En l'honneur de Gerhard Heinzmann

Pierre Edouard Bour, Manuel Rebuschi, Laurent Rollet are the editors of a book published for celebrating Gerhard Heinzmann's works. Here is the description :

This Festschrift is published on the occasion of Gerhard Heinzmann's 60th birthday. Its title "Construction" refers to Heinzmann's philosophical options (intuitionism, dialogical pragmatism, constructivism), as well as to his exceptional involvement in the building of many scientific enterprises and new scientific institutions. Sixty authors contributed to the volume, and the gathered essays witness the various centers of interest and intellectual achievements of Heinzmann. They are organized in five sections: (1) Henri Poincaré; (2) History and Philosophy of Mathematics; (3) History and Philosophy of Logic; (4) Pragmatism; and (5) Miscellaneous.

Contributors :
Evandro Agazzi, Michael Astroh, Hervé Barreau, Thomas Bénatouïl, Denis Bonnay, Hélène Bouchilloux, Pierre Edouard Bour, Michel Bourdeau, Christophe Bouriau, Christiane Chauviré, Michael Detlefsen, Pascal Engel, Dominique Fagnot, Virginie Fiutek, Didier Galmiche, Paul Gochet, Jeremy Gray, Marcel Guillaume, Jaakko Hintikka, Bertram Kienzle, Ralf Krömer, Jacques Lambert, Dominique Larchey-Wendling, Philippe Lombard, Kuno Lorenz, Igor Ly, Ulrich Majer, Mathieu Marion, Alexandre Métraux, Michel Meulders, Philippe Nabonnand, Michel Paty, Roger Pouivet, Joelle Proust, Shahid Rahman , Narahari Rao , Manuel Rebuschi, Laurent Rollet, Séverine Rollet, Giuseppina Ronzitti, Philippe de Rouilhan, Helge Rückert, Fabien Schang, Anne-Françoise Schmid, François Schmitz, Elisabeth Schwartz, Hourya Sinaceur, Antonia Soulez, Claudine Tiercelin, Richard Tieszen, Frédérick Tremblay, Tero Tulenheimo, Johan van Benthem, Louis Vax, Denis Vernant, Joseph Vidal-Rosset, Henk Visser, Klaus Volkert, Gudrun Vuillemin, Scott Walter.

Pierre Edouard Bour, Manuel Rebuschi Laurent Rollet (ed.) (2010). Construction. Festschrift for Gerhard Heinzmann. College Publications.

Full table of content.

Empathy and artistic creation

Can empathy play a role in Literature ?

This morning, while reading the French journal La Croix, I came accross this interesting piece, written by the French novelist Christian Bobin : 

Je vois une araignée et je deviens araignée, j'entends parler une personne et je suis cette personne. Lorsque dans une journée, vous avez été une libellule, un désespéré, une page de livre, une rose étourdie de chaleur, si vous n'écrivez pas vous êtes accablé (I see a spider, I am a spider ; I hear someone talking I am this person. If you don't write the day you are a dragonfly,  a desesperate person, the page of a book, a rose stunned by the sun, you will be overpowered).

Bobin C. & Nativel C. (22/07/2010). L'oubli du temps et de soi. La Croix, p. 18.

The message is quite clear : Bobin believed he has the ability to be something or somebody else than himself, to feel and think what others feel and think, to the point of being the thing or the person himself and stop being Bobin. Writing, for Bobin, is a way to keep the extreme consequences of empathy at bay, to keep in mind that he is Bobin only and nothing else, that there is a frontier between him and the world. 

Empathy is a common topic in Literature. See for this extract of the Deuxième rêveries du promeneur solitaire : 

L’état auquel je me trouvai dans cet instant est trop singulier pour n’en pas faire ici la description. La nuit s’avançoit. J’apperçus le Ciel, quelques étoiles, & un peu de verdure. Cette premiere sensation fut un moment délicieux. Je ne me sentois encore que par là. Je naissois dans cet instant à la vie, & il me sembloit que je remplissois de ma légere existence tous les objets que j’appercevois. Tout entier au moment présent je ne me souvenois de rien ; je n’avois nulle notion distincte de mon individu, pas la moindre idée de ce qui venoit de m’arriver ; je ne savois ni qui j’étois, ni où j’étois ; je ne sentois ni mal, ni crainte, ni inquiétude.

Rousseau J-J (1782). Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire. Deuxième promenade.

