We argue that moral decision making is reasons-based, focusing on the idea that people encounter decisions as questions to be answered and that they process reasons to the extent that they can see them as putative answers to those questions. After introducing our topic, we sketch the erotetic reasons-based framework for decision making. We then describe three experiments that extend this framework to moral decision making in different question frames, cast doubt on theories of moral decision making that discount reasons (...) and appeal, and replicate our initial finds in moral contexts that do not involve direct physical harm. We conclude by reinterpreting Stanley Milgram’s studies in destructive obedience in our new framework. (shrink)

It is true of many truths that I do not believe them. It is equally true, however, that I cannot rationally assert of any such truth both that it is true and that I do not believe it. To explain why this is so, I will distinguish absence of belief from disbelief and argue that an assertion of “p, but I do not believe that p” is paradoxical because it is indefensible, i.e. for reasons internal to it unable to convince. (...) A closer examination of the irrationality involved will show that such is the skeptic’s predicament, trying to convince us to bracket knowledge claims we have good grounds to take ourselves to be entitled to. Even if the sceptic cannot be proven wrong, his challenge still demands an answer, if not a treatment. In this paper, I argue that the cure lies in epidemiology rather than epistemology: instead of attacking the sceptic head-long, I commend guerilla tactics, vaccinating our fellow non-sceptics against the sceptical virus. I will not argue that the sceptic is wrong, necessarily wrong or that he cannot be believed, but that he cannot convince. Scepticism requires a leap of faith: something we may justifiably refrain from even on the sceptic’s own standards. (shrink)

Two decades ago, Rolf Landauer (1991) argued that “information is physical” and ought to have a role in the scientific analysis of reality comparable to that of matter, energy, space and time. This would also help to bridge the gap between biology and mathematics and physics. Although it can be argued that we are living in the ‘golden age’ of biology, both because of the great challenges posed by medicine and the environment and the significant advances that have been made—especially (...) in genetics and molecular and cell biology—we feel that information as an essential aspect of life has been neglected, or at least misunderstood. We therefore summon Maxwell’s Demon and its distant relative the ratchet, and apply these to biology. (shrink)

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

Solar radiation management (SRM) may help to reduce the negative outcomes of climate change by minimising or reversing global warming. However, many express the worry that SRM may pose a moral hazard, i.e., that information about SRM may lead to a reduction in climate change mitigation efforts. In this paper, we report a large-scale preregistered, money-incentivised, online experiment with a representative US sample (N = 2284). We compare actual behaviour (donations to climate change charities and clicks on climate change petition (...) links) as well as stated preferences (support for a carbon tax and self-reported intentions to reduce emissions) between participants who receive information about SRM with two control groups (a salience control that includes information about climate change generally and a content control that includes information about a different topic). Behavioural choices are made with an earned real-money endowment, and stated preference responses are incentivised via the Bayesian Truth Serum. We fail to find a significant impact of receiving information about SRM and, based on equivalence tests, we provide evidence in favour of the absence of a meaningfully large effect. Our results thus provide evidence for the claim that there is no detectable moral hazard with respect to SRM. [Open access]. (shrink)

The expression "analytic narratives" is used to refer to a range of quite recent studies that lie on the boundaries between history, political science, and economics. These studies purport to explain specific historical events by combining the usual narrative approach of historians with the analytic tools that economists and political scientists draw from formal rational choice theories. Game theory, especially of the extensive form version, is currently prominent among these tools, but there is nothing inevitable about such a technical choice. (...) The chapter explains what analytic narratives are by reviewing the studies of the major book Analytic Narratives (1998), which are concerned with the workings of political institutions broadly speaking, as well as several cases drawn from military and security studies, which form an independent source of the analytic narratives literature. At the same time as it gradually develops a definition of analytic narratives, the chapter investigates how they fulfil one of their main purposes, which is to provide explanations of a better standing than those of traditional history. An important principle that will emerge in the course of the discussion is that narration is called upon not only to provide facts and problems, but also to contribute to the explanation itself. The chapter distinguishes between several expository schemes of analytic narratives according to the way they implement this principle. From all the arguments developed here, it seems clear that the current applications of analytic narratives do not exhaust their potential, and in particular that they deserve the attention of economic historians, if only because they are concerned with microeconomic interactions that are not currently their focus of attention. (shrink)

