The use of the human microbiome as a subject of study for forensic purposes raises a number of issues, ranging from a challenge to our traditional concept of identity to respect for privacy and the type of consent to be obtained when a microbiome sample is taken. The particular nature of this study requires the joint work of a multidisciplinary team made up of specialists in ethics, forensic science, law, microbiology, philosophy and political science.

Clinician-scientists play a valuable role in bridging the gap between patient care and clinical research. However, there are no clear guidelines that describe how to handle the day-to-day ethical and methodological questions that arise when navigating the competing responsibilities of practitioner and researcher—a situation that can easily leave the clinician-scientist confused and frustrated. This article outlines common ethical and methodological concerns for the clinician-scientist when developing, implementing, and analyzing research in practice, and offers practical suggestions to address these issues. This (...) paper will outline the role that reflexivity can play throughout the research process to assist the clinician-scientist in maintaining ethical and methodological rigor, as well as upholding the moral obligations of both practitioner and researcher. (shrink)

A considerable amount of academic attention has been paid to John Kennedy and to his group of advisors during the Cuban missile crisis. Next to no attention has been accorded other bodies of the Kennedy White House that had daily access to a President's most private moments and possibly to his important deliberations. Drawing on Richard Reeves' account of President Kennedy: Profile of Power, I revisit the early 1960s looking for bodies of power that are culturally sexed female by others (...) and compelled into being as workaday secretaries and confidants, and para-Everythings for Kennedy. In doing so, I draw on the feminist body theorizing of Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti and Elizabeth Grosz, as well as the evocations of bodies in important but abjected places featured in Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. After constructing the historically broad category of the handmaid to Washington power, I reread constructions of decision-making in the Cuban missile crisis offered by Graham Allison and conclude that the feint of mancentred Washington masks bodies given the locations, skills and resources to ooze into spaces of decision and power canonically forbidden to them. (shrink)

This landmark book is now reissued in a new edition that has been vastly rewritten and updated to respond to recent Kantian literature.

Pour contrer le scepticisme au sujet de la connaissance des valeurs, la plupart soutiennent avec John Rawls qu’une croyance comme celle qu’une action est bonne est justifiée dans la mesure où elle appartient à un ensemble de croyances cohérent, ayant atteint un équilibre réfléchi. Christine Tappolet s’inspire des travaux de Max Scheler et d’Alexius von Meinong pour défendre une conception opposée au cohérentisme. La connaissance des valeurs est affirmée dépendre de nos émotions, ces dernières étant conçues comme des perceptions (...) des valeurs. (shrink)

This landmark book is now reissued in a new edition that has been vastly rewritten and updated to respond to recent Kantian literature. It includes a new discussion of the Third Analogy, a greatly expanded discussion of Kant’s _Paralogisms, _and entirely new chapters dealing with Kant’s theory of reason, his treatment of theology, and the important Appendix to the Dialectic. _Praise for the earlier edition: _ “Probably the most comprehensive and substantial study of the Critique of Pure Reason written by (...) any American philosopher.... This is a splendid book.”—Lewis White Beck “This masterful study... will most certainly join the canon of required reading for future interpreters of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Superbly organized and lucidly written.”—Garrett Green, _Journal of Religion_. (shrink)

"First Published in 1998, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.".

So considered, Hume is viewed as a naturalist, whose project in the first three parts of the first book of the Treatise is to provide an account of the ...

_Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice_ addresses interconnections between speciesism, sexism, racism, and homophobia, clarifying why social justice activists in the twenty-first century must challenge intersecting forms of oppression. This anthology presents bold and gripping--sometimes horrifying--personal narratives from fourteen activists who have personally explored links of oppression between humans and animals, including such exploitative enterprises as cockfighting, factory farming, vivisection, and the bushmeat trade. _Sister Species_ asks readers to rethink how they view "others," how they affect animals with their (...) daily choices, and how they might bring change for all who are abused. These essays remind readers that women have always been important to social justice and animal advocacy, and they urge each of us to recognize the links that continue to bind all oppressed individuals. The astonishing honesty of these contributors demonstrates with painful clarity why every woman should be an animal activist and why every animal activist should be a feminist. Contributors are Carol J. Adams, Tara Sophia Bahna-James, Karen Davis, Elizabeth Jane Farians, Hope Ferdowsian, Linda Fisher, Twyla François, Christine Garcia, A. Breeze Harper, Sangamithra Iyer, Pattrice Jones, Lisa Kemmerer, Allison Lance, Ingrid Newkirk, Lauren Ornelas, and Miyun Park. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary perspectives on the feature of conscious life that scaffolds every act of cognition: subjective time. Our awareness of time and temporal properties is a constant feature of conscious life. Subjective temporality structures and guides every aspect of behavior and cognition, distinguishing memory, perception, and anticipation. This milestone volume brings together research on temporality from leading scholars in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, defining a new field of interdisciplinary research. The book's thirty chapters include selections from classic texts by William James (...) and Edmund Husserl and new essays setting them in historical context; contemporary philosophical accounts of lived time; and current empirical studies of psychological time. These last chapters, the larger part of the book, cover such topics as the basic psychophysics of psychological time, its neural foundations, its interaction with the body, and its distortion in illness and altered states of consciousness. Contributors Melissa J. Allman, Holly Andersen, Valtteri Arstila, Yan Bao, Dean V. Buonomano, Niko A. Busch, Barry Dainton, Sylvie Droit-Volet, Christine M. Falter, Thomas Fraps, Shaun Gallagher, Alex O. Holcombe, Edmund Husserl, William James, Piotr Jaśkowski, Jeremie Jozefowiez, Ryota Kanai, Allison N. Kurti, Dan Lloyd, Armando Machado, Matthew S. Matell, Warren H. Meck, James Mensch, Bruno Mölder, Catharine Montgomery, Konstantinos Moutoussis, Peter Naish, Valdas Noreika, Sukhvinder S. Obhi, Ruth Ogden, Alan o'Donoghue, Georgios Papadelis, Ian B. Phillips, Ernst Pöppel, John E. R. Staddon, Dale N. Swanton, Rufin VanRullen, Argiro Vatakis, Till M. Wagner, John Wearden, Marc Wittmann, Agnieszka Wykowska, Kielan Yarrow, Bin Yin, Dan Zahavi. (shrink)

