The assumption that the concept of phenomenal consciousness is pretheoretical is often found in the philosophical debates on consciousness. Unfortunately, this assumption has not received the kind of empirical attention that it deserves. We suspect that this is in part due to difficulties that arise in attempting to test folk intuitions about consciousness. In this article we elucidate and defend a key methodological principle for this work. We draw this principle out by considering recent experimental work on the topic by (...) Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz (2008). We charge that their studies do not establish that the folk have a concept of phenomenal consciousness in part because they compare group agents to individuals . The problem is that group agents and individuals differ in some significant ways in terms of functional organization and behavior. We propose that future experiments should establish that ordinary people are disposed to ascribe different mental states to entities that are given behaviorally and functionally equivalent descriptions. (shrink)

This qualitative study describes the lived experience of physicians who work in communities that have experienced a public mass shooting. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seventeen physicians involved in eight separate mass casualty shooting incidents in the United States. Four major themes emerged from constant comparative analysis: The psychological toll on physicians: “I wonder if I'm broken”; the importance of and need for mass casualty shooting preparedness: “[We need to] recognize this as a public health concern and train physicians to (...) manage it”; massive media attention: “The media onslaught was unbelievable”; and commitment to advocacy for a public health approach to firearm violence: “I want to do whatever I can to prevent some of these terrible events.”. (shrink)

Arguing About Human Nature covers recent debates--arising from biology, philosophy, psychology, and physical anthropology--that together systematically examine what it means to be human. Thirty-five essays--several of them appearing here for the first time in print--were carefully selected to offer competing perspectives on 12 different topics related to human nature. The context and main threads of the debates are highlighted and explained by the editors in a short, clear introduction to each of the 12 topics. Authors include Louise Anthony, Patrick Bateson, (...) David Buller, John Dupre, Paul Griffiths, Sally Haslanger, Richard Lewontin, Ron Mallon, and E.O. Wilson. Contributors Rachel Cooper, Nancy Holmstrom, Kim Sterelny, and Elizabeth Cashdan provide brand new chapters in these debates. Suggested Reading lists offer curious readers new resources for exploring these debates further. A rguing About Human Nature is the first volume of its kind, designed to introduce to an interdisciplinary student audience some of the most important arguments on the subject generated by scientific research and philosophical reflection. (shrink)

Microbiologists are transitioning from the study and characterization of individual strains or species to the profiling of whole microbiomes and microbial ecology. Equipped with high-throughput methods for studying the taxonomic and functional characteristics of diverse samples, they are just beginning to encounter the conceptual, theoretical, and experimental problems of comparing taxonomy to function, and extracting useful measures from such comparisons. Although still unresolved, these problems are well studied in macro-ecology and are reiterated here as an historical precautionary for microbial ecologists. (...) Beyond expected and unresolved terminological vagueness, we argue that assessments and comparisons of taxonomic and functional profiles in micro-ecology suffer from theoretically unresolvable arbitrariness and ambiguities. We divide these into problems of scale, individuation, and commensurability. We argue that there is no technically/theoretically “correct” scale, individuation, or comparison of taxonomy and function, but there are nonetheless better and worse methodologies for profiling. (shrink)

En novembre 2002, a eu lieu, à l'Université de Liège, une rencontre entre chercheurs d'horizons divers autour du Cap des Tempêtes de Lucien François, publié dans cette même collection. Le droit sans la justice? Aux yeux d'Augustin et de la tradition du droit naturel en général, il est impossible d'abstraire l'un de l'autre sans donner raison au fameux pirate répliquant à Alexandre le Grand : " Parce que j'opère avec un petit navire, on m'appelle brigand ; toi, parce que tu (...) opères avec une grande flotte, Empereur! ". Que répondent à cette objection les théoriciens positivistes qui séparent quant à eux droit et justice? Comment rendent-ils compte, sans la justice, de la différence entre un Etat et une troupe de brigands, une arrestation et un rapt, une extorsion et un impôt? L'un des plus réputés d'entre eux, N. Bobbio, parlait de cette question comme du " cap des Tempêtes " que ne peut éviter d'affronter tout positivisme juridique. Le cap des Tempêtes. Essai de microscopie du droit est précisément le titre que L. François, Professeur émérite à l'Université de Liège, a donné à son dernier ouvrage. Il s'agit sans doute d'une des tentatives les plus radicales pour approcher le phénomène juridique en dehors de tout présupposé moral, selon une perspective " microscopique " originale qui met le même soin à analyser une file d'attente, un racket, ou l'organisation complexe de ce que nous appelons " l'État ". Quelles sont les conséquences philosophiques de cette approche microscopique du droit? Sur quels présupposés repose-t-elle? Y a-t-il une anthropologie, voire une ontologie, qui la sous-tendent? Et in fine, est-il réellement possible de concevoir le droit en faisant abstraction de tout principe, du moins de tout horizon, de justice? (shrink)

