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El método de la “libre investigación científica del derecho” propuesto por François Gény ha marcado toda una generación de juristas. Tratado con detenimiento a lo largo de su extensa y compleja obra, la libre investigación científica se presenta como un método completo destinado a orientar al jurista en la creación, interpretación y aplicación del derecho positivo. Por desventura, el clima ambiente en el que nació su obra y en el que tuvo que desenvolverse con posterioridad, dominado por la escuela (...) de la exégesis, no ha sabido extraer de la obra de Gény más que elementos dispares no haciendo justicia a su método. En la actualidad, el redescubrimiento de su método de la libre investigación científica permitirá combatir el anquilosamiento dogmático, evitar los excesos formalistas, y aportar elementos de interés para la investigación iusfilosófica de nuestro tiempo. El método de la “libre investigación científica del derecho” propuesto por François Gény ha marcado toda una generación de juristas. Tratado con detenimiento a lo largo de su extensa y compleja obra, la libre investigación científica se presenta como un método completo destinado a orientar al jurista en la creación, interpretación y aplicación del derecho positivo. Por desventura, el clima ambiente en el que nació su obra y en el que tuvo que desenvolverse con posterioridad, dominado por la escuela de la exégesis, no ha sabido extraer de la obra de Gény más que elementos dispares no haciendo justicia a su método. En la actualidad, el redescubrimiento de su método de la libre investigación científica permitirá combatir el anquilosamiento dogmático, evitar los excesos formalistas, y aportar elementos de interés para la investigación iusfilosófica de nuestro tiempo. (shrink)

During the first few decades of the twentieth century, legal theory on both sides of the Atlantic was characterized by a tremendous amount of skepticism toward the private law concepts of property and contract. In the United States and France, Oliver Wendell Holmes and François Gény led the charge with withering critiques of the abuse of deduction, exposing their forebears' supposedly gapless system of private law rules for what it was, a house of cards built on the ideological foundations (...) of laissez faire capitalism. The goal was to make the United States Constitution and the French civil code more responsive to the realities of industrialization. Unlike the other participants in this transatlantic critique, François Gény simultaneously insisted on the immutability of justice and social utility. His “ineluctable minimum of natural law” would guide judges and jurists toward the proper social ends, replacing deduction with teleology. The problem was that nearly all of Gény's contemporaries were perplexed by his conception of natural law, which lacked the substance of the natural rights tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the historicist impulse of the early twentieth. No one was more perplexed than Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose more thorough going skepticism led him to see judicial restraint as the only solution to the abuse of deduction. The ultimate framework for this debate was World War I, in which both Holmes and Gény thought they had found vindication for their views. Events on the battlefield reaffirmed Gény's commitment to justice just as they reignited Holmes' existential embrace of the unknown. In a sense, the limits of their skepticism would be forged in the trenches of the Great War. (shrink)

Ce livre est la première biographie consacrée à l'une des plus grandes figures intellectuelles et politiques du XXe siècle : Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997). Jeune résistant grec révolutionnaire menacé de mort par les staliniens, il arrive en France à l'âge de vingt-trois ans, alors que l'engouement pour l'URSS est à son zénith. Il contribue alors à créer, avec Claude Lefort et Jean-François Lyotard, l'une des branches les plus vivaces de la gauche radicale, « Socialisme ou Barbarie », qui deviendra ensuite (...) une revue mythique et l'une des grandes influences de Mai 68, notamment par sa critique de gauche des régimes dits « communistes ». Économiste, philosophe, psychanalyste, militant politique, Castoriadis est l'auteur d'une œuvre essentielle pour quiconque s'intéresse à la question de l'institution hors du cadre de l'État, dont il traite dans ce que l'on peut considérer comme l'un des maîtres ouvrages du XXe siècle, L'Institution imaginaire de la société (1975). Il n'a en effet cessé, en croisant l'analyse historienne et l'approche psychanalytique, de s'attacher à penser la conquête de l'autonomie comme condition de l'approfondissement démocratique. Fruit d'une enquête menée auprès d'une centaine de témoins, cet ouvrage permet enfin de lever le voile sur cette figure hors norme et trop méconnue, qui est restée marginale jusqu'au bout, malgré son élection comme directeur d'études à l'EHESS au début des années 1980. Celui en qui Pierre Vidal-Naquet voyait un « génie », et Edgar Morin un « Titan de l'esprit », est pourtant très certainement appelé, en ces temps de grandes turbulences des souverainetés établies, à devenir l'un des penseurs-clés du XXIe siècle. (shrink)

