This paper briefly presents an account, partially based upon Ryle’s approach, of the functions of intentional psychological terms as they are used in ordinary language. According to this account, intentional psychological terms describe known patterns of behavior that are determined by selective mechanisms of causation. That is, these terms describe relations between certain responses, selected on the basis of the consequences they produce in the environment, and contexts of their occurrence, to which they become associated. Intentional psychological terms do not (...) point to inner causes of a given behavior, but can explain it only in the sense of stating that it could be expected to occur, if we can identify its behavior pattern and the context in which it occurs. We proceed then to examine three main objections that have been raised against Ryle’s position, namely: (a) Davidson’s challenge to the non-causal accounts of reason-explanations; (b) Armstrong’s worries about “leaving the counterfactuals hanging in the air”; and (c) the holistic objection to the (wrongly) presumed Ryle’s atomism. We aim at showing that none of these objections pose serious problems to the proposed account. (shrink)

This paper addresses several objections that have been leveled against a behavioral approach to psychological categories. It reconstructs and critically assesses the so-called causal objection; alleged counterexamples whereby one can exhibit the typical behaviors associated with a psychological phenomenon without exhibiting the latter, including Lewis’ “perfect actor” case and Kirk’s “zombie”; alleged counterexamples whereby organisms can exemplify psychological phenomena without exhibiting any behavior associated with them, including Armstrong’s imagined brain in a vat, Putnam’s “super-super-spartans” scenario, and related cases; and the (...) holistic objection. Mistaken assumptions in each of these objections are pinpointed. The paper starts with a brief characterization of behaviorism about psychological categories and a summary of the particular version thereof supported here, which draws upon Ryle and Skinner, among others. (shrink)

A abordagem de Armstrong e Lewis sobre os conceitos psicológicos ordinários pretende-se uma síntese entre behaviorismo e cartesianismo. Ela sustenta, fundamentalmente, duas teses: (a) a de que esses conceitos, em geral, explicam e predizem comportamentos pela designação de entidades internas (isto é, próprias do interior do corpo) que são os ocupantes de papéis de causar os respectivos comportamentos; e (b) a tese de que os ocupantes desses papéis causais identificam-se com entidades cerebrais e, eventualmente, substratos internos de outras constituições físicas, (...) no sentido de identidades de tipos (e não de particulares), ainda que restringidas. Por um lado, a abordagem é formulada em oposição à ideia de que os conceitos em questão não se referem a causas internas; mas, por outro, propõe uma forma de visão materialista e entende esses conceitos como possuindo conexões lógicas com relações comportamentais do organismo como um todo com aspectos do ambiente maior. O presente trabalho procura sugerir (1) que tal abordagem é implausível, levantando a ela várias objeções; e (2) que as objeções de Armstrong e Lewis a perspectivas comportamentais não atingem pelo menos uma específica deste tipo, aqui esboçada brevemente e apoiada. (shrink)

Ordinary psychological predicates, and the phenomena we report to by means of them, can be grouped together into different categories. For instance, it is usual to group together phenomena such as belief and expectancy in a category of ‘propositional attitudes’, whereas sensations, like pain and itch, in a distinct one. Which taxonomy of the mental would be plausible to be adopted in contexts such as those of introductory books to the philosophy of mind, i.e., when we need to set out (...) only from minimal assumptions regarding these predicates and phenomena? This article suggests some desiderata and principles for such a taxonomy; exposes and critically assesses some taxonomies presented in introductory books to the philosophy of mind; and proposes the sketch of an alternative one. (shrink)

