Cancer registries are an important part of the public health infrastructure, since they allow to monitor the temporal trends of this illness as well as facilitate epidemiological research. In order to effectively set up such registries, it is necessary to create a system of data collection that permits to record health-related information from patients who are diagnosed with cancer. Given the sensitive nature of such data, it is debated whether their recording should be based on consent or whether alternative arrangements (...) are possible (eg, opt-out systems where information is automatically collected but patients can later withdraw). In the recent reform of the Swiss cancer registration legislation, the lawmaker set out to implement rules about the recording of data in cancer registries that would allegedly go beyond a consent-based model, in order to balance accurate registration with respect of patient rights. However, by analysing the operational norms of the new legislation and comparing them with those of other systems, it emerges that the Swiss rules de facto closely resemble a system of registration based on informed consent—in partial contradiction with the objective pursued by the lawmaker. In this paper, we show how the details of a policy are crucial to determine its true nature and we highlight some critical elements—from an ethical standpoint—of the recently reformed Swiss policy on cancer registration. (shrink)

Le présent dossier est issu d’une collaboration de plusieurs années entre le directeur, Frédéric Gabriel, et les différents auteurs des articles. Il répond à un programme de recherche qui avait été présenté comme suit : La revue ThéoRèmes entend se concentrer sur l’expérience comme vecteur de compréhension des religions, dans toute la richesse des disciplines que son texte de présentation mentionne : sociologie, histoire, anthropologie, psychologie ou sciences cognitives. Qu’en est-il du droi...

Frederic Lee sets out the foundations of a post-Keynesian price theory through developing an empirically grounded production schema. The administered, normal cost and mark-up price doctrines are explained in parts I-III of the book, as many of their theoretical arguments are important for developing the foundations. This involves discussing the work of Gardiner Means, Philip Andrews, and Michal Kalecki as well as the developers of the doctrines, such as Edwin Nourse, Paolo Sylos Labini, Harry Edwards, Josef Steindl and Alfred Eisner. (...) Drawing upon the arguments and formal modelling offered by the doctrines, in conjunction with empirical evidence from one hundred studies on pricing and production, Dr Lee develops an empirically grounded pricing model and production schema. He argues that the model and the schema together constitute the foundations for post-Keynesian price theory. (shrink)

We argue that a fashionable interpretation of the theory of natural selection as a claim exclusively about populations is mistaken. The interpretation rests on adopting an analysis of fitness as a probabilistic propensity which cannot be substantiated, draws parallels with thermodynamics which are without foundations, and fails to do justice to the fundamental distinction between drift and selection. This distinction requires a notion of fitness as a pairwise comparison between individuals taken two at a time, and so vitiates the interpretation (...) of the theory as one about populations exclusively. (shrink)

I want in this paper to do two things. First, I want to respond to some studies that argue that people are often not rational: that people regularly and systematically depart from rationality. The conclusion itself does not worry me. I pressed for the same in a recent book. But the arguments seem to me wrong, and wrong in an interesting way. There may be something to be learned from seeing how and why they fail.

Banni de la communauté juive à 23 ans pour hérésie, Baruch Spinoza décide de consacrer sa vie à la philosophie. Son objectif? Découvrir un bien véritable qui lui "procurerait pour l'éternité la jouissance d'une joie suprême et incessante". Au cours des vingt années qui lui restent à vivre, Spinoza édifie une oeuvre révolutionnaire. Comment cet homme a-t-il pu, en plein XVIIe siècle, être le précurseur des Lumières et de nos démocraties modernes? Le pionnier d'une lecture historique et critique de la (...) Bible? Le fondateur de la psychologie des profondeurs? L'initiateur de la philologie, de la sociologie et de l'éthologie? Et surtout, l'inventeur d'une philosophie fondée sur le désir et la joie, qui bouleverse notre conception de Dieu, de la morale et du bonheur? À bien des égards, Spinoza est non seulement très en avance sur son temps, mais aussi sur le nôtre. C'est ce que j'appelle le "miracle" Spinoza. Frédéric Lenoir raconte la vie édifiante de Spinoza que Goethe, Nietzsche, Freud ou Einstein considéraient comme le plus grand des philosophes. Il rend accessible sa pensée foisonnante et livre un traité philosophique d'émancipation, qui se lit presque comme un thriller tant on a envie de connaître l'étape suivante et d'atteindre la joie suprême. Une lecture qui donne une force et une énergie incroyables."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

À quoi ressemblerait la planète Terre si on ne la considérait qu’à travers quelques chiffres clés? Quelles échelles incommensurables apparaîtraient à la lumière de cette mise en chiffre? Quels redimensionnements de nos écologies politiques?

