"L’écriture philosophique de Sarah Kofman a eu pour enjeu « la vie comme texte ». De L’enfance de l’art (1970) à L’imposture de la beauté (1995, posthume), la philosophe a exploré cette question dans un geste de lecture audacieux par lequel elle confronte philosophes anciens (Empédocle, Héraclite, Platon), modernes (Descartes, Kant, Rousseau, Kierkegaard, Comte, Marx) et contemporains (Sartre, Blanchot, Derrida). Sarah Kofman convoquait aussi dans toutes ses analyses deux interlocuteurs privilégiés, Freud et Nietzsche. La littérature, l’idéologie, le féminin, le rire, (...) les rapports à l’art et à la psychanalyse, l’autobiogriffure furent les « voies de traverse » par lesquelles celle qui, enfant, avait survécu à la Shoah, reconduisit la philosophie « au cœur de la vie ». Plus de vingt-cinq ans après la parution de Rue Ordener, rue Labat et du Mépris des Juifs en 1994, n’est-il pas temps de prendre la mesure de cette œuvre philosophique?Cet ouvrage réunit, dans une perspective transdisciplinaire et internationale, philosophes, littéraires, historiens, historiens de l’art et psychanalystes autour du travail de la philosophe. Multipliant les approches et les interprétations, faisant droit aux questions historiographiques et archivistiques liées à son œuvre, ces lectures entendent donner toute son actualité critique à la voix unique de Sarah Kofman."--Page 4 de la couverture. (shrink)

We examined liking for happy- and sad-sounding music as a function of exposure, which varied both in quantity (number of exposures) and in quality (focused or incidental listening). Liking ratings were higher for happy than for sad music after focused listening, but similar after incidental listening. In the incidental condition, liking ratings increased linearly as a function of exposure. In the focused condition, liking ratings were an inverted U-shaped function of exposure, with initial increases in liking (after 2 exposures) followed (...) by decreases (after 8 or 32 exposures). The results documented that: (1) sad music is liked as much as happy music in some instances; (2) frequency of exposure causes both familiarity (positive) and over-familiarity (negative) effects; and (3) effects of exposure on liking differ for focused and incidental listening. (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 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.

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 ouvrage est issu d’un colloque sur « Le féminisme face aux dilemmes juifs contemporains » qui s’est tenu à Paris le 11 décembre 2011, avec le concours du Centre Communautaire de Paris. Il a accompagné la publication par Nelly Las de Voix juives dans le féminisme – Résonances françaises et anglo-américaines (Honoré Champion, 2011). Le projet de cette manifestation consistait à rassembler des personnalités (religieuses, universitaires et, plus largement, intellectuelles) venues de « sensib...

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)

La science classique s'est trouvée associée à un désenchantement du monde. C'est la leçon que Jacques Monod entendait tirer des progrès de la biologie : "L'ancienne alliance est rompue. L'homme sait enfin qu'il est seul dans l'immensité indifférente de l'Univers d'où il a émergé par hasard." Notre science n'est plus ce savoir classique, nous pouvons déchiffrer le récit d'une "nouvelle alliance". Loin de l'exclure du monde qu'elle décrit, la science retrouve comme un problème l'appartenance de l'homme à ce monde. Les (...) théories scientifiques ne peuvent plus supposer la possibilité d'un savoir omniscient : nous lisons, jusque dans leurs principes, les traces d'une activité d'exploration au sein d'une nature en évolution. (shrink)

This volume contains twenty-two papers dedicated to ancient and medieval representations of justice, from the Septuagint to Thomas of Aquinas. It explores over a long historical period the evolution of various aspcts of this notion, understood as an individual virtue and as an ethical ideal, but also as a political value embodied in laws, rules, and institutions. In particular, it examines how early Christian authors, relying on biblical meanings of justice, have modified the conceptual framework and socio-political practices bound to (...) this idea. To demonstrate the contribution of Christian literature, considered here from Tertullian to Fulgentius Ferrandus, notions of justice from the bible and antiquity shall be studied followed by their medieval intellectual posterity. To what extent does this tradition of thought testify to a renewal of perceptions of justice, divine as well as human, and of injustice? How has it influenced representations of justice in the medieval world, whether expressed in academic treatises or in fiction? This volume lies at the junction of classical studies, biblical and patristic studies, medieval literature and philosophy. (shrink)

In this letter, we argue against a recurring idea that early word learning in infants is related to the low-level capacity for backward associations—a notion that suggests a cognitive gap with other animal species. Because backward associations entail the formation of bidirectional associations between sequentially perceived stimulus pairs, they seemingly mirror the label-referent bidirectional mental relations underlying the lexicon of natural language. This appealing but spurious resemblance has led to various speculations on language acquisition, in particular regarding early word learning, (...) which we deconstruct here. (shrink)

