Lee suggests a conceptualization of health data sharing not merely as an act of altruism, but as a gift. The difference is important, as the inscription of the latter in a social context inv...

BackgroundThe advent of learning healthcare systems (LHSs) raises an important implementation challenge concerning how to request and manage consent to support secondary use of data in learning cycles, particularly research activities. Current consent models in Quebec were not established with the context of LHSs in mind and do not support the agility and transparency required to obtain consent from all involved, especially the citizens. Therefore, a new approach to consent is needed. Previous work identified the meta-consent model as a promising (...) alternative to fulfill the requirements of LHSs, particularly large-scale deployments. We elicited the public’s attitude toward the meta-consent model to evaluate if the model could be understood by the citizens and would be deemed acceptable to prepare for its possible implementation in Quebec.MethodsEight focus groups, with a total of 63 members of the general public from various backgrounds were conducted in Quebec, Canada, in 2019. Explicit attention was given to literacy levels, language spoken at home and rural vs urban settings. We assessed attitudes, concerns and facilitators regarding key components of the meta-consent model: predefined categories to personalized consent requests, a dynamic web-based infrastructure to record meta-consent, and default settings. To analyse the discussions, a thematic content analysis was performed using a qualitative software.ResultsOur findings showed that participants were supportive of this new approach of consent as it promotes transparency and offers autonomy for the management of their health data. Key facilitators were identified to be considered in the implementation of a meta-consent model in the Quebec LHSs: information and transparency, awareness campaigns, development of educational tools, collaboration of front-line healthcare professionals, default settings deemed acceptable by the society as well as close partnerships with recognized and trusted institutions.ConclusionsThis qualitative study reveals the openness of a sample of the Quebec population regarding the meta-consent model for secondary use of health data for research. This first exploratory study conducted with the public is an important step in guiding decision-makers in the next phases of implementing the various strategies to support access and use of health data in Quebec. (shrink)

In 2013, Bennett proposed a mereological theory in which the parthood relation is defined on the basis of two primitive relations: a is a part of b iff a fills a slot owned by b. However, this theory has issues counting how many parts an entity has. We explore the various counting problems and propose a new theory to solve them. Keeping the core idea of Bennett’s slots, this theory introduces mereological relations between slots. This theory enables us to solve (...) all known counting problems and to go beyond the limits of Bennett’s theory by theorising expected features of mereological theories: supplementation principles and mereological sum and fusion. The theory is illustrated on ontological issues on the nature of structural universals and informational entities. (shrink)

The notion of affordance remains elusive, notwithstanding its importance for the representation of agency, cognition, and behaviors. This paper lays down a foundation for an ontology of affordances by elaborating the idea of “core affordance” which would serve as a common ground for explaining existing diverse conceptions of affordances and their interrelationships. For this purpose, it analyzes M. T. Turvey’s dispositional theory of affordances in light of a formal ontology of dispositions. Consequently, two kinds of so-called “core affordances” are proposed: (...) specific and general ones. Inspired directly by Turvey’s original account, a specific core affordance is intimately connected to a specific agent, as it is reciprocal with a counterpart effectivity of this agent within the agent-environment system. On the opposite, a general core affordance does not depend on individual agents; rather, its realization involves an action by an instance of a determinate class of agents. The utility of such core affordances is illustrated by examining how they can be leveraged to formalize other major accounts of affordances. Additionally, it is briefly outlined how core affordances can be employed to analyze three notions that are closely allied with affordances: the environment, image schemas, and intentions. (shrink)

Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) was one of the most important French philosophers of the Twentieth Century. His impact has been felt across many disciplines: sociology; cultural studies; art theory and politics. This volume presents a diverse selection of interviews, conversations and debates which relate to the five decades of his working life, both as a political militant, experimental philosopher and teacher. Including hard-to-find interviews and previously untranslated material, this is the first time that interviews with Lyotard have been presented (...) as a collection. Key concepts from Lyotard's thought – the differend, the postmodern, the immaterial – are debated and discussed across different time periods, prompted by specific contexts and provocations. In addition there are debates with other thinkers, including Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, which may be less familiar to an Anglophone audience. These debates and interviews help to contextualise Lyotard, highlighting the importance of Marx, Freud, Kant and Wittgenstein, in addition to the Jewish thought which accompanies the questions of silence, justice and presence that pervades Lyotard's thinking. (shrink)

In this book it explores science and technology, makes connections between these epistemic, cultural, and political trends, and develops profound insights into the nature of our postmodernity.

