Projects
Projects FNS
To the test of scandal. Figures of singularity and regimes of visibility in the contemporary public sphere
2013 - 2016
Applicant : Laurence Kaufmann, Philippe Gonzalez
In an age of new visibility, public attention resolutely focuses on singular figures, whether they are «big» and famous personalities (DSK) or «small» and ordinary people (Nafissatou Diallo). The craze for hyper-mediatized singular figures who increasingly populate the contemporary public sphere is often said to compromise the very vitality of public life: far from contributing to the rational well-argued debate driven by the general interest, proper to deliberative democracy, those figures seem to respond exclusively to the peculiar logic of reputation, esteem or discredit. And yet, in the case of affairs and scandals, those very same figures, since they have perpetuated a transgression made public, are powerfully revealing: they put the collectivity to the test, both forcing and allowing society to experience the resistance of its moral boundaries, to renew or to confirm them. Affairs and scandals can thus be seen as moral and political indicators. They put into question the formation and transformations of public life.
Our research precisely aims at investigating the deep effects of media hyper-visibility by focusing on affairs and scandals as specific forms of public controversy. Interestingly, the analysis of affairs and scandals does not only shed light on the cultural expectancies and moral appraisals proper to a given community at a given time. It also illuminates the political and theoretical models of the public sphere. Indeed, the key role played by singularity and reputation in affairs and scandals calls into question the disembodied model of rational argumentation that still prevails in social sciences. Emotions such as indignation that are central in those public controversies can then be considered as promising topics for sociological investigation.
The psychological foundations of the social: empirical studies on naive sociology
2004 - 2006
FNRS, Division 1, project FNRS nº 100011-105741/1
This project aims to better understand the way in which children as young as 3-year-old recognize and process information that is socially relevant. In line with mainstream developmental psychology and evolutionary psychology, our hypothesis is that children are pre-wired to process and acquire information on the recurrent regularities of their environment. Children are said to be functionally designed to learn and hence to expect different kinds of information, whether it be on physical entities, living beings, or others' mental states. But our hypothesis differs from the extensive literature on a very important point: counter the prevailing view that reduces social information to other people's mental states (ie. beliefs and desires), we postulate that there is a system of social inferences specifically dedicated to processing non-psychological, group-level information such as rules, status, hierarchy, and situations. Far from being nothing but a subspecies of «theory of mind», that is, the cognitive ability to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own, social cognition consists of predictions and expectations based upon impersonal, public social regularities.
The results of our ongoing experiments plead for the existence of such a theory-like system of social inferences: they indeed show that 3- and 4-years-old who do not have yet a theory of mind are able to use social rules, social roles and situation traits to predict other's behavior. That means that social cognition, contrary to what theory-of-mind research claims, does not necessarily involve mindreading. This finding paves the way for a non-mentalistic reconceptualization of social cognition in psychology ; eventually, it might also help to specify the social capacities that enable children to become competent community members and make thereby social order possible.
Others projects
Cognition, réalités sociales et philosophie
2018 - 2019
grant-giving organisation : Alliance Campus Rhodanien
Applicant : Laurence Kaufmann, Rémy Amouroux, Jean-Michel Roy (ENS Lyon)
Le projet se propose de constituer une communauté de réflexion pluridisciplinaire dans le Campus Rhodanien autour d'une reprise de la question traditionnelle des rapports théoriques que doivent entretenir l'explication scientifique des phénomènes sociaux et celle des phénomènes cognitifs qui soit conduite à la lumière d'un examen critique des profondes transformations que ces rapports connaissent aujourd'hui, sous l'effet d'une série d'évènements scientifiques tels que la Révolution Cognitive, le tournant cognitif de la sociologie, le tournant social des sciences cognitives, développement des outils de la complexité... Capitalisant sur une série de contacts scientifiques établis depuis 2015 entre chercheurs du Campus, il est conçu comme la phase préliminaire d'une opération de collaboration scientifique internationale de plus long terme. Cette phase préliminaire sera centrée plus précisément sur la question dite du naturalisme social, entendue comme celle de la possibilité et de la pertinence d'établir un rapport de continuité entre l'explication des phénomènes sociaux et celle des phénomènes naturels. Cette question particulière touche directement aux rapports entre explication sociale et explication cognitive en raison de l'engagement massif de l'entreprise cognitive contemporaine dans la voie du naturalisme cognitif.
ANR LICORNES: Les Interfaces entre Culture, ORganisme, Nature Et Société
2013 - 2016
grant-giving organisation : ANR (France)
Applicant : D. Guillo (CNRS)
Le projet LICORNES porte sur le thème général des rapports entre nature et culture et se déploie autour de deux axes. Le premier axe propose d'étudier les points de contacts entre nature et culture chez l'être humain, en tenant compte des vues qui sont actuellement
développées, chacune de leur côté et avec leurs propres méthodes, par l'anthropologie et la sociologie, d'une part, et la biologie de l'évolution, la psychologie du développement, l'éthologie et les sciences cognitives, d'autre part. Cet axe repose sur trois enquêtes. La première porte sur l'apparition des compétences sociales et culturelles chez les enfants,
étudiée au moyen d'une méthodologie qui combine l'expérimentation et l'ethnographie. La seconde propose une discussion théorique du concept de représentation - qui est aujourd'hui au coeur des débats entre les sciences cognitives et les sciences sociales - à partir d'une enquête ethnographique et expérimentale sur les croyances collectives relatives à la diversité et au devenir du vivant. La troisième, enfin, porte sur l'histoire des théories naturalistes.
The politics of children: the cognitive processing of social hierarchies
2011 - 2013 (36 mois)
grant-giving organisation : Fondation de France (France)
Applicant : Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst (CNRS)
Other partners : Laurence Kaufmann