This paper is the result of a contribution between ethics and law, which will be used as thought-process tools, to address the complex issue of legal and ethical statuses of GM fish. To find answers, we propose to consider this issue from a wider angle, looking at the relations between the human, animal, and living worlds. We show that it is possible to construct other forms of intellectual logic that, without setting these worlds in opposition, do not lapse into relativism (...) where boundaries are blurred. In this sense, we submit the hypothesis that ordered pluralism should help us to move past a mere Man–Animal relationship to reveal the entire complexity of relationships within mankind and between mankind and other (non-human) worlds alongside it and to which it belongs: the animal and living worlds. With this new logic, “animal ethics” and “animal law” are re-embedded into a set of relationships. This logic emerges from a new consideration: the nature of the contemporary objects we are dealing with. We shall call objects like genetically modified fish “relational objects” in the sense that in order to be apprehended, they utilize a set of relationships of which there are just as many as the dimensions forming them, not as predicates but as primary constituents. Experimentally, in the case of GM fish, we translate this by proposing to typologize legal and ethical considerations induced by multiple relations connected to this object. According to the type of relationship in question, the GM fish will not have the same status; it is a changing object that must be suitably apprehended. (shrink)

Cet article propose une lecture transdisciplinaire de l’œuvre de l’autrice turco-allemande Emine Sevgi Özdamar (née en 1946). Grâce à une approche à la fois historienne et littéraire de la trilogie Sonne auf halbem Weg : die Istanbul-Berlin Trilogie (Soleil à mi-chemin : la trilogie Istanbul-Berlin), nous cherchons à interroger le récit à la première personne d’un parcours migratoire au féminin qui échappe aux catégories littéraires traditionnelles, entre autobiographie, roman et témoignage. Plutôt que de définir de nouveaux critères de classification, cet (...) article entend montrer l’apport d’un texte littéraire qui prend en compte le prisme du genre à la construction d’un discours historique alternatif, en rupture avec l’historiographie dominante de l’époque sur les Gastarbeiter (travailleurs invités allemands) en République fédérale d’Allemagne (seconde moitié du xxe siècle). (shrink)

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)

The paper’s aim is to underline the growing phenomenon of categorization of EU migrants despite the existence of a common EU citizenship. It addresses legal categorization deriving from EU legislation and the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union, but also factual categorization arising from host member states’ practices. The legal categorization of EU migrants reveals a clear differential treatment between economically active and inactive EU mobile citizens. Member states’ practices very often go further than legal categorization (...) by excluding poor mobile citizens, viewed as abusers of rights or as a potential threat to local public order or security. This paper also investigates the incompleteness of EU citizenship, being unable to prevent categorization of EU migrants. (shrink)

Ce livre vise un triple objectif: presenter l'unite de la doctrine de Fichte, determiner la signification de ce qu'il est convenu d'appeler le tournant speculatif de l'idealisme allemand par rapport a la philosophie transcendantale de Kant, enfin montrer comment la philosophie de Fichte contribue a renouveler un debat contemporain, celui portant sur les arguments transcendantaux, auquel ont pris part Strawson, Hintikka, Rorty ou Apel. La comprehension de la philosophie de Fichte permettra de mettre en lumiere sa definition originale du transcendantal, (...) definition qui constitue le coeur de sa pensee et fait la specificite de sa philosophie. (shrink)

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)

A radically new philosophy of experience and speculation, based on a reading of Whitehead's Process and Reality. Can experience be thought systematically without transforming the richness of the world as it is lived into reductive philosophical generalities? Can the method of empiricism ever be reconciled with a method of systematic cosmological speculation? Didier Debaise's reading of Whitehead shows clearly what a philosophy that makes this possible looks like, how it works and what is at stake. He focuses in on Whitehead's (...) attempt to construct a metaphysical system of everything in the universe that exists whilst simultaneously claiming that it can account for every element of our experience: everything enjoyed and perceived, willed or thought. (shrink)

Purpose As data-driven tools increasingly shape our life and tech ethics crises become strikingly frequent, data ethics coursework is urgently needed. The purpose of this study is to map the field of data ethics curricula, tracking relations between courses, instructors, texts and writers, and present a proof-of-concept interactive website for exploring these relations. This method is designed to be used in curricular research and development and provides multiple vantage points on this multidisciplinary field. Design/methodology/approach The authors use data science methods (...) to foster insights about the field of data ethics education and literature. The authors present a semantic, linked open data graph in the Resource Description Framework, along with proof-of-concept analyses and an exploratory website. Its framework is open-source and language-agnostic, providing the seed for future contributions of code, syllabi and resources from the global data ethics community. Findings This method provides a convenient means of exploring an overview of the field of data ethics’ social and textual relations. For educators designing or refining a course, the authors provide a method for curricular introspection and discovery of transdisciplinary curricula. Research limitations/implications The syllabi the authors have collected are self-selected and represent only a subset of the field. Furthermore, this method exclusively represents a course’s assigned literature rather than a holistic view of what courses teach. The authors present a prototype rather than a finished product. Originality/value This curricular survey provides a new way of modeling a field of study, using existing ontologies to organize graph data into a comprehensible overview. This framework may be repurposed to map the institutional knowledge structures of other disciplines, as well. (shrink)

As knowledge creation quickly gains importance for globally active corporations, we attempt to combine the advantages of the Stakeholder View with those of the SECI model by Nonaka and Takeuchi. In order to support the mental processes of the stakeholders, we use so-called topic maps to transform implicit into explicit knowledge and to visualize it. The preliminary propositions are illustrated by the case study of Swiss Re.

