Based on the presentation of a research framework (the shared work of teachers), this text uses an empirical approach to examine the hypothesis of a co-elaboration of the professional situation. To do so, the empirical investigation, based on the Goffman framework, analyzes the process of reconstructing a teaching session (reference situation) over the course of a pedagogical counselling session (support situation) characterized by interaction between a beginning teacher and a trainer. The invalidation of the hypothesis leads to a suggested conceptualization (...) of the professional situation combining definitional approaches (emphasizing the duality between its singularity and its genericity) and methodological approaches. A partir de la présentation d’un cadre de recherche (le travail partagé des enseignants), ce texte soumet à l’empirie l’hypothèse de la co-élaboration de la situation professionnelle. Pour ce faire, en s’appuyant sur le cadre de Goffman, l’enquête empirique analyse le processus de reconstruction d’une séance d’enseignement (situation de référence) au cours d’une séance de conseil pédagogique (situation support) caractérisée par l’interaction entre une enseignante débutante et un formateur. L’invalidation de l’hypothèse débouche sur une proposition de conceptualisation de la situation professionnelle qui combine des approches définitoires (insistant sur la dualité entre sa singularité et sa généricité) et méthodologiques. (shrink)

This paper addresses whether we have transparent accurate access to our own conscious experience. It first sketches the origin and social history of this issue in the seventeenth century, when the trust one can have in self- knowledge was disputed in the religious, social and scientific domains. It then reviews evidence that our conscious experience is disunified in several ways and has two levels, can be opaque to us, and contains much that is non-explicit; and that attending to one's experience (...) not only affects and changes it, but may also bring about specific content and phenomenal experience. Quite apart from trusting other people's introspective reports, we cannot trust ourselves even in knowing our own consciousness. Finally, several ways of coping with the problems produced by these characteristics are suggested. (shrink)

The European Corporate Sustainability Framework (ECSF) is a new generation management framework, aimed to meet increased corporate complexity and support corporate transformation towards more sustainable ways of doing business. It is a multilayer, integral business framework with an analytical, contextual, situational and dynamic dimension. Analytically, the framework is structured according to four focus points - the constitutional, conceptual, behavioural and evaluative perspective - providing integrative designs of complex and dynamic phenomena. The framework includes coherent sets of business philosophies, approaches, concepts (...) and tools that structures corporate realities and generates sequences of steps in order to obtain adequate institutional structures, a road to corporate transformation and higher performance levels. (shrink)

Biological modalities, i.e., biologically possible, impossible, or necessary states of affairs have not received much attention from philosophers. Yet, it is widely agreed that there are biological constraints on physically possible states of affairs, such that not everything that is physically possible is also biologically possible, even if everything that is biologically possible is also physically possible. Furthermore, biologists use concepts that appear to be modal in nature, such as the concept of evolvability in evolutionary developmental biology, or “evo-devo.” The (...) present chapter investigates what kind of modality underlies the concept of evolvability. This concept tries to capture the capacity of an organism or a lineage to sustain genetic changes that enable it to evolve or to evolve adaptively. The basic idea of the proposed approach is to construe evolvability as a kind of accessibility in a modal space. The difficult part is to specify this modal space and the relevant accessibility relation. While there may not be a general way of defining such a relation, there exist model systems for which it is possible, e.g., evolving small RNAs. The modal space in such cases turns out to be quite distinct from those constructed by philosophers, e.g., David Lewis’s similarity metric for possible worlds. Even though the biological case examined here is quite special, attending to the way in which biological possibilities are modeled in this case harbors some general lessons about biological modalities, in particular their dependence on the explanatory goals of the models modeling modality. (shrink)

This is an agenda-setting exploration of the relationship between green politics and liberal ideology. Ecological problems provide unique challenges for liberal democracies.; This challenge is examined by the author who aims to fill the gap between short-term ecological modernization and the politically infeasible longer term utopian approaches.

The present study explores the contribution of the Slovak philosophical school, which uniquely grasped the European and Czechoslovak heritage of phenomenology and existential philosophy. In the text, the authors present a congenial and undeniably up-to-date concept of syncriticism as developed by Jozef Piaček and analyse its contribution to Slovak philosophical discourse and more broadly, in the dialogue of phenomenology and existential philosophy in Slovakia. In the study, the authors also examine the cultural-philosophical starting points and specifics of Slovak modern philosophy (...) and postmodern thinking as phenomena of the Central European intellectual space in the context of thinking about the unique and inspiring project of perichronosophy as a thematic invariant developed at philosophical workplaces in Central Europe (Comenius University Bratislava, Trnava University Trnava, Charles University Prague, Masaryk University Brno). Jozef Piaček has been affiliated with the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University for many years, studied under Jan Patočka and is an expert on Husserl’s phenomenology. He has continuously developed a unique philosophical approach involving syncriticism and perichronosophy, which continues to resonate with his students at academic institutions in Slovakia and abroad. Piaček published several monographs and papers on the subject of syncriticism. The platform of living philosophy is his concept of a digital philosophical encyclopaedia, where he archives all publication outputs on the subject of the philosophy of syncriticism. This text will present Piaček’s concept of perichronosophy and concordance in Slovak philosophy, more broadly in phenomenology, as well as in the context of Patočka’s themes (philosophy as care for the soul in the village) with implications for the philosophy of education and philosophical therapy (dasein-analysis). (shrink)

