En prenant l'article "Certitude" pour point focal, on veut donner à voir comment Diderot a su rassembler toute la puissance critique de l’Encyclopédie pour bousculer les certitudes de ses contemporains. Une lecture attentive de l’article permettra de voir comment Diderot se livre une composition singulière faite de pièces empruntées à des autorités. On verra ensuite que Diderot fissure lui-même ce collage en le mettant en dialogue avec des éléments externes selon une méthode sophistiquée de renvois à d’autres articles de (...) l’Encyclopédie ou à d’autres textes de collaborateurs du dictionnaire. (shrink)

Quasi-realists aspire to accommodate core features of ordinary normative thought and discourse in an expressivist framework. One apparent such feature is that we can be more or less confident in our normative judgments—they vary in credence. Michael Smith has argued that quasi-realists cannot plausibly accommodate these distinctions simply because they understand normative judgments as desires, but desires lack the structure needed to distinguish these three features. Existing attempts to meet Smith’s challenge have accepted Smith’s presupposition that the way to meet (...) the challenge is to show that normative judgments have more structure than they initially seem to have. I argue that accepting this presupposition is accepting too much. The orthodox view of certitude, insofar as there is one, understands certitude very roughly in terms of counterfactual betting behaviour. Counterfactual betting behaviour, though, is not in any useful sense a structural feature of a given judgment. It is rather a more holistic feature of a given agent’s cognitive system. Insofar as it can meet the other challenges it faces, quasi-realism can characterize credences in terms of counterfactual betting behaviour and effectively say exactly what many realists will want to say about credences, thus meeting Smith’s challenge much more directly. (shrink)

Upon examining the manuscripts of the Foucault Archive at the BnF (2013), one can easily realize that Foucault’s interpretation of Descartes is but a simplified version of Heidegger’s own interpretation of Descartes. Indeed, Foucault, after Heidegger, tells us that there is a connection between Descartes’ Cogito and the Mathesis universalis, though this is nowhere to be found in Descartes' writings. These two contemporary philosophers criticize what they perceive in Descartes, namely the truth of subjectivity as certitude, and they consider (...) uneasiness (unrest, disquiet, Unruhe, Unheimlichkeit) as the affect that truly characterizes thinking. My paper traces the linkage between the Cogito and the Mathesis universalis in Heidegger and in Foucault. I evaluate their agreement with regards to their shared critic of the subject's certitude and the importance of uneasiness, or more specifically of historical uneasiness, as a means of defining subjectivity anew in the 20th century. I compare their respective understandings of the connection between the Cogito and the Mathesis universalis by reading well-known texts, as well as by examining the early writings of Heidegger (which have recently been published in the Gesamtausgabe) and the manuscripts of the Foucault Archive at the BnF, in order to delineate more precisely the conception of subjectivity that is at stake in their philosophy. (shrink)

The presence of Neoplatonism in contemporary french phenomenology has a pregnance that crosses its most relevant points. Jean-Luc Marion's work does not escape this. In this work we approach the marionian appropriation of Nicholas of Cusa's thought, in the light of his writing Certitudes négatives, with the intention of understanding the cusanu´s ignorant doctrine as a way of negative certainty. La presencia del neoplatonismo en la fenomenología francesa contemporánea posee una pregnancia que atraviesa sus puntos más relevantes. La obra de (...) Jean-Luc Marion no escapa a esto. En este trabajo abordamos la apropiación marioniana del pensamiento de Nicolás de Cusa, a la luz de su escrito Certitudes négatives, con la intención de comprender la doctrina ignorante del Cusano como un modo de certeza negativa. (shrink)

Death by neurological criteria has been at the center of ethical debates. I argue that brain death is a valid determination of death. This follows from an understanding that the brain is the effective integrator of the body and that following the death of the brain the body stops functioning as an integrated whole. Questions regarding this certainty have been reignited, however, by a study out of Yale that demonstrated synthetic perfusates, such as the compounds dubbed BrainEx and OrganEx, could (...) restore cellular and even organ function in a porcine body and brain after death. Through analyzing medical, scientific, and theological literature I argue that even in the face of developing scientific technology moral certitude in brain death determinations is secure. (shrink)

