Since 2002, at least two kinds of laboratory-testable, solid-state Maxwell demons have been proposed that utilize the electric field energy of an open-gap n-p junction and that seem to challenge the validity of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In the present paper we present some arguments against the alleged functioning of such devices.

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

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

Certains auteurs germanophones contemporains exploitent la discordance entre la présence attendue du déterminant du groupe nominal (GN) en allemand et l’absence d’actualisateur pour coder une variété germano-turque, désignée par le terme Kiez, qui signifie métonymiquement « langage des quartiers ». Un exemple en est la menace rituelle « ich mach dich messer », qu’on pourrait traduire littéralement par : « je te fais couteau » et qui correspond pragmatiquement à une signification de type « tu vas avoir affaire à (...) mon couteau ». L’absence de tout déterminant pour le substantif Messer met en scène une langue inhabituelle pour le lecteur germanophone. La contribution analyse les réalisations et leurs effets chez deux auteurs germano-turcs contemporains : Feridun Zaimoglu dans le recueil Kanak Sprak, écrit dans cette « langue de canaques », et Emine Sevgi Özdamar dans l’ensemble de titre Mutterzunge, « Langue de la mère ». (shrink)

L’entre-deux nous le rencontrons, c’est l’autre. Pour nous, il fut présent dans les formations-recherches interculturelles des Offices des jeunesses : franco-allemand, germano-polonais, franco-québécois. L’autre, les ennemis ou les alliés? Ceux d’hier ou les nouveaux, alors, l’Est et l’Ouest. Leur rivalité pour l’espace nous référait à l’entre-deux du cosmos et de l’humain ; le cosmos, repère d’entre-deux. En microphysique, à chaque particule, son antiparticule. Le proton en noyau, les électrons alentour mais aussi le neutron. En cosmologie : rayonnement centrifuge des (...) étoiles ; gravitation centripète jusqu’au trou noir. Le monde du vivant n’est pas en reste. De la cellule à l’être pluricellulaire. De la scissiparité à la reproduction sexuée. Entre-deux du monde végétal et du monde animal ; de l’humain ouvert à l’infini et de l’univers plein. Mais s’ils se sentent vides, les humains tombent dans des absolus qui les opposent parfois jusqu’au meurtre de l’autre. L’antidote : vivre, penser, inventer les entre-deux de l’histoire et des civilisations. The in-between, we meet it: it is my neighbour. For me, it was present in the intercultural trainings-searches for the Services of the youths: French-German, German-Polish, French-from Quebec. The others: enemies or allies? Those of yesterday or the new, then, the East and the West. Their rivalry for space referred to us in the in-between of the cosmos and the human being; the cosmos, the mark of the in-between. In microphysics, in every particle, its antiparticle. The proton in core, electrons surrounding but also the neutron. In cosmology: brilliance of spin-dries stars; centripetal gravitation up to the black hole. Le Monde of the alive is not outdone. From the cell to the being pluricellulaire. From the fissiparity to the sexual reproduction. In-between of the vegetable world and of the animal kingdom; of the human being, open to the infinity, and of the full universe. But if they feel empty, the human beings fall in absolutes, which sometimes bring them to the murder others. The antidote: living, thinking, inventing the in-between of history and of the civilizations. (shrink)

Reseña critica de los trabajos presentados en el encuentro italo-germano sobre Vico celebrado en Merano, 8-9 de Mayo de 1995, con la participación de G. Cotroneo, D. Barbieri, J. Seifert, K. Flasch, H. Seidl y G. Patella.A critical review of the papers submined at the Italian-German Meeting on Vico held at Merano during May, 8th and 9th 1995. References are made to G. Cotroneo, D. Barbieri, J. Seifert, K. Flasch, H. Seidl and G. Patella.