1. Being an Animal Human beings are animals: phylum: chordata, class: mammalia, order: primates, family: hominids, species: homo sapiens, subspecies: homo sapiens sapiens. According to current scientific opinion, we evolved approximately 200,000 years ago in Africa from ancestors whom we share with the other great apes. What does it mean that we are animals? Scientifically speaking, an animal is essentially a complex, multicellular organism that feeds on other life forms. But what we share with the other animals is not just (...) a definition: it is a history – that is, it is a story – and a resulting set of attributes and circumstances, and an ecosystem, and a planet. What is the story? Living things are homeostatic systems – they maintain themselves through a process of nutrition that enables them to work constantly at replacing the fragile materials of which they are composed. Living things also work at reproducing, or contributing to the reproduction, of other living things that maintain themselves in essentially the same way. To engage in those activities is essentially what it means to be alive. And in order to engage in those activities, a living thing must be, in some way, responsive to conditions in its environment. Plants, for instance, respond to dryness, by growing deeper roots, or to sunshine, by turning their leaves in its direction. Even a unicellular organism is drawn to some things and recoils from others. (shrink)

The fifteen essays, written by such eminent scholars as Derrida, Heidegger, Deleuze, Klossowski, and Blanchot, focus on the Nietzschean concepts of the Will to ...

The contents of our conscious mind can seem unpredictable, whimsical, and free from external control. When instructed to attend to a stimulus in a work setting, for example, one might find oneself thinking about household chores. Conscious content thus appears different in nature from reflex action. Under the appropriate conditions, reflexes occur predictably, reliably, and via external control. Despite these intuitions, theorists have proposed that, under certain conditions, conscious content resembles reflexes and arises reliably via external control. We introduce the (...) Reflexive Imagery Task, a paradigm in which, as a function of external control, conscious content is triggered reliably and unintentionally: When instructed to not subvocalize the name of a stimulus object, participants reliably failed to suppress the set-related imagery. This stimulus-elicited content is considered ‘high-level’ content and, in terms of stages of processing, occurs late in the processing stream. We discuss the implications of this paradigm for consciousness research. (shrink)

Humans can recollect past events in details and/or know that an object, person, or place has been encountered before. During the last two decades, there has been intense debate about how recollection and familiarity are organized in the brain. Here, we propose an integrative memory model which describes the distributed and interactive neurocognitive architecture of representations and operations underlying recollection and familiarity. In this architecture, the subjective experience of recollection and familiarity arises from the interaction between core systems and an (...) attribution system. By integrating principles from current theoretical views about memory functioning, we provide a testable framework to refine the prediction of deficient versus preserved mechanisms in memory-impaired populations. The case of Alzheimer's disease is considered as an example because it entails progressive lesions starting with limited damage to core systems before invading step-by-step most parts of the model-related network. We suggest a chronological scheme of cognitive impairments along the course of AD, where the inaugurating deficit would relate early neurodegeneration of the perirhinal/anterolateral entorhinal cortex to impaired familiarity for items that need to be discriminated as viewpoint-invariant conjunctive entities. The integrative memory model can guide future neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies aiming to understand how such a network allows humans to remember past events, to project into the future, and possibly also to share experiences. (shrink)

This essay argues that the key to understanding Kant's transcendental idealism is to understand the transcendental realism with which he contrasts it. It maintains that the latter is not to be identified with a particular metaphysical thesis, but with the assumption that the proper objects of human cognitions are “objects in general” or “as such,” that is, objects considered simply qua objects of some understanding. Since this appears to conflict with Kant's own characterization of transcendental realism as the view that (...) (mistakenly) regards appearances as if they were things in themselves, the essay explicates the connection between the concepts of an object (or thing) considered as such and a thing considered as it is in itself. In light of this, it maintains that Kant's transcendental idealism is compatible with a robust empirical realism and that many of its critics are tacitly committed to a misguided transcendental realism. (shrink)

This paper contains a critical analysis of the interpretation of Kant's second edition version of the Transcendental Deduction offered by Béatrice Longuenesse in her recent book: Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Though agreeing with much of Longuenesse's analysis of the logical function of judgment, I question the way in which she tends to assign them the objectifying role traditionally given to the categories. More particularly, by way of defending my own interpretation of the Deduction against some of her criticisms, (...) I argue that Longuenesse fails to show how either part of the two-part proof may be plausibly thought to have established the necessity of the categories (as opposed to the logical functions). Finally, I question certain aspects of her 'radical' interpretation of the famous footnote at B160-1, where Kant distinguishes between 'form of intuition' and 'formal intuition'. (shrink)

