A generalized third-order autonomous Duffing–Holmes system is proposed and deeply investigated. The proposed system is obtained by adding a parametric quadratic term m x 2 to the cubic nonlinear term − x 3 of an existing third-order autonomous Duffing–Holmes system. This modification allows the system to feature smoothly adjustable nonlinearity, symmetry, and nontrivial equilibria. A particular attention is given to the effects of symmetric and asymmetric nonlinearity on the dynamics of the system. For the specific case of m = 0, (...) the system is symmetric and interesting phenomena are observed, namely, coexistence of symmetric bifurcations, presence of parallel branches, and the coexistence of four and six symmetric attractors. For m ≠ 0, the system loses its symmetry. This favors the emergence of other behaviors, such as the coexistence of asymmetric bifurcations, involving the coexistence of several asymmetric attractors. All these phenomena have been numerically highlighted using nonlinear dynamic tools and an analog computer of the system. In fact, PSpice simulations of the latter confirm numerical results. Moreover, amplitude control and synchronization strategies are also provided in order to promote the exploitation of the proposed system in engineering. (shrink)

Traite de la conception philosophique de Jacques Maritain qui a développé tout au long de sa carrière un système de pensée proche de celui de Saint Thomas d'Aquin. Cette étude s'inscrit dans la tentative de mettre en lumière les aspects fondamentaux de la quête de l'homme et de son rapport à la beauté d'après le philosophe Maritain.

Raoul Moati intervenes in the critical debate that divided two prominent philosophers in the mid-twentieth century. In the 1950s, the British philosopher J. L. Austin advanced a theory of speech acts, or the "performative," that Jacques Derrida and John R. Searle interpreted in fundamentally different ways. Their disagreement centered on the issue of intentionality, which Derrida understood phenomenologically and Searle read pragmatically. The controversy had profound implications for the development of contemporary philosophy, which, Moati argues, can profit greatly (...) by returning to this classic debate. In this book, Moati systematically replays the historical encounter between Austin, Derrida, and Searle and the disruption that caused the lasting break between Anglo-American language philosophy and continental traditions of phenomenology and its deconstruction. The key issue, Moati argues, is not whether "intentionality," a concept derived from Husserl's phenomenology, can or cannot be linked to Austin's speech-acts as defined in his groundbreaking _How to Do Things with Words_, but rather the emphasis Searle placed on the performativity and determined pragmatic values of Austin's speech-acts, whereas Derrida insisted on the trace of writing behind every act of speech and the iterability of signs in different contexts. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine the scope of the commentary made by Jacques Lacan in his Séminaire on the concept of phenomenological intentionality. By re-writing the object of the drive in a topological space / curve, Lacan intended to give full value to a certain number of defining traits of Freudian drive against its interpretation into any kind of non-critical intentionalism. This specifically required that the French psychoanalyst emphasize the vicariousness of the drive in relation to (...) any defined object / goal which induces the irreducible “perverse polymorphic” nature of any drive. Our article also seeks to demonstrate that Lacan did not agree with the repudiation of the concept of “intention” which he had inherited from phenomenology and which he had reworked under Freud’s patronage, but had subverted its scope in the passage from intentionality to pulsionality by which he expected to achieve disidentification of the desired objective / goal from the pulsional satisfaction goal. Through this complication, we seek to re-open the issue of limits that the concept of intentionality encounters when it meets post-Freudian metapsychology. (shrink)

Analyse les conditions de la déconstruction complète de la métaphysique à partir de la philosophie du langage ordinaire développée par Jacques Derrida.