Outline: The reality of Catholicism; The question of the development of science; Historical outlook at some transitional moments; When dogma meets science; Contemporary physics and the worldview of Catholicism; Awaiting a 'Grand Narrative' and the final vision of harmony.

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

In Axel Honneths Recht der Freiheit (RF) dienen persönliche Beziehungen, zu welchen Honneth neben Familien- und Liebesbeziehungen auch die Freundschaft zählt, der Verwirklichung einer „besondere[n], schwer zu charakterisierende[n] Form von Freiheit“ (RF 233). Diese Behauptung fügt sich ein in die Kernthese des Rechts der Freiheit. Demnach vermochte es die „Freiheit im Sinne der Autonomie des Einzelnen“ innerhalb unzähliger „Vorstellung[en] vom Guten“ als einzige, die moderne Gesellschaft nachhaltig zu prägen, wohingegen alle anderen Werte, die in der Moderne wirkmächtig geworden sind, als (...) „Facette[n] der konstitutive[n] Idee der individuellen Autonomie“ (RF 35) verstanden werden müssen. Wir argumentieren, dass Honneths Erörterung des Werts von Freundschaft in dreierlei Hinsicht sein Ziel verfehlt: Erstens zwingt sie Honneth zu einer radikalen Beschneidung des Freundschaftsbegriffs, indem er einen überzogenen Kontrast zwischen antiken und modernen Konzeptionen von Freundschaft zeichnet. Zweitens marginalisiert Honneth mit seiner Betrachtung andere Axiologien der Freundschaft, welche dieser gewichtige instrumentelle, konstitutive und finale Werte zuweisen. Drittens scheint selbst eine schwächer angelegte These, die den Wert, den Freundschaften für die individuelle Freiheit haben, auf die Stellung eines primus inter pares zurückstuft, immer noch den zentralen Wert, den Freundschaften für uns haben sollten, zu verfehlen. Dadurch wird Honneths Kernthese von der Exklusivität des Wertes der Freiheit für unsere Gesellschaft in Frage gestellt. (shrink)

Here we will go beyond the variety of violence to show its unity, common points and continuities. For although there are multiple forms of violence, they are interrelated: they define a continuum from trivial to extreme violence. Violence against oneself, things, living things such as plants and animals, other nations, the other, one’s fellow human beings, therefore the violence of society against its members, which returns to self-violence. Another continuum is its spiral development, with violence generating violence and pushing it (...) to grow. Violence can also be learned, we progress ever further in violence: in gangs, in armies, in society... Everyone is capable of violence, sometimes to a good advantage as in self-defence. Here it resides in necessity, that of survival, but in general it is impunity that allows and encourages it. In closed, totalitarian, universes: family, work, hospital, army, state... The proximity and distance between the perpetrator and the victim defines yet another continuity. We will discuss the various elements that contribute to its development. And paradoxically, to see that violence also serves to avoid violence. In this way, evacuating it, refusing it, is in fact feeding it, which makes today’s violence, which is an evolution of previous violence and which prepares and defines tomorrow’s violence. (shrink)

