La filosofía fue entre nosotros, durante largo tiempo, un “juego social”, en las últimas décadas se ha venido transformando en (pseudo)campo, y en la actualidad está expuesta a sucumbir a la heteronomía, decayendo a la degradada situación de “espacio de servicios”. Así la doctrina de Bourdieu esclarece el surgimiento, la situación actual, y en cierto modo también la peripecia futura de la filosofía en España. Y al mismo tiempo consigue explicar porque, en este preciso momento, es plausible el pesimista (...) diagnóstico de que el peligro de regresión a la heteronomía compromete la existencia del incipiente campo filosófico español. Simplemente ocurre que en las situaciones de crisis las percepciones de los agentes adquieren una relevancia de la que suelen carecer en etapas más apacibles. En los períodos de desilusión los agentes se vuelven lúcidos, en una palabra, porque entonces resulta más difícil “seguir el juego” que el campo les exige. Ya que tomar parte en dicho juego no es más, según Bourdieu, que una forma de ilusión. (shrink)

I intend to: a) clarify the origins and de facto meanings of the term relativism; b) reconstruct the reasons for the birth of the thesis named “cultural relativism”; d) reconstruct ethical implications of the above thesis; c) revisit the recent discussion between universalists and particularists in the light of the idea of cultural relativism.. -/- 1.Prescriptive Moral Relativism: “everybody is justified in acting in the way imposed by criteria accepted by the group he belongs to”. Universalism: there are at least (...) some judgments which are valid inter-culturally Absolutism: there are at least some particular prescriptions which are valid without exception everywhere and always -/- 2. The traditional proof of prescriptive moral relativism: the argument from variability: Judgments, rules, and shared values are de facto variable in time and space. The traditional counter-proof: examples of variability do not prove what skeptics contend. -/- 3. Pre-history of the doctrine -Ancient sophists: either immoralist or contractualist -Modern moral scepticism (xvii c.): variability as an historical and ethnographic fact supports a sceptical conclusion more moderate than sheer immoralism. - Voltaire, Kant, Reid counter-attack pointing at a universally shared moral sense - Romantics and idealists stage an even more moderate reformulation: instead of universally shared moral sense they point at the Spirit of a People which is: a)alternative to abstract and universal philosophical systems as far as it is lived ‘culture’; b) indivisible unity with an inner harmony and a source of normative standards; c) dynamic, in so far as it is a manifestation of the Spirit through the becoming of National cultures. -/- 4. The birth of Cultural Relativism and its ethical implications 4.1. The 18th c. doctrine was the noble savage (a non-historical doctrine: state of nature vs. social state) 4.2 Edward Tylor (1832-1817) and ethnocentric historicism Savage moral standards are real enough, but they are far and weaker than ours. 4.3 Boas and Malinowski and an holistic reaction to ethnocentric historicism -/- Franz Boas (1858-1942): a) Development of civilizations is not ruled by technical progress nor does it follow a one-way path; instead there are parallel developments (for ex. Agriculture does not follow stock-raising); b) racial characters have no relevance in development of civilization; c) we are not yet in a position to compare externally identical kinds of behaviour till we have not yet understood beliefs and intentions laying at their roots (for ex.: “From an ethnological point of view murder cannot be considered as a single phenomenon”; d) we should distinguish among different practices which are only superficially similar (fro ex. practices traditionally classified under the label “tabù”); e) there is as a fact just one normative ethic, constant in its contents but varying in its extension; f) the implication is not that we cannot judge behavior by members of other groups; it is only a recommendation of caution. -/- Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942): a) against Tylor’s and Frazer’s “magpie” methodology, field-work is required, a culture as a whole should be observed from inside; individual elements are incomprehensible; b) a culture is an organic whole; c) its elements are accounted for by their function (economy), avoiding non-observables (empio-criticism). -/- Ruth Benedict and Melville Herskovitz identify Boas’s approach with “cultural relativism”. Benedict: what is normal and abnormal is to be judged on a culture’s own standards, not on our own (“Anthropology and the Abnormal”). Herskovits: “Boas adumbrates what we have come to call cultural relativism” (The Mind, p. 10); “Judgements are based on experience, and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his own enculturation” (Man and his Works). -/- 4. How analytic philosophy understood and misunderstood the discussion 4.1. At the beginning of the 20th c., the new view in ethics was non-cognitivism (emotivist and subjectivist). Eric Westermark combines this view with an old-style ethnographic approach in support of relativity of moralities. Moralities are codes, or systems of emotive ‘disinterested’ reactions selected by evolution on their usefulness in terms of survival value for the society that is the carrier of such systems or codes. The moral relativity thesis: there are cases of disagreement that cannot be settled even after agreement about facts. 4.2 Anti-realists Brandt, Mackie, Gilbert, Harman adopt Westermark’s approach in a more sophisticated version: a) moralities are codes with an overall function and may be appraised only as wholes; b) variability is an argument for moral subjectivism; c) apparent legitimacy of deriving shift from ought is legitimized only within one institution d) morality should not be described but instead made, and existing moralities may be improved. Is it ‘real’ relativism? It is clearly subjectivism (a metaethical thesis). The normative thesis is that there better and worse codes, and survival values is the normative standard. -/- 4.3 Particularists MacIntyre, Sandel, Taylor, Wiggins, McDowell ‘Wittgensteinian’ prospectivist arguments bent to support weak-relativist claims MacIntyre: there is ‘incommensurability’ between different theoretical systems in both science and ethics. No argument is possible through different systems Different traditions may coexist for a long time without being able to bring their conflicts to a rational solution. -/- 4.4 Kantian universalists Baier, Gewirth, Rawls, Apel, Habermas Shared claim: justice concerns the right and is universal in so far as it may be based on minimal assumptions Other virtues are relative to context in so far as they are related to comprehensive views of the good - O’Neill criticism: a) it is an assumption shared by both alignments; b) after an alleged crisis brought about by alleged loss of metaphysical certainties, theories of justice have dropped demanding assumptions and kept universalism, virtue theories have kept demanding assumptions and dropped universalism; c) the opposition of virtue and justice has arisen in an unjustified way. O’Neill’s positive proposal: ‘constructive’ procedures may be adopted both (i) concerning all the range of virtues and (ii) across cultures once we abandon idealization and confine ourselves to abstraction from real-world cases. -/- 4.5 A metaethical relativist and anti-relativist normative ethicists: Bernard Williams Williams: vulgar relativism may be assumed to claim that: a) 'just' means 'just in a given society'; b) 'just in a given society' is to be understood in functionalist sense; c) it is wrong for one society’s members to condemn another society’s values. It is inconsistent since in (c) uses ‘just’ in a non-relative way that has been excluded in (a). William’s positive proposal: i) keep a number of substantive or thick ethical concepts that will be different in space and time; ii) admit that public choices are to be legitimized through recourse to more abstract procedures and relying on more thin ethical concepts. -/- 5. Critical remarks 5.1 The only real relativism available is ‘vulgar’ relativism (Westermark?) 5.2. Descriptive universalism (or absolutism) has a long pedigree, from Cicero on, reaching Boas himself but it is useless as an answer to normative questions 5.3. Twentieth-century philosophical discussion seems to discuss an ad hoc doctrine reconstructed by assembling obsolete philosophical ideas but ignoring the real theory of cultural relativism as formulated by anthropologists. -/- 6. A distinction between ethoi and ethical theories as a way out of confusions a)There are systems of conventions de facto existing. These may be studies from outside as phenomena or facts. b)There is moral argument and this, when studies from outside, is a fact, but this does not influence in any degree the possible validity of claims advanced. c) the difference between the above claims and Mackie’s criticism to Searle’s argument of the promising game is that promises, arguments etc. are also phenomena, but they are also communicative phenomena with a logical and pragmatic structure. -/- 7.Conclusions: a) cultural relativism, as a name for Boas’s methodology is a valuable discovery, and in this sense we are all relativists; b) ethical relativism, as an alleged implication of cultural relativism, has been argued in a philosophically quite unsophisticated way by Benedict and Herskovits; philosophers apparently discussed ethical relativism in the basis of a rather faint impression of what cultural relativism had been. c) a full-fledged ethical relativism has hardly been defended by anybody among philosophers; virtually no modern philosopher really argued a prescriptive version of the thesis; d) we may accept the grain of truth in ethical relativism by including relativist critique to ethical absolutism into a universalist normative doctrine that be careful in separating open-textured formulations of universal claims from culturally conditioned particular prescriptions. -/- . 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I offer two potential diagnoses of the behavioral norms governing post‐truth politics by comparing the view of language, communication, and truth‐telling put forward by David Lewis (extended by game theorists), and John Searle. My first goal is to specify the different ways in which Lewis, and game theorists more generally, in contrast to Searle (in the company of Paul Grice and Jurgen Habermas), go about explaining the normativity of truthfulness within a linguistic community. The main difference is that (...) for Lewis and game theorists, “truthful” signaling follows from an align- ment of interests, and deception follows from mixed motives leading to the calculation that sending false information is better for oneself. Following in the Enlightenment tradition, Searle argues that practical reasoning, which involves mastery of at least one language, requires that actors intend to communicate. This intention includes constraining the content of statements to uphold veracity conditions. After distinguishing between these two accounts, I will artic- ulate the implications for explaining, and even informing actions, constitutive of post‐truth politics. I argue that the strategic view of communication is suffi- cient neither to model everyday conversation nor to reflect a public sphere useful for democratic govern- ment. Both the pedagogy of strategic communication as cheap talk, and its concordance with new digital information technologies, challenge norms of truthful- ness that underlie modern institutions essential to an effective public sphere. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Social Science: A Contemporary Introduction examines the perennial questions of philosophy by engaging with the empirical study of society. The book offers a comprehensive overview of debates in the field, with special attention to questions arising from new research programs in the social sciences. The text uses detailed examples of social scientific research to motivate and illustrate the philosophical discussion. Topics include the relationship of social policy to social science, interpretive research, (...) action explanation, game theory, social scientific accounts of norms, joint intentionality, reductionism, causal modeling, case study research, and experimentation. (shrink)

Life is getting digital more than ever as technology improves. While the Internet is responsible for two percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is underestimated as a pollutant. Since public awareness is one of the most important preservation methods, it can contribute to protecting the environment from carbon emissions by raising people's understanding. In this regard, serious games, as a type of gamification transmitting educational content besides entertainment, immerse the player in enjoyment while teaching them a specific topic or (...) enhancing their skills in a field. This study proposes a serious game, taking the digital unseen carbon footprint and its effects on the landscape into the topic. The game considers SDG goals provided by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. In this regard, the research uses SDGs 4 and 7 by providing quality education for all and access to sustainable energy by changing people's everyday habits. (shrink)

We evaluate the asymptotic performance of boundedly-rational strategies in multi-armed bandit problems, where performance is measured in terms of the tendency (in the limit) to play optimal actions in either (i) isolation or (ii) networks of other learners. We show that, for many strategies commonly employed in economics, psychology, and machine learning, performance in isolation and performance in networks are essentially unrelated. Our results suggest that the appropriateness of various, common boundedly-rational strategies depends crucially upon the social context (if (...) any) in which such strategies are to be employed. (shrink)

Games, play and gamification are essential for all ages because they allow players to develop useful 21st century skills such as digital literacy, critical and scientific thinking, problem solving, comprehension and communication skills, storytelling skills, etc. The new generation of digital natives requires a different approach in learning new things and libraries could take advantage of that by using gamification on learning content. In this way, libraries could become more welcoming spaces, more open to the public and much more interested (...) in what the public wants. To find out what people think about the idea of playing games at the library, the idea of libraries using gamified activities or if the public would like to use gamified apps on the library websites, a questionnaire-based survey was administered on Facebook and WhatsApp between February 2 and February 8, 2024. Analysis of the answers obtained shows that the Romanian public is open to the idea of libraries where reading, communicating, socializing, acquiring knowledge in various fields such as literature, history, geography can be combined in a fun and enjoyable way with play, games and gamification. Respondents would also like to use gamification on library websites such as a book lending app. (shrink)

Sport poses a number of important and no less significant questions, which, on the face of it, may not necessarily seem very important or significant to begin with – a peculiarity that we believe to be integral to sport itself. This article introduces, explores and outlines the psychoanalytic significance of this peculiarity. It explores how the emotions stirred by sport are intertwined with a realm of fiction and fantasy. Despite its lack of practical utility, sport carries an undeniable gravity, encapsulating (...) the aspirations of communities, nations and continents. As a result, psychoanalysis can be used to critically reflect on the purpose and meaning of sport: that is, why do we need sport, and why, for large sections of the world’s population, do we rely on it? Ultimately, while psychoanalysis maintains a unique relation to a variety of unexpected fields of study – including art, culture and neuroscience – we seek to add to this expanding list of inquiry by including sport in this critical domain. By utilising sport as a platform to elucidate psychoanalytic concepts, it is recognised that sport can also prompt questions for psychoanalysis. In so doing, theoretical discussions on the social, cultural and political dimensions of sport through psychoanalytic theory are introduced and applied. (shrink)

