Descartes est, dans le fait, le vrai fondateur de la philosophie moderne, en tant qu'elle prend la pensée pour principe. L'action de cet homme sur son siècle et sur les temps nouveaux ne sera jamais exagérée. C'est un héros ; il a repris les choses par les commencements, et il a retrouvé de nouveau le vrai sol de la philosophie, auquel elle est revenue après un égarement de mille ans. 1637, c'est la date de la publication du Discours de la (...) méthode, de René Descartes - véritable déclaration des droits et des pouvoirs de la Raison sur un monde qu'elle domine et organise. Toute la pensée moderne est née de cet ouvrage dont la langue, dense mais toujours claire, n'a pas vieilli. (shrink)

Cumulative technological culture (CTC) refers to the increase in the efficiency and complexity of tools and techniques in human populations over generations. A fascinating question is to understand the cognitive origins of this phenomenon. Because CTC is definitely a social phenomenon, most accounts have suggested a series of cognitive mechanisms oriented toward the social dimension (e.g., teaching, imitation, theory of mind, and metacognition), thereby minimizing the technical dimension and the potential influence of non-social, cognitive skills. What if we have failed (...) to see the elephant in the room? What if social cognitive mechanisms were only catalyzing factors and not thesufficient and necessaryconditions for the emergence of CTC? In this article, we offer an alternative, unified cognitive approach to this phenomenon by assuming that CTC originates in non-social cognitive skills, namely technical-reasoning skills which enable humans to develop the technical potential necessary to constantly acquire and improve technical information. This leads us to discuss how theory of mind and metacognition, in concert with technical reasoning, can help boost CTC. The cognitive approach developed here opens up promising new avenues for reinterpreting classical issues (e.g., innovation, emulation vs. imitation, social vs. asocial learning, cooperation, teaching, and overimitation) in a field that has so far been largely dominated by other disciplines, such as evolutionary biology, mathematics, anthropology, archeology, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

In the first English translation of his work, Laruelle explores the major European thinkers from Nietzsche to Derrida to define his own 'non-philosophical' ...

ArgumentThis paper challenges the use of the notion of “culture” to describe a particular organization of mathematical knowledge, shared by a few mathematicians over a short period of time in the second half of the nineteenth century. This knowledge relates to “geometrical equations,” objects that proved crucial for the mechanisms of encounters between equation theory, substitution theory, and geometry at that time, although they were not well-defined mathematical objects. The description of the mathematical collective activities linked to “geometrical equations,” and (...) especially the technical aspects of these activities, is made on the basis of a sociological definition of “culture.” More precisely, after an examination of the social organization of the group of mathematicians, I argue that these activities form an intricate system of patterns, symbols, and values, for which I suggest a characterization as a “cultural system.”. (shrink)

L'auteur consacre sa réflexion à l'amplification et à l'achèvement de la non-philosophie, en combinant science et philosophie qui sont considérées comme des variables définissant un espace ondulatoire et particulaire de l'opération de penser.

The commentaries have both revealed the implications of and challenged our approach. In this response, we reply to these concerns, discuss why the technical-reasoning hypothesis does not minimize the role of social-learning mechanisms – nor assume that technical-reasoning skills make individuals omniscient technically – and make suggestions for overcoming the classical opposition between the cultural versus cognitive niche hypothesis of cumulative technological culture.

To systematically answer the generalized Kretschmann objection, I propose a mean to make operational a criterion widely recognized as allowing one to decide whether the gauge symmetry of a theory is artificial or substantial. My proposition is based on the dressing field method of gauge symmetry reduction, a new simple tool from mathematical physics. This general scheme allows one in particular to straightforwardly argue that the notion of spontaneous symmetry breaking is superfluous to the empirical success of the electroweak theory. (...) Important questions regarding the context of justification of the theory then arise. (shrink)

Unlike traditional sentimentalists, sophisticated sentimentalists don’t think that the main linguistic function of evaluative terms is simply to express emotional responses. Instead, they contend that to predicate an evaluative term to an object is to judge that a particular emotion is justified toward that object. I will raise a fundamental difficulty for the sophisticated sentimentalists’ attempt to provide a credible account of the meaning of our most important evaluative terms. A more careful examination of the relations between the affective and (...) the reflective elements characteristic of our evaluative thinking will suggest that the emotions play a less central role in an account of the meaning of evaluative terms than sentimentalists have assumed. (shrink)

