This paper discusses “impartiality thought experiments”, i.e., thought experiments that attempt to generate intuitions which are unaffected by personal characteristics such as age, gender or race. We focus on the most prominent impartiality thought experiment, the Veil of Ignorance (VOI), and show that both in its original Rawlsian version and in a more generic version, empirical investigations can be normatively relevant in two ways: First, on the assumption that the VOI is effective and robust, if subjects dominantly favor a certain (...) normative judgment behind the VOI this provides evidence in favor of that judgment; if, on the other hand, they do not dominantly favor a judgment this reduces our justification for it. Second, empirical investigations can also contribute to assessing the effectiveness and robustness of the VOI in the first place, thereby supporting or undermining its applications across the board. (shrink)

All first-order Gödel logics G_V with globalization operator based on truth value sets V C [0,1] where 0 and 1 lie in the perfect kernel of V are axiomatized by Ciabattoni’s hypersequent calculus HGIF.

Experimental ethicists investigate traditional ethical questions with non-traditional means, namely with the methods of the empirical sciences. Studies in this area have made heavy use of philosophical thought experiments such as the well-known trolley cases. Yet, the specific function of these thought experiments within experimental ethics has received little consideration. In this paper we attempt to fill this gap. We begin by describing the function of ethical thought experiments, and show that these thought experiments should not only be classified according (...) to their function but also according to their scope. On this basis we highlight several ways in which the use of thought experiments in experimental ethics can be philosophically relevant. We conclude by arguing that experimental philosophy currently only focuses on a small subcategory of ethical thought experiments and suggest a broadening of its research agenda. (shrink)

In this paper we present applications of the ACGT Master Ontology (MO) which is a new terminology resource for a transnational network providing data exchange in oncology, emphasizing the integration of both clinical and molecular data. The development of a new ontology was necessary due to problems with existing biomedical ontologies in oncology. The ACGT MO is a test case for the application of best practices in ontology development. This paper provides an overview of the application of the ontology within (...) the ACGT project thus far. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to introduce and explain display calculi for a variety of logics. We provide a survey of key results concerning such calculi, though we focus mainly on the global cut elimination theorem. Propositional, first-order, and modal display calculi are considered and their properties detailed.

This review aims to identify (1) sources of knowledge and (2) important themes of the ethical debate related to surgical alteration of facial features in East Asians. This article integrates narrative and systematic review methods. In March 2014, we searched databases including PubMed, Philosopher’s Index, Web of Science, Sociological Abstracts, and Communication Abstracts using key terms “cosmetic surgery,” “ethnic*,” “ethics,” “Asia*,” and “Western*.” The study included all types of papers written in English that discuss the debate on rhinoplasty and blepharoplasty (...) in East Asians. No limit was put on date of publication. Combining both narrative and systematic review methods, a total of 31 articles were critically appraised on their contribution to ethical reflection founded on the debates regarding the surgical alteration of Asian features. Sources of knowledge were drawn from four main disciplines, including the humanities, medicine or surgery, communications, and economics. Focusing on cosmetic surgery perceived as a westernising practice, the key debate themes included authenticity of identity, interpersonal relationships and socio-economic utility in the context of Asian culture. The study shows how cosmetic surgery of ethnic features plays an important role in understanding female identity in the Asian context. Based on the debate themes authenticity of identity, interpersonal relationships, and socio-economic utility, this article argues that identity should be understood as less individualistic and more as relational and transformational in the Asian context. In addition, this article also proposes to consider cosmetic surgery of Asian features as an interplay of cultural imperialism and cultural nationalism, which can both be a source of social pressure to modify one’s appearance. (shrink)

I argue that Sellars’s naturalization of Kant should be understood in terms of how he used behavioristic psychology and cybernetics. I first explore how Sellars used Edward Tolman’s cognitive-behavioristic psychology to naturalize Kant in the early essay “Language, Rules, and Behavior”. I then turn to Norbert Wiener’s understanding of feedback loops and circular causality. On this basis I argue that Sellars’s distinction between signifying and picturing, which he introduces in “Being and Being Known,” can be understood in terms of (...) what I call cybernetic behaviorism. I interpret picturing in terms of cycles of cybernetic behavior and signifying in terms of coordination between cybernetic behavior systems, or what I call triangulated cybernetic behavior. This leads to a formal, naturalistic understanding of personhood as the capacity to engage in triangulated cybernetic behavior. I conclude by showing that Sellars’s thought has the resources, which he did not exploit, for introducing the concept of second-order cybernetics. This suggests that Sellars’s philosophy of mind could be developed in the direction of autopoiesis and enactivism. (shrink)

