The God of the Machine presents an original theory of history and a bold defense of individualism as the source of moral and political progress.

Alfred North Whitehead has never gone out of print, but for a time he was decidedly out of fashion in the English-speaking world. In a splendid work that serves as both introduction and erudite commentary, Isabelle Stengersâe"one of todayâe(tm)s leading philosophers of scienceâe"goes straight to the beating heart of Whiteheadâe(tm)s thought. The product of thirty yearsâe(tm) engagement with the mathematician-philosopherâe(tm)s entire canon, this volume establishes Whitehead as a daring thinker on par with Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault. Reading (...) the texts in broadly chronological order while highlighting major works, Stengers deftly unpacks Whiteheadâe(tm)s often complicated language, explaining the seismic shifts in his thinking and showing how he called into question all that philosophers had considered settled after Descartes and Kant. She demonstrates that the implications of Whiteheadâe(tm)s philosophical theories and specialized knowledge of the various sciences come yoked with his innovative, revisionist take on God. Whiteheadâe(tm)s God exists within a specific epistemological realm created by a radically complex and often highly mathematical language. âeoeTo think with Whitehead today,âe Stengers writes, âeoemeans to sign on in advance to an adventure that will leave none of the terms we normally use as they were.âe. (shrink)

New paradigms in the psychology of reasoning have included a consideration for general contextual factors that may impact on the reasoning process, including individuals’ goals and motivations. We suggest that emotions are one such important contextual factor that influences reasoning. The classic literature on thinking and reasoning has typically ignored the possible influence of emotion, except to consider it a source of disruption. We review findings from studies where participants were asked to reason about personally relevant emotional experiences such as (...) sexual abuse, war, and terrorist attacks. While some findings are consistent with the view that incidental emotions have a deleterious effect on reasoning, a number of findings also suggest a beneficial impact of emotion. For instance, veterans reasoned more logically about combat-related syllogisms than structurally identical syllogisms with neutral contents; victims of sexual abuse reporting more negative emotions following the events also reasoned more logically on abuse-related contents, relative to neutral contents. This may be associated with integral emotions, when the affective reaction is relevant to the semantic contents reasoned about. We propose that the positive impact of integral emotions on reasoning can be explained by increased utility of problem content and increased utility of reasoning. (shrink)

How can a collective pay attention virtuously? Imagine a group of scientists. It matters what topics they pay attention to, that is, which topics they draw to the foreground and take to be relevant, and which they leave in the background. It also matters which aspects of an investigated phenomenon they foreground, and which aspects they leave unnoticed in the background. If we want to understand not only how individuals pay attention of this kind virtuously, but also collectives, we first (...) need a framework to understand virtuous collective agency. A result of this article will be that virtuous collective action depends on the collective being institutionalized. At the same time, we have to think of the constituents of the collective in terms of practical identities (as opposed to individuals). This is what enables us to understand how a collective can acquire the stability required for virtue, and how we don’t end up with a summative account of group virtue, respectively. It will be argued that collectives only have the required stability in their actions when their commitments are habitualized in the form of institutionalized procedures. An Aristotelian understanding of virtue distinguishes between commitment, inclination, and action. Only when a subject’s inclination is fully lined up with her commitment, do we arrive at the required stability (of character) for virtuous action. In the case of individuals, to build up an appropriate inclination consists in an inscribing of the commitment into the feelings and body of the subject. If a commitment is fully ‘embodied’ in this sense, it has formed the individual’s inclination accordingly. How can one make sense of this in the case of collective subjects? This article tries to show that for collectives, the embodiment of commitment (the forming of the fitting inclinations) consists in creating policies, procedures, and rules that stabilize the acting according to the commitment, irrespective of the motivation of each individual involved in the collective. Hence, embodiment of commitment, in the case of collectives, is institutionalization. The article then explores what this requirement of institutionalization means for collective attention. The illustration will draw on a distinction between focused and open-minded attention. It will be shown that for either case – focused and open-minded – in order for a collective to pay attention virtuously, it needs to have its commitments institutionalized. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza cómo los modelos de producción y de consumo de los años veinte determinaron la obsesión cultural por la autenticidad. A partir de los análisis que hicieron Benjamin, Adorno y Kracauer se analiza el modo en que la industria cultural favorece la identificación estética con las estrellas de la conocida como sociedad de masas. A continuación, se explica por qué el origen de esta realidad hay que buscarlo en el proyecto literario y político de Rousseau y en el (...) modo en que éste, al mismo tiempo que rehabilita la novela en la institución literaria, asocia virtud moral y pasión natural. (shrink)