The idea that deep brain stimulation (DBS) induces changes to personality, identity, agency, authenticity, autonomy and self (PIAAAS) is so deeply entrenched within neuroethics discourses that it has become an unchallenged narrative. In this article, we critically assess evidence about putative effects of DBS on PIAAAS. We conducted a literature review of more than 1535 articles to investigate the prevalence of scientific evidence regarding these potential DBS-induced changes. While we observed an increase in the number of publications in theoretical neuroethics (...) that mention putative DBS-induced changes to patients’ postoperative PIAAAS, we found a critical lack of primary empirical studies corroborating these claims. Our findings strongly suggest that the theoretical neuroethics debate on putative effects of DBS relies on very limited empirical evidence and is, instead, reliant on unsubstantiated speculative assumptions probablyin lieuof robust evidence. As such, this may reflect the likelihood of a speculative neuroethics bubble that may need to be deflated. Nevertheless, despite the low number of first-hand primary studies and large number of marginal and single case reports, potential postoperative DBS changes experienced by patients remain a critical ethical concern. We recommend further empirical research in order to enhance theoretical neuroethics work in the area. In particular, we call for the development of better instruments capable of capturing potential postoperative variations of PIAAAS. (shrink)

This is an important new book about human motivation, about the reasons people have for their actions. What is distinctively new about it is its focus on how people see or understand their situations, options, and prospects. By taking account of people's understandings, Professor Schick is able to expand the current theory of decision and action. The author provides a perspective on the topic by outlining its history. He defends his new theory against criticism, considers its formal structure, and shows (...) at length how it resolves many currently debated problems: the problems of conflict and weakness of will, Allais' problem, Kahneman and Tversky's problems, Newcomb's problem, and others. The book will be of special interest to philosophers, psychologists, and economists. (shrink)

l'Histoire du scepticisme d'Érasme à Spinoza de Richard H. Popkin n'est pas seulement le récit des diverses doctrines sceptiques qui traversent le XVIe et le XVIIe siècle: un fil conducteur confère à l'ensemble sa cohérence. Mieux, une conception générale de la philosophie moderne sous-tend ses analyses. Selon Popkin en effet, toute la philosophie, depuis la Renaissance jusqu'aux lumières, s'est trouvée confrontée à la tâche de surmonter la «crise pyrrhonienne», née en contexte de querelle religieuse, et qui très vite s'étend à (...) tout le savoir. Popkin a ainsi proposé une interprétation originale mais peut-être aussi parfois contestable de la modernité, en particulier dans la mesure où il ne distingue pas assez nettement le scepticisme ancien du moderne, et où il ne prend pas en compte la spécificité du fidéisme. (shrink)

Postmodernity authors have taken parts from Nietzche and Heidegger’s writings, leaving aside other parts not of their interest. So, their philosophical grounding explains itself the denying of history and their suspicion for science and technology. But, as Nietzche and Heidegger heirs, postmodernit..

The phenomenological effects of deep brain stimulation (DBS) on the self of the patient remains poorly understood and under described in the literature, despite growing evidence that a significant number of patients experience postoperative neuropsychiatric changes. To address this lack of phenomenological evidence, we conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews with 17 patients with Parkinson's disease who had undergone DBS. Exploring the subjective character specific to patients' experience of being implanted gives empirical and conceptual understanding of the potential phenomenon of DBS-induced self-estrangement. (...) Our study concluded that (1) the more patients preoperatively felt alienated by their illness, the more they experienced postoperative self-estrangement, and (2) the notion of self-estrangement seems to exist in association with certain common qualitative characters, namely, loss of control, which reflects a deteriorative estrangement, and distorted perception of capacities, which reveals a restorative estrangement. These findings indicate that subjective self-reports help us to understand some aspects of the potential phenomenon of DBS-induced self-estrangement. (shrink)

