The current interest in and discussion of virtue ethics suggests that this approach to moral decisionmaking has several distinct advantages as applied to ethical issues in healthcare delivery. For the most part, calls to incorporate the virtues of the healthcare provider in discussions of these issues have sought to supplement rather than totally replace traditional ethical theories, such as the utilitarian focus on maximizing the best overall consequences and the Kantian concern to act on the duty of respect for persons. (...) Including virtue-based ethics in such discussions allows for a more eclectic view of what should be considered in resolving difficult moral problems. As many critics of the purely principle-based approach have noted, real moral dilemmas are usually quite messy and are not easily susceptible to satisfactory resolution solely on the basis of abstract moral theories or principles. (shrink)

The ability of two Panepinto micro pigs and two Yorkshire pigs (Sus scrofa) to acquire a joystick-operated video-game task was investigated. Subjects were trained to manipulate a joystick that controlled movement of a cursor displayed on a computer monitor. The pigs were required to move the cursor to make contact with three-, two-, or one-walled targets randomly allocated for position on the monitor, and a reward was provided if the cursor collided with a target. The video-task acquisition required conceptual understanding (...) of the task, as well as skilled motor performance. Terminal performance revealed that all pigs were significantly above chance on first attempts to contact one-walled targets (p< 0.05). These results indicate that despite dexterity and visual constraints, pigs have the capacity to acquire a joystick-operated video-game task. Limitations in the joystick methodology suggest that future studies of the cognitive capacities of pigs and other domestic species may benefit from the use of touchscreens or other advanced computer-interfaced technology. (shrink)

The people's right to know and press rights to gather and publish information remain dominant justifications for controversial media activities. Yet, the power of the media to set the agenda for public discourse in our country warrants a careful analysis of these rights, their corresponding responsibilities, and their moral limits. This article examines the right to know and press freedom from the perspective of their shared purpose, facilitation of informed decision making. This article also demonstrates moral justification of limits on (...) right to know and press freedom based on traditional ethics theories and media impact on public discourse. (shrink)

The principle of respect for autonomy is increasingly under siege as a valuable component of healthcare ethics. Its critics charge that it has been elevated to a position out of proportion to its contribution, so that the individual's wishes and rights have come to dominate healthcare decisionmaking, while obligations and responsibilities are ignored or devalued. If we are to salvage respect for autonomy we must find a way to reconnect the individual and the community, rights and responsibilities, in the way (...) we think about, discuss, and make healthcare decisions. (shrink)

This article contributes to the development of a professional responsibility theory of public relations ethics. Toward that end, we examine the roles of a public relations practitioner as a professional, an institutional advocate, and the public conscience of institutions served. In the article, we review previously suggested theories of public relations ethics and propose a new theory based on the public relations professional's dual obligations to serve client organizations and the public interest.

The American Medical Association has provided a list of patient responsibilities, said to be derived from patient autonomy, without providing any justification for this derivation. In this article, the virtue of moral responsibility is proposed as a way to justify these kinds of limits on respect for individual autonomy. The need for such limits is explained by examining the traditional principles of health care ethics. What is missing in health care decision making, and can be provided by the virtue of (...) moral responsibility, is a careful consideration of the impact of individual decisions on particular others and the community, as a whole. The concept of moral responsibility as a virtue is then developed and examples of its application to health care decision making are provided. Finally, the roles of both physicians and health care ethicists in promoting the morally responsible exercise of individual autonomy are explored. (shrink)

: The principle of respect for autonomy has come under increasing attack both within health care ethics, specifically, and as part of the more general communitarian challenge to predominantly liberal values. This paper will demonstrate the importance of respect for autonomy for the social practice of assigning moral responsibility and for the development of moral responsibility as a virtue. Guided by this virtue, the responsible exercise of autonomy may provide a much-needed connection between the individual and the community.

