En s'inscrivant dans une problématique posée par Pierre Schaeffer à propos d'une utilisation des moyens de communication au profit de groupes sociaux d'intérêts communs, cet article présente les conditions d'émergence et de fonctionnement des réseaux spécifiques de communication sociale à partir de l'exemple concret de la radio Antélim, et il s'interroge sur une éventuelle préfiguration d'Internet. Dans un premier temps, un rappel des théorisations, recherches et expériences, menées au cours des années 1960-1970, dégagera les conditions d'une communication participative, interactive et (...) multipolaire, modèle alternatif à celui, dominant, des mass média. Puis, l'étude de l'expérimentation d'Antélim menée en France entre 1978 et 1985 avec le milieu de la marine marchande mettra en lumière l'origine du projet, sa mise en oeuvre et présentera une évaluation de l'expérience. Enfin, la question de la préfiguration d'Internet par ces réseaux spécifiques de communication sociale via la radio sera posée pour tenter de définir des parallèles possibles entre ces deux dispositifs.By entering in a problem posed by Pierre Schaeffer about a use of means of communication for the benefit of groups of common interests, this article presents the conditions for the emergence and operation of specific networks of social communication from the example of the radio Antélim, and he wondered about a possible forerunner of the Internet. At first, a reminder of the theories, research and experiments, conducted in the years 1960-1970, will identify the conditions for participatory communication, interactive and multipolar alternative model to the dominant, mass media. Then, the study of Antélim experimentation conducted in France between 1978 and 1985 with the middle of the Merchant will highlight the origin of the project, its implementation and present an evaluation of the experience. Finally, the question of the forerunner of the Internet by these specific networks of social communication via the radio will be asked to try to identify possible parallels between these two devices. (shrink)

Mediation is an alternative dispute resolution process that is becoming more and more popular particularly in English-speaking countries. In contrast to traditional litigation it has not benefited from technological advances and little research has been carried out to make this increasingly widespread practice more efficient. The study of argumentation in dispute mediation hitherto has largely been concerned with theoretical insights. The development of argumentation theories linked to computational applications opens promising new horizons since computational tools could support mediators, making sessions (...) quicker and more efficient. For this, we need tools for close analysis of mediation discourse in order to explore the argumentative activity in depth, and ultimately get an accurate image of how dialogues unfold in this particular context. This paper therefore aims at laying the foundations of a theory of close analysis for discourse in dispute mediation. Theories provided by the literature serve as a basis for argumentative analyses of transcripts of mediation sessions in order to deliver a clear image of the argumentative structure. Analyses of the argumentative strategies in mediation discourse will allow for the development of a dialogue protocol that can be used to develop operational models which can be embodied in software to help make the mediation process easier and more effective. (shrink)

Biology seems to present local and transitory regularities rather than immutable laws. To account for these historically constituted regularities and to distinguish them from mathematical invariants, Montévil and Mossio (Journal of Theoretical Biology 372:179–191, 2015) have proposed to speak of constraints. In this article we analyse the causal power of these constraints in the evolution of biodiversity, i.e., their positivity, but also the modality of their action on the directions taken by evolution. We argue that to fully account for the (...) causal power of these constraints on evolution, they must be thought of in terms of normativity. In this way, we want to highlight two characteristics of the evolutionary constraints. The first, already emphasised as reported by Gould (The structure of evolutionary theory, Harvard University Press, 2002), is that these constraints are both produced by and producing biological evolution and that this circular causation creates true novelties. The second is that this specific causality, which generates unpredictability in evolution, stems not only from the historicity of biological constraints, but also from their internalisation through the practices of living beings. (shrink)

Languages show substantial variability between their speakers, but it is currently unclear how the structure of the communicative network contributes to the patterning of this variability. While previous studies have highlighted the role of network structure in language change, the specific aspects of network structure that shape language variability remain largely unknown. To address this gap, we developed a Bayesian agent‐based model of language evolution, contrasting between two distinct scenarios: language change and language emergence. By isolating the relative effects of (...) specific global network metrics across thousands of simulations, we show that global characteristics of network structure play a critical role in shaping interindividual variation in language, while intraindividual variation is relatively unaffected. We effectively challenge the long‐held belief that size and density are the main network structural factors influencing language variation, and show that path length and clustering coefficient are the main factors driving interindividual variation. In particular, we show that variation is more likely to occur in populations where individuals are not well‐connected to each other. Additionally, variation is more likely to emerge in populations that are structured in small communities. Our study provides potentially important insights into the theoretical mechanisms underlying language variation. (shrink)

