Cross-border reproductive care (CBRC) can be defined as the movement from one jurisdiction to another for medically assisted reproduction (MAR). CBRC raises many ethical concerns that have been addressed extensively. However, the conclusions are still based on scarce evidence even considering the global scale of CBRC. Empirical ethics appears as a way to foster this ethical reflection on CBRC while attuning it with the experiences of its main actors. To better understand the ‘in and out’ situation of CBRC in Canada, (...) we conducted an ethnographic study taking a ‘critically applied ethics’ approach. This article presents a part of the findings of this research, obtained by data triangulation from qualitative analysis of pertinent literature, participant observation in two Canadian fertility clinics and 40 semidirected interviews. Based on participants’ perceptions, four themes emerged: (1) inconsistencies of the Canadian legal framework; (2) autonomy and the necessity to resort to CBRC; (3) safety and the management of CBRC individual risks; and (4) justice and solidarity. The interaction between these four themes highlights the problematic of ‘reproductive outsourcing’ that characterised the Canadian situation, a system where the controversial aspects of MAR are knowingly pushed outside the borders. (shrink)

Le placement familial pose d’emblée la question d’un conflit culturel, entre représentations de ce qui définit, pour chacun des acteurs en présence, une famille. Certaines apparaissent compatibles, d’autres ne le sont pas. L’enfant se construira à partir de ce constat et des mises en tension qu’il génère. L’auteur, psychologue, explique l’importance du lien et du dialogue entre culture de la famille d’origine et culture de la famille d’accueil. C’est à travers l’étude du rapport au corps de l’enfant, des modalités relationnelles (...) rencontrées au fil de l’accueil et de la question des valeurs familiales et culturelles transmises à l’enfant que s’établit cette recherche sur les conséquences d’un choc entre cultures familiales dans le cadre d’un placement familial. L’institution se doit de prendre la mesure d’une telle dynamique afin, d’une part, de soulager l’enfant d’une telle responsabilité et, d’autre part, de promouvoir une sorte de métissage culturel familial, garant du processus de subjectivation en situation de placement. (shrink)

Invariance of the class of algorithms expressible with respect to changes in computational formalism have provided extremely stable foundations for the Church-Turing thesis, according to which a number of—equivalent—computational mechanisms each fully capture the intuitive notion of algorithm. Thanks to the stability and elegance of the Church-Turing thesis, the notion of computation defined by these mechanisms is etched in stone as the theoretical essence of computation. In particular, this notion has been extensively used as an abstract tool to model natural (...) phenomena. (shrink)

La critique de la science chez Nietzsche n’est pas passée par des phases opposées, mais a toujours consisté à souligner, avec des accentuations variées, l’ambiguïté de tout désir de connaître. La science accentue simplement ce qui risque toujours de menacer la dignité du désir de connaître, qu’il s’agisse du besoin de sécurité ou de familiarité, comme de l’avidité ou de la prétention à la pureté.

Les deux livres de Sartre sur l’image posent un problème d’interprétation rarement traité. Le premier, L’Imagination, s’achève sur un vibrant hommage à la théorie husserlienne de l’image. Le second, L’Imaginaire, qui faisait initialement partie d’un même volume, propose une théorie inédite de l’imagination qui ne cite pas une seule fois Husserl, et qui s’en démarque fortement. Sartre a-t-il changé de point de vue d’un livre à l'autre ? Ou faut-il comprendre que son hommage à Husserl était d’emblée un hommage critique, (...) porteur de lourds désaccords explicités par L’Imaginaire ? Cet article répond à ces questions en cernant les lignes de fracture décisives entre les deux auteurs. (shrink)