Understanding the philosophical foundations of the principle of respect for autonomy is essential for its proper application within medical ethics. The foundations provided by Immanuel Kant's principle of humanity and John Stuart Mill's principle of liberty share substantial areas of agreement including: the grounding of respect for autonomy in the capacity for rational agency, the restriction of this principle to rational agents, and the important distinction between influence and control. Their work helps to clarify the scope and role of the (...) principle of respect for autonomy in health care delivery; its implications for truth telling, informed consent, and confidentiality; and its relationship to other moral principles, such as beneficence and distributive justice. (shrink)

In this article I provide an overview of philosophical conceptions of privacy and suggest 3 models to assist with the ethical analysis of privacy invasion by the news media. The models are framed by respect for persons, the comparison of harms and benefits, and the transfer of power. After describing the models, I demonstrate how they can be applied to news reporting that invades the privacy of public figures.

Journal of Mass Media Ethics, Volume 27, Issue 2, Page 157-159, April-June.

The coverage of national tragedies by the news media has come under increasing criticism. Yet, we continue to watch, listen, and read. One approach to resolving this conflict is through an understanding and recognition of the contribution the news media make to public discourse and public grieving.Themes from communication studies, political theory, and contemporary ethics are all employed to develop a new perspective on this type of news coverage. The perspective taken here is based on the ritual view of communication, (...) according to which the purpose of communication is the maintenance of society and the representation of shared beliefs. The argument is made that the news media in these tragic situations have the responsibility of providing needed information, stimulating public discourse, bringing us together as a community of fellow-citizens, and telling stories that engage our emotions and lead us to re-evaluate our own values, attitudes, choices, and actions. Specific examples are provided from the September 11 attacks to demonstrate that in all of these ways the news media make a valuable contribution to public grieving by initiating and supporting the kind of public discourse that can meet human needs in the face of grief and loss. (shrink)

This paper approaches the topic of visual art in medical education from a philosophical perspective, drawing on arguments from epistemology, philosophy of science, aesthetics, and contemporary ethical theory. Several medical ethicists have noted that the traditional clinical paradigm may increase the epistemic and emotional distance between patient and physician in part by focusing on the physical body and medical technology. Some of these same writers recommend a new approach to patients based on empathy and increased attention to suffering. After reviewing (...) these arguments, supporting examples, and recommendations, I explain how visual art that expresses or symbolizes the emotional response to illness could be used to introduce an additional paradigm into medical education. This would be a paradigm based on empathetic attention to patients' emotional experiences in illness. My own argument is that this additional way of perceiving and relating to patients may reduce the distance between patient and physician and may allow physicians to better meet the ideal of treating the patient as a person. (shrink)

This collection of essays examines a relationship which has provoked much current debate, the relationship between ethical theory and applied ethics. As moral philosophers have increasingly focused their attention on ethical issues in the professions and public policy development, the relevance of ethical theory to these issues and the competence of moral philosophers to address them have both been questioned.

Parallels between the mathematics of tiling, which describes geometries of visual space, and neo-Riemannian theory, which describes geometries of musical space, make it possible to show that certain paradoxes featured in the visual artworks of M. C. Escher also appear in the pitch space modelled by the neo-Riemannian Tonnetz . This article makes these paradoxes visually apparent by constructing an embodied model of triadic pitch space in accordance with principles drawn from the mathematics of tiling, on the one hand, and (...) from cognitive science, on the other – specifically, the notion that our experience of pitch relationships is governed in part by the metaphorical projection of patterns abstracted from embodied experience known as image schemas. These paradoxes are illustrated with reference to passages drawn from four compositions to whose expressive character such paradoxes contribute: the fifteenth-century motet 'Absalon fili mi'; the finale of Haydn's String Quartet in G major, Op. 76 No. 1; Brahms's Intermezzo in B minor, Op. 119 No. 1; and Wagner's Parsifal. (shrink)

