Bowman-Smart et al. (2023) argue for a framework to examine the ethical issues associated with genetic screening for non-medical traits in the context of noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT). Such s...

How do young children learn how to talk about ethical concepts, such as fairness and equity? The current research assesses the effects of philosophy-based anti-bias lessons aimed at three to five-year-olds in a laboratory preschool and explores the relationship between socioemotional skills, language development, and understanding of ethical concepts. The constructivist curriculum was grounded in storybook lessons with corresponding activities. In a pre-posttest design, we interviewed children before and after lessons in fairness education that included book reading, related games, and (...) philosophical discussions. We found that children showed a significant increase in comprehension of equity-related terms and skin color awareness, and we found a positive relationship between children’s observed levels of community membership skills and their receptive vocabulary. In addition, receptive vocabulary skills predicted participant’s skin color awareness and their ability to tell a fairness narrative involving skin color following the lessons. The current study provides a framework for teachers to integrate ethical reasoning into a preschool curriculum and identifies some abilities occurring earlier than predicted by Jean Piaget. Given the divisive political climate surrounding anti-bias education, we hope that the present study encourages educators to put social emotional learning at the forefront of preschool pedagogy. (shrink)

In his Brouillon Project on conic sections, Girard Desargues studies the notion of traversale, which generalizes that of diameter introduced by Apollonius. One often reads that it is equivalent to the notion of polar, a concept that emerged in the beginning of 19th century. In this article we shall study in great detail the developments around that notion in the middle part of the Brouillon project. We shall in particular show, using the notes added by Desargues after the first draft (...) was written, how here arises a new theory, that of the polarity associated to a conic section. We shall show that besides a natural correspondance between points and lines, Desargues has understood that a conic induces on every line in its plane an involution, and how he progressively handles the considerable conceptual difficulties he has to deal with when trying to explain clearly his novative ideas. (shrink)

This review seeks to present a comprehensive picture of recent discussions in the social sciences of the anticipated impact of AI on the world of work. Issues covered include: technological unemployment, algorithmic management, platform work and the politics of AI work. The review identifies the major disciplinary and methodological perspectives on AI’s impact on work, and the obstacles they face in making predictions. Two parameters influencing the development and deployment of AI in the economy are highlighted: the capitalist imperative and (...) nationalistic pressures. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that emotions are characteristically passive. As we ordinarily think of them, emotions are ways in which we are acted upon, that is, moved or affected by aspects of our environment. Moreover, we have no voluntary control over whether we feel them. In this paper, I call attention to a much-neglected respect in which emotions are active, which is no less central to our pretheoretical concept of them. That is, in having emotions, we are engaged with the (...) world insofar as we respond to aspects of our environment. In this context, to say that an emotion is a response to x is tantamount to saying that x is a reason for which we have it. Elaborating this claim in light of a historically prominent conception of the active/passive distinction, I will argue that emotions are a form of spontaneity in virtue of their responsive character and contrast in this respect with perceptions, which are fundamentally receptive. While this proposal is prima facie opposed to the ordinary image of emotions as passive, I will show that it actually allows us to make proper sense of it. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 4, Page 244-253, October 2022. This article is a précis of my 2019 monograph The World-Directedness of Emotional Feeling: On Affect and Intentionality. The book engages with a growing trend of philosophical thinking according to which the felt dimension and the intentionality of emotion are unified. While sympathetic to the general approach, I argue for a reconceptualization of the form of intentionality that emotional feelings are widely thought to possess and, accordingly, of the kind of (...) role they play in our mental lives. More specifically, I argue that the way we feel in having an emotion is not a perception-like awareness of evaluative properties of its object, but instead constitutes the taking of a stand or position on this object in light of its evaluative properties. (shrink)

The political writings of Jean-Francois Lyotard, the prophet of the postmodern, are presented here as both the missing dimension of his work and the key to understanding his position within contemporary debate.

"A driving force in all Sartre's writing is his serious desire to change the life of his reader." -- Iris Murdoch.

Un entretien avec Jean-Luc Gleyze, président du Conseil départemental de la Gironde, qui porte avec une vingtaine de départements français un projet d’expérimentation d’un revenu de base d’un montant suffisant, d’au moins mille euros, automatique, inconditionnel, mais dégressif, c’est-à-dire dépendant des revenus de chacun.

