This paper argues that in some explanations mathematics are playing an explanatory rather than a representational role, and that this feature unifies many types of non-causal or non-mechanistic explanations that some philosophers of science have been recently exploring under various names. After showing how mathematics can play either a representational or an explanatory role by considering two alternative explanations of a same biological pattern—“Bergmann’s rule”—I offer an example of an explanation where the bulk of the explanatory job is done by (...) a mathematical theorem, and where mechanisms involved in the target systems are not explanatorily relevant. Then I account for the way mathematical properties may function in an explanatory way within an explanation by arguing that some mathematical propositions involving variables non directly referring to the target system features constitute constraints to which a whole class of systems should comply, provided they are describable by a mathematical object concerned by those propositions. According to such “constraint account”, those mathematical facts are directly entailing the explanandum, as a consequence of such constraints. I call those explanations “structural”, because here properties of mathematical structures are accounting for the explanandum; various kinds of mathematical structures thereby define various types of structural explanations. (shrink)

Besides mechanistic explanations of phenomena, which have been seriously investigated in the last decade, biology and ecology also include explanations that pinpoint specific mathematical properties as explanatory of the explanandum under focus. Among these structural explanations, one finds topological explanations, and recent science pervasively relies on them. This reliance is especially due to the necessity to model large sets of data with no practical possibility to track the proper activities of all the numerous entities. The paper first defines topological explanations (...) and then explains why topological explanations and mechanisms are different in principle. Then it shows that they are pervasive both in the study of networks—whose importance has been increasingly acknowledged at each level of the biological hierarchy—and in contexts where the notion of selective neutrality is crucial; this allows me to capture the difference between mechanisms and topological explanations in terms of practical modelling practices. The rest of the paper investigates how in practice mechanisms and topologies are combined. They may be articulated in theoretical structures and explanatory strategies, first through a relation of constraint, second in interlevel theories, or they may condition each other. Finally, I explore how a particular model can integrate mechanistic informations, by focusing on the recent practice of merging networks in ecology and its consequences upon multiscale modelling. (shrink)

There are various conceptions of objectivity, a characteristic of the scientific enterprise, the most fundamental being objectivity as faithfulness to facts. A brute fact, which happens independently from us, becomes a scientific fact once we take cognisance of it through the means made available to us by science. Because of the complex, reciprocal relationship between scientific facts and scientific theory, the concept of objectivity as faithfulness to facts does not hold in the strict sense of an aperspectival faithfulness to brute (...) facts. Nevertheless, it holds in the large sense of an underdetermined faithfulness to scientific facts, as long as we keep in mind the complexity of the notion of scientific fact (as theory-laden), and the role of non-factual elements in theory choice (as underdetermined by facts). Science remains our best way to separate our factual beliefs from our other kinds of beliefs. (shrink)

As part of a recent attempt to extend the methods of formal semantics beyond language, it has been claimed that music has an abstract truth-conditional semantics, albeit one that has more in common with iconic semantics than with standard compositional semantics. After summarizing this approach and addressing a common objection, we argue that music semantics should be enriched in three directions by incorporating insights of other areas of Super Semantics. First, it has been claimed by Abusch 2013 that visual narratives (...) make use of discourse referents akin to those we find in language. We argue that a similar conclusion extends to music, and we highlight it by investigating ways in which orchestration and dance may make cross-referential dependencies more explicit. Second, we show that by bringing music semantics closer to the semantics of visual narratives, we can give an account of the semantics of mixed visual and musical sequences. Third, it has been claimed that co-speech gestures trigger characteristic conditionalized presuppositions, called ‘cosuppositions’, and that their semantic status derives from their parasitic character relative to words. We argue that the same conclusion extends to some instances of film and cartoon music: it may trigger cosuppositions that can be revealed by embedding film excerpts or gifs in sentences so as to test presupposition projection. We further argue that under special discourse conditions, pro-speech gestures and pro-speech music alike can trigger cosuppositions as well. These results suggest that new insights can be gained not just by extending the methods of semantics to new objects, but also by drawing new connections among them. (shrink)

