Promoting recovery has become more and more important in the care of patients with severe mental disorders such as psychosis. Recovery is a personal process of growth involving hope, self-identity, meaning in life, and responsibility. Obviously, these components pertain, at least in part, to a psychotherapeutic care perspective. Yet, up to now, recovery has mainly been taken into account in transforming health services and as a general framework for supportive therapy. Existential phenomenology abdicates a theoretical stance and considers issues such (...) as death anxiety, isolation, responsibility, and meaning. Thus, it is likely to provide some insight into the psychotherapeutic aspects of recovery. Furthermore, existential psychotherapy allows powerful insights for adopting a recovery-oriented attitude and to provide useful themes for discussing issues allowing patients to gain meaning and hope. This paper describes these elements to give clinicians insights into this complex topic. (shrink)

Teilhard has never given up on permanence behind change, whereas Blondel, although interested by permanence, presents a very keen consciousness of irreversibility. Blondel attempts to construct an ontology that integrates this fact of change or becoming. Would this have satisfied Teilhard? Blondel develops a "logic of moral life" insisting on the initial option right to the end of our destiny. Teilhard develops a consciousness of time with a direct hold on a world apprehended first by the senses, whereas Blondel is (...) suspicious of the sometimes misleading testimony of the senses. We thus see a Blondelian attempt to see where the will reach its limits from this only standpoint, while Teilhard admits the influence of a mystical vision. We thus find in both thinkers a primacy of eternal light and truths, strongly affirmed by Blondel, although present in Teilhard; a specificity of evolution, and the necessity of a complement to prevent thought to close itself off. Both thinkers agree on the idea that "Everything holds from above." They recognize that our humanity represents only a sketch, that it is infra-substantial. (shrink)

This paper argues that besides mechanistic explanations, there is a kind of explanation that relies upon “topological” properties of systems in order to derive the explanandum as a consequence, and which does not consider mechanisms or causal processes. I first investigate topological explanations in the case of ecological research on the stability of ecosystems. Then I contrast them with mechanistic explanations, thereby distinguishing the kind of realization they involve from the realization relations entailed by mechanistic explanations, and explain how both (...) kinds of explanations may be articulated in practice. The second section, expanding on the case of ecological stability, considers the phenomenon of robustness at all levels of the biological hierarchy in order to show that topological explanations are indeed pervasive there. Reasons are suggested for this, in which “neutral network” explanations are singled out as a form of topological explanation that spans across many levels. Finally, I appeal to the distinction of explanatory regimes to cast light on a controversy in philosophy of biology, the issue of contingence in evolution, which is shown to essentially involve issues about realization. (shrink)

The problem of unification in a normal modal logic $L$ can be defined as follows: given a formula $\varphi$, determine whether there exists a substitution $\sigma$ such that $\sigma $ is in $L$. In this paper, we prove that for several non-symmetric non-transitive modal logics, there exists unifiable formulas that possess no minimal complete set of unifiers.

To what extent do early intuitions about ownership depend on cultural and socio-economic circumstances? We investigated the question by testing reasoning about third party ownership conflicts in various groups of three- and five-year-old children (N = 176), growing up in seven highly contrasted social, economic, and cultural circumstances (urban rich, poor, very poor, rural poor, and traditional) spanning three continents. Each child was presented with a series of scripts involving two identical dolls fighting over an object of possession. The child (...) had to decide who of the two dolls should own the object. Each script enacted various potential reasons for attributing ownership: creation, familiarity, first contact, equity, plus a control/neutral condition with no suggested reasons. Results show that across cultures, children are significantly more consistent and decisive in attributing ownership when one of the protagonists created the object. Development between three and five years is more or less pronounced depending on culture. The propensity to split the object in equal halves whenever possible was generally higher at certain locations (i.e., China) and quasi-inexistent in others (i.e., Vanuatu and street children of Recife). Overall, creation reasons appear to be more primordial and stable across cultures than familiarity, relative wealth or first contact. This trend does not correlate with the passing of false belief theory of mind. (shrink)

We propose two alternatives to Xu’s axiomatization of Chellas’s STIT. The first one simplifies its presentation, and also provides an alternative axiomatization of the deliberative STIT. The second one starts from the idea that the historic necessity operator can be defined as an abbreviation of operators of agency, and can thus be eliminated from the logic of Chellas’s STIT. The second axiomatization also allows us to establish that the problem of deciding the satisfiability of a STIT formula without temporal operators (...) is NP-complete in the single-agent case, and is NEXPTIME-complete in the multiagent case, both for the deliberative and Chellas’s STIT. (shrink)

