We compare diverse degrees of compactness and finiteness in Boolean algebras with each other and investigate the influence of weak choice principles. Our arguments rely on a discussion of infinitary distributive laws and generalized prime elements in Boolean algebras. In ZF set theory without choice, a Boolean algebra is Dedekind finite if and only if it satisfies the ascending chain condition. The Denumerable Subset Axiom implies finiteness of Boolean algebras with compact top, whereas the converse fails in ZF. Moreover, we (...) derive from DS the atomicity of continuous Boolean algebras. Some of the results extend to more general structures like pseudocomplemented semilattices. (shrink)

We introduce the notion of constructive suprema and of constructively directed sets. The Axiom of Choice turns out to be equivalent to the postulate that every supremum is constructive, but also to the hypothesis that every directed set admits a function assigning to each finite subset an upper bound. The Axiom of Multiple Choice implies a simple set-theoretical induction principle , stating that any system of sets that is closed under unions of well-ordered subsystems and contains all finite subsets of (...) a given set must also contain that set itself. This is not provable without choice principles but equivalent to the statement that the existence of joins for constructively directed subsets of a poset follows from the existence of joins for nonempty well-ordered subsets. Moreover, we establish the equivalence of SIP with several other fundamental statements concerning inductivity, compactness, algebraic closure systems, and the exchange between chains and directed sets. (shrink)

Philosophy of Experimental Biology explores some central philosophical issues concerning scientific research in experimental biology, including genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, developmental biology, neurobiology, and microbiology. It seeks to make sense of the explanatory strategies, concepts, ways of reasoning, approaches to discovery and problem solving, tools, models and experimental systems deployed by scientific life science researchers and also integrates developments in historical scholarship, in particular the New Experimentalism. It concludes that historical explanations of scientific change that are based on local laboratory (...) practice need to be supplemented with an account of the epistemic norms and standards that are operative in science. This book should be of interest to philosophers and historians of science as well as to scientists. (shrink)

Despite the importance of commitment in moral and political philosophy, there has hitherto been little extended analysis of it. Marcel Lieberman examines the conditions under which commitment is possible, and offers at the same time an indirect argument for moral realism. He argues that realist evaluative beliefs are functionally required for commitment - especially regarding its role in self-understanding - and since it is only within a realist framework that such beliefs make sense, realism about values is a condition (...) for the possibility of commitment itself. His ambitious study addresses questions that are of great interest to analytic philosophers but also makes many connections with continental philosophy and with folk psychology, sociology and cognitive science, and will be seen as a distinctive intervention in the debate about moral realism. (shrink)

Ideomotor theory of human action control proposes that activation of a motor representation can occur either through internally-intended or externally-perceived actions. Critically, sometimes these alternatives of eliciting a motor response may be conflicting, for example, when intending one action and perceiving another, necessitating the recruitment of enhanced action-control to avoid motor mimicry. Based on previous neuroimaging evidence, suggesting that reduced mimicry is associated with self-related processing, we aimed to experimentally enhance these action-control mechanisms during motor contagion by inducing self-focus. In (...) two within-subjects experiments, participants had to enforce their action intention against an external motor contagion tendency under heightened and normal self-focus. During high self-focus participants showed reduced motor mimicry, induced either by mirror self-observation or self-referential judgments. This indicates that a self-focus provoking situation can enhance online action-control mechanisms, needed to resist unintentional motor contagion tendencies and thereby enables a modulation of automatic mirroring responses. (shrink)

Many ethical concerns surrounding human genetics studies remain unresolved. We report here the situation in Cameroon.Objectives: To describe the profile of human genetic studies that used Cameroonian DNA samples, with specific focus on i) the research centres that were involved, ii) authorship, iii) population studied, iv) research topics and v) ethics disclosure, with the aim of raising ethical issues that emerged from these studies.Method: Bibliometric Studies; we conducted a PubMed-based systematic review of all the studies on human genetics that used (...) Cameroonian DNA samples from 1989 to 2009.Results and Discussion: Fifty articles were identified, involving predominantly research centres from Europe (64%) and America (32%). Only 7 (14%) Cameroonian institutions and 14 (28%) Cameroonian authors were associated with these publications.At least 52% of publications were devoted to population genetics (variation/migration patterns) amongst 30 Cameroonian ethnic groups. Very few studies concerned public health related genetic issues and only 5 (10%) references were found for hemoglobinopathies like sickle cell anaemia. Almost all DNA samples are ‘banked’ outside of the African continent.Capacity building, rights to the genetic information and benefits to the individuals, communities and populations who contribute to these studies are addressed.Conclusions: 1) Our data suggests the need for a wider debate towards building capacity and addressing ethical issues related to human genomic research in sub-Saharan Africa and specifically in Cameroon; 2) National ethical guidelines and regulations concerning the collection, use and storage of human DNA are urgently needed in Cameroon. (shrink)

