Martin Heidegger and Vincent Scully, writing from very different positions, agree that the enclosure of human life and the disclosure of a moral universe are the chief functions of architecture, and they agree further that the traditional house best exemplifies the first function and the Greek temple the second. The culture of technology has emptied the home of many substantial engagements, and it has reduced the monumental structures, the high-rises and expressways, to instrumental status. Architects need to understand (...) the cultural force of technology, the ways buildings shape the conduct of our lives, and the responsibilities that follow from the comprehension of contemporary culture. (shrink)

In The Psychologizing of Modernity, Mark Jarzombek examines the impact of psychology on twentieth-century aesthetics. Analysing the interface between psychology, art history and avant-gardist practices, he also reflects on the longevity of the myth of aesthetic individuality as it infiltrated not only avant-garde art, but also history writing. The principal focus of this study is pre-World War II Germany, where theories of empathy and Entartung emerged; and post-war America, where artists, critics and historians gradually shifted from their reliance on psychology (...) to philosophy, and, most recently, to theory. Included are discussions of writers such as Heinrich Wölfflin, Ludwig Volkmann, John Dewey, Vincent Scully and Richard Arnheim, among others. The Psychologizing of Modernity is a broad and erudite study of the evolution of modern aesthetic thinking in the fields of art and architectural history. (shrink)

Centering on the early Platonic dialogues, this paper delineates the importance of considering Plato’s Lysis’ as rightful inclusion to Jan Szaif’s proposal of “core group” of aporetic dialogue. This paper highlights a synoptic presentation of the development of Lysis’s reception by modern scholars of Plato (Platonic scholars) at the beginning of this discourse to establish a compelling argument for its aporetic nature. It then proceeds with a revisit to Szaif’s article Socrates and the Benefits of Puzzlement. The first section, considering (...) its importance, emphasizes the evident possibility of opening his list of ‘core group’ of aporetic dialogue to Lysis benefitting the said dialogue. This exposition concludes with the philosophical nature of friendship, even love, must neither begin in Plato’s Phaedrus and Symposium nor in Aristotle’s conception of friendship in Nicomachean Ethics. Alternatively, cognizant of the aporetic tradition followed and practiced by Plato, all studies on the said topics may begin with Lysis. (shrink)

Over the past few years, individual competencies for sustainability have received a lot of attention in the educational, sustainability and business administration literature. In this article, we explore the meaning of two rather new and unfamiliar moral competencies in the field of corporate sustainability: normative competence and action competence. Because sustainability can be seen as a highly complex or ‘wicked’ problem, it is unclear what ‘normativity’ in the normative competence and ‘responsible action’ in the action competence actually mean. In this (...) article, we raise the question how both these moral competencies have to be understood and how they are related to each other. We argue for a virtue ethics perspective on both moral competencies, because this perspective is able to take the wickedness of sustainability into account. It turns out that virtue ethics enables us to conceptualize normative competence and action competence as two aspects of one virtuous competence for sustainability. (shrink)

Much of cognitive science is committed to the modular approach to the study of cognition. The core of this approach consists of a pair of assumptions - the anatomical and the functional modularity assumptions - which motivate two kinds of inference: the anatomical and the functional modularity inferences. The legitimacy of both of these inferences has been strongly challenged, a situation that has had surprisingly little impact on most theorizing in the field. Following the introduction of an important, yet rarely (...) made, distinction between two functional concepts - the distinction between cognitive working and cognitive role - this paper analyses these kinds of inference, and refocuses the attention on new aspects of their main limitations. It is argued that both the anatomical and functional modularity inferences can, and do, operate in three distinct modes in contemporary cognitive science, and that seeing this is essential to understanding both the power and the limitations of these methodological tools. (shrink)

Traditionally, discussions of moral participation – and in particular moral agency – have focused on fully formed human actors. There has been some interest in the development of morality in humans, as well as interest in cultural differences when it comes to moral practices, commitments, and actions. However, until relatively recently, there has been little focus on the possibility that nonhuman animals have any role to play in morality, save being the objects of moral concern. Moreover, when nonhuman cases are (...) considered as evidence of moral agency or subjecthood, there has been an anthropocentric tendency to focus on those behaviors that inform our attributions of moral agency to humans. For example, some argue that the ability to evaluate the principles upon which a moral norm is grounded is required for full moral agency. Certainly, if a moral agent must understand what makes an action right or wrong, then most nonhuman animals would not qualify (and perhaps some humans too). However, if we are to understand the evolution of moral psychology and moral practice, we need to turn our attention to the foundations of full moral agency. We must first pay attention to the more broadly normative practices of other animals. Here, we begin that project by considering evidence that great apes and cetaceans participate in normative practices. (shrink)

