Quantum theory explains a hugely diverse array of phenomena in the history of science. But how can the world be the way quantum theory says it is? Fifteen expert scholars consider what the world is like according to quantum physics in this volume and offer illuminating new perspectives on fundamental debates that span physics and philosophy.

My dissertation explores the ways in which Rudolf Carnap sought to make philosophy scientific by further developing recent interpretive efforts to explain Carnap’s mature philosophical work as a form of engineering. It does this by looking in detail at his philosophical practice in his most sustained mature project, his work on pure and applied inductive logic. I, first, specify the sort of engineering Carnap is engaged in as involving an engineering design problem and then draw out the complications of design (...) problems from current work in history of engineering and technology studies. I then model Carnap’s practice based on those lessons and uncover ways in which Carnap’s technical work in inductive logic takes some of these lessons on board. This shows ways in which Carnap’s philosophical project subtly changes right through his late work on induction, providing an important corrective to interpretations that ignore the work on inductive logic. Specifically, I show that paying attention to the historical details of Carnap’s attempt to apply his work in inductive logic to decision theory and theoretical statistics in the 1950s and 1960s helps us understand how Carnap develops and rearticulates the philosophical point of the practical/theoretical distinction in his late work, offering thus a new interpretation of Carnap’s technical work within the broader context of philosophy of science and analytical philosophy in general. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the implications of opposing domains theory for developing ethical leaders. Opposing domains theory highlights a neurological tension between analytic reasoning and socioemotional reasoning. Specifically, when we engage in analytic reasoning, we suppress our ability to engage in socioemotional reasoning and vice versa. In this article, we bring together the domains of neuroscience, psychology, and ethics, to inform our theorizing around ethical leadership. We propose that a key issue for ethical leadership is achieving a (...) healthy balance between analytic reasoning and socioemotional reasoning. We argue that organizational culture often encourages too heavy a reliance on nonemotional forms of reasoning to arrive at moral judgments. As a result, leaders run the risk of suppressing their ability to pay attention to the human side of moral dilemmas and, in doing so, dehumanize colleagues, particularly subordinates, and clients. (shrink)

The New French Edition of Pierre Duhem’s The Aim and Structure of the Physical Theory reviewed by Jean-François Stoffel.

In July 1759 the French philosopher Andre´ Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval (1716-1764) published in Berlin a diatribe against the excessive and incorrect use of French in the Prussian capital. Far from being a mere guide to linguistic style, the Préservatif contre la corruption de la langue françoise generated a heated debate, attested by an official threat to ban its publication. The personal animosity between Prémontval and the perpetual secretary of the Berlin Academy, Jean Henri Samuel Formey (1711-1797) (...) was amply demonstrated over the pages of the Préservatif, offering a rare insight into the complex web of social and intellectual tensions in mid eighteenth-century Berlin and its Academy of Sciences. At stake were the social status and the philosophical outlook of local Huguenots, compared to that of French philosophers who were granted asylum in Prussia by Frederick II. The debate also concerned the issues of academic freedom in an absolutist regime, the material production and distribution of texts, conduct and etiquette in the Republic of Letters and the formation of group identities in eighteenth-century Germany. Drawing on manuscripts preserved in Berlin, Göttingen and Krakow, this article traces the development of the controversy and the reception of Prémontval’s work by both French- and German- writing authors at the Berlin Academy and beyond its confines. (shrink)

Conceptual metaphors have received much attention in research on discourse about infectious diseases in recent years. Most studies found that conceptual metaphors of war dominate media discourse about disease. Similarly, a great deal of research has been undertaken on the new coronavirus, i.e., COVID-19, especially in the English news discourse as opposed to other languages. The present study, in contrast, analyses the conceptual metaphors used in COVID-19 discourse in French-language newspapers. The study explored the linguistic metaphors used in COVID-19 (...) discourse in these newspapers and conceptual metaphors that underlie and motivate them, using a conceptual metaphor theory framework (CMT). Therefore, two North African French-language newspapers, namely Libération, published in Morocco, and La Presse de Tunisie, published in Tunisia, formed the corpus of the current study. The results showed that the most frequent framing of COVID-19 was in terms of WAR, followed by DISASTER and KILLER, respectively. (shrink)

Throughout the bulk of the Reformed Tradition’s history within both Europe and the United States, most scholars have dismissed pastor and theologian Moïse Amyraut as a seventeenth century French heretic whose actions and theology led to the demise of the Huguenots in France. However, upon further introspection into Amyraut’s claims as being closer to Calvin (soteriologically) than his Genevan successors, one finds uncanny parallels in the scriptural commentaries and biblical insight into the expiation of Christ between Calvin and Amyraut. (...) By comparing key scriptural passages concerning the atonement, this article demonstrates that Reformed theologian Moïse Amyraut in fact propagated a universal atonement theory which parallels Calvin’s, both men ascribing to biblical faithfulness, a (humanistic) theological method, and similar hermeneutic. As such, both Calvin and Amyraut scripturally contend that God desires and provided the means for the salvation of the whole world. Further, the article demonstrates that Calvin’s successor, Theodore de Beza, could not in fact make the same claims as Amyraut, this article demonstrating that Beza went beyond Calvin’s scriptural approach to Christ’s expiation. Therefore, this article supports a more centrist approach from within and outside the Reformed tradition by demonstrating that Calvin and Amyraut concentrically held to God’s gracious provision in Christ for the saving of the whole world, for those who would believe in Christ for salvation. (shrink)