In a 2012 review article, Anthony P. Maingot made a case for each generation rewriting history according to its own needs and preoccupations. Everyone, he suggested, has their own C.L.R. James. Everyone, perhaps, except students of international relations and international history, where references to James’s copious and critical body of work are less common. In the spirit of finding one’s own James, this article employs The Black Jacobins and James’s other magnum opus, World Revolution,1917–1936: The Rise and Fall of the (...) Communist International, to think historically about two interrelated processes of the twentieth century: the rise of the state, and the relationship between nationalisms and internationalisms. Along with encounters with revolutionary Marxism and pan-Africanism, James bore witness to the challenges of the state, and the tensions between nationalism and internationalism that were so central to understanding the twentieth century. (shrink)

Dans cet essai de cosmologie sauvage, je ne me suis pas adressé aux marquises et aux abbesses, comme le fit Fontenelle, mon lointain prédécesseur, en son temps. Mon public est profane et il refuse d'emblée la docte ignorance (docta ignorantia) des métaphysiciens et des mystiques, femmes savantes ou esprits crédules. Il se méfie aussi bien des mystifications dont se parent parfois les savants et les scientifiques, aussi bien que des fabulations des auteurs de science-fiction, mais il tend l'oreille souvent aux (...) poètes, écrivains et philosophes inquiets. La cosmologie ou théorie de l'univers est-elle possible et n'est-elle pas limitée par un horizon, l'horizon du visible ou de l'observable? Imaginer un au-delà de l'horizon est la tâche de la cosmologie spéculative qui a remplacé la métaphysique et qui prend alors la relève de la mythologie pour inventer la scène primitive d'une mer originelle. Cette eau originaire, que l'on retrouve chez Thalès dans la philosophie grecque présocratique, n'est pas si éloignée des fluctuations du vide quantique et le mythe de l'océan primitif peut être perçu comme la matrice de toutes les cosmogonies. Mais qui n'abordera jamais les rives de l'origine? La limite antérieure de l'origine rejoint la limite de l'horizon : toutes deux sont récessives et l'on ne peut concevoir l'univers que comme une sphère, ce qu'un autre penseur présocratique, Parménide, avait bien vu. C'est dans cette sphère que l'observateur local se tient et tient ensemble l'origine et l'horizon pour mesurer l'empan de l'univers, avec la Terre en son centre. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Many Faculties of Education in the UK and elsewhere have ‘social justice’ written into their mission statements. But are they concerned by questions of social justice in education, or has the term become somewhat vacuous and devoid of substantive meaning? The present article subjects recent discourses about social justice in education to scrutiny and finds them wanting in various respects, in particular when juxtaposed with historical accounts of justice by philosophers such as Aristotle or Aquinas. Among the complaints made here (...) is that most educational accounts (a) make do with a ‘negative’ conception of social justice as focused on specific cases of injustices without any positive conception of what social justice means in its entirety, (b) foreground institutional justice at the expense of justice as a moral or civic virtue, (c) fail to connect the identification of justice or injustice to an account of phronesis or practical wisdom for integrating values, (d) shy away from associating social justice with the ‘common good’ and (e) fail to get to grips with some thorny normative questions about the role of justice in the ordering of goods in a hierarchy towards the highest good. Along the way, various remedies are suggested. (shrink)

C'est un thème husserlien que je veux traiter dans mon exposé, un thème qui relève de la philosophie husserlienne de la logique. Celui de la «Mannigfaltigkeitslehre» ou doctrine de la multiplicité. J'exposerai brièvement ce thème et j'essaierai ensuite d'en donner une version moderne qui soit à la fois une critique et un renouvellement des intentions de Husserl.

C'est un thème husserlien que je veux traiter dans mon exposé, un thème qui relève de la philosophie husserlienne de la logique. Celui de la «Mannigfaltigkeitslehre» ou doctrine de la multiplicité. J'exposerai brièvement ce thème et j'essaierai ensuite d'en donner une version moderne qui soit à la fois une critique et un renouvellement des intentions de Husserl.

