As a theoretical framework in the Science and Technology Studies (sts) scholarship, the sociotechnical imaginaries approach (sta) has provided a conceptual framework and methodology that not only overcome the deterministic understanding of technological development but also theorized the relationship between society on the one hand, and science and technology on the other. However, as will be pointed out, a limitation of the sta renders it incapable of problematizing what I will call as the technopolitics of specialization, defined as the (...) organization of unequal positions based on the capitalist centers’ control over techno-epistemic networks set against the backdrop of a neocolonial relation. Such an incapacity glosses over the persistence of neocolonialism and dependency especially in the Global South. -/- This paper aims to reimagine the theoretical framework of the sociotechnical imaginaries by developing a critical review of its approach. The paper will place in dialogue the most recent and relevant conceptual developments of the sta and the dependency theory of Samir Amin. The paper will present how the most relevant literature concerning the sta work on the assumption that every polity has control over existing techno-epistemic networks from which imaginaries are independently defined. The paper will argue that given the notion of international specialization developed by Samir Amin and presupposed today in the sta, the technopolitics of specialization monopolizes control of the techno-epistemic networks thereby constraining the imaginaries of peripheral countries. (shrink)

Surveillance studies scholars and privacy scholars have each developed sophisticated, important critiques of the existing data-driven order. But too few scholars in either tradition have put forward alternative substantive conceptions of a good digital society. This, I argue, is a crucial omission. Unless we construct new “sociotechnical imaginaries,” new understandings of the goals and aspirations digital technologies should aim to achieve, the most surveillance studies and privacy scholars can hope to accomplish is a less unjust version of the technology (...) industry’s own vision for the future. (shrink)

The article offers an attempt to understand the present state of Kant’s legacy in Russia on the threshold of the Tercentenary. An explanans is found in the metaphors of “ tabula rasa ” and “unplowed virgin soil,” first used by Leibniz in relation to Russia in his letters and memoranda addressed to tsar Peter I and other members of the Russian elite, which became the country’s “absolute metaphors to live by” up to present time. Several known and unknown episodes from (...) the history of the reception of Kantian ideas, his followers in Russia, and the transformation of the urban environment of Kant’s life in Königsberg, as it was becoming Kaliningrad, are presented through the prism of this metaphor. Without hoping to make specific recommendations of any use from such metaphorical grounds, this study aims to emphasize the depth, interconnectedness, and basic, metaphysical tension of the relationship between Europe and Russia, which cannot be terminated at will by either side, or by a third party. In a situation where the sides are doomed to dialog, Kant, appropriated by Russia as its “subject,” occupies the unique position of mediator of philosophical understanding and peaceful action. (shrink)

A collaborative article by the Editorial Collective of Social Imaginaries. Investigations into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From ‘the capitalist imaginary’ to the ‘democratic imaginary’, from the ‘ecological imaginary’ to ‘the global imaginary’ – and beyond – the social imaginaries field has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. The recent debates on social imaginaries and potential new imaginaries reveal a recognisable field and paradigm-in-the-making. We argue that Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor have articulated the (...) most important theoretical frameworks for understanding social imaginaries, although the field as a whole remains heterogeneous. We further argue that the notion of social imaginaries draws on the modern understanding of the imagination as authentically creative. We contend that an elaboration of social imaginaries involves a significant, qualitative shift in the understanding of societies as collectively and politically-instituted formations that are irreducible to inter-subjectivity or systemic logics. After marking out the contours of the field and recounting a philosophical history of the imagination, the essay turns to debates on social imaginaries in more concrete contexts, specifically political-economic imaginaries, the ecological imaginary, multiple modernities and their inter-civilisational encounters. The social imaginaries field imparts powerful messages for the human sciences and wider publics. In particular, social imaginaries hold significant implications for ontological, phenomenological and philosophical anthropological questions; for the cultural, social, and political horizons of contemporary worlds; and for ecological and economic phenomena. The essay concludes with the argument that social imaginaries as a paradigm-in-the-making offers valuable means by which movements towards social change can be elucidated as well providing an open horizon for the critiques of existing social practices. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a surge in online collaboration between experts and amateurs on scientific research. In this article, we analyse the epistemological implications of these crowdsourced projects, with a focus on Zooniverse, the world’s largest citizen science web portal. We use quantitative methods to evaluate the platform’s success in producing large volumes of observation statements and high impact scientific discoveries relative to more conventional means of data processing. Through empirical evidence, Bayesian reasoning, and conceptual analysis, we show how information (...) and communication technologies enhance the reliability, scalability, and connectivity of crowdsourced e-research, giving online citizen science projects powerful epistemic advantages over more traditional modes of scientific investigation. These results highlight the essential role played by technologically mediated social interaction in contemporary knowledge production. We conclude by calling for an explicitly sociotechnical turn in the philosophy of science that combines insights from statistics and logic to analyse the latest developments in scientific research. (shrink)

