Le lecteur moderne demeure dérouté par les ekphraseis de bâtiments des textes byzantins. Il est en effet difficile de les considérer comme des sources pour l'archéologie ou l'Histoire de l'art, et la recherche tend à leur égard à adopter deux approches : l'une, plutôt liée à l'Histoire et à l'Histoire de l'art, s'emploie à retrouver des éléments réels de bâtiments ou d'œuvres d'art dans ces textes ; l'autre, plutôt philologique, cherche à considérer ces textes en eux-mêmes pour leur valeur littéraire. (...) Serait-il cependant possible de chercher une voie médiane? Une voie qui accepterait qu'une part de l'étrangeté de ces textes, nécessairement due à la langue et à l'époque, le soit également parce que l'expérience de lecture entre Moyen Âge et époque moderne a radicalement changé. Il manquerait au lecteur moderne, non l'imagination, mais les mécanismes et les résultats de l'imagination médiévale. Les échos lexicaux et thématiques qui balisent le texte et qui en dessinent l'architecture en seraient la clef aboutiraient à un texte en 3D, c'est-à-dire une projection mentale de l'objet décrit non pas comme simple image donnée par l'information contenue dans le texte, mais comme image construite par la composition du discours. Ainsi, au fur et à mesure qu'un auteur décrit un bâtiment, le texte le construit en mots et in fine en a épousé la forme. (shrink)

Le lecteur moderne demeure dérouté par les ekphraseis de bâtiments des textes byzantins. Il est en effet difficile de les considérer comme des sources pour l'archéologie ou l'Histoire de l'art, et la recherche tend à leur égard à adopter deux approches : l'une, plutôt liée à l'Histoire et à l'Histoire de l'art, s'emploie à retrouver des éléments réels de bâtiments ou d'œuvres d'art dans ces textes ; l'autre, plutôt philologique, cherche à considérer ces textes en eux-mêmes pour leur valeur littéraire. (...) Serait-il cependant possible de chercher une voie médiane? Une voie qui accepterait qu'une part de l'étrangeté de ces textes, nécessairement due à la langue et à l'époque, le soit également parce que l'expérience de lecture entre Moyen Âge et époque moderne a radicalement changé. Il manquerait au lecteur moderne, non l'imagination, mais les mécanismes et les résultats de l'imagination médiévale. Les échos lexicaux et thématiques qui balisent le texte et qui en dessinent l'architecture en seraient la clef aboutiraient à un texte en 3D (trois dimensions), c'est-à-dire une projection mentale de l'objet décrit non pas comme simple image donnée par l'information contenue dans le texte, mais comme image construite par la composition du discours. Ainsi, au fur et à mesure qu'un auteur décrit un bâtiment, le texte le (re)construit en mots et in fine en a épousé la forme. (shrink)

A breathtaking look at the new science that can track consciousness deep in the brain How does our brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events (...) behind a conscious state. We can now pin down the neurons that fire when a person reports becoming aware of a piece of information and understand the crucial role unconscious computations play in how we make decisions. The emerging theory enables a test of consciousness in animals, babies, and those with severe brain injuries. A joyous exploration of the mind and its thrilling complexities, Consciousness and the Brain will excite anyone interested in cutting-edge science and technology and the vast philosophical, personal, and ethical implications of finally quantifying consciousness. (shrink)

"La méditation du Principe est le principe même de la philosophie." Cette sentence par laquelle débute le présent ouvrage ne décline pas seulement le projet d'un livre, elle traduit l'ambition d'une oeuvre. Son auteur, Stanislas Breton, disparu le 2 avril 2005, métaphysicien original et génial, parvenu alors au faîte d'une recherche initiée dans les universités romaines, poursuivie dans les Instituts catholiques de Lyon de Paris et relancée à l'Ecole normale supérieure d'Ulm, en déroulait alors la thèse dans une étonnante (...) fulgurance. Trente ans exactement après sa première publication, celle-ci se trouve à nouveau, plus actuelle que jamais, présentée au public. Les quatre parties qui la structurent sont consacrées au concept antique de "Principe" à "l'Ineffable" auquel il se trouve nécessairement confronté, à ses usages en philosophie et en théologie, et à la critique à laquelle le soumet la pensée contemporaine. Elles déchiffrent, chemin faisant, ce qui décide, sous des modes bien différents, de l'"organisation du pensable" à l'intérieur des philosophies et des théologies. Ainsi réédité, cet ouvrage se livre à l'inspiration de nouvelles générations soucieuses d'honorer et d'exploiter, dans la ligne du N Fonds Breton une oeuvre d'exception. (shrink)

