ArgumentMontpellier vitalists upheld a medical perspective akin to modern “holism” in positing the functional unity of creatures imbued with life. While early vitalists focused on the human organism, Jean-Charles-Marguerite-Guillaume Grimaud investigated digestion, growth, and other physiological processes that human beings shared with simpler organisms. Eschewing modern investigative methods, Grimaud promoted a medically-grounded “metaphysics.” His influential doctrine of the “two lives” broke with Montpellier holism, classifying some vital phenomena as “higher” and others as “lower” and attributing the “nobility” of (...) the human species to the predominance of the former. In place of Montpellier teaching that attributed health to the holistic equilibration of vital activities, Grimaud embraced spiritualist dualisms of soul and body, Creator and created. Celebrating the divinely-ordained “wisdom” evident in involuntary physiological processes, he argued that such life functions were incomprehensible to human investigators. While Grimaud's work encouraged inquiry into the division between the central and “vegetative” nervous systems that became paradigmatic in nineteenth-century neuroscience, it also opened Montpellier vitalism to charges of conservatism and obscurantism that are still lodged against it to the present day. (shrink)

Le XIVe siècle peut sans nul doute être considéré comme «l’âge d’or» de la mystique en Angleterre. Parmi les noms de R. Rolle, W. Hilton, J. de Norwich, l’auteur du Nuage d’Inconnaissance occupe une place importante, gardant un anonymat manifestement recherché. Il apparaît très vraisemblable que cet Anonyme ait longtemps et assidûment fréquenté les milieux cartusiens, s’il n’a pas été lui-même chartreux, avant peut-être de choisir une vie plus radicalement érémitique. Le but de son œuvre est l’union à Dieu par (...) le détachement absolu, union au Tout-Autre selon le mode apophatique légué par Denys le pseudo-Aréopagite dont il se réclame explicitement, et auquel il emprunte le titre de son principal ouvrage. Il revendique également l’influence de Grégoire de Nysse, de saint Augustin, de Richard de Saint-Victor dont il traduira en anglais le Benjamin minor, et laisse clairement entendre qu’il a lu Thomas d’Aquin, saint Bernard et Guillaume de Saint-Thierry. Mais il est une influence profonde et non avouée qu’il nous a semblé intéressant de dégager ici; il s’agit de celle du Miroir des Simples âmes anéanties de Marguerite Porete. (shrink)

Aristotle's remarks about the differences between the sexes have become infamous for their implications for the social status of women. In his observations on female biology, Aristotle claims that "the female nature is, as it were, a deformity." In describing women's role in the public sphere, he claims that women are naturally subordinate because, while they possess a deliberative faculty, that capacity is "without authority." While both claims express the "inferiority" of female bodies/women relative to male bodies/men, it is not (...) self-evident that the defects Aristotle identifies in female biology have cognitive or moral manifestations that would justify the rule of men over women in political life. Marguerite Deslauriers here aims to construct a coherent picture of Aristotle's views on sexual and gender-based difference from these remarks and to show the extent to which his views on female biology and women's role in politics are causally connected. Without exculpating Aristotle from charges of misogyny, Deslauriers contextualizes his explanations of the role and origin of female animals in his biology and the role of women in his political philosophy; she shows how Aristotle developed these views and the importance they hold for his wider philosophical commitments. She then explores how Aristotle might have seen the link between the physiology of sex and the bearing it has on political life. She ultimately argues that in Aristotle's conception of sexual difference in biology and politics, there is a tension between his view of the inferiority of female bodies and women and his commitment to the idea that females and women are valuable both for generation and for the political life characteristic of human beings. In this tension she finds a difference between Aristotle and his predecessors: while previous accounts associate sexual difference with affliction, Aristotle sees sexual difference as a benefit, both to a species and a political community. This volume will be of interest to philosophers and students interested in ancient philosophy, feminist philosophy, as well as those studying moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, we use an experimental design to compare the performance of elicitation rules for subjective beliefs. Contrary to previous works in which elicited beliefs are compared to an objective benchmark, we consider a purely subjective belief framework. The performance of different elicitation rules is assessed according to the accuracy of stated beliefs in predicting success. We measure this accuracy using two main factors: calibration and discrimination. For each of them, we propose two statistical indexes and we compare the (...) rules’ performances for each measurement. The matching probability method provides more accurate beliefs in terms of discrimination, while the quadratic scoring rule reduces overconfidence and the free rule, a simple rule with no incentives, which succeeds in eliciting accurate beliefs. Nevertheless, the matching probability appears to be the best mechanism for eliciting beliefs due to its performances in terms of calibration and discrimination, but also its ability to elicit consistent beliefs across measures and across tasks, as well as its empirical and theoretical properties. (shrink)

