Dans la correspondance de Fénelon à Madame Guyon. Éros, force motrice qui vise la jouissance de la création, dialogue intimement avec l’ascétisme de la pulsion de mort – Thanatos. Cette polarité est en effet requise par le quiétisme. Il s’agit de parvenir à l’extrémité de Thanatos (« la faiblesse de l’homme » - son anéantissement), pour ensuite, entrevoir Éros (« l’espérance la plus folle » - l’union en Dieu). Le corpus de lettres structuré thématiquement autour de cette gageure de l’ (...) « union » dans la « mort », nous fournit donc l’occasion d’explorer la genèse des enjeux les plus radicaux de l’écriture fénelonienne dans son rapport contradictoire aux pulsions et leur manifestation stylistique principale : la répétition. C’est dans ce corpus que Fénelon évoque sa fameuse « sécheresse », celle qui fait de lui « un bateau qui n’a ni rames ni voiles », et qui a été depuis rapprochée de la pulsion de mort. Par l’intimité, voire le « secret » qu’elles révèlent, ainsi que leur datation entre 1689 et 1690, ces missives constituent un moyen de sonder les origines du lien entre mystique, psychanalyse et stylistique dans l’œuvre de Fénelon. Elles nous apprennent que dans cette relation épistolaire vécue et narrée comme exceptionnelle, la pulsion de vie trouve un point d’ancrage et, partant, la valeur littéraire des répétitions s’en trouve amoindri. Si les redondances expriment toujours la puissance du dogme du pur amour ou pulsion de mort - que les correspondants ne cessent de gloser, la pulsion de vie ne s’exprime que peu, tarie par les aveux d’amour en je-pense-à-toi et je-t-aime. Dans ces aveux, Fénelon scelle définitivement le mariage d’Eros et de Thanatos à travers l’expression « mourir d’envie ». Une fois ce mariage prononcé, l’écriture n’a plus lieu d’être et s’interrompt. (shrink)

Un amer constat paraît traverser l’air du temps, peut-être même le constitue-t-il. Les alertes et l’urgence face aux problèmes constitutifs de notre modernité se redoublent et se démultiplient, aussi bien quantitativement que qualitativement, fruits d’une interdépendance qui appelle des catastrophes en chaîne, sans que semble pouvoir pointer, même à l’horizon, ce spectre de réponses capables d’apaiser la détresse environnante, actuelle et à venir. Non pas que ces réponses soient impossibles :...

Degradation of eukaryotic RNAs that contain premature termination codons (PTC) during nonsense‐mediated mRNA decay (NMD) is initiated by RNA decapping or endonucleolytic cleavage driven by conserved factors. Models for NMD mechanisms, including recognition of PTCs or the timing and role of protein phosphorylation for RNA degradation are challenged by new results. For example, the depletion of the SMG5/7 heterodimer, thought to activate RNA degradation by decapping, leads to a phenotype showing a defect of endonucleolytic activity of NMD complexes. This phenotype (...) is not correlated to a decreased binding of the endonuclease SMG6 with the core NMD factor UPF1, suggesting that it is the result of an imbalance between active (e.g., in polysomes) and inactive (e.g., in RNA‐protein condensates) states of NMD complexes. Such imbalance between multiple complexes is not restricted to NMD and should be taken into account when establishing causal links between gene function perturbation and observed phenotypes. (shrink)

Objectives: To clarify how lay people and health professionals judge the acceptability of ending the life of a terminally ill patient.Design: Participants judged this acceptability in a set of 16 scenarios that combined four factors: the identity of the actor , the patient’s statement or not of a desire to have his life ended, the nature of the action as relatively active or passive , and the type of suffering .Participants: 115 lay people and 72 health professionals in Toulouse, France.Main (...) measurements: Mean acceptability ratings for each scenario for each group.Results: Life ending interventions are more acceptable to lay people than to the health professionals. For both, acceptability is highest for intractable physical suffering; is higher when patients end their own lives than when physicians do so; and, when physicians are the actors, is higher when patients have expressed a desire to die than when they have not . In contrast, when patients perform the action, acceptability for the lay people and nurse’s aides does not depend on whether the patient has expressed a desire to die, while for the nurses and physicians unassisted suicide is more acceptable than physician assisted suicide.Conclusions: Lay participants judge the acceptability of life ending actions in largely the same way as do healthcare professionals. (shrink)

