Pointe extrême de la métaphore, l'oxymore postule, dans le théâtre claudélien, une altérité essentielle entre l'Amant et l'Amante, entre Dieu et sa créature, altérité que ne contredirait pas cependant l'identité existentielle: l'Incarnation. Prouhèze déploie sous nos yeux la bannière divine dont le signe est, comme dans les versets de Raymond Lulle, “un homme mort”. Si la corde de l'amour est tissée à coups de languissements de soupirs et de pleurs par le poète-dramaturge, la Croix est symétriquement désignée dans ses drames (...) comme l'Arbre de Vie.Un personnage aussi étrange — car bien peu théâtral — que l'Ombre Double duSoulier de Satin résume ce paradoxe dans la mesure où la représentation qu'elle offre de la tension amoureuse crée un lien insécable entre la Terre et l'Ailleurs; l'Ombre Double témoigne de ce que l'Amant et l'Amante comme Dieu et sa créature peuvent concorder dans la béatitude sans pour autant fusionner. Autrement dit, selon Claudel, que l'homme soit à l'image de Dieu ne suffit pas à sa foi, encore faut-il qu'il ne cesse de manifester sa ressemblance à Dieu. Seule, la “métaphore vive”, c'est-à-dire la métaphore ayant gardé en mémoire les paradoxes et les tensions de l'oxymore, respecterait le mystère d'une relation où la présence croît a proportion de l'absence et fonderait cette parole sacrée et compensatoire d'une resseblance mille fois déjouée. (shrink)

What is well-being? This is one of humanity's oldest and deepest questions; Valerie Tiberius offers a fresh answer. She argues that our lives go well to the extent that we succeed in what matters to us emotionally, reflectively, and over the long term. So when we want to help others achieve well-being, we should pay attention to their values.

I examine the branch of evolutionary epistemology which tries to account for the character of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans by extending the biological theory of evolution to the neurophysiological substrates of cognition. Like Plotkin, I construe this branch as a struggling science, and attempt to characterize the sort of theory one might expect to find this truly interdisciplinary endeavor, an endeavor which encompasses not only evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and developmental neuroscience, but also and especially, the computational modeling (...) of artificial life programming; I suggest that extending Schaffner''s notion of interlevel theories to include both horizontal and vertical levels of abstraction best fits the theories currently being developed in cognitive science. Finally, I support this claim with examples drawn from computational modeling data using the genetic algorithm. (shrink)

Many philosophers of psychology fail to appreciate the constructivist process of science as well as its pragmatic aspects. A well-developed philosophy of science helps to clear many conceptual confusions. However, ridding ourselves of popular complaints only opens more sophisticated worries regarding how we generalize specific events and how we use those generalizations to build physical systems and abstract models. These questions can still be answered though by realizing that science is largely a social enterprise, and how and what we explain (...) depends a great deal upon who is asking the question of whom and when. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that one of the standards that governs practical reasoning is the stability standard. The stability standard, I argue, is a norm that is constitutive of practical reasoning: insofar as we do not take violations of this norm to be relevant considerations, we do not count as engaged in reasoning at all. Furthermore, I argue that it is a standard we can explicitly employ in order to deliberate about our ends or desires themselves. Importantly, this standard (...) will not require that some ends are prescribed or determined by reason alone. (edited). (shrink)

Background Disclosure of obtaining informed consent from patients (ICP) and research ethics committee (REC) approval in published reports is sometimes omitted. To date, no disclosure data are available on surgical research. Objective Our aim was to assess whether REC approval and ICP were documented in surgical trials. Study design Overall, 657 randomised trials, published between 2005 and 2010 in 10 international journals, were included. We collected the report rate of REC approval and ICP and contacted the corresponding author when ethical (...) information was lacking. Results Among the 657 randomised controlled trials (RCT), 576 (87.7%) stated that an REC had approved the research, and 606 (92.2%) stated that ICP had been requested. Furthermore, 28 RCTs (4.3%) reported neither REC nor ICP. Conclusions The phase III randomised surgical trials that were analysed were shown to have respected fundamental ethical principles in approximately 90% of the cases examines. (shrink)

The study of propositional realizability logic was initiated in the 50th of the last century. Some interesting results were obtained in the 60-70th. but many important problems in this area are still open. Now interest to these problems from new generation of researchers is observed. This survey contains an exposition of the results on propositional realizability logic and corresponding techniques. Thus reading this paper can be the start point in exploring and development of constructive logic.

