The human relationship to nature is a deeply ambiguous one. Human animals are both a part of nature and distinct from it. They are part of nature in the sense that, like other forms of life, they were brought into existence by natural processes, and, like other forms of life, they are dependent on their environment for survival and success. Yet humans are also reflective animals with sophisticated cultural systems. Because of their immense power and their ability to wield it (...) intentionally, humans have duties and responsibilities that other animals do not. (shrink)

The essays explore virtually all of Johnson's writings: each of his novels, his numerous short stories, the range of his nonfiction essays, his many book ...

Les médias ont longtemps exercé un contrôle sur le discours public pouvant les concerner. Cela n’est plus le cas. Elle est révolue l’époque où la critique des médias pouvait très difficilement se faire entendre sur la place publi­que, dont les journalistes étaient les gardiens incontournables. Jusqu’à récem­ment, les médias dominaient le jeu et sélectionnaient les sources qui les criti­quaient publiquement. Ils pouvaient exercer une sorte de monopole de l’autocritique en se dotant de dispositifs d’autorégulation , dont l’efficacité, l’indépendance et la (...) crédi­bilité sont mises en cause dans plusieurs pays. Avec Internet et l’interactivité pro­pre aux médias sociaux, plus rien ne peut endiguer le flot de critiques. Les médias ne peuvent plus prétendre que l’autorégulation suffit à assurer la qualité et l’inté­grité de l’infor­mation, puisque leur production souffre de carences rapide­ment décelées par les citoyens, que l’on doit désormais considérer comme des agents de la corégulation. (shrink)

Recent scholarship on the idea of communism leads to questions of organization and what Michael Hardt refers to as “the problem of leadership.” Beyond the critical assessment of the crises of contemporary capitalism, and beyond the existing social democratic solutions, a psychoanalytically-informed Žižekian notion of the party offers solutions to ultra-left theories of networked horizontalism as well as versions of the party that repeat the problems of communist modernism. If the context of climate change, economic inequality and political authoritarianism require (...) that we reconsider “what is to be done” about global neoliberal capitalism, then the idea of the political party, understood in terms of Jacques Lacan’s Discourse of the Analyst, can provisionally occupy the place of a neutral knowledge of the objective demands of history that is premised on the experiences of the emancipatory left. Like the Analyst, the party does not stand in for or represent the people. However, through the fetishistic aspect of representation, as opposed to materially or ontologically-grounded guarantees for political power, the party registers a minimal difference from a technocratic University Discourse and an ultra-left Discourse of the Hysteric. (shrink)

English summary: Bonaventurian thought is indeed a monadology. This book makes use of Foucauldian archaeology in order to present the monadological discourse. Further, it provides a solution to the archaeological questions that relate to subject, object, and speech which reappear systematically in Bonaventure's texts. Further, as Bonaventure did not write a treaty of monadology, and as far as his monadology is only the result of his thought and practice, this book must be understood, instead, as a rewriting of his monadology. (...) French description: La pensee bonaventurienne est une monadologie. Son principe n'est pas l'unite indivisible de la monade, comme dans la monadologie leibnizienne, mais la ressemblance avec une tri-unite, la Trinite creatrice que tous les etres expriment a leur maniere. Le cadre de cetteexpression qui ne doit rien a une harmonie preetablie, releve d'unehierarchie qui, ordonnee a la Trinite, comprise comme modele exemplairede toutes les creatures qui en sont les images, necessite l'engagement d'un sujet libre qui peut s'y refuser. Cette etude use de l'archeologie foucaldienne et presente le discours monadologique qui articule le sujet et l'objet en tant que monades, comme solution a la problematique archeologique qui articule sujet, objet et discours. Enfin, dans la mesure ou Bonaventure n'a pas ecrit de traite monadologique et que sa monadologie est la resultante de sa pensee et de son exercice, ce livre doit etre compris comme une reecriture de sa monadologie. (shrink)

I identify the special sort of stability (invariance, resilience, etc.) that distinguishes laws from accidental truths. Although an accident can have a certain invariance under counterfactual suppositions, there is no continuum between laws and accidents here; a law's invariance is different in kind, not in degree, from an accident's. (In particular, a law's range of invariance is not "broader"--at least in the most straightforward sense.) The stability distinctive of the laws is used to explicate what it would mean for there (...) to be multiple grades (or degrees) of physical necessity. Whether there are is for science to discover. (shrink)

