While the history of Thomas More as a character on stage is long and varied, the humanist made his most regular appearance in Latin school plays across Catholic Europe throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Still, only a handful of these plays are known to have survived, all of which were performed on the Jesuit stage. This article sheds light on a newly discovered Neo-Latin More play, which, it argues, was staged at the Benedictine college of Marchiennes in the late-sixteenth (...) or early-seventeenth century. After a brief contextualization and analysis of the manuscript and the tragedy enclosed, the article offers an edition of the Latin text and a study of its intertextual ties with the dramatic oeuvres of Desiderius Erasmus and George Buchanan. (shrink)

Le livre que le lecteur tient entre les mains est un bréviaire de l'indifférence à la politique. Ce bréviaire, toutefois, ne vise aucune fin édificatrice, ni prosélyte. Il se contente d'être l'exposé fragmentaire d'un soupçon vague : que la politique ne rend pas heureux. Plutôt qu'y dépenser une énergie que nous n'avons pas, ne vaut-il pas mieux nous tourner vers d'autres horizons? Déambulant le long d'une plage des Pouilles, assis à la terrasse d'un café parisien, ou goûtant, depuis le balcon (...) d'un hôtel, la nuit londonienne, nous n'avons que l'embarras du choix. II suffit qu'une jeune fille croise notre chemin pour que la politique s'évanouisse comme un rêve d'hiver. (shrink)

Magic est de ces livres étonnants, bouleversant tout ce que nous croyions savoir sur un sujet. A partir d'une interrogation sur l'apparition du concept de "lien social" chez Rousseau ou Durkheim, Laurent de Sutter propose une surprenante remise en cause du consensus régnant autour de l'idée de lien. Plutôt que de poursuivre l'investigation du côté de la sociologie, il suggère, pour comprendre ce qui nous lie, de regarder du côté d'un droit qui aurait retrouvé celle qui lui a toujours (...) été consubstantielle et que l'on a pourtant tenté de refouler, à savoir sa magie. Que se passerait-il si, en effet, le droit était la dernière manifestation de la magie dans un monde qui croyait pouvoir s'en passer? Telle est la question au coeur de ce bref essai érudit, spectaculaire et fascinant, passant avec une grâce provocante de Montesquieu à Giordano Bruno, des juristes romains à Gabriel Tarde, de Marcel Mauss aux inspirateurs du Code civil, de Giorgio Agamben à Quentin Meillassoux. (shrink)

"Pop'philosophie" : si l'on en croit la morgue méprisante que ce simple mot provoque, il s'agirait du nom d'une étrange maladie. Celle d'une philosophie se prostituant aux industries culturelles ou, pire, aux sirènes du populisme. Avec la pop' philosophie, on assisterait à la ruine de la philosophie tout court, devenue tantôt gadget pédagogique, tantôt tentative pathétique de capitaliser sur le glamour frelaté de la pop culture. Et si c'était faux? Pour Gilles Deleuze, en tout cas, rien n'était plus important que (...) l'invention d'une pop'philosophie qui sauverait la pensée de la correction professorale et de la pontification esthétique. Inventer une pensée véritablement anarchiste, enterrant la philosophie pour l'ouvrir à des devenirs inédits : tel était l'objectif qu'il donna au concept de pop'philosophie. Rien n'était moins simple ni plus ambitieux. Il est temps de comprendre en quoi."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Why law may be less important than we think.

