Supra-Bayesianism is the Bayesian response to learning the opinions of others. Probability pooling constitutes an alternative response. One natural question is whether there are cases where probability pooling gives the supra-Bayesian result. This has been called the problem of Bayes-compatibility for pooling functions. It is known that in a common prior setting, under standard assumptions, linear pooling cannot be nontrivially Bayes-compatible. We show by contrast that geometric pooling can be nontrivially Bayes-compatible. Indeed, we show that, under certain assumptions, geometric and (...) Bayes-compatible pooling are equivalent. Granting supra-Bayesianism its usual normative status, one upshot of our study is thus that, in a certain class of epistemic contexts, geometric pooling enjoys a normative advantage over linear pooling as a social learning mechanism. We discuss the philosophical ramifications of this advantage, which we show to be robust to variations in our statement of the Bayes-compatibility problem. (shrink)

The Dominican theologian Durand of Saint-Pourçain (ca. 1275–1334), breaking from the wide consensus, made a two-pronged attack on concurrentism (i.e., the theory according to which God does more than conserving creatures in existence and co-causes all their actions). On the one hand, he shows that the concurrentist position leads to the unacceptable consequence that God is the direct cause of man’s evil actions. On the other hand, he attacks the metaphysical foundations of concurrentism, first in the version offered by Thomas (...) Aquinas and Giles of Rome, and then in a more general way. Against Thomas and Giles, he challenges Neoplatonic assumptions about causality and being. More generally, he establishes that God’s action and a creature’s action can be neither identical nor different, and thus cannot both be direct causes of the same effect. Without claiming that Durand’s series of objections are definitely unanswerable, we may at least observe that they have generally been underestimated (which earned him the lowly role of the mere foil of the concurrentist view in the history of philosophy) and are able to do considerable damage to concurrentism. (shrink)

This book explains, in simple terms, with a minimum of mathematics, why things can appear to be in two places at the same time, why correlations between simultaneous events occurring far apart cannot be explained by local mechanisms, and why, nevertheless, the quantum theory can be understood in terms of matter in motion. No need to worry, as some people do, whether a cat can be both dead and alive, whether the moon is there when nobody looks at it, or (...) whether quantum systems need an observer to acquire definite properties. The author's inimitable and even humorous style makes the book a pleasure to read while bringing a new clarity to many of the longstanding puzzles of quantum physics. (shrink)

Building a coherent discourse on professionalism is a challenge for corporate social responsibility practitioners, as there is not yet an established knowledge basis for CSR, and CSR is a contested notion that covers a wide variety of issues and moral foundations. Relying on insights from the literature on micro-CSR, new professionalism, and Boltanski and Thévenot’s economies of worth framework, we examine the discourses of 56 CSR practitioners in South Korea on their claimed professionalism. Our analysis delineates four distinct discourses of (...) CSR professionalism—strategic corporate giving, social innovation, risk management, and sustainability transition—that are derived from a plurality of more or less compatible moral foundations whose partial overlaps and tensions we document in a systematic manner. Our results portray these practitioners as compromise makers who selectively combine morally distant justifications to build their own specific professionalism discourse, with the aim to advance CSR within and across organizations. By uncovering the moral relationality connecting these discourses, our findings show that moral pluralism is a double-edged sword that can not only bolster the justification of CSR professionalism but also threaten collective professionalism at the field level. Overall, our study suggests paying more attention to the moral relationality and tensions that underlie professional fields. (shrink)

Contrary to what many interpretations claim, according to Bayle faith does not completely eliminate reason. It intervenes to reveal factual truths that can only be known through revelation (for example, that God allowed Adam and Eve to sin). To these factual truths can be applied a rational principle (an axiomatic and evident one, according to Bayle, which he calls a "common notion"), namely, that "what God does is well done." God allowed sin, so we must think it was justified, even (...) if we don't understand why. This approach is what I call, cum grano salis, Pierre Bayle's theodicy. (shrink)