Studies on difficulties in understanding scientific terms have shown that the problem is more serious among non-Western learners. The main reasons for this are the learners' pre-existing knowledge of scientific terms, their native language incommensurability with Western languages, and the polysemy of the words used to denote scientific concepts. The current study is an analysis of the conceptualisation of scientific concepts in two culturally different languages, i.e. Arabic and French, which represent a non-Western language and a Western language respectively. (...) Physics concepts which are considered as some of the most challenging concepts for non-Western languages (Loo 2005; Aranador 2005) were selected for analysis. To this end, the terms that refer to two physics concepts, "weight" and "mass" in Arabic وَزْن (wazn) and كُتْلَة (kutla) and in French poids and masse were semantically analysed. The analysis of the concepts in both languages is informed by the prototype theory by Rosch (1973; 1975), idealised cognitive models (ICMs) by Lakoff (1987), and conceptual metaphor and conceptual metonymy by Lakoff and Johnson (2003). The data for analysis were retrieved from two comparable Arabic and French corpora, namely the ArabiCorpus and the Concordancier-Corpus Français. The results suggest that there are both similarities and differences between the Arabic and French concepts in terms of meanings, prototypes, and metaphorical as well as metonymic semantic extensions. These findings support the argument that the human conceptual system is related to our environmental and cultural experiences and also importantly, validate previous claims on the need for educators to be cognizant of the culturally relevant meanings of scientific words found in everyday language that may impede learners' understanding of scientific concepts. (shrink)

In this article Johann David Michaelis’s views of language and translation are juxtaposed with his own experience as a translated and translating author, especially with regard to the translations of his prize essay on the reciprocal influence of language and opinions (1759). Its French version originated in a close collaboration with the translators, while the pirated English edition was anonymously translated at second hand. The article reconstructs Michaelis’s relationship with the French translators and his renouncement of the English (...) version, publicly condemned in London by Robert Lowth at the author’s request. These two processes represent different contemporary modes of translation and shed new light on emerging theories of linguistic and cultural transfer. (shrink)

A RELATIVISTIC THEORY OF PHENOMENOLOCICAL CONSTITUTION: A SELF-REFERENTIAL, TRANSCENDENTAL APPROACH TO CONCEPTUAL PATHOLOGY. (Vol. I: French; Vol. II: English) -/- Steven James Bartlett -/- Doctoral dissertation director: Paul Ricoeur, Université de Paris Other doctoral committee members: Jean Ladrière and Alphonse de Waehlens, Université Catholique de Louvain Defended publically at the Université Catholique de Louvain, January, 1971. -/- Universite de Paris X (France), 1971. 797pp. -/- The principal objective of the work is to construct an analytically precise methodology which (...) can serve to identify, eliminate, and avoid a certain widespread _conceptual fault_ or _misconstruction_, called a "projective misconstruction" or "projection" by the author. It is argued that this variety of error in our thinking (i) infects a great number of our everyday, scientific, and philosophical concepts, claims, and theories, (ii) has largely been undetected, and (iii), when remedied, leads to a less controversial and more rigorous elucidation of the transcendental preconditions of human knowledge than has traditionally been possible. The dissertation identifies, perhaps for the first time, a _projective_ variety of self-referential inconsistency, and proposes an innovative, self-reflexive approach to transcendental argument in a logical and phenomenological context. The strength of the approach lies, it is claimed, in the fact that a rejection of the approach is possible only on pain of self-referential inconsistency. The argument is developed in the following stages: A general introduction identifies the central theme of the work, defines the scope of applicability of the results reached, and sketches the direction of the studies that follow. The preliminary discussion culminates in a recognition of the need for a _critique of impure reason_. The body of the work is divided into two parts: Section I seeks to develop a methodology, on a purely formal basis, which is, on the one hand, capable of being used to study the transcendental foundations of the special sciences, including its own proper transcendental foundation. On the other hand, the methodology proposed is intended as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool for dealing with _projective_ uses of concepts. The approach initiates an analysis of concepts from a perspective which views _knowledge as coordination_. Section I describes formal structures that possess the status of preconditions in such a coordinative account of knowledge. Special attention is given to the preconditions of _identifying reference_ to logical particulars. The first section attempts, then, to provide a self-referential, transcendental methodology which is essentially revisionary in that it is motivated by a concern for conceptual error-elimination. Phenomenology, considered in its unique capacity as a self-referential, transcendental discipline, is of special relevance to the study. Section II accordingly examines a group of concepts which come into question in connection with the central theme of _phenomenological constitution_. The "_de-projective methodology_" developed in Section I is applied to these concepts that have a foundational importance in transcendental phenomenology. A translation is, in effect, proposed from the language of consciousness to a language in which preconditions of referring are investigated. The result achieved is the elimination of self-defeating, projective concepts from a rigorous, phenomenological study of the constitutive foundations of science. The dissertation was presented in a two volume, double-language format for the convenience of French and English researchers. Each volume contains an analytical index. (shrink)

In this article Johann David Michaelis’s views of language and translation are juxtaposed with his own experience as a translated and translating author, especially with regard to the translations of his prize essay on the reciprocal influence of language and opinions (1759). Its French version originated in a close collaboration with the translators, while the pirated English edition was anonymously translated at second hand. The article reconstructs Michaelis’s relationship with the French translators and his renouncement of the English (...) version, publicly condemned in London by Robert Lowth at the author’s request. These two processes represent different contemporary modes of translation and shed new light on emerging theories of linguistic and cultural transfer. (shrink)

