L’idéal de transparence semble s’imposer à tous les esprits comme une évidence. Toute opacité est suspecte de cacher des pratiques douteuses (népotisme, corruption, détournement, abus) en faisant obstacle à une indispensable soif de vérité. Prenant à contre-pied cette aspiration commune à tout rendre transparent, on s’efforce ici de souligner certains des coûts, des écueils et des victimes collatérales de l’impératif de transparence agité aujourd’hui de façon irréfléchie dans nos discours publics.

After explaining the interdisciplinary aspect of the series of events organized around the square of opposition since 2007, we discuss papers related to the 4th World Congress on the Square of Opposition which was organized in the Vatican at the Pontifical Lateran University in 2014. We distinguish three categories of work: those dealing with the evolution and development of the theory of opposition, those using the square as a metalogical tool to give a better understanding of various systems of logic (...) and those related with applications of the theory of opposition to conceptual analysis and pedagogy. (shrink)

Many-valued logics are standardly defined by logical matrices. They are truth-functional. In this paper non truth-functional many-valued semantics are presented, in a philosophical and mathematical perspective.

Universal Logic is not a new logic, but a general theory of logics, considered as mathematical structures. The name was introduced about ten years ago, but the subject is as old as the beginning of modern logic: Alfred Tarski and other Polish logicians such as Adolf Lindenbaum developed a general theory of logics at the end of the 1920s based on consequence operations and logical matrices. The subject was revived after the flowering of thousands of new logics during the last (...) thirty years: there was a need for a systematic theory of logics to put some order in this chaotic multiplicity. This bo. (shrink)

En 1723, la Charte fondatrice de la Grande Loge de Londres donne à l'ordre Maçonnique pour projet de devenir le « centre de l'union et le moyen de nouer une amitié fidèle parmi des hommes qui sans cela seraient restés à perpétuelle distance ». De cette aspiration à relever Babel procèdent les tentatives pour cartographier la République maçonnique, mettre sur pied un réseau de correspondance et une langue véritablement universels - ce dernier chantier menant à l'espéranto. L'ordre Maçonnique a décliné (...) tout au long du XVIIIe siècle cette utopie planétaire sur le mode d'une véritable citoyenneté de la République maçonnique avec son passeport, ses droits et ses devoirs. Puis il a dû répondre aux formidables bouleversements issus de 1789 et de l'éveil des nationalités, en s'orientant vers une conception plus engagée de la République universelle des francs-maçons, sensible aux idées libérales et à lémancipation des peuples, au risque de donner des arguments à ses détracteurs, qui lui reprochent de se rendre coupable d'un crime d'indifférenciation. (shrink)

Les trente dernières années du XX e siècle ont été marquées par une très forte inflation des règles du droit du travail visant à protéger l’emploi. Ces règles encadrent notamment le licenciement et tentent d’endiguer le recours aux contrats précaires. Mais on s’aperçoit aujourd’hui qu’il n’existe pas de rapport mécanique entre les objectifs poursuivis (protéger l’emploi), leur traduction législative et les résultats produits qui sont décevants. Prenant acte de son impuissance le législateur entend désormais changer de paradigme en concentrant ses (...) efforts sur la protection des transitions professionnelles. Toutefois les lois les plus récentes qui s’inscrivent dans cette perspective connaissent de nombreux déboires, et pour l’instant il ne semble pas évident que la prospection sur ces nouvelles terres donne plus de résultats que ceux obtenus sur les anciennes. (shrink)

YVES CHARLES ZARKA — Éric Marty, je suis content d’avoir un dialogue avec vous aujourd’hui. Il y a un moment déjà que je souhaitais discuter d’un phénomène qui est pour moi assez surprenant. Je pense au nombre de publications actuelles en France sur la question juive, les Juifs, le Juif, parfois sur la dénomination « juif ». On ne sait plus très bien. Des ouvrages à répétition,..

