Within science fiction the topic of ‘first contact’ is a popular theme. How will an encounter with aliens unfold? Will we succeed in communicating with them? Although such questions are present in the background of many science fiction novels, they are not always explicitly dealt with and even if so, often in a poor way. In this article, I will introduce a typology of five dominant types of solutions to the problem of first contact in science (...) fiction works. The first four solutions are the more dominant, but also the least interesting ones. There is a fifth category that addresses the question of first contact in a more interesting way, exemplified by the work of Stanisław Lem. This fifth option defines itself as a critique of the four previous categories, or of their shared assumption of what Lem (1967) has called ‘the myth of cognitive universality’. Lem is sceptical of the common optimism that first contact will always be successful. In books such as Solaris (1961), His Master’s Voice (1967) and Fiasco (1986), humanity makes first contact with an alien phenomenon, but fails to comprehend the phenomenon. Fundamentally, it will be argued that Lem’s work shows that in such an encounter we will typically not only lack the right answers to our questions, but that we also often lack the correct questions: we simply do not have the right categories or instruments to even recognize, let alone meaningfully interrogate, the alien phenomenon. The article ends with an exploration of the implications of Lem’s pessimism and whether it is the most plausible option for first contact. Moreover, the article will draw some lessons for philosophy of science, by exploring the parallel with the confrontation of novel or deviant phenomena in science. Lem’s work is helpful here because it succeeds in articulating what has not always been appreciated in the philosophy of science, namely that the right questions by which to interrogate scientific phenomena are not given, but that their articulation always requires work. (shrink)

Evidentialism is the doctrine that rational belief should be proportioned to one’s evidence. By “one’s evidence,” I mean evidence that we possess and know that we possess. I specifically exclude from “evidence” the following: information of which we are unaware that our brain might rely on in constructing experience or in the formation of beliefs. My initial interest is with the doctrine of Evidentialism as it applies to a quandary that arises in the Sci-Fi movie Contact, the “Contact (...) Paradox” as I will call it. In this movie one of the main characters, Ellie, is a cosmologist working in a radio-telescope research facility searching for signals from intelligent life in the cosmos. The entity whose epistemological status is at issue in her quandary is her deceased father but there is an obvious parallel between the quandary of a rational believer in God and Ellie’s quandary, a parallel extensively explored in the movie itself. My first thesis is that in Ellie’s case Evidentialism is false: in certain cases, it is rational to believe in the existence of an entity in spite of the fact that the empirical evidence overall is contrary, and the Contact Paradox is one such case. Later in the paper I turn attention to the issue of Evidentialism regarding beliefs in the existence of God. My second thesis is that Evidentialism is false there as well. (shrink)

Based on the 1985 science fiction novel by the astronomer Carl Sagan, Contact tells the story of what a first encounter between humans and intelligent extraterrestrial beings might be like. It also details the complexities of faith and belief in a world where religion and science often come into conflict—a favorite theme of Sagan's, and a major subject in the history of philosophy. This chapter explores tangles of faith and belief through the lens of philosophy and the characters (...) and concepts of Contact. We pay special attention to Sagan's mouthpiece Ellie Arroway, who embodies the practice of doubting as essential to living a life rich in insight and meaning. While this is far from the sole philosophic quandary raised by the film, it is perhaps the central one. (shrink)

To what extent do early intuitions about ownership depend on cultural and socio-economic circumstances? We investigated the question by testing reasoning about third party ownership conflicts in various groups of three- and five-year-old children (N = 176), growing up in seven highly contrasted social, economic, and cultural circumstances (urban rich, poor, very poor, rural poor, and traditional) spanning three continents. Each child was presented with a series of scripts involving two identical dolls fighting over an object of possession. The child (...) had to decide who of the two dolls should own the object. Each script enacted various potential reasons for attributing ownership: creation, familiarity, first contact, equity, plus a control/neutral condition with no suggested reasons. Results show that across cultures, children are significantly more consistent and decisive in attributing ownership when one of the protagonists created the object. Development between three and five years is more or less pronounced depending on culture. The propensity to split the object in equal halves whenever possible was generally higher at certain locations (i.e., China) and quasi-inexistent in others (i.e., Vanuatu and street children of Recife). Overall, creation reasons appear to be more primordial and stable across cultures than familiarity, relative wealth or first contact. This trend does not correlate with the passing of false belief theory of mind. (shrink)

The Letter from Pero Vaz de Caminha to the King of Portugal, Manuel I, is a unique document because its account of first contact with a people unknown in Europe up to that time may be regarded as evidence of the anthropological impossibility of a neutral gaze. This is an asymmetric testimony, as we do not possess (for obvious reasons) the Amerindian counterpart of European discourse. Although the letter’s author is someone who fully assumes the objectivity claim, we (...) must not neglect the rhetorical framework of this assumption. Hence the need for textual analysis that seeks to somehow discern the boundaries between fiction and reality. It is not as an ethnographic document, indeed, that we should value the Letter. In fact, it is necessary to recognize that this is a beautiful piece of literature whose architectural weave owes everything to the classical mechanisms of Rhetoric. (shrink)

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, high hopes were put on digital contact tracing, using mobile phone apps to record and immediately notify contacts when a user reports as infected. Such apps can now be downloaded in many countries, but as second waves of COVID-19 are raging, these apps are playing a less important role than anticipated. We argue that this is because most countries have opted for app configurations that cannot provide a means of rapidly informing users (...) of likely infections while avoiding too many false positive reports. Mathematical modelling suggests that differently configured apps have the potential to do this. These require, however, that some pseudonymised data be stored on a central server, which privacy advocates have cautioned against. We contend that their influential arguments are subject to two fallacies. First, they have tended to one-sidedly focus on the risks that centralised data storage entails for privacy, while paying insufficient attention to the fact that inefficient contact tracing involves ethical risks too. Second, while the envisioned system does entail risks of breaches, such risks are also present in decentralised systems, which have been falsely presented as ‘privacy preserving by design’. When these points are understood, it becomes clear that we must rethink our approach to digital contact tracing in our fight against COVID-19. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

New theological understanding can emerge with the advancement of scientific knowledge and the use of new concepts, or older concepts in new ways. Here, the authors present a proposal to extend the concept of “rescue and recovery” found in the United Nations Law of the High Seas, off‐world and within a broader purview of other intelligent and self‐aware species that humans may someday encounter. The notion of a morality that extends to off‐world species is not new, but in this analysis, (...) rescue and recovery become an imperative when any intelligent and self‐aware species is in harm's way. Rescue and recovery encompass a necessary action component except perhaps in those cases where rescuers are in danger. The authors explore three biblical examples of rescue and recovery to derive a fundamental meaning of the concept. (shrink)

