Si les animaux d’élevage comme les animaux d’expérimentation intéressent depuis une trentaine d’années de plus en plus de personnes – de chercheurs, de militants –, les animaux dit de compagnie, en revanche, semblent toujours pâtir du préjugé selon lequel, parce qu’ils relèveraient d’une relation privée, ils seraient sans intérêt scientifique ou philosophique. Donna Haraway propose une façon tout à fait singulière de court-circuiter cet arrêt de la pensée afin de pouvoir re-problématiser cette relation à nouveau frais. Ce qui change immédiatement, (...) c’est le caractère non plus privé mais politique de cette co-relation : l’histoire biologique et politique qui nous unit à ces animaux dit de compagnie apparus massivement dans les années 1970 est toute aussi complexe que celle que nous partageons par ailleurs avec nos autres espèces compagnes. Comment raconter cette histoire et hériter des conséquences de cette co-évolution? Comment prendre au sérieux, moralement, politiquement nos relations inter-espèces? (shrink)

À la fin du xviii e siècle, le concept de génération se voit progressivement remplacé par ceux de reproduction et de production dans les champs a priori sans rapport que sont les sciences naturelles et les sciences économiques. Après avoir esquissé une restitution de ce déplacement conceptuel, il s’agira d’interroger ce qui se joue aujourd’hui derrière les reprises de ce concept et, plus largement, du paradigme de la génération.

Émilie Hache and Bruno Latour argue in their article “Morality or Moralism?” that contemporary moral treatments of animals exhibit a hard-won insensitivity, and a corresponding inability to respond, to the “call” of animals—to the moral claims that animals legitimately make on us. In responding, Rowlands commends aspects of this thesis but argues that Hache and Latour have improperly formulated it. Rather than being an inability to respond to the call of animals, contemporary moral treatments of the moral claims (...) of animals exhibit a willingness to respond to their call in the only way that remains available, given the development of moral discourse during the last three hundred years. The willingness to respond to the call is admirable; but the restriction on moral discourse that makes this the only available form of moral response is, Rowlands suggests, both admirable and regrettable in almost equal measure. (shrink)

This response to “Morality or Moralism?” by Émilie Hache and Bruno Latour, while accepting the plausibility and importance of their critique of moralism in the name of morality, identifies a number of questionable steps and assumptions in their development of it. Mulhall's response questions an ambiguity in their specifications of what morality and moralism are—an unexplained tendency on their part to occlude distinctively nonhuman animal life in favor of the inanimate when advocating a concern for the nonhuman, and what (...) appears to be a misreading of Michel Serres. (shrink)

Tamen's essay is one of a group of responses to Émilie Hache and Bruno Latour's article “Morality or Moralism?” which advocates our “sensitization” to nonhuman things. Tamen examines the picture of universal reciprocation that Hache and Latour propose, according to which, when I “bow at” (acknowledge) things, some things bow back at me, and I must treat whatever bows back as if it were like me. Unlike James Lovelock, a passage from whose work they discuss, Hache and (...) Latour understand this picture in a sense that is essentially “honorary.” The picture or premise they propose sets up, they admit, “a promising misunderstanding.” Tamen offers two arguments in response: one against as-if locutions and another against the very notion of setting up a misunderstanding. But it is good news, Tamen concludes, that sensitization cannot be set up. To what extent we would want a “revival of scruple” to succeed is a serious question, the answer dependent on how much scruple about which things and for what reasons. However pleasing the Hache/Latour or Lovelock picture, it is easy to imagine an intemperate degree of scruple, requiring agonies of continual debate and calculation of the minutest consequences of our acts and the most unlivable alternatives. (shrink)

