Que peut nous apporter la réflexion philosophique sur les rapports de l’homme à la nature? C’est l’interrogation centrale de cet ouvrage qui nous propose une réflexion à prendre au sens premier, comme on parle de la réflexion d’un rayon lumineux en optique. En effet, de même que le rayon retourne à sa source après avoir rencontré une surface réfléchissante, la pensée peut revenir sur elle-même pour se repenser. "Penser sa pensée, (c'est) proprement philosopher", disait Alain dans Éléments de philosophie. Ce (...) texte retrace les rapports de l’homme à la nature à travers un vaste panorama de la pensée occidentale et nous fait comprendre l’enchaînement des systèmes et des doctrines entre sciences de la nature et de l’homme, philosophie, art et action. De manière originale, il analyse avec précision (extraits à l'appui) des notions essentielles comme le progrès, la nature de l'homme, la technique...pour nous faire approcher la pensée écologique de célèbres penseurs et écrivains (Aristote, Hegel, Spinoza, Voltaire, Chateaubriand, etc.) et des scientifiques (Darwin, Galilée, Copernic, Lévi-Strauss, etc.) Ses références sont nombreuses et toujours justifiées. Grâce à ce tour d'horizon des grandes pensées sur la nature, Luc Strenna nous propose d'accepter notre devoir écologique et de mieux respecter le vivant dans toute sa richesse. (shrink)

Moral purism is a commonly held view on moral worthiness and how to identify it in concrete cases. Moral purists long for a moral world in which (business) people—at least sometimes—act morally worthy, but in concrete cases they systematically discount good deeds as grounded in self-interest. Moral purism evokes moral cynicism. Moral cynicism is a problem, both in society at large and the business world. Moral cynicism can be fought by refuting moral purism. This article takes issue with moral purism. (...) The common strategy to tackle moral purism is to reject the exclusion thesis which states that self-interest and the ‘pure’ moral motive (and thus moral worthiness) exclude each other. We develop a different strategy. We argue that moral purists are mistaken in the way they judge moral worthiness in concrete cases. They employ the wrongprocedureand the wrongcriteria.We develop a proper procedure and proper criteria. We build on Kant, who we argue is unfairly regarded as the champion of moral purism. In order to see how Kant can develop a consistent (non-purist) philosophy, the exclusion thesis must be embedded in Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Properly embedded, Kant turns out to be both anti-purist and anti-cynical. (shrink)

In its last round of publications in September 2012, the Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) assigned a biochemical function to most of the human genome, which was taken up by the media as meaning the end of ‘Junk DNA’. This provoked a heated reaction from evolutionary biologists, who among other things claimed that ENCODE adopted a wrong and much too inclusive notion of function, making its dismissal of junk DNA merely rhetorical. We argue that this criticism rests on misunderstandings concerning (...) the nature of the ENCODE project, the relevant notion of function and the claim that most of our genome is junk. We argue that evolutionary accounts of function presuppose functions as ‘causal roles’, and that selection is but a useful proxy for relevant functions, which might well be unsuitable to biomedical research. Taking a closer look at the discovery process in which ENCODE participates, we argue that ENCODE’s strategy of biochemical signatures successfully identified activities of DNA elements with an eye towards causal roles of interest to biomedical research. We argue that ENCODE’s controversial claim of functionality should be interpreted as saying that 80 % of the genome is engaging in relevant biochemical activities and is very likely to have a causal role in phenomena deemed relevant to biomedical research. Finally, we discuss ambiguities in the meaning of junk DNA and in one of the main arguments raised for its prevalence, and we evaluate the impact of ENCODE’s results on the claim that most of our genome is junk. (shrink)

