Experiential imagination consists in an imaginative projection that aims at simulating the experiences one would undergo in different circumstances. It has been traditionally thought to play a role in how we build our lives, engage with other agents, and appreciate art. Although some philosophers have recently expressed doubts over the capacity of experiential imagination to offer insight into the perspective of someone other than our present-selves, experiential imagination remains a much sought-after tool. This paper substantiates pessimism about the epistemological value (...) of these uses of experiential imagination by developing an embodied approach. Our thesis is that experiential imagination is _robustly embodied_ because the _sociohistorically situated_ body makes an irreducible contribution to the imaginative project, and that, as such, it is constrained by who we are as _concrete_ agents. We argue that experiential imagination is an embodied, virtual exploration of imagined scenarios that depends on our situated history of sensorimotor and affective interactions. We conclude that experiential imagination is much more limited than commonly acknowledged, as it can hardly be divorced from who we are and where we have been. (shrink)

Advocates of the ethical criticism of art claim that works' ethical defects or merits have an impact on their aesthetic value. Against ethical critics, autonomists claim that moral criteria should not be part of the considerations when evaluating works of art as art. Autonomism refers to the view that an artwork's aesthetic value is independent from its ethical value. The purpose of this paper is to examine how autonomism has been defended in the contemporary discussion in analytic aesthetics. I present (...) three versions of autonomism: Richard Posner's radical autonomism, James C. Anderson and Jeffrey T. Dean, and James Harold's moderate autonomism, and Francisca Pérez Carreño's robust autonomism. I argue that robust autonomism offers a stronger argument against the ethical critic. However, I point to some difficulties for Pérez Carreño's account and conclude by suggesting how further work in autonomism might go around them. (shrink)

This article examines what constitutes an ethical flaw in artworks and asks which ethical flaws are relevant in determining works. ethical and aesthetic values. I argue that while most of the discussion has simply taken for granted that it is intrinsic ethical flaws that should be taken into account, there are further important differences in the type of intrinsic ethical flaws that artworks display. I identify two different types of ethical defects in artworks, fictional and actual, and argue that this (...) distinction has important consequences for debates surrounding the ethical value of works of fiction. (shrink)

Advocates of interactionism in the ethical criticism of art argue that ethical value impacts aesthetic value. The debate is concerned with “the intrinsic question”: the question of whether ethical flaws/merits in artworks’ manifested attitudes affect their aesthetic value (Gaut 2007: 9). This paper argues that the assumption that artworks have intrinsic ethical value is problematic at least in regards to a significant subset of works: fictional artworks. I argue that, insofar as their ethical value emerges only from attitudes attributable to (...) actual agents, fictional artworks only have extrinsic ethical value. I show that what is at stake for interactionism is whether ethical judgements concerning artists’ attitudes in a context, rather than manifested attitudes, are ever aesthetically relevant. I conclude that, without buying into extreme actual intentionalism, a still controversial theory of interpretation that ties artworks’ meaning to actual artists, interactionism fails to show that ethical flaws/merits are aesthetic flaws/merits. (shrink)

Aesthetic evaluations of human bodies have important implications for moral recognition and for individuals’ access to social and material goods. Unfortunately, there is a widespread aesthetic disregard for non-white bodies. Aesthetic evaluations depend on the aesthetic properties we regard objects as having. And it is widely agreed that aesthetic properties are directly accessed in our experience of aesthetic objects. How, then, might we explain aesthetic evaluations that systematically favour features associated with white identity? Critical race philosophers, like Alia Al-Saji, Mariana (...) Ortega, Paul C. Taylor, and George Yancy, argue that this is because the perception of racialized bodies is affected by the social structures in which they are appreciated. The aim of this paper is to propose how social structures can affect aesthetic perception. I argue that mental imagery acquired through the interaction with aesthetic phenomena structures the perception of non-aesthetic properties of bodies, so that aesthetic properties consistent with racist stereotypes are attributed to individuals. (shrink)

Work in feminist and critical race aesthetics brings out a complex interaction between aesthetic, ethical, and political value. The interest in ethico-political considerations is also found in recent literature around art and ethics, such as debates about the work of immoral artists, cultural appropriation and heritage, and art in public spaces. These discussions are characterized by a social structural approach to the ethico-political value of art that focuses on relations between artworks, other artefacts, and individuals in specific sociohistorical contexts and (...) as they emerge from specific social organizations. In this paper I present the main features and assumptions behind these social structural approaches to the values of art. I examine accounts that take ethico-political value to depend on artworks’ contributions to public discourse and on their role in constituting social structures. (shrink)

Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics TaylorPaul CWiley Blackwell. 2016. pp. 203. £18.99.