This response to “Morality or Moralism?” by Emilie Hache and Bruno Latour takes issue with their distinction between two kinds of morality. Hache and Latour see a difference between morality as sensitivity and morality as principled claims regarding moral considerability. They then argue for form-content contradiction/harmony between these purportedly opposing senses. In responding, Zamir argues that these operations can be construed as distinct kinds of sensitivity. Arguments that advocate bringing nonhuman animals into moral consideration can be abstract and (...) general. But this does not mean that such arguments or those who make them are insensitive. Some kinds of sensitivity are attuned to general facts rather than to particulars. Hache and Latour thus err by reducing moral sensitivity to a response to particulars, which leads them to perceive form-content tensions where these do not exist. Zamir's response also argues against a tendency in posthumanist animal ethics—a tendency shared by Hache and Latour's article—to refuse descending to discuss the actual practical questions regarding animals that Anglo-American animal ethics explores. Zamir examines (and rejects) some possible posthumanist arguments that might support remaining philosophically uninvolved in these discussions. (shrink)

Compared to other animals, humans appear to have a special motivation to share experiences and mental states with others (Clark, 2006;Grice, 1975), which enables them to enter a condition of ‘we’ or shared intentionality (Tomasello & Carpenter, 2005). Shared intentionality has been suggested to be an evolutionary response to unique problems faced in complex joint action coordination (Levinson, 2006;Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005) and to be unique to humans (Tomasello, 2014). The theoretical and empirical bases for this claim, (...) however, present several issues and inconsistencies. Here, we suggest that shared intentionality can be approached as an interactional achievement, and that by studying how our closest relatives, the great apes, coordinate joint action with conspecifics, we might demonstrate some correlate abilities of shared intentionality, such as the appreciation of joint commitment. We provide seven examples from bonobo joint activities to illustrate our framework. (shrink)

This groundbreaking book provides an analytical tool to understand how and why evil works in the world as it does. Deconstructing memory, history, and myth as received wisdom, the volume critically examines racism, sexism, poverty, and stereotypes.

Brian Epstein has argued (in The Ant Trap and ‘Anchoring versus grounding’) that social kinds ‘export’ across worlds. Although the conditions for war criminality are not ‘fixed’ in the Empire, for instance, Darth Vader is a war criminal there. And, according to Epstein, an account of social construction should imply that he is. Ultimately, he argues that ‘grounding-only’ accounts of social construction – like those proposed by Jonathan Schaffer and Aaron Griffith – imply that social kinds do not export across (...) worlds. As a result, he argues that we need more than grounding; in particular, we need both grounding and what he calls ‘anchoring’ to account for it. In this paper, I argue that, once we draw a distinction between what I call ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ social kinds, Epstein’s argument is either invalid or irrelevant. (shrink)

Just as contemporary metaphysics, in general, is marked by an interest in ground, contemporary social metaphysics, in particular, is marked by an interest in social construction. It’s no surprise, then, that some contemporary metaphysicians have come to understand social construction in terms of ground. In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake. In particular, I argue that any otherwise plausible account of construction as ground is objectionably revisionary. First, I discuss an argument for the view that construction is (...) ground that is endorsed by its proponents, and identify its weaknesses. I then consider, and dispense with, different versions of the view that construction is ground, and argue that these either overgeneralize, undergeneralize, or both. After responding to the objection that my arguments presuppose monism with respect to construction, I conclude that though ground is relevant to construction, extant ground-theoretic accounts of its relevance fail to capture it. (shrink)

