Félix Germain et Silyane Larcher, directeur et directrice de ce livre collectif, ont trois objectifs : rendre les femmes noires françaises visibles, tout en reflétant leur diversité dans la France métropolitaine, coloniale et postcoloniale ; présenter sur le sujet de nouveaux travaux avec un large éventail de chercheur.es ; et, préparer le terrain pour de futures études en ce domaine. Ces objectifs sont parfaitement atteints. Les contributions démontrent définitivement la place centrale des f...

In moral and political philosophy, collective obligations are promising “gap-stoppers” when we find that we need to assert some obligation, but can not plausibly ascribe this obligation to individual agents. Most notably, Bill Wringe and Jesse Tomalty discuss whether the obligations that correspond to socio-economic human rights are held by states or even by humankind at large. The present paper aims to provide a missing piece for these discussions, namely an account of the conditions under which obligations can apply to (...) loose collections of agents that do not qualify as collective agents in their own right. I first explain the notion of joint obligations of loose collections of agents as opposed to collective obligations of collections of agents that are collective agents in their own right, and argue that the conditions under which agents can jointly have obligations are the conditions under which they are jointly able to do what is required. I then build on Virginia Held’s seminal work on the moral responsibility of “random collections” to develop such conditions for joint ability. My discussion shows that collections of individuals can more easily be subject to moral obligations than previously assumed. It also shows that putative joint obligations need to be carefully time-indexed, and that it is largely an empirical question whether a given collection can be subject to a moral obligation to perform a given joint action at a particular time. (shrink)

Who should be recognized as a refugee? This article seeks to uncover the normative arguments at the core of legal and philosophical conceptions of refugeehood. It identifies three analytically dist...

Bilattices, introduced by Ginsberg as a uniform framework for inference in artificial intelligence, are algebraic structures that proved useful in many fields. In recent years, Arieli and Avron developed a logical system based on a class of bilattice-based matrices, called logical bilattices, and provided a Gentzen-style calculus for it. This logic is essentially an expansion of the well-known Belnap–Dunn four-valued logic to the standard language of bilattices. Our aim is to study Arieli and Avron’s logic from the perspective of abstract (...) algebraic logic . We introduce a Hilbert-style axiomatization in order to investigate the properties of the algebraic models of this logic, proving that every formula can be reduced to an equivalent normal form and that our axiomatization is complete w.r.t. Arieli and Avron’s semantics. In this way, we are able to classify this logic according to the criteria of AAL. We show, for instance, that it is non-protoalgebraic and non-self-extensional. We also characterize its Tarski congruence and the class of algebraic reducts of its reduced generalized models, which in the general theory of AAL is usually taken to be the algebraic counterpart of a sentential logic. This class turns out to be the variety generated by the smallest non-trivial bilattice, which is strictly contained in the class of algebraic reducts of logical bilattices. On the other hand, we prove that the class of algebraic reducts of reduced models of our logic is strictly included in the class of algebraic reducts of its reduced generalized models. Another interesting result obtained is that, as happens with some implicationless fragments of well-known logics, we can associate with our logic a Gentzen calculus which is algebraizable in the sense of Rebagliato and Verdú . We also prove some purely algebraic results concerning bilattices, for instance that the variety of distributive bilattices is generated by the smallest non-trivial bilattice. This result is based on an improvement of a theorem by Avron stating that every bounded interlaced bilattice is isomorphic to a certain product of two bounded lattices. We generalize it to the case of unbounded interlaced bilattices. (shrink)

Multinational enterprises venturing into emerging economies operate in relatively unfamiliar environments that, compared with their home countries, often display a high degree of administrative distance. At the same time, many MNEs face the question of how intensely to commit to corporate social responsibility in emerging economies, given the often relatively lower social standards in those countries. This research addresses the question of how administrative distance, MNE subsidiary size, and experience in the host country relate to the extent to which MNEs (...) strategically commit to CSR in their emerging economy subsidiaries. We argue that the greater the administrative distance between MNEs’ home and host countries, the lesser the MNE subsidiaries strategically commit to CSR. At the same time, we predict that the larger the size of MNE subsidiaries, and the longer their experience in the host country, the more the MNE subsidiaries strategically commit to CSR. To test our hypotheses, we use data from a large-scale, cross-industry survey of 213 subsidiaries of Western MNEs in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. We complement the survey data with country-level data from the World Bank Governance Indicators. (shrink)

