Persuasion is an important and yet complex aspect of human intelligence. When undertaken through dialogue, the deployment of good arguments, and therefore counterarguments, clearly has a significant effect on the ability to be successful in persuasion. Two key dimensions for determining whether an argument is “good” in a particular dialogue are the degree to which the intended audience believes the argument and counterarguments, and the impact that the argument has on the concerns of the intended audience. In this paper, we (...) present a framework for modelling persuadees in terms of their beliefs and concerns, and for harnessing these models in optimizing the choice of move in persuasion dialogues. Our approach is based on the Monte Carlo Tree Search which allows optimization in real-time. We provide empirical results of a study with human participants that compares an automated persuasion system based on this technology with a baseline system that does not take the beliefs and concerns into account in its strategy. (shrink)

The philosophy of Hitler is simplistic [primaire]. But the primitive powers that burn within it burst open its wretched phraseology under the pressure of an elementary force. They awaken the secret nostalgia within the German soul. Hitlerism is more than a contagion or a madness; it is an awakening of elementary feelings.But from this point on, this frighteningly dangerous phenomenon becomes philosophically interesting. For these elementary feelings harbor a philosophy. They express a soul's principal attitude towards the whole of reality (...) and its own destiny. They predetermine or prefigure the meaning of the adventure that the soul will face in the world.The philosophy of Hitlerism therefore goes beyond the philosophy of Hitlerians. It questions the very principles of a civilization. The conflict is played out not only between liberalism and Hitlerism. Christianity itself is threatened in spite of the careful attentions or Concordats that the Christian churches took advantage of when Hitler's regime came to power.But it is not enough to follow certain journalists in distinguishing between Christian universalism and racist particularism: a logical contradiction cannot judge a concrete event. The meaning of a logical contradiction that opposes two forms of ideas only shows up fully if we go back to their source, to intuition, to the original decision that makes them possible. It is in this spirit that we are going to set forth the following reflections. Emmanuel Levinas has been professor of philosophy at the Ecole Normale Superieure Israelite de Paris and at the University of Paris I . Among his books that have been translated into English are Totality and Infinity, Ethics and Infinity, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, and The Levinas Reader. His essay "As If Consenting to Horror" appeared in the Winter 1989 issue of Critical Inquiry. Sean Hand is lecturer in French at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is the editor of The Levinas Reader and the translator of Levinas's Difficult Freedom . He is currently completing a book on Michel Leiris. (shrink)

Dans le "Manifeste au Service du Personnalisme" d'Emmanuel Mounier, le philosophe français expose les principes fondamentaux du personnalisme. L'ouvrage défend la primauté de la personne humaine dans la société et explore comment le personnalisme peut influencer la politique, l'économie et la culture. Mounier appelle à une réflexion approfondie sur la dignité et la responsabilité individuelles, cherchant à promouvoir une société où chaque personne est reconnue et respectée dans sa singularité. Ce manifeste offre une vision philosophique engagée en faveur de (...) la place centrale de l'individu au sein de la communauté. (shrink)

The ethics of conducting research in epidemic situations have yet to account fully for differences in the proportion and acuteness of epidemics, among other factors. While epidemics most often arise from infectious diseases, not all infectious diseases are of epidemic proportions, and not all epidemics occur acutely. These and other variations constrain the generalization of ethical decision-making and impose ethical demands on the individual researcher in a way not previously highlighted. This paper discusses a number of such constraints and impositions. (...) It applies the ethical principles enunciated by Emmanuel et al.1 to the controversial Pfizer study in Nigeria in order to highlight the particular ethical concerns of acute epidemic research, and suggest ways of meeting such challenges. The paper recommends that research during epidemics should be partly evaluated on its own merits in order to determine its ethical appropriateness to the specific situation. Snap decisions to conduct research during acute epidemics should be resisted. Community engagement, public notification and good information management are needed to promote the ethics of conducting research during acute epidemics. Individual consent is most at risk of being compromised, and every effort should be made to ensure that it is maintained and valid. Use of data safety management boards should be routine. Acute epidemics also present opportunities to enhance the social value of research and maximize its benefits to communities. Ethical research is possible in acute epidemics, if the potential challenges are thought of ahead of time and appropriate precautions taken. (shrink)

