This article focuses on the ethics of education and training, from an interdisciplinary perspective that is itself structurally embedded in the multi-referential nature of the education and training sciences. We draw on Daniel Sibony's conceptualization of the in-between as a professional position in education and training to consider ways of reconciling educational and training support and proximity with the realities of physical distance in digital interventions, all in an ethical way. We discuss the conditions under which support can be successfully (...) incorporated into distance learning (1), dialecticize presence and digital technology in education and training (2), and finally lay some groundwork for an ethics of benevolent digital support, based on the concept of authority and its mutations in hypermodern democracies (3). (shrink)

Hygge Philosophies: Between Cultural Heritage and Personal Development in the Face of the Hypermodern Quest for Individual Well-Being In this article, we are interested in hygge, often presented as a Danish philosophy of life. We question hygge as it is portrayed and listed in personal development literature (1). We suggest that, in the contemporary Western democratic context, hygge touches on both a part of Danish cultural heritage and a sphere of concerns typical of Western democratic hypermodernity (2). A concluding section (...) will allow us to make some generalizations about the stakes of intellectual work in our societies in the XXIst century and the contributions that philosophers can make (3). Keywords: hygge, individualism, democracy, well-being, personal development. (shrink)

Cet article saisit la question des fondements philosophiques de la formation des adultes en faisant fond sur les thèses du penseur critique de la modernité tardive Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017). Le texte s’ouvre par un regard englobant et synthétique sur l’oeuvre intellectuelle de Bauman (1). Il isole ensuite plus spécifiquement ce qui en son sein nous aide à prendre la mesure de la centralité de l’éducation tout au long de la vie comme défi majeur de ce que l’auteur appelle une vie (...) liquide (3). La focale est ensuite encore resserrée sur ce qui, dans la pensée baumanienne, permet de faire signe vers un type polymorphe de formation des adultes à même de permettre aux individus contemporains tout à la fois d’apprendre à naviguer et d’apprendre en naviguant dans un monde problématique (3). Une ouverture conclusive permet enfin de récapituler les apports les plus décisifs de Bauman dans le cadre problématique qui est celui du présent numéro et de dégager les linéaments ou les têtes de pont de ce qu’une discussion de fond du diagnostic baumanien sur le monde hypermoderne et la philosophie de l’éducation qu’il requiert pourrait être (4). (shrink)

This paper introduces a hermeneutical approach to graphic novel representations of punishments inflicted on women accused of collaboration with the German occupant during the French purge in 1944- 1945. Since the study aims to determine to establish links between graphic novels and the evolutions of the historiography of the Occupation and Liberation of France, it includes a historiographical component. Drawing on other cultural medias who have dealt with this theme (novels, movies, poems, songs), the aim is also to identify the (...) meaning given by artists to their portrayals of shorn and assaulted women. The paper eventually introduces a broader philosophical reflection on the emancipation from authoritarianism. It is the study’s contention that graphic novelists are offering a feminist discourse and are using the theme of shorn and assaulted women during the liberation as a reminder of the late emancipation of women from male domination. (shrink)

This essay proposes interdisciplinary work converging around a concept (the Anthropocene), a philosophical tradition (phenomenology), and an author (Merleau-Ponty) in order to overcome the limits of intelligibility to which can be confronted approaches that favor a single perspective on these themes, or a single theme approached from different perspectives. The first section of the essay develops a triple return to the foundations of the problem which interests us by treating in a synthetic manner the following three questions: what is the (...) Anthropocene? What does the idea of human autonomy truly mean? Can phenomenology help us think their encounter? The second section briefly introduces the reflective context in which Merleau-Ponty developed his thinking on Nature, on the human being as it emerges from Nature, and on technique in its relation both to the human being and to Nature. By adopting Merleau-Pontyan thought as a critical framework, the third section examines the current paradigm for the co-production of scientific knowledge and its implication for the inclusion of non-human nature. (shrink)