In The Differend, Lyotard subjects to scrutiny- from the particular perspective of his notion of 'differend' - the turn of all Western philosophies toward language; the decline of metaphysics; the present intellectual retreat of Marxism; the hopes raised and mostly dashed, by theory; and the growing political despair. Taking his point of departure in an analysis of what Auschwitz meant philosophically, Lyotard attempts to sketch out modes of thought for our present.

Lyotard’s earliest major work, available in English for the first time. Jean-François Lyotard is recognized as one of the most significant French philosophers of the twentieth century. Although nearly all of his major writing has been translated into English, one important work has until now been unavailable. Discourse, Figure is Lyotard’s thesis. Provoked in part by Lacan’s influential seminars in Paris, Discourse, Figure distinguishes between the meaningfulness of linguistic signs and the meaningfulness of plastic arts such as painting (...) and sculpture. Lyotard argues that because rational thought is discursive and works of art are inherently opaque signs, certain aspects of artistic meaning such as symbols and the pictorial richness of painting will always be beyond reason’s grasp. A wide-ranging and highly unusual work, Discourse, Figure proceeds from an attentive consideration of the phenomenology of experience to an ambitious meditation on the psychoanalytic account of the subject of experience, structured by the confrontation between phenomenology and psychoanalysis as contending frames within which to think the materialism of consciousness. In addition to prefiguring many of Lyotard’s later concerns, Discourse, Figure captures Lyotard’s passionate engagement with topics beyond phenomenology and psychoanalysis to structuralism, semiotics, poetry, art, and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

Presents a series of the Wellek Library lectures given in May of 1986 entitled: Clouds, Touches, and Gaps.

The objective of this study is to analyze the measurability and interfirm comparability of sustainability performance through the qualitative content analysis of 12 sustainability reports of mining firms using the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. The systematic comparison of information disclosed in 92 GRI indicators sheds light on the reasons underlying the impossibility of rigorously measuring and comparing the sustainability performance of firms from the same sector, which are supposed to be strictly following the same reporting guideline. These reasons include qualitative (...) aspects of sustainability, lack of compliance with GRI protocols, indicator contingency, ambiguous or incomplete information, data heterogeneity, and report opacity. The study makes it possible to return to the very notion of sustainability, its meaning, and flexible application by organizations. The results are discussed from three different theoretical perspectives, each of which proposes possible and complementary explanations of the main findings. (shrink)

In The Differend, Lyotard subjects to scrutiny- from the particular perspective of his notion of 'differend' - the turn of all Western philosophies toward language; the decline of metaphysics; the present intellectual retreat of Marxism; the hopes raised and mostly dashed, by theory; and the growing political despair. Taking his point of departure in an analysis of what Auschwitz meant philosophically, Lyotard attempts to sketch out modes of thought for our present.

Research on reasoning about consequential arguments has been an active but piecemeal enterprise. Previous research considered in depth some subclasses ofconsequential arguments, but further understanding of consequential arguments requires that we address their greater variety, avoiding the risk of over-generalisation from specific examples. Ideally we ought to be able to systematically generate the set of consequential arguments, and then engage in random sampling of stimuli within that set. The current article aims at making steps in that direction, using the theory (...) of utility conditionals as a way to generate a large set of consequential arguments, and offering one study illustrating how the theory can be used for the random sampling of stimuli. Itis expected that further use of this method will bring more diversity to experimental research on consequential arguments, and more robustness to models of argumentation from consequences. (shrink)

The psychology of reasoning is increasingly considering agents' values and preferences, achieving greater integration with judgment and decision making, social cognition, and moral reasoning. Some of this research investigates utility conditionals, ‘‘if p then q’’ statements where the realization of p or q or both is valued by some agents. Various approaches to utility conditionals share the assumption that reasoners make inferences from utility conditionals based on the comparison between the utility of p and the expected utility of q. This (...) article introduces a new parameter in this analysis, the underlying causal structure of the conditional. Four experiments showed that causal structure moderated utility-informed conditional reasoning. These inferences were strongly invited when the underlying structure of the conditional was causal, and significantly less so when the underlying structure of the conditional was diagnostic. This asymmetry was only observed for conditionals in which the utility of q was clear, and disappeared when the utility of q was unclear. Thus, an adequate account of utility-informed inferences conditional reasoning requires three components: utility, probability, and causal structure. (shrink)

