L’interprétationnisme radical

J’examine la thèse défendue par Donald Davidson selon laquelle un être ne peut avoir des pensées que s’il a été en communication linguistique avec quelqu’un d’autre par le passé. Cette thèse, que j’appelle « l’interprétationnisme radical », dérive de la thèse A selon laquelle il est nécessaire d’avoir les concepts de croyance et de vérité objective pour avoir des croyances, et de la thèse B voulant que la communication linguistique soit requise pour l’acquisition du concept de vérité objective. En réponse à A, je préconise un point de vue contextualiste, selon lequel les normes d’attribution de croyances dépendent du contexte conversationnel. Le contextualisme entraîne non pas que A est fausse, mais qu’elle doit être relative à un contexte. Je montre par ailleurs que contrairement à ce qu’affirme B, l’interaction (linguistique) avec autrui n’est pas nécessaire pour acquérir le concept de vérité objective. Je conclus que les arguments de Davidson soutiennent au mieux l’interprétationnisme modéré, c’est-à-dire l’idée selon laquelle un être a des pensées si et seulement si ces pensées sont interprétables par un interprète pleinement informé.I examine Donald Davidson’s thesis that a creature cannot have thoughts unless it has had a linguistic communication with another creature. This thesis, which I call “Radical Interpretationism”, derives from the claim that (A) it is necessary to have the concepts of belief and objective truth in order to have beliefs and the claim that (B) linguistic communication is required to acquire the concept of objective truth. In response to (A), I put forward a contextualist viewpoint, according to which the norms of belief attribution are context-dependent. Contextualism entails not that (A) is false, but that it must be relativised to a context. I then show that contrary to what (B) says, (linguistic) interaction with others is not necessary to acquire the concept of objective truth. I conclude that Davidson’s arguments at best support moderate interpretationism, that is, the view that a creature has thoughts if and only if these thoughts are interpretable by a fully-informed interpreter

Indeterminate Analyticity

W. V. Quine is commonly read as holding that there are no analytic truths and no a priori truths. I argue that this is a misreading. Quine’s view is that no sentence is determinately analytic or determinately a priori. I show that my reading is better supported by Quine’s arguments and general remarks about meaning and analyticity. I then briefly reexamine the debate between Quine and Carnap about analyticity, and show that the nature of their disagreement is different than what it is usually thought to be

A Defense of Causal Invariantism

Causal contextualism holds that sentences of the form ‘c causes e’ have context-sensitive truth-conditions. We consider four arguments invoked by Jonathan Schaffer in favor of this view. First, he argues that his brand of contextualism helps solve puzzles about transitivity. Second, he contends that how one describes the relata of the causal relation sometimes affects the truth of one’s claim. Third, Schaffer invokes the phenomenon of contrastive focus to conclude that causal statements implicitly designate salient alternatives to the cause and effect. Fourth, he claims that the appropriateness of a causal statement depends on what is contextually taken for granted or made salient. We show that causal invariantism can explain these linguistic data at least as well as contextualism. We then argue that pace Schaffer, some causal sentences are always correct and can never be plausibly denied, regardless of the context

Une enquête : le statut de l'écrivain et la diffusion de la littérature

Pour le sociologue, la littérature, comme les autres formes de l'activité mentale, est à la fois effet et cause des transformations multiples qui caractérisent notre société moderne. La sociologie de la connaissance a depuis longtemps établi une corrélation entre les productions mentales d'une part et le substratum économique, l'organisation sociale et la culture d'autre part. La littérature, comme l'art en général, offre cependant un intérêt particulier pour le sociologue.D'un côté, la société rend possible la création de certaines formes et le développement de certains thèmes. Ainsi, Roland Barthes dans Le degré zéro de L'écriture établit une relation entre le genre d'écriture (formes littéraires) et les sociétés de type bourgeois et de type socialiste. Mais l'écrivain, comme le peintre ou le musicien, n'est pas seulement conditionné globalement par sa société, il est aussi un individu qui vit dans un milieu précis. Sa plus grande sensibilité lui fait percevoir de façon plus aiguë qu'à ses concitoyens les tensions de sa société. Son œuvre est ainsi, de quelque manière, le reflet, le miroir de la vie profonde de son milieu comme aussi de sa société et de son époque. N'étant pas nécessairement philosophe, l'écrivain ne sera pas non plus réflexif dans sa saisie du social. C'est plutôt par transposition au niveau de la sensibilité qu'il transmettra son message. Ce message deviendra pour le sociologue un témoignage, témoignage souvent d'autant plus valable qu'il sera non pas réflexif mais simplement vécu. La journée de demain sera consacrée à l'étude de ces témoignages au niveau des thèmes de notre littérature. Nous avons cependant cru qu'il serait utile de situer ces réflexions dans un cadre plus large. Plutôt que d'apporter des réponses définitives à ce sujet, nous voulons simplement soulever quelques questions qui seront — nous l'espérons — pertinentes et plusieurs personnes — écrivains, éditeurs, libraires, hauts fonctionnaires du ministère des Affaires culturelles du Québec — ont obligeamment accepté de collaborer à cette enquête. Les auteurs tiennent à leur exprimer ici leur gratitude. Ils désirent remercier aussi de leur concours MM. Fernand Grenier, Louis Trotier et Jean Raveneau, professeurs à l'Institut de géographie de l'Université Laval, Mlle Nicole Gagnon et M. Paul Bélanger, assistants de recherche au Département de sociologie et d'anthropologie, et M. Lawrence Ramsay, étudiant en sociologie qui surtout seront susceptibles d'orienter des recherches futures. Les principaux thèmes que nous aborderons seront les suivants : I. la situation de la littérature proprement dite par rapport à la production générale du livre ; II. les problèmes de diffusion (bibliothèques et librairies) ; III. La perception de la littérature et de la société chez les écrivains et les éditeurs

