When deciding on an online purchase, consumers often face a plethora of information. Yet, individuals consumers differ greatly in the amount of information they are willing and able to acquire and process before making purchasing decisions. Extensively processing all available information does not necessarily promote good decisions. Instead, the empirical evidence suggests that reviewing too much information or too many choice alternatives can impair decision quality. Using simulated contract conclusion scenarios, we identify distinctive types of information processing styles and find (...) that certain search and selection strategies predict the quality of the final choice. Participants chose a cellular service contract in a web-based environment that closely resembled actual online settings in the country of study. Using information processing data obtained with tracking software, we identify three consumer segments differing along two dimensions – the extent dimension, referring to the overall effort invested in information processing, and the focus dimension, referring to the degree to which someone focuses on the best available options. The three subgroups of respondents can be characterized as follows: consumers with a low-effort and low-focus information processing strategy ; consumers with a moderate-effort and high-focus information processing strategy ; and consumers with high-effort and low-focus information processing strategy. The three groups differed not only in their information processing but also in the quality of their decisions. In line with the assumption of ecological rationality, most successful search strategies were not exhaustive, but instead involved the focused selection and processing of a medium amount of information. Implications for effective consumer information are provided. (shrink)

Several logical operators are defined as dual pairs, in different types of logics. Such dual pairs of operators also occur in other algebraic theories, such as mathematical morphology. Based on this observation, this paper proposes to define, at the abstract level of institutions, a pair of abstract dual and logical operators as morphological erosion and dilation. Standard quantifiers and modalities are then derived from these two abstract logical operators. These operators are studied both on sets of states and sets of (...) models. To cope with the lack of explicit set of states in institutions, the proposed abstract logical dual operators are defined in an extension of institutions, the stratified institutions, which take into account the notion of open sentences, whose satisfaction is parametrised by sets of states. A hint on the potential interest of the proposed framework for spatial reasoning is also provided. (shrink)

In a thought-provoking paper, Schuklenk and Smalling argue that no right to conscientious objection should be granted to medical professionals. First, they hold that it is impossible to assess either the truth of conscience-based claims or the sincerity of the objectors. Second, even a fettered right to conscientious refusal inevitably has adverse effects on the rights of patients. We argue that the main problem with their position is that it is not derived from a broader reflection on the meaning and (...) implications of freedom of conscience and reasonable accommodation. We point out that they collapse two related but distinct questions, that is, the subjective conception of freedom of conscience and the sincerity test. We note that they do not successfully show that the standard norm according to which exemption claims should not impose undue hardship on others is unworkable. We suggest that the main reason why arguments such as no one is forced to be a medical professional are flawed is that public norms should not constrain citizens to choose between two of their basic rights unless it is necessary. In fine, Schuklenk and Smalling, who see conscience claims as arbitrary dislikes, sell freedom of conscience short and forego any attempts at balancing the competing rights involved. We maintain the authors neglect that most of legal reasoning is contextual and that the blanket restriction of healthcare professionals' freedom of conscience is disproportionate. (shrink)

Face aux approches classiques, qui se focalisent sur les figures centrales du matérialisme, cet ouvrage collectif propose une exploration d'auteurs se situant à la périphérie de ce courant, voire dans ses marges plus lointaines, dessinant ainsi les contours d'une mouvance qui contribue à sa vitalité."--Publisher's website.

