Internet users fill in interactive forms with multiple fields, check/uncheck checkboxes, select options and agree to submit. People give their consents without keeping track of them. Dominance of the machine producing human consent is ubiquitous. Humanless bureaucratic procedures become embedded into routine usage of digital products and services automating human behavior. This bureaucracy does not make individuals wait in conveyor-like lines (which sometimes can cause a collective action), it patiently waits or suddenly pops up in an annoying message requiring immediate (...) action and consuming time. It follows pre-installed procedures so cannot be distracted or appealed to. It lacks what Sofia Ranchordás calls ‘administrative empathy’. Users can hardly reach through bureaucratic procedures and communicate with another human. An individual involved in these sequences of actions contributes to increasing the quantity of bureaucratic procedures. The algorithmic bureaucracy power resides in the limited ability of human beings to make conscious and informed decisions when dealing with high complexity levels. This ubiquity makes it virtually impossible for individuals to track and verify statuses and control binding power of all legal actions on the platform. The authors apply critical analysis to explore social implications, threats and possible alternatives for corporate and governmental algorithmic bureaucracy in the emerging digital society. (shrink)

Recently Timothy Williamson (2007) has argued that characterizations of the standard (i.e. intuition-based) philosophical practice of philosophical analysis are misguided because of the erroneous manner in which this practice has been understood. In doing so he implies that experimental critiques of the reliability of intuition are based on this misunderstanding of philosophical methodology and so have little or no bearing on actual philosophical practice or results. His main point is that the orthodox understanding of philosophical methodology is incorrect in that (...) it treats philosophical thought experiments in such a way that they can be “filled in” in various ways that undermines their use as counter-examples and that intuition plays no substantial role in philosophical practice when we properly understand that methodology as a result of the possibility of such filling in. In this paper Williamson’s claim that philosophical thought experiments cases can be legitimately filled in this way will be challenged and it will be shown that the experimental critique of the intuition-based methods involved a serious issue. (shrink)

Eugene Gendlin claims that he wants "to think with more than conceptual structures, forms, distinctions, with more than cut and presented things" (WCS 29).1 He wants situations in their concreteness to be something we can think with, not just analyze conceptually. He wants to show that "conceptual patterns are doubtful and always exceeded, but the excess seems unable to think itself. It seems to become patterns when we try to think it. This has been the problem of twentieth century philosophy" (...) (WCS 29). As a result he has "long been concerned with what is not formed although always in some form" (TAD 1). In this essay I would like to explore some of the issues surrounding the relation of the unformed and the formed. Gendlin says that "we get beyond the forms by thinking precisely in them" (TAD 1). The two emphasized words have to be considered separately as well as together. In many essays Gendlin's main concern is with the "precisely": can something that is not fully formed and definite still direct us as we carry forward language and action? My discussion begins with that issue; I suggest ways that Gendlin's proposal connects with and differs from some current ideas in epistemology and the philosophy of language. Then my discussion moves to the "in": what sense can we make of the formed being unformed? Finally I suggest that Gendlin's program runs into some difficulties in this connection. (shrink)

The Emergic Cognitive Model (ECM) is a unified computational model of visual filling-in based on the Emergic Network architecture. The Emergic Network was designed to help realize systems undergoing continuous change. In this thesis, eight different filling-in phenomena are demonstrated under a regime of continuous eye movement (and under static eye conditions as well). -/- ECM indirectly demonstrates the power of unification inherent with Emergic Networks when cognition is decomposed according to finer-grained functions supporting change. These can interact (...) to raise additional emergent behaviours via cognitive re-use, hence the Emergic prefix throughout. Nevertheless, the model is robust and parameter free. Differential re-use occurs in the nature of model interaction with a particular testing paradigm. -/- ECM has a novel decomposition due to the requirements of handling motion and of supporting unified modelling via finer functional grains. The breadth of phenomenal behaviour covered is largely to lend credence to our novel decomposition. -/- The Emergic Network architecture is a hybrid between classical connectionism and classical computationalism that facilitates the construction of unified cognitive models. It helps cutting up of functionalism into finer-grains distributed over space (by harnessing massive recurrence) and over time (by harnessing continuous change), yet simplifies by using standard computer code to focus on the interaction of information flows. Thus while the structure of the network looks neurocentric, the dynamics are best understood in flowcentric terms. Surprisingly, dynamic system analysis (as usually understood) is not involved. An Emergic Network is engineered much like straightforward software or hardware systems that deal with continuously varying inputs. Ultimately, this thesis addresses the problem of reduction and induction over complex systems, and the Emergic Network architecture is merely a tool to assist in this epistemic endeavour. -/- ECM is strictly a sensory model and apart from perception, yet it is informed by phenomenology. It addresses the attribution problem of how much of a phenomenon is best explained at a sensory level of analysis, rather than at a perceptual one. As the causal information flows are stable under eye movement, we hypothesize that they are the locus of consciousness, howsoever it is ultimately realized. (shrink)

Perceptual filling-in for vision is the insertion of visual properties (e.g., color, contour, luminance, or motion) into one’s visual field, when those properties have no corresponding retinal input. This paper introduces and provides preliminary empirical support for filled/non-filled pairs, pairs of images that appear identical, yet differ by amount of filling-in. It is argued that such image pairs are important to the experimental testing of theories of consciousness. We review recent experimental research and conclude that filling-in involves (...) brain activity with relatively high integrated information (Phi) compared to veridical visual perceptions. We then present filled/non-filled pairs as an empirical challenge to the integrated information theory of consciousness, which predicts that phenomenologically identical experiences depend on brain processes with identical Phi. (shrink)