L'identification de Socrate à un "miasme" dans l'Eutyphron est liée à la transformation et à l'intériorisation d'une ancienne norme juridique. La procédure de "purification" invoquée, qui doit débarrasser la cité d'une souillure provoquée par les atteintes à la religion civique, est primitivement magico-médicale. Elle traduit immédiatement dans les registres du corps le principe de la faute. C'est un travail d'intériorisation de cette figure qui engendre le soi, et Socrate est une étape histo..

La thèse centrale de van Fraassen dans son dernier ouvrage est que son interprétation modale de la mécanique quantique constitue une variante admissible de l'interprétation de Copenhague et que cette variante est résolument empiriste. Les moyens mis en œuvre pour défendre la thèse sont considérables – l'auteur fait appel à toutes les ressources de la littérature contemporaine sur la MQ et discute la plupart des auteurs pertinents – et le résultat est à la hauteur des promesses de l'ouvrage. Mais la (...) thèse, abritée sous le couvert d'un œcuménisme herméneutique, ne parvient pas à dégager du dogme empiriste une interprétation de la MQ suffisamment radicale pour lui assurer un statut indépendant. C'est sous le signe du rationalisme cartésien que van Fraassen a d'ailleurs voulu placer son entreprise, puisqu'il cite dans l'épigraphe de son ouvrage le Descartes des Principes de la philosophie : «Que touchant les choses que les sens n'aperçoivent point, il suffit d'expliquer comment elles peuvent être […]». Et Descartes d'ajouter: «C'est tout ce qu'Aristote a fait». (shrink)

L’objectif de l’article est de proposer une théorie de l’engagement psychologique dans le langage. C’est-à-dire de présenter une vue systématique de l’implication de la psyché des sujets parlants dans leur accomplissement d’actes de langage ou encore de ce à quoi ils sont assujettis sur le plan psychologique quand ils parlent. Cette théorie a la forme d’une série de thèses chacune relative à un trait spécifique de la performance langagière. Prenant appui sur la philosophie du langage de John Searle et Daniel (...) Vanderveken, elle est élaborée à partir d’une notion originale d’engagement à avoir des états mentaux.The aim of this article is to propose a theory of the psychological commitment in the language. In other words, it is to present a systematic view of how the mental states of the speakers are present in their performance of speech acts, of what are the psychological states to the possession of which the speakers are committed when they speak. This theory is based on several thesis, each of which is about a specific aspect of the performance of speech acts. It is proposed in the perspective of the philosophy of language of John Searle and Daniel Vanderveken on the basis of an original concept of commitment to have mental states. (shrink)

Le terme de moment est omniprésent dans l’œuvre de Hegel et les commentateurs n’ont pas suffisamment insisté sur le sens dynamique du « Moment » hégélien qui n’a rien de temporel, mais dénote plutôt le momentum ou moment cinétique de la mécanique newtonienne. Hegel a donné vie à ce concept de moment et en a fait le moteur de sa dialectique qu’on interprète ici comme une syllogistique dynamique de la sursomption des moments du procès de la conscience et du devenir (...) de l’esprit. Une logique dynamique pourrait récupérer avantageusement cette dialectique des concepts. Mais la lecture critique de Hegel veut montrer comment un concept physique est transformé en notion métaphysique et comment une science de la logique « Wissenschaft der Logik » est dévoyée dans une ontologie où c’est une philosophie de la nature qui devient mécanique en assujettissant la physique à un idéalisme objectif supraphysique. Un épilogue sur le vocabulaire hégélien termine l’article. (shrink)