Our senses provide us with information about the world, but what exactly do they tell us? I argue that in order to optimally respond to sensory stimulations, an agent’s doxastic space may have an extra, “imaginary” dimension of possibility; perceptual experiences confer certainty on propositions in this dimension. To some extent, the resulting picture vindicates the old-fashioned empiricist idea that all empirical knowledge is based on a solid foundation of sense-datum propositions, but it avoids most of the problems traditionally (...) associated with that idea. The proposal might also explain why experiences appear to have a non-physical phenomenal character, even if the world is entirely physical. (shrink)

In We Have Always Been Cyborgs (2021), Stefan L. Sorgner argues that, given the growing economic burden of desirable welfare programs, in order for Western democratic societies to continue to flourish it will be necessary that they establish some form of algocracy (i.e., governance by algorithm). This is argued to be necessary both in order to maintain the sustainability and efficiency of these programs, but also due to the fact that further integration of humans into technical systems provides the only (...) effective means to bridge gaps in functionality and governance. However, Sorgner’s position is entirely insensitive to the design turn in applied ethics, which argues against the neutrality of technology, instead maintaining that technology and society co-construct each other with persistent feedback loops. This, I argue, is a problem for his account inasmuch as technologies, as they become more ubiquitous, likewise become pervasive and inextricable from our sociotechnical infrastructures. As such, less-than-beneficent forces, as current trends illustrate, can appropriate these seemingly banal infrastructures to gear them towards oppressive ends, thereby ultimately threatening the social democracies that Sorgner’s position aims to buttress. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the issue of truth-telling in non-fictional narratives of (in)justice. Based on examples of rape narratives, domestic abuse narratives, human trafficking narratives and asylum seeker narratives, I examine the various difficulties in telling the truth in such stories, particularly those related to various culturally conditioned ideas of how the world works, which at the same time form the basis of, among other things, legal discourse and officials’ decision-making processes. I will also demonstrate that such culturally conditioned ideas, (...) which are the basis of official discourse, can be considered within the category of both the social imaginary of the just world in the Taylorian sense of the term, and the social master narrative, which in the case of stories of (in)justice is often based on the just world hypothesis. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two highly publicized formal trade-offs in the field of responsible artificial intelligence (AI) -- between predictive accuracy and fairness and between predictive accuracy and interpretability. These formal trade-offs are often taken by researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers to directly imply corresponding tensions between underlying values. Thus interpreted, the trade-offs have formed a core focus of normative engagement in AI governance, accompanied by a particular division of labor along disciplinary lines. This paper argues against this prevalent interpretation by (...) drawing attention to three sets of considerations that are critical for bridging the gap between these formal trade-offs and their practical impacts on relevant values. I show how neglecting these considerations can distort our normative deliberations, and result in costly and misaligned interventions and justifications. Taken together, these considerations form a sociotechnical framework that could guide those involved in AI governance to assess how, in many cases, we can and should have higher aspirations than the prevalent interpretation of the trade-offs would suggest. I end by drawing out the normative opportunities and challenges that emerge out of these considerations, and highlighting the imperative of interdisciplinary collaboration in fostering responsible AI. (shrink)

Bioart is a form of hybrid artistico-scientific practices in contemporary art that involve the use of bio-materials (such as living cells, tissues, organisms) and scientific techniques, protocols, and tools. Bioart-works embody vulnerability (intrinsic to all beings) and depend on (bio)technologies that allow these creations to come into being, endure and flourish but also discipline them. This article focuses on ‘semi-living’ sculptures by The Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A). TC&A’s artworks consist of bioengineered mammal tissues grown over biopolymer scaffoldings of (...) different shapes and require sterile conditions of a bioreactor and constant care in order to survive. The article explores how bioart-works are always already intertwined with multiple (bio)technologies and techniques of care and labour, forming specific feminist technoecologies that challenge conventional bioscientific and cultural imaginaries of embodiment and the relation between physis and techné. TC&A’s sculptures expose life as the non/living: the processual enmeshment of the organic and inorganic, living and non-living, and growth and decay. The article argues that thinking with and through the feminist technoecologies of bioart mobilises philosophical inventiveness: not only does it problematise the entwinement of technology and biomatter and of culture and nature, but it also prompts us to rethink the ontology of life. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It is commonly argued that Kierkegaard’s famous observation that life can be understood backward, but must be lived forward excludes the possibility of intellectual preparation to life. This article suggests the view that, while it is not the case that Kierkegaard has an elaborate vision of thinking about the possibilities of life one faces, he engages the notion of imaginary construction [experimentere] to propose existential prototypes for mental exploration that prepare us for life lived forward. It is concluded (...) that the person capable of imaginary construction has to be able to be firmly in control of the possibilities she faces. In Kierkegaard’s view, such a control requires the grasp of the opposite temporal directions – to be both looking at one’s past and future. Kierkegaard’s employment of such a double temporal vision of existence is modelled on Janus Bifrons, the two-faced god who is effectively able to simultaneously look both backward into the past and forward into the future. (shrink)

