: New genetic technologies continue to emerge that allow us to control the genetic endowment of future children. Increasingly the claim is made that it is morally "irresponsible" for parents to fail to use such technologies when they know their possible children are at risk for a serious genetic disorder. We believe such charges are often unwarranted. Our goal in this article is to offer a careful conceptual analysis of the language of irresponsibility in an effort to encourage more care (...) in its use. Two of our more important sub-claims are: A fair judgment of genetic irresponsibility necessarily requires a thick background description of the specific reproductive choice; and there is no necessary connection between an act's being morally wrong and its being irresponsible. These are distinct judgments requiring distinct justifications. (shrink)

Bioethicists appearing in the media have been accused of "shooting from the hip" (Rachels, 1991). The criticism is sometimes justified. We identify some reasons our interactions with the press can have bad results and suggest remedies. In particular we describe a target (fostering better public dialogue), obstacles to hitting the target (such as intrinsic and accidental defects in our knowledge) and suggest some practical ways to surmont those obstacles (including seeking out ways to write or speak at length, rather than (...) in sound bites). We make use of our own research into the way journalists quote bioethicists. We end by suggesting that the profession as a whole look into this question more fully. (shrink)

Le génie de Léonard de Vinci, celui de Michel-Ange ressortent mieux sur le fond révélateur de l’Académie de Careggi, où Marsile Ficin règne en maître, évoquant sinon invoquant Platon. La culture platonicienne entretenue par Ficin - mais Cristoforo Landino ou Ange Politien sont tour à tour convoqués - délimite le contour d’un nouvel ordre artistique dont André Chastel, dans un travail de jeunesse qui engage déjà ses subtiles analyses d’histoire de l’art et des idées, rend raison avec passion. En (...) quelques pages lumineuses, Jean Wirth donne à ce maître livre sa juste place dans une tradition historiographique qu’il a contribué à renouveler. (shrink)

Jean Bollack est mort le 4 décembre 2012, à l’âge de 89 ans. C’était un philologue, et un personnage, hors norme, comme il les aimait, et comme ceux qui l’ont connu l’ont aimé. Une façon, paradoxale sans doute, de fixer sa norme à lui, est de dire de l’écriture ce que Léonard disait de la peinture : è cosa mentale. Ce qui signifie que les textes ne sont pas ce pour quoi on les considère souvent, documents ou expressions. Lus par (...) Jean Bollack, ils étaient toujours la trace de la distance prise... (shrink)

William C. Hackett s English translation of Jean Wahl s "Existence humaine et transcendence" (1944) brings back to life an all-but-forgotten book that provocatively explores the philosophical concept of transcendence. Based on what Emmanuel Levinas called Wahl s famous lecture from 1937, "Existence humaine et transcendence" captured a watershed moment of European philosophy. Included in the book are Wahl's remarkable original lecture, the debate that ensued, with significant contributions by Gabriel Marcel and Nicolai Berdyaev, as well as letters submitted on (...) the occasion by Heidegger, Levinas, Jaspers, and other famous figures from that era. Concerned above all with the ineradicable felt value of human experience by which any philosophical thesis is measured, Wahl makes a daring clarification of the concept of transcendence and explores its repercussions through a masterly appeal to many (often surprising) places within the entire history of Western thought. Apart from its intrinsic philosophical significance as a discussion of the concepts of being, the absolute, and transcendence, Wahl's work is valuable insofar as it became a focal point for a great many other European intellectuals. Hackett has provided an annotated introduction to orient readers to this influential work of twentieth-century French philosophy and to one of its key figures. "Augmented by William C. Hackett's comprehensive introduction to Jean Wahl and his summary of Wahl's seminal "Human Existence and Transcendence," we now have Wahl's most important writings in English. The book presents the well-known ideas of transascendence and transdescendence and, in so doing, highlights the relevance of Wahl's 'philosophy of transcendence' today. Remarkable for its anticipations of later French thought, Wahl's work provides a key to much of what remains hidden in the tradition of twentieth-century French thought." Leonard Richard Lawlor, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy, Penn State University". (shrink)

Este artículo quisiera introducir al corazón de «la cosa misma». Esta «cosa» no es aquí el sistema hegeliano propiamente en su totalidad. Ello sería pretencioso. Se trata más bien de la estructura de este sistema, es decir de la forma especulativa que determina el desarrollo y el ordenamiento de su contenido y permite captar, en su coherencia específica, las distintas obras donde se expone la sistemática hegeliana. Estas obras son principalmente la Fenomenología del espíritu, la Enciclopedia de las ciencias filosóficas (...) y los diversos Cursos de Berlín. En las obras restantes encontramos todavía la Ciencia de la lógica –que es el despliegue detallado de lo que en forma abreviada encontramos en la lógica de la Enciclopedia– y los Principios de la filosofía del derecho, que constituyen una elaboración más profunda de la parte consagrada al espíritu objetivo en la Enciclopedia. (shrink)

