L’obligation faite aux comités d’éthique de la recherche canadiens de compter un représentant du public parmi leurs membres est à la fois précise et indéterminée. Précise, car elle conduit à ouvrir les comités sur l’extérieur de l’hôpital ou du monde de la santé. Indéterminée, car cette ouverture peut s’opérer de multiples façons et se lester ainsi de significations fort différenciées. Cette perplexité invite à scruter la manière dont des pays étrangers ont conçu et réalisé une participation du public aux comités. (...) Dans cette optique, l’article examine la situation dans différents pays d’Europe occidentale. Il montre la diversité des manières de comprendre qui sont les représentants du public, et ouvre en même temps des pistes de réflexion à propos des conceptions du travail des comités, qui sont en jeu dans l’ouverture de ceux-ci à de tels représentants. Il apparaît ainsi que l’implication du public dans le travail des comités peut certes se trouver favorisée par l’exigence de la participation d’un représentant du public, mais qu’elle constitue en définitive un objectif qui ne se trouve pas atteint par cette seule exigence : celle-ci doit être accompagnée par d’autres démarches qui peuvent trouver de stimulantes sources d’inspiration dans des initiatives significatives déjà réalisées. (shrink)

Le développement de la recherche et de l'expérimentation médicales à imposé l'idée d'un contrôle éthique de ces activités, confié aux soins de comités indépendants.De professions et d'origines diverses (médecin, infirmier, juriste, philosophe), les auteurs proposent ici leur réflexion et leurs témoignages sur ces comités : leur rôle, leurs règles de fonctionnement et leur composition.

In four experiments, we asked subjects for judgements about scenarios that pit utilitarian outcomes against deontological moral rules, for example, saving more lives vs. a rule against active killing. We measured trait emotions of anger, disgust, sympathy and empathy, asked about the same emotions after each scenario. We found that utilitarian responding to the scenarios, and higher scores on a utilitarianism scale, were correlated negatively with disgust, positively with anger, positively with specific sympathy and state sympathy, and less so with (...) general sympathy or empathy. In a fifth experiment, we asked about anger and sympathy for specific outcomes, and we found that these are consistently predictive of utilitarian responding. (shrink)

Our primary focus is on analysis of the concept of voluntariness, with a secondary focus on the implications of our analysis for the concept and the requirements of voluntary informed consent. We propose that two necessary and jointly sufficient conditions must be satisfied for an action to be voluntary: intentionality, and substantial freedom from controlling influences. We reject authenticity as a necessary condition of voluntary action, and we note that constraining situations may or may not undermine voluntariness, depending on the (...) circumstances and the psychological capacities of agents. We compare and evaluate several accounts of voluntariness and argue that our view, unlike other treatments in bioethics, is not a value-laden theory. We also discuss the empirical assessment of individuals? perceptions of the degrees of noncontrol and self-control. We propose use of a particular Decision Making Control Instrument. Empirical research using this instrument can provide data that will help establish appropriate policies and procedures for obtaining voluntary consent to research. (shrink)

The dissertation is composed of two parts. Part II is the first English translation of philosopher Luce Irigaray's 1983 book L'oubli de l'air chez Martin Heidegger, a lyrical meditation on the later work of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Part I is a general introduction to Part II and to the work of Luce Irigaray.

In recent works, Luce Irigaray offers arguments for the establishment of sexed rights that rely upon certain presuppositional accounts of the development of relational sexuate identity and difference. The paper advances a series of objections to these accounts, in addition to examining some of Irigaray's proposals concerning women's indefinition, the category of the neuter, and female genealogy. Supplementing Luce Irigaray's argument that mother-daughter genealogy is under-symbolized in present Occidental cultures, it suggests, for reasons consonant with Irigaray's general project, (...) additional corrective representation of paternal genealogy in terms of father-daughter relations. (shrink)