Data-driven technologies have come to pervade almost every aspect of business life, extending to employee monitoring and algorithmic management. How can employee privacy be protected in the age of datafication? This article surveys the potential and shortcomings of a number of legal and technical solutions to show the advantages of human rights-based approaches in addressing corporate responsibility to respect privacy and strengthen human agency. Based on this notion, we develop a process-oriented model of Privacy Due Diligence to complement existing frameworks (...) for safeguarding employee privacy in an era of Big Data surveillance. (shrink)

This contribution presents an adult education workshop implemented in the field of early childhood education. One of the specificities of education and care practices lies in the competences of the professionals to give a central role to the detailed observation of situations, in order to adjust their modalities of action. How can such observational work be developed and transformed? A participatory research-training approach aims to support the co-construction of an analytical view on observable phenomena in the course of interactions. In (...) a perspective of interactional analysis, it focuses on the modalities that favor the construction of such an analytical posture. (shrink)

The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus is famous for having turned botany into a systematic discipline, through his classification systems—most notably the sexual system—and his nomenclature. Throughout his life, Linnaeus experimented with various paper technologies designed to display information synoptically. The list took pride of place among these and is also the common element of more complex representations he produced, such as genera descriptions and his “natural system.” Taking clues from the anthropology of writing, this essay seeks to demonstrate that lists (...) can be considered as genuine research technologies. They possess a potential to generate research problems of their own but also pose limitations to inquiries that can be overcome only by the use of new media. (shrink)

De Bernard Arcand à Guillaume Vigneault en passant par Sylvie Boucher, Richard Desjardins, Jacques Languirand ou Andrée Ruffo, 46 personnalités québécoises provenant des horizons les plus divers expliquent en une page, avec ...

Dans la préface qu’elle donne au livre de son ancienne doctorante (2008), Françoise Thébaud souligne qu’il s’agit là d’une « histoire sociale et genrée des politiques nationales d’immigration et de naturalisation, et des pratiques administratives qui les mettent en œuvre », à partir du cas de Marseille, au cours des dernières années de la Troisième République (1918-1940). Linda Guerry s’attelle à cette tâche en se confrontant à des milliers de documents puisés dans les fonds archivistiques pa...

L'article exhume une supercherie littéraire empruntant au goût chinois publiée à Paris en 1788 et tente d'en décortiquer les implications intellectuelles. Le faux porte sur le détournement du titre de l'ouvrage—référence au pamphlet de Morelly, alors communément attribué à Diderot—, de l'auteur—Confucius, philosophe contemporain de Socrate qui n'a laissé aucun ouvrage de sa main—, du travail de traduction—qui par définition n'a jamais pu exister—et de commentaire—attribué à un jésuite de la mission française en Chine. Le véritable aute ur du faux, (...) Louis Lavicomterie, Montagnard et régicide, l'a revendiqué pendant la Révolution. La reconstitution des circonstances et des arrière-plans historiques du texte tente de circonscrire la charge émotive et pamphlétaire de ce message chinois falsifié pour véhiculer un plaidoyer en faveur de l'abolition de la peine de mort et une satire de la justice et du clergé. Derrière Confucius, Lavicomterie a inscrit Voltaire en filigrane. On peut y lire autant de miroirs des attentes à la veille de la Révolution: la recherche d'une morale laïque permettant de dépasser les discordes religieuses et le rejet du droit divin, fondement de l'Ancien Régime. (shrink)