For Kant, a body fills out space by means of its causal efficacy. The essential properties of matter are hence dependent on underlying forces and it is one task of the Opus postumum (OP) to reconstruct the system of forces. In order to avoid an infinite regress of causal explanations, this system of forces needs to account for a primitive origin of all mechanical moving forces in something that is constitutive of forces, yet radically different - this is the ether (...) that fills all space that constantly moves or vibrates all the parts of the material bodies internally. I argue that we can read Kant’s argument for the existence of the ether through the lens of dispositions: essential properties of matter, such as ponderability, coercibility, cohesibility, and exhaustibility, should be understood as dispositions. These dispositions are ‘physically conditioned,’ as Kant calls it, on the ether. To display their manifest and perceivable properties, the ether acts as the ubiquitous and universal ‘activation stimulus’ of the dispositions that make up material bodies. He causes them to constantly display their manifest properties that make them continuously perceivable and causally efficient. Thereby Kant offers a solution to a problem formulated by Simon Blackburn, namely that purely dispositional matter would lead us into skepticism. (shrink)

The paper addresses two difficulties that arise in Treatise 1.2.5. First, Hume appears to be inconsistent when he denies that we have an idea of a vacuum or empty space yet allows for the idea of an “invisible and intangible distance.” My solution to this difficulty is to develop the overlooked possibility that Hume does not take the invisible and intangible distance to be a distance at all. Second, although Hume denies that we have an idea of a vacuum, some (...) texts in Treatise 1.2.5 are taken by interpreters to suggest that Hume nonetheless believes that there are vacuums in nature. I discuss the relevant texts and defend the view that Hume does not in fact countenance belief in vacuums. I conclude by outlining an interpretation of Hume’s intention in the Treatise that allows us to understand his discussion of ideas as having implications for the sciences. (shrink)

Callender and Cohen have proposed to apply a “Gricean strategy” to the constitution problem of scientific representation, taking inspiration from Grice’s reduction of linguistic meaning to mental states. They suggest that scientific representation can be reduced to stipulation by epistemic agents. This account has been criticised for not making a distinction between symbolic and epistemic representation and not taking into account the communal aspects of scientific representation. I argue that these criticisms would not apply if Grice’s actual strategy were properly (...) employed. I present Grice’s account of linguistic meaning and transpose his actual strategy and method to epistemic representation. This results in a reduction of epistemic representation to mental states that does not fall prey to the same criticisms. The main novelty of the resulting account is a distinction between contextual representational use and general representational status, which I address using the notion of indexicality. (shrink)

A collective duty gap arises when a group has caused harm that requires remedying but no member did harm that can justify the imposition of individual remedial duties. Examples range from airplane crashes to climate change. How might collective duty gaps be filled? This paper starts by examining two promising proposals for filling them. Both proposals are found inadequate. Thus, while gap-filling duties can be defended against objections from unfairness and demandingness, we need a substantive justification for their (...) existence. I argue that substantive justification can be found in the normative force of commitments individuals make to others with regard to ends. Along the way, I argue that gap-filling duties must be conceptualized differently in group agents, as compared to non-agent groups: in the former, gap-filling duties can be understood as duties to “take up the slack”; in the latter, this would be a category error. (shrink)

If states are permitted to create and maintain a military force, by what means are they permitted to do so? This paper argues that a theory of just recruitment should incorporate a concern for moral risk. Since the military is a morally risky profession for its members, recruitment policies should be evaluated in terms of how they distribute moral risk within a community. We show how common military recruitment practices exacerbate and concentrate moral risk exposure, using the UK as a (...) case study. We argue that the British state wrongs its citizens by subjecting them to excessively morally risky recruitment practices. Since, we argue, this risk exposure cannot be justified by appealing to the benefits of a military career for recruits, our argument calls for reform of existing practices. Our method of evaluation is generalizable and thus can be used to assess other states’ practices. (shrink)

In Book I, part iv, section 2 of the Treatise, "Of scepticism with regard to the senses," Hume presents two different answers to the question of how we come to believe in the continued existence of unperceived objects. He rejects his first answer shortly after its formulation, and the remainder of the section articulates an alternative account of the development of the belief. The account that Hume adopts, however, is susceptible to a number of insurmountable objections, which motivates a reassessment (...) of his original proposal. This paper defends a version of Hume's initial explanation of the belief in continued existence and examines some of its philosophical implications. (shrink)

Both continental and analytic traditions have tended to associate Hegel’s idealism with metaphysics and therefore as divorced from and even pernicious to reality. Hence, contemporary Hegel studies have tended to concentrate on discrete elements of his philosophy while attempting to avoid its metaphysical dimensions and their systematic pretensions. I seek to show that rather than dwelling in abstraction, Hegel’s metaphysics, as presented in his Logics, recount the thought determinations through which being comes to be grounded and thus, scientifically knowable as (...) nature. Such categorical determining is essentially linguistic, taking place through the grammatical forms of judgment (Urteil) and their outcome in the syllogism. The centrality of these grammatical forms reveals the anthropological goal of Hegel’s metaphysics, where the fully determined copula of judgment presents itself as the object of natural science, for us. (shrink)

Mettre en rapport des textes de Hegel sur l’amour érotique avec quelques passages du penseur romantique Friedrich Schlegel permet de mettre en relief la méfiance hégélienne à l’égard du désir sexuel. Selon l’échelle hiérarchique de désirs chez Hegel, le désir érotique fait preuve d’un déséquilibre entre le sujet désirant et l’objet désiré, ce qui est typique d’un rapport purement naturel et non spirituel. C’est dire que la connaissance charnelle, avec son objet dénué de Soi propre, représente pour Hegel une forme (...) inférieure de savoir. L’inégalité sujet-objet propre à l’amour érotique n’est dépassée que par la participation à la substance éthique, ce qui exige la reconnaissance réciproque de consciences de soi égales. Dans ce contexte, il s’agit du mariage. Juxtaposing some of Hegel’s texts on erotic love with certain passages from the romantic thinker Friedrich Schlegel throws light on Hegel’s problematic relationship with sexual desire. According to his hierarchy of types of desire, erotic desire betrays an imbalance between the desiring subject and the object of desire, typical of a purely natural, non-spiritual relation. This means that carnal knowledge, with its self-less object, represents an inferior form of knowing. The inequality between subject and object, inherent in erotic love, is only surpassed through participation in the ethical substance, requiring the reciprocal recognition of equal self-consciousnesses. In the present context, this means marriage. (shrink)