Cher ****, Il émane de ma Rêverie d'aujourd'hui un désir de projet de volumes dans le paysage mieux assis et assumé. Détachement progressif des modes d'insertion confortables — qui ont été néanmoins de bons leviers : M'appuyant sur le « land-art », mobiliser le génie du paysage comme plateforme pour des expressions plastiques de grande échelle afin d'en faire émerger du sens. Utiliser le paysage comme environnement harmonique à un statuaire monumental - Résidence numérique — François Villais.

ABSTRACT The article treats the universal history Ruins, or Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires (Les ruines ou Méditations sur les révolutions des empires) of the French cultural philosopher Constantin-François Volney (1757–1820). Using a textual, interdisciplinary study, which focuses upon Volney’s complex cultural and historical philosophical contexts, I demonstrate that his primary concern was a nearly 2500 years coherent Europe of tradition and reception: this Europe did not represent a western corner of a larger Asian landmass but, in the (...) late eighteenth century, rather offered the opportunity for a complex and harmonious unity of European peoples under French circumstances. Volney chose the ruins of the desert town of Palmyra as the starting point of his historical and philosophical reflections. As a cultural philosopher of the late Enlightenment, he looks past the divine workings of the course of history in order to take instead the finite, man-made world as his focal interest. The following pages emphasize these reflections on human history that – in the face of a melancholic mode – highlighted the cultural anthropological characteristics and committed them to the promotion of a self-creating future. (shrink)

Classical texts of continental legal theorising in Hungarian translation: RUDOLF VON JHERING: Kampf ums Recht [1872] / EUGEN EHRLICH: Freie Rechtsfindung und freie Rechtswissenschaft [1903] / HERMANN KANTOROWICZ: Der Kampf um die Rechtswissenschaft [1906] / RUDOLF STAMMLER: Richtiges Recht [1908] & excerpts from his Theorie der Rechtswissenschaft [1911/1923] & Richtiges Recht [1921] / FRANÇOIS GÉNY: Science et technique en droit privé positif [1924: excerpts] / GUSTAV RADBRUCH: Rechtsphilosophie [1932: excerpts] / HANS KELSEN ‘The Pure Theory of Law and Analytical (...) Jurisprudence’ [1941] & ‘The Law as a Specific Social Technique’ [1941] & ‘Value Judgments in the Science of Law’ [1942] / GUSTAV RADBRUCH ‘Gesetzliches Unrecht und übergesetzliches Recht’ [1946] / ALEXANDRE PASSERIN D’ENTRÈVES ‘Le droit naturel’ [1959] / HANS KELSEN ‘What is Justice?’ [1960] & ‘Positivisme juridique et doctrine du droit naturel’ [1963]. (shrink)

