This symposium on Monique Deveaux’s Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements includes commentaries by Sally Matthews, Renante D. Pilapil, Violetta Igneski, and Wouter Peeters, with a reply from Deveaux. The book makes the case that normative thinking about poverty should engage closely with the aims, insights, and actions of poor-led organizations and social movements. Challenging conventional framings of poverty by moral philosophers, Deveaux argues that chronic poverty is centrally about the subordination and dispossession of the poor – not mere (...) needs scarcity. To exclude people living in poverty from shaping antipoverty solutions is therefore to perpetuate their social-political domination and epistemic oppression. Deveaux’s book explains what a political reframing of poverty looks like from the vantage point of several poor-led organizations and social movements, using concrete examples from across the globe, and argues for political responsibility for solidarity with those movements. (shrink)

Monique Roelofs offers a pathbreaking systematic model of the field of address and puts it to work in the arts, critical theory, and social life. She shows how address props up finely hewn modalities of relationality, agency, and normativity. Address exceeds a one-on-one pairing of cultural productions with their audiences. As ardently energizing tiny slippages and snippets as fueling larger impulses in the society, it activates and reaestheticizes registers of race, gender, class, coloniality, and cosmopolitanism. In readings of writers (...) and artists ranging from Julio Cortázar to Jamaica Kincaid and from Martha Rosler to Pope.L, Roelofs demonstrates the centrality of address to freedom and a critical political aesthetics. Under the banner of a unified concept of address, Hume, Kant, and Foucault strike up conversations with Benjamin, Barthes, Althusser, Fanon, Anzaldúa, and Butler. Drawing on a wide array of artistic and theoretical sources and challenging disciplinary boundaries, the book illuminates address's significance to cultural existence and to our reflexive aesthetic engagement in it. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the effect of sound on visual motion perception. One model involves the illusion created when two identical objects moving towards each other on a two-dimensional visual display can be seen to either bounce off or stream through each other. Previous studies show that the large bias normally seen toward the streaming percept can be modulated by the presentation of an auditory event at the moment of coincidence. However, no reports to date provide sufficient evidence to (...) indicate whether the sound bounce-inducing effect is due to a perceptual binding process or merely to an explicit inference resulting from the transient auditory stimulus resembling a physical collision of two objects. In the present study, we used a novel experimental design in which a subliminal sound was presented either 150 ms before, at, or 150 ms after the moment of coincidence of two disks moving towards each other. The results showed that there was an increased perception of bouncing when the subliminal sound was presented at or 150 ms after the moment of coincidence compared to when no sound was presented. These findings provide the first empirical demonstration that activation of the human auditory system without reaching consciousness affects the perception of an ambiguous visual motion display. (shrink)

Increasing privacy concerns are arising from expanding use of aggregated personal information in health practices. Conversely, in light of the promising benefits of data driven healthcare, privacy...

Historically, video games featuring content perceived as excessively violent have drawn moral criticism from an indignant (and sometimes, morally outraged) public. Defenders of violent video games have insisted that such criticisms are unwarranted, as committing acts of virtual violence against computer-controlled characters – no matter how heinous or cruel those actions would be if performed in real life – harm no actual people. In this paper, I present and critically analyze key aspects of this debate. I argue that while many (...) ethical objections to playing violent video games seem to miss their marks, there is sufficient reason to take modest steps in order to address the concerns that theorists have raised. (shrink)

Although the word empathy only recently came into existence, eighteenth century philosopher, David Hume, significantly contributed to our current understanding of the term. Hume was among the first to suggest that an empathic mechanism is the central means by which we make ethical judgments and glean moral knowledge. In this paper, I explore Hume's moral sentimentalism, and I argue that his conception of empathy provides a surprisingly apposite framework for interpreting and addressing a current issue in practical ethics: the moral (...) significance of ultra-violent video games. Ultimately, I attempt to show that a Humean account of morality uniquely explains the dangers of ultra-violent video gaming by elucidating a direct connection between playing such games and moral harm. (shrink)

