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.

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.

Paleontology is hot

Two important discoveries were made recently in Paleontology. Both are described in the lastest online issue of Nature. The first is all about the presence of the first tetrapod on earth : it seems they appeared 20 millions years before when we thought they had (400 millions and not 380 millions years before today). The second is about the discovery of a new human species, in Siberia, who share a common ancestor (homo erectus) with homo neandertalis and homo sapiens, and migrated before homo heidelbergensis, the ancestor of homo neandertalis, from Africa (between 300 000 and 500 000 years ago).

1) Tetrapod : an article in french (La Recherche) and a video on Nature.
2) New human species : Nature.

Both are really worth seeing and reading !

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.

Paraconsistent Foundations of Mathematics : a weblog.

Paraconsistent Foundations for Mathematics is a new blog created for a new project at the University of Melbourne. The project is under the direction of Pr. Graham Priest, Ass. Pr. Greg Restall, and a research associate Francesco Berto. Zach Weber is the author of the blog. I am looking forward to read the next posts !

(Introduction to Paraconsistent Logic.)