V Franciji s v tem obdobju spremenili ustavo. Vanjo so bili vnešeni popolna prepoved smrtne kazni ter nekaj popravkov, ki jih je zahtevala ratifikacija Lizbonske pogodbe. Spremenjena je bila tudi ureditev odgovornosti predsednika republike. Poleg tega je francoski ustavni svet v postopku presoje ustavnosti zakonov podal nekaj opaznih odločitev. V njih je z uporabo tehnike ciljev ustavne veljave večinoma omogočil takšne razlage ustave in zakonov, ki... Preprečevanje kriminalitete. Varnostno pridržanje. Nadzor imigracije. Povratništvo. Mladoletniška kriminaliteta.

Cogito, ergo sum. Ce n’est pas tiré de la plume de Descartes que cet énoncé apparaît pour la première fois dans les œuvres du philosophe. C’est en effet Caterus qui, dans la première série d’Objectiones aux Meditationes l’écrit, telle que la postérité scolaire va le considérer, comme un objet textuel autonome et digne par soi-même d’intérêt. Le fait est anecdotique, mais il est révélateur. D’abord parce que ce n’est pas Descartes qui a constitué...

Para completar la exposición de su propio pensamiento Xavier Zubiri dictó en 1968 un ciclo de conferencias titulado Estructura dinámica de la realidad. El texto de esas conferencias es el que ahora, forma este libro. En él analiza el momento dinámico de la realidad, lo que denomina su «dar de sí». Si en Sobre la esencia la realidad era definida como «de suyo», ahora se completaba esa definición afirmando que es, además un «dar de sí». De suyo, la realidad (...) da de sí. Tal podría ser el resumen más apretado de esta obra, que añade precisiones muy importantes a los libros ya publicados en esta misma colección. (shrink)

An extensions by new axioms and rules of an algebraizable logic in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi is not necessarily algebraizable if it involves new connective symbols, or it may be algebraizable in an essentially different way than the original logic. However, extension whose axioms and rules define implicitly the new connectives are algebraizable, via the same equivalence formulas and defining equations of the original logic, by enriched algebras of its equivalente quasivariety semantics. For certain strongly algebraizable logics, all (...) connectives defined implicitly by axiomatic extensions of the logic are explicitly definable. (shrink)

The past decade has seen a burgeoning of scholarly interest in conscientious objection in healthcare. While the literature to date has focused primarily on individual healthcare practitioners who object to participation in morally controversial procedures, in this article we consider a different albeit related issue, namely, whether publicly funded healthcare institutions should be required to provide morally controversial services such as abortions, emergency contraception, voluntary sterilizations, and voluntary euthanasia. Substantive debates about institutional responsibility have remained largely at the level of (...) first-order ethical debate over medical practices which institutions have refused to offer; in this article, we argue that more fundamental questions about the metaphysics of institutions provide a neglected avenue for understanding the basis of institutional conscientious objection. To do so, we articulate a metaphysical model of institutional conscience, and consider three well-known arguments for undermining institutional conscientious objection in light of this model. We show how our metaphysical analysis of institutions creates difficulties for justifying sanctions on institutions that conscientiously object. Thus, we argue, questions about the metaphysics of institutions are deserving of serious attention from both critics and defenders of institutional conscientious objection. (shrink)

Replying to Samuel Knafo and Benno Teschke, this article shows how Political Marxism offers powerful conceptual tools to understand modes of production that structure historical processes as fundamentally constituted by exploitative social and political relations. I explain how structure, or rules of reproduction, should be understood as alienated social relations, which are inherent to all class societies. Understanding structure this way leaves ample space for – and makes inevitable – the consideration of agency.

