The term 'therapeutic misconception' (TM) was introduced in 1982 to conceptualize how some psychiatry trial participants perceived and interpreted their involvement in research. TM has since been identified in many settings and is a major component in research ethics discussions. A qualitative study included a subgroup of interviews with five parents (two couples, one mother) who declined to enrol their baby in a neonatal trial. Analysis suggested the possibility of a counterpart to TM which, given the original terminology, we term (...) the 'injurious misconception' (IM). While TM is closely linked to the elision of care and research, and involves an over-stated sense of benefit and protection, IM may be a product of a particularly keen and discomforting sense of distinctions between care and research and a correspondingly over-stated sense of risk and threat. (shrink)

The objective of the study was to explore parental experiences of being offered participation in a previous neonatal research study involving venepuncture. The method employed was a questionnaire-based exploration of parents' attitudes in those approached to participate in a study of term and preterm immunization responses (Preterm Immunisation Study [PREMIS]). We explored experience of the initial approach, knowledge of study, venepuncture and views on research ‘in general’. In all, 59% of families responded. Highest response rates were for those participating in (...) PREMIS (87% term/69% preterm) and lowest in decliners (34% and 35%). Responding parents participating in PREMIS were well informed, positive about research and did not find the venepuncture problematic. Sixty percent of responding parents who declined PREMIS attributed their declining to the need for venepuncture. In conclusion, parents participating or declining a neonatal study involving venepuncture are different, but participating parents were well informed and seemed able to judge that participation was right for them such that in consenting families venepuncture itself is not problematic. (shrink)

Digital Cognitive Technologies is an interdisciplinary book which assesses the socio-technical stakes of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), which are at the core of the Knowledge Society. This book addresses eight major issues, analyzed by authors writing from a Human and Social Science and a Science and Technology perspective. The contributions seek to explore whether and how ICTs are changing our perception of time, space, social structures and networks, document writing and dissemination, sense-making and interpretation, cooperation, politics, and the dynamics (...) of collective activity (socio-informatics). (shrink)

The well-known experiments of Nisbett and Wilson lead to the conclusion that we have no introspective access to our decision-making processes. Johansson et al. have recently developed an original protocol consisting in manipulating covertly the relationship between the subjects’ intended choice and the outcome they were presented with: in 79.6% of cases, they do not detect the manipulation and provide an explanation of the choice they did not make, confirming the findings of Nisbett and Wilson. We have reproduced this protocol, (...) while introducing for some choices an expert guidance to the description of this choice. The subjects who were assisted detected the manipulation in 80% of cases. Our experiment confirms Nisbett and Wilson’s findings that we are usually unaware of our decision processes, but goes further by showing that we can access them through specific mental acts. (shrink)

In the 1970s and 1980s a strong opposition and anxiety towards biological and naturalizing knowledges was the norm in feminist discourse. In the past decades the certainties of that ‘anti-biologism’ have been challenged, in part because of a new recognition of the role of contingency in both biological determination and biological science. What seems to have survived the shift is a set of normative assumptions concerning the role of determinacy and contingency (or being-born and becoming) in the political implications of (...) ontological claims: an assumed political valorization of contingency. This article challenges those assumptions. It draws attention to the embrace of contingency and processuality on the part of supremacist biopolitical discourse, and suggests the need to think again about the politics of contingency and becoming (in constructivist as well as biologistic discourses). Focusing on the issue of racism and supremacist-specification, the article takes a genealogical look at ‘second-wave’ feminist anti-biologism. Monique Wittig’s materialist feminist attack on naturalizing ideology and ‘the myth of woman’ provides the (ideal-typical) historical example. The article draws attention to curious absences in Wittig’s (and Rosalind Rosenberg’s) anti-biologistic statements concerning early 20th-century biologistic feminism: the absence of a critique of eugenics, racism and supremacism. Arguably the condemnation of biology as a conservative ‘ideology of the status quo’ created masks for biopolitical ontology, obscuring the progressive, dynamic, processual character of biologism and of modern racism. While dislodging some powers of biologistic discourse, feminist anti-biologism might also have played a part in facilitating the revitalization of biopolitical racism within the constructivist culturalist rubric. The aim of the article is not to critique ‘second-wave’ feminism from the perspective of contemporary scholarship, but to help generate new ways of thinking and feeling about the role of ontology, contingency and temporality in the present politics of classification. (shrink)

