To test whether mental activities collected from non-REM sleep are influenced by REM sleep, we suppressed REM sleep using clomipramine 50 mg or placebo in the evening, in a double blind cross-over design, in 11 healthy young men. Subjects were awakened every hour and asked about their mental activity. The marked REM-sleep suppression induced by clomipramine did not substantially affect any aspects of dream recall . Since long, complex and bizarre dreams persist even after suppressing REM sleep either partially or (...) totally, it suggests that the generation of mental activity during sleep is independent of sleep stage. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, (...) affective autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societallevel analyses. At the individual- level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub- dimensions and two sets of values dimensions. At the societal- level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For (...) each society, we report the Cronbach' s? statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency as well as report interrater agreement analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country span sp. (shrink)

In recent years, the biopharmaceutical industry has seen an increase in the development of so-called orphan drugs for the treatment of rare and neglected diseases. This increase has been spurred on by legislation in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere designed to promote orphan drug development. In this article, we examine the drivers of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in orphan drug markets and the extent to which biopharmaceutical firms engage in these activities with a strategic orientation. The unique context (...) of orphan drugs constitutes a research opportunity to test the applicability of existing theoretical perspectives on CSR and strategic CSR. Using Schwartz and Carroll’s (Bus Ethics Q, 13(4):503–530, 2003) three-domain approach to CSR and the literature on strategic CSR as a theoretical background, we employ a combination of semi-structured interviews and a quantitative website content analysis to study practices of biopharmaceutical firms in the United States and European Union. Our findings show that both US- and EU-based companies engaged in orphan drugs development perceive their involvement as a responsible business activity beyond the economic dimension of CSR. However, for the majority of these companies their CSR activities do not qualify as strategic according to the criteria established in the literature. We also find significant differences between larger and smaller firms in their use of CSR. Based on these findings, we make several suggestions regarding orphan drug legislation and other measures that might help firms exploit strategic CSR benefits. (shrink)

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, an important conceptual battleground for democratic theorists ought to be, it would seem, the capitalist firm. We are now painfully aware that the typical model of government in so-called investor-owned companies remains profoundly oligarchic, hierarchical, and unequal. Renewing with the literature of the 1970s and 1980s on workplace democracy, a few political theorists have started to advocate democratic reforms of the workplace by relying on an analogy between firm and state. To (...) the extent that a firm is an organization comparable to the state, it too ought to be ruled along democratic lines. Our paper tests the robustness of the analogy between firm and state by considering six major objections to it: the objection from a difference in ends, the objection from shareholders’ property rights, the objection from worker’s consent, the objection from workers’ exit opportunities, the objection from workers’ expertise, and the objection from the fragility of firms. We find all of these objections wanting. While the paper does not ambition to settle the issue of workplace democracy at once, our goal is to pave the way for a more in-depth study of the ways in which firms and states can be compared and the possible implications this may have for our understanding of the nature of managerial authority and the governance of firms. (shrink)

"Isabelle Stengers presents us with a new way of understanding a remarkably diverse range of sciences and their relation to a material and living world. Playing with a position both inside the practices that constitute and transform science and outside the sciences as their mode of conceptualization, Stengers explores the limits, constraints, and inventions that fuse modern science and contemporary society." Elizabeth Grosz --.

Concerned with the interplay between science, society, and power, Isabelle Stengers offers a unique perspective on the power of scientific theories to modify society, and vice versa. 9 diagrams.

The current time is witnessing a vast expansion in the range and influence of medical systems over the provision of care. Real care, however, is not an outcome of systems, but of ancient traditions governing medical practice.

The paper provides a new critical perspective on the propensity interpretation of fitness, by investigating its relationship to the propensity interpretation of probability. Two main conclusions are drawn. First, the claim that fitness is a propensity cannot be understood properly: fitness is not a propensity in the sense prescribed by the propensity interpretation of probability. Second, this interpretation of probability is inessential for explanations proposed by the PIF in evolutionary biology. Consequently, interpreting the probabilistic dimension of fitness in terms of (...) propensities is neither a strong motivation in favor of this interpretation, nor a possible target for substantial criticism. (shrink)

