Neuroethics is an interdisciplinary field that arose in response to novel ethical challenges posed by advances in neuroscience. Historically, neuroethics has provided an opportunity to synergize different disciplines, notably proposing a two-way dialogue between an ‘ethics of neuroscience’ and a ‘neuroscience of ethics’. However, questions surface as to whether a ‘neuroscience of ethics’ is a useful and unified branch of research and whether it can actually inform or lead to theoretical insights and transferable practical knowledge to help resolve ethical questions. (...) In this article, we examine why the neuroscience of ethics is a promising area of research and summarize what we have learned so far regarding its most promising goals and contributions. We then review some of the key methodological challenges which may have hindered the use of results generated thus far by the neuroscience of ethics. Strategies are suggested to address these challenges and improve the quality of research and increase neuroscience's usefulness for applied ethics and society at large. Finally, we reflect on potential outcomes of a neuroscience of ethics and discuss the different strategies that could be used to support knowledge transfer to help different stakeholders integrate knowledge from the neuroscience of ethics. (shrink)

Moral or ethical questions are vital because they affect our daily lives: what is the best choice we can make, the best action to take in a given situation, and ultimately, the best way to live our lives? Health ethics has contributed to moving ethics toward a more experience-based and user-oriented theoretical and methodological stance but remains in our practice an incomplete lever for human development and flourishing. This context led us to envision and develop the stance of a “living (...) ethics”, described in this inaugural collective and programmatic paper as an effort to consolidate creative collaboration between a wide array of stakeholders. We engaged in a participatory discussion and collective writing process known as instrumentalist concept analysis. This process included initial local consultations, an exploratory literature review, the constitution of a working group of 21 co-authors, and 8 workshops supporting a collaborative thinking and writing process. First, a living ethics designates a stance attentive to human experience and the role played by morality in human existence. Second, a living ethics represents an ongoing effort to interrogate and scrutinize our moral experiences to facilitate adaptation of people and contexts. It promotes the active and inclusive engagement of both individuals and communities in envisioning and enacting scenarios which correspond to their flourishing as authentic ethical agents. Living ethics encourages meaningful participation of stakeholders because moral questions touch deeply upon who we are and who we want to be. We explain various aspects of a living ethics stance, including its theoretical, methodological, and practical implications as well as some barriers to its enactment based on the reflections resulting from the collaborative thinking and writing process. (shrink)

Gilbert and colleagues point out the discrepancy between the limited empirical data illustrating changes in personality following implantation of deep brain stimulating electrodes and the vast number of conceptual neuroethics papers implying that these changes are widespread, deleterious, and clinically significant. Their findings are reminiscent of C. P. Snow’s essay on the divide between the two cultures of the humanities and the sciences. This division in the literature raises significant ethical concerns surrounding unjustified fear of personality changes in the context (...) of DBS and negative perceptions of clinician-scientists engaged in DBS. These concerns have real world implications for funding future innovative, DBS trials aimed to reduce suffering as well as hampering true interdisciplinary scholarship. We argue that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism and the value it places on empirical inquiry, experiential knowledge, and inter-disciplinary scholarship – reflecting diverse ways of knowing – provides a framework to start to address the important questions Gilbert and colleagues raise. In particular, we highlight the importance of expert clinician knowledge in contributing to the neuroethical questions raised by Gilbert and colleagues. Finally, we provide illustrative examples of some of our interdisciplinary empirical research that demonstrate the iterative cycle of inquiry characteristic of pragmatism in which conceptual neuroethics questions have led to empirical studies whose results then raise additional conceptual questions that give rise to new empirical studies in a way that highlights the contributions of the humanities and the sciences. (shrink)

Gilbert and colleagues point out the discrepancy between the limited empirical data illustrating changes in personality following implantation of deep brain stimulating electrodes and the vast number of conceptual neuroethics papers implying that these changes are widespread, deleterious, and clinically significant. Their findings are reminiscent of C. P. Snow’s essay on the divide between the two cultures of the humanities and the sciences. This division in the literature raises significant ethical concerns surrounding unjustified fear of personality changes in the context (...) of DBS and negative perceptions of clinician-scientists engaged in DBS. These concerns have real world implications for funding future innovative, DBS trials aimed to reduce suffering as well as hampering true interdisciplinary scholarship. We argue that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism and the value it places on empirical inquiry, experiential knowledge, and inter-disciplinary scholarship – reflecting diverse ways of knowing – provides a framework to start to address the important questions Gilbert and colleagues raise. In particular, we highlight the importance of expert clinician knowledge in contributing to the neuroethical questions raised by Gilbert and colleagues. Finally, we provide illustrative examples of some of our interdisciplinary empirical research that demonstrate the iterative cycle of inquiry characteristic of pragmatism in which conceptual neuroethics questions have led to empirical studies whose results then raise additional conceptual questions that give rise to new empirical studies in a way that highlights the contributions of the humanities and the sciences. (shrink)