The modernization of Burgundy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drew on the coordinated efforts of numerous industrial and cultural sectors. Among these innovative developments, new tourism industries played a prominent role in providing new opportunities for the consumption of local products while redefining existing conceptions of Burgundian landscapes. This entailed collaboration of a variety of cultural intermediaries ranging from local boosters to politicians and from merchants to academics. Geographers contributed by incorporating symbolic, subjective, and performative practices into (...) the existing regional concepts of terroir and genres-de-vie. The result was newly scripted roles for tourists and locals to participate in gastronomic activities that, by virtue of the experience, altered participants’ experience of time, space, and themselves. Rapidly institutionalized in Burgundy, these developments illustrate how contemporary commercial interests influenced geographic notions of place in the French provinces. (shrink)

It is common in the autonomy literature to claim that some more demanding theories of autonomy disrespect certain individuals by giving the result that those individuals lack autonomy. This claim is often made in the context of the debate between substantive and content-neutral theories of autonomy. Proponents of content-neutral theories often argue that, in deeming certain people non-autonomous—especially certain oppressed people who seem to have internalized their oppression in certain ways—the substantive theories disrespect those people. They take this as reason (...) to accept content-neutral views over substantive views. Despite its ubiquity, this concern about disrespect is hard to pin down precisely. In this paper, I articulate two questions that need to be answered before we can understand the disrespect objection. First: Who, exactly, is supposedly being disrespected by substantive views? Second: Why is it that excluding people with these features is disrespectful? I consider a number of possible answers to each of these questions, and I argue that none of them gives us a plausible explanation of why we should think substantive theories of autonomy are disrespectful to anyone. No matter how we fill in the details, I will argue, there is simply no reason to prefer content-neutral theories of autonomy over substantive ones on the grounds of respect. (shrink)

Abstract: Given an embodied evolutionary context, the (conscious) organism creates phenomenality and establishes a first-person point of view with its own agency, through intentional relations made by its own acts of fiat, in the same way that human observers create meaning in language.

Recently, several philosophers have recast feminist arguments against pornography in terms of Speech Act Theory. In particular, they have considered the ways in which the illocutionary force of pornographic speech serves to set the conventions of sexual discourse while simultaneously silencing the speech of women, especially during unwanted sexual encounters. Yet, this raises serious questions as to how pornographers could (i) be authorities in the language game of sex, and (ii) set the conventions for sexual discourse - questions which these (...) speech act-theoretic arguments against pornography have thus far failed to adequately answer. I fill in this gap of the argumentation by demonstrating that there are fairly weak standards for who counts as an authority or convention-setter in sexual discourse. With this analysis of the underpinnings of a speech act analysis of pornography in mind, I discuss a range of possible objections. I conclude that (i) the endorsement of censorship by a speech act analysis of pornography competes with its commitment to the conventionality of speech acts, and, more damningly, that (ii), recasting anti-pornography arguments in terms of linguistic conventions risks an unwitting defence of a rapist's lack of mens rea - an intolerable result; and yet resisting this conclusion requires that one back away from the original claim to women's voices being 'silenced'. (shrink)

Uncertainty, insufficient information or information of poor quality, limited cognitive capacity and time, along with value conflicts and ethical considerations, are all aspects thatmake risk managementand riskcommunication difficult. This paper provides a review of different risk concepts and describes how these influence risk management, communication and planning in relation to forest ecosystem services. Based on the review and results of empirical studies, we suggest that personal assessment of risk is decisive in the management of forest ecosystem services. The results are (...) used together with a reviewof different principles of the distribution of risk to propose an approach to risk communication that is effective aswell as ethically sound. Knowledge of heuristics and mutual information on both beliefs and desires are important in the proposed risk communication approach. Such knowledge provides an opportunity for relevant information exchange, so that gaps in personal knowledge maps can be filled in and effective risk communication can be promoted. (shrink)

This essay fills in some historical, conceptual, and pedagogical gaps that appear in the most visible and recent professional efforts to “revive” Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL). I present “American Philosophy and Self-Culture” as an advanced undergraduate seminar that broadens who counts in and what counts as philosophy by immersing us in the lives, writings, and practices of seven representative U.S.-American philosophers of self-culture, community-building, and world-changing: Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), Henry David (...) Thoreau (1817–1862), Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), Henry Bugbee (1915–1999), and Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004). Students enter the class with preconceptions about who philosophers are, what they do, how they write, and the languages in which they write. Students walk out with new senses of self, place, and language that emerge through new ways of seeing, doing, and writing philosophy. (shrink)

Wearable devices are increasingly present in the health context, as tools for biomedical research and clinical care. In this context, wearables are considered key tools for a more digital, personalised, preventive medicine. At the same time, wearables have also been associated with issues and risks, such as those connected to privacy and data sharing. Yet, discussions in the literature have mostly focused on either technical or ethical considerations, framing these as largely separate areas of discussion, and the contribution of wearables (...) to the collection, development, application of biomedical knowledge has only partially been discussed. To fill in these gaps, in this article we provide an epistemic (knowledgerelated) overview of the main functions of wearable technology for health: monitoring, screening, detection, and prediction. On this basis, we identify 4 areas of concern in the application of wearables for these functions: data quality, balanced estimations, health equity, and fairness. To move the field forward in an effective and beneficial direction, we present recommendations for the 4 areas: local standards of quality, interoperability, access, and representativity. (shrink)

