Preliminary Material /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Kosmos & Kontingenz /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- "De la théorie à la pratique“ /Eva Marie Noller -- Mittelalterliche Kosmologie und Kontingenz /Cornelia Selent -- Kontingenz der Stimmen im Kosmos der Lettern -,Atomologie', Technologie und William Baldwins Beware the Cat /Ronja Bodola -- Hypothese, Abweichung und Traum Keplers Ellipsen /Reto Rössler -- "Nur leerer Raum und Schatten“ /Hartmut Böhme -- Gewissheit als sentiment /Christian Reidenbach -- Poiesis (...) im "Gegenhalt“ der anderen Welten: Epistemische und kosmologische Kontingenz bei Breitinger und Brockes /Johannes Wankhammer -- Ungereimtheit - Poesie und Prosa um 1755 /Wolfgang Hottner -- "Es giebt freylich unzähliche Welten“ /Tim Sparenberg -- Kontingenz, Ordnung und realer Grund bei Kant /Thijs Menting -- Im Grunde das Regellose /Philipp Weber -- Kontingenz und Latenz /Helmut Müller-Sievers -- Revolution in Permanenz: Auguste Blanquis Ewigkeit durch die Sterne /Alexandra Heimes -- "Kosmische Gesetze“? /Elisa Ronzheimer -- Vom unendlichen Universum zur Dialektik der Kontingenz /Thomas Ebke -- Stetigkeit im kosmischen Diskontinuum /Timothy Attanucci -- Versuch einer Kosmologie des Performativen in der Kunst /Maximilian Haas -- Kosmopolitismus und Internationalismus: Zwei Modelle, zwei Erbschaften /Étienne Balibar -- Vom kontingenten Kosmos zur Kosmopolitik /Karin Harrasser -- Auswahlbibliographie /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Begriffsregister /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber -- Autorinnen und Autoren /Reto Rössler, Tim Sparenberg and Philipp Weber. (shrink)

In this paper, with reference to Vito Acconci’s Following Piece (1969) and Sophie Calle’s Take care of yourself (2007), I show that some works of conceptual art rely on exemplification to convey ideas, and I defend the following claims about those works. In the first place, I argue that the kinds of events and of objects they present us with are relevant for appreciating the views the works convey. In the second place, siding with Elisabeth Schellekens (2007) and Peter Goldie (...) (2007), I argue, contra James Young (2001), that those artworks can yield experiential knowledge. In the third place, I argue that those artworks also possess probatory value. Finally, I maintain that those artworks can be valuable instruments for the education of the emotions. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper are two views: on the one hand, two general claims about street art – a broad art category encompassing works of spray painting as well as of yarn bombing, paste ups as well as sculptural interventions, tags as well as stickers, and so on – and, on the other hand, a much more specific view about certain contemporary tags produced, roughly, over the past twenty years. The two general claims are, first, that all works (...) of street art are subversive (see, e.g., Bacharach 2015; 2018; Chackal 2016; Baldini 2015; 2016; 2017; 2018; Willard 2016), second, that works of street art are the result of acts of self-expression (Riggle 2016). The specific view about certain contemporary tags is that they are artworks, although they are not presented, mainly, for appreciation of aesthetic properties grounded in their perceptual properties, because they are works of conceptual street art (see Lewisohn 2010; JAK 2012). The key question of the paper concerns, however, not contemporary tags, but “very early tags” (VETs) – a term that I shall use to designate the extremely simple, unadorned tags that first appeared in the late 1960s and that some scholars consider as the historical predecessors of the various practices that today we group under the category “street art” (see, e.g., Young 2014; Gastman et al. 2015): should we regard VETs as artworks? On the one hand, VETs writers tend to answer this question in the negative, since they stress that they didn’t cast themselves as artists and often identify the first tags that are artworks with the graphically elaborated tags that begun to be seen around New York City and Philadelphia just a few years after the appearance of the first tags. On the other hand, already in the early 1970s, artists and intellectuals such as Norman Mailer and Gordon Matta-Clark seemed to hold the view that it was appropriate to regard both VETs and later tags as art, although they didn’t defend this thesis with argument. The view that some contemporary tags that are not presented, mainly, for appreciation of their aesthetic properties might be candidates for appreciation as works of conceptual art suggests a strategy for assessing the issue whether VETs are candidates for art appreciation: can we defend the claim that the extremely simple, unadorned VETs were presented for appreciation as works of conceptual street art? I argue that we have good reasons to hold this view. (shrink)

