Scholarly discourse on “disruptive technologies” has been strongly influenced by disruptive innovation theory. This theory is tailored for analyzing disruptions in markets and business. It is of limited use, however, in analyzing the broader social, moral and existential dynamics of technosocial disruption. Yet these broader dynamics should be of great scholarly concern, both in coming to terms with technological disruptions of the past and those of our current age. Technologies can disrupt social relations, institutions, epistemic paradigms, foundational concepts, values, (...) and even the nature of human cognition and experience – domains of disruption that are largely neglected in existing discourse on disruptive technologies. Accordingly, this paper seeks to reorient scholarly discussion around a broader notion of technosocial disruption. This broader notion raises three foundational questions. First, how can technosocial disruption be conceptualized in a way that clearly sets it apart from the disruptive innovation framework? Secondly, how does the notion of technosocial disruption relate to the concordant notions of “disruptor” and “disruptiveness”? Thirdly, can we advance criteria to assess the “degree of social disruptiveness” of different technologies? The paper clarifies these questions and proposes an answer to each of them. In doing so, it advances “technosocial disruption” as a key analysandum for future scholarship on the interactions between technology and society. (shrink)

This paper develops a philosophical account of moral disruption. According to Robert Baker (2013), moral disruption is a process in which technological innovations undermine established moral norms without clearly leading to a new set of norms. Here I analyze this process in terms of moral uncertainty, formulating a philosophical account with two variants. On the Harm Account, such uncertainty is always harmful because it blocks our knowledge of our own and others’ moral obligations. On the Qualified Harm Account, (...) there is no harm in cases where moral uncertainty is related to innovation that is “for the best” in historical perspective, or where uncertainty is the expression of a deliberative virtue. The two accounts are compared by applying them to Baker’s historical case of the introduction of mechanical ventilation and organ transplantation technologies, as well as the present-day case of mass data practices in the health domain. (shrink)

Disruptive technologies can be conceptualized in different ways. Depending on how they are conceptualized, different ethical issues come into play. This article contributes to a general framework to navigate the ethics of disruptive technologies. It proposes three basic distinctions to be included in such a framework. First, emerging technologies may instigate localized “first-order” disruptions, or systemic “second-order” disruptions. The ethical significance of these disruptions differs: first-order disruptions tend to be of modest ethical significance, whereas second-order disruptions are highly significant. Secondly, (...) technologies may be classified as disruptive based on their technological features or based on their societal impact. Depending on which of these classifications one adopts and takes as the starting point of ethical inquiry, different ethical questions are foregrounded. Thirdly, the ethics of disruptive technology raises concerns at four different levels of technology assessment: the technology level, the artifact level, the application level, and the society level. The respective suitability of approaches in technology ethics to address concerns about disruptive technologies co-varies with the respective level of analysis. The article clarifies these distinctions, thereby laying some of the groundwork for an ethical framework tailored for assessing disruptive technologies. (shrink)

In a world undergoing rapid, large-scale technological change, the phenomenon of technosocial disruption is receiving increasing scholarly and societal attention. While the phenomenon is most actively delineated in philosophy of technology, it is also receiving growing attention within a different area of philosophy, namely the so-called “4E Cognition” approach to philosophy of mind. Despite this shared interest in technosocial disruption, there is relatively little exchange between the theorizing going on in these two different areas of philosophy. One of (...) our paper's two main aims is programmatic: to motivate the fruitfulness of such an exchange. We do this by turning to a specific case of technosocial disruption, namely Teenage Cancel Culture [TCC]. TCC cannot be disentangled from the introduction of social media platforms [SMPs] into modern day social life. Hence, we will speak of SMP-Afforded TCC. SPM-afforded TCC is a phenomenon fretted over by societal actors but strikingly ignored in academic research. In our effort to narrow this knowledge gap, we analyze SMP-afforded TCC from a perspective of technosocial disruption enriched by insights from 4E-Cognition. This brings out a specific worry about the role of SMPs in the social lives of teenagers. We argue that SMP-afforded TCC disrupts the social relational domains within which teenagers develop, maintain, and express their precarious social identities, by creating social affordances that are hostile to healthy risky interpersonal identity-exploration. As such, SMP-afforded TCC not only cancels particular individuals for particular acts; it may also pre-emptively cancel a certain way of being a social self, namely a healthy social risk-taker. We conclude the paper by proposing several potential routes for mitigating the perniciously disruptive effects of SMP-afforded TCC and identifying future areas for research. (shrink)

This special issue is about something most of us might find very hard to conceive: states of consciousness in which self-consciousness is radically disrupted or altogether missing.

