Paul P G Dumouchel | Université du Québec à Montréal (original) (raw)

Papers by Paul P G Dumouchel

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AI, 2023

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

Natureculture, 2017

Japan is considered to be the most highly robotized society in the world, which at the industrial... more Japan is considered to be the most highly robotized society in the world, which at the industrial level at least is certainly true. There are presently some 250,000 industrial robots employed in Japan, which is more than in any other country, and this number is expected to double in less than five years, quadruple in ten. Further, according to a claim that has been around at least since the early 1960s, there is a 'love story' between Japan and robots (Koestler 1960). The Japanese are said to love robots, while Westerners tend to fear or at least to be wary of them, and many studies show that social acceptance of robots is higher in Japan than in Europe (Hornyak 2006). Japanese newspapers are always eager to report that someone invented a robot for making sushi or a robotic bed for elderly patients that transforms into a wheel chair. Robots in everyday life are seen as useful helpers rather than potentially dangerous rivals. However, for those of us who live there, the presence of robots in everyday life is not so evident. It is not clear to me that there are more robots in my normal environment in Japan, than what I find when I go to France or Canada. The love story between Japan and robots may be true, but it seems to be taking place at the level of cultural representations more than that of daily experience. Part of the explanation for the apparent discrepancy between the number of robots in Japan and the daily experience of robots, may simply be the lack of social visibility of most robots. Unless you are a factory worker, encounters with industrial robots are

Les Cahiers de la Justice, 2011

Mimétisme et massacres La distinction fondamentale me semble-t-il si on veut comprendre la dynami... more Mimétisme et massacres La distinction fondamentale me semble-t-il si on veut comprendre la dynamique mimétique qui conduit aux massacres est celle qui sépare la violence illégitime de la violence légitime, qui départit la mauvaise violence qui n'est que désordre, destruction et massacre, de la bonne violence, de la violence qui vise à purifier la communauté et à ramener l'ordre, et qui, de ce fait, très souvent n'est déjà plus tout à fait une violence, puisqu'elle vise à mettre un terme à la violence. C'est la distinction qui sépare la violence immorale, monstrueuse et honnie, de la violence nécessaire, juste et justifiée. Car la violence à grande échelle nécessite de nombreux participants, soit directement, lorsque les armes employées ont une faible

Deception in Markets, 2005

En somme, on ne peut que ruser avec un partenaire d'échange, le prendre en traître serait saper l... more En somme, on ne peut que ruser avec un partenaire d'échange, le prendre en traître serait saper les fondements de l'échange. R. Hamayon La chasse à l'âme. But the emperors, and other Christian sovereigns, under whose government these errors, and the like encroachments of ecclesiastics upon their office, at first crept in, to the disturbance of their possessions, and of the tranquility of their subjects, though they suffered the same for want of foresight of the sequel, and of insight into the designs of their teachers, may nevertheless be esteemed accessories to their own, and the public damage. Hobbes Leviathan

Encyclopeidia of Violence, Peace & Conflict, Vol.4, 2022

A long tradition views the relation between reason and violence in the form of a dichotomy where ... more A long tradition views the relation between reason and violence in the form of a dichotomy where reason is both opposed to violence and constitutes an alternative means of resolution of the conflicts. This dichotomy is not a mere conceptual opposition, it is also a historical phenomenon. In order to be socially efficacious, the opposition between reason and violence requires specific cultural and institutional conditions which historically were provided by the modern state monopoly of legitimate violence, that should not be understood merely as commanding superior force, but as a moral authority that distinguishes between good and bad violence. Definitions and dichotomy The initial difficulty in addressing the question of the relations between reason and violence is that we are dealing with two rather ill-defined terms. First, reason and rationality are not only notoriously hard to define, but they also constitute 'moving targets' so to speak. Over time, and especially perhaps during the last 50 years, our conceptions of what is reason, of what constitutes rationality and of what is reasonable, have profoundly changed, leading to disagreements and uncertainty. Different disciplines like economics, 1 philosophy, 2 social justice theories, 3 or psychology 4 promoting various notions which are sometimes related, sometimes vastly different. Some proposing that rationality can be reduced to purposeful action and that is only one strategy among many, of which natural selection is the most prominent, that augment the probability that an organism will reach its intended goal? 5 Others implicitly suggesting that we should perhaps abandon the idea. 6

Studi di Sociologia, 2021

Using empirical evidence concerning catastrophes I show that the conception of inequalities domin... more Using empirical evidence concerning catastrophes I show that the conception of inequalities dominant in social ethics is inadequate, that it misrepresent the reality it pretends to analyze and evaluate. Disaster studies make clear that catastrophes regularly entrench existing inequalities, making the poor and vulnerable poorer and more vulnerable, and the rich richer. In consequence, I argue, the distinction between legitimate and unjustified inequalities disappears. This well established empirical result undermines a central presupposition of major theories of social justice: that in themselves inequalities are morally neutral. Whether "justice as fairness", "brute luck" or "desert" theories all these approaches to social justice are challenged by the effect of catastrophes on pre-existing inequalities. In a second part, I argue that this properly catastrophic result for theories of social justice is related to the fact that they tend to identify, if not sometimes to conceived inequalities as properties of agents, while they are relational properties rather than properties of isolated individuals.

Humana Mente, 2020

In this article we tackle the core question of machine emotion research-"Can machines have emotio... more In this article we tackle the core question of machine emotion research-"Can machines have emotions?"-in the context of "social robots", a new class of machines designed to function as "social partners" for humans. Our aim, however, is not to provide an answer to the question "Can robots have emotions?" Rather we argue that the "robotics of emotion" moves us to reformulate it into a different one-"Can robots affectively coordinate with humans?" Developing a series of arguments relevant to theory of emotion, philosophy of AI, and the epistemology of synthetic models, we argue that the answer to this different question is positive, and that it lays grounds for an innovative ethical approach to emotional robots. This ethical project, which we introduced elsewhere as "synthetic ethics", rejects the diffused ethical condemnation of emotional robots as "cheating" technology. Synthetic ethics focuses not on an ideological refusal, but on the concrete sustainability of the emerging mixed human-robot social ecologies. On this basis, in contrast to a purely negative ethical approach to social robotics it promotes an analytical case by case ethical inquiry into the type of human flourishing that can result from human-robot affective coordination.