It has been pointed out that Sensorimotor Enactivism, a theory that claims that perception is enacted and brought about by movement, says very little about the neural mechanisms that enable perception. For the proponents of the predictive approach to Sensorimotor Enactivism, this is a challenge that can be met by introducing predictive processing into the picture. However, the compatibility between these theories is not straightforward. Firstly, because they seem to differ in their stand towards representations: while Sensorimotor Enactivism is said (...) to belong to the non-representational wing of cognitive science, predictive processing has a representational profile. And secondly, because they exhibit different explanatory strategies: while Sensorimotor Enactivism prioritizes the interactions of the embodied agent, predictive processing has internalist commitments. The aim of this paper is to address these concerns and show that a predictive approach to Sensorimotor Enactivism is viable. More specifically, I focus on the Free-Energy approach, a theory that falls within the ballpark of predictive processing. In this paper I argue for the following claims. I argue that both Sensorimotor Enactivism and the Free-Energy approach may be understood for some systems in representational terms. The non-representational reading of Sensorimotor Enactivism is not mandatory and neither is the representational reading of the Free-Energy approach. Sensorimotor Enactivism is, in this respect, compatible with both representational and non-representational interpretations of the FEA. So, the position towards representations of these frameworks should not stand in the way of a predictive approach to Sensorimotor Enactivism. I also show that the Free-Energy approach allows for an account that prioritizes the interaction of the embodied agent with the environment. This is the explanatory strategy followed by Sensorimotor Enactivism. To justify this strategy and following other proponents of Sensorimotor Enactivism, I argue that by referring to the interactions of the embodied agent a better account of the phenomena in question is provided. On this basis, I claim that Sensorimotor Enactivism and the Free-Energy approach are compatible in what concerns their explanatory strategy as well. Thus, making the case for the viability of the predictive approach to Sensorimotor Enactivism. (shrink)

During the project of the fundamental ontology, Heidegger refers to destruction as a moment of phenomenology –among other two that are equally constitutive– which has a mainly historical character. Now, this paper aims to show that the notion of philosophy as destruction is intensified as Heidegger’s thought moved forward. Destruction, in Heidegger’s first lectures, demands an analysis on both the limits and possibilities of the philosophical tradition. It is in this analysis when we come to realize that the question of (...) being has been forgotten; that, instead of that, we have privileged the question of beings. In this way, destruction allows us to discover the absence of Being and, therefore, the horizon from which it must be answered: time. On the lectures that came after Being and Time, Heidegger shows that the absence unveiled by the destructive analysis is based on the character of Dasein itself. This being is constituted by the absence of beings, by nothing. Philosophy is, therefore, destruction in the most radical way, because its task is to show the metaphysical character of Dasein. It is only because of this task that philosophy in this destructive manner is historical. (shrink)

In ‘Rethinking Nature: Phenomenology and a Non-reductionist Cognitive Science’, Gallagher [2019] sets out to overcome resistance to the idea that phenomenology is relevant to cognitive science. He argues that the relevance in question may be secured if we rethink the concept of nature. For Gallagher, this transformed concept of nature—which is to be distinguished from the classic scientific conception of nature in that it embraces irreducible subjectivity—is already at work in some contemporary enactive phenomenological approaches to cognitive science. Following a (...) summary of Gallagher’s argument, we argue that this rethinking of nature is not necessary to secure the aim in question. We articulate two alternative ways of achieving the relevance of phenomenology to cognitive science. The first, which turns on a minimal notion of naturalism, leaves the classic scientific conception of nature intact. The second, which turns on a practice-based analysis of collaboration between phenomenology and cognitive science, leaves it open which concept of nature one should adopt. As we show, each of the proposals on the table (Gallagher’s own and our two alternatives) comes at a cost. Which of the three proposals is the more attractive will depend on which cost one wants to pay. (shrink)

This paper analyses the phenomenology and epistemology of chatbots such as ChatGPT and Bard. The computational architecture underpinning these chatbots are large language models (LLMs), which are generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems trained on a massive dataset of text extracted from the Web. We conceptualise these LLMs as multifunctional computational cognitive artifacts, used for various cognitive tasks such as translating, summarizing, answering questions, information-seeking, and much more. Phenomenologically, LLMs can be experienced as a “quasi-other”; when that happens, users anthropomorphise them. (...) For most users, current LLMs are black boxes, i.e., for the most part, they lack data transparency and algorithmic transparency. They can, however, be phenomenologically and informationally transparent, in which case there is an interactional flow. Anthropomorphising and interactional flow can, in some users, create an attitude of (unwarranted) trust towards the output LLMs generate. We conclude this paper by drawing on the epistemology of trust and testimony to examine the epistemic implications of these dimensions. Whilst LLMs generally generate accurate responses, we observe two epistemic pitfalls. Ideally, users should be able to match the level of trust that they place in LLMs to the degree that LLMs are trustworthy. However, both their data and algorithmic opacity and their phenomenological and informational transparency can make it difficult for users to calibrate their trust correctly. The effects of these limitations are twofold: users may adopt unwarranted attitudes of trust towards the outputs of LLMs (which is particularly problematic when LLMs hallucinate), and the trustworthiness of LLMs may be undermined. (shrink)