This is Vol. I in French. Vol. II in English is available separately from this website. -/- The principal objective of the work is to construct an analytically precise methodology which can serve to identify, eliminate, and avoid a certain widespread conceptual fault or misconstruction, called a "projective misconstruction" or "projection" by the author. -/- It is argued that this variety of error in our thinking (i) infects a great number of our everyday, scientific, and philosophical concepts, claims, and (...) theories, (ii) has largely been undetected, and (iii), when remedied, leads to a less controversial and more rigorous elucidation of the transcendental preconditions of human knowledge than has traditionally been possible. -/- The dissertation identifies, perhaps for the first time, a projective variety of self-referential inconsistency, and proposes an innovative, self-reflexive approach to transcendental argument in a logical and phenomenological context. The strength of the approach lies, it is claimed, in the fact that a rejection of the approach is possible only on pain of self-referential inconsistency. The argument is developed in the following stages: -/- A general introduction identifies the central theme of the work, defines the scope of applicability of the results reached, and sketches the direction of the studies that follow. The preliminary discussion culminates in a recognition of the need for a critique of impure reason. -/- The body of the work is divided into two parts: Section I seeks to develop a methodology, on a purely formal basis, which is, on the one hand, capable of being used to study the transcendental foundations of the special sciences, including its own proper transcendental foundation. On the other hand, the methodology proposed is intended as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool for dealing with projective uses of concepts. -/- The approach initiates an analysis of concepts from a perspective which views knowledge as coordination. Section I describes formal structures that possess the status of preconditions in such a coordinative account of knowledge. Special attention is given to the preconditions of identifying reference to logical particulars. The first section attempts, then, to provide a self-referential, transcendental methodology which is essentially revisionary in that it is motivated by a concern for conceptual error-elimination. -/- Phenomenology, considered in its unique capacity as a self-referential, transcendental discipline, is of special relevance to the study. Section II accordingly examines a group of concepts which come into question in connection with the central theme of phenomenological constitution. The "de-projective methodology" developed in Section I is applied to these concepts that have a foundational importance in transcendental phenomenology. A translation is, in effect, proposed from the language of consciousness to a language in which preconditions of referring are investigated. The result achieved is the elimination of self-defeating, projective concepts from a rigorous, phenomenological study of the constitutive foundations of science. -/- The dissertation was presented in a two volume, double-language format for the convenience of French and English researchers. Each volume contains an analytical index. (shrink)

The importation of Lacanian psychoanalysis into film theory in the 1970s and 1980s ushered in a new era of cinema scholarship and criticism. Figures including Raymond Bellour, Laura Mulvey, and Christian Metz are often considered the pioneers of applying Lacanian psychoanalysis in the context of film theory, most notably through their writings in Screen Journal. However, where French and British scholarship on Lacan and film reached its limits, American Lacanianism flourished. When Joan Copjec’s now classic essay “The (...) Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan” was published in 1989, the trajectory of Lacanian film theory would become radically altered; as Todd McGowan recently put it, the “butchered operation” on Lacan committed by Mulvey and (quoting Copjec) the “Foucaultianization” of Lacan under the auspices of Screen Journal were finally indicted in one gesture through Copjec’s critique. Copjec and McGowan’s unique American view of Lacan marks a pivotal point in the convergence of psychoanalytic theory and cinema studies; by seeking to wrest Lacan from historist/deconstructionist theories of the subject, and by revisiting Lacan beyond the mirror stage, Copjec and McGowan can be said to have instantiated a resuscitation or even a renaissance of Lacanian theory in film studies in particular and in American scholarship more generally. In this essay, this renaissance of Lacanian theory is examined, focusing on the innovations these two American thinkers brought to psychoanalytic film theory and the multiple paths carved out into other disciplines that followed. First, a detailed summation of the contentions between screen theory and Copjec’s position is introduced, as well as McGowan’s assessment thereof. Then, the trajectory of psychoanalytic film theory after Copjec’s arrival is the focus, including the major innovations in her thought from cinematic subjectivity to sexual difference (most notably from Read My Desire) and the way her position spread to philosophy and ontology. Finally, the article identifies the limitations of Copjec’s and McGowan’s thought and seeks new possibilities through which we may continue to apply psychoanalysis to the cinema in the wake of these two important thinkers. L’importation de la psychanalyse lacanienne dans la théorie du film au cours des années 1970 et 1980 a apporté une nouvelle ère de recherche et de critique cinématographiques. Des figures comme Raymond Bellour, Laura Mulvey et Christian Metz sont souvent considérées comme étant les pionniers dans l’application de la psychanalyse lacanienne au contexte de la théorie du film, surtout dans leurs écrits pour le Screen Journal. Par contre, là où les recherches françaises et britanniques sur Lacan et la cinématographie ont atteint leurs limites, le lacanisme américain a prospéré. La publication en 1989 de « The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan », l’essai classique de Joan Copjec, a complètement changé la trajectoire de la théorie lacanienne du film; comme Todd McGowan l’a récemment exprimé, « l’opération massacrée » commise sur Lacan par Mulvey et (citant Copjec) la « Foucaultisation » de Lacan sous les auspices de Screen Journal avaient finalement été accusées d’un seul coup par la critique de Copjec. Le point de vue uniquement américain de Copjec et de McGowan sur Lacan marque un tournant dans la convergence de la théorie psychanalytique et des études cinématographiques. En cherchant à arracher Lacan des théories historicistes/déconstructivistes du sujet, et en revisitant Lacan au-delà du stade du miroir, Copjec et McGowan ont instancié une ressuscitation, voire une renaissance, de la théorie lacanienne dans les études cinématographiques en particulier et dans les études américaines en général. Dans cet article, cette renaissance de la théorie lacanienne est examinée, mettant l’accent sur les innovations que ces deux penseurs américains ont apportées à la théorie psychanalytique du film et les multiples chemins tracés dans d’autres disciplines subséquentes. Premièrement, un résumé détaillé des différends entre la théorie du film et la position de Copjec est présenté, ainsi que l’évaluation de McGowan à ce sujet. Puis, la trajectoire de la théorie psychanalytique du film après l’arrivée de Copjec est mise de l’avant, notamment les innovations importantes de sa pensée de la subjectivité à la différence sexuelle (particulièrement dans Read My Desire) et la manière dont sa position s’est propagée dans la philosophie et l’ontologie. Finalement, l’article identifie les limites de la pensée de Copjec et de McGowan et cherche de nouvelles possibilités à travers lesquelles nous pourrions continuer d’appliquer la psychanalyse au cinéma après ces deux grands penseurs. (shrink)