This chapter illustrates through the analysis of some examples how philosophical research can illuminate the improvisational aspects of installation art. There is little philosophical research on improvisation in the visual arts. Similarly, there is little philosophical research on installation art – in section 2, I mention some key claims that have been put forward. Not surprisingly, then, philosophers have not yet focussed – at least to my knowledge – on improvisation in installation art. The issue, though, is timely. Not only (...) some installation artists have explored improvisation in their practice, both solo and collaboratively (see section 3) but, as I shall argue, it can be claimed that some works of installation art represent or express improvisation (section 4), that some invite the public to engage in improvisation (section 5), and that curatorial teams responsible for the displays of certain installation artworks have the opportunity to introduce improvisational elements in their practice, if they so wish (section 6). (shrink)

--- abstract is not requested by the Editors.

This paper identifies, develops, and argues for an interpretation of Mary Astell’s understanding of self-government. On this interpretation, what is essential to self-government, according to Astell, is an agent’s responsiveness to her own reasoning. The paper identifies two aspects of her theory of self-government: an ‘authenticity’ criterion of what makes our motives our own and an account of the capacities required for responsiveness to our own reasoning. The authenticity criterion states that when our motives arise from some external source without (...) validation by our own understanding of the reasons supporting them, then they are not our own. The capacities requisite for responsiveness to our own reasoning are those of examining and evaluating our own motives and of resisting the social pressure to conform to others’ opinions. An upshot of this interpretation of Astell’s theory of self-government is that it reveals her insights into the ways ‘custom’ can undermine an individual’s ability to govern oneself. (shrink)

The re-use of publicly available (personal) data for originally unanticipated purposes has become common practice. Without such secondary uses, the development of many AI systems like large language models (LLMs) and ChatGPT would not even have been possible. This chapter addresses the ethical implications of such secondary processing, with a particular focus on data protection and privacy issues. Legal and ethical evaluations of secondary processing of publicly available personal data diverge considerably both among scholars and the general public. While some (...) of these uses are met with opposition and criticism, others are quite unanimously viewed as unproblematic. Often, proponents and opponents of such practices invoke the same ethical and legal standards for their opposite conclusions. This state of affairs shows that other considerations besides the public availability of data must play a role. It calls for a theoretical clarification of the additional criteria that should guide decisions about the (legally informed) ethical acceptability of re-processing practices. In order to make a contribution towards this goal, the present chapter maps the ongoing debate and systematises the existing contributions around three lines of argument: a consent-centred position, an approach that focuses on the distinction between data and information, and finally a line of argument that focuses on the contextual norms that govern the flows of information. The chapter further relates these arguments to three underlying conceptions of privacy and data protection: rights-based, structural and contextual, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each position in the light of concrete examples. It concludes by arguing for a mixed approach that combines core elements of the structural and contextual approaches. The chapter aims to contribute to existing research in the fields of data, AI and research ethics, and to reconnect the debate with ethical and legal scholarship on privacy and data protection. In doing so, it aims to make a theoretical contribution towards refining existing conceptions of privacy and data protection in order to make them more fit to ‘drive our digital world’ as far as the use of publicly available data is concerned. (shrink)

There is growing debate about what is the correct methodology for research in the ontology of artworks. In the first part of this essay, I introduce my view: I argue that semantic descriptivism is a semantic approach that has an impact on meta-ontological views and can be linked with a hermeneutic fictionalist proposal on the meta-ontology of artworks such as works of music. In the second part, I offer a synthetic presentation of the four main positive meta-ontological views that have (...) been defended in philosophical literature about artworks and of some criticisms that can be lodged against them: Amie Thomasson’s global descriptivism, Andrew Kania’s local descriptivism, Julian Dodd’s folk-theoretic modesty, and David Davies’ rational accountability view. In the conclusion, I show the advantages of my view. (shrink)

During the French Revolution, Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793) campaigned for the rights of women, enslaved people and other politically marginalised and underprivileged groups. Conceptually, her reflection is located within the tradition of the social contract. However, she made a theoretical and practical break with this by abolishing the separation between the political and private spheres and universally expanding political participation and belonging.

