One of the main problems is of course the mind-body problem. It'snot really a question as to how there can be such disparate things as protons and electrons on the one hand, and such things as desires on the other, cohabiting the same universe and apparently having quite a lot to do with each other. For, provided that we are not squeamish about committing the pathetic fallacy, we can attribute desires to any kind of servomechanism, we can claim that the ordinary water closet, for example, wants to remain full at all times and when necessary acts so as to fulfil that desire. The question, as I see it, is rather, how there can be such a thing as consciousness of desire existing in universelargely unconscious.

Thus consciousness (of) belief and belief are one and the same being, the characteristic of which is absolute immanence. But as soon as we wish to grasp this being, it slips between our fingers, and we find ourselves faced with a pattern of duality, with a game of reflections. For consciousness is a reflection (reflet), but qua reflection it is exactly the one reflecting (réfléchissant), and if we attempt to grasp it as reflecting, it vanishes and we fall back on the reflection.

Many people seem to find it quite impossible to doubt that if a person did not do something freely, then he can be neither praised nor blamed for doing it. This assumption is shared by people with very different views about freedom, determinism and moral responsibility. It is held by most ‘libertarians’, who, to preserve moral responsibility, reject determinism. It is held by ‘hard determinists’, who accept determinism and therefore reject moral responsibility; and it is held by ‘soft determinists’, who accept determinism, but argue that determinism does not exclude any kind of freedom that is relevant to whether a person may be held responsible.

No one denies that scientists frequently use bodies of knowledge from already-explored fields of inquiry as models as they argue analogically in the attempt to build new theories in other fields; however, there appears to be considerable controversy about the values of the analogical models when once the new theories are complete. One school of thought has it that although acquaintance with a theory's analogical models might serve a useful pedagogical value—helping to introduce the novice to complex ideas—essentially such acquaintance is theoretically superfluous, and is indeed often dangerously misleading. Thus, R.B. Braithwaite cautions us that “The price of the employment of models is eternal vigilance,” and Mario Bunge states flatly that:

In factual science analogy and analogical inference are welcome as theory construction tools. By the same token they are signs of growth, symptoms that the theory is still in the making rather than mature. A mature classical electrodynamics has no need for elastic tubes of force: the field—a non-mechanical substance—suffices for all purposes, the mechanical analogies being regarded as removable appendages.

Pierre Janet (1859–1947) offre un exemple remarquable de l'inadéquation qui existe souvent entre l'importance réelle de l'œeuvre d'un savant et l'importance qui lui est assignée par le succès et la renommèe.

Nous partirons du thème cent fois rebattu de l'allégorie de la Caverne. Les interprétations classiques du célébre passage de la République sont connues de tous. Il ne s'agit pas pour nous de les répéter, mais de proposer une nouvelle lecture de l'allégorie qui nous sortirait des sentiers battus.

Dans cet article, je me propose deux buts: 1) illustrer les difficultés éprouvèes par un philosophe — i.e. un profane en tout — au moment ou il tente de faire la synthése des points de vue des spécialistes; 2) tenter de clarifier la façon dont se pose le problème d'une théorie de la monnaie.