Five years ago, an article co-written by some of us presented an emerging trend to disclose some individual genetic results to research participants within the international research community. At the time, ethical norms and scholarly publications on the return of results often did not distinguish between the return of research results in general and the return of unexpected results. Both technologies and research practices have evolved significantly. Today whole genome and exome sequencing are increasingly affordable and frequently used in genetic (...) research. Because these techniques produce a vast amount of interpretable and non-interpretable data about an individual, the issue of how to manage information generated by such technologies needs to be considered. However, the development of international ethical guidelines has not kept up with the rapid pace of technological progress. Indeed developments in genomic biobanking also challenge the duty to disclose research results. (shrink)

This paper explores principles governing the rational balance among an agent's beliefs, goals, actions, and intentions. Such principles provide specifications for artificial agents, and approximate a theory of human action (as philosophers use the term). By making explicit the conditions under which an agent can drop his goals, i.e., by specifying how the agent is committed to his goals, the formalism captures a number of important properties of intention. Specifically, the formalism provides analyses for Bratman's three characteristic functional roles played (...) by intentions [7, 9], and shows how agents can avoid intending all the foreseen side-effects of what they actually intend. Finally, the analysis shows how intentions can be adopted relative to a background of relevant beliefs and other intentions or goals. By relativizing one agent's intentions in terms of beliefs about another agent's intentions (or beliefs'), we derive a preliminary account of interpersonal commitments. (shrink)

This book describes in detail the relationship between symbolic representations of knowledge and abstract states of knowledge, exploring along the way the foundations of knowledge, knowledge bases, knowledge-based systems, and knowledge representation and reasoning. The idea of knowledge bases lies at the heart of symbolic, or "traditional," artificial intelligence. A knowledge-based system decides how to act by running formal reasoning procedures over a body of explicitly represented knowledge—a knowledge base. The system is not programmed for specific tasks; rather, it is (...) told what it needs to know and expected to infer the rest. This book is about the logic of such knowledge bases. It describes in detail the relationship between symbolic representations of knowledge and abstract states of knowledge, exploring along the way the foundations of knowledge, knowledge bases, knowledge-based systems, and knowledge representation and reasoning. Assuming some familiarity with first-order predicate logic, the book offers a new mathematical model of knowledge that is general and expressive yet more workable in practice than previous models. The book presents a style of semantic argument and formal analysis that would be cumbersome or completely impractical with other approaches. It also shows how to treat a knowledge base as an abstract data type, completely specified in an abstract way by the knowledge-level operations defined over it. (shrink)

Much biomedical research cannot be performed without recruiting human subjects. Increasingly, volunteer registries are being developed to assist researchers with this challenging task. Yet, volunteer registries raise confidentiality issues. Having recently developed a registry of volunteers, the authors searched for normative guidance on how to implement the principle of confidentiality. The authors found that the protection of confidentiality in registries are based on the 10 key elements which are elaborated in detail in the Canadian Standards Association Model Code. This paper (...) describes how these 10 detailed key principles can be used during the developmental stages of volunteer registries. (shrink)

Stem cells and their malignant counterparts require the support of a specific microenvironment or “niche”. While various anti‐cancer therapies have been broadly successful, there are growing opportunities to target the environment in which these cells reside to further improve therapeutic efficacy and outcome. This is particularly true when the aim is to target normal or malignant stem cells. The field aiming to target or use the niches that harbor, protect, and support stem cells could be designated as “nichotherapy”. In this (...) essay, we provide a few examples of nichotherapies. Some have been employed for decades, such as hematopoietic stem cell mobilization, whereas others are emerging, such as chemosensitization of leukemia stem cells by targeting their niche. (shrink)

Résumé Le concept d’ethos, que l’étymologie rattache à l’éthique, aux mœurs et à la morale, est ici examiné à l’intersection des études sémiotiques et des sciences sociales. Une méthode est développée pour l’étude des caractères, ou ethe, qui passe par la reconnaissance des signes éthiques sur les scènes d’énonciation considérées, elles-mêmes constitutives d’une situation sociale à analyser. L’article est divisé en trois parties. La première partie définit l’ethos selon ses deux usages dans la théorisation aristotélicienne (rhétorique et poétique). La deuxième (...) partie définit les signes éthiques dans leur rapport théorique aux études sémiotiques et à la sociologie. La troisième partie présente une application à un cas contemporain à cette recherche : la controverse dans l’espace public autour d’un projet de développement du territoire dans la ville de Québec. En théorisant pour la première fois les signes éthiques, cet article propose un renouvellement de la sociologie compréhensive au moyen d’une méthodologie éprouvée. (shrink)

