Œuvres (ordre alphabétique des titres en français) Crise de la philosophie occidentale [1874], Paris, Aubier-Montaigne (Bibliothèque philosophique), 1947 (trad. et introduction de Maxime Herman), 384 p. Le développement dogmatique de l’Église [1885], Paris, Desclée, 1991 (trad. et présentation de François Rouleau et Roger Tandonnet), 209 p. Les fondements spirituels de la vie [1884], Lettre pré...

This book argues against the traditional understanding of the semantics/pragmatics divide and puts forward a radical alternative. Through half a dozen case studies, it shows that what an utterance says cannot be neatly separated from what the speaker means. In particular, the speaker's meaning endows words with senses that are tailored to the situation of utterance and depart from the conventional meanings carried by the words in isolation. This phenomenon of ‘pragmatic modulation’ must be taken into account in theorizing about (...) semantic content, for it interacts with the grammar-driven process of semantic composition. Because of that interaction, the book argues, the content of a sentence always depends upon the context in which it is used. This claim defines Contextualism, a view which has attracted considerable attention in recent years, and of which the author of this book is one of the main proponents. (shrink)

Par-delà le règne, puis l'éclipse, du paradigme newtonien, l'oeuvre philosophique et scientifique de ce penseur qui inventa le calcul infinitésimal, la dynamique et de nouveaux modèles pour la théorie de l'organisme, fournit un point d'ancrage privilégié à l'analyse épistémologique.

Diversity of evidence is widely claimed to be crucial for evidence amalgamation to have distinctive epistemic merits. Bayesian epistemologists capture this idea in the variety-of-evidence thesis: ceteris paribus, the strength of confirmation of a hypothesis by an evidential set increases with the diversity of the evidential elements in that set. Yet, formal exploration of this thesis has shown that it fails to be generally true. This article demonstrates that the thesis fails in even more circumstances than recent results would lead (...) us to expect. Most importantly, it can fail whatever the chance that the evidential sources are unreliable. Our results hold for two types of degrees of variety: reliability independence and testable aspect independence. We conclude that the variety-of-evidence thesis can, at best, be interpreted as an exception-prone rule of thumb. (shrink)

Diversity of evidence is widely claimed to be crucial for evidence amalgamation to have distinctive epistemic merits. Bayesian epistemologists capture this idea in the variety-of-evidence thesis: ceteris paribus, the strength of confirmation of a hypothesis by an evidential set increases with the diversity of the evidential elements in that set. Yet, formal exploration of this thesis has shown that it fails to be generally true. This article demonstrates that the thesis fails in even more circumstances than recent results would lead (...) us to expect. Most importantly, it can fail whatever the chance that the evidential sources are unreliable. Our results hold for two types of degrees of variety: reliability independence and testable aspect independence. We conclude that the variety-of-evidence thesis can, at best, be interpreted as an exception-prone rule of thumb. (shrink)

The theory of living beings as machines of nature and the conception of composite substances endowed with conjoined souls, entelechies, or monads, as well as that of organic bodies, were solidified over the course of the transformations of Leibniz's thought that issued in the New System of Nature. On this basis, the monadological versions of a system of nature centered upon the integrated organization ad infinitum of living beings were gradually articulated. Leibniz aimed to spell out a science, or physiology (...) of vital processes, that would be, as much as possible, in agreement with the epistemological exigencies of the complex metaphysical model that he had elaborated. On the one hand, Leibniz offers a critical evaluation of the methodological options that divide the allegiances of the physicians and naturalists who are his contemporaries; what is more, he determines the profile of the analyses and explications that are to be promoted. For This double preoccupation translates into the scientific exchanges and correspondences that accompany the construction of the theory of organic bodies as constituents of machines of nature. The author focuses on the particular case of the propositions concerning the science of the living that stem from his reaction to the work of Georg Ernst Stahl. (shrink)

The variety-of-evidence thesis has been criticized by Bovens and Hartmann. This article points to two limitations of their Bayesian model: the conceptualization of unreliable evidential sources as randomizing and the restriction to comparing full independence to full dependence. It is shown that the variety-of-evidence thesis is rehabilitated when unreliable sources are reconceptualized as systematically biased. However, it turns out that allowing for degrees of independence leads to a qualification of the variety-of-evidence thesis: as Bovens and Hartmann claimed, more independence does (...) not always imply stronger confirmation. (shrink)

This article maintains that an important class of scientific generalizations should be reinterpreted: they have typically been understood as ceteris paribus laws, but are, in fact, generics. Four arguments are presented to support this thesis. One argument is that the interpretation in terms of ceteris paribus laws is a historical accident. The other three arguments draw on similarities between these generalizations and archetypal generics: they come with similar inferential commitments, they share a syntactic form, and the existing theories to make (...) sense of them are alike. Once these generalizations are properly understood as generics, the recent cognitive approach to generics can be extended to the study of the relevant sciences. The last section indicates ways in which this extension is fruitful for the two strands of research that we combine: the philosophy of science literature on generalizations and the semantics literature on generics. (shrink)

I argue that immunity to error through misidentification primarily characterizes thoughts that are 'implicitly' de se, as opposed to thoughts that involve an explicit self-identification. Thoughts that are implicitly de se involve no reference to the self at the level of content: what makes them de se is simply the fact that the content of the thought is evaluated with respect to the thinking subject. Or, to put it in familiar terms : the content of the thought is a property (...) which the thinking subject self-ascribes (as in the Loar/Lewis/Chisholm analysis). After answering an objection (to the effect that immunity can affect explicit de se thoughts), I extend the analysis to demonstrative thoughts, which also exhibit the property of immunity to error through misidentification. (shrink)