According to Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophers, everything depends for its existence on something else. But what would a world devoid of fundamentalia look like? In this paper, I argue that the anti-foundationalist “neither-one-nor-many argument” of the Indian Mādhyamika Śrīgupta commits him to a position I call “metaphysical indefinitism.” I demonstrate how this view follows from Śrīgupta’s rejection of mereological simples and ontologically independent being, when understood in light of his account of conventional reality. Contra recent claims in the secondary literature, I (...) clarify how the Madhyamaka metaphysical dependence structure is not a straightforward infinitism since it does not honor strict asymmetry or transitivity. Instead, its dependence relations are irreflexive and extendable, admitting of dependence chains of indefinite (though not actually infinite) length and dependence loops of non-zero length. Yet, the flexible ontology of Śrīgupta's Madhyamaka can accommodate a contextualist account of asymmetry and support a revisable theory of conventional truth, delivering significant payoffs for the view, including the capacity to accommodate developments in scientific explanation. (shrink)

Śrīgupta, a Buddhist philosopher in the Middle Way tradition, was born in Bengal in present-day India in the seventh century. He is best known for his Introduction to Reality with its accompanying auto-commentary,1 in which he presents the first Middle Way iteration of the influential "neither-one-nor-many argument."2 This antifoundationalist line of reasoning sets out to prove that nothing enjoys ontologically independent being.Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born some one thousand years later, in the city of Leipzig, situated on the outskirts of (...) European learning and thought. He is best known today for having co-invented the infinitesimal calculus, for his... (shrink)

The Open Corporation, originally published in 2002, set out a blueprint for effective corporate self-regulation, offering practical strategies for managers, stakeholders and regulators to build successful self-regulation management systems. Christine Parker examined the conditions under which corporate self-regulation of social and legal responsibilities were likely to be effective, covering a wide range of areas - from consumer protection to sexual harassment to environmental compliance. Focusing on the features that make self-regulation or compliance management systems effective, Parker argued that law (...) and regulators needed to focus much more on 'meta-regulating' corporate self-regulation if democratic control over corporate action was to be established. (shrink)

In this article, we review the psychology of hero development and hero worship. We propose that heroes and hero narratives fulfill important cognitive and emotional needs, including the need for wisdom, meaning, hope, inspiration, and growth. We propose a framework called the heroic leadership dynamic to explain how need-based heroism shifts over time, from our initial attraction to heroes to later retention or repudiation of heroes. Central to the HLD is idea that hero narratives fulfill both epistemic and energizing functions. (...) Hero stories provide epistemic benefits by providing scripts for prosocial action, by revealing fundamental truths about human existence, by unpacking life paradoxes, and by cultivating emotional intelligence. To energize us, heroes promote moral elevation, heal psychic wounds, inspire psychological growth, and exude charisma. We discuss the implications of our framework for theory and research on heroism, leadership processes, and positive psychology. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant uses the notion of spontaneity to characterize both the ordinary epistemic activity of the understanding and the kind of causal activity required for transcendentally free agency. In spite of the obvious differences between these two conceptions of spontaneity, at one time Kant virtually identified them, since he licensed the inference from the spontaneity of thought manifest in apperception to the transcendental freedom of the thinker. By the mid-1700s, however, he abandoned that view, affirming (...) instead a sharp distinction between “logical freedom,” which pertains to acts of thought, and “transcendental freedom,” which supposedly pertains to acts of will. This distinction, if not the precise language in which it was originally expressed, remained an integral part of the “critical” philosophy. Moreover, although the topic of freedom is not discussed in the Paralogisms, Kant there insists on the illegitimacy of the attempt to derive any synthetic knowledge regarding the nature of the “thing which thinks” from the ‘I think’. (shrink)

In this discussion I respond to some of the criticisms raised by Béatrice Longuenesse and Hannah Ginsborg to my account of Kant's aesthetic theory presents in Kant's Theory of Taste.

The Eleatic Visitor speaks forcefully when he insists, ‘Necessarily, whenever there is speech, it is speech of something; it is impossible for it not to be of something’. For ‘if it were not of anything, it would not be speech at all; for we showed that it is impossible for there to be speech that is speech of nothing’. Presumably, at 263c10, when he claims to have ‘shown’ that it is impossible for speech to be of nothing, the Visitor is (...) referring back to the Parmenidean puzzles at Sophist 237ff. (shrink)

