Parmi les nombreuses lettres de Pierre Teilhard, celles envoyées aux Bégouen, près d'une centaine, occupent une place privilégiée. C'est en 1913, avec la rencontre du comte Henri Bégouën, passionné de préhistoire, que commence la relation de Teilhard avec cette famille. Durant la guerre, cette relation s'ouvre à Max, le fils aîné, et, par la suite, à Simone, son épouse. Dans sa correspondance, Teilhard témoigne d'une amitié profonde et fidèle tout particulièrement à l'égard du couple, qu'il compte parmi ses intimes. En (...) toute liberté, il lui fait part du cheminement de sa pensée et de l'état d'avancement de ses écrits, il lui confie ses difficultés avec les autorités religieuses et prend position sur les courants politiques et idéologiques qui secouent la France et le monde. Grâce aux nombreux souvenirs rassemblés par Max et à quelques copies de ses lettres à Teilhard, se perçoit l'influence déterminante du jésuite sur sa vie et sur son activité professionnelle en Afrique. S'y révèle aussi la riche personnalité du couple qui a contribué au rayonnement de la pensée de Teilhard. Dès 1928, Simone reproduit et diffuse les essais envoyés de Chine par Teilhard. Initiative, peu connue jusqu'à présent, qui a facilité l'édition rapide des oeuvres complètes. En postface, quatre spécialistes de l'oeuvre de Teilhard, Jean-Pierre Demoulin, François Fuvé, Henri Madelin et Gustave Martelet, mettent en lumière l'apport de ces lettres à la compréhension de la personnalité et de la vision clu monde du jésuite. De cet ensemble, il ressort clairement que la pensée teilhardienne déborde des cercles scientifiques et peut éclairer les chrétiens soucieux de construire une société plus juste et plus fraternelle. Les éditions Lessius ont aussi publié la Correspondance de Pierre Teilhard avec Lucile Swan (2008) et Teilhard de Chardin prophète d'un Christ toujours plus grand de Gustave Martelet (2005). (shrink)

"À l'ère postmoderne des incertitudes économiques et des défis identitaires qui sont ceux du XXIe siècle, penser l'être humain, c'est aussi explorer ou définir les univers non humains qui l'entourent. Toutefois, cette exploration est le plus souvent abstraite, figurative ou illustrative et reflète quasi exclusivement des intérêts humains. Elle instrumentalise ainsi les animaux, relégués à un rôle accessoire ou symbolique au profit d'une analyse concernée par l'humain et sa 'différence'. Cet ouvrage se départ de cette tendance pour considérer les responsabilités (...) humaines en regard des souffrances animales. Ce thème est en effet négligé par la pensée contemporaine, qui suit la trace anthropocentrique des priorités humaines d'une part, et par ailleurs rechigne à mener de front réflexion et militantisme. À travers une approche interdisciplinaire audacieuse, philosophes, vétérinaires, juristes, artistes, critiques littéraires, sociologues et historiens font ici part de leur désir de bouleverser les traditions humaines qui perpétuent l'oppression des animaux. Ils communiquent le fruit de leur expérience et de leur réflexion tout en exprimant l'urgence de leur engagement. En rompant le silence qui légitimise l'exploitation insensée de tous les êtres non humains, ils examinent certaines des conséquences de ces traditions, mais montrent également comment de nouvelles voies/x peuvent être prises, clamées et entendues afin de rendre possible la connexité de 'différents modes d'existence' (Bruno Latour)." [Source : 4e de couv.]. (shrink)

Saving Animals, a study of three different kinds of animal sanctuaries, is the first major ethnography to describe how sanctuaries “unmake” the notion of animals as property that reduces them to “bare life.” The study relies on numerous engaging narratives about rescue animals, their mutual interactions, and their interactions with the people who care for them—narratives that illustrate how the sentience and subjectivity of animals provide a firm ground for the author's ethical considerations. An animal sanctuary is ideally an intentional (...) community of cocitizens whose pragmatic and symbolic value resides in its ability to lay the foundation for a broad challenge to all violent practices of exploitation “targeted at a range of different others.” The patient, incremental work of sanctuaries has implications not only for the future of human-animal relations but more broadly for the future of humans on the planet. The ultimate vision of sanctuaries is a world outside that mirrors the world inside, a pantopia where there will be no “others,” only “us.”. (shrink)