I inquire into argument at the system level, exploring the controversy over whether climate scientists should fly. I document participants’ knowledge of a skeptical argument that because scientists fly, they cannot testify credibly about the climate emergency. I show how this argument has been managed by pro-climate action arguers, and how some climate scientists have developed parallel reasoning, articulating a sophisticated case why they will be more effective in the controversy if they fly less. Finally, I review some strategies arguers (...) deploy to use the arguments of others against them. I argue that only by attending to argument-making at the system level can we understand how arguers come to know the resources for argument available in a controversy and to think strategically about how to use them. I call for more work on argument at the system level. (shrink)

Transhuman, or trans-human, is the concept of an intermediary form between human and posthuman. In other words, a transhuman is a being that resembles a human in most respects but who has powers and abilities beyond those of standard humans. These abilities might include improved intelligence, awareness, strength, or durability. Transhumans sometimes appear in science-fiction as cyborgs or genetically-enhanced humans. This book will look into the question "Can machines think?" followed by "Can humans extend their lifespan and keep up with (...) machines?" In other words, do we (humans) have to modify ourselves to be bionic humans, to co-exist and make the most of machines in future? (shrink)

These lectures on logic, more specifically proof theory, are basically intended for postgraduate students and researchers in logic. The question at stake is the nature of mathematical knowledge and the difference between a question and an answer, i.e., the implicit and the explicit. The problem is delicate mathematically and philosophically as well: the relation between a question and its answer is a sort of equality where one side is ``more equal than the other'': one thus discovers essentialist blind spots. Starting (...) with Godel's paradox --so to speak, the incompleteness of answers with respect to questions--the book proceeds with paradigms inherited from Gentzen's cut-elimination. Various settings are studied: sequent calculus, natural deduction, lambda calculi, category-theoretic composition, up to geometry of interaction, all devoted to explicitation, which eventually amounts to inverting an operator in a von Neumann algebra. Mathematical language is usually described as referring to a preexisting reality. Logical operations can be given an alternative procedural meaning: typically, the operators involved in GoI are invertible, not because they are constructed according to the book, but because logical rules are those ensuring invertibility. Similarly, the durability of truth should not be taken for granted: one should distinguish between imperfect and perfect modes. The procedural explanation of the infinite thus identifies it with the unfinished, i.e., the perennial. But is perenniality perennial? This questioning yields a possible logical explanation for algorithmic complexity. This highly original course on logic by one of the world's leading proof theorists challenges mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, and philosophers to rethink their views and concepts on the nature of mathematical knowledge in an exceptionally profound way. (shrink)

Go back to An-fang, the Peace Square at An-Fang, the Beginning Place at An-Fang, where all things start (… ) An-Fang was near a city, the only living city with a pre-atomic name (… ) The headquarters of the People Programmer was at An-Fang, and there the mistake happened: A ruby trembled. Two tourmaline nets failed to rectify the laser beam. A diamond noted the error. Both the error and the correction went into the general computer. Cordwainer SmithThe Dead Lady (...) of Clown Town, 1964. (shrink)

While the formulation of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow, including the experience dimensions, has remained stable since its introduction in 1975, its dedicated measurement tools, research methodologies, and fields of application, have evolved considerably. Among these, education stands out as one of the most active. In recent years, researchers have examined flow in the context of other theoretical constructs such as motivation. The resulting work in the field of education has led to the development of a new model for understanding (...) flow experience in education, specifically dedicated to adult learning. As a result of both a meticulous analysis of existing models and consideration of more recent developments, a new flow scale has thus been developed. The aim of this study is therefore twofold: to validate the new flow measurement scale dedicated to the educational environment, EduFlow-2, and to test a new theoretical model. Students taking a course, some on-site and others in a MOOC, participated. Several scales were administered online at the end of the participants' course during the 2017 academic year. The factor structure of EduFlow-2 was tested using Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling. Several models were tested. The model with a second-order factor best fit the data. We tested the invariance of the flow scale measure for gender and for the type of training. We were able to show that the flow scale is invariant of the modalities of these two variables. Results revealed good psychometric qualities for the scale, making it suitable for both on-site and distance learning. The analysis also revealed significant relationships with the classic variables of motivation, self-efficacy, learning climate, and life satisfaction. Furthermore, all four dimensions of the model were found to be adequate and consistent with the underlying theoretical arguments. In the end, this new, short flow scale and the theoretical model were demonstrated to be promising for future studies in the field of education. (shrink)

