During the refereeing procedure of Anthropomorphic Quantum Darwinism by Thomas Durt, it became apparent in the dialogue between him and me that the definition of information in Physics is something about which not all authors agreed. This text aims at describing the concepts associated to information that are accepted as the standard in the Physics world community.

The impact of Darwin's work in biology is widely known; we present here a less known aspect which is that of applying Darwin's ideas in physics, and how this may relate with the transition from pre-life to life. Darwin's work on the origin of species was a breakthrough not only because of its explanation of how different species came to exist but also because the extinction of a species is caused not only by the charactenstics of the species, but in (...) large degree by the charactenstics of the environment. In contrast, in Newton's approach to physics, the environment was seen as neutral and inert. The goal of this article is to portray how quantum Darwinism helps to clarify the transition from Physics to pre-life. (shrink)

Gödel’s incompleteness applies to any system with recursively enumerable axioms and rules of inference. Chaitin’s approach to Gödel’s incompleteness relates the incompleteness to the amount of information contained in the axioms. Zurek’s quantum Darwinism attempts the physical description of the universe using information as one of its major components. The capacity of quantum Darwinism to describe quantum measurement in great detail without requiring ad-hoc non-unitary evolution makes it a good candidate for describing the transition from quantum to classical. A baby-universe (...) diffusion model of cosmic inflation is analyzed using quantum Darwinism. In this model cosmic inflation can be approximated as Brownian motion of a quantum field, and quantum Darwinism implies that molecular interaction during Brownian motion will make the quantum field decohere. The quantum Darwinism approach to decoherence in the baby-universe cosmic-inflation model yields the decoherence times of the baby-universes. The result is the equation relating the baby-universe’s decoherence time with the Hubble parameter, and that the decoherence time is considerably shorter than the cosmic inflation period. (shrink)

We describe the Catholic natural law tradition by examining its origins in the medieval penitentials, the papal decretals, the writings of Thomas Aquinas, and seventeenth century casuistry. Catholic natural law emerges as a flexible ethic that conceives of human nature as rational and as oriented to certain basic goods that ought to be pursued and whose pursuit is made possible by the virtues. We then identify four approaches to natural law that have evolved within the United States during the twentieth (...) century, including the traditionalist, proportionalist, right reason, and historicist approaches. The normative implications of these approaches are discussed in relation to ethical issues in the tobacco industry, ITT under Geneen, the marketing of pharmaceuticals, affirmative action, and bribery. It is argued that Alasdair MacIntyre is correct in claiming that the natural law tradition is superior to the liberal ethics of modern deontology and utilitarianism. (shrink)

El presente artículo presenta los nuevos e importantes descubrimientos en la terraza litoral al pie del oasis de niebla, a partir de Noviembre de 2003, que junto a estudios anteriores conforman un cuadro general bastante completo de los patrones de asentamiento, modus vivendi, costumbres y actividades económicas de los antiguos pobladores costeros del norte de Chile, que reafirman la enorme importancia que adquirió el ecosistema de oasis de niebla costero en el género de vida, tipos de asentamiento y desplazamientos de (...) los cazadores-recolectores marinos del litoral norte. (shrink)

Abstract:Our critics confuse the role normative ethical theory can take in business ethics. We argue that as a practical discipline, business ethics must focus on norms, not the theories from which the norms derive. It is true that our original work is defective, but not in its form, but in its neglect of contemporary advances in feminist ethics.

