Content skepticism about practical reason is doubt about the bearing of rational considerations on the activities of deliberation and choice. Motivational skepticism is doubt about the scope of reason as a motive. Some people think that motivational considerations alone provide grounds for skepticism about the project of founding ethics on practical reason. I will argue, against this view, that motivational skepticism must always be based on content skepticism. I will not address the question of whether or not content skepticism is (...) justified. I want only to establish the fact that motivational skepticism has no independent force. (shrink)

One of the great difficulties with Kant’s moral philosophy is that it seems to imply that our moral obligations leave us powerless in the face of evil. Kant’s theory sets a high ideal of conduct and tells us to live up to that ideal regardless of what other persons are doing. The results may be very bad. But Kant says that the law "remains in full force, because it commands categorically" (G, 438-39/57).* The most weI1—known example of...

Plato and Kant advance a constitutional model of the soul, in which reason and appetite or passion have different structural and functional roles in the generation of motivation, as opposed to the familiar Combat Model in which they are portrayed as independent sources of motivation struggling for control. In terms of the constitutional model we may explain what makes an action different from an event. What makes an action attributable to a person, and therefore what makes it an action, is (...) that it issues from the person''s constitution, and therefore from the person as a whole, rather than from some force working on or in the person. This in turn implies an account of what makes an action good: what makes an action good is that it is deliberated upon and chosen in a way that unifies the person into a constitutional system. Through deliberative action we constitute ourselves as unified agents. Platonic justice and Kant''s categorical imperative are shown to be normative standards for action because they are principles of self-constitution. (shrink)

Kant holds that the good will is a source of value, In the sense that other things acquire their values from standing in an appropriate relation to it. I argue that aristotle holds a similar view about contemplation, And that this explains his preference for the contemplative life. They differ about what the source of value is because they differ about which kind of activity, ethical or contemplative, discovers meaning and purpose in the world.

AN ASSUMPTION IN DEBATES ABOUT THE PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MIRACLES IS THAT IF A MIRACLE (A VIOLATION OF NATURAL LAW OR A PERMANENTLY INEXPLICABLE EVENT) WERE TO OCCUR, IT WOULD BE EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN GOD. THE PAPER EXPLORES RESERVATIONS BY SEVERAL PHILOSOPHERS ABOUT THIS CONNECTION BETWEEN GOD AND MIRACLES, AND PRESENTS ARGUMENTS TO SHOW THAT IF A MIRACLE WERE TO OCCUR THERE WOULD BE GOOD REASON TO DENY THAT GOD EXISTS.

When Carol Gilligan (1982) first introduced the ethic of care she did so from the discipline of psychology using empirical data that questioned Kohlberg's (1981) negative assumptions about the mora...

A unique authoritative analysis of the individual an social concerns informing the politics of contemporary psychoanalysis.

This research aimed to inform nursing practice and policy by identifying satisfying and problematic experiences of hospital visitors during the hospitalisation episode of a significant other. An extensive contextual review revealed that healthcare systems in advanced economies face multiple pressures and that in England, the government leaves the determination of hospital visiting rules to individual trusts. The analytic lens of liminality provides rich interpretations of visitors’ accounts and demonstrates the importance to visitors of structure (hospital rules and systems) and communitas (...) (social bonding among liminal personae). Supportive hospital structures reduce the challenges of liminality and increase satisfaction. The data further suggest an extension to current understandings of liminality. Strong structure and successful communitas permit a safe exit from liminality after the hospitalisation episode for visitors with a close emotional bond with the patient. (shrink)