Philosophy has long either dismissed or paid only minimal attention to creativity, and even with the rise of research on imagination, the creative imagination has largely been ignored as well. The aim of this volume is to correct this neglect. By bringing together existing research in various sub-disciplines, we also aim to open up new avenues of research. The chapters in Part I provide some framing and history on the philosophical study of imagination and creativity, along with an overview of (...) the empirical literature. Part II explores imagination and creativity as they manifest in, and in turn shape, the individual. Part III surveys the role of imagination and creativity across a wide variety of artistic domains, and the chapters of Part IV turn to societal domains. Part V focuses on the interplay of imagination and creativity with regard to particular features of creative subjects and different kinds of creative subjects. *** -/- Part I: Theories and Approaches 1. Theories of Imagination (Peter Kung) 2. Theories of Creativity (Julia Langkau) 3. Historical Treatments of Imagination in the Western Tradition (Lucia Oliveri) 4. Historical Treatments of Creativity in the Western Tradition (Elliot Paul) 5. Non-Western Treatments of Imagination (Reza Hadisi and Jing Iris Hu) 6. Non-Western Treatments of Creativity (Nicolas B. Verger and Vlad Glăveanu) 7. Empirical Treatments of Imagination and Creativity (Dustin Stokes) 8. Experimental Philosophy of Imagination and Creativity (Michael T. Stuart) 9. The Relationship between Imagination and Creativity (Margherita Arcangeli) -/- Part II: Imagination and Creativity in Mind and Action 10. Imagination, Creativity, and Skill (Amy Kind) 11. Imagination, Creativity, and Attention (Bence Nanay) 12. Imagination, Creativity, and Agency (Caterina Moruzzi) 13. Imagination, Creativity, and Emotion (Julien Deonna and Fabrice Teroni) 14. Imagination, Creativity, and Embodiment (Adriana Clavel-Vázquez and María Jimena Clavel Vázquez) 15. Imagination, Creativity, and Gender (Luke Roelofs) 16. Imagination, Creativity, and Race (Nicholas Whittaker) 17. Imagination, Creativity, and Child Development (Thalia Goldstein, Anna Sofia Caruso, Darian Stapleton, and Lamin Fatty) -/- Part III: Imagination and Creativity in the Arts 18. Imagination, Creativity, and the Visual Arts (Claire Anscomb) 19. Imagination, Creativity, and Music (Matteo Ravasio) 20. Imagination, Creativity, and Fiction (Hannah H. Kim) 21. Imagination, Creativity, and Dance (David Davies and Anna Pakes) 22. Imagination, Creativity, and the Culinary Arts (Patrik Engisch) 23. Imagination, Creativity, and Film (Murray Smith) 24. Imagination, Creativity, and Acting (Tzachi Zamir) 25. Imagination, creativity, and fashion (Laura T. Di Summa) -/- Part IV: Imagination and Creativity in Society 26. Imagination and Creativity in the Scientific Realm (Alice Murphy) 27. Imagination and Creativity in the Moral Realm (Tim Mulgan) 28. Imagination and Creativity in the Political Realm (Avshalom Schwartz) 29. Imagination and Creativity in the Law (Maksymilian Del Mar) 30. Imagination and Creativity in the Religious Realm (Neil Van Leeuwen) 31. Imagination and Creativity in Business (Eric Peterson) 32. Imagination and Creativity in Times of Crisis (Jennifer Fraser and Noah Stemeroff) Part V: Emerging Issues in Imagination and Creativity Research 33. Imagination, Creativity, and Aphantasia (Andrea Blomkvist) 34. Imagination, Creativity, and Neurodivergence (Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa) 35. Imagination, Creativity, and Non-Human Animals (Henry Shevlin) 36. Imagination, Creativity, and Artificial Intelligence (Peter Langland-Hassan) 37. Collective Imagination and Collective Creativity (Nick Wiltsher) . (shrink)

