Veronica Cibotaru

In this paper, I argue that it is possible to understand Waismann’s notion of open texture through the paradigm of prototype theory stemming from cognitive linguistics. Indeed, prototype theory conceives concepts as functioning according to a prototype whose concrete application remains indeterminate and flexible. Prototype theory entails thus the possibility that cases that challenge the familiar use of a concept may be encountered in experience, which is precisely at stake with the notion of open texture. At the same time, prototype theory explains the creative dimension of human language that is also mentioned by Waismann: human language is creative precisely because its concepts are flexible and have subsequently the capacity of expressing new types of experience. This new perspective on the notion of open texture presents a double interest. First, it allows highlighting the innovative scope of this notion, since it shows that it has the potential to challenge traditional theories of concepts, which consider concepts as a set of characteristics. Second, it opens the possibility for an extension of the notion of open texture to most if not to all concepts. Several research works have been carried out in this direction. Reconsidering open texture through prototype theory offers a new theoretical tool for this purpose: proving that other, non-empirical concepts also function according to prototypes would indeed prove that open texture is an essential feature of most if not all concepts.

Computational creativity has gained in the recent years momentum as an established interdisciplinary field, whose aim is to investigate, design and foster artificial creativity. This article analyses whether artificial outputs can appear to as being creative and assesses thus computational creativity from the standpoint of the receiver. While taking Boden’s distinction between several forms of creativity as a starting point, I argue that creativity implies besides surprise and value an additional essential feature, namely the creative intention, not only from the standpoint of the creator but also of the receiver. Following the notion that I propose, creative intention cannot be identified to the mere absence of randomness, but implies the possibility of interpreting the intention, as well as volition and the expression of personal lived experiences. Subsequently I reflect on the possibility of attributing creativity to computer programs while being aware of their lack of creative intention. I argue that the best solution for this purpose is considering computer programs as co-creative partners, which can be credited as contributors to the creative process. In my conclusive remarks, I assess the implications of this possibility for the notion of creative subject. More precisely, I raise the question whether the latter should necessarily be linked to the notion of creativity, and hence, whether co-creative artificial programs should necessarily be considered as creative subjects.

The aim of this study is to unveil the Kantian echoes of Fink’s idea of a constructive phenomenology by deepening the common points of this idea with Kant’s transcendental dialectic, among which the fact that both unveil structures of totality and are oriented towards a form of ungivenness. At the same time, the article shows some important differences and highlights a polysemy of the notions of given and ungiven characteristic of Kant’s thought which Fink seems to have overlooked or at least to have passed under silence. This polysemy has nevertheless the potential to interrogate the meaning of these notions in Fink’s thought and in phenomenology more generally.

The meaning and legitimacy of the idea of God in Kantian writings, especially those dating from the so-called critical period, raise questions at first sight as to the very necessity of maintaining this idea in a system of thought which claims to be free from dogmatic metaphysics, within which the idea of God seems irremediably to belong. This article justifies the philosophical importance of the idea of God in Kantian moral thought by showing that this idea is necessary to be able to think of the paradoxical dimension which characterizes the human being as a being capable of morality, a dimension which consists of a tension between the autonomy of moral reason and the moral finitude of the human being.

Both Husserl’s and Levinas’ phenomenologies conceive an intrinsic relationship between ethics and the idea of God. It is not clear however how one should understand this relationship and what could be its proper phenomenological value. I argue in this article that the idea of God has a specific henomenological meaning for ethics, as it is conceived both by the later Husserl and by Levinas. This phenomenological meaning resides in the structure of ethical subjectivity, insofar as its relationship with the good, both as striving towards the good and as obligation to be good, necessarily entails the recognition of the idea of God. Both in Husserl’s and in Levinas’ phenomenologies the idea of God bears a necessary relationship to infinity: it is indeed understood as infinitely distant being (Husserl) or as idea of the infinite itself (Levinas), and generates a form of striving towards an ethical ideal (Husserl) or a form of ethical obligation (Levinas).