This metatheoretical paper develops a list of new research targets by exploring particularly promising interdisciplinary contact points between empirical dream research and philosophy of mind. The central example is the MPS-problem. It is constituted by the epistemic goal of conceptually isolating and empirically grounding the phenomenal property of “minimal phenomenal selfhood,” which refers to the simplest form of self-consciousness. In order to precisely describe MPS, one must focus on those conditions that are not only causally enabling, but strictly necessary (...) to bring it into existence. This contribution argues that research on bodiless dreams, asomatic out-of-body experiences, and full-body illusions has the potential to make decisive future contributions. Further items on the proposed list of novel research targets include differentiating the concept of a “first-person perspective” on the subcognitive level; investigating relevant phenomenological and neurofunctional commonalities between mind-wandering and dreaming; comparing the functional depth of embodiment across dream and wake states; and demonstrating that the conceptual consequences of cognitive corruption and systematic rationality deficits in the dream state are much more serious for philosophical epistemology (and, perhaps, the methodology of dream research itself) than commonly assumed. The paper closes by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between dream research and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The thesis that knowledge is a factive mental state plays a central role in knowledge-first epistemology, but accepting this thesis requires also accepting an unusually severe version of externalism about the mind. On this strong attitude externalism, whether S is in the mental state of knowledge can and often will rapidly change in virtue of changes in external states of reality with which S has no causal contact. It is commonly thought that this externalism requirement originates in the (...) factivity of knowledge. However, despite a number of recent defenses of non-factive accounts of knowledge, epistemology has yet to consider whether a non-factive approach might produce a version of the mental state thesis that can avoid strong externalism. Here I do just that, exploring how three different proposals for weakening factivity might be adapted to theories of knowledge as a non-factive mental state. Contrary to what we might expect, however, none of these proposals are compatible with anything close to attitude internalism about knowledge—or even a substantially weaker externalism. All told, the widespread view that wraps up the severe externalism required for knowledge to be a mental state in factivity is mistaken. Knowledge’s external-world connection runs far deeper than the factivity constraint. (shrink)

As many Western countries emerged from initial periods of lockdown in spring 2020, they had brought COVID-19 infection rates down significantly. This was followed, however, with more drastic second and third waves of viral spread, which many of these same countries are struggling to bring under control, even with the implementation of further periods of lockdown. Could this have been prevented by policymakers? We revisit two strategies that were focus of much discussion during the early stages of the pandemic, and (...) which were implemented in several Western countries, albeit in a weakened form. These strategies both proceed by targeting certain segments of the population, while allowing others to go about their lives unhindered. The first suggests selectively isolating those that would most likely suffer severe adverse effects if infected – in particular the elderly. The second involves identifying and quarantining those who are likely to be infected through a contact tracing app that would centrally store users’ information. We suggest that both strategies showed promise in preventing the need for further lockdowns, albeit in a significantly more stringent form than anything that was implemented in Western countries. We then proceed to an ethical evaluation of these more stringent policies. We contend that selective isolation strategies face severe ethical problems due to its discriminatory nature, while the ethical issues with a more aggressive contact tracing regime can be mitigated. This analysis has implications for how to respond effectively and ethically to future pandemics, and perhaps contains lessons on how to successfully emerge from our current predicament. (shrink)

Constructive realism (CR) is an attempt to overcome the difficulties associated with naïve realism and radical constructivism. There are different versions for CR. In this paper, I defend a particular version of CR. Complexity of reality, on the one hand, and the impact of human mind, language, and culture, on the other, leads to the inevitable contribution of constructs in knowledge development. According to the CR, even if mental, linguistic and cultural side of constructs could not be avoided in principle, (...) a certain proportion of reality-contact can be considered and defended for the constructs. In this sense, human mind and culture has a constitutive role to play in knowledge acquiring instead of being an innocent means in the process of acquiring knowledge. On the other hand, the role played by the reality in this process cannot be ignored because, according to the CR, knowledge consists after all of knowing 'something' in the real world. On the whole, taking into account both the constitutive role of mind and culture, on the one hand, and the inevitable role of the reality, on the other, shows the difference between the CR and pure realism, pure constructivism, and those versions of CR that do not take the constitutive role of mind into account. There are requirements for the CR in science education. First of all, there must be a constant caution for making sure that our scientific theories have caught the proportion of reality-contact. This point shows the difference between the CR and pure constructivism. This caution should be present in our science teaching as well. Secondly, we should encourage our students to develop imaginative alternative constructs when they are learning sciences. This shows the difference between the CR with naïve realists who ignore the importance of students' imaginations in suggesting alternative constructs. Notwithstanding, while we encourage the students to develop their imaginative constructs, there should be considered a limitation for their over-justification about their constructs. In this way, we as teachers should urge them to take counter-evidence most seriously into account. This is a point in which constructive realists are distinguished from pragmatists too. Pragmatists do not give up their theories in confrontation with counter-evidence but rather look for almost limitless changes in their constructs in order for making the counterevidence compatible with their theories, whereas constructive realists will be ready to take counterevidence more serious and correct their constructs accordingly. (shrink)

Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is an established method for integrating values into technical design. It has been applied to different technologies and, more recently, to artificial intelligence (AI). We argue that AI poses a number of challenges specific to VSD that require a somewhat modified VSD approach. Machine learning (ML), in particular, poses two challenges. First, humans may not understand how an AI system learns certain things. This requires paying attention to values such as transparency, explicability, and accountability. Second, (...) ML may lead to AI systems adapting in ways that ‘disembody’ the values embedded in them. To address this, we propose a threefold modified VSD approach: 1) integrating a known set of VSD principles (AI4SG) as design norms from which more specific design requirements can be derived; 2) distinguishing between values that are promoted and respected by the design to ensure outcomes that not only do no harm but also contribute to good; and 3) extending the VSD process to encompass the whole life cycle of an AI technology in order to monitor unintended value consequences and redesign as needed. We illustrate our VSD for AI approach with an example use case of a SARS-CoV-2 contact tracing app. (shrink)

This paper intends to further the understanding of the formal properties of (higher-order) vagueness by connecting theories of (higher-order) vagueness with more recent work in topology. First, we provide a “translation” of Bobzien's account of columnar higher-order vagueness into the logic of topological spaces. Since columnar vagueness is an essential ingredient of her solution to the Sorites paradox, a central problem of any theory of vagueness comes into contact with the modern mathematical theory of topology. Second, Rumfitt’s recent (...) topological reconstruction of Sainsbury’s theory of prototypically defined concepts is shown to lead to the same class of spaces that characterize Bobzien’s account of columnar vagueness, namely, weakly scattered spaces. Rumfitt calls these spaces polar spaces. They turn out to be closely related to Gärdenfors’ conceptual spaces, which have come to play an ever more important role in cognitive science and related disciplines. Finally, Williamson’s “logic of clarity” is explicated in terms of a generalized topology (“locology”) that can be considered an alternative to standard topology. Arguably, locology has some conceptual advantages over topology with respect to the conceptualization of a boundary and a borderline. Moreover, in Williamson’s logic of clarity, vague concepts with respect to a notion of a locologically inspired notion of a “slim boundary” are (stably) columnar. Thus, Williamson’s logic of clarity also exhibits a certain affinity for columnar vagueness. In sum, a topological perspective is useful for a conceptual elucidation and unification of central aspects of a variety of contemporary accounts of vagueness. (shrink)

[File is the introduction to the monograph] -/- Abstract to monograph -/- How and whether thinking affects perceiving is a deeply important question. Of course it is of scientific interest: to understand the human mind is to understand how we best distinguish its processes, how those processes interact, and what this implies for how and what we may know about the world. And so in the philosopher’s terms, this book is one on both mental architecture and the epistemology of perception. (...) But there is a more human interest. How we make contact with the world, and with one another, is of the most basic of importance. We can make both sensory contact and cognitive contact with the world. The first is traditionally supposed to be determined by the biological nature of our sensory systems, while the second is at least partly determined by us, what we have learned, our experiences, and so on. The most basic claim of the book is that this is mistaken and importantly so. Our sensory contact with the world can also change and in a way that is importantly affected by the cognitive contact that we have, or have had, with the world. Thinking does not just affect perceiving, thinking improves perceiving. If this is true, it changes not only how we should theorize the mind, it changes how we should understand, as individuals, our place in and contact with the world. (shrink)