Throughout much of his writing, Whitehead outlines a critique of what he termed the `bifurcation of nature'. This position divides the world into objective causal nature, on the one hand, with the perceptions of subjects on the other. On such a view, truth lies in a reality external to such subjects and it is the task of science to deliver clear and immediate access to this realm. Further, judgments about this external reality are the province of human subjects and it (...) is the task of philosophy to ascertain the validity or otherwise of these. This article outlines Whitehead's attempts to develop a conception of nature which avoids this premise; it also explains how he offers a way for contemporary theories to construct or engineer abstractions which go beyond notions of social construction or deconstruction. This article argues that not only does Whitehead offer a coherent alternative to such approaches but that the manner in which his major text is written reflects his commitment to the inherently constructed and constructing character of all existence. (shrink)

Prepared for an ANU Humanities Research Centre Symposium in early August 2003, these notes may be considered as a comment on Brian Massumi’s proposition that ‘a political ecology would be a social technology of belonging, assuming coexistence and co-becoming as the habitat of practices’.

Recent years have seen a notable increase in the production of scientific expertise by large multidisciplinary groups. The issue we address is how reports may be written by such groups in spite of their size and of formidable obstacles: complexity of subject matter, uncertainty, and scientific disagreement. Our focus is on the International Panel on Climate Change, unquestionably the best-known case of such collective scientific expertise. What we show is that the organization of work within the IPCC aims to make (...) it possible to produce documents that are indeed expert reports. To do so, we first put forward the epistemic norms that apply to expert reports in general, that is, the properties that reports should have in order to be useful and to help decision-making. Section 2 claims that these properties are: intelligibility, relevance and accuracy. Based on this analysis, section 3 points to the difficulties of having IPCC reports indeed satisfying these norms. We then show how the organization of work within the IPCC aims at and to a large extent secures intelligibility, relevance and accuracy, with the result that IPCC reports can be relied on for decision-making. Section 4 focuses on the fundamentals of IPCC’s work organization--that is, division of labour within the IPCC--while section 5 investigates three frameworks that were introduced over the course of the functioning of the IPCC: the reviewing procedure of IPCC reports, the language that IPCC authors use to express uncertainty and the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. Concluding remarks are offered in section 6. (shrink)

At the end of his life, Michel Foucault wrote of ‘problematization’ as what he had done all along. Yet some commentators see a ‘new’ Foucault emerging together with this term. This essay accepts the last hypothesis and connects it with the French scene, where problematization was already familiar, and its use under tension. Starting with Bachelard, problematization was related with a polemic epistemological stance, but its reprise by Gilles Deleuze turned it into an affirmative theme dramatizing the creation of problems. (...) Situating Foucault’s problematization in this philosophical line permits us to develop the relation he proposed between problematization and the test of contemporary reality on the thinker. This paper will put problematization itself to the test of our present, that is, to the prospect of the social-ecological devastation associated with climate disorder. Both following and betraying Foucault with the help of Whitehead and Haraway, problematization will then be related to the power of sensible events, a power which requires allowing oneself to be touched, and allowing what touches us the power to modify the relation we entertain to our own reasons. (shrink)

An innovative, multifaceted approach to scientific experiments as designed by and shaped through interaction with the modeling process The role of scientific modeling in mediation between theories and phenomena is a critical topic within the philosophy of science, touching on issues from climate modeling to synthetic models in biology, high energy particle physics, and cognitive sciences. Offering a radically new conception of the role of data in the scientific modeling process as well as a new awareness of the problematic aspects (...) of data, this cutting-edge volume offers a multifaceted view on experiments as designed and shaped in interaction with the modeling process. Contributors address such issues as the construction of models in conjunction with scientific experimentation; the status of measurement and the function of experiment in the identification of relevant parameters; how the phenomena under study are reconceived when accounted for by a model; and the interplay between experimenting, modeling, and simulation when results do not mesh. Highlighting the mediating role of models and the model-dependence of data measurement, this volume proposes a normative and conceptual innovation in scientific modeling--that the phenomena to be investigated and modeled must not be precisely identified at the start but specified during the course of the interactions arising between experimental and modeling activities. Contributors: Nancy D. Cartwright, U of California, San Diego; Anthony Chemero, U of Cincinnati; Ronald N. Giere, U of Minnesota; Jenann Ismael, U of Arizona; Tarja Knuuttila, U of South Carolina; Andrea Loettgers, U of Bern, Switzerland; Deborah Mayo, Virginia Tech; Joseph Rouse, Wesleyan U; Paul Teller, U of California, Davis; Michael Weisberg, U of Pennsylvania; Eric Winsberg, U of South Florida. (shrink)