Selon Léonard de Vinci, le peintre doit « se mettre à la place de l’esprit même de la nature », entendue comme genèse perpétuelle, force vitale et métamorphique. Dans sa démesure, un tel projet fascine autant qu’il terrifie. Pour répondre à ce défi, Léonard renouvelle profondément l’art de la peinture jusqu’à en faire, en théorie comme en pratique, un exercice sans cesse recommencé. Les notes et préceptes du Traité de peinture comme les techniques qu’il invente en témoignent – chiaroscuro, sfumato, (...) perspective aérienne, componimento inculto [esquisse informe ou sauvage], etc. À la jonction de la main et de l’esprit, l’exercice de peindre sollicite une ascèse perceptive et imaginative, à travers le jugement, le regard, porté sur le monde et ses formes mouvantes. Ascèse, au sens fort d’un désapprentissage permettant de détisser les rets de l’habitude et les tropismes subjectifs. Cet exercice opère non seulement le crayon à la main, par le déploiement de l’esquisse et la fécondité du repentir [pentimento], mais, dans un plus grand dénuement encore, en regardant « des murs souillés de beaucoup de taches », « avec l’idée d’imaginer quelque scène » – « incitation à la rêverie éveillée » comme l’appelle André Chastel. Dès lors l’exercice de peindre prend chez Léonard une tournure très étonnante et singulière : tout en privilégiant la dimension processuelle de l’œuvre, il s’agit de faire, pour ainsi dire, de la peinture sans pigment ni pinceau. Autrement dit, la prétention cosmique du peintre n’a d’égale que son aptitude au dénuement. (shrink)

Selon Léonard de Vinci, le peintre doit « se mettre à la place de l’esprit même de la nature », entendue comme genèse perpétuelle, force vitale et métamorphique. Dans sa démesure, un tel projet fascine autant qu’il terrifie. Pour répondre à ce défi, Léonard renouvelle profondément l’art de la peinture jusqu’à en faire, en théorie comme en pratique, un exercice sans cesse recommencé. Les notes et préceptes du Traité de peinture comme les techniques qu’il invente (ou réinvente) en témoignent – (...) chiaroscuro, sfumato, perspective aérienne, componimento inculto [esquisse informe ou sauvage], etc. À la jonction de la main et de l’esprit, l’exercice de peindre sollicite une ascèse perceptive et imaginative, à travers le jugement, le regard (« jugement de l’œil », giudizio dell’occhio), porté sur le monde et ses formes mouvantes. Ascèse, au sens fort d’un désapprentissage permettant de détisser les rets de l’habitude et les tropismes subjectifs. Cet exercice opère non seulement le crayon à la main, par le déploiement de l’esquisse et la fécondité du repentir [pentimento], mais, dans un plus grand dénuement encore, en regardant « des murs souillés de beaucoup de taches », « avec l’idée d’imaginer quelque scène » – « incitation à la rêverie éveillée » comme l’appelle André Chastel. Dès lors l’exercice de peindre (ou la peinture comme exercice) prend chez Léonard une tournure très étonnante et singulière : tout en privilégiant la dimension processuelle de l’œuvre, il s’agit de faire, pour ainsi dire, de la peinture sans pigment ni pinceau. Autrement dit, la prétention cosmique du peintre n’a d’égale que son aptitude au dénuement. (shrink)

Traditionally, this puzzle has been solved in various ways. Aristotle, for example, distinguished between “accidental” and “essential” changes. Accidental changes are ones that don't result in a change in an objects' identity after the change, such as when a house is painted, or one's hair turns gray, etc. Aristotle thought of these as changes in the accidental properties of a thing. Essential changes, by contrast, are those which don't preserve the identity of the object when it changes, such as when (...) a house burns to the ground and becomes ashes, or when someone dies. Armed with these distinctions, Aristotle would then say that, in the case of accidental changes, (1) and (2) are both false—a changing thing can really change one of its “accidental properties” and yet literally remain one and the same thing before and after the change. (shrink)

