L'entreprise fondationnelle traditionnelle en éthique a abouti à un échec, c'est-à-dire à la victoire du relativisme moral. De son côté, la métaéthique a contribué largement à renforcer ce relativisme en voulant caractériser l'éthique négativement en prenant pour point de référence le discours scientifique . Mais n'y aurait-il pas une autre façon de fonder l'éthique et la bioéthique ? Le présent texte voudrait apporter réponse à cette question en adoptant une perspective épistémologique.In our view, the field of ethics is in jeopardy (...) : the traditional approaches wanting to give an ontological foundation to ethics has lead on the contrary to the victory of moral relativism ; on the other hand, further support has been provided for relativism with the intervention of metaethics which defines ethics negatively in contrast to science . Could there be another way to secure the foundation of ethics ? In this paper, we try to see whether the perspective of the philosophy of science could not help us to choose rationally between moral rules and in this way to provide an indirect foundation for ethics and bioethics but nevertheless a foundation. (shrink)

La littérature épistémologique actuelle véhicule une image caricaturale de la philosophie popperienne de la biologie. En effet, on suppose sa position suffisamment claire et univoque pour pouvoir se résumer succinctement en quelques lignes. De plus, on la suppose toujours la même tout au long de l'évolution intellectuelle de son auteur. Dans le présent article, nous voudrions contester ces deux suppositions car sa pensée est non seulement vague et ambiguë mais encore elle est loin d'être constante et homogène. De ce fait, (...) nous entendons corriger une conception eronnée et généralement répandue de sa philosophie de la biologie.Popper's philosophy of biology is generally miscon- ceived. It is supposed to be homogeneous and clearly statable in a few lines. Worse, Popper's changes of mind on these questions are not even taken into account. In this article, we will try to show why these suppositions are erroneous and how they hinder us from forming a more adequate idea of his philosophy of biology. (shrink)

Paul Gilbert has written a fascinating, stimulating book, one that offers a strong challenge to whoever might believe that the progress of scientific thought has rendered classical metaphysics obsolete, meaningless, or worthy only of historical scholarship. His work, based on the notion that a modern experimental science such as physics is not chiefly grounded on empirical evidence, is quite contrary to that naive empiricist conception already in jeopardy owing to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the present day prevalence of statistical explanation. (...) Physics' distinguishing trait is, in fact, the mathematical form given to its laws. However, mathematics is still awaiting a solid and complete foundation since Gödel's incompleteness theorem and the failure of Hilbert's metamathematical program. Such foundational difficulties are no surprise to Gilbert. Like those encountered by modern science's metaphysical predecessors, such difficulties are necessary consequences of the insuperable gap between reality and its discursive representation, between the unity of being, the multiplicity of its sensible appearances, and its analytical and synthetic reconstruction in thought. They reflect the "ontological differences" and conceptual separations that can be properly reunified only in action and not in words, that is, by means of a specific human action performed mentally when one is thinking that he is effectively thinking about something. Now, this type of solution is of course precluded by the prevailing quest for "objectivity" or "knowledge without a subject." For Gilbert, there can be no such thing as knowledge that is not animated by a subject's desire to fulfill the need to know, by doubts and astonishment at the recognition that reality is far more complex than its sensible appearances by which one immediately conceptualizes it. Even one's emotions, passions, freedom, the will to transcend oneself, to build a viable society, and to join with others while respecting their otherness must be taken into account. Any solid foundation for human knowledge must then encompass an ethical dimension. This is the major conclusion which the author wished to arrive at in this book and which had to be established first, before proceeding to the ultimate foundation aimed at by metaphysics. (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.

A discussion of Frege's views concerning the meaning of 'I' and his distinction between the 'I' of soliloquy and the 'I' of conversation.

The issues addressed in philosophical papers on quotation generally concern only a particular type of quotation, which I call ‘closed quotation’. The other main type, ‘open quotation’, is ignored, and this neglect leads to bad theorizing. Not only is a general theory of quotation out of reach: the specific phenomenon of closed quotation itself cannot be properly understood if it is not appropriately situated within the kind to which it belongs. Once the distinction between open and closed quotation has been (...) drawn and properly appreciated, it is tempting to consider that only closed quotation is relevant to semantics. Open quotation is more a matter of pragmatics: it is a matter of what people do with words, rather than a matter of content and truth-conditions. In this way one can provide the beginning of a justification for the neglect of open quotation in current semantic theorizing. There is some truth in this view, yet the phenomenon of ‘mixed quotation’, investigated at length in this paper, is interesting precisely because it shows that things are not so simple. Important issues concerning the interface between semantics and pragmatics will thus be raised. (shrink)

Review of Insensitive Semantics, by H. Cappelen and E. Lepore.

Hierdie boek is n inleiding tot moderne denkrigtings wat alle fasette van die staat betref. Dit verduidelik die verbintenis tussen die huidige proses van staatsvorming in Suid-Afrika en die tradisionele faktore wat dit elders in die w reld aangehelp het.