‘Contract cheating’ has recently emerged as a form of academic dishonesty. It involves students contracting out their coursework to writers in order to submit the purchased assignments as their own work, usually via the internet. This form of cheating involves epistemic and ethical problems that are continuous with older forms of cheating, but which it also casts in a new form. It is a concern to educators because it is very difficult to detect, because it is arguably more fraudulent than (...) some other forms of plagiarism, and because it appears to be connected to a range of systemic problems within modern higher education. This paper provides an overview of the information and literature thus far available on the topic, including its definition, the problems it involves, its causal factors, and the ways in which educators might respond. We argue that while contract cheating is a concern, some of the suggested responses are themselves problematic, and that best practice responses to the issue should avoid moral panic and remain focussed on supporting honest students and good academic practice. (shrink)

Engaging the World explores Luce Irigaray’s writings on sexual difference, deploying the resources of her work to rethink philosophical concepts and commitments and expose new possibilities of vitality in relationship to nature, others, and to one’s self. The contributors present a range of perspectives from multiple disciplines such as philosophy, literature, education, evolutionary theory, sound technology, science and technology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis. They place Irigaray in conversation with thinkers as diverse as Charles Darwin, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Gilles Deleuze, René Decartes, (...) and Avital Ronell. While every essay challenges Irigaray’s thought in some way, each one also reveals the transformative effects of her thought across multiple domains of contemporary life. (shrink)

Luce Irigaray has written that “sexual difference is one of the major philosophical issues, if not the issue, of our age.” Spanning metaphysics, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis, her work examines how sexual difference structures being and subjectivity, organizes our experience of the world, and affects the images and discourses involved in knowledge production and practical action. No other philosopher has paid such careful attention to the consequences of the elision of sexual difference in philosophical thought. However, at a time when (...) notions of sexual and gender difference are hotly contested, Irigaray’s thought has often been dismissed as essentialist or reductively binary. This book brings together leading scholars to consider the philosophical implications of Irigaray’s writing on sexual difference, particularly for issues of gender and race. Their essays directly confront the charge of essentialism, exploring how Irigaray’s thought opens new possibilities for understanding the complexity of gender identities, including nonbinary and trans experiences as well as alternative configurations of masculinity and femininity. Though Irigaray is sometimes accused of a failure to appreciate racial difference, contributors show the productive role of her work in thinking race. This book also illuminates how Irigaray’s work provides creative practices that help realign human experience and our relations with nature and each other. (shrink)

A politics of women's writing, then, if it is not to fall back on a biologically based theory of sexual difference, must address itself, as Luce Irigary has done in "Pouvoir du discours, subordination du feminin," to the position of mastery held not only by scientific discourse , not only by philosophy, "the discourse of discourses," but by the logic of discourse itself. Rather than attempting to identify a specific practice, in other words, such a feminist politics would attempt (...) to relocate sexual difference at the level of the text by undoing the repression of the "feminine" in all systems of representation for which the other must be reduced to the economy of the Same .Mary Jacobus is an associate professor of English and of women's studies at Cornell University. She is the author of a book on Wordsworth as well as the editor of a collection of feminist criticism, Women Writing and Writing about Women. Currently she is at work on a study of Thomas Hardy and a collection of essays on Romantic poetry and prose. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Simone de Beauvoir Luce Irigaray Colette Guillaumin Hélène Cixous Julia Kristeva Monique Wittig Sarah Kofman Michèle Le Doeuff Christine Delphy Conclusion.

