Dans le débat portant sur la définition de la santé mentale, trois grandes approches peuvent être distinguées : l’approche normativiste (Szasz, Sarbin), l’approche naturaliste (Boorse) et l’approche hybride (Wakefield). Cet article vise à nuancer cette classification en clarifiant en quel sens Boorse, le représentant de l’approche naturaliste, peut être rangé dans cette catégorie. La conception de Boorse est beaucoup plus critique à l’égard de l’entreprise psychiatrique que ce qui est habituellement admis et les similarités entre Boorse et l’approche normativiste, quant à elles, sont beaucoup plus importantes.

In the Optics, Descartes claims that telescopes and microscopes lead to morally certain knowledge. It is unclear, however, that Descartes’s expressed confidence in these instruments is warranted. In this article, I show how a limited range of telescope and microscope observations could lead to morally certain knowledge for Descartes, and how observations beyond this range admit of enough reasonable doubt to undermine moral certainty. I also explain moral certainty as a form of knowledge in Descartes’s scientific practices, his epistemic commitment to optical instruments, and I offer an explanation for why Descartes never used optical instruments in his scientific endeavours.

Dans cet article, nous nous demandons quelles sont les raisons de la distinction et de l’opposition établies par Hegel entre le doute et le scepticisme antique dans son essai de 1802 et dans quelle mesure ce point de vue est original. L’article montre que cette séparation se fonde sur l’attribution au sceptique d’une certitude de sa négation et que cette attribution se révèle à travers l’interprétation hégélienne du rapport entre Pyrrhonisme et Nouvelle Académie, d’une part, et d’autre part du Parménide de Platon.

Nous effectuons dans cet article un survol des dangers liés à certaines représentations des phénomènes épigénétiques lors de la formulation de recommandations sociales et médicales. Après avoir exploré les représentations de l’épigénétique dans différents ouvrages de vulgarisation et discours médiatiques, nous critiquons certaines des conclusions susceptibles d’émerger de tels discours qui peuvent paraître prématurées. Nous insistons en particulier sur les enjeux relevant de la responsabilité parentale —notamment celle des femmes — quant à la transmission de marqueurs épigénétiques. Enfin, nous proposons quelques considérations épistémologiques concernant la biologie du développement qui viennent nuancer la portée des discours concernant une éventuelle responsabilité épigénétique. Une telle clarification est susceptible, selon nous, de lever plusieurs difficultés relatives à la compréhension des recherches en épigénétique ainsi qu’à leur application éventuelle hors du champ scientifique.

Philosophers speak of ‘what it’s like to’ have an experience without taking account of how semantically various the phrase is. ‘Blindsight’ visual perception lacks detail.

Hegel has a metacritical standpoint that can be related to but not reduced to the Herderian metacritique. Hegel’s philosophical language must not be understood in terms of the opposition between an ‘absolute’ and a ‘finite’ language; rather, it must be understood in terms of the opposition between abstract and concrete language. At a theoretical level, concrete language cannot be understood without assuming an organic function of memory. At the practical level, the difference between abstract and concrete language will be understood as the difference between everyday language and a philosophical one. Hegel justifies this last difference by following Humboldtian standpoints.

(i) God is omniscient; therefore, for any change, C, among particulars, God knows the occurrence of C. (ii) If God knows the occurrence of C, then X. (iii) not-X. It is clear that the set of propositions (i)—(iii) is inconsistent. This is the general form of two problems—which I call the ‘problem of change in knowledge’ (PCK) and the ‘problem of change in essence’ (PCE)—for Avicenna concerning God’s knowledge of particulars. No work in the secondary literature has discussed exactly what PCK and PCE are. In this paper, I will clarify exactly what they are.

This paper identifies a puzzle that emerges when recent work on the suspension of judgement is integrated with evidentialist solutions to the wrong kind of reasons problem: it looks like there is no such thing as a reason to suspend judgement. Two possible responses to this puzzle are considered: one recharacterizes the suspension of judgement as a mental action, and the other recharacterizes it as a second-order attitude. It is argued that these responses sidestep the puzzle only with unacceptable compromise to the view of suspension of judgement.

According to Kant, there is some doctrine, which he sometimes calls ‘empirical realism,’ such that it was doubted by Descartes, denied by Berkeley, and endorsed by Kant himself. The primary aim of this paper will be to reconstruct Kant’s own narrative of the historical relationship between Descartes, Berkeley, and himself, in order to identify the doctrine Kant calls ‘empirical realism.’ I argue that the empirical realism that Descartes doubted, Berkeley denied, and Kant endorsed is the doctrine that the concept of extended substance has legitimate application.

Dans cet article, nous nous efforcerons de comprendre un phénomène mis en lumière par Michel Foucault dans les tomes 2 et 3 de son Histoire de la sexualité : celui de la tendance à la valorisation du «vieil âge» au cours de la période du Haut Empire romain, tendance illustrée notamment par la représentation stoïcienne, et plus particulièrement sénéquienne, de la vieillesse. Cette représentation positive agit chez Sénèque à la fois comme point focal et pôle d’attraction d’une existence placée toute entière sous l’égide des pratiques d’auto-édification de soi, pour celui qui s’efforce de convertir le matériau brut de sa propre vie en œuvre d’art. Au-delà de la lecture foucaldienne du phénomène, nous montrerons que la représentation du vieil âge dans le stoïcisme tardif signale un effort intellectuel et éthique censé activer un autre cours du temps à rebours de la temporalité habituelle de la déliquescence, vécue comme une douloureuse et inexorable dissolution de l’être.

