This book offers a provocative account of interdisciplinary research across the neurosciences, social sciences and humanities. Setting itself against standard accounts of interdisciplinary 'integration,' and rooting itself in the authors' own experiences, the book establishes a radical agenda for collaboration across these disciplines. Rethinking Interdisciplinarity does not merely advocate interdisciplinary research, but attends to the hitherto tacit pragmatics, affects, power dynamics, and spatial logics in which that research is enfolded. Understanding the complex relationships between brains, minds, and environments requires a (...) delicate, playful and genuinely experimental interdisciplinarity, and this book shows us how it can be done. This book is open access under a CC-BY license and funded by The Wellcome Trust. (shrink)

In this new book, author Russell McCutcheon offers a powerful critique of traditional scholarship on religion, focusing on multiple interrelated targets. Most prominent among these are the History of Religions as a discipline; Mircea Eliade, one of the founders of the modern discipline; recent scholarship on Eliade's life and politics; contemporary textbooks on world religions; and the oft-repeated bromide that "religion" is a sui generis phenomenon. McCutcheon skillfully analyzes the ideological basis for and service of the sui generis (...) argument, demonstrating that it has been used to constitute the field's object of study in a form that is ahistoric, apolitical, fetishized, and sacrosanct. As such, he charges, it has helped to create departments, jobs, and publication outlets for those who are comfortable with such a suspect construction, while establishing a disciplinary ethos of astounding theoretical naivete and a body of scholarship to match. Surveying the textbooks available for introductory courses in comparative religion, the author finds that they uniformly adopt the sui generis line and all that comes with it. As a result, he argues, they are not just uncritical, but actively inhibit the emergence of critical perspectives and capacities. And on the geo-political scale, he contends, the study of religion as an ahistorical category participates in a larger system of political domination and economic and cultural imperialism. (shrink)

La question du synthétique a priori définie par Husserl, malgré la critique adressée par le Cercle de Vienne, est réouverte. Plutôt que de fonder le concept à partir de l'intuition, l'auteur propose de le fonder à partir du concept. Il s'appuie sur la pensée de Bolzano, pour en faire le principe d'une lecture de Kant, Husserl, Schlick et Wittgenstein.

Applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for cybersecurity tasks are attracting greater attention from the private and the public sectors. Estimates indicate that the market for AI in cybersecurity will grow from US$1 billion in 2016 to a US$34.8 billion net worth by 2025. The latest national cybersecurity and defence strategies of several governments explicitly mention AI capabilities. At the same time, initiatives to define new standards and certification procedures to elicit users’ trust in AI are emerging on a global scale. (...) However, trust in AI (both machine learning and neural networks) to deliver cybersecurity tasks is a double edged sword: it can improve substantially cybersecurity practices, but can also facilitate new forms of attacks to the AI applications themselves, which may pose severe security threats. We argue that trust in AI for cybersecurity is unwarranted and that, to reduce security risks, some form of control to ensure the deployment of ‘reliable AI’ for cybersecurity is necessary. To this end, we offer three recommendations focusing on the design, development and deployment of AI for cybersecurity. (shrink)

L'époque, selon certains, serait celle de l'espace, après l'effondrement des grandes eschatologies historiques. L'espace a, on l'oublie, une histoire. Quant à l'histoire, elle trouverait dans sa mise en relation avec les discours de la spatialité (architecture, écologie, géographie), les moyens de s'inscrire dans l'effectivité.

Human beings talk to themselves; sometimes out-loud, other times in inner speech. In this paper, I present a resolution to the following dilemma that arises from self-talk. If self-talk exists then either, we know what we are going to say and self-talk serves no communicative purpose, and must serve some other purpose, or we don’t know what we are going to say, and self-talk does serve a communicative purpose, namely, it is an instance of us communicating with ourselves. Adopting was (...) the strategy taken by Bart Geurts, who claims that the primary purpose of self-talk is to entrain commitments, and is not communicative. While accepting that self-talk can usefully play this role, I criticise the view that entraining commitments is self-talk’s fundamental role. I argue that adopting the view that we are self-blind, at least to a significant degree, means that we can accept that self-talk does play a communicative role. (shrink)

