Fonder la légitimité de l’exercice scolaire de la dissertation sur sa valeur de « patrimoine » conduit à ne pas réfléchir aux raisons de sa difficulté pour les élèves et à rechercher des adaptations qui la privent de toute valeur formatrice. Expliciter la finalité de cet exercice en prenant pour fondement les caractéristiques du discours rationnel permet au contraire d’analyser par contraste les causes sociologiques d’une incompréhension initiale. Renoncer à faire accéder les élèves à l’écriture dissertative reviendrait pourtant renoncer à (...) les faire accéder à la liberté par l’exercice rationnel du jugement. L’article entend affronter cet enjeu en proposant des médiations pour intervenir sur les pratiques argumentatives des élèves afin d’engager une appropriation des exigences de la dissertation. (shrink)

Inλ-calculus, the strategy of leftmost reduction (“call-by-name”) is known to have good mathematical properties; in particular, it always terminates when applied to a normalizable term. On the other hand, with this strategy, the argument of a function is re-evaluated at each time it is used.To avoid this drawback, we define the notion of “storage operator”, for each data type. IfT is a storage operator for integers, for example, let us replace the evaluation, by leftmost reduction, ofϕτ (whereτ is an integer, (...) andϕ anyλ-term) by the evaluation oftτϕ. Then, this computation is the same as the following: first computeτ up to some reduced formτ 0, and then applyϕ toτ 0. So, we have simulated “call-by-value” evaluation within the strategy of leftmost reduction.The main theorem of the paper (Corollary of Theorem 4.1) shows that, in a second orderλ-calculus, using Gödel's translation of classical intuitionistic logic, we can find a very simple type (or specification) for storage operators. Thus, it gives a way to get such operators, which is to prove this type in second order intuitionistic predicate calculus. (shrink)

Introduction. Il est bien connu que la correspondance de Curry-Howard permet d'associer un programme, sous la forme d'un λ-terme, à toute preuve intuitionniste, formalisée dans le calcul des prédicats du second ordre. Cette correspondance a été étendue, assez récemment, à la logique classique moyennant une extension convenable du λ-calcul. Chaque théorème formalisé en logique du second ordre correspond donc à une spécification de programme.Il se pose alors le problème, en général tout à fait non trivial, de trouver la spécification associée (...) à un théorème donné; autrement dit, de déterminer le comportement opérationnel commun aux λ-termes associés aux diverses démonstrations formelles du théorème considéré.Cette question est résolue ici pour le théorème de complétude de la logique classique.La première étape consiste à formaliser convenablement ce théorème en logique du second ordre. Ce travail est fait complètement dans la section 1. Il a comme sous-produit, peut-être inattendu, de montrer que ce théorème est prouvable en logique intuitionniste du second ordre. Ceci, toutefois, à condition d'introduire une légère variante de la notion de modèle, en admettant un modèle supplémentaire trivial, où toute formule est satisfaite.On notera, à ce sujet, que des preuves intuitionnistes du théorème de complétude de la logique intuitionniste, utilisant des variantes de la notion de modele de Kripke, ont été données par H. Friedman [7] et W. Veldman [8]. On remarquera également qu'un argument de G. Kreisel [2] montre que le théorème de complétude habituel de la logique intuitionniste n'a pas de preuve intuitionniste. (shrink)

Cet article étudie ce que l’on peut entendre par « ce qui dépend de nous » dans la tradition aristotélicienne. L’auteur interroge les tenants de l’apparition d’un Self chez les Stoïciens et remet vivement en question certaines conceptions de l’histoire de la philosophie. Il soutient qu’il n’y a pas de raison, et même moins, de voir en Épictète l’inventeur du « libre arbitre », pas plus qu’il n’y en a de voir chez les Stoïciens une quelconque naissance de la subjectivité (...) en raison de l’innovation qu’aurait été la notion d’assentiment. L’argumentation repose sur la conception « libertarienne » du « ce qui dépend de nous » par Alexandre d’Aphrodise.De « ce qui dépend de nous »This paper examines that what is the meaning of « what depends on us » in the Aristotelian tradition. The Author adresses all those who think that the Self was originated by the Stoics. He criticizes in a provocative way some manners in the history of philosophy. He champions that there is no cause, or even less, to understand Epictetus as any creator of the liberum arbitrium, no more than to understand the Stoics as the origine of our modern conception of the subjectivity because of their notion of assent. The argument rests on the « libertarian » conception of « what depends on us » by Alexander of Aphrodisias. (shrink)

