"Principe à valeur constitutionnelle en droit français, la sécurité juridique occupe une place centrale dans l'argumentaire du législateur aussi bien national qu'européen et se trouve au coeur de l'activité juridictionnelle. Dans une perspective économique du droit, les systèmes juridiques sont désormais eux-mêmes évalués à l'aune de la sécurité juridique, comme le démontrent les rapports "Doing Business", commandés par la Banque Mondiale depuis une dizaine d'années. Cependant, la crainte d'insécurité juridique semble ne jamais avoir été aussi forte. Elle est notamment révélée (...) par l'appel récurrent à la notion de sécurité juridique. La mondialisation et la "fondamentalisation" du droit amplifient le phénomène dans la mesure où l'exigence de sécurité se manifeste dans des contextes plus complexes de formation et d'application du droit. En parallèle, la notion d'insécurité juridique est évoquée en creux lors des travaux relatifs à la sécurité juridique. Or, cette dernière est le plus souvent envisagée à partir de la dénonciation de son contraire, l'insécurité juridique. Par conséquent, la sécurité juridique est envisagée de manière négative. Pourtant, l'insécurité juridique ne fait l'objet d'aucun travail conceptuel malgré son emploi généralisé. Sous l'égide de la Cour de cassation et de la Société de législation comparée, des juristes de plusieurs horizons se sont réunis à Paris le 22 mars 2021 pour mener une double analyse de cette notion dans un colloque intitulé "Insécurité juridique : l'émergence d'une notion? " Ils ont d'abord apprécié le recours à la notion d'insécurité juridique pour se livrer ensuite à un exercice prospectif, notamment au regard des nouveaux enjeux technologiques.". (shrink)

Les modes traditionnels de gestion politique sont progressivement complétés par une série de procédures laissant davantage de place, en amont d'une décision, à la participation des citoyens. L'équipement nécessaire à l'information, la publicisation des causes et leur mise en discussion puisent dans un large vivier d'innovations. En analysant une procédure de débat organisée par des élus porteurs d'un projet controversé de développement local - l'implantation d'un parc d'éoliennes dans le nord de la France - nous souhaitons montrer comment les (...) technologies de l'information et de la communication peuvent être mobilisées en tant que dispositif d'animation de la procédure de débat public dans son ensemble et comment le fait d'y recourir cristallise les tensions sur la nature démocratique de l'expérience.The traditional management policies are gradually complemented by a series of procedures allowing more space in front of a decision, the participation of citizens. The equipment required information, publicizing and their causes in discussions draw on a large pool of innovations. Analyzing a procedure debate organized by elected holders of a controversial local development - the establishment of a wind farm in the north of France - we want to show how information technology and communication can be mobilized as a device animation process of public debate in general and how to use them is crystallized tensions on the democratic nature of the experience. (shrink)

Dans le terrain sis au 135 rue Kanakari à Patras a été mise au jour une parcelle de la nécropole romaine du Nord‑Est, qui est organisée conformément aux normes des nécropoles de l’Italie et de ses colonies. Au total, onze tombes à ciste et un tombeau couvert d’une toiture en tuiles, dans un enclos, ont été dégagés. Ils ont été utilisés sans interruption du iiie s. au viie s. apr. J.‑C. À l’époque byzantine, la présence d’installations artisanales est attestée (...) sur une partie du terrain. Des 157 monnaies de bronze récupérées, nous présentons ici dix‑sept monnaies du Bas‑Empire et cinq monnaies byzantines, de la fin du iiie s. au début du viie s. apr. J.‑C., qui apportent une preuve supplémentaire de l’utilisation de la nécropole romaine du Nord‑Est de Patras à cette période. (shrink)

Copyright ©2005–2010 All rights reserved. Jonathan Bennett [Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read as though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations, are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis . . . . indicates the omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. (...) Larger omissions are reported, between brackets, in normal-sized type. The numbering of the segments of each dialogue is Malebranche’s. (shrink)

Dans ce livre, Malebranche expose sa philosophie à travers des entretiens avec un philosophe, un janséniste et un mandarin chinois. Il explore les différentes dimensions de la métaphysique, de la religion et de la mort et cherche à répondre aux questions fondamentales de l'existence. Tout étudiant en philosophie trouvera ce livre intéressant et instructif. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is (...) in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The book that the French reader holds in his hands is one of the century’s most fascinating and liberating. It does nothing less than instigate the psychoanalytic approach as a universal method of...

