Depuis les éloges d’Érasme, l’Utopie est associée à l’humanisme, et le martyre de Thomas More, face au tyran Henri VIII – et libidineux de surcroît – fait qu’on ne regarde pas plus loin. Martyr catholique, c’est pourtant une qualité bizarre pour un homme qui acceptait n’importe quelle religiosité et souhaitait des prêtres créés par la société. Humaniste ne l’est pas moins pour un homme qui suggérait de rétablir l’esclavage en Angleterre. L’ancien amateur d’épigrammes durant son séjour d’Oxf...

Le présent article se donne pour fin d’explorer la question des rapports entre foi, croyance et connaissance à la lumière de leur théorisation médiévale. En posant la question de la compossibilité de la connaissance et de la foi, il interroge le rôle que jouent croyance et foi dans notre acceptation quotidienne de vérités plus ou moins évidentes. Il s’agit donc ici en définitive de voir comment certains outils conceptuels empruntés à Thomas d’Aquin et Augustin d’Hippone peuvent nous aider (...) à penser la confusion et l’effritement contemporains de l’idée de vérité en comprenant comment notre rapport affectif aux institutions contribue à ce phénomène. (shrink)

La Politeia de Platon et la cité de Dieu d'Augustin d'une part, l'Utopie de Thomas More de l'autre sont deux façons différentes d'envisager un modèle social, comme un idéal ou comme un programme. Le tournant de l'une à l'autre attitude peut être situé chez les clercs des réformes médiévales, carolingienne puis grégorienne, qui conçurent une interprétation réaliste de la pensée d'Augustin, notamment en matière matrimoniale. Le résultat en fut l'extension étonnante de l'interdit d'inceste. Ainsi fut abattu le (...) pouvoir des femmes, ou ce qu'il en restait, parmi les communautés d'origine germanique installées dans la partie occidentale de l'Empire romain. (shrink)

This festschrift for Teddy Seidenfeld is a collection of newly commissioned essays on imprecise probability by leading experts in the field. Each contribution touches on Teddy’s seminal contributions to the field of imprecise probability, and gives an up-to-date state of the field that cannot be found elsewhere. The title, “a reflection on the foundations of probability and statistics”, calls back to Teddy’s seminal book, “Rethinking the Foundations of Probability and Statistics”, bookends to a career that has made fundamental contributions to (...) the foundations of probability and statistics, and shaped the field of imprecise probability. It is aimed at scholars engaged in probability and statistics. (shrink)

In the Canadian forensic psychiatric context, the concepts of risk and dangerousness interact, intersect, and morph into the notion of significant threat to the safety of the public. Stemming from the results of a critical ethnography of the Ontario Review Board, this article unpacks the central role of forensic psychiatric nursing, as an example of a 'psych' discipline (e.g., psychiatry and psychology), in a system that is built to produce risky persons and to legitimize their detention and supervision. By using (...) excerpt of interviews conducted with nurses, ethnographic observations of Review Board hearings, and other documentary artifacts, the findings illustrate how rationalizations of risk and dangerousness are contingent on space, time, and observer. Depending on the time of the assessment or on the health‐care professional who performs it, different elements including, but not limited to, mental illness, interpersonal relationships, financial instability, and sexual vulnerability, are relied upon in very fluid, interchangeable, and discretionary ways to justify findings of dangerousness. Such a dynamic expands the reach of psychiatry's legitimacy at identifying risky conduct and controlling risky persons to domains very loosely associated with the notion of dangerousness. The work of Foucault and Castel provides the theoretical backdrop on which rests the discussion and the implications for nursing. (shrink)

Cancers rely on multiple, heterogeneous processes at different scales, pertaining to many biomedical fields. Therefore, understanding cancer is necessarily an interdisciplinary task that requires placing specialised experimental and clinical research into a broader conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework. Without such a framework, oncology will collect piecemeal results, with scant dialogue between the different scientific communities studying cancer. We argue that one important way forward in service of a more successful dialogue is through greater integration of applied sciences (experimental and clinical) (...) with conceptual and theoretical approaches, informed by philosophical methods. By way of illustration, we explore six central themes: (i) the role of mutations in cancer; (ii) the clonal evolution of cancer cells; (iii) the relationship between cancer and multicellularity; (iv) the tumour microenvironment; (v) the immune system; and (vi) stem cells. In each case, we examine open questions in the scientific literature through a philosophical methodology and show the benefit of such a synergy for the scientific and medical understanding of cancer. (shrink)

