This article investigates the ethical foundations for both personal and commercial conduct, placing these a) for natural individuals with Kant’s categorical imperative as the standard for verification and b) for entities defined to conduct business with markets that freely determine prices among the participating actors at the moment of exchange. Pervasive digitization of transactions is noted. The concepts of currency and money are defined and examined in practice, drawing on the statements of international and US government agencies, economists as well (...) as investigative reporters. (shrink)

This essay considers the concrete consequences for human lives of social and economic values. Through case studies indicative of the Victorian age, early 20th century and contemporary 21st century, the evolutionary change in specific values is exhibited. Values are recognized as essentially shaping human conduct, while the exercise of individual choices in this milieu has resulted in progressive shifts breaking up the rigid adherence to values, establishing the possibility in some areas for greater tolerance, such as in the area of (...) mores determining the institution of marriage. The destructive nature of corruption through material values is also presented. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to examine the long-term evolution of the material reproductive vehicles of society. The fairly continuous trend of economic integration and progressive enfranchisement of the world’s people is indicated, ascertainable even with the emergence from general slavery of ancient times, through feudalism to the modern stage of industrialism and widespread national sovereignties. With greater political expression has come higher degrees and penetration of economic prosperity. Both vicious and virtuous tendencies of automation are considered. The necessary (...) foundation of living labor is recognized. (shrink)

This essay presents what is enduring and still powerful in Marx’s analysis of capital, viewed synthetically as the resulting moral imperative to fairness in the social relationships of production.

Global stewardship explores the perspective of caring for the entire globe—all its peoples and life. The interconnectedness of the basic elementary systems—air and water, which are both necessary for terrestrial and aquatic life—is acknowledged. The concomitant threats of their toxification from immoderate employments of substances and techniques justify the need for global respect and cooperation as well as effective world economic systems as the means to sustain this life.

The method chosen here draws on concepts borrowed from sociology and anthropology. This double conceptual approach is necessary for a society divided between values inherited from medieval Christianity and precapitalist practices. Seventeenth-century France did not think of itself as a class society but as a society of orders. Since sociology is a system of knowledge whose concepts are taken from an imaginary construct, it is thus more suited to analyzing bourgeois society than societies in transition.6 In trying to measure the (...) past with the aid of tools forged in and for contemporary societies, the sociologist runs the risk of only measuring an artifact, produced by his theories in the field of history. Hence the need for the anthropological concepts, including the notion of exchange, among others, whether material , symbolic , or sexual .This approach will bring to light the contradictions underlying the society of the ancient régime. Whereas an ordinary sociohistorical approach views the reign of Louis XIV as unified under a dogmatic classicism, the socioanthropological approach stresses the tensions and oppositions running through this society. Classicism appears then as a façade covering up the change that it cannot imagine. This “spectacle”7 makes it possible to unite contradictory social practices, both those produced by consumption and which originate in the medieval economy and those belonging to the early accumulation of capital which sketch future bourgeois economic practices. 6. See Cornelius Catoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey .7. See Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, rev. English ed. . Jean-Marie Apostolidès is professor of French literature at Stanford University. His publications include Le roi-machine, Les metamorphoses de Tintin, and Le prince sacrifié. Alice Musick McLean, a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago, is specializing in medieval narrative and the literature of the fantastic. (shrink)

The Abidjan School is a school of thought that developed in the 1980s and 1990s in the Côte d'Ivoire inspired by the work of Louis-Joseph Lebret and Amartya Sen. It follows the empirical approach i...

Moral psychology studies the features of cognition, judgement, perception and emotion that make human beings capable of moral action. Perspectives from feminist and race theory immensely enrich moral psychology. Writers who take these perspectives ask questions about mind, feeling, and action in contexts of social difference and unequal power and opportunity. These essays by a distinguished international cast of philosophers explore moral psychology as it connects to social life, scientific studies, and literature.

Comme son titre l’indique, cet ouvrage collectif, dirigé et présenté par Karen Hagemann et Jean H. Quataert, s’adresse en premier lieu aux historien-ne-s travaillant sur l’Allemagne des xixe et xxe siècles, et dont la majorité se trouvent aux États-Unis et en Allemagne. Son lectorat devrait pourtant s’avérer beaucoup plus vaste, car le livre offre aussi une précieuse somme de connaissances et de réflexions à tout-e historien-ne s’intéressant aux récentes évolutions de l’historiographie occide...

