Les pensées de l’action de Weil et de Camus se heurtent à une même antinomie : la volonté d’agir raisonnablement implique à la fois de renoncer à toute action, car une action ne peut être efficace que si elle est potentiellement violente, et d’agir, car s’abstenir de toute action signifie accepter la violence présente. L’agent doit dès lors justifier la violence qu’il met en œuvre. En conséquence, cet article confronte la manière dont ces deux auteurs s’efforcent de résoudre cette difficulté. (...) Une telle confrontation nous permet, d’une part, de trouver chez Weil les fondements philosophiques qui manquent à la pensée camusienne. D’autre part, la lecture de Camus nous prémunit contre une interprétation erronée de la justification weilienne de moyens violents par une fin raisonnable. (shrink)

L’objectivité permettrait d’assurer la supériorité de la science par rapport à d’autres modes de connaissance. Elle doit donc être défendue, surtout en cette « ère de post-vérité » où les « faits alternatifs » remplacent les faits avérés, en politique comme ailleurs. Or les attaques proviennent autant de l’extérieur que de l’intérieur de la sphère philosophique. Il convient donc de tenter d’opérer la réconciliation la plus large possible avec deux représentants de clans (très) opposés, Mario Bunge et Bruno Latour. Réinvestissant (...) les grandes conceptions de la notion d’objectivité, je propose ici trois chantiers pour cette réconciliation : la mise au rancart des conceptions naïves et parfois insincères de la science, la réévaluation des contextes de découverte et de justification, et celle de la distinction faits-valeurs. (shrink)

On abordera ici l'échec du pseudo-théologien Heidegger à venir se saisir de l'irrationnel augustinien et soulignerons la différence entre l'irrationnel dorien (au bout du langage) et l'irrationnel ionien (au bout du monde) autour de la mesure.

La division entre "Intellect Agent" (intellectus agens) et "intellect Patient" (noûs pathêtikos) est-elle historique et donc culturelle ? Si oui , y a-t-il un intellect Uni-versel entre les deux ?

: This paper addresses the need to examine teaching practices from the observation that they are beyond what they should be. This task devolved to scientists of education is to learn about teaching practices in their relationship to student learning in order to build the database useful to teacher educators and reflexivity necessary for any teacher about their own practice. The concepts of competence, pattern and are useful instrument in this endeavor of explanation and understanding of the practices. The proposed (...) theoretical framework is illustrated by a perspective of teaching practices of teachers in schools and colleges. These differ in many aspects and this requires the testing of new hypotheses to explain -/- La présente contribution traite de la nécessité d’étudier les pratiques d’enseignement à partir du constat de ce qu’elles sont au delà de ce qu’elles devraient être. Cette tâche dévolue aux chercheurs en sciences de l’éducation vise à mieux connaître les pratiques d’enseignement dans leurs relations aux apprentissages des élèves afin de constituer la base de données utiles aux formateurs d’enseignants et nécessaire à toute réflexivité des enseignants à propos de leur propre pratique. Les notions de compétence, de schème et d’instrument sont utiles à cette entreprise d’explication et de compréhension des pratiques. La proposition de cadrage théorique est illustrée par une mise en perspective des pratiques d’enseignement de professeurs des écoles et de collèges. Celles-ci se distinguent sur bien des aspects ce qui réclame la mise à l’épreuve de nouvelles hypothèses explicatives. (shrink)

Comment l'Etre s'ouvre-t-il ? Réponse définitive au sophiste Heidegger.

Le structuralisme, en le rapprochant du langage, a détruit le concept freudien de "Verdichtung" (condensation). Il s'agissait chez Freud d'un mouvement irrationnel dont la rationalité ne venait que de la cause finale qu'était le désir (inconscient). Avec sa notion de "Volonté de Puissance" (Der Wille zur Macht), Nietzsche tente de la même manière de déterminer l'intention et l’extension de ce mouvement de sens sans introduire la cause finale comme le fit Freud. Il s'approche alors de la dialectique platonicienne et de (...) son fondement, avant de plonger dans l'abyme de la source iranienne (perse). L'échec de la métabiologie de Nietzsche sera le départ de notre approche métabiologique appuyée sur la métaphysique d'Aristote et Kant. (shrink)

Rejet de la dialectique comme objet pouvant rentrer au sein de la logique. Refoulement de la dialectique dans l'histoire. Or si la dialectique est historique alors nous pouvons la situer spatialement dans l'histoire.

Cet article explore sous l’angle éthique les attentes, surprises et déceptions vécues par les étu- diants inscrits à un atelier de design participatif avec des jeunes de 10-14 ans. Cette expérience, inscrite dans le programme Growing up in Cities, devait aboutir à des résultats de recherche et des projets d’aménagement réalistes en impliquant les jeunes comme collaborateurs dans la conception. Face à ces objectifs ambitieux, le bilan pour les jeunes est mitigé sur le plan des retombées et du caractère égalitaire (...) des rapports. En revanche, on se rend compte que les étu- diants ont cherché diverses manières de traiter les jeunes comme des personnes intelligentes, sensibles et autonomes. Cet article propose quelques pistes pour éclairer les choix en termes de démarche de participation. (shrink)