I’ve been both fascinated and distressed by the arguments raging over how best to respond to the covid-19 pandemic. In particular, I’ve been struck by the way people claim scientific authority for their confident assurances of what needs to be done. And I’m especially intrigued by the scorn they often lavish on those who hold differing views on what science is telling us. The heat generated by the resulting debates is strikingly similar to the heat generated by debates over the (...) science connected with human-caused climate change. And in both cases, the disputants too often presuppose indefensibly naïve views about scientific authority and certitude, apparently unaware that even the allegedly most obvious logical truths lack the certainty attributed to scientific authority in these debates. As a rule, I dislike re-circulating my Editorials, but I think it’s time to resurrect one (modestly tweaked) from a few years ago, addressing precisely this issue (Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 379–386, 2017). …………………………………… “Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.” --Oscar Wilde I’ve often noticed how debates within the SSE community sometimes parallel debates in the political arena, perhaps especially with respect to the passion they elicit and the intolerance and condescension sometimes lavished on members of the “opposition.” Occasionally, of course, the debates in the SSE are nearly indistinguishable from those in the political arena—say, over the evidence for human-caused climate change. But what I find most striking is how the passion, intolerance, etc.—perhaps most often displayed by those defending whatever the “received” view happens to be—betrays either a surprising ignorance or else a seemingly convenient lapse of memory, one that probably wouldn’t appear in less emotionally-charged contexts. What impassioned partisans tend to ignore or forget concerns (a) the tentative nature of both scientific pronouncements and knowledge claims generally (including matters ostensibly much more secure than those under debate), as well as (b) the extensive network of assumptions on which every knowledge claim rests. So I’d like to offer what I hope will be a perspective-enhancer, concerning how even our allegedly most secure and fundamental pieces of a priori knowledge are themselves open to reasonable debate. A widespread, but naïve, view of logic is that no rational person could doubt its elementary laws. But that bit of popular “wisdom” is demonstrably false. And if that’s the case, then so much the worse for the degree of certitude we can expect in more controversial arenas. Let me illustrate with a few examples.[1] [1] I’m indebted to Aune, 1970 for much of what follows. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Scientism, Certitude, and the Recovery of PoliticsChristopher Justin Brophy O.P.In Natural Law and Human Rights, Pierre Manent begins his analysis of the contemporary political situation by discussing the intractable tension between the relativism surrounding moral action and the absolutism surrounding "human rights." Later, drawing heavily from Aristotle's Politics, Manent discusses the necessity of a command-obey structure to resolve the tension such that human beings can fruitfully engage in (...) political life. These two claims, one about the tension between relativism and absolutism and the other about the command-obey structure, are closely linked. If it is true that human beings have an innate need for authority, then it is also the case that the extreme abuses of that need, as they manifest themselves in the political realm, will be either wholesale embrace of such authority (absolutism) or wholesale rejection (relativism). We should be clear that the authority Manent discusses is not arbitrary or autocratic exercise of power, but a legitimate authority towards which citizens can offer rational assent. But any human need or desire can be abused and knowledge of the abuses is necessary to understand the proper object.It is the contention of this piece that Manent, in his explication of command-obey, wrote better than he knew. Manent authored his text before the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, his analysis provides some of the best explanatory power for understanding the politics surrounding COVID. This politics has significance that transcends the particular crisis of the pandemic and merits serious attention. Specifically, Manent's analysis of the human need for a command-obey structure both offers an explanation for the concurrent tension between relativism and absolutism, at least as it pertains to the relationship between science and politics, and gives explanatory [End Page 239] power for the rise of scientism in contemporary society. The widespread conception that the natural sciences have the potential to answer questions that reside out of their proper purviews leads to abuses of authority in both directions, by both sides—the political left and political right. I will flesh out my argument first by showing the usefulness of Manent's analysis for explaining how easily so many in the United States fall prey to a false conception of "science" that undermines a healthy politics and reveals, at root, a dangerous aversion to ambiguity. I will then explain the implications of the elevation of scientism for the relationship between politics and Christianity. I will conclude with some reflections on the common good and the future of politics in the United States given Manent's important observations. I anticipate that a common criticism of Manent's book will be that it lacks clear prescriptions for the political problems that ail us. I will argue that clear prescriptions cannot follow from the logic of Manent's argument, and ultimately that the lack of prescription is one of the strengths of the book.Before I begin, I wish to make two qualifications. First, Manent's argument ultimately is about the (un)tenability of liberalism without some common conception of the good. He treats several moral and political problems in his book that fall outside of the scope of this short paper. I am not attempting in the analysis that follows to reduce the moral scope of Manent's claims or even to take up the mantle of his argument. I simply wish to show how his analysis is helpful in explaining a contemporary political problem and how the implications of this analysis should affect the way Christians think about political practice in the United States. Second, I want to make clear at the outset that I positively wish to avoid a discussion about the various policies enacted as responses to COVID-19. I also want to avoid any cavalier political discussion of COVID that does not sufficiently respect the over one million persons (given the latest CDC tally) who have lost their lives in this country and the hardships that many more have endured due to the pandemic. It is essential for our purposes here though to treat the political significance of the pandemic. I will attempt to do that now.The Appeal of ScientismNumerous thinkers... (shrink)