Dans son Algebra de 1560, Pierre de La Ramée (1515-1572) emploie une manière originale de poser les opérations de l’algèbre sous la forme de ce que j’appellerai des « schémas de calcul ». Ces schémas constituent un aspect singulier de l’écriture mathématique de Pierre de La Ramée par rapport à celle de ses contemporains. Avec ses « schémas de calcul », La Ramée contribue à l’invention, pour les mathématiques de la modernité, d’une langue propre. Leur étude conduit donc à réfléchir (...) sur les prémisses de ce que les philosophes des mathématiques appellent parfois la « révolution symbolique » du xviie siècle. Mon but est de montrer en quoi cette révolution est liée pour une part aux possibilités offertes par l’imprimerie. Je m’appuierai pour cela sur les travaux de Walter J. Ong. (shrink)

Dans cet article, j’étudie la façon dont Pierre de La Ramée aborde la question de l’analyse mathématique, d’abord dans ses écrits de logicien, puis dans ses traités mathématiques. Dans les Scholae mathematicae, en reprenant un argumentaire qui lui avait servi dans les controverses des années 1550 concernant la « méthode unique», il est conduit à la conclusion que l’analyse n’a aucune valeur démonstrative. Ses recherches sur les significations diverses du mot analysis et sur la nature de l’analyse dans les mathématiques (...) grecques m’apparaissent pourtant comme une condition préalable pour que soit reconnue au xviie siècle la fécondité de la méthode analytique en géométrie. (shrink)

L’œuvre mathématique de La Ramée est constituée d’ouvrages publiés tout au long de sa carrière. Les éditions abrégées des Éléments d'Euclide, ses manuels d’arithmétique et de géométrie plusieurs fois remaniés, un court traité d’algèbre ainsi que les Scholae mathematicae de 1569 sont autant d’ouvrages dans lequels il met en œuvre une réforme des mathématiques héritées et de leur enseignement. Des justifications de cette réforme apparaissent dans les trois livres d’un Prooemium mathematicum portant sur l’histoire des mathématiques, la défense de leur (...) « utilité » et une critique sévère de l’exposé euclidien. Pour autant, l’œuvre mathématique de La Ramée ne doit pas être mise à part de l’œuvre philosophique qu’il élabore par ailleurs. Dans cet article, je m’efforce de le montrer en m’interrogeant d’abord sur les raisons qui ont poussé La Ramée à se tourner, au début de sa carrière, vers les mathématiques ; l’examen du livre I du Prooemium mathematicum me permet ensuite d’examiner le rôle que jouent Platon, Aristote et Euclide dans son histoire des mathématiques. Finalement, je suis amené, en abordant la critique raméenne de l’ « abstraction » pythagoricienne, à chercher dans les éditions de la Dialectica et les Scholae in liberales artes les éléments d’une « philosophie des mathématiques » – conception originale de la nature des objets mathématiques et de la façon dont on accède à leur connaissance – qui offre une certaine lumière sur la réforme des mathématiques qu’entreprend La Ramée. (shrink)

Understanding the link between brain evolution and the evolution of distinctive features of modern human cognition is a fundamental challenge. A still unresolved question concerns the co-evolution of tool behavior (i.e., tool use or tool making) and language. The shared neurocognitive processes hypothesis suggests that the emergence of the combinatorial component of language skills within the frontal lobe/Broca's area made possible the complexification of tool-making skills. The importance of the frontal lobe/Broca's area in tool behavior is somewhat surprising with regard (...) to the literature on neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience, which has instead stressed the critical role of the left inferior parietal lobe. Therefore, to be complete, any version of the shared neurocognitive processes hypothesis needs to integrate the potential interactions between the frontal lobe/Broca's area and the left inferior parietal lobe as well as their co-evolution at a phylogenetic level. Here, we sought to provide the first elements of answer through the use of the massive deployment framework, which posits that evolutionarily older brain areas are deployed in more cognitive functions (i.e., they are less specific). We focused on the left parietal cortex, and particularly the left areas PF, PGI, and anterior intraparietal (AIP), which are known to be involved in tool use, language, and motor control, respectively. The deployment of each brain area in different cognitive functions was measured by conducting a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies. Our results confirmed the pattern of specificity for each brain area and also showed that the left area PGI was far less specific than the left areas PF and AIP. From these findings, we discuss the different evolutionary scenarios depicting the potential co-evolution of the combinatorial and generative components of language and tool behavior in our lineage. (shrink)

