La fonction générale du déterminant est habituellement décrite par les linguistes et les grammairiens en termes d’actualisation, référant explicitement ou implicitement au passage d’un signe du statut « en puissance » au statut « en effet ». Cette vision est ancrée dans les théorisations de G. Guillaume et de C. Bally fondées sur la dichotomie saussurienne langue/parole. L’utilité de la notion d’actualisation pose cependant question dans la mesure où la valeur de « non actualisation » n’est pas (...) associée à l’absence de déterminant. Ainsi, il est nécessaire d’aller au-delà des explications inspirées par ces apports afin de saisir la différence fonctionnelle entre les expressions nominales avec et sans déterminant. Nous postulons que le critère de focalisation permet d’atteindre cet objectif. Nous montrons que des écrits de G. Guillaume contiennent des explications qui vont dans le sens de l’analyse en termes de (dé)focalisation que nous proposons. (shrink)

Nous nous intéressons dans cette contribution à l’absence de déterminant en chinois et en français. Bien qu’en chinois il n’existe pas d’article, cela ne signifie pas l’absence des fonctions assumées par l’article et par l’article zéro. Concernant les fonctions des articles, nous nous intéresserons à la dissymétrie fonctionnelle entre ces deux langues : présence / absence d’article en français et présence / absence de classificateur en chinois. Pour étudier leurs fonctions, nous procèderons à une analyse contrastive (...) des fonctions assumées par l’article et par les classificateurs, et ce particulièrement sur les aspects suivants : distinction entre fonction prédicationnelle et identificationnelle ; concrétion et actualisation des noms en français et en chinois ; phénomènes dissymétriques entre le chinois et le français par rapport à l’article / classificateur. Une étude comparative comme celle-ci permet de prendre conscience d’un certain rapprochement grammatical entre ces deux langues apparemment éloignées. (shrink)

Défini comme l’une des parties du discours traditionnelles, l’article, « l’un des instruments odieux de notre grammaire » (Alexis François, La grammaire du purisme et l’académie française au 18ème siècle, Paris, Société Nouvelle de Librairie et d’Édition, p. 70) crée une véritable ligne de démarcation pour le phénomène langagier en tant qu’il divise les langues en deux catégories distinctes : langues avec article et langues sans article. Au-delà de la technicité grammaticale que créent le système d’article et l’absence d’article (...) au sein du groupe nominal, cette étude permet de repenser la nécessité noologique et phénoménologique de cette classe de mot bien particulière. Il convient donc de s’interroger sur l’absence d’article dans des langues avec article (français, allemand, anglais, italien, macédonien, etc.) et sur l’« absence de tout » dans des langues sans article (croate, serbe, russe, turc, etc.). Au sein des langues dépourvues de tout système d’articles, un déterminant d'origine numérale s'apparente à l'article et, ce faisant, s'approprie une valeur d'adjectif indéfini : « (un) certain ». Les deux cas de figure ou, mieux encore, les deux voies qu'empruntent les langues concernées permettent d'enrichir le tenseur binaire en psychomécanique du langage, notamment en y ajoutant des extensités médianes, non réductibles à la traditionnelle échelle « article défini » - « article indéfini » – « article zéro ». (shrink)

Les théories linguistiques en général, et plus particulièrement la psychomécanique du langage, dont le modèle est essentiellement binaire, peinent à faire une place à l’absence de déterminant sémiologiquement marqué. Quoique le terme « article zéro » soit communément usité, il n’y a guère de consensus sur le sens à lui donner. Pour le français, où son emploi reste marginal, on observe une fracture entre une posture théorique consistant à l’intégrer au système de l’article et une autre revenant à en (...) nier l’existence. Pour l’anglais, où il est beaucoup plus fréquent, la théorie se heurte à une multiplicité d’emplois difficiles à rassembler sous un même phénomène. Or un examen attentif des occurrences du corpus permet de proposer, dans la continuité de la théorie psychomécanique, un modèle où coexistent d’une part l’absence de tout déterminant et, d’autre part, un article zéro dont on peut montrer qu’il recouvre une véritable opération de détermination définie comme une transition du nom de la langue au discours débouchant sur son aptitude à référer. (shrink)