Tracking theories of mental representation posit a privileged relation between color representations and the color properties of objects. Tracking theories of mental representation have been used to motivate color realism as they posit that the function of color vision is to represent the colors of objects. It has been argued that tracking theories have a major flaw, namely they cannot account for reliable misrepresentation. It has further been suggested that reliable color misrepresentation is a live possibility. In this chapter, I (...) argue that the current evidence indicates that our color representations reliably misrepresent. This conclusion undermines tracking theories and the color realist theories they purport to motivate. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Hutcheson has a theory of obligation that is different in important ways from the views of his predecessors and that his theory may not be as problematic as critics have claimed. In section (I) I sketch a brief picture of the rich conceptual landscape surrounding the concept of obligation in the Early Modern period. I focus on the five figures Hutcheson explicitly references: Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf, their French translator and commentator (...) Jean Barbeyrac, as well as G. W. Leibniz and Richard Cumberland. In section (II) I offer an account of Hutcheson’s theory of obligation and illustrate that not only does Hutcheson have a view on what previous figures called the source, end, and object of obligation, he also focuses on the epistemological question of the origin of our idea of obligation as opposed to the metaphysical question of the efficient cause of obligation. Furthermore, although Hutcheson shares with his predecessors the idea that obligation implies a certain kind of necessity, he conceives of this necessity in a unique way, namely in terms of the necessity of a perception. In section (III) I defend Hutcheson’s theory of obligation against three objections: 1. that it makes a sham of obligation by locating its source within the human being, 2. that it is reducible to divine command theory, and 3. that, in the end, Hutcheson has no real or meaningful theory of obligation. My hope is that, at the very least, appraising these objections helps further clarify the theory of obligation that Hutcheson presents in his works. (shrink)

In my review of Steven French's The structure of the world. Metaphysics & Representation. OUP, Oxford, 2014 I argue that the author is forced to navigate between the Scilla of Tegmark’s Pitagoreanism (2008) and the Carybdis of “blobobjectivism” (Horgan and Potrč 2008), namely the claim that the whole physical universe is a single concrete structurally complex but partless cosmos (a “blob”).

David Bohm, in his "causal theory", made the correct Hegelian synthesis of Einstein's thesis that there is a "there" there, and Bohr's antithesis of "thinglessness" (Nick Herbert’s term). Einstein was a materialist and Bohr was an idealist. Bohm showed that quantum reality has both. This is “physical dualism” (my term). Physical dualism may be a low energy approximation to a deeper monism of cosmic consciousness called "the super-implicate order" (Bohm and Hiley’s term), “pregeometry” (Wheeler’s term), “substratum” (Dirac’s term), “funda-MENTAL (...) space” (Hameroff’s term), “Chi” (Chinese medicine & Falun Gong) etc., but for our immediate pragmatic purpose of constructing naturally conscious nano-computers and of virtually reverse engineering alleged reports of propellantless UFO propulsion (French Intelligence Report, 1999 [email protected] Vol. 5, No. 11, Part 1 -- August 1, 1999 & NIDS report "Best UFO Cases - Europe", I. Von Ludwiger) to the stars and beyond, physical dualism will work. (shrink)

This article assesses’ Susan Haack’s theory of foundherentism and her position that this approach provides a solution to the meta-epistimeological problem. Using a Cartesian model, the paper shows the circularity of Haack’s arguments, ultimately arguing that a combination of foundherentism and an a priori strategy may provide a more fruitful approach.

French translation by G. B. Côté and Roger Lapalme of "A Geneticist's Roadmap to Sanity" (G. B. Côté, 2019) with added bibliography. -/- À voir le monde d’aujourd’hui, on pourrait croire que nous avons perdu la raison. Je veux explorer ici les fondements mêmes de notre existence. Je discuterai brièvement du libre arbitre, de l’éthique, de la religion, de la souffrance, du dualisme cartésien et de l’état de conscience, avec un arrière-plan promulguant l’importance de la physique quantique d’aujourd’hui et (...) de l’intemporel. Pour ce faire, je devrai d’abord établir que le platonisme mathématique est une prémisse essentielle pour qu’un univers (ou même un multivers) prenne forme, et j’introduirai les trois modes d’existence abstrait, virtuel et concret (en philosophie) correspondant respectivement aux concepts d’information, d’énergie et de masse (en physique). Cet article constitue un bref exposé de ma théorie du tout. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders the Idealistic aesthetics of tragedy from an unconventional point of view. It investigates the relationship between theory and dramatic canon by focusing on those works and authors that are excluded from the canon by the theoretical discourse. My aim is to show that Idealist philosophers and Romantic critics concur in constructing a unitary model of the tragic conflict that is partly defined through its contraposition to the ‘Senecan’ conception of tragedy as a representation of suffering and (...) as a dialectic of passions. Seneca here stands for an entire line of European dramaturgy, which involves Shakespeare and culminates in French Classicism. This contrast does not merely concern a literary model, but also, more generally, the conception of subjectivity underlying the dramaturgy of passions. This paper thus helps to shed light on the controversial relationship between the idealistic philosophy of the tragic with modern tragedy at large. -/- Keywords: Theory of Tragedy, Idealism, Seneca, Hegel, Pathos . (shrink)

A review of Francoise Laruelle's General Theory of Victims, which places Laruelle's theory in the context of post-colonial theories of the subaltern subject after Gayatri Spivak and Edward Said. The review questions whether Laruelle's General Theory of Victims really allows the so-called victims to speak for themselves, or simply represents another attempt by Western (French?) intellectuals to speak to/through the victims, for their own political and theoretical purposes.

