Anne Devarieux | : En allant de Maine de Biran à Louis Lavelle, nous allons d’une métaphysique de l’expérience intérieure qui définit l’être du moi comme un volo donné dans le sentiment actuel de sa puissance propre, à une ontologie déclinant les puissances plurielles du moi, à l’intérieur d’une dialectique de la puissance et de l’acte (théorie de la participation). Mais tous deux ont pensé l’intériorité comme un mouvement absolu, secret et irréductible à toute représentation. Attentif à l’évolution (...) de la pensée de Maine de Biran, Louis Lavelle semble avoir développé toutes les potentialités cachées du moi biranien. Un tel mouvement permet d’éclairer la place de Maine de Biran dans l’histoire du spiritualisme français, et de ses héritiers, qu’il s’agisse d’Henri Bergson ou de Michel Henry. | : Going from Maine de Biran to Louis Lavelle, we can feel the distance between a metaphysics of inner experience which defines the being of the ego as a volo, given in the present sense of its own power, and an ontology asserting the plural virtual powers of the ego, within a dialectic of the power and the act (theory of participation). However, both have thought interiority as an absolute and secret motion, irreducible to any representation. Attentive to the evolution of Maine de Biran’s thought, Louis Lavelle seems to have developed all the hidden potential of the Biranian theory of the self. Such a movement can illuminate the place of Biran in the history of French spiritualism, and of his heirs, whether it be Henri Bergson or Michel Henry. (shrink)

In an essayistic and experimental approach, which includes the reconstruction of conceptual contexts and poetic writing, this article interrogates the passages and hybridizations between poetry and philosophy from the point of view of their relation to Eros. Thus, in dialogues with Sappho, Anne Carson, Walter Benjamin and Hans Blumenberg, I present the notion of “eroticization of language” as a point of convergence between poetic production and theoretical impulse.

Background In 2001 a report on the provision of clinical ethics support in UK healthcare institutions identified 20 clinical ethics committees. Since then there has been no systematic evaluation or documentation of their work at a national level. Recent national surveys of clinical ethics services in other countries have identified wide variation in practice and scope of activities. Objective To describe the current provision of ethics support in the UK and its development since 2001. Method A postal/electronic questionnaire survey administered (...) to the chairs of all 82 clinical ethics services registered with the UK Clinical Ethics Network in July 2010. Results Response rate was 62% with the majority of responding services situated in acute trusts. All services included a clinical ethics committee with one service also having a clinical ethicist. Lay members were present in 72% of responding committees. Individual case consultation has increased since 2001 with 29% of chairs spending more than 50% of their time on this. Access to and involvement in the process of case consultation is less for patients and families than for clinical staff. There is wide variation in committee processes and levels of institutional support. Over half of the responding committees undertook some form of evaluation. Conclusion Clinical ethics services in the UK are increasing as is their involvement in case consultation. However, the significant variation in committee processes suggests that further qualitative research is needed to understand how these committees function and the role they play in their institution. (shrink)

This book engages with the most urgent philosophical questions pertaining to the problem of terrorism. What is terrorism? Could it ever be justified? Assuming that terrorism is just one of many kinds of political violence, the book denies that it is necessarily wrong and worse than war. In fact, it may be justifiable under certain circumstances.

