L’art pariétal du Paléolithique supérieur présente, à côté d’un extraordinaire répertoire animalier bien diversifié, un grand nombre de signes qui ne trouvent pas d’équivalents dans la perception de la réalité sensible. Tandis que les images des humains ou des créatures mi-humaines mi-animales sont très rares, ces formes aniconiques, souvent géométrisantes et aisément classifiables, sont globalement plus nombreuses que les animaux. Si saisir l’intentionnalité qui a poussé les premiers artistes à peindre sur les parois représente un défi pour nos compétences interprétatives, (...) les « signes » constituent l’aspect le plus énigmatique de ce défi. Il y a trente ans, en 1988, dans la revue Current Anthropology, a été publié un article de James D. Lewis-Williams et Thomas A. Dowson, « The Signs of All Times. Entoptic Phenomena in Upper Paleolithic Art », ouvrant une nouvelle perspective sur l’origine des signes. En appliquant le modèle neuropsychologique à l’imagerie bidimensionnelle de l’art des grottes, il est possible d’identifier à des signes à valeur universelle, selon les auteurs, les apparitions entoptiques présentes, avec leurs diverses modalités combinatoires, dans l’art rupestre de « tous les temps ». Cette interprétation de l’art des sociétés préhistoriques, qui resitue la naissance des images dans les territoires visionnaires des cultures chamaniques, a soulevé en France des perplexités et des polémiques innombrables, parfois acerbes. Il est prioritaire alors de voir si le modèle neuropsychologique est effectivement en mesure d’offrir un cadre explicatif des données archéologiques des grottes ornées et de ses « constructions symboliques », en mesure d’intégrer tous les indices disponibles dans une construction théorique cohérente. The parietal art of the Upper Paleolithic shows, alongside with an extraordinary and highly diversified animalistic repertoire, a large number of signs which cannot be found in the perception of sensible reality. While images of humans or of anthropo-zoomorphic creatures are very rare, these aniconic forms—while often geometric and appropriate for classification—are globally more copious than animals. If understanding the intentions that prompted the first artists to paint on the walls represents a challenge for our interpretative skills, then the “signs” constitute the most enigmatic aspect of this challenge. Thirty years ago, in 1988, an article written by James D. Lewis-Williams and Thomas A. Dowson, and entitled “The Signs of All Times. Entoptic Phenomena in Upper Paleolithic Art”, was published in the Current Anthropology journal. This article opened up new perspectives on the origin of signs. According to its authors, by applying the neuropsychological model to the two-dimensional imagery of cave art, it is possible to identify universal signs ascribable to the entoptic appearances that can be found—in their different combined modes—in the rock art of all times. This interpretation of the art of prehistoric societies, which has led to the emergence of images within the visionary territories of shamanic cultures, has provoked countless—and sometimes harsh—disputes in France. It has therefore become a priority to evaluate whether the neuropsychological model is actually able to provide an explanatory picture of the archaeological evidence of historiated caves and their constructions symboliques that would be capable of integrating all the clues available into a coherent theoretical structure. (shrink)

Parental decision making is necessary for contracting medical interventions that require personal risk–benefit evaluation, and for overseeing matters of education. In the nineteenth century, exemptions from obligatory vaccination were granted for religious and conscientious reasons. Then and today, religion and moral values play marginal roles in vaccine hesitancy and denialism. Rather, the key values invoked by vaccine hesitants and denialists are liberty and pluralism. Neither is compatible with limiting adolescents’ choice. Because vaccination does not require assessment of personal medical risks, (...) because it does not need to occur within the sphere of the doctor–patient relationship, and because the risk involved is within the range of their daily activities, adolescents have the right to free access to vaccination without legal requirement of parental involvement. Drawing on the development of Common Law, and on the development of respect for personal conscience in the history of ideas, this paper does not promote an argument that grants public health an overriding moral power. Rather, this paper rejects the presumption that vaccination of adolescents might involve a conflict between parental authority and public health. Free access to vaccination is compatible with the law and ethics of adolescents’ evolving autonomy in relation to healthcare. (shrink)