It is common to find depictions of behaviorist approaches to the mind as approaches according to which mental events are “dispositions for behavior.” Moreover, it is sometimes said that for these approaches the dispositions are for publicly observable behaviors, or even “purely physical movements,” thereby excluding from being constitutive of mental events any internal bodily happening, besides any movement not taken as “purely physical.” In this paper I aim to pinpoint problems in such widespread depictions of behaviorism about the mind, (...) by arguing that they turn out to be too restrictive or too broad, as the case may be. In addition, I put forward an alternative, more balanced characterization, which wards off such problems. Based upon this alternative characterization, I attempt to classify some of the embodied mind theories as behavioral, non-behavioral, or borderline cases between behavioral and non-behavioral perspectives. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como objetivo principal apresentar uma reconstruçáo lógico-conceitual e avaliaçáo de três argumentos de Skinner para a tese de que os termos psicológicos comuns sáo, em geral, inadmissíveis em análise do comportamento (a tese da inadmissibilidade). Começamos fazendo uma revisáo da abordagem de tais termos sustentada por Skinner, particularmente sua abordagem das categoriais de termos psicológicos disposicionais. Muito dela é aqui aceito, mas adotamos, como hipótese de trabalho, um desacordo com a premissa de Skinner de que eles sejam (...) irremediavelmente mentalistas. Nossa análise mostra que, se esta hipótese estiver correta, entáo os argumentos analisados náo resultam ser inteiramente plausíveis; e, embora a opçáo do autor seja plenamente aceitável, também o é uma (em princípio) opçáo alternativa, que explore os valores heurísticos de tais termos (sem incorporá-los ao vocabulário de base) para a descoberta de padrões comportamentais e seus contextos, em ambientes abertos de pesquisa. Um objetivo colateral deste artigo é mostrar o equívoco de duas suposições muitas vezes assumidas em filosofia da mente sobre o behaviorismo radical: a de que ele náo tem uma abordagem relevante sobre o funcionamento dos termos em questáo e a de que sua tese da inadmissibilidade se baseia em premissas verificacionistas. (shrink)

The traditional, and still standard, view of psychological phenomena in some empirical sciences holds that they take place inside the organism’s body and can be individuated independently of external factors. The organism’s behaviors are, according to this view, mere effects, rather then constituents, of psychological phenomena. And the fact that, for example, an organism is desiring something instead of something else is taken to be a matter entirely of what is inside the organism. The current versions of the view are (...) usually couched in materialistic terms, identifying psychological phenomena with brain phenomena. However, as Noë, in this book, and some other authors point out, such approaches are still Cartesian in spirit. Despite doing away with the nonphysical dimension of Descartes’ doctrine, they too believe our psychological phenomena are inner causes of behavior and can be, in pri .. (shrink)

The term ‘heat’ originates from the Old English word hǣtu, a word of Germanic origin; related to the Dutch ‘hitte’ and German ‘Hitze’. Today, we distinguish three different meanings of the word ‘heat’. First, ‘heat’ is understood in colloquial English as ‘hotness’. There are, in addition, two scientific meanings of ‘heat’. ‘Heat’ can have the meaning of the portion of energy that changes with a change of temperature. And finally, ‘heat’ can have the meaning of the transfer of thermal energy (...) from a hotter to a colder system or body. By contrast, for the Ancients and Scholastics, ‘heat’ was a manifest, real quality of bodies and there was an ontological distinction between biological or innate heat (which was regarded as an innate principle of life for warm-blooded animals) and the physical manifest heat of external objects, which is potentially harmful. During the late Renaissance period, however, both views changed fundamentally and evolved - via the application of physical and mechanical analogies - into the foundations for today’s unified mechanistic theory of heat. (shrink)

I propose a theory aimed at advancing scholarly research in social entrepreneurship. By highlighting the key trade-off between value creation and value capture and explaining when situations of simultaneous market and government failure may arise, I suggest that social entrepreneurship is the pursuit of sustainable solutions to neglected problems with positive externalities. I further discuss the situations in which problems with externalities are likely to be neglected and derive the central goal and logic of action of social entrepreneurs, in contrast (...) to commercial entrepreneurs. Overall, this article provides a conceptual framework that allows understanding the growing phenomena of social entrepreneurship and its role in the functioning of modern society. (shrink)

It can be argued that Nancy Fraser's work integrates the concepts of recognition and redistribution by questioning the definition of the concept of recognition in order to bring it closer to the practical scope of redistribution. One of the difficulties raised by the concept of recognition is that it can appear as a kind of social monism by presenting culture as the main factor behind all social criticism, and thus, behind all kinds of claims and conflicts. However, it is possible (...) to acknowledge the theoretical significance of the economy as well. Instead of a monistic framework, we should adopt a dualistic one, founded less on the distinction between economy and culture than on the analysis of their imbrications. Both economy, and status as defined in cultural, ethnic, or sexual approaches to recognition, could work together to minimize the importance of the civil and political rights defended by liberal thinkers. (shrink)