Living together peacefully in a world of differences asks for a practice of respecting the irreducible difference of the other. Acknowledging this `not-me' of the other subject generates an in-between: a space/time between subjects that cannot be transgressed other than by violence. Following Irigaray, I argue that this `in-between' comes about through the passion of wonder, a being touched in the flesh in the encounter with the other, which opens the subject to him/herself and to the other. To perceive this (...) touch asks for a life-style directed at keeping open and sensitizing the sensibilities of the senses, so that the subject's aesthesis or awareness for the perceptions of the sensible flesh and of its reactions to the other is heightened. Key-element in this aesthetics is the practice of breathing. It enables the subject to remain rooted in him/or herself and open to the other: generating and respecting the in-between between them. (shrink)

The Middle English Partonope of Blois possesses two characteristics which are more in keeping with twelfth-century French romance than with fifteenth-century English literature: a strong focus on place and the forceful presence of the heroine. Both Melior and her city undergo a substantial shift in identity: Melior is transformed from a dominating woman who seeks to control the hero into a more passive figure; Chef d'Oire changes both in character — from being an otherworldly magical place with its own independent (...) sense of time to a tournament venue more grounded in reality — and in the terminology which is used to describe it. Throughout the work Melior and her city are portrayed as interdependent and inseparable, and in order to convert the initially subversive and powerful Melior into a more conventional romance heroine it is also necessary to adapt the image of her city. (shrink)

IntroductionJamais construit, jamais occupé, le Panoptique de Bentham demeure une architecture virtuelle qu’il est possible d’interpréter, de rêver ou de « cauchemarder » avec peut-être plus de liberté que si elle s’était incarnée dans la pierre. Si d’un côté, des recherches récentes ont permis de préciser l’évolution historique de ce projet dans la pensée de Bentham, dans d’autres domaines, le Panoptique est un paradigme utilisé pour lire la littérature anglo-saxonne de la fin du XVIIIe sièc..

Alors que l’analogie (qu’elle soit entendue au sens propre comme égalité de rapports ou au sens faible comme métaphore ou comparaison) est largement répandue dans la philosophie ancienne (chose évidente quand on lit les autres présocratiques, Platon et Aristote), Anaxagore ne fait usage d’aucun type d’analogie. Il met en revanche l’accent sur un autre type de relation que nous appellerons l’« homologie », terme par lequel nous entendons une relation d’identité entre deux choses. De plus, alors que l’analogie était habituellement (...) utilisée dans un but heuristique, nous verrons que l’homologie est à chaque fois révélée au moyen d’une inférence. Le but de cet article est d’essayer de montrer que ces deux faits sont liés et qu’Anaxagore a délibérément choisi de remplacer l’analogie par l’homologie afin de rendre manifeste, grâce à l’écriture, une loi universelle sous‑jacente aux phénomènes sensibles, à savoir l’irréductibilité du mélange universel, qui s’avère être un obstacle à l’activité de l’Intellect cosmique autant que sa condition de possibilité. (shrink)

Around the world, unhealthy diets are a leading cause of disease. Shifting population diets in a healthier direction will require downstream policy interventions. This means changing the composition of the processed food supply, particularly reducing salt, sugar and fat. Mandatory nutrient limits imposed by government are one way of achieving this. However, they have been criticized as a particularly intrusive regulatory option, interfering with both free markets and free choices. At the same time, voluntary industry reformulation has become an intervention (...) favoured by national governments, the World Health Organization and the food industry. This article uses a comparison of the two interventions—which share a common public health goal, albeit achieved through different regulatory means—as a basis to evaluate the ethical charges against mandatory nutrient limits. It makes three main findings: that both affect free dietary choice in very similar ways; that dominant public health ethics frameworks are not well equipped to compare mandatory and voluntary forms of regulation; and that food governance is inherently multisectoral, involving markets, governments and the public. Taking these findings into account, the article calls for a more nuanced ethical evaluation of food reformulation policies. (shrink)

"L'usage substantivé du mot 'soi' est intriguant. Le pronom tonique 'soi' ne pose pas de problème particulier dans les expressions comme 'prendre soin de soi', 'compter sur soi' ou 'être hors de soi'. Mais parler d'un 'soi', c'est aller au-delà de la réalité grammaticale et supposer une identité personnelle à travers la diversité des expériences. Or, l'idée de soi et la croyance en l'identité personnelle ont été mises en question par David Hume, dont les arguments résonnent toujours dans la philosophie (...) contemporaine. Le but de ce livre est double : montrer, en historiens de la philosophie, de quelle façon le philosophe britannique a répondu à ces problèmes, et évaluer la fécondité de ces résultats pour les sciences de l'esprit."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Irigaray demonstrates that metaphysics depends upon the specific negation and exclusion of the female body. Readings of Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman tend to highlight the status of this excluded materiality: is there an essential female body which precedes negation or is the feminine only an effect of exclusion? I approach Irigaray's work by way of another question: is it possible to move beyond a feminist critique of metaphysics and towards a feminist philosophy?