The aggregation of individual judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a collective decision on the same propositions is called judgment aggregation. Literature in social choice and political theory has claimed that judgment aggregation raises serious concerns. For example, consider a set of premises and a conclusion where the latter is logically equivalent to the former. When majority voting is applied to some propositions (the premises) it may give a different outcome than majority voting applied to another set of propositions (the (...) conclusion). This problem is known as the discursive dilemma (or paradox). The discursive dilemma is a serious problem since it is not clear whether a collective outcome exists in these cases, and if it does, what it is like. Moreover, the two suggested escape-routes from the paradox—the so-called premise-based procedure and the conclusion-based procedure—are not, as I will show, satisfactory methods for group decision-making. In this paper I introduce a new aggregation procedure inspired by an operator defined in artificial intelligence in order to merge belief bases. The result is that we do not need to worry about paradoxical outcomes, since these arise only when inconsistent collective judgments are not ruled out from the set of possible solutions. (shrink)

Various methods have been employed to investigate different aspects of the brain activity modulation related to the performance of a cycling task. In our study we examined how functional connectivity and brain network efficiency varied during an endurance cycling task. To this purpose, we reconstructed EEG signals at source level: we computed current densities in 28 anatomical regions of interest (ROIs) through the eLORETA algorithm, then we calculated the Lagged Coherence of the 28 current density signals to define the adjacency (...) matrix. To quantify changes of functional network efficiency during an exhaustive cycling task, we computed three graph theoretical indices: local efficiency (LE), global efficiency (GE) and Density (D) in two different frequency bands, Alpha and Beta bands, that indicate alertness processes and motor binding/fatigue respectively. This analysis was conducted for six different task intervals: pre-cycling, initial, intermediate and final stages of cycling, active recovery and passive recovery. Fourteen participants performed an incremental cycling task with simultaneous EEG recording and RPE monitoring to detect participants’ exhaustion. LE remained constant during the endurance cycling task in both bands. Therefore, we speculate that fatigue processes did not affect segregated neural processing. We observed an increase of GE in the Alpha band only during cycling, that could be due to greater alertness processes and preparedness to stimuli during exercise. Conversely, although D did not change significantly over time in the Alpha band, its general reduction in the Beta bands during cycling could be interpreted within the framework of the neural efficiency hypothesis, which posits a reduced neural activity for expert/automated performances. We argue that the use of graph theoretical indices represents a clear methodological advancement in studying endurance performance. (shrink)

Nearly 400 million adults have been vaccinated against COVID-19. Children have been excluded from the vaccination programmes owing to their lower vulnerability to COVID-19 and to the special protections that apply to children’s exposure to new biological products. WHO guidelines and national laws focus on medical safety in the process of vaccine approval, and on national security in the process of emergency authorisation. Because children suffer much from social distancing, it is argued that the harms from containment measures should be (...) factored in a broader perspective on the good of the child. Considering the available knowledge on the disease, vaccine, and coping strategies, the decision about vaccine access to children is a public responsibility. The ultimate choice is a matter of paediatric informed consent. Moreover, jurisdictions that permit non-participation in established childhood vaccination programmes should also permit choice of vaccines outside of the approved programmes. Even if vaccine supply is too short to cover the paediatric population, the a priori exclusion of children is unjust. It may also exacerbate local and global inequalities. The second part of the paper delineates a prudent and ethical scheme for gradual incorporation of minors in vaccination programmes that includes a rigorous postvaccination monitoring. This is a theoretical paper in ethics that uses the Pfizer vaccine as a stock example, without discussing possible differences among existing vaccines. The key purpose is reflection on the good of the child in emergencies and vaccine policymaking. All data relevant to the study are included in the article and in its refernces. (shrink)

