This article proposes a number of models to examine through which mechanisms a population of autonomous agents could arrive at a repertoire of perceptually grounded categories that is sufficiently shared to allow successful communication. The models are inspired by the main approaches to human categorisation being discussed in the literature: nativism, empiricism, and culturalism. Colour is taken as a case study. Although we take no stance on which position is to be accepted as final truth with respect to human categorisation (...) and naming, we do point to theoretical constraints that make each position more or less likely and we make clear suggestions on what the best engineering solution would be. Specifically, we argue that the collective choice of a shared repertoire must integrate multiple constraints, including constraints coming from communication. Key Words: autonomous agents; colour categorisation; colour naming; connectionism; cultural evolution; genetic evolution; memes; origins of language; self-organisation; semiotic dynamics; symbol grounding. (shrink)

This volume is the direct result of a conference in which a number of leading researchers from the fields of artificial intelligence and biology gathered to ...

As soon as we stop talking aloud, we seem to experience a kind of 'inner voice', a steady stream of verbal fragments expressing ongoing thoughts. What kind of information processing structures are required to explain such a phenomenon? Why would an 'inner voice' be useful? How could it have arisen? This paper explores these questions and reports briefly some computational experiments to help elucidate them.

The paper discusses recent developments in web technologies based on collaborative tagging. This approach is seen as a tremendously powerful way to coordinate the ontologies and views of a large number of individuals, thus constituting the most successful tool for distributed cognition so far.

The paper discusses recent developments in web technologies based on collaborative tagging. This approach is seen as a tremendously powerful way to coordinate the ontologies and views of a large number of individuals, thus constituting the most successful tool for distributed cognition so far.

Jablonka & Lamb's (J&L's) book is refreshing in that it debunks the exclusively gene-centered approach used these days to explain almost anything about life and human behavior. The book is very accessible and most convincing when the authors discuss biological theories of genetic and epigenetic inheritance, but it does not shy away from the more slippery terrain of behavioral and symbolic inheritance, and specifically the origins of language. But is the analogy appropriate?

Biorobotics research should not only target “realistic” models of living systems and be judged exclusively from that perspective. It should pay just as much attention to formal models and artificial systems. They allow the examination of assumptions which do not necessarily hold for living systems, but precisely therein lies their value. They generate insight by enabling a comparison between the artificial and the real.

The interesting and deep commentaries on our target article reflect the continued high interest in the problem of colour categorisation and naming. Clearly, colour remains for many cognitive science related disciplines a fascinating microworld in which some of the most fundamental issues for cognition and culture can be studied. Although our target article took the stance of practically oriented engineers who are trying to find the best solution for orchestrating the self-organisation of communication systems in artificial agents, most commentators focus (...) on the implications for cognitive science and we will do the same in our reply. (shrink)

In a recent essay, John Norton proposes a material theory of induction, according to which all justification for inductive inference ultimately stems from the particular facts of the case at hand. Despite being sympathetic to the pluralistic spirit of this proposal, I argue that central controversies among leading theories of inductive inference turn not on material facts but upon normative judgments regarding the proper standards and aims of induction. Thus, a pluralistic approach to induction can be successfully developed only given (...) an explanation of how the choice of such aims and standards depends on features of particular cases. (shrink)

Probabilistic models have much to offer to philosophy. We continually receive information from a variety of sources: from our senses, from witnesses, from scientific instruments. When considering whether we should believe this information, we assess whether the sources are independent, how reliable they are, and how plausible and coherent the information is. Bovens and Hartmann provide a systematic Bayesian account of these features of reasoning. Simple Bayesian Networks allow us to model alternative assumptions about the nature of the information sources. (...) Measurement of the coherence of information is a controversial matter: arguably, the more coherent a set of information is, the more confident we may be that its content is true, other things being equal. The authors offer a new treatment of coherence which respects this claim and shows its relevance to scientific theory choice. Bovens and Hartmann apply this methodology to a wide range of much discussed issues regarding evidence, testimony, scientific theories, and voting. Bayesian Epistemology is an essential tool for anyone working on probabilistic methods in philosophy, and has broad implications for many other disciplines. (shrink)