The human eyes and brain, which have finite boundaries, create a ‘‘virtual’’ space within our central nervous system that interprets and perceives a space that appears boundless and infinite. Using insights from studies on the visual system, we propose a novel fast processing mechanism involving the eyes, visual pathways, and cortex where external vision is imperceptibly processed in our brain in real time creating an internal representation of external space that appears as an external view. We introduce the existence of (...) a three-dimension default space consisting of intrapersonal body space that serves as the framework where visual and non-visual sensory information is sensed and experienced. We propose that the thalamus integrates processed information from corticothalamic feedback loops and fills-in the neural component of 3D default space with an internal visual representation of external space, leading to the experience of visual consciousness. This visual space inherently evades perception so we have introduced three easy clinical tests that can assist in experiencing this visual space. We also review visual neuroanatomical pathways, binocular vision, neurological disorders, and visual phenomenon to elucidate how the representation of external visible space is recreated within the mind. (shrink)

As large language models (LLMs) continue to demonstrate remarkable abilities across various domains, computer scientists are developing methods to understand their cognitive processes, particularly concerning how (and if) LLMs internally represent their beliefs about the world. However, this field currently lacks a unified theoretical foundation to underpin the study of belief in LLMs. This article begins filling this gap by proposing adequacy conditions for a representation in an LLM to count as belief-like. We argue that, while the project of (...) belief measurement in LLMs shares striking features with belief measurement as carried out in decision theory and formal epistemology, it also differs in ways that should change how we measure belief. Thus, drawing from insights in philosophy and contemporary practices of machine learning, we establish four criteria that balance theoretical considerations with practical constraints. Our proposed criteria include accuracy, coherence, uniformity, and use, which together help lay the groundwork for a comprehensive understanding of belief representation in LLMs. We draw on empirical work showing the limitations of using various criteria in isolation to identify belief representations. (shrink)

Nietzsche talks about shame [scham*, schmach*, schand*] in all of his published and authorized works, from The Birth of Tragedy to Ecce Homo. He refers to shame in over one hundred passages – at least five times as often as he refers to resentment/ressentiment. Yet the scholarly literature on Nietzsche and shame includes just a handful of publications, while the literature on Nietzsche and resentment includes over a thousand. Arguably, this disproportionate engagement has been driven by the fact that English (...) translations of Nietzsche’s writings systematically italicize and transliterate ‘ressentiment’ rather than treating it as the normal word it is. In any case, this chapter aims to fill the gap in the secondary literature by using digital humanities methods to systematically investigate the functions of shame in Nietzsche’s writings. I argue that Nietzsche is ambivalent about shame, depending on the function that it serves. There are four main functions. First, in a society of near-equals, it regulates interactions and incentives in ways that preserve game-theoretic equilibria. Second and relatedly, Nietzsche associates the capacity to experience nuanced and appropriate feelings of shame – and to anticipate them in others – with the pathos of distance, a virtue that he associates with nobility. Third, when shame is directed towards fixed aspects of human nature, it transforms those aspects into vices; by contrast, when it is directed towards malleable aspects of human nature, it may foster self-improvement and virtue. Nietzsche frequently laments the way that shame targets immutable aspects of ourselves. Finally and relatedly, Nietzsche casts counter-shame on those who would direct first-order shame on fixed aspects of human nature, as well as a paradoxical form of uplifting shame on their victims. If this is right, then Nietzsche does not offer a univocal verdict on shame. Instead, like many other emotions and emotional capacities, shame is inescapable, complex, and function-relative. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss the need for a theory of essences within Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and then formulate one. I will do so by drawing on Graham Harman’s work on OOO and Martin Heidegger’s thought on the essence of being, presented in his Introduction to Metaphysics. Harman touches on essences, describing them as the tension between a withdrawn object and its withdrawn qualities, but fails to distinguish between essential and inessential qualities within this framework. To fill in the (...) gaps, I will turn to Heidegger’s explication of phusis in order to show that an essential aspect of being is how one enters into causal relations and continually reveals oneself to other beings. In bringing OOO and Heidegger together, I will find that each object has a unique way of exerting itself in the world and that the domestic relations that make up this unique profile are essential to it, while other domestic relations, those that do not influence its particular way of exerting itself, are inessential. Thus, the essence will be found to be the set of domestic relations that make up the determinate form, or unique causal profile, of the object. (shrink)

Raymond Carver's stories have received many labels: minimalism, K-mart fiction, low-rent tragedy, neo-realism. Paring language, plot, and characterization to the bone, Carver concentrates his stories on instances of judgment and choice. These climactic moments affect not only the characters, but also the reader, who is called to fill the gaps in the text. The gaps generally show the unrelatedness of the characters' responses to the situations in which they find themselves. Relying on formulae, concepts, and rules taken for granted as (...) common knowledge, Carver's characters make choices and judgments which reveal the displacement of their consciousness of themselves and of the world. In trying to fill the gaps, the reader finds himself/herself in the same stance of making judgments and choices, and of looking at his/her own displacement. This predicament is more poignantly conveyed in the early stories, collected in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, Furious Seasons, and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, since Carver writes about people "on the other side of the tracks," that is, on the edges of the sites of power and decisions. Bartenders, wage workers, and salespeople, Carver's characters in these early stories see their lives always threatened by joblessness, bankruptcy, and homelessness. In the later stories, collected in Cathedral and Where I'm Calling From, Carver explores possibilities in conversation, storytelling, and rituals that celebrate the here and now of each occasion and allow the merging of voices and feelings that places the individual's consciousness in the world. (shrink)

