Les mathématiques telles qu’elles se sont développées entre 1935 et 1970 jouent un rôle très important dans La Méthode. Ce rôle est explicite en ce qui concerne la logique, plus implicite en ce qui concerne la théorie du contrôle, l’incertitude, et certaines notions vues hors du champ mathématique et particulièrement probabiliste . Sur un exemple de résultats récents de la logique mathématique, la correspondance de Curry-Howard et les travaux de Jean-Louis Krivine nous montrent la pertinence des idées et des (...) intuitions d’Edgar Morin concernant la logique, la réalité et le cerveau.Mathematics as they are developed between 1935 and 1970 played a very important role in the method. This role is explicit with respect to the logical, implied regarding control theory, uncertainty, and some notions out of the field and especially mathematical probability . On a recent example of results of mathematical logic, the Curry-Howard correspondence and the work of Jean-Louis Krivine show the relevance of the ideas and insights of Edgar Morin on logic, reality and brain. (shrink)

Christia Mercer has exposed for the first time the underlying doctrines of Leibniz's philosophy. By analyzing Leibniz's early works she demonstrates that the metaphysics of pre-established harmony developed many years earlier than previously believed and for reasons that have not been understood. A much deeper understanding of some of Leibniz's key doctrines emerges. Christia Mercer's study will force scholars to reconsider their basic assumptions about early modern philosophy and science. This is a very significant contribution to the history (...) of early modern philosophy that will be of special importance to philosophers, historians of ideas, historians of science and those in religious studies. (shrink)

while no one was looking, contextualism replaced rational reconstructionism as the dominant methodology among English-speaking early modern historians of philosophy. In this paper, I expose the contours of this silent revolution, show that rational reconstructionism is a thing of the past among early modern historians, and examine the current state of early modern scholarship.1 As the contextualist revolution has increasingly widened our perspective and revealed the period’s philosophical diversity, it has encouraged early modernists to develop new skills and expertise. I (...) propose here that current early modern historians are devoted to maximize... (shrink)

Ronald Mercer - Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 410-411 Book Review Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion Jeffrey L. Kosky. Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. Pp. xxiv + 223. Cloth, $39.95. Emmanuel Levinas's thought has been a sleeping giant in continental philosophy, having influence upon many of his contemporaries while drawing minimal attention to himself. In the last (...) few years, however, as evidenced by the explosion of secondary literature on Levinas, it is clear that scholars are awakening to Levinas's importance. Jeffrey Kosky's work, Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion, joins this secondary.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 571-572 [Access article in PDF] Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi, editors. The Cambridge Companion to Levinas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xxx + 292. Cloth, $65.00. Paper, $23.00. The goal of the Cambridge Companion to Philosophy series has been to "dispel the intimidation" that students and non-specialists often experience when faced with the works of a "difficult and challenging (...) thinker" (i). Indeed, Emmanuel Levinas would qualify as such a thinker, whose work is firmly rooted in two traditions: (1) the admittedly abstruse and seminal phenomenologies of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and (2) Judaism, including the Talmudic tradition, the philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig, as well as Levinas's experience with rampant anti-Semitism in twentieth-century Europe. The imminent danger in producing a collection with the express intent of making a challenging thinker accessible is that the force of the thought may become undermined by the process of simplification. The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, however, achieves its goal as a book that not only elucidates Levinas but also provides numerous essays that even the Levinasian scholar will find useful.Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi are directly responsible for the success of the Companion. These two editors have proven themselves as adept collaborators in the area of Levinasian philosophy with their earlier contribution to Indiana University Press's series Studies in Continental Thought: Re-reading Levinas (Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi, editors [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991]). This new cooperative effort offers essays that introduce Levinas's thought from the perspective of some of the many fields upon which he has had an influence including the philosophy of language, art, feminism, Judaism, phenomenology, and the philosophy of religion.Even with the many tangential fields to which Levinas's thought contributes, the Companion often refers to Derrida's metaphor which describes Levinas's work as a wave, the "same" wave, crashing on the beach with increasing demand. Derrida, however, is also partly responsible for the intensifying return of Levinas's work. Derrida's critique of Levinas's Totality and Infinity was the impetus behind Levinas's subsequent focus on language and the problematic of "how" one speaks of that which is outside being. Certainly, the Companion could have spent the majority of its pages outlining this philosophical, textual conversation, but such an explication would have compromised the accessibility of this introductory text to the non-specialists to whom this series caters. The editors, instead, chose to avoid Derrida's difficult critique while having a significant concentration of essays that deal with Levinas's philosophy of language. This allows neophyte students of Levinas to discover his intricate thought on language without necessary knowledge of the context as well as provide those scholars interested in the debate access to the most contemporary thought on the matter—at least from the Levinasian perspective. Readers are assured, then, that the Companion covers the difficult concepts of the speaking face from the early period to the later distinction of the "saying" and the "said," inspired by Derrida's critique.The Companion, unfortunately, seems one sided concerning an important aspect of Levinas's philosophy. Throughout his entire corpus, Levinas attributes his thought to the seminal work of Edmund Husserl, continually inviting his readers to begin again with Husserl's phenomenology. Rudolph Bernet contributes to this collection an outstanding analysis of Levinas's critique of Husserl, describing some of the departures that Levinas makes from Husserl's phenomenology. The rest of the Companion, however, makes note to downplay Levinas's positive indebtedness to phenomenology. Hillary Putnam promises to explain Levinas with a "minimum of reliance on any prior knowledge of the two great 'H's (Husserl/Heidegger)" (40). Adhering to her word, in an otherwise insightful essay, means that the phenomenological issue remains superficial. While it is never absent, Bernet's essay seems to have set the tone, placing Levinas in a position of opposition with Husserl with a minimum of discussion of what Levinas has called his adherence to the "spirit" of phenomenology. To the Companion's credit... (shrink)