In absence of effective pharmaceutical treatments, the individual's compliance with a series of behavioral recommendations provided by the public health authorities play a critical role in the control and prevention of SARS-CoV2 infection. However, we still do not know much about the rate and determinants of adoption of the recommended health behaviors. This paper examines the compliance with the main behavioral recommendations, and compares sociocultural, psychosocial, and social cognitive explanations for its variation in the French population. Based on the current (...) literature, these 3 categories of factors were identified as potential determinants of individual differences in the health preventive behaviors. The data used for these analyses are drawn from 2 cross-sectional studies conducted after the lockdown and before the peak of the COVID-19 epidemic in France. The participants were drawn from a larger internet consumer panel where recruitment was stratified to generate a socio-demographically representative sample of the French adult population. Overall, the results show a very high rate of compliance with the behavioral recommendations among the participants. A hierarchical regression analysis was then performed to assess the potential explanatory power of these approaches in complying with these recommendations by successively entering sociocultural factors, psychosocial factors, social cognitive factors in the model. Only the inclusion of the cognitive variables substantially increased the explained variance of the self-reported adoption of preventive behaviors, providing better support for the social cognitive than the sociocultural and psychosocial explanations. (shrink)

La theorie de la signification a joue un role central dans le developpement de la phenomenologie. Jocelyn Benoist essaye d'en donner un expose systematique, y decelant le paradoxe que represente l'influence decisive d'un auteur qui n'utilise pas le concept d'intentionalite (Bolzano), relu et reinterprete par Husserl au moyen de ce meme concept. L'oeuvre de Husserl se situe au croisement de Bolzano et de Brentano, d'une pensee du sens et d'une pensee de l'acte, de l'objectivisme logique et de la description (...) psychologique et pragmatique: c'est le principe de lecture adopte ici. Cette enquete sur la theorie de la signification de Husserl conduit a revisiter tous les lieux classiques de la philosophie du langage et de la logique contemporaine, mis en vedette depuis par la philosophie analytique: theorie du sens, de la grammaire, de la verite, de la proposition, du nom propre, de l'indexicalite, des performatifs, etc. On mesure ainsi le point auquel la pensee de Husserl etait deja installe de plain-pied dans ces problematiques, et ce qu'elles-memes ont, aujourd'hui, a gagner a un retour sur elle. (shrink)

L'idée d'une origine commune de la phénoménologie et de la philosophie analytique commence à être bien admise. On essaie ici de lui donner quelque consistance en la mettant à l'épreuve d'une question, qui fut décisive pour les auteurs à la source de ces deux traditions, à la fin du XIXème siècle et au début du XXème : celle de la référence manquante ou des " objets inexistants ". On montre comment ce problème a pu orienter d'un côté les débats internes (...) à l'école brentanienne (Brentano lui-même, Twardowski, Meinong, le jeune Husserl), et de l'autre les réflexions des auteurs sources de la tradition dite analytique (Bolzano, Frege, Russell). Par opposition à d'autres études plus " syncrétiques ", il s'agit avant tout, dans la démarche adoptée, de mettre en avant des différences. D'abord au sein de l'école intentionaliste, beaucoup plus diversifiée et traversée de tensions qu'on ne le croit souvent. Puis, aussi et surtout, entre cette école et les auteurs qui ont choisi délibérément une autre voie : Frege et Russell, bien sûr, mais aussi déjà Bolzano. Il s'agit par là même de mesurer un écart qui devait s'avérer déterminant pour toute la philosophie du XXème siècle et de mieux définir le champ propre de cette philosophie. (shrink)

Animal production, especially pork production, is facing growing international criticism. The greatest concerns relate to the environment, the animals’ living conditions, and the occupational diseases. But human and animal conditions are rarely considered together. Yet the living conditions at work and the emotional bond that inevitably forms bring the farm workers and the animals to live very close, which leads to shared suffering. Suffering does spread from animals to human beings and can cause workers physical, mental, and also moral suffering, (...) which is all the more harmful due to the fact that it is concealed. The conceptual tools used to conceal suffering ( animal welfare, stress, pain) suggest that the industrial system can be improved, whereas for farmers it is by definition incompatible with animal husbandry. (shrink)

A groundbreaking study of how concepts of virtue and vice are used to deny American women full political rights.

A study of how public service has changed in this new era of interconnectedness.

There has been considerable interest in the literature about how professions operate in both the private and public interest. This paper examines this issue in the context of the enforcement of the professional code of conduct of a particular professional accounting association. The paper explores whether certain enforcement actions of the association suggest behaviour motivated at least partially by private interest. It then considers whether the consequences of such behaviour or practices are troubling.

This paper explores how metaphorical thinking might contribute to an aetiology of florid delusions in psychosis. We argue that this approach helps to account for the path from experience to the delusional assertion, which, though relatively straightforward for monothematic delusions like the Capgras delusion, has always been difficult to account for in florid delusions in psychosis. Our account also helps to account for double book-keeping and the relative agential inertia of the belief.