Assessing physical fitness has emerged as a proxy of the health status of children and adolescents and therefore as relevant from a public health point of view. DAFIS is a project included in Plan Galicia Saudable of the regional government of Galicia. DAFIS consists of an on-line software devoted to record the results of a standard physical fitness protocol carried out as a part of the physical education curriculum. The aims of this study were: to obtain normative values of physical (...) fitness of the Galician school population evaluated in the DAFIS project, and to identify a reduced number of components and tests able to capture a significant amount of the variability in the physical fitness of children and adolescents. From an initial sample of 27784 records, 15287 cases were considered after filtering. Generalized Additive Models for Location, Scale and Shape were used for obtaining percentile curves and tables for each sex. Furthermore, a principal components analysis was performed, selecting the number of components by applying the Kaiser’s rule and selecting a subset of variables considering the correlation between each variable and the components. Percentile curves and normative values are reported for each test and sex. Physical fitness was better in boys than in girls throughout age groups, except for flexibility that was consistently higher in girls. Two main components were detected throughout age groups: the first one representing body composition and partially cardiorespiratory fitness and the second one muscular fitness. For boys and girls, waist to height ratio had the highest correlations with the first component in four out of six age groups. The highest correlation with the second component, was most frequently observed for the handgrip test both in boys and girls. This study provides evidence about the utility of school community actions like DAFIS aimed to track the health-related fitness of children and adolescents. The results suggest that fat mass distribution and muscular performance concentrate a high proportion physical fitness variance. (shrink)

C'est le compte-rendu de: Barnés Vázquez, Antonio & Magda Kučerková (ed.), _The Figurativeness of the Language of Mystical Experience._ _Particularities and Interpretations. _Brno, Masaryk University Press, 2021, 279 pp., ISBN 978-80-210-9997-5.

While 4E approaches to cognition are increasingly introduced in educational contexts, little has been said about how 4E commitments can inform pedagogy aimed at fostering ethical competencies. Here, we evaluate a 4E-inspired ethics exercise that we developed at a technical university to enliven the moral imagination of engineering students. Our students participated in an interactive tinkering workshop, during which they materially redesigned a healthcare artifact. The aim of the workshop was twofold. Firstly, we wanted students to experience how material choices (...) at the levels of design and functionality can enable morally significant reimaginings of the affordances commonly associated with existing artifacts. We term this type of reimagining world-directed moral imagination. Secondly, through the design process, we wanted students to robustly place themselves in the lived embodied perspectives of (potential) users of their selected artifacts. We term this person-directed moral imagination. While student testimonies about the exercise indicate that both their world-directed and person-directed moral imagination were enlivened, we note that the fostering of robust person-directed moral imagination proved challenging. Using 4E insights, we diagnose this challenge and ask how it might be overcome. To this end, we engage extensively with a recent 4E-informed critique of person-directed moral imagination, raised by Clavel Vázquez and Clavel-Vázquez (2023). They argue that person-directed moral imagination is profoundly limited, if not fundamentally misguided, particularly when exercised in contexts marked by emphatic embodied situated difference between the imaginer and the imagined. Building upon insights from both the 4E field and testimonies from critical disability studies, we argue that, while their critique is valuable, it ultimately goes too far. We conclude that a 4E approach can take on board recent 4E warnings regarding the limits of person-directed moral imagination while contributing positively to the development of moral imagination in engineering ethics education. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a heightened focus on the study of minimal forms of awareness during sleep to advance the study of consciousness and understand what makes a state conscious. This focus draws on an increased interest in anecdotical descriptions made by classic Indian philosophical traditions about unusual forms of awareness during sleep. For instance, in the so-called state of witnessing-sleep or luminosity sleep, one is said to reach a state that goes beyond ordinary dreaming and abide in a state (...) of just awareness, a state in which one is not aware of anything else other than one’s own awareness. Moreover, for these traditions, this state is taken to be the essence or background of consciousness. Reports on such a state opens the door to exciting new lines of research in the study of consciousness, such as inquiry into the so-called “objectless” awareness during sleep—states of awareness that lack an ordinary object of awareness. In this two-staged research project, we attempted to find the phenomenological blueprints of such forms of awareness during sleep in 18 participants by conducting phenomenological interviews, informed by a novel tool in qualitative research, the micro-phenomenological interview (MPI) method. Following a phenomenological analysis, we isolated a similar phase across 12 reported experiences labelled as ‘nothingness phase’ since it described what participants took to be an experience of ‘nothingness’. his common phase was characterised by minimal sense of self—a bodiless self, yet experienced as being ‘somewhere’—, the presence of non-modal sensations, relatively pleasant emotions, an absence of visual experience, wide and unfocused attention, and an awareness of the state as it unfolded. (shrink)