Dans cet article nous esquisserons les contours d’une phénoménologie de ce que nous appellerons la tolérance « active » conçue comme une attitude consistant en l’approbation du comportement et des codes culturels d’autrui, par opposition à une tolérance « passive » plus proche de la définition classique de la tolérance comme pâtir. Pour ce faire nous nous appuierons sur un essai (1965) du phénoménologue germano-américain Herbert Spiegelberg consacré précisément à une phénoménologie de l’approbation (ou de l’appréciation). Notre principal objectif (...) sera de décrire aussi précisément que possible la structure intentionnelle relativement complexe de l’acte au cœur de la tolérance active et de le distinguer d’autres types d’acte apparemment similaires en mettant au jour ses fondements dans des états-de-choses axiologiques. Notre objectif secondaire sera de réfléchir à la manière dont cette analyse peut nourrir une phénoménologie interculturelle. (shrink)

En ce moment propice aux débats sur la Constitution, la souveraineté du peuple, la démocratie directe, cet essai veut donner un aperçu historique, politique et philosophique du problème, à partir d'une seule idée directrice repensée dans la perspective de la "théorie mimétique" de René Girard : l'opposition établie par Giovanni Lobrano entre le "modèle ancien ou romain", seul vrai modèle républicain, et le "modèle moderne ou germano-anglais", d'origine féodale.

"S'inscrivant dans la démarche générale de l'École de Francfort, s'efforçant d'unir la démarche dialectique et matérialiste du marxisme avec la psychanalyse, dans le cadre d'un projet visant l'émancipation totale de l'homme, la philosophie sociale critique du "Grand Refus" esquissée par Herbert Marcuse est caractérisée par une lecture beaucoup plus radicale des écrits de Freud, par I 'effort de dépasser le fatalisme de Freud et la tentative de s'interroger sur le visage particulier que prennent la répression, la sublimation de la sexualité, (...) le refoulement et l'agressivité dans nos sociétés modernes industrielles très avancées. Ainsi appelle-t-il "surrépression" la répression inutile et irrationnelle qui les caractérise. Le présent ouvrage s'efforce de reconstruire l'itinéraire philosophico-sociologico-politique de ce grand penseur germano-américain incarnant le désir d'une société future non-répressive, dont l'œuvre avait atteint, à l'époque de la révolte étudiante et de la Guerre du Vietnam, un rayonnement mondial, en consacrant des analyses précises et approfondies à chacune des étapes de sa pensée."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Le but de la présente étude est d’établir un bilan aussi complet que possible des grandes lignes de la recherche des vingt dernières années en théologie sacramentaire. Pour cela, l’auteur commence par une analyse sélective des communications données au Colloque des RSR qui s’est tenu à Chantilly du 28 au 30 juin 1986 afin de déceler les courants majeurs qui se retrouvent par la suite dans les travaux de recherche théologique postérieurs à cette époque. Dans une deuxième partie, il retrace (...) le fruit des travaux recensés entre 1987 et 2001 dans les bulletins critiques des RSR, ce qui, soit dit en passant, justifie que l’ensemble de ce dossier soit dédié à la mémoire de Henri Bourgeois, décédé prématurément en 2001. Un tel itinéraire permet de se faire une idée de tout ce qui a été élaboré sur le sujet par des auteurs, surtout franco-, anglo-, germano- et italophones. En dernier lieu, sont données quelques propositions du point de vue d’un théologien systématique, dogmaticien, engagé lui-même comme acteur dans cette recherche.The purpose of the present study is to assess as completely as possible the principal areas of research during the past 20 years of sacramental theology. To that end, the author begins with a selective analysis of papers given at the Colloquium of RSR, which was held at Chantilly from the 28th to the 30th of June 1986. His goal was to identify major contributions that influenced theological research during the period that followed. The second part retraces the fruit of the works reviewed between 1987 and 2001 in the critical bulletins of the RSR , which we can say in passing, justified the dedication of the whole dossier to the memory of Henri Bourgeois, who died prematurely in 2001. Such an approach provides a broad perspective of the contributions made on the subject by authors, especially French-, English-, German-, and Italian-speaking. Finally, some proposals represent the view of a systematic, dogmatic theologian who was himself engaged as a participant in this research. (shrink)

