The paper addresses the integration of ethics into professional education related to the disciplines responsible for the conception and creation of the artificial (artefactual or technology). The ontological-epistemological paradigm of those disciplines is understood within the frame of the sciences of the artificial as established by Herbert Simon (1969). According to that paradigm, those sciences include disciplines not only related to the production of artefacts (technology), such as engineering, architecture, industrial design, etc, but also disciplines related to devised courses of (...) action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones, like medicine, law, education, etc. They are centered on intentional action and at their core is the activity of design, which is their common foundation and attitude, or their common culture. The science of design becomes the broader foundational discipline for any professions engaged in the intentional transformation of the world. The main distinction between design disciplines and scientific ones rests on the object-project dichotomy. Indeed, contrary to Science that sees the world as an object to be observed, Design sees the world as a project and acts upon the world through projects, which are grounded in intentions, ends, and values. Design disciplines are meant to transform the world, or part of it, and are teleological. Being so, they are embodied in an act that is ethical and their ontology-epistemology must be addressed also through practical reason to resituate all professional disciplines according to their involved nature. (shrink)

This paper suggests that design ethics can be enriched by considering ethics beyond the traditional approaches of deontology, teleology, and virtue ethics. Design practice and design ethics literature tend to frame ethics in design according to these approaches. The paper argues that a fundamental and concrete ethical understanding of design ethics can also be found in Sartrean Existentialism, a philosophy centered on the individual and his/her absolute freedom. Through the analysis of four core concepts of Sartrean Existentialism that define a (...) specific ethics, the paper illustrates why such philosophical approach is relevant to design ethics. The paper also shows how Sartrean Existentialism and its ethics apply to critical issues of professional practice in design such as professional engagement and design decision-making. The paper finally argues that Sartre’s philosophy and ethics is a perspective that offers the designer in design practice a solid ground to engage his/her ethical dilemma. (shrink)

Trouvés dans une brocante, les quinze cahiers du journal d’Emilie Serpin (1837-1914) sont un formidable document sur la trajectoire sociale d’une fille d’instituteur qui fut, de 1861 à 1871, institutrice privée dans deux familles nobles de l’Anjou, avant de devenir elle-même, par un mariage tardif et inespéré, mère de famille. Tenu de manière régulière de 1864 à 1871, ce journal a deux faces : journal de piété d’une jeune femme qui, après avoir perdu son fiancé, se réfugie dans une pratique (...) religieuse intense, mais aussi chronique sociale de la vie des familles nobles que sa position lui permet d’observer de l’intérieur de manière très critique. Riche « source » pour l’histoire sociale et l’histoire des mentalités, le journal d’Émilie Serpin est d’abord, à ses propres yeux, une sorte d’œuvre à laquelle sa passion de l’écriture lui fait accorder autant d’importance qu’à ses pratiques pieuses : c’est à cet « atelier d’écriture » que sera consacrée cette présentation. (shrink)

J. P. Telotte _A Distant Technology: Science Fiction Film and the Machine Age_ Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1999 ISBN 0-8195-6346-3 218 pages.

Das »Richtige und das Gute« (1930), das ethische Hauptwerk W. D. Ross’, enthält eine Vielzahl wichtiger moralphilosophischer Thesen und Argumente, die bis in die Gegenwart kontrovers diskutiert werden. Im Mittelpunkt steht seine pluralistische Deontologie, der zufolge sich die richtige Handlung aus einer Abwägung der in der jeweiligen Situation relevanten und unableitbaren Prima-facie-Pflichten ergibt, von denen nur ein Teil auf die Optimierung der Handlungsfolgen bezogen ist. Diese Deontologie wurde zu einem modernen Klassiker unter den normativen ethischen Theorien. Darüber hinaus stellt Ross’ (...) These, dass moralische Intuitionen eine Quelle selbstevidenten Wissens sein können, einen wichtigen Referenzpunkt in Debatten um den erkenntnistheoretischen Fundamentalismus dar. Auch für die Handlungstheorie liefert Ross einflussreiche Argumente, wenn er die Ansicht vertritt, dass Pflichten nie ein bestimmtes Motiv des Handelnden zum Gegenstand haben können. Eine zentrale Stellung nimmt für Ross die Güterlehre ein, in welcher er von vier Grundgütern, Tugend, Wissen, Lust und Gerechtigkeit, ausgeht. Wurde Ross in den ersten Jahrzehnten des 20. Jahrhunderts im damaligen Großbritannien als ein herausragender Ethiker – einer der bedeutendsten des Jahrhunderts, auf Augenhöhe mit G.E. Moore – angesehen, wandelte sich das Meinungsbild in den folgenden Jahrzehnten unter dem Einfluss besonders des Logischen Positivismus und der Philosophie Wittgensteins. In den letzten Jahrzehnten ist jedoch wieder ein wachsendes Interesse an Ross’ Ethik festzustellen. Dabei wird »Das Richtige und das Gute« bisweilen sogar mit der »Nikomachischen Ethik«, Kants »Grundlegung« und Humes »Untersuchung über die Prinzipien der Moral« verglichen. (shrink)