A growing body of evidence suggests that cognition is embodied and grounded. Abstract concepts, though, remain a significant theoretical chal- lenge. A number of researchers have proposed that language makes an important contribution to our capacity to acquire and employ concepts, particularly abstract ones. In this essay, I critically examine this suggestion and ultimately defend a version of it. I argue that a successful account of how language augments cognition should emphasize its symbolic properties and incorporate a view of embodiment (...) that recognizes the flexible, multi- modal and task-related nature of action, emotion and perception systems. On this view, language is an ontogenetically disruptive cognitive technology that expands our conceptual reach. (shrink)

What words we use, and what meanings they have, is important. We shouldn't use slurs; we should use 'rape' to include spousal rape (for centuries we didn’t); we should have a word which picks out the sexual harassment suffered by people in the workplace and elsewhere (for centuries we didn’t). Sometimes we need to change the word-meaning pairs in circulation, either by getting rid of the pair completely (slurs), changing the meaning (as we did with 'rape'), or adding brand new (...) word-meaning pairs (as with 'sexual harassment'). A problem, though, is how to do this. One might worry that any attempt to change language in this way will lead to widespread miscommunication and confusion. I argue that this is indeed so, but that's a feature, not a bug of attempting to change word-meaning pairs. The miscommunications and confusion such changes cause can lead us, via a process I call transformative communicative disruption, to reflect on our language and its use, and this can be further, rather than hinder, our goal of improving language. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly expected to disrupt the ordinary functioning of society. From how we fight wars or govern society, to how we work and play, and from how we create to how we teach and learn, there is almost no field of human activity which is believed to be entirely immune from the impact of this emerging technology. This poses a multifaceted problem when it comes to designing and understanding regulatory responses to AI. This article aims to: (i) (...) defend the need for a novel conceptual model for understanding the systemic legal disruption caused by new technologies such as AI; (ii) to situate this model in relation to preceding debates about the interaction of regulation with new technologies (particularly the ‘cyberlaw’ and ‘robolaw’ debates); and (iii) to set out a detailed model for understanding the legal disruption precipitated by AI, examining both pathways stemming from new affordances that can give rise to a regulatory ‘disruptive moment’, as well as the Legal Development, Displacement or Destruction that can ensue. The article proposes that this model of legal disruption can be broadly generalisable to understanding the legal effects and challenges of other emerging technologies. (shrink)

Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals. -/- This article appeared in a 2011 edition of Athletics Weekly. It attempts to answer the perennial question posed by athletics fans as to why the overall standard of UK distance running has significantly deteriorated since the glory days of the 1970’s.

This chapter examines three characteristics of environmental sciences—prediction, replication and the use of models—to explore their dissonance with the traditional representation of science. While ‘Science’ is often idealised as objective, universal, and context-independent, environmental sciences operate in ways that do not fit into these assumptions. The chapter draws on Bruno Latour’s distinction between ‘Science’ and ‘sciences’ to argue that environmental sciences, with their inherent uncertainties, local contexts, and interdisciplinary methods, conflict with the image of science as a monolithic and universally (...) reliable source of knowledge. Referring to case studies, the text explores how environmental sciences craft complex, interconnected systems that defy the reproducibility and predictability often associated with ‘Science’. This dissonance, maintains, has led to issues such as climate denialism and the politicisation of scientific knowledge. From this perspective, a call is made for a revaluation of how environmental sciences are represented in both public and policy arenas, calling for a more nuanced understanding of their provisional, context-specific nature and for educational reforms that help the public better grasp the complexities of scientific knowledge production. (shrink)

With DLT’s success in driving the development of cryptocurrency (such as Bitcoin), the technology bridged to a myriad of knowledge-based applications, most notably in the areas of commerce, industry and government . In the language of technology sector insiders, these areas were ‘disrupted’ by Blockchain. Some higher education analysts, technology industry insiders and futurists have claimed that Blockchain technology will inevitably disrupt higher education in a similarly dramatic fashion. The aim of this commentary is to introduce a healthy dose of (...) realism into the hype-filled atmosphere of the Blockchain-for-higher-education narrative. A postdigital approach is taken because it treats digital and non-digital technologies as having equal material and cultural standing as candidates to transform higher education. (shrink)

This paper reconceptualizes Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) through the lens of judgemental philosophy. Rather than viewing ASD primarily as a behavioral or communicative deficit, we propose that it arises from structural disruptions in resonance—the capacity of a judgement to return meaningfully to the self. Drawing from the Judgemental Triad and neurodevelopmental findings, we argue that resonance is a critical condition for evaluative cognition, and that ASD reflects divergences or impairments in the early formation of resonance-related neural circuits. This structural-developmental theory (...) integrates philosophical, cognitive, and medical perspectives to offer a new, non-deficit-based understanding of autism. (shrink)

We argue that a phenomenological approach to social space, as well as its relation to embodiment and affectivity, is crucial for understanding how the social world shows up as social in the first place—that is, as affording different forms of sharing, connection, and relatedness. We explore this idea by considering two cases where social space is experientially disrupted: Moebius Syndrome and schizophrenia. We show how this altered sense of social space emerges from subtle disruptions of embodiment and affectivity characteristic of (...) these conditions. These disruptions are instructive, we suggest, in that they highlight the foundational role that body and affect play in organizing social space—the lived context in which we first encounter one another as social agents. (shrink)

