In this Introduction we lay out the context of a ‘Continental philosophy of biology’ and suggest why Georges Canguilhem’s place in such a philosophy is important. There is not one single program for Continental philosophy of biology, but Canguilhem’s vision, which he referred to at one stage as ‘biological philosophy’, is a significant one, located in between the classic holism-reductionism tensions, significantly overlapping with philosophy of medicine, philosophy of technology and other themes moving away from the more common existential and (...) phenomenological motifs of post-war European thought. Chapters examine (among other themes) his relation to Lebensphilosophie, to authors such as Kant, Nietzsche and Marjorie Grene, and to current theoretical biology. (shrink)

Historically, parents looking for guidance turned to a small cadre of trusted individuals such as grandparents and pediatricians. In the Internet era, this paradigm has shifted. With a few keystrokes, anxious parents have access to a seemingly endless array of opinions from faceless sources with unknown agendas. For some parents, this can cause more uncertainty, and for the parents of a child with a medical condition, navigating this information can be overwhelming. In this modern paradigm, the pediatrician's duty has also (...) become more complex, especially with the shift from paternalism to patient autonomy in medical decision-making. It is within this context that Alan Fleischman's book, Pediatric Ethics: Protecting the Interests of Children, should be examined. A pediatrician and neonatologist, Fleischman has witnessed this evolution over more than five decades of practice. As a clinical and academic bioethicist, he has also witnessed a transformation in the field of bioethics, with shifting perspectives on areas such as research ethics and medical decision-making. Because of his rich experience and deep understanding of the past and present of ethical issues in pediatrics, Fleischman approaches this subject with a perspective that warrants attention and thoughtful consideration. (shrink)

The action noun adhimukti derives from the verb adhi-muc, not attested in Classical Sanskrit but in P?li. It is regularly used in the passive, with the original meaning ‘to be fastened to’, and then ‘to adhere’. This meaning is not used in a concrete sense, but in a metaphorical one, referred to mind and mental objects, so that adhimukti can be used to express inclination, faith in a doctrine, and also intentional and stable representation of an image or an idea (...) in meditative practice, sometimes with the effect of transformation of external reality. The common feature appears to be adherence or the fixing of the mind on its object. (shrink)

In one of his last writings, Life: Experience and Science, Michel Foucault argued that twentieth-century French philosophy could be read as dividing itself into two divergent lines: on the one hand, we have a philosophical stream which takes individual experience as its point of departure, conceiving it as irreducible to science. On the other hand, we have an analysis of knowledge which takes into account the concrete productions of the mind, as are found in science and human practices. In order (...) to account for this division, Foucault opposed epistemologists such as Cavaillès and Canguilhem to phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty and Sartre but, also, and more particularly, he opposed Poincaré to Bergson. The latter was presented by Foucault as being the key-figure of the ?philosophy of experience? at the beginning of the twentieth century. Fifteen years later, in his Deleuze and in the Logics of Worlds, Alain Badiou again uses this dual structure in his interpretation of the past hundred years of French thought. He employs a series of oppositional couples: himself and Deleuze, Lautmann and Sartre, and, finally, Brunschvicg and Bergson. On the one hand a ?mathematical Platonism? and on the other a ?philosophy of vital interiority.? This Manichean reading of philosophy, and the strategic use of the figure of Bergson has, itself, a long tradition. It was also proposed by Althusser who, following Bachelard, opposed his standpoint to any form of ?empiricism.? Althusser developed his thought from a tradition of Marxist thinkers and ideologists, which included Politzer's and Nizan's critique of bourgeois philosophy and, even before that, neo-Kantians such as the philosophers of the Revue de métaphysique et de morale. The aim of this essay is to deconstruct and to put into its precise context of production this series of genealogies which entails the mobilization of Bergsonism and of the name ?Bergson.? By doing so, I hope to weight the importance of Bergsonism in twentieth-century French philosophy, in both its ?positive? and its ?negative? aspect. The essay will proceed regressively, taking into account figures such as Althusser, Badiou, Deleuze, Foucault, Canguilhem, Cavaillès, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, but also Polizer, Brunschvicg and Alain. The conclusion of the essay is an attempt at reading the ?Bergson renaissance? in the light of new discoveries in genetics and the cognitive sciences and to tie it to the renewal of studies in the history of French philosophy. (shrink)

