As theorists, developers, and practitioners of the anticipatory governance of emerging technologies, we applaud Ankeny et al.’s...

Background Forward-looking, democratically oriented governance is needed to ensure that human genome editing serves rather than undercuts public values. Scientific, policy, and ethics communities have recognized this necessity but have demonstrated limited understanding of how to fulfill it. The field of bioethics has long attempted to grapple with the unintended consequences of emerging technologies, but too often such foresight has lacked adequate scientific grounding, overemphasized regulation to the exclusion of examining underlying values, and failed to adequately engage the public. Methods (...) This research investigates the application of scenario planning, a tool developed in the high-stakes, uncertainty-ridden world of corporate strategy, for the equally high-stakes and uncertain world of the governance of emerging technologies. The scenario planning methodology is non-predictive, looking instead at a spread of plausible futures which diverge in their implications for different communities’ needs, cares, and desires. Results In this article we share how the scenario development process can further understandings of the complex and dynamic systems which generate and shape new biomedical technologies and provide opportunities to re-examine and re-think questions of governance, ethics and values. We detail the results of a year-long scenario planning study that engaged experts from the biological sciences, bioethics, social sciences, law, policy, private industry, and civic organizations to articulate alternative futures of human genome editing. Conclusions Through sharing and critiquing our methodological approach and results of this study, we advance understandings of anticipatory methods deployed in bioethics, demonstrating how this approach provides unique insights and helps to derive better research questions and policy strategies. (shrink)

Do philosophic views affect job performance? The authors found that possessing a belief in free will predicted better career attitudes and actual job performance. The effect of free will beliefs on job performance indicators were over and above well-established predictors such as conscientiousness, locus of control, and Protestant work ethic. In Study 1, stronger belief in free will corresponded to more positive attitudes about expected career success. In Study 2, job performance was evaluated objectively and independently by a supervisor. Results (...) indicated that employees who espoused free will beliefs were given better work performance evaluations than those who disbelieve in free will, presumably because belief in free will facilitates exerting control over one’s actions. (shrink)

The essay outlines the character of free logic, and motivation for its construction and development. It details some technical achievements of high philosophical interest, but urges that the role of existence assumptions in logic is still not fully understood, that unresolved old problems, both technical and philosophical, abound, and presents some new problems of considerable philosophical import in free logic.

This paper deals with the Meinong-Russell controversy on nonsubsistent objects. The first part notes the similarity of certain contemporary semantical developments to Meinonj;'s theory of nonsubsistent objects. Then it lays out the major features of Meinong's famous theory, considers Russell's objections to same and Meinong's counter-objections to Russell, and argues that Russell's well-known argument fails. However, it is possible to augment Russell's argument against Meinong with sound Russellian principles in such a way that it presents at least a strong inclining (...) reason against Meinong's theory of impossible objects. (shrink)

In vivo explore des questions fondamentales et des moments cruciaux de l’existence humaine – l’entrée en interaction avec une culture étrangère, la décision de se sortir d’une condition de vie routinière ou malheureuse, une action généreuse posée dans un contexte quotidien ordinaire – en fonction de leur potentiel de transformation de l’existence. En recourant à des illustrations tirées de la vie réelle et d’œuvres de fiction, Gabor Csepregi révèle le rôle primordial des sentiments personnels dans le façonnement de la vie (...) humaine et démontre le pouvoir formateur de la spontanéité en dehors du contexte traditionnel de l’éducation formelle. Ces moments, et notamment la façon dont ils perturbent l’ordre temporel ordinaire constituent des expériences vécues de notre vitalité. « Recourant à un langage clair et précis, In vivo captivera les philosophes et les intellectuels. Csepregi engage un dialogue entre diverses traditions, faisant appel aux meilleurs courants de plusieurs philosophies pour développer un point de vue unique ». - Gaëlle Fiasse, Université McGill. (shrink)

Propose l'idée directrice suivante : les trois monothéismes méditerranéens forment système comme les polythéismes indo-européens. Au prix d'une critique girardienne du modèle dumézilien, qui a l'effet de compliquer les deux approches ainsi privées de leur tentation englobante, l'analyse procède à une exégèse véritablement anthropologique.

