Malgré les déclarations d'intention et les efforts des écologistes, la planète est en danger. Ses ennemis cherchent un profit immédiat à empoisonner l'air, les sols et l'eau, à abattre les arbres et les animaux. Ils trouvent un intérêt à détruire la réalité pour lui substituer un monde virtuel contrôlable. Cet essai invite à établir de nouvelles relations entre la planète et les hommes.

In their recent paper, “Practical Knowledge without Luminosity,” Bob Beddor and Carlotta Pavese (2022) claim that the doctrine of essentially intentional actions, or “essentialism,” is false. Essentialism states that some actions are essentially intentional, such that, “whenever they are performed, they are performed intentionally” (2022, p. 926). Beddor and Pavese work to reject essentialism, which figures as a key premise in Juan Piñeros Glasscock’s anti-luminosity argument against the knowledge condition for intentional action (Piñeros Glasscock, p. 1240). Historically, essentialism has received (...) little attention from philosophers since its inception in Elizabeth Anscombe’s Intention (2000, §47). However, I believe that essentially intentional actions can play an important role in an ontology of action. In my paper, I develop and argue for a variety of essentialism in the context of naive action theory, which I call naive essentialism. Naive essentialism is a two-fold thesis, which claims that (1) essentially intentional actions exist, and (2) that essentially intentional actions ground accidentally intentional actions. My paper has four parts. In the first part, I distinguish between essentially and accidentally intentional actions, and unpack the relevant principles of naive action theory. Second, I present the grounding thesis that accidentally intentional actions are grounded in essentially intentional actions. Next, I provide an argument for the existence of essentially intentional actions. Lastly, I briefly respond to a possible objection to my argument. The upshot of my arguments is that essentially intentional actions form the metaphysical and explanatory bedrock in a naive ontology of action, and that there are good reasons for accepting a key premise in Piñeros Glasscock’s anti-luminosity argument. (shrink)

Health care institutions have paid increasing attention to preventing nosocomial transmission of influenza through vaccination of health care personnel. While multifaceted voluntary interventions have increased vaccination rates, proponents of mandatory programs contend the rates remain unacceptably low. Conventional bioethical analyses of mandatory programs are inadequate; they fail to account for the obligations of nonprofessional personnel or to justify the weights assigned to different ethical principles. Using an ethics framework for public health permits a fuller analysis. The framework's focus on fairness (...) accentuates the potential differences between the risk of transmitting infection and employment status, and the need to equitably evaluate exemptions. The framework's emphasis on balancing benefits and burdens highlights the need to justify a specific goal and questions the need to exclude all nonmedical exemptions. While mandatory vaccination programs are justifiable, greater attention should be paid to their implementation. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 25-27.

Volume 25, Issue 3, March 2025, Page 40-42.

Background: While employers are increasingly considering and implementing COVID-19 vaccination requirements, little is known about the reasons offered by employees seeking religious exemptions.Methods: We conducted a mixed methods analysis of all the requests for religious exemptions submitted during the initial implementation of a COVID-19 vaccination requirement at a single academic medical center in the United States.Results: Five hundred sixty-five (3.4%) employees requested religious exemptions. At least 305 (54.0%) requesters had job titles suggesting that they had direct patient contact. Four hundred (...) ninety-nine (88.3%) of requesters self-identified as Christian, of whom 120 (21.2%) identified as Roman Catholic. Requesters offered 0 to 8 (mean 2.7) categories of reasons for their request. The most frequently stated reasons pertained to the use of fetal cell lines in vaccine development and manufacturing (382, 67.6%), interest in maintaining purity (221, 39.1%), or belief in divine healing (172, 30.4%). Some requesters also volunteered evidence of the sincerity of their beliefs including examples of their religious practices (116, 20.5%), other practices (66, 11.7%), and emotional states (32, 5.7%). One hundred fifty-two applications (26.9%) contained text copied without attribution, primarily from sample religious exemption request letters available on the Internet.Conclusions: Most requesters focused on the use of fetal cell lines in the development or manufacturing of the vaccines as the justification for their request. The development of vaccines that are not reliant on fetal cell lines may increase vaccination rates. Understanding reasons for religious exemption requests may inform vaccine education and vaccination policies. (shrink)

