Cet article défend une définition de l’exploitation, restreinte aux relations de travail, en tentant d’une part d’expliciter une certaine compréhension de sens commun du concept (rémunération inéquitable en fonction du travail presté), et d’autre part d’échapper aux difficultés qui ont affecté la définition marxiste traditionnelle de l’exploitation comme extorsion de la plus-value (dans ses diverses variantes). Il explore ainsi le lien entre l’exploitation et l’obligation matérielle de travailler pour subvenir à ses besoins fondamentaux. Après avoir mis en garde contre les (...) politiques d’activation des chômeurs, il conclut que l’exploitation est un phénomène contre lequel on peut lutter à l’aide de mécanismes relativement simples, même dans les sociétés capitalistes. Il rappelle toutefois que cela ne suffit pas à réaliser la justice sociale, resituant l’exploitation parmi d’autres enjeux fondamentaux pour une philosophie politique égalitariste. (shrink)

PREMISSA No século XIX, ocorreram transformações impulsionadas pela emergência de novas fontes energéticas (água e petróleo), por novos ramos industriais e pela alteração profunda nos processos produtivos, com a introdução de novas máquinas e equipamentos. Depois de 300 anos de exploração por parte das nações europeias, iniciou -se, principalmente nas colônias latino-americanas, um processo intenso de lutas pela independência. É no século XIX, já com a consolidação do sistema capitalista na Europa, que se encontra a herança intelectual mais próxima da (...) qual surgirá a Sociologia como ciência particular. No início desse século, as ideias do Conde de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), de Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), de David Ricardo (1772-1823) e de Charles Darwin (1809-1882), entre outros, foram o elo para que Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), Auguste Comte (1798-1857), Karl Marx (1818 -1883) e Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), entre outros, desenvolvessem reflexões sobre a sociedade de seu tempo. Auguste Comte e Karl Marx foram os pensadores que lançaram as bases do pensamento sociológico e de duas grandes tradições – a positivista e a socialista – que muito influenciaram o desenvolvimento da Sociologia no Brasil. 1 AUGUSTE COMTE E A TRADIÇÃO POSITIVISTA Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte nasceu em Montpellier, na França, em 19 de janeiro de 1798. Com 16 anos de idade, ingressou na Escola Politécnica de Paris, fato que teria significativa influência na orientação posterior de seu pensamento. De 1817 a 1824, foi secretário do Conde de Saint-Simon. Comte declarou que, com Saint -Simon, aprendeu muitas coisas que jamais encontraria nos livros e que, no pouco tempo em que conviveu com o conde, fez mais progressos do que faria em muitos anos, se estivesse sozinho. Toda a obra de Comte está permeada pelos acontecimentos que ocorreram após a Revolução Francesa de 1789. Ele defendeu parte dos princípios revolucionários e criticou a restauração da monarquia, preocupando-se fundamentalmente em reorganizar a sociedade, que, no seu entender, estava em ebulição e mergulhada no caos. Para Comte, a desordem e a anarquia imperavam em virtude da confusão de princípios (metafísicos e teológicos), que não se adequavam à sociedade industrial em expansão. Era, portanto, necessário superar esse estado de coisas, usando a razão como fundamento da nova sociedade. Propôs, então, a mudança da sociedade por meio da reforma intelectual plena das pessoas. De acordo com o pensador, com a modificação do pensamento humano, por meio do método científico, que ele chamava de “filosofia positiva”, haveria uma reforma das instituições. Com a proposta do estudo da sociedade por meio da análise de seus processos e estruturas, e da reforma prática das instituições, Comte criou uma nova ciência, à qual deu o nome de “física social”, passando a chamá-la posteriormente de Sociologia. A Sociologia representava, para Comte, o coroamento da evolução do conhecimento, mediante o emprego de métodos utilizados por outras ciências, que buscavam conhecer os fenômenos constantes e repetitivos da natureza: a observação, a experimentação, a comparação e a classificação. De acordo com esse pensador, a Sociologia, como as ciências naturais, deve sempre procurar a reconciliação entre os aspectos estáticos e os dinâmicos do mundo natural ou, no caso da sociedade humana, entre a ordem e o progresso. O lema da “filosofia positiva” proposta por Comte era “conhecer para prever, prever para prover”, ou seja, o conhecimento é necessário para fazer previsões e também para solucionar possíveis problemas. A influência de Comte no desenvolvimento da Sociologia foi marcante, sobretudo, na escola francesa, evidenciando-se em Émile Durkheim e seus contemporâneos e seguidores. Seu pensamento esteve presente em muitas das tentativas de criar tipologias para explicar a sociedade. Suas principais obras são: Curso de filosofia positiva (1830-1842), Discurso sobre o espírito positivo (1848), Catecismo positivista (1852) e Sistema de política positiva (1854). Para concluirmos, Comte explanava que para a superação da anarquia reinante na nova sociedade industrial, a filosofia positivista defendia a subordinação do progresso à ordem. O mesmo era contra o retorno de Luís XVIII ao trono: em sua concepção, a sociedade industrial que emergia requeria um governo fundado na razão. 2 A TRADIÇÃO SOCIALISTA: KARL MARX E FRIEDRICH ENGELS Karl Heinrich Marx nasceu em Tréveris, na antiga Prússia, hoje Alemanha, em 1818 e, em 1830, ingressou no Liceu Friedrich Wilhelm, nessa mesma cidade. Anos depois, foi cursar Direito na Universidade de Bonn, transferindo-se para Berlim em seguida. Pouco a pouco, entretanto, seus interesses migraram para a Filosofia, área na qual defendeu, em 1841, a tese de doutorado A diferença da filosofia da natureza em Demócrito e Epicuro. Sua vida universitária foi marcada pelo debate político e intelectual influenciado pelo pensamento de Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) e, principalmente, pelo de Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770- 1831). Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) nasceu em Barmen (Renânia), na antiga Prússia, hoje Alemanha, filho mais velho de um rico industrial do ramo têxtil. Terminou sua formação secundária em 1837 e a partir de então sua formação intelectual foi por conta própria (autodidata), com alguns cursos universitários esparsos e de curta duração. Desde cedo começou a trabalhar nas empresas de seu pai e foi nessa condição que se deslocou para Bremen por três anos e depois foi enviado pelos pais a Manchester, na Inglaterra, onde trabalhou nas fábricas da família. Engels ficou impressionado com a miséria na qual viviam os trabalhadores das fábricas inglesas. Os dois, Marx e Engels, se encontraram em 1842, quando Marx passou a escrever para A Gazeta Renana, jornal da província de Colônia, do qual Engels era colaborador e mais tarde editor-chefe. O jornal, que criticava o poder prussiano, foi fechado em 1843, e Marx se viu desempregado. Ao perder o emprego, mudou-se para Paris, na França. Ali escreveu, em 1844, os Manuscritos econômico-filosóficos (só publicados em 1932) e, junto com F. Engels, o livro A sagrada família. Por sua vez, F. Engels, em 1844, decidiu voltar para a Alemanha, onde publicou, em 1845, A situação da classe trabalhadora na Inglaterra. Entre 1845 e 1847, Marx exilou-se em Bruxelas, na Bélgica, onde escreveu A ideologia alemã (em parceria com Friedrich Engels) e Miséria da filosofia (1847), obra na qual criticou o filósofo Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865). Em 1848, ainda na Bélgica, a parceria com Engels se solidificou ao escreverem juntos o livreto O Manifesto Comunista. Em 1848, Marx foi expulso da Bélgica e retornou a Colônia, na Alemanha (Prússia), sempre pensando na possibilidade de uma mudança estrutural em sua terra natal. Isso, entretanto, não aconteceu e Marx foi expulso da Alemanha em 1849, ano em que migrou para Londres, na Inglaterra, onde permaneceu até o fim da vida. Lá escreveu O 18 Brumário de Luís Bonaparte (1852), sua mais importante obra de reflexão sobre a vida política europeia do século XIX, desenvolveu pesquisas e concluiu seu maior trabalho: O capital: crítica da economia política. O primeiro volume dessa obra foi publicado em 1867; os outros três, em 1885, 1894 e 1905, após a morte de Marx, revisados por F. Engels. 2.1 O contexto histórico e a obra de Marx e Engels Para situar a obra de Marx e Engels, é necessário conhecer um pouco do que acontecia em meados do século XIX. Com as transformações que ocorriam no mundo ocidental, principalmente na esfera da produção industrial, houve um crescimento expressivo no número de trabalhadores industriais urbanos, com uma consequência evidente: precariedade da vida dos operários nas cidades. As condições de trabalho no interior das fábricas eram péssimas. Os empregados eram superexplorados, alimentavam-se mal e trabalhavam em ambientes insalubres. Para enfrentar essa situação e tentar modificá-la, os trabalhadores passaram a se organizar em associações e sindicatos e a promover movimentos de reivindicação. Desenvolveu-se, então, uma discussão das condições sociais, políticas e econômicas para se definirem as possibilidades de intervenção nessa realidade. Desde o início do século XIX, muitos pensadores discutiram essas questões, nas perspectivas socialista e anarquista. Na Inglaterra podem ser citados, entre outros: William Godwin (1756-1836), Thomas Spence (1750-1814), Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Robert Owen (1771-1858) e Thomas Hodgkin (1787-1866). Na França, destacaram-se Étienne Cabet (1788- 1856), Flora Tristan (1803-1844), Charles Fourier (1772-1837) e Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865). Marx e Engels levaram em conta esses pensadores, debatendo com alguns contemporâneos e criticando-os. Além disso, incorporaram a tradição da economia clássica inglesa, presente principalmente nas obras de Adam Smith e de David Ricardo. Pode-se dizer, portanto, que Marx e Engels desenvolveram seu trabalho com base na análise crítica da economia política inglesa, do socialismo utópico francês e da filosofia alemã. Esses dois autores não buscavam definir uma ciência específica para estudar a sociedade (como a Sociologia, para Auguste Comte) ou situar seu trabalho em um campo científico particular. Em alguns escritos, Marx afirmou que a História seria a ciência que mais se aproximava de suas preocupações, por abarcar as múltiplas dimensões da sociedade, a qual deveria ser analisada na totalidade, não havendo uma separação rígida entre os aspectos sociais, econômicos, políticos, ideológicos, religiosos, culturais etc. O objetivo de Marx e Engels era estudar criticamente a sociedade capitalista com base em seus princípios constitutivos e em seu desenvolvimento, visando dotar a classe trabalhadora de uma análise política da sociedade de seu tempo. Assim, a tradição socialista nascida da luta dos trabalhadores, muitos anos antes e em situações diferentes, tem como expressão intelectual o pensamento de Karl Marx e Friedrich Engels. Para entender as concepções fundamentais de Marx e Engels é necessário fazer a conexão entre as lutas da classe trabalhadora, suas aspirações e as ideias revolucionárias que estavam presentes no século XIX na Europa. Para eles, o conhecimento científico da realidade só tem sentido quando visa à transformação dessa mesma realidade. A separação entre teoria e prática não é discutida, pois a “verdade histórica” não é algo abstrato e que se define teoricamente; sua verificação está na prática. Apesar de haver algumas diferenças em seus escritos, os elementos essenciais do pensamento de Marx e Engels podem ser assim sintetizados: • historicidade das ações humanas – crítica ao idealismo alemão; • divisão social do trabalho e o surgimento das classes sociais – a luta de classes; • o fetichismo da mercadoria e o processo de alienação; • crítica à economia política e ao capitalismo; • transformação social e revolução; • utopia – sociedade comunista. A obra desses dois autores é muito vasta e não ficou vinculada estritamente aos movimentos sociais dos trabalhadores. Pouco a pouco foi introduzida nas universidades como parte do estudo em diferentes áreas do conhecimento. Estudiosos de Filosofia, Sociologia, Ciência Política, Economia, História e Geografia, entre outras áreas, foram influenciados por ela. Na Sociologia, como afirma Irving M. Zeitlin, no livro Ideología y teoría sociológica, tanto Max Weber quanto Émile Durkheim fizeram, em suas obras, um debate com as ideias de Karl Marx. Pelas análises da sociedade capitalista de seu tempo e a repercussão que tiveram em todo o mundo, principalmente no século XX, nos movimentos sociais e nas universidades, Marx e Engels são considerados autores clássicos da Sociologia. No campo dessa disciplina, porém, o pensamento deles ficou um pouco restrito, pois perdeu aquela relação entre teoria e prática (práxis), ou seja, entre a análise crítica e a prática revolucionária. Essa relação esteve presente, por exemplo, na vida e na obra dos russos Vladimir Ilitch Ulianov, conhecido como Lênin (1870-1924), e Leon D. Bronstein, conhecido como Trotsky (1879-1940), da alemã Rosa Luxemburgo (1871-1919) e do italiano Antonio Gramsci (1891- 1937), que tiveram significativa influência no movimento operário do século XX. Com base no trabalho de Marx e Engels, muitos autores desenvolveram estudos acadêmicos em vários campos do conhecimento. Podemos citar, por exemplo, Georg Lukács (1885-1971), Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991), Lucien Goldmanm (1913 -1970), Louis Althusser (1918 -1990), Nikos Poulantzas (1936-1979), Edward P. Thompson (1924-1993) e Eric Hobsbawm (1917 -2012). O pensamento de Marx e Engels continua, assim, presente em todo o mundo, com múltiplas tendências e variações, sempre gerando controvérsias. REFERENCIAL TEÓRICO GEMKOW, H.; PSUA, I. M. L. Marx e Engels: Vida e Obra. São Paulo: Alfa e Ômega, 1984. 232 pp. GIANOTTI, J. A. Comte. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1978. 318 pp. (Col. Os Pensadores) KONDER, L. Marx: vida e obra. 7ª ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2007. 154 pp. (Col. Vida e Obra). (shrink)