ABSTRACTThis article considers Friedrich Nietzsche’s claims about value creation alongside his proclamation that ‘nature is always value-less’, assessing their implications for his metaethics. It begins by weighing the evidence for a recent constructivist interpretation of Nietzsche’s metaethics, arguing that despite several apparent interpretive advantages, Nietzschean constructivism ultimately fails. Through a close reading of GS 301 and related passages, the constructivist interpretation is shown to be misguided in taking Nietzsche’s talk of value creation as expressing a metaethical view according to which (...) the evaluative attitudes of philosophers ground what is valuable. Against this, it is argued that GS 301 should be understood as an assertion of the status of philosophers as the causal sources of new evaluative outlooks that shape the held values of their respective cultures, a claim developed through analysis of passages in which Nietzsche discusses his ideal of the ‘genuine philosopher’ and contrasts this figure with ‘critics’ or ‘philosophical laborers’. It is next argued that, insofar as it is best understood as describing a social or anthropological phenomenon rather than a metaphysical one, GS 301 is a poor piece of evidence not only for the constructivist interpretation, but in fact for any account of Nietzsche’s metaethical position—including radical anti-realist interpretations informed by his statement that ‘nature is always value-less’. The paper then concludes by appealing to another passage, GS 55, which hints towards a very different—and plausibly realist—picture of Nietzsche’s metaethics. (shrink)

[327] § 1. Quoique, depuis le renouvellement des Lettres, les Mathématiques aient été enrichies de plusieurs parties, par l’application qu’on en a faite à différents objets de physique, il s’en faut de beaucoup qu’on ait également réussi dans ce qui regarde les objets métaphysiques. Ces objets paraissent moins traitables, et il n’est pas même facile d’en indiquer la cause. II faudrait pour cet effet remonter à l’origine des idées abstraites, afin de mieux connaître celles qu’on traite dans la...

This paper brings feminist public health ethics and feminist analytic tools to bear on mainstream medical research. Specifically, it uses these approaches to call attention to several problems associated with “The Placenta Harbors a Unique Microbiome,” a recent study published in Science Translational Medicine. We point out the potential negative consequences these problems have for both women’s health and their autonomy.Our paper has two parts. We begin by discussing the study, which examines the composition of the placental microbiome, that is (...) to say, the communities of microorganisms that live in the placenta. Among other things, this study considers two different relations: a correlation.. (shrink)

Nietzsche claims that weakness of will is a pervasive feature of modernity: ‘Nothing is as timely [zeitgemass] as weakness of will’ (BGE 212). In this paper I explore a textual puzzle regarding the phenomenon traditionally identified with weakness of will, akrasia. Specifically, I draw attention to an apparent inconsistency between Nietzsche’s views regarding the origins of action and evaluative judgment, on the one hand, and his commitment to the possibility of akratic action, on the other. Nietzsche appears to account for (...) both action and ‘conscience’ – which functions like what philosophers today would call ‘better judgment’—by appealing to the strength of the drives. Thus, it is not immediately clear how action could ever diverge from conscience in the manner required for akratic action. As I argue, however, Nietzsche’s theoretical commitments regarding action and conscience are ultimately consistent with the possibility of akratic action. After motivating the interpretive tension, I offer a closer examination of Nietzsche’s remarks regarding the sources of action and conscience, respectively. I then demonstrate, drawing on his description of the relations between drives and his distinction between conscious and unconscious thought, that Nietzsche conceives of akratic action as a kind of ‘willing and not being able.’. (shrink)

This paper explores the encounter between traditional Confucian thought and contemporary Anglophone philosophy. It explores the evolution in philosophical methods and heuristics employed by "Western" thinkers in the past fifty or so years, often with the aim of extracting Confucian thought from its specific social and historical roots. Unlike the disciplines of intellectual or literary history, these philosophers have a distinctive variety of aims. These include: articulate dimensions of Confucian philosophy not explicit in traditional texts, develop critiques of Western modernity, (...) derive solutions to problems in Western philosophy, and attempt to reimagine Confucian thought for an East Asian modernity. Analyzing how contemporary philosophers have engaged the Chinese tradition makes clearer the meaning of the much-debated term “Chinese philosophy,” without becoming mired in definitional disputes, while also justifying the enterprise of engaging philosophically with the Chinese tradition. (shrink)

Regimentation of an intuitively plausible distinction enhances understanding of that distinction. In Carnap’s words, it is an explication. Properly employed, it is, in the case to be considered, and in almost all others, an indispensable aid to good philosophizing.