Artykuł w głównej mierze poświęcony jest analizie późnego eseju Norberta Eliasa Über die Einsamkeit der Sterbenden in unseren Tagen (1982). W pierwszej części autorka rozpatruje socjologiczne refleksje Eliasa nad zmianami we współczesnej percepcji umierania – choroby, starości, śmierci. Zdaniem Eliasa fenomen śmierci podlega systematycznemu wykluczeniu z centrum życia społecznego – z codzienności -, co stanowi o nowej wersji jego „zaczarowania”. W części drugiej przedstawiona jest jedna z najważniejszych tez niniejszego artykułu, tj. idea rozumu anamnetycznego. Autorka skupia się tu na Eliasowskich (...) pojęciach komunikacji, zaangażowania i balansu w strukturze ja-my (resp. ja-ty). Elisowska formuła Ich-Wir-Balance, jako proces uczenia się, ma stanowić o zrównoważeniu i przedefiniowaniu rozumu anamnetycznego / pamięci kolektywnej. W ostatniej, trzeciej części autorka ilustruje krótko pewne podobieństwa między Eliasowską kategorią śmierci a nihilizmem w ujęciu T. Różewicza oraz koncepcją biopolityki G. Agambena. (shrink)

Beginning with a survey of the shortcoming of theories of organology/media-as-externalization of mind/body—a philosophical-anthropological tradition that stretches from Plato through Ernst Kapp and finds its contemporary proponent in Bernard Stiegler—I propose that the phenomenological treatment of media as an outpouching and extension of mind qua intentionality is not sufficient to counter the ̳black-box‘ mystification of today‘s deep learning‘s algorithms. Focusing on a close study of Simondon‘s On the Existence of Technical Objectsand Individuation, I argue that the process-philosophical work of Gilbert (...) Simondon, with its critique of Norbert Wiener‘s first-order cybernetics, offers a precursor to the conception of second-order cybernetics (as endorsed byFrancisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, and Ricardo B. Uribe) and, specifically, its autopoietic treatment of information. It has been argued by those such as Frank Pasquale that neuro-inferential deep learning systems premised on predictive patterning, suchas AlphaGo Zero, have a veiled logic and, thus, are ̳black boxes‘. In detailing a philosophical-historical approach to demystify predictive patterning/processing and the logic of such deep learning algorithms, this paper attempts to shine a light on such systems and their inner workingsàla Simondon. (shrink)

As figurational sociologists and sociolinguists, we need to know that we currently find support from other fields in our efforts to construct a sociocultural science focused on interdependencies and processes, creating a multidimensional picture of human beings, one in which the brain and its mental and emotional processes are properly recognized. The paradigmatic revolutions in 20th-century physics, the contributions made by biology to our understanding of living beings, the conceptual constructions built around the theories of systems, self-organization and complexity, all (...) these implore that we reflect on social sciences paradigms in the light of the great changes in these other disciplines. The application of metaphors or theoretical images of complexity and figurational sociology in understanding language and socio-communication phenomena is of great use, since language is not an ‘object’, but a ‘complex’; it exists simultaneously in and among different domains. ‘Languaging’ and interaction are co-phenomena. The former exists within the latter, and the latter within the former. By visualizing, for instance, the different levels of linguistic structure not as separate entities but rather as united and integrated within the same theoretical frame, by seeing their functional interdependencies, by situating them in a greater multidimensionality that includes what for a long time was considered ‘external’ – the individual and his or her mind-brain, the sociocultural system, the physical world, etc. – and expanding in this way our classical view, we should be able to make important, if not essential, theoretical and practical advances. (shrink)

The history of the relationship between Christian theology and the natural sciences has been conditioned by the initial decision of the masters of the "first scientific revolution" to disregard any necessary explanatory premiss to account for the constituting organization and the framing of naturally occurring entities. Not paying any attention to hierarchical control, they ended-up disseminating a vision and understanding in which it was no longer possible for a theology of nature to send questions in the direction of the experimental (...) sciences, as was done in the past between theology and many philosophically-based thought-systems. Presenting the history of some hinge-periods in the development of the Western-world sciences, this book first sets out to consider the conceptual revolution which has, in the 20th Century, related consciousness, physical laws and levels of organization, in order to show that a new chance existed then for theology. This discourse was invited to revise its language to open it up to the quest for meaning which we find on the periphery of the project of the experimental sciences. The Century-old reflection on the foundations of probability had prepared the ground for the introduction of the concept of information, at first linked to an effort aimed at maximizing the efficiency of electromagnetic communications. Taking the full measure of the questions that information theory poses to the biological sciences, this work attempts to identify the areas of convergence setting the stage for general systems theory, while it also tries to identify the insufficiencies of this recent vision and to highlight the questions left unanswered. Re-reading some of the traditional proofs of God's existence from the order of the world, relying on some pioneering insights of Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Norbert Wiener, the author brings those proofs and insights in contact with the fascinating initial project of cybernetics and the elements of a "mythical" nature which, from its inception, it could never entirely eliminate. This book ends with the confrontation between the conceptually most extended regulation factors in the history of Western thought. It articulates the poetic utopia concerned with an immediate grasp of the world in its "deictic" character with the concurrent one aimed at the domination over matter and energy expressed by technology's driving rational utopia. (shrink)

