Cet article s’intéresse au problème de la maintenance, c’est-à-dire au moment où les membres d’un collectif social tentent d’assurer dans le temps l’existence de leur collectif en instituant des règles pour réguler leurs comportements. Ce problème se pose avec acuité lorsque certains membres ne respectent pas ces règles communes. Pour maintenir la coopération sociale, les membres peuvent décider d’instituer des règles secondaires visant à sanctionner les transgressions des règles primaires déjà établies. La maintenance d’un collectif peut ainsi reposer sur l’émergence (...) de pouvoirs déontiques qui donnent aux membres l’autorité de légitimement punir et expulser les transgresseurs. Mais d’où viennent ces règles ? On peut penser qu’elles émergent des émotions éprouvées par les membres envers les transgresseurs. Je le démontre à l’aide d’une étude de cas qui établit que, dans le collectif Occupy Geneva, l’institutionnalisation de normes pour punir, exclure et réintégrer les déviants s’ancraient respectivement dans l’indignation, le mépris et le pardon. -/- This article focuses on the problem of maintenance; that is the moment when the members of a social collective attempt to ensure the existence of their collective over time by instituting rules to regulate their behavior. This problem becomes critical when certain members do not respect the common rules. To maintain social cooperation, members can decide to institute secondary rules aimed at sanctioning the transgressions of the already established primary rules. The maintenance of a collective can thus rely on the emergence of deontic powers that give members the authority to legitimately punish and expel transgressors. But where do these rules come from? The hypothesis is that they emerge from the emotions felt by the members towards the transgressors. I show this with the help of a case study, which establishes that the institutionalization of norms allowing the punishment, the exclusion, and the reintegration of deviants within the “Occupy Geneva” collective, was grounded in indignation, contempt, and forgiveness respectively. (shrink)

Qu’est-ce que l’indignation ? Cette émotion est souvent conçue comme une émotion morale qu’une tierce-partie éprouve vis-à-vis des injustices qu’un agent inflige à un patient. L’indignation aurait ainsi trait aux injustices et serait éprouvée par des individus qui n’en seraient eux-mêmes pas victimes. Cette émotion motiverait la tierce-partie indignée à tenter de réguler l’injustice en l’annulant et en punissant son auteur. Cet article entreprend de montrer que cette conception de l’indignation n’est que partielle. En effet, l’indignation ne porte pas que (...) sur les injustices, mais plus généralement sur les torts injustifiés. Ce faisant, l’indignation peut être une émotion morale, mais aussi une émotion conventionnelle ou esthétique. De plus, elle peut être éprouvée par les individus victime des torts : elle n’est pas uniquement éprouvée par des tierces-parties. De la sorte, les individus indignés qui subissent les torts peuvent eux-mêmes chercher à les annuler et à punir leurs auteurs. Puisqu’elle peut être éprouvée tant par des spectateurs que par les personnes qui subissent les torts et qu’elle incline ceux qui l’éprouvent à faire appel à d’autres personnes pour réguler ces torts, l’indignation vécue individuellement est partageable : elle peut devenir une émotion collective jouant un rôle fondamental dans la régulation sociale en contribuant au renforcement de normes sociales existantes ou à l’émergence de nouvelles normes sociales associées aux idées du juste prévalant dans la société considérée. (shrink)

In this article, Catherine Kirchner-Blanchard et Frédéric Lefrançois question the decolonial stance of Caribbean artists who pursue artistic freedom and agency without relating or comparing their work to the great models of Western art history.

Cet article s’intéresse aux émotions dans l’internalisation et l’émergence des normes sociales. Nous y montrons comment les normes sociales ont un impact sur les émotions et comment les émotions ont un impact sur les normes sociales. Pour le faire, trois approches complémentaires mais souvent traitées indépendamment les unes des autres dans la littérature scientifique sont discutées. La première a trait à la façon dont les normes sociales (les normes émotionnelles) régulent les émotions. Cette régulation se comprend comme l’internalisation de la (...) normativité sociale dans les membres d’une société : les normes émotionnelles contribuent à la fabrique des dispositions émotionnelles des membres qui s’ajustent aux normes et aux valeurs valant dans leur société. La deuxième approche a trait au rôle des émotions dans le soutien aux normes sociales. Une fois que l’internalisation des normes et des valeurs est opérée et que les membres ont développé une sensibilité affective aux normes et aux valeurs de leur collectif, les émotions peuvent opérer comme des régulateurs des comportements : les émotions font que les membres se conforment aux normes et aux valeurs. Les normes internalisées suscitent des réactions émotionnelles qui contribuent au maintien de l’ordre normatif. La troisième approche affirme que les émotions contribuent à l’émergence des normes sociales et des valeurs dans une société donnée. En ce sens, les émotions peuvent contribuer à la transformation de l’ordre normatif. Il s’agit donc de la fabrique de la société. (shrink)