John Rawls is frequently perceived as being an advocate for purely redistributive policies designed to mitigate the consequences of a capitalist economy — an assumption I challenge in this article. My objective is to elucidate the biased nature of this view and provide a comprehensive analysis of the transformation of the corporate landscape that a just society would entail within Rawls's framework. Through a meticulous examination of Rawls's delineation of economic regimes, I underscore the profound — and often unsuspected — (...) implications of liberal egalitarianism on corporate ownership and management. Rawls's proposition of a “property-owning democracy” posits that citizens should retain ownership of shares in companies throughout their lifetimes. Liberal socialism implies the nationalization of the means of production and the socialization of their management. (shrink)

How can we distinguish between quasi-realist expressivism and normative realism? The most promising answer to this question is the “explanation” explanation proposed by Dreier (2004), Simpson (2018), and others: the two views might agree in their claims about truth and objectivity, or even in their attributions of semantic content to normative sentences, but they disagree about how to explain normative meaning. Realists explain meaning by invoking normative facts and properties, or representational relations between normative language and the world, the thought (...) goes, while expressivists appeal instead to desire-like mental states in their explanations of meaning. However, I argue that, if we adopt a deflationary approach to representation and other related notions, there need be no such explanatory divide between expressivism and anything recognizable as a plausible notion of normative realism. Any alleged explanatory criterion for realism will either be incompatible with deflationism, or it will fail to capture some standard versions of normative realism. I conclude that, in a deflationary framework, expressivism is compatible with genuine realism. (shrink)

Ce texte a été publié dans Carnets, n° 6, janvier 2016 – Exotopies de Barthes, p. 130-142. Résumé : L'idiorrythmie, terme que Barthes emprunte au vocabulaire religieux des monastères et qui répond à son « fantasme d'une solitude collective », d'un compromis entre retrait et engagement, est, selon nous, en germe depuis les premiers travaux et sous-tend toute son écriture. Car, parmi le foisonnement de métaphores littéraires ou philosophiques mobilisées pour mener à bien son combat d'écrivain contre le - Poétique (...) et Études littéraires – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Tout le monde en conviendra : lire n'est pas une activité de tout repos. La vue y est certes sollicitée, et même d'emblée, mais c'est pour aussitôt s'éclipser. S'il était purement vu, le texte (dans son sens étendu d'objet de l'interprétation) ne serait pas encore lu. La lecture proprement dite aura lieu dès l'instant où je cesse de voir ce qui m'est donné à voir pour me faufiler au-delà. J'embrasse à présent une réalité tri-dimensionnelle, je deviens le texte et le (...) texte m'épouse, je flaire et je ressens, j'hallucine et je jubile, bref : je lis. La lecture sera synesthésique ou ne sera pas. Mon voyeurisme n'est plus trivial mais absolu. Or ce don de voyance que je m'accorde pour pallier mon aveuglement du départ n'est pas sans risques : je ne suis à l'abri ni de la méprise ni de la foi aveugle. Et c'est là le côté ironique de toute lecture. On a beau s'investir dans l'oeuvre, tôt ou tard l'enchantement sera rompu. Je me vois en train de lire, donc je ne lis plus.Le texte me renvoie soudain à mes propres limites. Il n'empêche que cet ébranlement du sujet soit souvent déclencheur d'une expérience esthétique, expérience qui porte également un enseignement : la lecture aujourd'hui engage quiconque s'y adonne à être prêt à abdiquer à chaque instant ou, du moins, à respecter l'illisible et l'inappropriable. L'aboutissement de ce travail ce confond avec son présupposé majeur : inutile de vouloir maintenir le clivage entre lecture textuelle et lecture tout court (d'une image, du monde, d'un corps désiré, etc.), ce sont leurs empiètements qui restituent à ce geste ancestral et sans doute universel son souffle et son ampleur. Des scènes de perception entravée, lacunaire ou défectueuse, glanées dans le patrimoine littéraire et plastique contemporain (Proust, Cocteau, Michaux, Calvino, Manganelli, De Chirico, Alechinsky, Fuentes, Biély, Nabokov, Gombrowicz et tant d'autres) et appréhendées comme autant de simulacres de l'expérience de lecture, nous ont permis de cerner l'activité lectorielle au plus proche des textes. (shrink)