Est-il possible, par-delà l'opposition courante et parfois abusive entre philosophies continentale et anglo-saxonne, de comparer le moment où, avec Russell, naît le paradigme du langage et le moment où, avec Fichte, semble culminer le paradigme de la subjectivité ? L'analyse du concept de relation de soi à soi (référence d'une proposition à elle-même ou d'un sujet à lui-même) permet de repenser la nature de l'opposition entre les deux traditions. En effet, si, dans un cas, l'autoréférence est frappée d'interdit, alors que, (...) dans l'autre, elle est donnée comme l'une des conditions que doivent honorer les propositions philosophiques, ce n'est nullement parce que, dans le premier, on s'interrogerait sur le langage et ses mécanismes, tandis que, dans le second, on s'attarderait sur la conscience et sa « nature ». En effet, le désaccord ici porte sur la notion même de vérité. Le mode de référence ad extra est-il seul susceptible d'être pensé en termes de vrai et de faux, ou bien faut-il considérer, qu'en philosophie, la référence à renonciation est à prendre en compte dans la détermination de ce qui est vrai et de ce qui ne l'est pas ? Telle est la question à laquelle conduit la comparaison, en apparence paradoxale, entre ces deux auteurs. Is it possible, beyond the usual and sometimes excessive opposition between Anglo-Saxon and Continental philosophy, to compare the philosophical moment when Russell initiated the linguistic paradigm and this other philosophical moment when Fichte seems to have brought the paradigm of subjectivity to its peak ? One should try to reconsider the nature of the opposition between these two philosophical traditions by analyzing the concept of self-reference (be it propositional or subjective). Indeed, that self-reference should be banished in the first case and that it should be perceived as one of the conditions for philosophical propositions in the other has nothing to do with the fact that one is actually dealing either with language or with the « nature » of consciousness. The heart of the dispute is to be found in the very notion of truth. Is ad extra referentiality the only one likely to be thought of in terms of true of false, or should one consider that philosophy may refer to enunciation as an element that contributes to determine what is true or false ? Such is the question raised by the apparently paradoxical comparison between Russell and Fichte. (shrink)

Zipf famously stated that, if natural language lexicons are structured for efficient communication, the words that are used the most frequently should require the least effort. This observation explains the famous finding that the most frequent words in a language tend to be short. A related prediction is that, even within words of the same length, the most frequent word forms should be the ones that are easiest to produce and understand. Using orthographics as a proxy for phonetics, we test (...) this hypothesis using corpora of 96 languages from Wikipedia. We find that, across a variety of languages and language families and controlling for length, the most frequent forms in a language tend to be more orthographically well‐formed and have more orthographic neighbors than less frequent forms. We interpret this result as evidence that lexicons are structured by language usage pressures to facilitate efficient communication. (shrink)

Cet article analyse l’incidence du découpage art / non-art sur la hiérarchie implicite des expériences qui sous-tend la hiérarchie explicite des arts. Parmi la diversité des expériences prédisposées par un « effet d’art », il se focalise sur l’expérience privilégiée du « libre jeu du plaisir libre » dont il met à jour l’évolution historique, de la charis (dans la période antique de l’« art élargi ») à ses nouveaux enjeux spécifiques dans l’esthétique de Kant.

L’inceste, comme transgression en acte, et l’incestuel, comme séduction narcissique et aliénante, constituent des figures d’une causalité que Spinoza et Freud, dans des perspectives différentes, ont explorée. Appuyée sur les grands principes qui fondent leurs démarches respectives, la confrontation de leurs analyses du procès d’individuation, de la filiation et de la transgression conduit à un éclairage réciproque des deux doctrines : apparaissent alors nettement certains de leurs points de convergence théorique comme leurs dissemblances. Elle permet aussi la reconstitution théorique de (...) la genèse et de la nature de l’inceste dans ses trois principales formes, en tant qu’objet d’interdit social, inceste psychique et inceste en acte. Loin d’être l’effet de désirs sexuels conduisant à la transgression de la loi, l’inceste résulte de son absence, et de la persistance de liens fusionnels qui manifestent à la fois les difficultés et l’immaturité des individus qu’ils unissent. (shrink)

"The Invention of Modern Science proposes a fruitful way of going beyond the apparently irreconcilable positions, that science is either "objective" or "socially constructed." Instead, suggests Isabelle Stengers, one of the most important and influential philosophers of science in Europe, we might understand the tension between scientific objectivity and belief as a necessary part of science, central to the practices invented and reinvented by scientists."--pub. desc.