This paper provides a typology of appeals to authority, identifying three distinct types: that which is based on a command; that which is based on expertise; and that which is based on dignity. Each type is distinguished with respect to the reaction that a failure to follow it ordinarily evokes. The rhetorical roots of Locke's ad verecundiam are traced to the rhetorical practices of ancient Rome.

La doctrine de Marx continue, alors même qu'elle n'a cessé d'être critiquée, de susciter l'intérêt voir l'adhésion d'un nombre croissant d'intellectuels. L'idée d'un "sens de l'Histoire", notamment, nourrit une littérature de recherche et un combat politique importants. Mais qu'en est-il réellement? A-t-on bien lu Marx? Jean Borella, qui cherche à tisser des liens entre philosophie et foi chrétienne, travaille dans cet ouvrage à sortir des sentiers battus du marxisme orthodoxe pour mettre en regard les conceptions matérialistes et christiques de (...) l'Histoire. (shrink)

(1) a. The fog extended from London toward Paris. (the state reading is an extent reading (Jackendoff 1990)) b. Debris covered the outfield. c. Water filled the glass.

The ambition and proposal for data modeling of myths presented in this paper is to link contemporary technical affordances to some canonical projects developed in structural anthropology. To articulate the theoretical promise and innovation of this proposal, we present a discrete-event system specification modeling and simulation approach in order to perform a generative analysis and a dynamic visualization of selected narratives, aimed at validating and revitalizing the transformational and morphodynamic theory and methodology proposed by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his structural analysis (...) of myth. After an analysis of Lévi-Strauss’s transformational methodology, we describe in detail how discrete-event system specification models are implemented and developed in the framework of a DEVSimPy software environment. The validation of the method involves a discrete-event system specification simulation based on the extension of discrete-event system specification models dedicated to provide a dynamic Google Earth visualization of the selected myth. Future work around the discrete-event system specification formalism in anthropology is described as well as future applications regarding the impact of computational models to new contemporary anthropological domains. (shrink)

Science and the institutions of science are far from democratic systems,and yet they are the most democratic of regimes. This essay examinesthe demand for transparency and public participation. One can distinguishseveral levels of public influence. Their function suggests thatdecision-makers, both scientists and technocrats, are being obligedto accept and work with rules which are no longer laid down by themselves.

In this paper I propose to continue the analysis of the appeal to authority begun at the last OSSA conference. I proceed by examining the well-documented use of the appeal made by the ancient Roman advocate, Cicero. The fact that Cicero expressed his opinion was expectably sufficient to give his auditors--responsible citizens all--reason to do as he desired. But why? The resolution of this puzzle points to a strong sense in which arguments can be called rhetorical , for the rational (...) force of Cicero's authority depends necessarily on what he says. (shrink)

Have we any obligations beyond our own borders? What form do these take? These questions are addressed through a concept of comparative justice indebted to the just war tradition and the equal moral regard of persons.

Le doute cartésien – théorique, généralisé, hyperbolique et volontaire – reprend et renforce tout d’abord les raisons sceptiques traditionnelles de douter, afin de mettre pour la première fois en doute tout le sensible, mais aussi de montrer que ces raisons buttent sur les naturae simplicissimae et la certitude de la mathesis universalis. Descartes forge alors un nouvel argument sceptique : le « Dieu qui peut tout », qui permet de penser que, lorsque je me rends à l’évidence des natures simples, (...) je peux me tromper du point de vue d’une autre rationalité et d’une évidence supérieure à la mienne. Mais le doute n’est pas seulement chez Descartes un moment et un moyen provisoires qu’il s’agirait de vaincre, et qui serait effectivement vaincu par la certitude du cogito. Puisqu’il ne dévoile aucune chose, n’énonce aucune proposition et n’engage pas la moindre prédication, le doute laisse en effet la parole ne dire qu’elle-même et se manifester ce qui y parle, c’est-à-dire celui qui parle, ego. On peut donc soutenir que c’est directement du doute, véritable premier principe cartésien, que provient l’existence. (shrink)

Résumé Le principe de précaution est une réponse apportée à un vrai problème. Les menaces auxquelles l’humanité se trouve confrontée aujourd’hui, et dont la mise en système pourrait mettre sa survie en danger, requièrent une forme de prudence radicalement nouvelle. Ni la phronêsis des Anciens ni le calcul des chances des Modernes ne conviennent. Le principe de précaution apparaît cependant incapable de relever ce défi, tant ses fondements conceptuels sont faibles et inadéquats. Il se trompe en particulier de cible en (...) posant que c’est l’incertitude qui paralyse l’action. On montre que c’est plutôt l’incapacité où l’on se trouve de transformer ce que l’on sait en croyances incitant à l’action. C’est au niveau d’une métaphysique de la temporalité que l’on cherche une réponse à ce défi, en introduisant des modalités de type bergsonien dans une nouvelle approche de l’argument dominateur. La construction qui en résulte conduit à une forme inédite de rationalité dont on explore les propriétés parfois paradoxales. (shrink)