Plus que jamais, le souverainisme, parfois opposé au mondialisme, est au cœur des polémiques contemporaines qui mettent en jeu l'avenir de notre civilisation. Ces courants de pensée souterrains structurent l'action des politiques contemporains, traversant tout le spectre des clivages, de la droite à la gauche. Pour permettre au lecteur de mieux comprendre, ce livre étudie les soubassements philosophiques et historiques profonds du souverainisme. Il montre en quoi ce dernier est une vision complète du monde, de la place de l'homme dans (...) l'univers, et qu'il est loin d'être un simple sentiment de nostalgie surannée. Ce livre propose une reconstruction des identités: celle d'une nation, celle des corps intermédiaires et celle de la personne, en particulier celle de notre identité personnelle, culturelle, et plus dérangeant, sexuelle. Il repousse le danger létal de la mentalité 'woke.' Il propose enfin une aventure humaine. Il fait connaitre l'état d'esprit d'une communauté d'hommes et de femmes, qui doivent s'unir afin de constituer une force politique porteuse de renouveau. Il vous exposera des solutions politiques, sociales, culturelles et économiques concrètes, montrant que le souverainisme est un atout battant aisément le progressisme face aux défis du monde moderne. Lorsque vous aurez lu ce livre, vous comprendrez comment le souverainisme reconstruit patiemment les liens brisés de l'humanisme et souhaiterez faire partie des hommes et des femmes accomplis, porteurs de ce renouveau politique."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

It has been argued that an epistemically rational agent’s evidence is subjectively mediated through some rational epistemic standards, and that there are incompatible but equally rational epistemic standards available to agents. This supports Permissiveness, the view according to which one or multiple fully rational agents are permitted to take distinct incompatible doxastic attitudes towards P (relative to a body of evidence). In this paper, I argue that the above claims entail the existence of a unique and more reliable epistemic standard. (...) My strategy relies on Condorcet’s Jury Theorem. This gives rise to an important problem for those who argue that epistemic standards are permissive, since the reliability criterion is incompatible with such a type of Permissiveness. (shrink)

Le présent livre part d'une idée polémique et critique : la philosophie est encore aujourd'hui dominée et commandée par la théologie et la religion. Cette domination prend la vie pour sujet et la mort comme alliée et s'appuie sur une transcendance, une instance qui vient à la verticale de la vie. Cette domination structure la philosophie politique et donne forme à l'idéologie des Partis et des États qui mettent la vie et la mort en jeu et qui subordonnent la vie (...) démocratique à une politique religieuse ou à une religion politique. Il faut alors relire les philosophes de la modernité, ceux qui s'inscrivent dans l'horizon de la fin de la religion et cherchent à interrompre l'absolu théologique - Nietzsche, Benjamin, Freud, Heidegger, et au-delà de la modernité Derrida et Ameisen - pour analyser comment ceux-ci résistent au pouvoir théologique et religieux à travers leur écriture : s'inspirer de leur résistance d'écriture pour inventer une tout autre pensée de la vie. La tâche qui se dessine ici est la suivante : revenir aux philosophes et aux penseurs qui se sont exposés de manière critique à la limite de la théologie et de la religion, dénouer le lien du théologique et du politique sans faire de la politique la religion du présent, autrement dit libérer la pensée et la possibilité d'une vie démocratique à venir, chercher dans les textes de la modernité et dans certaines strates imaginaires de la Bible la possibilité d'une vie sans appui : sans fondement théologico-religieux, suspendue à elle-même comme à sa propre liberté"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest on the notion of freedom as non-domination, according to which a subject is free to the extent that no agent has the capacity to arbitrarily interfere on his actions. Now, the most common way of interpreting the notion of freedom as non-domination restricts its applicability to cases where particular agents can intentionally and arbitrarily interfere on a subject�s affairs. In this paper, I present an argument which shows that the standard conception (...) of freedom as non-domination is too restrictive, and that this notion can be extended so as to as to ground a critical point of view on economic and social inequalities. (shrink)

L’origine iranienne du titre de « Vivificateur », donné en 4Q521 au héros eschatologique, auteur de la résurrection, a été établie dans un article antérieur. On suit ici le parcours du « Vivificateur » dans la littérature juive de langue grecque, dans le Nouveau Testament et dans les Actes de Thomas. In a former article we established that the title « Life-Giver » – which is attributed to an eschatological hero in 4Q521, who brings about the resurrection – has an (...) Iranian origin. Here we follow the track of the « Life-Giver » in Jewish literature written in Greek, in the New Testament and in the Acts of Thomas. (shrink)

En I Corinthiens 13,2, l'apôtre Paul fait une allusion polémique au Commentaire d'Habacuc 7,4-5. Cette allusion, transparente pour certains des destinataires de l'Épître, est masquée à d'autres par des procédés rhétoriques. In I Corinthians 13,2 the apostle Paul alludes polemically to the Commentary on Habakkuk 7,4-5. This allusion is evident to some addressees of the Epistle, but to others it is concealed by rhetorical devices.

Aborder Montaigne en pédagogue du jugement, c'est renouveler une lecture qui permit à Gabriel Compayré, Émile Faguet ou Pierre Villey de recommander la lecture d'un auteur réputé sceptique en dépit de son scepticisme. Comment bien juger? La connaissance des règles et l'aptitude à raisonner ne suffisent pas pour faire un bon jugement. En se confiant courageusement et lucidement à son jugement personnel, Montaigne apprend à penser en situation d'incertitude, tout en renouant avec l'expérience et les grands auteurs.