This article examines two theses formulated by Russo and Williamson in their study of causal inference in the health sciences. The two theses are assessed against evidence from a specific case in the social sciences, i.e., research on the institutional determinants of the aggregate unemployment rate. The first Russo–Williamson Thesis is that a causal claim can only be established when it is jointly supported by difference-making and mechanistic evidence. This thesis is shown not to hold. While researchers in my case (...) study draw extensively on both types of evidence, one causal claim out of the three analyzed is established even though it is exclusively supported by mechanistic evidence. The second Russo–Williamson Thesis is that standard accounts of causality fail to handle the dualist epistemology highlighted in the first Thesis. I argue that a counterfactual-manipulationist account of causality—which is endorsed by many philosophers as well as many social scientists—can perfectly make sense of the typical strategy in my case study to draw on both difference-making and mechanistic evidence; it is just an instance of the common strategy of increasing evidential variety. (shrink)

Desde el siglo XVIII, el jardín es el lugar del saber-hacer y de los conocimientos adquiridos por la botánica experimental. A partir de ahí, se propondrá una definición de lo que es un ambiente técnico: un ambiente de cultivo hecho de normas y leyes. Pero este ambiente técnico debe distinguirse del ambiente natural. Este último designa un ambiente ocupado por especies salvajes. Se trata, pues, de precisar la naturaleza de la relación entre ambiente técnico y ambiente natural. A los productos (...) del cultivo, Linneo les daba un valor positivo. Rousseau piensa al contrario. A la naturaleza, le da un valor positivo. Linneo valora el jardín, está a favor del cultivo. Rousseau desvaloriza el jardín, está a favor de la naturaleza. La controversia sobre los organismos modificados podría comenzar. (shrink)

Dramatisation d'un dialogue souhaite par Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz mais refuse par John Locke, les Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain mettent en scene Theophile et Philalethe: et Leibniz pouvait ainsi donner la replique a l'Essay concerning Human Understanding de Locke. Longtemps consideres comme la simple synthese de la philosophie leibnizienne, les Nouveaux Essais ne nous presentent-ils pas plutot le philosophe de Hanovre empruntant des pistes originales d'analyse et offrant des orientations epistemologiques plus marquees que dans toute autre de ses oeuvres? S'interessant (...) a l'Essay, Leibniz avait declare:...] j'ai fort medite moi-meme sur ce qui regarde les fondements de nos connaissances....] De toutes les recherches il n'y a point de plus importante, puisque c'est la clef de toutes les autres. Ce sont les tenants et les aboutissants de ce jugement de Leibniz, qui fixait ainsi - par anticipation - le propos des Nouveaux Essais, auxquels les auteurs ont ici consacre leurs analyses. (shrink)

L'auteur consacre sa réflexion à l'amplification et à l'achèvement de la non-philosophie, en combinant science et philosophie qui sont considérées comme des variables définissant un espace ondulatoire et particulaire de l'opération de penser.

L'entretien présente les principales thèses exposées dans la première édition de L'Islamisme en face, (Paris, La Découverte, 1995) et répond aux questions et aux remarques formulées par la rédaction de la revue Krisis sur l'origine et les principales expressions du phénomène islamiste dans ses dimensions nationales (économiques, politiques et sociales) et internationale, au sein des sociétés arabo-musulmanes comme en Europe.

Every statement represents a certain state of affairs as holding in a certain situation, which the statement concerns. The situation which a statement concerns is indicated by the context. It must be distinguished from whichever situation may be explicitly mentioned in the statement. In this framework, two cognitive processes are analysed: projection and reflection. Both involve two representations: one which concerns a situation s, and another one which explicitly mentions that situation. Through reflection we go from the representation concerning s (...) to the representation mentioning s. Through projection we go from the representation mentioning s to the representation concerning s. (shrink)

Language and judicial activities are both signs of the existence of a society. There is, therefore, good reason for a dialogue between the science of language and the science of law. This article applies a linguistic theory of the Paris School (semiotics) to the examination of a legal text, namely a contract. The author points to some eIements shared by legal and other texts, and demonstrates how a semiotic interpretation can provide interesting and unexpected insights into the deeper levels of (...) a legal text. He concludes that a similar approach could fruitfully be used with other types of legal text. (shrink)

La philosophie bergsonnienne a rendu le monde de ses contemporains moins opaque, les aidant à lui trouver un sens. Si la France cartésienne coïncide avec les partisans de la démocratie parlementaire ancrée à gauche, celle de Bergson recrute ses plus gros bataillons dans la droite nationale, conservatrice, mais également dans une gauche antiparlementaire, révolutionnaire.

_Philosophical reflections on the phenomenon of globalization._.

. This article analyzes the epistemic contributions of models by distinguishing three roles that they might play: an evidential role, a revealing role and a stimulating role. By using an account of learning based on the philosophical understanding of propositional knowledge as true justified belief, the paper provides the conditions to be fulfilled by a model in order to play a determined role. A case study of an economic model of the labor market—the DMP model—illustrates the usefulness of these conditions (...) in articulating debates over the epistemic contributions of a given model. (shrink)

A defence of the 'pragmatic' theory of anaphora (which stresses the analogy between anaphora and deixis) against an argument put forward by Gareth Evans.