Strange Fruit is an exemplary study of the question of the integration of West Indians of immigrant origin living in England in the 1980s. Through this play structured in three acts, Caryl Phillips offers the reader-viewer privileged access to the inner world of a West Indian family living in a deprived London neighborhood. At the heart of this intimate drama with tragic overtones, there is a cultural conflict between two successive generations of immigrants. Philosophical and existential issues are deftly treated (...) in a psychoanalytical perspective. (shrink)

On conçoit souvent la jalousie comme une émotion ayant pour objet les relations de proximité (amour, amitié, fratrie, etc.). Elle a généralement mauvaise presse et est typiquement envisagée comme une émotion moralement condamnable, voire comme un vice. Or, la jalousie ne porte pas uniquement sur les relations de proximité : elle peut également porter sur divers biens (prestige, richesses, biens matériels, privilèges, etc.). Par ailleurs, certains auteurs soutiennent que des cas de jalousie pourraient être moralement justifiés, voire que la jalousie (...) pourrait être une vertu. La jalousie paraît également jouer un rôle dans l’institution et le maintien d’institutions visant à perpétuer des inégalités entre les individus jaloux de leurs avantages et ceux qu’ils envisagent comme des concurrents cherchant à les déposséder de leurs biens. De fait, la jalousie paraît utile pour la théorie politique de par les liens qu’elle entretient avec la justice distributive. Cet article propose, dans la première section, une discussion portant sur la nature de la jalousie où elle est contrastée avec l’envie et l’indignation. Dans la seconde section, on se demandera si la jalousie est un vice, ou si elle peut être parfois moralement justifiée, ou même être une vertu. La troisième section traitera les rôles joués par la jalousie collective dans la justice distributive et la fondation et le maintien d’institutions sociales visant à protéger les intérêts des jaloux. Pour le faire, le cas de la jalousie économique, telle que David Hume et Adam Smith la concevaient dans les relations commerciales entre États européens au XVIIIème siècle, est considéré. (shrink)

Cet article explore les conséquences pour le libéralisme politique de considérer l’existence d’un pluralisme raisonnable au sujet des différentes conceptions du juste. Comment une conception publique de la justice peut se développer malgré un désaccord raisonnable et profond sur les termes mêmes de cette justice ? En comparant le libertarisme, la justice comme équité et l’égalitarisme strict, il sera montré que les concepts fondamentaux de ces conceptions du juste sont essentiellement contestés. En guise de solution, deux conditions seront suggérées afin (...) de faire en sorte que la conception publique de la justice en soit une de tolérance politique : premièrement, elle devra se baser sur une liste de droits minimaux reconnus par les différentes conceptions raisonnables du juste; et deuxièmement, si la conception publique de la justice a pour ambition de se développer au-delà du dénominateur commun, elle devra offrir des mesures compensatoires à ceux supportant des conceptions du juste plus restrictives. À certains égards, cette problématique et ces accommodements s’apparentent à ce qui est déjà proposé au sujet de multiculturalisme. (shrink)

Dans son plus récent ouvrage, Figures du communisme, l’économiste et philosophe Fréderic Lordon s’attaque au problème brûlant de la double crise, économique et environnementale, actuelle. Lordon désigne le coupable : le capitalisme, qui détruit la planète par son exploitation sans vergogne de la nature, et qui détruit la vie par son exploitation des êtres humains. Face à ce système mortifère, une sortie du capitalisme s’impose. Sortir du capitalisme, certes, mais pour le remplacer par quoi ? Lordon nous présente ici son (...) alternative. Contre le capitalisme destructeur de monde, Fréderic Lordon veut la figure du communisme. En s’inspirant des travaux de Bernard Friot, Lordon nous expose son idéal de société communiste : salaire à vie, garantie économique générale, abolition du marché et de la finance, réduction du travail et accès généralisé à la culture et à l’éducation. Il s’en prend également aux obstacles de la révolution communiste, qu’il s’agisse de la bourgeoisie, des grandes institutions financières, des banques, des multinationales, des médias, de l’État, de son armée et de sa police, mais aussi de ceux que Fréderic Lordon appelle « les scouts », les Piketty et consorts, qui espèrent sauver l’humanité et la planète tout en sauvant le capitalisme. Une critique sans concession d’une actualité brûlante. (shrink)