When a technology is seen as the right solution to a recognized problem, the development of alternative technologies comes under threat. To secure much-needed resources, proponents of alternative technologies must, in these conditions, restart societal discussion on the status quo, a process at once technological and discursive known as ‘path creation’. In this article, we investigate discussion-restarting strategies employed by supporters of emerging technologies in the field of solar fuels, particularly the advocates of a technology referred to as ‘artificial (...) photosynthesis’. For illustrative purposes we explore four such strategies: revisiting weak spots, resizing the problem, redefining the game, and renegotiating labels. We conclude with a methodological reflection on the empirical study of discursive strategies in a socio-technical system. We further suggest a more systematic application of discourse-analytical and argumentation-theoretical insights that can complement current scholarship on path dependence and path creation. (shrink)

The debates on the scientificity of social sciences in general, and sociology in particular, are recurring. From the original methodenstreitat the end the 19th Century to the contemporary controversy on the legitimacy of “regional epistemologies”, a same set of interrogations reappears. Are social sciences really scientific? And if so, are they sciences like other sciences? How should we conceive “research programs” Lakatos (1978) or “research traditions” for Laudan (1977) able to produce advancement of knowledge in the field (...) of social and human phenomena? Is the progress of knowledge in social sciences similar to the one generally observed in natural sciences? Is it possible to evaluate the relative merits of each one of these research programs? -/- These debates are important vectors of social and intellectual polarization. The historical divide between the positivist and the hermeneutics poles precedes the structure of the contemporary debate around the epistemic space of social sciences, It is not only a question of renewing the opposition between a monist view of sciences (e.g. McIntyre, 1996) and a dualistic one (e.g. Geertz, 1973) or even a trialist view of sciences (e.g. Lepenies, 1985). It is also a question of asserting dichotomies transformed into framework (including when it is a question of exceeding them): nature-culture, nomothetic-idiographic, models-narrative, structure-history, cause-reason, explanation-comprehension. -/- In this short introduction, we provide, in section 2, a first overview of this epistemological debate in social science. Section 3 proposes a different standpoint on the same questions, by introducing both ontological and methodological aspects in this basic epistemological debate. Namely, following (Hollis, 1994) oppositions of the explanation - understanding, causes - meaning, etc., types discussed in the firsts ection are comparatively examined together with oppositions of the structure - action, holism - individualism types. This allows us to discus show multi-agent design, by integrating various dimensions and standpoints in the same framework (Phan, Amblard, 2007, Chapters 1, 5, 14) can help us to shift these boundaries, and to bypass these oppositions. As model building and ontology design are at the core of this process (Phan, Amblard, 2007, Chapter 12), Section4 discusses various issues of the art of modelling, starting both from economists’ and sociologists’ current standpoints. (shrink)

PURPOSE: The conventional wisdom in dental and medical education is that dental and medical students experience "ethical erosion" over the duration of dental and medical school. There is some evidence for this claim, but in the case of dental education this evidence consists entirely of survey research, which doesn't measure behavior. The purpose of this study was to measure the altruistic behavior of dental students, in order to fill the significant gap in knowledge of how students are disposed to behave, (...) rather than how they are disposed to think. -/- METHODS: To test the altruistic behavior of dental students, we conducted a field experiment using the Ultimatum Game, which is a game commonly used in economics to observe social behavior. Students from each of the four years of dental school played the game in standardized conditions with real money. -/- RESULTS: Students exhibited greater levels of altruism than the general population typically does. Students' altruism peaked in year four. Students' altruism was associated with the socioeconomic status of responder. -/- CONCLUSION: The results suggest that that dental students are more altruistic than the population average and that altruism increases during their education. Thus, if a decreasing ability to behave altruistically is observed during dental school, it is not likely due to a general disposition of students, but rather some factor specific to the educational environment in which the decrease is observed. (shrink)

An emotional deficit in individuals with psychopathy has been regarded as a potential factor in the disinhibition of selfish behaviors, which can be an impediment to a successful life in human society. However, recent studies in the field of economics have made clear that emotional function is associated with irrational decision-making. In the present study, to test whether psychopathy may have a positive aspect in a social setting, we examined the decision-making of college students with high and low (...) tendencies for psychopathy in the ultimatum game, which illustrates conflict between fairness and economic utility. We also investigated electrodermal responses to fair and unfair offers for each group. Compared to low psychopathic controls, individuals with a high tendency toward psychopathy more often choose economic utility by accepting unfair offers. Whereas controls more often exhibited an electrodermal response to unfair offers compared to fair offers, high psychopathic individuals did not show a similar difference between the types of offer. The results suggest that the affective deficit of psychopathy might be associated with insensitivity to unfairness and may contribute to a rational decision to accept unfair offers. Hence, psychopathy can be rational in some social situations. (shrink)

The use of participant-led visual data production is often seen as advantageous because data can be directed, constructed and created away from the influence of the researcher. The case for employing the visual to engender participatory research, and specifically to limit the intrusive presence of the researcher, is well versed and in vogue within the field of social science; however, although participatory techniques offer an opportunity to disrupt power relations, they are unable to transcend familial practices. Drawing from (...) a study in which mother/daughter dyads produced photographs, collages, maps and stories to communicate their everyday lives and ideas of the future, this paper examines the wider role of ‘intrusive presence’. The paper documents incidents of external physical interference where visual data was amended, the influence of outside suggestion in the creative process, and the restrictions placed by the imagined reactions of the viewer. The paper argues that when the ‘intrusive presence’ of the researcher steps out of the site of visual data production this leaves a space that is often filled by the ‘intrusive presence’ of significant others. (shrink)

When parties and interest groups interact, they can do so in several ways which could be on an informal level, lobbying for a party candidate, or group representatives approach party leaders in the parliament to lobby them on an issue. There is a plethora of studies on the extent to which major political parties and major interests have related in the past and continue to relate or interact at the organizational level. Researchers have investigated to what extent parties and groups (...) had formal organizational ties, cooperated in elections, or worked in concert on developing and implementing policies. Factors that for decades have determined the relationship between political parties and interest groups in liberal democracies are political system and subsystem development, political culture and political ideology, centralization of government and policymaking, nature of the party system, political party dependence on interest groups, encompassing characteristics of the interest group system, interest group development, ideology, and leadership. However, the pandemic has influenced to a great extend the relationship between interest groups and politics. While Covid-19 crisis has consolidated power within governments, leaving opposition parties in a bind, on the other hand it has galvanized interest groups and businesses to mobilize. The pandemic has opened up the lobbying playing field to many new players. The paper aims to investigate to what extend the pandemic has influenced the relationship between political parties, government and interest groups and what strategies have these last ones used to get heard in a time when social distancing has reduced the opportunities for face-to-face lobbying. (shrink)

Rules are meant to apply equally to all within their jurisdiction. However, some rules are frequently broken without consequence for most. These rules are only occasionally enforced, often at the discretion of a third-party observer. We propose that these rules—whose violations are frequent, and enforcement is rare—constitute a unique subclass of explicitly codified rules, which we call ‘phantom rules’ (e.g., proscribing jaywalking). Their apparent punishability is ambiguous and particularly susceptible to third-party motives. Across six experiments, (N = 1440) we validated (...) the existence of phantom rules and found evidence for their motivated enforcement. First, people played a modified Dictator Game with a novel frequently broken and rarely enforced rule (i.e., a phantom rule). People enforced this rule more often when the “dictator” was selfish (vs. fair) even though the rule only proscribed fractional offers (not selfishness). Then we turned to third person judgments of the U.S. legal system. We found these violations are recognizable to participants as both illegal and commonplace (Experiment 2), differentiable from violations of prototypical laws (Experiments 3) and enforced in a motivated way (Experiments 4a and 4b). Phantom rule violations (but not prototypical legal violations) are seen as more justifiably punished when the rule violator has also violated a social norm (vs. rule violation alone)—unless the motivation to punish has been satiated (Experiment 5). Phantom rules are frequently broken, codified rules. Consequently, their apparent punishability is ambiguous, and their enforcement is particularly susceptible to third party motives. (shrink)

The first of its kind, this anthology in the burgeoning field of technology ethics offers students and other interested readers 32 chapters, each written in an accessible and lively manner specifically for this volume. The chapters are conveniently organized into five sections: I. Perspectives on Technology and its Value II. Technology and the Good Life III. Computer and Information Technology IV. Technology and Business V. Biotechnologies and Enhancement A hallmark of the volume is multidisciplinary contributions both in analytic and (...) continental philosophy and across several hot-button topics of interest to students, including the ethics of autonomous vehicles, psychotherapeutic phone apps, and bio-enhancement of cognition and in sports. The volume editors, both teachers of technology ethics, have compiled a set of original and timely chapters that will advance scholarly debate and stimulate fascinating and lively classroom discussion. An online eResources site provides a glossary of all relevant terms, sample classroom activities/ discussion questions relevant for chapters, and links to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries and other relevant online materials. Key Features: Examines the most pivotal ethical questions around our use of technology, equipping readers to better understand technology's promises and perils Explores throughout a central tension raised by technological progress: maintaining social stability vs. pursuing dynamic social improvements Provides ample coverage of the pressing issues of free speech and productive online discourse. (shrink)

Abstract: Advances in new technologies create new ways to stimulate the pleasure center of the human brain via new chemicals, direct application of electricity, electromagnetic fields, “reward hacking” in games and social networks, and in the future, possibly via genetic manipulation, nanorobots and AI systems. This may have two consequences: a) human life may become more interesting, b) humans may stop participating in any external activities, including work, maintenance, reproduction, and even caring for their own health, which could slowly (...) contribute to a decline in human populations. As wireheading is not self-limiting, it may push the addict to his/her limits and ultimately result in life-threatening behavior. Mass unemployment and the provision of basic income would likely feed the industry of pleasures. DIY synthetic biology and computers may create the possibility of homemade very addictive drugs through various routes, like insertion of a morphine-producing gene in plants or stimulation of the brain via electromagnetic fields, which may not be possible to control via limiting the supply chain. If “wireheading knowledge” becomes freely available, it could create a reward-hacking epidemic larger than the current U.S. opioid crisis and possibly contribute to a global civilizational decline. (shrink)

If one wishes to understand what money is, to whom should one turn as the most reliable source of knowledge? Of course, economists propose themselves as the experts on the matter. Who, if not those who study in- terest rates, prices and exchanges could know more about the nature of money? Yet, with a few exceptions, those philosophers in the burgeoning field of social ontology who ask ‘what is money?’ (or, for that matter, ‘what is a marriage?, ‘what (...) is ownership?’, ‘what is a cocktail party?’, etc.) tend to ignore what past and present social scientists maintain on these issues. John Searle comes to mind as having such an insulated approach. Since The Construction of Social Reality, Searle has repeatedly claimed to have found no adequate definition of institutions on the part of those scholars who are the most concerned with them. Understanding Institutions leaves a different impression about the state of the art. In this elegant book, Francesco Guala shows that social scien- tists, economists in particular, can actually be trusted in how they under- stand the notions which they apply. Guala finds in game theory the relevant conceptual framework in which to explore the nature of institutions. Fol- lowing David Hume, David Lewis, and Edna Ullmann-Margalit, he defends a view, termed the rule-in-equilibrium account, which conceives institutions as solutions to coordination problems. For example, to determine what a marriage is, we must look at the range of coordination dilemmas which married couples have resolved: Who cooks? Who picks up the children f rom school? Who washes the dishes? etc. Likewise, the institution of own- ership states who will make use of what? The highway code indicates which side of the road to drive on. Cocktail parties? I gather they specify when to entertain and who to bond with. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Genevieve Lloyd argues that when we follow Spinoza in understanding reason as a part of nature, we gain new insights into the human condition. Specifically, we gain a new political insight: we should respond to cultural difference with a pluralist ethos. This is because there is no pure universal reason; human minds find their reason shaped differently by their various embodied social contexts. Furthermore, we can use the resources of the imagination to bring this ethos about. In my (...) response, I offer a friendly challenge to Lloyd’s characterisation of the lessons of Spinoza’s philosophy. I argue that Lloyd’s Spinoza remains excessively unpolitical, even in the moment that he is brought to bear on contemporary politics. An unpluralistic attitude may well be rationally inferior, but is it really explained by insufficient or inappropriate imagination? To the contrary, a properly Spinozist account of reason must include an account of the concrete determinants of reason’s imperfect realisation in the world. In Spinoza’s own oeuvre, this is carried out through an ever-increasing—and ever more sociological—interest in the political structures within which individual reason flourishes or withers. (shrink)

Growth in popularity of computer games is a noticeable change in recent years. Electronic entertainment increasingly engages the wider society and reaches to new audiences by offering them satisfy of wide variety of needs and aspirations. As a mass media games not only provide entertainment, but they are also an important source of income, knowledge and social problems. Article aims to bring closer look on the common areas of games and comics. On the one hand designers and artists working (...) on games are often inspired by comic books, as well as they create their licensed adaptations and separate „interactive issues”. On the other hand more and more often we can see comics based on popular games. Study present the areas of agreement, cooperation or dependence like: technologies used to create games and comic books, use of comic books to comment events in the gaming industry and organization of exhibitions or events popularizing the works from both fields. ** W ostatnich latach dostrzegalny jest wzrost popularności gier komputerowych. Elektroniczna rozrywka angażuje uwagȩ coraz to szerszych krȩgów społecznych i dociera do nowych grup odbiorców oferuj¸a}c im zaspokojenie najrozmaitszych potrzeb i aspiracji. Jako środek masowego przekazu gry dostarczaj¸a} nie tylko rozrywki, ale stanowi¸a} też istotne źródło dochodów, wiedzy i problemów społecznych. Celem artykułu jest przybliżenie wspólnych obszarów gier i komiksu. Z jednej strony projektanci i artyści pracuj¸a}cy nad grami czȩsto czerpi¸a} inspiracjȩ z komiksów, jak również tworz¸a} ich licencjonowane adaptacje i odrȩbne, „interaktywne numery”. Z drugiej zaś coraz czȩściej publikowane s¸a} komiksy bazuj¸a}ce na popularnych grach. Opracowanie przedstawia również takie obszary porozumienia, współpracy, b¸adź zależności jak: technologie wykorzystywane przy tworzeniu gier i komiksów, zastosowanie komiksów w komentowaniu wydarzeń branży gier oraz organizowanie wystaw i imprez popularyzuj¸acych twórczość z obu dziedzin. (shrink)