Cet article se donne pour objectif de réfléchir à ce que la crise mondiale du Covid-19 a révélé de nos manières d’habiter les lieux où nous vivons, et parmi celles-ci, la pratique de la danse. La démarche adoptée ici est celle d’un dialogue entre trois courants philosophiques spécifiques : la phénoménologie, le pragmatisme et l’écoféminisme, au sujet de leur conception de l’expérience somatique, à la fois vécue, complexe et ordinaire. Nous cherchons ici les lignes communes à ces trois mouvements philosophiques, (...) dans le but d’esquisser une compréhensions nouvelle du corps, et par extension, une nouvelle approche de la danse par temps de crise pandémique. (shrink)

Normative naturalism holds that normative properties are identical with, or reducible to, natural properties. Various challenges to naturalism focus on whether it can make good on the idea that normative concepts can be used in systematically different ways and yet have the same reference in all contexts of use. In response to such challenges, some naturalists have proposed that questions about the reference of normative terms should be understood, at least in part, as normative questions that can be settled through (...) normative inquiry. In this paper I have two goals. First, I argue that these naturalist proposals do not yet allow for radical disagreement on normative matters, or at least do not explain how such disagreement is possible. Secondly, I argue that, in order to account for radical disagreement, naturalists should not only treat normative reference as a normative issue but also adopt a non-representationalist account of normative concepts, on which such concepts are individuated through their practical role. I illustrate this point by showing how a view that combines naturalism and expressivism about normative discourse can vindicate the elasticity of normative concepts, their referential stability, and the objectivity of normative truths. (shrink)

The commons is a concept increasingly used with the promise of creating new collective wealth. In the aftermath of the economic and financial crises, finance and money have been criticized and redesigned to serve the collective interest. In this article, we analyze three types of complementary currency systems: community currencies, inter-enterprise currencies, and cryptocurrencies. We investigate whether these systems can be considered as commons. To address this question, we use two main theoretical frameworks that are usually separate: the “new commons” (...) in organization studies and the “common good” in business ethics. Our findings show that these monetary systems and organizations may be considered as commons under the “common good” framework since they promote the common interest by creating new communities. Nevertheless, according to the “new commons” framework, only systems relying on collective action and self-management can be said to form commons. This allows us to suggest two new categories of commons: the “social commons,” which fit into both the “new commons” and the “common good” frameworks, and the “commercial commons,” which fit the “common good” but not the “new commons” framework. This research advances a new conceptualization of the commons and of the ethical implications of CCs. (shrink)

L'intérêt des sciences humaines pour les rapports entre TIC, langues et savoirs n'est pas nouveau. Cependant l'intelligibilité d'une construction épistémologique des relations reste un domaine en friche dans le contexte de la mondialisation. Le présent article essaie de s'en prendre à ce vide épistémologique en interrogeant particulièrement les enjeux des langues africaines dans le travail de structuration et de dissémination du savoir global et des savoirs locaux. Ces savoirs, chacun à sa manière, tentent de se construire un statut nouveau en (...) s'insérant dans les divers marchés de la connaissance. Pour cela, ils tirent profit du renouvellement des thématiques occidentales vis-à-vis des consommateurs africains d'information scientifique. En conséquence, des politiques de productivité et de circularité des savoirs s'érigent dans des stratégies d'uniformisation épistémologique. Parallèlement, la mode de la «diversité linguistique et culturelle», censée protéger les langues et savoirs locaux, risque de les transformer en de simples objets ethnographiques.The interest of the humanities to the relationship between ICT and language knowledge is not new. However, the intelligibility of a construction epistemological relations remains a fallow field in the context of globalization. This article tries to take this empty epistemological questioning particularly the issues of African languages ​​in the work of structuring and dissemination of global knowledge and local knowledge. This knowledge, in their own way, trying to build a new status by inserting themselves into the various markets for knowledge. For this, they benefit from the renewal of western themed vis-à-vis African consumers of scientific information. As a result, productivity and political knowledge circularity themselves up in uniform epistemological strategies. Meanwhile, the fashion of the "linguistic and cultural diversity," intended to protect indigenous knowledge and languages, may turn them into mere ethnographic objects. (shrink)

This book brings together an introduction to the social sciences of religions - intended for the general public, which generally ignores them - in a critical essay in order to update them in the face of a current situation that strongly challenges them and will continue to do so. Indeed, the news of globalization imposes the confusing spectacle of a world of religions caught between the two extremes of forms so exclusivist that they justify violence, even terrorism, and such irenic (...) forms that they seek a spirituality fit to go beyond all borders, even religious ones. The place given to Islam in this way is explained, among other things, because during the conflicts of Salafist jihadist and certain branches of Sufism, it illustrates this contradiction in a particularly strong, but by no means exclusive way. (shrink)

Review of Ronald Dworkin, Religion without God , (Harvard University Press, 2013), 180 pages.