This paper is addressed to recent theoretical discussions of the Anthropocene, in particular Bernard Stiegler’s Neganthropocene (Open Universities Press, 2018), which argues: “As we drift past tipping points that put future biota at risk, while a post-truth regime institutes the denial of ‘climate change’ (as fake news), and as Silicon Valley assistants snatch decision and memory, and as gene-editing and a financially-engineered bifurcation advances over the rising hum of extinction events and the innumerable toxins and conceptual opiates that Anthropocene Talk (...) fascinated itself with—in short, as ‘the Anthropocene’ discloses itself as a dead-end trap…”. The objective of this paper is therefore twofold: (1) to discuss how the Anthropocene is appropriated to certain ideological discourses (paradoxically) to maintain the hegemony of precisely those systems of production that have most accelerated climate change etc.; (2) to consider how the factography of the Anthropocene is exploited in this process to mask the ideological character of industry-aligned “technocratic” environmental management. The paper is not concerned with specific case studies in terms of government and industry policy, or climate science, but rather with the ways in which the discourse of the Anthropocene has been inflected within the humanities and the broader cultural field—that is to say, ideologically, as a system or logic of meaning. How the Anthropocene “means” is, in this respect, a question of some importance. This paper does not attempt to address all the facets of this question, but focuses upon a central “apocalyptic” strain in the discourse of the Anthropocene drawn particularly from Francis Fukuyama’s millennial posthumanism and centred in the question of “sustainability” as catastrophe management—with the risk that real environmental degradation will become an alibi for a revived neoliberalism. In other words, that the critical Earth system transformations that characterise the Anthropocene are themselves commodities, and that the project of their amelioration is in process of defining a future (opportunistic) “crisis” rhetoric with a global political franchise. The ideological import of the Anthropocene stems precisely from the fact that it is planetary and, while catalysed by human agency, independent in its specific behaviour from it. The Anthropocene objectively presents as the contemporary counterpart of the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction and the most compelling argument for a new kind of technological “arms race.” But it also presents as the condition of an emerging ideological discourse which will determine how this race is run. From the discourse on “energy security” to the widespread “security crackdown” on environmental activists across the so-called developed & developing world, the Anthropocene has come to represent the co-option of a scientific factography for the thinly disguised resurgence of “ideological science” of the Fukuyamaesque variety (post-history, post-human). For Fukuyama, the true meaning of “posthuman” is thus the accomplishment of humanity’s historical mission. As the “End of History” designates an end of ideological struggle, so too the dénouement of the Anthropocene and the “ends of man” represent the accomplished purpose of species warfare: dominion, not simply over the world, but over all possible worlds. According to this narrative, science—like technology—must be uniquely at the service of the maintenance of the global order, organised around a universal appeal to “crisis management.” It is precisely for this reason that what calls itself post-human masks the return of an ever-more-apocalyptic Humanism. (shrink)

Critical reflection on clinical ethics consultation is essential to the field. Johnson and colleagues (2015) have helpfully summarized the consultation experience of a children's specialty hospital...

Corporate governance guidelines are a mechanism that a firm can enact which should reduce agency costs and better align the interests of boards and the suppliers of capital. This study examines stock price reactions primarily attributable to institutional investors occurring when corporations announce the enactment of corporate governance guidelines. A final sample of 77 firms was derived from the first announcement of corporate governance guidelines exclusive to the SEC-EDGAR database. The results indicate that good governance does matter. Firms that announced (...) the enactment of corporate governance guidelines experienced increased stock prices following the announcements. There was an immediate (days 1–4) reaction for firms that provided all or part of the guidelines’ substance; a delayed (days 8–10) reaction occurred for those firms that only referenced the guidelines’ enactment. Additionally, firms with either a potentially greater following or that had a previous history of acrimonious relations with stakeholders were rewarded by the announcement of the enactment of guidelines. (shrink)

The analysis of a dispute can focus on either interests, rights, or power. Commentators often frame the conflict over conscience in clinical practice as a dispute between a patient’s right to legally available medical treatment and a clinician’s right to refuse to provide interventions the clinician finds morally objectionable. Multiple sources of unresolvable moral disagreement make resolution in these terms unlikely. One should instead focus on the parties’ interests and the different ways in which the health care delivery system can (...) accommodate them. In the specific case of pharmacists refusing to dispense emergency contraception, alternative systems such as advanced prescription, pharmacist provision, and over-the-counter sales may better reconcile the client’s interest in preventing unintended pregnancy and the pharmacist’s interest in not contravening his or her conscience. Within such an analysis, the ethicist’s role becomes identifying and clarifying the parties’ morally relevant interests. (shrink)

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

Amy E. Caruso Brown (2022) considers situations in which a minor child’s parent or legal guardian (the “marginalized decision-maker (MDM)”) defers to another individual (the “primary decision-maker...

