Objective Adolescents have had very limited access to research on biomedical prevention interventions despite high rates of HIV acquisition. One concern is that adolescents are a vulnerable population, and trials carry a possibility of harm, requiring investigators to take additional precautions. Of particular concern is preventive misconception, or the overestimation of personal protection that is afforded by enrolment in a prevention intervention trial. Methods As part of a larger study of preventive misconception in adolescent HIV vaccine trials, we interviewed 33 (...) male and female 16–19-year-olds who have sex with men. Participants underwent a simulated HIV vaccine trial consent process, and then completed a semistructured interview about their understanding and opinions related to enrolment in a HIV vaccine trial. A grounded theory analysis looked for shared concepts, and focused on the content and process of adolescent participants’ understanding of HIV vaccination and the components of preventive misconception, including experiment, placebo and randomisation. Results Across interviews, adolescents demonstrated active processing of information, in which they questioned the interviewer, verbally worked out their answers based upon information provided, and corrected themselves. We observed a wide variety of understanding of research concepts. While most understood experiment and placebo, fewer understood randomisation. All understood the need for safer sex even if they did not understand the more basic concepts. Conclusions Education about basic concepts related to clinical trials, time to absorb materials and assessment of understanding may be necessary in future biomedical prevention trials. (shrink)

The contributors to Pragmatism and the Philosophy of Sport argue that American pragmatism is particularly well suited analyze the experience and development of sport activities. This volume will be a valuable resource in any philosophy of sport class or in a course on pragmatism; it will also be appropriate for kinesiology students. It will give readers a good sense of the themes in the American philosophical tradition as well as those in the burgeoning field of the philosophy of sport.

The history of the theory of general relativity presents unique features. After its discovery, the theory was immediately confirmed and rapidly changed established notions of space and time. The further implications of general relativity, however, remained largely unexplored until the mid 1950s, when it came into focus as a physical theory and gradually returned to the mainstream of physics. This essay presents a historiographical framework for assessing the history of general relativity by taking into account in an integrated narrative intellectual (...) developments, epistemological problems, and technological advances; the characteristics of post–World War II and Cold War science; and newly emerging institutional settings. It argues that such a framework can help us understand this renaissance of general relativity as a result of two main factors: the recognition of the untapped potential of general relativity and an explicit effort at community building, which allowed this formerly disparate and dispersed field to benefit from the postwar changes in the scientific landscape. (shrink)

Contemporary scholarship concerning science diplomacy is increasingly taking a historical approach. In our introduction to this special issue, we argue that this approach promises insight into science diplomacy because of the tools historians of science bring to their work. In particular, we observe that not only are historians of science currently poised to chart the diplomatic aspects involved in the transnational circulation of technoscientific knowledge, materials, and expertise. They are ready to bring critical global analysis to an important phenomenon that (...) has too often been treated as a benign diplomacy device deployed by the Global North without equal reference to the Global South. Through cases discussed in the articles of the special issue, however, we see that historically, in the Global South as well as the Global North, science diplomacy has often functioned to mediate the circulation of technoscientific knowledge and materials, and its historical study helps to better illuminate the resulting knowledge-power nexus. (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.

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.

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)

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)

This paper conducts a cost–benefit analysis of Australia’s Covid-19 lockdown strategy relative to pursuit of a mitigation strategy in March 2020. The estimated additional deaths from a mitigation strategy are 11,500 to 40,000, implying a Cost per Quality Adjusted Life Year saved by locking down of at least 11 times the generally employed figure of $100,000 for health interventions in Australia. The lockdowns do not then seem to have been justified by reference to the standard benchmark. Consideration of the information (...) available to the Australian government in March 2020 yields a similar ratio and therefore the same conclusion that lockdown was not warranted. If Australia experiences a new outbreak, and cannot contain it without resort to a nationwide lockdown, the death toll from adopting a mitigation strategy at this point would be even less than had it done so in March 2020, due to the vaccination campaign, lessons learned since March 2020, and because the period over which the virus would then inflict casualties would now be much less than the period from March 2020. This would favour a mitigation policy even more strongly than in March 2020. This approach of assessing the savings in quality adjusted life years and comparing them to a standard benchmark figure ensures that all quality adjusted life years saved by various health interventions are treated equally, which accords with the ethical principle of equity across people. (shrink)

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)

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)

