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

In the first English translation of his work, Laruelle explores the major European thinkers from Nietzsche to Derrida to define his own 'non-philosophical' ...

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)

François Recanati; IV*—Contextual Dependence and Definite Descriptions, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 87, Issue 1, 1 June 1987, Pages 57–74, h.

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)

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)

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)

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin n’était pas théologien de profession, mais son œuvre a surtout été reçue – et parfois contestée – dans le domaine religieux. Il n’a pas prétendu proposer une réflexion systématique mais renouveler la pensée chrétienne pour la mettre en cohérence avec les connaissances scientifiques. C’est ainsi que la théologie doit devenir une recherche permanente. En dépit de quelques limites, en particulier sur la question du mal, sa pensée peut rester inspirante pour le travail du théologien. Dans le (...) dialogue avec les sciences, c’est une « nouvelle face de Dieu » qui se révèle. (shrink)

Sait-on que la science-fiction américaine, du roman " cyberpunk " à la saga Matrix, se nourrit largement de Jean Baudrillard? Que Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari inspirent aux Etats-Unis les pionniers de l'Internet comme de la musique électronique? Que Michel Foucault y est la référence majeure des luttes communautaires, tandis que Jacques Derrida est une star sans égale dans l'université? Après avoir croisé à New York la contre-culture des années 1970, les œuvres des philosophes français de l 'après - structuralisme (...) sont entrées dans les départements de littérature de l'université américaine, où elles ont bouleversé de l'intérieur tout le champ intellectuel. Réinterprétées, réappropriées au service des combats identitaires de la fin de siècle américaine, elles ont fourni le socle théorique sur lequel ont pu s'épanouir, contre la régression des années Reagan, les cultural studies, les gender studies et les études multiculturelles. C'est cette histoire, mal connue, de la french theory que François Cusset retrace ici. Il décrit le succès de cette étrange " théorie française " - la déconstruction, le biopouvoir, les micropolitiques ou la simulation -jusque dans les tréfonds de la sous - culture américaine. Il restitue l'atmosphère particulière des années 1970 et raconte la formidable aventure américaine, et bientôt mondiale, d'intellectuels français marginalisés dans l'Hexagone. Car le plus surprenant est que, pendant que l'Amérique les célébrait, la France s'empressait d'inhumer ces dangereux échevelés de la " pensée 68 " pour louer à nouveau l'humanisme citoyen et son vieil universalisme abstrait. Ce livre éclaire ce paradoxe en explorant une modalité méconnue, mais cruciale, du malentendu franco - américain. Au-delà, il brosse un portrait passionnant des mutations de l'espace intellectuel, culturel et politique américain des dernières décennies. (shrink)

Porphyrius (234 - 305), Plotinus' disciple and editor of his Enneads, addresses his letter to Marcella, an aging woman, whom he married late in life. He explains to her the reasons for leaving her, after only ten months of marriage. He invites her to leave passions behind to lead a philosophical life along the lines of the major ethical principles inspired by Plato. Porphyrius takes a strong stand as an apologist of traditional philosophical teachings. The Letter to Marcella provides a (...) unique account on the ways and principles along which a philosophical life should be led. The Letter to Marcella survives as a single manuscript that dates from the 15th century. It is here introduced, edited, translated and annotated. (shrink)

The idea that Revelation had been brought to a close is presented in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum, Chap. 1, § 4) : “The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away ; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord, Jesus Christ”. This article intends to interpret the idea of a “closed” revelation in terms of a “kenotic process”.

SummaryIn this paper I discuss two influential views in the philosophy of mind: the two‐component picture draws a distinction between ‘narrow content’ and ‘broad content’, while radical externalism denies that there is such a thing as narrow content. I argue that ‘narrow content’ is ambiguous, and that the two views can be reconciled. Instead of considering that there is only one question and three possible answers corresponding to Cartesian internalism, the two‐component picture, and radical externalism respectively, I show that there (...) are two distinct questions: ‘Are mental contents internal to the individual?’ and, ‘Are mental contents analysable in two‐components?’ Both questions can be given a positive or a negative answer, in such a way that there are four, rather than three, possible views to be distinguished. The extra view whose possibility emerges in this framework is that which mixes radical externalism with the two‐component picture. It agrees with radical externalism that there cannot be ‘solipsistic’ contents: content is not an intrinsic property of the states of an individual organism, but a relational property. It also agrees with the two‐component picture, on a certain interpretation: the broad content of a psychological state depends upon what actually causes that state, but the narrow content depends only on what normally causes this type of state to occur. In the last section of the paper, I deal with internal representation which seem to be independent even of the normal environment. I show that such contents are themselves independent of the normal environment only in a relative sense: they are locally independent of the normal environment, yet still depend on it via the concepts to which they are connected in the concept system. (shrink)

In the beginning of this article, the author discusses the biographical context of his engagement in the French translation of Sein und Zeit in the 1980s, under the guidance of Jean Beaufret. He integrates the discussion into the general problem of philosophical translation. The author argues that one of the most important things in this matter is the decision of translating. Concerning Heidegger translations, the author – answering to some critics he received – insists upon the idea of the intimate (...) relationship between thinking and poetry, justifying his constant appeal to examples from literature in his translator’s notes at the end of his version of Sein und Zeit. (shrink)

Jesus’ instruction to the crowds in Matthew 23:3 to obey and do everything the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees tell them comes as a surprise. It is the only case in Matthew where the words of the Jewish leaders are seemingly portrayed in a positive light. If this portrayal indeed is positive, it seems to stand in tension with how Matthew construes these leaders and their teachings in the rest of the gospel. Jesus’ positive remark furthermore seemingly stands (...) in contrast with Matthew 28:20, where Jesus claims all authority to himself and instructs his disciples to teach all the nations to obey everything he has commanded them. The question therefore arises as to how this seemingly positive reference of Jesus, which apparently stands in contrast with Jesus’ criticism in the rest of the gospel, should be interpreted. In answering this question, an intra-textual approach is followed. (shrink)