NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Biopolitique, gouvernement et libéralisme chez le dernier Foucault

Michel Foucault is mostly known for his contribution to the problem of power. His research in political philosophy, on the other hand, has received little attention. This master’s thesis aims to give an account of the modern political power starting with its first great technological form: biopolitics. Giving the initial account of biopower presented in La volonté de savoir, I defend the idea that the power over life, on the rise as a very important political question, must also be seen as a foundation of classical liberalism. Even if biopolitics is constitutive of the birth of capitalism, we will show that it nonetheless differs from the economic power as theorised by Marx in the 1844 Manuscripts and Capital. Our goal is to show that liberalism cannot be reduced to economics and that biopolitics allows for positive transformation. Finally, we will show that liberalism appears as a theory of government that exceeds, on Marx’s economist reading, the moral interpretation that it is traditionally associated with.

Keyphrases: Foucault, Marx, Biopolitics, Liberalism, Capitalism, Government, Power, Market
Le cerveau selon Aristote

This study clarifies Aristotle’s brain theory. Going against a philosophical (Plato) and medical (Hippocrates) tradition that regarded the brain as the central organ of the body and the locus of psychic activities, Aristotle assigns virtually no function to the brain in his conception of sensation, voluntary movement, and intelligence. According to the philosopher, the brain is cold, moist, entirely deprived of blood and is in charge of cooling the heat produced by the heart and of inducing sleep. In other words, Aristotle’s brain theory is deeply flawed. Yet, Aristote’s mistakes are not devoid of interest. Thus, our study tries to understand the causes of these errors, and, in doing so, pays special attention to the method and to the different kinds of data that Aristotle uses in the field of life sciences. This approach sheds light on the influence of a preexisting medical literature and, as a result, invites to reevaluate the place of empirical observation in Aristotle’s biology.

Keyphrases: Aristote, Aristotle, Cerebral Anatomy, Cerebral Physiology, Scientific Method, History of Science, Brain
Sans-voix : comment les inclure en politique? Le défi des générations futures et les animaux non humains

In this M.A. research, I try to understand how to politically admit future generations and nonhuman animals. To do this, I analyze debates in philosophy about intrinsic value, theories of justice, rights and political representation. I suggest that what has been accomplished about future generations can serve to the animal cause and conversely. I review what brings together this voices-less. After I allowed them an intrinsic and political value, I recognize them with rights to physically integrity, life and liberty. Finally, I suggest solutions to by-pass the problem of non-audibility in democracy.

Keyphrases: Intergenerational ethics, Animal ethics, Politic, Liberalism, Utilitarianism, Speciesism, Fundamentals rights, Interests, Damage, Representation
L'abêtissement chez Pascal

This Master’s thesis aims to clarify the meaning of “s’abêtir” in Blaise Pascal’s Pensées. As the Apologie de la religion chrétienne was left unfinished, the French philosopher took his secret to the grave: What did he mean by the idea that the cure for unbelief – repeating actions and words related to Christian worship – results in “s’abêtir” ? I argue that “s’abêtir” means becoming-beast, and that the context in which the notion is uttered as well as the lexical field it covers relate to the “discours de la Machine” and the notion of “automate”. My analysis allows me to say that, formally, “s'abêtir” refers to the preparation of human habits to faith. In the following chapters, I show that the vocabulary of Machine/automate/bête is likely to clarify three dimensions for such a preparation. Depending on the position we adopt with respect to the problem of belief, that is, from a psycho-physiological, moral or epistemological perspective, “s’abêtir” can simultaneously mean 1) acquiring corporeal and intellectual habits that lead to faith ; 2) strengthening the virtue of humility against pride, inherited from original sin ; 3) passively acquiring a range of factual knowledge from Scripture and history necessary to understand the evidence of the truth of Christianity. Each one of these perspectives is the topic of one of the successive chapters of this thesis.

Keyphrases: Blaise Pascal, Machine, Automate, Apologie, Philosophy, Christianity, Apology, Cartesian philosophy, Beast, Automaton, Habit, Belief
La doctrine du péché originel chez Augustin : aperçu du contexte d’émergence

The first verse of Genesis says that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The world, its form and matter, and time, argues Augustin, arose in Being out of nothing, in one single instant, that of the Creation. Conceived as the coronation of Creation, man, however, quickly breaks the trust relationship with his Creator, and does this by making evil use of a good thing: his free will. Because of its first transgression, says Augustine, humanity will, from now on, bear the mark of sin, which only the redemptive figure of Christ, the Second Adam, can erase, for all of those willing to follow his path. Yet, because of his irrepressible desire to acquire knowledge and experience of the world through his own given being, subject to change, man appears to be perpetually tempted by the transgression of his essential relativity to God. God, however, being the sole creator of the very being of created things, creates all things good, but to a certain degree: evil, which seems to characterize the being and actions of men, in reality, corresponds to varying degrees of goodness, which themselves result from more or less privation of the Supreme Good, namely, God. Berber of roman culture, witness and actor of the last days of Antiquity, passionate thinker and essential theologian, Augustine has produced some of humanity’s most important writings. In this work, we will attempt to understand the context which led to the emergence of his doctrine of original sin.