Norbert Wiener’s idea of “cybernetics” is linked to temporality as in a physical as in a philosophical sense. “Time orders” can be the slogan of that natural cybernetics of time: time orders by itself in its “screen” in virtue of being a well-ordering valid until the present moment and dividing any totality into two parts: the well-ordered of the past and the yet unordered of the future therefore sharing the common boundary of the present between them when the ordering (...) is taking place by choices. Thus, the quantity of information defined by units of choices, whether bits or qubits, describes that process of ordering happening in the present moment. The totality (which can be considered also as a particular or “regional” totality) turns out to be divided into two parts: the internality of the past and the externality of the future by the course of time, but identifiable to each other in virtue of scientific transcendentalism (e.g. mathematical, physical, and historical transcendentalism). A properly mathematical approach to the “totality and time” is introduced by the abstract concept of “evolutionary tree” (i.e. regardless of the specific nature of that to which refers: such as biological evolution, Feynman trajectories, social and historical development, etc.), Then, the other half of the future can be represented as a deformed mirror image of the evolutionary tree taken place already in the past: therefore the past and future part are seen to be unifiable as a mirrorly doubled evolutionary tree and thus representable as generalized Feynman trajectories. The formalism of the separable complex Hilbert space (respectively, the qubit Hilbert space) applied and further elaborated in quantum mechanics in order to uniform temporal and reversible, discrete and continuous processes is relevant. Then, the past and future parts of evolutionary tree would constitute a wave function (or even only a single qubit once the concept of actual infinity be involved to real processes). Each of both parts of it, i.e. either the future evolutionary tree or its deformed mirror image, would represented a “half of the whole”. The two halves can be considered as the two disjunctive states of any bit as two fundamentally inseparable (in virtue of quantum correlation) “halves” of any qubit. A few important corollaries exemplify that natural cybernetics of time. (shrink)

Singularity has been a concern of the developers of cybernetics and artificial intelligence (AI) since the pioneering writings of such thinkers as Norbert Weiner. Yet many accept the inevitability of systems of AI surpassing human control and are optimistic that machine intelligence will harmonize human life with our environment. This essay examines this optimism against a reading of two poets: Richard Brautigan and Friedrich Hölderlin. Through these readings, it will attempt to show that the eclipse of nature by human (...) beings can be used to examine the eclipse of the human being by machine intelligence. Thus, what is missing in machine intelligence is a dimension related to the experience of pain and joy that reconnect us to reflect on what has been severed or lost in the movement of humanity through history. This demonstrates that the very categories of optimism and pessimism concerning the future of AI points to the value of life, one that can never be encoded into our machines. (shrink)

Misophonia is a disorder of tolerance to specific sounds (i.e. trigger sounds), such as chewing, throat clearing or breathing sounds, produced by humans, which can trigger intense emotional reactions (anger, disgust). This relatively prevalent disorder can cause a reduction in the quality of life. The causes of misophonia are still unclear. In this article, we develop a “social” hypothesis based on the work of Norbert Elias. Misophonia would be an exaggerated reaction to behaviours (of others) that have been subject (...) to rigorous social conditioning, which are supposed to be strictly regulated and repressed. The social rules imposed by society, accompanying the long process of pacification and increasing interdependence between individuals over the centuries, would be at the origin of this conditioning. The function of this conditioning, achieved mainly through shame and disgust, would be to preserve social cohesion, through the strict training of behaviour. It is indeed imperative to control oneself, to act in a thoughtful and balanced way, to spare others by taking into account their expectations, in short to behave in a “courteous” way. Imposed and less spontaneous behaviour creates a sense of modesty and distance between individuals. The obligation to strictly regulate behaviour and affect in public contributes to the creation of an interiority, an "inner self". The feeling of intrusion by others is a collateral effect of this process of distancing and individualisation. The rigorous integration of the social rule by the misophonic subject may account for the fact that any violation of the rule is considered unacceptable. In order to put an end to the unpleasant situation, i.e. to the intrusion generated by the “encroachment” of others, the subject has no other choice but to flee or to attack the author of the sound. (shrink)

How does the critical Kant view ontology? There is no shared scholarly answer to this question. Norbert Hinske sees in the Critique of Pure Reason a “farewell to ontology,” albeit one that took Kant long to bid (Hinske 2009). Karl Ameriks has found evidence in Kant’s metaphysics lectures from the critical period that he “was unwilling to break away fully from traditional ontology” (Ameriks 1992: 272). Gualtiero Lorini argues that a decisive break with the tradition of ontology is essential (...) to Kant’s critical reform of metaphysics, as is reflected in his shift from “ontology” to “transcendental philosophy,” two notions that Lorini takes to be related by mere “analogy” (Lorini 2015). I agree with Lorini that a thorough reform of ontology is a pivotal part of Kant’s critical plan for metaphysics and that ontology somehow “survives within the critical philosophy” (Lorini 2015: 76). To make this case, however, I deem it important to identify “ontology” and “transcendental philosophy” in the sense of extensional equivalence. While we can detect this identification in Kant’s writings, only from his metaphysics lectures can we get a full sense of its historical and philosophical significance. In this chapter I focus on how it represents a definitive turn from as well as notable continuity with traditional treatments of ontology, particularly the Wolffian one. (shrink)

