Mobsters and others engaged in risky forms of social coordination and coercion often communicate by saying something that is overtly innocuous but transmits another message ‘off record’. In both ordinary conversation and political discourse, insinuation and other forms of indirection, like joking, offer significant protection from liability. However, they do not confer blanket immunity: speakers can be held to account for an ‘off record’ message, if the only reasonable interpreta- tions of their utterance involve a commitment to it. Legal (...) liability for speech in the service of criminal behavior displays a similar profile of significant protection from indirection along with potential liability for reasonable interpretations. Specifically, in both ordinary and legal contexts, liability depends on how a reasonable speaker would expect a reasonable hearer to interpret their utterance in the context of utter- ance, rather than on the actual speaker’s claimed communicative intentions. (shrink)

I introduce game-theoretic models for threats to the discussion of threats in speech act theory. I first distinguish three categories of verbal threats: conditional threats, categorical threats, and covert threats. I establish that all categories of threats can be characterized in terms of an underlying conditional structure. I argue that the aim—or illocutionary point—of a threat is to change the conditions under which an agent makes decisions in a game. Threats are moves in a game that instantiate a subgame in (...) which the addressee is ‘under threat’. (shrink)

With catastrophic events of «nature» like global warming, arguments emerge that insinuate an equivalence of vulnerability, responsibility or being affected by these catastrophes. Such an alleged equivalence when facing climate catastrophe is already visible, for example, in the notion of the «Anthropocene» itself, which obscures both causes and various vulnerabilities in a homogenized as well as universalized concept of humanity (anthropos). Taking such narratives as a starting point, the paper explores questions about the connection between catastrophe, temporality, and history, following (...) mainly Walter Benjamin, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Jean-Luc Nancy with the goal to provide (1) a critique of the concept «Anthropocene» on the basis of nonequivalence while retaining its key features to still grasp the catastrophic present, (2) an analysis of anthropocenic time and the chronical structure of catastrophe, (3) philosophical considerations on the intersection of catastrophe and history. (shrink)

عنوان المقالة: الثقافة بين الأنا والآخر-مقاربات للتفكير.. الاسم الكامل: الصديق الصادقي العماري... .جامعة سيدي محمد بن عبد الله، فاس، المغرب.... ....التخصص: علم الاجتماع...... ...ملخص: .... لكل أمة ثقافة تعبر عن كينونتها، وتعكس طبيعتها، وتسجل إنتاجاتها المتراكمة عبر التاريخ، فتخلق منها أمة ذات تفردات تميزها عن غيرها من الأمم. وكذلك هي الثقافة في تميزها عن الثقافات السائدة، سواء في الزمن الواحد، أو في أزمنة متطاولة، وإن كانت تأخذ عنها، وتقتبس منها، وتتلاقح معها، فتتقارب، وتتحاور، وتتفاعل بطرق متباينة، فتكتسب قوة في المناعة، (...) وقدرة على التناغم مع البيئة، وعلى التكيف مع المحيط الإنساني العام، وتلك هي طبيعة الثقافة لدى أي أمة من الأمم، وفي كل عصر من العصور. كما أن لكل ثقافة هوية، ولكل هوية جوهر تعبر عنه خصوصيات معينة، وتنبثق عنه قيم سامية ومثل عليا، هي عنوان الأصالة والعراقة اللتين تعتبران القواعد الراسخة للثقافة. غير أنه من الصعب الحديث عن عمليات تبادل وحوار ثقافي بين ثقافتين غير متكافئتين، لأن التفاعل يتم من خلال الاعتراف أولا بثقافة الآخر، وإعطائها القيمة والمكانة التي تستحقها إلى جانب نظيرتها، كما أن الحوار واحترام الاختلاف يجب أن يكون من الطرفين معا، لهم الرغبة المتبادلة بعيدا عن الإكراه والاستغلال. إذ أن تبادل أشكال وعناصر الثقافة بين الشعوب والأمم لا ينبع من الإعجاب والرغبة في التوظيف الإيجابي لصالح ثقافة الأصل، وإنما يخضع لاعتبارات سياسية وأيديولوجية بالدرجة الأولى، حيث أن هذه الأشكال تتصارع فيما بينها وتخضع لاعتبارات حاسمة. فالصورة السلبية والقدحية التي أصبحت الميزة الحقيقية للمثاقفة في العصر الحالي، من خلال اعتماد الثقافة كآلية وأسلوب للتحكم والسيطرة على المستضعفين، ولد لدى الشعوب والأمم، خاصة العربية منها، خوفا على الهوية العربية الإسلامية من الضياع، مما دفع بالكثيرين إلى السعي نحو التعريف بالتراث والثقافة الخاصة وإبراز أهم مكوناتها، غير أن مسألة الرجوع للتراث العربي الإسلامي اختلفت حسب نوع التوجه والقناعة، ونوع المرجعية التي تؤطر كل فئة ولو من داخل نفس الشعب. مما نتج عن ذلك اختلافات وتشعبات في قراءة هذا التراث، حيث استند البعض على الأصولية الحادة، أما البعض الآخر اشتغل من داخل الاتجاه اليساري أو اللبرالي. من أجل تحليل وتفتيت هذا الإشكال بخصوص محورية الثقافة بين الأنا والآخر المختلف، تسعى هذه المقالة إلى الوقوف عند مفهوم الثقافة من داخل الأنثروبولوجيا وعلم الاجتماع، وإبراز العلاقة التلازمية بين الثقافة والهوية وطريقة تشكلهما، ثم التطرق لظاهرة المثاقفة والتثاقف وأهم الوظائف المميزة لهما، وأخيرا إبراز وتحليل الأسس التي تنبني عليها العلاقة بين الثقافة العربية وثقافة الآخر المختلف، وأهم الجوانب التي تحكمهما. ............. Each nation has a culture that expresses its identity, reflects its nature and records its accumulated productions throughout history, creating a nation unique in relation to other nations. Culture is also distinct from traditional cultures, both in time and in extended periods, although it takes, quotes and insinuates with them, converges, interacts and interacts in different ways, gaining the strength of immunity, the ability to align with the environment, the ability to adapt to the human environment in general, and that’s the nature of the culture of every nation and nation. (shrink)