Keyphrases: Augustin, Morale, Adam, Augustine, Original sin, Good, Evil, Ethics, Ontology, Genesis, Adam, Christianism
Valeur intrinsèque de la nature et éthique environnementale : une critique de l'approche pragmatique

In this paper, we will study the place that the notion of intrinsic value in nature should take in environmental ethics and we will criticize pragmatism for rejecting the notion of intrinsic value. For Bryan G. Norton, one of the forefathers of environmental pragmatism, the notion of intrinsic value is an obstacle to the establishment of public environmental policies. Contrary to this belief, we will argue that this notion can play an essential part in environmental ethics as a common ground for establishing global politics able to respond to international environmental issues. For this purpose, we will first present the pragmatic approach and its arguments against the use of intrinsic value in nature. On this basis, we will then criticize some aspects of environmental pragmatism in order to show that this position is not flawless and that some shortcomings could be remediated with the use of the notion of intrinsic value in nature. The inadequacy of a purely pragmatic position in regard to global environmental threat having been shown, we will finally present the notion of intrinsic value in nature as conceived by J. Baird Callicott. This presentation will give us the essentials tools to establish the metaphysical foundation of the intrinsic value for species. We will finally show, with the help of Willis Jenkins position, that environmental pragmatism can be compatible with the use of intrinsic value in nature. Intrinsic value in nature can play a crucial role in environmental ethics and we should consequently resist to those who treat this notion as irrelevant.

Keyphrases: J. Baird Callicott, Bryan G. Norton, Philosophy, Environmental ethic, Pragmatism, Intrinsic value, Environmental policies
Autonomie et vulnérabilité : l'apport de l'autonomie relationnelle

The common definition of autonomy takes its origins from the works of Emmanuel Kant. During the twentieth century, a feminist lecture of this nature denounces, while also highlighting an atomistic and masculine conception of autonomy, non-representative of the vulnerable and social nature of the human being. This memoir explores the themes and concepts surrounding autonomy and vulnerability within a feminist perspective, while actively establishing the possibility of the moral agent as a separate and autonomous member, dependent on its social environment.  The concept of relational autonomy proposed by Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar constitutes an alternative to this Kant notion, which is further adjusted with human sociability.

Keyphrases: Liberal autonomy, Relational autonomy, Vulnerability
Théorème Central Limite pour les marches aléatoires biaisées sur les arbres de Galton-Watson avec feuilles

This Master thesis is part of a larger project of linking the behaviours of a certain type of random walks in random environments (RWRE) with those of a toy model called the Bouchaud’s trap model. The domain of RWRE is very wide but our interest will be on a particular kind of models which are reversible and directionally transient.  More specifically, we will see why those models have similar behaviours and what kind of results we could expect once we have reviewed the Bouchaud’s trap model. We will also present some basic technic used in this field, such as regeneration times.  As a contribution, we will demonstrate a central limit theorem for the β-biased random walk on a Galton-Watson tree.

Keyphrases: Random walk in random environment, RWRE, Galton-Watson tree, Central limit theorem, Regeneration time, Trap models
Test d'adéquation à la loi de Poisson bivariée au moyen de la fonction caractéristique

Our aim in this thesis is to conduct the goodness-of-fit test based on empirical characteristic functions proposed by Jiménez-Gamero et al. (2009) in the case of the bivariate Poisson distribution. We first evaluate the test’s behaviour in the case of the univariate Poisson distribution and find that the estimated type I error probabilities are close to the nominal values. Next, we extend it to the bivariate case and calculate and compare its power with the dispersion index test for the bivariate Poisson, Crockett’s Quick test for the bivariate Poisson and the two test families proposed by Novoa-Muñoz et Jiménez-Gamero (2014). Simulation results show that the probability of type I error is close to the claimed level and that it is generally less powerful than other tests. We also discovered that the dispersion index test should be bilateral whereas it rejects for large values only. Finally, the p-value of all these tests is calculated on a real dataset from soccer. The p-value of the test is 0,009 and we reject the hypothesis that the data come from a Poisson bivariate while the tests proposed by Novoa-Muñoz et Jiménez-Gamero (2014) leads to a different conclusion.

