Connu pour ses engagements et ses responsabilités politiques - il fut avocat, résistant, conseiller de la République, sénateur, député, ministre -, Léo Hamon a aussi été un grand universitaire, inaugurant sa carrière à la faculté de droit et de science politique de Dijon. Si ses travaux de jeunesse portent essentiellement sur le droit administratif, sa carrière universitaire, à partir de 1959, lui permet d'être l'un des premiers à s'intéresser à la jurisprudence naissante du Conseil constitutionnel et à consacrer des colloques (...) et des ouvrages à la science politique, irréductiblement liée, selon lui, au droit public. Lecteur infatigable et d'une curiosité intellectuelle insatiable, Léo Hamon est l'une des dernières figures d'un certain monde des juristes. Le colloque organisé à Dijon se propose de revenir sur cet itinéraire afin d'en montrer la cohérence et la diversité, à travers les thèmes du pouvoir, que Léo Hamon a souhaité à la fois restaurer, sous la Ve République, et contrôler, par l'Intermédiaire des juges, et les figures du gaulliste si particulier et de l'universitaire reconnu que Léo Hamon incarna. (shrink)

Management and Morality provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of the moral and ethical dimension to organizational and individual behavior, while adding an original, developmental perceptive. Management and Morality combines organizational theory and behavior with approaches to organizational and individual development. The first two sections of the book, Ethical Thinking and Management Practice, and Moral Issues in Organizations, provide a clear and thorough coverage of these areas relevant to ethical behavior in and of organizations. On this basis, the third section, (...) A Developmental Perspective, develops a new approach to ethical development of organizations and individuals concerned with the improvement of organizational structures, processes, and practices so as to allow for individual morality and individual moral behavior. Rich in its coverage of the field and variety of ideas, Management and Morality will be essential reading to students and academics in management, business and organizational ethics, organizational behavior and development, and organizational sociology. (shrink)

Rawls’s difference principle and the position dubbed ‘luck egalitarianism’ are often viewed as competing theories of distributive justice. However, recent work has emphasised that Rawlsians and luck egalitarians are working with different understandings of the concept of justice, and thus not only propose different theories, but different theories of different things. Once they are no longer seen in direct competition, there are some questions to be asked about whether these two theories can be consistently endorsed alongside one another. In this (...) essay, I (begin to) investigate whether Rawls’s theory (or elements of it) and (some form of) luck egalitarianism can be consistently endorsed. -/- I begin by outlining the main aspects of Rawls’s theory and luck egalitarianism, showing them to be different kinds of theory and therefore not in direct competition. I then propose an understanding of how these ideas came to be seen to be in direct competition. Finally, I outline five different ways in which one might consistently be (some kind of) a luck egalitarian and (some kind of) a Rawlsian, and try to say something about what is to be said for and against each of these ways of combining the theories. (shrink)

Albert Einstein's attitude towards quantum mechanics—and statistical physics in general—was a puzzle to many of his contemporaries, and has remained a puzzle to the present. Though he made many significant contributions to statistical physics, he continually refused to regard that branch of science as fundamental. The present essay demonstrates that his attitude towards statistical physics was formed during his earliest investigations—between 1901 and 1903. In particular, it is shown that in Einstein's view, statistical laws are based upon non-statistical assumptions. This (...) view influenced much of his later thinking. A few illustrations are offered, concluding with a discussion of his opposition to quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Government policy aims at a 'seamless web' of learning provision. This is exemplified in a local Learning and Skills Council supported by work on widening participation to higher education (HE) in another London sub-region. The emerging system described is comprehended as a whole from 'Foundation Learning' in compulsory schooling to post-compulsory 'Lifelong Learning' in further, higher and continuing education and training thereafter.

