Per meglio comprendere la rilevanza della posta in gioco – le condizioni effettive di democratizzazione delle nostre democrazie – è opportuno svolgere alcune considerazioni sul problema generale della legittimità del potere politico, che possiamo ricapitolare in tre punti: ciò che viene reputato legittimo (l’oggetto), 2. chi decide della legittimità (il soggetto) e 3. il criterio che la definisce (l’argomento) . A seconda delle risposte ne discendono diverse visioni della politica. Nel ricostruire il tema introdurremo dei concetti fondamentali – politica, (...) potere, effettività, legittimità, legalità, giustizia, libertà, etc. – e ci avvarremo del contributo di alcuni autori che Norberto Bobbio identificava come “classici”, non secondariamente, per la capacità di elaborare delle categorie generali di cui non si possa fare a meno per interpretare la realtà storico-sociale, anche quella differente dal contesto di genesi e d’uso della loro opera (I). Da ultimo, in maniera assai provvisoria, dovremo chiarire la prospettiva storico-evolutiva, di matrice habermasiana, che orienta l’analisi di Ampola sui modelli di legittimazione degli odierni stati democratici di diritto. Le diverse giustificazioni del potere politico possono essere non solo esaminate e comparate dal punto di vista dei concetti fondamentali e della logica argomentativa e neppure solo documentate storiograficamente nelle loro forme compiute o distorte di istituzionalizzazione. Sullo sfondo della riflessione sulla democratizzazione c’è l’assunto che la costellazione dei problemi si collochi nel quadro di uno sviluppo normativo discontinuo delle società umane di cui la teoria dell’evoluzione sociale può ricostruire la logica e la dinamica (II). (shrink)

Nel presente articolo vengono illustrati gli assunti epistemologici che distinguono la sociologia di Pierre Bourdieu, senza la cui considerazione risultano di difficile comprensione il suo quadro teorico – con i concetti di spazio sociale, habitus, campo, capitale, potere, interesse, classe, etc. – e la “triangolazione” con cui il sociologo francese definisce un “approccio relazionale” che ripensa la connessione tra i paradigmi strutturalisti e individualisti, stabilisce una compiuta dialettica tra teoria della società e ricerca sociale e ridiscute lo (...) statuto scientifico della sociologia rispetto alle altre scienze sociali, alla riflessione filosofica e alla storiografia. (shrink)

L'America e il mondo sono in procinto di collassare a causa di una crescita eccessiva della popolazione, la maggior parte per il secolo scorso e ora tutto a causa di persone del terzo mondo. Il consumo di risorse e l'aggiunta di uno o due miliardi in più di 2100 crolleranno la civiltà industriale e porterà alla fame, alle malattie, alla violenza e alla guerra su scala impressionante. Miliardi moriranno e la guerra nucleare è tutt'altro che certa. In America questo è (...) stato enormemente accelerato dalla massiccia immigrazione e dalla riproduzione degli immigrati, unite ad abusi resi possibili dalla democrazia. La natura umana depravata trasforma inesorabilmente il sogno della democrazia e della diversità in un incubo di criminalità e povertà. La causa principale del collasso è l'incapacità della nostra psicologia innata di adattarsi al mondo moderno, che porta le persone a trattare le persone non correlate come se avessero interessi comuni. Questo, oltre all'ignoranza della biologia e della psicologia di base, porta alle illusioni di ingegneria sociale dei parzialmente istruiti che controllano le società democratiche. Pochi capiscono che se aiuti una persona che fai del male a qualcun altro, non c'è pranzo gratuito e ogni singolo oggetto che qualcuno consuma distrugge la terra in modo irreparabile. Di conseguenza, le politiche sociali ovunque sono insostenibili e una dopo l'altra tutte le società senza rigorosi controlli sull'egoismo crolleranno nell'anarchia o nella dittatura. Senza cambiamenti drammatici e immediati, non c'è speranza di prevenire il crollo dell'America, o di qualsiasi paese che segua un sistema democratico. Da qui il mio saggio "Suicide by Democracy". È anche ormai chiaro che i sette sociopatici che governano la Cina stanno vincendo la terza guerra mondiale, e quindi il mio saggio conclusivo su di loro. L'unica minaccia più grande è l'Intelligenza Artificiale che commento brevemente. La chiave di tutto ciò che ci riguarda è la biologia, ed è l'ignarietà che porta milioni di persone intelligenti istruite come Obama, Chomsky,Clinton, il Partito Democratico e il Papa a sposare ideali utopici suicidi che portano inesorabilmente direttamente all'Inferno sulla Terra. Come W ha notato, è ciò che è sempre davanti ai nostri occhi che è il più difficile da vedere. Viviamo nel mondo del sistema linguistico deliberativo cosciente 2, ma è inconscio, automatico sistema riflessivo 1 che governa. Questa è la fonte della cecità universale descritta da The Phenomenological Illusion (TPI) di Searle, Pinker's Blank Slate and Tooby and Cosmides' Standard Social Science Model. Il primo gruppo di articoli cerca di dare un'idea di come ci comportiamo che è ragionevolmente privo di illusioni teoriche. Nei prossimi tre gruppi commento tre delle principali illusioni che impediscono un mondo sostenibile: tecnologia, religione e politica (gruppi cooperativi). La gente crede che la società possa essere salvata da loro, quindi fornisco alcuni suggerimenti nel resto del libro sul perché questo è improbabile attraverso brevi articoli e recensioni di libri recenti di scrittori ben noti. Un'altra sezione descrive l'illusione religiosa – che c'è qualche super potere che ci salverà. La sezione successiva descrive le illusioni digitali, che confondono i giochi linguistici del System 2 con gli automatismi del Sistema uno, e quindi non possono distinguere le macchine biologiche (cioè le persone) da altri tipi di macchine (cioè i computer). Altri illusioni digitali sono che saremo salvati dal male puro (egoismo) del Sistema 1 da computer/AI/robotica/nanotecnologia/ingegneria genetica creata dal System 2. Il principale Nessun pranzo libero ci dice che ci saranno conseguenze gravi e forse fatali. L'ultima sezione descrive The One Big Happy Family Delusion, cioè che siamo selezionati per la cooperazione con tutti, e che gli ideali euforici di Democrazia, Diversità e Uguaglianza ci condurranno all'utopia, se ne gestiamo le cose correttamente (la possibilità della politica). Ancora una volta, il No Free Lunch Principle dovrebbe avvertirci che non può essere vero, e vediamo nel corso della storia e in tutto il mondo contemporaneo, che senza controlli rigorosi,egoismo e stupidità guadagnano il sopravvento e presto distruggono qualsiasi nazione che abbracci queste illusioni. Inoltre, la mente scimmia sconti ripida il futuro, e così collaboriamo nel vendere il patrimonio del nostro discendente per comfort temporanei, esacerbando notevolmente i problemi. (shrink)