L'écologie préénergétique des années 1905-1935 est à la recherche de ses objets d'étude. Des unités fondamentales de la nature (telles que formation végétale, association végétale, climax, biome, communauté biotique, écosystème) se trouvent en compétition et se succèdent les unes aux autres. Autour des années 1920 et 1930, la philosophie organiciste d'Alfred N. Whitehead, ainsi que la perspective évolutionniste d'Herbert Spencer et les propositions émergentistes de Samuel Alexander et Conwy L. Morgan, deviennent des références sous-jacentes au débat épistémologique concernant les unités (...) de base de l'écologie. Des auteurs comme Frederic E. Clements et John Phillips soutiendront plusieurs formes d'organicisme écologique, tandis que Henry A. Gleason interprétera l'association végétale comme le résultat d'une juxtaposition fortuite d'individus. Enfin, et paradoxalement, l'écosystème de Arthur G. Tansley, tout en faisant partie, à l'origine, d'une perspective anti-organiciste, deviendra l'unité fondamentale de programmes de recherche qui se voudront, au moins dans leurs intentions, émergentistes. (shrink)

(Back Cover:) « La pensée métaphysique renaîtra demain. Ce sont des savants qui ont le goût et le sens de la pensée conduite jusqu’au terme de ses exigences internes, et des philosophes initiés aux sciences expérimentales qui, en commun, la feront. » L’œuvre de Claude Tresmontant (1925-1997) illustre parfaitement cette recherche de la métaphysique d’un monde en devenir, qui sait écouter et se modeler sur la transformation – la métamorphose – promise à une Création finalisée. Le trait commun aux exposés (...) ici présentés sous forme définitive a été cette recherche autour d’une pensée qui renouvelle de l’intérieur la métaphysique en réalisant le vœu de Bergson qu’elle devienne « auscultatrice », que l’énigme que pose l’homme face à son origine et sa destinée ne soit pas recouverte par une pensée qui se perdrait dans la description des choses ou dans l’esprit de système, mais qui non plus n’irait se recroqueviller sur elle-même, en narrant sa propre expérience subjective sous le mode de la déréliction. Claude Tresmontant a su penser l’être en genèse, et il a cherché à renouveler la question de l’existence de Dieu, en en transformant la problématique en dialogue avec les sciences contemporaines. À ce goût de l’être dont les sciences ont renouvelé l’approche, il a également voulu infuser un « supplément d’âme », en repensant la réalité de la création et l’horizon de la cause finale, toujours à partir de la nature ultimement théologique de la réponse à la question « qu’est-ce que l’homme ? » Contributeurs : Yves Tourenne, Philippe Gagnon, Fabien Revol, Brunor, Frédéric Crouslé, Bertrand Souchard, Emmanuel Gabellieri. Table of Contents: Note Liminaire (Ph. Gagnon) - 7 En quoi la pensée de Claude Tresmontant nous stimule-t-elle encore ? Hommage et critique (Y. Tourenne) - 13 L’imbrication de la preuve de Dieu et de la cosmologie chez Tresmontant représente-t-elle une preuve ? (Ph. Gagnon) - 27 L’usage apologétique de la philosophie de Tresmontant dans les Indices pensables de Brunor (F. Revol) - 49 Réponse à Fabien Revol (Brunor) - 77 Qu’est-ce qui cloche dans la théologie de Claude Tresmontant ? (Fr. Crouslé) - 85 Les métaphysiques principales de Claude Tresmontant : la foi biblique est-elle à part de la raison philosophique grecque ? (B. Souchard) - 109 Maurice Blondel et Claude Tresmontant (E. Gabellieri) - 123 La vision informationnelle de Tresmontant, surtout en référence au problème de l’âme (Ph. Gagnon) - 133. (shrink)

« Pourquoi les choses tiennent-elles ensemble ? » (Traité d'ontologie, 2009, p. 237). Cette citation me sert de départ à une réflexion sur la nature des relations liantes souvent appelées relations de comprésence à la suite de Russell, ces bundling relations qui nouent les propriétés ensembles pour constituer les objets ordinaires (tables, chaises, individus biologiques) selon la théorie du faisceau. De même que Frédéric Nef, je suis séduit par les nombreuses vertus philosophiques de ces relations liantes. Ma contribution ne portera (...) pas sur une critique ou une défense de ces relations mais sur l'étude de leur nature, et en particulier, de leur possible nature méréologique. Je vais esquisser rapidement certains aspects de la théorie classique du faisceau que je qualifierai de réaliste pour opposer ensuite les variantes réalistes à deux autres versions méréologiques de la théorie, que je qualifierai d'éliminativistes. (shrink)

Introduction to the special issue in Pragmatics & Cognition focused on creativity, cognition, and material culture. With contributions from Maurice Bloch, Chris Gosden, Tim Ingold, John Kirsh, Carl Knappett & Sander van der Leeuw, Lambros Malafouris, Frédéric Vallée-Tourangeau, Kevin Warwick, and Tom Wynn and Frederick L. Coolidge.