Cahier Verbatim VII, 2020

Contagion, 2021

hat is a machine? What distinguishes a machine from a tool or a simple instrument-for example, a ... more hat is a machine? What distinguishes a machine from a tool or a simple instrument-for example, a knife, a hammer, an ax, or a pencil? Tools are technical objects that can be seen as extending or continuing a bodily action. They augment its efficiency. To push, hit, tear, pierce, crush, grasp, or throw: tools and simple instruments allow us to do better what, to some extent, we can already do without them. They enhance our performance, make the action easier, more precise, they push back the limits of what we can do. What is done with difficulty and imperfectly with our bare hands, teeth, or nails can be done better and more easily using a tool, or with the help of a stone, a leaf, a stick, or of any natural object that momentarily becomes a tool. We can throw farther using a thruster, or a sling, draw better using a pen or brush. A knife, an adze, or an ax cuts deeper, tears thicker material than we can with our teeth or hands; a hammer hits harder, allowing us to crush hard stones. In all these cases, when using the tool the bodily action originally involved is, so to speak, developed in the same direction. Tools prolong the bodily intention of

Journal of Artificial Intelligence Humanities, 2019

Introduction Autonomous road vehicles, either cars or trucks, especially if they become common wi... more Introduction Autonomous road vehicles, either cars or trucks, especially if they become common will inevitably sometimes be involved in accidents leading to property damages or even loss of life. This raises the issue of responsibility. Who will and who should be responsible either morally or legally when the accident is the direct result of an action taken by an autonomous vehicle, perhaps because it failed to perceive an obstacle or pedestrian, or to react appropriately to another vehicle's movement? A different and more difficult question concerns what a machine should do when it has the choice either to protect its own passengers or to prioritize the safety of others, drivers, passengers of another vehicle, or pedestrians. What rule should guide the autonomous vehicle when faced with such dilemmas? How can we justify giving the machine one rule that prioritizes, say, the safety of the vehicle's passengers, rather than another which gives precedence to the protection of young children whether they are passengers or not? How should we consider machines that autonomously decide when faced with such dilemmas? Floridi and Sanders in an influential article provide a minimal definition of a moral agent in two steps:"An action is said to be morally qualifiable if and only if it can cause moral good or evil. An agent is said to be a moral agent if randomly if it is capable of morally qualifiable action." 1 Given this definition, it seems that an autonomous vehicles endowed with accident rules concerning who should be protected and who could be sacrificed in the case of accidents, would qualify as artificial moral agents or AMAs. Therefore, the introduction of autonomous road vehicles would also correspond to the introduction of a large number of artificial moral agents in our society. As Floridi and Sanders indicate in the conclusion of their paper, recognizing artificial systems as moral agents or moral machines has important consequences on the issue of responsibility. The remainder of this chapter will inquire into some of the social and political consequences of considering autonomous road vehicles as moral machines as well as some of the philosophical difficulties of doing so. Moral machines? What is a moral machine? What could be considered as one? What conditions are necessary in order for a machine to be moral, or immoral agent? Is it sufficient for a machine's action in the world to have (at time) consequences which have moral import in order for it to be a 'moral machine'? If the answer is 'yes', then it seems that just about any machine will be a moral machine, more precisely any artifact, machine or not, a medication, a knife, or a printing press will be moral. Clearly by 'moral machine' we mean more than that, but how exactly can this further demand be cashed out? Generally, the basic, necessary and perhaps sufficient requirement in order for a machine to be a moral agent is to be autonomous. That is to say, to be in some way 1 L. Floridi& J.W. Sanders "On the Morality of Artificial Agents" in Mind and Machine (2004) 14.3:349-379, page 361 for the quotation. 'responsible' for its action in the world; the machine or artificial system should, so to speak, be 'in charge of its own action'. The problem is that autonomy is a concept which is hard to define and that means different things in different domains. In AI, robotics, information science and the sciences of artificial systems, disciplines which produce autonomous artificial agents and machines, autonomy is generally defined as the ability of a system to adapt by itself to changes in its environment. It is thus defined relative to an environment, but as Lucy Suchman reminds us at the beginning of her classic Human-Machine Reconfiguration 2 the environment in which a machine or artificial agent acts is quite different from that in which humans live. It is significantly poorer and more limited. In consequence, what is autonomous for a machine may be quite obviously and trivially determined from a human point of view. The second difficulty is that what "acting in a way that is adapted to the environment" means in the context of artificial systems, unlike what is the case for natural systems, primarily depends on what the system's designer or programmer wants it to do. To be adapted here is not a simple relation between the agent and its environment. It is also relative to a norm that is imposed from the outside by the system's creator or programmer. The question of the 'morality' of the machine then also needs to take into account that norm and its ethical value. The issue is further made difficult by the fact that 'moral autonomy' can be understood in a variety of ways. Here are three very different, yet, I think, serious candidates. First, to be morally autonomous in the Kantian sense is for an agent to give to him or herself, his or her own (moral) law. Which means to treat every person (including the agent) as an end in itself, rather than merely a means to an end. According to an alternative formulation, an agent acts morally in the Kantian sense if the maxim of her action could be transformed into a universal law of nature. Second, an agent is morally autonomous to the extent that the moral obligations to which the agent is subject, unlike laws of nature, bind the agent but do not determine his actions. Or, to say it in another way, one's action is only morally autonomous if the agent could have acted in a way that was immoral. 3 Finally, a morally autonomous person is one who can recognize that another person has a legitimate claim, even in the absence of a pre-existing moral norms that justify that claim. This last formulation is close to Sen's idea that being against injustice is prior to and does not require having a theory of justice, and to Bergson's concept of 'open morality'. All three views of moral autonomy are different, but they are closely related in that all presuppose that a moral agent can in some way take distance from the rules that guide his or her action. Something that is particularly difficult to do for a machine, but which is where resides the whole issue of its possible moral autonomy. Given these difficulties, answering the questions "what is a moral machine?" or "can a 2 L. Suchman, Human-Machine Reconfiguration (Cambridge University Press, 2007). 3 Note that a similar requirement applies to law, as Mireille Hildebrandt, reminds us. What distinguishes law from technological normativity is that it can be resisted. M. Hildebrandt Smart Technologies and the End(s) of Law (London: Edward Elgar, 2015), p. 296.

Contagion, 2020

Human beings, after all, provide for each other the most ingenious obstacles to what partial know... more Human beings, after all, provide for each other the most ingenious obstacles to what partial knowledge and minimal rationality they can hope to command.-Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choices in Public and Private Life ROMANTIC LIE W e tend to have a romantic view of liars, or rather of those who lie, and of how and of why they and we lie. A romantic view in the sense in which Girard uses that term in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, whose French title was Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, that is, "Romantic lie and novelistic truth. " Our common paradigm of the lie is willful deceit. We think the liar knows the truth, but he or she willfully hides it. The liar misrepresents what is the case to manipulate others to his or her own advantage. The liar knows something that we do not know; otherwise, he could not deceive us, for we would know the truth. Or she successfully claims an authority that she does not have, to trick us and declare that what we know is false.

Cahiers Verbatim, volume VI (hiver), 2019

L 'objectif de ce texte est de tracer une cartographie des passions en politique ou plus précisém... more L 'objectif de ce texte est de tracer une cartographie des passions en politique ou plus précisément de la façon dont on a conçu le rôle, l'influence, ou l'action des passions (des émotions ou de l'affect) en politique. Par « passions en politique » il ne faut pas simplement entendre ce qu'on pourrait nommer les « passions politiques » au sens étroit, comme le nationalisme, le millénarisme, la passion révolutionnaire, l'amour de la liberté, ou plus récemment l'Islam politique. C'est-à-dire des affects dont le contenu, l'objet ou les manifestations sont essentiellement politiques. Au-delà d'elles, l'expression « passions en politique » renvoie aussi aux diverses façons dont les affects, les émotions et les passions, au sens le plus ordinaire, peuvent agir sur le politique. La carte ne porte pas sur les passions elles-mêmes, sur la nature desquelles le texte reste agnostique-ce pourquoi j'utiliserai sans les distinguer les termes de passions, d'émotions ou d'affect. de certaines différences dans les manières de les concevoir. La cartographie que je cherche à dresser n'est donc pas celle des différentes passions politiques, mais celle des diverses manières dont on a conçu les rapports entre les affects et le politique.

