There is currently no consensus regarding what measures are most valid to demonstrate perceptual processing without awareness. Likewise, whether conscious perception and unconscious processing rely on independent mechanisms or lie on a continuum remains a matter of debate. Here, we addressed these issues by comparing the time courses of subjective reports, objective discrimination performance and response priming during meta-contrast masking, under similar attentional demands. We found these to be strikingly similar, suggesting that conscious perception and unconscious processing cannot be dissociated (...) by their time course. Our results also demonstrate that unconscious processing, indexed by response priming, occurs, and that objective discrimination performance indexes the same conscious processes as subjective visibility reports. Finally, our results underscore the role of attention by showing that how much attention the stimulus receives relative to the mask, rather than whether processing is measured by conscious discrimination or by priming, determines the time course of meta-contrast masking. (shrink)

To students and practitioners of anamorphic art, the name of Jean-François Niceron is more than preeminent; it has become iconic. La Perspective Curieuse was first published in 1638. An augmented version was then translated into Latin by Mersenne in 1646. A newly amended and augmented version was retranslated into French by Roberval in 1652. This book is an English translation of the 1652 text, with reference to the 1638 and 1646 versions. Considering the continued high reputation of the book, the (...) mathematics have been checked for correctness and consistency, and the authors have provided a full commentary, pointing out the most difficult turns of the 17th-century French, the respective contributions of Niceron, Mersenne and Roberval, and explaining Niceron's greatest insights and weaknesses. (shrink)

Background The first COVID-19 wave started in February 2020 in France. The influx of patients requiring emergency care and high-level technicity led healthcare professionals to fear saturation of available care. In that context, the multidisciplinary Ethics- Support Cell (EST) was created to help medical teams consider the decisions that could potentially be sources of ethical dilemmas. Objectives The primary objective was to prospectively collect information on requests for EST assistance from 23 March to 9 May 2020. The secondary aim was (...) to describe the Cell’s functions during that period. Research design This observational, real-time study of requests for Cell consultations concerned ethical dilemmas arising during a public health crisis. The EST created a grid to collect relevant information (clinical, patient’s/designated representative’s preferences and ethical principles strained by the situation), thereby assuring that each EST asked the same questions, in the same order. Participants and research context Only our university hospital’s clinicians could request EST intervention. Ethical considerations The hospital Research Ethics Committee approved this study (no. CER-2020-107). The patient, his/her family, or designated representative was informed of this ethics consultation and most met with EST members, which enabled them to express their preferences and/or opposition. Findings/results 33 requests (patients’ mean age: 80.8 years; 29 had COVID-19: 24 with dyspnea, 30 with comorbidities). 17 Emergency Department solicitations concerned ICU admission, without reference to resource constraints; others addressed therapeutic proportionality dilemmas. Discussion Intervention-request motives concerned limited resources and treatment intensity. Management revolved around three axes: the treatment option most appropriate for the patient, the feasibility of implementation, and dignified care for the patient. Conclusions COVID-19 crisis forced hospitals to envisage prioritization of ICU access. Established decision-making criteria and protocols do not enable healthcare professionals to escape ethical dilemmas. That acknowledgement highlights ethical risks, enhances the added-value of nursing and encourages all players to be vigilant to pursue collective deliberations to achieve clear and transparent decisions. (shrink)

This paper seeks to find possibilities forreconciliation of the implementation of theprecautionary principle and the promotion ofinternational trade of genetically modified organisms,based on the assumption that a sustainabledevelopment is a right objective to strive for. Itstarts with an explanation of the background and therole of the precautionary principle, and describes inwhat way measures based on the precautionary principlecan easily lead to the creation of trade barriers. Thearticle then examines to what extent the WTO (WorldTrade Organisation) Agreements allow theimplementation of the (...) precautionary principle. Inaddition, structural conflicts between the perceptionof the precautionary principle and the concept oftrade liberalisation will be evoked. The last sectionof the paper analyses to what extent the WTO rulesprovide possibilities to avoid or solve theseconflicts in order to attempt to answer the mainquestion: are the precautionary principle and theinternational trade of genetically modified organismsreconcilable? (shrink)