In the summer of 2016, the University of Dallas and the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México organized a conference to discuss the topic of the middle class and its continued decline—recognizing that, despite some historical, political and cultural differences, healthy democracies throughout the hemisphere depend upon a strong and prosperous middle class. This volume brings together contributions by nine scholars from both institutions. The chapters reflect diverse disciplinary perspectives that are historical, political, economic, anthropological, and philosophical. Despite this diversity, the (...) volume possesses a conceptual unity that stems from its foundation in Aristotle’s approach to the middle class. On this basis, the topic is given a rigorous study that is both theoretical and data-driven. The chapters include treatments of Aristotle, Montesquieu, Adam Smith and Sir James Steuart, Catholic social teaching, the problem of inequality in the US, the definition and measurement of the middle class in Mexico, as well as its values and political attitudes, the rise of middle-class politics in early-twentieth-century Latin America, and a comparative analysis of healthcare for the middle class in North America. (shrink)

Popper's well-known demarcation criterion has often been understood to distinguish statements of empirical science according to their logical form. Implicit in this interpretation of Popper's philosophy is the belief that when the universe of discourse of the empirical scientist is infinite, empirical universal sentences are falsifiable but not verifiable, whereas the converse holds for existential sentences. A remarkable elaboration of this belief is to be found in Watkins's early work on the statements he calls “all-and-some,” such as: “For every metal (...) there is a melting point.” All-and-some statements are both universally and existentially quantified in that order. Watkins argued that AS should be regarded as both nonfalsifiable and nonverifiable, for they partake in the logical fate of both universal and existential statements. This claim is subject to the proviso that the bound variables are “uncircumscribed” ; i.e., that the universe of discourse is infinite. (shrink)

The “Human Brain Project” (HBP) is a large-scale European neuroscience and information communication technology (ICT) project that has been a matter of heated controversy since its inception. With its aim to simulate the entire human brain with the help of supercomputing technologies, the HBP plans to fundamentally change neuroscientific research practice, medical diagnosis, and eventually the use of computers itself. Its controversial nature and its potential impacts render the HBP a subject of crucial importance for critical studies of science and (...) society. In this paper, we provide a critical exploratory analysis of the potential mid- to long-term impacts the HBP and its ICT infrastructure could be expected to have, provided its agenda will indeed be implemented and executed to a substantive degree. We analyse how the HBP aspires to change current neuroscientific practice, what impact its novel infrastructures could have on research culture, medical practice and the use of ICT, and how, given a certain degree of successful execution of the project’s aims, potential clinical and methodological applications could even transform society beyond scientific practice. Furthermore, we sketch the possibility that research such as that projected by the HBP may eventually transform our everyday world, even beyond the scope of the HBP’s explicit agenda, and beyond the isolated ‘application’ of some novel technological device. Finally, we point towards trajectories for further philosophical, historical and sociological research on the HBP that our exploratory analysis might help to inspire. Our analysis will yield important insights regardless of the actual success of the HBP. What we drive at, for the most part, is the broader dynamics of scientific and technological development of which the HBP agenda is merely one particularly striking exemplification. (shrink)

Following a long-standing philosophical tradition, impartiality is a distinctive and determining feature of moral judgments, especially in matters of distributive justice. This broad ethical tradition was revived in welfare economics by Vickrey, and above all, Harsanyi, under the form of the so-called Impartial Observer Theorem. The paper offers an analytical reconstruction of this argument and a step-wise philosophical critique of its premisses. It eventually provides a new formal version of the theorem based on subjective probability.

This paper (first published under the same title in Journal of Mathematical Economics, 29, 1998, p. 331-361) is a sequel to "Consistent Bayesian Aggregation", Journal of Economic Theory, 66, 1995, p. 313-351, by the same author. Both papers examine mathematically whether the the following assumptions are compatible: the individuals and the group both form their preferences according to Subjective Expected Utility (SEU) theory, and the preferences of the group satisfy the Pareto principle with respect to those of the individuals. While (...) the 1995 paper explored these assumptions in the axiomatic context of Savage's (1954-1972) SEU theory, the present paper explores them in the context of Anscombe and Aumann's (1963) alternative SEU theory. We first show that the problematic assumptions become compatible when the Anscombe-Aumann utility functions are state-dependent and no subjective probabilities are elicited. Then we show that the problematic assumptions become incompatible when the Anscombe-Aumann utility functions are state-dependent, like before, but subjective probabilities are elicited using a relevant technical scheme. This last result reinstates the impossibilities proved by the 1995 paper, and thus shows them to be robust with respect to the choice of the SEU axiomatic framework. The technical scheme used for the elicitation of subjective probabilities is that of Karni, Schmeidler and Vind (1983). (shrink)