In The Leviathan in the state theory of Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt puts forward the claim that there is a ?barely visible crack? in Hobbes's theory of the state that opened the door to liberal constitutionalism. This essay claims that Schmitt's ?thesis of the crack? is composed of two elements: first, Schmitt argues that Hobbes makes a concession to individual conscience in his discussion of miracles; second, Schmitt points out that Hobbes's individualism undermines his notion of the absolute state. As (...) Schmitt relies on an unconvincing critique of Hobbes's discourse on miracles in order to justify his more general claim against Hobbes's authoritarianism, this essay suggests that Schmitt's ?thesis of the crack? is untenable in the form that Schmitt presented it in 1938. An attempt, however, is made to salvage ?the thesis of the crack? by turning to concepts found in Schmitt's Concept of the political and in Political theology. Although Schmitt openly approved of the so?called protection/obedience principle, this essay claims that there are a number of crucial differences between Schmitt's formulation of that principle and Hobbes's own version; an examination of these differences enables us (i) to appreciate the consequences of Hobbes's individualism on his theory of the state and (ii) to shed new light on Howard Warrender's famous claim that Hobbes's sovereign is inherently weak. The essay concludes that in spite of Schmitt's fallacious formulation of the ?thesis of the crack? of 1938, his political theory affords us a rare vantage point from which we can clearly see a case against the association of Hobbes with authoritarianism. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to consider both Schmitt’s polemical and his analytical claims in dealing with a concept which is central to his theory and yet strangely overlooked by the secondary literature: the concept of friendship. The essay proceeds in three steps; first it makes some textual claims about the meaning and role of friendship in Schmitt’s writings; secondly its puts forward an interpretation of the significance of friendship in Schmitt’s political thought; finally, it tries to disentangle polemics (...) from diagnostics in Schmitt’s discourse and draws some tentative conclusions. (shrink)

Ethical dilemmas in critical care may cause healthcare practitioners to experience moral distress: incoherence between what one believes to be best and what occurs. Given that paediatric decision-making typically involves parents, we propose that parents can also experience moral distress when faced with making value-laden decisions in the neonatal intensive care unit. We propose a new concept—that parents may experience “moral schism”—a genuine uncertainty regarding a value-based decision that is accompanied by emotional distress. Schism, unlike moral distress, is not caused (...) by barriers to making and executing a decision that is deemed to be best by the decision-makers but rather an encounter of significant internal struggle. We explore factors that appear to contribute to both moral distress and “moral schism” for parents: the degree of available support, a sense of coherence of the situation, and a sense of responsibility. We propose that moral schism is an underappreciated concept that needs to be explicated and may be more prevalent than moral distress when exploring decision-making experiences for parents. We also suggest actions of healthcare providers that may help minimize parental “moral schism” and moral distress. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt's friend/enemy principle is exposed to in-depth philosophical analysis and historical examination with the aim of showing that the political follows hostility, violence and terror as form follows matter. The book argues that the partisan is an umbrella concept that includes the national and global terrorist.

In this article we present the bases for a computational theory of the cognitive processes underlying human communication. The core of the article is devoted to the analysis of the phases in which the process of comprehension of a communicative act can be logically divided: (1) literal meaning, where the reconstruction of the mental states literally expressed by the actor takes place: (2) speaker's meaning, where the partner reconstructs the communicative intentions of the actor; (3) communicative effect, where the partner (...) possibly modifies his own beliefs and intentions; (4) reaction, where the intentions for the generation of the response are produced; and (5) response, where an overt response is constructed. The model appears to be compatible with relevant facts about human behavior. Our hypothesis is that, through communication, an actor tries to exploit the motivational structures of a partner so that the desired goal is generated. A second point is that social behavior requires that cooperation be maintained at some level. In the case of communication, cooperation is, in general, pursued even when the partner does not adhere to the actor's goals, and therefore no cooperation occurs at the behavioral level. This important distinction is reflected in the two kinds of game we introduce to account for communication. The main concept implied in communication is that two agents overtly reach a situation of shared mental states. Our model deals with sharedness through two primitives: shared beliefs and communicative intentions. (shrink)

L'application de la notion de structure à l'analyse des systèmes philosophiques est sans doute l'un des développements les plus fructueux de ce qu'on a appelé le structuralisme. La tradition inaugurée par Martial Gueroult et poursuivie par Victor Goldschmidt, Jules Vuillemin et d'autres a conduit à une fondation critique de la notion de système philosophique et a renouvelé profondément la méthode de l'histoire de la philosophie. En cherchant à reconstituer les orientations principales de cette tradition, nous essayons d'abord de distinguer le (...) structuralisme en philosophie du structuralisme en mathématique et en linguistique. Nous prenons comme base de discussion de cette question l'analyse de Gilles-Gaston Granger donnée en 1967, dans Pensée formelle et sciences de l'homme. Ensuite, nous abordons trois problèmes centraux de l'application de la notion de système en philosophie. La question de la clôture des concepts philosophiques ; la question de la vérité ; la question des rapports entre science et philosophie. (shrink)