BackgroundInnovations in technology have contributed to rapid changes in the way that modern biomedical research is carried out. Researchers are increasingly required to endorse adaptive and flexible approaches to accommodate these innovations and comply with ethical, legal and regulatory requirements. This paper explores how Dynamic Consent may provide solutions to address challenges encountered when researchers invite individuals to participate in research and follow them up over time in a continuously changing environment.MethodsAn interdisciplinary workshop jointly organised by the University of Oxford (...) and the COST Action CHIP ME gathered clinicians, researchers, ethicists, lawyers, research participants and patient representatives to discuss experiences of using Dynamic Consent, and how such use may facilitate the conduct of specific research tasks. The data collected during the workshop were analysed using a content analysis approach.ResultsDynamic Consent can provide practical, sustainable and future-proof solutions to challenges related to participant recruitment, the attainment of informed consent, participant retention and consent management, and may bring economic efficiencies.ConclusionsDynamic Consent offers opportunities for ongoing communication between researchers and research participants that can positively impact research. Dynamic Consent supports inter-sector, cross-border approaches and large scale data-sharing. Whilst it is relatively easy to set up and maintain, its implementation will require that researchers re-consider their relationship with research participants and adopt new procedures. (shrink)

L’auteur a pris le risque de traiter d’une question qui, aujourd’hui encore, fait polémique : celle du rapport qu’entretient le philosophe et romancier Jean-Jacques Rousseau avec la différence sexuelle. L’un des mérites de l’étude de Laure Challandes est d’argumenter, avec une grande précision, sur la nécessaire frontière qui existe entre les textes théoriques, Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles, Du contrat social, Émile ou de l’éducation, entre autres, et les textes fictifs, parmi lesque...

Paru en 1975, Surveiller et punir de Michel Foucault a profondément marqué l'ensemble des sciences humaines et sociales. Plus de quarante ans après, la société de surveillance annoncée par Foucault se manifeste à travers des préoccupations sécuritaires croissantes et la quête fantasmatique d'un risque zéro. Les réformes successives de notre droit pénal traduisent une volonté forte de prévenir, voire de prédire, la réalisation des infractions. La surveillance se déploie non seulement dans l'enceinte carcérale mais au-delà des murs. Il s'avère ainsi (...) crucial de relire l'ouvrage de Foucault à la lumière d'une actualité juridique et politique dense, marquée par une progressive prise de conscience de la nécessité d'appréhender les questions pénales et pénitentiaires d'une manière globale et concertée, mais aussi par le caractère limité des avancées concrètes en ce domaine. Ainsi, en mobilisant une pluralité d'approches disciplinaires (du droit à la philosophie, de la science politique à la sociologie et à la psychiatrie), cet ouvrage se propose de mettre les analyses foucaldiennes de la société punitive, du pouvoir disciplinaire, de l'archipel carcéral, de la surveillance généralisée et de la production de la délinquance à l'épreuve de notre présent, à la fois pour en mesurer la portée réelle et pour élaborer un diagnostic original de notre actualité sociale, juridique et politique. (shrink)

Nombreuses sont les contradictions imputées à l’œuvre de Danto, telles, pour les plus spectaculaires, « ontologie versus historicisme » ou « essentialisme versus contextualisme », voire « substantialisme versus pluralisme postmoderne ». Pour tenter de sortir de ces paradoxes, qui qualifient trop souvent le cheminement de Danto, nous tentons de revenir à l’exacte nature de son essentialisme qui, ouvrant (1981) et fermant (2013) sa réflexion sur l’art, en constitue l’armature profonde. Nous montrons, chemin faisant, comment la clarification de cet « (...) essentialisme » permet de relativiser, voire de pulvériser, certaines des plus lourdes contradictions qui lui sont reprochées. (shrink)

