News

Didier passed away on Wednesday, September 27, 2023, after a long battle with cancer. It is with deep sadness that we pay tribute to him through these testimonials. Didier had finally found a more fulfilling place for his enactive approach to linguistics by joining the "Interactions, Corpus, Apprentissages, Représentations" laboratory (ICAR, UMR 5191 CNRS, ENS de Lyon, Université Lyon 2) on March 23, 2018. His vigor and imagination have enabled him to dig this furrow, which he began to share with us on the occasion of the four CNRS/ARCO summer schools "Constructivism and enaction: a new paradigm for cognitive science" from 2006 to 2009. At the end, we encouraged him to produce a first, risky text in the book published in 2010 by MIT Press; he did so: Language and Enaction[1]. The sensitive, fragile and courageous man that he was, had taken flight.

Picture taken during the school of enation on the island Oléron in 2006
(crédit O. Gapenne)

Tribute from the editorial board of Intellectica

Didier naturally joined the editorial board of Intellectica in 2017 after the publication of the issue 68 entitled Language and enaction: embodiment, environment, experience, learning which he coordinated with Michael Grégoire[1]. Since then, he has been an active member of the editorial board, with his presence, his involvement, his virtuoso handling of the French and English languages, but also his sense of humor. We were privileged to be able to publish his writings following the colloquium Langage et énaction - Production du sens, Incarnation, Interaction which had taken place some time before at the University of Clermont-Ferrand. He offered us the honor of coordinating this issue on a new line of research, even though he was already heavily involved as co-creator of the new journal Signifiance[2] (May 2014).

His membership of the editorial board has enabled us to better represent the work of the language sciences within the journal. But beyond his identity as a researcher, he always had the right word and knew how to enlighten us on the origin and connotations of the terms we were using, as this extract from the introduction of the issue 68 co-authored with Michaël Grégoire testifies: "The original meaning of the term language is etymologically transparent: "to set the tongue in motion", from its lexical root lingua "tongue" (the organ or tongue as a speech-regulating system, as far back as Latin) and the suffix  age from the verb agere "to move, set in motion, carry away, direct, lead". The literal interpretation of this composition produces the idea of an embodied activity, carried out by an organ of the human body, and sufficiently remarkable in its realization and specific effects to deserve to be named in its own right and excluding contexts where language participates in interactions in relation to other bodies and objects (chewing and swallowing, bodily hygiene, delousing, suckling)" (translated from french, Bottineau & Grégoire, 2017, p.8). Didier not only had the right word, but also the right tone and gesture. Interactions with him were sometimes songs and dances. Always full of life, they were tinged with his trademark panache and subtle, vivacious humor.

It's hard to summarize Didier's interests as a researcher. You have to (re)read him to understand how he was able to weave organic links between the Guillaumian tradition, Varela's contributions, Maturana's languaging, Berthoz's simplexity, submorphemia, and the list could go on without diluting the coherence of his theoretical synthesis, which would have deserved more time to unfold its full enormous potential. But the seeds are well scattered in his writings, and it remains to harvest and valorize them.

A man of science, an advocate of the enaction paradigm in the language sciences, some of us also caught a glimpse of this committed citizen in exchanges outside editorial board meetings.

His departure will leave a huge void in the cognitive science community, and in language science in particular. But we can be sure that his scientific commitment to the value of enactive approaches in linguistics will have opened up a path of research that should continue to flourish.

Dear Didier, your research will continue to accompany ours, alive and inseparable from your voice, your way of interpreting the thirst for knowledge.

Virginie Beaucousin, Magali Ollagnier-Beldame, Olivier Gapenne, Mehdi Khamassi, Alain Mille, Pierluigi Basso, Cyril Monier, le  comité de rédaction d’Intellectica

I didn't know Didier before he joined the Editorial Board of Intellectica.

I had been surprised by his deep attention to what was being said around him.

I even thought he was shy until he spoke... I was astonished by his firm, steady voice, which clearly supported what he was saying.

The layout of the issue 68, for which he was editor, was easy. I am grateful to him for that.

Marie-Jo Lécuyer

This text will be published in french in the issue 79. It was translated thanks to DeepL (https://www.deepl.com/).

[1] https://hal.science/halshs-00339894

[2] https://intellectica.org/en/human-language-languages-and-speech-perspective-languaging-and-enaction

[3] https://revues.polen.uca.fr/index.php/Signifiances/about

It is with great pleasure that we now announce the publication of Issue #78 of the Intellectica journal. It is a thematic issue entitled "Cognition and Intelligence" coordinated by Olivier Gapenne and Olivier Chopin. The content of the issue as well as the summary of each article are accessible on the website of the journal. Link to the issue.