Involuntary autobiographical memories are spontaneously arising memories of personal events, whereas voluntary memories are retrieved strategically. Voluntary remembering has been studied in numerous experiments while involuntary remembering has been largely ignored. It is generally assumed that voluntary recall is the standard way of remembering, whereas involuntary recall is the exception. However, little is known about the actual frequency of these two types of remembering in daily life. Here, 48 Danish undergraduates recorded their involuntary versus voluntary autobiographical memories during a day (...) using a mechanical counter. Involuntary memories were reported three times as frequently as voluntary memories. Compared to voluntary memories, they were associated less with problem solving and social sharing and more with day dreaming, periods of boredom, no reasons for remembering and predominantly came to mind during unfocused attention. The findings suggest that involuntary recall is a typical way of accessing the personal past. (shrink)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore artificial moral agency by reflecting upon the possibility of a Moral Turing Test and whether its lack of focus on interiority, i.e. its behaviouristic foundation, counts as an obstacle to establishing such a test to judge the performance of an Artificial Moral Agent. Subsequently, to investigate whether an MTT could serve as a useful framework for the understanding, designing and engineering of AMAs, we set out to address fundamental challenges within (...) the field of robot ethics regarding the formal representation of moral theories and standards. Here, typically three design approaches to AMAs are available: top-down theory-driven models and bottom-up approaches which set out to model moral behaviour by means of models for adaptive learning, such as neural networks, and finally, hybrid models, which involve components from both top-down and bottom-up approaches to the modelling of moral agency. With inspiration from Allen and Wallace as well as Prior, we elaborate on theoretically driven approaches to machine ethics by introducing deontic tense logic. Finally, within this framework, we explore the character of human interaction with a robot which has successfully passed an MTT. Design/methodology/approach – The ideas in this paper reflect preliminary theoretical considerations regarding the possibility of establishing a MTT based on the evaluation of moral behaviour, which focusses on moral reasoning regarding possible actions. The thoughts reflected fall within the field of normative ethics and apply deontic tense logic to discuss the possibilities and limitations of artificial moral agency. Findings – The authors stipulate a formalisation of logic of obligation, time and modality, which may serve as a candidate for implementing a system corresponding to an MTT in a restricted sense. Hence, the authors argue that to establish a present moral obligation, we need to be able to make a description of the actual situation and the relevant general moral rules. Such a description can never be complete, as the combination of exhaustive knowledge about both situations and rules would involve a God eye’s view, enabling one to know all there is to know and take everything relevant into consideration before making a perfect moral decision to act upon. Consequently, due to this frame problem, from an engineering point of view, we can only strive for designing a robot supposed to operate within a restricted domain and within a limited space-time region. Given such a setup, the robot has to be able to perform moral reasoning based on a formal description of the situation and any possible future developments. Although a system of this kind may be useful, it is clearly also limited to a particular context. It seems that it will always be possible to find special cases in which a given system does not pass the MTT. This calls for a new design of moral systems with trust-related components which will make it possible for the system to learn from experience. Originality/value – It is without doubt that in the near future we are going to be faced with advanced social robots with increasing autonomy, and our growing engagement with these robots calls for the exploration of ethical issues and stresses the importance of informing the process of engineering ethical robots. Our contribution can be seen as an early step in this direction. (shrink)

Depuis près d'un demi-siècle, Madame Hélène Ackermans a coopéré très activement à l'organisation de l'École des sciences philosophiques et religieuses des F.U.S.L. Avec Monseigneur Henri Van Camp, elle a donné à la tribune des leçons publiques sa renommée internationale; auprès de l'actuel comité de direction, elle n'a cessé de prodiguer ses multiples compétences et ses conseils avisés. En hommage à son travail, il a été demandé à quelques-uns des penseurs avec lesquels Madame Hélène Ackermans a noué des liens d'amitié, de (...) réfléchir au rôle de la philosophie dans la Cité. (shrink)

This book explores five Platonic dialogues: Lysis, Charmides, Protagoras, Euthydemus, and the Republic. This book uses Socrates’ narrative commentary as its primary interpretive framework. No one has engaged in a sustained attempt to explore the Platonic dialogues from this angle. As a result, it offers a unique contribution to Plato scholarship. The portrait of Socrates that emerges challenges the traditional view of Socrates as an intellectualist and offers a holistic vision of philosophical practice.

This paper examines the impact of education reforms on school admissions policies and practices. It discusses the changes that are needed to improve the current system, especially in areas where the market is highly developed. It is concluded that the new legislation to be enacted by the current Labour Government should be beneficial, but that more far-reaching changes are needed for the admissions process to be equitable, transparent and accountable.

In Lewis Carroll's AliceThroughtheLooking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty said: neither more nor less.” One may not agree with this approach, but it may well be preferable to using a word: (a) with only a vague idea of its meaning, or (b) with many possible meanings.

Sommes-nous, au moins occasionnellement, responsables de nos croyances ? Une chose est sûre, en pratique, nous considérons souvent que tel est le cas. Mais l’attribution d’une telle responsabilité est problématique dans la mesure où les croyances ne sont pas des états mentaux que nous contrôlons comme nous contrôlons, par exemple, nos actions. Cet article est consacré à préciser, à expliquer et à défendre l’affirmation selon laquelle les croyances ne sont pas des états mentaux que nous pouvons acquérir « à volonté (...) » . Dans un deuxième temps, nous expliquons brièvement pourquoi la vérité de cette affirmation n’empêche pas que nous soyons, au moins occasionnellement, responsables de ce que nous croyons. (shrink)

