Timely and provocative essays on bioethical questions brought to the forefront by the bioterrorist threat.

This book provides a comprehensive commentary of the Philebus designed to shed light on the nature and function of the good in Plato’s philosophy as a whole. Topics discussed include dialectic, pleasure, epistemology, and the relations between metaphysics and ethics.

In this collection of essays, Bromberger explores the centrality of questions and predicaments they create in scientific research. He discusses the nature of explanation, theory, and the foundations of linguistics.

Este no es un libro de filosofía, ni de astrología, ni de esoterismo. No hay en él ninguna pretensión más allá de la simple expresión de un recorrido intelectual y vital, de una búsqueda y un encuentro. Desde este punto de vista se intentan exponer tres esferas distintas del ser y del conocer, de forma separada pero con las oportunas referencias cruzadas, y manteniendo siempre la jerarquía que las diferencia. La primera de ellas es la que aquí se considera como (...) un tipo de exoterismo, es decir, un ámbito externo de considerar las cosas (en referencia a los dos siguientes): la filosofía; con la razón como facultad analítica y reflexiva por excelencia, pretende buscar las razones de ciertas problemáticas mediante el pensamiento discursivo. El segundo ámbito, el intermedio, definido como el del simbolismo, de la analogía universal o del anima mundi, es tratado aquí en referencia a una ciencia tradicional y sagrada: la astrología. Y el tercero y último es aquel dominio correspondiente a la Metafísica integral, en el sentido profundo que apunta hacia la Trascendencia misma, como núcleo de toda forma espiritual; se presentará aquí desde el esoterismo tradicional en la línea de los trabajos de René Guénon, pero principalmente desde la tradición más reciente (la islámica) y la considerada por muchos más primordial (la hindú). (shrink)

J’examine dans cet article le double aspect sous lequel la loi se trouve discutée par l’Étranger dans le Politique : si elle fait tout d’abord l’objet d’une critique sévère au nom d’une science idéale, elle est ensuite réhabilitée à titre de substitut à l’idéal défaillant. Cette réhabilitation est complexe : elle passe par un étrange récit de politique-fiction qui fait écho sans le dire à Thucydide et qui permet à l’Étranger de lier dans un même procès écriture juridique et écriture (...) spéculative ; elle se développe ensuite moyennant une série d’arguments qui insistent sur le nécessaire respect de la loi indépendamment de son contenu et de sa pertinence, mais qui indiquent aussi implicitement la nécessité de lui attribuer une origine mythique dans une connaissance divine devenue inaccessible. Le Politique signe l’acte de naissance de la fiction théologico-politique.I explore in this paper the dual aspect of the Eleatic Visitor’s discussion of law in the Statesman. Although it is at first severely criticized on behalf of an ideal science, it is then rehabilitated as a substitute for the failing ideal. But this rehabilitation is a complex one : it is made via a very peculiar account of political fiction echoing implicitly Thucydides and allowing the Eleatic Visitor to put on the same trial legal and speculative writing. Then it develops by using several arguments, insisting on the necessary respect due to the law, whatever content and relevance it may have, but yet implicitly pointing out the need to confer a mythic origin to law within the context of divine knowledge now impervious to men. Thus Plato’s Statesman pioneers theological political fiction. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyze the legal situation regarding physician-assisted suicide in the world. Our hypothesis is that the prohibitive stance on physician-assisted suicide in most societies in the world today seems to be related to our moral attitudes toward suicide. This brings us to a discussion about life itself. We claim that the total lack of legal protection for physician-assisted suicide from international organizations and most countries in the world lies in a philosophical assumption that supports much of our (...) common beliefs about what life really is. This assumption states that life must be thought of as not belonging exclusively to the individual. We argue that this assumption is a misconception that can be heard in the debate on suicide. Consequently we endorse a different conception of life which tends to favor a pro-choice stance towards suicide and assisted death in general. This position takes the patient’s decision about when to die more seriously. We conclude that there is no reason why physician-assisted suicide does not deserve legal protection as an individual right to die under international law. (shrink)