Counterfactuals have become an important area of interdisciplinary interest, especially in logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, psychology, decision theory, and even artificial intelligence. In this study, we propose a new form of analysis for counterfactuals: analysis by algorithmic complexity. Inspired by Lewis-Stalnaker's Possible Worlds Semantics, the proposed method allows for a new interpretation of the debate between David Lewis and Robert Stalnaker regarding the Limit and Singularity assumptions. Besides other results, we offer a new way to answer the problems (...) raised by Goodman and Quine regarding vagueness, context-dependence, and the non- monotonicity of counterfactuals. Engaging in a dialogue with literature, this study will seek to bring new insights and tools to this debate. We hope our method of analysis can make counterfactuals more understandable in an intuitively plausible way, and a philosophically justifiable manner, aligned with the way we usually think about counterfactual propositions and our imaginative reasoning. (shrink)

Are we to get rid with representation after all? Since World War II, political philosophy seems to have devoted itself to either the intellectual sabotage of representation, or its defence against all evidence. Nobody seems to have thought that the problem with political representation might be the fact that the way it was thought was by no means correct. Considered as a fundamental principle of Western democracies, it might be at the very level of what a principle implies that representation (...) must be reloaded. For instance, by admitting that as a principle representation is not something that precedes what for which it provides ground (the government, the State, etc.)—but something that follows, that constitutes the final product of representation itself. (shrink)

BackgroundThe landscape of clinical research has evolved over the past decade. With technological advances, the practice of using electronic informed consent (eIC) has emerged. However, a number of challenges hinder the successful and widespread deployment of eIC in clinical research. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the views of various stakeholders on the potential advantages and challenges of eIC.MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with 39 participants from 5 stakeholder groups from across 11 European countries. The stakeholder groups included physicians, patient organization representatives, (...) regulator representatives, ethics committee members, and pharmaceutical industry representatives, and all were involved in clinical research. Interviews were analyzed using the framework method.ResultsInterviewees identified that a powerful feature of eIC is its personalized approach as it may increase participant empowerment. However, they identified several ethical and practical challenges, such as ensuring research participants are not overloaded with information and offering the same options to research participants who would prefer a paper-based informed consent rather than eIC. According to the interviewees, eIC has the potential to establish efficient long-term interactions between the research participants and the research team in order to keep the participants informed during and after the study. Interviewees emphasized that a personal interaction with the research team is of utmost importance and this cannot be replaced by an electronic platform. In addition, interviewees across the stakeholder groups supported the idea of having a harmonized eIC approach across the European Member States.ConclusionsInterviewees reported a range of design and implementation challenges which needs to be overcome to foster innovation in informing research participants and obtaining their consent electronically. It was considered important that the implementation of eIC runs alongside the face-to-face contact between research participants and the research team. Moreover, interviewees expect that eIC could offer the opportunity to enable a personalized approach and to strengthen continuous communication over time. If successfully implemented, eIC may facilitate the engagement of research participants in clinical research. (shrink)

Rationale In Belgium, several policies regulating reimbursement of acid suppressant drugs and evidence-based recommendations for clinical practice were issued in a short period of time, creating a unique opportunity to observe their effect on prescribing. Aims and objectives To describe the evolution of prescriptions for acid suppressants and explore the interaction of policies and practice recommendations with prescribing patterns. Method Monthly claims-based data for proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and H-2-antihistamines by general practitioners, internists and "astroenterologists were obtained from the Belgian (...) national health insurance database (1997-2005). The evolution of reimbursed defined daily doses and expenses after introduction of reimbursement regulations and dissemination of practice recommendations was explored. Results Recommendations had no impact on prescribing. All changes can be related to concomitant policies. Lifting reimbursement restrictions for cheaper products did not control growth or save costs in the Iona term. Only restricting reimbursement of all PPIs managed to curb the growth. We observed an unintended increase of non-omeprazole PPIs by gastroenterologists. Conclusions Reimbursement policies influence prescribing, but their effect can be unintended. A dialogue between policymakers and guideline developers, and evidence-based policies that are linked to clinical guidelines, could be an effective way to pursue both cost-containment and quality of care. (shrink)