(in lieu of abstract, first paragraphs here) For philosophers, reading Richard Dawkins is often a frustrating experience. Many of Dawkins’ writings treat important philosophical topics, such as the existence of God, the meaning of life, the relationship of randomness to order. Dawkins has original ideas, but he lacks the philosophical training and vocabulary to articulate these ideas properly and to develop them coherently. In Believing in Dawkins, Eric Steinhart sets himself an ambitious task: to use the writings of Dawkins to (...) present a coherent, naturalistic alternative to religious metaphysics, specifically to Christian theism. Using an architectural metaphor, he summarizes the project of Believing in Dawkins as follows -/- It is helpful to think of the Dawkinsian texts in architectural terms. His fragmentary sketches for spiritual naturalism are like architectural drawings. Sometimes they depict little windows, while other times they portray enormous spires reaching towards the stars. The edifice is vast. But these architectural diagrams are often unclear, incomplete, and inconsistent. I want to clarify them, fill in their missing parts, and resolve their conflicts. So I’m using his writings to construct a novel building. … To fit his fragmentary plans into a coherent and self-supporting structure, I will add some large-scale frameworks (10). -/- Steinhart’s wide-ranging book covers many topics: complexity, ontology, possibility, humanity, spirituality, among many others. He does not sneak theism into Dawkins’ writings. In fact, Steinhart argues that many practices and ideas that he uses to construct the edifice of Dawkins’ spiritual naturalism have been hijacked by theism, such as the notion of an afterlife, sacredness, holiness, and even the notion of gratitude. (shrink)

Despite its centrality in the philosophy of cognitive science, there has been little prior philosophical work engaging with the notion of representation in contemporary NLP practice. This paper attempts to fill that lacuna: drawing on ideas from cognitive science, I introduce a framework for evaluating the representational claims made about components of neural NLP models, proposing three criteria with which to evaluate whether a component of a model represents a property and operationalising these criteria using probing classifiers, a popular analysis (...) technique in NLP (and deep learning more broadly). The project of operationalising a philosophically-informed notion of representation should be of interest to both philosophers of science and NLP practitioners. It affords philosophers a novel testing-ground for claims about the nature of representation, and helps NLPers organise the large literature on probing experiments, suggesting novel avenues for empirical research. (shrink)

Filling a gap in knowledge in gender theory, genocidal, and Holocaust studies, this paper operationalizes the concept of phallicism as an analytic explanation of the simultaneous killing and sexual victimization of racialized men in western, capitalist, patriarchal societies. The theory of phallicism posits that racialization lays the basis for a sexualization process wherein racialized males are caricaturized as both salacious savages (who can be raped by the men or women of the dominant racial group) and bestial/wanton creatures deserving of (...) immediate death for the sake of liberal civility. Breaking with the dominant interpretive lenses in scholarly discourses around race and gender that understand racialized femininity as the basis of dehumanization, this paper will operationalize the notion of phallicism through historical and comparative analysis of the writings of political prisoner George Jackson and Primo Levi, a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust. With the theory of phallicism—the guiding theoretic of the paradigm of Black Male Studies—we can sharpen our conceptual acumen to account for the function of misandric patterns of intergroup violence and its role as the organizing principle of the negrophobia characteristic of Western, patriarchal, capitalist regimes. (shrink)

In the contemporary life sciences more and more researchers emphasize the “limits of reductionism” (e.g. Ahn et al. 2006a, 709; Mazzocchi 2008, 10) or they call for a move “beyond reductionism” (Gallagher/Appenzeller 1999, 79). However, it is far from clear what exactly they argue for and what the envisioned limits of reductionism are. In this paper I claim that the current discussions about reductionism in the life sciences, which focus on methodological and explanatory issues, leave the concepts of a reductive (...) method and a reductive explanation too unspecified. In order to fill this gap and to clarify what the limits of reductionism are I identify three reductive methods that are crucial in the current practice of the life sciences: decomposition, focusing on internal factors, and studying parts in isolation. Furthermore, I argue that reductive explanations in the life sciences exhibit three characteristics: first, they refer only to factors at a lower level than the phenomenon at issue, second, they focus on internal factors and thus ignore or simplify the environment of a system, and, third, they cite only the parts of a system in isolation. (shrink)

In this topical section, we highlight the next step of research on modeling aiming to contribute to the emerging literature that radically refrains from approaching modeling as a scientific endeavor. Modeling surpasses “doing science” because it is frequently incorporated into decision-making processes in politics and management, i.e., areas which are not solely epistemically oriented. We do not refer to the production of models in academia for abstract or imaginary applications in practical fields, but instead highlight the real entwinement of science (...) and policy and the real erosion of their boundaries. Models in decision making – due to their strong entwinement with policy and management – are utilized differently than models in science; they are employed for different purposes and with different constraints. We claim that “being a part of decision-making” implies that models are elements of a very particular situation, in which knowledge about the present and the future is limited but dependence of decisions on the future is distinct. Emphasis on the future indicates that decisions are made about actions that have severe and lasting consequences. In these specific situations, models enable not only the acquisition of knowledge (the primary goal of science) but also enable deciding upon actions that change the course of events. As a result, there are specific ways to construct effective models and justify their results. Although some studies have explored this topic, our understanding of how models contribute to decision making outside of science remains fragmentary. This topical section aims to fill this gap in research and formulate an agenda for additional and more systematic investigations in the field. (shrink)

The concept of instantiation is realized differently across a variety of metaphysical theories. A certain realization of the concept in a given theory depends on what roles are specified and associated with the concept and its corresponding term as well as what entities are suited to fill those roles. In this paper, the classic realization of the concept of instantiation in a one-category ontology of abstract particulars or tropes is articulated in a novel way and defended against unaddressed objections.