Autour de la grande conference de Jacques Derrida, intitulee Justices, prononcee en 2003 et demeuree inedite en francais a ce jour, cet ouvrage collectif convoque certains des meilleurs specialistes de son oeuvre. Il s'agit moins ici de commemorer ou de dresser un etat des lieux que de penser, a partir de Derrida et avec lui, ce qui vient et de repondre a l'appel, aux appels pluriels qui resonnent dans son travail philosophique. Sont ainsi examines les principaux legs de sa (...) pensee dans les differents domaines (philosophie, politique, science des religions, esthetique, litterature) qu'elle a profondement transformes. Autant de reponses et de responsabilites, autant de provocations a lire et a relire l'oeuvre de Jacques Derrida a sa hauteur, comme elle nous y engage toujours. Avec les textes de: Gil Anidjar, Philip Armstrong, Fernanda Bernardo, Mireille Calle-Gruber, Danielle Cohen-Levinas, Gianfranco Dalmasso, Francoise Dastur, Jacques Derrida, Silvano Facioni, Edoardo Ferrario, Jerome Lebre, Georges Leroux, Michel Lisse, Rene Major, Marie-Louise Mallet, Serge Margel, Joana Maso, Ginette Michaud, J. Hillis Miller, Raoul Moati, Jean-Luc Nancy, Evando Nascimento, Francois Nault, Laura Odello, Jean-Michel Rabate, Marta Segarra, Peter Szendy, Chantal Talagrand, Francesco Vitale et Hent de Vries. (shrink)

Raoul Moati intervenes in the critical debate that divided two prominent philosophers in the mid-twentieth century. In the 1950s, the British philosopher J. L. Austin advanced a theory of speech acts, or the "performative," that Jacques Derrida and John R. Searle interpreted in fundamentally different ways. Their disagreement centered on the issue of intentionality, which Derrida understood phenomenologically and Searle read pragmatically. The controversy had profound implications for the development of contemporary philosophy, which, Moati argues, can profit greatly (...) by returning to this classic debate. In this book, Moati systematically replays the historical encounter between Austin, Derrida, and Searle and the disruption that caused the lasting break between Anglo-American language philosophy and continental traditions of phenomenology and its deconstruction. The key issue, Moati argues, is not whether "intentionality," a concept derived from Husserl's phenomenology, can or cannot be linked to Austin's speech-acts as defined in his groundbreaking _How to Do Things with Words_, but rather the emphasis Searle placed on the performativity and determined pragmatic values of Austin's speech-acts, whereas Derrida insisted on the trace of writing behind every act of speech and the iterability of signs in different contexts. (shrink)

This brings together five pieces written by Jacques Derrida as extended lectures. The most important theme is Derrida's redefinition of speech acts and the 'event' as a particular kind of performative. The effects of globalization and mechanization, along with arising issues, provide a second constellation of themes. The first four essays involve a specific act of speech: the lie, the excuse, perjury and profession. The last two essays continue Derrida's powerful series of meditations on professional and institutional questions. The (...) final essay, 'Psychoanalysis Searches the States of Its Soul', confronts the task facing psychoanalysis today: coming to terms in new ways with worldwide cruelty and accommodating itself to the modern juridical concepts of crime against humanity. The phrase 'without alibi' (alibi, of course, being another speech act) is used throughout the essay as a leitmotif indicating that the responsibility psychoanalysis has to respond to globalization cannot be evaded. (shrink)

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

But he also inspires the respect that comes from an illustrious career, and, among many who were his colleagues and peers, he inspired friendship. The Work of Mourning is a collection that honors those friendships in the wake of passing.

Derrida's first book-length work, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy , was originally written as a dissertation for his diplôme d'etudes superieures in 1953 and 1954. Surveying Husserl's major works on phenomenology, Derrida reveals what he sees as an internal tension in Husserl's central notion of genesis, and gives us our first glimpse into the concerns and frustrations that would later lead Derrida to abandon phenomenology and develop his now famous method of deconstruction. For Derrida, the problem of genesis (...) in Husserl's philosophy is that both temporality and meaning must be generated by prior acts of the transcendental subject, but transcendental subjectivity must itself be constituted by an act of genesis. Hence, the notion of genesis in the phenomenological sense underlies both temporality and atemporality, history and philosophy, resulting in a tension that Derrida sees as ultimately unresolvable yet central to the practice of phenomenology. Ten years later, Derrida moved away from phenomenology entirely, arguing in his introduction to Husserl's posthumously published Origin of Geometry and his own Speech and Phenomena that the phenomenological project has neither resolved this tension nor expressly worked with it. The Problem of Genesis complements these other works, showing the development of Derrida's approach to phenomenology as well as documenting the state of phenomenological thought in France during a particularly fertile period, when Levinas, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and Tran-Duc-Thao, as well as Derrida, were all working through it. But the book is most important in allowing us to follow Derrida's own development as a philosopher by tracing the roots of his later work in deconstruction to these early critical reflections on Husserl's phenomenology. "A dissertation is not merely a prerequisite for an academic job. It may set the stage for a scholar's life project. So, the doctoral dissertations of Max Weber and Jacques Derrida, never before available in English, may be of more than passing interest. In June, the University of Chicago Press will publish Mr. Derrida's dissertation, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy , which the French philosopher wrote in 1953-54 as a doctoral student, and which did not appear in French until 1990. From the start, Mr Derrida displayed his inventive linguistic style and flouting of convention."--Danny Postel, Chronicle of Higher Education. (shrink)

