Reintroduction programs in which captive-bred or reared animals are released into natural habitats are considered a key approach for conservation; however, success rates have generally been low. Accounting for factors that enable individual animals to have a greater chance of survival can not only improve overall conservation outcomes but can also impact the welfare of the individual animals involved. One such factor may be individual personality, and personality research is a growing field. This type of research presents animal welfare scientists (...) with the opportunity to develop behavior profiles that may predict how particular individuals cope with challenges. This has direct implications for both in situ and ex situ populations and can bridge the gap between animal welfare and conservation. We designed a project to ascertain the presence of personality traits in Blanding’s turtles (Emydoidea blandingii), a species of special concern in the state of Michigan, and assess potential links between traits and post-release success. As hypothesized, the Blanding’s turtles in this study displayed behavioral responses to modified open field tests indicative of distinct personality traits: exploration, boldness and aggression. Additionally, the personality traits were correlated differently with survival and behavior patterns when the turtles were released into the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge. More exploratory turtles had higher survival rates, while neither boldness nor aggression were related to survival. Exploratory turtles were also more likely to travel longer distances after release. The use of muskrat dens was related to increased survival, and both bolder and more exploratory turtles made higher use of this feature. Exploratory and aggressive turtles were found basking outside of water more often, while bold turtles were more likely to be found at the water surface. Both of these basking behaviors may increase the risk of predation and may be reflective of a trade-off between risk and behaviors related to physiological health. Understanding how personality affects behavior and survival post-release can be a critical tool for improving reintroduction success. Zoo animal welfare scientists and practitioners can implement approaches that improve the welfare of individuals within the context of conservation initiatives. (shrink)

This paper aims to deflate the idea that democracy would be in essence a privileged locus of civic trust. Three claims are defended: (1) there is nothing specific to democracy regarding the affirmation that trust is required for social cooperation; (2) democracy, when conceived discursively, depends on guarded epistemic trust and; (3) popular control may require, in some contexts, institutions that express and foster distrust towards a specific section of the population. The conclusion to be drawn is that the appropriateness (...) of trust for the achievement of popular control over government depends on a contextual and realist assessment. (shrink)

There has long been interest in identifying and studying ‘‘successful psychopaths.” This study sampled psychologists with an interest in law, attorneys, and clinical psychology professors to obtain descriptions of individuals considered to be psychopaths who were also successful in their endeavors. The results showed a consistent description across professions and convergence with descriptions of traditional psychopathy, though the successful psychopathy profile had higher scores on conscientiousness, as measured within the five-factor model (FFM). These results are useful in documenting the existence (...) of successful psychopathy, demonstrating the potential benefit of informant methodology, and providing an FFM description that distinguishes successful psychopaths from unsuccessful psychopaths studied more routinely within prison settings. (shrink)

The politics of reconciliation, in Canada, finds its origin in judgements of the Supreme Court affirming the objective of reconciling the sui generis authority and continued distinct existence of I...

The politics of reconciliation, in Canada, finds its origin in judgements of the Supreme Court affirming the objective of reconciling the sui generis authority and continued distinct existence of I...

Surrogates’ decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatments (LSTs) are pervasive. However, the factors influencing surrogates’ decisions to initiate LSTs are relatively unknown. We present evidence from two experiments indicating that some surrogates’ decisions about when to initiate LSTs can be predictably manipulated. Factors that influence surrogate decisions about LSTs include the patient’s cognitive state, the patient’s age, the percentage of doctors not recommending the initiation of LSTs, the percentage of patients in similar situations not wanting LSTs, and default treatment (...) settings. These results suggest that some people may use heuristics when making these important life-and-death decisions. These findings may have important moral implications for improving surrogate decisions about LSTs and reconsidering paternalism. (shrink)

In the absence of the Arabic text of al-Khw's Arithmetic, which has not yet been found, the oldest Latin adaptations from the twelfth century are the only evidence documenting the genesis and the first spreading of a decimal arithmetic that uses nine figures and zero, i.e. the Indian reckoning known in the Middle Ages as algorismus. This paper studies these texts, their content, their sources, and identifies their authors and the milieus in which they were written.

This paper presents a conception of corruption informed by epistemic democratic theory. I first explain the view of corruption as a disease of the political body. Following this view, we have to consider the type of actions that debase a political entity of its constitutive principal in order to assess corruption. Accordingly, we need to consider what the constitutive principle of democracy is. This is the task I undertake in the second section where I explicate democratic legitimacy. I present democracy (...) as a procedure of social inquiry about what ought to be done that includes epistemic and practical considerations. In the third section, I argue that the problem of corruption for a procedural conception of democracy is that the epistemic value of the procedure is diminished by corrupted agents’ lack of concern for truth. Corruption, according to this view, consists in two deformities of truth: lying and bullshit. These deformities corrupt since they conceal private interests under the guise of a concern for truth. In the fourth section, I discuss the difficulties a procedural account may face in formulating solutions to the problem of corruption. (shrink)