In the contemporary biomedical literature, every disease is considered genetic. This extension of the concept of genetic disease is usually interpreted either in a trivial or genocentrist sense, but it is never taken seriously as the expression of a genetic theory of disease. However, a group of French researchers defend the idea of a genetic theory of infectious diseases. By identifying four common genetic mechanisms (Mendelian predisposition to multiple infections, Mendelian predisposition to one infection, and major gene (...) and polygenic predispositions), they attempt to unify infectious diseases from a genetic point of view. In this article, I analyze this explicit example of a genetic theory, which relies on mechanisms and is applied only to a specific category of diseases, what we call “a regional genetic theory.” I have three aims: to prove that a genetic theory of disease can be devoid of genocentrism, to consider the possibility of a genetic theory applied to every disease, and to introduce two hypotheses about the form that such a genetic theory could take by distinguishing between a genetic theory of diseases and a genetic theory of Disease. Finally, I suggest that network medicine could be an interesting framework for a genetic theory of Disease. (shrink)

Review of Dowek, Gilles, Computation, Proof, Machine, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015. Translation of Les Métamorphoses du calcul, Le Pommier, Paris, 2007. Translation from the French by Pierre Guillot and Marion Roman.

Digital innovations are rapidly changing the contemporary workplace. Big Tech companies marketing algorithmic management increasingly decide on the Future of Work. Political responses, however, often focus on managing the impact of these technologies on workers. They leave the question of how these technologies are designed or how workers can determine their own futures unanswered. This approach risks surrendering the Future of Work debate to techno-determinist imaginaries aligned with corporate interests. Using Cornelius Castoriadis’ early writings on worker struggles in French (...) Tayloristic factories and his later oeuvre on conflictual social imaginaries, I propose an agonistic approach to the Future of Work. Not merely companies implementing workplace technologies, but also workers themselves possess agency in determining the Future of Work. Workers’ frequent contestations against machinic surveillance and technologically mediated coordination of the labour process disclose an alternative Future of Work in which technologies are used to enhance worker autonomy rather than bureaucratic control. Worker struggles at Amazon Mechanical Turk illustrate this agonistic dynamic: Amazon mobilizes algorithmic management to fragment and control a workforce of globally dispersed remote workers, but the latter form online social communities and create counter-technologies to reappropriate control over the labour process. (shrink)

Theodore de Laguna develops and argues for a deflationary view of truth well before the publication of what many have taken to be its source, or at least its inspiration, namely Frank P. Ramsey’s paper ‘Facts and Propositions’. I outline de Laguna’s view of truth and the arguments he offers for it; I also discuss its role in the history of twentieth-century philosophy. My outline and discussion serve as an introduction to de Laguna’s ‘A Nominalistic Interpretation of Truth’, a paper (...) he originally wrote in English but which has hitherto only been published in French. (shrink)

Photomechanical reprint of papers from 1970 to 1992 mostly in English, some in German or French: Foreword 1–4; LAW AS PRACTICE ‘La formation des concepts en sciences juridiques’ 7–33, ‘Geltung des Rechts – Wirksamkeit des Rechts’ 35–42, ‘Macrosociological Theories of Law’ 43–76, ‘Law & its Inner Morality’ 77–89, ‘The Law & its Limits’ 91–96; LAW AS TECHNIQUE ‘Domaine »externe« & domaine »interne« en droit’ 99–117, ‘Die ministerielle Begründung’ 119–139, ‘The Preamble’ 141–167, ‘Presumption & Fiction’ 169–185, ‘Legal Technique’187–198; LAW AS (...) LOGIC ‘Moderne Staatlichkeit und modernes formales Recht’ 201–207, ‘Heterogeneity & Validity of Law’ 209–218, ‘Leibniz & die Frage der rechtlichen Systembildung’ 219–232, ‘Law & its Approach as a System’ 233–255, ‘Logic of Law & Judicial Activity’ 258–288, ‘Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law’ 289–293, ‘The Nature of the Judicial Application of Norms’ 295–314; LAW AS EXPERIENCE ‘The Socially Determined Nature of Legal Reasoning’317–374, ‘The Ontological Foundation of Law’ 375–390, ‘Is Law a System of Enactments?’ 391–398, ‘The Uniqueness of National Legal Cultures’ 399–411, ‘Institutions as Systems’ 413–424; LAW AS HISTORY ‘From Legal Customs to Legal Folkways’ 427–436, ‘Anthropological Jurisprudence?’ 437–457, ‘Law as a Social Issue’ 459–475, ‘Law as History?’477–484, ‘Rechtskultur – Denkkultur’ 485–489; w/ Curriculum Vitae & Bibliography, as well as Index & Indexes of normative materials & of names. (shrink)

Beauvoir maintains a unified "compromise theory" of aesthetics throughout her ethics, feminism, and fiction that portrays the conundrum that every artist faces -- an impasse that sets action against inaction, politics against culture. Beauvoir's theory of art in The Mandarins, aided by an analysis of women's oppression in The Second Sex, advocates art that keeps past events alive in the present and in so doing, changes even the tragic into the life affirming. Beauvoir lauds artists who, even in (...) the face of self-doubt, continue to engage in artistic endeavors in order to maintain an ethical relationship to the rest of humanity. (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)