The article proposes to analyse whether the current configuration of national migration legislation from Arendt's perspective on the universalization of human rights and Agamben's reflections on bare life and the state of exception demonstrates its capacity to protect the human rights of people undergoing forced migration. To this end, a literature review of a bibliographical nature was used, using the historical procedure method. In order to interpret the effectiveness of the current configuration of the human rights of this vulnerable group, (...) an analysis of international and national legislation on migration was carried out, focusing mainly on the case of the New Brazilian Migration Law. To this end, a theoretical discussion was built to understand how human rights are framed considering the situation of migration and statelessness in the face of an increasingly prevalent state of exception. It was noted that the constitutive fragility of forced migrants is a perennial situation, aggravated by the political inaction of nation states. It has also been noted that there is a need for states and international organizations to adopt new practices to promote the human dignity of forced migrants. (shrink)

L’objectif de cette introduction est double : elle présente les articles rassembles dans ce volume et offre une synthèse des développements récents de l’épistemologie des modalités.The role of this introduction is twofold: it presents the papers collected in this volume and offers a synthesis of recent developments of the epistemology of modality.

This volume provides the reader with the substantial evidence, presented here for the first time in a chronological manner, of the essential place that Dionysus occupied in Greek and Roman political thought. The eleven chapters that make up the volume are authored by an interdisciplinary team of scholars (including four top specialists in the field, Cornelia Isler-Kerényi, Richard Seaford, Richard Stoneman and Jean-Marie Pailler) and cover the period from archaic Greece to the late Roman empire. The reader can therefore observe (...) how the political ideas and motifs rooted in Greek classical thought were continued, adapted, and developed in successive periods of history. The contributors reconstruct the political significance of Dionysus by examining different kinds of evidence: historiography, poetry, coins, epigraphy, art, and philosophy. They discuss the place of the god in the politics of Greek city-states, explore the long tradition of imitating Dionysus that ancient leaders, from Alexander the Great to the Roman emperors, manifested in various ways, as well as demonstrate how the political role of Dionysus was reflected in Orphism and Neoplatonist philosophy. Dionysus and Politics provides an excellent introduction to a fundamental feature of ancient political thought which until now has been largely neglected by mainstream academia. The book will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars interested in ancient politics and religion. (shrink)

Proliferating literature claims that academia is in a critical condition, generating armies of anxious, neurotic and time-hungry individuals which are governed by the speed imperatives integral to a modernist and capitalist rationality. This book puts the temporal ordering of academic life under the microscope, and showcases the means of yielding a better understanding of how time and temporality act both as instruments of power and vulnerability within the academic space. This book brings together more than three dozen scholars who collectively (...) craft a much-needed nuanced sociologically-driven perspective of temporalities in academia. Delving into contemporary processes which are quintessentially temporal in their character, such as the increasing precariousness of jobs among junior scholars, the prevalence of grant funding, the role of evaluation systems, and the political economy of higher education, the authors offer a forensic analysis of the complex nature of academic temporalities as experienced, understood, controlled, managed and contested in various academic and research contexts. (shrink)

The article focuses on the history of the conflict between analytic and continental tradition, which dominated the philosophy of the 20th century. Although both traditions originated from the same intellectual environment and were heavily influenced by Neo-Kantianism, their mutual lack of understanding progressed over time and, on several occasions, the situation grew into open hostility. The article describes the ten most serious conflicts: Russell vs. Bergson, Schlick vs. Husserl, Carnap vs. Heidegger, Ryle vs. Heidegger, Popper's critique of pseudoscience, conference in (...) Royaumont, Searle vs. Derrida, the revelation of Heidegger's Nazi past, Derrida's Honorary Doctorate from Cambridge, and Sokal's scam. At the beginning of the 21st century it turns out that the conflict between analytic and continental philosophy has been exhausted. What is more substantial is the dispute over the philosophical methodology, which is reflected in the division into naturalistic and anti-naturalistic thinkers. (shrink)

I suggest here ecologies of the nascent state, posing the following general questions: what is this state and what is it to live, to fabricate modes of life, in its immanence? I believe populating this state is, by right, ‘ecological’, even if what I offer here is only a sketch or glimpse, playful as it is, of the possibility of such modes of life, of dwelling. As I develop it here, the nascent is in flight of being. It is populated (...) by lesser, minoritarian existences. If it is ‘ecological’, it is because these existences, or modes of becoming, are themselves, in their own right, ‘ecologies’, that is, modes of dwelling, of life, on the ‘other side of existence’, as Antonin Artaud put it once, in exile from Being. The power to return eternally to the nascent state is the power to live, to dwell, in the absolute forgetfulness of Being, in the interstice where philosophy supposedly ends, but where it nevertheless begins again, in oblivion itself, where being is never already the verticality of Being, its difference with beings, but always nascent, in the beginning, eternally so. (shrink)