Les logiciels d’aide à la décision basés sur des techniques d’intelligence artificielle sont de plus en plus utilisés dans le domaine de la justice. Or ces techniques nécessitent souvent d’accéder à de grandes quantités d’informations personnelles afin de réaliser un apprentissage de qualité. En France, le cadre légal semble aujourd’hui favorable à l’ouverture des jugements, pourvu que la vie privée des personnes concernées soit respectée. Cependant, la protection des données personnelles destinées à être publiées reste difficile techniquement. Cet article a (...) pour objectif de décrire une attaque minimaliste qui a été réalisée en 2014 sur un jeu de données protégé par l’application d’un algorithme de pseudonymisation. L’originalité de cette attaque réside dans sa simplicité de fonctionnement – elle ne nécessite pas d’accès à un jeu de données auxiliaire – et dans sa cible – l’algorithme de pseudonymisation. Nous présentons la famille des algorithmes de pseudonymisation, décrivons et analysons l’attaque, et concluons sur la place de la pseudonymisation dans le Règlement Général sur la Protection des Données personnelles. (shrink)

The moral responsibility of pharmaceutical companies is often invoked when discussing the difficulties faced by developing countries regarding their access to medication. In this article, I wish to criticize one strategy of attributing responsibility to pharmaceuticals, according to which moral responsibility originates from the analogy between enterprise and individual moral agent. I will propose an alternative strategy linking responsibility to the functions of the enterprise using a distinction between the organizational and occupational functions of a pharmaceutical company. Despite its interest, (...) the mitigated success of this proposition will bring me to reconsider the overall relevance of attributing, in such a targeted manner, moral responsibility to pharmaceuticals. (shrink)

La pensée de Jean-Jacques Rousseau est essentiellement une pensée politique, qui oscille entre un pôle transpolitique, que le citoyen de Genève incarne, par exemple, dans les personnages du législateur, du pédagogue et du sage, et un pôle prépolitique, où figurent l'homme naturel, le marginal et l'homme sensible. C'est en examinant quelques pages de trois grandes oeuvres de Rousseau: l'« Emile », « Du contrat social » et « Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse », que je tenterai d'éclaircir brièvement ces points. (...) Ainsi sera manifestée l'actualité des paradoxes rousseauistes.Rousseau's thought is essentially a political thought that swings from a transpolitical pole, presented through the figures of the legislator, the pedagogue and the wise man, and a prepolitical pole, where we meet natural man, the outsider and the man of exquisite sensibility. This theme is brought to light through a partial analysis of three of Rousseau's major works : " Emile ", " Du contrat social " and the "Nouvelle Héloïse". In this way, it is hoped that Rousseau's paradoxes will be shown to have meaning for our contemporaries. (shrink)

Despite periodic references to F. H. Bradley as a dogmatic metaphysician of the worst sort, or an unreformed, conservative, and nonhistorical Hegelian, one of his logical doctrines is now a commonplace: his analysis of the logical form of affirmative universal categorical statements. In “On Denoting” Russell adopted this analysis without discussion, merely noting that it had been “ably argued” by Bradley. Virtually all philosophers since have followed suit. It is now an accepted truth that statements like “All A’s are B” (...) have the logical form. (shrink)

In his foreword to wilderness and the heart, a collection of essays on Henry Bugbee’s philosophy, Alasdair MacIntyre commends Bugbee’s book, The Inward Morning, for the way in which it integrates form and content. How it is written and what it says, MacIntyre writes, “are to be grasped together or not at all” (xiii). “What can be learned from The Inward Morning,” MacIntyre continues, “is not primarily a set of philosophical theses and arguments—although such theses and arguments are to be (...) found in it—but rather something of the first importance about the place that philosophical theses and arguments might have in our lives, the relevance to our lived experience of the reading of philosophical texts” (xiii). In .. (shrink)

How should a political society be structured so as to legitimately distribute political power? One principle advanced to answer this question is the principle of subsidiarity. According to this principle, the default locus of political power is with the lowest competent political unit. This article argues that subsidiarity is a structural principle of a conception of political legitimacy informed by epistemic considerations. Broadly, the argument is that political societies organised according to the principle of subsidiarity can more effectively achieve political (...) decisions that can justifiably appear to be correct from the point of view of those subject to them. The article presents two considerations in order to establish a pro tanto case for acting separately before presenting five additional epistemic considerations that establish a prima facie case for acting separately. The article then shows that political legitimacy and the epistemic aim of decision-making can sometimes be served more effectively and efficiently by allowing higher-level political units to assist lower-level political units. (shrink)

This article is a revised version of a lecture delivered at the Colloque ‘Histoire des Mentalités, Histoire des résistances, ou les Prisons de longue durée, Aix-La Baume, 20–21–22 septembre 1980.