The contemporary discussion of modesty has focused on whether or not modest people are accurate about their own good qualities. This essay argues that this way of framing the debate is unhelpful and offers examples to show that neither ignorance nor accuracy about the good qualities related to oneself is necessary for modesty. It then offers an attention-based account, claiming that what is necessary for modesty is to direct one’s attention in certain ways. By analyzing modesty in this way, we (...) can best explain the distinct features of modesty, keep much of what is intuitive in contemporary accounts, and better understand why modesty is a virtue at all. (shrink)

Research seeking a scientific foundation for the theory of art appreciation has raised controversies at the intersection of the social and cognitive sciences. Though equally relevant to a scientific inquiry into art appreciation, psychological and historical approaches to art developed independently and lack a common core of theoretical principles. Historicists argue that psychological and brain sciences ignore the fact that artworks are artifacts produced and appreciated in the context of unique historical situations and artistic intentions. After revealing flaws in the (...) psychological approach, we introduce a psycho-historical framework for the science of art appreciation. This framework demonstrates that a science of art appreciation must investigate how appreciators process causal and historical information to classify and explain their psychological responses to art. Expanding on research about the cognition of artifacts, we identify three modes of appreciation: basic exposure to an artwork, the artistic design stance, and artistic understanding. The artistic design stance, a requisite for artistic understanding, is an attitude whereby appreciators develop their sensitivity to art-historical contexts by means of inquiries into the making, authorship, and functions of artworks. We defend and illustrate the psycho-historical framework with an analysis of existing studies on art appreciation in empirical aesthetics. Finally, we argue that the fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure can be amended to meet the requirements of the framework. We conclude that scientists can tackle fundamental questions about the nature and appreciation of art within the psycho-historical framework. (shrink)

In order to describe the logic of morality, "contractualist" philosophers have studied how individuals behave when they choose to follow their moral intuitions. These individuals, contractualists note, often act as if they have bargained and thus reached an agreement with others about how to distribute the benefits and burdens of mutual cooperation. Using this observation, such philosophers argue that the purpose of morality is to maximize the benefits of human interaction. The resulting "contract" analogy is both insightful and puzzling. On (...) one hand, it captures the pattern of moral intuitions, thus answering questions about human cooperation: why do humans cooperate? Why should the distribution of benefits be proportionate to each person's contribution? Why should the punishment be proportionate to the crime? Why should the rights be proportionate to the duties? On the other hand, the analogy provides a mere as-if explanation for human cooperation, saying that cooperation is "as if" people have passed a contract-but since they didn't, why should it be so? To evolutionary thinkers, the puzzle of the missing contract is immediately reminiscent of the puzzle of the missing "designer" of life-forms, a puzzle that Darwin's theory of natural selection essentially resolved. Evolutionary and contractualist theory originally intersected at the work of philosophers John Rawls and David Gauthier, who argued that moral judgments are based on a sense of fairness that has been naturally selected. In this book, Nicolas Baumard further explores the theory that morality was originally an adaptation to the biological market of cooperation, an arena in which individuals competed to be selected for cooperative interactions. In this environment, Baumard suggests, the best strategy was to treat others with impartiality and to share the costs and benefits of cooperation in a fair way, so that those who offered less than others were left out of cooperation while those who offered more were exploited by their partners. It is with this evolutionary approach that Baumard ultimately accounts for the specific structure of human morality. (shrink)