We present an inference to the best explanation of the immense cultural success of Freudian psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic method. We argue that an account of psychoanalytic facts as products of unintended declarative speech acts explains this phenomenon. Our argument connects diverse, seemingly independent characteristics of psychoanalysis that have been independently confirmed, and applies key features of John Searle’s and Eerik Lagerspetz’s theory of institutional facts to the psychoanalytic edifice. We conclude with a brief defence of the institutional approach against (...) more contentious social constructivist approaches to science and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

This book consists of eleven new essays that provide new insights into classical and contemporary issues surrounding free will and human agency. They investigate topics such as the nature of practical knowledge and its role in intentional action; mental content and explanations of action; recent arguments for libertarianism; the situationist challenge to free will; freedom and a theory of narrative configuration; the moral responsibility of the psychopath; and free will and the indeterminism of quantum mechanics. Also tackling some historical precursors (...) of contemporary debates, taken together these essays demonstrate the need for an approach that recognizes the multifaceted nature of free will. This book provides essential reading for anyone interested in the current scholarship on free will. (shrink)

The author discusses Aristotle’s notion of deliberation and shows that it differs considerably from the model of deliberation as is common in contemporary discussions of free will and moral responsibility. As opposed to the contemporary model, Aristotle’s account does not require that the deliberator has any belief (or lack thereof) concerning the availability of possible courses of action. However, the action chosen by deliberation, before it is performed, is still contingent––i.e. such that it can both be and not be done––and (...) up to us. Moreover, the action’s being up to us can be seen as grounded in our having rational capacities that are necessarily two-sided. This might suggest that the agent can do otherwise than she has decided by deliberation. The author argues that this is not the case: after deliberation, or after forming the relevant desire, the agent can actualize only one arm of her two-sided capacity, and hence, she cannot act differently than as decided by deliberation. If it makes sense to say that she can act differently, it is only because there may occur, in the interval between deliberation and action, some other desire which takes over a role of the decisive factor. (shrink)

Článek představuje teorii původu lidské morálky od Franse de Waala a zhodnocuje přínos filozofických komentářů od Christine M. Korsgaardové a Mary Midgleyové z hlediska oboru evoluční etiky. Základní struktura de Waalova přístupu je v souladu se sentimentalistickou teorií morálky, která určuje soucítění jako bazální morální cit. V interpretaci vlivné neodarwinistické genocentrické školy dále hraje zásadní roli altruismus. Stoupenci tohoto směru nicméně obhajují rozdělení krutého světa přírody a etického světa lidské kultury; distinkce byla Fransem de Waalem nazvána „teorií pozlátka“, neboť vyvolává (...) obraz tenké vrstvy morálky nanesené na sobecké jádro lidské biologické přirozenosti. C. M. Korsgaardová využívá kantovskou etiku, aby ukázala, že zvířata nemohou být počítána za morální, neboť postrádají schopnost normativní autonomie. M. Midgleyová oponuje jak neodarwinistickému, tak kantovskému rozvrhu etiky a ukazuje, že soucítění patří k přirozenosti společensky žijících druhů a že reflektivní uvažování se vztahuje pouze k nejvyššímu patru evoluce morálky. Pozice M. Midgleyové je pro evoluční zkoumání morálky přínosnější než postup C. M. Korsgaardové. This article introduces Frans de Waal’s theory of the origins of human morality and evaluates the merits of the philosophical commentaries of Christine M. Korsgaard and Mary Midgley, and their application to the discipline of evolutionary ethics. The fundamental structure of de Wall’s approach is congruent with the sentimentalist theory of morality which determines sympathy as the most vital moral sentiment. A crucial role is also assigned to altruism in the view of morality in the influential genocentric neo-Darwinian school. However, proponents of this school advocate the separation of the cruel world of nature and the ethical world of humane culture; this is dubbed “Veneer Theory” by F. de Waal, since it invokes an image of a thin layer of morality applied to a selfish core of biological human nature. C. M. Korsgaard applies Kantian ethics to argue that animals cannot count as moral because they are not capable of normative self-government. M. Midgley opposes both neo-Darwinism and the Kantian tradition in ethics in arguing that sympathy is a part of any social species’ nature, and that reflective reasoning refers only to the highest peak of moral evolution. It is argued that the position of M. Midgley is ultimately a more fruitful approach to the evolutionary examination of ethics than that proposed by C. M. Korsgaard. (shrink)