En Belgique, l’enseignement de la religion et de la morale est toujours organisé sur base du pacte scolaire de 1958. Or, le paysage convictionnel s’est profondément modifié, sous le double impact de la sécularisation et de l’immigration. L’idée d’une réforme s’impose de plus en plus comme une évidence, mais elle se heurte à des obstacles juridiques et politiques. Ce livre constitue un plaidoyer en faveur de l’organisation d’un cours commun d’éthique, de citoyenneté et de culture religieuse et philosophique (ECCR). Il (...) met en évidence l’impérieuse nécessité d’introduire ce cours indispensable à l’apprentissage du vivre ensemble. (shrink)

Our work is aimed at studying the optimization of a complex motor behaviour from a global perspective. First, free climbing as a sport will be briefly introduced while emphasizing in particular its psychomotor aspect called route finding. The basic question raised here is how does the optimization of a sensorimotoricity-environment system take place. The material under study is the free climber's trajectory, viewed as the signature of climbing behaviour (i.e., the spatial dimension). The concepts of learning, optimization, constraint, and degrees (...) of freedom of a system will be discussed using the synergistic approach to the study of movement (Bernstein, 1967; Kelso, 1977). Measures of a trajectory's length and convex hull can be used to define an index whose equation resembles that of an entropy. This index is a measure of the trajectory's overall complexity. Some important concepts related to the thermodynamics of curves will also be discussed. The optimization process will be studied by examining the changes in entropy over time for a set of trajectories generated during the learning of a route (ten successive repetitions of the same climb). It will be shown that the entropy of the trajectories decreases as learning progresses, that each level of expertise has its own characteristic entropy curve, and that for the subjects tested, the mean entropy of skilled climbers is lower than that of average climbers. Basing our analysis on the concepts of degrees of freedom and constraint equations, an attempt is made to relate trajectory entropy to system entropy. Based on the postulate that trajectory entropy is equal to the difference in entropy between the unconstrained and constrained system, a model of motor optimization is proposed. This model is illustrated by an entropy graph reflecting a dynamic release process. In the light of our results, two opposing views will be examined: movement construction vs. movement emergence. (shrink)

Many philosophers assume that philosophical theories about the psychological nature of moral judgment can be confirmed or disconfirmed by the kind of evidence gathered by natural and social scientists (especially experimental psychologists and neuroscientists). I argue that this assumption is mistaken. For the most part, empirical evidence can do no work in these philosophical debates, as the metaphorical heavy-lifting is done by the pre-experimental assumptions that make it possible to apply empirical data to these philosophical debates. For the purpose of (...) this paper, I emphasize two putatively empirically-supported theories about the psychological nature of moral judgment. The first is the Sentimental Rules Account, which is defended by Shaun Nichols. The second is defended by Jesse Prinz, and is a form of sentimentalist moral relativism. I show that both of the arguments in favour of these theories rely on assumptions which would be rejected by their philosophical opponents. Further, these assumptions carry substantive moral commitments and thus cannot be confirmed by further empirical investigation. Because of this shared methodological assumption, I argue that a certain form of empirical moral psychology rests on a mistake. (shrink)

Complexe, énigmatique car radicalement novatrice, la pensée nietzschéenne donne le sentiment d'être trop dispersée pour pouvoir être saisissable. Du reste, y a-t-il un ou plusieurs Nietzsche? Celui de L'Antéchris et d'Ecce Homo est-il le même que celui de La Naissance de la tragédie? Mais complexe ne signifie pas chaotique, et l'incertitude se dissipe si l'on repère les moments où se constituent ses positions fondamentales: quand la notion de pulsion se met-elle en place? Avec quel ouvrage la théorie des valeurs apparaît-elle? (...) À quel moment la logique du sentiment de puissance est-elle identifiée? Quand la philosophie est-elle comprise comme un dire-oui? Dans quel livre la tentative de lire la réalité tout entière comme volonté de puissance se fait-elle jour? Cet ouvrage apporte une réponse à ces questions. Il caractérise l'apport des principaux textes de Nietzsche, et montre que l'évolution de sa réflexion n'est pas faite de revirements ni d'abandons de thèses au profit de thèses nouvelles, mais d'un affinement progressif au sein d'une problématique invariante: conquête d'un mode de pensée réformé dont les grandes lignes sont dessinées dès son premier livre, La Naissance de la tragédie"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

An e-mail discussion can be rendered into print in several ways. Rather than trying to imitate a genuine conversation, this is a personal essay containing comments and replies by the other contributors. Most of the substantial points made in the e-mail discussion are contained here, although not always in the order they happened.

