Philippe Gagnon

Description courte (Électre, 2019) : Une étude d'un des principaux axes de réflexion du philosophe des sciences et de la nature Raymond Ruyer (1902-1987). À la lumière des découvertes de l'embryogenèse et en s'appuyant par ailleurs sur la théorie de l'information, il proposa une interprétation des concepts unificateurs de la cybernétique mécaniste. Short Descriptor (Electre 2019): A study of one of the main axes of reflection of the French philosopher of science and of nature Raymond Ruyer (1902-1987). Relying on the discoveries about embryogenesis, and also with the use of information theory, Ruyer proposed an interpretation of the main unifying concepts of mechanistic cybernetics. Cet ouvrage propose une étude fouillée d'un des principaux axes de réflexion du philosophe des sciences et de la nature français Raymond Ruyer (1902–1987) : la cybernétique. Après avoir proposé une philosophie structuraliste, Ruyer la modifia à la lumière des découvertes de l'embryogenèse, puis il proposa une interprétation des concepts unificateurs de la cybernétique mécaniste. Réfléchissant sur cette dernière et sur la théorie de l'information, en particulier sur l'origine de l'information, il défendit que cette cybernétique n'était qu'une lecture inversée de la vraie cybernétique, qui nous donnerait de lire dans l'expérience même les traces du pouvoir morphogénétique, appréhendé comme un champ axiologique. Dans un texte résumant son propre parcours, Ruyer affirma finalement que la critique de la théorie de l'information « peut donner […] l'espoir d'aboutir à quelque chose comme une nouvelle théologie. » Les idées directrices de Ruyer sont tout particulièrement contextualisées ici à partir de la question du développement des formes en biologie, et de celles de la génétique, de la genèse stochastique de l'ordre, et de l'identification mentale ou physique de l'information. Il se termine en départageant ce qui est théologique et axiologique dans ce projet de métaphysique qui, bien que resté inachevé, n'en représente pas moins le plus impressionnant conçu en France au siècle dernier. – This book offers an in-depth study of one of the main axes in the reflection of French philosopher of science and nature Raymond Ruyer. In a text summarising his own development, Ruyer stated about the philosophical critique of information theory that it "is what can give the most long-lasting hope of getting to something like a new theology." After propounding a structuralist philosophy, and distinguishing between form and structure, to then modify it in the light of discoveries in embryogenesis, Ruyer offered a re-evaluation of the unifying concepts of mechanistic cybernetics. Thinking about it and about information theory, he defended the idea that this cybernetics was in reality an inverted reading of the real one, which would allow us to read in experience itself traces of the morphogenetic power, apprehended as the axiological field. On some transversal points, the development of forms in biology and genetics, the stochastic genesis of order, the identification of information with either psychological and mental, or physical reality, behaviour, and the access to meaning, this work exposes the main ideas of Ruyer while situating them in the context of the breadth of others' contributions. It ends by determining what is theological and axiological in this project for a metaphysics which, although unfinished, is nevertheless the most impressive effort done in France in the last century. – Available on i6doc dot com (ISBN 978-2-930517-56-8 ; pdf 978-2-930517-57-5)

Theology used to be the discipline that arbitrated and ‘said’ the truth. Some argued that its methodical engagement had to make it a search-driven experimentation with an inductive outlook intended at tracking truth through practice and praise, in short conversion. The empirico-formal sciences have sought canonical norms of knowledge away from any regimentation. Neopositivism had for a time entertained a fact-derived language and, as such, it banned metaphor as mingling problems by perpetuating the belief in entirely theoretical knowledge-terms. Here we aim at putting together an examination of some of the reasons why a pluralistic epistemology has come to be adopted, and an attempt at finding pluralistic responses to that very idea through interdisciplinary comparison. This is the editors' (M. Fuller & A. Runehov) introduction: Philippe Gagnon asks the interesting question: Does pluralism itself need to be plural? He argues that neo-positivism has for some time now focused on using a fact-derived language, banning metaphoricity. He explores the reasons pluralistic epistemology came to be adopted, and leads us through some important philosophical problems and how they were tackled by different philosophers and in various times. Such philosophical problems or questions concern theories, truth and knowledge. If a theory is considered to be the best one, on which criteria is this judgement made? Might it be better to have several theories that are ex æquo? Gagnon argues that even though ‘pluralism’ is a better term compared to ‘the many’, it does not entirely escape relativism. Hence, he proposes to use ‘plurality’ instead, which does not threaten the unity of truth. After this philosophical exploration, he turns to theology, specifically Trinitarian theology, to implement his findings there.