How should we approach the daunting task of renewing the ideal of equality? In this book, Christine Sypnowich proposes a theory of equality centred on human flourishing or wellbeing. She argues that egalitarianism should be understood as seeking to make people more equal in the constituents of a good life. Inequality is a social ill because of the damage it does to human flourishing: unequal distribution of wealth can have the effect that some people are poorly housed, badly nourished, (...) ill-educated, unhappy or uncultured, among other things. When we seek to make people more equal our concern is not just resources or property, but how people fare under one distribution or another. Ultimately, the best answer to the question, equality of what?, is some conception of flourishing, since whatever policies or principles we adopt, it is flourishing that we hope will be more equal as a result of our endeavours. Sypnowich calls for both retrieval and innovation. What is to be retrieved is the ideal of equality itself, which is often assumed as a background condition of theories of justice, yet at the same time, dismissed as too homogenising, abstract and rigid a criterion for political argument. We must retrieve the ideal of equality as a central political principle. In doing so, she casts doubt on the value of focussing on cultural difference, and rejects the idea of neutrality that dominates contemporary political philosophy in favour of a view of the state as enabling the betterment of its citizens. ". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant’s Theory of ActionLara DenisRichard McCarty. Kant’s Theory of Action. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. xxiv + 250. Cloth, $74.00.This significant, stimulating contribution to Kantian practical philosophy strives to interpret Kant’s theory of action in ways that will increase readers’ understanding and appreciation of Kant’s moral theory. Its thesis is that Kant combines metaphysical freedom and psychological determinism: our actions within the phenomenal world are causally (...) determined by our prior psychological states in that world and are appearances of our free action in the noumenal world. McCarty argues for a metaphysical, “two-worlds” interpretation of Kant’s transcendental distinction between appearances and things in themselves over epistemological or methodological “two-standpoints” interpretations familiar from Christine Korsgaard [End Page 533] and Henry Allison (along the way, McCarty also challenges Allison’s “Incorporation Thesis”). Some of the book’s arguments are textual, displaying perceptive readings of Kant’s lecture notes, published works, and philosophical influences. Others primarily concern the philosophical plausibility or moral tenability of various positions one might attribute to Kant. The book’s greatest strength is McCarty’s positive account of Kant’s theory of action. He presents a coherent, even elegant, two-worlds model. His interpretations of maxims, incentives, empirical character, and Gesinnung are insightful.The book’s first two chapters introduce McCarty’s understanding of maxims and incentives and begin tackling what he calls “the problem of justification and explanation.” Chapter 3 defends the claim that Kant embraced psychological determinism. Chapters 4 and 5 present McCarty’s two-worlds interpretation of the transcendental distinction, defend it from objections, and argue for its superiority over two-standpoint interpretations. Chapter 6 focuses on moral motivation, presenting respect for the moral law as an incentive capable of explaining morally justified actions, and distinguishing between morally worthy and virtuous action so as to defend Kant’s ethics from common objections. Chapter 7 similarly disentangles notions of a good will and virtue, provocatively claiming that all human agents have both a good will and virtue. The main task of chapter 7, however, is analysis of the radical evil in human nature. Chapter 8 raises questions about Kant’s conception of the highest good—particularly, the afterlife in which we are to continue our moral progress—as an object of rational hope.I read the book’s main argument as follows:1. Kant’s theory of action must solve “the problem of justification and explanation”: it must show how the reasons that justify a judgment that one ought to do something can also explain one’s doing it. Kant’s theory of action must solve this problem because if what justifies an action cannot also explain it, such justification is “irrelevant.” Only if our actions are explicable in terms of practical reasoning is justification of action by practical reasoning (e.g. by reference to hypothetical or categorical imperatives) “relevant” to our conduct. The problem of justification and explanation arises as it does within Kant’s ethics because Kant holds that pure reason is capable of issuing in action; yet he also holds that human beings and other imperfectly rational agents do not invariably act as we recognize we ought. So we cannot explain our acting as we ought (when we do) simply by appeal to “ought implies can,” internalism, or “the causality of freedom.”2. Psychological determinism, combined with a metaphysical interpretation of Kant’s transcendental distinction, allows Kant to solve the problem of justification and explanation. Through a timeless, free act in the noumenal world, we each fix our empirical character, which serves as the “causal law” for our actions in the phenomenal world. Maxims, which function as both major premises in practical syllogisms and rules of our empirical characters, provide bases for both the imperatival justifications and motivational explanations of human actions. The “logical force” of a maxim justifies action on it; the “psychological force” of the maxim—specifically, of the incentive incorporated into the maxim—explains action on it.3. Psychological determinism is compatible with and beneficial for Kant’s moral theory. Most crucially, it is compatible with the freedom necessary for moral agency and responsibility.4. Two-standpoint... (shrink)

The first two sections of this paper are devoted respectively to the criticisms of my views raised by Stephen Engstrom and Andrews Reath at a symposium on Kant's Theory of Freedom held in Washington D.C. on 28 December 1992 under the auspices of the North American Kant Society. The third section contains my response to the remarks of Marcia Baron at a second symposium in Chicago on 24 April 1993 at the APA Western Division meetings. The fourth section deals with (...) some general criticisms of my treatment of Kant's theory of freedom and its connection with transcendental idealism that have been raised by Karl Ameriks, who was also a participant in the second symposium, in an earlier piece published in Inquiry and by Paul Guyer in a review. The paper as a whole is thus an attempt to reformulate and clarify some of the central claims of my book in light of the initial critical reaction. (shrink)

Reading the New Nietzsche is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the four most important and widely read of Nietzsche's works. After a largely biographical introduction, a chapter is devoted to each work. Read in succession they give an overall philosophical account of Nietzsche's thought.