An English translation of Pierre Bayle's posthumous last book, Entretiens de Maxime et de Themiste (1707), in which Bayle defends his skeptical position on the problem of the evil. This book is often cited and attacked by G.W. Leibniz in his Theodicy (1710). Over one hundred pages of original philosophical and historical material introduce the translation, providing it with context and establishing the work's importance.

If citizens are to make enlightened collective decisions, they need to rely on true factual beliefs, but misinformation impairs their ability to do so. Although some cases of misinformation are deliberate and amount to propaganda, cases of inadvertent misinformation are just as problematic in affecting the beliefs and behavior of democratic citizens. A review of empirical evidence suggests that this is a serious problem that cannot entirely be corrected by means of deliberation.

In a recent contribution to conceptual ethics, Joshua Habgood-Coote argues that philosophers should refrain from using the term “fake news,” which is commonly employed in public discussions focusing on the epistemic health of democracies. In this short discussion note, I take issue with this claim, discussing each of the three arguments advanced by Coote to support the conclusion that we should abandon this concept. First, I contend that although “fake news” is a contested concept, there is significant agreement among contemporary (...) philosophers about its key feature. Second, I argue against the claim that “fake news” is an unnecessary concept by underlying that it is not reducible to other terms we customarily use to describe the epistemic dysfunctions of democracies. Lastly, I suggest that using the term “fake news” need not serve propagandistic aims, and that philosophers can use this concept without engaging in epistemic policing, that is, commanding their interlocutors not to believe specific news stories or sources. (shrink)

Kant’s discussion of the highest good is subject to continuous disagreement between the proponents of two interpretations of this concept. According to the secular interpretation, Kant conceived of the highest good as a political ideal which can be realized through human agency alone, albeit only from the Critique of the Power of Judgement onwards. By way of contrast, proponents of the theological interpretation find Kant’s treatment of the highest good in his later works to be wholly coherent with the discussions (...) of this concept found in the second Critique. In their view, however, Kant never conceived of the highest good as a political ideal, and some go as far as to argue that it is the work of God alone. In this article, I defend a theologico-political account of the highest good that avoids the pitfalls of both readings. (shrink)