This paper analyses Bohr’s complementarity framework and applies it to biosemiotic studies by illustrating its application to three existing models of living systems: mechanistic biology, Barbieri’s version of biosemiotics in terms of his code biology and Markoš’s phenomenological version of hermeneutic biosemiotics. The contribution summarizes both Bohr’s philosophy of science crowned by his idea of complementarity and his conception of the phenomenon of the living. Bohr’s approach to the biological questions evolved – among other things – from the consequences of (...) an epistemological lesson of quantum theory and in light of complementarity of observer as a priori living creature and ex post scientific explanation of the living. In a manifestation of the phenomenon of the living, each model of living system and its description makes accessible – from its own presuppositions, contexts and concepts – some features which are not accessible from the others. Nevertheless, for a general understanding of that phenomenon, incompatible sophisticated approaches are equally necessary. Bohr’s epistemology of complementarity turns out to be a heuristic and methodical framework for testing the extent to which biosemiotics can become one of the special sciences or its potential as a cross-disciplinary branch of study. (shrink)

The nature of unconscious information processing is a heavily debated issue in cognitive science, and neuroscience. Traditionally, it has been thought that unconscious cognitive processing is restricted to knowledge that is strongly prepared by conscious processes. In three experiments, we show that the task that is performed consciously can also be applied unconsciously to items outside the current task set. We found that a same–different judgment of two target stimuli was also performed on two subliminally presented prime stimuli. This was (...) true for target and prime stimuli from entirely different categories, as well as for prime and target stimuli at different levels of abstraction. These results reveal that unconscious processing can generalize more widely than previously accepted. (shrink)

This article argues against Catton and Dunlap’s claims that the natural environment has been ignored or downplayed in American sociology before the emergence of environmental sociology in the 1970s. By reviewing a collection of 86 sociology textbooks between 1894 and 1980, the article provides quantitative evidence regarding the scope and types of references to the natural environment in mainstream sociology. The bulk of the article is based on an interpretive-historical analysis of the different representations of the environment in the textbook (...) literature. This analysis is carried out from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, whereby sociological ideas about nature are interpreted in terms of their intellectual milieu and social context. The main finding is that the ‘natural environment’ has been interpreted in different ways and has been put to a variety of epistemological and ideological uses — particularly positivism and functionalism — throughout the history of the discipline. (shrink)

The nature of unconscious information processing is a heavily debated issue in cognitive science , and neuroscience . Traditionally, it has been thought that unconscious cognitive processing is restricted to knowledge that is strongly prepared by conscious processes . In three experiments, we show that the task that is performed consciously can also be applied unconsciously to items outside the current task set. We found that a same–different judgment of two target stimuli was also performed on two subliminally presented prime (...) stimuli. This was true for target and prime stimuli from entirely different categories, as well as for prime and target stimuli at different levels of abstraction. These results reveal that unconscious processing can generalize more widely than previously accepted. (shrink)

Among other virtues, Mental Files Theory provides a straightforward explanation of de jure coreference, i.e. identity of referent guaranteed by meaning alone: de jure coreference holds between terms when these are associated with the same mental file from which they inherit their reference. In this paper, I discuss an objection that Angel Pinillos raises against Mental Files Theory and other similar theories: the theory predicts that de jure coreference should be transitive, just like identity. Yet there are cases, involving ‘slash-terms’, (...) in which transitivity fails, or so it seems. In his book Mental Files, Recanati replies that the mental files theorist can accommodate Pinillos’ exceptions by offering a refined model of merging files, the ‘partial merging’ model. While agreeing with Recanati on the need for such a model, I contend that, pace Recanati and Pinillos, de jure coreference is transitive even in the presence of slash-terms. I will first show that paradoxical consequences ensue if slash-terms are said to de jure corefer with several basic terms at once. Then, building on two different accounts Recanati gives of referential confusion, I will show that on both views, de jure coreference cannot hold because of the behaviour of confused slash-terms. I will conclude that, in Mental Files Theory, a slash-term can, at most, de jure corefer with only one basic term per context. (shrink)