I learned very early, perhaps even before 1933 and certainly after Hitler’s huge success at the time of his election to the Reichstag, of Heidegger’s sympathy toward National Socialism. It was the late Alexandre Koyré who mentioned it to me for the first time on his return from a trip to Germany. I could not doubt the news, but took it with stupor and disappointment, and also with the faint hope that it expressed only the temporary lapse of a great (...) speculative mind into practical banality. It cast a shadow over my firm confidence that an unbridgeable distance forever separated the delirious and criminal hatred voiced by Evil on the pages of Mein Kampf from the intellectual vigor and extreme analytical virtuosity displayed in Sein und Zeit, which had opened the field to a new type of philosophical inquiry.Could one question the incomparable impression produced by this book, in which it immediately became apparent that Heidegger was the interlocutor and equal of the greatest—those very few—founders of European philosophy? that here was someone, this seemed obvious, all modern thought would soon have to answer? Emmanuel Levinas has been professor of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure Israélite de Paris and at the University of Paris I . Among his books that have been translated into English are Totality and Infinity, Ethics and Infinity, and Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence. Paula Wissing, a free-lance translator and editor, has recently translated Paul Veyne’s Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 60, Issue 2, Page 304-319, June 2022.

Albert Lautman,.philosophe, juif, fusillé par les Nazis pour faits de Résistance comme son ami et collègue Jean Cavaillès, a laissé inachevée une œuvre puissante et dont l'influence s'est fait sentir au-delà de son domaine. Lautman est une figure rare : un philosophe souverain, capable de mobiliser les grands noms de la tradition philosophique, de Platon à Heidegger, et suffisamment averti des mathématiques pour proposer une intelligence de leur développement acceptée des savants. Les membres du groupe Bourbaki ont reconnu en Lautman (...) un auteur exposant adéquatement les mathématiques auxquelles ils contribuaient ; Deleuze se réfère à lui de manière élogieuse ; Badiou, Petitot et Salanskis, notamment, lui font écho ou tentent de le prolonger. On examine ici cette œuvre dense, depuis Essai sur les notions de structure et d'existence en mathématiques et Essai sur l'unité des sciences mathématiques dans leur développement actuel aux textes posthumes, Symétrie et dissymétrie en mathématiques et en physique suivi du Problème du temps, après l'avoir située dans son contexte historique-scientifique. On espère ainsi montrer la profondeur et l'actualité d'une pensée singulière, celle d'un grand rationaliste qui était aussi un métaphysicien. (shrink)

Entend dégager l'enjeu philosophique de la pensée augustinienne du cogito, dans " La cité de Dieu " et dans " La Trinité ", en situant la réflexion du saint dans le champ de la philosophie antique, et en rapprochant sa perspective de celles de Descartes et de Husserl.

In this paper, I explore Hegel’s concept of freedom as self-liberation. I consider the struggle between the soul and the body within Hegel’s Anthropology as an example of how conflict can act as a condition for asserting one’s freedom through self-improvement or Bildung. In this regard, there are reminiscent aspects of the famous ‘Lordship and Bondage’ dialectic within Hegel’s treatment of the body-soul relation. If the initial dominion of nature over the soul can be described as madness for Hegel, habit (...) constitutes the mean through which spirit acquires its freedom. (shrink)

This article examines the controversy that has arisen in the last decade about Michel Foucault’s supposed “fascination” with neoliberalism, especially around the contributions of Daniel Zamora and Michael C. Behrent. Their theses are contrasted with Foucauldian writings and reconsidered from a different approach to the historical, political and intellectual context of the French 1970s, which, in our opinion, shows a lack of complexity in the studies of those authors. Thus, this paper tries to establish that the limitations of Michel Foucault’s (...) approach to neoliberalism do not respond to any sort of neoliberal “sympathies”, but to another kind of problems-mainly analytical-. (shrink)

