"Open Democracy envisions what true government by mass leadership could look like."—Nathan Heller, New Yorker How a new model of democracy that opens up power to ordinary citizens could strengthen inclusiveness, responsiveness, and accountability in modern societies To the ancient Greeks, democracy meant gathering in public and debating laws set by a randomly selected assembly of several hundred citizens. To the Icelandic Vikings, democracy meant meeting every summer in a field to discuss issues until consensus was reached. Our contemporary representative (...) democracies are very different. Modern parliaments are gated and guarded, and it seems as if only certain people—with the right suit, accent, wealth, and connections—are welcome. Diagnosing what is wrong with representative government and aiming to recover some of the lost openness of ancient democracies, Open Democracy presents a new paradigm of democracy in which power is genuinely accessible to ordinary citizens. Hélène Landemore favors the ideal of “representing and being represented in turn” over direct-democracy approaches. Supporting a fresh nonelectoral understanding of democratic representation, Landemore recommends centering political institutions around the “open mini-public”—a large, jury-like body of randomly selected citizens gathered to define laws and policies for the polity, in connection with the larger public. She also defends five institutional principles as the foundations of an open democracy: participatory rights, deliberation, the majoritarian principle, democratic representation, and transparency. Open Democracy demonstrates that placing ordinary citizens, rather than elites, at the heart of democratic power is not only the true meaning of a government of, by, and for the people, but also feasible and, today more than ever, urgently needed. (shrink)

The maze and the masses -- Democracy as the rule of the dumb many? -- A selective genealogy of the epistemic argument for democracy -- First mechanism of democratic reason: inclusive deliberation -- Epistemic failures of deliberation -- Second mechanism of democratic reason: majority rule.

This paper takes stock of a recent but growing movement within the field of deliberative democracy, which normatively argues for the epistemic dimension of democratic authority and positively defends the truth-tracking properties of democratic procedures. Authors within that movement call themselves epistemic democrats, hence the recognition by many of an ‘epistemic turn’ in democratic theory. The paper argues that this turn is a desirable direction in which the field ought to evolve, taking it beyond the ‘fact of disagreement’ that had (...) previously blocked the conceptual road to acknowledging more than intrinsic properties to democratic decision procedures. The paper shows how two authors in particular – Joshua Cohen and David Estlund – have successfully lifted the Rawlsian requirement of epistemic abstinence and defends epistemic democrats and the implications of the epistemic turn in democratic theory against various misconceptions. (shrink)

This paper argues in favor of the epistemic properties of inclusiveness in the context of democratic deliberative assemblies and derives the implications of this argument in terms of the epistemically superior mode of selection of representatives. The paper makes the general case that, all other things being equal and under some reasonable assumptions, more is smarter. When applied to deliberative assemblies of representatives, where there is an upper limit to the number of people that can be included in the group, (...) the argument translates into a defense of a specific selection mode of participants: random selection. (shrink)

Consensus plays an ambiguous role in deliberative democracy. While it formed the horizon of early deliberative theories, many now denounce it as an empirically unachievable outcome, a logically impossible stopping rule, and a normatively undesirable ideal. Deliberative disagreement, by contrast, is celebrated not just as an empirically unavoidable outcome but also as a democratically sound and normatively desirable goal of deliberation. Majority rule has generally displaced unanimity as the ideal way of bringing deliberation to a close. This article offers an (...) epistemic perspective on this question of consensus versus disagreement. For ensuring the production of better decisions, we argue, the normative appeal of consensus varies depending on the deliberative task – whether it entails problem solving or prediction. We argue that in pure problem-solving contexts, consensus retains a strong normative appeal and forms the ideal deliberative outcome of deliberation. In contrast, on predictive tasks, consensus should generally not be used as a stopping rule noris it likely to be epistemically desirable as an outcome. Instead deliberators may be better served by ending the deliberation with a form of deliberative disagreement we call ‘positive dissensus’, which paves the way for more accurate aggregate predictions. (shrink)

