The starting point of this conversation with philosopher Mathieu Triclot is the issue of the causal contribution of video game playing in school shootings. Triclot explains the limitations of current psychological approaches regarding video game violence. He further develops on the peculiar features of the video game medium and how they relate to the problem of violence. Triclot eventually shows that, although players may relate to virtual violence in very different ways, violence in video games is not merely a (...) subjective phenomenon. He highlights that some “regimes of experience,” which got stable in the video game culture, cultivate a toxic relation to violence. (shrink)

Bringing Pierre Bourdieu to Science and Technology Studies Content Type Journal Article Pages 263-273 DOI 10.1007/s11024-011-9174-2 Authors Mathieu Albert, Wilson Centre and Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 200 Elizabeth Street , Eaton-South 1-581, Toronto, ON M5G 2C4, Canada Daniel Lee Kleinman, Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 348 Agricultural Hall 1450 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA Journal Minerva Online ISSN 1573-1871 Print ISSN 0026-4695 Journal Volume Volume 49 Journal Issue Volume 49, (...) Number 3. (shrink)

According to Clifford Geertz, the purpose of anthropology is not to explain culture but to explicate it. That should cause us to rethink our relationship with machine learning. It is, we contend, perfectly possible that machine learning algorithms, which are unable to explain, and could even be unexplainable themselves, can still be of critical use in a process of explication. Thus, we report on an experiment with anthropological AI. From a dataset of 175K Facebook comments, we trained a neural network (...) to predict the emoji reaction associated with a comment and asked a group of human players to compete against the machine. We show that a) the machine can reach the same accuracy as the players, b) it fails in roughly the same ways as the players, and c) easily predictable emoji reactions tend to reflect unambiguous situations where interpretation is easy. We therefore repurpose the failures of the neural network to point us to deeper and more ambiguous situations where interpretation is hard and explication becomes both necessary and interesting. We use this experiment as a point of departure for discussing how experiences from anthropology, and in particular the tension between formalist ethnoscience and interpretive thick description, might contribute to debates about explainable AI. (shrink)

We propose a logic of abduction that (i) provides an appropriate formalization of the explanatory conditional, and that (ii) captures the defeasible nature of abductive inference. For (i), we argue that explanatory conditionals are non-classical, and rely on Brian Chellas’s work on conditional logics for providing an alternative formalization of the explanatory conditional. For (ii), we make use of the adaptive logics framework for modeling defeasible reasoning. We show how our proposal allows for a more natural reading of explanatory relations, (...) and how it overcomes problems faced by other systems in the literature. (shrink)

After presenting the rules of Eleatic antilogic, i.e., dialectic, I argue that Zeno was a practitioner, and, on the basis of key passages from Plato’s Parmenides (127e-128e and 135d-136c), that his paradoxes of divisibility and movement were notreductio ad absurdum, but simple derivation of impossibilities (adunaton) meant to ridicule Parmenides’ adversaries. Thus, Zeno did not try to prove that there is no motion, but simply derived this consequence from premises held by his opponents. I argue further that these paradoxes were (...) devised, in accordance with Eleatic antilogic, following a scheme that included hypotheses and their contradictories, within which the subject is to be treated both “in relation to itself,” and “in relation to other things”. (shrink)

This paper presents reflections on the author's death aspirations as they are informed by a set of earth-connection stories, environmental concepts, and modernist burial practices. This weave is meant to inspire further consideration on what is coming to be known as 'green burial'. More precisely, this means an exploration of the author's earth-centred burial musings in association with the following themes: the meanings and historical trajectory of prevailing death and burial practices; 'narratives' of the human-earth life-cycle; relevant environmental ethics and (...) place literature concepts; and lastly, some sense of the newly emerging practices and appeals to green burial - i.e. the normative and practical grounds for rethinking and working toward more environmentally sensitive burial practices. This weave of themes is instructive for posing green burial as evocative of a more comprehensive and spiritual ethos of connection, continuity, and responsibility. In this sense, rather than being seen as contrary or contentious, green burial may actually enable us to dispel some of the growing angst, uncertainty, and insensitivity often underlying prevailing burial practices, while contributing to an emerging environmental consciousness. (shrink)