The poor performances of typically developing children younger than 4 in the first-order false-belief task “Maxi and the chocolate” is analyzed from the perspective of conversational pragmatics. An ambiguous question asked by an adult experimenter (perceived as a teacher) can receive different interpretations based on a search for relevance, by which children according to their age attribute different intentions to the questioner, within the limits of their own meta-cognitive knowledge. The adult experimenter tells the child the following story of object-transfer: (...) “Maxi puts his chocolate into the green cupboard before going out to play. In his absence, his mother moves the chocolate from the green cupboard to the blue one.” The child must then predict where Maxi will pick up the chocolate when he returns. To the child, the question from an adult (a knowledgeable person) may seem surprising and can be understood as a question of his own knowledge of the world, rather than on Maxi's mental representations. In our study, without any modification of the initial task, we disambiguate the context of the question by (1) replacing the adult experimenter with a humanoid robot presented as “ignorant” and “slow” but trying to learn and (2) placing the child in the role of a “mentor” (the knowledgeable person). Sixty-two typical children of 3 years-old completed the first-order false belief task “Maxi and the chocolate,” either with a human or with a robot. Results revealed a significantly higher success rate in the robot condition than in the human condition. Thus, young children seem to fail because of the pragmatic difficulty of the first-order task, which causes a difference of interpretation between the young child and the experimenter. (shrink)

Around people who were close to him, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe would sometimes cry out with anger: “Death is a scandal! It is intolerable!” When he died almost fourteen years ago, prematurely and af...

Nietzsche and Heidegger were both lovers of language, and author Jean Graybeal argues that their writing styles demonstrate a relationship with the feminine dimension of language. Using as a framework the theories of Julia Kristeva concerning the "symbolic" and "semiotic" dispositions in language, Graybeal reads Nietzsche and Heidegger as writers and thinkers whose experimentation with language is directly relevant both to their quests for nonmetaphysical ways of thinking and to the feminist project of moving beyond male dominance. The chapters (...) on Nietzsche discuss portions of The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Ecce Homo with the question of woman in the forefront of the analysis. The chapters on Heidegger deal, first, with Being and Time, describing the ways in which Heidegger evokes the feminine and semioitic dimensions in language. Finally, eight of Heidegger's later essays are read with attention to feminie, maternal, and erotic imagery. (shrink)

Lee suggests a conceptualization of health data sharing not merely as an act of altruism, but as a gift. The difference is important, as the inscription of the latter in a social context inv...

A l'occasion du cinquantenaire de la mort de René Guénon, l'auteur retrace la vie de ce philosophe qu'un commentateur qualifia d'invisible, tant il fut discret et effacé. De son enfance en milieu catholique à son adhésion à l'islam, en passant par son intérêt pour l'ésotérisme, l'occultisme, l'hindouisme et son initiation maçonnique, Guénon surprend en se montrant un infatigable chercheur d'absolu et un précurseur du dialogue interreligieux. Cet ouvrage très complet propose une vivante évocation de la tradition symbolique, que René Guénon (...) a eu le mérite d'épurer. Sa pensée, tout en interrogeant les apports de l'Orient à l'Occident, les mythes et les symboles, dénonce les pseudo-religions, les sectes, le théosophisme ou l'erreur spirite, et évite le piège du syncrétisme. René Guénon estimait que tout homme doit tendre à la réalisation spirituelle et il fut un juge impitoyable de notre civilisation occidentale matérialiste. Jean-Luc Maxence éclaire l'itinéraire exceptionnel de cet auteur qui, en une vingtaine de livres, marqua plusieurs figures de son époque, de René Daumal à Louis Pauwels ou Raymond Abellio, et dont l'œuvre était considérée comme " l'une des plus singulières de ce temps " par le cardinal Daniélou, même si celui-ci ne partageait pas ses idées. Rebelle, inclassable, la pensée du " philosophe invisible " appartient au patrimoine de la philosophie. (shrink)