Natasha Mitchell: This is All in the Mind on Radio National abc.net.au/rn I'm Natasha Mitchell and really this past fortnight has been hellish for Australia, the bushfires in Victoria have claimed hundreds of human lives and it's almost been impossible to comprehend the scale of the disaster. Today's show links in a small way to the debate now being waged over what, or who, causes bushfires. It's a discussion about the philosophy of intentions and their profound moral weight.

« Je m'en voudrais de ne pas parler ici d'un autre Canadien, ancien élève de cette maison [Petit Séminaire de Montréal], qui jette par sa science beaucoup de lustre sur notre nom dans les milieux scientifiques de l'Europe. Le P. Éphrem Longpré nous avait été révélé par M. Étienne Gilson. L'éminent professeur de philosophic médiévale en Sorbonne avait avoué ne pas connaître d'homme plus au courant de cette difficile science que le P. Éphrem ».

Les textes -- Tiédeur et laxisme d'Érasme -- Rigueur et sobriété de Luther -- Les prédécesseurs de Luther -- Lignes do force du débat -- Que reste t-il de nos prières et de nos efforts? -- La doctrine des deux règnes -- La liberté le traite de la liberté du chrétien de M. luther -- Serf arbitre et nouvelle théologie -- L'oeil et le regard -- L'exigence de vérité -- La justification -- Essai de résumé du Traite du serf arbitre (...) de Martin Luther. (shrink)

Edouard Machery argues that many traditional philosophical questions are beyond our capacity to answer. Answering them seems to require using the method of cases, a method that involves testing answers to philosophical questions against what we think about real or imagined cases. The problem, according to Machery, is that this method has proved unreliable ; what we think about these kinds of cases is both problematically heterogeneous and volatile. His bold solution: abandon the method of cases altogether and with it (...) many of the questions that we have come to associate with philosophy itself. Many of the critical responses to Machery’s book have focused on whether empirical work on judgements about philosophical cases supports his claim that the method of cases is unreliable. Our problem with these responses is that they accept that reliability is the right way to frame empirically informed concerns about the method of cases, and we think that it is not. The reason is simple: the kind of unreliability thesis that Machery needs proves to be empirically intractable, at least by anything like the current methods used by experimental philosophers, or so we shall argue here. While we have empirical grounds for thinking that unreliability arguments don’t give us reason to abandon the method of cases, we do think that there are empirical grounds for thinking that it needs to be reformed. There are other standards that we expect our methods to meet beyond mere reliability, especially standards of practical rationality, which are too often forgotten in metaphilosophical discussions that tend to focus exclusively on epistemological considerations. Methodological considerations, after all, are not just matters of epistemic normativity, but practical rationality as well. What’s more, considerations of practical rationality become particularly important when we move from the kind of extreme scepticism that Machery endorses to the kind of progressive reformation that we think should be pursued. And so we conclude by arguing that thinking about philosophical inquiry in terms of standards of practical rationality allows us both to better understand what kinds of problems recent empirical work on philosophical cognition raises for the method of cases and also how that work can point the way to reforming it. (shrink)

