Undeniably, a strikingly higher number of people die with direct health care provider involvement in Canada’s euthanasia regime, euphemistically termed “Medical Assistance in Dying” [MAiD], than un...

Cette contribution examine la pertinence de la Convention européenne des droits de l’homme pour les personnes en situation de handicap. Elle se penche sur les principes de la Convention tels que la dignité humaine, l’autonomie personnelle et l’égalité, qui sont particulièrement importants pour les personnes en situation de vulnérabilité. Le texte aborde ensuite les obligations négatives et positives de l’État à l’égard des personnes handicapées. En ce qui concerne les premières, le texte souligne la nécessité de procéder à des évaluations (...) individualisées dans le cadre des processus décisionnels et de trouver un équilibre entre les droits des personnes et les intérêts de l’État. En ce qui concerne les secondes, l’État est également tenu d’évaluer les besoins réels des personnes handicapées. Il doit fournir une aide suffisante, tout en pouvant prendre en compte des considérations financières légitimes. La Convention européenne est ensuite examinée dans sa relation avec la Convention des Nations Unies relative aux droits des personnes handicapées. La Cour européenne des droits de l’homme s’efforce généralement d’interpréter la Convention européenne en harmonie avec les autres traités internationaux. Si la Convention des Nations Unies a ainsi influencé certains développements dans la jurisprudence de la Cour, il existe également des cas où la Cour a estimé que la Convention européenne n’offrait pas le même niveau de protection que la Convention des Nations Unies. La relation entre les deux conventions reste dynamique, ce qui laisse penser qu’avec le temps, davantage de principes de la Convention des Nations Unies pourraient devenir partie intégrante de l’interprétation de la Convention européenne. (shrink)

In this essay we will use mind as the term to designate the totality and manner in which our thoughts take place. We use the term brain to refer to the underlying mechanics, the substrate and the manner in which it supports the operations needed to carry out thoughts.

The discussion about the impact of agricultural biotechnology on Africa is deeply divided and contains widely diverging claims about the impact of biotechnology on African farmers. Building upon literature on the ‘good farmer’ that highlights that farmers identities are an important factor in explaining the success or failure of agricultural change, we argue that the identity of the farmer is an undervalued yet crucial aspect for understanding the debate about the impact of agricultural biotechnology on African farmers. In this article (...) we therefore investigate what farmers’ identities are implicated in the arguments about the impact of biotechnology on African farmers. We aim to identify the main fault lines in different accounts of the African biotechnology farmer by analysing the identities ascribed to them in two prominent cases of controversy: the debates at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg and the discussion about the impact of biotechnology on smallholder farmers in the Makhathini flats in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Our findings demonstrate that arguments about biotechnology are informed by diverging conceptions of who the African farmer is, what is important for the African farmer, and what role the African farmer has in relation to agricultural biotechnology. These findings remain relevant for current discussions on gene editing technologies like CRISPR-Cas. Openly discussing these different views on the identity of smallholder farmers is crucial for moving forward in the biotechnology controversy and can inform future attempts to elicit the farmer’s voice. (shrink)

Traditionally, Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is largely identified with his analysis of the structure of scientific revolutions. Here, we contribute to a minority tradition in the Kuhn literature by interpreting the history of evolutionary biology through the prism of the entire historical developmental model of sciences that he elaborates in The Structure. This research not only reveals a certain match between this model and the history of evolutionary biology but, more importantly, also sheds new light (...) on several episodes in that history, and particularly on the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), the construction of the modern evolutionary synthesis, the chronic discontent with it, and the latest expression of that discontent, called the extended evolutionary synthesis. Lastly, we also explain why this kind of analysis hasn’t been done before. (shrink)

