How to design and interpret a randomised controlled trial using Bayesian statistics.
Published in Anaesthesia
Kant on the Moral Law as the Causal Law for Freedom
Published in Kant-Studien
For Kant, the moral law is the causal law of freedom. However, it is not an explanatory causal law. It is instead a causal law of imputation: it is a law according to which we can be held responsible for the actions the law declares necessary; that is, it is a law according to which we can be considered the causes of whether or not we act lawfully....
LOVE'S BODY AND THE BODY OF LOVE: On Norman O. Brown's Eschatological Hermaphrodite and the Darwinian Continuities of Na...
Published in Journal of homosexuality
US-American philosopher Norman O. Brown (1913-2002) was one of the very few twentieth-century intellectuals to situate hermaphroditism at the core of their work. Although Brown's publications became cult books of the then emerging protest subcultures and were eventually regarded as milestones in the history of Freudian revisionism, the reception of...
Hugo et les « farouche[s] architecture[s] » du hasard
Cet article s’attache aux rêveries de Hugo sur les farouches architectures naturelles (montagnes, écueils marins) produites par le hasard, sublimes, vacillantes, oniriques. Que devient le paradigme architectural dès lors qu’un art mystérieux de la nature élève des « monuments extra-humains » dénués d’architecte comme de fondement, exposés à la pres...
Thought, Choice, and Other Causes in Aristotle’s Account of Luck
Published in Apeiron
In Physics 2.4–6, Aristotle offers an account of things that happen “by luck” (ἀπὸ τύχης) and “spontaneously” (ἀπὸ τοῦ αὐτομάτου). Many of these things are what we might think of as “lucky breaks”: cases where things go well for us, even though we don’t expect them to. In Physics 2.5, Aristotle illustrates this idea with the case of a man who goes ...
« Colomb ignorant trouva le nouveau monde » : ignorance, découverte fortuite et expérimentation à la première modernité
Cet article part du topos de la découverte par hasard, qui, à la première modernité, est souvent attribuée à des « ignorants ». En effet, il est généralement admis alors que la découverte de l’Amérique, l’invention de la poudre à canon, de la boussole, de l’imprimerie ou encore de la première lunette astronomique auraient été faites par hasard par ...
Fontenelle : jouer et philosopher
Comme interlocuteur de Leibniz, comme lecteur assidu (et sourdement polémique) de Pascal, et comme lointain héritier d’Épicure, Fontenelle a toutes les raisons de ne pas méconnaître l’importance morale et philosophique du jeu. De fait, la pensée de Fontenelle rencontre la question du jeu selon diverses modalités. En un sens littéral, Fontenelle abo...
Éloge de la « production hasardeuse » : le De rerum natura de Lucrèce au miroir de l’Anti-nature de Clément Rosset
International audience
Chance, causality and necessity in social sciences methodology. An open research between thesmos and nomos
Published in Open Political Science
The main purpose of this paper is to identify lawlike regularities inside social sciences. This purpose rises from our will to contribute to the debate about the scientificity of such topics. After providing an overview of the most authoritative scholars who have broached the issue, an attempt will be made to propose an alternative answer through s...
Καθάπερ ἄνθρωπος φρόνιμος: Prudence in Aristotle’s Ethics and Biology
Published in Apeiron
It is a well-known feature of Aristotle’s biology that he resorts to the analogy with human art to explain the concept of final causality operative in living things. In this Aristotle’s theory of biology is explicitly anti-Empedoclean: whereas for Empedocles a randomly generated animal part is preserved if it happens to suit an expedient function, ...