Traditional health sciences (including nursing) paradigms, conceptual models, and theories have relied heavily upon notions of the ‘person’ or ‘patient’ that are deeply rooted in humanistic principles. Our intention here, as a collective academic assemblage, is to question taken‐for‐granted definitions and assumptions of the ‘person’ from a critical posthumanist perspective. To do so, the cinematic works of filmmaker David Cronenberg offer a radical perspective to revisit our understanding of the ‘person’ in nursing and beyond. Cronenberg's work explores bodily transformation and (...) mutation, with the body as a fragile and malleable vessel. Cronenberg's work allows us to interrogate the body in all its complexity, contingency, and hybridity and provides avenues of rupture within current understandings of ‘the person’. Reinventing the definition of what it means to be human, critical posthumanism offers opportunities to both critique humanist theories and build affirmative futurities. Also drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, specifically, their concept of becoming, we propose a critical posthumanist alternative to the conceptualization of the person in the health sciences, that of the becoming‐mutant, so frequently explored in Cronenberg's films. Such a conceptualization permits the inclusion of various technological interventions of the contemporary subject: The postperson. This position offers the health science disciplines a radical reconceptualization of the conceptual and theoretical approaches, extending beyond those trapped within the quagmire of humanistic principles. (shrink)

The variety of evidence thesis in confirmation theory states that more varied supporting evidence confirms a hypothesis to a greater degree than less varied evidence. Under a very plausible interpretation of this thesis, positive test results from multiple independent instruments confirm a hypothesis to a greater degree than positive test results from a single instrument. We invoke Bayesian Networks to model confirmation on grounds of evidence that is obtained from less than fully reliable instruments and show that the variety of (...) evidence thesis is not sacrosanct when testing is conducted with less than fully reliable instruments: under certain conditions, a hypothesis receives more confirmation from evidence that is obtained from one rather than from more independent instruments. In the appendix, we prove certain convergence results for large numbers of positive test results from single versus multiple less than fully reliable instruments. (shrink)

L’importance de Ludwik Fleck pour l’épistémologie historique est maintenant reconnue. Mais nul ne semble encore avoir mis en évidence que ses conceptions, au-delà de leur champ d’origine, s’appliquent aussi très naturellement, et avec profit, à l’histoire des idées. C’est ce que l’on se propose de faire ici, en présentant leurs concepts fondamentaux, ceux de style de pensée et de collectif de pensée.

Ricoeur’s Philosophy of the Will is reexamined here both as a source of motivation for his project of dialoguing with the analytic theory of action and as an explanation for the lack of response on the part of his Anglo-American interlocutors. Keywords: Actions, Language, Body, Idealism. Résumé La Philosophie de la volonté de Ricœur est revisitée ici comme source de motivation de son entreprise de dialogue avec la théorie analytique de l’action et comme explication du défaut de réponse de ses (...) interlocuteurs anglo-américains. Mots-clés: Actions, Langage, Corps, Idéalisme. (shrink)

Créativité et mathématiques ne font pas bon ménage dans l'inconscient collectif. Pourtant à l'heure d'Internet, il existe bien une manière de revisiter la géométrie, l'algèbre ou même la logique. Il suffit de prendre un peu de distance par rapport aux calculs, de se donner quelques libertés par rapport à l'histoire, de changer de point de vue... En vagabondant à travers l'histoire et l'application des mathématiques, les auteurs se livrent ici à un jeu de vulgarisation d'une saveur et d'une subtilité inédites. (...) [4e de couv.]. (shrink)

The position of the Belgian prime minister is hardly mentioned in the Belgian Constitution. lt was only after almost 140 years, in 1970 he was mentioned for the first time. lts power is rather a matter of common law. Since 1831 through the years, the position and power of the PM changed strongly. This often happened together with changes concerning the power of the King: the weaker the King, the stronger the PM.The existence of coalition governments puts forward bis role (...) as coordinator and even as arbitrator, whereas the federalisation process since the seventies places him as a conciliator between Regions and Communities. The growing importance of the European Council of Head of States have made him the most important decision-maker among the national politicians in the European integration process. The PM's skills concerning timing and agendasetting are very important because it is one of his most important power instruments. Other key skills are bis profound knowledge in certain issues but mostly as a generalist, his insisting on good minister nominations by the party leaders, the way he can motivate his cabinet members, a good team spirit among the government members and the existence of a clear government contract. In order to avoid a strongdependency on or tutelage from the political parties of the majority it is important to have their top politicians in the government. (shrink)