In this reply I try to show that, contrary to Milberry’s apparent assertion, the general intellect of the multitude does not have the explanatory robustness she accredits to it. Digital network technologies are currently overwhelmingly effective in proletarianizing and disempowering the cognitariat and only an active technopolitics of deproletarianization could reverse this hegemonic situation. In my response to Verbeek, I attempt to correct his misinterpretation of the Stieglerian approach as being dialectical in nature and show that, far from reinstating the (...) humanist dichotomy between human beings and technologies, my analysis assumes their original, albeit fundamentally ambiguous and even ‘uncanny’ [unheimlich] interconnection. I conclude with pointing out some implications of this view for a ‘really realistic’ political theory of technology. (shrink)

The first “R” from animal research ethics prescribes the replacement of animal experiments with animal-free alternatives. However, the question of when an animal-free method qualifies as an alternative to animal experiments remains unresolved.Drawing lessons from another debate in which the word “alternative” is central, the ethical debate on alternatives to germline genome editing, this paper develops a general account of when something qualifies as an alternative to something. It proposes three ethically significant conditions that technique, method, or approach X must (...) meet to qualify as an alternative to Y: (1) X must address the same problem as Y, under an appropriate description of that problem; (2) X must have a reasonable chance of success, compared to Y, in solving the problem; and (3) X must not be ethically unacceptable as a solution. If X meets all these conditions, its relative advantages and disadvantages determine whether it is preferable, indifferent, or dispreferable as an alternative to Y.This account is then applied to the question of whether animal-free research methods qualify as alternatives to animal research. Doing so breaks down the debate around this question into more focused (ethical and other) issues and illustrates the potential of the account. (shrink)

This article has two general aims. It first of all critically reconsiders the empirical turn’s dismissal of transcendentalism in the philosophy of technology, in particular through the work of Ihde and Verbeek, and defends the continuing relevance of the notion of the transcencental in thinking about technology today, illustrating this mainly through a reading of Stiegler’s understanding of the human condition as a technical condition and his view of human (noetic) evolution as proceeding from a process of technical exteriorization. The (...) crucial issue that is missed by postphenomenology and the empirical turn is that technology itself in its empiricity occupies the (periodically changing) place of the transcendental. It thus fails to consider the transcendental operativity of technical artifacts within its own empiricist stance. Secondly, it argues for the continuing importance and usefulness of the idea of Technology with a capital T, equally discarded by the representatives of the empirical turn, in particular against the emerging backdrop of the Anthropocene as the age of decisive anthropogenic forcing of the planet and the growing dominance of what has recently been called the technosphere in Earth system science. With Stiegler I show that a proper, inherent dynamic of technology must be acknowledged historically, anthropologically, techno-evolutionarily as well as (techno)phenomenologically. I conclude by demonstrating that our time of planetary crisis summons us to redirect our attention to technology from the empirical to the transcendental, and from the micro-level to the macro-level again. (shrink)

How are masculinity and nationalism intertwined? This question has received scant theoretical attention, and existing theories tend to focus on their shared ideals and are embedded in a heteronormative, homophobic, and patriarchal framework. Such views imply a static relationship between the two phenomena and are incompatible with the recent phenomenon of homonationalism and the incorporation of some homosexual bodies within the nation. Addressing this theoretical gap, this article develops a more holistic framework of the relationship between nationalism and masculinity. Drawing (...) on relational sociology, it conceptualises nationalism as competing masculinities. It argues that the link between masculinities and nationalism is not found in their overlapping substantive ideals, but rather that the two phenomena are co-constructed through their overlapping Othering processes. The proposed theoretical framework does not only provide a more dynamic understanding of the link between masculinity and nationalism, but it also helps to overcome the apparent duality between homonationalism and heteronationalism. It is shown that both phenomena are in fact two sides of the same coin, with the main difference between them being the location of homophobia as a technology of Othering within different types of Self/Other relations. Overall, the article provides an analytical tool that allows for the contextualisation and understanding of seemingly contradictory features of nationalism and its relationship to masculinity. (shrink)