The essay analyses the originality of Machiavelli's reflection about the conflict under the Prince's government, in order to point out concordances and differences with the role - more extensively studied - of conflict within a republic. The questions analysed are, first of ali, the Prince's necessity of foreseeing the institutional structures for the regulation of conflict; then, the issue of alliances for the Prince who, having taken the power with the support of the great or of the people, needs popular (...) support to maintain it; finally, the nature of the popular desire of not being oppressed, and particularly the fact that it is not only a negative desire, but rather contains an active tension to defend liberty. -/- . (shrink)

Advancements in artificial intelligence and (social) robotics raise pertinent questions as to how these technologies may help shape the society of the future. The main aim of the chapter is to consider the social and conceptual disruptions that might be associated with social robots, and humanoid social robots in particular. This chapter starts by comparing the concepts of robots and artificial intelligence and briefly explores the origins of these expressions. It then explains the definition of a social robot, as well (...) as the definition of humanoid robots. A key notion in this context is the idea of anthropomorphism: the human tendency to attribute human qualities, not only to our fellow human beings, but also to parts of nature and to technologies. This tendency to anthropomorphize technologies by responding to and interacting with them as if they have human qualities is one of the reasons why social robots (in particular social robots designed to look and behave like human beings) can be socially disruptive. As is explained in the chapter, while some ethics researchers believe that anthropomorphization is a mistake that can lead to various forms of deception, others — including both ethics researchers and social roboticists — believe it can be useful or fitting to treat robots in anthropomorphizing ways. The chapter explores that disagreement by, among other things, considering recent philosophical debates about whether social robots can be moral patients, that is, whether it can make sense to treat them with moral consideration. Where one stands on this issue will depend either on one’s views about whether social robots can have, imitate, or represent morally relevant properties, or on how people relate to social robots in their interactions with them. Lastly, the chapter urges that the ethics of social robots should explore intercultural perspectives, and highlights some recent research on Ubuntu ethics and social robots. (shrink)

This chapter is centered around an apparent tension that research on implicit bias raises between virtue and social knowledge. Research suggests that simply knowing what the prevalent stereotypes are leads individuals to act in prejudiced ways—biasing decisions about whom to trust and whom to ignore, whom to promote and whom to imprison—even if they reflectively reject those stereotypes. Because efforts to combat discrimination obviously depend on knowledge of stereotypes, a question arises about what to do next. This chapter argues that (...) the obstacle to virtue is not knowledge of stereotypes as such, but the “accessibility” of such knowledge to the agent who has it. “Accessibility” refers to how easily knowledge comes to mind. Social agents can acquire the requisite knowledge of stereotypes while resisting their pernicious influence, so long as that knowledge remains, in relevant contexts, relatively inaccessible. (shrink)

L’analisi classica sul Potere è sempre basata sulla definizione a posteriori del Potere. “La storia di tutta la società, svoltasi fin qua, è storia di lotta di classe” sono le affermazioni che rappresentano il Potere come un effetto di un predeterminato rapporto fra gruppi costituiti. Questi appunti invece vogliono partire dal Potere come un concetto di più alto livello nell’analisi sociologica. Il Marxismo analizza una istanza del Potere. Quello per il quale il capitale è predominante (...) sul lavoro. Questa scelta di campo che pone la relazione fra capitale e lavoro come determinata, è in realtà una relazione di Potere e come tale indeterminata a priori, ma solo osservabile. -/- Propongo una declinazione del Potere come una connotazione di unità culturali (concetto semiotico) descrivibili con il concetto di relazione, classe, profitto. (shrink)