Le critère d’absence d’envie, introduit par J. Tinbergen et utilisé par certaines théories de la justice distributive, ne permet pas, dans tous les cas, d’identifier des allocations de biens respectant l’exigence de pareto-optimalité. Pour cette raison il a été, durant un temps, délaissé. Néanmoins, ce critère demeure utile dans certains contextes dont nous voudrions préciser les caractéristiques. En effet, plusieurs travaux récents d’économie normative ont montré que, sous certaines conditions et même dans un contexte de production, l’absence d’envie (...) offre une solution à la recherche d’allocations équitables. Ainsi, nous voudrions examiner, à partir de ces résultats, sous quelles conditions le champ d’application du critère d’absence d’envie peut être étendu, en vue d’identifier des allocations équitables, dans un contexte économique d’échange comme de production.The non envy criterium, introduced by Tinbergen and convoqued by some theories of justice, cannot always be used to identify allocations which also satisfy the requirement of Pareto-optimality. This is the reason why it had been neglected for a while. Nevertheless, it is still useful in some contexts we would like to describe. In fact, recent conclusions of normative economy demonstrated that, in some conditions and even in the framework of production, this criterium provide a solution for fair allocations. Precisely, we would like, on the basis of these results, to determine which extent has the implementation of non envy criterium in order to identify fair distributive allocations in a context of exchange and production as well. (shrink)

The Passive Hand: Absence d’œuvre, Resistance and Désœuvrement. I question the rapport between the hand as an aesthetic notion and the value of passivity, in order to define the dynamic of the relationship between passivity and creation. I, first, examine the Blanchot’s metaphor regarding the act of creation as being a privative intervention of the left hand, passive, on the right hand, active, under the light of a critical reading of the Nietzschean concepts of active force—reactive force; then, I (...) analyse the passivity of the discourse under three types of rapport: the inspiration and the absence of the œuvre, the resistance and the œuvre, the disobedience and the désœuvrement. From the absence of the œuvre of the inspired artist to the resistance at the œuvre, which creates the œuvre, and lastly, to the reactive force which affirms the refusal of the œuvre and produces the absence of the œuvre, passivity makes a circular movement from the impossibility of the oeuvre towards the désœuvrement, from from its genesis to its heterogenesis. (shrink)

The non envy criterium, introduced by Tinbergen and convoqued by some theories of justice, cannot always be used to identify allocations which also satisfy the requirement of Pareto-optimality. This is the reason why it had been neglected for a while. Nevertheless, it is still useful in some contexts we would like to describe. In fact, recent conclusions of normative economy demonstrated that, in some conditions and even in the framework of production, this criterium provide a solution for fair allocations. Precisely, (...) we would like, on the basis of these results, to determine which extent has the implementation of non envy criterium in order to identify fair distributive allocations in a context of exchange and production as well. (shrink)

BackgroundDo sexual minority persons who have undergone unsuccessful sexual orientation change efforts suffer subsequent psychological or social harm from the attempt? Previous studies have conflated present and past, even pre-SOCE, harm in addressing this question. This study attempts, for the first time, to isolate and examine the question of current psychosocial harm for former SOCE participants among sexual minorities in representative population data.MethodUsing nationally representative data across three cohorts of sexual minorities in the United States, persons exposed to SOCE were (...) compared with the remainder not exposed to SOCE on two measures of internal distress—psychological distress and current mental health—and seven measures of behavioral harm: substance abuse ; alcohol dependence ; self-harm; suicide ideation; suicide planning; suicide intentions; and suicide attempts.ResultsThe SOCE group was statistically indistinguishable from the non-SOCE group on any measure of harm. For behavioral harm, risk ratios were 0.97–1.02. Harm was equivalent for the two groups despite the SOCE group having experienced higher lifetime and current minority stress, greater childhood adversity, and lower socioeconomic status. Logistic regression models that adjusted for these differences suggest that SOCE exposure reduced the effect of minority stress and childhood adversity for suicide attempts, although this effect did not fully account for the equivalence between the SOCE and non-SOCE groups.ConclusionDespite higher exposure to factors predicting behavioral harm—minority stress, childhood adversity, and lower socioeconomic background—sexual minority persons who had undergone failed SOCE therapy did not suffer higher psychological or social harm. Concerns to restrict or ban SOCE due to elevated harm are unfounded. Further study is needed to clarify the reasons for the absence of harm from SOCE. (shrink)

Depuis sa fondation comme discipline indépendante, la psychologie semble contourner les questions épistémologiques constitutives d’une science de l’esprit. Cet article s’attache à présenter brièvement quelques-unes de ces questions, à travers la psychologie historique d’Ignace Meyerson.

