Loi de bioéthique du 2 août 2021 : analyse critique des dispositions relatives à l’assistance médicale à la procréation (AMP)

Whereas in France assisted reproductive technology (ART) was intended to respond to pathological infertility or the risk of transmitting a serious disease, the bioethics law of 2 August 2021 opens up technological procreation to fertile couples, to single women and women's couple. Procreation is thus disconnected from the carnal reality of the begetting of a child and is based solely on the will of the adult to realise his or her parental project. This is not without consequences for the rights of the child born of these technologies but also for the meaning of filiation in general.     

Reason with Baggage

In this article I show that David Novak's natural law theory precedes his encounter with Judaism. That is to say, the theory is the product of a theological viewpoint consisting of three components—createdness, commandedness, and response—that is then found by Novak in a number of areas of Jewish thought and practice that admit of the same three parts. As a result of this interpretation, I posit that Paul Nahme, who argues for a pragmatic reading of Novak's theory, as well as Martin Kavka and Randi Rashkover, who offer a political understanding of it, do not account for the theological richness and metaphysical basis of Novak's natural law theology.     

TWO CONCEPTIONS OF LIBERALISM: Theology,Creation, and Politics in the Thought of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke1

Constitutional liberal practices are capable of being normatively grounded by a number of different metaphysical positions. Kant provides one such grounding, in terms of the autonomously derived moral law. I argue that the work of Edmund Burke provides a resource for an alternative construal of constitutional liberalism, compatible with, and illumined by, a broadly Thomistic natural law worldview. I contrast Burke's treatment of the relationship between truth and cognition, prudence and rights, with that of his contemporary, Kant. We find that in each case where Kant's system is constructed from the first principle of autonomy, Burke's thought is oriented toward an end that is not of our making. Readings of Burke as a natural law thinker are currently out of fashion among Burke commentators; without relying, for the main thesis, on historical claims about Burke's “Thomism,” I nonetheless explore and challenge some of the assumptions that underlie the current orthodoxy.     

Conflict tasks and the diffusion framework: Insight in model constraints based on psychological laws

Formal models of decision-making have traditionally focused on simple, two-choice perceptual decisions. To date, one of the most influential account of this process is Ratcliff’s drift diffusion model (DDM). However, the extension of the model to more complex decisions is not straightforward. In particular, conflicting situations, such as the Eriksen, Stroop, or Simon tasks, require control mechanisms that shield the cognitive system against distracting information. We adopted a novel strategy to constrain response time (RT) models by concurrently investigating two well-known empirical laws in conflict tasks, both at experimental and modeling levels. The two laws, predicted by the DDM, describe the relationship between mean RT and (i) target intensity (Piéron’s law), (ii) standard deviation of RT (Wagenmakers–Brown’s law). Pioneering work has shown that Piéron’s law holds in the Stroop task, and has highlighted an additive relationship between target intensity and compatibility. We found similar results in both Eriksen and Simon tasks. Compatibility also violated Wagenmakers–Brown’s law in a very similar and particular fashion in the two tasks, suggesting a common model framework. To investigate the nature of this commonality, predictions of two recent extensions of the DDM that incorporate selective attention mechanisms were simulated and compared to the experimental results. Both models predict Piéron’s law and the violation of Wagenmakers–Brown’s law by compatibility. Fits of the models to the RT distributions and accuracy data allowed us to further reveal their relative strengths and deficiencies. Combining experimental and computational results, this study sets the groundwork for a unified model of decision-making in conflicting environments.     

The construction of gender in halakhic Responsa by the Reform movement: transgender people as a case study

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the expanding field of trans-Jewish-feminist studies in general, and to the scholarship about Jewish law in particular, by analyzing the ways in which the Reform movement has gradually legitimized transgender people and accepted them fully. Applying Judith Butler's ideas about the heterosexual matrix as an analytical tool, the article demonstrates how the Reform movement, in a slow and gradual process, has left the entire heterosexual matrix behind, although it can be claimed that the process (of leaving behind the heterosexual matrix) has not run all the way to a complete dissolution.     

Grace as Pardon and Power: Pictures of the Christian Life in Luther, Calvin, and Barth

Christians have long understood grace both as a declaration of acceptance and as a power that transforms. This article illumines two theses while investigating the relationship between these understandings of grace in Luther, Calvin, and Barth's development of the law/gospel dialectic and the doctrines of justification and sanctification. First, though each theologian makes use of both understandings of grace, each also tends to emphasize one over the other. The unity and tension within and between these perspectives help to show that while both pictures are of the greatest importance for each other and cannot be separated, they also exist in tension, as long as they are worked out in the lives of sinners. Second, the author claims that the positions of Luther and Barth are more alike than is generally recognized.     

What use has approved

The meaning of a word is given by a customary rule for its use. I defend that claim and explain its implications by a comparison with customary rules in law. I address two problems about customary rules: first, how can the mere facts of social practice yield a norm? Secondly, how can we explain disagreement about the requirements of a custom, if those requirements are determined by the shared practice of the participants in a community? These problems can be resolved in a way that illuminates customary rules, and helps to explain the relation between the meaning of a word and the customary rule for its use. The meaning of a word is the usefulness that it has because of the customary rule for its use.     

From is to ought: Natural Law in Buddhadasa Bhikkhu and Phra Prayudh Payutto

The contemporary Thai Theravada Buddhist monks Buddhadasa Bhikkhu and Phra Prayyudh Payutto espouse a version of natural law thinking in which the norms of good behavior derive from the nature of the world, specifically its features of conditionality, causality, karma and interdependence. An ethic which stresses non-egoic harmony is the result. This paper (1) develops the notion of natural law in their thinking and (2) critically evaluates these ideas as a foundation for ethical thought, specifically asking whether such ideas recognize something of value in the individual per se and in individual freedom and, in an interdependent world, how one can challenge injustice or a brutal government.     

Application of the generalized matching law to point-after-touchdown conversions and kicker selection in college football

Coaches make a variety of complex decisions in American-rules college football, especially related to point-after-touchdown (PAT) conversions and, historically, kicker selection. However, little research has characterized the pattern of these choices and whether they are sensitive to environmental manipulations, such as increased effort to score. In the present study, the generalized matching law (GML)—a model that predicts a linear relation between log-transformed choices for two alternatives and the amount of reinforcement garnered from them—was applied to PAT-conversion (1 point vs. 2 point) and kicker (soccer-style vs. conventional-style) selection using archived data from the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Overall, PAT-conversion and kicker selection exhibited matching. Further, narrowing the goal-post width was associated with decreased preference for one-point (relative to two-point) PAT attempts and enhanced sensitivity to increases in points scored from one-point (relative to two-point) PAT attempts. This investigation provides support for the ecological validity of the GML and demonstrates that complex decisions in football conform to an orderly pattern that can be described using the GML.     

DEFENDING NIEBUHR FROM HAUERWAS

In his 2001 book, With the Grain of the Universe, Stanley Hauerwas has made an extended case for Karl Barth as the model for how to do Christian ethics, and for Reinhold Niebuhr as the model for how not to do it. Though Barth's closer and deeper theological connection to the Christian tradition appeals to a Jewish traditionalist by analogy, nevertheless, Niebuhr's approach to social ethics, based as it is on a version of natural law, is of greater appeal. That is because it is more philosophically arguable in a secular society and culture, and because it is more politically effective there. It is what made Niebuhr a more effective opponent of Nazism than was Barth. Also, Niebuhr's version of natural law is not a christianized version of Stoic natural law teaching but, rather, a profound use of the biblical prohibition of idolatry, having heretofore unnoticed affinities with rabbinic developments of that prohibition.