Critics of functional explanations in social science maintain that such explanations are illegitimate unless a mechanism is specified. Others argue that mechanisms are not necessary for causal inference and that functional explanations are a type of causal claim that raise no special difficulties for testing. I show that there is indeed a special problem that confronts testing functional explanations resulting from their connection to second-order causal claims. I explain how mechanisms can resolve this difficulty, but argue that this does not (...) provide support for methodological individualism since it is not necessary that the mechanisms be described in terms of individual interactions. (shrink)

L'oeuvre du philosophe anglais est au coeur du débat qui divise historiens et philosophes sur le thème de la sécularisation de la pensée politique moderne. Cet ouvrage ambitionne de contribuer nettement à ce débat, en montrant le rôle joué par la théologie de la toute-puissance dans la constitution de la philosophie morale et politique de Hobbes.

Les etudes ici reunies rendent compte de ce que furent le contexte historique et litteraire de la redaction des dialogues platoniciens, puis de la maniere dont leur auteur a choisi de confronter sa philosophie a la mythologie, afin de mener une enquete sur le monde, l'ame et la cite. Ces lectures veulent prendre ainsi la mesure de ce qui nous eloigne aujourd'hui de Platon, mais suggerer encore qu'une histoire de la philosophie qui cherche a s'affranchir de l'anachronisme trace un chemin (...) vers la philosophie. (shrink)

What happens when the meaning of life based on a divine revelation no longer makes sense? Does the quest for transcendence end in the pursuit of material success and self-absorption? Luc Ferry argues that modernity and the emergence of secular humanism in Europe since the eighteenth century have not killed the search for meaning and the sacred, or even the idea of God, but rather have transformed both through a dual process: the humanization of the divine and the divinization of (...) the human. Ferry sees evidence for the first of these in the Catholic Church's attempts to counter the growing rejection of dogmatism and to translate the religious tradition into contemporary language. The second he traces to the birth of modern love and humanitarianism, both of which demand a concern for others and even self-sacrifice in defense of values that transcend life itself. Ferry concludes with a powerful statement in favor of what he calls "transcendental humanism"--a concept that for the first time in human history gives us access to a genuine spirituality rooted in human beings instead of the divine. (shrink)

As the need for more diversity in business ethics is becoming more pressing in our global world, we provide an historical study of a Fair Trade (FT) movement, born in rural Mexico. We first focus on the basic assumptions of its founders, which include a worker–priest, Frans van der Hoff, a group of native Indians and local farmers who formed a cooperative, and an NGO, Max Havelaar. We then review both the originalities and challenges of the FT movement and its (...) potential contributions to the current theories and practices in business ethics. (shrink)

This volume is a study of the influence of Timaeus on the development of Western cosmology in three axial periods of European culture: Late Antiquity, Middle Ages and Renaissance.

After criticizing, Habermas's and Rawls's approaches to public reason,this book proposes social imaginaries, rather than constructed concepts, as the normative resource of public reasoning. Examples are drawn from debates over the display of the Confederate Flag, Ralph Ellison's exchange with Hannah Arendt over school desegregation, the controversy over Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, and arguments over "the clash of civilizations.".

One of the strongest strands in Nancy's philosophy is an attempt to rethink community and the very idea of the social in a way that does not ground these ideas in some individual subject or subjectivity. The fundamental argument of this book is that being is always 'being with', that 'I' is not prior to 'we', that existence is essentially co-existence. He thinks this being together, not as a comfortable enclosure in a pre-existing group, but as a mutual abandonment and (...) exposure to each other, one that would preserve the 'I' and its freedom in a mode of imagining community as neither a 'society of spectacle' nor via some form of 'authenticity'. (shrink)

Distant Suffering examines the moral and political implications for a spectator of the distant suffering of others as presented through the media. What are the morally acceptable responses to the sight of suffering on television, for example, when the viewer cannot act directly to affect the circumstances in which the suffering takes place? Luc Boltanski argues that spectators can actively involve themselves and others by speaking about what they have seen and how they were affected by it. Developing ideas in (...) Adam Smith's moral theory, he examines three rhetorical 'topics' available for the expression of the spectator's response to suffering: the topics of denunciation and of sentiment and the aesthetic topic. The book concludes with a discussion of a 'crisis of pity' in relation to modern forms of humanitarianism. A possible way out of this crisis is suggested which involves an emphasis and focus on present suffering. (shrink)