Collaborative forms of work such as extended networks, expert groups, and consortia increasingly structure biomedical activities. They are particularly prominent in the cancer field, where procedures such as multicenter clinical trials have been instrumental in establishing the specialty of oncology, and subfields such as cancer genetics, where bioclinical activities—for example, testing for breast and ovarian cancer genes and follow-up interventions—are predicated on the articulation of a number of tasks performed by new clinical collectives. In this article, we examine the founding (...) and development of a French bioclinical collective—the Groupe Génétique et Cancer —that coordinates and structures the activities of most French actors in cancer genetics and operates simultaneously in the clinical, research, and regulatory domains. To examine the group’s structure and dynamics, the article combines information gathered through traditional fieldwork methods with information elicited from a coauthorship and semantic-network analysis of the publications of GGC members from 1969 to 2001. (shrink)

Quand l’historienne autrichienne Brigitte Hamann publie en 1986 Bertha von Suttner. Ein Leben für den Frieden, elle met fin à la longue traversée du désert que subissait depuis sa mort en juin 1914 la pacifiste autrichienne Bertha von Suttner, Prix Nobel de la paix en 1905 et auteure de Die Waffen nieder!, roman antimilitariste signé de son nom et titre, paru en 1889 et devenu le best-seller de la fin du xixe siècle. Alors qu’elle avait été une des grandes figures (...) publiques du tournant du siè... (shrink)

We argue that dominant white cultural views and public health co-produce race as a technology that charts the path of viral transmission away from the white bodies to form a trajectory for an otherwise aimless disease. This epistemological project is one enmeshed in popular culture, medical practice, and biopolitics. COVID-19 and the related Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement work together to make visible the narrative technologies. This project contributes to understanding race and public health as co-constituted in ways that shape (...) imaginative possibilities, material and agential realties, and health outcomes in light of COVID-19. Our argument is novel in naming race a technology of American public health and taking up Coeckelbergh and Reijers’ call for a normative theory of narrative technology. We extend Coeckelbergh and Reijers’ narrative technologies to include race, a narrative artifact, co-produced by biology, public health, and individual actors. (shrink)

This paper shows how solidarity is one of the founding principles in Thomas More's Utopia. In the fictional republic of Utopia described in Book II, solidarity has a political and a moral function. The principle is at the center of the communal organization of Utopian society, exemplified in a number of practices such as the sharing of farm work, the management of surplus crops, or the democratic elections of the governor and the priests. Not only does solidarity benefit the individual (...) Utopian, but it is a prerequisite to ensure the prosperity of the island of Utopia and its moral preeminence over its neighboring countries. However, a limit to this principle is drawn when the republic of Utopia faces specific social difficulties, and also deals with the rest of the world. In order for the principle of solidarity to function perfectly, it is necessary to apply it exclusively within the island or the republic would be at risk. War is not out of the question then, and compassion does not apply to all human beings. This conception of solidarity, summed up as “Utopia first!,” could be dubbed a Machiavellian strategy, devised to ensure the durability of the republic. We will show how some of the recommendations of Realpolitik made by Machiavelli in The Prince correspond to the Utopian policy enforced to protect their commonwealth. (shrink)

Pour projeter de la lumière dans de nombreux coins et recoins obscurs de la logique pure de Husserl et dans les rapports entre sa logique formelle et sa logique transcendantale, et combler des lacunes empêchant qu’on arrive à une appréciation juste de sa Mannigfaltigkeitslehre, ou théorie de multiplicités, on examine comment, en prônant une théorie des systèmes déductifs, ou systèmes d’axiomes, comme tâche suprême de la logique pure, Husserl cherchait à résoudre certains problèmes épineux auxquels il s’était heurté en écrivant (...) Philosophie de l’arithmétique. Ces problèmes sont décrits. Ensuite, on rassemble les éléments nécessaires pour caractériser ce que Husserl, à travers les textes présentement disponibles, voulait dire des Mannigfaltigkeiten. Pour conclure, il est indiqué comment Husserl pouvait considérer que sa théorie représentait une solution aux problèmes qui avaient conduit à son élaboration.To shed light on the numerous dark areas surrounding Husserl’s ideas about pure logic and the relationship between his formal logic and his transcendental logic, and so provide an accurate characterisation of his Mannigfaltigkeitslehre, a close look is taken at how, by advocating a theory of deductive systems, or axiomatic systems as the highest task of pure logic, Husserl sought to resolve certain thorny problems he encountered when writing the Philosophy of Arithmetic. Those problems are described. Then, his ideas about axiomatization and manifolds are drawn together from the various sources now available to provide a more complete picture of his Mannigfaltigkeitslehre. In conclusion, it is shown how Husserl considered his theory to be a solution to the problems leading to its development. (shrink)

