The double look on complex dimension
Abstract: The etymology of ‘hierarchy’, the sacred order, remains relevant: there are always laws to which one must submit, if only the natural, new sacraments. I show that the collapse of hierarchies is natural, too, but that this disappearance is disastrous. It is not the hierarchical principle that poses the problem but its dysfunctions, its … Read more
Abstract: Between the sterile positions of the denigration of animal suffering and the human-animal analogism, the truth is that the experience of suffering is strictly individual and connoted “atrocious” according to moral rather than physical criteria. Exacerbated animal suffering is our neglected human suffering. Pain sensors are universal, not what feels them How do you … Read more
Abstract: Is the ideal an engine of social change or only a symptom? The double look shows that it is both, in a metastable cycle, allowing for example to understand that the abolition of slavery or the death penalty can be imposed on a population that appears to be unfavorable but which implicitly accepts the … Read more
Abstract: Authors write about people, not for them. Essential nuance and yet misunderstood by editors assisted by ‘sensitivity readers’. A misunderstanding caused by a misconception of the collective? Bram Stoker redacted by Dracula Dracula, hired as Bram Stoker’s sensitive reader, rewrote his vampire classic. How did this author of the Barbarian Ages have the audacity … Read more
The line of anti stretch racism to everyone Anti-anti-anti… When you see a long line of ants surrounding a word like this, it means that it is dying, after too many contradictory uses. This is indeed the case for the cadaverous ‘racism’, a victim of its (semantic) popularity. Each of us has heard it so … Read more
Abstract: Some authors use biology to interpret questions of psychology and sociology. This is the reductionist tradition —our behaviors would emanate from our physical constitution. Cultural symbolism is sought in biology, and if it is not found there, it would be illusory. I deliberately take a polemical example, the concept of race, to show that: … Read more
How to renew ethics? Almost all ethical discussions start from an established morality. That is, every new moral rule is born in a circular way from laws set in stone. This conservatism protects our essential ideals. But the new rules seem exposed to the risk of inbreeding. Do they really adapt best to the frenetic … Read more
Thinking about evil is not just about burning yourself in it With ‘Evil in modern thought‘, essayist Susan Neiman revisits Nietzsche and Arendt to condemn a resignation from contemporary philosophy about evil. She sees the Holocaust as such an exorbitant evil that it requires a complete overhaul of ethics, not just deconstructing world history. An … Read more
Morals Test Bench Philomag’s newsletter is back in force after the summer break with a study of 1098 students in 10 countries comparing utilitarian and deontological morals. By testing students’ behavior through games of dice and sums to be won, researchers come across a counterintuitive result: those who proclaim their attachment to an intangible moral … Read more
The philosopher’s outstretched hand I have not found a better synthesis on this subject than a remarkable issue (60) of Cités published in 2014 (french): “What do cognitive neuroscience think and want?”. The theme allows the confrontation between philosophers and neuroscientists about the mind/body problem. Yves Charles Zarka, for philosophers, begins by giving a hand: … Read more