Notre étude sur le temps grec précédant la pensée d Aristote commencera d'abord par un commentaire de son premier texte, le Protreptique. Nous verrons se dégager deux temps distincts : l'un initiatique, circulaire et d'inspiration platonicienne, et l'autre diamétralement opposé dont Aristote serait le défenseur. Afin d'interroger cette dichotomie, nous retournerons aux conceptions poétiques. Les Tragiques nous permettront d'offrir une première esquisse de cette notion dans l'univers grec (Du destin...). Ensuite, l'oeuvre épique d'Homère sera l'occasion de mieux saisir le nouage (...) existant entre le temps et la sphère religieuse (Des héros...). Le travail du grand théologue Hésiode viendra confirmer cette vision initiatique, comme l'avait déjà remarquablement exposée F. Nietzsche (Des mythes...). C'est alors que nous plongerons au sein du pythagorisme afin de parachever cette vision (Des mystères...). Notre compréhension de ce courant, traversé par la théogonie iranienne, nous permettra, ensuite, de bien le distinguer de celui dit «ionien» et ainsi de s'éloigner de la parole platonicienne (De l'idéologie...). Enfin, en revenant aux premiers penseurs ioniens que furent Thalès et Anaximandre, nous analyserons si c'est effectivement cette vision du monde qui a été retenue par le Stagirite afin de fonder la première modélisation du concept de temps (De la science...). -/- Dans le deuxième volume, nous verrons revenir la pensée des théologoï au sein même du corpus aristotélicien et c'est alors que nous interrogerons notre division entre être et existence du temps. -/- Régis LAURENT est philosophe, membre de l'association Kairos kai logos (Centre d'études sur la pensée antique).Ce livre est le premier volet de son travail de thèse de doctorat en philosophie effectué au sein de trois Universités françaises (Grenoble, Clermont-Ferrand et Rennes).Outre cette formation philosophique,l'auteur est également diplômé en sciences humaines (Maîtrise des sciences du langage et maîtrise de psychologie). Par ailleurs, sa formation en théologie a été effectuée à l'Université thomiste de Paris (U.L.S.H = CEPHI) et au C.E.J de l'E.H.E.S.S. (shrink)

Nous comparons les notions d’usage et de signification chez Ludwig Wittgenstein et Martin Heidegger. Contrairement à Jocelyn Benoist, nous pensons que l’analogie entre Wittgenstein et Heidegger n’est pas superficielle. La métaphysique de Heidegger explicite certaines présuppositions implicites de la seconde philosophie de Wittgenstein. Le pragmatisme naturaliste de Wittgenstein peut être théorisé. Notamment la notion wittgensteinienne d’usage, ou de jeu de langage, peut être comprise comme une pratique à la fois naturelle et normative régie par des règles. -/- Wittgenstein’s notions of (...) use and meaning are compared with the corresponding Heidegger’s ones. Unlike Jocelyn Benoist, we suggest that the analogy between Wittgenstein and Heidegger is not superficial. Heidegger’s metaphysics makes explicit some of the implicit presuppositions of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Wittgenstein’s naturalistic pragmatism can be theorized. In particular, Wittgenstein’s notion of use, or language game, can be understood as both natural and normative rule- governing practice. (shrink)

This article-testimony can be seen as an example of a maybe new discipline that could be called "scientific metaphysics" made of thoughts experiments, definitions, some proofs, some explanations, some conjectures. Of course, to be called science, the discipline needs some possibility of "verification" too. We will see if it can be considered. -/- We start from a thought experiment: -/- Can the universe defined as U_Def be aware conscious of itself as whole? -/- This question is a variant of the (...) more familiar: -/- Can the universe be aware conscious? -/- We can distinguish two main approaches in human history in the attempts at answering this second question: 1) the approach by the bottom with a weak version of consciousness: it includes "panpsychic" like theories. 2) the approach by the head with a strong version of consciousness: it includes "holistic" theories. Spinoza's "Pantheism", for example, can be considered as one of them, even if some interpretations of Spinoza's metaphysics are not satisfied with the equation "god = universe". -/- The purpose developed in this article belongs to the second kind of approach. After a definition of the universe \emph{U}$_{\textit{Def}} $ in 7 points and the introduction of 3 premisses, one of them being devoted to our definition of "strong consciousness", we suggest an answer to the initial question and we draw the most important among numerous consequences: - semantical jump by META-abstraction and introduction of the holistic semantics; - extension of the natural language to a supra-natural language; - highlighting of a higher-order solipsism; - etc. -/- We devote some attention to the notion of "model" in its logical and philosophical acceptation and we introduce the notion of evolutional self-modelization. (shrink)

Premier ouvrage de l’histoire de la philosophie à être totalement consacré au concept d’entéléchie, il ne s’agira pas de proposer un essai historique allant de la mise en place de cette notion chez Aristote jusqu’à la conception biologique développée par Hans Driesch. Inscrit dans un projet plus global de compréhension du temps aristotélicien, c’est à une véritable refondation métaphysique du concept que ce travail nous convie. Si Kant, à l’ultime fin de sa première critique, avait admis qu’il n’existait que deux (...) voies possibles de fondation de l’a priori - la voie historique (platonicienne) empruntée par Hegel et la voie physiologique (aristotélicienne) qui sera la nôtre - la première partie de ce second volume prendra pour acquis qu’il n’existe pas de théorie qui puisse unifier ces deux pôles du savoir. Cela impliquera une scission entre deux mouvements irrationnels que sont le mouvement entéléchique aristotélicien et le mouvement dialectique platonicien. A partir du corps a priori du surhomme, le premier mouvement sera à la racine de la théorie de la connaissance (De la science) alors que le second sera au fondement de la théorie des valeurs (De l’Idéologie). En circonscrivant le mouvement dialectique dorien autour du noûs perse (iranien), ce travail offrira une première définition totalement négative du mouvement entéléchique appuyé, lui, sur le noûs ionien (« phénicien ») dont la seconde partie sera l’objet. De l’analyse de la substance première en passant par l’étude phénoménologique des schèmes de la camusité et du membre moteur, cette étude reviendra sur l’élasticité du tendon afin d’approcher non-phénoménalement le concept lui-même et tenter ainsi une première symphyse avec les rythmes circadiens de la biologie contemporaine. (shrink)