Location Based Services (LBS) are information services that can be\naccessed with mobile phones. They rely on the system's knowledge of the\ngeographical position and the identifier of the phone being used, and\ntherefore on collecting data on an identified or identifiable user. In\nthis respect, the French data protection act stipulates that users agree\nto be supplied with an LBS service on a fully transparent basis and that\ntheir location data must be erased or made anonymous once the service\nhas been provided. In some cases, location-based (...) services are provided\non the user's own request, but in other cases, the individual concerned\nis unaware of the fact that third parties know where s/he is. This\ncreates potential for surveillance and misuse on the part of both police\nand businesses. What is at stake here is not only the right of\nindividuals to freedom of movement and to privacy but also, and more\nperniciously, citizens' autonomy with regard to information and\ndecision-making. (shrink)

Abstract There is general agreement that the targeting of civilians in war is morally wrong. But sometimes starvation tactics are accepted as being a better option than direct military attacks. This article questions this view by arguing that starvation tactics affect civilians first and inflict long-term suffering. It argues that they are not just unless they can be limited to a small area where only military personnel will be affected. It looks at the provision for starvation tactics in the Geneva (...) Conventions, and at the argument of double effect. It then illustrates the argument with three case studies: the siege of Leningrad; the application of sanctions prior to and during the Gulf War in 1990?1991; and restrictions of food during the war in Bosnia. (shrink)

Introduction Ce texte explore une dimension profondément « pré-réfléchie » de notre expérience vécue, qui semble jouer un rôle essentiel dans la genèse d’une perception, mais aussi d’une compréhension, d’un sens. À partir de plusieurs exemples, et notamment celui de l’écoute d’un son, je montrerai que cette dimension possède des caractéristiques structurelles spécifiques, qui semblent très différentes de celles de l’expérience dont nous sommes habituellement conscients. Notamment, la distinct...

Early mathematical abilities matter for later formal arithmetical performances, school and professional success. Accordingly, it seems central to accurately assess numerical school readiness at school entrance. This is a prerequisite for identifying school-starters who are at risk to encounter difficulties in mathematics and stimulate their acquisition of mathematical fundamentals as soon as possible. In the present study, we present a new test which allows professionals working with children (e.g., teachers, school psychologists, speech therapists, school doctors) to assess children’s numerical school (...) readiness when they enter formal schooling in a simple, rapid and efficient manner. 346 children were assessed at the entrance of 1st grade (6-to-7-year-olds) with the novel numerical school readiness test (T1). In addition, children’s numerical skill levels were evaluated with classical arithmetical tests at T1 and a year later in 2nd grade (T2, 7-to-8-year-olds). Performance in these classical tests in 1st and 2nd grade systematically related to their early mathematical abilities assessed with the numerical school readiness test. By using the present test to evaluate numerical school readiness it is possible to identify pupils at risk for developing poor mathematical skills right from the start of formal schooling. Such a tool is needed, as a child’s scholastic level in mathematic at school entrance (or school readiness) is known to be critical for his or her future school and professional carrier (Currie & Thomas, 1999; Duncan et al., 2007; Pagani, Fitzpatrick, Archambault, & Janosz, 2010; Rivera-Batiz, 1992; Romano, Babchishin, Pagani, & Kohen, 2010). (shrink)

We shall prove here that any binary relation on a base E with cardinality n > 6 is reconstructible from its restrictions of cardinality 2, 3, 4 and . This proof needs results of part I of this paper where we characterize any pair of relations R, R' which are 2-, 3- and 4-hypomorphic. As a corollary we obtain that any binary relation is -reconstructible.

We offer an ecological (Gibsonian) alternative to cognitive (im)penetrability. Whereas Pylyshyn explains cognitive (im)penetrability by focusing solely on computations carried out by the nervous system, according to the ecological approach the perceiver as a knowing agent influences the entire animal-environmental system: in the determination of what constitutes the environment (affordances), what constitutes information, what information is detected and, thus, what is perceived.