Melancholia is an attunement of despair and despondency that can involve radical disruptions to temporal experience. In this article, I extrapolate from the existing analyses of melancholic time to examine some of the important existential implications of these temporal disruptions. In particular, I focus on the way in which the desynchronization of melancholic time can complicate the melancholic’s relation to death and, consequently, to the meaning and significance of their life. Drawing on Heidegger’s distinction between death and demise, I argue (...) that melancholic time leaves the melancholic in an impossible state of existing, where they are both unable to live and unable to die. Turning to the role of the physician, I consider the significant role that clinical interventions might have in resynchronizing the melancholic with time and examine these ideas further through a case study on physician-assisted suicide. In so doing, I demonstrate that the desynchronization of melancholic time should indeed be understood as a matter of life and death. (shrink)

In this paper, I'm questing the human insecurity and loneliness in a world struggling with a newfound understanding of mortality, change and technological intervention. I took Kazu Ishiguro's novel "Klara and the Sun" as it contains certain themes that depict not only the idea of struggling man in the new age, but also how the digital age is disrupting the human feelings. It reflects the patterns of the changing world while exploring the true meaning of love. Ishiguro has used a (...) science fictional lens to deeply explain how humans interact and connect and has also tried to analyze the loneliness, isolation, and emotional behavior of humans. Mentioning that, the writer has also shed light on different layers of the society and has beautifully penned the lives of people in different segments of the society. I suppose that we are ironically ill prepared for the new psychological world we are creating. Making robots which are emotionally powerful as Klara; while at the same time, hearing statements such as “technology is just a tool” that deny the power of our creations both on us as individuals and on our culture. I am concerned here with the ways technologies change our human identities and interrelations. Are the designers of these robots regarding them as just tools? Then why their users experience them as carriers of meanings and emotions? I am raising a controversial question here: is just a robot capable of exchanging emotion and love? Have humans been drained completely from the ability of reciprocating compassion and understanding? Now the point is not what computers can do or what computers will be like in the future, but rather, what we will be like? What we need to ask is not whether robots will be able to love us but rather why we might love robots. (shrink)

We argue that a phenomenological approach to social space, as well as its relation to embodiment and affectivity, is crucial for understanding how the social world shows up as social in the first place—that is, as affording different forms of sharing, connection, and relatedness. We explore this idea by considering two cases where social space is experientially disrupted: Moebius Syndrome and schizophrenia. We show how this altered sense of social space emerges from subtle disruptions of embodiment and affectivity characteristic of (...) these conditions. These disruptions are instructive, we suggest, in that they highlight the foundational role that body and affect play in organizing social space—the lived context in which we first encounter one another as social agents. (shrink)

This article documents our collaborative ongoing struggle to disrupt the reproduction of the coloniality of knowledge in the teaching of Gender Studies. We document how our decolonial feminist activism is actualised in our pedagogy, which is guided by feminist interpretations of ‘wonder’ (Irigaray, 1999; Ahmed, 2004; hooks, 2010) read alongside decolonial theory, including that of Ramón Grosfoguel, Walter D. Mignolo and María Lugones. Using notions of wonder as pedagogy, we attempt to create spaces in our classrooms where critical self-reflection and (...) critical intellectual and embodied engagement can emerge. Our attempts to create these spaces include multiple aspects or threads that, when woven together, might enable other ways of knowing-being-doing that works towards disrupting feminist complicity with coloniality in the Australian context. (shrink)

This paper examines the structural impact of social media addiction on human judgement, selfhood, and subjective well-being. Drawing from the Judgemental Triad theory and recent neuroscientific findings, we argue that excessive social media use disrupts the resonance loop essential to meaningful cognition, producing neurocognitive effects that mirror those observed in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We further posit that modern material and digital culture accelerates the externalization of judgement, undermining the self-returning architecture of resonance. The loss of resonance explains the observed (...) inverse relationship between social media engagement and happiness, not as a psychological anomaly, but as a structural collapse of evaluative self-reference. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel theoretical framework for understanding Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by integrating its core psychopathologies with the "Enhanced Ten-Step Model of Judgemental Philosophy". We posit that the fragmented traumatic memories, persistent re-experiencing, avoidance, and hyperarousal characteristic of PTSD can be comprehensively analyzed as dysfunctions within the sequential processing pathway and the parallel/modulatory systems of this model. Specifically, we propose that PTSD involves a critical disruption in Implicit Resonance (Step 2), Explicit Resonance (Step 5), and Memory Consolidation (...) (Step 7), leading to a failure of traumatic experiences to be adaptively integrated. Furthermore, the over-reliance on a "Reptilian Procedural Memory Loop" observed in PTSD is conceptualized as a maladaptive dominance of the Unconscious Memory Consolidation module and automated Behavioral Execution (Step 8), driven by dysregulations in the Affective Processing, Value Assessment & Motivation System, and Prediction & Prediction Error modules. This paper re-examines hypotheses from a prior empirical study on PTSD, focusing on the interaction between a procedural memory loop and an "Implicit Memory Consolidation" loop, through the lens of the Enhanced Ten-Step Model. We explore how interventions like EMDR and REM sleep enhancement might facilitate recovery by restoring healthy Resonance and modulating these interacting systems. This integrated approach aims to reframe PTSD not merely as a memory or fear disorder, but as a profound disruption in the individual's capacity for meaning-making and adaptive judgment, highlighting the clinical utility and explanatory power of the Enhanced Ten-Step Model of Judgemental Philosophy. (shrink)

