La philosophie de la Nature et du Temps chez Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) n’a peut-être pas assez retenu l’attention des scientifiques, en particulier en France. On sait que ce mathématicien-philosophe collaborant avec Bertrand Russell pour l’écriture des Principia Mathematica (1910-1913) a insisté sur le caractère abstrait des points d’espace dans la fondation de la géométrie. A partir de 1911, il étend cette observation aux instants de temps, et développe progressivement, à partir de là, une vision de l’ontologie du monde comme (...) une succession de « concrescences d’entités actuelles » dont chacune apporte avec elle une brique de temps finie. Ces concrescences ne sont pas sans rappeler les réductions du paquet d’ondes dans les opérations de mesure en mécanique quantique ; en fait, Whitehead a suivi de près le développement de cette théorie, comme il a suivi de près le développement de la relativité. Par ailleurs, sa philosophie de la Nature, ou comme il le dit sa philosophie de l’organisme, prévoit une solidarité globale des entités actuelles qui par certains côtés rappelle l’intrication quantique. On examine plus en profondeur cette similarité et ses limites, et aborde les relations esprit-matière chez cet auteur. Malgré ses défauts, la métaphysique de Whitehead, en en particulier la négation de l’instant a mis en lumière, à mon sens, la complexité du temps de la nature (chez Whitehead le process), bien au-delà de la variable continue t des physiciens. Une large part de cet article est basée sur mon livre Whitehead, Philosophe du Temps (auteur, 2020, à paraître). (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), a mathematician and logician by training, is the author of highly original works at the crossroads of science and philosophy, exploring the nature of the world around us and its temporal flow. Convinced that everyday terms distort reality, Whitehead invented or borrowed terms more appropriate to his project. The word "Process", which gives its title to his most famous work Process and Reality (1929), is central to his thinking. Process introduces his vision of nature as a (...) succession of crystallizations, each of which proves the finite granularity of time: the instant does not exist. It also implies a confrontation with the theory of relativity and quantum physics. Whitehead's perspective allows for the occurrence of creative novelties, but for which the world necessarily cooperates with a deity, the role of which is examined in this book's last chapter. In Alfred North Whitehead, Philosopher of Time, author Rémy Lestienne mixes biographical elements and intellectual advances, from logicism to philosophies of nature. A compelling introduction to Whitehead's demanding work, this book deciphers a metaphysical landscape often considered too abstract to be approachable, but points out the philosopher's imperfections with respect to the scientific advances of our time. (shrink)

Histoire de la philosophie et liberté -- Le monde libre -- Le récit du commencement : une aporie de la raison grecque -- La vraisemblance du faux (Parménide, fragment I, 31-32) -- Sur le plan du Timée -- La cosmologie finale du Sophiste (265b4-e6) -- La communauté humaine dans la philosophie grecque -- Note sur la définition du mouvement (Physique III 1-3) -- Le fou stoïcien.

Hannah Arendt a un problème avec la philosophie. Si elle en joue et provoque, le trait s’avère constant, tout au long de sa vie, publique comme privée. Jamais elle ne cacha son peu d’appétence pour les « diseur[s] professionnel[s] de vérité »1. Elle poussa même le vice jusqu’à déclarer, en réponse à Günther Gauss qui, lors d’une célèbre entrevue datant de 1964 et tel le frais cabri qui, avec candeur et bonheur, se dirige guilleret, primesautier, vers la surprise party que (...) donne le loup en son... (shrink)

In 1922, three young men founded the avant-garde magazine 7 Arts to promote the arts and in particular the synthesis of all the arts as only architecture and cinema can achieve. Pierre Bourgeois, a poet, his brother Victor, an architect, and the painter Pierre-Louis Flouquet were soon joined by the composer Georges Monier and Karel Maes, painter, engraver and furniture designer. "The five" succeeded in harnessing the vital forces of the Belgian avant-garde and in placing their magazine at the very (...) heart of the European avant-garde. Throughout the six years of publication the pages of the magazine provided a platform for the principal protagonists of the Belgian and international artistic scene: De Stijl, the Bauhaus, the Purists, the Constructivists, the Futurists and many other champions of the geometric abstraction to which they gave the name Plastique pure or Pure Plastic. Their ambition was to have the arts penetrate every dimension of modern urban life and to transform it in the process. In 2020, CIVA is devoting a retrospective exhibition to 7 Arts, the impressive adventure that this work presents. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose an argumentation formalism that allows for both deductive and abductive argumentation, where ‘deduction’ is used as an umbrella term for both defeasible and strict ‘forward’ inference. Our formalism is based on an extended version of our previously proposed information graph formalism, which provides a precise account of the interplay between deductive and abductive inference and causal and evidential information. In the current version, we consider additional types of information such as abstractions which allow domain experts (...) to be more expressive in stating their knowledge, where we identify and impose constraints on the types of inferences that may be performed with the different types of information. A new notion of attack is defined that captures a crucial aspect of abductive reasoning, namely that of competition between abductively inferred alternative explanations. Our argumentation formalism generates an abstract argumentation framework and thus allows arguments to be formally evaluated. We prove that instantiations of our argumentation formalism satisfy key rationality postulates. (shrink)