"This book provides new interpretations of Heidegger's philosophical method in light of 20th-century postmodernism and 21st-century speculative realism. In doing so, it raises important questions about philosophical method in the age of global warming and climate change. Vincent Blok addresses topics that have yet to be extensively discussed in Heidegger scholarship, including Heidegger's method of questioning, the religious character of Heidegger's philosophical method and Heidegger's conceptualization of philosophical method as explorative confrontation. He is also critical of Heidegger's conceptuality and (...) develops a post-Heideggerian concept of philosophical method, which provides a new perspective on the role of willing, poetry and earth-interest in contemporary philosophy. This earth-interest turns out to be particularly important to consider and leads to critical reflections on Heidegger's concept of Earth, the necessity of Earth-interest in contemporary philosophy and a post-Heideggerian concept of the Earth. Heidegger's Concept of Philosophical Method will be of interest primarily to Heidegger scholars and graduate students, but its discussion of philosophical method and environmental philosophy will also appeal to scholars in other disciplines and areas of philosophy"--. (shrink)

Despite the multidisciplinary dimension of the kinds of research conducted under the umbrella of synthetic biology, the US-based founders of this new research area adopted a disciplinary profile to shape its institutional identity. In so doing they took inspiration from two already established fields with very different disciplinary patterns. The analogy with synthetic chemistry suggested by the term ‘synthetic biology’ is not the only model. Information technology is clearly another source of inspiration. The purpose of the paper, with its focus (...) on the US context, is to emphasize the diversity of views and agendas coexisting under the disciplinary label synthetic biology, as the two models analysed are only presented as two extreme postures in the community. The paper discusses the question: in which directions the two models shape this emerging field? Do they chart two divergent futures for synthetic biology? (shrink)

How do people make sense of their experiences? How do they understand possibility? How do they limit possibility? These questions are central to all the human sciences. Here, Vincent Crapanzano offers a powerfully creative new way to think about human experience: the notion of imaginative horizons. For Crapanzano, imaginative horizons are the blurry boundaries that separate the here and now from what lies beyond, in time and space. These horizons, he argues, deeply influence both how we experience our lives (...) and how we interpret those experiences, and here sets himself the task of exploring the roles that creativity and imagination play in our experience of the world. (shrink)

En faisant de cet ouvrage une introduction à la philosophie française contemporaine, Vincent Descombes initie surtout au langage et aux enjeux de la discussion dite philosophique.

Cancer viewed as a programmed, evolutionarily conserved life‐form, rather than just a random series of disease‐causing mutations, answers the rarely asked question of what the cancer cell is for, provides meaning for its otherwise mysterious suite of attributes, and encourages a different type of thinking about treatment. The broad but consistent spectrum of traits, well‐recognized in all aggressive cancers, group naturally into three categories: taxonomy (“phylogenation”), atavism (“re‐primitivization”) and robustness (“adaptive resilience”). The parsimonious explanation is not convergent evolution, but the (...) release of an highly conserved survival program, honed by the exigencies of the Pre‐Cambrian, to which the cancer cell seems better adapted; and which is recreated within, and at great cost to, its host. Central to this program is the Warburg Effect, whose malign influence permeates well beyond aerobic glycolysis to include biomass interconversion and genomic heuristics. Warburg‐type metabolism and genomic instability are targets whose therapeutic disablement is a major priority. (shrink)

This is a discussion of the reaction to the recent research article publication in the journal Protein & Cell by a group of scientists at Sun Yat-sen University using the CRISPR/Cas9 technique on editing non-viable human zygotes. Many commentators condemned the Chinese scientists for overstepping ethical boundaries long accepted in Western countries and accused China of having lax regulations on genomic research in general. We argue that not only did this research follow strict ethical standards and fully comply with current (...) regulations, but China also has a well-developed regulatory framework governing such research comparable to many developed countries. We see the reactions among Western commentators as a misunderstanding of the current situation and an expression of a lack of willingness to acknowledge China as an equal partner in the international debate about proper limits to the development of new biotechnologies. (shrink)

"Public engagement in science" is one of the buzzwords that, since 2000, has been used in nanotechnology programs. To what extent does public engagement disrupt the traditional relations between science and the public? This paper briefly contrasts the traditional model of science communication - the diffusionist model - that prevailed in the twentieth century and the new model - the participatory model - that tends to prevail nowadays. Then it will try to disentangle the assumptions underlying the public dialogue initiated (...) about nanotechnology, and conclude that nanotechnology actually develops a managerial model of society. (shrink)

