How and why, historian of science Lily Kay asks, did the ‘biological problem of DNA-based protein synthesis’ come to be represented ‘as an information code and a writing technology?’ What sort of metaphor was ‘code’ for these bio-geneticists? One whose run-away expansion, Derrida noted in Of Grammatology (1967), urgently required philosophical justification. Yet, 60 years later, there is still fundamental disagreement about its meaning and epistemic status. If the metaphor lacks ontological purchase, what accounts for its effectiveness? If, on the (...) other hand, scriptural metaphors get at the common root of culture and biology, what do we now mean by ‘code’? In this article, I trace several influential accounts of the metaphor’s effectiveness—making explicit the opposing notions of ‘code’ that animate them—and argue that each is too limited. Greater attention to the metaphoricity of ‘code’ yields a more philosophically productive and critical account of the metaphor of code. (shrink)

One of Jacques Derrida’s richest and most provocative works, Life Death challenges and deconstructs one of the most deeply rooted dichotomies of Western thought: life and death. Here Derrida rethinks the traditional philosophical understanding of the relationship between life and death, undertaking multidisciplinary analyses of a range of topics, including philosophy, linguistics, and the life sciences. In seeking to understand the relationship between life and death, he engages in close readings of Freudian psychoanalysis, the philosophy of Nietzsche and Heidegger, (...) French geneticist François Jacob, and epistemologist Georges Canguilhem. Derrida gave his “Life Death” seminar over fourteen sessions between 1975 and 1976 at the École normale supérieure in Paris as part of the preparation for students studying for the agrégation, a notoriously competitive qualifying exam. The theme for the exam that year was “Life and Death,” but Derrida made a critical modification to the title by dropping the coordinating conjunction. The resulting title of Life Death poses a philosophical question about the close relationship between life and death. Derrida argues that death must be considered neither as the opposite of life nor as the truth or fulfillment of it, but rather as that which both limits life and makes it possible. Through these captivating sessions, Derrida thus not only questions traditional understandings of the relationship between life and death, but also ultimately develops a new way of thinking about what he calls “life death.”. (shrink)

This collection of essays and interviews, some previously unpublished and almost all of which appear in English for the first time, encompasses the political and ethical thinking of Jacques Derrida over thirty years. Passionate, rigorous, beautifully argued, wide-ranging, the texts shed an entirely new light on his work and will be welcomed by scholars in many disciplines--politics, philosophy, history, cultural studies, literature, and a range of interdisciplinary programs. Derrida's arguments vary in their responsiveness to given political questions--sometimes they are (...) vivid polemics on behalf of a position or figure, sometimes they are reflective analyses of a philosophical problem. They are united by the recurrent question of political decision or responsibility and the insistence that the apparent simplicity or programmatic character of political decision is in fact a profound avoidance of the political. This volume testifies to the possibility and the necessity of a philosophical politics. Negotiations assembles some of the most telling examples of the intrinsic relationship, so often affirmed by Derrida in more abstract philosophical terms, between deconstructive reading practices and what is called the "political"--more precisely, politics in an almost down-to-earth, pragmatic, and commonsense use of the word. Among the many subjects covered in the book are: the death penalty in the United States, the civil war in Algeria, globalization and cosmopolitanism, the American Declaration of Independence, Jean-Paul Sartre, the value of objectivity, politics and friendship, and the relationship between deconstruction and actuality. (shrink)

The subjective Bayesian interpretation of quantum mechanics and Rovelli’s relational interpretation of quantum mechanics are both notable for embracing the radical idea that measurement outcomes correspond to events whose occurrence is relative to an observer. Here we provide a detailed study of their similarities and especially their differences.