Many neo-Aristotelians argue that practical identities are normative, that is, they provide us with reasons for action and create binding obligations. Kantian constructivists agree with this insight but argue that contemporary Aristotelians fail to fully justify it. Practical identities are normative, Kantian constructivists contend, but their normativity necessarily derives from the normativity of humanity. In this paper, I shed light on this underexplored similarity between neo-Aristotelian and Kantian constructivist accounts of the normativity of practical identities, and argue that both ultimately (...) fail. I end by suggesting an alternative justification of the claim that practical identities are normative. (shrink)

One central objection to philosophical defences of liberal neutrality is that many neutrally justified laws and policies are nonetheless discriminatory as they unilaterally impose costs or confer unearned privileges on the bearers of a particular conception of the good. Call this the false neutrality objection. While liberal neutralists seldom consider this objection to be a serious allegation, and often claim that it rests on a misunderstanding, I argue that it is a serious challenge for proponents of justificatory neutrality. Indeed, a (...) careful examination of recent French and Canadian laws which impede the members of cultural minorities from freely practising their religion reveals that the state can hide its discriminatory aims by cloaking the policies it enacts in neutral language. In order to avoid the problem of false neutrality, I contend, liberal neutralists should defend a combination of neutrality of justification and neutrality of aim and operationalize neutrality of aim through a practical test that has been a defining feature of American jurisprudence on religious freedom in the last thirty years: the general applicability requirement. (shrink)

Is calculation possible without language? Or is the human ability for arithmetic dependent on the language faculty? To clarify the relation between language and arithmetic, we studied numerical cognition in speakers of Mundurukú, an Amazonian language with a very small lexicon of number words. Although the Mundurukú lack words for numbers beyond 5, they are able to compare and add large approximate numbers that are far beyond their naming range. However, they fail in exact arithmetic with numbers larger than 4 (...) or 5. Our results imply a distinction between a nonverbal system of number approximation and a language-based counting system for exact number and arithmetic. (shrink)

At a time when bioethical issues are at the top of public and political agendas, there is a renewed interest in representations of the embryo in various religious traditions. One of the major traditions that have contributed to Western representations of the embryo is the Jewish tradition. This tradition poses some difficulties that may deter scholars, but also presents some invaluable advantages. These derive from two components, the search for limits and narrativity, both of which are directly connected with the (...) manner in which Jewish tradition was constructed in Antiquity. The article accomplishes three goals: • To introduce some central elements in ancient Rabbinic literature on the subject of the embryo and its representation; • To present this body of literature as clearly as possible, noting some of the difficulties encountered by scholars who engage in its study; • To explain how the literature’s textuality came about, examining the particular sociopolitical circumstances of Judaism at that time, including the reasons for the delay in the production of scientific texts, transmitted as such, as compared to other philosophical or religious traditions. The claim is that these circumstances engendered a tradition peculiarly relevant for the study and teaching of medical ethics today. (shrink)

The mapping of numbers onto space is fundamental to measurement and to mathematics. Is this mapping a cultural invention or a universal intuition shared by all humans regardless of culture and education? We probed number-space mappings in the Mundurucu, an Amazonian indigene group with a reduced numerical lexicon and little or no formal education. At all ages, the Mundurucu mapped symbolic and nonsymbolic numbers onto a logarithmic scale, whereas Western adults used linear mapping with small or symbolic numbers and logarithmic (...) mapping when numbers were presented nonsymbolically under conditions that discouraged counting. This indicates that the mapping of numbers onto space is a universal intuition and that this initial intuition of number is logarithmic. The concept of a linear number line appears to be a cultural invention that fails to develop in the absence of formal education. (shrink)

We propose a modular ontology of the dynamic features of reality. This amounts, on the one hand, to a purely spatial ontology supporting snapshot views of the world at successive instants of time and, on the other hand, to a purely spatiotemporal ontology of change and process. We argue that dynamic spatial ontology must combine these two distinct types of inventory of the entities and relationships in reality, and we provide characterizations of spatiotemporal reasoning in the light of the interconnections (...) between them. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of somatic evolution by natural selection to our understanding of cancer development. I do so in two steps. In the first part of the paper, I ask to what extent cancer cells meet the formal requirements for evolution by natural selection, relying on Godfrey-Smith’s (2009) framework of Darwinian populations. I argue that although they meet the minimal requirements for natural selection, cancer cells are not paradigmatic Darwinian populations. In the second (...) part of the paper, I examine the most important examples of adaptation in cancer cells. I argue that they are not significant accumulations of evolutionary changes, and that as a consequence natural selection plays a lesser role in their explanation. Their explanation, I argue, is best sought in the previously existing wiring of the healthy cells. (shrink)

Sex, Drug & Laruelle -/- - et nous errions, nourris du vin des cavernes et du biscuit de la route, moi pressé de trouver le lieu et la formule - A. Rimbaud.

Résumé Charles Wolfe vient de publier Lire le matérialisme (ENS Éditions, 2020), où il esquisse une histoire des différentes formes de matérialisme, y compris le matérialisme vitaliste et les versions du XXe et du XXIe siècle. Pierre-François Moreau, auteur de la préface de l’ouvrage, entame ici une discussion sur les problèmes et les ressources d’une telle histoire.