Lewis’ Principal Principle (PP) aims at clarifying the connection between chance (i.e. objective probability) and credence (i.e. subjective probability). It is generally assumed that the chance that an event will occur does not depend on our credence in the occurrence of that event. Nevertheless, chances constrain our credence, and Lewis’ PP is an attempt to capture this connection.

Although organizational and situational factors have been found to predict burnout, not everyone employed at the same workplace develops it, suggesting that becoming burnt out is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. The aim of this study was to elucidate perceptions of conscience, stress of conscience, moral sensitivity, social support and resilience among two groups of health care personnel from the same workplaces, one group on sick leave owing to medically assessed burnout (n = 20) and one group who showed no indications (...) of burnout (n = 20). The results showed that higher levels of stress of conscience, a perception of conscience as a burden, having to deaden one’s conscience in order to keep working in health care and perceiving a lack of support characterized the burnout group. Lower levels of stress of conscience, looking on life with forbearance, a perception of conscience as an asset and perceiving support from organizations and those around them (social support) characterized the non-burnout group. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The paper explores the ethical aspects of introducing cultural circumcision of children into the EU public health system. We reject commonplace arguments against circumcision: considerations of good medical practice, justice, bodily integrity, autonomy and the analogy from female genital mutilation. From the unique structure of patient‐medicine interaction, we argue that the incorporation of cultural circumcision into EU public health services is a kind of medicalization, which does not fit the ethos of universal healthcare. However, we support a utilitarian argument (...) that finds hospital‐based circumcision safer than non‐medicalized alternatives. The argument concerning medicalization and the utilitarian argument both rely on preliminary empirical data, which depend on future validation. (shrink)

Hobbes's philosophical discourse is deconstructed as the interplay of the drama of individual behavior as perceived by rational agents and the detached analysis of conflict a by a political geometer . The author solves some long-standing problems in Hobbesian political philosophy (e.g., the role of glory, Hobbes' pessimism) and shows the consistency of Hobbes's attempt to derive absolutism as the only stable political association.

Human beings frequently attribute anthropomorphic features, motivations and behaviors to animals, artifacts, and natural phenomena. Historically, many interpretations of this attitude have been provided within different disciplines. What most interpretations have in common is distinguishing children’s manifestations of this attitude, which are considered “natural,” from adults’ occurrences, which must be explained by resorting to particular circumstances. In this article, I argue that anthropomorphism is not grounded in specific belief systems but rather in interaction. In interaction, a non-human entity assumes a (...) place that generally is attributed to a human interlocutor, which means that it is independent of the beliefs that people may have about the nature and features of the entities that are anthropomorphized. This perspective allows us to explain the problems that emerge if we consider anthropomorphism as a belief: (i) adults under certain circumstances may anthropomorphize entities even if they perfectly know that these entities have no mental life; (ii) according to the situation, the same entity may be anthropomorphized or treated as an object; (iii) there is no consistency among the entities that are anthropomorphized; (iv) there is individual variability in anthropomorphization, and this variability derives from affective states rather than from different degrees of knowledge about the entity that is anthropomorphized or greater or lesser naivety of the person who anthropomorphizes. From this perspective, anthropomorphism is a basic human attitude that begins in infants and persists throughout life. The difference between adults and children is not qualitative but rather a matter of complexity. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to present Gödel's discussion on concepts, from 1944 to the late 1970s, in particular relation to the thought of Frege and Russell. The discussion takes its point of departure from Gödel's claim in notes on Bernay's review of ?Russell's mathematical logic?. It then retraces the historical background of the notion of intension which both Russell and Gödel use, and offers some grounds for claiming that Gödel consistently considered logic as a free-type theory of concepts, called (...) intensions, considered as the denotations of predicate names. (shrink)