It is widely held that assertions are partially governed by an epistemic norm. But what is the epistemic condition set out in the norm? Is it knowledge, truth, belief, or something else? In this paper, I defend a view similar to that of Stanley (2008), according to which the relevant epistemic condition is epistemic certainty, where epistemic certainty (but not knowledge) is context-sensitive. I start by distinguishing epistemic certainty, subjective certainty, and knowledge. Then, I explain why it's much more plausible (...) to think that "certain", rather than "know", is context-sensitive. After that, I respond to an important worry raised by Pritchard, according to which the proposed view is too strong to accommodate our current practice of assertion. I then show that the main linguistic and conversational data advanced in the recent literature in favour of the knowledge condition are best explained by the certainty view. Finally, I offer two principled considerations: the certainty view is the only one compatible with three independently plausible claims and it fits very well with the common thought that knowledge does not entail certainty. (shrink)

Is knowledge the epistemic norm of action and assertion? Gettier and justified-false-belief cases have been raised as counterexamples to the necessity direction of that claim. Most knowledge normers reply by distinguishing permissibility from excusability. An important objection to this move, however, is that it requires a still lacking view of epistemic excuses sufficiently general to cover all the cases, correctly relating the supposed excuse to the subject's cognitive life, and not collapsing into an account of the fundamental normative standard (see (...) Gerken 2017). In this paper, I rely on independent work in epistemology and cognitive science to suggest a novel account of epistemic excuses in terms of epistemic feelings. In contrast to other existing accounts, this account is immune from the above objection and can thus be used to rescue the knowledge norm. (shrink)

Distinguer pour unir, ou Les degres du savoir was first published in 1932 by Jacques Maritain. In this new translation of The Degrees of Knowledge, Ralph McInerny attempts a more careful expression of Maritain's original masterpiece than previous translations. Maritain proposes a hierarchy of the forms of knowledge by discussing the degrees of rational and suprarational understanding. Nine appendices, some longer than the chapters of the book, advance Maritain's thought, often by taking on criticism of earlier editions of the (...) work. Rightly called Maritain's cardinal work, The Degrees of Knowledge is a magnificent and sagacious achievement. Jacques Maritain's masterpiece proposes a hierarchy of forms of knowledge that culminate in mystical experience and wisdom, which is a gift of the Holy Ghost. Maritain argues that the intellectual life is meant to be complemented by the spiritual life and should culminate in sanctity. (shrink)

A recent paper has given a lucid treatment of Bell’s notion of local causality within the framework of the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics. However, the authors went on to conclude that the quantum violation of Bell’s notion of local causality is no more surprising than a common cause. Here, I argue that this conclusion is unwarranted by the authors’ own analysis. On the contrary, within the framework outlined by the authors, I argue that far from saving the notion of (...) ‘locality’ from the grip of Bell’s theorem, the authors have deprived it of a meaningful definition. (shrink)

According to a widely discussed view, knowledge plays a significant normative role in action: It is epistemically rational to treat p as your reason for action if and only if you know that p. As many philosophers have observed, however, this view clashes with the claim that knowledge is moderate and stable. For, granting that claim, there will be high stakes cases in which knowledge seems insufficient. To deal with such cases, some philosophers embracing the knowledge norm combine three independently (...) plausible claims. First, they say that no non-trivial condition is luminous; second, they say that doing something while not being in a position to know that that is appropriate is bad (in high stakes cases); third, they say that in the high stakes cases in question, the subject knows but fails to be in a position to know that she knows (Williamson Philos Q 55:213–235, 2005). This paper argues that this account can overcome the main objections already raised in the literature, but that it still faces the apparently insurmountable challenge of providing a natural and helpful way of substantiating the second claim. (shrink)

A certain number of cases suggest that our willingness to ascribe “knowledge” can be influenced by practical factors. For revisionary proposals, they indicate that the truth‐values of “knowledge” ascriptions vary with practical factors. For conservative proposals, on the contrary, nothing surprising is happening. Standard pragmatic approaches appeal to pragmatic implicatures and psychological approaches to the idea that belief formation is influenced by practical factors. Conservative proposals have not yet offered a fully satisfactory explanation, though. In this article, I introduce and (...) defend a third conservative proposal which I call “Refined Invariantism”. The two main claims of this proposal are that (1) we should distinguish between high stakes cases in which the subject does not believe (that he knows) the target proposition and those in which he believes (that he knows) the target proposition and that (2) we should adopt a psychological treatment for the first kind of case and a pragmatic treatment based on the epistemic standards for appropriate assertion and action for the second kind of case. I argue that this new combined approach avoids the main pitfalls of its two conservative rivals and that it gives new life to the generality objection levelled against revisionary views. (shrink)

