Louis Quere

In general, in our ordinary life, we manage to make the difference between “strange” behavior and error or extravagant beliefs. The question is here to know how we do so, and against what background. There are also specialized contexts for evaluating whether certain types of behavior or discourse are normal or abnormal: courts of law and psychiatric hospitals are two examples. In these contexts, judgments are formed against a background of technical or scientific knowledge, but they also result from epistemic means of evaluation that are similar to habitual ones. The paper seeks to highlight this similarity with respect to recognizing mental disturbance. Starting from Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, it attempts at extending it by drawing on notions of reciprocal perspectives and of judgments of incongruity. It documents its investigation by analyzing sequences from Malek Bensmail’s documentary, Aliénations, which examines the treatment of mental suffering in contemporary Algeria

This paper is an essay about Harold Garfinkel's heritage. It outlines a response to Eric Livingston's proposal to say goodbye to ethnomethodology as pertaining to the sociological tradition; and it rejects part of Melvin Pollner's diagnosis about the changes occurred in ethnomethodological working. If it agrees with Pollner about the idea that something of the initial ethnomethodology's program has been left aside after the "work studies" turn, it asserts that such a turn has nonetheless made possible authentic discoveries. So the paper speaks for a better integration of the two versions of ethnomethodology separated by Pollner

Cet article présente et discute la philosophie de la religion de John Dewey, en la rapportant aux débats actuels sur le « post-séculier ». La perspective de Dewey est complètement séculariste tout en plaidant pour le développement de l’attitude religieuse dans l’expérience. Il s’agit d’une attitude religieuse libérée du surnaturalisme et du dogmatisme des religions instituées. Ce sécularisme religieux paradoxal est fondé sur une conception naturaliste de l’expérience humaine et de la vie sociale. Après avoir reconstitué les arguments de Dewey, l’article examine deux objections qui leur ont été adressées.

This chapter proposes a novel approach to an ecological conception of experience and society. This approach is based on Dewey’s and Bentley’s conception of “trans-action”. Dewey’s use of this concept aims at explaining why environment and organism are internal to each other, and what kind of “agency of doing” the environment represents. The paper first describes Dewey’s biological-cultural conception of experience, and then examines some of the difficulties associated with it. Finally, it considers how we could take up such a conception in the social sciences.

Pour George Herbert Mead, penser c’est entretenir « une conversation de gestes intériorisée». Cette conception ne paraît pas à première vue d’une originalité absolue. Ce qui la rend vraiment originale est l’approche « sociale-behavioriste » dont elle fait partie, et notamment la double idée que la conversation dont il s’agit est une conversation de gestes ou d’attitudes, et que la pensée ainsi quel ‘intelligence réflexive naissent de l’internalisation d’un processus d’organisation de la conduite étayé sur le mécanisme social de la communication. Encore faut-il saisir en quoi cette conception diffère de celle du fondateur de la psychologie behavioriste, John B. Watson, pour qui penser n’est rien d’autre que se tenir un discours interne.

Ethnomethodologists have very often distorted G. H. Mead’s works, partly because they have read them through H. Blumer’s interpretations. Therefore they have undervalued many similarities existing between Mead’s and Garfinkel’s thoughts. Of course there are lots of ambiguities and problems in Mead’s writings, and ethomethodologists are right when they criticize them. But they are wrong when they misread Mead. This paper examines two points. The first one is one about which Mead has often been misread: his use of the internal-exernal distinction with regard to mind and action. This use doesn’t aim at maintaining a pychological interiority, but at grasping motricity as a kind of intentionality. The second point is about Garfinkel’s respecification of one of Mead’s main leitmotiv: “taking the attitude of the generalized other.” Garfinkel’s respecification is done in A. Schütz’s terms : the attitude of the generalized other is internal to the “attitude of everyday life,” and the generalized other takes the form of that which is normal, i.e. of that which is “in accordance with the mores.”

Pour George Herbert Mead, penser c’est entretenir « une conversation de gestes intériorisée». Cette conception ne paraît pas à première vue d’une originalité absolue. Ce qui la rend vraiment originale est l’approche « sociale-behavioriste » dont elle fait partie, et notamment la double idée que la conversation dont il s’agit est une conversation de gestes ou d’attitudes, et que la pensée ainsi quel ‘intelligence réflexive naissent de l’internalisation d’un processus d’organisation de la conduite étayé sur le mécanisme social de la communication. Encore faut-il saisir en quoi cette conception diffère de celle du fondateur de la psychologie behavioriste, John B. Watson, pour qui penser n’est rien d’autre que se tenir un discours interne.