This paper focuses on private residential green space as a site of contested meanings. Recent research points to the emergence of an activism centered on ecological restoration and a shift away from the lawn as the only accepted landscape practice for private green space. However, it is clear that the lawn, a particularly powerful cultural landscape form in residential neighborhoods, still largely dominates this space across North America. This investigation examines the voices of two groups: traditional lawn owners and ecological (...) activists. We observe two sets of discourses centered on private green space. Both groups construct residential green space as a site of identity politics-a site wherein the self is defined as pure and the other excluded as different and necessarily inferior. And both perceive their discourse as ''natural.'' The critical finding is that they are almost entirely oppositional discourses. The contest over what constitutes appropriate landscaping practices for this space provides a locus for bringing to a discursive level, the kinds of socio-cultural perspectives and practices that create and dominate our places in late capitalist society. We suggest that at present the lawn remains a barrier to alternative green space practices. (shrink)

This article maps a controversy in network science over the last 15 years, dividing the field about the epistemic status of a central notion, scale-freeness. The article accounts for the two main disputes, in 2005 and in 2018, as they unfolded in academic publications and on social media. This article analyzes the conflict, and the reasons why it reignited in 2018, to the surprise of many. It is argued that the concept of complex networks is shared by the distinct subcultures (...) of theorists and experimentalists; and that these subcultures have incompatible approaches to knowledge: nomothetic and idiographic. Following Galison, this article contends that network science is a trading zone where theorists and experimentalists can trade knowledge across the epistemic divide. (shrink)

There is now an awakening to and recognition of the emotionally complex lives of some non-human animals. While their forms of consciousness may vary, some are indeed conscious and deserve political consideration. What that political consideration ought to be is the central topic of this article. First, I argue that interspecies justice must be understood in terms of the relationships that foster individual flourishing of all concerned. The obstacles to such flourishing are the five faces of oppression famously identified by (...) Iris Marion Young: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. By extending Young’s concept of the social group to intra- and interspecies groups, we become more attuned to differences between and among species. Theorizing the existence of interspecies groups brings forward new avenues to explore oppression and simultaneously theorize its opposite – interspecies justice. Second, I argue that a positive theory of interspecies flourishing can be developed on the basis of Marx’s materialist philosophy and reclamation of species-being. Though Marx uses humanist language throughout the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, attention to his methodological commitments reveals that some non-human animals can no longer be excluded from the capability of flourishing and species-being. Some non-human animals are conscious, act purposefully, and labor creatively and must be included in our circle of moral and political concern. (shrink)

This paper presents the first possible world semantics for concessive conditionals (i.e., even if A, C conditionals) constructed in a compositional way. First, the meaning of if is formalized through a semantics that builds on the proposal given by Stalnaker (1968). A major difference from Stalnaker’s approach is that irrelevant conditionals (i.e., conditionals where the antecedent and the consequent have no connection) are false in this new setting. Second, the meaning of even is analyzed through a formal semantics based on (...) the notion of scale. This analysis overcomes the problems arising in standard approaches, in which even is analyzed with the help of pragmatic presuppositions. Finally, the two particles are combined in order to provide a formal analysis of even if. This theory predicts the major phenomena concerning the behavior of concessive conditionals and without any call to pragmatic explanations. More generally, this approach creates the possibility of a compositional analysis of other conditionals such as if then or only if forms. (shrink)

Cet article a déjà paru dans Recherche en éducation musicale, n° 28, Université Laval, Québec et est également disponible ici. Nous remercions Louise Mathieu ainsi que la revue Recherche en éducation musicale de nous avoir aimablement autorisé à le reproduire ci-dessous, tous droits étant par ailleurs réservés. Résumé : Au début du XXe siècle, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze crée la Rythmique, une éducation musicale reconnaissant le rôle fondamental du corps et du mouvement corporel dans la façon dont on perçoit et (...) (...) - Musique et Musicologie – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