The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities debated for several years about whether it should adopt positions and, if so, on what range of issues. The membership recently approved an amendment to its bylaws permitting the Society to adopt positions on matters related to academic freedom and professionalism but not on substantive moral and policy issues. This resolution is problematic for a number of reasons, including the lack of a categorical difference between these types of claims and the Society's inability (...) to speak on behalf of patients and research subjects. The implementation of the amendment also raises several issues. The Society will need to refrain from speaking too specifically and to articulate the responsibilities of its members. If the Society fails to address these concerns, it runs the risk of denigrating its public image and that of the profession. (shrink)

AT FIRST SIGHT IT WOULD SEEM INCONGRUOUS, even an oxymoron, to juxtapose the names of Charles Darwin and Thomas Aquinas. Darwin was a biologist of the nineteenth century whose theory of evolution demanded the mutability of natural species. Thomas Aquinas, the father of Thomism, was a theologian and philosopher of the thirteenth century who held that forms in themselves and the species they constitute are immutable. Six centuries separated Darwin and Aquinas, centuries that witnessed the decline of Thomism and scholasticism (...) in general, with Descartes’s rejection of substantial forms and the advent of English empiricism and the positivism of Auguste Comte. Living in an antischolastic environment and convinced of the mutability of species, it would seem unlikely that Darwin would have any connection with Aquinas. (shrink)

The contents and structure of semantic memory have been the focus of much recent research, with major advances in the development of distributional models, which use word co‐occurrence information as a window into the semantics of language. In parallel, connectionist modeling has extended our knowledge of the processes engaged in semantic activation. However, these two lines of investigation have rarely been brought together. Here, we describe a processing model based on distributional semantics in which activation spreads throughout a semantic network, (...) as dictated by the patterns of semantic similarity between words. We show that the activation profile of the network, measured at various time points, can successfully account for response times in lexical and semantic decision tasks, as well as for subjective concreteness and imageability ratings. We also show that the dynamics of the network is predictive of performance in relational semantic tasks, such as similarity/relatedness rating. Our results indicate that bringing together distributional semantic networks and spreading of activation provides a good fit to both automatic lexical processing (as indexed by lexical and semantic decisions) as well as more deliberate processing (as indexed by ratings), above and beyond what has been reported for previous models that take into account only similarity resulting from network structure. (shrink)

Table of contents -- Foreword by klaus schwab -- Author biographies -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction - by armand doucet & jelmer evers -- education in a time of unprecedented change by michael soskil -- education today: a collection of snapshots by elisa guerra -- - overcoming equity gaps in and through education by michael soskil -- Teach me: the learner profile by armand doucet -- the power of learning by nadia lopez -- contextualizing personalization in education by (...) class='Hi'>armand doucet -- Evolution of technology in the classroom by koen timmers -- flip the system: the networked activist teacher by jelmer evers -- Conclusion- by armand doucet & jelmer evers -- Epilogue by andreas schleicher. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 8, Page 11-13, August 2012.

It is generally recognized that the content of a philosophy cannot be adequately understood apart from the form in which it is couched and the style of reasoning with which it is supported. Matter and form go together in a philosophy, as they do in all human creations and everywhere in nature. Thus, Werner Jaeger has shown the importance of form in the development of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Julius Stenzel has stressed the interrelation of dialectical method and content in the (...) philosophy of Plato. In the study of the philosophies of the Middle Ages the common scholastic method has long been the object of attention; but, with the exception of Thomism, their individual and special modes of procedure and styles of reasoning have largely been neglected. All too often they have been studied with an eye simply to their content, as “static systems of conceptions”, with little if any regard for their living form and method. (shrink)