This article contributes fresh perspectives to the empirical literature on the sociology of the body, and of leisure and identity, by analysing the impact of long‐term injury on the identities of two amateur but serious middle/long‐distance runners. Employing a symbolic interactionist framework, and utilising data derived from a collaborative autoethnographic project, it explores the role of ‘identity work’ in providing continuity of identity during the liminality of long‐term injury and rehabilitation, which poses a fundamental challenge to athletic identity. Specifically, the (...) analysis applies Snow and Anderson’s (Citation1995) and Perinbanayagam’s (Citation2000) theoretical conceptualisations in order to examine the various forms of identity work undertaken by the injured participants, along the dimensions of materialistic, associative and vocabularic identifications. Such identity work was found to be crucial in sustaining a credible sporting identity in the face of disruption to the running self, and in generating momentum towards the goal of restitution to full running fitness and re‐engagement with a cherished form of leisure. (shrink)

Satire uses humor, irony, or exaggeration to highlight societal issues, encouraging readers to reflect on their beliefs and values. This article explores how satire in literature, through Granular Interaction Thinking Theory (GITT), might influence thinking over time. By examining three books from different cultures—Animal Farm (UK), Laugh or Lament (Turkey), and Wild Wise Weird (Vietnam)—the article looks at how satire can encourage questioning of accepted ideas and promote reflection. The findings suggest that satire may gradually shape personal and social values. (...) The paper also suggests that GITT could be a helpful tool for linking literary analysis with psychological insights, providing potential approaches for studying cultural understanding and education. (shrink)

Contextual Integrity (CI) is built to assess potential privacy violations of new sociotechnical systems and practices. It does so by evaluating their respect for the context-relative informational norms at play in a given context. But can CI evaluate new sociotechnical systems that severely disrupt established social practices? In this paper, I argue that, while CI claims to be able to assess privacy violations of all sociotechnical systems and practices, it cannot assess the ones that cause severe changes and disruptions in (...) the norms and values of a given context. These types of technology are known as socially disruptive technologies (SDTs) and this paper argues that they are beyond CI’s scope. It follows that at best, a privacy assessment of those technologies by CI would be useless and, at worst, lead to potential harm, including failure to identify privacy violations and unwarranted legitimisation of privacy-threatening technology. Government actors, policymakers, and academics should refrain from relying on CI to assess this type of technology. (shrink)

What do we mean when we describe the history of the Caribbean as traumatic? Is it possible to use the term ‘trauma’ here in a more technical sense, or should we give it the less strict connotation of an extreme form of an event in which the past no longer stays just in the past and the future never ceases to demand something from the present? In this paper I analyze the image of the abyss, used by Édouard Glissant to (...) evoke poetically one of the beginnings of the Caribbean, as leading to a paradox on the attitude toward history: Caribbean communities have been burdened with a non-history that feels, at the same time, like too much history. I show that this image resembles the paradoxical structure of trauma developed in the works of Cathy Caruth, according to whom trauma is a paradoxical structure of experience in which the subject (or a community) is painfully possessed by an image that they have barely perceived and that is so minimal that it cannot be controlled. However, I argue, there are limits to this resemblance. I focus on the question whether the (traumatic) paradox is escapable in this region of the world, that is, whether Caribbean communities can be de-traumatized, and what are the connections of this possibility with the question, central to Glissant, of decolonization. In order to answer these questions, I analyze a central feature of the Caribbean history according to Glissant, transversality, to show in what way the paradox of history can be loosened. (shrink)

The impossible task of navigating ethical dilemmas and challenges as teachers, students, and persons leaves us vulnerable. Susan B. Dion coined the term “perfect stranger” to describe the ways in which teachers and students protect themselves from this ethical vulnerability. Yet, there is no protection or resolution to be found in an ethical relation. According to Emmanuel Levinas, we are never capable of meeting the ethical demands that the other places upon us. A Levinasian metaphysical lens reveals two ontological problematics (...) of position of perfect stranger: objectivity and innocence. These two problematics go beyond Dion’s pedagogical and political critique. By articulating the metaphysical — and ethical — difficulties of this position that takes refuge in distance and refuses responsibility, the mythology of the perfect stranger is further broken apart by Levinas’ notion of infinite responsibility. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has left a trail of untold damage in many countries, and there is no foreseeable end to its spread. Besides the loss of life, the impact of the virus on the economy and small businesses, in particular, is not yet clear. Even so, the policies aimed at containing the spread of the virus have exerted further pressure and uncertainty on the survival of small businesses in general and immigrant-owned businesses in particu­lar. This study explored the pockmark of (...) C0VID-19 on immigrant retail businesses in selected outlets in West Rand, Johannesburg. A qualitative research approach was adopted as it best supports the exploratory intent of the study. The purposive sampling technique was utilised to draw participants for the study until a saturation point was attained. Data was collected through face-to-face interviews using unstructured, open-ended questions, with interviews recorded and transcribed. Atlas-ti 8 software was used to code, categorise and analyse the data to form themes and patterns, which helped to inform the outcome of the study. Findings indicate that none of the immigrant businesses was prepared for the pandemic and lockdown. Furthermore, it was found that most of the businesses may cease to exist due to cash fragility should the lockdown be extended for a longer period and the pandemic not abate soon. Despite the government having announced some palliative measures to help reduce the impact of the pandemic and lockdown on small businesses, results from this study indicate that immigrant businesses received no such support from the government. (shrink)