Spanish translation of Field, S. L. (2012). 'Democracy and the multitude: Spinoza against Negri'. Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 59(131), 21-40. Translated by María Cecilia Padilla and Gonzalo Ricci Cernadas. Negri celebra una concepción de la democracia en la que los poderes concretos de los individuos humanos no se alienan sino que se agregan: una democracia de la multitud. Pero ¿cómo puede actuar la multitud sin alienar el poder de nadie? Para contestar esta dificultad, Negri (...) explícitamente apela a Spinoza. Sin embargo, en este trabajo, sostengo que la filosofía de Spinoza no respalda el proyecto de Negri. Por el contrario, argumento que la multitud spinozista evita la jerarquía interna por medio de la mediación de las instituciones políticas y no a pesar de ellas; de la misma manera, estas instituciones tampoco simplemente emanan de la multitud tal cual es, sino que estructuran, contienen y canalizan sus pasiones. En particular, las instituciones requeridas no son las de la democracia simple y directa. Puede ser que existan otros argumentos no spinozistas en los cuales Negri pueda basar su teoría, pero no puede defender legítimamente su concepción de la multitud democrática apelando a Spinoza. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that there is an essential difference between social intelligence and creative intelligence, and that they have their foundation in human sexuality. For sex differences, we refer to the vast psychological, neurological, and cognitive science research where problem-solving, verbal skills, logical reasoning, and other topics are dealt with. Intelligence tests suggest that, on average, neither sex has more general intelligence than the other. Though people are equals in general intelligence, they are different in special forms (...) of intelligence such as social intelligence and creative intelligence, the former dominant in women, the latter dominant in men. The dominance of creative intelligence in men needs to be explained. The focus of our research is on the strictly anthropological aspects, and consequently our explanation for this fact is based on the male-female polarity in the mating systems. Sexual dimorphism does not only regard bodily differences but implies different forms of sex life. Sex researchers distinguish between two levels of sexual intercourse: procreative sex and recreational sex, and to these we would add “creative sex.” On all three levels, there is a behavioral difference between men and women, including the subjective experience. These differences are as well attributed to culture as genetically founded in nature. Sexual reproduction is only possible if females cooperate. Their biological inheritance makes females play a decisive role in mate choice. Recreational sex for the purpose of pleasure rather than reproduction results from female extended sexual activity. Creative sex, on the contrary, is a specifically male performance of sexuality. We identify creative sex with eroticism. Eroticism evolved through the transformation of the sexual drive into a mental state of expectation and fantasizing. Hence, sex differences (that nowadays are covered up by cultural egalitarianism) continue to be the evolutionary origin of the difference between social and creative intelligence. (shrink)

This book offers a detailed study of the political philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza, focussing on their concept of power as potentia, concrete power, rather than power as potestas, authorised power. The focus on power as potentia generates a new conception of popular power. Radical democrats–whether drawing on Hobbes's 'sleeping sovereign' or on Spinoza's 'multitude'–understand popular power as something that transcends ordinary institutional politics, as for instance popular plebsites or mass movements. However, the book argues that these (...) understandings reflect a residual scholasticism which Hobbes and Spinoza ultimately repudiate. Instead, on the book's revisionist conception, a political phenomenon should be said to express popular power when it is both popular (it eliminates oligarchy and encompasses the whole polity), and also powerful (it robustly determines political and social outcomes). Two possible institutional forms that this popular power might take are distinguished: Hobbesian repressive egalitarianism, or Spinozist civic strengthening. But despite divergent institutional proposals, the book argues that both Hobbes and Spinoza share the conviction that there is nothing spontaneously egalitarian or good about human collective existence. From this point of view, the book accuses radical democrats of pernicious romanticism; the slow, meticulous work of organizational design and maintenance is the true centre of popular power. Three minute video summary available via HPBin3. Extended discussion on The Political Theory Review podcast. First chapter open access available via Oxford Scholarship Online. Videos of book talks at National University of Singapore (Centre for Legal Theory) and Universidad de Buenos Aires (Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani) available via YouTube. (See links below.). (shrink)

Communication and content presents a comprehensive and foundational account of meaning based on new versions of situation theory and game theory. The literal and implied meanings of an utterance are derived from first principles assuming little more than the partial rationality of interacting agents. New analyses of a number of diverse phenomena – a wide notion of ambiguity and content encompassing phonetics, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and beyond, vagueness, convention and conventional meaning, indeterminacy, universality, the role of truth in communication, (...) semantic change, translation, Frege’s puzzle of informative identities – are developed. Communication, speaker meaning, and reference are defined. Frege’s context and compositional principles are generalized and reconciled in a fixed-point principle, and a detailed critique of Grice, several aspects of Lewis, and some aspects of the Romantic conception of meaning are offered. Connections with other branches of linguistics, especially psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and natural language processing, are explored. -/- The book will be of interest to scholars in philosophy, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. It should also interest readers in related fields like literary and cultural theory and the social sciences. (shrink)

The relationship between ethics and science has been discussed within the framework of continuity versus discontinuity theories, each of which can take several forms. Continuity theorists claim that ethics is a science or at least that it has deep similarities with the modus operandi of science. Discontinuity theorists reject such equivalency, while at the same time many of them claim that ethics does deal with objective truths and universalizable statements, just not in the same sense as science does. I propose (...) here a third view of quasi-continuity (or, equivalently, quasi-discontinuity) that integrates ethics and science as equal partners toward the uncovering of new knowledge. In this third way, a program envisioned by William James but made practicable only by contemporary scientific advancement, science can and must inform ethics at a deep level, and ethical theory— while going beyond science—cannot do without it. In particular, I identify four areas of ethics-science collaboration: neurobiological research into the basis of moral judgment, comparative anthropol- ogy, comparative evolutionary biology of primates, and game-theo- retical modeling. I provide examples within each of these fields to show how they link to ethical theories (including prescriptive work) and questions. The essay concludes with a brief discussion of the light that a scientifically informed ethics can shed on some classical problems in moral theory, such as the relationships between rational- ity and selfishness, egoism and altruism, as well as the concept of social contract. A joint research program involving both philosophers and scientists is called for if we wish to move ethical theory into the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Marriage is one of the most important topics in the education field since life in this world is structured by interaction among families and between families and other social institutions. Dissatisfaction and unsustainability of marriage have led the urgency of premarital education in various countries. The problem is that the spread of virtual reality has made marriage itself to become more complex and experience reinterpretation and reconfiguration, moreover with the emergence of new kind of marriage in the digital (...) era, i.e. virtual marriage. Everybody who has observed, known, or even tried, certainly asks the question, “Could (or: should) I accept virtual marriage?” . This study was aimed to investigate the role of tolerance of ambiguity and illusion of intimacy in online dating in predicting the acceptance of virtual marriage. There were 420 adolescents and young adults (212 males, 208 females; Mage=21.10 years old, SDage=1.459 years; 338 students, 82 employees or entrepreneurs) in the Greater Jakarta, Indonesia, participated in this study. It was found that the acceptance was not predicted by the ambiguity tolerance, but by the illusion of intimacy in online dating. The psychometric issues, substantive discussion, and recommendation are presented at the end of this article. The trend of virtual marriage should not be allowed to roll away, by autopilot, without loaded by strategies in designing an online game as one of the pivotal educational technologies that needs to shape appropriate character and attitude for it. (shrink)

It is common to assimilate Marx’s and Spinoza’s conceptions of democracy. In this chapter, I assess the relation between Marx’s early idea of “true democracy” and Spinozist democracy, both the historical influence and the theoretical affinity. Drawing on Marx’s student notebooks on Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, I show there was a historical influence. However, at the theoretical level, I argue that a sharp distinction must be drawn. Philosophically, Spinoza’s commitment to understanding politics through real concrete powers does not support with Marx’s (...) anti-institutional conception of true democracy. And as a matter of social theory, the gap between civil society and the state which so troubles Marx is a development of modernity that has not entered Spinoza's premodern field of view. Marx’s true democracy was also influenced by his study of Rousseau, and theoretically, it is just as close if not closer to Rousseau as to Spinoza. (shrink)

Could a person ever transcend what it is like to be in the world as a human being? Could we ever know what it is like to be other creatures? Questions about the overcoming of a human perspective are not uncommon in the history of philosophy. In the last century, those very interrogatives were notably raised by American philosopher Thomas Nagel in the context of philosophy of mind. In his 1974 essay What is it Like to Be a Bat?, Nagel (...) offered reflections on human subjectivity and its constraints. Nagel’s insights were elaborated before the social diffusion of computers and could not anticipate the cultural impact of technological artefacts capable of materializing interactive simulated worlds as well as disclosing virtual alternatives to the “self.” In this sense, this article proposes an understanding of computers as epistemological and ontological instruments. The embracing of a phenomenological standpoint entails that philosophical issues are engaged and understood from a fundamentally practical perspective. In terms of philosophical praxis, or “applied philosophy,” I explored the relationship between human phenomenologies and digital mediation through the design and the development of experimental video games. For instance, I have conceptualized the first-person action-adventure video game Haerfest (Technically Finished 2009) as a digital re-formulation of the questions posed in Nagel’s famous essay. Experiencing a bat’s perceptual equipment in Haerfest practically corroborates Nagel’s conclusions: there is no way for humans to map, reproduce, or even experience the consciousness of an actual bat. Although unverifiable in its correspondence to that of bats, Haerfest still grants access to experiences and perceptions that, albeit still inescapably within the boundaries of human kinds of phenomenologies, were inaccessible to humans prior to the advent of computers. Phenomenological alterations and virtual experiences disclosed by interactive digital media cannot take place without a shift in human kinds of ontologies, a shift which this study recognizes as the fundamental ground for the development of a new humanism (I deem it necessary to specify that I am not utilizing the term “humanism” in its common connotation, that is to say the one that emerged from the encounter between the Roman civilization and the late Hellenistic culture. According to this conventional acceptation, humanism indicates the realization of the human essence through “scholarship and training in good conduct” (Heidegger 1998, p. 244). However, Heidegger observed that this understanding of humanism does not truly cater to the original essence of human beings, but rather “is determined with regard to an already established interpretation of nature, history, world, and […] beings as a whole.” (Heidegger 1998, p. 245) The German thinker found this way of embracing humanism reductive: a by-product of Western metaphysics. As Heidegger himself specified in his 1949 essay Letter on Humanism, his opposition to the traditional acceptation of the term humanism does not advocate for the “inhuman” or a return to the “barbaric” but stems instead from the belief that the humanism can only be properly understood and restored in culture as more original way of meditating and caring for humanity and understanding its relationship with Being.). Additionally, this study explicitly proposes and exemplifies the use of interactive digital technology as a medium for testing, developing and disseminating philosophical notions, problems and hypotheses in ways which are alternative to the traditional textual one. Presented as virtual experiences, philosophical concepts can be accessed without the filter of subjective imagination. In a persistent, interactive, simulated environment, I claim that the crafting and the mediation of thought takes a novel, projective (In Martin Heidegger’s 1927 Being and Time, the term “projectivity” indicates the way a Being opens to the world in terms of its possibilities of being (Heidegger 1962, pp. 184–185, BT 145). Inspired by Heidegger’s and Vilem Flusser’s work in the field of philosophy of technology as well as Helmuth Plessner’s anthropological position presented in his 1928 book Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch. Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie, this study understands the concept of projectivity as the innate openness of human beings to construct themselves and their world by means of technical artefacts. In this sense, this study proposes a fundamental understanding of technology as the materialization of mankind’s tendency to overcome its physical, perceptual and communicative limitations.) dimension which I propose to call “augmented ontology.”. (shrink)

Negri celebrates a conception of democracy in which the concrete powers of individual humans are not alienated away, but rather are added together: this is a democracy of the multitude. But how can the multitude act without alienating anyone’s power? To answer this difficulty, Negri explicitly appeals to Spinoza. Nonetheless, in this paper, I argue that Spinoza’s philosophy does not support Negri’s project. I argue that the Spinozist multitude avoids internal hierarchy through the mediation of political institutions and not in (...) spite of them; nor do these institutions merely emanate from the multitude as it is, but rather they structure, restrain and channel its passions. In particular, the required institutions are not those of a simple direct democracy. There may be other non-Spinozist arguments on which Negri can ground his theory, but he cannot legitimately defend his conception of the democratic multitude by appeal to Spinoza. (shrink)