Proteins are targeted to plastids by N‐terminal transit peptides, which are recognized by protein import complexes in the organelle membranes. Historically, transit peptide properties have been defined from vascular plant sequences, but recent large‐scale genome sequencing from the many plastid‐containing lineages across the tree of life has provided a much broader representation of targeted proteins. This includes the three lineages containing primary plastids (plants and green algae, rhodophytes and glaucophytes) and also the seven major lineages that contain secondary plastids, “secondhand” (...) plastids derived through eukaryotic endosymbiosis. Despite this extensive spread of plastids throughout Eukaryota, an N‐terminal transit peptide has been maintained as an essential plastid‐targeting motif. This article provides the first global comparison of transit peptide composition and summarizes conservation of some features, the loss of an ancestral motif from the green lineages including plants, and modifications to transit peptides that have occurred in secondary and even tertiary plastids. BioEssays 29:1048–1058, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The article attempts to verify that inappropriate use of information provided by the media can increase risks for persons who are susceptible to mental illness. The impact of Colombian news in 2014 related to the word suicide was studied to that end. The news was analyzed subsequently through a survey with eight questions applied by two members of the group who had been trained to conduct the study. The idea was to delve deeper and to see the effect of the (...) media and its stigmatization. Nowadays, adolescents are more exposed to situations in which their mood can be affected by improper use of the media, bearing in mind that the worst outcome would be that it leads to suicidal behavior. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a health issue leading older adults to an increased vulnerability to unfavorable outcomes. Indeed, the presence of physical frailty has recently led to higher mortality due to SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, no longitudinal studies have investigated the role of neuropsychogeriatric factors associated with lockdown fatigue in healthy cognitive aging. Eighty-one healthy older adults were evaluated for their neuropsychological characteristics, including physical frailty, before the pandemic. Subsequently, 50 of them agreed to be interviewed and neuropsychologically re-assessed during the (...) lockdown and immediately after it. Moreover, during another home confinement, they performed a psychological screening to evaluate possible mood changes and fatigue. According to Fried's frailty criteria, at T0, 63% of the sample was robust, 34.5% pre-frail, and only 2.5% frail. Significantly, these subjects presented a decrease in handgrip strength and walking speed. Results from Principal Component Analyses and multiple regression models highlighted the contribution of “cognitive” and “psychological” factors in explaining handgrip strength and gait speed. At T3, lockdown fatigue was explained by higher scores on the Beck Depression Inventory and lower scores on the Trail Making Test part A. Results from a moderated-mediation model showed that the effect of psychomotor speed on lockdown fatigue was mediated by depression, with a moderating effect of gait speed. Our findings highlight the complex interrelationship between cognitive, psychological, and physical factors in the emergence of pandemic fatigue in a carefully selected older population. (shrink)

Aims and hypothesesIn an environment of absolute silence, researchers have found many of their participants to perceive phantom sounds. With this between-subject experiment, we aimed to elaborate on these research findings, and specifically investigated whether–in line with the fear-avoidance model of tinnitus perception and reactivity–fear or level of perceived threat influences the incidence and perceptual qualities of phantom sound percepts in an anechoic room. We investigated the potential role of individual differences in anxiety, negative affect, noise sensitivity and subclinical hearing (...) loss. We hypothesized that participants who experience a higher level of threat would direct their attention more to the auditory system, leading to the perception of tinnitus-like sounds, which would otherwise be subaudible, and that under conditions of increased threat, narrowing of attention would lead to perceptual distortions.MethodsIn total, N = 78 normal-hearing volunteers participated in this study. In general, the study sample consisted of young, mostly female, university students. Their hearing was evaluated using gold-standard pure tone audiometry and a speech-in-noise self-test, which is a sensitive screening test to identify subclinical hearing loss. Prior to a four-minute stay in an anechoic room, we randomized participants block design-wise in a threat and no-threat condition. Participants in the threat condition were deceived about their hearing and were led to believe that staying in the room would potentially harm their hearing temporarily. Participants were asked whether they perceived sounds during their stay in the room and rated the perceptual qualities of sound percepts. They were also asked to fill-out standardized questionnaires measuring anxiety, affect and noise sensitivity. The internal consistency of the questionnaires used was verified in our study sample and ranged between α = 0.61 and α = 0.90.ResultsIn line with incidence rates reported in the literature, 74% of our participants reported having heard tinnitus-like sounds in the anechoic room. Speech-in-noise identification ability was comparable for both groups of participants. The experimental manipulation of threat was proven to be effective, as indicated by significantly higher scores on a Threat Manipulation Checklist among participants in the threat condition as compared to those in the no-threat condition. Nevertheless, participants in the threat condition were as likely to report tinnitus percepts as participants in the no-threat condition, and tinnitus percepts were not rated as being louder or more unpleasant as a function of level of threat. For participants who did experience tinnitus percepts, a higher level of threat was associated with a higher degree of experienced unpleasantness. These associations were absent in those who did not experience tinnitus. Higher negative affect was only slightly associated with higher ratings of tinnitus unpleasantness.ConclusionWhereas our threat manipulation was successful in elevating the level of fear, it did not contribute to a higher percentage of participants perceiving tinnitus-like sounds in the threat condition. However, higher levels of perceived threat were related to a higher degree of perceived tinnitus unpleasantness. The findings of our study are drawn from a rather homogenous participant pool in terms of age, gender, and educational background, challenging conclusions that are applicable for the general population. Participants generally obtained normophoric scores on independent variables of interest: they were low anxious, low noise-sensitive, and there was little evidence for the presence of subclinical hearing loss. Possibly, there was insufficient variation in scores to find effects. (shrink)