Understanding the link between brain evolution and the evolution of distinctive features of modern human cognition is a fundamental challenge. A still unresolved question concerns the co-evolution of tool behavior (i.e., tool use or tool making) and language. The shared neurocognitive processes hypothesis suggests that the emergence of the combinatorial component of language skills within the frontal lobe/Broca's area made possible the complexification of tool-making skills. The importance of the frontal lobe/Broca's area in tool behavior is somewhat surprising with regard (...) to the literature on neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience, which has instead stressed the critical role of the left inferior parietal lobe. Therefore, to be complete, any version of the shared neurocognitive processes hypothesis needs to integrate the potential interactions between the frontal lobe/Broca's area and the left inferior parietal lobe as well as their co-evolution at a phylogenetic level. Here, we sought to provide the first elements of answer through the use of the massive deployment framework, which posits that evolutionarily older brain areas are deployed in more cognitive functions (i.e., they are less specific). We focused on the left parietal cortex, and particularly the left areas PF, PGI, and anterior intraparietal (AIP), which are known to be involved in tool use, language, and motor control, respectively. The deployment of each brain area in different cognitive functions was measured by conducting a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies. Our results confirmed the pattern of specificity for each brain area and also showed that the left area PGI was far less specific than the left areas PF and AIP. From these findings, we discuss the different evolutionary scenarios depicting the potential co-evolution of the combinatorial and generative components of language and tool behavior in our lineage. (shrink)

We provide a Kripke semantics for a STIT logic with the "next" operator. As the atemporal group STIT is undecidable and unaxiomatizable, we are interested in strict fragments of atemporal group STIT. First we prove that the satisfiability problem of a formula of the fragment made up of individual coalitions plus the grand coalition is also NEXPTIME-complete. We then generalize this result to a fragment where coalitions are in a given lattice. We also prove that if we restrict the language (...) to nested coalitions the satisfiability problem is NP-complete if the number of agents is fixed and PSPACE-complete if the number of agents is variable. Finally we embed individual STIT with the "next" operator into a fragment of atemporal group STIT. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 33.2 (2005) 42-70 [Access article in PDF] "O Happy Living Things" Frankenfoods and the Bounds of Wordsworthian Natural Piety Anne-Lise François With all the flowers Fancy e'er could feignWho breeding flowers will never breed the same. —John Keats, "Ode to Psyche" And I could wish my days to beBound each to each in natural piety. —William Wordsworth, "My heart leaps up" O happy living things! no tongue (...) Their beauty might declare:A spring of love gusht from my heart, And I bless'd them unaware!Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I bless'd them unaware. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" "O happy living things!"—vitamin-enriched grains; potatoes equipped to kill their predators; silk-producing goats; fast-growing salmon that hardly require feeding. Is it possible to predicate the breathless exclamation that escapes Coleridge's mariner, unaware not of water snakes but of the fantastic array of genetically modified creatures—animals and plants—currently under design or production by biotech industries? Already in May 2000 a New York Times article was announcing the imminent arrival of "fast-growing trout and catfish, oysters that can withstand viruses, and an 'Enviropig,' whose feces are less harmful to the environment because they contain less phosphorus." An article inset describes the emergent production of "pharm-animals":These domesticated beasts—cows, pigs, goats, sheep, and chickens—have been given the ability to produce pharmaceuticals and other valuable substances in their milk, eggs or semen. Endowed by scientists with foreign genes, often taken from humans, these animals, or bioreactors, as they are also known, earn their keep as living chemical factories. Two companies, the Genzyme Corporation of Cambridge, Mass., and PPL Therapeutics, a Scottish company, already have products from pharm animals being tested in clinical trials supervised by the Food and Drug Administration. Many other animals are [End Page 42] still in the development stage. For example, Nexia Biotechnologies in Canada is working on a goat that carries a gene from spiders allowing it to produce spider silk in its milk. When the spider silk, which consists of extremely strong, light proteins, is extracted from the goat's milk, the substance, potentially, can be used in applications like bulletproof vests. [Yoon] This last sentence is intriguing. The genetic revolution often bills itself as a second green revolution that will prevent starvation and alleviate disease, promising to feed the world's growing population in terms that tend to essentialize poverty and hunger as inevitable symptoms of a human condition, rather than understand them through the lens of specific colonial and postcolonial histories. But bulletproof vests? The indignant leftist response here would be to deride the collusion between biotechnology and the military-industrial complex—bulletproof vests leaving little doubt as to whose desires count as universal, timeless needs. Yet such a response is perhaps too quick to attribute reason to these genetic experiments in cross-species breeding, and too quick to accept the terms in which biotechnicians present themselves—as the instruments of reason, whether of global capitalism or universal human progress. Part of what this essay wishes to suggest is that to dream up such things and to think of wanting to do them—make a goat produce spider silk in its milk—involve particular fantasies, fantasies not simply about recreating the world in one's image, but about learning to desire the world again, to be excited by it or "surprised" by its existence, to borrow a phrase from Stanley Cavell. The journalist's parenthetical "potentially" indicates that no use has yet been determined, no burning need fuels such experiments, and hints at the boredom behind them—what William Wordsworth might have called the "state of almost savage torpor" in which desire itself has to be invented.As the New York Times writer's double metaphor of animal as laborer- and factory-in-one suggests—"these animals, or bioreactors, as they are also known, earn their keep as living chemical factories"—the binaries animal-human, machine-animal... (shrink)

