Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor provide a clearly reasoned, articulate account of the two main principles of secularism—equal respect, and freedom of conscience—and argue that in our religiously diverse, politically interconnected world, secularism, properly understood, may offer the only path to religious and philosophical freedom.

The lever appears to be a very simple object, a tool used since ancient times for the most primitive of tasks: to lift and to balance. Why, then, were prominent intellectuals active around 1800 in areas as diverse as science, philosophy, and literature inspired to think and write about levers? In The Lever as Instrument of Reason, readers will discover the remarkable ways in which the lever is used to model the construction of knowledge and to mobilize new ideas among (...) diverse disciplines. These acts of construction are shown to model key aspects of the human, from the more abstract processes of moral decision-making to a quite literal equation of the powerful human ego with the supposed stability and power of the fulcrum point. (shrink)

Ce commentaire intégral des Conjectures de Nicolas de Cues manifeste toute la fécondité de l'oeuvre dans sa complexité. Il élucide l'art général des conjectures, en explore et approfondit les sources doctrinales (en particulier lulliennes) et scientifiques : optiques, mathématiques, biologiques et médicales... Il montre ainsi que la théorie cusaine de la connaissance constitue une hénologie des points de vue et met en évidence l'articulation du rapport entre la vérité, objet de toute recherche connaissante, et l'altérité, condition de tout être fini, (...) et notamment de l'homme. La vérité dans l'altérité se révèle alors comme condition de possibilité de tout ce qui est à partir de l'Un - ce qui constitue l'ordre de l'être - et comme condition de possibilité de toute pensée. Il s'agit, dès lors, de saisir la singularité de l'approche cusaine de la réflexion réciproque entre l'ordre de la pensée et l'ordre de l'être. Après avoir analysé le concept central de conjecture, entendu non comme une simple supposition, mais bien comme une connaissance inadéquate du vrai, la première partie déploie les principes de la nouvelle méthode, fondée sur l'analogie fondamentale entre mens humaine et mens divine. La découverte de ces principes nécessite l'exposition d'une théorie du nombre articulée à celle, d'inspiration proclusienne, des quatre unités (divine, intellectuelle, rationnelle et sensible). Cette première partie conduit à la mise en place de figures manuductrices, paradigmatiques pour notre connaissance. La seconde partie du commentaire explicite les exemples d'application de l'ars coniecturalis donnés par le Cusain en mathématiques, en philosophie naturelle et en anthropologie. Le lecteur découvrira ici comment les Conjectures engagent une philosophie de l'esprit et une philosophie critique, fondamentalement liées à une pensée de l'hétéronomie. (shrink)

This study uses a sample of 242 European professional purchasers to examine the six characteristics of the decision-making process developed by Jones. The illustration mobilizes six original scenarios reproducing typical purchasing situations. Two versions of each scenario were used, one representing low moral intensity and the other showing high moral intensity. Two populations were sampled: one of 120 purchasers responding to the first version of the questionnaire and a second of 122 different purchasers responding to version two. Each version contained (...) three low-moral-intensity scenarios and three high-moral-intensity scenarios. The research also investigates two concepts suggested by Hannah et al. :663–685, 2011): examining the complexity of ethical decision-making through scenarios and microsocial professional ethical contexts. The findings reveal that neither traditional individual characteristics nor standard company characteristics have a real impact on two stages of Rest’s model. They also show that internal locus of control and a high microsocial ethical environment have a positive impact on purchaser awareness and intention to act ethically for four of the six dimensions: magnitude of consequences, social consensus, temporal immediacy, and concentration of effect. Moral intensity factors also have a positive impact on these four dimensions. The two other dimensions are not related to the independent variables. (shrink)

This work argues for a moral consideration of animal work relations. Paying special attention to the livestock industry, the author challenges the zootechnical denigration of animals for increased productivity awhile championing the collaborative nature of work. For Porcher, work is not merely a means to production but a means of living together unity. This unique reconsideration of work envisions animals as co-laborers with humans, rather than overwrought tools for exploitative, and often lethal, employment. Readers will learn about the disjunction between (...) those focused on productivity and profit and those who favor a more ethical work environment for animals. Porcher's text also engages environmental and political debates concerning animal-human relations. (shrink)

In absence of effective pharmaceutical treatments, the individual's compliance with a series of behavioral recommendations provided by the public health authorities play a critical role in the control and prevention of SARS-CoV2 infection. However, we still do not know much about the rate and determinants of adoption of the recommended health behaviors. This paper examines the compliance with the main behavioral recommendations, and compares sociocultural, psychosocial, and social cognitive explanations for its variation in the French population. Based on the current (...) literature, these 3 categories of factors were identified as potential determinants of individual differences in the health preventive behaviors. The data used for these analyses are drawn from 2 cross-sectional studies conducted after the lockdown and before the peak of the COVID-19 epidemic in France. The participants were drawn from a larger internet consumer panel where recruitment was stratified to generate a socio-demographically representative sample of the French adult population. Overall, the results show a very high rate of compliance with the behavioral recommendations among the participants. A hierarchical regression analysis was then performed to assess the potential explanatory power of these approaches in complying with these recommendations by successively entering sociocultural factors, psychosocial factors, social cognitive factors in the model. Only the inclusion of the cognitive variables substantially increased the explained variance of the self-reported adoption of preventive behaviors, providing better support for the social cognitive than the sociocultural and psychosocial explanations. (shrink)