This paper offers a framework for consciousness of internal reality. Recent PET experiments are reviewed, showing partial overlap of cortical activation during self-produced actions and actions observed from other people. This overlap suggests that representations for actions may be shared by several individuals, a situation which creates a potential problem for correctly attributing an action to its agent. The neural conditions for correct agency judgments are thus assigned a key role in self/other distinction and self-consciousness. A series of behavioral experiments (...) that demonstrate, in normal subjects, the poor monitoring of action-related signals and the difficulty in recognizing self-produced actions are described. In patients presenting delusions, this difficulty dramatically increases and actions become systematically misattributed. These results point to schizophrenia and related disorders as a paradigmatic alteration of a ''Who?'' system for self-consciousness. (shrink)

Recently, swimming-style colour synaesthesia was introduced as a new form of synaesthesia. A synaesthetic Stroop test was used to establish its genuineness. Since Stroop interference can occur for any type of overlearned association, in the present study we used a modified Stroop test and psychophysiological synaesthetic conditioning to further establish the genuineness of this form of synaesthesia. We compared the performance of a swimming-style colour synaesthete and a control who was trained on swimming-style colour associations. Our results showed that behavioural (...) aspects of swimming-style colour synaesthesia can be mimicked in a trained control. Importantly, however, our results showed a psychophysiological conditioning effect for the synaesthete only. We discuss the theoretical relevance of swimming-style colour synaesthesia according to different models of synaesthesia. We conclude that swimming-style colour synaesthesia is a genuine form of synaesthesia, can be mimicked behaviourally in non-synaesthetes, and is best explained by a re-entrant feedback model. (shrink)

Decades of tobacco control initiatives have turned public opinion against cigarette smoking. Smokers, once considered glamorous, are now stigmatized in domains including the workplace. Extant literature lacks scrutiny of smoker stigmatization and devaluation within the job selection process, and mechanisms that lead to such outcomes. Using an experimental design, we empirically examine initial reactions to job applicants’ smoking behaviors within two samples. We show that initial impressions are significantly worse when job applicants smoke versus do not in a store-based context. (...) Moreover, this effect occurs indirectly through perceived likelihood of engaging in counterproductive work behaviors, and is conditional upon respondents’ own attitudes towards smoking. These relationships—similar for customer service and inventory management jobs—are indicative of potential biases within the hiring process. Implications of these findings, and the moral dilemmas they raise around the treatment of smokers, are discussed from the ethical perspective of human resource management. (shrink)

In the past decade, experiments on altruistic punishment have played a central role in the study of the evolution of cooperation. By showing that people are ready to incur a cost to punish cheaters and that punishment help to stabilise cooperation, these experiments have greatly contributed to the rise of group selection theory. However, despite its experimental robustness, it is not clear whether altruistic punishment really exists. Here, I review the anthropological literature and show that hunter-gatherers rarely punish cheaters. Instead, (...) they avoid dealing with them and switch to other partners. I suggest that these data are better explained by individual selection, and in particular by partner choice models, in which individuals are in competition to be recruited by cooperative partners. I discuss two apparent problems for partner choice theories: large-scale cooperation and punishments in economic games. I suggest that rather than favouring group selection theory, these two phenomena provide evidence in favour of individual selection: (1) people produce large-scale cooperation through institutions in which punishment is not altruistic but rewarded on an individual basis; (2) punishment in experimental games can be explained without altruism and is indeed often better explained by individual interests. (shrink)

Most people believe that suffering is intrinsically bad. In conjunction with facts about our world and plausible moral principles, this yields a pro tanto obligation to reduce suffering. This is the intuitive starting point for the moral argument in favor of interventions to prevent wild animal suffering. If we accept the moral principle that we ought, pro tanto, to reduce the suffering of all sentient creatures, and we recognize the prevalence of suffering in the wild, then we seem committed to (...) the existence of such a pro tanto obligation. Of course, competing values such as the aesthetic, scientific or moral values of species, biodiversity, naturalness or wildness, might be relevant to the all-things-considered case for or against intervention. Still, many argue that, even if we were to give some weight to such values, no plausible theory could resist the conclusion that WAS is overridingly important. This article is concerned with large-scale interventions to prevent WAS and their tractability and the deep epistemic problem they raise. We concede that suffering gives us a reason to prevent it where it occurs, but we argue that the nature of ecosystems leaves us with no reason to predict that interventions would reduce, rather than exacerbate, suffering. We consider two interventions, based on gene editing technology, proposed as holding promise to prevent WAS; raise epistemic concerns about them; discuss their potential moral costs; and conclude by proposing a way forward: to justify interventions to prevent WAS, we need to develop models that predict the effects of interventions on biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and animals’ well-being. (shrink)