This seminal paper, which marks a turning point of the chemical revolution, is presented for the first time in a complete English translation. In this first half Lavoisier undermines phlogiston chemistry by arguing that his French contemporaries had replaced Stahl’s original theory with radically different systems that conceptualised the phlogiston principle in completely incompatible ways. He refutes their claims by showing that these later models were riddled with inconsistencies as to phlogiston’s weight, its ability to penetrate glass and (...) its role as a source of colour and odour in chemical compounds. (shrink)

This article argues that we can construct a complex interpretation of the nature of time by linking Aciman’s gnostic thread to aspects of twentieth century theory, from philosophy and psychoanalysis. In brief, it attempts to demonstrate the roles of dislocation, deferral, and Otherness in constituting human temporality. The essay begins by surmising the conceptual history of time, touching on key ideas put forward by Augustine and Bergson. The second section takes a psychoanalytic turn after exploring Homo Irrealis to describe (...) the significance of desire and fantasy. Thirdly, we develop a unique and temporal application of difference and deferral, building off of Deleuze and Derrida. The fourth section will consider how the psychoanalytic concept of the Other is inhered within time. We conclude that an Acimanic analysis of time is the means by which we can understand existence not as a series of moments, but a rich progression of dissimilitude and Otherness defined moreso by its lack of cohesion and directness of being than by a unified and self-identifying subject. (shrink)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the French philosopher of science Edmond Goblot wrote three prescient papers on function and teleology. He advanced the remarkable thesis that functions are, as a matter of conceptual analysis, selected effects. He also argued that “selection” must be understood broadly to include both evolutionary natural selection and intelligent design. Here, I do three things. First, I give an overview of Goblot’s thought. Second, I identify his core thesis about function. Third, I argue (...) that, despite its ingenuity, Goblot’s expansive construal of function cannot be right. Still, Goblot deserves long-overdue credit for his work. (shrink)

When the French philosopher Sarah Kofman committed suicide in 1994 she left behind an impressive oeuvre in which both the autobiographical genre and the treatment of women play a central role. Her theoretical re ections on both topics situate themselves in the interstices between psychoanalysis, feminism and deconstruction and share a common concern: the respect of alterity in all its guises. Kofman's resistance to the authoritative claim of the retrospective closure underlying traditional autobiographies is closely related to her celebration (...) of an e ®criture parricide, a mode of writing which undoes the repression of multiplicity and otherness. Shortly before her death Kofman published an autobiographical account of her own childhood years after the deportation and death of her father in a concentration camp. This article addresses the striking discrepancies between the theoretical positions Kofman defends throughout her philosophical writings and the autobiographical turn of her own last words. (shrink)

This work focuses on the analysis of Paul Virilio, an important representative of the Contemporary French Thought, pertaining to society. Virilio sees modern society as the transformation of time-space relations within the context of the proliferation of speed-producing vehicles. The proliferation of speed and speed producing tools has brought about the end of space and also has reconstructed time as accelerated time. Speed is seen as a dominant logic in the organization of economic, political, military, social and urban spheres. (...) In other words, modern society is built on the basis of a new logic of speed in which not only merely economic transformations but also political, military, spatial and technological changes occur. According to Virilio, the modern age brought a model of society based on movement through the proliferation of speedgenerating tools. He defines the transformations in modern society with the concept of "dromology" (speed science). This approach evaluates the speed as a central category in formation and development of all socities. To Virilio, speed is an important tool determining both power and controlling means and the distribution of money and wealth. The study discusses the transformation of the speed, which is questioned by Virilio by means of such concepts as dromologic revolution, dromologic progress, dromocratic society, within the social and historical processes as well as the change of military and spatial organizations within the mdoernity. The study, in a way, draws a framework that aims to understand the new social organization of information, information, money and labor flows caused by globalization as a radical dromologic situation. (shrink)

The theme of the conflict between the different interpretations of Spinoza’s philosophy in French scholarship, introduced by Christopher Norris in this volume and expanded on by Alain Badiou, is also central to the argument presented in this chapter. Indeed, this chapter will be preoccupied with distinguishing the interpretations of Spinoza by two of the figures introduced by Badiou. The interpretation of Spinoza offered by Gilles Deleuze in Expressionism in Philosophy provides an account of the dynamic changes or transformations of (...) the characteristic relations of a Spinozist finite existing mode, or human being. This account has been criticized more or less explicitly by a number of commentators, including Charles Ramond. Rather than providing a defence of Deleuze on this specific point, which I have done elsewhere, what I propose to do in this chapter is provide an account of the role played by “joyful passive a affections” in these dynamic changes or transformations by distinguishing Deleuze’s account of this role from that offered by one of his more explicit critics on this issue, Pierre Macherey. An appreciation of the role played by “joyful passive affections” in this context is crucial to understanding how Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza is implicated in his broader philosophical project of constructing a philosophy of difference. The outcome is a position that, like Badiou in the previous chapter, rules out “intellect in potentiality” but maintains a role for the joyful passive affects in the development of adequate ideas. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, there have been many attempts to bring together Critical Theory of Frankfurtian strain and French theories generally referred to as poststructuralist. The present text seeks to readdress the problem of their tricky articulation by taking a look at some vicissitudes those two currents of thought underwent in Brazil. In addition to the risk – embedded in the Parisian passion for dissolution – of positivizing atrocious aspects of Brazilian society related to the country’s multi-secular informality and (...) backwardness, what is at stake is the adequate understanding of the meaning and relevance of dialectical criticism in a peripheral country, in other words, the capacity to weigh the influx and gravitation of foreign ideas and forms in a society of inorganic culture, the possibility, finally, of critically verifying the supposed universality of hegemonic theories and categories in light of a cultural experience amassed under a heterodox modernization. (shrink)

