Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in the idea that natural language enhances and extends our cognitive capabilities. Supporters of embodied cognition have been particularly interested in the way in which language may provide a solution to the problem of abstract concepts. Toward this end, some have emphasized the way in which language may act as form of cognitive scaffolding and others have emphasized the potential importance of language-based distributional information. This essay defends a version of the (...) cognitive enhancement thesis that integrates and builds on both of these proposals. I argue that the embodied representations associated with language processing serve as a supplementary medium for conceptual processing. The acquisition of a natural language provides a means of extending our cognitive reach by giving us access to an internalized combinatorial symbol system that augments and supports the context-sensitive embodied representational systems that exist independently of language. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the trolley method of moral philosophy has three shortcomings not yet adequately addressed in the literature. First, trolley problems highlight high stakes ethical decisions. These decisions do not represent the majority of ethical decisions made by most people, and thus, the trolley method ignores most of moral life. Second, the trolley method operates by way of a faux-anonymization of moral agents. This process leads to descriptions of moral agents being unwittingly supplied by those to (...) whom the problems are presented and thereby the formation of a paradigmatic moral agent which excludes a considerable number of real world moral persons. Lastly, the trolley method mischaracterizes what most moral decision-making is like by presenting a moral agent's decision as isolated, uninfluenced, and made with full self-awareness. (shrink)

« Le moment topologique » désigne la référence commune à la topologie faite par de nombreux auteurs dans les années soixante (Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida). Dans le paradigme phénoménologique, il conditionna deux réponses antonymes : d’un côté, chez Merleau-Ponty, il ouvrit la voie vers une nouvelle réduction, d’un autre côté, chez Derrida, il permit une rupture d’avec le cadre méthodologique de la phénoménologie. C’est pourtant le dépassement de cette opposition qui est ici proposé.

« En Europe dans cette Europe qu’on dit malade […] la proposition politique d’un revenu universel, inconditionnel, c’est-à-dire, détaché d’un emploi salarié est en train de s’imposer comme le seul critère de renouvellement des programmes politiques » affirmait déjà en 2016, Yann Moulier Boutang, économiste. Le droit à un emploi correctement rémunéré pour assurer les conditions concrètes d’existence est de moins en moins universel. Les États tentent de venir en aide à cette population qui, avec ou sans travail, n’arrive plus (...) à vivre décemment, par des mesures d’assistance, avec des aides conditionnées, complexes, stigmatisantes. En Europe comme dans le monde, des expérimentations d’aides versées inconditionnellement, ciblées, pendant une durée limitée, laissent déjà entrevoir les bienfaits d’une telle mesure. Il reste à franchir l’étape de l’universalité à l’échelle de toute une communauté politique pour évaluer ses effets, non seulement sur la partie la plus pauvre de la société, mais aussi son rôle transformateur de l’ensemble de la société. (shrink)

The European Union welfare standardsfor intensively kept pigs have steadilyincreased over the past few years and areproposed to continue in the future. It isimportant that the cost implications of thesechanges in welfare standards are assessed. Theaim of this study was to determine theprofitability of rearing pigs in a range ofhousing systems with different standards forpig welfare. Models were constructed tocalculate the cost of pig rearing (6–95 kg) in afully-slatted system (fulfilling minimum EUspace requirements, Directive 91630/EEC); apartly-slatted system; a high-welfare,straw-based system (...) (complying with the UK-basedRoyal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty toAnimals, Freedom Food standards) and afree-range system. The models were also used toassess the consequences of potential increasesin space allowance, and to estimate the cost ofrearing pigs under organic standards.The cost of rearing pigs ranged from92.0 p/kg carcass weight (cw) and 94.6 p/kgcw forthe partly-slatted and fully-slatted systems,to 98.8 p/kgcw and 99.3 p/kgcw for the FreedomFood and free-range systems respectively. Whenspace allowance was increased by 60% to levelsin a recent proposal to revise pig welfareDirective (91/630/EEC), the rearing costs wereunchanged for the free-range system but rose by4.6 p/kgcw for the fully-slatted system. Rearingcosts under organic standards were 31% higherthan in the free-range system. These resultssuggest that improved pig welfare can beachieved with a modest increase in cost. (shrink)