This book uncovers and explores the constant tension between the historical and the transcendental that lies at the heart of Michel Foucault's work. In the process, it also assesses the philosophical foundations of his thought by examining his theoretical borrowings from Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, who each provided him with tools to critically rethink the status of the transcendental. Given Foucault's constant focus on the question of the possibility for knowledge, the author argues that his philosophical itinerary can be understood (...) as a series of attempts to historicize the transcendental. In so doing, he seeks to uncover a specific level that would identify these conditions without falling either into an excess of idealism or of materialism. The author concludes that, although this problem does unify Foucault's work and gives it its specifically philosophical dimension, none of the concepts successively provided manages to name these conditions without falling into the pitfalls that Foucault originally denounced as characteristic of the "anthropological sleep"--various forms of confusion between the historical and the transcendental. Although Foucault's work provides us with a highly illuminating analysis of the major problems of post-Kantian philosophies, ultimately it remains aporetic in that it also fails to overcome them. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show how schizophrenia, understood as a distortion of the most intimate structures of subjectivity, illustrates the nature of subjectivity as such, while at the same time how philosophical considerations may help to understand schizophrenia. More precisely, schizophrenic experiences of self-alienation seem to reflect a congealing or concretization of a form of differentiation or potential alterity implicit in the dynamic nature of subjectivity. In other words, we propose that the structure of subjectivity includes potential (...) divisions and fissures that condition the experiences of radical self-alienation seen in schizophrenia. In order to elucidate how this alterity emerges within the self in schizophrenia and in order to consider its conditions of possibility we examine the disorders of the self as described in phenomenological psychopathology. We especially use the work of the Japanese psychiatrists Mari Nagai, her teacher Bin Kimura, and the French psychiatrist Henry Ey, supplemented with clinical material from our own research. Finally, we shed light on the development of the psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, which are understood as the expressions of a radical alterization of the self. (shrink)

Nation and liberty: two ideas that in spite of the innumerable works that have been devoted to them are still open to new approaches, indeed, to new definitions. They pose a problem whose essence is to remain without a definitive answer, to be always actual, because it concerns man of all times, all countries and all conditions. This apparently-simple remark raises a question: is it possible to put nation and liberty on the same level? It is permissible to consider liberty (...) and nation as a pair forming a new concept, or do we simply have a relationship located in a precise time at a given place? (shrink)

This article is another unapologetic contribution to ‘the gentle art of rational choice bashing’. The debate over rational choice theory (RCT) may appear to have tired out; yet RCT is as dominant in political sciences as ever. The reason is that critics typically take aim at the symptoms of RCT’s failings, rather than their root cause: RCT’s very ambition of being the ‘science of choice’. In this article I argue that RCT fails twice, first as a science of choice and (...) then as a science of choice. Both failures suggest that political sciences need an epistemologic (re)conversion away from the Platonic ideal of a deductive and universal science of choice toward a more inductive and pluralist paradigm. While advocates of RCT rightly insist that ‘you can’t beat something with nothing’, I take their advice, with a grain of salt: in order for alternatives to appear, the frame of references needs to be modified. I draw a few perspectives for the political sciences. (shrink)

Trade secret theft is a problem that almost all organizations face. The greatest threat is employee mobility and potential unethical post-employment behavior. This study investigates the role of individual personality traits in judgments about trade secret misappropriation. Our hypotheses were tested in three studies addressing three different situational contexts: current employees, employees about to be laid off, and students who had quit their job. Relationships were estimated with robust regression. The results show that some personality traits predict judgment about another (...) person's trade secret misappropriation, and that the situational context in which individuals formulate their ethical judgment moderates the impact of personality traits on ethical judgment. (shrink)

Certain features of Stage NREM sleep – for example, rhythmic voltage oscillation in thalamic neurons – are physiologically inhospitable to “REM sleep processes.” In Stage 2, the sleep spindle and its refractory period must limit the incursion of “covert REM,” and thus the extent of REM-like cognition. If these hyperpolarization-dependent events also inform Stage NREM cognition, does a “1-gen” model suffice to account for REM-NREM differences? [Nielsen].

