Ambient assisted living systems are based on sensors and actuators, with a diversity of network protocols and vendors. This commonly leads to the introduction of gateways or middlewares into the technical infrastructure in order to address interoperability issues. The xAAL framework presented in this paper aims to provide interoperability and to redesign such “gateways” into well-defined functional entities communicating with each other via a lightweight message bus over IP. Each entity may have multiple instances, may be shared between several boxes, (...) and may be physically located in any box. Thanks to the distributed architecture of the system, each home automation vendor may peacefully provide its own xAAL box without revealing details of its technology. Also, several applications may be plugged together on the xAAL bus without getting bored with underlying heterogeneity. Moreover, the management of the dynamicity allows sensors or applications to enter and leave the system at any time. (shrink)

The complexity of industrial reality, the plurality of legitimate perspectives on risks and the role of emotions in decision-making raise important ethical issues in risk management that are usually overlooked in engineering. Using a questionnaire answered by 200 engineering students from a major engineering school in Canada, the purpose of this study was to assess how their training has influenced their perceptions toward these issues. While our results challenge the stereotypical portrait of the engineer, they also suggest that the current (...) engineering education might fail to empower engineers to engage in ethical risk management. We therefore propose an active-learning method to help in this matter. Carried out through workshops with 34 students in chemical engineering, the effectiveness of this method has been evaluated using group interviews and questionnaires. Our results suggest that such an approach is effective, at least in the short run, to motivate students to engage in ethical risk management and to trigger reflectivity on what it means to be an engineer today. (shrink)

Risk management is certainly one of the most important professional responsibilities of an engineer. As such, this activity needs to be combined with complex ethical reflections, and this requirement should therefore be explicitly integrated in engineering education. In this article, we analyse how this nexus between ethics and risk management is expressed in the engineering education research literature. It was done by reviewing 135 articles published between 1980 and March 1, 2016. These articles have been selected from 21 major journals (...) that specialize in engineering education, engineering ethics and ethics education. Our review suggests that risk management is mostly used as an anecdote or an example when addressing ethics issues in engineering education. Further, it is perceived as an ethical duty or requirement, achieved through rational and technical methods. However, a small number of publications do offer some critical analyses of ethics education in engineering and their implications for ethical risk and safety management. Therefore, we argue in this article that the link between risk management and ethics should be further developed in engineering education in order to promote the progressive change toward more socially and environmentally responsible engineering practices. Several research trends and issues are also identified and discussed in order to support the engineering education community in this project. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to shed light on and develop what I call a phenomenological conception of experiential justification. According to this phenomenological conception, certain experiences gain their justificatory force from their distinctive phenomenology. Such an approach closely connects epistemology and philosophy of mind and has recently been proposed by several authors, most notably by Elijah Chudnoff, Ole Koksvik, and James Pryor. At the present time, however, there is no work that contrasts these different versions of PCEJ. This (...) paper not only bridges this gap, but also reveals problems in current versions of PCEJ. Consequently, I argue for a new version of PCEJ that focuses on what is given within experience and not on how what is given pushes me towards believing something. (shrink)

This case examines how IBERDROLA, Spain’s leading electricity supplier, shifted the company’s strategic focus to concentrate on sustainability and turned it into a source of competitive edge in a liberalized market. Largely pre-empting the industry obligations that came out of the Kyoto agreement, IBERDROLA decided to put sustainability at the heart of the company’s decision-making processes. IBERDROLA sold off its most polluting facilities and all non-core activities to concentrate on becoming the greenest player on the market. Its success was due (...) to its willingness to walk the talk, to get stakeholders on side, and to demonstrate its determination to be a corporate citizen. An important element of the strategy was to establish a working relationship with important NGOs and effect their involvement with IBERDROLA’s activities. An early and uneasy partnership with WWF/Adena over the production of green energy proved a sharp learning curve for both parties. Then in 2004 a relatively minor event triggered a chain of reactions that led to a revolution in the company’s policy of stakeholder integration. A small group of protected birds was killed when they flew into the blades at one of IBERDROLA’s wind power facilities. When previous similar crises had occurred, IBERDROLA had dealt with them through the time-honoured methods of dialogue and confrontation. This time, IBERDROLA decided to initiate a new approach. They invited SEO/BirdLife (the Spanish Ornithology Society), the oldest Spanish NGO dedicated to the environment, to undertake a study into the implications of similar installations on bird conservation and the environment. The intention is for this collaboration to lead to a strategic agreement between both parties. (shrink)