Several contemporary architects have designed architectural objects that are closely linked to their particular sites. An in-depth study of the relevant relationship holding between those objects and their sites is, however, missing. This paper addresses the issue, arguing that those architectural objects are akin to works of site-specific art. In section (1), I introduce the topic of the paper. In section (2), I critically analyse the debate on the categorisation of artworks as site-specific. In section (3), I apply to architecture (...) the lesson learned from the analysis of the art debate. (shrink)

Marie Oldfield, Pro Bono Economics & Refugee Council. Over half the total applications for asylum the UK receives each year are initially rejected, yet nearly a third of these initial rejections are subsequently overturned on appeal. This process that fails to get decisions right first time imposes significant costs, not just on the applicants themselves, but also more widely on UK taxpayers. Asylum seekers are not entitled to welfare benefits nor employment except in some limited cases, and are often (...) placed in unsuitable conditions with lack of appropriate support to prepare their case for asylum. These unfortunate circumstances mean that they are unable to gather and present all the required evidence first time, even when the case for asylum is legitimate. As a result, the application is rejected and thus begins a cycle of appeals that might eventually lead to a successful outcome for the asylum seeker but will, in the process, burden the taxpayer with unnecessary administrative cost and cause the asylum seeker needless distress and prevent them from accessing suitable economic opportunities. • Our study estimates that there are approximately 4,000 initial rejections that are successfully appealed each year and, with each appeal incurring direct administrative costs of around £1,000, the price tag of incorrect initial decisions adds up to a hefty £4 million per year in unnecessary administrative costs alone. • There are other costs, too, that negatively impact asylum seekers and taxpayers, albeit in a more indirect manner. The longer the appeals process is dragged out, the more delay there is to successful asylum seekers entering the labour market which means lost economic activity and forgone tax revenue for the Exchequer. Long periods of unemployment also result in skills attrition and lower the probability of the asylum seeker successfully entering the labour market in the future. • A lengthy appeals process heightens stress and worsens mental health in asylum seekers, a group arguably already more vulnerable on this front. Unnecessary human suffering aside, there is also a monetary cost borne by the taxpayer should NHS mental health services become involved. Thus, there is a pressing and viable case for providing asylum seekers a stable environment in which to complete their applications for asylum. This would increase the likelihood of reaching correct decisions in the first instance, avoid unnecessary administrative costs of an arduous appeals process, enable successful asylum seekers to access the labour market and contribute to the Exchequer, and avoid placing extra demands on already strained NHS mental health services. (shrink)

l volume di Gustavo Gozzi "Diritti e civiltà. Storia e filosofia del diritto internazionale (Bologna, il Mulino, 2010) ha a nostro avviso colmato una lacuna importante nel panorama filosofico-giuridico italiano. Si tratta infatti della prima pubblicazione in lingua italiana che, da un punto di vista insieme storico e filosofico, affronta in modo sistematico lo sviluppo del diritto internazionale dall’età moderna ai giorni nostri. Questo primato è già un eccellente motivo per discutere Diritti e civiltà. Ma c’è di più. Una parte (...) consistente del saggio è dedicata alla ricostruzione e discussione di contributi non-occidentali al dibattito contemporaneo sulla natura e il ruolo del diritto internazionale. Si può anzi dire che Gozzi fa proprio il punto di vista di questi autori: il volume si distingue infatti per un approccio critico nei confronti della pretesa universalità delle dottrine occidentali del diritto internazionale. Questo scetticismo si fonda sulla tesi fondamentale del volume, secondo la quale il diritto internazionale è caratterizzato dalla “continuità del discorso dell’egemonia occidentale dalla prima età moderna fino alla realtà contemporanea” (p. 11). Prendendo avvio dall’approccio sistematico e insieme critico del volume e dai temi in esso trattati, questo forum intende (ri)discutere temi chiave della storia e filosofia del diritto internazionale e metterne a fuoco un programma di ricerca. (shrink)

We argue that relating to myself as me provides, as such, a reason to care about myself: grasping that an event involves me, instead of another, makes it matter in a special way. Further, this self-concern is not simply a matter of seeing in myself some instrumental value for other ends. We use as our foil a recent skeptical challenge to this view offered in Setiya 2015. We think the case against self-concern is powered by unwarrantedly narrow construals of three (...) key notions. One is the notion of a first-personal way of relating to oneself. A narrow account of the first person in terms of special epistemic relations to oneself makes it easy to overlook a source of non-instrumental reasons of self-concern, located in the special relation a subject has to herself as agent. Two is the notion of what it is to be a reason. And, three, is the notion of self-concern itself. We show that the skeptical case rests in part on a slide towards neighbouring but distinct notions of egoism and selfishness. We also argue that Setiya’s notion of self-love, offered to capture the pre-theoretical intuition of self-concern, cannot do it justice. (shrink)

This paper contrasts the experience of works of installation art with sculptural and architectural experience and argues that installation art is an interactive art form.