This book is a PhD dissertation and a very personal book at the same time. It asks the question whether society can and should be a point of orientation ("Bezugspunkt") for the human individual. Please note, that this cannot be a scientific book: If sociology is defined as society observed by society (or by sociologists, who are the agents of society), society observed by a single person (and for the aim of this single person) cannot be scientific. This is also (...) true if the researcher adheres to reason and scientific methodology: observations and understanding created by the human individual for its own private purposes simply are not scientific because they lack universality. "Bezugspunkt Gesellschaft" studies a number of different strains of sociology (and their scientific representatives, e.g. Pierre Bourdieu, Niklas Luhmann, Ralf Dahrendorf, Norbert Elias, Berger/Luckmann) in order to find out what it is that sociology studies? Is sociology the study of a society of human beings? Or is it true that society does not consist of human beings, but, as Luhmann claims, of acts of communication? Or is it true, as Bourdieu claims, that society consists of the instances of freedom abandoned half willingly, half out of habitude, by human individuals like in the case of a coffeehouse waiter who over time has just given up the idea that he could be anything else than a coffeehouse waiter. This book was inspired by a deconstructivist method of analysis in the field of literary theory where researchers state that it is of no interest what the author of a book wanted to say. Instead we should treat the work of literature as if the society of the author's epoch had written it. This theoretical "murder" of the human being in the form of the authors of works of literature in literary theory might have its analogy in sociology: Maybe sociology is also, like literary theory, not about people? However, if sociology is not about people - what can sociology teach us, us people? The book looks at different concepts of society throughout history, starting from the ancient concept that society is community, or that it is a circle of friendships, to more modern and dystopian concepts like that society is some kind of unhuman society. The book ends with the "Balzac machine", representing the incredibly talented and prolific French author Honoré de Balzac as a person who was an expert in the study of society and entirely blind to the phenomenon of society at the same time. The paradox of Balzac manifested itself in the fact that he literally worked himself to death in an attempt to gain society's recognition. (shrink)

This article investigates the semantics of sentences that express numerical averages, focusing initially on cases such as 'The average American has 2.3 children'. Such sentences have been used both by linguists and philosophers to argue for a disjuncture between semantics and ontology. For example, Noam Chomsky and Norbert Hornstein have used them to provide evidence against the hypothesis that natural language semantics includes a reference relation holding between words and objects in the world, whereas metaphysicians such as Joseph Melia (...) and Stephen Yablo have used them to provide evidence that apparent singular reference need not be taken as ontologically committing. We develop a fully general and independently justified compositional semantics in which such constructions are assigned truth conditions that are not ontologically problematic, and show that our analysis is superior to all extant rivals. Our analysis provides evidence that a good semantics yields a sensible ontology. It also reveals that natural language contains genuine singular terms that refer to numbers. (shrink)

The 20th Century is the starting point for the most ambitious attempts to extrapolate human life into artificial systems. Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics, Claude Shannon’s Information Theory, John von Neumann’s Cellular Automata, Universal Constructor to the Turing Test, Artificial Intelligence to Maturana and Varela’s Autopoietic Organization, all shared the goal of understanding in what sense humans resemble a machine. This scientific and technological movement has embraced all disciplines without exceptions, not only mathematics and physics but also biology, sociology, psychology, economics (...) etc. New terms were developed, such as “information”, “organization”, “entropy”, “communication”, “encryption”, “computation” and “algorithmics” to mention a few, all which had an enormous impact on artificial systems. Our work follows this historical track but with a reversed order of priorities. Instead of deducing a reduced group of human acts into an artificial environment, we deduce the human aspects of machines by extrapolating algorithmic methodologies into everyday life acts. The present informational theories were insufficiently powered to achieve this objective without developing a new theoretical approach. Hence, our research is directed towards an expansion of the current informational theories. (shrink)

This issue of Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research (TA) encompasses eight articles by artists and scholars from around the globe who engage with methodologies of art practice within research that reflects on technological and ecological change, contributing to the discourse on the inclusion of subjective experience in research. The articles by authors Dulmini Perera, Kate Doyle, Nora S. Vaage, Merete Lie, Nikita Peresin Meden, Kristina Pranjić, Peter Purg, Nicolaas H. Jacobs, Marth Munro, Chris Broodryk, Semi Ryu, Rahul Mahata, (...) Doreswamy, Sana Altaf and Aqib Javid Parry form a collection that crosses disciplines and genres to engage in fundamental critique of existing modes of enquiry and conclusion. The texts situate art and design methodologies in particular cultural contexts and in relation to frameworks defined by research methodologies of the sciences and humanities to gain agency for critique and to counter a sense of inevitability that has come to mark the most recent crises. (shrink)

