Both the physiological and the pathological morphogenetic processes that we can meet in embryogenesis, neogenesis and degenerative dysgenesis present common features: they are ruled by three different kinds of mechanisms, one related to cell migration, the second to cell differentiation and the third to cell proliferation. We deal here with an application to the cambial growth which essentially involves the third type of mechanism.Woody plants produce secondary tissue (secondary xylem and phloem) from a meristematic tissue called vascular cambium, responsible for (...) the radial growth of a tree. This paper focuses on the formation of secondary xylem, considered in two dimensions in a cross-section framework. A new discrete modelling approach is used, based on the cellular scale, in order to attain a more accurate understanding of how the elementary microscopic behaviour of each cell takes part in the macroscopic morphogenesis. The mathematical model essentially uses an occurrence method simulating the main features of radial growth with simple geometric rules, such as Thom's division rule (Thom,1972)to account for the cell proliferation. The study applies to concrete instances in which the changes made in the geometrical cellular patterns of the vascular cambium clearly affect the shape of the tree, as in Pinus radiata (D. Don.). (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore in a systematic way the rationality of emotions elicited when we engage with works of fiction. I first lay out the approach to the emotions on which my discussion is premised. Next, I concentrate on two facets of emotional rationality—the first pertains to the relation between emotions and the mental states on which they are based, the second to the relation between emotions and the judgements and behaviour they elicit. These observations about (...) emotional rationality are then applied to emotions elicited by works of fiction. After having distinguished several families of emotions, I concentrate on what I call blob-emotions and emotions-for. I argue that, given their nature as direct responses to a restricted range of stimuli, blob-emotions are not irrational. As regards emotions-for fictional entities, I emphasize that a subject’s rationality shows in the way her emotions-for respond to evidence. On this basis, I discard an influential reason to think that emotions-for fictional entities are irrational. Finally, I offer an argument to conclude that they are typically correct and rational. (shrink)

When thinking about the notion of essence or of an essential feature, philosophers typically focus on what I will call the notion of objectual essence. The main aim of this paper is to argue that beside this familiar notion stands another one, the notion of generic essence, which contrary to appearance cannot be understood in terms of the familiar notion, and which also fails to be correctly characterized by certain other accounts which naturally come to mind as well. Some of (...) my objections to these accounts are similar to some of Kit Fine’s compelling objections to the standard modal account of (objectual) essence (Fine 1994). In the light of these objections, Fine advances the view that it is metaphysical necessity which has to be understood in terms of essence, rather than the other way around, and takes essence to be unanalyzable. When formulatinghis view, Fine had only objectual essence in mind (or had both concepts in mind, but assumed that the generic is a special case of the objectual), and for that reason, I will argue, his account fails. I will suggest that Fineans should modify their view, and take it that metaphysical necessity is to be understood in terms of the two notions of essence—a view I myself find appealing. Finally, I will end by suggesting a further move which reduces the objectual to the generic, making metaphysical necessity reducible to generic essence alone—a move with which I myself have some sympathy. (shrink)

Say that two sentences are factually equivalent when they describe the same facts or situations, understood as worldly items, i.e. as bits of reality rather than as representations of reality. The notion of factual equivalence is certainly of central interest to philosophical semantics, but it plays a role in a much wider range of philosophical areas. What is the logic of factual equivalence? This paper attempts to give a partial answer to this question, by providing an answer the following, more (...) specific question: Given a standard propositional language with negation, conjunction and disjunction as primitive operators, which sentences of the language should be taken to be factually equivalent by virtue of their logical form? The system for factual equivalence advocated in this paper is a proper fragment of the first-degree system for the logic of analytic equivalence put forward in the late seventies by R. B. Angell. I provide the system with two semantics, both formulated in terms of the notion of a situation’s being fittingly described by a linguistic item. In the final part of the paper I argue, contra a view I defended in my “Grounding and Truth-Functions”, that the logic for factual equivalence I advocate here should be preferred to Angell’s logic if one wishes to follow the general conception of the relationships between factual equivalence and the notion of grounding put forward in the 2010 paper. (shrink)

The purpose of the book is to clarify the notion of existential dependence and cognate notions, such as supervenience and the notion of an internal relation. I defend the view that such notions are best understood in terms of the concept of metaphysical grounding, i.e. the concept of one fact obtaining in virtue of other facts, where ‘in virtue of’ has a distinctively metaphysical meaning.