Que se passe-t-il quand de l'eau et du vin se melangent? Comment les quatre elements simples du monde physique se melent-ils les uns aux autres pour former les choses qui nous entourent? La multitude des couleurs vient-elle aussi d'un melange de couleurs simples? Deux corps melanges sont-ils simplement juxtaposes a une echelle microscopique ou bien peuvent-ils se compenetrer de sorte qu'il y aurait deux corps dans le meme lieu? L'union de l'ame et du corps est-elle un melange? Telles sont quelques-unes (...) des questions etonnamment diverses que croise cette histoire du probleme du melange dans la philosophie grecque. Le recit propose ici suit trois lignes principales: la tradition peripateticienne, qui, d'Aristote a son commentateur Alexandre d'Aphrodise, elabore un modele de melange par mediation ou les ingredients de depart s'assimilent reciproquement pour s'unifier en un compose qualitativement intermediaire; la doctrine stoicienne de la mixtion de part en part, ou les ingredients se compenetrent jusqu'a devenir parfaitement coextensifs; le neoplatonisme et les transpositions qu'il opere a partir des modeles physiques precedents pour penser non seulement des relations entre corps mais aussi celle entre l'ame et le corps ou bien entre les realites incorporelles ou immaterielles de l'arriere-monde suprasensible. Fondee sur un vaste corpus de textes couvrant pres d'un millenaire d'histoire de la philosophie grecque, cette etude se veut aussi une proposition de methode: donner a lire les textes eux-memes et rester au plus pres de l'analyse des sources pour suivre parmi l'etonnant foisonnement des doctrines les developpements aussi divers qu'inattendus que la raison humaine, dans sa luxuriante imagination theorique, sait donner a la meme idee, fut-elle aussi courante et intuitive que celle de melange. (shrink)

Introduction to New Realism provides an overview of the movement of contemporary thought named New Realism, by its creator and most celebrated practitioner, Maurizio Ferraris. Sharing significant concerns and features with Speculative Realism and Object Oriented Ontology, New Realism can be said to be one of the most prescient philosophical positions today. Its desire to overcome the postmodern antirealism of Kantian origin, and to reassert the importance of truth and objectivity in the name of a new Enlightenment, has had (...) an enormous resonance both in Europe and in the US. Introduction to New Realism is the first volume dedicated to exposing this continental movement to an anglophone audience.Featuring a foreword by the eminent contemporary philosopher and leading exponent of Speculative Realism, Iain Hamilton Grant, the book begins by tracing the genesis of New Realism, and outlining its central theoretical tenets, before opening onto three distinct sections. The first, 'Negativity', is a critique of the postmodern idea that the world is constructed by our conceptual schemas, all the more so as we have entered the age of digitality and virtuality. The second thesis, 'positivity', proposes the fundamental ontological assertion of New Realism, namely that not only are there parts of reality that are independent of thought, but these parts are also able to act causally over thought and the human world. The third thesis, 'normativity,' applies New Realism to the sphere of the social world. Finally, an afterword written by two young scholars explains in more detail the relationship between New Realism and other forms of contemporary realism. (shrink)

Animal production, especially pork production, is facing growing international criticism. The greatest concerns relate to the environment, the animals’ living conditions, and the occupational diseases. But human and animal conditions are rarely considered together. Yet the living conditions at work and the emotional bond that inevitably forms bring the farm workers and the animals to live very close, which leads to shared suffering. Suffering does spread from animals to human beings and can cause workers physical, mental, and also moral suffering, (...) which is all the more harmful due to the fact that it is concealed. The conceptual tools used to conceal suffering ( animal welfare, stress, pain) suggest that the industrial system can be improved, whereas for farmers it is by definition incompatible with animal husbandry. (shrink)

Machine learning-based AI algorithms lack transparency. In this article, I offer an interpretation of AI’s explainability problem and highlight its ethical saliency. I try to make the case for the legal enforcement of a strong explainability requirement: human organizations which decide to automate decision-making should be legally obliged to demonstrate the capacity to explain and justify the algorithmic decisions that have an impact on the wellbeing, rights, and opportunities of those affected by the decisions. This legal duty can be derived (...) from the demands of Rawlsian public reason. In the second part of the paper, I try to show that the argument from the limitations of human cognition fails to get AI off the hook of public reason. Against a growing trend in AI ethics, my main argument is that the analogy between human minds and artificial neural networks fails because it suffers from an atomistic bias which makes it blind to the social and institutional dimension of human reasoning processes. I suggest that developing interpretive AI algorithms is not the only possible answer to the explainability problem; social and institutional answers are also available and in many cases more trustworthy than techno-scientific ones. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to examine the decision-making processes at work among French buyers—whether beginners or more experienced individuals, when confronted with a dilemma involving an ethical or non-ethical choice to be made. We go on to illustrate these dilemmas through the use of five original scenarios that reproduce typical situations that arise in a purchasing context in relation to the environment, physical integrity, conflict of interest, or paternalism. Based on 172 participants, the results of our study show (...) that, ethical decision-making depends very clearly on two main factors: expertise and gender. The study also reveals that there is not always a coherent link between ethical choices made and the reasons and justifications given for those choices. Ethical options chosen are not exclusively justified on the grounds of purely ethical reasons but also on the grounds of commercial or economic reasons, or else reasons of avoidance. (shrink)