"When he died in 2004, Jacques Derrida left behind a vast legacy of unpublished material, much of it in the form of written lectures. With The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I, the University of Chicago Press launches an ambitious series of English translations of these important works based upon the meticulously established original French editions." "In this seminar from 2001 and 2002, Derrida explores the persistent association of bestiality or animality with sovereignty and continues his deconstruction of the (...) traditional determinations of the human. The beast and the sovereign are connected, he contends, because neither animals nor kings are subject to the law - the sovereign stands above it, while the beast falls outside the law from below. He then traces this association through an astonishing array of texts, including La Fontaine's fable "The Wolf and the Lamb," Hobbes's biblical sea monster in Leviathan, D. H. Lawrence's poem "Snake," Machiavelli's Prince with its elaborate comparison of princes and foxes, a historical account of Louis XIV attending an elephant autopsy, and Rousseau's evocation of werewolves in The Social Contract." "Deleuze, Lacan, and Agamben also come into critical play as Derrida focuses in on questions of force, right, justice, and philosophical interpretations of the limits between man and animal." --Book Jacket. (shrink)

APARTHEID—may that remain the name from now on, the unique appellation for the ultimate racism in the world, the last of many.May it thus remain, but may a day come when it will only be for the memory of man.A memory in advance: that, perhaps, is the time given for this exhibition. At once urgent and untimely, it exposes itself and takes a chance with time, it wagers and affirms beyond the wager. Without counting on any present moment, it offers (...) only a foresight in painting, very close to silence, and the rearview vision of a future for which apartheid will be the name of something finally abolished. Confined and abandoned then to this silence of memory, the name will resonate all by itself. Reduced to the state of a term in disuse. The thing it names today will no longer be.But hasn’t apartheid always been the archival record of the unnameable?The exhibition, therefore, is not a presentation. Nothing is delivered here in the present, nothing that would be presentable—only, in tomorrow’s rearview mirror, the late, ultimate racism, the last of many. Jacques Derrida, professor of philosophy at the Ecole des hauts etudes en sciences socials in Paris, is the author of, among other works, Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, Margins of Philosophy, and Dissemination. His most recent contribution to Critical Inquiry, “The Linguistic Circle of Geneva,” appeared in the Summer 1982 issue. Peggy Kamuf teaches French at Miami University, Ohio. She is the author of Fiction of Feminine Desire. (shrink)

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

The Political Illusion, examines modern man's passion--political affairs--and the role he plays in them and in the modern state.

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

A feature of American political consciousness is a desire to propagate democracy throughout the world. In our enthusiasm to share what we enjoy, Barzun notes that little attention is paid to exactly what we are trying to distribute.

In this article we investigate the value and utility of Machiavelli’s work for Community-Based Natural Resource Management. We made a selection of five topics derived from literature on NRM and CBNRM: Law and Policy, Justice, Participation, Transparency, and Leadership and management. We use Machiavelli’s work to analyze these topics and embed the results in a narrative intended to lead into the final conclusions, where the overarching theme of natural resource management for the common good is considered. Machiavelli’s focus on practical (...) realities produces new, sometimes unsettling, insights. We conclude that this focus helps to understand the development and performance of management regimes and their consequences and that institutional design should be seen as an ongoing process, which requires a constant adaptation of these institutions. (shrink)