. Fresh evidence from Free Choice Items (FCIs) in French question the current perception of the class. The role of some standard distinctions found in the literature is weakened or put in a new perspective. The distinction between universal and existential is no longer an intrinsic property of FCIs. Similarly, the opposition between variation-based vs intension-based analyses is relativized. We show that the regime of free choiceness can be characterized by an abstract constraint, that we call Non-Individuation (NI), and which (...) can be satisfied in different ways that match current distinctions. NI says that the information conveyed by a sentence containing a FCI should not be reducible to a referential situation, that is a situation in which particular individuals satisfy the sentence in the current world. The widely used resource of modal variation becomes a particular scenario of free-choiceness, not its essence. In fact, we show that under certain conditions, FCIs can occur in episodic, non-modal sentences, a fact that NI can accommodate. We also discuss more fine-grained aspects of the semantics of FCIs, such as their emotional colour. (. . .) the tripod fell spontaneously, because, though it stood on its feet so as to serve for a seat, it did not fall so as to serve for a seat. Aristotle, Physics II,6. (shrink)

Among the main reactions to scepticism, fallibilism is certainly the most popular nowadays. However, fallibilism faces a very strong and well-known objection. It has to grant that concessive knowledge attributions—assertions of the form “I know that p but it might be that not p”—can be true. Yet, these assertions plainly sound incoherent. Fallibilists have proposed to explain this incoherence pragmatically. The main proponents of this approach appeal to Gricean implicatures (Rysiew in Noûs 35(4):477514, 2001; Dougherty and Rysiew in Philos Phenomenol (...) Res 78(1):123132, 2009; Dougherty and Rysiew in Synthese 181(3):395403, 2011). Very recently, some philosophers have observed that fallibilists can also explain this apparent incoherence pragmatically if they embrace a (context-sensitive) certainty norm for assertion (Petersen in Synthese 196(11):4691–4710, 2019; Beddor in Philos Impr 20(8), 2020; Vollet in Dialectica 74:3, 2020). In this paper, I argue for the superiority of this latter explanation over its older rivals. (shrink)

The traditional view in epistemology has it that knowledge is insensitive to the practical stakes. More recently, some philosophers have argued that knowledge is sufficient for rational action: if you know p, then p is a reason you have (epistemically speaking). Many epistemologists contend that these two claims stand in tension with one another. In support of this, they ask us to start with a low stakes case where, intuitively, a subject knows that p and appropriately acts on p. Then, (...) they ask us to consider a high stakes version of the case where, intuitively, this subject does not know that p and could not appropriately act on p without double-checking. Finally, they suggest that the best explanation for our shifty intuitions is that p is a reason the subject has in the low stakes case but not in the high stakes case. In short, according to this explanation, having a reason (in the epistemic sense) is sensitive to the stakes. If so, either knowledge is sensitive to the stakes or else you can know that p even if p is not a reason you have (in the epistemic sense). In this paper, I consider more closely the relation between having a reason (in the epistemic sense) and having a reason to check. I argue that the supposition that if one has p as a reason (in the epistemic sense) then one has a reason not to check whether p, or no reason to check whether p, is highly doubtful. On the contrary, I suggest, it is plausible that, given our fallibility, one always has an epistemic reason to check whether p, whether or not p is a reason one has (in the epistemic sense). On the basis of this observation, I show that one can offer a new way of explaining the cases in question, allowing us to reconcile the traditional view about knowledge and the sufficiency of knowledge for rational action. (shrink)

This critique of Henri Bergson is Jacques Maritain's first book. In it he shows he has a grasp of the thought of St Thomas Aquinas and an ability to show its relevance to other systems such as that of Bergson. This text presents Jacques Maritain's as a philosopher, a Thomist and a critic.