This introductory chapter attempts to clarify the philosophical, empirical, and theoretical bases on which a cognitive neuroscience approach to consciousness can be founded. We isolate three major empirical observations that any theory of consciousness should incorporate, namely (1) a considerable amount of processing is possible without consciousness, (2) attention is a prerequisite of consciousness, and (3) consciousness is required for some specific cognitive tasks, including those that require durable information maintenance, novel combinations of operations, or the spontaneous generation of intentional (...) behavior. We then propose a theoretical framework that synthesizes those facts: the hypothesis of a global neuronal workspace. This framework postulates that, at any given time, many modular cerebral networks are active in parallel and process information in an unconscious manner. An information becomes conscious, however, if the neural population that represents it is mobilized by top-down attentional amplification into a brain-scale state of coherent activity that involves many neurons distributed throughout the brain. The long-distance connectivity of these `workspace neurons' can, when they are active for a minimal duration, make the information available to a variety of processes including perceptual categorization, long-term memorization, evaluation, and intentional action. We postulate that this global availability of information through the workspace is what we subjectively experience as a conscious state. A complete theory of consciousness should explain why some cognitive and cerebral representations can be permanently or temporarily inaccessible to consciousness, what is the range of possible conscious contents, how they map onto specific cerebral circuits, and whether a generic neuronal mechanism underlies all of them. We confront the workspace model with those issues and identify novel experimental predictions. Neurophysiological, anatomical, and brain-imaging data strongly argue for a major role of prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, and the areas that connect to them, in creating the postulated brain-scale workspace. (shrink)

Comment penser et décrire l'animal aujourd'hui? Faut-il insister sur l'identité homme-animal, au point de supprimer toute différence? Doit-on maintenir un propre de l'homme, et si oui, lequel? Comment éviter les travers de l'anthropocentrisme? Que faire - et ne pas faire - aux animaux, et au nom de quoi? Georges Chapouthier et Florence Burgat travaillent depuis longtemps ces questions, d'une manière qui déplace nos (pré)conceptions...

Le monde moderne de par son mode de vie a reçu l'empreinte de l'hygiène et de la médecine ainsi que des principes résultant des découvertes de l'industrie pharmaceutique chimique, de Pasteur, de Flemming, etc. Ces produits sont certes d'un apport utile pour garantir le confort anatomique et physiologique de l'organisme humain, mais il faut raisonnablement les considérer aujourd'hui comme un triomphe d'une humanité à l'incessante poursuite d'une santé durable. La physiologie et l'anatomie n'étant pas les seules composantes de l'être humain, (...) la santé ne saurait en aucun cas être considérée, prise en charge ou ajustée, comme une simple machine industrielle ou être comparée à un plan d'ajustement structurel ou de relance économique pour assurer la croissance et la survie d'un peuple. C'est la colonne vertébrale de la thèse de l'auteur Gervais Mvogo dans son ouvrage Limites et échecs de la médecine occidentale. Théorie de la guérison. Le sujet de réflexion fascine dans son ancrage de parallélisme des sources ontologiques de la nature humaine, s'appuyant ainsi sur Dieu. Le titre ouvre le débat sur la démarche, la pratique, l'émergence et la radiance des firmes et des intelligences artificielles de l'industrie pharmaceutique, véritable politique de la médecine occidentale. (shrink)

Sean Irving’s book Hayek’s Market Republicanism: The Limits of Liberty shows that the commonly accepted reading of Hayek as a liberal thinker is mistaken, and that his political writings are best understood as belonging to the broader tradition of republicanism. The distinction is important for understanding many aspects of Hayek’s thought, and especially his rejection of social justice and majoritarian democracy. In that sense, one of the book’s more general merits is its implicit contribution to ongoing debates between republican ‘freedom (...) as non-domination’ and liberal ‘freedom as non-interference’. Irving focuses on what he sees as a contradiction between Hayek’s chief concerns about the state as the main source of domination and his disregard for private forms of power, and especially within the capitalist firm. I argue, however, that the example of Hayek should lead us to consider a more prosaic conclusion: freedom as non-domination is a concept less useful for criticising the free market than Irving and left-leaning Republicans seem to assume. (shrink)

