It is important to understand the drivers of green consumption, because of growing concern for the health of the planet. In this paper, the assumption that a virtue-green product relationship exists is tested. The objective is to understand how product morality can influence the valuation of green products. Relying on virtue theory and positive spillover as conceptual bases, the research implicitly and explicitly tests and confirms green product virtue. The results demonstrate that perceived green product virtue leads to positive emotions, (...) which explain heightened purchase intentions. In line with the conceptualization, I show that the effect is moderated by the importance consumers place on their own morality. Importantly, explicitly framing green products as virtuous activates positive spillover by consumers; when green products are branded with a virtue cue, they encourage consumers to be more virtuous. Beyond being perceived as better people, when consumers interact with green products they effectively engage in more moral acts, such as making donations. The results confirm the perception of green products as moral agents and provide marketers with insights into the marketing value of virtue cues in green product consumption. (shrink)

Research on the influence of industry on chemical regulation has mostly been conducted within the framework of the production of ignorance. This special issue extends this research by looking at how industry asserts its interests––not just in the scientific sphere but also at other stages of policy-making and regulatory process––with a specific focus on the types of tools or instruments industry has used. Bringing together sociologists and historians specialized in Science and Technology Studies, the articles of the special issue study (...) the arenas in which instruments and practical guidelines for public policy are negotiated or used. The aim is to observe the devices in the making or in action, from the selection of actors to the production of thresholds, criteria, and other technical regulations. The introduction highlights how industry influence on expertise and regulation is undoubtedly far more pervasive and multifarious than has been conceptualized to date by social scientists. Putting this issue back at the heart of both the STS and social sciences research agendas is increasingly urgent and could lead to new inquiries able to highlight these logics even more widely, using fresh empirical examples. (shrink)

Human language, hominin tool production modes, and multimodal communications systems of primates and other animals are currently well-studied for how they display compositionality or combinatoriality. In all cases, the former is defined as a kind of hierarchical nesting and the latter as a lack thereof. In this article, I extend research on combinatoriality and compositionality further to investigations of everyday primate skills. Daily locomotion modes as well as behaviors associated with subsistence practices, hygiene, or body modification rely on the hierarchical (...) nesting of different behavioral and cognitive actions into complex skills. I introduce a scheme which uses hierarchical organization to differentiate combinatorial from compositional skills. Combinatorial skills are defined either as aggregational or linearly hierarchical depending on whether the skill occurs momentarily in space or unfolds sequentially over time. Compositional skills are defined either as nested or interactionally hierarchical depending on whether the skill results in new constructs or in new interactions between existing constructs. The methodology I propose combines epistemological hierarchy theory with data from primatological field research and experimental and comparative psychological research and provides a means to integrate current constructionist and extended views on cognition and action with older research on behavioral logics in psychology and operational chain thinking in anthropology. The approach furthermore synchronizes with ongoing research on teleonomy, intentionality, and creativity. -/- . (shrink)

Nel presente contributo proponiamo un’intervista a Nathalie Simondon, responsabile dell’edizione dell’opera di Gilbert Simondon, al fine di fare luce sui temi di ecologia, enciclopedismo, transdisciplinarità e umanismo nella produzione filosofica di Gilbert Simondon.

Cet article entend cerner la spécificité de la critique littéraire de l’art telle qu’elle fut pratiquée par les écrivains et poètes en France entre 1850 et 1950, dans le sillage de Diderot, à partir d’un examen des écrits sur l’art de Diderot, Baudelaire, Zola, Stendhal, Huysmans, Valéry, Proust, Reverdy, Leiris. Au-delà des différences individuelles de goût, de statut, de sujets traités et de la prolixité discursive évidente dans la pratique, on peut mettre en lumière les points de convergence qui s’observent (...) dans leurs écrits, afin de cerner le propre de la critique littéraire de l’art du point de vue de la démarche, de la méthode et du style. Ces convergences prennent fond dans une posture commune aux écrivains, qui est celle du non-spécialiste, cultivant résolument la pensée libre et subjective. (shrink)