To help infer the meanings of novel words, children frequently capitalize on their current linguistic knowledge to constrain the hypothesis space. Children's syntactic knowledge of function words has been shown to be especially useful in helping to infer the meanings of novel words, with most previous research focusing on how children use preceding determiners and pronouns/auxiliary to infer whether a novel word refers to an entity or an action, respectively. In the current visual world experiment, we examined whether 28‐ to (...) 32‐month‐olds could exploit their lexical semantic knowledge of an additional class of function words—prepositions—to learn novel nouns. During the experiment, children were tested on their ability to use the prepositions in, on, under, and next to to identify novel creatures displayed on a screen (e.g., The wug is on the table), as well as their ability to later identify the creature without accompanying prepositions (e.g., Look at the wug). Children overall demonstrated understanding of all the prepositions but next to and were able to use their knowledge of prepositions to learn the associations between novel words and their intended referents, as shown by greater‐than chance looks to the target referent when no prepositional phrase was provided. (shrink)

This volume is devoted St. Thomas's commentary on the Physics. In the Physics, Aristotle delves into what makes things what they are. In commenting on this fundamental text of Aristotelian philosophy, St. Thomas takes Aristotle's thoughts and deepens them.

Human interactions are often improvised rather than scripted, which suggests that efficient coordination can emerge even when collective plans are largely underspecified. One possibility is that such forms of coordination primarily rely on mutual influences between interactive partners, and on perception–action couplings such as entrainment or mimicry. Yet some forms of improvised joint actions appear difficult to explain solely by appealing to these emergent mechanisms. Here, we focus on collective free improvisation, a form of highly unplanned creative practice where both (...) agents' subjective reports and the complexity of their interactions suggest that shared intentions may sometimes emerge to support coordination during the course of the improvisation, even in the absence of verbal communication. In four experiments, we show that shared intentions spontaneously emerge during collective musical improvisations, and that they foster coordination on multiple levels, over and beyond the mere influence of shared information. We also show that musicians deploy communicative strategies to manifest and propagate their intentions within the group, and that this predicts better coordination. Overall, our results suggest that improvised and scripted joint actions are more continuous with one another than it first seems, and that they differ merely in the extent to which they rely on emergent or planned coordination mechanisms. (shrink)

Dans Science, Perception and Reality, Sellars distingue l’image manifeste de l’homme et l’image scientifique de l’homme. La première est obtenue à partir de la façon dont nous prenons conscience de nous-mêmes comme humains dans le monde. La seconde correspond à ce que les différentes sciences nous amènent à postuler sur la manière dont l’homme est constitué. Van Fraassen, lui, étend au monde ces concepts...

Adults are skilled at using language to construct/negotiate identity and to signal affiliation with others, but little is known about how these abilities develop in children. Clearly, children mirror statistical patterns in their local environment (e.g., Canadian children using zed instead of zee), but do they flexibly adapt their linguistic choices on the fly in response to the choices of different peers? To address this question, we examined the effect of group membership on 7‐ to 9‐year‐olds' labeling of objects in (...) a trivia game, exploring whether they were more likely to use a particular label (e.g., sofa vs. couch) if members of their “team” also used that label. In a preregistered study, children (N = 72) were assigned to a team (red or green) and were asked during experimental trials to answer questions—which had multiple possible answers (e.g., blackboard or chalkboard)—after hearing two teammates and two opponents respond to the same question. Results showed that children were significantly more likely to produce labels less commonly used by the community (i.e., dispreferred labels) when their teammates had produced those labels. Crucially, this effect was tied to group membership, and could not be explained by children simply repeating the most recently used label. These findings demonstrate how social processes (i.e., group membership) can guide linguistic variation in children. (shrink)

"Translated with an uncanny sense for the overall point of Augustine's doctrine. In short, a very good translation. The Introduction is admirably clear." --Paul Vincent Spade, Indiana University.

The seed system is a major component of traditional management of crop genetic diversity in developing countries. Seed flows are an important part of this system. They have been poorly studied for minor Andean crops, especially those that are propagated vegetatively. We examine the seed exchanges of Oxalis tuberosa Mol., a vegetatively propagated crop capable of sexual reproduction. We studied the seed exchanges of four rural communities in Candelaria district at the international and local levels, emphasizing the spread of new (...) sexually-produced genotypes through these exchanges. Interviews with 44 farmers generated socioeconomic, agronomic, crop diversity and seed exchange information, and data on the potential incorporation of new sexually-produced genotypes in the crop germplasm. We interviewed merchants to evaluate the input and output of genetic diversity in the communities studied. Results showed a positive effect of the farmers’ wealth on the diversity cultivated and on seed exchanges. Most seed exchanges occurred at market, creating a distinction between cash and self-consumption landraces. Cash landraces were intensively exchanged; self-consumption landraces were isolated at the farmer level and prone to genetic drift and complete loss. Merchants exported seeds of cash landraces across Bolivia and into Peru and Argentina. New sexually produced genotypes are less incorporated into cash landraces than in self-consumed landraces. However, new genotypes incorporated into cash landraces are diffused faster and better, being more intensively exchanged. We propose conservation strategies that can be applied to other vegetatively propagated and minor Andean crops. (shrink)