Objective: To determine under what conditions lay people and health professionals find it acceptable for a physician to breach confidentiality to protect the wife of a patient with a sexually transmitted disease .Methods: In a study in France, breaching confidentiality in 48 scenarios were accepted by 144 lay people, 10 psychologists and 7 physicians. The scenarios were all possible combinations of five factors: severity of the disease ; time taken to discuss this with ; intent to inform the spouse about (...) the disease ; intent to adopt protective behaviours ; and decision to consult an expert in STDs , 2×2×3×2×2. The importance and interactions of each factor were determined, at the group level, by performing analyses of variance and constructing graphs.Results: The concept of breaching confidentiality to protect a wife from her husband’s STD was favoured much more by lay people and psychologists than by physicians . The patient’s stated intentions to protect his wife and to inform her of the disease had the greatest impact on acceptability. A cluster analysis showed groups of lay participants who found breaching confidentiality “always acceptable” , “depending on the many circumstances” , requiring “consultation with an expert” and “never acceptable ”.Conclusions: Most people in France are influenced by situational factors when deciding if a physician should breach confidentiality to protect the spouse of a patient infected with STD. (shrink)

Time is a critical issue for organizations, especially for healthcare organizations. In the last three decades, concerns over the transformation of healthcare organizations have increasingly gained attention in the literature, indicating how task duration has been reduced to improve clinical-workflow efficiency. This article seeks to raise questions about the experience of acceleration and the ways in which this brings ethical implications to the fore for health professionals within healthcare organizations. Current approaches to acceleration fail to place ethical considerations as their (...) central concern. This article, drawing on the theory of social acceleration and dynamic stabilization of Hartmut Rosa, offers a deeper analysis of ethical perspectives concerning acceleration. To do so, we draw on an in-depth case study, ethnographic immersion, and 48 semi-structured interviews with professionals within a French public hospital. We also carried out 20 telephonic interviews with directors in different hospitals of various sizes. We contribute to the literature by critically exploring the intersection between the experience of acceleration and ethics. We identify four broad categories of ethical implications for health professionals: the expected flexibility of directors facing uncertainty; the erosion of the ethics of care; the process of mechanistic dehumanization; and the adverse effects of speed on emotional work and workers’ well-being. (shrink)

Selon différentes conceptions du genre et des parcours de transition, toujours singulières mais empreintes d’attentes sociales, l’enveloppe corporelle du sujet transgenre se métamorphose. Lors d’entretiens de recherche et d’épreuves projectives (Rorschach et tat ), deux jeunes adultes transgenres aux profils psychopathologiques névrotiques présentaient une sensibilité marquée aux normes, à la morale et aux attentes sociétales. La légitimité, la culpabilité et la honte étaient des problématiques redondantes. Différents temps de transitions subjectives, familiales, sociales et corporelles se sont trouvés en jeu : (...) le passage à l’âge adulte, une vie étudiante hors du giron familial. Ces deux situations illustrent une discussion sur les transitions du corps et des enveloppes chez des sujets transgenres, entre seconde peau et moi-peau corsets. (shrink)

Food systems are made of a myriad of actors, visions and interests. Collaborative governance arrangement may foster their transformation towards greater sustainability when conventional means, such as state-oriented planning, technological developments or social innovations provide insufficient impetus. However, such arrangements may achieve transformative results only under certain conditions and in specific contexts. Despite an abundant literature on participatory schemes, the success for collaborative governance arrangements remains partially understood and deserves academic attention, in particular in the field of food systems reform. (...) This article provides an in-depth analysis of an empirical case study in the Walloon Region (Belgium), where the administration for sustainable development initiated a six-month participatory process to collectively construct a roadmap towards a sustainable regional food system. The article explores the extent to which the process has allowed transformative voices to emerge, and assesses whether the outcome provides a promising tool for adopting a transformative policy at the regional scale. It argues that the facilitation process insufficiently attenuated existing power relations and highlights key underlying factors (including time, resources, expertise and coalition building) that, like in classical negotiation settings, strengthen or weaken specific actors. It discusses the link between the results of the participatory process and the potential for policy-makers to build upon these to guide further the region’s food system towards a sustainable future. (shrink)

Résumé D’une multiplicité inhérente à la pratique de la danse contemporaine, nous dessinerons les contours de l’interprète, les graphies d’un danseur, des deux dimensions du papier aux trois dimensions du corps et du plateau. De l’écriture à l’interprétation, de la composition à la réception en passant par des notions de transmission ou de traduction et au sein de quelques réalisations chorégraphiques, nous analyserons des processus, par le biais de la description kinesthésique, relative à la sensation et la construction du mouvement (...) dansé. (shrink)

Integrative experiment design should be extended to thought-experiments. Thought-experiments are closely connected to “real” experiments. They are involved in devising the design space of theories and possible experiments. The latter may be partitioned into experiments to be really performed and mere thought-experiments. The proposed extension of integrative experiment design lends guidance to a more methodical performance of thought-experiments.

