Denis Vidal

When the gods drink milk ! : empiricism and belief in contemporary hinduism

The permeability of the boundary between religion and politics in India has already been highlighted in many studies. In reality, ever since Independence, the separation established by the Indian constitution between these two central domains of social life has always been rather tenuous. But it is only during the last two decades that a large-scale movement openly questioning the principle has emerged. In effect, political parties appealing to Hinduism have been making a concerted attempt to turn it into the more or less explicit basis for a national state culture, which would replace the purely secular ideals prevailing until now. ~ I

On the concepts of violence and non violence in hinduism and indian society

as Gandhi, or that Brahmans scarcely hesitate before using the stick, even though they loudly and insistently advertise their faith in non-violence? These ways of acting, which are often paradoxical in our eyes, may however allow us to reconsider our understanding of the concepts of violence and non-violence in Hinduism, for there are many aspects of Indian society and culture which effectively contradict ideas taken for granted since Gandhi about the role of violence in them.

Readability of the gaze and expressions of a robot museum visitor: Impact of the low level sensory-motor control

In this paper we propose a neural network allowing a mobile robot to learn artwork appreciation. The learning is based on the social referencing approach. The robot acquires its knowledge (artificial taste) from the interaction with humans. We present and analyze specifically the visual system, its impact on the robot behavior, and at the end, we analyze the readability of our robot behavior according to visitors comments. We show that the low level spatial competition between the values associated to areas of interest in the image are important for the coherence of the robots object evaluation and the readability of its behavior.

Robots étrangement humains

Qu’est-ce qui est en jeu lorsqu’on donne a un robot une apparence humaine, puis lorsqu’on croise son regard ? Autour de cette question gravitent les differentes contributions a ce numero de la revue Gradhiva. Developpant une anthropologie comparee des creatures artificielles dans leur diversite (des automates de l’Inde ancienne aux dernieres creations du marche des sex toys, en passant par les marionnettes japonaises), les auteurs du dossier envisagent ces moments d’interaction qui obligent l’homme, confronte a sa propre image, a instaurer une relation nouvelle a des objets qui lui ressemblent et qui peuvent autant susciter le malaise que l’empathie. Pour ce faire, ils s’attachent a liberer la robotique humanoide des discours prophetiques qui l’accompagnent souvent pour mieux en saisir les enjeux contemporains, a l’aide notamment d’une ethnographie precise des pratiques de laboratoires. Dans la perspective interdisciplinaire qui est la sienne, la revue Gradhiva apporte avec ce numero une contribution inedite a l’etude des machines anthropomorphes.