What is it to share the same concept? The question is an important one since sharing the same concept explains our ability to non-accidentally coordinate on the same topic over time and between individuals. Moreover, concept identity grounds key logical relations among thought contents such as samesaying, contradiction, validity, and entailment. Finally, an account of concept identity is crucial to explaining and justifying epistemic efforts to better understand the precise contents of our thoughts. The key question, then, is what psychological (...) and social facts could play these roles? Elsewhere, we have argued for a specific relational model of concept identity, the connectedness model (e.g. Schroeter 2012, Schroeter and Schroeter 2014, 2015). Our aim in this chapter is to further explain the motivations behind that account, to address worries about transitivity and vagueness, and to contrast our approach with closely related accounts of concept identity developed by François Recanati and Simon Prosser. -/- What’s distinctive of our approach is that we seek to vindicate the first-person epistemic perspective of concept users. Concepts, on our account, play a crucial normative role in setting regulative ideals for the representational practices in which individual subjects participate. This focus on the normative role of concepts – as opposed to a purely causal explanatory role – motivates our approach to concept identity and our toleration of vagueness and borderline cases. (shrink)

In this article, originally published in 1946, Michel Tournier builds a new system of the world both inspired by Sartre’s philosophy and turned against his recent conversion to humanism. Tournier describes an impersonal world full of impersonal emotions and thoughts from which, suddenly, emerges the subject conceived on the model of the Cartesian Cogito. The appearance of the subject is indeed required by the world itself as long as the Cartesian ego, although mistaken and irrelevant, paradoxically contributes to (...) the rational process of History. (shrink)

Cette méditation en première personne tourne autour de l’antique et grande question : Que faire? et s’appuie sur le texte des Essais de Montaigne. La question du « faire » y est interrogée et relancée par-delà le « produire » et la production qui, aujourd’hui, plus que jamais, risquent de l’emporter et de l’engloutir tandis qu’est brossé un portrait chinois (taoïste!) de celui dont Nietzsche disait si bien : « c’est à lui que je m’attacherais si l’on me donnait pour (...) tâche de faire de cette terre une patrie ». (shrink)

Du temps du confinement et de la dévastation qui affectent si profondément notre sens de la temporalité, la philosophie aurait-elle quelque chose à dire? L’occasion en tout cas de relire quelques textes d’Aristote et d’Augustin et d’essayer de nous orienter dans Être et temps de Heidegger en nous interrogeant sur l’expression avoir le temps au moment où, pour chacun, s’amenuise le temps qui reste.

Comment écrire sur Bataille sans s’épargner et se mettre soi-même hors jeu sinon en entrant dans le jeu de ce qu’on appellera, en un sens majeur, la parodie ? Dans ce retour, dans cet éternel retour des pensées et des mots – dans cette déconstruction créatrice qu’est la réécriture – Bataille n’y entra-t-il pas lui même en écrivant sur Nietzsche ?

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)

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

The Swiss physician and psychiatrist views a patient as a person whose personal problems are contributing factors to physical illness.

The prevalent view in animal ethics is that speciesism is wrong: we should weigh the interests of humans and non-humans equally. Shelly Kagan has recently questioned this claim, defending speciesism against Peter Singer’s seminal argument based on the principle of equal consideration of interests. This critique is most charitably construed as a dilemma. The principle of equal consideration can be interpreted in either of two ways. While it faces counterexamples on the first reading, it makes Singer’s argument question-begging on the (...) second. In response, Singer has grasped the first horn of this dilemma and tried to accommodate Kagan’s apparent counterexamples. In my opinion, this attempt is unpersuasive: the principle of equal consideration is inconsistent with common-sense intuitions on Kagan’s cases. Worse, Singer’s argument begs the question anyway. It therefore faces two serious objections. This is not to say that there is nothing wrong with speciesism, however. In the second half of the paper, I propose another, better argument against speciesism, which I argue is immune to both objections. According to this other argument, speciesism is wrong because it involves discriminating on the basis of a merely biological property. (shrink)

Animal ethicists have been debating the morality of speciesism for over forty years. Despite rather persuasive arguments against this form of discrimination, many philosophers continue to assign humans a higher moral status than nonhuman animals. The primary source of evidence for this position is our intuition that humans’ interests matter more than the similar interests of other animals. And it must be acknowledged that this intuition is both powerful and widespread. But should we trust it for all that? The present (...) paper defends a negative answer to that question, based on a debunking argument. The intuitive belief that humans matter more than other animals is unjustified because it results from an epistemically defective process. It is largely shaped by tribalism, our tendency to favor ingroup members as opposed to outgroup members. And this influence is distortive for two reasons. First, tribalism evolved for reasons unrelated to moral truths; hence, it would at best produce true moral beliefs accidentally. Second, tribalism generates a vast quantity of false moral beliefs, starting with racist beliefs. Once this intuition is discarded, little evidence remains that speciesism is morally acceptable. (shrink)