We discuss some aspects of the relation between dualities and gauge symmetries. Both of these ideas are of course multi-faceted, and we confine ourselves to making two points. Both points are about dualities in string theory, and both have the ‘flavour’ that two dual theories are ‘closer in content’ than you might think. For both points, we adopt a simple conception of a duality as an ‘isomorphism’ between theories: more precisely, as appropriate bijections between the two theories’ sets of states (...) and sets of quantities. The first point is that this conception of duality meshes with two dual theories being ‘gauge related’ in the general philosophical sense of being physically equivalent. For a string duality, such as T-duality and gauge/gravity duality, this means taking such features as the radius of a compact dimension, and the dimensionality of spacetime, to be ‘gauge’. The second point is much more specific. We give a result about gauge/gravity duality that shows its relation to gauge symmetries to be subtler than you might expect. For gauge theories, you might expect that the duality bijections relate only gauge-invariant quantities and states, in the sense that gauge symmetries in one theory will be unrelated to any symmetries in the other theory. This may be so in general; and indeed, it is suggested by discussions of Polchinski and Horowitz. But we show that in gauge/gravity duality, each of a certain class of gauge symmetries in the gravity/bulk theory, viz. diffeomorphisms, is related by the duality to a position-dependent symmetry of the gauge/boundary theory. (shrink)

A RELEVÂNCIA DO PRÉVIO ESGOTAMENTO DAS INSTÂNCIAS DESPORTIVAS E AS SANÇÕES AO SEU DESCUMPRIMENTO.

The earliest -- c.1446-7 --complete translation of an authentic dialogue of Plato into a Western vernacular language.

We make two points about dualities in string theory. The first point is that the conception of duality, which we will discuss, meshes with two dual theories being ‘gauge related’ in the general philosophical sense of being physically equivalent. The second point is a result about gauge/gravity duality that shows its relation to gauge symmetries to be subtler than one might expect: each of a certain class of gauge symmetries in the gravity theory, that is, diffeomorphisms, is related to a (...) position-dependent symmetry of the gauge theory. (shrink)

A 4ª Revolução Industrial é o culminar da era digital. Atualmente, tecnologias como robótica, nanotecnologia, genética e inteligência artificial prometem transformar nosso mundo e a maneira como vivemos. O campo da Segurança e da Ética da Inteligência Artificial são áreas de pesquisa emergentes que vêm ganhando popularidade nos últimos anos. Diversas organizações de cunho privado, público e não governamentais têm publicado diretrizes propondo princípios éticos para a regulamentação do uso e desenvolvimento de sistemas inteligentes autônomos. Meta-análises do campo de pesquisa (...) em Ética da IA apontam uma convergência sobre certos princípios éticos que, supostamente, governam a indústria da IA. Entretanto, pouco se sabe sobre a eficiência desta forma de “Ética”. Neste estudo, gostaríamos de realizar uma análise crítica do atual estado da Ética da IA, e sugerir que essa forma de governança baseada em diretrizes éticas principialista não é suficiente para normatizar a indústria da IA e seus desenvolvedores. Acreditamos que drásticas mudanças sejam necessárias, tanto nos processos de formação de profissionais das áreas ligadas ao desenvolvimento de software e sistemas inteligentes quanto no aumento da regulamentação desses profissionais e sua indústria. Para tanto, sugerimos que o Direito se beneficie das contribuições recentes da Bioética, de forma a explicitar em termos legais as contribuições da Ética da IA para a governança. (shrink)

The most resounding expression of the truly unprecedented mobilizations of migrants throughout the United States in 2006 was a mass proclamation of collective defiance: ¡Aquí Estamos, y No Nos Vamos! [Here we are, and we're not leaving!]. This same slogan was commonly accompanied by a still more forcefully incorrigible rejoinder: ¡Y Si Nos Sacan, Nos Regresamos! [... and if they throw us out, we'll come right back!]. It is quite striking and, as this essay contends, not merely provocative but genuinely (...) productive to note the affinity between the crucial articulation of this radically open-ended politics of migrant presence with the similarly abject and profoundly destabilizing politics of queer presence. In a manner remarkably analogous to the slogan, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!", the dynamic enunciation of these phrases in the context of the mass mobilizations of migrants asserted an irreducible spirit of irreverence and disaffection for state power. Both gestures unreservedly and unapologetically assert not only their irreversible presence, furthermore, but also uphold the intractable challenge of their own intrinsic incorrigibility. (shrink)