In locating friendly fire in contemporary philosophy of religion, D.Z. Phillips shows that more harm can be done to religion by its philosophical defenders than by its philosophical despisers. Friendly fire is the result of an uncritical acceptance of empiricism, and Phillips argues that we need to examine critically the claims that individual consciousness is the necessary starting point from which we have to argue: for the existence of an external world and the reality of God; that God is a (...) person without a body, a pure consciousness; and that to assent to a religious belief is essentially to assign a truth value to a proposition independent of any confessional context. When these products of friendly fire are avoided, we arrive at a new understanding of belief, trust and the soul, and refuse to say more or less than we know about the realities of human life in the service of religious apologetics. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, the contemporary scientific realist is concerned to justify belief in what we might call theoretical truth, which includes truth based on ampliative inference and truth about unobservables. Many, if not most, contemporary realists say scientific realism should be treated as ‘an overarching scientific hypothesis’ (Putnam 1978, p. 18). In its most basic form, the realist hypothesis states that theories enjoying general predictive success are true. This hypothesis becomes a hypothesis to be tested. To justify our belief in the (...) realist hypothesis, realists commonly put forward an argument known as the ‘no-miracles argument’. With respect to the basic hypothesis this argument can be stated as follows: it would be a miracle were our theories as successful as they are, were they not true; the only possible explanation for the general predictive success of our scientific theories is that they are true. (shrink)

Eugenics casts a long shadow over contemporary genetics. Any measure, whether in clinical genetics or biotechnology, which is suspected of eugenic intent is likely to be opposed on that ground. Yet there is little consensus on what this word signifies, and often only a remote connection to the very complex set of social movements which took that name. After a brief historical summary of eugenics, this essay attempts to locate any wrongs inherent in eugenic doctrines. Four candidates are examined and (...) rejected. The moral challenge posed by eugenics for genetics in our own time, I argue, is to achieve social justice. (shrink)

This article endeavors to identify the strongest versions of the two primary arguments against epistemic scientific realism: the historical argument—generally dubbed “the pessimistic meta-induction”—and the argument from underdetermination. It is shown that, contrary to the literature, both can be understood as historically informed but logically validmodus tollensarguments. After specifying the question relevant to underdetermination and showing why empirical equivalence is unnecessary, two types of competitors to contemporary scientific theories are identified, both of which are informed by science itself. With the (...) content and structure of the two nonrealist arguments clarified, novel relations between them are uncovered, revealing the severity of their collective threat against epistemic realism and its “no-miracles” argument. The final section proposes, however, that the realist’s axiological tenet “science seeks truth” is not blocked. An attempt is made to indicate the promise for a nonepistemic, purely axiological scientific realism—here dubbed “Socratic scientific realism.”. (shrink)

In this paper I challenge and adjudicate between the two positions that have come to prominence in the scientific realism debate: deployment realism and structural realism. I discuss a set of cases from the history of celestial mechanics, including some of the most important successes in the history of science. To the surprise of the deployment realist, these are novel predictive successes toward which theoretical constituents that are now seen to be patently false were genuinely deployed. Exploring the implications for (...) structural realism, I show that the need to accommodate these cases forces our notion of “structure” toward a dramatic depletion of logical content, threatening to render it explanatorily vacuous: the better structuralism fares against these historical examples, in terms of retention, the worse it fares in content and explanatory strength. I conclude by considering recent restrictions that serve to make “structure” more specific. I show however that these refinements will not suffice: the better structuralism fares in specificity and explanatory strength, the worse it fares against history. In light of these case studies, both deployment realism and structural realism are significantly threatened by the very historical challenge they were introduced to answer. (shrink)