Temporaryism—the view that not always everything always exists—comes in two main versions: presentism and expansionism (aka the growing block theory of time). Both versions of the view are commonly formulated using the notion of being present, which we, among others, find problematic. Expansionism is also sometimes accused of requiring extraordinary conceptual tools for its formulation. In this paper, we put forward systematic characterizations of presentism and expansionism which involve neither the notion of being present nor unfamiliar conceptual tools. These characterizations (...) are full-blown logics, each logic comprising an axiomatic proof system and an intuitive semantics with respect to which the system is both sound and complete. (shrink)

Social learning is likely to include affective processes: it is necessary for newcomers to discover what value to attach to objects, persons, and events in a given social environment. This learning relies largely on the evaluation of others’ emotional expressions. This study has two objectives. Firstly, we compare two closely related concepts that are employed to describe the use of another person’s appraisal to make sense of a given situation: social appraisal and social referencing. We contend that social referencing constitutes (...) a type of social appraisal. Secondly, we introduce the concept of affective social learning with the hope that it may help to discriminate the different ways in which emotions play a critical role in the processes of socialization. (shrink)

Philosophers agree that an important part of our knowledge is acquired via testimony. One of the main objectives of social epistemology is therefore to specify the conditions under which a hearer is justified in accepting a proposition stated by a source. Non-reductionists, who think that testimony could be considered as an a priori source of knowledge, as well as reductionists, who think that another type of justification has to be added to testimony, share a common conception about children development. Non-reductionists (...) believe that infants and children are fundamentally gullible and their gullibility could be seen as an example for justifying testimony, while reductionists believe that this gullibility is merely an exception that should be taken into account. The objective of this paper is to review contemporary literature in developmental psychology providing empirical grounds likely to clarify this philosophical debate. What emerges from current research is a more elaborated vision of children’s attitude toward testimony. Even at a very young age, children do not blindly swallow information coming from testimony; doubtful or contradictory information is automatically screened by their cognitive system. Even if they are unable to give positive reasons for the acceptance of a given testimony, young children are not gullible. Such empirical findings tend to call into question the radical opposition between reductionism and non-reductionism. (shrink)

In 1977, R. B. Angell presented a logic for analytic containment, a notion of relevant implication stronger than Anderson and Belnap's entailment. In this paper I provide for the first time the logic of first degree analytic containment, as presented in [2] and [3], with a semantical characterization—leaving higher degree systems for future investigations. The semantical framework I introduce for this purpose involves a special sort of truth-predicates, which apply to pairs of collections of formulas instead of individual formulas, and (...) which behave in some respects like Gentzen's sequents. This semantics captures very general properties of the truth-functional connectives, and for that reason it may be used to model a vast range of logics. I briefly illustrate the point with classical consequence and Anderson and Belnap's tautological entailments. (shrink)

I provide and defend two natural accounts of fundamentality for facts that do justice to the idea that the “degree of fundamentality” enjoyed by a fact is a matter of how far, from a ground-theoretic perspective, the fact is from the ungrounded facts.

Psychologists have emphasized children's acquisition of information through firsthand observation. However, many beliefs are acquired from others' testimony. In two experiments, most 4yearolds displayed sceptical trust in testimony. Having heard informants' accurate or inaccurate testimony, they anticipated that informants would continue to display such differential accuracy and they trusted the hitherto reliable informant. Yet they ignored the testimony of the reliable informant if it conflicted with what they themselves had seen. By contrast, threeyearolds were less selective in trusting a reliable (...) informant. Thus, young children check testimony against their own experience and increasingly recognise that some informants are more trustworthy than others. (shrink)