Why and how do norms emerge? Which norms emerge and why these ones in particular? Such questions belong to the ‘problem of the emergence of norms’, which consists of an inquiry into the production of norms in social collectives. I address this question through the ethnographic study of the emergence of ‘norms against violence’ in the political collective Occupy Geneva. I do this, first, empirically, with the analysis of my field observations; and, second, theoretically, by discussing my findings. In consequence (...) of two episodes categorized as sexual assaults that occurred in their camp, the members of Occupy Geneva decided to tackle those issues in a general assembly. Their goal was to amend their first charter of good conduct in order to reform its norms and complete it with norms aiming to regulate ‘facts’ of ‘unjustified violence’. During a collective deliberation, new norms were devised, debated and consensually adopted. The writing of the new charter took place in a second general assembly during which the wording of the written norms was collectively decided. I show that indignation over the sexual assaults was the main motive that led to the collective deliberation, and that the entire process of the making of these norms was characterized by different collective emotions. Indeed, indignation, contempt and fear played major roles in the emergence of norms prohibiting violence, allowing punishment and exclusion of wrongdoers, and prescribing collective intervention against an aggressor to neutralize the threat represented. These findings prompt me to hypothesize that social norms emerge from emotions thanks to the latters’ internal structure; and that emotions provide causal and grounding explanations for this emergence. Thus, emotions allow us to answer the questions: ‘Why do norms emerge?’ and ‘Why do they have their specific forms?’ In short, I argue that social norms have emotional foundations. (shrink)

At the phenomenal level, consciousness can be described as a singular, unified field of recursive self-awareness, consistently coherent in a particualr way; that of a subject located both spatially and temporally in an egocentrically-extended domain, such that conscious self-awareness is explicitly characterized by I-ness, now-ness and here-ness. The psychological mechanism underwriting this spatiotemporal self-locatedness and its recursive processing style involves an evolutionary elaboration of the basic orientative reference frame which consistently structures ongoing spatiotemporal self-location computations as i-here-now. Cognition computes action-output (...) in the midst of ongoing movement, and consequently requires a constant self-locating spatiotemporal reference frame as basis for these computations. Over time, constant evolutionary pressures for energy efficiency have encouraged both the proliferation of anticipative feedforward processing mechansims, and the elaboration, at the apex of the sensorimotor processing hierarchy, of self-activating, highly attenuated recursively-feedforward circuitry processing the basic orientational schema independent of external action output. As the primary reference frame of active waking cognition, this recursive i-here-now processing generates a zone of subjective self-awareness in terms of which it feels like something to be oneself here and now. This is consciousness. (shrink)

. Computational chemistry grew in a new era of “desktop modeling,” which coincided with a growing demand for modeling software, especially from the pharmaceutical industry. Parameterization of models in computational chemistry is an arduous enterprise, and we argue that this activity leads, in this specific context, to tensions among scientists regarding the epistemic opacity transparency of parameterized methods and the software implementing them. We relate one flame war from the Computational Chemistry mailing List in order to assess in detail the (...) relationships between modeling methods, parameterization, software and the various forms of their enclosure or disclosure. Our claim is that parameterization issues are an important and often neglected source of epistemic opacity and that this opacity is entangled in methods and software alike. Models and software must be addressed together to understand the epistemological tensions at stake. (shrink)

Intentional explanation, according to Elster, seeks to elucidate an action by showing that it was intentionally conducted, in order to bring about certain goals . Intentional actions furthermore, are rational actions: they imply that agents establish a connection between the goals they target and the means that are appropriate to reach them, by way of different beliefs about the means, the goals and the environment. But how should we understand intentional actions in the light of philosophical research on emotions, rationality, (...) and normativity? This question is the departure point of this article. Various philosophers have analyzed the relationships between rationality and emotion, those between emotion and normativity, and those between emotion and intentional action. Nonetheless, their theses are scattered and do not offer an integrative view on how rationality, normativity and emotions work from the standpoint of intentional explanation. By using de Sousa’s distinction between the epistemic and the strategic modes of rationality as a theoretical framework, this article proposes therefore to remedy this deficit by unifying these philosophical insights with the goal of elaborating a theory of intentional explanation which brings together rationality, normativity and emotions. (shrink)

