L’ouvrage de Jean Quétier, Le Travail de parti de Marx. Intervenir dans les organisations ouvrières, publié aux Éditions de la Sorbonne (collection « La philosophie à l’œuvre ») explore de manière inédite les modalités d’interventions politiques de Marx au sein des organisations ouvrières. Parallèlement à ce premier opus, Jean Quétier publie la même année aux Éditions sociales (collection « Les essentielles ») une anthologie de textes de Marx intitulée Sur le parti révolutionnaire. S’ouvrant...

L’érotisme très particulier de la pin-up, celui de la « fille d’à côté », fait de cette figure une icône américaine des années 40 dans l’imaginaire collectif. L’engouement populaire qu’elle suscite, dans ces années là, est réel, notamment aux États-Unis. Pourtant autour de cette simple image de légèreté et d’insouciance, de nombreux enjeux politiques se nouent. Employée de manière massive durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale pour « remonter le moral des troupes » sur le front et à l’arrière, la pin-up, (...) multipliant ses fonctions, devient bel et bien un instrument de stratégie militaire. (shrink)

Background: Hospital nurses are frequently the first care givers to receive a patient’s request for euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide (PAS). In France, there is no consensus over which medical practices should be considered euthanasia, and this lack of consensus blurred the debate about euthanasia and PAS legalisation. This study aimed to investigate French hospital nurses’ opinions towards both legalisations, including personal conceptions of euthanasia and working conditions and organisation. Methods: A phone survey conducted among a random national sample of 1502 (...) French hospital nurses. We studied factors associated with opinions towards euthanasia and PAS, including contextual factors related to hospital units with random-effects logistic models. Results: Overall, 48% of nurses supported legalisation of euthanasia and 29%, of PAS. Religiosity, training in pallative care/pain management and feeling competent in end-of-life care were negatively correlated with support for legalisation of both euthanasia and PAS, while nurses working at night were more prone to support legalisation of both. The support for legalisation of euthanasia and PAS was also weaker in pain treatment/palliative care and intensive care units, and it was stronger in units not benefiting from interventions of charity/religious workers and in units with more nurses. Conclusions: Many French hospital nurses uphold the legalisation of euthanasia and PAS, but these nurses may be the least likely to perform what proponents of legalisation call “good” euthanasia. Improving professional knowledge of palliative care could improve the management of end-of-life situations and help to clarify the debate over euthanasia. (shrink)

This article develops an ethical construct of “respectful use” to govern the conduct of humans toward animals. The scope of the terms “use” and “respectful” are developed. Some guidelines for the discernment of respectful use of animals are suggested. Then the status of animals within the legal system is briefly considered. Within the law, the socially defined key term is “unnecessary” rather than respectful. Finally, the newer legal standard of duty of care is shown to be approaching the ethical concept (...) of respectful use. (shrink)

The need for a framework to justify that a model has sufficient credibility to be used as a basis for internal or external (typically regulatory) decision-making is a primary concern when using modelling and simulation (M&S) in healthcare. This chapter reviews published standards on verification, validation, and uncertainty quantification (VVUQ) as well as regulatory guidance that can be used to establish model credibility in this context, providing a potential starting point for a globally harmonised model credibility framework.

Objectives: To assess French district nurses’ opinions towards euthanasia and to study factors associated with these opinions, with emphasis on attitudes towards terminal patients.Design and setting: An anonymous telephone survey carried out in 2005 among a national random sample of French district nurses.Participants: District nurses currently delivering home care who have at least 1 year of professional experience. Of 803 district nurses contacted, 602 agreed to participate .Main outcome measures: Opinion towards the legalisation of euthanasia , attitudes towards terminal patients (...) .Results: Overall, 65% of the 602 nurses favoured legalising euthanasia. Regarding associated factors, this proportion was higher among those who discuss end-of-life issues with terminal patients , who consider competent patients should always be told their prognosis and who value the role of advance directives and surrogates in end-of-life decision-making for incompetent patients . Women and older nurses were less likely to favour legalising euthanasia, as were those who believed in a god who masters their destiny.Conclusions: French nurses are more in favour of legalising euthanasia than French physicians; these two populations contrast greatly in the factors associated with this support. Further research is needed to investigate how and to what extent such attitudes may affect nursing practice and emotional well-being in the specific context of end-of-life home care. (shrink)