Numerous studies show that humans tend to be more cooperative than expected given the assumption that they are rational maximizers of personal gain. As a result, theoreticians have proposed elaborated formal representations of human decision-making, in which utility functions including “altruistic” or “moral” preferences replace the purely self-oriented "Homo economicus" function. Here we review mathematical approaches that provide insights into the mathematical stability of alternative ways of representing human decision-making in social contexts. Candidate utility functions may be evaluated with help (...) of game theory, classical modeling of social evolution that focuses on behavioral strategies, and modeling of social evolution that focuses directly on utility functions. We present the advantages of the latter form of investigation and discuss one surprisingly precise result: “Homo economicus” as well as “altruistic” utility functions are less stable than a function containing a preference for the golden rule or for the common welfare that is only expressed in social contexts composed of individuals with similar preferences. We discuss the contribution of mathematical models to our understanding of human other-oriented behavior, with a focus on the classical debate over psychological altruism. We conclude that human can be psychologically altruistic, but that psychological altruism evolved because it was generally expressed towards individuals that contributed to the actor’s fitness, such as own children, romantic partners and long term reciprocators. (shrink)

BackgroundIn December 2014, China announced that only voluntarily donated organs from citizens would be used for transplantation after January 1, 2015. Many medical professionals worldwide believe that China has stopped using organs from death-row prisoners.DiscussionIn the present article, we briefly review the historical development of organ procurement from death-row prisoners in China and comprehensively analyze the social-political background and the legal basis of the announcement. The announcement was not accompanied by any change in organ sourcing legislations or regulations. As a (...) fact, the use of prisoner organs remains legal in China. Even after January 2015, key Chinese transplant officials have repeatedly stated that death-row prisoners have the same right as regular citizens to “voluntarily donate” organs. This perpetuates an unethical organ procurement system in ongoing violation of international standards.ConclusionsOrgan sourcing from death-row prisoners has not stopped in China. The 2014 announcement refers to the intention to stop the use of organs illegally harvested without the consent of the prisoners. Prisoner organs procured with “consent” are now simply labelled as “voluntarily donations from citizens”. The semantic switch may whitewash sourcing from both death-row prisoners and prisoners of conscience. China can gain credibility only by enacting new legislation prohibiting use of prisoner organs and by making its organ sourcing system open to international inspections. Until international ethical standards are transparently met, sanctions should remain. (shrink)

We argue that the experience of knowing and having the truth about oneself known in the context of therapy is not an end in itself; rather, it is important because the trust engendered by this experience opens one up to learning about one’s social world and finding better ways to live in it. We consider the consequences of a lack of epistemic trust in terms of psychopathology.

