For much of Western history, we have been confident that human beings are persons but no other creatures have that status. These beliefs matter because personhood has often been deemed a necessary requirement for possessing moral value. Recently, an American legal activist group, the Nonhuman Rights Project, has challenged the assumption that only human beings are persons. Their approach is simple. They assume that humans possess particular features that make them persons, then ask whether there is evidence that any nonhuman (...) animals display these same qualities. The group has offered testimony from an array of experts to support the claim that chimpanzees, elephants, and dolphins do indeed possess them. They conclude that these animals should legally be considered persons. Although the Project makes claims about legal rights only, and their court suits have so far been unsuccessful, their arguments have implications for more general issues concerning the moral standing of nonhuman animals and their relations to humans. If some animals do have a standing as persons even in the narrow sense required for legal recognition, then we may be morally obliged to treat those animals very differently, by, for example, not killing them for sport or food, or using them for medical experimentation. (shrink)

Een theologisch betoog van de gereformeerde Kamper hoogleraar in (o.a.) de Ethiek.

In his latest book Kritik und Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Criticism and the History of Science, 1988), Gunnar Andersson clarifies the logical aspects of falsification and metalogical relationships between falsification, prediction and explanation. By analyzing the case studies on which Kuhn and Feyerabend have based their arguments for the incommensurability thesis, he shows that thesis to be untenable. A decisive criticism of the "new philosophy of science" is given. In the process Popper's methodology is developed further. It is shown that the "Kuhn Revolution" (...) is indeed a pseudo-revolution. (shrink)

The Church is a sexed body, in both carnal and symbolic terms. The Church has sex, but being the Church it does so in a radically creative way. This article explores the contrast between sex as imagined by the Church and as imagined by evolutionary psychology (Darwinism). It argues that the latter reduces sex to reproduction (repetition) and makes this a metaphysical principle, whereas the Church transforms sex into a means for final beatitude. (Christian sex is not about self-perpetuation, but (...) about welcoming strangers; not about children as possessions, but as God's most precious gifts.) Darwinism strangely repeats a debased (neoscholastic) form of the natural law, whereas the Church looks to follow a law that is the dispossessive desire of God for God. Sex after this law orders us towards the infinite joy of our consummation with and in God, in the fellowship of Christ and the holy saints. (shrink)

There is an increasing need for quality in ethics consultations, though there have been significant achievements in the United States and Europe. However, fundamental concerns that place the profession in jeopardy are discussed from the perspective of the U.S. in a manner that will be helpful for other countries. The descriptive component of the essay (the first two points) explains the achievements in ethics quality (illustrated by the IntegratedEthics program of the Veterans Health Administration) and the progress on standards and (...) competencies for ethics consultations (represented by the Core Competencies of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities). Based on these achievements, the analytical component of the essay (the final three points) identifies and seeks to resolve three fundamental concerns (with increasing levels of importance) that compromise quality in ethics consultations: standards of quality; professionalism; and credentialing. The analysis argues for clearer standards of quality in ethics consultation and urges further professionalism by explaining the need for the following: interpreting the ASBH core competencies in a normative manner, developing a Code of Ethics, and clarifying the meaning of best practices. However, the most serious concern that threatens quality in ethics consultations is the lack of a credentialing process. This concern can be resolved effectively by developing an independent Ethics Consultation Accreditation Council to accredit and standardize graduate degree programs, fellowship experiences, and qualifying examinations. This credentialing process is indispensable if we are to strategically enhance quality in ethics consultations. (shrink)

" L'état social n'est avantageux aux hommes qu'autant qu'ils ont tous quelque chose et qu'aucun d'eux n'a rien de trop " écrit Rousseau. Une certaine redistribution des richesses est donc le préalable obligé d'une vie politique qui ne tourne pas à la domination des uns sur les autres. Le présent essai retrace la genèse de l'inégalité telle que Rousseau la conçoit et en analyse les conséquences. Rousseau ou la révolution impossible constitue ainsi une introduction à la lecture du Discours sur (...) l'origine de l'inégalité et du Contrat social. Mais, par delà l'éclairage apporté à des textes parfois difficiles, tous ceux qui ne se satisfont pas du cours pris par la vie politique dans les démocraties contemporaines devraient y trouver de quoi nourrir leur réflexion critique. (shrink)