This paper adopts a comparative approach in order to appreciate the distinct contributions of Arne Nass and Felix Guattari to ecosophy and their respective connections to semiotics. The foundational holistic worldview and dynamics ecosophy propounds show numerous connections with semiotics. The primary objective of this paper is to question the nature and value of these connections. Historically, the development of ecosophy was always faced with modelling and communication issues, which constitute an obvious common ground shared with semiotics. As a means (...) to an end, ecosophy settled to develop a thoughtful axiology based on ecological wisdom and promote it bottom-up. Political activism notwithstanding, semiotics also deals with value: sign value and meaning. In this respect, semiotics is inherently axiological, but most often this dimension is effaced or muted. Emphasizing the axiological dimension of semiotics helps understand how dominant significations, habits, and values are established, and enlighten the crucial part it could play in the humanities and beyond by partly coalescing with ecosophy. As the complementarity of both traditions is appreciated, the plausibility of a merger is assessed. Arguably, ecosophy is axiomatized semiotics. From this novel perspective, one can see human communities as dynamically partaking in signifying processes, in a space that is at once an ecosphere, a semiosphere, and a vast political territory. As there is growing evidence that environmental degradation lessens our quality of life and the sustainability of our communities, ecosophy might help reform values and practices. (shrink)

This article argues that community-based research (CBR)—research that includes the participation of “lay” citizens in the research process—is changing the process of research and knowledge production. The article is an initial attempt to examine the outcomes of CBR and the impact such research is having on knowledge development and funding trends in North America. The article concludes with a set of policy recommendations and areas for further research.

An important, yet little explored, area of feminist research is women's subjective experience of everyday life. Claiming Reality is the first study to apply the insights of the growing discipline of phenomenological sociology to women's experience, particularly the experience of childbirth, in an attempt to develop a feminist phenomenological perspective.

"On a peine à imaginer la secousse qu'a dû provoquer la parution de ce premier livre de Claude Lévesque, en 1976, dans le milieu philosophique et littéraire au Québec, car toucher à l'écriture et à la lecture, c'est ébranler tout ce qui sert de socle à notre culture. Titre inaugural des éditions VLB, réédité deux ans plus tard dans la collection « 10/18 », cet ouvrage où nous interpellent Nietzsche, Freud, Blanchot et Derrida -- pour ne nommer que ceux-là -- (...) libère, comme dans un feu d'artifice, ce qui était en excès et en souffrance dans la conceptualité traditionnelle. En déposant un élément de rupture ou d'indécision dans tout ce qui cherche à se refermer sur soi, il veut susciter un nouveau désir, plus périlleux -- une nouvelle espérance, plus souveraine."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

Huit mois après le dépôt du rapport de la Commission Charbonneau, nous avons souhaité explorer les défis liés à la mise en place des recommandations. Avec un regard constructif, nous nous questionnons sur le fait de savoir à qui incombe le suivi d’un rapport de cette envergure ainsi que les obligations légales liées à cette question et nous nous permettons d’émettre certaines idées liées à une vision globale en matière de reddition de comptes. Tout en partageant nos réflexions inspirées des (...) bonnes pratiques en matière de gestion du risque de fraude, nous présentons la complexité de la mise en place d’une recommandation tels le soutien et la protection des lanceurs d’alerte. (shrink)

God is speaking-clearer than ever before. But are we listening? Full of hope and insight, this book is a clarion call to believers to lean in and pursue hearing God again. Here is what you need to rediscover how to listen to him with accuracy-and help restore integrity and trust in the only Voice that speaks peace in these troubled, unprecedented times.

What is involved when a group of agents decide to do something together? Joint action by a team appears to involve more than just the union of simultaneous individual actions, even when those actions are coordinated. We would not say that there is any teamwork involved in ordinary automobile traffic, even though the drivers act simultaneously and are coordinated (one hopes) by the traffic signs and rules of the road. But when a group of drivers decide to do something together, (...) such as driving somewhere as a convoy, it appears that the group acts more like a single agent with beliefs, goals, and intentions of its own, over and above the individual ones. [more]. (shrink)

A central problem in applying logical knowledge representation formalisms to traditional robotics is that the treatment of belief change is categorical in the former, while probabilistic in the latter. A typical example is the fundamental capability of localization where a robot uses its noisy sensors to situate itself in a dynamic world. Domain designers are then left with the rather unfortunate task of abstracting probabilistic sensors in terms of categorical ones, or more drastically, completely abandoning the inner workings of sensors (...) to black-box probabilistic tools and then interpreting their outputs in an abstract way. Building on a first-principles approach by Bacchus, Halpern and Levesque, and a recent continuous extension to it by Belle and Levesque, we provide an axiomatization that shows how localization can be realized wrt a basic action theory, thereby demonstrating how such capabilities can be enabled in a single logical framework. We then show how the framework can also enable localization for multiple agents, where an agent can appeal to the sensing already performed by another agent and the knowledge of their relative positions to localize itself. (shrink)