In this essay I try to determine the extent to which it is possible to conceive robots and organisms as analogous entities. After a cursory preamble on the long history of epistemological connections between machines and organisms I focus on Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics, where the analogy between modern machines and organisms is introduced most explicitly. The analysis of issues pertaining to the cybernetic interpretation of the analogy serves then as a basis for a critical assessment of its reprise in (...) contemporary robotics and AI, where the line between organisms and technologies gets even more blurred. In brief, I argue for the necessity of defining the extent to which the analogy between robots and organisms applies in order not only to harness its heuristic potential, but also to keep track of the pivotal differences that distinguish the two classes of entities. Finally, I discuss how the ordinary use of language and the peculiar status of the idea of robot obstruct awareness of the differences between robots and organisms. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the specific shift in the meaning of “civilization” that took place in texts and documents of early American philosophical naturalism. Particularly, it will focus on the specific role that naturalization plays in the edification of a newly secularized, science-oriented, and democratic society, as well as of a naturalized conception of culture and civilization. Indeed, as the work of many philosophers and intellectuals of the Forties highlights, naturalism represents not only the banner of a new idea of civilization, (...) but at the same time becomes the symbol of a powerful postwar ideology. (shrink)

In 1948, Claude Shannon introduced his version of a concept that was core to Norbert Wiener's cybernetics, namely, information theory. Shannon's formalisms include a physical framework, namely a general communication system having six unique elements. Under this framework, Shannon information theory offers two particularly useful statistics, channel capacity and information transmitted. Remarkably, hundreds of neuroscience laboratories subsequently reported such numbers. But how (and why) did neuroscientists adapt a communications-engineering framework? Surprisingly, the literature offers no clear answers. To therefore first (...) answer "how", 115 authoritative peer-reviewed papers, proceedings, books and book chapters were scrutinized for neuroscientists' characterizations of the elements of Shannon's general communication system. Evidently, many neuroscientists attempted no identification of the system's elements. Others identified only a few of Shannon's system's elements. Indeed, the available neuroscience interpretations show a stunning incoherence, both within and across studies. The interpretational gamut implies hundreds, perhaps thousands, of different possible neuronal versions of Shannon's general communication system. The obvious lack of a definitive, credible interpretation makes neuroscience calculations of channel capacity and information transmitted meaningless. To now answer why Shannon's system was ever adapted for neuroscience, three common features of the neuroscience literature were examined: ignorance of the role of the observer, the presumption of "decoding" of neuronal voltage-spike trains, and the pursuit of ingrained analogies such as information, computation, and machine. Each of these factors facilitated a plethora of interpretations of Shannon's system elements. Finally, let us not ignore the impact of these "informational misadventures" on society at large. It is the same impact as scientific fraud. (shrink)

In Cybernetics (1961 Edition), Professor Norbert Wiener noted that “The role of information and the technique of measuring and transmitting information constitute a whole discipline for the engineer, for the neuroscientist, for the psychologist, and for the sociologist”. Sociology aside, the neuroscientists and the psychologists inferred “information transmitted” using the discrete summations from Shannon Information Theory. The present author has since scrutinized the psychologists’ approach in depth, and found it wrong. The neuroscientists’ approach is highly related, but remains unexamined. (...) Neuroscientists quantified “the ability of [physiological sensory] receptors (or other signal-processing elements) to transmit information about stimulus parameters”. Such parameters could vary along a single continuum (e.g., intensity), or along multiple dimensions that altogether provide a Gestalt – such as a face. Here, unprecedented scrutiny is given to how 23 neuroscience papers computed “information transmitted” in terms of stimulus parameters and the evoked neuronal spikes. The computations relied upon Shannon’s “confusion matrix”, which quantifies the fidelity of a “general communication system”. Shannon’s matrix is square, with the same labels for columns and for rows. Nonetheless, neuroscientists labelled the columns by “stimulus category” and the rows by “spike-count category”. The resulting “information transmitted” is spurious, unless the evoked spike-counts are worked backwards to infer the hypothetical evoking stimuli. The latter task is probabilistic and, regardless, requires that the confusion matrix be square. Was it? For these 23 significant papers, the answer is No. (shrink)