Despite its philosophical interest, Susanna Newcome’s Enquiry Into the Evidence of the Christian Religion (1728, revised 1732) has received little attention from commentators. This paper seeks to redress this oversight by offering a reconstruction of Newcome’s innovative argument for God’s existence. Newcome employs a cosmological argument that differs from Thomist and kalām version of the argument. Specifically, Newcome challenges that idea that the causal chains observed in nature can exist independently. She does this through an appeal to findings from Newtonian (...) natural philosophy that suggest that the universe has entropic tendencies. This suggests that the continued operations of nature are dependent on a cause external to the universe. Newcome identifies this external cause with God. Various strengths and weaknesses of Newcome’s argument are discussed and an attempt is made to situate the argument within her broader epistemic framework and the larger context of Newtonian physico-theology. The paper also explores what is known of Newcome’s biography and intellectual milieu. (shrink)

Brad Hooker argues that the cost of inculcating in everyone the prevent disaster rule places a limit on its demandingness. My aim in this article is show that this is not true of existential risk reduction. However, this does not spell trouble for the reason that removing persistent global harms significantly improves our long-run chances of survival. We can expect things to get better, not worse, for our population.

Psychologists have traditionally approached phenomenology by describing perceptual states, typically in the context of vision. The control of actions has often been described as 'automatic', and therefore lacking any specific phenomenology worth studying. This article will begin by reviewing some historical attempts to investigate the phenomenology of action. This review leads to the conclusion that, while movement of the body itself need not produce a vivid conscious experience, the neural process of voluntary action as a whole has distinctive phenomenological consequences. (...) The remainder of the article tries to characterise this phenomenology. First, the planning of actions is often conscious, and can produce a characteristic executive mode of awareness. Second, our awareness of action often arises from the process of matching what we intended to do with what actually happened. Failures of this matching process lead to particularly vivid conscious experience, which we call 'error awareness'. These features of action phenomenology can be directly related to established models of motor control. This allows an important connection between phenomenology and neuroscience of action. Third, whereas perceptual phenomenology is normally seen as caused or driven by the sensory stimulus, a much more fluid model is required for phenomenology of action. Several experimental results suggest that phenomenology of action is partly a post hoc reconstruction, while others suggest that our awareness of action represents an integration of several processes at multiple levels of motor processing. Fourth, and finally, studies of the phenomenology of action, unlike those of perception, show a strong linkage between primary awareness and secondary awareness or self-consciousness: awareness of action is specifically and inextricably awareness of my action. We argue that the concepts of agency and of proprioaction are fundamental to this linkage. For these reasons, action represents a much more promising field than perception for attacking the problematic question of the relation between primary and secondary consciousness. Some promising directions for future research are indicated. (shrink)

Associate to any linear ordering on the integers the mapping whose value on n is the cardinality of {kn; kn}: a purely combinatorial characterization for the mappings associated to the well-orderings is established.

This article extrapolates a theory of memory as an intentional consciousness from Sartre’s early, scattered references to memory. There are three key questions: How does Sartre conceive of memory’s intentional structure? Its temporal structure? And how does memory display both continuity and discontinuity in the stream of consciousness? Starting from the Sartrean insight that memory is a ‘double consciousness’ the article offers an analysis of how memory helps to constitute a temporally complex mode of being-in-theworld. Aside from memory’s usefulness in (...) this regard, memory also has the power to disturb consciousness and disrupt its projects. Roland Barthes’s concept of the punctum – which is connected to analyses of mourning – helps to clarify this. A synoptic analysis of Sartre and Barthes allows for a phenomenological description of how consciousness can be stuck in the past, confronted by something that was, and which holds the mind captive. (shrink)

Psychologists have traditionally approached phenomenology by describing perceptual states, typically in the context of vision. The control of actions has often been described as 'automatic', and therefore lacking any specific phenomenology worth studying. This article will begin by reviewing some historical attempts to investigate the phenomenology of action. This review leads to the conclusion that, while movement of the body itself need not produce a vivid conscious experience, the neural process of voluntary action as a whole has distinctive phenomenological consequences. (...) The remainder of the article tries to characterise this phenomenology. First, the planning of actions is often conscious, and can produce a characteristic executive mode of awareness. Second, our awareness of action often arises from the process of matching what we intended to do with what actually happened. Failures of this matching process lead to particularly vivid conscious experience, which we call 'error awareness'. These features of action phenomenology can be directly related to established models of motor control. This allows an important connection between phenomenology and neuroscience of action. Third, whereas perceptual phenomenology is normally seen as caused or driven by the sensory stimulus, a much more fluid model is required for phenomenology of action. Several experimental results suggest that phenomenology of action is partly a post hoc reconstruction, while others suggest that our awareness of action represents an integration of several processes at multiple levels of motor processing. Fourth, and finally, studies of the phenomenology of action, unlike those of perception, show a strong linkage between primary awareness and secondary awareness or self-consciousness: awareness of action is specifically and inextricably awareness of my action. We argue that the concepts of agency and of proprioaction are fundamental to this linkage. For these reasons, action represents a much more promising field than perception for attacking the problematic question of the relation between primary and secondary consciousness. Some promising directions for future research are indicated. (shrink)