Transcrire des écrits scolaires : entre philologie et génétique textuelle Cet article propose une réflexion épistémologique sur les problèmes posés par la transcription d’écrits scolaires pour la constitution d’un corpus informatisé. Il interroge l’opération de transcription de manuscrits dans deux cadres théoriques : la philologie et la génétique textuelle. On examine les modèles proposés dans ces deux cadres, les possibilités mais aussi les problèmes rencontrés pour la transcription d’écrits parfois non normés comme le sont les écrits d’élèves. À partir d’exemples (...) de productions d’élèves, on aborde plusieurs difficultés récurrentes : la transcription des éléments non verbaux des manuscrits, de la topographie de l’écrit ou encore des énoncés métadiscursifs. (shrink)

D’où vient la transparence et où va-t-elle? Quelles sont ses méthodes? Quels types de savoirs doivent être constitués pour nous la fournir? Cet article propose la description d’un tableau de bord informationnel, c’est-à-dire d’une interface de plus en plus souvent déployée dans les initiatives relevant de la transparence. Cet Index des Clés Performatives aide à percevoir l’emprise des régimes de mesure et de gestion de performance sur notre monde. Pour expliquer le parcours allant de la transparence à la gestion de (...) performance à travers les tableaux de bord, cet article revient sur un scandale récent de la politique britannique qui a déclenché une nouvelle poussée d’appels à la transparence, et finalement à la multiplication des tableaux de bords. (shrink)

La conversion de la France à une politique de « réduction des risques » , est généralement interprétée comme l’indice d’un changement de paradigme en matière de toxicomanie. Il est néanmoins possible de la voir comme une forme de réagencement politique du monde des consommations de drogues, visant à définir de nouveaux seuils, les plus bas possibles, pour l’entrée dans des dispositifs de soin et de service. L’examen des visions du monde sur lesquelles reposent ces équipements politiques, en France comme (...) dans le reste de l’Union européenne, montre d’ailleurs que la vision du monde autonomiste y compose avec d’autres, compensatoires et additives, plus anciennement implantées. C’est sans doute pourquoi on retrouve, à divers niveaux, un véritable décalage entre les mesures volontaristes liées à ces politiques publiques et les contextes dans lesquels elles sont mises en œuvre : qu’il s’agisse des promoteurs, professionnels ou amateurs, ou qu’il s’agisse des destinataires, tout le monde semble s’accommoder d’un fonctionnement minimal de ces dispositifs, vérifiant ainsi une fois de plus la force des liens faibles.The French turn to the so-called « risk reduction policy » , is generally interpreted as a shift of the paradigm of drug addiction policies. One can, nevertheless, see it as a kind of new political layout of the drug addiction field, intended to define new thresholds for one’s entering in the treatment and care devices. When we examine the worldviews which sustain these political equipments , we can see that the autonomist worldview has to come to terms with others, namely : the compensatory and additive ones. That is probably why we can see, at various levels, a real discrepancy between the strong willings supporting the actions promoted by the risk reduction policies, and the contexts in which they take place : would it be the main actors , or the beneficiaries, everyone seems to be satisfied with a minimal functioning of these devices, verifying once again the strength of the weak ties. (shrink)

Avec les consommations d’énergies fossiles et les émissions de gaz à effet de serre reparties à la hausse, le « monde d’après » ressemble terriblement à l’extractivisme d’avant. Et pourtant, des paramètres se sont déplacés à l’occasion de la pandémie et de son confinement planétaire. Une mutation s’est précipitée dans notre rapport aux énergies fossile.

Après avoir passé en revue la diversité des politiques nationales en matière de transition énergétique, cet entretien fait le point sur ce que l’Union européenne a déjà pu et pourra apporter aux multiples redimensionnements en cours. Alors que les politiques nationales restent obnubilées par une conception centralisatrice de la production énergétique, le nouveau monde de la parité-réseau et des consommateurs-producteurs redistribue les cartes selon des échelles sensiblement différentes. Une coordination européenne entre initiatives locales peut devenir un atout, pour autant que (...) des mesures de redistribution sachent prévenir une nouvelle « lutte des classes énergétiques » qu’exaspèrent nos inégalités actuelles. (shrink)