Tolerance for blood transfusion risks is very low, as evidenced by the implementation of expensive blood tests and the rejection of gay men as blood donors. Is this low risk tolerance supported by the precautionary principle, as defenders of such policies claim? We discuss three constraints on applying the precautionary principle and show that respecting these implies tolerating certain risks. Consistency means that the precautionary principle cannot prescribe precautions that it must simultaneously forbid taking, considering the harms they might cause. (...) Avoiding counterproductivity requires rejecting precautions that cause more harm than they prevent. Proportionality forbids taking precautions that are more harmful than adequate alternatives. When applying these constraints, we argue, attention should not be restricted to harms that are human caused or that affect human health or the environment. Tolerating transfusion risks can be justified if available precautions have serious side effects, such as high social or economic costs. (shrink)

Stiegler understands the Anthropocene as the age in which planetary enframing engenders an avalanche of entropization, putting humanity’s survival at risk. To avoid catastrophe, the so-called technosphere should be transformed from an entropic-destructive into a negentropic-constructive assemblage, ushering in the Neganthropocene. Stiegler’s focus is on the noetic dimension, in particular as constituted and conditioned overwhelmingly today by the digital pharmakon. In this article I want to make a case for the importance of an entirely other noetic pharmakon not addressed by (...) Stiegler: the nontechnical pharmakon of psychedelics, which allows for the expansion of humanity’s noetic frontier beyond the digital, providing access to dimensions of experience—and possibly also of reality—that may support the emerging neganthropos to awaken on a postanthropocentric planet in which it is enabled to commune in a noosphere made up by many other, nonhuman intelligences, which may prove essential for the neganthropic transformation to succeed. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: The availability of costly safety measures against transfusion-transmissible infections forces Western countries to confront difficult ethical questions. How to decide about implementing such measures? When are such decisions justified? As a preliminary to addressing these questions, we assessed which concerns shape actual donor blood safety policymaking in five Western countries. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: Our qualitative study involved determining which issues had been discussed in advisory committee meetings and capturing these issues in general categories. Appropriate documents were identified in (...) collaboration with local decision-making experts in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The introduction of hepatitis B virus nucleic acid testing and selected measures against variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, West Nile virus, and Q-fever were chosen as cases representing decision-making on safety measures with high costs and low or uncertain added safety. RESULTS: A broad inventory of concerns was established, including: 1) nine categories of advantages and disadvantages of candidate safety policies; 2) six kinds of difficulties in assessing risks and forecasting the effects of safety policies; 3) 13 decision-making principles; and 4) six kinds of practical barriers hampering the translation of candidate policies into decisions. CONCLUSION: Blood safety policymaking involves a wide variety of competing concerns, and approaches to reconcile these considerations are themselves contested. Developing a systematic decision-making approach requires ethical reflection on, among others, reasonable costs of safety and the value of transparency in public policy. (shrink)

According to Terence Penelhum, Philo's confession in the last part of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion reveals on the side of the author a reconciliatory and pacifying attitude towards the liberal moderate clergy of his days. This article investigates whether another reading of this intriguing text is not more appropriate. It defends the idea that Philo's speeches and Cleanthes’ reactions to it in the last part of the Dialogues reveal on Hume's side an attitude of mild despair and isolation towards (...) the religious culture of eighteenth-century Scotland, in both its orthodox and more moderate form. (shrink)

Scale is central to understanding nanotechnologies. These technologies are usually described as the understanding and control of matter at the nanoscale, with one nanometer being 10^-9 meter. At this scale, some materials gain new properties that can be used in the creation of new products. These properties may contribute to economic growth and social welfare but, conversely, they may also create negative effects, such as new risks to human health and the environment. As an emerging field whose consequences are still (...) uncertain, the meanings of nanotechnologies are hotly contested. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhen Maurice Blondel raised the problem of Christian salvation in his thesis ‘L’Action’, he met with heavy resistance, both from the French University, striving for rationality and from the traditional Catholic philosophers who rejected the ‘modern’ method of immanence. Whereas in the sphere of knowledge Hegel starts the search for Absolute Knowledge from the uncultivated consciousness on, Blondel, exploring the sphere of the will, goes out from the most primitive willing of ‘something’ so as to climb – equally dialectically – (...) towards the object of the ultimate desire of the will. To Blondel, this path presupposes overcoming the position of positivism. Blondel reckons only with the ethical drive of the will’s desire. The way he chooses allows him to penetrate as far as to the natural desire of god, fulfilled by revelation. The act of faith, however, does not belong to philosophy. The fierce discussions after the publication gave Blondel the opportunity to expound his idea of a Christian philosophy... (shrink)