Standardly, epistemic peers regarding a given matter are said to be people of equal competence who share all relevant evidence. Alternatively, one can define epistemic peers regarding a given matter as people who are equally likely to be right about that matter. I argue that a definition in terms of likelihood captures the essence of epistemic peerhood better than the standard definition or any variant of it. What is more, a likelihood definition implies the truth of the central thesis in (...) the debate on peer disagreement, the so-called Equal Weight View, according to which we should give the opinions of our peers the same weight we give our own. Adopting a likelihood definition, however, does not end the debate on peer disagreement, because the alleged theoretical alternatives to the Equal Weight View, reinterpreted in the light of a likelihood definition, can in fact be shown to be compatible with this view—though the reinterpreted versions may appear less plausible than the original ones. (shrink)

Marc Jeannerod is director of the Institut des Sciences Cognitives in Lyon. His work in neuropsychology focuses on motor action. The idea that there is an essential relationship between bodily movement, consciousness, and cognition is not a new one, but recent advances in the technologies of brain imaging have provided new and detailed support for understanding this relationship. Experimental studies conducted by Jeannerod and his colleagues at Lyon have explored the details of brain activity, not only as we are (...) actively moving, but as we plan to move, as we imagine moving, and as we observe others move. His work also captures important distinctions between pathological and non-pathological experience. In The Cognitive Neuroscience of Action , Jeannerod focussed on object-oriented actions. What happens in the brain and what do we experience when we reach to grasp an object? How do we plan an action of that sort? To what extent does explicit motor imagery contribute to such action? What role does a motor representation or motor schema play in the accomplishment of action? At the very end of that book he raises questions that seem quite different. How is it possible to understand the intentions of others? Precisely what mechanisms allow us to imitate other people's actions? In more recent years much of Jeannerod's work has been in pursuit of these questions about interaction with others, and he has helped to show that there are intimate connections between moving ourselves and understanding others. Jeannerod's work does not lack important implications for a philosophical understanding of human activity. Although in contemporary philosophical debates on consciousness one can still find arguments that simply ignore bodily movement as an important factor in cognition, several recent works have returned to serious consideration of movement and action . In the following interview Jeannerod discusses many issues relevant to the philosophy of mind and action, including concepts of intentionality, movement and consciousness of movement, the role of simulation in understanding others, and the best way to conceptualize brain processes in all of these regards. Importantly, he makes constant reference to the empirical evidence, much of it developed in his own experimental studies. (shrink)

In this paper it will be shown that HEO and $HRO^E$ are isomorphic with respect to extensional equality. This answers a question of Troelstra [T, 2.4.12, p. 128]. The main problem is to extend effective operations to a larger domain. This will be achieved by a modification of the proof of the continuity of effective operations. Following a suggestion of A.S. Troelstra, similar results were obtained for ECF(U) and $ICF^E(U)$, where $U$ is any universe of functions closed under "recursive in".

The evidence that we get from peer disagreement is especially problematic from a Bayesian point of view since the belief revision caused by a piece of such evidence cannot be modelled along the lines of Bayesian conditionalisation. This paper explains how exactly this problem arises, what features of peer disagreements are responsible for it, and what lessons should be drawn for both the analysis of peer disagreements and Bayesian conditionalisation as a model of evidence acquisition. In particular, it is pointed (...) out that the same characteristic of evidence from disagreement that explains the problems with Bayesian conditionalisation also suggests an interpretation of suspension of belief in terms of imprecise probabilities. (shrink)

AI has become the poster child for a certain kind of thinking which holds that some technologies can become objective, independent and emergent entities which can evolve beyond the control of their creators. This thinking is not new however. It is a product of certain philosophical ideas such as materialism, a common-sense world of objective and independent objects, a correspondence theory of truth, and so forth, which are centered around the pre-eminence of science, epistemology, and logical reasoning, among others, as (...) the supremely valid modes of engaging experience. This paper aims to critically examine the synthesis of the development program for AI to be found in the writings of computer scientist John McCarthy (1927–2011). McCarthy has been called one of the founding fathers of AI. First, some of the main themes which recur in his writings from as early as the mid nineteen fifties in the Dartmouth proposal, up to his late writings, are considered. A discussion of the goals that such a program implies, follows, in terms of society’s relation with AI based technology and the nature and purpose of AI itself. These implications are arguably related to social control and are also moral. Ultimately, McCarthy’s idea that AI is and can be built upon a paradigm of reasoning and logic so as to simulate a perfectly rational abstraction of human thinking is shown to be motivated by his view that AI systems should be controlled, as servants. This understanding of human thinking is questionable, however, given current research on human irrationality, as well as on the argumentative role of reasoning. And yet, the process of development toward the unachievable goal of controllable, rational, logical AI systems, has handily come to serve as a blind for increasing techno-corporate control of society, with techno-corporate interests displacing blame for devaluations and harms caused by their push to develop the technology to AI systems which they can conveniently ‘lose control of.’. (shrink)

AUTOUR DE LA RELIGION REFLEXIVE. Le concept de réflexivité chez Jean-Marc Ferry. Réflexions sur le point de vue moral. Dépasser l'ex-communication politique du religieux. AUTOUR DE LA REPUBLIQUE CREPUSCULAIRE. Prendre l'Europe au sérieux. Une éthique de la reconnaissance internationale. Pour une république européenne placée sous le signe de l'aurore.