Bien que Hegel ne propose pas de solution satisfaisante au problème de l'injustice sociale, il est important d'analyser ce problème, car il définit les limites de la société civile. Dans ce court article, je veux montrer que l'injustice sociale est caractérisée par l'insatisfaction, qui produit une classe de hors-caste, car elle n'a ni biens, ni droits. De plus, il y a faille et problème, car Hegel conçoit la société civile à partir d'une axiologie de l'harmonisation et de l'intégration que démentent (...) les processus économiques. En revanche, la perspicacité du diagnostic hégélien démontre bien que l'absence d'intégration et de reconnaissance sociale est un mal aussi grand que la privation matérielle.Although Hegel offers no solution to the problem of social injustice, it is important to analyse this problem, for it defines the limits of civil society. In this short paper, I shall try to show that social injustice is characterized by the dissatisfaction that produces a class of outcaste people who have no goods, nor rights. Furthermore, there is a shortcoming and a problem in Hegel's conception of civil society: it is based on an axiology of harmonization and integration, which is contradicted by economic processes. However, the perspicacious hegelian diagnosis shows clearly that the absence of integration and social recognition is as great an evil as material deprivation. (shrink)

L'absence d'une analyse quelconque du concept de vérité a de quoi surprendre dans un discours qui se propose de dire à quelles conditions s'obtient cette vérité. C'est pourtant bien de cette carence que souffrent les Méditations. A l'exception d'une brève allusion, dans la Cinquième Méditation, attribuable d'ailleurs à Clerselier, et dans une traduction remaniée par lui mais non approuvée par Descartes, le mot « vérité » n'y est défini nulle part.

The furore over the retention of organs at postmortem examination, without adequate consent, has led to a reassessment of the justification for, and circumstances surrounding, the retention of any human material after postmortem examinations and operations. This brings into focus the large amount of human material stored in various archives and museums, much of which is not identifiable and was accumulated many years ago, under unknown circumstances. Such anonymous archival material could be disposed of, used for teaching, used for research, (...) or remain in storage. We argue that there are no ethical grounds for disposing of the material, or for storing it in the absence of a teaching or research rationale. Nevertheless, with stringent safeguards, it can be used even in the absence of consent in research and teaching. Regulations are required to control the storage of all such human material, along the lines of regulations governing anatomy body bequests. (shrink)

Phidias’ absence from the survey of sculptors in Cic. Brut. 70 is curious, explanation in terms of differing histories of sculpture only partly convincing. I suggest that Cicero has valid literary motives and is wittily undermining the Atticist position by adaptation of what was a rhetorical topos, the parallel development of Greek prose and sculpture from archaic spareness to classical expertise and dignity: see Dem. Eloc. 14, D. H. Isoc. 3, p.59 U-R; more elaborate but partly deriving from Cicero (...) and less homogeneous is Qu. 12.10.7–9. Cicero assumes the reader's knowledge of the commonplace, pointedly ignores the quality of grandeur and dignity, and develops a theory of technical progress on the basis of veritas and grace to attack the Atticists from their own preferences. The resulting model serves to demote Lysias, imitated by the Atticists but merely the counterpart of Calamis, strigosior like archaic sculptures and superseded by later progress. The analogy thus obliquely repeats the brief but charged parenthesis in 66 that Demosthenes superseded Lysias. (shrink)

Featuring nine new articles chosen by coeditor, Steven M. Cahn, the third edition of E. D. Klemke's The Meaning of Life offers twenty-two insightful selections that explore this fascinating topic. The essays are primarily by philosophers but also include materials from literary figures and religious thinkers. As in previous editions, the readings are organized around three themes. In Part I the articles defend the view that without faith in God, life has no meaning or purpose. In Part II the selections (...) oppose this claim, defending instead a nontheistic, humanistic alternative--that life can have meaning even in the absence of theistic commitment. In Part III the contributors ask whether the question of the meaning of life is itself meaningful. The third edition adds substantial essays by Moritz Schlick, Joel Feinberg, and John Kekes as well as selections from the writings of Louis P. Pojman, Emil L. Fackenheim, Robert Nozick, Susan Wolf, and Steven M. Cahn. The only anthology of its kind, The Meaning of Life: A Reader, Third Edition, is ideal for courses in introduction to philosophy, human nature, and the meaning of life. It also offers general readers an accessible and stimulating introduction to the subject. (shrink)