Dans ce recueil, j'ai voulu regrouper des textes publiés en français et en anglais dans les vingt dernières années; ces textes font écho à mes recherches dans le domaine des fondements de la logique, des mathématiques et de la physique dans une perspective constructiviste depuis un demi-siècle. C'est donc un parcours fondationnel sur la longue durée que j'ai voulu reproduire sans négliger la dimension critique des enjeux scientifiques de la logique, des mathématiques et de la physique avec la vigilance philosophique (...) qui remet aussi bien en question la philosophie traditionnelle dans ses retranchements métaphysiques. Cet assemblage n'est pas un florilège, mais plutôt un pot-pourri de textes parus dans des revues qui ne sont pas facilement accessibles pour les papers en anglais qui composent un medley d'articles scientifiques sans musique, mais avec un leitmotiv et des thèmes majeurs récurrents.J'ai ajouté des commentaires introductifs pour chacun des articles pour les situer dans le temps de leur publication et dans les débats actuels touchant le savoir scientifique."--Page 4 de la couverture. (shrink)

De Platon à Descartes et de Kant à Husserl, les idéalités mathématiques ont constamment été l'objet de l'attention philosophique; pour Platon et Descartes, idéalités discursives et régulatrices, pour Kant et Husserl, idéalités pures et objectives. Chez le dernier, bien que les tentatives inaugurates de philosophie mathématique aient été sévèrement critiquées par un Frege et malgré l'intérêt limité qu'elles ont aujourd'hui pour l'épistémologue des mathématiques, l'idéalité mathématique restera toujours un modèle — au sens d'idéal — épistémologique privilégié. Le Centre des Archives (...) — Husserl de Louvain publiera bientôt, par les soins de H. R. Brennecke de Cologne, un ouvrage réunissant les principaux écrits mathématiques de Husserl — dont la thèse de doctorat sur le calcul des variations écrite sous l'inspiration de Weierstrass, Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung — sous le titre Studia Mathematica. Si Husserl n'a pas pu mener à terme son projet de « Mannigfaltig-keitslehre », théorie des multiplicités — c'est de ce même terme que Cantor avait aussi baptisé sa théorie des ensembles au début — il n'en demeure pas moins que les analyses phénoménologiques ne sont pas dépourvues d'intérêt pour la doctrine de la science contemporaine et peuvent même constituer le langage approprié pour l'épistémologue des sciences naturelles ou sociales. C'est cela même que semble récuser Desanti, du moins pour l'épistémologie mathématique. Disons tout de suite que Desanti se défend mal d'utiliser le langage phénoménologique et s'il le conteste, c'est peut-être qu'il n'est pas parvenu à le dé-construire totalement, selon l'expression de Derrida. (shrink)

De Platon à Descartes et de Kant à Husserl, les idéalités mathématiques ont constamment été l'objet de l'attention philosophique; pour Platon et Descartes, idéalités discursives et régulatrices, pour Kant et Husserl, idéalités pures et objectives. Chez le dernier, bien que les tentatives inaugurates de philosophie mathématique aient été sévèrement critiquées par un Frege et malgré l'intérêt limité qu'elles ont aujourd'hui pour l'épistémologue des mathématiques, l'idéalité mathématique restera toujours un modèle — au sens d'idéal — épistémologique privilégié. Le Centre des Archives (...) — Husserl de Louvain publiera bientôt, par les soins de H. R. Brennecke de Cologne, un ouvrage réunissant les principaux écrits mathématiques de Husserl — dont la thèse de doctorat sur le calcul des variations écrite sous l'inspiration de Weierstrass, Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung — sous le titre Studia Mathematica. Si Husserl n'a pas pu mener à terme son projet de « Mannigfaltig-keitslehre », théorie des multiplicités — c'est de ce même terme que Cantor avait aussi baptisé sa théorie des ensembles au début — il n'en demeure pas moins que les analyses phénoménologiques ne sont pas dépourvues d'intérêt pour la doctrine de la science contemporaine et peuvent même constituer le langage approprié pour l'épistémologue des sciences naturelles ou sociales. C'est cela même que semble récuser Desanti, du moins pour l'épistémologie mathématique. Disons tout de suite que Desanti se défend mal d'utiliser le langage phénoménologique et s'il le conteste, c'est peut-être qu'il n'est pas parvenu à le dé-construire totalement, selon l'expression de Derrida. (shrink)