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

This paper evaluates the claim that it is possible to use nature’s variation in conjunction with retention and selection on the one hand, and the absence of ultimate groundedness of hypotheses generated by the human mind as it knows on the other hand, to discard the ascription of ultimate certainty to the rationality of human conjectures in the cognitive realm. This leads to an evaluation of the further assumption that successful hypotheses with specific applications, in other words heuristics, seem to (...) have a firm footing because they were useful in another context. I argue that usefulness evaluated through adaptation misconstrues the search for truth, and that it is possible to generate talk of randomness by neglecting aspects of a system’s insertion into a larger situation. The framing of the problem in terms of the elimination of unfit hypotheses is found to be unsatisfying. It is suggested that theories exist in a dimension where they can be kept alive rather than dying as phenotypes do. The proposal that the subconscious could suggest random variations is found to be a category mistake. A final appeal to phenomenology shows that this proposal is orphan in the history of epistemology, not in virtue of its being a remarkable find, but rather because it is ill-conceived. (shrink)

This paper first outlines the main ideas of British natural theology, and shows the perennial value some of them have kept. It then outlines ways of searching for connections between God and nature, seeking traces of intelligence, first in the context of the setting of the modern ontology of the laws of nature, and then in the context of the design argument. It contrasts the positions of Hume and Paley. A presentation of recent "intelligent design" proposals is then offered, from (...) the perspective of their continuing that tradition of argumentation. They are contrasted with a Millian acount of their leaving the problem of evil unanswered. Behe's concept of irreducible complexity is presented in greater details, followed by Dembski's attempt to turn it into a logically valid mode of inference. Objections stemming from philosophers of science are lastly considered. The nature of life's strategies is in the end found to escape both attempts to have it on one's side. (shrink)

This is the outline: 6. L'absence du concept de l'individualité 7. L'existence illimitée (boundless) Métaphore et analogie 8. L'évolution et l'existence comme durée individuelle dans le temps cosmique 9. L'option de la nécessité naturelle 10. L'inconnaissabilité ultime.

The problem of knowledge has been centred around the study of the content of our consciousness, seeing the world through internal representation, without any satisfactory account of the operations of nature that would be a pre-condition for our own performances in terms of concept efficiency in organizing action externally. If we want to better understand where and how meaning fits in nature, we have to find the proper way to decipher its organization, and account for the fact that we have (...) found codes and replicators operating at a deep levels of analysis. Informational analysis deals with units of organizational stability but it takes them for granted and leaves open the question of their origin. Patterns are used when we recognize the same configurations at different places and try to explain through their recurrence, yet to make sense of the presence of signals and counter-balancing mechanisms disseminated in nature, a hypothesis is offered to the effect that feedback signals would have a role to play in the coming about of a world that is open to new configurations and submitted to a form of stability that is more attuned to system laws than overarching unrevisable ones. (shrink)

This study is devoted to the problem of the place and significance of the scientific quest and worldview, and to their articulation with metaphysics as they serve to bring the mind to the consideration of the problem and mystery of the existence of God in the thought of the contemporary French philosopher and theologian Claude Tresmontant (1925-97).

What we read in the major synthetic writings of Teilhard shows a thought aware of the incessant interaction between natural entities and the organizing power which exerts an attraction on them that becomes practically infallible beyond a tipping point. This testifies of a prescient view that has many connections to the mode of thinking of cybernetics.