The next issue, Issue #79, will be a special issue on "Beyond Cognition, the Emotions", edited by Isabelle Viaud-Delmon and Georges Chapouthier, and will be published in the Winter of 2023.

We wish you a very good reading!

It is with great pleasure that we now announce the publication of Issue #77 of the Intellectica journal. It is a non-thematic issue with regular papers and a book review. The content of the issue as well as the summary of each article are accessible on the website of the journal. Link to the issue.

The next issue, Issue #78, will be a special issue on "Cognition and military intelligence", edited by Olivier Gapenne and Olivier Chopin, and will be published in the Summer of 2023.

We wish you a very good reading!

It is with great pleasure that we now announce the publication of Issue #76 of the Intellectica journal. It is a special issue on "John Stewart: Tribute/Legacy/Debate", edited by Charles Lenay. The content of the issue as well as the summary of each article are accessible on the website of the journal. Link to the issue.

The next issue, Issue #77, will be a normal issue including regular paper submissions, and will be published in the winter of 2022.

We wish you a very good reading!

It is with great pleasure that we now announce the publication of Issue #75 of the Intellectica journal. It is a special issue on "Liberty and cognition", edited by Cyril Monier and Mehdi Khamassi. The content of the issue as well as the summary of each article are accessible on the website of the journal. Link to the issue.

The next issue, Issue #76, will be a special issue on "John Stewart: Tribute/Legacy/Debate", edited by Charles Lenay, and will be published by the summer of 2022.

We wish you a very good reading!

We are sorry to announce a publication delay of Issue #75 "Liberty and cognition" coordinated by Cyril Monier and Mehdi Khamassi. Initially planned for December 2021, the publication will take place in March 2022.

Please find below the summary of this issue:

1. Cyril Monier & Mehdi Khamassi. Introduction

2. Mehdi Khamassi & Jean Lorenceau. Embodied cognitive dynamics and their impact on humans’ freedom within the society.

3. Kathinka Evers. Variable determinism in social applications: translating science to society.

4. Jenner Herman Bedminster. L’impuissance de la volonté et le déterminisme causal. Discussion du libre arbitre et de l’irresponsabilité morale.

5. François Kammerer. Enhanced freedom.

6. Jean-Baptiste Guillon. Libre arbitre et déterminisme dans les débats entre philosophie analytique et neurosciences.

7. Joël Dolbeault. Free Will according to Bergson: Conceptual Clarifications and Confrontation with Libet-Type Experiments.

8. Bernard Feltz. Liberty, determinism and neurosciences.

9. Mathias Pessiglione. Do as you want : the release by the deliberation.

Regular paper

10. Catherine Recanati. The original approach of Jean Nicod and its interest in semantics and cognitive science.

Thank you for your understanding.

We wish you a happy new year!

The editorial team

Call for communications for special issue #76 of the journal Intellectica (intellectica.org).

Submission

Please send you manuscript (or your questions) to: soumission@intellectica.org

Instructions for authors : https://intellectica.org/en/authors

Deadline: 27 January 2022

Detailed description

Link to the detailed description of the call for communications for special issue #76.

It is with great pleasure that we now announce the publication of Issue #74 of the Intellectica journal. It is a special issue on "Memory and Cognition: How is the Meaning of the World Constructed Through our Interactions with the Environment?", edited by Rémy Versace. The content of the issue as well as the summary of each article are accessible on the website of the journal. Link to the issue.

The next issue, Issue #75, will be a special issue on "Free necessity and cognition", edited by Cyril Monier and Mehdi Khamassi, and will be published in the winter of 2021.

We wish you a very good reading!

As we sent issue #73 to press, we learned of the passing of

John Stewart

on January 31, 2021

 

The story of John and Intellectica goes back to the year 1993. We will miss his intelligence, immense knowledge, humor and kindness. Our thoughts are with his family, friends, and colleagues.

A tribute to him will be paid in a forthcoming publication: issue #76 to be published in late 2021 will consist of texts discussing his research work. The call for papers will open in September.

A seminar "Life and Cognition. A Tribute to John Stewart (1941-2021)" was organized by the CRED team of the UTC COSTECH, most of whose lectures are available here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC98U3FjeMg-scD6zYa3d9Jg/videos