Dans leurs écrits sur l’art, Diderot et Baudelaire montrent comment les lignes des tableaux dirigent l’œil pour générer un intérêt, voire un choc déclencheur d’une expérience esthétique lorsqu’elles sont brisées. Les rides, fissures, plis qui rompent l’harmonie des figures sont pour Diderot une source profonde d’émotion, tandis que la ligne serpentine est de préférence infléchie en arabesque par Baudelaire. À leur façon, le philosophe et le poète montrent ainsi comment la pensée esthétique moderne se nourrit de ces désordres et irrégularités (...) de l’art en redéfinissant le beau idéal classique en une brisure de l’idéal. (shrink)

A substantial portion of produce harvested around the world is wasted because it does not meet consumers’ shape expectations. Only recently has research begun investigating the causes underlying misshapen produce rejection by consumers. Generally, this limited research has concluded that misshapen produce is subject to an ugly penalty, leading consumers to form biased expectations regarding product attributes (e.g., healthiness, tastiness, or naturalness). In this research, we propose that this ugly penalty extends to the moral valuation of misshapen produce and that (...) this moral penalty is rooted in the feelings of disgust evoked by the visual appearance of such produce. Across five studies and two pilot studies, we show that misshapen fruits and vegetables are disgust elicitors, and that felt disgust causes consumers to make negative moral associations with produce which, in turn, leads to decreased preference. We also show that pairing misshapen produce with a positive unconditioned stimulus (i.e., an image of attractive individuals) is an efficient solution to counteract the effect of this stereotype. This research contributes to the growing body of work demonstrating the link between consumption behaviors, consumer preferences, and morality. (shrink)

The title of this essay is not to be taken literally: I will not be making the case that Marseille is actually the last working class city in France. My title is a reference to Chris Marker’s 1993 film The Last Bolshevik (Le Tombeau d’Alexandre), a film about Alexander Medvedkin, one of the pioneers of early Soviet cinema. Medvedkin was the inspiration for the Groupe Medvedkine, a film collective founded by Chris Marker and made up of French militant filmmakers who, (...) in December 1967, decided to document the labor unrest that had erupted in factories near Besançon by making experimental films that involved the active participation of the workers themselves. Marker first met Medvedkin at a film festival in Leipzig .. (shrink)

In this special issue, Steins and Edwards introduced the notion of nested platforms for resource use negotiation as a tool to facilitate collective action amongst multiple-users in complex common-pool resource management scenarios. Five discussion statements were put forward to aid the debate on multi-use platforms. This paper is a synthesis of the responses to these statements by the other contributors to this special issue. It aims to further stimulate the debate on the management of complex, multiple-use common-pool management scenarios.

This paper discusses the establishment of a governance framework to secure the development and deployment of “good AI”, and describes the quest for a morally objective compass to steer it. Asserting that human rights can provide such compass, this paper first examines what a human rights-based approach to AI governance entails, and sets out the promise it propagates. Subsequently, it examines the pitfalls associated with human rights, particularly focusing on the criticism that these rights may be too Western, too individualistic, (...) too narrow in scope and too abstract to form the basis of sound AI governance. After rebutting these reproaches, a plea is made to move beyond the calls for a human rights-based approach, and start taking the necessary steps to attain its realisation. It is argued that, without elucidating the applicability and enforceability of human rights in the context of AI; adopting legal rules that concretise those rights where appropriate; enhancing existing enforcement mechanisms and securing an underlying societal infrastructure that enables human rights in the first place, any human rights-based governance framework for AI risks falling short of its purpose. (shrink)

