A partir d'un encrage syndical révolutionnaire, le mouvement Freinet emprunte des techniques et procédés pédagogiques au mouvement international des réformes pédagogiques et s'appuie sur l'évolution des sciences humaines. Les débats et controverses qui émaillent son histoire montrent non seulement l'impact pédagogique mais aussi les enjeux politiques.

Over many centuries, the homing pigeon has been selectively bred for returning home from a distant location. As a result of this strong selective pressure, homing pigeons have developed an excellent spatial navigation system. This system passes through the hippocampal formation, which shares many striking similarities to the mammalian hippocampus; there are a host of shared neuropeptides, interconnections, and its role in the storage and manipulation of spatial maps. There are some notable differences as well: there are unique connectivity patterns (...) and spatial encoding strategies. This review summarizes the comparisons between the avian and mammalian hippocampal systems, and the responses of single neurons in several general categories: location and place cells responding in specific areas, path and goal cells responding between goal locations, context-dependent cells that respond before or during a task, and pattern, grid, and boundary cells that increase firing at stable intervals. Head-direction cells, responding to a specific compass direction, are found in mammals and other birds but not to date in pigeons. By studying an animal that evolved under significant adaptive pressure to quickly develop a complex and efficient spatial memory system, we may better understand the comparative neurology of neurospatial systems, and plot new and potentially fruitful avenues of comparative research in the future. (shrink)

Nurses are often caught in the middle of what appear to be intractable moral conflicts. For such times, the function and limits of moral compromise need to be explored. Compromise is compatible with moral integrity if a number of conditions are met. Among these are the sharing of a moral language, mutual respect on the part of those who differ, acknowledgement of factual and moral complexities, and recognition of limits to compromise. Nurses are in a position uniquely suited to leadership (...) in fostering an environment that makes compromise with integrity possible. Keywords: compromise, integrity, nursing ethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Abstract:When people reason on the basis of moral rules, do they suppose that in the absence of a prohibitory rule they are free to act, or do they suppose that morality always requires a justification establishing a permission to act? In this essay we present a series of learning experiments that indicate when learners tend to close their system on the basis of natural liberty and when on the principle of residual prohibition. Those who are taught prohibitory rules tend to (...) infer natural liberty while those taught permission rules tend to infer residual prohibition. In mixed cases, where learners are taught both types of rules, there is some tendency to suppose that natural liberty is the default. Both natural liberty and its denial can be learned; is there a reason to adopt one system of moral rules or the other? We argue that systems of social morality based on a principle of natural liberty have a striking advantage over their competitors: they are well adapted to effectively exploring the constant novel circumstances that arise in open, dynamic, societies. (shrink)

In this essay I sketch a philosophical argument for classical liberalism based on the requirements of public reason. I argue that we can develop a philosophical liberalism that, unlike so much recent philosophy, takes existing social facts and mores seriously while, at the same time, retaining the critical edge characteristic of the liberal tradition. I argue that once we develop such an account, we are led toward a vindication of “old” (qua classical) liberal morality—what Benjamin Constant called the “liberties of (...) the moderns.” A core thesis of the paper is that a regime of individual rights is crucial to the project of public justification because it disperses moral authority to individuals thus mitigating what I call the “burdens of justification.” Footnotesa Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Philosophy Department workshop on the morality of capitalism, and at the conference on rights theory at the Murphy Institute, Tulane University. I am grateful for the comments of the participants; my special thanks to David Schmidtz, Julian Lamont, and Andrea Houchard for their useful written comments and suggestions. (shrink)

That the Bible rejoices in humour might come as a surprise to many. Yet since humour can be the most powerful method of communicating serious information in an appealing, relaxing and respectful manner, we must surely expect to find humour in the Scriptures. In fact, as this article explains, it is there in abundance. It is at the heart of our salvation history. The Bible 'revels in a profound laughter, a divine and human laughter that is endemic to the whole (...) narrative of creation, fall and salvation, and finally a laughter that results in a wondrous, all-encompassing comic vision'. We surely find divine humour in our attempts as humans to judge the actions of God according to our expectations and then to discover that our conclusions are dramatically wrong. (shrink)

Mandeville writes that it was said of Montaigne “that he was pretty well vers’d in the Defects of Man-kind, but unacquainted with the Excellencies of human Nature,” adding, “If I fare no worse, I shall think my self well used.” Mandeville transformed Montaigne’s suggestion into a methodology for his systematic attempt to “anatomize the invisible Parts of Man”. His tale of “the grumbling hive,” and his extensive commentary on it, were designed to demonstrate that “if Mankind could be cured of (...) the Failings they are Naturally guilty of, they would cease to be capable of being rais’d into such vast, potent and polite Societies, as they have been”. (shrink)