Starting again from Descartes' philosophy, our intention in this article is not to leave phenomenology, but to return to it in order to shed new light on how it encounters metaphysics and revives it. It is a question of inscribing French phenomenology in another history of metaphysics, one that is underground and unofficial and which lives, in truth, from that very thing that completes the other or which the other completes. Initially, we will focus on Jean-Luc Marion's reading of Descartes (...) from the paradigm offered by Heidegger. Secondly, we would like to replay the confrontation between Descartes and Pascal. Only in the third stage, then, will we be able to return to how metaphysics, most often assumed as such from its Cartesian configuration, has worked under the surface of the phenomenology its French representatives received from Husserl and Heidegger. Levinas can often serve as an exemplary figure. (shrink)

Cet article interroge la question des corpus en analyse multimodale des corpus oraux d’interactions filmées dans le cadre d’une linguistique qui intègre l’étude des gestes à celle du discours pour rendre compte des pratiques langagières dans leur globalité. Ce type d’approche est traditionnellement associé à des petits corpus supports d’analyses qualitatives. À l’appui d’un tour d’horizon de recherches contemporaines en analyse multimodale des interactions orales, nous montrons que l’étude linguistique des gestes se prête à une grande variété d’approches innovantes au (...) plan méthodologique. En pratique, il reste à ce jour difficile de construire des grands corpus pour l’analyse gestuelle, parce qu’il s’agit d’une entreprise longue et coûteuse (enregistrement, transcription, annotation) : les petits corpus sont nombreux parce qu’ils sont plus faciles à construire pour un chercheur seul ou une petite équipe de recherche aux moyens limités. Cette situation tend cependant à évoluer, et ce de plusieurs manières, grâce aux collaborations nationales et internationales et aux nouveaux outils numériques. Les « petits » corpus n’en restent pas moins sources de résultats précieux en analyse gestuelle. Pour diverses raisons, les standards internationaux de l’évaluation de la recherche tendent à valoriser l’analyse quantitative aux dépens de l’analyse qualitative, faisant oublier que ces deux types d’approches ont des objectifs certes différents mais complémentaires : ils permettent de répondre à des questions de recherche différentes (étroites ou larges) et de proposer des savoirs d’origines différentes (généralisabilité des résultats ou généralisabilité des processus observés), dont la légitimité est elle aussi de nature différente (réfutabilité des résultats ou consilience des experts). Nombre de travaux récents en analyse gestuelle encouragent à remettre en question la dichotomie traditionnelle entre analyses qualitatives et quantitatives, en intégrant les deux approches de diverses manières. (shrink)

If we are to understand the complex relationship between Bergson and Kant, we must not approach the former’s philosophy as if it could only be either pre-critical or post-Kantian. Instead, the present essay seeks to shed light on this relationship by treating Kant as another “missing precursor of Bergson.” In Bergson’s eyes, Kant, like Descartes, contains two possible paths for philosophy, which reflect the two fundamental tendencies that are mixed together in the élan vital and continued in humankind: intuition and (...) intelligence. Bergson breaks with Kant from the interior of his philosophy, which he divides into two Kantianisms: the one, which he rejects as ancient, and the other, which he appropriates. What the analysis of this Bergsonian appropriation of Kant reveals, however, is not the existence of a latent Bergsonism in Kant, but rather the recovery of a Kantianism that is completed in Bergson—a Kantianism that embarked down a path that Kant himself, who held himself back from following it in order to dispense with all “intellectual” intuition, had only sketched. Thus, if Bergson is to be believed, an intuitive metaphysics, which installs itself in pure duration, is neither below nor beyond Kantian critique, but can pass through it, can traverse it in its entirety, since it proposes to surpass it, to prolong it following the path that Kant himself had cleared in order to fulfill its suppressed virtualities. (shrink)