Although expressions of facial emotion hold a special status in attention relative to other complex objects, whether they summon our attention automatically and against our intentions remains a debated issue. Studies supporting the strong view that attentional capture by facial expressions of emotion is entirely automatic reported that a unique emotional face distractor interfered with search for a target that was also unique on a different dimension. Participants could therefore search for the odd-one out face to locate the target and (...) attentional capture by irrelevant emotional faces might be contingent on the adoption of an implicit set for singletons. Here, confirming this hypothesis, an irrelevant emotional face captured attention when the target was the unique face with a discrepant orientation, both when this orientation was unpredictable and when it remained constant. By contrast, no such capture was observed when the target could not be found by monitoring displays for a discrepant face and participants had to search for a face with a specific orientation. Our findings show that attentional capture by emotional faces is not purely stimulus driven and thereby resolve the apparent inconsistency that prevails in the literature on the automaticity of attentional capture by emotional faces. (shrink)

The essence of the method of physics is inseparably connected with the problem of interplay between local and global properties of the universe. In the present paper we discuss this interplay as it is present in three major departments of contemporary physics: general relativity, quantum mechanics and some attempts at quantizing gravity (especially geometrodynamics and its recent successors in the form of various pregeometry conceptions). It turns out that all big interpretative issues involved in this problem point towards the necessity (...) of changing from the standard space-time geometry to some radically new, most probably non-local, generalization. We argue that the recent noncommutative geometry offers attractive possibilities, and gives us a conceptual insight into its algebraic foundations. Noncommutative spaces are, in general, non-local, and their applications to physics, known at present, seem very promising. One would expect that beneath the Planck threshold there reigns a "noncommutative pregeometry", and only when crossing this threshold does the usual space-time geometry emerges. (shrink)

There is no direct, constant relationship between the anthropological and cultural aspects of modernity. Anthropologically modern peoples display a certain heterogeneity that is not unconnected with earlier peoples, and the culture produced by modern humans, which is also heterogeneous, is differentiated diachronically and according to territory. Though paleogenetic research seems to point us to a single, African source for modern peoples, who had replaced the pre-sapiens populations in Eurasia, this view is not completely proven or accepted. On the other hand, (...) paleo-genetic research has contributed to our relinquishing the hypothesis of a multiregional ‘total continuity’ of local pre-modern populations in the Old World. Indeed the theory of a partial replacement, by a migration ‘out of Africa’, appears to be getting increasingly plausible. This article deals with the problems of the origins of modern man from the points of view of anthropological, paleogenetic, paleoenvironmental and cultural approaches. (shrink)

Research in recent years suggests that fairness concerns could mitigate hold-up problems. In this study, we report theoretical analysis and experimental evidence on an opposite possibility: that fairness concerns could also induce hold-up problems. In our setup, hold-up problems will not occur with purely self-interested agents, but theoretically could be induced by demand for distributional fairness among agents without sufficiently strong counteracting factors such as intention-based reciprocity. We observe a widespread occurrence of hold-up in our experiment. Relationship-specific investments occurred less (...) than half of the time, resulting in significant inefficiencies. Moreover, whenever a relationship-specific investment was made: (a) it was typically not reciprocated by the partner; (b) nor did the investor’s offers at the bargaining stage exhibit expectations for reciprocity. Consequently, the partner extracted all the additional expected payoff from relationship-specific investments. Further experimentation suggested that our results were driven by a fundamental lack of intention-based reciprocity in fairness concerns, rather than self-serving bias. (shrink)

Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, Volume 62, Issue, Page 430-436, January 2020.

Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, Volume 62, Issue, Page 430-436, January 2020.

ABSTRACTThis essay reads Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice as a machine: a machine made of connectors, disruptors, reversible engines and agentive parts. Starting from a minor detail in the play...

Notamment par l'intermédiaire de Germaine de Staël.