Forum Philosophicum, 2019

The idea of artificial intelligence implies the existence of a form of intelligence that is "natu... more The idea of artificial intelligence implies the existence of a form of intelligence that is "natural, " or at least not artificial. The problem is that intelligence , whether "natural" or "artificial," is not well defined: it is hard to say what, exactly, is or constitutes intelligence. This difficulty makes it impossible to measure human intelligence against artificial intelligence on a unique scale. It does not, however, prevent us from comparing them; rather, it changes the sense and meaning of such comparisons. Comparing artificial intelligence with human intelligence could allow us to understand both forms better. This paper thus aims to compare and distinguish these two forms of intelligence, focusing on three issues: forms of embodiment, autonomy and judgment. Doing so, I argue, should enable us to have a better view of the promises and limitations of present-day artificial intelligence, along with its benefits and dangers and the place we should make for it in our culture and society.

Studi di Sociologia. (2017) 4: 303-318, 2017

This paper argues, against the dominant position in social sciences-especially economics and in b... more This paper argues, against the dominant position in social sciences-especially economics and in biology that cooperation and conflict are not polar opposite, but to the contrary that cooperation and conflict constitute forms of social coordination that partake in the social bonds and are related in such a way that they grow in parallel. Therefore, in highly social species, like humans, we should expect greater cooperation to lead to more rather than less conflicts. I show why this is the case and the limits of S. Bowles's concept of «parochial altruism» which continues to treat cooperation and conflict as opposite which excludes each other. Following an old sociological tradition, I argue that in the absence of coordination between opponents, violence is not conflict, in fact that cooperation cannot be separated from conflict and show how agents often cooperate to conflict.

Cahier de l'Herne Girard, 2008

Les descriptions détaillées de violences collectives modernes, surtout politiques, comme les pogr... more Les descriptions détaillées de violences collectives modernes, surtout politiques, comme les pogroms, les émeutes raciales, le nettoyage ethnique, l’holocauste ou les génocides donnent de ces phénomènes une image à première vue fort différente de celle que nous offre la théorie girardienne de la crise mimétique. En effet presque toutes les analyses de ces violences s’accordent pour reconnaître l’importance de meneurs du jeu, d’acteurs politiques principaux, de spécialistes et de véritables entrepreneurs de la violence sans lesquels les massacres n’auraient pas eu lieu et les événements auraient pris une tournure toute différente. Loin d’être spontanée, l’effet d’une contagion qui envahit l’ensemble de la société, la violence collective, d’après certains des meilleurs exemples que nous possédions semble être planifiée, organisée, réfléchie, sinon rationnelle, le résultat d’une action concertée et coordonnée. Or comment concilier ces descriptions avec la conception girardienne de la crise, le rôle qu’elle accorde au mimétisme et l’importance qu’elle donne aux phénomènes de contagion?

Cahier Verbatim, Presses de l'université Laval, 2018

Je défends la thèse que le roman pédagogique de Fénelon, Les aventures de Télémaque, est une oeuv... more Je défends la thèse que le roman pédagogique de Fénelon, Les aventures de Télémaque, est une oeuvre profondément anti-utopique. À première vue cela peut sembler étonnant, car le roman est souvent décrit comme « pseudo-historique et utopique ». L'utopie est généralement définie comme la description d'une société idéale et l'on fait remonter cette tradition à La République de Platon. C'est aussi un genre littéraire qui s'apparente au récit de voyage, mais ayant pour cadre des sociétés imaginaires. Les aventures de Télémaque satisfont toutes ces conditions. Ces aventures sont essentiellement un récit de voyage qui a pour cadre des sociétés imaginaire et le roman contient trois description de ce que l'on pourrait considérer comme des sociétés idéales. De plus, certaines études récentes s'attardent à l'influence centrale de Platon sur Fénelon. Il y a donc d'excellentes raisons de penser que Les aventures de Télémaque s'inscrivent au moins partiellement dans la tradition de la littérature utopique.

Philosophie, 2019

Following a suggestion from G. Bateson, this article enquires into the consequence of the idea of... more Following a suggestion from G. Bateson, this article enquires into the consequence of the idea of embodiment in philosophy of mind, taking seriously the notion of an ecology of mind. In the first half of this article, after distinguishing between the biological and the systemic approaches to ecology, I focus on three characteristics of the systemic approach. First, that a system is an abstract object that is multiply embodied in a collection of physically distinct heterogeneous objects. Second, that there is a form of circular causality between the level of the elements and that of the system as a whole, as some characteristics of the elements partake in the explanation of how the system functions, while the requirement of the system explains why the elements have the characteristics that they do. The third is the ontological uncertainty that we sometimes find in ecology, where the same term is used to designate both a central component of the ecological system and the system as a whole. In the second half, beginning with a critique of the theory of mind approach, I look into the consequences of conceiving that mind is embodied in a collection of physically distinct heterogeneous objects that interact as elements of a system, rather than enclosed in an individual body. 1. The Ecology of Mind In 1972, Gregory Bateson published Steps to an Ecology of Mind [1]. "Steps" seems the right title for a collection of essays written over a period of more than thirty-five years, in which the idea of an ecology of mind only becomes an explicit theme in the last section of the book. What these steps recount is how Bateson, who was throughout his life "concerned by four sorts of subject matter: anthropology, psychiatry, biological evolution and genetics, and the new epistemology which comes out of systems theory and ecology", progressively became convinced that ideas and mind cannot be studied and understood in isolation, but only as part of a larger system. Thus, the idea of an "ecology of mind", that there is an ecosystem of mind and ideas. In this contribution, I wish to revisit not so much Bateson's text, as the idea of an ecology of mind in relation to the question of embodiment. The project faces an immediate objection: during the last twenty years or so, the term ecology has been used in relation to so many different topics that its meaning has become, to say the least, somewhat unclear. For example, a quick search for the entry "ecology of" in open access website Academia.edu gives, apart from the ecology of various animals, plants, viruses, and types of environment among others, the following results: the ecology of tactical overlap [2], the ecology of affect [3], the ecology of terror defense [4], the dark ecology of elegy, the ecology of religious beliefs, of medieval art, of team science, of risk taking, of monads, of technology, of recovery, of Victorian fiction, of narratives, and so on. Given this abundance of associations, it is difficult to understand what the ecology of mind could mean or how it can be more than just another metaphor. In biology, ecology is usually defined as the branch which studies how organisms interact with their environment and with other organisms. Each individual entertains complex relationships with

Frontiers in Psychology, 2018

Social robotics entertains a particular relationship with anthropomorphism, which it neither sees... more Social robotics entertains a particular relationship with anthropomorphism, which it neither sees as a cognitive error, nor as a sign of immaturity. Rather it considers that this common human tendency, which is hypothesized to have evolved because it favored cooperation among early humans, can be used today to facilitate social interactions between humans and a new type of cooperative and interactive agents – social robots. This approach leads social robotics to focus research on the engineering of robots that activate anthropomorphic projections in users. The objective is to give robots " social presence " and " social behaviors " that are sufficiently credible for human users to engage in comfortable and potentially long-lasting relations with these machines. This choice of 'applied anthropomorphism' as a research methodology exposes the artifacts produced by social robotics to ethical condemnation: social robots are judged to be a " cheating " technology, as they generate in users the illusion of reciprocal social and affective relations. This article takes position in this debate, not only developing a series of arguments relevant to philosophy of mind, cognitive sciences, and robotic AI, but also asking what social robotics can teach us about anthropomorphism. On this basis, we propose a theoretical perspective that characterizes anthropomorphism as a basic mechanism of interaction, and rebuts the ethical reflections that a priori condemns " anthropomorphism-based " social robots. To address the relevant ethical issues, we promote a critical experimentally based ethical approach to social robotics, " synthetic ethics, " which aims at allowing humans to use social robots for two main goals: self-knowledge and moral growth.

