We prove some results on the polynomial hierarchies of infinite abelian groups. In particular, we show the polynomial hierarchy over an infinite group of exponent a prime number p collapse if and only if it is the case in the classical theory.

The just war tradition assumes that civil war is a possible site of justice. It has an uneasy relationship with liberalism, because the latter resists the idea that insurgency and counterinsurgency can be justified in moral terms. The paper suggests that, even if this is true, these two schools of thought are closer to each other than often appears to be the case. In particular, the paper argues that insurgency and counterinsurgency can be justified using the liberal assumptions that nonviolent (...) opposition is the proper non-institutional technique to fight oppressive regimes, and that law enforcement is the appropriate response to unjustified rebellions. Given these assumptions, insurgent warfare is limited to circumstances in which, firstly, nonviolent resistance is no longer a reasonable course of action; and secondly, insurgents have the intention to create the political conditions that are needed to make it a coherent option again.Counter insurgent warfare, in turn, is restrained to those situations in which, first, there is a rebellion or revolution even though the use of nonviolent strategies for conflict and change remains a reasonable choice; and second, police agencies lack the resources that arerequired for managing and suppressing rebel activities. Of course, these requirements should be taken as presumptions, and there may be cases when they do not hold. (shrink)

David-Ménard examines the problem of the genesis of Kant's moral philosophy. The separation between Kantian practical reason and the inclinations of sense which it regulates is shown by the author to originate in Kant's attempt to regulate his own tendency to hypochondria. Her argument links the themes from two of Kant's precritical works which attest to this tendency-"An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind" and Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime-to the final form of (...) the critical philosophy. (shrink)

Du sommaire: I -- Clinique et philosophie: Le probleme -- La polemique. II -- Eloge du masochisme, critique de la notion de plaisir. III -- Philosophie de la repetition: Les trois repetitions -- Comment une philosophie du temps revient a Masoch et a Sade -- L'inconscient et les problemes. IV -- Le corps sans organes, critique ou abandon de la psychanalyse?: Artaud et Van Gogh -- La distance prise par rapport a l'organisme -- Les devenirs et leur fin immanente. V (...) -- Les devenirs et les syntheses disjonctives: Les syntheses disjonctives et l'invention de la vie et de la pensee -- Repeter et inventer selon Deleuze et selon Freud -- Ambiguite de la repetition en psychanalyse. VI -- Philosophie de l'infini, creer des concepts est-ce circuler a vitesse infinie sur le chaos?: L'affinite de la philosophie avec l'infini -- L'infini et la raison contingente -- Sur la lecture de Deleuze par Alain Badiou -- Une invention conceptuelle met-elle en jeu l'infini?". (shrink)

Under this title, I wish to clarify the philosophical perspective that has run through my work for the last fifteen years, in three volumes: L’hystérique entre Freud et Lacan, La folie dans la raison pure, and Les constructions de l’universel. In the first of these works, I reflected on the status of the body in psychoanalysis, on the distance that needed to be taken with regard to the two Western traditions of thought concerning the body, namely those of Aristotle and (...) Descartes, in order to understand Freud’s conceptions of the erogenous body and the drive. I also raised the question of the divergence between the physiological- and the drive-constructions of the body. In my second book, I tried to understand to what degree a philosophical system, in this case Kant’s transcendental theory of the object, may be the meeting point between a new logic—a new logic of negation in Kant’s case—and a fantasized encounter with a mad thinker. I also considered the way in which a philosophical text weaves several active heterogeneous directions like the warp and the weft within thought, and how they may be spotted in the text. Finally, in Les constructions de l’universel, I considered the relevance of the concept of the universal for understanding how conceptual thought detaches itself from its author, and compared art, philosophy, and dream analysis from this point of view. I also tried to evaluate the pertinence of Lacan’s project of producing a logic of sexuation, and the degree of autonomy such a project has with respect to the internal ambiguities of the logical and philosophical concept of the universal. In these three books, I have practiced a philosophy of contingency—contingency of the relation between discourses and contingency of the real with respect to the thought which knows it. It is this philosophy of contingency that I would like to explain. (shrink)