This case examines how IBERDROLA, Spain’s leading electricity supplier, shifted the company’s strategic focus to concentrate on sustainability and turned it into a source of competitive edge in a liberalized market. Largely pre-empting the industry obligations that came out of the Kyoto agreement, IBERDROLA decided to put sustainability at the heart of the company’s decision-making processes. IBERDROLA sold off its most polluting facilities and all non-core activities to concentrate on becoming the greenest player on the market. Its success was due (...) to its willingness to walk the talk, to get stakeholders on side, and to demonstrate its determination to be a corporate citizen. An important element of the strategy was to establish a working relationship with important NGOs and effect their involvement with IBERDROLA’s activities. An early and uneasy partnership with WWF/Adena over the production of green energy proved a sharp learning curve for both parties. Then in 2004 a relatively minor event triggered a chain of reactions that led to a revolution in the company’s policy of stakeholder integration. A small group of protected birds was killed when they flew into the blades at one of IBERDROLA’s wind power facilities. When previous similar crises had occurred, IBERDROLA had dealt with them through the time-honoured methods of dialogue and confrontation. This time, IBERDROLA decided to initiate a new approach. They invited SEO/BirdLife (the Spanish Ornithology Society), the oldest Spanish NGO dedicated to the environment, to undertake a study into the implications of similar installations on bird conservation and the environment. The intention is for this collaboration to lead to a strategic agreement between both parties. (shrink)

This case examines how IBERDROLA, Spain’s leading electricity supplier, shifted the company’s strategic focus to concentrate on sustainability and turned it into a source of competitive edge in a liberalized market. Largely pre-empting the industry obligations that came out of the Kyoto agreement, IBERDROLA decided to put sustainability at the heart of the company’s decision-making processes. IBERDROLA sold off its most polluting facilities and all non-core activities to concentrate on becoming the greenest player on the market. Its success was due (...) to its willingness to walk the talk, to get stakeholders on side, and to demonstrate its determination to be a corporate citizen. An important element of the strategy was to establish a working relationship with important NGOs and effect their involvement with IBERDROLA’s activities. An early and uneasy partnership with WWF/Adena over the production of green energy proved a sharp learning curve for both parties. Then in 2004 a relatively minor event triggered a chain of reactions that led to a revolution in the company’s policy of stakeholder integration. A small group of protected birds was killed when they flew into the blades at one of IBERDROLA’s wind power facilities. When previous similar crises had occurred, IBERDROLA had dealt with them through the time-honoured methods of dialogue and confrontation. This time, IBERDROLA decided to initiate a new approach. They invited SEO/BirdLife (the Spanish Ornithology Society), the oldest Spanish NGO dedicated to the environment, to undertake a study into the implications of similar installations on bird conservation and the environment. The intention is for this collaboration to lead to a strategic agreement between both parties. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. The first is an interpretative one as I wish to provide a detailed account of Husserl’s conception of experiential justification. Here Ideas I and Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge: Lectures 1906/07 will be my main resources. My second aim is to demonstrate the currency and relevance of Husserl’s conception. This means two things: Firstly, I will show that in current debates in analytic epistemology there is a movement sharing with Husserl the (...) basic idea that certain experiences gain their justificatory force simply from their distinctive phenomenal character. Secondly, I shall reveal the benefits of Husserl’s specific version of this view. Thus, one of my aims is to show that debates in current analytic epistemology could profit from adopting certain Husserlian elements. More precisely, I will defend Husserl’s claim that perceptual experiences are justifiers due to their self-giving phenomenal character as opposed to the currently popular view that it is the phenomenology of pushiness that makes them justifiers. To put it differently, what matters is what is originally given within experience and not how you feel about what is given. (shrink)

In his influential paper “Grasping the Third Realm,” John Bengson raises the question of how we can non-accidentally grasp abstract facts. What distinguishes successful intuition from hallucinatory intuition? Bengson answers his “non-accidental relation question” by arguing for a constitutive relationship: The intuited object is a literal constituent of the respective intuition. Now, the problem my contribution centers around is that Bengson’s answer cannot be the end of the story. This is because, as Bar Luzon and Preston Werner have recently pointed (...) out, this answer leads to the follow-up question of why certain intuitional experiences are constituted by the facts, but others are not. My objective is to answer this question by specifying precisely what is epistemically defective about intellectual hallucinations. My result is that, in stark contrast to perception, intellectual hallucinations are epistemically defective in the sense that something is overlooked. In successful intuition, by contrast, all relevant possibilities/scenarios are considered/imagined. This has crucial epistemological implications. In particular, I argue that intuitions exhibiting a certain phenomenology cannot fail to successfully grasp abstract facts. I call this the non-accidental correctness thesis, which constitutes the main thesis of this paper. (shrink)

