CHARLES DUPRAS | : L’épigénétique est un champ d’études qui s’intéresse aux modifications biochimiques et aux changements dans la structure tridimensionnelle de l’ADN ayant pour effet de contraindre ou de faciliter la lecture et l’expression des gènes. Au cours des dix dernières années, l’épigénétique a attiré l’attention d’un nombre croissant de chercheurs en sciences sociales, puisqu’elle semble venir confirmer, cette fois sur le plan moléculaire, le rôle déterminant de l’environnement développemental des personnes dans la configuration de leur individualité biologique et (...) dans la programmation de leur santé future. Cet article se penche sur les implications épistémologiques potentielles de l’épigénétique. Nous distinguons et décrivons trois perspectives socio-anthropologiques complémentaires, adoptées par différents auteurs, sur le rapprochement des concepts de « nature » et de « culture » par l’épigénétique : la socialisation du biologique, la biologisation du social et la superposition nature-culture. | : Epigenetics is a field of study that focuses on biochemical modifications and changes in the tridimensional structure of DNA that have the effect of constraining or facilitating the reading and expression of genes. Over the last ten years, epigenetics has captured the attention of several social scientists since it appears to confirm, this time at the molecular level, the determining role of the developing environment of people in configurating their biological individuality and programming their future health. This article discusses the potential epistemological implications of epigenetics. It distinguishes and describes three complementary socio-anthropological perspectives, taken by different authors, on the rapprochement of the concepts “nature” and “nurture” by epigenetics: the socialization of the biological, the biologization of the social, and the superimposition nature-nurture. (shrink)

Throughout Islamic history, we observe enmity and conflicts between Sunnism and Shiism, nonetheless there has been also reconciliation between these sects. This article examines the opportunities and challenges of Sunni-Shia convergence in Indonesia. Such a picture will reveal a better understanding of the features of Sunni-Shia convergence in the country and their relationship with the notion of ‘Indonesian Islam’. The hostility between Shiism and Sunnism in Indonesia is triggered by misunderstandings between these sects, politicisation of Shiism, as well as geopolitical (...) tensions in the Middle East. These constitute the challenges of Sunni-Shia convergence. One may also observe the ventures of Sunni-Shia convergence which have been undertaken by the scholars of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, and other Islamic civil society organisations. Grounding on these enterprises and the enduring elaboration of ‘Indonesian Islam’, the opportunities of and the prospects for Sunni-Shia rapprochement in the country are envisaged. (shrink)

Background: A growing number of frameworks for the practice of clinical ethics are described in the literature. Among these, hermeneutical frameworks have helped highlight the interpretive and contextual nature of clinical ethics practice. Objectives: The aim of this article is to further advance this body of work by drawing on the ideas of Charles Taylor, a leading hermeneutical philosopher. Design/Findings: A Hermeneutical Rapprochement Framework is presented for clinical ethics practice, based on Taylor’s hermeneutical “retrieval” and “rapprochement.” This builds (...) on existing hermeneutical approaches for the practice of clinical ethics by articulating a framework with interpretive and reconciliatory scope that extends beyond the presenting “local” context. A Hermeneutical Rapprochement Framework considers broader socio-historical horizons and imaginaries grounded on Taylor’s expansive work in epistemological, ontological, political, and moral philosophy. Discussion: The framework is discussed in terms of how it can be operationalized for clinical practice as well as normative development. Implications for the educational preparation of clinical ethicists are also discussed. Although this work is directly relevant for clinical ethicists, it can also help inform the ethical practice of all clinicians. (shrink)

Beller, Bender, and Medin question the necessity of including social anthropology within the cognitive sciences. We argue that there is great scope for fruitful rapprochement while agreeing that there are obstacles (even if we might wish to debate some of those specifically identified by Beller and colleagues). We frame the general problem differently, however: not in terms of the problem of reconciling disciplines and research cultures, but rather in terms of the prospects for collaborative deployment of expertise (methodological and (...) theoretical) in problem-driven research. For the purposes of illustration, our focus in this article is on the evolution of cooperation. (shrink)

Traditionally logic was considered as having two branches deductive and inductive. However the development of the subject from Frege up to about 1970 brought about a divergence between deductive and inductive logic. It is argued in this paper that developments in artificial intelligence in the last twenty or so years have created a new framework for logic in which deductive and inductive logic can, once again, be treated as similar branches of the same discipline.

