Le Yaoundé PhD Seminar-Theories of Justice est un séminaire international et pluridisciplinaire qui se tient depuis 2012 à Yaoundé. Il réunit des professeurs et des doctorants africains et non africains ainsi que des professionnels et des représentants de la société civile autour de questions de justice sociale et de politique publique. À l'initiative de doctorants africains et non africains, il a été mis en place conjointement par la Chaire Hoover de l'Université catholique de Louvain et par le Centre d’études et (...) de recherches sur la justice sociale et politique de l’Université catholique d’Afrique centrale dans le but de bâtir une véritable solidarité entre le Nord et le Sud dans le domaine de la formation académique et de la recherche. The Yaoundé PhD Seminar-Theories of Justice is an international and multidisciplinary seminar which is held since 2012 in Yaoundé. It brings together teachers and African and non-African doctoral students as well as professionals and representatives of civil society around issues of social justice and public policy. At the initiative of African and non-African students, it has been implemented jointly by the Hoover Chair of the Catholic University of Louvain and the Centre of studies and research on social justice and political of the Catholic University of Central Africa in order to build a genuine solidarity between the North and the South in the field of academic training and research. (shrink)

Ontological and methodological constraints on a theory of cognition that would generalize across species are identified. Within these constraints, ecological arguments for animal-environment mutuality and reciprocity and the necessary specificity of structured energy distributions to environmental facts are developed as counterpoints to the classical doctrines of animal-environment dualism and intractable nonspecificity. Implications of and for a cognitive theory consistent with Gibson's programme of ecological psychology are identified and contrasted with contemporary cognitivism.

The present article allows to explore, analyze and reflect on the consequences and problems posed by biobanks and attempts to prove the need of social and humanitarian support in establishing and functioning of biobanks as a new type of scientific institutions. The basis of the article is the latest publications devoted to social and humanitarian aspects of biobanking and Russian experience of the initial formation of this subject domain. The article marks and classifies different aspects of biobanking that objectively demands (...) the participation of specialists in ethics and social sciences. The cases of biobanking development and risks are estimated; the objective need of applied ethics and social sciences specialists’ participation in biobanking is proved. (shrink)

Cognition means different things to different psychologists depending on the position held on the mind-matter problem. Ecological psychologists reject the implied mind-matter dualism as an ill-posed theoretic problem because the assumed mind-matter incommensurability precludes a solution to the degrees of freedom problem. This fundamental problem was posed by both Nicolai Bernstein and James J. Gibson independently. It replaces mind-matter dualism with animal-environment duality -- a better posed scientific problem because commensurability is assured. Furthermore, when properly posed this way, a conservation (...) law is suggested that encompasses a psychology of transactional systems, a biology of self-actional systems, and a physics of interactional systems. For such a solution, a theory of cognition for goal-directed behaviour is needed. A sketch is supplied for how such a theory might be pursued in the spirit of the new physics of evolving complex systems. (shrink)

Although this is a work of biography rather than of philosophy, in presenting the life of a philosopher like de Tracy a good deal of attention is necessarily paid to presenting his thought. The author provides extensive discussions of the five volumes of the Elements d’ideologie, including the Grammaire, the Logique, and the Traité de la volonté et de ses effets. In addition, he describes how de Tracy developed his science to apply to political economy, morals, and politics. In both (...) cases the author seeks to show how de Tracy’s thought takes its bearings from his experiences in revolutionary France and from his readings of Locke, Condillac, Helvetius, d’Holbach, Diderot, and Voltaire. While preserving the materialist presuppositions of these antecedents, de Tracy’s originality, according to Kennedy, lies in applying their materialism to a novel theory of movement. Further, in applying this theory of movement to human things, de Tracy prepares for the modern historical interpretation of ideology. Unfortunately, the author does not elaborate what precisely distinguishes de Tracy’s theory of movement from similar theories in the Epicurean tradition which he follows. Further, he does not explain how de Tracy’s application of this theory of movement to history, at the same time as Hegel, affects the historical interpretation of "ideology" in a way that differs from Hegel and that yet explains the evolution of the concept of "ideology." We may conjecture that de Tracy’s incipient philosophy of history adumbrates later materialist theories of historical development as encountered in Comte, whom he inspired, or in John Stuart Mill, who as a young man had been acquainted with de Tracy. But this does not distinguish "the ideologue" from Voltaire, who is often credited with originating the philosophy of history and who was a source of de Tracy’s thought in so many other respects. (shrink)

Upon first reading this work, and without knowing its author, one may doubt its philosophical significance. Whereas philosophy implies wakefulness, the Reveries denotes dreams, "a shapeless diary" of the movements of the author’s soul. Often perceived as the product of Rousseau’s disturbed last years, seldom has it been used for interpreting his better known writings. It may therefore seem not surprising that two centuries should have passed before a scholarly English translation of high quality would appear, one that is indeed (...) prepared by a translator thoroughly grounded both in the tradition of Western philosophy and in the thought of Rousseau. Yet appearances notwithstanding, Charles Butterworth appends to his excellent translation an elaborate interpretative essay to justify the view that Rousseau’s last writing represents an ordered view that is not only philosophically interesting, but also reveals the basis of his paradoxical thought. (shrink)

In this paper we describe and explore a management tool called the Caux Round Table Self-Assessment and Improvement Process (SAIP). Based upon the Caux Round Table Principles for Business — a stakeholder-based, transcultural statement of business values — the SAIP assists executives with the task of shaping their firm’s conscience through an organizational self-appraisal process. This process is modeled after the self-assessment methodology pioneered by the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Program. After briefly describing the SAIP, we address three topics. (...) First, we examine similarities and differences between the Baldrige approach to corporate self-assessment and the self-assessment process utilized within the SAIP. Second, we report initial findings from two beta tests of the tool. These illustrate both the SAIP’s ability to help organizations strengthen their commitment to ethically responsible conduct, and some of the tool’s limitations. Third, we briefly analyze various dimensions of the business scandals of 2001–2002 (Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, etc.) in light of the ethical requirements articulated with the SAIP. This analysis suggests that the SAIP can help link the current concerns of stakeholders — for example, investors and the general public — to organizational practice, by providing companies with a practical way to incorporate critical lessons from these unfortunate events. (shrink)

All of our information about the world is derived from the function of our senses, and thus they are the principal source of all our knowledge. This was recognized explicitly by early Greek philosophers, remained an important point of discussion for nineteenth‐century philosophers, and continues to be a key issue for present‐day philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. It is a key issue in cognitive science because, by initiating the processes that store and evaluate information, sensory information transmission can be considered a (...) cognitive initiator. In a very real sense, who we are and how we see the world are the result of the experiences that are mediated by our sensory systems. These are some of the reasons why the study of sensory systems has occupied such a prominent place in modern cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

This book covers a remarkable amount of ground and has become something of a classic. Besides the Discourse and the Meditations, it contains Private Thoughts, the third set of Objections and Replies, most of the Regulae, parts of the Principia and the Dioptrics, together with crrespondence with Elizabeth, Princess Palatine, Mersenne and others.

Latash & Anson's intention to describe only the regularities of motor behavior is compromised by the homunculus paradigm. Although we concur on the need to redefine in atypical populations, we contend that this enterprise requires a process based functionalism. We argue for accommodating movement control and perceptual processes with physical and task constraints in a natural setting.