For many presentist philosophers, e.g. Zimmerman (Contemp Debates Metaphys 10:211–225, 2008), a central motivation in favour of presentism is that it is supposed to be part of common sense. But the fact that common-sense intuitions are indeed presentist is usually taken for granted (and sometimes also conceded by eternalists). As has been shown in other domains of philosophy (e.g. free will), we should be careful when attributing some supposed intuitions to common sense, and Torrengo (Phenomenology and Mind 12: 50–55, 2017) (...) and Le Bihan (Igitur-Arguments Philos 9(1):1–23, 2018) have legitimately raised doubts about the assumption that common sense is presentist. In this paper, I take up this challenge and try to show that our common-sense intuitions do imply presentism. More precisely, the intuitions that I take to imply presentism are fundamental intuitions about our selves as conscious beings. The upshot is that presentism is so much embedded within our conception of our selves that if presentism is false, then I don’t exist! (shrink)

We applaud Boyer's attempt to ground the psychology of ownership partly in a cooperative logic. In this commentary, we propose to go further and ground the psychology of ownership solely in a cooperative logic. The predictions of bargaining theory, we argue, completely contradict the actual features of ownership intuitions. Ownership is only about the calculation of mutually beneficial, reciprocal contracts.

Despite her hostility to surrealism, Simone Weil received a paradoxical reception in the work and thought of Georges Bataille. From this point onwards she has attracted the interest of psychoanalysis up to the present day. After their meeting and exchanges at the beginning of the 1930s, Bataille wrote a novel in which he created a portrait of Simone Weil and asks, through her, questions which served to develop and enrich the next stages of his theoretical constructions. This pathway to progress (...) through reference to Simone Weil has often gone unnoticed. However, it deserves to be reconstituted because it brings a disturbing light that Weil would not have approved but that could help us to renew our understanding of her personality and her work. (shrink)

This entirely new English translation of Buridan's classic treatment of logical consequence aims to make accessible to the modern reader the foremost treatment of the subject in the middle ages. The translation is accompanied by an introduction in which Buridan's ideas are set in their historical context and clearly explained.

Bringing together two aspects of Thomas Aquinas's thought that have been studied separately: his theory of God's concurrence and his theory of instrumental causality, I show how he uses the latter (which I discuss first) to clarify the Proclusian principle that the first cause has a greater influence on an effect than the proximate causes. Thanks to this theory, Aquinas accounts for the fact that it is God who confers existence to every new being that is produced by natural processes, (...) without however negating the agency of secondary, created causes. (shrink)

Dans cette étude, le rôle et la valeur de l’ornementation sont repensés en examinant principalement, par une approche différente, l’une des mosaïques de sol de la Maison de Dionysos à Néa Paphos, celle de l’enlèvement de Ganymède par un aigle. L’organisation spatiale du décor géométrique (la structure générale avec ses motifs) et de la scène figurée permet de suggérer la présence d’un triclinium. L’analyse d’un type de motif géométrique en particulier, le « fleuron en six‑feuilles », montre qu’il revêt vraisemblablement (...) une signification astrale. L’interprétation considère la relation étroite entre la scène figurée et les sept motifs d’étoile, qui renvoient aux planètes connues dans l’Antiquité, et s’appuie sur des comparanda iconographiques et textuels pour réexaminer la portée symbolique de la composition dans son contexte d’utilisation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article, of essayistic-bibliographic character, seeks to reflect on the uses, powers and meanings of the term Aesthetic Education in scientific research, starting, firstly, from approaches on the concept of aesthetics from the texts The Problem of Content, Material and Form in Literary Creation, by Mikhail Bakhtin and Malaise dans l’ésthetique, by Jacques Rancière, to then mobilize, from a Latin American perspective, its relations with the field of education in dialogue with Latin American authors. The text is constituted as (...) a theoretical-methodological exercise to think the Aesthetic Education from angles and prisms still little investigated in the current literature on the subject. (shrink)

Pref. and introd. in English; text in Latin.