An important moral category—dishonest speech—has been overlooked in theoretical ethics despite its importance in legal, political, and everyday social exchanges. Discussion in this area has instead been fixated on a binary debate over the contrast between lying and ‘merely misleading’. Some see lying as a distinctive wrong; others see it as morally equivalent to deliberately omitting relevant truths, falsely insinuating, or any other species of attempted verbal deception. Parties to this debate have missed the relevance to their disagreement of the (...) notion of communicative dishonesty. Communicative dishonesty need not take the form of a lie, yet its wrongness does not reduce to the wrongness of seeking to deceive. This paper therefore proposes a major shift of attention away from the lying/misleading debate and towards the topic of communicative dishonesty. Dishonesty is not a simple notion to define, however. It presupposes a difficult distinction between what is and is not expressed in a given utterance. This differs from the more familiar distinction between what is and is not said, the distinction at the heart of the lying/misleading debate. This paper uses an idea central to speech act theory to characterize dishonesty in terms of the utterer’s communicative intentions, and applies the resulting definition to a variety of contexts. (shrink)

Malem Seña in “¿Puede las malas personas ser buenos jueces?” analyzed the judicial morality. At first time from a historical analysis, the judges were not required to base their judgments, because they were the mirror of legitimacy and morality of their decisions. With the advent of rationalism and modern State, the sentences should be the foundation. The situation that put the judge person in the background. In this situation, the answer to the question posed in the job would be: "Yes, (...) bad people can be good judges", answer hardly accepted by all. Malem Seña, far from giving a definite answer, ends his work with the insinuation that judges should maintain an image of morality, rather than being morally unimpeachable agents. This situation raises questions about different dimensions of analysis that have been shelved, and in particular try to analyze why this importance takes the image of morality. To do this, from the perspective of the concepts of Slavoj Žižek‘s ideology and fantasy, it will attempt to reach some responses or generate argumentative lines about the importance of the image of morality on morality itself. (shrink)