Investigando a racionalidade científico-técnica e a lógica da dominação na relação entre o sistema educacional e a formação econômico-social, o artigo traz como fundamento crítico as análises de Marcuse, Adorno e Bourdieu, recorrendo à produção de Entre os muros da escola (2008), do cineasta francês Laurent Cantet, para caracterizar o pluralismo étnico-racial, socioeconômico e histórico-cultural da realidade social e a tensão que se impõe ao processo de construção do conhecimento que, convergindo para a constituição da “natureza” humana, encerra ambivalência (...) e antagonismo, à medida que se não escapa ao determinismo histórico-cultural e econômico-social, a sua atividade não possibilita senão o exercício da liberdade concreta, tendo em vista a dialética que preside a articulação envolvendo objetividade e subjetividade que implica a sua experiência formativa. (shrink)

Cosmopolis A Review of Cosmopolitics -/- 2015/3-4 -/- Editorial Dominique de Courcelles & Paul Ghils -/- This issue addresses the general concept of “spirituality” as it appears in various cultural contexts and timeframes, through contrasting ideological views. Without necessarily going back to artistic and religious remains of primitive men, which unquestionably show pursuits beyond the biophysical dimension and illustrate practices seeking to unveil the hidden significance of life and death, the following papers deal with a number of interpretations covering a (...) wide field extending from belief to theory, from emotions to concepts, from the wisdom of personal experience to the most sophisticated doctrines. Spirit and spirituality are indeed many-faceted notions. They may refer to the intricate world of the interacting spirits which inhabit living beings in animistic traditions, without excluding a “grand force” linking human beings within a dynamic whole on which their very existence rely . They also bear upon more atomistic and either/or approaches of Western philosophy, which have become embodied in Cartesian dualism against a monotheist background, to the point of freezing the essence of individuals and culminating in the extreme individualism that characterizes our contemporaries. However, this equally refers to the opposite conception of materialism, across times and cultures, from ancient India and Greece (Cārvāka, originally known as Lokāyata, or some Buddhist doctrines for the former, Democritus or Lucretius for the latter) to more contemporary materialistic schools, whether modern or postmodern. -/- The following papers look at the contrasting forms of the philosophy and spirit of the human factor set into a whole, with no artificial disjoint between the psychical and the physical levels, as Wittgenstein put it: “And how can a body have a soul?”. This approach is not unrelated to the notion of anthropocene examined in a recent issue of Cosmopolis, with provides another comprehensive framework open to a spiritual life emerging from the very environment that generated it. -/- *** The first section of this issue was edited by Dominique de Courcelles, director at the National French Research Centre (CNRS), whom we wish to thank for collecting relevant studies relating to the religious and political questions, with a view to focusing on the war of ideas inevitably waged behind images, concepts and perceptions, taking an asymmetrical approach. To the extent that they are mindful of global/local interactions and include representations, opinions and beliefs, such disciplines as philosophy, philology, history and social sciences can provide useful studies accounting for new practices in geopolitics and a fair diplomacy. -/- In her introduction, Dominique de Courcelles first poses the question of how the religious and political spheres interrelate, with their corresponding religious demands and humanistic values. She then suggests that the right question today may be breaking with the philosophy of human rights concerned with the defense of human beings against the hazards of arbitrary politics or the instrumental use of religion, in favour of a fair philosophy of humankind, a new humanism. This would consist in recognizing a common loyalty of all towards one interhuman, not only interstate community, to protect it from both the autonomy demanded by individuals and the instrumental use of minorities. -/- Considering the fact of diversity, so important today in terms of both politics and religion, Abdelhai Azarkan looks at the conditions under which tolerance could obtain the double status of right and duty. He revisits to two philosophers, John Locke and Voltaire, who thought about it from the historical reality of religious wars. The former made tolerance into a right, basing his analysis on the political-legal level, while the latter saw tolerance as a duty, from an analysis based on ethical-political criteria. -/- Mathieu Guidère examines what he calls semantic denominationalism, a term which implies religious attributes and identities, whichever national loyalties or personal belonging they may have at the same time. Since the early 2000s, thie phenomenon has expanded tremendously, compounded by the “war on terror” and the over media-oriented terrorist actions. Denominational expressions act as formal names for ordinary and high-profile players in domestic and foreign policies of democratic states. These systems reveal a receding secularization, while the powerful comeback of religious identities signals the failure of nation-states and the weakening of the humanist spirit. -/- Barbara De Poli retraces the history of a contemporary jihadism claiming its Islamic essence and asserting the truth of genuine coranic principles via the war on infidels, with a view to restoring the Caliphate. After defining the term jihad, she shows that even if this contemporary jiadism is spreading in the Muslim world, it radically departs from Islamic law and the received use of the term jihad, in so far as it is rooted in the early radical thinking of Islamic ideologues in the 20th century, starting with with Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. This current has been fueled by by international conflicts since the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan, in which the so-called Western countries bear a major responsibility. -/- Abderrazak Sayadi starts from the Tunisian experience to ask the question of humanist values and democracy within the relationships between the religious and political spheres. As a historian of religion, he is brought to demystify certain islamic principles and to paying attention to the reform of law, seeing the separation of religion and politics as a precondition to a successful democratic gamble and the establishment of a renewed humanism. -/- Dominique de Courcelles reminds us that getting a better knowledge of narrations and words makes it possible to better understand how logical and rhetorical thinking works for those who wage an asymetriccal war, re-enchanting and mystifying the world to better take control. As soon as 1932, an exchange of letters between Einstein and Freud made it clear that, in order to free man from fatality and war, education understood as culture was fundamental. Such illustrations as the exécution of Oussama ben Laden and the Caliph’s speech in Mossoul show that a premiminary analysis of images and words is essential to a fair diplomacy conducted by people from civil society, whose culture and wisdom allow justice and force to speak together and better resist war. -/- Marcel Boisard thinks that on the day the guns fall silent, exhausted by war, we will not return to the state borders that have prevailed for a century as an outcome of the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. It is time to prepare the “day after”, which will be a huge challenge. To this end, a summit of Middle-East nations is urgently needed to globally decide the fate of those peoples. On the condition that we know who the enemy is and accept to name it, to understand the history of the countries, groups and alliances, and to question any false or self-interested sense of certainty. -/- *** In the second section, Paul Schafer provides the author’s experiences to explain how culture, from the artistic to the biological, has the power to to open the doors to spirituality, from the inner self to the global environment. He asks himself whether a relative permanence of spirituality can arise from the specific moments that characterize it. Laurent Ledoux synthesizes the conclusion of a symposium held on 22 January 2015 on the links between philosophy and management, on the basis of the spiritual dimension conceived as “natural” and the answers it may suggest to the issues that face the organizations in a “contemporaniversal” world. Jacques Rifflet makes that question in a secular perspective, based on the wellsprings of personal commitment before it can be caught by any religious creed or scientific theory. In this sense spirituality, in alliance with reason, both inspires human consciousness and illuminates its destiny. Sami Aldeeb asks himself whether Islam can be reconciled with human rights. Caught between the belief in an absolute and final Word descended from the sky, and evidence showing that any religion is the creation of a given culture and a society situated in time and space, the Makkan and … contexts et médinois call for differentiated, if not opposite answers and exegeses. Bernard Carmona provides the outline of a dialogical framework, which is known to be a feature of debates between the various philosophical schools of classical India, exemplified here by the transdisciplinary perspective of debates within a Buddhist context. *** The articles not focused on the previous topic include a study by Landry Signé on China’s strategy, competing with the United States to control African resources. The author deals with the specific case of China’s rapprochement with Southern Sudan since Sudan was broken up. In the last paper, Goran Fejić and Rada Iveković, return to the essential role that women should play, and comments upon the role of some international legal instruments related in particular to the elimination of all forms of discrimination. The perspective is transnational and transethnic and is based on secular criteria, as regards nation-building and more generally society-building. Considering the persistence of widespread violence, whether in times of armed conflict or in times of peace, the question remains whether it is possible to fully implement rights and justice instruments. (shrink)

