Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 2, February 2022.

Discussion of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is currently dominated by two opposing interpretations of the work: a metaphysical or realist reading and the 'resolute' reading of Diamond and Conant. Marie McGinn's principal aim in this book is to develop an alternative interpretative line, which rejects the idea, central to the metaphysical reading, that Wittgenstein sets out to ground the logic of our language in features of an independently constituted reality, but which allows that he aims to provide positive philosophical insights into (...) how language functions. McGinn takes as a guiding principle the idea that we should see Wittgenstein's early work as an attempt to eschew philosophical theory and to allow language itself to reveal how it functions. By this account, the aim of the work is to elucidate what language itself makes clear, namely, what is essential to its capacity to express thoughts that are true or false. However, the early Wittgenstein undertakes this descriptive project in the grip of a set of preconceptions concerning the essence of language that determine both how he conceives the problem and the approach he takes to the task of clarification. Nevertheless, the Tractatus contains philosophical insights, achieved despite his early preconceptions, that form the foundation of his later philosophy. -/- The anti-metaphysical interpretation that is presented includes a novel reading of the problematic opening sections of the Tractatus, in which the apparently metaphysical status of Wittgenstein's remarks is shown to be an illusion. The book includes a discussion of the philosophical background to the Tractatus, a comprehensive interpretation of Wittgenstein's early views of logic and language, and an interpretation of the remarks on solipsism. The final chapter is a discussion of the relation between the early and the later philosophy that articulates the fundamental shift in Wittgenstein's approach to the task of understanding how language functions and reveal the still more fundamental continuity in his conception of his philosophical task. (shrink)

Pauline Kleingeld has argued persuasively that Kant’s Principle of Autonomy draws an analogy between two relationships: 1) that between an individual agent and their maxim, and 2) that between a legislator and their legislation. She also suggests that Kant’s evolving views on the normative significance of popular elections made his analogy inapt, which explains its disappearance from his later writings. This comment concurs with Sorin Baiasu that the merits of Kant’s analogy were untouched by his evolving political views. The analogy (...) presupposes that when lawmakers legislate, they do so as representatives of the people, but even Kant’s mature writings posit that unelected lawmakers are representatives of the people in the necessary sense. Facts about whether a lawmaker acquired legislative authority by election, heredity, or conquest do have normative implications in the larger context of Kant’s political theory, but such facts are necessarily temporally upstream of the relation between legislator and legislation, just as facts about how an agent became rational are upstream of the relation between individual agent and maxim. Because the analogy focuses exclusively on these two relationships, it cannot be damaged by such upstream facts. Moreover, we should consider the possibility that Kant’s Principle of Autonomy compares a human will to the united general will of the people itself rather than to the will of a fallible public official or institution. On this alternative reading, it is even more clear that Kant’s evolving views on the significance of elections could have no possible relevance to the Principle of Autonomy. (shrink)

Desire After Affect offers a detailed analysis of the affective turn and its consequences for the humanities.

Originally presented as the author's thesis, Paris-Sorbonne, 1974.

Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism is the first book-length work to explore the interrelationships between contemporary female musicians and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, music, and literature by women and men. The music and videos of contemporary musicians including Erykah Badu, Beyoncé, The Carters, Hélène Cixous, Missy Elliot, the Indigo Girls, Janet Jackson, Janis Joplin (and Big Brother and the Holding Company), Natalie Merchant, Joni Mitchell, Janelle Monáe, Alanis Morrisette, Siouxsie Sioux, Patti Smith, St. Vincent (Annie Clark), and Alice Walker (...) are explored through the lenses of pastoral and Afropresentism, Gothic, female Gothic, and the literature of William Blake, Beethoven, Arthur Schopenhauer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charlotte Dacre, Ralph Waldo Emerson, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Ann Radcliffe, William Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, her husband Percy Shelley, Henry David Thoreau, Horace Walpole, Jane Williams, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Wordsworth to explore how each sheds light on the other, and how women have appropriated, responded to, and been inspired by the work of authors from previous centuries. (shrink)

Cet entretien revient sur l’histoire des oppositions de gauche en URSS (notamment trotskystes, mais pas uniquement) et sur l’évolution actuelle de la Russie post-soviétique. Il critique les approches considérant l’URSS comme un « capitalisme d’État » et analyse les transformations à l’œuvre de la Russie contemporaine, notamment en terme de rapports de propriété. La nomenklatura joue un rôle contradictoire, tenant à conserver le contrôle de l’État tout en impulsant une vague de privatisations sous pression internationale.