This article responds to the question of the ‘implicit and presupposed theological turn of phenomenology’ by providing a close reading of Jacques Derrida’s Le Toucher—Jean-Luc Nancy (2000 French/2005 English translation), particularly concerning what Derrida alludes to as ‘the Christian thinking of the flesh’ in the French phenomenological tradition post-Husserl. In reading Derrida’s own text, the article identifies and then performs a ‘cryptonomy’ of references to the ‘Christian body,’ and of the ‘return of religion.’ The article also focuses on the more (...) recent writings of Jean-Luc Nancy, especially Corpus (2000 French), concerning the body and its relationship to the concept of corporality (Leiblichkeit) from Husserl’s Ideas II. (shrink)

Tsarina Doyle’s bold new effort to interpret Nietzsche as a metaphysician will be of interest to readers concerned with his views on metaphysics, metaethics, and the philosophy of mind. Doyle argues that Nietzsche proposes the metaphysics of the will to power in response to the problem of nihilism, which emerges via the recognition of the unjustifiability of a traditional presupposition about our values—namely, that they are objective and meaningful in virtue of “corresponding to value properties instantiated in a mind-independent and (...) non-empirical world”. According to Doyle, Nietzsche’s will to power thesis combats the problem of nihilism by underwriting values that are objective and mind-independent insofar... (shrink)

[421] Pour indiquer le sujet de ce mémoire, je commencerai par rapporter ce qui m’en a fourni l’occasion. C’est la lecture de Longin et la comparaison de ce qu’il dit sur le sublime avec ce que d’autres auteurs en ont dit. Longin commence par faire souvenir son ami Terentianus du petit traité de Cecilius, qui roule sur la même matière, et du peu de satisfaction que leur a causée la lecture de cet ouvrage. Il taxe le style de Cecilius de (...) bassesse et de répondre assez mal à la dignité de son su... (shrink)

À partir des années 1980 eut lieu une véritable révolution dans la connaissance du phénomène neurologique de la synesthésie, qui s’est accompagnée d’une révolution culturelle avec l’apparition de témoignages personnels de synesthètes. Cette représentation littéraire et plastique des perceptions synesthésiques fait partie du mouvement contemporain de représentations autobiographiques de différentes conditions neurologiques. Carol Steen, Patricia Lynne Duffy et Marcia Smilack sont des acteurs pionniers de la représentation des perceptions synesthésiques. From the 1980s, a revolution took place in the knowledge of (...) the neurological phenomenon of synesthesia, which has been accompanied by a cultural revolution with the emergence of personal accounts of synesthetes. Autobiographical representation—literary or plastic—of synesthetic perceptions belongs to the contemporary movement of autobiographical representations of various neurological conditions. Carol Steen, Patricia Lynne Duffy and Marcia Smilack are pioneers involved in representation of synesthetic perceptions. (shrink)

After a brief description of what the contemporary trans-humanism is, we analyze the use of a trans-humanist-like vocabulary made by Fr. Teilhard de Chardin. After exhibiting a contradiction in Teilhard’s vision of human evolution, we show how his thought contains also some interesting elements which could help us to correct some dangerous drifts of the recent trans-humanist philosophy.

Cognitive sciences and neurology finally put the stress on olfaction and its dysfonctionalities. Their researches may explain linguistic phenomenoms (insuitability between language and odors) or litterary issues (proustian memory). Neurology and anthropology apparently conclude that there is a fundamental inadequation between human language and odors, opposed to language and colors’s subtle and narrow links.