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

L’histoire de la métaphysique à Genève pendant l’époque moderne est liée à la figure de David Derodon (c. 1600-1664), philosophe et théologien calviniste français. Il soutient que la métaphysique est la science de l’étant commun aux corps et aux esprits et que, pour cette raison, elle doit être distinguée de la pneumatique et de la somatique. Il s’agit, en d’autres termes, d’une métaphysique fortement « ontologisée » qui traite des choses neutres. Le but de cet article est de montrer la (...) diffusion de cette définition de la France à la Suisse jusqu’à son emploi par le cartésien Jean-Robert Chouet (1642-1731), professeur à la célèbre Académie de Genève fondée par Calvin en 1559. Chouet va encore plus loin en donnant une dénomination nouvelle à cette version de la métaphysique, qui est celle d’ontologie (ou ontosophia ), et en y introduisant le cogito cartésien. (shrink)

Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by atypical perception, including processing that is biased toward local details rather than global configurations. This bias may impact on memory. The present study examined the effect of this perception on both implicit and explicit memory in conditions that promote either local or global processing. The first experiment consisted of an object identification priming task using two distinct encoding conditions: one favoring local processing and the other favoring global processing of drawings. The second experiment focused (...) on episodic memory with two different cartoon recognition tasks that favored either local or a global processing. In addition, all the participants underwent a general clinical cognitive assessment aimed at documenting their cognitive profile and enabling correlational analyses with experimental memory tasks. Seventeen participants with ASD and 17 typically developing controls aged from 10 to 16 years participated to the first experiment and 13 ASD matched with 13 TD participants were included for the second experiment. Experiment 1 confirmed the preservation of priming effects in ASD but, unlike the Comparison group, the ASD group did not increase his performance as controls after a globally oriented processing. Experiment 2 revealed that local processing led to difficulties in discriminating lures from targets in a recognition task when both lures and targets shared common details. The correlation analysis revealed that these difficulties were associated with processing speed and inhibition. These preliminary results suggest that natural perceptual processes oriented toward local information in ASD may impact upon their implicit memory by preventing globally oriented processing in time-limited conditions and induce confusion between explicit memories that share common details. (shrink)

What kind of technology is the piano? It was once a distinctly everyday technology. In the bourgeois home of the nineteenth century it became an emblematic figure of gendered social life, its role shifting between visually pleasing piece of furniture, source of light entertainment, and expression of cultured upbringing. It performed this role unobtrusively, acting as a transparent mediator of social relations. To the composer of concert music it was, and sometimes still is, says Samuel Wilson, like the philosopher’s table: (...) “an assumed background on which one writes.” Like other instruments standard to Western art music, the piano was designed to facilitate the production of a consistent and refined timbre. More than most other such instruments, the piano also facilitated a kind of sonic neutrality. With its wide pitch range and smoothing of the percussive attack of its predecessor instruments, the piano presented composers with a technological means of approaching composition from a seemingly objective vantage point. It exemplified, in Heideggerian terms, the instrumentality of the instrument, serving as a mediator between idea and expression that apparently adds no character of its own. -/- This notion of the invisibility, or transparency, of the mediations that musical technologies such as the piano enact is one of my areas of concern here. So too is its inverse: when these mediations become visible or opaque. Transparency has been a topic of significant recent theoretical attention. Stefanos Geroulanos, for example, has detailed how the supposed transparency of intersubjective, epistemological, and social relations was a major point of critique in postwar French thought, where the supposition of transparency was taken to suppress how the world was “complex, layered, structured, filled with heterogeneity” – and, as I will stress here, contingency. The thinkers Geroulanos considers, from Jean-Paul Sartre through to Jean-François Lyotard, can be said to be united in their refusal to invisibilise mediatedness. From a starting point of conceiving of the piano as a technological artifact, and in particular from John Cage’s ‘prepared piano,’ I will explore how a similar concern has appeared in musical contexts, albeit not without the risk of reversion back into a logic of transparency. (shrink)