À quoi ressemble l'être humain que Platon, Avicenne, Darwin ou Beauvoir décrivent, expliquent et théorisent? Qu'est-ce que la philosophie ou le projet scientifique de chacun de ces auteurs nous disent sur l'humain? C'est la diversité des figures de l'être humain que ce Dictionnaire des anthropologies donne à voir. Constitué de plus de cent articles écrits par des spécialistes reconnus, il expose les conceptions de l'être humain propres à des auteurs issus de diverses disciplines : philosophie, psychologie, anthropologie, sociologie, préhistoire ou (...) encore biologie. (shrink)

We regularly intentionally expose ourselves to fictions we take to be likely to elicit in us emotions we generally find unpleasant when prompted by actual states of affairs. This is the so-called “paradox of tragedy”. We contribute to solving the paradox of tragedy by denying that, when fiction-directed, most of these emotions are in themselves unpleasant. We first provide strong evidence that these emotions, such as fear, sadness, or pity, are often enjoyed when fiction-directed. We then advance an explanation of (...) what makes these fiction-directed emotions often not unpleasant, while their reality-directed counterparts are generally so. In the last section, we advance an explanation of what makes fiction-directed emotions often enjoyable, and argue that a complete solution to the paradox of tragedy should be pluralist. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to assess the impact of Big Data technologies for insurance ratemaking, with a special focus on motor products.The first part shows how statistics and insurance mechanisms adopted the same aggregate viewpoint. It made visible regularities that were invisible at the individual level, further supporting the classificatory approach of insurance and the assumption that all members of a class are identical risks. The second part focuses on the reversal of perspective currently occurring in data analysis (...) with predictive analytics, and how this conceptually contradicts the collective basis of insurance. The tremendous volume of data and the personalization promise through accurate individual prediction indeed deeply shakes the homogeneity hypothesis behind pooling. The third part attempts to assess the extent of this shift in motor insurance. Onboard devices that collect continuous driving behavioural data could import this new paradigm into these products. An examination of the current state of research on models with telematics data shows however that the epistemological leap, for now, has not happened. (shrink)

Based on an ethnography of French trials for trafficking in human beings and aggravated procuring, this article seeks to contribute to the analysis of the reframing, in penal terms, of the struggles engaged in the name of social justice and women’s rights, of which anti-trafficking policies are particularly emblematic. Studying the judging practices and logics at stake during trials reveals how fantasized representations of the pimp and the victim take on substance. In particular, I argue that judges invoke a set (...) of gendered, sexualized and racialized extra-legal norms, which, along with their legal foundations, constitute their knowledge base and impose a moral and penal hierarchy among litigants. Therefore, not only does this analysis contribute to defining the contours of the elusive figures of the pimp and the victim in the penal arena, it also exposes how maintaining public order is based on the perpetuation of a gendered and sexual national order in the name of gender justice. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Affiliation is both an antecedent and a consequence of emotional mimicry (i.e. imitating a counterpart’s emotional expression). Thus, interacting with a disliked partner can decrease emotional mimicry, which in turn can further decrease liking. This perpetuating circle has not been investigated in the context of mental health stigma yet. The present study tested the influence of the label “schizophrenia” on liking, interpersonal closeness, and emotional mimicry. In an online experiment (n = 201), participants recruited from the general population saw several (...) videos of actors displaying emotional expressions. Actors were described with one of four labels: “schizophrenia”, “healthy”, “diabetes”, and a negative adjective (e.g. “hot-tempered”). Emotional mimicry was measured using OpenFace 2.2. Liking and interpersonal closeness were assessed with questionnaires. Overall, compared to other labels, participants reported less liking and interpersonal closeness to the actor with the schizophrenia label. However, no effect on emotional mimicry was found. The decreased liking of the schizophrenia actors was explained by a lack of knowledge about schizophrenia and the explicit stigma of schizophrenia. Our study contributes to the literature by highlighting the need to reduce the stigma of schizophrenia. (shrink)