A general mathematical framework, based on countable partitions of Natural Numbers [1], is presented, that allows to provide a Semantics to propositional languages. It has the particularity of allowing both the valuations and the interpretation Sets for the connectives to discriminate complexity of the formulas. This allows different adequacy criteria to be used to assess formulas associated with the same connective, but that differ in their complexity. The presented method can be adapted potentially infinite number of connectives and truth values, (...) therefore, it can be considered a general framework to provide semantics to several of the known logic systems (eg, LC, L3 LP, FDE). The presented semantics allow to converge to different standard semantics if the separation complexity procedure is annulled. Therefore, it can be understood as a framework that allows greater precision (in complexity terms) with respect to formula satisfaction. Naturally, because of how it is built, it can be incorporated into non-deterministic semantics. The presented procedure also allows generating valuations that grant a different truth value to each formula of propositional language. As a positive side effect, our method allows a constructive proof of the equipotence between N and N^n for all Natural n. (shrink)

This chapter explores Cicero’s reception in the German Enlightenment, a topic that has garnered less scholarly attention compared to his influence in the Anglosphere. Focusing on Johann Joachim Spalding and Christian Garve as case studies, we highlight Cicero’s profound and often underappreciated impact on German intellectual thought, particularly in shaping ideas about the human vocation (Bestimmung des Menschen)—a legacy that extends even to the towering figure of the German Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant.

Using insights from two of the major proponents of the hermeneutical approach, Paul Ricoeur and Hannah Arendt—who both recognized the ethicopolitical importance of narrative and acknowledged some of the dangers associated with it—I will flesh out the worry that “narrativity” in political theory has been overly attentive to story telling and not heedful enough of story listening. More specifically, even if, as Ricoeur says, “narrative intelligence” is crucial for self-understanding, that does not mean, as he invites us to, that we (...) should always seek to develop a “narrative identity” or become, as he says, “the narrator of our own life story.” I offer that, perhaps inadvertently, such an injunction might turn out to be detrimental to the “art of listening.” This, however, must also be cultivated if we want to do justice to our narrative character and expect narrative to have the political role that both Ricoeur and Arendt envisaged. Thus, although there certainly is a “redemptive power” in narrative, when the latter is understood primarily as the act of narration or as the telling of stories, there is a danger to it as well. Such a danger, I think, intensifies at a time like ours, when, as some scholars have noted, “communicative abundance” or the “ceaseless production of redundancy” in traditional and social media has often led to the impoverishment of the public conversation. (shrink)

Nuestra deflación espiritual ante la muerte de los otros debido a nuestro deseo intenso por negar la propia muerte constituye, más que un obstáculo insalvable, una oportunidad ética y política para pensar y construir otros discursos y prácticas normativas frente a la destructividad de la que somos capaces y a la que estamos expuestos de manera irremediable. Sin duda, las normas de aprehensión y de reconocimiento de lo humano dependen, ante todo, de nuestras disposiciones afectivas ante la muerte de los (...) otros, cuyas pérdidas juzgamos, diferencialmente, como meritorias o indignas de ser lloradas, según el valor o el desvalor que adjudicamos a sus vidas. De ahí la importancia del derecho a ser llorado como condición ética y política para la humanización de todos. Este artículo, basado en Esquilo, Sigmund Freud y Judith Butler, cuenta con tres apartados: la cuestión de la destructividad humana; vidas matables, inmerecedoras de duelo; el poder afectivo del duelo. (shrink)

Los monólogos interiores en “Escuchad la Voz” de Franz Werfel constituyen verdaderos momentos de introspección y reflexión profundas del protagonista, mensajero de la salvación para la humanidad. El monólogo es un elemento de comunicación directo de Jeeves, el personaje principal, con el lector, a la manera de un intercambio oral transmitido al interlocutor. La encarnación del mesiánico Jeremías en un personaje contemporáneo trae consigo el poder de la redención, ya que aunque el héroe trágico debe morir, nos entrega la vida (...) a cambio para restaurar el orden. Nadie duda de la grandeza de Werfel, quien se diferencia de otros autores por comprender al ser humano desde lo profundo de su corazón. El texto que Werfel recrea advierte que “las cuestiones profundamente humanas son perennes y requieren, para su inteligencia y recreación, de fuentes igualmente perennes”. En “Escuchad la Voz” el soliloquio se constituye en una leve y sutil trama básica sobre la que se desarrollan las imágenes e ideas de la vida espiritual, y a partir de allí, el lector puede percibir claramente lo que atraviesa por la mente de Jeeves. (shrink)

The hereby introduction gives an insight into the topics and themes discussed in the hereby presented issue of the journal Ethics in Progress, devoted to the topic of transhumanism in its numerous contexts.