In this book Frederic Schick develops his challenge to standard decision theory. He argues that talk of the beliefs and desires of an agent is not sufficient to explain choices. To account for a given choice we need to take into consideration how the agent understands the problem, how he sees in a selective way the options open to him. The author applies his new logic to a host of common human predicaments. Why do people in choice experiments act so (...) often against expectations? Why do people cooperate in situations where textbook logic predicts that they won't? What exactly is weakness of will? What are people reporting when they say their lives have no meaning for them? This book questions the foundations of technical and philosophical decision theory and will appeal to all those who work in that field, be they philosophers, economists and psychologists. (shrink)

The article resituates critical realism within critical theory and proposes a tripartite articulation of British critical realism, German critical theory and French anti-utilitarianism. It suggests that the critique of positivism has to be enhanced with a critique of utilitarianism and makes the case that both critiques have to be grounded in a hermeneutic approach to social life. By taking the symbolic constitution of the world seriously, critical realist hermeneutics offers a via media between naturalism and anti-naturalism, explanation and interpretation, universalism (...) and relativism, materialism and idealism, realism and constructivism. (shrink)

. Computational chemistry grew in a new era of “desktop modeling,” which coincided with a growing demand for modeling software, especially from the pharmaceutical industry. Parameterization of models in computational chemistry is an arduous enterprise, and we argue that this activity leads, in this specific context, to tensions among scientists regarding the epistemic opacity transparency of parameterized methods and the software implementing them. We relate one flame war from the Computational Chemistry mailing List in order to assess in detail the (...) relationships between modeling methods, parameterization, software and the various forms of their enclosure or disclosure. Our claim is that parameterization issues are an important and often neglected source of epistemic opacity and that this opacity is entangled in methods and software alike. Models and software must be addressed together to understand the epistemological tensions at stake. (shrink)

Cette nouvelle de politique-fiction imagine un avenir proche où le populisme deviendrait le paradigme du discours politique. Une nouvelle modernité assiste à l’expansion d’une multiplicité de peuples virtuels. Les populismes de droite et de gauche entrent en rivalité : quel est le vrai Peuple? Mais les peuples n’ont pas besoin de populisme, ils ont besoin d’agencement. Qu’est-ce qu’agencer les peuples virtuels qui déchirent nos vies?

At the age of twenty-five, Primo Levi was sent to Hell. Levi, an Italian chemist from Turin, was one of many swept up in the Holocaust of World War II and sent to die in the German concentration camp in Auschwitz. Of the 650 people transported to the camp in his group, only 15 men and 9 women survived. After Soviet liberation of the camp in 1945, Levi wrote books, essays, short stories, poetry, and a novel, in which he painstakingly (...) described the horrors of his experience at Auschwitz. He also spent the rest of his life struggling with the fact that he was not among those who were killed. In _Primo Levi and the Politics of Survival,_ Frederic D. Homer looks at Primo Levi's life but, more important, shows him to be a significant political philosopher. In the course of his writings, Levi asked and answered his most haunting question: can someone be brutalized by a terrifying experience and, upon return to "ordinary life," recover from the physical and moral destruction he has suffered? Levi used this question to develop a philosophy positing that although man is no match for life, he can become better prepared to contend with the tragedies in life. According to Levi, the horrors of the world occur because of the strength of human tendencies, which make relationships between human beings exceedingly fragile. He believed that we are ill-constituted beings who have tendencies toward violence and domination, dividing ourselves into Us and Them, with very shallow loyalties. He also maintained that our only refuge is in education and responsibility, which may counter these tendencies. Homer calls Levi's philosophy "optimistic pessimism." As Homer demonstrates, Levi took his past experiences into account to determine that goodwill and democratic institutions do not come easily to people. Liberal society is to be earned through discipline and responsibility toward our weaknesses. Levi's answer is "civilized liberalism." To achieve this we must counter some of our most stubborn tendencies. Homer also explores the impact of Levi's death, an apparent suicide, on the way in which his work and theories have been perceived. While several critics discount Levi's work because of the nature of his death, Homer argues that his death is consistent with his philosophy. A book rich in brutally honest philosophy, _Primo Levi and the Politics of Survival_ compels one to look at serious questions about life, tragedy, optimism, solidarity, violence, and human nature. (shrink)