This paper suggests that the enactive approach to ethics could benefit from engaging a dialogue with the phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas, a philosopher who has given ethics a decisive role in the understanding of our social life. Taking the enactive approach of Colombetti and Torrance as a starting point, we show how Levinas’ philosophy, with the key notions of face, otherness, and responsibility among others can complement and enrich the enactive view of ethics. Specifically, we argue that Levinas can provide, (...) on the one hand, a phenomenological characterisation of ethics itself, of its nature and fundamental meaning, and on the other, an account of how sociality, affectivity and embodiment, as presented in Colombetti and Torrance’s work, combine to bring about the ethical experience. However, we also point out that introducing Levinas to the enactive approach could be challenging. It is not obvious how sense-making and value-making, as centred on the precariousness and potential death of the subject, would account for the ethical experience as grounded on the precariousness and potential death of the other. (shrink)

Some of the most eminent and enduring philosophical questions concern matters of priority: what is prior to what? What 'grounds' what? Is, for instance, matter prior to mind? Recently, a vivid debate has arisen about how such questions have to be understood. Can the relevant notion or notions of priority be spelled out? And how do they relate to other metaphysical notions, such as modality, truth-making or essence? This volume of new essays, by leading figures in contemporary metaphysics, is the (...) first to address and investigate the metaphysical idea that certain facts are grounded in other facts. An introduction introduces and surveys the debate, examining its history as well as its central systematic aspects. The volume will be of wide interest to students and scholars of metaphysics. (shrink)

Fabrice Virgili (Q) : Elisabeth Elgán, comme historienne des mouvements sociaux et du féminisme suédois dans les années 1970, vous avez bien voulu à l’occasion du 2e Congrès de l’Institut du genre qui s’est réuni à Angers à la fin août 2019 revenir sur le #MeToo en Suède. Pouvez-vous d’abord nous rappeler dans quel contexte apparaît ce #? Elisabeth Elgán (EE) : Il est encore un peu tôt pour avoir des recherches approfondies sur ce mouvement, il s’agit donc d’une (...) réflexion fondée sur mes prop... (shrink)

I offer an account of fundamentality for facts in terms of metaphysical grounding. The account does justice to the idea that whether a fact is absolutely fundamental, and whether a fact is more fundamental than, or as fundamental as, another fact, are a matter of where in a grounding-induced hierarchy of kinds of facts these facts appear.

Teams are considered to be extremely complex dynamic entities that suffer at the hand of constant evolution of their structure to meet and adapt to the varying situational demands they come face-to-face with (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006). Agencies, industries, and government institutions are currently placing greater attention to the adaption of team dynamics and teamwork as they are important to key organizational outcomes. As greater attention is being placed on the maturation of team dynamics, the incorporation of efficient methodological tools (...) to understand how teams are being measured over time becomes critical. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to present a review of relevant academic articles detailing the science behind methodological tools and general approaches to study team dynamics over time. We provide an overview of the methodological tools used to understand team dynamics with accordance to specific temporal elements. Drawing from Kozloski, Gully, Nason, and Smith (1999) process model of team development, we highlight relevant emergent team constructs within each stage. As well, for each stage, we discuss the what and how to measure team dynamics. Our analyses bring to light relevant, novel and complex approaches being used by researchers to examine specific constructs within different team developmental phases (e.g., agent-based simulations, computational modeling) and the importance of transitioning from a single source methodology approach. Implications and future research are also discussed. (shrink)

Recent metaphysics has turned its focus to two notions that are—as well as having a common Aristotelian pedigree—widely thought to be intimately related: grounding and essence. Yet how, exactly, the two are related remains opaque. We develop a unified and uniform account of grounding and essence, one which understands them both in terms of a generalized notion of identity examined in recent work by Fabrice Correia, Cian Dorr, Agustín Rayo, and others. We argue that the account comports with antecedently (...) plausible principles governing grounding, essence, and identity taken individually, and illuminates how the three interact. We also argue that the account compares favorably to an alternative unification of grounding and essence recently proposed by Kit Fine. (shrink)

'Ontological dependence' is a term of philosophical jargon which stands for a rich family of properties and relations, often taken to be among the most fundamental ontological properties and relations. Notions of ontological dependence are usually thought of as 'carving reality at its ontological joints', and as marking certain forms of ontological 'non-self-sufficiency'. The use of notions of dependence goes back as far as Aristotle's characterization of substances, and these notions are still widely used to characterize other concepts and to (...) formulate metaphysical claims. This paper first gives an overview of the varieties of these notions, and then discusses some of their main applications. (shrink)