Human-centered explainable AI (HCXAI) advocates for the integration of social aspects into AI explanations. Central to the HCXAI discourse is the Social Transparency (ST) framework, which aims to make the socio-organizational context of AI systems accessible to their users. In this work, we suggest extending the ST framework to address the risks of social misattributions in Large Language Models (LLMs), particularly in sensitive areas like mental health. In fact LLMs, which are remarkably capable of simulating roles and personas, may lead (...) to mismatches between designers' intentions and users' perceptions of social attributes, risking to promote emotional manipulation and dangerous behaviors, cases of epistemic injustice, and unwarranted trust. To address these issues, we propose enhancing the ST framework with a fifth 'W-question' to clarify the specific social attributions assigned to LLMs by its designers and users. This addition aims to bridge the gap between LLM capabilities and user perceptions, promoting the ethically responsible development and use of LLM-based technology. (shrink)

Questi appunti si concentrano sul ruolo del Potere e sulla sociologia del Potere. L’analisi classica sul Potere è sempre basata sulla definizione a posteriori del Potere. “La storia di tutta la società, svoltasi fin qua, è storia di lotta di classe” sono le affermazioni che rappresentano il Potere come un effetto di un predeterminato rapporto fra gruppi costituiti. -/- Questi appunti invece vogliono partire dal Potere come un concetto di più alto livello nell’analisi sociologica. (...) -/- Dopo il manifesto dell' Archelogia, disciplina che cerca di sistematizzare il Potere come disciplina, si passa a dare una definizione del Potere e delle sue linee di analisi. -/- Si arriva ad un approccio semiotico (come segno) della verità e si tenta di iniziare dei ragionamenti sulla teoria del valore sotto il profilo dei segni. -/- These notes focus on the role of Power and the sociology of Power. -/- The classic analysis of Power is always based on the a posteriori definition of Power. "The history of the whole society, which has taken place this far, is the history of class struggle" are the statements that represent Power as an effect of a predetermined relationship between constituted groups. -/- These notes instead want to start from Power as a higher level concept in sociological analysis. After the manifesto of Archelogy, a discipline that seeks to systematize Power as a discipline, we move on to give a definition of Power and its lines of analysis. We arrive at a semiotic approach (as a sign) of truth and we try to start reasoning on the theory of value from the point of view of signs. (shrink)

The social categories to which we belong—Latino, disabled, American, woman— causally influence our lives in deep and unavoidable ways. One might be pulled over by police because one is Latino, or one might receive a COVID vaccine sooner because one is American. Membership in these social categories most often falls outside of our control. This paper argues that membership in social categories constitutes a restriction on human agency, creating a situation of non-ideal agency for many human individuals. -/- However, there (...) are ways to resist the causal influence of social categories, and certain socially marginalized groups can be understood as attempting to do just this. I discuss two instances of social category resistance: gender pronouns and the rights of trans individuals. I suggest that the intentional declaration of gender pronouns (“she/her” or “they/them”) can be understood as an attempt to resist the causal powers of nonconsensual social categorization. Similarly, one among many reasons to support the rights of trans individuals is that their self-declarations of gender identity can be viewed as a reclamation of agency in the face of causal constraints imposed by socially defined and imposed gender categories. This lesson can be generalized to people belonging to a broad range of marginalized groups. (shrink)

Social knowledge, for the most part, is knowledge through testimony. This essay is an overview of the epistemology of testimony. The essay separates knowledge from justification, characterizes testimony as a source of belief, explains why testimony is a source of knowledge, canvasses arguments for anti-reductionism and for reductionism in the reductionism vs. anti-reductionism debate, addresses counterexamples to knowledge transmission, defends a safe basis account of testimonial knowledge, and turns to social norms as a partial explanation for the reliability of testimony.

Many extant theories of placebo focus on their causal structure wherein placebo effects are those which originate from select features of the therapy (e.g. client expectations or ‘incidental’ features like size, and shape). Although such accounts can distinguish placebos from standard medical treatments, they cannot distinguish placebos from everyday occurrences e.g. when positive feedback improves our performance on a task. Providing a social epistemological account of a treatment context can rule out such occurrences, and furthermore reveal a new way to (...) distinguish clinical placebos from standard medical treatments. (shrink)

This paper reviews current debates in social epistemology about the relations ‎between ‎knowledge ‎and consensus. These relations are philosophically interesting on their ‎own, but ‎also have ‎practical consequences, as consensus takes an increasingly significant ‎role in ‎informing public ‎decision making. The paper addresses the following questions. ‎When is a ‎consensus attributable to an epistemic community? Under what conditions may ‎we ‎legitimately infer that a consensual view is knowledge-based or otherwise ‎epistemically ‎justified? Should consensus be the aim of scientific inquiry, and (...) if so, what ‎kind of ‎consensus? How should dissent be handled? It is argued that a legitimate inference ‎that a ‎theory is correct from the fact that there is a scientific consensus on it requires taking ‎into ‎consideration both cognitive properties of the theory as well as social properties of ‎the ‎consensus. The last section of the paper reviews computational models of ‎consensus ‎formation.‎. (shrink)

This chapter examines some key developments in discussions of the social dimensions of knowing-how, focusing on work on the social function of the concept of knowing-how, testimony, demonstrating one's knowledge to other people, and epistemic injustice. I show how a conception of knowing-how as a form of 'downstream knowledge' can help to unify various phenomena discussed within this literature, and I also consider how these ideas might connect with issues concerning wisdom, moral knowledge, and moral testimony.