Painting, according to Jean-Luc Marion, is a central topic of concern for philosophy, particularly phenomenology. For the question of painting is, at its heart, a question of visibility—of appearance. As such, the painting is a privileged case of the phenomenon; the painting becomes an index for investigating the conditions of appearance—or what Marion describes as “phenomenality” in general. In The Crossing of the Visible, Marion takes up just such a project. The natural outgrowth of his earlier reflections on icons, these (...) four studies carefully consider the history of painting—from classical to contemporary—as a fund for phenomenological reflection on the conditions of (in)visibility. Ranging across artists from Raphael to Rothko, Caravaggio to Pollock, The Crossing of the Visible offers both a critique of contemporary accounts of the visual and a constructive alternative. According to Marion, the proper response to the “nihilism” of postmodernity is not iconoclasm, but rather a radically iconic account of the visual and the arts that opens them to the invisible. (shrink)

Dans cet entretien, Jean-Luc Marion remet en cause la pertinence à la fois du concept de pouvoir et de la question même de l’« au-delà » du pouvoir dans la mesure où tous deux demeurent prisonniers du régime de la métaphysique. De son point de vue, certains phénomènes identifiés par la philosophie contemporaine – tel celui de l’appel – rendent inopérants ce régime et les concepts (pouvoir, puissance, force, faiblesse) qu’il peut configurer. Délivrés du pouvoir aussi bien que du non-pouvoir, (...) ces phénomènes procèdent de ce que Marion propose d’appeler l’impouvoir. (shrink)

A critical survey of work being done in political thought - whether philosophy, theory or history - in the United Kingdom.

It is the economic buzz-word of the 1990s, it destroys our jobs, it hollows out the decision-making power of governments, it even threatens the nation-state as the central institution of western type democracies — `it' is globalization and we are only at the beginning of it. Whether all of this is for good or ill is a topic of heated debate. One positive view is that globalization is an unmixed blessing, with the potential to boost productivity and living standards everywhere.This (...) is because a globally integrated economy can lead to a better division of labour between countries, allowing low-wage countries to specialize in labour-intensive tasks while high-wage countries use workers in more productive ways. It will allow firms to exploit bigger economies of scale. And with globalization, capital can be shifted to whatever country offers the most productive investment opportunities, not trapped at home financing projects with poor returns. In fact, the arguments in favour of globalization differ little from the arguments in favour of a free market in a closed economy.Critics of globalization take a gloomier view. They predict that increased competition from low-wage developing countries will destroy jobs and push down wages in today's rich economies. There will be a `race to the bottom' as countries reduce wage taxes, welfare benefits and environmental controls to make themselves more `competitive'. Pressure to compete will erode the ability of governments to set their own economic policies. The critics also worry about the increased power of financial markets to cause economic havoc, as in the European currency crises of 1992-93, Mexico in 1994-95 and South-East Asia in 1997-98. And “chaos theorists” have even predicted a clash of civilizations, as Western norms and values attempt to impose themselves on other societies through the medium of globalization.But despite all the buzz about globalization, or rather because of it, globalization has turned into a notoriously difficult concept to define. It is an inflated term that is employed so loosely that almost anything can be used to illustrate its operation. This limits the analytical usefulness of the concept. In what follows, we shall introduce a more precise definition and point out the political consequences of this type of globalization. (shrink)