The Swiss philosopher Anton Marty (Schwyz, 1847 - Prague, 1914) belongs, with Carl Stumpf, to the first circle of Brentano’s pupils. Within Brentano’s school (and, to some extent, in the secondary literature), Marty has often been considered (in particular by Meinong) a kind of would-be epigone of his master (Fisette & Fréchette 2007: 61-2). There is no doubt that Brentano’s doctrine often provides Marty with his philosophical starting points. But Marty often arrives at original conclusions which are diametrically opposed to (...) Brentano’s views. This is true of his views about space and time and about judgment, emotions and intentionality. In the latter case, for example, Marty develops Brentano’s view and its implications in great detail (Mulligan 1989; Rollinger 2004), but uses them to formulate a very unBrentanian account of intentionality as a relation of ideal assimilation (Chrudzimski 1999; Cesalli & Taieb 2013). Marty’s philosophy of language, on the other hand, is one of the first philosophies worthy of the name. In what follows, we contrast briefly their accounts of (i) judgment and states of affairs and of (ii) emotings and value (two topics of foremost significance, for Brentano and Marty’s theoretical and practical philosophies respectively) (§1), and their philosophies of language (§2). Brentano’s view of language is based on his philosophy of mind. Marty takes over the latter and turns a couple of claims by Brentano about language into a sophisticated philosophy of language of a kind made familiar much later by Grice. Marty’s philosophy of states of affairs and value and of the mind’s relations to these also takes off from views sketched by the early Brentano, views forcefully rejected by the later Brentano. (shrink)

This article consists in two parts that are complementary and autonomous at the same time. -/- In the first one, we develop some surprising consequences of the introduction of a new constant called Lambda in order to represent the object ``nothing" or ``void" into a standard set theory. On a conceptual level, it allows to see sets in a new light and to give a legitimacy to the empty set. On a technical level, it leads to a relative resolution of (...) the anomaly of the intersection of a family free of sets. -/- In the second part, we show the interest of introducing an operator of potentiality into a standard set theory. Among other results, this operator allows to prove the existence of a hierarchy of empty sets and to propose a solution to the puzzle of "ubiquity" of the empty set. -/- Both theories are presented with equi-consistency results (model and interpretation). -/- Here is a declaration of intent : in each case, the starting point is a conceptual questionning; the technical tools come in a second time\\[0.4cm] \textbf{Keywords:} nothing, void, empty set, null-class, zero-order logic with quantifiers, potential, effective, empty set, ubiquity, hierarchy, equality, equality by the bottom, identity, identification. (shrink)