Gilbert and colleagues point out the discrepancy between the limited empirical data illustrating changes in personality following implantation of deep brain stimulating electrodes and the vast number of conceptual neuroethics papers implying that these changes are widespread, deleterious, and clinically significant. Their findings are reminiscent of C. P. Snow’s essay on the divide between the two cultures of the humanities and the sciences. This division in the literature raises significant ethical concerns surrounding unjustified fear of personality changes in the context (...) of DBS and negative perceptions of clinician-scientists engaged in DBS. These concerns have real world implications for funding future innovative, DBS trials aimed to reduce suffering as well as hampering true interdisciplinary scholarship. We argue that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism and the value it places on empirical inquiry, experiential knowledge, and inter-disciplinary scholarship – reflecting diverse ways of knowing – provides a framework to start to address the important questions Gilbert and colleagues raise. In particular, we highlight the importance of expert clinician knowledge in contributing to the neuroethical questions raised by Gilbert and colleagues. Finally, we provide illustrative examples of some of our interdisciplinary empirical research that demonstrate the iterative cycle of inquiry characteristic of pragmatism in which conceptual neuroethics questions have led to empirical studies whose results then raise additional conceptual questions that give rise to new empirical studies in a way that highlights the contributions of the humanities and the sciences. (shrink)

The article Pragmatismand the Importance of Interdisciplinary Teams in Investigating Personality Changes Following DBS.

Ce texte entend montrer les enjeux en termes de protection des données personnelles de l'accès au service WHOIS. Avec la création massive de nouveaux noms de domaines rendue possible par la migration des serveurs racines vers IPv6, la question de l'accès au WHOIS devient critique. Une régulation tendant à mieux assurer la protection des données personnelles est à envisager dans un autre contexte, l'Icann ne souhaitant pas la mettre en place. Mieux vaut se replier sur les noms de domaines contrôlés (...) par les organismes respectant les directives européennes, à l'image de ce que pratique l'Afnic, assurant la protection des données personnelles des propriétaires des noms de domaine tout en permettant d'y avoir accès dans des conditions bien spécifiées.This paper aims to show what is at stake in terms of data protection with access to the WHOIS service. With the exponential growth ofTLDs offered by the migration of root servers to IPv6, access to WHOIS has become a critical issue. A regulation to ensure better protection of personal data needs to be envisaged in a different context, since ICANN does not wish to implement it. A better option would be to use TLDs under the control of organisations that abide by EU rules, as AFNIC is doing by protecting the personal data of domain name owners while allowing access to them under specified conditions. (shrink)

Michel Weber, Essai sur la gnose de Harvard. Whitehead apocryphe, Louvain-la-Neuve, Les Éditions Chromatika, 2011. (978-2-930517-26-1, 292 p., 20 €) L’objet de ce livre consiste en une éludication croisée de la philosophie organique whiteheadienne et de la gnose thomasienne. Il cherche à répondre à deux questions. La philosophie de l’événement, du processus ou du procès, d’Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) possède-t-elle, volens nolens, un fond gnostique syrien ? L’évangile apocryphe de Thomas, le gnostique juif qui a couché par écrit l’enseignement (...) de Jésus probablement trente ans après son décès, offrant ainsi une source qui pourrait être plus ancienne que les évangiles canoniques et leur hypothétique texte-racine Q, gagne-t-il a être lu à partir de prémisses whiteheadiennes ? Michel Weber dirige le Centre de philosophie pratique « Chromatiques whiteheadiennes » à Bruxelles. Il a publié plus de cinquante ouvrages scientifiques, dont La Dialectique de l’intuition chez A. N. Whitehead (2005), Whitehead’s Pancreativism (2006 & 2011) et L’Épreuve de la philosophie (2008). (shrink)

Michel Weber, L’Épreuve de la philosophie. Essai sur les fondements de la praxis philosophique, Louvain-la-Neuve, Les Éditions Chromatika, 2008. (978-2-930517-02-5 ; 141 p. ; 15 € ; ) Peu connu en francophonie, l’entretien — ou la « pratique » — philosophique est une activité qui plonge ses racines dans l’héritage socratique. Faire l’épreuve de la philosophie, c’est se soumettre à l’exigence de la vie authentique, telle qu’elle pilote un type particulier de dialogue : le dialogue maïeutique, celui qui accouche (...) les âmes. Il s’agit ici de situer les enjeux de la pratique philosophique et d’en établir les fondements, c’est-à-dire de montrer ce qui fait sa spécificité indépendamment des disciplines existant déjà dans le domaine de la santé mentale. Little known in the French-speaking world, philosophical counselling is a practice that is rooted in Socrates' and Epicurus legacies. The philosophical ordeal, i.e., to put philosophy to the test requires a double event taking place during the dialogue between the philosophical practitioner and the visitor (to use Achenbach's term). On the one hand, the practitioner accepts to have her philosophical standpoint assessed by its maieutic capacity to relieve human suffering. On the other, the visitor endorses in his own way the commitment to authenticity that is specific to philosophical life. This book provides the foundations for a practice primarily inspired by A. N. Whitehead’s organic and processual philosophy as it enforces a radical creativity. Its visionary stance is furthermore confronted with Pierre Hadot’s “spiritual exercises” and its efficacy supported by James’ pragmatism. (shrink)