It is often claimed that emotions are linked to formal objects. But what are formal objects? What roles do they play? According to some philosophers, formal objects are axiological properties which individuate emotions, make them intelligible and give their correctness conditions. In this paper, I evaluate these claims in order to answer the above questions. I first give reasons to doubt the thesis that formal objects individuate emotions. Second, I distinguish different ways in which emotions are intelligible and argue that (...) philosophers are wrong in claiming that emotions only make sense when they are based on prior sources of axiological information. Third, I investigate how issues of intelligibility connect with the correctness conditions of emotions. I defend a theory according to which emotions do not respond to axiological information, but to non-axiological reasons. According to this theory, we can allocate fundamental roles to the formal objects of emotions while dispensing with the problematic features of other theories. (shrink)

Fabrice Jotterand; Bioethics and the Coming Age of Thresholding, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 8, Issue 3, 1 January 2.

The benefits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in medicine are unquestionable and it is unlikely that the pace of its development will slow down. From better diagnosis, prognosis, and prevention to more precise surgical procedures, AI has the potential to offer unique opportunities to enhance patient care and improve clinical practice overall. However, at this stage of AI technology development it is unclear whether it will de-humanize or re-humanize medicine. Will AI allow clinicians to spend less time on administrative tasks and (...) technology related procedures and more time being present in person to attend to the needs of their patients? Or will AI dramatically increase the presence of smart technology in the clinical context to a point of undermining the humane dimension of the patient–physician relationship? In this brief commentary, we argue that technological solutions should be only integrated into clinical medicine if they fulfill the following three conditions: (1) they serve human ends; (2) they respect personal identity; and (3) they promote human interaction. These three conditions form the moral imperative of humanity. (shrink)

In this article we critically examine the principle of equivalence of care in prison medicine. First, we provide an overview of how the principle of equivalence is utilized in various national and international guidelines on health care provision to prisoners. Second, we outline some of the problems associated with its applications, and argue that the principle of equivalence should go beyond equivalence to access and include equivalence of outcomes. However, because of the particular context of the prison environment, third, we (...) contend that the concept of “health” in equivalence of health outcomes needs conceptual clarity; otherwise, it fails to provide a threshold for healthy states among inmates. We accomplish this by examining common understandings of the concepts of health and disease. We conclude our article by showing why the conceptualization of diseases as clinical problems provides a helpful approach in the delivery of health care in prison. (shrink)

Vous avez peut-être lu l'Enfer de Dante mais jamais son Paradis : il équivaut à vos yeux à un néant immaculé. Or le paradis dantesque est bien plus différencié et violent que son enfer. Béatrice y déclare au poète : " Si tu voyais mon rire, tu serais réduit en cendres ". C'est pourquoi, au fond, vous mettez le paradis à la porte : vous redoutez l'exigence de sa joie. Et vous vous fabriquez à la place un petit paradis artificiel, (...) rassurant... qui fait un enfer très convenable. Certes, il ne s'agit pas de fuir vers un autre monde imaginaire, ni de régresser vers ce paradis terrestre dont la Genèse nous dit qu'il est définitivement perdu. A la notion d'un au-delà, vous opposez à bon droit la requête de vivre hic et nunc. Mais vous n'arrivez jamais à être vraiment ici, maintenant. C'est là que le vrai paradis révèle son paradoxe et se défend contre ses parodies : il n'est pas évasion vers un ailleurs, mais la grâce déchirante d'être présent à tous et à chacun, dans une ouverture symphonique, une créativité chorale. Ce livre vous invite à un itinéraire à travers la philosophie, la théologie et les arts - de Nietzsche à Bonnefoy de Baudelaire au Bernin, de Sade à Mozart - afin d'approcher ce que le paradis a de plus terrible et de plus beau : la béance de sa béatitude. Oh! il ne s'agit pas de vous consoler, non, mais de vous convoquer à cette joie qui doit vous faire perdre toute contenance - comme un clown - et détruire en vous tout contentement - comme un fleuve, lequel n'est lui-même que de se recevoir et de s'offrir sans fin... (shrink)

