This article addresses the need to problematize “cases” in science and technology studies work, as a middle-range theory issue. The focus is not on any one case study per se, but on why case studies exist and endure in STS. Case studies are part of a specific problematization in the field. We therefore explore relations between motivation for the use of cases, their constitution, and ways they can be invoked to make particular kinds of arguments in STS. We set out (...) to examine the case as an object that links together research practices, intellectual debates, and programmatic concerns in our own work. Based on our experiences and on this reflection on the links between cases and questions in STS, we propose a number of casemaking strategies that shift and enrich the deployment of ethnographic cases as an epistemic tool in STS. (shrink)

Les travaux de Hans Jonas demeurent largement méconnus de la francophonie. Le peu d’entrain dont témoigne la communauté philosophique à traduire les textes de Jonas s’explique en grande partie par le caractère éclaté de son œuvre dans laquelle on chercherait en vain un ouvrage fondateur ou un livre qui rassemblerait ses principales positions philosophiques. Héritière de la phénoménologie, l’œuvre jonasienne est multiforme et en constant devenir. Elle ne s’arrête sur aucune vérité définitive en abordant de façon toujours maîtrisée des champs (...) du savoir aussi variés que ceux de la mythologie, de la biologie et de l’éthique. Dans son ouvrage issu d’une thèse de doctorat, Nathalie Frogneux relève avec brio le défi qui consiste à découvrir le sens général d’une pensée complexe dont l’itinéraire semble dominé par la discontinuité. Frogneux parvient pourtant à mettre au jour l’unité de la pensée jonasienne qu’elle situe dans le régime d’une double critique: une critique du «dualisme occidental» où l’homme et le monde naturel deviennent étrangers l’un à l’autre, et une critique du monisme philosophique qui en vient à ne plus reconnaître aucune liberté au vivant. Comme le souligne Jean Greisch dans la préface, il s’agit de la première interprétation systématique de la pensée de Jonas dont la production philosophique s’étend sur près de soixanteannées. La longévité et la productivité de Jonas ont d’ailleurs donné lieu à cette anecdote rapportée par Frogneux où un étudiant demandait à Paul Ricœur s’il y avait un lien de parenté entre le Jonas des années 1930 intéressé par le gnosticisme de l’Antiquité tardive et celui de la notion de responsabilité des années 1980. Il s’agissait bien sûr du même homme. (shrink)

SummaryThis article deals with laissez faire arguments as distinguishable in Europe between the final decades of the nineteenth century and 1914. The focus is on Herbert Spencer and the British ‘Individualists’, the Italian Vilfredo Pareto, and the Frenchman Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. Analysis concentrates on the relationship between laissez faire formulations and democracy, the latter amounting to the impact of the extension of the franchise on representative government. All the mentioned authors blamed the mechanisms of democratic government for the contemporary (...) growth in state functions. While Spencer focused on the threat of a new class legislation after the demise of aristocratic power, Pareto and Leroy-Beaulieu viewed the pressure of lobbies and parties as the chief cause of the extension of state interventions. This article also aims to detect similarities and differences with more recent formulations. It is argued that Friedrich Hayek's achievement was to reconcile, against earlier perspectives, laissez faire with democracy. The reconciliation rested on a conceptualisation of democracy as a valuable method or procedure, onto which no values should be grafted. (shrink)

This paper argues that (a) civic constitutionalism is a cohesive body of scholarship (b) it offers a detailed challenge to Hélène Landemore’s account of how to fix democratic politics, while at the same time (c) suggesting how to blend compelling features of Landemore’s approach with a more traditionally-grounded approach (d) consequently, democratic theorists of all sorts should consider becoming civic constitutionalists.