The recent literature on causality has seen the introduction of several distinctions within causality, which are thought to be important for understanding the widespread scientific practice of focusing causal explanations on a subset of the factors that are causally relevant for a phenomenon. Concepts used to draw such distinctions include, among others, stability, specificity, proportionality, or actual-difference making. In this contribution, I propose a new distinction that picks out an explanatorily salient class of causes in biological systems. Some select causes (...) in complex biological systems, I argue, have the property of enabling coherent causal control of these systems. Examples of such control variables include hormones and other signaling molecules, e.g., TOR (target of rapamycin), morphogens or the products of homeotic selector genes in embryonic pattern formation. I propose an analysis of this notion based on concepts borrowed from causal graph theory. (shrink)

For contagious diseases like measles a successful immunization program can result in herd protection. Small outbreaks may still occur but fade out soon, because the possibilities for the pathogen to spread in the ‘herd’ are very small. This implies that people who refuse to participate in such a program will still benefit from the protection it offers, but they don’t do their part in maintaining protection. Isn’t that a case of freeriding—and isn’t that unfair towards all the people who do (...) collaborate? If so, that might be considered an additional ground for making vaccination mandatory or compulsory.In this paper I argue that vaccination refusal can be considered as freeriding, but that this might not be unfair. The public good of herd protection is a peculiar public good because it supervenes on private benefits that are enjoyed by all who do opt for vaccination. For vaccinated individuals, the additional benefit of herd protection comes about, as it were, for free, and hence they can’t complain that others benefit without sharing in the burdens. There are however still other grounds for making vaccination compulsory or at least for seeing refusal as a morally wrong choice. (shrink)

One of the societal problems in a new influenza pandemic will be how to use the scarce medical resources that are available for prevention and treatment, and what medical, epidemiological and ethical justifications can be given for the choices that have to be made. Many things may become scarce: personal protective equipment, antiviral drugs, hospital beds, mechanical ventilation, vaccination, etc. In this paper I discuss two general ethical principles for priority setting (utility and equity) and explain how these principles will (...) often point in diverging directions. Moreover, each of these principles can be understood in different, again often competing, ways. Notwithstanding these controversies and conflicts, in the context of pandemic response there are at least some points of convergence: several policies can be justified by appeal to different ethical principles and theories. Convergence may be found with respect to a focus on saving the most lives (instead of other aggregative accounts); giving priority antiviral prophylaxis and therapy for life-saving pandemic responders; and, partly depending on epidemiology of the pandemic, to prioritise vaccination of children. Although decision-making about access to intensive care will involve choices with immediate tragic implications, the ethical complexity of these choices is relatively modest (although decisions will not be easy): there are persuasive moral reasons for giving priority to patients who are expected to benefit most within the shortest time. Finally, in the last section I tentatively argue that constraints on people’s freedom, as necessary for an effective public health approach, may support giving somewhat more weight to saving the most lives, than to concerns of equity. (shrink)

Many nursing homes have an influenza vaccination policy in which it is assumed that express (proxy) consent is not necessary. Tacit consent procedures are more efficient if one aims at high vaccination rates. In this paper I focus on incompetent residents and proxy consent. Tacit proxy consent for vaccination implies a deviance of standard proxy consent requirements. I analyse several arguments that may possibly support such a deviance. The primary reason to offer influenza vaccination is that vaccinated persons have a (...) significantly reduced risk of getting the flu. This reason however cannot support the assumption that each nursing home resident is ‘better off ’ if she is vaccinated. Neither can it support tacit proxy consent policies. More promising are arguments that take the collective nature of infectious diseases into account. A potentially strong, but ultimately insufficient, argument for non‐express consent is that vaccination contributes to prevention of harm to others. Other arguments emphasise the importance of group protection: herd immunity. I discuss three collective reasons for aiming at herd immunity: solidarity, a common interest in reducing the risk of illness, and a common interest in the prevention of an influenza outbreak. The latter argument appears to be most important. An outbreak is not just detrimental to the health of residents; it is detrimental to their everyday social life as well. Outbreaks can be seen as a collective evil. My analysis shows that there are valid (though not necessarily sufficient) moral arguments for a tacit proxy consent policy. (shrink)

Ich rekonstruiere und kritisiere Hans Drieschs Argumentation für die Behauptung, daß biologischen Prozessen nur eine substanzdualistische Ontologie der belebten Materie (Vitalismus) gerecht werden kann. Meine Diagnose lautet, daß Drieschs Argumentation zwar logisch schlüssig ist bzw. durch leichte Modifikationen in eine logisch gültige Form gebracht werden kann, aber von empirisch unbegründeten, metaphysischen Prämissen über die Möglichkeiten eines energieumwandelnden Mechanismus ausgeht.