Sex is an important part of human life. It is a source of pleasure and intimacy, and is integral to many people’s self-identity. This chapter examines the opportunities and challenges posed by the use of AI in how humans express and enact their sexualities. It does so by focusing on three main issues. First, it considers the idea of digisexuality, which according to McArthur and Twist (2017) is the label that should be applied to those ‘whose primary sexual identity (...) comes through the use of technology’, particularly through the use of robotics and AI. While agreeing that this phenomenon is worthy of greater scrutiny, the chapter questions whether it is necessary or socially desirable to see this as a new form of sexual identity. Second, it looks at the role that AI can play in facilitating human-to-human sexual contact, focusing in particular on the use of self-tracking and predictive analytics in optimising sexual and intimate behaviour. There are already a number of apps and services that promise to use AI to do this, but they pose a range of ethical risks that need to be addressed at both an individual and societal level. Finally, it considers the idea that a sophisticated form of AI could be an object of love. Can we be truly intimate with something that has been ‘programmed’ to love us? Contrary to the widely-held view, this chapter argues that this is indeed possible. (shrink)

There is an apparent tension in Shepherd’s accounts of space and time. Firstly, Shepherd explicitly claims that we know that the space and time of the unperceived world exist because they cause our phenomenal experience of them. Secondly, Shepherd emphasizes that empty space and time do not have the power to effect any change in the world. My proposal is that for Shepherd time has exactly one causal power: to provide for the continued existence of self-same or changing objects. Because (...) Shepherd takes causation to be a relation whereby two objects combine to form a third, their effect, whenever we perceive a continually existing object, since time is a proper part of such objects, our perception of time is caused by time itself. Likewise, space’s causal power is to provide for the possibility of the motion or rest of objects, and so when we perceive objects with space as a proper part, we come into causal contact with space. (shrink)

"Kapitał społeczny ludzi starych na przykładzie mieszkańców miasta Białystok" to książka oparta na analizach teoretycznych i empirycznych, która przedstawia problem diagnozowania i używania kapitału społecznego ludzi starych w procesach rozwoju lokalnego i regionalnego. Kwestia ta jest istotna ze względu na zagrożenia i wyzwania związane z procesem szybkiego starzenia się społeczeństwa polskiego na początku XXI wieku. Opracowanie stanowi próbę sformułowania odpowiedzi na pytania: jaki jest stan kapitału społecznego ludzi starych mieszkających w Białymstoku, jakim ulega przemianom i jakie jest jego zróżnicowanie? Ludzie (...) starzy są tu postrzegani jako kategoria społeczna, czyli zbiór osób podobnych do siebie pod względem społecznie istotnych cech (takich jak wiek, posiadane role społeczne i świadomość korzystania ze świadczeń społecznych), którzy są świadomi tego podobieństwa i swojej odrębności od innych. Przyjmuje się ponadto, iż osoby takie przekroczyły 60. rok życia. Zakłada się też, że w zasobach ludzkich skumulowany jest kapitał ludzki, społeczny i kulturowy. Kapitał społeczny jest tu ujmowany szeroko jako potencjał współdziałania osadzony w powiązaniach międzyludzkich i normach społecznych, który może przynosić korzyści osobom, grupom i społeczeństwom. W części teoretycznej przedstawiono informacje o starości jako etapie w życiu jednostki, wyjaśniono pojęcie ludzi starych, omówiono społeczne teorie starzenia się, historyczne czynniki oddziaływające na położenie kategorii społecznej ludzi starych, zmiany ich miejsca w społeczeństwie polskim w trakcie transformacji ustrojowej i na początku XXI wieku, możliwe konsekwencje wzrostu długości życia w warunkach demokracji i kapitalizmu oraz charakterystykę problemu starzenia się ludności Białegostoku jako miasta pogranicza. Zaprezentowano też różnorodne koncepcje kapitału społecznego, sfery jego oddziaływania na rozwój społeczno-gospodarczy, jego stan w Polsce oraz wytyczne do strategicznego budowania jego zasobów. Przybliżono również wybrane informacje o aktywności ludzi starych w życiu publicznym, społecznym i gospodarczym jako kluczowych cechach ich kapitału społecznego. Porządkując różne stanowiska teoretyczne, wyniki badań i dane statystyczne, dążono do powiązania wielu rozproszonych źródeł w przekonaniu, iż jest to istotne w celu określenia i zagospodarowania zasobów kapitału społecznego seniorów, jak również niwelacji opóźnienia polskiej socjologii w zakresie badań nad ludźmi starymi. Pomimo, iż za podstawową perspektywę teoretyczną publikacji uznana została koncepcja kapitału P. Bourdieu, autor bierze również pod uwagę propozycje badawcze J.S. Colemana, R.D. Putnama, F. Fukuyamy, A. Giddensa, P. Sztompki i A. Sadowskiego. Drugi rozdział zawiera określenie ram metodologicznych badań przeprowadzonych na potrzeby tej publikacji. Omówiono przyjęte założenia badawcze oraz przybliżono sposób i przebieg realizacji badań. Przede wszystkim zdecydowano się na korzystanie z metody jakościowej i zastosowanie techniki wywiadu swobodnego ukierunkowanego. Uznano, iż podmiotowy kontakt z ludźmi starymi umożliwi dokładniejsze rozpoznanie kontekstu, w którym znajdują się zasoby ich kapitału społecznego. Jest to ważne, gdyż przenoszenie na rodzimy grunt opracowanych za granicą interpretacji działań ludzi starych i rozwiązań aktywizujących, może okazać się nieskuteczne lub wywołać negatywne efekty zewnętrzne. Ponadto w literaturze przedmiotu zwraca się uwagę na niedostatek badań gerontologicznych zgodnych z paradygmatem interpretatywnym. Badaniu poddano 26 respondentów w wieku od 60 do 89 lat żyjących w mieście Białystok związanych z jedną z dwóch różnych instytucji: Domem Pomocy Społecznej i Uniwersytetem Trzeciego Wieku. Poprzez porównywanie osób znajdujących się na dwóch biegunach aktywności społecznej możliwe było dostrzeżenie podobieństw i różnic w ich wyposażeniu kapitałowym, a zarazem w osiągniętych w ciągu życia pozycjach w strukturze klasowej i zasobach służących pomyślnej starości6. W trzecim rozdziale przedstawiona została część wyników analiz empirycznych. Przybliżono tu sposób, w jaki ludzie starzy myślą o podobnych sobie przodkach i osobach współczesnych, a także czynniki, w zależności od których zmienia się ich pozycja społeczna w mieście oraz problemy społeczne, jakie uznają za najważniejsze dla ludzi starych. Analizie poddano opinie o ich czasie wolnym, szansach i barierach aktywności ekonomicznej. Wyróżniono typy kapitału społecznego ludzi starych w zależności od instytucji, z którymi są związani oraz podejścia do postrzegania i wykorzystywania zróżnicowania wewnętrznego seniorów. Omówiono wizerunek seniorów w środkach masowego przekazu. Publikacja nie zawiera ścisłego zakończenia. W ostatnim rozdziale wskazano jedynie na główne wnioski płynące z badań oraz na potencjalne dalsze kierunki analiz. Uzupełnienie tego podejścia stanowią zamieszczone w aneksie zestawienia oddolnych technik budowania kapitału społecznego oraz podstawowych cech Miast Przyjaznych Starszemu Wiekowi. Z opracowania tego z pewnością będą mogli skorzystać nie tylko naukowcy zajmujący się tematyką ludzi starych, ale i pracownicy socjalni, politycy, pracodawcy, przedstawiciele mediów i organizacji pozarządowych oraz obywatele Białegostoku i innych miast. ** "Social Capital of Old People on the Example of Bialystok Residents" is a book based on theoretical and empirical study, which presents an issue of diagnosing and using of old people social capital in the local and regional development processes. This issue is significant because of the threats and challenges associated with process of rapid ageing of Polish society at the beginning of 21st century. Publication, in particular, is an attempt to give answers to the following questions: what is the state of old people social capital in Bialystok, what transformations it undergoes and how is it differentiated? In this study old people are viewed as a social category, which is a set of people similar to each other in terms of socially significant features (such as age, possessed social roles and awareness of received social benefits), who are aware of these similarities and differences between each other. Moreover, it is assumed, that such persons exceeded the 60 years of age. It is also assumed that human, social and cultural capital is accumulated in the human resources. Social capital is recognized here broadly as a potential for collaboration embedded in interpersonal relationships and social norms that may benefit individuals, groups and societies. The book consists of three chapters. The first, which is the theoretical part of work, includes information about: old age as a stage of individual life and explanation of the old people notion. It discusses social theories of ageing, historical factors affecting on the social position of old people category, changes in their place in Polish society during the system transformation and in the early 21st century. It describes the possible consequences of increased life expectancy for democracy and capitalism - including the concepts of society for all ages, silver economy. It also features ageing population issue, as well as social policy towards the elderly and old age in Bialystok as the borderland city. A variety of social capital concepts were presented; the spheres of its influence on socio-economic development, its status in Poland and guidelines for strategic building of its resources. Selected information on the activity of old people in public, social and economic life as key features of their social capital was brought closer. Putting various theoretical positions, results of research and statistical data in order was aimed to link many dispersed sources considering that it is relevant to identify and develop seniors' social capital resources, as well as leveling the delay of Polish sociology research on the elderly. Fundamental theoretical perspective of publication is the concept of capital according to P. Bourdieu. However, the proposals of J.S. Coleman, R.D. Putnam, F. Fukuyama, A. Giddens, P. Sztompka and A. Sadowski were also used. The second chapter contains a methodological framework for the purposes of study. Research assumptions, method and course of implementation of studies were discussed. The study is based on the qualitative method and the application of in-depth interview techniques. It was considered that the personal contact with old people will be more accurate than other research techniques to identify the context in which they social capital resources can be found. It is important because the transfer of developed abroad activating solutions and interpretations of old people actions may be ineffective or have negative external effects in the Polish context. Moreover, in the Polish science literature attention is paid to scarcity of gerontological research in accordance with the interpretive paradigm. Study involved 26 respondents aged 60 to 89 years living in Bialystok associated with one of two different institutions: nursing home for the elderly and University of the Third Age. By comparing the persons on two extremes of social activity it was possible to see similarities and differences in their capital equipment, and also in achievements of the life positions in the class structure and resources aimed at successful ageing. The third chapter presents the empirical analysis of the research results. This part outlines the way in which old people think about their ancestors and contemporary people. It also shows factors according to changes in their social position in the city, social issues which they consider most important for old people, their opinions about leisure time, opportunities and barriers of economic activity and types of old people social capital depending on the institution with which they are associated. Approach to the perception and use of internal disparities of seniors were also discussed. The analysis additionally contains the evaluation of senior citizens image in the polish mass media. This publication does not contain a strict ending. It only identifies the main conclusions of the research and potential directions of future analysis. Above all, older people could improve their position not by demanding increases in social benefits from which major parts are often taken away by their family members, but by highlighting their human, social and cultural capital. It is necessary to create favorable conditions for social and professional life of old people and their cooperation with members of local communities. Important role in this regard is played by institutions implementing three tasks: stimulating senior citizens' desire to satisfy previously unrealized needs; creating relationships between them so that they can solve their own problems and work for the others; and providing legal, social and vocational guidance. Stimulating cooperation between existing public, commercial and non-governmental sector organizations may serve to achieve these goals. The dissemination of bottom-up techniques of social capital building and checklist of essential features of Age-friendly Cities may also be important. -/- . (shrink)