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

Nous assistons depuis quelques années à un retour de Vico à l'horizon de la pensée contemporaine. Plusieurs ouvrages savants et plusieurs rééditions critiques d'œuvres du philosophe napolitain ont marqué récemment ce regain d'intérêt. Ce retour en force s'explique tout naturellement par le recul de la pensée positiviste et néo-positiviste dans notre culture actuelle, depuis que feu le structuralisme, pensée dominante au cours des années soixante à quatre-vingt-dix du XXe siècle, a montré ses limites et n'est plus à la mode. Vico, (...) en effet, que nous pouvons considérer comme le fondateur non seulement de l'histoire moderne mais aussi de ta philosophie et de la culture romantiques, est par excellence le critique du cartésianisme du XVIIe et de ta pensée des Lumières du XVIIIe siècle, et surtout du positivisme historique à venir. Il est donc logique et naturel que, depuis la fin du XXe siècle, une nouvelle génération de penseurs retourne à Vico après avoir hérité des antipositivistes que sont, après Bergson, tes phénoménologues, Paul Ricoeur et Emmanuel Lévinas. C'est principalement la linguistique et la poétique et, plus généralement l'histoire et les sciences humaines dont Vico peut être considéré comme le fondateur, qui bénéficient actuellement de ce retour aux sources vichiennes de la science du langage, de la morale et de la politique. Autrement dit, à ta critique de la raison mythologique. D'où le titre du livre de Jacques Chabot : Giombattista Vico ou la raison du mythe. L'auteur s'attache à nous montrer que la contribution ta plus essentielle de Vico à ta science moderne de l'histoire et aux sciences humaines réside dans sa découverte des mythes conçus comme formes symboliques de la raison pratique qui informent à l'origine poétiquement et raisonnablement toutes les institutions de l'humanité et toute civilisation. Dans l'esprit même de ta collection "Les Ecritures du Sud", Jacques Chabot - il y a déjà publié en 2003 un Albert Camus, "la pensée de Midi" - entend mettre à la portée d'un public cultivé de non spécialistes la difficile pensée de Vico en faisant un travail d'honnête vulgarisation. Comme il s'agit d'un "écrivain du Sud", il souligne aussi le caractère propre de la pensée du philosophe napolitain en l'inscrivant dans la continuité de l'humanisme gréco-latin qui se perpétue après lui dans un humanisme romantique et méditerranéen, sensiblement différent du romantisme allemand qui l'a longtemps occulté. Et dans le même esprit de cette collection, à la différence des ouvrages scientifiques récents exclusivement consacrés à Vico lui-même, Jacques Chabot s'efforce de l'actualiser en mettant sa philosophie en relation avec les grands courant de la pensée contemporaine. (shrink)

Tout ce qui est dans l'oeuvre de Jacques, nous l'avons d'abord vécu à l'état de difficulté vitale et d'expérience, - les questions de l'art et de la morale, de la philosophie, de la foi, de la prière, de la contemplation. Cela nous a d'abord été donné à vivre, à chacun selon sa nature et la grâce de Dieu », notait Raïssa en 1934. Cette correspondance confirme le propos, qui nous fait pénétrer dans « l'amour fou » de deux vies (...) données l'une à l'autre, et la trame quotidienne de leur fécondité de pensée et de « grandes amitiés ».Leur conversion en 1906 scelle la vocation d'un couple venu déjà un peu d'ailleurs : lui, 18 ans, romantique, révolutionnaire et dreyfusard en diable, en rupture avec les élites républicaines laïques dont il est issu ; elle, 17 ans, comme sortie d'une peinture de Chagall, juive et slave en quête à la Sorbonne d'une nouvelle patrie spirituelle. Les premiers regards portés sur eux discernent déjà leur promesse : « Je les trouve absolument dignes l'un de l'autre ; ce sont même de si beaux types d'humanité qu'il faut se féliciter de les voir se rechercher. On ne trouve pas si souvent de couple bien assorti ; celui-là me paraît devoir donner un exemple lumineux. »Ils s'écrivent abondamment dès que les aléas de la vie les séparent et ce premier tome les suit dans la découverte d'eux-mêmes. Dans la discontinuité des circonstances, leur chemin métaphysique et mystique progresse, tandis que se révèle, derrière chaque ouvrage, chaque combat, chaque accompagnement spirituel, le secret de leur rayonnement : au fil de ces 712 lettres, c'est d'abord une histoire d'amour, dans un respect tendre et sacré de la singularité de l'autre. (shrink)

