Background: Dementia care at home often involves decisions in which the caregiver must weigh safety concerns with respect for autonomy. These dilemmas can lead to situations where caregivers provide care against the will of persons living with dementia, referred to as involuntary treatment. To prevent this, insight is needed into how family caregivers of persons living with dementia deal with care situations that can lead to involuntary treatment. Objective: To identify and describe family caregivers’ experiences regarding care decisions for situations (...) that can lead to involuntary treatment use in persons living with dementia at home. Research design: A qualitative descriptive interview design. Data were analysed using the Qualitative Analysis Guide of Leuven. Participants and research context: A total of 10 family caregivers providing care for 13 persons living with dementia participated in in-depth semi-structured interviews. Participants were recruited by registered nurses via purposive sampling. Ethical consideration: The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University Hospitals Leuven and the Medical Ethical Test Committee Zuyderland. Findings: Family caregivers experience the decision-making process concerning care dilemmas that can lead to involuntary treatment as complicated, stressful and exhausting. Although they consider safety and autonomy as important values, they struggle with finding the right balance between them. Due to the progressive and unpredictable nature of dementia, they are constantly seeking solutions while they adapt to new situations. Family caregivers feel responsible and experience social pressure for the safety of persons living with dementia. They may be blamed if something adverse happens to the persons living with dementia, which increases an already stressful situation. Their experience is influenced by characteristics of the care triad such as practical and emotional support, knowledge, and previous experiences. Discussion and conclusion: To prevent involuntary treatment, professionals need to proactively inform family caregivers, and they need to support each other in dealing with complex care situations. (shrink)

Heeft een miljonair recht op zijn rijkdom? Moeten we zelfs een moordenaar vergeven? En kan een mens ooit zijn lot veranderen? Het hangt allemaal af van ons antwoord op een fundamentele vraag: hebben we een vrije wil? 0Filosofen twijfelen al eeuwen over het antwoord hierop, en sinds decennia roepen biologen en neurologen dat de vrije wil niet bestaat. Ieder jaar stapelt het bewijs tegen de vrije wil zich verder op: we zijn een product van onze genen, van onze geschiedenis en (...) van onze omstandigheden.0Toch laat de vrije wil ons niet los. Deze mythe heeft meer invloed dan ooit? in ons strafrecht, onze economie en onze zoektocht naar geluk. 0Jurriën Hamer denkt verder waar anderen terugdeinzen en stelt de rol van de vrije wil ter discussie. 'Waarom schurken pech hebben en helden geluk' is een confronterend debuut met radicale implicaties voor onze manier van leven - van onze politiek tot onze meest intieme relaties. (shrink)

Taking organs from dead people seems, prima facie, to raise fewer ethical complications than taking organs from other sources. There are, however, serious ethical problems in taking organs from the dead unless there is premortem evidence that this is what the deceased would have wanted, or at least, not have objected to. In this paper we will look at a “strong” opting out policy as proposed by John Harris. We will argue that people can be harmed after their death and (...) that the posthumous removal of organs against their expressed wishes is one form that such harm might take. We also argue that Harris’s claim that we show “equality of concern” between the donor and recipient requires too much. (shrink)

Kierkegaard is often praised for his poetic writing style. Throughout his works, especially his pseudonymous ones, he often breaks from philosophical prose and instead uses extended metaphors, fairy tales, parables, and allegories. This book, which is the first that directly addresses Kierkegaard's parables, argues that they help the reader undergo transformative change. It asks why Kierkegaard uses parables in a broad sense, how they function as a form of indirect communication, why Kierkegaard must remain secretive about the purpose of the (...) parables, and how this secrecy plays an important role in Kierkegaard's authorship. (shrink)

Beginning with the view that human consciousness is essentially embodied and that the way we consciously experience the world is structured by our bodily dynamics and surroundings, the book argues that emotions are a fundamental manifestation of our embodiment, and play a crucial role in self-consciousness, moral evaluation, and social cognition.