Considering the urgency of addressing grand challenges that affect human health and achieving the ambitious health targets set by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, the role of business in improving health has become critical. Yet, our systematic review of the business–health literature reveals that business research focuses primarily on occupational health and safety, health care organizations, and health regulations. To embrace the health externalities generated by business activities, we propose that future research should investigate the conditions under which business (...) articulates and participates in health challenges, engages in multilevel actions toward tackling health challenges, and improves health outcomes and its impact on the health of external stakeholders, including customers and local communities. We also urge business scholars to engage with the public health research community to increase impact. (shrink)

Consumer-based datasets are the products of data brokerage firms that agglomerate millions of personal records on the adult US population. This big data commodity is purchased by both companies and individual clients for purposes such as marketing, risk prevention, and identity searches. The sheer magnitude and population coverage of available consumer-based datasets and the opacity of the business practices that create these datasets pose emergent ethical challenges within the computational social sciences that have begun to incorporate consumer-based datasets into empirical (...) research. To directly engage with the core ethical debates around the use of consumer-based datasets within social science research, I first consider two case study applications of consumer-based dataset-based scholarship. I then focus on three primary ethical dilemmas within consumer-based datasets regarding human subject research, participant privacy, and informed consent in conversation with the principles of the seminal Belmont Report. (shrink)

We show that MRP + MA implies that ITP(λ, ω 2 ) holds for all cardinal λ ≥ ω 2 . This generalizes a result by Weiß who showed that PFA implies that ITP(λ, ω 2 ) holds for all cardinal λ ≥ ω 2 . Consequently any of the known methods to prove MRP + MA consistent relative to some large cardinal hypothesis requires the existence of a strongly compact cardinal. Moreover if one wants to force MRP + MA (...) with a proper forcing, it requires at least a supercompact cardinal. We also study the relationship between MRP and some weak versions of square. We show that MRP implies the failure of □(λ, ω) for all λ ≥ ω 2 and we give a direct proof that MRP + MA implies the failure of □(λ, ω 1 ) for all λ ≥ ω 2. (shrink)

We present and contrast two accounts of cooperative communication, both based on Active Inference, a framework that unifies biological and cognitive processes. The mental alignment account, defended in Vasil et al., takes the function of cooperative communication to be the alignment of the interlocutor's mental states, and cooperative communicative behavior to be driven by an evolutionarily selected adaptive prior belief favoring the selection of action policies that promote such an alignment. We argue that the mental alignment account should be rejected (...) because it neglects the action-oriented nature of cooperative communication, which skews its view of the dynamics of communicative interaction. We introduce our own conception of cooperative communication, inspired by a more radical ecological interpretation of the active inference framework. Cooperative communication, on our ecological conception, serves to guide and constrain the dynamics of the cooperative interaction via the construction and restructuring of shared fields of affordances, in order to reach the local goals of the joint actions in which episodes of cooperative communication are embedded. We argue that our ecological conception provides a better theoretical standpoint to account for the action-oriented nature of cooperative communication in the active inference framework. (shrink)

In the face of challenging circumstances, many teachers turn to spirituality for sustenance and strength. Yet spirituality’s place in education and in educators’ lives has long been a matter of confusion and contention, not least because of the ambiguity of the term in its common usage. What is its relationship to religion? And what defines it? In this article, I submit that the later work of Michel Foucault offers a helpful approach to spirituality that displaces those questions—drawing attention away from (...) beliefs and/or attitudes professed, and towards the process of practical self-transformation that subjects undertake for the sake of a truth that is actualised in the body. To be spiritual in this sense is more a matter of what one does than what one believes or who one is. To offer a sense of why it matters in the lives of educators, I draw on the experiences of a San Diego high school teacher confronting interlocking personal, professional, and political challenges as a detailed example. (shrink)