Psychology is in a preparadigmatic or pre-unified stage of scientific development. Two characteristics of psychology's status are: lack of cumulative scientific growth and experimental-theoretical overgeneralization. The reinforcer, as a construct in theories and as a critical element of behavioral change, has been a casualty of the separatism between such factions as radical behaviorism and cognitive psychology. In the end, psychology as a progressive science has been impeded, and psychological practitioners have been left to use intervention techniques that are not the (...) most effective or efficient. In order to improve upon this situation, unification is needed between radical behaviorism and cognitive psychology, among other disciplines. However, the issue of the reinforcer is only one of many areas where such unification should be pursued and attained. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Lindquist et al. remark that not all fear instances lead to heightened amygdalar activity and, instead, point to roles of the amygdala in detecting or stimuli. By reviewing research on the amygdala's functions in episodic-autobiographical memory, we further emphasize the involvement of the amygdala in coding the subjective relevance and extracting the biological and social significance of the stimuli.

The central argument of this article is that there is a remarkable conceptual parallel between Hegel’s famous notion of the “cunning of Reason” and the philosophically profound concept of Chi in Igbo metaphysics. By way of establishing this parallel, the article advances the following subsidiary but complementary points: Chi is also “cunning” in its dynamics; both principles (i.e. Chi and Reason/Spirit) are non-deterministic because they try to maintain a dialectic balance between destiny and individual responsibility; both possess divine attributes; and (...) community serves as an invaluable medium of operation for both. The scholarly significance of the article lies in its attempt not only to systematise the Igbo thought on Chi by eliminating the vestiges of discredited “ethno-philosophy”, but also to open up a constructive dialogue between Hegel and elements of African philosophy, using Igbo metaphysics as a placeholder. This is against the backdrop of certain discontents generated by Hegel’s famous uncomplimentary and racist remarks on Africa. Seen in this light, the article may well be an exercise in “rapprochement”. (shrink)

Marion Bourbon Que l’activité philosophique chez la plupart des philosophes antiques ait prétendu disposer d’une fonction thérapeutique, psychothérapeutique, nous le savons bien, tant cette dernière s’est explicitement pensée sur le modèle médical. Il ne faut néanmoins pas oublier qu’alors, dans le même temps, c’est la médecine elle-même qui s’est trouvée apparentée à la philosophie en ce qu’elle suppose intrinsèquement un usage du logos, ce que Platon le premier pose sans ambages. Cette métaphore de la philosophie comme thérapie a aussi ressurgi (...) plus récemment en philosophie analytique, sous la plume de Wittgenstein pour lequel « la philosophie traite une question comme une maladie ». Mais jusqu’à quel point s’agit-il de dire la même chose? (shrink)

CHAPTER I THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF ALBERT EINSTEIN Section A . The Inductive Beginnings of Scientific Investigation The famous use by Einstein of the elliptical ...

Most philosophers agree that libertarian freedom and the ontology most naturally associated with it is not easily harmonized with epistemically robust versions of naturalism. And while he continues to remain a bit skeptical of such harmonizations efforts, John Searle has recently proffered hope for such reconciliation and the general contours to which any such attempt must conform. I state Searle’s views, criticize each step in his argument, and conclude that his attempt at a rapprochement is a failure.