Can new technology enhance purpose-driven, democratic dialogue in groups, governments, and societies? Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice is the first book that attempts to sample the full range of work on online deliberation, forging new connections between academic research, technology designers, and practitioners. Since some of the most exciting innovations have occurred outside of traditional institutions, and those involved have often worked in relative isolation from each other, work in this growing field has often failed to reflect the (...) full set of perspectives on online deliberation. This volume is aimed at those working at the crossroads of information/communication technology and social science, and documents early findings in, and perspectives on, this new field by many of its pioneers. -/- CONTENTS: -/- Introduction: The Blossoming Field of Online Deliberation (Todd Davies, pp. 1-19) -/- Part I - Prospects for Online Civic Engagement -/- Chapter 1: Virtual Public Consultation: Prospects for Internet Deliberative Democracy (James S. Fishkin, pp. 23-35) -/- Chapter 2: Citizens Deliberating Online: Theory and Some Evidence (Vincent Price, pp. 37-58) -/- Chapter 3: Can Online Deliberation Improve Politics? Scientific Foundations for Success (Arthur Lupia, pp. 59-69) -/- Chapter 4: Deliberative Democracy, Online Discussion, and Project PICOLA (Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly) (Robert Cavalier with Miso Kim and Zachary Sam Zaiss, pp. 71-79) -/- Part II - Online Dialogue in the Wild -/- Chapter 5: Friends, Foes, and Fringe: Norms and Structure in Political Discussion Networks (John Kelly, Danyel Fisher, and Marc Smith, pp. 83-93) -/- Chapter 6: Searching the Net for Differences of Opinion (Warren Sack, John Kelly, and Michael Dale, pp. 95-104) -/- Chapter 7: Happy Accidents: Deliberation and Online Exposure to Opposing Views (Azi Lev-On and Bernard Manin, pp. 105-122) -/- Chapter 8: Rethinking Local Conversations on the Web (Sameer Ahuja, Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, and Andrea Kavanaugh, pp. 123-129) -/- Part III - Online Public Consultation -/- Chapter 9: Deliberation in E-Rulemaking? The Problem of Mass Participation (David Schlosberg, Steve Zavestoski, and Stuart Shulman, pp. 133-148) -/- Chapter 10: Turning GOLD into EPG: Lessons from Low-Tech Democratic Experimentalism for Electronic Rulemaking and Other Ventures in Cyberdemocracy (Peter M. Shane, pp. 149-162) -/- Chapter 11: Baudrillard and the Virtual Cow: Simulation Games and Citizen Participation (Hélène Michel and Dominique Kreziak, pp. 163-166) -/- Chapter 12: Using Web-Based Group Support Systems to Enhance Procedural Fairness in Administrative Decision Making in South Africa (Hossana Twinomurinzi and Jackie Phahlamohlaka, pp. 167-169) -/- Chapter 13: Citizen Participation Is Critical: An Example from Sweden (Tomas Ohlin, pp. 171-173) -/- Part IV - Online Deliberation in Organizations -/- Chapter 14: Online Deliberation in the Government of Canada: Organizing the Back Office (Elisabeth Richard, pp. 177-191) -/- Chapter 15: Political Action and Organization Building: An Internet-Based Engagement Model (Mark Cooper, pp. 193-202) -/- Chapter 16: Wiki Collaboration Within Political Parties: Benefits and Challenges (Kate Raynes-Goldie and David Fono, pp. 203-205) -/- Chapter 17: Debian’s Democracy (Gunnar Ristroph, pp. 207-211) -/- Chapter 18: Software Support for Face-to-Face Parliamentary Procedure (Dana Dahlstrom and Bayle Shanks, pp. 213-220) -/- Part V - Online Facilitation -/- Chapter 19: Deliberation on the Net: Lessons from a Field Experiment (June Woong Rhee and Eun-mee Kim, pp. 223-232) -/- Chapter 20: The Role of the Moderator: Problems and Possibilities for Government-Run Online Discussion Forums (Scott Wright, pp. 233-242) -/- Chapter 21: Silencing the Clatter: Removing Anonymity from a Corporate Online Community (Gilly Leshed, pp. 243-251) -/- Chapter 22: Facilitation and Inclusive Deliberation (Matthias Trénel, pp. 253-257) -/- Chapter 23: Rethinking the ‘Informed’ Participant: Precautions and Recommendations for the Design of Online Deliberation (Kevin S. Ramsey and Matthew W. Wilson, pp. 259-267) -/- Chapter 24: PerlNomic: Rule Making and Enforcement in Digital Shared Spaces (Mark E. Phair and Adam Bliss, pp. 269-271) -/- Part VI - Design of Deliberation Tools -/- Chapter 25: An Online Environment for Democratic Deliberation: Motivations, Principles, and Design (Todd Davies, Brendan O’Connor, Alex Cochran, Jonathan J. Effrat, Andrew Parker, Benjamin Newman, and Aaron Tam, pp. 275-292) -/- Chapter 26: Online Civic Deliberation with E-Liberate (Douglas Schuler, pp. 293-302) -/- Chapter 27: Parliament: A Module for Parliamentary Procedure Software (Bayle Shanks and Dana Dahlstrom, pp. 303-307) -/- Chapter 28: Decision Structure: A New Approach to Three Problems in Deliberation (Raymond J. Pingree, pp. 309-316) -/- Chapter 29: Design Requirements of Argument Mapping Software for Teaching Deliberation (Matthew W. Easterday, Jordan S. Kanarek, and Maralee Harrell, pp. 317-323) -/- Chapter 30: Email-Embedded Voting with eVote/Clerk (Marilyn Davis, pp. 325-327) -/- Epilogue: Understanding Diversity in the Field of Online Deliberation (Seeta Peña Gangadharan, pp. 329-358). -/- For individual chapter downloads, go to odbook.stanford.edu. (shrink)

In this chapter, the author articulates two Hobbesian models of interpersonal power relations that can be used to understand gender relations: what he will call the dominion model and the deference model. Hobbes himself analyses the relation between men and women through the dominion model. The author lays out Hobbes's model of interpersonal power relations as dominion, including his application of the model to the case of gender relations. The centerpiece of Hobbes's method is his “state of nature” thought experiment. (...) Hobbes's analysis is radical insofar as he understands familial relations according to the general model of interpersonal relations just outlined, without any reference to sui generis principles. The author indicates some shortcomings of the dominion model for grasping contemporary social life. The much‐celebrated social contract between equal male citizens is quietly underpinned by the sexual contract, a contract of domination between men and women. (shrink)

This paper outlines an analysis of the word ‘fun’, as it is used in everyday English sentences to describe various activities and asks why some things are labeled as fun while others seem unable to be properly described as such. One common unspoken idea, for example, is that a fun activity is deemed fun due to having a particular phenomenology, in a way that might be comparable to being in a ‘flow state’. Due to the trouble such psychological accounts of (...) fun have in explaining both the precise conditions of fun and also why some activities are thought to be enjoyable but not fun, a deflationary theory is instead introduced. This proposed alternative account suggests that the use of the word ‘fun’, when describing activities in English sentences, signals that the sentence is a generic sentence, an idea based on a semantic distinction made by Greg Carlson (1989). Further, it is argued that the words ‘pleasurable’ and ‘enjoyable’ are reserved for non-generic sentences, leaving the use of the word ‘fun’ to signal something akin to a grammar relation, rather than referring to a feeling or psychological state. (shrink)

The pragmatist tradition in philosophy has left a sound legacy in many contemporary research fields. John Dewey’s continuist and emergentist approach to the nature-or-nurture problem in relation to the individual human mind has been regained lately in evolutionist psychology and related disciplines. For Dewey, language plays a fundamental role in creating and maintaining this continuity between the individual mind and the social and physical environment humans inhabit. The present article will focus on a few contemporary lines of research that (...) identify language as the ‘glue’ that bonds each individual to one another and to society, with a decisive impact on the development of one’s own mind. (shrink)

At the centre of Powers' (2019) China and England is an extraordinary forgotten episode in the history of political ideas. There was a time when English radicals critiqued the corruption and injustice of the English political system by contrasting it with the superior example of China. There was a time when they advocated adopting a Chinese conceptual framework for thinking about politics. So dominant and prevalent was the English radicals' use of this framework, that their opponents took to dismissing their (...) points as 'the argument from the Chinese'. In my review of Powers' book, I welcome the profound reconfiguration of our political understandings that knowledge of this historical episode brings. However, I question Powers' framing presumption that the generic problems of any complex society lead to convergence on a single master political value of 'social justice'. Surely there are deep and enduring differences amongst thinkers of political value, even within a single society, let alone across different societies. Taking this point seriously would challenge the simple linear directionality of Powers' story of moral and political progress. (shrink)

When game theory was introduced to biology, the components of classic game theory models were replaced with elements more befitting evolutionary phenomena. The actions of intelligent agents are replaced by phenotypic traits; utility is replaced by fitness; rational deliberation is replaced by natural selection. In this paper, I argue that this classic conception of comprehensive reapplication is misleading, for it overemphasizes the discontinuity between human behavior and evolved traits. Explicitly considering the representational roles of evolutionary game theory (...) brings to attention neglected areas of overlap, as well as a range of evolutionary possibilities that are often overlooked. The clarifications this analysis provides are well-illustrated by—and particularly valuable for—game theoretic treatments of the evolution of social behavior. (shrink)