:Some understand utopia as an ideal society in which everyone would be thoroughly informed by a moral ethos: all would always act on their pure conscientious judgments about justice, and so it would never be necessary to provide incentives for them to act as justice requires. In this essay I argue that such a society is impossible. A society of purely conscientiously just agents would be unable to achieve real justice. This is the Paradox of Pure Conscientiousness. This paradox, I (...) argue, can only be overcome when individuals are prepared to depart from their own pure, conscientious, judgments of justice. (shrink)

Exceptuada la primera mitad de la Athēnaiōn Politeia, cuya autoría sigue siendo discutida, no hay obras de investigación histórica en el corpus aristotélico. Esto fortalece la impresión de que la teoría política aristotélica se abstrae de la historia. Esta opinión es reforzada por las afirmaciones contenidas en la Poética, que atenúan la importancia de la historia y los historiadores en favor de la poesía y los poetas. Esta contribución ofrece una interpretación más matizada, que se apoya sobre todo en una (...) lectura intertextual de la Athēnaiōn Politeia y el libro 5 de la Política. Ambos textos dirigen la atención del lector hacia la historia, pero en una manera completamente diferente. En este artículo argumento que los usos que hace Aristóteles de la historia son fundamentales para sus intercambios dialógicos con las narraciones que los seres humanos construyen para dar sentido a sus experiencias y aclarar sus opciones a la hora de elegir. Si se leen en este espíritu dialógico, estos textos resaltan las posibilidades y los riesgos de la acción política y salvaguardan la importancia tanto de la historia como de la poesía para la teoría política aristotélica. Palabras-clave: historia, poesía, ciencias sociales, teoría política. (shrink)

The notion of a weakly scattered theory T is defined. T need not be scattered. For each a model of T, let sr() be the Scott rank of . Assume sr() ≤ ω\sp A \sb 1 for all a model of T. Let σ\sp T \sb 2 be the least Σ₂ admissible ordinal relative to T. If T admits effective k-splitting as defined in this paper, then θσ\cal Aθ\cal A$ a model of T.

Consider a stylized contrast between medical and business ethics. Both fields of applied ethics focus on a profession whose activities are basic to human welfare. Both enquire into obligations of professionals, and the relations between goals intrinsic to the profession and ethical duties to others and to the society. I am struck, however, by a fundamental difference: whereas medical ethics takes place against a background of almost universal consensus that the practice of medicine is admirable and morally praiseworthy, the business (...) profession is embedded within the framework of firms in a capitalist market economy, and for the last century and a half there has been sustained debate about the moral and economic justifiability of such an economy. To be sure, even under socialism there might be an “ethics of socialist managers,” and there would be some overlap between such an ethic and contemporary business ethics. Nevertheless, many of the characteristic problems of business ethics — e.g., what are the obligations of a corporation to its shareholders? — arise only in the context of a private property-based market economy. This raises a deep problem for business ethics: can one develop an account of ethical practices for an activity (i.e., business) while ignoring that the context in which this activity occurs (i.e., capitalism) is morally controversial? It is as if the work in medical ethics proceeded in the midst of widespread disagreement whether medicine was a good thing. Another way of thinking about the problem is: if one teaches business ethics, does this commit you to accepting that business can be ethical? And doesn’t this commit you to accepting that capitalism is justifiable?1 I suspect that this is a serious problem for many teachers of business ethics. Many were trained in academic philosophy, and within academic philosophy there are many who think — or at least suspect — that capitalism is basically unjust, or perhaps that only a greatly modified capitalism would be acceptable.. (shrink)

‘Homophobia’ is shorthand for stigmatising attitudes and practices towards people who demonstrate sexual diversity. In this article, we reflect on how African Christian faith may become redemptive rather than violent in the context of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex forms of sexuality.

Randy E. Burnett, The Structure of Liberty Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998, xi + 347pp.

In a series of influential papers, John McDowell has argued that the rule‐following considerations explored in Wittgenstein’s later work provide support for a particularist form of moral objectivity. The article distinguishes three such arguments in McDowell’s writings, labelled the Anthropocentricism Argument, the Shapelessness Argument, and the Anti‐Humean Argument, respectively, and the author disputes the effectiveness of each of them. As far as these metaethical debates are concerned, the article concludes that the rule‐following considerations leave everything in their place.

My concern in this essay is a family of liberal theories that I shall call “public reason liberalism,” which arose out of the social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. These social contract accounts stressed that the justification of the state depended on showing that everyone would, in some way, consent to it. However, by relying on consent, social contract theory seemed to suppose a voluntarist conception of political obligation and authority: I am only bound by political authority if (...) I choose to be bound.1 Only in Kant, I think, does it become clear that consent is not fundamental to a social contract view: Kant insists that we have a duty to agree to act according to the idea of the “original contract.”2 Rawls’s revival of the social contract tradition in A Theory of Justice also made no important appeal to consent, though the apparatus of an “original agreement” of sorts persisted. The aim of the original position, Rawls announced, is to settle “the question of justification…by working out a problem of deliberation.”3 As the question of public justification takes center stage (we might say as contractualist liberalism becomes justificatory liberalism), it becomes clear that posing the problem of justification in terms of a deliberative or a bargaining problem is simply a heuristic: the real issue is “the problem of justification”4 — what principles can be justified to all reasonable persons. (shrink)

Targeted killing is a subspecies of assassination, deployed against irregular combatants such as terrorists. The justification for targeted killing bypasses the usual ‘war paradigm’ and ‘criminal enforcement paradigm’, and is thus unusual. There are various ways of securing such a justification, but also a number of dangers attending these arguments.