Jean de Jandun et Walter Burley, commentateurs des œuvres de Aristote et d’Averroès à l’Université de Paris aux xiiie et xive siècles, juxtaposent à la lettre les enseignements de leurs sources au risque d’aboutir à des théories problématiques. Pour décrire le mouvement substantiel de la génération, ils retiennent d’Aristote les principes métaphysiques de la matière, la forme et la privation, et leur ajoutent la problématique introduite par les philosophes arabes de la possible corporéité et de la quantification de la (...) matière par des dimensions indéterminées qui en sont inséparables. Cette quantification devient nécessaire pour faire de la matière un sujet adéquat au changement substantiel. Pourtant, la nature quantitative de la matière demeure indéfinissable et met en péril la théorie médiévale de la génération.John of Janduno and Walter Burley, commentators of the works of Aristotle and Averroës at the University of Paris during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, literally juxtapose the teachings of their sources, running the risk of leading to problematic theories. To describe the fundamental movement of the generation, they retain Aristotle’s metaphysical principles of matter, form and privation, and add the questions introduced by the Arab philosophers regarding the possible corporeality and quantification of matter by inseparable undetermined dimensions. This quantification becomes necessary to make the matter a subject susceptible to substantial change. However, the quantitative nature of the matter remains elusive and jeopardizes the medieval theory of the generation. (shrink)

À l'université de Paris au XIV e siècle, Jean de Jandun est un commentateur érudit des œuvres d'Averroès et a marqué un intérêt particulier à sa doctrine sur la quantification de la matière présente au livre I de son De substantia orbis. S'il reprend à la lettre les enseignements du commentateur sur les dimensions indéterminées, il tente de définir aussi de façon originale les principes ontologiques de ces dimensions en les intégrant à deux théories très discutées à l'époque: la (...) génération et l'individuation. Le commentaire de Jean de Jandun souligne une tendance à utiliser de plus en plus cette doctrine dans les domaines de la métaphysique et de la philosophie naturelle, mais révèle aussi un statut ontologique insoluble pour ces dimensions qui confirment la nature indéfinissable de la materia prima. At the University of Paris in the XIV th century, Jean de Jandun is an erudite commentator of the works of Averroès and marked a particular interest in his doctrine on the quantification of matter in book I of De substantia orbis. If he takes back literally the teachings of the commentator on the indefinite dimensions, he tries to define also in an original way the ontological principles of these dimensions by joining them into two very controversial theories: the generation and the individuation. The comment of Jean de Jandun underlines a tendency to use more and more this doctrine in the domains of the metaphysics and the natural philosophy but also reveals an insoluble ontological status for these dimensions which confirm the undefinable nature of materia prima. (shrink)

Walker's essays and articles written between 1966 and 1982 discuss the concept and influence of art and the artist's life, criticisms of authors such as Jean Toomer and Zora Neale Hurston, studies in the civil rights movement and feminist movement, and her own ideas while writing her book "The Color Purple.".

The categorical denial of third-party forgiveness represents an overly individualistic approach to moral repair. Such an approach fails to acknowledge the important roles played by witnesses, bystanders, beneficiaries, and others who stand in solidarity to the primary victim and perpetrator. In this paper, I argue that the prerogative to forgive or withhold forgiveness is not universal, but neither is it restricted to victims alone. Not only can we make moral sense of some third-party acts and utterances of the form, “I (...) can or cannot forgive…” but also, we ought to recognize them as legitimate instances of third party forgiveness. Concern for the primary victim’s autonomy tends to exaggerate a need for moral deference, while ignoring how others are called upon to support and mediate for victims of violence and oppression. I advocate a cautious extension of the victim’s prerogative to forgive, one that grounds forgiveness in a double relation of sympathetic identification and attentive care. Following Jean Harvey’s recent work, I call this relationship moral solidarity. Furthermore, I argue, there are important moral and political reasons to acknowledge third party forgiveness; these reasons are particularly evident in contexts of oppression. In fact, third party refusals to forgive may have particular moral significance. In situations of abuse, oppression and damaged self-respect, third party refusals may protect the agency of victims who too easily forgive. (shrink)