Insurance is pervasive in many social settings. As a cooperative device based on risk pooling, it serves to attenuate the adverse consequences of various risks by offering policyholders coverage against the losses implied by adverse events in exchange for the payment of premiums. In the insurance industry, the concept of actuarial fairness serves to establish what could be adequate, fair premiums. Accordingly, premiums paid by policyholders should match as closely as possible their risk exposure. Such premiums are the product of (...) the probabilities of losses and the expected losses. This article presents a discussion of the fairness of actuarial fairness through three steps: defining the concept based on its formulation within the insurance industry; determining in which sense it may be about fairness; and raising some objections to the actual fairness of actuarial fairness. The necessity of a normative evaluation of actuarial fairness is justified by the influence of the concept on the current reforms of public insurance systems and the fact that it highlights the question of the repartition of the gains and burdens of social cooperation. (shrink)

In this article we defend the inferential view of scientific models and idealisation. Models are seen as “inferential prostheses” (instruments for surrogative reasoning) construed by means of an idealisation-concretisation process, which we essentially understand as a kind of counterfactual deformation procedure (also analysed in inferential terms). The value of scientific representation is understood in terms not only of the success of the inferential outcomes arrived at with its help, but also of the heuristic power of representation and their capacity to (...) correct and improve our models. This provides us with an argument against Sugden’s account of credible models: the likelihood or realisticness (their “credibility”) is not always a good measure of their acceptability. As opposed to “credibility” we propose the notion of “enlightening”, which is the capacity of giving us understanding in the sense of an inferential ability. (shrink)

In Racial Prescriptions, Jonathan Xavier Inda offers a critical and timely analysis of the making of BiDil, the first drug that was marketed exclusively to African Americans. Sibille Merz speaks to him about the re-articulation of racial politics under neoliberalism, the legacies of scientific racism and the molecularization of biopolitics in the genomic age.

Since the 1970s, the concepts of “lifeworld” and “everyday life” have been part of the discourse of social pedagogy and social and educational work in general. Xavier Úcar's objective in this article is to generate and communicate socio-pedagogical knowledge that helps social pedagogues to build socio-educational relationships that are more effective, more sustainable, more satisfactory, and ultimately richer in terms of both experiences and learning for participants. A conceptually oriented, nonsystematic analysis procedure was used to conduct this research. The (...) procedure involved an in-depth investigation of documents that focus on the two target areas of this study: (1) social pedagogy, and (2) lifeworld and everyday life. The results describe the theoretical background of lifeworld and everyday life, discuss the development of the perspective of “lifeworld orientation” within the framework of social pedagogy in Germany, and analyze how everyday life is understood through actions undertaken by social pedagogues. These results provide ideas for mapping the essential dimensions of everyday life from the perspective of social pedagogy. (shrink)

The past decade has seen a burgeoning of scholarly interest in conscientious objection in health care. Specifically, several commentators have discussed the implications that conscientious objection has for the delivery of timely, efficient, and nondiscriminatory medical care. In this paper, I discuss the main argument put forward by the most prominent critics of conscientious objection—what I call the Professional Duty Argument or PDA. According to proponents of PDA, doctors should place patients’ well-being and rights at the center of their professional (...) practice. Doctors should be prepared to set their personal moral or religious beliefs aside where these beliefs conflict with what is legal and considered good medical practice by relevant professional associations. Conscientious objection, on this account, should be heavily restricted, if even allowed at all. I discuss two powerful objections against PDA. The first objection, which I call the fallibility objection, notes that law and professional codes of conduct are fallible guides for ethical conduct and that conscientious objection has in the past and continues today to provide a check on aberrations in law and professional convention. The second, which I call the professional discretion objection, states that restrictions on conscientious objection undermine one of the cornerstones of good medical practice, namely, a practitioner’s right to independent professional judgment. I argue that these two objections give us reason to retain conscience clauses in professional codes of conduct. (shrink)

Scientists and engineers who extensively use the term “nanomachine” are not always aware of the philosophical implications of this term. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of nanomachine through a distinction between three major paradigms of machine. After a brief presentation of two well-known paradigms - Cartesian mechanistic machines and Von Neumann’s complex and uncontrolled machines – we will argue that Drexler’s model was mainly Cartesian. But what about the model of his critics? We propose a (...) third model - Gilbert Simondon’s notion of concrete machines – which seems more appropriate to understand nanomachines than the notion of “soft machines”. Finally we review a few strategies currently used to design nanomachines, in an effort to determine which paradigm they belong to. (shrink)

