Conceptual analysis of health and disease is portrayed as consisting in the confrontation of a set of criteria—a “definition”—with a set of cases, called instances of either “health” or “ disease.” Apart from logical counter-arguments, there is no other way to refute an opponent’s definition than by providing counter-cases. As resorting to intensional stipulation is not forbidden, several contenders can therefore be deemed to have succeeded. This implies that conceptual analysis alone is not likely to decide between naturalism and normativism. (...) An alternative to this approach would be to examine whether the concept of disease can be naturalized. (shrink)

In Western countries today, a growing number of women delay motherhood until their late 30s and even 40s, as they invest time in pursuing education and career goals before starting a family. This social trend results from greater gender equality and expanded opportunities for women and is influenced by the availability of contraception and assisted reproductive technologies. However, advanced maternal age is associated with increased health risks, including infertility. While individual medical solutions such as ART and elective egg freezing can (...) promote reproductive autonomy, they entail significant risks and limitations. We thus argue that women should be better informed regarding the risks of advanced maternal age and ART, and that these individual solutions need to be supplemented by a public health approach, including policy measures that provide women with the opportunity to start a family earlier in life without sacrificing personal career goals. (shrink)

This paper, on the psychopathology and phenomenology of schizophrenia, presents a selective summary of the work of the French psychiatrist, Eugene Minkowski (1985-1972), one of the first psychiatrists of an explicitly phenomenological persuasion. Minkowki believed that the phenomenological essence of schizophrenia (what he called the "trouble générateur") consists in a loss of "vital contact with reality" (VCR) and manifests itself as autism. Loss of vital contact with reality signifies a morbid change in the temporo-spatial structure of experiencing, particularly in the (...) diminishment and modification of temporal-dynamic aspects and a corresponding predominance of spatial-static factors. The patient tries to compensate for this primary morbid process through a variety of affective-cognitive preoccupations (rich autism) or sterile intellectuoid attitudes (autisme pauvre). Autism signifies a morbidly modified existential pattern that affects the domains of experience and expression as well as action. Minkowski's psychopathological analyses are illustrated by brief clinical vignettes of his patients. (shrink)

Résumé — Dans le § VI du De fato, Alexandre d’Aphrodise déclare exposer la conception péripatéticienne du destin. Il pose à cet effet l’identité de la nature et du destin. Le but de cet article est d’expliciter la détermination de la nature mise en œuvre pour établir cette identité et de la confronter à la théorie aristotélicienne. L’examen est mené d’un double point de vue : celui des procédures méthodologiques utilisées et celui du concept de nature qui en résulte.Remarques sur (...) la conception de la nature dans les § 2-6 du De Fato d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise— In De fato VI, Alexander of Aphrodisias states the Peripatetic theory of Fate, arguing that nature and Fate are identical. What notion of nature results from this statement ? Is it still Aristotelian ? The question will be examined under two aspects, methodological and conceptual. (shrink)

Fashion has a varied and explosive history. Our responsibility as educators preparing students and therefore careers for this context places us in a very difficult and complex position. Do we prepa...

It is argued that multiscale approaches are necessary for an explanatory modeling of biological systems. A first step, besides common to the multiscale modeling of physical and living systems, is a bottom-up integration based on the notions of effective parameters and minimal models. Top-down effects can be accounted for in terms of effective constraints and inputs. Biological systems are essentially characterized by an entanglement of bottom-up and top-down influences following from their evolutionary history. A self-consistent multiscale scheme is proposed to (...) capture the ensuing circular causality. Its differences with standard mean-field self-consistent equations and slow-fast decompositions are discussed. As such, this scheme offers a way to unravel the multilevel architecture of living systems and their regulation. Two examples, genome functions and biofilms, are detailed. (shrink)