Computational reproducibility possesses its own dynamics and narratives of crisis. Alongside the difficulties of computing as an ubiquitous yet complex scientific activity, computational reproducibility suffers from a naive expectancy of total reproducibility and a moral imperative to embrace the principles of free software as a non-negotiable epistemic virtue. We argue that the epistemic issues at stake in actual practices of computational reproducibility are best unveiled by focusing on software as a pivotal concept, one that is surprisingly often overlooked in accounts (...) of reproducibility issues. Software is not only about designing and coding but also about maintaining, supporting, distributing, licensing, and governance; it is not only about developers but also about users. We focus on openness debates among computational chemists involved in molecular modeling software packages as empirical grounding for our argument. We then identify and analyse four epistemic characteristics as key to the role of software in computational reproducibility. (shrink)

What are the motivational bases that help explain the various normative judgements that social agents make, and the normative reasoning they employ? Answering this question leads us to consider the relationships between thoughts and emotions. Emotions will be described as thought-dependent and thought-directing, and as being intimately related to normativity. They are conceived as the grounds that motivate social agents to articulate their reasoning with respect to the values and norms they face and/or share in their social collective. It is (...) argued that because they are modes of thinking, emotions generate cognitive activities that relate to the making of evaluative and deontic judgements, the utterance of speech acts, the mastering of normative concepts and the building of arguments. Furthermore, each type of emotion generates its own constitutive judgements and structures normative thinking according to its own logic. The main thesis is that emotions provide sociological explanations for social agents’ thinking and speech, for emotions are precisely what motivate and, especially, structure normative reasoning and language. Being observable in language, emotions allow us to explain a) how social subjects reason and argue through norms and values, and b) how social subjects through their speech acts can contribute to the (un-)making of the social world. (shrink)

When developing phylogenetic systematics, the entomologist Willi Hennig adopted elements from Nicolai Hartmann’s ontology. In this historical essay I take on the task of documenting this adoption. I argue that in order to build a metaphysical foundation for phylogenetic systematics, Hennig adopted from Hartmann four main metaphysical theses. These are (1) that what is real is what is temporal; (2) that the criterion of individuality is to have duration; (3) that species are supra-individuals; and (4) that there are levels of (...) reality, each of which may be subject to different kinds of law. Reliance on Hartmann’s metaphysics allowed Hennig to ground some of the main theoretical principles of phylogenetic systematics, namely that the biological categories—from the semaphoront to the highest rank—have reality and individuality despite not being universals, and that they form a hierarchy of levels, each of which may require different kinds of explanation. Hartmann’s metaphysics thereby provided a philosophical justification for Hennig’s phylogenetic systematics, both as a theory and as a method of classification. (shrink)

Before the Darwinian revolution species were thought to be universals. Since then, numerous attempts have been made to propose new definitions. The twentieth-century German philosopher Nicolai Hartmann defined 'species' as an individual system of processes and a process of life of a higher-order. To provide a clear understanding of Hartmann's conception of species, I first present his method of definition. Then I look at Hartmann's Philosophie der Natur (1950) to present his concepts of "organism" and "species." And I end the (...) paper by pointing out two possible systematic inconsistencies. (shrink)

In their recent paper on “Challenges in mathematical cognition”, Alcock and colleagues (Alcock et al. [2016]. Challenges in mathematical cognition: A collaboratively-derived research agenda. Journal of Numerical Cognition, 2, 20-41) defined a research agenda through 26 specific research questions. An important dimension of mathematical cognition almost completely absent from their discussion is the cultural constitution of mathematical cognition. Spanning work from a broad range of disciplines – including anthropology, archaeology, cognitive science, history of science, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology – we (...) argue that for any research agenda on mathematical cognition the cultural dimension is indispensable, and we propose a set of exemplary research questions related to it. (shrink)

The Russian philosopher Nikolai Onufrievich Lossky adhered to an evolutionary metaphysics of reincarnation according to which the world is constituted of immortal souls or monads, which he calls ‘substantival agents.’ These substantival agents can evolve or devolve depending on the goodness or badness of their behavior. Such evolution requires the possibility for monads to reincarnate into the bodies of creatures of a higher or of a lower level on the scala perfectionis. According to this theory, a substantival agent can evolve (...) by being gradually reincarnated multiple times through a sort of process of metamorphosis from the level of the most elementary particles all the way up to the level of human beings or even higher. In ‘Ученiе Лейбница о перевоплощенiи какъ метаморфозѣ’, Lossky argues that the works of Leibniz contain scattered elements of such a systematic evolutionary doctrine of reincarnation as metamorphosis and he attempts to reconstitute this doctrine. The present article is intended as an historical introduction to the translation of Lossky’s ‘Leibniz’s Doctrine of Reincarnation as Metamorphosis.’. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the conception of an endogenous aesthetic matrix in the Caribbean and the Americas within a decolonial perspective.