How do people make sense of their experiences? How do they understand possibility? How do they limit possibility? These questions are central to all the human sciences. Here, Vincent Crapanzano offers a powerfully creative new way to think about human experience: the notion of imaginative horizons. For Crapanzano, imaginative horizons are the blurry boundaries that separate the here and now from what lies beyond, in time and space. These horizons, he argues, deeply influence both how we experience our lives (...) and how we interpret those experiences, and here sets himself the task of exploring the roles that creativity and imagination play in our experience of the world. (shrink)

Chemistry deserves more philosophical attention not so much to do justice to a long-neglected science or to enhance its cultural prestige, but to undermine a number of taken-for-granted assumptions about scientific rationality and more importantly to diversify our metaphysical views of nature and reality. In brief, this paper does not make the case for a philosophy of chemistry. It rather urges philosophers of science to listen to chemists and discuss what they learn from them. Because over the course of many (...) centuries chemists have developed a special access to nature and a special way of investigating and dealing with material substances, they have confronted a number of epistemological and ontological issues that are worth discussing. Following critical remarks about the disciplinary partition of philosophy, a historical section presents the contributions to philosophy of a few French twentieth-century chemists-turned philosophers to emphasize how they have challenged the dominant philosophical categories. The final section develops one of the lessons that philosophers can learn from chemists: to pay attention to things, to their materiality and activity in order to develop new ontological perspectives. (shrink)

Rivers stopped or flowing backward -- Harmony, number, and others --Twentieth-Century measures.

Ce numéro de Clio, Histoire, Femmes et Sociétés est un peu inhabituel. En effet, contrairement aux principes de la revue, le dossier est consacré uniquement à l’histoire contemporaine et même à l’histoire du très contemporain : nous rendons compte de journées d’étude organisées à Lyon en septembre 2008 qui s’inscrivaient dans un cycle de colloques sur « les années 68 » échelonnés de novembre 2007 à novembre 2008. Cependant, pour conserver la présence des différentes périodes de l’histoire, le...

James Prescott Joule’s (1818–1889) bicentenary took place in 2018 and commemorated by the IDTC with a Symposium—‘James Joule’s Bicentenary: Scientific and Pedagogical Issues Concerning Energy Conservation’—at the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS & BSHS), 14th–17th September, 2018, in London. This symposium had three main objectives: It aimed specifically to celebrate James Joule’s achievements considering the most recent historiographical works with a particular focus on the principle of conservation of energy; It served the purpose of discussing the scientific (...) and pedagogical issues related to heat, energy and work and how they are presented in textbooks and worked out in classrooms; It also provided discussions on the present situation of teaching and learning science through the use of History of Science, both in K-12 and college level with an emphasis on energy and related concepts. In the following, the Introduction of this Special Issue on Joule is presented. (shrink)

Cross-border reproductive care (CBRC) can be defined as the movement from one jurisdiction to another for medically assisted reproduction (MAR). CBRC raises many ethical concerns that have been addressed extensively. However, the conclusions are still based on scarce evidence even considering the global scale of CBRC. Empirical ethics appears as a way to foster this ethical reflection on CBRC while attuning it with the experiences of its main actors. To better understand the ‘in and out’ situation of CBRC in Canada, (...) we conducted an ethnographic study taking a ‘critically applied ethics’ approach. This article presents a part of the findings of this research, obtained by data triangulation from qualitative analysis of pertinent literature, participant observation in two Canadian fertility clinics and 40 semidirected interviews. Based on participants’ perceptions, four themes emerged: (1) inconsistencies of the Canadian legal framework; (2) autonomy and the necessity to resort to CBRC; (3) safety and the management of CBRC individual risks; and (4) justice and solidarity. The interaction between these four themes highlights the problematic of ‘reproductive outsourcing’ that characterised the Canadian situation, a system where the controversial aspects of MAR are knowingly pushed outside the borders. (shrink)

Emerging technologies are increasingly used in an attempt to “enhance the human body and/or mind” beyond the contemporary standards that characterize human beings. Yet, such standards are deeply controversial and it is not an easy task to determine whether the application of a given technology to an individual and its outcome can be defined as a human enhancement or not. Despite much debate on its potential or actual ethical and social impacts, human enhancement is not subject to any consensual definition. (...) This paper proposes a timely and much needed examination of the various definitions found in the literature. We classify these definitions into four main categories: the implicit approach, the therapy-enhancement distinction, the improvement of general human capacities and the increase of well-being. After commenting on these different approaches and their limitations, we propose a definition of human enhancement that focuses on individual perceptions. While acknowledging that a definition that mainly depends on personal and subjective individual perceptions raises many challenges, we suggest that a comprehensive approach to define human enhancement could constitute a useful premise to appropriately address the complexity of the ethical and social issues it generates. (shrink)