There is a tendency to take mounted dinosaur skeletons at face value, as the raw data on which the science of paleontology is founded. But the truth is that mounted dinosaur skeletons are substantially intention-dependent—they are artifacts. More importantly, I argue, they are also substantially imagination-dependent: their production is substantially causally reliant on preparators’ creative imaginations, and their proper reception is predicated on audiences’ recreative imaginations. My main goal here is to show that dinosaur skeletal mounts are plausible candidates for (...) art-status. But, what is more, I think they are artworks—specifically, sculptures. (shrink)

Philosophical suspicions about the place of shame in the psychology of the mature moral agent are in tension with the commonplace assumption that to call a person shameless purports to mark a fault, arguably a moral fault. I shift philosophical suspicions away from shame and toward its absence in the shameless by focusing attention on phenomena of shamelessness. In redirecting our attention, I clarify the nature of the failing to which ascriptions of shamelessness might refer and defend the thought that, (...) as an evasion of moral self-censure, shamelessness can be morally pernicious. Far from foregoing shame, I conclude, we should be mindful of its moral importance and unapologetic in its defense. (shrink)

Translator's preface -- Introduction: The question of phenomenology -- Hyletic phenomenology and material phenomenology -- The phenomenological method -- Pathos-with reflections on Husserl's Fifth cartesian meditation -- For a phenomenology of community.

In this commentary we argue for the value of involving people with a diagnosis of mental health disorders and/or their caregivers as co-researchers in mental health research. We claim that co-produ...

Ce livre de Michel Freitag interpelle "tous ceux qui s'interrogent sur la place qu'ils tiennent ou le rôle qu'ils jouent dans l'aventure de l'Université contemporaine." (Georges Leroux, Spirale) Une des constantes des écrits contenus dans ce livre "réside dans la comparaison systématique que Michel Freitag établit entre les caractéristiques de la modernité et celles de la postmodernité et les conséquences de celle-ci sur le traitement des enjeux et des problèmes actuels." (Louis Guay, Anthropologie et société) "Dans une société réduite au (...) bavardage, à l'insignifiance, à la poursuite de petits bonheurs mesquins, le tout sous contrôle bureaucratique de plus en plus envahissant, une telle réflexion est devenue essentielle. Voici un livre de bonne foi qui n'attend que ses lecteurs, qu'on souhaite nombreux." (Robert Major, Voix et images). (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of the history of the notion of essence in 20th century analytic philosophy, focusing on views held by influential analytic philosophers who discussed, or relied on essence or cognate notions in their works. It in particular covers Russell and Moore’s different approaches to essence before and after breaking with British idealism, the (pre- and post-)logical positivists’ critique of metaphysics and rejection of essence (Wittgenstein, Carnap, Schlick, Stebbing), the tendency to loosen the notion of logical necessity (...) to accommodate certain metaphysical truths in Wittgenstein and others, Quine’s logical rehabilitation of metaphysics and criticism of de re modality, the modal view of essence promoted by the development of quantified modal logic (C. I. Lewis, Barcan Marcus, Kripke) and direct reference theory (Barcan Marcus, Kripke, Putnam), and the emergence of the notion of metaphysical necessity (Kneale, Kripke), and finally Fine’s re-establishment of a Neo-Aristotelian, hyperintensional notion of essence in contemporary metaphysics. (shrink)

Philosophers disagree about what the folk concept of pain is. This paper criticises existing theories of the folk concept of pain, i.e. the mental view, the bodily view, and the recently proposed polyeidic view. It puts forward an alternative proposal – the polysemy view – according to which pain terms like “sore,” “ache” and “hurt” are polysemous, where one sense refers to a mental state and another a bodily state, and the type of polysemy at issue reflects two distinct but (...) related concepts of pain. Implications with respect to issues in philosophy of pain are also drawn. (shrink)

« Qu’est-ce que la philosophie et quel est son rôle aujourd’hui? Entre juillet et octobre 1966, quelques mois après la parution des Mots et les Choses, Michel Foucault, dans un manuscrit très soigneusement rédigé mais qu’il ne publiera pas, apporte sa réponse à cette question tant débattue.À la différence de ceux qui, à l’époque, s’attachent à dévoiler l’essence de la philosophie ou à en prononcer la mort, Foucault l’appréhende, dans sa matérialité, comme un discours dont il convient de dégager l’économie (...) eu égard aux autres discours (scientifique, fictif, ordinaire, religieux) qui circulent dans un contexte donné.Le Discours philosophique propose ainsi une nouvelle manière de faire l’histoire de la philosophie, qui la décentre du commentaire des grands philosophes. Nietzsche y occupe toutefois une place particulière car il inaugure une conjoncture où la philosophie devient une entreprise de diagnostic du présent. Il revient en effet désormais à la philosophie de dire, à partir de l’« archive intégrale » d’une culture, ce qui en fait l’actualité.Si L’Archéologie du savoir, consacré aux enjeux méthodologiques d’un tel projet, s’y annonce, nulle part autant que dans Le Discours philosophique Michel Foucault n’aura explicité les ambitions de son programme intellectuel.»--. (shrink)