HISTÓRIA DA SOCIOLOGIA: O DESENVOLVIMENTO DA SOCIOLOGIA I -/- A SOCIOLOGIA CONTEMPORÂNEA -/- HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY I THE SOCIOLOGY CONTEMPORANY -/- Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva – IFPE-BJ, CAP-UFPE e UFRPE. E-mails: [email protected] e [email protected] WhatsApp: (82)98143-8399. -/- PREMISSA -/- Se até a década de 1960 podia-se falar em uma Sociologia dividida por países, após essa época, tendo em vista um processo significativo de circulação de informações pelos mais variados meios de comunicação, pode-se dizer que os (...) principais cientistas sociais se tornaram globalizados, assim como a literatura sociológica. As questões sociais, que até então podiam estar localizadas em países ou em blocos de países, também se tornaram mundializadas, e vários pensadores passaram a refletir sobre temas chamados de pós-modernos, hipermodernos ou simplesmente contemporâneos, e que afetam um país, uma região ou todo o mundo. A Sociologia contemporânea, porém, mantém uma relação significativa com as grandes vertentes da Sociologia anterior: • a marxista ou histórico-estrutural, com suas variações; • a durkheimiana ou funcionalista, com o desenvolvimento de um neofuncionalismo; • a weberiana ou compreensiva, com o desenvolvimento da fenomenologia e da hermenêutica; • a teórica e pragmática estadunidense, com variadas linhas. Além dessas vertentes, pensadores como Jean-Gabriel de Tarde e Georg Simmel, que estavam um tanto esquecidos, pelo menos no Brasil, em razão da ênfase em Émile Durkheim, num caso, e em Max Weber, em outro, retomaram seus lugares de destaque. Essas vertentes inspiraram outros tantos pensadores, que – refletindo sobre a realidade em que vivem, mesclando ou não contribuições de diferentes linhas teóricas e formulando uma série de conceitos – demonstram as possibilidades e a diversidade do pensamento sociológico e fazem a Sociologia avançar muito no processo de compreensão da realidade contemporânea. A combinação de diversas vertentes teóricas torna difícil fazer qualquer enquadramento ou mesmo tentar classificar determinados autores. Muitos analistas veem nisso uma crise de paradigmas na Sociologia contemporânea. Essa “crise” poderia ser entendida do ponto de vista epistemológico; entretanto, sempre houve diversidade de epistemologias na Sociologia. Acreditamos que essa diversidade epistemológica, de teorias, de objetos e de métodos, concorrentes ou não, na explicação de fenômenos sociais deve ser vista como indicativo de vigor, e não de decadência. Por fim, indico a seguir, em ordem alfabética, alguns dos pensadores e sociólogos contemporâneos cujo trabalho tem dado especial contribuição à Sociologia desenvolvida no Brasil: Alain Touraine (1925-), Anthony Giddens (1938-), Axel Honneth (1949-), Boaventura de Sousa Santos (1940-), David Harvey (1935-), Edgard Morin (1921-), François Dubet (1946), Gilles Lipovetsky (1944-), Howard S. Becker (1928-), Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-), István Mészáros (1930-2017), Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007), Jürgen Habermas (1929-), Manuel Castells (1942-), Marshall Bermann (1940-2013), Michael Löwy (1938-), Michel Maffesoli (1944-), Néstor García Canclini (1939-), Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998), Norbert Elias (1897-1990), Peter Ludwig Berger (1929-2017), Ralph Dahrendorf (1929-2009), Raymond Boudon (1934-2013), Richard Sennett (1943-), Serge Moscovici (1928 -2014), Thomas Luckmann (1927-2016), Ulrich Beck (1944-2015) e Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017). -/- REFERENCIAL TEÓRICO -/- CUIN, C. H.; GRESLE, F. História da Sociologia. Trad. Roberto Leal Ferreira. São Paulo: Ensaio, 1994. -/- NERY, M. C. R. Sociologia contemporânea. 1ª ed. Curitiba: IESDE, 2007. -/- NOVA, S. V. Introdução a Sociologia. 6ª ed. São Paulo: Atlas, 2004. -/- SILVA, A. et al. Sociologia em movimento. 2ª ed. São Paulo: Moderna, 2016. -/- SBS - Sociedade Brasileira de Sociologia PUCRS - PPG em Ciências Sociais Avenida Ipiranga, 6681 - Partenon CEP: 90619-900 - Porto Alegre, RS [email protected] Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva © 2019 -/- Estimule a criatividade, respeite o direito autoral. (shrink)

Hans Jonas’ “philosophical biology,” although developed several decades ago, is still fundamental to the contemporary reflection upon the meaning of life in a systems thinking perspective. Jonas, in fact, closely examines the reasons of modern science, and especially of Wiener’s Cybernetics and Bertalanffy’s General System Theory, and at the same time points out their basic limits, such as their having a reductionistic attitude to knowledge and ontology. In particular, the philosopher highlights the problematic consequences of scientific reductionism for human nature. (...) As the final result of an overall process of naturalization, the essence of the human being is reduced to its quantitative features only, while the “meaning” of life as such becomes no different from the “fact” of its material consistency. However, the problem is that by such a process, the human being is deprived of his specificity. (shrink)

This Open Peer Commentary on “A Critical Cybernetics” by Klaus Krippendorff outlines that enacting alternative not-yet existing realities goes beyond discourse and can be considered design practice. A Critical Cybernetics for enacting alternative not-yet existing realities, such as Krippendorff proposed, would benefit from associating itself with the expertise in the technicity of society that has been central to cybernetics since its inception.