Keyphrases: Bivariate Poisson distribution, Characteristic function, Probability generatic function, Goodness-of-fit test
A consistent test of independence between random vectors

Testing for independence between random vectors is an important question in statistics. Because there is an infinite number of ways by which a random quantity X can be dependent of another random quantity Y , it is not a trivial question. It has been found that classical tests such has Spearman [33],Wilks [40], Kendall [18] or Puri and Sen [24] are ineffective to detect many forms of dependence. Recent, significant results on the topic include Székely et al. [35], Gretton et al. [14] or Heller et al. [15]. However, most of the available tests can only detect dependence between two random quantities. Because pairwise independence does not guarantee mutual independence, techniques testing the hypothesis of mutual independence between any number of random quantities are required. In this research we propose a non-parametric and universally consistent test of independence, applicable to any number of random vectors of any size. Precisely, we extend the procedure described in Heller et al. [15] in two ways. Firstly, we propose to use the ranks of the observations instead of the observations themselves. Secondly, we extend their method to test for independence between any number of random vectors. As the distribution of our test statistic is not known, a permutation method is used to compute p−values. Then, simulations are performed to obtain the power of the test. We compare the power of our new test to that of other tests, namely those in Genest and Rémillard [10], Gretton et al. [14], Székely et al. [34], Beran et al. [3] and Heller et al. [15]. Examples featuring random variables and random vectors are considered. For many examples investigated we find that our new test has similar or better power than that of the other tests. In particular, when the random variables are Cauchy, our new test outperforms the others. In the case of strictly discrete random vectors, we present a proof that our test is universally consistent.

Keyphrases: independence test, multivariate data, random vectors
Un outil pour développer et tester les grammaires d’unification polarisées

This thesis presents a computer tool to develop and test polarized unification grammars that was built, namely, to help validate experimentally Kahane & Lareau’s Meaning-Text Unification Grammar (MTUG) formalism. We first describe the theory behind the PUG formalism, then we explain how the module was developed and we test it using a fragment of the MTUG grammar.

Keyphrases: Unification de graphes, Polarized unification grammars, Graph unification, Meaning-Text Theory, Computational linguistics
Les locuteurs d’une langue tonale sont-ils de meilleurs musiciens? Effet potentiel de la connaissance native d’une langue à tons sur la perception du contraste du pitch

This thesis gives an overview of neuropsychological and electrophysiological studies about the possible interaction between the processing of language and music. Our main purpose is to examine the possible reasons for which tone language speakers have a better capacity in perceiving pitch contrast in music than native speakers of an intonational language. First, we discuss the neural processing of prosody and music, attempting to show an overlap between the two domains. Next, we present the concept of a tone langue and the neural processing of lexical tones. Afterwards, we discuss the transfer effects of the processing capacity of pitch in linguistic and music by focusing on the influence of a knowledge of a tone language on the musical perception. To do this, the encoding of pitch and the hemispheric specialization will be discussed.

Keyphrases: encoding of pitch, tone language, hemispheric specialization, music, prosody, neural processing
Étude des techniques d’estimation de densité et du tracé de chemins pour le rendu des milieux participatifs

Nowadays, the use of photo-realistic computer images is very common, whether for film making, creating virtual environments, video games, or even for pre-visualizing architectural projects. The understanding and technological advances of the last 20 years allow us to be able to create very realistic images. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between a photo of a real object and a virtual image.  But to achieve such a high degree of realism, it is necessary to create complex and costly algorithms capable of simulating the physical laws governing  interactions between light and matter. Participating media are a perfect example, as they are unavoidable and must be integrated during the creative processes, whether for simulating smoke or clouds, or for creating a credible atmosphere.  Despite the overpowering performance of modern computers, it is still currently impossible to reproduce participating media perfectly, and in a reasonable time. Some visual effects, such as caustics or multiple scattering, are difficult to reproduce for some kinds of algorithms, so one is often limited to a simplification of the interactions. This is even more true for real-time applications that often require rendering at 30 frames per second.  The quantity and the quality of the images to be calculated can also be so important that it is necessary to develop new algorithms. This is the case for the film industry, which must be able to anticipate and plan its renderings on computer farms, often over a year, and at the same time strictly control the financial aspect.  We will present in this thesis various techniques of simulation of participating media, analyse them, and propose certain directions for future work.

Keyphrases: Participating media, Scattering, Rendering, Computer graphics
Using goal-driven assistants for software visualization

Using software visualization to accomplish certain tasks such as design defect detection  can prove tedious. Users first need to find and configure a visualization tool that  is adequate for representing the data they want to examine. Then all too often, they are  forced to manually navigate the software system in order to complete their task. What  we propose is a simpler and more efficient approach that moves the emphasis from configuring a tool and manually navigating the system to writing a definition of the work we  want to accomplish. Our goal-driven assistant then generates the best visualization tool  and guide us through the navigation of the task.  Our approach consists of three main components. The first component is a domain specific  language (DSL) to describe analysis tasks. The second component is a language  to define the visualizations as customized implementations of the model-view-controller  (MVC) pattern. The last component is a generation process used to go from the analysis  task to the visualization.  By removing the need to configure a visualization tool and guiding the navigation of  the system, we believe we made a tool that is simpler and faster to use than its conventional  counterparts.