This article is part of the period of methodological expansion, proposed by the philosopher Arturo Roig (1922-2012), in the 70's and 80's. Although the analysis of categories is rooted in the philosophical field, this expansion is made in the direction of social categories. More specifically to the categories of “civilization” and “barbarism”, both in the field of the history of ideas and in the philosophical history of Latin American liberation. First, we give different definitions and their multiple uses of category (...) in philosophy. Subsequently, we analyze the category of “human dignity”, one of the arms of the very broad anthropological a priori category, systematized by the thinker from Mendoza. Then we disaggregate the proposal of a categorical rearmament, which has among its multiple functions: the rescue, criticism, replacement, reworking and integration of categories that have been forgotten, distorted, dehistoricized and decontextualized. The categories of “civilization” and “barbarism” have generated a semantic ordering of the discursive universe in Latin America. We review different theses proposed by Roig, in the historicization of the assessment -both negative and positive- of the category “barbarism” that different thinkers in Latin America have expressed. Among them: Juan Montalvo, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, José Hernández, Juan Bautista Alberdi, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, among the main ones. (shrink)

But what are functions? Here, 15 leading scholars of philosophy of psychology and philosophy of biology present new essays on functions.

André Tosel, décédé en mars 2017, était un philosophe engagé, attaché tout au long de son existence à faire vivre un marxisme critique puisant notamment dans le meilleur de la tradition italienne de ce courant de pensée ; il fut l'un des rares français à introduire et discuter les oeuvres majeures d'A. Labriola et surtout d'A. Gramsci, ainsi par ailleurs que celles de Vico dont il fut un fin connaisseur. Il consacra sa thèse de doctorat d'état aux rapports entre (...) religion, politique et philosophie chez Spinoza et contribua de façon décisive à de nouvelles lectures du philosophe en le mettant en miroir de Marx. Professeur de philosophie des universités de Besançon, Franche Comté, de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne et de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, dans lesquelles il occupa de nombreuses fonctions de directions administratives et scientifiques, il était un homme de collectif attaché à faire vivre le savoir, s'engageant dans la vie universitaire et politique, contribuant également de manière décisive au lancement et à l'animation de la revue Actuel Marx. Passionné par l'évolution des pensées contemporaines, il intervenait régulièrement dans des débats d'actualité, sous la forme de contributions dans L'Humanité ou dans des ouvrages destinés à un public large, tout particulièrement dans la dernière période sur les questions de sécularisation, de laïcité et de religion. Cet ouvrage entend lui rendre hommage en abordant les différentes facettes de son oeuvre, traversant un demi-siècle de vie intellectuelle. (shrink)

The central point of this essay is to demonstrate the incommensurability of ‘Darwinian fitness’ with the numeric values associated with reproductive rates used in population genetics. While sometimes both are called ‘fitness’, they are distinct concepts coming from distinct explanatory schemes. Further, we try to outline a possible answer to the following question: from the natural properties of organisms and a knowledge of their environment, can we construct an algorithm for a particular kind of organismic life-history pattern that itself will (...) allow us to predict whether a type in the population will increase or decrease relative to other types? Introduction Darwinian fitness Reproductive fitness and genetical models of evolution The models of reproductive fitness 4.1 The Standard Viability Model 4.2 Frequency-dependent selection 4.3 Fertility models 4.4 Overlapping generations Fitness as outcome 5.1 Fitness as actual increase in type 5.2 Fitness as expected increase in type 5.2.1 Expected increase within a generation 5.2.2 Expected increase between generations 5.2.3 Postponed reproductive fitness effects The book-keeping problem Conclusion. (shrink)

