Articles
“Elements of a Structural Analysis of the Event of the 11th of September 2001”, 2024
2024
“Machines and Us: The Comparison of Machines and Humans at the Test of the Problematic of Solipsism”, Normativity & Normativity of Art, Balkan Analytic Forum, Vol. 1, 2024.
The first objective of this article is to propose a reflexion about the limits of the comparison or analogy or metaphor between humans and machines. This comparison which runs through the history of European philosophy (Aristotle, 1995, 1253b23; Descartes, 2006, pp. 157–159; Onfray de la Mettrie, 1996, 3–39; Kant, 2007, §65; Lewis, 1934, p. 144; Sartre, 2003, p. 248; Wittgenstein, 1947, Ts-229, 448), is basic for functionalism, and central for the development of medical sciences. For the distinction between parts of living bodies, in particular, between organs, involves the consideration of distinct and mutually compatible biological ends, whose coordinated functioning together renders satisfaction possible. However, although the affirmation of the comparability of these two types of cases is not problematic as such, the affirmation of the identity or indistinctness of these relations is not without posing problems, whether conceptual or practical. If humans are under some aspects like machines and inversely, as some tasks are realizable by humans or machines, another thing is to suppose affirming that humans are machines, or that machines are humans (see C. I. Lewis, 1934). The stake of this point is considerable, for its range is not only the literality of the personification involved by the humanization or biologization of machines as robots (for we are not surprised by saying that such robot sweeps, achieves actions, smiles), but also that the depersonification involved by the machinization or metaphorical dehumanization of humans (whether to express an appreciation of the realization of a task by a person or to express the horror and the inhumanity, the absence of emotions involved by the realization of an action by a person). But its range also concerns: the extension of our concept of autonomy, the asymmetry of our relations to rules, principles, laws, of humans and machines, and in fact to a stronger extent our concept of relation. The question is thus whether this comparison, pertinent under some aspects in some contexts for certain ends, could have been adequate, turned out not be a comparison at all, such that the metaphorical could have become in such cases, literal. This affirmation could have seemed entirely incompatible with new possibilities of liberation rendered possible by technological innovations. In reality that is not the case since these possibilities are understood as such against the background of precedent possibilities. The problem we then shall pose is the following: to which extent does the comparison or metaphor or analogy of human machine render possible the necessarily nonrestrictive limits of intelligibility? What are the limits of this comparison? To which extent does the recourse to this comparison turn out beneficial? To contribute to the resolution of this problem, I shall propose to put the comparison between machines and us and of us with machines at the test of the problematic of solipsism. To achieve this task, I present the criticism made by Lewis of solipsism (1934), and then present Turing’s critical reconception of solipsism (1950). I then attempt to establish the way in which Wittgenstein, with his criticism of solipsism (1953), functionalism, and reductionism, solves the problems encountered by the conceptions of solipsism of Turing and Lewis.
“Description, Language, Other Minds, Reduction, and Phenomenology”, Philosophy Study, 134, Vol. 13, No. 9, 395-408, December 2023.
How to think a unique and determinative turn in analytic philosophy of mind? To answer this question this article first presents an attempt to render clear that analytic phenomenology, by contrast with conceptions of phenomenology of the XXth century, beneficially dispenses with several methodological and conceptual assumptions that were assumed to be compulsory, as phenomenological reduction, a notion of synthesis, and a philosophical notion of the a priori. It then presents some eventual difficulties to the achievement of a phenomenological turn within analytic philosophy, which are, the neglect of historicity, abstractionism, the acknowledgement of the place of language in our lives, and solipsism. It finally presents several demands that concern the felicity of contemporary analytic phenomenologies, namely, anti-abstractionism, fallibilism, attention to polyadic relations, and the integration of ecological and decolonial concerns of our cultures.
“The Notion of Negative Fact in the Early Works of Russell and Wittgenstein”, 44th International Wittgenstein Symposium: 100 Years Tractatus, Österreichische Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft, Edited by Alois Pichler, Esther Heinrich-Ramharter, and Friedrich Stadler, no. XXIX, 589-597, 2023.
This paper consists in a comparative study of the notions of negative fact in the early works of Russell and Wittgenstein. How to account for our ability to think both that it is false that what is not the case is the case and incorrect to think that it is true that what is not the case is the case? Are the truth and the correctness of such thoughts and of their expressions meant to be insured by the existence of negative facts? Or do we need to think of negative facts differently? In his early works, Russell argues not only that negative facts exist, but also that the philosophical problem they suffice to solve is real. While in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein dissolves the philosophical problem by letting the superfluity and misleadingness of the affirmation of the existence of negative facts be seen as such.