Jean-François Mattéi est un philosophe français né en 1941 à Oran et décédé en 2014 à Marseille. Sa disparition laisse incontestablement un vide dans le paysage intellectuel français contemporain, car peu de voix ne se sont élevées avec tant de force et de brio pour dénoncer l'imposture de la pensée faible et du postmodernisme, ces répliques modernes de la sophistique que Platon combattait déjà vigoureusement à l'aube de la philosophie. Un premier ouvrage collectif parut en 2015, De Platon à (...) Matrix - L'Âme du monde, qui rendit hommage au penseur sur un mode complice, amical et touchant. Une chaire vit le jour au Centre Universitaire de la Méditerranée (CUM) de Nice, dont l'ambition annoncée est de prolonger l'œuvre de Mattéi en fournissant des travaux de réflexion autour du génie méditerranéen de la pensée et de la civilisation européenne.La rame à l'épaule, expression tirée de l'Odyssée, emprunte une tierce voie, qui ne relève ni de la proximité amicale ni du travail universitaire d'érudition. Ce que vise ici Baptiste Rappin, c'est en effet le cœur de la pensée de Jean-François Mattéi : à savoir que le mythe confère à la raison son sens et son horizon, et seul lui permet de s'articuler au monde. Les symboles préservent de la sorte le langage de l'autoréférentialité et de l'inarticulation barbare. Si cet essai scrute attentivement l'œuvre de Mattéi, il en ressort, du fait même de son objet, une relecture de l'histoire de la philosophie qui s'exprime à travers les analogies de l'architecture, du ciel, de l'étoile, de la musique et du tissu qui traversent la pensée européenne de ses aurores platonicienne et même pythagoricienne jusqu'à Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt ou encore Boutang. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Descartes’s Demon and the Madness of Don QuixoteSteven NadlerDescartes’s “malicious demon” (genius malignus, le mauvais génie)—the evil deceiver of the Meditations on First Philosophy whose hypothetical existence threatens to undermine radically Descartes’s confidence in his cognitive f aculties—is an artful philosophical and literary device. There is considerable debate over the significance of this powerful and malevolent being within Descartes’s argumentative strategy. Some insist that its role is a substantive (...) one, with Descartes in troducing the deceiver in order to deepen yet further the skeptical doubts of the First Meditation, doubts from which he hopes, by the grace of a benevolent God, eventually to rescue himself. 1 Others claim that its role is merely a rhetorical one, with the demon meant simply to reinforce already philosophically well-established skeptical doubts that, in the face of everyday habit, are difficult to sustain. 2 Either way, there is no underestimating the force of the hypothesis as an epistemological tool for subverting our faith in our reasoning and sensory powers. [End Page 41]It is useful to place the “evil genius” in the context of seventeenth-century intellectual culture 3 not just for our understanding of what may have been the historical origins of this most extreme and “metaphysical” 4 of all skeptical doubts but also for broadening our appreciation of its significance beyond epistemology alone. When we grasp the various practical (moral, legal, and social) problems and the literary and artistic possibilities raised by the demon hypoth esis, we can see why such an improbably hyper-skeptical thesis is nonetheless deserving of general interest. To take just one example, Richard Popkin, in his seminal work on the history of skepticism in early modern thought, describes the knotty problems that are generated in the legal context of a trial when the issue of the demonic is raised (as in the case of someone on trial for witchcraft). 5In the service of this contextualizing project I compare Descartes’s meditator (with his self-assumed skeptical pose) with a near-contemporary literary character of particular fame and importance. What is especially striking—and instructive—in this comp arison are the parallels and resonances between the kind of general, systematic, philosophically-generated hyperbolic doubt that Descartes introduces by way of his deceptor potentissimus et malignus and the initially more particular (but perhaps eq ually systematic) distrust of the faculties that is suggested by Don Quixote’s own “rationalization” of his illusions. 6 In fact precisely the same philosophical problem is raised both in the first major work of modern philosophy and in the first modern novel: in the face of the possibility of ongoing deception by some powerful and malicious being, how can we possibly trus t our sensory and rational faculties to provide us with true and reliable knowledge? Descartes’s philosophical work can even provide us with a key to understanding part of the nature of Don Quixote’s madness, to systematizing it in its epistemological dim ensions. Reciprocally, it may be that Cervantes’s hero gives us a concrete picture of what it would be like to try to live in the radically deceptive world of the skepticism of the First Meditation. [End Page 42]Did Cervantes’s novel have a direct influence on Descartes’s philosophical reflections? The first part of Don Quixote was published in 1604; the second part, written after several pirated editions of Part I had been circulating for a number of year s, appeared in 1614, the year before Cervantes’s death. The novel was immediately and enormously popular and was quickly translated into a number of other languages. The first French translation of Part I (by César Oudin) was published in 1614. In 1618, François de Rosset translated Part II, and these two translations were published together in one volume in 1639, 1646, and 1665. 7 We can be confident that Descartes knew about Cervantes’s works; and while we cannot say with certainty that he read Don Quixote, given his education, social status, interest in novels of chivalry, and the intellectual circles in which he traveled, it would be surprising if he did not. He... (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)