In this paper my aim is to get clearer on what eliminative materialism actually does and does not entail. I look closely at one cluster of views that is often described as a form of eliminativism in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science and try to show that this characterization is a mistake. More specifically, I look at conceptions of eliminativism recently endorsed by writers such as Edouard Machery, Paul Griffiths, Valerie Hardcastle and others, and argue that although these views do (...) endorse the elimination of something, they offer only what I will call a sort of category dissolution, and should be treated as something altogether different from traditional eliminativism. Spelling out the main contrast between eliminative materialism proper and this alternative view, and defending the need to keep them distinct, is my primary objective. As I show, a central irony is that proponents of the problematic outlook often insist that divergent things should not be classified together under a single label. By characterizing their own views as a form of eliminativism, they commit a fundamental error that they themselves argue should not be made. While my focus here is on eliminative materialism, the error I intend to highlight appears across various discussions about alleged eliminativism of all sorts of things. (shrink)

Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation is unlikely to strike most readers as a sacred text. True, the design of the 1997 English paperback edition hints at something mysterious within. The seventeenth century map on the cover, glowing green and only partially visible from the front, disrupts the geographic orientation a map might be expected to provide. The seeming clarity of the title, author, and translator, is likewise unsettled by their placement, suspended above the surrounding white expanse. Yet this trace (...) of eeriness is easily dispelled by the physical book’s assertion of scholarly credentials. “Michigan,” the name of the university press publisher, prominent on the spine and back, also announces itself on the front cover, and the text on the back declares the book an aesthetic and political—but not sacred—project, with three blurbs praising the translator’s achievement and the author’s brilliance. The Library of Congress cataloguing information on the copyright page tells us that Poetics of Relation, Glissant’s third monograph, is first and foremost about his birthplace (Martinique--civilization, language, culture, nationalism, and literature of). Secondarily, according to the cataloguers, it is a book about the French connection (“6. Martinique—Dependency on France. 7. West Indies, French—Relations—France. 8. France—Relations—West Indies.”). Scholarly interpretations of Poetics of Relation are of course more expansive and exploratory than cataloguing’s brevity allows. Still, most who write about this strange and beautiful text focus on poetics and politics, with very few lingering over Glissant’s own claims about the importance of the sacred. (shrink)

This essay provides a queer reading of Édouard Glissant’s critique of Western metaphysics as presented in his 1990 work Poetics of Relation. Glissant’s text is interpreted as offering conceptual tools for understanding the production of an outside of the gender binary, as well as for a critique of the naturalisation of the bourgeois framework underlying queer visibility and inclusion as political ends. Based on the self-transgressive character shared by the notions of Relation and queerness, it is further argued that (...) both the potentialities and the aporetic elements of Glissant’s proposal can elucidate those of queer theories and practices. (shrink)

L’auteur, qui se propose de publier, pour le bicentenaire de la naissance d’Édouard Reuss , sa correspondance avec Michel Nicolas , présente l’état de ces lettres inédites et les circonstances de leur rédaction. Il montre qu’elles éclairent l’élaboration de la production littéraire des deux protagonistes et l’évolution de la théologie protestante au XIX e siècle en France. Pour illustrer le combat commun des deux correspondants pour le progrès des sciences théologiques en France, il présente enfin les passages qui concernent (...) le projet de création d’une revue scientifique. Il suggère au passage l’influence insoupçonnée de M. Nicolas sur la théologie protestante française, en particulier sur l’évolution des sciences bibliques. The author, who proposes to publish, for the bicentennial of Edouard Reuss’ birth , his correspondence with Michel Nicolas , presents the state of these yet unpublished letters and the circumstances in which they were written. He shows that they enlighten the literary production of both protagonists and the evolution of French Protestant theology in the 19th century. To illustrate their common struggle for the advance of theological sciences in France, he presents at last passages which concern the project to create a scientific periodical. He also suggests the unsuspected influence of M. Nicolas on French Protestant theology, in particular on the evolution of biblical sciences. (shrink)

In his two volumes on Intuitive Thought Professor Edouard Le Roy continues his idealistic interpretation of spiritual creativity, and turns from its ‘products’ manifested in biological and human evolution to consider its most intimate character, as it is ‘lived through’ or directly experienced in intuitive and inventive thinking. The whole plan and its execution are determined by two characteristic themes of Bergsonism—intuition and the dynamical schema—though these are repensès in a quite original way. “Intuitive thought” and “metaphysical thought,” M. Le (...) Roy affirms in the preface, are “one and the same”; the latter is condemned only by those who misconceive the former. So by correcting misunderstandings he seeks to. (shrink)

