BackgroundGiven that advances in research continuously raise new ethical issues, a multidisciplinary working group of investigators involved in biomedical research has gathered to discuss and compare ethical viewpoints in their daily practice.MethodsThe working group has drafted a Charter for Ethics in Biomedical Research that encompasses all the steps in the research process, i.e. from the initial idea to analysis and publication of the results.ResultsBased on key principles for ethically responsible research, the Charter may serve as a tool for performing research, (...) discussing research issues and training researchers.ConclusionsThe Charter should stimulate researchers to think about their responsibility for research in a progressive, caring society. (shrink)

Resident microbiota do not just shape host immunity, they can also contribute to host protection against pathogens and infectious diseases. Previous reviews of the protective roles of the microbiota have focused exclusively on colonization resistance localized within a microenvironment. This review shows that the protection against pathogens also involves the mitigation of pathogenic impact without eliminating the pathogens (i.e., “disease tolerance”) and the containment of microorganisms to prevent pathogenic spread. Protective microorganisms can have an impact beyond their niche, interfering with (...) the entry, establishment, growth, and spread of pathogenic microorganisms. More fundamentally, we propose a series of conceptual clarifications in support of the idea of a “co-immunity,” where an organism is protected by both its own immune system and components of its microbiota. -/- . (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE Moral Character and Moral Theories Social interaction is the thread from which the fabric of moral character is woven.1 For it is social ...

Laurence Goldstein gives a straightforward and lively account of some of the central themes of Wittgenstein's writings on meaning, mind, and mathematics.

" Now Laurence Lampert sets out to fulfill this prophecy by providing a section by section interpretation of this philosophical masterpiece that emphasizes its unity and depth as a comprehensive new teaching on nature and humanity.According ...

One of the most important recent developments in the study of concepts has been the resurgence of interest in nativist accounts of the human conceptual system. However, many theorists suppose that a key feature of neural organization—the brain’s plasticity—undermines the nativist approach to concept acquisition. We argue that, on the contrary, not only does the brain’s plasticity fail to undermine concept nativism, but a detailed examination of the neurological evidence actually provides powerful support for concept nativism.

Descartes a entrepris de détruire la pratique aristotélicienne de la philosophie : à son savoir seulement probable, les Regulae, puis les Essais opposent une science certaine d'objets clairs et distincts. Mais cette instauration concerne aussi, peut-être même d'abord, l'idéal pratique qu'Aristote ne cesse de viser dans les sciences théorétiques : le sage parvient à la félicité par l'exercice même d'une connaissance si parfaite qu'elle imite celle du dieu, qui pense sa pensée en acte et éternellement. Descartes met décidément en crise (...) la félicité par la contemplation, dont la pensée médiévale avait hérité d'Aristote. Pourtant, une autre figure de la félicité se dégage tout aussi indiscutablement de l'entreprise cartésienne : la méthode, la certitude scientifique qu'elle permet et les principes métaphysiques qui assurent l'une et l'autre restent, à chaque moment, solidaires d'une attitude et d'une ambition proprement morales - la volonté infinie aboutit à la générosité, où la considération du bon usage de notre libre-arbitre permet le - contentement de soi-même -. Ainsi la philosophie atteint-elle, pour Descartes aussi, à une félicité. Mais à une félicité volontaire et non plus contemplative. On tentera donc d'abord de mesurer, dans différents champs de la philosophie cartésienne, l'impact de la certitude jusque sur les questions d'éthique ; ensuite, de souligner la référence constante, quoique souvent implicite, de Descartes à la félicité telle qu'Aristote la visait ; enfin, de suivre leur dialogue au fil conducteur de leurs versions divergentes, mais complices, de l'admiratio et du thaumazein. (shrink)

The influential political philosopher Leo Strauss has been credited by conservatives with the recovery of the great tradition of political philosophy stretching back to Plato. Among Strauss's most enduring legacies is a strongly negative assessment of Nietzsche as the modern philosopher most at odds with that tradition and most responsible for the sins of twentieth-century culture--relativism, godlessness, nihilism, and the breakdown of family values. In fact, this apparent denunciation has become so closely associated with Strauss that it is often seen (...) as the very core of his thought. In Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, the eminent Nietzsche scholar Laurence Lampert offers a controversial new assessment of the Strauss-Nietzsche connection. Lampert undertakes a searching examination of the key Straussian essay, "Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil." He shows that this essay, written toward the end of Strauss's life and placed at the center of his final work, reveals an affinity for and debt to Nietzsche greater than Strauss's followers allow. Lampert argues that the essay comprises the most important interpretation of Nietzsche ever published, one that clarifies Nietzsche's conception of nature and of human spiritual history and demonstrates the logical relationship between the essential themes in Nietzsche's thought--the will to power and the eternal return. (shrink)