This article is a theoretical and empirical exploration of the meaning that accompanies contractual agreements, such as the End-User License Agreements (EULAs) that participants of online communities are required to sign as a condition of participation. As our study indicates, clicking “I agree” on the often lengthy conditions presented during the installation and updating process typically permits third parties (including researchers) to monitor the digitally-mediated actions of users. Through our small-scale study in which we asked participants which terms of EULAs (...) they would find agreeable, the majority confirmed that they simply clicked through the terms presented to them without much knowledge about the terms to which they were agreeing. From a research ethics standpoint, we reflect upon whether or not informed consent is achieved in these cases and pose a challenge to the academic research community to attend to the socio-technical shift from informed consent to a more nebulous concept of contractual agreement, online and offline. (shrink)

A reconsideration of the crucial historical role of slavery in the consolidation of the global regime of capital accumulation provides a vital source of Marxian critique for our postcolonial present. The Atlantic slave trade literally transformed African men and women into human commodities. The reduction of human beings into human commodities, or ‘human capital’ – indeed, into labour and nothing but labour – which was the very essence of modern slavery, served as a necessary prerequisite for the consolidation and perfecting (...) of what Marx called ‘labour in the abstract’, and requires us to re-situate enslaved labour as the defining and constitutive limit for how we comprehend labour as such under capitalism. The production of labour in the abstract, or labour ‘in general’, depended nonetheless upon concrete productions of sociopolitical difference, particularly the branding of race. The term ‘Black’, which was devised to literally and figuratively brand the flesh of enslaved people, was also contrived to signify their particular sociopolitical condition of brutal degradation as the ultimate limit for the subjugation of labour. Blackness names that limit. Thus, Blackness is in fact necessary for apprehending labour as such under capitalism. Marx’s scathing critique of wage labour is always haunted by the long shadow of slavery as its limit figure. If we comprehend labour to be the antithesis of capital, then to the extent that Blackness names the ultimate condition of labour’s subordination and subjection to capital, we need to recognise the tendency for all labour under capital to be pressed toward a sociopolitical condition of Blackness (or approximating Blackness), where Blackness does not name any kind of essential identity but the racialised sociopolitical condition of that subordination/subjection. Consequently, the labour theory of value – which has always been in fact, more accurately, a value theory of labour – must be complemented with what we might posit to be a racial theory of labour. Such an ostensibly historical perspective on the foundational role of slavery in the genesis of capitalism is no mere scholastic exercise in the historiography of ‘primitive accumulation’, however, but rather must be re-purposed toward the ends of elaborating what has remained an as-yet underdeveloped Marxian theory of migrant labour. Extrapolating key insights from Marx’s corpus for the formulation of a racial theory of labour, this essay is ultimately concerned with the ways that slavery supplies capitalism with a defining horizon for all labour, and thus how this insight might instructively serve to comprehend the racialised subordination of migrant labour within our global/postcolonial sociopolitical order. (shrink)

This article examines dominant socio-political questions regarding migration, ‘multiculturalism’, and ‘integration’, as a politics of citizenship (and race) in contemporary (post-colonial) Europe. The argument unfolds through a critique of the nationalist complacencies and racial complicities in Jürgen Habermas’s remarks on ‘multiculturalism’ during the 1990s. With recourse to ‘underclass’ discourse, Habermas’s reflections were themselves a trans-Atlantic metastasis of a distinctly US ‘American’ hegemonic sociological commonsense with regard to, but actively disregarding, the fact of white supremacy. Habermas’s thoughts are critically situated alongside (...) their subsequent metastasis, back across the Atlantic, into Francis Fukuyama’s recent invocations of ‘terrorism’ and his advocacy of the ‘American melting pot’ model as a trans-Atlantic prescription for Europe’s ailments. Treating ‘immigrants’ as a kind of societal illness, both are preoccupied by the same ‘problem’ — non-Europeans (as disaffected ‘minorities’). Thus, these discourses of ‘immigration’ manifest a distinctly post-colonial cancer coursing restlessly through the larger social formation of ‘the West’. (shrink)