This extract describes the feeling of the Rousseau after an accident, near Menilmontant, in October 1776. The sentence : "il me semblait que je remplissais de ma légère existence tous les objets que j'appercevois (literally : "it felt like I was filling every object I saw with my lightweight existence") is vague. But it is clear 1) that there is no real border between him and the world, and 2) that feelings and sensations are not linked to an delimited individual (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) who would not be supposed to share them.

Others example can be found in Literature (remember the famous : "Emma Bovary, c'est moi", by Flaubert) and others aspects can be seen as an indirect form of empathy (e.g., the bond between Nature and states of mind in the Brontë' sisters's novels). Intuitively, for me, it seems that empathy play a keyrole in Literature. But what is that role ? Psychology of Literature may be choosing the wrong path if it tries to identify and explain this role only through the sudy of classical texts of Literature. Don't laugh ! Many psychological analysis of Literature content themselves with this sort of study. After all this is what psychoanalysis of Literature was all about. But I think a more productive path would be the testing of hypothesis in the field ! From a cognitive and neurological point of view, what authors do when they write ? What happen when they include more than one speaker in their novels ? How can they make each character of a novel a individual ? What is the psychological basis of these phenomenon ? Is the psychological basis different when, in a novel, we see the world from the point of view of another species than human (as in Lassie Come Home, by Eric Wright ; or the Call of the Wild and White Fang, by Jack London) ? What cognitive abilities are they using ?

Leviathan & Poincaré

A terrific discovery in Paleontology (Nature) : the fossil of the skull of a whale (3 m. long), very alike to the skeleton of a sperm whale in size and in appearance. This whale seemed to be a very aggressive predator : a massive jaw with huge teeth, teeth on the upper and lower jaws, probably 17m. long. The team call this whale : Leviathan melvillei. Watch the nice video and read the article. A summary of both can be found at the BBC.

Note also a very important step in Mathematics : the conjecture de Poincaré is now considered a theorem, thanks to G. Perelman. See  Pour la Science.

MAJ (3/07/2010) : Perelman did not accept the prize associated with the solving of the problem. See : Brilliant & reclusive Russian Mathematician doesn't need your money.

Call for papers : The Extended Mind

The Extended Mind

In the decade or so since the publication of Clark and Chalmers' seminal paper, the extended mind thesis has had a highly significant influence on the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. This comes from the fact that it promotes a view of mind and cognition that breaks away from other such views popular in the late 20th century. Thus, the extended mind thesis promotes: one, functionalism, without the restrictions imposed by biological implementational structure; two, externalism, not only regarding mental contents, but also regarding the vehicles of content; and three, postcognitivism, where cognition is not simply a matter of internal symbol manipulation. The result is, thus, a view that could be labelled "situated and embodied functionalism".
Critics have reacted in different ways. Some have objected, on behalf of intracranialism, that the extended mind thesis is too radical, in that it flouts the distinction between intrinsic and derived intentionality in the characterization of the mental; or in that it mistakes extracranial aids to cognition for the real vehicles of cognition. Other critics, though, have argued that the development of Clark and Chalmers' insights has sometimes been too conservative, insofar as it supports a representationalist, rather than an antirepresentationalist, version of postcognitivism; or insofar as it continues to give pride of place to processes in the brain/CNS, precluding the extension of the idea of cognition to other less complicated life forms.
Teorema invites submissions on these and related topics for a special issue to be published in 2011. Papers must be written in English or in Spanish, and should not exceed 6000 words. For the presentation of their manuscripts, authors are requested to adhere to the details that can be found at Teorema. Electronic submissions, both in .doc and .pdf formats and prepared for blind refereeing, must be sent to the Editor by October 1st, 2010. Notification of intent to submit including title (tentative) and subject matter (a brief abstract) will be greatly appreciated as it will assist with the coordination and planning of the special issue.

Contact details for queries and submissions:

Teorema
Prof. Luis M. Valdés Villanueva
Director de teorema
Departamento de Filosofía
Universidad de Oviedo
E-33071 Oviedo (España)
E-mail: lmvaldes at uniovi.es

The Geometry of Visual Space and the Nature of Visual Experience, by Farid Masrour

Next Tuesday, June 29th at the Colloquium du DEC, (12h à 13h3O – Salle Paul Lapie – 29 rue d’Ulm – 1er étage) : The Geometry of Visual Space and the Nature of Visual Experience, Farid Masrour (Assistant Professor, NYU).

Abstract :

Empirical research shows that we see bent lines as straight, we see an object oriented along the depth axis as having a different size than a same-sized object oriented along the horizontal axis, as a result objects seem to change their shape as they rotate in space. Our visual experiences seems to systematically falsify some of the basic principles that are required to make sense of fundamental geometrical notions such as straight lines, distances and planes. This paper argues that these results have significant philosophical implications about the nature of our perceptual experience. In particular, I shall argue that they put pressure on accounts that regard our visual experiences as constituted by relations to external facts, as well as those accounts that assimilate our visual experience to pictures.