Not everything that it's ‘possible’ FOR you to do is something it's ‘possible’ THAT you will do. The compatibilist freedom formula ‘absence of impediments’ must embrace external and internal – including psychological – impediments. Desires are impediments only when they impede, owing to motivational conflict. But other impediments, external or internal, require merely the potential to impede.

The field of AI safety aims to prevent increasingly capable artificially intelligent systems from causing humans harm. Research on moral alignment is widely thought to offer a promising safety strategy: if we can equip AI systems with appropriate ethical rules, according to this line of thought, they'll be unlikely to disempower, destroy or otherwise seriously harm us. Deontological morality looks like a particularly attractive candidate for an alignment target, given its popularity, relative technical tractability and commitment to harm-avoidance principles. I (...) argue that the connection between moral alignment and safe behavior is more tenuous than many have hoped. In general, AI systems can possess either of these properties in the absence of the other, and we should favor safety when the two conflict. In particular, advanced AI systems governed by standard versions of deontology need not be especially safe. (shrink)

Upshot: I focus on the group of ideas concerning the nature of the global observer and discuss some important terms regarding the idea of global observation. Furthermore, I address the meta-philosophical problem of how the presence or absence of the global observer influences various philosophical and scientific contexts.

Can we legitimately speak of ethicsexperts? Recent literature in philosophy and medical ethics addresses this important question but does not offer a satisfactory answer. Part of the problem is the absence of an examination of what it means to be an expert in general. I therefore begin by reviewing my analysis of expertise which appeared earlier in this journal. We speak of two kinds of experts: persons whose expertise is in virtue of what theyknow (epistemic expertise), or what theydo (...) (performative expertise). Applying this analysis to the domain of ethics, I argue that we may speak of ethical expertise in three epistemic senses: a) expertise indescriptive ethics, b) expertise inmetaethics, c) expertise innormative ethics, and in a performative sense: d) expertise inliving a good life. I conclude with a brief description of some social roles of ethics experts. (shrink)

This article examines difficulties with bureaucratic reform for transitional economies, drawing on the American experience. Bureaucracies have incentive and performance problems that could retard economic growth in transitional economies. A remedy for a politicized corrupt bureaucracy is an autonomous, professional bureaucracy, chosen on the basis of merit. This article argues, however, such a move will not necessarily bring improvement. Political controls over the bureaucracy must be developed and inserted so that the bureaucracy has incentives to be more efficient and to (...) be more responsive to changing citizen demands. The American experience indicates that absent such provisions, a highly-protected, professional bureaucracy can engage in opportunism to advance its interests and those interests may not coincide with promoting economic growth.Cet article examine les difficultés auxquelles font face les tentatives de réforme de la bureaucratie dans les économies en transition en s’inspirant de l’expérience américaine. Les questions d’incitation et l’inefficacité des bureaucraties pourraient retarder la croissance économique dans les économies en transition. Une bureaucratie autonome, professionnelle, choisie sur la base du mérite est un remède à une bureaucratie politiquement corrompue. Cependant, cet article soutient qu’une telle démarche n’engendre pas nécessairement des améliorations. Il faut en plus élaborer des contrôles politiques de la bureaucratie afin que celle-ci soit incitée à être plus efficace et davantage sensible aux besoins changeants des citoyens. L’expérience américaine indique qu’en l’absence de telles dispositions, une bureaucratie professionnelle et très protégée peut se comporter de manière opportuniste en cherchant à promouvoir ses propres intérêts, pas toujours compatibles avec l’accélération de la croissance économique. (shrink)