L'entretien présente les principales thèses exposées dans la première édition de L'Islamisme en face, (Paris, La Découverte, 1995) et répond aux questions et aux remarques formulées par la rédaction de la revue Krisis sur l'origine et les principales expressions du phénomène islamiste dans ses dimensions nationales (économiques, politiques et sociales) et internationale, au sein des sociétés arabo-musulmanes comme en Europe.

We take self‐governance or autonomy to be a central feature of human agency: we believe that our actions normally occur under our guidance and at our command. A common criticism of the standard theory of action is that it leaves the agent out of his actions and thus mischaracterizes our autonomy. According to proponents of the endorsement model of autonomy, such as Harry Frankfurt and David Velleman, the standard theory simply needs to be supplemented with the agent's actual endorsement of (...) his actions in order to make room for our autonomy. I argue that their proposal fails and that a more substantive enrichment of the standard theory is called for. (shrink)

Humans can follow different social learning strategies, sometimes oriented toward the models’ characteristics. The goal of the present study was to explore which who-strategy is preferentially followed in the technological context based on the models’ psychological characteristics. We identified three potential who-strategies: Copy the pedagogue, copy the engineer, and copy the friend. We developed a closed-group micro-society paradigm in which participants had to build the highest possible towers. Participants began with an individual building phase. Then, they were gathered to discuss (...) the best solutions to increase tower height. After this discussion phase, they had to make a new building attempt, followed by another discussion phase, and so forth for a total of six building phases and five discussion rounds. This methodology allowed us to create an attraction score for each participant. We also assessed participants’ theory-of-mind skills, technical-reasoning skills, and prosocialness to predict participants’ attraction scores based on these measures. Results show that we learn from engineers because they are the most successful. Their attraction power is not immediate, but after they have been identified as attractors, their technique is copied irrespective of their pedagogy or friendliness. These findings open avenues for the study of the cognitive bases of human technological culture. (shrink)

Theoreticians that defend a form of realism regarding natural kinds minimally entertain the belief that the world features divisions into kinds and that the natural kind concept is a useful tool for philosophy of science. The objective of this paper is to challenge these assumptions. First, we challenge realism toward natural kinds by showing that the main arguments for their existence, which rely on the epistemic success of natural kinds, are unsatisfactory. Second, we show that, whether they exist or not, (...) natural kinds are expendable when it comes to describing and analyzing scientific explanations accurately. (shrink)

In this article, I argue against a widely accepted model of utterance interpretation, namely the LS model (literality‐based serial model), according to which the literal interpretation of an utterance (the proposition literally expressed by that utterance) must be computed before nonliteral interpretations can be entertained. Alleged arguments in favor of this model are shown to be fallacious, counter‐examples are provided, and alternative models are sketched.