Carbon offsetting remains contentious within, at least, philosophy. By posing and then answering a general question about an aspect of the morality of carbon offsetting—Does carbon offsetting make luxury emissions morally permissible?—this essay helps to lessen some of the topic’s contentiousness. Its central question is answered by arguing and defending the view that carbon offsetting makes luxury emissions morally permissible by counteracting potential harm. This essay then shows how this argument links to and offers a common starting point for further (...) examination of offsetting across various disciplines and domains, such as policy and other branches of philosophy like the ethics of risk. (shrink)

En la modernidad tradicional la realidad se presenta desde una mathesis universalis que la explica y le confiere unos contornos fijos y claros desde los cuales es posible construir todo el edificio de la ciencia natural que lo explica. Así, el mundo del hombre se observará desde las leyes universales que rigen todo comportamiento humano en sociedad. Para Nietzsche, por el contrario, el mundo sólo encuentra su fundamento en el devenir de configuraciones de fuerzas que no se rigen por ninguna (...) ley previa más allá de su propia relación. Igualmente, en Baltasar Gracián, es ampliamente apoyada la tesis de que el aragonés propone una «nihilización» del mundo que coloca su fundamento fuera, en fuga. Nos proponemos analizar las reflexiones de Baltasar Gracián y Friedrich Nietzsche de acuerdo a las cuales el mundo aparece desde su «inmundicia» y falta de fundamento en contra de esa visión moderna que busca someter al mundo a unas leyes fijas y universales. Sin embargo y, al mismo tiempo, queremos mostrar cómo esta visión no conduce a un nihilismo resignado, sino que, por el contrario, impone al hombre la responsabilidad de, aceptando este desfondamiento del mundo, hacer de él algo que merezca la pena ser vivido. (shrink)

Este estudo tem por objetivo conhecer a estrutura e a dinâmica de funcionamento de famílias de nível sociocultural médio-alto, com casais de dupla carreira e filhos em idade escolar. Para tanto, realizou-se um Estudo de Casos Múltiplos (Yin, 1993) com quatro famílias. Para a coleta de dados, foi uti..

I introduce a novel multidimensional framework tailored to investigate a set of phenomena that might appear intractable and render them amenable to scientific inquiry. In particular, I focus on examining altered states of consciousness that appear to the experiencing subject as “contentless” or “objectless” states in some form, either by having disrupted or reduced content of awareness, or content that appears as missing altogether. By drawing on empirical research, I propose a cluster of phenomenological dimensions aimed at enhancing our understanding (...) of this group of experiences of minimal awareness, including Richness of the Content, Bodily-Awareness, Passage of Time, Attentional Focus, and Self-Revelation. The result is a robust framework that provides precise scientific terminology, facilitating its operationalisation and adaptability for future empirical work. I show the explanatory power of this framework through a case study of the state of clear light sleep—a state widely reported by Indo-Tibetan Buddhist traditions as an instance of pure awareness during sleep, a state of consciousness-as-such. This rare phenomenon has gained increasing attention in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind for the study of the nature of consciousness. However, we still lack consensus on its characterisation and potential identity with other associated states. I end the paper by illustrating how the state of clear light sleep can be situated in relation to other associated states and more ordinary ones as regions of a multidimensional state space. (shrink)

The article refers to a valid and current research area related to business sustainability. The development of the concept of sustainability has resulted in the linking of the overall concept to the actions that entrepreneurs take for sustainable development. Thus, it has moved the discussion to the level of sustainable business models, taking into account economic, environmental and social aspects together. The paper focuses on the social layer of the sustainable business model. The main objective of this article is to (...) identify the relationship between activities in the social dimension and sustainable outcomes. Research covers organizations operating in Poland and is based on a questionnaire (the statistical analysis is based on empirical studies conducted in 303 companies operating in Poland). The data collected allowed the construction of a regression model and the results revealed statistically significant relationships between social outcomes and values for society and employees. (shrink)

Frédéric Chopin is the epitome of the romantic artist; he had a chronic pulmonary disease that ultimately caused his death at the age of 39. An overlooked neurological condition is discussed in this paper. We consider the possibility of a temporal lobe epilepsy, as throughout his life Chopin had hallucinatory episodes, which can accompany seizure disorders.