This article describes the conceptual framework within which knowledge about Africa was legitimized in eighteenth-century French philosophy. The article traces a shift or rupture in this conceptual framework which, at the end of the eighteenth century, led to the emergence of new conditions for knowledge legitimation that altered Europe's perception of Africa. The article examines these two conceptual frameworks within the context of a discussion of the social theory of the time, which categorized Africans first as savages, and then, with (...) the advent of our modern "style of reasoning," as primitives. The argument used to demonstrate this change in categorizations is historical. The greater part of the article analyzes in detail the principal social theory of Enlightenment philosophy, the stadial theory of society, with the aim of demonstrating how it determined what could be affirmed about Africa. The shift in the perception of Africans from savages to primitives involved an epistemological change in how societies were grasped. The article provides a greater understanding of the constitution of Africa as a cognitive construct, which is not only of theoretical concern; this construct shaped Europe's intervention in Africa, and continues to influence what we believe Africa is and should become. (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)

Following on from The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I, this book extends Jacques Derrida’s exploration of the connections between animality and sovereignty. In this second year of the seminar, originally presented in 2002–2003 as the last course he would give before his death, Derrida focuses on two markedly different texts: Heidegger’s 1929–1930 course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. As he moves back and forth between the two works, Derrida pursuesthe relations between solitude, insularity, (...) world, violence, boredom and death as they supposedly affect humans and animals in different ways. Hitherto unnoticed or underappreciated aspects of Robinson Crusoe are brought out in strikingly original readings of questions such as Crusoe’s belief in ghosts, his learning to pray, his parrot Poll, and his reinvention of the wheel. Crusoe’s terror of being buried alive or swallowed alive by beasts or cannibals gives rise to a rich and provocative reflection on death, burial, and cremation, in part provoked by a meditation on the death of Derrida’s friend Maurice Blanchot. Throughout, these readings are juxtaposed with interpretations of Heidegger's concepts of world and finitude to produce a distinctively Derridean account that will continue to surprise his readers. (shrink)

The Gift of Death, Jacques Derrida’s most sustained consideration of religion, explores questions first introduced in his book Given Time about the limits of the rational and responsible that one reaches in granting or accepting death, whether by sacrifice, murder, execution, or suicide. Derrida analyzes Czech philosopher Jan Patocka’s Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History and develops and compares his ideas to the works of Heidegger, Lévinas, and Kierkegaard. One of Derrida’s major works, The Gift of Death resonates (...) with much of his earlier writing, and this highly anticipated second edition is greatly enhanced by David Wills’s updated translation. This new edition also features the first-ever English translation of Derrida’s Literature in Secret. In it, Derrida continues his discussion of the sacrifice of Isaac, which leads to bracing meditations on secrecy, forgiveness, literature, and democracy. He also offers a reading of Kafka’s Letter to His Father and uses the story of the flood in Genesis as an embarkation point for a consideration of divine sovereignty. “An important contribution to the critical study of ethics that commends itself to philosophers, social scientists, scholars of religion... [and those] made curious by the controversy that so often attends Derrida.”—Booklist, on the first edition. (shrink)

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

In this paper we consider mechanistic explanations for biologic malfunctions. Drawing on Lipton’s work on difference making, we offer three reasons why one should distinguish i) mechanistic features that only make a difference to the malfunction one aims to explain, from ii) features that make a difference to both the malfunction and normal functioning. Recognition of the distinction is important for a) repair purposes, b) mechanism discovery, and c) understanding. This analysis extends current mechanistic thinking, which fails to appreciate the (...) distinction. We illustrate our contribution with a case on sleeping disorders as arising from disruptions of circadian rhythms. (shrink)

An accessible and thorough introduction to implicatures, a key topic in all frameworks of pragmatics. Starting with a definition of the various types of implicatures in Gricean, neo-Gricean and post-Gricean pragmatics, the book covers many important questions for current pragmatic theories, namely: the distinction between explicit and implicit forms of pragmatic enrichment, the criteria for drawing a line between semantic and pragmatic meaning, the relations between the structure of language and its use, the social and cognitive factors underlying the use (...) of implicatures by native speakers, and the factors influencing their acquisition for children and second language learners. Written in non-technical language, Implicatures will appeal to students and teachers in linguistics, applied linguistics, psychology and sociology, who are interested in how language is used for communication, and how children and learners develop pragmatic skills. (shrink)

