Refuser sans dire non : étude d’un jeu de langage dans une transaction entre un patron et un employé

The aim of this paper is to go on with the articulation between the notions of form of life and language game started by Agnoletti (2006). In this way, we want to show the links between language game and activity through the study of pieces of verbal interaction coming from a professional transaction between a chief and his employee. By using the hierarchical and functional analysis (Roulet et al., 1985), we show regularities, both at the level of the structure of the interaction and in that of the sentences and vocabulary. We make then a relationship between the linguistic forms and the context in which they appear and we consider that we have to deal with a language game which has two modalities: appeal to the rule and the charge. These forms are related to power and authority.     

Redeeming the penultimate: discipleship and Church in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

There are striking parallels between the theologies of discipleship advanced by the Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard and the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer's notion of ‘costly grace’ closely resembles Kierkegaard's critique of the misuse of the Pauline-Lutheran doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. After the publication of Cost of Discipleship, however, Bonhoeffer's view of discipleship moves in a different direction from that of Kierkegaard. Whereas Kierkegaard takes discipleship to mean that the Christian must be in irrevocable conflict with the world, Bonhoeffer sees discipleship as living in the world and cultivating a ‘worldly holiness’. This article tracks the reasons why their initially similar theologies of discipleship result in Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer developing different understandings of Christian discipleship and church. The discussion is organised around the distinction Bonhoeffer makes in his Ethics between the ‘ultimate’ and the ‘penultimate’. Kierkegaard emphasises the ultimate to such an extent that the penultimate is virtually eliminated and the Christian disciple is called upon to live in a state of constant eschatological opposition to the world. For Bonhoeffer on the other hand the penultimate is not to be condemned but to be transformed in the light of the ultimate. The article argues that the differing notions of discipleship advanced by Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer arise from the different political contexts in which they were living and writing. Whereas Kierkegaard's historical situation prompted him to affirm the ultimate by confronting his contemporaries with New Testament Christianity's radical opposition to the world, Bonhoeffer's resistance to the Nazi régime prompted him to reflect on how the ultimate can be integrated into the penultimate and how the Christian disciple can engage with the world without being of the world.     

Reproductive ectogenesis: The third era of human reproduction and some moral consequences

In a well known story Derek Parfit describes a disconnection between two entities that normally (in real life) travel together through space and time, namely your personal identity consisting of both mind and body. Realising the possibility of separation, even if it might never happen in real life, new questions arise that cast doubt on old solutions. In human reproduction, in real life, at present the fetus spends approximately nine months inside the pregnant woman. But, we might envisage other possibilities. Historically, the first era is the normal conception inside the woman, the growth of the fetus in the womb and then, after nine months, birth and the appearance of a new individual. The second era is In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF). The fetus starts outside the woman as a fertilised egg, moves to the body of the woman and spends nine month there, where the body of the woman and the fetus travel together in space-time to separate at birth. In the third era of reproductive ectogenesis, the two never travel together. The fetus spends its gestational time entirely outside the woman’s body. We have two entities separated in space-time the whole time. The intimate connection consisting in the fetus being a part of the woman’s body is gone. In this paper I will briefly comment on the three eras of human reproduction — and primarily on the relationship between the new individual and the woman — and then spend some time with a fictional story illustrating some moral consequences of the third era. The story is from Pig Pharmaceuticals Limited and how they in the year 2050 report the successful development of pig-related pregnancies with transgenic pigs as surrogate mothers.     

The interpolation of object and surface structure

One of the main theoretical challenges of vision science is to explain how the visual system interpolates missing structure. Two forms of visual completion have been distinguished on the basis of the phenomenological states that they induce. Modal completion refers to the formation of visible surfaces and/or contours in image regions where these properties are not specified locally. Amodal completion refers to the perceived unity of objects that are partially obscured by occluding surfaces. Although these two forms of completion elicit very different phenomenological states, it has been argued that a common mechanism underlies modal and amodal boundary and surface interpolation (the "identity hypothesis"; Kellman & Shipley, 1991; Kellman, 2001). Here, we provide new data, demonstrations, and theoretical principles that challenge this view. We show that modal boundary and surface completion processes exhibit a strong dependence on the prevailing luminance relationships of a scene, whereas amodal completion processes do not. We also demonstrate that the shape of interpolated contours can change when a figure undergoes a transition from a modal to an amodal appearance, in direct contrast to the identity hypothesis. We argue that these and previous results demonstrate that modal and amodal completion do not result from a common interpolation mechanism.     

Archetypes, complexes and self-organization

There has always been confusion and disagreement about the nature of the terms archetype and complex in Jungian circles, not to mention non-Jungian ones. Another ongoing concern is whether Jung's concept of the archetype and complex can be justified in terms of current scientific research, most notably that of neurophysiologists and others interested in the brain and consciousness. This paper proposes a theory of the formation of complexes, namely, that they are created through self-organization within the brain/mind. Self-organization is a process typical of large complex systems, and is generally accepted to operate within the brain and to be important in its functioning. Examples of self-organization in biology are related to the psychic processes that form the complexes. It is then natural to define the archetype in terms of the complex, and the authors propose a definition of the archetype as an equivalence class of complexes. On this view, the archetype is an emergent property of the activity of the brain/mind, and is, appropriately, defined at the level at which it emerges. This definition is in line with the original development of Jung's ideas, in that he derived the concept of the archetype from his earlier discovery of the feeling-toned complex.     

Bayesian modeling of measurement error in predictor variables using item response theory

It is shown that measurement error in predictor variables can be modeled using item response theory (IRT). The predictor variables, that may be defined at any level of an hierarchical regression model, are treated as latent variables. The normal ogive model is used to describe the relation between the latent variables and dichotomous observed variables, which may be responses to tests or questionnaires. It will be shown that the multilevel model with measurement error in the observed predictor variables can be estimated in a Bayesian framework using Gibbs sampling. In this article, handling measurement error via the normal ogive model is compared with alternative approaches using the classical true score model. Examples using real data are given.This paper is part of the dissertation by Fox (2001) that won the 2002 Psychometric Society Dissertation Award.     

The mixed model for multivariate repeated measures: validity conditions and an approximate test

Repeated measures on multivariate responses can be analyzed according to either of two models: a doubly multivariate model (DMM) or a multivariate mixed model (MMM). This paper reviews both models and gives three new results concerning the MMM. The first result is, primarily, of theoretical interest; the second and third have implications for practice. First, it is shown that, given multivariate normality, a condition called multivariate sphericity of the covariance matrix is both necessary and sufficient for the validity of the MMM analysis. To test for departure from multivariate sphericity, the likelihood ratio test can be employed. The second result is an approximation to the null distribution of the likelihood ratio test statistic, useful for moderate sample sizes. Third, for situations satisfying multivariate normality, but not multivariate sphericity, a multivariate correction factor is derived. The correction factor generalizes Box's and can be used to construct an adjusted MMM test.I am grateful to an anonymous referee for carefully attending to the mathematical details of this paper.     

A rasch model for continuous ratings

A unidimensional latent trait model for continuous ratings is developed. This model is an extension of Andrich's rating formulation which assumes that the response process at latent thresholds is governed by the dichotomous Rasch model. Item characteristic functions and information functions are used to illustrate that the model takes ceiling and floor effects into account. Both the dichotomous Rasch model and a linear model with normally distributed error can be derived as limiting cases. The separability of the structural and incidental parameters is demonstrated and a procedure for estimating the parameters is outlined.