The Shadow of God in the Philosopher’s Garden. The Parc de La Villette in Paris in the context of the philosophy of chôra I Bernard Tschumi’s project of the Parc de La Villette could have won the competition and was implemented thanks to the political atmosphere that accompanied the victory of the left-wing candidate in the French presidential elections in 1981. François Mitterand’s revision of the political programme and the replacement of radical reforms with the construction of prestigious architectural objects (...) and urban assumptions in the French capital gave Tschumi a unique opportunity to realise ideas that polemicised with traditional forms of social life, questioned the basic principles of architecture and included architectural work in the philosophical disputes over the issues of metaphysics. Tschumi’s theoretical assumptions put forward during the design of the Parc de La Villette highlighted the questions of conflict between the main components of the project and suggested that the intensification of differences was analogous to Jacques Derrida’s creation of the concept of différance. It was this philosopher who in a special commentary to Derrida’s project also introduced the concept of maintenant, which aimed at demonstrating that the architect’s polemical inclinations remain in a hidden balance with his inclinations to affirmation of architectural principles. During the discussion between Derrida and Peter Eisenman, who was to take part in the design of the Parisian park, the concept of the chôra was also put forward, which in the course of the debate led to an additional confusion of architectural and philosophical problems. II In the period from the Antiquity to the Renaissance, the dialogue Timaeus was the most frequently commented work of Plato. At present, the most frequently discussed is the issue of the chôra included in it, which aroused fascination among philosophers, researchers of rhetoric, religion, feminism, but also architecture. The work on the chôra also influenced the development of the interpretation of the Parc de La Villette, among which the topics related to the beginning and the change were highlighted. In early uses of the word chôra in Greek, as in Homer’s 18th Book of Iliad, it meant both dancing and a place to dance. On this occasion, it can be seen that it is not possible to determine which phenomenon took precedence in the creation of the name. It cannot be denied, however, that the word concerned a specific movement, as if circular and returning to an indefinable beginning. Despite gaining more and more general meanings, the word chôra has retained its connection with the dance of people on the threshing floor, the dance of bees (choros meliton) or the dance of stars (choros astron). In Timaeus, the chôra is a space filled with movement with an effect similar to shaking the sieve to husk the grain: it separates similar elements from the dissimilar ones. The juxtaposition of the Parc de La Villette and the chôra already at this stage leads to the suggestion that the park was treated by the architect as a place of dynamic changes leading to the establishment of new social solutions. In his statements, the architect confirmed that the park was to be a space of new politics and ethics. The book by Julia Kristeva La Révolution du langage poétique contributed to the spread of the belief that works of art can play a role as factors of political revolution. In this work, the author put forward the thesis that the chôra is a kind of space, the character of which has a destructive influence on attempts to conclude language games. The chôra gives beginning to words, but at the same time, by leaving a trace of this beginning it forces us to renew their meanings. The chôra understood in this way, turns out to be an irremovable beginning, to which one has to return all the time. Kristeva found manifestations of the chôra’s activity in avant-garde French poetry, to which she attributed the role of a mediator between criticism of metaphysics and aspirations for social change. The chôra, violating the language, introduces some voids into it, as if traces of the abyss, which direct the consciousness towards understanding the necessity of political changes. The Parc de La Villette was to pursue similar objectives in the city space. In his essays, Tschumi considered the problems of creating spaces that would give rise to a radical democracy. The proposed rebellious spaces should have the characteristics of a void, in which contradictory forces would occur as forms of pure activity. The means of achieving this goal was to concentrate contradictions and make them visible. The Parc de La Villette was supposed to collect differences as indelible and at the same time by showing them it was supposed to raise awareness of the social world as a conglomerate of differences. Saturation of the space of the park with subversive values results from the character of this space suppressed in the consciousness, as well as from the social diversity which has not been taken into account so far. The main contradictions contained in space relate to the division that exists between its presentation as a mental problem and a sensual one. The park was the deliberate creation of a place that transcends such a division and creates a separate space for negotiation between architectural theories and its practical applications. The purpose of the park was to become a place of future events, which would not hide their conflicting character coming from diversity of both space and society. The method of composition usually aimed at achieving a harmonious whole has been replaced by Tschumi with a system of juxtaposition of non-coherent elements or those resulting from variations and transformations. Tschumi did not seek direct influence on politics in the Parc de La Villette, but made room for thinking about the possibilities of the future. He introduced problems rather than showed solutions to them. The task of the park was to put the principles of architecture into a kind of vibration that would inspire users to participate in the new community. III Tschumi believes that the quality of architecture depends on the theoretical factor it contains. Such a view led to the creation of architecture that would achieve visibility and comprehensibility only after its interpretation. On his way to creating such an architecture he took on a purely philosophical reflection on the basic building block of architecture, which is space. In 1975, he wrote an essay entitled Questions of Space, in which he included several dozen questions about the nature of space. The questions he formulated could be regarded as analogous to the situation in the philosophy of the time, in which the interest in questioning the most obvious forms of understanding the world and intellectual categories increased. The research on space is an area common to many fields of natural sciences, humanities and artistic creation, but it also deals with other problems, such as issues of experience. The concept of space-time continuum proposed by Hermann Minkowski drew attention to the identity of time and space with the events taking place. Probably regardless of the postulates of physicists commenting on Albert Einstein’s discoveries, also in philosophy it increased the importance of the concept of the event which became dominant in Martin Heidegger’s latest work Contributions of Philosophy: Of the event. Furthermore, Tschumi’s reflections on space entered into relation with the problem of experience, which aroused the interest of a group of French philosophers trying to assimilate Georges Bataille’s concept of “inner experience”. Both Tschumi and Derrida referred to Bataille because his views could be used not only to modify the concept of the subject, but also to change the understanding of what constitutes the area of architecture. The discussion on experience has led to the recognition that the subject is not sovereign, but actually a form of what is on their outside. Such insights make it possible to treat the area of the Parc de La Villette as existing mainly when it is organised by its users. The decisive features of the park are its assumptions, according to which it is a variety of active void that leads to agreeing new social relations with it. The park does not force to participate in already existing moral or political communities, but tries to move into an unknown future in which the scope of free functioning of individuals will be increased. Doubts about the principles of functioning of the individual self and its discovery as a whole composed of non-coherent parts, as well as its dependence on its own depth full of disordered forces, influenced the understanding of architecture as a set of contradictions whose source is a fundamental void anticipating the empty phenomenal space. The use of this phenomenal void in architecture, as well as the rejection of the whole and unity, had a specific political purpose and drew its inspiration from political analyses. In the Parc de La Villette, metaphysics and politics were brought closer together because the philosophy of void was used to create new conditions for community action. It can be argued that the source of this philosophy was the perception of errors in existing societies dependent on the shortcomings of traditional metaphysics. Spacing (espacement) was one of the key terms in Derrida’s philosophy, which was also combined with the concepts of différance and chôra. The study of the nature of space, especially its transition from the level of pure possibility to the level of sensual phenomenon, also contributes to understanding how well designed space can have an impact on its audience. This explanation is based on Tschumi’s assumption that the space of the Parc de La Villette contradicts the integrating approaches and instead exposes contradictions, but it does so in a way that combines incompatible properties into a single piece of architecture. The specificity of such integration is similar to the invention of a musical phrase, which is an ideological message: moral and political. Such a thesis may raise doubts, however, if both the clearly adopted assumptions and those deduced from the work allow for their logically ordered presentation then to a limited extent it may be assumed that the work has achieved a connection between a specific philosophy of space and its practical application. Derrida combined the problem of spatiality with the problem of transcendental imagination in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who in the first version of Critique of Pure Reason assumed that pure imagination precedes the appearance of time and space, even in their transcendental forms. The imagination in such a situation can be described as a factor activating time and space, which indicates what function is played by movement in this activity. This leads us to recognize that the ultra originary source of pure forms of sensual intuition is movement, which in early Greek philosophy was identified with void and its lack of resistance to phenomena occurring in it. Derrida’s philosophy in search of a certain super-transcendental source of time and space pointed to différance which, like void or the chôra, does not have material features or even any other form of being. Différance is the primary cause of the disruption of motionlessness and the introduction of activity into motionless time and space, thus its activity can be described as spacing (espacement). Derrida’s discoveries in this respect are not entirely original, because Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel already pointed out when examining the present that it is primarily a differential relation (differente Beziehung), which, being seemingly neutral, influences the present with supernatural force and makes it unidentifiable with itself. Differente Beziehung must similarly influence the originary space, negating its initial character by multiplying its divisions and expanding its boundaries. Différance acts by revealing contradictions wherever there is apparent undifferentiation. Tschumi, composing the Parc de La Villette as a variety of void and a set of incompatible layers, followed the rules of différance or the chôra: he made void visible together with its saturation with contradictions. If space can be considered to be the result of the activity of difference, such activity has a certain regularity, which influences the behaviour of its observers. Differences or contradictions fall into a certain rhythm, which can be considered a manifestation of transcendent order. The problem is that what can be considered the source of such order, namely the logos or God, is partly disorder and error. According to descriptions contained in Timaeus, the world is a combination of forces that drive to order with forces of erroneous necessity that resounds in every order and forces it to return to disorder. Derrida denied the possibility of understanding différance as a theological value, even if it were a negative or apophatic theology, but no categorical denial could be perfect. The assumption that différance or the chôra are not endowed with any substance properties cannot deny their activity, and thus a certain force. Already since Democritus, philosophy has multiplied the names of such a force and the contradictory variety of its manifestations, never forgetting also the necessity for reason to withdraw from the possibility of giving its correct characteristics. Such a withdrawal may be interpreted as an expression of respect and, in certain situations, as a cult of the force that precedes reasonableness. The Parc de La Villette, which is an artistic divagation about the contradictions and forces behind them, can be considered as a place of their sublimation, and therefore as a variation of the temple of what differs from order and disorder. IV In the texts that presented the theoretical assumptions of the Parc de La Villette, Tschumi used a large number of terms that contradicted not only the traditional principles of composing architecture, but also negated the rules of social order and the foundations of Western metaphysics. Tschumi’s statements, which are a continuation of his leftist political fascinations from the May 1968 revolution, as well as his interest in the philosophy of French poststructuralism and his collaboration with Derrida, prove that terms such as “disruption”, “dissociation”, “disfunction”, “disjunction” and “dispersion” not only referred to architectural problems but also applied to political criticism and the deepest foundations of thinking itself. His collaboration with Derrida manifested itself primarily in the publication La Case Vide: La Villette 1985, in which the architect’s design drawings and texts explaining his concepts related to the Parc de La Villette were accompanied by an extensive essay by Derrida, which included theoretical problems taken up by Tschumi in a philosophical context. Architectural and philosophical issues were also combined during seven discussion meetings organised by Eisenman, invited by Tschumi to collaborate on the design of the Parc de La Villette. Eisenman, who, like Tschumi, invited Derrida to participate in the design of the park and also led to the publication of Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman, in which his ideas were confronted with Derrida’s philosophical text. In this case, Derrida’s essay was not a direct commentary on the architect’s concepts, but rather a reflection on the question of the chôra presented by Plato in Timaeus. During the discussion and in his essay, Derrida pointed out that the chôra is a component of the created world, yet it does not belong to it, but precedes it. The originality of the chôra is so radical that she also precedes all the factors of creating the world, including ideas and the Demiurge. Thus athesis appeared in the metaphysics of the West that the chôra is a form of active abyss, in relation to which all beings are secondary, both those perfect (as ideas or God) and those created, such as the world, things, people or language. This leads to the conclusion that the chôra does not exist, because all existence is a derivative of the chôra. Nor could the chôra be described, since it is a form of developing a space that is preceded by a lack of space characteristic of the chôra. Derrida intended the chôra to be an instance with an exceptional degree of transcendentalism, an anti-metaphysical instance, but also an a-theological one. However, this attempt failed, both in the field of secular philosophy and in the field of theology. Derrida’s characteristics of the chôra to strengthen its transcendentalism and negation of metaphysics had to be expressed in a language that immediately produces new concepts and a new metaphysics that reproduces the categories of the beginning, the origin or the foundation known from earlier philosophical traditions. All forms of criticism of metaphysics are also inspired by negative, apophatic and mystical theology. The undermining of many concepts of permanent meaning and the introduction of new concepts of unstable meaning, characteristic of the philosophy of deconstruction, had many features of originality, but it was directed towards problems whose solutions repeat, with the use of new vocabulary, the findings known in culture since Democritus. Thus, if apophatic philosophy can be regarded as deconstruction avant la lettre, then deconstruction itself in its late versions began to take on the features of a new religion. The exchange of inspiration between theology and deconstruction was manifested in a series of scientific conferences and publications in which Derrida’s philosophical concepts were interpreted within the scope of religious thought. Theological threads began to be found in such concepts of deconstruction as différance or the chôra, while at the same time Derrida himself undertook in his philosophy to study problems such as the Other (L’Autre) or the Impossible (Impossible), which belonged to newer theological traditions. As a consequence of the new problems, the deconstruction became closer to the features of a new religion. Philosophy, at least from Kant’s time, has tried to create a system that would take over from religion the tasks of setting moral and political goals. Similarly, Derrida has directed his interest towards the problems of democracy and ethics, which would enable their renewal. Attempts to create a new religion (cleared of old metaphors), a new community or a new democracy bring problems and threats which may be no less troublesome than the previous systems. All promises of freedom carry with them threats, the greater the more they strive for perfection. The renewal of existential orders, sometimes carried out by means of violent changes, is a certain repetitive feature of human cultures. Deep changes, however, do not protect against the return of both old gods and old demons. Tschumi and Derrida were shaped in their youth by the atmosphere of leftist rebellion against the moral and political limitations of ossified communities and the imperfections of democracy. The ethical theme distinguishes many of their works, including the Parc de La Villette. The opposition to the metaphysical traditions of philosophy and architecture contained in this park was prompted by specific political situations and resulted from bringing political issues to the level of philosophical considerations. Achievements made at the level of pure concepts were then subject to elevation, to a kind of sacralization, which made them religious concepts. The deconstruction reached for the status of the new religion especially when it found its followers and began to generate moral obligations. In the new situation, terms such as the chôra, l’Autre or the Impossible were absolutized and in relation to them a cult and attitude of adoration emerged. The Parc de La Villtette then gained new post-secular meanings, which allow it to be assigned the function of a Temple of Otherness (L’Autre) and Impossible. V In the traditional sense, a work of art creates an illustration of the outside world, or of a certain text or doctrine. Sometimes it is considered that such an illustration is not literal, but is an interpretation of what is visible, or an interpretation of a certain literary or ideological message. It can also be assumed that a work of art creates its own visual world, a separate story or a separate philosophical statement. Parc de La Villette represents the last of these possibilities: it is a philosophical statement that develops the premises derived from poststructuralist philosophies and the philosophy of deconstruction. The uniqueness of its being status, however, is that it does so not only at the level of the theoretical assumptions, but also through its functioning as an active philosophical work. This means that a park is a happening philosophy. Its activity, however, does not refer only to the present tense, but is also an attempt to penetrate the future, all otherness and impossibility. This kind of activity assumes that the work, in a sense, does not yet fully exist, but is also still produced in the processes of its interpretation. The theoretical foundations of the park included texts by Tschumi, in which he questioned traditional ways of creating a work of architecture, postulating in return the use of a long series of negations, which were comparable to the crisis of metaphysics characteristic of contemporary philosophy. It is therefore no coincidence that the publication containing Tschumi’s theoretical text on Parc de La Villette was accompanied by an essay by Derrida developing some of the architect’s concepts. The next step in integrating philosophy into the process of park design was a series of discussions between Eisenman and Derrida, who completely moved the creation of the park into the world of thoughts, without accentuating the need for their realization in the material reality. The main topic of these discussions was the problem of the chôra, which was taken up by later commentators and used to interpret the park as a work in which the philosophy of the beginning is manifested relating to issues of politics, morality and religion. The park was therefore interpreted as a space of invention within the scope of creating new rules of functioning of the community and democracy. Thinking about the political future may, however, exceed the horizon of ordinary expectations. Although philosophical thought is always connected with contemporary problems and metaphysics sometimes intertwines with current politics, yet at the same time the customs of philosophy also include crossing horizons and thinking about absolute otherness and impossibility. Initially, the chôra, différance, absolute otherness (tout autre) and the Impossible were concepts of pure philosophy of atheistic character, but with the further development of the discussion, more and more theological motifs began to emerge. One of the reasons for this phenomenon was the fact that radical negations of all being, which were contemplated in contemporary philosophy (by Heidegger and Derrida, among others), had previously been manifested in negative and apophatic theologies (by Master Eckhart, among others).Also the category of the “Other”, taken from Emmanuel Levinas, was clearly connected with the thought about God. A further reason for connecting the chôra with the theological thought was the interest in the philosophy of deconstruction expressed by some theologians. John Caputo in particular managed to persuade Derrida to participate in discussions on the current status of religion. In the late period of Derrida’s writing, further statements on religious topics appeared. All these reasons led to posing a question about the identity of the chôra and God. Although there were no satisfactory conclusions on this issue, the discussion was also important to create an interpretation of the park as a place of worship. The chôra, representing, according to Plato, the preoriginal emptiness is the place of every beginning, but it turns out that it is not neutral to the being created in it. The chôra deposits itself in every being as an irremovable beginning that interferes with its stability. The chôra, therefore, forces us into a palintropical movement, but it also turns out to be a pure compulsion, an erring necessity and a fundamental force from which, in the human perception, motifs useful to the individual and to the community are extracted. All definitions of this force, including its anthropomorphisation, are formulated in such a way that they allow for building private and collective morality upon them. Such definitions are changed depending on variable political situations. It is difficult to determine whether in the processes of changes in the formulation of “God’s names” any essential value is retained, which is not subject to change. The current definitions of the chôra (God?), which can be found, for example, in the philosophy of Caputo, stress that she is a combination of various and contradictory forces. This characteristic inherits much of Plato’s concept, reminds us of Master Eckhart’s views on Gottheit and, at the same time, is not unfamiliar to Tschumi, whose essays were an apologia of contradictions. The current concept of chôra, transferred into the sphere of politics, is the praise of social diversity and the protection of the difference from the forces of order. In the Parc de La Villette, the future community and democracy were elevated as a system of safe existence of individuals in all their singularity. The park is a temple of a future community in which individual beings have nothing in common. (shrink)