Cette étude analyse comment la mise en scène d'une méditation sur les ruines des anciens empires conduit Volney à opposer le cycle des révolutions à la Révolution française. Les vertus du décentrement, tout autant méthodologiques que philosophiques et politiques, sont multiples et elles permettent d'instruire le procès des religions. Si la Révolution française est exemplaire, c'est donc parce quelle annonce ce mouvement de prise en main de leur destin par les peuples. Pourquoi faut-il dès lors encore recourir à un catéchisme (...) ?This study examines how the staging of a meditation on the ruins of the ancient empires leads Volney to contrast the seemingly endless cycle of revolutions to the French Revolution. Decentration has virtues — as much methodological as philosophical and political — that are multiple, and that allow to put religions on trial. If the French Revolution is paradigmatic, it is because it announces this movement by which the peoples will take their destiny in their own hands. But then, why should a catechism still be needed? (shrink)

Aristotle’s Prior Analytics identifies deductions simpliciter with inferential necessity, so that a deduced conclusion is necessarily inferred from some premises. Modern logical reconstructions claim that inferential necessity in Aristotle corresponds to logical validity. However, this logical reconstruction fails on two accounts. First, logical validity does not highlight Aristotle’s distinction between inferential necessity and predicative necessity, meaning that the inferential necessity of a deduction is not of the same kind as the predicative necessity of a non‑deductive argument. Second, logical validity does (...) not explain the relevance of Aristotle’s distinction between complete and incomplete deductions. Logicians speak of complete deduction by adding the term “obvious” or “transparent” to logical validity, and then criticize Aristotle’s view for being unclear. However, Aristotle’s position is not confronted with this difficulty. There is nothing to add to inferential necessity, which already means complete deducibility, as opposed to incomplete deducibility, deemed to be potentially complete. Accordingly, the Prior Analytics reduces the incomplete deductions to the complete deductions in order to prove the potential, inferential necessity of the incomplete deductions. Logical validity would have been faithful to Aristotle’s text, if it had been possible to coin a notion of potential validity, distinct from both validity and invalidity. (shrink)

This paper shows that Aristotle's De Interpretatione does not separate syntax from semantics. Linguistic sentences are not syntactic entities, and non-linguistic meanings are not semantic propositions expressed by linguistic sentences. In fact, Aristotle resorts to a mental conception of meaning, distinguishing linguistic meanings in a given language from non-linguistic mental contents in relation to actual things: while the former are not the same for all, the latter are shared by everyone. Aristotle is not a modern logician, like Boole, Frege, or (...) Russell, in so far as a mental conception of meaning does not reveal an abstract semantics for a syntactic language. (shrink)

Christianism often mentions perfumes. Its liturgy based on Scripture uses incense and balm. A reading from the Bible and the lives of saints reveals many extraordinary perfumes (“odours of sanctity”). The Virgin Mary holds extreme importance among saints and it is quite common to see her spreading miraculous fragrances. These are subtle, discrete but pleasant signals from Heaven. They are sent to everyone in order to convert non‑believers or turn back believers to the faith in God. The divine origin of (...) perfumes is tied up with the memories and hopes from Paradise. It marks bodies escaping from death and entering into eternal life. (shrink)

, which uses the intuitionistic propositional calculus, with the only connective →. It is very important, because the well known Curry-Howard correspondence between proofs and programs was originally discovered with it, and because it enjoys the normalization property: every typed term is strongly normalizable. It was extended to second order intuitionistic logic, in 1970, by J.-Y. Girard [4], under the name of system F, still with the normalization property.More recently, in 1990, the Curry-Howard correspondence was extended to classical logic, following (...) Felleisen and Griffin [6] who discovered that the law of Peirce corresponds to control instructions in functional programming languages. It is interesting to notice that, as early as 1972, Clint and Hoare [1] had made an analogous remark for the law of excluded middle and controlled jump instructions in imperative languages.There are now many type systems which are based on classical logic; among the best known are the system LC of J.-Y. Girard [5] and the λμ-calculus of M. Parigot [11]. We shall use below a system closely related to the latter, called the λ c -calculus [8, 9]. Both systems use classical second order logic and have the normalization property.In the sequel, we shall extend the λ c -calculus to the Zermelo-Frænkel set theory. The main problem is due to the axiom of extensionality. To overcome this difficulty, we first give the axioms of ZF in a suitable (equivalent) form, which we call ZF ɛ. (shrink)