This article begins by introducing Paro, a robot designed for (substitute) pet-therapy in retirem... more This article begins by introducing Paro, a robot designed for (substitute) pet-therapy in retirement homes and hospitals. Paro's success as a social robot illustrates the fact that, in an interaction, " social agents " give precedence to their relation to other agents over the relations to objects. However, Paro's artificial empathy is characterized by its failure to engage with the world and provides an example of what may be called " pure sociality ". Among humans, examples of relations of pure sociality are rare. Most social relations rests on an object or pretext that allows them to arise. Violence and passionate love are among the few examples of relations of pure sociality suggesting that such relations which involve strong emotions can also be self-defeating. How can this be squared with Paro's apparent success?

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AI, 2023

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

Natureculture, 2017

Japan is considered to be the most highly robotized society in the world, which at the industrial... more Japan is considered to be the most highly robotized society in the world, which at the industrial level at least is certainly true. There are presently some 250,000 industrial robots employed in Japan, which is more than in any other country, and this number is expected to double in less than five years, quadruple in ten. Further, according to a claim that has been around at least since the early 1960s, there is a 'love story' between Japan and robots (Koestler 1960). The Japanese are said to love robots, while Westerners tend to fear or at least to be wary of them, and many studies show that social acceptance of robots is higher in Japan than in Europe (Hornyak 2006). Japanese newspapers are always eager to report that someone invented a robot for making sushi or a robotic bed for elderly patients that transforms into a wheel chair. Robots in everyday life are seen as useful helpers rather than potentially dangerous rivals. However, for those of us who live there, the presence of robots in everyday life is not so evident. It is not clear to me that there are more robots in my normal environment in Japan, than what I find when I go to France or Canada. The love story between Japan and robots may be true, but it seems to be taking place at the level of cultural representations more than that of daily experience. Part of the explanation for the apparent discrepancy between the number of robots in Japan and the daily experience of robots, may simply be the lack of social visibility of most robots. Unless you are a factory worker, encounters with industrial robots are

Les Cahiers de la Justice, 2011

Mimétisme et massacres La distinction fondamentale me semble-t-il si on veut comprendre la dynami... more Mimétisme et massacres La distinction fondamentale me semble-t-il si on veut comprendre la dynamique mimétique qui conduit aux massacres est celle qui sépare la violence illégitime de la violence légitime, qui départit la mauvaise violence qui n'est que désordre, destruction et massacre, de la bonne violence, de la violence qui vise à purifier la communauté et à ramener l'ordre, et qui, de ce fait, très souvent n'est déjà plus tout à fait une violence, puisqu'elle vise à mettre un terme à la violence. C'est la distinction qui sépare la violence immorale, monstrueuse et honnie, de la violence nécessaire, juste et justifiée. Car la violence à grande échelle nécessite de nombreux participants, soit directement, lorsque les armes employées ont une faible

Deception in Markets, 2005

En somme, on ne peut que ruser avec un partenaire d'échange, le prendre en traître serait saper l... more En somme, on ne peut que ruser avec un partenaire d'échange, le prendre en traître serait saper les fondements de l'échange. R. Hamayon La chasse à l'âme. But the emperors, and other Christian sovereigns, under whose government these errors, and the like encroachments of ecclesiastics upon their office, at first crept in, to the disturbance of their possessions, and of the tranquility of their subjects, though they suffered the same for want of foresight of the sequel, and of insight into the designs of their teachers, may nevertheless be esteemed accessories to their own, and the public damage. Hobbes Leviathan

Encyclopeidia of Violence, Peace & Conflict, Vol.4, 2022

A long tradition views the relation between reason and violence in the form of a dichotomy where ... more A long tradition views the relation between reason and violence in the form of a dichotomy where reason is both opposed to violence and constitutes an alternative means of resolution of the conflicts. This dichotomy is not a mere conceptual opposition, it is also a historical phenomenon. In order to be socially efficacious, the opposition between reason and violence requires specific cultural and institutional conditions which historically were provided by the modern state monopoly of legitimate violence, that should not be understood merely as commanding superior force, but as a moral authority that distinguishes between good and bad violence. Definitions and dichotomy The initial difficulty in addressing the question of the relations between reason and violence is that we are dealing with two rather ill-defined terms. First, reason and rationality are not only notoriously hard to define, but they also constitute 'moving targets' so to speak. Over time, and especially perhaps during the last 50 years, our conceptions of what is reason, of what constitutes rationality and of what is reasonable, have profoundly changed, leading to disagreements and uncertainty. Different disciplines like economics, 1 philosophy, 2 social justice theories, 3 or psychology 4 promoting various notions which are sometimes related, sometimes vastly different. Some proposing that rationality can be reduced to purposeful action and that is only one strategy among many, of which natural selection is the most prominent, that augment the probability that an organism will reach its intended goal? 5 Others implicitly suggesting that we should perhaps abandon the idea. 6

Studi di Sociologia, 2021

Using empirical evidence concerning catastrophes I show that the conception of inequalities domin... more Using empirical evidence concerning catastrophes I show that the conception of inequalities dominant in social ethics is inadequate, that it misrepresent the reality it pretends to analyze and evaluate. Disaster studies make clear that catastrophes regularly entrench existing inequalities, making the poor and vulnerable poorer and more vulnerable, and the rich richer. In consequence, I argue, the distinction between legitimate and unjustified inequalities disappears. This well established empirical result undermines a central presupposition of major theories of social justice: that in themselves inequalities are morally neutral. Whether "justice as fairness", "brute luck" or "desert" theories all these approaches to social justice are challenged by the effect of catastrophes on pre-existing inequalities. In a second part, I argue that this properly catastrophic result for theories of social justice is related to the fact that they tend to identify, if not sometimes to conceived inequalities as properties of agents, while they are relational properties rather than properties of isolated individuals.

Humana Mente, 2020

In this article we tackle the core question of machine emotion research-"Can machines have emotio... more In this article we tackle the core question of machine emotion research-"Can machines have emotions?"-in the context of "social robots", a new class of machines designed to function as "social partners" for humans. Our aim, however, is not to provide an answer to the question "Can robots have emotions?" Rather we argue that the "robotics of emotion" moves us to reformulate it into a different one-"Can robots affectively coordinate with humans?" Developing a series of arguments relevant to theory of emotion, philosophy of AI, and the epistemology of synthetic models, we argue that the answer to this different question is positive, and that it lays grounds for an innovative ethical approach to emotional robots. This ethical project, which we introduced elsewhere as "synthetic ethics", rejects the diffused ethical condemnation of emotional robots as "cheating" technology. Synthetic ethics focuses not on an ideological refusal, but on the concrete sustainability of the emerging mixed human-robot social ecologies. On this basis, in contrast to a purely negative ethical approach to social robotics it promotes an analytical case by case ethical inquiry into the type of human flourishing that can result from human-robot affective coordination.