The Research Domani Criteria framework (RdoC) encourages research on specific impairments present across traditional nosological categories and suggests a list of biological and behavioral measures for assessing them. After a description of RdoC, in this article we focus on impairments of the ability of understanding others, specifically in Theory of Mind and empathy. We illustrate recent evidence on brain anomalies correlating with these deficits in Schizophrenia, Addiction Disorders and Mood Disorders populations. In the last section, we zoom out and consider (...) this kind of research vis-à-vis the objection of being reductionistic that is, in favoring mechanistic accounts of mental disorders. We argue that metaphysical reductionism and explanatory reductionism are not conceptually entailed by the RdoC framework. (shrink)

In the literature there are two well-established but opposite readings of Arendt: as an agonistic theorist and as a deliberative one. In between these two positions a smaller number of scholars have argued that in Arendt these two dimensions can to a large extent be reconciled. This paper follows this third path but tries to bring it one step further. In particular, it defends the idea that those scholars who have proposed this third reading of Arendt have fallen short of (...) revealing the degree to which deliberation and agonism are, for her, interwoven. Through an original reading of Arendt’s views on judgment, persuasion, distinction and Eichmann’s banality, the paper clarifies why, for her, agonism and deliberation are not only compatible but actually mutually dependent. In other words, it clarifies why she believes that there can be no deliberation without agonism and no agonism without deliberation. (shrink)

A partir de la perspectiva que ofrece el concepto de “vulnerabilidad social” como un potente analizador que permite visibilizar, entre otras cuestiones, la marcada incertidumbre que sienten numerosas/os jóvenes en relación a su futuro, enlazada a los cuestionamientos respecto de lo que les ofrece el sistema educativo en las actuales condiciones, y el sentido de la educación “en jaque” ante la falta de garantías de promover y propiciar el acceso justo y digno al mundo laboral con su consecuente promesa de (...) movilidad social ascendente, este trabajo se propone advertir acerca de los alcances e implicancias que tienen la s marca s de inseguridad, inestabilidad y precariedad del contexto socioeconómico regional en el que se inscriben sus trayectorias de vida y escolares, singulares y colectivas, en sus oportunidades, deseos y apuestas. El trabajo enfatiza finalmente en que al p reguntar y preguntarse desde “ adolescencias situadas ” por los deseos, los futuros, las prácticas y sus sentidos, se habilita n senderos no sólo para desarmar discursos sociales y de las disciplinas instituida s que reproducen identidades patologizadas, tuteladas y exclusiones diversas, sino también para promover movimientos subjetivos en y entre las/os propias/os p rotagonistas, y los adultos a cargo de su acompañamiento tanto del campo de la salud/salud mental como del de la educación, al interrogar(se / nos) por trayectorias supuestamente predefinidas, cuestión esta que supone no solo un desafío para la Psicología y la Psiquiatría sino también todo un reto para la Pedagogía en sus versiones paradigmáticas hegemónicas. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:Being a parent is hard, particularly parenting adolescents, who need to be given choices and allowed the space to learn how to make choices for themselves, even when those choices result in negative consequences. This essay explores how Steven Sondheim and James Lapine's 1987 musical Into the Woods provides relatable stories of the challenges of being a parent, the challenges of parenting adolescents, and just how messy parents and families can be despite everyone trying their best. The stories of Little (...) Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Jack, and Cinderella show us various stages, trajectories, and occasional tragedies of adolescents' emerging autonomy, while the Baker's and the Witch's struggles becoming and being parents encapsulate how disorderly and untidy parenting often is. Pediatricians and clinical bioethicists, who are often in a position to scrutinize the choices of parents and teens, should remember that parents and adolescents are almost always motivated by good intentions and doing the best that they can. Perhaps the best we can do is accompany them on their journey "into the woods.". (shrink)