Frédéric Sanssens et Michel Weber, Philosopher, guérir et sanctifier. Dialogues sur la voie druidique, Louvain-la-Neuve, Éditions Chromatika, 2020. (ISBN 978-2-930517-66-7, pdf 978-2-930517-67-4, 134 pp., 17€) -/- S’il est impossible de nier la triple racine culturelle de l’Europe — romaine, grecque, et judéo-chrétienne —, on ne peut pour autant faire l’économie de son passé celtique et de la proximité que celui-ci atteste avec l’Inde. Philosopher, guérir et sanctifier sont les trois missions traditionnelles que les druides partagent avec les brahmanes (...) ; elles furent aussi celles des philosophes pré-socratiques. Nos Dialogues sur la voie druidique constituent, à la fois, une introduction généraliste pour le profane et un outil analytique pour l’initié. On y évoque tout particulièrement l’enracinement historique et symbolique du druidisme contemporain et la fonction sacerdotale du druide. -/- Frédéric Sanssens est théologien de formation et professeur de philosophie et de citoyenneté. Druide, il officie, entre autre, comme « formateur » des néophytes. Michel Weber est philosophe de formation, de profession, et d’inclination. Il pratique aussi la thérapie psychocorporelle ayurvédique. (shrink)

La visée de cette étude se résume en peu de mots : abandonné à lui-même, le système économico-politico-social actuel est condamné et son trépas sera douloureux, à moins qu’une réforme profonde ne survienne. Les pistes de réflexion qu’il rassemble dans cette étude trouvent leur origine dans deux systèmes de pensée complémentaires : la philosophie organique du dernier Whitehead et le matérialisme dialectique de Marx. Poliment mis entre parenthèses comme une double aberration historique, leurs travaux ont pourtant déterminé les balises conceptuelles (...) de tous les problèmes contemporains : les racines et les enjeux de la technoscience, du matérialisme, du capitalisme et de l’existence démocratique dans une biosphère en faillite, au propre comme au figuré... De plus, ce balisage s’alimente d’une pensée processuelle et pragmatique qui est tout à fait à l’ordre du jour. Ainsi, à la lumière des travaux de ces deux penseurs, Michel Weber aborde la thèse simple suivante : la civilisation occidentale mondialisée a atteint un point de rupture qui ne tardera plus à se manifester sous une forme insurrectionnelle, à moins que des réformes radicales soient promptement mises en oeuvre. Il en propose principalement trois : déprofessionnaliser la politique, recentrer la société sur les communautés et restaurer le droit régalien de battre monnaie. En somme, il s’agit ici de dessiner une réponse politique à une crise globale systémique qui est radicalement politique. (shrink)

Willard van Orman Quine (1908-2000), philosophe et logicien américain, a conduit la philosophie analytique à sa première révolution conceptuelle en critiquant l'empirisme logique du Cercle de Vienne et de son maître Carnap en particulier. En débarrassant cet empirisme des «deux dogmes» indéfendables qui le soutiennent, Quine l'ébranle en profondeur : la signification des énoncés ayant trait au monde s'avère largement indéterminée, le savoir comme tel perd ses fondements et l'on court le risque d'un scepticisme dangereux. Pour saisir comment une connaissance (...) solide du monde peut pourtant se monnayer en des théories verbalisées partageables, Quine réinvente le réalisme. Il veut construire, par des voies radicalement nouvelles et contre-intuitives, un empirisme «sans les dogmes» qui s'inscrive toutefois dans le champ logico-linguistique qu'il est en train de bouleverser. Ce sont les thèses centrales de son oeuvre et les polémiques dont elles furent l'objet que le présent ouvrage expose : l'indétermination de la traduction, l'inscrutabilité de la référence, le holisme sémantique, la relativité de l'ontologie, la naturalisation de l'épistémologie. La philosophie dite postanalytique et notamment ses déploiements néopragmatistes trouvent dans cette oeuvre leur date de naissance et leurs racines. Quine, dont les thèses paradoxales ont dérouté la philosophie analytique, est une figure dominante de cette tradition qui est au coeur de l'actualité philosophique contemporaine. (shrink)

Que dire à des jeunes de vingt ans pour leur conduite dans ce monde qui part à la dérive? La civilisation s'effondre, les valeurs s'inversent, la culture se rétrécit comme une peau de chagrin, les livres comptent moins que les écrans, l'école n'apprend plus à penser mais à obéir au politiquement correct, la famille explosée, décomposée, recomposée se retrouve souvent composée d'ayants droit égotistes et narcissiques. De nouveaux repères surgissent, qui contredisent les anciens : le racisme revient sous forme de (...) racialisme, la phallocratie sous prétexte de néo-féminisme, l'antisémitisme sous couvert d'antisionisme, le fascisme sous des allures de progressisme, le nihilisme sous les atours de la modernité, l'antispécisme et le transhumanisme passent pour des humanismes alors que l'un et l'autre travaillent à la mort de l'homme, l'écologisme se pare des plumes anticapitalistes bien qu'il soit le navire amiral du capital--il y a de quoi perdre pied. J'ai rédigé une série de lettres à cette jeune génération pour lui raconter les racines culturelles de notre époque : elles ont pour sujet la moraline, le néo-féminisme, le décolonialisme, l'islamo-gauchisme, l'antifascisme, la déresponsabilisation, la créolisation, l'antisémitisme, l'écologisme, l'art contemporain, le transhumanisme, l'antispécisme. L'une d'elles explique en quoi consiste l'art d'être français : d'abord ne pas être dupe, ensuite porter haut l'héritage du libre examen de Montaigne, du rationalisme de Descartes, de l'hédonisme de Rabelais, de l'ironie de Voltaire, de l'esprit de finesse de Marivaux, de la politique de Hugo."--Back cover. (shrink)