Resumen: Durante la década del sesenta, la revista Movie hereda de Cahiers du cinéma las preferencias por la politique des auteurs y por cierto cine norteamericano. No obstante, sin abandonar esa predilección por un “cine de directores”, a lo largo de su trayectoria la revista británica intentará desarrollar un riguroso método de análisis formal a través de detallados close readings de los films. Algunos de sus integrantes buscan aplicar al cine los planteos de F. R. Leavis y la revista Scrutiny (...) a propósito de la crítica literaria. Es esta modulación analítica la que será puesta en cuestión con el auge del estructuralismo y el posestructurailsmo a los que se asocia la revista Screen en los años 70.: During the sixties, the journal Movie inherits from Cahiers du cinéma the preferencies for a politique des auteurs and for certain american films. However, never abandoning this tendency towards a “cinema of directors”, the british journal develops a rigorous method of formal analysis and detailed close readings. Some of its members try to apply to cinema the concepts elaborated by F. R. Leavis and the journal Scrutiny in reference to literary criticism. It is precisely this analytic method that will be questioned during the boom of structuralism and post structuralism to which the journal Screen will be asociated in the 70s. (shrink)

El presente artículo busca describir la crítica de F. H. Jacobi a la filosofía trascendental en torno al problema de la afección y la cosa en sí. Esta crítica atribuye al pensamiento de Kant un idealismo incompatible con toda noción de realismo. La interpretación de Jacobi, sin embargo, se apoya sobre un desconocimiento de la naturaleza metodológico-trascendental no solo de la terminología involucrada en el problema de la afección, sino de toda la reflexión kantiana acerca del conocimiento. El modelo exegético (...) de la two aspects view ha proporcionado instrumentos que nos permiten una reconstrucción hermenéutica del problema de la afección y ponen en evidencia el extravío metodológico en la crítica de Jacobi. (shrink)

BackgroundConcurrent with efforts to establish national and regional biorepositories in Africa is widespread endorsement of ethics committees as stewards of the interests of individual donors and their communities. To date, ethics training programs for IRB members in Botswana have focused on ethical principles and international guidelines rather than on the ethical dimensions of specific medical technologies and research methodologies. Little is known about the knowledge and concerns of current and prospective IRB members in Botswana with respect to export, reuse, storage, (...) and benefit-sharing of biospecimens.MethodsThis qualitative study examined perspectives of IRB members in Botswana about the collection and use of biospecimens in research. Forty-one IRB members representing five committees in Botswana participated in discussions groups in March 2013. Transcriptions of audiotapes and field notes were analyzed to identify issues of concern that might be alleviated through education and capacity-building, and areas that required ongoing discussion or additional regulatory guidance.ResultsAreas of concern included lack of understanding among patients and providers about the use of biospecimens in clinical care and research; reuse of biospecimens, particularly issues of consent, ownership and decision-making; export of specimens and loss of control over reuse and potential benefits; and felt need for regulatory guidance and IRB-member training. Local belief systems about bodily integrity and strong national identity in the construct of benefits may be at odds with initiatives that involve foreign biorepositories or consider such collections to be global public goods.ConclusionEducation is needed to strengthen IRB-member capacity to review and monitor protocols calling for the collection and use of biospecimens, guided by clear national policy on priority-setting, partnerships, review, and oversight. Engagement with local stakeholders is needed to harmonize fundamentally different ways of understanding the human body and community identity with the aims of contemporary biomedicine. (shrink)

Institutional Review Boards have expressed concern that research into sensitive topics such as mental disorder will cause participants undue distress. This study investigated the emotional responses of 5,220 Australians to a survey on mental-health-related discrimination. Participants were interviewed about their mental health and experiences of discrimination across 10 life domains and then the emotional impacts of the survey. Results suggested that a minority experienced a negative reaction in contrast to 88% reporting positive experiences. A mental health problem was associated with (...) both negative and positive reactions. (shrink)

Ce livre est, comme le titre l’indique, un objet hybride, à la fois dictionnaire et anthologie. L’auteur n’est pas une historienne professionnelle mais une écrivaine, déjà auteur d’une biographie d’une de ses aventurières, l’Anglaise Adela Breton, qui fut une pionnière des séjours et des relevés archéologiques à travers le Mexique précolombien à la fin du xixe siècle (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2005). Chaque notice individuelle est suivie d’une indication de sources (parfois...

