Dans un contrepoint polémique au livre de A. Damásio, L'Erreur de Descartes, nous soutenons: que la thèse de l a «séparation» de l’âme et du corps permet, dans les écrits physiologiques de Descartes tels que le Traité de l'Homme, une réduction des fonctions végétative et sensitive aux processus mécaniques et naturels du corps humain; que l'in troduction d'une âme dans le corps se justifie, chez Descartes, par l'impossibilité de rendre raison de la rationalité du comportement humain et de la conscience (...) par les simples mécanismes physiologiques et la seule «disposition des organes». On montre, donc, que Descartes est, d'un côté, un des père s de la moderne approche neurologique qui est à l a base du livre de M. Damásio et, de l'autre, qu'il a vu d'avance une des limites d'une explication exclusivement neurologique de la complexité du comportement humain. (shrink)

En partant des derniers paragraphes de la cinquième parti du Discours de la Méthode, on a reconstitué la formulation cartésienne de la perception d’un autre moi. Les critères de l’usage du langage et de la plasticité du comportement ont été analysés à la lumière de l’idée d’une machine universelle et du test de Turing. On conclut de la faiblesse de l’argument cartésien sur l’irréductibilité de la pensée à un dispositif machinal. En tant qu’issue de la difficulté, on propose une révision (...) de la façon cartésienne de caractérisation de la pensée à partir du concept d’expérience, tout en abandonnant le thème d’une perception interne incommunicable et intémoignable. (shrink)

There is increasing concern about “surveillance capitalism,” whereby for-profit companies generate value from data, while individuals are unable to resist (Zuboff 2019). Non-profits using data-enabled surveillance receive less attention. Higher education institutions (HEIs) have embraced data analytics, but the wide latitude that private, profit-oriented enterprises have to collect data is inappropriate. HEIs have a fiduciary relationship to students, not a narrowly transactional one (see Jones et al, forthcoming). They are responsible for facets of student life beyond education. In addition to (...) classrooms, learning management systems, and libraries, HEIs manage dormitories, gyms, dining halls, health facilities, career advising, police departments, and student employment. HEIs collect and use student data in all of these domains, ostensibly to understand learner behaviors and contexts, improve learning outcomes, and increase institutional efficiency through “learning analytics” (LA). ID card swipes and Wi-Fi log-ins can track student location, class attendance, use of campus facilities, eating habits, and friend groups. Course management systems capture how students interact with readings, video lectures, and discussion boards. Application materials provide demographic information. These data are used to identify students needing support, predict enrollment demands, and target recruiting efforts. These are laudable aims. However, current LA practices may be inconsistent with HEIs’ fiduciary responsibilities. HEIs often justify LA as advancing student interests, but some projects advance primarily organizational welfare and institutional interests. Moreover, LA advances a narrow conception of student interests while discounting privacy and autonomy. Students are generally unaware of the information collected, do not provide meaningful consent, and express discomfort and resigned acceptance about HEI data practices, especially for non-academic data (see Jones et al. forthcoming). The breadth and depth of student information available, combined with their fiduciary responsibility, create a duty that HEIs exercise substantial restraint and rigorous evaluation in data collection and use. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with explaining some of the principal theoretical developments in elementary particle physics and discussing the associated methodological problems both in respect of heuristics and appraisal. Particular reference is made to relativistic quantum field theory, renormalization, Feynman diagram techniques, the analytic S-matrix and the Chew — Frautschi bootstrap.

Oxford Scholarly Classics is a new series that makes available again great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in uniform series design, the reissues will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.

In the context of business, interactions between individuals generate social systems that emerge anywhere within a corporation or in its relations with external agents. These systems influence the behaviors of individuals and, as a result, the collective actions we usually attribute to corporations. Social systems thus make a difference in processes of action that are often morally evaluated by internal and external agents to the firm. Despite this relevance, social systems have not yet been the object of specific attention in (...) the literature on moral agency in business. To fill this gap, I construct a theoretical framework based on Luhmann’s ideas on social systems and morality. In particular, I argue that morality is a phenomenon that occurs in communication, and an agent can engage in morality in three different ways (as a _moral factor_, an _expressive moral agent_, or a _reflective moral agent_) depending on the functions it plays in communicative interactions. Based on this framework, I argue that social systems in business can be considered moral agents of those types. (shrink)

This comes near to satisfying; but even with ipsa the change of subject from tecta to plaustra is awkward, and exsultant is inappropriate to a lumbering plaustrum . I suggest reading cisia instead of ipsa. The cisium was a fast light two-wheeled vehicle which might well jump up on a rough road; and the first three letters cis could have become the -es of the MS exsultantes. Two further points: lapis uiai is not ‘a stone on the road’ , but (...) rather the stone of the road, i.e. the paving; and utrimque is not ‘on one side or the other’ but ‘on both sides’. There remains Ernout's objection that the suppression of the final s of lapis is unlikely. One can only say that no one would have ventured to introduce by conjecture pendentibu' structas or manantibu' stillent, but both are found in Lucretius' text. (shrink)

Ancient rhetoric divided the questions which concerned the orator into the definite and the indefinite, quaestiones finitae and quaestiones infinitae, the former concerned with particular persons and occasions, the latter without any such reference. To take a simple example from Quintilian, ‘Should one marry?’ is a quaestio infinita, ‘Should Cato marry?’ a quaestio finita. The distinction was introduced, or at any rate first clearly formulated, by Hermagoras in the second century B.C., and became an established part of rhetorical theory. The (...) Greek term for the indefinite, or general, question was none of the various Latin equivalents used by Cicero attained general currency, and the Greek term prevailed. (shrink)

Tomas Aquinas defined truth as the correspondence between things and understanding. Castro Alves paints the horror of the slave nautical traffic. In his essay On the Concept of History, Walter Benjamin reminds us: “The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘emergency situation’ in which we live is the rule.” This ‘emergency situation’ was Fascism. Albert Camus defended his romance La Peste against the accusation of Roland Barthes that is was “dehors de l’histoire”, pointing out that it was (...) not only about the recent historical phenomenon of Fascism, but also about the permanent risk of its rebirth. Agnes Heller associates faith with prejudice and alienation. The following article will explore the Thomist concept of truth, Benjamin’s concept of history, Camus’ allegory of the plague, Agnes Heller’s notion of faith and Castro Alves’ powerful denouncement of slave traffic, to better criticize the phenomenon of post-truth, a rebirth of fascist information practices. (shrink)