This study proposes a framework by which grammatically and syntactically sound sentences are classified through the perceptual measurement in noise of multilinguals and monolinguals, using an objective measure called SPERI and an interpretivist measure called SPIn, with results evaluated using Shortlist models and the BLINCS model. Hereby filling a knowledge gap on the perception of sentences that combine in varying levels of contextual meaning, linguistic load and cognitive load, this study used sentence clustering methods to find limitations of the (...) proposed framework in determining an absolute and accurate prediction of performance between sentences in the proposed different categories, with factors such as sentence predictability and word frequency taking precedence. There were unintended findings including a relationship between the number of languages spoken and performance, proficiency in other languages decreasing performance despite being an English Native, and how mistakes by multilinguals were more semantically and phonetically influenced than monolinguals. (shrink)

This essay examines theoretical arguments surrounding the use of post-colonial theory as a way to fill in the epistemological lacuna in the studies of post-socialism. It reviews the various streams of this theoretical development and employs Edward Said’s notion of “traveling theory” to demonstrate that theoretical claims made by proponents and opponents of this particular comparative perspective are historically, socially, and geographically situated, although not fixed. Disciplinary, national, and institutional affiliations, instead of theoretical justifications, are identified as important factors in (...) the propensity to accept or resist the introduction of post-colonial perspective on Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The essay concludes by acknowledging the potential usefulness as well as the limits of post-colonialism in the conceptualization of the post- socialist space. (shrink)

Aristotle said that induction (epagōgē) is a proceeding from particulars to a universal, and the definition has been conventional ever since. But there is an ambiguity here. Induction in the Scholastic and the (so-called) Humean tradition has presumed that Aristotle meant going from particular statements to universal statements. But the alternate view, namely that Aristotle meant going from particular things to universal ideas, prevailed all through antiquity and then again from the time of Francis Bacon until the mid-nineteenth century. Recent (...) scholarship is so steeped in the first-mentioned tradition that we have virtually forgotten the other. In this essay McCaskey seeks to recover that alternate tradition, a tradition whose leading theoreticians were William Whewell, Francis Bacon, Socrates, and in fact Aristotle himself. The examination is both historical and philosophical. The first part of the essay fills out the history. The latter part examines the most mature of the philosophies in the Socratic tradition, specifically Bacon’s and Whewell’s. After tracing out this tradition, McCaskey shows how this alternate view of induction is indeed employed in science, as exemplified by several instances taken from actual scientific practice. In this manner, McCaskey proposes to us that the Humean problem of induction is merely an artifact of a bad conception of induction and that a return to the Socratic conception might be warranted. (shrink)

Vast archives of fragmentary structural brain scans that are routinely acquired in medical clinics for diagnostic purposes have so far been considered to be unusable for neuroscientific research. Yet, recent studies have proposed that by deploying machine learning algorithms to fill in the missing anatomy, clinical scans could, in future, be used by researchers to gain new insights into various brain disorders. This chapter focuses on a study published in2019, whose authors developed a novel unsupervised machine learning algorithm for synthesising (...) missing anatomy in extremely sparse clinical MRI scans of thousands of stroke patients. By approaching the study from a media-theoretical perspective, I analyse how its authors dis-cursively negotiated the anatomical and operative plausibility of the unobserved anatomy that their black-boxed algorithm reconstructed from the existing sparse data. My analysis fore-grounds the processual, relational, context-dependent, and essentially unstable character of the thus established plausibility of the algorithmically synthesised neuroanatomy. (shrink)

This article analyses the phenomenology and ontology of videogames through the lens of semiotics. The difference between games and more traditional narrative models (such as those found in books and movies) lies on the structural level. The game narrative needs to be ‘written’ (played) before it can be ‘read’ (interpreted). Games provide fluidity of interactive immersion: the interface as the place of the merger between the player and the game. A connection, without delay, is established between the movement of the (...) player’s hands and the virtual movement across virtual space-times of the virtual characters/events on the screen. The connection is cybernetic, of course, and real. The actuality of the virtual is established as the action of the finger movements of the player. Games require at least a minimum degree of interaction. The player has a role as the master of the code, as the last string of code attached to complete the sequence. Such is the definition of the Cinematic under the formal demands of the Ludic: the defining-delimiting-restricting background which nonetheless, by its very (fixed) presence, provides the nurturing ground for the appearance and presence of (fluid) malleability as the ‘gap’ or ‘lack’ in the structure to be filled – in whatever manner – by the player in the act of his or her (world-constitutive) existential engagement. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s insightful work on epistemic injustice discusses two forms of epistemic injustice—testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when the victim lacks the interpretative resources to make sense of her experience, and this lacuna can be traced down to a structural injustice. In this paper, I provide one model of how to fill the conceptual gap in hermeneutical injustice. First, I argue that the victims possess conceptual resources to make sense of their experiences, namely phenomenal concepts. Second, I (...) show how one might work the way up in a two-step process from a subjective, phenomenal concept to a novel, public concept. Finally, I discuss the conditions that have to be met for this process to be successful. The resulting model shows a way how the victims might alleviate hermeneutical injustice by developing novel concepts, given that the dominant group does not care about their predicament. (shrink)

This essay explores the inherent blankness of life, describing it as devoid of fixed meaning, purpose, or morality. It discusses how humans struggle with this blankness, often attempting to avoid or fill it through various activities and pursuits. The essay distinguishes between natural biological activities and those driven by fear and anxiety, emphasizing how societal conditioning contributes to the latter. It delves into the role of rationality in avoiding blankness, the discomfort of silence, and the vibrancy that this blankness holds. (...) Ultimately, it advocates for embracing this blankness as a source of freedom, vitality, and profound insight into the nature of existence. (shrink)