This opinion paper takes aim at an error made recently by Clarivate Analytics in which it sent out an email that congratulated academics for becoming exclusive members of academia’s most cited elite, the Highly Cited Researchers. However, that email was sent out to an undisclosed number of non-HCRs, who were offered an apology shortly after, through a bulk mail, which tried to down-play the importance of the error, all the while praising the true HCRs. When Clarivate Analytics senior management was (...) contacted, the company declined to offer an indication of the number of academics who had been contacted and erroneously awarded the HCR status. We believe that this regrettable blunder, together with the opacity offered by the company, fortify the corporate attitude about the value of the journal impact factor, and what it represents, namely a marketing tool that is falsely used to equate citations with quality, worth, or influence. The continued commercialization of metrics such as the JIF is at the heart of their use to assess the “quality” of a researcher, their work, or a journal, and contributes to a great extent to driving scientific activities towards a futile endeavor. (shrink)

Neuroconstructivism: How the Brain Constructs Cognition proposes a unifying framework for the study of cognitive development that brings together (1) constructivism (which views development as the progressive elaboration of increasingly complex structures), (2) cognitive neuroscience (which aims to understand the neural mechanisms underlying behavior), and (3) computational modeling (which proposes formal and explicit specifications of information processing). The guiding principle of our approach is context dependence, within and (in contrast to Marr [1982]) between levels of organization. We propose that three (...) mechanisms guide the emergence of representations: competition, cooperation, and chronotopy; which themselves allow for two central processes: proactivity and progressive specialization. We suggest that the main outcome of development is partial representations, distributed across distinct functional circuits. This framework is derived by examining development at the level of single neurons, brain systems, and whole organisms. We use the terms encellment, embrainment, and embodiment to describe the higher-level contextual influences that act at each of these levels of organization. To illustrate these mechanisms in operation we provide case studies in early visual perception, infant habituation, phonological development, and object representations in infancy. Three further case studies are concerned with interactions between levels of explanation: social development, atypical development and within that, developmental dyslexia. We conclude that cognitive development arises from a dynamic, contextual change in embodied neural structures leading to partial representations across multiple brain regions and timescales, in response to proactively specified physical and social environment. (shrink)

Over the last 40 years or so, there has been an explosion of cultural evolution research in anthropology and archaeology. In each discipline, cultural evolutionists investigate how interactions between individuals translate into group level patterns, with the aim of explaining the diachronic dynamics and diversity of cultural traits. However, while much attention has been given to deterministic processes, we contend that current evolutionary accounts of cultural change are limited because they do not adopt a systematic stochastic approach. First, we show (...) that, in contrast with the intense debates in ecology and population genetics, the importance of stochasticity in evolutionary processes has generated little discussion in the sciences of cultural evolution to date. Second, we speculate on the reasons, both ideological and methodological, why that should be so. Third, we highlight the inadequacy of genetically-inspired stochastic models in the context of cultural evolution modelling, and ask which fundamental stochastic processes might be more relevant to take up. We conclude that the field of cultural evolution would benefit from a stochastic revolution. For that to occur, stochastic models ought to be developed specifically for cultural data and not through a copy-pasting of neutral models from population genetics or ecology. (shrink)

El filósofo mexicano Emilio Uranga (1921-1988) es recordado por su Análisis del ser del mexicano (1952) y por su labor como periodista político y asesor de López Mateos, Díaz Ordaz, Echeverría y López Portillo. Es posible tender un puente entre los dos aspectos, gracias a su concepción ontologizante de la Revolución Mexicana, leitmotiv de su producción teórica.

The first form of the inside-outside dichotomy appears as a self-encapsulated system with an active border. These systems are based on two complementary but asymmetric processes: constructive and interactive. The former physically constitute the system as a recursive network of component production, defining an inside. The maintenance of the constructive processes implies that the internal organization also constrains certain flows of matter and energy across the border of the system, generating interactive processes. These interactive processes ensure the maintenance of the (...) constructive processes thus specifying a meaningful outside. Upon this basic form of identity formation, the evolutionary and historical domain is open for the emergence of a whole hierarchy and ecology of insides and outsides. These which mutually subsume and collaborate in the maintenance of the essential inside-outside dichotomy that defines the conditions of possibility of the subjects and the worlds they generate. (shrink)