In 2000, Business and Society Review published a Special Issue of the journal to explore scholars’ ideas about how the practice of corporate citizenship would evolve in the 21st century. Contributors to the volume predicted a change in business motives for engaging in social initiatives, suggesting that managers would begin to see corporate citizenship as a strategic necessity to preserve organizational legitimacy in the face of changing social values. This article uses data from a study of corporate citizenship practices in (...) over 500 Norwegian companies to explore the validity of the Special Issue predictions. We begin by reviewing the foundations of organizational legitimacy theory and examine recent research documenting the growing importance of corporate citizenship for assessments of business legitimacy. We describe our study methods, present our results, and discuss the implications of our findings in this context. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the desires that play a role at the palliative stage and relate them to various approaches to patient autonomy. What attitude can physicians and other caregivers take to the desires of patients at the palliative stage? We examine this question by introducing five physicians who are consulted by Jackie, an imaginary patient with metastatic lung carcinoma. By combining the models of the physician-patient relationship developed by Emanuel and Emanuel (1992) and the Hellenistic approaches to desires (...) analyzed by Nussbaum (1994), five different ways of dealing with desires in the context of palliative care are sketched. The story of Jackie shows that desires are to a certain extent responsive to reasoning. In the palliative process, that can be a reason to devote attention to the desires of patients and caregivers and to determine which desires need to be fulfilled, which are less important, and how they are linked to emotions the patient has. (shrink)

The relationship between animal rights and contractarian theories of justice such as that of Rawls has long been vexed. In this article, I contribute to the debate over the possibility of inclusion of animals in Rawls’s theory of justice by critiquing the rationale he gives for their omission: that they do not possess moral personality. Contrary to Rawls’s assumptions, it appears that some animals may possess the moral powers that comprise moral personality, albeit to a lesser extent than most humans. (...) Some animals can act in pursuit of preferences and desires (and communicate them non-verbally), which might be taken as implicitly selecting a conception of the good; further, scientific research demonstrating inequity aversion and social play behaviors suggests that some animals can have a sense of justice relating to their own social groups. I conclude that Rawls’s theory needs to acknowledge any animals that can be considered to meet the threshold of moral personality, while the concept of moral personality as a range property may also require reconsideration. (shrink)

Dyadic coping (DC), how couples cope together to deal with a stressor like chronic illness, has received increased attention over the last three decades. The aim of the current study was to summarize the current state of research on DC in couples. We conducted a scoping review of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods studies published between 1990 and 2020, assessing DC in couples during three decades. 5,705 studies were identified in three electronic databases and hand searches. We included 643 sources in (...) this review (with a total ofN= 112,923 study participants). Most studies were based in the global North, particularly in the US and Europe. Publication numbers increased constantly over time. A third of study designs were cross-sectional studies followed by qualitative and longitudinal studies. The most prolific DC research areas were related to DC and minor stressors and DC and major physical health stressors. Overall, DC has been established internationally as a highly relevant construct in many disciplines (clinical, social, developmental, personality psychology, social work, nursing etc.). To conclude, the review reveals that future studies should focus on predictors, trajectories, and the importance of very specific DC behaviors for personal and dyadic functioning. (shrink)

Ce texte tente de tisser ensemble, entre les 2 auteurs, des lectures, des expériences, des échanges. C'est un texte d'éducation sur l'éducation. Chaque démarche exige des engagements, des remaniements conceptuels et une reprise d'élaborations toujours inachevées.--[Memento].

Anselm's ontological argument is one of the most fascinating, most controversial, and most misunderstood arguments in the entire history of Western thought. By centring the argument firmly in the Neoplatonic tradition within which Anselm was writing, Understanding Anselm's Ontological Argument sheds fresh light and clarity on this enigmatic piece of philosophy. It argues that, far from resting upon a fallacy or illegitimately attempting to define God into existence, Anselm's argument is a powerful and plausible philosophical proof, and deserves to be (...) taken seriously as such. Written to be understandable for specialists and non-specialists alike, Understanding Anselm's Ontological Argument is ideal for scholars and researchers in philosophy of religion and philosophy in the Middle Ages (especially Neoplatonism) as well as for medievalists in general. (shrink)