« Je t’aime moi non plus », le titre de la fameuse chanson de Gainsbourg reflète de manière exquise ce que la vie a de beau et d’amer à la fois. A défaut de traiter d’amour, cet ouvrage analyse les méandres de l’aide à sens unique. L’altruisme, ce comportement de don sans attente de retour de service, est abordé ici de manière scientifique et philosophique plutôt que poétique et littéraire. Un objectif est d’en traquer les mécanismes sous-jacents, ceux qui échappent (...) à tout romantisme et se traduisent souvent en calculs de coûts et bénéfices. Il s’agit également d’approfondir les diverses manières de comprendre et de pratiquer l’altruisme. Souvent considéré comme une des plus grandes vertus humaines, l’objet de nombreux écrits philosophiques et psychologiques, l’altruisme peut-il se trouver chez les abeilles et les marmottes ? Posez la question à un biologiste de l’évolution et il vous répondra « Mais oui, évidemment ! ». A première vue, une telle réponse est consternante mais nous verrons qu’à y regarder de plus près, les philosophes et les biologistes ne parlent pas exactement de la même chose en utilisant le même terme. L’hétérogénéité des disciplines intéressées à l’altruisme et des contextes théoriques dans lesquels il est utilisé en ont fait une notion extrêmement complexe et difficile à saisir. Au sein des différentes sciences sociales et du vivant, l’altruisme est un élément pivot dans trois débats dont cet ouvrage prend le temps de retracer les contours. Tantôt, l’altruisme se profile en danger (apparent) pour la théorie de l’évolution darwinienne (chap. 1), tantôt, il sert de cheval de bataille dans la croisade contre l’idéal de l’homo economicus si souvent prôné en économie (chap. 2 et 3), tantôt il est une énigme à découvrir dans les méandres de nos motivations intimes (chap. 3). Dans le cadre de ces différents débats, la notion d’altruisme prend des significations sensiblement différentes. Pour en rendre compte, l’ensemble de l’ouvrage s’articule autour d’une triple distinction fondamentale : l’altruisme peut être compris au sens biologique, comportemental ou psychologique. Chacune de ces notions est utilisée dans un contexte spécifique au sein de sciences qui ont leurs propres traditions et leurs propres débats internes. La structure de l’ouvrage est organisée en fonction de cette triple distinction. Le premier chapitre est consacré à l’altruisme biologique, définit en termes de valeur de survie et de reproduction (fitness) : un comportement est altruiste s’il a pour effet d’augmenter la fitness d’autrui aux dépens de sa propre fitness. L’observation de comportements altruistes au sein du monde animal a posé un des plus grands défis à la théorie de l’évolution depuis la publication de l’Origine des espèces. Des générations de biologistes se sont attelés à la tâche d’expliquer comment un comportement qui augmente la fitness biologique d’autres organismes aux dépends de la fitness de l’agent a pu être sélectionnée au fil de l’évolution. Nous verrons que c’est grâce aux travaux de William Hamilton et d’autres que cette difficulté a pu être résolue. Le deuxième chapitre retrace les attaques d’une frange d’économistes (supportés dans leur effort critique par des théoriciens des jeux et anthropologues évolutionnistes), contre le modèle classique de l’homo economicus. Leur objectif est de montrer que des personnes ordinaires ne se comportement souvent pas en maximisateurs rationnels de leurs gains propres, comme le prédirait la théorie économique néo-classique. Dans le cadre de ce débat, c’est du comportement social spécifiquement humain et plus particulièrement de l’altruisme humain dont il est question. Le terme d’altruisme est alors utilisé dans un sens plus lâche que ne le font les biologistes ; ce que l’on appellera l’altruisme comportemental comprend les actions coûteuses pour l’agent et avantageuses pour autrui. La particularité humaine fournira également l’occasion de traiter la délicate question des rapports entre l’évolution génétique et la culture. Nous verrons que l’étude du comportement animal fournit les premiers éléments d’explication de l’altruisme humain, mais ce dernier ne peut être pleinement compris qu’au terme d’une analyse qui tient compte des capacités qui nous sont propres. Cette analyse nous permettra de saisir pourquoi les êtes humains sont à la fois plus sociaux et plus opportunistes (la contradiction n’est qu’apparente) que les autres espèces animales. Malgré leurs différences, les versions biologique et comportementale de l’altruisme sont très proches au sens où elles traitent des conséquences de comportements. Ces notions ne reflètent qu’imparfaitement la conception ordinaire que nous nous faisons de l’altruisme. L’altruisme tel qu’il est utilisé dans le langage courant correspond davantage à l’image que s’en font les philosophes et les psychologues. Pour déceler les actions altruistes, ces derniers se demandent généralement si elles ont été causées par un motif dirigé vers le bien d’autrui. En ce sens, on parle d’altruisme psychologique qui réfère aux causes plutôt qu’aux effets des actions d’aide. Le troisième chapitre est consacré aux débats qui font rage autour de la question de savoir si les êtres humains sont capables d’agir de manière altruiste psychologique, c’est-à-dire en fonction de motifs exclusivement dirigés vers le bien-être d’autrui. Nous verrons à quel point cette tâche est ardue à moins d’accepter de reformuler la question en termes de motivation primaire à l’action. Au terme de l’analyse, il apparaitra que les trois notions d’altruisme se croisent sans se recouper dans un enchevêtrement de liens plus ou moins complexes. Nous verrons par exemple que l’altruisme biologique (voire comportemental) pourrait bien être une condition nécessaire à l’évolution de l’altruisme psychologique ; des liens tangibles peut ainsi être tissés entre ces différentes notions. Les diverses approches du phénomène de l’altruisme retracées dans cet ouvrage fournissent également des clefs de compréhension des méandres du comportement social animal et plus particulièrement humain. De manière générale, sans apporter de solutions toutes faites, cet écrit peut servir de guide sémantique et initie le lecteur à une littérature interdisciplinaire émergeante, foisonnante, passionnante quoique encore souvent parsemée de confusions et de contradictions. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with events that were the subject of an inquest into the deaths of 12 children who died while undergoing or shortly after having undergone cardiac surgery at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre, Manitoba, Canada, during 1994. A notable finding of the Sinclair Inquest was that nurses involved with the pediatric cardiac surgery program were concerned about the competence of the surgeon and made sustained efforts throughout 1994 to have these concerns addressed. That the nurses’ concerns were (...) not taken seriously is the central problem of this paper. Essentially, the position articulated is that gendered and gendering discourses constituted a form of power that structured the field of nurses’ possible actions. These discourses constituted a resource to make nurses knowable, to produce them as certain forms of the person, and were therefore part of what governed nurses everyday conduct. Though neither simply good nor bad in themselves, in this case, these discourses had constraining effects on how nurses were able to conduct themselves. (shrink)

The term “Socratic method” is so pervasive in education across the disciplines that it has largely lost its meaning, and it has lost its roots in its originator—the historical Socrates. In this article we draw from the original source, Plato's ancient dialogues, to understand the theory and principles behind the questioning used in Socratic method. A deep understanding of Socratic method is particularly timely now as nursing leaders call for increased use of theory‐based debriefing across the nursing curriculum. Socratic questioning (...) is ideally suited as a method for debriefing in nursing classrooms because of its ability to enhance critical thinking and self‐reflection of the learner and because of its basis in care for the learner through a learner‐centred design. We present an analysis of the Socratic method in Plato's works and provide an overview of the key Socratic principles and techniques. We illustrate these principles and techniques with examples of how Socratic teaching can be applied in the nursing classroom, and we address the challenges and rewards for nursing faculty implementing Socratic method. Learning about Socratic method directly from Plato's dialogues can provide a richer and more robust understanding of this key pedagogical technique and help nurse educators practice more intentional and informed Socratic questioning and debriefing. (shrink)