This paper shows how solidarity is one of the founding principles in Thomas More's Utopia. In the fictional republic of Utopia described in Book II, solidarity has a political and a moral function. The principle is at the center of the communal organization of Utopian society, exemplified in a number of practices such as the sharing of farm work, the management of surplus crops, or the democratic elections of the governor and the priests. Not only does solidarity benefit the individual (...) Utopian, but it is a prerequisite to ensure the prosperity of the island of Utopia and its moral preeminence over its neighboring countries. However, a limit to this principle is drawn when the republic of Utopia faces specific social difficulties, and also deals with the rest of the world. In order for the principle of solidarity to function perfectly, it is necessary to apply it exclusively within the island or the republic would be at risk. War is not out of the question then, and compassion does not apply to all human beings. This conception of solidarity, summed up as “Utopia first!,” could be dubbed a Machiavellian strategy, devised to ensure the durability of the republic. We will show how some of the recommendations of Realpolitik made by Machiavelli in The Prince correspond to the Utopian policy enforced to protect their commonwealth. (shrink)

Respected Catholic ethicists have recently defended the use of salpingostomy and methotrexate in the management of ectopic pregnancies.This article examines the arguments for the revised assessments to determine whether there are sound reasons to believe that these two methods do not constitute the direct and immediate killing of innocent human beings. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.1 (Spring 2011): 65–82.

1 Timothy and the Pastoral Letters appear to be efforts to codify structure and roles in the early church. These efforts largely reflected the patriarchal social structures of the time and as such are not relevant to the twenty-first-century church. But some of the concerns identified herein, for example expectations of church leaders, are useful for a current discussion. What is missing is any acknowledgement of the potential for identified church leaders to take advantage of vulnerable congregants, particularly women and (...) children. How might the writer of 1 Timothy have addressed this serious problem in the churches? (shrink)

Medical explanations have often been thought on the model of biological ones and are frequently defined as mechanistic explanations of a biological dysfunction. In this paper, I argue that topological explanations, which have been described in ecology or in cognitive sciences, can also be found in medicine and I discuss the relationships between mechanistic and topological explanations in medicine, through the example of network medicine and medical genetics. Network medicine is a recent discipline that relies on the analysis of various (...) disease networks in order to find organizing principles in disease explanation. My aim is to show how topological explanations in network medicine can help solving the conceptual issues that pure mechanistic explanations of the genetics of disease are currently facing, namely the crisis of the concept of genetic disease, the progressive geneticization of diseases and the dissolution of the distinction between monogenic and polygenic diseases. However, I will also argue that topological explanations should not be considered as independent and radically different from mechanistic explanations for at least two reasons. First, in network medicine, topological explanations depend on and use mechanistic information. Second, they leave out some missing gaps in disease explanation that require, in turn, the development of new mechanistic explanations. Finally, I will insist on the specific contribution of topological explanations in medicine: they push us to develop an explanation of disease in general, instead of focusing on single explanations of individual diseases. This last point may have major consequences for biomedical research. (shrink)

This paper deals with two issues. First, it identifies structured propositions with logical procedures. Second, it considers various rigorous definitions of the granularity of procedures, hence also of structured propositions, and comes out in favour of one of them. As for the first point, structured propositions are explicated as algorithmically structured procedures. I show that these procedures are structured wholes that are assigned to expressions as their meanings, and their constituents are sub-procedures occurring in executed mode. Moreover, procedures are not (...) mere aggregates of their parts; rather, procedural constituents mutually interact. As for the second point, there is no universal criterion of the structural isomorphism of meanings, hence of co-hyperintensionality, hence of synonymy for every kind of language. The positive result I present is an ordered set of rigorously defined criteria of fine-grained individuation in terms of the structure of procedures. Hence procedural semantics provides a solution to the problem of the granularity of co-hyperintensionality. (shrink)

In Western countries today, a growing number of women delay motherhood until their late 30s and even 40s, as they invest time in pursuing education and career goals before starting a family. This social trend results from greater gender equality and expanded opportunities for women and is influenced by the availability of contraception and assisted reproductive technologies. However, advanced maternal age is associated with increased health risks, including infertility. While individual medical solutions such as ART and elective egg freezing can (...) promote reproductive autonomy, they entail significant risks and limitations. We thus argue that women should be better informed regarding the risks of advanced maternal age and ART, and that these individual solutions need to be supplemented by a public health approach, including policy measures that provide women with the opportunity to start a family earlier in life without sacrificing personal career goals. (shrink)