Previous research has shown that women are disproportionately negatively affected by a variety of socio-economic hardships, many of which COVID-19 is making worse. In particular, because of gender roles, and because women’s jobs tend to be given lower priority than men’s (since they are more likely to be part-time, lower-income, and less secure), women assume the obligations of increased caregiving needs at a much higher rate. This unfairly renders women especially susceptible to short- and long-term economic insecurity and decreases in (...) wellbeing. Single-parent households, the majority of which are headed by single mothers, face even greater risks. These vulnerabilities are further compounded along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, class, and geography. Drawing upon the philosophical literature on political responsibility and structural injustice (specifically, the work of Iris Marion Young), I argue that while the state may not have had either foresight into, or control over, the disproportionate effect the pandemic would have on women, it can nonetheless be held responsible for mitigating these effects. In order to do so, it must first recognize the ways in which women have been affected by the outbreak. Specifically, policies must take into account the unpaid labor of care that falls on women. Moreover, given that this labor is particularly vital during a global health pandemic, the state ought to immediately prioritize the value of this work by providing financial stimuli directly to families, requiring employers to provide both sick leave and parental leave for at least as long as schools and daycares are inoperational, and providing subsidized emergency childcare. (shrink)

"We argue about how the entirety of Frederick Nietzsche's work hangs together. To what extent do the major works contradict one another, and to what extent can they be reconciled? In order to resolve that question, Jeremy Fortier shows that Nietzsche's own autobiographical statements provide a more reliable guide to the coherence and unity of his corpus than scholars have appreciated. Using Nietzsche's own self-assessments as a guide to the major developments of his career brings together works that are (...) typically thought of as quite separate, showing how they each form an integral part of a single project. By clarifying the evolution of Nietzsche's thought in this fashion, the book is able to illuminate what Nietzsche judged to be the primary courses of action open to thoughtful and politically-concerned individuals in the contemporary world"--. (shrink)

Focusing on discourses and practices of identity in an Italian organization in London, this article examines the relationship between the construction of the identity of places and the construction of terrains of belonging. Various forms of cultural practices that mark out spatial and identity boundaries for the London Italian population are discussed in relation to the deployment of gender and ethnicity. Advancing a corporeal approach to identity formation, it is argued that displays of the Italian presence in London operate through (...) the repetition of regulatory norms that produces the effect of materialization of cultural belonging through the ethnicizing and gendering of individual bodies. Gender and ethnicity are deeply embedded in one another and their entwinement is to be understood as the outcome of their construction along similar bodily lines. Also, the author shows that gender and ethnicity are mutually dependent on each other for their construction; imperatives of gender serve to stabilize a fluctuating and indeterminate ethnic culture, while ethnic conventions naturalize the different positions men and women occupy in social life. (shrink)

While commonly referring to us as ‘human’, ‘particular’, or ‘rational’ souls, in one striking passage, Proclus instead describes us asτὸ πολυπλανὲς καὶ μέχρι τοῦ Ταρτάρου κατιὸν καὶ αὖθις ἀνεγειρόμενον παντοῖά τε εἴδη ζωῆς ἀνελίττον ἤθεσί τε χρώμενον ποικίλοις καὶ πάθεσιν ἄλλοτε ἄλλοις καὶ μορφὰς ζῴων ἀλλαττόμενον πολυειδεῖς, δαιμονίας ἀνθρωπίνας ἀλόγους, κατευθυνόμενον δ’ οὖν ὅμως ὑπὸ τῆς Δίκης καὶ εἰς οὐρανὸν ἀπὸ γῆς ἀνατρέχον καὶ εἰς νοῦν ἀπὸ τῆς ὕλης περιαγόμενον κατὰ δή τινας τεταγμένας τῶν ὅλων περιόδους.a far-wanderer, who descends all (...) the way to Tartarus only to be raised up again, who unfolds all possible forms of life, making use of diverse manners and suffering one passion after another, who takes on the forms of living beings of every sort, daemons, men and irrational creatures, and yet is guided by Justice, ascending from earth to heaven and from matter to intellect, being led round and round in accordance with certain prescribed revolutions of the universe. (shrink)