The task of being oneself lies at the heart of human existence and entails the possibility of not being oneself. In the case of schizophrenia, this possibility may come to the fore in a disturbing way. Patients often report that they feel alienated from themselves. Therefore, it is perhaps unsurprising that schizophrenia sometimes has been described with the heideggerian notion of inauthenticity. The aim of this paper is to explore if this description is adequate. We discuss two phenomenological accounts of (...) schizophrenia: Binswanger’s account of schizophrenia as a form of inauthenticity and Blankenburg’s account of schizophrenia as a loss of common sense, which seems construable as a loss of inauthenticity. We argue that the accounts are highlighting aspects of the same underlying phenomenon, viz. schizophrenic autism. Moreover, we argue that Binswanger’s description of schizophrenia as a form of inauthenticity is inadequate and we discuss experiences of self-alienation in schizophrenia. (shrink)

_Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing_ is a poetic, insightful, and ultimately moving exploration of 'the strange science of writing.' In a magnetic, irresistible narrative, Cixous reflects on the writing process and explores three distinct areas essential for 'great' writing: _The School of the Dead_--the notion that something or someone must die in order for good writing to be born; _The School of Dreams_--the crucial role dreams play in literary inspiration and output; and _The School of Roots_--the importance of (...) depth in the 'nether realms' in all aspects of writing. Cixous's love of language and passion for the written word is evident on every page. Her emotive style draws heavily on the writers she most admires: the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, the Austrian novelists Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard, Dostoyevsky and, most of all, Kafka. (shrink)

NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) refers to an oppositional attitude from local residents against some risk generating facility that they have been chosen to host either by government or industry. The attitude is claimed to be characteristic of someone who is positive to a facility but who wants someone else to be its host. Since siting cannot be provided if everyone has this attitude, society ends up in a worse situation. The attitude is claimed to be egoistic and irrational. Here (...) it is argued that the NIMBY critique rests on questionable assumptions about the rightness of weighing total benefit against total cost. This weighing-principle will sometimes have to yield so that the rights of individuals can be acknowledged. (shrink)

This article furnishes a philosophical background for the current debate about responsibility and culpability for war crimes by referring to ideas from three important just war thinkers: Augustine, Francisco de Vitoria, and Michael Walzer. It combines lessons from these three thinkers with perspectives on current problems in the ethics of war, distinguishes between legal culpability, moral culpability, and moral responsibility, and stresses that even lower-ranking soldiers must in many cases assume moral responsibility for their acts, even though they are part (...) of a military hierarchy and act under orders. The questions addressed in this article are arguably among the hardest and most muddled in military ethics and deserve close philosophical analysis and scrutiny. (shrink)

Training students to write with a Philosophical Aim: Pedagogical Scenario and Psychological Perspective. Perspective with the international swarming of the oral and collective P4C (Philosophy FOR Children) practice, its benefits for children’s development have been demonstrated in various and transversal fields. Are these beneficial effects transferable and quantifiable in individual writings of students aged 13 to 14 years? We will outline some directions to answer this question by presenting an original educational P4C tool, Philo & Carto, which is based on (...) artworks as anchors to initiate the dialogical community of inquiry. The results from a first experiment will be presented and discussed, and pedagogical directions will be proposed. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to Ibn Sinn's text deals with two distinct, though closely related, subjects. First he considers the classification of problems, founded on the logical criteria which are the number and degree of indetermination of the solutions and the number of hypotheses and their possible independence. This classification does not replace the Hellenistic one, which remains relevant insofar as it purports to solve geometrical problems, but complements it and has a different frame of reference, applying principally to algebra, (...) that new born science. Ibn Sinn to bestow more importance on the role played by analysis in the course of the proof, the only role left to synthesis being to check that all implications involved in the course of analysis are in fact equivalences. This method will prove to be productive in algebra too, so much so that some algebraists will explicitly identify algebra with analysis. (shrink)

ML-HCAs have the potential to significantly change an entire healthcare system. It is not even necessary to presume that this will be disruptive but sufficient to assume that the mere adaptation of...