Envy and resentment are generally thought to be unpleasant and unethical emotions which ought to be condemned. I argue that both envy and resentment, in some important forms, are moral emotions connected with concern for justice, understood in terms of desert and entitlement. They enable us to recognise injustice, work as a spur to acting against it and connect us to others. Thus, we should accept these emotions as part of the ethical life.

This conference was devoted to the 80 years of the Copenhagen Interpretation, and to the question of the relevance of the Copenhagen interpretation for the present understanding of quantum mechanics. It is in this framework that fundamental questions raised by quantum mechanics, especially in information theory, were discussed throughout the conference. As has become customary in our series of conference in Växjö, we were glad to welcome a fruitful assembly of theoretical physicists, experimentalists, mathematicians and even philosophers interested in the (...) foundations of probability and physics. The nature of quantum fluctuations---in the form of Stochastic Electrodynamics or in other approaches to stochastic quantum mechanics---was also a central topic discussed during the conference, especially during debates. We should also mention talks on the completeness or incompleteness of quantum mechanics; on macroscopic quantum systems; on Bell's inequality, entanglement and experiments on quantum nonlocality (and locality); on Bohmian mechanics; on the connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity; on quantum probability; on quantum computing, quantum teleportation and quantum cryptography technologies; and more generally on the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics and on the philosophical problems raised by its interpretations. (shrink)

This Växjö conference was devoted to the reconsideration of quantum foundations. Due to increasing research in quantum information theory, especially on quantum computing and cryptography, many questions regarding the foundations of quantum mechanics, which have long been considered to be exclusively of philosophical interest, nowadays play an important role in theoretical and experimental quantum physics.

ABSTRACT:A key factor in the decision to convert a publicly owned company to private status is the expectation that value will be created, providing the firm with rent. These rents have implications regarding the property rights of the firm’s capital-contributing constituencies. We identify and analyze the types of rent associated with the newly private firm. Compared to public firms, going private allows owners the potential to partition part of the residual risk to bond holders and employees, rendering them to be (...) co-residual risk bearers with owners. We propose that new promotion-based contracts with bond holders and employees, reflecting their particular investments, be negotiated as the firm migrates from public to private status. These contracts should acknowledge the firm’s intent to maximize shareholder value and its need to take the risks necessary to do so, but support that the firm’s survival not be undermined due to its possibly opportunistic owners. (shrink)

Is love essential to ethical life, or merely a supplement? In Kant's view, respect and love, as duties, are in tension with each other because love involves drawing closer and respect involves drawing away. By contrast, Irigaray says that love and respect do not conflict because love as passion must also involve distancing and we have a responsibility to love. I argue that love, understood as passion and based on respect, is essential to ethics.

In a reading of René Descartes's The Passions of the Soul, Luce Irigaray explores the possibility that wonder, first of all passions, can provide the basis for an ethics of sexual difference because it is prior to judgment, and thus nonhierarchical. For Descartes, the passion of generosity gives the key to ethics. I argue that wonder should be extended to other differences and should be combined with generosity to form the basis of an ethics.

This work examines Aristotle's discussions of definition in his logical works and the Metaphysics, and argues for the importance of definitions of simple ...

Corporate codes of ethics, which have spread in the last decades, have shown a limited ability to foster ethical behaviors. For instance, they have been criticized for relying too much on formal compliance, rather than taking into account sufficiently agents and their moral development, or promoting self-reflexive behaviors. We aim here at showing that a code of ethics in fact has meaning and enables ethical progress when it is interpreted and appropriated with practical wisdom. We explore a model that represents (...) an uncommon organizational code of ethics: the monastic Rule of St. Benedict, written in the sixth century and still used today. Our empirical study—conducted in several monasteries living under this rule—shows that organization members interpret this rule, both hermeneutically and ethically, to adapt it to situations. They also appropriate this rule as a way of life and treat it as a dynamic framework that helps them to follow their purpose within their organization. This exceptional code actually offers an alternative model for practicing codes of ethics, in a virtue-ethical manner, beyond mere compliance with the text. The way in which reflexive and active agents practice the code, both individually and collectively, shapes their organizational experience and fosters their moral development. (shrink)