Contemporary critical approaches to bioethics increasingly present themselves as “relational,” though the meaning of relationality and its implications for bioethics seem to be many and varying. I argue that this confusion is due to a multiplicity of relational approaches originating from distinct theoretical lineages. In this article, I identify four key differences among commonly referenced relational approaches: the scope and nature of relationships considered, the extent of the determining influence on individual selfhood, and the integrity of individual selfhood. Importantly, these (...) four differences carry consequences for the usage of relational approaches within academic and clinical bioethics. I show that these differences attach to multiple objects of critique within mainstream bioethics and imply distinct metaethical commitments. Although I issue a cautionary note about combining relational approaches from distinct lineages, I close by suggesting that many such approaches may have their use, drawing on Susan Sherwin's sense of bioethical theories as lenses. (shrink)

“Care robots” offer technological solutions to increasing needs for care just as economic imperatives increasingly regulate the care sector. Ethical critiques of this technology cannot succeed without situating themselves within the crisis of social reproduction under neoliberal capitalism. What, however, constitutes “care” and its status as a potential critical resource, and how might care robots damage this potential? Although robots might threaten norms of care, I argue that they are by no means necessarily damaging. Critiques of care robots must not (...) entrench exclusionary images of the ideal carer. Instead, critical reflection on their use should trouble dominant paradigms of care. (shrink)

Howard J. Curzer presents a fresh new reading of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which brings each of the virtues alive. He argues that justice and friendship are symbiotic in Aristotle's view; reveals how virtue ethics is not only about being good, but about becoming good; and describes Aristotle's ultimate quest to determine happiness.

The crisis of Covid‐19 has forced us to notice two things: our human interdependence and American society's tolerance for what Nancy Krieger has called “inequalities embodied in health inequities,” reflected in data on Covid‐19 mortality and geographies. Care is integral to our recovery from this catastrophe and to the development of sustainable public health policies and practices that promote societal resilience and reduce the vulnerabilities of our citizens. Drawing on the insights of Joan Tronto and Eva Feder Kittay, we argue (...) that the ethics of care offers a critical alternative to utilitarian and deontological approaches and provides a street‐ready framework for integration into public health deliberations to anchor public policy and investments concerning the recovery and future well‐being of America's citizens and society. (shrink)

Donald Davidson holds that metaphors have no linguistic meaning in addition to their literal meaning. Max Black and Frank B. Farrell each contends that Davidson’s view is inconsistent with the fact that metaphors are appropriate objects of explication and evaluation. However, as I show, Davidson’s view actually is entirely consistent with this fact. I also argue that Black’s and Farrell’s own accounts of metaphor imply that sometimes the linguistic meaning of a sentence is other than a product of the meanings (...) of its words and its logical form, and I give a reason why accounts of metaphor with this implication are best rejected. E.M. Zemach, for his part, agrees with Davidson about what metaphors mean, but contends that, on Davidson’s recent account of language and interpretation, all metaphors turn out to be true; metaphors express novel or impractical but nonetheless literally true comparisons or categorizations. Zemach, however, I argue, has neglected the distinction between how speakers actually apply their words to things and their standards of correct application. (shrink)