Synthetic biology, as an engineering approach to biological systems, has the potential to disruptively innovate the development of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. Data accessibility and differences in data-usage capabilities are important factors in shaping this innovation landscape. In this paper, the data that underpin synthetic biology responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are analyzed as positional information goods—goods whose value depends on exclusivity. The positionality of biological data impacts the ability to guide innovations toward societally preferred goals. From both an ethical (...) and economic point of view, positionality can lead to suboptimal as well as beneficial situations. When aiming for responsible innovation (i.e. embedding societal deliberation in the innovation process), it is important to consider hurdles and facilitators in data access and use. Central governance and knowledge commons provide routes to mitigate the negative effects of data positionality. (shrink)

In the last couple of years, serious controversies have raised doubts over the reliability of research supporting the efficacy and safety of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, popular drugs used for the treatment of depression and a variety of related conditions. These controversies have also evoked concerns over the promotional tactics used by industry to promote these drugs. In another article in this volume, David Healy argues that the tactics highlighted by these and some other recent controversies in psychiatry have brought (...) medical research itself to the level of commercial publicity. In the following article, I provide some additional first-hand information about controversies in which David Healy was involved. I then situate these controversies within the context of the increasing commercialization of medical research. I discuss how the controversies highlight the failure of existing regulatory regimes in curbing inappropriate industry influence over research. I critically analyse some of the measures recently promoted by the medical research community, such as the introduction of a clinical trial registry, and I indicate why these measures are insufficient. In conclusion, I highlight how a more radical reform of the clinical trials scene is needed. (shrink)

Euthanasia and psychological suffering: empathy beyond any taboo? Nowadays, when facing the death wish of a patient, a psychiatrist in Belgium or the Netherlands may legally initiate euthanasia. Proponents of this situation argue that a psychiatric patient’s autonomy and the seriousness of his or her suffering ought to be acknowledged and taken fully seriously. A psychiatrist’s consent to euthanasia will here have to be grounded on an assessment of psychological suffering that cannot be purely medical in character, which in turn (...) will have to depend, for a good deal, on empathy. However, a closer look at such empathy uncovers various paradoxes and leads to the conclusion that a psychiatrist with the kind of empathy that is appropriate to his or her role, i.e., ‘cognitive’ empathy, will resist rather than go along with the patient’s death wish. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to interpret Yuk Hui’s ambitious and promising project of cosmotechnics and technodiversity as a kind of “critical synthesis” of the philosophies of technology of Martin...

To balance a large state or society, whether monarchical or republican, on general laws, is a work of so great difficulty, that no human genius, however comprehensive, is able, by the mere dint of reason and reflection, to effect it.Andrew Sabl’s Hume’s Politics: Coordination and Crisis in the History of England is an impressive tribute to the Tacitus of the eighteenth century. His study offers a reading of the History of England “as if it were a treatise on this one (...) subject: how conventions of political authority arise, change, improve by various measures, and die”.1 Hume’s History, according to Sabl, is much more than a mere narrative of the gradual emergence of a stable constitutional monarchy on the English... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a new logic-based understanding of the connection between classical kinematics and relativistic kinematics. We show that the axioms of special relativity can be interpreted in the language of classical kinematics. This means that there is a logical translation function from the language of special relativity to the language of classical kinematics which translates the axioms of special relativity into consequences of classical kinematics. We will also show that if we distinguish a class (...) of observers in special relativity and exclude the non-slower-than light observers from classical kinematics by an extra axiom, then the two theories become definitionally equivalent. Furthermore, we show that classical kinematics is definitionally equivalent to classical kinematics with only slower-than-light inertial observers, and hence by transitivity of definitional equivalence that special relativity theory extended with “Ether” is definitionally equivalent to classical kinematics. So within an axiomatic framework of mathematical logic, wee xplicitly show that the transition from classical kinematics to relativistic kinematics is the knowledge acquisition that there is no “Ether”, accompanied by a redefinition of the concepts of time and space. (shrink)