In the field of ?neurolaw?, reformists claim that recent scientific discoveries from the mind sciences have serious ramifications for how legal responsibility should be adjudicated, but conservatives deny that this is so. In contrast, I criticise both of these polar opposite positions by arguing that although scientific findings can have often-weighty normative significance, they lack the normative authority with which reformists often imbue them. After explaining why conservatives and reformists are both wrong, I then offer my own moderate suggestions about (...) what views we have reason to endorse. My moderate position reflects the familiar capacitarian idea which underlies much lay, legal, and philosophical thinking about responsibility ? namely, that responsibility tracks mental capacity. (shrink)

The promises of nanotechnology have been framed by a variety of metaphors, that not only channel the attention of the public, orient the questions asked by researchers, and convey epistemic choices closely linked to ethical preferences. In particular, the image of the ‘therapeutic missile’ commonly used to present targeted drug delivery devices emphasizes precision, control, surveillance and efficiency. Such values are highly praised in the current context of crisis of pharmaceutical innovation where military metaphors foster a general mobilization of resources (...) from multiple fields of cutting-edge research. The missile metaphor, reminiscent of Paul Ehrlich’s ‘magic bullet’, has framed the problem in simple terms: how to deliver the right dose in the right place at the right moment? Chemists, physicists and engineers who design multi-functional devices operating in vitro can think in such terms, as long as the devices are not actually operating through the messy environment of the body. A close look at what has been done and what remains to be done suggests that the metaphor of the “therapeutic missile” is neither sufficient, nor even necessary. Recent developments in nanomedicine suggest that therapeutic efficacy cannot be obtained without negotiating with the biological milieu and taking advantage of what it affords. An ‘oikological’ approach seems more appropriate, more heuristic and more promising than the popular missile. It is based on the view of organism as an oikos that has to be carefully managed. The dispositions of nanocapsules have to be coupled with the affordances of the environment. As it requires dealing with nanoparticles as relational entities (defined by their potential for interactions) rather than as stable substances (defined by intrinsic properties) this metaphor eventually might well change research priorities in nanotechnology in general. (shrink)

The relationship between law and morality has for some years been the object of a new investment by legal doctrine, in search of a new balance between individual freedom on the one hand, and the assertion of rights or values seen as imperative, as well as dignity or the principle of non-discrimination, on the other. In this article is proposed a modelling of the concepts of neutrality attached to the definition of public order, whose potentialities are in a second time (...) tested in the field of the treatment of religion in the enterprise. (shrink)

This paper expands the current business ethics research area by empirically testing the relationships between students’ misconduct including academic dishonesty (i.e., plagiarism/fabrication and/or exam cheating) and undesirable academic behaviors (i.e., disrespectful behaviors and/or slacker behaviors) and their perception of business ethics. Based on 133 surveys from the students in a northwestern regional comprehensive university business program, this study reveals that students who have reported higher frequencies of engaging in exam cheating, disrespectful behavior, or slacker behavior have perceived the given questionable, (...) unethical employee practices as more acceptable conducts than the students who have reported lower frequencies. Students who have more frequently engaged in plagiarism/fabrication are found to be more accepting of both questionable, unethical business operations and employee practices. Gender, age, and cumulative GPA have been additionally explored and found to have correlations with business ethics perception. For ethically-sensitive future practitioners, this paper calls for institutions of higher education (IHEs) to provide clear guidelines on academic conduct/misconduct along with business ethics education in curriculum. (shrink)

ArgumentThe interwar period in France is characterized by intense activity to disseminate science in society through various media: magazines, conferences, book series, encyclopedias, radio, exhibitions, and museums. In this context, the scientific community developed significant attempts to disseminate science in close alliance with the State. This paper presents three ambitious projects conducted in the 1930s which targeted different audiences and engaged the social sciences along with the natural sciences. The first project was a multimedia enterprise aimed at bridging what would (...) later be named “the two cultures” – natural sciences and humanities – rather than at popularizing scientific results in the society at large. The second project, an encyclopedia namedEncyclopédie françaiseedited by the French historian Lucien Febvre, was meant to shape a cultural view of science for the general public. The third project and the most successful enterprise was thePalais de la découvertedesigned by the physicist Jean Perrin and explicitly aimed at attracting the young public. This paper explores the paradoxes that resulted from these large enterprises. Despite their social ideals, the scientists-popularizers favored an elitist concept of popular science essentially aimed at integrating science into high culture. While they strove to overcome the increased specialization of sciences, their efforts nevertheless accelerated the professionalization of scientific research and the isolation of science in an ivory tower. In their attempts to get closer to the public, they eventually contributed to spreading the cliché of the increasing gap between the scientists and the public. (shrink)