Recent empirical and conceptual research has shown that moral considerations have an influence on the way we use the adverb 'intentionally'. Here we propose our own account of these phenomena, according to which they arise from the fact that the adverb 'intentionally' has three different meanings that are differently selected by contextual factors, including normative expectations. We argue that our hypotheses can account for most available data and present some new results that support this. We end by discussing the implications (...) of our account for folk psychology. (shrink)

Kant argued that Euclidean geometry is synthesized on the basis of an a priori intuition of space. This proposal inspired much behavioral research probing whether spatial navigation in humans and animals conforms to the predictions of Euclidean geometry. However, Euclidean geometry also includes concepts that transcend the perceptible, such as objects that are infinitely small or infinitely large, or statements of necessity and impossibility. We tested the hypothesis that certain aspects of nonperceptible Euclidian geometry map onto intuitions of space that (...) are present in all humans, even in the absence of formal mathematical education. Our tests probed intuitions of points, lines, and surfaces in participants from an indigene group in the Amazon, the Mundurucu, as well as adults and age-matched children controls from the United States and France and younger US children without education in geometry. The responses of Mundurucu adults and children converged with that of mathematically educated adults and children and revealed an intuitive understanding of essential properties of Euclidean geometry. For instance, on a surface described to them as perfectly planar, the Mundurucu's estimations of the internal angles of triangles added up to ∼180 degrees, and when asked explicitly, they stated that there exists one single parallel line to any given line through a given point. These intuitions were also partially in place in the group of younger US participants. We conclude that, during childhood, humans develop geometrical intuitions that spontaneously accord with the principles of Euclidean geometry, even in the absence of training in mathematics. (shrink)

French text publication of the manuscript of the English article en-titled "Physics, History of" and published by Duhem in Volume 12 of the 1911 "Catholic Encyclopedia".

Pierre Bayle’ın Tarihsel ve Eleştirel Sözlük adlı eserindeki “Spinoza” maddesi, Spinoza felsefesinin temel meselelerine dair genel bir bakış sunar. Söz konusu maddenin burada çevirisi sunduğumuz “N Çıkması”nda ise Bayle, özellikle Spinoza’nın Ethica adlı eserine odaklanarak kip, değişiklik, töz ve Tanrı gibi Spinoza metafiziğinin temel kavramlarına yönelik eleştiriler getirir.

I propose a systematic survey of the various attitudes proponents of enaction (or enactivism) entertained or are entertaining towards representationalism and towards the use of the concept “mental representation” in cognitive science. For the sake of clarity, a set of distinctions between different varieties of representationalism and anti-representationalism are presented. I also recapitulate and discuss some anti-representationalist trends and strategies one can find the enactive literature, before focusing on some possible limitations of eliminativist versions of enactive anti-representationalism. These limitations are (...) here taken as opportunities for reflecting on the fate of enactivism in its relations with representationalism and anti-representationalism. (shrink)

Why would a philosopher choose to convey his ideas in the form of Manga? This discussion between Masahiro Morioka, author of Manga Introduction to Philosophy, and the translator of its French edition, Pierre Bonneels, shows how philosopher and artist Morioka became acquainted, through images, with fundamental abstract notions. After a short historical analysis of the aesthetic advantages of Manga, consideration is given to this unique way of provoking thought. On this basis, theoretical aspects of “time” and the “I” proposed (...) by Ōmori Shōzō are compared with Morioka’s Manga presentation. Although the questions raised are universal, the authors note that the use of Japanese metaphors enables these two thinkers to draw on a concrete understanding of notions like temporality and identity. (shrink)

We describe an ontology of philosophy that is designed to aid navigation through philosophical literature, including literature in the form of encyclopedia articles and textbooks and in both printed and digital forms. The ontology is designed also to serve integration and structuring of data pertaining to the philosophical literature, and in the long term also to support reasoning about the provenance and contents of such literature, by providing a representation of the philosophical domain that is oriented around what philosophical literature (...) is about. (shrink)

Organismal death is foundational to the evolution of life, and many biological concepts such as natural selection and life history strategy are so fashioned only because individuals are mortal. Organisms, irrespective of their organization, are composed of basic functional units—cells—and it is our understanding of cell death that lies at the heart of most general explanatory frameworks for organismal mortality. Cell death can be exogenous, arising from transmissible diseases, predation, or other misfortunes, but there are also endogenous forms of death (...) that are sometimes the result of adaptive evolution. These endogenous forms of death—often labeled programmed cell death, PCD—originated in the earliest cells and are maintained across the tree of life. Here, we consider two problematic issues related to PCD (and cell mortality generally). First, we trace the original discoveries of cell death from the nineteenth century and place current conceptions of PCD in their historical context. Revisions of our understanding of PCD demand a reassessment of its origin. Our second aim is thus to structure the proposed origin explanations of PCD into coherent arguments. In our analysis we argue for the evolutionary concept of PCD and the viral defense-immunity hypothesis for the origin of PCD. We suggest that this framework offers a plausible account of PCD early in the history of life, and also provides an epistemic basis for the future development of a general evolutionary account of mortality. (shrink)

We aim to provide the ontological grounds for an adequate account of persistence. We defend a perspectivalist, or moderate pluralist, position, according to which some aspects of reality can be accounted for in ontological terms only via partial and mutually complementary ontologies, each one of which captures some relevant aspect of reality. Our thesis here is that this is precisely the sort of ontological account that is needed for the understanding of persistence, specifically an account involving two independent ontologies, one (...) for continuants, and one for occurrents. (shrink)