By most measures, French labor is among the weakest in the industrialized world. Yet it has retained a high level of mobilizing and institutional power. This unusual position is partly due to the historical role of labor courts, one of France’s oldest and most influential labor institutions. Based on a range of historical and contemporary evidence, this article shows that the involvement of the state and labor in these courts over the past two centuries has played a crucial role in (...) the evolution of French industrial relations. This process unfolded along three main dimensions: the early establishment of labor courts strongly and durably influenced the mobilization patterns of the emergent labor movement, France’s labor relations model was largely inspired by the judicialism embedded in labor courts, and a combination of more contingent events led to the emergence of a problematic notion of union“representativeness.” These patterns have contributed to shape French labor into its present condition of both weakness and strength. (shrink)

In the framework of judgment aggregation, we assume that some formulas of the agenda are singled out as premisses, and that both Independence (formula-wise aggregation) and Unanimity Preservation hold for them. Whether premiss-based aggregation thus defined is compatible with conclusion-based aggregation, as defined by Unanimity Preservation on the non-premisses, depends on how the premisses are logically connected, both among themselves and with other formulas. We state necessary and sufficient conditions under which the combination of both approaches leads to dictatorship (resp. (...) oligarchy), either just on the premisses or on the whole agenda. This framework is inspired by the doctrinal paradox of legal theory and arguably relevant to this field as well as political science and political economy. When the set of premisses coincides with the whole agenda, a limiting case of our assumptions, we obtain several existing results in judgment aggregation theory. (shrink)

Quelques années avant sa mort, Sartre soutient que, même s’il lui est arrivé d’écrire sur de tels sujets, il ignore aussi bien l’angoisse que le désespoir. Avec la sincérité – semble-t-il – d’un homme délivré du qu’en-dira-t-on, l’auteur de L’Être et le néant déclare : « j’ai parlé de désespoir, mais c’est de la blague, j’en ai parlé parce qu’on en parlait, parce que c’était la mode : on lisait Kierkegaard », et il ajoute à propos de l’angoisse : « (...) je n’ai jamais eu d’angoisse. Ce sont des no... (shrink)

Dans la relation éducative coexistent transfert et relation. Dans la relation familiale vont exister une dépendance et une relation réelles évoluant progressivement vers la construction d’imagos parentales. Les parents peuvent transmettre à leurs enfants un certain nombre de codes et de règles à condition de s’en sentir les dépositaires et les garants. À travers l’éducation de leurs enfants les parents doivent pouvoir assumer une façon de faire sous-tendus par une façon d’être. Ceci ne peut se comprendre qu’à la faveur d’un (...) véritable processus de filiation. (shrink)

This article examines what might constitute the first manifestation of consciousness in the life of an individual, focusing on the subjective starting state of newborns. It presents evidence showing that we are born with some minimal self-awareness, a kind of awareness that might even be present in foetuses depending on the criteria used. It investigates the mechanisms that might account for how self-awareness quickly evolves from being minimal and phenomenal in the context of sensation, perception, and action and discusses the (...) innate propensity of newborns to detect sameness in the experience of things that surround them. It identifies two putative mechanisms that would support an innate propensity to detect sameness: synesthesia and the vicariousness of experience. (shrink)

Using photographs and testimonials, we will analyze details of the “miracle of the spinning sun” on October 13, 1917, at solar noon near Fatima. The phenomenon predicted ahead of time, occurred as the clouds cleared on what began as a rainy day. Various explanations have been presented but do not stand up to a comparative analysis of eyewitnesses, weather data, and photographs. This article aims to bring clarity to this event through the analysis of certified photographs and testimonies comparing them (...) to official meteorological and astronomical data. Our study confirms key points of the testimonials while focusing on objective data. The shadows and reflections reveal two soft light sources emerging from a rather dark background: one seen as a “pale sun”, and another overhead, fuzzy and as softly bright. The latter, likely being caused by a clear cloud, blurred the shadows of the weak “sun”. Strangely, the portions of clothing exposed to this “sun” dried quickly. This warm source, uncannily moonlike, was also able to cast distinct shadows on sloping surfaces and under objects. Eventually, these shadows will help us to estimate the height of the “sun” at ~30°, lower than the expected 42°. Therefore, the directly observed source could not have been the sun, and most probably not any physiological, psychological, or meteorological effect. (shrink)