According to the received view, genuine mathematical justification derives from proofs. In this article, I challenge this view. First, I sketch a notion of proof that cannot be reduced to deduction from the axioms but rather is tailored to human agents. Secondly, I identify a tension between the received view and mathematical practice. In some cases, cognitively diligent, well-functioning mathematicians go wrong. In these cases, it is plausible to think that proof sets the bar for justification too high. I then (...) propose a fallibilist account of mathematical justification. I show that the main function of mathematical justification is to guarantee that the mathematical community can correct the errors that inevitably arise from our fallible practices. (shrink)

There is a large gap between the specialized knowledge of scientists and laypeople’s understanding of the sciences. The novice-expert problem arises when non-experts are confronted with (real or apparent) scientific disagreement, and when they don’t know whom to trust. Because they are not able to gauge the content of expert testimony, they rely on imperfect heuristics to evaluate the trustworthiness of scientists. This paper investigates why some bodies of scientific knowledge become polarized along political fault lines. Laypeople navigate conflicting epistemic (...) and social demands in their acceptance of scientific testimony; this might explain their deference to scientific fringe theories, which often goes together with denying established scientific theories. I evaluate three approaches to mitigate denialism: improving the message, improving the messenger, and improving the environment in which the message is conveyed. (shrink)

Since the first discussion of Brentano’s relation to (and account of) medieval philosophy by Spiegelberg in 1936, a fair amount of studies have been dedicated to the topic. And if those studies focused on some systematic issue at all, the beloved topic of intentionality clearly occupied a hegemonic position in the scholarly landscape . The following pages consider the question from the point of view of ontology, and in a twofold perspective: What did Brentano know about medieval ontology and what (...) kind of access did he have to that material (section 1)? What kind of use did Brentano make of medieval material in his own philosophy, and with what kind of results (section 2)? (shrink)

This paper examines the role of prestige bias in shaping academic philosophy, with a focus on its demographics. I argue that prestige bias exacerbates the structural underrepresentation of minorities in philosophy. It works as a filter against (among others) philosophers of color, women philosophers, and philosophers of low socio-economic status. As a consequence of prestige bias our judgments of philosophical quality become distorted. I outline ways in which prestige bias in philosophy can be mitigated.

People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this (...) question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy—the tendency to view humans negatively—predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self-attributions across cultural groups, by comparing samples from an independent country and a diverse set of interdependent countries. Results indicated that the direction and magnitude of the effect are comparable across all groups we tested. The belief in a good true self appears robust across groups varying in cultural orientation or misanthropy, suggesting a consistent psychological tendency to view the true self as morally good. (shrink)

Criteria of acceptability for mathematical proofs are field-dependent. In topology, though not in most other domains, it is sometimes acceptable to appeal to visual intuition to support inferential steps. In previous work :829–842, 2014; Lolli, Panza, Venturi From logic to practice, Springer, Berlin, 2015; Larvor Mathematical cultures, Springer, Berlin, 2016) my co-author and I aimed at spelling out how topological proofs work on their own terms, without appealing to formal proofs which might be associated with them. In this article, I (...) address two criticisms that have been raised in Tatton-Brown against our approach: that it leads to a form of relativism according to which validity is equated with social agreement and that it implies an antiformalizability thesis according to which it is not the case that all rigorous mathematical proofs can be formalized. I reject both criticisms and suggest that our previous case studies provide insight into the plausibility of two related but quite different theses. (shrink)

This paper has a twofold aim. On the one hand, we will discuss the much debated question of the source of normativity (which traditionally has nature and practical reason as the two main contenders to this role) and propose a new answer to it. Second, in answering this question, we will present a new account of practical wisdom, which conceives of the ethical virtues as ultimately unified in the chief virtue of phronesis, understood as ethical expertise. To do so, we (...) will first criticize the main current view of phronesis and its bearer (the phronimos), then offer another view of the nature of phronesis and of its relation to the other ethical virtues. Our proposal should not be intended as an interpretation of Aristotle’s own view; rather, it should be seen as a broadly Aristotelian theoretical proposal, which we believe can satisfyingly address most of the problems that afflict the more traditional accounts of practical wisdom. In section 2 of this paper, after criticizing first-nature naturalistic views of moral virtue, we take practical reason to be the cornerstone of second-nature naturalistic views; in section 3, we will outline criticisms to which, in our view, the traditional views of phronesis are ill-suited to respond, and, in section 4, we will outline our view of phronesis as ethical expertise – a view which in our view is immune to the above-mentioned criticisms – by spelling out the three main tenets of phronesis as ethical expertise: a conceptual thesis, an epistemic thesis, and the educational implications of the two. Finally, we will support our proposal with some empirical evidence taken from cognitive science. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to investigate the roles of commutative diagrams (CDs) in a specific mathematical domain, and to unveil the reasons underlying their effectiveness as a mathematical notation; this will be done through a case study. It will be shown that CDs do not depict spatial relations, but represent mathematical structures. CDs will be interpreted as a hybrid notation that goes beyond the traditional bipartition of mathematical representations into diagrammatic and linguistic. It will be argued that one (...) of the reasons why CDs form a good notation is that they are highly mathematically tractable: experts can obtain valid results by ‘calculating’ with CDs. These calculations, take the form of ‘diagram chases’. In order to draw inferences, experts move algebraic elements around the diagrams. It will be argued that these diagrams are dynamic. It is thanks to their dynamicity that CDs can externalize the relevant reasoning and allow experts to draw conclusions directly by manipulating them. Lastly, it will be shown that CDs play essential roles in the context of proof as well as in other phases of the mathematical enterprise, such as discovery and conjecture formation. (shrink)

