Alain Berthoz

Itzhak Fried

Gretty Mirdal

Syndrome E

The Brains that Pull the Triggers

Comment prend-on une décision ? En calculant le pour et le contre ? En gardant la tête froide pour évaluer ses chances de succès ou ses risques d'échec ? En faisant taire ses passions ? Et si la décision n'était rien de tout cela ? Si la décision n'était pas raison mais action ? Et si ce que nous appelons aujourd'hui les décideurs " étaient avant tout des " hommes d'actions " ? Ce livre renouvelle entièrement nos idées sur la prise de décision en étudiant au plus prés comment notre cerveau s'y prend pour décider. On y découvrira un cerveau parieur. Un cerveau joueur. Un cerveau qui dialogue avec le corps sensible et son double. Un cerveau ému. Professeur au Collège de France, Alain Berthoz dirige le laboratoire de physiologie de la perception et de l'action (CNRS-Collège de France). Il a publié un essai sur Le Sens du mouvement et des Leçons sur le corps, le cerveau et l'esprit, chez Odile Jacob. "

Décision (La)

At the beginning of the 20th century, German biologist Jakob von Uexküll created the concept of "Umwelt" to denote the environment as experienced by a subject. This concept of environment differs from the idea of passive surroundings and is defined not just by physical surroundings, but is rather a "subjective universe", a space weighted with meaning. Today, neuroscience provides a new way to look at the brain’s capability to create a representation of the world. At the same time behavioural specialists are demonstrating that animals have a richer mental universe than previously known. Philosophical reflection thus finds itself with more experimental and objective data as well. Nearly a century after the publication of von Uexküll’s founding work ("Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere" was published in 1909), neurobiologists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, ethologists, and philosophers revisit his mail concept at the light of modern science

How Living Beings Perceive the World

Neurobiology of "Umwelt"

Jean-Luc Petit

Par ses livres, Le Sens du mouvement et La Décision, Alain Berthoz a largement renouvelé notre conception de la physiologie de la perception et de l’action. Il confronte ici ses idées avec celles d’un grand philosophe du XXe siècle, Edmund Husserl, dont Jean-Luc Petit, l’un de nos meilleurs phénoménologues, est spécialiste. Ses expériences et ses analyses du mouvement, de la posture, de la décision, de la perception nous font comprendre l’importance et la pertinence des approches qui sont celles de Husserl. La pensée n’est pas avant l’action ni l’action avant la pensée. Pour Alain Berthoz et Edmund Husserl, l’action contient toute la pensée. Alain Berthoz, neurophysiologiste, est professeur au Collège de France. Jean-Luc Petit, philosophe, est professeur à l’université Marc-Bloch de Strasbourg.

Phénoménologie et Physiologie de l’action

Groping around a familiar room in the dark, relearning to read after a brain injury, navigating a virtual landscape through an avatar: all are expressions of vicariance—when the brain substitutes one process or function for another. Alain Berthoz shows that this capacity allows humans to think creatively in an increasingly complex world.