Dans cet article, je soutiens que l’épuisement subjectif fragilise l’individualité dans l’exécution des actes intentionnels de douter, se soucier, planifier et finalement se protéger. Ces quatre actes intentionnels sont intersubjectifs puisqu’ils sont orientés vers autrui et illustrent une relationnalité imposée. L’épuisement subjectif est relatif aux individus et il affecte la subjectivité parce qu’il empêche l’individu d’entreprendre des projets existentiels individuels. Cette relationnalité imposée et toujours orientée vers autrui affaiblit l’intentionnalité d’une personne et fragilise son individualité. Une description phénoménologique révèle ces (...) actes invisibles et non quantifiables, et comment ils influencent les intentions et les actions d’un sujet. Finalement, je soutiens que l’épuisement subjectif est un phénomène négatif impliquant des risques éthiques, épistémiques, existentiels et émotionnels pour les sujets subalternes. Ainsi, ces quatre actes intentionnels, vécus dans un contexte social inégalitaire, renforcent l'épuisement subjectif et l’imposent aux sujets subalternes. (shrink)

BackgroundMedical assistance in dying (MAID) has been legal in Québec since December 2015 and in the rest of Canada since July 2016. Since then, more than 60 people have donated their organs after MAID. Such donations raise ethical issues about respect of patients’ autonomy, potential pressure to choose MAID, the information given to potential donors, the acceptability of directed donations in such a context and the possibility of death by donation. The objective of this study was to explore Québec professionals’ (...) perspectives on the ethical issues related to organ donation after MAID.MethodsWe conducted semi-directed interviews with 21 health care professionals involved in organ donation such as intensivists and intensive care nurses, operating room nurses, organ donation nurses and coordinators.ResultsThe participants were all favourable to organ donation after MAID in order to respect patients’ autonomy. They also favoured informing all potential donors of the possibility of donating organs. They highlighted the importance of assessing donors’ reasons for requesting MAID during the assessment. They were divided on directed donation, living donation before MAID and death by donation.ConclusionOrgan donation after MAID was widely accepted among the participants, based on the principle of respect for the donor’s autonomy. The findings of this study only provide the perspectives of Québec health care professionals involved in organ donation. Future studies are needed to gather other stakeholders’ perspectives on this issue as well as patients’ and families’ experiences of organ donation after MAID. (shrink)

A correct understanding of experience is crucial for understanding the difference between human and non-human animals. Richard Sorabji interprets Aristotle to be affirming that experience in non-human animals is the same thing as a rudimentary universal, and that the individual who possesses experience achieves his goal by the application of low level univer-sals. I argue that this is neither a correct understanding of Aristotle’s statements in the Posterior Analytics, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics, nor is it true to the facts. Sorabji (...) is misled, first, by the fact that experience can be regarded as a rudimentary universal in humans, and secondly by the fact that people of experience often possess universals that pertain to their actions. As to the latter, I show that people of experience do not succeed in virtue of possessing universals. As to the former, I point out that regarding experience as a rudimentary universal presupposes that the being that possesses them goes on to acquire true universals, something Sorabji fails to show. The presence of a modicum of experience in some non-human animals, thus, does not show that these beings share with us the capacity for knowledge of universals. (shrink)

INSPIRED by a dynamist Naturphilosophie and looking for a mathematics of the natura naturans, the founders of modern mathematics in Germany made some lasting contributions in the attempt to go beyond perceptible space. Hermann Grassmann’s extension theory, Johann Benedict Listing’s topology, Bernhard Riemann’s non-Euclidean manifold theory, Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi’s approach to non-mechanistic theory and last but not least Georg Cantor’s transfinite set theory were all influenced by the tradition of Naturphilosophie. One central motivation for the new mathematics was to (...) decipher the so-called “inner side of nature” which was thought to be invisible but nonetheless physical. As a result, mathematics was understood not only in terms of quantity but of morphogenetic quality and as a tool to recognize the intrinsic possibilities of structuring and organizing nature. This essay focuses on the philosophical viewpoints of Christian Samuel Weiss, Justus and Hermann Grassmann, Bernhard Riemann and their reception of Schelling’s philosophy. Riemann deconstructed empiricist theories of space so as to glean the fundamental constitution of space. One result was that a given, fixed and static metric is not necessary for the understanding of space. The underlying topological substratum has no specific metric but is capable of exhibiting any possible metric. Riemann’s claims are compared with Schelling’s theory of space in his “Darstellung des Naturprocesses”. My thesis is that Schelling’s philosophy of the emergence of space can be read in Riemannian terms and that it is an interesting model in the context of modern questions. (shrink)