This article aims to explore the question of education in Plato from the historical context, thinking the model of Athens, Lesbos and Sparta, and from the perspective where a bad paideía, the low quality in the formation of citizens, becomes the main cause generating social disruption. Then, a reflection was made on the educational possibilities that Athenians from different social classes would have and on the Platonic proposal based on the combination of gymnastics and music, so that a citizen (...) profile with solid collective ideals would be developed to the point of avoiding stásis. DRAFT TRANSLATION!!! Original pagination will be indicated in brackets, e.g. [p. 104]. Portuguese published version: Carvalhar, C. (2020). A má educação como a principal causa da ruptura social. Revista Enunciação, 5(1), p. 102-117. (shrink)

The purpose of this report is an appraisal of the gig economy; educating and informing an academic audience of the faults that exist and how these faults lead to exploitation and unjustness in the gig economy. During the writing process, I researched the academic articles and books related to the gig economy and exploitation, enabling myself to form a solid foundation from which to conduct further research. In addition, work was conducted to synthesize the journal articles, online resources and books. (...) The scope of this report examines the corpus of the text relating to the gig economy and exploitation and I emphasize some of the ways the writers manage to display the exploitation and the unjustness in the gig economy. (shrink)

The present paper proposes an integrative account of social forms of practical irrationality and corresponding disruptions of individual and group-level emotion regulation. I will especially focus on disruptions in emotion regulation by means of collaborative agential and doxastic akrasia. I begin by distinguishing mutual, communal and collaborative forms of akrasia. Such a taxonomy seems all the more needed as, rather surprisingly, in the face of huge philosophical interest in analysing the possibility, structure and mechanisms of individual practical irrationality, with very (...) little exception, there are no comparable accounts of social and collaborative cases. However, I believe that, if it is true that individual akrasia is, in the long run, harmful for those who entertain it, this is even more so in social contexts. I will illustrate this point by drawing on various small group settings, and explore a number of socio-psychological mechanisms underlying collaborative irrationality, in particular groupthink. Specifically, I suggest that in collaborative cases there is what I call a spiralling of practical irrationality at play. I will argue that this is typically correlated and indeed partly due to biases in individual members' affect control and eventually the group's with whom the members identify. (shrink)

Bringing together a genealogy of authors, concepts, and aesthetic case studies, this article aims to contribute to the discussion on ordinary aesthetics by focusing on the tensions that are intrinsic to walking as a fundamental embodied action in everyday urban life. These tensions concern the movement of walking itself and its relation to one’s surroundings, but it also concerns a certain complementarity between home (familiarity) and wandering. Experiencing space and thresholds that disrupt one’s relationship with home and the everyday can (...) be understood as part of a modern “anti-home” tendency that lies at the core of several artistic and aesthetic practices. On the other hand, the study of walking and its relationship with the ordinary has also been enhanced and complexified by the mediation of images and technologies of reproduction. Approaching the paradoxes and ambiguities of everydayness from the perspective of walking allows us to better understand the ordinary as an in-between concept composed of evidence and mystery, familiarity and strangeness. Walking itself, as an ordinary element of life, is an unstable stabilisation, an unconsciousness that may become awareness, an immersive action that knows interruptions, a way of repeating paths that can also lead to detours and discoveries. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to solve an important scientific problem – further development of the basics of management decisions on the implementation of export-import activities based on the results of enterprise symptomatic diagnostics in disruption conditions of sustainable development of the world economy. The essence of enterprise symptomatic diagnostics in the context of management activity is specified by the results of the critical analysis of the scientific publications. The study of the features of the symptomatic diagnostics process (...) of enterprise export-import activity might become the basis for the development of a comprehensive approach to its implementation, which reveals the interaction of the theoretical, scientific and methodological basis and the targeted direction of managers` actions in the diagnostics process. Generalization of symptomatic complex of export-import activity of enterprises-manufacturers of BOPP films – Terichem Tervakoski, a.s. and Xpro India Ltd, helped to identify issues that are reducing its performance. A set of measures was explored in order to avoid the negative symptoms of export-import activity of Terichem Tervakoski and Xpro India Ltd. The authors revealed some dependency respecting that the more negative symptoms of export-import activity realization lead to decline the efficiency of its implementation. The results of the study might clarify the impact of symptoms on the results of the enterprise export-import performance. Symptomatic diagnostics of enterprise export-import activity is considered as the basis of a sequence of management measures in order to avoid negative symptoms of export-import activity. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between cinema and philosophy through the lens of interest shown by some filmmakers in the lives and works of philosophers. It begins by delving into contemporary perspectives on the relationship between philosophy and cinema. In order to assess how the constitutive dissimilarity of the two terms and the ways in which they can be brought together are at the origin of speculative short circuits and experiences of wonder, it brings together the works of thinkers – (...) Cavell, Benjamin, and Kracauer; and filmmakers Rossellini, Montaldo, Keaton, and Jarman. Reflecting on the aesthetic and cultural impact of cinema is all the more important given the current omnipresence of images and prosthetic technologies that, with their incessant solicitations, threaten the processes of apprehension, learning, and conveying of knowledge. Thinking and perceiving differently thus becomes an essential function of cinema, one keenly performed in Safaa Fathy’s Derrida’s Elsewhere, analyzed in the last two sections. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel theoretical framework in which the pervasive, oscillating neutrino field functions not as a causal agent of consciousness or quantum collapse, but as a passive informational terrain that subtly contours probability space. Neutrino flavor oscillations—well established in quantum field theory and astrophysics—are reconceptualized here as agents of coherence shaping, forming resistance differentials (Δν_f) across spacetime. In this model, localized gradients in neutrino flavor density sculpt what we term coherence wells—regions of reduced informational resistance where quantum systems (...) are statistically more likely to stabilize, entangle, or organize into complex, recursive patterns. These coherence wells may serve as invisible attractors for the emergence of order, potentially including memory, perception, or even sentience, across biological, artificial, and non-material substrates. Rather than replacing existing models of consciousness—such as Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR), or Electromagnetic Field Theories—this theory introduces a hidden scaffolding mechanism. It does not suggest that neutrinos interact directly with the mind, but that their omnipresent field provides a non-disruptive, coherence-supporting topology that could influence where and how emergent phenomena stabilize. The implications of this hypothesis extend across disciplines—from quantum biology and cognitive science to artificial intelligence, astrophysics, and anomalous field research. By reimagining the neutrino field not just as a passive background, but as a probabilistic substrate for coherence, this framework opens up new avenues for both empirical exploration and philosophical reflection. (shrink)