Personalized medicine aims to tailor disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment to individuals on the basis of their genes, lifestyle and environments. Patient and interest organizations may potentially play an important role in the realization of PM. This paper investigates the views and perspectives on PM of a variety of PIOs. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted among leading representatives of 13 PIOs located in Europe and North-America. The data collected were analysed using a conventional content analysis approach. The PIO representatives supported (...) the realization of PM but feared that many financial, structural and organizational challenges may delay its realization. They encouraged strategies to modernize drug licencing mechanisms, develop research and data sharing infrastructures, and educate patients and health care professionals in PM. Notably, they emphasized the importance of developing PM in an equitable way and taking into consideration the patients’ needs, values and personal situation. Despite varying levels of awareness regarding PM, the PIO representatives expressed willingness to engage in the PM agenda and recommended that PIOs work closely with policy-makers to design PM in a way that truly addresses the needs and concerns of patients. PIOs have the potential to become central drivers of the PM agenda. Collaborations should be further developed between PIOs, researchers, drug developers and health care authorities. (shrink)

La présente étude se propose d'analyser, de mettre en cause, puis en perspective le thème reçu de la fin de la philosophie. Analyser le motif, en développant diverses variantes (post-analytique, phénoménologique, etc.). Le mettre en cause, à la lumière d'une conception de la signification philosophique qui aille au-delà des paradoxes dont la racine est commune : une " cours à la référence " au détriment d'une théorie minimale de l'auto-référence. Au total, fournir un modèle qui mène vers la fin de (...) la fin de la philosophie, c'est-à-dire vers la vie toujours recommencée. (shrink)

Si nombreux sont les penseurs qui s’aceordent a dire que « notre epoque est celle de I’espace», là où la précedente avait été celle du temps et de I’histoire, les tentatives pour spatialiser nos concepts, et par là sortir des apories induites par la domination du temps (messianisme d’un avenir radieux ou nostalgie d’un passé idyllique) sont diverses (Deleuze, Foucault, Lacan, ete.). Avant eux Merleau-Ponty fut un des premiers à appeler de ses vœux eette spatialisation. C’est cette volonté de Merleau-Ponty (...) de spatialiser nos concepts que I’A. voudrait interroger. Quelle est la fonction de la topologie merleau-pontyenne et surtout quel en est le statut? N’assiste-t-on pas in fine à une difficulté de cette spatialisation de nos notions et ce faisant à un retour à un modèle temporel elassique ? Teiles sont les questions que se propose d’étudier cet article. (shrink)

In the philosophy of science, identity over time emerges as a central concern both as an ontological category in the interpretation of physical theories, and as an epistemological problem concerning the conditions of possibility of knowledge. In Reichenbach and subsequent writers on the problem of indistinguishable quantum particles we see the return of a contrast between Leibniz and Aquinas on the subject of individuation. The possibility of rejecting the principle of the identity of indiscernibles has certain logical difficulties, leading us (...) inexorably from ontology into epistemology. For the epistemological problem we attend to the differences that emerged between the (neo-)Kantian and logical empiricist traditions, also saliently displayed in Reichenbach's writings. After examining the contrast between Kant's and Leibniz's conceptions of empirical knowledge, specifically with respect to the irreducibility of spatiotemporal determinations, we explore an application of a neo-Kantian view to the same problem of indistinguishable quantum particles. (shrink)

This article is about the chief character of Sartre?s unfinished trilogy of novels known as Les chemins de la liberté—Daniel, Mathieu?s fellow-student at the École normale, Daniel the "archangel," Daniel the shamefaced pederast, Daniel the gaping wound, Daniel the strange hero, Daniel the recurrent figure in many of Sartre?s works. We do not intend to offer yet another explanation of this handsome young literature professor?s convoluted character to the explanations that already exist, nor to interpret yet again his detestation of (...) mankind and his prayers to God, which the author openly mocks. What we wish to do in these few pages is firstly to shed light on the procedures of Daniel?s imagination and evolution, and secondly to analyze how the author?s goals changed as, while writing the trilogy, he evolved from Gallimard?s up and coming star into the symbol of the search for freedom, the spokesman whom some disagreed with, criticised, despised, while others glorified him and praised him to the skies. We would like to try and elucidate the evolution of this character, steering between the free future of a literary work in progress and the ungraspable heart of darkness. (shrink)