As football (soccer) clubs are facing different ethical challenges, many clubs are turning to ethical codes to counteract unethical behaviour. However, both in- and outside the sport field, uncertainty remains about the effectiveness of these ethical codes. For the first time, a longitudinal study design was adopted to evaluate code effectiveness. Specifically, a sample of non-professional football clubs formed the subject of our inquiry. Ethical code effectiveness was assessed by the measurement of the ethical climate. A repeated-measurements ANOVA revealed a (...) positive evolution of the ethical climate within the studied football clubs. This evolution could not be ascribed to the mere presence of an ethical code. However, several potential code effectiveness determining characteristics were also included in the research design. Some of these accounted partly for the evolution of the ethical climate of the football clubs. Results suggest that football clubs should incorporate their ethical code into a broader ethical programme, with attention for professionalization initiatives, stakeholder management, ethical leadership, and whistle-blowing protection. (shrink)

Aging is an elusive property of life, and many important questions about aging depend on its definition. This article proposes to draw a definition from the scientific literature on aging. First, a broad review reveals five features commonly used to define aging: structural damage, functional decline, depletion, typical phenotypic changes or their cause, and increasing probability of death. Anything that can be called ‘aging’ must present one of these features. Then, although many conditions are not consensual instances of aging, aging (...) is consensually described as a process of loss characterized by a rate and resulting from the counteraction of protective mechanisms against mechanisms that limit lifespan. Beyond such an abstract definition, no one has yet succeeded in defining aging by a specific mechanism of aging because of an explanatory gap between such a mechanism and lifespan, a consensual explanandum of a theory of aging. By contrast, a sound theoretical definition can be obtained by revisiting the evolutionary theory of aging. Based on this theory, aging evolves thanks to the impossibility that natural selection eliminates late traits that are neutral mainly due to decreasing selective pressure. Yet, the results of physiological research suggest that this theory should be revised to also account for the small number of different aging pathways and for the existence of mechanisms counteracting these pathways, that must, on the contrary, have been selected. A synthetic, but temporary definition of aging can finally be proposed. (shrink)

While many experts and organizations have recognized infertility as a public health issue, most governments have not yet adopted a public health approach to infertility. This article argues in favor of such an approach by discussing the various implications of infertility for public health. We use a conceptual framework that focuses on the dual meaning of the term ‘public’ in this context: the health of the public, as opposed to that of individuals, and the public/collective nature of the required interventions. (...) This analysis highlights the need for a comprehensive public health approach toward infertility, points to some initiatives that are already in place and demonstrates that prevention is currently a neglected—yet much needed——element. We move on to discuss the sensitive nature of prevention initiatives as a probable explanation for their scarcity. We illustrate the complexity of prevention through an analysis of an infertility prevention campaign previously conducted in the United States, which provoked significant controversy. We use a public health communication ethics framework to expose the strengths and the shortcomings of this campaign, and conclude that prevention initiatives targeting infertility can indeed be conducted in a sensible way that promotes autonomy while improving public health. (shrink)

The current gridlock around climate change and how to address our global sustainability issues can be understood as resulting from clashes in worldviews. This article summarizes some of the research on worldviews in the contemporary West, showing that these worldviews have different, and frequently complementary, potentials, as well as different pitfalls, with respect to addressing climate change. Simultaneously, the overview shows that, because of their innate reflexivity and their capacity to appreciate and synthesize multiple perspectives, individuals inhabiting integrative worldviews may (...) have particular potentials with respect to addressing climate change. In the conclusion I argue that the policy challenge is to develop strategies that inspire the different worldview groups to actualize their potentials while mitigating their pitfalls, as well as to unite and mobilize them around a single vision that speaks to them all. (shrink)

Si l’on possède peu de témoignages sur la manière dont les femmes du XIXe siècle ont vécu le vieillissement, les discours des médecins sur cette question abondent. La ménopause est décrite par eux comme une période particulièrement dangereuse qui, à l’instar de la puberté, bouleverse toute l’économie de la femme. Au nombre des maladies qui sont susceptibles de l’assaillir lorsque s’interrompt le mécanisme régulateur que représentait la menstruation s’ajoute la blessure narcissique que provoque la perte de sa féminité et l’entrée (...) dans l’âge de décrépitude. Plus encore, la femme perdant avec la faculté d’engendrer sa vocation sociale (la maternité), cette période, souvent qualifiée d’âge critique ou d’âge dangereux, s’annonce comme une véritable mort sociale. Privée de sa capacité de séduction, fragilisée par la révolution physiologique qui s’opère en elle, la femme, encouragée à se retirer d’un monde où elle ne peut plus briller, est plus que jamais assignée à la sphère privée. (shrink)