This article contributes to the concept of social values by presenting analytical tools that explore how social values are classified, re-presented and interpersonally performed in the construction of identities. I approach social values as classificatory systems of acceptability and desirability that are collectively generated. The meanings of social values are embedded in culture and in power imbalanced social relations; they constantly undergo reformulation in identification processes and are also used to define the social order. I suggest that social values can (...) be analysed in relation to aspects of representation and interpersonal positioning that are also involved in the construction of identities: Value classifications involve compartmentalising moral orders into e.g. good, desirable, important, necessary; value projects are concerned with how value classifications and content occupy roles and become oriented to action; and value positioning is concerned with how narrators align with value classifications and projects as well as with individuals and groups seen to share or reject such classifications and projects. (shrink)

On a souvent dit que la bioéthique émergea au confluent des sciences de la santé, de la théologie, de la philosophie et du droit. Or, pour poursuivre son évolution, la bioéthique se doit d’adopter une position critique vis-à-vis de cet héritage, notamment en ce qui concerne le droit.

Ce texte offre quelques réflexions épistémologiques et méthodologiques en réponse au texte d’Antoine Boudreau LeBlanc qui plaide pour une bioéthique renouvelée, capable de faire le lien entre science et politique afin de relever les défis majeurs auxquels l’humanité est actuellement confrontée. Cette proposition apparait nécessaire, compte tenu du paradoxe qui émerge du fait que l’expertise et la spécialisation grandissante ne se traduisent pas toujours par des solutions aux problèmes complexes qui affligent l’humanité. Il apparaît nécessaire de réfléchir à la nature (...) même de ces problèmes et de reconnaitre qu’ils se situent à une échelle qui dépasse l’individu. De même, il apparait nécessaire de considérer la dimension pratique de mise en oeuvre des solutions proposées. L’ouverture épistémique de la bioéthique semble être un atout important à cet égard. Toutefois, on peut se demander si le potentiel d’hybridation entre les savoirs défendu par Boudreau LeBlanc risque d’être atténué par la professionnalisation et la centralisation de la médiation entre ceux-ci. De même, il importe de préserver le caractère distinctif de la bioéthique. (shrink)

Is it possible to interfere with individual decision-making while preserving freedom of choice? The purpose of this article is to assess whether ‘libertarian paternalism’, a set of political and ethical principles derived from the observations of behavioural sciences, can form the basis of a viable framework for the ethical analysis of public health interventions. First, the article situates libertarian libertarianism within the broader context of the law and economics movement. The main tenets of the approach are then presented and particular (...) attention is given to its operationalization through the notion of a ‘nudge’. Essentially, a ‘nudge’ consists in an intervention, which aims to suggest one choice over another by gently steering individual choices in welfare-enhancing directions yet without imposing any significant limit on available choices. Finally, the article concludes that, while it fails as an overreaching framework of ethical analysis, libertarian paternalism nonetheless constitutes a valuable addition to the conceptual toolbox of public health ethics. (shrink)

This paper considers Freud's 1920 text, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in light of Jacques Derrida's critical commentary on it in The Post Card. Against the deconstructive reading that highlights the performative aspects of Freud's speculative remarks, David-Ménard reads Freud's theory of the death drive as an epistemological and experimental hypothesis necessary for giving an account of the complexity and diversity of the clinical phenomenon of repetition in psychoanalysis. Though the death drive never appears locatable as such in the various (...) examples given by Freud, it is nonetheless accessible in the constellation of differences produced by traumatic dreams, children's games, etc. (shrink)