This paper examines the question of why consumers engage in ethical consumption. The authors draw on self-affirmation theory to propose that the choice of an ethical product serves a self-restorative function. Four experiments provide support for this assertion: a self-threat increases consumers’ choice of an ethical option, even when the alternative choice is objectively superior in quantity (Study 1) and product quality (Study 2). Further, restoring self-esteem through positive feedback eliminates this increase in ethical choice (Studies 2 and 3). As (...) an additional test of the robustness of our results, a final study examined the effect of self-threat on choice in a field setting (Study 4). The findings indicate that ethical purchases are not just altruistic. They hold purposeful individual value and can help in the self-restorative process. Implications for managers making decisions regarding investment in ethical product features are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce an ecological account of communication according to which acts of communication are active inferences achieved by affecting the behavior of a target organism via the modification of its field of affordances. Constraining a target organism’s behavior constitutes a mechanism of socially extended active inference, allowing organisms to proactively regulate their inner states through the behavior of other organisms. In this general conception of communication, the type of cooperative communication characteristic of human communicative interaction is a (...) way of constraining interaction dynamics toward the goals of a given joint action by constructing and altering shared fields of affordances. This account embraces a pragmatist view according to which communication is a form of action aiming to influence the behavior of a target, and stands against the traditional transmission view according to which communication fundamentally serves to convey information. Understanding acts of communication as active inference under an ecological interpretation allows us to link communicative and ultimately linguistic behavior to the biological imperative of minimizing free energy and to emphasize the action-oriented nature of communicative interaction. (shrink)

A new method of observation is currently emerging in psychiatry, based on data collection and behavioral profiling of smartphone users. Numerical phenotyping is a paradigmatic example. This behavioral investigation method uses computerized measurement tools in order to collect characteristics of different psychiatric disorders. First, it is necessary to contextualize the emergence of these new methods and to question their promises and expectations. The international mental health research framework invites us to reflect on methodological issues and to draw conclusions from certain (...) impasses related to the clinical complexity of this field. From this contextualization, the investigation method relating to digital phenotyping can be questioned in order to identify some of its potentials. These new methods are also an opportunity to test psychoanalysis. It is then necessary to identify the elements of fruitful analysis that clinical experience and research in psychoanalysis have been able to deploy regarding the challenges of digital technology. An analysis of this theme's litterature shows that psychoanalysis facilitates a reflection on the psychological effects related to digital methods. It also shows how it can profit from the research potential offered by new technical tools, considering the progress that has been made over the past fifty years. This cross-fertilization of the potential and limitations of digital methods in mental health intervention in the context of theoretical issues at the international level invites us to take a resolutely non-reductionist position. In the field of research, psychoanalysis offers a specific perspective that can well be articulated to an epistemology of networks. Rather than aiming at a numerical phenotyping of patients according to the geneticists' model, the case formulation method appears to be a serious prerequisite to give a limited and specific place to the integration of smartphones in clinical investigation. (shrink)

Unlike the majority of philosophers, Hannah Arendt was not inclined to look down on common sense. She became convinced of common sense’s invaluable significance for our common world, especially when she came to understand that totalitarianism consists of its undermining. No matter how important the role of the concept in her thought, however, its meaning remains ambiguous insofar as it refers to two related, yet different ‘faculties’, common sense as a cognitive faculty on the one hand and common sense as (...) a faculty of judgment on the other. The aim of this two-part paper is to clarify this complicated relation.The first part sketches the development of the concept and demonstrates how the polemic created by Eichmann in Jerusalem sharpened Arendt’s understanding of the difference between truth and opinion, knowing and judging. Subsequently, it focuses on Arendt’s analysis of common sense as a cognitive faculty, i.e. as a ‘sixth sense’ that enables us to grasp the common and worldly context of our experiences and therefore also enables us to tell truth from falsehood. It is not thinking, with its search for meaning, but our common sense that warrants the revelation of truth and with it the possibility of knowledge . Because truth compels the mind and precludes debate, Arendt distinguishes it sharply from opinion, which is never self-evident.Nevertheless, this distinction does not end, as in Plato, in the hierarchical subordination of opinion to truth . At the same time, Arendt was aware of the powerlessness and vulnerability of truth in the public forum, in spite of its compelling character. This paradox calls for a discussion of Arendt’s view on the possibilities and limitations of modern mass-manipulation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article is concerned with the writings on resistance by Richard Price and Joseph Priestley, the leaders of the Rational Dissenters who supported the American and French Revolutions, from the late 1760s to 1791. The article discusses the differences between Rational Dissent and mainstream Whig resistance theory, as regards history in particular: the Dissenters viewed the Glorious Revolution as a lost opportunity rather than a full triumph and claimed the heritage of the Puritan opposition to Charles I, some of them (...) justifying the regicide. Price's and Priestley's views on resistance are assessed against the benchmark of John Locke's conception of the breach of trust. While both thinkers presented themselves as followers of Locke, they departed from his thought by their emphasis on the constantly active role of the people. Each in their own way, they also argued that early, possibly peaceful, resistance was preferable to violent resistance as a last resort against a tyranny. In the end, Price and Priestley each articulated an original theory derived from Locke; their views were very close and their main difference concerned the treatment of history, Price's caution contrasting with Priestley's justification of tyrannicide. (shrink)