Le but de cet ouvrage est double : il s'agit, d'une part, de montrer qu'il y a au sein de la pensée kantienne critique une théorie de la signification originale. L'originalité de cette théorie réside dans la distinction explicite qu'elle établit entre deux types de significations radicalement différentes, à savoir une signification théorétique et une signification pratique. Il s'agit, d'autre part, de montrer, à travers une confrontation avec la phénoménologie husserlienne de la signification, que l'on peut comprendre la théorie kantienne de la signification, tout comme la théorie husserlienne, comme une théorie de la signification qui accorde un primat à la conscience. Plus précisément, ces deux pensées de la signification conçoivent la signification comme le rapport de la conscience à un objet. Toutefois, malgré ce point commun, on ne peut dire que la théorie kantienne de la signification soit une théorie intentionnelle au sens propre du terme, car il apparaît à travers cette confrontation avec la pensée husserlienne de la signification qu'il lui manque deux éléments essentiels, à savoir la conception de l'objet signifié comme une entité idéale, et celle de la conscience comme un lieu autonome au sein duquel la signification tire son origine."--Page 4 of cover.

The development of artificial intelligence necessarily implies the anthropological question of the difference between human and artificial intelligence for two reasons: on the one hand artificial intelligence tends to be conceived on the model of human intelligence, on the other hand, a large part of types of artificial intelligence are designed in order to exhibit at least some features of what is conceived as being human intelligence. In this article I address this anthropological question in two parts. First I bring into review and classify some of the main answers that have been proposed until now to this question. I argue that these variety of answers can be broadly classified in three categories, namely a (1) behaviorist, (2) a representational, and (3) a holistic understanding of human intelligence. In a second moment I propose an alternative way of understanding the difference between human and artificial intelligence, which is not essentialist but contextualist and content-related. Contrary to possible answers that I analyse in the first section, this alternative model does not aim at grasping the essence of human intelligence, which could or could not be reproduced in principle by artificial intelligence. It situates rather the fundamental differences between human and artificial intelligence in the context of human existence and the conceptual content of human intelligence, following the phenomenological description of one of its most fundamental features, namely its life-world. Grounding on this approach, it is possible to argue that human and artificial intelligence could be distinct, even if one could prove that they are eidetically, i.e. by their essence, identical.

This edited volume offers a comprehensive view of various possible phenomenological approaches of the experience of love, ranging from classical historical perspectives up to contemporary and critical viewpoints. It explores both the crucial importance of the question of love for the history of phenomenology as well as the rich potential of phenomenology for a deeper insight in the experience of love and its various dimensions, such as its affective, relational, but also ethical and religious aspects.

The starting point of this article lies in the idea, defended by Hannah Arendt, according to which only goodness can be radical, while evil is merely banal. The idea of a banality of evil is present in Arendt’s work Eichmann in Jerusalem, although it is explicitly not presented as a general theory on evil as such – it is more particularly in her correspondence with Gershom Scholem that one can find this specific distinction between evil and goodness mentioned. How is this distinction to be understood? This article proposes the idea that such a distinction has to be construed on an ontological level: evil is ontologically deficient, since it does not take hold in a specific capacity of human beings, which would be what Hannah Arendt calls the demonic evil, but in the absence of thinking, i.e. in the absence of a specific human faculty. Conversely, only goodness expresses a creative human faculty, which is precisely thinking, and which, following Hannah Arendt, can be fully realized only through a political, collective dimension.

The aim of this chapter is to study the meaning of the concept of ‘transcendental’ in the philosophies of Kant and Husserl by focusing on the motives that led these two thinkers to introduce this notion into their systems. We will show that they are guided by two different motives. While Kant introduces the concept of transcendental because he aims to save the possibility of metaphysics, Husserl reengages it in his quest for a deeper understanding of the relationship between the subject and the world. Nevertheless, I aim to show that these two different uses of ‘transcendental’ share one common feature: they both account for the imperative of the infinite as a fundamental structure of subjectivity.

An icon is part of the visible world, moreover, of things that are visible in a second degree. It is not only a sensitive thing, but a sensitive image of a sensitive entity. As an eikon, it is located in a platonic sense among the lowest degree of the doxa, and within the lowest degree of the scale of being. However it is not a simple sensitive and illusory representation of God, such as one criticized from a Kantian point of view. The profound sense of an icon lies in its opening towards the invisible. An icon tries to capture the invisible. How is this meeting point of the visible and the invisible entangled? Can an icon really allow us to “see” the invisible or is it only a profanation of the invisible? It is my aim to analyze those questions in the following article.