To Wittgenstein’s late thought is often attributed a form of cultural or epistemic relativism, according to which truths are relative to the criteria of justification valid within a linguistic community. This paper aims to show that this attribution lies largely on a misinterpretation of Wittgenstein’s ideas on the relation between language-games and forms of life. In the first section are presented the grounds for some relativist readings of Wittgenstein’s thought. In the second section, through the analysis of some passages of (...) the Tractatus and On Certainty, it is argued that, although Wittgenstein insisted on the “ungroundedness” of our language-games, he did not mean that any epistemic attitude, as long as it is endorsed by a community, is as valid as any other one. Rather, it is possible to show that some games better apply to our world and appear thus as more objective, so that there can be a difference in the validity of world-picures, contrary to what the epistemic relativist holds. In the third and final section, it is claimed that the different communities that appear in Wittgenstein’s examples are not actual or existing alternative possibilities, but an imaginary anthropology that Wittgenstein uses to enlighten how we, humans, work with our language-games. So, it is not possible to attribute him the idea that different games underly different forms of life, as some relativist authors do. It is concluded that Wittgenstein was not likely to be a cultural relativist. (shrink)

It has been argued that ethical frameworks for data science often fail to foster ethical behavior, and they can be difficult to implement due to their vague and ambiguous nature. In order to overcome these limitations of current ethical frameworks, we propose to integrate the analysis of the connections between technical choices and sociocultural factors into the data science process, and show how these connections have consequences for what data subjects can do, accomplish, and be. Using healthcare as an example, (...) attention to sociocultural conversion factors relevant to health can help in navigating technical choices that require broader considerations of the sociotechnical system, such as metric tradeoffs in model validation, resulting in better ethical and technical choices. This approach promotes awareness of the ethical dimension of technical choices by data scientists and others, and that can foster the cultivation of 'ethical skills' as integral to data science. (shrink)

The notion of 'freedom' has gained an emblematic character in contemporary political discourse. It is, commonly, viewed as the central value and political goal of modern societies. Similarly, human rights documents conceive of freedom as their founding principle with universal validity. In contradistinction to this prevalent approach to freedom, this paper aims to demonstrate that freedom is, primarily, a political signifier with social-historical variability. One cannot, therefore, simply and uncritically assume that freedom has (or should have) universal validity or transhistorical (...) significance. In the first section of this paper, the structure of the contemporary liberal discourse on freedom is discussed and called into question. In light of Arendt's interpretation of freedom and through her analysis of the public domain, I reflect on the social-historical variability of the meaning of freedom and its inextricable nexus with a particular form of society. In the second section and drawing on Castoriadis, the notion of 'freedom' is approached in view of human signifying practices and imaginary dimension of society. This examination reveals in what way freedom––in the sense of a central social imaginary signification––contributes to the institution of an autonomous mode of society and determines the affective disposition and intentional vector of its inhabitants. (shrink)

Questions are currently being posed concerning the implications of the clinical uptake of psychedelics. While enthusiasm surrounds the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelics and critique surrounds their appropriation to commercial ends, limited attention has been given to the role of psychedelics in generating social transformation. Herbert Marcuse contended radical change requires ‘new imaginaries of liberation’. We consider whether clinical uptake of psychedelics may produce the perceptual shifts necessary to generate social transformation surrounding contemporary alienating conditions. Economic structures contributing to these (...) alienating conditions are highly resistant to change and may neuter psychedelics’ revolutionary potential. We illustrate how psychedelics may be instrumentalised: regulating individuals into unjust systems; redirecting psychedelic usage away from therapeutic ends towards productivity; distracting or diverting attention from systemic forms of control; usurping non- ordinary states into the domain of self-care; and fetishistically commodifying psychedelic experience as a consumable. There are, however, reasons to believe that psychedelics, in raising consciousnesses, may prove resistant to co-option. In particular, psychedelics induce perceptual experiences that: challenge the paradigmatic assumptions of industrial society by provoking alternative epistemologies and meta- physics; generate expanded or ecological constructions of selfhood, thereby offering resignifications of meanings, desires, and life potentials; and offer the enriched phenomenological insight into self, other, and world called for in combating ubiquitous social alienation. In this way, psychedelics may induce the revolution in perception necessary to imagine liberatory potentials and spark the desire for collective emancipation. (shrink)

I give grounds for taking seriously the possibility that some of the emotions we ascribe do not exist. I build on the premise that the experience of imagining an emotion resembles that of having one. First a person imagines having an emotion. This is much like an emotion, so the person takes herself to be having the emotion that she imagines, and acts or expects a disposition to act accordingly. The view sketched here contrasts possibly impossible emotions such as disembodied (...) passion, blind rage, and Quixotic courage with real ones such as affection, anger, and bravery. Both these real emotions and the states of imagining impossible ones are things that really happen to us. (shrink)

