Epistemic decolonization, in its various conceptual formulations and presentations, could be taken to hold promise for either the completion of the anti-colonial struggle or the self-re-discovery of the formerly colonized and oppressed. In Africa this project has had a long history as both a counter to hegemonic histories of claimed Western epistemological superiority as well as theories of racism and racist practices against black people of African descent. What is not entirely clear are the precise achievements of decolonial thought and (...) practice. I interrogate the relevance, use and continuation of decoloniality as a genre of thought and practice on the African continent against the background of the perennial problems of material underdevelopment and stifled political spaces that render the supposed beneficiaries of decolonization hopeless subjects who continue to be disempowered and oppressed in their own home. This interrogation is to be carried alongside another inquiry aimed at evaluating the achievements of African philosophy as a form of epistemic decolonization. If African philosophy is a form of decolonization, as it should be, it should be able to clearly demonstrate its achievements and how they have had an effect on broader goals of decolonizing and empowering inhabitants of the African continent. (shrink)

Sustainability is typically viewed as consisting of three forces, economic, social, and ecological, in tension with one another. In this paper, we address the dangers posed to societal sustainability. The concern being addressed is the very survival of societies where the rights of individuals, personal and collective freedoms, an independent judiciary and media, and democracy, despite its messiness, are highly valued. We argue that, as a result of various technological innovations, a range of dysfunctional impacts are threatening social and political (...) stability. For instance, robotics and automation are replacing human labor and decision-making in a range of industries; search engines, monetized through advertising, have access to, and track, our interests and preferences; social media, in connecting us to one another often know more about us than we ourselves do, enabling them to profit in ways which may not coincide with our well-being; online retailers have not only acquired the ability to track and predict our buying choices, but also they can squeeze vendors based on their outsize bargaining power; and, in general, virtual technologies have changed both the way we think and our sense of self. With the rising deployment of the Internet of Things, and developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence, the threats to individual freedoms and rights, societal cohesion and harmony, employment and economic well-being, and trust in democracy are being ratcheted up. This paper lauds the benefits and addresses the harm wrought by the high tech giants in Information and Communication Technologies. The search for rapidly growing revenues drives firms to accelerate product innovation without fully investigating the entire gamut of their impacts. As greater wealth accrues to the leaders of tech firms, inequalities within firms and societies are widening, creating social tensions and political ferment. We explore the ethical nature of the challenge employing a simple utilitarian calculus, complemented by approaches rooted in rights, justice, and the common good. Various options to address the challenges posed by ICTs are considered and evaluated. We argue that regulation may do little more than slow down the damage to society, particularly since societal values and political preferences vary internationally. Firms need to establish ethical standards, imbuing the upholders of these standards with sufficient authority, while creating a culture of morality. User involvement and activism, and shareholders’ concerns for the sustainability of societies on whose continued prosperity they depend, are imperative to humanity’s ability to decide the future direction of technology. (shrink)

Anderson and Csima :245–264, 2014) defined a jump operator, the bounded jump, with respect to bounded Turing reducibility. They showed that the bounded jump is closely related to the Ershov hierarchy and that it satisfies an analogue of Shoenfield jump inversion. We show that there are high bounded low sets and low bounded high sets. Thus, the information coded in the bounded jump is quite different from that of the standard jump. We also consider whether the analogue of the Jump (...) Theorem holds for the bounded jump: do we have A≤bTB\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$A \le _{bT}B$$\end{document} if and only if Ab≤1Bb\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$A^b \le _1 B^b$$\end{document}? We show the forward direction holds but not the reverse. (shrink)

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Preface to the Paperback Edition -- Preface -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Research Design and Methodology: The Two Studies -- Chapter 3: Is There a Problem? Current Patterns of Ethical Standards and Practices -- Chapter 4: The Dilemma of Science and Therapy: The Effects of Competitionin the Science Community -- Chapter 5: The Dilemma of Science and Therapy: The Effects of Competitionin the Local Institution -- (...) Chapter 6: Social Control: Some Patterns and Consequences of Socialization -- Chapter 7: Social Control: Some Patterns and Consequences of CollaborationGroups and Informal Interaction Structures -- Chapter 8: Six Case Studies -- Chapter 9: Social Control: The Structures, Processes, and Efficacy of PeerGroup Review -- Chapter 10: Social Control: Have Medical Schools Been Ethical Leaders? -- Chapter 11: The Social Responsibilities of a Powerful Profession: Some Suggestionsfor Policy Change and Reform -- Appendix I. National Survey Questionnaire -- Appendix II. Intensive Two-Institution Interview Schedule -- Index. (shrink)