This article focuses on the so-called “Area of Freedom, Security and Justice” (ASFJ), namely the policy field of the European Union (EU) that covers judicial and police cooperation, migration and asylum policies and the control of external borders. The article explores how the AFSJ has emerged and how, within it, the relationship between freedom and security has evolved over time and brought about a shift towards a “Security Union”.

Digitalisation has lent the right to privacy increasing philosophical and legal relevance. However, privacy’s epistemic status and associated normative values are constantly subject to radical criticisms. This article investigates the validity, in theory and practice, of three radical critiques of privacy. A review of the philosophical and interdisciplinary discourse on privacy during the last half century is followed by analyses of recent legal developments within the EU. Privacy emerges as a highly differentiated and powerful tool to protect individuals and social (...) relations and to limit and redistribute power. However, the right to privacy remains far from realising its practical potential. (shrink)

The Passenger Name Record (PNR) Directive has introduced a pre-emptive, risk-based approach in the landscape of European databases and information exchange for security purposes. The article contributes to ongoing debates on algorithmic security and data-driven decision-making by fleshing out the specific way in which the EU PNR-based approach to security substantiates core characteristics of algorithmic regulation. The EU PNR framework appropriates data produced in the commercial sector for generating security-related behavioural predictions and does so in a way that gives rise (...) to a paradoxical normativity directly dependent on empirical states. Its ‘securitisation move’ is moreover characterised by an inherent tendence to expand. As a result, the PNR Directive poses challenges for existing check and balance mechanisms and for human autonomy. These challenges could be partially addressed by strengthening ex-post control procedures and independent auditing. Yet in the decision to adopt a risk-based security model, something more fundamental seems to be at stake, namely, the preservation of the idea of human beings as moral agents able to direct and modify their behaviour in accordance with an intelligible, reliable and predictable normative order. (shrink)

La categoría ‘arte conceptual’ se aplica a una gran cantidad de obras de arte contemporáneo. El artista Sol LeWitt introdujo el término en la jerga del arte al describir obras de arte donde “la idea o el concepto es el aspecto más importante de la obra” (LeWitt 1967: 79, traducción mía). Inicialmente, el término se utilizó para referirse a obras producidas entre finales de los años sesenta y principios de los setenta por artistas como Sol LeWitt, Robert Barry, Lawrence Weiner, (...) On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, John Baldessari, el grupo Art & Language y otros (véase Lippard 1973). En España fueron relevantes el Grup de Treball, Zaj o Esther Ferrer entre otros. Más tarde se hizo evidente no solo que obras como Fuente (1917) de Marcel Duchamp – un urinario de porcelana, que fue firmado “R. Mutt” y presentado para una exposición de la Sociedad de Artistas Independientes – tenían mucho en común con aquellas producidas a finales de la década de 1960 y principios de la de 1970, sino también que obras de arte conceptual continuaron siendo producidas a lo largo de la década de 1970 y las décadas siguientes, hasta el punto de que podría argumentarse que gran parte del arte contemporáneo es, en cierta medida, conceptual. -/- Es característico de los primeros autores conceptuales el uso del lenguaje natural en obras que son en principio visuales o plásticas, como las frases de Weiner, las definiciones de Kosuth o los ensayos de Art&Language. Se trata de un interés por el significado y el lenguaje heredado de la semiótica y la filosofía analítica de la época. También señala el énfasis (a menudo exclusivo) de todas las obras de arte conceptual en el elemento conceptual, como ocurre en los dibujos y pinturas murales de LeWitt, donde el artista produjo las instrucciones para su ejecución, luego las realizó en colaboración con otros, o transfirió completamente a otros esta tarea. Otra característica de las primeras obras de arte conceptual es que los artistas no manipularon ningún material para producir un objeto (como en Fuente de Duchamp) o usaron materiales excéntricos como el lenguaje natural, su propio cuerpo -como en I am the locus (# 1) (1975) de Adrian Piper, una performance en la que la artista se pegó un bigote en la cara, se puso una peluca Afro y anteojos redondos con montura de alambre y caminó en las calles actuando como un hombre-, o el chocolate con el que Anya Gallaccio revistió las paredes de un viejo edificio agrícola en Stroke (2004), dejando que el público las tocara y que el chocolate se pudriese. -/- Debido a sus características inusuales, el arte conceptual plantea muchas preguntas filosóficas: sobre la definición de arte, sobre la ontología y los medios de las obras de arte y sobre nuestra experiencia apreciativa de ellas. En lo que sigue, presentaré brevemente cada uno de estos temas. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) and molecular biotechnologies (MB) are among the most promising, but also ethically hotly debated emerging technologies. In both fields, several ethics reports, which invoke lists of ethics principles, have been put forward. These reports and the principles lists are technology specific. This article aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on ethics of emerging technologies by comparatively analysing four European ethics reports from the two technology fields. Adopting a qualitative and in-depth approach, the article highlights how ethics (...) principles from MB can inform AI ethics and vice versa. By synthesizing the respective ethical cores of the principles included in the analysed reports, the article derives, moreover, a unified list of principles for assessing emerging technologies. The suggested list consists of nine principles: autonomy; individual and social well-being and prevention of harm; reliability, safety and security; informational privacy; transparency; accountability; communication, participation and democracy; justice, fairness, and non-discrimination; sustainability. (shrink)