The black hole information loss paradox is a catch-all term for a family of puzzles related to black hole evaporation. For almost 50 years, the quest to elucidate the implications of black hole evaporation has not only sustained momentum, but has also become increasingly populated with proposals that seem to generate more questions than they purport to answer. Scholars often neglect to acknowledge ongoing discussions within black hole thermodynamics and statistical mechanics when analyzing the paradox, including the interpretation of Bekenstein-Hawking (...) entropy, which is far from settled. To remedy the dialectical gridlock, I have formulated an overarching, unified framework, which I call ``Black Hole Paradoxes'', that integrates the debates and taxonomizes the relevant `camps' or philosophical positions. -/- I demonstrate that black hole evaporation within Hawking's semi-classical framework insinuates how late-time Hawking radiation is an entangled global system, a contradiction in terms. The relevant forms of information loss are associated with a decrease in maximal Boltzmann entropy and an increase in global von Neumann entropy respectively, which engender what I've branded the ``paradox of phantom entanglement''. Prospective solutions are then tasked with demonstrating how late-time Hawking radiation is either exclusively an entangled subsystem, in which a black hole remnant lingers as an information safehouse, or exclusively an unentangled global system, in which information is evacuated to the exterior. -/- The disagreement between safehouse and evacuation solutions boils down to the statistical interpretation of thermodynamic black hole entropy, i.e., Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. Safehouse solutions attribute Bekenstein-Hawking entropy to a minority of black hole degrees of freedom, those that are associated with the horizon. Evacuation solutions, in contrast, attribute Bekenstein-Hawking entropy to all black hole degrees of freedom. I argue that the interpretation of Bekenstein-Hawking entropy is the litmus test to vet the overpopulated proposal space. So long as any proposal rejecting Hawking's original calculation independently derives black hole evaporation, globally conserves degrees of freedom and entanglement, preserves a version of semi-classical gravity at sub-Planckian scales, and describes black hole thermodynamics in statistical terms, then it counts as a genuine solution to the paradox. (shrink)

Jean-Claude Milner’s Le sage trompeur (2013), a controversial recent piece of French Spinoza literature, remains regrettably understudied in the English-speaking world. Adopting Leo Strauss’ esoteric reading method, Milner alleges that Spinoza dissimulates his genuine analysis of the causes of the persecution and survival of the Jewish people within a brief “manifesto” found at the end of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP), Chapter 3. According to Milner, Spinoza holds that the Jewish people themselves are responsible for the hatred of the Jewish people, (...) and that the engine of their longevity is the hatred they engender. Additionally, claims Milner, Spinoza covertly insinuates that the solution to this persistent state of hatred consists in the mass apostasy of the Jewish people under the leadership of a Sabbatai Zevi-like figure. This article presents the Milner–Spinoza controversy to the English-speaking public along with the larger context of French-language scholarship on Spinoza’s relation to Judaism. While refuting Milner’s reading of Spinoza, I simultaneously clarify relevant elements of Spinoza’s discussions of Judaism in the TTP, such as Spinoza’s examination of Jewish identity and the nature of divine election, Spinoza’s understanding of the causes of national hatred, and Spinoza’s appeals to Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, and Turkish political history. (shrink)

Title in English: "Omnipartiality. On deliberation in governance for health with the inclusion of emotions, self-interests and expertise" Abstract: To what extent it is possible to reconcile the will of the people with expertise? That is the traditional question of democratic policymaking. However, the dilemma outlined in this way is very misleading. It suggests that citizens have no knowledge to offer on any given issue. In addition, it insinuates some peculiar resistance of the expert elite to ignorance, egoism or emotions. (...) A more appropriate question would rather be the following: To what extent policymaking based on expertise is possible at all? Yet another question follows. Is policymaking based solely on evidence even sound? Is the traditional ideal of impartiality, an exclusion of egoism and passions from policymaking a good ideal? Author of the book argues that a good governance for health – and policymaking in general – requires the inclusion and proper balance of the three key inputs of governance: expertise, self-interest and emotions. Considering them requires going beyond typical public debates, bargaining and even beyond expert panels. It requires public deliberation in which the three inputs could engaged in a form of constructive dialogue with each other. In good governance, we should not limit ourselves to evidence insulated from material interests and strong intuitions. We cannot orient ourselves on procedural, neutral impartiality. Rather, we should move towards omnipartiality. (shrink)

This project begins with the selective sensory experience suggested by lngarden followed by an insensitivity he insinuates to digestive processes. This is juxtaposed with an oenological explanation of phenomenal sedimentation offered by Jean-Luc Marion. It compares the dynamics of time in the former with the those of wine in the latter. Emphasis is given to lngarden's insinuation of time as fluid, liquid, or aquatic. It revisits Ingarden's physiological explanations of partially-open systems by way of the bilateral excretion and absorption (...) of semi-permeable cellular membranes. The importance he eventually grants to inner secretion is considered alongside perspiration and salivation collateral to skin and membranes. It suggests that Ingarden's interest in thermoregulation, partial permeation, and secretion invites alternative conceptions of temporal consciousness in physiological experiences, beyond sequential and linear clock-time and/or Kantian intuition. Temporality experienced as temperance becomes discernible at a permeable point in which the sedimentation of Husserl, the maturation of Marion, and the fluidity and secretion of Ingarden mix and mingle into the taste of time. (shrink)