Suite aux attaques diverses qui en annoncent la fin imminente, faut-il renvoyer l'humanisme aux oubliettes de l'histoire? Cet idéal d'homme complet dont le développement physique, affectif, intellectuel et moral ne souffre pas de limites, qui substitue à l'esprit de soumission celui de libre examen, est-il désormais dépassé? La personne, le sujet, la liberté, le progrès, ne sont-ils que des chimères inconsistantes? La raison n'est-elle qu'un instrument trompeur? Faut-il abandonner les hommes au fatalisme le plus radical? L'humanisme semble désormais faire l'objet (...) de critiques sévères. Est-il pour autant dépassé? (shrink)

Contrairement à ce que l’on pourrait croire, les « philosophies de l’histoire » prennent naissance antérieurement au siècle des Lumières, bien avant que ne s’imposent les idées de devenir des civilisations, d’évolution des espèces ou de progrès de l’esprit humain. Elles pensent l’aventure humaine de manière globale sur des modèles temporels très divers (temps circulaire, linéaire, progrès ou décadence). Mais, dans tous les cas, elles proposent un modèle de compréhension de l’histoire humaine à la fois totalisant et reposant sur un (...) principe moteur unique. Ne dépassent-elles pas alors le strict cadre de l’Histoire entendue comme discipline prudente et très sectorisée appartenant aux sciences humaines? Peut-on soumettre la complexité du réel à un schéma explicatif rigide et totalisant? Telle est la question fondamentale qui se pose aussi bien au philosophe qu’à l’historien. De nombreux historiens, mais aussi des sociologues, des anthropologues et des philosophes, ont remis en question ces vastes conceptions de l’histoire, conceptions d’autant plus suspectes qu’elles souffrent souvent de difficultés internes sérieuses. (shrink)

The limited capacity of immediate memory “rides” on the even more limited capacity of consciousness, which reflects the dynamic activity of the thalamocortical core of the brain. Recent views of the conscious narrow-capacity component of the brain are explored with reference to global workspace theory (Baars 1988; 1993; 1998). The radical limits of immediate memory must be explained in terms of biocognitive brain architecture.

This chapter presents a new version of the theory of deliberative democracy, focusing on its specificity as a future genre, and based on arguments used to defend plausibility. Moral philosophy of ethical theories is applied in this context as a form of casuistics, involving probabilities, and not limited to case studies within the framework of applied ethics. The chapter then considers relationships between the sciences, scientific practices and ethics; the interweaving of facts and values; the quarrels that exist between coexisting (...) disciplines; the competing approaches of epistemic pluralism, in both inter‐ and intra‐disciplinary forms; and argumentative coexistence in interdisciplinary contexts. It outlines the possible solution pathways, notably that of dialogical co‐argumentation. The chapter explores the question of pluralism of ethical theories with a focus on relevant elements that may modify an evaluation. In France, the precautionary principle has been enshrined in the Constitution since 2005, within the framework of the Environment Charter. (shrink)

This work is the first book-length study devoted exclusively to a scholarly and systematic analysis of how soldiers returning from battle have been, or should be, treated morally. Long-scattered historical material is pulled together from a variety of sources to show why and how the early medieval custom of imposing penances on returning warriors first originated, and then, by the end of the Middle Ages, had lapsed into disuse.

This paper uses E. M. Forster’s novel Howards End to help articulate what I describe as a moral pluralist approach to moral conflict. Moral pluralism, I argue here, represents a way of responding to the moral conflicts we encounter in our lives, rather than the mere acknowledgment of their inevitability, as suggested by value pluralists like Isaiah Berlin. The tragic view of moral conflict epitomized by Sophocles’ Antigone and endorsed by most theories of value pluralism, tells us that we must (...) choose between moral commitments and reconcile ourselves to the moral regrets that inevitably follow from moral choice. The moral pluralist view, in contrast, suggests that we should seek means, however imperfect, of satisfying conflicting moral commitments and minimizing causes for moral regret. That view, I argue, drives the words and actions of Forster’s heroine in Howards End, Margaret Schlegel. Confronted with a battle between a willful patriarch and a self-righteous sister, a conflict that maps neatly onto the central conflict in Sophocles’ tragedy, Margaret refuses to take sides without refusing to make moral choices. And in doing so, she comes to exemplify an unexpected kind of moral heroism. (shrink)

The world of our experience consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part . . . The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we may be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner 'state' in which the thinking comes to pass.

Voir son cerveau en première personne s’activer à l’occasion de la réalisation d’une tâche semble établir plus qu’une corrélation en décrivant ce qui serait un lien de causalité entre le corps et son cerveau. Le corps est une surface et un résultat dont la conscience ne perçoit le processus vivant qu’en retard sur la vitalité et la mobilité du cerveau. Nous sommes en retard sur notre cerveau mais notre conscience du présent ne peut avoir accès à la temporalité de sa (...) condition. La transparence du cerveau in vivo implique des dispositifs neuro-expérientiels. (shrink)