As a transformative thinker of the twentieth century, whose work spanned all branches of the humanities, Michel Foucault had a complex and profound relationship with literature. And yet this critical aspect of his thought, because it was largely expressed in speeches and interviews, remains virtually unknown to even his most loyal readers. This book brings together previously unpublished transcripts of oral presentations in which Foucault speaks at length about literature and its links to some of his principal themes: madness, (...) language and criticism, and truth and desire.The associations between madness and language--and madness and silence--preoccupy Foucault in two 1963 radio broadcasts, presented here, in which he ranges among literary examples from Cervantes and Shakespeare to Diderot, before taking up questions about Artaud's literary correspondence, lettres de cachet, and the materiality of language. In his lectures on the relations among language, the literary work, and literature, he discusses Joyce, Proust, Chateaubriand, Racine, and Corneille, as well as the linguist Roman Jakobson. What we know as literature, Foucault contends, begins with the Marquis de Sade, to whose writing--particularly La Nouvelle Justine and Juliette--he devotes a full two-part lecture series focusing on notions of literary self-consciousness.Following his meditations on history in the recently published Speech Begins after Death, this current volume makes clear the importance of literature to Foucault's thought and intellectual development. (shrink)

Avec l’entrée en vigueur de l’Énoncé de politique des trois conseils, la surveillance éthique continue fait maintenant partie intégrante du processus d’évaluation éthique sur la scène universitaire canadienne. Pourtant, malgré l’acceptation de ce concept, les chercheurs et les institutions se questionnent sur sa portée et sa mise en application. Dans cette perspective, cet article porte un regard sur les racines et les variantes du concept, les efforts de rationalisation dont il a fait l’objet en contexte américain d’où il a émergé (...) et sur le contexte de son entrée sur la scène canadienne. (shrink)

English summary: Theater allows people to examine important problems with sufficient distance in order to judge fairly without feeling directly implicated. Michel Meyer offers a much needed history of theater, from its earliest Greek beginnings, through the Middle Ages, Enlightenment, to the absurd works of Beckett or Sartre, while remembering the context of other supporting arts. French description: Le theatre est, avec l'epopee, la plus ancienne forme de litterature en Occident. Son but est de creer de la distance avec (...) des situations problematiques, liees au pouvoir, au divin, aux dilemmes moraux, afin de permettre au spectateur de faire le bon jugement sans se sentir directement implique. Michel Meyer envisage toutes les theories du theatre, a commencer par celle d'Aristote, qui se sont succede jusqu'a aujourd'hui et les confronte a l'histoire meme du theatre. Eschyle, Sophocle, Euripide, Aristophane, Marlowe, Machiavel, Shakespeare, Racine et le theatre classique francais, le theatre baroque espagnol, le romantisme, le realisme, d'Ibsen a Tchekhov et a Pirandello, comme le theatre de l'absurde, avec Ionesco, Beckett ou Sartre, tout est etudie, articule, et remis en perspective. La rationalite dans l'histoire du theatre est clairement mise en evidence, sans jamais negliger ce que le theatre doit ou apporte aux autres arts les plus proches, comme l'opera. Michel Meyer offre ici une synthese spectaculaire et une erudition sans precedent sur le phenomene theatre en un ouvrage court et percutant, plein d'idees nouvelles. (shrink)

Comment procede la science? Comment se constitue-t-elle et comment progresse-t-elle? Telles sont les questions fondamentales que traite l'auteur dans cet ouvrage qui est original tant par ses aspects historiques que par ses analyses thematiques. Pour la premiere fois dans les pays de langue francaise, l'interpretation neo-positiviste de la science est etudiee en detail au travers de ses representants contemporains : Carnap, Hempel, Popper. L'auteur remonte aux racines kantiennes du neo-positivisme. En se situant au-dela du logicisme reducteur et du psychologisme irrationaliste, (...) Decouverte et justification en science s'attache a mettre en evidence l'activite questionnante du processus de recherche scientifique, et a demontrer le mecanisme logique qui engendre les decouvertes. A cote de la logique traditionnelle qui est celle de la justification, il existe une autre logique, irreductible au calcul mathematique, qui est la metaphorisation. Celle-ci, en tant qu'elle est la demarche de tout esprit createur de resultats, se differencie des processus de recherche tels qu'ils ont ete analyses jusqu'ici : les conceptions de Popper et de Kuhn, ainsi que la theorie de l'induction de Hume, de l'abduction de Peirce, de la retroduction de Hanson, sans oublier l'associationnisme et l'intuitionnisme chers aux psychologistes, font l'objet d'un examen approfondi. L'auteur envisage egalement le langage de la science en termes de questionnement. Le savant, comme tout locuteur, parle de ce qui fait question pour lui, meme si le probleme pose dont il est question dans son discours demeure implicite a titre de presuppose. Les theories de Frege, de Russell et de Wittgenstein sur la formalisation des langages se trouvent integrees dans une vision unitaire de l'activite discursive, pour laquelle le contexte d'interrogation et de reponse situe toute intelligibilite possible. (shrink)