In this article, I address the ways in which debates in liberal, Marxist and postmodernist social theory have remoulded readings of emancipation – and how these reformulations have affected the organisation of emancipatory struggles by and in political parties and social movements. I focus on three conceptual ambiguities that have spurred theoretical disputes and restructured organisational imaginations of emancipation: who might struggle for liberation, to what end and in which ways. In all three respects, understandings of emancipation have become increasingly (...) individualised, contingent and process-oriented – both in theory and in its political-organisational correspondents. As a consequence, effective collective struggles for autonomy may become ever more difficult to organise. While occurring in the name of further liberation, the ongoing reinterpretation of emancipation and its impact on the political organisation of emancipatory struggles might in the end hamper or even undermine the very liberation and autonomy they had aimed to promote. (shrink)

As donor trust legitimises research, trust is vital for research in the fields of biomedicine, genetics, translational medicine and personalised medicine. For parts of the donor community, the consent signature is a sign of trust in research. Many consent processes in biomedical research ask donors to provide their data for an unspecified future use, which introduces uncertainty of the unknown. This uncertainty can jeopardise donor trust or demand blind trust. But which donor wants to trust blindly? To reduce this uncertainty, (...) we explore first, which future-proof actors donors could trust when signing a consent form. Second, we discuss the question Can we know if donor trust expires? and what prevents donor trust from expiring. Finally, we present possible measures that can help to nurture trust in the far future. In this article, we draw on our previous research on trust in biomedical research, on trust in the broader healthcare system and Niklas Luhmann’s and Anthony Giddens’ trust theories. Our findings suggest that, in the far future, researchers will need to consider donor autonomy, as well as societal norms and values of the time period in which the data were donated. They will need to find mechanisms where possible to publicly announce the use of old data sets. However, foremost researchers will need to treat the data respectfully. It remains vital that professionals and the society continue to elaborate on the norms and values that shape the common understanding of what is morally right and wrong when researching data. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to describe Mark Burgin’s results in non-Diophantine mathematics, which are important for the foundation of mathematics and its application in quantum field theory. In particular, the elimination of divergences in quantum electrodynamics is described.

In typical statistical learning studies, researchers define sequences in terms of the probability of the next item in the sequence given the current item (or items), and they show that high probability sequences are treated as more familiar than low probability sequences. Existing accounts of these phenomena all assume that participants represent statistical regularities more or less as they are defined by the experimenters—as sequential probabilities of symbols in a string. Here we offer an alternative, or possibly supplementary, hypothesis. Specifically, (...) rather than identifying or labeling individual stimuli discretely in order to predict the next item in a sequence, we need only assume that the participant is able to represent the stimuli as evincing particular similarity relations to one another, with sequences represented as trajectories through this similarity space. We present experiments in which this hypothesis makes sharply different predictions from hypotheses based on the assumption that sequences are learned over discrete, labeled stimuli. We also present a series of simulation models that encode stimuli as positions in a continuous two‐dimensional space, and predict the next location from the current location. Although no model captures all of the data presented here, the results of three critical experiments are more consistent with the view that participants represent trajectories through similarity space rather than sequences of discrete labels under particular conditions. (shrink)