Il est assez rare qu’un concept philosophique s’échappe de l’arène académique. C’est pourtant le cas du concept de spécisme, qui a fait une entrée remarquée dans la sphère publique au cours de la dernière décennie. Il est désormais au cœur du débat de société sur nos devoirs envers les animaux non humains. Hélas, ce concept et les enjeux qu’il soulève sont souvent mal compris. Nombreux sont les auteurs qui contestent sa légitimité alors qu’ils le maitrisent mal. D’autres l’utilisent plus volontiers (...) sans toutefois mieux le comprendre. Les confusions qui entourent cette notion l’empêche de contribuer à la discussion autant qu’elle le pourrait. Le présent ouvrage entend remédier à cet état de faits en donnant de la notion de spécisme une présentation à la fois assez précise pour rendre justice aux discussions philosophiques dont elle fait l’objet et suffisamment claire pour être accessible à quiconque s’intéresse au statut moral des animaux. Il se divise en deux parties. La première aborde des questions ontologiques : Qu’est-ce exactement que le spécisme ? À quelles conditions existe-t-il ? Ces conditions sont-elles remplies dans les faits ? Quant à la seconde, elle porte sur des questions éthiques : Le spécisme peut-il être justifié ? Faut-il au contraire le condamner au même titre que le racisme et le sexisme ? (shrink)

Taking regular walks when living with Parkinson’s disease has beneficial effects on movement and quality of life. Yet, patients usually show reduced physical activity compared to healthy older adults. Using auditory stimulation such as music can facilitate walking but patients vary significantly in their response. An individualized approach adapting musical tempo to patients’ gait cadence, and capitalizing on these individual differences, is likely to provide a rewarding experience, increasing motivation for walk-in PD. We aim to evaluate the observance, safety, tolerance, (...) usability, and enjoyment of a new smartphone application. It was coupled with wearable sensors and delivered individualized musical stimulation for gait auto-rehabilitation at home. Forty-five patients with PD underwent a 1-month, outdoor, uncontrolled gait rehabilitation program, using the BeatWalk application. The music tempo was being aligned in real-time to patients’ gait cadence in a way that could foster an increase up to +10% of their spontaneous cadence. Open-label evaluation was based on BeatWalk use measures, questionnaires, and a six-minute walk test. Patients used the application 78.8% of the prescribed duration and enjoyed it throughout the program. The application was considered “easy to use” by 75% of the patients. Pain, fatigue, and falls did not increase. Fear of falling decreased and quality of life improved. After the program, patients improved their gait parameters in the six-minute walk test without musical stimulation. BeatWalk is an easy to use, safe, and enjoyable musical application for individualized gait rehabilitation in PD. It increases “walk for exercise” duration thanks to high observance.Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02647242. (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)