Amidst the many brain events evoked by a visual stimulus, which are specifically associated with conscious perception, and which merely reflect non-conscious processing? Several recent neuroimaging studies have contrasted conscious and non-conscious visual processing, but their results appear inconsistent. Some support a correlation of conscious perception with early occipital events, others with late parieto-frontal activity. Here we attempt to make sense of those dissenting results. On the basis of a minimal neuro-computational model, the global neuronal workspace hypothesis, we propose a (...) taxonomy which distinguishes between vigilance and access to conscious report, as well as between subliminal, preconscious and conscious processing. We suggest that these distinctions map onto different neural mechanisms, and that conscious perception is systematically associated with a sudden surge of parieto-frontal activity causing top-down amplification. (shrink)

Racial epithets are derogatory expressions, understood to convey contempt toward their targets. But what do they actually mean, if anything? While the prevailing view is that epithets are to be explained pragmatically, I argue that a careful consideration of the data strongly supports a particular semantic theory. I call this view Combinatorial Externalism. CE holds that epithets express complex properties that are determined by the discriminatory practices and stereotypes of their corresponding racist institutions. Depending on the character of the institution, (...) the complex semantic value can be composed of a variety of components. The account has significant implications on theoretical, as well as, practical dimensions, providing new arguments against radical contextualism, and for the exclusion of certain epithets from First Amendment speech protection. (shrink)

This paper clarifies the usage of Albert Hirschman’s categories of market behaviour as of exit and voice in debates about workplace democracy by taking seriously his critique of the neoclassical analysis of competition. Pro-market liberals are generally hostile to the idea of workplace democracy and tend to favour top-down hierarchies as a way of organising labour. This hostility is generally inspired by the neoclassical analysis of exploitation and efficiency, which leads them to defend distributions achieved through exit-based competitive equilibria. Following (...) Hirschman, I propose to consider a hypothetical alternative: a democratic equilibrium, reached through the use of voice. I show that it would present the same appealing characteristics than its competitive counterpart while also accounting for the non-ideal conditions in which markets operate. Support for free markets should entail support for workplace democracy minimally understood as a strengthening of voice. (shrink)

The norms surrounding pejorative language, such as racial slurs and swear words, are deeply prohibitive. Pejoratives are typically a means for speakers to express their derogatory attitudes. As these attitudes vary along many dimensions and magnitudes, they initially appear to be resistant to a truth-conditional, semantic analysis. The goal of the paper is to clarify the essential linguistic phenomena surrounding pejoratives, survey the logical space of explanatory theories, evaluate each with respect to the phenomena and provide a preliminary assessment of (...) the initial resistance to a truth-conditional analysis. (shrink)

This paper discusses critically the fundamental elements of the Stegmüller/Sneed-reconstruction of Kuhn's normal science concept. It is argued that a) Kuhn himself cannot accept this reconstruction if he wants to describe theory dynamics in the past; b) the reconstruction is not based on a pure non-statement view; c) to have a theory in the sense of Kuhn, should be related to the ordered pair <K,Iₒ> to ensure the desired constancy over time; d) the reconstruction implies, contrary to Kuhn, the ability (...) of rejecting a theory without having an alternative one; e) the rejection of a theory can be the result of a falsifying procedure and, therefore, theories are not immune from falsification; f) the reconstruction still contains rationality gaps; g) the reconstruction shows more precisely than Kuhn's work that Popper is right when he attacks normal scientist's behaviour; h) the positions of the Kuhnians and of the criticists could be reconciled partially. (shrink)

Pejoratives are the class of expressions that are meant to insult or disparage. They include swear words and slurs. These words allow speakers to convey emotional states beyond the truth-conditional contents that they are normally taken to encode. The puzzle arises because, although pejoratives seem to be a semantically unified class, some of their occurrences are best accounted for truth-conditionally, while others are best accounted for non-truth-conditionally. Where current, non-truth-conditional, views in the literature fail to provide a unified solution for (...) the puzzle, this paper motivates a novel, semantic, analysis of pejorative language. The significance of the proposed solution is not only linguistic in nature, but also philosophical, as it both provides a new argument for, and sheds further light on, the nature of semantic externalism. (shrink)

Fictional terms are terms that have null extensions, and in this regard pejorative terms are a species of fictional terms: although there are Jews, there are no kikes. That pejoratives are fictions is the central consequence of the Moral and Semantic Innocence (MSI) view of Hom et al. (2013). There it is shown that for pejoratives, null extensionality is the semantic realization of the moral fact that no one ought to be the target of negative moral evaluation solely in virtue (...) of their group membership. In having null extensions, pejorative terms are much like mythological terms like ‘unicorn horn’ that express concepts with empty extensions, even though it was thought otherwise: people who falsely believed the mythology were mislead into thinking that ordinary objects (i.e. whale tusks) were magical objects, and pejoratives terms work likewise. For example, the term ‘kike’ is supported by the ideology of anti-Semitism, and speakers who fall prey to its influence (perniciously or not) are mislead into thinking that ordinary people (i.e. Jews) are inherently worthy of contempt. In this paper, we explore the consequences of this parallelism, with an eye to criticisms of MSI. In particular, we will re-visit identity expressivist views - those that hold that there are kikes and that they are Jews, and hence deny null extensionality - arguing that this embeds a mistake of fiction for fact. Among the issues to be discussed are the role of fictional truth in understanding pejorative sentences and the relation of the semantics of pejoratives to offensive use of language. We conclude with meta-semantic reflections on the origins of word meanings. (shrink)