Keyphrases: Software visualization, Code analysis
Sequential modeling, generative recurrent neural networks, and their applications to audio

By far Deep Learning showed to be the most promising venue of achieving applied Artificial Intelligence which has been the dream of many as the path toward AI-powered future and eventually the Artificial General Intelligence. In this work we are interested in harnessing this powerful method to make bigger strides in the direction of creating a ``Talking Machine''.  This thesis is dedicated to presenting a parametric statistical model for generating unconditional audio sequences including speech, onomatopoeia, and music in an end-to-end manner. Proposed model does not benefit from any handcrafted features that are developed over the course of many years in the field of signal processing rather operates on raw sample audio. As a general framework it can also potentially be applied in other domains that require modeling sequential data; e.g. Natural Language Processing.  Chapter 1 and 2 give a brief overview of the background topics including machine learning and basic building blocks of deep learning algorithms. Following chapters of this thesis present our endeavor toward the aforementioned goal.

Keyphrases: Artificial intelligence, Machine learning, Deep neural networks, Representation learning, Sequential modeling, Generative models, Audio generation
Comparaison de méthodes de détection automatique d’intersections sur surfaces paramétriques

The question of determining if a given geometric model has extraneous intersections is common to many domains: numerical simulation, CAD/CAM, animation, computer graphics, etc. The complexity of this problem varies with the representation chosen to generate the model. For parametric surfaces, it is a hard problem, but for which many solutions have been proposed. Those solutions differ from one another by their underlying ideas, their complexity and the exactitude of the result they give. In this thesis, we will try to compare some of these methods. We will concentrate on the class of methods we call failsafe, the methods that will surely detect the possibility of an intersection if there is one. Those are the methods used in all critical applications, the applications in which a malformed model would have important consequences. The work of this thesis is mostly theoretical. First, we will compare the different techniques on their power of resolution. Then, we will discuss the execution cost of the different methods. We did some implementations while working on this thesis, but only as a way to support our theoretical observations. A complete empirical study of the execution times of the different methods would be left to do. We will see that there is a partial order between some of the methods in their strength, but not all of them. For example, the test-point method is strictly stronger than the separation of the convex hulls method, but is neither stronger nor weaker than the Volino- Thalmann method.

Keyphrases: intersection, auto-intersection, surface, detection, interference, parametric
Using Workflows to Automate Activities in MDE Tools

Software engineering aims to create software tools that allow people to solve particular problems in an easy and efficient way. In this regard, Model-driven engineering (MDE) enables to generate software tools, by systematically modeling and transforming models. In order to do this, MDE relies on language workbenches: Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for engineering modeling languages, designing models executing them and verifying them. However, the usability of these tools is far from efficient. Common MDE activities, such as creating a domain-specific language or developing a model transformation, are nontrivial and often require repetitive tasks. This results in unnecessary risings of development time. The goal of this thesis is to increase the productivity of modelers in their daily activities by automating the tasks performed in current MDE tools. I propose an MDE-based solution where the user defines a reusable workflow that can be parameterized at run-time and executed. This solution is implemented in an IDE for graphical modeling. I also performed two empirical evaluations in which the users’ productivity is improved.

Keyphrases: Workflow, Enactment, Domain-specific Modeling, Model Transformation, Fitts Law
Analyse des émotions dans un jeu vidéo

Throughout a video game, we see people becoming aggressive, shouting for joy and sometimes crying. These observed reactions prompt us to ask what are the major emotions created in a player during a game session, as well as to identify the responsible elements. To this end, our study proposes a method of emotional analysis of a game as well as a tool whose implementation uses this method in order to give easy access to information for users. This analysis submits a graphic illustration of emotional transition along the course of the player during the game. To develop this method we performed an experiment on a group of 21 people and used 5 physiological measurement tools. We focused mainly on the combination of 2 of them, the recognition of facial expressions and the follow-up of the gaze. Our results show the effectiveness of this method through an improvement of the precision both in the identification of the emotions and their triggers. From this step came the desire to predict the emotions of the players. It is with this in mind that we present in this paper 2 approaches based on the theoretical model of emotion evaluation Ortony, Clore and Collins and Machine learning algorithms, in particular a version of the k nearest neighbors and the Random forest classifiers. The results obtained being promising, such an achievement would widen the possibilities in the design of video games.

Keyphrases: Emotions in video games, Emotional analysis, Emotional intelligence, Affectiv computing