It is widely held that there is a distinctive norm of assertion. A plausible idea is that there is an analogous, perhaps weaker, norm for indirect communication via implicatures. I argue against this type of proposal. My claim is that the norm of assertion is a social norm governing public updates to the conversational record. Off the record implicatures are not subject to social norms of this type. I grant that, as happens in general with intentional actions, off the record (...) communicative acts may be subject to normative assessments on different levels (for instance, regarding their moral or prudential appropriateness). However, such assessments do not generate distinctive norms that apply to all cases of implicature. (shrink)

The primary focus of this project is the silent and subvocal speech-recognition interface unveiled in 2018 as an ambulatory device wearable on the neck that detects a myoelectrical signature by electrodes worn on the surface of the face, throat, and neck. These emerge from an alleged “intending to speak” by the wearer silently-saying-something-to-oneself. This inner voice is believed to occur while one reads in silence or mentally talks to oneself. The artifice does not require spoken sounds, opening the mouth, or (...) any explicit or external movement of the lips. The essay then considers such subvocal “speech” as a mode of writing or saying and the interior of the mouth or oral cavity as its writing surface. It briefly revisits discussions of telepathy to recontextualize Heidegger’s warning against enframing language exclusively within calculative technics and physiology, which he suggests is detrimental to Mundarten (mouth-modes of regional dialects). It closes in reconsideration of Husserl’s phenomenology of language and meaning in Ideas as it might apply to subvocal speech-recognition interfaces. It suggests ways by which the electrophysiology that the device detects and deciphers (as an alleged intention of a presumed natural language unspoken vocally or aloud) might supplement Husserl’s insinuation of the Leiblichkeit of language through a self-stamping extraction of an extension of meaning. (shrink)

Mathematics has always been a core part of western education, from the medieval quadrivium to the large amount of arithmetic and algebra still compulsory in high schools. It is an essential part. Its commitment to exactitude and to rigid demonstration balances humanist subjects devoted to appreciation and rhetoric as well as giving the lie to postmodernist insinuations that all “truths” are subject to political negotiation. In recent decades, the character of mathematics has changed – or rather broadened: it has become (...) the enabling science behind the complexity of contemporary knowledge, from gene interpretation to bank risk. Mathematical understanding is all the more necessary for future jobs, as well as remaining, as ever, a prophylactic against the more corrosive philosophical views emanating from the humanities. (shrink)

Abstract: Artificial Morality is a new, emerging interdisciplinary field that centres around the idea of creating artificial moral agents, or AMAs, by implementing moral competence in artificial systems. AMAs are ought to be autonomous agents capable of socially correct judgements and ethically functional behaviour. This request for moral machines comes from the changes in everyday practice, where artificial systems are being frequently used in a variety of situations from home help and elderly care purposes to banking and court algorithms. It (...) is therefore important to create reliable and responsible machines based on the same ethical principles that society demands from people. New challenges in creating such agents appear. There are philosophical questions about a machine’s potential to be an agent, or mora l agent, in the first place. Then comes the problem of social acceptance of such machines, regardless of their theoretic agency status. As a result of efforts to resolve this problem, there are insinuations of needed additional psychological (emotional and cogn itive) competence in cold moral machines. What makes this endeavour of developing AMAs even harder is the complexity of the technical, engineering aspect of their creation. Implementation approaches such as top- down, bottom-up and hybrid approach aim to find the best way of developing fully moral agents, but they encounter their own problems throughout this effort. (shrink)

In his Theory of Justice John Rawls presents a critique of utilitarianism. He focuses on utilitarianism in the version offered by John Stuart Mill, but Rawls’s analysis of Mills’ views is schematic and limited to Mill’s ethical theory. Rawls does not recognize the importance of perfectionistic themes in Mill’s theory, nor does he note the consequences of that issue for the problem of gender equality. Rawls discuses those themes in his Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. If one is (...) primarily guided by Rawls’s Theory of Justice, however, the person will be unable to appreciate similarities between Rawls’s and Mill’s positions. When focusing on the Lectures it is possible to recognize these affinities that are only dimly insinuated in the Theory of Justice. In the later volume they are strong enough to support the claim that a more pronounced affinity may bind these two authors that are not obvious at the first glance. I proceed therefore (1) to expose some shortcomings in the presentation of Mill’s utilitarianism by Rawls; (2) go on to analyse Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy in order to present a more penetrating reading of Mill’s utilitarianism by including its perfectionistic content; and (3) finally on the basis of those claims I point to some practical consequences of Mill’s and Rawls’s views on gender equality. (shrink)