Olympe de Gouges is known primarily for La Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (1791), which is her response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, adopted in 1789 by the National Assembly. Carol Sherman's book, Reading Olympe de Gouges, turns our attention away from normative principles of La Déclaration and directs it toward the ways that de Gouges's other texts challenge the normativity of the dominant social imaginaries of the time. Sherman’s book is required (...) reading for anyone wanting to participate in the debates about whether de Gouges deserves a place the Panthéon, but also in broader discussions about the history of feminism and the French Revolution. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between belief-like imaginings and the establishment of imaginary worlds (often called fictional worlds). After outlining the various assumptions my argument is premised on, I argue that belief-like imaginings, in themselves, do not render their content true in the imaginary world to which they pertain. I show that this claim applies not only to imaginative projects in which we are instructed or intend to imagine certain propositions, but also to spontaneous imaginative projects. After arguing (...) that, like guided imaginative projects, spontaneous projects involve specific imaginary truths, I conclude that imaginative projects, whether spontaneous or deliberate, comprise not only imaginings, but also mental acts of determining such truths. (shrink)

In 1982, MIT physicist Frank Wilczek predicted and named ANYONS, quasiparticles (particle-like formations) that are confined to 2 dimensions. The name might come from Prof. Wilczek's lighthearted comment "anything goes". This article's main goal is to show that anyons could be another name for 1) virtual particles, 2) Mobius strips, and 3) figure-8 Klein bottles. Along the way, we'll see the picture painted by the article confirm that Einstein's dream of gravitational-electromagnetic unity fits in with anyons being Mobius strips. We'll (...) also have encounters with intergalactic travel and imaginary computers. They really could exist but are imaginary in the sense that they use imaginary time (as well as space-time warping). (shrink)

This paper defends the use of imaginary cases in normative theorizing. Imaginary cases are used as a part of an argument and should be assessed in terms of the role they play within arguments. The paper identifies five ways in which they are used and then uses some of the best examples to bring out how they contribute to debates. While not directly akin to empirical experiments, criticisms of imaginary cases can be represented in terms of the (...) well‐known distinction between internal and external validity in social science experiments. While imaginary cases can suffer from internal and external validity problems, these do not constitute a decisive critique of their use as a method of analysis. Criticisms of imaginary cases should detail the precise form in which they are used, and why any particular use is invalid, internally or externally, in the context of the argument for which the case is presented. (shrink)

In a calculation involving imaginary numbers, we begin with real numbers that represent concrete measures and we end up with numbers that are equally real, but in the course of the operation we find ourselves walking “as if on a bridge that stands on no piles”. How is that possible? How does that work? And what is involved in the as-if stance that this metaphor introduces so beautifully? These are questions that bother Törless deeply. And that Törless is bothered (...) by such questions is a central question for any reader of Törless. Here I offer my interpretation, along with a reconstruction of the philosophical intuition that lies behind it all. (shrink)

According to the logical positivists, signs (words and pictures) of imaginary beings have no referent (Goodman). The semiotic theory behind this assumption is dualistic and Cartesian: signs vs. nonsigns as well as the mental vs. the material world are in fundamental opposition. Peirce’s semiotics is based on the premise of the sign as a mediator between such opposites: signs do not refer to referents, they represent objects to a mind, but the object of a sign can be existent or (...) nonexistent, a feeling or an idea, something merely imaginary or even something false. The paper examines the nature of imaginary, nonexistent, and nonfigurative objects, such as unicorns, phoenixes, or nonrepresentative paintings, and shows why verbal or visual representations of imaginary beings and even nonfigurative paintings, which seem to represent nothing, are fully developed signs with a variety of objects determining their representation. (shrink)

Both Husserl and Sartre speak of quasi-presence in their descriptions of the lived experience of imagination, and for both philosophers, accounting for quasi-presence means developing an account of the hyle proper to imagination. Guided by the perspective of fulfillment, Husserl’s theory of imaginary quasi-presence goes through three stages. Having experimented first with a depiction-model and then a perception-model, Husserl’s mature theory appeals to his innovative conception of inner consciousness. This elegant account nevertheless fails to do justice to the facticity (...) and bodily involvement of our imaginary experience. Sartre’s theory of analogon, based on his conception of imaginary quasi-presence as ‘magical’ self-affection, embodies important insights on these issues. Kinesthetic sensations and feelings are the modes in which we make use of own body to possess and be possessed by the imaginary object, thus lending it a semblance of bodily presence. (shrink)

While I was working about some basic physical phenomena, I discovered some geometric relations that also interest mathematics. In this work, I applied the rules I have been proven to P=NP? problem over impossibility of perpendicularity in the universe. It also brings out extremely interesting results out like imaginary numbers which are known as real numbers currently. Also it seems that Euclidean Geometry is impossible. The actual geometry is Riemann Geometry and complex numbers are real.