La recherche des causes apparaît à la fois comme un impérieux besoin de l'esprit humain et, sous la plume de nombreux acteurs du développement historique des connaissances, comme un obstacle. L'examen comparé des tendances majeures du raisonnement commun et des théories scientifiques actuellement enseignées fait apparaître des écarts importants quant à leur statut du point de vue de la causalité. " Donc ", " alors ", " ensuite " : ce trio de vocables résume la question que posent la part (...) de l'implication logique et celle des relations temporelles entre cause et effet. La causalité au sens où les physiciens l'entendent se distingue ainsi du lien qu'une relation pose entre grandeurs prises au même instant. Le débat rejoint ainsi la notion de fonction - et son nécessaire développement vers les fonctions de plusieurs variables - ainsi que celle des associations probabilistes entre grandeurs. Cet ouvrage invite à un examen croisé de la manière dont ce thème est abordé dans différentes disciplines (mathématiques, sciences physiques, biologie, histoire-géographie), sous le double regard de la didactique et de l'épistémologie. (shrink)

In Postmodernity's Transcending: Devaluing God, Laurence Paul Hemming grapples with the philosophical weakness that characterizes postmodern theory, its privileging of the visual, and its reductive description of the self. He offers a profound challenge to many theologians and philosophers currently articulating questions concerning God, value, and the supposed "nihilism" of the postmodern situation. He does this by examining the origin and trajectory of the aesthetic sublime, beloved of postmodern theologians, philosophers, and theorists of art. Hemming's work undertakes on one (...) hand a history of the concept of the sublime; on the other, it explores the limits of theological thinking, where theology is understood either as a practice arising from faith or from thinking alone. By examining concepts like soul, experience, analogy, and truth, Hemming provokes contemporary Christian theology to a more serious engagement with philosophy. Hemming gives an authoritative genealogy of the predominance of the visual, beginning with the Presocratics and ending in the present. He examines the confrontation with God and the gods to be found in Protagoras, Longinus, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Zizek, and Derrida, and, in the process, offers innovative readings of these thinkers. A highly original study, Postmodernity's Transcending: Devaluing God will stimulate considerable discussion about postmodernity, representation, and subjectivity and, in particular, philosophical and theological discussions of the sublime and transcendence. -/- Introduction -- Postmodernity's transcending -- Rhetor and rhetoric -- The truth of sublimity -- The soul of sublimity -- Analogia entis -- Counting up to one is sublime -- Negating sublimity -- Devaluing God -- Transcending postmodernity -- Conclusion. (shrink)

Cognitive science proposes that we have evolved to build mental maps of the world not according to its actual, physical nature, but according to what allows us to thrive. In other words, our individual and collective realities are fictions - carefully constructed to enable us to maintain our particular perspectives. It used to be that our fictions were rooted to reasonably solid things: to people, places and memories. Today, in an age of online personas, alternative truths, constant surveillance and an (...) increasingly hysterical news cycle, our realities are becoming more flimsy and more vulnerable than ever before. Ours is now a zoomed-in perspective, where the backstage is centre stage. We are both camera person and subject, with new powers and new weaknesses. Our personal and political spheres are dangerously merging. How will the form and grammar of our feelings have to change in this over-exposed environment? Should any of our stories remain secret? How are these phenomena changing the way we live? How do we maintain a sense of reality in an increasingly fantastic world? Picnic Comma Lightning is an innovative examination of the nature of reality in the twenty-first century, one that explores the key ethical, political and neurological forces contouring our inner selves, but also the old influences of grief and desire, memory and imagination. In it, award-winning author Laurence Scott provides a lively and accessible new philosophy for this epoch in Western civilisation, one that will change the way you see the world, and your place within it."--Publisher description. (shrink)