This paper examines causal theories of reference with respect to how plausible an account they give of non-physical natural kind terms such as ‘gene’ as well as of the truth of the associated theoretical claims. I first show that reference fixism for ‘gene’ fails. By this, I mean the claim that the reference of ‘gene’ was stable over longer historical periods, for example, since the classical period of transmission genetics. Second, I show that the theory of partial reference does not (...) do justice to some widely held realist intuitions about classical genetics. This result is at loggerheads with the explicit goals usually associated with partial theories of reference, which is to defend a realist semantics for scientific terms. Thirdly, I show that, contrary to received wisdom and perhaps contrary to physics and chemistry, neither reference fixism nor partial reference are necessary in order to hold on to scientific realism about biology. I pinpoint the reasons for this in the nature of biological kinds, which do not even remotely resemble natural kinds (i.e., Lockean real essences) as traditionally conceived. (shrink)

There has been increased interest in the potential of maternal immunisation to protect maternal, fetal, and infant health. Maternal tetanus vaccination is part of routine antenatal care and immunisation campaigns in many countries, and it has played an important part in the reduction of maternal and neonatal tetanus. Additional vaccines that have been recommended for routine maternal immunisation include those for influenza and pertussis, and other vaccines are being developed. Maternal immunisation is controversial since regulators, professionals, and the public are (...) often reluctant to accept pharmaceutical interventions during pregnancy. So far, little attention has been given to the ethics of vaccination during pregnancy. In this Personal View we argue that maternal immunisation should be offered in response to concrete, severe risks of disease for mother and child, and we explain how this requirement of serious risk can be used to guide ethical decision-making about maternal immunisation. (shrink)

Even though it is often presumed that the use of technology like medication administration technology is both safer and more effective, the importance of nurses' know‐how is not to be underestimated. In this article, we accordingly try to argue that nurses' labor, including their different forms of knowledge, must play a crucial role in the development, implementation and use of medication administration technology. Using three different theoretical perspectives (‘heuristic lenses') and integrating this with our own ethnographic research, we will explore (...) how nursing practices change through the use of medication technology. Ultimately, we will argue that ignoring (institutional) complexity and the various types of important knowledge that nurses have, will seriously complicate the implementation of medication administration technology. (shrink)

Il est une actualité de la syllogistique aristotélicienne qui impose encore aujourd'hui les règles de l'argumentation logique dans la production du savoir scientifique. Le moyen terme y régule la structure et la forme du raisonnement — cet ensemble de jugements — élaboré de telle sorte que la conclusion découle nécessairement des prémisses. Chez Aristote, le jugement requiert ainsi une multitude de procédures d'application à la réalité. Or, Boole trouve en cela un problème méthodologique largement négligé par les logiciens et certains (...) historiens des sciences modernes : le problème d'Aristote sur le moyen terme, le moyen terme étant à la fois cause, matière et forme du syllogisme catégorique. Les deux penseurs visent pourtant l'infaillibilité du raisonnement par l'élimination du moyen terme dans les procédures de la recherche de la vérité. Ce qui les divise est à la fois d'ordre méthodologique et de degré. Car, Aristote élimine le moyen terme de la conclusion et selon les lois ultimes de l'objet. Boole, en revanche, élimine le moyen terme du raisonnement symbolique sur la base des lois ultimes de la pensée pure en lui reniant le statut que lui conférait Aristote. Cet article vise à montrer, à la lumière de cette éclipse du moyen terme pour Aristote que, pour Boole, la solution nécessaire au problème d'Aristote est la « théorie générale des signes » qui, elle, consacre l'élimination du moyen terme du raisonnement symbolique. C'est une exigence de la pensée connaissante en ce qu'elle constitue son caractère méta-méthodologique. La théorie générale des signes rendrait ainsi l'actualité de l'aristotélisme plus persistante si tant est qu'il est admis que Boole ne s'en est lui-même pas encore démarqué. (shrink)

This article situates Auden’s poem Musée des Beaux Arts in the process of his conversion to Christianity. The author argues for the layered intertextuality of the poem, in which allusions to Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, The Census at Jerusalem, and The Massacre of the Innocents can be recognised. Moreover, Philippe de Champaigne’s Presentation in the Temple and Peter Paul Rubens’s The Martyrdom of St Livinus seem also to have influenced the poem. Finally, there is reason to suppose (...) that John Singer Sargent’s Crashed Aeroplane influenced Auden. In an analysis of the structure of the poem, the author argues that there is a clear structure hidden under the surface of day-to-day language. He connects this hidden structure with Auden’s poem The Hidden Law, and suggests that Auden wished to claim that even though we cannot understand suffering, it has a hidden meaning known only to God. This hidden meaning connects our suffering with the self-emptying of Christ, a connection which the author demonstrates is in fact also made in Musée des Beaux Arts. (shrink)