Métachronologie propose une théorie du temps entièrement nouvelle, temps comportant non pas une, mais deux dimensions. Cette théorie se développe à partir de l'analyse d'un instant, lui-même conçu comme double et non simple : instant composé de deux temps coordonnés, passé et futur, chacun mobilisé par sa manière propre de se temporaliser. Au coeur de l'instant, non son présent mais sa faille, un vide de temps. La métachronologie est la métaphysique de ce temps sans présent, auquel se substitue l'instance d'une (...) collision entre deux temporalités corrélatives. La collision est une notion employée par Vladimir Jankélévitch pour désigner la logique (qu'il nomme "métalogique") d'un renvoi réciproque et infini d'un terme à l'autre d'une alternative. Son modèle en est l'instant de la mort, collision de la pensée avec ce qui l'enlève et qu'elle ne rencontre pas. La métachronologie se donne à poursuivre cette intuition métalogique de Jankélévitch, cela jusqu'en des conséquences surprenantes, en rupture même avec quelques racines de sa propre philosophie du temps. La fidélité à sa pensée supposant qu'on en écoute ce qu'elle porte d'inouï. Tout instant donc serait collisionnel. Au lieu du présent, sa défaillance, sorte de trou où passé et futur s'excluent et pourtant se coordonnent, et se convertissent l'un en l'autre. Aussi cette collision est-elle ici notée "vav", opérateur en hébreu de conjonction de termes et de conversion de temps. Quant à l'écartement d'un même instant en deux temps distincts, il qualifie la quandoquité de cet instant, par analogie avec l'ubiquité d'un événement présent au même instant en deux lieux séparés. Ainsi principe de rupture, de coordination et de conversion, "vav" se dispose pour reformuler le mystère temporel en s'arrêtant à cette seule énigme : une sorte de néant écartant en l'instant même deux temps indissociables et incompatibles. (shrink)

1. WeimarLa recherche consacrée au droit et à la pensée juridique sous la République de Weimar accorde une place privilégiée au droit public et constitutionnel. Parmi les raisons de ce phénomène il y a la question de la continuité et des ruptures entre Weimar et le nazisme, une question qui pose dans le même temps le problème de la nouveauté radicale que représente le nazisme en matière de pensée politique et de pratique sociale d’une part, et le problème des racines (...) qu’il a trouvées dans les... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 304-317 [Access article in PDF] Sovereign Love and Atomism in Racine's Bérénice Ellen Mcclure ALTHOUGH CRITICS HAVE NOTED links between the new science of the seventeenth century and the works of La Fontaine and Molière, 1 a similar influence of Epicureanism or even Cartesianism upon French classical tragedy is harder to trace. No two areas of seventeenth-century cultural life would seem farther apart (...) than the emerging science, with its rejection of Aristotelian categories as inadequate to experienced reality, and classical French tragedy, with its antimaterialism and claims to universal truth often bolstered by references to none other than Aristotle himself. Yet René Pintard reminds us that the 1660s and 1670s—the period when many of the tragedies we regard as "classical" were written—saw a strong renewal of interest in the philosophies articulated in the first half of the century. 2 So widespread was this interest that Pierre Gassendi's friend and follower Bernier was able to publish an edition and translation of the philosopher's works in 1674-1675 which proved to be a resounding success. It is hard to believe that the much-discussed new science somehow missed writers of tragedies, especially given the extensive contacts between Molière, La Fontaine and Racine.In this article, I demonstrate this influence by positing that Racine's play Bérénice, ostensibly a reworking of a well-known love story that Corneille was also producing on the Paris stage at the same time, is in part a reflection on the pressing question of what holds the universe together. Through his exploration of the possibility of satisfactory love between two independent sovereigns, Racine explores issues that the revival of Epicureanism had brought into the philosophical foreground. This reading of the play brings into focus the incredibly [End Page 304] important, yet too-often neglected, 3 role of Antiochus, the character whom Racine invented for his version of the play. I will show that his tragic in-betweenness offers a necessary alternative to Titus' and Bérénice's valorization of self-contained sovereignty. I Before embarking on a close reading of the play itself, however, I would like to offer a brief survey of the debate to which I believe Racine refers. Both Michel Foucault and Timothy Reiss have identified the seventeenth century as a transitional period between the age of correspondences exemplified in Aristotelian philosophy and the age of representation and quantification that characterized eighteenth-century thought. 4 This transition, however, was far from smooth, as philosophers sought to articulate a universe whose separate and radically de-hierarchized elements remained somehow joined together.For most seventeenth-century philosophers, the sacrifice of Aristotelian categories and scholasticism in no way lessened the imperative for a sense of divine order and causation. Gassendi's often self-contradictory efforts to reconcile Epicurus and Christianity provide perhaps the most striking example of this transitional struggle. The atomism posited by Epicurus through Lucretius posed particular difficulties for a Christian worldview. A world governed by the chance interactions of atoms eliminates any sense that things happen for a purpose; God cannot be the benevolent author and overseer of the universe. Gassendi's equal respect for atomism and for Christianity should be read as evidence of the profound struggle between separateness and interconnection (or, as Gassendi would call it, harmony) taking place during this period. 5 For, as Bloch points out, although Gassendi partially reconciled the demands of the two systems by situating atoms in an uncreated, infinite, and contiguous space and time, he continued to hold to the profoundly troubling existence of the void in the universe. Once again, the chief objection to the void implicit in atomism was religious, since if God is everywhere, the void cannot exist, and likewise, God cannot create nothing. The revival of stoicism supplied instead a vision of the universe ultimately comprised and held together by an ethereal pneuma that some neo-Stoics did not hesitate to identify as a sort of divine presence. 6 Descartes himself made heroic attempts, in his Principes... (shrink)