Since antiquity two different negations in natural languages have been noted: predicate negation (not honest) and predicate term negation (dishonest). The extensive literature offers no models. We propose category-theoretic models with two distinct negation operators, neither of them in general Boolean. We study combinations of the two (not dishonest) and sentential counterparts of each. We emphasize the relevance of our work for the theory of cognition.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 37-41 [Access article in PDF] What I Know and Don't Know: A Christian Reflects on Buddhist Practice Mary Frohlich Catholic Theological Union To reflect and write on spiritual practice for publication in an academic journal requires a delicate balancing act. It is not appropriate simply to recount one's experience; nor is it appropriate merely to theorize. I am assisted in this balancing act by a (...) set of categories proposed some years ago by Walter Principe and generally accepted as standard now within the academic field of spirituality. Principe observed that spirituality operates on three interrelated yet distinct levels and that it is crucial for the academician to be clear about which level or levels are being presented. The three are: (1) experience; (2) articulation within wisdom traditions; (3) academic interpretation. 1 My understanding of what is desired in the present context is some of all three but with a primary emphasis on the second. What does Buddhist practice look like from my stance within my Christian "wisdom traditions"? Thus, this is the horizon within which I will present both experience and academic insights.First a bit of autobiographical context. I became a Christian as a young adult, after having been raised in a secular humanist household. My first attempts at a form of meditation as a teenager came from reading Taoist books; in college I experimented with drugs (at that time this was often seen as "spiritual practice") and spent a couple of years very seriously practicing transcendental meditation. Only after all this did I seek baptism and church membership. Since then, my certainty that my call is to be a Christian has not wavered. I spent several years in a Carmelite contemplative monastery, and I now belong to another Roman Catholic religious order.Yet I have repeatedly been drawn to periods of engagement with various practices having Hindu and Buddhist roots.This context is important to describe because I am aware that for me (and for many spiritual seekers today) there can never be a "pure" insertion in a single tradition. I reflected on that recently in an airplane at twenty-five thousand feet, looking down and seeing how totally human constructive activity has reshaped the contours of the land, the rivers, and everything that depends on them. I realized then that the same must be said of the inner contours of my soul. Nearing fifty, I bear the marks [End Page 37] of everything that I have ever done or touched or suffered or known. As I approach this task of reflecting on Buddhist practice from the point of view of a Christian, I cannot do it as a pure outsider. My spiritual practice is Christian in its core, but it has been inextricably shaped by so many other influences--including varieties of Buddhist practice.It is also important to acknowledge the limits of my knowledge about Buddhism and Buddhist practices. My academic exposure to Buddhism is about equivalent to an introductory undergraduate course. As for Buddhist practice, I have participated in a total of five weekend retreats, three one-week retreats, and one three-week retreat. These were all from either Vipassana (Insight Meditation) or Zen (Kwan Um or Diamond Sangha) traditions. Occasionally, I have also had even briefer exposure to other Buddhist traditions. I am very aware that there is much I do not know, or that perhaps I just plain misunderstand, about Buddhism.Yet dialogue requires that I honestly state my views, in their present form, with the hope that in the dialogical process what is misinformed or insensitive can eventually be corrected.Spiritual practice (for Buddhists as well as Christians) involves many different kinds of practices. Practices of charity, such as hospitality or almsgiving, perhaps present the fewest obstacles to mutual understanding, because the practices may be generally similar in both traditions. The ritual practices of a religious tradition, on the other hand, can feel extremely alien to those who do not belong to that religious culture. Paul Hanvey has noted that our reaction to... (shrink)

This article is a philosophical analysis of escapism as a pedagogical possibility, with a particular focus on TV series. Taking my own, as well as students, experience of escapism into TV series as a starting point, that is, their ability take us somewhere far away, something which has become more acute during the pandemic time since we remain more or less self-isolated because of the corona virus Covid-19, the article discusses escapism in relation to distraction and attention in life as (...) well as within teaching, but also in relation to colportage, hope and social justice. According to Ernst Bloch, social justice cannot materialize without regarding things differently. Something that is often dismissed as mere escapism might be a seed for a new and more humane social order, as it can be seen as an “immature, but honest substitute for revolution”. Drawing on Bloch’s understanding of colportage and hope, as well as Walter Benjamin’s understanding of mass culture and cinema, the article treats escapism and TV series not as something simple, but rather as possible seeds for a new social order and thus as having pedagogical possibilities. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir remarks that women have trouble articulating a “we” together; this foible of language is connected to our unwillingness to claim our subjectivity, and to our ability to say “I” in ordinary conversation. The corresponding political difficulty is that the “we” of a non-exclusionary women’s solidarity and revolution seems almost impossible to imagine. Luce Irigaray’s paradigm of between-women-talk, best designated as talk amongst women and non-cis-men, offers a way of reforming the language required: a Platonic participation where (...) desire beyond purpose is the only qualification, with #MeToo being one imperfect conversational example. Interrogating our reluctance and hesitation at the possibilities of this conversation makes our need for the language of mutually reinforcing subjectivity clear. (shrink)

