In this article, we first describe our general inhibitory-control theory and, then, we describe how we have tested its specific hypotheses on reasoning with brain imaging techniques in adults and children. The innovative part of this perspective lies in its attempt to come up with a brain-based synthesis of Jean Piaget’s theory on logical algorithms and Daniel Kahneman’s theory on intuitive heuristics.

This paper defends the view that Newtonian forces are real, symmetrical and non-causal relations. First, I argue that Newtonian forces are real; second, that they are relations; third, that they are symmetrical relations; fourth, that they are not species of causation. The overall picture is anti-Humean to the extent that it defends the existence of forces as external relations irreducible to spatio-temporal ones, but is still compatible with Humean approaches to causation (and others) since it denies that forces are a (...) species of causation. (shrink)

This discussion paper responds to two recent articles in Biology and Philosophy that raise similar objections to cultural attraction theory, a research trend in cultural evolution putting special emphasis on the fact that human minds create and transform their culture. Both papers are sympathetic to this idea, yet both also regret a lack of consilience with Boyd, Richerson and Henrich’s models of cultural evolution. I explain why cultural attraction theorists propose a different view on three points of concern for our (...) critics. I start by detailing the claim that cultural transmission relies not chiefly on imitation or teaching, but on cognitive mechanisms like argumentation, ostensive communication, or selective trust, whose evolved or habitual function may not be the faithful reproduction of ideas or behaviours. Second, I explain why the distinction between context biases and content biases might not always be the best way to capture the interactions between culture and cognition. Lastly, I show that cultural attraction models cannot be reduced to a model of guided variation, which posits a clear separation between individual and social learning processes. With cultural attraction, the same cognitive mechanisms underlie both innovation and the preservation of traditions. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 2 Seiten: 762-765.

I challenge two points in Cohen Kadosh & Walsh's (CK & W) argument: First, the definition of abstraction is too restricted; second, the distinction between representations and operations is too clear-cut. For example, taking Jean Piaget's I propose that another way to avoid orthodoxy in the field of numerical cognition is to consider inhibition as an alternative idea of abstraction.

Cognitive gadgets puts forward an ambitious claim: language, mindreading, and imitation evolved by cultural group selection. Defending this claim requires more than Heyes' spirited and effective critique of nativist claims. The latest human “cognitive gadgets,” such as literacy, did not spread through cultural group selection. Why should social cognition be different? The book leaves this question pending. It also makes strong assumptions regarding cultural evolution: it is moved by selection rather than transformation; it relies on high‐fidelity imitation; it requires specific (...) cognitive adaptations to cultural learning. Each of these assumptions raises crucial yet unaddressed difficulties. (shrink)

When Henri Poincaré reviewed the then competing theories of electrodynamics in the 1890s, he required their compatibility with two principles of mechanical origin—the reaction principle and the relativity principle. Historians of relativity theory have usually focused on the relativity principle and neglected or misinterpreted Poincaré’s concern with the reaction principle. In particular, most of them have interpreted his crucial article of 1900 on “Lorentz’s theory and the principle of reaction” as an attempt to save this principle by assuming an electromagnetic (...) momentum in addition to the momentum of matter. The purpose of this article is to dismiss this interpretation and show that Poincaré had the opposite intention as he spelled out the paradoxical consequences of Lorentz’s violation of the reaction principle. In doing so, he formally introduced a quantity that could later be interpreted as a genuine electromagnetic momentum, developed a fundamentally new understanding of Lorentz’s transformations in relation with the relativity principle and identified the paradoxes that Einstein would later solve by assuming the inertia of energy. (shrink)

L’expression équilibre naturel est largement utilisée dans les médias et par les militants écologistes pour sensibiliser le grand public aux conséquences néfastes des activités humaines sur l’environnement. Pourtant, alors qu’elle était relativement plébiscitée par les scientifiques au xixe et au début du xxe siècle, la quasi-totalité des écologues n’emploie plus cette expression. Dans cet article, nous visons à montrer que cette expression n’a pas été abandonnée à cause d’une réfutation de l’idée qu’elle recouvrait mais à cause d’une tombée en désuétude. (...) Nous avançons deux causes possibles à cette tombée en désuétude et nous défendons que les termes actuels de stabilité et de résilience renvoient à la même idée qui persiste et se précise. (shrink)

For several decades, Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The book series is international in orientation and reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The series is led by an international team of editors.

Analogies between hearing and seeing already existed in ancient Greek theories of perception. The present paper follows the evolution of such analogies until the rise of 17th century optics, with due regard to the diversity of their origins and nature but with particular emphasis on their bearing on the physical concepts of light and sound. Whereas the old Greek analogies were only side effects of the unifying concepts of perception, the analogies of the 17th century played an important role in (...) constructing optical theories by imitation of acoustic theories, or vice versa. This transition depended on several factors including the changing relations between optics, music, mathematics, and physics, the diversity of early modern concepts of sound, and the rise of a new physics based on experimentation and mechanical explanation. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to the proof of the following upward categoricity theorem: Let K be a tame abstract elementary class with amalgamation, arbitrarily large models, and countable Löwenheim-Skolem number. If K is categorical in ‮א‬₁ then K is categorical in every uncountable cardinal. More generally, we prove that if K is categorical in a successor cardinal λ⁺ then K is categorical everywhere above λ⁺.