The work argues that engaging Africa's cultural and epistemic resources as social imaginaries, and not as metaphysical or ontological “essences,” could help practitioners of African philosophy overcome the cluster of shortcomings and undesirable features associated with “ethnophilosophy.” A number of points are outlined to buttress this claim. First, the framework of social imaginaries does not operate with the false assumption that Africa's cultural forms and epistemic resources are static and immutable. Second, this framework does not lend itself to sweeping generalizations (...) about Africa or large swathes of it. Third, the framework of social imaginaries remedies ethnophilosophy's problem of collectivism. Fourth, unlike ethnophilosophy, it does not romanticize and canonize a supposedly “idyllic” African past, which militates against a realistic and forward‐looking philosophizing. Finally, with the framework of social imaginaries, Africa's indigenous cultural and epistemic resources become amenable to being engaged with critical philosophical rigor. This not only enhances their potential for cross‐cultural philosophical conversation but also enhances their usefulness for addressing current sociopolitical issues affecting Africa. The discussion in this paper somewhat touches upon the question of method in African philosophy, using the ethnophilosophy problem to navigate the vast gamut of issues involved. (shrink)

This article proposes to read John Banville’s The Book of Evidence, a crime story narrated from the protagonist’s first-person gaze, from a Lacanian perspective by referring to his mirror stage theory. As an extension of testimonial literature, the novel is deemed to be a narrative of introspective self-examination, thus introducing a creation of “the self” paralleling the text. The protagonist’s mnemonic narrative is accompanied by the idea of an alternative world of not only self-expression but also self-depiction and presentation, as (...) in Lacan’s Imaginary. This self-creation, however, may not be as innocent as it seems. The reason for this is that although the mirror phase involves a transition from the Imaginary to the Symbolic, it presupposes the role of the other, biologically (m)other, in order to accustom the subject to the law of society. However, just because the protagonist, Freddie, mentions his mother’s presence as “nothing,” there is no soothing force for his adaptation to societal laws. Here, Freddie is subject to what Lacan sees as a minor prototype who lives in a society and yet is attached to his own rules, which is the first principle of male violence associated with this novel. Therefore, this article also tries to find answers for Freddie’s performance of male violence within the axis of psychoanalytic postulations elaborated on Lacan’s identity theory. (shrink)

I argue that John Dewey’s analysis of imagination enables an account of learning from imaginary cases consistent with Jonathan Dancy’s moral particularism. Moreover, this account provides a more robust account of learning from cases than Dancy’s own. Particularism is the position that there are no, or at most few, true moral principles, and that competent reasoning and judgment do not require them. On a particularist framework, one cannot infer from an imaginary case that because a feature has a (...) particular moral importance there, that it must have that import in an actual case. Instead, for Dancy, cases can yield “reminders,” and a person with a lot of experience (real or imagined) brings a “checklist” of features that can matter to a situation. Using the Nathan-David exchange from 2 Samuel and Martha Nussbaum’s “Steerforth’s Arm” from Love’s Knowledge, I show that this account does not explain all instances of learning from cases. Drawing on recent work on cases, I argue that cases can be educative by serving an exploratory function, probing what one takes to be known and provoking change in the background one uses in evaluating a situation. I then argue that Dewey’s work on imagination in his comments on sympathy and in A Common Faith and Art as Experience enables such a role for cases on a particularist framework. Mark Johnson’s recent work on metaphor further illuminates how Dewey’s account of art can be exploratory. I contend that this account affords an exploratory role for cases consistent with Dancy’s particularism. (shrink)

In this paper, we attempt to de-naturalize the prevailing economistic imaginary of work that Max Weber and later commentators described as ‘protestant work ethic,’ epitomized in the figure of homo economicus. We do so by contrasting it with the imaginary of skillful work that can be found in vignettes about artisans in the Zhuangzi. We argue that there are interesting contrasts between these views concerning 1) direct goal achievement vs. indirect goal achievement through the cultivation of skills; 2) (...) the hierarchization of mental versus physical dimensions of work; 3) the crafting of non-dominating relationships between the working subject, their object, and their instruments of work, which leads to questions about the sustainability of these relationships; and 4) the relationship between work and well-being, which the Daoist texts conceptualize in a much more holistic, but also more presentist way than Western economic rationality. We conclude by pointing out the relevance of these differences for several contemporary debates about work, by denaturalizing a dominant imaginary of work, by distinguishing different forms of work, by suggesting a different relation between work and nature, and by raising questions about the desirability of the automation of work. (shrink)