Between 2013 and 2016, West Africa experienced the largest ever outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease. In the absence of registered treatments or vaccines to control this lethal disease, the World Health Organization coordinated and supported research to expedite identification of interventions that could control the outbreak and improve future control efforts. Consequently, the World Health Organization Research Ethics Review Committee was heavily involved in reviews and ethics discussions. It reviewed 24 new and 22 amended protocols for research studies including interventional (...) and observational studies. WHO-ERC provided the reviews within on average 6 working days. The WHO-ERC often could not provide immediate approval of protocols for reasons which were not Ebola Virus Disease specific but related to protocol inconsistencies, missing information and complex informed consents. WHO-ERC considerations on Ebola Virus Disease specific issues are presented. To accelerate study approval in future public health emergencies, we recommend: internally consistent and complete submissions with information documents in language participants are likely to understand, close collaboration between local and international researchers from research inception, generation of template agreements for data and sample sharing and use during the ongoing global consultations on bio-banks, formation of Joint Scientific Advisory and Data Safety Review Committees for all studies linked to a particular intervention or group of interventions, formation of a Joint Ethics Review Committee with representatives of the Ethics Committees of all institutions and countries involved to strengthen reviews through the different perspectives provided without the ‘opportunity costs’ for time to final approval of multiple, independent reviews, direct information exchange between the chairs of advisory, safety review and ethics committees, more Ethics Committee support for investigators than is standard and a global consultation on criteria for inclusion of pregnant women and children in interventional studies for conditions which put them at particularly high risk of mortality or other irreversible adverse outcomes under standard-of-care. (shrink)

This paper draws on an in-depth phenomenological analysis of some interviews taken from volunteers, inviting them to reflect on their lived experiences of meaningfulness in the context of volunteering and citizenship. It is found that while some testimonies reinforce the standard conceptions of meaningfulness, other testimonies vary from it. The main challenge of this contribution consists in phenomenologically describing this alternative picture of meaningfulness, depicted as the event of wit(h)nessing. In a final part, the authors consider how volunteering is at (...) times especially prone to further experiences of wit(h)nessing. (shrink)

In this article, I take up Uri McMillan’s work in Embodied Avatars to rethink the subject–object relationship in women’s preaching. In performance art, the subject fashions herself into an object. I stretch the performance art genre to include preachers Rachel Baker, Jarena Lee, and Florence Spearing Randolph, arguing that these women have strategically performed objecthood to navigate gendered and racialized constraints in Christian proclamation. Examining these three women preachers through the lens of performing objecthood opens up theological understandings of how (...) the Spirit works in a world marked by social sin. Contrary to theologians who describe submission to the Spirit as self-effacement, I show how submission to the Spirit can counter worldly authorities, while enabling women preachers to transform perceptions of gender and race in a liberative way. (shrink)

Background/ObjectiveSeveral studies have examined the impact of Parkinson’s disease on the quality of couples’ relationships. To date, few studies have explored how couples experience their relationship dynamic by taking into account the disease stage. The objectives of this study were to understand the experience of each partner and to study the mechanisms that underlie their couple organization in the advanced stage of PD.MethodsSemistructured individual interviews conducted with fifteen patients and their partners were the subject of a dyadic interpretative phenomenological analysis.ResultsThree (...) themes were identified from the analysis: the first, “A Closeness That Separates,” allows the identification of different patterns of interactions that lead to emotional distancing between the partners; the second, “The Adversity Is Not Unbearable, But Going It Alone Would Be,” emphasizes the importance of how the assisting partner provides support; and the third, “Be Prepared for Anything and Facing an Uncertain Future,” reveals the extent and modes of the dyadic regulation of the emotions linked to what the future may hold.ConclusionPsychological support is important to help couples express both their feelings and their respective needs in the evolving context of PD. (shrink)

Ce livre explore l’interface entre la science économique, notamment l’économie comportementale, et la condition animale. L’économie comportementale, champ d’étude relativement récent de l’économie inspiré de la psychologie offre en effet de nombreuses perspectives sur le sujet du bien-être animal. On découvre dans ce livre que la discipline économique fournit des outils notionnels et pratiques nombreux pour penser une société où les intérêts des êtres humains et les intérêts des autres anima...