I will present and criticise the two theories of truthmaking David Armstrong offers us in Truth and Truthmakers (Armstrong 2004), show to what extent they are incompatible and identify troublemakers for both of them, a notorious – Factualism, the view that the world is a world of states of affairs – and a more recent one – the view that every predication is necessary. Factualism, combined with truthmaker necessitarianism – ‘truthmaking is necessitation’ – leads Armstrong to an all-embracing totality state (...) of affairs that necessitates not only everything that is the case but also everything else – that which is not the case, that which is merely possible or even impossible. All the things so dear to realists – rocks, natural properties, real persons – become mere abstractions from this ontological monster. The view that every predication is necessary does in some sense the opposite: it does away with totality states of affairs and, arguably, also with states of affairs. We have particulars and universals, partially identical and necessarily connected to everything else. Just by the existence of anything, everything is necessitated – the whole world mirrored in every monad. Faced with the choice between these two equally unappealing alternatives, I suggest returning to Armstrong’s more empiricist past: the world is not an all-inclusive One, nor necessitated by every single particular and every single universal, but a plurality of particulars and universals, interconnected by a contingent and internal relation of exemplification. While a close variant, truthmaker essentialism, can perhaps be saved, this means giving up on truthmaker necessitarianism. This, I think, what it takes to steer a clear empiricist course between the Scylla of Spinozist general factness and the Charybdis of a Leibnizian overdose of brute necessities. (shrink)

This French article aims at analyzing the Ricardian problem of an "invariable standard of value" in Ricardo's own terms. It is argued that Ricardo's commentators and modern followers have changed these terms significantly. The problem actually branches into two subproblems, i.e., that of "invariability" strictly, and that of "neutrality with respect to distribution". These subproblems do not matter to Ricardo to the same extent. He regards the latter (in various formulations recapitulated here) as a complication of the former, which is (...) the crucial one in his search for a "good" standard. This exemplifies precisely how Ricardo could theoretically focus on the production side of the economy at the expense of the distribution side. With these conclusions at hand, the paper can be critical of Marx's and Sraffa's interpretations of the Ricardian problem of the standard: respectively, because Marx's is simply incorrect, and because Sraffa's solved a problem that was unrelated to the original one in Ricardo. -/- -/- . (shrink)

This critical notice was occasioned by reading M. Espinoza, "Freedom in a Causally Determined World," Actas de las XIII Jornadas sobre Filosofía y Metodología Actual de la Ciencia, Jornadas sobre Libertad y Determinismo: Ciencias Sociales y Ciencias de la Naturaleza, Universidad de A Coruña, March 2008.

This article brings to bear findings from the debate on the boundary problem in democratic theory on discussions of workplace democracy to argue that workplace democrats’ focus on workers is unjustified and that more constituencies will have to be included in any prospective scheme of workplace democracy. It thereby provides a valuable and underdiscussed perspective on workplace democracy that goes beyond the debate’s usual focus on the clarification and justification of workplace democrats’ core claim. It also goes beyond approaches like (...) stakeholder theory in law and economics that determine decision-making rights without taking into account genuinely democratic considerations. My discussion proceeds by considering three principles for inclusion from democratic theory for the specific case of the corporation. I submit that two of them, the all-coerced and the all-subjected principle, are not appropriate for this specific case, because they cannot capture the distinguishing features of the corporation. The all-affected principle however is appropriate but has a very wide range. I further argue that this is not as big of a problem as it first might seem and that this principle is still the most appropriate for defining the demos of the democratic corporation. The article closes by pointing out the consequences of this result for the workplace democracy debate and for the legitimacy of the market as a coordination mechanism. (shrink)

To celebrate his 80th birthday, the Roman universities of Roma Tre and the Pontifical Athenaeum S. Anselmo organised in May 2016 a conference entitled Around Gianni Vattimo. Friends, students and young researchers gathered for a moment of 'conversation' with one of the most important figures in contemporary Italian philosophy to retrace together some of the paths that Vattimo himself traced and opened up during his long academic and political career. Among the various themes of his thought, hermeneutics, Christianity and politics (...) were those privileged by the interventions of these memorable days: these in fact constitute the essential axes of the present volume that makes us re-read the fundamental knots of his philosophy. This work takes place under the banner of a new way of understanding philosophical research, no longer as the conquest of a unique and definitive knowledge, but as an infinite interpretative task, just as Heidegger and Nietzsche, the main authors of reference of the father of 'weak thought', now allow him to understand the search for Being that is given in language. (shrink)