Ce texte propose une série de réflexions qui s'inscrivent dans la lignée des travaux menés avec Douglas Hofstadter sur les processus analogiques. Nous estimons que ces réflexions sont à la fois profondément compatibles avec les idées de Gilles Fauconnier et soulignent l'importance de ses contributions. Plus précisément, cet article a trois objets. Le premier remet en question la possibilité d'une perception littérale et rend au contraire cette hypothèse psychologiquement improbable. Il soutient une perspective interprétative selon laquelle les concepts s'interposent dans (...) toutes les activités mentales, de la perception la plus triviale aux idées les plus abstraites. Le deuxième concerne les liens entre analogie et catégorisation, aboutissant au constat que les distinctions établies entre ces notions dans le sens commun et les traditions académiques se dissolvent au fur et à mesure que l'analyse s'approfondit. Le troisième met l'accent sur les intrications contre-intuitives entre form... (shrink)

Since special relativity and quantum mechanics, information has become a central concept in our description and understanding of physical reality. This statement may be construed in different ways, depending on the meaning we attach to the concept of information, and on our ontological commitments. One distinction is between mind-independent ‘Shannon information’ and a traditional conception of information, connected with meaning and knowledge. Another, orthogonal, distinction is between information considered as a fundamental physical entity, and an ontological agnosticism where physics is (...) about our information of the world rather than about the world itself. Combinations of these lead to various possibilities. I argue that adopting mind-independent information as ontologically fundamental is a hitherto undefended position with important advantages. This position appears similar to Floridi’s informational structural realism, but is fundamentally different. Rather than ‘epistemically indistinguishable differences’, it requires a robust conception of information as consisting of readable and interpretable messages. (shrink)

BackgroundThe safety of sleeping pills has increased dramatically during the last 100 years, from barbiturates to bensodiazepines to modern day so-called Z-drugs.MethodsThe circumstances of prescribing sleeping pills in the early 20th century are illustrated by summarizing the main storyline of a novel by Swedish writer Vilhelm Moberg. This is followed by a thought experiment and a theoretical discussion.ResultsIn his 1937 novel Sömnlös (Swedish for sleepless) Vilhelm Moberg portrayed existential and relational distress in relation to insomnia. In a thought experiment, past (...) progresses in sleeping pills safety are projected into the future. Thereby, it is claimed that important issues in the area of philosophy of medicine come to the fore. This leads to a theoretical discussion about broader questions concerning the role of the physician, the goals of medicine (as described by Lennart Nordenfelt), the concept of pharmaceuticalisation (as described notably by sociologist of sleep Simon J. Williams and co-workers), and health enhancement (c.f. Carl Elliott and the alleged wish to be better than well).ConclusionInsomnia is a prism through which important philosophical and sociological questions related to the practice of medicine can be asked. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage, écrit dans un style accessible et rigoureux, constitue la meilleure synthèse des idées d'Emmanuel Mounier. Prenant appui sur sa philosophie de la personne, l'auteur éclaire des thèmes majeurs : la communication, la liberté, l'éthique, l'engagement, la politique, la culture. En ce sens, ce livre est également une remarquable introduction à la philosophie. Le lecteur percevra vite l'actualité d'un penseur qui fit de l'événement son "maître intérieur", et que l'on a pu caractériser comme un Socrate du XXe siècle.

The task of producing a comprehensive, single‐volume treatment of Buddhist philosophy presents certain editorial challenges, not the least of which is the problem of how to do justice to the sheer breadth and diversity of a tradition that spans some two and a half millennia. This introductory chapter of A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy sheds some light on the considerations that shaped the structure and content of the book.