We prove strong completeness of the □-version and the ◊-version of a Gödel modal logic based on Kripke models where propositions at each world and the accessibility relation are both infinitely valued in the standard Gödel algebra [0,1]. Some asymmetries are revealed: validity in the first logic is reducible to the class of frames having two-valued accessibility relation and this logic does not enjoy the finite model property, while validity in the second logic requires truly fuzzy accessibility relations and this (...) logic has the finite model property. Analogues of the classical modal systems D, T, S4 and S5 are considered also, and the completeness results are extended to languages enriched with a discrete well ordered set of truth constants. (shrink)

Several ethicists have defended the use of responsibility-based criteria in healthcare rationing. Yet in this article we outline two challenges to the implementation of responsibility-based healthcare rationing policies. These two challenges are, namely, that responsibility for past behavior can diminish as an agent changes, and that blame can come apart from responsibility. These challenges suggest that it is more difficult to hold someone responsible for health related actions than proponents of responsibility-sensitive healthcare policies suggest. We close by discussing public health (...) policies that could function as an alternative to contentious, responsibility-sensitive rationing policies. (shrink)

Before his death in 1989, Gilbert Simondon wrote two major books consisting of his principal and complementary theses, both defended in 1958. The complementary thesis on the mode of existence of technical objects was published in 1958, while it was only in 1964 that sections of his principal thesis on individuation were made available to the public (and even then only the chapters dedicated to the regimes of physical and vital individuation, excluding those dealing with psychic and collective individuation.) Over (...) the course of his career, Simondon produced other major texts, but only in the form of unpublished courses or conference presentations published in poorly distributed journals. Some of these texts have .. (shrink)

There has been significant debate about whether the moral norms of medical practice arise from some feature or set of features internal to the discipline of medicine. In this article, I analyze Edmund Pellegrino’s conception of the internal morality of medicine, and situate it in the context of Alasdair MacIntyre’s influential account of “practice.” Building upon MacIntyre, Pellegrino argued that medicine is a social practice with its own unique goals—namely, the medical, human, and spiritual good of the patient—and that the (...) moral norms that govern medical practice are derived from these goals. After providing an overview of Pellegrino’s work, I discuss some forceful objections to his theory—specifically, that it is too rigid and incapable of entering into dialogue with contemporary values systems; that it is dependent on an external conception of human flourishing; and that it is incompatible with the rapidly changing nature of modern medicine. In the final section of this article, I consider how theorists working in the Hippocratic tradition might respond to these objections against ethical essentialism by drawing upon MacIntyre’s historico-cultural method as well as what he calls Aristotle’s “metaphysical biology.”. (shrink)

Le Pere Xavier Tilliette est l'un des plus grands historiens contemporains de la philosophie. Il est l'auteur d'une monumentale etude en deux volumes sur Schelling... qui il avait d'ailleurs consacre plusieurs autres ouvrages. Il a egalement ecrit d'excellents livres sur d'autres grandes figures de la philosophie occidentale notamment Fichte, Merleau-Ponty, Lequier. Il est aussi et surtout le representant le plus connu d'un genre unique de la philosophie de la religion, celui qui traite des grands themes de la theologie chretienne (...) selon leurs dimensions proprement philosophiques. Rappelons simplement plusieurs travaux tres novateurs sur le Christ et la philosophie, mais aussi sur la philosophie et l'Eglise ou encore la philosophie et l'Eucharistie. Toutefois, Xavier Tilliette n'est pas seulement philosophe, il est aussi un grand erudit de l'histoire litteraire francaise, notamment de l'oeuvre de Paul Claudel. Apres deux Festschrift anterieures parues respectivement en Allemagne et en Italie, ce troisieme recueil publie en l'honneur du Pere Tilliette est edite en Belgique. Il contient trente contributions, plus de la moitie consacrees... l'histoire de la philosophie, avec un nombre eleve de textes sur Schelling. Les autres etudes, tres variees, tres originales, relevent de la philosophie de la religion, de la theologie philosophique et de l'histoire de la litterature. Ces travaux dont les auteurs, en provenance de huit pays et de trois continents, vont de jeunes erudits... peine trentenaires jusqu'aux contemporains de l'illustre jesuite, sont rediges en Francais, en Italien, en Allemand et en Anglais. Ils manifestent et illustrent la fecondite de l'oeuvre de ce disciple fervent des Peres de Lubac et Danielou, son rayonnement extraordinaire, les richesses multivalentes de ses deux-mille publications. (shrink)