Siblings Carol and Jordan Steiker come by their opposition to capital punishment honestly. As law clerks to Justice Thurgood Marshall, an inveterate abolitionist, they observed and participated in...

Western practices and theories of the sacred have been ritually performed and culturally elaborated mostly by male theorists who ignored the historical exclusion of women from sacral arenas. Shaped by male morphologies, their practices and descriptions quickly became prescriptions for theological rectitude and/or healthy social functioning. Women's exclusion appears to have been essential rather than epiphenomenal to the political and ecclesiastical structures established. Through the lens of Sigmund Freud, in this article I will attempt to analyse why the question as (...) to how the Western sacred has been achieved, defined, and elaborated is inherently antithetical to the future of the earth and of women. I will argue that Freud's focus on repression rather than nurture enables the Western sacred to forge gender dichotomies and legitimize those forms of religious and political mentalities that now carry lethal capacities. For that reason, we need to de-construct its most dangerous capacities, challenge the toxic stories, develop spiritual and disciplinary practices that nurture human creativity, foster independent thinking, and radically address the acute gendered imbalance that currently pervades the religious and political social imaginary. I argue that a feminist call for mere equality within existing theological or political frameworks fails to do justice to the issues at stake. I will then point briefly to some alternative approaches to the sacred mentioned above in the work of philosopher and psychoanalyst, Luce Irigaray; anthropologist, Peggy Reeves Sanday; Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman, and artist, psychoanalyst and theorist, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger. (shrink)

Amidst the many voices clamoring to interpret the environmental crisis, some of the most important are the voices of religious traditions. Long before modernity's industrialism began the rape of Earth, premodern religious and philosophical traditions mediated to untold generations the wisdom of living as a part of nature. These traditions can illuminate and empower wiser ways of postmodern living. The original writings of Worldviews and Ecology creatively present and interpret worldviews of major religious and philosophical traditions on how humans can (...) live more sustainably on a fragile planet. Contributors include Charlene Spretnak, Larry Rasmussen, Noel Brown, Jay McDaniel, Tu Wei-Ming, Thomas Berry, David Ray Griffin, J. Baird Callicott, Eric Katz, Roger E. Timm, Robert A. White, Christopher Key Chapple, Brian Swimme, Brian Brown, Michael Tobias, Ralph Metzner, George Sessions, and Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. Insights from traditions as diverse as Jain, Jewish, ecofeminist, deep ecology, Christian, Hindu, Bahai, and Whiteheadian will interest all who seek an honest analysis of what religious and philosophical traditions have to say to a modernity whose consciousness and conscience seems tragically narrow, the source of attitudes that imperil the biosphere. (shrink)

Many of the philosophers of African politics who have argued that the political challenges of Nigeria, and of Africa as a whole are as a result of the impunity and corruption of post-independence Nigeria leaders also give the impression that the people of Nigeria are mere innocent victims because in their arguments all the ills of the Nigerian state exist only because the country have not experienced or discovered an honest and capable political leader. The scholars argue to the effect (...) that all that Nigeria can do is simply to hope for the ascendance of a Messiah, who being an honest, capable and patriotic leader will on his own volition become committed to the cause of reversing the situation in order to turn around all the ills of the nation. Employing the examples of two prominent scholars of African politics the paper employs the epistemological rigor of analysis and logic to examine and make a critique of the underlying assumptions of the scholars and identifies the theoretical flaws of believing that political representatives are substantively political leaders, that Nigerians are helpless victims who on their own are incapable of reversing the situation and that Nigeria should hope for a political saviour who will turn around all the social and political ills of Nigeria on his own accord. Keywords : Ignocence, Messianism, Epistemology, Democracy, Nigeria. (shrink)