Chaos and Cosmos offers a new and unique interpretation of Argentine essayist and fiction writer Jorge Luis Borges as a thinker of what continental twentieth century political theory called the political. While not a political writer in the traditional sense, Borges was indeed an author whose response to the advent of totalitarianism, in particular in its Nazi form, generated the most experimental, insightful, and rigorous short fiction and non-fiction political interrogation. -/- As is well known, Borges’ writing went beyond originality; (...) it created a genre of its own, and the Borgesian style is not limited to form. This Borgesian style fundamentally relates to how his response to the advent of totalitarianism led to sharp and philosophically sophisticated interrogations-in-fiction of the political, understood in this book as related to three main distinctive dimensions: that of the question of the forms of society, that of the relationship between the imaginary and the real, and that of the relationship between the same and the other. -/- Chaos and Cosmos introduces the reader to Borges as an experimental writer, as an Argentine citizen, as a thinker of global political phenomena, and as a South American Pragmatist. The book also makes incursions in a political theorizing of its own, intertwining an interpretation of Borges’ essays and fiction pieces from the 1930s and 1940s with the central concerns of philosophers and political thinkers such as William James, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hannah Arendt, Claude Lefort, Michael Foucault, Richard Rorty, and Judith Butler. (shrink)

Due to the scarcity of data from government sources, twisting facts and rewriting histories in order to warp out a belligerent present has become a rising tendency. Such a tendency brings with it a convenient inability to speak truth to power. The majority of the urban credo today has fallen victim to a system of what can be called a new-age urban ideology of 'perfective fakeness'.

Theoretically grounded in queer death studies and environmental humanities, this article has a twofold aim. Firstly, it explores the somatechnics of environmental violence in the context of Northern and Eastern Europe, while paying attention to ongoing ecocide inflicted by Russia on Ukraine, and to the post-WW2 chemical weapon dumps in the Baltic Sea. Secondly, the article examines the concept of eco-grief in its close relation to artistic narratives on ecocide. By bridging the discussion on environmental violence and artistic renderings of (...) eco-grief, the article hopes to contribute to a better understanding of the socio-cultural responses to more-than-human death and loss, and their accompanying ethical imaginaries and affordances. (shrink)

In this work, we will approach some essential questions about the collective imaginary and their relations with reality and truth. We should face this subject in a conceptual framework, followed by the corresponding factual analysis of demonstrable behavioral realities. We will adopt not only the methodology, but mostly the tenets and propositions of the analytic philosophy, which certainly will be apparent throughout the study, and may be identified by the features described by Perez : -/- Rabossi (1975) defends the (...) idea that analytic philosophy can be identified by considering certain family resemblances. He suggests the following family traits: a positive attitude toward scientific knowledge; a cautious attitude toward metaphysics; a conception of philosophy as a conceptual task, which takes conceptual analysis as a method; a close relationship between language and philosophy; a concern with seeking argumentative answers to philosophical problems; search for conceptual clarity Perez, Diana Ines, "Analytic Philosophy in Latin America”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ). These core concepts involve cultural, social, religious, scientific, philosophic, moral, and political contents, belonging to the individual and collective existence of each one of us. The present work grounds itself on analytical reflection. We will speculate the most comprehensive and profound way we can and express the results of our thoughts. Notwithstanding the multidisciplinary nature of the subject and the methodological openness for accepting contributions from any field of science, this work belongs to the aim of psychology and ontology or, in other terms, social and ontological psychology. The main scope of this paper is to observe how some essential evolutionary attributes of humankind, like creativity, imagination, and association, can become a hazardous sickness, sheltered in the misty shadows of the intelligence. (shrink)

Aldo Leopold accorded great significance to the images he used to describe both the land and humankind’s relation to it. Focusing on three key images of Leopold’s “ecological imaginary”—the balance, the pyramid, and the round river—this article argues that the most profound of these is the round river. Contrasting this image with James Lovelock’s portrayal of the earth as Gaia, it further argues that Leopold’s round river can be interpreted as a contemporary, ecological reworking of the primordial, Homeric experience (...) of Being, according to which the foundation of the world is a round river, Oceanus. (shrink)

This paper takes up Bethesda Game Studios' Starfield (2023) as an aesthetic artefact, carefully attending to the thematics of the game's narrative in their operation as structuring "thought patterns" for the player's experience of the game, thought patterns that give form to the "sensible fabric" of the game and so constitute an imaginary or "distribution of the sensible" that requires critique (Rancière, 2013). Utilizing the aesthetic and material-economic theories of Nicolas Bourriaud, Jacques Rancière, Jussi Parikka, and David Graeber, this (...) paper examines the aesthetics of the techno-ecological imaginary that Starfield institutes, close reading the play of perspectives into which the game invites the player-character, and analysing this play in its problematic orientation to the key dramatic revelation of planetary catastrophe that occurs late in the game's main campaign. If, as climate and games scholar Benjamin Abraham writes (2022), "[b]ringing the climate crisis 'home' to all of our lives, all of our workplaces, all of our hobbies, is the necessary first step in acting to reverse climate action," then illuminating and critiquing Starfield's deployment of such a crisis will help players, scholars, and developers alike take the first step in learning to pay attention to the very "modes of perception" that prevent us from effecting real change in the global technological systems that have brought us to the brink of planetary collapse. (shrink)