Biobanks correspond to different situations: research and technological development, medical diagnosis or therapeutic activities. Their status is not clearly defined. We aimed to investigate human biobanking in Europe, particularly in relation to organisational, economic and ethical issues in various national contexts. Data from a survey in six EU countries were collected as part of a European Research Project examining human and non-human biobanking. A total of 147 institutions concerned with biobanking of human samples and data were investigated by questionnaires and (...) interviews. Most institutions surveyed belong to the public or private non-profit-making sectors, which have a key role in biobanking. This activity is increasing in all countries because few samples are discarded and genetic research is proliferating. Collections vary in size, many being small and only a few very large. Their purpose is often research, or research and healthcare, mostly in the context of disease studies. A specific budget is very rarely allocated to biobanking and costs are not often evaluated. Samples are usually provided free of charge and gifts and exchanges are the common rule. Good practice guidelines are generally followed and quality controls are performed but quality procedures are not always clearly explained. Associated data are usually computerised. Biobankers generally favour centralisation of data rather than of samples. Legal and ethical harmonisation within Europe is considered likely to facilitate international collaboration. We propose a series of recommendations and suggestions arising from the EUROGENBANK project. (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)

El artículo tiene por objeto analizar la construcción del conocimiento mapuche según el discurso de kimches. Sostenemos que en la educación familiar existe un proceso de construcción de conocimientos propios como un sistema de saberes y contenidos educativos para la formación de personas. La metodología empleada es la investigación educativa. Los resultados parciales muestran una descripción acerca de la lógica de los conocimientos educativos propios, para contextualizar la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de las ciencias en el medio escolar, desde la (...) educación intercultural en contexto mapuche. The aim of this article is to analyze the construction of Mapuche knowledge based on the kimches speech. We argue that within family education, there exists a process of constructing their own knowledge, as a system of knowledge and educational contents for forming individuals. The research methodology applied corresponds to education research. Preliminary results describe the logic of individual educational knowledge from intercultural education in the Mapuche context, so as to contextualize the teaching and learning of Science in schools. (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)

This book promotes the research of present-day women working in ancient and medieval philosophy, with more than 60 women having contributed in some way to the volume in a fruitful collaboration. It contains 22 papers organized into ten distinct parts spanning the sixth century BCE to the fifteenth century CE. Each part has the same structure: it features, first, a paper which sets up the discussion, and then, one or two responses that open new perspectives and engage in further reflections. (...) Our authors’ contributions address pivotal moments and players in the history of philosophy: women philosophers in antiquity, Cleobulina of Rhodes, Plato, Lucretius, Bardaisan of Edessa, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Plotinus, Porphyry, Peter Abelard, Robert Kilwardby, William Ockham, John Buridan, and Isotta Nogarola. The result is a thought-provoking collection of papers that will be of interest to historians of philosophy from all horizons. Far from being an isolated effort, this book is a contribution to the ever-growing number of initiatives which endeavour to showcase the work of women in philosophy. (shrink)

Deals with the topic of causality. This book traces the evolution of causal thinking from antiquity to the present and culminates with a description of five key conditions that must be satisfied to demonstrate a causal effect.