Recent research in philosophy of science has shown that scientists rely on a plurality of strategies to develop successful explanations of different types of phenomena. In the case of biology, most of these strategies go far beyond the traditional and reductionistic models of scientific explanation that have proven so successful in the fundamental sciences. Concretely, in the last two decades, philosophers of science have discovered the existence of at least two different types of scientific explanation at work in the biological (...) sciences, namely: mechanistic and structural explanations. Despite the growing evidence about the radically different nature of these two types of explanation, no inquiry has been conducted to date to determine the ontological reasons that might underlie these differences, nor the way in which these types of explanations can be systematically related with each other. Here, we aim to cover this gap by connecting this plurality of research strategies with the existence of emergent levels of reality. We argue that the existence of these different—and apparently incompatible—explanatory strategies to account for biological phenomena derives from the existence of “ontological jumps” in nature, which generate different regimes of causation that in turn demand the development of different explanatory frameworks. We identify two of these strategies—mechanistic modelling and network modelling—and connect them to the existence of two ontological regimes of causation. Finally, we relate them with each other in a systematic way. In this vein, our paper provides an ontological justification for the plurality of explanatory strategies that we see in the life sciences. (shrink)

This research investigates the potential for a “fair” co-branding operation. A major corporate brand is fictitiously allied with a Fair Trade labelling organization brand. The sample for the study is composed of 540 respondents, representative of the French population. By considering commercial brands and Fair Trade labels as dissimilar in terms of customers’ perceived Fair Trade orientations, this article studies how this lack of similarity impacts perceived congruence between both entities and how prior brand attitudes and congruence influence customers’ evaluation (...) of the co-branded product. The results of this research demonstrate that: Consumer prior brand attitudes toward the partner brands influence very little customers’ evaluation. Perceived similarity of the partner brands has a strong influence toward congruence of the co-branding operation. Results also indicate that congruence has a strong influence upon customers’ evaluation. An inverted U-shaped relationship exists between perceived similarity and relevancy of the alliance, and between expectancy and customers’ evaluation. The results obtained through the test of a partial least square model, and inverted U-shaped hypothesis, represent a new insight into co-branding theory. The high discursive power of fair co-branding is a key issue: the corporate brand provides the alliance with its leading position, while the Fair Trade brand provides the ethical attribute. (shrink)

This paper develops a largely neglected parallel between prudence and population ethics. Prudence is generally understood to be concerned with the balancing of well-being over time. How, precisely, well-being ought to be balanced over time, however, is a fervently debated question. I argue that developing a standard guiding such evaluations is exceedingly challenging. This is due to an often overlooked fact about prudence, namely that it shares a structural similarity with population ethics: In both contexts, we assess the comparative value (...) of populations of personstages/people, which may vary in number and level of well-being. Based on this analogy, I show that the development of an adequate theory of prudence runs into very similar impossibility results as obtain in population ethics. In particular, I prove that Arrhenius’ fifth impossibility theorem can be applied to prudence. I develop and compare four possible answers to this challenge. First, I discuss the possibility of accepting the very repugnant conclusion intrapersonally. Second, I present and further develop Donald Bruckner’s Minimax Regret approach, which gives up Transitivity. Third, I apply Jacob Nebel’s Lexical Threshold View to prudence and critically evaluate it. Lastly, I introduce what I call the Negative Lexicality View, which is based on Lexical Threshold View but overcomes some of its problems. (shrink)

In her foreword to Science Next, Elizabeth Edwards wrote of science as a tool for social progress: "Innovation is not simply the abstract victory of knowledge [or] the research that gave me years to live; the next science can advance human flourishing and serve the common good. That's the kind of world I want to leave for my children, and for yours." With these words, she joined a tradition that goes back to America's founders, who saw America itself as a (...) "great experiment." Yet while no one can deny that science undergirds the American Dream, it has long been fertile terrain for the "culture wars." Along with arguing the pros and cons of abortion and healthcare, policymakers must now grapple with advancements that raise questions about what it means to be human: we've decoded the genome, but should we modify it to enhance certain "desirable" traits? If we can, should we prolong life at any cost? Will we soon be counting robots, cyborgs, and chimeras among our friends and family?The first book to unpack our love/hate relationship with science from our country's origins to today, The Body Politic is essential reading for science buffs and concerned citizens alike.Jonathan D. Moreno is editor of the Center for American Progress' online magazine Science Progress and professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Author and editor of many seminal books and articles on science and science policy, he divides his time between Philadelphia, PA, and Washington, DC. (shrink)