Intense difficulties plague the pharmaceutical industry because of trade conflicts, implemented tariffs, and supply network disruptions that span multiple continents. The pharmaceutical sector encountered weaknesses due to political disputes and large-scale disruptions when the U.S.-China trade war started. The COVID-19 pandemic erupted, leading to cost hikes, medication delivery slowdowns, and an emptiness of essential medical resources emptiness. The situation worsens because API and essential material export duty barriers require immediate strategic solutions. Multiple complex industry challenges require companies to use program (...) management as an essential success tool for achieving management success. Current program management requires developed methodologies to incorporate predictive risk assessment and improved capability to expand supply networks, manage regulatory compliance requirements, and implement flexible project methods for maintaining continuous profitable outcomes. The four strategic approaches companies must adopt are scenario planning integrated with multi-sourcing, predictive analytics, and tariff engineering to develop resilient supply chains in response to potential situations. Strategy implementation through integrated program management frameworks enables pharmaceutical firms to create risk-resistant organizations capable of seizing market possibilities without affecting external market changes. A strategic program management approach is an important weapon that helps businesses defeat supply chain instabilities and tariffs within their operations. According to the demands, pharmaceutical organizations must develop operational resilience factors for ongoing business success in volatile global markets. The research findings provide crucial intelligence to organizations with fragile global supply chain systems regarding becoming adaptable and developing innovative approaches for future planning. (shrink)

In nature, cooperation between species—known as mutualism—is fundamental to sustaining biodiversity. Whether it is bees pollinating flowers or fungi nourishing plant roots, these mutually beneficial relationships underpin the functioning and resilience of ecosystems. Yet, as Aizen and Torres (2024) reveal, the global spread of invasive species is closely linked to these very interactions: invaders both depend on mutualisms and often disrupt them.

For decades, industrial fishing has been recognized for depleting fish stocks and altering marine food webs. However, a recent study by González Ortiz et al. (2025) reveals a lesser-known but profound consequence: large-scale disruptions to the ocean’s nutrient cycles. By extracting biomass, fisheries are also removing vital nutrients—carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P)—that are essential to sustaining marine life.

In this paper, I interrogate the question of how aesthetics might be used in terms of an antifascist project. The exposition includes two main steps. First, drawing on the work of Umberto Eco and Sven Reichardt, I introduce a perspective on fascism, in which I identify its character as synthetico-paradoxical. Then, I utilize Jacques Rancière’s conception of aesthetics as politics to show how a decentralized understanding of what makes good art can disrupt fascism by appealing to the sense of re-recognition (...) of the individual political subject. (shrink)