In the burgeoning debate about neuroscience’s role in contemporary society, the issue of brain optimization, or the application of neuroscientific knowledge and technologies to augment neurocognitive function, has taken center stage. Previous research has characterized media discourse on brain optimization as individualistic in ethos, pressuring individuals to expend calculated effort in cultivating culturally desirable forms of selves and bodies. However, little research has investigated whether the themes that characterize media dialogue are shared by lay populations. This article considers the relationship (...) between the representations of brain optimization that surfaced in a study of British press coverage between 2000 and 2012 and interviews with forty-eight London residents. Both data sets represented the brain as a resource that could be manipulated by the individual, with optimal brain function contingent on applying self-control in one’s lifestyle choices. However, these ideas emerged more sharply in the media than in the interviews: while most interviewees were aware of brain optimization practices, few were committed to carrying them out. The two data sets diverged in several ways: the media’s intense preoccupation with optimizing children’s brains was not apparent in lay dialogue, while interviewees elaborated beliefs about the underuse of brain tissue that showed no presence in the media. This article considers these continuities and discontinuities in light of their wider cultural significance and their implications for the media–mind relationship in public engagement with neuroscience. (shrink)

Individuals’ spatial position is affected by social factors. The majority of studies correlating spatial position and social factors have used methods with drawbacks. A more complete method was developed by Dolado & Beltran (2011) in captive animals. The present study aimed to apply a modified version of this method in two semi-free-ranging macaque groups. The proposed method divides group’s surroundings into different subareas, selecting different points in each subarea and calculating the coordinates of these points. We filmed each group and (...) analyzed the videos using an activated time transition recording to determine the individuals’ coordinates. With these data, we calculated spatial variables, allowing us to obtain groups’ spatial patterns. The current method improves on previous procedures and could be applied to larger study areas and groups than the method of Dolado & Beltran (2011), thus representing a viable option for studying spatial distribution patterns in semi-free-ranging macaque groups. (shrink)

This article discusses the meanings that motherhood has in the everyday life of women in Sweden and how they practice their mothering. The empirical foundation is qualitative interviews conducted with mothers who live in Sweden. Social constructionist and discursive psychology inspired the article, and according to the analysis three discursive positions were identified. The first position deals with the child-mother relationship and indicates that the child's psychological well-being is dependent on the mother's accessibility. The second discursive position deals with the (...) child-mother-woman relationship. Within this framework, motherhood involves finding contentment in life beyond the child, to be able to convey that well-being to the child. The third discursive position focuses on the mother as a working woman rather than a mother. These three discursive positions are discussed in relation to a pronounced discourse within Swedish society, which centers on an intense politically induced struggle for gender equality. (shrink)

In Insister, Hlne Cixous brings a unique mixture of theoretical speculation, breath-taking textual explication and scholarly erudition to an extremely close reading of Derrida's work, always attentive to the details of his thinking. At the same time, Insister is an extraordinarily poetic meditation, a work of literature and of mourning for Jacques Derrida the person, who was a close friend and accomplice of Cixous's from the beginning of their careers.

Between the elitist “philosophy is for grown-ups” and the demagogic “everyone can be a philosopher”, where does Philosophy for Children (P4C) belong in preschools? What is it assumed, expected, or intended to achieve? How is it implemented? This article reviews the literature evaluating the impact of P4C practices on preschool children (aged 3–6). It identifies the main actual or purported obstacles signaled by educators to argue that philosophy cannot be practiced before age 6. It then appraises, from a cognitive developmental (...) psychology perspective, the reality of these supposed obstacles, considering the underlying developmental skills that very young children may lack compared with older ones. Finally, pedagogical adjustments to P4C school practices are suggested, illustrated, and discussed to adapt this program, initially designed and documented for elementary-school children, to the potential of preschoolers. (shrink)