La question du nihilisme a une longue histoire. Elle émerge au sein de l'idéalisme allemand, se déploie ensuite dans l'intelligentsia et la littérature russes, puis trouve chez Nietzsche et Heidegger ses explorations les plus influentes. Si le mot semble moins courant depuis un demi-siècle -- comme d'autres termes aussi chargés, pensons à celui d'aliénation -- les enjeux qu'il soulève demeurent toutefois au cœur de la pensée contemporaine. Les risques environnementaux nourrissent d'ailleurs plus que jamais l'inquiétante intuition que de puissantes dynamiques (...) de dévalorisation du réel sont à l'œuvre dans les sociétés modernes. Ces douze essais, qui font largement entendre la voix d'une nouvelle génération, n'ont pourtant pas pour but de défendre une thèse commune. Ils explorent plutôt les multiples aspects du nihilisme et se confrontent à ses grandes interprétations. Sont ainsi proposées autant de pistes pour rejoindre les débats sur le capitalisme, la technique, l'éducation, le patriarcat, le roman ou la démocratie. Pluralité revendiquée, qui illustre néanmoins un même ancrage dans les défis du monde actuel. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the manifestations of what we call “dialogical critical thinking” in elementary school pupils when they are engaged in philosophical exchanges among peers: What are thecharacteristics of dialogical critical thinking? How does it develop in youngsters? Our research was conducted during an entire school year, with eight groups of pupils from three different cultural contexts: Australia, Mexico and Quebec. Our findings were constructed in an inductive manner, inspired by qualitative analysis as defined by Glaser and Strauss (...) (1967). From our analysis, a grid was developed, illustrating the process by which dialogical critical thinking developed among the pupils involved in our research. This process is manifested via four modes of thinking (logical, creative, responsible and meta-cognitive), which become increasingly complex according to three epistemological perspectives (egocentricity, relativism and inter-subjectivity oriented toward meaning). (shrink)

L’étude reprend la philosophie inaugurée par La réciprocité des consciences (1942) en fonction de philosophies plus récentes de l’intersubjectivité (E. Lévinas et F. Jacques). Après avoir montré comment le caractère fondamental de la réciprocité fonde la causalité des personnes et se fonde sur le Dieu personnel et tripersonnel, elle revient d’une manière critique sur une possible mise en tutelle d’une pensée personnaliste par une pensée religieuse. L’amour n’aurait-il pas laissé en retrait la réciprocité, la personne la relation, la communion la (...) communication, enfin l’intime le social ? On ne saurait pourtant oublier Maurice Nédoncelle. Il a défendu avec raison une priorité de la réciprocité sur l’altérité, dans l’intersubjectivité ; de la personne sur la nature, dans la théologie ; de la souffrance sur le péché, dans la théodicée. (shrink)