SOME MODERN THOMISTS claiming to follow the lead of Thomas Aquinas, hold that the objects of the types of mathematics known in the thirteenth century, such as the arithmetic of whole numbers and Euclidean geometry, are real entities. In scholastic terms they are not beings of reason but real beings. In his once-popular scholastic manual, Elementa Philosophiae Aristotelico-Thomisticae, Joseph Gredt maintains that, according to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, the object of mathematics is real quantity, either discrete quantity in arithmetic or (...) continuous quantity in geometry. The mathematician considers the essence of quantity in abstraction from its relation to real existence in bodily substance. "When quantity is considered in this way," he writes, "it is not a being of reason but a real being. Nevertheless it is so abstractly considered that it leaves out of account both real and conceptual existence." Recent mathematicians, Gredt continues, extend their speculation to fictitious quantity, which has conceptual but not real being; for example, the fourth dimension, which by its essence positively excludes a relation to real existence. According to Gredt this is a special, transcendental mathematics essentially distinct from "real mathematics," and belonging to it only by reduction. (shrink)

Of the different features of this case, I focus on the pediatric endocrinologist's refusal to treat the patient. Providers generally have wide latitude in accepting or refusing patients. Appropriat...

Of the different features of this case, I focus on the pediatric endocrinologist's refusal to treat the patient. Providers generally have wide latitude in accepting or refusing patients. Appropriat...

: The film "Who Should Survive?: One of the Choices on Our Conscience" contains a dramatization of the death of an infant with Down syndrome as the result of the parents' decision not to have a congenital intestinal obstruction surgically corrected. The dramatization was based on two similar cases at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and was financed by the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Foundation. When "Who Should Survive?" was exhibited in 1971, the public reaction was generally critical of the parents' (...) decision and the physicians' inaction. Although technological developments in medicine were a necessary condition for the production of this film and its unanticipated reception, they were not a sufficient condition. The proximate cause was a changed understanding of the capabilities of individuals with Down syndrome. Part of the impetus for this change was data showing the adverse effects of institutionalization on normal children. (shrink)

Bioethicists have scrupulously defended patients’ privacy and autonomy in medical care settings; they have not always taken the same care in their own work.

Legislation banning gender-affirming medical care (GAMC) for minors is inconsistent with the Consensus Recommendations for Pediatric Decision-Making (Salter et al. 2023). Gender dysphoria is a medical condition, and GAMC promotes adolescents’ health interests. The evidence for GAMC is comparable to the evidence for other types of pediatric medical care. Parents are permitted to consent for similar risks in the treatment of other conditions. Evaluation of the potential benefits, risks, and treatment alternatives is contingent on individual patients’ clinical conditions and adolescents’ (...) and their parents’ values and preferences. Such decisions are within the scope of parental discretion and should be made through shared decision-making with health-care providers. Parents’ declining GAMC does not inherently create a significant risk of serious imminent harm required to justify state intervention. Usurping parental discretion for GAMC is unjust: it treats this medical care differently than other comparable types of medical care without sufficient justification. (shrink)

Prayer and the temple were two of the most prominent themes in the Third Gospel and they have garnered scholarly interest. However, the discussion about prayer vis-à-vis the temple in Luke’s special source (L) has gone unnoticed. Using source criticism and narrative criticism, the research shows a connection between prayer and the temple in L. The relationship between the two reflects the development from a belief in the temple as a place for praying and receiving an answer, to Jesus who (...) intercedes for the people. This article argues that the prayer in Luke’s special source revealed Jesus as the new, personified temple through whom the L communities prayed and received answers to their prayers. Based on this finding, this article then shows the possible reconstruction of the separation between Judaism and Christianity from the perspective of L communities. Contribution: This article contributes to the discussion on Lukan Christology by proposing that Jesus is the new personified temple as understood by the L communities. Such a depiction lends new support to Dunn’s reconstruction of the parting of the ways between Jews and Christians. (shrink)