This article aims at making a contribution within the framework of the new and renowned interest for Jacques Derrida's political thinking. The main objective is to clarify some specific contributions made to the discussion Derrida holds between phenomenology and structuralism. With this in mind, two central dimensions to think politics, found in the earliest texts of the author, are presented: on the one hand, by the discussion of a traditional definition of philosophy, exemplified here with phenomenology, a construction of a (...) different link between philosophy and politics seems to be possible; on the other, by the questioning of the formalism inherent in structuralism from notions like play and force a structural politicity, thought of as economy of violence, emerges. The methodological assumption that is taken here is that the texts where politics is an explicit subject are not necessarily those from which Jacques Derrida's contributions to think politics must be tracked. For this purpose we are going to narrow down our reading to just three texts: "Introduction to Husserl's Origin of Geometry", "Force and signification" and "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences".El artículo busca realizar un aporte en el marco del renovado interés por el pensamiento político de Jacques Derrida. El objetivo es precisar ciertas contribuciones en la discusión que Derrida tiene con la fenomenología y el estructuralismo. Para ello se muestran dos dimensiones centrales de los textos tempranos del autor para pensar la política: por una parte, al discutir una definición tradicional de filosofía, ejemplificada aquí con la fenomenología, se posibilita la construcción de otro vínculo entre filosofía y política; por otra parte, al cuestionar el formalismo inherente al estructuralismo desde nociones como juego o fuerza surge una politicidad estructural pensada como economía de la violencia. El presupuesto metodológico del cual partimos es que no necesariamente en los textos donde la política constituye un tema explicito es donde deben rastrearse sus aportes para pensar la política. Para ello, vamos a restringir nuestra lectura a tres textos: "Introducción a El Origen de la Geometría de Husserl" , "Fuerza y Significación" y "La estructura, el signo y el juego en el discurso de las ciencias humanas". (shrink)

Being and Nothingness argues that in the master–slave dialectic Hegel had a ‘brilliant insight’ contra solipsism, to the effect that each self-consciousness depends on other consciousnesses. Against Hegel, however, Sartre claims that the separation of the for-itself remains an insurmountable ‘scandal’ and that collectivity can at best exist as a ‘de-totalised totality’, never as Subject. In a confrontation with Hegelian Sittlichkeit, Notebooks for an Ethics extends this analysis to the historical modalities of the mutual recognition of freedoms. A ‘concrete ethics’ (...) must be ‘revolutionary socialist’, centrally concerned with ‘the dialectic of the ends and means of revolution’. Finally, Sartre’s analysis of the dialectic of society and the state in the Critique of Dialectical Reason explains why sovereignty can never be the embodiment of an imaginary Subject. Sartre thus ultimately occupies a highly distinctive middle ground between Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and Marx’s critique of Hegel. A fulcrum of the argument, focused on Notebooks for an Ethics, consists in a comparison between Sartre and Trotsky’s Their Morals and Ours. (shrink)

Cet essai s’emploie à opérationnaliser les principes de la pensée complexe d’Edgar Morin, en prenant comme prétexte la question de gouvernance. Il porte sur la gouvernance régie par les principes du paradigme de simplicité et indique une autre façon de penser la gouvernance à la lumière des leçons de la pensée complexe, notamment au Congo. Il apparaît que gouverner en situation complexe, c’est chercher des solutions, en délibérant, au fur et à mesure que le vieil équilibre normatif se lézarde ; (...) c’est reconnaître les conflits, les oppositions, les incertitudes, la complexité de la et en société, et travailler avec eux.This essay seeks to operationalize the principles of complex thinking Edgar Morin, using as a pretext the issue of governance. It focuses on governance guided by the principles of simplicity and paradigm indicates another way of thinking about governance in the light of the lessons of complex thought, especially in Congo. It appears that govern complex situation is to seek solutions, deliberating as and as the old equilibrium normative crack, is to recognize conflicts, oppositions, uncertainty, complexity and society, and work with them. (shrink)

La « crise » des fondements des mathématiques (1902-1931) fut l’agent de l’avènement du paradigme axiomatico-ensembliste dans lequel la plupart des tensions et stratégies fondationnelles continuent d’être formulées. Au terme d’une synthèse de ces interrogations et de leurs traductions techniques, qui suit le fil conducteur de l’opposition constructif / non-constructif, on montre quelques-unes des subversions, encore minoritaires, que subit ce paradigme. On insiste alors sur les voies possibles de son dépassement, en pointant l’essoufflement conceptuel qui transparaît derrière le dynamisme de (...) l’une de ses branches actuelles, la théorie descriptive des ensembles. L’objectif est ainsi de contribuer à l’examen distancié, proprement épistémologique, de la nature des étapes du développement des mathématiques au 20ème siècle. (shrink)