A long-standing debate surrounds the question as to what justifies memory judgements. According to the Past Reason Theory, these judgements are justified by the reasons we had to make identical judgements in the past, whereas the Present Reason Theory claims that these justifying reasons are to be found at the time we pass the memory judgements. In this paper, I defend the original claim that, far from being exclusive, these two theories should be applied to different kinds of memory judgements. (...) The Past Reason Theory offers the most appealing account of justified propositional memory judgements, while the Present Reason Theory provides the best approach to justified episodic memory judgements. One outcome of my discussion is thus that memory is not epistemologically unified and my argument in favour of this conclusion connects with the issues of internalism, reliabilism and the basing relation. (shrink)

This monograph is a detailed study, and systematic defence, of the Growing Block Theory of time (GBT), first conceived by C.D. Broad. The book offers a coherent, logically perspicuous and ideologically lean formulation of GBT, defends it against the most notorious objections to be found in the extant philosophical literature, and shows how it can be derived from a more general theory, consistent with relativistic spacetime, on the pre-relativistic assumption of an absolute and total temporal order. -/- The authors devise (...) axiomatizations of GBT and its competitors which, against the backdrop of a shared quantified tense logic, significantly improves the prospects of their comparative assessment. Importantly, neither of these axiomatizations involves commitment to properties of presentness, pastness or futurity. The authors proceed to address, and defuse, a number of objections that have been marshaled against GBT, including the so-called epistemic objection according to which the theory invites skepticism about our temporal location. The challenge posed by relativistic physics is met head-on, by replacing claims about temporal variation by claims about variation across spacetime. -/- The book aims to achieve the greatest possible rigor. The background logic is set out in detail, as are the principles governing the notions of precedence and temporal location. The authors likewise devise a novel spacetime logic suited for the articulation, and comparative assessment, of relativistic theories of time. The book comes with three technical appendices which include soundness and completeness proofs for the systems corresponding to GBT and its competitors, in both their pre-relativistic and relativistic forms. -/- The book is primarily directed at researchers and graduate students working on the philosophy of time or temporal logic, but is of interest to metaphysicians and philosophical logicians more generally. (shrink)

How does metaphysical grounding interact with the truth-functions? I argue that the answer varies according to whether one has a worldly conception or a conceptual conception of grounding. I then put forward a logic of worldly grounding and give it an adequate semantic characterisation.

We argue that the main objections against two central tenets of a Jamesian account of the emotions, i.e. that (1) different types of emotions are associated with specific types of bodily feelings (Specificity), and that (2) emotions are constituted by patterns of bodily feeling (Constitution), do not succeed. In the first part, we argue that several reasons adduced against Specifity, including one inspired by Schachter and Singer’s work, are unconvincing. In the second part, we argue that Constitution, too, can withstand (...) most of the objections raised against it, including the objection that bodily feelings cannot account for the outward-looking and evaluative nature of emotions. In both sections, we argue that the kinds of felt bodily changes posited by a Jamesian account of emotions are best understood in terms of felt states of action-readiness. (shrink)

In the third of his Logical Investigations, Husserl draws an important distinction between two kinds of parts: the dependent parts like the redness of a visual datum or the squareness of a given picture, and the independent parts like the head of a horse or a brick in a wall. On his view, the distinction is to be understood in terms of a more fundamental notion, the notion of foundation. This paper is an attempt at clarifying that notion. Such attempts (...) have already been undertaken by Peter Simons and Kit Fine, and the paper also contains elements of comparison of our three sets of views. (shrink)

When we remember, we often know that we do. How does this memory identification proceed? After having articulated some constraints on an attractive account of memory identification, this paper explores three types of accounts that respectively appeal to features of memory content, of memory as an activity, and of memory as an attitude. It offers reasons to favour an attitudinal account giving pride of place to the feeling of familiarity.