The question of whether problems with the social determinants of health that might impact decision-making justify denying eligibility for assisted dying has recently come to the fore in debates about the legalisation of assisted dying. For example, it was central to critiques of the 2021 amendments made to Canada’s assisted dying law. The question of whether changes to a country’s assisted dying legislation lead to descents down slippery slopes has also come to the fore—as it does any time a jurisdiction (...) changes its laws. We explore these two questions through the lens of Canada’s experience both to inform Canada’s ongoing discussions and because other countries will confront the same questions if they contemplate changing their assisted dying law. Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying law has evolved through a journey from the courts to Parliament, back to the courts, and then back to Parliament. Along this journey the eligibility criteria, the procedural safeguards, and the monitoring regime have changed. In this article, we focus on the eligibility criteria. First, we explain the evolution of the law and what the eligibility criteria were at the various stops along the way. We then explore the ethical justifications for Canada’s new criteria by looking at two elements of the often-corrosive debate. First, we ask whether problems with the social determinants of health that might impact decision-making justify denying eligibility for assisted dying of decisionally capable people with mental illnesses and people with disabilities as their sole underlying medical conditions. Second, we ask whether Canada’s journey supports slippery slope arguments against permitting assisted dying. All data relevant to the study are included in the article. (shrink)

Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor provide a clearly reasoned, articulate account of the two main principles of secularism—equal respect, and freedom of conscience—and argue that in our religiously diverse, politically interconnected world, secularism, properly understood, may offer the only path to religious and philosophical freedom.

Indigenous people (IP) have faced multiple difficulties in education. Indigenous students often do worse academically than non-indigenous student peers. These stated the low enrollment rates showed a dropout rate, absenteeism, repetition rates, literacy rate, and thus the educational outcomes, with retention and completion being two significant issues. Further, this study explores the lived experiences and challenges faced by indigenous high school students amidst the new normal education. Employing the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the findings of this study were: (1) The reason (...) why IP learners were not satisfied with their performance is that they cannot understand some of the lessons due to the language barrier. (2) IP learners are committed to finishing their studies, however, some of the students lack resources for studying, like gadgets for researching, and they do not have cell phones. And the other students may have gadgets or cellphones, but their internet connection is low or not accessible in some places at their location. (shrink)

Interpretations of Euripides’Heraclesoften focus on Theseus’ and Heracles’ cooperative social values in the final scene as a culmination of themes ofphilia. I argue that the relationship Theseus forges competes with Heracles’ attachment to his household,oikos, which is the central social relationship Euripides describes. The drama consistently develops Heracles as his household's leader by inviting the audience to compare Heracles with interim caretakers Megara and Amphitryon, and later through the protagonist's performance of emotional attachment before and after his madness. The closing (...) scene continues to reveal the value and vulnerability of household attachment by accentuating Heracles’ exclusion from the identity of human family member. This trajectory suggests a painful misalignment between Heracles’ experience in theoikosand the public position Theseus offers at Athens: of a semi-divine hero receiving public cult and honours. Euripides emphasizes this tension to distinguish the experience ofoikos-membership. (shrink)

Machine learning-based AI algorithms lack transparency. In this article, I offer an interpretation of AI’s explainability problem and highlight its ethical saliency. I try to make the case for the legal enforcement of a strong explainability requirement: human organizations which decide to automate decision-making should be legally obliged to demonstrate the capacity to explain and justify the algorithmic decisions that have an impact on the wellbeing, rights, and opportunities of those affected by the decisions. This legal duty can be derived (...) from the demands of Rawlsian public reason. In the second part of the paper, I try to show that the argument from the limitations of human cognition fails to get AI off the hook of public reason. Against a growing trend in AI ethics, my main argument is that the analogy between human minds and artificial neural networks fails because it suffers from an atomistic bias which makes it blind to the social and institutional dimension of human reasoning processes. I suggest that developing interpretive AI algorithms is not the only possible answer to the explainability problem; social and institutional answers are also available and in many cases more trustworthy than techno-scientific ones. (shrink)

© The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] starting point of the book is the assessment of discrimination against Muslim immigrants in French society. The first part presents the results from several surveys that illustrate the negative opinions as well as the discriminatory practices against Muslim immigrants. The second part reviews the characteristics of Muslim immigrants that fuel the discrimination and negative opinions, mainly (...) their religious practices, their gender relations, and their poor competence with the French language.Although this kind of investigation is needed, it rests on two main ideological assumptions that severely weaken its relevance. First, why do the authors claim an investigation into Christian-heritage countries, when the focus is on France? The particularity of French laicity... (shrink)

(2014). Naranjo, Claudio. The Enneagram of Society: Healing the Soul to Heal the World. World Futures: Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 157-160.

In this paper, I offer a personal and professional narrative of how Canada went from prohibition to permission for medical assistance in dying. I describe the legal developments to date and flag what might be coming in the near future. I also offer some personal observations and reflections on the role and impact of bioethics and bioethicists, on what it was like to be a participant in Canada's law reform process, and on lessons that readers in other jurisdictions might take (...) from Canada's experience. (shrink)