According to a theorem recently proved in the theory of logical aggregation, any nonconstant social judgment function that satisfies independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) is dictatorial. We show that the strong and not very plausible IIA condition can be replaced with a minimal independence assumption plus a Pareto-like condition. This new version of the impossibility theorem likens it to Arrow’s and arguably enhances its paradoxical value.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has repeatedly been described as an “essentially contested concept,” which means that its signification is subject to continuous struggle. We argue that the “CSR institution” (CSRI; i.e., the set of standards and rules regulating corporate conduct under the banner of CSR) is legitimized by narratives which “decontest” the underlying concept of CSR in a manner that safeguards the CSRI from calls for alternative institutional arrangements. Examining several such narratives from a structuralist perspective, we find them to (...) be permeated with six recurrent ambiguities that we show to be reflective of three deep-set taboos: the taboo of the noncongruency between corporate profit objectives and societal needs, the taboo of multinational firms’ continued contribution to the emergence of global socioenvironmental issues, and the taboo of the CSRI’s moderate results in solving these problems. We contend that the perpetuation of these taboos contributes to inhibiting substantial change in the way of doing business, and we sketch out possibilities for initiating a “recontestation” of CSR’s meaning. (shrink)

Biological individuals are usually defined by evolutionists through a reference to natural selection. This article looks for a concept of individuality that would hold at the same time for organisms and for communities or ecosystems, the latter being unaffected by natural selection. In the wake of Simon’s notion of “quasi-independence,” I elaborate a concept of “weak individuality” defined by probabilistic connections between sub-entities, read off our knowledge of their interactions. This formal scheme of connections allows one to infer what are (...) the individuals in the domain addressed by the theory of the interactions. The article argues that if ecosystems do not have strong individuality, they still possess a weak individuality, ecological theories providing the values of the variables in the formula for individuality. (shrink)

This book addresses several key issues in the biological study of death with the intent of capturing their genealogy, the assumptions and presuppositions they make, and the way that they open specific new research avenues. The book is divided into two sections: the first considers physiology and the second evolutionary biology. Huneman explains that biologists in the late 1950s put forth a research framework that evolutionarily accounts for death in terms of either an effect of the weakness of natural selection (...) or a by-product of natural selection for early reproduction. He illustrates how the biology of death is a central field and that studying it provides insight into the way that the epistemic structure of this knowledge has been constituted, persists until now, and may conflict with some traditional philosophical ideas. (shrink)

De l'Antiquité à la Renaissance, la notion d'harmonie a lié les mathématiques, l'astronomie et la musique. Renouant avec cette tradition millénaire, Jean-Philippe Uzan vous invite à écouter le chant des étoiles, les vibrations du cosmos et le cri du big bang. Une balade cosmique entre sciences et musique, vertigineuse et inspirante. Jean-Philippe Uzan est physicien théoricien, spécialiste de la théorie du big bang. Il est directeur de recherche au CNRS/Institut d'astrophysique de Paris et directeur adjoint de l'Institut Henri (...) Poincaré. (shrink)

This research investigates 3- and 5-year-olds' relative fairness in distributing small collections of even or odd numbers of more or less desirable candies, either with an adult experimenter or between two dolls. The authors compare more than 200 children from around the world, growing up in seven highly contrasted cultural and economic contexts, from rich and poor urban areas, to small-scale traditional and rural communities. Across cultures, young children tend to optimize their own gain, not showing many signs of self-sacrifice (...) or generosity. Already by 3 years of age, self-optimizing in distributive justice is based on perspective taking and rudiments of mind reading. By 5 years, overall, children tend to show more fairness in sharing. What varies across cultures is the magnitude of young children's self-interest. More fairness (less self-interest) in distributive justice is evident by children growing up in small-scale urban and traditional societies thought to promote more collective values. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Preface: Virtual Entities in ScienceRobert Harlander, Jean-Philippe Martinez, Friedrich Steinle, and Adrian WüthrichIt is not only since the sudden increase of online communication due to the COVID-19 situation that the concept of the “virtual” has made its way into everyday language. In this context, it mostly denotes a digital substitute for a real object or process. Virtual reality is perhaps the best-known term in this respect. With these (...) digital connotations, “virtuality” has also been used in science and research: Chemists use virtual laboratories, biologists do virtual scanning of molecular structures, and geologists engage in virtual field trips. But the concept of the virtual has a much longer tradition, dating back to long before the dawn of the digital age. Virtual images and virtual displacements were introduced in classical physics already in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, respectively. They represent auxiliary objects or processes without instantiation, with the purpose of efficiently describing specific physical systems. In today’s physics, the term “virtual” is mostly associated with the quantum world, first and foremost with the “virtual particle” of quantum field theory. It has become such an integral part of modern high energy physics that its ontological character may be considered to go beyond the purely auxiliary, which is typically associated with the virtual. [End Page 263]In other disciplines, however, use of the term virtual without a digital connotation is much rarer. While concepts like “virtual adrenaline” show up in physiological research around 1940s, and Charles Darwin, in a private note in January 1840,1 spoke of “virtual change” in the context of embryology, these examples seem to be singular occurrences of entities that were explicitly called “virtual.” The basic idea behind the terminology of the virtual, however, might be much more common, even outside of physics. The “invisible hand” in economics, or the “vital force” in biology, for instance, may carry aspects of a virtual entity, even if they have not been referred to that way.These different observations raise several questions about the status of virtual entities in science. What has led scientists to call one entity “virtual” and not another? Do all virtual entities in science have the same roots and meet the same characteristics? Are they more than auxiliary objects or processes? Why does physics seem to occupy a specific position with respect to the use of the notion of virtuality? These are some points that led us to discuss virtual entities in science during a workshop, out of which grew the present collection. We invited contributions that addressed the historical formation and philosophical interpretation of concepts of virtual entities in physics and other disciplines—in whatever terms they may come. The main goal of the workshop was to bring to the fore similarities and differences in the meanings and functions of these concepts, so as to be able to precisely characterize why certain entities are considered virtual in specific contexts, why a different terminology was often used in each individual case, and in what sense the virtual entities relate to the real world.The organization of the workshop was part of our project “The formation and development of the concept of virtual particles,” a subproject of the Research Unit “The Epistemology of the Large Hadron Collider,” funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Der Wissenschaftsfonds (FWF). The workshop took place online on four consecutive Fridays in March 2021. It brought together contributors who discussed the role of the concept of the virtual in theoretical as well as experimental activities, and investigated into the origins of the terminology of the virtual as it was applied to the various disciplines of natural science. Dealing with historical, philosophical, but also methodological questions, the presentations covered a wide time range, from the Middle Ages to the present day. While physics naturally emerged as the dominant field, natural philosophy, computer science and biology were also addressed. The papers in this volume were contributed by participants in this workshop and approach the subject from different angles. [End Page 264]First, Friedrich Steinle provides us with an introductory piece that reflects on the specific meaning of the use of the term ‘virtual’ in science. He highlights and... (shrink)