Through the prism of archipelicity, the artistic production of the Afro-American Diaspora reveals its diffractive potential: at once close to and far from its original origins, it unfolds in the in-between of a double consciousness. In his seminal essay, Paul Gilroy calls for the overcoming of binary oppositions in order to better apprehend the complexity of Afro-diasporic intellectual culture, which he sees as specifically transnational (Gilroy, 1993). As inclusive as this theoretical framework may seem, it is challenged by the inherent (...) transcoloniality of the artistic dynamics animating the region of the Black Island Americas. To this day, avatars of the colonial model persist in the Lesser and Greater Antilles and in the majority of the coastal nations of the Caribbean basin. To a certain extent, these schemes continue to influence the aesthetic-political choices of the region’s visual artists and performers, while providing them with symbolic codes that can be interpreted as signs of belonging to the Afro-Trans American diaspora. It is therefore a challenge to claim any form of diasporic citizenship in such a shifting and uncertain configuration. What is thought to be relevant from an individual or community perspective may prove to be institutionally subversive. In the syncretic tradition of Cuba and Brazil, the same code can be given different semiotic meanings depending on the political and pragmatic context. This article therefore takes an ethno-critical look at the contribution of such practices to the broader framework of archipelagic networks and map zones of Afro-diasporic connectivity in a trans-American context. (shrink)

A view inherited from Max Weber states that purposive rational action, value rational action and affective action are three distinct types of social action that can compete, oppose, complement or substitute each other in social explanations. Contrary to this statement, I will defend the view that these do not constitute three different types of social actions, but that social actions always seem to concurrently involve rationality, normativity and affectivity. I show this by discussing the links between rational actions and consequentialism (...) and non-consequentialism, and by elaborating on certain major relationships between rationality, normativity and emotions. (shrink)

This paper aims to highlight the articulation of skin memory with trans-Caribbean aesthetics by exploring the diasporic works of female diasporic artists born in the West Indies who emigrated to the United States. We intend to show how these contemporary female artists rewrite the codification and reception of the skin-related memory by connecting their artwork to a genealogy of traumas and healing practices that call for the empowerment of the Caribbean skin ego.

This paper zooms in on the notion of coloniality with a view to understanding how it is rehearsed in trans-colonial contexts. From the earliest stages of coloniality - the elision mode of encounter (or 'discovery' of the Americas) to its latest developments in global art performance.

The Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) provides that “an individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead.” We show that the UDDA contains two conflicting interpretations of the phrase “cessation of functions.” By one interpretation, what matters for the determination of death is the cessation of spontaneous functions only, regardless of their generation by artificial means. By the (...) other, what matters is the cessation of both spontaneous and artificially supported functions. Because each UDDA criterion uses a different interpretation, the law is conceptually inconsistent. A single consistent interpretation would lead to the conclusion that conscious individuals whose respiratory and circulatory functions are artificially supported are actually dead, or that individuals whose brain is entirely and irreversibly destroyed may be alive. We explore solutions to mitigate the inconsistency. (shrink)

Using two examples of ethical choice, Philippa Foot’s snake and the traffic roundabout, this paper offers an account of normative induction that characterizes particularism and generalism as stages of normative inquiry, rather than rival accounts of moral knowledge and motivation. Ethical particularism holds that the evaluative cannot be “cashed out” in propositional form, and that it is descriptively “shapeless.” Drawing on examples from law, this paper claims that, while individual normative inquiry may be viewed as encountering a shapeless particularist context (...) of seemingly unlimited non-moral properties, normativity is driven by repetition of similar situations toward shared practices and descriptive predication. Rather than retention of epistemic status by defeated reasons,this illustrates retirement of relevant properties and accompanying reasons,transformation of the reasons environment, and a pluralist normative ontology. (shrink)