It is often claimed that there is an explanatory divide between an expressivist account of normative discourse and a realist conception of normativity: more precisely, that expressivism and realism offer conflicting explanations of (i) the metaphysical structure of the normative realm, (ii) the connection between normative judgment and motivation, (iii) our normative beliefs and any convergence thereof, or (iv) the content of normative thoughts and claims. In this paper I argue that there need be no such explanatory conflict. Given a (...) minimalist approach to the relevant metaphysical and semantic notions, expressivism is compatible with any explanation that would be acceptable as a general criterion for realism. (shrink)

Cet article soutient que Ben. 1, 3-4, une célèbre polémique à l’encontre de l’étymologie chrysippéenne, ne devrait pas être lue comme un rejet « en bloc » d’une étymologie philosophique, mais seulement comme un ensemble de conditions restrictives imposées à celle-ci. Cette interprétation nous permet de considérer les nombreuses étymologies du corpus sénéquien, dont une douzaine sont ici réunies et commentées, comme des réflexions philosophiquement intéressantes sur le langage. L’article se concentre sur la manière dont Sénèque utilise l’étymologie comme une (...) stratégie de traduction (baptisée ancrage étymologique) ayant pour but de rendre acceptables pour le lecteur romain, les aspects les plus contre intuitifs et paradoxaux de la philosophie stoïcienne, domestiquant ainsi la doctrine du Portique. Cette stratégie est comparée à l’approche très semblable de Cicéron dans Tusc. 3, 7-11. (shrink)

Gothic literature—a genre brimming with madness, supernaturalism, and psychological terror—offers innumerable case studies potentially representing how psychiatric patients perceive their treatment from healthcare professionals. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” offers a poignant example of this through its fictional narrator, a diarist many interpret to be suffering from postpartum depression. The fiction here does not stray far from reality: Gilman orchestrated her diarist’s experience to mirror her own, as both real author and fictional character suffocated from (...) a melancholy only made worse by their physicians’ insistence on following the “Rest Cure.” While this instruction to cease all work and activity was a prevalent depression treatment at the time, Gilman, through “The Yellow Wallpaper,” reveals how the intervention ultimately harmed more than helped because it overlooked her—and, by extension, her fictional diarist’s— unique needs and identities. Today, while the ineffective Rest Cure no longer exists, applying observations from “The Yellow Wallpaper” to clinical research calls attention to underrepresentation in treatment development, a costly problem that could be mitigated by mindful incorporation of intersectionality theory into study designs. (shrink)

Psychiatric phenomenology emerged from the willingness to spread Husserl’s program of going back to the things themselves into the psychiatric field. However, what this initial will then became is not very clear. We show that if this will to go back to the things themselves really enabled to bring phenomenology and psychiatry together (especially by the Swiss psychiatrist L. Binswanger), the thing to whom we have to go back changed over time: first conceived as the experience lived by people with (...) a psychiatric disorder, it was then conceived as the psychiatric disorder itself. We show that both of these ideas are inadequate. Our thesis is that psychiatric phenomenology has to be considered as belonging to the hermeneutical field (as defined by Ricoeur and Gadamer). We show that this hypothesis leads to a more insightful understanding of what is psychiatric phenomenology and what status we should concede to it. (shrink)

We all could have had better lives, yet often do not wish that our lives had gone differently, especially when we contemplate alternatives that vastly diverge from our actual life course. What, if anything, accounts for such conservative retrospective attitudes? I argue that the right answer involves the significance of our personal attachments and our biographical identity. I also examine other options, such as the absence of self-to-self connections across possible worlds and a general conservatism about value.

Dancers and dance philosophers report on experiences of a certain form of sense making and bodily thinking through the dancing body. Yet, discussions on expertise and consciousness are often framed within canonical philosophical world-views that make it difficult to fully recognize, verbalize, and value the full variety of embodied and affective facets of subjectivity. Using qualitative interviews with five professional dancers and choreographers, I make an attempt to disclose the characteristics of what I consider to be a largely overseen state (...) of consciousness: embodied reflection. Dancers are familiar with this attentive bodily presence, which constitutes their work mode and heightens their abilities as experts. Detailed descriptions of their daily work at the theatre help us grasp the qualities and understand the enigmas of the absorbed state of bodily thinking. Husserl’s theories on reflection and Merleau-Ponty’s work on motoricity support our understanding of the structures behind embodied reflection. I believe it is a common human resource, and that whether we are experts or not, we all have the ability to reflect non-conceptually through bodily and/or affective activity. (shrink)