Farabi et l'école d'Alexandrie, est la première étude consacrée à l'ensemble des thèmes de l'œuvre de celui qui fut l'un des plus grands philosophes arabes.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nobel Rhetoric; or, Petrarch's PendulumPhilippe-Joseph SalazarVery many authors who have their roots in other countries work in Europe, because it is only here where you can be left alone and write, without being beaten to death. It is dangerous to be an author in big parts of Asia and Africa.1The ceremony of [Petrarch's] coronation was performed on the Capitol, by his friend and patron the supreme magistrate of the (...) republic... and thrice repeating his vows for the prosperity of Rome, he knelt before the throne and received from the senator a laurel crown, with a more precious declaration, "This is the reward of merit."(Gibbon 1952, 2:573)§1.I would like to address a simple question: what is a Nobel laureate's speech?2 With a corollary: how does it provide an opportunity to perform as a public intellectual, a "philosopher" of sorts? And a further corollary: what does it say about intellectual compliance or resistance? There is a play on words in the title of this essay, made to draw attention to the rhetorical construction of a commonplace, mass media-induced belief: that Nobel laureates are, in essence, "noble minds."3 For brevity's sake this essay focuses mainly on the literature prizes and, to a lesser extent, the peace prizes. [End Page 373]§2.At face value, a Nobel Prize is a rhetorical event (from the time the winner is announced to the moment of the Nobel address): over the recent years, rituals attached to the Nordic apotheosis have attracted growing media interest—they belong to "breaking news"—lending laureates a public exposure that, in turn, has led them to perform a public role or to publicly decline this performance, literally to "dispose of " it—"disposure" as the antistrophe of exposure. The public is usually aware of the announcement of the name of the winner, who instantly becomes a global "brand." Publicity and news programs follow suit, and if a recipient's ethical qualities resonate with the ethical preoccupations of the day (gender is one) the better the news value. Arguments are built on the announcement and often recur when, in early December, recipients deliver their Nobel addresses.This rhetorical event may indeed take the shape of a "rhetorical situation" if national pride or state concerns impose an exigency onto laureates—it is interesting to note that the media are complicit in stressing the national value of an award. The exigency resembles the one applied by them to sport performances. However, while the practices of public reward and public performance no longer allow a sportsperson to decline a medal or to express personal views on a podium to the public strains of a national hymn,4 they do still allow Nobel laureates to absent themselves, as André Gide did in 1947 (this strategy gave him the opportunity, in a terse banquet speech read on his behalf, to express his view that Paul Valéry had been overlooked by the Nobel, thus turning the award into a muted invective; see Gide 1947), to say they don't care, that their country of origin did little for them, and even, although rarely, to decline or to express amusement at the award.5 In short, beside "disposure," they can perform "exposure" through acceptance or dismissiveness, thus drawing a merciful line between reward (in sport) and award (the Nobel).A rhetorical situation is indeed created when a Nobel winner is seen as betraying state or nation by accepting the prize. In one reverse case, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was berated for not accepting it (in 1964), in spite of the fact that, at that time, his philosophy and political engagement made clear to the French state and the French public that he abhorred them both. In 2003, South Africans learned at their expense how reward and award are borderline and therefore not on the same side: they failed to thank J. M. Coetzee for his temperance, when, having resettled in Australia at the time of his award, he waited for a while before taking Australian citizenship.6 The Nobel Foundation's rightful insistence on disregarding [End Page 374] nationality does not mean nationality... (shrink)

Jusqu’à Blaise Pascal, le hasard désigne ce qui se produit en dehors de tout dessein humain ou divin et de tout ordre stable. Après lui, on cherche à préciser de façon constructive ces trois types d’exclusion, ce qui amène à définir les événements merveilleux, les événements aléatoires et les événements accidentels. Chacune de ces trois démarches a ses avantages et ses inconvénients. La première rend compte de tout ce qui étonne, mais écarte la liberté et le miracle et ne permet (...) ni vérification, ni prévision, ni décision. La seconde permet des prévisions et des vérifications expérimentales, mais son emploi ne peut se généraliser sans entrer en conflit avec le déterminisme, qui la considère comme une illusion. La troisième explique beaucoup de choses par la rencontre de séries causales indépendantes, mais ce faisant elle exclut toute finalité. Il faut faire très attention à ne pas les confondre. Until Blaise Pascal, chance meant what happens outside any human or divine design or any stable order. Attempts are made, ever since, to set down in a constructive fashion those three types of exclusion : what it is that leads to define marvellous events, chance events and accidental events. Each of those three endeavours has its advantages and its drawbacks. The first accounts for everything that amazes, but it sets aside freedom and miracle, and does not allow any verification, prevision, or decision. The second permits previsions and experimental verifications, but its use cannot be generalized without entering into conflict with determinism, which considers it an illusion. The third explains a number of things through the encounter of independent causal series, but, while so doing, it excludes all finality. One must be very cautious not to confuse the three. (shrink)