A certain number of philosophers are attracted to the idea that knowledge is the epistemic norm of practical reasoning in the sense that it is epistemically appropriate to rely on p in one’s practical reasoning if and only if one knows that p. A well-known objection to the sufficiency direction of that claim is that there are cases in which a subject supposedly knows that p and yet should not rely on p. In light of the distinction between sufficient and (...) insufficient reasons, some philosophers contend that these cases are inconclusive. In this paper, I argue that this insufficient reason manoeuvre is defective because it either misconstrues the relevant cases or is at odds with strong intuitions about how we (should) reason. I then put forward further considerations relative to the instability of some pieces of reasoning and show how they can be explained by a certainty norm for practical reasoning. (shrink)

In this engaging APSA address, Jacques Maritain outlines the essential relationship between Christianity and democracy. In Maritain's view, it is the Gospel or the Christian leaven which has awakened the secular, temporal consciousness to supreme moral principles and the real content of democracy understood as the earthly pursuit of Gospel truths conceming the transcendent origins and destiny of man and society. Christianity teaches the inalienable dignity of every human being fashioned in the image of God, the inviolability of conscience, (...) the unity of the human race, the natural equality of all men, children of the same God and redeemed by the same Christ, the dignity of labor and the dignity of the poor, the primacy of inner values and good will over external values, universal brotherhood, love, and justbe. Maritain distinguishes between the procedural aspects and the substantive content of democracy, but anchors the Gospel vision in the free exercise of rational and moral faculties as key to democratic self-government. He cautions that without a superior moral law by virtue of which men are bound in conscience toward what is just and good, the rule of the majority runs the risk of being raised to the supreme rule of good and evil, and democracy is liable to tum to totalitahanism, that is, to self-destruction. Maritain concludes that what has been gained for the secular consciousness, if it does not veer to barbarism, is the sense of freedom consonant with the vocation of our nature. (shrink)

The paper presents the notion of “Spirit of Nature” in Henry More and describes its position within More’s philosophical system. Through a thorough analysis, it tries to show in what respects it can be considered a scientific object and in what respects it cannot. In the second part of this paper, More’s “Spirit of Nature” is compared to Newton’s various attempts at presenting a metaphysical cause of the force of gravity, using the similarities between the two to see this notorious (...) problem of Newton scholarship in a new light. One thus sees that if Newton drew from Stoic and Neo-Platonic theories of aether or soul of the world, we need to fully acknowledge the fact that these substances were traditionally of a non-dualistic, half-corporeal, half-spiritual nature. Both More’s “Spirit of Nature” and Newton’s aether can thus be understood as different attempts at incorporating such a pneumatic theory into the framework of modern physics, as it was then being formed. (shrink)

Many philosophers agree that there is an epistemic norm governing action. However, they disagree on what this norm is. It has been observed that the word ‘know’ is prominent in ordinary epistemic evaluations of actions. Any opponent of the knowledge norm must provide an explanation of this fact. Gerken has recently proposed the most developed explanation. It invokes the hypothesis that, in normal contexts, knowledge-level warrant is frequently necessary and very frequently sufficient (Normal Coincidence), so that knowledge-based assessments would be (...) a good heuristic for practical reasoning and epistemic evaluations of action. In this paper, I raise three problems for this approach. First, I argue that Normal Coincidence is ad hoc: it relies on an unsupported frequency hypothesis that we should expect to be false given the warrant account that Gerken also endorses. Second, I argue that, in any case, Normal Coincidence is insufficient to support the hypothesis that knowledge-based evaluation of action constitutes a good heuristic. Third, I consider three other hypotheses close to Normal Coincidence apparently more likely to support the heuristic hypothesis, but I argue that they seem even more ad hoc than Normal Coincidence. (shrink)

This paper outlines a phenomenological approach for describing physiological reactions occurring immediately after vital threats. This exemplified by data taken from previous studies relative to chemical intoxications of rats by a neurotoxical drug. The survival rate of the animals and the variations of their cerebral acetylcholinesterese activity are both reported as a function of the drug concentration, and with respect to their age. The collecting of the results may be described as the cusp, a bifurcation set of Thom's Catastrophe Theory.The (...) young animals react by a vital burst which modifies the shape of the cusp. A new fold or pocket takes place, changing it to the butterfly bifurcation set. This pocket supports the survival attractor concept, which appears reactional, transitory and variable in its intensity. (shrink)