Slurring is a kind of hate speech that has various effects. Notable among these is variable offence. Slurs vary in offence across words, uses, and the reactions of audience members. Patterns of offence aren’t adequately explained by current theories. We propose an explanation based on the unjust power imbalance that a slur seeks to achieve. Our starting observation is that in discourse participants take on discourse roles. These are typically inherited from social roles, but only exist during a discourse. A (...) slurring act is a speech-act that alters the discourse roles of the target and speaker. By assigning discourse roles the speaker unjustly changes the power balance in the dialogue. This has a variety of effects on the target and audience. We show how these notions explain all three types of offence variation. We also briefly sketch how a role and power theory can help explain silencing and appropriation. Explanatory power lies in the fact that offence is correlated with the perceived unjustness of the power imbalance created. (shrink)

The Russian philosopher Nikolai Onufrievich Lossky considered himself a Leibnizian of sorts. He accepted parts of Leibniz’s doctrine of monads, although he preferred to call them ‘substantival agents’ and rejected the thesis that they have neither doors nor windows. In Lossky’s own doctrine, monads have existed since the beginning of time, they are immortal, and can evolve or devolve depending on the goodness or badness of their behavior. Such evolution requires the possibility for monads to reincarnate into the bodies of (...) creatures of a higher level on the scala perfectionis. According to this theory, a monad can evolve by being progressively reincarnated multiple times through a sort of process of metamorphosis from the level of the most elementary particles all the way up to the level of human beings or even higher. Lossky argues that the works of Leibniz contain scattered elements of such a systematic doctrine of reincarnation. He attempts to reconstitute this doctrine in an article that appeared both in Russian and German in 1931. The Russian version, ‘Ученiе Лейбница о перевоплощенiи какъ метаморфозѣ’, was published in the Сборникъ Русскаго института въ Прагѣ, vol. 2, 1931, pp. 77–88. The German version appeared under the title ‘Leibniz’ Lehre von der Reinkarnation als Metamorphose,’ in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 40, n. 2, 1931, pp. 214–226. The content of the Russian and German versions is roughly the same, except for the omission, in the German version, of a mention of David Hume in the second sentence and of one paragraph and a half at the end of the article. The following is a translation of this article. I translated the text from the Russian version, which was in all appearances written first, but I also took the German version into account. The original pagination is added in angle brackets. Angle brackets are used wherever the additions are mine. — Frédéric Tremblay. (shrink)

In recent years, educational institutions have started using the tools of commercial data analytics in higher education. By gathering information about students as they navigate campus information systems, learning analytics “uses analytic techniques to help target instructional, curricular, and support resources” to examine student learning behaviors and change students’ learning environments. As a result, the information educators and educational institutions have at their disposal is no longer demarcated by course content and assessments, and old boundaries between information used for assessment (...) and information about how students live and work are blurring. Our goal in this paper is to provide a systematic discussion of the ways in which privacy and learning analytics conflict and to provide a framework for understanding those conflicts. -/- We argue that there are five crucial issues about student privacy that we must address in order to ensure that whatever the laudable goals and gains of learning analytics, they are commensurate with respecting students’ privacy and associated rights, including (but not limited to) autonomy interests. First, we argue that we must distinguish among different entities with respect to whom students have, or lack, privacy. Second, we argue that we need clear criteria for what information may justifiably be collected in the name of learning analytics. Third, we need to address whether purported consequences of learning analytics (e.g., better learning outcomes) are justified and what the distributions of those consequences are. Fourth, we argue that regardless of how robust the benefits of learning analytics turn out to be, students have important autonomy interests in how information about them is collected. Finally, we argue that it is an open question whether the goods that justify higher education are advanced by learning analytics, or whether collection of information actually runs counter to those goods. (shrink)

Thought experiments that concoct bizarre possible world modalities are standard fare in debates on personal identity. Appealing to intuitions raised by such evocations is often taken to settle differences between conflicting theoretical views that, albeit, have practical implications for ethical controversies of personal identity in health care. Employing thought experiments that way is inadequate, I argue, since personhood is intrinsically linked to constraining facts about the actual world. I defend a moderate modal skepticism according to which intuiting across conceptually incongruent (...) worlds constitutes ‘invalid intuitioninferences’—i.e., carrying over intuitions gathered from facts about possible worlds that are at odds with facts about the actual world, for the purpose of making claims about real-life persons and their identity, leads to conceptual incongruences. Such a methodological fallout precludes accurate, informative judgments about personal identity in the actual world, calling into question the adequacy of thought experimental considerations for potential real world applications in medical ethics. (shrink)

This paper provides a method for characterizing space events using the framework of conceptual spaces. We focus specifically on estimating and ranking the likelihood of collisions between space objects. The objective is to design an approach for anticipatory decision support for space operators who can take preventive actions on the basis of assessments of relative risk. To make this possible our approach draws on the fusion of both hard and soft data within a single decision support framework. Contextual data is (...) also taken into account, for example data about space weather effects, by drawing on the Space Domain Ontologies, a large system of ontologies designed to support all aspects of space situational awareness. The framework is coupled with a mathematical programming scheme that frames a mathematically optimal approach for decision support, providing a quantitative basis for ranking potential for collision across multiple satellite pairs. The goal is to provide the broadest possible information foundation for critical assessments of collision likelihood. (shrink)