During the first half of the twentieth century, many philosophers of memory opposed the postulation of memory traces based on the claim that a satisfactory account of remembering need not include references to causal processes involved in recollection. However, in 1966, an influential paper by Martin and Deutscher showed that causal claims are indeed necessary for a proper account of remembering. This, however, did not settle the issue, as in 1977 Malcolm argued that even if one were to buy Martin (...) and Deutscher’s argument for causal claims, we still don’t need to postulate the existence of memory traces. This paper reconstructs the dialectic between realists and anti-realists about memory traces, suggesting that ultimately realists’ arguments amount to inferences to the best explanation. I then argue that Malcolm’s anti-realist strategy consists in the suggestion that causal explanations that do not invoke memory traces are at least as good as those that do. But then, Malcolm, I argue that there are a large number of memory phenomena for which explanations that do not postulate the existence of memory traces are definitively worse than explanations that do postulate them. Next, I offer a causal model based on an interventionist framework to illustrate when memory traces can help to explain memory phenomena and proceed to substantiate the model with details coming from extant findings in the neuroscience of memory. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA longstanding tradition in philosophy distinguishes between knowthatand know-how. This traditional “anti-intellectualist” view is soentrenched in folk psychology that it is often invoked in supportof an allegedly equivalent distinction between explicit and implicitmemory, derived from the so-called “standard model of memory.”In the last two decades, the received philosophical view has beenchallenged by an “intellectualist” view of know-how. Surprisingly, defenders of the anti-intellectualist view have turned to the cognitivescience of memory, and to the standard model in particular, todefend their view. Here, (...) I argue that this strategy is a mistake. As it turns out, upon closer scrutiny, the evidence from cognitivepsychology and neuroscience of memory does not support theanti-intellectualist approach, mainly because the standard modelof memory is likely wrong. However, this need not be interpretedas good news for the intellectualist, for it is not clear that theempirical evidence necessarily supp... (shrink)

This Element focuses on three challenges of evolution to religion: teleology, human origins, and the evolution of religion itself. First, religious worldviews tend to presuppose a teleological understanding of the origins of living things, but scientists mostly understand evolution as non-teleological. Second, religious and scientific accounts of human origins do not align in a straightforward sense. Third, evolutionary explanations of religion, including religious beliefs and practices, may cast doubt on their justification. We show how these tensions arise and offer potential (...) responses for religion. Individual religions can meet these challenges, if some of their metaphysical assumptions are adapted or abandoned. (shrink)

Anton Marty (1847-1914) is known to be the most faithful pupil of Franz Brentano. As a matter of fact, most of his philosophical ideas find their source in the works of his master. Yet, the faithfulness of Marty is not constant. As the rich correspondence between the two thinkers shows, Marty elaborates an original theory of intentionality from ca. 1904 onward. This theory is based on the idea that intentionality is a process of mental assimilation (ideelle Verähnlichung), a process at (...) the core of which lies a sui generis relation of “ideal similitude” holding between a thinking subject and its object. This study spells out the Martyian notion of mental assimilation and traces back Marty’s evolution from his earlier position (prominently described in the recently published Deskriptive Psychologie of 1893-1894) to his final view as it is found in the Untersuchungen of 1908. It turns out that besides Brentano, Husserl is a key figure in that evolution. Such a “genetic”elucidation of Marty’s last theory is required in order to reach the main goal of this paper, namely: the clarification of Marty’s degree of dependence upon Brentano with respect to the theory of intentionality. That being said, we do not merely intend to compare the mature Marty with Brentano: our “genetic” considerations will also allow us to describe the interaction between the two thinkers before 1904. Accordingly, we begin by presenting Brentano’s own position on intentionality in discussing its two currently competing readings, namely the “discontinuist” and the “continuist” one. Against a recent interpretation, we argue that Marty’s endorsement of a “discontinuist” reading is not based on a misunderstanding of Brentano’s position. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to investigate specific aspects connected with visualization in the practice of a mathematical subfield: low-dimensional topology. Through a case study, it will be established that visualization can play an epistemic role. The background assumption is that the consideration of the actual practice of mathematics is relevant to address epistemological issues. It will be shown that in low-dimensional topology, justifications can be based on sequences of pictures. Three theses will be defended. First, the representations used (...) in the practice are an integral part of the mathematical reasoning. As a matter of fact, they convey in a material form the relevant transitions and thus allow experts to draw inferential connections. Second, in low-dimensional topology experts exploit a particular type of manipulative imagination which is connected to intuition of two- and three-dimensional space and motor agency. This imagination allows recognizing the transformations which connect different pictures in an argument. Third, the epistemic—and inferential—actions performed are permissible only within a specific practice: this form of reasoning is subject-matter dependent. Local criteria of validity are established to assure the soundness of representationally heterogeneous arguments in low-dimensional topology. (shrink)

D. Justin Coates argues that, in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, P. F. Strawson develops a modest transcendental argument for the legitimacy of our moral responsibility practices. I disagree with Coates’ claim that Strawson’s argument provides a justification, in Wittgenstein’s and/or Strawson’s sense of that term, of our responsibility practices. I argue that my interpretation of Strawson solves some difficulties with Coates’ argument, while retaining its advantages.

