School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences

About: School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences is a facility organization based out in Villejuif, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Politics & Context (language use). The organization has 1230 authors who have published 2084 publications receiving 57740 citations. The organization is also known as: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales & EHESS.

Disorientation and self-consciousness: a phenomenological inquiry

Abstract: The present paper explores the phenomenology of disorientation and its relationship with self-consciousness. Section 1 discusses previous literature on the links between self-location and self-consciousness and proposes a distinction between minimal self-location (which requires only an ego-centric frame of reference) and integrated self-location (which requires the integration of egocentric and allocentric frames of reference). The double aim of the paper is to use this distinction to deepen our understanding of spatial disorientation, and to use the phenomenology of disorientation to elucidate the role that integrated self-location plays in shaping self-consciousness. Section 2 starts by looking at the experience of being “turned around”, which is a common experience of disorientation. This analysis leads to the conclusion that integrated self-location is transmodal and depends on all three egocentric axes, and that disorientation destabilizes this integrated self-location. Section 3 explores a corpus of reports of disorientation episodes and highlights four key characteristics of these experiences (anxiety, vulnerability, confusion and diminishment) and their links to self-consciousness, focusing on the transformations in both the lived body and the experience of space. The central thesis of this paper is that during disorientation a destabilization of integrated self-location results in a diminished form of self-consciousness.

Raison et cultures

Abstract: Raison et cultures, deux notions aussi anciennes que pretendument antithetiques, aussi faciles a utiliser dans le langage du sens commun que delicates a dechiffrer dans celui des sciences sociales L'ombre de chacune cache une chaine de significations, un vocabulaire compose de cognitions " rationnelles ", necessairement individuelles et de croyances " absurdes ", forcement collectives Lors d'une conference unique, prononcee a Seville, a l'occasion de la remise du titre de Docteur honoris causa, Serge Moscovici dechiffre minutieusement cette dualite Revisitant les sources anthropologiques de sa theorie des representations sociales, il livre un veritable discours programmatique sur les tensions entre psychologie et culture, croyance et connaissance, societes multi-culturelles et pluri-culturelles, science et sens commun

Topics of Cognitive Economics

Abstract: This chapter presents the main topics which can be subsumed under the label “cognitive economics” and which correspond to current work. It first presents the cognitive processes carried out by an individual agent concerning the structure and revision of his beliefs and the mental deliberation preceding his choice. It then presents the mechanisms of interaction between several agents in the strategic and face-to-face form of game theory or in the more parametric and indirect form of economic theory. Each of the four successive themes is treated from two points of view, an epistemic one where hyper-intelligent agents act and coordinate instantaneously through sophisticated reasoning and an evolutionary one where boundedly rational agents adapt reciprocally through dynamic learning processes. Concluding remarks concern the ontological and epistemological positions of cognitive economics.

Ethnoarchaeology of Fuel Use in Northern Forests: Towards a Better Characterization of Prehistoric Fire-Related Activities

Abstract: Prehistoric fuel management and hearth functions are key research issues that have benefitted from the development of experimental and ethnoarchaeogical approaches aimed at providing interpretative models for archaeological fire and fuel studies.In this paper, we present a selection of ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological and ethnohistorical data mostly collected among Evenks and Athabascans of East Siberia and North America. Our aim is to question and discuss the relationship between fuel and hearth functions from an ethnoarchaeobotanical perspective: what are the criteria for selecting plant fuels? How archaeologically visible can these diverse fuel types be and what do they tell us about past fire-related activities?Our data shows that the contents of combustion structures result from multiple people-environment interactions at different levels, few of which are accessible to the archaeologist. Nevertheless, ethnoarchaeology, by fostering a reflection on taphonomy issues in the broad sense, active...

The multi-dimensional approach to drug-induced states a commentary on Bayne and Carter's "dimensions of consciousness and the psychedelic state".

Abstract: Bayne and Carter argue that the mode of consciousness induced by psychedelic drugs does not fit squarely within the traditional account of modes as levels of consciousness, and favors instead a multi-dimensional account according to which modes of consciousness differ along several dimensions-none of which warrants a linear ordering of modes. We discuss the assumption that psychedelic drugs induce a single or paradigmatic mode of consciousness, as well as conceptual issues related to Bayne and Carter's main argument against the traditional account. Finally, we raise a set of questions about the individuation of dimensions selected to differentiate modes of consciousness that could be addressed in future discussions of the multi-dimensional account.