Sleep and dreaming are important daily phenomena that are receiving growing attention from both the scientific and the philosophical communities. The increasingly popular predictive brain framework within cognitive science aims to give a full account of all aspects of cognition. The aim of this paper is to critically assess the theoretical advantages of Predictive Processing (PP, as proposed by Clark 2013, Clark 2016; and Hohwy 2013) in defining sleep and dreaming. After a brief introduction, we overview the state of the (...) art at the intersection between dream research and PP (with particular reference to Hobson and Friston 2012; Hobson et al. 2014). In the following sections we focus on two theoretically promising aspects of the research program. First, we consider the explanations of phenomenal consciousness during sleep (i.e. dreaming) and how it arises from the neural work of the brain. PP provides a good picture of the peculiarity of dreaming but it can’t fully address the problem of how consciousness comes to be in the first place. We propose that Integrated Information Theory (IIT) (Oizumi et al. 2014; Tononi et al. 2016) is a good candidate for this role and we will show its advantages and points of contact with PP. After introducing IIT, we deal with the evolutionary function of sleeping and dreaming. We illustrate that PP fits with contemporary researches on the important adaptive function of sleep and we discuss why IIT can account for sleep mentation (i.e. dreaming) in evolutionary terms (Albantakis et al. 2014). In the final section, we discuss two future avenues for dream research that can fruitfully adopt the perspective offered by PP: (a) the role of bodily predictions in the constitution of the sleeping brain activity and the dreaming experience, and (b) the precise role of the difference stages of sleep (REM (Rapid eye movement), NREM (Non-rapid eye movement) in the constitution and refinement of the predictive machinery. (shrink)

In the years before the Second World War, Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach emigrated to the United States, escaping the quickly deteriorating political situation on the continent. Once in the U. S., the two significantly changed the American philosophical climate. This two-part paper reconstructs Carnap’s and Reichenbach’s surprisingly numerous interactions with American academics in the decades before their move in order to explain the impact of their arrival in the late 1930s. Building on archival material of several key players and (...) institutions, I take some first steps toward answering the question why logical empiricism became so successful in the United States after the War. This first part reconstructs Carnap’s development between 1923, when he first visited New York, and 1936, when he was offered a position at the University of Chicago. I describe Carnap’s first substantive contacts with American philosophers as well as the events leading up to his decision to emigrate. In addition, I argue that some of Carnap’s work from the mid-1930s—in particular “Testability and Meaning”—can be better understood if we take into account his attempts to correct the American narrative about logical positivism and his increasingly desperate efforts to find a position in the United States. (shrink)

The powerful role that teachers can play in our development is the focus Binyamin, Jayusi, and Tamir’s chapter in this volume. They argue that teachers, in particular teachers that don’t share the same background as their students, can help counter the increasing polarization that characterizes our current era. In these critical notes I raise three challenges to their proposal. First, by exploring the mechanisms of polarization I demonstrate that polarization is not a problem unique to thick diversity or thick (...) multiculturalism. Second, the central premise of the authors’ proposal rests on the ability of greater contact to reduce prejudice. The contact hypothesis, however, has numerous backlash effects and unintended consequences that can increase prejudice rather than reduce prejudice. These backlash effects and unintended consequences raise serious doubts for the success of placing minority teachers in majority classrooms to reduce prejudice. Third, I raise concerns about how the proposal tokenizes minority teachers, the use of instrumental rationales for diversity, and the politics of deference and being-in-the-room privilege that also go unaddressed in their proposal. (shrink)