Precision medicine and molecular systems medicine (MSM) are highly utilized and successful approaches to improve understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of many diseases from bench-to-bedside. Especially in the COVID-19 pandemic, molecular techniques and biotechnological innovation have proven to be of utmost importance for rapid developments in disease diagnostics and treatment, including DNA and RNA sequencing technology, treatment with drugs and natural products and vaccine development. The COVID-19 crisis, however, has also demonstrated the need for systemic thinking and transdisciplinarity and the limits (...) of MSM: the neglect of the bio-psycho-social systemic nature of humans and their context as the object of individual therapeutic and population-oriented interventions. COVID-19 illustrates how a medical problem requires a transdisciplinary approach in epidemiology, pathology, internal medicine, public health, environmental medicine, and socio-economic modeling. Regarding the need for conceptual integration of these different kinds of knowledge we suggest the application of general system theory (GST). This approach endorses an organism-centered view on health and disease, which according to Ludwig von Bertalanffy who was the founder of GST, we call Organismal Systems Medicine (OSM). We argue that systems science offers wider applications in the field of pathology and can contribute to an integrative systems medicine by (i) integration of evidence across functional and structural differentially scaled subsystems, (ii) conceptualization of complex multilevel systems, and (iii) suggesting mechanisms and non-linear relationships underlying the observed phenomena. We underline these points with a proposal on multi-level systems pathology including neurophysiology, endocrinology, immune system, genetics, and general metabolism. An integration of these areas is necessary to understand excess mortality rates and polypharmacological treatments. In the pandemic era this multi-level systems pathology is most important to assess potential vaccines, their effectiveness, short-, and long-time adverse effects. We further argue that these conceptual frameworks are not only valid in the COVID-19 era but also important to be integrated in a medicinal curriculum. (shrink)

This book proposes a holistic transdisciplinary approach to sustainability as a subject of social sciences. At the same time, this approach shows new ways, as perspectives of philosophy, political science, law, economics, sociology, cultural studies and others are here no longer regarded separately. Instead, integrated perspectives on the key issues are carved out: Perspectives on conditions of transformation to sustainability, on key instruments and the normative questions. This allows for a concise answer to urgent and controversial questions such as the (...) following: Is the EU an environmental pioneer? Is it possible to achieve sustainability by purely technical means? If not: will that mean to end of the growth society? How to deal with the follow-up problems? How will societal change be successful? Are political power and capitalism the main barriers to sustainability? What is the role of emotions and conceptions of normality in the transformation process? To which degree are rebound and shifting effects the reason why sustainability politics fail? How much climate protection can be claimed ethically and legally e.g. on grounds of human rights? And what is freedom? Despite all rhetoric, the weak transition in energy, climate, agriculture and conservation serves as key example in this book. It is shown how the Paris Agreement is weak with regard to details and at the same time overrules the growth society by means of a radical 1,5-1,8 degrees temperature limit. It is shown how emissions trading must – and can – be reformed radically. It is shown why CSR, education, cooperation and happiness research are overrated. And we will see what an integrated politics on climate, biodiversity, nitrogen and soil might look like. (shrink)

Clinical fields of the “sciences of the mind” (psychotherapy, psychiatry, etc.) lack integrative conceptual frameworks that have explanatory power. Mainly descriptive-classificatory taxonomies like DSM dominate the field. New taxonomies such as Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) aim to collect scientific knowledge regarding “systems” for “processes” of the brain. These terms have a supradisciplinary” meaning if they are considered in context of Systems Science. This field emerges as a platform of theories like general systems theory, catastrophe theory, synergetics, chaos theory, etc. It (...) provides a lot of abstract concepts, constructs, methods and models. We assume that these tools also enable theoretical integration in the diversified field of clinical practice in the sciences of the mind. Additionally, systems thinking in clinical psychology improves conceptual links to currently network-oriented neurobiology. However, clear definitions of systemic terms are necessary to emerge from their mainly metaphorical use. Here we revise mainly terms like “structure”, “process” and “dynamics” as they are used already in psychology, psychoanalysis, psychopathology and psychiatry in an ill-defined way. For instance, affective-cognitive structures like “life space” or “object representations” can be seen as products of mental processing. These structures, in turn, modulate dynamics of mental processes. Additionally, we suggest a coupled network concept of emotions and motivations as the main subsystem that modulates mental dynamics that results in a qualitative systemic model of the mind. Finally, we assume that a revisited systemic approach could improve interdisciplinary understanding of the mental. ystem for mental dynamics. In this context, we assume that a revisited systemic approach could improve interdisciplinary understanding of the mental. (shrink)

