Public debate on acceptable farm animal husbandry suffers from a confusion of tongues. To clarify positions of various stakeholder groups in their joint search for acceptable solutions, the concept of animal welfare was split up into three notions: no suffering, respect for intrinsic value, and non-appalling appearance of animals. This strategy was based on the hypothesis that multi-stakeholder solutions should be based on shared values rather than on compromises. The usefulness of such an artificial value distinction strategy was tested in (...) a small series of experiments. The results demonstrate that the chosen concept to distinguish between values is effective in a stakeholder context. Farmers’ views on doing good to animals appeared to be largely based on their value to prevent suffering and predominantly focused on the provision of regular care. Their priority for this value is clearly shared with other stakeholders, providing a basis for joint solutions. The concept of intrinsic value does not play a discernable role in farmers’ considerations. Based on the varying views on welfare, it can be inferred that there is a gradual rather than a principal difference between government legislation and farmers’ values, whereas public perception and acceptance of farm practices remains complicated. Distinction between value groups and focusing on a selected notion (such as no suffering) proved to be effective in bringing representatives of stakeholder groups together, but is unlikely to bridge the emotional gap between commercial farm practices and public ideals. (shrink)

Following halberstadt ("int. log. rev." 1970, i) a counterfactual may be meaningless, the antecedent being syntactically faulty. the author thinks this to be pointless, since indicative and subjunctive mood may, in certain cases, present no apparent difference. halberstadt does not distinguish between subjunctive and counterfactual conditionals. the author thinks that this distinction is needed, and proposes a time factor as distinctive factor. so, the counterfactual 'i a had been the case, b would have happened' is expressible as 'if, at time (...) t, a, then b, and now time is t+n', while the subjunctive leaves open whether the sentence is uttered at time t or t+n. further, halberstadt proposes a formulation of counterfactuals which does not distinguish between 'de re' and 'de dicto'. (shrink)

A SECOND COMPLETELY REVISED EDITION OF THIS TEXTBOOK ON INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH WAS PUBLISHED WITH AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS IN 2022. Check out that version here and a PDF of its ToC and Introduction, as this first edition (AUP 2016) is no longer available. [This book (128 pp.) serves as an introduction and manual to guide students through the interdisciplinary research process. We are becoming increasingly aware that, as a result of technological developments and globalisation, problems are becoming so complex that they (...) can only be solved through cooperation between multiple disciplines. Healthcare, climate change, food security, energy, financial markets and quality of life are just a few examples of issues that require scientists and academics to work in a crossdisciplinary way. As a result of these developments, an interdisciplinary approach is becoming increasingly popular in higher education and must be considered an absolute necessity. Young academics are being called on to step beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplines in order to contribute to addressing fundamental problems and solving challenges facing society. There is a need for people who are not afraid to ask critical questions, who can work together well and can look beyond the boundaries of their own field. This means students need to learn more about how they can integrate and apply knowledge, methods and skills from different fields. Interdisciplinary research projects and practical training courses offer students more than one perspective on the same subject. Comparing and contrasting, connecting, adding and adapting concepts, theories and methodologies from different disciplines ultimately results in new insights and better answers to complex problems.]. (shrink)

Pork producers in Western Europe moreand more encounter a variety of societalconcerns about pork and pork production. Sofar, however, producers predominantly focusedon low consumer prices, therewith addressingjust one concern. This resulted in an intensiveand large-scale production system, decreasinglyrelated to the area of farm land, andaccompanied with increasing concerns aboutsafety and healthiness of pork, animal welfare,environmental pollution, and others.An overview was given of possible concernsabout West-European pork production with theconsumers, citizens, and producers, and thoseconcerns are traced back to the pork productionsystem. (...) The various kinds and qualities ofinformation about the pork production system onwhich possible concerns are based have beenworked out extensively in this paper. Knowledgeabout the aspects of pork production that cangive rise to concerns can be used in two ways.First, the communication about those aspectstowards consumers and citizens can be adjustedor extended to give them better possibilitiesto make food choices or to develop their ownopinions about pork production. Second,producers could change the pork productionsystem such that it better satisfies consumersand citizens. Such adaptations are wellpossible, as three pork quality schemes, whichhave been evaluated, illustrate. However, mostof these adaptations can only be carried out atthe cost of the present low consumer prices andwill not occur spontaneously on a large scale.Therefore, accounting for the type andrelevance of the concerns, legislation isnecessary to address societal concerns in abalanced way such that pork production systemsbecome acceptable for the majority of oursociety. (shrink)

We present a logic, \, for the discovery of deterministic causal regularities starting from empirical data. Our approach is inspired by Mackie’s theory of causes as INUS-conditions, and implements a more recent adjustment to Mackie’s theory according to which the left-hand side of causal regularities is required to be a minimal disjunction of minimal conjunctions. To derive such regularities from a given set of data, we make use of the adaptive logics framework. Our knowledge of deterministic causal regularities is, as (...) Mackie noted, most often gappy or elliptical. The adaptive logics framework is well-suited to explicate both the internal and the external dynamics of the discovery of such gappy regularities. After presenting \, we first discuss these forms of dynamics in more detail. Next, we consider some criticisms of the INUS-account and show how our approach avoids them, and we compare \ with the CNA algorithm that was recently proposed by Michael Baumgartner. (shrink)