Author: Norbert Waszek. Translated by Pedro Sepúlveda Zambrano.

Earthbodies describes how our bodies are open circuits to a sensual magic and planetary care that when closed off leads to disastrous detours, such as illness, ...

An interpretation of Hegel's Philosophy of Subjective Spirit showing its continued relevance to contemporary issues in the philosophy of mind.

This is a sketch of the basis and role of consciousness and the minimally required elements and constraints of any setting that may produce consciousness. It proposes that consciousness (as we know it) is a biologically-mediated product of evolved recursive and hierarchically nested representational systems that obey information theoretic principles and Bayesian (probabilistic) feedback and feedforward predictive modeling processes.

Growing-Block theorists hold that past and present things are real, while future things do not yet exist. This generates a puzzle: how can Growing-Block theorists explain the fact that some sentences about the future appear to be true? Briggs and Forbes develop a modal ersatzist framework, on which the concrete actual world is associated with a branching-time structure of ersatz possible worlds. They then show how this branching structure might be used to determine the truth values of future contingents. They (...) point out three different ways of interpreting the logical connectives, which give rise to three different logics of the open future: one supervaluationist, one corresponding to Lukasiewicz's strong Kleene logic, and one intuitionist. (shrink)

Carl Gillett has defended what he calls the “dimensioned” view of the realization relation, which he contrasts with the traditional “flat” view of realization (2003, 2007; see also Gillett 2002). Intuitively, the dimensioned approach characterizes realization in terms of composition whereas the flat approach views realization in terms of occupiers of functional roles. Elsewhere we have argued that the general view of realization and multiple realization that Gillett advances is not able to discharge the theoretical duties of those relations (Shapiro (...) 2004, unpublished manuscript; Polger 2004, 2007, forthcoming). Here we focus on an internal objection to Gillett’s account and then raise some broader reasons to reject it. (shrink)

In an online, participatory class, we interpreted The Dream of the Flaming Sword knowing nothing of the dreamer beyond age and gender, and having none of the dreamer’s associations. Our interpretation included a series of predictions about the dreamer. When it was complete, we asked the bringer of the dream (who had until then been silent and who also gave no visual feedback to our discussion) to give us more information about the dreamer. Eight months later the bringer gave us (...) further information from the dreamer. Our predictions were mostly confirmed. In the dream, the dreamer’s identity is repeatedly questioned. -/- This record is another iteration of an experiment that is described more fully in the paper The Dream of the Six-Legged Dog, soon to be published. This iteration repeats and confirms the evidence given in that paper. -/- AUDIO RECORD OF THE CLASS ABOUT THE FLAMING SWORD: link is on the title page of the paper you can download here. (shrink)

Projects of human improvement take both individual and intergenerational forms. The biosciences provide many technologies, including prenatal screening and the latest gene editing techniques, such as CRISPR, that have been viewed as providing the means to human improvement across generations. But who is fit to furnish the next generation? Historically, eugenics epitomizes the science-based attempt to improve human society through distinguishing kinds of people and then implementing social policies—from immigration restriction to sexual sterilization and euthanasia—that influence and even direct what (...) sorts of people populate our future. Despite recognition of the horrors of the eugenic extremes of the past and of the subhumanizing of those sufficiently below appearance or ability norms to be viewed as “defective” or “unfit”, many people continue to be drawn to strands of eugenic thinking. (shrink)

Who is recognised as a philosopher and what counts as philosophy influence both the content of a philosophical education and academic philosophy’s continuing demographic skew. The “philosophical who” and the “philosophical what” themselves are a partial function of matters that have been passed over in collective silence, even if that now feels to some like a silence belonging to the distant past. This paper discusses some philosophical silences regarding race, gender, and disability in the context of reflection on philosophical education (...) and on philosophical practice in the public sphere. It focuses on Charles Mills’ writings on race, Susan Babbitt’s on race and gender, and on more collaboratively-generated work on eugenics and disability. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Giubilini and Minerva argue for the moral permissibility of what they call ‘after-birth abortion’, or infanticide. Here I suggest that they actually employ a confusion of two distinct arguments: one relying on the purportedly identical moral status of a fetus and a newborn, and the second giving an independent argument for the denial of moral personhood to infants (independent of whatever one might say about fetuses). After distinguishing these arguments, I suggest that neither one is capable (...) of supporting Giubilini and Minerva's conclusion. The first argument is at best neutral between permitting infanticide and prohibiting abortion, and may in fact more strongly support the latter. The second argument, I suggest, contains an ambiguity in its key premise, and can be shown to fail on either resolution of that ambiguity. Hence, I conclude that Giubilini and Minerva have not demonstrated the permissibility of infanticide, or even great moral similarity between abortion and infanticide. (shrink)

