Lines of research | IPhiG - Université Grenoble Alpes

Line 1: “Practices: Values, Standards and Institutions” (leader: T. Boccon-Gibod)

IPhiG’s first line of research is devoted to human practices and their standards, such as they exist within contemporary societies. The development of this line takes the form of work aimed at understanding actual practices addressed within their political, ethical and legal dimensions, as well as normative proposals formulated both in theoretical work and within non-philosophical bodies of reflection (medical ethics committees, workshops on research ethics, etc.). Line1 thus seeks, with the declared objective of elucidating contemporary practices such as they exist, to meet the demands expressed by the academic world (for example, the ethics of science, care ethics and research ethics) and by civil society (for example, concerning the meaning of punishment, authority, gestational surrogacy (GPA), euthanasia or regarding corruption in public ethics) for an in-depth reflection on the rules and values governing our conduct, the processes by which they are formulated and their modes of application.
More precisely, the activities of line 1 take two main directions.

Basic ethics and applied ethics

Line 1’s first direction focuses on the various aspects of the ethics under consideration– applied, normative, and meta-ethics – and pursues a variety of themes that figure prominently on the current ethics agenda – in particular, the ethics of innovation, feminist ethics, care ethics, research ethics, bioethics, the ethics of artificial intelligence, and work ethics – paying close attention to the sources and resources that current ethics can find in the history of ethics and moral philosophy.

Political and legal philosophy

Line 1’s second direction is devoted to the standards of practices, standards regarded as institutional phenomena. Driven by the objective of elucidating the historical evolution of modern and contemporary social, political and legal forms (for example, by studying contemporary governmentality or the destiny of political categories resulting from modernity), it questions the way in which standards are constituted within institutions and confronts the issues raised by their application and the exercise of the power they involve. More specifically, this second line consolidates work relating to political and social philosophy, on the one hand, and the philosophy of law and public ethics on the other.

Line 2: “Mind: Cognition and Language” (leader: K. Michaelian)

The IPhiG’s second main line of research (PPL) questions the nature of the mind, (or) of cognitive life, with a special emphasis on the themes of memory, intentionality and language. The work carried out takes place within current theoretical frameworks, which are arranged as follows: the naturalistic approach enshrined in the field of cognitive sciences, on the one hand, and non-naturalistic approaches that favour logical and conceptual analysis, on the other. This line debates the question of the nature of the mind and how to go about elucidating it. Does the use of empirical methods provided by cognitive neuropsychology, with their own modes of delivering evidence, lead to a proper understanding of cognitive life? Or should less — or even non — empirical methods be chosen? For example, should semantics be constructed by means of an exclusively logical and pragmatic analysis, or should prominence be given, when considering naturalised semantics, to psychological operations and their experimental examination? Similar questions arise concerning memory and intentionality. More precisely, the activities of line 2 are arranged in two main directions.

Philosophical approaches to the mind

Line 2’s first direction brings together the naturalistic approach and conceptual analysis as regards several psychological concepts. Dedicated mainly to memory, the imagination and intentionality, it provides an opportunity to contrast but also combine the philosophical resources offered by empirical work in cognitive neuropsychology and conceptual analysis promoted by the philosophy of ordinary language, in order to address questions relating to the philosophy of the mind.

Mind and language

Research within the IPhiG has long been rooted in reflections on language. After having mainly produced work relating to logical languages and natural languages, and having explored their semantic and pragmatic aspects, line 2’s second direction now questions the relationship between mind and language, whether through the neo-Wittgensteinian approach of elucidating the mind via the analysis of ordinary language, or through using a naturalistic approach which raises the question of the nature of the cognitive processes brought into play by the use of language, for example by examining the role of perception and the various forms of inference at work in the semantic interpretation of natural languages.

Line 3: "History of Philosophy"(leader:Anthony Bonnemaison)

The IPhiG's third line of research has two main objectives. First, it promotes the development of studies covering various historical periods: ancient philosophy (Presocratics, Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus), modern philosophy (Machiavelli, Descartes, Malebranche, Poulain de la Barre, Elisabeth de Bohême, Marie de Gournay), and contemporary philosophy (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Cornelius Castoriadis, Gilbert Ryle, Elizabeth Anscombe, Simone de Beauvoir, Françoise Héritier, Barbara Cassin). Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the work situates the analysis of philosophical concepts and debates in their socio-political, cultural, and intellectual context, all while considering the materiality of sources. Secondly, the line works on the articulation between philosophical tradition and contemporary philosophy, whether by studying contemporary updates of certain philosophical traditions (such as sophistry and rhetoric), or the historical roots of contemporary thought (notably feminism and the philosophy of the state). To this extent, this line fits in with the other two lines of research pursued by the laboratory, while also having its own specific research topics. More precisely, the activities of Line 3 are arranged in three main directions.

Constitution of the philosophical canon

Line 3's first direction focuses on the construction of the philosophical canon. It first examines the exclusionary practices through which this canon is constructed, whether through the distinction between philosophy and non-philosophy or between “great” and “minor” philosophers. It includes works on the boundaries between philosophy and sophistry, on women philosophers, on contemporary rewritings, but also translations and editions of so-called minor or lesser-known works. More broadly, it questions the different ways of writing (and rewriting) the history of philosophy. In doing so, this approach aims to take a reflexive and critical stance on the history of philosophy.

Imagination and faculties of the soul

Line 3's second direction addresses the question of the soul and its faculties in the philosophical tradition. It focuses on three interrelated issues: the role of imagination in relation to other faculties (memory, intellect, sensation); the paradigm of imprint and trace to conceive of the soul's relationship to the world; the role of the body in explaining psychic processes.

Questioning power

Line 3's third direction studies power in the philosophical tradition. Power is studied in terms of its effects (such as the invisibilization and control of female bodies), its practices (how can power be made acceptable in the eyes of the governed?), its driving forces (what are the connections between economic theories and theories of raison d'état, for example?), and its connections with the symbolic. The aim is both to question how power has been philosophically theorized and to identify specific practices or effects of power throughout history, including the history of philosophy.