This volume features essays about and by Paul Benacerraf, whose ideas have circulated in the philosophical community since the early nineteen sixties, shaping key areas in the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of logic, and epistemology. The book started as a worskhop held in Paris at the Collège de France in May 2012 with the participation of Paul Benacerraf. The introduction addresses the methodological point of the legitimate use of so-called “Princess Margaret Premises” in drawing philosophical (...) conclusions from Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem. The book is then divided into three sections. The first is devoted to an assessment of the improved version of the original dilemma of “Mathematical Truth” due to Hartry Field: the challenge to the platonist is now to explain the reliability of our mathematical beliefs given the very subject matter of mathematics, either pure or applied. The second addresses the issue of the ontological status of numbers: Frege’s logicism, fictionalism, structuralism, and Bourbaki’s theory of structures are called up for an appraisal of Benacerraf’s negative conclusions of “What Numbers Could Not Be.” The third is devoted to supertasks and bears witness to the unique standing of Benacerraf’s first publication: “Tasks, Super-Tasks, and Modern Eleatics” in debates on Zeno’s paradox and associated paradoxes, infinitary mathematics, and constructivism and finitism in the philosophy of mathematics. Two yet unpublished essays by Benacerraf have been included in the volume: an early version of “Mathematical Truth” from 1968 and an essay on “What Numbers Could Not Be” from the mid 1970’s. A complete chronological bibliography of Benacerraf’s work to 2016 is provided.Essays by Jody Azzouni, Paul Benacerraf, Justin Clarke-Doane, Sébastien Gandon, Brice Halimi, Jon Pérez Laraudogoitia, Mary Leng, Antonio Leòn-Sànchez and Ana Leòn-Mejía, Marco Panza, Fabrice Pataut, Philippe de Rouilhan, Andrea Sereni, and Stewart Shapiro. (shrink)

I introduce a proof system for the logic of relative fundamentality, as well as a natural semantics with respect to which the system is both sound and complete. I then “modalise” the logic, and finally I discuss the properties of grounding given a suggested account of this notion in terms of necessity and relative fundamentality.

I identify a notion of logical grounding, clarify it, and show how it can be used (i) to characterise various consequence relations, and (ii) to give a precise syntactic account of the notion of “groundedness” at work in the literature on the paradoxes of truth.

This paper explores substantive accounts of emotional phenomenology so as to see whether it sheds light on key features of emotions. To this end, we focus on four features that can be introduced by way of an example. Say Sam is angry at Maria’s nasty remark. The first feature relates to the fact that anger is a negative emotion, by contrast with positive emotions such as joy and admiration (valence). The second feature is how anger differs from other emotions such (...) as sadness, fear and joy (individuation). The third concerns the objects of anger and the sense in which anger discloses the significance of Maria’s remark to Sam (intentionality). Finally, there is anger’s relation to behaviour (motivation). Does focussing on emotional phenomenology encourage specific accounts of these features? We shall see that there are reasons to think it does. Still, are these reasons of sufficient import to dispel the scepticism of those who think that nothing of consequence plays out at the personal level of emotional experience? Given the role of emotional experience in our evaluative practices, we shall conclude that they are. Our discussion is structured as follows: section 1 focuses on feeling approaches to phenomenology, section 2 on componential approaches, section 3 on perceptual approaches and section 4 on attitudinal approaches. Section 5 concludes with some observations regarding the significance of emotional phenomenology. (shrink)