Le devenir d’un groupe de jeunes qui ont vécu en moyenne huit ans en familles d’accueil et sont sortis du placement depuis plus de cinq ans a été analysé et mis en regard avec l’évolution de l’histoire de l’institution de placement. L’objectif était de mesurer les effets conjugués des carences, maltraitements et ruptures dans la vie des enfants et adolescents et ceux dus à la stabilité d’un milieu environnant sur l’insertion sociale et professionnelle à l’âge adulte. L’article présente aussi quelques-uns (...) des souvenirs de ces adultes âgés de 23 à 39 ans, témoignages de leur histoire d’enfants ayant vécu entre deux familles. (shrink)

To those who have observed it for a long time, the People's Republic of China today has the appearance of a convalescent who has made his way back from a long illness and is slowly relearning to use his vital organs. And this is the consequence of the decisive and remarkable measures taken after the death of Mao Tse-tung and the subsequent elimination of his abusive widow, Chiang Ch'ing, by survivors of the great cultural revolution, now in the upper circles (...) of the Chinese Communist party. Explanations were provided in the “Resolution on the History of the Chinese Communist Party” adopted June 27, 1981, at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Eleventh Party Congress. But the real turning point dates from 1978, in the historic third session of this same Eleventh Congress when the opposition to Mao's chosen successor, Hua Guo-feng, called upon participants to “liberate their minds and to seek truth in the facts”. A new People's China had begun to take shape, and although it is not yet possible to pass judgement on its future prospects, visitors who travel there today can only bear witness to the return of this immense population to existential reality, while little by little the “barracks socialism” of the ultra-leftists is dying out. (shrink)

Sur le modèle du On Death IV (De morte) de Philodème, publié chez le même éditeur en 2009 par W. B. Henry, cet ouvrage propose, après une introduction de trente-quatre pages, une traduction – fondée sur l’édition donnée par Christian Jensen en 1906 pour Teubner – de cet écrit de Philodème tenu par lui comme un livre sur l’économie. Même si dans les « Acknowledgements » (p. vii) V. Tsouna rappelle qu’elle a participé à la traduction de L’Économie pour Les (...) Épicuriens co-édité par Daniel Delattr... (shrink)

Within a digital corpus of 20 Italian post-unification conduct books, UAM CorpusTool is used to perform a manual annotation of 13 emotive rhetorical figures as indices of “shown” emotion. The analysis consists in two text mining tasks: classification, which identifies emotive figures using the 13 categories, and clustering, which identifies groups, i.e. clusters where emotive figures co-occur. Emotive clusters mainly discuss diligence and parsimony—personal values linked to self-improvement for which reader agreement is not taken for granted. In this corpus they (...) function as “moving” values, that is, values acting recurrently as contexts for “argued” emotion. (shrink)

The article traces the origin and development of the concept of social skills in first and foremost American academic discourse. As soon as the concept of social skills was coined, the concern for people lacking such skills started and has been on the increase ever since. After the analysis of the academic history of the concept follows an examination of the implementation of a range of assessment instruments and training programmes related to social skills in contemporary Danish welfare institutions. The (...) analysis forwarded in the article thus demonstrates how an intellectual idea may develop and travel - and on its journey connect to pre-existing cultural logics and societal concerns. The idea of social skills has through its development been made uncontroversial – everybody wants to be skilful. The concept does, however, convey an individualistic view on social life and imposes a reflexivity over own performance on the participants. Further, its normative character contributes to a problematization of those who are perceived to lack these skills. (shrink)

Dès ses premières réalisations, le mouvement de l’Éducation nouvelle a défendu une mixité coéducative, une « coéducation des sexes » caractéristique de son projet. L’évolution des mentalités, des moeurs et de la société d’entre-deux-guerres y est sans doute pour beaucoup. Cet article se propose d’expliciter pourquoi et comment cette coéducation est devenue un principe fédérateur pour l’Éducation nouvelle.