Among classical liberals and libertarians a serious debate has been afoot about whether any sort of government is justified. Murray N. Rothbard, Jan Narveson, Bruce Benson and Randy Barnett are usually listed as the main skeptics, while Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, John Hospers, among others, are listed as defenders of the morality of limited government. In this paper I argue that once properly understood, the two sides aren’t in fundamental disagreement. Anarcho-libertarians do embrace the idea that men and women in (...) a free society are justified in establishing a legal order in defense of their basic and derivative rights, and this is also what limited government proponents advance as the basis for the system they deem to be just. I argue that no fundamental difference exists between these two legal orders. The monopoly anarcho-libertarians claim limited government proponents wrongfully sanction is, in fact, not a coercive monopoly and the legal order proposed by anarchists would also have this monopolistic characteristic. This should put an end to this fruitless dispute and free the energies on both sides to mount a really important and henceforth united defense of the free society with its just legal order.Parmi les libéraux classiques et les libertariens un important débat concerne la question de savoir si une quelconque forme de gouvernement est justifiée. Murray N. Rothbard, Jan Narveson, Bruce Benson et Randy Barnett sont habituellement classés parmi les principaux sceptiques, alors qu’Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, John Hospers, entre autres, sont plutôt classés en tant que défenseurs de la moralité d’un gouvernement limité. Dans cet article, je soutiens qu’une fois correctement compris, les deux clans ne sont pas fondamentalement en désaccord. Les anarcho-libertariens soutiennent l’idée que les hommes et les femmes dans une société libre sont en droit d’établir un ordre législatif pour défendre leurs droits fondamentaux et leurs droits dérivés, et c’est aussi ce que les partisans du gouvernement limité proposent comme fondement du système qu’ils considèrent être juste. Je soutiens qu’il n’existe pas de différence fondamentale entre ces deux ordres législatifs. Le monopole du gouvernement limité que les partisans anarcholibertariens sanctionnent à tort est, en fait, non pas un monopole coercitif, et l’ordre législatif proposé par les anarchistes aurait lui aussi cette caractéristique monopolistique.Cela devrait mettre un terme à cette dispute stérile et libérer les énergies des deux côtés pour ériger à l’avenir une défense unie réellement importante pour une société libre avec un ordre juridique juste. (shrink)

Utilitarian ethics and metaphysical idealism, especially of a Bradleyan sort, are not usually thought of as natural allies. Yet when one considers that it is a crucial part of utilitarian doctrine that the only genuine value is experienced value and almost the definition of idealism that for it the only genuine reality is experienced reality one should surely suspect that the two views have a certain affinity. The essential impulse behind utilitarianism is the sense that the only criterion of something (...) really being intrinsically good is that it feels good. To the ordinary man to say that something feels good is much the same as saying that it is a pleasure, so that for him it is a small step from identifying good with what feels good to identifying it with pleasure. It suggests itself, then, that the utilitarian is essentially one who thinks that, so far as the good goes, esse ispercipi. In that case the utilitarian is an idealist about value. It does not follow that he should be an idealist about things in general, but it does suggest the converse, that the idealist about things in general might be expected to be a utilitarian in his ethics. (shrink)

A longstanding debate in the philosophy of action opposes causalists to anti-causalists. Causalists claim the authority of Davidson, who offered powerful arguments to the effect that intentional explanations must be causal explanations. Anti-causalists claim the authority of Wittgenstein, who offered equally powerful arguments to the effect that reasons cannot be causes. My aim in this paper is to achieve a rapprochement between Davidsonian causalists and Wittgensteinian anti-causalists by showing how both sides can agree that reasons are not causes, but (...) that intentional explanations are causal explanations. To this end, I first defuse Davidson’s Challenge, an argument purporting to show that intentional explanations are best made sense of as being explanatory because reasons are causes. I argue that Wittgenstein furnishes anti-causalists with the means to resist this conclusion. I then argue that this leaves the Master Argument for the claim that intentional explanations are causal explanations, but that by distinguishing between a narrow and a wide conception of causal explanation, we can resolve the stalemate between Wittgensteinian anti-causalists impressed by the thought that reasons cannot be causes and Davidsonian causalists impressed by the thought that intentional explanations must be causal explanations. (shrink)