Proclus considère Platon comme divinement inspiré. Cette assertion ne fait pas pour autant office de simple expédient pour expliquer la véracité de la pensée de son illustre prédécesseur. En effet, Proclus a fait de l’inspiration divine une partie essentielle de ce que l’on pourrait appeler sa « théorie de la connaissance ». Tous les modes de connaissance supra-rationnels de l’âme humaine sont, pour Proclus, le fruit d’une participation indirecte aux ordres supérieurs de la réalité, ce qu’il assimile à la notion (...) traditionnelle de l’inspiration divine. Suivant un examen détaillé des inspirations de l’âme humaine selon Proclus, nous allons examiner deux questions relatives à l’inspiration de Platon lui-même. (shrink)

L’exégèse de l’Isagoge de Porphyre par Ammonius et, partant, son interprétation des célèbres lignes 1.9-12 sont les premières chronologiquement à nous avoir été préservées. Bien que l’essence de cette interprétation, la soi-disant doctrine des trois états de l’universel, soit aujourd’hui bien connue, la section du commentaire dans laquelle elle apparaît n’a jusqu’ici jamais été entièrement traduite. L’article qui suit présente une traduction complète du commentaire d’Ammonius sur l’Isagoge 1.9-12, précédée d’une brève introduction.

First, I discuss cross-cultural evidence showing that a good deal of enculturation takes place outside of thinking through other minds. Second, I review evidence challenging the claim that humans seek to minimize entropy. Finally, I argue that optimality claims should be avoided, and that descriptive Bayesianism offers a more promising avenue for the development of a Bayesian theory of culture.

Immediate experience is not, currently, a fashionable topic in philosophy. Few, if any, contemporary philosophers offer commentaries on, or discussions of, immediate experience, especially the conception of it that was generally accepted in the early part of the twentieth century. Immediate experience has come to be identified with the immediately given and since ‘the given’ has been labelled a myth, immediate experience shares its fate.

_ Source: _Volume 63, Issue 4, pp 449 - 476 While we know that the interpretation of the ‘soul’s pilot’ found in Hermias’ _Scholia on Plato’s Phaedrus_ differs considerably from that of Syrianus and Proclus, this difference has not shifted the prevailing opinion that the _Scholia_ are a faithful transcript of Syrianus’ lectures on the _Phaedrus_. I argue, however, that the difference over the soul’s pilot is only the first in a series of elements which are difficult, if not impossible, (...) to ascribe to Syrianus. This, I believe, is compelling evidence that the _Scholia_ contain the ideas of both Syrianus and Hermias. (shrink)

Cases of past absence involve agents noticing in retrospect that an object or property was absent, such as when one notices later that a colleague was not at a talk. In Sanskrit philosophy, such cases are introduced by Kumārila as counterexamples to the claim that knowledge of absence is perceptual, but further take on a life of their own as a topic of inquiry among Kumārila’s commentators and their Nyāya interlocutors. In this essay, I examine the Nyāya philosopher Gaṅgeśa’s epistemology (...) of past absence, according to which agents learn that a recollectable object or property was absent by inferring its past absence from failing to recall that object or property. Gaṅgeśa’s account is best appreciated against the backdrop of earlier theories and their shortcomings, and I begin by presenting historical views leading up to his. I identify two groups of views about the epistemology of past absence: recollection views, according to which cases of past absence involve agents recalling negative information; and recollection failure views, according to which cases of past absence involve agents failing to recall positive information. I reconstruct two early recollection views: a Bhāṭṭa view belonging to Uṃveka, and a competing Nyāya view belonging to Jayanta and Bhāsarvajña. I then examine Śālikanātha and Sucarita’s critiques of recollection views, following which I reconstruct a Bhāṭṭa recollection failure view belonging to Pārthasārathi. I then examine Gaṅgeśa’s critiques of Pārthasārathi’s account and the recollection failure view he constructs out of its shortcomings. (shrink)