Deux classiques de l’un des plus importants précurseurs de l’écologie politique au Québec réunis en seul volume! Dans L’écosophie ou la sagesse de la nature, Serge Mongeau nous invite, à partir de ses propres expériences, à une profonde réflexion sur une éthique écologique. Au lieu de voir la nature comme extérieure à nous, comme un réservoir de ressources, il faut l’envisager comme un processus de vie dans lequel nous avons un rôle à jouer. C’est donc un autre mode de (...) relation qu’il faut développer et ce sont les voies pour y arriver qu’explore ce texte dans lequel l’auteur préconise un respect sans idolâtrie de la nature et propose un certain nombre de balises pour que s’établisse une véritable symbiose entre la Terre vivante et les êtres humains. Dans La belle vie, Serge Mongeau s’interroge. Tous souhaitent faire « la belle vie », tous veulent être heureux, tous cherchent le bonheur. Mais... prend-on les bons moyens pour y arriver? Quel pourrait être notre rapport au plaisir et au désir, émancipé du besoin de possession? La société de consommation offre de multiples biens à acquérir, une foule de services et une grande variété de moyens d’évasion. Cependant, bien des gens découvrent aujourd’hui qu’on ne peut tout attendre de la consommation, que la voie de la simplicité volontaire leur ouvre des portes vers un plus grand épanouissement, mais aussi qu’il ne suffit pas de simplifier sa vie pour trouver le bonheur. C’est donc à une réflexion plus globale que l’auteur a voulu donner accès en écrivant ce texte d’une grande beauté. Serge Mongeau esquisse divers chemins pour trouver le bonheur : vivre le moment présent, aimer, prendre le temps de vivre, jouer, se rapprocher de la nature, donner un sens à sa vie, simplifier sa vie, cultiver sa vie intérieure et s’investir dans des actions significatives pour changer ce qui n’est plus acceptable. Quand je relis aujourd’hui La belle vie et L’écosophie ou la sagesse de la nature, je constate qu’ils demeurent d’une actualité étonnante. Il ne s’agit pas là d’un constat réjouissant ; nous écrivons, nous constatons, nous suggérons des voies d’action et, vingt ans plus tard, nous voyons que nous avons été si peu écoutés. Il faut donc relancer la réflexion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mystery on the Move:Aquinas’s Theological Method as Transforming WisdomGilles Mongeau, S.J.CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES to the thought of Thomas Aquinas have begun to recover its character as a “wisdom practice” aimed at the transformation of persons and sociocultural situations.1 The wise person helps others move along a path through the mysteries of faith toward a wisely ordered life for themselves in a justly ordered society. The starting point of this (...) essay is the supposition that Aquinas’s theological method in the Summa theologiae, rooted in the practice of the three arts of language (grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric) is itself a wisdom practice that proposes an ordered series of exercises that must be performed by the student, leading him or her to a greater participation in divine wisdom. I will show that Aquinas’s use of the tools of rhetoric, particularly the enthymemes known as arguments of fittingness, are a set of practical instructions that facilitate an affective response to divine mystery in order to enable a judgment by connaturality. [End Page 285] Thus, we can learn from Aquinas how fruitfully to order affect and reason in the exercise of the theological craft.The essay proceeds in three parts. First, a thought experiment will help us understand (a) how a medieval text works as a guide to performance, and (b) how intellect and affect interact in both artistic performance and aesthetic appreciation. Second, I will trace the role of affect and reason in knowledge for Aquinas, specifically in knowledge of the beautiful, of the good, and of divine mysteries. Third, I will show how Aquinas’s use of rhetorical enthymemes, specifically the argument of fittingness, promotes an affectively founded judgment whose fruit is true knowledge of the divine mysteries.I. A Thought ExperimentThe image below reproduces the sheet music for “O nuit d’amour,” a duet for tenor and soprano between Faust and Marguerite in Gounod’s opera Faust. A person with absolutely no training in music, looking at this page, will be able to glean only a small amount of information from it: the content of the text itself; the fact—indicated by the names “Faust” and “Marg.” listed above the score—that there are two singers; possibly, if he or she is enterprising and looks up a translation of “andante,” the fact that this piece of music is sung at a walking pace, moderately slow and mellow. But he or she is unlikely to be able to sing the duet without memorizing it from a performance he or she hears.Now, someone with singing experience in a choir, though without training in solfège, will be able to get a bit more information from the page: he or she will likely be able to recognize the time signature and the sequence and value of the notes and rests, as well as the ascending and descending patterns of the melody, so that given solid accompaniment and competent direction, and enough practice time, he or she could sing the duet. But this performance will not rely so much on the sheet music as it will rely on the external supports, and the nuances of the performance will be minimal. [End Page 286] Click for larger view View full resolutionFinally, two singers with training in solfège will be able to notice a number of things about the duet: first, that it is in D flat major, but that Faust’s part shades at bars five and six into B flat minor, adding a mysteriously ambiguous quality to his declaration of love; second, that Marguerite’s part remains always in a major key, though it shifts between D flat major and G flat major, adding a kind of temporary “lift” at key points in [End Page 287] her melody; that some of the chords in the accompaniment, at key points in the duet, are not played in their root positions, but in their second or third inversions, thus transforming the quality of the sound; they will also note instructions for holding notes. All of this information will allow a well-trained singer to sight-sing the duet and supply the necessary nuances from the... (shrink)

Presents essays describing the author's impressions of art and architectural works.