Cahier Verbatim VII, 2020

Contagion, 2021

hat is a machine? What distinguishes a machine from a tool or a simple instrument-for example, a ... more hat is a machine? What distinguishes a machine from a tool or a simple instrument-for example, a knife, a hammer, an ax, or a pencil? Tools are technical objects that can be seen as extending or continuing a bodily action. They augment its efficiency. To push, hit, tear, pierce, crush, grasp, or throw: tools and simple instruments allow us to do better what, to some extent, we can already do without them. They enhance our performance, make the action easier, more precise, they push back the limits of what we can do. What is done with difficulty and imperfectly with our bare hands, teeth, or nails can be done better and more easily using a tool, or with the help of a stone, a leaf, a stick, or of any natural object that momentarily becomes a tool. We can throw farther using a thruster, or a sling, draw better using a pen or brush. A knife, an adze, or an ax cuts deeper, tears thicker material than we can with our teeth or hands; a hammer hits harder, allowing us to crush hard stones. In all these cases, when using the tool the bodily action originally involved is, so to speak, developed in the same direction. Tools prolong the bodily intention of

Journal of Artificial Intelligence Humanities, 2019

Introduction Autonomous road vehicles, either cars or trucks, especially if they become common wi... more Introduction Autonomous road vehicles, either cars or trucks, especially if they become common will inevitably sometimes be involved in accidents leading to property damages or even loss of life. This raises the issue of responsibility. Who will and who should be responsible either morally or legally when the accident is the direct result of an action taken by an autonomous vehicle, perhaps because it failed to perceive an obstacle or pedestrian, or to react appropriately to another vehicle's movement? A different and more difficult question concerns what a machine should do when it has the choice either to protect its own passengers or to prioritize the safety of others, drivers, passengers of another vehicle, or pedestrians. What rule should guide the autonomous vehicle when faced with such dilemmas? How can we justify giving the machine one rule that prioritizes, say, the safety of the vehicle's passengers, rather than another which gives precedence to the protection of young children whether they are passengers or not? How should we consider machines that autonomously decide when faced with such dilemmas? Floridi and Sanders in an influential article provide a minimal definition of a moral agent in two steps:"An action is said to be morally qualifiable if and only if it can cause moral good or evil. An agent is said to be a moral agent if randomly if it is capable of morally qualifiable action." 1 Given this definition, it seems that an autonomous vehicles endowed with accident rules concerning who should be protected and who could be sacrificed in the case of accidents, would qualify as artificial moral agents or AMAs. Therefore, the introduction of autonomous road vehicles would also correspond to the introduction of a large number of artificial moral agents in our society. As Floridi and Sanders indicate in the conclusion of their paper, recognizing artificial systems as moral agents or moral machines has important consequences on the issue of responsibility. The remainder of this chapter will inquire into some of the social and political consequences of considering autonomous road vehicles as moral machines as well as some of the philosophical difficulties of doing so. Moral machines? What is a moral machine? What could be considered as one? What conditions are necessary in order for a machine to be moral, or immoral agent? Is it sufficient for a machine's action in the world to have (at time) consequences which have moral import in order for it to be a 'moral machine'? If the answer is 'yes', then it seems that just about any machine will be a moral machine, more precisely any artifact, machine or not, a medication, a knife, or a printing press will be moral. Clearly by 'moral machine' we mean more than that, but how exactly can this further demand be cashed out? Generally, the basic, necessary and perhaps sufficient requirement in order for a machine to be a moral agent is to be autonomous. That is to say, to be in some way 1 L. Floridi& J.W. Sanders "On the Morality of Artificial Agents" in Mind and Machine (2004) 14.3:349-379, page 361 for the quotation. 'responsible' for its action in the world; the machine or artificial system should, so to speak, be 'in charge of its own action'. The problem is that autonomy is a concept which is hard to define and that means different things in different domains. In AI, robotics, information science and the sciences of artificial systems, disciplines which produce autonomous artificial agents and machines, autonomy is generally defined as the ability of a system to adapt by itself to changes in its environment. It is thus defined relative to an environment, but as Lucy Suchman reminds us at the beginning of her classic Human-Machine Reconfiguration 2 the environment in which a machine or artificial agent acts is quite different from that in which humans live. It is significantly poorer and more limited. In consequence, what is autonomous for a machine may be quite obviously and trivially determined from a human point of view. The second difficulty is that what "acting in a way that is adapted to the environment" means in the context of artificial systems, unlike what is the case for natural systems, primarily depends on what the system's designer or programmer wants it to do. To be adapted here is not a simple relation between the agent and its environment. It is also relative to a norm that is imposed from the outside by the system's creator or programmer. The question of the 'morality' of the machine then also needs to take into account that norm and its ethical value. The issue is further made difficult by the fact that 'moral autonomy' can be understood in a variety of ways. Here are three very different, yet, I think, serious candidates. First, to be morally autonomous in the Kantian sense is for an agent to give to him or herself, his or her own (moral) law. Which means to treat every person (including the agent) as an end in itself, rather than merely a means to an end. According to an alternative formulation, an agent acts morally in the Kantian sense if the maxim of her action could be transformed into a universal law of nature. Second, an agent is morally autonomous to the extent that the moral obligations to which the agent is subject, unlike laws of nature, bind the agent but do not determine his actions. Or, to say it in another way, one's action is only morally autonomous if the agent could have acted in a way that was immoral. 3 Finally, a morally autonomous person is one who can recognize that another person has a legitimate claim, even in the absence of a pre-existing moral norms that justify that claim. This last formulation is close to Sen's idea that being against injustice is prior to and does not require having a theory of justice, and to Bergson's concept of 'open morality'. All three views of moral autonomy are different, but they are closely related in that all presuppose that a moral agent can in some way take distance from the rules that guide his or her action. Something that is particularly difficult to do for a machine, but which is where resides the whole issue of its possible moral autonomy. Given these difficulties, answering the questions "what is a moral machine?" or "can a 2 L. Suchman, Human-Machine Reconfiguration (Cambridge University Press, 2007). 3 Note that a similar requirement applies to law, as Mireille Hildebrandt, reminds us. What distinguishes law from technological normativity is that it can be resisted. M. Hildebrandt Smart Technologies and the End(s) of Law (London: Edward Elgar, 2015), p. 296.

Contagion, 2020

Human beings, after all, provide for each other the most ingenious obstacles to what partial know... more Human beings, after all, provide for each other the most ingenious obstacles to what partial knowledge and minimal rationality they can hope to command.-Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choices in Public and Private Life ROMANTIC LIE W e tend to have a romantic view of liars, or rather of those who lie, and of how and of why they and we lie. A romantic view in the sense in which Girard uses that term in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, whose French title was Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, that is, "Romantic lie and novelistic truth. " Our common paradigm of the lie is willful deceit. We think the liar knows the truth, but he or she willfully hides it. The liar misrepresents what is the case to manipulate others to his or her own advantage. The liar knows something that we do not know; otherwise, he could not deceive us, for we would know the truth. Or she successfully claims an authority that she does not have, to trick us and declare that what we know is false.

