The End of History, 30 Years Later

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Abstract: What verdict for the ‘End of History’ announced 30 years ago by Francis Fukuyama? Far from having come to a standstill, political regimes continue their cycle, including democracy with a shift towards anarchy, renamed ‘peoplecracy’. Basically, it is a steady pendulum swing between individualism and collectivism that ends up undermining any type of regime … Read more

When science takes its ease with racial symbolism

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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

The origin of all reality

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Abstract: The incommensurable strangeness of the origin forces us to create commensurables to dress this ultimate shamelessness. What separates the true from the imaginary? The ability to “listen to oneself think” tends to make us project thought out of reality. There is a ‘material’ world and another ‘virtual’ one, which each of us invents for … Read more

Information and consciousness

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Abstract: I show how Surimposium, a theory of consciousness based on complexity, encompasses existing positions on information and consciousness, that of philosophers, physicalists, and new panconscious theories including Tononi’s integrated information. Three positions Three positions on information and consciousness:1) Classical philosophical: information is relative to a conscious observer (Searle).2) Classical materialist: information exists in itself, … Read more

How to react to the exceptional?

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“What would I have done in their place?” Sven Ortoli wonders as he walks the streets of Pompeii. Flee or stay as Vesuvius begins to agitate? The locals have never experienced or heard of an eruption. No scientific model. What to decide from scratch? Finding the right start Unfortunately, Sven does not know the UniPhiM1the … Read more

Does the Chinese Chamber still have an interest today?

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John Searle’s goal in 1980, in designing this thought experiment, was to denigrate the possibility of understanding and consciousness in an artificial intelligence. Searle imagines himself locked in a room with a catalogue of rules for answering sentences in Chinese, a language he does not know. With these syntactic rules he can answer in Chinese. … Read more

Freedom and fraternity distorted by equality

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Discordance at the pediment Of the french republican trio equality-liberty-fraternity it is the third that has been most often erased and replaced by a less discouraging noun: charity of Christians, comradeship of communists, solidarity of socialists, humanitarian of NGOs. Less discouraging? Yes, fraternity is so easy to sully. Collectivism quickly derived into groupism. That of … Read more

Disguising your activist ideas with neuroscience

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Invading neurons No doubt you have noticed like me this growing undesirable effect of the popularity of neuroscience: it frequently replaces the classical paradigms of psychology by their opposites, without real experimental demonstration, as if reading functional MRIs taught us the springs of the human personality… Examples flood our journals that have become neuro-psychological. The … Read more

Equations, cognitive biases?

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Abstract: Math contains cognitive biases. To support this astonishing observation, I begin by going back in the history of mathematics. By erasing any intention within them, we have at the same time lost track of complexity and quality. These intentions exist, but are now hidden in acronyms, in particular the ‘=’ with multiple meanings. The … Read more