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

In a first part I present the results of the philosophy of scientific explanation with an attempt to apply them to the case of the theory of evolution. Then I observe that the requirements of modelization of phenomena with the help of inductive logic do not capture efficiently the pertinent factors and fail just as much to exclude those which end up being neutral as explanatory premises. I then query in the direction of confirmation theory, and show that probabilistic reasoning (...) does not possess the syntactic means of testing evolutionary hypotheses in a way that would rely on a valid mode of inference. In a second part, I try to show how biology has oscillated between two privileged modes of explanation, the first one being through form of which I suggest here that it has never been replaced and that it has known a forgotten vitality in the middle and latter part of the 19th Century, and the second one being through function here evaluated critically alongside that of tinkering. Finally, some limits are seen to hold against the pretence to epistemological exclusivism of those two outlooks on the biological object. (shrink)

Este artigo é dedicado aos usos que Foucault propõe da obra de Sade (desde História da Loucura até A vontade de Saber), ou seja, de que forma estes usos são suscetíveis de despertar um esclarecimento indireto sobre o status equivocado que recebem as Luzes no pensamento foucaultiano. Aqui, encontram-se explicitamente opostas à figura literária de um Sade transgressivo que se associa à escrita e ao pensamento do “exterior”, e aquela de um Sade “sargento do sexo”, provedor de um erotismo disciplinar (...) que acompanha o desdobramento de uma racionalidade instrumental. (shrink)

The Pareto principle states that if the members of society express the same preference judgment between two options, this judgment is compelling for society. A building block of normative economics and social choice theory, and often borrowed by contemporary political philosophy, the principle has rarely been subjected to philosophical criticism. The paper objects to it on the ground that it indifferently applies to those cases in which the individuals agree on both their expressed preferences and their reasons for entertaining them, (...) and those cases in which they agree on their expressed preferences, while differing on their reasons. The latter are cases of "spurious unanimity", and it is normatively inappropriate, or so the paper argues, to defend unanimity preservation at the social level for them, so the Pareto principle is formulated much too broadly. The objection seems especially powerful when the principle is applied in an ex ante context of uncertainty, in which individuals can disagree on both their probabilities and utilities, and nonetheless agree on their preferences over prospects. (shrink)

Developing tools is a crucial aspect of experimental practice, yet most discussions of scientific change traditionally emphasize theoretical over technological change. To elaborate on the role of tools in scientific change, I offer an account that shows how scientists use tools in exploratory experiments to form novel concepts. I apply this account to two cases in neuroscience and show how tool development and concept formation are often intertwined in episodes of tool-driven change. I support this view by proposing common normative (...) principles that specify when exploratory concept formation and tool development succeed to initiate scientific change. (shrink)

This article discusses Sven Ove Hansson’s corpus model for the influence of values (in particular, non-epistemic ones) in the hypothesis acceptance/rejection phase of scientific inquiry. This corpus model is based on Hansson’s concepts of scientific corpus and science ‘in the large sense’. I first present Hansson’s corpus model of value influence with some introductory comments about its origins, a detailed presentation of the model with a new terminology, an analysis of its limits, and an appreciation of its handling of controversial (...) non-epistemic values. I conclude that it is a very good candidate for managing value influence, because contrary to other models in the literature it is fairly simple, it provides a universal and systematic procedure for dealing with values, and it syste- matically preserves the epistemic integrity of science. I then study some difficulties associated with the model’s central feature of taking the maximum level of evidence required by the applications of a claim in order for the latter to enter the scientific corpus: the difficulty to identify this maximum requirement; the non-optimality of this requirement with respect to other less demanding requirements; the potentially detrimental consequences of the preference for false negatives over false positives on which it relies; and the issue of whether there can nevertheless be requirements higher than this maximum. I show that these issues may potentially challenge the corpus model. Finally, I call for empirical work (in particular, an investigation of scientists’ and engineers’ own normative views) in order to better assess these issues. (shrink)