For older workers, self-employment is an important alternative to waged employment. Drawing on social learning theory and social cognitive career theory we examine how attitudes toward one’s own aging, future time perspective (captured by perceived time left to live) and perceived support from referent individuals predict self-efficacy for entrepreneurship and outcome expectations, influencing self-employment interest. Findings from a sample of professional association members (n = 174, mean age 52.5 years), revealed that an open-ended time perspective relates positively to entrepreneurial self-efficacy, (...) while social support relates positively to outcome expectations. Consistent with social cognitive career theory, entrepreneurial self-efficacy mediated the relationship between future time perspective and interest in self-employment, and outcome expectations mediated the relationship between social support and interest in self-employment. This study extends current career and entrepreneurship theory in several ways. First, the inclusion of age-related psychosocial and sociocultural factors in the study model shed light on the intersection between older age, the contextual environment and development of self-employment interest. Second, the findings support earlier arguments that older entrepreneurship is a social process whereby the social context in which people work and live influences their interest in entrepreneurship, and that entrepreneurial behavior among older peop... (shrink)

Spelling out in detail what we do and do not know about phenomenological experience, this book denies the common view of consciousness as a central decision...

What is required to be an interdisciplinary theory in cognitive science is for it to span more than one traditional domain. Generally speaking, as I discuss ...

The article explores the place of affect in community relations with respect to trauma following the closure of a steelworks for a working-class community in the South Wales valleys in 2002. A review of sociological approaches to community demonstrates the poor handling of relational and affective aspects which, it is argued, are central to the way in which community relations were formed and provided a safe and containing skin against the uncertainty of industrial production. Using psychoanalytic approaches to affect which (...) stress the importance of skin, particularly the work of Bick, Tustin, Winnicott and Anzieu, the article explores how a sense of a containing skin provides a feeling of ontological security for a community beset by uncertainty and insecurity. It is argued that, following the closure of the steelworks in 2002, this skin is ruptured and that it is difficult for the members of the community to find a way forward. Using examples taken from psychosocial interviews with community members, the case is made for a range of affective relations and practices through which the skin is created. The absence of these practices and relations creates a profound sense of lack of safety and fear of death within the inhabitants, which needs to be addressed, but is rarely discussed in approaches to community or regeneration. (shrink)

Yule, Valerie Review(s) of: Heroes and heretics: A political history of western thought, by Barrows Dunham, Publisher, Alfred A. Knopf in 1964.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 153-155.

Human moral behaviour ranges from vicious cruelty to deep compassion, and any explanation of morality must address how our species is capable of such a range. Darwin argued that any social animal, with sufficient intellectual capacity, would develop morality. In agreement, I argue that human morality is unique in the animal kingdom not because of any particular moral capacity, but because some very abstract cognitive abilities that are unique to our species are layered on top of phylogenetically older emotional instincts (...) for aggression and for empathy. I review research on several components of empathy, intersubjectivity and theory of mind, detailing which of these capacities is uniquely human, and highlighting relevant neuroanatomy for each ability. Finally, I describe our abstract cognitive abilities for recursion and metarepresentation, and argue that these are uniquely human. When these abilities interact with our older social abilities (empathy, intersubjectivity) we are able to reason abstractly about others' mental states and how to affect them. Thus, it is these abstract cognitive capacities that give us the ability to be both cruel and compassionate, but it is our ancient ability for empathy that keeps us moral. Morality is, in a very real sense, a gift from our ancestors. (shrink)