En réponse à un article critique de A. J. Graham, la restitution des cinq premières colonnes du « grand » catalogue des Théores de Thasos est maintenue dans le dispositif qui a été proposé Thasiaca (BCH Suppl. V, 1979) p. 107 à 127. La mise en place précise du bloc inscrit de Thasos inv. 249 à la colonne 9 du catalogue (assise II) confirme en effet l'hypothèse présentée sur le nombre des assises inscrites. La chronologie générale proposée Thasiaca, p. 118, (...) est ainsi assurée ; pour la période ancienne (colonne 1) la réforme qui introduit à Thasos le régime des Trois cent soixante et les collèges triples annuels de Théores était donc sûrement contemporaine de Pisistrate. (shrink)

Language and judicial activities are both signs of the existence of a society. There is, therefore, good reason for a dialogue between the science of language and the science of law. This article applies a linguistic theory of the Paris School (semiotics) to the examination of a legal text, namely a contract. The author points to some eIements shared by legal and other texts, and demonstrates how a semiotic interpretation can provide interesting and unexpected insights into the deeper levels of (...) a legal text. He concludes that a similar approach could fruitfully be used with other types of legal text. (shrink)

This work demonstrates that Diderot was an original scientific theorist who knew how to navigate the irreducible diversity of the sciences, in both theory and practice, compare different perspectives, and draw out their philosophical implications. The complex epistemology that he developed is remarkably rich.

L’évolution industrielle nous destine à vivre dans des environnements technologiques caractérisés par une dissémination informatique totale dans la multitude et d’objets connectés capables de traitement sémantique et d’interaction informationnelle avec les humains. Dans ce contexte d’Intelligence ambiante se déploient des dispositifs domotiques d’Interactions dites naturelles Homme / machine. Ainsi de Google Home présenté comme : « une enceinte à commande vocale qui fonctionne avec l'Assistant Google ». On pourra tout aussi bien discuter avec les agents de la concurrence : Amazon (...) Echo, Apple HomePod, etc. Ces dispositifs nous conduisent à interroger une étape contemporaine majeure de « la révolution technologique du langage » et de son automatisation, qui fait des machines de réels sujets parlants, inscrits dans un « couplage humano-machinique ». Dans ce contexte fortement marqué par les affordances, nous observons les modalités de cette interaction artéfactuelle et dite naturelle, caractérisée notamment par une simulation conversationnelle et une personnalisation des dispositifs technologiques. La perspective est celle d’une linguistique post-dualiste et non logocentrée, dans la lignée du courant de l’analyse du discours : Texte-Discours-Interaction. (shrink)

Résumé Comment envisager aujourd’hui la peinture comme une activité spécifique, et sous quelles conditions? L’approche qui en est faite dans ce texte part de la simple notion de « recouvrement », prise dans son sens le plus littéral, pour en poser quelques articulations particulières. Tout d’abord, celle de la construction d’un objet pictural fondé par ses composantes matérielles, et la valeur de mise en espace spécifique qu’il constitue dans le rapport à la frontalité. De là, l’affirmation d’une notion de « (...) distance » que permet cet objet, distance mise en opposition à des données d’immersion, qui présenterait un fonctionnement basé sur la mise en œuvre constante d’un écart. Arguments dont on voit bien évidemment la dimension moderne, pour ne pas dire moderniste, dont ce texte interroge, dans la situation contemporaine, une possible remise en jeu. (shrink)

Thinking involves many elements of sound that philosophical tradition has repressed. Breathing, rhythms and collateral noises participate in the making of idealities, even the most abstract. In order to hear them, the voice needs to be considered as one sound among others and as multiple, even when it comes from the same speaker, following different protocols of enunciation. Listening to the recordings of seminars and studying the role played by modern sound technologies make it possible to hear subterranean meanings and (...) tensions at the heart of mental elaboration. Thinkers and writers could be defined by the way they handle the acoustic environments favourable to the way they speak and write, whether by selection, mixing or silence. An ‘acousmatic’ reading aims to listen to this sonic investment in texts and to hear the complex vibrations of their thought. (shrink)