Avec un titre comme Luther et la philosophie, depuis le xviiie siècle et dans les milieux « libéraux » du xixe siècle, on aurait pu s’attendre à un exposé, bien sûr complet, de la philosophie du Réformateur. On trouve l’expression, par exemple, dans les tables analytiques de L’Encyclopédie, à l’entrée « luthéranisme ». Bien que Philippe Büttgen se soit donné comme objet, pour d’autres travaux, « la confessionnalisation de la philosophie ..

This article presents the Arabic text of al-Q's short geometric treatise, The Book of the centres of the tangent circles on lines, by the method of analysis, with translation and a mathematical commentary. In this treatise al-Q solves by analysis an ordered set of eight problems where the goal is to locate, on a given line, the centre of a circle which is tangent to two given elements, which may be points, straight lines or circles. For example, in the first (...) problem he wanted to find the centre of a circle which contains two given points. In fact, al-Q establishes the locus of the solutions, and this locus can be a straight line or a conic. The treatise is reminiscent of one of the purposes of al-Q's work on the perfect compass, namely to assign to the conics the status of regular lines. (shrink)

Philippe Stern, qui fut conservateur en chef du Musée Guimet à Paris, est surtout connu comme historien des arts de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud-Est. Il a sinon créé, du moins perfectionné la méthode qui consiste à suivre l'évolution, à travers la vie d'un art, de motifs spécialement choisis pour en découvrir la chronologie jusque-là inconnue. Il a fait de cette méthode un outil sûr qui a permis en particulier de redresser la chronologie erronée de l'art khmer, d'établir (...) la chronologie de l'art cham de l'Annam ancien, de préciser la chronologie des temples hypogées de l'Inde classique et celles des nombreuses fondations du dernier grand roi khmer, Jayavarman VII. Mais cet archéologue, cet historien, ce conservateur de Musée fut surtout un amant du beau, préoccupé par la nature et le rôle profond de l'expérience esthétique. Ainsi mûrit lentement à travers toute une existence une oeuvre dont Beauté-Clef (Peter Lang, 1989) est un premier volet et dont voici le second volet. (shrink)

The development of geometrical analysis in the 10th century was partly inspired by the reception of the works of Apollonius, which Arab mathematicians translated as early as the preceding century. Al-Qūhī contributed to this development by writing several collections of problems dealing with Apollonian themes and solved by the method of analysis; however, it seems that they do not all occupy the same place in his work. The author gives here the edition, translation, and mathematical commentary of a short work, (...) entitled The determination of two straight lines from a point along a known angle, which presents the particularity of providing problems as geometrical lemmas to other studies. Indeed, al-Qūhī uses two of these lemmas in more complex constructions which belong to his Treatise on the art of the astrolabe. In this same treatise on the astrolabe, as well as in his Treatise on the perfect compass, this scholar also uses as lemmas several problems solved in another of his works, entitled The generation of points on straight lines according to ratios of which the terms are surfaces. This work is unfortunately lost, and all that remains of it are the traces which subsist in other treatises in which it has been used. This study seems to be necessary if one wishes to understand the organization of the work of al-Qūhī, a mathematician of the first rank who was representative of his time. (shrink)

This research investigates 3- and 5-year-olds' relative fairness in distributing small collections of even or odd numbers of more or less desirable candies, either with an adult experimenter or between two dolls. The authors compare more than 200 children from around the world, growing up in seven highly contrasted cultural and economic contexts, from rich and poor urban areas, to small-scale traditional and rural communities. Across cultures, young children tend to optimize their own gain, not showing many signs of self-sacrifice (...) or generosity. Already by 3 years of age, self-optimizing in distributive justice is based on perspective taking and rudiments of mind reading. By 5 years, overall, children tend to show more fairness in sharing. What varies across cultures is the magnitude of young children's self-interest. More fairness (less self-interest) in distributive justice is evident by children growing up in small-scale urban and traditional societies thought to promote more collective values. (shrink)