We investigate the conflict between the ex ante and ex post criteria of social welfare in a new framework of individual and social decisions, which distinguishes between two sources of uncertainty, here interpreted as an objective and a subjective source respectively. This framework makes it possible to endow the individuals and society not only with ex ante and ex post preferences, as is usually done, but also with interim preferences of two kinds, and correspondingly, to introduce interim forms of the (...) Pareto principle. After characterizing the ex ante and ex post criteria, we present a first solution to their conflict that extends the former as much possible in the direction of the latter. Then, we present a second solution, which goes in the opposite direction, and is also maximally assertive. Both solutions translate the assumed Pareto conditions into weighted additive utility representations, and both attribute to the individuals common probability values on the objective source of uncertainty, and different probability values on the subjective source. We discuss these solutions in terms of two conceptual arguments, i.e., the by now classic spurious unanimity argument and a novel informational argument labelled complementary ignorance. The paper complies with the standard economic methodology of basing probability and utility representations on preference axioms, but for the sake of completeness, also considers a construal of objective uncertainty based on the assumption of an exogeneously given probability measure. JEL classification: D70; D81. (shrink)

Animal research suggests that central serotonergic neurons are involved in behavioral suppression, particularly anxiety-related inhibition. The hypothesis linking decreased serotonin transmission to reduced anxiety as the mechanism in the anxiolytic activity of benzodiazepines conflicts with most clinical observations. Serotonin antagonists show no marked capacity to alleviate anxiety. On the other hand, clinical signs of reduced serotonergic transmission (low 5-HIAA levels in the cerebrospinal fluid) are frequently associated with aggressiveness, suicide attempts, and increased anxiety. The target article attempts to reconcile such (...) human and animal findings by investigating whether anxiety reduction or increased impulsivity is more Likely to account for animal behavioral changes associated with decreased serotonergic transmission. The effects of manipulating central serotonin in experimental anxiety paradigms in animals (punishment, extinction, novelty) are reviewed and compared with the effects of antianxiety drugs. Anxiety seems neither necessary nor sufficient to induce control by serotonergic neurons on behavior. Further evidence suggests that behavioral effects of anxiolytics thought to be mediated by decreases in anxiety are not caused by the ability of these drugs to reduce serotonin transmission. Blockade of serotonin transmission, especially at the level of the substantia nigra, results in a shift of behavior toward facilitation of responding. This behavioral shift is particularly marked when there is competition between acting and restraining response tendencies and when obstacles prevent the immediate attainment of an anticipated reward. It is proposed that serotonergic neurons are involved not only in behavioral arousal but also in enabling the organism to arrange or tolerate delay before acting. Decreases in serotonin transmission seem to be associated with the increased performance of behaviors that are usually suppressed, though not necessarily because of the alleviation of anxiety, which might contribute to the suppression. (shrink)