Several disputes about the nature of experience operate under the assumption that experiences have parts, including temporal parts. There's the widely held view, when it comes to temporal experiences, that we should follow James' exhortation that such experiences aren't mere successions of their temporal parts, but something more. And there's the question of whether it is the parts of experiences which determine whole experiences and the properties they have, or whether the determination goes instead from the whole to the parts, (...) as holists have it. But what are parts, or temporal parts, of experiences exactly—what does it mean to say that an experience is “part” of another? Are the participants in those disputes talking about the same thing—is there a univocal notion of “experiential part” available? Are there different kinds of experiential parts? And if there are, is there a systematic way of carving them out? More importantly, how should we conceive of the temporal parts of experiences, and how can we establish that experiences really do have temporal parts, against those who reject the notion? (shrink)

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

In this paper, I argue that looking at the concept of neural function through the lens of cognition alone risks cognitive myopia: it leads neuroscientists to focus only on mechanisms with cognitive functions that process behaviorally relevant information when conceptualizing “neural function”. Cognitive myopia tempts researchers to neglect neural mechanisms with noncognitive functions which do not process behaviorally relevant information but maintain and repair neural and other systems of the body. Cognitive myopia similarly affects philosophy of neuroscience because scholars overlook (...) noncognitive functions when analyzing issues surrounding e.g., functional decomposition or the multifunctionality of neural structures. I argue that we can overcome cognitive myopia by adopting a patchwork approach that articulates cognitive and noncognitive “patches” of the concept of neural function. Cognitive patches describe mechanisms with causally specific effects on cognition and behavior which are likely operative in transforming sensory or other inputs into motor outputs. Noncognitive patches describe mechanisms that lack such specific effects; these mechanisms are enabling conditions for cognitive functions to occur. I use these distinctions to characterize two noncognitive functions at the mesoscale of neural circuits: subsistence functions like breathing are implemented by central pattern generators and are necessary to maintain the life of the organism. Infrastructural functions like gain control are implemented by canonical microcircuits and prevent neural system damage while cognitive processing occurs. By adding conceptual patches that describe these functions, a patchwork approach can overcome cognitive myopia and help us explain how the brain’s capacities as an information processing device are constrained by its ability to maintain and repair itself as a physiological apparatus. (shrink)

Whereas many others have scrutinized the Allais paradox from a theoretical angle, we study the paradox from an historical perspective and link our findings to a suggestion as to how decision theory could make use of it today. We emphasize that Allais proposed the paradox asa normative argument, concerned with ‘the rational man’ and not the ‘real man’, to use his words. Moreover, and more subtly, we argue that Allais had an unusual sense of the normative, being concerned not so (...) much with therationality of choicesas with therationality of the agent as a person. These two claims are buttressed by a detailed investigation – the first of its kind – of the 1952 Paris conference on risk, which set the context for the invention of the paradox, and a detailed reconstruction – also the first of its kind – of Allais’s specific normative argument from his numerous but allusive writings. The paper contrasts these interpretations of what the paradox historically represented, with how it generally came to function within decision theory from the late 1970s onwards: that is, as an empirical refutation of the expected utility hypothesis, and more specifically of the condition of von Neumann–Morgenstern independence that underlies that hypothesis. While not denying that this use of the paradox was fruitful in many ways, we propose another use that turns out also to be compatible with an experimental perspective. Following Allais’s hints on ‘the experimental definition of rationality’, this new use consists inletting the experiment itself speak of the rationality or otherwise of the subjects. In the 1970s, a short sequence of papers inspired by Allais implemented original ways of eliciting the reasons guiding the subjects’ choices, and claimed to be able to draw relevant normative consequences from this information. We end by reviewing this forgotten experimental avenue not simply historically, but with a view to recommending it for possible use by decision theorists today. (shrink)