The Research Domani Criteria framework (RdoC) encourages research on specific impairments present across traditional nosological categories and suggests a list of biological and behavioral measures for assessing them. After a description of RdoC, in this article we focus on impairments of the ability of understanding others, specifically in Theory of Mind and empathy. We illustrate recent evidence on brain anomalies correlating with these deficits in Schizophrenia, Addiction Disorders and Mood Disorders populations. In the last section, we zoom out and consider (...) this kind of research vis-à-vis the objection of being reductionistic that is, in favoring mechanistic accounts of mental disorders. We argue that metaphysical reductionism and explanatory reductionism are not conceptually entailed by the RdoC framework. (shrink)

This paper addresses issues regarding perceptions of surveillance technologies in Europe. It analyses existing studies in order to explore how perceptions of surveillance affect and are affected by the negative effects of surveillance and how perceptions and effectiveness of surveillance technologies relate to each other. The paper identifies 12 negative effects of surveillance including, among others, privacy intrusion, the chilling effect and social exclusion, and classifies them into three groups. It further illustrates the different ways in which perceptions and effectiveness (...) of surveillance interact with each other, distinguishing between perceived security and perceived effectiveness. Finally, the paper advances a methodology to take into account perception issues when designing new surveillance technologies. By doing so, it rejects manipulative measures aiming at improving perceptions only and suggests measures that address the background conditions affecting perceptions. (shrink)

Este capítulo presenta dos versiones de la teoría según la cual deberíamos centrarnos en ciertas acciones realizadas por los artistas para comprender qué tipo de objetos son las obras de arte: la propuesta de Gregory Currie (An Ontology of Art, 1989) y la de David Davies (Art as Performance, 2004). Si bien estas teorías no están exentas de problemas, es cierto que estas proporcionan una guía completa de algunos de los temas en los que uno debería meditar al evaluar y (...) desarrollar teorías sobre qué son las obras de arte. Además, Currie y Davies presentan algunos de los argumentos más refinados contra los puntos de vista contextualistas y estructuralistas sobre la metafísica de las obras de arte, así como contra el empirismo estético. (shrink)

The relationship between power, law and consent is a key feature of the Western debate on criminal law. On the one side, defining the legitimate ways of exercising the punitive power has been a critical question since the Enlightenment thought onwards and especially as to the rule of law doctrine. On the other side, the role played by public punishment in shaping consent and its communicative potential have been crucial questions for critical, as well as non-critical approaches to criminal law (...) in contemporary thought. These questions gain in strength and radicalism when it comes to international criminal law (ICL). In this case the filter of the state is not present anymore to mediate between power, law and consent, and the power to punish individuals is directly exercised by international institutions. This means, on the one hand, that traditional justifications of the power to punish and which are elaborated on in the domestic sphere are not useful anymore in legitimating international punishment. International criminal norms are not framed by an international democratically elected parliament, and their exercise is not controlled by the complex system of checks and balances typical of the rule of law. On the other hand, having not being created by a sovereign, international criminal law cannot be conceived as an instrument to build or consolidate consent around the sovereign. A double-sided dilemma therefore arises: traditional explanations are no longer apt to answer the question whether ICL is legitimate, while ICL itself can no longer be considered an instrument to build consent around the traditional power exercising it, namely the state. Although I consider both sides of the dilemma equally interesting and stimulating, I will focus here only on one side of the coin: the ability to build consent of the ICL institutions, and in particular the International Criminal Court (ICC). In other words, instead of asking whether the consent around the ICC is broad enough for the Court to be considered legitimate, I shall ask whether the ICC is able to build consent around the world order it embodies. (shrink)