This volume, originally published in 2002, assembles the historical sequence of writings that Kant published between 1783 and 1796 to popularize, summarize, amplify and defend the doctrines of his masterpiece, the Critique of Pure Reason of 1781. The best known of them, the Prolegomena, is often recommended to beginning students, but the other texts are also vintage Kant and are important sources for a fully rounded picture of Kant's intellectual development. As with other volumes in the series there are copious (...) linguistic notes and a glossary of key terms. The editorial introductions and explanatory notes shed light on the critical reception accorded Kant by the metaphysicians of his day and on Kant's own efforts to derail his opponents. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 564-565 [Access article in PDF] Samuel J. Kerstein. Kant's Search for the Supreme Principle of Morality. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 226. Cloth, $60.00. Summed up in a sentence, this book is both a critical examination of Kant's claim to have derived a supreme moral principle and a limited defense of Kant's project that appears to depart (...) significantly from Kant's own approach. Methodologically, a large portion of this book is devoted to analyzing various key concepts and claims about the nature of the categorical imperative in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason and testing them against "everyday" moral intuitions via numerous examples and counterexamples.Kerstein begins by distinguishing between the tasks of deduction and derivation of a supreme moral principle, whereby a deduction is understood as an argument for the existence of a supreme moral principle, and a derivation simply assumes this conditionally and goes on to argue that a particular principle and no other can claim the title. Kerstein waives the discussion of whether Kant succeeds in giving a deduction and hence satisfactorily refutes moral skepticism. His focus in the book is on the derivation proposed primarily in Groundwork I and II that if there is a supreme moral principle, then it must be that law expressed in his formulations of the Categorical Imperative (hereafter "CI"). Kerstein addresses Bruce Aune's "traditional" reading of Kant's derivation, wherein the argument utterly fails because Kant allegedly infers a relatively substantive command ("Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will to be universal law") from a purely formal, higher order, and hence relatively empty one ("Conform your actions to universal law"). He then devotes a chapter each to two recent, influential defenses of Kant's derivation that seek his argument outside the Groundwork. Kerstein addresses Henry Allison's attempt to rescue the derivation via an account of agency rooted in Kant's notion of transcendental freedom, elaborated in the second Critique. Kerstein rejects Allison's reconstruction on the grounds that it remains too abstract to generate the degree of specificity arrived at in Kant's Groundwork universalization formulation. Chapter Three examines Christine Korsgaard's alternative reconstruction of Kant's argument that focuses on the formulation of humanity ("Act so as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of any other, always as an end and never as a means only"). He rejects her interpretation because, again, the move from the abstract command to conform to universal law to the substantive formulation about humanity as a universally recognizable unconditional good fails. From the former, more abstract claim, he argues, it does not follow that there is a universally recognizable unconditional good, let alone that this good is humanity in itself (and not, say, utility [happiness], or even some intrinsic value unrelated to humanity, both of which Kant rejects as candidates for the unconditionally good).In his own reconstruction, Kerstein dissolves the criticism of the traditional reading of Kant's Groundwork derivation of the formula of universal law by simply denying that Kant [End Page 564] argues directly from the more generic principle to the specific versions of the CI (91ff). Instead he suggests that Kant's argument is less direct, made by way of laying out a set of criteria that any supreme principle must meet, and showing how the CI meets them while no other candidates can. In the second half of the book he takes a painstaking and critical look at a total of eight criteria, each of which Kant holds to be necessary and together are jointly sufficient for establishing the CI as "the supreme norm for the evaluation of the moral permissability and requiredness of an action, but not of its moral value" (165). This statement includes Kerstein's most controversial and interesting reconstructive claim, namely his denial that moral worth attaches only to actions done in accordance with duty as determined by the test... (shrink)

Guyer argues for four major theses. First, in his early, pre-critical discussions of morality, Kant advocated a version of rational egoism, in which freedom, understood naturalistically as a freedom from domination by both one's own inclinations and from other people, rather than happiness, is the fundamental value. From this point of view, the function of the moral law is to prescribe rules best suited to the preservation and maximization of such freedom, just as on the traditional eudaemonistic account it is (...) to prescribe rules for the maximization of happiness. Second, in the Groundwork, Kant abandoned this naturalistic approach and while retaining the same substantive thesis as his early moral philosophy, "namely that freedom is the value that is realized by adherence to the moral law" (Guyer 455), attempted to provide a non-naturalistic (transcendental) grounding for this valuation of freedom. Third, this took the form of a transcendental deduction, closely modeled on that of the first Critique, which was intended to demonstrate that we are in fact (noumenally) free and the moral law is the "causal law" of this freedom. Fourth, this deduction is a disaster, indeed, one of Western philosophy's "most spectacular train wrecks" (Guyer 445). I shall discuss each in turn, devoting the bulk of my attention to the last. (shrink)

The interpretation of the patient’s extraordinary remarks as indicating disturbances of ipseity turns on the assertion that we should not understand their complaints as ‘merely metaphorical.’ There is an established opinion in psychopathology that patients mean what they say literally. Thus, in thought insertion they believe that thoughts, as mental objects, are actually put inside their heads. The authors follow this tradition when they say that patients construct an inner space and imbue their thoughts and feelings with spatial qualities. The (...) conception of the mind as ‘the auditorium of our inner monologues’ has philosophical precedents. This picture is not of itself pathological, but it can be misleading if we.. (shrink)

