Archive Electronique - Institut Jean Nicod
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1997 research outputs found
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La métaphysique du temps : perspectives contemporaines
No full textInternational audienceQui ne s’est un jour demandé ce qu’est vraiment le temps ? Quelle est sa réalité ? Quelles propriétés lui reconnaître ? Nous avons l'impression que le temps passe ou s’écoule. Mais cela correspond-il à sa nature réelle ? Comment rendre compte des distinctions entre passé, présent, futur ? Les enseignements des sciences contredisent-ils notre conception ordinaire du temps ? Ces interrogations, aussi anciennes que la philosophie elle-même, ont fait l’objet d’un examen renouvelé dans la métaphysique contemporaine. Sans prétendre à l'exhaustivité, les contributions réunies dans ce volume entendent offrir un guide des questions les plus disputées, aujourd'hui, en ce domaine
Referential and General Calls in Primate Semantics
No full textInternational audienceIn recent years, the methods of formal semantics and pragmatics have been fruitfully applied to the analysis of primate communication systems. Most analyses therein appeal to a division of labor between semantics and pragmatics which has the following three features: (F1) calls are given referential meanings (they provide information about the world rather than just about an action to be taken), (F2) some calls have a general meaning, and (F3) the meanings of calls in context are enriched by competition with more informative calls, along the lines of scalar implicatures. In this paper, we develop highly simplified models to independently assess the conditions under which such features would emerge. After identifying a sufficient condition for (F1), we find a range of conditions under which (F2) and (F3) are not evolutionarily stable, and discuss the consequences for both modeling and empirical work
The intertwined cultural evolution of ascetic spiritualities and puritanical religions as technologies of self-discipline
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Postface à l’édition critique de "Pourquoi notre cerveau a inventé le bien et le mal"
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Half-truths and the Liar
No full textInternational audienceA half-truth may be defined as a sentence that is true in one sense, but that fails to be true in another, hence as a sentence only true to some extent. This paper discusses some aspects in which the Liar may be considered a half-truth. Talk of half-truths, like talk of half-full containers, implies that truth is gradable, and moreover that some sentences can be true without being perfectly true. I review some evidence for the view that ``true'' and ``false'' are absolute gradable adjectives, and argue that both are moreover systematically ambiguous between a total and a partial interpretation supporting the strict-tolerant distinction. I use this evidence to revisit the strict-tolerant account of truth and the Liar. While the strict-tolerant account was originallyconceived for vague predicates, its extension to the semantic paradoxes assumed that assertion, but not truth, comes in differentdegrees. I reconsider this claim, and argue that we get a more unified picture by treating ``true'' as a special type of vague predicate