According to an externalist theory of content the content of an individual’s thoughts and the meaning of her words need not supervene on her intrinsic history. Two individuals may be intrinsically exactly alike yet entertain different thoughts, and attach different meanings to the words they use. ETC, which has been most notably defended by Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge, has attained the status of current orthodoxy. Nevertheless, some maintain that combining ETC with the premisses that we have privileged (...) access to our intentional states yields a surprising conclusion. It yields the conclusion that we can have a priori knowledge of features of the external world that seem only accessible to empirical investigation. Call the argument from ETC and privileged access to this conclusion the main argument. Some take the main argument to be a reductio of ETC. Since we have privileged access to our intentional states, and lack the a priori knowledge attributed by the main argument, ETC is false. Some take the main argument to refute the premisses that we have privileged access to those intentional states falling within the scope of ETC. Others see the main argument as a refutation of external world scepticism. We will show that the main argument does not support any of these interesting conclusions. We will show that the main argument does not threaten to restrict privileged access, refute external world scepticism, or constitute a reductio of ETC. More exactly, we will show that the most defensible version of ETC, even when combined with the premiss that we have unrestricted privileged access to our intentional states, yields no a priori knowledge of the external world. (shrink)

§1. Introduction. Natural sets that can be enumerated by a computable function always seem to be either actually computable or of the same complexity as the Halting Problem, the complete r.e. set K. The obvious question, first posed in Post [1944] and since then called Post's Problem is then just whether there are r.e. sets which are neither computable nor complete, i.e., neither recursive nor of the same Turing degree as K?Let be the r.e. degrees, i.e., the r.e. sets modulo (...) the equivalence relation of equicomputable with the partial order induced by Turing computability. This structure is a partial order with least element 0, the degree of the computable sets, and greatest element 1 or 0′, the degree of K. Post's problem then asks if there are any other elements of.The solution of Post's problem by Friedberg [1957] and Muchnik [1956] was followed by various algebraic or order theoretic results that were interpreted as saying that the structure was in some way well behaved:Theorem 1.1. Every countable partial ordering or even uppersemilattice can be embedded into.Theorem 1.2. For every nonrecursive r.e. degreeathere are r.e. degreesb, c < asuch thatb ∨ c = a.Theorem 1.3. For every pair of nonrecursive r.e. degreesa < bthere is an r.e. degreecsuch thata < c < b. (shrink)

An examination of David Hume's philosophy of religion that situates his conception "true religion" within the context of his overall science of human nature, his rejection of popular religion, and his Ciceronian influence"--Provided by publisher.

There would be, beyond the work carried out with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe on the Jena Romantics—the first phase of German Romanticism—in The Literary Absolute (1978; trans. 1988), a “romanticism”, recurrent and yet problematised, of Jean-Luc Nancy. Set forth in a little-known text on Flaubert, this “romanticism” reveals itself to be, not of a school of thought nor of a fantasy, but of a form insofar as it is conveyed by a very new regime of thinking. Moreover, it must itself be overcome, (...) by following the infinity of sense that the fragmentation of totalities qua the world imposes. (shrink)

What do Jerry Fodor and Bas van Fraassen, the archetypical scientific realist and his antirealist shadow, have in common? They’re both defenders of the theory-observation distinction. It isn’t surprising that a realist and an antirealist should agree about something; but it is curious that van Fraassen’s and Fodor’s defenses of the theory-observation distinction play diametrically opposite roles in their philosophical agendas. Van Fraassen needs it to support his antirealism; Fodor wants it in support of his realism. Van Fraassen needs the (...) distinction in order to protect antirealism from the charge of incoherence. Antirealists wish to ascribe a more exalted status to the observational import of a theory than to its nonobservational claims. Van Fraassen’s version of the antirealist thesis is that belief in observational claims is rationally warranted under some logically and nomologically possible conditions, whereas belief in theoretical claims is never warranted. This identifies the species of antirealism at issue as epistemic antirealism. This position would be a nonstarter if the observational import couldn’t be distinguished from the rest. And, in fact, denying the coherence of the theory-observation distinction has been a popular realist gambit in the debate about scientific realism. (shrink)

Drawing on a career-long exploration of 1960s French philosophy, Leonard Lawlor seeks a solution to 'the problem of the worst violence'. The worst violence is the reaction of total apocalypse without remainder; it is the reaction of complete negation and death; it is nihilism. Lawlor argues that it is not just transcendental violence that must be minimised: all violence must itself be reduced to its lowest level. He offers new ways of speaking to best achieve the least violence, which (...) he creatively appropriates from Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze and Guattari as 'speaking-freely', 'speaking-distantly' and 'speaking-in-tongues'. (shrink)

The paper presents the main ideas of Ultrafilter Logic (UL), as introduced by Veloso and others. A new proposal, Normality Logic (NL), is outlined for expanding the expressive power of UL. The system NL appears to offer a simpler solution to the problem of expressive power than the sorting strategy of Carnielli and Veloso. Interpretations of NL are discussed and an important point of contact to Hansson's notion of non-prioritized belief revision is observed.