This paper analyzes Kant's thesis in the Tugendlehre that there are certain ends that we are obligated to adopt. It contends that none of the three arguments which Kant advances in support of this thesis succeeds and that the attempted reconstruction by Nelson Potter likewise fails. It then maintains that the argument does work, if one brings in, as an implicit premise, transcendental freedom. Finally, it is argued that this late doctrine of obligatory ends marks a significant advance over the (...) treatment of broad duties in the Grundlegung and can serve as a basis for defending Kant's ethics against the familiar emptiness charge. Der Beitrag untersucht die These Kants in der Tugendlehre , daß es bestimmte Zwecke gibt, zu deren Verfolgung wir verpflichtet sind. Dabei stellt sich heraus, daß keines der drei Argumente, die Kant zur Stützung dieser These verwendet, durchgreift und daß der diesbezügliche Rekonstruktionsversuch von Nelson Potter ebenso fehlschlägt. Es wird weiterhin die Ansicht vertreten, daß die Argumentation dann überzeugt, wenn man die transzendentale Freiheit als Prämisse einbezieht. Schließlich wird gezeigt, daß diese späte Lehre Kants von den Zwecken, die zugleich Pflicht sind, einen erheblichen Fortschritt gegenüber der Behandlung der weiten Pflichten in der Grundlegung bedeutet und eine Grundlage dafür bietet, Kants Ethik gegen den üblichen Vorwurf des leeren Formalismus in Schutz zu nehmen. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper attempts to develop an interpretation of Kant's transcendental idealism which is based upon his critique of transcendental realism . It is argued that given Kant's transcendental distinction, all non‐ or pre‐critical philosophies, even Berkeleian phenomenalism are transcendentally realistic. This paradoxical result is used as the basis for an analysis of Kant's resolution of the mathematical antinomies, wherein this resolution is seen both as an “indirect proof” of transcendental idealism and as a refutation of transcendental realism. Finally, it is (...) claimed that Kant's idealism, at least insofar as it is established by means of a refutation of transcendental realism, is methodological rather than metaphysical, viz. it involves a claim about how the sensible world is to be considered in transcendental reflection, not a claim about the “real nature” of this world.RésuméCet article essaye de développer une interprétation de l'idéalisme transcendental de Kant, interprétation basée sur sa critique du réalisme transcendental . L'auteur montre que, si l'on accepte la distinction transcendentale de Kant, toutes les philosophies non critiques et précritiques sont transcendentalement réalistes, y compris le phénoménalisme de Berkeley. A partir de ce résultat paradoxal, il analyse la manière dont Kant résoud les antinomies mathématiques: cette résolution apparaît à la fois comme preuve indirecte de l'idéalisme transcendental et comme une réfutation du réalisme transcendental. L'auteur est finalement d'avis que l'idéalisme de Kant, du moins lorsqu'il est justifié par une réfutation du réalisme transcendental, est plus méthodologique que métaphysique, c'est‐à‐dire qu'il déclare comment le monde sensible doit être considéré dans la réflexion transcendentale et non quelle est la véritable nature de ce monde.ZusammenfassungEs wird versucht, eine Interpretation von Kants transzendentalem Idealismus zu entwickeln, die auf seiner Kritik am transzendentalen Realismus — verstanden als derjenige Standpunkt, der systematisch Erscheinung und Ding an sich verwechselt — beruht. Es wird argumentiert, dass — einmal Kants transzendentale Unterscheidung angenommen — aile früheren, vorkritischen Systeme der Philosophie einschliesslich Berkeleys Phänomenalismus transzendental realistisch sind. Dieses paradoxale Ergebnis wird als Basis für eine Analyse von Kants Auflösung der mathematischen Antinomien verwendet, wobei dièse Auflösung sowohl als ein indirekter Beweis für den transzendentalen Idealismus als auch als eine Widerlegung des transzendentalen Realismus gedeutet wird. Es wird schliesslich nahegelegt, dass Kants Idealismus, sofern wenigstens als er sich auf Widerlegung des transzendentalen Realismus abstützt, mehr ein rnethodologischer als ein metaphysischer Idealismus ist. Er statuiert eher über die Art, wie die Sinneswelt in einer transzendentalen Reflexion betrachtet werden soll, als über die Frage, wie die Welt wirklich beschaffen sei. (shrink)

Dharmakīrti’s (c. seventh century) Examination of Relations (Sambandhaparīkṣā) is unique in the Indian Buddhist canon for its being the only extant root text devoted entirely to the topic of the ontological status of relations. But the core thesis of this treatise—that relations are only nominally real—is in prima facie tension with another claim that is central to Dharmakīrti’s epistemology: that there exists some kind of “natural relation” (svabhāvapratibandha) that reliably underwrites inferences. Understanding how Dharmakīrti can consistently rely on natural relations (...) to prop up his presentation of inferential reasoning while at the same time advancing an anti-realist account of relations is critical for making sense of his system of logic and epistemology, which came to be nearly universally adopted in Tibetan Buddhism cutting across traditions. Chomden Rikpé Reldri (1227–1305), who was perhaps the most prolific commentator on logic and epistemology in the history of Tibetan philosophy, composed two texts commenting on the Examination of Relations, neither of which have received any scholarly attention to date. In this paper, I provide an introduction to Chomden Reldri’s two commentaries and consider how they may illuminate Dharmakīrti’s text and also what they reveal about the understanding of Dharmakīrti’s account of relations in early Tibetan scholasticism. I then present a translation of Dharmakīrti’s Examination of Relations together with Chomden Reldri’s commentary, Annotations and Topical Outline of the Examination of Relations (’Brel pa brtag pa’i mchan dang sa bcad gnyis). (shrink)