In this dialogue with Yuk Hui, Pieter Lemmens explains the discipline called philosophy of technology and gives a concise overview of the most important contemporary approaches within this field. He also offers a critical evaluation of what are probably the two most salient characteristics of contemporary philosophy of technology, the so-called “empirical turn” and the “ethical turn,” which are deeply related and partly reflect the discipline’s on-going alignment with the global neoliberal agenda of exclusively profit-driven technological innovation. He also (...) critically reflects on recent developments in the molecular and informational life sciences such as genomics, metabolomics, bioinformatics and synthetic biology. (shrink)

For simplicity, most of the literature introduces the concept of definitional equivalence only for disjoint languages. In a recent paper, Barrett and Halvorson introduce a straightforward generalization to non-disjoint languages and they show that their generalization is not equivalent to intertranslatability in general. In this paper, we show that their generalization is not transitive and hence it is not an equivalence relation. Then we introduce another formalization of definitional equivalence due to Andréka and Németi which is equivalent to the Barrett–Halvorson (...) generalization in the case of disjoint languages. We show that the Andréka–Németi generalization is the smallest equivalence relation containing the Barrett–Halvorson generalization and it is equivalent to intertranslatability, which is another definition for definitional equivalence, even for non-disjoint languages. Finally, we investigate which definitions for definitional equivalences remain equivalent when we generalize them for theories in non-disjoint languages. (shrink)

Welch :263–279, 2017) has recently proposed two possible explanations for why the field of evolutionary biology is plagued by a steady stream of claims that it needs urgent reform. It is either seriously deficient and incapable of incorporating ideas that are new, relevant and plausible or it is not seriously deficient at all but is prone to attracting discontent and to the championing of ideas that are not very relevant, plausible and/or not really new. He argues for the second explanation. (...) This paper presents a twofold critique of his analysis: firstly, the main calls for reform do not concern the field of evolutionary biology in general but rather, or more specifically, the modern evolutionary synthesis. Secondly, and most importantly, these calls are not only inspired by the factors, enumerated by Welch, but are also, and even primarily, motivated by four problematic characteristics of the modern synthesis. This point is illustrated through a short analysis of the latest reform challenge to the modern synthesis, the so-called extended evolutionary synthesis. We conclude with the suggestion that the modern synthesis should be amended, rather than replaced. (shrink)

In 1847, the British polymath William Whewell pointed out that the sciences for which he, in 1837, had coined the term “palætiological” have much in common and that they may reflect light upon each other by being treated together. This recommendation is here put into practice in a specific way, to wit, not by comparing the palaetiological sciences that Whewell distinguished himself but by comparing the general historical development of the scientific study of the four broad palætiological domains that he (...) enumerated in 1847: the solar system, the Earth, its vegetable and animal creation, and man. For wide and various as their subjects are, it will be found that [the palætiological sciences] have all certain principles, maxims, and rules of procedure in common; and thus may reflect light upon each other by being treated together. William Whewell ( 1847, 1, p. 640). (shrink)