En lugar de explicar la potencia por el acto (la esencia por la existencia), nos sentimos inclinados a explicar el acto por la potencia. Habría que hacer filosofía basándonos en lo que vemos, no en lo que suponemos. -/- Pero no sólo la mente humana es causa de este reduccionismo. El ente mismo podría ser responsable, porque si bien el ente es concebible sin la existencia actual, el ser no lo es sino unido a un ente. De ahí la fatal (...) tendencia a establecer el ente, separado de la existencia actual, como primer principio de la metafísica. -/- Por último, está la neutralidad existencial de nuestros conceptos, descrita admirablemente por Kant. Si la existencia actual no puede ser representada por, ni en, un concepto, la tentación de olvidarse de ella es irresistible, y se concluirá que la especulación filosófica es existencialmente neutra. -/- Así las cosas, parecería lógico que los filósofos se hayan concentrado en el ente, dando por supuesto el ser. Pero el riesgo es enorme, porque pudiera ser que el ser fuera una fuerza viva y una causa eficiente de efectos observables en las cosas que decimos que son. En este caso, las filosofías basadas en la noción de ser inexistencial estarían abocadas al desastre, y sus defensores podrían concluir -erróneamente- que no vale la pena ponerlo como primer principio del conocimiento metafísico, reemplazando la noción de ser por una de sus partes o aspectos -a modo de sucedáneo- . La metafísica se convierte así en otra ciencia: Lógica con Ockam, Matemáticas con Descartes, Física con Kant, Sociología con Comte, etc. Pero estos intentos a la postre fracasan. Se culpa entonces a la metafísica de ser una pseudociencia y sobreviene el escepticismo metafísico. -/- En este libro se hace un recorrido histórico para mostrar esta tesis: que cualquier intento por romper la unidad del ente, separando la esencia de la existencia, para luego olvidarse de esta última, está condenado al fracaso: acabará desligándose de la realidad, que no se deja atrapar en el puro esencialismo, ni en la fenomenología existencialista. (shrink)

Developing earlier studies of the system of numbers in Mundurucu, this paper argues that the Mundurucu numeral system is far more complex than usually assumed. The Mundurucu numeral system provides indirect but insightful arguments for a modular approach to numbers and numerals. It is argued that distinct components must be distinguished, such as a system of representation of numbers in the format of internal magnitudes, a system of representation for individuals and sets, and one-to-one correspondences between the numerosity expressed by (...) the number and its metrics. It is shown that while many-number systems involve a compositionality of units, sets and sets composed of units, few-number languages, such as Mundurucu, do not have access to sets composed of units in the usual way. The nonconfigurational character of the Mundurucu language, which is related to a property for which we coin the term 'low compositionality power', accounts for this and explains the curious fact that Mundurucus make use of marked one-to-one correspondence strategies in order to overcome the limitations of the core system at the perceptual/motor interface of the language faculty. We develop an analysis of a particular construction, parallel numbers, which has not been studied before, elucidating the whole system. This analysis, we argue, sheds new light on classical philosophical, psychological and linguistic debates about numbers and numerals and their relation to language, and more particularly, sheds light on few-number languages. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates the innovative character of the approach to metaethics underlying John Dewey’s pragmatism. Dewey's theory of evaluation is contrasted with one of the most dominant contemporary metaethical theses: constructivism. I show that the insistence placed by metaethical constructivists on the actor’s practical point of view, on the rejection of the subjective preferences model, and on a specific form of ethical antirealism and naturalism echoes some of the most crucial claims made by Dewey. This argumentation leads to my main (...) hypothesis: an analysis of Dewey's conception of evaluation allows us to highlight the groundbreaking character of its metaethical approach—an approach that will be characterized as fairly constructivist. (shrink)

Ce texte présente une partie de la pensée trouvée au sein de l’oeuvre de jeunesse du philosophe japonais Ōmori Shōzō qui appartient à l’école de Tokyo. L’objet de l’analyse proposée est celui de la logique. Le défi est de décrire que la nécessité des énoncés logiques exacts repose sur l’expérience. Ainsi cet examen découvre et expose le logicisme hyper empirique auquel Ōmori nous invite. Nous parlerons du sens possible de la logique « non scientifique » pour insister ensuite sur le (...) sens scientifique de cette dernière. Finalement, nous discuterons de la provenance de la nécessité que comportent en elles les phrases logiques. Nous présenterons ainsi deux origines distinctes de la nécessité. (shrink)