Continued concern for animal welfare may be alleviated when welfare would be monitored on farms. Monitoring can be characterized as an information system where various stakeholders periodically exchange relevant information. Stakeholders include producers, consumers, retailers, the government, scientists, and others. Valuating animal welfare in the animal-product market chain is regarded as a key challenge to further improve the welfare of farm animals and information on the welfare of animals must, therefore, be assessed objectively, for instance, through monitoring. Interviews with Dutch (...) stakeholder representatives were conducted to identify their perceptions about the monitoring of animal welfare. Stakeholder perceptions were characterized in relation to the specific perspectives of each stakeholder. While producers tend to perceive welfare from a production point of view, consumers will use visual images derived from traditional farming and from the animals’ natural environments. Scientists’ perceptions of animal welfare are affected by the need to measure welfare with quantifiable parameters. Retailers and governments (policy makers) have views of welfare that are derived from their relationships with producers, consumers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and scientists. All interviewed stakeholder representatives stated that animal welfare is important. They varied in the extent to which they weighted economic considerations relative to concern for the animals’ welfare. Many stakeholders emphasized the importance of communication in making a monitoring system work. Overall, the perspectives for the development of a sustainable monitoring system that substantially improves farm animal welfare were assessed as being poor in the short term. However, a reliable system could be initiated under certain conditions, such as integrated chains and with influential and motivated stakeholders. A scheme is described with attention points for the development of sustainable monitoring systems for farm animal welfare in the long term. (shrink)

In matters of the mind, the opposition between what is mind-made or inside and natural or outside the mind is bound to misfire. Lindquist et al. build their analysis on a strong contrast between naturalism, which they reject, and psychologism, which they endorse. We challenge this opposition and indicate how adopting psychologism to combat a naturalistic view of emotional mind/brain areas is self-defeating. We briefly develop the alternative view of emotions as mental organs.

We translate unconstrained and constrained input/output logics as introduced by Makinson and van der Torre to modal logics, using adaptive logics for the constrained case. The resulting reformulation has some additional benefits. First, we obtain a proof-theoretic characterization of input/output logics. Second, we demonstrate that our framework naturally gives rise to useful variants and allows to express important notions that go beyond the expressive means of input/output logics, such as violations and sanctions.

This presentation discusses a notion encountered across disciplines, and in different facets of human activity: autonomous activity. We engage it in an interdisciplinary way. We start by considering the reactions and behaviors of biological entities to biotechnological intervention. An attempt is made to characterize the degree of freedom of embryos & clones, which show openness to different outcomes when the epigenetic developmental landscape is factored in. We then consider the claim made in programming and artificial intelligence that automata could show (...) self-directed behavior as to the determination of their step-wise decisions on courses of action. This question remains largely open and calls for some important qualifications. We try to make sense of the presence of claims of freedom in agency, first in common sense, then by ascribing developmental plasticity in biology and biotechnology, and in the mapping of programmed systems in the presence of environmental cues and self-referenced circuits as well as environmental coupling. This is the occasion to recall attempts at working out a logical and methodological approach to the openness of concepts that are still to be found, and assess whether they can operate the structuring intelligibility of a yet undeveloped or underdeveloped field of study, where a “bisociation" and a unification of knowledge might be possible. (shrink)

En deux pages, l’auteur se propose de rendre compte de l’ouvrage Au fondement du Management. Théologie de l’Organisation, Volume 1 de Baptiste Rappin. Il y insiste sur la pertinence d’interroger philosophiquement le monde managérial dont nous faisons aujourd’hui l’épreuve.

Avec la pandémie de Covid-19, les modèles épidémiologiques sont sortis de l’ombre des laboratoires de recherche pour venir guider les gouvernements du monde entier dans l’organisation de leur réponse sanitaire face à la crise. Les modèles jouent un rôle de prescripteur dans la mise en place des mesures sanitaires. Face à l’inconnu, ils se proposent de géométriser ce qui n’a en apparence ni forme, ni structure, ni corps, ni comportement, ni frontière : l’événement pandémique. Leur enjeu est, pour ainsi dire, (...) de plier les aléas de la contagion sous toutes ces dimensions, afin de les détacher de l’ignorance des causes qui les déterminent. Donner au phénomène pandémique les traits d’une loi de la nature et d’un déterminisme social, voilà ce à quoi la modélisation aspire. La dynamique heuristique qu’elle engage, participe ainsi de la construction d’une représentation sociale et politique de la pandémie. Cet article analyse les obstacles qui se nouent autour de la modélisation et des effets boîte noire qu’elle engendre. (shrink)

L’hypothèse privilégiée dans ce travail est de considérer le Grenelle de l’environnement comme un dispositif d’écriture et comme un dispositif d’énonciation collectif. Son orientation pragmatique est double : il construit du consensus et produit des mesures d’action publique. Deux types d’approches sont privilégiés : une première approche, morphologique, est orientée vers l’analyse de la représentation des problèmes, une seconde, formelle, est dédiée à l’analyse de la formulation de mesures.

L’hypothèse privilégiée dans ce travail est de considérer le Grenelle de l’environnement comme un dispositif d’écriture et comme un dispositif d’énonciation collectif. Son orientation pragmatique est double : il construit du consensus et produit des mesures d’action publique. Deux types d’approches sont privilégiés : une première approche, morphologique, est orientée vers l’analyse de la représentation des problèmes, une seconde, formelle, est dédiée à l’analyse de la formulation de mesures.

Que serait une exposition qui, au lieu de prendre place dans un musée ou dans une galerie, prendrait place au cinéma? (un projet de Mathieu Copeland, avec Chantal Akerman, Peter Downsbrough, Liam Gillick, John Giorno, Philippe Grandrieux, Isidore Isou, Philippe-Alain Michaud, Meredith Monk, Lee Ranaldo, Susan Stenger, Alan Vega, Jacques Villeglé, Lawrence Weiner, Apichatpong Weerasethakul...).