Bad news for Kant's Aesthetics

My paper about Aesthetic Realism and normative aesthetic judgments, written with Florian Cova, is published. Abstract and extract are available on The Monist's website.

The Crisis in Education

We are in a multi-crisis world according to experts. Our civilization is in crisis. Civilization is failing because education is also in crisis -a chain of crisis, so to speak-. Values are no longer respected and kids are disoriented. Knowledge is being taken over by specialized skills, and many things that were known and considered the pillars of humanity are being forgotten. Wisdom is obsolete, nobody seeks nowadays to develop his/her soul and to find peace of mind. Habits are battled away by the constant changes and enormous leaps in civilization, i.e., those who learned a set of essential habits to live and appreciate the world as it was don't understand anymore and can't live in the new

Parutions du recueil "La Philosophie expérimentale"

Les éditions Vuibert font paraître un volume de recueil d'articles sur la philosophie expérimentale : Dutant, J., Machery, E., Knobe, J., Nahmias, E., Cova, F., Nichols, S., (eds) (2011), La Philosophie expérimentale. Paris : Vuibert. 

J'ai traduit l'article de Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, et Turner : L'incompatibilisme est-il intuitif ?

3 philosophy papers (2 published and 1 to be published)

1 chapter accepted and published:

• Pain, N. (2011), Mathematical Platonism, in Bruce, M. & Barbone, S. (eds), Just the Arguments: 100 of the Most Important Arguments in Western Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, 373-375.

 






 
1 paper accepted and published:

• Pain, N. (2011), Le coût de l'argument de l'indispensabilité des mathématiques, Répha, 3.

1 paper accepted and to be published:

• Cova, F. & Pain, N. (2012), Can folk aesthetics ground aesthetic realism (draft)? The Monist.

CALL FOR PAPERS: From Practice to Results in Logic and Mathematics

Philosophia Scientiae invites contributions for the following special topic: From Practice to Results in Logic and Mathematics. Thematic issue of Philosophia Scientiae 16/1 (February 2012)

Guest editors: Valeria Giardino, Amirouche Moktefi, Sandra Mols, and Jean Paul Van Bendegem

Submission Deadline: March 20, 2011 (extended deadline)
Acceptance Notification: June 1st, 2011

The PratiScienS research group, in collaboration with Prof. Jean Paul Van Bendegem, invites the submission of articles for a thematic issue of the journal Philosophia Scientiae dedicated to the role of practices in the establishment of results in logic and mathematics.

We look for papers on how the concrete practices of mathematicians and logicians may influence the results of their enquiries and, more broadly, the definition of what counts as proof. We are also interested in papers proposing a methodological reflection on the difficulties that a critical analysis of such practices in logic and mathematics implies, and on issues related to the development of the appropriate exploratory conceptual tools. Case studies are welcome, though authors should make explicit what they consider as practices and how their papers are related to the practice-focused theme of this issue of Philosophia Scientiae.

We are also strongly interested in papers linking the issue’s theme with that at the core of PratiScienS, that is, the issue of practices in their relations with the construction and validation of scientific knowledge. Therefore, we are also looking for this special issue for papers discussing practices and results in logic and mathematics in relation with PratiScienS’s main research topics: the "Wimsatt-like" concept of robustness, the role of tacit aspects, and the contingency vs. inevitability issue, as in the case of mathematics and logic.

Manuscripts should be submitted in English or French, and prepared for anonymous peer review. Abstracts in French and English (200-300 words) should be included.

Guidelines for authors are to be found on the journal’s website.

Papers should be sent by e-mail to Valeria Giardino: Valeria.Giardino@ens.fr

For more information on the PratiScienS group, its research themes and its activities, please visit its website.

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.

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.

The Epistemological Argument against Mathematical Platonism

An amended version of my "epistemological argument against mathematical platonism" (forthcoming in Bruce & Barbone, Just the Argument : 100 of the most important Arguments in Western Philosophy, Blackwell) can be read here : draft.

Une somme en français sur le darwinisme contemporain

Les Mondes darwiniens (Syllepses, 2009, 30 euros), sous la direction de Thomas Heams, Philippe Huneman, Guillaume Lecointre, Marc Silberstein, est une somme sur le darwinisme contemporain, y compris bien sûr les aspects théoriques fondamentaux (fonction, variation, espèce, etc), mais aussi l'enseignement de la théorie de l'évolution, le débat entre le créationnisme et le darwinisme, l'application du paradigme darwinien à d'autres champs de recherche (morale, éthique, linguistique, sciences humaines, etc). Une cinquantaine d'auteurs ont participé à la réalisation de cet ouvrage, indispensable pour tous les chercheurs et les étudiants travaillant sur des questions liées plus ou moins directement au darwinisme.