The aim of this master’s thesis is to analyse and highlight the interaction between science, politics and law. More precisely, our research question concerns the use of scientific arguments in social spheres (notably in politics and law) instead of legal or political arguments. In fact, we want to raise the way in which certain actors invoke scientific arguments to impose "objective" elements of fact in debate and, in this way, refrain from politically and "subjectively" discussing these same elements (or, at (...) least, their social consequences). This Master’s thesis will adopt an interdisciplinary theoretical framework (chapter 1) mobilising philosophy of science, philosophy of law, sociology of law, legal technique and analytical theories. Then, we will apply it to a case study: the European regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) after the European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruling of 25 July 2015 (chapter 2). The first chapter will provide theoretical elements to rethink the interaction between science, politics and law. The first section will propose a 'state of the art’ of the philosophical literature on the relationship between science (as a regime of truth) and politics. This master’s thesis will assess a truth under construction rather than a transcendental truth. Section 2 anticipates authoritarian claims based on science by considering the relationship science can have with power (Foucault). A solid review of philosophical, sociological and legal literature highlights the risks of giving decision-making power to an all-powerful science. Notably, the use of science to justify discriminatory policies is emphasised as these policies could not be challenged because, at the time, it was considered an objective scientific truth. Finally, section 3 offers a critique of the narratives of neutral and objective science, through the approach of science in action. This sociological approach presented all the doubts and subjectivity of science in action. The second chapter will propose a case study to illustrate the theoretical framework. We have chosen GMOs because they constitute a hybrid 'event', marked by scientific controversies, and with major socio-economic implications. The legal framework of GMOs in the European Union will be presented in the first section. In addition, the legal status of new breeding techniques (NBTs) will be examined. The second section will analyse the ruling of the European Court of Justice which made NBTs subject to GMO regulation. Finally, the third section will propose a reflection on the philosophy of law on the modes of existence of scientific, legal and political disciplines. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Adorno’s controversial claim that human rationality is inherently mimetic. To do so, I break this claim down into three puzzles (the natural historical puzzle, the metaphysical puzzle, and the epistemic puzzle) and consider each in turn. The first puzzle originates in Adorno’s assertion that in the course of human history the mimetic moment of human thought “is melted together with the rational moment”. So whereas, on his narrative, mimesis has become an intrinsic component of human (...) rationality, it appears that we are oblivious to this state of affair and unable to recognize the workings of mimesis in what we otherwise refer to as rationality. The second puzzle concerns the traditional metaphysical question regarding the possibility of knowledge. Adorno holds that the key to this question lies in the “mimetic moment of knowledge”, which he characterizes as the “moment of the elective affinity between the knower and the known.” The third puzzle concerns his views on how the mimetic moment of thought plays out in our epistemic practices. As he puts it, “consciousness knows of its other as much as it resembles that other,” which seems to entail that our very efforts to conceptualize objects somehow rely on imitative processes. I work out what I take to be the basics of Adorno’s understanding of mimesis and use them to make sense of each puzzle. I argue that Adorno’s insistence on the mimetic component of human rationality isn’t meant to promote more mimetic modes of comportment, but a reflexive awareness of the extent to which our rational activities already rely on imitative (or immersive) processes, even those we view as embodying the strongest claims to the contrary. (shrink)

Résumé: Fruit du colloque "Spiritualité japonaise - Perceptions et représentations, entre tradition et occidentalisation" organisé par les Universités Libre de Bruxelles et Catholique de Louvain, cet ouvrage propose des recherches en philosophie de la religion sur le Japon comparativement à l’Occident.

A presentation and discussion of Gottlob Frege's understanding of language, both natural and artificial, with close attention to his texts.

In this paper, we evaluate the project of resurgence of metaphysics based on the pecularity of the quantum domain, a project that is supported by some contemporary philosophers. Beyond the general arguments against scientific realism that are still applicable here, we show that this project is faced with the three following issues that, we believe, make it unrealizable: (a) the problem raised by the realistic interpretation of the wave function, as a description of a ‘concrete physical fact’ of the independent (...) reality; (b) the lack of any experimental counterpart of the (non-local) hidden variables quantum theories, and, in some cases, their incompatibility with the quantum predictions; and (c) the fact that the key-properties of quantum phenomena, like their non-locality, essentially depend on the observables that are used for their description and cannot then be assigned to any ‘independent’ reality. (shrink)

Mon objectif dans cet article est de mieux cerner les contours d’une conception institutionnelle de la corruption. Je tenterai de contribuer à ce programme de recherches sur la corruption institutionnelle d’une double façon. Premièrement, j’essaierai de clarifier le concept de « corruption institutionnelle » en mettant en lumière quatre de ses principales caractéristiques et certains de ses avantages. Deuxièmement, je tenterai d’exposer trois problèmes auxquels sont confrontés ses partisans : les problèmes de la portée, du faux-diagnostic et de l’essentialisme. Malgré (...) la sympathie que j’ai pour cette approche, j’espère montrer qu’elle recèle certains points problématiques. Je tenterai essentiellement de montrer que les « institutionnalistes » risquent de faire de la corruption un concept normativement surchargé. (shrink)

This article claims that one has to distinguish between X° reflexives which do not bear phi-features, such as number, and XP complex reflexive - which do bear such features. The presence/vs absence of features, it is argued, explains the behavior of so called long distance reflexives - first observed, within the generative tradition, in scandinavian languages - but present all over. The observation according to which XP reflexives are clause bound, while X° reflexives in argument position are not, is some (...) times refered to as "Pica's generalization" (see Burzio (1987) which stressed correctly that is was the first time that such a correlatiion betwen reflexives structure, binding domains, and the role of a cycle was observed. The behavioir of reflexives it is argued derives from the properties of abstratc movement at the level of Logical Form. (shrink)

It has been pointed out that Gettier case scenarios have deviant realizations and that deviant realizations raise a difficulty for the logical analysis of thought experiments. Grundmann and Horvath have shown that it is possible to rule out deviant realizations by suitably modifying the scenario of a Gettier-style thought experiment. They hypothesize further that the enriched scenario corresponds to the way expert epistemologists implicitly interpret the original one. However, no precise account of this implicit enrichment is offered, which makes the (...) proposal somewhat ad hoc. Drawing on pragmatic theory, I argue that the content of Grundmann and Horvath’s modified scenario corresponds to the default interpretation of the original scenario and that epistemological expertise is not required to access the deviance-proof interpretation. This Default Interpretation proposal offers thus a more general and independently motivated solution to the Problem of Deviant Realizations. (shrink)