La fascinazione dell'economia noetica e le seduzioni del potere.

Worsening energy crises and the growing effects of climate change have spurred, among other things, concerted efforts to tackle global problems through what the United Nations calls Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are in turn argued to be best achieved via the adoption of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) as the vehicle for guiding our efforts. However, though these things are often presented as the solution to global issues, they are increasingly being used as a means to centralize power (...) and exacerbate growing authoritarian trends. This article aims to demonstrate how the narratives surrounding ESG mask this reality, taking as a solution one of the foundational causes of global wealth and power disparity. (shrink)

A platitude that took hold with Kuhn is that there can be several equally good ways of balancing theoretical virtues for theory choice. Okasha recently modelled theory choice using technical apparatus from the domain of social choice: famously, Arrow showed that no method of social choice can jointly satisfy four desiderata, and each of the desiderata in social choice has an analogue in theory choice. Okasha suggested that one can avoid the Arrow analogue for theory choice by employing a strategy (...) used by Sen in social choice, namely, to enhance the information made available to the choice algorithms. I argue here that, despite Okasha’s claims to the contrary, the information-enhancing strategy is not compelling in the domain of theory choice. (shrink)

Decamerón ha causado una reacción convulsa por su contenido social y la burla a patrones adscritos a la religión y la moral medievales en Italia. Por ello, se propone fundamentar esas razones que acarrearon el asombro de la obra literaria de Giovanni Boccaccio. Se retoma el concepto de la función social de la ironía, que a la vez parte de tres principios básicos desarrollados por Bergson. Una situación cómica requiere inteligencia, insensibilidad y crítica social. Con ello es posible explicar que (...) la ironía se encuentra condicionada a la cosmovisión del autor. (shrink)

Academia is a competitive environment. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) are limited in experience and resources and especially need achievements to secure and expand their careers. To help with these issues, this book offers a new approach for conducting research using the combination of mindsponge innovative thinking and Bayesian analytics. This is not just another analytics book. 1. A new perspective on psychological processes: Mindsponge is a novel approach for examining the human mind’s information processing mechanism. This conceptual framework is used (...) to construct models in studies. The framework is highly flexible and widely applicable for many different types of information processes. The mindsponge approach can help researchers discover interesting ideas or even formulate their very own theories when investigating psychosocial phenomena. This approach brings a fresh wind to the current landscape of social sciences and humanities (SSH). 2. Easy-to-follow analysis protocol: The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF analytics) is useful in terms of computing and visualizing power but also easy to learn and apply. Contrary to being intimidating, the Bayesian analytics section of this book is presented in a reader-friendly manner with a detailed yet clear step-by-step procedure. Examples are from published BMF articles, allowing readers to immediately practice the method and quickly create their own applications. With educational purposes in mind, the book is very suitable for ECRs who are looking to innovate their research methods. 3. Advocating for low-cost, high-quality research: Doing science can be very costly. Mindsponge innovative thinking and BMF analytics help produce impactful studies using openly available data on online repositories. This is based on the authors’ previous works and experiences. The book presents examples of employing the open R package bayesvl on secondary data from different sources. With less financial constraints, researchers can have more freedom of thought to pursue their curiosity and creativity. ECRs in low- and middle-income countries may find this aspect crucial in their careers. 4. Support and collaboration: The authors share their insights from experiences in the academic publishing system to help readers get through the processes of manuscript writing and peer-reviewing more easily. The authors are also ready to support other researchers with further inquiries and collaboration opportunities at the following website, mindsponge(dot)info. This book is for: a) ECRs whose only abundant resources are their innovation capacity and strength of will; b) Researchers in SSH who want to explore a novel approach to thinking and study conducting; c) Low- and middle-income countries’ researchers looking for a cost-effective research protocol; and, d) Innovative thinkers who want to turn their interesting thoughts into good publications. (shrink)

En estas páginas hemos presentado varios argumentos para defender que existe una conexión entre el empleo de heurísticas y los procesos de deliberación. En lugar de caracterizar las heurísticas en función de las disciplinas, los campos y/o los ámbitos en que se emplean—tal y como hace, por ejemplo, el grupo ABC, i.e. racionalidad ecológica—las hemos proyectado sobre nuestros enclaves deliberativos, esto es, sobre un espacio eminentemente retórico y político. En dichos enclaves, tal y como solía recordarnos Quintín Racionero, la téchne (...) de la persuasión se nos presenta como parte del órganon de la filosofía práctica porque está aplicada a un espacio ontológico fundado por la comunicación humana. Y es en el seno de dicha comunicación como cabe entender la proliferación de razonamientos heurísticos encaminados al cálculo, la estimación y/o la ponderación, con ayuda de los cuales no sólo se orienta la acción colectiva sino las mismas fases de la deliberación. (shrink)