Linguists are becoming more and more interested in the genealogy of linguistics. And in reconstituting the history or prehistory of their science, they are discovering numerous ancestors, sometimes with a certain astonished recognition. Interest in the origin of linguistics is awakened when the problems of the origin of language cease to be proscribed and when a certain geneticism—or a certain generativism—comes back into its own. One could show that this is not a chance encounter. This historical activity is no longer (...) elaborated solely at the margins of scientific practice, and its results are already being felt. In particular, we are no longer at the stage of the prejudice according to which linguistics as a science was born of a single "epistemological break"—a concept, called Bachelardian, much used or abused today—and of a break occurring in our immediate vicinity. We no longer think, as does Maurice Grammont, that "everything prior to the nineteenth century, which is not yet linguistics, can be expedited in several lines."1 Noam Chomsky, in an article announcing his Cartesian Linguistics, which presents in its major lines the concept of "generative grammar," states: "My aim here is not to justify the interest of this investigation, nor to describe summarily its procedure, but instead to underline that by a curious detour it takes us back to a tradition of ancient thought, rather than constituting a new departure or a radical innovation in the domain of linguistics and psychology."2If we are to set ourselves down in the space of this "curious detour," we could not help encountering the "linguistics" of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We would have to ask ourselves, then, in what ways Rousseau's reflections on the sign, on language, on the origin of languages, on the relations between speech and writing, and so on announce what we are so often tempted to consider as the very modernity of linguistic science, that is, modernity as linguistic science, since so many other "human sciences" refer to linguistics as their particular model. And we are all the more encouraged to practice this detour in that Chomsky's major references, in Cartesian Linguistics, are to the Logi cand General and Reasoned Grammar of Port-Royal, works that Rousseau knew well and held in high esteem.3 For example, on several occasions Rousseau cites Duclos' commentary on the General and Reasoned Grammar. The Essay on the Origin of Languages even closes with one of these citations. Thus Rousseau acknowledges his debt.1. Maurice Grammont, cited by Noam Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics , p. 1.2. Chomsky, "De quelques constantes de la théory linguistique," Diogène, no. 51 ; my italics. See also Chomsky, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory , p.15 ff. There is an analogous gesture in Jakobson, who refers not only to Peirce and, as does Chomsky, to Humboldt but also to John of Salisbury, to the Stoics, and to Plato's Cratylus: see Jakobson, "A la recherche de l'essence du langage," Diogène, no. 51 .3. "I began with some book of philosophy, like the Port-Royal Logic, Locke's Essay, Malebranch, Leibniz, Descartes, etc." .Jacques Derrida, professor of the history of philosophy at the Ècole Normale Supérieure in Paris, is the author of, among other works, Writing and Difference, Of Grammatology, and Marges de la philosophie, from which the present essay is taken. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "The Law of Genre," appeared in the Autumn 1980 issue. Alan Bass, a psychoanalyst, has published essays on deconstruction and psychoanalytic theory and practice. (shrink)

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

The text is divided into two parts. In the first part, the author describes the eternalists’ and presentists’ positions as the two basic possible statements of the ontology of time . The eternalist position and the emphasis it puts on the actual existence of past and future events are thoroughlly analysed in order to show that in fact, they end up making strings of symbols that are not correct statements. It is therefore necessary to step beyond these clumsy statements and (...) try to understand more exactly the eternalist intuitions on a deeper, metaphysical level. That is the main concern of the second part of the text, in which the metaphysical implications of both positions are compared. At the end of the linguistical analysis in the first part, we got to a point where it may seem that presentism and eternalism are only different attempts at expressing what is in fact the same understanding of the nature of time, but in the metaphysical analysis that follows, it will turn out that they are not. Presentism and eternalism are shown to be two different ontological approaches of time in relation to space . The author then focuses on the consequences these two positions have especially on the concept of the present and of its flow through time. In the end, presentism and eternalism turn out to be completely different positions that – in parallel with the famous McTaggart’s argument – claim a very strong reality of time on the one hand or, on the other hand, its utter unreality. (shrink)

Réexamen de l'établissement du texte et du sens d'Aristophane, Nuées 1005-1007, où est évoquée la course d'entraînement d'un jeune sportif dans le gymnase de l'Académie avec une couronne sur la tête, à la lumière des études philologiques récentes et des peintures de vases.