The rapid recent expansion of copyright law worldwide has sparked efforts to defend the ‘public domain’ of non-propertized information, often on the ground that an expansive public domain is a condition of a ‘free culture’. Yet questions remain about why the public domain is worth defending, what exactly a free culture is, and what role (if any) authors’ rights might play in relation to it. From the standard liberal perspective shared by many critics of copyright expansionism, the protection of individual (...) expression by means of marketable property rights in authors’ works serves as an engine of progress towards a fully competitive ‘marketplace of ideas’ – though only if balanced by an extensive public domain from which users may draw in the exercise of their own expressivity. This article shows that a significantly different, and arguably richer, conception of what a free culture is and how authors’ rights underpin it emerges from a direct engagement with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. For Kant, progress towards a fully emancipated (i.e. a ‘mature’ or ‘enlightened’) culture can only be achieved through the critical intellectual activity that public communication demands: individual expressive freedom is only a condition, not constitutive, of this ‘freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters’. The main thesis defended in this article is that when Kant’s writings on publicity (critical public debate) are read in relation to his writings on the legal organization of publishing, a necessary connection emerges between authors’ rights – as distinct from copyrights – and what Jürgen Habermas and others have named the public sphere. I conclude that it is the public sphere, and not the public domain as such, that should serve as the key reference point in any evaluation of copyright law’s role in relation to the possibility of a free culture. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉCet article est une défense de la position exposée par Nelson Goodman dans Langages de l'art. Goodman affirme que les images fonctionnent dans des systèmes symboliques denses. La différence entre texte et image ne se situe pas là où nous l'aurions spontanément cherchée : dans l'expérience perceptuelle que nous avons des images. Une telle théorie de la dépiction peut sembler iconoclaste, voire complètement fausse, et ce, parce que nous y voyons à tort une explication de la représentation picturale. Elle offre (...) cependant, rapportée à d'autres intuitions philosophiques qui essaiment ailleurs dans l’œuvre de Goodman, une meilleure compréhension du fonctionnement des images.ABSTRACTIn this paper, I draw unexpected conclusions from Nelson Goodman's views on depiction. Faithful to the symbolic turn of aesthetics in the twentieth century, Goodman argues that pictures are as conventional and natural as scripts. Unlike scripts, however, pictures work in dense symbolic systems. The difference between image and script cannot be found where we would have spontaneously looked: in our perceptual experience of pictures. Obviously, the structural approach which is at stake in Languages of Art is iconoclast; we often consider it surprising, or even absolutely misleading, perhaps because we do not connect the analyses Goodman conducts in his essay with the experience we ordinarily have of pictures. I argue that Goodman's position becomes clearer when it is reduced to a much more modest philosophical purpose: to offer a criterion for discrimination between scripts and pictures. Pictures, unlike scripts, are dense. Of course, that does not explain depiction. However, my account of Goodman's view, when connected to intuitions about cognitive processes that have spread elsewhere in his work, sheds light on the way pictures are connected with the objects they depict. (shrink)

L’article de Nelson Goodman que nous traduisons ici, « Seven Strictures on Similarity», a été publié dans le recueil Problems and Projects [Goodman 1972]. Ce dernier ouvrage n’a pas fait l’objet d’une traduction exhaustive en français, sans doute parce qu’il contient nombre d’articles fort techniques, qui demandent une connaissance préalable des travaux de Goodman en logique, en épistémologie et en philosophie du langage. Cependant, plusieurs textes de ce recueil revêtent un intérêt majeur ta...

This book focuses on the impact of technology on taxation and deals with the broad effect of technology on diverse taxation systems. It addresses the highly relevant eTax issue and argues that while VAT may not be the ultimate solution with regard to taxing electronic commerce, it can be demonstrated to be the most effective solution to date. The book analyzes the application and the effectiveness of traditional income tax principles in contradistinction to VAT principles. Taking into account rapidly ameliorating (...) technology, the book next assesses the compatibility between electronic commerce and diverse systems of taxation. Using case studies of Amazon.com and Second Life, as well as additional practical examples, the book demonstrates the effectiveness of VAT in respect of electronic commerce and ameliorating technology in the incalculable and borderless realm of cyberspace. (shrink)

Introduction: Aristotle's phantasia and the ancient concept of imagination -- Visualization, vividness (enargeia) and realism -- Mathematical projection, copying and analogy -- Prophecy, inspiration and allegory -- Conclusion: ancient and modern imagination.

Schizophrenia is associated with a series of visual perception impairments, which might impact on the patients’ every day life and be related to clinical symptoms. However, the heterogeneity of the visual disorders make it a challenge to understand both the mechanisms and the consequences of these impairments, i.e., the way patients experience the outer world. Based on earlier psychiatry literature, we argue that issues regarding time might shed a new light on the disorders observed in patients with schizophrenia.We will briefly (...) review the mechanisms involved in the sense of time continuity and clinical evidence that they are impaired in patients with schizophrenia.We will then summarize a recent experimental approach regarding the coding of time-event structure in time, namely the ability to discriminate between simultaneous and asynchronous events. The use of an original method of analysis allowed us to distinguish between explicit and implicit judgments of synchrony.We showed that for SOAs below 20ms neither patients nor controls fuse events in time. On the contrary subjects distinguish events at an implicit level even when judging them as synchronous. In addition, the implicit responses of patients and controls differ qualitatively. It is as if controls always put more weight on the last occurred event, whereas patients have a difficulty to follow events in time at an implicit level. In patients, there is a clear dissociation between results at short and large asynchronies, that suggest selective mechanisms for the implicit coding of time-event structure. These results might explain the disruption of the sense of time continuity in patients.We argue that this line of research might also help us to better understand the mechanisms of the visual impairments in patients and how they see their environment. (shrink)