In the last two decades an increasing number of musicians, musicologists and philosophers in the United States of America have dealt with questions of philosophy of music on a phenomenological basis. F. Joseph Smith certainly deserves mention as one of the first and most innovative of these authors. Sections 1 and 2 of the paper sketch a portrait of Smith against the background of the current situation in America, where there is a strong awareness of the need to overcome the (...) present limits imposed by historical musicology in order to develop a new phenomenological approach. Section 3 expounds Smith 's critique against traditional theory of musical form and his attempt to redefine musical form on the basis of Husserl's treatise on passive synthesis. This, in the author's opinion, is Smith 's most important contribution to a phenomenologically oriented philosophy of music. Finally, section 4 tries to draw some critical conclusions concerning Smith 's work, with special regard to the merits and demerits of his idea of phenomenology as applied to music. (shrink)

This book highlights some of the most pressing safety, ethical, legal and societal issues related to the diverse contexts in which robotic technologies apply. Focusing on the essential concept of well-being, it addresses topics that are fundamental not only for research, but also for industry and end-users, discussing the challenges in a wide variety of applications, including domestic robots, autonomous manufacturing, personal care robots and drones.

Some philosophers believe that entities have essences. What are we to make of the view that essences are themselves entities? E.J. Lowe has put forward an infinite regress argument against it. In this paper I challenge that argument. First, drawing on work by J.W. Wieland, I give a general condition for the obtaining of a vicious infinite regress. I then argue that in Lowe’s case the condition is not met. In making my case, I mainly (but not exclusively) consider definitionalist (...) accounts of essence. I make a re￾quirement to which definitionalists such as Lowe are committed and which, I venture, should also be palatable to non-naïve modalists. I call it the Relevance Principle. The defence trades on it, as well as on the distinction, due to K. Fine, between mediate and immediate essence. (shrink)

In the book The Insect Societies, Wilson proposed categories of sociality that were presented as a landmark unification of terminology in the study of social behavior. Since then, many new behavioral patterns have been described, but they could not be fitted into any of the available categories, undermining the consensus around that well-established classification. New general classifications tried to circumvent the limitations shown by Wilson’s categorization, but with little success. Among the proposals, some maintain the form of discrete categorization, while (...) others advance a quantitative model to characterize sociality. These proposals have failed to clarify the use of the categories of sociality, and none of them has become widely accepted or overcome the problems faced by the classification of social behaviors. Here we explore whether an analysis of types of concepts proposed by Carnap can help to move forward in this discussion. His distinction between qualitative concepts and quantitative concepts is used here as an epistemological basis for analyzing the development of the proposed conceptual changes and classifications of sociality. Recently, social behavior has come to be considered a complex phenomenon, and quantitative concepts could bring a lot of informative data to understanding its development and perhaps its evolution. We conclude that a new metric of sociality should be built, using characteristics that are nonarbitrary, evolutionarily meaningful, and amenable to comparing all social animals. Finally, we advocate for an integrative view of social complexity based on individuals’ interactions as a useful metric of sociality. This approach still needs further development. (shrink)

Objective: Individually, vision and hearing impairments have been linked to higher levels of anxiety and depression. We investigated the effect of dual sensory impairment in a large representative sample of Spanish adults. Methods: Data from a total of 23,089 adults from the Spanish National Health Survey 2017 were analyzed. Self-reported difficulty of seeing and hearing, and depression and chronic anxiety were analyzed. Multivariable logistic regression was assessed for difficulty with vision alone, hearing alone and with difficulty with both, adjusting for (...) gender, age, marital status, living as a couple, education, smoking, alcohol consumption, BMI, physical activity, use of glasses/contact lenses, and hearing aid. Results: Visual difficulty, hearing difficulty, and dual difficulties were all associated with significantly higher odds for depression and for chronic anxiety. Dual sensory difficulty was associated with higher odds ratios for depression and anxiety when compared to either impairment alone. Conclusion: Dual sensory difficulty is associated with significantly higher odds of anxiety and depression when compared to either vision or hearing difficulty alone. Appropriate interventions are needed to address any reversible causes of vision and hearing as well as anxiety and depression in people in these specific groups. (shrink)