Coherent-ambiguity aversion is defined within the smooth-ambiguity model as the combination of choice-ambiguity and value-ambiguity aversion. Five ambiguous decision tasks are analyzed theoretically, where an individual faces two-stage lotteries with binomial, uniform, or unknown second-order probabilities. Theoretical predictions are then tested through a 10-task experiment. In tasks 1–5, risk aversion is elicited through both a portfolio choice method and a BDM mechanism. In tasks 6–10, choice-ambiguity aversion is elicited through the portfolio choice method, while value-ambiguity aversion comes about through the (...) BDM mechanism. The behavior of over 75 % of classified subjects is in line with the KMM model in all tasks 6–10, independent of their degree of risk aversion. Furthermore, the percentage of coherent-ambiguity-averse subjects is lower in the binomial than in the uniform and in the unknown treatments, with only the latter difference being significant. The most part of coherent-ambiguity-loving subjects show a high risk aversion. (shrink)

Notwithstanding the recent prominence of the term “problem” in the humanities, few scholars have analysed its history. This essay tries to partially fill that lack, principally covering the period from late modernity through to the 1960s, in order to understand the role that the term plays in “Continental” philosophy, with special emphasis on the writings of Gilles Deleuze. This analysis focuses on the strategies employed by different agents to define “philosophical” problems, or “philosophical” ways of posing problems. The term, originally (...) used in antiquity by knowledge-producers located in an autonomous position, implied an idea of cognition oscillating between production and reproduction. Once the term escaped the context of geometry, it was involved in symbolic struggles that radicalized during modernity. The Kantians placed “philosophy” in a supposedly neutral position of science treating “the problem of all the problems” and invented a new genre, the “history of philosophy,” focusing on the analysis of “philosophical problems.” This approach had great institutional success in the German and French universities and clashed, during the twentieth century, with another usage of philosophy as a practice of “dissolution of problems,” developed in the United Kingdom and the Austro-Habsburg Empire. (shrink)

To be both a clinician and a scientist—what is usually called a clinician scientist or clinical investigator—is easy neither from an ethical nor from a methodological standpoint. On the one hand, it requires care, cure of the patients, and good ethical practice. On the other, excellent skills in experimental design and data analysis are necessary. In addition, the correct choice of a disease as a model to be studied is very often hampered by the obvious ethical constraints of working with (...) human beings, thus limiting the experimental armamentarium in the hands of the clinician scientist. Yet, Henry Beecher succeeded in both. He was an excellent clinician and scientist and put forward ideas and concepts that today... (shrink)

Dans l’Antiquité, affronter la vaste étendue de la mer symbolisait l’inconnu des dangers de la vie mortelle. C’était une tâche ardue pour les hommes, et tout simplement inconcevable pour les femmes. C’est peut-être pour cette raison que les études sur la condition féminine dans les sociétés antiques, notamment en Grèce, qui, depuis les années 1970, éclairent la position sociopolitique, familiale, juridique et religieuse des femmes au sein de la communauté urbaine, négligent leur rapport avec...

Les langues de bois ne sont pas l’apanage des systèmes autoritaires et totalitaires. Les sociétés démocratiques et ouvertes n’échappent pas, loin s’en faut, au phénomène. Les professionnels de la « com », sous l’influence de processus de civilisations dont le principal effet consiste à produire des sociétés de plus en plus policées, élaborent à la demande de leurs donneurs d’ordre des dispositifs discursifs et des méthodes visant à réduire les risques propres à la communication. Privilégiant une conception instrumentale de la (...) communication, le destin des « communicants » se réduirait-il à transformer leur activité en principale arme contre les valeurs démocratiques et humanistes portées par la communication ? Pour dépasser la com et libérer la communication de toutes les langues de bois qui l’emprisonnent, il convient de transformer les conditions pratiques de l’exercice de ces professionnels en renforçant leur rôle de médiateur.« Doublespeak » in its different forms is by no means the sole preserve of authoritarian or totalitarian regime: open democratic societies are equally afflicted. Professionals in « communication », working under the influence of processes of civilisation whose main effect is to produce increasingly policed societies, receive commissions to develop patterns and methods of discourse whose aim is to minimise the risks inherent to communication itself. In treating communication primarily as an instrument, these « communicators » may well find that their activities are turning into a particularly lethal weapon against the democratic and humanist values that are inherent to communication. To move beyond this subverted form of communication and liberate it from the many forms of doublespeak that have imprisoned it, the practical conditions in which they exercise their profession need to be transformed by reinforcing their role as mediators. (shrink)