In the late 19th century great changes in theories of light and electricity were in direct conflict with certitude, the view that scientific knowledge is infallible. What is, then, the epistemic status of scientific theory? To resolve this issue Duhem and Poincaré proposed images of fallible knowledge, Instrumentalism and Conventionalism, respectively. Only in 1919–1922, after Einstein's relativity was published, he offered arguments to support Fallibilism, the view that certainty cannot be achieved in science. Though Einstein did not consider Duhem's (...) Instrumentalism, he argued against Poincaré's Conventionalism. Hitherto, Einstein's Fallibilism, as presented at first in a rarely known essay of 1919, was left in the dark. Recently, Howard obscured its meaning. Einstein's essay was never translated into English. In my paper I provide its translation and attempt to shed light on Einstein's view and its context; I also direct attention to Einstein's images of philosophical opportunism in scientific practice. (shrink)

De l'antiquité à la Renaissance, la notion de certitude est au coeur de la structuration de la pensée. Cet ouvrage réunit les contributions de spécialistes, qui explorent tous la littérature latine en mettant cette notion à l'épreuve de différentes disciplines et époques.

Parmi les auteurs qui au xx e siècle ont dénoué le lien traditionnel entre connaissance et certitude, on s’intéressera particulièrement à Whitehead, qui allie un enthousiasme indiscutable pour les progrès dont fait preuve la connaissance scientifique à partir du xvii e siècle à l’idée que toute certitude absolue est un frein aux développements de la connaissance.

Accommodating degrees of moral certitude is a serious problem for non-cognitivism about ethics. In particular, non-cognitivism has trouble accommodating fundamental moral certitude. John Eriksson and Ragnar Francén Olinder [2016] have recently proposed a solution. In fact, Eriksson and Francén Olinder offer two different proposals—one ‘classification’ account and one ‘projectivist’ account. We argue that the classification account faces the same problem as previous accounts do, while the projectivist account has unacceptable implications. Non-cognitivists will have to look elsewhere for a (...) plausible solution to the problem of accommodating fundamental moral certitude. (shrink)

Michael Smith has recently argued that non-cognitivists are unable to accommodate crucial structural features of moral belief, and in particular that non-cognitivists have trouble accounting for subjects' certitude with respect to their moral beliefs. James Lenman and Michael Ridge have independently constructed 'ecumenical' versions of non-cognitivism, intended to block this objection. We argue that these responses do not work. If ecumenical non-cognitivism, a hybrid view which incorporates both non-cognitivist and cognitivist elements, fails to meet Smith's challenge, it is unlikely (...) that 'purer' and more familiar versions of non-cognitivism will succeed. (shrink)

"Certitude" : le Mémorial -- "Quelle morale la raison devrait dicter sans la lumière de la foi" : l'entretien de M. Pascal avec M. de Sacy -- "La vérité hors de la charité" : du mystère de la pénitence -- "N'y a-t-il point une vérité substantielle?" : infini, rien -- "Qu'on ne prétende pas subtiliser" : les Écrits sur la grâce -- "La maxime de la médisance" : la XVIe Provinciale -- "Ce qui achève notre impuissance" : disproportion de (...) l'homme -- "De nouvelles lumières sur la religion" : la Vie de M. Pascal et De la vraie religion -- De vera religione -- Annexe : "Le chosisme" : Étienne Gilson et Pascal -- "Un portrait porte absence et présence" : De la vraie religion -- "Dans l'ennui" : du divertissement -- "Nous ne nous tenons jamais au temps présent" : du divertissement -- "En lui vous êtes remplis" : la Prière pour le bon usage des maIadies -- L'amitié "sans attachement" : la Vie de M. Pascal. (shrink)