L'histoire de la philosophie a toujours vu en Plotin un metaphysicien. Porphyre ne dit-il pas de son maitre qu'il connaissait parfaitement la geometrie, l'arithmetique, la mecanique, l'optique et la musique, mais qu'il n'etait pas enclin a approfondir davantage ces disciplines? Ce peu de gout pour les mathematiques et la physique n'a pourtant pas empeche Plotin de rediger quelques traites exclusivement connsacres a des questions de physique et de cosmologie, traites qui furent les grands oublies des etudes neioplatoniciennes. Parmi ceux-ci, le (...) traite Sur le ciel est d'une importance capitale aussi bien en raison du sujet qu'il aborde que du debat philosophique qu'il engage avec la tradition. La vision plotinienne du monde et du ciel doit en effet trouver sa place au sein des theories cosmologiques dominantes de son epoque: celles transmises par le Timee de Platon, le De Caelo d'Aristote et la vision stoicienne de l'univers. Il va sans dire que Plotin se veut un exegete des doctrines platoniciennes, mais le present traite montre peut-etre plus que tout autre la difficile cohabitation de l'independance d'esprit et de la fidelite aux textes du maitre. Ce qui se presente comme une exegese du Timee devient en fait une trahison des enseignements qui y sont contenus. Le traite II, 1 [40] fut le theatre d'une rebellion, celle d'un interprete platonicinen qui tente de lire dans le Timee une theorie qui ne s'y trouve pas. (shrink)

Concepts for sustainable bioeconomy systems are gradually replacing the ones on linear product chains. The reason is that continuously expanding linear chain activities are considered to contribute to climate change, reduced biodiversity, over-exploitation of resources, food insecurity, and the double burden of disease. Are sustainable bioeconomy systems a guarantee for a healthy planet? If yes, why, when, and how? In literature, different sustainability indicators have been presented to shed light on this complicated question. Due to high degrees of complexity and (...) interactions of actors in bioeconomy systems, trade-offs and non-linear outcomes became apparent. This fueled the debates about the normative dimensions of the bioeconomy. In particular, the behavior of actors and the utilization of products do not seem to be harmonized according to the environmental, social, and economic pillars of sustainability. Potential conflicts require a new conceptual framework that is here introduced. It consists of a ‘sustainability’ cylinder captured between an inner-cylinder, representing order, and an outer-cylinder for chaos, based on the laws of physics and complex adaptive systems. Such a framework permits (bioeconomy) systems to propagate in the sustainability zone only if they follow helical pathways serving as the new norms. Helices are a combination of two sinusoidal patterns. The first represents here the sustainable behavior of interacting actors and the second the balanced usage of resources and products. The latter counteracts current growth discourses. The applicability of the conceptual cylinder framework is positively verified via 9 cases in Europe, which encompass social-organizational and product-technological innovations. –. (shrink)

In the present research we investigated gender-specific beliefs about emotional behaviour. In Study 1, 180 respondents rated the extent to which they agreed with different types of beliefs (prescriptive, descriptive, stereotypical, and contra-stereotypical) regarding the emotional behaviour of men and women. As anticipated, respondents agreed more with descriptive than with prescriptive beliefs, and more with stereotypical than with contra-stereotypical beliefs. However, respondents agreed more with stereotypical beliefs about the emotional behaviour of women than with those about men. These results were (...) replicated in Study 2 with a sample of 75 students and 80 nonstudents. In Study 3, a sample of 279 respondents rated the extent of agreement with the same items, this time with respect to then own emotional behaviour. A similar pattern of results was obtained, although agreement rates were higher than in Study 1 and 2. (shrink)