Per l’antropologo Pierre Clastres, i concetti di “Stato” e di “politico” sono sempre stati colti, nel mondo occidentale, come due elementi interdipendenti: lo Stato è politico, non c’è politica senza Stato. I suoi studi etno-antropologici tentano di ribaltare questa visione, concettualizzando le società primitive come “senza” e “contro lo Stato”. Il presente testo esamina i testi di Clastres cercando di inserire le sue riflessioni all’interno di paradigmi giuridici e politologici consolidati e di dimostrare come l’antropologia politica e le scienze politiche (...) possano mettersi in comunicazione. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 92-94.

Both the sensory and the motivational-affective component of pain must be taken into account in studies on sex differences as well as on neuropathic, postoperative, sympathetic, and visceral pain. In all these cases, therapeutic strategies should be aimed at controlling the peripheral, central, and psychological mechanisms underlying the global pain experience. Similarly, it should be recalled that some neuropeptides act on both sensory and affective pain mechanisms. [berkley; mcmahon; dickenson; coderre & katz; wiesenfeld-hallin et al.; blumberg et al.].

We analyze the results from three different risk attitude elicitation methods. First, the broadly used test by Holt and Laury, HL, second, the lottery-panel task by Sabater-Grande and Georgantzis, SG, and third, responses to a survey question on self-assessment of general attitude towards risk. The first and the second task are implemented with real monetary incentives, while the third concerns all domains in life in general. Like in previous studies, the correlation of decisions across tasks is low and usually statistically (...) non-significant. However, when we consider only subjects whose behavior across the panels of the SG task is compatible with constant relative risk aversion, the correlation between HL and self-assessed risk attitude becomes significant. Furthermore, the correlation between HL and SG also increases for CRRA-compatible subjects, although it remains statistically non-significant. (shrink)

Artefacts do not always do what they are supposed to, due to a variety of reasons, including manufacturing problems, poor maintenance, and normal wear-and-tear. Since software is an artefact, it should be subject to malfunctioning in the same sense in which other artefacts can malfunction. Yet, whether software is on a par with other artefacts when it comes to malfunctioning crucially depends on the abstraction used in the analysis. We distinguish between “negative” and “positive” notions of malfunction. A negative malfunction, (...) or dysfunction, occurs when an artefact token either does not or cannot do what it is supposed to. A positive malfunction, or misfunction, occurs when an artefact token may do what is supposed to but, at least occasionally, it also yields some unintended and undesirable effects. We argue that software, understood as type, may misfunction in some limited sense, but cannot dysfunction. Accordingly, one should distinguish software from other technical artefacts, in view of their design that makes dysfunction impossible for the former, while possible for the latter. (shrink)

In this paper Giuseppe Bianco analyzes the ideological and epistemological coordinates and the space of possibilities proper to the cluster of philosophy students of which Tournier was part between 1943 and 1948; to do so he reconstructs their evolution in a context dominated by the currents of Neo-Scholasticism, Personalism, phenomenology, Marxism, and Existentialism. Finally, he focuses on the importance of Jean-Paul Sartre for these young people, underlining their particular interpretation of his work.

