Ces deux ouvrages tentent de présenter l'évolution du concept de l'utopie. L'ouvrage de Claude Cohen-Safir voudrait recenser les noms des penseurs européens et américains qu'elle considère comme importants dans la trajectoire des idées utopiques outre Atlantique. On trouve mention, dans ce livre, d'utopistes présents dans l'ouvrage dirigé par Michèle Riot-Sarcey qui s'intéresse davantage aux questions de définition et de méthodologie. Le but de chaque auteur dans ce collectif est aussi...

RationaleThere are growing concerns over the occurrence of adverse physiologic events occurring in pilots during operation of United States Air Force and Navy high-performance aircraft. We hypothesize that a heightened inspiratory work of breathing experienced by jet pilots by virtue of the on-board life support system may constitute a “distraction stimulus” consequent to an increased sensation of respiratory muscle effort. As such, the purpose of this study was to determine whether increasing inspiratory muscle effort adversely impacts on attentional performance.MethodsTwelve, healthy (...) participants were recruited for this study. Participants completed six repetitions of a modified Masked Conjunctive Continuous Performance Task protocol while breathing against four different inspiratory threshold loads to assess median reaction times. A computer-controlled threshold loading device was used to set the inspiratory threshold loads. Repeated measures analysis of variances were performed to examine: the efficacy of the threshold loading device to impose significantly higher loading at each loading condition; the effects of loading condition on respiratory muscle effort sensation; and the influence of hypercapnia on MCCPT scores during inspiratory threshold loading. Generalized additive mixed effects models were used to examine the potential non-linear effects of respiratory muscular effort sensation, device loading, and hypercapnia, on MCCPT scores during inspiratory threshold loading.ResultsInspiratory threshold loading significantly augmented inspiratory effort sensation and the inspiratory pressure-time product. Our analyses also revealed that median hit RT was positively associated with inspiratory effort sensation during inspiratory loading trials.ConclusionThe findings of this work suggest that it was not increasing inspiratory muscle effort per se, but rather participant’s subjective perception of inspiratory “load” that impacts negatively on attentional performance; i.e., as the degree of inspiratory effort sensation increased, sotoo did median hit RT. As such, it is reasonable to suggest that minimizing inspiratory effort sensation during high-performance flight operations may prove useful in reducing pilot RTs during complex behavioral tasks. (shrink)

La richesse des œuvres de George Sand ne cessent de nous éblouir : deux ouvrages témoignent de l’étendue de sa production littéraire dans un contexte historique bien précis grâce à des chercheurs connus et moins connus qui ont soigneusement édité ses écrits. Le contexte est d’autant plus important pour notre compréhension de son engagement public. Contrairement à la notion de l’auteur romantique qui se coupe du monde dans une solitude artistique, George Sand est ici dans sa splendeur de femme...

Throughout history, dance has maintained a critical presence across all human cultures, defying barriers of class, race, and status. How dance has synergistically co-evolved with humans has fueled a rich debate on the function of art and the essence of aesthetic experience, engaging numerous artists, historians, philosophers, and scientists. While dance shares many features with other art forms, one attribute unique to dance is that it is most commonly expressed with the human body. Because of this, social scientists and neuroscientists (...) are turning to dance and dancers to help answer questions of how the brain coordinates the body to perform complex, precise, and beautiful movements. In the present paper, we discuss how recent advances in neuroscientific methods provide the tools to advance our understanding of not only the cerebral phenomena associated with dance learning and observation but also the neural underpinnings of aesthetic appreciation associated with watching dance. We suggest that future work within the fields of dance neuroscience and neuroaesthetics have the potential to provide mutual benefits to both the scientific and artistic communities. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Contemplating Suicide: The Language and Ethnics of Self Harm By Gavin J. Fairbairn Routledge, 1995. Pp. xxx. ISBN 415?10606. £12.95(pbk). Religious Transformation in Western Society. The End of Happiness By Harvie Ferguson, Routledge, 1992. Pp. xvi + 269. ISBN 0?415?02574?5. £XX.xx. Feminism and the Self: The Web of Identity By Morwenna Griffiths Routledge, 1995. Pp. 191. ISBN 0?415?09821?1. £12.99 (pbk). Faith, Scepticism and Personal Identity. A Festschrift for Terence Penelhum Edited by J.J. Macintosh and H. A. Meynell University of Calgary (...) Press, 1994. Pp. vii + 304. CAN$27.95. The Shape of Space (second edition) By Graham Nerlich Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 0?521?45645?2. Logical Learning Theory: A Human Teleology and its Empirical Support By Joseph F. Rychlak University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Pp. 387. ISBN 0?8032?3904?1. £32.95 Philosophical Idealism and Christian Belief By Alan P.F. Sell University of Wales Press, 1995. Pp. x + 338. (shrink)