Sports organizations face various ethical challenges. To tackle these, ethical codes are becoming increasingly popular instruments. However, a lot of questions remain concerning their effectiveness. There is a particular lack of knowledge when it comes to their form and content, and on the influence of these features on the effectiveness of these codes of ethics. Therefore, we developed a framework to analyze ethical codes and used this to assess codes of ethics in sports clubs from six disciplines. The form and (...) content characteristics of the codes were tested for their impact on the ethical climate of sports clubs. Our results show that most codes focus on the themes of integrity, and on solidarity among the members of sports clubs. Deontological phrasing is dominant in ethical codes in sports clubs. The occurrence of comprehension aids, such as examples, and procedural content, such as the mentioning of sanctions, is low. When it comes to code effectiveness, i.e., the influence on the ethical climate, we see a positive significant effect of the use of consequentialist oriented statements, and of the combination of regulatory and inspirational phrasing. Also the presence of explicit guidelines for the members of the board had a positive significant affect. This shows that codes should be a source of inspiration and stimulate moral awareness, rather than merely guide behavior by simple rules. Other content elements do not influence code effectiveness, suggesting that ethical codes merely have a function of raising ethical awareness in sports clubs. These results help to shed light on what it takes for a code of ethics to become a useful and effective instrument to tackle unethical behavior in sports clubs. (shrink)

Directive 2002/73 enacted by the Council and Parliament of the European Union introduces substantial and procedural amendments to the European Community's `old' Equal Treatment Directive 76/207, providing, in particular, clarification of the definitions of concepts such as direct and indirect discrimination and (sexual) harassment. Yet, while the European Commission has praised the progressive nature of the new European legislation, a critical assessment of its provisions reveals some serious shortcomings and a host of missed opportunities. Although the new Directive generally reflects (...) the spirit of the case law of the E.C.J., it does so without any originality or pro-activism meaning that the European legislature has once again left the initiative of pursuing sex equality in the E.U. to the Court. (shrink)

Science starts by using terms such as ‘temperature’ or ‘fish’ or ‘gene’ to preliminarily delimitate the extension of a phenomenon, and concludes by giving most of them a technical meaning based on an explanatory model. This transforma- tion of the meaning of the term is an essential part of its naturalization. Debating on the definition of ‘disease’, what most philosophers of medicine have examined is the pre-naturalized meaning of the term: for that reason they have focused on the task of (...) delimiting disease and non-disease (health), mainly used conceptual analysis as a method of choice, and considered the nosological level of ‘disease judgments’ rather than the pathophysiological or psychopathological level of disease mechanisms, thus making them impervious to most scientific discoveries. By focusing instead on the naturalized concept of disease and following some suggestions by philosophers of biology and scientists in cutting-edge fields of biomedical research, they could gar- ner results from a comparison of the mechanisms of diseases. This would ultimately result in a general theory of disease linked with our most general theories on living beings, among them, systems biology and network medicine. Before undertaking such a task, preliminary questions arise: is it likely that there are biological features common to different types of disease? Is it a philosopher’s job to determine what they consist in? What use would such a general theoretical definition of disease be? (shrink)