This article draws on the sociology of expectations to examine the construction of expectations of ‘ethical AI’ and considers the implications of these expectations for communication governance. We first analyse a range of public documents to identify the key actors, mechanisms and issues which structure societal expectations around artificial intelligence and an emerging discourse on ethics. We then explore expectations of AI and ethics through a survey of members of the public. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for (...) the role of AI in communication governance. We find that, despite societal expectations that we can design ethical AI, and public expectations that developers and governments should share responsibility for the outcomes of AI use, there is a significant divergence between these expectations and the ways in which AI technologies are currently used and governed in large scale communication systems. We conclude that discourses of ‘ethical AI’ are generically performative, but to become more effective we need to acknowledge the limitations of contemporary AI and the requirement for extensive human labour to meet the challenges of communication governance. An effective ethics of AI requires domain appropriate AI tools, updated professional practices, dignified places of work and robust regulatory and accountability frameworks. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 71-75 [Access article in PDF] Response to Kingsley Price's "How Can Music Seem to be Emotional" Marguerite Nering Calgary, Canada Kingsley Price argues that music, since it is not personal, cannot be emotional but can only seem emotional. In an earlier draft of this paper he described it more fully: "Music is not a person, cannot possibly harbor an inward life, (...) and cannot possibly be emotional." He then sets out to discover how music, since for him it is not emotional, can seem to be so. Through a step-by-step process of philosophical inquiry, he first looks within perception and not finding an answer there, searches without, mainly focusing on meaning and Susanne Langer's theory of emotion and music. His search is unrewarded, leaving him to conclude that the answer to his question remains an incomprehensible mystery.His logic at first seems impervious to dispute. Had he not strictly limited his meaning of music and emotion-particularly emotion-it may have simplified responding to his query. For him, "music" refers to instrumental music that is heard or perceived. "Emotion" means conscious feelings we find ourselves in when undergoing emotion.The major question one must ask is whether his basic premise is accurate. Is he correct in stating that music unequivocally is not emotional but only seems so? [End Page 71] Is he correct in stating that music does not harbor an inward life? After all, he is talking about instrumental music that is perceived. While one cannot deny that notated music on paper is not emotional, does this hold for instrumental music being performed and transmitted? The source is a live human, someone who has an inward life, or at least did have at the time of production. The receptor is alive and has an inward life. The human source is sending living music imbued with emotion and energy. The airwaves transport these vibrations. Can we really say that the living or live music reaching the receiver's ears is not carrying real emotion?Returning to Price's analysis, we find he looks first at perception itself, in this case sense perception, and determines that it has two major constituents: awareness and the object of awareness. He argues that awareness cannot seem to exist; it must exist. It is always simple; therefore, there can be no characteristic that makes it seeming and not real. I question whether the latter conclusion necessarily follows, that is, that reality is a consequence of simplicity, but I must agree that awareness by virtue of its existence must be real.Music heard is the object of awareness. He states that the distinction between seeming and reality does apply to some things-for example, to Macbeth seeing a dagger that really is not there-but declares that this cannot apply to music heard, for it actually exists. Does this mean that one cannot hear music that really is not there? The illusion should work for hearing if it works for vision. Back to his argument, because music heard exists, he reasons that one cannot say that the seeming emotionality in music can be traced to the character of the music that bears it. I wonder then how this would apply to a person playing music with real emotion for his or her own enjoyment? In this case the human receptor of music is also the human source of the music. They are one and the same, and this person of course has an inward personal life. Does this music only seem emotional or is it really emotional? It would make sense that it is really emotional.He then looks at whether the seemingness of emotionality can be traced to emotionality itself and deduces that it cannot. Emotions are real. If we feel joy, it is real joy we are feeling and not seeming joy. One cannot debate this. Again, however, I am not convinced of the seemingness of the emotionality of music. Because music comes from a living person, it is an extension... (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn the debate about the worth of women in sixteenth and seventeenth century Italy three pro-woman authors of the period, Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, and Arcangela Tarabotti, develop...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 71-75 [Access article in PDF] Response to Kingsley Price's "How Can Music Seem to be Emotional" Marguerite Nering Calgary, Canada Kingsley Price argues that music, since it is not personal, cannot be emotional but can only seem emotional. In an earlier draft of this paper he described it more fully: "Music is not a person, cannot possibly harbor an inward life, (...) and cannot possibly be emotional." He then sets out to discover how music, since for him it is not emotional, can seem to be so. Through a step-by-step process of philosophical inquiry, he first looks within perception and not finding an answer there, searches without, mainly focusing on meaning and Susanne Langer's theory of emotion and music. His search is unrewarded, leaving him to conclude that the answer to his question remains an incomprehensible mystery.His logic at first seems impervious to dispute. Had he not strictly limited his meaning of music and emotion-particularly emotion-it may have simplified responding to his query. For him, "music" refers to instrumental music that is heard or perceived. "Emotion" means conscious feelings we find ourselves in when undergoing emotion.The major question one must ask is whether his basic premise is accurate. Is he correct in stating that music unequivocally is not emotional but only seems so? [End Page 71] Is he correct in stating that music does not harbor an inward life? After all, he is talking about instrumental music that is perceived. While one cannot deny that notated music on paper is not emotional, does this hold for instrumental music being performed and transmitted? The source is a live human, someone who has an inward life, or at least did have at the time of production. The receptor is alive and has an inward life. The human source is sending living music imbued with emotion and energy. The airwaves transport these vibrations. Can we really say that the living or live music reaching the receiver's ears is not carrying real emotion?Returning to Price's analysis, we find he looks first at perception itself, in this case sense perception, and determines that it has two major constituents: awareness and the object of awareness. He argues that awareness cannot seem to exist; it must exist. It is always simple; therefore, there can be no characteristic that makes it seeming and not real. I question whether the latter conclusion necessarily follows, that is, that reality is a consequence of simplicity, but I must agree that awareness by virtue of its existence must be real.Music heard is the object of awareness. He states that the distinction between seeming and reality does apply to some things-for example, to Macbeth seeing a dagger that really is not there-but declares that this cannot apply to music heard, for it actually exists. Does this mean that one cannot hear music that really is not there? The illusion should work for hearing if it works for vision. Back to his argument, because music heard exists, he reasons that one cannot say that the seeming emotionality in music can be traced to the character of the music that bears it. I wonder then how this would apply to a person playing music with real emotion for his or her own enjoyment? In this case the human receptor of music is also the human source of the music. They are one and the same, and this person of course has an inward personal life. Does this music only seem emotional or is it really emotional? It would make sense that it is really emotional.He then looks at whether the seemingness of emotionality can be traced to emotionality itself and deduces that it cannot. Emotions are real. If we feel joy, it is real joy we are feeling and not seeming joy. One cannot debate this. Again, however, I am not convinced of the seemingness of the emotionality of music. Because music comes from a living person, it is an extension... (shrink)