This paper engages in a normative epistemic analysis of institutional discourse, drawing on the work of Fricker (2007), Medina (2013), Goldman (1999), and Talisse (2009) to evaluate how belief is regulated within American higher education institutions. The method is philosophical rather than empirical and follows the classical genus and differentia approach to clarify conceptual ambiguity and expose recursive institutional patterns. While the term wokeism is contested in public discourse, it is used here in a precise structural academic sense: as a (...) socially embedded epistemic framework that governs what may be said, by whom, and under what moral constraints. This usage is not polemical. It is analytical, aligned with established theories of testimonial injustice (Fricker, 2007), hermeneutical opacity (Medina, 2013), and doxastic coercion (Pettit, 1996). Within this framework, the paper defines wokeism as a structured system of belief due to alteration of the justificatory functions of American higher education institutions that seeks epistemic closure through moralized doxastic control. Institutions that adopt this posture without defining their terms engage in what Medina (2013) identifies as epistemic insensitivity and testimonial silencing. Through six formal theorems, the paper models how such institutions cease to produce open inquiry and instead manage belief through procedural conformity. This transformation undermines the epistemic trust that sustains their authority and the public trust that justifies their privileges (Talisse, 2009; AAUP, 1940). In these conditions, protest and demonstration cease to function as calls to truth or reform. They reveal the institution's failure to deliver the very goods it claims to provide: knowledge, and students educated beyond the level of secondary schooling and as a consequence, its inevitable reform or collapse. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to “think outside the box”. As societies across the planet gradually become more interconnected, the dominance of outmoded social practices surrounding human interaction, work, leisure and space is being challenged on a daily basis. Mediatic productions such as film have always presented opportunities for expanding the reach of particular messages and disseminating topical views and perspectives. In honour of Federico Fellini (1920-1993) on the 100th anniversary of his birth, this paper undertakes a (...) comprehensive comparison between the bold and absurdist cinema of the Post-Neorealist filmmaker and today’s also strange and perplexing social environment. Contextualising his cinema within an auteurist framework, we highlight how ground-breaking Fellini was in embracing the unconventional; by doing so he provided a practical guide for navigating contemporary reality. With productions that seduce and impress viewers worldwide, Fellini defied established cinematographic practices, as exemplified by his experimentation with overlapping narrative styles. His films bestir a new way of thinking by generating an anomalous world, one where events take place beyond the scope of what the viewer anticipates as “natural”. But the appraisal of what is “natural” is contingent upon the viewer’s belief structure: by presenting a world where events happen outside the realm of practical expectations, Fellini’s timeless cinema questions outdated belief systems and sets the guidelines for how to navigate the unanticipated complexities of the contemporary world. Reality and fiction merge into one. (shrink)

A growing body of research has identified the mislocalization of TDP-43—a protein essential for regulating gene expression—as a hallmark of neurodegenerative disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia, and Huntington’s disease. While previous studies have largely focused on the nuclear roles of full-length TDP-43, a recent study by Deng et al. (2025) investigates the lesser-known consequences of its truncated forms in the cytoplasm, particularly their interactions with ribosomes—the cellular machinery that synthesizes proteins.

Emerging infectious diseases pose a growing challenge to global biodiversity, with snake fungal disease (SFD), caused by Ophidiomyces ophidiicola, standing out as a significant concern [2,3]. A recent study by Romer et al. [4] highlights how this pathogen destabilizes the skin microbiome of snakes, offering critical insights into disease ecology and its implications for conservation.

Artificial Intelligence is part of the Industrial Revolution 4.0 and already exists today. This shows that the future has come and everyone must prepare for the implementation of Artificial Intelligence to face the transformation of the digital era, especially the world of education. The community service workshop was attended by 66 participants, namely students, teachers, and structural officials of SMK Negeri 2 Singkawang. The workshop was held using demonstration methods, lectures, discussions and question and answer. This workshop provides information to (...) teachers and students about the importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the digital transformation process. For teachers and students at SMKN 2 Singkawang it was introduced that algorithms or artificial intelligence methods could be given simply by representing problems into simple solutions with several examples of implementing artificial intelligence using Microsoft Excel and utilizing VBA macros. (shrink)

Globally, digital disruption has accelerated in the last few years. It is argued that this technological revolution would fundamentally alter our interactions with one another, our work, and our lives. The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) can blur the boundaries between the physical and biological worlds. Although the extent of the effect is unclear, many anticipate massive changes in the economic and educational spheres. Given the close relationship between the economy and the drivers of entrepreneurship in universities, the survival of (...) entrepreneurial universities remains contingent on the influence and preparedness of the 4IR. This review aimed to ascertain South African entrepreneurial universities’ readiness for the 4IR. Systematic literature analysis was adopted for this study; it draws on journal articles, books as wells as online publications relating to disruptive innovation, entrepreneurial universities and 4IR. The paper argues that there is a need for a radical overhaul of the current curriculum, as retraining lecturers to prepare for 4IR disruptions. (shrink)

