The double look
Pain is an exciting topic for the philosophy of mind. Its reality and meaning are redefined in this article on the frequent confusion between pain-injury and pain-repair: Abstract: Pain-repair is often confused with pain-injury. However, the attitudes to follow are very different. In search of the meaning of our feelings, let us not forget that … Read more
Do we have to choose between contradictory analyses? A recurring problem handicaps philosophical analysis: teleological and ontological views are contradictory. They describe competing cases. If it’s genetics, it can’t be psychology. If it’s culture, it can’t be biology. Etc. The contradiction arises from an epistemology that is too horizontal: the different views are deciphered, compared, … Read more
A microcosm of good size In Oceanian mythologies, the human body is the microcosm of the divine macrocosm. More representative if we give it space? The strong build is particularly appreciated by Polynesians, who engaged in ritual fattening (ha’apori). The elder children were locked in the shade in huts and fed abundantly until they made … Read more
Is there a brain? That there is a nervous system, that’s for sure, and it extends through the whole body. It concentrates remarkably in the skull. Crossroads and cells multiply there. But there remains, for the most part, a vast network of connected fibers. The key element of the nervous system is not the neuron … Read more
Weight is a battlefield War is declared between the medical world and the big guys. On the one hand, the heavy combine of public health, determined to crush the obese to rid them of their superfluous fat and make pretty thin stems like the others, easier to fit. Curative and preventive medicine, long angry with … Read more
Switching to the pump I fill up my car. Do I need to ask myself if I’m putting in too much gas or not enough? Not. I am waiting for the sound click signaling the interruption of the stream. The car is full. It consumes its full according to a rather stable mechanical ‘physiology’. The … Read more
This series of articles studies feeding and its disorders in relation to the relationship to the body in modern societies. Obesity, anorexia, Oceanian cultural memes on the body, notion of Somma and model of the psyche to position the image of the body. In the 1st article, let’s start by filling up food. Before asking … Read more
Stagnation of meaning? No cash value Willingly critical debater of our friends at Philosophie Magazine, I must today sing the praises of Octave Larmagnac-Matheron for his remarkable article on the crisis of the public hospital. Everything is there. Based on the foresight of Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, Octave remarkably clarifies the “loss of meaning”, … Read more
Eradicate all traces of smallpox? The smallpox virus still exists in 2 known labs, one American and one Russian. Should we make all traces of its existence disappear? Does the devastation that a life form has caused in humans justify its total and definitive eradication? Could it redeem itself one day, manipulated wisely? Difficult ethical … Read more
Why do serious illnesses or accidents have this ability, frequently, to straighten the mind, to make it resume its proper functioning? The temporal dimension of the person reappears. Instead of being a perpetual present in the process of succeeding one another, existence once again provides it with a beginning, middle and end. The mind, lazily … Read more