J. D. P. Bolton has argued in the C.Q. 1948 that although there is some confusion in the use of the term ‘quinquennalis’ in the first century A.D., the linguistic and literary evidence suggests that the Neronia was a four-yearly festival, that the celebration which Tacitus records in 65 was merely a postponement of part of the celebration due in 64, and that such a view is supported by the evidence of Nero's issues of Certamen Quinquennale semisses. Bolton divides these (...) semisses into four main groups: Copper. With sc on reverse. Obverse: bare head of Nero; legend NERO CAESAR AVGVSTVS variously abbreviated. (shrink)

A common intuition about evidence is that if data x have been used to construct a hypothesis H, then x should not be used again in support of H. It is no surprise that x fits H, if H was deliberately constructed to accord with x. The question of when and why we should avoid such “double-counting” continues to be debated in philosophy and statistics. It arises as a prohibition against data mining, hunting for significance, tuning on the signal, and (...) ad hoc hypotheses, and as a preference for predesignated hypotheses and “surprising” predictions. I have argued that it is the severity or probativeness of the test—or lack of it—that should determine whether a double-use of data is admissible. I examine a number of surprising ambiguities and unexpected facts that continue to bedevil this debate. (shrink)

This chapter deals with the ways in which entrepreneurships driven by industrial design and the strategies for interconnecting design for innovation are articulated. In the first instance, current practices are recognized in order to analyze the different processes that entrepreneurial dynamics go through. This analysis is carried out from a systemic perspective, at three levels of abstraction: designer, entrepreneurship and ecosystem. The theoretical and conceptual framework will be structured based on the innovations driven by design, which occur around the designer, (...) his personal projects, and the possible interactions and singularities offered by living spaces. The objective of this work is to unravel the eventual relationships of the entrepreneurial designer in the ecosystem and to highlight the potential added by emerging connections, which allow for the projection of synergistic actions with other actors to create value(s). In this way, other possible views of the entrepreneurial process are provided, where the cultural and philosophical dimension that characterizes industrial designers allows them to achieve a higher quality of life, designing and producing collectively (in) their environment. (shrink)

We report the results of a randomized trial to assess the impact of an innovative ethics curriculum on the knowledge and confidence of 85 medical house officers in a university hospital programme, as well as their responses to a simulated clinical case. Twenty-five per cent of the house officers received a lecture series, 25 per cent received lectures and case conferences, with an ethicist in attendance, and 50 per cent served as controls. A post-intervention questionnaire was administered. Knowledge scores did (...) not differ among the groups. Confidence regarding ethical issues was significantly greater in the aggregate intervention group compared to the control group. Confidence regarding procedural issues related to ethics was significantly higher for the EI group than for the controls. Responses to a simulated case showed that significantly fewer house officers in the EI group would intubate a patient for whom such therapy would be futile. We conclude that ethics education can have an impact on house officers' confidence and their responses to a simulated case, and that the EI was more effective than the LI. Such results have implications regarding the implementation of ethics education during residency. (shrink)

Several philosophers have developed accounts to dissolve the apparent conflict between deterministic laws of nature and objective chances. These philosophers advocate the compatibility of determinism and chance. I argue that determinism and chance are incompatible and criticize the various notions of “deterministic chance” supplied by the compatibilists. Many of the compatibilists are strongly motivated by scientific theories where objective probabilities are combined with deterministic laws, the most salient of which is classical statistical mechanics. I show that, properly interpreted, statistical mechanics (...) is either an indeterministic theory or else its probabilities are not chances, just as incompatibilism demands. (shrink)