French translation of "Truth-Makers" (1984). A realist theory of truth for a class of sentence holds that there are entities in virtue of which these sentences are true or false. We call such entities ‘truthmakers’ and contend that those for a wide range of sentences about the real world are moments (dependent particulars). Since moments are unfamiliar we provide a definition and a brief philosophical history, anchoring them in our ontology by showing that they are objects of perception. (...) The core of our theory is the account of truthmaking for atomic sentences, in which we expose a pervasive ‘dogma of logical form’, which says that atomic sentences cannot have more than one truthmaker. The authors uphold the mutual independence of logical and ontological complexity. The theory is compared with that of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, and the authors outline formal principles of truthmaking taking account of both kinds of complexity and suggesting how to overcome Wittgenstein’s problem of negation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Philosophy of Enlightenment and Political Conservatism This study aims at giving an explanatory understanding of conservativism in regard to the philosophy of politics, and at discussing its place and future within our historical period. This study asserts that conservative philosophy of politics came about as a reaction against continental enlightenment, and became a political stance within French Revolution. This artical mainly considers the formation of conservative theory, and the relation between conservativism and the philosophy of enlightenment. Moreover, (...) reactions to the philosophy of enlightenment arisen by religious, romantic and conservative thinkers have also been mentioned. Within the history of western thought, political conservativism emphasizes a serious tradition of thought, assumed to bear a rich philosophical heredity. Moreover, among modern philosophies of politics, it also stresses a highly comprehensive doctrine, and a philosophy of politics which has completely marked our historical period. Keywords: Conservativism, Philosophy of Enlightenment, Edmund Burke, French Revolution. (shrink)

Kathryn Gines's book details Hannah Arendt 's racial and conceptual biases against Black people in the US and post-colonial Africa. Gines makes original and significant contributions to feminist philosophy by applying various feminist and anticolonial strategies, including standpoint theory and multidirectionality, to Arendt 's political essays and concepts. Feminist critiques of Arendt in general and racial critiques of "Reflections on Little Rock" in particular are not new; however, Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question offers a novel and comprehensive racial (...) critique of Arendt 's major writings. Gines offers a "sustained analysis of Arendt 's treatment of the Black experience in the United States", as well as racial violence within the contexts of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and French and British imperialism and colonialism. In this review I will offer an overview of the book as a whole, before evaluating the extent of Gines's critique as it pertains to Arendt 's misguided judgments and her theory of judgment. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on an argument in my book *Perception*. It has two parts. In the first part, I argue against what I call "basic" naive realism, on the grounds that it fails to accommodate what I call "internal dependence" and it requires an empirically implausible theory of sensible properties. Then I turn Craig French and Ian Phillips’ modified naïve realism as set out in their recent paper "Austerity and Illusion". It accommodates internal dependence. But it may retain (...) the empirically implausible theory of sensible properties. And it faces other empirical problems. Representationalism about experiences avoids those problems and is to be preferred. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMaterialism is the view that everything that is real is material or is the product of material processes. It tends to take either a ‘cosmological’ form, as a claim about the ultimate nature of the world, or a more specific ‘psychological’ form, detailing how mental processes are brain processes. I focus on the second, psychological or cerebral form of materialism. In the mid-to-late eighteenth century, the French materialist philosopher Denis Diderot was one of the first to notice that any (...) self-respecting materialist had to address the question of the status and functional role of the brain, and its relation to our mental life. After this the topic grew stale, with knee-jerk reiterations of ‘psychophysical identity’ in the nineteenth-century, and equally rigid assertions of anti-materialism. In 1960s philosophy of mind, brain–mind materialism reemerged as ‘identity theory’, focusing on the identity between mental processes and cerebral processes. In contrast, Diderot’s cerebral materialism allows... (shrink)

The 21st-century university is a contested site of neoliberal transformation. Its role is moving away from that of a hub of culture, knowledge and critique to that of a provider of skills and employability for the market. The move towards a lean business model in the management of knowledge production is not an isolated phenomenon, but integral to the shifting economic, political and moral landscapes of global capitalism and the knowledge society. The literature discussing the changes in higher education, which (...) could be collectively termed "critical studies of academia", remains fragmented and is yet to yield tangible resistance or envision viable alternative models of academic governance. This article discusses the possibility of generating constructive critique of "the new spirit of academic capitalism" from within. French Convention Theory is employed as a conceptual toolbox for unpacking the worlds of worth, conventions and justifications which operate beneath the surface of the marketisation, acceleration and casualisation of scientific labour - and suggested as a potential tool for building a generative sociology of critique. (shrink)

This paper will analyze the evolution and the key aspects of René Girard’s critique of the Hegelian “struggle for recognition” and the master-slave dialectic. Through a discussion of Girard’s views on Identity, Difference, Violence, Desire and Negativity, the study will aim to highlight the philosophical uniqueness of the mimetic theory in respect to French Hegelianism and postHegelianism.

Abstract: One of the institutional highlights of the encounter between Austrian “wissen¬schaftliche Philosophie” and French “philosophie scientifique” in the first half of the 20th century was the “First International Congress for Unity of Science” that took place 1935 in Paris. In my contribution I deal with an episode of the philosophical mega-event whose protagonist was the American philosopher and semiotician Charles William Morris. At the Paris congress he presented his programme of a comprehensive, practice-oriented scientific philosophy and, in a (...) more elaborated version he published it two years later in Logical Positivism, Pragmatism and Scientific Empiricism (Morris 1937). Morris aimed at a synthesis of formalism, pragmatism, and traditional empiricism that combined the virtues of these accounts while avoided their shortocmings. The core of approach was a comprehensive theory of the concept of meaning. Through an analysis of the concept of meaning he sought to sort out the existing differences and the options for a possible future rapprochment between logical empiricism and pragmatism. Against the overly narrow logical empiricist understanding of philosophy as the syntax of the language of science Morris argued for a “scientific pragmatism” that comprised four levels: (1) Philosophy as Logic of Science, (2) Philosophy as Clarification of Meaning (Peirce), (3) Philosophy as Empirical Axiology (Dewey), and (4) Philosophy as Empirical Cosmology (Whitehead). (shrink)

This French paper is a prelimary report on the authors' work on the logics of common knowledge and common belief. See L. Lismont and P. Mongin, "On the logic of common belief and common knowledge", Theory and Decision 37 (1): 75-106. 1994 for a more complete report.