La lexicographie bilingue grec moderne-français / français-grec moderne reflète la position paradoxale de chaque langue : si l'apprentissage du grec moderne en France ne répond à aucun impératif, en revanche le français est, en Grèce, la seconde langue vivante obligatoire dès le secondaire. Les dictionnaires bilingues sont massivement rédigés et édités en Grèce, et destinés à des apprenants grecs. La question se pose alors de savoir dans quelle mesure leur conception résulte effectivement de l'observation des données lexicales des langues en (...) présence, et si cette observation n'est pas doublée, filtrée par une pré-appropriation qui apprêterait le matériau à la langue-cible pour en faciliter l'apprentissage. Le présent travail vise à ouvrir la réflexion sur les stratégies d'appropriation linguistiques et culturelles à l'œuvre dans la lexicographie bilingue. Une de ces stratégies consiste à conformer le matériau d'entrée à certaines caractéristiques structurelles de L2. Notre axe d'observation portera sur la dichotomie entre construction synaptique et construction morphologique, qui permet d'opposer les deux langues sur un axe macrostructurel. (shrink)

Teilhard de Chardin's use of metaphor in "The Phenomenon of Man" is the perfect linguistic counterpart to his lifelong attempt to vision the unity of being.

Governments in Europe and the United States have recently acquired significant stakes in a number of financial institutions, raising fears that they will use their investments to pursue interventionist goals. The comparative analysis of sixteen major bailouts in Belgium, Germany, France, Ireland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States provides evidence to the contrary. Fiscal and political considerations have prompted governments to generally avoid common stock investments, limit direct managerial involvement and favor early exits. While this investment strategy may (...) prove detrimental to other stakeholders, it resembles the approach distressed asset investors would adopt under the circumstances. (shrink)

Denommer, c'est appeler les etres et les choses par le nom qui leur a ete institue dans et par la langue. Assurant l'intercomprehension entre les locuteurs, la denomination constitue une propriete fondamentale du lexique et des terminologies. Si epistemologiquement, la denomination fait partie integrante des appareils conceptuel et methodologique de la Linguistique et de la Terminologie, dans l'une et l'autre discipline elle connait une situation paradoxale. D'une part elle souffre d'un deficit important de conceptualisation; de l'autre elle se revele etre (...) un puissant moteur pour la description semantique et referentielle du lexique et des terminologies. L'objet du present ouvrage est de proposer un reexamen systematique et explicite de cette notion et de lui assurer un positionnement valide dans l'appareil theorique de la Linguistique. Refusant une caracterisation monolithique, l'analyse opte pour une conception modulaire, articulee sur les differents parametres combinables et superposables qui definissent cette propriete: ontologiques, sociolinguistiques, juridiques et linguistiques. L'objectif de ce travail est egalement heuristique: envisager la denomination comme un levier en vue du reexamen du concept de polysemie, qui lui est consubstantiellement lie. Appliquee aux modeles categoriels et non categoriels, la denomination permet de distinguer entre emplois relevant effectivement d'une polysemie lexicale de ceux procedant d'effet impartis aux instanciations de vocables. (shrink)

Papers presented at a conference held in University College, Galway, in June 1993.

This paper is a theo-poetic exposition on hope via the series Neon Genesis Evangelion. The authors work to counter the dilemma of the modern human-cyborg: a subject saturated with digital technology who wants to fight the horror of their continual experience of a commodified hope. What emerges in this paper’s analysis is the articulation of three kinds of hope. The first kind is a prosaic general hope of the imaginary; the second is a rational hope of the symbolic, while the (...) third is an occult, excessive hope in the real. The ethical injunction of this paper’s conclusion is that to refuse the horror of the digital, we must preserve this third-order hope through an ethics of antagonistic uselessness. (shrink)