An examination of the relation between war and politics, by one of the twentieth century’s most influential thinkers From 1971 until 1984 at the College de France, Michel Foucault gave a series of lectures ranging freely and conversationally over the range of his research. In Society Must Be Defended , Foucault deals with the emergence in the early seventeenth century of a new understanding of war as the permanent basis of all institutions of power, a hidden presence within society (...) that could be deciphered by an historical analysis. Tracing this development, Foucault outlines the genealogy of power and knowledge that had become his dominant concern. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 304-317 [Access article in PDF] Sovereign Love and Atomism in Racine's Bérénice Ellen Mcclure ALTHOUGH CRITICS HAVE NOTED links between the new science of the seventeenth century and the works of La Fontaine and Molière, 1 a similar influence of Epicureanism or even Cartesianism upon French classical tragedy is harder to trace. No two areas of seventeenth-century cultural life would seem farther apart (...) than the emerging science, with its rejection of Aristotelian categories as inadequate to experienced reality, and classical French tragedy, with its antimaterialism and claims to universal truth often bolstered by references to none other than Aristotle himself. Yet René Pintard reminds us that the 1660s and 1670s—the period when many of the tragedies we regard as "classical" were written—saw a strong renewal of interest in the philosophies articulated in the first half of the century. 2 So widespread was this interest that Pierre Gassendi's friend and follower Bernier was able to publish an edition and translation of the philosopher's works in 1674-1675 which proved to be a resounding success. It is hard to believe that the much-discussed new science somehow missed writers of tragedies, especially given the extensive contacts between Molière, La Fontaine and Racine.In this article, I demonstrate this influence by positing that Racine's play Bérénice, ostensibly a reworking of a well-known love story that Corneille was also producing on the Paris stage at the same time, is in part a reflection on the pressing question of what holds the universe together. Through his exploration of the possibility of satisfactory love between two independent sovereigns, Racine explores issues that the revival of Epicureanism had brought into the philosophical foreground. This reading of the play brings into focus the incredibly [End Page 304] important, yet too-often neglected, 3 role of Antiochus, the character whom Racine invented for his version of the play. I will show that his tragic in-betweenness offers a necessary alternative to Titus' and Bérénice's valorization of self-contained sovereignty. I Before embarking on a close reading of the play itself, however, I would like to offer a brief survey of the debate to which I believe Racine refers. Both Michel Foucault and Timothy Reiss have identified the seventeenth century as a transitional period between the age of correspondences exemplified in Aristotelian philosophy and the age of representation and quantification that characterized eighteenth-century thought. 4 This transition, however, was far from smooth, as philosophers sought to articulate a universe whose separate and radically de-hierarchized elements remained somehow joined together.For most seventeenth-century philosophers, the sacrifice of Aristotelian categories and scholasticism in no way lessened the imperative for a sense of divine order and causation. Gassendi's often self-contradictory efforts to reconcile Epicurus and Christianity provide perhaps the most striking example of this transitional struggle. The atomism posited by Epicurus through Lucretius posed particular difficulties for a Christian worldview. A world governed by the chance interactions of atoms eliminates any sense that things happen for a purpose; God cannot be the benevolent author and overseer of the universe. Gassendi's equal respect for atomism and for Christianity should be read as evidence of the profound struggle between separateness and interconnection (or, as Gassendi would call it, harmony) taking place during this period. 5 For, as Bloch points out, although Gassendi partially reconciled the demands of the two systems by situating atoms in an uncreated, infinite, and contiguous space and time, he continued to hold to the profoundly troubling existence of the void in the universe. Once again, the chief objection to the void implicit in atomism was religious, since if God is everywhere, the void cannot exist, and likewise, God cannot create nothing. The revival of stoicism supplied instead a vision of the universe ultimately comprised and held together by an ethereal pneuma that some neo-Stoics did not hesitate to identify as a sort of divine presence. 6 Descartes himself made heroic attempts, in his Principes... (shrink)

Schopenhauer’s invective is legendary among philosophers, and is unmatched in the historical canon. But these complaints are themselves worthy of careful consideration: they are rooted in Schopenhauer’s philosophy of language, which itself reflects the structure of his metaphysics. This short chapter argues that Schopenhauer’s vitriol rewards philosophical attention; not because it expresses his critical take on Fichte, Hegel, Herbart, Schelling, and Schleiermacher, but because it neatly illustrates his philosophy of language. Schopenhauer’s epithets are not merely spiteful slurs; instead, they reflect (...) deep-seated theoretical and methodological commitments to transparency of exposition. (shrink)

Objectives: To assess whether according to healthcare providers, the creation of an ethics service responds to a need; assess the importance of an ethics service for healthcare providers; determine what ethics services should be offered and the preferred formats of delivery; and identify key issues to be initially dealt with by the ethics service.Design: A survey of healthcare providers in Québec’s Centre Local de Services Communautaires , healthcare institutions dedicated to community health and social services.Findings: 96 respondents agreed that an (...) ethics service was needed, and on average the ethics service project was judged to be very important. Preferred formats for ethics consultation and education were identified, as well as key concerns such as the need of respect for the patient as a person, elder abuse and ethical issues in home care.Conclusion: This survey is helping in the implementation of an ethics service and can guide others in similar healthcare institutions. (shrink)

... PREFACE Paul Gochet (Liege) "[...] une entite physique ne peut etre envisagee que comme une sorte de concretisation, de consolidation locale dans un ...