Mit der Akademie-Ausgabe der aristotelischen Schriften, die von 1831 an erscheinen und ein großes Dokument der Zusammenarbeit von philologischer und philosophiehistorischer Forschung darstellen, sowie der Neubewertung der aristotelischen Philosophie in der Nachfolge Hegels und Schellings, erreicht die Rezeption des aristotelischen Werkes im 19. Jahrhundert ein neues Niveau. Zurecht wird auch davon gesprochen, daß die deutsche Philosophie seit den 1830er Jahren im Zeichen einer »Erneuerung des Aristoteles« steht. Auf der Grundlage der philologischen Forschung von Bekker und Brandis bis zu Bonitz und (...) der Philosophiegeschichtsschreibung von Schleiermacher und Ritter bis zu Zeller, geht es nicht bloß um philologische Grundlagenforschung, sondern auch um den Versuch, die Einheit des aristotelischen Philosophiekonzepts im Sinne einer »aristotelischen Weltanschauung« aufzufassen und diese zum Grundmuster der Wirklichkeitserkenntnis zu machen. Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, einer der einflußreichsten Schulphilosophen des 19. Jahrhunderts, verbindet diese beiden Aspekte der Aristoteles-Rezeption. Die Bedeutung der aristotelischen Philosophie läßt sich seiner Ansicht nach auf drei Leitlinien zusammenfassen: Zum einen wird sie den Anforderungen zeitgemäßen Philosophierens im Gespräch mit den Einzelwissenschaften gerecht; zum anderen liefert sie das Musterbild, wie Philosophie als »Theorie der Wissenschaften« dennoch eine prägende Funktion im Wissenschaftsdiskurs ausüben kann. Und sie bietet darüber hinaus auf einem hohen systematischen Niveau die Möglichkeit, mit der eigenen Denktradition im Gespräch zu bleiben. Die Wirkungsgeschichte dieser »Erneuerung des Aristoteles« verläuft über Rudolf Eucken, Wilhelm Dilthey und Franz Brentano bis in das 20. Jahrhundert. (shrink)

Siegel argues that the Kuhnian relativism presented in ?Kuhn's Epistemological Relativism? fails because it neglects the possibility of rational choice in science between rival paradigms? own incommensurable standards on the basis of ?paradigm?neutral external standards?. In reply, it is argued (1) that Siegel has given no reason to believe that there are such external standards in science, (2) that the mere ?possibility? of such standards in scientific debate is not sufficient to vitiate Kuhn's relativism, (3) that the actual existence of (...) rational debate concerning the internal standards of rival paradigms does not entail (as Siegel claims) the existence of ?paradigm?neutral external standards?, and finally (4) that Kuhn's relativism concerning standards in science does not lead (as Siegel claims) to a ?reductio? which undermines the philosophical standards implicit in Kuhn's argument. (shrink)

Let me begin with a stylized contrast between two ways of thinking about morality. On the one hand, morality can be understood as the dictate of, or uncovered by, impartial reason. That which is (truly) moral must be capable of being verified by everyone’s reasoning from a suitably impartial perspective. If we are to respect the free and equal nature of each person, each must (in some sense) rationally validate the requirements of morality. If we take this view, the genuine (...) requirements of morality are a matter of rational reflection and self-imposed law. For Kant it seemed to be a matter of reflection by a rational individual, testing the impartiality of his maxims. For Rousseau, who was an important influence on Kant, under the proper conditions collective deliberation could yield impartial rules of justice that are willed by all. From another point of view moralities are social facts with histories. The heroes of this tradition are Hume, Ferguson and, perhaps surprisingly given his “deductive” method, Hobbes. The moral codes — or if “code” implies too much systematization, moral “practices” — we have ended up with are, to some extent, a matter of chance. This is by no means to say that morality is entirely arbitrary, but it does contain a significant arbitrary element. The morality we have ended up with is path-dependent: only because our moral codes have started somewhere, and have changed in response to unanticipated events, can we explain why we ended up where we have, and different societies end up in different places. The proponents of each view typically seek to discredit the other. Those who conceive of morality as the demand of impartial reason often insist the evolutionists confuse “positive morality” (the moral code that people actually follow) with justified (or true) morality, which is revealed by impartial reason. The positive morality that has evolved is simply what people think is morality, not what really is morality.. (shrink)