Sémantiquement sous-spécifiés, les noms sous-spécifiés sont fonctionnellement très habiles, et assurent des fonctions de connexion ou d'indexation textuelle. Nous nous intéresserons dans cet article à l'actualisation des NSS au cours du processus d’écriture enregistré en temps réel, dans le but d'observer la mise en fonctionnement discursive de cette sous-catégorie nominale et la manière dont les NSS peuvent contribuer à structurer les dynamiques discursives. Nous défendons l'idée selon laquelle les stratégies d'actualisation des NSS au cours du processus d'écriture offrent (...) un éclairage inédit de leur fonctionnement textuel, et permettent aussi d'interroger la notion de sous-spécification, appréhendée dans la dynamique de l'actualisation online et, de ce fait, mise en relation avec la notion de complétion informationnelle. (shrink)

This review essay takes three very different types of books, one on new social movements, the second on global governance and the third on dystopia, to reflect on methodological questions in knowledge production for social change which is the professed aim of critical and radical scholarship. The essay reflects on the methodological problems of making connections between philosophical, sociological and empirical analyses in ways that can guide action. The treatment of facts and events, omission to consider gaps and absences in (...) accounts of experiences, the obfuscation of the desirable and the possible in legal liberalism, problems of connecting everyday life to ontological questions of being and reality, perspectives and unity of micro and macrocosms, are some of the themes considered. The essay engages the methodological strategies that are needed to make the moves from space/time in philosophy to spatio-temporality in sociological analysis to here and now in empirical studies. It argues that all levels are interpenetrated in manifest experiences and that it is important to grasp the institutional constraints on knowledge production if knowledge is to provide guidance for transformative action. (shrink)

A theory of true observation is developed as a generalization of the method of inter-observer agreement that scientists use to determine the objectivity and reliability of observations. A true observation is defined as a statement included in a set of statements in which there is statistical dependence and perfect agreement between the statements made by a universe of experimentally independent persons. Meaningfulness--the existence of an objective referent--for each form of statement included in the set is inferred from statistical dependence, correct (...) meaning within the universe of observers from the absence of disagreement. In this theory truth is inferred from a spatio-temporal pattern of statements as behavior rather than from the traditional correspondence between observation and object or logical relationships among statements. (shrink)

This paper seeks to clarify the precise sense in which Collingwood's “metaphysics without ontology” is a descriptive metaphysics. It locates Collingwood's metaphysics against the background of Strawson's distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics and then defends it against the claim that Collingwood reduced metaphysics to a form of cultural anthropology. Collingwood's metaphysics is descriptive not because it is some sort of historicised psychology that describes temporally parochial and historically shifting assumptions, but because it is a high level form of conceptual (...) analysis premised on the claim that ontological questions are actually internal ones and that metaphysics, understood as an attempt to answer external questions, is not a possible philosophical enterprise. This non-historicist reading of what it means to take the ontology out of metaphysics has broader implications which go beyond a scholarly debate in so far as it shows that it is possible to maintain objectivity in the absence of strong ontological underpinnings. (shrink)

In conclusion of his Being and Nothingness Sartre articulated the problem of freedom as a moral one, promising to write a book concerning the problem. The work was published only posthumously. As a consequence of it he was reproached by his critics either for the absence of the moral problematic in his existentialism or for that in the long run the moral problem disappears . Some of them recognized his moral vision, but only in its negative form . In (...) contrast to these views the author tries to show, that the perspective of meaning and values is the core of Sartre’s phenomenological ontology, which is the necessary background of the ultimate objective of the French philosopher: a conception of morals, which would be concrete and historical at he same time. Her argumentation is based on the passages from Being and Nothingness, as well as from Sartre’s posthumous Cahiers pour un morale . A special attention is paid to problems such as the distinction between ethical anxiety and the everyday mo_rals, the spirit of seriousness, understanding man as useless passion and also the problema_tic of the motive and sense of moral conversion, articulated by Sartre. (shrink)

The problem of the internal ideological diversity of Islam has become the subject of close attention of researchers more than once. In the absence of a single institution that would regulate the "regime of truth" for most Muslims, Islamic orthodoxy appears to be rather blurred and essentially, as A. Knysh writes, depends to a large extent on the political forces that support this or that direction of Islamic thought.106 In this context, the situation of institutional pluralism in the Muslim (...) Umma of Ukraine is a logical continuation of world trends. At the same time, the identification of a center of religious authority or organization from the point of view of its dogmatic or ideological direction is often a rather difficult task. First of all, the reason for this may be the reluctance of the organizations themselves to openly determine their position so as not to be criticized by competitive structures. On the other hand, the focus on the preaching of Islam in the Ukrainian context often requires the need to rely on the most general, basic principles of the doctrine that do not require special training for new converts. (shrink)