Le nom de Dominique Kahang'a Rukonkish a marqué plus d'un intellectuel à Kalonda, Kinshasa et au-delà, par l'arc-en-ciel thématique qu'il avait peint dans ses réflexions, spécialement autour de deux thèmes : la philosophie et la tradition sapientielle africaine. Ces thèmes sont au coeur des différents textes qui composent ce livre dont le point commun est que, comme peut-être aucune autre science, la philosophie vit de la réflexion des penseurs sur ce qui donne à penser et de la discussion avec (...) d'autres penseurs. C'est ici que se situe l'étude de sa propre tradition, comme l'a montré Dominique Kahang'a Rukonkish. Ceci est particulièrement nécessaire dans des situations de crise comme celle que traverse l'Afrique contemporaine. Ce qui importe dans ce cas est de questionner le passé à partir du contexte actuel en vue de ses potentialités à venir, tout en l'ouvrant à la possibilité d'une rencontre avec les autres traditions. Les auteurs des contributions réunies dans ce livre remercient Dominique Kahang'a Rukonkish pour ce qu'ils sont devenus grâce à lui. C'est pour eux un devoir de mémoire auquel ils se plient. (shrink)

Most democratic theorists agree that concentrations of wealth and power tend to distort the functioning of democracy and ought to be countered wherever possible. Deliberative democrats are no exception: though not its only potential value, the capacity of deliberation to ‘neutralise power’ is often regarded as ‘fundamental’ to deliberative theory. Power may be neutralised, according to many deliberative democrats, if citizens can be induced to commit more fully to the deliberative resolution of common problems. If they do, they will be (...) unable to get away with inconsistencies and bad or private reasons, thereby mitigating the illegitimate influence of power. I argue, however, that the means by which power inflects political disagreement is far more subtle than this model suggests and cannot be countered so simply. As a wealth of recent research in political psychology demonstrates, human beings persistently exhibit ‘motivated reasoning’, meaning that even when we are sincerely committed to the deliberative resolution of common problems, and even when we are exposed to the same reasons and evidence, we still disagree strongly about what ‘fair cooperation’ entails. Motivated reasoning can be counteracted, but only under exceptional circumstances such as those that enable modern science, which cannot be reliably replicated in our society at large. My analysis suggests that in democratic politics – which rules out the kind of anti-democratic practices available to scientists – we should not expect deliberation to reliably neutralise power. (shrink)

Le réel, travaillé par une structure dissimulée sous le discours scientifique, technique et marchand que l'auteur érige à la dignité de concept sous le sigle "STM", impose sans vergogne les trouvailles les plus incertaines : équations financières douteuses, nucléaire civil et militaire, chaînes de Ponzi, génie génétique, NBIC etc. aboutissant en plus des inégalités, à la pollution industrielle planétaire de l'air, de l'eau et des aliments, du dépérissement des plantes, des animaux et des hommes. Supposant un sujet dont le discours (...) "STM" veut toujours se débarrasser, c'est le rôle de la psychanalyse de ne pas céder sur l'éthique, chacun ayant à répondre de la responsabilité de son inconscient non seulement là où ça parle, mais également là où ça revient sous la forme d'un réel répétitif et traumatique, celui de la catastrophe. (shrink)

This article challenges the association between realist methodology and ideals of legitimacy. Many who seek a more “realistic” or “political” approach to political theory replace the familiar orientation towards a state of justice with a structurally similar orientation towards a state of legitimacy. As a result, they fail to provide more reliable practical guidance, and wrongly displace radical demands. Rather than orienting action towards any state of affairs, I suggest that a more practically useful approach to political theory would directly (...) address judgments, by comparing the concrete possibilities for action faced by real political actors. (shrink)

"Que sais-je? Que dois-je faire? Que m'est-il permis d'espérer? " Ainsi s'interrogeait Kant. Preuve s'il en est que les philosophes ne sont pas des êtres désincarnés. Ce sont des hommes comme nous, ayant une famille, un métier, des engagements citoyens. Dans leurs écrits, ils nous parlent de nous, de ce que nous sommes et vivons. Leurs questions sont les interrogations existentielles auxquelles nous confronte le monde postmoderne consumériste, individualiste, relativiste et nihiliste. En revisitant la philosophie moderne, cet ouvrage nous invite (...) à reprendre les trois grandes questions kantiennes. Il est urgent de penser notre existence afin de vivre avec lucidité, responsabilité et plénitude. Ce que les Grecs appelaient une vie "bonne". (shrink)