A Polish space is not always homeomorphic to a computably presented Polish space. In this article, we examine degrees of non-computability of presenting homeomorphic copies of compact Polish spaces. We show that there exists a $\mathbf {0}'$ -computable low $_3$ compact Polish space which is not homeomorphic to a computable one, and that, for any natural number $n\geq 2$, there exists a Polish space $X_n$ such that exactly the high $_{n}$ -degrees are required to present the homeomorphism type of $X_n$. (...) Along the way we investigate the computable aspects of Čech homology groups. We also show that no compact Polish space has a least presentation with respect to Turing reducibility. (shrink)

This paper focuses on examining the dynamic nature of community supported agriculture (CSA) and the real-world experiences which mark its contours, often making it distinct from the early idealized CSA “model.” Specifically, our study examines the narratives of the farmers of Devon Acres CSA over its duration, in tandem with a survey of recent shareholders in order to understand and explain its evolution. The framework we develop here shows that this CSA is largely characterized by instrumental and functional beliefs and (...) practices, with some elements in the collaborative mode. A key contribution of this research is the development of a framework which helps to highlight the relative fluidity and patchwork quality of CSA participant positions over time. At Devon Acres, the real-world factors and issues influencing CSA evolution are seen to be products of both the local and larger contexts, evident in such areas as shifts in farmer learning and adaptation, differences between beliefs and practices in member volunteer efforts, and changes in farm and resource conditions. With respect to CSA more broadly, we argue that the reality of dominant food system context and site-specific influences on CSA development compels us to rework our attachment to early idealized “model” traits. Expansion in CSA numbers, evidence of adaptation and situated learning, and retention of the local and organic as core traits, speak to the pragmatic yet transformative potential of CSA contribution to food system change. (shrink)

For a population to undergo evolution by natural selection, it is assumed that the constituents of the population form parent-offspring lineages, that is, that they must reproduce. I challenge this assumption by dividing the notion of reproduction into two subprocesses, that is, multiplication and inheritance, that produce parent-offspring lineages between the parts of a population, and I show that their population-level roles, generation and memory, respectively, can be effected by processes that do not rely on such local-level lineages. I further (...) argue that these two population-level processes, not local parent-offspring lineages, are necessary conditions for a population to undergo Darwinian evolution. (shrink)

La thèse que présuppose ce livre est la suivante : la modernité, que l'on dit "désenchantée", est triste, parce que désenchantée. Les textes qui y sont rassemblés veulent mettre en présence, mais aussi en question, les deux sens du mot "désenchantement" : l'idée que l'avancement de la "raison instrumentale" (C Taylor)s'est accompagné du recul du domaine du magique, du merveilleux, du mythe, et celle selon laquelle la modernité est morose. Mais il s'agit ici de penser moins la morosité que la (...) joie liée à ce que pourrait être une philosophie du réenchantement du monde. Non pas tant, donc, replonger dans les thèses sur le désenchantement qu'imaginer ce que pourrait être un certain réenchantement. A cet égard, on a voulu porter un regard privilégié sur l'enfance, "terre de l'humain" (T De Koninck), comme sur une manière d'idéal qui pointerait vers la question du sens d'une existence qui vaille d'être vécue. Le pari de ce projet est en définitive qu'une philosophie du réenchantement du monde témoignera que la vie peut être une aventure exaltante, passionnante, un parcours sensé et par conséquent rempli d'espoir, comme dans ces contes pour enfants qui jadis faisaient notre joie. (shrink)

Prior work on weakness of will has assumed that it is a thoroughly psychological phenomenon. At least, it has assumed that ordinary attributions of weakness of will are purely psychological attributions, keyed to the violation of practical commitments by the weak-willed agent. Debate has recently focused on which sort of practical commitment, intention or normative judgment, is more central to the ordinary concept of weakness of will. We report five experiments that significantly advance our understanding of weakness of will attributions (...) by showing that the ordinary concept of weakness of will is less thoroughly psychological than the philosophical debate has assumed. We begin by showing that a sizable minority of people attribute weakness of will even in the absence of a violated commitment (Experiment 1). We then show that weakness of will attributions are sensitive to two important non-psychological factors. First, for actions stereotypically associated with weakness of will, the absence of certain commitments often triggers weakness of will attributions (Experiments 2–4). Second, the quality of an action’s outcome affects the extent to which an agent is viewed as weak-willed: actions with bad consequences are more likely to be viewed as weak-willed (Experiment 5). Our most important finding is that the ordinary concept of weakness of will is sensitive to two non-psychological factors and is thus much broader than philosophers have thus far imagined. We conclude by suggesting a two-tier model that unites our findings with traditional philosophical theorizing about weakness of will. (shrink)

[1] Dalle origini all'Ottocento. 3 t., a cura di V. Mathieu.--[2] Il pensiero contemporaneo. 3 t., a cura di A. Bausola.