This memorial to Latour is not an appraisal of his fifty-year research career but the report of a traveling companion with a story to share about the apparent lack of continuity, the sudden, unapologetic, unprincipled changes of position, with which he surprised or scandalized his colleagues and readers. In the first place, was he a sociologist, an anthropologist, a philosopher? Though he did not make lasting commitments of that kind, he did make deeper ones that did not change—above all, never (...) to explain anything in terms of something more general and, thus, never to accept the position of judge. To follow Latour's problematic changes—sometimes referred to as his “versatility”—demands that we follow the changes of the very terms of the problems that his basic commitment bound him to confront. From the 1980s, when his work dealt with technoscientific progress, to the years of his growing concern with political ecology, and finally to his recognition of the oncoming climate chaos, dizzying leaps were entailed by his resistance to the temptation of judging. Involved in, but never the cause of, various of his leaps, Stengers describes her friend as responding, perforce, to changing times, rather than as behaving like a theorist thinking mainly of his image, reputation, and career. (shrink)

Face à la violence, que peut la philosophie? Cette question se pose avec une terrible acuité après les attentats de janvier contre Charlie Hebdo et l'hyper-cacher. Le présent ouvrage prétend y apporter une réponse en prenant du recul et à travers la philo française contemporaine de Sartre à Levinas en passant par Camus, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone Weil, Canguilhem, Cavaillès, Lévi-Strauss, Deleuze, Foucault, Jankélévitch et Derrida. Sartre, c'est à la fois l'être et le néant et toutes les questions politiques de l'après-guerre (...) ; Camus, l'absurde et la révolte avec le refus de la violence ; Merleau-Ponty, la justification du communisme et donc d'une certaine forme de totalitarisme ; Simone Weil, Canguilhem et Cavaillès mettent le pacifisme à l'épreuve et en avant l'expérience de la nécessité ; Lévi-Strauss pose le problème de la violence face à la diversité humaine repensée ; Deleuze confronte la métaphysique à la politique. Foucault souligne l'enfermement intolérable ; Jankélévitch Derrida et Levinas pose le problème de l'éthique et de la métaphysique et de l'impossible pardon face au génocide juif. Ici c'est toute la philosophie c'est-à-dire, l'action et la pensée les oeuvres et les relations, l'histoire et l'actualité qui tentent de répondre à une certaine folie du monde. (shrink)

Le scepticisme de Montaigne -- Perturbations dans le genre -- Bouleversement des catégories du masculin et du féminin dans "Par divers moyens on arrive à pareille fin" -- L'identité en question -- L'homme insoluble -- Les Indiennes, les Indiens et nous -- Le sexe indécis -- Renversement -- Critique sceptique de la rhétorique adressée aux femmes -- Féminité et savoir du corps -- Parodie de la discipline conjugale -- Au sujet de la femme insatiable -- Déplacement et/ou réhabilitation inattendue -- (...) Malheur et bonheur du mariage ou la vie selon son mouvement -- Solitude ou mariage -- Grandeur de la relation conjugale -- Examen sceptique de la gynécocratie -- Satire du patriarcat -- Abandon et transmission du pouvoir -- Restauration de la légitimité du gouvernement féminin -- Réduction à l'absurde -- Réquisitoire contre la chasse aux sorcières -- Vanité de la recherche des causes -- Justice sceptique et clémence -- Vénus, les boiteux et les boiteuses -- Apologie paradoxale -- L'amour de préférence à la guerre -- Trivialité et danger de l'amour -- Éloge de l'amour -- Dernières accolades -- Construction d'une communauté autre -- Un lectorat féminin estimé -- Les femmes dédicataires dans les Essais -- Marie de Gournay, une philosophe féministe autonome, mais fidèle. (shrink)

La technique et la civilisation qu'elle commande sont, à notre époque, un important sujet de réflexion. Depuis quelques années, les sections techniques de l'enseignement du second degré, et des études supérieures, ont, à leur programme, quelques notions de philosophie. Cette mesure répond à une nécessité culturelle. Plus encore, elle satisfait un besoin et un droit des jeunes techniciens. Nul n'échappe aux grandes interrogations concernant la vérité et la certitude, la valeur et le bien, le droit et la justice, l'homme et (...) sa destinée, que la philosophie pose et éclaire. Cet ouvrage se limite à l'essentiel, c'est-à-dire aux questions concernant la connaissance, l'activité de l'homme, l'homme en société et la religion. Un manuel d'initiation simple et accessible pour les élèves, les étudiants mais aussi tous ceux qui, déjà engagés dans la vie professionnelle, souhaitent compléter leur formation philosophique. (shrink)