This article examines the possibility of philosophizing about mathematics with children. It aims at outlining the nature of the practice of philosophy of mathematics with children in a mainly theoretical and exploratory way. First, an attempt at a definition is proposed. Second, I suggest some reasons that might motivate such a practice. My thesis is that one can identify an intrinsic as well as two extrinsic goals of philosophizing about mathematics with children. The intrinsic goal is related to a presumed (...) inherent importance of presenting children with some philosophical questions about mathematics. The extrinsic goals consist of first the positive effects such a practice can have on mathematical learning and abilities and second the fostering of children's understanding of philosophical method of inquiry and thinking and therefore of their philosophical thinking competences. Third, some examples found in the literature of previously developed ways of practising philosophy of mathematics with children are presented. This article aims at giving a general outlining picture of the issues surrounding the practice of philosophy of mathematics with children and should therefore be read as an encouragement to further development and studies. (shrink)

Lo sviluppo del diritto internazionale penale è stato accolto con entusiasmo da attivisti per i diritti umani, giuristi e studiosi di questioni internazionali. La punizione dei crimini internazionali più gravi, come i crimini di guerra, quelli contro l’umanità e il genocidio è considerata un importante passo avanti verso l’effettiva protezione dei diritti umani e l’affermazione della pace. Questo entusiasmo sembra però aver lasciato sullo sfondo alcune domande fondamentali: come si giustifica l’esercizio del potere punitivo internazionale? Chi ne è il titolare (...) e in virtù di cosa? Il tribunale del mondo prova a rispondere a queste domande, indagando da una prospettiva filosofico-politico-giuridica la giustificazione del diritto internazionale penale e assumendo come punto di partenza le specificità del contesto internazionale. L’autrice auspica il superamento del diritto internazionale penale a favore di un sistema plurale di risposta alle gravi violazioni dei diritti elementari: un sistema che comprenda anche soluzioni non penali e che in alternativa all’universalismo del diritto penale internazionale offra meccanismi orientati alle esigenze delle comunità coinvolte. (shrink)

An analysis of three pictorial works by Ugo Nespolo is put forward: "Barbe posticce" (1977); "Guardar Manzoni" (1974); "Il museo: Fontana" (1975). It is claimed that such works embody meditations on the concept and the varieties of representation, that they prompt critical reflections on the role of museums in art-making, and that they suggest an alternative route to that of the 'dematerialization' of the art object for the understanding of contemporary art.

Recent AI progress led to a boost in beneficial applications from multiple research areas including VR. Simultaneously, in this newly unfolding deepfake era, ethically and security-relevant disagreements arose in the scientific community regarding the epistemic capabilities of present-day AI. However, given what is at stake, one can postulate that for a responsible approach, prior to engaging in a rigorous epistemic assessment of AI, humans may profit from a self-questioning strategy, an examination and calibration of the experience of their own epistemic (...) agency – especially to counteract both intentional misdirection by unethical actors and unintentional epistemic self-sabotage. In this paper, we expound on a new avenue of utilizing AIVR tools to advance an AI-related misdirection awareness of humans in the deepfake era. Firstly, we harness scientific knowledge from the psychology and neuroscience of magic where the study of misdirection techniques is center stage. Secondly, we connect the latter to creativity research linking human creative potential to inspiration from the seemingly impossible. Overall, AIVR could become an empowering experiential testbed for human epistemic agency enabling a better rational evaluation of AI capabilities. However, a misuse of the same type of tools could yield AIVR safety risks if not counteracted preemptively. (shrink)

This autodidactic paper wraps up an earlier epistemic art project and compactly collates the main unfolded scientific and philosophical strategies for epistemic resiliency against epistemic doom in the deepfake era. Retrospectively speaking, the existence of a dense condensate within which explanatory blockchain (EB) based science, EB-based philosophy and EB-based art overlap acts as a pointer to untapped non-algorithmic epistemic resources that could (if ever activated) exhibit the natural tendency to compel the reach of algorithmic computations – noticeably at the "cost" (...) of increasing non-algorithmic self-determination. (shrink)