Representations of the active brain have served to establish a particular domain of competence for brain mappers and to distinguish brain mapping’s particular contributions to mind/brain research. At the heart of the claims about the emerging contributions of functional brain mapping is a paradox: functional imagers seem to reject representations while also using them at multiple points in their work. This article therefore considers a love-hate relationship between scientists and their object: the case of the iconoclastic imager. This paradoxical stance (...) is the result of the formation of an interdisciplinary approach that brings together a number of scientific traditions and their particular standards of what constitutes scientific evidence. By examining the various ways in which images are deployed and rejected, the origins of these conflicting tendencies can be traced to the technological, methodological, and institutional elements in the work of functional imagers. This approach provides insight into the current demarcation of imaging and reflects on features of visual knowledge. (shrink)

The shift in Foucault’s work from genealogy to ethics finds consensus among Foucault scholars. However, the motivations behind this transition remain either misunderstood or understudied in large part. Foucault’s recently published or soon-to-be translated 1977/—9 lectures (published as Security, Territory, Population and as The Birth of Biopolitics) offer new elements for understanding this dense and uncharted period along Foucault’s itinerary. In this article, the author argues that Foucault’s interpretation of the liberal tradition, which is at the core of the 1977—9 (...) lectures, must be examined in combination with Foucault’s other major interests in the late 1970s, namely the Iranian Revolution and Kant. The discovery of spirituality (Iran), the valorization of an autonomous subject (Kant) and the call for a tolerant environment towards minority practices (liberalism) pave the way for the later Foucault’s ethics, which are grounded in spiritual exercises and means of liberating the subject. (shrink)

Recently, evidentialists have argued that only they can explain transparency--the psychological phenomena wherein the question of doxastic deliberation of whether to believe p immediately gives way to the question of whether p--and thus that pragmatism about epistemic reasons is false. In this paper, we provide a defense of pragmatism. We depart from previous defenses of pragmatism which argue against the evidentialist explanation of transparency or the fact of transparency itself, by instead arguing that the pragmatist can provide a sound explanation (...) of transparency while maintaining her distinctive view of epistemic reasons. We do so by putting forth an evolutionary debunking explanation of doxastic deliberation. Since both the evidentialist and pragmatist have sound explanatory accounts of transparency, we argue that transparency should not be appealed to when trying to adjudicate the debate between evidentialists and pragmatists, but rather must be decided on other grounds. (shrink)

What kind of thing is a reason for action? Are reasons for action subjective states of the agent, such as desires and/or beliefs? Or are they, rather, objective features of situations that favor certain actions? The suggestion offered in this article is that neither strategy satisfies. What is needed is a third category for classifying reasons which makes them out to be neither purely subjective nor purely objective. In brief: a reason for action is a feature of the situation that (...) matters to the agent. On this proposal, subjective states of the agent are indeed indispensable in characterizing reasons for action. Precisely which set of situational features matter to an agent—precisely what shape the agent experiences the situation as having—depends on the agent's psychological makeup. Those features themselves are not psychological states, however, and it is precisely those features that constitute the agent's reasons for action. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze exprime un besoin de philosophie apte à révolutionner les manières convenues de pratiquer la philosophie. Il souhaite mettre un terme au cycle des interprétations pour mieux expérimenter les forces impersonnelles, associe l'histoire de la philosophie à l'" agent de pouvoir " dans la pensée, et formule ce curieux désir de sortir de ta philosophie par ta philosophie. Ses monographies d'auteurs ont pourtant acquis le statut de " classiques " de la philosophie. Deleuze prend également part, à sa manière, (...) aux grands débats de son temps en situant son travail dans le courant de la métaphysique occidentale. D'où la nécessité d'interroger l'héritage philosophique de Deleuze, dix années après la disparition de fauteur. Les contributions réunies ici ouvrent de nouvelles pistes en étudiant les rapports complexes de Deleuze à notre tradition et en récusant aussi toute tentative de réduction de la pensée deleuzienne à un simple moment historique. Contributions de Manola Antonioti, Alain Beaulieu, Constantin Boundas, Olivier Fahle, Stéfan Leclercq et Arnaud Viltani. (shrink)