Suppose that there are objective normative facts and our beliefs about such facts are by-and-large true. How did this come to happen? This is the reliability challenge to normative realism. As has been recently noted, the challenge also applies to expressivist “quasi-realism”. I argue that expressivism is useful in the face of this challenge, in a way that has not been yet properly articulated. In dealing with epistemological issues, quasi-realists typically invoke the desire-like nature of normative judgments. However, this is (...) not enough to prevent the reliability challenge from arising, given that quasi-realists also hold that normative judgments are truth-apt beliefs. To defuse this challenge, we need to isolate a deeper sense in which normative thought is not representational. I propose that we rely on the negative functional thesis of expressivism: normative thought does not have the function of tracking normative facts, or any other kind of facts. This thesis supports an argument to the effect that it is misguided to expect an explanation of our access to normative facts akin to the explanations available in regions of thought that have a tracking function. We should be content with explanations of our reliability that take for granted certain connections between our psychology and the normative truths. (shrink)

The essential qualities of human nature, including faith, trust, repentance, forgiveness, compassion, and mercy, are discussed in this collection of writings by some of the world's great sages, both ancient and contemporary. The advice of prophets Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad, the wisdom of Confucius and Buddha, and the prudence of saints, scholars, and even cyclists provide expert guidance for those looking to improve their spiritual well-being.

A la fin du XIXe siècle, alors que l'Europe assiste au retour triomphal de la métaphysique dont Henri Bergson est une figure de proue, sur le positivisme, l'Espagne de la Restauration bourbonienne fait figure de résistante. La répartition bipolaire de l'intellectualité espagnole, entre les conservateurs néo-thomistes et les réformateurs de plus en plus attirés par la psychologie scientifique notamment, rend le dialogue primordialement impossible avec le bergsonisme. Seul Leopoldo Alas, dit Clarin, tente alors de faire entendre la "philosophie nouvelle", dans (...) son pays. Après que le bergsonisme a été boudé durant ces premières décennies d'existence par l'Espagne, la crise théologique moderniste de 1907 précipite son entrée dans la péninsule. Les premiers acteurs "philosophiques" du bergsonisme sont anti-bergsoniens et catholiques. Cet anti-bergsonisme religieux se double d'un rejet politique, pendant la Grande Guerre, principalement lors de la visite diplomatique de Bergson à Madrid, en mai 1916. Parallèlement, les réformateurs, férus de pédagogie, qui ont créé en 1876 la Institucion Libre de Ensenanza, découvrent la conceptualité bergsonienne qu'ils intègrent progressivement, entre 1900 et 1930, dans leur nouvelle science psychopédagogique. Toutefois, les grands acteurs espagnols de la régénération métaphysique sont les littéraires, les poètes symbolistes, appelés "modernistes" dans ce pays, puis les avant-gardes esthétiques. Ce sont eux qui métabolisent le bergsonisme en une (méta-)physique intime et organique. Ce n'est que dans un second temps, dans les années 1910, et non sans obstacles, que les spécialistes espagnols de philosophie intègrent et diffusent le bergsonisme. (shrink)

Shen et al. (2024) have articulated the many opportunities as well as notable challenges associated with the emerging practice of returning individual research results (IRR) specific to digital phe...

Training in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) is mandated for select trainees supported by federal funds. RCR Instructors typically address standards and accepted practices for the planning, conduct and reporting of academic research. While this focus may be relevant to future academic scientists, the majority of science graduate students pursue careers in non-academic employment sectors (e.g., government, non-profit, industry). The ethical and regulatory conventions, norms and expectations of the academic setting may not always transfer to other work environments. As (...) such, educators should focus less on answering specific questions about standards and practices in academia, and instead design ethics education to actively engage students in a learning process that prepares them with the skills to identify and navigate ethical dimensions in a wide range of possible science professions. This paper introduces the principles of andragogy and provides recommendations for educators to consider when designing research ethics education for graduate students seeking cross-sector science careers. By applying principles that resonate with adult learning and integrating strategies that promote self-directed and life-long learning (e.g., reflective practice and collaborative projects), professional and research ethics instructional effectiveness may be enhanced. (shrink)

