This paper looks at selected reviews of women’s philosophical (and literary) works by Revolutionary author and politician Pierre-Louis Roederer. This study occasions the following remarks. Women’s works, when they raised political radical and sometimes feminist agendas were not only read and reviewed, but considered part of the general Revolutionary effort to relieve social and political inequalities. Secondly Roederer appears, from these reviews, as committed to convincing the French intellectual community that works by women ought to be taken as seriously (...) as works by men, and to combat the prejudices which meant that they often were not. I will highlight in particular his reading of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman as both a fictionalized continuation of the philosophical programme of her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and as a contribution to the philosophy of emotions – for which he compares it to Sophie de Grouchy’s Letters on Sympathy. I will also look at an unpublished draft in which he compares and contrasts Grouchy, Germaine de Staël, Emilie du Chatelet and Suzanne Necker’s writings on love. (shrink)

A milestone in the development of post-war Marxist thought.

With several never-before published writings, this volume gathers Althusser's major essays on psychoanalytic thought----documenting his intense and ambivalent relationship with Lacan, and dramatizing his intellectual journey and troubled personal life.

John Rawls famously holds that the basic structure is the 'primary subject of justice.'1 By this, he means that his two principles of justice apply only to a society's major political and social institutions, including chiefly the constitution, the economic and legal systems, and (more contentiously) the family structure.2 This thesis — call it the basic structure restriction — entails that the celebrated difference principle has a narrower scope than one might have expected. It doesn't apply directly to choices that (...) individuals make within the basic structure. Individuals can live up to the demands of justice simply by obeying whatever rules are set by, and by doing what is necessary to sustain, the basic .. (shrink)

The growing academic literature on ‘food sovereignty’ has elaborated a food producer-driven vision of an alternative, more ecological food system rooted in greater democratic control over food production and distribution. Given that the food sovereignty developed with and within producer associations, a rural setting and production-side concerns have overshadowed issues of distribution and urban consumption. Yet, ideal types such as direct marketing, time-intensive food preparation and the ‘family shared meal’ are hard to transcribe into the life realities in many non-rural, (...) non-farming households, and it is unclear, in turn, how such realities can fit into models of food sovereignty. A particular practical and research gap exists in how to engage the overwhelming need for food options served under time constraints and (often) outside of the home or a full-service restaurant. The over-generalized vilification of ‘fast food’ should be replaced by a framework that allows us to distinguish between unhealthy, corporate fast foods and both traditional and emerging alternatives that can serve to extend the tenets of food sovereignty further into food processing, distribution and consumption. This article analyzes existing conceptualizations of fast food, explores fast food historically, and studies how food sovereignty can operationalize its tenets and priorities in situations where fast food is an unquestionable necessity. (shrink)

In the literature, there are many axiomatizations of qualitative probability. They all suffer certain defects: either they are too nonspecific and allow nonunique quantitative interpretations or are overspecific and rule out cases with unique quantitative interpretations. In this paper, it is shown that the class of qualitative probability structures with nonunique quantitative interpretations is not first order axiomatizable and that the class of qualitative probability structures with a unique quantitative interpretation is not a finite, first order extension of the theory (...) of qualitative probability. The idea behind the method of proof is quite general and can be used in other measurement situations. (shrink)

Various proposals for generalizing event spaces for probability functions have been put forth in the mathematical, scientific, and philosophic literatures. In cognitive psychology such generalizations are used for explaining puzzling results in decision theory and for modeling the influence of context effects. This commentary discusses proposals for generalizing probability theory to event spaces that are not necessarily boolean algebras. Two prominent examples are quantum probability theory, which is based on the set of closed subspaces of a Hilbert space, and topological (...) probability theory, which is based on the set of open sets of a topology. Both have been applied to a variety of cognitive situations. This commentary focuses on how event space properties can influence probability concepts and impact cognitive modeling. (shrink)

Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (Notes towards an investigation) -- Reply to John Lewis -- Freud and Lacan -- A letter on art in reply to André Daspre.