Depuis qu'elles existent, les sciences dites exactes se prétendent différentes des autres savoirs. Comment comprendre cette prétention? Faut-il, à la manière des épistémologues anglo-saxons ou de Karl Popper, tenter d'identifier les critères qui la justifient? Peut-on, suivant le modèle nouveau des études sociales des sciences, y voir une simple croyance? Ce livre propose un dépassement fructueux de l'opposition, apparemment irréconciliable, entre ces deux approches des sciences. Et si la tension entre objectivité scientifique et croyance était justement constitutive des sciences, enjeu (...) des pratiques inventées et réinventées par les scientifiques? Réussir à parler des sciences avec humour, sans en faire un objet de vénération, ni de dénonciation, en restant au plus proche de la passion des scientifiques, tel est ici le pari d'Isabelle Stengers. Mais ce livre ne se limite pas à un discours sur les sciences. Il s'agit bien plutôt de prolonger l'histoire de leur invention. Comment comprendre les liens multiples entre la science et les pouvoirs qui la mobilisent aujourd'hui? Comment concevoir les rapports entre science, expertise et démocratie? La nouveauté de L'invention des sciences modernes est de faire de ces différents problèmes intellectuels, pratiques et politiques les enjeux du processus par où pourrait s'inventer et se renouveler l'identité même des sciences. (shrink)

Prenant comme point de départ la critique nietzschéenne du christianisme, cet ouvrage montre que la pertinence de celle-ci est conjoncturelle, et non point structurelle. Le Dieu chrétien n'est pas réductible au seul Dieu de la moralité : l'Ancien Testament et le Nouveau Testament attestent de la gratuité de l'amour du Dieu de l'Alliance et du Dieu chrétien. S'inscrivant dans la ligne d'une éthique téléologique, la deuxième partie du livre dégage les grandes lignes de l'éthique aristotélicienne et analyse l'articulation opérée par (...) Paul Ricoeur dans Soi-même comme un autre, entre les moments déontologique et téléologique. Le détour par Thomas d'Aquin permet d'introduire la dimension théologale de l'éthique chrétienne. A partir de concepts élaborés par Paul Ricoeur, la troisième partie articule morale, éthique et théologalité. Loi et désir sont pensés en lien avec la Règle d'or. La revalorisation de l'hétéronomie offre alors une perspective nouvelle pour donner sens à la grâce. Les notions d'attestation-conviction, d'imputabilité, de responsabilité et de reconnaissance permettent ensuite de développer l'identité du sujet éthique chrétien. Enfin, l'éthique est pensée selon une dialectique entre agir et désir d'être qui s'ouvre à la dimension ontologique et qui aboutit à une perspective eschatologique. (shrink)

Coletânea de trabalhos de especialistas brasileiros que analisam algumas das obras mais importantes de pensadores marxistas deste século: O espírito da utopia (Bloch), Teoria do agir comunicativo (Habermas), Dialética negativa (Adorno), História e consciência de classe (Lukács), Contrarrevolução e revolta (Marcuse), Eduard Fuchs, o colecionador e o historiador (Walter Benjamin), As ideias fora do lugar (Roberto Schwarz), Marx: Lógica e política (Ruy Fausto) e Trabalho e reflexão (José Arthur Giannotti).

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 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)

Shavelson et al. (2023) identify an important problem in their Target article: a significant number of terminally ill patients with impaired motor function are wrongfully excluded from receiving ai...