Propomos neste texto examinar o papel das disposições (Stimmungen), e, particularmente, das chamadas “disposições fundamentais” na construção da pergunta heideggeriana pela historicidade da história. Nós partimos da pergunta pela historicidade da história da filosofia para a análise do papel hermenêutico cumprido pela angústia na analítica da cotidianidade em Ser e Tempo, procurando esclarecer a conexão dessa disposição com o conceito de historicidade tal como tratado nessa obra. Em seguida, tratamos da maneira como são pensadas as disposições em Conceitos fundamentais da (...) metafísica, obra na qual Heidegger explicitamente pensa a disposição do tédio como característica de uma época. Uma vez que mostramos como podemos entender as disposições em geral em sentido historial, retomamos a análise da angústia, e, a partir da discussão de sua estrutura tal como apresentada em Ser e Tempo, perguntamos pela relação específica da angústia com a questão da historicidade, no que ela significa para o projeto de Ser e Tempo e para a obra posterior de Heidegger. (shrink)

What are the characteristics to be included in a fruitful definition of democracy? More important still, which of the features commonly considered democratic had better be excluded from the dinning characteristics?

ABSTRACT Avner de Shalit argues that philosophers should listen to what the public thinks. He argues that by engaging with people in the streets, political philosophy will improve. Yet, what makes the public special in this regard? This response will do three things. First, it asks whether discussing with the public differs in any meaningful way from discussing with other people such as colleagues or students. Second, it questions the methodological approach, asking whether de Shalit's approach provides a legitimate answer (...) to his question. Third, it raises the worry that this approach is prone to doing politics rather than philosophy. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt hat in seiner Schrift 'Völkerrechtliche Großraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot für raumfremde Mächte' von 1939 versucht, dem Reichsbegriff zu einer völkerrechtlichen Renaissance zu verhelfen. 'Reich' ist bei ihm gedacht als Kern einer europäischen Hegemonialordnung. Die Präsentation dieser Konzeption hat im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland sofort eine lebhafte Debatte ausgelöst. Der Verfasser versucht, sie nachzuzeichnen, wobei auf bisher unveröffentlichte Dokumente aus dem umfangreichen Nachlass Carl Schmitts zurückgegriffen wird. Der Autor weist auch auf die Parallelen zwischen Schmitts Konzeption vom 'totalen Staat' und jene vom (...) Reich hin. Ähnlich wie Jüngers berühmte Wendung von der 'totalen Mobilmachung' hat sie Anfang der dreißiger Jahre großes Aufsehen erregt. Das 'Reich' hat immer einen über das Verfassungs- und Völkerrecht hinausweisenden Beiklang - oder genauer: einen engen Bezug zur Politischen Theologie. Einigermaßen überraschend ist, dass der katholische Politische Theologe Carl Schmitt Begriffe benutzt, die eher aus dem Repertoire der protestantischen Theologie stammen. Auch für die Deutung dieses Zusammenhangs wurden unveröffentlichte Briefe aus dem Nachlass Schmitts herangezogen. Das 'Reich' als politische Konzeption ist nach 1945 fast spurlos in der Versenkung verschwunden, und dennoch beweist Schmitts Schrift zur 'Großraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot für raumfremde Mächte' Aktualität durch ihre antiuniversalische Stoßrichtung: 'Die notwendige Konsequenz des Universalismus ist Imperialismus'. So lautet nicht etwa ein Satz aus Schmitts Oevre, sondern er steht in dem Buch 'Kampf der Kulturen' des Harvard Professors Samuel P. Huntington. (shrink)