The semantic poverty of general nouns and their referential versatility could make them excellent means to achieve a co-referential anaphora. Many contexts, however, do not allow a general noun like chose (‘thing’), personne (‘person’) or individu (‘individual’) to reiterate a previously classified referent. The difficulties of such reiterations or the (often pejorative) discursive effects they produce are linked to the referent declassification they involve. In fact, general nouns are distinguished from other superordinate nouns by their weak classifying power. This feature, (...) instead, brings them closer to quality nouns (in Milner’s sense), which appear at the top of the generality continuum in some examples proposed by Halliday & Hasan. (shrink)

Cet article étudie la notion de « responsabilité politique » définie par Young pour répondre au problème des injustices mondiales. Il tente d’expliquer pourquoi l’auteure prend pour point de départ le modèle de la responsabilité individuelle, écartée dès le xix e siècle pour penser la solidarité sociale, et montre que la responsabilité « politique » chez Young aboutit paradoxalement à la disqualification de l’action publique.

Si la pensée de Georges Bataille, pensée limite, n'appartient exactement ni à la philosophie ni à la littérature, elle se tisse de l'une et de l'autre mobilisant en outre, suivant les époques, la sociologie, la psychanalyse, la mystique. Précaution ou jeu, face à la psychanalyse comme face à la philosophie, Bataille a toujours plaidé "coupable". Le sens de la faute, chez lui, est central: il détermine sa position à l'égard, de la pensée et des différentes disciplines qu'il mobilise. La faute (...) donne aussi le sens de ce qu'il a cherché au travers d'une communauté, dès ses premiers écrits (sur Sade notamment), et jusqu'aux ultimes (La Littérature et le mal). Au plus près des moments les plus noirs de son oeuvre et des questions théoriques les plus litigieuses qu'elle soulève, L'Art de la faute propose une lecture inédite de Georges Bataille, dans laquelle l'approche des écrits se veut autant biographique (autobiographique, même) que théorique. L'Art de la faute se tient où Bataille rencontre une lectrice singulière: le lieu du fantasme."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Cet article est consacré à un emploi singulier des descriptions définies dans la presse people sur Internet. De nombreuses descriptions définies, telles le mari de Jill Biden, pour désigner Joe Biden, et le mari de Melania, pour désigner Donald Trump, y apparaissent sans lien avec le propos des articles, et cela parfois dans des contextes où un pronom personnel serait plus approprié qu’une expression nominale. Nous soulignerons d’abord combien ces descriptions définies s’écartent des emplois ordinaires des expressions référentielles très spécifiées (...) en général et des descriptions définies en particulier et quels risques certaines d’entre elles, relevant de la catégorie des « anaphores présuppositionnelles » de Milner, peuvent présenter pour la bonne interprétation référentielle. Nous spécifierons ensuite leur fonction, fonction liée à la fois à la coloration « people » de ce type de presse et à son support numérique. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck, Jean-Marc Ferry et Jürgen Habermas voient dans l’Union européenne la réalisation d’une démocratie postnationale, capable de se hisser au niveau des enjeux actuels. Les signes de cette réalisation ne se font toutefois pas jour dans des valeurs abstraites, mais dans l’expérience de l’européanisation, lors des commerces transfrontaliers. Après avoir présenté ce paradoxe dans les textes, nous suggérons que l’accent mis sur les expériences ordinaires tient à la place occupée par le droit dans la construction européenne. Le contrôle des (...) libertés de circulation par la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne, caractéristique du marché intérieur, est à l’origine d’une intégration plus large, qui a étendu les droits des opérateurs économiques et forgé le statut de citoyen européen. La jurisprudence de la CJUE a en effet permis d’élargir la portée des droits transnationaux, dans la continuité du droit cosmopolitique kantien, sans dissoudre les États membres dans une association supranationale. Une affiliation postnationale, alternative au modèle de la souveraineté étatique classique, semble ainsi se concrétiser dans l’Union européenne. Cependant, nous suggérons que le crédit accordé à la construction, par la jurisprudence de la CJUE, de la citoyenneté postnationale, risque d’occulter les effets problématiques d’une intégration judiciaire vouée à être essentiellement négative. (shrink)