In this book, he argues that the purpose of democracy should be to promote justice - we need not just democracy (in the sense of unqualified democracy) but a just democracy. Machiavelli and Rawls must be brought together.

Les Principes de la philosophie du droit sont un grand livre, qui repense toute l'histoire politique, et qui presente l'Idee de l'Etat moderne.

In this paper, we show that the implication fragment of classical propositional logic is finitary for unification with parameters.

This paper develops an account of the normative basis of priority setting in health care as combining the values which a given society holds for the common good of its members, with the universal provided by a principle of common humanity. We discuss national differences in health basket in Europe and argue that health care decision-making in complex social and moral frameworks is best thought of as anchored in such a principle by drawing on the philosophy of need. We show (...) that health care needs are ethically ‘thick’ needs whose psychological and social construction can best be understood in terms of David Wiggins’s notion of vital need: a person’s need is vital when failure to meet it leads to their harm and suffering. The moral dimension of priority setting which operates across different societies’ health care systems is located in the demands both of and on any society to avoid harm to its members. (shrink)

La question qu’on nomme aujourd’hui des « genres naturels » en métaphysique porte sur les « jointures » du monde : quelles classes de choses constituent le monde et existent réellement? Si nominalistes et réalistes s’opposent depuis longtemps sur la possibilité même de répondre à cette question, les sciences modernes proposent des découpages en genres naturels qui contrastent souvent avec l’image naturelle du monde. Cet article se concentre sur les genres naturels en biologie. Après avoir présenté le principe de réponse (...) offert par la biologie évolutive, à savoir la systématique cladistique, j’expose le paradoxe du poisson, puisque « poisson » n’y est pas un nom de classe objectif, et semble donc aussi peu réel que « légume ». Je montre ensuite comment ce paradoxe est abordé différemment par des conceptions réalistes ou pragmatistes des genres naturels, et, en distinguant plusieurs sortes de pragmatismes en fonction des pratiques sociales auxquelles ils réfèrent la vérité des énoncés, je défendrai un pragmatisme modéré quant aux genres naturels en biologie. (shrink)

November 4th-5th, 2012 at Kyoto University. Organizers: Hisashi Nakao & Pierre-Alain Braillard.

Emotions are traditionally considered to be brief states that last for seconds or a few minutes at most. However, due to pioneering theoretical work of Frijda and recent empirical studies, it has become clear that the duration of emotions is actually highly variable with durations ranging from a few seconds to several hours, or even longer. We review research on determinants of emotion duration. Three classes of determinants are identified: features related to the (a) emotion-eliciting event (event duration and event (...) appraisal), (b) emotion itself (nature of the emotion component, nature of the emotion, and emotion intensity), and (c) emotion-experiencing person (dispositions and emotion regulatory actions). Initial evidence on the psychological and neural mechanisms that underlie their effects is discussed. (shrink)

This is a study that investigated the extent of use of the three principles of ethics – utility, morality, and justice – in managerial ethical decision making, in addition to the personal attitude towards them. It involved undergraduate and graduate business students (total N=163) from the Olayan School of Business in the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Two kinds of measurements were done: self assessment, and testing with the Saschkin’ s Managerial Value Profile (1997). It showed that morality was the (...) overriding ethical principle used, especially in the graduate group (professionals). Business students still believed in the justice system despite the weakness of the country’s law. Utility was the least used, although males were found to be more utilitarian than females. Finally there was no relation between personal attitudes toward the three ethical principles, and the intentional behavior when faced with ethical dilemmas. The findings were discussed and recommendations were given. (shrink)