The concept of ideology is central to the understanding of the many political, economic, social, and cultural processes that have occurred in the last two centuries. And yet, what is the nature of the different ideologies remains a vague, open, and much disputed question. Many political, sociological, and ideological studies have been devoted to ideology. Very little, on the other hand, has been done from the philosophical field. And this despite the fact that there are undoubtedly many philosophical (...) questions related to ideology and its role in modern industrialized societies. Just a few examples of ideology-related philosophical questions suffice to prove the point: What objects do ideologies deal with? Are the ideologies testable? Are there true ideologies? Do they evolve? How are ideologies related to societies? Is the existence of ideologies inevitable in modern societies? What is the relation of ideology to science? Is science just another kind of ideology? Are we, as human beings, innately predisposed to believe in ideologies? Or, instead, ideologies proliferate through indoctrination and propaganda? Are ideologies necessarily harmful?...and much more. In this article I try to answer some of these questions from a philosophical point of view, taking a materialist approach. I begin by characterizing ideology as a complex, multi-layered concept. Then, I briefly discuss the material systems on which ideological movements operate, that is, societies and concrete human groups. I identify at least 11 different elements that seem to be present in most ideologies, and I compare these characteristics with those of contemporary science and technology. Although some superficial similarities can be identified, there are deep differences that make ideology completely different from science. The similarities, however, are stronger with technology. Ideologies continually evolve with technological advances, social changes, and even with mere fashion. The current fragmentation of ideologies caused by the widespread use of new technologies and social networks has given rise to new phenomena of ideological propagation which, in my opinion, are very dangerous, particularly for open societies. I discuss these processes, within the context of the nature vs nurture debate, along with the question of whether we can get rid of ideologies. (shrink)

In recent years, the human ability to reasoning about mental states of others in order to explain and predict their behavior has come to be a highly active area of research. Researchers from a wide range of fields { from biology and psychology through linguistics to game theory and logic{ contribute new ideas and results. This interdisciplinary workshop, collocated with the Thirteenth International Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (TARK XIII), aims to shed light on models of (...) social reasoning that take into account realistic resource bounds. People reason about other people's mental states in order to understand and predict the others' behavior. This capability to reason about others' knowledge, beliefs and intentions is often referred to as theory of mind. Idealized rational agents are capable of recursion in their social reasoning, and can reason about phenomena like common knowledge. Such idealized social reasoning has been modeled by modal logics such as epistemic logic and BDI (belief, desire, intention) logics and by epistemic game theory. However, in real-world situations, many people seem to lose track of such recursive social reasoning after only a few levels. The workshop provides a forum for researchers that attempt to analyze, understand and model how resource-bounded agents reason about other minds. (shrink)

Universal social institutions, such as marriage, commons management and property, have emerged independently in radically different cultures. This requires explanation. As Boyer and Petersen point out ‘in a purely localist framework would have to constitute massively improbable coincidences’ . According to Boyer and Petersen, those institutions emerged naturally out of genetically wired behavioural dispositions, such as marriage out of mating strategies and borders out of territorial behaviour. While I agree with Boyer and Petersen that ‘unnatural’ institutions cannot thrive, this (...) one-sided explanation of universal social institutions in terms of genetic human nature is unsatisfactory. Drawing on the literature on multi-level selection and gene-culture coevolution, I argue that universal social institutions are first and foremost the products of cultural selection. They occupy fitness peaks in the landscape of cultural possibilities, much in the same way that biological adaptations occupy fitness peaks in the landscape of biological possibilities. To show this, I use game-theory. By modelling the domains of social interaction in which marriage, commons management, and property emerged as Prisoner’s dilemma situations, it becomes clear how an institutional framework allows the group to move to an interactive equilibrium with a larger payoff. Institutions do so by incentivising all parties to adopt a cooperative strategy. They are culturally selected ways of optimising genetically constrained domains of human social interaction. (shrink)

Immersing in the virtual world of the Internet, information and communication technologies are changing the human being. In spite of the apparent similarity of on-line and off-line, social laws of their existence are different. According to the analysis of games, based on the violation of the accepted laws of the world off-line, their censoring, as well as the cheating, features of formation and violations of social norms in virtual worlds were formulated. Although the creators of the games have (...) priority in the standardization of the virtual world, society as well as players can have impact on it to reduce the realism. The violation of the prescribed rules by a player is regarded as cheating. And it is subjected to sanctions, but the attitude toward it is ambiguous, sometimes positive. Some rules are formed as a result of the interaction between players. (shrink)

Current advances in research, development and application of artificial intelligence systems have yielded a far-reaching discourse on AI ethics. In consequence, a number of ethics guidelines have been released in recent years. These guidelines comprise normative principles and recommendations aimed to harness the “disruptive” potentials of new AI technologies. Designed as a semi-systematic evaluation, this paper analyzes and compares 22 guidelines, highlighting overlaps but also omissions. As a result, I give a detailed overview of the field of AI ethics. (...) Finally, I also examine to what extent the respective ethical principles and values are implemented in the practice of research, development and application of AI systems—and how the effectiveness in the demands of AI ethics can be improved. (shrink)

Social robots are robots that can interact socially with humans. As social robots and the artificial intelligence that powers them becomes more advanced, they will likely take on more social and work roles. This has many important ethical implications. In this paper, we focus on one of the most central of these, the impacts that social robots can have on human autonomy. We argue that, due to their physical presence and social capacities, there is a (...) strong potential for social robots to enhance human autonomy as well as several ways they can inhibit and disrespect it. We argue that social robots could improve human autonomy by helping us to achieve more valuable ends, make more authentic choices, and improve our autonomy competencies. We also argue that social robots have the potential to harm human autonomy by instead leading us to achieve fewer valuable ends ourselves, make less authentic choices, decrease our autonomy competencies, make our autonomy more vulnerable, and disrespect our autonomy. Whether the impacts of social robots on human autonomy are positive or negative overall will depend on the design, regulation, and use we make of social robots in the future. (shrink)

Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology engages first-time philosophy readers on a guided tour through the core concepts, questions, methods, arguments, and theories of epistemology—the branch of philosophy devoted to the study of knowledge. After a brief overview of the field, the book progresses systematically while placing central ideas and thinkers in historical and contemporary context. The chapters cover the analysis of knowledge, the nature of epistemic justification, rationalism vs. empiricism, skepticism, the value of knowledge, the ethics of belief, Bayesian epistemology, (...) social epistemology, and feminist epistemologies. Along the way, instructors and students will encounter a wealth of additional resources and tools: chapter learning outcomes, key terms, images of philosophers and related art, useful diagrams and tables, boxes containing excerpts and other supplementary material, questions for reflection, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary. For an undergraduate survey epistemology course, Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology is ideal when used as a main text paired with primary sources and scholarly articles. For an introductory philosophy course, select book chapters are best used in combination with chapters from other books in the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series (edited by Christina Hendricks). (shrink)

As evidenced in recent literature in moral philosophy, commending actions on their propensity to develop enduring moral traits is not the province of the virtue theorist alone. For however we understand the moral goals of human beings and the nature of right action we recognize that a temperate, just or beneficent person is more likely to conform to the demands of morality than one lacking in these virtues. If this idea is used as a standard for assessing the worth of (...) activities generally and engaging in sporting activity particularly it becomes clear that the highest level of athletic engagement, that is, professional sports, is often morally problematic. The not uncommon phenomenon of athletic underperformance once a sizable, secure contract has been achieved, the expanding quantity and severity of verbal abuse directed at officials and other athletes, as well as the increasing incidence of on-field violence, raise concern that developing moral virtues is no longer a goal of professional sporting activities. This conclusion, however, is not a result of the concept of sport itself or even the idea of professional sport. Both amateur and professional sport are capable of promoting moral development in their participants by making possession of certain virtues a condition for success in that activity. So the problem lies not in the conceptual details of sporting activity but rather in the formulation or prosecution of the rules and expectations governing the sport in question. The essay argues that not only is sport capable of being a worthwhile activity but that there is a sport that in fact generally meets the conditions for being a worthwhile activity, namely professional cricket. In defending this claim it is shown that it is not an essential feature of professional cricket that garners our moral commendation but rather a complex set of contingent features: the Laws of Cricket, the enforcement of those laws and the historico-social context in which the game is set. (shrink)

People inhabit a vast and intricate social network nowadays. In addition to our own decisions and actions, we confront those of various groups every day. Collective decisions and actions are more complex and bewildering compared to those made by individuals. As members of a collective, we contribute to its decisions, but our contributions may not always align with the outcome. We may also find ourselves excluded from certain groups and passively subjected to their influences without being aware of the (...) source. We are used to being in overlapping groups and may switch identities, supporting or opposing the claims of particular groups. But rarely do we pause to think: What do we talk about when we talk about groups and their decisions? At the heart of this dissertation is the question of collective agency, i.e., in what sense can we treat a group as a rational agent capable of its action. There are two perspectives we take: a philosophical and logical one. The philosophical perspective mainly discusses the ontological and epistemological issues related to collective agency, sorts out the relevant philosophical history, and argues that the combination of a relational view of collective agency and a dispositional view of collective intentionality provides a rational and realistic account. The logical perspective is associated with formal theories of groups, it disregards the psychological content involved in the philosophical perspective, establishes a logical system that is sufficiently formal and objective, and axiomatizes the nature of a collective. The first topic that is addressed is the ontology of collective agency, i.e., the question what exactly is collective agency. The philosophical discussion of collective agency centres around the reduction problem of the concept of a collective. Individualism and Cartesian internalism have long influenced orthodox theories and made them face the choice between an irreducible concept of a collective and ontological reductionism. Heterodox theories such as functionalism and interpretationism reinterpret the concept of agency and accept it as also realized on the level of a collective. To adequately explain social phenomena that are essentially relational in nature, we propose a relational, holistic account of collective agency and argue that functionalism and interpretationism can be integrated into such an account. While acknowledging the irreducibility of the concept of a collective, we find that there is a deep incompatibility between the concept of a collective and the concept of intentionality as the mark of the mental. To explain how collective intentionality nevertheless is possible and why we tend to use it analogously to how we use the concept of individual intentionality, we explore a dispositional account of intentionality which enables us to give an account of the concept of intentionality at both the individual and collective level. Specifically, we subdivide the dispositional account into three aspects: behavioral, purely mental, and cognitive. We then argue that collective intentionality is real by analyzing different forms of attributive judgments of intentionality and by introducing the perspective of indispensable collective responsibility. We also analyze how philosophical theories about collective agency relate to central features of formal theories about collective decisions, such as game theory. Although the two fields are both concerned with collectives, there are also differences that need to be addressed. For example, game theory is clearly anti-psychologistic since its aim is a formal and objective analysis. However, from the relational and dispositional perspective, intentionality at the individual level and collective intentionality as we analyze it, inevitably involve mental content. In order to explain this difference and identify where the boundary is, we analyze the relationships between the three basic concepts involved, namely intentionality, preference, and dependency, so as to provide a unified picture of collective theory across philosophical and formal theories. After paving the nexus between philosophical and formal perspectives, the logical perspective becomes the theme of our discussion. To be able to express game theoretical concepts and to connect them to our philosophical perspective, We present a logic of preference and functional dependence and its hybrid extension, and provide an axiomatization which is sound and strongly complete. The decidability of this logic is also proved. Its application to modeling non-cooperative and cooperative games in strategic form is explored. The resulting framework provides a unified view of Nash equilibrium, Pareto optimality, and the core. The philosophical relevance of these game-theoretical notions to discussions of collective agency is made explicit. Finally, we conclude and clarify the position of our theory in the broader field of research on the topics addressed in the thesis. Also, we point out many new questions and directions suggested by our analysis, including philosophical and logical open problems. (shrink)

Reasoning about analogical arguments is known to be subject to a variety of cognitive biases, and a lack of clarity about which factors can be considered strengths or weaknesses of an analogical argument. This can make it difficult both to design empirical experiments to study how people reason about analogical arguments, and to develop scalable tutoring tools for teaching how to reason and analyze analogical arguments. To address these concerns, we describe WG-A (Warrant Game — Analogy), a framework for (...) people to analyze analogical arguments based on Bartha’s (2010) Articulation Model of analogical argumentation. We carry out two experiments designed to probe WG-A’s effectiveness in improving participants’ ability to reason about analogical arguments and argumentation in general, and argue that WG-A is a promising approach, though it is in need of further development. (shrink)

