, that of bodily action or of body in movement. Others concern various aspects of the athlete's life, such as expression of religious beliefs, immortality, eternal return and the front. It suggests that many of these images and symbols may still be found in contemporary sports, in open contrast with some of the Olympic principles suggested by De Coubertin and chiefly prevalent in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (shrink)
Cet article commence par rappeler quelques éléments de la vie et de l’oeuvre d’Aelred de Rievaulx, connu comme philosophe de l’amitié. Il situe ensuite son discours sur l’âme au sein du regain d’intérêt pour ce sujet manifesté dans l’ordre cistercien par des auteurs comme Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, Isaac de l’Étoile ou l’auteur du De spiritu et anima, mais aussi chez les Victorins. Il en vient ensuite à la spécificité du discours d’Aelred tel qu’on le trouve dans son dialogue sur (...) l’âme, mais aussi dans d’autres écrits. On ne s’étonnera pas de retrouver l’influence d’Augustin et en particulier du De quantitate animae, ni celle de Bernard notamment en ce qui concerne la liberté. En revanche la présence de plusieurs arguments similaires à ceux du Phédon en faveur de l’immortalité de l’âme est plus difficilement explicable. Les caractéristiques principales du discours d’Aelred sur l’âme touchent l’articulation de la psychologie à l’éthique, le rôle accordé à l’imagination et les considérations eschatologiques sur le destin des âmes après la mort. (shrink)
« Météorite tombé de l’autre côté du Rhin, Dietrich ne semble d’aucun temps philosophique assignable, rebelle à tous les « ismes », splendide, mais isolé – d’un mot : “Teutonique” ». C’est la connaissance de ce grand penseur, Theodoricus Teutonicus von Vriberg, Thierry ou Dietrich de Freiberg en français, que vient enrichir la thèse de doctorat d’Andrea Colli, publiée en 2010 aux éditions Marietti. Cette recherche prolonge la redécouverte de cet « épineux outsider » dont le coup de lancement (...) .. (shrink)
Si l’immunité du philosophe de la connaissance aux penchants irrationalistes et au modèle tyrannique de Kraus ne fait pas de doute, l’intérêt pour ses outils trouve son sens dans la prise de conscience par le rationaliste des limites de l’Aufklärung. Contre les tentations élitistes de certains enthousiastes naïfs (la liberté naîtra de la lucidité acquise par la seule science et le seul exercice de la raison), Bouveresse tient la satire et l’ironie pour indispensables : le monde intellectuel n’est pas moins (...) violent et injuste que les autres mondes sociaux ; on ne peut y défendre l’honnêteté intellectuelle et l’exigence de justice sociale et économique sans accompagner l’exercice de la raison et les luttes pour un monde égalitaire par l’exercice d’une contre-violence au moins équivalente à la violence de l’attaque dont sont l’objet ces valeurs inséparables aux yeux du démocrate armé. (shrink)
Thomist solution to the problem of love -- Remarks on the elements of the Thomist solution in Greek and medieval thought -- Two medieval sketches of the physical theory -- First characteristic : duality of the lover and the beloved -- Second characteristic : the violence of love -- Third characteristic : irrational love -- Fourth characteristic : love as the final end -- Appendix 1: The postulation of the problem of love in the first scholastics -- Appendix 2: The (...) formal identification of love and understanding in William of St. Thierry. (shrink)