The concept of ‘‘certitude” is central in Arabic discussions of the theory of demonstration advanced by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics. In the Arabic tradition it is ‘‘certitude,” rather than ‘‘knowledge”, that is usually identified as the end sought by demonstrations. Al-Fārābī himself devotes a short treatise, known as the Conditions of Certitude, to determining the criteria according to which a subject can claim to have absolute certitude of any proposition. In this article the author traces (...) the roots of the concept of certitude to the Arabic translation of the Posterior Analytics. She then offers a close reading of the text of al-Fārābī's Conditions and its parallels in his Epitome of the Posterior Analytics. She argues that the identification of certitude as a cognitive state distinct from knowledge enabled al-Fārābī to introduce a number of interesting and sometimes problematic innovations into Arabic epistemology. Foremost amongst his positive innovations is the recognition that contingent as well as necessary propositions allow for an attenuated form of certitude, and the introduction of reliabilism into the justification of claims to certitude. But al-Fārābī is also one of the first philosophers to articulate explicitly the idea that certitude must include an element of ‘‘knowing that one knows,” a controversial principle that tends to undermine both al-Fārābī’s reliabilism and his efforts to loosen some of the strictures in traditional Aristotelian epistemology. (shrink)

When paternalism is deemed morally justified, weak paternalism—which restricts itself to assisting the target of paternalism realize his own preferences—is the preferred (less problematic) alternative. In determining the appropriateness of weak paternalism, the level of certitude of the paternalist regarding the correctness of her assessment of the true preferences of the one‐paternalized is obviously a crucial factor. Yet in the ethics of paternalism this parameter has escaped systematic treatment. This paper aims to initiate discussion on this indispensable consideration for (...) weak paternalism. Analysing a real‐life dilemma of paternalism in healthcare, the paper focuses on the theoretical question of how the paternalist can optimize her certitude by combining personal knowledge of the individual patient with population data on treatment refusal/consent of patients facing similar decisions. The paper presents an outline of a decision‐making scheme that can be valuable in medical ethics and beyond. (shrink)

In the French version of the question set by the Berlin Academy in 1763, the word évidence is used whereas the German document mentions deutliche Beweisen. What is this difference the sign of? What are its consequences? The terms évidence, Deutlichkeit, certitude occur in very different ways in the answers provided. The various terminological and conceptual meanings reflect a deep epistemological ambiguity. Among German-language answers, the notion of Deutlichkeit is not central unlike that of Gewißheit. French-language answers all refer (...) to évidence but this term is little defined and too broad. As a result, it was the spirit rather than the letter of the question that prevailed. However, most answers converge on the “need to believe” found both in évidence, certitude, Deutlichkeit and the constraining force of demonstration. (shrink)

Is there a tension between Émilie du Châtelet’s Law of Continuity (LC) and her belief between absolutely certain and morally certain propositions? In this paper, I argue that ‘no’— there is no tension, since there are at least two interpretative choices that commentators can make. First, they could argue that for Du Châtelet, the LC is restricted in scope and should be applied in the empirical domain only: there is an epistemic gap between the natural, empirical world, whose truths we (...) are only morally certain about, and the abstract, metaphysical world, whose truths we can be absolutely certain about. The other alternative, which I defend here, is the following: interpret Du Châtelet as believing in a psychological formulation of the LC, in which case there is no difference in kind between being absolutely certain and being morally certain—there is only a difference in degree between these two epistemic attitudes. This resolves the tension because insofar as it limits the LC to three domains (rather than one): a geometrical domain, an empirical domain, and a psychological domain, it means that Du Châtelet is not committed— strictly speaking—to a difference in kind between being absolutely and morally certain about some proposition. (shrink)