Because of their range, brilliance, and singularity, the ideas of the philosopher-critic-historian Michel Foucault have gained extraordinary currency throughout the Western intellectual community. This book offers a selection of seven of Foucault's most important published essays, translated from the French, with an introductory essay and notes by Donald F. Bouchard. Also included are a summary of a course given by Foucault at College de France; the transcript of a conversation between Foucault and Gilles Deleuze; and an interview with Foucault that (...) appeared in the journal Actuel. Professor Bouchard has divided the book into three closely related sections. The four essays in Part One examine language as a "perilous limit" of what we know and what we are. The essays in the second part suggest the methodological guidelines to which Foucault subscribes, and they record, in the editor's words, "the penetration of the language of literature into the domain of discursive thought." The material in the last section is more obviously political than the essays. It treats language in use, language attempting to impart knowledge and power. Translated by the editor and Sherry Simon into fluent and lucid English, these essays will appeal primarily to students of literature, especially those interested in contemporary continental structuralist criticism. But because of the breadth of Foucault's interests, they should also prove valuable to anthropologists, linguists, sociologists, and psychologists. (shrink)

Many philosophy instructors want their students to change the way they think about and act in the world. Reflection can be one way to bring this about, yet it is common for student reflections to fail to enable this desired transformative learning experience. Our research investigated how instructors can design better reflective assignments to cultivate a more transformative learning experience for students. Using thematic analysis, a qualitative research method, we analyzed student reflection data to identify themes and patterns of student (...) work. Findings include concrete guidelines for cultivating better student reflections, including: designing for reflection, explicitly limiting summary, and incentivizing students to make specific claims while bringing personal experience to bear. (shrink)

Many philosophy instructors want their students to change the way they think about and act in the world. Reflection can be one way to bring this about, yet it is common for student reflections to fail to enable this desired transformative learning experience. Our research investigated how instructors can design better reflective assignments to cultivate a more transformative learning experience for students. Using thematic analysis, a qualitative research method, we analyzed student reflection data to identify themes and patterns of student (...) work. Findings include concrete guidelines for cultivating better student reflections, including: designing for reflection, explicitly limiting summary, and incentivizing students to make specific claims while bringing personal experience to bear. (shrink)

The first collection of twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Henry's work in English, this book provides an excellent introduction to his thought.

This paper addresses a largely neglected question in ongoing debates over disagreement: what is the relation, if any, between disagreements involving credences and disagreements involving outright beliefs? The first part of the paper offers some desiderata for an adequate account of credal and full disagreement. The second part of the paper argues that both phenomena can be subsumed under a schematic definition which goes as follows: A and B disagree if and only if the accuracy conditions of A's doxastic attitude (...) are such that, if they were fulfilled, this would ipso facto make B's doxastic attitude inaccurate, or vice-versa. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: From “Truth and Power”.

Si l’on connaît aujourd’hui le dialogue fructueux que Paul Ricœur a noué avec les penseurs structuralistes, on ignore largement son positionnement face à la mouvance poststructuraliste. Faut-il opposer la philosophie de Ricœur au poststructuralisme à la française ou au contraire doit-on montrer qu’elle en est une variante singulière? C’est la seconde option qui est ici défendue. Certes, le poststructuralisme ne doit pas être considéré comme une école de pensée mais comme une reconstruction qui relève de l’histoire de la philosophie. Dans (...) la mesure où les horizons de dépassement du structuralisme ont été posés de manière chaque fois particulière, il est préférable de parler de poststructuralismes au pluriel. C’est la raison pour laquelle J. Michel propose des confrontations dyadiques entre Ricœur et certains de ses contemporains que l’on regroupe habituellement dans cette mouvance. (shrink)