Although the mapping between form and meaning is often regarded as arbitrary, there are in fact well-known constraints on words which are the result of functional pressures associated with language use and its acquisition. In particular, languages have been shown to encode meaning distinctions in their sound properties, which may be important for language learning. Here, we investigate the relationship between semantic distance and phonological distance in the large-scale structure of the lexicon. We show evidence in 100 languages from a (...) diverse array of language families that more semantically similar word pairs are also more phonologically similar. This suggests that there is an important statistical trend for lexicons to have semantically similar words be phonologically similar as well, possibly for functional reasons associated with language learning. (shrink)

La hagiografía medieval tenía una importante función didáctica. Estos relatos fueron muy útiles para la Iglesia ya que permitían transmitir valores, modelos de conducta e ideas complejas a los feligreses. En este trabajo de investigación exploraremos tres obras hagiográficas en verso redactadas en distintas zonas de la Península Ibérica durante el siglo XIII, protagonizadas por tres santas que representan modelos diferentes (mártires, religiosas y penitentes). A través de este estudio comparativo hemos podido observar que, más allá de los tópicos asociados (...) a cada modelo de santidad, los valores transmitidos como ejemplo de “buenas cristianas” se repiten en todos ellos como condición necesaria para que la mujer alcanzase la salvación eterna: mantenimiento de la virginidad, castidad, penitencia y purga del pecado. Así, podemos concluir que la hagiografía femenina plenomedieval tuvo un importante papel en la transmisión y asentamiento de las ideas del clero respecto a lo femenino, cargadas de una evidente misoginia. (shrink)

Le droit applicable à l’exercice de l’autorité parentale a été remanié par la loi du 4 mars 2002. Il existe désormais un statut légal du couple parental, applicable quelle que soit la situation familiale des parents, conditionné par l’établissement du lien de filiation de l’enfant. Ce droit commun est gouverné par un principe supérieur : les père et mère exercent en commun l’autorité parentale. La consécration progressive d’un principe d’autorité parentale conjointe (1970,1987,1993, 2002) est certes un progrès en ce qu’elle (...) invite les parents à s’accorder et à se consulter dans l’exercice de l’autorité parentale, mais l’indifférenciation des situations familiales sur laquelle repose désormais la notion de « coparentalité » est excessive en ce qu’elle conduit à détacher le principe du modèle d’un couple uni. Une autre orientation pourrait être prise : celle consistant à rapprocher du mariage le concubinage avec vie maritale, ce qui supposerait de prendre en la matière le contre-pied de la loi de 1999. L’apport le plus apparent de la loi du 4 mars 2002 est de prévoir tout un arsenal de dispositions de nature à assurer l’effectivité du principe de coparentalité, en particulier les conventions et la résidence alternée. Les conventions marquent, sous l’angle de la notion d’ordre public, l’avènement du pluralisme familial, nouveauté encadrée par un corps de règles de plus en plus tentaculaire. Quant à la résidence alternée, cette modalité présente le défaut majeur d’être désormais légale, ce qui implique sa vocation à s’appliquer à tous. Il serait souhaitable pour cette raison de rétablir dans la loi le principe de la résidence habituelle de l’enfant chez l’un de ses parents et de réserver la résidence alternée à la pratique judiciaire, à titre très exceptionnel et expérimental, pour des enfants en âge de l’assumer. (shrink)

Recent analysis of genome sequences has identified individuals that are healthy despite carrying severe disease‐associated mutations. A possible explanation is that these individuals carry a second genomic perturbation that can compensate for the detrimental effects of the disease allele, a phenomenon referred to as suppression. In model organisms, suppression interactions are generally divided into two classes: genomic suppressors which are secondary mutations in the genome that bypass a mutant phenotype, and dosage suppression interactions in which overexpression of a suppressor gene (...) rescues a mutant phenotype. Here, we describe the general properties of genomic and dosage suppression, with an emphasis on the budding yeast. We propose that suppression interactions between genetic variants are likely relevant for determining the penetrance of human traits. Consequently, an understanding of suppression mechanisms may guide the discovery of protective variants in healthy individuals that carry disease alleles, which could direct the rational design of new therapeutics. (shrink)