While the importance of social emotions is widely recognized, the question whether all emotions are social and what this would mean for the category ‘social emotions’ is yet to be addressed systematically. Emotion theorists and researchers so far have proposed different candidates for social emotions. These include non-basic emotions, self-conscious emotions, higher-cognitive emotions, and defining social emotions via their social functions. This paper looks at these different candidates for social emotions and briefly discusses their issues. Discussing the candidates and their (...) issues motivates embracing a pluralistic approach to social emotions. In a further step, the paper will look at approaches exploring how social factors impact emotions in general. This serves as a basis for explaining what it would mean to propose that all emotions are social. After reviewing different candidates for social emotions and looking at the impact of social factors on emotions in general, the paper will propose that a pluralistic understanding of social emotions is needed to embrace the different ways in which social emotions may function. Embracing a pluralistic understanding of social emotions does not mean, however, that all emotions are social emotions. (shrink)

What are the proper epistemic aims of social media sites? A great deal of social media critique presupposes an exceptionalist attitude, according to which social media is either uniquely good, or uniquely bad for our collective knowledge-generating practices. Exceptionalism about social media is troublesome, both because it leads to oversimplistic narratives, and because it prevents us making relevant comparisons to other epistemic systems. The goal of this chapter is to offer an anti-exceptionalist account of the epistemic aims of social media. (...) I will argue that social systems (and epistemic institutions in general) ought to pursue three distinct epistemic goals: promoting good epistemic outcomes for users, realising epistemically good institutional features, and achieving structural epistemic justice. Although these goals are often mutually supportive, I will consider a number of cases in which these values conflict. This means that there are epistemic dilemmas about how to design social media platforms (and other kinds of epistemic system) which can only be resolved by appealing to ethical considerations. This discussion highlights that just as in the political realm, there is no such thing as a neutral epistemic system. (shrink)

Sometimes citizens disagree about political matters, but a decision must be made. We have two theoretical frameworks for resolving political disagreement. The first is the framework of social choice. In it, our goal is to treat parties to the dispute fairly, and there is no sense in which some are right and the others wrong. The second framework is that of collective decision-making. Here, we do believe that preferences are truth apt, and our moral consideration is owed not to those (...) who disagree but to the community that stands to benefit or suffer from the decision. In this chapter, I describe and explore these two frameworks. I conclude two things. First, analysis of real-world disagreement suggests that collective decision-making is the right way to model politics. In most, possibly even all, political disagreement, all parties believe (if implicitly) that there is an objective standard of correctness. Second, this matter is connected to the concept of pluralism. If pluralism is true, then collective decision-making cannot be applied to some political disagreements. More surprisingly, pluralism may rule out the applicability of social choice theory as well. (shrink)

I Racconti di Edgar Allan Poe, tra orrore e ricerca della luce.

Recent literature on Christian nationalism by sociologists of religion in the United States identifies a perceived novel phenomenon: the fusion of authoritarian governmental forms with Christianity. However, the socio-historical origin of this international trend has been left relatively unexplored. Therefore, the goal of this chapter is to create a single international account that lends itself to future comparative theoretical frameworks and analyses through the term "Christofascism." -/- The chapter can also be accessed on google books at the link included in (...) the description. Finally, order the book on Routledge's website, also linked in the description. (shrink)

AI is increasingly becoming based upon Internet-dependent systems to handle the massive amounts of data it requires to function effectively regardless of the availability of stable Internet connectivity in every affected community. As such, sustainable development (SD) for rural and mountain communities will require more than just equitable access to broadband Internet connection. It must also include a thorough means whereby to ensure that affected communities gain the education and tools necessary to engage inclusively with new technological advances, whether they (...) be focused on machine learning algorithms or community infrastructure, as they will be increasingly dependent upon the automational capabilities of AI. In this essay, an exploration will be conducted into the means whereby student-engaged learning (SEL) can effectively be utilized to provide targeted, inclusive education to rural and mountain communities regarding the implications of AI for SD. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Phyllis Rooney’s 2003 chapter, “Feminist Epistemology and Naturalized Epistemology: An Uneasy Alliance,” taking guidance from her critique of naturalized epistemology in pursuing my own analysis of another uneasy alliance: that between feminist epistemology and social epistemology. Investigating some of the background assumptions at work in prominent conceptions of social epistemology, I consider recent analyses of "epistemic bubbles" to ask how closely such analyses are aligned with ongoing research in feminist epistemology. I argue that critical feminist (...) insights in political philosophy are called for here, especially those that focus on multiple politically salient relationships and also emphasize practices of personal transformation as inseparably bound up with broader movements for social transformation. Insofar as feminist epistemology continues to carry another world in its heart, I argue that it will continue to rest uneasily with any effort to align it with—let alone subsume it within—the still emerging field of social epistemology. (shrink)

Food prices are a daily concern in many households’ decision-making, especially when people want to have healthier diets. Employing Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 710 Indonesian citizens, we found that people from wealthier households are less likely to have concerns about food prices. However, the degree of health considerations in food consumption was found to moderate against the above association. In other words, people of higher income-based social classes may worry more about food prices if they (...) care more about the health impacts of their food choices. These findings provide more insights for policymakers on the psychological aspects of promoting the balance between finance and health in food consumption. (shrink)