Notez que le livre est accompagné par un site intéressant : lesmondesdarwiniens, et que Florian Cova a réalisé un compte-rendu du livre sur NonFiction.

Aesthetic Realism is doomed

Voici le papier que Florian Cova et moi allons prononcer à l'Université de Louvain-la-Neuve, le 29 avril 2010, pour le colloque Arts en valeur : Le sens commun peut-il fonder le réalisme esthétique ? Enjoy !

Le Philosophe dans la Cité, Florian Cova et moi

Florian Cova et moi avons publié sur le site Philosophe dans la Cité. Il a fourni un intéressant article d'introduction à la philosophie morale dans la tradition analytique. Et j'ai proposé un article sur la manière dont Bouveresse interprète le postmodernisme et le post-structuralisme dans Rationalité et Cynisme.

Le Philosophe dans la Cité propose des documents remarquables, notamment le tout récent "La société et l'État chez Marx et Honneth" (Julien Rajaoson), ou des tables rondes (sur Entre d'eux, le 15 mai 2010, dans l'Amphithéâtre Guizot de la Sorbonne, avec l'auteur Céline Huot, et Laura-Maï Gaveriaux), etc. Mais aussi un blog, une École, des réflexions sur l'art et la littérature... Bref, un site très complet à découvrir.

Robert Sapolsky on the uniqueness of humans

Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist, is giving a lecture about the uniqueness of humans.



Discovered at OpenCulture.

Descartes and his missing letters

A letter written by Descartes to Father Mersenne has been recently discovered. A very interesting letter indeed, because it is about the effects of censorship. All the story here.

DSM-V and debates about what is a mental disorder

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a manual of Psychiatry published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), is due in 2013. But, if you are interested in this topic, you can have a look at the APA website, where drafts of the articles (initial versions) written by the DSM-V group can be read and commented upon (until April 2010). The originality of the DSM is the fact that it does not only describe disorders, it gives the criteria to identify each disorder and a diagnosis. The definition of what is a mental disorder is at the core of this enterprise, and is the topic of many debate about the DSM.

The third version, the DSM-III (1980), was strongly orientated by an operationalist definition of what is a mental disorder. Spitzer and Endicott (DSM-III's editors) were influenced by the work of C. Hempel in Philosophy of Science. According to this approach, in order to define what is a mental disorder, we only need the experimental procedures which enable us to tell the conditions through which the concept can be applied. If we want to define what is cerebral activity, we only need to say that a subject has a cerebral activity iff, linked to encephalograph, we see indications of his brain activities on an encephalogramm. The authors tried to define mental disorder according to the operationalist approach. Of course, the main points of this strategy were to avoid any circular definition based on normality and to use the means provides by an empirical approach. As Spitzer said, mental illnesses are subcategories of medical disorders.

Wakefield, in his famous 1992 paper, shows that the DSM-III's idea of mental illness is at its core fonctionalist and not at all operationalist, by reinterpretating the whole definition in fonctionalist terms. He holds an hybrid position, which takes into account 1) harm and sufferings according to social value and 2) dysfunction, based in evolutionary theory. Wakefield's remarks were taken into account by the committee of specialists of mental health who enclosed a clinical criterion among the official criteria to define mental illness in the DSM-IV ("distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning"), published in 1994.

So, what's new in the DSM-V ? 5 criteria are featured to define mental illness. Here they are :

1. A behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual.
2. The consequences of which are clinically significant distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning).
3. Must not be merely an expectable response to common stressors and losses (for example, the loss of a loved one) or a culturally sanctioned response to a particular event (for example, trance states in religious rituals).
4. That reflects an underlying psychobiological dysfunction.
5. That is not primarily a result of social deviance or conflicts with society.

First, the emphasis on the biological nature of a mental disorder is obvious (criterion 4), and is absent from the DSM-IV (here are the criteria of the DSM-IV). Second, the etiology is more and more evacuated from the criteria. Compare : "Is associated with present distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom", in the DSM-IV, and "The consequences of which are clinically significant distress;(e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning)" in the DSM-V. The notion of risk (for the present distress or the disability to be the cause of death and pain) has disappeared. Third, the intensity of pain is taken into account into the DSM-V, which was not in the DSM-IV. Compare : "present distress" in the DSM-IV and "clinically significant distress" in the DSM-V. No universal scale is needed for this kind of scale. To be clinically significant, the scale is standardized by the patient himself.