The genesis of Axel Honneth's ethics of recognition shows that it represents the attempt to critically rejuvenate historical materialism through an emphasis on the normative dimensions and the anthropological preconditions of social interaction. By making explicit this project to redefine a theory of praxis, the exact theoretical stance and the full practical potential of Honneth's social theory can be stressed. However, by contrast to its initial formulation, the mature theory of recognition appears to have interpreted praxis in a narrow interpersonalist (...) sense. This is especially evident for the spheres of socialisation and labour. The last part of the article argues that the initial definition of the project could have been taken in a more materialist direction. This would define the second marxist horizon of the ethics of recognition, one of fruitful future developments. (shrink)

A growing body of nursing writing is engaged in reviewing the material and relational world of nursing using geographical concepts. This paper draws upon research undertaken in hospital settings where nurses constituted the hospital as a home space for patients. Nurses’ practices created an equitable and patient‐centred use of physical space in the hospital ward, along with the intimate, extended and personal relationships associated by patients with a caring and homely environment. It is suggested that this constitution of space resonates (...) with the geographic notion of the therapeutic landscape and can be read as a challenge to more conventional uses of hospital spaces shaped by biomedical concerns. The implications of merging the distinctly different spaces and places of home and hospital are also explored using the concepts of hybridity and spatial vulnerability. The complex hybrid nursing creation of home space within hospital places works against the grain of usual understandings of hospitals as specialised illness spaces that are the domain of the health professional inhabitants. While there are limitations and dangers in the representation, this constitution of space is an expression of core nursing values privileging patient–nurse relationships and supports the maintenance of identity and personal expression. (shrink)

Les parlers poitevins nord-occidentaux (Noirmoutier, Marais nord vendéen) présentent une variation allophonique complexe du vocalisme. On peut distinguer plusieurs niveaux de diphtongaison qui rendent ces variétés particulièrement intéressantes pour l’analyse phonologique. L’étonnante diversité des formes phonétiques en surface peut cependant se réduire à deux grandes catégories de noyaux vocaliques, simples (monophtongues) et complexes (monophtongues longues et diphtongues sous-jacentes). Les premières sont sujettes à des contraintes d’expression liées à l’atérité, ou laxité, tandis que les deuxièmes alternent des voyelles tendues avec des (...) diphtongues décroissantes ou fermantes dans l’oral spontané. Cette contribution traite principalement de comment une enquête sur la structure phonologique d’une variété dialectale peut durer vingt ans, en faisant alterner diverses approches et divers angles de vue sur les données : transcription phonétique, spectrographie acoustique, analyse phonologique tendant à devenir une enquête phonologique amenée à remettre en cause ses prémisses et ses instruments d’observation des faits de parole pour aboutir à une description de la langue. (shrink)

À partir de l’analyse d’un argument présenté dans la correspondance avec More, cette étude examine la conception cartésienne du rapport de l’étendue à l’impénétrabilité à travers le prisme de l’imagination. Je montre que l’argument en question est une expérience de pensée qui s’appuie sur le caractère inimaginable d’une étendue pénétrable. Je défends l’idée selon laquelle la conception proprement cartésienne de l’imagination implique que le contenu et les limites de nos actes d’imagination dépendent des propriétés des images cérébrales. J’en déduis que (...) cette conception particulière de l’imagination explique pourquoi l’argument des lettres à More est concluant du point de vue de Descartes. (shrink)

L’article se propose, à partir de l’expérience de la construction et de l’exploitation des bases de données dialectales de la BDLC (corse) et du THESOC (occitan), de cerner ce qu’un grand corpus est susceptible d’apporter à la phonologie. La réponse, appuyée sur quelques cas d’espèces, fait intervenir trois niveaux : celui de l’établissement des faits à soumettre à l’analyse, celui de la validation des hypothèses émises, celui de la valeur heuristique des données prises en compte. Les faits aléatoirement rassemblés dans (...) un grand corpus et donc non nécessairement pris en compte dans l’analyse initiale sont en effet de nature à transformer la vision de la clôture du corpus, à confirmer (ou infirmer ce qui, in fine, est aussi important) les hypothèses avancées, à suggérer d’autres solutions aux problèmes rencontrés que celles initialement envisagées. Un des points saillants, en outre, est, au plan théorique, la mise en discussion de la notion d’entité discrète, tant en matière d’unités phonologiques (de type phonème) que d’unités systémiques (de type idiome localisé) tant il est vrai qu’en matière de langue il n’existe qu’un continuum. L’idiolecte est déjà composite, l’idiome local n’est qu’un chaînon dans le continuum aréal. Les unités discrètes constituent donc l’instrument d’analyse incontournable du fait linguistique, une réalité dans la représentation qu’un locuteur a de son système ; mais l’observable est un continuum, un ensemble de cellules perméables les unes aux autres, si c’est bien dans la conscience collective que se trouve (déposée) la langue, conformément au dire saussurien. (shrink)