Even more than for other treatments, great importance must be given to informed consent in the case of electroconvulsive therapy. In a percentage of cases, the symbolic connotation of the treatment, even if mostly and intrinsically negative, may actually be a determining factor in the patient’s motives for giving consent. On an ethical and medicolegal level, the most critical point is that concerning consent to the treatment by a psychotic subject with a severely compromised ability to comprehend the nature and (...) objective of the proposed therapy, but who nonetheless expresses his consent, for reasons derived from delusional thoughts. In fact, this situation necessarily brings to light the contradiction between an explicit expression of consent, a necessary formality for the commencement of therapy, and the validity of this consent, which may be severely compromised due to the patient’s inability to comprehend reality and therefore to accept the proposal of treatment, which is intrinsic to this reality. With the use of an electric current, the symbolic experience associated with anaesthesia, and the connection to convulsions, ECT enters the collective consciousness. In relation to this, ECT is symbolic of these three factors and hooks on to the thoughts, fears, feelings and expectations of delusional patients. These are often exemplified in the violent intervention of the persecutor in the patient with schizophrenia, the expected punishment for the ’error’ committed for which the depressed patient blames himself and the social repression of the maniacal patient’s affirmation of his inflated self-esteem. (shrink)

This article will attempt to show that from the beginning of the letter of Eusebius of Nicodemia to Paulinus of Tyre, the meaning of ὁμοούσιος should be sought in the opposition on the part of the Council of Nicea to the divisive doctrine of hypostases by Arius and his followers. The assertion of the similarity or identity of nature or ousia between the Father and the Son that ὁμοούσιος suggests is traceable to the teaching of Alexander of Alexandria, but also (...) of Eusthatius of Antioch, so that it could be thought that in Nicea a convergence between the two major opponents of Arius could have taken place, in the same way in which it had occurred over the Antiochene formula of 325. Analysis of the doctrine of ὁμοούσιος by Athanasius confirms that the term was opposed to the divisive interpretation of the hypostases within Arianism. The second part of the article, takes into consideration the study on the interpretation of the Nicene ὁμοούσιος proposed by P. F. Beatrice. The Author argues that Beatrice’s thesis, which attempts to trace the introduction of the term in the Nicene Creed back exclusively to Constantine, with the agreement of Eusebius of Caesarea, is not backed by the documentation at our disposal. (shrink)

This study intends to show how the essential elements in the debate over the divinity of the Son provoked by Arianism are already present within the Alessandrian Church during the first decades of the 3rd century. From the works of Origen it becomes apparent that his teaching on the eternity of the Logos intends to oppose those who asserted a temporal beginning thus separating the Logos from the divinity of the Father, which allows us to define them as radical supporters (...) of the theology of the Logos. Against this doctrine, there is an identified opposition which probably utilized the term ὁμοούσιος to indicate to the contrary the divinity of the Son; nevertheless Origen, while proposing that the Son is generated from the ousia of the Father, does not share this teaching because in his theology the Son remains subordinate to the Father. (shrink)

Henri Bergson (1859–1940), the most prominent member of nineteenth-century French spiritualism, is the first philosopher who explicitly defined philosophy as a practice which consists in posing problems anew and in creating concepts. In this article, I will try to reconstruct the progressive importance acquired by the terms ‘problem’ and ‘concept’ in nineteenth-century French philosophy and how they combined in Bergson’s theories about creativity, invention and novelty. I will argue that Bergson’s conception of philosophy as a creative intellectual practice was the (...) result of a negotiation, inside a pre-existent spiritualist framework, between, on the one hand, neo-Kantianism and, on the other hand, evolutionism which strongly influenced empirical psychology and the emerging social sciences. Bergson’s solution, influenced by the evolution of mathematics and literary theory, was just one of the possible options, and the main alternative to a new form of transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