Especialistas em desenvolvimento de Inteligência Artificial prevêem que o avanço no desenvolvimento de sistemas e agentes inteligentes irá remodelar áreas vitais em nossa sociedade. Contudo, se tal avanço não for realizado de maneira prudente e crítico-reflexiva, pode resultar em desfechos negativos para a humanidade. Por este motivo, diversos pesquisadores na área têm desenvolvido uma concepção de IA robusta, benéfica e segura para a preservação da humanidade e do meio-ambiente. Atualmente, diversos dos problemas em aberto no campo de pesquisa em IA (...) advêm da dificuldade de evitar comportamentos indesejados de agentes e sistemas inteligentes, e ao mesmo tempo especificar o que realmente queremos que tais sistemas façam, especialmente quando prospectamos a possibilidade de agentes inteligentes atuarem em vários domínios ao longo prazo. É de suma importância que agentes inteligentes artificiais tenham seus valores alinhados com os valores humanos, dado ao fato de que não podemos esperar que uma IA desenvolva valores morais humanos por conta de sua inteligência, conforme é discutido na Tese da Ortogonalidade. Talvez tal dificuldade venha da maneira que estamos abordando o problema de expressar objetivos, valores e metas, utilizando de métodos cognitivos representacionais. Uma solução para este problema seria a abordagem dinâmica proposta por Dreyfus, que com base na filosofia fenomenológica mostra que a experiência humana do ser-no-mundo em diversos aspectos não é bem representada pelo método cognitivo simbólico ou conexionista, especialmente na questão de aprendizagem de valores. Uma possível abordagem para esse problema seria a utilização de modelos téoricos como SED para abordar o porblema de aprendizagem de valores em IA. (shrink)

1 Einleitung: Die konstruktivistische Herausforderung strukturgenetischer Subjekttheorien........................................................ 11 1. 1 Sozialisationstheorie - jenseits der groBen Entwiirfe......................................... 17 1. 2 Der genetische Strukturalismus im Kontext theoretischer Leitunterscheidungen................................................................................ ....... 20 1. 3 Konstitution als Problemstellung...................................................................... 27 2 Strukturgenetischer und radikaler Konstruktivismus........................... 33 2. 1 Die Erkenntnistheorie des Radikalen Konstruktivismus vor dem Hintergrund einer interaktionistischen strukturgenetischen Theoriestrategie.................................................................................... ........... 36 2. 1. 1 "Realitat" und "Wirklichkeit"........................................................................... 37 2. 1. 2 Konstruktivitat und AuBenwe1t: Piaget und von Glasersfeld............................. 41 2. 1. 3 Abgeschlossenheit, Rekursivitat und strukturelle Koppelung........................... 46 (...) 2. 2 Aquilibration und Adaption - Die differenztheoretische Ausgangslage des strukturgenetischen Konstruktivismus Piagets..................... 51 2. 3 Differenzerfahrung und die Entstehung des Neuen........................................... 54 2. 4 Der Status strukturgenetischer Fragestellungen vor dem Hintergrund des radikalen Konstruktivismus.................................................... 57 3 Soziale Konstitutions- und Systemtheorie.............................................. 62 3. 1 Die soziale Konstitutionshypothese.................................................................. 64 3. 2 Sprachzentrismus und Regelontologie.............................................................. 70 3. 3 Sinn als Grundbegriffund die Eigenstiindigkeit des Sozialen.......................... 72 3. 4 Das Problem der doppelten Kontingenz........................................................... 76 3. 5 Interpenetration und strukturelle Koppelung.................................................... 84 3. 6 Differenz und Identitat in der System- und sozialen Konstitutionstheorie......... 89 3. 7 Zwischenbilanz und Konsequenzen fur die Konzeption des Anfangsproblems 92 5 4 Die Konstitution der Subjekt-Objekt-Differenz: Das grundlegende Bezugsproblem des interaktionistischen Konstruktivismus...................................... 97 4. 1 Die Subjekt-Objekt-Differenzierung im genetischen Strukturalismus Piagets.................... 100 4. 1. 1 Die Ausgangskonstellation............................................ 102 4. 1. 2 1m Reich der Metaphem: Die Rolle der AuBenwelt und der Akkommodation........................................................................ 106 4. 1. 3 Die primaren und sekundaren Zirkularreaktionen im Blick des radikalen Konstruktivismus........................................................ III 4. 1. 4 Die Ausbildung der Subjekt-Objekt-Gegenlage.......................................... (shrink)