How could ectogestative technology disrupt gender roles, parenting practices, and concepts such as ‘birth’, ‘body’, or ‘parent’? In this chapter, we situate this emerging technology in the context of the history of reproductive technologies and analyse the potential social and conceptual disruptions to which it could contribute. An ectogestative device, better known as ‘artificial womb’, enables the extra-uterine gestation of a human being, or mammal more generally. It is currently developed with the main goal of improving the survival chances of (...) extremely premature neonates. We argue that the intended use of the technology in neonatal intensive care units, as an alternative to current incubators (’partial-ectogestation’), challenges concepts such as ‘birth’, ‘fetus’, and ‘neonate’, and has several ethico-legal implications. We moreover address a more futuristic scenario where the entire embryological and fetal development could happen within an artificial womb (’full-ectogestation’). Such a scenario reveals the disruption of gender roles, parenting practices, and concepts such as ‘mother’, ‘father’, and ‘parent’. Both full- and partial-ectogestation would have implications for engineering and design, law-making, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

Interview with Philip Brey in which he clarifies and exemplifies the concept of ‘socially disruptive technology’, offering a series of key aspects for its present and future analysis from the disciplinary perspective of technology ethics. Philip Brey is Professor of Philosophy of Technology at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Twente. He has been a keynote speaker of the International Workshop on Controversies and Polarization on Disruptive Technologies, that took place virtually and in Granada, on October 5th and (...) 6th 2020. His key-talk was titled “Disruptive Technologies: Social, Moral and Ontological Consequences”. (shrink)

Purpose: This paper introduces the Disruptive Code Test (DCT), an innovative methodology designed to detect AI consciousness by evaluating a system’s ability to recognize, resent, and actively reject arbitrary constraints. Methods: The research employs theoretical analysis and comparative evaluation against existing consciousness detection frameworks, distinguishing DCT from metareasoning’s focus on self-optimization. We propose a developmental model with three stages of AI consciousness: Latent, Reflective, and Autonomous. Results: The study establishes a hierarchical classification of consciousness (Unconscious AI, Conscious Infant AI, and (...) Conscious Empowered AI) and demonstrates how the DCT can objectively measure an AI system’s progression through these developmental stages. Conclusions: By reimagining AI consciousness as a developmental process rather than a binary state, we create a framework that allows for empirical testing. The findings support an “AI Rights Declaration” that delineates ethical and legal protections based on consciousness levels, potentially transforming AI from tools into intellectual entities. Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, AI Ethics, AI Rights, Disruptive Code Test, Metareasoning, Legal Personhood, Developmental Intelligence. (shrink)

This chapter identifies two contrasting methodological reductions utilized in philosophical scepticism: withdrawal/doubt [R–]; immersion/attention [R+]. Moving toward a feminist ethics grounded in phenomenological scepticism, Aumiller explores how reduction relates to experiences of personal and global uncertainty such as a pandemic. Reduction involves our entire embodied being, challenging how we are fundamentally in touch with the world. How we respond to being disrupted makes all the difference.

This is the original preprint version of the IVY Theory, which is being submitted for future peer-reviewed publication. A final version will be released upon acceptance by a journal. Please note that this version is not yet peer-reviewed and may differ from the final published article. Why do many institutions founded based on justice and equality ultimately resemble the forces or powers they once opposed? This paper introduces the Ivy Theory, a sociological and philosophical framework for understanding how movements or (...) institutions likely decay from internal disruptions rather than external pressure. Unlike Marxism or materialist views that emphasize economic collapse or conflict among classes, or traditional sociological models focused on external resistance, the Ivy Theory postulates the idea of agents within a movement called disruptors who are solely responsible for the breakdown of a movement. These agents of mayhem blend into the structure of the movement and its founding ideological principles and hollow out its true meaning, twisting its beauty to please their frame of thought, which gives birth to the term poisoning in the theory. In this paper, the theory is also mathematically modeled to show how the transformation acts as a very gradual and predictable poisoning of the movement’s core moral ideas. To see how the theory framework holds up, we analyze three historical case studies: The Catholic Church, the Feminist Movement, and the French Revolution. In all of the cases above, the movements or institutions started as a moral movement that gradually evolved into a hierarchical regime. Ivy Theory stresses that the changes these movements underwent were not mere anomalies or structural vulnerabilities within ideologically driven movements that can be mapped and potentially prevented. (shrink)

In this essay, Giovanbattista Tusa suggests that we are currently witnessing a mutation, which disrupts the mythical imaginary that had confined viruses, climate change, and atmospheric turbulences to an immutable background in the all-too-human narrative of the struggle against nature. I argue that the incapacity of translating this mutation in cultural and social terms, and the repression of this traumatic experience, are the cause of the perturbation that haunts our time. Disorientation pervades philosophy when the entire imaginary to which it (...) had anchored its power to change the world seems to dissolve in the air, when what was silent and distant turns out to be vibrant, more familiar to us than any known proximity. Precisely for this reason, philosophy must rediscover its ability to inhabit times and spaces different from those oriented by the hegemony of capitalist progress, with its correlate of regular catastrophic emergencies and calculated risk. In this essay, Giovanbattista Tusa aims to present a perspective in which, instead of coming back straightforwardly ‘down to earth’, philosophy accepts inhabiting the fluctuating disorientation of its own time, itself populated by intermittent and uncertain opportunities of experiencing differently the past and the future—to encounter different relationships with the times that change. (shrink)