Does Non-Moral Ignorance Exculpate? Situational Awareness and Attributions of Blame and Forgiveness

In this paper, we set out to test empirically an idea that many philosophers find intuitive, namely that non-moral ignorance can exculpate. Many philosophers find it intuitive that moral agents are responsible only if they know the particular facts surrounding their action. Our results show that whether moral agents are aware of the facts surrounding their action does have an effect on people’s attributions of blame, regardless of the consequences or side effects of the agent’s actions. In general, it was more likely that a situationally aware agent will be blamed for failing to perform the obligatory action than a situationally unaware agent. We also tested attributions of forgiveness in addition to attributions of blame. In general, it was less likely that a situationally aware agent will be forgiven for failing to perform the obligatory action than a situationally unaware agent. When the agent is situationally unaware, it is more likely that the agent will be forgiven than blamed. We argue that these results provide some empirical support for the hypothesis that there is something intuitive about the idea that non-moral ignorance can exculpate

Downregulation of uPAR and Cathepsin B Induces Apoptosis via Regulation of Bcl-2 and Bax and Inhibition of the PI3K/Akt Pathway in Gliomas

Glioma is the most commonly diagnosed primary brain tumor and is characterized by invasive and infiltrative behavior. uPAR and cathepsin B are known to be overexpressed in high-grade gliomas and are strongly correlated with invasive cancer phenotypes.In the present study, we observed that simultaneous downregulation of uPAR and cathepsin B induces upregulation of some pro-apoptotic genes and suppression of anti-apoptotic genes in human glioma cells. uPAR and cathepsin B (pCU)-downregulated cells exhibited decreases in the Bcl-2/Bax ratio and initiated the collapse of mitochondrial membrane potential. We also observed that the broad caspase inhibitor, Z-Asp-2, 6-dichlorobenzoylmethylketone rescued pCU-induced apoptosis in U251 cells but not in 5310 cells. Immunoblot analysis of caspase-9 immunoprecipitates for Apaf-1 showed that uPAR and cathepsin B knockdown activated apoptosome complex formation in U251 cells. Downregulation of uPAR and cathepsin B also retarded nuclear translocation and interfered with DNA binding activity of CREB in both U251 and 5310 cells. Further western blotting analysis demonstrated that downregulation of uPAR and cathepsin B significantly decreased expression of the signaling molecules p-PDGFR-β, p-PI3K and p-Akt. An increase in the number of TUNEL-positive cells, increased Bax expression, and decreased Bcl-2 expression in nude mice brain tumor sections and brain tissue lysates confirm our in vitro results.In conclusion, RNAi-mediated downregulation of uPAR and cathepsin B initiates caspase-dependent mitochondrial apoptosis in U251 cells and caspase-independent mitochondrial apoptosis in 5310 cells. Thus, targeting uPAR and cathepsin B-mediated signaling using siRNA may serve as a novel therapeutic strategy for the treatment of gliomas

Mutations and Deregulation of Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK and PI3K/PTEN/Akt/mTOR Cascades Which Alter Therapy Response

The Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK and PI3K/PTEN/Akt/mTOR cascades are often activated by genetic alterations in upstream signaling molecules such as receptor tyrosine kinases (RTK). Certain components of these pathways, RAS, NF1, BRAF, MEK1, DUSP5, PP2A, PIK3CA, PIK3R1, PIK3R4, PIK3R5, IRS4, AKT, NFKB1, MTOR, PTEN, TSC1, and TSC2 may also be activated/inactivated by mutations or epigenetic silencing. Upstream mutations in one signaling pathway or even in downstream components of the same pathway can alter the sensitivity of the cells to certain small molecule inhibitors. These pathways have profound effects on proliferative, apoptotic and differentiation pathways. Dysregulation of components of these cascades can contribute to: resistance to other pathway inhibitors, chemotherapeutic drug resistance, premature aging as well as other diseases. This review will first describe these pathways and discuss how genetic mutations and epigenetic alterations can result in resistance to various inhibitors

Indeterminate Analyticity

W. V. Quine is commonly read as holding that there are no analytic truths and no a priori truths. I argue that this is a misreading. Quine’s view is that no sentence is determinately analytic or determinately a priori. I show that my reading is better supported by Quine’s arguments and general remarks about meaning and analyticity. I then briefly reexamine the debate between Quine and Carnap about analyticity, and show that the nature of their disagreement is different than what it is usually thought to be