L'ambition de ce livre, et elle est grande, est de faire vivre à son lecteur, qu'il soit ou non philosophe, le trajet fulgurant qui, en quelques années, a transformé le mathématicien Alfred North Whitehead en philosophe spéculatif. De la pierre grise que je vois là jusqu'à la création du Dieu qu'exige la cohérence spéculative, il s'agit bel et bien de cette " libre et sauvage création de concepts " associée à la philosophie anglaise par Deleuze et Guattari dans Qu'est-ce que (...) la philosophie? Mais " sauvage " signifie d'abord ici l'humour d'une mise à l'aventure de tous les " nous savons bien " qui rassurent, et l'expérimentation tranquille des concepts qui portent à leur plus haut degré, pour les faire converger, liberté et contrainte, audace et obligation. De l'aventure, nul ne devrait ramener une doctrine ou un mode de pensée unanime ; plutôt, différent pour chacun, un certain goût pour les questions qui mettent en risque, et une grande indifférence aux mots d'ordre qui prétendent nous dire comment penser. (shrink)

The present text comments on Steel 2005 , in which the author claims to extend from the deterministic to the general case, the result according to which the causal Markov condition is satisfied by systems with jointly independent exogenous variables. I show that Steel’s claim cannot be accepted unless one is prepared to abandon standard causal modeling terminology. Correlatively, I argue that the most fruitful aspect of Steel 2005 consists in a realist conception of error terms, and I show how (...) this conception sheds new light on the relationship between determinism and the causal Markov condition. †To contact the author, please write to: Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, Université Catholique de Louvain, Place du Cardinal Mercier 14, 1348 Louvain la Neuve, Belgium; e‐mail: isabelle[email protected]. (shrink)

Experimental activity is traditionally identified with testing the empirical implications or numerical simulations of models against data. In critical reaction to the ‘tribunal view’ on experiments, this essay will show the constructive contribution of experimental activity to the processes of modeling and simulating. Based on the analysis of a case in fluid mechanics, it will focus specifically on two aspects. The first is the controversial specification of the conditions in which the data are to be obtained. The second is conceptual (...) clarification, with a redefinition of concepts central to the understanding of the phenomenon and the conditions of its occurrence. (shrink)

This paper suggests that one single thread characterizes the developments of French phenomenology that occurred after 1990 in the wake of Merleau-Ponty's and Levinas's major contributions. Janicaud in 1991 had already identified one global trend in French phenomenology and believed it was possible to unite the thoughts of Levinas, Henry, Marion and Chrétien under the common banner of “theological phenomenology.” However, his analysis seems to fail to account for deeper-seated affinities that exist between French phenomenologists such as Marion, Lacoste, Chrétien, (...) Richir, Depraz, Romano – and Benoist for part of his work. This is the reason why, although the present paper does agree with Janicaud's idea that the French authors who define themselves as phenomenologists share some common ground, it defines this common trend quite differently, i.e., as a form of epistemological realism that ultimately manifests itself as a radical empiricism. Consequently, the present study will state and defend three hypotheses: contemporary French phenomenology professes a form of realism of experience, which is the true rallying point of otherwise differing elaborations; this type of epistemological empiricism, by virtue of its radicality, implies a problem that threatens to drive phenomenology towards its own dissolution, because as it precipitates in fine the dilution of philosophical discourse into a multitude of other discourses; this variant of empiricism shows that, within its strictly defined viewpoint, there is scarcely any difference between French phenomenology and a certain part of French analytical philosophy. All three hypotheses lead to the same conclusion: the determination of the defining aspect of contemporary French phenomenology entails, beyond the apparent, misleading, and futile quarrel of paradigms, to bring to light a common space for contemporary French philosophy, which, from both perspectives, can be conveyed by the single term “to show.” It is, in fact, the elevation of “to show” to the detriment of “to demonstrate” that seems to ensnare thinkers within an impasse. (shrink)