This presentation discusses a notion encountered across disciplines, and in different facets of human activity: autonomous activity. We engage it in an interdisciplinary way. We start by considering the reactions and behaviors of biological entities to biotechnological intervention. An attempt is made to characterize the degree of freedom of embryos & clones, which show openness to different outcomes when the epigenetic developmental landscape is factored in. We then consider the claim made in programming and artificial intelligence that automata could show self-directed behavior as to the determination of their step-wise decisions on courses of action. This question remains largely open and calls for some important qualifications. We try to make sense of the presence of claims of freedom in agency, first in common sense, then by ascribing developmental plasticity in biology and biotechnology, and in the mapping of programmed systems in the presence of environmental cues and self-referenced circuits as well as environmental coupling. This is the occasion to recall attempts at working out a logical and methodological approach to the openness of concepts that are still to be found, and assess whether they can operate the structuring intelligibility of a yet undeveloped or underdeveloped field of study, where a “bisociation" and a unification of knowledge might be possible.

The history of the relationship between Christian theology and the natural sciences has been conditioned by the initial decision of the masters of the "first scientific revolution" to disregard any necessary explanatory premiss to account for the constituting organization and the framing of naturally occurring entities. Not paying any attention to hierarchical control, they ended-up disseminating a vision and understanding in which it was no longer possible for a theology of nature to send questions in the direction of the experimental sciences, as was done in the past between theology and many philosophically-based thought-systems. Presenting the history of some hinge-periods in the development of the Western-world sciences, this book first sets out to consider the conceptual revolution which has, in the 20th Century, related consciousness, physical laws and levels of organization, in order to show that a new chance existed then for theology. This discourse was invited to revise its language to open it up to the quest for meaning which we find on the periphery of the project of the experimental sciences. The Century-old reflection on the foundations of probability had prepared the ground for the introduction of the concept of information, at first linked to an effort aimed at maximizing the efficiency of electromagnetic communications. Taking the full measure of the questions that information theory poses to the biological sciences, this work attempts to identify the areas of convergence setting the stage for general systems theory, while it also tries to identify the insufficiencies of this recent vision and to highlight the questions left unanswered. Re-reading some of the traditional proofs of God's existence from the order of the world, relying on some pioneering insights of Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Norbert Wiener, the author brings those proofs and insights in contact with the fascinating initial project of cybernetics and the elements of a "mythical" nature which, from its inception, it could never entirely eliminate. This book ends with the confrontation between the conceptually most extended regulation factors in the history of Western thought. It articulates the poetic utopia concerned with an immediate grasp of the world in its "deictic" character with the concurrent one aimed at the domination over matter and energy expressed by technology's driving rational utopia.

This article offers a summary of Whitehead’s life, along with bibliographical indications, and it additionnally gives reference markers to help understand how Whitehead renewed cosmology by unearthing a new understanding of a subject that would not be detached from its corporeal rootedness. Then, a more particular understanding of Whitehead’s criticism of the technoscentific project is sought, as to its absence of self-scrutiny. An additional consideration of ecology, and then religion, are offered.