The large-scale and intensive collection and analysis of digital data (commonly called “Big Data”) has become a common, popular, and consensual research method for the social sciences, as the automation of data collection, mathematization of analysis, and digital objectification reinforce both its efficiency and truth-value. This article opens with a critical review of the literature on data collection and analysis, and summarizes current ethical discussions focusing on these technologies. A semiotic model of data production and circulation is then introduced to (...) problematize the view that digital data has ceased to stand for a formalization method (a possible kind of representation among others), and effectively “becomes the world itself” (a direct presentation of the world outperforming all other modes of representation). Following Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics and pragmaticist philosophy, we characterize digitalization as a hypersymbolic semiotic process, and we highlight the naturalization of meaning, the illusion of iconicity, and rhetorical efficiency on which data’s truth value relies within the context of its large-scale, profit-driven, and results-oriented research uses. This outlines some epistemological and ethical implications of data’s visualization, use, and authority, and indicates avenues for critical semiotics of contemporary data science and analysis. (shrink)

Gynaecological self-help, a well-known and historical feminist practice from the Second Wave movements which aims at embodying a radical alternative to traditional reproductive politics, is resurging today in France, Switzerland and Belgium. Drawing on empirical observations and interviews, this article questions the links between feminist memory of self-help, the shaping of nostalgia and the production of a political feminist ‘we’. Born at the end of the 1960s in the United States, feminist self-help travelled internationally and was appropriated differently depending on (...) national contexts. This ‘glorious’ history of self-help and, more importantly, its narrated memory, is central to contemporary European self-help activism, as observed in the three national contexts. Drawing on this insight, this article reveals the active memory-oriented emotional work of self-help activists. It examines the ways in which nostalgia for an imagined and lost past is actively and practically produced and encouraged in social movement practices, and highlights the specificity of the kind of collective feminist identity that it shapes and promotes in contemporary self-help politics. (shrink)

This article explores the critical role of emotions and bodies in the individual dynamics of engagement as well as the construction of collective identities and action in women’s groups in the 1970s in France. Much literature on emotion work in feminist organizations has tended to discuss emotions stemming from women’s dominant socialization processes as, above all, alienating, thereby as barriers to their activism. The Movement for the liberty of abortion and birth control offers essential insights into how gendered dispositions can (...) be primary determinants of feminist collective identity formation, and even spur innovative protest practices. With their specific organizational settings and action, some ‘dissident MLACs’ in Aix-en-Provence, Lille, Lyon and Paris – those which continued to practice abortion despite its legalization and in defiance of the 1975 law which forbade them to do so – mobilized reciprocal emotions and bodily experiences to sustain engagement and serve a political project. Drawing on a wide array of biographical interviews and archival sources centred on abortion practices, the article examines the distinctive emotion culture these groups constructed. Its anchoring in bodies, commitment to emotions like tenderness and compassion, but also domestic and relational skills consecrated a gendered repertoire of action which therefore notably appealed to women whose social properties did not predispose them to collective action. (shrink)

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

Inner speech has been shown to vary in form along several dimensions. Along condensation, condensed inner speech forms have been described, that are supposed to be deprived of acoustic, phonological and even syntactic qualities. Expanded forms, on the other extreme, display articulatory and auditory properties. Along dialogality, inner speech can be monologal, when we engage in internal soliloquy, or dialogal, when we recall past conversations or imagine future dialogues involving our own voice as well as that of others addressing us. (...) Along intentionality, it can be intentional (when we deliberately rehearse material in short-term memory) or it can arise unintentionally (during mind wandering). We introduce the ConDialInt model, a neurocognitive predictive control model of inner speech that accounts for its varieties along these three dimensions. ConDialInt spells out the condensation dimension by including inhibitory control at the conceptualization, formulation or articulatory planning stage. It accounts for dialogality, by assuming internal model adaptations and by speculating on neural processes underlying perspective switching. It explains the differences between intentional and spontaneous varieties in terms of monitoring. We present an fMRI study in which we probed varieties of inner speech along dialogality and intentionality, to examine the validity of the neuroanatomical correlates posited in ConDialInt. Condensation was also informally tackled. Our data support the hypothesis that expanded inner speech recruits speech production processes down to articulatory planning, resulting in a predicted signal, the inner voice, with auditory qualities. Along dialogality, covertly using an avatar’s voice resulted in the activation of right hemisphere homologues of the regions involved in internal own-voice soliloquy and in cerebellar deactivation, consistent with internal model adaptation. Switching from first-person to third-person perspective resulted in activations in precuneus and parietal lobules. Along intentionality, compared with intentional inner speech, mind wandering with inner speech episodes was associated with greater bilateral inferior frontal activation and decreased activation in left temporal regions. This is consistent with the reported subjective evanescence and presumably reflects condensation processes. Our results provide neuroanatomical evidence compatible with predictive control and in favor of the assumptions made in the ConDialInt model. (shrink)