In this article, we put forward a new strategy for teaching the concept of energy. In the first section, we discuss how the concept is currently treated in educational programmes at primary and secondary level (taking the case of France), the learning difficulties that arise as well as the main teaching strategies presented in science education literature. In the second section, we argue that due to the complexity of the concept of energy, rethinking how it is taught should involve teacher (...) training specifically developed for the concept. In our view, Epistemology and the History of Science and Technology (EHST) is the best method for a full understanding of the concept of energy and should thus be included in the teacher training programme. In the third section, we provide a general framework for a teacher training programme on energy, based on the history and epistemology of the concept and structured on the following three questions: ‘What is the origin of the concept of energy?’, ‘What is energy?’ and ‘What purpose does the concept of energy serve?’. (shrink)

This two-part paper reviews a scholarly debate on an alleged tension in Frege's philosophy of logic. In Section 1 of Part I, I discuss Frege's view that logic is concerned with establishing norms for correct thinking and is therefore a normative science. In Section 2, I explore a different understanding of the role of logic that Frege seems to advance: logic is constitutive of the very possibility of thought, because it sets forth necessary conditions for thought. Hence, the tension the (...) view according to which logic is normative for thought seems to be incompatible with the idea that abiding by the laws of logic forms a precondition for thought. In Section 1 of Part II, I survey a number of interpretations of Frege's conception of logic that deal with this question. I show that they are for the most part either normative readings (emphasising the former understanding of the nature of logic) or constitutive readings (emphasising the latter). Finally, in Section 2, I adjudicate the debate and aim at reconciling the normative and the constitutive strands in Frege's conception of logic. (shrink)

This paper challenges a standard interpretation according to which Frege’s conception of logic (early and late) is at odds with the contemporary one, because on the latter’s view logic is formal, while on Frege’s view it is not, given that logic’s subject matter is reality’s most general features. I argue that Frege – in Begriffsschrift – retained the idea that logic is formal; Frege sees logic as providing the ‘logical cement’ that ties up together the contentful concepts of specific sciences, (...) not the most general truths. Finally, I discuss how Frege conceives of the application of Begriffsschrift, and of its status as a ‘lingua characteristica’. (shrink)

This two-part paper reviews a scholarly debate on an alleged tension in Frege ’s philosophy of logic. In Section 1 of Part I, I discuss Frege ’s view that logic is concerned with establishing norms for correct thinking and is therefore a normative science. In Section 2, I explore a different understanding of the role of logic that Frege seems to advance: logic is constitutive of the very possibility of thought, because it sets forth necessary conditions for thought. Hence, the (...) tension the view according to which logic is normative for thought seems to be incompatible with the idea that abiding by the laws of logic forms a precondition for thought. In Section 1 of Part II, I survey a number of interpretations of Frege ’s conception of logic that deal with this question. I show that they are for the most part either normative readings or constitutive readings. Finally, in Section 2, I adjudicate the debate and aim at reconciling the normative and the constitutive strands in Frege ’s conception of logic. (shrink)

This paper addresses Frege's discussion of illogical thought in the introduction to Basic Laws of Arithmetic. After a brief introduction, I discuss Frege's claims that logic is normative vis-à-vis thought, and not descriptive, and his opposition to the idea that logical laws express psychological necessities. I argue that these two strands of Frege's polemic against psychologism constitute two motivating factors behind his allowing for the possibility of illogical thought. I then explore a line of thought—originally advanced by Joan Weiner—according to (...) which Frege should have rejected illogical thought as not constituting a genuine possibility. I argue that, once developed, this line of thought constitutes an important correction (moreover, one that is consistent with his two aforementioned anti-psychologistic strands) to Frege's own response to the possibility of illogical thought. -/- . (shrink)