This is an intellectual-biographical research essay on D. I. Chyzhevśkyi (1894-1977), the internationally renowned Ukraine scholar, expert on the history of philosophy, on Russian and Ukrainian philology and Slavic-German intercultural relations. He studied at Saint Petersburg University 1911-1913 and at Kyiv University 1916-1919 where he graduated with distinction. His would have been a promising academic career, however, in 1921, for political reasons Chyzhevśkyi felt compelled to leave Ukraine. He went to Germany, studied with E. Husserl in Freiburg/Breisgau, met M. Heidegger, (...) H.-G. Gadamer and other young influential German philosophers. But political transformations again changed the course of his life. Despite the hardships he had to cope with in the following years he was incredibly productive in publishing, engaged actively in the famous Prague Linguistic Circle and in the first Conferences of the Hegel Association. He became Assistant Professor of Slavonic studies at Harvard University and from 1956 professor at Heidelberg University. Still, his success was not without a drop of bitterness. As an émigré Chyzhevśkyi remained a foreigner in his adopted country. The essay is based on original documents from German archives: institutional files and private letters, many of them yet unknown. Moreover, the article benefits from its author’s personal acquaintance with Chyzhevśkyi in his late Heidelberg years, 1960s and 1970s. (shrink)

In Bester’s article (2018) challenging the use of the harm principle and advocating sole reliance on the use of a best interest standard (BIS) in pediatric decision-making, we believe that the auth...

I discuss a tension between two broadly Aristotelian ideas about the role of emotions in virtue and consider its implications for the original and attractive theory of virtuous judgment that Gopal Sreenivasan develops in Emotion and Virtue. One is the idea that a virtuous person has fitting emotions. The other idea is that the virtuous person has emotions that point her toward performing a virtuous action. I explain the tension between these ideas, and how it arises with respect to both (...) of Sreenivasan's central examples of virtue: compassion and courage.I suggest that this tension generates some interesting and systemic respects in which a virtuous agent's virtuous emotional responses hamper her attempts to judge what is the virtuous thing to do. This makes me less sanguine than I take Sreenivasan to be about the contributions of emotion to the virtuous agent's reliability in passing his “Central Test of Virtue.”. (shrink)

Critical factors that appear to encourage vocal development in humans are altriciality and long immaturity. Hominid infants appear to have evolved a specific tendency to use elaborate vocalization as a means of soliciting long-term investment from caregivers. The development of such vocal capacity provides necessary infrastructure for language development across human life history.

In practice, the inquiry into whether Socrates/William Tell/Robin Hood really existed hinges on the origin of the causal sequence leading up to the present use of the name employed for the personage in question, even though the occurrence of a Kripkean ‘baptism’ is not a logical consequence of most assertions employing that name, but only an ‘implication’ like the sort that makes examples of Moore's paradox (e.g. 'It is raining, but I have no idea whether it is raining’) strike ordinary (...) language users as ‘inconsistent’. But with any express assertions or denials of the existence of the personage named, the attribution of Kripkean sense to the name is unavoidable. (shrink)

This paper, written from the perspective of a liberal Protestant, addresses Karl Barth’s famous dispute with his predecessor Friedrich Schleiermacher. It claims that despite the vehemence he often employs against Schleiermacher, a careful assessment of Barth reveals an ever-shifting ambivalence. Barth’s dismissal was very much a heated reaction amidst post-war circumstances, and Schleiermacher served as a symbol for aspects of pre-war culture and theology that are not necessarily reflective of Schleiermacher’s original project. Later in his career, Barth seems to have (...) yearned to rehabilitate aspects of that very project. (shrink)

Funding organizations around the world are adopting open science policies, resulting in a pressing need for open science programs. In response to the 2011 decadal survey, NASA sought to expand and accelerate omics research, releasing its GeneLab Strategic Plan in 2014. GeneLab is an open science data repository and analysis portal for spaceflight and space-relevant omics data. GeneLab’s output has been outstanding, but its full potential as a way to transform space biology has not yet been achieved. NASA should pursue (...) the development of GeneLab as an open science platorm in earnest. (shrink)

Every one of us will die, and the processes we go through will be our own - unique to our own experiences and life stories. End-of-Life Care and Pragmatic Decision Making provides a pragmatic philosophical framework based on a radically empirical attitude toward life and death. D. Micah Hester takes seriously the complexities of experiences and argues that when making end-of-life decisions, healthcare providers ought to pay close attention to the narratives of patients and the communities they inhabit so that (...) their dying processes embody their life stories. He discusses three types of end-of-life patient populations - adults with decision-making capacity, adults without capacity, and children - to show the implications of pragmatic empiricism and the scope of decision making at the end of life for different types of patients. (shrink)