Current controversies about the ordination of women have shown the need for a re‐examination of what the Christian Church means by priesthood. This article looks at the Epistle to the Hebrews’ contribution to our understanding. To that end it focuses on the institution of priesthood in its first‐century Jewish context and shows the use made of it by the author of Hebrews in his presentation of Christian faith.Section 1 emphasizes some all‐important differences between the NT’s use of the language of (...) priesthood and ours. Not least, it nowhere uses “priest” to designate Christian ministers. All the more striking, therefore, is Hebrews’ depiction of Jesus as “high priest”.Section 2 discusses Judaism’ Day of Atonement ceremonies – Hebrews’ dominant cultic model. In the comparison drawn between Christ’s death and exaltation with these rites, he becomes not only the high priest but also the expiatory victim.As far as Judaism’ cultic institutions are concerned, however, Jesus was not and never could be a priest, since he was of the tribe of Judah rather than Levi. Hence Hebrews appeals to Melchizedek. How this non‐Israelite model is used by Hebrews to subvert the whole notion of priesthood as caste is discussed in section 3.Finally, in section 4 Isaacs concludes that for Hebrews there is no longer a role for an ongoing priesthood, since Jesus has definitively achieved access to God, which was its raison d’être. Melchizedekian high priesthood is unique to Christ; neither inherited nor transmitted. Hence, unlike other NT authors, for Hebrews even the church as a corporate body is not a priesthood. As its closing chapters show, in this Epistle the cultic model gives way to the more inclusive one of pilgrimage. (shrink)

Maurice Blondel’s philosophy has had a decisive influence on the theology of Henri de Lubac, but more than an influence, it goes of an encounter and a dialogue between two great Catholic thinkers. This article proposes, over the course of successive encounters and collaborations between Blondel and Lubac, a presentation of Lubac’s reflection in that it extends Blondel’s critique of extrinsicity to the field of theology. This friendship between Lubac and Blondel testifies to the inherent character of the mystical question (...) to both philosophy and theology. This anchoring signifies the Mystery of Christ at work in the gesture of reason and in the understanding of faith. At the same time, Lubac promotes, in philosophy itself, an intelligence through faith. Friendship has not been an empty word with Lubac who openly defended Maurice Blondel on several occasions, and even after Blondel’s death, when Lubac continued to make the philosopher’s thought known by publishing and annotating a large part of his correspondence. (shrink)

Les prestataires de soins de santé (HCP) ont joué un rôle central dans l'endiguement de la pandémie de COVID-19. Bien que potentiellement très bénéfique, la mise en oeuvre de tests sérologiques rapides à grande échelle soulève des dilemmes éthiques et affecte la capacité des HCP à travailler dans des conditions optimales. À cet égard, nous appelons l'attention sur les questions éthiques spécifiques et urgentes qui affectent de manière distincte les HCP suite à la disponibilité et à l'éventuelle utilisation obligatoire de (...) tests sérologiques rapides pour COVID-19. (shrink)

Despite growing interest in emotions, organizational scholars have largely ignored the moral emotion of schadenfreude, which refers to pleasure felt in response to another’s misfortune. As a socially undesirable emotion, it might be assumed that individuals would be hesitant to share their schadenfreude. In two experimental studies involving emotional responses to unethical behaviors, we find evidence to the contrary. Study 1 revealed that subjects experiencing schadenfreude were willing to share their feelings, especially if the misfortune was perceived to be deserved. (...) Study 2 extends this work by incorporating schadenfreude targets of different status. Consistent with the “tall poppy syndrome,” subjects were more willing to share schadenfreude concerning high status targets than low status targets when the perceived severity of the target’s misconduct was low. This status effect disappeared at higher levels of perceived deservingness, however. Reported willingness to share schadenfreude was strongest at these levels but did not differ significantly between high and low status targets. These findings build on the social functional account of emotions, suggesting that sharing schadenfreude may signal normative cues to others regarding workplace behaviors that are deemed to be unethical. (shrink)

This editorial presents a special issue gathering four contributions about the patient’s lived experience in the context of deep-brain stimulation. It aims at clarifying the meaning of such an experience and its scope for medical practice, the health system and its legal frame.