Résumé Dans ce présent article, il s’agit de définir les conditions à partir desquelles il est possible de convoquer la notion de « visite médiatisée ». Le dispositif mis en place dans le cadre de rencontres parent/enfant et nécessitant un travail de médiatisation doit pouvoir s’appuyer sur trois fonctions spécifiques. La première correspond à l’établissement d’un système pare-excitation susceptible d’accueillir et de réduire les effets des excitations générées dans et par la rencontre. La deuxième représente le travail de métabolisation des (...) données de la rencontre en éléments psychiques, à travers les processus de traduction et de transformation. Enfin, la visite médiatisée doit contribuer au retraitement du négatif tel que l’histoire familiale en porte la trace. Ces fonctions s’inscrivent dans un principe de continuité sans lequel il est inapproprié de parler de médiatisation des visites. (shrink)

Résumé Dans ce présent article, il s’agit de définir les conditions à partir desquelles il est possible de convoquer la notion de « visite médiatisée ». Le dispositif mis en place dans le cadre de rencontres parent/enfant et nécessitant un travail de médiatisation doit pouvoir s’appuyer sur trois fonctions spécifiques. La première correspond à l’établissement d’un système pare-excitation susceptible d’accueillir et de réduire les effets des excitations générées dans et par la rencontre. La deuxième représente le travail de métabolisation des (...) données de la rencontre en éléments psychiques, à travers les processus de traduction et de transformation. Enfin, la visite médiatisée doit contribuer au retraitement du négatif tel que l’histoire familiale en porte la trace. Ces fonctions s’inscrivent dans un principe de continuité sans lequel il est inapproprié de parler de médiatisation des visites. (shrink)

THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN FREEDOM is one of the central and recurring issues of philosophy. Kant considered it to be at the heart of his own philosophy, the "keystone," as he called it, of the whole architecture of his system of pure reason, both of practical reason as well as of speculative reason. However, the notorious difficulties of interpreting Kant's philosophy in general, and his doctrine of freedom in particular, have made most of Kant's accomplishments in this area relatively inaccessible (...) to contemporary philosophers. In this paper I will discuss the problem of human freedom from a Kantian perspective and will make use of some of what I consider to be Kant's most significant analyses and arguments. It is not my intention to try to preserve, illuminate, or render consistent everything which Kant said about freedom; such an endeavor would probably be in vain. I do, however, want to pay him the respect of believing that there is much that is worth preserving in what he says about freedom, and that is, with a modest amount of reconstruction, quite relevant to the way many of us think about the problem of freedom today. (shrink)

L’auteur aborde la question du modèle adoptif dans le cadre du placement familial. Cette évolution nécessite l’action conjointe de l’institution, de la famille d’accueil et de l’enfant placé. Pour atténuer les effets de cette dynamique au long cours, il s’agirait, entre autres, d’aider l’assistante maternelle à ne pas identifier l’enfant placé, corps étranger à sa propre famille, au corps étranger interne, constitué d’éléments infantiles non élaborés, qu’elle abrite. Cette étude s’appuie également sur deux observations cliniques susceptibles de préciser les enjeux (...) et les risques du modèle adoptif. (shrink)

The Conditional Probability Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics replaces the abstract notion of time used in standard Quantum Mechanics by the time that can be read off from a physical clock. The use of physical clocks leads to apparent non-unitary and decoherence. Here we show that a close approximation to standard Quantum Mechanics can be recovered from conditional Quantum Mechanics for semi-classical clocks, and we use these clocks to compute the minimum decoherence predicted by the Conditional Probability Interpretation.

How to engage the public in a reflection on the most pressing ethical issues of our time? What if part of the solution lies in adopting an interdisciplinary and collaborative strategy to shed light on critical issues in bioethics? An example is Art + Bioéthique, an innovative project that brought together bioethicists, art historians and artists with the aim of expressing bioethics through arts in order to convey the “sensitive” aspect of many health ethics issues. The aim of this project (...) was threefold: 1) to identify and characterize mechanisms for the meeting of arts and bioethics; 2) to experiment with and co-construct a dialogue between arts and bioethics; and 3) to initiate a public discussion on bioethical issues through the blending of arts and bioethics. In connection with an exhibition held in March 2016 at the Espace Projet, a non-profit art space in Montréal, the project developed a platform that combined artworks, essays and cultural & scientific mediation activities related to the work of six duos of young bioethics researchers and emerging artists. Each duo worked on a variety of issues, such as the social inclusion of disabled people, the challenges of practical applications of nanomedicine and regenerative medicine, and a holistic approach to contemporary diseases. This project, which succeeded in stimulating an interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration between bioethics and arts, is an example of an innovative approach to knowledge transfer that can move bioethics reflection into the public space. (shrink)