The purpose of the present study was to profile high school students’ achievement as a function of their demographic characteristics, parent attributes, and school behaviors. Students were nested within schools in the Saudi Arabia Kingdom. Out of a large sample of 500k, participants involved 3 random samples of 2,000 students measured during the years 2016, 2017, and 2018. Randomization was conducted at the student level to ensure that all school units will be represented and at their respective frequency. Students were (...) nested within 50 high schools. We adopted the multilevel latent profile analysis protocol put forth by Schmiege et al. and Mäkikangas et al. that account for nested data and tested latent class structure invariance over time. Results pointed to the presence of a 4-profile solution based on BIC, the Bayes factor, and several information criteria put forth by Masyn. Latent profile separation was mostly guided by parents’ education and the number of student absences. Two models tested whether the proportions of level 1 profiles to level 2 units are variable and whether level 2 profiles vary as a function of level 1 profiles. Results pointed to the presence of significant variability due to schools. (shrink)

William Desmond’s ongoing contribution to metaphysics encompasses both an innovative construction of a metaphysical perspective (“metaxological metaphysics”) and a thorough criticism of prior metaphysics. Consideration of seven distinct but related criticisms of other metaphysical theories reveals much of Desmond’s own view. What seems to be missing in Desmond’s works is thorough-going use of Neoplatonic thinkers. This absence is telling insofar as classical Neoplatonists not only avoid many of the criticisms that Desmond directs against “forgetful” metaphysicians but actually articulate a (...) metaphysics that would often confirm Desmond’s own. A clear example of this is found in Plotinus’s view of determination and excess in the individual, a metaphysical topic of great importance for Desmond himself. From this, one may conclude that Desmond’s already rich metaphysical thinking may be further enriched through closer consideration of Neoplatonism. (shrink)

The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 requires company executives to certify financial statements and internal controls as a means of reducing fraud. Many companies have operationalized this by instituting a sub-certification process and requiring lower-level managers to sign certification statements. These lower-level organizational members are often the individuals who are aware of fraud and are in the best position to provide information on the fraudulent act. However, the sub-certification process may have the effect of reducing employees’ intentions to report wrongdoing. We (...) suggest that subordinates with knowledge of a superior who committed a fraudulent act and certified that there is no fraud will feel less personal responsibility to report the act, thus, decreasing reporting intentions. Additionally, we suggest that if the fraud is discovered subsequent to the reports being filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, employees will perceive lower management responsiveness to investigate the fraud, which will reduce intentions to report. Using an experimental approach, we manipulate two between-participant variables: the presence or absence of sub-certification by the transgressor and the timing of fraud discovery, either before or after the reports have been filed with the SEC. We find that when sub-certification is present, perceived personal responsibility and intentions to report were diminished compared to when sub-certification is absent. Timing of the discovery of the fraudulent act did not influence perceived management responsiveness or reporting intentions. Supplemental analysis shows that personal responsibility partially mediates the relationship between sub-certification and reporting intentions. Our findings suggest that audit committees and senior executives may want to carefully consider the costs and benefits of the sub-certification process. (shrink)

In "Behavioral Law and Economics: The Assault on Consent, Will, and Dignity," Mark D. White uses the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant to examine the intersection of economics, psychology, and law known as "behavioral law and economics." Scholars in this relatively new field claim that, because of various cognitive biases and failures, people often make choices that are not in their own interests. The policy implications of this are that public and private organizations, such as the state and employers, can (...) and should design the presentation of options and default choices in order to "steer" people to the decision they would make, were they able to make choices in the absence of their cognitive biases and failures. Such policies are promoted under the name "libertarian paternalism," because choice is not blocked or co-opted, but simply "nudged." White argues that such manipulation of choice is impossible to conduct in people's true interests, and any other goal pursed by policymakers substitutes their own ends, however benevolent they may be, for people's true ends. Normatively, such manipulation should not be conducted because it fails to respect the dignity and autonomy of persons, what some hold to be the central idea in Kant's ethical system, and which serves to protect the individual from coercion, however subtle, from other persons or the state. (shrink)