Moral error theorists face the so-called “now-what problem”: what should we do with our moral judgments from a prudential point of view if these judgments are uniformly false? On top of abolitionism and conservationism, which respectively advise us to get rid of our moral judgments and to keep them, three revisionary solutions have been proposed in the literature: expressivism, naturalism, and fictionalism. In this paper, I argue that expressivism and naturalism do not constitute genuine alternatives to abolitionism, of which they (...) are in the end mere variants—and, even less conveniently, variants that are conform to the very spirit of abolitionism as formulated by its proponents. The main version of fictionalism, by contrast, provides us with a recommendation to which abolitionists cannot consistently subscribe. This leaves us with only one revisionary solution to the now-what problem. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ Dans cet article, je propose une interprétation de la philosophie de Wilhelm Dilthey qui repose sur trois idées directrices. La première idée identifie l'objet de sa philosophie : la vie. La deuxième idée établit sa méthode, soit l'autoréflexion. La troisième idée clarifie ce qui est révélé par l'autoréflexion, à savoir l'universalité et la variabilité de la vie. Dans un premier temps, je défends que la lecture épistémologique de la philosophie de Dilthey doit être abandonnée. Dans un deuxième temps, je (...) présente mon interprétation de la philosophie de Dilthey. ABSTRACT In this paper, I suggest an interpretation of Wilhelm Dilthey's philosophy that rests on three guiding ideas. The first idea identifies the object of his philosophy: life. The second one establishes its method, namely self-reflection. The third one clarifies what is revealed by self-reflection, that is the universality and the variability of life. First, I show that the epistemological reading of Dilthey's philosophy must be abandoned. Second, I detail my interpretation of Dilthey's philosophy. (shrink)

In 'Ethics Without Sentience: Facing Up to the Probable Insignificance of Phenomenal Consciousness' (Kammerer, 2022), I argued that phenomenal consciousness is probably normatively insignificant, and does not play a significant normative role. In 'Preserving the Normative Significance of Sentience' (Dung, 2024), Leonard Dung challenges my reasoning and defends sentientism about value and moral status against my arguments. Here I respond to Dung's criticism, pointing out three flaws in his reply. My conclusion is that the view that phenomenal consciousness is distinctively (...) significant is still very much under threat. (shrink)

Was verbindet Hammer, Pinsel und Geige? Werkzeuge und Instrumente vermitteln zwischen menschlichem Körper und Materie. So genießen diese Objekte eine genuine Gemeinsamkeit, und doch gründet gerade in der Differenz beider Begriffe die abendländische Unterscheidung zwischen handwerklichen und künstlerischen bzw. musikalischen oder wissenschaftlichen Tätigkeiten. Die Beiträge des achten Bandes der Hamburger Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte nehmen Werkzeuge und Instrumente aus einer kunsthistorischen Perspektive und im interdisziplinären Dialog in den Blick. Das Augenmerk liegt gleichermaßen auf den Techniken ihrer Handhabung, ihrer Diskursivierung in Kritik (...) und Theorie sowie ihrer Darstellung im Bild. Mit Beiträgen von: Gotlind Birkle, Martine Clouzot, Philippe Cordez, Gottfried Korff, Matthias Krüger, François Lamy, Katja Müller-Helle, Ulrich Pfisterer, Albrecht Pohlmann, François Poplin, Julia Ann Saviello, Monika Wagner. (shrink)

This enlarged edition of Mario Bunge's Dictionary of Philosophy is a superb reference work for both students and professional philosophers.

A historical overview, with an attempt to rebut Grice's argument against Contextualism.

Animal ethicists often distinguish between direct and indirect defenses of speciesism, where the former appeal to species membership and the latter invoke other features that are simply associated with it. The main extant charge against indirect defenses rests on the empirical claim that any feature other than membership in our species is either absent in some humans or present in some nonhumans. This paper challenges indirect defenses with a new argument, which presupposes no such empirical claim. Instead, the argument from (...) discordance resorts to the following principle: a certain feature can only justify discriminating on the basis of that feature. (shrink)