Je voudrais partager avec vous la première partie d'un projet d'article à approche philosophique et dont l'objet est l'impact potentiel de l'idéalisme kantien sur l'idée de la ''révolution libanaise'' du 17 octobre 2019. Cet article a un double objectif : d'une part unifier et clarifier le lexique de cette révolution autour du concept du criticisme kantien et de son élaboration qui nous serait propre, et d'autre part recadrer l'intérêt de la révolution à une focalisation idéelle nécessaire à toute dynamique efficace (...) et pérenne de changement. (shrink)

All humans share a universal, evolutionarily ancient approximate number system (ANS) that estimates and combines the numbers of objects in sets with ratio-limited precision. Interindividual variability in the acuity of the ANS correlates with mathematical achievement, but the causes of this correlation have never been established. We acquired psychophysical measures of ANS acuity in child and adult members of an indigene group in the Amazon, the Mundurucú, who have a very restricted numerical lexicon and highly variable access to mathematics education. (...) By comparing Mundurucú subjects with and without access to schooling, we found that education significantly enhances the acuity with which sets of concrete objects are estimated. These results indicate that culture and education have an important effect on basic number perception. We hypothesize that symbolic and nonsymbolic numerical thinking mutually enhance one another over the course of mathematics instruction. (shrink)

Sleep has long been a topic of fascination for artists and scientists. Why do we sleep? What function does sleep serve? Why do we dream? What significance can we attach to our dreams? We spend so much of our lives sleeping, yet its precise function is unclear, in spite of our increasing understanding of the processes generating and maintaining sleep. We now know that sleep can be accompanied by periods of intense cerebral activity, yet only recently has experimental data started (...) to provide us with some insights into the type of processing taking place in the brain as we sleep. There is now strong evidence that sleep plays a crucial role in learning and in the consolidation of memories. Once the preserve of psychoanalysts, 'dreaming' is now a topic of increasing interest amongst scientists. With research into sleep growing, this volume is both timely and valuable in presenting a unique study of the relationship between sleep, learning, and memory. It brings together a team of international scientists researching sleep in both human and animal subjects. Aimed at researchers within the fields of neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, and neurology, this book will be an important first step in developing a full scientific understanding of the most intriguing state of consciousness. (shrink)

Three things must be clarified before we can proceed with the examination. These are the terms sustainability, politics and megatrend. Unfortunately, all three are ambiguous and few disciplines have arrived at a consistent definition for any of them. While we will not resolve the ambiguity to everyone's satisfaction, we will attempt to achieve an extensional bargain (Rappaport, 1953) through which we develop an understanding of how we are using the terms. First, sustainable development became a construct in 1987 through the (...) Brundtland Report (Brundtland, 1987) and has remained ambiguous ever since. This is where we begin our examination of sustainable consumption. Megatrend, as a phenomenon, has been defined in a multitude of ways over the past thirty-five years. In this chapter, we adopt the criteria set forth by Mittelstaedt et al. (2014) for categorising megatrends, but will use a broader interpretation of what constitutes megatrends. Finally, our use of the term political will be broader than the more common use of the term relating to legal structures, laws or agencies, and include the underlying institutions that frame the more micro aspects of politics. This approach is necessary because of the scale of sustainability and megatrends in both time and space. (shrink)

Cross cultural studies have played a pivotal role in elucidating the extent to which behavioral and mental characteristics depend on specific environmental influences. Surprisingly, little field research has been carried out on a fundamentally important perceptual ability, namely the perception of biological motion. In this report, we present details of studies carried out with the help of volunteers from the Mundurucu indigene, a group of people native to Amazonian territories in Brazil. We employed standard biological motion perception tasks inspired by (...) over 30 years of laboratory research, in which observers attempt to decipher the walking direction of point-light (PL) humans and animals. Do our effortless skills at perceiving biological activity from PL animations, as revealed in laboratory settings, generalize to people who have never before seen representational depictions of human and animal activity? The results of our studies provide a clear answer to this important, previously unanswered question. Mundurucu observers readily perceived the coherent, global shape depicted in PL walkers, and experienced the classic inversion effects that are typically found when such stimuli are turned upside down. In addition, their performance was in accord with important recent findings in the literature, in the abundant ease with which they extracted direction information from local motion invariants alone. We conclude that the effortless, veridical perception of PL biological motion is a spontaneous and universal perceptual ability, occurring both inside and outside traditional laboratory environments. (shrink)

Current approaches to formal representation in biomedicine are characterized by their focus on either the static or the dynamic aspects of biological reality. We here outline a theory that combines both perspectives and at the same time tackles the by no means trivial issue of their coherent integration. Our position is that a good ontology must be capable of accounting for reality both synchronically (as it exists at a time) and diachronically (as it unfolds through time), but that these are (...) two quite different tasks, whose simultaneous realization is by no means trivial. The paper is structured as follows. We begin by laying out the methodological and philosophical background of our approach. We then summarize the structure and elements of the Basic Formal Ontology on which it rests, in particular the SNAP ontology of objects and the SPAN ontology of processes. Finally, we apply the general framework to the specific domain of biomedicine. (shrink)