Architecture and Deconstruction Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi -/- Introduction Towards deconstruction in architecture Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished: the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture, the second one, in which (...) a collaboration between Jacques Derrida and a group of architects interested in his concepts is commenced, and the third one, in which completed or only designed objects or new concepts of deconstruction created by architects gain their supremacy over philosophy. The following book analyses these three possible ways, first of all with the reference to Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. -/- Peter Eisenman -/- Misreading… and Other Errors -/- The issue of relations between Peter Eisenman’s work and philosophy of deconstruction may be referred to his activity more than ten years preceding his direct collaboration with Jacques Derrida (in 1985) and organisation of the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at Museum of Modern Art in New York (in 1988). As soon as at the stage of designing the first houses (House I-III, 1967-1970), which almost entirely inscribed in formalistic aesthetics of Modernism, the architect analysed the problem of architecture dependence on its assumptions. All his later designs may be treated as consequence of this initial interest in relations between practice and theory, and at the same time as an introduction to manipulations later on led at the level of metaphysics of architecture. Beginning with the issue of presence, considered in comments to House VI (1972), the number of ideas having their analogies in philosophy of deconstruction increased. The text entitled The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, The End of the End (1984), in which Eisenman criticised questions of representation in architecture, its delusive strive for truth and comparably unattainable attempts at ultimate definition of elementary rules, should be acclaimed the breaking point. This attitude was extended by numerous strategies disturbing architecture rules defined at metaphysical level in an essay Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: an Architecture of Absence (1986). The issue of Eisenman’s passage from formalism to deconstruction has already been much discussed in the literature (Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Patin among others), still it should be mentioned that the threads similar to Derrida’s concept included in Eisenman’s writing reveal untranslatability of architecture and philosophy. -/- Choral Works or Separate tricks -/- In 1985-1986 a series of seven disputes between Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman took place. The pretext for them were designs concerning Parc de la Villette in Paris. The situation of many months of collaboration between a notable philosopher of the second half of the 20th c. and an architect that already had a huge theoretical oeuvre, ended up with a publication of a large volume entitled Chora L Works and it became at the same time a vast study area for historians of contemporary architecture and philosophers. Derrida’s contribution to concept works were his considerations over the idea of chôra, the properties related to this concept were about to be reflected in shapes of the park. Therefore, Chora L Works became an example of the abilities of contemporary art, both in its capability of translation from philosophical ideas to artistic forms and its resistance to tradition of representing in architecture some phenomena and values originating outside this discipline. In the final period of their collaboration both interlocutors started to polemicise with each other more decidedly, what became a separate part of their thought exchange. The exchange of letters between Derrida and Eisenman at the turn of 1989 ended up the period of their direct contacts, nevertheless, at this time precisely a large group of experts in issues of deconstruction joined the discussion and extended the revealed in the former dispute problems into more than ten years of further considerations and publications. Except for a long text by Jeffrey Kipnis, who had participated in the meetings of the philosopher and the architect, there appeared also comments of researchers of artistic theories (K. Michael Hays, Thomas Patin), philosophers (Andrew Benjamin), and even experts in Greek literature (Maria Theodorou or Ann Bergren). Following these debates a contemporary reflection on architecture has saturated with indeed numerous concepts originating in philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Architecture which imitates mute philosophy -/- The series of Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman meetings, which took place in the period of 1985-1987, induced many authors to make comments. Some of them (Jeffrey Kipnis, Ann Bergren, Maria Theodorou) developed the subject of chôra which was introduced to the discussion by Derrida. The problem that was about to be solved was the question of tying up the concept of chôra with architecture, including Eisenman’s architecture and the series of meetings within frames of Chora L Works project. Kipnis on this occasion paid attention to chôra and its character of anachronia which infects any being created within chôra. In other words any event has its counterpart (analogon) in another, earlier event. He demonstrated the similarity of structure of many events and statements from the times of Derrida and Eisenman’s meetings to the almost identical behaviour of figures in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. The loss of beginning present in this phenomenon was appropriate to both features of chôra and the effects of typical analyses of philosophy of deconstruction. Bergren’s analyses focused on accentuating gender of chôra, which, according to this author, had been neglected hitherto in discussions. She collated chôra descriptions with characteristics of women in myths, early Greek epic and philosophy and she arrived at a conclusion that chôra has features of a single woman and a married one at the same time. And yet Theodorou’s studies showed that in the Homeric epics chôra is not treated as an idea but is related with single things and events. The other part of the comments (represented by Andrew Benjamin and K. Michael Hays’ utterances) concerns Eisenman’s attitude to tradition which was treated as a variety of iteration understood philosophically. Benjamin commenced his considerations at the point of closeness between a definition of tradition and a concept of chôra understood as perpetuation (placement). A problematic issue was for him Eisenman’s complex relation to tradition based on its contest and affirmation at the same time. Overcoming the simple subordination to tradition – according to Benjamin – was based on awareness of the role of repetition in culture not known before. Hays made an attempt to explain the pleasure and torment of repetition with the support of Sigmund Freud and Roland Barthes’ concepts. According to Hays repetitions are attempts of a single being to a certain primal state perceived as free of any tension. In a similar way Rosalind Krauss explained a motif of a grate present in Modernistic art and also exceptionally frequent in Eisenman’s work. -/- Annex Architecture is still writing Balzac novels. Peter Eisenman and literature -/- Architecture’s approach to writing, script or literature, present within Peter Eisenman’s work, is an exceptional phenomenon, furthermore a complex one. The article considers four possible relations. The first one relates to Eisenman’s characteristics as a person extremely gifted with the ability to wordplay, which very ‘play’ reveals skills to create architectural images. In the second approach the attention has been paid to Eisenman’s interests – in the first period of his oeuvre – in linguistic works by Noam Chomsky and his transformational-generative grammar. The third kind of relations applied to overcoming the need for autonomy of architecture (and of modernist aesthetics at the same time) and renew interests in questions of meaning in architecture. The fourth sort of relations occurred when Eisenman started to create reflections of historic or literary narrations in architecture – ‘stone stories’ and architectural fictions of their kind. -/- Bernard Tschumi -/- From perversion to deconstruction In Bernard Tschumi’s writings from the 1970s and 1980s we can find a transposition of important threads of post-structuralist ideas deriving from Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida’s works. The analysis of the architect’s writings also shows roots in Phillippe Sollers, Michel Foucault and Denis Hollier’s works. The analysis of borrowed elements from the beginnings of Tschumi’s theoretical activity may be helpful in explaining the contents of his later writings motre inspired by philosophy of deconstruction. The set of his earliest views was inspired by Marxism, Neo Marxism and French Structuralism, mainly by the writings of Henri Levebre and Guy Debord. From the thought of Levebre Tschumi took interest for city as not only a question of urbanistics but also a political issue. From Debord’s concepts he borrowed a conviction about the role of situational violation for changes in the society structure. Some of these beliefs were preserved in his own concepts of architecture as an event. From this period derived also his will to change conservative elements of social structure not by means of political revolution but of theoretical and creative activity. Tschumi acknowledged that the effective way of the proceedings towards achieving his aims would be accepting the role of both a critical intellectualist and architecture expert who would not hide away his left-wing orientation. The speculations defined by the architect as ‘revolting analyses’ were about to characterise contradictions which tear the society apart, penetrate architecture and constitute the basis of culture. Spreading away of the conscience of false assumptions hidden away in various disciplines could have weakened cohesion of a conservative society and influence the will to change among the elites. This way the beginnings of political revolution were rooted in philosophy of architecture. In 1977 Tschumi published his text entitled The Pleasure of Architecture inspired by Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, it also included some concepts derived from Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida. First of all the author used Barthes’s concept which made an assumption that literary activity is pervaded by the spirit of resistance towards social rules, and Tschudi transferred this remark onto architecture. From the ideas of Bataille, acquainted via Holier’s work, he derived his belief that two concepts of space, a conceptual one (defined as Pyramid) and a sensual one (defined as Labirynth), not losing their distinct features, they join in the concept of experienced space which exceeds contradictions. The exceeding itself was defined as the basic rule of architecture and it was referred to situations in which architecture not only negates social needs, but also disavows its own tradition. Crossing the borders applies not only to political issues or permanent rules of the very discipline but also interfering with other fields (especially literature and film). The fact that architecture is associated with organising events turned Tschumi’s attention to questions of violence that result from upsetting architectural order of a given building by its users and the one hand, and on the other from forcing the users to specific acts imposed by this very order. The analysis of the concepts used by Tschumi in his early writings indicates that they are close to definitions that would occur in his reflection in the following years influenced by philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Approaching deconstruction Tschumi in his theories developed in the 1980s presumed that the current social world had undergone a deep process of decay, and the reaction against which ought to be based on ordering-up actions, and also preserving the main outline of disintegration of the whole and its elements in the state of conflict. The statements concerning the nature of the contemporary to Tschumi social relations were applied by him to the world of architecture, this led him to coming up with designing strategies that took into consideration the destabilised character of conditions in which works of architecture were created. New ways of conduct invented by Tschumi drew their inspiration from literature and research on literature, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, structuralism and post structuralism, and eventually also deconstruction philosophy. The proposed methods were opposed by their author both to functionalism continuity trends and postmodern architecture. Tschumi’s proposals contradicted any forms of conservatism or traditionalism in political sphere as well as in reference to tendencies in architecture. They were not simple contradictions of social or architectural rules, they intrude them from the inside, weaken or escalate the already existing incongruities, they move the boundaries between the areas. Revolutionary illusions about the possibility of radical changes were replaced with strategies which completed, tainted or test former rules in the series of formal games of permutation and combination. Quite different from avant-garde formalism Tschumi’s games were not about maintaining the autonomy of a given area, but on the contrary – polluting it with other areas’ influences. Tschumi enjoyed demonstrating illusions of architecture concerning simple relations between form and function, or between form and meaning. Making use of Freud, Lacan and Foucault’s research he introduced a category of “madness” into architecture allowing an observation that the recognised norms are nothing but merely ones of many possible principles of behaviour, and their recognised status resulted from unjustified hindering innovativeness which is crucial for architecture. To reborn architecture’s capability of changing Tschumi also made use of Barthes’s discoveries concerning rules of narration and works by writers who applied in their writing knowledge on linguistics. Making a work’s author unclear by various mechanical transformations of its elements was however apparent only, and formal rigours imposed on the process of designing liberated possibilities difficult to obtain in more traditional creative action. Another mode of acting introduced by Tschumi was combining his work of elements deriving from outside architecture; joining space records with notation of motion and events accompanying architectural objects among others. These architectural and extra-architectural elements were not unified, on the contrary their heterogenous and conflictual character was stressed. This is how shock, anxiety and instability, typical for live in great metropolises, infiltrated architecture. Taking some ideas of deconstruction philosophy as a pattern Tschumi also took into critical consideration in his essays traditional in architecture oppositions between form and figuration, or theory and practice. By combining various inspirations he eventually worked out an idea of architectural event, which he understood as a series of actions contesting its own field, redefining its sources, principles and elements. An event, understood in this way, was not so much producing works as rather creating conditions of their production and at the same time designing the society different from a hierarchic one. -/- Park of deconstruction Among numerous philosophical strategies of deconstruction most frequently used was questioning the practice of strong opposition of two reasons. In many cases Bernard Tschumi’s writings just consider functioning of the conflict juxtaposition of the ideas of structure and ornament or theory and practice in history of architecture. Violation of traditional relations between terms of this kind, both old and modern, raised Jacques Derrida’s objections, when he was induced for the first time to co-operate with architects’ milieu. During this long lasting thought exchange the philosopher eventually acknowledged Bernard Tschumi’s arguments for reasoning the encroachment of architecture’s fundamental rules. Deconstruction applied in architecture was not a simple transposition or analogy of practices that had been applied by philosophy of deconstruction. We may even say that considering architectural terms became an important formula of deconstruction. Architecture understood in philosophical way became something beyond the practice and theory of its own discipline, a sort of metaphysics of both philosophy and architecture. The deliberate encroachment of simplicity of dividing architecture into theory and practice, for the first time became a clear aim for Tschumi in his drawings and texts entitled The Manhattan Transcripts. The contents of this series of works was a record of characteristic features of this New York district in such a way that not only objects were the subject of the record but also relations between objects, people and events. The record was about to take into consideration a conflict character of elements of this representation and at the same time to avoid applying to them the rule of mimetism. The record became a form of reflection over the very record by an increased control over the ways of representation. Architecture which was considered in the The Manhattan Transcripts was not directed to fulfill the needs of inhabitation or production, it was rather related with hitherto usually marginalised liminal situations: building ostentatiously big monuments, religious cult, war etc. Architecture operating in these relations focused also the attention on the included in it continuous tendency to overpass its own restrictions, the role of violence as its not recognised factor, or the meaning of excess and shock in its operation. Architecture moving from reason towards madness became even more visible in the design of Parisian Parc de la Villette, whose pavilions were defined as folies (in French it means both small park buildings and follies). The park was supposed to be on the one hand a reflection of traditional society disintegration while on the other it questioned basic rules of producing a work of architecture. The traditional rules of designing, based on ordering up, were replaced with the strategies of dysfunction and dissociation. In Tschumi’s opinion methods of this kind may be equivalent of what Derrida named différance. Instead of aiming at mergence, any diversity, plays or variations were strengthen. Tschumi’s texts, in which he explained his attitude, were completed by Derrida’s extent statement entitled Point de folie – Maintenant l’architecture. Derrida’s article is the most significant of all his statements on architecture as a form of thinking and activity. According to the philosopher, architecture should divide space (in French defined as espacement), what enables both thinking and action – it arranges the space of an event. Tschumi’s buildings, defined as folies, in an essential way destabilise any created order, and at the same time they refresh it. Derrida’s statement suggests that architecture may become both metaphor of an order merging a language or a society but also of inner forces which deconstruct and reconstruct it. Therefore architecture is at the same time a construction, a deconstruction and a reconstruction. Parc de la Villette stands out in this system with its attempt to step beyond the scheme of an easy repetition and its heading for chances of achieving more radical otherness. -/- Conclusion Destruction as construction. Paradoxes of deconstruction in architecture -/- Scepticism about persistence and common importance of fundamental values of human culture evinced in philosophers and writers’ works as early as in Greek antiquity, nevertheless it was not expressed so strongly as in the second half of the 20th century. Especially in Heidegger’s work Being and Time (although originated in 1927, still influential in all later philosophy) the following states were characterised: the state of losing the ground (Abgrund), of being out of sight (Unheimlichkeit) and of being out of dwelling (Un-zuhause-sein) – as the basis of self-confidence of conscious being there (Dasein). The entire criticism of philosophy of home and dwelling draws the inspiration from this early writing of the German philosopher, it combines crisis of basic terms of metaphysics with social conditions which are dictated by living in large metropolis. The crisis of both metaphysical foundation and home appears to be similar to the situation of weakening the relations between a man and his dwelling in extensively expanding cities. Whereas philosophy, as well as many disciplines of social sciences, have diagnosed for a long time the destabilisation of fundamental ideas of Western culture and crucial changes in the ways of dwelling, architecture itself occurred to be “the last fortress of metaphysics” (J. Derrida). Among contemporary architects, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi were the ones who engaged most decidedly in the issues of critical analysis of architecture foundation and its social role. Both the architects noticed new formulas of contemporary social and individual existence, tremendously different from the entire history, and at the same time they affirmed lack of adequacy of architecture concepts to new situations. Both Eisenman and Tschumi used to describe the existing architecture as a tool for consolidation of highly integrated and hierarchised societies, and also as a discipline extremely uncoincidental with the current character of social life based on ideas of freedom and diversity. The means to transform architecture and make a factor of further social changes out of it, was a concept that accentuated revealing the inner contradictions of this discipline, and considering them in designing strategies. Eisenman’s activity, in regard of what has just been noticed, was focused on questioning the basic rules of traditionally comprehended architecture, especially the rule of purpose. The American architect noticed that the concept of architecture as fulfilment the need of location, hides away the fact that the location has to be constantly reconsidered, and hence it is overtaken by change (dislocation). Therefore new concept of architecture propounded architectural activity to translocate the concept of location – more than before – but also to change its status perpetually. Such comprehended architecture should claim, as its main purpose, the constant revision of this purpose and create itself anew permanently. Even Eisenman’s earliest designs of houses nos. I-IV broke with such values as the sense of safety, closeness and familiarity, and just on the contrary they accentuated senses of strangeness, homelessness and loss of confidence. The contradictions within architecture noticed by Tschumi referred to combination of intellectual and sensual values in architecture, when their non-appropriation was defeated by an additional condition, namely the way of experience based on pleasure of excess, marked by insanity. The features of folly were especially visible in his designs of gardens, where the order of planning was mixed with sensual experience introduced by particular elements (both the ones created by nature, and the buildings defined as folies). Parc de la Villette designed by the French architect in Paris put in question not only the common understanding of purpose in architecture but also the ideas of order and integrity, as its plan was based on the combination of independent layers with records of grids of points, various lines and planes. The architecture that collides inadequate elements with each other was supposed to be a kind of an event with no beginning and no end. The architecture treated as an event became a form of a space weakened articulation that maintains its diversity and lack of accordance of the elements building it up. The analyses of Eisenman and Tschumi’s theoretical writings indicate how much the aims of architecture have actually changed; instead of supporting social persistence, the architecture is rather intensifying contradictions, and instead of providing people with the sense of safety, it sublimes danger. From simple acts of defamiliarisation, increasing the distance to itself and enhancing the role of theory, through discomfort, anxiety, not feeling someone at home, weirdness, excess, shock and violence, architecture reached the edge of stability and uncertainty, only to make an attempt at penetrating what is impossible and unutterable, and recording what cannot become the subject of any records. -/- . (shrink)

