NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
L’intégration de la prise de décision visuo-motrice et d’action motrice dans des conditions ambiguës

Decision-making is a mechanism that primarily involves supraspinal neural structures to perform a link between the perception of the signal and action. Several studies that seek to understand the mechanisms of decision-making are conducted at various levels ranging from cognitive behavioral analysis to computational modeling. The purpose of this project was to evaluate how moment-to-moment variability of the sensory stimuli observed, influences the ability of humans to detect the direction of motion in a visual stimulus. In this work, we eliminated one of the potential sources of variability, namely variability from one visual image to another of the number of points which carried three different motion signals (coherent left, coherent right, and random) in Random-dot Kinematogram (RDK) stimuli, i.e a source of variability of external origin. “V6” stimuli were standard RDK stimuli with instantaneous (i.e., moment-to-moment) signal variability, whereas “V8” stimuli were modified to eliminate the stochastic variability due to variability in the number of points, which carried the coherent signal from image frame to image frame in the RDK stimuli. If the performance of the subjects, as measured by their reaction times and the number of correct answers, differs in response to the stimuli of which the number of points moving coherently varies (V6) or does not vary (V8) from moment to moment in the visual stimulus, this would be a proof that the variability of peripheral origin would modulate the decision-making process. On the other hand, if the performance of the subjects does not differ between the two types of stimuli, this would be a proof that the major source of variability of performance is of central origin. In our results we found that the strength of coherent movement modulates the reaction times and the number of correct responses of subjects. However, eliminating the variability of peripheral origin defined above, had little significant effect on the performance of the subjects. There is no clear difference between the distribution of reaction times or between errors and correct answers for each test performed between both V6 and V8 stimuli. Finally, after measuring the amount of motion energy in the RDK stimuli, we could propose that: the origin of the observed variability in the results would primarily be of central origin.

Keyphrases: Cognition, Decision making, RDK stimuli, Reaction time, Rate of correct answers, Visual motion energy, Coherent movement, Signal variability, Cognitive behavioral analysis
La preuve ontologique de l'existence de Dieu chez Descartes

This master thesis project will focus on Descartes and the "ontological" proof of the existence of God. The presentation will be made of this proof, its ins and outs. It will take into account: first, the role and status of the latter in the order of metaphysical reasons; second, the relationship between the "ontological" proof and the "through the effects" proof; and third, the various writings of Descartes in which it is question of the ontological argument. Thus, this analysis will note the differences there might be in Descartes thought regarding the substance or form of this argument. We will discuss on the different position this proof occupied in two writings: the Meditations (1641) and the Principles of Philosophy (1644). This type of analysis will allow us to focus on the debate initiated by Martial Guéroult and Henri Gouhier concerning the place of the "ontological" proof of the existence of God in the order of metaphysical reasons as well as its relations with the "through the effects" proof. The posterity of this debate will also be considered. Also, we will be able to ask the question whether there is an evolution of the "ontological" proof of the existence of God in the thought of Descartes over his writings. In summary, in this thesis, we address two issues: the question of autonomy or non-autonomy of the "ontological" proof in relation with the "through the effects" proof; and the question about the possibility of an evolution of the place and nature of the "ontological" proof of the existence of God in the writings of Descartes.

Keyphrases: Descartes, Existence, Philosophy, God, Metaphysic, Ontological proof
Les effets de la maternité sur les trajectoires de carrière des femmes diplômées au Québec : le rôle des aspirations de carrière

Although much progress experienced by women in the labour market, several challenges remain in terms of representation of women in strategic positions in Québec organizations, despite that they are more educated than men. Our study focuses on barriers contributing to this situation, particularly the effects of motherhood on career aspirations, and by extension on the career paths of female university graduates.  This qualitative study was conducted using primary data collected from female members of the Ordre des conseillers en gestion des ressources humaines agrées (CRHA) et conseillers en relations industrielles agrées (CRIA) du Québec. By our results, we have shown that a variety of factors - societal, organizational, individual and family - makes unreachable strategic positions in organizations by women. Among these factors, motherhood has the effect of negatively influencing the career trajectories by reducing the time investment in the work and the geographical and international mobility of women. Our results also argue that having children has the effect of directing career aspirations of women towards more balance. In this way, women would make choices promoting better work-family balance in their life. Thus, this career aspiration has the effect of influencing the career trajectories of mothers into jobs where flexible schedule is possible, as is the case of opting for self-employment or a job applicant does not travel outside, for example.   Finally, this study contributes to the literature on factors influencing women's career trajectories. In fact, the mediating effects of career aspirations between motherhood and career trajectories have been not very studied up to now. This study observes the mechanisms of career choice at this time of women's lives.