Schelling est le moins connu des " grands " philosophes : c'est que, sans doute, dans l'œuvre qu'il nous propose, il n'y a rien justement à connaître, aucun sens ultime et autonome qui puisse désormais se représenter, se résumer pour lui-même, se diffuser dans une quelconque postérité - rien d'autre que l'œuvre elle-même et le travail toujours recommencé de son impossible perfection. Pendant soixante années, de 1794 à 1854, qui sont les plus riches peut-être (parce que les dernières) de l'histoire (...) de la philosophie, une pensée a cherché à se clore, à se comprendre, à s'arrêter, sans cesser de se voir rouverte par l'effondrement (le retournement) des structures où elle avait cru s'équilibrer. Il a semblé à l'auteur de cette étude que ces ruines successives finissaient par présenter un tracé signifiant, comme si le véritable " système " de Schelling s'écrivait peu à peu, hors de la vue du philosophe, dans un autre espace qui est celui de l'histoire même de son œuvre, jusqu'au moment où, dans sa " dernière philosophie ", tout le passé contradictoire se récapitule et redevient contemporain au sein d'une construction qui se présente elle-même comme dédoublée et interminable. On trouvera ici l'histoire de cette formation, de ce destin que Schelling a patiemment enduré sans jamais chercher à l'interrompre de manière prématurée, et qui fait de lui une figure proprement exemplaire. Grâce à cette œuvre en effet, où la pensée apparaît perpétuellement replongée dans la profondeur parfois désespérante de son travail, il devient possible d'approcher d'un peu plus près " l'acte et le lieu " de la philosophie, partout ailleurs masqués par la perfection superficielle de son résultat ; par là même, au-delà de l'individu Schelling, c'est une question plus vaste qui se trouve posée - la question : Qu'est-ce qu'une œuvre philosophique? (shrink)

"Vous êtes perdus si vous oubliez que les fruits sont à tous et que la terre n'est à personne." Le Discours est une critique virulente et toujours actuelle d'une société où l'homme est dépossédé dès sa naissance de sa qualité d'homme. Il faut relire J.-J. Rousseau. Ses attaques contre le travail, la propriété et, en général, la vie sociale telle que nous la trouvons constituée dans un monde où nous sommes jetés sans l'avoir voulu ont, pour nos oreilles, des échos (...) à la fois très modernes et inattendus. La Reine fantasque est un conte "gai et fou". (shrink)

Im Folgenden stellen wir drei aktuelle Forschungsbereiche zur formalen Logik bei Kant allgemeinverständlich dar und greifen dabei auf die trans zendentale Logik nur dann zurück, wenn sie ein besseres Verständnis der formalen Logik ermöglicht: Zunächst wird Kants Beitrag zur Rezeption und Weiterentwicklung von Euler-artigen Diagrammen dargestellt. Diese Diagramme wurden in den 1990er Jahren wiederentdeckt, als formales System interpretiert und werden heute insbes. in der Didaktik, in den Kognitionswissenschaften, in der Linguistik, in KI-Bereichen wie der (Logik-basierten) Wissensrepräsentation eingesetzt, und auch in (...) der Philosophie verwendet (Kapitel 2). Mehrere Studien haben in den letzten Jahren gezeigt, dass Kant in weiten Teilen seines Systems Oppositionsverhältnisse verwendet, die der Struktur des logischen Quadrats entsprechen. Das logische Quadrat ist heute Gegenstand intensiver Forschung, da es neben der klassischen, auch die paravollständige und parakonsistente Negation abbildet (Kap. 3). Jüngst wurde zudem die Implementierbarkeit der kantischen Logik in ein formalisiertes deduktives System bewiesen. Die Bedeutung dieses Ergebnisses wird insbesondere im Hinblick auf die formalisierte Umsetzung der Sätze vom Widerspruch, vom zureichenden Grund und der Ausschließung des Mittleren erläutert (Kap. 4). Abschließend möchten wir ein paar Perspektiven für die Forschung zur formalen Logik bei Kant nennen (Kap. 5). -- -/- Note: No financial support acknowledged by the second autor (S. Kovač). (shrink)