Fred Suppe claims that the refereed journal article is an appropriate unit of scientific debate for philosophical analysis. He also claims that when we regiment scientific papers correctly, we can see that the hypothetico-deductive method, Baysian induction, and inference to the best explanation fail to capture the structure of scientific articles adequately. In what follows I demonstrate that the coding scheme Suppe used for uncovering the structure of a scientific paper is not appropriate under all circumstances, illustrate alternative structures found (...) in various scientific articles, and show that the hypothetico-deductive method can accommodate the alternative structures I find. My conclusions are that the article that Suppe analyzed is not paradigmatic of published scientific articles, that different papers have different structures, that the structure depends upon the rhetorical goals of the article, and that, because of the different structures and different goals, no one philosophical account of testing is going to suffice. (shrink)

(2014). Tin Men: Ethics, Cybernetics and the Importance of Soul. Journal of Military Ethics: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 3-19. doi: 10.1080/15027570.2014.908011.

Valéry constateert dat Europa, ondanks de hoopvolle naoorlogse stemming, zijn intellectuele en morele kompas is kwijt geraakt. Het wezenlijke op de wereld is door de oorlog aangetast.

Sugar, pork, beer, corn, cider, scrapple, and hoppin' John all became staples in the diet of colonial America. The ways Americans cultivated and prepared food and the values they attributed to it played an important role in shaping the identity of the newborn nation. In A Revolution in Eating, James E. McWilliams presents a colorful and spirited tour of culinary attitudes, tastes, and techniques throughout colonial America. Confronted by strange new animals, plants, and landscapes, settlers in the colonies and West (...) Indies found new ways to produce food. Integrating their British and European tastes with the demands and bounty of the rugged American environment, early Americans developed a range of regional cuisines. From the kitchen tables of typical Puritan families to Iroquois longhouses in the backcountry and slave kitchens on southern plantations, McWilliams portrays the grand variety and inventiveness that characterized colonial cuisine. As colonial America grew, so did its palate, as interactions among European settlers, Native Americans, and African slaves created new dishes and attitudes about food. McWilliams considers how Indian corn, once thought by the colonists as "fit for swine," became a fixture in the colonial diet. He also examines the ways in which African slaves influenced West Indian and American southern cuisine. While a mania for all things British was a unifying feature of eighteenth-century cuisine, the colonies discovered a national beverage in domestically brewed beer, which came to symbolize solidarity and loyalty to the patriotic cause in the Revolutionary era. The beer and alcohol industry also instigated unprecedented trade among the colonies and further integrated colonial habits and tastes. Victory in the American Revolution initiated a "culinary declaration of independence," prompting the antimonarchical habits of simplicity, frugality, and frontier ruggedness to define American cuisine. McWilliams demonstrates that this was a shift not so much in new ingredients or cooking methods, as in the way Americans imbued food and cuisine with values that continue to shape American attitudes to this day. (shrink)

Scholarship on faculty and student perceptions of plagiarism is plagued by a vast, scattered constellation of perspectives, context, and nuance. Cultural, disciplinary, and institutional subtitles, among others in how plagiarism is defined and perspectives about it tested obfuscate consensus about how students and faculty perceive and understand plagiarism and what can or should be done about those perspectives. However, there is clear consensus that understanding how students and faculty perceive plagiarism is foundational to mitigating and preventing plagiarism. This study takes (...) up the challenge of investigating its own institution’s student and faculty perspectives on plagiarism by testing whether students and instructors differentiate between different kinds or genres of plagiarism, and measuring differences in their perception of seriousness or severity of those genres. Using a device modified from the ‘plagiarism spectrum’ published by Turnitin®, the researchers implemented a campus-wide survey of faculty and student perceptions, and analyzed the data using two different methodologies to ensure results triangulation. This study demonstrates both students and faculty clearly differentiate between kinds of plagiarism, but not on their severity. This study demonstrates both students and faculty clearly differentiate the severity between kinds of plagiarism, but not on the specific rank or order of their severity. Further, this study’s novel methodology is demonstrated as valuable for use by other academic institutions to investigate and understand their cultures of plagiarism. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 101 Heft: 3 Seiten: 345-375.