This volume sets out to re-imagine the theoretical and epistemological presuppositions of existing scholarship on identities. Despite a well-established body of scholarly texts that examine the concept from a wide range of perspectives, there is a surprising dearth of work on multiple, heterogeneous forms of identity. Numerous studies of ethnic, linguistic, regional and religious identities have appeared, but largely in isolation from one another. Rethinking 'Identities' is a multi-authored project that is original in providing - in distributed and granular mode (...) - a hyper-contemporary and wide-ranging applied analysis that questions notions of identity based on nation and region, language, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion or even 'the human'. The volume achieves this by mobilizing various contexts of identity (gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nation) and medium (art, cinema, literature, music, theatre, video). Emphasizing the extreme contemporary (the twenty-first century) and the challenges posed by an increasingly global society, this collection of essays builds upon existing intellectual investigations of identity with the aim of offering a fresh perspective that transcends cognitive and geographical frontiers. (shrink)

This article introduces the symposium “Toward a Philosophy of Blockchain,” which provides a philosophical contemplation of blockchain technology, the digital ledger software underlying cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, for the secure transfer of money, assets, and information via the Internet without needing a third-party intermediary. The symposium offers philosophical scholarship on a new topic, blockchain technology, from a variety of perspectives. The philosophical themes discussed include mathematical models of reality, signification, and the sociopolitical institutions that structure human life and interaction. The (...) symposium also investigates the metaphilosophical theme of how to create a philosophy of anything, specifically a new topic such as blockchain technology. Repeated themes are identified, in all areas of philosophical inquiry, and conceptual resources are elaborated to contribute to a philosophical understanding of blockchain technology. Thus, philosophy as a metaphilosophical approach is shown to be able to provide an understanding of the conceptual, theoretical, and foundational dimensions of novelty and emergence in the world, with a particular focus on blockchain technology. (shrink)

In 1932, as America struggled to overcome the great economic depression and Hitler was taking power in Germany, Dewey issued a challenge to teachers. Based upon what he viewed as the principle by which to judge "the processes of education, formal and informal," he urged teachers to embrace the following goal: "Education should create an interest in all persons in furthering the general good, so that they will find their own happiness realized in what they can do to improve the (...) conditions of others" (LW 7: 243).In setting this challenge to teachers, Dewey has in mind helping students develop their character in two ways. First, teachers should nurture students' sensitivity to the impact of their speech and actions .. (shrink)

In this paper we address the interrelated questions of why and how certain features of an organism’s environment become meaningful to it. We make the case that knowing the biology is essential to understanding the foundation of meaning-making in organisms. We employ Miguel Nicolelis et al’s seminal research on the mammalian somatosensory system to enrich our own concept of brain-objects as the neurobiological intermediary between the environment and the consequent organismic behavior. In the final section, we explain how brain-objects advance (...) the ongoing discussion of what constitutes a biosemiotic system. In general, this paper acknowledges Marcello Barbieri’s call for biology to make room for meaning, and makes a contribution to that end. (shrink)

The strong continuity thesis postulates that the properties of mind are an enriched version of the properties of life, and thus that life and mind differ in degree and not kind. A philosophical problem for this view is the ostensive discontinuity between humans and other animals in virtue of our use of symbols—particularly the presumption that the symbolic nature of human cognition bears no relation to the basic properties of life. In this paper, we make the case that a genuine (...) account of strong continuity requires the identification of some sort of correlate of symbol-use in basic life properties. Our strategy is three-fold: 1) we argue that examples of proto-symbolism in simple living systems would be consistent with an evolutionary trajectory that ultimately produced symbolic cognition in humans; 2) we introduce Gordon Tomkins’ biological notion of ‘symbol’ as something that represents to the organism a feature of its environment that is significant to its survival; and 3) we employ this biological understanding of symbol-use to suggest that the symbolic nature of human cognition can be understood as an enriched version of the basic symbolic properties of life, thus preserving life-mind continuity in this context. (shrink)

_Inspiring new techniques for engaging students with democratic ideals_ _John Dewey and the Philosophy and Practice of Hope_ combines philosophical theory with a study of its effects in an actual classroom. To understand how Dewey, one of the century's foremost philosophers of education, understood the concept of hope, Stephen Fishman begins with theoretical questions like: What is hope? What are its objects? How can hope foster a new understanding of democracy and social justice? The book's second half is a classroom (...) study that mir-rors in practice what Fishman explores in theory, as Lucille McCarthy observes Fishman's undergraduate students reading the theorists. Illustrating students' own vital engagement with the hope literature, McCarthy reveals how the discussions deepen student understandings, simultaneously showing education's power to promote hope and turn social ideals into reality. (shrink)

Philosophers attracted to the republican ideal of freedom as nondomination sometimes offer the thought that a state concerned to promote this ideal would be more committed to economic justice than a liberal state pursuing freedom as noninterference. The republican commitment to economic justice is more demanding and its provisions are more substantial. These philosophers overstate republican redistributive commitments. The state need only provide a basic set of capabilities in order to achieve the republican goal, and concerns about domination in society (...) better support a sufficiency aim in redistributive policy. (shrink)

Despite the increasing amount of literature on the legal and political questions triggered by a commitment to liberty of conscience, an explanation of the normative significance of conscience remains elusive. We argue that the few attempts to address this fail to capture the reasons people have to respect the consciences of others. We offer an alternative account that utilizes the resources of the contractualist tradition in moral philosophy to explain why conscience matters.