This essay explores the inherent blankness of life, describing it as devoid of fixed meaning, purpose, or morality. It discusses how humans struggle with this blankness, often attempting to avoid or fill it through various activities and pursuits. The essay distinguishes between natural biological activities and those driven by fear and anxiety, emphasizing how societal conditioning contributes to the latter. It delves into the role of rationality in avoiding blankness, the discomfort of silence, and the vibrancy that this blankness holds. (...) Ultimately, it advocates for embracing this blankness as a source of freedom, vitality, and profound insight into the nature of existence. (shrink)

In a recent article, Madelaine Ley evaluates the future of work, specifically robotised workplaces, via the lens of care ethics. Like many proponents of care ethics, Ley draws on the approach and its emphasis on relationality to understand ethical action necessary for worker wellbeing. Her paper aims to fill a research gap by shifting away from the traditional contexts in which care ethics is employed, i.e., health and care contexts and instead appropriates the approach to tackle the sociotechnicity of robotics (...) and how caring should be integrated into non-traditional contexts. This paper comments on that of Ley’s, making the case that the author does, in fact, achieve this end while still leaving areas of potential future research open to buttressing the approach she presents. (shrink)

According to Immanuel Kant’s well-known account of his own intellectual development, it was the skeptic David Hume who roused him from his dogmatic slumber. According to some popular accounts of post-Kantian philosophy, it was the soporific speculation of the idealists that quickly returned German philosophy to the Procrustean bed of unverifiable metaphysics, where it dogmatically slept for half of the nineteenth century. This popular picture of post-Kantian German philosophy receives some apparent support from the relevant evidence. After all, Kant had (...) allegedly demonstrated the illegitimacy of all metaphysical speculation that transcends the bounds of experience, and the writings of the German idealists - filled as they are with references to what is putatively “absolute” and “unconditioned” - seem to violate Kant’s strictures. In place of this popular conception, I seek to sketch out a rather difference picture of German idealism. The development of post-Kantian German idealism is best described, not as a turning away from skepticism, but rather as a radicalization of it. The radicalization of skepticism from Kant through Fichte to Hegel, however, does not lead away from systematic philosophy. The movement of thought from Kant to Hegel coincides with the gradual realization that skeptical thought is not external to systematic philosophy, but is in fact internal to, or even identical with it. This thesis concerning the progressive “radicalization” or “internalization” of skepticism in German idealism receives some prima facie support form the relevant writings of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. (shrink)

The “saturated phenomenon” is Jean-Luc Marion’s principal hypothesis, by which he tries to ground the source of phenomenality. Against the transcendental phenomenology, Marion finds phenomena that go beyond the constitutional power of intention. The saturated phenomenon is never possessed because the saturated phenomenon withdraws itself and thus it endlessly escapes from us. A problem of intelligibility thus arises. The essential finitude of the subject requires that the subject passively receives what the saturated phenomenon gives. Marion, however, endows the gifted with (...) more than the mere passivity. The subject is invited as a “witness” who actively responds to the call of the phenomenon. Marion posits the interpersonal relationship. The problem of the interpretability of intention is another problem inherent in the infinity of interpretation of the other. In our ordinary lives, we habitually search out the other’s intention, infinitely. Emmanuel Levinas clearly points out that the other is the transcendent source of ethics, a source which is not intelligible to us. The other, for Levinas, does not appear to the subject, but conditions it. Marion, by contrast, neutralizes the other and “the face” imposes “oneself” as the other who is neutrally visible to us. I assume Marion is more interested in the world of objects, rather than the world of persons, and thus misses the peculiarity resident in the personhood of persons. We become passive in the presence of the personality, not because we want to become passive, but because we realize our own power of illustration does not fill in the personality. (shrink)

In recent years, the opioid crisis in the United States has sparked significant discussion on doctor–patient interactions concerning chronic pain treatments, but little to no attention has been given to investigating the vocal aspects of patient talk. This exploratory sociolinguistic study intends to fill this knowledge gap by employing prosodic discourse analysis to examine context-specific linguistic features used by the interlocutors of two distinct medical interactions. We found that patients employed both low pitch and creak as linguistic resources when describing (...) chronic pain, narrating symptoms and requesting opioids. The situational use of both features informs us about the linguistic ways in which patients frame fraught issues like chronic pain in light of the current opioid crisis. This study expands the breadth of phonetic analysis within the domain of discourse analysis, serving to illuminate discussions surrounding the illocutionary role of the lower vocal tract in expressing emotions. (shrink)

In Vietnam, regionalisation in the GMS occurs in different parts at different paces and levels driven by the central government and with the participation of the local governments, private sector and grassroots people in the framework of the GMS Program. So far there has been no major research either in Vietnamese or English that addresses this issue. The thesis seeks to fill this gap by examining the empirical process of regionalisation in three Vietnam’s border towns in the First-Generation GMS Economic (...) Corridor Town Development Project. Employing analytical framework based on relevant International Relations and interdisciplinary theories, and a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the thesis finds that the GMS regionalisation is a combination of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ processes. The thesis commences by highlighting the significance of the Mekong River to the development of the region. Then various multilateral cooperative schemes are explored to generate a complete picture of regional cooperation. It is concluded that many multilateral mechanisms with little progress may have negative impacts on the regionalisation in the GMS. Among 13 schemes in the GMS, GMS Program is considered as one of the most well-known subregional cooperation schemes. The GMS Program came to existence just in time to assist the Mekong riparian states to integrate better into the regional and international markets in the context that there were new developments both at the regional and world’s levels. In the case of Vietnam, the GMS Program has given Hanoi an option to carry on its omni-directional foreign policy and helped it consolidate its existing relationships with its traditional and neighbouring partners. Notably, regionalisation is occurring in some parts of the country where GMS projects have been implemented. Regionalisation can be best observed in economic space where there are intensive interactions among people under various dimensions enabled by favourable policies. Although regionalisation promises to bring new cooperative opportunities in the GMS, regionalisation in the GMS will continue to meet new challenges from growing natural and man-made threats to the Mekong River. Further, the involvement of outsiders is also a real challenge to the regionbuilding process. (shrink)