Occasions of Identity is an exploration of timeless philosophical issues about persistence, change, time, and sameness. Andre Gallois offers a critical survey of various rival views about the nature of identity and change, and puts forward his own original theory. He supports the idea of occasional identities, arguing that it is coherent and helpful to suppose that things can be identical at one time but distinct at another. Gallois defends this view, demonstrating how it can solve puzzles about persistence dating (...) back to the Ancient Greeks, and investigates the metaphysical consequences of rejecting the necessity and eternity of identities. (shrink)

The instrumentalist argument from the underdetermination of theories by data runs as follows: (1) every theory has empirically equivalent rivals; (2) the only warrant for believing one theory over another is its possession of a greater measure of empirical virtue; (3) therefore belief in any theory is arbitrary. In this paper, I examine the status of the first premise. Several arguments against the universal availability of empirically equivalent theoretical rivals are criticized, and four algorithms for producing empirically equivalent rivals are (...) defended. I conclude that the case for the first premise of the argument from underdetermination is very strong. The disposition of the argument itself depends on the fate of the second premise. (shrink)

El artículo reconstruye el desarrollo y los giros que tuvo la idea de la selección natural de Darwin en la obra de Sir Karl Popper. Hecho esto, se presenta la nueva interpretación de Popper sobre el darwinismo como un cambio en el concepto de evolución, entendiéndolo como un proceso que mantiene la estructura explicativa básica propuesta por Darwin pero que opera no sólo en el nivel orgánico sino en distintos niveles, vinculando su concepción pluralista de la realidad. Así, se concluye (...) presentando la epistemología evolucionista popperiana como una forma de darwinismo universal. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spirit and Politics: Some Thoughts on Margaret Watkins’s The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s “Essays”Andre C. Willis (bio)Margaret Watkins’s elegant text, The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s Essays (2019),1 is marked by a Humean approach: it fosters philosophical consideration of both the faculties of the mind and the affective features of experience in ways that bear on practical, moral issues. Ever-attentive to the meaning of Hume’s various nuances and strategic ambiguities, (...) Watkins’s even-handed approach guides us into a broad swath of Hume’s ideas and marches us through a trajectory of secondary interlocutors. It also establishes Watkins as an integral part of Hume’s lineage, in the sense that she understands that thoughtful writing itself is an intellectual virtue. Her “unusual sensitivity, not to life’s daily vicissitudes but to beauties and deformities” (193)2 richly textures her overall argument that positions Hume’s Essays as a filter for his vision of “true philosophy:” that reflective turn towards nature and common life that openly challenges abstruse reasoning, fluently embraces historicism and perspectivalism, and deftly foregrounds the usefulness of ideas over their logical certainty.As much as Watkins reveals Hume’s vision for philosophy, she also extends it; for, among other things, her consideration of Hume’s unique endeavor in philosophical literature (ultimately collected under the title Essays, Moral, Political and Literary [1758]), makes an important twofold contribution to Hume studies. It brings greater attention to Hume’s notion of “public spirit,” a distinct mode of human excellence that combines “benevolence” with “greatness of mind.” And, it aestheticizes some practical dimensions of human life (noted in chapter titles, for example, “Working,” [End Page 143] “Thinking,” “Loving”) without losing track of their socio-political valences. I shall return to these two main points below. As an introductory gesture, I want to note that Watkins’s writing both nicely elaborates Hume’s philosophical vision and thoughtfully broadens his literary insights. It does “the job of putting the audience into a responsive relation with the work of art,” what literary critic R. P. Blackmur identified as “the job of intermediary.”3Generally speaking, Watkins’s mediation filters salient themes and terms from Hume’s corpus through a particularly close reading of the Essays. Cast through her richly stylized analysis, Hume’s foundational ideas of “sympathy,” “convention,” “impressions,” “association,” “imagination,” “artifice,” the “passions” (and more) find fresh interpretive air. An example of this in her first chapter tracks Hume’s use of both “artifice” and “convention” from the Treatise through the second Enquiry to the Essays. For Watkins, a through-line for Hume is that “governing” can be thought of as repeated actions that bridge institutional policy to individual character. To think about governing in this way is to open ourselves to new ways of conceiving potential overlaps between nature and artifice (say, in the instance of a moral virtue like courage [50]). To link categories in the Essays back to their antecedent texts along the lines that Watkins does is to situate them in the context of Hume’s larger thought-project and, indirectly, confirm connections between the individual essays. These conjoinings, for Watkins, suggest Hume’s Essays can be treated together, without either blending their disparate themes or diluting their individual subject matter.4This point stands in opposition to Hume’s own semi-admonishment (1741) that “The Reader must not look for any connexion among these Essays but must consider each of them as a Work apart.”5 Watkins’s response—indicative of the graciousness of her overall tone—is to warmly acknowledge Hume’s reproach and affirm the distinctiveness of each of the essays. She proclaims: “The Essays are not unified” (5). Her thinking about them separately, however, reveals a common practical thread in their form. Watkins characterizes this form as serving “to promote public benefit” (4). I think about this form as being philosophical in the way that Richard Rorty conceives of philosophy as cultural criticism. Watkins, however, wants to emphasize the public character of Hume’s philosophy. She writes: “Hume seeks to benefit the public in two ways. First, he tries to allay irrational attitudes that produce imprudent personal and... (shrink)