This dissertation shows that Proclus provides a consistent reading of Plato's late dialogues, and develops a three level ontology which stands on its own. By augmenting the reserve of Platonist philosophy with Post Platonic developments of Greek mathematics and astronomy and physics, at points where Platonism ceased to provide operating principles, Proclus, reached for formulations which went beyond Plato. His own metaphysics, though sometimes obscured by theurgic allusions, grounds Being in an infinite One. ;One of the problems that Proclus attempts (...) to solve through the posit of three infinities, is that an iterative potential infinity, seen in the interval structure of the physical world, could divide to oblivion if uncolonized by Principle. The 'One Being', which brings Limit and noetic sameness, is itself entrapped in Self Reflexivity. An infinity of a third kind, one beyond all Limit and Unlimit is posed to solve this problem. This is Proclus' NeoPlatonic solution to the fact that Being alone, albeit under the rule of intellect, cannot guarantee itself. ;Platonism assumes a "universe" i.e. One grounding Many, which predetermines the place of all structure. $\rm A\nu\lambda o\gamma\iota\alpha$ is a principle of substitution which governs the visible cosmos and makes it comprehensible by mathematical formulations. Plato's emphasis on the self same as the epitome of Being, with circularity as the highest form for thought, helps Proclus provide a consistent account of: Creation ; Infinity as a Simultaneous Whole ; Soul and Nous, Dialectic is valorized over other forms of thought as most like $$ the eternal truth and a means to assimilation. Procession and reversion forms a circle which demonstrates a metaphysical successor of cosmic revolutions found to exist as the heavenly bodies carry out their noetic patterns. ;Finally Eternity encapsulates Time; but again its infinite circularity is only recouped by a One beyond all Limit which can carry out the Providence of a final cause. (shrink)

The haploid male germ cell differentiation program controls essential steps of male gametogenesis and relies partly on a significant number of sex chromosome‐linked genes. These genes need to escape chromosome‐wide transcriptional repression of sex chromosomes, which occurs during meiosis and is largely maintained in post‐meiotic cells. A newly discovered histone lysine modification, crotonylation (Kcr), marks X/Y‐linked genes that are active in post‐meiotic male germ cells. Histone Kcr, by conferring resistance to transcriptional repressors, could be a dominant element in maintaining these (...) genes active in the globally repressive environment of haploid cell sex chromosomes. Furthermore, the same mark was found associated with post‐meiotically activated genes on autosomes. Histone Kcr therefore appears to be an indicator of the male haploid cell gene expression program and a notable element of genome programming in the post‐meiotic phases of spermatogenesis. (shrink)

Cette note de recherche prend pour point de départ un certain nombre d’observations empiriques sur les pratiques d’écritures relatives à la « rédaction web ». Son ancrage est celui de l’analyse du discours, envisagée comme discipline interprétative et lecture critique des énoncés mais aussi comme démarche susceptible d’apporter sa contribution à une didactique de l’écrit. Nous y livrons quelques premiers éléments de réflexion pour la caractérisation discursive des textes issus de la rédaction web, prenant en compte pour cela à la (...) fois la composante discursive de ces productions et les discours construisant la rédaction web comme pratique d’écriture. A partir de deux exemples, nous montrons que les normes dominantes de la rédaction web, liées notamment aux contraintes du support et à des enjeux économiques, sont diversement prises en compte suivant la sphère d'activité où sont produits les textes. (shrink)

Prior to August Weismann’s 1889 germ-plasm theory, social reformers believed that humans could inherit the effects of a salubrious environment and, by passing environmentally-induced modifications to their offspring, achieve continuous progress. Weismann’s theory disrupted this logic and caused many to fear that they had little control over human development. As numerous historians have observed, this contributed to the birth of the eugenics movement. However, through an examination of the work of social scientists Lester Frank Ward, Richard T. Ely, Amos Griswold (...) Warner, James Mark Baldwin, Simon Nelson Patten, Alfred Kroeber, Walter Robinson Smith, and Luther Lee Bernard, I demonstrate that Weismann’s ideas also prompted scholars to create of theories of human progress in which the social environment had a central role and biological heredity had a diminished one. Furthermore, in creating a new theory of social progress based on a concept called “social heredity,” the thinkers surveyed in this article separated biological and social thought and asserted the independence of the American social sciences. I argue that this represents an important moment in the maturation of the human sciences, and I suggest that the germ-plasm theory of heredity deserves a larger place in histories of the development of the American social scientific disciplines. (shrink)