"In a wide-ranging discussion the author examines the philosophy of Kant, Heidegger, Adorno and Derrida and looks at the works of modernist and postmodernist artists such as Cezanne, Debussy and Boulez. Lyotard addresses issues such as time and memory, the sublime and the avant-garde, and the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Throughout his discussion he considers the close but problematic links between modernity, progress and humanity, and the transition to postmodernity. Lyotard claims that it is the task of literature, philosophy (...) and the arts to bear witness to and explain this difficult transition." "This important contribution to aesthetic and philosophical debates will be of great interest to students in philosophy, literary and cultural theory and politics."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

The ambition and proposal for data modeling of myths presented in this paper is to link contemporary technical affordances to some canonical projects developed in structural anthropology. To articulate the theoretical promise and innovation of this proposal, we present a discrete-event system specification modeling and simulation approach in order to perform a generative analysis and a dynamic visualization of selected narratives, aimed at validating and revitalizing the transformational and morphodynamic theory and methodology proposed by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his structural analysis (...) of myth. After an analysis of Lévi-Strauss’s transformational methodology, we describe in detail how discrete-event system specification models are implemented and developed in the framework of a DEVSimPy software environment. The validation of the method involves a discrete-event system specification simulation based on the extension of discrete-event system specification models dedicated to provide a dynamic Google Earth visualization of the selected myth. Future work around the discrete-event system specification formalism in anthropology is described as well as future applications regarding the impact of computational models to new contemporary anthropological domains. (shrink)

This article starts, on the one hand, with a consideration of the paradoxical way in which, namely when he wanted to evoke those intellectual figures that have decidedly contributed to the revelation of the "true Pascal", i. e., of the Pascal that had known the good usage of reason, Fortunat Strowski comes to the idea of putting side by side Pierre Duhem and Leon Brunschvicg. On the other, a reference is made to the fact that Duhem only published two articles (...) and a preface on Pascal while Brunschvicg is the author of a major work on the great figure of the XVIIth -Century. Hence, the question raised is about the consideration that shall be given to a paradoxical affirmation that seems to place on equal terms the few pages that Duhem has written on Pascal with the imposing contributions of Brunschvicg. For the author of the article, it would not be very consequent to take such affirmations as if they were unreflected ones, since it is clear that Strowski knew exactly what he was writing as we can see from the very good knowledge he had of the writings of both Blaise Pascal and Pierre Duhem. Indeed, and more than anyone else, Strowski was in a very good position to enlighten us about these two thinkers and to write about them in the terms he effectively did. The goal of the article, therefore, is to justify that assertion, which on its face is quite paradoxical, by showing in concrete terms the extent to which Pierre Duhem was truly influenced by Blaise Pascal. ––– O presente artigo começa por realçar o modo paradoxal como, uma vez que ele se dá ao trabalho de evocar aqueles autores que contribuíram para a revelação do verdadeiro Pascal, ou seja, daquele que conheceu o bom uso da razão, Fortunat Strowski não hesita em colocar o nome de Pierre Duhem lado a lado com o de Léon Brunschvicg. O facto, porém, é que Pierre Duhem não fez mais do que publicar dois artigos e um prefácio sobre Blaise Pascal, ao passo que Brunschvicg lhe dedicou uma obra que haveria de ficar famosa. O problema, portanto, consiste em saber qual o valor que se deve atribuir a uma tal afirmação desconcertante, a qual parece simplesmente equalizar as poucas páginas de Duhem sobre Pascal com as imponentes contribuições de Brunschvicg. Nesse sentido, a estratégia do autor do artigo consiste em não tomar de forma ligeira uma tal afirmação, como se Strowski não tivesse considerado bem as consequências e o alcance daquilo que escrevia, pois a verdade é que ele conhecia não só a obra de Pascal mas também a de Duhem. Ou seja, mais do que ninguém, ele estava perfeitamente à altura de nos comunicar algo de substancial acerca de cada um destes pensadores e de escrever a seu propósito aquilo que ele efectivamente escreveu. Em suma, o presente artigo não tem outra pretensão que não a de justificar essa afirmação aparentemente paradoxal segundo a qual Pierre Duhem foi um verdadeiro pascaliano. (shrink)