Pierre Bourdieu was one of the most influential social thinkers of the past half-century, known for both his theoretical and methodological contributions and his wide-ranging empirical investigations into colonial power in Algeria, the educational system in France, the forms of state power, and the history of artistic and scientific fields-among many other topics. Despite the depth and breadth of his influence, however, Bourdieu's legacy has yet to be assessed in a comprehensive manner. The Oxford Handbook of Pierre Bourdieu (...) fills this gap by offering a sweeping overview of Bourdieu's impact on the social sciences and humanities. Thomas Medvetz and Jeffrey J. Sallaz have gathered a diverse array of leading scholars who place Bourdieu's work in the wider scope of intellectual history, trace the development of his thought, offer original interpretations and critical engagement, and discuss the likely impact of his ideas on future social research. The Handbook highlights Bourdieu's contributions to established areas of research-including the study of markets, the law, cultural production, and politics-and illustrates how his concepts have generated new fields and objects of study. (shrink)

This work is an attempt to elaborate an understanding of the nature and meaning of ontology, and on that basis, to construct it. The starting-point and clue for the construction of ontology is language, and language's power to express what is. The understanding of ontology which is secured in this essay is one which sees ontology as the linguistically conditioned account of what is and of the existence of what is, an account which becomes, coordinately and equally, onto-theology and onto-anthropology, (...) in which latter, the nature of person is adumbrated as transcendence towards Being as value and value as Being. (shrink)

En 1534, le grand chancelier d'Angleterre, sir Thomas More, refuse de prêter serment à l'Acte de Suprématie par lequel Henri VIII d'Angleterre, s'opposant à l'Eglise de Rome, se proclame chef de l'Eglise anglicane. Condamné par le tribunal royal à la décapitation publique, Thomas More demeure pourtant fidèle : fidèle au roi, fidèle à la foi, et fidèle à sa conscience au prix de sa vie. En effet, s'il ne reconnaît pas le roi comme chef de l'Eglise nationale, il (...) n'a jamais remis en cause son autorité temporelle. Sir Thomas More, humaniste, juriste, théologien, diplomate, homme d'Etat et finalement martyr, est devenu un modèle pour ceux qui se dévouent au bien commun. L'Europe troublée du XVIe siècle n'est pas sans rappeler notre époque soumise à la difficile gestion des affaires publiques, aux scandales financiers et à l'avidité de quelques puissants. Ce livre, qui présente la vie de Thomas More et les valeurs fondatrices de son action, peut nous aider à trouver de nouveaux repères pour devenir ferment dans la pâte du monde. Le lecteur saisira alors toute la vérité des paroles adressées par l'humaniste anglais Roger Ascham à la petite- fille de More : "Par cet homme seul, c'est toute l'Angleterre qui s'est trouvée anoblie.". (shrink)

Ecological developmental biology (eco‐devo) explores the mechanistic relationships between the processes of individual development and environmental factors. Recent studies imply that some of these relationships have deep evolutionary origins, and may even pre‐date the divergences of the simplest extant animals, including cnidarians and sponges. Development of these early diverging metazoans is often sensitive to environmental factors, and these interactions occur in the context of conserved signaling pathways and mechanisms of tissue homeostasis whose detailed molecular logic remain elusive. Efficient methods for (...) transgenesis in cnidarians together with the ease of experimental manipulation in cnidarians and sponges make them ideal models for understanding causal relationships between environmental factors and developmental mechanisms. Here, we identify major questions at the interface between animal evolution and development and outline a road map for research aimed at identifying the mechanisms that link environmental factors to developmental mechanisms in early diverging metazoans.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

Augustin a découvert la Bible tardivement et progressivement, à Milan, puis en Afrique. Il ne l'a pas lue d'emblée entièrement. Il l'a utilisée sous des formes diverses, celle qu'il rapportait d'Italie, celles qu'il rencontrait en Afrique, dans les Églises catholiques et chez les donatistes, celles aussi que Jérôme venait de produire . En dépit de sa préférence pour la Septante, Augustin a toujours recherché le meilleur texte. Dans le prolongement de sa conversion et au contact de la Bible, (...) son herméneutique aussi s'est transformée. Des observations sont faites à propos de Ct 1,6-7 , Jr 10,2-9 et Ac 1,1-3. (shrink)

Cet article associe trois approches issues de l’institutionnalisme historique : l’école historique allemande, l’institutionnalisme américain originel et la théorie de la régulation. Il en dégage les principes méthodologiques partagés et analyse leur application au processus d’élaboration théorique. Codes JEL : B15, B25, B40, B52, E02, Z13.