The moving spotlight account (MS) is a view that combines an eternalist ontology and an A-theoretic metaphysics. The intuition underlying MS is that the present time is somehow privileged and experientially vivid, as if it were illuminated by a moving spotlight. According to MS-theorists, a key reason to prefer MS to B-theoretic eternalism is that our experience of time supports it. We argue that this is false. To this end, we formulate a new family of positions in the philosophy of (...) time, which differ from MS in that, intuitively, they admit a plurality of moving spotlights. We argue that these ‘deviant’ variants of MS cannot be dismissed as conceptually incoherent, and that they are as well-supported by our experience as is MS. One of these variants, however, is consistent with the B-theory. Thus, if our experience of time supports MS, then it supports the B-theory as well. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article cherche à éclairer l’élection de Martial Gueroult (1891-1976) à la chaire d’Histoire et technologie des systèmes philosophiques en 1951, et, indirectement, le succès de son approche « structurale » de l’histoire de la philosophie. Ceux qui occupaient des rôles clés dans la gestion de l’économie disciplinaire des sciences humaines ne devaient pas contredire dans leur travaux les axiomes qui avaient réglé la pratique de l’histoire de la philosophie depuis le début du XIXe siècle tout en faisant montre (...) d’innovation dans ce champ. Dans un premier temps nous résumons la méthode historiographique proposée par Gueroult ; un deuxième temps l’inscrit dans une tradition d’historiographie de la philosophie ; le troisième temps situe sommairement la pratique de l’histoire de la philosophie au Collège de France et à la Sorbonne ; dans de quatrième et cinquième temps nous décrivons les rapporteurs et les candidats lors de l’élection au Collège de France, et les pièces pertinentes ; enfin nous considérons les stratégies adoptées pendant la campagne qui ont pu déterminer le résultat de l’élection. (shrink)

Computing, today more than ever before, is a multi-faceted discipline which collates several methodologies, areas of interest, and approaches: mathematics, engineering, programming, and applications. Given its enormous impact on everyday life, it is essential that its debated origins are understood, and that its different foundations are explained. On the Foundations of Computing offers a comprehensive and critical overview of the birth and evolution of computing, and it presents some of the most important technical results and philosophical problems of the discipline, (...) combining both historical and systematic analyses. -/- The debates this text surveys are among the latest and most urgent ones: the crisis of foundations in mathematics and the birth of the decision problem, the nature of algorithms, the debates on computational artefacts and malfunctioning, and the analysis of computational experiments. By covering these topics, On the Foundations of Computing provides a much-needed resource to contextualize these foundational issues. -/- For practitioners, researchers, and students alike, a historical and philosophical approach such as what this volume offers becomes essential to understand the past of the discipline and to figure out the challenges of its future. (shrink)

Open futurism is the indeterministic position according to which the future is ‘open’, i.e., there is now no fact of the matter as to what future contingent events will actually obtain. Many open futurists hold a branching conception of time, in which a variety of possible futures exist. This paper introduces two challenges to branching-time open futurism, which are similar in spirit to a challenge posed by Fine to tense realism. The paper argues that, to address the new challenges, open (...) futurists must adopt an objective, non-perspectival notion of actuality and subscribe to an A-theoretic, dynamic conception of reality. Moreover, given a natural understanding of “actual future”, it is perfectly sensible for open futurists to hold that a unique, objectively actual future exists, contrary to a common assumption in the current debate. The paper also contends that recognising the existence of a unique actual future helps open futurists to avoid potential misconceptions. (shrink)

This paper explores taste fragmentalism, a novel approach to matters of taste and faultless disagreement. The view is inspired by Kit Fine’s fragmentalism about time, according to which the temporal dimension can be constituted—in an absolute manner—by states that are pairwise incompatible, provided that they do not obtain together. In the present paper, we will apply this metaphysical framework to taste states. In our proposal, two incompatible taste states (such as the state of rhubarb’s being tasty and the state of (...) rhubarb’s being distasteful) can both constitute reality in an absolute manner, although no agent can have joint access to both states. We will then develop a formalised version of our view by means of an exact truthmaker semantics for taste assertions. Within this framework—we argue—our linguistic and inferential practices concerning cases of faultless disagreement are elegantly vindicated, thus suggesting that taste fragmentalism is worth of further consideration. (shrink)

CHAPTER Structure and function In physical systems made by a large number of basic constituents one can observe collective properties which find their ...