Dans la carte des conflits numériques – logiciel libre, open source, théorie de la propriété –Échelle Inconnue relate son expérience de bataille pour le QR-code (encodeur et décodeur libre en ligne, donc gratuit et réalisable par tous) contre le système de « Flash code » payant, érigé comme standard national, commercialisé par Orange. Ce récit, victorieux dans la ville de Rouen, a amené une vingtaine de collectivités territoriales à préférer utiliser le site d’Échelle Inconnue pour élaborer leur code, amenant Orange (...) à abandonner ses rêves de code fermé et payant. (shrink)

This paper considers the rediscovery of Hegel currently taking place in the analytic philosophy. Going back to the Hegelian texts themselves, I will try to show how they can help to decisively solve some problems of contemporary philosophy. I will concentrate on the theme of knowledge, and especially mathematical knowledge, in relation to Hegelian dialectical logic.

Various notions of independence of observables have been proposed within the algebraic framework of quantum field theory. We discuss relationships between these and the recently introduced notion of logical independence in a general operator-algebraic context. We show that C*-independence implies an analogue of classical independence.

In French, the word « expérience » has two different meanings, which often merge into each other: whether one hears it as « to experience » or as « to experiment », one will take it towards lay knowledge and techniques of struggle, or towards scientific protocols and techniques of governance. This article rides on this ambiguity, putting the two sides of this notion to the service, and to the test, of an analysis of practices and policies dealing with the (...) issue of drugs. On this specific question, the two meanings of political « expérience » are both maximally divergent and intimately tied to each other. (shrink)

MORALITY AS A SOURCE OF (BANAL) EVIL. HANNAH ARENDT READS KANT The experience of totalitarianism made Arendt notice how problematic the common understanding of morality is. If we identify it with the obedience to the rules governing human relationships it can happen that when those rules become questionable we are no longer able to distinguish right from wrong. But totalitarian leaders not only rejected the existing rules; they replaced them with the ones that prescribed evil things. Arendt thinks that the (...) real moral problem is with those "ordinary" people who adapted to the new situation. Both the ease of their conversion and the example of those who were able to resist it, led her to conclude that “morality of rules” might be detrimental to the activities that can make us refrain from doing evil. Analyzing these activities, which are thinking and judging, Arendt often refers to Kant’s philosophy. I want to demonstrate the fruitfulness of this interpretation, and its importance to moral and political thought of Arendt herself. The presentation of these topics is supposed to deepen the reflection on the problem of "banal" evil. (shrink)

Hegel i Nietzsche twierdzili, że żyją w czasach przełomu, który wymusi pojawienie się nowego etapu w dziejach ludzkości. Sytuację człowieka współczesnego określa „fakt” roztrzaskania dotychczasowych horyzontów oraz konieczność stworzenia, lub odkrycia, horyzontów nowych. Postulują oni zatem ustanowienie nowego celu ludzkości. Filozofia polityki winna stać się częścią tego ogólnokulturowego projektu. Tym samym rzucają wyzwanie współczesnej filozofii politycznej, która zrzeka się prawa do ustanawiania takiego celu. Obaj są też przekonani – znów wbrew twierdzeniom współczesnym – że cel ów może i powinien być (...) ugruntowany w naturze całej rzeczywistości i w naturze człowieka. W ich założeniu ma to być cel człowieka empirycznego, historycznego, człowieka, który osiągnął bolesną świadomość tego, że to on był twórcą tych wartości, które dotąd uznawał za obiektywne. Potrzeba sformułowania nowego celu każe Heglowi i Nietzschemu powrócić do klasycznego pojmowania filozofii polityki, do postrzegania w doskonałości człowieka ideału, któremu ma być podporządkowana polityczna działalność. Właściwe rozumienie miejsca człowieka w świecie, ujęcie go jako istoty stwarzającej horyzonty i przekształcającej zgodnie z nimi rzeczywistość, pozwala według nich dotrzeć do prawdy o bycie jako całości, do konstytuującej go zasady samo-rozwoju, będącego zarazem samo-przezwyciężaniem i samo-przekraczaniem. Zaakceptowanie tej prawdy o świecie pozwala ugruntować w nim ideał doskonałości, który można od tej pory ujmować jako istotowy cel człowieka, i żądać podporządkowaniu mu całej kulturowej działalności, w tym także – filozoficzno-politycznej teorii i praktyki. (shrink)

Being inherently different from any other lifesaving organ transplant, uterine transplantation does not aim at saving lives but supporting the possibility to generate life. Unlike the kidneys or the liver, the uterus is not specifically a vital organ. Given the non-lifesaving nature of this procedure, questions have been raised about its feasibility. The ethical dilemma revolves around whether it is worth placing two lives at risk related to surgery and immunosuppression, amongst others, to enable a woman with absolute uterine factor (...) infertility to experience the presence of an organ enabling childbirth. In the year 2000, the first uterine transplantation, albeit unsuccessful, was performed in Saudi Arabia from where it has spread to the rest of the world including Sweden, the United States and now recently India. The procedure is, however, still in the preclinical stages and several ethical, legal, social and religious concerns are yet to be addressed before it can be integrated into the clinical setting as standard of care for women with absolute uterine factor infertility. (shrink)

This paper develops a challenge to theism. The challenge is to explain why the hypothesis that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and all-good god should be considered significantly more reasonable than the hypothesis that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and all-evil god. Theists typically dismiss the evil-god hypothesis out of hand because of the problem of good–there is surely too much good in the world for it to be the creation of such a being. But then why doesn't the problem (...) of evil provide equally good grounds for dismissing belief in a good god? I develop this evil-god challenge in detail, anticipate several replies, and correct errors made in earlier discussions of the problem of good. (shrink)

There is an old and powerful argument for the claim that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. A recent response to this argument, sometimes called the “dependence response,” centers around the claim that God’s relevant past beliefs depend on the relevant agent’s current or future behavior in a certain way. This paper offers a new argument for the dependence response, one that revolves around different cases of time travel. Somewhat serendipitously, the argument also paves the way (...) for a new reply to a compelling objection to the dependence response, the challenge from prepunishment. But perhaps not so serendipitously, the argument also renders the dependence response incompatible with certain views of providence. (shrink)

"What is a military aircraft? John Law shows in his beautiful analysis that it is a constant oscillation between multiplicity and singularity.