The authors examine the nursing practice of disposing unaltered controlled substances into public water systems as an issue for nurses concerned with the environmental harm it can cause. A summary of the history of controlled substance management reveals inconsistencies in the interpretation of current regulations that have led to disposal policies that vary by institution, according to a benchmarking survey of regional hospitals. Much attention has been given to the phenomenon of conscientious objection in the context of patient care that (...) conflicts with a nurse’s moral integrity. Nurses who are compelled to dispose narcotics down drains may also face this struggle. The authors submit that this disposal method is based on a type of double effect logic where preventing diversion is viewed as a good effect of flushing unused controlled substances that outweighs any harm it may cause, though there is little evidence to support this conclusion. Consequently, the topic deserves further study so that nurse managers and administrators can support and offer alternatives to nurses who object to flushing drugs down the drain. (shrink)

The following scenario seems possible: a community uses concepts that play the same role in guiding actions and shaping social life as our normative concepts, and yet refer to something else. As Eklund argues, this apparent possibility poses a problem for any normative realist who aspires to vindicate the thought that reality itself favors our ways of valuing and acting. How can realists make good on this idea, given that anything they might say in support of the privileged status of (...) our normative concepts can be mirrored by the imagined community? E.g., the realist might claim that using our concepts is what we ought to do if we are to describe normative facts correctly, but members of the other community can claim the same about their concepts, using their own concept of ought. A promising approach to this challenge is to try to rule out the possibility of alternative normative concepts, by arguing that any concepts that have the same normative role must share a reference as well. In this paper I argue that normative quasi-naturalism, a view that combines expressivism about normative discourse with a naturalist metaphysics of normativity, supports referential normativity and solves the problem of alternative normative concepts. (shrink)

In this paper, I support a hybrid view regarding the metaphysics of worlds. I endorse Lewisian Modal Realism for possible worlds (LMR). My aim is to come up with a hybrid account of impossible worlds that provides all the plenitude of impossibilities for all fine-grained intentional contents. I raise several challenges for such a plenitudinous hybrid theory. My version of hybrid modal realism builds impossible worlds as set-theoretic constructions out of genuine individuals and sets of them, that is, as set-theoretic (...) constructions from parts and sets of parts of genuine Lewisian worlds. _Structured worlds_ are defined as sets of tuples: structured entities built out of Lewisian ‘raw material’. These structured worlds are ersatz worlds, some of which are impossible. I claim that propositions must be sets of worlds rather than members of sets. Once the construction is in place, I evaluate the proposal and show that my hybrid account is able to supply a plenitude of impossibilities and thus giving the resources to make all the hyperintensional distinctions we are looking for, whilst remaining Lewisian-conservative. (shrink)

La question de la religion - de son essence, de sa fonction, de son origine - a été centrale dans la sociologie et l'anthropologie classiques. Pour la tirer des impasses et de la stagnation où elle est reléguée de nos jours, Camille Tarot propose ici un bilan critique des œuvres des meilleurs comparatistes, à travers leurs théories si contradictoires de la religion. Huit auteurs principaux sont soumis à examen : Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Mircéa Eliade, Georges Dumézil, Claude Lévi-Strauss, (...) René Girard, Pierre Bourdieu et Marcel Gauchet. L'important en la matière est d'abord d'esquiver les faux irénismes comme les querelles stériles ou haineuses, pour confronter les doctrines en profondeur et systématiquement. Ensuite, de déceler l'impensé et les refoulements que produit chaque cadre théorique, pour proposer le modèle ou l'idéal-type de la religion qui paraît le mieux fondé. Au fil de cet examen, il apparaît que l'essence du fait religieux est à rechercher à l'intersection du symbolique et du sacré, à comprendre à partir des fondations d'Emile Durkheim et de Marcel Mauss, complétées par les apports de René Girard. La possible fécondité du modèle qui se dégage ainsi s'atteste par sa capacité à relire les sources et à renouveler en profondeur les vieux problèmes des fonctions de la religion, qui n'avaient guère avancé depuis Emile Durkheim. (shrink)