Cahiers Verbatim, volume VI (hiver), 2019

L 'objectif de ce texte est de tracer une cartographie des passions en politique ou plus précisém... more L 'objectif de ce texte est de tracer une cartographie des passions en politique ou plus précisément de la façon dont on a conçu le rôle, l'influence, ou l'action des passions (des émotions ou de l'affect) en politique. Par « passions en politique » il ne faut pas simplement entendre ce qu'on pourrait nommer les « passions politiques » au sens étroit, comme le nationalisme, le millénarisme, la passion révolutionnaire, l'amour de la liberté, ou plus récemment l'Islam politique. C'est-à-dire des affects dont le contenu, l'objet ou les manifestations sont essentiellement politiques. Au-delà d'elles, l'expression « passions en politique » renvoie aussi aux diverses façons dont les affects, les émotions et les passions, au sens le plus ordinaire, peuvent agir sur le politique. La carte ne porte pas sur les passions elles-mêmes, sur la nature desquelles le texte reste agnostique-ce pourquoi j'utiliserai sans les distinguer les termes de passions, d'émotions ou d'affect. de certaines différences dans les manières de les concevoir. La cartographie que je cherche à dresser n'est donc pas celle des différentes passions politiques, mais celle des diverses manières dont on a conçu les rapports entre les affects et le politique.

Forum Philosophicum, 2019

The idea of artificial intelligence implies the existence of a form of intelligence that is "natu... more The idea of artificial intelligence implies the existence of a form of intelligence that is "natural, " or at least not artificial. The problem is that intelligence , whether "natural" or "artificial," is not well defined: it is hard to say what, exactly, is or constitutes intelligence. This difficulty makes it impossible to measure human intelligence against artificial intelligence on a unique scale. It does not, however, prevent us from comparing them; rather, it changes the sense and meaning of such comparisons. Comparing artificial intelligence with human intelligence could allow us to understand both forms better. This paper thus aims to compare and distinguish these two forms of intelligence, focusing on three issues: forms of embodiment, autonomy and judgment. Doing so, I argue, should enable us to have a better view of the promises and limitations of present-day artificial intelligence, along with its benefits and dangers and the place we should make for it in our culture and society.

Studi di Sociologia. (2017) 4: 303-318, 2017

This paper argues, against the dominant position in social sciences-especially economics and in b... more This paper argues, against the dominant position in social sciences-especially economics and in biology that cooperation and conflict are not polar opposite, but to the contrary that cooperation and conflict constitute forms of social coordination that partake in the social bonds and are related in such a way that they grow in parallel. Therefore, in highly social species, like humans, we should expect greater cooperation to lead to more rather than less conflicts. I show why this is the case and the limits of S. Bowles's concept of «parochial altruism» which continues to treat cooperation and conflict as opposite which excludes each other. Following an old sociological tradition, I argue that in the absence of coordination between opponents, violence is not conflict, in fact that cooperation cannot be separated from conflict and show how agents often cooperate to conflict.

Cahier de l'Herne Girard, 2008

Les descriptions détaillées de violences collectives modernes, surtout politiques, comme les pogr... more Les descriptions détaillées de violences collectives modernes, surtout politiques, comme les pogroms, les émeutes raciales, le nettoyage ethnique, l’holocauste ou les génocides donnent de ces phénomènes une image à première vue fort différente de celle que nous offre la théorie girardienne de la crise mimétique. En effet presque toutes les analyses de ces violences s’accordent pour reconnaître l’importance de meneurs du jeu, d’acteurs politiques principaux, de spécialistes et de véritables entrepreneurs de la violence sans lesquels les massacres n’auraient pas eu lieu et les événements auraient pris une tournure toute différente. Loin d’être spontanée, l’effet d’une contagion qui envahit l’ensemble de la société, la violence collective, d’après certains des meilleurs exemples que nous possédions semble être planifiée, organisée, réfléchie, sinon rationnelle, le résultat d’une action concertée et coordonnée. Or comment concilier ces descriptions avec la conception girardienne de la crise, le rôle qu’elle accorde au mimétisme et l’importance qu’elle donne aux phénomènes de contagion?

Cahier Verbatim, Presses de l'université Laval, 2018

Je défends la thèse que le roman pédagogique de Fénelon, Les aventures de Télémaque, est une oeuv... more Je défends la thèse que le roman pédagogique de Fénelon, Les aventures de Télémaque, est une oeuvre profondément anti-utopique. À première vue cela peut sembler étonnant, car le roman est souvent décrit comme « pseudo-historique et utopique ». L'utopie est généralement définie comme la description d'une société idéale et l'on fait remonter cette tradition à La République de Platon. C'est aussi un genre littéraire qui s'apparente au récit de voyage, mais ayant pour cadre des sociétés imaginaires. Les aventures de Télémaque satisfont toutes ces conditions. Ces aventures sont essentiellement un récit de voyage qui a pour cadre des sociétés imaginaire et le roman contient trois description de ce que l'on pourrait considérer comme des sociétés idéales. De plus, certaines études récentes s'attardent à l'influence centrale de Platon sur Fénelon. Il y a donc d'excellentes raisons de penser que Les aventures de Télémaque s'inscrivent au moins partiellement dans la tradition de la littérature utopique.

Philosophie, 2019

Following a suggestion from G. Bateson, this article enquires into the consequence of the idea of... more Following a suggestion from G. Bateson, this article enquires into the consequence of the idea of embodiment in philosophy of mind, taking seriously the notion of an ecology of mind. In the first half of this article, after distinguishing between the biological and the systemic approaches to ecology, I focus on three characteristics of the systemic approach. First, that a system is an abstract object that is multiply embodied in a collection of physically distinct heterogeneous objects. Second, that there is a form of circular causality between the level of the elements and that of the system as a whole, as some characteristics of the elements partake in the explanation of how the system functions, while the requirement of the system explains why the elements have the characteristics that they do. The third is the ontological uncertainty that we sometimes find in ecology, where the same term is used to designate both a central component of the ecological system and the system as a whole. In the second half, beginning with a critique of the theory of mind approach, I look into the consequences of conceiving that mind is embodied in a collection of physically distinct heterogeneous objects that interact as elements of a system, rather than enclosed in an individual body. 1. The Ecology of Mind In 1972, Gregory Bateson published Steps to an Ecology of Mind [1]. "Steps" seems the right title for a collection of essays written over a period of more than thirty-five years, in which the idea of an ecology of mind only becomes an explicit theme in the last section of the book. What these steps recount is how Bateson, who was throughout his life "concerned by four sorts of subject matter: anthropology, psychiatry, biological evolution and genetics, and the new epistemology which comes out of systems theory and ecology", progressively became convinced that ideas and mind cannot be studied and understood in isolation, but only as part of a larger system. Thus, the idea of an "ecology of mind", that there is an ecosystem of mind and ideas. In this contribution, I wish to revisit not so much Bateson's text, as the idea of an ecology of mind in relation to the question of embodiment. The project faces an immediate objection: during the last twenty years or so, the term ecology has been used in relation to so many different topics that its meaning has become, to say the least, somewhat unclear. For example, a quick search for the entry "ecology of" in open access website Academia.edu gives, apart from the ecology of various animals, plants, viruses, and types of environment among others, the following results: the ecology of tactical overlap [2], the ecology of affect [3], the ecology of terror defense [4], the dark ecology of elegy, the ecology of religious beliefs, of medieval art, of team science, of risk taking, of monads, of technology, of recovery, of Victorian fiction, of narratives, and so on. Given this abundance of associations, it is difficult to understand what the ecology of mind could mean or how it can be more than just another metaphor. In biology, ecology is usually defined as the branch which studies how organisms interact with their environment and with other organisms. Each individual entertains complex relationships with