The concept of anticipation, on the one hand, has received a considerable treatment in classical phenomenology, particularly in Husserl. The Zhuangzi, on the other hand, has not been explored with the help of Husserl’s concept of anticipation. Broadly construed, anticipation, due to its association with robust proclivity to seeing and conjuring up possibilities issuing from a phenomenon, shall have no place in the Zhuangzi. Against such backdrop, I argue that—albeit the Zhuangzi does not develop an explicit discourse on anticipation—a delimited (...) form of anticipation (‘d-anticipation’), that is, one which is inspired by Husserl’s concept of anticipation evident in his genetic phenomenology, can work in concert with the thoughts articulated in the Zhuangzi. I demonstrate this via examining death, desire, and freedom evident in the Zhuangzi. That ‘d-anticipation’ can work in concert with the thoughts articulated in the Zhuangzi can be apprehended in a variety of ways. Firstly, it can be seen in our natural response to death and the way in which we handle desires. Secondly, it points to Zhuangzi’s reductionistic manner of appreciating the richness of reality. Thirdly, it offers a way in which we can live life according to our nature. Fourthly, it points to an exercise of freedom which opens up the possibility of transcending conventional standards. Fifthly, it is inherently constitutive of the process of comportment with the Dao. Finally, it is in essence constitutive of a phenomenon or circumstance. In setting out to demonstrate these contentions, I seek to show that ‘d-anticipation’ can fill in a lacuna brought about by the negative appraisal of anticipation in the Zhuangzi and can assume a pivotal role in one’s comportment with the Dao. (shrink)

This paper fills a gap in the existing metaphilosophical research on paradoxes byfocusing on the role of scenarios. Typical philosophical paradoxes contain a scenariodescription whose contribution to paradoxes remains unexplored. I argue that sce-narios are examples or instantiations of the abstract schema of paradoxes. As such,scenarios contribute to paradoxes on two levels. First, they make the argument moreconcrete, thus enhancing the dialectical force of paradoxes and facilitating their under-standing, especially for non-experts. This function is external to the paradox itself, buthas (...) important practical implications for the use of paradoxes and their effect on philo-sophical debates, and it contributes to explaining why philosophical paradoxes areusually introduced by a scenario. Second, and more crucially, scenarios are essentialto the epistemic dimension of paradoxes. By definition, paradoxes have two neces-sary components: the argumentative structure and the plausibility/implausibility ofthe premises/conclusion. By providing examples of the abstract schema, scenarioscontribute to making the premises plausible. In particular, scenarios are the source ofplausibility and justification for those premises that contain an empirically groundedassertion of existence. Examples of such paradoxes are the Sorites paradox, the Lot-tery paradox, and the Grue paradox. Contrary to the dialectical role, the epistemicfunction of scenarios is indispensable, as it connects paradoxes to the real world andunderscores their significance in specific debates. (shrink)

Enactivism and ecological psychology converge on the relevance of the environment in understanding perception and action. On both views, perceiving organisms are not merely passive receivers of environmental stimuli, but rather form a dynamic relationship with their environments in such a way that shapes how they interact with the world. In this paper, I suggest that while enactivism and ecological psychology enjoy a shared specification of the environment as the cognitive domain, on both accounts, the structure of the environment, itself, (...) is unspecified beyond that of contingent relations with the species-typical sensorimotor capacities of perceiving organisms. This lack of specification creates a considerable gap in theory regarding the organization of organisms as coupled with their environments. I argue that this gap can be filled by drawing from resources in developmental systems theory, namely, specifying the environmental state-space as a developmental niche that shapes and is shaped by individual organisms over developmental and, on a population scale, evolutionary time. Defining the environment as an organism’s developmental niche makes it clearer how and why certain contingencies have arisen, in turn, strengthening a joint appeal to both enactivism and ecological psychology as theories asserting complementarity between organisms and their environments. (shrink)

The Ḥatäta Zärʾa Yaʿǝqob and the Ḥatäta Wäldä Ḥəywät are enigmatic and controversial works. Respectively an autobiography and a companion treatise by a disciple, they are composed in the Gǝʿǝz language and set in the highlands of Ethiopia during the seventeenth century. Expressed in prose of great power and beauty, they bear witness to pivotal events in Ethiopian history and develop a philosophical system of considerable depth. However, they have also been condemned by some as a forgery, an elaborate mystification (...) successful in deceiving generations of European and Ethiopian scholars. -/- This volume breaks new ground for the study of these texts, presenting a clear account of the most up-to-date scholarship the ways they works are being investigated by contemporary philosophers, philologists, and historians. -/- While the authorship question is addressed in the volume, it is not the sole locus of discussion. The near-exclusive focus on this question over the last century has obscured scholarly interest in the texts’ philosophical and literary qualities in their own right. Accordingly, this volume begins to fill this gap, exploring the texts' implications for the global history of philosophy and transnational intellectual history of the 17th century. (shrink)

The stated intent of the volume is "to broaden the exposure of Chinese Studies outside America and Great Britain" (p. vii). In this respect, the book succeeds admirably, as one of its distinctive features is the introduction of German scholarly approaches to an Anglo-American audience. As this fills a lacuna in Chinese studies, this volume is to be welcomed.