Brain in a vat scenarios in analytic philosophy feature both brains and technological apparatus. The relation between specimens and technology is an interesting aspect of these scenarios, and in order to explore this relation, I contrast here two kinds of scientific collecting practices: the collection of post-mortem brains versus the compilation of digital brain atlases. This contrast highlights a novel configuration of the relation between brains and new information technologies. This new configuration is traced back to the late 1980s, which (...) saw the rise of a new kind of collection of brains, with a markedly different scope and nature: the neuroscience database. Brains are now easily captured in vivo, so that while post-mortem brains were precious and few, scanners provide an embarrassment of riches in the form of terabytes of data. The rise of the virtual brain as a new digital object for research is reliant on the development of new imaging technologies, but also on the growth of computerised tools, informatics, and electronic networks in this field. These developments contribute to an informational turn in scientific research. This article considers what is involved in the shift in type of object, from the scarce, wet, biological brain to a plentiful, digital, virtual one. It discusses the significance of this new object in terms of collections, institutions, and research practices. (shrink)

Later Nyāya philosophers maintain that absences are real particulars, irreducible to any positives, that we perceive. The fourteenth-century Nyāya philosopher Gaṅgeśa argues for a condition on absence perception according to which we always perceive an absence as an absence of its counterpositive, or its corresponding absent object or property. Call this condition the ‘counterpositive condition’. Gaṅgeśa shows that the counterpositive condition is both supported by a plausible thesis about the epistemology of relational properties and motivates the defence of absence as (...) irreducible. But against Gaṅgeśa, the sixteenth-century Nyāya philosopher Raghunātha and his seventeenth-century commentators Bhavānanda, Jagadīśa, and Gadādhara identify cases in which the counterpositive condition fails. In this article, I examine the Nyāya-internal debate over this condition. I conclude that Raghunātha makes a compelling case that the counterpositive condition fails. (shrink)

From a scientific perspective, hunger can be regarded as an identifiable conscious sensation which can be distinguished from other conscious states. The hunger state can be measured and is a marker of the existence of underlying biological processes. Measured hunger is functional and is normally associated with the act of eating. However, the conscious state of hunger, although driven physiologically, is not exclusively determined by biology; there is an environmental influence that can modulate its intensity and periodicity, and cultural factors (...) that shape the appropriateness of the expression of hunger. Within a psychobiological framework, hunger can be considered as the expression of a ‘need state’ which mediates between biological requirements and environmental satisfaction. Our empirical studies show that hunger is clearly associated with biological signals and is central to the relationship between energy expenditure and energy intake. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to current discussions about methods in anthropological (especially ethnographic) research on the cultures of the internet. It does so by considering how technology has been presented in turn as an epistemological boon and bane in methodological discourse around virtual or online ethnography, and cyberanthropology. It maps these discussions with regards to intellectual traditions and ambitions of ethnographic research and social science, and considers how these views of technology relate to modernist discourse about the value of (...) technology for producing a particular kind of objective knowledge. For this article, I have examined a number of monographs and methodological texts in which the internet, as both a new setting and a new technology for doing ethnography, is shown to raise new issues for ethnographic work and for theorising anthropological approaches. In this material, questions of presence, field relations (including trust and confidentiality), and new possibilities for observation are especially prominently discussed. Anxieties about whether the internet can be a field at all are also expressed. In my analysis, I place these issues and dilemmas facing the researcher in the context of the intellectual tradition of ethnography as applied to technology. The main themes found to subtend these discussions of ethnography's 'way of knowing' are the notion of 'field', technology, intersubjectivity and capture. The paper ends with a reflection on the kind of knowledge about the internet that ethnography can be expected to produce, given these methodological prescriptions. (shrink)