Au début de la deuxième vague de COVID-19, le 7 novembre 2020, était organisé le séminaire « Questions d’éthique » au Lieu Unique à Nantes (France). La conférence du Pr. Axel Kahn était axée sur la perspective éthique des relations entre information et médias, chercheurs et essais cliniques, liberté individuelle et démocratie sanitaire, mais également l’urgence des soins, le tri des patients et le confinement. Partant du caractère indispensable de l’ « éthique en temps de crise », titre de sa (...) conférence, il analyse sa pratique à travers le prisme de la liberté et de la responsabilité. (shrink)

In recent years, humans’ ability to selectively modify genes has increased dramatically as a result of the development of new, more efficient, and easier genetic modification technology. In this paper, we argue in favor of using this technology to improve the welfare of agricultural animals. We first argue that using animals genetically modified for improved welfare is preferable to the current status quo. Nevertheless, the strongest argument against pursuing gene editing for welfare is that there are alternative approaches to addressing (...) some of the challenges of modern agriculture that may offer ethical advantages over genetic modification; namely, a dramatic shift towards plant-based diets or the development of in vitro meat. Nevertheless, we provide reasons for thinking that despite these possible comparative disadvantages there are important reasons for continuing the pursuit of welfare improvements via genetic modification. (shrink)

In “A Public Health Ethics Framework for Populations with Limited English Proficiency,” Chipman and colleagues present a valuable framework for addressing health disparities linked to limited Engli...

After reviewing the literature on current knowledge about consciousness in humans, we present a state-of-the art discussion on consciousness and related key concepts in animals. Obviously much fewer publications are available on non-human species than on humans, most of them relating to laboratory or wild animal species, and only few to livestock species. Human consciousness is by definition subjective and private. Animal consciousness is usually assessed through behavioural performance. Behaviour involves a wide array of cognitive processes that have to be (...) assessed separately using specific experimental protocols. Accordingly, several processes indicative of the presence of consciousness are discussed: perception and cognition, awareness of the bodily-self, self-related knowledge of the environment (including social environment). When available, specific examples are given in livestock species. Next, we review the existing evidence regarding neuronal correlates of consciousness, and emphasize the difficulty of linking aspects of consciousness to specific neural structures across the phyla because high-level cognitive abilities may have evolved independently along evolution. Several mammalian brain structures (cortex and midbrain) are involved in the manifestations of consciousness, while the equivalent functional structures for birds and fishes would likely be the pallium/tectum and midbrain. Caution is required before excluding consciousness in species not having the same brain structures as the mammalian ones as different neural architectures may mediate comparable processes. Finally, specific neurophysiological mechanisms appear to be strongly linked to the emergence of consciousness, namely neural synchrony and neural feedback. Considering the limited amount of data available and the few animal species studied so far, we conclude that different manifestations of consciousness can be observed in animals but that further refinement is still needed to characterize their level and content in each species. Further research is required to clarify these issues, especially in livestock species. (shrink)

Adaptive phenotypic plasticity allows organisms to cope with environmental variability, and yet, despite its adaptive significance, phenotypic plasticity is neither ubiquitous nor infinite. In this review, we merge developmental and population genetic perspectives to explore costs and limits on the evolution of plasticity. Specifically, we focus on the role of modularity in developmental genetic networks as a mechanism underlying phenotypic plasticity, and apply to it lessons learned from population genetic theory on the interplay between relaxed selection and mutation accumulation. We (...) argue that the environmental specificity of gene expression and the associated reduction in pleiotropic constraints drive a fundamental tradeoff between the range of plasticity that can be accommodated and mutation accumulation in alternative developmental networks. This tradeoff has broad implications for understanding the origin and maintenance of plasticity and may contribute to a better understanding of the role of plasticity in the origin, diversification, and loss of phenotypic diversity. (shrink)

Translation for this volume by Lydia Patton of Chapter 9 (pages 179-200) of Émilie du Châtelet's Institutions de Physique (Foundations of Physics). Original publication date 1750. Paris: Chez Prault Fils.

