Le physicien a-t-il le moyen de dire ce qu'il en sait? Le modèle proposé en Occident depuis vingt-cinq siècles pour la connaissance du monde a permis le progrès scientifique en vue d'un objectif : dominer la nature. Ce modèle ne rencontre-t-il pas aujourd'hui les limites de sa pertinence? D'autres civilisations l'ont adopté récemment pour son efficacité pratique. La conception occidentale du monde était-elle nécessaire, ou est-elle un artefact sans consistance, un épiphénomène?

The ubiquity of the Internet has given rise to new hybrid types of online users such as hybrid consumers and prosumers. This paper looks at some of the new legal challenges raised by the exciting opportunities for active participation and co-creation by such users in electronic commerce transactions. The method employed, in homage to Jon Bing, is to look back in time to understand how users in sales transactions have been progressively regarded—alternatively exposed to risk, alternatively protected—and how contract law (...) has adapted to such new developments. The paper shows that, even following the emergence of the hybrid consumer and the prosumer, there are strong arguments for the consumer’s continued protection, not least because of the increase in technological sophistication and complexity. The paper seeks to test somewhat the limits where consumer protection ends and where general contract law—with its attendant doctrines like caveat emptor—would apply again with respect to the aforementioned new users. (shrink)

This volume describes the current "main contenders," including neo-Piagetian, neo-connectionist, neo-innatist and sociocultural models.

The experimental philosophy movement advocates the use of empirical methods in philosophy. The methods most often discussed and in fact employed in experimental philosophy are appropriated from the experimental paradigm in psychology. But there is a variety of other (at least partly) empirical methods from various disciplines that are and others that could be used in philosophy. The paper explores the application of corpus analysis to philosophical issues. Although the method is well established in linguistics, there are only a few (...) tentative attempts of philosophers to utilise it. Examples are introduced and the merit of corpus analysis is compared to that of using general internet search engines and questionnaires for similar purposes. (shrink)

Drawing on mostly ignored texts, this book thoroughly reassesses Marx and Engels's engagement with theology.

This book functions as a set of theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical challenges to two fields of scholarship.

The debate on how an individual human life can be understood as being more or less meaningful has been pursued for a considerable time now. Despite extensive discussion some important aspects remain under-explored, namely the relation between meaningfulness and morality – even though many authors implicitly assume a connection between these two value dimensions. But how does morality contribute to a meaningful life? Is it a necessary condition? Or is it not necessary but sufficient or contributive? Or is there, when (...) explored further, no connection at all? This article discusses the relation between morality and meaning by outlining the central positions in the debate, explains the main arguments for and against, and offers some indications for future work in the field. (shrink)

This book offers a contemporary critique of liberal democracy, understood as a set of institutions and as a set of ideas.

Contrary to received opinion among philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, conscious duality as a principle of brain organization is neither incoherent nor demonstrably false. The present paper begins by reviewing the history of the theory and its anatomical basis and defending it against the claim that it rests upon an arbitrary decision as to what constitutes the biological substratum of mind or person.

In this commentary we discuss the possibility of subcortical consciousness and its implications for fetal anesthesia and analgesia. We review the neural development of structural and functional elements that may participate in conscious representation, with a particular focus on the experience of pain. (Published Online May 1 2007).

This book presents one of the first systematic assessments of aesthetic insights into world politics. It examines the nature of aesthetic approaches and outlines how they differ from traditional analysis of politics. The book explores the potential and limits of aesthetics through a series of case studies on language and poetics"--Provided by publisher.

This article undertakes a dual task. The first is to argue that the various positions of major Marxist thinkers on revolution may be gathered under the common framework of kairós, understood as a resolutely temporal term relating to the critical time, the opportune moment that appears unexpectedly and must be seized. The second task is to question the nature of kairós in terms of its biblical, class and economic residues. An investigation of the use of the term in classical Greece (...) reveals that it refers to both time and place, designating primarily what is in the right time and correct place. Given the class identifications of the Greek writers who deal with kairós and their subtle defences of their propertied, ruling class status, the term becomes problematic in light of these associations that trail behind it. In response, I seek to develop the political implications of the true opposite of kairós, namely ákairos, what is ill-timed and in the wrong place. (shrink)