The view that infants possess a full-fledged propositional language-of-thought (LoT) is appealing, providing a unifying account for infants’ precocious reasoning skills in many domains. However, careful appraisal of empirical evidence suggests that there is still no convincing evidence that infants possess discrete representations of abstract relations, suggesting that infants’ LoT remains incomplete. Parallel arguments hold for perception.

Le terme « perception » apparaît pour la première fois dans son sens philosophique dans les Académiques de Cicéron, où il traduit le terme technique stoïcien κατάληψις, traduit également par compréhension. La perception n’est pas une « perception sensible » au sens moderne du terme, car elle ne se définit pas comme une impression produite en nous par les choses extérieures, mais comme l’assentiment donné à la phantasia dite compréhensive ou perceptive, c’est‑à‑dire celle qui est conforme à son objet, claire (...) et distincte. Il s’agit pour les stoïciens de l’un des critères de la vérité. Pour contester l’existence de la perception et son rôle-clé dans l’épistémologie stoïcienne, les académiciens ont adopté une stratégie en deux temps : affirmer que l’assentiment porte sur des propositions et non sur des représentations, et contester l’existence d’une représentation perceptive, discernable des représentations fausses. Les stoïciens ont répondu sur ces deux points et ont reconstruit la notion de perception inventée initialement par Zénon dans le cadre de cette polémique, qui a forgé la notion classique de la perception. Le continuisme perceptif des stoïciens et leur conception cinématographique de la perception sensible sont les clés de leur conception de la perception. (shrink)

The history of the relations between Leibniz and Spinoza is a matter of philosophical and scholarly controversy. This chapter aims to refer to the first thesis as the Necessity of Actuality and to the second thesis as the Plenitude of Possibilities. It examines how Leibniz's stance with respect to these two theses, and more generally his views on modality, grew out as a response to Spinoza's views. Leibniz explicitly connects Spinoza's attributes with the concept of a world. As most commentators, (...) Leibniz reads Spinoza as a necessitarian, which is a natural interpretation. The difference between Leibniz's and Spinoza's views would reside in their conceptions of God and of the mechanism whereby the actual world comes to exist. Leibniz entertains the hypothesis of reality encompassing a plurality of actual worlds, which seems to achieve the Plenitude of Possibility. (shrink)

Now in paperback, Jean-Luc Marion's groundbreaking philosophy of human uncertainty. In Negative Certainties, renowned philosopher Jean-Luc Marion challenges some of the most fundamental assumptions we have developed about knowledge: that it is categorical, predicative, and positive. Following Descartes, Kant, and Heidegger, he looks toward our finitude and the limits of our reason. He asks an astonishingly simple—but profoundly provocative—question in order to open up an entirely new way of thinking about knowledge: Isn’t our uncertainty, our finitude, and rational (...) limitations, one of the few things we can be certain about? Marion shows how the assumption of knowledge as positive demands a reductive epistemology that disregards immeasurable or disorderly phenomena. He shows that we have experiences every day that have no identifiable causes or predictable reasons and that these constitute a very real knowledge—a knowledge of the limits of what can be known. Establishing this “negative certainty,” Marion applies it to four aporias, or issues of certain uncertainty: the definition of man; the nature of God; the unconditionality of the gift; and the unpredictability of events. Translated for the first time into English, Negative Certainties is an invigorating work of epistemological inquiry that will take a central place in Marion’s oeuvre. (shrink)

