This article provides a summary of current knowledge about memory illusions. The memory illusions described here focus on the recall of imagined events that have never actually occurred. The purpose is to review theoretical ideas and empirical evidence about the reality-monitoring processes involved in memory illusions. Reality monitoring means deciding whether the memory has been perceptually derived or been self-generated (thought or imagined). A few key findings from the literature have been reported in this paper and these focus on internal (...) source-monitoring judgments which distinguish perceptual events from imagined events. Finally, the experimental paradigms used to shed light on processes occurring in the failure of reality monitoring in healthy subjects may be extended to an examination of the causes and the prevention of hallucinations in patients. (shrink)

This book explores the possible relations between Western types of rationality and Buddhism. It also examines some cliche;s about Buddhism and questions the old antinomies of Western culture (“faith and reason,” or “idealism and materialism”). The use of the Buddhist notion of the Two Truths as a hermeneutic device leads to a double or multiple exposure that will call into question our mental habits and force us to ask questions differently, to think “in a new key.” Double Exposure is somewhat (...) of an oddity. Written by a specialist for nonspecialists, it is not a book of vulgarization. Although it aims at a better integration of Western and Buddhist thought, it is not an exercise in comparative philosophy or religion. It is neither a contribution to Buddhist scholarship in the narrow sense, nor a contribution to some vague Western “spirituality.” Cutting across traditional disciplines and blurring established genres, it provides a leisurely but deeply insightful stroll through philosophical and literary texts, dreams, poetry, and paradoxes. (shrink)

Although developmental biology is an institutionalized discipline, no unambiguous account of what development is and when it stops has so far been provided. In this article, I focus on two sets of developmental molecular mechanisms, namely those underlying the heterochronic pathway in C. elegans and those involving Hox genes in vertebrates, to suggest a conceptual account of animal development. I point out that, in these animals, the early stages of life exhibit salient mechanistic features, in particular in the way mechanisms (...) of genetic regulation occur in the organism. Indeed, these stages are characterized by sequential and irreversible changes in gene expression taking place throughout the organism. A general definition of animal development based on these distinctive features implies that, at least for some animal species, development does not go on throughout the life of the animal, contrary to what has recently been claimed by some biologists and philosophers. Instead, in such species, development encompasses various events occurring sequentially at the beginning of life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Comme Elle Respire:Memory of Breath, Breath of MemoryFrédérique Berthet (bio)Translated by David F. Bell (bio)La poésie est un système de respiration, c'est fait pour mieux respirer.[Poetry is a respiration system, it's made for breathing better.]—Erri De Luca- Stop!- What?- I can hear you breathing!...- Stop!- Breathing?- Yes!—Paul Thomas AndersonLittle paper-fish cutouts have been placed on the ground, on the carpet.We're in the reassuring '70s stylishness of a doctor's office. (...) The carpet is soft and glistens like in interior decoration magazines, it's with it, in. We couldn't care less about what Dyson vacuum cleaners and "purifiers" boast they can eliminate several decades later: acarids, those microscopic domestic arthropods, human parasites (notably), and airborne vectors of infectious disease (colds, coughs, respiratory distress). No, in the spring of 1975, innocently and self-satisfyingly, the urbane doctor flaunts the opulent carpet with curly pile in his luxury apartment with its state-of-the-art waiting room.In this grand interior of a medical office, a man in a white coat plies his important trade. For example, that day a little girl is re-learning how to breathe. One might think that exhaling and inhaling is learned for life—je t'aime comme je respire, elle parle comme elle respire, il ment comme il respire1—from the very first cry at birth. But in fact, sometimes in life breathing gets stuck between the nasal cavity and the bronchial tubes, between the respiratory tract and the lungs. Progressively, imperceptibly, the organism is short of air, a malicious infection spreads and impairs [End Page 92] alveolar diffusion to the point of respiratory exhaustion: Is it serious, doctor? We must act quickly, very quickly. How to liquify what stopped up the system one day to the point of blocking it—the doctors know what to do.This doctor undertook long, arduous and learned studies. He knows functionally how a living being breathes, how a child lives organically. He can also re-teach the little girl what she no longer knows how to do: inhale, exhale using the full volume of the thoracic cage, regulating the ventilatory flow, solidifying the invisible membranes. In the child's family, everyone knows (and knows how to do) important things, but no one undertook extensive studies, much less studies of the aerial exchanges in the human body. This special knowledge possessed by the doctor (unless special means something else unspoken that would explain why this specific doctor was chosen rather than any other) surrounds him with a padding of respect that creates (and the little girl feels this) a sort of protective continuum between him and the walls within which he sees her, where he practices his kind of calm and slow urbane medicine. It's far from the formidable hospital she has just left, with its spherical apparatus next to the bed aspirating the red and yellow pleural liquid, the "treatment room" where the surgeon, the "butcher" as the nurses call him among themselves, manipulated the drain without anesthesia, with no regard for the child's suffering. The doctor, and his place in the elevated tower, even though they are not to be confused, make for a cozy reception space in which one is comfortable, even in passing.This doctor—who is, in truth, a massage-physiotherapist—is located in a designer high-rise building with a façade decorated by white, pointed features that manifest a will toward an architectural act. On the ground floor, the entrance hall is finished in dark-veined, clear brown marble, and the entry threshold between the exterior and interior is marked by large transparent glass panes that must be manipulated with care. The entrance hall has an intimidating sonority and a useless cold nudity from which one escapes in an elevator where one is surrounded by mirrors and gold buttons and in which one speeds upward silently toward floors, clouds.The designer high-rise is located at the outskirts, the outskirts of a city of recent Olympic stature, where several years earlier Olympic athletes were welcomed and trained to increase their respiratory capacity and... (shrink)