Of course, all the anti-rationalists and all the anti-naturalists in the field of Psychiatry will be infuriated by the publication of the DSM-V. And it is not difficult to see why. I suppose that, as always, anti-DSM will state that the DSM-V is the product of the Western thought, that it holds a dogmatic approach, that it cannot account for behavior and disorder in non-Western areas of the World, and that it mixes up social features and behavioral syndromes. I wonder how long will they use the ineffective sophism of the origin to address the DSM. I wonder how long will they use old data (the debate about the presence of homosexuality in the DSM-II, in the 1960's and 1970's) to produce relevant, up-to-date and fruitful critics.


See also :
An article, by Anna Lieti, in Le Temps (19 février 2010) : "Tous des malades mentaux".
Wakefield, J. C, 1992, “The Concept of Mental Disorder: On the Boundary Between Biological Facts and Social Values.” American Psychologist 47:(3) 373–88.
Mental illness (SEP)

Philosophy and Human Evolution. Is it right to Clone a Neandertal ?

As it is shown in "Should we clone neandertals", we are facing a unique moment in the human history : the possibility to give a second chance to an old relative of ours, Homo neandertalensis, is within our reach. In the article, the author, Zach Zorich, analyses several issues concerning this possibility : biological, ethical and legal.


First things first. How are we (Homo sapiens) related to Homo neandertalensis ?

Our direct and common ancestor is Homo heidelbergensis, an extinct species of the genus Homo, who lived less than 1 million years ago. Sometimes in the last 450 000 years, Homo neandertalis appeared and became distinct from Homo heidelbergensis. Neandertals may have disappeared 35 000 years ago. The modern Homo sapiens may have appeared 160 000 years ago and is now the only living species of the genus Homo.


Why re-create Neandertals ?

Scientists have two reasons :

1. Knowledge : the more we know about Homo neandertalensis, the more we know about Homo sapiens. By re-creating a Neandertal, we can have the answers of many questions concerning our species and the genus Homo : Did all the members of Homo possess language ? (The fact that Homo neandertalensis possess the genetic ability -he possess the gene FOXP2-  is not a sufficient for having a language -birds have FOXP2 too-.) Were all members of Homo able to produce highly sophisticated reasonings ? Who was the smarter ? And so on.
2. Therapy : If Homo neandertalensis is sufficiently distinct from us, he may be immunized to Homo sapiens specific diseases, such as HIV, Polio... Neandertals cells would be use to find cure, through gene treatments.

How can we re-create Neandertals ?

If the author asks the question "Should we Clone Neandertals ?", it is because he is taking seriously the latest technical progress, which put in our hands the very possibility to do so. According to the author, there are several possibilities : altering the DNA of the Neandertals to make it compatible with a living human cell (but this would required, according to George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, "10 million changes to make a modern human genome match the Neanderthal genome") ; transfering the DNA of the Neandertal in an donor egg, from which the cell's genetic material has been removed (but most frequently, the cell dies) ; creating stem cells that have Neandertals' DNA, and, from the state of pluripotency of the cell, creating parts of a body or a living Neandertal. And it is highly probable that this last solution may work.

Are the reasons to clone Neandertals sufficient to do so ?

The author shows several arguments against the cloning of a Neandertal. For Bernard Rollin, a bioethicist and professor of philosophy at Colorado State University, it would be unfair to put a human into an environnment in which he does not belong. That is precisely why scientists considered the possibility to clone not only one, but a group of Neandertals, and the possibility to re-create their entire environnment. But is it right ?

For Lori Andrews, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, the fact that the Neandertal has access to human rights will automatically undermined the reasons why he has been created. Well, if cloning a Neandertal is not a paradox, I am no philosopher. From a scientific, medical, and legal point of view, if a Neandertal is cloned, since he has access to every human rights, he cannot be experimented upon and studied according to the willing of the scientists. Thus the reason why scientists want the Neandertal to be cloned is the cause that he can neither be the object of scientific and medical experimentations. Even the success or the failing of the cloning is a paradox : from a legal and ethical point of view, if we succeed to clone a Neandertal, then, since he has immediate access to human rights, it is not right. But if the cloning fails, since he has immediate access to human rights, he is the victim of a murder.

This is why the alleged-reasons are not sufficient. But, since a mammoth is currently being cloned or will soon be, some scientists do not see why we should not clone a Neandertal...