Pour les philosophes existentialistes athées, l’existence se solde nécessairement par un échec : nous surgissons dans le monde sans raison, ce qui nous condamne à y errer en vain à la recherche d’un impossible salut. La contrepartie de notre liberté est en effet la contingence qui se manifeste au cœur de notre conscience par un perpétuel arrachement à nous-mêmes et une perpétuelle insatisfaction. Lavelle refuse de s’abandonner à un tel pessimisme ; pour lui l’erreur des athées est de se focaliser (...) sur l’existence en oubliant qu’elle prend sa source dans la vie qui la précède et la déborde de toute part. Or, c’est précisément dans cette antériorité et prééminence de la vie que nous devons trouver une bonne raison de croire qu’elle mérite d’être vécue. L’existence ne dure que le temps d’une « traversée » qui doit nous mener de l’enfance à la sagesse ou à la sainteté. Pour cela, il suffit de nous laisser guider par l’amour et par la lumière de nos « expériences premières ».According to the atheistic existentialist philosophers, existence necessarily ends up in failure: we come into this world for no reason, and that condemns us to search in vain for an impossible salvation. Contingency is the price of our freedom, a contingency in the centre of our consciousness that tears us apart and leaves us perpetually dissatisfied. Lavelle refuses to give way to such pessimism; according to him, the mistake of the atheists is to focus on existence, forgetting that it takes its source in life that precedes and overflows it. It is precisely in this anteriority and pre-eminence of life that we must find good reason to believe that living is worthwhile. Existence only lasts the time of a “crossing over” that should lead us from childhood to wisdom or to sanctity. To this end, it is sufficient to let ourselves be guided by love and by the light of our “primal experiences”. (shrink)

This chapter of the Handbook of Utility Theory aims at covering the connections between utility theory and social ethics. The chapter first discusses the philosophical interpretations of utility functions, then explains how social choice theory uses them to represent interpersonal comparisons of welfare in either utilitarian or non-utilitarian representations of social preferences. The chapter also contains an extensive account of John Harsanyi's formal reconstruction of utilitarianism and its developments in the later literature, especially when society faces uncertainty rather than probabilistic (...) risk. (shrink)

To what extent do early intuitions about ownership depend on cultural and socio-economic circumstances? We investigated the question by testing reasoning about third party ownership conflicts in various groups of three- and five-year-old children (N = 176), growing up in seven highly contrasted social, economic, and cultural circumstances (urban rich, poor, very poor, rural poor, and traditional) spanning three continents. Each child was presented with a series of scripts involving two identical dolls fighting over an object of possession. The child (...) had to decide who of the two dolls should own the object. Each script enacted various potential reasons for attributing ownership: creation, familiarity, first contact, equity, plus a control/neutral condition with no suggested reasons. Results show that across cultures, children are significantly more consistent and decisive in attributing ownership when one of the protagonists created the object. Development between three and five years is more or less pronounced depending on culture. The propensity to split the object in equal halves whenever possible was generally higher at certain locations (i.e., China) and quasi-inexistent in others (i.e., Vanuatu and street children of Recife). Overall, creation reasons appear to be more primordial and stable across cultures than familiarity, relative wealth or first contact. This trend does not correlate with the passing of false belief theory of mind. (shrink)

Zum 65. Geburtstag des Kolner und Brusseler Agyptologie-Professors Philippe Derchain gratulierten ihm seine Freunde Kollegen und Schuler mit 33 Beitragen aus dem Gebiet der Religions- und Geistesgeschichte des Alten Agyptens: H. Altenmuller, J. Baines, E. Blumenthal, W. Boochs, M. Broze, Fr. de Cenival, W. Decker, M. Derchain-Urtel, E. Doetsch-Amberger, E. Graefe, J.Gw. Griffiths, M. Heerma van Oss, W. Helck, M. Herb, J.M. Kruchten, D. Kurth, Fr. Labrique, A. Loprieno, M. Malaise, D. Meeks, H. De Meulenaere, J. Quaegebeur, B. Radomska, (...) U. Rossler-Kohler, H.J. Thissen, CL. Traunecker, U. Verhoeven, P. Vernus, M. Weber, W. Westendorf, W. Wettengel, E. Winter, J. Zandree (+). Ein Schriftenverzeichnis Philippe Derchains und diverse Indices beschliessen den Band. (shrink)

This is a chapter of a collective volume of Rawls's and Harsanyi's theories of distributive justice. It focuses on Harsanyi's important Social Aggregation Theorem and technically reconstructs it as a theorem in welfarist social choice.

The transmission of Greek learning to the Arabic-speaking world paved the way to the rise of Arabic philosophy. This volume offers a deep and multifarious survey of transmission of Greek philosophy through the schools of late Antiquity to the Syriac-speaking and Arabic-speaking worlds.