The vast body of Lawrence scholarship has veered between the extremes of uncritical celebration and violent denigration. This first extended study of Lawrence's aesthetics draws on a number of modern critical approaches to present an original and balanced analysis of Lawrence's literary and art criticism, and of the complex cultural context from which it emerged. -/- Emphasising the influence on this most`English' of writers of a German intellectual and cultural heritage, Anne Fernihough focuses on Lawrence's connections with the völkisch (...) ideologies prevalent in Germany from 1910-1930, from which both Heideggerian philosophy and Nazism emerged. The deep-seated affinities between Lawrentian and Heideggerian aesthetics are examined for the first time, and the author highlights Lawrence's `green' critique of industrialization. New light is shed on Lawrence's hostility towards Freud, contrasting the two writers' thinking on art and the unconscious. The book's reassessment of Lawrence's relationship with Bloomsbury opposes the received view that Lawrence and the Bloomsbury art critics were poles apart. -/- This fascinating and lucid study reveals Lawrence's art criticism as pluralistic and anti-authoritarian, a necessary antidote to his sometimes brutally authoritarian politics and to the dogma and rigidity that pervades so many other areas of Lawrence's thought. (shrink)

This book provides an interdisciplinary perspective on working with young people, focusing on education, health and social work, and draws on projects and perspectives from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia. The volume highlights the ethical challenges and dilemmas as these and other services are integrated and addresses how ethical practices are confronted and shared across disciplines.<BR> The first section looks at professional practice; the second foregrounds children's and young people's voices and is especially concerned with children (...) and young people as co-researchers. Subjects addressed within the text include sex education, health education, custodial care, confidentiality and gaining consent, ethical issues around ICT and researching with vulnerable populations.<BR> The book is intended for both scholars and practitioners. It places examples in clearly articulated theoretical frameworks as well as considering professional principles and practice. (shrink)

The phenomenon of ‘innocent guilt’ regards cases where people feel guilty without being responsible for the wrongdoing or suffering at which the guilt is directed. The aim of this article is to develop a consistent account of innocent guilt and show how it may arise in the aftermath of conflicts. In order to do this, innocent guilt is contrasted with guilt and collective guilt, and the account is substantiated by drawing on the writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Emmanuel Levinas, who (...) both consider the phenomenon of innocent guilt a necessary element in the fundamental structure of the ethical subject. These thinkers, furthermore, show a connection between guilt and possible victims of wrongdoing, rather than between guilt and personal acts of wrongdoing. Innocent guilt may thus appear in the aftermath of conflicts as an ethical and emotional response to the fact of finding oneself in a post-conflict situation still marked by suffering. It thus reveals a fundamental need to contribute to the relieving of such suffering. (shrink)

How does understanding occur in encounters of living beings? What is experienced by the interaction partners and what happens in the ‘In-Between’? And how can this be captured? In this paper an enactive approach to interaction is proposed with the focus on reciprocal inter-corporeal attunement and co-creation of meaning in a specific environment. As alternative framework this approach is applied to the interaction of d/Deaf persons and animals. In the interaction with an animal, verbal communication – which is challenging for (...) d/Deaf persons – is of secondary importance, so this frame is well suited to focus on intercorporeal attunement. In the interaction discourse regarding d/Deaf persons as well as Human-Animal-Interaction the assessment of the interaction process as such and embodied research methodologies are scarcely to be found. With the enactive approach new perspectives on the mechanisms of interaction and the influencing conditions can be opened as well as new approaches to respective research options. (shrink)

This paper proposes an approach to the question of meaning and understanding based on the idea of constitutive rules and their relationship to the social objects they are used to create. This approach implicates mutual attention as an essential aspect of the social processes constitutive of social objects and mutual intelligibility. Social objects as such include the meaning, perception and coherence of things, identities and talk, etc. There is a relatively unexplored but important line of argument in sociology that has, (...) from the beginning, explained the coherence and mutual intelligibility of social objects and associations in terms of constitutive practices and social facts. This line of argument begins with Emile Durkheim (1893) and carries through the work of Harold Garfinkel to current studies of work and interaction, human computer interaction and talk. The argument is that we use constitutive practices (Constitutive rules or constitutive background expectancies) to create social objects and make coherent and shared meanings. To act is in this sense for Garfinkel ([1948]2006) to “mean”. Explaining the consistency of social objects and orders in terms of constitutive orders, rules, or practices is an approach that meets the challenges posed to social science and philosophy by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953), Peter Winch (1958) and Paul Grice (1989). (shrink)