As Russell's paradox of "the set of all sets that do not contain themselves" indicated long ago, matters go seriously amiss if one operates an ontology of unrestricted totalization. Some sort of restriction must be placed on such items as "the set of all sets that have the feature F' or "the conjunction of all truths that have the feature G." But generally, logicians here introduce such formalized and complex devices as the theory of types or the doctrine of impredictivity. (...) The present paper argues for the informal and elementary idea that the items invoked in a proper identification have themselves already been identified. Even as an explanation is not satisfactory that proceeds in terms of items that themselves require prior explanation, so the same holds with identification. And heed of this elementary idea suffices to sideline those otherwise paradoxical perplexities. (shrink)

F. Enriques and G. de Santillana have begun in collaboration the composition of a general history of scientific thought. The first volume of this work, which has been recently published, is concerned with the science of antiquity,1 and to a large extent covers the same ground as the history of ancient philosophy, as the frontiers of philosophy and natural science, at any rate until the time of Aristotle, were not yet clearly differentiated. But the two historians are interested in bringing (...) into prominence a great many problems and personalities that the history of philosophy generally leaves on one side, although they help to complete and vivify the picture of the mentality of the ancients. Mathematics, medicine, geography, astronomy, applied mechanics, and physics, in short all the particular scientific studies that were just beginning to detach themselves from the parent trunk of general philosophy are studied by the authors in their individual developments and through the personalities of their cultivators. The explanations are clear and simple and can be followed even by readers unversed in science; the information is at first hand and is supplemented by a careful discussion of sources. The scientific questions are not isolated from the historical setting of the civilization of antiquity, but are shown in relation to matters of philosophy, religion, art, and moral and political life. The bibliography, intended for the more purely scientific and technical departments of philosophy, forms a very useful and timely completion of the bibliography of philosophic thought in general. (shrink)

The advent of CRISPR has drastically moved the possibility of genetically modifying human genomes from the space of science fiction into nearby reality. Whether one considers the positive results f...

where ‘aa’ is a plural term, and ‘F’ a plural predicate. Following George Boolos (1984) and others, many philosophers and logicians also think that plural expressions should be analysed as not introducing any new ontological commitments to some sort of ‘plural entities’, but rather as involving a new form of reference to objects to which we are already committed (for an overview and further details, see Linnebo 2004). For instance, the plural term ‘aa’ refers to Alice, Bob and Charlie simultaneously, (...) and the plural predicate ‘F’ is true of some things just in case these things cooperate. A natural question that arises is whether the step from the singular to the plural can be iterated. Are there terms that stand to ordinary plural terms the way ordinary plural terms stand to singular terms? Let’s call such terms superplural. A superplural term would thus, loosely speaking, refer to several ‘pluralities’ at once, much as an ordinary plural term refers to several objects at once.1 Further, let’s call a predicate superplural if it can be predicated of superplural terms. It is reasonably straightforward to devise a formal logic of superplural terms, superplural predicates, and even superplural quantifiers (see Rayo 2006). But does this formal logic reflect any features of natural languages? In particular, does ordinary English contain superplural terms and predicates? The purpose of this article is to address these questions. We examine some earlier arguments for the existence of superplural expressions in English and find them to be either.. (shrink)

The importance of the Treatise on equations by Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī has been brought to our attention by R. Rashed, who underlined the analytical aspects of this essentially algebraic work. Following Rashed, this article concentrates on one of these analytical concepts, namely the maximum of a polynomial expression f of degree 3. The purpose is to clarify the techniques that led al-Ṭūsī, when computing the maximum of f, to systematically display algebraic equations equivalent to f = 0. By demonstrating that (...) al-Ṭūsī's essentially algebraic proofs were also based on analytical procedures, we show that the presence of these equations was not fortuitous, but resulted from a correct understanding of the maximum of f. The accompanying geometrical representations were primarily for illustration. L'importance du Traité des équations de Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, a été mise en évidence par les travaux de R. Rashed, qui ont souligné les aspects analytiques de cette œuvre essentiellement algébrique. Parmi les notions analytiques qui figurent dans le Traité d'al-Ṭūsī, nous évoquerons uniquement celle du maximum d'une expression polynomiale du 3 e degré, f. La présente étude pourrait apporter une contribution à une problématique posée par R. Rashed: élucider les moyens et les techniques qui, lors du calcul du maximum, auraient conduit al-Ṭūsī à mettre systématiquement en valeur des équations équivalentes à fʹ = 0. Notre étude confirme que la présence de telles expressions n'est pas fortuite; elle découle d'une conception correcte du maximum de f. À cet effet, nous montrons que si les démonstrations utilisées par al-Ṭūsī sont essentiellement algébriques, elles s'appuient sur des procédés analytiques; les représentations géométriques qui les accompagnent constituent surtout des moyens de visualisation. (shrink)