En el análisis internacional contemporáneo, es un error ignorar a uno de los países que tiene una de las mayores tasas de crecimiento de los últimos años. El autor del libro es especialista en la región de Asia y en particular de China. En el texto se ofrece un análisis serio y profundo de la evolución de un país que se mantiene por la senda del crecimiento. Jean-Luc Domenach es autor de libros como: “China: el olvidado archipiélago (1992)”; “China 1949-1994 (...) (1994)”; “Asia en situación de ri.. (shrink)

Nuestro principal objetivo en este trabajo es el de analizar si es posible construir sistemas lógicos temporales-epistémicos lo suficientemente satisfactorios. Sin embargo, las principales dificultades para lograr este propósito provienen del hecho de tener que combinar una perspectiva temporal absoluta con una perspectiva epistémica relativa a cada agente; es decir, por un lado, los instantes de tiempo vienen determinados desde el punto de vista de un observador situado fuera del mundo, y, por otro lado, las alternativas epistémicas de cada agente (...) son relativas a dicho agente. Pensamos que algunas de estas dificultades podrían ser superadas con la ayuda de las lógicas híbridas, puesto que este tipo de lógicas simplifica la combinación de sistemas temporales y epistémicos, y así podemos evitar tener que construir modelos excesivamente complicados. Our main goal in this paper is to analyse if it is possible to build some suitable Temporal-Epistemic Systems. However, the main difficulties in order to aim this goal come from the fact of having to combine an absolute temporal perspective with a relative epistemic perspective; that is, on one hand, temporal points are determined from the point of view of an observer placed outside the world, and, on the other hand, the epistemic alternatives of each agent are relative to that agent. We think that some of these difficulties could be solved with the help of hybrid logics, because this kind of logics simplifies the combination of temporal and epistemic systems, and so we can avoid building highly complicated models. (shrink)

Words like "terrorism" and "war" no longer encompass the scope of contemporary violence. With this explosive book, Adriana Cavarero, one of the world's most provocative feminist theorists and political philosophers, effectively renders such terms obsolete. She introduces a new word—"horrorism"—to capture the experience of violence. Unlike terror, horrorism is a form of violation grounded in the offense of disfiguration and massacre. Numerous outbursts of violence fall within Cavarero's category of horrorism, especially when the phenomenology of violence is considered from (...) the perspective of the victim rather than that of the warrior. Cavarero locates horrorism in the philosophical, political, literary, and artistic representations of defenseless and vulnerable victims. She considers both terror and horror on the battlefields of the _Iliad_, in the decapitation of Medusa, and in the murder of Medea's children. In the modern arena, she forges a link between horror, extermination, and massacre, especially the Nazi death camps, and revisits the work of Primo Levi, Hannah Arendt's thesis on totalitarianism, and Arendt's debate with Georges Bataille on the estheticization of violence and cruelty. In applying the horroristic paradigm to the current phenomena of suicide bombers, torturers, and hypertechnological warfare, Cavarero integrates Susan Sontag's views on photography and the eroticization of horror, as well as ideas on violence and the state advanced by Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt. Through her searing analysis, Caverero proves that violence against the helpless claims a specific vocabulary, one that has been known for millennia, and not just to the Western tradition. Where common language fails to form a picture of atrocity, horrorism paints a brilliant portrait of its vivid reality. (shrink)

The human voice does not deceive. The one who is speaking is inevitably revealed by the singular sound of her voice, no matter “what” she says. We take this fact for granted—for example, every time someone asks, over the telephone, “Who is speaking?” and receives as a reply the familiar utterance, “It’s me.” Starting from the given uniqueness of every voice, Cavarero rereads the history of philosophy through its peculiar evasion of this embodied uniqueness. She shows how this history—along with (...) the fields it comprehends, such as linguistics, musicology, political theory, and studies in orality—might be grasped as the “devocalization of Logos,” as the invariable privileging of semantike over phone, mind over body. Female figures—from the Sirens to the Muses, from Echo to opera singers—provide a crucial counterhistory, one in which the embodied voice triumphs over the immaterial semantic. Reconstructing this counterhistory, Cavarero proposes a “politics of the voice” wherein the ancient bond between Logos and politics is reconfigured, and wherein what matters is not the communicative content of a given discourse, but rather who is speaking. (shrink)

Adriana Novoa and Alex Levine offer here a history and interpretation of the reception of Darwinism in Argentina, illuminating the ways culture shapes ...