Conscious awareness comprises two distinct states, autonoetic and noetic awareness. Schizophrenia impairs autonoetic, but not noetic, awareness. We investigated the strategic regulation of relevant and irrelevant contents of conscious awareness in schizophrenia using a directed forgetting paradigm. Twenty-one patients with schizophrenia and 21 normal controls were presented with words and told to learn some of them and forget others. In a subsequent test, they were asked to recognize all the words they had seen previously and give remember, know or guess (...) responses according to whether they recognized words on the basis of autonoetic awareness, noetic awareness, or guessing. Overall, patients showed the same degree of a directed forgetting effect as normal subjects. However, whereas the effect was observed both for remember and know responses in normal subjects, it was observed for know, but not for remember, responses in patients. These results indicate that patients with schizophrenia exhibit an impaired strategic regulation of contents of autonetic awareness for relevant and irrelevant information. (shrink)

Featuring more than one hundred of his photographs in every genre, this book celebrates Hervé's work as an artist, creating images that serve not simply as records but stand as works of a singular imagination.

This paper considers the three first clauses of the Pistiros Charter. Closely connected with each other, they show the financial privileges accorded to Greek merchants by the Thracian authorities. The third clause prohibited any annulment of debts. The second may be compared to the δίκη αργυρίου in Athens and apparently concerned inheritances, which explains the recourse to the principle of kinship. In the first we have to restore an oath "purgatoire", by which the dynast denies having received funds demanded of (...) him. The three clauses are mentioned in the final oath not to confiscate sums belonging to a living or a deceased person. The second part studies certain coins in special use in transactions between Greeks and Thracians: imitations of Thracian staters and bronze triobols from Maroneia. (shrink)

La frappe de la monnaie et le timbrage des amphores relèvent d’une même technique, celle du sceau, qui est la marque d’une autorité publique. Cette étude analyse les rapprochements entre la composition des types monétaires et celle des emblèmes sur les timbres. Elle relève les nombreux exemples d’emploi de la même image. Elle étudie la signification juridique du scellement, qui a pour effet d’indiquer l’objet dokimon, agréé par la cité. Elle compare les modes de contrôle de la monnaie et des (...) amphores. Enfin, elle met en évidence les coïncidences chronologiques entre l’apparition des timbres et la réforme monétaire de 390 ainsi que le passage des timbres anciens aux timbres récents et le passage du groupe IV et au groupe V, vers 335. La prise de Thasos par Philippe V en 202 pourrait aussi marquer l’histoire des timbres et des monnaies. (shrink)

En dépit de sept lois intervenues entre 1988 et 2013 en matière de transparence dans la vie publique et de lutte contre la corruption, la France est caractérisée par un sentiment de banalisation des scandales politiques. Ces derniers, qui conduisent parfois à la démission ou à la condamnation d’un responsable politique, semblent d’abord revêtir une dimension « sacrificielle ». Or cette situation, qui aboutit à ne plus voir dans certains manquements éthiques des scandales politiques ou qui prive ceux-ci, lorsqu’ils éclatent, (...) de leur effet utile pour la construction de l’État de droit, est révélatrice d’une culture juridique française fondée sur une croyance en une « incarnation » du pouvoir. L’objet de l’article est dès lors d’expliquer les raisons de cette spécificité, avant de montrer que le système français promeut lui-même une distinction entre la fonction politique et son titulaire, et l’instauration d’un « censeur » au service de la première. (shrink)

A slight modification of Helmholtz’s metrical approach to the foundations of geometry leads to the locally Euclidian character of space without restriction of the curvature. A bolder generalization involving time measurement leads to the locally Minkowskian character of spacetime. Some philosophical consequences of these results are drawn.Keywords: Hermann Helmholtz; Space; Time; Spacetime.

In plants, virus‐derived double‐stranded RNA is processed into small interfering (si)RNAs by RNAse III‐type enzymes. siRNAs are believed to guide an RNA‐induced silencing complex (RISC) to promote sequence‐specific degradation (or ‘slicing’) of homologous viral transcripts. This process, called RNA silencing, likely involves Argonaute (AGO) proteins that are known components of plant and animal RISCs. Plant viruses commonly counteract the silencing immune response by producing suppressor proteins, but the molecular basis of their action has remained largely unclear. A recent study by (...) Zhang and colleagues1 now shows that the 2b suppressor of Cucumber mosaic virus directly interacts with Arabidopsis AGO1 and inhibits its slicing activity, suggesting that AGO1 might be a component of the elusive plant antiviral RISC. BioEssays 29:319–323, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This response takes advantage of the diverse and wide-ranging series of commentaries to clarify some aspects of the target article, and flesh out other aspects. My central point is a plea to take graphic codes seriously as codes, rather than as a kind of visual art or as a byproduct of spoken language; only in this way can the puzzle of ideography be identified and solved. In this perspective, I argue that graphic codes do not derive their expressive power from (...) iconicity alone (unlike visual arts), and I clarify the peculiar relationship that ties writing to spoken language. I then discuss three possible solutions to the puzzle of ideography. I argue that a learning account still cannot explain why ideographies fail to evolve, even if we emancipate the learning account from the version that Liberman put forward; I develop my preferred solution, the “standardization account,” and contrast it with a third solution suggested by some commentaries, which says that ideographies do not evolve because they would make communication too costly. I consider, by way of conclusion, the consequences of these views for the future evolution of ideography. (shrink)

Au cours de la campagne de 1985 au palais de Malia, un dépôt de fondation a été identifié contre un mur qui peut être attribué à une première installation palatiale. Ce dépôt était constitué par une théière du type de Patrikiès enfermée dans une petite boîte d'ammouda. Les parallèles existants montrent que le dépôt de Malia présente un caractère original. En outre la date haute du vase (MA III - MM I A) fait remonter à cette époque la date de (...) construction de l'édifice protopalatial. Il apparaît probable enfin que d'autres dépôts de fondation, jusqu'ici non reconnus, ont existé dans le palais ou sur son emplacement, scandant les diverses phases d'un développement architectural continu. (shrink)