Projets de recherche en cours
The starting hypothesis of this project is that there exists an important category of entities, widely used in the sciences but rarely studied as such, which we call products and by-products. This project will have a significant impact within philosophy by defending a novel conception of human-produced continuants which moves away from the prevailing emphasis on individual and collective intentions, and instead assigns a central role to the capacities of agents and their products.
This project aims to use defences to tackle questions of responsibility afresh. The standard approach first identifies conditions for responsibility (or culpability), such as choice and knowledge, and then applies these conditions to specific questions such as whether one is responsible for forgettings. Our defence-first approach flips the script. Instead of asking whether a condition X is required for responsibility, we ask whether its absence exculpates—that is, whether it provides a justification, an excuse, or an exemption.
The starting hypothesis of our research project the idea that games fall under the scope of social ontology – the branch of ontology that studies the nature of the social world and the various entities, relationships, and phenomena of which it is composed. It may seem obvious that games have an important social dimension, as they are typically played collectively and embedded within complex social practices involving various roles, norms, conventions, and institutions. Despite its intuitive appeal, the view that games are social entities in their own right has rarely been explored in the literature. We intend to develop this perspective and to investigate its consequences regarding the nature, mode of existence, and fundamental properties of games.