This research investigated the effect of divided attention at encoding on feeling-of-knowing . Participants had to learn a 60 word-pair list under two experimental conditions, one with full attention and one with divided attention . After that, they were administered episodic FOK tasks with a cued-recall phase, a FOK phase and a recognition phase. Our results showed that DA at encoding altered not only memory performance, but also FOK judgments and FOK accuracy. These findings throw some light on the central (...) role of the quality of memory encoding to make accurate FOK judgments and provide new evidence supporting the relationship between memory and metamemory judgments. (shrink)

Cet article examine l’influence sur la première hypothèse du Parménide de deux penseurs dont l’importance a été négligée par les critiques : Mélissos et Gorgias. Après avoir observé que les prédicats attribués à l’un ainsi que la forme démonstrative sont plus représentatifs de l’éléatisme de Mélissos que de celui de Parménide, nous expliquons ce constat par le fait que Platon reprenne une partie du Traité du Non-être de Gorgias qui vise elle-même essentiellement Mélissos. Nous démontrons alors que la première hypothèse, (...) et même l’ensemble de la seconde partie du Parménide, est un pastiche du Traité du Non-être, et nous en tirons des conclusions sur le statut de l’exercice dialectique mis en œuvre dans le Parménide. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate how Xenophanes was ‘eleaticised’, i.e. attributed theses and arguments that belong to Parmenides and Melissus. I examine texts of Plato, Aristotle and Theophrastus in order to determine if they considered Xenophanes as a philosopher and a monist. I show that neither Plato nor Aristotle regarded him as a philosopher, but rather as a pantheist poet who claimed, in a vague way, that everything is one. But Theophrastus interpreted too literally Aristotle’s claims and was the first (...) to make Xenophanes a proper monist philosopher. (shrink)

Bipedalism is one of the criteria that paleoanthropologists use in order to interpret the fossil record and to determine if a specimen belongs to the human lineage. In the context of such interpretations, bipedalism is considered to be a unique characteristic of this lineage that also marks its origin. This conception has largely remained unchallenged over the last decades, in spite of fossil discoveries that led to the emergence of bipedalism in the human lineage being shifted back by several millions (...) of years. In this paper, I analyze the uses of this criterion in paleoanthropology and demonstrate that interpretative biases (such as underdetermined inferences and circular reasoning) are at play in interpretations of hominin remains. By discussing Darwin’s hypotheses about the evolution of bipedalism, I identify major theoretical issues that need to be addressed in the current debates on hominin evolution. First, the assumption that “man alone has become a biped” (Darwin in The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex, John Murray, London, 1871) is analyzed in the light of recent empirical data. Three major issues are discussed: the definition of “man”, i.e. “human”, the uniqueness of human bipedalism, and the equivocal meaning of being a “biped”. Then, I highlight some of Darwin’s remarks that may be helpful for current debates in paleoanthropology, regarding natural selection in locomotor evolution, as well as taxonomic and phylogenetic significance of functional features. Finally, I analyze two examples of how fossil discoverers referred to Darwin in the recent years and discuss his role as an intellectual support. (shrink)

Bipedalism is one of the criteria that paleoanthropologists use in order to interpret the fossil record and to determine if a specimen belongs to the human lineage. In the context of such interpretations, bipedalism is considered to be a unique characteristic of this lineage that also marks its origin. This conception has largely remained unchallenged over the last decades, in spite of fossil discoveries that led to the emergence of bipedalism in the human lineage being shifted back by several millions (...) of years. In this paper, I analyze the uses of this criterion in paleoanthropology and demonstrate that interpretative biases are at play in interpretations of hominin remains. By discussing Darwin’s hypotheses about the evolution of bipedalism, I identify major theoretical issues that need to be addressed in the current debates on hominin evolution. First, the assumption that “man alone has become a biped” is analyzed in the light of recent empirical data. Three major issues are discussed: the definition of “man”, i.e. “human”, the uniqueness of human bipedalism, and the equivocal meaning of being a “biped”. Then, I highlight some of Darwin’s remarks that may be helpful for current debates in paleoanthropology, regarding natural selection in locomotor evolution, as well as taxonomic and phylogenetic significance of functional features. Finally, I analyze two examples of how fossil discoverers referred to Darwin in the recent years and discuss his role as an intellectual support. (shrink)