Background Minimal research has been done to determine how well European nursing students understand the core principles of academic integrity and how often they deviate from good academic practice. Aim The aim of this study was to find out what educational needs nursing students have in terms of academic integrity. Research design A quantitative cross-sectional study in the form of a survey of nursing students was conducted via questionnaire in the fall of 2020. Participants The sample was composed of 79 (...) students in the BScN and MScN programs at Zürich University of Applied Sciences. Ethical considerations An application for a non-competence clearance was approved by the Ethics Committee in Zurich (BASEC No. Req-2020-00868). The survey was anonymous, and informed consent was obtained prior to participation. Results The participants had a high level of confidence in their own knowledge but were in many cases unable to correctly identify clear-cut examples of misconduct and to differentiate them from questionable practices. About 13% of the participants admitted that during their university education they had copied shorter passages from other sources into their own text without marking them as quotes. Conclusions The study documents extensive knowledge gaps among nursing students regarding both academic misconduct and questionable practices and indicates a need for improved academic integrity training. (shrink)

It is a well-known fact that the Śaiva nondualistic philosopher Utpaladeva (fl. c. 925–975) adopted the Sāṃkhya principle according to which the effect must exist in some way before the operation of its cause (satkāryavāda). Johannes Bronkhorst has highlighted the paradox inherent in this appropriation: Utpaladeva is a staunch supporter of the satkāryavāda, but whereas Sāṃkhya authors consider it as a means of proving the existence of an unconscious matter, the Śaiva exploits it so as to establish his monistic idealism, (...) in perfect contradiction with the Sāṃkhya dualism of matter and consciousness. How does Utpaladeva achieve this complete reversal of meaning of the satkāryavāda? The present article argues that the elliptical verses of the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā dealing with this issue have been partly misunderstood so far due to the loss of Utpaladeva’s own detailed commentary (Vivr̥ti) on this passage: Abhinavagupta’s two commentaries, however terse in this respect, clearly show that a crucial part of Utpaladeva’s reasoning remains implicit in the verses. The article therefore attempts to reconstruct the gist of Utpaladeva’s strategy by having recourse to various other Śaiva sources, including Somānanda’s Śivadr̥ṣṭi and Utpaladeva’s own commentary thereon. This examination shows that Utpaladeva’s appropriation of the satkāryavāda rests on a profound transformation of the Sāṃkhya notions of manifestation (abhivyakti) and potentiality (śakti), and that his criticism of the Sāṃkhya understanding of causality might target the Śaiva dualists as well as Sāṃkhya authors. (shrink)

Karl Jaspers' phenomenology remains important today, not solely because of its continuing influence in some areas of psychiatry, but because, if fully understood, it can provide a method and set of concepts for making new progress in the science of psychopathology. In order to understand this method and set of concepts, it helps to recognize the significant influence that Edmund Husserl's early work, Logical investigations, exercised on Jaspers' formulation of them. We trace the Husserlian influence while clarifying the main components (...) of Jaspers' method. Jaspers adopted Husserl's notions of intuition, description, and presuppositionlessness, transforming them when necessary in order to serve the investigations of the psychopathologist. Jaspers also took over from Wilhelm Dilthey and others the tools of understanding (Verstehen) and self-transposal. The Diltheyian procedures were integrated into the Husserlian ones to produce a method that enables psychiatrists to define the basic kinds of psychopathological mental states. (shrink)

This paper aims 1) to introduce the notion of theoretical story as a resource and source of constraint for the construction and assessment of models of phenomena; 2) to show the relevance of this notion for a better understanding of the role and nature of values in scientific activity. The reflection on the role of values and value judgments in scientific activity should be attentive, I will argue, to the distinction between models and the theoretical story that guides and constrains (...) their construction. The aim of scientific activity is to develop understanding of phenomena, and something that serves this aim and contributes to the development of understanding has a cognitive value. Cognitive values are the features that something that plays a role in scientific activity should have so that it can serve its aim. I will focus my attention on the features of the theoretical story and of the models. (shrink)