This volume aims to clarify the epistemic potential of applying evolutionary thinking outside biology, and provides a survey of the current state of the art in research on relevant topics in the life sciences, the philosophy of science, and the various areas of evolutionary research outside the life sciences. By bringing together chapters by evolutionary biologists, systematic biologists, philosophers of biology, philosophers of social science, complex systems modelers, psychologists, anthropologists, economists, linguists, historians, and educators, the volume examines evolutionary thinking within (...) and outside the life sciences from a multidisciplinary perspective. While the chapters written by biologists and philosophers of science address theoretical aspects of the guiding questions and aims of the volume, the chapters written by researchers from the other areas approach them from the perspective of applying evolutionary thinking to non-biological phenomena. Taken together, the chapters in this volume do not only show how evolutionary thinking can be fruitfully applied in various areas of investigation, but also highlight numerous open problems, unanswered questions, and issues on which more clarity is needed. As such, the volume can serve as a starting point for future research on the application of evolutionary thinking across disciplines. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a central aspect of the “picture theory” in the Tractatus – the “identity requirement” – namely the idea that a proposition represents elements in reality as combined in the same way as its elements are combined. After introducing the Tractatus' views on the nature of the proposition, I engage with a “nominalist” interpretation, according to which the Tractatus holds that relations are not named in propositions. I claim that the nominalist account can only be maintained by (...) rejecting the “identity requirement.” I then consider an opposite – “realist” – interpretation, according to which Tractarian names include names of properties and relations. I argue that, although it can accommodate the “identity requirement,” the realist interpretation falls short of providing a correct interpretation of the Tractatus' conception of a name. I conclude by presenting an alternative account (to both nominalism and realism) of the Tractatus' conception of a name. (shrink)

In this article I engage with a recent debate vis-à-vis Kant’s conception of logic, which deals with whether Kant saw logical laws as normative for, or rather as constitutive of, the faculty of understanding. On the former view, logical laws provide norms for the correct exercise of the understanding; on the latter, they define the necessary structure of the faculty of understanding per se. I claim that these two positions are not mutually exclusive, as Kant held both a normative and (...) a constitutive conception of logic. I also sketch a parallelism between Kant’s conceptions of logic and of ethics: Kant’s twofold conception of logic parallels his view of moral laws as normative (for the human will) but constitutive (of a holy will). (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss Wittgenstein's conception of truth in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Section 1 sets the scene by exploring how the notion of truth is in the Tractatus intertwined with notions such as sense and picture. In section 2 I discuss a traditional interpretation that sees the Tractatus as committed to truth as correspondence. In sections 3 and 4 I discuss two more recent alternative lines of interpretation; according to one, we should interpret truth in the (...) Tractatus as a relation of identity. According to the other, the Tractatus endorses a deflationary account of truth. I conclude in section 5 by adjudicating the interpretative debate. (shrink)

This paper investigates Wittgenstein’s account of the relation between elementary and molecular propositions (and thus, also, the propositions of logic) in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I start by sketching a natural reading of that relation – which I call the “bipartite reading” – holding that the Tractatus gives an account of elementary propositions, based on the so-called picture theory, and a different account of molecular ones, based on the principle of truth- functionality. I then show that such a reading cannot be (...) attributed to Wittgenstein, because he holds the view that an explanation of logical complexity is already given by a correct account of the (pictorial) nature of elementary propositions; this is implied in his claim that “an elementary proposition contains all logical constants/operations in itself”. After clarifying Wittgenstein’s notion of an operation from the Notes on Logic to the Tractatus, I finally explain why Wittgenstein claims that an elementary proposition contains all logical operations in itself, and hence why he can be said to provide a unified (and thus not bipartite) account of language and logic. (shrink)

This paper presents and discusses some recent interpretations of the form of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Borutti (2010) interprets the Tractatus as a sort of maze, where its propositions – far from leading to a single conclusion – represent different paths and (intersecting) ways of elucidating the essence of language and reality. Bazzocchi (2010), by contrast, describes the Tractatus as having a tree-like structure, its main propositions being the roots of the tree and the decimal ones branches and leaves, different levels of (...) comment on the main propositions. On the view advocated by Diamond and Conant (2010), the Tractatus has a ladder structure (where its propositions are rungs) through which it guides its reader to get rid of philosophical confusions. The paper finally briefly discusses how these readings deal with the question of Tractarian nonsense. (shrink)