Political philosophers’ prescriptions for poverty alleviation have overlooked the importance of social movements led by, and for, the poor in the global South. I argue that these movements are normatively and politically significant for poverty reduction strategies and global justice generally. While often excluded from formal political processes, organized poor communities nonetheless lay the groundwork for more radical, pro-poor forms of change through their grassroots resistance and organizing. Poor-led social movements politicize poverty by insisting that, fundamentally, it is caused by (...) social relations of power that exploit and subordinate poor populations. These movements and their organizations also develop the collective capabilities of poor communities in ways that help them to contest the structures and processes that perpetuate their needs deprivation. I illustrate these contributions through a discussion of the Landless Rural Worker’s Movement in Brazil, a poor mobilization organization in Bangladesh, and the slum and pavement dweller movement in India. Global justice theorizing about poverty cannot just “add on” the contributions of such struggles to existing analyses of, and remedies for, poverty, however; rather, we will need to shift to a relational approach to poverty in order to see the vital importance of organized poor communities to transformative, poor-centered poverty reduction. (shrink)

This essay examines the citizen's apparent agelessness that is foundational to liberal democratic theories. By engaging the notion of citizenship rights, Lanoix challenges this assumed perpetual adulthood and argues for a new way of conceptualizing the citizen. The broader notion of citizen as cohabitant allows for the changing relationship a citizen will have with her citizenship rights and accommodates individuals who are not self-governing but who, nonetheless, share a democratic space.

The term “emotional practices” is gaining currency in the historical study of emotions. This essay discusses the theoretical and methodological implications of this concept. A definition of emotion informed by practice theory promises to bridge persistent dichotomies with which historians of emotion grapple, such as body and mind, structure and agency, as well as expression and experience. Practice theory emphasizes the importance of habituation and social context and is thus consistent with, and could enrich, psychological models of situated, distributed, and (...) embodied cognition and their approaches to the study of emotion.It is suggested here that practices not only generate emotions, but that emotions themselves can be viewed as a practical engagement with the world. Conceiving of emotions as practices means understanding them as emerging from bodily dispositions conditioned by a social context, which always has cultural and historical specificity. Emotion-as-practice is bound up with and dependent on “emotional practices,” defined here as practices involving the self , language, material artifacts, the environment, and other people. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus, the essay emphasizes that the body is not a static, timeless, universal foundation that produces ahistorical emotional arousal, but is itself socially situated, adaptive, trained, plastic, and thus historical. Four kinds of emotional practices that make use of the capacities of a body trained by specific social settings and power relations are sketched out—mobilizing, naming, communicating, and regulating emotion—as are consequences for method in historical research. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for philosophers to name disinterestedness, or some like feature, as an essential characteristic of love. Such theorists claim that in genuine love, one’s concern for her beloved must be non-instrumental, non-egocentric, or even selfless. These views prompt the question, “What, if any, positive role might self-interestedness play in genuine love?” In this paper, I argue that attachment, an attitude marked primarily by self-focused emotions and emotional predispositions, helps constitute the meaning and import of at least some (...) kinds of adult reciprocal love. In this way, attachment represents a type of self-interestedness that not only contributes positively to such relationships but is also essential to them. (shrink)

We often use the term “attachment” to describe our emotional connectedness to objects in the world. We become attached to our careers, to our homes, to certain ideas, and perhaps most importantly, to other people. Interestingly, despite its import and ubiquity in our everyday lives, the topic of attachment per se has been largely ignored in the philosophy literature. I address this lacuna by identifying attachment as a rich “mode of mattering” that can help to inform certain aspects of agency (...) and emotion. First, drawing on insights from Ancient stoicism and developmental and clinical psychology, I suggest that the relevant form of attachment involves a felt need for its object and a particular relationship between the object and the attached agent’s sense of security. I then argue that these features serve to distinguish the attitude from the more philosophically familiar notion of caring. Finally, I show that recognizing this form of attachment as a distinct mode of mattering has important implications for understanding grief. (shrink)