I argue that the adjective δαιμόνιος (‘daemonic’) and the substantivized adjective τὸ δαιμόνιον (‘the daemonic’) that occur in Aristotle’s dream treatises basically mean ‘divine-like,’ denoting an illusory appearance of divine intervention, typically in the form of an alleged god-sent prophetic dream. Yet the appearances to which the terms refer are, in fact, neither divine nor supernatural at all, but involve merely coincidental correlations between the dream and the fulfilling event. It is shown that Aristotle’s use of ‘daemonic’ is traditional and (...) reflects the endoxon that prophetic dreams are closely related to the divine. The paper also examines a set of earlier readings of the daemonic in De divinatione in relation to the proposed interpretation. (shrink)

Background: Mental fatigue can impact physical demands and tactical behavior in sport-related contexts. Small-sided games are often used to develop a specific sport-related context. However, the effects of mental fatigue on physical demands and tactical behaviors during soccer SSGs have not been aggregated for systematical assessment.Objective: This systematic review was conducted to compare the effects of mental fatigue vs. control conditions in terms of the total running distance and tactical behavior of soccer players during SSGs.Methods: The data sources utilized were (...) PubMed, PsycINFO, Scielo, Scopus, SPORTDiscus, and Web of Science. The study eligibility criteria were established based on PICOS: Population: healthy youth and young adult men soccer players with regular training practice and belonging to teams with regular competitions; Intervention: exposed to mental fatigue-induced protocols only before SSGs; Comparator: control conditions before SSGs; Outcomes: physical demands and tactical behavior ; Study design: counterbalanced cross-over design; and only full-text and original articles written in English.Results: The database search initially identified 111 titles. From those, six articles were eligible for the systematic review and meta-analysis. Results showed no significant effect of fatigue on total running distance and tactical behavior.Conclusions: A non-significant effect of mental fatigue on total running distance and tactical behaviors performed by soccer players during SSGs was found in this systematic review. (shrink)

Together with the emergence of strong executive presidencies and the frequency of coups d'Etat, the single party is one of the striking features of the political development in Africa South of the Sahara since 1960.More than half the countries of the continent are presently under one-party rule. This article attempts to analyse the origins, recent developments, and perspectives in the field of African single-party states. Sameelements favourable to the emergence of this phenomenon were the colonial heritage, the precolonial tradition, and (...) the aura of legitimacy of the national liberation movements. Several techniques were usedby African leaders to impose rule by one party; distinction is made between political, legal and institutional, and authoritarian means. African leaders have relied on several justifications to rationalise the introduction of such regimes : economie development, national unity and nation-building, the absence of class-differentiation, the unanimitarian tradition, and the need to give constitutional recognition to a de facto situation. A critical analysis shows that these arguments do not, in general, withstand closer examination. The conclusion is that the single-party «ideology» serves mainly to protect the hegemony of a small and privileged political class of rulers against challenge of its position. As far as perspectives are concerned, three possibilities seem to be developing simultaneously : the Party-State, the no-party state, and the multi-party state. It is argued in a conclusion that the single-party state need not be undemocratic ; some conditions for a democratic one-party system are set forth. (shrink)

Political and sociological research indicates that the use of consociational techniques has been a major means of ensuring peace and stability in a divided society like Belgium. This paper attempts to cast a first look at another component: what are the legal mechanisms of confiictmanagement in Belgium? This question is studied on the basis of the case of the school-confiict, which is one aspect of the ideological dividing line ; this was indeed the first to be institutionalised in Belgium. The (...) drafting of the 1831 Constitution was the first great exercise in consensus-seeking and the same approach prevailed over much of the 19th century. It was interrupted, however, during the first «School War» which was waged from 1879 to 1884. After the First World War a number of issues in the educational dispute were settled by way of package-deals, which were an attempt to replace zero-sum games by more-or-less choices. However a second School War erupted from 1950 to 1958. After the 1958 elections the balance of power was such that compromise showed necessary again : this situation led to the «School Pact» which tried to institutionalise consociational solution-seeking in this field. The Pact system was later applied in numerous other fields where mere majoritarian decision-making was discarded.White in the School issue these solutions were not as yet legalised, in later agreements they were.The paper argues that the main aim of these approaches is to avoid adjudication on these issues by third confiict-solvers, such as courts and tribunals. Instead allocation is arranged between the participants to the deal ; these partners are the political parties who claim to represent the whole range of public opinion. In this way «soft law» is created : this development represents a creeping undermining of the Rule of Law. (shrink)