"The enterprise initiative is probably the most significant political and cultural influence to have affected Western and Eastern Europe in the last decade. In this book, academics from a range of disciplines debate Mary Douglas's distinctive Grid Group cultural theory and examine how it allows us to analyse the complex relation between the culture of enterprise and its institutions. Mary Douglas, Britain's leading cultural anthropologist, contributes several chapters."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The central aim of this article is to specify the ontological nature of constitutive mechanistic phenomena. After identifying three criteria of adequacy that any plausible approach to constitutive mechanistic phenomena must satisfy, we present four different suggestions, found in the mechanistic literature, of what mechanistic phenomena might be. We argue that none of these suggestions meets the criteria of adequacy. According to our analysis, constitutive mechanistic phenomena are best understood as what we will call ‘object-involving occurrents’. Furthermore, on the basis (...) of this notion, we will clarify what distinguishes constitutive mechanistic explanations from etiological ones. 1 Introduction 2 Criteria of Adequacy 2.1 Descriptive adequacy 2.2 Constitutive–etiological distinction 2.3 Constitution 3 The Ontological Nature of Constitutive Mechanistic Phenomena 3.1 Phenomena as input–output relations 3.2 Phenomena as end states 3.3 Phenomena as dispositions 3.4 Phenomena as behaviours 4 Phenomena as Object-Involving Occurrents 4.1 What object-involving occurrents are and why we need them 4.2 The object in the phenomenon 4.3 The adequacy of option 5 Conclusion. (shrink)

We characterize four fruitful and underappreciated epistemic roles played by the concept of an individualized niche in contemporary biology, utilizing results of a qualitative empirical study conducted within an interdisciplinary biological research center. We argue that the individualized niche concept (1) shapes the research agenda of the center, (2) facilitates explaining core phenomena related to inter-individual differences, (3) helps with managing individual-level causal complexity, and (4) promotes integrating local knowledge from ecology, evolutionary biology, behavioral biology and other biological fields. We (...) thereby also challenge arguments that the niche concept is superfluous in ecology. (shrink)

The review is available online on Estudos Kantianos.

In this chapter, Marie Collins Swabey critiques naturalism and defends a rationalistic conception of knowledge.

Some commentators have condemned Kant’s moral project from a feminist perspective based on Kant’s apparently dim view of women as being innately morally deficient. Here I will argue that although his remarks concerning women are unsettling at first glance, a more detailed and closer examination shows that Kant’s view of women is actually far more complex and less unsettling than that attributed to him by various feminist critics. My argument, then, undercuts the justification for the severe feminist critique of Kant’s (...) moral project. (shrink)

Leuridan (2011) questions whether mechanisms can really replace laws at the heart of our thinking about science. In doing so, he enters a long-standing discussion about the relationship between the mech-anistic structures evident in the theories of contemporary biology and the laws of nature privileged especially in traditional empiricist traditions of the philosophy of science (see e.g. Wimsatt 1974; Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005; Bogen 2005; Darden 2006; Glennan 1996; MDC 2000; Schaffner 1993; Tabery 2003; Weber 2005). In our view, Leuridan (...) misconstrues this discussion. His weak positive claim that mechanistic sciences appeal to generalizations is true but uninteresting. His stronger claim, that all causal claims require laws, is unsupported by his arguments. Though we proceed by criticizing Leuridan’s arguments, our greater purpose is to embellish his arguments in order to show how thinking about mechanisms enriches and transforms old philosophical debates about laws in biology and provides new insights into how generalizations afford prediction, explanation and control. (shrink)

Mechanisms are said to consist of two kinds of components, entities and activities. In the first half of this chapter, I examine what entities and activities are, how they relate to well-known ontological categories, such as processes or dispositions, and how entities and activities relate to each other (e.g., can one be reduced to the other or are they mutually dependent?). The second part of this chapter analyzes different criteria for individuating the components of mechanisms and discusses how real the (...) boundaries of mechanisms are. (shrink)

Preservationism is a dominant account of the justification of beliefs formed on the basis of memory. According to preservationism, a memory belief is justified only if that belief was justified when it was initially held. However, we now know that much of what we remember is not explicitly stored, but instead reconstructed when we attempt to recall it. Since reconstructive memory beliefs may not have been continuously held by the agent, or never held before at all, a purely preservationist account (...) of memory does not allow for justified reconstructed memory beliefs. In this essay, I show how a process reliabilist account can maintain preservationism about reproductive memory beliefs while accommodating the justification of reconstructive memory beliefs. I argue that reconstructive memory is an inferential process, and that therefore the beliefs it produces are justified in the same way that other inferential beliefs are justified. Accordingly, my process reliabilist account combines a preservationist account of reproductive memory with an inferential account of reconstructive memory. I end by defending this view against objections. (shrink)