What is artificial life? Much has been said about this interesting collection of efforts to artificially simulate and synthesize lifelike behavior and processes, yet we are far from having a robust philosophical understanding of just what Alifers are doing and why it ought to interest philosophers of science, and philosophers of biology in particular. In this paper, I first provide three introductory examples from the particular subset of artificial life I focus on, known as ‘soft Alife’ (s-Alife), and follow up (...) with a more in-depth review of the Avida program, which serves as my case study of s-Alife. Next, I review three well-known accounts of thought experiments, and then offer my own synthesized account, to make the argument that s-Alife functions as thought experimentation in biology. I draw a comparison between the methodology of the thought-experimental world that yields real-world results, and the s-Alife research that informs our understanding of natural life. I conclude that the insights provided by s-Alife research have the potential to fundamentally alter our understanding of the nature of organic life and thus deserve the attention of both philosophers and natural scientists. (shrink)

In addition to recognizing the connection between aesthetic judgment and mindfulness to better understand the continuity between humans and nonhuman animals, a shift of the discussion of the origins of mind to the origins of mindfulness ...

Leading sixteenth-century scholars such as Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus used print technology to engage in dialogue and debate with authoritative contemporary texts. By what Juan Luis Vives termed 'the unfolding of words,' these humanists gave old works new meanings in brief notes and extensive commentaries, full paraphrases, or translations. This critique challenged the Middle Ages' deference to authors and authorship and resulted in some of the most original thought--and most violent controversy--of the Renaissance and Reformation.

John Hare has proposed “prescriptive realism” in an attempt to stake out a middle-ground position in the twentieth century Anglo-American debates concerning metaethics between substantive moral realists and antirealist-expressivists. The account is supposed to preserve both the normativity and objectivity of moral judgments. Hare defends a version of divine command theory. The proposal succeeds in establishing the middle-ground position Hare intended. However, I argue that prescriptive realism can be strengthened in an interesting way.

This research examines the practice of cryonics and provides empirical evidence for an improved understanding of the motivations and attitudes of participants. Cryonics is the freezing of a person who has died of a disease in hopes of restoring life at some future time when a cure may be available. So far, about 300 people have been cryopreserved, and an additional 1200 have enrolled in such programs. The current work has three vectors. First, the results of a worldwide cryonics survey (...) carried out as part of this research are discussed. Second, a theoretical model is developed from the survey results to propose a Theory of Cryonic Life Extension which explains an individual’s decision to select cryopreservation. Third, the most distinctive survey result, a conceptualization of personal identity malleability, is extended with a philosophical formulation. Personal identity is found to be emergent, not fundamental, and thus may continue to evolve in concept and application, particularly in the longer time frames implicated by cryonics. The potential consequences of this work are that the conceptual norms materializing in the cryonics community could be forerunners of wider societal trends of how humans understand themselves as subjects in an era increasingly configured by science and technology. (shrink)

Considering the mutual benefits of blockchain and transhumanism, this essay proposes crypto cloudminds as a safe mechanism by which the human mind might transcend its unitary limitations by permissioning partial resources to join a multi-party mind in a cloud-based environment. Cloudminds could have diverse purposes including problem solving, learning, experience, exploration, innovation, artistic expression, and other personal development activities. Crypto cloudminds could be multicurrency, operating with payment remuneration, security, and ideas as the denominations of measure. For thriving in the future, (...) mind node peers could enter “Yes-and” Payment Channels with one another for collaborative idea development. For surviving in the future, good-player behavior could be game-theoretically enforced with the simultaneous privacy-transparency property of blockchains, together with the immutable peer-confirmed consensus algorithm and audit-log checks and balances system. Overall, blockchains might serve as an institutional technology that is the basis for treaties and progress in a multi-species society of human, algorithm, and machine, guiding the way to positive transhuman futures. (shrink)

The belief bias in reasoning occurs when individuals are more willing to accept conclusions that are consistent with their beliefs than conclusions that are inconsistent. The present study...

As inter‐organisational relations represent an increasingly important element in business the ability to build sustainable relationships becomes a key skill. To achieve sustainable relationships parties need to move from a low trust/low ethics base to a high trust/high ethics base in their relating. This paper uses data from a study into trust‐based partnering in the construction industry to demonstrate that ethics is integral to trust building. The data supports the proposition that ethical partnering, which is characterised by reliability, delivery of (...) promises, open and honest communications, respect and reciprocity, and a willingness to act reasonably towards each other, is the most effective model for parties seeking to build sustainable relationships. (shrink)