For Thomas Aquinas, the creator of natural law is a personal, substantial, and relational God. For Laozi, it is an impersonal, non-substantial, self-manifesting dao. There are similarities, and this article will consider several of them. For Thomas, the act of creation comes from God, and for Laozi the giving birth of the universe is from the dao’s unconditional generosity. Thus it is possible to compare the way in which the world-originating generosity of God generates the moral law and the way (...) in which the self-manifesting dao generates the moral law. In Thomas’s view the natural law is the rational participation of the human being in God’s eternal law. Laozi’s heavenly dao governs all things in the universe, and for this reason human beings and their techniques should comply with dao. Thomas emphasizes human freedom of will and the responsibility to pursue what is good and to avoid what is evil. Laozi emphasizes the objectivity of heavenly dao without any reference to human freedom of will or individual responsibility. With religious Daoism there develops the idea of collective responsibility and the divinization of dao, a point that invites further comparative study of Thomism and Daoism. (shrink)

A parieto-frontal integration theory (P-FIT) model of human intelligence has been proposed based on a review of neuroimaging literature and lesion studies. The P-FIT model provides an important basis for future research. Future studies involving connectivity analyses and an integrative approach of imaging modalities using the P-FIT model should provide vastly increased understanding of the biological bases of intelligence.

Estudio intertextual del "Llibre d'amic i amat" en los ámbitos de la espiritualidad, de la teología y de la literatura vernacular, sobre todo mediante referencias a la patrística latina, el pensamiento de cistercienses y victorianos, la "legenda" de "Ami et amile", etc. se adopta el método de la filiaciones, pero con rectificaciones notables: no basta con señalar el parentesco de motivos y temas, etapa que debe prolongarse por un estudio de la función y el sentido de dichos elementos en la (...) arquitectura, el sistema de un pensamiento. Se pone de realce, asimismo, la importancia de compaginar filosofía y poética, en torno a lo que pudiera ser una tipología del "exemplum" en el opúsculo luliano. (shrink)

Background Generally, there is unanimity about the value of community engagement in health-related research. There is also a growing tendency to view genetics and genomics research (GGR) as a special category of research, the conduct of which including community engagement (CE) as needing additional caution. One of the motivations of this study was to establish how differently if at all, we should think about CE in GGR. Aim To assess the perspectives of genetics and genomics researchers in Uganda on CE (...) in GGR. Method A cross-sectional qualitative study was conducted at Makerere University and Uganda Virus Research Institute. Twenty-five individuals participated, the majority being male (sixteen). Participants included nineteen genetics and genomics researchers (researchers and research coordinators), two CE officers, three nurses and one nursing counsellor. Data were collected using in-depth interviews and analyzed in a thematic manner using NVivo version 12 Plus. Study findings Thirteen of the respondents had conducted CE in their GGR in either a geographical and disease-specific community. Some respondents said CE principles are the same and there is no need for special consideration for CE in GGR. Others gave ethical issues in GGR that require special consideration for CE in such research and these were categorized into six themes: GGR is new to communities, Difficulty in communicating GGR by the researchers, Genes are shared in communities, Cultural sensitivities against GGR, Community attitude toward GGR, Some GGR studies take long to end, and Negotiation of research benefits. Special considerations for CE when conducting GGR were suggested and categorized into seven themes: creating awareness of GGR in communities, obtaining both community acceptance and individual consent, CE team composition, involve communities in solving GGR challenges, prolong CE in some GGR, develop guidelines for CE in GGR, and legal considerations on GGR. Conclusion GGR was characterized by special issues that require special CE considerations for such research. (shrink)