By transcendental aesthetic, Kant means “the science of all principles of a priori sensibility” (A 21/B 35). These, he argues, are the laws that properly direct our judgments of taste (B 35 – 36 fn.), i.e. our aesthetic judgments as we ordinarily understand that notion in the context of contemporary art. Thus the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason, entitled the Transcendental Aesthetic, enumerates the necessary presuppositions of, among other things, our ability to make empirical judgments about (...) particular works of art. These presuppositions are sensible rather than intellectual because on Kant's view, all intellection that considers objects of any kind, whether abstract or concrete, must at base connect to actual, material objects with which we come into direct contact; and this we can do only through sensibility (A 19/B 33). Thus the following discussion explores what Kant claims must be true of us in order to make the sorts of aesthetic judgments we make, rather than any particular class or quality of aesthetic judgments itself. On Kant's view, what must be true of us in order to make aesthetic judgments is not different from what must be true of us in order to make any other kind of judgment about empirical objects. This last point is worth emphasizing, in order to correct an interpretation of Kant's account of aesthetic judgment in the Critique of Judgment that wrongly reads Kant as claiming that aesthetic judgments do not have to satisfy the same basic requirements of judgment that any other kind of judgment also must satisfy, such as the synthetic subsumption of such objects under certain necessary and hard-wired concepts of understanding, the internal coherence of such judgments with other, non-aesthetic ones of a more abstract and comprehensive character, the unified consciousness within which such judgments are intelligibly made, and the like. Of course Kant recognizes the special character of aesthetic judgments and unpacks it in the... (shrink)

Should the existence of moral disagreement reduce one’s confidence in one’s moral judgments? Many have claimed that it should not. They claim that we should be morally self-sufficient: that one’s moral judgment and moral confidence ought to be determined entirely one’s own reasoning. Others’ moral beliefs ought not impact one’s own in any way. I claim that moral self-sufficiency is wrong. Moral self-sufficiency ignores the degree to which moral judgment is a fallible cognitive process like all the rest. In this (...) paper, I take up two possible routes to moral self-sufficiency.First, I consider Robert Paul Wolff’s argument that an autonomous being is required to act from his own reasoning. Does Wolff’s argument yield moral self-sufficiency? Wolff’s argument does forbid unthinking obedience. But it does not forbid guidance: the use of moral testimony to glean evidence about nonmoral states of affairs. An agent can use the existence of agreement or disagreement as evidence concerning the reliability of their own cognitive abilities, which is entirely nonmoral information. Corroboration and discorroboration yields nonmoral evidence, and no reasonable theory of autonomy can forbid the use of nonmoral evidence. In fact, by using others to check on my own cognitive functionality, an agent is reasoning better and is thereby more autonomous.Second, I consider Philip Nickel’s requirement that moral judgment proceed from personal understanding. I argue that the requirement of understanding does forbid unthinking obedience, but not discorroboration. When an agent reasons morally, and then reduces confidence in their judgments through discorroboration, they are in full contact with the moral reasons, and with the epistemic reasons. Discorroboration yields more understanding, not less. (shrink)

The term ‘formal ontology’ was first used by the philosopher Edmund Husserl in his Logical Investigations to signify the study of those formal structures and relations – above all relations of part and whole – which are exemplified in the subject-matters of the different material sciences. We follow Husserl in presenting the basic concepts of formal ontology as falling into three groups: the theory of part and whole, the theory of dependence, and the theory of boundary, continuity and (...) class='Hi'>contact. These basic concepts are presented in relation to the problem of providing an account of the formal ontology of the mesoscopic realm of everyday experience, and specifically of providing an account of the concept of individual substance. (shrink)

Abstract In The Descent of Man (1879), Charles Darwin proposed a speculative evolutionary explanation of extended benevolence—a human sympathetic capacity that extends to all nations, races, and even to all sentient beings. This essay draws on twenty-first century social science to show that Darwin’s explanation is correct in its broad outlines. Extended benevolence is manifested in institutions such as legal human rights and democracy, in behaviors such as social movements for human rights and the protection of nonhuman animals, and (...) in normative attitudes such as emancipative values and a commitment to promote the rights or welfare of animals. These phenomena can be substantially explained by cultural evolutionary forces that trace back to three components of what Darwin called the human “moral sense”: (1) sympathy, (2) our disposition to follow community rules or norms, and (3) our capacity to make normative judgments. Extended benevolence likely emerged with “workarounds,” including political ideologies, that established an inclusive sympathetic concern for sentient life. It likely became as widespread as it is now due to recently arisen socio-economic conditions that have created more opportunities for people to have contact with and take the perspective of a broader cross-section of humanity, as well as other species. (shrink)

This study adds to the existing literature on meaningful work by offering a cross-cultural perspective. Since work shapes the kind of person that we are and plays an important role in our well-being, some theorists have adopted a virtue theory approach to meaningful work using an Aristotelian-MacIntyrean framework. For lack of a better term, I will call this a western virtue theory. This paper presents a contemporary virtue-focused Buddhist perspective on the topic. While a virtue-ethics interpretation of Buddhism is now (...) widely accepted and has been applied to several issues, not much has been written about meaningful work using a Buddhist-Aristotelian comparative framework. Buddhism is an important cultural component not only of countries that are predominantly Buddhist, but of other societies that have come in contact with it. To develop a Buddhist framework, I draw heavily from the works of Buddhist scholars, particularly in the West who use a virtue framework in interpreting Buddhism. The aims of my essay are dual. The first is to articulate a straightforward application of Buddhism on the contemporary ethical discussion of meaningful work. The second is to discuss the similarities, clarify the differences, and demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses relative to each other of the Buddhist and the Western virtue theory perspectives. In my analysis, I argue that consideration of Buddhist perspective will enable us to construct a cross-cultural, inclusive, and pluralistic conceptual model for the deliberation of meaningful work that complements the Western virtue theory. (shrink)

Historical reconstructions of the effects of the intellectual migration are typically informed by one of two conflicting narratives. Some scholars argue that refugee philosophers, in particular the logical positivists, contributed to the demise of distinctly American schools of thought. Others reject this ‘eclipse view’ and argue that postwar analytic philosophy can best be characterized as a synthesis of American and positivist views. This paper studies the fate of one of the most influential schools of U.S. philosophy—Columbia naturalism—and argues that both (...) narratives are part of a larger story. First, I reconstruct the rise of the Columbia school, focusing on its naturalist analyses of science, morality, and religion as well as its contributions to the history of ideas. Next, I trace some of the naturalists’ contacts with German philosophers and show that they encountered a strong bifurcation between historical and scientific philosophy in their discussions. I argue that a similar distinction gradually infected debates between naturalists, eventually resulting in a split within the Columbia school itself. The historically-oriented naturalists, I argue, were overshadowed by the analytic movement, whereas the science-minded naturalists were able to incorporate the views of the émigrés, thereby developing the tradition in new directions. (shrink)

I argue that it is possible to improve and methodologically enrich the pragmatic dimension of neurophenomenology by searching for points of contact and possibilities for integration between its phenomenological grounding and various first-person and embodied methodologies and practices, referring in particular to somatics, somaesthetics, and emersiology.