The year 1968 is universally considered a watershed in history, as the world was experiencing an accelerated growth of anti-establishment protests that would have long-lasting impacts on the cultural, social, and political spheres of human life. On September 26, amid social and political unrest across the globe, 62 physicists gathered in Geneva to found the European Physical Society. Among these were the official representatives of the national physical societies of 18 countries in both Eastern and Western Europe, who signed the (...) constitution in spite of the political divides of the Cold War. According to the main proponent of the society, Italian physicist Gilberto Bernardini, the success of the initiative was the realization of a dream: the institutional formation of a single community of European physicists, a representation of a culturally unified Europe that he described as a “single highly civilized nation.” The analysis of as yet unexplored archival materials of Bernardini and other protagonists in the establishment of the society has enabled an investigation of the historical development of science diplomacy in two interconnected ways: first, by elucidating how the actors involved, especially those in Western Europe, interpreted their role as diplomats amid particularly turbulent reconfigurations of international political relations; second, by interpreting the attempt to institutionalize transnational scientific networks with the establishment of a non-governmental organization as a tool to influence world political affairs. It will first be shown that the political ideal of a culturally unified Europe was deeply intertwined with the socio-professional interests of a specific community, mostly involved with CERN. I will argue that, in the process of establishing the society, the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact armed forces led many of the Western physicists involved in this process to reframe the role of the European Physical Society as a tool to diffuse liberal-democratic values and to support political dissidents in Eastern Europe. (shrink)

This chapter argues that our ambiguity toward renewable technologies arises from our understanding that the nature of the machine is somehow alien and external to us. Historically, we have thought of the machine as lacking cultural signification. As a result, the machine has been relegated to mere utility rather than having any axiological or human reality. Thinking of the machine as utterly other has exercised a certain xenophobia or misoneism as well as an uncritical technophilia. This ambiguity arises from our (...) acceptance that technology is based on the principle of conservation, a sameness underlying change that is traceable to Aristotle’s theory of causality with its implicit ontological distinction between natural and human made objects. To overcome such teleology, we need a different ontological ground on which to consider the concept of technology. Gilbert Simondon gives us such tools. His work is slowly surfacing with thinkers such as Bernard Stiegler and more recently in the English-speaking academy with thinkers such as Elizabeth Grosz and Andrew Feenberg. 1 This chapter will show how both Aristotle’s phenomenology of technology and Simondon’s ontogenesis can help to think though the challenges of renewable technologies associated with climate change. It will outline Aristotle’s phenomenology of technology and illustrate the intersection and departure of Simondon’s ontogenetic epistemology through his three-phase principle of individuation: elemental phase, individual phase, and ensemble phase. For Simondon all objects become whole (sunolos) though a process of individuation, which explains the coming into being and the existence of beings of all kinds. There are three phases: the elemental which is the spontaneous excess of being; individuation is the successive multistability of being where being splits becoming both the individual and the many; and finally the ensemble . (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)

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)

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)

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 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)

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

This response briefly argues that post-phenomenology has always cut across the transcendental-empirical divide and is able to cultivate a deep respect for technologies in their otherness, without denying their relation to humanity. It does this by revisiting Don Ihde’s genetic phenomenological variations and tracing its relation to Gilbert Simondon’s ontogenesis. Having set up the historical nature of objects, the second part of this paper will take up Yoni Van Den Eede’s call for a more speculative approach.

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)

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, ...

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)

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)

This work aims to contribute to reflection on the epistemological elements present in the philosophy of Hans Jonas. The interpretative key provided by the author with the notion of Homo Pictor and the importance of images, symbols, imagination and memory in the evolution of human freedom within the scope of life, which resulted in the current human being, provide a fruitful field for exploration of the attributes of the epistemic subjects pointed out by the philosopher. In this sense, we propose (...) a reading that considers the possible elements of a theory of knowledge by Jonas based on the texts Image Making and the Freedom of Man (1966), with emphasis on the appendix of the essay, entitled On the Origins of the Experience of Truth and from the text Tool, Image, and Grave (1986). (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)

Ce recueil se veut un instrument de travail à l'intention de ceux qui s'interrogent sur les idéologies, ce qu'elles sont, d'où elles viennent et à quoi elles servent. Michel Simon y a réuni un certain nombre de textes qui ont marqué l'histoire et la réflexion sur l'idéologie et les idéologies et qui sont proposés comme autant de points de repères : Marx, Engels, Lénine, Lukacs, Mannheim, Korsch, Gramsci, Althusser chez les marxistes, mais aussi Jean Baechler et Pierre Ansart. Un commentaire (...) d'accompagnement situe ces textes dans leur contexte et fournit les explications nécessaires tandis que des tableaux récapitulatifs donnent une vue d'ensemble de chaque auteur. (shrink)

t. 1. De la phénoménologie -- t. 2. De la subjectivité -- t. 3. de l'art et du politique -- t. 4. Sur léthique et la religion.