This is an experimental piece of writing by François Laruelle. Via its origins in both Greek and Judeo-Christian thought, philosophy has risen up from the abysses of the world and made its assault on human identity. Philosophy dominates man, and as long as he lives under the philosophical decision or ?Ontological Statute? he lives also within an impotence of thought and within an infinite culpability. Yet ultimately man is an inalienable reality, and nothing ? not even philosophy ? can (...) substitute itself for man and for his identity. There is no reversibility between man and philosophy. Man itself is the abolition of the Statute. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru, sous une forme augmentée et corrigée, dans Le Social et le Sensible. Introduction à une anthropologie modale, Paris, Téraèdre, 2005, p. 101-118. Nous remercions François Laplantine de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici sous sa forme originelle. Nous nous proposons dans cet article d'esquisser une confrontation entre une pensée de la vie et une pensée du social. Une telle confrontation s'avère problématique et délicate. Assez souvent soit elle risque de tourner court parce que (...) - Anthropologie. (shrink)

To deal with memory-based modes of presentation I propose a couple of revisions to the standard criterion of difference for modes of presentation attributed to Frege. First, we need to broaden the scope of the criterion so that not merely the thoughts of a given subject at a given time may or may not involve the same way of thinking of some object, but also the thoughts of a subject at different times. Second, we need to ‘relativize’ the criterion of (...) difference to particular subjects in particular situations. Thanks to these revisions, we can make sense of Evans’ notion of a dynamic mode of presentation that persists through time despite lower-level changes. A dynamic mode of presentation is a complex mode of presentation involving several epistemically rewarding relations to the reference successively (in contrast to composite modes of presentation, which involve several epistemically rewarding relations simultaneously). I show how this idea can be cashed out in the mental file framework, and how, in that framework, we can provide a straightforward answer to the question: when is a mode of presentation based on a memory M the same as the mode of presentation based on the perception P from which the memory derives? The answer appeals to the distinction between anchored and unanchored memories. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger is one of the twentieth century's most important philosophers, and now also one of the most contentious as revelations of the extent of his Nazism continue to surface. His ground-breaking works have had a hugely significant impact on contemporary thought through their reception, appropriation and critique. His thought has influenced philosophers as diverse as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Adorno, Gadamer, Levinas, Derrida and Foucault, among others. In addition to his formative role in philosophical movements such as phenomenology, hermeneutics and (...) existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, deconstruction and post-modernism, Heidegger has had a transformative effect on diverse fields of inquiry including political theory, literary criticism, theology, gender theory, technology and environmental studies. The Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger is the definitive textbook to Heidegger's life and work, in fifty-nine original essays written by an international team of leading Heidegger scholars. This new edition presents comprehensive coverage of Heidegger life and contexts, sources, influences and encounters, key writings, major themes and topics, and reception and influence, and includes a chapter addressing the controversial Black Notebooks, National Socialism, and Antisemitism. This is the ideal research tool for anyone studying or working in the field of Heidegger Studies today. (shrink)

Nouvelle édition critique et traduction française annotée de la _Lettre à Marcella_ de Porphyre. Le philosophe néoplatonicien Porphyre (234-305) y adresse à sa femme un témoignage unique sur la manière dont une vie philosophique peut être conduite et se préserver. This book presents a new annotated and translated edition of neoplatonist 3rd-century Greek philosopher Porphyrius’ _Letter to Marcella_. This letter, adressed to his wife, gives a unique account on the ways and principles along which a philosophical life should be led (...) so as to perpetuate itself. (shrink)

The neutral theory of biodiversity assumes that coexisting organisms are equally able to survive, reproduce and disperse, but predicts that stochastic fluctuations of these abilities drive diversity dynamics. It predicts remarkably well many biodiversity patterns, although substantial evidence for the role of niche variation across organisms seems contradictory. Here, we discuss this apparent paradox by exploring the meaning and implications of ecological equivalence. We address the question whether neutral theory provides an explanation for biodiversity patterns and acknowledges causal processes. We (...) underline that ecological equivalence, although central to neutral theory, can emerge at local and regional scales from niche-based processes through equalizing and stabilizing mechanisms. Such emerging equivalence corresponds to a weak conception of neutral theory, as opposed to the assumption of strict equivalence at individual level in the strong conception. We show that this duality is related to diverging views on hypothesis-testing and modeling in ecology. In addition, the stochastic dynamics exposed in neutral theory are pervasive in ecological systems and, rather than a null hypothesis, ecological equivalence is best understood as a parsimonious baseline to address biodiversity dynamics at multiple scales. (shrink)

Accounts for referential communication (and especially communication by means of definite descriptions and indexicals) in the mental file framework.