Les auteurs, à partir de rencontres entre historiens et spécialistes de littérature ou de cinéma, se penchent sur la récurrence du thème de la défaite. Vercingétorix, Jeanne d'Arc, Waterloo, Sedan, juin 1940 : la France exalte volontiers vaincus et pertes. La défaite permet de refonder une nation, un peuple, une communauté, elle est l'occasion d'un sursaut.

Contemporary nation‐states commonly meet all these criteria simultaneously. But historically, this complex governmental form evolved slowly and partially, with particular characteristics developing unevenly in different locales and becoming generalized over long time periods. The processes of state formation have been strongly influenced by many factors – the transition from feudalism to capitalism, changes in military technology, wars, revolutions, imitative effects, geopolitical situations, the rise of nationalism and of liberal democracy, and the experience of communism, fascism and other forms of ‘exceptional (...) regimes’ in industrialized countries. Within the defining characteristics set out above, there can be many different state variants, with contrasting institutional arrangements. Circumstances quite often arise where most defining characteristics are present but one or several features are missing or called in question – creating difficult cases where the attribution of statehood becomes problematic. (shrink)

This paper provides a response to Hanna Pickard and Stephen Pearce’s paper ‘Balancing costs and benefits: a clinical perspective does not support a harm minimisation approach for self-injury outside of community settings.’ This paper responded to my article ‘Should healthcare professionals sometimes allow harm? The case of self-injury.’ There is much in the paper that I would agree with, but I feel it is important to respond to a number of the criticisms of my paper in order to clarify my (...) position and to facilitate ongoing debate in relation to this important issue. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of ethics in design. Traditionally, ethical questions have been seen as marginal issues in the design of technology. Part of the reason for this stems from the widely held notion of technology being “out of control.” This notion is a barrier to what I call “ethical design” because it implies that ethics has no role to play in the development of technology. This view, however, is challenged by recent work in the field of Science and (...) Technology Studies (STS). Looking into the dynamics of technological change, STS scholars argue that human choices are present at every stage of a technology’s development and, furthermore, that human values are reflected in the very design of artifacts. This alternative view suggests that ethics can and should be included in the design process. Drawing on examples from the privacy arena. I point to some of the potential advantages of addressing ethical concerns early on in the design of a technology. I conclude with some general strategies for bringing ethics back into design. (shrink)

Ordinary measurement using a standard scale, such as a ruler or a standard set of weights, has two fundamental properties. First, the results are approximate, for example, within 0.1 g. Second, the resulting indistinguishability is transitive, rather than nontransitive, as in the standard psychological comparative judgments without a scale. Qualitative axioms are given for structures having the two properties mentioned. A representation theorem is then proved in terms of upper and lower measures.

L'ambition de cet ouvrage est d'éclairer la figure du philosophe telle que Nietzsche la redéfinit à travers dix études, chacune articulée autour d'une notion clé de la réflexion nietzschéenne. Ce que Nietzsche appelle la "philosophie de l'avenir" ne désigne pas un genre ni une variante de la philosophie, mais explicite la notion même de philosophie, une fois celle-ci mise en accord avec son exigence de radicalité en matière de questionnement - ambition que, selon Nietzsche, les philosophes ne sont jamais parvenus (...) à réaliser véritablement. Habitée par cette exigence, la philosophie se doit de prendre pour objet de réflexion ce qu'il y a de plus radical, ce qui conditionne toute pensée et plus largement toute activité humaine - c'est-à-dire le mode de conditionnement lui-même, ce que Nietzsche désigne par le terme de "valeurs". A titre de conséquence, on découvre alors que c'est le façonnement de l'homme et l'élaboration d'une nouvelle forme de vie qui est au coeur de son entreprise. (shrink)