The criminal defendant is presumed innocent and his guilt must be proved beyond reasonable doubt for conviction. On some issues, however, the defendant must prove his innocence on the balance of probabilities to avoid conviction. Commentators have despaired of reconciling reverse burdens with the presumption in a principled way. Andrew Stumer has made a fresh attempt; however, his solution is overly rigid and rule bound. The presumption is engaged in a dynamic enterprise—minimizing the expected cost of error, mistaken acquittals as (...) well as wrongful convictions. Stumer’s fixed criminal standard and stringent restrictions on reverse burdens work against this goal. A more flexible approach is required, reflecting the calculus of error management. Where the cost or probability of wrongful conviction is relatively low, and the cost or probability of mistaken acquittal relatively high, it may be necessary to lower the standard of proof, or even to reverse the burden of proof. To inhibit these strategies is to increase the expected cost of error at trial. (shrink)

Les entretiens ici réunis portent sur les conséquences de cette révolution méthodologique qui permet la compréhension des grands aspects de l'existence, thème de nombreux essais de Michel Henry à partir des années 80 : action, ...

First published: 2010; Previous edition: 2012..

As part of recent epistemic challenges to democracy, some have endorsed the implementation of epistemic constraints on voting, institutional mechanisms that bar incompetent voters from participating in public decision-making procedures. This proposal is often considered incompatible with a commitment to political equality. In this paper, I aim to dispute the strength of this latter claim by offering a theoretical justification for epistemic constraints on voting that does not rest on antiegalitarian commitments. Call this the civic accountability justification for epistemic constraints (...) on voting. On this view, voters stand to one another in a normative relation of reciprocal accountability that requires them to uphold an epistemically responsible conduct. Modest epistemic constraints on voting are justifiable because they secure that participation in voting is conforming to this normative requirement. Thanks to its distinctive features, the civic accountability justification can overcome two problems that egalitarians commonly associate with the idea of epistemic constraints on voting: the disrespect problem and the hierarchy problem. (shrink)

A recent paper by Bullock (2018) raises a dilemma for proponents of epistemic paternalism. If epistemic paternalists contend that epistemic improvements contribute to one’s wellbeing, then their view conflates with general paternalism. Instead, if they appeal to the notion of a distinctive epistemic value, their view is unjustified, in that concerns about epistemic value fail to outweigh concerns about personal sovereignty. In this chapter, I address Bullock’s challenge in a way that safeguards the legitimacy of epistemic paternalism, albeit restricting its (...) scope to a limited range of cognitive projects. After shedding light on a problem with how Bullock singles out cases to which the dilemma applies, I argue that there is at least one reasonable way of interpreting the notion of ‘personal autonomy’ which legitimates and justifies undertaking epistemically paternalistic interferences for one’s epistemic good. (shrink)

The course given by Michel Foucault from February to March 1984, under the title 'The Courage of Truth', was his last at the Collège de France. His death shortly after, on June 25th, tempts us to detect a philosophical testament in these lectures, especially in view of the prominence they give to the theme of death, notably through a reinterpretation of Socrates' last words--'Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius'--which, with Georges Dumézil, Foucault understands as the expression of a profound (...) gratitude towards philosophy for its cure of the only serious illness: that of false opinions and prejudices. These lectures continue and radicalize the analyses of those of the previous year. Foucault's 1983 lectures investigated the function of 'truth telling' in politics in order to establish courage and conviction as ethical conditions for democracy irreducible to the formal rules of consensus. With the Cynics, this manifestation of the truth no longer appears simply as a risky speaking out, but in the very substance of existence. In fact, Foucault offers an incisive study of ancient Cynicism as practical philsophy, athleticism of the truth, public provocation, and ascetic sovereignty. The scandal of the true life is constructed in oppositon to Platonism and its world of transcendent intelligible forms"--Publisher's description, p. [2] of dust jacket. (shrink)

Psychiatric research is in crisis because of repeated failures to discover new drugs for mental disorders. Lack of measurement validity could partly account for these failures. If researchers do not actually measure the effects of drugs on the disorders they aim to investigate, one should expect suboptimal treatment outcomes. I argue that this is the case, focusing on depression, and fear & anxiety disorders. In doing so, I show how psychiatric research illustrates a more general phenomenon that I call “validity (...) drift.” A validity drift occurs when, in the course of developing new measurement procedures, researchers end up studying something different from what they originally aimed to study. I analyze the different ways in which scientists attempt to validate procedures for measuring mental disorders for the purpose of testing drugs in animal models. I show how those validation efforts might fail, thereby leading to validity drifts. Overall, this analysis highlights the complex interplay between the development of new measurement procedures, their calibration, and scientific theories of the target phenomena. (shrink)