Countries with federal institutions often face demands for more political autonomy from their member states. To answer these demands, some have proposed recognizing a right to internal self-determination, constrained in multiple ways. Although interesting, this proposition — defended by theorists of multinational federalism — might be insufficient in resolving the existing inequalities between peoples living in the same federation. This is the thesis for which I will argue in this paper. I will argue that Will Kymlicka's concept of internal self-determination (...) remains indeterminate and opens the door to stronger interpretations of the concept than he intends. (shrink)

En enero de 1974 Zubiri dio un breve curso en la Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones de Madrid sobre el tema Tres dimensiones del ser humano: individual, social e histórica. Meses después publicó la última de esas lecciones bajo el título de La dimensión histórica del ser humano. El presente volumen recoge el texto de las tres conferencias, más la versión escrita de la última de ellas. La tesis que Zubiri desarrolla en estas lecciones es que el ser humano es (...) a la vez y necesariamente individual, social e histórico, y que estas dimensiones vienen exigidas por su propia realidad específica, que es pluralizante, continuante y prospectiva. (shrink)

Xavier Landes | : Happiness has become a central theme in public debates. Happiness indicators illustrate this importance. This article offers a typology of the main challenges conveyed by the elaboration of happiness indicators, where happiness can be understood as hedonia, subjective well-being, or eudaimonia. The typology is structured around four questions: what to measure?—i.e., the difficulties linked to the choice of a particular understanding of happiness for building an indicator; whom to include?—i.e., the limits of the community monitored (...) by such an indicator; how to collect the data?—i.e., the difficulties stemming from objective and subjective reporting; what to do?—i.e., the concerns about the use of happiness indicators in public policy. The major points of normative contention are discussed for each of these dimensions. The purpose of this article is to contribute in a constructive manner to happiness research by offering an overview of some major philosophical and political challenges of building happiness indicators. The conclusion underlines the importance of the strategy of diversification- hybridization, which consists in setting a variety of indicators or composite indicators that articulate different understandings of happiness. It is stressed that happiness indicators raise democratic and institutional issues with which normative thinkers should deal. | : Le bonheur est devenu un thème central dans les débats publics. Les indicateurs de bonheur illustrent cette importance. Cet article offre une typologie des principaux enjeux contenus dans le travail d’élaboration d’indicateurs de bonheur quand ce dernier est compris comme hedonia, bien-être subjectif ou eudaimonia. La typologie est structurée autour de quatre questions : 1) que mesurer?, où sont en jeu les difficultés liées au choix d’une compréhension particulière du bonheur pour construire un indicateur; 2) qui inclure?, c’est-à-dire comment tracer les limites de la communauté morale qui est l’objet d’un tel indicateur; 3) comment collecter les données?, où on interroge les difficultés propres aux techniques subjectives et objectives de collecte de données; 4) que faire?, où on soulève l’enjeu des craintes quant à l’usage d’indicateurs de bonheur dans les politiques publiques. Les points majeurs de dispute normative sont discutés pour chaque dimension. Nous espérons ainsi contribuer de manière constructive à la recherche sur le bonheur en offrant un aperçu de quelques défis philosophiques et politiques majeurs relatifs à la construction d’indicateurs de bonheur. Nous concluons en soulignant l’importance de la stratégie de diversification-hybridation qui consiste à mettre en place des indicateurs variés ou composites articulant différentes compréhensions du bonheur. Ces indicateurs soulèvent des enjeux démocratiques et institutionnels que les penseurs normatifs doivent considérer. (shrink)

It is shown that axiomatic extensions of intuitionistic propositional calculus defining univocally new connectives, including those proposed by Gabbay, are strongly complete with respect to valuations in Heyting algebras with additional operations. In all cases, the double negation of such a connective is equivalent to a formula of intuitionistic calculus. Thus, under the excluded third law it collapses to a classical formula, showing that this condition in Gabbay's definition is redundant. Moreover, such connectives can not be interpreted in all Heyting (...) algebras, unless they are already equivalent to a formula of intuitionistic calculus. These facts relativize to connectives over intermediate logics. In particular, the intermediate logic with values in the chain of length n may be "completed" conservatively by adding a single unary connective, so that the expanded system does not allow further axiomatic extensions by new connectives. (shrink)