Many philosophers agree that there is an epistemic norm governing action. However, they disagree on what this norm is. It has been observed that the word ‘know’ is prominent in ordinary epistemic evaluations of actions. Any opponent of the knowledge norm must provide an explanation of this fact. Gerken has recently proposed the most developed explanation. It invokes the hypothesis that, in normal contexts, knowledge-level warrant is frequently necessary and very frequently sufficient (Normal Coincidence), so that knowledge-based assessments would be (...) a good heuristic for practical reasoning and epistemic evaluations of action. In this paper, I raise three problems for this approach. First, I argue that Normal Coincidence is ad hoc: it relies on an unsupported frequency hypothesis that we should expect to be false given the warrant account that Gerken also endorses. Second, I argue that, in any case, Normal Coincidence is insufficient to support the hypothesis that knowledge-based evaluation of action constitutes a good heuristic. Third, I consider three other hypotheses close to Normal Coincidence apparently more likely to support the heuristic hypothesis, but I argue that they seem even more ad hoc than Normal Coincidence. (shrink)

In 1996 Jacques Derrida gave a lecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on the occasion of Antonin Artaud: Works on Paper, one of the first major international exhibitions to present the avant-garde dramatist and poet's paintings and drawings. Derrida's original title, "Artaud the Moma," is a characteristic play on words. It alludes to Artaud's calling himself Mômo, Marseilles slang for "fool," upon his return to Paris in 1946 after nine years in various asylums, while playing (...) off of the museum's nickname, MoMA. But the title was not deemed "presentable or decent," in Derrida's words, by the very institution that chose to exhibit Artaud's work. Instead, the lecture was advertised as "Jacques Derrida... will present a lecture about Artaud's drawings." For Derrida, what was at stake was what it meant for the museum to exhibit Artaud's drawings and for him to lecture on Artaud in that institutional context. Thinking over the performative force of Artaud's work and the relation between writing and drawing, Derrida addresses the multiplicity of Artaud's identities to confront the modernist museum's valorizing of originality. He channels Artaud's specter, speech, and struggle against representation to attempt to hold the museum accountable for trying to confine Artaud within its categories. Artaud the Moma, as lecture and text, reveals the challenge that Artaud posed to Derrida—and to art and its institutional history. A powerful interjection into the museum halls, this work is a crucial moment in Derrida's thought and an insightful, unsparing reading of a challenging writer and artist. (shrink)

This original translation, by Edward H. Flannery, brings you one of Maritain s most eye-opening studies of Christianity. Although not his most famous work, Maritain s An Essay on Christian Philosophy provides readers with an in-depth analysis and careful philosophical approach to the study of theology and, at the time of original publication, was considered to be the definitive statement of the Thomistic position. Discover his theses for yourself as Maritain considers the nature of philosophy, morality, and their relations to (...) Christianity with clarity and a scholarly attention to detail. Flannery provides English readers with a glossary of terms to bring further understanding to Maritain s original words. Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher and political thinker. He was born in Paris in 1882, where he spent most of his life. His father was a prominent lawyer and his mother the daughter of a statesman. He attended the Sorbonne to study philosophy and natural science, and after marrying, he and his wife converted to Catholicism. It was after this he became a well-known scholar of St. Thomas Aquinas and Thomistic philosophy. He published widely on philosophical and political thought, and by the 1930s, he was an established thinker in the Catholic community. After the outbreak of WWII, Maritain relocated to the United States, where he taught at Princeton University and Columbia University. Later in life, he and his wife returned to France, where he continued to write and study Catholic scholarship until his death in 1973. (shrink)

Paru en 1936, réédité en 1946 puis en 1968, Humanisme intégral est très probablement celui de tous les écrits de Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) qui a connu la plus large audience. Son propos est ambitieux puisque le philosophe entend y traiter des relations entre le christianisme et le monde moderne dans leur ensemble. Fresque historique marquée par la fidélité au thomisme, mais aussi regard lucide sur son époque, l'ouvrage, entre réalisme et utopie, appelle de ses voeux l'avènement d'une nouvelle chrétienté, (...) et constitue l'un des maillons essentiels de la réflexion de l'Eglise au XXe siècle. (shrink)