Contrairement à une idée reçue, les religions fabriquent de nombreuses différences : c’est une façon de donner sens au monde. La difficulté vient de ce qu’elles ne coïncident pas avec les différenciations et les séparations modernes. Du coup, les différences religieuses du passé peuvent s’effacer, mais aussi s’exacerber dans des formes identitaires. Mais elles peuvent aussi rappeler à la modernité que le franchissement de certaines limites en certains domaines l’expose au risque de « déraillements » .Contrary to a received idea, (...) religions create a great many differences in their attempts to give meaning to the world. The difficulty arises from the fact that these differences do not coincide with the differentiations and separations of modern times. As a result, the religious differences of the past can fade away, but they can also become exacerbated through forms of identity-building. Nevertheless, they can also be a reminder to modern times that crossing over certain boundaries in certain areas can create risks of “derailment”. (shrink)

When it was first published in French in 1980, The Ordinary Man of Cinema signaled a shift from the French film criticism of the 1960s to a new breed of film philosophy that disregarded the semiotics and post-structuralism of the preceding decades. Schefer describes the schizophrenic subjectivity the cinema offers us: the film as a work projected without memory, viewed by (and thereby lived by) a subject scarred and shaped by memory. The Ordinary Man of Cinema delineates the phenomenology of (...) movie-going and the fleeting, impalpable zone in which an individuals personal memory confronts the cinemas ideological images to create a new way of thinking. It is also a book replete with mummies and vampires, tyrants and prostitutes, murderers and freaksfigures that are fundamental to Schefers conception of the cinema, because the worlds that cinema traverses (our worlds, interior and exterior) are worlds of pain, unconscious desire, decay, repressed violence, and the endless mystery of the body. Fear and pleasure breed monsters, and such are what Schefers emblematic "ordinary man" seeks and encounters when engaging in the disordering of the ordinary that the movie theater offers him. Among other things, Schefer considers "The Gods" in 31 brief essays on film stills and "The Criminal Life" with reflections on spectatorship and autobiography. While Schefers book has long been standard reading in French film scholarship, until now it has been something of a missing link to the field (and more broadly, French theory) in English. It is one of the building blocks of more widely known and read translations of Gilles Deleuze (who cited this book as an influence on his own cinema books) and Jacques Rancière. (shrink)

We describe here a simple method in order to obtain programs from proofs in second-order classical logic. Then we extend to classical logic the results about storage operators proved by Krivine for intuitionistic logic. This work generalizes previous results of Parigot.

Many logicians have tried to formalize a modal logic from the Prior Analytics, but the general view is that Aristotle has failed to offer a consistent modal logic there. This paper explains that Aristotle is not interested in modal logic as such. Modalities for him pertain to the relations of predication, without challenging the assertoric system of deductions simpliciter. Thus, demonstrations or dialectical deductions have modal predicates and yet are still deductions simpliciter. It is a matter of distinguishing inferential necessity (...) that applies to every deduction from the modal predicates in the two premises and conclusion. The modality of demonstrations can be either necessary or possible. The necessity is predicative, i.e., independent of inferential necessity. While the possible demonstration challenges the predicative necessity of the necessary demonstration, it preserves the inferential necessity of the deduction simpliciter. (shrink)