"La grande question métaphysique aujourd'hui, en matière de langage, est de savoir si un modèle computationnel suffit à expliquer le comportement linguistique humain. Est-ce que la faculté de langage de chacun d'entre nous et plus spécialement sa compétence linguistique, s'explique parce que nous avons des algorythmes implémentés dans notre tête? Cette question appartient de plein droit à la philosophie de la linguistique. Elle a une vaste portée. En aval, elle concerne la représentation d'une bonne partie du comportement humain, selon le (...) modèle qu'en donnent les cognitivistes de stricte obédience. En amont, elle concerne tout simplement le vieux débat de théorie de la connaissance entre le rationalisme et l'empirisme. L'objet de ce livre est une critique fouillée du rationalisme dans ses fondements linguistiques. Il prend donc la forme d'une analyse de la nature du savoir linguistique et de celle du langage.... Il s'agit de constituer les bases d'une nouvelle version de l'empirisme que nous pouvons baptiser externalisme. Les résultats développés dans ce livre concernent principalement la théorie de la science et celle du langage. La thèse ultime de l'externalisme c'est que l'esprit lui-même est d'essence historique et empirique." Extrait de l'introduction. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to analyze the problem of the intensity of forms in the late Middle Ages and to show how this debate eventually gave rise to a new metaphysical project in the 14th century: the project of quantifying the different types of perfections existing in the universe – that is the project of “measuring being”. Cet ouvrage se propose d’analyser l’histoire du débat relatif à l’intensité des formes au Moyen Âge, et de retracer la manière dont (...) il conduisit au XIVe siècle à l’émergence d’un projet métaphysique nouveau : celui de quantifier les perfections contenues dans l’univers et, ainsi, de “mesurer l’être”. (shrink)

This paper studies ‘minority’ initiatives to organize sports games. A meta-analysis of published data in the literature identifies the formal appearance taken by each of these initiatives under the Olympic model. But it also conduces to build a number of indicators to answer a series of questions about their logic and strategies. All the initiatives studied are based on an ambivalent posture that, while based on the denunciation of a discriminating space, claim access to it. By an astonishing paradox, ‘non-normative’ (...) actors are driven to reclaim a model that, under cover of Universal, aims to establish a norm that is situated and dated. In practice, they use two types of strategies: a strategy for participation in the Olympics to transform them into a space which represents a fight against exclusion, or a strategy to create alternative events. Whatever the strategy, these initiatives are implemented according to their objectives. Differentiated in their forms—participatory or autonomy—they are also in their purpose. The comparison of these initiatives shows that ultimately, beyond strategies and logic inherent in different social, historical and organizational contexts, the mobilizations of the actors reveal the same ambivalence about the sports model conveyed by the Olympic institution. (shrink)

We introduce three natural collective variants of the well-known axiom of desirability, which require that if the contributions of a first coalition are at least as large as the contributions of a second coalition, then the payoff in the first coalition should be as large as the payoff in the second coalition. These axioms are called coalitional desirability and average coalitional desirability. The third variant, called uniform coalitional desirability, applies only to coalitions with the same size. We show that coalitional (...) desirability is very strong: no value satisfies simultaneously this axiom and efficiency. To the contrary, the combination of either average coalitional desirability or uniform coalitional desirability with efficiency and additivity characterizes the equal division value. (shrink)