Reshaping our methodological research tools for adequately capturing injustice and domination has been a central aspiration of feminist philosophy and social epistemology in recent years. There has been an increasingly empirical turn in recent feminist and political theorization, engaging with case studies and the challenges arising from conducting research in solidarity with unequal partners. I argue that these challenges cannot be resolved by merely adopting a norm and stance of deference to those in the struggle for justice. To conduct philosophical (...) research in an engaged and solidaristic manner, I suggest that deference be supplemented by three methodological and normative principles: 1) epistemic humility, 2) accountability, and 3) co-producing knowledge. I situate these principles within contemporary philosophical work on solidarity, and show how they might help confront power imbalances and other methodological hazards that arise when conducting research in solidarity with others. I arrive at these principles in part by critically reflecting on my own attempt to conduct research in solidarity with women’s rights activists in Senegal. (shrink)

What are the conditions under which one biological object is a part of another biological object? This paper answers this question by developing a general, systematic account of biological parthood. I specify two criteria for biological parthood. Substantial Spatial Inclusionrequires biological parts to be spatially located inside or in the region that the natural boundary of t he biological whole occupies. Compositional Relevance captures the fact that a biological part engages in a biological process that must make a necessary contribution (...) to a condition that is minimally sufficient to one or more of the characteristic behaviors of the biological whole. Instead of emphasizing the diversity of part-whole relations in the biological world, this paper asks what biological part-whole relations have in common and what constrains their existence, in general. After presenting the two criteria for biological parthood I discuss in how far my account can cope with hard cases (e.g., redundant parts) and I reveal the merits and limits of monism. (shrink)

Individuals of many animal species are said to have a personality. It has been shown that some individuals are bolder than other individuals of the same species, or more sociable or more aggressive. In this paper, we analyse what it means to say that an animal has a personality. We clarify what an animal personality is, that is, its ontology, and how different personality concepts relate to each other, and we examine how personality traits are identified in biological practice. Our (...) analysis shows that biologists often study specific personality traits, such as boldness, sociability or aggressiveness, rather than personalities in general. We claim that personality traits are best understood as dispositions and that they are operationally defined in terms of certain sets of behaviours, which are studied in specific experimental set-ups. Furthermore, we develop an integrative philosophical account that specifies and formalises three criteria for identifying personality traits, which are used in biological practice. For an individual animal to have a personality trait it must, first, behave differently than others. Second, these behavioural differences must be stable over a certain time, and third, they must be consistent in different contexts. (shrink)

This paper argues that an addressee's failure to recognize a speaker's authority can constitutes another form of silencing.

This is the first record of nesting in the soil by the ant Camponotus sericeiventris (Guérin-Méneville, 1838), which has arboreal habit. The study was conducted in southeastern Brazil, in an ant colony located in a subterranean site. This study describes, for the first time, the ability of this arboreal species to vary its nesting site by the occupation of an unusual place in an urban environment; and this study demonstrates that this species is an interesting model for studies in urban (...) environments. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on two underlying presumptions that impinge on the effort of UNESCO to engender universal agreement on a set of bioethical norms: the conception of universality that pervades much of the document, and its disregard of structural inequalities that significantly impact health. Drawing on other UN system documents and recent feminist bioethics scholarship, we argue that the formulation of universal principles should not rely solely on shared ethical values, as the draft document affirms, but also on differences (...) in ethical values that obtain across cultures. UNESCO's earlier work on gender mainstreaming illustrates the necessity of thinking from multiple perspectives in generating universal norms. The declaration asserts the ‘fundamental equality of all human beings in dignity and rights’1 and insists that ‘the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition’2 yet it does not explicitly recognize disparities of power and wealth that deny equal dignity and rights to many. Without attention to structural (as opposed to merely accidental) inequities, UNESCO's invocation of rights is so abstract as to be incompatible with its avowed intention. (shrink)

This Article aims to demonstrate that the WTO jurisprudence on science-related trade disputes has become imbued with a specific vision of science that has prevented any possible application of the precautionary principle. This situation is due both to the WTO’s specific dispute settlement procedures and to the substantive nature of precautionary measures. Indeed, such measures’ foundation on “insufficient scientific evidence” dramatically undermines the probative value of science in WTO adjudication and creates a seeming contradiction: The system requires defendants to provide (...) legal evidence of the absence of sufficient scientific evidence. The reasoning of the Panel on the EC–Biotech case was riddled with this apparent paradox. For the first time, the US–Continued Suspension case has opened a gateway to address this fundamental issue. (shrink)

Is philosophy like plumbing? I have made this comparison a number of times when I have wanted to stress that philosophising is not just grand and elegant and difficult, but is also needed. It is not optional. The idea has caused mild surprise, and has sometimes been thought rather undignified. The question of dignity is a very interesting one, and I shall come back to it at the end of this article. But first, I would like to work the comparison (...) out a bit more fully. (shrink)