Rendre hommage à un auteur, ce n'est pas seulement célébrer ce qu'il fut mais c'est aussi alerter sur ce que son oeuvre apporte au présent et à l'avenir de la connaissance. C'est bien le sens donné à cet hommage à André-Jean Arnaud. Repenser le droit, c'était pou r cet auteur érudit : repenser les lieux, les conditions et les façons de l'étudier en dépassant les frontières géographiques en même temps que les frontières disciplinaires. En montrant en quoi André-Jean (...) Arnaud fut, hors des sentiers battus et des orthodoxies de la production et de la transmission des savoirs en la matière, un exceptionnel précurseur et l'infatigable artisan d'un nouveau régime de connaissance sur le droit, le présent ouvrage s'adresse à toutes celles et à tous ceux, enseignants, chercheurs, étudiants ou simples citoyens, pou r qui l'étude du droit permet de mieux comprendre ce que sont et ce que sont susceptibles de devenir nos sociétés. (shrink)

Usually, the organization of living systems is explained by appealing to an intrinsic purpose that is based on the biological survival. However, paradigmatically, it is inevitable to observe that the final destiny of all living organisms is death. In this work, we defend that, from an organizational approach, there is a form of death—Regulatory Cell Death—that, far from being a mere "absence of life", is a process of biological regulation and a feature of self-maintenance in multicellular organisms.

Este libro reciente de Cristian Saborido sobre filosofía de la medicina, que, como no abunda, se titula fundacionalmente en forma homónima, _Filosofía de la medicina, _es un texto dedicado tanto a filósofos de la ciencia, como a profesionales de la salud. En tal sentido es un libro para el estudio de una disciplina de la filosofía y, a la vez, un texto para indagar y provocar la reflexión de quienes llevan a cabo la práctica de las ciencias médicas. Aquí nos (...) ocuparemos de analizar las principales inquietudes que presenta Saborido para desglosarlas y comprender su alcance. (shrink)

It's been 41 years since the publication of Ernst Mayr's Cause and Effect in Biology wherein Mayr most clearly develops his version of the influential distinction between ultimate and proximate causes in biology. In critically assessing Mayr's essay I uncover false statements and red-herrings about biological explanation. Nevertheless, I argue to uphold an analogue of the ultimate/proximate distinction as it refers to two different kinds of explanations, one dynamical the other statistical.