There is an under-appreciated tradition of genealogical explanation that is centrally concerned with social functions. I shall refer to it as the tradition of pragmatic genealogy. It runs from David Hume (T, 3.2.2) and the early Friedrich Nietzsche (TL) through E. J. Craig (1990, 1993) to Bernard Williams (2002) and Miranda Fricker (2007). These pragmatic genealogists start out with a description of an avowedly fictional “state of nature” and end up ascribing social functions to particular building blocks of our practices (...) – such as the fact that we use a certain concept, or live by a certain virtue – which we did not necessarily expect to have such a function at all. That the seemingly archaic device of a fictional state-of-nature story should be a helpful way to get at the functions of our actual practices must seem a mystifying proposal, however; I shall therefore endeavor to demystify it in what follows. My aim in this chapter is twofold. First, by delineating the framework of pragmatic genealogy and contrasting it with superficially similar methods, I argue that pragmatic genealogies are best interpreted as dynamic models whose point is to reveal the function – and non-coincidentally often the social function – of certain practices. Second, by buttressing this framework with something it notably lacks, namely an account of the type of functionality it operates with, I argue that both the type of functional commitment and the depth of factual obligation incurred by a pragmatic genealogy depend on what we use the method for: the dynamic models of pragmatic genealogy can be used merely as heuristic devices helping us spot functional patterns, or more ambitiously as arguments grounding our ascriptions of functionality to actual practices, or even more ambitiously as bases for functional explanations of the resilience or the persistence of practices. By bringing these distinctions into view, we gain the ability to distinguish strengths and weaknesses of the method’s application from strengths and weaknesses of the method itself. (shrink)

This article aims to make progress towards an account of social cohesion and participation in terms of which we can better understand how groups of people come to constitute stable social orders. It argues for a conceptual distinction between "inclusion" and "integration" and sheds new light on their theoretical relationship. While "integration" refers to group members' willingness to act in accordance with the given norms of a social structure, "inclusion" is linked to their participation opportunities. Although inclusion also plays an (...) essential role in integrating a normative order, levels of inclusiveness necessary for social cohesion may vary across different contexts. (shrink)

This paper comments on Gallagher’s recently published direct perception proposal about social cognition [Gallagher, S.. Direct perception in the intersubjective context. Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 535–543]. I show that direct perception is in danger of being appropriated by the very cognitivist accounts criticised by Gallagher. Then I argue that the experiential directness of perception in social situations can be understood only in the context of the role of the interaction process in social cognition. I elaborate on the role of social (...) interaction with a discussion of participatory sense-making to show that direct perception, rather than being a perception enriched by mainly individual capacities, can be best understood as an interactional phenomenon. (shrink)

During the Covid-19 pandemic we increasingly turned to technology to stay in touch with our family, friends, and colleagues. Even as lockdowns and restrictions ease many are encouraging us to embrace the replacement of face-to-face encounters with technologically mediated ones. Yet, as philosophers of technology have highlighted, technology can transform the situations we find ourselves in. Drawing insights from the phenomenology of sociality, we consider how digitally-enabled forms of communication and sociality impact our experience of one another. In particular, we (...) draw attention to the way in which our embodied experience of one another is altered when we meet in digital spaces, taking as our focus the themes of perceptual access, intercorporeality, shared space, transitional spaces, and self-presentation. In light of the way in which technological mediation alters various dimensions of our social encounters, we argue that digital encounters constitute their own forms of sociality requiring their own phenomenological analysis. We conclude our paper by raising some broader concerns about the very framework of thinking about digitally and non-digitally mediated social encounters simply in terms of replacement. (shrink)

Research into Kelsen’s conception of judicial justice seems at first sight contradictory to his own Pure Theory of Law. Upon closer consideration this prima facie contradiction turns out to be only an appearance due to the paradoxical effect that is produced by Kelsen’s pure theory of law itself. By revealing three paradoxical effects of Kelsen’s work in this article, I try to show that research into a Kelsenian representation of judicial justice is not only possible but also meaningful. The first (...) paradox originates from Kelsen’s formalised and value-free concept of law, which unexpectedly confronts the judge with his moral responsibility for the material valuation of the law. Secondly, a paradox arises from Kelsen’s rationalised notion of relative justice, which in fact forces the judge to be absolutely convinced of the moral rightness of his judgement. The third paradox is a result of Kelsen’s idea of objectivised ‘social peace’, by which the judge just realises the subjective and irrational demands of justice. From my analysis of these three seeming contradictions in Kelsen’s pure theory of law emerges an apparent Kelsenian representation of judicial justice. Starting from his pure theory of law it should be possible to conceive of a ‘pure’ form of administration of law, which would stipulate social peace as a condition for the ‘purity’ of a judicial judgement. I even imagine that Kelsen considered peace as a conditio tacita for the validity of the whole legal order, just as he regarded the basic norm as conditio per quam and effectivity as conditio sine qua non for the validity of the legal order. In any case, according to Kelsen’s conception of judicial justice, social peace proves to be the implicit or tacit condition for a ‘pure’ judgement. With that this ‘pacifying jurisprudence’ can be understood as a surprising paragon of a ‘pure’ administration of justice, on the understanding that peace is not a sufficient but an obvious condition for a just administration of law. That this should also apply mutatis mutandis for Kelsen’s concept of the legal order as a whole will be made subject of further research. (shrink)