Cornelius Castoriadis is one of the very few social and political philosophers – modern and ancient – for whom a concept of imagination is truly central. In his work, however, the role of imagination is so overarching that it becomes difficult to grasp its workings and consequences in detail, in particular in its relation to democracy as the political form in which autonomy is the core imaginary signification. This article will proceed by first suggesting some clarifications about Castoriadis’s employment of (...) the concept. This preparatory exploration will allow us in a second step to discuss why the idea of democracy is closely linked to tragedy, and why this linkage in turn is dependent on the centrality of imagination for human action. In a third conceptual step, finally, we suggest that any concept of imagination will need to take into account the plurality and diversity of the outcomes of the power of imagination. Thus, the question of the nature of the novelty that imagination creates needs to be addressed as well as the one of the agon in the face of different imagined innovations in a given democratic political setting. As a consequence of this shift in emphasis, to be elaborated further, one will be able to say more about one question of which Castoriadis was well aware, which he never addressed himself in detail, though: the decline and end of polities and political forms, the question of political mortality. (shrink)

In this chapter Nathalie Bulle and Francesco Di Iorio present critical realism’s take on methodological individualism, their affinities and differences relating to notions of structure and agency in interpreting social reality, and challenge Margaret Archer’s criticisms of MI, which seem to combat a “straw man.”.

Traditionally defined as the science of the living, or as the field that beyond anatomical structure and bodily form studies functional organization and behaviour, physiology has long been excluded from evolutionary research. The main reason for this exclusion is that physiology has a presential and futuristic outlook on life, while evolutionary theory is traditionally defined as the study of natural history. In this paper, I re-evaluate these classic science divisions and situate physiology within the history of the evolutionary sciences, as (...) well as within debates on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and the need for a Third Way of Evolution. I then briefly point out how evolutionary physiology in particular contributes to research on function, causation, teleonomy, agency and cognition. (shrink)

In the 1990s, Building Information Modeling (BIM) software significantly altered architectural approaches to planning and building. Based on parametric methods, BIM technologies sought to simulate the construction process prior to a building’s realisation. These computer simulations challenged the existing practice of representing a building through plan, section and elevation, proposing that one computational model could create a more efficient way of building. The history of BIM explorations and applications, while hardly linear, can be traced back to developments in computing since (...) the post-war period. This article maps some of these histories by examining how the computational model became an organisational infrastructure, collecting data about design and building parameters, and facilitating knowledge transfer across industries. Special attention will be given to the foundational role of Charles Eastman’s work on a Building Description System (BDS) in the 1970s, as well as Robert Aish’s contribution to RUCAPS, one of the earliest applications of Building Modeling for the design of parametric structures. I will further address research on interface technologies and computational curve modelling as well as the popularisation of Building Information systems through the office of Gehry Partners. By highlighting the interrelated nature of technology and cultural shifts in the making of BIM, this contribution sheds light on the epistemic status of computer simulations in architecture, and the dynamics of the design and building processes in which they are used. (shrink)

Translation: How did life originate? What were the first life forms? How did the cells of our body evolve? Is natural selection the only mechanism whereby evolution occurs? What did Darwin mean with the term natural selection and do we still use that definition today? Does evolution occur slow or fast? Are we determined by our genes? We all ask ourselves these questions from time to time. Scientists however often get too technical and philosophers too speculative in their answers. This (...) book aims to form a bridge between the life and human sciences. Questions on the origin and evolution of life are analyzed critically from within different disciplines. The result is a state of the art, accessible for philosophers and scientists as well as non-academics. Many of the answered proposed can thereby be understood as complements, deviations and alternatives to the standard paradigm of biology, the Modern Synthesis. These deviating statements are bundles into 15 theses. The question then becomes in how far the Modern Synthesis should become the subject of revision based upon these theses. Original: Hoe is leven ontstaan? Welke vorm nam het eerste leven aan? Hoe ontstonden de cellen waaruit ons lichaam is opgebouwd? Is natuurlijke selectie het enige mechanisme waarlangs evolutie zich voordoet? Wat bedoelde Darwin met natuurlijke selectie en gebruiken we deze definitie vandaag nog? Voltrekt evolutie zich traag of snel? Worden we gedetermineerd door onze genen? We stellen ons allemaal deze vragen wel eens. Wetenschappers worden echter algauw te technisch en filosofen te speculatief bij het beantwoorden ervan. Dit boek wil een brug slaan tussen de natuurwetenschappen en de menswetenschappen en de vragen omtrent de oorsprong en evolutie van leven, kritisch en nuchter, vanuit verschillende disciplines analyseren. Het resultaat is een huidige stand van zaken, leesbaar, zowel voor filosofen als wetenschappers en ook voor de leek. Vele van de voorgestelde antwoorden kunnen daarbij begrepen worden als aanvullingen, afwijkingen of alternatieven van het standaardparadigma in de biologie: de Moderne Synthese. Deze afwijkende stellingen werden gebundeld in 15 thesen. De vraag is in hoeverre de Moderne Synthese, in relatie met deze thesen, onderwerp voor herziening moet zijn. (shrink)