Fabrice Teroni,Julien Deonna | : Selon l’analyse FA des concepts évaluatifs, notre conception d’un objet comme ayant une valeur donnée est la conception d’une certaine attitude évaluative appropriée à son endroit. Cet article examine deux défis que doit relever cette analyse. Le défi psychologique exige de l’analyse qu’elle fasse appel à des attitudes qui soient à même d’éclairer nos concepts évaluatifs, tout en ne présupposant pas la maîtrise de ces mêmes concepts. Le défi normatif réclame quant à lui que (...) la compréhension du caractère approprié des attitudes pertinentes s’articule autour d’une forme de normativité intimement liée à la nature de ces attitudes, sans pour autant dépendre de la maîtrise des concepts évaluatifs analysés. Afin d’établir si l’analyse FA peut relever ces défis, nous commençons par clarifier la nature des attitudes auxquelles il convient de faire appel. Dans la première section, nous considérons des attitudes génériques comme les désirs et présentons des raisons de privilégier des attitudes plus spécifiques, à savoir les émotions. La suite de la discussion évalue la plausibilité d’une analyse FA souscrivant à l’une ou l’autre des approches contemporaines en théorie des émotions. La deuxième section souligne qu’il est difficile d’associer l’analyse FA aux théories en termes de contenu évaluatif et la troisième présente les atouts d’une théorie en termes d’attitudes évaluatives. Dans la dernière section, nous revenons au défi normatif et esquissons une manière de le relever. | : According to the FA analysis of evaluative concepts, our conception of an object as having a given value is the conception of a given evaluative attitude towards it as being appropriate. In this paper, we explore two challenges that this analysis has to take up. The psychological challenge requires that the analysis appeal to attitudes that are apt to shed light on our evaluative concepts while not presupposing the mastery of these same concepts. The normative challenge requires that we understand the appropriateness of the relevant attitudes in terms of a kind of normativity intimately related to these attitudes, again without this presupposing the mastery of the relevant evaluative concepts. To determine whether the FA analysis can meet these challenges, we start by clarifying the sort of attitudes the analysis should appeal to. In section 1, we consider generic attitudes like desires and give some reasons to favor more specific attitudes, namely emotions. The ensuing discussion assesses the prospects of an FA analysis in light of contemporary accounts of emotions. In section 2, we argue that the FA analysis should not be combined with accounts according to which emotions have evaluative contents and then offer, in section 3, some reasons for combining the FA with an account in terms of evaluative attitudes. In section 4, we show how this allows for solving the normative challenge. (shrink)

The Hippocratic Oath, the Hippocratic tradition, and Hippocratic ethics are widely invoked in the popular medical culture as conveying a direction to medical practice and the medical profession. This study critically addresses these invocations of Hippocratic guideposts, noting that reliance on the Hippocratic ethos and the Oath requires establishingwhat the Oath meant to its author, its original community of reception, and generally for ancient medicine what relationships contemporary invocations of the Oath and the tradition have to the original meaning of (...) the Oath and its original reception what continuity exists and under what circumstances over the last two-and-a-half millenniums of medical-moral reflections what continuity there is in the meaning of professionalism from the time of Hippocrates to the 21st century, and what social factors in particular have transformed the medical profession in particular countries. This article argues that the resources for a better understanding of medical professionalism lie not in the Hippocratic Oath, tradition, or ethos in and of themselves. Rather, it must be found in a philosophy of medicine that explores the values internal to medicine, thus providing a medical-moral philosophy so as to be able to resist the deformation of medical professionalism by bioethics, biopolitics, and governmental regulation. The Oath, as well as Stephen H. Miles' recent monograph, The Hippocratic Oath and the Ethics of Medicine, are employed as heuristics, so as to throw into better light the extent to which the Hippocratic Oath, tradition, and ethics can provide guidance and direction, as well as to show the necessity of taking seriously the need for a substantive philosophy of medicine. (shrink)

La quatrième de couverture indique : "La création, l'émergence et la nouveauté sont des notions indispensables pour comprendre l'évolution naturelle et l'histoire culturelle. Il est toutefois bien difficile de les définir : comment en effet repenser adéquatement la nouveauté et l'émergence? Comment même les envisager, avec leurs conséquences et leurs répercussions, dans l'histoire humaine en général si la vie, la conscience et la culture forment des noeuds gordiens impossibles à défaire? Cet essai espère résoudre de tels problèmes en répertoriant les (...) contradictions et les tensions des projets naturalistes. Une autre image de l'histoire humaine surgit alors, plus surprenante que celle imposée par la phénoménologie de la vie et la psychologie évolutionniste.". (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that physical laws have a unique modal status known as nomic necessity which is weaker than metaphysical necessity. This orthodox view has come into question in the past few decades. In particular, the metaphysical view known as essentialism has provided an argument that the laws of nature are necessary in the strongest possible sense. It seems obvious to many that at least some essentialist arguments in favor of the necessity of scientific claims are going to be sound. (...) For example, the view that claims like "water is H2O" are necessary has itself 2 become an orthodox view. However, the question of whether laws, like the law of conservation of energy, or the law of gravity, are necessary is far more contentious. Philosophers divide roughly into two camps, law necessitarians1 who hold that the laws are necessary in the strongest sense and contingency theorists who hold that they are at least in some sense contingent. One argument for the necessitarian position is via an essentialist theory of the transworld identity of properties. In this paper I defend such a theory of the identity of properties and its necessitarian consequences from one major criticism. To focus the paper, I center the discussion on a single critic, E. J. Lowe. In his book, The Four Category Ontology, he offers a criticism of the essentialist argument for necessitarianism via an analogy with other forms of transworld identity and intuitions about the contingency of the physical constants2. I undermine the usefulness of Lowe's analogy by examining the purposes of attributions of properties. I also show that the essentialist's position can allow it to accommodate the intuitions of contingency in a way that fits best with the purpose behind property attributions. (shrink)