In this paper, we provide a macro level analysis of the visibility of philosophy of science in the sciences over the last four decades. Our quantitative analysis of publications and citations of philosophy of science papers, published in 17 main journals representing the discipline, contributes to the longstanding debate on the influence of philosophy of science on the sciences. It reveals the global structure of relationships that philosophy of science maintains with science, technology, engineering and mathematics and social sciences and (...) humanities fields. Explored at the level of disciplines, journals and authors, this analysis of the relations between philosophy of science and a large and diversified array of disciplines allows us to answer several questions: what is the degree of openness of various disciplines to the specialized knowledge produced in philosophy of science? Which STEM and SSH fields and journals have privileged ties with philosophy of science? What are the characteristics, in terms of citation and publication patterns, of authors who get their philosophy of science papers cited outside their field? Complementing existing qualitative inquiries on the influence of specific authors, concepts or topics of philosophy of science, the bibliometric approach proposed in this paper offers a comprehensive portrait of the multiple relationships that links philosophy of science to the sciences. (shrink)

To the technical and administrative difficulties encountered by the propagation of Jennerian vaccination among Indochinese populations since the beginning of French colonization, was opposed the will to impose a western prophylactic method. This led to some aberrations, such as attempts of compulsive mass-vaccination with an ineffective and/or unsafe product. There was also an inherent contradiction between the French medical service's proclaimed wish to apply vaccination to the entire Indochinese population and its suspicious attitude concerning the know-how of local practitioners. But (...) the important small-pox endemicity in Indochina also made this tropical area a great ground for experience because it led to advances in vaccine production methods, e.g., from buffaloes, and even in the 'science of immunization'. (shrink)

L'introduction par Aristote de la matière dans la théorie des contraires est une correction des modèles du devenir proposés par ses prédécesseurs : il est désormais possible de penser ensemble devenir et ordre. La matière récuse le dilemme de être et du non-être qui rendait impossible toute théorie de la génération. Cette introduction de la matière commande, à l'intérieur de la pensée d'Aristote, la distinction entre deux sortes de dynamis, et la distinction corrélative de deux sortes de moteurs : les (...) moteurs mus et immobiles. La matière est ainsi autant cause d'ordre que de contingence. The introduction of matter into the theory of contraries by Aristotle puts right earlier versions of kinèsis suggested by his predecessors : thinking kinèsis and order together is henceforth possible. Matter resolves the dilemma of being or not-being which was making any theory of generation impossible. That introduction of matter commands, in Aristotle's thinking, the distinction between two sorts of dynamis and the correlative distinction between two sorts of movers : the moved movers and the unchanging ones. Matter is thus as much cause of order as of contingency. (shrink)

Dans cet article nous proposons une analyse d’un aspect peu évoqué du parcours de Genette, son séminaire de l’EHESS-Paris. Genette n’a pas explicité sa méthode, mais il avait constaté dans les années 1960 que l’enseignement universitaire était considéré comme une pratique neutre, et même un tabou, qui demandait à être historicisée et comprise dans sa portée idéologique. À partir d’une description des rituels et des modalités de son enseignement, nous analyserons le caractère spécifique de sa méthode de formation à la (...) recherche, en soulignant sa relation avec la tradition de l’EHESS. (shrink)

Dans le prolongement de sa thèse sur les enfants abandonnés en Bretagne, soutenue en 2010 à l’université de Rennes, Isabelle Le Boulanger esquisse dans ce volume, en relisant ses notes d’archives, une étude des agressions sexuelles commises sur des enfants dans la Bretagne du xixe siècle. Son corpus est constitué d’un échantillon aléatoire d’archives judiciaires (dépouillement d’une année de dossiers de procédure par décennie), au demeurant inégalement conservées dans les cinq départements qu...

From student protests over the teaching of canonical texts such as Plato's Republic to the use of images of classical Greek statues in white supremacist propaganda, the world of the ancient Greeks is deeply implicated in a heated contemporary debate about identity and diversity. In Plato's Caves, Rebecca LeMoine defends the bold thesis that Plato was a friend of cultural diversity, contrary to many contemporary perceptions. Through close readings of four Platonic dialogues--Republic, Menexenus, Laws, and Phaedrus--LeMoine shows that, (...) across Plato's dialogues, foreigners play a role similar to that of Socrates: liberating citizens from intellectual bondage. (shrink)