L’article montre d’abord jusqu’où convergent la dialectique hégélienne de l’Idée et la dialectique lautmanienne des Idées, et ce sur quoi elles se séparent en profondeur : sur la négativité et le statut de la contradiction. Il s’intéresse ensuite à certaines formalisations qui ont été proposées de ces deux dialectiques : celle de Doz et Dubarle pour Hegel dans une extension de la logique booléenne, et celle, récemment esquissée par F. Zalamea en théorie des catégories, pour Lautman. Est montré dans ses (...) grandes lignes comment la traductibilité mutuelle, au niveau technique, peut être établie entre les deux entreprises, la conséquence étant que la divergence spéculative semble rétroactivement gommée, que le négatif semble avoir disparu. À partir de ce paradoxe sont présentées quelques pistes de réflexion sur les enjeux de la démarche de formalisation, entendue comme entreprise de réduction du fossé existant entre le conceptuel et le formel, et de ce qu’elle révèle des rapports entre mathématiques et philosophie.The paper begins by showing what is common to Hegel’s dialectic of the Idea and Lautman’s dialectic of Ideas, and where they diverge deeply : on negativity and the status of contradiction. It then focuses on two different attempts to formalize these dialectics : Doz and Dubarle’s attempt to formalize the Hegelian one in an extension of Boolean logic ; and, more recently, Zalamea’s formalization of the Lautmanian one through category theory. The paper then sketches how, at a technical level, these two attempts can be translated one into the other — which indicates, in turn, that the speculative divergence seems to have disappeared, that the negative has been erased. With reference to this paradox the paper provides the reader with some reflections dealing with the stakes of the formalizing process, seen as way of reducing the gap existing between the conceptual and the definite, and of what it reveals of the relations between mathematics and philosophy. (shrink)

A la fin du XVIIIe siècle, la philosophie, dans un débat autour de l'héritage de Kant, s'autodétermine comme système de la liberté, pour achever la révolution copernicienne, et accéder, dans le système du savoir, au concept, à la conscience de soi. La liberté s'affirme comme identité du penser et de l'être. Schelling est alors inspiré d'une part par Spinoza, et d'autre part par Kant et Fichte.

The observation that an animal's behavior is largely unaltered even after profound modifications of sizeable brain portions, suggests a large flexibility in the relationships between species-specific brain structures and species-specific behavior. In this perspective, a fascinating example is given by the comparison of jumping spiders and felids, where similar predatory behaviors are achieved with totally different brain substrates. (Published Online May 1 2007).

De la morale du système financier international à la bioéthique en passant par la moralisation de la politique environnementale, les questions autour de la morale sont aujourd'hui omniprésentes dans l'actualité, touchant tous les ...

In 1978, treatment and vaccination programs were recommended to control bovine trypanosomiasis and brucellosis in Ivory Coast. A single trypanocidal treatment of young calves dramatically reduced their mortality rate. A preliminary demonstration project was carried out in a limited area by the government agency SODEPRA, followed by demonstrations on nearly all the farms. The costs were covered by SODEPRA as one of their development projects. Over a period of time the farmers took charge of the treatments, both financially and physically. (...) In 1992, the trypanocidal treatments were still widely used. The reasons for this success could be its dramatic efficacy, the simple technology employed, the low cost that was progressively charged to the farmers, and the fact that this was a long term extension project with continuous farmer training. The brucellosis control program started with an initial vaccination of 1 to 10 year old females followed by an annual vaccination of 1 to 2 year old heifers. One year later, a 37% reduction in the abortion rate was observed. The vaccination were paid for and carried out by SODEPRA. The control program then stopped but, because of growing problems with brucellosis, vaccinations started again in 1992. There is still a question of how vaccinations will be accepted when the farmers are required to share the cost for the control of a largely inconspicuous disease. (shrink)