Les questions fondationnelles en logique et en mathématiques, les questions de fond et de fondements sont-elles des questions qui relèvent de la foi ou de la croyance ou des questions susceptibles d'analyse rigoureuse et philosophiquement décidables? C'est cette interrogation que je veux développer et à laquelle j'apporterai une réponse personnelle.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Artificial Virtues and the Equally Sensible Non-Knaves: A Response to Gauthier Annette C. Baier Gauthier's splendidly dialectical paper1 first sets out Hume's official Treatise account ofhow each personhas a self-interested motive to curb her natural but socially troublesome self-interest, by agreeing to the adoption ofthe artifices ofprivate property rights, transfer by consent, and promise (provided others are also agreeing to adopt them), andhow the sympathy-dependent moral sentiment (...) approves of such a redirection of"the interested passion." Enlightened self-interest gives us the natural obligation tojustice; the fact that it is morally approved turns it into a moral obligation. Self-hatred for any breaches of the moral obligation may come in to bolster the self-interested motivation, and this will be helped along by the extra artifices employed by educators and politicians. So far so good. But now enters the sensible knave, who queries the initial assumption that each will in fact gain more by strict conformity to the rules of the Humean social artifices than by occasional carefully calculated and undetected breaches of them. If the knave is right, then the Treatise story ofhow reasonable self-interested people can get themselves to conscientiously respect property rights (including rights ofbarter), and to keep promises, is in trouble. Only by an erroneous calculation of their interest could they end with the motivation which Hume attributes to them, and finds to be morally approvable.Gauthier argues that there are indications even in the Treatise that Hume is aware ofthe flawed nature ofhis official account, since he attributes "sophistry" to some attempted justifications of honest behaviour, and attributes "feigned acts" of impossible willing to some conscientious promise-keepers. Gauthier finds Hume to have, in the Treatise, a second, less official story ofwhat it takes to be motivated to be just—that it takes error, and letting oneself be taken in by feignings and sophistry. In the Enquiry Concerning the Principles ofMorals this submerged account surfaces in the sensible knave's challenge and Hume's admission that his own answer will not be satisfactory to the knave. The charms of official Humeanjustice, Gauthierconcludes, are spurious, sincethe "anatomy" of the account of the rational motivation to be just is known to be unsound. "The sensible knave's message is thathuman society... lacks any moral foundation." Volume XVIII Number 2 429 ANNETTE C. BAIER This is a sombre tale. One of its unwelcome implications is that Hume himself, really believing that the knave is right, but unwilling tobe seen tohave the bad grace to "dehver a theory, however true which... leads to a practice dangerous and pernicious," is simply trying to "sink" the knave's truth in oblivion by creating a smoke-screen of insincere rhetoric about the greater delights of consciousness of integrity over the knave's satisfaction in his ill-gotten gains. So there really are two sombre tales—one, attributed to Hume, about justice, and one about Hume's dupUcity (or is it mere cynical frivolity?): Gauthier crafts both stories beautifully, directing our attention to bits ofHume's text injust the right order for his dramatic purposes. But is he giving us truth or fiction? I completely agree with Gauthier's version of Hume's official Treatise story, that the moral obligation to justice supervenes on the "natural obligation" for which Hume believes the natural motivation to be collectively redirected self- (or family) interest.2 1 agree that there are one or two passages, especially in the Treatise section, "Of the obUgation of promises," that seem to jar with this account, and which much somehow be explained. I agree that Hume believes that his reply to the knave is, from the knave's point ofview, unsatisfactory. Now for some disagreements. First, about Hume's reply to the knave.3From the viewpointofthevirtuous dues-payingmemberof"the party of humankind," Hume's is a perfectly satisfactory reply. It will be plain truth, for a person with the other Humean virtues (including equity, which is listed as a natural virtue),4 that justice will bring as great or greater good than would judicious injustice. Even if it would be "simply preposterous" to believe that the social order is dangerously threatened by any... (shrink)