This paper argues against the idea of climate change refugeehood. Drawing on political realism, it reconstructs the idea and function of refugeehood in international politics. Refugees are not the agencyless victims merely in search of rescue by states of the Global North, as the idea of climate refugeehood as a form of humanitarian refugeehood would have it. Nor are they simply a function of reparative justice, or of defending international state legitimacy. To liberal democracies, refugees are those fleeing political oppression. (...) They hold an important political function in inter-state relations in undermining rival political systems and strengthening liberal democratic regimes, both ideally and materially. The idea of climate refugeehood collides with the role refugeehood plays in international politics, the reasons for their admission, and the conceptualization of their plight and function. It ought, hence, to be rejected. (shrink)

Esta investigación aborda la validez del espacio público como auspiciador de la participación política, centrándose en las diversas formas de apropiación del espacio que pueden fomentar dicha participación. El objetivo principal consiste en demostrar las posibilidades de acción política de las y los ciudadanos al expresar su desacuerdo a través de distintos procesos de apropiación del espacio público: la apropiación por dominación, por rebelión, la apropiación vandálica y artística. Se sostiene que la legitimidad de un sistema de gobierno puede cuestionarse (...) o debilitarse según la actuación pública del cuerpo ciudadano contra el Estado o la entidad que ejerce la soberanía sobre el espacio. El análisis se llevará a cabo desde la filosofía política de la vertiente disociativa y el realismo político a través de los conceptos de conflicto, soberanía y desacuerdo. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar as características do modelo sócio-formativo para a construção e o desenvolvimento de sociedades sustentáveis no ensino universitário. O artigo aponta que as universidades da América Latina precisam de redesenhar os seus currículos, incluindo a abordagem socio-formativa, para formar indivíduos capazes de resolver problemas emergentes como os danos ambientais e a perda da ética. A socioformação promove o aperfeiçoamento integral do aluno, a resolução de problemas contextuais e o pensamento crítico. Além disso, permite a articulação (...) de diferentes áreas de conhecimento para abordar problemas interdisciplinares; enfatiza as competências emocionais e sociais, a reflexão e a participação do aluno na sua aprendizagem; e promove a identificação e resolução colaborativa de problemas reais através de projectos formativos. A análise conclui que a socioformação gera resultados em estudantes e professores, reforça o funcionamento da universidade e forma indivíduos que aplicam os seus conhecimentos para resolver problemas de forma ética. (shrink)

La Historia de la Filosofía se ubica en una tensión entre el tiempo y el logos, cuya adecuada comprensión decide en última instancia el papel que ésta cumple en la Filosofía. Esta tesis es desarrollada por el autor mediante el estudio del lugar que tal disciplina ocupa en la constitución del Sistema hegeliano. Según esto, la dependencia mutua del tiempo y del logos debe mostrarse por dos vías contrapuestas: de un lado, la necesidad de considerar la existencia (Dasein) del concepto (...) en el tiempo, y de otro lado, el esfuerzo que representa la Filosofía como esclarecimiento del tiempo histórico en el concepto. Por esta razón, si bien Hegel sabe de la importancia de la Historia de la Filosofía en la consolidación del Sistema (según el lema de que el saber acerca del devenir histórico de la Filosofía es ya Filosofía), su presentación de la misma revela un mayor énfasis en el lagos. A diferencia de Hegel, el autor opina que no debe hablarse de los textos filosóficos como "meros hijos de su tiempo" (y por tanto, como observables desde una perspectiva "superior" a ellos), sino que es preciso reconocer en ellos una opacidad inherente, reflejo de la cual los textos filosóficos pueden abordarse siempre de modos diversos. (shrink)

The sense of kairos is of time as having an event-like character. Fundamental here is a split between quantitative time and a qualitatively distinct moment. The decisive moment connects the kairological to crisis. By exploring the accounts of kairos in three contemporaries responding to the sense of crisis in 1920s Germany—Benjamin, Heidegger, and Tillich—this article shows the manner in action in the kairos can be understood as both responsive and non-opportunist. Themes such as the “tiger leap” (Benjamin), the “moment of (...) vision” (Heidegger), and the “shuddering” of time (Tillich) are analyzed to demonstrate how these accounts taken in dialogue with one another give an understanding of kairos, as a displacement and disruption of time as chronos and not simply as an interruption in chronological time. Such a disruption of chronological time is a necessary condition for responsible action, giving a measure also for the present. (shrink)