This is a brief philosophical introduction to, and an annotated translation of, the section on absence from Śālikanātha’s Pramāṇapārāyaṇa (Study of the Instruments of Knowledge), a foundational work of Prābhākara epistemology. In this section, which focuses on the epistemology of absence, Śālikanātha argues against the Bhāṭṭa view that there is a sui generis instrument of knowledge (pramāṇa) by which we learn of absence (abhāva). He does so by arguing for a subjective reductionist thesis about absence, according to which the absence (...) of a perceivable (dṛśya) object at a locus is identical with a positive state of awareness (buddhi) whose content includes the locus but not the perceivable object. If correct, Śālikanātha argues, we should therefore learn of absence in the same ways we acquire self-knowledge more generally. While developing his reductionism about absence, Śālikanātha responds to a range of concerns, including the objection that his view cannot explain causation by absence. (shrink)

Derrida’s intellectual itinerary shows a progressive reconciliation with Lévinas’ ethical thinking. “Violence and Metaphysics”, one of Derrida’s earlier essays, was highly critical of Lévinas’ “phallotheology”, whereas his later works were more receptive to the Levinasian analysis on hospitality, “cities of refuge” (villes-refuges) and justice. This essay will discuss the mutual terminological exchanges between Derrida and Lévinas as well as some divergences between the two thinkersregarding the deconstruction project. Finally, we will see how Derrida distinguishes himself from Lévinas’ ethics by bringing (...) an end to the search for the conditions of possibility of experience in favour of a more radical experience of the impossible and the inconditional. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze is a contemporary French thinker who shows the greatest awareness to Québec culture by integrating into his philosophical work some of its revolutionary forces. By way of illustration, the first part of this article attends to the contributions of prominent cultural figures — all discussed by Deleuze — namely, Jack Kérouac, Pierre Perrault, Michèle Lalonde, Norman McLaren, and Alexis the Trotter. The second part of this article explores the reception of Deleuze in Québec in and outside of academia. (...) Notably, we will see how his philosophy was part of the counter-culture before even receiving recognition within philosophy departments. (shrink)

Bayne and Carter argue that the mode of consciousness induced by psychedelic drugs does not fit squarely within the traditional account of modes as levels of consciousness, and favor instead a multi-dimensional account according to which modes of consciousness differ along several dimensions—none of which warrants a linear ordering of modes. We discuss the assumption that psychedelic drugs induce a single or paradigmatic mode of consciousness, as well as conceptual issues related to Bayne and Carter’s main argument against the traditional (...) account. Finally, we raise a set of questions about the individuation of dimensions selected to differentiate modes of consciousness that could be addressed in future discussions of the multi-dimensional account. (shrink)

Because of their ubiquity, plasticity, and direct effects on the nervous system, markers of oxidative status may be of great value to assess animal welfare across species and conditions in the wild. However, welfare biologists have not yet seized this opportunity, possibly because the validity of these markers as welfare indicators remains questionable. A validation process was, therefore, performed here using a meta‐analytical approach considering three conditions assumed to impair the welfare of animals. With very few exceptions, two of the (...) four considered markers consistently varied across these negatively‐valenced conditions. By highlighting the current underrepresentation of markers of oxidative status in animal welfare studies, and by concretely illustrating that some of these markers can consistently reflect negative affective states, this article aims to encourage biologists to include these physiological markers in their toolbox to better measure, monitor, and perhaps also improve the welfare of animals in their natural habitat. (shrink)

The economic aspects of biobanking are intertwined with the social and scientific aspects. We describe two problems that structure the discussion about the economics of biobanking and which illustrate this intertwining. First, there is a ‘sustainability problem’ about how to maintain biobanks in the long term. Second, and representing a partial response to the first problem, there is a ‘commercialisation problem’ about how to deal with the voluntary altruistic relationship between participants and biobanks, and the potential commercial relationships that a (...) biobank may form. Social scientists have argued that the commercialisation problem is inadequate as a way to construct the multiple tensions that biobanks must negotiate. We agree that the commercialisation problem is an inadequate framework; turning to alternative accounts of bioeconomy, we suggest that contemporary consideration of the economics of biobanking primarily in terms of participants and their bodily tissue may reproduce the very commodification of science that these scholars critique. We suggest that an alternative conception of the economics of biobanking beyond the logics of commodification, which may thereby allow broader questions about the social and economic conditions and consequences of biobanks to be posed. (shrink)