Présentation générale Ce numéro spécial des Cahiers de la recherche, une collection consacrée à la grammaire anglaise de l’énonciation et dirigée par Janine Bouscaren, se présente comme un hommage des membres du geped (Groupe d’études en psycholinguistique et didactique) à Danielle Bailly qui en fut la fondatrice en 1994. L’ouvrage comporte dix-huit contributions, dont certaines collectives, que les éditrices du volume, Danielle Chini et Pascale Goutéraux, ont articulé autour de six chapitres...

In this chapter Nathalie Sigot argues that Bentham’s interest in international trade lies in the consideration of the redistributive effects of trade and its consequences on happiness for one’s society. Sigot demonstrates that Bentham’s view on international trade changed between 1786 and 1821, when the principle of the limitation of industry by capital disappeared from his writings. Sigot explains how Bentham’s approach is driven by a focus on security and on a calculus of gains and losses in terms of (...) happiness. (shrink)

While methodological individualism is a fundamental approach within the social sciences, it is often misunderstood. This highlights the need for a discursive and up-to-date reference work analyzing this approach’s classic arguments and assumptions in the light of contemporary issues in sociology, economics and philosophy. This two-volume handbook presents the first comprehensive overview of methodological individualism. Chapters discuss historical and contemporary debates surrounding this central approach within the social sciences, as well as cutting edge developments related to the individualist tradition with (...) philosophical and scientific implications. Bringing together multiple contributions from the world’s leading experts on this important tradition of theorizing, this collective endeavor provides teachers, researchers and students in sociology, economics, and philosophy with a reliable and critical understanding of the founding principles, key thinkers and intellectual development of MI since the late 19th century. ​. (shrink)

To see "democracy as a tragic regime", as Cornelius Castoriadis did, is to recognize the ever-present risk of democracy’s cancellation, but it also means to emphasize the anti-democratic nature of such cancellation, thus its incompatibility with democracy. In the context of this understanding of democracy, the article takes the political to consist of those relations among people and among institutions within the polis, which aim at deciding about the polis’ fate. It takes the social to be those relations among people (...) and among institutions within the polis, to whom such decisions about the polis’ fate apply and whom they create. If democracy is understood as tension between the two, then the relation between those who decide and those who are subject of the decision is never entirely pacified – hence, always contested and in need of specification. Using the examples of the state of exception and totalitarianism (temporary and permanent self-cancellation), the article argues that these situations are outside a linear continuation with the democratic phenomenon and are due to a displacement, which is akin to the hubristic displacement. (shrink)

The work is divided into five chapters. The first, “Neglect of Everyday Aesthetics,” speaks of the fact that although the question of aesthetics has been enriched and enlarged by objects long ignored, with notable design, aesthetics is essentially a discourse on art. This is problematic in the sense that many implications of our aesthetic judgment escape all problematic reflexion if we stay centered on art. The aesthetic activity brings ethic choices (to prefer this or that type of environment) that are (...) not included in the artistic appreciation; the problematic of artistic creation does not take into consideration the ordinary creation, such as arranging a garden, a space, or a living space. The second chapter is .. (shrink)