We introduce a ranking of multidimensional alternatives, including uncertain prospects as a particular case, when these objects can be given a matrix form. This ranking is separable in terms of rows and columns, and continuous and monotonic in the basic quantities. Owing to the theory of additive separability developed here, we derive very precise numerical representations over a large class of domains (i.e., typically notof the Cartesian product form). We apply these representationsto (1)streams of commodity baskets through time, (2)uncertain social (...) prospects, (3)uncertain individual prospects. Concerning(1), we propose a finite horizon variant of Koopmans’s (1960) axiomatization of infinite discounted utility sums. The main results concern(2). We push the classic comparison between the exanteand expostsocial welfare criteria one step further by avoiding any expected utility assumptions, and as a consequence obtain what appears to be the strongest existing form of Harsanyi’s (1955) Aggregation Theorem. Concerning(3), we derive a subjective probability for Anscombe and Aumann’s (1963) finite case by merely assuming that there are two epistemically independent sources of uncertainty. (shrink)

Nudge is a concept of policy intervention that originates in Thaler and Sunstein's (2008) popular eponymous book. Following their own hints, we distinguish three properties of nudge interventions: they redirect individual choices by only slightly altering choice conditions (here nudge 1), they use rationality failures instrumentally (here nudge 2), and they alleviate the unfavourable effects of these failures (here nudge 3). We explore each property in semantic detail and show that no entailment relation holds between them. This calls into question (...) the theoretical unity of nudge, as intended by Thaler and Sunstein and most followers. We eventually recommend pursuing each property separately, both in policy research and at the foundational level. We particularly emphasize the need of reconsidering the respective roles of decision theory and behavioural economics to delineate nudge 2 correctly. The paper differs from most of the literature in focusing on the definitional rather than the normative problems of nudge. (shrink)

As stochastic independence is essential to the mathematical development of probability theory, it seems that any foundational work on probability should be able to account for this property. Bayesian decision theory appears to be wanting in this respect. Savage’s postulates on preferences under uncertainty entail a subjective expected utility representation, and this asserts only the existence and uniqueness of a subjective probability measure, regardless of its properties. What is missing is a preference condition corresponding to stochastic independence. To fill this (...) significant gap, the article axiomatizes Bayesian decision theory afresh and proves several representation theorems in this novel framework. (shrink)

Stalnaker ( 1978 ) made two seminal claims about presuppositions. The most influential one was that presupposition projection is computed by a pragmatic mechanism based on a notion of ‘local context’ . Due to conceptual and technical difficulties, however, the latter notion was reinterpreted in purely semantic terms within ‘dynamic semantics’ (Heim 1983 ). The second claim was that some instances of presupposition generation should also be explained in pragmatic terms . But despite various attempts, the definition of a precise (...) ‘triggering algorithm’ has remained somewhat elusive. We discuss possible extensions of both claims. First, we offer a reconstruction of ‘local contexts’ which circumvents some of the difficulties faced by Stalnaker’s original analysis. We preserve the idea that local contexts are computed by a pragmatic mechanism that aggregates the information that follows from an incomplete sentence given the global context; but we crucially rely on a modified notion of entailment (‘R-entailment’), whose plausibility should be assessed on independent grounds. Second, we speculate that local contexts might prove necessary (though by no means sufficient) to understand how some presuppositions are triggered. In a nutshell, we suggest that a presupposition is triggered when the semantic contribution of an expression to its local context is in some sense ‘heterogeneous’. Without giving an analysis of the latter notion, we note that this architecture implies that presuppositions should be triggered on the basis of the meaning that an expression has relative to its local context (what we call its ‘local meaning’); we sketch some possible consequences of this analysis. (shrink)

Emotions are traditionally considered to be brief states that last for seconds or a few minutes at most. However, due to pioneering theoretical work of Frijda and recent empirical studies, it has become clear that the duration of emotions is actually highly variable with durations ranging from a few seconds to several hours, or even longer. We review research on determinants of emotion duration. Three classes of determinants are identified: features related to the emotion-eliciting event, emotion itself, and emotion-experiencing person. (...) Initial evidence on the psychological and neural mechanisms that underlie their effects is discussed. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: -- Acknowledgements -- PART I: WHAT HAPPENED? -- Inheriting from Seattle -- What Are We Dealing With? -- Daring to be Pragmatic -- Infernal Alternatives -- Minions -- PART II: LEARNING TO PROTECT ONESELF -- Do You Believe in Sorcery? -- Leaving Safe Ground -- Marx Again... -- To Believe in Progress No Longer? -- Learning Fright -- PART III: HOW TO GET A HOLD? -- Thanks to Seattle? -- The Trajectory of an Apprenticeship -- Fostering (...) New Connections -- Sorry, but we have to -- Reactivating History -- PART IV: NEEDING PEOPLE TO THINK -- A Cry -- Interstices -- Ecosophy -- Political Creation -- Empowerment -- Reclaim -- Above All, Not to Conclude -- Index. (shrink)