What we mean to do in this Symposium is to think about education by means of the concept of ‘potentiality’ in contrast to the logic of ‘actualisation’ which is prevailing in education today. In this paper, I try to think out loud through a particular way of teaching philosophy that may fit in with a ‘potentialism’ based approach, as we have tentatively called it. In Spain, philosophy is part of the secondary education curriculum. At first glance, it might seem (...) a blessing to live in a country that deems that philosophy should have an important role in a young person’s education nevertheless, the students are usually quite lost. Students receive philosophy as a collection of lofty discourses, therefore philosophy is reduced to ‘Nietzsche said …’, ‘Aristotle said …’, thereby deactivating the potentiality of their ideas. In the following, I will argue how I believe we can reactivate the potentiality of philosophy, and how we can transpose this gesture to the teaching of philosophy at the secondary education level. (shrink)

As a social psychologist addressing mainly the topics of social facilitation (motivation) and attitudinal effects of mere exposure (affect), between 1965 and 1975 Robert B. Zajonc authored prominent works that relied on or led to observations of the actions of nonhuman animals. Zajonc pointed to insects, worms, fish, fowl, birds, mice, rats, cats, dogs, monkeys, and apes as animal models whereby responses of beasts were used as evidential substitutes (with apparently equal weight) for responses of man. These efforts notwithstanding, animal-based (...) research no longer has visibility in mainstream social psychology. Reasons for this absence include general historical trends in the field’s development. (shrink)

Pour des raisons essentiellement liées à la vocation des textes où la notion de présupposition a fait son apparition, c’est la présupposition d’existence qui s’est imposée la première à l’attention des philosophes du langage. Elle a également déterminé l’orientation des débats en les focalisant sur quelques problèmes traditionnels, au premier chef desquels le problème de l’absence de référence de certaines expressions et celui des imperfections du langage naturel. Contrairement aux noms propres et aux descriptions définies, les termes qui signifient (...) des universaux ont joué un rôle très marginal dans la discussion de ce qui est présupposé par les énoncés que nous échangeons. Ce sont pourtant les noms d’espèces et de genres qui ont été associés les tout premiers à des phénomènes qui relèvent de la présupposition. Afin de montrer que cette association n’a rien perdu de son intérêt, nous avons étudié le traitement qu’Aristote réserve à la famille de paralogismes qui exploitent la similarité morphologique entre noms propres et noms communs pour rattacher la même présupposition d’existence aux uns et aux autres, alors même que cette présupposition est légitime dans un cas (celui des expressions qui désignent des choses particulières), abusive dans l’autre cas (celui des expressions qui signifient des universaux). (shrink)

Our paper has three parts. In Part 1, we discuss John Gardner’s thesis that the non-elliptical ascription of agency to law is a necessary and irreducible part of any adequate explanation of the activities of legal officials. We consider three explananda which might conceivably necessitate this ascription, and conclude that none in fact does so. In Part 2, we discuss two other theses of Gardner’s: that it makes no sense to ascribe to law the claim that there are legal obligations (...) , and that law’s claim is the claim that there are moral obligations . We take issue with Gardner’s arguments for , and suggest that is unwarranted in the absence of an argument that law makes any claims at all. In Part 3, we briefly argue that, insofar as it issues requirements, there are certain claims that law cannot but make. We conclude that if Gardner is right that law’s claims are those of certain of its officials, it is law-making and not law-applying officials who make law’s claim. (shrink)

: Eponymic honor is a common form of professional recognition in economics, as it is in other sciences. There also seems to be convincing evidence that individuals exposed to economic theory behave less cooperatively and more self-interestedly than individuals who have not been exposed to such economic ideas. Taken together these two facts would seem to suggest that the history of economic thought would be a history of rather contentious priority fights. If economists generally behave in self-interested and non-cooperative ways, (...) and having your name attached to a particular result serves one’s professional self-interest, then economists should be quick to fight for these eponymic honors. This means that economists should be continually involved in sordid disputes about who does, and who does not, get credit for various economic discoveries. The paradox is that such priority fights do not exist in economics. The paper examines absence of such disputes from a Mertonian perspective. (shrink)