Pascal semble toujours s’être tenu dans les marges de l’historiographie philosophique. Cette situation tient d’abord à la méfiance explicite qu’il nourrit à l’égard des « philosophes ». Mais elle s’explique aussi par l’influence d’un acteur décisif dans l’institutionnalisation de la discipline : Victor Cousin. Pour le montrer, nous étudions les effets produits sur le long terme par la construction d’une « figure philosophique » qui articule, sous le nom de Pascal, des textes et un contenu philosophique spécifique, en se focalisant (...) sur sa réception chez Havet, Brunschvicg et Heidegger. Un tel retour historique permet de mettre en évidence des points aveugles dans notre interprétation de ce que peut être la philosophie de Pascal, voire dans notre conception de ce qui constitue l’en dehors de la philosophie en général. Il offre en outre un éclairage original sur les opérations de sélection qui ont présidé à la constitution de ce que nous appelons notre « modernité » philosophique. (shrink)

A pesar de que Max Horkheimer en Eclipse de la razón había analizado los límites de la razón subjetiva, atendien- do a las posibilidades de retornar a la razón objetiva y a su función después del eclipse, a Jay le parecían aún insuficientes estas respuestas. Por ello, regresó al estudio de las conceptualizaciones filosóficas de los fundadores de la teoría crítica y de quienes se quedaron a cargo del Instituto de Investigación Social en Frankfurt. En este sentido, este texto podría (...) verse en continuidad y a distancia respecto a su primer li- bro: Dialectical Imagination. A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (1973); producto de su trabajo de doctorado, enfocado en la formación del Instituto de Investigación Social; en sus principales integrantes: Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Leo Löwenthal, Walter Benjamin,Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer, Henryk Grossmann, Erich Fromm, Karl August Wittfogel; en la integra- ción del psicoanálisis; en su exilio a América; en los estudios empíricos sobre el autoritarismo, la estética y la industria cultural. (shrink)

Nada más habitual que el hábito. Y, sin embargo, de seguir a Aristóteles, no existirían virtudes entre nosotros, o sea: aptitudes y habilidades que acaban por configurar la existencia humana. En este ensayo se examina el desarrollo dialéctico del hábito en Hegel, desde la Antropología hasta la Eticidad : en el plano individual, desde el estado fetal y el desvarío en el alma sentiente hasta el autosentimiento de sí y el nacimiento del Yo; en el plano colectivo, se atiende más (...) bien a la génesis del hábito y sus fautores: las corporaciones, las instituciones estatales y la opinión pública, hasta desembocar en el extraño estadio del hábito como deshabituación de todo hábito, en el fenómeno de la guerra. Se pone así de relieve el modo en que el hábito es el modo crucial de ser entre la individualidad animal y el cuerpo sociopolítico como aparato mecánico que promete vida y amenaza muerte. (shrink)

The debate on climate change needs normative visions and principles to provide orientation and to line up normative requirements. This may enable to provide a comprehensive view on energy and climate topics. This contribution, while dealing with justice, gives a perspective from ethics respectively from a (re-)interpretation of national constitutions, the EU Charter of fundamental rights and the European convention on human rights in the light of sustainability. It takes us to human rights as the basic norm of any liberal (...) democratic constitution (on national and transnational level), but criticizes the academic international law debate (unlike the practice of international law) which seems to be focused on the idea of even absolute, i.e. not subject to any balancing, environmental fundamental rights. Overall, it turns out that an interpretation of fundamental rights which is more multipolar and considers the conditions for freedom more heavily – as well as the freedom of future generations and of people in other parts of the world – develops a greater commitment to climate protection. Regarding the theory of balancing, for the purpose of a clear balance of powers the usual principle of proportionality also proves specifiable. (shrink)