Experts in Artificial Intelligence (AI) development predict that advances in the dvelopment of intelligent systems and agents will reshape vital areas in our society. Nevertheless, if such an advance isn't done with prudence, it can result in negative outcomes for humanity. For this reason, several researchers in the area are trying to develop a robust, beneficial, and safe concept of artificial intelligence. Currently, several of the open problems in the field of AI research arise from the difficulty of avoiding unwanted (...) behaviors of intelligent agents, and at the same time specifying what we want such systems to do. It is of utmost importance that artificial intelligent agents have their values aligned with human values, given the fact that we cannot expect an AI to develop our moral preferences simply because of its intelligence, as discussed in the Orthogonality Thesis. Perhaps this difficulty comes from the way we are addressing the problem of expressing objectives, values, and ends, using representational cognitive methods. A solution to this problem would be the dynamic cognitive approach proposed by Dreyfus, whose phenomenological philosophy defends that the human experience of being-in-the-world cannot be represented by the symbolic or connectionist cognitive methods. A possible approach to this problem would be to use theoretical models such as SED (situated embodied dynamics) to address the values learning problem in AI. (shrink)

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are one of the first examples of nanotechnology, with a history of promising uses and high expectations. This paper uses the recent debate over their future to explore both ethical and value-laden statements which unsettle the notion of CNTs as a value-free nanotechnology and their regulation as purely a technical affair. A point of departure is made with the inclusion of CNTs on the Substitute-It-Now list by the Swedish NGO ChemSec, an assessment process that anticipates and complements (...) the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation in Europe. An argument map is constructed to illustrate the core contention in the debate—should CNTs be substituted or not—which follows from a systematic literature review and content analysis of sampled journal articles. Nine arguments are articulated that bolster one of two camps: the pro-substitution camp or the contra-substitution camp. Beneath these arguments are a set of three implicit values that animate these two camps in prescribing competing interventions to resolve the dispute: (i) environmental protection and human safety, (ii) good science, and (iii) technological progress. This leads to a discussion around the regulatory problem of safeguarding conflicting values in decision-making under sustained scientific uncertainty. Finally, the study suggests further empirical work on specific nanomaterials in a pivot away from the abstract, promissory nature of nanotechnology and other emerging technologies in science, technology, and innovation policy. The examination of ethics and values is useful for mapping controversies in science and technology studies of regulation, even amongst experts in cognate research fields like nanomedicine and nanotoxicology. (shrink)

Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), a student of canon law who became a Catholic cardinal, was widely considered the most important original philosopher of the Renaissance. He wrote principally on theology, philosophy, and church politics. This volume makes most of Nicholas's other writings on Church and reform available in English for the first time.

Designer Biology: The Ethics of Intensively Engineering Biological and Ecological Systems consists of thirteen chapters that address the ethical issues raised by technological intervention and design across a broad range of biological and ecological systems. Among the technologies addressed are geoengineering, human enhancement, sex selection, genetic modification, and synthetic biology.

Andrea Staiti, Geistigkeit, Leben und geschichtliche Welt in der Transzendentalphänomenologie Husserls Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s10743-012-9103-8 Authors Nicholas de Warren, Department of Philosophy, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481, USA Journal Husserl Studies Online ISSN 1572-8501 Print ISSN 0167-9848.