In “Now the French are invading England” (Analysis 62, 2002, pp. 34-41), Komarine Romdenh-Romluc offers a new theory of the relationship between recorded indexicals and their content. Romdenh-Romluc’s proposes that Kaplan’s basic idea, that reference is determined by applying a rule to a context, is correct, but we have to be careful about what the context is, since it is not always the context of utterance. A few well known examples illustrate this. The “here” and “now” in “I (...) am not here now” on an answering machine do not refer to the time and place of the original utterance, but to the time the message is played back, and the place its attached telephone is located. Any occurrence of “today” in a newspaper or magazine refers not to the day the story in which it appears was written, nor to the day the newspaper or magazine was printed, but to the cover date of that publication. Still, it is plausible that for each (token of an) indexical there is a salient context, and that “today” refers to the day of its context, “here” to the place of its context, and soon. Romdenh-Romluc takes this to be true, and then makes a proposal about what the salient context is. It is “the context that Ac would identify on the basis of cues that she would reasonably take U to be exploiting.” (39) Ac is the relevant audience, “the individual who it is reasonable to take the speaker to be addressing”, and who is assumed to be linguistically competent and attentive. (So Ac might not be the person U intends to address. This will not matter for what follows.) The proposal seems to suggest that it is impossible to trick a reasonably attentive hearer about what the referent of a particular indexical is. Since such trickery does seem possible, Romdenh-Romluc’s theory needs (at least) supplementation. I present two examples of such tricks. (shrink)

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)

A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science (...) was informed by class interest but not therefore necessarily ideology. Capitalists have an interest in understanding the natural world (to a point) so that they can manipulate it for profit. Their survival in the marketplace often depends on their competitive success in doing so. The fact that their interventions into nature, driven by class interest, often succeed, is evidence of the reliability and truth of their natural scientific theories. -/- With social science, capitalists have a partial interest in understanding the world, so that they may maintain their class power, ideological hegemony, and a reasonably stable and self-reproducing economy. Some bourgeois social science, Marx thinks, is therefore vindicated the same way that natural science is, because of, not despite, its success in promoting the class interests that cause it. But the capitalist class, Marx thinks, also has an interest in obfuscating the truth about the social world. It would undermine the stability of capitalism, for example, for the bourgeoisie to adopt what Marx thinks to be the correct social theory, Marxism, and proclaim to the world that capitalism is exploitative and unstable. Capitalism creates a a need for ideological social theories that, driven by class interest, represent capitalism as just, natural, inevitable, and unalterable. If Marxism is correct, while these theories may further capitalist interests, they will not withstand the test of time as capitalist exploitation and instability engenders countersystemic political action. -/- How, then can we know, according to Marx, that Marxism is correct, as applied to itself? In part it is whether it succeeds in further the class interests that cause it. If workers adopt bourgeois theories and Marxism is right, they will find themselves frustrated in pursuit of goals that they have, such as improving their well-being, and if Marxism is wrong, then those theories will help them further their own goals. Similarly with Marxism: if it is right, then workers who adopt it should in the long run have more success in furthering their own goals, and if not, then not. But it is question begging to say that our confidence in the reliability of Marxism is enhanced by its successful promotion of goals that capitalists do not have but (according to Marxism) workers do. To avoid this problem it is necessary to compare the relative success of each sort of theory in promoting the interests and needs that the respective classes have independently of the theory, as well as by the usual criteria of scientific theory choice. -/- Thus the Soviet variant of Marxism was fairly decisively refuted by its failure to generate the support of its own designated constituency necessary to grow and survive. Whether the same is true of other varieties of Marxism or of capitalist social theory, it is, as Zhou En Lai said when asked whether the French Revolution had succeeded, too soon to tell, at least in any definitive way. However, and this is the point of the paper, an objective test of Marxism is possible even though Marxism says that all theory is informed by class interest. The question is whether the interests are in discovering or obfuscating the truth. The point is not limited to Marx, but applies to any self-referential social scientific theory that includes itself in its scope. -/- Keywords: ideology, self-referential theory, self-reference, reliabilism, objectivity, Marx, Marxism, sociology of science, class interest, classes, capitalism, bourgeoisie, workers, working class, social theory of knowledge, confirmation of scientific theory. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to analyse, from a philosophical perspective, the 16th and 17th Century models of currency, as well as their influence on the types of society in which the models developed. For this, the author values the study by the French philosopher Michael Foucault Words and Things on this matter and the principal foundations of Ludwig von Bertalanffy´s systems theory. The 17th Century model of currency is based on the notion of a system of (...) exchange. The notion of a system of exchange represents a transformation of great significance, upon which the principal characteristics of our current globalised era are founded, not only in economic life, but also in relation to an understanding of the world that it implies. Furthermore, the notion of a system of exchange was the step before the current model of electronic payments of the digital era, in which large transactions (and also large data transfers) take place by pressing a button. The principal idea of the paper is that these economic practices hold the key to deepen a philosophical and historical comprehension of concepts such as globalisation. (shrink)