Le préambule de l'édit de Tiberius Julius Alexander inscrit sur les piliers du temple d'Hibis de l'oasis d'El Khargeh est exceptionnel à plus d'un titre : par sa longueur, par la complexité et la précision de son cadre idéologique associant empereur et gouverneur dans le gouvernement de l'Egypte, mais aussi par la difficulté qu'il y a à l'insérer, lui et son projet, dans la chronologie heurtée du début de l'année 68. L'examen de la forme diplomatique démontre qu'il s'agit d'un édit (...) préparé de longue date, la tâche essentielle dévolue par Néron au gouverneur de cette province qu'il devait visiter, et qui a été promulgué le 6 juillet 68 dans l'ignorance des événements romains. Sitôt annoncées et confirmées les nouvelles de la mort de Néron et de l'accession de Galba, le texte de l'édit et du préambule a été repris à la hâte pour l'adapter au programme du nouveau régime. Il faut donc considérer cet «édit de restauration d'Alexandrie et de l'Egypte» dans le droit fil des ordonnances philanthropiques hellénistiques, comme un édit néronien. En appendice, sont étudiés les usages dans la langue de chancellerie de πρόνοιαν ποιεΐσθαι, φροντίς, φροντίζειν et προγράφειν. (shrink)

A great deal of thought has been given to the effects of information technology on reading, books and printed material. Its impact on writing, the production of texts, which is, however, the counterpart of reading, has not aroused the same interest. It is true that witnesses to the act of creation are less familiar objects than books or newspapers: in spite of the passion of the media and the educated public for writers’ manuscripts, these remain predominantly the prerogative of researchers (...) and are still rarely taken out of libraries and archive collections. In extremely literate Western societies, reading is an activity practised by large sectors of the population. The same cannot be said about writing as an active producer of texts, for this encompasses a much more limited group of professionals, and is thought, more or less, to require a special gift in its literary form. Written production is rather the hidden face of McLuhan's Gutenberg galaxy, and the commercial businesses which manufacture and distribute writing in its printed form are better known to the public than the mysterious secrets of creation. (shrink)

Aristotle's endeavor, at least insofar as we can judge from the way it has been transmitted to us and from the titles of the lost works, is often presented as the first work of an encyclopedic nature, as it seems to embrace and order all of the elements of knowledge. Does Aristotle not advance a classification of sciences, in Metaphysics, E, 1, as well as a systematic outline of the “sciences of nature” in his Meteorologica, I, 1? And again, although (...) logic is often presented as not belonging to the system of sciences since it is not counted as a science in Metaphysics, E, 1, is Aristotle not generally considered the inventor of this discipline? The impression is all the stronger in that Andronicus of Rhodes, in the first century b.c., edited Aristotle's works by roughly adopting the threefold division of philosophy into Logic-Physics-Ethics, a division that had become common during the Hellenistic period though more particularly proper to the Stoic system. Since then, all the editions of Aristotle, in every language, have been made to serve the order in which Aristotle's treatises were thus edited. (shrink)

Trade in high-value-added toxins for therapeutic and biological use is expanding. These toxins are generally derived from microalgae belonging to the dinoflagellate family. Due to the difficulties to grow these sensitive planktonic species and to the complexity of methods used to synthesize these molecules, which are generally complex chemical structures, biotoxin manufacturers called on artificial intelligence technologies. Manufacturing processes have been greatly improved through the development of specific learning neural networks, applied to each phases of biotoxin production: photo-bioreactors operating at (...) optimal yied; new chemical synthesis research processes; toxin biosynthetic research pathways offering short-cut possibilities. (shrink)

Dans les traditions philosophiques occidentales, c'est à la critique développée par la pensée marxiste que l'on doit de pouvoir aborder l'oeuvre de Moses Hess (1812-1875). Pourtant, le "rabbin des communistes", comme on l'a appelé, fut l'un des penseurs du XIXe siècle qui questionna au plus près les conditions de la liberté et de l'égalité sociales, en même temps qu'il ouvrit la voie à l'idée d'un foyer juif en Palestine, où cette liberté et cette égalité se seraient pleinement épanouies. Dans les (...) études juives, la philosophie de Moses Hess est rarement évoquée, si l'on excepte quelques commentaires qui font de lui ce "communiste et sioniste, qui joua un rôle décisif dans le premier mouvement et inventa virtuellement le second". Le livre de Jean-Louis Bertocchi veut porter un éclairage nouveau sur cette oeuvre pionnière et singulière à bien des égards, dont le coeur est bel et bien la discussion serrée, "en accord divergeant", de la pensée de Spinoza, lu attentivement par Marx lui-même, et qui, dans le ciel d'un humanisme juif émancipé et émancipateur, dessine une constellation en perpétuel mouvement, où scintillent tour à tour philosophie, communisme et sionisme."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)