A coherent story is a story that fits together well. This notion plays a central role in the coherence theory of justification and has been proposed as a criterion for scientific theory choice. Many attempts have been made to give a probabilistic account of this notion. A proper account of coherence must not start from some partial intuitions, but should pay attention to the role that this notion is supposed to play within a particular context. Coherence is a property of (...) an information set that boosts our confidence that its content is true ceteris paribus when we receive information from independent and partially reliable sources. We construct a measure cr that relies on hypothetical sources with certain idealized characteristics. A maximally coherent information set, i.e. a set with equivalent propositions, affords a maximal confidence boost. cr is the ratio of the actual confidence boost over the confidence boost that we would have received, had the information been presented in the form of maximally coherent information, ceteris paribus. This measure is functionally dependent on the degree of reliability r of the sources. We use cr to construct a coherence quasi-ordering over information sets S and S’: S is no less coherent than S’ just in case c_r is not smaller than c_r for any value of the reliability parameter. We show that, on our account, the coherence of the story about the world gives us a reason to believe that the story is true and that the coherence of a scientific theory, construed as a set of models, is a proper criterion for theory choice. (shrink)

Although Ricoeur and Taylor are often grouped together, their conceptions of language, literature, and practical reason are very different. The first half of this essay focuses on Ricoeur's theory of triple mimesis and narrative, showing how his attempt to synthesize Kant, Husserl, and structuralism results in a formalism that blocks out the ontological, hermeneutical, and historical dimensions of literature and practical reason. The second half of the essay develops Taylor's ontological conception of public imagination and illustrates the dynamics of this (...) conception of language and interpretation by showing how literary works debate with each other over language, subjectivity, and reference. Narrative does not just order; it argues. (shrink)

"Par dizaines, des expressions issues de la mythologie grecque se sont inscrites dans le langage courant : une "pomme de discorde", un "dédale de rues", prendre le "taureau par les cornes", toucher le "pactole", "tomber de Charybde en Scylla", suivre un "fil d'Ariane", "jouer les Cassandre", etc. Mille références endormies aux Sirènes, à Typhon, Océan, Triton, Python, Sibylle, Stentor, Mentor, Laïus, Argus, OEdipe et à tant d'autres personnages mythiques habitent encore incognito nos conversations de tous les jours. Je vous propose (...) de les réveiller en racontant les histoires magnifiques qui en sont l'origine. Mais il y a plus. Les grands mythes ne se limitent pas à des "contes et légendes". Ils proposent des leçons de vie et de sagesse d'une profondeur abyssale. La mythologie représente ainsi une tentative grandiose pour apporter des réponses à l'antique question métaphysique de "la vie bonne pour les mortels". Son étude, passionnante en elle-même, constitue pour cette raison une excellente introduction à la philosophie." Luc Ferry. (shrink)

"Ne croyez surtout pas qu'il s'agisse de science-fiction : 18 avril 2015, une équipe de généticiens chinois entreprenait d'"améliorer" le génome de quatre-vingt-trois embryons humains. Jusqu'où ira-t-on dans cette voie? Sera-t-il possible un jour (bientôt? déjà?) d'"augmenter" à volonté tel ou tel trait de caractère de ses enfants, d'éradiquer dans l'embryon les maladies génétiques, voire d'enrayer la vieillesse et la mort en façonnant une nouvelle espèce d'humains "augmentés"? Nous n'en sommes pas (tout à fait) là, mais de nombreux centres de (...) recherche "transhumanistes" y travaillent partout dans le monde, avec des financements colossaux en provenance de géants du Web tel Google. Les progrès des technosciences sont d'une rapidité inimaginable, ils échappent encore à toute régulation. En parallèle, cette "infrastructure du monde" qu'est le Web a permis l'apparition d'une économie dite "collaborative", celle que symbolisent des applications comme Uber, Airbnb ou BlaBlaCar. Selon l'idéologue Jeremy Rifkin, elles annoncent la fin du capitalisme au profit d'un monde de gratuité et de souci de l'autre. N'est-ce pas, tout à l'inverse, vers un hyperlibéralisme, vénal et dérégulateur, que nous nous dirigeons? Certaines perspectives ouvertes par les innovations technoscientifiques sont enthousiasmantes, d'autres effrayantes. Ce livre cherche d'abord à les faire comprendre, et à réhabiliter l'idéal philosophique de la régulation, une notion désormais vitale, tant du côté de la médecine que de l'économie.". (shrink)

