This book disentangles the complex meanings of responsibility in nanotechnology development by focusing on its theoretical and empirical dimensions. The notion of responsibility is extremely diversified in the public discourse of nanoscale technologies. Addressed are major disciplinary perspectives working on nanotechnology, e.g. philosophy, sociology, and political science, as well as the major multidisciplinary areas relevant to the innovation process, e.g. technology assessment and ethics. Furthermore, the interplay between such expertises, disciplines, and research programmes in providing a multidisciplinary understanding of responsibility (...) is emphasized. (shrink)

As the purpose of this book is to open dialogue, we draw no conclusions. Instead, reflecting on the theoretical and practical implications that arise from each chapter, we offer some reflection through an exploration of the ways in which Australia has broadened discussions on P4C. In addition, we situate our discussion in contemporary global issues relevant to education and schooling: gender stereotyping, bias and language; Aboriginal philosophy; environmental education; and sexuality, adolescence and discrimination. As a community of children, adolescents and (...) adults, philosophers and educators, as well as citizens, we have an opportunity to contribute educationally to an inquiring society. (shrink)

Did Descartes ever develop a political thought of his own? This question, still open in the field of cartesian studies, is maybe doomed to remain without a definitive answer, mainly because of the lack of a specific work dedicated by him to politics. Nevertheless, we have a long letter to Princess Elisabeth in which the French philosopher, starting from his reading of Machiavelli's masterpiece, Il Principe, discusses political matters, and especially the political instruments that a good prince should use in (...) order to guarantee stability to his reign. The present essay deals with it, exploring the possibility that Descartes might have been trying to outline in that text the main features of a political anthropology, founding it on the universal anthropology of passions that he was developing in those years. (shrink)

Constitutional reform has been an important means to push populist authoritarian agendas in Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Venezuela. The embrace of constitutional means and rhetoric in pursuit of these agendas has led to the growing recognition of ‘populist constitutionalism’ as a contemporary political phenomenon. In all four examples mentioned above, democracy, popular sovereignty and direct plebiscitary appeal to the people is the rhetorical and justificatory framework for constitutional reform. This, I worry, gives democracy a bad name and reinforces the widespread (...) suspicion that citizens should not be directly involved in constitutional reform as popular participation can lead to dangerous majoritarianism and is easily manipulated by elite actors seeking to weaken constitutional checks and balances. But the problem, I argue, is not inherent in citizen’s participation in constitutional reform. In contrast to populist constitutionalism, I develop an idea of deliberative constitutionalism in which citizens can participate in constitution-making and reform without hijacking constitutionalism for majoritarian, nationalist or anti-pluralist ends. Deliberative constitutionalism as I understand it has four features: a Habermasian co-originality thesis that articulates the interdependence of democracy and liberalism mediated by a conception of discourse; a proceduralized idea of popular sovereignty that reduces the tension between appeal to the people and respect for pluralism; the centrality of the public sphere over the voting booth as the cradle of democracy; institutional innovations intended to include citizens in constitutional reform (including through referendums) but avoid majoritarian and populist pathologies. (shrink)

Mapping a Controversy of our Time: The Anthropocene We offer a bibliometric analysis of the literature and authors of the controversial Anthropocene discipline. Thanks to digital tools, we comprehend this complexity by drawing on existing literature and digital networks. In order to appreciate the interdisciplinary character of the controversy, we show clusters of co-cited publications, co-authors, and co-occurring terms in the fields of social science, agricultural and biological science, environmental science, and Earth and planetary science. The multidisciplinary character of Anthropocene (...) research is reflected in the co-citation analysis and the term co-occurrence analysis. We found two clusters of co-occurring terms, representing agreement and disagreement with Anthropocene, and offer a comparison of the emblematic works presented in the network. (shrink)

Il s’agit là du livre d’une historienne dont les analyses s’appuient sur une remarquable documentation. La bibliographie qui termine l’ouvrage en fait foi, et elle tient compte en particulier de la littérature la plus récente. Si beaucoup d’éléments de la vie de Colette sont déjà connus, ils sont replacés ici dans le cadre d’une histoire sociale et d’une histoire culturelle, à la manière de Theodore Zeldin ou de Pascal Ory. L’intrication entre d’une part la vie de l’auteur, la formation intel...