The comprehension of abduction put forward in this essay is compatible with the contemporary biosemiotics consensus. Moreover, it coincides with the evolutionary framework Peirce has developed in its time.Biosemiotics is being developed since the 1980’s and is characterized by a growing interest for its body of works. It is now a major field in general semiotics throughout the world. We owe to Thomas A. Sebeok to have paved the way for this new science to emerge and develop from a synthesis (...) of pioneering works by Jakob von Uexküll and Charles S. Peirce. In 1981, in the introduction to The Play of Musement, Sebeok shared his “absolute conviction that semiotics begins and ends with biology and that the sign science... (shrink)

Claiming Reality is the first study to apply the insights of the growing discipline of phenomenological sociology to women's experience, particularly the experience of childbirth, in an attempt to develop a feminist phenomenological perspective.

L’auteur analyse la réglementation économique à travers ses effets allocatifs et redistributifs. Il met en évidence l’apparition de rentes découlant de l’adoption de la réglementation. La destination finale de ces rentes caractérise l’essentiel des effets redistributifs envisagés. Selon l’auteur, l’évaluation éthique d’une réglementation doit reposer sur le bien-fondé des effets redistributifs qui en découlent. La question centrale consistant à voir si la réglementation a pour effet de détourner les rentes d’une large majorité au profit d’un nombre restreint d’individus. L’article met (...) en évidence la manière dont on peut envisager une éthique de la réglementation comme un problème d’appropriation de rentes économiques du grand nombre vers un nombre plus restreint d’individus. (shrink)

Guthrie has an interesting point: "I claim religion consists of seeing the world as humanlike and arises because doing so is a good bet even though, like other bets, it may fail". This book is best understood by identifying its two interwoven arguments. The first is that religion is anthropomorphism. The second is that this anthropomorphism is due to a perceptual strategy. He does an admirable job of presenting the first. Marshaling the thought of Spinoza, Hume, Feuerbach, and others, he (...) argues that religion arises from projecting human traits into nature. His second argument basically runs as follows: anthropomorphism permeates our world, in science, philosophy, commercial and fine art, and religion. There is a universal cause of anthropomorphism in all of these enterprises, and it is due to the perceptual strategy that anthropomorphism is "the result of a general, spontaneous, and unconscious interpretive tendency... to find as much organization as possible in things and events". For Guthrie, the most organization indicates what matters the most, and what matters the most are living beings, and especially humans. He theorizes "that perception is interpretation, that interpretation attends to the most important possibilities, and that the most important possibilities are humanlike". (shrink)

The concept of joint action is at the core of numerous diverse research topics, including philosophical explorations of social action, studies of human dialogue, human-computer interaction, computer-supported collaborative work, multiagent systems, distributed artificial intelligence, distributed simulation, and contract law. It is therefore remarkable that so central a concept has received so little detailed analysis, in comparison with studies of individuals. However, in recent years, the study of joint action has begun to undergo more intense scrutiny, primarily from philosophers and researchers (...) in artificial intelligence. These two disciplines often address similar topics but with different motivations, methodologies, tools, and criteria for success. Although this paper is inspired by philosophical work, it is squarely motivated by the concerns of building intelligent systems that are capable of collaborative behavior, either with a user, or with other such systems. Still, we hope that the paper sheds light on philosophical issues, and treats the subject of joint action at a sufficiently precise level to be illuminating of problems that any philosophical account needs to confront. (shrink)

While discovery of error provides personal gain for the entrepreneur, does this process automatically allocate value equitably among all stakeholders? We argue that the entrepreneurial process can be used to generate or maintain an entrepreneur’s personal wealth through the exploitation of a stakeholder group. Thus entrepreneurship can be both an equilibrating and a disequilibrating process and that both the visible hand of government and the decisions of an entrepreneur can speed or slow our movement toward value equilibrium. Speed toward value (...) equilibrium is likely to be important to a victimized stakeholder group and deserves further scholarly attention. (shrink)

More than entertainment and beyond salutary reading to take a step back from the COVID-19 crisis, this novel by Martin Winckler is meant to be a source of inspiration and even a self-fulfilling prophecy of which it is up to us to become a part.

This is a multidisciplinary and multicultural study of traditional and contemporary terms and issues in religious studies. It “is intended as a guide for people who are seeking a more adequate understanding of the history as well as the contemporary significance of religion”. This work is neither a dictionary nor an encyclopedia. It is a collection of essays discussing terms meaningful to religion in its postmodern context. The essays are not intended to provide a basic outline for the undergraduate. They (...) are for the serious student or scholar who seeks an ongoing dialogue with what has been written in the past as it is transformed into future meaning. (shrink)