It is argued that the Matthean Gospel partially reflects the unstable political and religious situation in which this document originated. Broad outlines are postulated of this probable religious situation. This article presents an investigation of the developments within the broader Jewish society during the time of the New Testament. This implies the investigation of developments within Judaism, which entails some fragmentation of Judaism and a development towards Formative Judaism. The 'Jesus movement' and eventually the Matthean community evolved among these developments.

_A mood for Philosophy_ __ _ _ _In this dialogue with Francois Laruelle Anne-Françoise Schmidt suggests that Laruelle's non-philosophy, which begins with an indecision, could be conceived as something that in the history of painting has been called figura serpentinata, "serpentine line". This line, which produces a kind of music by the use of concepts, is visible according her trough his whole work: from his first book on Ravaisson, _Phenomenon and Difference,_ through to his last one, _The Last Humanity: A (...) New Ecological Science_, published in French in 2015 and expected to appear in English in 2018._. (shrink)

In this paper I compare my account of IEM to another one, the Simple View, according to which a judgment is IEM just in case its grounds do not include an identity. The Simple View does not say why no identity assumption is needed to ground the singular judgment in the IEM cases; my account is meant to complement it by providing an answer to that question. According to my account, the judgments that are IEM are based on a certain (...) experience, and what they are about is pre-determined by the mode of that experience, by the type of experience it is, in a way that leaves no room for an alternative. (shrink)

In this paper, we redefine the target of evolutionary explanations by proposing the “evosystem” as an alternative to populations, lineages and species. Evosystems account for changes in the distribution of heritable variation within individual Darwinian populations (evolution by natural selection, drift, or constructive neutral evolution), but also for changes in the networks of interactions within or between Darwinian populations and changes in the abiotic environment (whether these changes are caused by the organic entities or not). The evosystem can thereby become (...) a centerpiece for a redefined evolutionary science, that is, evolutionary studies, that apprehends through a single framework the variety of evolutionary processes that lie at various scales. To illustrate the importance of this broadened perspective on evolution, we use a case of antimicrobial resistance evolution: the spread of the blaNDM gene family and the related resistance to carbapenem antibiotics observed globally, and show how evolutionary studies can contribute to answering contemporary socially relevant challenges. (shrink)

Mental files serve as individual or singular concepts. Like singular terms in the language, they refer, or are supposed to refer. What they refer to is not determined by properties which the subject takes the referent to have (i.e. by the information stored in the file), but through relations to various entities in the environment in which the file fulfills its function. Files are based on acquaintance relations, and the function of the file is to store whatever information is made (...) available through the relations in question. I offer a typology of files. The most important distinction is between proto-files and conceptual files. In contrast to proto-files, conceptual files can host not only information derived through the specific relation on which the file is based, but also information about the same object gained in some other way. In this framework identity comes into the picture twice. (i) Identity is presupposed when two pieces of information occur in the same file. Such 'presumptions of identity' ground the linguistic phenomenon of de jure coreference, which takes place when two singular terms, or two occurrences of a singular term, are associated with the same file. (ii) Judgments of identity work by linking two distinct files, thereby enabling information to flow freely between them. This corresponds to de facto coreference. (Linking is not merging ; identity judgments have the effect of merging files only when the files belong to a very specific category, that of 'encyclopedia entries' -- a type of conceptual file based on a higher-order relation rather than on a specific acquaintance relation.) In the last part of the paper I will discuss, and attempt to rebut, two objections to the mental-file account. According to the first objection, the account is circular ; according to the second objection, de jure coreference cannot be accounted for it in terms of identity of the associated mental files because de jure coreference is not a transitive relation. (shrink)