This paper examines the discussion about false pleasures in the "Philebus" (36 c3-44 a11). After stressing the crucial importance of this discussion in the economy of the dialogue, it attempts to identify the problematic locus of the possibility of true or false pleasures. Socrates points to it by means of an analogy between pleasure and doxa. Against traditional interpretations, which reduce the distinction drawn in this passage to a distinction between doxa and pleasure on the one hand and their object (...) on the other, it is argued that, rather, Socrates distinguishes between the mere fact of having a doxa or a pleasure, on the one hand, and the content of these acts, on the other hand. Consequently, the possibility for a pleasure to be false does not concern its relation to an object, but the affective content which defines it. In order to show how the affective content of a pleasure can be false, it is necessary to examine the three species of false pleasures described by Socrates in their relation to appearance and imagination. Appearance is not identical with perception for Plato: it consists in a mixture of perception and doxa. As for imagination, it consists in "illustrating" a doxa present in the soul by means of a "quasi-perception". It is the presence of a doxa in each of these processes which makes it possible for them to be true or false, while mere perception cannot be either true or false. It is then argued that according to the "Philebus" pleasure can be false precisely because its affective content is not a mere perception, but either an appearance or an imagination. (shrink)

Our goal in this paper is to articulate a precise concept of at least a certain kind of disease-mongering, showing how pharmaceutical marketing can commercially exploit certain diseases when their best definition is given through the success of a treatment in a clinical trial. We distinguish two types of disease-mongering according to the way they exploit the definition of the trial population for marketing purposes. We argue that behind these two forms of disease-mongering there are two well-known problems in the (...) statistical methodology of clinical trials (the reference class problem and the distinction between statistical and clinical significance). Overcoming them is far from simple. (shrink)

We provide characterizations of the equal division values and their convex mixtures, using a new axiom on a fixed player set based on player nullification which requires that if a player becomes null, then any two other players are equally affected. Two economic applications are also introduced concerning bargaining under risk and common-pool resource appropriation.

CorpusReader est un dispositif expérimental permettant d'articuler plusieurs instruments pour construire des corpus multi-annotés. L'objectif de ce dispositif est la description de corrélations entre niveaux de description pour caractériser des normes, comme par exemple des discours ou des genres. Dans ce cadre, toute annotation est une interprétation et le contexte est défini comme une pluralité d'interprétations réifiées dans un codage commun. CorpusReader permet à la fois de construire cette annotation contextualisante puis d'en extraire des sous-ensembles et des quantifications pour des (...) analyses quantitatives. (shrink)

CorpusReader est un dispositif expérimental permettant d'articuler plusieurs instruments pour construire des corpus multi-annotés. L'objectif de ce dispositif est la description de corrélations entre niveaux de description pour caractériser des normes, comme par exemple des discours ou des genres. Dans ce cadre, toute annotation est une interprétation et le contexte est défini comme une pluralité d'interprétations réifiées dans un codage commun. CorpusReader permet à la fois de construire cette annotation contextualisante puis d'en extraire des sous-ensembles et des quantifications pour des (...) analyses quantitatives. (shrink)

La lectura nos permite disponer de una caja de herramientas que puede y debe contribuir a la mejora de los entornos en donde los individuos y la sociedad tejen sus quehaceres. Este ensayo analiza con rigor y amenidad las distintas funciones que la lectura puede cumplir: desde su placer hasta sus usos como forma de conocimiento, pasando por la lectura como un instrumento de transformación moral.

Although Pascal is a thinker of the figure of Christ, he seems to neglect the other Persons of the Trinity, in particular the Holy Spirit. This article examines the place Pascal gives to the third Person of the Trinity. It shows that, for Pascal, the Holy Spirit plays an important role in the conversion of man, insofar as he spreads in his heart the grace of Christ sent by the Father. Finally, this study comes to a difficult fragment of Pascal’s (...) in which he asks whether all Holy Scripture is dictated by the Holy Spirit, in order to propose a new reading. (shrink)

The Analytic/Synthetic distinction did not originate in Kant, but in Port-Royal's logical theory. The key for the doctrine is the explicite recognition of two different kinds of relative clauses, e.g. explicative and determinative. In the middle eighteenth century the distinction becomes a topic within the grammars. Although we can find by grammarians different criteria for the distinction, these criteria (for which we can find medieval sources) are for the main predictable from the original theory of ideas, which was presented in (...) Port-Royal's logical writings. The topic of the two relative clauses (somewhat broader than the analytic/synthetic distinction) can be used to give empirical criteria for analyticity and also for revisiting Quine's criticism of the topic. Analyticity yet appears as a master piece of classical linguistic philosophy and not as being the empty dogma of modern empiricism. (shrink)