In 1713 the scientific instrument-maker Jakob Leupold published designs for three machines were the first attempt to design machinery with internal moving parts that replaced human agency in creating original images. This paper first analyzes his text and engravings in order to explain how he proposed to do this, given contemporary materials and command of physical forces. Next, it characterizes the devices as a transition from concepts of incision to concepts of mirroring, taken as models of the history of mechanical (...) reproduction. And finally, Leupold’s replacement of the sighting grid with differential gears points to a set of problems appearing in contemporary philosophy represented in Rococo artistic production of this period as well. Taking the proposed devices in context, they help to theorize the complex notions of creative activity in Rococo visual culture. Taken as an episode in the history of communications, they instance the development of conceptions of personhood and of physical forces at stake in the invention of automated media. (shrink)

Dubourg and Baumard mention a potential role for the human drive to systemise as a factor motivating interest in imaginary worlds. Given that hyperexpression of this trait has been linked with autism (Baron-Cohen, 2002, 2006), we think this raises interesting implications for how those on the autism spectrum may differ from the neurotypical population in their engagement with imaginary worlds.

Abstract: There has been an ongoing dispute between defenders of world disclosure (understood here in a loosely Heideggerian sense) and advocates of normative debate. I will take up a recent confrontation between Charles Taylor and Robert Brandom over this question as my point of departure for showing how world disclosure can expand the range of normative argument. I begin by distinguishing pre-reflective disclosure—the already interpreted, structured world in which we find ourselves—from reflective disclosure—the discrete intervention of a particular utterance or (...) text. I discuss Taylor’s notion of social imaginaries as a way of thematizing our pre-reflective background and Talal Asad’s critique of Taylor to show how this background can be one space of argument. I then develop my own understanding of reflective disclosure, of which Taylor gives an indequate account, developing my argument with help of literature, including a close analysis of Susan Glaspell short story “A Jury of Her Peers.” This story illustrates how world disclosure can make normative arguments without confining itself to Brandom’s or Habermas’s idea of the exchange of reasons. (shrink)

This essay is a comparison between Schelling's and Blanchot's conceptions of the night of the imaginary. Schelling is the most romantic of the German idealist philosophers and Blanchot the most extreme of the French “deconstructionists.“ Their historical link is actually indirect, but they offer two complementary views on the “same“ impersonal nocturnal experience of the imaginary, the approach of which requires a certain self-overcoming of philosophy towards literature.

The aim of this paper is to provide an interpretation for Sartre’s account of the unity of consciousness in The Transcendence of the Ego. I will argue that it is only once The Transcendence of the Ego is read alongside other texts written around the same time, such as The Imaginary, that we can understand how Sartre believes it is possible for consciousness to be unified without an I. I begin by setting out the Kantian context that Sartre develops (...) for his views, before looking at Sartre’s arguments themselves. I then turn to some of the difficulties other readers have encountered with making sense of the arguments of the Transcendence of the Ego. I argue that it is only in relation to Sartre’s account of what he calls the illusion of immanence in The Imaginary, that we can make sense of Sartre’s account of consciousness, before reconstructing what I take to be Sartre’s position drawing on Sartre’s references to Bergson and Spinoza. (shrink)

Citation: Christodoulou, Marina. “‘To be dead is an unthinkable anomaly’ Reversed Necropolitics and the Death Imaginary.” Lo Sguardo - rivista di filosofia N. 23, 2017 (I) - Reinventare il reale. Jean Baudrillard (2007-2017) a cura di Eleonora de Conciliis, Enrico Schirò, Daniela Angelucci, pp. 127-137. Articolo sottoposto a peer review. Ricevuto il 14/10/2016. Accettato il 12/01/2017. ISSN: 2036-6558 -/- --------- -/- The concept or the theory of Death in the thought of Jean Baudrillard is not given the particular attention (...) it needs. When one speaks of the thought of Baudrillard, one rarely will mention ‘death’ as one of the keywords of his corpus. I think, though, that it deserves such a key place, for three reasons. Firstly, because the theme of Death is a gargantuan concept in the history of Philosophy and it even emerges with the definition of Philosophy itself, since, at least, Plato. Every philosopher, more or less is preoccupied with it, as an archetypical necessity of both human culture and of philosophy in particular. It is always interesting to see how each philosopher or each person thinks on it, as their thoughts on Death are a departure point and an indication of their whole philosophical system or, for non-philosophers, of their whole way of life. Secondly, it is important to examine this theme in Baudrillard because it inseparably interconnects, explains, and is explained by all the other, key, and the less prominent themes in his philosophy. Baudrillard’s thinking might take new dimensions when viewed through his thoughts on Death. Finally, Baudrillard is considered a difficult thinker, because, unlike other philosophers, he grasps themes which people are used to seeing as the pre-occupation or within the realm of fiction, even science-fiction. I would like to show, using simple language, that his philosophy, especially surrounding the subject of Death, is completely naked of any metaphysical, romanticised, fantastic, or fiction-like properties; it is realistic and political. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the question of whether metaphysics and theology are or can become science. After examining the qualities of contemporary science, which evolved from an earlier historic concept of any body of literature into a formal method for obtaining empirical knowledge, I apply that standard to metaphysics and theology. I argue that neither metaphysics nor theology practices a scientific method or generates scientific knowledge. Worse, I conclude that both metaphysics and theology are at best purely cultural projects—exercises (...) in exegesis of local cultural and religious ideas and language—and, therefore, that other cultures have produced or would produce radically different schemes of metaphysics or theology. At its worst, metaphysics is speculation about the unknowable, while theology is rumination about the imaginary. (shrink)