The term “lean in” was popularized by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, via her #1 Best Seller encouraging women to defy their fears and dare to be leaders in their fields. She received criticism because although admitting to external barriers contributing to the gender gap in leadership, the scope of her book focused on the internal shortcomings of women. She asserted that women are hindered by barriers that exist within themselves, and provided practical tips, backed by research, to equip women with (...) strategies to proactively progress in the workplace instead of shying away. Sandberg is not the first to raise concern about gender inequality. Other women in history like Susan B. Anthony and Maggie Lena Walker also challenged lopsided gender roles through their words and actions. Using the critical biography methodology, this paper explores these women’s experiences, philosophies and contributions, reflects on Sandberg’s insight, and develops a framework, based on the theory of planned behavior as well as the ethical principles of utilitarianism and corporate social responsibility, that links internal factors, organizational external factors, and societal external factors to intentions to lean in and leaning in behavior. Thus, via critical biography, this paper examines both internal and external factors, showing how they are linked, and how they may impact leaning in intentions and behavior. The paper also discusses how leaning in may influence both individual and gender mobility for women, and ultimately, increased gender equality. (shrink)

While discourse and deliberation cannot replace voting, bargaining, or compromise, Chambers argues, it is important to maintain a background moral conversation in which to anchor other activities.

The Bells of Sevastopol: On Nietzsche's First Musical Composition. This article offers an interpretation and new dating of Nietzsche’s early musical compositions. These documents – harmony exercises and small compositions – are crucial for understanding the beginning of Nietzsche’s study of music. Of these musical scores, the most interesting is the so-called “melody fragment.” This short “melody” is not simply an adolescent’s attempt to write music; it is instead an interesting document on the intellectual activity of the young Nietzsche during (...) the years of the Crimean War. A comparison of some notebooks of the period reveals similarities that allow us a precise dating. Moreover, this “melody” suggestively recalls the death knell after “the fall of Sevastopol.”. (shrink)

Resumo Este artigo examina um período muito breve da juventude de Nietsche, de seu nascimento a 1862. Durante estes anos Nietzsche descobre progressivamente que o mundo encantado ao interno do qual ele nascera, protegido e seguro, não é imune ao mal e às doenças. Neste estudo examina-se todas as doenças que Nietzsche viu entrar em casa, através do pai, dos parentes e dos amigos. Antes mesmo que sua biografia registrasse patologias que ele carregará consigo até o fim, Nietzsche encontrará as (...) feições do mal nas formas históricas que a sua época registrou deixando marcas indeléveis no seu imaginário.This article examines a very short period of Nietzsche's youth, from his birth to 1862. During these years, Nietzsche gradually discovered that the enchanted world in which he was born, protected and safe, was not immune to evil and disease. This study examines all the diseases that Nietzsche has experienced inside the house, through his father, relatives and friends. Even before his biography recorded pathologies that he would remember ever after, Nietzsche met the face of evil in the historical knowledge that his time recorded leaving indelible traces in his imagination. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSkepticism about citizen competence is a core component of Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels’s call, in Democracy for Realists, for rethinking our model of democracy. In this paper I suggest that the evidence for citizen incompetence is not as clear as we might think; important research shows that we are good group problem solvers even if we are poor solitary truth seekers. I argue that deliberative democracy theory has a better handle on this fundamental fact of human cognition (...) and therefore has a more realistic view of the conditions that might improve citizen competence. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the asymmetrical mediated communication of the broad democratic public sphere can profitably be understood through the lens of deliberative democracy only if we adopt a system approach to deliberation. A system approach, however, often introduces a division of labor between ordinary citizens and experts. Although this division of labor is unavoidable and I believe compatible with a deliberative principle of legitimacy, it flirts with elitist theories of democracy: epistemic elites come up with the agendas, (...) ideas, and policy positions and democratic publics ratify or repudiate the agendas but do not generate or really engage with them. This I argue would violate an essential defining feature of deliberative democracy, namely that epistemic quality and equal participation are tightly linked. I turn to Habermas and his idea of a feedback loop as a possible solution to this dilemma. (shrink)

A widespread historiographical portrayal represented Descartes' dualism as constituted in direct contrast with Aquinas' concept of soul-form. In the wake of the many studies that have opposed this prejudice in recent decades, this book reconstructs the fifteenth and seventeenth-century debate on psychology, focusing primarily on the Jesuit context and on the intersection between Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Augustinianism in early modern France. Beginning with a rigorous investigation of the theories of the separated soul, particular attention is then given to the indirect (...) derivation of the Cartesian cogito and innatism from angelological themes of the time. Indeed, in the years in which Descartes elaborates his metaphysics, the immediate proximity between souls and angels is somehow a matter of fact, in the light of which many of the argumentative choices of the Meditations, and even the relationship that closely joins the "thinking substance" with the body-machine, appear clear. -/- . (shrink)