I have two objectives in this article. The first is methodological: I elaborate a minimal phenomenological method and attempt to show its importance in studies of infant behavior. The second objective is substantive: Applying the minimal phenomenological approach, combined with Meltzoff’s “like-me” developmental framework, I propose the hypothesis that infants learn the pointing gesture at least in part through imitation. I explain how developments in sensorimotor ability (posture, arm and hand control and coordination, and locomotion) in the first year of (...) life prepare the infant for acquiring the pointing gesture. The former may directly enable the latter by allowing the infant to experience its own body as being “like those” of others, thus allowing it to imitatively appropriate a broader range of adult behavior. My proposal emphasizes the embodiment of mind in the development of cognition, contrary to latent dualistic tendencies in some developmental literature. (shrink)

This chapter canvases a number of ways that issues surrounding disability intersect with social epistemology. We begin with a discussion of how social epistemology as a field and debates concerning epistemic injustice in particular would benefit from further (a) engaging the fields of disability studies and philosophy of disability and (b) more directly addressing the problem of ableism. In section two, we turn to issues of testimony, “intuitive horribleness,” and their relationship to debates concerning disability and well-being. We address how (...) the regular lack of uptake of disabled people’s testimony can lead to a number of structural rather than merely individual epistemic injustices, and we also consider how the very nature of some disabilities make testimonial issues more complicated. We conclude by discussing various norms of social interaction and how they can systematically disadvantage Autistic people in particular with respect to all the issues discussed herein. (shrink)

In this paper recognition is taken to be a question of social ontology, regarding the very constitution of the social space of interaction. I concentrate on the question of whether certain aspects of the theory of recognition can be translated into the terms of a socio-ontological paradigm: to do so, I make reference to some conceptual tools derived from John Searle's social ontology and Robert Brandom's normative pragmatics. My strategy consists in showing that recognitive phenomena cannot be isolated at the (...) level of human interaction, and are, rather, in part proper to animal interaction as well. Furthermore, it is argued that recognitive powers are constitutive powers more basic than deontic ones and play a role much broader than the one they in fact assume in Searle and in Brandom. (shrink)

How social media impacts the autonomy of its users is a topic of increasing focus. However, much of the literature that explores these impacts fails to engage in depth with the philosophical literature on autonomy. This has resulted in a failure to consider the full range of impacts that social media might have on autonomy. A deeper consideration of these impacts is thus needed, given the importance of both autonomy as a moral concept and social media as a feature of (...) contemporary life. By drawing on this philosophical literature, we argue that autonomy is broadly a matter of developing autonomy competencies, having authentic ends and control over key aspects of your own life, and not being manipulated, coerced, and controlled by others. We show how the autonomy of users of social media can be disrespected and harmed through the control that social media can have over its users’ data, attention, and behaviour. We conclude by discussing various recommendations to better regulate social media. (shrink)

Our primary aim in this paper is to sketch a cognitive evolutionary approach for developing explanations of social change that is anchored on the psychological mechanisms underlying normative cognition and the transmission of social norms. We throw the relevant features of this approach into relief by comparing it with the self-fulfilling social expectations account developed by Bicchieri and colleagues. After describing both accounts, we argue that the two approaches are largely compatible, but that the cognitive evolutionary approach is well- suited (...) to encompass much of the social expectations view, whose focus on a narrow range of norms comes at the expense of the breadth the cognitive evolutionary approach can provide. (shrink)

Though the social world is real and objective, the way that social facts arise out of other facts is in an important way shaped by human thought, talk and behaviour. Building on recent work in social ontology, I describe a mechanism whereby this distinctive malleability of social facts, combined with the possibility of basic human error, makes it possible for a consistent physical reality to ground an inconsistent social reality. I explore various ways of resisting the prima facie case for (...) social inconsistency. I conclude, however, that the prima facie case survives scrutiny, and draw out some of the ramifications. (shrink)

Drawing on work from Marina Sbisà’s “Ideology and the Persuasive Use of Presupposition” (1999), Rae Langton has developed a powerful account of the subtle mechanisms through which hate speech and propaganda spread. However, this model has a serious limitation: it focuses too strongly on individual speech acts isolated from their wider context, rendering its applicability to a broader range of cases suspect. In this chapter, I consider the limits of presupposition accommodation to clarify the audience’s role in helping hate speakers, (...) and claim the necessary mechanisms are much more active and social than Langton suggests, with effects not capturable in the analysis of isolated speech acts. I revisit Sbisà’s work on presupposition and develop an alternative model that (1) improves upon the Langtonian model for explaining the power of hate propaganda, and (2) is more in line with Sbisà’s original approach to ideology and the normative aspects of presupposition. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring recent work on metaphysical grounding to bear on the phenomenon of social construction. It is argued that grounding can be used to analyze social construction and that the grounding framework is helpful for articulating various claims and commitments of social constructionists, especially about social identities, e.g., gender and race. The paper also responds to a number of objections that have been leveled against the application of grounding to social construction from Elizabeth Barnes, (...) Mari Mikkola, and Jessica Wilson. (shrink)