In current debates, many philosophers of science have sympathies for the project of introducing a new approach to the scientific realism debate that forges a middle way between traditional forms of scientific realism and anti-realism. One promising approach is perspectivism. Although different proponents of perspectivism differ in their respective characterizations of perspectivism, the common idea is that scientific knowledge is necessarily partial and incomplete. Perspectivism is a new position in current debates but it does have its forerunners. Figures that are (...) typically mentioned in this context include Dewey, Feyerabend, Leibniz, Kant, Kuhn, and Putnam. Interestingly, to my knowledge, there exists no work that discusses similarities to the phenomenological tradition. This is surprising because here one can find systematically similar ideas and even a very similar terminology. It is startling because early modern physics was noticeably influenced by phenomenological ideas. And it is unfortunate because the analysis of perspectival approaches in the phenomenological tradition can help us to achieve a more nuanced understanding of different forms of perspectivism. The main objective of this paper is to show that in the phenomenological tradition one finds a well-elaborated philosophy of science that shares important similarities with current versions of perspectivism. Engaging with the phenomenological tradition is also of systematic value since it helps us to gain a better understanding of the distinctive claims of perspectivism and to distinguish various grades of perspectivism. (shrink)

Solar radiation management (SRM) may help to reduce the negative outcomes of climate change by minimising or reversing global warming. However, many express the worry that SRM may pose a moral hazard, i.e., that information about SRM may lead to a reduction in climate change mitigation efforts. In this paper, we report a large-scale preregistered, money-incentivised, online experiment with a representative US sample (N = 2284). We compare actual behaviour (donations to climate change charities and clicks on climate change petition (...) links) as well as stated preferences (support for a carbon tax and self-reported intentions to reduce emissions) between participants who receive information about SRM with two control groups (a salience control that includes information about climate change generally and a content control that includes information about a different topic). Behavioural choices are made with an earned real-money endowment, and stated preference responses are incentivised via the Bayesian Truth Serum. We fail to find a significant impact of receiving information about SRM and, based on equivalence tests, we provide evidence in favour of the absence of a meaningfully large effect. Our results thus provide evidence for the claim that there is no detectable moral hazard with respect to SRM. [Open access]. (shrink)

A collection of essays investigating key historical and scientific questions relating to the concept of natural purpose in Kant's philosophy of biology.

The conception of social justice presented and defended in Philippe Van Parijs, "Real Freedom for All" entails, among other implication, the justification of an unconditional basic income. It was the subject of seven critical comments that forms issue 22 and part of 23 of ANALYSE & KRITIK. In this article, Van Parijs offers a comprehensive reply.

Nous présentons une étude fondée sur un corpus de transcriptions de consultations médicales, dans le cadre d’un projet interdisciplinaire qui explore la question des inégalités sociales de santé. L’objet de cet article est de montrer comment, en tant que linguistes familiers du traitement outillé des corpus, nous avons choisi d’aborder ce matériau qui fait l’objet de questionnements disciplinaires complémentaires, et quels éléments de caractérisation spécifiques nous sommes en mesure d’apporter en réponse à une demande émanant de la sphère médicale.

Nous présentons une étude fondée sur un corpus de transcriptions de consultations médicales, dans le cadre d’un projet interdisciplinaire qui explore la question des inégalités sociales de santé. L’objet de cet article est de montrer comment, en tant que linguistes familiers du traitement outillé des corpus, nous avons choisi d’aborder ce matériau qui fait l’objet de questionnements disciplinaires complémentaires, et quels éléments de caractérisation spécifiques nous sommes en mesure d’apporter en réponse à une demande émanant de la sphère médicale.

A autora aborda o fenômeno da formação enquanto uma atividade que tende a se autonomizar dos processos realizados na instituição escolar e abrange um conjunto de práticas muito heterogêneas segundo os lugares onde são exercidas. Dentre os principais fatos e mudanças associados à formação, destaca: o desemprego, as formas de emprego em ruptura com a norma, o prolongamento da escolaridade e da inserção profissional, transição da juventude à vida adulta, análise das políticas educativas e de emprego, qualificações, competências e comparações (...) internacionais. (shrink)

Although providing aid in conflict is implicitly political, involving humanitarian actors and aid in conflict resolution initiatives, as Weiss advocates, risks diluting the primary responsibility of humanitarian aid to alleviate suffering.