The concept of free will has been heavily debated in philosophy and the social sciences. Its alleged importance lies in its association with phenomena fundamental to our understandings of self, such as autonomy, freedom, self-control, agency, and moral responsibility. Consequently, when neuroscience research is interpreted as challenging or even invalidating this concept, a number of heated social and ethical debates surface. We undertook a content analysis of media coverage of Libet’s et al.’s :623–642, 1983) landmark study, which is frequently interpreted (...) as posing a serious challenge to the existence of free will. Media descriptions of Libet et al.’s experiment provided limited details about the original study. Overall, many media articles reported that Libet et al.’s experiments undermined the existence of free will, despite acknowledging that several methodological limitations had been identified in the literature. A propensity to attribute greater credibility than warranted to neurobiological explanations could be at stake. (shrink)

‘Philosophical dialogue’ indicates both a form of philosophical inquiry and its corresponding literary genre. In its written form, it typically features two or more characters who engage in a discussion concerning morals, knowledge, as well as a variety of topics that can be widely labelled as ‘philosophical’. Our philosophical dialogue takes place in Krakow, Poland. It is a rainy morning and two strangers are waiting at a tram stop. One of them is dressed neatly, and cannot stop fidgeting with his (...) closed umbrella. The other was caught unprepared by the morning downpour and water is dripping from his worn, soaked jacket. (shrink)

Michel Weber, Éléments de routine ayurvédique. Autonomie, rituel et ascèse, Les Éditions Chromatika, 2021. (978-2-930517-82-7 ; pdf 978-2-930517-83-4 ; 104 pp., 14€) -/- L’Ayurvéda propose une philosophie de vie qui articule un vaste système métaphysique (une cosmologie théorique) avec une visée thérapeutique profonde (une anthropologie pratique). -/- À la croisée de la théorie et de la pratique, on trouve la routine (« dinacharya ») dont le but est de susciter l’individuation et la solidarité, c’est-à-dire l’autonomie (de chacun) respectueuse de (...) la communauté (de tous). Ce faisant, elle constitue une ascèse dont l’efficacité a été longuement éprouvée et rarement égalée. (shrink)

In this post‐9/11 era marked by religious and ethnic conflicts and the rise of cultural intolerance, ambiguities arising from the conflation of multiculturalism, sexism, and religious fundamentalism jeopardize the delivery of culturally safe nursing care to non‐Western populations. This new social reality requires nurses to develop a heightened awareness of health issues pertaining to racism and ethnocentrism to provide culturally safe care to non‐Western immigrants or refugees. Through the lens of post‐colonial feminism, this paper explores the challenge of providing culturally (...) safe nursing care in the context of the post‐9/11 in Canadian healthcare settings. A critical appraisal of the literature demonstrates that post‐colonial feminism, despite some limitations, remains a valuable theoretical perspective to apply in cultural nursing research and develop culturally safe nursing practice. Post‐colonial feminism offers the analytical lens to understand how health, social and cultural context, race and gender intersect to impact on non‐Western populations’ health. However, an uncritical application of post‐colonial feminism may not serve racialized men's and women's interests because of its essentialist risk. Post‐colonial feminism must expand its epistemological assumptions to integrate Taylor's concept of identity and recognition and Bakhtin's concepts of dialogism and unfinalizability to explore non‐Western populations’ health issues and the context of nursing practice. This would strengthen the theoretical adequacy of post‐colonial feminist approaches in unveiling the process of racialization that arises from the conflation of multiculturalism, sexism, and religious fundamentalism in Western healthcare settings. (shrink)

In this path breaking volume, leading researchers from psychology, linguistics, philosophy and primatology offer complementary perspectives on the role of intersubjectivity in the context of human development, comparative cognition and...

Direct-to-consumer advertising of healthcare products refers to a variety of marketing practices based on a combination of information and promotion strategies directed at consumers through different media such as radio and television broadcasts, newspaper and magazine ads, and, more recently, through the Internet. The principal form of marketing used by the pharmaceutical industry is the distribution of free samples to physicians but DTCA is an increasing part of global promotional spending for prescription drugs. Latest estimates suggest that DTCA now represents (...) an annual $3.2 billion enterprise for the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. Findings from the literature show that these substantial efforts are geared toward the newer pharmaceuticals for chronic conditions with huge market potentials. The lion's share is going to the 20 most prescribed pharmaceuticals. (shrink)