The cultural transmission of theological concepts remains an underexplored topic in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). In this paper, I examine whether approaches from CSR, especially the study of content biases in the transmission of beliefs, can help explain the cultural success of some theological concepts. This approach reveals that there is more continuity between theological beliefs and ordinary religious beliefs than CSR authors have hitherto recognized: the cultural transmission of theological concepts is influenced by content biases that also (...) underlie the reception of ordinary religious concepts. (shrink)

There is widespread excitement in the literature about the method of arbitrary functions: many take it to show that it is from the dynamics of systems that the objectivity of probabilities emerge. In this paper, I differentiate three ways in which a probability function might be objective, and I argue that the method of arbitrary functions cannot help us show that dynamics objectivise probabilities in any of these senses.

According to Michael Zimmerman, no interpretation of the idea that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal captures a significant truth. He raises several worries about the Strawsonian view that moral responsibility consists in susceptibility to the reactive attitudes and claims that this view at best supports only an etiolated interpretation of the idea that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. He outlines three problems. First, the existence of self-reactive attitudes may be incompatible with the interpersonal nature of moral responsibility. Secondly, Zimmerman questions (...) the significance of the interpersonal nature of moral responsibility, according to the Strawsonian view. Thirdly, he argues that that view may be taken to suggest the wrong kind of priority relation between ‘P is morally responsible’ and ‘it is appropriate to adopt some reactive attitude toward P’. I discuss each of these problems in turn and conclude that Strawsonians can respond to all three problems raised by Zimmerman. The Strawsonian view supports a significant interpretation of the idea that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. (shrink)

Environmentalism has been a part of the ideological landscape of liberal societies for nearly three decades. Classical liberals have not yet succeeded, however, in articulating a coherent response that would be relevant to politically active environmentalists, as well as to liberals receptive to postmodern ideas. Robert C. Paehlke argues that, conservative liberals being in fact hostile to environmental thinking, moderate progressivism and environmentalism should enter into a close alliance. This paper challenges both assertions. Admittedly, not all currents within contemporary conservative (...) liberalism could play a part in the development of a neoliberal environmentalist movement. One current, however, the skeptical tradition, whose origin can be traced back to the Scottish Englightenment, is remarkably well suited to this task. Progressivism, on the other hand, could end up smothering the environmental movement under the weight of its own certainties. (shrink)

In this paper I claim that perceptual discriminatory skills rely on a suitable type of environment as an enabling condition for their exercise. This is because of the constitutive connection between environment and perceptual discriminatory skills, inasmuch as such connection is construed from an ecological approach. The exercise of a discriminatory skill yields knowledge of affordances of objects, properties, or events in the surrounding environment. This is practical knowledge in the first-person perspective. An organism learns to perceive an object by (...) becoming sensitized to its affordances. I call this position ecological disjunctivism. A corollary of this position is that a case of perception and its corresponding case of hallucination—which is similar to the former only in some respects—are different in nature. I show then how the distinguishability problem is addressed by ecological disjunctivism. (shrink)

Este trabalho apresenta algumas considerações a respeito da Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC), no referente às questões ligadas ao ensino da língua portuguesa no Brasil, à territorialidade e ao pertencimento racial, processos históricos, que envolvem, no campo da educação, a formação docente e a construção da cidadania dos educandos e das educandas nestes tempos de reafirmação do Estado democrático de direito e da vaga decolonial. Portanto, trata-se de uma abordagem política em termos do pensamento de Paulo Freire, patrono da educação (...) brasileira, que considerava político o ato de educar (FREIRE, 1980; 1983; 1989; 1996). É com base nesta perspectiva que a BNCC será abordada, mas sob o aporte teórico da análise pragmática do discurso, tributária da análise discursivo-desconstrutiva (cf. ARAÚJO, 2020). (shrink)

As neuroscience progresses, we will not only gain a better understanding of how our brains work, but also a better understanding of how to modify them, and as a result, our mental states. An important question we are faced with is whether the state could be justified in implementing such methods on criminal offenders, without their consent, for the purposes of rehabilitation and reduction of recidivism; a practice that is already legal in some jurisdictions. By focusing on a prominent type (...) of view of free action, which I call bypassing views, this paper evaluates how such interventions may negatively impact the freedom of their subjects. The paper concludes that there will be a tension between the goals of rehabilitation and reduction of recidivism, on the one hand, and the negative impact such interventions may have on free action, on the other. Other things equal, the better that a particular intervention is at achieving the former, the more likely it is to result in the latter. (shrink)

There is a common assumption that evolutionary explanations of religion undermine religious beliefs. Do etiological accounts similarly affect the rationality of religious practices? To answer this question, this paper looks at two influential evolutionary accounts of ritual, the hazard-precaution model and costly signaling theory. It examines whether Cuneo’s account of ritual knowledge as knowing to engage God can be maintained in the light of these evolutionary accounts. While the evolutionary accounts under consideration are not metaphysically incompatible with the idea that (...) religious rituals engage God, they cast doubt on whether many, if not all, rituals can do this successfully. (shrink)

This paper challenges the negative attitudes towards labelled proof systems, usually referred to as semantic pollution, by arguing that such critiques overlook the full potential of labelled calculi. The overarching objective is to develop a practice-based philosophical analysis of labelled calculi to provide insightful considerations regarding their proof-theoretic and philosophical value. To achieve this, successful applications of labelled calculi and related results will be showcased, and comparisons with other relevant works will be discussed. The paper ends by advocating for a (...) more practice-based approach towards the philosophical understanding of proof systems and their role in structural proof theory. (shrink)