Alan Turing is often portrayed as a materialist in secondary literature. In the present article, I suggest that Turing was instead an idealist, inspired by Cambridge scholars, Arthur Eddington, Ernest Hobson, James Jeans and John McTaggart. I outline Turing’s developing thoughts and his legacy in the USA to date. Specifically, I contrast Turing’s two notions of computability (both from 1936) and distinguish between Turing’s “machine intelligence” in the UK and the more well-known “artificial intelligence” in the USA. According to my (...) proposed historical interpretation, Turing did not view computations in the real world to be exhaustively and deterministically characterized by his automatic machines from 1936. (shrink)

In the popular imagination, the relevance of Turing's theoretical ideas to people producing actual machines was significant and appreciated by everybody involved in computing from the moment he published his 1936 paper ‘On Computable Numbers’. Careful historians are aware that this popular conception is deeply misleading. We know from previous work by Campbell-Kelly, Aspray, Akera, Olley, Priestley, Daylight, Mounier-Kuhn, Haigh, and others that several computing pioneers, including Aiken, Eckert, Mauchly, and Zuse, did not depend on Turing's 1936 universal-machine concept. Furthermore, (...) it is not clear whether any substance in von Neumann's celebrated 1945 ‘First Draft Report on the EDVAC’ is influenced in any identifiable way by Turing's work. This raises the questions: When does Turing enter the field? Why did the Association for Computing Machinery honor Turing by associating his name to ACM's most prestigious award, the Turing Award? Previous authors have.. (shrink)

I respond to Lennart Nordenfelt's analysis of dignity by questioning his attempt to establish an objective standard by which dignity can be determined. I approach this by considering the way in which claims to dignity may be contested and defended. This leads, in the cases of dignity of merit and dignity of moral status, to an apparent relativism. This relativism is checked by further consideration of dignity of identity, and in particular by consideration of the nature of the processes that (...) serve to humiliate people. It is suggested that acts of humiliation attack certain competences that human beings develop as embodied, social beings. Menschenwürde may then be articulated as an account of human nature, in terms of the human potential to develop a series of core competences. This account of human nature aspires to universality, and as such offers an objective ground to dignity. This paper is a product of the research project on Dignity and Older Europeans Programme, Contract No QLG6, 2001, 00888). (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Bioethics, edited by Wendy A. Rogers et al., presents a thorough, contemporary understanding of feminist bioethics, linking feminist efforts to other critical approaches in the field of bioethics. A more demanding standard for feminist scholarship is set by engaging gender at its intersections with race, class, sexuality, and ability––intersections that require bioethicists to attend to issues like incarceration and transmisogynistic violence that are less frequently tackled in the field. Editors and contributors alike in this volume (...) show that long‐standing feminist conceptual interventions, especially those regarding the significance of relationality and epistemic marginalization, provide key tools for a coalition of critical approaches to bioethics. (shrink)

In a recent comment on the HFEA’s public consultation on sex selection, Soren Holm claimed that proponents of family balancing are committed to embrace a laissez faire approach. Given that arguments in support of sex selection for family balancing also support sex selection for other social reasons, advocates of family balancing, he asserts, are simply inconsistent when calling for a limit on access to sex selection. In this paper, I argue that proponents of family balancing are in no way inconsistent. (...) Provided their advocacy of family balancing is aimed at preventing a severe distortion of the natural sex ratio, they are entirely justified in insisting on restrictions to sex selection. The real question is whether a concern for the sex ratio does indeed call for a limit on sex selection. Based on a recent survey on gender preferences and data from several Gender Clinics, I argue that a restriction on sex selection to family balancing is unwarranted. In the absence of any evidence for a pending sex ratio distortion, we are actually required to adopt a laissez faire approach to sex selection. (shrink)