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)

Previous studies suggest that psychopathic traits commonly present as comorbid with substance use disorders. Moreover, neuroimaging and psychometric findings suggest that psychopathic traits may predispose individuals to a sensitized reward response to drugs. Given that substance use disorders are characterized by a neurocognitive bias toward drug-reward relative to non-drug reward, it is possible that heightened psychopathic characteristics may further predispose to this processing bias. To evaluate this possibility, we assessed psychopathic traits (measured using the PCL-R; Hare, 2003 ) in 105 (...) probationers/parolees and evaluated the relationship between PCL-R scores, lifetime duration of drug use, and biases in neural response to drug- compared to food-related videos. Psychopathic traits (potentially driven by interpersonal/affective traits) were positively correlated with drug > food reactivity within the right insula and left amygdala. In addition, psychopathic traits modulated the relationship between drug use and drug > food reactivity within the left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, right insula, and left caudate nucleus. Specifically, lifetime duration of drug use correlated positively with drug > food reactivity in participants with lower levels of psychopathic traits and correlated negatively with drug > food reactivity in individuals with higher levels of psychopathic traits. These results help reconcile prior studies on psychopathy and drug-stimulus processing and provide neurocognitive support for the notion that psychopathic traits serve as an underlying risk factor for substance use disorders. These results suggest that different treatment regimens for substance abuse for individuals with higher or lower levels of psychopathy may be beneficial and suggest that reduction of neurocognitive biases to drug-related stimuli may offer useful targets for future treatment protocols. (shrink)

Avec sa succession de bouleversements institutionnels, le dix-septième siècle anglais fut un fabuleux terrain d'expérimentation et de réflexion politique d'où surgirent les grandes théories modernes. A cette période, philosophes et acteurs engagés tentèrent de penser, avec une acuité particulière liée aux événements (guerres civiles, régicide, république, dictature), les tensions inhérentes au pouvoir, tout à la fois perçu comme contraignant, tyrannique et libérateur. Quatre d'entre eux ont été retenus : Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), le théoricien de l’absolutisme, James Harrington (1611-1677), le républicain (...) classique, Algernon Sidney (1623-1683), le martyr whig, John Locke (1632-1704), le père du libéralisme. Le propos de l’ouvrage est de montrer que, par-delà leurs différences, ces quatre penseurs partagent une approche qui constitue le socle commun d’une théorie de l’Etat moderne. Leur doctrine s’affranchit de l’exercice utopique comme de la théorie de la raison d’Etat et se conçoit comme une anatomie du corps politique. Par un examen minutieux des textes, l’auteur cherche à s’écarter de l' interprétation trop « idéologique » sans doute accentuée par les combats de l’histoire. Elle met en évidence un objet philosophique commun aux quatre auteurs, que l’on retrouve au cœur de toute conception moderne du pouvoir. (shrink)

In traditional reward systems, managers’ key performance indicators must surpass an agreed target in order to achieve a financial bonus. This system is designed to motivate high performance; yet adverse behavioural effects are often observed. These include middle managers becoming incentivised to game the reward system and target negotiation process they are subject to. This paper discusses three approaches to preventing such undesirable behavioural effects: Firstly, a linear pay-for-performance system without a target floor for receiving a performance bonus. Secondly, a (...) bonus banking system where managers participate at the company’s losses as well as its gains. Thirdly, a proposal that uses the Beyond Budgeting approach which radically negates the core premises of the traditional reward system and replaces rewards for individual manager performance with those for wider team performance. These three approaches are compared and evaluated with respect to their potential to prevent unwanted manager behaviour, and on consideration of how effectively they may be operationalised. (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)

BackgroundGiven that advances in research continuously raise new ethical issues, a multidisciplinary working group of investigators involved in biomedical research has gathered to discuss and compare ethical viewpoints in their daily practice.MethodsThe working group has drafted a Charter for Ethics in Biomedical Research that encompasses all the steps in the research process, i.e. from the initial idea to analysis and publication of the results.ResultsBased on key principles for ethically responsible research, the Charter may serve as a tool for performing research, (...) discussing research issues and training researchers.ConclusionsThe Charter should stimulate researchers to think about their responsibility for research in a progressive, caring society. (shrink)