The instrumentalist argument from the underdetermination of theories by data runs as follows: (1) every theory has empirically equivalent rivals; (2) the only warrant for believing one theory over another is its possession of a greater measure of empirical virtue; (3) therefore belief in any theory is arbitrary. In this paper, I examine the status of the first premise. Several arguments against the universal availability of empirically equivalent theoretical rivals are criticized, and four algorithms for producing empirically equivalent rivals are (...) defended. I conclude that the case for the first premise of the argument from underdetermination is very strong. The disposition of the argument itself depends on the fate of the second premise. (shrink)

Over the last decade the modeling and the storage of biological data has been a topic of wide interest for scientists dealing with biological and biomedical research. Currently most data is still stored in text files which leads to data redundancies and file chaos.In this paper we show how to use relational modeling techniques and relational database technology for modeling and storing biological sequence data, i.e. for data maintained in collections like EMBL or SWISS-PROT to better serve the needs for (...) these application domains.For this reason we propose a two step approach. First, we model the structure (and therefore the meaning of the) data using an Entity-Relationship approach. The ER model leads to a clean design of a relational database schema for storing and retrieving the DNA and protein data extracted from various sources. Our approach provides the clean basis for building complex biological applications that are more amenable to changes and software ports than their file-base counterparts. (shrink)

The paper presents the main ideas of Ultrafilter Logic (UL), as introduced by Veloso and others. A new proposal, Normality Logic (NL), is outlined for expanding the expressive power of UL. The system NL appears to offer a simpler solution to the problem of expressive power than the sorting strategy of Carnielli and Veloso. Interpretations of NL are discussed and an important point of contact to Hansson's notion of non-prioritized belief revision is observed.

One of Descartes’ greatest contributions to modern thought lies in his dualistic conception of mind and body. While the physical body in Descartes assumes a passive role in the ontological structure of reality, subject to mechanistic laws, the mind in Descartes, on the other hand, assumes an active role, as an organizing axis and producer of values and ideas, exercising a rational dominion over reality. physical reality. This dualistic Cartesian conception would generate important effects on the problem of mind-body interaction, (...) becoming the central theme debated by contemporary philosophy of mind. Contemporary theories of philosophy of mind seek to overcome this dualism, through neuroscience and cognitive psychology. These theories attempt to apply the reductionist scientific model to human mental phenomena and processes, describing them in non-mental, physical, and empirical terms. However, the reductionist project of these contemporary theories has not yet proved successful in explaining unobservable phenomena of the mind, such as consciousness, will and human subjectivity. (shrink)

Derrida wrote extensively on "the question of the animal." In particular, he challenged Heidegger's, Husserl's, and other philosophers' work on the subject, questioning their phenomenological criteria for distinguishing humans from animals. Examining a range of Derrida's writings, including his most recent _L'animal que donc je suis_, as well as _Aporias_, _Of Spirit_, _Rams_, and _Rogues_, Leonard Lawlor reconstructs a portrait of Derrida's views on animality and their intimate connection to his thinking on ethics, names and singularity, sovereignty, and the (...) notion of a common world. Derrida believed that humans and animals cannot be substantially separated, yet neither do they form a continuous species. Instead, in his "staggered analogy," Derrida asserts that all living beings are weak and therefore capable of suffering. This controversial claim both refuted the notion that humans and animals possess autonomy and contradicted the assumption that they possess the trait of machinery. However, it does offer the foundation for an argument-which Lawlor brilliantly and passionately defines in his book-in which humans are able to will this weakness into a kind of unconditional hospitality. Humans are not strong enough to keep themselves separate from animals. In other words, we are too weak to keep animals from entering into our sphere. Lawlor's argument is a bold approach to remedying "the problem of the worst," or the complete extermination of life, which is fast becoming a reality. (shrink)

The majority of North American corporations awakened to the need for their own ethical guidelines during the late 1970s and early 1980s, even though modern corporations are subject to a surprising multiplicity of external codes of ethics or conduct. This paper provides an understanding of both internal and external codes through a discussion of the factors behind the development of the codes, an analysis of internal codes and an identification of problems with them.