BackgroundViral pandemics present a range of ethical challenges for policy makers, not the least among which are difficult decisions about how to allocate scarce healthcare resources. One important question is whether healthcare workers should receive priority access to a vaccine in the event that an effective vaccine becomes available. This question is especially relevant in the coronavirus pandemic with governments and health authorities currently facing questions of distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.Main textIn this article, we critically evaluate the most common ethical (...) arguments for granting healthcare workers priority access to a vaccine. We review the existing literature on this topic, and analyse both deontological and utilitarian arguments in favour of HCW prioritisation. For illustrative purposes, we focus in particular on the distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine. We also explore some practical complexities attendant on arguments in favour of HCW prioritisation.ConclusionsWe argue that there are deontological and utilitarian cases for prioritising HCWs. Indeed, the widely held view that we should prioritise HCWs represents an example of ethical convergence. Complexities arise, however, when considering who should be included in the category of HCW, and who else should receive priority in addition to HCWs. (shrink)

Xavier Labbée dirige l'Institut du Droit et de l'Ethique.

Xavier Landes | : In this article, consensus, defined as the consent of all citizens, is argued to be the first best for part of the liberal tradition on political legitimacy. Consensus would be the foundation of the liberal society that, when out of reach, needs to be approximated through, for instance, voting. I build on the timid attempts in political theory at using the theorem of the second best as a tool to settle difficult decision making in applied (...) political theory. More precisely, I defend the view that consensus would be the first best for part of the liberal tradition on political legitimacy. Furthermore, I illustrate how moral, factual, disagreements may create second-best problems, especially in terms of stability. Finally, I spell out some reasons why such problems directly affect a liberal order, on pragmatic grounds. The final purpose is to contribute to the literatures on legitimacy and on the application of the theorem of the second best outside economics. The key idea is to stress that much more work has to be done for “importing” the theorem of the second best into political theory. | : Dans cet article, le consensus, défini comme le consentement de tous les citoyens, est présenté comme remplissant la fonction d’optimum de premier rang [first best] pour une partie de la tradition libérale quant à la légitimité politique. Le consensus fonderait la société libérale qui, lorsque hors d’atteinte, nécessiterait d’être approximer au travers, par exemple, du vote. Je m’appuie sur les timides tentatives en théorie politique d’utiliser le théorème de l’optimum de second rang [second best] comme outil pour résoudre des prises de décision difficiles en théorie politique appliquée. Plus précisément, je défends l’idée que le consensus serait l’optimum de premier rang pour une partie de la tradition libérale quant à la légitimité politique. De plus, j’illustre comment les désaccords moraux, factuels peuvent créer des problèmes d’optimum de second rang, en particulier en termes de stabilité. Enfin, j’expose quelques raisons pour lesquelles de tels problèmes affectent directement un ordre libéral, d’un point de vue pragmatique. Le but final est de contribuer aux littératures sur la légitimité et sur l’application du théorème d’optimum de second rang à l’extérieur des sciences économiques. L’idée principale est de souligner qu’il reste beaucoup de travail afin d’« importer » le théorème d’optimum de second rang en théorie politique. (shrink)

Xavier Landes,Martin Andersen,Klemens Kappel.

Xavier Landes,Martin Andersen,Klemens Kappel.

XAVIER, Joelma Aparecida dos Santos. A disciplina de Cultura Religiosa na PUC Minas : aspectos fenomenológicos e éticos como tópos privilegiado do diálogo. Dissertação (Mestrado) 2013. 96p. - Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Belo Horizonte.