We discuss a theory presented in a posthumous paper by Alfred Tarski entitled “What are logical notions?”. Although the theory of these logical notions is something outside of the main stream of logic, not presented in logic textbooks, it is a very interesting theory and can easily be understood by anybody, especially studying the simplest case of the four basic logical notions. This is what we are doing here, as well as introducing a challenging fifth logical notion. We first recall (...) the context and origin of what are here called Tarski-Lindenbaum logical notions. In the second part, we present these notions in the simple case of a binary relation. In the third part, we examine in which sense these are considered as logical notions contrasting them with an example of a nonlogical relation. In the fourth part, we discuss the formulations of the four logical notions in natural language and in first-order logic without equality, emphasizing the fact that two of the four logical notions cannot be expressed in this formal language. In the fifth part, we discuss the relations between these notions using the theory of the square of opposition. In the sixth part, we introduce the notion of variety corresponding to all non-logical notions and we argue that it can be considered as a logical notion because it is invariant, always referring to the same class of structures. In the seventh part, we present an enigma: is variety formalizable in first-order logic without equality? There follow recollections concerning Jan Woleński. This paper is dedicated to his 80th birthday. We end with the bibliography, giving some precise references for those wanting to know more about the topic. (shrink)

The ultimate causes of sex differences in human aggressive behavior can lie mainly in evolved, inherited mechanisms that differ by sex or mainly in the differing placement of women and men in the social structure. The present commentary contrasts Campbell's evolutionary interpretation of aggression sex differences with a social structural interpretation that encompasses a wider range of phenomena.

This paper addresses Rousseau's contribution to educational practice by illustrating the ways in which his notion of amour-propre distorts the teacher-student relationship in Muriel Spark's novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Though some of Rousseau's pedagogical methods may appear impractical and problematic, his insights into the psychological distortions of amour-propre bear directly on teaching because it is such an important instance of the relationship between self and others. The protagonist, Jean Brodie, is shown to be not only (...) an inadequate teacher but a morally destructive one as well because she violates the teacher-student relationship by both encouraging amourpropre among her students and using those same students primarily to satisfy her own need for power and self-aggrandizement. Her eventual ruin at the hands of her “best” student results from the amour-propre both share. Miss Brodie's failure illustrates the dangers of looking at teaching as self-expression, personal fulfillment etc., to the extent of forgetting what it actually is — the careful addressing of students' experience both as individuals and as learners. (shrink)

This essay starts from the theory of disputes and progresses towards a theory of ‘interpellation’, which it aims to outline. The starting point is given by Lyotard's differend, which provides a first contrast between dispute and quarrel. Dispute can be seen as the more irenic pole of a system where quarrel would be identified as clearly agonistic. The essay first revisits the differend in the light of Habermas's theory, which posits that discussions take place against the background of a lifeworld. (...) This enables ways of conceptualizing both dispute, as emerging from the possibilities offered by language games, and quarrel, which belongs to the world of incomprehension. This first model is subjected to the test of Lewis Carroll's ‘Alice in Wonderland’ books, where dissensus is transformed into consensus, where a quarrel may end up in a dispute which respects conventions. But the crucial point of the essay is to provide a philosophy of language which enables the conceptualization of quarrels. The essay revisits the conceptions put forward in The Violence of Language and A Marxist Philosophy of Language but then carries the analysis into new territory. Finding inspiration in Althusser's theory of interpellation and in Judith Butler's reading of Althusser, the essay shows that quarrels enact both interpellation and counter-interpellation, and views further quarrels as one of the characteristics of human language. (shrink)

In this thesis we construct a critical encounter between the composer John Cage and the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. This encounter circulates through a constellation of problems found across and between mid-twentieth century musical, artistic, and philosophical practices, the central focus for our line of enquiry being the concept of experimentation. We emphasize the production of a method of experimentation through a practice historically situated with regards to the traditions of the respective fields of music and philosophy. However, we argue that (...) these experimental practices are not reducible to their historical traditions, but rather, by adopting what we term a problematic reading, or transcendental critique, with regards to historical givens, they take their historical situation as the site of an experimental departure. We follow Cage through his relation to the history of Western classical music, his contemporaries in the musical avant-garde, and artistic movements surrounding and in some respects stemming from Cage’s work, and Deleuze through his relation to Kant, phenomenology, and structuralism, in order to map the production of a practice of experimentation spanning music, art, and philosophy. Some specific figures we engage with in these respective traditions include Jean-Phillipe Rameau, Pierre Schaeffer, Marcel Duchamp, Pierre Boulez, Robert Morris, Yoko Ono, La Monte Young, Edmund Husserl, Maurice-Merleau-Ponty, Alain Badiou, and Félix Guattari. In so doing we seek to find between these practices points of both conjunction and disjunction which enrich our understanding of Cage’s and Deleuze’s work, and, more widely speaking, of the passage of twentieth century music and philosophy in general. Here we hope to make contributions to the fields of continental philosophy and music theory especially, and to open a point of engagement with the nascent field of sound studies. (shrink)