Some factors affecting marital distances have been studied in two Outer Hebridean islands, Harris (843 marriages) and Barra (444 marriages), over the period 1855-1990. In each island marital distances fell before 1900, but then rose to their greatest values after the 1950s. Fishermen generally married at the shortest distances and men in land-based occupations at the longest. The depression in the fishing industry during the 1880s and early 1890s was associated with reductions in marital distances, especially among fishermen. In the (...) different regions of Harris, marital distances were least in the south-east, where settlement was most dense, and greatest in the south-west where it was most sparse. (shrink)

From climate change to fossil fuel dependency, from the uneven effects of natural disasters to the loss of biodiversity: complex socio-environmental problems indicate the urgency for cross-disciplinary research into the ways in which the social, the natural and the technological are ever more entangled. This ground breaking text moves between environmental sociology and environmental geography, political and social ecology and critical design studies to provide a definitive mapping of the state of environmental social theory in the age of the (...) anthropocene. Environments, Natures and Social Theory provokes dialogue and confrontation between critical political economists, actor network theorists, neo-Malthusians and environmental justice advocates. It maps out the new environmental politics of hybridity moving from hybrid neo-liberals to end times ecologists, from post environmentalists to cyborg eco-socialists. White, Rudy and Gareau insist on the necessity of a critical but optimistic hybrid politics, arguing that a more just, egalitarian, democratic and sustainable anthropocene is within our grasp. This will only be brought into being, however, by reclaiming, celebrating and channeling the reconstructive potential of entangled hybrid humans as inventive hominids, creative gardeners, critical publics and political agents. Written in an accessible style, Environments, Natures and Social Theory is an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students across the social sciences. (shrink)

In this highly original and thought-provoking work the late Miller Mair puts forward his ideas for a new psychology. First published in 1989, he deals with issues of fundamental importance to the future of a psychology guided by genuine enquiry and concern rather than mere professional self-interest. Crossing and re-crossing boundaries between psychology, psychotherapy and philosophy, and between ‘science’ and ‘art’, he demonstrates the linkages between the personal and the impersonal, subject and object, inside and outside, with a daring not (...) previously risked by anyone working in the area. Dr Mair stresses the importance of a poetic approach in psychology and psychotherapy, and the need to explore and understand the nature of psychology through an imaginative freedom of language. He emphasizes that a poetic awareness and attentiveness is fundamental to any pursuit of understanding of ourselves or others. This is a very personal book, concerned with _personal knowledge_, but it is meant for anyone who seeks to understand themselves and others, and what is involved in coming to such understanding. Focusing on ordinary human experience, and moving towards literary and artistic modes of expression, the author invites you to enter in, follow what _you_ think and feel, as he proposes a radical revision of much that is accepted in psychology and in psychotherapy. (shrink)

A case study is presented of the development of computer-based support tools for power engineers in the electricity supply industry. The objective was to develop an expert system to support witching schedule production. A user-centred approach was followed which led the user community to conclude that a switching schedule production assistant (SSPA) was required which would leave control with the power engineer. Prototype systems were developed and evaluated in user trials which revealed that a significant and more general purpose tool (...) would be a computer generated electricity network display that the engineers could manipulate. The paper concludes that the process of enabling users to evaluate alternative forms of technology can facilitate the development systems that are useful, acceptable and usable. (shrink)

In his 1947 British Academy lecture on Naturalistic Ethics, Mr. W. F. R. Hardie is concerned to ask himself whether a naturalistic theory of ethics can give a “satisfactory account of our moral knowledge or convictions,” or whether some form of non-naturalism is demanded by our moral experience. It will be remembered that after a careful sifting and examination of certain features of our moral knowledge or convictions, Mr. Hardie suspends judgment between naturalism and non-naturalism, observing that “on the one (...) hand philosophers who start from the ostensible facts of our moral experience and thinking, and are most careful and accurate in their rendering of these facts, have tended to be led to objectivist and anti-naturalistic conclusions. Where they least carry conviction is in the moral epistemology which they assume or defend. When we reflect, with the epistemological issue in mind, on the actual process in ourselves of moral reflection and decision, we are more inclined to sympathize with a ‘moral sentiment’ theory than we ought to be if the rationalists are wholly in the right.” In what follows I wish to consider another feature of our moral experience which Mr. Hardie did not examine in his lecture and which appears to be of considerable importance, namely the situation where, to put it very roughly for the moment, we find ourselves at variance with another person or persons on a moral issue, where, for instance, I hold that a certain course of conduct is right, and the other person or persons hold that it is wrong, or vice versa , and where further we may pursue divergent courses of action accordingly. I wish to ask myself whether the naturalistic commentary on this situation of ethical disagreement is altogether satisfactory when we consider it in the light of “the ostensible facts of our moral experience and thinking,” whether, in fact, to use another phrase of Mr. Hardie's, it squares altogether with “our fundamental moral convictions” in regard to such a situation. The naturalistic commentary with which I am primarily concerned is that which is now sometimes labelled “the emotive theory of ethics,” and is to be found admirably developed, for example, in Professor Stevenson's book Ethics and Language. (shrink)