This is the outline: 1. Introduction : organicisme et personnalisme 2. Un effort pour philosopher sur tout 3. La théologie et la question de l’infra-substantiel 3.1 Un schème de pensée qui pose problème 3.2 Le statut de l’immortalité 4. Substance, personne et cosmos.

Previous neural network models of concept learning were mainly implemented with supervised learning schemes. However, studies of human conceptual memory have shown that concepts may be learned without a teacher who provides the category name to associate with exemplars. A modular neural network architecture that realizes concept acquisition through two functionally distinct operations, categorizing and naming, is proposed as an alternative. An unsupervised algorithm realizes the categorizing module by constructing representations of categories compatible with prototype theory. The naming module associates (...) category names to the output of the categorizing module in a supervised mode. In such a modular architecture, the interface between the modules can be conceived of as an “information relay” that encodes, constrains, and propagates important information. Five experiments were conducted to analyze the relationships among internal conceptual codes and simple conceptual and lexical development. The first two experiments show a prototype effect and illustrate some basic characteristics of the system. The third experiment presents a bottom‐up model of the narrowing down of children's early lexical categories that honors mutual exclusivity. The fourth experiment introduces top‐down constraints on conceptual coding. The fifth experiment exhibits how hierarchical relationships between concepts are learned by the architecture, and also demonstrates how a spectrum of conceptual expertise may gradually emerge as a consequence of experiencing more with certain categories than with others. (shrink)

The relations between rationality and optimization have been widely discussed in the wake of Herbert Simon's work, with the common conclusion that the rationality concept does not imply the optimization principle. The paper is partly concerned with adding evidence for this view, but its main, more challenging objective is to question the converse implication from optimization to rationality, which is accepted even by bounded rationality theorists. We discuss three topics in succession: (1) rationally defensible cyclical choices, (2) the revealed preference (...) theory of optimization, and (3) the infinite regress of optimization. We conclude that (1) and (2) provide evidence only for the weak thesis that rationality does not imply optimization. But (3) is seen to deliver a significant argument for the strong thesis that optimization does not imply rationality. (shrink)

What are the roots of human normativity and when do children begin to behave according to standards and norms? Empirical observations demonstrate that we are born with built-in orientation toward what is predictable and of the same - henceforth what deviates from it -, what is the norm or the standard in the generic sense of the word. However, what develop in humans is self-consciousness, transforming norms from “should” to “ought” and making human normativity profoundly different from any other forms (...) expressed in infancy, other animals, or any smart machines. Self-consciousness is the ability to objectify oneself through the evaluative eyes of others. It sets us apart as a species and is at the roots of human normativity. A developmental blueprint capturing the progressive co-emergence of self-consciousness and normativity in the human child is proposed. (shrink)

I challenge the usual approach of defining emergence in terms of properties of wholes “emerging” upon properties of parts. This approach indeed fails to meet the requirement of nontriviality, since it renders a bunch of ordinary properties emergent; however, by defining emergence as the incompressibility of a simulation process, we have an objective meaning of emergence because the difference between the processes satisfying the incompressibility criterion and the other processes does not depend on our cognitive abilities. Finally, this definition fulfills (...) the nontriviality and the scientific‐adequacy requirements better than the combinatorial approach, emergence here being a predicate of processes rather than of properties. †To contact the author, please write to: Institut d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques (CNRS/Université Paris I Sorbonne), 13 rue du Four 75006, Paris; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This is the outline : I - Quelques étapes aux avancées significatives II - La pensée chrétienne et le hasard d’ignorance III - De quelques difficultés de raisonner sur le probable IV - Téléologie et évolutionnisme V - Où est l’« étage » qui permette de parler d’indépendance ? VI. Qu’y a-t-il à la base de nos concepts d’ordre ? VII - Quelle place pour le hasard ? VIII. Le hasard appréhendé de dos ?