Although Wilhelm Dilthey and Franz Brentano apparently were pursuing roughly the same objective—to offer a description of our mental functions and of their relations to objects—and both called their respective research programs ‘descriptive psychology’, they seem to have used the term to refer to two different methods of psychological research. In this article, I compare analyses of these differences. Against the reading of Orth but also against a possible application of recent relativist accounts of the epistemology of peer disagreement to (...) this case, I argue that their apparent shared objective is not enough to support an understanding of their views as two alternatives within a given historical or scientific context, or as a mutual peer disagreement. I show that the impression of a shared objective can be explained away as stemming from the influence of their teacher Adolf Trendelenburg, and I stress that the case of introspection strongly suggests that an account in terms of peer disagreement is not plausible. Finally, I conclude that the opposition between two traditions, Austrian philosophy and historicism, might be better suited to account for the dispute and its apparent common historical context. (shrink)

Iris Marion Young argues we cannot understand others' experiences by imagining ourselves in their place or in terms of symmetrical reciprocity (1997a). For Young, reciprocity expresses moral respect and asymmetry arises from people's greatly varying life histories and social positions. La Caze argues there are problems with Young's articulation of asymmetrical reciprocity in terms of wonder and the gift. By discussing friendship and political representation, she shows how taking self-respect into account complicates asymmetrical reciprocity.