This volume gathers contributions at the intersection of history and politics. The essays, covering such topics as diverse as Italian identity in the Tientsin concession, international refugee policies in the interwar period and after, and the myths and realities of the Ukranian-Russian encounter in independent Ukraine, show that history provides better grounding as well as a more suitable paradigm for the study of politics than economics or other hard sciences. All of the contributors have a common link - doctoral work (...) supervised and shaped by Professor Andre Liebich - but have since expanded widely in the world. Hence, the authors of this work at once share a common base and yet benefit from diverse viewpoints. (shrink)

In this challenging study, André Gallois proposes and defends a thesis about the character of our knowledge of our own intentional states. Taking up issues at the centre of attention in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind and epistemology, he examines accounts of self-knowledge by such philosophers as Donald Davidson, Tyler Burge and Crispin Wright, and advances his own view that, without relying on observation, we are able justifiably to attribute to ourselves propositional attitudes, such as belief, that we consciously (...) hold. His study will be of wide interest to philosophers concerned with questions about self-knowledge. (shrink)

André Gagné | : Cet article s’intéresse à la signification et le rôle des solitaires–élus dans les logia 49-50 de l’Évangile selon Thomas. Après avoir répertorié les différents sens attribués au substantif monakhos par la recherche actuelle, nous proposons une interprétation nouvelle de l’expression au moyen d’une lecture synchronique et intratextuelle de l’EvTh. La conclusion est que les solitaires et les élus ne sont pas deux classes d’individus distincts, mais constituent plutôt un même groupe, une seule entité. L’EvTh caractérise (...) les solitaires–élus comme ceux qui s’adonnent à la quête du sens des paroles de Jésus, afin de ne pas goûter la mort . Étant issus du Royaume et de la lumière, ils sont aussi étrangers dans ce monde, à l’instar de Jésus, maître du plérôme. | : This article explores the function and meaning of the solitary–elect in logia 49-50 of the Gospel according to Thomas. Following a review of the various meanings attributed to the monakhos by modern scholarship, a fresh interpretation of this expression by means of a synchronic and intratextual reading of the GosThom. is offered. The conclusion is that the solitary and the elect are not two classes of individuals, but are rather a single unique group, a sole entity. The GosThom. characterizes the solitary–elect as those who seek the interpretation of the sayings of Jesus, in order to not taste death . Having originated from the Kingdom and the light, they are strangers in the world, just as Jesus, the lord of the Pleroma. (shrink)

Traditionally, this puzzle has been solved in various ways. Aristotle, for example, distinguished between “accidental” and “essential” changes. Accidental changes are ones that don't result in a change in an objects' identity after the change, such as when a house is painted, or one's hair turns gray, etc. Aristotle thought of these as changes in the accidental properties of a thing. Essential changes, by contrast, are those which don't preserve the identity of the object when it changes, such as when (...) a house burns to the ground and becomes ashes, or when someone dies. Armed with these distinctions, Aristotle would then say that, in the case of accidental changes, (1) and (2) are both false—a changing thing can really change one of its “accidental properties” and yet literally remain one and the same thing before and after the change. (shrink)

Questionnaire data from a cross-sectional study on social resilience in adolescence, with a sample of N = 1,974 Swiss seventh grade high school students ages 12–14 was used to identify and compare violence resilience profiles. Person-centered latent profile analysis was applied and allowed for the grouping of adolescents into profiles of internalizing and externalizing symptoms and differentiation of adolescents with and without physical parental violence experiences. Subsequently, a multinomial logistic regression analysis was conducted to further investigate the sociodemographic predictors of (...) violence resilience profiles. With LPA, we identified four distinct profiles for both adolescent groups. The results showed three particularly burdened profiles of adolescents, one with higher externalizing and one with higher internalizing symptoms, which did not occur simultaneously to the same extent. Furthermore, the third profile contained adolescents with both elevated internalizing and externalizing symptoms, the comorbid profile. The fourth profile consisted of the majority of adolescents, who exhibited little or no internalizing and externalizing symptoms, the so-called no/low symptomatic profile. A differentiated view of the symptoms can create added value regarding the understanding of violence resilience. Moreover, in the multinomial logistic regression, significant associations were found between the profiles and adolescents’ gender in the group of adolescents with parental physical violence experiences, but none were found in relation to sociocultural status and migration background. (shrink)