Mechanisms to engage lay citizens in science and technology are currently in vogue worldwide. While some engagement exercises aim to influence policy making, research suggests that they have had little discernable impacts in this regard. We explore the potentials and challenges of facilitating citizen engagement in nanotechnology from the “topdown,” addressing the following questions: Can academics and others within institutions initiate meaningful engagement with unorganized lay citizens from the top-down? Can they facilitate effective engagement among citizens, scientists, and policy makers (...) while building citizen engagement capacities? Is it possible to create independent bottom-up citizen engagement in scientific and technological issues from the top-down, and what are the challenges in doing so? Our experiences show that although academics can build citizens' individual, collective, and political capacities to engage with each other, scientists, and policy makers, this work is enormously time and energy intensive, and institutional support is needed to sustain it. (shrink)

Is Nederland een fraudeland geworden? Na alle berichten over boekhoudschandalen en het bekend worden van illegale prijsafspraken is het terecht dat die vraag wordt gesteld. Het oplichten van aandeelhouders of van klanten gaat in tegen verschillende ethische noties. Het verstrekken van onjuiste informatie is niet alleen vanuit een utilistisch standpunt verwerpelijk vanwege de economische schade die ontstaat doordat een optimale marktwerking belemmerd wordt. Ook vanuit een deontologisch perspectief staan de ethische seinen op rood: het bedriegen van aandeelhouders of klanten getuigt (...) van weinig respect en is onrechtvaardig omdat dit zelfverrijking mogelijk maakt ten koste gaat van de stakeholders. Ook vanuit het perspectief van de deugdenethiek zijn deze praktijken verwerpelijk: het achterhouden van informatie getuigt van een gebrek aan integriteit en heeft een negatieve voorbeeldfunctie naar anderen. (shrink)

Des « libertés» proclamées en 1789 à la loi sur la librairie de 1810, les dynamiques qui traversent le monde de l'imprimé constituent encore un des objets les plus originaux pour renouveler l'histoire des savoirs d'une période révolutionnaire riche en bouleversements institutionnels et en mutations épistémologiques. Dans la perspective d'une histoire sociale des savoirs, l'analyse des actions construites par et dans l'imprimé permet de préciser la compréhension des transformations sociales, institutionnelles et théoriques qui caractérisent cette période. Alors que le chantier (...) reste encore largement ouvert, il s'agit de présenter ici quelques jalons d'une analyse visant à replacer l'imprimé au coeur des interrogations sur les mutations des sociabilités, des identités et des productions intellectuelles en Révolution. (shrink)

The establishment of a functional vascular system requires multiple complex steps throughout embryogenesis, from endothelial cell (EC) specification to vascular patterning into venous and arterial hierarchies. Following the initial assembly of ECs into a network of cord‐like structures, vascular expansion and remodeling occur rapidly through morphogenetic events including vessel sprouting, fusion, and pruning. In addition, vascular morphogenesis encompasses the process of lumen formation, critical for the transformation of cords into perfusable vascular tubes. Studies in mouse, zebrafish, frog, and human endothelial (...) cells have begun to outline the cellular and molecular requirements underlying lumen formation. Although the lumen can be generated through diverse mechanisms, the coordinated participation of multiple conserved molecules including transcription factors, small GTPases, and adhesion and polarity proteins remains a fundamental principle, leading us closer to a more thorough understanding of this complex event. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation has been regarded as an efficient and safe treatment for Parkinson’s disease since being approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1997. It is estimated that more than 150 000 patients have been implanted, with a forecasted rapid increase in uptake with population ageing. Recent longitudinal follow-up studies have reported a significant increase in postoperative survival rates of patients with PD implanted with DBS as compared with those not implanted with DBS. Although DBS tends to increase (...) life expectancy for most patients with PD, this medical benefit does not come without attendant negative consequences. For example, emerging forms of iatrogenic harms are sometimes induced—harms which were not initially expected when clinicians proposed neurosurgery and patients or their guardians consented to the treatment. We report and discuss the clinical case of a patient who was implanted with DBS more than 20 years ago and is now experiencing unexpected stages of PD. This case illustrates how extending the life span without improving quality of life may introduce a burden of harms for patients and families. As well, this case shows why we should prepare for the expanding numbers of PD-implanted patients experiencing a gain of longevity but with severe stages of disease leading to diminution in quality of life. This newly observed effect of DBS treatment requires us to explore ethical questions related to iatrogenic harms, informed consent, end of life and caregivers’ burden. (shrink)