The philosophy of art and empirical aesthetics are, to all outward appearances, natural bedfellows, disciplines bound together by complimentary methodologies and the common goal of explaining a shared subject matter. Philosophers are in the business of sorting out the ontological and normative character of different categories of objects, events and behaviors, squaring up our conception of the nature of things, and clarifying the subject matter of different avenues of intellectual exploration via careful conceptual analyses of often complex conventional practices. Psychologists (...) have developed careful empirical methods for measuring and modeling behavior, methods that are fruitfully used in practice to test and evaluate hypotheses derived from our conception of the nature of our own cognitive and emotional engagement with the world. So, for all appearances, philosophy and psychology are grounded in complimentary research methods directed at the common task of sorting and testing theories about the nature of art and artistic practices, e.g. what is an artwork, what is the nature of the productive practices involved in creating these kinds of artifacts, or what is the nature of a consumer's artistic engagement with these artifacts. Unfortunately appearances can be deceptive. Despite common calls for rapprochement the two disciplines rarely meet. There are methodological and ideological reasons for this rift, and they are, not surprisingly, related. In what follows I will explore and evaluate some of the central sources of resistance on both sides this divide, introduce a model for the possibility of rapprochement, and briefly sketch the promise and pitfalls of current research in two areas, dance and film, where an active attempt at bridging the divide between philosophy and empirical aesthetics is underway. (shrink)

THERE HAS BEEN FOR MANY years a tension between the anarcho-capitalist or free-market anarchist, and the limited government or minarchist wings of the libertarian movement. This dispute has both enriched debate within such institutions as the Libertarian Party, the International Society of Individual Liberty, the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and the Cato Institute, and magazines such as Liberty and Reason, and has engendered greater insights as to the core of the overall philosophy shared by both.1 While this intralibertarian debate has (...) had its staunch supporters on either side, for many participants it has not been a pressing issue. After all, modern society resembles neither vision, and present governments will have to be radically reduced in scope and orientation before the divisions between these two alternatives will become a matter of practical interest. Thus many have agreed that this debate, except as a matter of intellectual curiosity, will have no practical relevance until that happy day when present governments are reduced to, say, 5 percent of their present size and influence.2 But intellectual curiosity and political philosophy are integral parts of libertarianism. Accordingly, analysis of government can. (shrink)

(1990). The German question—What role in the process of growing European rapprochement? World Futures: Vol. 29, The Future of European Integration, pp. 227-231.

Bob Solomon used to inveigh against William James’ theory of emotions, but he eventually arrived at a rapprochement with James and James’s recent successors. In particular, James suggested that emotions are initiated by the “automatic, instinctive” appraisals that register important information in the body and are recorded by body-mapping brain areas. In recent work Solomon describes the judgments he thinks constitute emotions as felt bodily appraisals in similar fashion.

Abstract«La divine proportion ne peut cependant pas être exprimée en nombres de façn exacte; néanmoins elle peut être exprimée de telle façon que, à travers un processus infini, nous pouvons en rapprocher de plus en plus et en délimitant le carré nous ne sommes jamais à plus d'une unité.» [Kepler, 1608].

Civilizational analysis of the kind propounded by Eisenstadt and globalization theory are apparently wholly incommensurate paradigms, with radically differing visions of the contemporary world order, the former championing the notion of ‘multiple modernities’ and the latter envisioning a world of trans-national processes and institutions. This articles challenges such a dichotomizing view, and seeks to illustrate how in various ways they overlap and can come to inform each other. Particular attention is given to how a focus on inter-civilizational interactions can lead (...) to productive rapprochements between civilizational analysis and globalization theory, as it allows some of the themes of the latter to be analysed through civilization-analytic lenses. The pioneering work in this regard of Benjamin Nelson is shown to provide a basis for future civilizational analyses of globalization, especially in the pre-modern world. (shrink)