Despite its vagueness Personalized, Precision, P4, P5, individualized, stratified medicine—or p-medicine in short—has become an increasingly popular term in biomedical literature. Philosophers have attempted to analyze what these various terms involve and have discussed consequences for medical practices. In this article, I argue that an important question remains unaddressed: what has made this project of p-medicine convincing to so many? My argument is that without real achievements, it would never have been. I also make the case that these achievements stem (...) from the domain of monoclonal antibodies, a new type of drug that justifies talks of personalized, precise, stratified, etc., medicine. In conclusion, while it may be possible to label any projection in the future of medicine as ‘p-medicine’, it is impossible to overlook mab-medicine as the spearhead. (shrink)

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, biomedical psychiatry around the globe has embraced the so-called precision medicine paradigm, a model for medical research that uses innovative techniques for data collection and analysis to reevaluate traditional theories of disease. The goal of precision medicine is to improve diagnostics by restratifying the patient population on the basis of a deeper understanding of disease processes. This paper argues that precision is ill-fitting for psychiatry for two reasons. First, in psychiatry, unlike in fields (...) like oncology, precision medicine has been understood as an attempt to improve medicine by casting out, rather than merely revising, traditional taxonomic tools. Second, in psychiatry the term “biomarker” is often used in reference to signs or symptoms that allow patients to be classified and then matched with treatments; however, in oncology “biomarker” usually refers to a disease mechanism that is useful not only for diagnostics, but also for discovering causal pathways that drug therapies can target. Given these differences between how the precision medicine paradigm operates in psychiatry and in other medical fields like oncology, while precision psychiatry may offer successful rhetoric, it is not a promising paradigm. (shrink)

According to the received view, the transportation view, animal extrapolation consists in inductive prediction of the outcome of a mechanism in a target, based on an analogical mechanism in a model. Through an analysis of the failure of preclinical studies of TGN1412, an innovative drug, to predict the tragic consequences of its first-in-man trial in 2006, the received view is challenged by a proposed view of animal extrapolation, the chimera view. According to this view, animal extrapolation is based on a (...) hypothesis about how human organisms work, supported by the amalgamation of results drawn from various experimental organisms, and only predicting the ‘predictive grid’, that is, a global framework of the effects to be expected. (shrink)

Avec le développement de la psychiatrie périnatale, les prises en charge précoces des familles se sont diversifiées. Au fil du temps, des équipes se sont efforcées de faciliter l'accès aux soins à des familles peu enclines à y adhérer d'elles-mêmes. Des institutions se sont organisées pour aider des familles à haut risque psychique, dans le but de lutter contre les processus inter-générationnels qui induisent maltraitance et placements. D'autres ont créé des lieux de parole et d'échange initiant des stratégies de rencontre (...) permettant aux familles de rompre peu à peu avec l'exclusion. (shrink)

This paper connects two notions: Hart and Mas-Colell’s ‘potential’, related to the value of coalitional games, and Coleman’s earlier notion of ‘power of a collectivity to act’, related to the easiness to make decisions by means of a voting rule.

L’ouvrage se présente comme un commentaire continu des chapitres de la Physique d’Aristote consacrés à l’étude du lieu (IV, 1-5). Le texte grec est cité d’après l’édition de Ross, et traduit par l’auteure de manière toujours très précise et rigoureuse (si ce n’est l’introduction d’une négation indue à la ligne 212a31, p. 237). L’ensemble permet de se donner une bonne conception de l’importance qu’Aristote accorde au lieu pour expliquer le mouvement des corps, de sa différence avec la notion d...

Une étude qui se situe exclusivement sur le terrain linguistique est bien placée pour attirer l’attention de l’interprète de Parménide, avide d’un éclairage nouveau sur un texte tellement commenté qu’il semble ne plus être possible d’y apporter quoi que ce soit. Le point de vue du grammairien pourrait en effet révéler certaines subtilités jusque-là ignorées, en particulier s’il ne cherche pas à mettre la grammaire au service d’une signification philosophique (comme on l’a déjà fait abondam­me...