Recent academic articles point to an increased vagueness and overlap in concepts related to business ethics and corporate responsibility. Further, the perception of these notions can differ in the smallbusiness world from the original academic definitions. This article focuses on the cognition of small-business owner-managers. Given the impact of small-business owner-managers on their ventures, corporate responsibility and ethical issues can take a different route in SMEs. The small-business owner-manager is able to shape the corporate culture and to enact values other (...) than profit. Adopting a cognitive perspective, we have identified how the small-business owner-manager makes sense of notions linked to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics. The concept of sensemaking has recently been applied to CSR (Basu and Pallazzo, 2008; Cramer et al., 2006). Applying a cognitive perspective to small-business owners may help in explaining specific phenomena found within smallbusiness ownership. For this research, the Repertory Grid Technique (RGT) is used, a method that has not previously been widely applied in the business and society field. Our findings to an extent invalidate the confusion in terminology found in the academic literature. Smallbusiness owner-managers, pragmatically and rather clearly, differentiate among the various concepts related to corporate responsibility and business ethics but, at the same time, they recognise the interrelationships and interdependencies of these concepts. These findings contribute to a better understanding of how small-business owners think and integrate corporate responsibility and ethical issues into their decisionmaking. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory advocates that firms bear responsibility for the implications of their actions. However, while a firm affects or can affect stakeholders, stakeholders can also affect the corporation. Previous stakeholder theorising has neglected the reciprocal nature of responsibility. The question can be asked whether—in a spirit of reciprocity, loyalty and fairness—stakeholders should treat the corporation in a fair and responsible way. This study based on different definitions of stakeholders argues that various stakeholder attributes differ for different categories of stakeholders. This (...) analysis presumes that the attribute of stakeholder reciprocity can probably be restricted to real stakeholders, labelled stakeowners: genuine stakeholders with a legitimate stake, the loyal partners who strive for mutual benefits. Stakeowners own and deserve a stake in the firm. Stakeholder reciprocity could be an innovative criterion in the corporate governance debate as to who should be accorded representation on the board. Corporate social responsibility should imply corporate stakeholder responsibility. (shrink)

Despite the recent increase in interest in corporate social responsibility and the propagation of corporate governance in both business and academic literature, from observations of actual practice, the author has seen at all company levels, in everyday operations, instances of non-ethical behaviour vis-à-vis the whole gamut of stakeholders. This state of affairs is linked with: pressure from stakeholders, short-term tactics, hegemony of financial considerations, ‘juridisation’ of business, the tyranny of communications and the media and the difficulties in translating strategy into (...) practical implementation. The paper scrutinises the motivation and the psychology of entrepreneurs and business people, and their behaviour is compared to other professional groups and confronted with the decline in ethics in society as described by some important observers. The conclusion drawn is that the recent positive evolutions do not provide sufficient ethical guidelines for the day-to-day activities of middle managers and entrepreneurs in the present competitive environment. Managers will always be confronted by difficult choices with ethical dilemmas. There will always be a tension between theory and pragmatism, but progress can be made with the effective implementation of the ethical discourse in companies. To achieve this, ethical management should not be confined to the large strategic issues but also applied to the small practical matters of everyday business life. Ethics in business and entrepreneurship requires more than corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR). (shrink)

Yves R. Simon explores moral virtue in this piece through identifying three moral positions common in modernity that attempt to substitute the traditional concept of virtue, as well as discussing the distinction between nature and use of sources of good or evil. He also discusses the distinctions between habits and opinions, as well as the virtue and science. He gives clear examples that make this book enjoyable for readers of all levels to understand moral virtue.