Second Paris-Nancy PhilMath Workshop

November 17-19, 2010, Paris

This is the second in an annual series of workshops on the philosophy of mathematics organized by a team of scholars from Paris, Nancy and elsewhere in France. The three-day meeting will feature both invited and contributed talks. The invited speakers, who have confirmed their participation, are:

- Patricia Blanchette (Notre Dame University)
- Jacques Bouveresse (Collège de France, Paris)
- John Burgess (Princeton University)
- Gabrielle Crocco (University of Provence, Aix-Marseille)
- Gilles Dowek (Ecole Polytechnique, Paris)
- Ignasi Jané (University of Barcelona)

Call for papers

Submissions of full-text papers are invited in the philosophy of mathematics for presentation at the workshop as one of six contributed talks. The languages of the workshop are English and French. Presentations should be no longer than 45 minutes, and will be followed by 30 minutes of discussion. In particular younger scholars and graduate students working on their dissertations are encouraged to submit, as the workshop provides them with an opportunity to discuss their work with experts from around the world. The deadline for submission is August 31st. Receipt of submissions will be acknowledged by email. The Program Committee will evaluate all papers and announce its decisions by the end of September. The papers should be sent by email in DOC, RTF, or PDF format to the following address: Marco.Panza@univ-paris1.fr

Steering Committee: M. van Atten, D. Bonnay, G. Crocco, J. Dubucs, S. Gandon, G. Heinzmann, P. Mancosu, S. Shapiro, I. Smadja.

Program Committee: A. Arana, M. Detlefsen, B. Halimi, P. Nabonnand, M. Panza, J.-J. Szczeciniarz, S. Walsh

Local Organizing Committee: M. Panza, P. Cardon, M. Detlefsen, A. Rodin, J.-J. Szczeciniarz.

Schedule

Call for papers: June 10st

Deadline for submission of papers: August 31st

Notification of acceptance: September 30st

Support: Chaire d’excellence ANR (senior) Michael Detlefsen.

Jean Nicod Prize 2010 : Tyler Burge

Tyler Burge (University of California, LA) was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize (2010). The Jean Nicod Prize winner will give 4 conferences in a few days in Paris. (More details here).

(Photo : T. Burge, on the right, with Jerry Fodor. Source : Alan Chalmers.)

Journée à la mémoire de Marie-Claude Lorne

L'IHPST organise une journée à la mémoire de Marie-Claude Lorne. Une brève présentation de ses travaux et de sa vie, et des hommages peuvent être lus ici et ici.

Chimpanzees : learning and language

PRESTIGE AND LEARNING

Here is the abstract of a very interesting article written by Victoria Horner1, Darby Proctor1, Kristin E. Bonnie, Andrew Whiten, Frans B. M. de Waal, about some social aspects in learning, for chimp. The (free access) article can be read here : Prestige Affects Cultural Learning in Chimpanzees.

Humans follow the example of prestigious, high-status individuals much more readily than that of others, such as when we copy the behavior of village elders, community leaders, or celebrities. This tendency has been declared uniquely human, yet remains untested in other species. Experimental studies of animal learning have typically focused on the learning mechanism rather than on social issues, such as who learns from whom. The latter, however, is essential to understanding how habits spread. Here we report that when given opportunities to watch alternative solutions to a foraging problem performed by two different models of their own species, chimpanzees preferentially copy the method shown by the older, higher-ranking individual with a prior track-record of success. Since both solutions were equally difficult, shown an equal number of times by each model and resulted in equal rewards, we interpret this outcome as evidence that the preferred model in each of the two groups tested enjoyed a significant degree of prestige in terms of whose example other chimpanzees chose to follow. Such prestige-based cultural transmission is a phenomenon shared with our own species. If similar biases operate in wild animal populations, the adoption of culturally transmitted innovations may be significantly shaped by the characteristics of performers.



LANGUAGE

It is believed that language is the privilege of the human species. Well, this belief may be wrong :

Mirror Neurons observed in human action.

In Current Biology, a nice study of mirror-neurons (about mirror neurons). Mirror-neurons were directly observed in certain species of primates, but not in humans. Here is a study that shows, as believed previously to this experiment, that mirror-neurons fire when a human acts and when he/she observes another human acting : Single-Neuron Responses in Humans during Execution and Observation of Actions.