Crossing the boundaries - between nature and artifact and between inanimate and living matter - is a major feature of the convergence between nanotechnology and biotechnology. This paper points to two symmetric ways of crossing the boundaries: chemists mimicking nature's structures and processes, and synthetic biologists mimicking synthetic chemists with biological materials. However to what extent are they symmetrical and do they converge toward a common view of life and machines? The question is addressed in a historical perspective. Both biomimetic (...) chemistry and synthetic biology can be described as descendants of an ambitious program developed by Stéphane Leduc who coined the phrase 'synthetic biology' in the early twentieth century. The main intention of this genealogy is to emphasize that although making life in a test tube is a recurrent project there are subtle nuances in the underlying metaphysical assumptions. This comparison is meant to contribute to a better understanding of the cultural issues at stake in the convergence between nano and biotechnologies. It suggests that the demarcation line between life and inanimate matter remains a hot issue, and that all traffics across the borders do not proceed from the same metaphysical assumptions. (shrink)

It is often assumed that chemistry was a typical positivistic science as long as chemists used atomic and molecular models as mere fictions and denied any concern with their real existence. Even when they use notions such as molecular orbitals chemists do not reify them and often claim that they are mere models or instrumental artefacts. However a glimpse on the history of chemistry in the longue durée suggests that such denials of the ontological status of chemical entities do not (...) testify for any specific allegiance of chemists to positivism. Rather it suggests that the dilemma positivism vs realism is inappropriate for characterizing the ontology of chemistry. This alternative shaped at the turn of the twentieth century in the context of controversies about atomic physics does not take into account the major concern of chemists, i.e. making up things. Only by considering what matters for chemists, their matters of concern rather than their matter theories, can we expect to get an insight on their ontological assumptions. The argumentation based on historical data is twofold. Generating new substances out of initial ingredients which is the raison d’être of chemistry raised a vexing puzzle which has been alternatively solved with the Aristotelian notion of mixt and the Lavoisieran notion of compound. I will argue that an essential tension remains intrinsic in chemistry between the two conceptual frameworks. But how are we to make sense of the long tradition of ontological non-commitment in chemistry? I argue that what is usually considered as a denial of the existence of the basic units of matter is better characterized as a focus on more important actors on the chemical stage. (shrink)

Publication date: 28 April 2021 Source: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Vol. 90 Author: Vincent Jemison In the present day, one of the most subtle means political leaders use to influence their base of supporters is through verbal communication. With this in mind, research shows that over the past two years, some political leaders have increasingly relied on “transferring their perception onto their base of followers, which often negatively stimulates, arouses and shapes an individual’s performance”. In addition, (...) to the detriment of our society, when political leaders transfer their perception onto their base of followers, they often misjudge the sensitive consequences of their prospective outcomes. Here for the first time, research now shows that a displaced thought process is attributed to the underlying stimulation used to arouse the transfer of one’s perception onto others. Therefore, because the “Dangerous behavior” following the transfer of one’s perception has become so prevalent in our society, such performance warrants immediate exploration. (shrink)

Lire Platon est, pour tout philosophe, lire " la philosophie de tous les philosophes, la philosophie en personne ", précise Vincent Descombes dans ce texte, œuvre d'un jeune philosophe, publié en 1971 et qui garde toute sa fraîcheur d'analyse et d'enthousiasme. Le lecteur ne doit pas chercher dans les Dialoguer platoniciens une doctrine à laquelle adhérer, mais plutôt des exercices dans l'art dialectique. Entendue au sens de Platon, la dialectique est l'art de poser les distinctions sans lesquelles nous tombons (...) dans la contradiction dès que nous avons affaire aux " grands genres de l'être ", comme le même et l'autre ou l'un et le multiple. (shrink)

Scientific models need to be investigated if they are to provide valuable information about the systems they represent. Surprisingly, the epistemological question of what enables this investigation has hardly been investigated. Even authors who consider the inferential role of models as central, like Hughes or Bueno and Colyvan, content themselves with claiming that models contain mathematical resources that provide inferential power. We claim that these notions require further analysis and argue that mathematical formalisms contribute to this inferential role. We characterize (...) formalisms, illustrate how they extend our mathematical resources, and highlight how distinct formalisms offer various inferential affordances. (shrink)