Stephen Maitzen argues that divine command metaethics must be mistaken because it is committed to the implausible assumption that the sentence ‘God is good’ is a tautology. In this article, I show that a charitable interpretation of R. M. Adams’ version of divine command metaethics is not committed to accept this assumption. I conclude that Maitzen’s objection merely manages to refute a strawman version of divine command metaethics.

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

Temporally extended experiences, experiential holists have it, are not reducible to successions of their temporal parts because some whole experiences determine their parts (in some way). This paper suggests, first, that some forms of experiential holism are in fact consistent with the rival atomist view (that experiences are successions of their parts) and, second, that the main reasons advanced for experiential holism are compatible with atomism too. The paper then looks at how holistic determination of its parts by a whole (...) experience might take place in time, arguing that it is either inconsistent or undermines widespread assumptions regarding the mechanisms underlying experiences. (shrink)

The need to act in networks and to function in a society where we relate in complex fashions has fostered the use of data in accordance with distributed models. In a big data context, the individual is often overcome with the sentiment that one’s life does not matter, nor does it make a difference. What are sought are trends, and since there is no detached observer, those change things as much as they measure them. Where can we find a vantage (...) point, a ‘topsight’ necessary before the conception of any program? One could seek it in the direction of a collective figure, somewhat like the Leviathan of Hobbes, made up in its gigantism of smaller figures. Those that have been schooled in the classical tradition, or philosophia perennis, might think that we are abandoning solid realism, which seeks a conformation of statements, propositions, and language to what there is. They might criticize the reign of opinion. But what we entered into is not, upon closer inspection, some overarching paradigm of truth as success. It is rather a rationality of the likely, and it requires assessing the truths that can seem distributed between alternating or competing positions. But then, to seek decisions despite this, is to erase from our world this ‘esprit de finesse’ which Pascal deemed necessary to balance the illusions of a procedural mathematical rationality claiming that its end-products are simply in correspondence with reality. When we gather information, we frame it within an ontology for classification purposes, but this does not import with itself the immanence of this information as endogenous power to harmonise and give form. Feeling, as Whitehead construed it, seeks to take within it a receptivity to the world in order to turn it into an internalised representation. For this, it needs to be possible for a part of the world to reflect in itself the whole. Yet, this reflection is not a totalisation in an immaterial data range, it is rather a grounding in the mystery of the flesh, which is found here as a signpost on the way, if we are to heal dreams of complete mastery. (shrink)

Judgment aggregation theory, or rather, as we conceive of it here, logical aggregation theory generalizes social choice theory by having the aggregation rule bear on judgments of all kinds instead of merely preference judgments. It derives from Kornhauser and Sager’s doctrinal paradox and List and Pettit’s discursive dilemma, two problems that we distinguish emphatically here. The current theory has developed from the discursive dilemma, rather than the doctrinal paradox, and the final objective of the paper is to give the latter (...) its own theoretical development along the line of recent work by Dietrich and Mongin. However, the paper also aims at reviewing logical aggregation theory as such, and it covers impossibility theorems by Dietrich, Dietrich and List, Dokow and Holzman, List and Pettit, Mongin, Nehring and Puppe, Pauly and van Hees, providing a uniform logical framework in which they can be compared with each other. The review goes through three historical stages: the initial paradox and dilemma, the scattered early results on the independence axiom, and the so-called canonical theorem, a collective achievement that provided the theory with its specific method of analysis. The paper goes some way towards philosophical logic, first by briefly connecting the aggregative framework of judgment with the modern philosophy of judgment, and second by thoroughly discussing and axiomatizing the ‘general logic’ built in this framework. (shrink)

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