Functional diversity holds the promise of understanding ecosystems in ways unattainable by taxonomic diversity studies. Underlying this promise is the intuition that investigating the diversity of what organisms actually do—i.e. their functional traits—within ecosystems will generate more reliable insights into the ways these ecosystems behave, compared to considering only species diversity. But this promise also rests on several conceptual and methodological—i.e. epistemic—assumptions that cut across various theories and domains of ecology. These assumptions should be clearly addressed, notably for the sake (...) of an effective comparison and integration across domains, and for assessing whether or not to use functional diversity approaches for developing ecological management strategies. The objective of this contribution is to identify and critically analyze the most salient of these assumptions. To this aim, we provide an “epistemic roadmap” that pinpoints these assumptions along a set of historical, conceptual, empirical, theoretical, and normative dimensions. (shrink)

This paper takes Porochista Khakpour’s personal narrative of chronic illness, disability, and addiction in Sick: A Memoir (2018) as a starting point to reflect on social and material features of sick bodily subjectivity. In ways heretofore largely unexplored by tradi-tional phenomenologies of illness, I ask what different modalities of the body come to light if we move beyond the privatization of dis-ease as a biological dysfunction and instead bring into focus its re-lation with conditions of existence that make and keep (...) some of us sick. (shrink)

This essay denaturalizes the taken-for-granted meaning of ‘access’ and interrogates its role and lived meaning in ableist social worlds, with a focus on spaces of higher education. I suggest that legalistic approaches to access need ‘cripping’ by a disability framework. Currently, these approaches (1) miss the intersubjective sociality of being-in-the-world; (2) they prioritize a narrow conception of access focused on ‘physical’ access and ‘physical’ space (a typology I contest); (3) they approach access as frozen in time, rather than as a (...) relational and temporally dynamic process (4); and, finally, they contribute to bureaucratizing and privatizing disability knowledge. I examine ‘access’ through the lens of belonging by asking how we orient ourselves in spaces shaped by oppressive social norms. I argue that ableist lifeworlds generate serious disorientations for disabled people that are lasting, structurally enforced, and harmful or debilitating. (shrink)

As a constructive alternative to the exclusionary binaries of Cartesian philosophy, Genevieve Lloyd and Moira Gatens turn to Spinoza. Spinoza's understanding of the body as "in relation" takes the focus of philosophical thought from the homogeneous subject to the heterogeneity of the social, and the focus of politics from individual rights to collective responsibility. The implications for feminism are radical; Spinoza enables a reconceptualization of the imaginary and the possibility of a sociability of inclusion.

Introduction -- Euripides, philosopher of the stage -- The world of men and gods -- Agreeing with nature : fate and providence in stoic ethics -- Augustine : divine justice and the "ordering" of evil -- The philosopher and the princess : Descartes and the philosophical life -- Living with necessity : Spinoza and the philosophical life -- Designer worlds -- Providence as progress -- Providence lost.

This article explores the relation among illness, home, and belonging. Through a feminist phenomenological framework, I describe the disorientations of being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and living with mental illness. This research anticipates the consequences of illness and serious disorientations for a conception of belonging as seamless body–world compatibility. Instead, this article examines how the stability of bodily dwellings in experiences of disorientation can suggest ways of being in the world that are more attentive to interdependency, unpredictability, and change (...) in human experience. I argue that these types of dwellings function as a more capacious and apposite metaphor to account for variations in belonging. This discussion outlines the ethical importance of building worlds that make room for different ways of being at home in and through our interactions with others. Although my discussion does not supply norms for ethical action, I contend that a feminist phenomenology of illness generates saliences and illuminates sensibilities that can transform our ways of being with others. (shrink)

Hoerl & McCormack claim that the temporal updating system only represents the world as present. This generates puzzles regarding the phenomenology of temporal experience. We argue that recent models of reinforcement learning suggest that temporal updating must have a minimal temporal structure; and we suggest that this helps to clarify what it means to experience the world as temporally structured.

A serious retardant to development of a specifically public relations (PR) ethical philosophy is the tendency to retain a commitment uniquely journalistic? objectivity. Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays offered two ethical options or imperatives, based on objectivity or on advocacy. Public relations must accept a commitment to the ethics of persuasion in order to reduce a crippling inferiority complex and advance understanding of the profession by its practitioners as well as the public.