The notion of transparency regularly comes up in discussions about the secondary uses of health data. Few studies, however, examine the impact of the presence or absence of transparency on members of the public. This literature review responds to this gap in the scientific literature. It is the result of a secondary analysis of 124 texts from an exploratory review on transparency, following the PRISMAS-ScR guidelines. The results help to identify negative or positive impacts and associate these with certain communication (...) components relating to secondary uses of health data. They also make it possible to identify the components associated with communication deemed transparent or opaque by stakeholders. Transparency, and more specifically continuity of communication, is strongly associated with increased trust and social acceptability, whereas members of the public generally perceive a lack of transparency negatively. This literature review also deepens our understanding of the potential negative impacts of transparent communication. (shrink)

I propose a reflection on the notion of Mapuche archive focusing on Mapuche jewelry as a special kind of document. As they were made with coins, I analyze the problem of the value associated with these jewels. Thus, I describe a historical movement, through which the coins were first withdrawn from the logic given by the Chilean political-economic archive, and then were inserted in a Mapuche logic of value and archive, understanding the latter as an instrument of political legitimacy. Then (...) I analyze their post-conquest journey, and their reinsertion in the Chilean field as commodities until their current museographic resignifications. I conclude by commenting some forms of their present assessment in the context of multicultural and patrimonial management of cultural differences. (shrink)

Neste artigo, trata-se, por um lado, de compreender até que ponto a existência humana e o pensamento, naquilo que eles têm de inventivo, são feitos de sínteses disjuntivas. E qual tipo de repetição entre os elementos, ligados de maneira nãocasual, mas não sistemática, supõe esta síntese tão importante no pensamento de Gilles Deleuze. Por outro lado, trata-se de saber se esse conceito de repetição converge com aquele que reclama a psicanálise.

In April 2020, almost six out of 10 people around the world were in lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Being locked down usually has a deleterious effect on the confined individual's mental health. In this exceptionally challenging context, finding ways to minimize negative mood about the pandemic is essential. Pandemic-related negative states (“negative mood”) and recovery experiences were investigated in a sample of 264 individuals who completed daily surveys four times per day over 7 consecutive days. MSEMs analyses revealed (...) that negative mood persisted from moment-to-moment through the day, thus showing a response lag effect. Further analyses revealed that when someone experienced pandemic-related psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, control, pleasure, or relatedness at specific periods of the day, mood had improved at the next measured time period, suggesting a protective effect. However, the pattern displayed by singles with dependents suggests that some recovery experiences at specific periods during the day seem to have a backfiring effect and worsen subsequent mood. These findings bring new insight into the role of recovery experiences during lockdowns and suggest that many could benefit from such experiences throughout the day when self-isolating. However, for individuals with multiple risk factors such as being single with dependents, some recovery experiences, at specific periods during the day, might not bring the desired outcome and future research is needed to examine if guilt or domestic burden may explain this finding. Results contribute to our understanding of how to take care of one's mental health during the current pandemic, and concrete recommendations adapted to individual contexts are provided. (shrink)

Ecrire un ouvrage intitulé La Révolution galiléenne; n'y faire l'analyse de la production d'aucun concept; n'exposer le procès de formation ni de la dynamique galiléenne, ni des rapports constitutifs de la théorie copernicienne à la mathématique ptoléméenne, ni de la géométrie analytique ou du principe d'inertie; taire l'architectonique des Principia de Newton et la récurrence qui s'y exerce sur les travaux de physique et d'astronomie mathématiques du siècle; tenir à juste raison que les sciences ont rapport à autre chose qu'elles (...) mais seulement pour parler de cet autre sans jamais penser distinctement les articulations spécifiques de ce rapport, tout en faisant néanmoins de locutions impliquant l'épistémologie un usage plus fréquent que peut être tout autre historien des sciences antérieur; tenir enfin le discours de la « culture occidentale » sur la science sans rien nous dire précisément sur celle-ci, en parlant toujours de celle-là, tel est le pari qui vient d'être en 900 pages formant deux tomes, tenu et gagne. On montrera de façon sommaire que pareille entreprise comporte des aspects moins gratuitement ludique qu'il n'y paraît ici. (shrink)