The notion of «professional situation,» as we propose to examine it, entails questioning simultaneously the place of contexts and the role of actors in teaching-learning situations. We propose to examine the contextualization of the teaching process in light of the groups welcomed and the conditions in which the teacher’s profession is practiced. Defining contextualization as «an art of doing» in line with a professional competency thus means postulating the legitimacy of the «context(s)» as an explanatory medium or media. The conceptual (...) model here developed follows in the tradition of Anthony Giddens’ (1987) theory of structuration and is complemented by the ecological model of human development advanced by Bronfenbrenner (1986). La notion de « situation professionnelle », telle que nous proposons de la visiter, suppose de questionner, dans un même mouvement, la place des contextes et le rôle des acteurs au sein des situations d’enseignement-apprentissage. Il s’agit pour nous d’interroger la contextualisation de la démarche d’enseignement engagée au regard des publics accueillis et des conditions d’exercice de la profession d’enseignant. Définir la contextualisation comme « un art de faire » qui relève d’une compétence professionnelle suppose alors de poser la légitimité du/des « contexte(s) » comme vecteur(s) explicatif(s). Le modèle conceptuel développé s’inscrit dans la lignée de la théorie de la structuration d’Anthony Giddens (1987). Il est complété par le modèle écologique du développement humain proposé par Bronfenbrenner (1986). (shrink)

This is a critical review of David Patterson's book Anti-Semitism and Its Metaphysical Origins (2015). In this review, I present the author's new explanation of the roots of anti-Semitism, which he finds in the anti-Semite's desire to become like God himself. Patterson's explanation makes an anti-Semite of all those who partake in the "Western rationalist project," especially philosophers (including Jewish philosophers such as Spinoza, Hermann Cohen, and Marx), but also Islamists and anti-Zionist Jews. I criticize Patterson on two fronts: First, (...) his "metaphysical" explanation relies on a petitio principii. Second, he should have argued his stance against that of Zeev Sternhell's thesis, according to which Western anti-Semitism is rooted, not in Western rationalism, but rather in the Western anti-rationalist (anti-Enlightenment) movement. (shrink)

This is a review of: Николай Онуфриевич Лосский, под редакцией В. П. Филатова, Москва: Росспэн (Серия "Философия России первой половины ХХ века"), 2016. It describes and appraises the content of this collection of nineteen articles on the life and thought of the prominent twentieth century Russian philosopher Nikolai Lossky. The volume, edited by Vladimir Filatov, presents the reader with an analysis of Lossky's philosophical legacy, including such aspects of his thought as his intuitivism, his personalism, his relation to phenomenology, his (...) narrative of the history of Russian philosophy, and so on. Lossky is also compared to other Russian philosophers (Shpet, Frank) and his legacy in other countries (Poland, Slovakia) is examined. The authors are Piama Gaidenko, Frances Nethercott, Albert Novikov, Victor Molchanov, Vitaly Lechtzer, Tatiana Shchedrina, Irina Beshkareva, Anatoly Pushkarsky, Elena Serdyukova, Vasily Vanchugov, Irina Blauberg, Roman Granin, Varvara Popova, Evgeny Babosov, Teresa Obolevich, Zlatica Plašienková, Oleg Ermichin, Alexander Podoxenov, Alexander Opalev, and Vladimir Schultz. (shrink)

The study’s goal was to provide an educational intervention in Algebra through GeoGebra that would boost students’ confidence, improve their learning, and correct their most minor mastered skills, allowing them to improve their Algebra performance. The research design was quasi-experimental, with 40 nonrandomly chosen participants comprising the GeoGebra and control groups. Mean and standard deviation was employed to describe the algebra performance and confidence of the respondents. At the same time, independent and dependent t-tests were used to determine the students’ (...) significant difference in algebra performance and confidence in the pre-and post-test between the control and GeoGebra groups. GeoGebra effectively improved algebra confidence, enhanced learning, and remedied the students’ least mastered skills. GeoGebra is recommended as an instructional material in teaching and learning Algebra and can be extended to other mathematics content areas. (shrink)

Commentary on Walsh, E. 2020. Cognitive transformation, dementia, and the moral weight of advance directives. The American Journal of Bioethics. 20(8): 54–64.