Abstract: A self-abnegating person lacks contact with their agency. This can be against their will, in absence of their will, or voluntarily. This does not mean that they cannot provide reasons for or a narrative about their actions. It’s just that the reasons or narrative are someone else’s. People abnegate parts of their agency regularly; for example, within hierarchical institutions. In other cases, the self-abnegation is all-encompassing; for example, a victim of brainwashing. An agent in such a position can (...) completely fail to understand themselves or be understood by others as having a self. I focus on two problems related to self-abnegation. The first is whether there is a conception of a self that can reliably discriminate between strong selves and abnegated selves. The second is whether a person with an abnegated self should be treated as a person with a strong self. I conclude that the good of respecting derived or instrumental agency comes in putting that person in a position to agentially flourish and in maintaining the structural conditions and expectations of agency. (shrink)

Fumerton’s distinctive brand of metaepistemological scepticism is compared and contrasted with the related position outlined by Stroud. It is argued that there are at least three interesting points of contact between Fumerton and Stroud’s metaepistemology. The first point of contact is that both Fumerton and Stroud think that (1) externalist theories of justification permit a kind of non-inferential, perceptual justification for our beliefs about non-psychological reality, but it’s not sufficient for philosophical assurance. However, Fumerton claims, while Stroud (...) denies, that (2) direct acquaintance with facts is sufficient for philosophical assurance. And this is important because Stroud thinks that (3) we have direct perceptual access or acquaintance with facts about the external world, while Fumerton denies this. (shrink)

The changes known as the loss of inflexions in English (11th- 15th centuries, included) were prompted with the introduction of a new mode of thinking. The mode of thinking, for the Anglo-Saxons, was a dynamic way of conceiving of things. Things were considered events happening. With the contacts of Anglo-Saxons with, first, the Romano-British; second, the introduction of Christianity; and finally with the Norman invasion, their dynamic way of thinking was confronted with the static conception of things coming from (...) the Mediterranean. The history of English from the 11th to the 15th century meant the introduction, confrontation and adoption of a new mental conception of things, the static way of conceiving of things, both modes of thinking defining the language today. (shrink)

Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox is about Mr. Fox's attempt to flourish as both a wild animal and a consumer. As such, this film raises some interesting and difficult questions about what it means to be a member of a certain kind, what is required to flourish as a member of that kind, and how consumerism either promotes or inhibits such flourishing. In this paper I use Fantastic Mr. Fox as an entry point into an examination of the relationship between (...) consumerism and human flourishing. More specifically, I use this film as a way to engage with a worry that many philosophers have expressed: namely, the worry that consumerism threatens the identity of individual consumers. I begin by bringing certain of Mr. Fox's worries into contact with an Aristotelian account of flourishing. I then press Aristotle's account further by arguing that consumerism threatens one's ability to flourish as a human being because it tends to discourage one from engaging in distinctly human activities. I then conclude by looking to Aristotle and Mr. Fox for some ways to respond to this threat. My ultimate goals are, first, to shed light on certain dangers that are associated with consumerism, and second, to indicate how people living in consumerist societies might nonetheless overcome those dangers. (shrink)

The paper outlines a model-theoretic framework for investigating and comparing a variety of mereotopological theories. In the first part we consider different ways of characterizing a mereotopology with respect to (i) the intended interpretation of the connection primitive, and (ii) the composition of the admissible domains of quantification (e.g., whether or not they include boundary elements). The second part extends this study by considering two further dimensions along which different patterns of topological connection can be classified - the strength (...) of the connection and its multiplicity. (shrink)

This article argues for epistemic decolonization by developing a relational model of knowledge, which we locate within indigenous knowledges. We live in a time of ongoing global, epistemic coloniality, embedded in and shaped by colonial ideas and practices. Epistemological decolonization requires taking nondominant knowledges and their epistemes seriously to open up the possibility of interrogating and dismantling the hegemony of the Western knowledge tradition. We here ask two related questions: What are the decolonial affordances of indigenous knowledges? And how do (...) these compare to other contemporary critiques of epistemic coloniality, specifically those mounted by posthumanism? In answer, we develop three definitional senses of relational with reference to indigenous knowledges. First, we define indigenous knowledges in relation to Western knowledge, with which they share a dialectical origin at the moment of colonial contact. Second, indigenous knowledges are relational in their ontological and axiological orientations. Third, relationality in indigenous knowledge suggests a trialectic space, rather than a dialectic space. We argue for the necessity of an anticolonial framework, which assigns priority to indigenous people’s perceptions and ways of knowing for theorizing recurring colonial relations and their (imperialistic) manifestations in producing and reproducing knowledge. (shrink)

François Lamy, a Benedictine monk and Cartesian philosopher whose extensive relations with Arnauld, Bossuet, Fénélon, and Malebranche put him into contact with the intellectual elite of late-seventeenth-century France, authored the very first detailed and explicit refutation of Spinoza’s Ethics in French, Le nouvel athéisme renversé. Regrettably overlooked in the secondary literature on Spinoza, Lamy is an interesting figure in his own right, and his anti-Spinozist work sheds important light on Cartesian assumptions that inform the earliest phase of Spinoza’s (...) critical reception in the seventeenth-century. I begin by presenting Lamy’s life and the contentious state of Spinoza’s French reception in the 1680 and 1690s. I then discuss a central argument in Lamy’s refutation, namely the Cartesian objection that Spinoza’s account of the conceptual independence of attributes is incompatible with the theory of substance monism. Contrasting Lamy’s objection with questions put to Spinoza by de Vries and Tschirnhaus, I maintain that by exhibiting the direction Spinoza’s views on substance and attribute took in maturing we may accurately assess the strength of Spinoza’s position vis-à-vis his Cartesian objector, and I argue that, in fact, Spinoza’s mature account of God as an expressive ens realissimum is not vulnerable to Lamy’s criticism. In conclusion, I turn to Lamy’s objection that Spinoza’s philosophy is question-begging in view of Spinoza’s account of God, and I exhibit what this point of criticism tells us about the intentions of the first French Cartesian rebuttal of the Ethics. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that communication in partnering is a physical exchange of information on the basis of ethically-bound conditions. Simply put, partners can cause each other harm. Thus, the criteria of communication in partnering is always within an ethical domain, where action runs along a continuum ranging from the ethical to the unethical. To make this argument, I will first lay out the conditions to which the relevant norms of evaluation can adhere. These conditions include proximity, orientation, (...) and point(s) of contact. Rather than provide a how-to guide for communication, I will examine a critical vocabulary for practically approaching communication in partnering. Section I begins with the conditions of communication, followed by Section II which examines the norms of communicating well. (shrink)

[For an Ethics without Theology] This study is a critical reflection on Marek Vácha's article on the ethics of euthanasia. In the first part the author offers a short consideration of the reasons for the moribund state of ethics in Czech philosophy, after which, in the second part, he presents a critique of Vácha's article. The article in question is, above all, lacking in a philosophical approach to the problem of euthanasia, and we find in it not so much (...) arguments as rhetoric. The only line of argument that is detectable in the article is founded on natural theology, something that Vácha elsewhere repudiates, and it offers the reader a false dilemma between accepting theistic ethics on the one hand or total subjectivism on the other. In reality, of course, there is a wide range of kinds of objective secular ethics. In the third part, one of these forms is summarised--a system of "everyday morality" which is founded on the concept of harm, and which treats conduct as immoral primarily when it causes unjustifiable harm to others. This form of ethics does not presuppose any controversial theory of value, and it constitutes the viewpoint from which the author then defends physician-assisted suicide. A doctor who helps a patient die--or who causes the patient's death on his own request--does not cause that individual harm if she has only a period of life filled with pain left. In conclusion the author indentifies certain points of contact between secular and theistic ethics. (shrink)