Nous comparons les notions d’usage et de signification chez Ludwig Wittgenstein et Martin Heidegger. Contrairement à Jocelyn Benoist, nous pensons que l’analogie entre Wittgenstein et Heidegger n’est pas superficielle. La métaphysique de Heidegger explicite certaines présuppositions implicites de la seconde philosophie de Wittgenstein. Le pragmatisme naturaliste de Wittgenstein peut être théorisé. Notamment la notion wittgensteinienne d’usage, ou de jeu de langage, peut être comprise comme une pratique à la fois naturelle et normative régie par des règles. -/- Wittgenstein’s notions of (...) use and meaning are compared with the corresponding Heidegger’s ones. Unlike Jocelyn Benoist, we suggest that the analogy between Wittgenstein and Heidegger is not superficial. Heidegger’s metaphysics makes explicit some of the implicit presuppositions of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Wittgenstein’s naturalistic pragmatism can be theorized. In particular, Wittgenstein’s notion of use, or language game, can be understood as both natural and normative rule- governing practice. (shrink)

The Marx of Communism and the Marx of Structuralism. The article addresses the issue of the response within the French Communist Party to the structuralist and anti-humanist reading of Marx which Althusser formulated in the period leading up to May 1968. While structuralism was regarded by some as a marker of the avant-garde, to a number of communist intellectuals, and in particular those closest to the party leadership, it amounted to a “a philosophy of hopelessness”. e article thus examines the (...) context in which Althusser was declared to be heterodox in the early months of 1966, in particular at the convention of philosophers held in Choisy and at the meeting of the Communist Party central committee in Argenteuil. (shrink)

Cette toute première édition critique de la version arabo-latine de la _Rhétorique_ d’Aristote réalisée par Hermann l’Allemand est accompagnée d’une étude complète de la tradition latine du texte, et présente les principes d’édition adoptés ici, qui prennent en compte la version arabe de la _Rhétorique_. This is the first critical edition of Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_ in its Arabo-Latin translation made by Hermann the German. It contains a full study of the latin tradition of the text, as well as the principles used (...) in the edition, which takes account of the Arabic version of the _Rhetoric_. (shrink)

The distinction between the body schema and the body image has become the stock in trade of much recent work in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy. Yet little is known about the interactions between these two types of body representations. We need to account not only for their dissociations in rare cases, but also for their convergence most of the time. Indeed in our everyday life the body we perceive does not conflict with the body we act with. Are the body (...) image and the body schema then somehow reshaping each other or are they relatively independent and do they only happen to be congruent? On the basis of the study of bodily hallucinations, we consider which model can best account for the body schema/body image interactions. (shrink)

We argue that Lewis would have rejected recent appeals to the notions of ‘metaphysical dependency’, ‘grounding’ and ‘ontological priority’, because he would have held that they’re not needed and they’re not intelligible. We argue our case by drawing upon Lewis’s views on supervenience, the metaphysics of singletons and the dubiousness of Kripke’s essentialism.