Questions regarding what exists are central to various forms of Buddhist philosophy, as they are to many traditions of philosophy. Interestingly, there is perhaps a clearer consensus in Buddhist thought regarding what does not exist than there may be regarding precisely what does exist, at least insofar as the doctrine of anātman (no self, absence of self) is taken to be a fundamental Buddhist doctrine. It may be noted that many forms of Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy in particular are considered (...) to offer a quite austere ontology—a rather ‘empty’ account of what exists. Continuing in this vein of ontological austerity, here I will attempt to lay out a relatively novel approach to Buddhist ontology, viz. Buddhist fictionalism. (shrink)

In the article these are considered ethical and legal problems caused by the ongoing pandemic of the new coronavirus disease. New challenges for health care, economy, education not only revealed rather a high level of stability and mobility, but also showed a poor readiness of response to sudden risks, which had a certain impact on all spheres of life of the whole society. The authors have conducted a brief cross-cultural analysis of the issue basing on data quoted by the international (...) network of UNESCO chairs in bioethics, sessions of the Bioethics Committee within the RF Commission on UNESCO affairs, as well as official open sources of the health care system and judicial sphere of the Russian Federation. Strong reciprocal link of legal risks in the interdisciplinary field of medicine and law are made discernable: on the one hand, introduction of sanitary and hygienic regulations are aimed at the realization of the right of protecting the health, while on the other hand they represent a violation of basic human rights. Besides the theoretical approach to the problem of the observance of the constitutional rights of citizens in the pandemic conditions there exists a real threat of their violation due to absence of special mechanisms of their realization in frames of sanitary and hygienic measures with regard to the vulnerable and socially disadvantaged sections in the society. It is made conclusion about necessity of the international collaboration for the purpose of joint decision-making and action in the sphere of health care taking into account an international character of ethical and legal challenges triggered by COVID-19 pandemic, as well as national, economic, cultural and confessional peculiarities. (shrink)

The articulation of critical dialects of psychology has typically involved a questioning of the foundational assumptions of the so-called mainstream. This has included critiques in the name of more adequate scientific foundations, but more recently these have been accompanied by critiques in the name of an absence of foundations altogether, and critiques that suggest a rethinking of the concept of foundation. These latter versions are usually influenced by the great 20 th Century non-foundational philosophies of figures such as Bergson, (...) Whitehead, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, or by related thinkers such as Deleuze, Serres, Luhmann, Butler and Stengers. In foregrounding themes of process and multiplicity such thinkers provide potent tools for critically rethinking psychological questions. Less positive has been a tendency amongst critical psychologists to polarise natural and social scientific issues and to associate the former with negative images (all that is static, mechanistic, essentialist and conservative). This can lead to a formulaic criticality in which arguments for nature are bad, and those for culture are good. Deconstruction comes to appear simply as an assertion of ‘the discursive construction of’ whatever phenomenon is under scrutiny. To counteract this trend, the proposed paper will discuss a process approach to ontology that welcomes contributions from the natural sciences as well as the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

As a theory of skill acquisition, the instance theory of automatization posits that, after a period of training, algorithm‐based performance is replaced by retrieval‐based performance. This theory has been tested using alphabet‐arithmetic verification tasks (e.g., is A + 4 = E?), in which the equations are necessarily solved by counting at the beginning of practice but can be solved by memory retrieval after practice. A way to infer individuals’ strategies in this task was supposedly provided by the opportunistic‐stopping phenomenon, according (...) to which, if individuals use counting, they can take the opportunity to stop counting when a false equation associated with a letter preceding the true answer has to be verified (e.g., A + 4 = D). In this case, such within‐count equations would be rejected faster than false equations associated with letters following the true answers (e.g., A + 4 = F, i.e., outside‐of‐count equations). Conversely, the absence of opportunistic stopping would be the sign of retrieval. However, through a training experiment involving 19 adults, we show that opportunistic stopping is not a phenomenon that can be observed in the context of an alphabet‐arithmetic verification task. Moreover, we provide an explanation of how and why it was wrongly inferred in the past. These results and conclusions have important implications for learning theories because they demonstrate that a shift from counting to retrieval over training cannot be deduced from verification time differences between outside and within‐count equations in an alphabet‐arithmetic task. (shrink)