In order to understand the transmission of a disease across a population we will have to understand not only the dynamics of contact infection but the transfer of health-care beliefs and resulting health-care behaviors across that population. This paper is a first step in that direction, focusing on the contrasting role of linkage or isolation between sub-networks in (a) contact infection and (b) belief transfer. Using both analytical tools and agent-based simulations we show that it is the (...) structure of a network that is primary for predicting contact infection—whether the networks or sub-networks at issue are distributed ring networks or total networks (hubs, wheels, small world, random, or scale-free for example). Measured in terms of time to total infection, degree of linkage between sub-networks plays a minor role. The case of belief is importantly different. Using a simplified model of belief reinforcement, and measuring belief transfer in terms of time to community consensus, we show that degree of linkage between sub-networks plays a major role in social communication of beliefs. Here, in contrast to the case of contract infection, network type turns out to be of relatively minor importance. What you believe travels differently. In a final section we show that the pattern of belief transfer exhibits a classic power law regardless of the type of network involved. (shrink)

The essay is a comparative look at Descartes' and Pascal's epistemology. For so vast a topic, I shall confine myself to comparing three crucial epistemological topics, through which I hope to evince Descartes' and Pascal's differences and points of contact. Firstly, I will concentrate on the philosophers' engagement with skepticism, which, for each, had different functions and motivations. Secondly, the thinkers' relation to Reason shall be examined, since it is the fulcrum of their thought—and the main aspect that separates (...) them. Lastly, I will examine each philosopher's theist epistemology; this section, of course, will focus on how and by what means Descartes and Pascal set out to prove God's existence. The latter aspect shall take us back to each philosopher's relationship to Doubt: the title, " The Giants of Doubt ", in fact, implies a fundamental link between Descartes and Pascal through Doubt. In addition, and most importantly, the contrast between the two thinkers' epistemology inaugurates a decisive scission in modern thought of enormous repercussion: Descartes' sturdy rationalism initiated the great branch of modern scientific inquiry , while Pascal's appeal to the power of intuition and feelings would eventually be the precursor of the reaction to the enlightenment that invested Europe by the second half of the eighteenth century. This departure of thought, which in my view may be traced back to them, has not been the common conceit of the history of philosophy: the reaction to the enlightenment has customarily been regarded as stemming from its internal contradictions or at best from its more radical doctrines. The essay shall show that these strands of thought were both parallel and born out of the antithetical epistemologies of Descartes and Pascal. (shrink)

The question of cosmic beginning has always attracted considerable attention from serious thinkers past and present. Among many contesting theories that have emerged, that of emanation was appropriated by Muslim philosophers like Ibn Sînâ in order to reconcile the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of matter with the teaching of al-Qur’ân on the One Creator-God. According to this theory, the universe, which comprises a multitude of entities, is generated from a transcendent Being, the One, that is unitary, through the medium (...) of a hierarchy of immaterial substances. While the ultimate source is undiminished, the beings which are emanated are progressively less perfect as they are further removed from the first principle. The process is conceived as being atemporal and often compared to the efflux of light from a luminous body, or to water flowing from a spring. This metaphysical theory has enabled Ibn Sînâ to solve the vexed problem: given an eternally existing world and one eternally existing God, how can the two necessarily co-exist without having the perfect, simple unity of God destroyed by contact with the multiplicity of material things? The following essay delineates and evaluates both Ibn Sînâ’s arguments as well as the counter-arguments of his critics. (shrink)

While spreading wide-world, the new coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 made changes in many social departments of our society on levels we never thought about and messes with all our cultural habits. Thus, we witnessed that the religious denominations took into consideration changes without precedent in their cultic history and thus dogmatic as well concerning the actual threat of Coronavirus. We saw for example the Roman-Catholic Church who suspended all masses here and there[1] at first or banned the crucial gestures in rituals (...) [to suspend the distribution of Holy Communion from the Chalice[2], to distribute the Eucharist preferably into the hands of the faithful, and to avoid the physical contact from a peaceful handshake, to forego ash crosses on forehead, to suspend placing water in holy water fonts at the entrance of churches, that the churchgoers "refrain" from kissing or touching the cross for veneration, or even cancellation of masses]. We witnessed Buddhist temples and Protestant churches around Korea [at first] and beyond that have also suspended religious gatherings, and so on. In my case, the Romanian Orthodox Church did the same thing[3], but in a controversial way, firstly making some recommendations for its believers [e.g. not to kiss public icons in Churches, but their indoor ones, and receive Holy Communion with teaspoons for single-use]; afterward same Church reconsidered these recommendations and withdrew its decision [perhaps at the pressure of civil fundamentalists]. How can we qualify all these measures and, moreover, the withdrawal on behalf of religious believers, as weakness, populism, diligence, assuming the human limits, or...something else? What would be the correct and coherent answer religion should assume in this particular regard, and especially what are the reasons to qualify it in a way or another? (shrink)

The Syncretism, specific of old and new religious currents, is a phenomenon closely linked to millenarian movements and the emergence of so-called prophets that say that transmit divine messages being dependent at the same time, important social changes, economic political and, not least, religious. In the history of religions, syncretism is determined by several factors, among which are the changes in social, political, economic, and new philosophical and religious synthesis, the term acquiring a cosmopolitan sense. Syncretism occurs when two or (...) more social groups with different religions, contact, assimilating their members and various other religious characteristics specific groups and, for the most part, are foreign to their own beliefs. Religious syncretism has grown particularly intense during the first four centuries of the Christian era, but its traces can envision more or less pronounced in all religious history of humanity, with respect to the merger of two or more deities or acceptance of new forms and often contradictory in different parts of religious worship of pagan deities specifically different. (shrink)

Homi Bhabha brings attention to the figure of the postcolonial metropolitan subject—a third world subject who resides in the first world. Bhabha describes the experiences of the “colonial” subject as ambivalently split. As much as his work is insightful, Bhabha's descriptions of the daily life of postcolonial metropolitan subjects as split and doubled is problematic. His analysis lends only to the possibility of these splittings/doublings as schizophrenically wholly arising. His analysis cannot account for the agonistic moments when the colonial (...) subject is caught in not knowing, and in developing understanding about present circumstances. A framework with an account of context and horizons, such as in phenomenology, can better depict the experiences of the postcolonial metropolitan subject. Maurice Merleau-Ponty follows a gestaltian contact with the world, which advances that the “most basic unit of experience is that of figure-on-a-background.” One perceives the figure/theme because of and within the background/horizon. In this horizonal framework, human experiences are ambiguously open. The openness in the horizon of the gestaltian framework better accounts for the conditions Bhabha refers to as splitting. The ambivalence can be understood not simply as conundrums that defy understanding but as ambiguous moments for expanding, developing, and growing. (shrink)

It is a common practice for authors of an academic work to thank the anonymous reviewers at the journal that is publishing it. Allegedly, scholars thank the reviewers because their comments improved the paper and thanking them is a proper way to show gratitude to them. Yet often, a paper that is eventually accepted by one journal is first rejected by other journals, and even though those journals’ reviewers also supply comments that improve the quality of the work, those (...) reviewers are not customarily thanked. We contacted prominent scholars in bioethics and philosophy of medicine and asked whether thanking such reviewers would be a welcome trend. Having received responses from 107 scholars, we discuss the suggested proposal in light of both philosophical argument and the results of this survey. We argue that when an author’s work is published, the author should thank the reviewers whose comments improved the paper regardless of whether those reviewers’ journals rejected or accepted the work. That is because scholars should show gratitude to those who deserve it, and those whose comments improved the paper deserve gratitude. We also consider objections against this practice raised by scholars and show why they are not entirely persuasive. (shrink)