Genevieve Lloyd illuminates and challenges some perplexing aspects of contemporary attitudes to wonder. She draws especially on Flaubert, who influenced the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. She also reaches into contemporary debates on refugees, secularisation and climate change.

Rawls symbolise les niveaux de raisonnement moral public et non public par l'utilisation des notions de raisonnable et de rationnel. Dans le contexte du pluralisme raisonnable qui caractérise les sociétés démocratiques libérales, il propose une articulation de ces notions qui doit permettre aux citoyens d'adhérer à leurs propres conceptions générales du bien sans pour autant compromettre l'existence d'une conception commune de la justice. R vise à articuler doctrines particulières et conception commune de façon à laisser la place à l'expression des (...) convictions personnelles des individus sans par ailleurs donner une signification égoïste à l'association politique. Cependant, lorsque Rawls précise le contenu de cette conception commune de la justice et la motivation des individus à y adhérer, il menace dangereusement la spécificité morale qu'il accorde en principe à la notion de raisonnable, symbole de cette raison publique, commune, partagée par les citoyens. Après avoir démontré cette difficulté, je souligne en conclusion deux raisons qui y contribuent, soit d'une part la prétention de Rawls de définir un libéralisme strictement politique et d'autre part la difficulté d'articuler une conception cohérente et acceptable de la motivation morale.Rawls uses the notions of the reasonable et the rational to symbolise two levels of moral reasoning : a public one and a non-public one. Reasonable pluralism characterizes liberal democratic societies ; in this context, Rawls looks for a specific articulation of public reason and non- public reasons which could allow citizens to pursue their own conception of the good without compromising the adoption of a common standpoint. Rawls thus wants to link the common point of view of public reason with the comprehensive doctrines citizens defend so as to let them free to build on their own conception, without the political association being reduced to a mere modus Vivendi of egoist people. (shrink)

Une recherche sur la communication publique de prévention du Sida a permis de mettre en évidence le rôle central des associations dans la mise en place d'un «cadrage» du problème en jeu, cognitif, symbolique et émotionnel et, par conséquent, dans la définition des stratégies successives mises en œuvre. Mais l'adoption de ces cadres par l'ensemble des acteurs diminue la visibilité de l'acteur central et devient paradoxalement un des éléments principaux qui déterminent sa mise à l'écart. Ces données permettent de faire (...) retour sur les processus d'influence minoritaire, et de les actualiser dans un cadre social concret. Elles contribuent à éclairer les différentes dimensions étroitement solidaires du cadrage, cognitif certes, mais aussi éthique, émotionnel, symbolique. Et, sur le résultat de l'influence, elle permettent de faire la part entre influence et pouvoir, alors même que l'exercice de l'influence s'opère au détriment du pouvoir que l'on pourrait tirer de la maîtrise du cadrage.Research into public communication initiatives about HIV/AIDS prevention has served to emphasise the central role played by associations in the struggle against HIV/AIDS at the cognitive, symbolic and emotional levels, and accordingly, in the definition of the strategies that have been successively implemented. However the adoption of these factors by all the parties involved lowers the visibility of the associations and paradoxically, becomes one of the main causes for it being pushed to one. The data presented allows us revisit the minority influence processes and to bring them up to date in a concrete social setting. They shed light on different and linked dimensions of cognitive and yet ethical, emotional and symbolic factors. Regarding the question of influence, they allow make a difference between influence and power, as the former is detrimental to the latter. (shrink)

Spinoza's doctrine of the uniqueness of substance has been interpreted as absorbing individual self-consciousness into an all-embracing whole.

This new edition of Genevieve Lloyd's classic study of the maleness of reason in philosophy contains a new introduction and bibliographical essay assessing the book's place in the explosion of writing and gender since 1984.

Editors' introduction to the Puncta special issue on "Critically Sick: New Phenomenologies Of Illness, Madness, And Disability.".