Two main cognitive theories predict that people find refuting evidence that falsifies their theorising difficult, if not impossible to consider, even though such reasoning may be pivotal to grounding their everyday thoughts in reality (i.e., Poletiek, 1996; Klayman & Ha, 1987). In the classic 2-4-6 number sequence task devised by psychologists to test such reasoning skills in a simulated environment – people fail the test more often than not. In the 2-4-6 task participants try to discover what rule the number (...) triple 2-4-6 conforms to. The rule is ‘ascending numbers’, but it is tricky to discover this rule. Participants tend to generate hypotheses with the properties of the 2-4-6 triple, for example, ‘even numbers ascending in twos’. They must search for evidence to test whether their hypothesis is the rule. But experimental evidence has shown that they tend to generate confirming triples that they expect to be consistent with their hypothesis rather than inconsistent falsifying triples. Counter to the two main hypothesis testing theories this paper demonstrates that falsification is possible in five 2-4-6 task experiments when participants consider an Imaginary Participant’s hypothesis. Experiment 1 and 2 show that competition with an opponent hypothesis tester facilitates falsification. Experiments 3 to 5 show that the consideration of an alternative hypothesis helps this falsification of hypotheses lead to rule discovery. The implications of the results for theories of hypothesis testing and reasoning are discussed. (shrink)

I criteri neurologici per accertare il decesso, da impiegare in alternativa a quelli cardiorespiratori se il paziente ha subìto lesioni cerebrali e si trova collegato alle apparecchiature per la ventilazione artificiale, sono entrati nell’uso comune della pratica medica occidentale da circa quarant’anni ed il consenso di cui essi godono nella comunità scientifica sembra, a prima vista, essere ancora oggi molto solido. Si diceva a prima vista, perché se si esamina con attenzione la letteratura dal 1992 ad oggi, si possono scoprire (...) i crescenti numeri del dissenso: ripensamenti e critiche provengono soprattutto da esperti di area medico-biologica, che associano le loro voci a quelle di filosofi, teologi, studiosi di etica. I motivi del dissenso sono molteplici, e l’ampia letteratura che li documenta riguarda la teoria scientifica posta a fondamento dei criteri neurologici, ed evidenzia le contraddizioni, teoriche ed applicative, derivanti dall’uso di quei criteri. (shrink)

Whether intentional suppression of an unpleasant or unwanted memory reduces the ability to recall that memory subsequently is a contested issue in contemporary memory research. Building on findings that similar processes are recruited when individuals remember the past and imagine the future, we measured the effects of thought suppression on memory for imagined future scenarios. Thought suppression reduced the ability to recall emotionally negative scenarios, but not those that were emotionally positive. This finding suggests that intentionally avoiding thoughts about emotionally (...) negative episodes may inhibit representations of those memories, progressively reducing their availability to recall. (shrink)

This article aims to examine the way in which an old expression, jouissance-value, created by Jacques Lacan, has become a key concept in the media industry and in the field of Media studies. The hypothesis presented here is the following: in the fabrication of jouissance-value, the gaze (regard) works as labor, establishing an economy of scopic desire.

It is argued that criticisms of Willian Band and James Park concerning the quantum mechanics measurement problem do not succeed.

For feminists, working in/with the ‘posts’ is, always has been, and must be, a collective and collaborative endeavour. Increasingly, post-inquiry involves taking seriously multiplicities of humans, nonhumans, more-than-and-other-than-humans, multispecies and natureculture entities, including viral, microbial, elemental and atmospheric relationalities. The individual papers in this Special Issue, this editorial, and the Special Issue as a whole attest to this imperative pull to the collective-collaborative in seeking to explore the entangled relations of/between feminisms and the ‘posts’. As a collaborative-collective multiplicity, the Special (...) Issue interrogates what these entangled relations offer for reconfiguring gender and education research, theory, pedagogic practice, activism and praxis. (shrink)