Descartes a entrepris de détruire la pratique aristotélicienne de la philosophie : à son savoir seulement probable, les Regulae, puis les Essais opposent une science certaine d'objets clairs et distincts. Mais cette instauration concerne aussi, peut-être même d'abord, l'idéal pratique qu'Aristote ne cesse de viser dans les sciences théorétiques : le sage parvient à la félicité par l'exercice même d'une connaissance si parfaite qu'elle imite celle du dieu, qui pense sa pensée en acte et éternellement. Descartes met décidément en crise (...) la félicité par la contemplation, dont la pensée médiévale avait hérité d'Aristote. Pourtant, une autre figure de la félicité se dégage tout aussi indiscutablement de l'entreprise cartésienne : la méthode, la certitude scientifique qu'elle permet et les principes métaphysiques qui assurent l'une et l'autre restent, à chaque moment, solidaires d'une attitude et d'une ambition proprement morales - la volonté infinie aboutit à la générosité, où la considération du bon usage de notre libre-arbitre permet le - contentement de soi-même -. Ainsi la philosophie atteint-elle, pour Descartes aussi, à une félicité. Mais à une félicité volontaire et non plus contemplative. On tentera donc d'abord de mesurer, dans différents champs de la philosophie cartésienne, l'impact de la certitude jusque sur les questions d'éthique ; ensuite, de souligner la référence constante, quoique souvent implicite, de Descartes à la félicité telle qu'Aristote la visait ; enfin, de suivre leur dialogue au fil conducteur de leurs versions divergentes, mais complices, de l'admiratio et du thaumazein. (shrink)

Speciesism is the wrong of not acknowledging the moral qualities that non-human animals possess that are similar or equivalent or even superior to the moral qualities that human beings possess. However, since it is manifestly clear that no one thinks that apes are in any way obligated to human beings, it clearly cannot be a form of speciesism to be mindful of the differences on the basis of which that is so. In opposition to the advocates of the Great Ape (...) Project, my aim in this essay is to establish the quite minimal claim that apes should not have the same moral status as human beings because human beings have a far greater capacity for moral responsibility than do apes. The claim that I wish to establish is quite compatible with the claim that apes should be treated in a much more morally wholesome manner. (shrink)

Nancy Jecker (2013) mounts a sustained and formidable critique of Norman Daniels's prudential lifespan account (PLA) as a reliable basis for justice between age groups in the responsible allocation...

Pendant plus de dix ans, chacun dans son coin, Marie-Pierre, Gérôme et Samuel ont consacré leur temps libre à des fanzines sur la musique. Jusqu’à ce qu’en 1998 Samuel se lance dans la publication de travaux de jeunes chercheurs en Lettres et en Sciences humaines et fonde les éditions Mélanie Séteun – anagramme et nom de plume de Samuel Étienne. Nombre de manuscrits qu’il reçoit ne sont pas publiables _in extenso. _Il songe alors à un livre collectif. L’IRMA, diffuseur des (...) éditions, rectifie le tir. Aucun périodique n’est consacré aux recherches pluridisciplinaires sur les musiques actuelles et amplifiées? Le livre collectif sera donc une revue. Samuel s’adjoint Marie-Pierre et Gérôme pour diriger les opérations. Et les voilà à l’heure de la parution du premier numéro de _Copyright Volume! _Il présente, toutes disciplines confondues, des articles de réflexion écrits par des universitaires, des témoignages de professionnels et d’institutionnels ainsi que des propositions plastiques d’a... (shrink)

The life fantastic -- Bedtime stories -- The end of things -- Optical disillusions -- Double vision -- Backstage pass -- Romance languages -- Fellow-feeling -- Bolts from the blue -- Final fantasies.

In this incisive new book one of Britain's most eminent philosophers explores the often overlooked tension between voluntariness and involuntariness in human cognition. He seeks to counter the widespread tendency for analytic epistemology to be dominated by the concept of belief. Is scientific knowledge properly conceived as being embodied, at its best, in a passive feeling of belief or in an active policy of acceptance? Should a jury's verdict declare what its members involuntarily believe or what they voluntarily accept? And (...) should statements and assertions be presumed to express what their authors believe or what they accept? Does such a distinction between belief and acceptance help to resolve the paradoxes of self-deception and akrasia? Must people be taken to believe everything entailed by what they believe, or merely to accept everything entailed by what they accept? Through a systematic examination of these problems, the author sheds new light on issues of crucial importance in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. (shrink)