Frontiers in Psychology, 2018

Social robotics entertains a particular relationship with anthropomorphism, which it neither sees... more Social robotics entertains a particular relationship with anthropomorphism, which it neither sees as a cognitive error, nor as a sign of immaturity. Rather it considers that this common human tendency, which is hypothesized to have evolved because it favored cooperation among early humans, can be used today to facilitate social interactions between humans and a new type of cooperative and interactive agents – social robots. This approach leads social robotics to focus research on the engineering of robots that activate anthropomorphic projections in users. The objective is to give robots " social presence " and " social behaviors " that are sufficiently credible for human users to engage in comfortable and potentially long-lasting relations with these machines. This choice of 'applied anthropomorphism' as a research methodology exposes the artifacts produced by social robotics to ethical condemnation: social robots are judged to be a " cheating " technology, as they generate in users the illusion of reciprocal social and affective relations. This article takes position in this debate, not only developing a series of arguments relevant to philosophy of mind, cognitive sciences, and robotic AI, but also asking what social robotics can teach us about anthropomorphism. On this basis, we propose a theoretical perspective that characterizes anthropomorphism as a basic mechanism of interaction, and rebuts the ethical reflections that a priori condemns " anthropomorphism-based " social robots. To address the relevant ethical issues, we promote a critical experimentally based ethical approach to social robotics, " synthetic ethics, " which aims at allowing humans to use social robots for two main goals: self-knowledge and moral growth.

This article begins by introducing Paro, a robot designed for (substitute) pet-therapy in retirem... more This article begins by introducing Paro, a robot designed for (substitute) pet-therapy in retirement homes and hospitals. Paro's success as a social robot illustrates the fact that, in an interaction, " social agents " give precedence to their relation to other agents over the relations to objects. However, Paro's artificial empathy is characterized by its failure to engage with the world and provides an example of what may be called " pure sociality ". Among humans, examples of relations of pure sociality are rare. Most social relations rests on an object or pretext that allows them to arise. Violence and passionate love are among the few examples of relations of pure sociality suggesting that such relations which involve strong emotions can also be self-defeating. How can this be squared with Paro's apparent success?

J'aimerais pour commencer lire quelques extraits de Sartre. Le premier, plus long, est tiré de la... more J'aimerais pour commencer lire quelques extraits de Sartre. Le premier, plus long, est tiré de la Critique de la raison dialectique (p. 536-538). Le groupe constitué est produit en chacun par chacun comme sa propre naissance d'individu commun et, en même temps, chacun saisit dans la fraternité sa propre naissance d'individu commun comme produite au sein du groupe et par lui Cette fraternité, d'autre part, c'est le droit de tous à travers chacun sur chacun. Il ne suffit pas de rappeler qu'elle est aussi violence ou qu'elle tire son origine de la violence : elle est la violence même en tant que celle-ci s'affirme comme lien d'immanence à travers les réciprocités positives. Par là nous devons entendre que la puissance pratique du lien de fraternité n'est pas autre chose (dans l'immanence 1) que la libre transformation par chacun, pour soi et pour l'autre tiers, du groupe en fusion en groupe de contrainte. On remarque tout particulièrement cette indistinction lorsque le groupe assermenté procède à l'exécution sommaire ou au lynchage d'un de ses membres (supposé traître ou ayant réellement trahi). Le traître n'est pas retranché du groupe; il n'a même pas réussi à s'en retrancher lui-même : il demeure membre du groupe en tant que celui-ci – menacé par la trahison – se reconstitue en anéantissant le coupable, c'est-à-dire en déchargeant sur lui toute sa violence. Mais cette violence d'extermination reste lien de fraternité entre les lyncheurs et le lynché en ce sens que la liquidation du traître se fonde sur l'affirmation positive qu'il est homme du groupe; jusqu'à la fin on s'acharne sur lui au nom de son propre serment et du droit qu'il reconnaissait sur lui aux autres. Mais, inversement, le lynchage est praxis de violence commune pour les lyncheurs en tant que son objectif est l'anéantissement du traître. Il est lien de fraternité réveillé et accentué entre les lyncheurs, en tant qu'il est une réactualisation, brutale du serment lui-même et que chaque pierre jetée, chaque coup donné se produit comme une nouvelle prestation du serment : celui qui participe à l'exécution du traître réaffirme l'indépassabilité de l'être-de-groupe comme limite de sa liberté et comme sa nouvelle naissance; il la réaffirme dans un sacrifice sanglant qui constitue en outre une reconnaissance explicite du droit coercitif de tous sur chacun et une menace de chacun sur tous. De plus, dans la praxis en cours (c'est-à-dire pendant l'exécution) chacun se sent solidaire de chacun et de tous dans la solidarité pratique du danger couru et de la violence commune. Je suis frère de violence pour tous mes voisins : on sait du reste que celui qui refuserait cette fraternité serait suspect. Autrement dit, la colère et la violence sont en même temps vécues comme Terreur exercée sur le traître et (dans le cas où les circonstances auraient produit ce sentiment) comme lien pratique d'amour entre les lyncheurs 2. La violence est la force même de cette réciprocité latérale d'amour. Nous pouvons comprendre par là que l'intensité des faits de groupe tire son origine de l'intensité des menaces extérieures, c'est-à-dire du danger; cette intensité lorsqu'elle ne se manifeste plus comme pression réelle sans que le danger ait pour autant disparu, est remplacée par ce substitut inventé : la Terreur. Celle-ci, réel produit des hommes groupés, n'en dépend pas moins, en elle-même et pour son degré d'intensité, de la violence adverse (c'est-à-dire de la violence subie et encore vivante dans les mémoires et de la violence attendue, en cas, par exemple, de contre-attaque). L'invention de la Terreur comme contre-violence engendrée par le groupe lui-même et appliquée par les individus communs sur chaque agent particulier (en tant qu'il comporte en lui-même un danger de sérialité) est donc l'utilisation de la force commune jusque-là engagée contre l'adversaire, pour le remaniement du groupe lui-même. Et toutes les conduites intérieures des individus communs (fraternité, amour, amitié aussi bien que colère et lynchage) tirent leur terrible puissance de la Terreur même. Les notes sont de Sartre et les passages en italiques le sont aussi dans le texte original. 1 Il va de soi, en effet, que le groupe est qualifié jusque dans chacun de ses membres par son rapport transcendant à l'autre groupe, c'est-à-dire au groupe adverse; nous y reviendrons. 2 Je parle ici de l'exécution des traîtres et non, bien entendu, de ce type de lynchage raciste qui fait, en Amérique, distraire la vie du membre d'un autre groupe.