t. 1. Livres I à IV -- t. 2. Livres V à VII et Notes marginales de Nicolas de Cues.

Along with Husserl's Ideas and Heidegger's Being and Time, Being Given is one of the classic works of phenomenology in the twentieth century. Through readings of Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, and twentieth-century French phenomenology (e.g., Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Henry), it ventures a bold and decisive reappraisal of phenomenology and its possibilities. Its author's most original work to date, the book pushes phenomenology to its limits in an attempt to redefine and recover the phenomenological ideal, which the author argues has never (...) been realized in any of the historical phenomenologies. Against Husserl's reduction to consciousness and Heidegger's reduction to Dasein, the author proposes a third reduction to givenness, wherein phenomena appear unconditionally and show themselves from themselves at their own initiative. Being Given is the clearest, most systematic response to questions that have occupied its author for the better part of two decades. The book articulates a powerful set of concepts that should provoke new research in philosophy, religion, and art, as well as at the intersection of these disciplines. Some of the significant issues it treats include the phenomenological definition of the phenomenon, the redefinition of the gift in terms not of economy but of givenness, the nature of saturated phenomena, and the question “Who comes after the subject?” Throughout his consideration of these issues, the author carefully notes their significance for the increasingly popular fields of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Being Given is therefore indispensable reading for anyone interested in the question of the relation between the phenomenological and the theological in Marion and emergent French phenomenology. (shrink)

This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. Luc Brisson argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical annihilation. Although philosophy was initially critical of myth because it could not be declared true or false and because it was inferior to argumentation, mythology was progressively reincorporated into philosophy through allegorical exegesis. Brisson shows to what degree allegory was employed among philosophers and how it enabled myth to take on (...) a number of different interpretive systems throughout the centuries: moral, physical, psychological, political, and even metaphysical. How Philosophers Saved Myths also describes how, during the first years of the modern era, allegory followed a more religious path, which was to assume a larger role in Neoplatonism. Ultimately, Brisson explains how this embrace of myth was carried forward by Byzantine thinkers and artists throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance after the triumph of Chistianity, Brisson argues, myths no longer had to agree with just history and philosophy but the dogmas of the Church as well. (shrink)

Debates in feminist political philosophy often focus on what problematic(s) to use in order to understand normative ideals, gendered differences, and their histories. For the purposes of this chapter, I will contrast two important problematics in these debates, the procedural/deliberative politics in the tradition of Critical Theory, represented here by Seyla Benhabib, and the poststructuralist or postmodern politics, represented here by Judith Butler. The goal of the contrast will be to set up the contribution that Gadamer’s work can make to (...) contemporary feminist philosophy. (shrink)

Critical evaluations of the current movement of corporate social responsibility commodification have neglected an important question: How do CSR professionals manage the tensions resulting from the search for both profit and social responsibility? This article addresses this question by analyzing the discourse of CSR consultants with the aim of understanding how they deal with such tensions through identity work. Our findings suggest that people who claim, or who are ascribed, paradoxical professional identities may engage in ‘paradoxical identity mitigation’ – a (...) process whereby the concomitant and paradoxical use of linguistic strategies is aimed at simultaneously embracing and distancing oneself from contradictory identity demands. In uncovering how CSR professionals discursively manage the tensions engendered by CSR commodification, our results also advance current knowledge of CSR by shedding light on the underlying processes whereby new ‘hybrid’ identities are constituted and mobilized by actors to make sense of their professional activities. (shrink)