The popularity of surgical modifications of race-typical features among Asian women has generated debates on the ethical implications of the practice. Focusing on blepharoplasty as a representative racial surgery, this article frames the ethical discussion by viewing Asian cosmetic surgery as an example of medicalization, which can be interpreted in two forms: treatment versus enhancement. In the treatment form, medicalization occurs by considering cosmetic surgery as remedy for pathologized Asian features; the pathologization usually occurs in reference to western features as (...) the norm. In the enhancement form, medicalization occurs by using medical means to improve physical features to achieve a certain type of beauty or physical appearance. Each type of medicalization raises slightly different ethical concerns. The problem with treatment medicalization lies in the pathologization of Asian features, which is oppressive as it continues to reinforce racial norms of appearance and negative stereotypes. Enhancement medicalization is ethically problematic because cosmetic surgery tends to conflate beauty and health as medical goals of surgery, overemphasizing the value of appearance that can further displace women’s control over their own bodies. I conclude that in both forms of medicalization, cosmetic surgery seems to narrowly frame a complex psychosocial issue involving physical appearance as a matter that can be simply solved through surgical means. (shrink)

This article defends four claims. The first is that in the last few decades, two waves of democratic innovation based on random selection must be differentiated by their partly different concrete devices, embodying different social dynamics and pointing toward different kinds of democracy. The second claim is that the rationale of the first wave, based on randomly selected minipublics, largely differs from the dynamic of political sortition in Athens, as it points toward deliberative democracy rather than radical democracy. Conversely, empowered (...) sortition processes that have emerged during the second wave capture better the spirit of radical Athenian democratic traditions. The third claim is normative: these empowered sortition processes are more promising for a real democratization of democracy. The last claim is that any proposal of a legislature by lot must rely on this lesson when trying to defend a normatively convincing and politically realistic perspective. (shrink)

In his Florentine Histories, Machiavelli offers an ambivalent portrayal of the revolt of the textile workers in late fourteenth-century Florence, known as the tumult of the Ciompi. On the face of it, Machiavelli's depiction of the insurgent workers is not exactly flattering. Yet this picture is undermined by a firebrand speech, which Machiavelli invents and attributes to an unnamed leader of the plebeian revolt. I interpret this speech as a radical and egalitarian vector of thought opened up by Machiavelli's text. (...) The revolutionary address reveals an untimely and not entirely self-conscious political radicalism, a plebeian politics that repudiates the logic of oligarchic privilege and is simultaneously not available for subsumption under the mantle of civic republicanism. (shrink)

Scheinerman (2023) proposes that at the Human Genome Editing Initiative international summit (held in March 2023) there should have been a parallel, separate Citizens’ Jury, and that the Human Geno...

INTRODUCTION Beyond Dissociations Reassembling the mind-brain after all? Yves Rossetti Antti Revonsuo "Comme des banes de poissons de meme espece, ...

Pathologizing ugliness refers to the framing of unattractive features as a type of disease or deformity. By framing ugliness as pathology, cosmetic procedures are reframed as therapy rather than enhancement, thereby potentially avoiding ethical critiques regularly levelled against cosmetic surgery. As such, the practice of pathologizing ugliness and the ensuing therapeuticalization of cosmetic procedures require an ethical analysis that goes beyond that offered by current enhancement critiques. In this article, I propose using a thick description of the goals of medicine (...) as an ethical framework for evaluating problematic medical practices. I first describe the goals of medicine based on Daniel Callahan's account. I then propose that the goals work best in conjunction with ancillary ethical concepts, namely medical knowledge and skills, standards of practice and medical duties and virtues. Next, I apply the thick description of the goals of medicine in critiquing the practice of framing ugliness as disease. Here, I demonstrate ethical conflicts between aesthetic judgments that underpin the practice of pathologizing ugliness and medical judgments that inform ethical medical practices. In particular, the thick description of the goals of medicine helps reveal ethical conflicts in at least three key domains common to clinical practices, which include (a) disease determination, (b) diagnostic evaluation and (c) establishing clinical indications. My analysis offers a novel way of critiquing the practice of pathologizing ugliness in cosmetic surgery, which tends to be neglected by enhancement critiques. (shrink)