Il est plutôt rare qu’on rende compte dans une revue philosophique d’un manuel de physique théorique. Dans le cas du présent ouvrage, la chose n’est pas si incongrue puisque l’auteur, physicien québécois, n’est pas étranger aux questions philosophiques et s’est souvent mêlé des débats épistémologiques. En plus, son traité comporte plusieurs chapitres qui intéressent l’épistémologie de la physique tout en étant un manuel d’une envergure comparable aux classiques du genre en langue française, ceux de Cohen-Tannoudji, Messiah, Omnès ou Lévy-Leblond. On (...) y trouvera un exposé complet de l’appareil analytique de la mécanique quantique, des espaces de Hilbert de dimension finie à l’intégrale fonctionnelle de Feynman—avec quelques remarques sur la question délicate de la convergence, puisqu’on sait que l’intégrale de «chemins» n’a pas de justification mathématique «interne»—et au groupe de symétrie de l’hamiltonien pour la dynamique d’un système quantique dont l’évolution temporelle est décrite par l’équation de Schrödinger. Ces matières sont introduites avec force détails et le souci constant des applications, comme en témoigne le chapitre8 sur les solutions numériques et les méthodes d’approximation. Couvrant surtout la physique atomique et moléculaire sans aller jusqu’à la théorie des particules élémentaires et la théorie quantique des champs, l’ouvrage discute du problème de la mesure plus abondamment que le traité standard. C’est là d’ailleurs un des traits distinctifs de l’ouvrage et les chapitres6 sur l’interprétation de la mécanique quantique, 12sur l’opérateur densité et 21sur les corrélations à distance feront l’objet de mon analyse. (shrink)

Ce livre de M. Floucat fait suite à cet autre de lui-même, Pour une restau­ration du politique. Maritain l'intransigeant, de la Contre-Révolution à la démo­cratie (cf. RevSR., 2001, p. 262-264). Il en justifie le titre et en confirme les conclusions. YF. réfute l'idée qu'il y aurait deux Maritain, c'est-à-dire deux philosophies opposées du même auteur, avant et après la condamnation de l'Ac­tion française, position tenue par l'historien Philippe Chenaux et par le père Paul Valadier. Là contre..

What is Justice? Classic and Contemporary Readings, 2/e, brings together many of the most prominent and influential writings on the topic of justice, providing an exceptionally comprehensive introduction to the subject. It places special emphasis on "social contract" theories of justice, both ancient and modern, culminating in the monumental work of John Rawls and various responses to his work. It also deals with questions of retributive justice and punishment, topics that are often excluded from other volumes on justice. This new (...) edition features expanded and updated readings on justice and punishment and includes more recent responses to John Rawls's work. Part One of the book features selections from classical sources including Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Mencius, as well as excerpts from the Bible and the Koran. Part Two provides readings on the state of nature and the social contract, from Hobbes and Locke to Rawls, Nozick, Gauthier, and Baier. Part Three includes the Declaration of Independence and Amendments to the U.S. Constitution in addition to selections on property and social justice by Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Engels, Marx, Mill, and several contemporary authors. Part Four offers a wide variety of readings on punishment, several of which address the death penalty. Part Five begins with selections from Rawls's work and includes responses from Dworkin, Nagel, Nozick, MacIntyre, Sandel, Walzer, Okin, and Rawls himself. Each selection is preceded by a brief introduction and each of the five parts opens with an introduction. The volume is further enhanced by a general introduction and an updated and extensive bibliography. Ideal for a wide variety of courses including social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of law, and contemporary moral problems, What Is Justice?, 2/e, does not assume any philosophical or specialized background. It is also engaging reading for anyone interested in justice. (shrink)