Genetic testing has led to the establishment of the concept of the “previvor”: someone who is not yet sick, but who has a genetic predisposition to disease. The previvor experience demonstrates how the practice of medicine and medical decision making is evolving to render current law and policy increasingly inapplicable to modern medical practice. The introduction of previvorship to the medical landscape raises special issues for the physician-patient relationship and the legal doctrine of informed consent. It challenges some of the (...) most basic assumptions underlying the doctrine, is representative of the doctrine’s declining utility, and is illustrative of the need to transition to a shared decision-making model. Thus, we should begin to envision a legal doctrine that supports a robust shared decision-making approach to address individual preferences and values, the increasing complexity of risk/benefit assessment, and inherent (and sometimes irreducible) uncertainty. Such an approach should emphasize a new, more expansive, and inclusive model of illness. (shrink)

Social problems such as racism, sexism, and inequality are often cited as structural rather than individual in nature. What does it mean to invoke a social structural explanation, and how do such explanations relate to individualistic ones? This article explores recent philosophical debates concerning the nature and usages of social structural explanation. I distinguish between two central kinds of social structural explanation: those that are autonomous from psychology, and those that are not. This distinction will help clarify the explanatory power (...) that each type of SSE has, points of convergence with methodological traditions such as critical theory and rational choice theory, and the difficulties that each type of SSE faces. (shrink)

BackgroundAs the number of randomised controlled trials of medicines for children increases, it becomes progressively more important to understand the experiences of parents who are asked to enrol their child in a trial. This paper presents a narrative review of research evidence on parents' experiences of trial recruitment focussing on qualitative research, which allows them to articulate their views in their own words.DiscussionParents want to do their best for their children, and socially and legally their role is to care for (...) and protect them yet the complexities of the medical and research context can challenge their fulfilment of this role. Parents are simultaneously responsible for their child and cherish this role yet they are dependent on others when their child becomes sick. They are keen to exercise responsibility for deciding to enter a child in a trial yet can be fearful of making the 'wrong' decision. They make judgements about the threat of the child's condition as well as the risks of the trial yet their interpretations often differ from those of medical and research experts. Individual parents will experience these and other complexities to a greater or lesser degree depending on their personal experiences and values, the medical situation of their child and the nature of the trial. Interactions at the time of trial recruitment offer scope for negotiating these complexities if practitioners have the flexibility to tailor discussions to the needs and situation of individual parents. In this way, parents may be helped to retain a sense that they have acted as good parents to their child whatever decision they make.SummaryDiscussing randomised controlled trials and gaining and providing informed consent is challenging. The unique position of parents in giving proxy consent for their child adds to this challenge. Recognition of the complexities parents face in making decisions about trials suggests lines for future research on the conduct of trials, and ultimately, may help improve the experience of trial recruitment for all parties. (shrink)

In Plato’s dialogue the Republic, Glaucon challenges Socrates to prove that the just (or moral) life is better or more advantageous than the unjust one. Socrates’s answer to the challenge is notoriously unsatisfying. Could new research on well-being in philosophy and psychology allow us to do better? After distinguishing two different approaches to the question “why be moral?” I argue that while new research on well-being does not provide an answer that would satisfy Glaucon, it does shed light on the (...) topic. Empirical research has different implications for our prudential reasons to be moral depending on which philosophical theory of well-being is accepted. Some well-being theories sustain stronger links to morality than others, but any theory of well-being can make use of empirical research to narrow the gap between prudence and morality to some extent. (shrink)