This chapter steps back from the important psychological work on collaborative remembering at the heart of the present volume to take up some broader questions about the place of memory in Western cultural thought, both historically and in contemporary society, offering the kind of integrative and reflective perspective for which philosophy is often known. In particular, the text aims to shed some light on the relationship between collaborative memory and the other two topics in this title—group-level cognizing and individuals—beginning with (...) the relationship between collective intentionality and collaborative remembering, and concluding with some brief comments on the politics of collaborative remembering by drawing on recent work that has been undertaken with eugenics survivors in Canada. (shrink)

In this encyclopedia entry I sketch the way contemporary theorists understand moral responsibility -- its varieties, its requirements, and its puzzles.

Research on the nature of dispositionality or causal power has flourished in recent years in metaphysics. This trend has slowly begun to influence debates in the philosophy of agency, especially in the literature on free will. Both sophisticated versions of agent-­‐causalism and the new varieties of dispositionalist compatibilism exploit recently developed accounts of dispositionality in their defense. In this paper, I examine recent work on agent-­‐causal power, focusing primarily on the account of agent-­‐causalism developed and defended by Timothy O’Connor’s in (...) his work on free will. Assuming the existence of irreducible causal powers, I offer an. (shrink)

Linda Zagzebski's "Epistemic Authority" (Oxford University Press, 2012) brings together issues in social epistemology with topics in moral and political philosophy as well as philosophy of religion. In this paper I criticize her discussion of self-trust and rationality, which sets up the main argument of the book; I consider how her view of authority relates to some issues of epistemic authority in testimony; and I raise some concerns about her treatment of religious epistemology and religious authority in particular.

Source incompatibilism is an increasingly popular version of incompatibilism about determinism and moral responsibility. However, many self-described source incompatibilists formulate the thesis differently, resulting in conceptual confusion that can obscure the relationship between source incompatibilism and other views in the neighborhood. In this paper I canvas various formulations of the thesis in the literature and argue in favor of one as the least likely to lead to conceptual confusion. It turns out that accepting my formulation has some surprising taxonomical consequences.

The probabilities a Bayesian agent assigns to a set of events typically change with time, for instance when the agent updates them in the light of new data. In this paper we address the question of how an agent's probabilities at different times are constrained by Dutch-book coherence. We review and attempt to clarify the argument that, although an agent is not forced by coherence to use the usual Bayesian conditioning rule to update his probabilities, coherence does require the agent's (...) probabilities to satisfy van Fraassen's [1984] reflection principle (which entails a related constraint pointed out by Goldstein [1983]). We then exhibit the specialized assumption needed to recover Bayesian conditioning from an analogous reflection-style consideration. Bringing the argument to the context of quantum measurement theory, we show that "quantum decoherence" can be understood in purely personalist terms---quantum decoherence (as supposed in a von Neumann chain) is not a physical process at all, but an application of the reflection principle. From this point of view, the decoherence theory of Zeh, Zurek, and others as a story of quantum measurement has the plot turned exactly backward. (shrink)

I argue for two controversial claims about Locke’s account of liberty in Essay 2.21. The first claim is that Locke does not identify liberty with freedom of action. Instead, Locke places further conditions on liberty beyond to the power to perform or forbear an action at will. The second (and closely related) claim is that Locke takes the power to suspend and examine desire to be necessary for liberty—in other words, that possession of the power to suspend and examine desire (...) is one such further condition upon liberty. (shrink)

:The study aimed to identify the level of enhancing the competitive advantage of training institutions in Palestine. The study used the descriptive analytical approach. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data that contribute to achieving the objectives of the study. The study population consists of workers in training institutions operating in the southern Palestinian governorates. The random sample for data collection, where (90) applicable questionnaires were retrieved. The results of the study showed that the general estimate for the competitive (...) advantage axis came with a high degree and a relative weight (90.67%). The results also showed that there were no statistically significant differences in enhancing the competitive advantage according to the variables (gender, governorate). As well as the existence of statistically significant differences in enhancing the competitive advantage according to the variables (Educational Qualification, Age Group, Number Of Years of Service). The study presented a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: the need for centers to develop their training systems in line with modern technology, in addition to the need for centers to target new areas in their service by opening other branches in diffe rent geographical locations. (shrink)

In his recent book, The Universe As We Find It, John Heil offers an updated account of his two-category ontology. One of his major goals is to avoid including relations in his basic ontology. While there can still be true claims positing relations, such as those of the form “x is taller than y” and “x causes y,” they will be true in virtue of substances and their monadic, non-relational properties. That is, Heil’s two-category ontology is deployed to provide non-relational (...) truthmakers for relational truths. This paper challenges the success of Heil’s project with respect to causation. The arguments here are not entirely negative, however. An option is made available to Heil’s ontology so that it might, at least to some extent, regain non-relational causings. (shrink)