Theories of embodied cognition abound in the literature, but it is often unclear how to understand them. We offer several interpretations of embodiment, the most interesting being the thesis that mental representations in bodily formats (B-formats) have an important role in cognition. Potential B-formats include motoric, somatosensory, affective and interoceptive formats. The literature on mirroring and related phenomena provides support for a limited-scope version of embodied social cognition under the B-format interpretation. It is questionable, however, whether such a thesis can (...) be extended. We show the limits of embodiment in social cognition. (shrink)

A new model of bioturbation has been developed to describe short term sediment reworking induced by macrobenthic communities. The design of the model had to consider the mixing processes, firstly, at the organism level, and secondly, at community level. This paper describes the mixing mode of the four types of bioturbators defined by the authors: the biodiffusors, the upward-conveyors, the downward-conveyors and the regenerators. The mathematical formulation of these sub-models consists of ordinary differential equations. They take into account the size (...) of the bioturbated zone, the output fluxes to the water column, tracer decay, physical mixing due to local currents and the type and intensity of the bioturbation processes. These sub-models make it possible to describe correctly the mixing events that have occurred in cores with each type of bioturbator. They also provide the basis for general bioturbation model, that will take into account the respective degrees of involvement of (i) the different bioturbation processes and their characteristics, (ii) the interference between the different processes, and (iii) make possible to predict the particle reworking in order to include it in studies of organic matter in early diagenesis. (shrink)

An odd dissensus between confident metaphysicians and neopragmatist antimetaphysicians pervades early twenty-first century analytic philosophy. Each faction is convinced their side has won the day, but both are mistaken about the philosophical legacy of the twentieth century. More historical awareness is needed to overcome the current dissensus. Lewis and his possible-world system are lionised by metaphysicians; Quine’s pragmatist scruples about heavy-duty metaphysics inspire antimetaphysicians. But Lewis developed his system under the influence of his teacher Quine, inheriting from him his empiricism, (...) his physicalism, his metaontology, and, I will show in this paper, also his Humeanism. Using published as well as never-before-seen unpublished sources, I will make apparent that both heavy-duty metaphysicians and neopragmatist antimetaphysicians are wrong about the roles Quine and Lewis played in the development of twentieth-century philosophy. The two are much more alike than is commonly supposed, and Quine much more instrumental to the pedigree of current metaphysics. (shrink)

When one contrasts pain with the classic five senses, discussions generally focus on vision, which is taken as the paradigmatic example of perception. An intentionalist might argue that if the phenomenal difference between feeling and seeing bodily disturbances cannot be explained at the level of the content, it can be so at the level of the mode of presentation, and more particularly at the level of the structure of the spatial phenomenology of pain. Here I will argue that the spatial (...) phenomenology of pain shares some key features with touch by contrast to sight, but these similarities should not make us neglect major differences between these two types of bodily sensations. I shall then draw the consequences of these differences for the awareness of one’s body as one’s own. In brief, to fix the boundaries of the body that one experiences as one’s own, one must answer two questions: where does the body stop, and the rest of world start? and what matters for self-preservation? I will suggest that touch primarily answers the first question, whereas pain primarily answers the second question. (shrink)

In this paper I build a case for considering the pioneering behaviourist philosopher Grace de Laguna as one of the grandmothers of analytic philosophy. I argue against the ‘Great Men’ narrative of analytic philosophy as composed of Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein and their followers, and in favour of a more inclusive ‘movement’ narrative of analytic philosophy as a broad and varied movement with an anti-idealist and naturalistic orientation aimed at fitting around novel development in the sciences, including Einsteinian physics and psychology. (...) I compare de Laguna’s prescient early views to Whitehead’s; both share an anti-idealist but also anti-atomist solution to the problem of perception, and both oppose the bifurcation of nature, with de Laguna expressing these views before Whitehead did. I conclude that while both opposed the narrower project of logical atomism, both count as ancestors of the wider analytic movement. (shrink)

In ‘Putnam’s Paradox’, Lewis defended global descriptivism and reference magnetism. According to Schwarz [2014], Lewis didn’t mean what he said there, and really held neither position. We present evidence from Lewis’s correspondence and publications which shows conclusively that Lewis endorsed both.