Does geometry constitues a core set of intuitions present in all humans, regarless of their language or schooling ? We used two non verbal tests to probe the conceptual primitives of geometry in the Munduruku, an isolated Amazonian indigene group. Our results provide evidence for geometrical intuitions in the absence of schooling, experience with graphic symbols or maps, or a rich language of geometrical terms.

Depuis 2007, Louis Pinto a publié cinq livres, développant une sociologie de la philosophie entamée il y a plus de vingt ans. L'objet et la méthode de ces travaux, explicitement situés dans le prolongement de l'œuvre de Bourdieu, sont précisés et rapprochés de deux autres ouvrages récents (Jean-Louis Fabiani et Stephan Soulié). Il s'agit de préciser la portée et le cadre de ces recherches et leur intérêt pour les philosophes, qui en sont à la fois l'objet et les destinataires. Since (...) 2007, Louis Pinto has published five books, developing a sociology of philosophy that he introduced more than twenty years ago. The aim and the method of this work, which echoes Bourdieu's sociology, are identified and connected to two other recent books (Jean-Louis Fabiani and Stéphan Soulié). This paper clarifies the range and framework of this research and its relevance to philosophers, who are both its subjects and recipients. (shrink)

A uniquely integrative work, this volume provides a much needed compilation of primary source material to researchers from basic neuroscience, psychology, developmental science, neuroimaging, neuropsychology and theoretical biology. * The ...

The problem of the unity of the proposition asks what binds together the constituents of a proposition into a fully formed proposition that provides truth conditions for the assertoric sentence that expresses it, rather than merely a set of objects. Hanks’ solution is to reject the traditional distinction between content and force. If his theory is successful, then there is a plausible extension of it that readily solves the Frege–Geach problem for normative propositions. Unfortunately Hanks’ theory isn’t successful, but it (...) does point to significant connections between expressivism, unity, and embedding. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend some of C. G. Hempel's basic theses concerning the logic of explanation and prediction against criticisms recently made by W. Stegmüller. It is argued (very concisely) thatthese is no need for essentially pragmatic conditions in DN-arguments;only the structural identity sub-thesis “Every adequate prediction is ... an adequate explanation” can be held instead of the one Hempel has in mind;the notion of the ambiguity of probabilistic explanations should be reformulated;there is no need for (...) more than one knowledge situation;systematizations with low inductive probability do not give rational predictions or explanations of singular events. (shrink)

The most influential justification of individual property rights is the Propertarian Argument. It is the idea that the institution of private property renders everyone better off, and crucially, even the worst-off members of society. A recent critique of the Argument is that it relies on an anthropologically false hypothesis – the idea, following Thomas Hobbes, that life in the state of nature is one of widespread scarcity and violence to which property rights are a solution. The present article seeks to (...) reformulate this Anthropological Objection in a way that more directly addresses Hobbes’ original argument. It then shows that private property is justified to the extent that it allows anyone to reclaim their free time. (shrink)

Critical congenital heart disease screening is rapidly becoming the standard of care in the United States after being added to the Recommended Uniform Screening Panel in 2011. Newborn screens typically do not require affirmative parental consent. In fact, most states allow parents to exempt their baby from receiving the required screen on the basis of religious or personally held beliefs. There are many ethical considerations implicated with allowing parents to exempt their child from newborn screening for CCHD. Considerations include the (...) treatment of religious exemptions in our current legal system, as well as medical and ethical principles in relation to the rights of infants. Although there are significant benefits to screening newborns for CCHD, when a parent refuses for religious or personal beliefs, in the case of CCHD screening, the parental decision should stand. (shrink)

Summary Directly concluded from a set of some well-known and some new conditions of adequacy, a definition of deductive-nomological explanation is given which is able to block all known anomalies, and is immune from the Eberle/Kaplan/Montague trivialization theorems. Among some other results it is further shown that law statements have to be logically equivalent to a conditional form.