In his Autobiography John Stuart Mill said that his motivation in writing A System of Logic was to meet his opponents, those who held “the German or a priori view” of human knowledge, on their own terms. “The notion that truths external to the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience,” he continued, “is … in these times, the great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions…. There never was such an instrument devised (...) for consecrating all deep seated prejudices.” To counteract “the German or a priori view” Mill argued that knowledge of mathematics and physical science is derived from observation and experience and that it presupposes no a priori or non-natural principles. It is comprised simply of truths known by direct experience and of truths inferred from them. Since mathematical and scientific knowledge is largely a body of inferred truths, A System of Logic is a study of the way in which truths are inferred. To quote Mill’s celebrated definition, logic is “the science of the operations of the understanding which are subservient to the estimation of evidence; both the process itself of advancing from known truths to unknown, and all other intellectual operations in so far as auxiliary to this.”. (shrink)

In his Autobiography John Stuart Mill said that his motivation in writing A System of Logic was to meet his opponents, those who held “the German or a priori view” of human knowledge, on their own terms. “The notion that truths external to the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience,” he continued, “is … in these times, the great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions…. There never was such an instrument devised (...) for consecrating all deep seated prejudices.” To counteract “the German or a priori view” Mill argued that knowledge of mathematics and physical science is derived from observation and experience and that it presupposes no a priori or non-natural principles. It is comprised simply of truths known by direct experience and of truths inferred from them. Since mathematical and scientific knowledge is largely a body of inferred truths, A System of Logic is a study of the way in which truths are inferred. To quote Mill’s celebrated definition, logic is “the science of the operations of the understanding which are subservient to the estimation of evidence; both the process itself of advancing from known truths to unknown, and all other intellectual operations in so far as auxiliary to this.”. (shrink)

Two recent publications investigate the nexus that ties together gender, cultural and postcolonial studies, Les féministes et le garçon arabe by Nacira Guénif Souilamas and Eric Macé, and a French translation of Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic : Modernity and Double Consciousness. Both contribute to refresh the Franco-French debate on immigration by linking issues of gender, class and race at work in today’s social conflicts.

The appropriately chosen title of Volume 3 of Bradley’s Collected Works, Refinement and Revision, is a guide to its contents. A further guide as well as a useful outline is provided by Carol Keene’s carefully constructed table of contents. Here it is, slightly abbreviated, but with page numbers to indicate the amount of material.

The appropriately chosen title of Volume 3 of Bradley’s Collected Works, Refinement and Revision, is a guide to its contents. A further guide as well as a useful outline is provided by Carol Keene’s carefully constructed table of contents. Here it is, slightly abbreviated, but with page numbers to indicate the amount of material.

Le problème de la vérité a toujours préoccupé l'esprit humain; il hante pour ainsi dire l'homme d'aujourd'hui. Dans les brèves réflexions qui vont suivre, nous nous proposons de présenter une approximation tres limitée de ce problème tel qu'il se pose à la philosophic traditionnelle, à savoir: Le caractère historique et relatifde la connaissance humaine est-il conciliable avec I'affirmation de vérites immuables?

I aim to explain why majority voting can be assumed to have an epistemic edge over lottery voting. This would provide support for majority voting as the appropriate decision mechanism for deliberative epistemic accounts of democracy. To argue my point, I first recall the usual arguments for majority voting: maximal decisiveness, fairness as anonymity, and minimal decisiveness. I then show how these arguments are over inclusive as they also support lottery voting. I then present a framework to measure accuracy so (...) as to compare the two decision mechanisms. I go over four arguments for lottery voting and three arguments for majority voting that support their respective accuracy. Lottery voting is then shown to have, compared to majority voting, a decreased probability of discrimination. That is, I argue that with lottery voting it is less probable under conditions of normal politics that if the procedure selects X, X is reasonable. I then provide two case scenarios for each voting mechanism that illustrate my point. (shrink)

Henry Sidgwick reports two exchanges separated by a number of years with his old friend T. H. Green. Sidgwick says.

Although T. H. Green is primarily remembered today as a moral and political philosopher, many of his philosophical concerns owe their origins to the Victorian crisis of faith in which a widespread belief in the literal truth of Scripture confronted seemingly incompatible scientific theories. Green attributed this crisis to the inability of science and religion to find accommodation in the popular version of empiricism widely accepted by educated men and women of his day. In his 371-page introduction to Hume’s Treatise, (...) Green argued that this philosophy was unacceptable, even on its own terms, and that it needed to be replaced with a new philosophy of life, one recognizing that both knowledge and human action are .. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs Sir William Hamilton's argument for thinking that the unconditioned is not an object of thought, a conclusion he abbreviates with the slogan ‘to think is to condition’. The paper describes Hamilton's conception of formal logic as the study of the laws of thought and claims that this conception allows these laws, particularly those of non-contradiction and excluded middle, to play a substantive role in Hamilton's argument.

The best introduction to Bradley is Richard Wollheim’s F. H. Bradley. Neither derogatory nor intensely partisan, Wollheim systematically addresses the central issues in Bradley’s philosophy, while in the process explaining and evaluating Bradley’s main arguments. One of the many merits of Wollheim’s book is that in it Bradley does not appear as a wild-eyed metaphysician, a modern Parmenides, but rather as a writer intent on separating logic from psychology. Wollheim continually stresses the importance of logic in Bradley’s thought and takes (...) pains to show that Bradley’s logical positions are frequently close to Russell’s. In this, as well as in other respects, Wollheim succeeds in presenting Bradley as a force to be reckoned with. (shrink)