The present discussion derives from a larger research project that concerns the medieval Latin translation of Averroes’ Middle Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics. The translation was carried out by Hermann the German in Toledo in 1240. I am concerned here specifically with nine passages that are distributed over three chapters of the Commentary in which the Latin translation is sprinkled with transliterations based on Greek and Arabic terms. These transliterations, which are not glosses, can be understood on several levels, and (...) these, in turn, raise questions about the boundary between transliteration proper and translation that borrows from the source language a term which is then integrated into the Latin lexicon in the form of a calque or ‘loan translation’. Examining these transliterations makes it possible, first, to show that the translator does not follow a uniform method throughout the text, which could imply the existence of several translators or several collaborators with disti... (shrink)

In this paper, we attempt to make a distinction between egocentrism and allocentrism in social cognition, based on the distinction that is made in visuo-spatial perception. We propose that it makes a difference to mentalizing whether the other person can be understood using an egocentric (‘‘you'') or an allocentric (‘‘he/ she/they'') stance. Within an egocentric stance, the other person is represented in relation to the self. By contrast, within an allocentric stance, the existence or mental state of the other person (...) needs to be represented as independent from the self. We suggest here that people with Asperger syndrome suffer from a disconnection between a strong naı¨ve egocentric stance and a highly abstract allocentric stance. We argue that the currently used distinction between first-person and third-person perspective-taking is orthogonal to the distinction between an egocentric and an allocentric stance and therefore cannot serve as a critical test of allocentrism. (shrink)

The philosophical world is indebted to Alvin Goldman for a number of reasons, and among them, his defense of the relevance of cognitive science for philosophy of mind. In Simulating minds, Goldman discusses with great care and subtlety a wide variety of experimental results related to mindreading from cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology and developmental psychology. No philosopher has done more to display the resourcefulness of mental simulation. I am sympathetic with much of the general direction of Goldman’s theory. (...) I agree with him that mindreading is not a single system based on a single mechanism. And I admire his attempt to bring together the cognitive neuroscientific discovery of mirror system phenomena and the philosophical account of pretense within a unique theoretical framework of mental simulation. To do so, Goldman distinguishes two types of mindreading, respectively, based on low-level and high-level simulation. Yet, I wonder in what sense they are really two distinct processes. Here, I will confine myself largely to spelling out a series of points that take issue with the distinction between low-level and high-level mindreading. (shrink)

En partie issu d’un colloque sur les « Effets de voix : la voix et les voix dans la pensée et la littérature romaines » qui s’est tenu en novembre 2014 à Lille, ce livre rassemble dix-huit contributions, classées selon quatre grandes catégories : I. Philosophie, II. Rhétorique et médecine, III. Acoustique, théâtre et littérature, IV. Linguistique, anthropologie, religion. Il comprend également une bibliographie (p. 385-423), un index des noms (p. 425-429), un index des passages cités (p. 431-...

Les présentes remarques se proposent d’observer la façon dont les noms propres ont été traités par Averroès dans son Commentaire moyen à l’Éthique à Nicomaque, rédigé à partir de la traduction arabe du traité aristotélicien, dont une seule copie unique existe aujourd’hui, conservée dans la bibliothèque Quaraouiyine de Fès. Perdu dans sa version originale arabe, ce Commentaire n’existe – à l’exception d’une trentaine de petits fragments – que dans sa traduction latine, réalisée en 1240 par Hermann l’Allemand, et dans sa (...) traduction hébraïque, achevée par Samuel de Marseille en 1340. Analyser l’attitude d’Averroès devant les noms propres de ENar, qui pour la plupart ont été translittérés par le traducteur arabe, entraîne par voie de conséquence un examen de la façon dont Hermann et Samuel ont à leur tour réagi face à des noms propres, dont ils ne connaissaient pas nécessairement les référents puisqu’ils appartiennent à une aire c... (shrink)

This is the first critical edition of Book X of the Latin version of Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s _Nicomachean Ethics_. The text is accompanied by a French translation and explanatory notes, and is preceded by a study of the manuscript tradition and two studies on the Commentary itself. Cette première édition critique de la version latine du Commentaire d’Averroès à l’_Éthique à Nicomaque_, accompagnée d’une traduction française annotée, est précédée de l’examen de la tradition manuscrite du texte et de (...) deux études consacrée à ce Commentaire. (shrink)