Just as we can be more or less certain that there is extraterrestrial life or that Goldbach’s conjecture is correct, we can be more or less certain about normative matters, such as whether euthanasia is permissible or whether utilitarianism is true. However, accommodating the phenomenon of degrees of normative certitude is a difficult challenge for non-cognitivist and expressivist views, according to which normative judgements are desire-like attitudes rather than beliefs. Several attempts have been made on behalf of non-cognitivism and (...) expressivism to meet the challenge Studies in metaethics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007; Sepielli in Philos Stud 160: 191–207, 2012; Eriksson and Francén Olinder in Aust J Philos 94: 719–735, 2016). These attempts have all been found wanting. Michael Ridge has recently offered a quasi-realist solution, according to which expressivists can say exactly what cognitivists say about certitude, including normative certitude. In this paper, we explain the basic problem and Ridge’s quasi-realist solution. We then argue that the quasi-realist account of normative certitude faces severe difficulties that do not arise for cognitivist accounts, according to which normative judgements are beliefs. (shrink)

Abū Ma'shar and al-Qābīsī were active astrologers and defenders of the scientific character of their discipline. They wrote works on criticisms brought forward against the discipline and challenged practitioners whom they considered as detrimental for the esteem and future fate of their science. Nevertheless, both writers can be seen as heirs to a single tradition of thought, which took its origins in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblios and developed largely independently of the religious or philosophical beliefs of a specific community. The arguments developed (...) for proving the scientific value of astrology are interesting in their own right, and merit further study not only by historians of science but also by historians of philosophy. (shrink)

This book contains the fruits of decades of reflection and teaching on basic philosophical problems, historical, epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical. It does not purport to be a systematic, tightly demonstrative treatise, but a meditation in which opinion and critical irony sometimes have the upper hand. Though the author strongly leans towards Cartesian, Kantian, Hegelian or phenomenological viewpoints, it seems when the cards are down, that the fundamental inspiration of his philosophical thinking remains on the whole Aristotelian and Thomistic.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1883 Edition.

(1) Je suis en ce moment, comme tout le monde peut le voir, dans une salle et non pas dehors. Je suis debout et non assis ou couché. Je porte des vêtements et ne suis pas tout nu. Je parle à voix haute et ne suis pas en train de chanter ou de chuchoter ou de me taire. J'ai dans la main quelques feuilles de papier sur lesquelles quelque chose est écrit. Il y a beaucoup d'autres personnes dans la salle (...) où je me trouve. Il y a des fenêtres d'un côté et une porte de l'autre. (2) Eh bien, ces dive... (shrink)

This article is a reflection on chance as a scientific object, starting from a materialistic point of view. I analyze the relationship between motion and complexity by introducing the notion of an open system and the categories that result from it: state of nature and observable, to review the debate on chance and certainty.

Chenu, M.-D. Foi, certitude et recherche.--Gilson, É. Réponse à Louis-Marie Régis, On some difficulties of interpretation.--Dubarle, D. Logique et épistémologie du signe chez Aristote et chez les Stoïciens.--Geiger, L.-B. Ce qui est, se dit en plusiers sens.--Owens, J. "Diversificata in diversis."--Cauchy, V. Être et connaître, l'irréductibilité de l'aristotélisme au platonisme.--Joós, E. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, de l'intentio intellectus, à l'intentio rei.--Murin, C. Pour une démystification de la "mort-de-Dieu" nietzschéenne.--Joós, E. Post-scriptum, la nouvelle scolastique de Louis-Marie Régis.--Landry, A.-M. Louis-Marie Régis, O.P., quelques (...) dates et faits marquants de sa vie.--Lettre d'Henri-Irénée Marrou à Louis-Marie Régis. (shrink)

Claiming the legacy of revolutionary of 1789, the Republicans organise at the end of nineteenth century the French school in its modern form and developpe a philosophy that is “fondationnaire” placing educational institution as foundation of the nation. The idea of the emancipation of the people by rational instruction without neglecting the moral and civic education is well located in the heart of the French school project and aims abstract rational subjects, despite their unique characteristics and affiliations. The phrase “the (...) Republic will be educator or she will not! “claim this fundamentally political intent stay up until the Second World War. After this period, the school system begin to be invested by the economy; during the period of the welfare state, an original synthesis seems to occur between “republican meritocracy, [...] social equality mass... [the] concern individualistic “(Gauchet, 2002), the rising concerns of the economy and employment, making the question of the qualifications of a concern more central. This delicate balance then seems to break during the Twenty pitiful’s years, then the school is characterized by a multiplicating of its missions, the lost of landmarks and the difficulty to make sense. The actual siginification of the scholar system will be questioned regarding to economic and anthropological influence of neo-liberalism, the requirement for long life education and its consequences, and also the education-socialization-qualification relations. (shrink)