Designed to immediately engage students and other readers in philosophical reflection, the new edition of Ethical Argument: Critical Thinking in Ethics bridges the gap between ethical theory and practice. This brief introduction combines a discussion of ethical theory with fundamental elements of critical thinking--including informal fallacies and the basics of logic--and uses case studies and practical applications to illustrate concepts. Author Hugh Mercer Curtler presents a carefully formulated critique of ethical relativism, encouraging students to reason along with him and (...) to question his argument at every point. This approach enables students to think systematically about ethical issues and to acquire basic skills in argumentation at the same time. They will learn how to bring principles to bear on ethical conflict, how to weigh pros and cons, how to recognize good ethical reasons, and how to distinguish sound argumentation from rationalization. The second edition of Ethical Argument: Critical Thinking in Ethics includes new exercises and examples, summary boxes, cartoons, and sample dialogues that demonstrate how to effectively debate ethical positions. It features more than forty case studies on ethical issues that are interesting and relevant to students. An ideal core text for courses in introductory ethics, this concise volume can be used along with additional primary sources, case studies, or newspaper articles and novels. It is also a helpful supplementary text for courses in applied ethics--including professional, business, and medical ethics--and in critical thinking. (shrink)

In this new lexical survey of Kant's works, Howard Caygill presents Kantian concepts and terminology in terms that will introduce and clarify his ideas for students and general readers alike.

This commentary responds to “Home Care in America: The Urgent Challenge of Putting Ethical Care into Practice,” by Coleman Solis and colleagues, in the May‐June 2023 issue of the Hastings Center Report. More specifically, we respond to the authors’ call for “inquiry into the nature, value, and practice” of home care. We argue that the most urgently needed normative reset for thinking about care work is the replacement of dominant individualistic thinking with systemic thinking. Deepening a focus on the social, (...) economic, and historical forces that shape the state of contemporary care work will help bioethicists to argue more effectively for improvements to working conditions. In turn, better working conditions will ease the oppositional stance between caregivers and receivers that has been set up by the current system, enabling all parties involved to better pursue the feminist ethical ideal of care. (shrink)

This book explores the controversial relationship between physicians and the pharmaceutical industry, identifies the ethical tensions and controversies, and proposes numerous reforms both for medicine's own professional integrity and for effective public regulation of the industry.

The most outstanding feature of this book is that here, for the first time, is made available in a single volume all the important historical essays Edgar Zilsel (1891-1944) published during WWII on the emergence of modern science. This edition also contains one previously unpublished essay and an extended version of an essay published earlier. In these essays, Zilsel developed the now famous thesis, named after him, that science came into being when, in the late Middle Ages, the social (...) barriers between the intellectuals and the artisans were eroded, due to the fact that the rapidly expanding commercial classes of that period had a keen interest in improvements in technology. This class was city-based and stimulated a social environment in which men of learning came to regard the craftsmen and technicians with a new respect, in which they no longer felt any contempt for manual work and in which theory and practice were eventually combined to produce modern science. This critical edition also carries a long introduction in which much new material about Zilsel's life and work is presented. It suggests that a radical new look at Zilsel's project needs to be taken. Zilsel's essays on the history of science look like a standard case study to substantiate a particular position on the origins of modern science, but they were also an attempt to show that lawlike explanation in history and social theory is possible. It is claimed that Zilsel's historical essays were a part of another project he was working on which focused on the idea that social phenomena were open to causal explanation as much as physical phenomena. Hence the volume also contains the essays Zilsel wrote in relation to this other project. Previously there have been published a German and an Italian edition of the Zilsel essays. This edition is the first in English; compared to the other two editions this one is the first that includes unpublished material and the first to undertake a serious effort to research Zilsel's life and work. What is special about this volume is the well-articulated social perspective it takes on the origins of modern science. Audience: Students in early modern social history/history of science as well as professional philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science. (shrink)

In its institutionalized form, disability studies has historically drawn from political activism in the United States and the United Kingdom, particularly struggles that sought rights and recognition through the development of a social understanding of disability in opposition to the mainstream medical model.1 Recent work that expands the geographic scope of disability studies beyond these contexts has spurred debate about the challenges such a move poses to the foundations of the field. This essay responds to the field’s transnational turn by (...) interrogating recent work by Nirmala Erevelles, Jasbir Puar, and Robert McRuer that displaces the white, wealthy, and Western contexts that have grounded the landmark achievements of disability studies. At issue here are the category struggles that emerge when a concept confronts the conditions and limits of its own migration. (shrink)

This study analyses the attitudes of university students towards unethical behaviour in the individual and organisational environments, and relates these attitudes to tolerance of corruption in their future professional lives. The results show a positive relationship between attitudes towards unethical behaviour in both environments, as well as tolerance towards acts of corruption, based on a virtual perception survey. Despite the general rejection attitude by students of such behaviour and acts, the rejection diminishes as their degree programme progresses. This study contributes (...) to our understanding of the tolerance of university students towards corruption, and to revealing how this attitude could explain tolerance towards this phenomenon in their future professional lives. (shrink)