Do people share their feelings of guilt with others and, if so, what are the reasons for doing this or not doing this? Even though the social sharing of negative emotional experiences, such as regret, has been extensively studied, not much is known about whether people share feelings of guilt and why. We report three studies exploring these questions. In Study 1, we re-analysed data about sharing guilt experiences posted on a social website called “Yahoo Answers”, and found that people (...) share intrapersonal as well as interpersonal guilt experiences with others online. Study 2 found that the main motivations of sharing guilt (compared with the sharing of regret) were “venting”, “clarification and meaning”, and “gaining advice”. Study 3 found that people were more likely to share experiences of interpersonal guilt and more likely to keep experiences of intrapersonal guilt to themselves. Together, these studies contribute to a further understanding of the social sharing of the emotion guilt. (shrink)

El modelo viquiano propuesto en este trabajo tiene hoy día implicaciones concretas para la lingüística y las ciencias cognitivas. A nuestro parecer, hoy las investigaciones en estos campos no hacen otra cosa que verificar la existencia de un vínculo gnoseológico entre sentido, concepto y metáfora que Vico exponía en la Scienza nuova. Vico demostró, ante todo, que la lógica poética constituye la facultad preliminar que permite el comportamiento simbólico humano. Dicha noción falta del todo en las actuales investigaciones sobre la (...) metáfora; y falta claramente la noción de Homo Poeticus en todas las visiones hasta ahora expuestas en lingüística. La concepción viquiana de la lógica poética permitirá a estas ciencias trazar el recorrido científico que deberán seguir en el futuro.Recent researches in linguistics and cognitive sciences may be brought as to show that there exist a empistemological bound between sense, concept and metaphor which Vico already acknowledged in his Scienza nuova. While Vico clearly showed that poetical logic helps to developing the human symbolic behavior; the concept of Homo poeticus is lacking in recent scholar contributions on issues related with metaphors and linguistics. It is assumed that the Vichian conception on poetical logic may improve a better understanding of the problems with which those sciences have hitherto been concerned. (shrink)

Après un livre plutôt austère sur Héraclite, l'auteur revient à la libre expression de soi ("C'est moy que je peins") où "expression de soi" ne signifie pas oubli des autres, qu'il s'agisse de ses proches, de ses amis (plusieurs fois présents par leurs lettres), de philosophes ("Rencontre de Pascal", "Hegel et le mal") ou d'hommes politiques ("Macron et la Crimée"). Reste que bien des chapitres ont un accent personnel, chapitres qu'une émotion inspire : nostalgie ("Au lycée d'Evreux"), fierté ("Mon sujet (...) de fierté"), humiliation ("Le vélo"), résignation ("Vieillir"), tout cela à l'ombre des préoccupations métaphysiques fondamentales ("La Nature comme Tout et source de vie", et "Vers la Nature infinie"). (shrink)

Le Temps, qui n'est ni un être ni l'Être, affirme seul son pouvoir sur toutes choses. Ici intervient la solution pyrrhonienne : penser non contre le Temps mais au fil du temps, la vie n'est qu'un évanouissement de moments. Suivre le mouvement « inégal, irrégulier et multiforme » de la vie, comme dit Montaigne, sans affirmer ou nier quoi que ce soit, mais en étant toujours à l'unisson, telle est alors l'attitude du sceptique.

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

The purpose of this article is to explore some of the non-obvious characteristics of the social science research-social policy (SSRSP) paradigm. We examine some of the underlying assumptions of the readily accepted claim that social science research can lead to the creation of rational social policy. We begin by using the framework of meta-analysis as one of the most powerful means of informing policy by way of empirical research findings. This approach is critiqued and found wanting in several ways. Several (...) conceptual and definitional issues connected to the term “policy” are explored as well. A central argument is that even the best social science research is no guarantee of enlightened policymaking because the very (inductive) basis of empirical research militates against the possibility of going from research findings to policy. This claim is explored within the context of a central paradox. This paradox is explored in some depth. Finally, within the SSRSP claim, we analyze related issues such as the possibility of utilizing Mixed Methods and the politics of policymaking. We conclude that the SSRSP framework is, at best, a subjective one which ironically is needed, but one which is constrained by the very methods that is uses to formulate policy. (shrink)