A common view in face recognition research holds that there is a stored representation specific to each known face. It is also posited that semantic or memory-based information cannot influence low-level face processing. The two experiments reported in this article investigate the nature of this representation and the flow of face information processing. Participants had to search for a particular primed face among other faces. In Experiment 1, the search was done in a context where distractors had either a different (...) degree of fame or the same degree of fame. In Experiment 2, the target face was primed either with semantic information or without any information. Both experiments demonstrated that increasing the display set size lengthened face detection time. However, the lengthening was a function of face fame. The search context also had an effect on the slope of the famous face detection. The results are explained in terms of the idea that face representations are reconstructed and that high- and low-level information are integrated into the processing. The integration process is not a conscious one. (shrink)

In this chapter we reflect on the relevance of peer review for assessing the quality of clinical ethics consultation. We contend that peer review in the narrative form as presented in this book provides an alternative to the formal clinical ethics consultation review procedures typically found in the clinical ethics literature. We elaborate on peer review as a reflection on clinical ethics consultation practice, the elements which a story should contain in order to provide a basis for peer review, and (...) the differences between the assessments of the peer reviewers. We argue that a narrative approach to assessing the quality of ethics consultation can be further developed by allowing all stakeholders who are involved in the clinical ethics practice to actively take part in the evaluation process, following a “responsive evaluation” approach. An example of this is creating a Community of Practice, the aim of which is to foster a joint learning process of all parties involved. At the end of this chapter, we draw conclusions on peer review as a dialogical tool for evaluating quality of clinical ethics consultation. (shrink)

M. W. Rowe’s outstanding book is the first full-dress biography of the philosopher J. L. (John Langshaw) Austin, who died in 1960 aged 48. During his comparatively short life, Austin made significa...

Introduction : digital technology and popular music sound -- Making sense of digital spatiality : Kate Bush's eerie collage -- The instrument formerly known as the machine : hyper-accuracy and sonic richness in Prince's Kiss -- The rebirth of silence in the company of noise : Portishead going retro -- Cut-ups and glitches : Los Sampler's and Squarepusher's freeze and flow -- Seasick computers : microrhythmic manipulation in the era of endless undo -- Autotuned voices : alienation and brokenhearted androids (...) -- Popular music in the digital era. (shrink)

The technologies used to govern performance at universities consist of monitoring and comparative instruments. They are designed to affect and direct behaviour. In these academic environments of exposure, comparison and self-monitoring are deeply entangled with a vulnerable affective economy. This article explores how these data may affect our moods and how academic value could be curated by other means and with care. Drawing on feminist new materialist thinking and speculative feminist storytelling, the article takes this picture of the actual as (...) a point of departure for discussing ways of experimenting with affirmative critique of the current use of data. Through a smaller experiment with thirty PhD students, the article discusses how to speculatively curate academic value by other means that provide more liveable world(ing)s than data visuals measuring performance and that engage other sensorial and affective registers. (shrink)

Some lives are more meaningful than others. Some lives are more important than others. What is the relationship between meaning in life and importance? Because both can be described as relating to significance, the two are often conflated. But these are rather different concepts and the meaningful and the important can easily come apart. They do, however, interact in important ways. When importance also meets the conditions for meaningfulness, it amplifies it, and importance on a large scale is a key, (...) and perhaps the only, source of superlative meaningfulness. When contrasted with the quest for meaning, the desire for importance can seem shallow and egocentric. But the desire to make an important contribution reflects a legitimate existential concern. And, in their best form, both the desire for importance, and that for meaningfulness, similarly combine outward-looking and self-regarding aspects. (shrink)

In the past few years, several democratic governments have published their National AI Strategies (NASs). These documents outline how AI technology should be implemented in the public sector and explain the policies that will ensure the ethical use of personal data. In this article, I examine these documents as political texts and reconstruct the political imaginary that underlies them. I argue that these documents intervene in contemporary democratic politics by suggesting that AI can help democracies overcome some of the challenges (...) they are facing. To achieve this, NASs use different kinds of imaginaries—democratic, sociotechnical and data—that help citizens envision how a future AI democracy might look like. As part of this collective effort, a new kind of relationship between citizens and governments is formed. Citizens are seen as autonomous data subjects, but at the same time, they are expected to share their personal data for the common good. As a result, I argue, a new kind of political imaginary is developed in these documents. One that maintains a human-centric approach while championing a vision of collective sovereignty over data. This kind of political imaginary can become useful in understanding the roles of citizens and governments in this technological age. (shrink)