Revista Intelligence Info este o publicație trimestrială din domeniile intelligence, geopolitică și securitate, și domenii conexe de studiu și practică. -/- Cuprins: -/- EDITORIALE / EDITORIALS -/- Tiberiu TĂNASE Considerații privind necesitatea educării și formării resursei umane pentru intelligence–ul național Considerations regarding the need to educate and train human resources for national intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Epistemologia activității de intelligence Epistemology of intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Rolul serviciilor de informații în război The role of the intelligence agencies in a war Nicolae SFETCU (...) Evoluția inteligenței artificiale în domeniul securității naționale The evolution of artificial intelligence in the field of national security -/- INTELLIGENCE / INTELLIGENCE -/- Ovidiu BOUREANU O scurtă istorie a spionajului: spionajul modern de la Războiul Rece la Războiul împotriva terorii A Brief History of the Spy: Modern Spying from the Cold War to the War on Terror Ioana PĂIUȘ, Tiberiu TĂNASE Securitate și informații într-o lume în schimbare Security and intelligence in a changing world Nicolae SFETCU Activitatea de intelligence - Ciclul intelligence Intelligence Activity – Intelligence Cycle Tiberiu TĂNASE Controlul asupra Intelligence –ului Control over Intelligence Tiberiu TĂNASE Informația și nevoia de gestionare a resurselor informaționale Information and the need to manage information resources Tiberiu TĂNASE Controlul parlamentar al serviciilor de informații Parliamentary control of intelligence services Tiberiu TĂNASE Mecanisme de control democratic al activității serviciilor de informații Mechanisms of democratic control of the activity of intelligence agencies Nicolae SFETCU Analiza informațiilor Intelligence Analysis Bogdan-George RĂDULESCU Cum ar trebui să fie utilizată analiza intelligence pentru a contracara războiul cognitiv? How should intelligence analysis be utilized to counter cognitive warfare? -/- ISTORIE / HISTORY -/- Tiberiu TĂNASE Biroul de Informații al Secției Militare din Transilvania și rolul său în campania pentru apărarea României Mari The Intelligence Office of the Transylvanian Military Section and its role in the campaign for the defense of Greater Romania Stan PETRESCU Pacepa, Kuklinski, Pollard și românii Pacepa, Kuklinski, Pollard and the Romanians Tiberiu TĂNASE Contracararea de către SSI a activităților informative și acțiunilor Serviciilor Germane și Sovietice de Informații implicate în evenimentele din 21 - 23 ianuarie 1941 Countering by the SSI of the informational activities and actions of the German and Soviet Intelligence Services involved in the events of January 21-23, 1941 Tiberiu TĂNASE Alexandru Ioan Cuza, fondatorul Intelligence-lui statului modern românesc Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Founder of the Intelligence of the Modern Romanian State Tiberiu TĂNASE, Bogdan MUSCALU Puncte de vedere privind tradițiile romane în istoria intelligence-lui Viewpoints on Roman traditions in history intelligence Tiberiu TĂNASE Istoria Serviciului Român de Informații – serviciu de intelligence competitiv, și strategiile de intelligence History of the Romanian Intelligence Service – competitive intelligence service, and intelligence strategies Rodica LISEANU Reformele serviciilor secrete de la Mihail Moruzov la Eugen Cristescu, între inovație și decadență Secret service reforms from Mihail Moruzov to Eugen Cristescu Rodica LISEANU Take Ionescu – O biografie vectorială în istoria partidelor politice și în semantica diplomației Take Ionescu - A Vectorial Biography in the History of Political Parties and the Semantics of Diplomacy Remus MACOVEI Trădători și trădători Traitors and traitors -/- GEOPOLITICA / GEOPOLITICS -/- Antoaneta AVRAM Pandemia de COVID-19 și consecințele ei în peisajul anului 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences in the landscape of 2022 Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ, Ioan MANCI Analiza conflictului ruso-cecen din perspectivă militară Analysis of the Russian-Chechen conflict from a military perspective Lisa-Maria ACHIMESCU Apusul universalismului european The decline of European universalism Emilian M. DOBRESCU Hegemonia chineză în producția de pământuri rare Chinese Hegemony in the Production of Rare Earths Ionuț-Daniel GORGOVAN ”Descurajarea integrată”. Analiză asupra strategiei SUA în Pacific "Integrated deterrence". Analysis of US Pacific Strategy Tiberiu TĂNASE, Violeta Ioana NAGÂȚ Conflictul arabo-israelian. Percepții privind cauzele și natura conflictului. Repere istorice și actualitate The Arab-Israeli conflict. Perceptions of the causes and nature of conflict. Historical landmarks and current affairs -/- SECURITATE / SECURITY -/- Tănase TIBERIU Minighid de pregătire și protecție contrainformativă Counterintelligence preparation and protection mini-guide Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ ISIS - Jocul morții - Martiri, asasinate și fascinație The Killing Game - Martyrdom, Murder and the Lure of ISIS Traian OSTAHIE Abordări generale ale conceptului de cultură de securitate For a 21st century realism Dalia Elena SILAGHI Terorismul cibernetic: o formă contemporană de terorism Cyber Terrorism: A Contemporary Form of Terrorism Paul Alexandru HELER Conflictul asimetric și consecințele sale în securitatea Asiei Asymmetric Conflict and Its Consequences in Asian Security Daria-Maria TÂRNĂVEAN Confruntarea informațională și repercusiunile sale asupra mediului actual de securitate The Information Confrontation and its Repercussions on the Current Security Environment Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ Analiza atacurilor cibernetice, precum APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) și ransomware Analysis of cyber attacks such as APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) and ransomware Daniela Georgiana GOLEA, Oana Ștefania COȘA Nevoia de adaptare managerială a noilor probleme de securitate modernă The need for managerial adaptation to new modern security issues Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ, Corneliu PREJA Implicarea NATO în domeniul apărării cibernetice NATO's involvement in cyber defence Alexandru CRISTIAN Paradigme în mediul internațional de securitate Paradigms in the international security environment Alexandru CRISTIAN Schimbarea paradigmelor în mediul internațional de securitate Changing paradigms in the international security environment Dan D. FARCAȘ Adevăr și dezinformare în fenomenul OZN Truth and disinformation in the UFO phenomenon Alexandru CRISTIAN Un nou mediu de securitate A new security environment -/- ȘTIINȚA INFORMAȚIEI / INFORMATION SCIENCE -/- Oana Ștefania COȘA Rolul structurilor de intelligence medical în atingerea obiectivul de consolidare a sistemului de sănătate The role of medical intelligence structures in achieving the objective of strengthening the health system Nicolae SFETCU Preocupări legislative în mineritul datelor Legislative concerns in data mining Nicolae SFETCU Utilizarea analiticii rețelelor sociale în intelligence Using social network analytics in intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Ingineria cunoașterii în colectarea informațiilor Knowledge Engineering in Intelligence Gathering -/- ISSN 2971 – 9089 ISSN-L 2821 – 8159, DOI: 10.58679/II26972. (shrink)

The first part of the article examines some recent studies on the early development of social norms that examine young children’s understanding of codified rule games. It is argued that the constitutive rules than define the games cannot be identified with social norms and therefore the studies provide limited evidence about socio-normative development. The second part reviews data on children’s play in natural settings that show that children do not understand norms as codified or rules of obligation, and (...) that the norms that guide social interaction are dynamic, situated, and heterogeneous. It is argued that normativity is intersubjective and negotiable and starts to develop in the first year, emerging as a practical skill that depends on participatory engagement. Three sources of compliance are discussed: emotional engagement, nonverbal agreement, and conversation. (shrink)

It’s a Sunday morning and a sports analyst is doing a pre-game show highlighting how hard the stadium is to play in. The home-field fans continue to get more outrageous as they prepare for the start of the event. Meanwhile, the visiting team’s fans continue to disrupt the mood of the crowd in efforts to even the momentum. After some words are exchanged a fight breaks out. Home-field advantage has become more than just an idea. Today, it (...) can often be considered a strategic asset in the outcome of many sporting events. With the continued growth of importance on the notion of home-field advantage we have also seen an increase in sports-related violence and vandalism. We turn on our TV to see our favorite sports analysts talk about how callow and senseless these acts are, while hours earlier the same individuals are headlining the significance home-field advantage can have on a team, game, or series. TV, radio, and media networks often provoke the idea of upholding a country, city, or team’s reputation of maintaining such tough home-field “advantages”. This idea of keeping an intimidating home-field advantage can clearly cause an effect on the mindset of that same team’s fan base. As we have seen in the past this ripple effect can become negative. Instead of looking at the individuals committing these reckless and often violent acts I propose that we take a closer look at the influences the media imposes on the masses. We understand that these actions are committed by individuals, but we need to be aware of how and why the individuals choose to behave these ways. The media needs to be less contradicting with the arguments they are provoking us with. If you are going to feed the beast, don’t punish it for eating. (shrink)