The dual-process model of cognition but most especially its reflective component, system 2 processing, shows strong conceptual links with critical thinking. In fact, the salient characteristics of system 2 processing are so strikingly close to that of critical thinking, that it is tempting to claim that critical thinking is system 2 processing, no more and no less. In this article, I consider the two sides of that claim: Does critical thinking always require system 2 processing? And does system 2 processing (...) always result in critical thinking? I argue that it is plausible and helpful to consider that critical thinking requires system 2 processing. In particular, this assumption can provide interesting insights and benchmarks for critical thinking education. On the other hand, I show that system 2 processing can result in a range of outcomes which are either contradictory with critical thinking, or of debatable social desirability—which suggests that there is more to critical thinking than mere system 2 processing, and more to system 2 processing than just critical thinking. (shrink)

Kant describes a conflict among the different theories of knowledge. A productive conflict whose emergence is the origin of a renewal: it awakens the spirit and it leads it to think critically. Philosophy becomes critique, Kant says, when it is not focused on the doctrines and on their demands, but on the relationship between general rules (the “sense”) that coordinates all the faculties – and their particular expression, that is to say the specific cases. Similarly operates the judge, that, in (...) court, has to invent (ausdenken) the rule capable of corresponding to the single case: a judge that, in order to decide (jus dicere) and utter the decision, tries to compensate the absence of adequate legal rules and often decides without the adapt general rule. The problem of the différend does not concern, thus, anthropology. It concerns language. Exemplary cases provide analoga of the sensitive data and are devices that allow the dialectic between different systems of value by connecting their core meaning, the proper names involved and what Kant defines the Darstellung. Nevertheless, against this background, a change of paradigm becomes necessary – a change that entails the break with hegelian philosophy of law and with a thought built on mediation, that is to say with the kantian Zusammenstimmung. It is not possible, nor desirable, to substitute the battle field with the court and to subordinate the individual interests to the general logic of argumentation, because the synthesis of the different voices might imply totalitarianism and the end of the différend might correspond to the beginning of terror. (shrink)

People can reason about the preferences of other agents, and predict their behavior based on these preferences. Surprisingly, the psychology of reasoning has long neglected this fact, and focused instead on disinterested inferences, of which preferences are neither an input nor an output. This exclusive focus is untenable, though, as there is mounting evidence that reasoners take into account the preferences of others, at the expense of logic when logic and preferences point to different conclusions. This article summarizes the most (...) recent account of how reasoners predict the behavior and attitude of other agents based on conditional rules describing actions and their consequences, and reports new experimental data about which assumptions reasoners retract when their predictions based on preferences turn out to be false. (shrink)

Alors qu’il était précepteur en Suisse, le jeune Hegel traduisit minutieusement un libelle révolutionnaire dénonçant l’oppression que les autorités bernoises exerçaient sur le Pays de Vaud. Il publia ces Lettres de Jean-Jacques Cart à son retour en Allemagne, en 1798, sous le couvert d’un anonymat qu’il ne leva jamais. Derrière le caractère anecdotique de cette première publication, on peut déceler des enjeux qui conduisirent à l’instauration de l’idéalisme spéculatif. Le motif de la lutte pour la reconnaissance, en particulier, semble (...) y trouver sa première apparition. Plus fondamentalement cette première publication éclaire le travail d’élaboration stylistique conduisant progressivement au système, avec, à l’horizon, la question de la portée pratique de la philosophie. (shrink)

Nouvelle édition critique et traduction française annotée de la _Lettre à Marcella_ de Porphyre. Le philosophe néoplatonicien Porphyre (234-305) y adresse à sa femme un témoignage unique sur la manière dont une vie philosophique peut être conduite et se préserver. This book presents a new annotated and translated edition of neoplatonist 3rd-century Greek philosopher Porphyrius’ _Letter to Marcella_. This letter, adressed to his wife, gives a unique account on the ways and principles along which a philosophical life should be led (...) so as to perpetuate itself. (shrink)

A collection of 15 fables from a founding figure of postmodernism that ask in the words of Jean-Francois Lyotard, "how to live and why?" It provides attention to issues of justice and ethics, and aesthetics and judgement - unravelling and reconfiguring idealistic notions of subjects.

Es ist nicht zuletzt Hegels Kritik der Demokratie gewesen, die ihm den Ruf zugetragen hat, ein Vordenker des modernen Totalitarismus zu sein. Die genaue Analyse zeigt hingegen, dass Hegels Demokratiekritik die Entfaltungsbedürfnisse der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft reflektiert und damit gerade den Anspruch des politischen Raums nach Totalität, wie er sich in der – antiken – Demokratie manifestiert, in Frage stellt. Hegels Zusammendenken von Staat und Gesellschaft lässt sich zugleich als Kritik des vom Liberalismus entwickelten Staatsverständnisses fruchtbar machen.