Fallait-il inventer l'agriculture? Que se passe-t-il quand une région d'Afrique est totalement administrée par des médecins coloniaux? Qui a inventé la pisciculture? Et les SMS? Comment les animaux identifient-ils les plantes qui les soignent? Que savent les agriculteurs sur les semences? La guerre de 1914-1918 a-t-elle été une guerre des sciences? En partant de situations exemplaires mais peu connues, les cinquante-deux auteurs, tous spécialistes de leur domaine, qui ont participé à ce livre foisonnant, montrent comment se réapproprier les sciences et (...) les techniques. À travers ces petites histoires toujours surprenantes et très accessibles, les auteurs révèlent en effet que la production des institutions scientifiques et techniques fonctionne bien autrement que l'image qu'elles veulent donner d'elles-mêmes, celles de savoirs inaccessibles au commun des mortels. On découvrira, au contraire, que les productions et les savoirs scientifiques transforment en permanence la société et l'environnement via les brevets, la consommation et les usages. C'est bien la raison pour laquelle les sciences nous concernent. En bref, un livre aussi instructif que démystificateur, pour en finir avec le rapport "magique" à la science dans lequel scientifiques et ingénieurs tendent à enfermer les citoyens que leurs productions concernent pourtant au premier chef. Remettre la science en démocratie, en somme : c'est précisément l'objectif que s'est donné l'association d'éducation populaire Les Petits Débrouillards, promoteur et porteur de cet ouvrage. (shrink)

pt. 1. Gaston Bachelard's historical epistemology.--pt. 2. For a critique of epistemology.

Radical embodied cognitive science is split into two camps: the ecological approach and the enactive approach. We propose that these two approaches can be brought together into a productive synthesis. The key is to recognize that the two approaches are pursuing different but complementary types of explanation. Both approaches seek to explain behavior in terms of the animal–environment relation, but they start at opposite ends. Ecological psychologists pursue an ontological strategy. They begin by describing the habitat of the species, and (...) use this to explain how action possibilities are constrained for individual actors. Enactivists, meanwhile, pursue an epistemic strategy: start by characterizing the exploratory, self-regulating behavior of the individual organism, and use this to understand how that organism brings forth its animal-specific umwelt. Both types of explanation are necessary: the ontological strategy explains how structure in the environment constrains how the world can appear to an individual, while the epistemic strategy explains how the world can appear differently to different members of the same species, relative to their skills, abilities, and histories. Making the distinction between species habitat and animal-specific umwelt allows us to understand the environment in realist terms while acknowledging that individual living organisms are phenomenal beings. (shrink)

En dialogue avec ses amis et partenaires de travail, Dominique Malaquais, réinterroge sa manière d’entrer en relation avec les artistes et de donner à connaître leur travail. De nombreuses précautions doivent être prises pour affirmer l’art africain dans toutes ses dimensions. Un regard nouveau sur la grande ville en découle nécessairement. Les livres accumulés pendant cette quête, qu’ils y aient trait ou non, seront donnés à une institution amie, Chimurenga, à Cape Town, et transmettront ce travail.

This article presents the critique of cybernetics as central to the history of one of the twentieth century’s most infamous avant-garde movements: the Situationist International (SI). Bringing together and analysing a series of seemingly marginal events in the build-up to May ’68, this article shows how the SI’s portrait of cybernetics as an emerging form of social power and control foreshadows later developments in French radical thought. This little-noted trajectory in the situationist movement also highlights the ways in which aesthetics, (...) theory, and politics are inextricably tied together in the events of May ’68. (shrink)

We agree with Heyes that an explanation of human uniqueness must appeal to cultural evolution, and not just genes. Her account, though, focuses narrowly on internal cognitive mechanisms. This causes her to mischaracterize human behavior and to overlook the role of material culture. A more powerful account would view cognitive gadgets as spanning organisms and their (shared) environments.