What can psychoanalysis offer contemporary arguments in the fields of Feminism, Queer Theory and Post-Colonialism? Jan Campbell introduces and analyses the way that psychoanalysis has developed and made problematic models of subjectivity linked to issues of sexuality, ethnicity, gender, and history. Via discussions of such influential and diverse figures as Lacan, Irigaray, Kristeva, Dollimore, Bhabha, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker, Campbell uses psychoanalysis as a mediatory tool in a range of debates across the human sciences, while also arguing for (...) a transformation of psychoanalytic theory itself. (shrink)

Building Better Health Care Leadership for Canada explains the development and implementation of the Executive Training in Research Application program. Managed and funded by the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation in partnership with the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Nursing Association, and the Canadian College of Health Care executives, EXTRA is a two-year national fellowship program that uses the principles of adult learning theory as well as practical projects to educate senior health care leaders in making more consistent use of (...) research evidence in their management roles. Fellows apply the theory learned in residency sessions and educational activities to projects within their home organizations. The authors identify the imperative for better use of evidence, outline the core elements of the curriculum, and capture the real-world experience of regional leaders and fellows involved in making specific changes informed by research-based evidence within their organization. Contributors include Jean-Louis Denis, Terrence Sullivan, Owen Adams, Malcolm Anderson, Lynda Atack, Robert Bell, Sam G Campbell, Sylvie Cantin, Ward Flemons, Dorothy Forbes, J. Sonja Glass, Paula Goering, Karen Golden-Biddle, Jeffrey S. Hoch, Paul Lamarche, Ann Langley, John N. Lavis, Jonathan Lomas, Margo Orchard, Raynald Pineault, Brian D. Postl, Christine Power, Trish Reay, Jean Rochon, Denis A. Roy, Andrea Seymour, Samuel B. Sheps, Micheline Ste-Marie, Nina Stipich, David Streiner, Carl Taillon, and Muriah Umoquit. (shrink)

Essays by Ernesto Buonaiuti, Friedrich Heiler, Wilhelm Koppers, Louis Massignon, Jean de Menasce, Erich Neumann, Henri-Charles Puech, Gilles Quispel, Erwin Rousselle, Boris Vyshelawzeff, and Heinrich Zimmer.

Essays by Julius Baum, C. G. Jung, C. Kerényi, Hans Leisegang, Paul Masson-Oursel, Fritz Meier, Jean de Menasce, Georges Nagel, Walter F. Otto, Max Pulver, Hugo Rahner, Paul Schmitt, and Walter Wili.

"Il faudrait que quelqu'un chez vous fasse un roman sur un intellectuel d'Europe centrale sous le coup des derniers événements. Pas seulement pour la curiosité psychologique. Pour apprendre à voir ce que vous n'aimez pas regarder", écrivait le phénoménologue tchèque Jan Patocka, en juillet 1949, à son ami Robert Campbell, philosophe et mathématicien français, auteur, en 1945, du premier ouvrage consacré aux écrits et à la pensée de Jean-Paul Sartre. Mieux qu'un roman, la correspondance amicale et philosophique que les (...) deux hommes échangeront pendant une trentaine d'années, avec deux hiatus dus aux aléas des circonstances, publiques et privées, depuis le lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, à travers le virage totalitaire de l'"autre Europe", le relatif dégel des années 1960 et l'avant-"printemps de Prague", jusqu'à l'engagement de Patocka dans le mouvement de la Charte 77 pour la défense des droits de l'homme, représente, dans ses trois dimensions indissolublement enchevêtrées de l'intime-quotidien, de l'historico-politique et de la pensée, un document d'une rare valeur précisément en ce sens. Un document qui nous met sous les yeux un exemple concret de ce que Patocka nomme "la vie dans l'idée". (shrink)