This book, first published in 1997, is an introductory overview of decision theory. It is completely non-technical, without a single formula in the book. Written in a crisp and clear style it succinctly covers the full range of philosophical issues of rationality and decision theory, including game theory, social choice theory, prisoner's dilemma and much else. The book aims to expand the scope and enrich the foundations of decision theory. By addressing such issues as ambivalence, inner conflict, and the constraints (...) imposed upon us by our attachments to others, Frederic Schick reveals that our thinking is often more subtle than standard theories of rationality allow. Only a theory that respects that subtlety can illumine what is otherwise puzzling. The book contains many examples drawn from history and literature dealing with subjects such as love, war, friendship, and crime. (shrink)

Ecological fitness has been suggested to provide a unifying definition of fitness. However, a metric for this notion of fitness was in most cases unavailable except by proxy with differential reproductive success. In this article, I show how differential persistence of lineages can be used as a way to assess ecological fitness. This view is inspired by a better understanding of the evolution of some clonal plants, colonial organisms, and ecosystems. Differential persistence shows the limitation of an ensemblist noncausal understanding (...) of evolution. Causal explanations are necessary to understand the evolution by natural selection of these biological systems. †To contact the author write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Montreal, P.O. Box 6128, Station Centre‐Ville, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 3J7 Canada; e‐mail: f.bouchard@umontreal.ca. (shrink)

La notion de «catégorie» traverse de manière centrale l�histoire de la philosophie depuis sa première formulation par Aristote. Elle tient une place importante dans la logique développée par Husserl. Cet article a pour visée de montrer comment, au-delà d�une simple exposition d�ontologie formelle, les catégories relèvent de la constitution transcendantale. Comme tout objet, réel ou idéel, les catégories sont corrélées à un ensemble structuré d�actes intentionnels qui peut rendre compte de leur émergence et de leur thématisation explicite. Cela permettra de (...) montrer que la problématique de la constitution chez Husserl, que l�on situe à partir du tournant transcendantal de 1907, est déjà bien amorcée à l�époque des Recherches logiques. (shrink)

Following Wallace’s suggestion, Darwin framed his theory using Spencer’s expression “survival of the fittest”. Since then, fitness occupies a significant place in the conventional understanding of Darwinism, even though the explicit meaning of the term ‘fitness’ is rarely stated. In this paper I examine some of the different roles that fitness has played in the development of the theory. Whereas the meaning of fitness was originally understood in ecological terms, it took a statistical turn in terms of reproductive success throughout (...) the 20th Century. This has lead to the ever-increasing importance of sexually reproducing organisms and the populations they compose in evolutionary explanations. I will argue that, moving forward, evolutionary theory should look back at its ecological roots in order to be more inclusive in the type of systems it examines. Many biological systems can only be satisfactorily accounted for by offering a non-reproductive account of fitness. This argument will be made by examining biological systems with very small or transient population structures. I argue this has significant consequences for how we define Darwinism, increasing the significance of survival over that of reproduction. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of the use of axioms in Banach’s Ph.D. and their role in the progression of Banach’s mathematical thought. In order to give a precise account of the role of Banach’s axioms, we distinguish two levels of activity. The first one is devoted to the overall process of creating a new theory able to answer some prescribed problems in functional analysis. The second one concentrates on the epistemological role of axioms. In particular, the notion of norm (...) completeness, as it appears in Banach’s text, can be interpreted as an epistemic linchpin between several a priori inhomogeneous domains of mathematical thought. (shrink)

An exploration of the first words and last words of life, written by a linguistically-trained trade author.

According to several late medieval logicians, the use the universal quantifier ‘omnis’ creates the requirement that the sentence refers to at least three items—the principle of sufficientia appellatorum. The commitment is such that, when the quota is not fulfilled, one has to import the missing items from the realm of the nonexistent. While the central argument for this principle, whose origin is Aristotle’s De Caelo, stems from the contrast between unrestricted universal quantifiers and binary quantifiers, the discussion is often mixed (...) with another issue, concerning the requirement of a plurality of referents for universals. In this paper, we try to distinguish those different issues and map the reactions of xiii th authors to the principle of sufficientia appellatorum. (shrink)