The paper discusses some formal difficulties concerning the theory of universals of Trope-Only ontologies, from which the formal theory of predication advanced by Trope-Only theorists seems to be irremediably affected. It is impossible to lay out a successful defense of a Trope-Only theory without Russellian types, but such types are ontologically inconsistent with tropes’ nominalism. Historically, Tropists’ first way to avoid the problem is appealing to the supervenience claim, which however fails on its terms and, thus, fails as a ground (...) for a solution to the higher-order or ‘type’ problem. A later solution involves the invariance of primitive equivalence relations in order to make universals ontologically innocuous. However, I argue that this latter solution fails to meet the requirements imposed on an ontologically unbiased nominalist attitude. So, this paper discusses how Trope-Only theories alter standard formal moves in Nominalism, and also is interested in clarifying further the formal assumptions for these problems. (shrink)

En este libro, que aparece en Italia en 1987, publicado muchas veces y muy comentado también en el extranjero, Vincenzo Ferrari analiza las funciones sociales del derecho en una perspectiva relativista, subjetivista y conflictualista, opuesta a la del funcionalismo sociológico. De tal manera, el derecho se revela como un medio de acción social dirigido a lograr los proyectos de seres humanos empeñados en relaciones variables de cooperación y de lucha. Así, se muestra cómo las normas jurídicas pueden orientar las actitudes (...) y desorientarlas; solucionar los conflictos y agravarlos o fomentarlos; legitimar cualquier forma de poder con argumentos tan válidos como ficticios. Solo al nivel de los ideales se redescubre el valor del derecho, su potencialidad libertadora y su naturaleza igualitaria. (shrink)

The question of whether problems with the social determinants of health that might impact decision-making justify denying eligibility for assisted dying has recently come to the fore in debates about the legalisation of assisted dying. For example, it was central to critiques of the 2021 amendments made to Canada’s assisted dying law. The question of whether changes to a country’s assisted dying legislation lead to descents down slippery slopes has also come to the fore—as it does any time a jurisdiction (...) changes its laws. We explore these two questions through the lens of Canada’s experience both to inform Canada’s ongoing discussions and because other countries will confront the same questions if they contemplate changing their assisted dying law. Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying law has evolved through a journey from the courts to Parliament, back to the courts, and then back to Parliament. Along this journey the eligibility criteria, the procedural safeguards, and the monitoring regime have changed. In this article, we focus on the eligibility criteria. First, we explain the evolution of the law and what the eligibility criteria were at the various stops along the way. We then explore the ethical justifications for Canada’s new criteria by looking at two elements of the often-corrosive debate. First, we ask whether problems with the social determinants of health that might impact decision-making justify denying eligibility for assisted dying of decisionally capable people with mental illnesses and people with disabilities as their sole underlying medical conditions. Second, we ask whether Canada’s journey supports slippery slope arguments against permitting assisted dying. All data relevant to the study are included in the article. (shrink)

David Eso and Kay Burns edition of philosopher Leo Ferraris previously unpublished 1973 manuscript brings to light a long forgotten satirical work, which, in an age of fake news, possesses renewed relevance. The editors contextualize The Earth is Flat! for the reader with a scholarly introduction and a humorous Forewarning. Author, Leo Ferrari, draws on his extensive knowledge of classical thought and its key figures to present a history of ideas that is sometimes accurate, sometimes speculative. Speculative or alternative (...) aspects of this history support his Flat Earth theme, as do a number of scientific experiments outlined, which the reader is encouraged to try. He traces the conflict between Globularist and Planoterrestrial beliefs from antiquity to his contemporary moment of the early 1970s, marked by space exploration. Later chapters chart the activities and philosophies of the Flat Earth Society of Canada, including Ferraris experience on the lecture circuit and in media platforms. The authors method is to blur the line between seriousness and humour and to show that intellectual work can also be good fun. He uses the idea of a spinning, spherical planet to symbolically represent the alienating effects of technological modernity. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a personal and professional narrative of how Canada went from prohibition to permission for medical assistance in dying. I describe the legal developments to date and flag what might be coming in the near future. I also offer some personal observations and reflections on the role and impact of bioethics and bioethicists, on what it was like to be a participant in Canada's law reform process, and on lessons that readers in other jurisdictions might take (...) from Canada's experience. (shrink)