This paper examines Irish campaigns for condom access in the early 1990s. Against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, activists campaigned against a law which would not allow condoms to be sold from ordinary commercial spaces or vending machines, and restricted sale to young people. Advancing a conception of ‘transformative illegality’, we show that illegal action was fundamental to the eventual legalisation of commercial condom sale. However, rather than foregrounding illegal condom sale as a mode of spectacular direct action, we (...) show that tactics of illegal sale in the 1990s built on 20 years of everyday illegal sale within the Irish family planning movement. Everyday illegal sale was a long-term world-making practice, which gradually transformed condoms’ legal meanings, eventually enabling new forms of provocative and irreverent protest. Condoms ‘became legal’ when the state recognised modes of condom sale, gradually built up over many years and publicised in direct action and in the courts. (shrink)

This paper draws on an in-depth phenomenological analysis of some interviews taken from volunteers, inviting them to reflect on their lived experiences of meaningfulness in the context of volunteering and citizenship. It is found that while some testimonies reinforce the standard conceptions of meaningfulness, other testimonies vary from it. The main challenge of this contribution consists in phenomenologically describing this alternative picture of meaningfulness, depicted as the event of witnessing. In a final part, the authors consider how volunteering is at (...) times especially prone to further experiences of witnessing. (shrink)

The anvartha-saṃjñā compound associates two contradictory terms: anvartha, which means “[used] in conformity with his [etymological/first] meaning”, and saṃjñā which implies the idea of a convention; it therefore appears to be quite intriguing. The question is: is it relevant to focus on this contradiction or is it only a false problem? The aim of this paper is to answer the above question and this implies to grasp somewhat better the use of this notion by the Pāṇinian grammarians. To do so, (...) the author has studied the main texts of the Pāṇinian tradition, having in mind the following questions: did the Pāṇinian grammarians deal with this notion and, if so, in what terms? Did they perceive the contradiction raised by the association of the terms anvartha and samjñā? The study will show that this contradiction is only a false problem: according to the Pāṇinian grammarians quoted above, even when a saṃjñā is provided with an etymological/first meaning and its bearer (or one of its properties) is partly described by this meaning, this saṃjñā belongs, above all, to the domain of convention. (shrink)

Fertility preservation has become more common for various populations, including oncology patients, transgender individuals, and women who are concerned about age-related infertility. Little attention has been paid to fertility preservation for patients with differences/disorders of sex development (DSD). Our goal in this article is to address specific ethical considerations that are unique to this patient population. To this end, we present a hypothetical DSD case. We then explore ethical considerations related to patient’s age, risk of cancer, concern about genetic transmission (...) of a DSD condition to children, co-occurring gender dysphoria, and access to experimental fertility preservation procedures. Given the limitations of current technologies, we recommend offering fertility preservation to individuals living with DSD using an informed decision-making approach that instills realistic expectations and minimizes the potential for false hope. Finally, we conclude with practical recommendations for this case based on the ethical considerations. (shrink)

The field of “science studies” has often been suspected of dubious moral grounds because of its intensive concern with nonhumans; the accusation is made by those who use a roughly Kantian definition of what it is to occupy the moral high ground. By evaluating four contrasting texts (by Comte-Sponville, Kant, Serres, and Lovelock) in tandem, this article explores what an “objective morality” would look like, and it considers how to compare the Kantian axiology with the actor-network theory's possible definition of (...) a thing-oriented morality. Especially important in this context is the moral intensity of a text, which this article defines semiotically in terms of the ability to feel responsible by responding to the “call” of more beings than the human beings so exclusively attended to in the moralist tradition. (shrink)