This thesis discusses some central aspects of Wittgenstein's conception of language and logic in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and brings them into relation with the philosophies of Frege and Russell. The main contention is that a fruitful way of understanding the Tractatus is to see it as responding to tensions in Frege's conception of logic and Russell's theory of judgement. In the thesis the philosophy of the Tractatus is presented as developing from these two strands of criticism and thus as the (...) culmination of the philosophy of logic and language developed in the early analytic period. Part one examines relevant features of Frege's philosophy of logic. Besides shedding light on Frege's philosophy in its own right, it aims at preparing the ground for a discussion of those aspects of the Tractatus' conception of logic which derive from Wittgenstein's critical response to Frege. Part two first presents Russell's early view on truth and judgement, before considering several variants of the multiple relation theory of judgement, devised in opposition to it. Part three discusses the development of Wittgenstein's conception of language and logic, beginning with Wittgenstein's criticism of the multiple relation theory and his early theory of sense, seen as containing the seeds of the picture theory of propositions presented in the Tractatus. I then consider the relation between Wittgenstein's pictorial conception of language and his conception of logic, arguing that Wittgenstein's understanding of sense in terms of bipolarity grounds his view of logical complexity and of the essence of logic as a whole. This view, I show, is free from the internal tensions that affect Frege's understanding of the nature of logic. (shrink)

In this paper I take the opportunity of the recent publication of Pieranna Garavaso’s and Nicla Vassallo’s Frege on Thinking and Its Epistemic Significance (with whose main tenets this paper is in constant dialogue) to provide an overview of some important components of Frege’s conception of logic. Section 1 discusses Frege’s view that the task of logic is to provide justification for what we think, and in sections 2 and 3 this idea is shown to play a central role in (...) his anti-psychologistic view that logic is normative for thinking. Section 4 offers a survey of Frege’s manifold conception of thinking. Finally, section 5 discusses the rela-tions between thinking and language in Frege’s philosophy. (shrink)

This paper examines an aspect of the debate between the so-called “traditional” and “resolute” (or “therapeutic”) interpretations of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, by focusing on the notion of nonsense and on the role that the context principle plays for a correct interpretation of that notion. In the first section the author distinguishes between “substantial” and “austere” conceptions of Tractarian nonsense; in the second section it is discussed how the austere conception of nonsense – held by the resolute interpreters of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus – (...) derives from a literal reading of the context principle. In the third section, by concentrating on some sections of the Tractatus where the notion of nonsense in explicitly discussed, it is shown that such a literal interpretation of the context principle cannot be attributed to Wittgenstein. In the last section, by combining remarks on contextuality, meaning and nonsense, a reading aimed at reconciling the Tractatus’ view of nonsense and the context principle is sketched. (shrink)

This paper investigates Wittgenstein's "notorious" criticism of Russell's theory of judgment. Instead of advancing a further new interpretation of it, though, I analyze and discuss some of the most promising readings of the Russell/Wittgenstein dispute put forward in the secondary literature; I aim to show that, despite their alleged reciprocal opposition, they cohere with each other because they are, at bottom, different ways of highlighting the same question. I then connect Wittgenstein's criticism of Russell to the account of the nature (...) of the proposition presented in the Tractatus, arguing that the latter can be seen as a natural development of the former. Finally, I make a quick connection between Wittgenstein's criticism of Russell and the conception of the world as the totality of facts, as presented in the Tractatus. (shrink)

Cette contribution étudie les caractéristiques de la Convention citoyenne pour le climat en tant que nouvelle procédure participative. Confrontée aux catégories du droit de l’environnement, ainsi qu’à d’autres modèles informels qui l’ont précédée, elle affirme sa singularité. Son intégration particulière dans le processus normatif y participe également. En effet, la traduction juridique des propositions de la Convention est déjà amorcée. En outre, la réforme en cours du Conseil économique, social et environnemental devrait pérenniser l’organisation de délibérations entre citoyens tirés au (...) sort, inscrivant ainsi le prototype de la Convention pour le climat dans un dispositif participatif renouvelé. (shrink)

The ideas Darwin published in On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man in the nineteenth century continue to have a major impact on our current understanding of the world in which we live and the place that humans occupy in it. Darwin’s theories constitute the core of the contemporary life sciences, and elicit enduring fascination as a potentially unifying basis for various branches of biology and the biomedical sciences. They can be used to understand the biological ground (...) of human cognition, common behavioral patterns and disorders, and psychopathology more generally in psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience. Perhaps the best known expression of this fact is Dobzhansky’s famous dictum that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” (Dobzhansky T. Am Zool 4:443–452, 1964: 449; Am Biol Teach 35:125–129, 1973: 125), and given that all human behavior supervenes on some biological basis, evolutionary thinking has a vast scope even just in this regard. (shrink)