Objective Having failed to achieve adequate influenza vaccination rates among employees through voluntary programmes, healthcare organisations have adopted mandatory ones. Some programmes permit religious exemptions, but little is known about who requests religious objections or why. Methods Content analysis of applications for religious exemptions from influenza vaccination at a free-standing children’s hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA during the 2014–2015 influenza season. Results Twelve of 15 260 employees submitted applications requesting religious exemptions. Requestors included both clinical and non-clinical employees. All requestors (...) voluntarily identified their religious affiliation, and most were Christian. Content analysis identified six categories of reasons used to justify an exemption: risks/benefits, ethical/political, lack of direct patient contact, providence, purity and sanctity of life. Individuals articulated reasons in 1–5 categories. The most frequently cited category was purity; the vaccine and/or its mode of administration were impure, or receiving the vaccine would make the individual impure. Two individuals asserted that the vaccine contained cells derived from aborted human fetuses. Individuals also volunteered information supporting the sincerity of their beliefs including distress over previous vaccination and examples of behaviour consistent with their specific objection or their general religious commitment. All requests were approved. Conclusions Less than 0.1% of employees requested religious exemptions. Partnering with religious leaders and carefully correcting erroneous information may help address requestors’ concerns. (shrink)

Moving from the structure of rites of passage, since Arnold Van Gennep’s renowned work (1909), to the essence of liminality captured by Victor Turner (1967), I propose a neurocognitive anthropological approach dealing with the bistable liminality found in human narrative imaginaries. In a brain-culture nexus, I will examine the liminal phase of the rites of passage by drawing on the enactive cognitive bistability property of the human brain. Recalling that the fundamental property of bistable systems is the alternation of two (...) distinct states of stable equilibrium, I propose a model that identifies the neurocognitive bases on which the transcultural variations of narrative motifs related to metamorphosis can be woven. (shrink)

A set of images can be considered as meaningfully different for an observer if they can be distinguished phenomenally from one another. Each phenomenal difference must be supported by some neurophysiological differences. Differentiation analysis aims to quantify neurophysiological differentiation evoked by a given set of stimuli to assess its meaningfulness to the individual observer. As a proof of concept using high-density EEG, we show increased neurophysiological differentiation for a set of natural, meaningfully different images in contrast to another set of (...) artificially generated, meaninglessly different images in nine participants. Stimulus-evoked neurophysiological differentiation (over 257 channels, 800 ms) was systematically greater for meaningful vs. meaningless stimulus categories both at the group level and for individual subjects. Spatial breakdown showed a central-posterior peak of differentiation, consistent with the visual nature of the stimulus sets. Temporal breakdown revealed an early peak of differentiation around 110 ms, prominent in the central-posterior region; and a later, longer-lasting peak at 300–500 ms that was spatially more distributed. The early peak of differentiation was not accompanied by changes in mean ERP amplitude, whereas the later peak was associated with a higher amplitude ERP for meaningful images. An ERP component similar to visual-awareness-negativity occurred during the nadir of differentiation across all image types. Control stimulus sets and further analysis indicate that changes in neurophysiological differentiation between meaningful and meaningless stimulus sets could not be accounted for by spatial properties of the stimuli or by stimulus novelty and predictability. (shrink)

Ouvrages Cathiard Marie-Agnès & Rebière Catherine, Lecture labiale pour l’adulte devenu sourd, 1re éd., Paris, De Boeck Supérieur, 2020, 192 p. Cathiard Marie-Agnès, Vivre avec des prothèses auditives ou des implants cochléaires, éditeur Books On Demand, 2022, 192 p. Directions d’ouvrages collectifs – Ouvrages en collaboration Cathiard Marie-Agnès & Pajon Patrick, Les imaginaires du cerveau, Fernelmont, Intercommunications & Éditions Modulaires Européennes, coll. « Transversales philosophique...

In this publication, we will use the principal concepts of John of the Cross, the famous mystic of the XVI th century, as a framework to go over, in a non-reductionist way, three challenges in contemporary neuroscience of decision-making. Firstly, the dark night and the purgative paths will be related to discontinuity in decision-making. Secondly, the passive and active paths will be associated to brain plasticity, architecture, and levels of decision. Thirdly, the illumination, which can be felt when a solution (...) is reached, has to do with positive emotions and can be inspired by the science of love of John of the Cross. We shall lastly conclude by emphasizing the usefulness of his work to illuminate the neuroscience of decision-making. (shrink)

Jeremy Bentham entend rompre avec les théories du contrat social et proposer une justification utilitariste de la démocratie. Or, aucune théorie de la démocratie ne peut se dispenser d’une théorie du « demos ». L’utilitarisme benthamien comporte ainsi un renouvellement de la question du peuple dans chacun de ses aspects, ontologique, politique et moral. Bentham développe une véritable théorie du peuple qui, bien que méconnue, constitue un tournant dans l’histoire de la philosophie politique.