Internalism about moral responsibility is the view that moral responsibility is determined primarily by an agent's mental states; externalism is the view that moral responsibility is determined primarily by an agent's overt behaviour and by circumstances external to the agent. In a series of papers, Michelle Ciurria has argued that most if not all current accounts of moral responsibility, including Strawsonian ones, are internalist. Ciurria defends externalism against these accounts, and she argues that, in contrast to his contemporary followers, P.F. (...) Strawson himself was an externalist. I believe that Ciurria's reading of Strawson is problematic. The aim of this paper is to elucidate Strawson's position with regard to the internalism-externalism issue against the background of Ciurria's reading of him. I conclude that Strawson was neither an internalist nor an externalist about moral responsibility. I draw extensively upon the whole body of Strawson's work, much of which is sadly neglected in discussions of ‘Freedom and Resentment’, although it illuminates many of the issues discussed there. (shrink)

This paper examines the cognitive foundations of natural theology: the intuitions that provide the raw materials for religious arguments, and the social context in which they are defended or challenged. We show that the premises on which natural theological arguments are based rely on intuitions that emerge early in development, and that underlie our expectations for everyday situations, e.g., about how causation works, or how design is recognized. In spite of the universality of these intuitions, the cogency of natural theological (...) arguments remains a matter of continued debate. To understand why they are controversial, we draw on social theories of reasoning and argumentation. (shrink)

Digital COVID certificates are a novel public health policy to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. These immunity certificates aim to incentivize vaccination and to deny international travel or access to essential spaces to those who are unable to prove that they are not infectious. In this article, we start by describing immunity certificates and highlighting their differences from vaccination certificates. Then, we focus on the ethical, legal, and social issues involved in their use, namely autonomy and consent, data protection, equity, and (...) international mobility from a global fairness perspective. The main conclusion of our analysis is that digital COVID certificates are only acceptable if they meet certain conditions: that they should not process personal data beyond what is strictly necessary for the aimed goals, that equal access to them should be guaranteed, and that they should not restrict people’s autonomy to access places where contagion is unlikely. We conclude that, if such conditions are guaranteed, digital COVID certificates could contribute to mitigating some of the most severe socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic. (shrink)

Michael Zimmerman has recently argued against the twofold Strawsonian claim that there can be no moral responsibility without a moral community and that, as a result, moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. I offered a number of objections to Zimmerman’s view, to which Zimmerman responded. In this article, I respond to Zimmerman’s responses to my criticisms.

The purpose of this article is to present several immediate consequences of the introduction of a new constant called Lambda in order to represent the object ``nothing" or ``void" into a standard set theory. The use of Lambda will appear natural thanks to its role of condition of possibility of sets. On a conceptual level, the use of Lambda leads to a legitimation of the empty set and to a redefinition of the notion of set. It lets also clearly appear (...) the distinction between the empty set, the nothing and the ur-elements. On a technical level, we introduce the notion of pre-element and we suggest a formal definition of the nothing distinct of that of the null-class. Among other results, we get a relative resolution of the anomaly of the intersection of a family free of sets and the possibility of building the empty set from ``nothing". The theory is presented with equi-consistency results . On both conceptual and technical levels, the introduction of Lambda leads to a resolution of the Russell's puzzle of the null-class. (shrink)

Philosophy of religion is often regarded as a philosophical discipline in which irrelevant influences, such as upbringing and education, play a pernicious role. This paper presents results of a qualitative survey among academic philosophers of religion to examine the role of such factors in their work. In light of these findings, I address two questions: an empirical one (whether philosophers of religion are influenced by irrelevant factors in forming their philosophical attitudes) and an epistemological one (whether the influence of irrelevant (...) factors on our philosophical views should worry us). My answer to the first question is a definite yes, my answer to the second, a tentative yes. (shrink)

This paper rehabilitates the Stoic conception of blending from the ground up, by freeing the Stoic conception of body from three interpretive presuppositions. First, the twin hylomorphic presuppositions that where there is body there is matter, and that where there is reason or quality there is an incorporeal. Then, the atomistic presupposition that body is absolutely full and rigid, and the attendant notion that resistance (antitupia) must be ricochet. I argue that once we clear away these presuppositions about body, the (...) foundations of Stoic corporealism fall into place. Body is fundamental (not hylomorphic). The two fundamental principles (archai) are bodies: divine active reason (logos) and passive matter (hulē); and these two bodies are two, not matter and form all over again, nor actual and potential, but agent and patient. The independence of the two archai is no threat to the unity of the cosmos, however, because the Stoic theory of body allows for the complete coextension of the archai. The hylomorphic thinker rightly asks, what relation could be tighter than that of the wax and its shape? The Stoic replies: a causal relation, the interaction of agent and patient completely coextended in a through and through blend. (shrink)

While the notion of chance has been central in discussions over the probabilistic nature of natural selection and genetic drift, its role in the production of variants on which populational sampling takes place has received much less philosophical attention. This article discusses the concept of chance in evolution in the light of contemporary work in evo-devo. We distinguish different levels at which randomness and chance can be defined in this context, and argue that recent research on variability and evolvability demands (...) a causal understanding of variational probabilities under which development acquires a creative, rather than a constraining role in evolution. We then provide a propensity interpretation of variational probabilities that solves a conceptual confusion between causal properties, variational probabilities and extant variation present in the literature, and explore some metaphysical consequences that follow from our interpretation, specifically with regards to the nature of developmental types. (shrink)

Puisque nous n'avons pu trouver un fondement logique à la dialectique, nous avons alors compris que la dialectique était historique. Il ne restait plus alors qu'à trouver la culture d'origine que nous avons localisée en Perse. -/- Since we could not find a logical foundation for the dialectic, we then understood that the dialectic was historical. All that remained was to find the culture of origin, which we located in Persia.