" Notre époque est celle de la prise de conscience de l'unité humaine. Dès lors, il est temps que la philosophie accomplisse sa vocation à l'universalité. Comme la nature est cela seul qui s'offre avec évidence à tous les hommes, une philosophie œcuménique ne peut être qu'une philosophie de la Nature. Or, si l'on lit le Tao-te king avec, en pensée, la philosophie naturaliste des Grecs d'avant Socrate, celle, en particulier, d'Héraclite, on se trouve en pays familier, et l'on vérifie (...) que les mêmes évidences essentielles s'imposent à tous les humains, à tous ceux du moins capables d'appréhender la Nature dans l'Ouvert. " M.C. (shrink)

Control measures directed at carriers of multidrug-resistant organisms are traditionally approached as a trade-off between public interests on the one hand and individual autonomy on the other. We propose to reframe the ethical issue and consider control measures directed at carriers an issue of solidarity. Rather than asking “whether it is justified to impose strict measures”, we propose asking “how to best care for a person’s carriership and well-being in ways that do not imply an unacceptable risk for others?”. A (...) solidarity approach could include elevating baseline levels of precaution measures and accepting certain risks in cases where there is exceptionally much at stake. A generous national compensation policy that also covers for costs related to dedicated care is essential in a solidarity approach. An additional benefit of reframing the questions is that it helps to better acknowledge that being subjected to control measures is a highly personal matter. (shrink)

Darwin famously held that his use of the term "chance" in evolutionary theory merely "serves to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the causes of each particular variation". Is this a tenable view today? Or should we revise our thinking about chance in evolution in light of the more advanced, quantitative models of Neo-Darwinian theory, which make substantial use of statistical reasoning and the concept of probability? Is determinism still a viable metaphysical doctrine about biological reality after the quantum revolution in (...) physics, or dowe have to abandon it in favor of an objective indeterminism? In light of such reflections, what is the relevant interpretation of probability in evolutionary theory? Do biologists use the concept of probability because they are finite cognitive agents or because the evolutionary process is fundamentally probabilistic? In this paper, I will show that we do not yet fully understand the nature of chance in evolution. (shrink)

Ecological thought has made a deep and apparently lasting impact on virtually every tradition in political theory (cf. e.g. Dobson, 2007) with the exception of libertarianism. While left- and right...

Enzyme directed genetic mechanisms causing random DNA sequence alterations are ubiquitous in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes. A number of molecular geneticist have invoked adaptation through natural selection to account for this fact, however, alternative explanations have also flourished. The population geneticist G.C. Williams has dismissed the possibility of selection for mutator activity on a priori grounds. In this paper, I attempt a refutation of Williams' argument. In addition, I discuss some conceptual problems related to recent claims made by microbiologists on (...) the adaptiveness of molecular variety generators in the evolution of prokaryotes. A distinction is proposed between selection for mutations caused by a mutator activity and selection for the mutator activity proper. The latter requires a concept of fitness different from the one commonly used in microbiology. (shrink)

Causal selection is the task of picking out, from a field of known causally relevant factors, some factors as elements of an explanation. The Causal Parity Thesis in the philosophy of biology challenges the usual ways of making such selections among different causes operating in a developing organism. The main target of this thesis is usually gene centrism, the doctrine that genes play some special role in ontogeny, which is often described in terms of information-bearing or programming. This paper is (...) concerned with the attempt of confronting the challenge coming from the Causal Parity Thesis by offering principles of causal selection that are spelled out in terms of an explicit philosophical account of causation, namely an interventionist account. I show that two such accounts that have been developed, although they contain important insights about causation in biology, nonetheless fail to provide an adequate reply to the Causal Parity challenge: Ken Waters's account of actual-difference making and Jim Woodward's account of causal specificity. A combination of the two also doesn't do the trick, nor does Laura Franklin-Hall's account of explanation (in this volume). We need additional conceptual resources. I argue that the resources we need consist in a special class of counterfactual conditionals, namely counterfactuals the antecedents of which describe biologically normal interventions. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.