Relating Narratives is a major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. First published in Italian to widespread acclaim, Relating Narratives is a fascinating and challenging new account of the relationship between selfhood and narration. Drawing a diverse array of thinkers from both the philosophical and the literary tradition, from Sophocles and Homer to Hannah Arendt, Karen Blixen, Walter Benjamin and Borges, Adriana Cadarero's theory of the `narratable self' shows how narrative models in philosophy and (...) literature can open new ways of thinking about formation of human identities. By showing how each human being has a unique story that can be told about them, Adriana Cavarero inaugurates an important shift in thinking about subjectivity and identity which relies not upon categorical or discursive norms, but rather seeks to account for `who' each one of us uniquely is. (shrink)

What does a truly democratic experience of political action look like today? In this provocative new work, Adriana Cavarero weighs in on contemporary debates about the relationship between democracy, happiness, and dissent. Drawing upon Arendt's understanding of politics as a participatory experience, but also discussing texts by Émile Zola, Elias Canetti, Boris Pasternak, and Roland Barthes, along with engaging Judith Butler, Cavarero proposes a new view of democracy, based not on violence, but rather on the spontaneous experience of a (...) plurality of bodies coming together in public. Expanding upon the themes explored in previous works, Cavarero offers a timely intervention into current thinking about the nature of democracy, suggesting that its emergence thrives on the nonviolent creativity of a widespread, participatory, and relational power that is shared horizontally rather than vertically. From digital democracy to selfies to contemporary protest movements, Cavarero argues that we need to rethink our focus on individual happiness and turn toward rediscovering the joyful emotions of birth through plural interaction. Yes, let us be happy, she urges, but let us do so publicly, politically, together. (shrink)

This pathbreaking work pursues two interwoven themes. Firstly, it engages in a deconstruction of Ancient philosopher's texts--mainly from Plato, but also from Homer and Parmenides--in order to free four Greek female figures from the patriarchal discourse which for centuries had imprisoned them in a particular role. Secondly, it attempts to construct a symbolic female order, reinterpreting these figures from a new perspective. Building on the theory of sexual difference, Cavarero shows that death is the central category on which the whole (...) edifice of traditional philosophy is based. By contrast, the category of birth provides the thread with which new concepts of feminist criticism can be woven together to establish a fresh way of thinking. Cavarero develops a philosophical narrative which, by re-interpreting each of the four figures of ancient thought, uncovers several images of the female desire for self-representation. Plato himself had not forseen that one day female subjectivity would assert its autonomy, plundering and throwing into confusion the patriarchal text in order to tell another story. (shrink)

A major programme of irrigated rice extension in the Middle Senegal River Valley has further limited the river’s natural flooding in the floodplain (Waalo), initially reduced by drought. We conducted a transdisciplinary (TD) and gendered study in the region to explore links between agricultural biodiversity and family diets using a social analysis of women’s practices. The results showed how rice expansion impacts local agrobiodiversity, diet quality and the cultural way of life. Disappearance of the singular agropastoral and fishing system of (...) the Senegal River Valley is profoundly modifying the landscape, limiting wooded riverine settings, and is undermining the traditional diversified flood-recession cropping system in the Waalo. This is causing an overconsumption of rice by reducing alternative food sources, such as sorghum, vegetables and animal products (fish, milk and meat). In particular, flood-recession sorghums are in danger of disappearing, yet they are more nutritious than rice and now sell for twice as much, or more. The way of life is being disrupted, notably sociabilities previously based on territorial complementarities, and women are disadvantaged in terms of recognition and added workload. Women’s groups have launched collective irrigated gardens, organic or not, only supported by the local NGO, but any surplus is hardly ever sold on the weekly markets in the neighbourhood. Moreover, this diet imbalance increases nutritional risk factors for health, such as vitamin and iron deficiencies, especially for women, hypertension and diabetes. We argue that, firstly, gendered TD experiences are relevant for documenting women’s activities in order for them to gain political support and, secondly, that targeting women’s care tasks gives more value and impact to TD research results. (shrink)

Technology is pervasive in current police practices, and has been for a long time. From CCTV to crime mapping, databases, biometrics, predictive analytics, open source intelligence, applications and a myriad of other technological solutions take centre stage in urban safety management. But before efficient use of these applications can be made, it is necessary to confront a series of challenges relating to the organizational structures that will be used to manage them, to their technical capacities and expectations, and to weigh (...) up the positive and negative external factors at play at the intersection between technology, society and urban management. The paper contributes to this discussion by looking into the dynamics that drive technological uptake in the field of urban safety, the different theories underpinning the relationship between crime and space, and the history and technological characteristics of Geographic Information Systems to later present specific case studies and practical examples of crime mapping systems. Finally, addressing matters related to organisational constraints, technological possibilities and societal impact from a critical point of view, the paper lays out guidelines to ensure that using technology to manage urban safety does not result in increased victimisation, inequalities or inefficiency. Taking one of the longest established technology used in police practice, crime mapping, and using a multidisciplinary, critical approach to escape technological solutionism and bridge the gap between the academic literature and policy needs and recommendations, this paper sends a cautionary tale to those hoping that technology alone can solve complex urban and social problems. (shrink)