Surgical devices are often marketed before there is good evidence of their safety and effectiveness. Our paper discusses the ethical issues associated with the early marketing and use of new surgical devices from the perspectives of the six groups most concerned. Health Canada, which is responsible for licensing new surgical devices, should amend their requirements to include rigorous clinical trials that provide data on effectiveness and safety for each new product before it is marketed. Industry should comply with all Health (...) Canada requirements to obtain licenses for new products. Until Health Canada requires effectiveness and safety data, industry should cooperate with physicians in appropriate studies before releasing new products and should make balanced presentations of all the available evidence. Surgeons should, before using a new surgical device, assess the evidence on its effectiveness and safety and ensure they are properly trained and competent in using the device. Surgeons should provide their patients with an evaluation of the available evidence and inform them about possible complications and the surgeon's level of experience with the new device. Patients, who should be given an honest evaluation of the available evidence, possible complications, and the surgeon's experience, should be encouraged to evaluate the evidence and information to their own satisfaction to ensure that fully informed consent is given. Health institutions, responsible for regulating practice within their walls, should review new devices for safety, effectiveness, and economic impacts, before allowing their use. They should also limit the use of new surgical devices to surgeons trained and competent in the new technology. Professional societies should provide guidance on the early adoption of new surgical devices and technologies. We urge all those involved in the development, licensing, and use of new surgical devices to aim for higher ethical standards to protect the health and safety of patients requiring surgery. The lowest acceptable ethical standard would require device manufacturers to provide surgeons with accurate and timely information on the efficacy and safety of their products, allowing surgeons and patients to evaluate the evidence (and the significance of information not yet available) before surgery. (shrink)

Background Shared responsibility is an essential part of family-centred care and it characterizes the relationship between parents and healthcare professionals. Despite this, little is known about their shared responsibility for decision-making in neonatal intensive care units. Aim The aim of this scoping review was to identify previous studies on the subject and to summarize the knowledge that has been published so far. Method The review was conducted using electronic searches in the CINAHL, PubMed, Scopus and PsycINFO databases and manual searches (...) of the reference lists of the selected papers. The searches were limited to peer-reviewed papers that had been published in English from 2010 to September 2021. The data were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria and the findings were inductively summarized. We identified eight papers that met the inclusion criteria. Ethical considerations: The scoping review was conducted according to good scientific practice by respecting authorship and reporting the study processes accurately, honestly and transparently. Results The results showed that shared responsibility for decision-making was based on the parents’ intentions, but the degree to which they were willing to take responsibility varied. The facilitating and inhibiting factors for shared responsibility for decision-making were related to the communication between parents and professionals. The impact was related to the parents’ emotions. Conclusion It is essential that parents and professionals negotiate how both parties will contribute to their shared responsibility for decision-making. This will enable them to reach a mutual understanding of what is in the infants’ best interests and to mitigate the emotional burden of decisions in neonatal intensive care units. More research is needed to clarify the concept of shared responsibility for decision-making in this intensive care context. (shrink)