The comprehension of living organisms in all their complexity poses a major challenge to the biological sciences. Recently, systems biology has been proposed as a new candidate in the development of such a comprehension. The main objective of this paper is to address what systems biology is and how it is practised. To this end, the basic tools of a systems biological approach are explored and illustrated. In addition, it is questioned whether systems biology ‘revolutionizes’ molecular biology and ‘transcends’ its (...) assumed reductionism. The strength of this claim appears to depend on how molecular and systems biology are characterised and on how reductionism is interpreted. Doing credit to molecular biology and to methodological reductionism, it is argued that the distinction between molecular and systems biology is gradual rather than sharp. As such, the classical challenge in biology to manage, interpret and integrate biological data into functional wholes is further intensified by systems biology’s use of modelling and bioinformatics, and by its scale enlargement. (shrink)

The central claim of Kant's political philosophy is that rational agents sharing a territory can justifiably be forced to live under a state; they have, in Kant's words, a duty of right to leave the state of nature. Perhaps something along these lines is entailed by any theory of state legitimacy, but the point raises special difficulties for Kant. He believes that rational agents have a right to freedom; that is, he believes that a rational agent's external freedom - her (...) ability to set and pursue ends for herself without being subject to the choices of others - can justifiably be restricted only for the sake of external freedom itself. To establish that human beings can be forced to join a civil condition, it will therefore not do to show that the state promotes security, prosperity or any other such value: Kant has to show that human beings living side by side need a state to be free. (shrink)

Une première approche voudrait réunir la justice prédictive et le droit international de l’investissement sous la même bannière, cette matière visant à apporter un cadre juridique stable à l’investisseur étranger face au comportement possiblement imprévisible de l’État d’accueil de l’investissement. Or, le processus d’ open data des décisions arbitrales, au sens large, est loin d’être achevé alors que subsiste la confidentialité des délibérés, ce qui tronque inévitablement l’échantillon de données exploité par les outils de justice prédictive. En outre, l’arbitrage relatif (...) aux investissements étrangers est un contentieux complexe caractérisé par une immense multiplicité de faits et de règles de droit applicables, rendant ainsi les combinaisons de données déclinables à l’infini et, conséquemment, les pronostics plus instables. Ces constats successifs ne nous dispenseront pas, toutefois, d’émettre quelques recommandations au cas où notre propre pronostic sur la justice prédictive et l’arbitrage international relatif aux investissements étrangers serait, dans les années à venir, déjoué. (shrink)

En 1966, Sartre declare: si l'on persiste a appeler sujet une sorte de je substantiel, ou une categorie centrale, toujours plus ou moins donnee, a partir de laquelle se developperait la reflexion, alors il y a longtemps que le sujet est mort. Ainsi, a sa maniere, Sartre participe lui aussi a l'enterrement du sujet. Mais c'est au nom d'un autre sujet, un sujet non substantiel, dont l'identite est toujours en sursis, tout a la fois libre et aliene, essentiellement vulnerable car (...) toujours happe sinon par la nevrose du moins par l'inauthenticite. C'est a l'explicitation critique de ces differentes determinations que cet essai est consacre. (shrink)

Any explanation of numbers and numeric occurrences in Celtic tradition (myths, imagery, schemes, realia, lore) requires an analysis of the whole context, for in no manner are they relevant of a kind of numerology. Most of these figures are deeply rooted in cosmological, seasonal, cyclic patterns, with analogical and metaphorical values in different fields (theories of wisdom, war, body politics), so that we can explain them by the inherited experiences of Indo-European culture, requiring then a periodization. The Divine Twins, the (...) twofold sovereignty, the Three Skies and the Three functions, the four provinces and the fifth, the festivals, the voyage to the Otherworld with its special time and calendar implications, are relevant of this conception. Here we are dealing with some numeral occurrences in relation with the year as a rythmical image of power. (shrink)

Que fait la justice numérique à la théorie et à la pratique du droit? Qu’induit-elle pour la vocation de justice de l’institution judiciaire? Comment en bouleverse-t-elle les différents métiers? Jean Lassègue et Antoine Garapon mènent une enquête approfondie pour différencier soigneusement les deux formes symboliques du numérique et du droit. Ils s’efforcent ainsi de ménager ainsi une troisième voie qui sache éviter tout autant la fascination dogmatique des juristes pour la tendance « loi et mathématique » (la tentation de fonder (...) la rationalité juridique sur la formalisation) que l’ambition légale démesurée de l’informatique contemporaine (la prétention actuelle des algorithmes à empiéter sur tous les domaines, y compris le droit). Il doit être possible de résister à l’automatisation pour inventer une justice, certes, assistée par ordinateur, mais sachant rester humaine. Reste à savoir comment. (shrink)