The practice of critical care medicine has long been a difficult task for most critical care physicians in the densely populated city of Hong Kong, where we face limited resources and a limited number of intensive care beds. Our triage decisions are largely based on the potential of functional reversibility of the patients. Provision of graded care beds may help to relieve some of the demands on the intensive care beds. Decisions to forego futile medical treatment are frequently physician-guided family-based (...) decisions, which is quite contrary to the Western focus on patient autonomy. However, as people acquire knowledge about health care and they become more aware of individual rights, our critical care doctors will be able to narrow the gaps between the dif ferent concepts of medical ethics among our professionals as well as in our society. An open and caring attitude from our intensivists will be important in minimizing the cross-cultural conflict on the complex issue of medical futility. (shrink)

Smooth muscle cells squeeze the blood back to your heart, raise the hackles on your neck and change the F‐stop of your eyes. The past year has provided penetrating new insights into their mechanism of contraction.

Brain-centered theories of consciousness seem to face insuperable difficulties. While some philosophers now doubt that the hard problem of consciousness will ever be solved, others call for radically new approaches to conscious experience. In this article I resurrect a largely forgotten approach to consciousness known as neorealism. According to neorealism, consciousness is merely a part, or cross-section, of the environment. Neorealism implies that all conscious experiences, veridical or otherwise, exist outside of the brain and are wholly independent of being (...) perceived or not; nonveridical perceptions of the environment over an arbitrarily short period of time are supposed to be objective constituents of the environment over a more extended time scale. I argue here that neorealism fares at least as well as brain-centered theories of consciousness on a number of fundamental issues. On one fundamental issue—the nature of the relation between veridical and nonveridical perceptions—neorealism outperforms its competitors. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to present and compare two approaches to formalizing cross-world comparisons like John might have been taller than he is in quantified modal logics. One is the standard method employing degrees and graded positives, according to which the example just given is to be paraphrased as something like The height that John has is such that he might have had a height greater than it, which is amenable to familiar formalization strategies with respect (...) to quantified modal logic. The other approach, based on subjunctive modal logic, mimics the mixed indicative-subjunctive patterns typical of cross-world comparisons in many natural languages by means of explicit mood markers. This latter approach is new and should, for various reasons, appeal to linguists and philosophers. Along the way, I argue that attempts to capture cross-world comparison by means of sentential operators are either inadequate or subject to substantive logical and philosophical objections. (shrink)

The problem of heterosis has been scrutinized from two points of view: the general experimental methodology and the interpretation of the facts in existing theories.Concerning the general experimental methodology, the relativity of the concept of heterosis is shown with respect to age and time of development of the parental strains, to the variations of the environmental conditions and to the direction of the reciprocal crosses. Therefore, in a large number of cases, experiments have taught not to be exhaustive.Concerning the existing (...) theories, heterosis is considered to be the result of a heterozygosity which can express itself at three levels, which are defined as heteroallely, heterogenomy and heterocytomy. Some works, which are well-representative for one of these three levels, are analysed, and within the results and theories of these works is looked for a point of agreement, in order to render a general hypothesis of heterosis possible. This point of agreement appears to be the cytoplasm, or more precisely, a nucleo-cytoplasmic equilibrium. In this way alone it is possible to disclose the existing continuity from crosses, as well as in the expression of the ovula-spermatozoid compatibility, which varies from lethality to hybrid vigour. From these evidences a general theory of heterosis is presented, by which heterosis is explained as the result of a disturbed nucleocytoplasmic equilibrium: it considers heterosis as a particular case of a more general law,i.e. the ovula-spermatozoid compatibility.This hypothesis is also discussed with respect to the diverse existing theories of cytoplasmic heredity. Some unsolved questions bearing on these problems are put forward, and the way to their solution has been indicated. (shrink)