O caráter protocolar desempenhado pelas matemáticas na formulação do conceito cartesiano de ciência é amplamente difundido e frequentemente reinvocado na literatura especializada quando se trata de abordar a exigência apodítica inerente a este conceito. No entanto, pouco se explora o que a diversidade das disciplinas matemáticas bem como a relação entretida por elas permite trazer de elucidação à noção cartesiana de ciência. Nosso propósito consiste, aqui, em tomar posição quanto a um debate acerca do estatuto da álgebra e da geometria (...) como disciplinas que fixam os lineamentos da teoria cartesiana do conhecimento ao exibirem o que Descartes reputaria como a aplicação ideal do intelecto. Trata-se de insistir, por vias que assinalam uma decisão teórica em favor de uma concepção mais intelectualista e menos imaginativa da ciência, que não há hesitação quanto ao papel primitivo e fundacional da álgebra se comparada à geometria. (shrink)

The concepts “dispositive” and “intermediality” emerged at the same time and are becoming increasingly prominent. In this article, I propose to consider what intermediality brings to the dispositive, based on a case study of the diptych El Otro Lado de la Cama and Los Dos Lados de la Cama, two mainstream films from contemporary Spain in the early twenty-first century. Dispositive theory has been developed in France by academics working in the fields of modern literature and theater at the University (...) of Toulouse, notably Marie-Thérèse Mathet, Stéphane Lojkine, Philippe Ortel and Arnaud Rykner. In the late 1990s, this group adapted Foucault’s concept of the dispositive 2 to the fields of literature and.. (shrink)

Xenotransplantation is defined as “any procedure that involves the transplantation, implantation, or infusion into a human recipient of either live cells, tissues, or organs from a nonhuman animal source, or human body fluids, cells, tissues or organs that have had ex vivo contact with live nonhuman animal cells, tissues, or organs.” Xenotransplantation has been viewed by desperate patients and their surgeons as a solution to the problem of the paucity of human organs available for transplantation. Foes of xenotransplantation argue that (...) the use of animal organs degrades the human race and should be avoided.In this paper, we briefly review the cultural context of xenotransplantation and explore the infectious disease risk of xenotransplantation. The United States Code of Federal Regulations requires life-long surveillance of a xenotransplantation recipient due to the largely unknown risk of novel infectious disease transmitted across species, known as xenogeneic infectious disease. We argue that despite being in the interest of protecting the public health, the imposition of lifelong surveillance requirements on xenotransplant recipients effectively abrogates the right to withdraw from a clinical trial after the transplantation has taken place. Moreover, we argue that a waiver of the right to withdraw should be made explicit in the interest of full disclosure, out of respect for the research subject’s right of self-determination. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that addressing the medical needs of older persons warrants expanding the array of insured services as described by the Canada Health Act to include home care. The growing importance of chronic care supports my call for federally regulated home care services as the nature of disease management has changed significantly in the last decades. In addition, if the values of equity, fairness and solidarity, which are the keystone values of the CHA, are to be upheld (...) within the current social and demographic context, then Canada’s health care system should adapt accordingly. I focus my argument on the services provided to older persons for two main reasons. First, the changing nature of disease management is best seen in this population. If it is to be successfully argued that the transformations in medicine warrant an expansion of insured services covered by the CHA, it will be best illustrated by looking at the needs of older persons. Second, with the demographic shift looming large in the policy agenda, an exploration of this issue is not only crucial but timely. (shrink)

This book, now open-access from OUP, develops a normative theory of political responsibility for solidarity with poor populations by engaging closely with empirical studies of poor-led social movements in the Global South. Monique Deveaux rejects familiar ethical framings of problems of poverty and inequality by arguing that normative thinking about antipoverty remedies needs to engage closely with the aims, insights, and actions of “pro-poor,” poor-led social movements. Defending the idea of a political responsibility for solidarity, nonpoor outsiders—individuals, institutions, and (...) states—can help to advance a transformative anti-poverty agenda only by supporting the efforts of these movements. (shrink)

Cet article examine le paysage européen sous l’angle des droits sexuels, portant l’attention sur l’unité fictive de l’Europe et les contradictions qui émergent entre les différents pays concernant les femmes en particulier. Le Lobby européen des femmes, les législations sur l’avortement, les processus de renaturalisation de la condition féminine avec des arguments écologiques, les déchirements autour de la prostitution, mettent en scène des dissonances importantes.