The problem of free will lies at the heart of modern scientific studies of consciousness. Some authors propose that actions are unconsciously initiated and awareness of intention is referred retrospectively to the action after it has been performed [e.g. Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Wegner, D. M. . On the inference of personal authorship: Enhancing experienced agency by priming effect information. Consciousness & Cognition, 14, 439–458]. This contrasts with the common impression that our intentions cause those actions. By combining a (...) stop signal paradigm and an intentional action paradigm we show that participants sometimes indicate to have intentionally initiated an action while reaction time data strongly suggest that they in fact failed to stop the action. In a second experiment we demonstrate that the number of trials in which participants misattributed their awareness of intention varied with the intentional involvement during action planning. Our data support the retrospective account of intentional action. Furthermore, we introduce an experimental approach that objectifies introspective judgments of awareness of intention. (shrink)

. Migrating narratives: pedagogical possibilities for relating difference. Ethics and Education: Vol. 7, Creating spaces, pp. 225-236. doi: 10.1080/17449642.2013.766539.

This article presents an investigation of the organization and structures of talk-in-interaction over mobile phone. The analysis is based upon naturally occurring data consisting of a corpus of calls recorded during everyday activities of a young adult. Using these data we reveal a range of sequential phenomena associated with mobile phone usage. Established conversation analytic work on landline telephone conversation is used in order to build a comparative analysis of how actions such as openings, caller–called identity management, and topic introduction (...) are accomplished in mobile vs landline telephone conversation. We first show that, far from revolutionizing the organization of telephone conversation, mobile phone talk retains many of the norms associated with landline phone talk. Subsequently, focusing on those modifications that are identifiable in our data, we show how these are related to aspects of the communicative affordances of mobile phones, orientations to which are observable in the talk of participants in mobile phone conversation. (shrink)

This is the first collection of essays bringing together Deleuzian Philosophy and postcolonial theory. Bignall and Patton assemble some of the world's leading figures in these fields to explore rich linkages between two previously unrelated areas of study.

Emerging from thought-provoking discussions and correspondence Simone Weil had with the Reverend Father Perrin, this classic collection of essays contains her most profound meditations on the relationship of human life to the realm of the transcendant.An enlightening introduction by Leslie Fiedler examines Weil's extraordinary roles as a philosophy teacher turned mystic. "One of the most neglected resources of our century ", Waiting for God will continue to influence spiritual and political thought for centuries to come.

"Lezioni di metafisica" presenta tradotti per la prima volta in italiano due cicli di lezioni tenuti da Henri Bergson presso la classe di khâgne del Lycée Henri-IV, tra il 1893 e il 1894. Per la loro collocazione temporale, a cavallo tra gli anni del "Saggio sui dati immediati della coscienza" (1889) e "Materia e memoria" (1896), queste lezioni risultano di straordinario interesse per gli studi sul filosofo francese, che vi sviluppa un serrato confronto con la storia della metafisica moderna e (...) della psicologia. Aristotele, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Spencer sono presentati e discussi da Bergson, che riflette – con loro e attraverso di loro – sui grandi temi dello spazio, del tempo, della materia, della memoria e dell’individualità. Tra i banchi dell’Henri-IV Bergson mette a punto un vero e proprio studio preparatorio per la sua originale critica al pensiero classico. (shrink)

Damaris Masham’s letters to John Locke can be fruitfully read as a form of philosophical autobiography. By reading them in this way, neglected aspects of Masham’s philosophy of sociability and the self’s relationship to the world can be brought to light. My first section introduces Masham and the letters, suggesting that generic interpretation has been an obstacle to their reception. Second, I argue that they are autobiographical. Third, I argue that they can be considered as philosophical autobiography. To demonstrate this, (...) I contrast Masham’s published stance on sociability with the stance on the topic that is revealed through the autobiographical reflections in the Locke correspondence.This... (shrink)

The question of how gender might inflect and affect philosophy as a way of life has been somewhat neglected, as has the role of philosophical modes of living for historical female philosophers. This essay draws on Michel Foucault’s multifaceted, Hadot‐inspired conception of philosophy to show how transformative philosophical practices of the self function as feminist praxis in the work of the early modern feminist philosopher Mary Astell. Philosophy in Astell’s texts, the essay argues, is a spiritual practice of the self (...) that at the same time functions as a feminist critique both of sexist social structures and of the self that undertakes the practice. It facilitates women in achieving internal freedom. Finally, the essay discusses potential feminist concerns about Astell’s proposed philosophical way of living, before suggesting that it may have value for women today. (shrink)