We present the inconsistency-adaptive deontic logic DP r , a nonmonotonic logic for dealing with conflicts between normative statements. On the one hand, this logic does not lead to explosion in view of normative conflicts such as O A ∧ O ∼A, O A ∧ P ∼A or even O A ∧ ∼O A. On the other hand, DP r still verifies all intuitively reliable inferences valid in Standard Deontic Logic (SDL). DP r interprets a given premise set ‘as normally (...) as possible’ with respect to SDL. Whereas some SDL-rules are verified unconditionally by DP r , others are verified conditionally. The latter are applicable unless they rely on formulas that turn out to behave inconsistently in view of the premises. This dynamic process is mirrored by the proof theory of DP r. (shrink)

Research has shown that context influences how sincere a smile appears to observers. That said, most studies on this topic have focused exclusively on situational cues (e.g. smiling while at a party versus smiling during a job interview) and few have examined other elements of context. One important element concerns any knowledge an observer might have about the smiler as an individual (e.g. their habitual behaviours, traits or attitudes). In this manuscript, we present three experiments that explored the influence of (...) such knowledge on ratings of smile sincerity. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants rated the sincerity of Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles after having been exposed to cues about the smiler’s tendency to reciprocate (this person always, never or occasionally returns favours). In Experiment 3 they performed the same task but with cues about the smiler’s love of learning (this person always, never or occasionally enjoys learning new tasks). The results show that cues about the smiler’s reciprocity tendency influenced participants’ ratings of smile sincerity and did so in a stronger manner than cues about the smiler’s love of learning. Overall, these results both strengthen and broaden the literature on the role of context on judgements of smile sincerity. (shrink)

This paper argues that most contemporary accounts of weakness of will either implicitly or explicitly assume that regret is a typical or even necessary element of standard cases of weakness of will and that this assumption is mistaken. I draw on empirical and philosophical work on self-assessment to show that regret need not accompany typical weak-willed behavior, and that we should therefore revise the dominant account of the difference between weakness of will and changes of mind.

La réception de John Rawls et des théories de la justice Souvent présenté comme un des plus grands théoriciens politiques du XXe siècle, John Rawls est aujourd'hui un philosophe consacré en France, communément perçu comme le porte-parole d'un " libéralisme égalitaire ", alliant défense de la démocratie, du marché et de la justice sociale. La réception de John Rawls et des théories de la justice Souvent présenté comme un des plus grands théoriciens politiques du XXe siècle, John Rawls est aujourd'hui (...) un philosophe consacré en France, communément perçu comme le porte-parole d'un " libéralisme égalitaire ", alliant défense de la démocratie, du marché et de la justice sociale. Rien ne laissait pourtant présager l'entrée dans le canon académique et dans le débat politique d'une oeuvre longtemps ignorée des philosophes et intellectuels français. Cette consécration tardive constitue le terme d'une histoire qui court du début des années 1970 aux années 2000, durant laquelle les lectures les plus diverses de Rawls se sont affrontées. Porté par une écriture dynamique et accessible, l'ouvrage de Mathieu Hauchecorne rend compte de la réception française de ce qu'on a communément appelé les " théories de la justice ". Il retrace les circulations de Rawls mais aussi d'auteurs comme Robert Nozick, Michael Walzer ou Amartya Sen entre les Etats-Unis et la France ; entre économie, philosophie, sociologie, droit et science politique ; et entre champ intellectuel et champ politique. Une histoire inséparable de reconfigurations plus globales, comme la domination accrue de l'anglais sur les échanges intellectuels transnationaux, l'affirmation d'une gauche non-marxiste en France, et les débats relatifs aux politiques de redistribution. Une contribution majeure à une sociologie de la pensée politique contemporaine. (shrink)