Sign languages are known to display the same general grammatical properties as spoken languages, but also to make greater use of iconic mechanisms. In Schlenker et al.’s ‘Iconic Variables’ :91–149, 2013), it was argued that loci can have an iconic semantics, in the sense that certain geometric relations among loci are preserved by the interpretation function. Here we ask whether plural and height specifications of loci display the formal behavior of phi-features in remaining uninterpreted in focus- and ellipsis-constructions. Data from (...) ASL and LSF show that plural and height specifications may indeed remain uninterpreted in these constructions; furthermore, there are cases in which a single high locus is construed iconically and left uninterpreted in the course of ellipsis resolution. We argue that our data are compatible with two theories. According to the Strong View, plural and height specifications of loci display exactly the behavior of spoken language features. According to the Weak View, our data just show that plural and height specifications share the behavior of features and other non-assertive elements in being separable from the referential terms they specify. Our LSF data are compatible with the Weak View; our ASL data might provide support for the Strong View. While our aim is merely to open the debate about the featural status of iconic specifications, the question is of some importance: if features are innate and primitive elements of grammar, and if some of them have an intrinsically geometric semantics, the signed modality might play a greater role than is usually thought at the very core of Universal Grammar. (shrink)

In several sign languages, plurals can be realized with unpunctuated or punctuated repetitions of a noun, with different semantic implications; similar repetition-based plurals have been described in some homesigns and silent gestures. Unpunctuated repetitions often get approximate ‘at least’ readings while punctuated repetitions typically correspond to ‘exactly’ readings. The prevalence of these mechanisms could be thought to be a case in which Universal Grammar does not just specify the abstract properties of grammatical elements, but also their phonological realization, at least (...) in the visual modality. We explore an alternative in which punctuated and unpunctuated repetitions arise from general properties of iconic representations. On an empirical level, we argue that in ASL, punctuated and unpunctuated repetitions are unlikely to be an exclusively grammatical mechanism, as they can be found with purely iconic representations. On a theoretical level, we argue for a modular account with three components. First, repetition-based plurals can create a simplified pictorial representation. Second, unpunctuated repetitions give rise to pictorial vagueness, resolved by way of quantification over precisifications. Third, a pragmatic process involving strategic reasoning maps these vague representations onto a set of candidate linguistic meanings, including some ‘at least’ plural readings that are best expressed by unpunctuated repetitions. (shrink)

Self-recognition by 86 children was assessed using the mirror mark test in two different social contexts. In the classic mirror task condition, only the child was marked prior to mirror exposure . In the social norm condition, the child, experimenter, and accompanying parent were marked prior to the child’s mirror exposure . Results indicate that in both conditions children pass the test in comparable proportion, with the same increase as a function of age. However, in the Norm condition, children displayed (...) significantly more hesitation while removing the mark, often touching it without removing it or, if so, promptly putting the mark back onto their forehead. In the Classic condition, only one child showed such hesitation. These results suggest that from the outset, mirror self-recognition can refer to social awareness. This link is interpreted as the trademark of human self-consciousness, a deeply rooted “looking glass” self-awareness. (shrink)

Description courte (Électre, 2019) : Une étude d'un des principaux axes de réflexion du philosophe des sciences et de la nature Raymond Ruyer (1902-1987). À la lumière des découvertes de l'embryogenèse et en s'appuyant par ailleurs sur la théorie de l'information, il proposa une interprétation des concepts unificateurs de la cybernétique mécaniste. -/- Short Descriptor (Electre 2019): A study of one of the main axes of reflection of the French philosopher of science and of nature Raymond Ruyer (1902-1987). Relying on (...) the discoveries about embryogenesis, and also with the use of information theory, Ruyer proposed an interpretation of the main unifying concepts of mechanistic cybernetics. -/- Cet ouvrage propose une étude fouillée d'un des principaux axes de réflexion du philosophe des sciences et de la nature français Raymond Ruyer (1902–1987) : la cybernétique. Après avoir proposé une philosophie structuraliste, Ruyer la modifia à la lumière des découvertes de l'embryogenèse, puis il proposa une interprétation des concepts unificateurs de la cybernétique mécaniste. Réfléchissant sur cette dernière et sur la théorie de l'information, en particulier sur l'origine de l'information, il défendit que cette cybernétique n'était qu'une lecture inversée de la vraie cybernétique, qui nous donnerait de lire dans l'expérience même les traces du pouvoir morphogénétique, appréhendé comme un champ axiologique. Dans un texte résumant son propre parcours, Ruyer affirma finalement que la critique de la théorie de l'information « peut donner […] l'espoir d'aboutir à quelque chose comme une nouvelle théologie. » Les idées directrices de Ruyer sont tout particulièrement contextualisées ici à partir de la question du développement des formes en biologie, et de celles de la génétique, de la genèse stochastique de l'ordre, et de l'identification mentale ou physique de l'information. Il se termine en départageant ce qui est théologique et axiologique dans ce projet de métaphysique qui, bien que resté inachevé, n'en représente pas moins le plus impressionnant conçu en France au siècle dernier. – This book offers an in-depth study of one of the main axes in the reflection of French philosopher of science and nature Raymond Ruyer. In a text summarising his own development, Ruyer stated about the philosophical critique of information theory that it "is what can give the most long-lasting hope of getting to something like a new theology." After propounding a structuralist philosophy, and distinguishing between form and structure, to then modify it in the light of discoveries in embryogenesis, Ruyer offered a re-evaluation of the unifying concepts of mechanistic cybernetics. Thinking about it and about information theory, he defended the idea that this cybernetics was in reality an inverted reading of the real one, which would allow us to read in experience itself traces of the morphogenetic power, apprehended as the axiological field. On some transversal points, the development of forms in biology and genetics, the stochastic genesis of order, the identification of information with either psychological and mental, or physical reality, behaviour, and the access to meaning, this work exposes the main ideas of Ruyer while situating them in the context of the breadth of others' contributions. It ends by determining what is theological and axiological in this project for a metaphysics which, although unfinished, is nevertheless the most impressive effort done in France in the last century. – Available on i6doc dot com (ISBN 978-2-930517-56-8 ; pdf 978-2-930517-57-5). (shrink)