Both Hippolytus of Rome and Sextus Empiricus attribute a concept of λόγος to Empedocles, relying on fragments that seem to have nothing to do with this claim. This article aims to show how the identification and clarification of their common Stoic source helps us to understand these texts better, and to reconstruct an interpretation of Empedocles’ epistemology that has not attracted critical attention so far.

Les paradoxes de l’horreur et de la tragédie posent la question de savoir si, et comment, il peut être rationnel de s’exposer intentionnellement, comme nous le faisons, à des œuvres fictionnelles qu’on qualifie parfois de « douloureuses ». J’entreprends de résoudre ces paradoxes en remettant en question l’idée de valence intrinsèque des émotions sur laquelle ils sont fondés et en expliquant pourquoi les émotions dirigées vers des fictions ne sont jamais désagréables ou déplaisantes, mais sont au contraire hédoniquement positives. Il (...) est donc rationnel de s’exposer aux œuvres qui les suscitent. (shrink)

Face à certaines expériences humaines, la morale se tient tranquille. Du moins le souhaiterait-on. Dans la guerre, la pensée est engagée, ou la pensée engage – c’est selon. Selon qu’on y participe – qu’on soit combattant – ou qu’on lutte contre l’occupation – qu’on soit résistant. Dire que la pensée s’engage tandis que la morale se tient tranquille pourrait paraître contradictoire : qu’est-ce qu’une pensée engagée, sinon une pensée qui relève aussi d’une morale ? Et en l’occurrence ici, une morale (...) de l’action ? Politique est la forme que doit prendre la pensée qui s’oriente vers l’action, et qui tente de porter les raisons collectives de l’engagement. Elle donne à la morale une réponse en forme d’évidence, parce qu’elle comporte un risque – celui de vouloir qu’une politique réponde encore, et plus que jamais, à la violence de l’aliénation, de l’oppression. Quelle serait inversement une expérience qui porterait la morale à haute intensité tandis qu’elle se refuserait à l’action ? Quelle (...). (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est un essai libre sur la vie et l'oeuvre d'Arne Naess, philosophe norvégien, écologiste engagé et alpiniste de renom. Dons les années 1970, Naess développe un "mouvement" écologique - plutôt qu'une philosophie - très personnel : une "écosophie", c'est-ô-dire un lien à l'écosphère et à la nature, cette entité dont nous faisons partie ou même titre que les autres espèces, et non une ressource inépuisable extérieure à nous. Il s'attache donc à adopter une attitude particulière vis-à-vis de l'environnement (...) et à vivre en harmonie avec Io nature. Au-delà de sa pensée philosophique, des ouvrages théoriques et des concepts qu'il développe, Naess invite chacun à découvrir son propre rapport à la nature, dans un processus d'identification - et donc d'empathie -, afin de fonder les bases nouvelles d'une écologie qu'il nomme "profonde". Jamais dogmatique ni extrémiste, l'oeuvre de Naess incite au contraire le lecteur à mettre en oeuvre sa propre "écosophie", créative et tolérante, à s'inventer une vie plus écologique sans bouleverser complètement ses habitudes, voire en améliorant sa qualité de vie. Une perspective écologiste qui pourrait sembler évidente, une nouvelle voie pour le développement personnel, sons école de pensée. (shrink)