Keyphrases: Career, Career aspirations, Women, Maternity
Séquestration du carbone atmosphérique dans la biomasse racinaire de plantations de saules

The carbon cycle has gone through notable changes since the industrial revolution, with the introduction of once fossilized C into the atmosphere. A number of promising mitigation solutions have been explored, including enhanced sequestration of atmospheric CO2 into soils by promoting the development of shrub trees’ root system. This research aims at: 1) quantifying total root biomass produced per unit surface per year from the short rotation coppice (SRC) of shrub willow (Salix Miyabeana), 2) obtaining the C and N concentration of roots according to diameter and depth and 3) determining the influence of pedoclimatic properties on underground C productivity. In order to achieve these goals, six willow trunks were excavated by hand from eight sites (n=45) and nine ingrowth cores were installed at five sites (n=45) to evaluate fine root productivity. The dried samples were weighted to quantify their total biomass and analyzed, for C and N content. Measured coarse root productivity at the sites varies from 0.7 to 1.8 Mg/ha/an. The C stock in the coarse root biomass varies (31.26% - 50.35%) and its variance is mainly explained by root diameter and the environmental caracteristics of the site of origin. Climatic constraints are the main influence over coarse root biomass production. Its variance is controlled (significant p: 0.004) by yearly and summer precipitations, controlling together 83.4% of the adjusted r2. Summer precipitation is negatively correlated to coarse root growth because the expansin protein content and activity within the roots is stimulated in dry environments. Fine root productivity (1.2 to 2.4 Mg/ha/year) is, however, controlled by a mix of climatic constraints and pedological constraints. There is 36.5% of the variance that is attributable to the pedological constraints and 37.5% of the variance explained by pedoclimatic constraints. The soil P and N contents have critical roles in the determination of fine root productivity. A large soil P stock stimulates fine root growth, whereas a large soil N stock limits the growth of the roots and stimulate aboveground biomass growth. This research allowed a better understanding of the conditions leading to enhanced productivity for willow SRC in the southern region of Quebec.

Keyphrases: CICR, Carbon, Biomass, Willow, SRC, Pedology, Climatic change
L’influence sur la longévité de l’exposition très tôt dans la vie à une épidémie au Québec à la fin du XIXe siècle

Numerous studies have shown the effects on longevity of early life and adult conditions. The purpose of our study is to analyze the impact of exposure to an epidemic disease during the fetal stage or the first year of life on survival after age 40 for people born in Quebec between 1885 and 1901. During this period, we identified epidemics of smallpox and scarlet fever, and the Russian influenza pandemic. The effects on age at death of other environmental conditions have been studied such as the sex, the season of birth and the year of birth, the urban-rural status at birth, the region of residence in early life and the region of residence at death. The dataset used in this study is based on the 5 percent sample of the 1901 Canadian Census, gathered by the Canadian Family Project (Sager 2001). Individuals were matched to their deaths records through the Quebec Consolidated Deaths Index from the Société de Généalogie du Québec and the Index des décès from the Institut de la statistique du Québec (Pilon-Marien and al. 2009). A descriptive analysis of the population studied has been done and a statistical analysis with Cox models and Gompertz models was made. We observe that individuals who were exposed to an epidemic disease during their first year of life had an increased mortality after age 40. In utero exposure to an epidemic hints at an increase of mortality after age 40 but the effect is not significant. Also, a birth during a pandemic, and therefore exposure both in utero and in the first year, apparently has no significant negatives impacts on longevity.

Keyphrases: Québec, smallpox, scarlet fever, Russian influenza, early life conditions, critical period, longevity
La conception de la philosophie dans les dialogues de jeunesse d'Augustin

Our Master's thesis wishes to shed light on the conception of philosophy developed in the early writings of Augustine (more precisely, the ones that Augustine has written during his time spent at Cassiciacum, between 386 and 387). It will limit its investigation to the works of Augustine that we can find in the two volumes of the fourth volume of the Bibliothèque augustinienne: the De beata uita and the De ordine. This work will pursue the question asked by Jean-Luc Marion in his study Au lieu de soi : L’approche de Saint Augustin and will try to find out if Augustine is or is not part of the metaphysical tradition. This question will indeed be at the core of our Master's thesis by orienting the development of the chapters of our study of the conception of philosophy of the young Augustine. The purpose of our Master's thesis is thus to better understand the Augustinian conception of philosophy that we find in the De beata uita and the De ordine in order to see if this conception is coherent with the Marionian thesis which states that Augustine is not a part of the metaphysical tradition.