We provide a systematic recipe for eliminating self-reference from a simple language in which semantic paradoxes (whether purely logical or empirical) can be expressed. We start from a non-quantificational language L which contains a truth predicate and sentence names, and we associate to each sentence F of L an infinite series of translations h 0(F), h 1(F), ..., stated in a quantificational language L *. Under certain conditions, we show that none of the translations is self-referential, but that any one (...) of them perfectly mirrors the semantic behavior of the original. The result, which can be seen as a generalization of recent work by Yablo (1993, Analysis, 53, 251–252; 2004, Self-reference, CSLI) and Cook (2004, Journal of Symbolic Logic, 69(3), 767–774), shows that under certain conditions self-reference is not essential to any of the semantic phenomena that can be obtained in a simple language. (shrink)

Ecology in principle is tied to evolution, since communities and ecosystems result from evolution and ecological conditions determine fitness values. Yet the two disciplines of evolution and ecology were not unified in the twentieth-century. The architects of the Modern Synthesis, and especially Julian Huxley, constantly pushed for such integration, but the major ideas of the Synthesis—namely, the privileged role of selection and the key role of gene frequencies in evolution—did not directly or immediately translate into ecological science. In this paper (...) I consider five stages through which the Synthesis was integrated into ecology and distinguish between various ways in which a possible integration was gained. I start with Elton’s animal ecology, then consider successively Ford’s ecological genetics in the 1940s, the major textbook Principles of animal ecology edited by Allee et al., and the debates over the role of competition in population regulation in the 1950s, ending with Hutchinson’s niche concept and McArthur and Wilson’s Principles of Island Biogeography viewed as a formal transposition of Modern Synthesis explanatory schemes. I will emphasize the key role of founders of the Synthesis at each stage of this very nonlinear history. (shrink)

In modern economics, the use of sympathy and empathy shows significant ambiguity. Sympathy has been used in two different senses. First, it refers to cases where the concern for others directly affects an individual's own welfare . Second, the term has served the purposes of welfare economics, where it is associated with interpersonal comparisons of the extended sympathy type, that is, comparisons between one's own situation in a social state and someone else's in a different social state . On the (...) other hand, empathy has been used interchangeably with sympathy either to render the idea of interdependent utility functions , or to convey the imaginative process of imagining oneself in someone else's place. (shrink)

This paper interprets the two pages devoted in the Critique of Pure Reason to a critique of Leibniz’s view of organisms as infinitely organized machines. It argues that this issue of organisms represents a crucial test-case for Kant in regard to the conflicting notions of space, continuity and divisibility held by classical metaphysics and by criticism. I first present Leibniz’s doctrine and its justification. In a second step, I explain the general reasoning by which Kant defines the problem of the (...) Antinomies, and then I specify the case of the Second Antinomy. Then, I ask why the organism raises specific issues for Kant’s solution of the Second Antinomy, and why it sheds light on the nature of Leibniz’s metaphysical assumptions about organisms. The last section considers this critique of Leibniz from the perspective of Kant’s future theory of organisms in the third Critique, specifying its role in the development of a Kantian view of organisms with regard to the changes occurring at the same time in the life sciences. (shrink)