Henrich and Boyd (2002) were the first to propose a formal model of the role of attraction in cultural evolution. They came to the surprising conclusion that, when both attraction and selection are at work, final outcomes are determined by selection alone. This result is based on a deterministic view of cultural attraction, different from the probabilistic view introduced in Sperber (1996). We defend this probabilistic view, show how to model it, and argue that, when both attraction and selection are (...) at work, both affect final outcomes. (shrink)

Synaesthesia is a heterogeneous phenomenon, even when considering one particular sub-type. The purpose of this study was to design a reliable and valid questionnaire for grapheme-colour synaesthesia that captures this heterogeneity. By the means of a large sample of 628 synaesthetes and a factor analysis, we created the Coloured Letters and Numbers questionnaire with 16 items loading on 4 different factors . These factors were externally validated with tests which are widely used in the field of synaesthesia research. The questionnaire (...) showed good test–retest reliability and construct validity . Our findings are discussed in the light of current theories and new ideas in synaesthesia research. More generally, the questionnaire is a useful tool which can be widely used in synaesthesia research to reveal the influence of individual differences on various performance measures and will be useful in generating new hypotheses. (shrink)

Punitive behaviours are often assumed to be the result of an instinct for punishment. This instinct would have evolved to punish wrongdoers and it would be the evidence that cooperation has evolved by group selection. Here, I propose an alternative theory according to which punishment is a not an adaptation and that there was no specific selective pressure to inflict costs on wrongdoers in the ancestral environment. In this theory, cooperation evolved through partner choice for mutual advantage. In the ancestral (...) environment, individuals were in competition to be recruited in cooperative ventures and it was vital to share the benefits of cooperation in a mutually advantageous manner. If individuals took a bigger share of the benefits, their partners would leave them for more interesting partners. If they took a smaller share, they would be exploited by their partners who would receive more than what they had contributed to produce. This competition led to the selection of a sense of fairness, a cognitive adaptation aiming to share equally the benefits of cooperation in order to attract partners. In this theory, punishment is not necessary for the evolution of cooperation. Punitive behaviours are only a way to restore fairness by compensating the victim or penalizing the culprit. Drawing on behavioural economics, legal anthropology, and cognitive psychology, I show that empirical data fit better with this framework than with the theory of group selection. When people punish, they do so to restore fairness rather than to help the group. (shrink)

This research aims to propose a new theory to account for the functions of biological objects. For this, I will show that the most accepted theories of biological functions fail, and then I will propose a new alternative that overcomes the given counterexamples. The research is divided into the following questions: i) appealing to various counterexamples, noting that there is no robust theory capable of accounting for the phenomenon; finally ii) I will give a minimal provisional / operational theory, which (...) allows us to continue incorporating the functional dimension of the features. (shrink)

In the historical context of a crisis in biological psychiatry, psychedelic drugs paired with psychotherapy are globally re-emerging in research clinics as a potential transdiagnostic therapy for treating mood disorders, addictions, and other forms of psychological distress. The treatments are poised to soon shift from clinical trials to widespread service delivery in places like Australia, North America, and Europe, which has prompted ethical questions by social scientists and bioethicists. Taking a broader view, we argue that the ethics of psychedelic therapy (...) concerns not simply how psychotherapies are different when paired with psychedelic drugs, but how psychedelic therapies shape and are shaped by different values, norms, and metaphysical commitments. Drawing from the published literature and interviews with seven psychedelic therapists working in clinical trials in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia, this article opens the black box of the treatments to consider the values and informal debates currently animating the therapies. Considering questions of patient autonomy, mechanisms of therapeutic action, and which therapies are best suited to pair with psychedelic substances, we examine the ethics of psychedelic therapy as an emergent form of life. To bring this form of life out in fuller relief, we conclude by comparing and contrasting it with ayahuasca use in Amazonian shamanism. (shrink)