Un nouveau discours politique prétend restaurer le peuple dans sa dignité en s’attaquant aux timides réformes multiculturalistes de ces dernières années. Une nouvelle séparation sociale est revendiquée en termes ethnoculturels, notamment dans le domaine scolaire, pour faire réapparaître les distances sociales qui ne peuvent plus être parlées en termes de classes.

Data from the Kipsigis of Kenya are used to test two models for how parents invest in offspring, the Trivers-Willard and local resource competition/enhancement hypotheses. Investment is measured as age-specific survival, educational success, marital arrangements, and some components of property inheritance, permitting an evaluation of how biases persist or alter over the period of dependence. Changes through time in such biases are also examined. Despite stronger effects of wealth on the reproductive success of men than women, the survival of sons (...) and daughters is not related to parental wealth. However, a Trivers-Willard effect characterizes educational investment: poor families show a greater concern for daughters’ (vis-à-vis sons’) schooling than do rich families, a trend that has increased over time. In regard to models of local resource competition and enhancement, men’s reproductive success decreases with number of brothers and increases with number of sisters; this pattern of competition with same-sex sibs and cooperation with opposite-sex sibs is not found among women. As predicted from these observations, parents show reduced investment in sons with a large number of brothers, and increased investment in sons with a large number of sisters. By contrast, investment in daughters is entirely unaffected by number of sisters and is influenced only in subtle ways by number of brothers. Levels of investment in relation to sibship size (irrespective of siblings’ sex) are highest for younger children of large sib sets.Discussion of the results in relation to those from other studies leads to three conclusions. First, predictive models for how investment biases vary across societies must consider a broad range of socioecological factors constraining parental options and payoffs. Second, the timing of investment biases within societies will be affected by the value of children and the costs of parental investment. Third, measures of investment appropriate for between-sex and between-class comparisons need careful attention. Each of these issues is brought to bear on the question of why, in contrast to so many other parts of the world, sex preferences are so muted in Africa. (shrink)

A new high‐resolution structure of a pain‐sensing ion channel, TRPA1, provides a molecular scaffold to understand channel function. Unexpected structural features include a TRP‐domain helix similar to TRPV1, a novel ligand‐binding site, and an unusual C‐terminal coiled coil stabilized by inositol hexakisphosphate (IP6). TRP‐domain helices, which structurally act as a nexus for communication between the channel gates and its other domains, may thus be a feature conserved across the entire TRP family and, possibly, other allosterically‐gated channels. Similarly, the TRPA1 antagonist‐binding (...) site could also represent a druggable location in other ion channels. Combined with known TRPA1 functional properties, the structural role for IP6 leads us to propose that polyphosphate unbinding could act as a molecular kill switch for TRPA1 inactivation. Finally, although packing of the TRPA1 membrane‐proximal region hints at a mechanism for electrophile sensing, the details of how TRPA1 responds to noxious reactive electrophiles and temperature await future studies.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

L’adoption en Polynésie repose encore sur des fondements culturels, même si la procédure de celle-ci s’inscrit dans la loi française. Sans mystère des origines, l’enfant se sait faa’amu dans la tradition polynésienne. Il sait qu’il est donné, confié à une autre famille et le système de parenté détermine sa place. Cette parenté sociale apparaît comme une règle fondatrice. L’adoption en Polynésie s’inscrit également dans un accord des volontés privées, de ce fait elle se nomme pour deux années « délégation d’autorité (...) parentale ». Ce n’est que secondairement que sera prononcée soit l’adoption simple, soit l’adoption plénière. La question des difficultés liées particulièrement à l’adoption demeure ouverte. (shrink)

Traduação do texto L’expérience de la méthode, de Caroline Blanvillain.