A striking feature of atrocities, as seen in genocides, civil wars or violence against certain racial and ethnic groups, is the attempt to dehumanize – to deny and strip human beings of their humanity. Yet the very nature of dehumanization remains relatively poorly understood. The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization is the first comprehensive and multidisciplinary reference source on the subject and an outstanding survey of the key concepts, issues and debates within dehumanization studies. Organized into four parts, the Handbook covers (...) the following key topics: (I) The history of dehumanization from Greek Antiquity to the Twentieth century, contextualizing the oscillating boundaries, dimensions, and hierarchies of humanity in the history of the ‘West’. (II) How dehumanization is contemporarily studied with respect to special contexts: as part of social psychology, as part of legal studies or literary studies, and how it connects to the idea of human rights, disability and eugenics, the question of animals, and the issue of moral standing. (III) How to tackle its complex facets, with respect to the perpetrator’s and the target’s perspective, metadehumanization and selfdehumanization, rehumanization, social death, status and interdependence, as well as the fear we show towards robots that become too human for us. (IV) Conceptual and epistemological questions on how to distinguish different forms of dehumanization and neighboring phenomena, on why dehumanization appears so paradoxical, and on its connection to hatred, essentialism, and perception. -- Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, history, psychology, and anthropology this Handbook will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as politics, international relations, criminology, legal studies, literary studies, gender studies, disability studies, or race and ethnic studies, as well as readers from social work, political activism, and public policy --- Table of Contents: Introduction. 1. Mapping dehumanization studies. – Maria Kronfeldner. Part I. Oscillating boundaries, dimensions, and hierarchies of humanity in historical contexts. 2. Dehumanization Before the Columbian exchange – Siep Stuurman. 3. 'Humanity' and its Limits in Early Modern European Thought – László Kontler. 4. Enlightenment Humanization and Dehumanization and the Orang-utan – Silvia Sebastiani. 5. Dehumanizing the Exotic in Living Human Exhibitions – Guido Abbattista. 6. Dehumanizing Strategies in Nazi Ideology and their Anthropological Context – Johannes Steizinger. 7. Theorizing the Inhumanity of Human Nature, 1955-1985 – Erika Lorraine Milam. Part II: Further special contexts of dehumanization. 8. The Social Psychology of Dehumanization – Nick Haslam. 9. Dehumanization and the Loss of Moral Standing – Edouard Machery. 10. Dehumanization and the Question of Animals – Alice Crary. 11. Dehumanization, Disability, and Eugenics – Robert A. Wilson. 12. Dehumanization and Human Rights – Marie-Luisa Frick. 13. Dehumanization by Law – Luigi Corrias. 14. Dehumanisation in Literature and the Figure of the Perpetrator – Andrea Timár. Part III: The complex facets of dehumanization. 15. Dehumanization and Social Death as Fundamentals of Racism – Wulf D. Hund. 16. How Status and Interdependence Explain Different Forms of Dehumanization – Susan T. Fiske. 17. Exploring Metadehumanization and Self-dehumanization from a Target Perspective – Stéphanie Demoulin, Pierre Maurage, Florence Stinglhamber. 18. The Dehumanization and Rehumanization of Refugees – Victoria M. Esses, Stelian Medianu, Alina Sutter. 19. Motivational and Cognitive Underpinnings of Fear of Social Robots that become ‘Too Human for Us’ – Maria Paola Paladino, Jeroen Vaes, Jolanda Jetten. Part IV: Conceptual and epistemological questions regarding dehumanization. 20. Objectification, Inferiorization and Projection in Phenomenological Research on Dehumanization – Sara Heinämaa and James Jardine. 21. Why Dehumanization is Distinct from Objectification – Mari Mikkola. 22. On Hatred and Dehumanization – Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang. 23. Dehumanization, the Problem of Humanity, and the Problem of Monstrosity – David Livingstone Smith. 24. Psychological Essentialism and Dehumanization – Maria Kronfeldner. 25. Could Dehumanization Be Perceptual? – Somogy Varga. (shrink)