In 2016, the Colorado legislature passed an amendment to Colorado’s medical proxy law that established a process for the appointment of a physician to act as proxy decision maker of last resort for an unrepresented patient (Colorado HB 16-1101: Medical Decisions For Unrepresented Patients). The legislative process brought together a diverse set of stakeholders, not all of whom supported the legislation. Following passage of the statutory amendment, the Colorado Collaborative for Unrepresented Patients (CCUP), a group of advocates responsible for initiating (...) the legislative process, coordinated a unique effort to engage these stakeholders in the creation of a set of voluntary guidelines to assist facilities and individual careproviders in the implementation of policies and procedures enabled by the statute. This article delineates the questions and concerns of stakeholders, describes how those issues were addressed within the guidelines, and proposes additional opportunities for research to assess the impact of the legislation in Colorado. (shrink)

A 62-year-old female with Huntington’s disease presented after a suicide attempt. Her advance directive stated that she did not want intubation or resuscitation, which her family acknowledged and supported. Despite these directives, she was resuscitated in the emergency department and continued to state that she would attempt suicide again. Her suicidality in the face of a chronic and advancing illness, and her prolonged consistency in her desire to take her own life, left careproviders wondering how to provide ethical, respectful care (...) to this patient. Tension between the ethical principles of autonomy and beneficence is central in this case. The patient’s narrative demonstrated that her suicide was an autonomous decision, free from coercion or disordered thinking from mental illness. Beneficence then would seem to necessitate care aligned with the patient’s desire to end her life, which created ethical uneasiness for her family and careproviders. The case highlights several end-of-life ethical considerations that have received much recent attention. With ongoing discussions about the legalization of aid in dying across the country, caregivers are challenged to understand what beneficence means in people with terminal illnesses who want a say in their death. This case also highlights the profound moral distress of families and careproviders that arises in such ethically challenging scenarios. (shrink)

Il est […] illusoire de vouloir affronter seul des problèmes qui appellent le dépassement des limites liées aux spécialisations disciplinaires et aux enjeux institutionnels. Après avoir lu l’ensemble des contributions au présent volume de Corela et m’être plongé dans un certain nombre de travaux cités dans ces articles, profitant du fait qu’Ingrid Mayeur et Marie-Anne Paveau ont eu l’élégance de me convier à un dialogue critique, je répondrai brièvement à cert...

Pour bien établir que le poète n’a pas pour tâche de rendre simplement ce qu’il a sous les yeux, mais, bien plutôt, de faire apparaître les choses dans leur advenir même, l’œuvre du poète grec Pindare s’impose à nous comme l’une des plus propres à manifester la vérité de cette thèse ; c’est l’étude de ses Odes Victoriales, principalement de la Septième Olympique dans son développement, qui va nous fournir de quoi la déterminer concrètement, en nous montrant comment le poète (...) procède en toute conscience. (shrink)

Dans ses tragédies, Sénèque met en scène des représentations « imaginaires », qui empruntent certains de leurs traits aux phantasiai stoïciennes, d’une manière très libre. D’un côté, le dramaturge a mis à distance l’univers fictif de son théâtre, lieu d’une réelle autonomie poétique. D’un autre côté, il relie presque toujours, chez ses personnages, les troubles de la perception et du rapport avec la réalité à une faiblesse de l’âme. Qu’il s’agisse d’illusions perceptives, d’hallucinations, d’un rêve, ou encore de fantasmes au (...) sens moderne du terme, le rôle déterminant du sujet dans la qualité de ses représentations est souligné : est ainsi mise en lumière la responsabilité des protagonistes dans le mouvement du destin qui les emporte. (shrink)

Durante la vida de Newton, su Óptica se publicó en sucesivas ediciones. En esta medida, fijar una versión definitiva del texto es problemático, por lo cual se hace necesario recurrir no sólo al texto sino también a los contextos y a la intertextualidad. El artículo plantea las dificultades de las lecturas tradicionales de la Óptica (como respuesta a teorías de la visión y la luz precedentes y como parte de la físico-teología inglesa) y argumenta a favor de una lectura teológica (...) del tratado, desde la epistemología de la Óptica y del entusiasmo religioso que Newton rechazó categóricamente. Consecuencia de esta lectura es una reformulación del texto, el contexto y la intertextualidad que hacen comprensible la Óptica de Newton. (shrink)