Things metaphysics can learn from physics Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9515-z Authors Isabelle Drouet, Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, Université Catholique de Louvain, Place du cardinal Mercier 14, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Idealism is the core of the Pratyabhijñã philosophy: the main goal of Utpaladeva (fl. c. 925–950 AD) and of his commentator Abhinavagupta (fl. c. 975–1025 AD) is to establish that nothing exists outside of consciousness. In the course of their demonstration, these Śaiva philosophers endeavour to distinguish their idealism from that of a rival system, the Buddhist Vijñānavāda. This article aims at examining the concept of otherness (paratva) as it is presented in the Pratyabhijñā philosophy in contrast with that of (...) the Vijñānavādins’. Although, according to the Pratyabhijñā, the other subjects are not ultimately real since all subjects are nothing but limited manifestations of a single absolute subject, the fact that we are aware of their existence in the practical world has to be accounted for. The Vijñānavādins explain it by arguing the we infer the others’ existence. The Pratyabhijñā philosophers, while refuting their opponents’ reasoning as it is expounded in Dharmakīrti’s Santānāntarasiddhi, develop a particulary original analysis of our awareness of the others, stating that this awareness is neither a perception (pratyakṣa) nor an inference (anumāna), but rather a guess (ūha) in which we sense the others’ freedom (svātantrya). (shrink)

Based on a consumer survey conducted in France, Germany, and the U.S., the study investigates consumers'' readiness to support socially responsible organizations and examines their evaluations of the economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities of the firm. French and German consumers appear more willing to actively support responsible businesses than their U.S. counterparts. While U.S. consumers value highly corporate eco-nomic responsibilities, French and German consumers are most concerned about businesses conforming with legal and ethical standards. These findings provide useful guidance (...) for the efficient management of social responsibility initiatives across borders and for further academic inquiries. (shrink)

Participation of the Public in Science: Towards a New Kind of Scientific Practice Participation of the public in science has been the object of an increasing number of social and political philosophical studies, but there is still hardly any epistemological study of the topic. While it has been objected that involvement of the public is a threat to the integrity of science, the apparent indifference of philosophers of science seems to testify to its lack of relevance to conceptions of scientific (...) activity. I argue both that it is not a threat to science and that it is relevant to philosophy of science by showing that it constitutes a new kind of epistemic practice. Two main objections to the idea that the involvement of non-scientists, with their situated perspective and contextual values, can form an epistemic practice will be addressed: the first bears on the epistemic potentialities of the cooperation between scientist and non-scientists; the second on the possibility that this cooperation takes the form of a practice. (shrink)

Music offers a unique opportunity to better understand the organization of the human brain. Like language, music exists in all human societies. Like language, music is a complex, rule-governed activity that seems specific to humans, and associated with a specific brain architecture. Yet unlike most other high-level functions of the human brain - and unlike language - music is a skill at which only a minority of people become proficient. The study of music as a major brain function has for (...) some time been relatively neglected. Just recently, however, we have witnessed an explosion in research activities on music perception and performance and their correlates in the human brain. This volume brings together an outstanding collection of international authorities - from the fields of music, neuroscience, psychology, and neurology - to describe the amazing advances being made in understanding the complex relationship between music and the brain. Aimed at psychologists and neuroscientists, this is a book that will lay the foundations for a cognitive neuroscience of music. (shrink)

Experimental modeling is the construction of theoretical models hand in hand with experimental activity. As explained in Section 1, experimental modeling starts with claims about phenomena that use abstract concepts, concepts whose conditions of realization are not yet specified; and it ends with a concrete model of the phenomenon, a model that can be tested against data. This paper argues that this process from abstract concepts to concrete models involves judgments of relevance, which are irreducibly normative. In Section 2, we (...) show, on the basis of several case studies, how these judgments contribute to the determination of the conditions of realization of the abstract concepts and, at the same time, of the quantities that characterize the phenomenon under study. Then, in Section 3, we compare this view on modeling with other approaches that also have acknowledged the role of relevance judgments in science. To conclude, in Section 4, we discuss the possibility of a plurality of relevance judgments and introduce a distinction between locally and generally relevant factors. (shrink)

The processing of fluent speech involves complex computational steps that begin with the segmentation of the continuous flow of speech sounds into syllables and words. One question that naturally arises pertains to the type of syllabic information that speech processes act upon. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to profile regions, using a combination of whole-brain and exploratory anatomical region-of-interest (ROI) approaches, that were sensitive to syllabic information during speech perception by parametrically manipulating syllabic complexity along two dimensions: (1) (...) individual syllable complexity, and (2) sequence complexity (supra-syllabic). We manipulated the complexity of the syllable by using the simplest syllable template—a consonant and vowel (CV)-and inserting an additional consonant to create a complex onset (CCV). The supra-syllabic complexity was manipulated by creating sequences composed of the same syllable repeated 6 times (e.g. /pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa/) and sequences of 3 different syllables each repeated twice (e.g. /pa-ta-ka-pa-ta-ka/). This parametrical design allowed us to identify brain regions sensitive to (1) syllabic complexity independent of supra-syllabic complexity, (2) supra-syllabic complexity independent of syllabic complexity and, (3) both syllabic and supra-syllabic complexity. High-resolution scans were acquired for 15 healthy adults. An exploratory anatomical ROI analysis of the supratemporal plane (STP) identified bilateral regions within the anterior two-third of the planum temporale, the primary auditory cortices as well as the anterior two-third of the superior temporal gyrus that showed different patterns of sensitivity to syllabic and supra-syllabic information. These findings demonstrate that during passive listening of syllable sequences, sublexical information is processed automatically, and sensitivity to syllabic and supra-syllabic information is localized almost exclusively within the STP. (shrink)