This article reviews experimental evidence for a specific sensorimotor function which can be dissociated from higher level representations of space. It attempts to delineate this function on the basis of results obtained by psychophysical experiments performed with brain damaged and healthy subjects. Eye and hand movement control exhibit automatic features, such that they are incompatible with conscious control. In addition, they rely on a reference frame different from the one used by conscious perception. Neuropsychological cases provide a strong support for (...) this specific motor representation of space, which can be spared in patients with lesions of primary sensory systems who have lost conscious perception of visual, tactile or proprioceptive stimuli. Observation of these patients also showed that their motor behavior can be ''attracted'' by a goal only under specific conditions, that is, when the response is immediate and when no cognitive representation of this goal is elaborated at the same time. Beyond the issue of the dissociation between an implicit motor representation and more cognitive processing of spatial information, the issue of the interaction between these two systems is thus a matter of interest. It is suggested that the conscious, cognitive representation of a stimulus can contaminate or override the short-lived motor representation, but no reciprocal influence seem to occur. The interaction observed in patients can also be investigated in normals. The literature provides examples of interaction between sensorimotor and cognitive framing of space, which confirm that immediate action is not mediated by the same system as delayed action, and that elaborating a categorial representation of the action goal prevents the expression of the short-lived sensorimotor representation. It is concluded that action can be controlled by a sensory system which is specialized for on-line processing of relevant goal characteristics. The temporal constraints of this system are such that it can affect the action before a full sensory analysis of this goal has been completed. The performance obtained on the basis of this spatial sensory processing suggests that short-lived motor representations may rather be considered as real ''presentation'' of the action world, which share its metric properties. (shrink)

The recent discussions on the label “historical epistemology” provide us with an interesting example of branding of concepts, ideas and methods. Given this recent interest in the meaning of the expression “historical epistemology”, a detailed analysis of its genealogy and context of emergence may provide some conceptual clarification in a discussion that is often confused and curiously silent on the long tradition of sociology of knowledge. This essay also sheds light on the difficulty with the international and interdisciplinary circulation of (...) ideas. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Sex Talk Just Friends and Sex Too? Casual Sex History and Prevalence So, Why have Sex with a Friend? Communication in Friends with Benefits Relationships The Bottom Line.

This article provides a critical comparative analysis of the substantive and procedural values and ethical concepts articulated in guidelines for allocating scarce resources in the COVID-19 pandemic. We identified 21 local and national guidelines written in English, Spanish, German and French; applicable to specific and identifiable jurisdictions; and providing guidance to clinicians for decision making when allocating critical care resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. US guidelines were not included, as these had recently been reviewed elsewhere. Information was extracted from each (...) guideline on: 1) the development process; 2) the presence and nature of ethical, medical and social criteria for allocating critical care resources; and 3) the membership of and decision-making procedure of any triage committees. Results of our analysis show the majority appealed primarily to consequentialist reasoning in making allocation decisions, tempered by a largely pluralistic approach to other substantive and procedural values and ethical concepts. Medical and social criteria included medical need, co-morbidities, prognosis, age, disability and other factors, with a focus on seemingly objective medical criteria. There was little or no guidance on how to reconcile competing criteria, and little attention to internal contradictions within individual guidelines. Our analysis reveals the challenges in developing sound ethical guidance for allocating scarce medical resources, highlighting problems in operationalising ethical concepts and principles, divergence between guidelines, unresolved contradictions within the same guideline, and use of naïve objectivism in employing widely used medical criteria for allocating ICU resources. (shrink)

Niccolò Machiavelli is the most prominent and notorious theorist of violence in the history of European political thought - prominent, because he is the first to candidly discuss the role of violence in politics; and notorious, because he treats violence as virtue rather than as vice. In this original interpretation, Yves Winter reconstructs Machiavelli's theory of violence and shows how it challenges moral and metaphysical ideas. Winter attributes two central theses to Machiavelli: first, violence is not a generic technology (...) of government but a strategy that tends to correlate with inequality and class conflict; and second, violence is best understood not in terms of conventional notions of law enforcement, coercion, or the proverbial 'last resort', but as performance. Most political violence is effective not because it physically compels another agent who is thus coerced; rather, it produces political effects by appealing to an audience. As such, this book shows how in Machiavelli's world, violence is designed to be perceived, experienced, remembered, and narrated. (shrink)