(Back Cover:) « La pensée métaphysique renaîtra demain. Ce sont des savants qui ont le goût et le sens de la pensée conduite jusqu’au terme de ses exigences internes, et des philosophes initiés aux sciences expérimentales qui, en commun, la feront. » L’œuvre de Claude Tresmontant (1925-1997) illustre parfaitement cette recherche de la métaphysique d’un monde en devenir, qui sait écouter et se modeler sur la transformation – la métamorphose – promise à une Création finalisée. Le trait commun aux exposés ici présentés sous forme définitive a été cette recherche autour d’une pensée qui renouvelle de l’intérieur la métaphysique en réalisant le vœu de Bergson qu’elle devienne « auscultatrice », que l’énigme que pose l’homme face à son origine et sa destinée ne soit pas recouverte par une pensée qui se perdrait dans la description des choses ou dans l’esprit de système, mais qui non plus n’irait se recroqueviller sur elle-même, en narrant sa propre expérience subjective sous le mode de la déréliction. Claude Tresmontant a su penser l’être en genèse, et il a cherché à renouveler la question de l’existence de Dieu, en en transformant la problématique en dialogue avec les sciences contemporaines. À ce goût de l’être dont les sciences ont renouvelé l’approche, il a également voulu infuser un « supplément d’âme », en repensant la réalité de la création et l’horizon de la cause finale, toujours à partir de la nature ultimement théologique de la réponse à la question « qu’est-ce que l’homme ? » Contributeurs : Yves Tourenne, Philippe Gagnon, Fabien Revol, Brunor, Frédéric Crouslé, Bertrand Souchard, Emmanuel Gabellieri. Table of Contents: Note Liminaire (Ph. Gagnon) - 7 En quoi la pensée de Claude Tresmontant nous stimule-t-elle encore ? Hommage et critique (Y. Tourenne) - 13 L’imbrication de la preuve de Dieu et de la cosmologie chez Tresmontant représente-t-elle une preuve ? (Ph. Gagnon) - 27 L’usage apologétique de la philosophie de Tresmontant dans les Indices pensables de Brunor (F. Revol) - 49 Réponse à Fabien Revol (Brunor) - 77 Qu’est-ce qui cloche dans la théologie de Claude Tresmontant ? (Fr. Crouslé) - 85 Les métaphysiques principales de Claude Tresmontant : la foi biblique est-elle à part de la raison philosophique grecque ? (B. Souchard) - 109 Maurice Blondel et Claude Tresmontant (E. Gabellieri) - 123 La vision informationnelle de Tresmontant, surtout en référence au problème de l’âme (Ph. Gagnon) - 133.

The need to act in networks and to function in a society where we relate in complex fashions has fostered the use of data in accordance with distributed models. In a big data context, the individual is often overcome with the sentiment that one’s life does not matter, nor does it make a difference. What are sought are trends, and since there is no detached observer, those change things as much as they measure them. Where can we find a vantage point, a ‘topsight’ necessary before the conception of any program? One could seek it in the direction of a collective figure, somewhat like the Leviathan of Hobbes, made up in its gigantism of smaller figures. Those that have been schooled in the classical tradition, or philosophia perennis, might think that we are abandoning solid realism, which seeks a conformation of statements, propositions, and language to what there is. They might criticize the reign of opinion. But what we entered into is not, upon closer inspection, some overarching paradigm of truth as success. It is rather a rationality of the likely, and it requires assessing the truths that can seem distributed between alternating or competing positions. But then, to seek decisions despite this, is to erase from our world this ‘esprit de finesse’ which Pascal deemed necessary to balance the illusions of a procedural mathematical rationality claiming that its end-products are simply in correspondence with reality. When we gather information, we frame it within an ontology for classification purposes, but this does not import with itself the immanence of this information as endogenous power to harmonise and give form. Feeling, as Whitehead construed it, seeks to take within it a receptivity to the world in order to turn it into an internalised representation. For this, it needs to be possible for a part of the world to reflect in itself the whole. Yet, this reflection is not a totalisation in an immaterial data range, it is rather a grounding in the mystery of the flesh, which is found here as a signpost on the way, if we are to heal dreams of complete mastery.

Très souvent, on compte sur la science pour nous sauver. Le rapport qu'on établit avec elle peut donner à penser que la science parlerait ainsi de choses, validerait quelque chose comme des évidences immédiates. La connaissance scientifique est inférentielle. Si elle a un objet, ce qu'en rigueur de termes la philosophie n'a pas, elle doit néanmoins se mettre à distance de lui pour se faire science. Elle valide ainsi des schèmes abstraits, qui ne sont scientifiques que dans cette mesure. Nous prendrons la mesure du fait que pour nous aider à retrouver le concret, l'intuition est meilleure guide que la science, et puis nous convoquerons certaines idées de l'algébriste et métaphysicien Alfred North Whitehead dont l'actualité ne cesse d'étonner, lorsqu'il inverse l'accès direct au réel, à l'envers de la vulgate reçue concernant les rapports entre science et religion.