Ethics designates a structured process by which important human values and meanings of life are understood and tackled. Therein, the ability to discuss openly and reflect on (aka deliberation) understandings of moral problems, on solutions to these problems, and to explore what a meaningful resolution could amount to is highly valued. However, the indicators of what constitutes a high-quality ethical deliberation remain vague and unclear. This article proposes and develops a pragmatist approach to evaluate the quality of deliberation. Deliberation features (...) three important moments: (1) broadening and deepening the understanding of the situation, (2) envisioning action scenarios, (3) coming to a judgment based on the comparative evaluation of scenarios. In this paper, we propose seven criteria to evaluate ethical deliberations: (1) collaborative diversity, (2) experiential literacy, (3) organization of experiences, (4) reflective capacity to instrumentalize the experiences of others, (5) interactional creativity, (6) openness of agents, (7) quality of the reformulation of scenarios. These criteria are explained and applied to the three moments of deliberation. Based on these criteria, three kinds of outcomes for deliberations are identified and discussed: good ethical deliberations, partial ethical deliberations, bad ethical deliberations. Our proposal will guide researchers and practitioners interested in the evaluation of the quality of ethical deliberations. It provides a reference tool that allows them to identify the possible limitations of a deliberation and to implement actions aimed at correcting these limitations in order to achieve the desired qualitative objectives. (shrink)

From a twenty-first century partnership between bioethics and neuroscience, the modern field of neuroethics is emerging, and technologies enabling functional neuroimaging with unprecedented sensitivity have brought new ethical, social and legal issues to the forefront. Some issues, akin to those surrounding modern genetics, raise critical questions regarding prediction of disease, privacy and identity. However, with new and still-evolving insights into our neurobiology and previously unquantifiable features of profoundly personal behaviors such as social attitude, value and moral agency, the difficulty of (...) carefully and properly interpreting the relationship between brain findings and our own self-concept is unprecedented. Therefore, while the ethics of genetics provides a legitimate starting point - even a backbone - for tackling ethical issues in neuroimaging, they do not suffice. Drawing on recent neuroimaging findings and their plausible real-world applications, we argue that interpretation of neuroimaging data is a key epistemological and ethical challenge. This challenge is two-fold. First, at the scientific level, the sheer complexity of neuroscience research poses challenges for integration of knowledge and meaningful interpretation of data. Second, at the social and cultural level, we find that interpretations of imaging studies are bound by cultural and anthropological frameworks. In particular, the introduction of concepts of self and personhood in neuroimaging illustrates the interaction of interpretation levels and is a major reason why ethical reflection on genetics will only partially help settle neuroethical issues. Indeed, ethical interpretation of such findings will necessitate not only traditional bioethical input but also a wider perspective on the construction of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

On répète que notre époque est « individualiste », mais sait-on vraiment ce qu’est l’individu ? Le philosophe Michel Henry nous invite à penser l’individualité à sa racine, indépendamment des discours courant ou sociologique. En mettant en œuvre une méthode phénoménologique, il a estimé parvenir à dégager la vérité d’une individualité originaire qui, loin de se résumer à un pur concept, se révèle concrètement dans une épreuve affective qu’il a appelée l’« ivresse de la vie ». En reconduisant (...) le principe d’individuation dans l’immanence de la vie décrite comme une auto-donation pathétique, cet auteur critique rigoureusement toute conception extatique réduisant l’individu à une totalité organique objective et renouvelle l’interprétation chrétienne de l’Individu. (shrink)

There might be value in examining the phenomenon of free will, without attempting to solve the debate surrounding its existence. Studies have suggested that diminishing belief in free will increases cheating behavior and that basic physiological states such as appetite diminish free will. These findings, if robust, could have important philosophical and ethical implications. Accordingly, we aimed to critically review methodologies and results in the body of literature that speaks to the two following questions: whether certain factors can change belief (...) in free will or not and whether changes in belief in free will impact different attitudinal or behavioral factors or not. Searching the PubMed and PsycInfo databases with different keyword strategies supplemented with reference section searches, we found 52 relevant papers for review. For each distinct study, we extracted information regarding: sample characteristics and related analyses, procedures and methodology, factors investigated, results, and effect sizes. Overall, we found that the samples were heavily constituted of women, of students and younger participants, with little information about representation of ethnic minorities. Procedures and methodology relied strongly on the use of experimental manipulations and a wide array of scales, including scales created by researchers. Several studies suggest the static and consequential properties of belief in free will. However, these conclusions are restrained by numerous limitations of the supporting body of evidence and the absence of replication studies. (shrink)

This volume is a wonderful introduction to Foucault and a testimony to the deep humanity of the man himself.

First published: 2010; Previous edition: 2012..

Il y a des questions concernant le droit auxquelles il n'est pas possible de répondre par la simple analyse du droit en vigueur et que pourtant ni les juristes, ni les philosophes ne peuvent éviter. Ce sont celles qui font l'objet de la philosophie du droit. Elles concernent notamment la définition du droit et d'abord celle du droit en vigueur lui-même, des rapports que le droit entretien avec d'autres phénomènes, comme le pouvoir, la force ou la morale, la possibilité d'une (...) science du droit, la structure du système juridique ou encore la spécificité du raisonnement juridique et des concepts employés par les juristes. (shrink)

In Essai sur le don (Essay on Gifts), a work that the author himself noted was only indicative and incomplete, Marcel Mauss recommended in his conclusions on general sociology and morality that the analysis should be taken further and future research should focus on certain cultural areas that he had not been able to take into account: Micronesia, Indochina, Tibet, Burma, and North Africa, among others. And he stressed the existence, among the Berbers, of “remarkable practices of taoussa,” the study (...) of which, he said, had been the business of Doutté and Maunier (Mauss 1968b: 274, n. 1). (shrink)