The Negation Problem states that expressivism has insufficient structure to account for the various ways in which a moral sentence can be negated. We argue that the Negation Problem does not arise for expressivist accounts of all normative language but arises only for the specific examples on which expressivists usually focus. In support of this claim, we argue for the following three theses: 1) a problem that is structurally identical to the Negation Problem arises in non-normative cases, and this problem (...) is solved once the hidden quantificational structure involved in such cases is uncovered; 2) the terms ‘required’, ‘permissible’, and ‘forbidden’ can also be analyzed in terms of hidden quantificational structure, and the Negation Problem disappears once this hidden structure is uncovered; 3) the Negation Problem does not arise for normative language that has no hidden quantificational structure. We conclude that the Negation Problem is not really a problem about expressivism at all but is rather a feature of the quantificational structure of the required, permitted, and forbidden. (shrink)

Nature always refers to something inasmuch as it relates to something else. This « something else » is highly variable. The role of Nature as the respondent of judgements which are both hierarchical and moral is always present in modern science, without thereby being deducible from modern science. Today it presents new contrasts, new oppositions which involve multiple natures, interlinked and historical, which does not result in anything like a neutral Nature. The best example, linked to the idea of Gaia, (...) is the greenhouse effect. Our interventions, even if they take place over a very short period of time, might disturb situations which arose over very long periods. Gaia is a new figure of Nature which must be respected because we are dependent on her, not in the sense that she must be respected as a goddess, but in the sense of her sensitivity. Now, a Nature that could thus be defined once and for all, with an identity that could be opposed to humanity’s, does not exist. Nature in the other sense does not exist objectively either, but is more interesting because it participates in human historicity. It exists in the sense in which it forces us to think, negotiate, take into account, imagine, take note without saying that Nature, too, thinks, negotiates, takes into account, imagines, and takes note. We must think and imagine with something that does not do so. This is the beginning of a culture of non-symmetry. If Nature as Gaia teaches us something, it is that we must take care : the fact the current regimen of interdependence suits us is in no way a privilege of this regiment. Gaia has no innate reason to care about us ; rather, we must care about her. Non-symmetry, then, is this interesting situation in which Nature interests us while we do not interest her. (shrink)

The question of universalism and relativism is often taken to be a matter of critical reflexivity. This article attempts to present the question instead as a matter of practical, political, and always-situated concern. The attempt starts from the consideration of modern experimental sciences. These sciences usually serve as the stronghold for universalist claims and as such are a target of relativism. It is argued that the specificity of these sciences is not a method but a concern. To be able to (...) claim that they have not unilaterally imposed their definitions on the phenomena they study is the leading concern of experimenters and should be understood in terms of the following achievement: the creation of a very particular “rapport” that authorizes claiming that what is operationally defined “lends itself” to this correlation. Linking knowledge production with a creation of rapports entails a pluralization of sciences along with the pluralization of modes of concern associated with the rapport. However, resisting unilaterally imposed definitions is not enough, since with the coming “knowledge economy” the questions that this article raises will soon be part of a romantic past. Thus it concludes with a speculative touch, which may be a requiem, relating the creation of rapports with an ecology of practices akin to William James's always-under-construction pluriverse. (shrink)

The main problems faced by a conception of perception as passive will be introduced through a critical examination of John McDowell's account of 'empirical thinking'. Overcoming these difficulties will lead to a conception of perception as involving an active cognitive participation of the perceiver, and an account of how observational judgment is warranted that is focused on the conditions of experience. In both cases, analogies to inquiry in scientific experimental practice will be explored.