Time passed after the commission of a wrong can affect how we respond to its agent now. Specifically it can introduce certain forms of complexity or ambivalence into our blaming responses. This paper considers how and why time might matter in this way. I illustrate the phenomenon by looking at a recent real-life example, surveying some responses to the case and identifying the relevant forms of ambivalence. I then consider a recent account of blameworthiness and its development over time that (...) purports to account for this ambivalence. Blameworthiness, on this account, consists in a psychological flaw; time matters because it brings the possibility of change in the agent, and ambivalence arises because it is hard to know to the extent of such change. This account, I argue, mischaracterises responses to the case and misidentifies the source of their ambivalence. Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of emotion, I sketch an alternative approach. Our responses, I suggest, make sense within processes through which we address wrongdoing. Time matters because these processes take time and because time’s having passed raises the question whether and how the wrong has been addressed. Unaddressed wrongs can elicit ambivalence of a specific form. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 4, April 2022. -/- In a moment where needs for care are acute and their provision precarious, feminist care ethics has gained new relevance as a framework for understanding and responding to necessary interdependence. This article reviews and evaluates two long-standing critiques of care ethics in light of this recent research. First, I assess what I call the pluralist feminist critique, or the dispute over the ability of care ethics to address the needs and histories (...) of a range of marginalized subjects. I identify two forms of this critique: the first disputes the biased starting points shaping the development of the theory, and the second concerns the weaponization of care in support of domination. Although these critiques are well-established, I draw attention to recent responses that move care theory in generative directions. I argue that the pluralist feminist critique demands both self-critical transformation in dialog with other feminist schools of thought and a robust account of care ethics' normative authority. I then take up critiques those levied by mainstream ethicists concerned with care theory's adequacy as an ethical approach. I show that recent work on normative authority, conceptual uniqueness, and the grounding of responsibility must be engaged before care theory can be dismissed as “under-theorized.” In articulating these two sets of critiques and evaluating recent rebuttals to them, I argue for a pluralist feminist theory of care within which strands informed by varying philosophical schools and methods can coexist. (shrink)

Howard Caygill systematically explores for the first time the relationship between Levinas' thought and the political. From Levinas' early writings in the face of National Socialism to controversial political statements on Israeli and French politics, Caygill analyses themes such as the deconstruction of metaphysics, embodiment, the face and alterity. He also examines Levinas' engagement with his contemporaries Heidegger and Bataille, and the implications of his rethinking of the political for an understanding of the Holocaust.

La pregunta por el sentido general del ser emerge, en situaciones críticas, como una indagación noética y existencial que descubre la condición finita y vulnerable del ser ahí. La pandemia Covid19 se ha convertido en el contexto social la oportunidad para pensar en la importancia del cuidado en donde, a raíz del confinamiento y el aislamiento preventivo, se ha modificado de forma infranqueable los ritmos de vida. La rapidación del mundo social de producción y consumo ha constituido el modus vivendi-operandi (...) de nuestras sociedades capitalistas. Por eso, los ritmos de vida acelerados han constituido la forma habitual del ser ahí en la carrera social hacia el éxito, consumada en una vida aparentemente feliz, sujeta a las tendencias del mercado y convirtiéndose, este imaginario colectivo, en el paradigma globalizado al cual aspira cualquier persona desde el nivel de vida o estrato social en que se encuentra. Los relegados del sistema, por su parte, quiénes no están a la altura de la competencia del capitalismo salvaje, se convierten en excedentes sociales postergados hacia el inevitable destino del desecho. Si queremos reivindicar el discurso del ser es en orden al fortalecimiento del cuidado de la vida, como un asunto primordial del ser ahí, para reconocer la raíz humana de la crisis ecológica porque, a la base de esta indagación fundamental se encuentra una deficiente cultura del cuidado que no es otra cosa que el descuido mismo del ser. El objetivo de este artículo, derivado de un proceso de investigación documental, es proponer, a la luz de los aportes de Martín Heidegger, la estructura fundamental de la cura como elemento consustancial de la vida en orden al cuidado de sí, de los otros y del ambiente natural como una respuesta oportuna a la crisis actual. (shrink)