In this shorter piece, at the instigation of a former philosophy student, I accepted to contribute alongside two other writers to the "Expert Help" rubric, and attempted to explain the genesis in Nietzsche's mind of the conception of the eternal recurrence. I lay stress on both the internal contradiction that the solitary of Sils-Maria was trying to resolve and the secret desire that this cherished and embraced rather than demonstrated theory be true in the face of conflicting evidence, and I furthermore challenge the received view that makes this vision incompatible with a Christian ontology.

Taking as a starting point for his quest the teaching received from the Hebrew prophets and transmitted by the people of Israel, Claude Tresmontant identifies in it the specific moment where an entirely new and creative thought is introduced in the history of mankind. Trained in philosophy of science and conscious of the discipline involved in a rigorous experimental method as a key to valid and true knowledge, Claude Tresmontant boldly recreated bridges, long destroyed, between science and philosophy of nature, as well as metaphysics and theology. Following an immense effort, he has found back, stringently and often on his own, a unifying concept capable of integrating the experience and the questions of today's man: "...the central question is that of integrating the teaching of creation and that of revelation in the unity of an intelligible vision of the world, desirable, and verifiable..." as he said himself in the preface to L'histoire de l'univers et le sens de la Création. This immense, powerful and thought-provoking work is here presented by a young philosopher, long time correspondent of Claude Tresmontant, who benefited from decisive moments of encounter with him.

In this article, we shall first show the dynamic cosmology present in Teilhard de Chardin’s work, as well as the ways in which he revives a tradition that puts philosophizing at the heart of living. Then, we shall show how he thinks of the problem of evil as the dismembering of a movement towards unity that he deems identical to the process of creation. Teilhard’s peculiar perspective distances him from catastrophic visions based on a Fall or original transgression. We will then show that Teilhard’s imaginings of the interaction between God and primal matter leave something to be desired. Nevertheless, we conclude that there is a real strength in this vision, when it construes morality as something truly evolutionary.

In a first part I present the results of the philosophy of scientific explanation with an attempt to apply them to the case of the theory of evolution. Then I observe that the requirements of modelization of phenomena with the help of inductive logic do not capture efficiently the pertinent factors and fail just as much to exclude those which end up being neutral as explanatory premises. I then query in the direction of confirmation theory, and show that probabilistic reasoning does not possess the syntactic means of testing evolutionary hypotheses in a way that would rely on a valid mode of inference. In a second part, I try to show how biology has oscillated between two privileged modes of explanation, the first one being through form of which I suggest here that it has never been replaced and that it has known a forgotten vitality in the middle and latter part of the 19th Century, and the second one being through function here evaluated critically alongside that of tinkering. Finally, some limits are seen to hold against the pretence to epistemological exclusivism of those two outlooks on the biological object.

Freedom is first apprehended as the pursuit of an activity which implies the choice to defend a thesis among other possible ones. This translation of the problem of freedom in an articulate language presupposes a complex nervous system and sensory apparatuses which we take for granted. In this study, I try to explore the undergrounds of the problem of freedom along with the suggestion that the notion of coding could enable one to bridge nature and the mind. When organisms invent, are they doing it in a spontaneous manner, inscribing in their hereditary and mnemonic instructions a stochastic contrivance of random accidents, or are they attempting to select among a limited number of schemes endowed with some optimality of functioning? If we consider them as submitted to physical forces, it is to the extent that we make them part of a strategy to extend the "laws" of a nature understood to respond passively. I suggest in this study that the epistemological understanding must regionalize itself and admit a hierarchy of dispositions in relation to the phenomenon of selection. I end by suggesting the pursuit of affirmation instead of negation, as this alone contains the requirement of integration to the knowing subject as well as the form in its act of understanding, without giving it a spontaneist position.

Transhumanism first offers itself as a means to save oneself from an embodiment that is judged as being far from perfect. One needs to ask in its wake what comes of desires to escape limitations that come from the body, as they are means of an overcoming of the self. The AI project seems to be governed by norms for what the mind is, that could easily be judged inconsistent. Religious and theological traditions have looked at what the meaning of an ineliminable image of God could mean. We try to map the meaning of extending this further into God’s resemblance. We then try to map this on a relationship of image and resemblance that would not have God come into competition with the doings of man.