German Lutheran scholar Johann Friedrich Weitenkampf (d.1758) sets out to explain and refute the Turkish concept of fate, dividing his dissertation into two sections: the first outlining the Turkish-Muslim view of fate; and the second seeking to prove the invalidity of the Muslim concept of fate with philosophical argumentation. He begins with some brief notes on the historical origin of the Turks, turning then to the backstory of the Qur’an, which he claims can be divided into six sections or (...) topics, the last of which concerns its teachings on fate. According to Weitenkampf, in mainstream Islamic thought, fate is predetermined and immutable. Weitenkampf categorizes most Turks as Jabrites who believe that God is the source of all evil and that men do not have free will. Therefore, men are compelled to do evil or good through God’s omnipotence. He offers examples of how this belief is manifested in the actions and values of the Turks. According to Weitenkampf, since Turks believe in predestination, they do not flee plague-ridden cities or shun contact with those infected. They do not fear death. If they suffer, they believe fate decreed it. In battle, this makes them brave to the point of foolhardy. Weitenkampf also paraphrases an exhortation from the Qur’an in which Muslims are told not to avoid danger, as God has already determined their fate. . . . Weitenkampf’s dissertatio is a symptom of the struggle between the weakened Lutheran orthodoxy and the rise of Pietism and rationalism in the wake of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. Unlike other Lutheran authors, he analyzes Islamic thought through systematic philosophical argumentation, deeply influenced by his logic and metaphysics teacher Knutzen, who tried to combine Wolffan Enlightenment rationalism with pietistic spirituality. (shrink)

This paper discusses the possibility of the phenomenon of empathy between humans and robots, starting from what happens during their eye contact. First, it is shown, through the most relevant results of HRI studies on this matter, what are the most important effects of the robot gaze on human emotions and behaviour. Secondly, these effects are compared to what happens during the phenomenon of empathy between humans, taking inspiration from the studies of Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein. Finally, (...) similarities and differences between human-human and human-robot empathy are conceptualized through Merleau-Ponty’s idea of flesh, which is the extended bodily element of the world. If there is a common concept of body, including both machine-bodies and living bodies, then a transcorporeal analogy takes place, thus explaining why the phenomenon of empathy occurs both in human-human and human-robot interactions. (shrink)

How much surveillance is morally permissible in the pursuit of a socially desirable goal? The proportionality question has received renewed attention during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic, because governments in many countries have responded to the pandemic by implementing, redirecting or expanding state surveillance, most controversially in the shape of collection and use of cell-phone location data to support a strategy of contact tracing, testing and containment. Behind the proportionality question lies a further question: in what way does a state (...) of emergency affect the proportionality of morally permissible surveillance? On the qualitative difference view, a state of emergency has the effect of suspending or altering at least some of the constraints on morally permissible action that apply under ordinary circumstances. On the quantitative difference view, the only difference between states of emergency and ordinary circumstances is that the stakes are greater in a state of emergency. If the qualitative difference view is true, then there are situations, perhaps such as the current Coronavirus pandemic, during which the proportionality condition employs a much less demanding ratio between social goods achieved and the badness of the surveillance performed. The overall objective of this article is to argue against the qualitative and for the quantitative difference view. I proceed by first setting out in somewhat greater detail how we must understand the qualitative difference view (section two). I then present a series of problematic implications of adopting the qualitative difference view and argue that jointly these give us sufficient reason to reject it (section three). This entails that our account of morally permissible surveillance should be unexceptional, i.e. the quantitative difference view: there is no morally significant difference between proportionality in ordinary circumstances and proportionality in emergencies, simply a spectrum of smaller to greater potential goods and bads of surveillance. In order to flesh out the implications of the quantitative view, I briefly sketch an unexceptional theory of proportional surveillance in exceptional circumstances (section four). The last section (five) summarises and concludes. (shrink)

In this article I develop two arguments, taking Max Scheler’s phenomenology as a starting point. The first one is that emotions are not private and internal states of consciousness, but what makes us come into contact with the expressive dimension of reality, by orienting our placement in the world and our interaction with others. The second thesis is that some emotions have an “anthropogenetic” nature that is at the roots of the ontology of a person and of social (...) ontology: it is through practices of “sharing” certain emotions that the humanity has been born and that the various forms of social realities are established. In accordance with one of María Zambrano’s phrases, I propose to trace these anthropogenetic emotions back to the «hambre de nacer del todo» («hunger for being fully born») of a being that never stops being born again. (shrink)

This chapter provides a high-level overview of key ethical issues raised by the use of surveillance technologies, such as digital contact tracing, disease surveillance, and vaccine passports, to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. To some extent, these issues are entirely familiar. I argue that they raise old questions in new form and with new urgency, at the intersection of information ethics, research ethics, and public health. Whenever we deal with data-driven technologies, we have to ask how they fare in relation (...) to important values like privacy, fairness, transparency, and accountability—values emphasized by information ethics scholars. Likewise, when such technologies put individuals at risk in order to drive scientific research and knowledge construction, we have to ask how they implicate values such as autonomy, beneficence and non-maleficence, and justice—values central to research ethics. And as researchers focusing on health information have long argued, when the data collected by these technologies pertain to individuals and public health, these ethical issues take on a special cast. -/- It is also true, however, that the pandemic has placed these questions in a new and revealing light. I highlight three insights from information ethics and research ethics that can help us navigate this difficult terrain. First, the value of privacy is instrumental, not absolute—there is nothing wrong with asking how to balance privacy against other important values. Second, privacy has both individual and social importance. Weighing privacy, on one hand, and public health, on the other, is not, therefore, a contest between individual and collective interests. Rather, it is an attempt to balance disparate public goods. Third, we ought to put these kinds of ethical decisions in the hands of third parties, rather than leaving them up to those who directly stand to benefit from them. In the case of pandemic surveillance technologies, this should mean more public, democratic oversight. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to offer a new view of the key relation between the content and the conscious character of visual experience. The author aims to support the following claims. First, the author rejects the qualia realist claim that conscious character is an intrinsic, nonrepresentational property of visual experience, for example, a pattern of activation of neurons. However, the author also rejects the rival widespread representationalist claim that the conscious character of visual experience is identical to, (...) or supervenes on, any specific property represented by visual experience. The positive proposal is the following. Conscious character is identical to those patterns of activation of neurons that are referentially or representationally alive. Conscious redness, for example, is a pattern of activations of neurons that is normally created only when brains of physical duplicates come in visual contact with some distal property. This pattern of activation is recruited by natural selection to represent that property. This is called meaning representationalism. (shrink)

Michael Ayers’s Knowing and Seeing: Groundwork for a New Empiricism is a rich and detailed development of two ideas. The first is that perception presents reality to us directly in a perspicuous way. We thus acquire primary knowledge of the world: “knowledge gained by being evidently, self-consciously, in direct cognitive contact with the object of the knowledge.” (Ayers 2019, 63) The second idea is that concepts are not needed in perception. In this article, the author examines Ayers’s view. (...) The author proceeds as follows: In the first section, he identifies the target of Ayers’s attacks, conceptualism. He then describes why many philosophers have felt this conceptualist view to be attractive. In the next section, he discusses Ayers’s criticisms of conceptualism in an attempt to disentangle these criticisms from the statement of his positive view, which the author discusses in the following section. He ends by describing some problems for Ayers’s positive position that are, so he argues, the result of his vehement opposition to conceptualism. (shrink)