There exists a fundamental convergence between some major trends of modern epistemology—as outlined, for instance, by Filmer Northrop and Henry Margenau—and the theories actually developed within sciences of the human mind where two types of thought—one implicit and, the other, explicit—tend to refer to two different lines of development. Moreover, these theories can find in the psychology of Lev Vygotsky some seminal hypotheses of a major importance. In order to highlight this convergence, we parallel the role played by structured conceptual (...) systems in Vygotsky’s conception of intellectual development and Northrop’s epistemology. We show how these conceptual systems account for the notion of causality and can explain the success of scientific thought, i.e. its possible match with the real world, while this match falsely justified an overall biological model of intellectual development in Jean Piaget’s work. We conclude that dual process theorists should no longer neglect cognitive tools, and especially conceptual systems, which underpin the awareness and mastery of thought that are characteristic of type 2 processes. This whole analysis leads us to maintain that human psychology is not characterized in the first instance by a need to act, but a quest for meaning. (shrink)

In 2010, two years after the global financial collapse that triggered the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the best-selling publication in France was not that year’s Prix Goncourt,1 Michel Houellebecq’s La carte et le territoire (The Map and the Territory), a novel published by Flammarion, one of Paris’s leading publishing houses. That honor went to Indignez-vous! (Time for Outrage!), a 32-page pamphlet authored by 93-year-old Stéphane Hessel, a former hero of the French Resistance, a concentration (...) camp survivor and career diplomat. Hessel’s booklet, issued by Indigène Editions, a small provincial publisher, has since sold over 2 million copies, reaching an estimated 10 million .. (shrink)

Scholarly opinions vary on what language is, how it evolved, and from where or what it evolved. Long considered uniquely human, today scholars argue for evolutionary continuity between human language and animal communication systems. But while it is generally recognized that language is an evolving communication system, scholars continue to debate from which species language evolved, and what behavioral and cognitive features are the precursors to human language. To understand the nature of protolanguage, some look for homologs in gene functionality, (...) brain areas, or anatomical structures such as the supralaryngeal vocal tract; others point toward primates, their gestural, vocal, multimodal, and in later evolving hominins also their pantomimic communication systems; and still others draw parallels between the musicality that characterizes language and the pitch found in the numerous sounds produced by animals. Accordingly, protolanguage theories today are multiple and diverse, and protolanguages might have also been diverse. This special issue on Evolving (Proto)Language/s for Lingua bundles several of the protolanguage theories that were put forward at the sixth edition of the Ways to Protolanguage conference series, held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, in 2019. Not aimed at surveying all the different ways there are to conceptualize, study, and model protolanguage/s, this issue provides interested readers with good overviews on the role played in current theorizing on protolanguage/s by (paleo)anthropology, genetics, physiology, developmental, evolutionary, ecological, and pragmatic research lines. (shrink)

The fundamental difference between Castoriadis' and Papaioannou's accounts of the link between tragedy and the political is that Castoriadis insists on a political form whilst Papaioannou insists on a social actor. The starting point for this essay, then, are two thinkers: one whose main interest was a political and philosophical reflection on the social-historical and one whose main interest was a philosophical reflection on the arts. Surprisingly, however, the end situation is one where Castoriadis gives us a political explanation of (...) the link between tragedy and the political whilst Papaioannou gives us a social explanation of the same phenomenon. How can this difference be accounted for? First, distinguishing their respective conceptualisations of the political allows us to see that where one thinker privileges restlessness and revolution, the other privileges law and regime. Second, looking at their depictions of the essential aspects of tragedy places them on opposing sides of the couple hubris- dike, in a way that leads to two radically different conceptualisations of the relation in question. (shrink)