A priori reflection, common sense and intuition have proved unreliable sources of information about the world outside of us. So the justification for a theory of the categories must derive from the empirical support of the scientific theories whose descriptions it unifies and clarifies. We don’t have reliable information about the de re modal profiles of external things either because the overwhelming proportion of our knowledge of the external world is theoretical—knowledge by description rather than knowledge by acquaintance. This undermines (...) the traditional idea that to be an object of category C is to be an object with such- and-such characteristic possibilities of combination. But this is no loss because de re modal thought lacks utility for creatures like us. (shrink)

Connue sous le titre d’« Invective contre le roi Jean », la Lettre céleste conservée dans le manuscrit Cotton Vespasian E. III de la British Library peut être datée du début de la décennie 1250. Elle se présente comme une critique du roi Henri III, des prélats et des grands du royaume d’Angleterre et de leurs officiers, tout en commémorant la figure du prédicateur et prophète Pierre de Wakefield, supplicié en 1213 sur l’ordre de Jean sans Terre. L’édition du texte (...) est accompagnée d’une traduction annotée et précédée d’une introduction historique et littéraire. (shrink)

Le Venezuela de la fin de la période coloniale se distingue sur bien des points des autres régions d’Amérique espagnole : une prospérité économique flatteuse fondée sur le commerce du cacao et que confirment les réformes bourboniennes de la fin du siècle ; une configuration sociale contrastée mais extrêmement fluide et une aristocratie créole, les mantuanos, dont le discours et les généalogies sociales sont repris à leur compte par les autres groupes sociaux émergents, notamment par le monde des pardos (métis) (...) ; mais également l’une des révolutions d’Indépendance les plus violentes du continent. Les sensibilités métisses vont de pair avec une mémoire partagée, au quotidien ou lors d’événements bien particuliers tels que visitas ou procès. D’autant qu’un autre élément contribue à faire de cette société métisse une société en mouvement : les femmes, quel que soit leur statut social ou ethnique. Transgressions des normes sociales et morales par les aristocrates mantuanas, revendications des pardas se voulant nobles et défendant leur « honneur » : se situant dans la perspective de l’histoire des sensibilités, cette étude tentera de faire le point sur ce métissage des représentations, ainsi que sur la subversion du modèle culturel hispanique qui en découle dans les pratiques effectives. (shrink)

Desde la Revolución de Independencia, el relato histórico ha ido acompañando el devenir político de Venezuela, por desempeñar un papel fundamental en la elaboración del mito unificador de la nación. Oficializado en las últimas décadas del siglo XIX, el culto a Bolívar ha sido el punto de partida de una historia oficial que, hoy en día, se asienta en una instrumentalización propia del pasado nacional. El presente ensayo intenta poner de relieve esta peculiar conformación de las memorias en su expression (...) más reciente así como los retos que conlleva, y analizar la acérrima lucha por la escritura de la historia que se está dando hoy día en la República Bolivariana. (shrink)

Nous interprétons les vues philosophiques de Werner Heisenberg comme un pragmatisme et un réalisme non-métaphysique de type Wittgensteinien. La « théorie close » est une règle (concept) Wittgensteinienne. À la différence d’Alisa Bokulich qui donne raison à la position de Paul Dirac sur la nature des relations entre les théories physiques différentes, nous favorisons plutôt celle de Heisenberg. Notre position interprétant Heisenberg va aussi à l’encontre de celle de Popper: le critère d’une théorie scientifique établie (close) est sa non-falsifiabilité. -/- (...) . (shrink)

Peter Strawson makes a crucial distinction between reactive attitudes and the objective attitude. Reactive attitudes such as gratefulness, anger and indignation imply that we take each other seriously as responsible agents. The objective attitude implies that we stop taking each other seriously. Strawson argues that the objective attitude is not merely psychologically difficult: it is inconceivable that we would systematically refrain from taking each other seriously and stop discussing with each other or blaming ourselves or others. Strawson, however, only discusses (...) the reactive attitudes from a general point of view. In this paper, we argue that the reactive attitudes of remorse and moral indignation are forms of ”symbolic restoration’. Retributive punishment should also be interpreted from this perspective. Consequently, our concern with moral blame cannot be understood independently from a concern with the harm that has occurred. Our attitude to the outcome determines our attitude to the agent. The concern with the mental state is secondary: it is structured by its place within the practice of symbolic restoration. (shrink)