Ce livre est une présentation de la philosophie de saint Thomas d’Aquin en confrontation avec le défi de la modernité. L’A. est bien placé pour cet acte à deux effets : présenter la pensée de saint Thomas, car sa formation dominicaine et la fréquentation assidue du Docteur angélique l’y ont préparé ; la présenter au défi de la modernité, puisqu’il a écrit d’autres ouvrages : Questions de la modernité (Paris, Fac éditions, 1985), Histoire et connaissance (Fribourg, Éd. universitaires, (...) 1997), s.. (shrink)

Ce recueil réunit des articles qui s'interrogent, depuis un ensemble de perspectives philosophiques des plus diverses, sur le rapport entre nature et éthique.

(2005). Was Pierre Duhem a Precursor of Postmodernism? Angelaki: Vol. 10, continental philosophy and the sciences the french tradition issue editor: andrew aitken, pp. 27-38.

In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all further (...) questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)

BackgroundIn the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds (CAHHM) cohort, participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, heart, and abdomen, that generated incidental findings (IFs). The approach to managing these unexpected results remain a complex issue. Our objectives were to describe the CAHHM policy for the management of IFs, to understand the impact of disclosing IFs to healthy research participants, and to reflect on the ethical obligations of researchers in future MRI studies.MethodsBetween 2013 and 2019, 8252 participants (...) (mean age 58 ± 9 years, 54% women) were recruited with a follow-up questionnaire administered to 909 participants (40% response rate) at 1-year. The CAHHM policy followed a restricted approach, whereby routine feedback on IFs was not provided. Only IFs of severe structural abnormalities were reported.ResultsSevere structural abnormalities occurred in 8.3% (95% confidence interval 7.7–8.9%) of participants, with the highest proportions found in the brain (4.2%) and abdomen (3.1%). The majority of participants (97%) informed of an IF reported no change in quality of life, with 3% of participants reporting that the knowledge of an IF negatively impacted their quality of life. Furthermore, 50% reported increased stress in learning about an IF, and in 95%, the discovery of an IF did not adversely impact his/her life insurance policy. Most participants (90%) would enrol in the study again and perceived the MRI scan to be beneficial, regardless of whether they were informed of IFs. While the implications of a restricted approach to IF management was perceived to be mostly positive, a degree of diagnostic misconception was present amongst participants, indicating the importance of a more thorough consent process to support participant autonomy.ConclusionThe management of IFs from research MRI scans remain a challenging issue, as participants may experience stress and a reduced quality of life when IFs are disclosed. The restricted approach to IF management in CAHHM demonstrated a fair fulfillment of the overarching ethical principles of respect for autonomy, concern for wellbeing, and justice. The approach outlined in the CAHHM policy may serve as a framework for future research studies.Clinical trial registrationhttps://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/nct02220582. (shrink)

La pensée économique de Thomas d’Aquin est connue pour son apport concernant le juste prix ou l’usure, mais sa délimitation épistémologique de l’activité économique retient peu l’attention des commentateurs. L’Aquinate hérite d’Aristote de la notion d’ œconomia, gestion familiale se distinguant à la fois du politique, qui concerne la cité, et de l’activité du marchand, pour « le gain » ou « pour l’argent ». La délimitation de l’activité économique se fait donc par l’agent et par la finalité. Jusqu’à (...) la Somme de théologie, le traitement des activités économiques est dispersé dans ses œuvres. La Somme fait œuvre novatrice en adoptant une typologie objectiviste, par la nature de l’opération, ici l’échange. Elle regroupe ces activités d’échange, à savoir le commerce et le prêt, en deux questions contiguës et leur donne un prologue commun. Elle les réunit comme échanges volontaires et nomme les péchés qui s’y rapportent. Thomas délimite ainsi l’activité économique, qui doit étre un échange et un acte volontaire. Ce cadre est à la fois extensif et restrictif : il permet de rendre compte des cas limites comme l’échange de biens non marchands, mais il exclut ce qui se rapporte à un don sans contrepartie, ou à un échange effectué avec secret (vol) ou violence (rapine). Ces critères, loin de constituer des évidences, viennent interroger les lectures économiques de l’œuvre thomasienne et la compréhension des rapports asymétriques entre co-contractants. (shrink)