No trait is more characteristic of contemporary philosophy in France than its continued fecundation by the physical and biological sciences. The divorce between philosophy and science that existed in the first half of last century is now regarded, by almost common consent, as an error of the great pre-war Unenlightenment. The ménage is rémonté ; the vieilles traditions of Descartes and Pascal live again, though very transfigured. How long the alliance may endure, how and how much it may benefit both (...) parties, it would be idle to prophesy. But it is significant that Boutroux and Bergson were compelled to devote much energy to acquiring a scientific competence, the one in mechanics, the other in biology. It is still more significant that a number of professional scientists should, with the passing of years, have contributed less to their sciences and increasingly to philosophy. This mutual invasion of territories has, indeed, become so considerable and enduring that philosophy in France is at present, for good or ill, almost wholly ‘philosophy of the sciences.’ It is now within this ‘internationalized’ neutral zone that the distinction between the epistemological and the ontological has to be drawn. Thus, Meyerson fairly represents the former emphasis, Bergson and Le Roy the latter. And if it is rare for one man to hold successively a chair in mathematics and a chair in philosophy, like Milhaud and Whitehead, rarer still is it for one man to hold both concurrently. But M. Edouard Le Roy has for many years lectured on mathematics and mechanics at the Faculte des Sciences in Paris; he has extended and modified Bergsonism from Bergson's former chair at the College de France. (shrink)

A deaf lesbian couple who chose to have a deaf child receive a lot of criticismA deaf lesbian couple in the US deliberately tried to create a deaf child. Sharon Duchesneau and Candy McCullough hoped their child, conceived with the help of a sperm donor, would be deaf like the rest of the family. Their daughter, five year old Jehanne, is also deaf and was conceived with the same donor. News of the couple choosing to have a deaf child has (...) only been revealed with the birth of their son Gauvin.1–4To increase their chance of having a deaf baby the women sought a deaf sperm donor from a sperm bank but were told that congenital deafness is “precisely the sort of condition” that disqualifies would-be donors. Rather than dismiss the idea they found their own sperm donor by asking a deaf friend who comes from a family with five generations of deafness.1The women, both professionals in the mental health field, insist that they would still love …. (shrink)

This essay is an introduction to the cluster on Latina feminism published in Hypatia (Spring 2016), Vo. 31 (2), which features essays on various areas of Latina feminisms as well as discussions on the intersection of Latina feminisms and the work of thinkers such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Simone de Beauvoir, Enrique Dussell, Immanuel Kant, Édouard Glissant, Walter Mignolo, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Contributors to the cluster include Stephanie Rivera Berruz, Cynthia M. Paccacerqua, Andrea J. Pitts, Monique Roelofs, Susan C. Méndez, (...) Gabriela Veronelli, and Elena Flores Ruiz. (shrink)

In his two volumes on Intuitive Thought Professor Edouard Le Roy continues his idealistic interpretation of spiritual creativity, and turns from its ‘products’ manifested in biological and human evolution to consider its most intimate character, as it is ‘lived through’ or directly experienced in intuitive and inventive thinking. The whole plan and its execution are determined by two characteristic themes of Bergsonism—intuition and the dynamical schema—though these are repensès in a quite original way. “Intuitive thought” and “metaphysical thought,” M. Le (...) Roy affirms in the preface, are “one and the same”; the latter is condemned only by those who misconceive the former. So by correcting misunderstandings he seeks to. (shrink)

Quantum mechanical measurements on a physical system are represented by observables - Hermitian operators on the state space of the observed system. It is an important question whether all observables may be realized, in principle, as measurements on a physical system. Dirac’s influential text ( [1], page 37) makes the following assertion on the question: The question now presents itself – Can every observable be measured? The answer theoretically is yes. In practice it may be very awkward, or perhaps even (...) beyond the ingenuity of the experimenter, to devise an apparatus which could measure some particular observable, but the theory always allows one to imagine that the measurement can be made. This Letter re-examines the question of whether it is possible, even in principle, to measure every quantum mechanical observable. Unexpectedly, ideas from com-. (shrink)