A beautiful, profound series of reflections on the body by one of the most prominent and consequential philosophers of continental Europe This landmark collection brings into English Jean-Luc Nancy's last completed work and concludes his remarkable philosophical reflections on the body, a project and journey he began almost thirty years ago. Nancy's essays--which take the body as an intersection of pulsing life and destructive cruelty on a global scale--become more vivid, more physical, than ever, even as they venture into language (...) that is as lyrical as it is profound. This vividness is manifest in blood: as it flows, in all its pulsing and forceful circulation, and as it spills, in the cruelty of existences confronted daily by countless destructions. This can be described as sanguis and cruor, the two Latin words for blood's intermingled but distinct aspects. This distinction allows Nancy to highlight an almost mystical sense of the body (yet one that remains soberly on this side of its manifest insistence), alongside the cruelty that pervades our world. The very existence of the world itself is threatened by its reduction to mere objects. The exceptional writings brought together in Corpus III comprise a masterful work of philosophy that marries rigorous erudition--on Freud, Nietzsche, and others--with rich poetic language and an actual poem. Nancy's thought opens the body onto its own unaccountable origins, its plural singularities, its enmeshed instantiations, and its excessive irreducibles, which are also the elusive excesses of language. Whereas in earlier texts Nancy has referred to this excess as poetry, here he performs it in the form of a poem, in the extraordinary hymn entitled Stoma. While the publication of a poem by Nancy is a notable event, equally noteworthy is a remarkable essay entitled "Scandalous Death," in which Nancy meditated on a subject that was to come to him too soon after. Above all, the book is crucial for bringing into English Cruor, the very last work Nancy completed before his death, an evocative meditation offered by a great thinker on the complex conditions of his own--and our--singular survival. (shrink)

In Russia a monotheism - Orthodox Christianity - and atheism in its Marxist version have succeeded each other as state systems of rites and representations. Rather than contrasting one with the other, term with term, this paper proposes to bring in a third term: the local religious systems of Russia’s animist minorities. We examine how Christianity and atheism tried one after the other to get established there and also consider the reactions they encountered. The analysis as planned is undertaken on (...) two levels: on an overall level we look at the strategies and aims of the state and its representatives, and on the local level - illustrated by the particular example of the Nenets - concrete and always specific mechanisms are presented, which application of general policy has implemented on the ground. (shrink)

The mean majority deficit in a two-tier voting system is a function of the partition of the population. We derive a new square-root rule: For odd-numbered population sizes and equipopulous units the mean majority deficit is maximal when the member size of the units in the partition is close to the square root of the population size. Furthermore, within the partitions into roughly equipopulous units, partitions with small even numbers of units or small even-sized units yield high mean majority deficits. (...) We discuss the implications for the winner-takes-all system in the US Electoral College. (shrink)

La tradition phénoménologique s'oppose aux sciences cogmttves contemporaines en ceci que le corps propre n'est pas, pour elle, une simple chose du monde physique dont l'esprit-cerveau contiendrait une représentation mentale, mais qu'il est plutôt constitué en son sens d'être pour le sujet par son usage et son appropriation active par ce même sujet, en tant qu'être agissant. Or, il existe une affinité, encore non reconnue, entre cette conception et celle qui ressort de la littérature en cartographie cérébrale des vingt dernières (...) années, d'une neurodynamique morphogénétique fonctionnelle induite et modulée par l'expérience, en une relative autonomie par rapport aux structures anatomiques du corps comme aux frontières cytoarchitectoniques du cerveau. Tirant parti de cette affinité, nous prenons appui sur les données des neurosciences pour réhabiliter contre sa dévalorisation par les sciences cognitives la théorie de la constitution de Husserl, en revenant de ses adaptations ultérieures (Merleau-Ponty) à sa forme authentique, qui est celle de l'auto-constitution subjective (transcendantale) du corps propre sur la base de l'expérience pratico-kinesthésique du «je meus mon corps ». (shrink)

Cet ouvrage a pour but de détruire le préjugé tenace d'après lequel le philosophe allemand Husserl, fondateur de la phénoménologie, se serait enfermé dans un solipsisme chimérique attribuant au sujet de la conscience le pouvoir de donner sens à toute chose au monde ; tandis que le philosophe autrichien Wittgenstein, fondateur de la philosophie analytique, nous aurait libéré des apories du solipsisme en se plaçant d'emblée sur le terrain communautaire de l'usage du langage.