In Between Facts and Norms, Jürgen Habermas points out an ambiguity in the Kantian concept of autonomy that would lead to an antagonism between human rights and popular sovereignty. He charges Kant of introducing this concept from the private point of view of the individual subject who judges morally and of elucidating it from the point of view of the discursive and democratic political formation of the will. Against this reading, Ingeborg Maus argues that Kant develops human rights and popular (...) sovereignty in the closest reciprocal complementarity. Nonetheless, she agrees with Habermas’s critique of the monological character of the Kantian principle of morality and reaffirms the ambiguity of the concept of autonomy. The aim of this article is to to shed light on Kant’s conceptions of Enlightenment and “public use of reason” developed in his political writings, in order to suggest that far from devaluating the political formation of the will, Kant establishes it as a fundamental step towards the realization of morality and, therefore, of the autonomy of the will. First, I will argue that in explaining the principle of autonomy with the idea of self-legislation of the will, Kant does not introduce ambiguity in this concept. On the contrary, it establishes a common normative structure between the domains of moral and right. Finally, I will return to the Doctrine of Right to argue that for Kant, interaction and communication between citizens is not lateral to the legitimation of right, since the members of the political community must consent and be convinced by reason. (shrink)

La traduction scientifique et technique et la terminologie relèvent d'un régime empirique comparable. Examinées au prisme de la doctrine linguistique de vérité logique, elles se différencient à partir de la ligne de démarcation langue naturelle / langage formel. Après avoir analysé les rapports respectifs des théories de la traduction et de la terminologie à la philosophie du langage issue de l'empirisme logique, on cherchera à clarifier les rapports réciproques entre ces théories chez les auteurs les plus représentatifs du modèle logico-ontologique. (...) On s'intéressera enfin à l'évolution du modèle dans un cadre fonctionnaliste et on s'interrogera sur les limites de la rupture épistémologique entrevue depuis les années 1980. L'engouement pour la traduction des terminologies servira d'exemple à charge. L'alternative pourrait venir de la sémantique textuelle.The scientific and technical translation and terminology are of a comparable empirical regime. Examined through the prism of linguistic doctrine of logical truth, they differ from the line natural language / formal language. After analyzing the reports of the respective theories of translation and terminology in the philosophy of language following the logical empiricism, we seek to clarify the interrelationship between these theories in the most representative authors logico-ontological model. Finally we will look at the evolution of the model in a functionalist and we will question the limits of epistemological rupture interview since 1980. The craze for the translation of terminologies used as an example to load. The alternative could have come from textual semantics. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 9, Page 14-15, September 2011.

Theorists often conceive of forgiveness as “wiping the slate clean” or something of the sort with respect to the offender’s moral infraction. This raises a puzzle concerning how (or whether) the relevant wrongdoing can continue to play a role in the forgiver’s deliberations, attitudes, and practical orientation toward the offender once forgiveness has taken place. For example, consider an agent who forgives her offender for an act of wrongdoing only to later blame her again for that very same act. Is (...) the relevant agent morally criticizable for breaching a commitment internal to her earlier forgiveness? When, if ever, is “un- forgiving,” justified? In brief, I argue that sometimes, we can genuinely forgive a wrongdoer for a particular transgression and at some later time, justifiably un-forgive her for it. Though the act of un-forgiving is underexplored, I argue that attending to this phenomenon will not only illuminate an important, often overlooked aspect of moral life, but it will also help to inform extant accounts of the nature and ethics of forgiveness. (shrink)

This essay examines paid care labor that typically assists older adult individuals in performing the activities of daily living. I make the case that emotional labor is constitutive of ancillary care and that some emotion-based utterances are communicative actions in the sense intended by Jürgen Habermas. However, communicative action is undermined because of the manner in which ancillary care is organized. I discuss why this is problematic and suggest ways to enhance the goals of ancillary care by granting communicative action (...) a greater role within caregiving. (shrink)