Dans ce livre issu de sa thèse de doctorat, F. Jégoudez reconstitue les grandes étapes de l’évolution du concept de Bildung (éducation, formation et développement de soi) à travers l’œuvre de Nietzsche, repartant des premières occurrences de celle-ci et accompagnant l’évolution du rapport du philosophe à ceux qu’il nomme les « savants ». La lecture proposée par F. Jégoudez a notamment l’intérêt d’insister sur la distinction produite par le philosophe entre une vraie ou authentique Bildung qui...

W illia m o f Ockha m w a s a F rancisca n fria r , a theol o gia n an d a v e r y singula r philo sophe r . H e l i v e d a t a tim e o f crisi s an d durin g th e transitio n o f philosop h y an d theol o g y . Hi s secularis m i s manifeste d i n (...) th e defens e o f a radica l separatio n bet w ee n th e religious an d secula r p ow ers . Assigne d t o th e philosophica l cu r ren t o f nominalism , h e deal t a s e v ere b l o w t o th e metap h ysica l realis m o f Aristotl e an d Thoma s Aquina s an d h e ad v ocate d the separatio n o f reaso n an d f aith , bet w ee n philosop h y an d theol o g y an d thu s h e unde r mined th e ideol o gica l foundation s o f th e churc h o f hi s time . H e w a s accuse d o f heres y because o f hi s nominalism , althoug h h e himsel f condemne d P op e Joh n XXI I a s heretica l fo r his conceptio n o f p o v e r t y , a concep t f a r rem o v e d fro m ev angelica l principle s an d especial ly fro m th e notio n o f th e F rancisca n orde r . H e defende d th e separatio n o f churc h an d stat e and h e denie d th e P ope ’ s authorit y i n secula r matters . H e flat ly asse r te d freedo m o f conscience an d Luthe r too k hi m a s a teache r. (shrink)

During the first outbreak of COVID-19, the F rench governmental advisory council on bioethics suggested the need to support healthcare providers with ad hoc “ethical support units.” Several units engaged in such endeavors across the country. This article outlines some methodological considerations made by the Cochin Hospital Clinical Ethics Center (the Cec). The Cec was founded in 2002 to provide clinical ethics support services. While its approach was inspired by North American models, it was shaped by and adapted to the (...) French context. This approach is called the “Commitment Model,” as it draws upon societal engagement in all phases of its service and places the perspectives of individual patients at its core. During the first outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, the Cec received a greater number of requests about recurring care practices or ethical guidelines and recommendations than single clinical ethics dilemmas. Through the presentation of an illustrative consultation, this article describes how, while the Cec made some adjustments to its service for the emergency situation, it preserved its case-by-case approach rather than engaging in what it calls organizational and institutional ethics. Such an approach allowed the Cec to refocus attention to individual patients and their unique circumstances and to support decision makers by the use of case-by-case, problematized, ethical reflections. (shrink)

RésuméLe problème du commencement occupe une place centrale clans la pensée de F. Gonseth. La solution qu'il lui apporte, sur laquelle repose toute sa théorie de la connaissance, est paradoxale en ce sens qu'elle dénic à toute connaissance la possibilityé de s'édifier ex nihilo; or historiquement, la connaissance a bien dû coninicncer tine fois. La levée de ce paradoxe fait appel à des concepts prônés par le récent mouvement systémique.SummaryThe problem of the beginning is important in Gonseth's thought. The solution (...) that he gives, and on which his entire epistemology is based, is paradoxical in that it denies that knowledge may be built up ex nihilo; but, historically, knowlege did indeed at some time have to begin. The resolution of this paradox makes use of concepts adopted by the recent systemics movement. (shrink)