In my paper, I dispute Christian Hengstermann’s analysis of More’s philosophical system as a form of panentheistic panpsychism in which matter is alive by virtue of being the last emanation from God. I show that, in his mature period, More explicitly rejected such an emanationist doctrine and attributed the non-mechanical powers of matter to an outside immaterial principle, the Spirit of Nature. Ultimately, this leads to a system in which divine space, the Spirit of Nature and the spirit of God (...) are representations of various aspects of the divine essence, as it is at work in the world. On the other hand, matter is not part of this triadic structure and can only be said to be alive at the cost of a rather counterintuitive redefinition of the notion of “life”. (shrink)

Althusser's entire theoretical undertaking has one objective and can be summarized in a single paradox. The objective is defined in 1965 in the opening lines of Pour Marx: “the research into Marx's philosophical thought, which is indispensable if we are to emerge from the theoretical impasse that history has left us in” (Althusser 1965, p. 11). The paradox is recalled in his lecture on “La Transformation de la Philosophie”: “Marxist philosophy exists, and yet it was not produced as philosophy” (Althusser (...) 1994, p. 149). (shrink)

Pascal Engel défend explicitement le purisme (ou l’intellectualisme). Selon la version générale de cette thèse, les facteurs qui déterminent si une croyance est justifiée, ou si elle est une connaissance, ne concernent que la vérité. Ils sont totalement indépendants des désirs ou des préférences du sujet, ainsi que des conséquences pratiques potentielles du fait de posséder ces croyances. Dans son article « Pragmatic Encroachment and Epistemic Value » (2009), P. Engel concède que des facteurs pratiques peuvent déterminer la quantité de (...) données (ou la justification) dont on a besoin pour savoir ou croire, tout en maintenant que cela n’affecte pas le purisme épistémique (dans sa version évidentialiste) sur les notions de donnée ou de degré de justification. Mais cela ne revient-il pas tout simplement à concéder l’impurisme épistémique au moins à propos de la connaissance ou de la justification simpliciter des croyances ? Dans cet article, j’examine en détails la position de P. Engel. Je montre que, correctement comprise, elle est intégralement puriste. En considérant le principe connaissance-action, je soulève néanmoins un dilemme pour son approche, jetant ainsi un doute sur le potentiel qu’elle aurait à fournir une réponse puriste satisfaisante à l’argument fondamental motivant l’impurisme épistémique. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 214 Seiten: 91-110.

At first glance singularity would seem to be necessarily opposed to the physical sciences, indeed to any kind of science. As the hallowed saying goes: “Science deals only in universals.” According to this view, the aim of any true scientific endeavor must be the discovery of universals or, in other words, the value of such an endeavor is based on its ability to explain phenomena in terms of universals. The status of singularity in science is a direct result of this (...) approach. Singularity is associated with the presence, either in a person or an object, of an unusual or exceptional quality, or of an individual trait. Singularity so conceived must therefore be seen as inherently compromising the aims of any scientific endeavor, since the purpose of that endeavor is universality as defined above. In this sense, the basis of scientific explication is the ability to determine a feature common to a collection of objects, thus allowing them to be explained by deductive reasoning. This common feature can therefore not be individual, if individual is understood as unusual or exceptional. (shrink)

China was the first country beyond Europe with an important civilization to receive scientific theory from the West in the modern era. Neither in India nor in Japan (where the first Western works arrived from China and were quickly banned) nor a fortiori in other missionary countries was there an early acquaintance with European sciences. In China the first handbook of Western geometry was printed in 1607, the first treatise of astronomy in 1614. After 1584 a map of the world, (...) inspired no doubt by that of Ortelius of 1570, was engraved in stone. Printed versions spread quickly in China and continued into Korea and Japan. The algebraic notation of Viète, plane and solid trigonometry, logarithms (called then the rules of Neper), the cosmology of Aristotle and the methods of astronomical calculation of Tycho Brahe were all introduced into China during the course of the 17th century. (shrink)