Keyphrases: Augustin, Cassiciacum, Sagesse, Uita beata, Augustine, Philosophy, Cassiciacum, Metaphysics, Truth, Wisdom, Uita beata, God
La guerre chez Thomas Hobbes et Carl von Clausewitz : entre théorie et réalité

War and its consequences are too important for philosophy to ignore these. In order to understand its foundations and internal mechanisms, we must thought into the heart of war behaviors. That is what Thomas Hobbes and Carl von Clausewitz each tried to do in thinking about the nature of war. This dissertation aims among other things to understand their respective theory about the nature of war and to see how to put them together. The conceptual analysis of state of war and of its causes according to Hobbes, as well as Clausewitz’s thought centered on the nature of war, ascertain similar dynamism where the belligerents’ reciprocal relationship leads to a rise of violence. The notion of will is central to these authors because it explains as much this continued rise of violence as well a possible resolution towards peace. Moving aside the sphere of morality and law while thinking about the war phenomenon, their thoughts wish to be cold and without illusions. In grasping the relational (and mimetic) dynamic which leads to an unlimited desire for power, these two authors decorticate the essence of war through a thought fundamentally oriented towards peace. Thus they give us tools to avoid the worst.

Keyphrases: Hobbes, Clausewitz, violence, war, will, mimetic, violence, rivalry, power, reciprocity
Le Capital, époque de la domination abstraite ; comparaison du rapport entre l’objectivation et l’aliénation dans les Manuscrits de 1844 et Le Capital de Marx

Karl Marx (1818-1883) devoted his work to an explicitation of a social philosophy of capitalism and its overthrow. This master’s thesis aims to specify the capitalist domination by analyzing the concepts of objectivation and alienation.  After an initial clarification of these concepts drawing from Hegel and Feuerbach, we defend the necessity to adopt a plural reading of the concept of objectivation in the Manuscripts from 1844 in order to fully understand the constitution of objectivity through social and historical mediations. From this last work to The Capital, alienation can be understood as the domination of a real abstraction, a social mediation to which humans had given the power to regulate their social interactions.

Keyphrases: Objectivation, Marx, Hegel, Feuerbach, Alienation, Capitalism, Subject-Object, Social ontology
Émergence et entropie

Entropy is generally considered as an emergent property, while the emergence of certain organized structures is supposed to be the result of entropy dissipation. Thus, emergence is sometimes seen as explaining entropy, whereas sometimes the explanation is the other way around, as entropy would explain emergence. As such both statements cannot be true. Faced with the daunting polysemy of these concepts of emergence, entropy and explanation, I argue that this apparent paradox can be formally solved as follows: the emergence (in a sense A) explains (in a sense B) entropy (in a sense, C) and entropy (in a sense D) explains (in a sense E) emergence (in a sense F). The solution is therefore to specify A, B, C, D, E, and F. To do this, I suggest a (restricted) pluralistic model of explanation and a critical examination of the concept of entropy. In the case of entropy as explanandum of emergence (A, B and C), what is emerging is irreversibility as an essential property of thermodynamic entropy, but it cannot be emergence of synonymous of non-explicability. I then show three possibilities that can explain the emergence of thermodynamic entropy: (i) in a strong sense, as an ontological modality, (ii) in an intermediate sense, from what I call ‘methodological emergence’ (where there is a possibility of reductive explanation but no derivational reduction), or (iii) in a weak sense, as its designation as a member of an emergence class. In the case of entropy as explanans of emergence (D, E, and F), one must distinguish the substantive approach from the analogical approach. In the first case, entropy refers to a robust and autonomous macroscopic property that can be mobilized in an explanans of the emergence of new complex structures. In the second case, the entropy exemplifies multiple realizability and can be mobilized, with a proper justification, within an explanans of the emergence of properties at higher levels. Ultimately, the polysemy of these concepts can be fruitful in this explanatory framework for various complex phenomena, from physics to biology.

Keyphrases: Entropy, Explanation, Complexity, Statistical physics, Population genetics
Problème du paradigme dans l'approche écologique de l'individualité chez Turner : une solution méréologique inspirée de Dupré et O'Malley

This master’s thesis consists in a study of the theory of biological individuality developed by Turner, its problems, as well as an approach of individuality that allows us to overcome Turner’s problems while also taking into account the important aspects of his theory. We will start off by showing that, according to Turner, individuality is an ecological matter since an individual cannot be understood without its abiotic parts if the latter play a role in the individual’s functionality.  Afterwards we will demonstrate that Turner’s theory is subject to Haber’s problem of the paradigm. Lastly, by building upon Dupré and O’Malley’s theory of individuality and their studies on bacteria, we will develop a new approach focused on functionality, named mereological approach, which overcomes the problems we find in Turner’s theory while also taking into account the role that abiotic parts play in the functionality of individuals.