This is a commentary piece on Marco Pavanini's article ' ‘Multistability and Derrida’s Différance: Investigating the Relations Between Postphenomenology and Stiegler’s General Organology' in which I critically extend upon his comparative analysis of postphenomenology''s notion of multistability and Stiegler's conception of organology, focusing in particular on the pharmacological nature of Stiegler's organology and the latter's most recent re-interpretation of it in terms of entropy and negentropy. Among other things I show, and both are more intended as additions than criticisms with (...) respect to Pavanini’s very helpful comparison, that the most important concern for Stiegler in theorizing technology is the fact that the transductive relations between the three organ systems distinguished in his pharmaco-organology of technology open up affective or libidinal circuits between these systems, i.e., circuits either of desire or drive depending on the way the pharmakon is adopted or not, and that these circuits are fundamentally noetic circuits vulnerable to denoetization; and that these libidinal-noetic circuits as conditioned by technology should be interpreted in terms of entropy and negentropy. Both insights are lacking in postphenomenology, which generally fails to consider the irreducibly destitutive character of all technology, rightfully emphasized by Pavanini, since it lacks a genuine pharmacological awareness. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page 65-68.

Traditionally, Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is largely identified with his analysis of the structure of scientific revolutions. Here, we contribute to a minority tradition in the Kuhn literature by interpreting the history of evolutionary biology through the prism of the entire historical developmental model of sciences that he elaborates in The Structure. This research not only reveals a certain match between this model and the history of evolutionary biology but, more importantly, also sheds new light (...) on several episodes in that history, and particularly on the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), the construction of the modern evolutionary synthesis, the chronic discontent with it, and the latest expression of that discontent, called the extended evolutionary synthesis. Lastly, we also explain why this kind of analysis hasn’t been done before. (shrink)

Over the past 5 years, a series of articles in leading American newspapers has revealed the extent to which the conduct of clinical trials may be affected by inducements offered by corporate research sponsors and accepted by some unscrupulous physicians. The cases described were disturbing. They involved physicians engaged in excessive “enrollment activities” in exchange for money. Some of these physicians perpetrated fraud, falsifying their recruitment records in order to increase their profits. Others ignored exclusion criteria designed to ensure the (...) safety of subjects and the validity of research results, referring their patients to research investigating treatments for conditions from which they did not suffer. One of the articles reports that physicians focusing exclusively on commercial research regularly divulge annual incomes upwards of $1,000,000 with profits in excess of $300,000. Two physicians accumulated well over $10,000,000 through clinical trials activities in less than a decade. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article highlights the epistemic concerns that have permeated the historical discourse around charlatanism. In it, I study the term “charlatan” as a multivalent actor’s category without a stable referent. Instead of defining or identifying “the charlatan,” I analyze how the concept of the charlatan was used to make epistemic interventions about what constituted credible knowledge in two interconnected controversies. Focusing on these controversies allows me to thematize how the concept of “the charlatan” expanded beyond medical contexts and to bring (...) a history of knowledge perspective to the history of medicine.The title of the article, “Charlatan Epistemology,” indicates a historical epistemological approach to charlatanism as well as the existence of a charlatan’s embodied epistemology. On the one hand, I historicize the epistemic characteristics of charlatanism, focusing on virtues as well as vices, knowledge as well as ignorance, by addressing the historical and contextual specificities of two case studies and the larger epistemic concerns at play. On the other hand, I show how references to charlatanism implied the existence of specific embodied knowledges, special skills and techniques to manipulate either natural secrets or the human psyche, and I explore the similarities and differences between charlatan epistemology and artisanal epistemology. (shrink)

Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes part of the ceremony.–Franz KaflaFor more than two decades, significant controversies have been brewing over the efficacy and safety of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors and other treatments for depression, and also over the expansion of their use for the treatment of a variety of other conditions. These controversies (...) culminated, in June 2004, with alawsuit intended by Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of the State of New York. The lawsuit accused pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmith-Kline of “repeated and persistent fraud by misrepresentation, concealing and otherwise failing to disclose to physicians information in its control concerning the safety and effectiveness of its antidepressant medication paroxetine” in treating children and adolescents suffering from depression. (shrink)