After a brief discussion of Kreisel’s notion of informal rigour and Myhill’s notion of absolute proof, Gödel’s analysis of the subject is presented. It is shown how Gödel avoids the notion of informal proof because such a use would contradict one of the senses of “formal” that Gödel wants to preserve. This Gödelian notion of “formal” is directly tied to his notion of absolute proof and to the question of the general applicability of concepts, in a way that overcomes both (...) Kreisel and Myhill’s conceptions. This paper aims to contribute to the present-day debate on informal and epistemic mathematics, focusing on what appears necessary for a better understanding of the issues at stake. (shrink)

The paper discusses ten philosophical problems in deontic logic: how to formally represent norms, when a set of norms may be termed ‘coherent’, how to deal with normative conflicts, how contraryto-duty obligations can be appropriately modeled, how dyadic deontic operators may be redefined to relate to sets of norms instead of preference relations between possible worlds, how various concepts of permission can be accommodated, how meaning postulates and counts-as conditionals can be taken into account, and how sets of norms may (...) be revised and merged. The problems are discussed from the viewpoint of input/output logic as developed by van der Torre & Makinson. We argue that norms, not ideality, should take the central position in deontic semantics, and that a semantics that represents norms, as input/output logic does, provides helpful tools for analyzing, clarifying and solving the problems of deontic logic. (shrink)

The Ostrogorski paradox and the discursive dilemma are seemingly unrelated paradoxes of aggregation. The former is discussed in traditional social choice theory, while the latter is at the core of the new literature on judgment aggregation. Both paradoxes arise when, in a group, each individual consistently makes a judgment, or expresses a preference, (in the form of yes or no) over specific propositions, and the collective outcome is in some respect inconsistent. While the result is logically inconsistent in the case (...) of the discursive paradox, it is not stable with respect to the level of aggregation in the case of the Ostrogorski paradox. In the following I argue that, despite these differences, the two problems have a similar structure. My conclusion will be twofold: on the one hand, the similarities between the paradoxes support the claim that these problems should be tackled using the same aggregation procedure; on the other hand, applying the same procedure to these paradoxes will help clarify the strengths and weaknesses of the aggregation method itself. More specifically, I will show that an operator defined in artificial intelligence to merge belief bases can deal with both paradoxes. (shrink)

Research in ethical AI has made strides in quantitative expression of ethical values such as fairness, transparency, and privacy. Here we contribute to this effort by proposing a new family of metrics called “decisional value scores” (DVS). DVSs are scores assigned to a system based on whether the decisions it makes meet or fail to meet a particular standard (either individually, in total, or as a ratio or average over decisions made). Advantages of DVS include greater discrimination capacity between types (...) of ethically relevant decisions and facilitation of ethical comparisons between decisions and decision-making systems, including across different modalities (for instance: human, machine, or coupled human–machine systems). After clarifying ambiguities in the concept of “decision” itself, including the question of how to individuate the decisions made by a system, we discuss the role and meaning of “decision” in common AI and machine learning approaches such as decision trees, neural networks, SVMs, and unsupervised classifiers. We then show how DVSs may be defined for several ethical values of interest, with an extended discussion of transparency. Finally, we explore how such metrics can be applied to real decision-making systems through two case studies: evaluations of LLMs for transparency; and evaluations of criminal risk assessment tools for utility, rights violations, fairness, and transparency. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to draw attention to the position of psychoanalysis regarding the opposition between the quest for truth and relativism. It is a conventional opposition of contemporary thought. On one hand, the quest for truth, and on the other, relativism, as the fundament of our intellectual and political life. I do this by means of Lacanian teachings. My objective is to take on the theoretical tools of psychoanalysis and the consequences of clinical facts, in order to (...) enable a critical reflection on this topic. Before proceeding to the precise argument, I briefly introduce the historical ground correlated to modern subjectivity, characterized by the vanishing of the guarantee of both truth and knowledge. Then I then go into the topic by means of a survey of Lacan’s reading of the path of modern logic. Lacan interprets the whole history of logic as a bungled action, “every bungled action is a successful discourse.” In fact, it points to the cardinal place of lack, which is the topic of psychoanalysis. It opens towards a deeper understanding of the role of the signifier of signification – the Bedeutung des Phallus. Lacan’s interpretation of the whole history of logic transforms the achievements of modern logical thought into the writings of a point de capiton for collective rationality. The key here is to focus on the capital role of what I call in conclusion “an inaccessible point” for both individual and collective life. This is the issue I address in the last point. The article is divided into five points: 1. the relativistic drift; 2. the guarantee of knowledge; 3. the guarantee of truth; 4. logic and point de capiton; and 5. the signification (Bedeutung) of the Phallus. (shrink)