The book was planned and written as a single, sustained argument. But earlier versions of a few parts of it have appeared separately. The object of this book is both to establish the existence of the paradoxes, and also to describe a non-Pascalian concept of probability in terms of which one can analyse the structure of forensic proof without giving rise to such typical signs of theoretical misfit. Neither the complementational principle for negation nor the multiplicative principle for conjunction applies (...) to the central core of any forensic proof in the Anglo-American legal system. There are four parts included in this book. Accordingly, these parts have been written in such a way that they may be read in different orders by different kinds of reader. (shrink)

"Redeeming Truth has as its overarching theme the redemption of truth looked at philosophically and theologically. This collection is notable in that it embraces a variety of approaches to its theme, from traditional forays to those that engage postmodernism and those that consider feminist theology. As many of the essays respond directly to other contributions, the volume reflects the vigor of the debate."--Jacket.

The aim of this book is to provide a better foundation for the legal rights of children than what now exists. The first part of the book describes the current legal status of children and critically discusses the traditional arguments for denying certain legal rights to children while granting them others. The second part describes and defends a general theory of children's rights, based on the principles of utility and egalitarian justice. The third part shows how the theory justifies significant (...) change in the current legal system. (shrink)

Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities was published in 1961 and is now generally considered one of the most important books ever written on cities and city life. At a time when suburbia appeared to be human destiny, and architectural and urban theorists questioned whether the city should survive, Jacobs taught people to see, understand, and love cities again. The book continues to be widely studied and discussed but is seldom read and understood in its entirety (...) – this guidebook will help readers both pull the text apart and tie it up together. This guidebook includes: a chapter by chapter exploration of the key arguments and ideas in the text a brief biography of Jane Jacobs examining her influences and the context in which The Death and Life was produced an outline of the book’s critical reception over the past fifty years and its contemporary relevance a comprehensive bibliography of both Jacobs’ writing and works written about her. (shrink)

This book offers a unique synthesis of past and current work on the structure, meaning, and use of negation and negative expressions, a topic that has engaged thinkers from Aristotle and the Buddha to Freud and Chomsky. Horn's masterful study melds a review of scholarship in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics with original research, providing a full picture of negation in natural language and thought; this new edition adds a comprehensive preface and bibliography, surveying research since the book's original publication.

Goldstein invites the philosophical beginner to think hard about issues ranging from patriotism and racism to artificial intelligence and the mind, from love and fidelity to free will and mortality, taking an interdisciplinary approach.

The Conceptual Mind’s twenty-four newly commissioned essays cover the most important recent theoretical developments in the study of concepts, identifying and exploring the big ideas that will guide further research over the next decade. Topics include concepts and animals, concepts and the brain, concepts and evolution, concepts and perception, concepts and language, concepts across cultures, concept acquisition and conceptual change, concepts and normativity, concepts in context, and conceptual individuation.

In this paper I present a novel account of achievement and I argue that, all other things being equal, the presence of this particular type of achievement in a person’s life makes that life more meaningful. In arguing for this conclusion, I explore the connections between m-achievements and a person’s self-conception and especially the idea that m-achievements provide a reason for the revision of one’s self-conception.

Johnathan Cohen's book provides a lucid and penetrating treatment of the fundamental issues of contemporary analytical philosophy. This field now spans a greater variety of topics and divergence of opinion than fifty years ago, and Cohen's book addresses the presuppositions implicit to it and the patterns of reasoning on which it relies.

1 Knowledge and Justification This book is an investigation of one central problem which arises in the attempt to give a philosophical account of empirical ...

ONE Introduction The history of psychology in the twentieth century is a story of the divorce and remarriage of psychology and philosophy. ...

Two new philosophical problems surrounding the gradation of certainty began to emerge in the 17th century and are still very much alive today. One is concerned with the evaluation of inductive reasoning, whether in science, jurisprudence, or elsewhere; the other with the interpretation of the mathematical calculus of change. This book, aimed at non-specialists, investigates both problems and the extent to which they are connected. Cohen demonstrates the diversity of logical structures that are available for judgements of probability, and explores (...) the rationale for their appropriateness in different contexts of application. Thus his study deals with the complexity of the underlying philosophical issues without simply cataloging alternative conceptions or espousing a particular "favorite" theory. (shrink)