Walter Wink is well-known for his exposition of what he has called “the third way” in Christian ethics, and his three-volume theological work expounding the nature of “the dominating powers that be” has left a lasting mark on Christian (post)liberalism -- not just in North America but elsewhere as well. However there is a vexing philosophical tension in Wink’s work, one that is even reflected in the fading of mainline Protestantism as a social force. This short piece was an early (...) effort to call attention to this challenge. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung In diesem Artikel wird das neoliberale Modell von Rationalität dem Verständnis der Rationalität gegenübergestellt, das Fichte in der Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre vorschlägt. Der erste Teil dreht sich um Foucaults Verbindung zwischen Gouvernementalität und Rational Choice Model. Im zweiten Teil werde ich die Handlungstheorie von Ludwig von Mises erörtern, die er in seinem Meisterwerk von 1940, Nationalökonomie. Eine Theorie des Handelns, aufarbeitet. Denn obwohl er die Rational Choice Theory nicht selbst formulierte, gilt er als beispielhafter Vertreter eines anthropologischen Musters, (...) in dem menschliches Handeln, Wahl, Rationalität und Wirtschaft eng voneinander abhängen. Im dritten Teil des Artikels kommt J. G. Fichte ins Spiel und seine in der Grundlage vorgeschlagene Rationalitätskonzeption zur Geltung. Denn die ganze Anthropologie von von Mises, auf welche sich die Möglichkeit des vernünftigen Handelns des homo oeconomicus überhaupt stützt, kann darauf zurückgeführt werden, was Fichte allein im zweiten, theoretischen Teil der Grundlage darstellt, dem Fichte allerdings einen dritten, praktischen Teil folgen lässt, in dem er die Gründung und die Rechtfertigung, ja die authentischen Bedingungen der Möglichkeit jenes theoretischen Handelns bzw. der Intelligenz in der Entfaltung der praktischen Vernunft darstellt. (shrink)

The central thesis of JC Beall’s paraconsistent Christology is that Christ, being human and divine, is a contradictory being, and a rational Christology can accept it, since logic nowadays does not exclude the possibility of true contradictions. In this paper, I move from Beall’s theory and I present an alternative view. I quote seven statements of the so-called ‘Athanasian Creed’ which synthesizes the results of conciliar Christology. The aim of the Creed is to combat monophysitism by stressing the duplicity and (...) unity of Christ: two (incompatible) natures inseparably joined in only one person. I note that the two-in-one principle, so intended, may be seen as an ancestor of what has been called ‘conjunctive paraconsistency’, whereby there could be true contradictions but contradictories cannot be separately true. I specifically oppose this view to Beall’s idea of Christ’s human divinity (or divine humanity) as a glut, showing that in the conjunctive account, true contradictions do not require any overlapping or joint ascription of truth and falsity. (shrink)

This article critically examines Foucault's engagement with neoliberalism. While Foucault declares that his analysis of this tradition is primarily descriptive, I argue that he continually questions whether neoliberalism is less disciplinary and biopolitically normalizing than traditional forms of liberalism. Although Foucault does not endorse neoliberalism as a prescriptive solution to these problems of normalization, his interest in such problems is consistent with his tendency to privilege freedom over other values like justice and equality. This helps to clarify the normative stakes (...) of Foucault's analysis while rejecting any suggestion that he was invested in neoliberalism as a comprehensive political program. Indeed, I repudiate the claim that he was “seduced” by neoliberalism. Furthermore, I reject the idea that he was trying to “invent” a distinctively socialist governmentality through the prism of neoliberalism. Finally, I consider the broader significance of this discussion for normative political philosophy. (shrink)