Negative subjective reports such as “I didn’t see the stimulus” can be interpreted as indicating either that the subject didn’t see the stimulus, or as indicating that, while the subject did see the stimulus, the strength of sensory signals associated with the stimulus fell below a conservative criterion for answering “seen”. Determining which of these two interpretations is correct is the criterion problem. I present two ways in which researchers can solve this problem. But there’s more. What I call the (...) “new criterion problem” consists in determining whether criteria effects reflect perceptual changes, or changes in response strategy. Through case studies, I argue that this new version of the problem can be solved as well, although there is currently no systematic way to solve it. I conclude that criterion problems do not constitute good reasons for skepticism about the scientific study of consciousness. (shrink)

I will argue that the asynchronous discussion format commonly used in online courses has little hope of bringing about transformative learning, and that this is because engaging with another as a person involves adopting a personal stance, comprised of affective and bodily relatedness (Ratcliffe 2007, 23). Interpersonal engagement ordinarily is fully embodied to the extent that communication relies heavily on individuals’ postures, gestures, and facial expressions. Subjects involved in face-to-face interaction can perceive others’ desires and feelings on the basis of (...) their expressions and movements, to which they become attuned by way of bodily resonance. Moreover, social cognition is enactive in the sense that parties do not passively receive information from their environments, but instead actively participate in the generation of meaning. They do so not in isolation, but instead via ongoing engagement and coordination with their interaction partners, so that sense-making becomes a shared activity. This paves the way for what I will call ‘participatory sense-making.’ To the extent that it involves asynchronous discussion and disembodied social engagement, online learning severs these interactive links between students and makes this sort of participatory sense-making unlikely. (shrink)

On a pu croire ou espérer, un temps, que les monstruosités de la Seconde Guerre mondiale étaient derrière nous. Définitivement. Or partout, à nouveau, on massacre, on torture, on extermine. Comment comprendre cette facilité des hommes entrer dans le mal? La réponse à cette question devient chaque jour plus urgente. Michel Terestchenko rouvre ici le débat. D'abord, en complétant la démonstration de Hannah Arendt : de même que ce ne sont pas seulement des monstres qui basculent dans l'horreur mais des (...) hommes ordinaires, trop ordinaires, de même, montre-t-il, il n'est pas besoin d'être un saint pour accomplir le juste et secourir des victimes au risque de sa vie. Héros ou salaud? C'est toujours une petite décision initiale, à peine perceptible, qui décide du côté dans lequel, une fois engagé, on se retrouvera in fine. Mais qu'est-ce qui explique cette décision? C'est là où l'enquête de M. Terestchenko prend toute son ampleur. En procédant à une reconstitution critique du débat central de la philosophie morale depuis le XVIIe siècle, aujourd'hui relayé par la majorité des sociologues et des économistes, elle montre combien est stérile l'opposition entre tenants de la thèse de l'égoïsme psychologique et défenseurs de l'hypothèse d'un altruisme sacrificiel. Ce n'est pas par " intérêt " qu'on tue ou qu'on torture. Ni par pur altruisme qu'on se refuse à l'abjection. Les travaux qui analysent les phénomènes de soumission à l'autorité, de conformisme de groupe ou de passivité face à des situations de détresse, invitent à comprendre tout autrement les conduites de destructivité. Tirant les conclusions philosophiques de recherches récentes entreprises en psychologie sociale et s'appuyant sur certains exemples historiques particulièrement éclairants - tel le cas de Franz Stangl, le commandant de Treblinka, ou, à l'opposé, les actions héroïques du pasteur André Trocmé et de sa femme Magda au Chambon-sur-Lignon -, l'auteur propose de penser les conduites humaines face au mal selon un nouveau paradigme celui de l'absence ou de la présence à soi. (shrink)

This chapter examines Chomsky's influence on the modeling of linguistic variation, focusing specifically on the notion of parameter. It begins by examining the different conceptualizations of “parameter” in Chomsky's work, from the Government and Binding era, through early Minimalism to more recent approaches which locate variation in phonological form. The idea that grammatical variation should be modeled by abstract parameters is arguably one of Chomsky's most important contributions to linguistic theory, and one which has had significant influence. Two domains of (...) variation (word order and argument expression) are used as case studies to illustrate how Chomsky's ideas have given rise to different kinds of parametric models. Finally, the chapter discusses some of the potential objections to the concept of parameters before concluding. (shrink)