A woman is found lying dead on the floor of the living room of her house in Leiden, the Netherlands, and because of a swollen and a slightly wounded eyelid, an autopsy is performed on the body the day after it is found. Behind the wound, there is a whole ballpoint pen, which entered the head of the deceased through her right eye causing mortal brain damage. How did it get there? This question was to cause a stir in Dutch (...) society, holding a group of police detectives and several scientists in its grip for several years. In this article, the ballpoint case is analyzed as to the boundary work between credible and noncredible expertise. As it is often assumed that boundary work in continental law is preempted by the structure of these law models, this case study adds a comparative note to the growing literature about science and the law. (shrink)

Une approche philosophique de la prière à des fins politiques est possible dans le cas où les deux substantifs sont mis en relais inconditionnel. Le premier élément responsable de cette filature des liens c’est la présence de l’autre. Prier et faire de la politique sont deux activités humaines trop humaines qui exigent l’ouverture à l’autre, pour l’autre comme pour l’édification de sa propre identité individuelle et collective. Comme les rites et les cultes, la liturgie, notamment la prière collective, a un (...) effet thérapeutique, et pédagogique, disons didactique et sociopolitique. Elle calme les esprits, la volonté, apaise l’angoisse et solidifie les liens sociaux. L'Eglise, par exemple, est née du rassemblement du peuple de Dieu en prière et c'est dans son sein que toute célébration liturgique trouve perpétuellement son accomplissement aussi bien que sa régénération dans l’invocation du nom du Christ-Vérité, Rédempteur, Fondateur, Roi et Prêtre. La présente étude sur « Vérité et Royauté » focalise l’attention sur l’essence même du politique qui se nourrit du religieux tout en lui fournissant gloire, pouvoir et moyens d’existence. (shrink)

The 2015 Disneyland outbreak of measles in the US unequivocally brought to light what had been brewing below the surface for a while: a slow but steady decline in vaccination rates resulting in a rising number of outbreaks. This can be traced back to an increasing public questioning of vaccines by an emerging anti-vaccination movement. This article argues that, in the face of diminishing vaccination rates, childhood vaccinations should not be seen as part of the domain of parental choice but, (...) instead, as a non-negotiable legal obligation. The first part of the article formulates and defends two arguments in favour of unqualified mandatory childhood vaccination laws. First, government should not permit parents to put their children at avoidable risk of death and suffering; second, government should guard the common good of herd immunity to protect vulnerable persons. The second part rejects legal and pragmatic objections against such mandatory vaccination laws. (shrink)

Roland Reichenbach; On Irritation and Transformation: A–teleological Bildung and its Significance for the Democratic Form of Living, Journal of Philosophy of Ed.

This article addresses the role of science and science advisory bodies in modeling practices for the support of policy-making procedures in the Netherlands in the field of health care. The authors show, based on a detailed investigation of a prestigious interdisciplinary modeling project in which an economic care model was developed for governmental use, that science advisory bodies are entangled with the policy actors they advise in what we call boundary configurations. Boundary configurations are strongly situated interconnections between science advisory (...) institutes and policy institutions that share a specific approach to problem definitions and methods and that are embedded in specific social, discursive, and material elements. Importantly, as the case study shows, such boundary configurations shape the kind of science, and related, the kind of social and political theories about the world, that is effectuated in modeling practices. In this case study, the boundary configuration in which economic experts and policy makers participated contributed to the articulation of health care in terms of a market-based policy program for the health care sector. (shrink)

The literary semiotics of Pierre Bourdieu incorporates the principles of habitus and hexis to reveal hidden codes in some literary texts. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877) is such a literary text. A Bourdieu-guided semiotic reading of Levin’s weeping locates marriage as the nexus enabling the interpretation of his “disobedient tears” on the eve of his wedding to Kitty. The habitus and hexis of marriage reveal the imbedded mythological, psychoanalytic, physiological, cultural, and socio-cultural codes that intersect in Levin’s crying. Bourdieu’s method thus (...) allows us to read Levin’s “disobedient tears” as commentaries on the semiotic codes imbedded in this literary event. (shrink)

The literary semiotics of Pierre Bourdieu incorporates the principles of habitus and hexis to reveal hidden codes in some literary texts. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877) is such a literary text. A Bourdieu-guided semiotic reading of Levin’s weeping locates marriage as the nexus enabling the interpretation of his “disobedient tears” on the eve of his wedding to Kitty. The habitus and hexis of marriage reveal the imbedded mythological, psychoanalytic, physiological, cultural, and socio-cultural codes that intersect in Levin’s crying. Bourdieu’s method thus (...) allows us to read Levin’s “disobedient tears” as commentaries on the semiotic codes imbedded in this literary event. (shrink)