Conventional economic theory assumes that agents should be consistent across decisions. However, it is often observed that experimental subjects fail to report consistent preferences. So far, these inconsistencies are almost always examined singly. We thus wonder whether the more inconsistent individuals in one task are also more inconsistent in other tasks. We propose an experiment in which subjects are asked to report their preferences over risky bets so as to obtain, for each subject, three measures of inconsistencies: classical preference reversals, (...) framing effects and preference instability. In line with previous experimental findings, subjects are largely inconsistent according to each of these three measures and there are considerable individual differences. The main result is that we find no correlation among these three measures of inconsistency. (shrink)

The prospect of organic unified knowledge challenges the increasing fragmentation of scientific disciplines which have become narrowly specialized with the accelerating rate of discoveries and the shaky status of many inductively obtained theories. Yet proof checkers which can control the logical correctness of reasoning offer the possibility of developing an integrative, deductive approach encompassing many branches of science within the same framework. The Principia Humanistica, developed by Krzysztof de Werszowec Rey, constitute such an attempt to apply the Mizar system of (...) verification to the human and related sciences as well as theology. Mizar is based on set theory whose terms may define the individual, value choices, the human person, culture, and religion. This essay explores the Mizar framework, including the definition of valuation and religion. It seeks to show the possibilities opened by such an integrated multidisciplinary approach for the study of free will, the definition of courage, and convergence towards unification with God. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the distribution and the interpretation of the temporal suffix -kue in Mbyá, a Guaraní language that is closely related to Paraguayan Guaraní. This suffix is attested both inside noun phrases and inside clauses. Interestingly, its nominal uses give rise to inferences that are unattested in its clausal uses. These inferences were first identified in Paraguayan Guaraní by Tonhauser, who called them the existence property and the change of state property. Tonhauser further argued that these properties (...) are built into the lexical entry of the nominal temporal marker -kue. By contrast, I argue that -kue denotes a relative past tense both in its nominal and clausal uses, and that the existence and change of state properties are pragmatic inferences that arise from the interaction of the literal meaning of -kue with general constraints on the interpretation of noun phrases, notably constraints on the topicality of the time of evaluation of noun phrases. This allows me to maintain a uniform analysis of -kue across its nominal uses and its clausal uses. The analysis of -kue in Mbyá is relevant to a number of current debates on the expression of tense crosslinguistically. Firstly, the existence of relative tenses has sometimes been called into question. Klein notably argues that relative tenses are actually combinations of tense with the perfect aspect. Others have argued that there exist true relative tenses in certain languages. I argue that facts of Mbyá support the latter view. Secondly, Klein famously defined tenses as relations between topic times and the time of utterance. I argue, on the other hand, that relative tenses only denote relations between times, and that the topicality or non-topicality of their temporal arguments depends on their context of use, including their syntactic environment. Thirdly, this paper contributes to debates on the nature and reality of nominal tenses The Oxford handbook of tense and aspect, 2012), by arguing that tense in Mbyá is a genuinely nominal category, in the sense that temporal functional projections are part of the extended projection of the noun phrase. (shrink)

The confrontations of stakeholder visions about agriculture and food production has become a focal point in the public sphere, coinciding with a diversification of agrifood models. This study analyzes the debates stemming from the coexistence of these models, particularly during the initial term of neoliberal-centrist Emmanuel Macron’s presidency in France. Employing collective monitoring from 2017 to 2021, a corpus of 958 online news and blog articles was compiled. Using a computational analysis, we reveal the framings and controversies emerging from this (...) media discourse. The macro-structuring of discourse on model coexistence revolves around scientific, economic and political framings. Coexistence is a complex of debates based on specific frames associated with specific arenas and actor configurations: growth of organic agriculture, transformations of agrifood systems, sciences of production and impacts, livestock and meat diet controversies, agroecological innovations, CAP reform criticism, discourse of peasant agriculture and State-Profession _co-gestion_. Employing global sentiment analysis and focusing on salient controversies, namely EGAlim law, pesticide regulations, and agribashing, we show the shift from conciliation to a hardening of debates. Finally, we discuss the causes and consequences of this trend. The political will to support the transition of agriculture remains influenced by the _co-gestion_ system, an inherited configuration of decision-makers instrumental in the agricultural modernization. As a consequence, significant agricultural challenges, particularly highlighted in the scientific macro-frame, persist unresolved. This lock-in of the agrifood system is based on defensive strategies that challenge the democratic debate about food and agricultural practices. (shrink)