The Vicarious Brain, Creator of Worlds

Gretty M. Mirdal

History shows us the same grim phenomenon over and over: under extreme circumstances, apparently ordinary citizens turn into merciless torturers and systematic executioners of defenseless victims. War crimes and genocides may be orchestrated by dictators and terrorist leaders,but they are carried out by individuals who otherwise show empathy, sound moral judgment, and aversion to violence. How does this happen? Is the pull of a murderous regime strong enough to make harmless men become amoral monsters, or is there some underlying psychological or physiological trait that predisposes certain people toward this transition? Can the pathological switch between sensitive human and desensitized killer be isolated, redicted, and prevented? Can it be overridden by compassion and altruism? Is violent aggression addictive? What implications does this have for the way we try and punish perpetrators of such crimes? These are among the questions taken up in a series of conferences on mass violence held from 2015 to 2017 at the Paris Institute of Advanced Studies. In this volume, neuroscientists, sociologists, historians, and legal scholars share research and insights on the roots of radicalization, in-group loyalty, how we learn to follow rules, and many other themes. The result is a troubling but distinctly illuminating glimpse of human nature, and a model of how interdisciplinary dialogue can shed light into its darkest corners. With contributions from Xabier Agirre Aranburu; Scott Atran; Alain Berthoz and Bérangère Thirioux; Thomas Boraud; Michel Botbol; Emile Bruneau;Christopher R. Browning; David Cohen and Nicolas Campelo;Jean-Paul Costa; Susan T. Fiske; Itzhak Fried; Julie Grèzes and Jorge L. Armony; Patrick Haggard; Etienne Koechlin; Heather D. Lucas, Daniel Sanchez, Jessica D. Creery, Xiaoqing Hu, and Ken A. Paller; Gretty M. Mirdal;Mathias Pessiglione; Richard Rechtman; Trevor W. Robbins; Edmund T. Rolls; Françoise Sironi; James K. Stewart; and Jean-Pol Tassin.

The Brains That Pull the Triggers

Carlo Ossola

Brian Stock

L’étroitesse d’esprit, le dogmatisme, l’intolérance, le fanatisme sont, à des degrés divers, des formes d’enfermement dans un schéma mental. Pour y échapper, il faut accéder à la « pluralité interprétative » : devenir capable de « manipuler » ses propres représentations et ses idées pour adopter, au moins temporairement et en imagination, d’autres points de vue que le sien. Mais quelles sont les bases cérébrales et mentales d’une telle capacité chez l’enfant et chez l’adulte ? À travers quelles formes historiques – culturelles, religieuses, artistiques – s’est-elle incarnée et développée ? Peut-on l’enseigner aux enfants, et comment ? Organisé les 12 et 13 juin 2008 au Collège de France, le colloque La pluralité interprétative. Fondements historiques et cognitifs de la notion de point de vue a tenté de faire le point sur ces questions.

Fondements historiques et cognitifs de la notion de point de vue

La pluralité interprétative

In this book a noted physiologist and neuroscientist introduces the concept of simplexity, the set of solutions living organisms find that enable them to deal with information and situations, while taking into account past experiences and anticipating future ones. Such solutions are new ways of addressing problems so that actions may be taken more quickly, more elegantly, and more efficiently. In a sense, the history of living organisms may be summed up by their remarkable ability to find solutions that avoid the world's complexity by imposing on it their own rules and functions. Evolution has resolved the problem of complexity not by simplifying but by finding solutions whose processes—though they can sometimes be complex—allow us to act in the midst of complexity and of uncertainty. Nature can inspire us by making us realize that simplification is never simple and requires instead that we choose, refuse, connect, and imagine, in order to act in the best possible manner. Such solutions are already being applied in design and engineering and are significant in biology, medicine, economics, and the behavioral sciences.

Simplifying Principles for a Complex World

Simplexity

“Simplexity, as I understand it, is the range of solutions living organisms have found, despite the complexity of natural processes, to enable the brain to prepare an action and plan for the consequences of it. These solutions are simplifying principles that enable the processing of information or situations, by taking into account past experience and anticipating the future. They are neither caricatures, shortcuts, or summaries. They are new ways of asking questions, sometimes at the cost of occasional detours, in order to achieve faster, more elegant, more effective actions.” A. B. As Alain Berthoz demonstrates in this profoundly original book, simplicity is never easy; it requires suppressing, selecting, connecting, thinking, in order to then act in the best way possible. And what if we, in turn, are inspired by the living world to process the complexity that surrounds us? Alain Berthoz is professor at the Collège de France where he is co-director of the Laboratoire de physiologie de la perception et de l’action. [Laboratory for the physiology of perception and action]. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and is the author of Le Sens du mouvement [The Brain's Sense of Movement] and La Décision [Emotion and Reason].

The only way we can convey our thoughts to another person is through verbal language. Does this imply that our thoughts ultimately rely on words? This text takes the contrary position, arguing that many possible 'languages of thought' play different roles in the life of the mind.

Alain Berthoz

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