This paper explores the idea of robust discursive equality on which respect-based conceptions of justificatory reciprocity often draw. I distinguish between formal and substantive discursive equality and argue that if justificatory reciprocity requires that people be accorded formally equal discursive standing, robust discursive equality should not be construed as requiring standing that is equal substantively, or in terms of its discursive purchase. Still, robust discursive equality is purchase sensitive: it does not obtain when discursive standing is impermissibly unequal in purchase. I then showcase different candidate conceptions of purchase justice, and draw conclusions about the substantive commitments of justificatory reciprocity.

Le but de cet article est de proposer un examen de l’ontologie matérielle de Franz Brentano. Nous soutenons ici la thèse selon laquelle Brentano défend un type original de monisme. Ce monisme peut être vu comme la conjonction de trois théories : le réisme (la thèse selon laquelle il n’existe que des choses individuelles concrètes), le monisme de priorité (la thèse selon laquelle il n’y a qu’une seule substance) et le super-substantialisme (la thèse selon laquelle cette substance est l’espace).

David Miller argues that national identity is indispensable for the successful functioning of a liberal democracy. National identity makes important contributions to liberal democratic institutions, including creating incentives for the fulfilment of civic duties, facilitating deliberative democracy, and consolidating representative democracy. Thus, a shared identity is indispensable for liberal democracy and grounds a good claim for self-determination. Because Miller’s arguments appeal to the instrumental values of a national culture, I call his argument ‘instrumental value’ arguments. In this paper, I examine the instrumental value arguments and show that they fail to justify a group’s right to self-determination.

In Mind and World, John McDowell claims that we need to steer our way between bald naturalism and rampant platonism as two ways to explain our capacity to use concepts. Performing this task requires an explanation of how concepts can be both socially charged and, at the same time, genuinely involving the world as it really is. I suggest that McDowell’s explanation is insufficient and that Wilfrid Sellars’s idea of sense impressions might be used to clarify the relationship between social practices and conceptual knowledge without incurring too much damage to the overall architectonics of McDowell’s theory.

Kant often compares reason to an organized body, which suggests that reason should be understood as a whole from which all possible uses of the faculties of reason are derived. However, Kant does not elaborate his conception of the whole of reason. Nor does the secondary literature. This paper suggests that the wholeness of reason is the apodictic modality of reason, i.e., the necessary standard that determines what can systematically belong to reason, and thus works as the systematic condition for all possible uses of the faculties of reason. This necessary standard is the discipline of pure reason.

Consider two epistemically possible worlds that are as similar as can be, except that atheism is true in one world and theism is true in the other world. Which world is it rational to prefer? I explore the strongest defence of the somewhat counterintuitive claim that it is rational to prefer the atheistic world. I also discuss the opposite conclusion, namely, that it’s rational to prefer the theistic world. Surprisingly, my conclusion is that it’s difficult to tell whether to prefer theism or atheism overall.

Cet article propose deux arguments principaux. D’abord, que la théorie égalitariste de la justice en éducation non-seulement englobe, mais supporte la théorie suffisantiste, et donc que le débat égalitarisme/suffisantisme — du moins celui qui a cours entre Brighouse et Swift d’une part et Anderson et Satz d’autre part — n’a pas lieu d’être. Ensuite, que l’application qu’opèrent Brighouse et Swift de leur propre théorie est excessive — quant aux choix parentaux et quant à ce qu’ils considèrent comme étant des comportements partiaux illégitimes.

According to the dispositional theory of meaning and content, what a speaker means by an expression is determined by her dispositions to use it. The literature contains two well-known objections against this theory: the problem of finitude and the problem of error. In his book Meaning and Normativity, Allan Gibbard propounds a novel defence against these objections. In this paper, I argue that Gibbard’s suggestions fail to save the dispositional theory. Moreover, I argue that Gibbard’s deflationary view about facts prevents him from saying anything about the property of meaning that would hold any interest for a naturalist.

One of the main problems that Paul Horwich’s Minimalist theory of truth must face is the generalization problem, which shows that Minimalism is too weak to have the fundamental explanatory role Horwich claims it has. In this paper, I defend Horwich’s response to the generalization problem from an objection raised by Bradley Armour-Garb. I also argue that, given my response to Armour-Garb, Horwich’s proposal to cope with the generalization problem can be simplified.

In this paper, I introduce the articles contained in this special issue, and I briefly explain some of the main arguments presented in my book A Conceptual Investigation of Justice. A central claim in my book is that a verbal and yet also philosophically substantial disagreement over the word ‘justice’ lies at the heart of a number of issues in contemporary political philosophy. Over the course of introducing my book’s arguments and the commentaries in this issue, I also offer an account of what it means for a dispute to be verbal, but not merely verbal.