This article focuses on the relationship between memory, female identity and the history of women: issues and areas of scholarship that have a comparatively recent history, but already present a rich spectrum of contrasting approaches and studies. In the case at hand, interpretations rooted in Foucault’s genealogical approach are contrasted with more recent postcolonial studies, against the backdrop of the political history of European and American feminism, a position that can scarcely be reduced to the more familiar terms of the (...) debate between philosophers and neuroscientists. The writing that springs from female memory is not the function of an alleged specificity of the female brain, but the product of the ability of a specific cultural subject to construct a genealogy from the point of view of its unprecedented reality: a seemingly minor “supplement,” but one that has the power to subvert the main corpus of history and knowledge, as Virginia Woolf already showed in magisterial terms as early as 1929. (shrink)

Many actors use the norm of climate justice to fight climate change and to struggle against global inequities internationally and domestically. Despite the enormous diversity of ways in which actors have deployed ideas of climate justice, many of the policies framed within this norm sustain oppressive, silencing, and/or assimilating tendencies. Hence, this paper looks at the biases that were introduced from ideas of “sustainable development” into the discourse of climate justice. Through the cases of India and Oceania, the paper illustrates (...) the ways in which colonial legacies of single-axis thinking and development emphasize a particular struggle at the expense of other experiences and ways of life. (shrink)

As when by night the glassOf Galileo, less assured, observesImagined lands and regions in the moonJohn Milton, Paradise Lost Most artists are afflicted with more than common stupidity, and this makes them even more desperate than they need be, and so they make themselves even more stupid than they really are, and so they make themselves artistically impotent – because, by panicking (consciously or unconsciously) at their own nonsense, they lose all self-respect and can produce either nothing...

This essay analyses the specific rhetoric of degeneration which was observable in the antisemitic polemic discourse of the last decades of 19th century. It provides an overview of the representation of Jewish art und artists as it took shape in the antisemitic literature of the Wilhelminian epoch. The growing emphasis placed by psychiatrists and racial theorists on the pathologies of the,,Jewish race“, such as hysteria or degeneration, resulted in the tendency to pathologize Jewish art and artists, which were deemed responsible (...) for the alleged decline of German culture. Mere aesthetic categories underwent a process of reduction and ideologization and were finally used for defamatory purposes, as shown in the case of the antisemitic denigration of Heinrich Heine. In order to demonstrate this, the analysis outlines the strict dichotomic logic of these argumentations, as the definition and consolidation of an ideal German essence was usually based on the construction of a degenerated Jewish identity. (shrink)

This article focuses on the case of conjoined twins in a selection of quodlibetal questions by John Peckham, Henry of Ghent, Remigius dei Girolami and John of Naples, in a period of time between th...

The Affective grounding hypothesis suggests that affective experiences play a crucial role in abstract concepts’ processing (Kousta et al. 2011). Vigliocco and colleagues test the role of affective experiences as well as the role of language in learning words denoting abstract concepts, comparing children with typical and atypical development. They conclude that besides the affective experiences also language plays a critical role in the processing of words referring to abstract concepts.

The article explores the complex experiences and positions of migrant women in the `nursing profession' in a southern European country, Greece. It looks at ways in which a rudimentary welfare state and a large informal economy have created the demand for les infirmières exclusives and for `quasi-nurses'. The supply and use of their services, on the one hand, helps perpetuate this informal welfare system and, on the other, has implications for migrant women themselves as, inter alia, it contributes to their (...) deskilling, exploitation, marginalization and exclusion. The multifarious degrees and forms that these processes take, to a large extent, depend on the cross-cutting of gender, ethnicity and class, as sexism intersects with different forms of `othering' and racialization processes in the destination country. The position of these women is also located in terms of ethnic and national boundaries. (shrink)