Old age is not normally associated with innovativeness and technical prowess. To the contrary, when treating age as a distinct category, policy makers, innovation scholars, and companies typically regard younger people as drivers of innovation, and the early adoption of new technology. In this paper, we critically investigate this link between age, ineptness, and technology adoption using a case study of the diffusion of electric bikes in the Netherlands. We demonstrate how, during the first wave of e-bike acceptance, old age (...) was constructed as an arena in which important learning processes took place, and where older persons became early adopters of e-bikes. Theoretically, this paper speaks critically to the prolific literature on innovation diffusion and its treatment of adopter categories as generic concepts. Using age as a central dimension, our research highlights the situated and constructed nature of adopter categories, and thus challenges age-based assumptions about innovation and technology use by younger and older persons. These insights about what we term the rejuvenation of e-bikes help us rectify existing biases of older persons as an inherently problematic group of technology users. (shrink)

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Compassion is mentioned in the Principles of the American Medical Association but not in the Code of Ethics of the Canadian Medical Association. In this article, we assess the case for including compassion in a code of ethics for physicians. We argue that, properly understood, there is a strong case for including compassion in codes of ethics for physicians on the basis that it is both clinically and ethically central to the practice of medicine.

Il existe plusieurs faisceaux de présomption qui témoigneraient de relation entre les Polynésiens et les Amérindiens d’Amérique du Sud : il est aujourd’hui admis que les Polynésiens ont atteint l’Amérique du Sud. Si la patate douce est un indice d’anciens contacts entre la Polynésie et l’Amérique du Sud, des archéologues ont aussi trouvé sur la façade pacifique de l’Amérique du Chili des ossements de poulets polynésiens. Quelles seraient les étoiles que les Polynésiens pourraient avoir suivies pour se pourvoir en patate (...) douce en Amérique du Sud et plus précisément au Chili, sous les latitudes où les chercheurs ont trouvé des poules polynésiennes? L’ethnoastronomie tentera de répondre à la question de l’itinéraire de la patate douce, en soulevant l’hypothèse du rôle des étoiles comme repère spatial. There are several bundles of presumption that would testify of relationship between Polynesians and Native Americans from South America: it is now accepted that the Polynesians have reached South America. If sweet potato is a sign of ancient contacts between Polynesia and South America, archaeologists have also found on the Pacific Ocean facade in Chile the bones of Polynesian chickens. What would be the stars possibly followed by the Polynesians to get sweet potato in South America and Chile, under the latitudes where researchers have found Polynesian chickens? The ethnoastronomy will attempt to respond to the issue of the route of the sweet potato, by raising the hypothesis of the role of the stars as spatial coordinate system. (shrink)

It is quite probable that one will soon be able to use genetic engineering to select the gender of one’s child by directly manipulating the sex of an embryo. Some might think that this method would be a more ethical method of sex selection than present technologies such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), since, unlike PGD, it does not need to create and destroy “wrong-gendered” embryos. This paper argues that those who object to present technologies on the ground that the (...) embryo is a person are unlikely to be persuaded by this proposal, though for different reasons. (shrink)

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

How should moral sanctions and moral rewards - the moral sentiments involving feelings of guilt and of virtue - be employed to govern individuals' behavior if the objective is to maximize social welfare? In the model that we examine, guilt is a disincentive to act and virtue is an incentive because we assume that they are negative and positive sources of utility. We also suppose that guilt and virtue are costly to inculcate and are subject to certain constraints on their (...) use. We show that the moral sentiments should be used chiefly to control externalities and further that guilt is best to employ when most harmful acts can successfully be deterred whereas virtue is best when only a few individuals can be induced to behave well. We also contrast the optimal use of guilt and virtue to optimal Pigouvian taxation and discuss extensions of our analysis. (shrink)

This collection of original papers, entitled "The beginning and end of the universe: scientific, philosophical, and theological perspectives", derives from an interdisciplinary conference, that had been organized jointly by the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Vatican Observatory. The conference consisted of two sessions of one day each, held at the Pontifical Gregorian University during the academic year 2014-2105. The first day focused on scientific, philosophical and theological questions concerning the beginning of the universe and the second day on questions concerning (...) the end of the universe. The richness of this book derives not only from the variety of academic perspectives but also from the different heuristic methods adopted by the researchers. For the book’s final version, more contributions were added, the entire collection was reviewed by all authors for constructive criticism and mutual evaluation, and the style and content of each contribution were adjusted to ensure that the book presents a satisfactory degree of unity. After a survey of what some current astronomical theories say about the beginning and end of the universe, the philosophical topics treated include the idea of first cause, the finality of the universe, and the Heideggerian idea of world. The theological topics include some current accounts of "creatio ex nihilo", and the relation between theological eschatology and the results of the cosmology of the far distant future. (shrink)