A leading idea of cultural evolutionary theory is that for human cultures to undergo evolutionary change, cultural transmission must generally serve as a high-fidelity copying process. In analogy to genetic inheritance, the high fidelity of human cultural transmission would act as a safeguard against the transformation and loss of cultural information, thus ensuring both the stability and longevity of cultural traditions. Cultural fidelity would also serve as the key difference-maker between human cumulative cultures and non-human non-cumulative traditions, explaining why only (...) us humans, with our uniquely high-fidelity transmission capabilities, are capable of evolving and sustaining complex traditions. But what does it mean for cultural transmission to be more or less faithful? This article has two objectives. The first is to clarify the meaning and uses of the concept of cultural fidelity and to evaluate their explanatory import. I argue that cultural evolutionists use several fidelity concepts (episodic, propensity, and generalized fidelity), concepts that I will define and clarify. The second objective is to challenge the explanatory significance of a general notion of fidelity (generalized fidelity) as being both explanatorily meaningful and operationalizable. I conclude that if fidelity is to serve as an explanation of the key differences between human cumulative cultures and non-human non-cumulative traditions, then the concept will have to be redesigned and rely on different assumptions. 1Introduction 2Generalized Fidelity 2.1The need for an explanatory concept of fidelity 2.2Three conditions for a general notion of cultural fidelity 3Episodic Fidelity 3.1Measuring episodic fidelity 3.2The relevance problem 3.3Explanatory pluralism 3.4The incommensurability of fidelity metrics 4Propensity Fidelity 5Fidelity as an Explanatory Concept 5.1Explaining cultural stability 5.2Explaining human distinctiveness 6Conclusion. (shrink)

High-fidelity cultural transmission, rather than brute intelligence, is the secret of our species’ success, or so many cultural evolutionists claim. It has been selected because it ensures the spread, stability and longevity of beneficial cultural traditions, and it supports cumulative cultural change. To play these roles, however, fidelity must be a causally-efficient property of cultural transmission. This is where the grain problem comes in and challenges the explanatory potency of fidelity. Assessing the degree of fidelity of any episode or mechanism (...) of cultural transmission always depends upon an investigator’s choice of grain of description at which cultural traditions are being studied. The fidelity of cultural transmission then appears to be relative to the granularity at which one approaches cultural variation, and since there is a multiplicity of grains of description by which the same tradition can be studied, there results a multiplicity of measures of fidelity for a same event or mechanism of cultural transmission. If this is correct, because fidelity is always relative to the grain of description dictated by the local and specific research interests of the investigator, then there seems to be no fact of the matter as to whether cultural transmission is faithful or not, independently from a researcher’s framework of analysis. The aims of this paper are to offer a conceptual clarification of the grain problem in cultural evolution, to assess its causes, to unpack its epistemological implications, and to examine its reach and consequences for a science of cultural evolution. (shrink)

In this short paper we analyse some paradoxical aspects of France’s Foucauldian heritage: while several French scholars claim the COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect example of what Foucault called biopolitics, popular reaction instead suggests a biopolitical failure on the part of the government; One of these failures concerns the government’s inability to produce reliable biostatistical data, especially regarding health inequalities in relation to COVID-19. We interrogate whether Foucaldianism contributed, in the past as well today, towards a certain myopia in France (...) regarding biostatistics and its relation to social inequalities in health. One might ask whether this very data could provide an appropriate response to the Foucauldian question: What kind of governance of life is the pandemic revealing to us? (shrink)

This article focuses on defective conditionals ? namely indicative conditionals whose antecedents are false and whose truth-values therefore cannot be determined. The problem is to decide which formal connective can adequately represent this usage. Classical logic renders defective conditionals true whereas traditional mathematics dismisses them as irrelevant. This difference in treatment entails that, at the propositional level, classical logic validates some sentences that are intuitively false in plane geometry. With two proofs, I show that the same flaw is shared by (...) a family of trivalent logics. I go on to examine the strict conditional and its derivatives. This family is the only one to avoid the faulty inference but it does so without addressing the status of the truth-value assigned to defective conditionals. (shrink)