Epigenetic and transcriptional variability contribute to the vast diversity of cellular and organismal phenotypes and are key in human health and disease. In this review, we describe different types, sources, and determinants of epigenetic and transcriptional variability, enabling cells and organisms to adapt and evolve to a changing environment. We highlight the latest research and hypotheses on how chromatin structure and the epigenome influence gene expression variability. Further, we provide an overview of challenges in the analysis of biological variability. An (...) improved understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying epigenetic and transcriptional variability, at both the intra- and inter-individual level, provides great opportunity for disease prevention, better therapeutic approaches, and personalized medicine. Epigenetic and transcriptional variability mediate phenotypic plasticity, enabling adaptation to changing environments. In this review, we describe the sources of inter- and intra-individual variability and discuss epigenetic regulators of gene expression variability, including DNA methylation and chromatin structure. Understanding these molecular mechanisms will improve therapeutic approaches and personalized medicine. (shrink)

Abstract I analyse the relationship between the Ramsey Test (RT) for the acceptance of indicative conditionals and the so-called problem of decision-instability. In particular, I argue that the situations which allegedly bring about this problem are troublesome just in case the relevant conditionals are evaluated by non-suppositional versions, e.g. causal/evidential, of the test. In contrast, a suppositional RT, by highlighting the metacognitive nature of the evaluation of indicative conditionals, allows an agent to run a simulation of such evaluation, without yet (...) committing her to the acceptance of such conditionals. I conclude that a suppositional interpretation of RT is superior to its nonsuppositional counterparts and by briefly showing that a suppositional RT is compatible with a deliberational decision theory. (shrink)

For Christian theology, the survival of the soul after the death of the body is a matter of fact. However, its philosophical explanation is probably the most peculiar issue of Thomas Aquinas’ radically Aristotelianaccount of body-soul. For both Augustine and Avicenna – who, together with Aristotle, can be considered the main sources of thirteenth century philosophy – the certainty of the immaterial soul’s ability to survive independently from the body was so strong that, coining their very own notions of human (...) spiritual substance, they described it as only partially implied in the act of the body’s information. This account was able to mediate between Aristotle’s idea of the soul as a form of the body and the Neoplatonic theory of the soul as an independent substance.... (shrink)

In the late 1950s the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) made a major effort to fund collaborative research between its member states. One of the first initiatives following the establishment of the alliance's Science Committee was the creation of a sub-group devoted to marine science: the Sub-committee on Oceanographic Research.This paper explores the history of this organization, charts its trajectory over the 13 years of its existence, and considers its activities in light of NATO's naval defence strategies. In particular it shows (...) how the alliance's naval commands played a key role in the sub-committee's creation due to the importance of oceanographic research in the tracking of enemy submarines. The essay also scrutinizes the reasons behind the committee's dissolution, with a special focus on the changing landscape of scientific collaboration at NATO. The committee's fall maps onto a more profound shift in the alliance's research agenda, including the re-organization of defence research and the rise of environmentalism. (shrink)

New translations tracing decades of Beauvoir's leftist political engagement during the turbulent era of decolonization, from articles exposing conditions in fascist Spain and Portugal in 1945 and hard hitting attacks on right-wing intellectuals in the 1950s, to a 1962 defense of an Algerian freedom fighter, Djamila Boupacha, and a 1975 article calling for the 'two state solution' in Israel. The texts range from a surprising 1952 defense of the misogynistic 18th c. pornographer, the Marquis de Sade, to the transcription of (...) a co-written 1974 documentary film on the aged in France. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present trust as a meta-emotion, such that it is an emotion that precedes first-order emotions. It examines how trust can be considered a meta-emotion by establishing criteria for identifying trust as a meta-emotion. How trust plays out differently in aesthetic and ordinary contexts can provide another mode for investigating meta-emotions. The article illustrates how it is possible to recognize these meta-emotions in narratives. Finally, it presents one of the aims of trust, sharing knowledge (...) between agents, when someone who provides testimony shares knowledge in an epistemic trust process with others. It shows a relationship construction between subjects and objects thanks to the trust, a meta-emotion that represents emotional ties between subjects to achieve another emotion. (shrink)