A Controlled Not variant of the standard quantum teleportation protocol affords a step-by-step analysis of what is, or can be said to be, achieved in the process in either location. Dominant interpretations of what quantum teleportation consists in and implies are reviewed in this light. Being mindful of the statistical significance of the terms and operations involved, as well as awareness of classical analogies, can help sort out what is specifically quantum-mechanical, and what is not, in so-called teleportation. What the (...) latter achieves appears to be the transmission, without the involvement of mysterious channels, of what a quantum state encapsulates: the multitiered probabilistic characterization of a given preparation, which might be all we can possibly know about a physical system in a given experimental situation. (shrink)

For fifty years, Bolivia’s political party system was a surprisingly robust component of an otherwise fragile democracy, withstanding coups, hyperinflation, guerrilla insurgencies, and economic chaos. Why did it suddenly collapse around 2002? This article offers a theoretical lens combining cleavage theory with Schattschneider’s concept of competitive dimensions for an empirical analysis of the structural and ideological characteristics of Bolivia’s party system from 1952 to 2010. Politics shifted from a conventional left-right axis of competition, unsuited to Bolivian society, to an ethnic/rural–cosmopolitan/urban (...) axis closely aligned with its major social cleavage. That shift fatally undermined elite parties and facilitated the rise of structurally and ideologically distinct organizations, as well as a new indigenous political class, that transformed the country’s politics. Decentralization and political liberalization were the triggers that politicized Bolivia’s latent cleavage, sparking revolution from below. The article suggests a folk theorem of identitarian cleavage and outlines a mechanism linking deep social cleavage to sudden political change. (shrink)

We introduce nudges in order to incite investors to choose Socially Responsible Investment funds instead of traditional funds. We have set up two online experiments with a total of 713 US retail investors, using three types of nudges to elicit their effects on investors’ SRI investments level: making SRI the default investment, introducing a SRI explanation message, and priming ethical values by displaying shocking images. Making SRI the default option is the most efficient nudge to influence investors towards SRI. Its (...) effect is twofold. First, around 50% of investors do not opt-out of the default allocation. Second, even investors who opt-out of the default allocation invest more in SRI than those in the control group, an effect that appears driven by anchoring. Although investors subjected to both priming and message content marginally increase their SRI investment, priming or message content in isolation appears to have a non-significant influence. For choice architects who want to steer retail investors towards SRI funds, making them the default option appears to be the most powerful nudge. (shrink)

Que signifie l’Europe pour les juristes? La première réponse, de caractère descriptif, renvoie aux deux ordres juridiques européens, celui de l’Union Européenne et celui du Conseil de l’Europe. Ces deux ordres juridiques reposent sur des traités et les États qui adhèrent à ces traités sont reconnus comme « européens ». Le concept juridique d’Europe est donc distinct du concept géographique : il intègre des territoires situés en Asie ou outremer. L’Europe juridique ne correspond pas non plus à un peuple européen, (...) mais à une pluralité de peuples reliés à des États-nations dont les institutions démocratiques ont approuvé l’adhésion à l’Europe. La soumission au droit des traités européens est ainsi à la base, conventionnelle, de l’Europe juridique. Cette situation peut être envisagée comme une série de fictions qui ont donné naissance à un réseau, relativement stables, de règles sur la protection des droits de l’homme. C’est ce droit cosmopolite des droits de l’homme qui peut être considéré comme la structure fondamentale du concept juridique d’Europe. (shrink)

Drawing on a forthcoming book by Rok Benčin on the concept of world, the article proposes a reading of _Between the Acts_ by Virginia Woolf that focuses on the dialectic of dispersion and unity. The novel presents a multiplicity of dispersed and fragmented transcendental frameworks that tend towards – an attempt that is always doomed to fail, but always begins anew – unification within the ideological apparatuses. In this endless dialectic, literature occupies a singular place, for the fictional structure of (...) these frameworks makes of it a transcendental-abyss, which enables passage from the novel of worlds to the world of the novel. (shrink)