Il est assez commun de se représenter le bûcheron comme un être plutôt fruste, qualifié avant tout par sa force au service d’une tâche peu valorisée. Or cette représentation se révèle tronquée, car l’équation qui associe la force à l’outil ne peut se réaliser sans le contrôle du geste. Plus encore, l’écoute des témoignages recueillis auprès des forestiers nous apprend que ce travail réclame d’efficaces systèmes de précision. C’est là une qualification oubliée, pourtant reconnue à part entière dès l’Iliade, qui (...) nous en donne deux témoins privilégiés par l’anthropologie historique de la Grèce, la mètis, l’« intelligence rusée », prêtée au kybérnêtês, le pilote du navire, au conducteur de char et, en bonne première place, au bûcheron. La théorie du contrôle nous permet maintenant de dépasser le flou conceptuel de la notion historiquement pré-théorique de mètis, la ruse s’appliquant à des cas bien trop divers, pour lui préférer les développements les plus récents d’une science du contrôle de l’action, théorisée depuis Wiener, nourrissant aujourd’hui les projets les mieux financés de cyber-cerveaux informatiques, au service des neurosciences et de la médecine. Le travail forestier, qui réclame une coordination maîtrisée des gestes, y compris de leurs commandes vocales dans le chant de travail — qu’un seul ou plusieurs bûcherons en équipe soient mobilisés —, nous en fournit une parfaite illustration. The woodcutter is commonly represented as a fairly boorish person, reduced to brute force and low-level tasks. But this representation is partial because a simplistic inferential link between an axe and strength obliterates that nothing can happen without any modus operandi, i.e. a set of neural controls over gestures. Indeed, listening to woodcutter’s testimonies led us to elicit that this work needs efficient precision systems. This high level of qualification was acknowledged at least since Homer’s Iliad as evidenced by two favourite telltales from historical anthropology of Ancient Greece: mètis ascribed to kybérnêtês, the ship’s pilot as to the chariot-driver and in the first rank to the woodcutter. Control theory allows now to avoid the fuzziness of meaning of the pre-theoretical notion of mètis to focus on a domain steadily developed since Wiener, now part of costly cyber-brain projects in informatics, for neuroscience and medicine. Forest work, which requires skilled gesture coordination, with vocal commands in a worksong—for one or more woodcutters being engaged in the task—is such a telling case. (shrink)

La scénographie est le plus souvent considérée au théâtre dans sa dimension esthétique ou dans sa capacité à devenir un espace ludique. Or, à l’opéra, si ces deux dimensions restent importantes et se complexifient du fait des contraintes spécifiques du chant et des attentes du public, c’est la fonction dramaturgique qui passe au premier plan. La nécessité de donner le décor à l’avance pour qu’il soit construit dans les ateliers impose qu’il soit pensé avec la mise en scène, en même (...) temps qu’elle. Grâce à un exemple précis, nous montrerons comment le trio dramaturgie-scénographie et mise en scène fonctionne étroitement pour faire émerger le sens. C’est donc à cette voix dramaturgique du scénographe que nous nous intéresserons ici. (shrink)

The growing critical and economic success of Virtual Reality technologies is generating renewed scholarly interest in virtual environments. One of the most long-lasting and influential perspectives on the topic has been labelled «virtual realism» (Heim [1998]), and it has passed throughout the entire history of virtual environments studies up to recent days (Chalmers [2022]). Virtual Realism frames virtual environments in terms of realism, and precisely of perceptive soundness and isomorphism between physical environments and virtual ones, producing a convincing illusion of (...) being physically present in the digital space. This article develops a critical counter-argument to this account. By employing James J. Gibson’s ecology of perception and Deleuze’s and Lévy’s philosophy of the virtual, the article aims at demonstrating that the ontology of virtual environments is rooted in a domain of predetermined possibilities, and that the resulting aesthetics can not be fully immersive. Instead, the latter should embrace the «emersive» and anti-realistic qualities of the medium as an expressive device. (shrink)