This article explores through the lens of Type 1 Diabetes what a body in fluctuation feels, and what kind of ecosystem has to be recreated to be able to survive, an ecosystem made of sensations, senses, sensors and more. It investigates the complexity of relying on sensations that appear or disappear, on other beings that have their own agendas, or on machines that could help or kill. It describes the fear of feeling estranged from one’s ‘extended body’ when it functions (...) alone, it tracks the experience of low blood sugar through the memory of the body or the instruments left in its surroundings. It is a story about the fiction of bodily integrity, of the combat between life and death, and of the impossibility of controlling the texture of life. (shrink)

As a cornerstone of public health, epidemiology has lately undergone substantial changes enabled by, among other factors, the use of biobank infrastructures. In biobank-related research, the return of results to participants constitutes an important and complex ethical question. In this study, we qualitatively investigated how individuals perceive the results returned following their participation in cohort studies with biobanks. In our semi-structured interviews with 31 participants of two such German studies, we observed that some participants overestimate the nature of the personal (...) information they will receive from the study. Although this misestimation does not seem to jeopardize the validity of the consent provided at recruitment, it may still represent a threat for participants’ trust in research and thus their long-term commitment, crucial for such studies. We argue that such misestimation may have ethical consequences on the principles guiding the reflection on the return of results in biobank research, i.e. autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and reciprocity. We suggest that shifting from the idea of directly benefiting participants through the return of research results could help focusing on benefiting society as a whole, thereby increasing research trustworthiness of population-based studies using biobanks. (shrink)

This paper integrates literature from the social sciences and humanities concerning the persuasive impact of visual material, highlighting issues of emotion and identification. Visuals are used not only to illustrate news and feature genres but also in advertising and campaigns that attempt to persuade their target audiences to change attitudes and behaviours. These include health, safety and charity campaigns, that attempt to socially engineer change in people’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. With the increasing presence of such visuals comes a more (...) emotive media environment with which people are forced to engage, and, under certain circumstances, disengage. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Mutz argues that there is an inverse correlation between deliberation and participation. However, the validity of this conclusion partly depends on how one defines deliberation and participation. Mutz's definition of deliberation as ?hearing the other side? or ?cross-cutting exposure? is narrower than a minimal conception of deliberation with which deliberative democrats could agree. First, a minimal conception of deliberation would have to revolve around the principle of a reasoned exchange of arguments, as opposed to mere exposure to dissenting views. (...) Second, Mutz's almost exclusive focus on participation as partisan activism gives the impression of an essential tension between participation and deliberation. But another form of civic participation, which I call ?critical-deliberative involvement,? is perfectly compatible with the incentives for reasoned exchange of arguments with others. We should thus encourage people to participate in politics in ways that engage their reasoning faculty, not just their party loyalty. This also requires teaching people how to disagree constructively. (shrink)

The present study is a theoretical and methodological proposal rooted in the field of social developmental psychology and describes three objectives. First, it aims to show how transgressive situations are conducive to study of social norms governing interactions. Second, the similarities and differences between two emotions, namely shame and embarrassment, are outlined in order to better understand how their respective measures can highlight social norms in interactions. Third, we illustrate our proposal to study social norms through emotional reactions by presenting (...) an ongoing experiment, that examines how children may react to a power situation. (shrink)

Disclosure is a common response to conflicts of interest; it is intended to expose the conflict to scrutiny and enable it to be appropriately managed. For disclosure to be effective the receiver of the disclosure needs to be able to use the information to assess how the conflict may impact on their interests and then implement a suitable response. The act of disclosure also creates an expectation of self-regulation, as the person with the conflicting interests will be mindful of their (...) own potential biases and aware that their decisions may be monitored. This article discusses some of the problems of relying on disclosure as a solution to address conflicts of interest in research, including the added complexities around institutional conflicts of interest. The case of Dan Markingson illustrates these issues and highlights the vulnerable position relying on disclosure as a solution leaves research participants in. (shrink)