Deciding the conflict between various rights and interests, especially in medical ethics where health and lives are in question, has significant challenges, and to obtain appropriate outcomes, it is necessary to properly apply the principles of non-discrimination and proportionality. Using the example of mandatory vaccination policies, we show that this task becomes even more difficult when these principles lead us to counterintuitive and paradoxical results. Although the general purpose of these principles is to ensure that decisions and policies seek the (...) highest and broadest possible enjoyment of rights for all (ie, the least restrictive solution), they achieve the complete opposite when applied to mandatory vaccination policies. To highlight and explain these paradoxical results, we present a typology of fifteen hypothetical mandatory vaccination policies containing various degrees of restriction and apply well-established non-discrimination and proportionality tests from constitutional law to each. We argue that mandatory vaccination policies exhibit two characteristics, namely the non-linear relationship between their general purposes and specific goals and the involvement of life and health, suggesting that more restrictive policies should prevail even though less restrictive policies might fail these tests. Using clearly structured and rigorous methodology from constitutional law, the proposed approach delivers a fresh view on the core ethical principles of non-discrimination and proportionality and a potentially useful tool in helping resolve also other challenges encountered in medical ethics beyond mandatory vaccination policies. (shrink)

Článek se zabývá demystifikací dodnes panující legendy o ikoně světové vědy, nositeli Nobelovy ceny za objev štěpení těžkých jader, chemiku Otto Hahnovi. Desítky let byl považován za vzor německé slušnosti, zodpovědnosti a příklad antinacistického vědce, který nekolaboroval se zločinným režimem na jeho válečné mašinérii. Teprve od devadesátých let 20. století se dostávají k rukám historiků archivní materiály, jež umožňují získat ucelenou představu o Hahnově působení v době nacistického Německa a o jeho aktivním zapojení ve válečném uranovém výzkumu, jehož výsledkem mělo (...) být sestrojení jaderných reaktorů a bomb. (shrink)

Les termes d’espèce naturelle font débat : s’agit-il de termes descriptifs qui exprimeraient des caractéristiques des objets tombant dans leur extension, ou fonctionnent-ils plutôt comme des noms qui désigneraient directement leur espèce, sans l’intermédiaire d’une description? Selon la théorie causale de la référence (TCR), un terme comme « Tigre » nomme directement l’espèce du Tigre grâce à l’ostension d’un échantillon de tigres individuels qui constitue l’étalon de référence pour les usages ultérieurs du terme. Je me propose ici de confronter la (...) TCR à la pratique des noms de taxons telle qu’elle est réglée par le Code International de Nomenclature Zoologique. Je tâcherai de montrer qu’en dépit de contre-exemples avancés récemment, les prédictions de la TCR sont vérifiées par les noms scientifiques d’espèces et de sous-espèces. (shrink)

Příspěvek se zaměřuje na zavádějící příběh o tzv. kodaňské interpretaci kvantové mechaniky, již jako údajně nerozpornou či jednotnou vytvořili a sdíleli na základě tzv. kodaňského ducha kvantové teorie její tvůrci v roce 1927. Článek bude vycházet z role, kterou v tomto příběhu sehráli především N. Bohr a W. Heisenberg. První část příspěvku seznamuje s variacemi toho, co se v literatuře považuje za kodaňskou interpretaci. Druhá část odhaluje, že zatímco kvantová mechanika vznikla ve dvacátých letech 20. století, kodaňská interpretace je veskrze (...) problematickým a především Heisenbergovým produktem z let padesátých. Jednou z hlavních motivací, kvůli níž vystoupil s tzv. kodaňskou interpretací, byla obrana vůči množícím se kritikám obhájců kvantové teorie. Jelikož mezi členy tzv. kodaňské školy nepanovala žádná jednotná či nerozporná interpretace kvantové mechaniky, zaměřuje se poslední část příspěvku na několik vybraných rozdílů hlavně mezi Bohrovým a Heisenbergovým výkladem kvantové teorie. (shrink)