Predicate approaches to modality have been a topic of increased interest in recent intensional logic. Halbach and Welch :71–100, 2009) have proposed a new formal technique to reduce the necessity predicate to an operator, demonstrating that predicate and operator methods are ultimately compatible. This article concerns the question of whether Halbach and Welch’s approach can provide a uniform formal treatment for intensionality. I show that the monotonicity constraint in Halbach and Welch’s proof for necessity fails for almost all possible-worlds theories (...) of knowledge. The nonmonotonicity results demonstrate that the most obvious way of emulating Halbach and Welch’s rapprochement of the predicate and operator fails in the epistemic setting. (shrink)

. . . This brilliant and tightly argued book . . . will be the most important book on moral theology to appear this year."—John Coleman, National Catholic Reporter.

Although environmental philosophy and the human exploration of space share common beginnings, scholars from either field have not given adequate attention to the possible connections between them. In this essay, we seek to spur the rapprochement and cross-fertilization of philosophy and space policy by highlighting the philosophic dimensions of space exploration, pulling together issues and authors that have had insufficient contact with one another. We do so by offering an account of three topics: planetary exploration, planetary protection and the (...) search for extraterrestrial life, and terraforming. The resulting synthesis seeks to change our thinking about earthbound environmental ethics as it considers the philosophical dimensions of space exploration, and introduces the possible benefits of a humanities-oriented approach to space policy. (shrink)

In this Matters Arising article, we outline how the recent article “The impact on patients of objections by institutions to assisted dying: a qualitative study of family caregivers’ perceptions” (White et al., 2023 Mar 13;24(1):22) informed Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) implementation in our large Australian public health setting, where objections do not emanate from, but within, the institution. In reporting the harms to patients and caregivers created by institutional objection, White et al. provide an evidenced-based road map for potential potholes (...) or risks associated with VAD implementation. We discuss the complexities emerging from the diverse views of health professionals and the ethical tensions arising from such, especially within certain specialties, and how we developed systemic strategies that support patients, caregivers and staff alike. We highlighted the need to shift from “Do you support VAD?“ to “How can we support you as healthcare professionals to integrate VAD into your practice, in a way that complies with the legislation, meets the needs of patients and caregivers, and feels safe and does not compromise your moral stance?“. (shrink)

This article explores the theological themes prevalent in the language of anorexia nervosa by briefly exploring extant literature in the field before reporting on the author’s qualitative fieldwork with Christian women with anorexia nervosa. Sufferers, both those from religious and non-religious backgrounds, often convey their understanding of their illness in theological and moral language, using terms such as ‘sin’ and ‘sacrifice’. The use of theological frameworks on ‘Pro-Ana’ internet forums is also considered. The article concludes by considering the implications of (...) this use of theological language for pastoral and chaplaincy care, and argues that highly skilled mental health chaplains would be of benefit to treatment models for anorexia nervosa and that community church leaders can pay a crucial role in long-lasting recovery, particularly for anorexic women who profess a Christian faith. (shrink)

Descartes’s conception of the mind is nothing like what most people suppose. I believe it may have interesting affinities with certain Asian—even Buddhist!—conceptions of the mind. I’m not qualified to comment on the Asian side, so I’m going to describe what I take to be his position and invite others to judge.

I ask everyone to look more deeply at man, whom Christ has saved in the mystery of His love, and at the human being’s unceasing search for truth and meaning. Different philosophical systems have lured people into believing that they are their own absolute master, able to decide their own destiny and future in complete autonomy, trusting only in themselves and their own powers. But this can never be the grandeur of the human being who can find fulfillment only in (...) choosing to enter the truth, to make a home under the shade of Wisdom and dwell there. Only within this horizon of truth will people understand their freedom in its fullness and their call to know and love God as the supreme realization of their true self. (shrink)