This monographic chapter explains how expected utility (EU) theory arose in von Neumann and Morgenstern, how it was called into question by Allais and others, and how it gave way to non-EU theories, at least among the specialized quarters of decion theory. I organize the narrative around the idea that the successive theoretical moves amounted to resolving Duhem-Quine underdetermination problems, so they can be assessed in terms of the philosophical recommendations made to overcome these problems. I actually follow Duhem's recommendation, (...) which was essentially to rely on the passing of time to make many experiments and arguments available, and evebntually strike a balance between competing theories on the basis of this improved knowledge. Although Duhem's solution seems disappointingly vague, relying as it does on "bon sens" to bring an end to the temporal process, I do not think there is any better one in the philosophical literature, and I apply it here for what it is worth. In this perspective, EU theorists were justified in resisting the first attempts at refuting their theory, including Allais's in the 50s, but they would have lacked "bon sens" in not acknowledging their defeat in the 80s, after the long process of pros and cons had sufficiently matured. This primary Duhemian theme is actually combined with a secondary theme - normativity. I suggest that EU theory was normative at its very beginning and has remained so all along, and I express dissatisfaction with the orthodox view that it could be treated as a straightforward descriptive theory for purposes of prediction and scientific test. This view is usually accompanied with a faulty historical reconstruction, according to which EU theorists initially formulated the VNM axioms descriptively and retreated to a normative construal once they fell threatened by empirical refutation. From my historical study, things did not evolve in this way, and the theory was both proposed and rebutted on the basis of normative arguments already in the 1950s. The ensuing, major problem was to make choice experiments compatible with this inherently normative feature of theory. Compability was obtained in some experiments, but implicitly and somewhat confusingly, for instance by excluding overtly incoherent subjects or by creating strong incentives for the subjects to reflect on the questions and provide answers they would be able to defend. I also claim that Allais had an intuition of how to combine testability and normativity, unlike most later experimenters, and that it would have been more fruitful to work from his intuition than to make choice experiments of the naively empirical style that flourished after him. In sum, it can be said that the underdetermination process accompanying EUT was resolved in a Duhemian way, but this was not without major inefficiencies. To embody explicit rationality considerations into experimental schemes right from the beginning would have limited the scope of empirical research, avoided wasting resources to get only minor findings, and speeded up the Duhemian process of groping towards a choice among competing theories. (shrink)

Simone Weil (1909-1943) foi filósofa, escritora, ativista política e humanista. Nasceu em Paris, no seio de família judaica. Formou-se em filosofia pela Université de Sorbonne e se tornou a primeira mulher catedrática da França. Militou fervorosamente pela causa dos trabalhadores fabris e, posteriormente, lutou na Guerra Civil Espanhola. Faleceu aos trinta e quatro anos por motivos de saúde.[1] [1] Para mais informações, vide texto disponível em:. Acesso em: 25 de junho de 2019.

In Richard Bradley’s book, Decision Theory with a Human Face, we have selected two themes for discussion. The first is the Bolker-Jeffrey theory of decision, which the book uses throughout as a tool to reorganize the whole field of decision theory, and in particular to evaluate the extent to which expected utility theories may be normatively too demanding. The second theme is the redefinition strategy that can be used to defend EU theories against the Allais and Ellsberg paradoxes, a strategy (...) that the book by and large endorses, and even develops in an original way concerning the Ellsberg paradox. We argue that the BJ theory is too specific to fulfil Bradley’s foundational project and that the redefinition strategy fails in both the Allais and Ellsberg cases. Although we share Bradley’s conclusion that EU theories do not state universal rationality requirements, we reach it not by a comparison with BJ theory, but by a comparison with the non-EU theories that the paradoxes have heuristically suggested. (shrink)

This chapter of the Handbook of Utility Theory aims at covering the connections between utility theory and social ethics. The chapter first discusses the philosophical interpretations of utility functions, then explains how social choice theory uses them to represent interpersonal comparisons of welfare in either utilitarian or non-utilitarian representations of social preferences. The chapter also contains an extensive account of John Harsanyi's formal reconstruction of utilitarianism and its developments in the later literature, especially when society faces uncertainty rather than probabilistic (...) risk. (shrink)

Stochastic independence has a complex status in probability theory. It is not part of the definition of a probability measure, but it is nonetheless an essential property for the mathematical development of this theory. Bayesian decision theorists such as Savage can be criticized for being silent about stochastic independence. From their current preference axioms, they can derive no more than the definitional properties of a probability measure. In a new framework of twofold uncertainty, we introduce preference axioms that entail not (...) only these definitional properties, but also the stochastic independence of the two sources of uncertainty. This goes some way towards filling a curious lacuna in Bayesian decision theory. (shrink)