In this paper we shall introduce two types of contextual-hierarchical approaches to the strengthened liar problem. These approaches, which we call the ‘standard’ and the ‘alternative’ ch-reconstructions of the strengthened liar problem, differ in their philosophical view regarding the nature of truth and the relation between the truth predicates T r n and T r n+1 of different hierarchy-levels. The basic idea of the standard ch-reconstruction is that the T r n+1-schema should hold for all sentences of \. In contrast, (...) the alternative ch-reconstruction, for which we shall argue in section four, is motivated by the idea that T r n and T r n+1 are coherent in the sense that the same sentences of \ should be true according to T r n and T r n+1. We show that instances of the standard ch-reconstruction can be obtained by iterating Kripke’s strong Kleene jump operator. Furthermore, we will demonstrate how instances of the alternative ch-reconstruction can be obtained by a slight modification of the iterated axiom system KF and of the iterated strong Kleene jump operator. (shrink)

Discusses the life and work of the nineteenth century landscape photographer, presenting a selection of photographs of the American West taken between 1858 and 1891.

"Élève-toi, mon éloquence, j'aperçois Platon qui s'élève au-dessus de l'homme! C'est sur sa bouche que les abeilles ont fait leur miel, que les rossignols ont chanté, que la déesse de la persuasion a élu son siège..." Le jésuite Nicolas Caussin témoigne ici pour nous de la mémoire du platonisme qui est celle du XVIIe siècle: un portrait de Platon en philosophe orateur s'y affirme, où la figure du Sage s'allie au prestige de l'écrivain pour consacrer comme modèle rhétorique celui que (...) Longin nomme l'Homère des philosophes. Après avoir chassé les poètes et fustigé les orateurs, le Platon des classiques redevient le théoricien du Phèdre, de l'Ion et des Lois, l'instigateur d'une philosophie éloquente et d'un lyrisme vertueux. Modèle de pensée et d'écriture pour une rhétorique du philosophique d'abord socratique, puis avec les intuitions d'un Claude Fleury, bientôt poétique, le divin philosophe nous invite alors à réfléchir sur le difficile croisement que l'humanisme classique tente d'opérer entre morale et éloquence relevée. Car ce retour d'un platonisme dans la philosophie de la rhétorique s'est effectué au sein de milieux humanistes mondains puis dévots, et a donné lieu à l'élaboration de formes extrêmement raffinées dans l'écriture de la morale. À travers la leçon de Platon, l'éloquence du Sage s'avère désormais séminale pour intégrer dans les belles-lettres une exigence de spirituel et leur accorder ainsi un nouveau prestige. C'est donc un tableau de la littérature morale à la manière de Platon qui, de La Fontaine à La Bruyère et au Fénelon du Télémaque, se trouve ici esquissé. (shrink)

This paper discusses a study examining how mentors in nurse education make professional judgments about the clinical competence of their pre‐registration nursing students. Interviews were undertaken with nine UK students and 15 mentors, using critical incidents in practice settings as a focus. The study was undertaken for the English National Practice‐Based Professional Learning Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. This paper reports on the conversation analytic thread of the work. The mentor role with pre‐registration nursing students is not only (...) supportive but involves formal assessment. Central to the relationship is communication. In professional education, communication is seen as a skill to be applied and assessed in practice settings but is also the medium mentors and mentees use to talk about the relationship. Analysis of excerpts of conversation in the interviews shows that episodes of communication are used as topics of conversation to establish professional identity. It also reveals that judgments about the extent of professional capacity of both students and mentors are grounded in everyday behaviours (for example, enthusiasm, indifference and confidence) as well as professional competence. In addition to focusing on clinical issues, mentors can and do use mundane communication as a resource for judgments about competence. (shrink)

Courtesy of Diane Liu Martin Schönfeld, co-Editor of Journal of Global Ethics, passed away June 21st. Martin received his first degrees from Regensburg University, he continued in philosophy at Lud...