Perception According to the American psychologist J.J. Gibson what we essentially or primarily pe... more Perception According to the American psychologist J.J. Gibson what we essentially or primarily perceive are not things, not objects in the world, but affordances. 1 This claim follows directly from the idea that perception and action are inseparable. That perception is for action, and even more that perception is action, not simply a particular form of action, but in a sense that perception and action are the " same thing " , a continuum, and that separating them as two distinct moments is artificial and misleading. That, he thought, was the central mistake of the experimental study of perception: that it is built on the model of the observer which completely separates perception from action. Hearing, smelling or seeing are isolated, taken in themselves as topic of research and the experimental subject is asked to do only that, to look, to listen, or to smell while the experimenter measures his or her ability to perceive or to discriminate between different stimuli. Such a model however, argued Gibson, has nothing to do with how animals live and with the real role that perception plays in their life. Even when an animal directly engages in observation as such, it always constitute an action that has a particular goal and purpose. Hence, Gibson proposed an " ecological theory of perception " which argues that you cannot study an animal's perception without taking into account his environment and how the animal interacts with it. I other terms you cannot study perception without taking into account the animal's biological niche.

A reading of the present refugee crisis in Europe and the role of our conception of justice in it... more A reading of the present refugee crisis in Europe and the role of our conception of justice in its unfolding.

Life and Law in the Age of Data-Driven Agency, 2020

Mimesis and Science, S. Garrels ed. Michigan State U. Press, 2011

Originally published as chapter 4 of MImesis and Science, edited by Scott R. Garrels at MIchigan... more Originally published as chapter 4 of MImesis and Science, edited by Scott R. Garrels at MIchigan State University Press.

Argues that the priviledge granted to co-citizens over and above non-nationals reflects a central... more Argues that the priviledge granted to co-citizens over and above non-nationals reflects a central presupposition of liberal political theory that is generally taken for granted but that needs to be question if we want it to be consistent with liberal moral theory. Originally published as chapter 7 of Paul Dumoucher & Reiko Gotoh (eds.) SOCIAL BONDS AS FREEDOM, REVISITING THE DICHOTOMY OF THE UNIVERSAL AND THE PARTICULAR, Berghahn Books, New York, 2015, pp. 174-191.

The so-called “affective turn” (Clough and Halley 2007) in the Humanities and Social Sciences, sh... more The so-called “affective turn” (Clough and Halley 2007) in the Humanities and Social Sciences, shed light on the (inter-)subjective intensity and dynamics immanent to bodily perceptions and matter in general (e.g. Massumi 2002). Similarly, research on the senses stressed their centrality in shaping social practice and culture (e.g. Geurts 2002, Howes 2004), calling for a focus on perception in processes of doing ethnography (e.g. Pink 2009). Furthermore, Ingold’s work (2000, 2013) pointed at the need to highlight creative processes in social practice and anthropology in the making, as engagements and correspondences with materials and the environment, in which skills of perception and action emerge alongside with ontologies. Moreover, anthropological works have also emphasized the important role matter plays in developing sensorial skills and in bearing or affording specific affects (e.g. Durham 2011, Navaro-Yashin 2012, Wetherell 2012). A common thread among these studies is that they point at the need to go beyond symbols and representations, meaning making processes, cognition, or belief. In other words, they suggest new research directions to go beyond simplified conceptions of “culture”. Yet, these approaches have been criticized for overlooking the intersubjective dimensions of feelings, for not grounding theory in empirical data, for lacking awareness of cultural differences and for overlooking power relationships (Wetherell 2012). Finally, such approaches simply do not take memory, imagination, or skills into account. Nevertheless, anthropological research has granted the status of “real” experience to both memory and imagination, mainly focusing on healing processes: imagining and imagery are analyzed as bodily practices, as they engage the motor-senses, providing a strong experience of immediacy and self-presence, reinforced by intersubjective engagements through (ritual) practice (e.g. Csordas 1996, 2002). Though groundbreaking, these approaches give only partial accounts of 1) how certain memories and imageries are evoked and entangled with experience through bodily interactions, 2) the feelings through which they emerge and 3) their relationships with embodied skills. Moreover, 4) they do not take interactions with non-humans and the environment into consideration and, 5) at least to a certina extent, they still tend to “psychologize” remembering and imagining. This Workshop seeks to address these gaps, looking at memory and imagination as “affective practices” (Wetherell 2012) or “practices of feeling with the world” (De Antoni and Dumouchel 2017), that rely on specific skills of the lived body moving-in-the-world. It tries to elaborate new methodological standpoints – based on empirical ethnographic data and from a comparative perspective – to relate feelings and bodily perceptions with practices of remembering and imagining, as the ground for experienced realities emerging through correspondences and attunements between bodies and environments, including non-humans.

Vivre avec les robots (Seuil, 2016, in pubblicazione in inglese presso Harvard University Press c... more Vivre avec les robots (Seuil, 2016, in pubblicazione in inglese presso Harvard University Press con il titolo Living with Robots) esplora lo slittamento paradigmatico che, nell’ambito della robotica, ha condotto l’intelligenza artificiale a esprimersi anche come empatia artificiale, aprendo una nuova fase nell’evoluzione tecnologica e umana. I robot di oggi interagiscono con gli umani in modi socialmente significativi, operando come mediatori terapeutici, allenatori, badanti, assistenti personali o intrattenitori.
La robotica sociale è basata sull’intelligenza artificiale, ma i suoi avanzamenti più innovativi riguardano lo studio delle emozioni umane, che i robot sono programmati per emulare, suscitare e incontrare.
Ogni robot creato dalla robotica sociale odierna incorpora, esprime e consente di testare molte ipotesi sull’affettività e sulla socialità umana.
Paul Dumouchel e Luisa Damiano mostrano che, quando i robotici progettano e costruiscono ‘robot empatici’, abbandonano la convenzionale nozione delle emozioni come esperienze discrete, private e interne, ripensandole nei termini di un continuum tra due o più attori impegnati nel coordinare, in tempo reale, il loro comportamento affettivo e, con ciò, le loro disposizioni all’azione.
Questa ricollocazione della socialità nelle emozioni conduce la robotica sociale odierna non solo a mettere in discussione molti assunti etici, ma anche a formulare un principio operativo e politico cruciale. Non si danno caratteristiche umane universali che i robot sociali devono tentare di emulare. Più che automi interagenti, essi devono diventare attori sociali, capaci di modificare attivamente le regole e le dinamiche che definiscono le loro interazioni con gli umani.

Nel quadro del progetto Robot: una Mano per l'Uomo, di cui Giulia Lombardi è responsabile, tra i collaboratori più preziosi, sin dal suo nascere, c'è la prof.ssa Luisa Damiano, autrice di questo libro, insieme con il prof. Paul Dumouchel. La presentazione del libro sarà l'occasione privilegiata per una tavola rotonda sulla necessità di affrontare le questioni riguardanti la relazione uomo-robot dal punto di vista filosofico.

Conference "Weak Robots and Stupid Dolls: Alternative Concepts of Artificial Humans in Japan", sé... more Conference "Weak Robots and Stupid Dolls: Alternative Concepts of Artificial Humans in Japan", séminaire de santé mentale (Matsumoto Takuya et Nicolas Tajan) organisé sur le thème "Living with Robots and Dolls", avec Paul Dumouchel (de l'Univ. Ritsumeikan), Université de Kyōto, Kyōto, 2 février 2019.

Conference untitled "Weak Robots and Stupid Dolls: Alternative Concepts of Artificial Humans in Japan", mental health workshop (Matsumoto Takuya et Nicolas Tajan), on the topic of ""Living with Robots and Dolls", with Paul Dumouchel (from Ritsumeikan University), Université de Kyōto, Kyōto, February 2, 2019.