Quelle politique peut-on faire quand on est un idiot? Loin d'être saugrenue, c'est bien la question qu'on est conduit à se poser inévitablement en lisant l'oeuvre de Gilles Deleuze. L'"idiot" joue, en effet, un rôle incontournable et essentiel dans la philosophie de Deleuze. Il est le personnage conceptuel qui fait tenir cette philosophie dans sa consistance propre. Il se situe à la charnière de l'image de la pensée que le philosophe invoque et suppose plus ou moins implicitement et de la (...) création de concepts qu'il produit explicitement. Aussi, faire de la philosophie, tout comme agir et penser politiquement, c'est toujours une manière de faire l'idiot. Les conséquences de cette approche sont capitales, du fait des questions posées à la réflexion politique classique centrée sur le Droit et l'Etat, du fait aussi des problématiques qui se voient invalidées dans ce champ. La place qui revient au contrôle et au bio-pouvoir, aux zones d'indétermination et aux espaces lisses, permet de prendre une saine distance vis-à-vis de la politique "majoritaire" et de faire apparaître, comme déjà de vieux clichés, bon nombre de thèmes et de concepts revendiqués par les organisations alternatives, mondialistes et subversives récentes. C'est une tout autre idée de la politique, centrée sur les devenirs, que nous invite à méditer la politique deleuzienne de l'idiot. Elle nous ouvre à d'autres espérances, nouvelles, en lien avec un "peuple absent" qui naîtrait avec chaque devenir. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: I The Extended Auction II Working in the Peep Show, Flirting in the Square III Insurance Behind a Veil of Ignorance IV Dworkin's Hybrid Scheme V Four Objections to Dworkin VI Ackerman Generalized VII Not Enough Redistribution? VIII Too Much Redistribution? Acknowledgement.

Animal research suggests that central serotonergic neurons are involved in behavioral suppression, particularly anxiety-related inhibition. The hypothesis linking decreased serotonin transmission to reduced anxiety as the mechanism in the anxiolytic activity of benzodiazepines conflicts with most clinical observations. Serotonin antagonists show no marked capacity to alleviate anxiety. On the other hand, clinical signs of reduced serotonergic transmission (low 5-HIAA levels in the cerebrospinal fluid) are frequently associated with aggressiveness, suicide attempts, and increased anxiety. The target article attempts to reconcile such (...) human and animal findings by investigating whether anxiety reduction or increased impulsivity is more Likely to account for animal behavioral changes associated with decreased serotonergic transmission. The effects of manipulating central serotonin in experimental anxiety paradigms in animals (punishment, extinction, novelty) are reviewed and compared with the effects of antianxiety drugs. Anxiety seems neither necessary nor sufficient to induce control by serotonergic neurons on behavior. Further evidence suggests that behavioral effects of anxiolytics thought to be mediated by decreases in anxiety are not caused by the ability of these drugs to reduce serotonin transmission. Blockade of serotonin transmission, especially at the level of the substantia nigra, results in a shift of behavior toward facilitation of responding. This behavioral shift is particularly marked when there is competition between acting and restraining response tendencies and when obstacles prevent the immediate attainment of an anticipated reward. It is proposed that serotonergic neurons are involved not only in behavioral arousal but also in enabling the organism to arrange or tolerate delay before acting. Decreases in serotonin transmission seem to be associated with the increased performance of behaviors that are usually suppressed, though not necessarily because of the alleviation of anxiety, which might contribute to the suppression. (shrink)

Max Stirner (1806-1856) est l'auteur de L'Unique et sa propriété, paru en 1844. Il occupe une place singulière dans l'histoire de la pensée philosophique en ce qu'il pousse celle-ci dans ses derniers retranchements et oppose à tous les systèmes politiques et sociaux la réalité de l'individu unique. Chantre de l'égoïsme mais prônant l'association, il s'en prend radicalement à toutes les doctrines fondées sur le sacrifice ou l'oubli de soi. Les deux textes qui composent le présent volume visent à dégager la (...) pensée de Stirner des contresens et légendes qu'a entrai nés une lecture biaisée de son oeuvre. Le Philosophe qui s'en va tout seul en propose une interprétation destinée à rendre Stirner accessible au lecteur d'aujourd'hui. Celui-ci y trouvera les grandes étapes de la vie de Stirner ainsi que la genèse et l'évolution de sa philosophie. Il assistera à la vigoureuse attaque menée par Stirner contre les idéaux – religieux, politiques ou moraux, qui asservissent l'individu concret. Or loin d'être apocalyptique, L'Unique fonde de manière dynamique un nouveau type d'individu et de relations sociales, qui s'oppose à tous les totalitarismes. De ce fait et par la postérité qu'il a eue (de Nietzsche et des anarchistes aux situationnistes), Stirner reste un des philosophes les plus actuels. Stirner a choqué nombre de lecteurs, à commencer par Karl Marx qui écrivit avec Engels L'Idéologie allemande pour le combattre: c'est cet éreintage "matérialiste" que dissèque Daniel Joubert dans Marx versus Stirner. Il éclaire l'antagonisme entre ces deux émules de Hegel, qui traça pour longtemps une fracture dans les rangs de la révolte et de la critique du monde marchand. Ces considérations, souvent malicieuses, ébauchent en outre la perspective d'un dépassement de l'opposition entre "l'Unique" stirnérien et "l'être générique" marxien. (shrink)

The once-lost introduction to the philosophy of science by Philipp Frank (1884-1966), a leading member of the Vienna circle of philosophers and biographer of Albert Einstein.

An introduction to semantics for the general reader. How things mean, from animal communication to music.