What makes a human voice agreeable is a matter of scientific discussion. Whereas prosody was shown to play a role regarding “male-female” attraction, the impact of frequency modulations in “non-sexual”, notably commercial, contexts has attracted little attention. Another point unaddressed in the literature is auditory sensitivity to short-term frequency modulations as current studies focus more on sentence. Thirty French female operators were recorded over the phone. All “bonjour” greeting words were classified in terms of frequency modulation linearity and orientation at (...) the syllable and word levels. Then, the different voices were played back to students and seniors who had to rate each voice according to their degree of agreeableness. Listeners preferred non-monotonous voices. Differences between age-classes were greater than between sex-classes. Results suggest that short-term frequency changes are important for auditory evaluation of voice agreeableness. This study opens new research perspectives concerning the importance of prosody during consumer-seller interactions. (shrink)

BackgroundThe spread of COVID-19 has disrupted the lifestyles of the world’s population. In the workplace, the pandemic has affected all sectors and has changed the way work is organized and carried out. The health sector has been severely impacted by the pandemic and has faced enormous challenges in maintaining healthcare services while providing care to those infected by the virus. At the heart of this battle, healthcare managers were key players in ensuring the orchestration of operations and the physical and (...) mental availability of employees during the crisis. Although few studies have been conducted to identify organizational practices or leadership skills to be adopted in a crisis context, the concrete behaviors of managers have not been documented yet. Therefore, this study aims at filling this gap by studying middle managers’ behaviors facing COVID-19 crisis in the healthcare sector.MethodsUsing a qualitative approach, eight focus groups were conducted online during the pandemic with 37 middle managers from the healthcare community of a Quebec health establishment from April to June 2020. Thematic analyses were conducted, and a mixed-methods approach was used to analyse the data based on Viitala’s hierarchical model of management skills.ResultsBased on the six managerial skills proposed in the model of Viitala, 21 specific management behaviors were identified as having been deployed by middle managers at the beginning of the pandemic. Considering that the health sector has been profoundly shaken by this health crisis, in addition to being an environment likely to experience other crises, managers need to develop practical skills in various crisis management situations. Thus, the results guide practitioners by highlighting the importance of team-oriented management behaviors, especially in a crisis context. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

Enseigner une langue étrangère en milieu guidé implique des contraintes spatiales et temporelles imposées par l’institution quand l’enseignement se déroule dans une classe ordinaire. Or, l’apprentissage d’une langue mobilise le corps tout entier dans la communication et l’interaction avec des conséquences sur les plans non seulement cognitifs mais aussi émotionnels, relationnels et culturels. En Chine, la culture éducative est fondée sur la transmission de savoirs essentiellement linguistiques, peu de place est accordée à l’oral. Beaucoup d’étudiants ont des difficultés en compréhension (...) comme en production, notamment dans le domaine de la fluidité prosodique. Des émotions et certains actes de langage ne s’expriment pas de la même manière en Orient et en Occident, ils peuvent être source de malentendus. L’introduction de pratiques théâtrales permet une nette amélioration de l’oral et une meilleure confiance en soi pour la prise de parole et l’interaction. Ces pratiques demeurent encore marginales, l’aspect ludique étant souvent considéré par les étudiants chinois eux-mêmes comme un travail manquant de sérieux. En revanche, les enseignants constatent une nette amélioration de l’oral chez les étudiants motivés. (shrink)

A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World: On the Body examines the importance of the body in everyday psychoanalytic practice and beyond. Written by world leading clinicians and international scholars, this important book aims to relocate the psychoanalytic body in the modern, more challenging world. Bringing together perspectives from across the range of psychoanalytic schools of thought, it covers essential analytic topics such as family and parenting, sex and gender, illness and psychosomatics, and concepts of the body in (...) infancy. Though in Freud's writing the intertwining of body and psyche is fundamental, psychoanalytic thought has sometimes downplayed or ignored this idea. This book returns the body to its rightful place in psychoanalysis, and brings the body into the contemporary world of technology and change, offering fresh insight into the sick body, the sexual body, the speaking body, the body of the changing family in which the traditional gendered labels no longer fit seamlessly, gender dynamics and much more. A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World gives renewed and increased emphasis to an essential tenant of psychoanalysis. With contributions from some of the most important modern psychoanalysts, this book will prove an essential work for both psychotherapists and academics. (shrink)