Public discussions of political and social issues are often characterized by deep and persistent polarization. In social psychology, it’s standard to treat belief polarization as the product of epistemic irrationality. In contrast, we argue that the persistent disagreement that grounds political and social polarization can be produced by epistemically rational agents, when those agents have limited cognitive resources. Using an agent-based model of group deliberation, we show that groups of deliberating agents using coherence-based strategies for managing their limited resources tend (...) to polarize into different subgroups. We argue that using that strategy is epistemically rational for limited agents. So even though group polarization looks like it must be the product of human irrationality, polarization can be the result of fully rational deliberation with natural human limitations. (shrink)

How feasible are conceptual engineering projects of social concepts that aim for the engineered concept to be widely adopted in ordinary everyday life? Predominant frameworks on the psychology of concepts that shape work on stereotyping, bias, and machine learning have grim implications for the prospects of conceptual engineers: conceptual engineering efforts are ineffective in promoting certain social-conceptual changes. Specifically, since conceptual components that give rise to problematic social stereotypes are sensitive to statistical structures of the environment, purely conceptual change won’t (...) be possible without corresponding world change. This tradition, however, tends to ignore that concepts don’t only encode statistical, but also causal information. Paying attention to this feature of concepts, I argue, shows that conceptual engineering is not only possible. There is an imperative to conceptually-engineer. (shrink)

Traditionally, social entities (i.e., social properties, facts, kinds, groups, institutions, and structures) have not fallen within the purview of mainstream metaphysics. In this chapter, we consider whether the exclusion of social entities from mainstream metaphysics is philosophically warranted or if it instead rests on historical accident or bias. We examine three ways one might attempt to justify excluding social metaphysics from the domain of metaphysical inquiry and argue that each fails. Thus, we conclude that social entities are not justifiably excluded (...) from metaphysical inquiry. Finally, we ask how focusing on social entities could change the character of metaphysical inquiry. We suggest that starting from examples of social entities might lead metaphysicians to rethink the assumption that describing reality in terms of intrinsic, independent, and individualistic features is preferable to describing it in terms of relational, dependent, and non-individualistic features. (shrink)

This essay briefly summarizes the key characteristics and social philosophies in Japan’s vision of Society 5.0. Then it discusses why Vietnam, as a developing country, can learn from the experiences of Japan in establishing its vision for an AI-powered human-centric society. The paper finally provides five concrete recommendations for Vietnam toward a harmonic and human-centric coexistence with increasingly competent and prevalent AI systems, including: Human-centric AI vision; Multidimensional, pluralistic understanding of human-technology relation; AI as a driving force for socio-economic development; (...) Bottom-up, participatory approach for building the vision; and Sustainability and inclusion in the adoption of AI. (shrink)

This chapter has four central aims. First, in §1, I distinguish two ideas within epistemology that sometimes travel under the name ‘contextualism’ — the ‘situational contextualist’ idea that an individual’s context, especially their social context, can make for a difference in what they know, and the ‘linguistic contextualist’ idea that discourse using the word ‘knows’ and its cognates is context-sensitive, expressing dif- ferent contents in different conversational contexts. -/- Second, in §2, I situate contextualism with respect to several influential ideas (...) in feminist epistemology. These ideas are thoroughgoingly contextualist in the situational sense; I’ll explore the prospects for linguistic contextualist analogues or implementations of them. Simple connections between these feminist ideas and linguistic contextualism will prove elusive, but more subtle ones are possible, and sometimes attractive. -/- §3 considers the degree to which contextual epistemic parameters are determined interpersonally, as opposed to individualistically. Should contextualists hold that speakers can individually determine the contextual parameters that influence the truth- conditions of their utterances? Or are they fixed at a broader social level? I’ll rehearse some influential reasons to opt for the latter, more social, form of contextualism. -/- In §4 I discuss the practical and moral significance of speakers’ choices of epistemic parameters, given contextualism. For example, I’ll consider how standards-raising can be used to discredit evidential sources, with an eye towards the social and moral consequences of such moves. (shrink)

A background assumption in much contemporary political philosophy is that justice is the first virtue of social institutions, taking priority over other values such as beneficence. This assumption is typically treated as a methodological starting point, rather than as following from any particular moral or political theory. In this paper, I challenge this assumption. To frame my discussion, I argue, first, that justice doesn’t in principle override beneficence, and second, that justice doesn’t typically outweigh beneficence, since, in institutional contexts, the (...) stakes of beneficence are often extremely high. While there are various ways one might resist this argument, none challenge the core methodological point that political philosophy should abandon its preoccupation with justice and begin to pay considerably more attention to social beneficence—that is, to beneficence understood as a virtue of social institutions. Along the way, I also highlight areas where focusing on social beneficence would lead political philosophers in new and fruitful directions, and where normative ethicists focused on personal beneficence might scale up their thinking to the institutional case. GPI Working Paper No. 11-2022. (shrink)