Keyphrases: Turner, Haber, Philosophy, Biology, Biological individuality, Unit of selection, Dupré and O'Malley
Les fondements de la désobéissance civile

This study regarding the foundation of civil disobedience is divided in three parts. The first chapter concerns the definition of civil disobedience by Hugo Adam Bedau. The second chapter deals with the historical origins of the concept from the writings of David Henry Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy to the campaigns of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The last chapter focus on the practice of civil disobedience in democratic regimes according to John Rawls. The purpose of this study is to prove that civil disobedience is true to justice despite being illegal, that it has been historically beneficial in the evolution of mentalities and that it is essential to democracy.

Keyphrases: Bedau, Thoreau, Gandhi, Luther King, Rawls, Political philosophy, Civil disobedience, Bedau, Thoreau, Gandhi, Luther King, Rawls
De l'intime au social : l'écriture de l'enfance dans le roman francophone contemporain de Maurice et de la Réunion

In this doctoral dissertation, which deals with childhood narratives in contemporary novels of Mauritius and Reunion Islands, we will examine the following dimensions: the narrative modalities, the construction, evolution and functions of the child protagonist within the texts, his relationship with different members of his family and the people around him, and the connection between these works and their social and discursive context.  Our corpus includes fourteen works of fiction from ten different Mascareignes writers, published from 1987 to 2012 : from Mauritius, Nathacha Appanah, Ananda Devi, Marie-Thérèse Humbert, Shenaz Patel, Amal Sewtohul et Carl de Souza; and from Reunion, Danielle Dambreville, François Dijoux, Axel Gauvin et Jean-François Samlong.   In these novels, if the narrative, discursive and symbolic diversity corresponds to the plural imaginative world of these heterogeneous societies, we can still find some significant trends, including narratives based on the adult’s memory or the child’s immediate experience; suffering, ill-treated, subaltern and rebellious child protagonists; families and societies whose general functioning, discourses and ideologies seem inappropriate, even harmful.    If some of these aesthetic choices partake of certain conventions, others embody a new and even transgressive approach. For example, borrowings from other generic forms like tales, theatre, etc., particular styles of writing and the frequent mixing of different voices and languages distinguish those texts from established norms. The extreme abuse of little girls and the appearance of violent children also seem original. The child’s experience and perspective provides a global, profound and inherently critical view of present-day and past societies of Mauritius and Reunion Islands, therefore providing a counter-discourse to the exotic and bucolic images of a paradise island. From being a witness to an actor, the child allows the author to explore a series of motives and issues distinct to the imaginative world and literatures of the Indian Ocean, like otherness, identity, history, memory, etc.

Keyphrases: Mascareignes, Childhood Narratives, Novel, Contemporary Literature, Indian Ocean, Mauritius, Reunion
Projets et utopies au Québec : Les années 1960 et 1970 : entre sculpture et architecture

Since the first release of Thomas More’s Utopia in the XVth century, the notion of utopia has been appropriated by different means of artistic expression. Quickly, architecture and urban planning used it as an historical purview, when merging in drawings and maps, representations of idealized societies. Modernity and new technologies changed intrinsically utopia’s modalities; therefore artistic projections progressed towards built models. The XXth century has also shown plenty of innovative forms and ideas, whose transmission was accelerated by new media. Although the 1960s and the 1970s gave rise to experimental forms and utopian projects — especially powered by the Révolution tranquille and Mai 68 — it is still challenging to find traces of these art and architecture projects in Québec, due to lack of documentation on the subject. In studying artistic works and practices of Yvette Bisson, Robert Roussil and Melvin Charney, this master thesis intends to observe means and tactics used within their sculptures to seize space and its political dimension. Through Michel de Certeau, Henri Lefebvre and Louis Marin, we will attempt to clarify in which ways the three sculptors’ imagination is fully deployed, hence creating new utopian spaces in sculpture.

Keyphrases: sculpture, architecture, Yvette Bisson, Robert Roussil, Melvin Charney, Révolution tranquille, utopia, space appropriation tactics
Narration et mathématiques l’utilisation des graphes au cinéma et dans la bande dessinée

It is possible to construct a model for time with parametric curves and joining them together leads to the construction of graphs. This model can be used to understand the structure of a story or to explore new narrative possibilities based on these graphs. In this work, we present this model as well as the mathematical notions on which it is based. Finally, we explore various possible narrative structures that appear when we embed these graphs on different surfaces.

Keyphrases: cinema, surfaces, sculpture, Narratology, comics, mathematics, graphs, topology, curves