This contribution reviews the main normative and positive arguments that can used in the assessment of the costs and benefits of food marketing restrictions, focusing specifically on theoretical and empirical developments in the economics of advertising, consumer behaviour and industrial organization since the 70s.

The development of nanotechnology intensifies challenges to the traditional understanding of how to pursue scientific and technological knowledge. Science can no longer be construed simply as the ideal of the quest for truth . Science has become the source of economic power and political power. In this paper, I argue that nanotechnology is a cardinal exemplar of “this politicization.” At the same time, I assert that this new scientific ethos offers the possibility of a better integration of ethical and philosophical (...) reflections at the core of scientific and technological development. (shrink)

Since the Nuremberg trials (1947–1949), informed consent has become central for ethical practice in patient care and biomedical research. Codes of ethics emanating from the Nuremberg Code (1947) recognize the importance of protecting patients and research subjects from abuses, manipulation and deception. Informed consent empowers individuals to autonomously and voluntarily accept or reject participation in either clinical treatment or research. In some cases, however, the underlying mental or physical condition of the individual may alter his or her cognitive abilities and (...) compromise the informed consent process. This is particularly true in chronic psychiatric conditions such as Treatment-Resistant Depression (TRD), where individuals may fail to respond to traditional antidepressant treatments (e.g., psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy). Moreover, it may raise further concerns for an individual’s motivation to consent and the level of understanding of the treatment or research procedure. This paper focuses on the informed consent process for Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) in the treatment of individuals diagnosed with TRD. Specifically, the paper addresses how depression may affect the decision-making capacity of an individual and the potential ethical and legal impact of failure to appreciate the seven elements of the consenting process (competence, voluntariness, disclosure, recommendation, understanding, decision, and authorization). To ensure the protection of vulnerable individuals with psychiatric disorders such as TRD and promote ethical behavior in biomedical research and patient care while avoiding potential legal pitfalls, we propose a paradigm that requires a stringent evaluation process of decision-making capacity for informed consent. (shrink)

The debate over moral bioenhancement has incrementally intensified since 2008, when Persson and Savulescu, and Douglas wrote two separate articles on the reasons why enhancing human moral capabilities and sensitivity through technological means was ethically desirable. In this article, we offer a critique of how Persson and Savulescu theorize about the possibility of moral bioenhancement, including the problem of weakness of will, which they see as a motivational challenge. First, we offer a working definition of moral bioenhancement and underscore some (...) of the challenges in determining whether moral bioenhancement, as conceptualized by Persson and Savulescu, falls into the category of enhancement or constitutes a type of therapeutic intervention. Second, we provide a critical analysis of the way Persson and Savulescu pathologize human behavior in relation to what they see as the main threat to the survival of the human species: weak moral motivation. Next, we critique the claim that the use of genetic manipulation and drug treatment will increase moral motivation. We argue that Persson and Savulescu mischaracterize the nature of human moral psychology because moral motivation includes affective and cognitive dimensions. The type of interventions they envision focus almost exclusively on the former. In the final two sections, we outline three main criticisms of moral bioenhancement and offer a more robust account of moral psychology and moral development than what Persson and Savulescu recommend, through the lens of Aristotle’s work on virtue ethics. Ultimately, we argue that what Persson and Savulescu, and Douglas consider as moral bioenhancement is a misnomer because they do not fully account for the complexity of moral agency. (shrink)