Many if not most sperm donors in the early years of IVF donated under conditions of anonymity. There is, however, a growing awareness of the ethical cost of withholding identifying parental information from donor children. Today, anonymous donation is illegal in many jurisdictions, and some jurisdictions have gone as far as retrospectively invalidating contracts whereby donors were guaranteed anonymity. This article provides a critical evaluation of the ethics and legality of anonymous donation. We defend Australian and British legislation that has (...) outlawed donor anonymity, and we argue for the establishment of a central registry that provides donor children with the ability to easily and reliably access identifying information about their donor parents. (shrink)

Cette recension a déjà paru sur le blog Abandonedfootnotes. Nous remercions Xavier Marquez de nous avoir autorisé à la reproduire ici. I have previously encouraged people to read Randall Collins' work (his infrequently updated blog, The Sociological Eye, is typically excellent), but it is only recently that I tackled his book on interaction rituals. And despite its forbidding title, seemingly promising a work on some technical topic in the sociology of religion, this is a very good book that (...) (...) - Recensions. (shrink)

It is shown that axiomatic extensions of intuitionistic propositional calculus defining univocally new connectives, including those proposed by Gabbay, are strongly complete with respect to valuations in Heyting algebras with additional operations. In all cases, the double negation of such a connective is equivalent to a formula of intuitionistic calculus. Thus, under the excluded third law it collapses to a classical formula, showing that this condition in Gabbay's definition is redundant. Moreover, such connectives can not be interpreted in all Heyting (...) algebras, unless they are already equivalent to a formula of intuitionistic calculus. These facts relativize to connectives over intermediate logics. In particular, the intermediate logic with values in the chain of length n may be "completed" conservatively by adding a single unary connective, so that the expanded system does not allow further axiomatic extensions by new connectives. (shrink)

After a brief comparison of Aliseda’s account with different approaches to abductive reasoning, I relate abduction, as studied by Aliseda, to idealization, a notion which also occupies a very important role in scientific change, as well as to different ways of dealing with the growth of scientific knowledge understood as a particular kind of non-monotonic process. A particularly interesting kind of abductive reasoning could be that of finding an appropriate concretization case for a theory, originally revealed as extraordinarily success-ful but (...) later discovered to be strictly false or only approximately or ideally true. I try to show this with the example of the Kepler-Newton relation. At the end of the paper, I give criteria in order to construe abduc-tive explanations in correspondence with a reasonable account of empirical progress. (shrink)

We recently found orientation constancy with respect to direction of gravity in the alert monkey. This seems to rely on a polysensory interaction that involves different sense-specific reference frames. Thus, we will challenge the assumption that the sense-specific reference frames are mutually exclusive. At the same time, we will highlight the dynamic tuning of the receptors that might rely on cross-modal mechanisms.

In this work, Xavier Lakshmanan argues for a textual linguistic approach to Christian theology. The book takes its shape in conversation with Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical thought, demonstrating how Ricoeur’s hermeneutic philosophy can inform the way Christians interpret and appropriate biblical narratives without delimiting the potential of the text or eroding the distinctiveness of its language. The text can be appropriated in ways that address the fundamental questions of life. New meanings are constantly generated from the same text in order (...) to describe and redescribe existence, and form human identity. The self is linked inseparably with narrative; every interpretation of narrative is at the same time a reinterpretation of the self and of its possibilities. In such interpretative processes, the reader interprets the text and the text interprets the reader at the same time through an interactive reading. Accordingly, the aim of interpreting the narratives is to open up the world of the text in front of the text and in front of the reader. Here what the text uncovers is the «textual» structure of existence itself. The reality that unfolds through language discloses the possibilities of existence, and in this way the text creates a future. A revised identity emerges against the horizon of that future to give a coherent and dynamic account of the self against a horizon of hope. (shrink)

In this article we critically evaluate an argument against state‐sanctioned euthanasia made by David Velleman in his 1992 paper ‘Against the right to die’. In that article, Velleman argues that legalizing euthanasia is morally problematic as it will deprive eligible patients of the opportunity of staying ‘alive by default’. That is to say, those patients who are rendered eligible for euthanasia as a result of legislative reform will face the burden of having to justify their continued existence to their epistemic (...) peers if they are to be perceived as ‘reasonable’. We discuss potential criticisms that could be made of the argument, and consider how a defender of the view might respond. Velleman’s argument is particularly interesting as it is a consequentialist argument against state‐sanctioned euthanasia, challenging the many consequentialist arguments that have been made in favour of legalizing the procedure. We conclude by suggesting that further research on the question of unfair burdens is important to adequately evaluating the potential harms of legalizing euthanasia for patients at the end of life. (shrink)