Los autores conversan sobre la distinta relación que tienen con la filosofía las lenguas española y francesa, encontrando la explicación de esa diferencia principalmente en los “espíritus” que nos separan, no obstante nuestra considerable cercanía lingüística. Mientras que la Reforma y la Contrarreforma exigieron de Francia un “humanismo del saber objetivo, del individuo y del progreso”, la cultura española dio de sí “un paradójico humanismo de la fe, de la expansión y de los juegos de la apariencia”. El “espíritu de (...) la filosofía” (Descartes, el ancestro de Hegel) se desarrolló en el norte de Europa, y en la Europa mediterránea floreció más bien “el espíritu de la ficción” (el Cervantes de Unamuno, de Ortega, de Borges y de Kundera). La inquietud de un mundo que bien podría no ser sino sueño, o incluso locura –de la que terminará por resurgir, al lado del cervantino y del calderoniano, el cogito cartesiano–, es sin embargo una inquietud española en primer lugar, y eso es algo que amerita ser estudiado, y sobre todo pensado. Una clave muy importante para dicho estudio es la constatación, subrayada por Nancy en respuesta al problema de la calificación de nuestra filosofía como “mera literatura”, de la “pérdida de confianza en las aventuras del sentido” que ha caracterizado a la Modernidad (o al Occidente en su versión nórdica, ese “espíritu de la filosofía alemana” que tras el efecto del nazismo se mudó a Francia y a Estados Unidos). Ahí donde Unamuno señalaba la necesidad, antes que de europeizar a España, de “españolizar a Europa”, Jean-Luc Nancy reconoce que Occidente necesita atreverse, una vez más, a abrirse a la aventura, y al riesgo del pensamiento. (shrink)

Ein Gespräch zwischen zweien, die sich nicht sicher sind, ob sie schon denken -/- Der Begriff des Denkens zieht sich als emphatischer Begriff durch das Werk von Jean-Luc Nancy. Zugleich lehnt er es ab, sich selbst als »Denker« bezeichnen zu lassen. Denken ist für ihn stets mit einem »noch nicht« zu versehen. Anknüpfend an Heideggers berühmte Vorlesung »Was heißt Denken?« spricht Nancy in diesem Band mit dem Philosophen und Kurator Daniel Tyradellis über das, was Denken macht: über prägende Lektüren und (...) einflussreiche Lehrer, über Misosophie und das Unerträgliche, über ästhetische Erfahrungen und ihre Medien. In Nähe und Abgrenzung zu Heidegger entsteht ein Bild des Denkens, das darum ringt, dem »uns« und dem »wir« Raum zu geben und das Mit-Sein als ontologische Kategorie zu fassen. (shrink)

Philosophers have been particularly interested in providing an analysis of the concept of mental disorder that could accommodate and guide psychiatric practices (for example diagnostics, therapy, epidemiology, etc.). One of the most discussed propositions is Jerome Wakefield’s “Harmful Dysfunction Analysis” (henceforth HDA). Inspired by Wakefield’s own foray into experimental philosophy, we propose in this paper to test folk people’s intuitions on a wider number of mental disorders than he did as well as in different condition in which the symptoms could (...) be understand as the result of an evolved mechanism. (shrink)

We consider a chain of metabolic reactions catalyzed by enzymes, of reversible Michaelis-Menten type with full dynamics, i.e. not reduced with any quasi-steady state approximations. We study the corresponding dynamical system and show its global stability if the equilibrium exists. If the system is open, the equilibrium may not exist. The main tool is monotone systems theory. Finally we study the implications of these results for the study of coupled genetic-metabolic systems.