Interest in the computational aspects of modeling has been steadily growing in philosophy of science. This paper aims to advance the discussion by articulating the way in which modeling and computational errors are related and by explaining the significance of error management strategies for the rational reconstruction of scientific practice. To this end, we first characterize the role and nature of modeling error in relation to a recipe for model construction known as Euler’s recipe. We then describe a general model (...) that allows us to assess the quality of numerical solutions in terms of measures of computational errors that are completely interpretable in terms of modeling error. Finally, we emphasize that this type of error analysis involves forms of perturbation analysis that go beyond the basic model-theoretical and statistical/probabilistic tools typically used to characterize the scientific method; this demands that we revise and complement our reconstructive toolbox in a way that can affect our normative image of science. (shrink)

If panpsychism is true, it suggests that consciousness pervades not only our brains and bodies but also the entire universe, prompting a reevaluation of our existential attitudes. Hence, panpsychism potentially fulfills psychological needs typically addressed by religious beliefs, such as a sense of belonging and purpose but also transcendence. The discussion is organized into two main areas: the implications of panpsychism for basic human existential needs, such as feelings of kinship, ommunication, and loneliness; and for greater existential questions relating to (...) mystical experiences including transcendent unity and alleviation of the fear of death. In conclusion panpsychism may provide a deeper meaning in life for some people but its broader impact depends on individual dispositions and the cultural context in which it is embedded. (shrink)

This essay defends the possibility of preemptive forgiving, that is, forgiving before the offending action has taken place. This essay argues that our moral practices and emotions admit such a possibility, and it attempts to offer examples to illustrate this phenomenon. There are two main reasons why someone might doubt the possibility of preemptive forgiving. First, one might think that preemptive forgiving would amount to granting permission. Second, one might think that forgiving requires emotional content that is not available prior (...) to wrongdoing. If, however, preemptively forgiving is genuinely possible—as this essay hopes to illustrate—then this fact has implications for our understanding of both relational normativity and the nature of forgiveness. (shrink)

The belief in immanent justice is the expectation that the universe is designed to ensure that evil is punished and virtue rewarded. What makes this belief so ‘natural’? Here, we suggest that this intuition of immanent justice derives from our evolved sense of fairness. In cases where a misdeed is followed by a misfortune, our sense of fairness construes the misfortune as a way to compensate for the misdeed. To test this hypothesis, we designed a set of studies in which (...) we show that people who do not believe in immanent justice are nonetheless implicitly influenced by intuitions of immanent justice. Strikingly, this effect disappears when the misfortune is disproportionate compared to the misdeed: In this case, justice is not restored and participants lose the intuition of immanent justice. Following recent theories of religion, we suggest that this intuition contributes to the cultural success of beliefs in immanent justice. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est consacre a l'etude de la distinction linguistique entre noms massifs (lait, mobilier, desordre, amour...) et noms comptables (chat, equipe, combat, chose...). Les premiers sont normalement invariables, tandis que les seconds s'emploient librement au singulier et au pluriel. Apres avoir etabli qu'il s'agit bien d'une distinction morpho-syntaxique, l'ouvrage discute la possibilite de caracteriser semantiquement cette distinction. Les recherches existantes ne tiennent compte, essentiellement, que des noms s'appliquant au domaine materiel. Ce travail, au contraire, examine en detail aussi bien (...) les noms concrets qu'abstraits. Il propose de redefinir les proprietes souvent attribuees aux noms massifs (references distributive et cumulative), grace, notamment, a une nouvelle notion de partie. Concernant les noms comptables, il montre qu'aucune propriete purement semantique n'est necessaire pour qu'un nom soit de ce type. L'ouvrage se termine par l'analyse des conversions (emplois massifs des noms comptables, et vice versa), et du role qu'y jouent les facteurs pragmatiques. (shrink)