“Autonomy, Constitutivity, Exemplars, Paradigms”, Conversations: the Journal of Cavellian Studies, 10, 2023.
This paper proposes an exploration of relationships and exchanges between the philosophies of Cavell and Kuhn by the study of aspects of the philosophy of Wittgenstein. Although the notions of language games and family resemblances used by Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions have been elaborated by Wittgenstein, Cavell’s reading of Wittgenstein inspired that of Kuhn. I will attempt to show that against this background, Cavell’s conception of the relations of arts, works of arts, and artists, can be relevantly compared to Kuhn’s conception of the relations of sciences, scientific successes, and scientific practitioners. Three ways of elucidating the mutual exchanges between Cavell and Kuhn may be distinguished: One consists in clarifying the ways in which Cavell and Kuhn explicitly mutually inspired each other. Another one consists in clarifying that Cavell’s Wittgenstein inspired Kuhn. And a third one consists in clarifying that Wittgenstein inspired both Kuhn and Cavell and the ways in which he inspired them. This third way is not exclusive of the first two and even contributes to these by rendering explicit their stakes. For at stake is not only the restitution of the truth of an exegetical mediation: that Kuhn’s Wittgenstein cannot be truly understood without accounting for Cavell’s Wittgenstein. Rather the transitive character of the mediation implied by interpretation does not substitute for the intransitive character of a thoroughly philosophical inheritance. It is not the case that because Kuhn was inspired by Cavell who was inspired by Wittgenstein, that Kuhn could be inspired only by Cavell’s Wittgenstein, and not by Wittgenstein. Further, the question is not only philological but philosophical if we take into account the methods and the philosophy of Wittgenstein. To use an image: that a path was indicated by someone to someone else could not have implied that what was indicated by a person to another was oneself; this much was already known to us with the old fable of the moon, the finger and the sage. With this paper I will thus first seek to establish the relevance of the comparison of Cavell’s conception of the relations of arts, works of arts, and artists with Kuhn’s conception of the relations of sciences, scientific successes, and scientific practitioners. Then I will attempt to render explicit the unrestrictive limits of this comparison both to account for the mutual exchanges between Cavell and Kuhn and consider or bring out some symmetries and asymmetries concerning the place of paradigms in sciences and arts.
“Le Solipsisme dans L’être et le néant” in L’être et le néant. Nouvelles lectures, Les Belles Lettres, 2015.
“Renoncer à l’esprit de sérieux: Valeur et Responsabilité dans L’être et le néant” in Situations de Sartre, Hermann, 2013.
Reviews
Review of Wittgenstein’s Metaphilosophy by Paul Horwich (Oxford University Press, 2012) with Rupert Read, Philosophy, xv+225pp., ISBN-10: 019966112X; ISBN-13: 978-0199661121, Oxford University Press, 2012.
Review of Qu’est-ce que l’intentionalité ? (Vrin, 2012) by Valérie Aucouturier (Université Saint-Louis, Bruxelles), Implications Philosophiques (Philosophical Commitments), January 2013.
Editorial
“‘Post-Truth’?”, with Rupert Read, Nordic Wittgenstein Review, July 2019.
Translations
(Unpublished) “Le Test de Turing”, “Turing’s test”, excerpt from “Brains in a vat”, Reason, Truth and History, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 8-12, 2018.
“How is it possible to make one see images in a dream ?” Letters 8 and 9 from the correspondence between Augustine and Nebridius” by Emmanuel Bermon, Augustiniana 67 (1-2), 73-99, 2017.
With H. Wagner (Bordeaux Montaigne University – SPH), “The Sense of Justice. A Realistic Utopia ?” by Céline Spector (Bordeaux Montaigne – SPH, IUF).
Edition
“Post-Truth”, with Rupert Read, a special issue of the Nordic Wittgenstein Review, 2019.
Wittgenstein and Phenomenology, with Oskari Kuusela and Mihai Ometiță, Routledge, 2018.
Editorial Assistance for Stoïcisme et lien social by Valéry Laurand (Bordeaux Montaigne University), éditions Classiques Garnier, 2014.
Unpublished (Pre-Prints Available on Demand)
“Colonialism, Legitimation, and Violence”
“Ecocide and Extractivism”
“La critique du solipsisme dans le Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus de Wittgenstein” – “The Criticism of Solipsism in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus of Wittgenstein”
“Lewis and Friedman on the A Priori”
Doctoral and Master Thesis
Ph.D Dissertation: “The Issue of Solipsism in the Early Works of Sartre and Wittgenstein”, 2016.
Master Dissertation: “Indicible et Expérience: La Question des Limites du Langage chez Nietzsche et Wittgenstein”, 2008.