Freedom of Expression,Laïcité and Islam in France: The Tension between Two Different (Universal) Perspectives

ABSTRACT

In France, freedom of expression is perceived as a sort of liberté matricielle, a matrix of other fundamental freedoms. As such, it is reflected in many constitutional provisions, including those referring to religion. In addition, the practical exercise of freedom of expression remains strictly linked with the principle of laïcité, which is part of the institutional, legal and intellectual history of the French Republic and has even become the basis of its founding “values.” All this, however, also implies an accentuation of individual freedom of expression, which normally takes precedence over the protection of religions, sometimes justifying caricature of divinities, rules, rites and symbols. The legal cases related to the right to satirical expression are examples of this. The article underlines the role of freedom of expression in the light of the principle of laïcité, which normally rejects the communitarian dimension of religious rights, which may explain some important aspects of, on the one hand, the evolution of legislation regarding both hate speech and blasphemy within French liberal constitutionalism and, on the other, the relationship between freedom of expression and the secular state. This approach offers a possibility of better evaluating existing French law in relation to some religious nomoi groups, specifically, Islamic organizations. These issues are particularly analysed from two perspectives: the right to criticize or challenge religions and the right to satirize. This analysis makes it possible to identify the legal limits of freedom of expression before and after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo tragedy and highlights the difficulties faced by the so-called laïcité à la française in dealing with today's multicultural societies. The need emerges for a proper balance to be struck between religious diversity and protection of human rights – not only the rights of groups to be different, but also the rights of persons within these groups, which also involves the efforts of religious denominations to articulate their claims in order to make them more compatible with constitutional rights, including those referring to freedom of expression.     

On the edge of language acquisition: inherent constraints on encoding multisyllabic sequences in the neonate brain

To understand language, humans must encode information from rapid, sequential streams of syllables – tracking their order and organizing them into words, phrases, and sentences. We used Near‐Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) to determine whether human neonates are born with the capacity to track the positions of syllables in multisyllabic sequences. After familiarization with a six‐syllable sequence, the neonate brain responded to the change (as shown by an increase in oxy‐hemoglobin) when the two edge syllables switched positions but not when two middle syllables switched positions (Experiment 1), indicating that they encoded the syllables at the edges of sequences better than those in the middle. Moreover, when a 25 ms pause was inserted between the middle syllables as a segmentation cue, neonates’ brains were sensitive to the change (Experiment 2), indicating that subtle cues in speech can signal a boundary, with enhanced encoding of the syllables located at the edges of that boundary. These findings suggest that neonates’ brains can encode information from multisyllabic sequences and that this encoding is constrained. Moreover, subtle segmentation cues in a sequence of syllables provide a mechanism with which to accurately encode positional information from longer sequences. Tracking the order of syllables is necessary to understand language and our results suggest that the foundations for this encoding are present at birth.     

Economic Impact of Third-Wave Cognitive Behavioral Therapies: A Systematic Review and Quality Assessment of Economic Evaluations in Randomized Controlled Trials

The term third-wave cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) encompasses new forms of CBT that both extend and innovate within CBT. Most third-wave therapies have been subject to randomized controlled trials (RCTs) focused on clinical effectiveness; however, the number and quality of economic evaluations in these RCTs has been unknown and may be few. Evidence about efficiency of these therapies may help support decisions on efficient allocation of resources in health policies. The main aim of this study was to systematically review the economic impact of third-wave therapies in the treatment of patients with physical or mental conditions. We conducted a systematic literature search in PubMed, PsycINFO, EMBASE, and CINALH to identify economic evaluations of third-wave therapies. Quality and Risk of Bias (RoB) assessment of economic evaluations was also made using the Drummond 35-item checklist and the Cochrane Collaboration’s tool for assessing risk of bias, respectively. Eleven RCTs were included in this systematic review. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and extended Behaviour Activation (eBA) showed acceptable cost-effectiveness and cost-utility ratios. No study employed a time horizon of more than 3 years. Quality and RoB assessments highlight some limitations that temper the findings. There is some evidence that MBCT, MBSR, ACT, DBT, and eBA are efficient from a societal or a third-party payer perspective. No economic analysis was found for many third-wave therapies. Therefore, more economic evaluations with high methodological quality are needed.     

Self-attributed body-shadows modulate tactile attention

Our body-shadows are special stimuli in the visual world. They often have anatomical resemblance with our own body-parts and move as our body moves, with spatio-temporal correlation. Here, we show that self-attributed body-shadows cue attention to the body-part they refer to, rather than the location they occupy. Using speeded spatial discrimination for tactile or visual targets at the hands, or for visual targets delivered near the hand-shadows, we demonstrate that mere viewing of task-irrelevant shadows can selectively facilitate tactile discrimination at the body-part casting the shadow (Experiment 1). In addition, such facilitation only develops through time for cast-shadows that have no resemblance with the body-part, but move in spatio-temporal correlation with it (Experiment 2). Conversely, facilitation fades away rapidly for shadow-like images that resemble the stimulated body-part, but are in fact static pictures (Experiment 3). Thus, recognising oneself as the owner of a shadow affects distribution of tactile attention.     

Switching between goals mediates the attentional blink effect

Humans are fundamentally limited in processing information from the outside world. This is particularly evident in the attentional blink (AB), the impaired ability to identify the second of two targets presented in close succession. We report findings from three experiments showing that the AB is significantly reduced when observers are set to achieve one single goal (reporting combinations of the two targets) instead of separate goals (reporting the two targets). This finding raises questions about the nature of AB, and suggests that processes involved in goal-switching must be taken into account by theories of the AB phenomenon.     

A Program to Select Sentences with a Strong Psychological Impact

This article presents a program based on the Elementary Pragmatic Model and on the administration of a test consisting of 90 sentences with a strong psychological impact interactively presented to participants. Data emerging from this procedure are calculated according to four coordinates and 16 relational functions processed on a grid defined by a table of 256 possible interactions. From these interactions three final states were found to constitute essentially the bottom line of the human mind. The program indicates how certain sentences could be selected systematically to lead initially deviant participants toward more statistically average patterns, in terms of coordinates, functions, interactions, and final states.     

Language That Puts You in Touch With Your Bodily Feelings: The Multimodal Responsiveness of Affective Expressions

ABSTRACT— Observing and producing a smile activate the very same facial muscles. In Experiment 1 , we predicted and found that verbal stimuli (action verbs) that refer to emotional expressions elicit the same facial muscle activity (facial electromyography) as visual stimuli do. These results are evidence that language referring to facial muscular activity is not amodal, as traditionally assumed, but is instead bodily grounded. These findings were extended in Experiment 2 , in which subliminally presented verbal stimuli were shown to drive muscle activation and to shape judgments, but not when muscle activation was blocked. These experiments provide an important bridge between research on the neurobiological basis of language and related behavioral research. The implications of these findings for theories of language and other domains of cognitive psychology (e.g., priming) are discussed.     

Control and synchronization of laser bursting and its implications in neuroscience

We present experimental and numerical evidence of control and synchronization of burst events in modulated CO₂ lasers. Bursts appear randomly in each laser as trains of large amplitude spikes intercalated by a small amplitude chaotic regime. Experimental data and model display the frequency locking of bursts in a suitable interval of coupling strengths. The analogy with neuronal bursting will also be discussed in view of the role of bursting synchronization in cognitive functions.