Many of us, even on our happiest days, struggle to quiet the constant buzz of anxiety in the background of our minds. All kinds of worries--worries about losing people and things, worries about how we seem to others--keep us from peace of mind. Distracted or misled by our preoccupations, misconceptions, and, most of all, our obsession with ourselves, we don't see the world clearly--we don't see the world as it really is. In our search for happiness and the good life, (...) this is the main problem. But luckily there is a solution, and on the path to understanding it, we can make use of the rich and varied teachings that have developed over centuries of Buddhist thought. With clarity and compassion, Nicolas Bommarito explores the central elements of centuries of Buddhist philosophy and practice, explaining how they can improve your life and teach you to live without fear. Mining important texts and lessons for practical guidance, he provides a friendly guide to the very practical goals that underpin Buddhist philosophy. After laying out the basic ideas, Bommarito walks readers through a wide range of techniques and practices we can adopt to mend ingrained habits. Rare for its exploration of both the philosophy that motivates Buddhism and its practical applications, this is a compassionate guide to leading a good life that anyone can follow. (shrink)

Most people agree that inflicting unnecessary suffering upon animals is wrong. Many fewer people, including among ethicists, agree that painlessly killing animals is necessarily wrong. The most commonly cited reason is that death (without pain, fear, distress) is not bad for them in a way that matters morally, or not as significantly as it does for persons, who are self-conscious, make long-term plans and have preferences about their own future. Animals, at least those that are not persons, lack a morally (...) significant interest in continuing to live. At the same time, some argue that existence itself can be good, insofar as one’s life is worth living. For animals, a good life can offset a quick, if early, death. So, it seems to follow that breeding happy animals that will be (prematurely) killed can be a good thing overall. Insofar as slaughter and sale makes it economically sustainable to raise new ones, who would otherwise not exist, raising and killing animals for food who will have lives worth living is good overall. It benefits them as well as consumers, and makes the world better by adding to the sum of happiness. The process of raising and killing animals with positive welfare produces a sequence of replacement that maintains or increases overall welfare, all else being equal (assuming in particular no overall negative impact on the welfare of other parties). Call this the Replaceability Argument (RA) and the ensuing controversy the Replaceability Problem (RP). This is a problem at the crossroads of the ethics of killing, agricultural ethics, procreation ethics, and population ethics. (shrink)

How do humans manage to keep track of a gradually changing object or person as the same persisting individual despite the fact that the extraction of information about this individual must often rely on heterogeneous information sources and heterogeneous tracking methods? The article introduces the Empirical Tracking of Individuals theory to address this problem. This theory proposes an analysis of the concept of integrated tracking, which refers to the capacity to acquire, store, and update information about the identity and location (...) of individuals in our environment. It hypothesizes that certain functions of attention are a key to explaining how the cognitive flexibility of the human mind overcomes the heterogeneity of sources and methods in integrated tracking. At least two premises lend support to this hypothesis. First, heterogeneity of tracking sources is overcome by the combination of information from multiple perceptual modalities and a phenomenon of multisensory 'transparency'. Second, heterogeneity of tracking sources and methods may also be overcome by inferences that combine information across domains to acquire reasons to believe propositions about the target's location and identity. (shrink)

This paper intends to bring Austinian themes into methodological discussion about models. Using Austinian conceptual vocabulary, I argue that models perform actions in and outside of the academic field. This multiplicity of fields induces a variety of felicity conditions and types of performed actions. If for example, an inference from a model is judged according to some epistemological criteria in the scientific field, the representation of the world which the model carries will not be judged by the same criteria outside (...) the scientific field. A model can be considered as a standard in a strict scientific framework, while not being used as part of public policies, or vice versa. However, we focus on the dynamics between different fields. (shrink)