This paper addresses the relation between Luce Irigaray’s work and politics by asking what it means to read her work locally, in place. The philosophical work of Indigenous scholar, Mary Graham, on the law of obligation, serves to ground such a local reading presenting, simultaneously, a case for a uniquely Australian philosophy. By way of suggesting possible connections between the work of Irigaray and Graham, the paper places Graham’s work on obligation alongside Irigaray’s work on the importance of a (...) symbolic re-distribution of value suggested in her philosophy of horizontal transcendence. Such a reading encourages us to consider what it means to engage work, such as Irigaray’s, in a here and now that differs from the European context of her writing. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the English philosopher Mary Astell’s marginalia in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s personal copy of the 1704 edition of Pierre Bayle’s Pensées diverses sur le comète (first published in 1682). I argue that Astell’s annotations provide good reasons for thinking that Bayle is biased toward atheism in this work. Recent scholars maintain that Bayle can be interpreted as an Academic Sceptic: as someone who honestly and impartially follows a dialectical method of argument in order to obtain the (...) goal of intellectual integrity. In her commentary, however, Astell suggests that: (i) if Bayle were honest and impartial in his inquiries, then he would not have pretended to attack popular superstition, only to undermine generally-held religious beliefs; and (ii) if Bayle valued intellectual integrity, then his argument for a society of virtuous atheists would not have relied upon a deceptive equivocation in terms. I conclude that the rediscovery of this marginalia is valuable for enhancing our appreciation of Astell as an astute reader of one of her most enigmatic contemporaries. (shrink)

This article analyses Mary Kelly’s Love Songs, 2005—07, which was exhibited in 2007 at Documenta 12. The series of artworks addresses the political and ideological legacies of early Anglo-US feminism through the perspectives of two generations of women. Drawing on oral and photographic archives, as well as historical re-enactments, Kelly indicates how her work does not simply record a feminist legacy but, rather, keenly intervenes in the process. I propose that this intervention is an ethical one. Drawing on Luce (...) Irigaray’s writings on the maternal gift, I demonstrate how Kelly’s project may be understood to enact an ethical relationality that I find is fundamental for thinking about the vexing issue of feminist intergenerationality. I conclude that while Love Songs maps no specific course of action, nor indicates exactly why or how a current generation of feminists should proceed, it nonetheless generates a space in which to imagine the radical futurity of the maternal gift. (shrink)

The book is about logical analysis of natural language. Since we humans communicate by means of natural language, we need a tool that helps us to understand in a precise manner how the logical and formal mechanisms of natural language work. Moreover, in the age of computers, we need to communicate both with and through computers as well. Transparent Intensional Logic is a tool that is helpful in making our communication and reasoning smooth and precise. It deals with all kinds (...) of linguistic context in a fully compositional and anti-contextual way. (shrink)

To revitalize nursing science, there is a need for a new approach to guide nurse scientists in addressing complex problems in health care. By applying theoretical concepts from a revolutionary philosopher of science, Paul K. Feyerabend, new nursing knowledge can be produced using creativity and pluralistic approaches. Feyerabend proposed that methods within and outside of science can produce knowledge. Despite the recognition of Feyerabendian philosophy within science, there is currently a lack of literature regarding the relevance of Feyerabendian philosophy for (...) nursing science. We aim to (a) describe and critique Feyerabendian concepts, (b) discuss the potential application of Feyerabendian philosophy for knowledge production within gerontological nursing and (c) describe theoretical possibilities for nurse scientists in using Feyerabendian philosophy to guide nursing knowledge development. We begin by introducing Feyerabend's life and his inspirations for his theoretical concepts, epistemological anarchism, theoretical pluralism and humanitarianism, and conclude by offering suggestions of how to apply Feyerabendian philosophy in nursing research. (shrink)

Personhood is ascribed on others, such that someone who is recognized to be a person is bestowed with certain civil rights and the right to decision making. A rising question is how severely brain-injured patients who regain consciousness can also regain their personhood. The case of patients with locked-in syndrome is illustrative in this matter. Upon restoration of consciousness, patients with LIS find themselves in a state of profound demolition of their bodily functions. From the third-person perspective, it can be (...) expected that LIS patients might experience a differential personal identity and may lose their status as persons. However, from the patients’ perspective, it is uncontested that they retain their personal identity and that they consider themselves to be persons. We here include results from a survey with patients with LIS aimed at identifying the primary expectations of patients for their care by non-medical professionals. Based on these first-hand reports, we argue that personhood in LIS is progressively regained as the widening circle of others recognizes them as persons. (shrink)

This dissertation aims to construct a non-dogmatic defence of common sense. It tries to show why the absence of justification for the judgements of common sense, which the sceptic reveals, does not invalidate them.