Following the collapse of the communist states it was assumed that Marxist philosophy had collapsed with it. In Introduction to Non-Marxism, François Laruelle aims to recover Marxism along with its failure by asking the question "What is to be done with Marxism itself?" To answer, Laruelle resists the temptation to make Marxism more palatable after the death of metaphysics by transforming Marxism into a mere social science or by simply embracing with evangelical fervor the idea of communism. Instead Laruelle (...) proposes a heretical science of Marxism that will investigate Marxism in both its failure and power so as to fashion new theoretical tools. In the course of engaging with the material of Marxism, Laruelle takes on the philosophy of Marx along with important philosophers who have extended that philosophy including Althusser, Balibar, Negri as well as the attempt at a phenomenological Marxism found in the work of Michel Henry. Through this engagement Laruelle develops with great precision the history and function of his concept of determination-in-the-last-instance. In the midst of the assumed failure of Marxism and the defections and resentment that followed, Laruelle's non-Marxism responds with the bold declaration: "Do not give up on theory!". (shrink)

Vous pensez peut-être que la peine de mort est injuste ? Ou que l’avortement est moralement acceptable ? Se pourrait-il alors que vous vous trompiez ? C’est en tout cas l’avis des théoriciens de l’erreur. D’après ces philosophes, tous les jugements moraux sont faux parce qu’ils présupposent à tort l’existence de faits moraux à la fois objectifs et non naturels. Organisé autour de ce défi nihiliste, le présent ouvrage aborde les principales théories métaéthiques comme autant de tentatives, plus ou moins (...) fructueuses, de sauver la morale. Les théories qu’on y rencontre combinent invariablement une thèse psychologique (sur la nature des jugements moraux) et une thèse ontologique (sur l’existence d’une réalité morale conforme auxdits présupposés). Dans le style argumentatif sobre et précis qui caractérise la philosophie analytique, ce manuel de métaéthique – le premier en langue française – entreprend d’évaluer minutieusement un ensemble de théories sur la morale. Bien que destiné en premier lieu aux enseignants de philosophie et à leurs étudiants, il se veut accessible à tous ceux qu’intéresse l’éthique. (shrink)

L'internalisme motivationnel est la théorie selon laquelle il existe une connexion nécessaire entre les jugements moraux et la motivation. Dans ce chapitre, nous distinguons un certain nombre de ses variantes et écartons celles d’entre elles qui sont moins directement intéressantes pour les grands débats métaéthiques. Nous examinons ensuite trois arguments philosophiques qui échouent à établir ou à réfuter l'internalisme. Enfin, nous présentons quelques arguments empiriques, relevant respectivement de la psychologie, des neurosciences et de la philosophie expérimentale.

In this article, I revisit Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus and contrast it with Herbert Simon's notion of bounded rationality. Through a discussion of the literature of economic sociology on status and Fligstein's political-cultural approach, I argue that this concept can be a source of fresh insights into empirical problems. I find that the greater the change in the social environment, the more salient the benefits of using habitus as a tool to analyze agents' behavior.

Ce chapitre aborde trois questions au sujet du spécisme. En réponse à la question « Qu’est-ce que le spécisme ? », je définis le spécisme comme une discrimination en fonction de l'espèce. Je réponds ensuite par l'affirmative à la question « Le spécisme existe-t- il ? ». Dans les faits, beaucoup de gens discriminent les individus en fonction de leur espèce. Enfin, je traite la question « Le spécisme est-il juste ou injuste ? ». À l'instar du racisme et du (...) sexisme, le spécisme est injuste parce qu'il enfreint le principe d'égal traitement, qui nous demande de traiter les cas semblables de manière identique. (shrink)