A renewed approach to democratic ethics is needed, one that takes into consideration the management of complexity and memory in a global world. The expansion of democratic ethics for the stewardship of a postnational, postmetaphysical, and postsecular world is the object of this book. It takes as its point of departure current proposals for global democratic justice, but extends these by incorporating contemporary European ideas on border and existential ethics. The privilege of democratic citizenship includes our conscious involvement with our (...) historical destinies, and with others whom we inevitably encounter on our journey of contemporary politics. A post-heroic approach to democratic ethics, one which takes violence and injustice seriously, yet understands the constraints posed on us as historical beings, is necessary. The practices of civility, such as they arise from a normative democratic universe and the ever-increasing role of civil society, can be harnessed for a transborder ethics. The examination of a contemporary democratic anthropology that includes a phenomenology of violence further clarifies the importance of intersubjective processes of encounter, dialogue, and recognition. (shrink)

Much debate in contemporary metaphysics of time has centred on whether or not tense is essential to the understanding of a temporal reality. The rival positions in this debate are associated with two very different pictures of the relationship between time and existence. Those who argue for the dispensability of tense see the phenomenon of tense as an epistemological accretion which infects our perception of the world but is in no way essential to a complete description of reality. With respect (...) to existence, things past and future are supposed to be on an equal footing with things present. Thus the Quinean ‘time slice’ ontology, which sees the world as a four-dimensional entity in space-time, repudiates any ontological significance to the differences between past, present and future. For the Quinean, what differences we see between past, present and future existents pertain to our limited mode of access to reality. In a perception which grasped the world as it really is tense differences would have no place. In this respect the Quinean position resembles Spinoza's claim in the Ethics that in so far as the mind conceives a thing under the dictates of reason it is affected equally, whether the idea be of a thing future, past or present. (shrink)

Based on archival and ethnographic data, this article analyzes the iconic-making, iconoclastic unmaking, and iconographic remaking of national identifications. The window into these processes is the career of Saint John the Baptist, patron saint of French Canadians and national icon from the mid-nineteenth century until 1969, when his statue was destroyed by protesters during the annual parade in his honor in Montréal. Relying on literatures on visuality and materiality, I analyze how the saint and his attending symbols were deployed in (...) processions, parades, and protests. From this analysis, I develop the sociological concept of aesthetic revolt, a process whereby social actors rework iconic symbols, redefining national identity in the process. The article offers a theoretical articulation and an empirical demonstration of how the context, content, and the form of specific cultural objects and symbols—national icons—are intertwined in public performance to produce eventful change, and shows why and how the internal material logic and the social life of these icons shape the articulation of new national identities. (shrink)

Being in Time examines philosophical treatments of time and self-consciousness in relation to concepts of narrative, focusing on the literary aspects of philosophical writing. Lloyd shows how philosophy bears on the human and emotional aspects of the experience of time which are often neglected by the history of philosophy. Starting with Augustine's treatment of the ways in which time makes him a 'problem to himself', the book traces the themes of unity and the experience of fragmentation and loss as expressed (...) by Descartes, Hume and Kant. The idea of the past as 'lost' is explored through Bergson's philosophy of time and Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return. The book concludes with a discussion of philosophical aspects of themes of self-consciousness, memory and writing in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and the novels of Virginia Woolf. (shrink)

An increasing number of studies about teacher’s induction issues mention that it is essential to take into account the types of support needs of beginning teachers to offer them adequate support. Few researchers have accurately portrayed the types of support needs felt by novice teachers and focused on the degree of agreement between the type of support needs felt and the perceived support received. This research used data drawn from a French-language survey (n = 156) and semi-directed interviews (n = (...) 10) conducted in Quebec with novice teachers. Quantitative analyzes using association measures on types of support needs and perception of support received indicate that the support perceived by teachers is largely inconsistent with the types of support needs felt. The interviews provide a better understanding of the quantitative results and suggest some possible solutions. (shrink)

Geneviève Brykman; XV*—Bayle's Case for Spinoza, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 259–272, https://doi.org/10.109.

The early discovery of cis‐regulatory elements able to promote transcription of genes over large distances led to the postulate that elements, termed insulators, should also exist that would limit the action of enhancers, LCRs and silencers to defined domains. Such insulators were indeed found during the past fifteen years in a wide range of organisms, from yeast to humans. Recent advances point to an important role of transcription factors in insulator activity and demonstrate that the operational observation of an insulator (...) effect relies on a delicate balance between the “efficiency” of the insulator and that of the element to be counteracted. In addition, genuine insulator elements now appear less common than initially envisaged, and they are only found at loci displaying a high density of coding or regulatory information. Where this is not the case, chromatin domains of opposing properties are thought to confront each other at “fuzzy” boundaries. In this article, we propose models for both fixed and fuzzy boundaries that incorporate probabilistic and dynamic parameters. BioEssays 26:523–532, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)