The perception of time cannot be reduced to a simple percept produced by an internal clock. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the role of the individual consciousness of time on temporal judgments. In the present study, the participants’ awareness of attention-related time distortions was assessed using a metacognitive questionnaire. The participants were also required to verbally judge a series of stimulus durations in a single or a dual task condition. The results revealed that time was (...) underestimated in the dual task compared to the single task. However, the accuracy of time judgments improved in line with the participants’ individual awareness of attentional time distortion: The more aware they were of the role of attention in time perception, the lower the time distortions they exhibited. Conscious awareness of time therefore plays a role in the accuracy of the time judgments made by human beings. (shrink)

Williams (WS) and Down (DS) syndromes are neurodevelopmental disorders with distinct genetic origins and different spatial memory profiles. In real-world spatial memory tasks, where spatial information derived from all sensory modalities is available, individuals with DS demonstrate low-resolution spatial learning capacities consistent with their mental age, whereas individuals with WS are severely impaired. However, because WS is associated with severe visuo-constructive processing deficits, it is unclear whether their impairment is due to abnormal visual processing or whether it reflects an inability (...) to build a cognitive map. Here, we tested whether blindfolded individuals with WS or DS, and typically developing (TD) children with similar mental ages, could use path integration to perform an egocentric homing task and return to a starting point. We then evaluated whether they could take shortcuts and navigate along never-traveled trajectories between four objects while blindfolded, thus demonstrating the ability to build a cognitive map. In the homing task, 96% of TD children, 84% of participants with DS and 44% of participants with WS were able to use path integration to return to their starting point consistently. In the cognitive mapping task, 64% of TD children and 74% of participants with DS were able to take shortcuts and use never-traveled trajectories, the hallmark of cognitive mapping ability. In contrast, only one of eighteen participants with WS demonstrated the ability to build a cognitive map. These findings are consistent with the view that hippocampus-dependent spatial learning is severely impacted in WS, whereas it is relatively preserved in DS. (shrink)

Melissus’ fragment B9, where he claims that being has no body and no thickness, raises the question of how being can be extended and full and at the same time incorporeal. Most recent interpretations tried to avoid lending to “body” the meaning of “physical body”. My aim in this paper is to reconstruct Melissus’ notion of body, by examining its connection to “thickness”. I show that Melissus meant by “thick” something that has distinct parts and therefore supports in B9 the (...) indivisibility of being. I then indicate that he relied on the contrast between soul and body for his conception of corporeality, by highlighting that by Presocratic thinkers, the soul was considered as “thin” and regarded as something that could be exempt of the division into parts. I conclude that even though Melissus’ notion of incorporeality is very different from the one Plato will develop, he made a huge step toward its conceptualization. (shrink)

Cet article s’interroge sur la corrélation qui a pu être établie dans la pensée présocratique entre grandes zones de l’univers et éléments. Il remet en question l’idée que l’univers aurait été archaïquement divisé en quatre parties et que l’innovation d’Empédocle aurait consisté à faire correspondre cette division préexistante et sa théorie élémentaire. Nous montrons plutôt que si Empédocle est le premier à établir une correspondance exacte entre niveau cosmologique et élémentaire, c’est aussi chez lui que nous trouvons pour la première (...) fois une division du monde en grandes zones distinctes et égales. Pour déterminer ce qui fait l’originalité d’Empédocle, nous examinons les diverses manières dont les penseurs ont structuré l’univers depuis Homère et quel genre de relation ils ont établi entre zones du monde et théorie élémentaire. (shrink)

Le lien entre « socialisme » et « sexualité » fait l’objet de nombreux débats dans le champ de l’étude historique de la sexualité. Ce lien n’est certes ni évident, ni toujours nécessaire. La plupart des mouvements socialistes ne tenaient pas, ou ne tiennent plus la libération des désirs comme un corollaire ou un facteur fondamental du changement social. Néanmoins, comme s’attache à le démontrer cet ouvrage, il existe indéniablement des rapports entre le projet socialiste de libération social...