In contrast to the common notion of experiments as a means for testing theories, Science Studies currently emphasize the explorative character of experiments, thus elevating their systematic epistemological relevance. Consequently the experiment has become another challenge to Reichenbach′s distinction between discovery and justification, which has been valid in the philosophy of science for several decades. Repeatedly the experiment has served as an epistemological paradigm in philosophy. Engaging with recent positions in Science Studies the paper investigates Kant′s understanding of the use, (...) meaning, and function of the experiment, focusing on its specifications with the catch words touchstone and the art of attempt. The historical and systematic approach shows to what extent the experiment is situated between freedom and coercion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The problem of the captivated gaze has been taken up repeatedly in philosophy. Plato's Allegory of the Cave stands paradigmatically for this. Here, the gaze at the shadowy images prevents people from taking the path to the sun. Denis Diderot's critical reinterpretation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave is less well known. In Diderot, the view of the artificial light images is just as captivating as Plato's shadow images. Unlike there, however, Diderot does not distinguish between perception and cognition (...) but instead focuses on the significance of the seemingly unimportant shift of the gaze within the cave. Diderot determines the starting point of the realisation of freedom in the liberation of one's own gaze from the captivation intended by third parties. Prerequisites for the liberation of the gaze are the realisation of an interruption. It is shifts in the alignment of the eyeballs that become visible here as lucid intervals and which, in Diderot, become the starting point of power analysis and the site of revolt and freedom practice. In this article, I will show how Diderot's demand for enabling the individual realisation of lucid intervals is not first and foremost an aesthetic, but a highly political one. The criteria of art, which are defined by Diderot and have not lost their relevance until today, are based on his explosive insight that the incessant captivation of the gaze stands in the way of democratisation. (shrink)

Film studies has largely avoided the biocultural turn that has swept through other areas of the humanities. This resistance may be understood in terms of the field’s recent distaste for grand theory—and in terms of the loose, social-constructionist thinking that is one residue of that distaste. Fortunately, a biocultural approach to cinema can offer film studies a necessary and defensible set of assumptions. It can also offer interpretive tools and potential ways of conceptualizing perennial concerns like authorship and genre. This (...) essay demonstrates the last two points through an evolutionary reading of Howard Hawks’s musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and through proposals for new ways of approaching auteurism and pornography. (shrink)

L'art contemporain n'a cessé de bousculer les évidences et les catégories par lesquelles l'esthétique entendait rendre compte de l'art, au point que la distinction entre art et non-art devient problématique, en tout cas ne peut être abordée que d'une manière interne à chaque contexte artistique. Le présent volume propose un ensemble d'études qui font de la notion de frontière un objet d'investigation et un outil d'exploration. De la rigidité à la perméabilité sur le plan institutionnel, du défi à toutes les (...) formes de transaction, c'est à une cartographie conceptuelle du monde de l'art plus mobile qu'il souhaite travailler. (shrink)

Different types of sense organs are present on the larva of Drosophila. Several genes that specify the type of sense organ that will form at a particular position have been recently identified. Here we review the functional and molecular analyses of these genes, and summarize the evidence which supports a role in the choice of which type of organ will be formed. Most or all of these genes are required for the appropriate specification of adult as well as larval sense (...) organs, suggesting that the larval and adult systems share many gene requirements. Interestingly, the specifying genes identified so far in the peripheral nervous system are also expressed in subsets of cells in the central nervous system, where they might have similar roles. (shrink)

Die Beiträge aus den unterschiedlichsten Wissenschaftsdisziplinen zeigen, dass Ideologien von jeher Wahrheitsansprüche formulierten, die im Verlauf ihrer Wirkungsgeschichte entweder als Irrtümer buchstäblich "Lügen gestraft" wurden oder von zeitgenössischen ideologischen Gegenentwürfen als solche bezeichnet wurden.

Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World Sean Esbjörn-Hargens & Michael Zimmerman Boston, Integral Books, 2009, xxxvi + 796 pp., cloth, $45.00 The science of ecology, wi...