Una de las formas en que la Filosofía se convierte en pensamiento crítico comprometido con su tiempo es cuando atiende a las cuestiones relacionadas con los movimientos sociales. Las diversas crisis en que nos encontramos actualmente requieren un quehacer filosófico que, sin abandonar el ámbito de la erudición académica, se acerque a los problemas sociales, aportando soluciones éticas y políticas. Las distintas formas de la Ética Ambiental se sitúan a este nivel. No obstante, sus propuestas serán sesgadas si no atienden (...) a las cuestiones de género asociadas a la problemática ambiental. La reflexión filosófica ecofeminista explora estas ausencias y realiza valiosas aportaciones a estas teorías y propuestas políticas. (shrink)

: A pesar de los avances en materia de igualdad, todas las sociedades siguen estando organizadas jerárquicamente sobre la idea de la superioridad de lo masculino. Las mujeres continúan siendo conceptualizadas y representadas como inferiores y naturalmente distintas a los hombres. Las diferentes culturas están fundadas en la opresión real y simbólica de la población femenina. Esto atenta contra los principios de igualdad, libertad y justicia. Por lo tanto, la teoría feminista aspira a deconstruir los prejuicios inherentes a la sumisión (...) de las mujeres. El concepto de género aparece como una categoría analítica para contribuir a esta labor de deconstrucción. En el presente trabajo, se realiza un análisis crítico de este concepto, así como de las principales reflexiones filosóficas sobre el mismo, con el fin demostrar su relevancia en el estudio de la desigualdad y en la construcción de teorías emancipatorias. (shrink)

Algunos nombres usados en nuestro lenguaje no se aplican efectivamente a nada ni nadie si son tomados de forma literal, pues carecen de referente. En términos searleanos, su significatividad no depende que puedan dar cuenta o no de ejemplares en el mundo; su significatividad se "mide" en el uso de ellos en tal o cual discurso, en medio de explicaciones o caracterizaciones forjadas por reglas, pues hablar un lenguaje es tomar parte activa en una conducta compleja gobernada por reglas. Este (...) artículo sustenta cómo en la filosofía de Searle la significatividad de los discursos, entre ellos los de la ciencia o los de la ficción, se logra en la emisión de actos ilocucionarios que hacen posible la invención de mundos cargados de significados, aun cuando estos carezcan de referencia directa. Some names in our language are not indeed applied to anything or nobody if they are taken literally, because they lack their referent. According to Searle, names´ significance does not depend on how they can give account or not of world samples; their significance "is measured" in the use of them in this or that speech, amid explanations or characterizations forged by rules, because to speak a language it is to take active part in a complex rule-governed behavior. This article supports how in the philosophy of Searle meaningfulness of speeches, including those of science or fiction, is achieved in the issuance of illocutionary acts that make possible the invention of worlds full of meanings, even when they lack direct referent. (shrink)

Este ensayo parte de la recogida de algunos criterios esenciales que ofrece el pensamiento filosófico occidental y del estudio de la fenomenología de la religión contemporánea para entrar en diálogo con la mística. En un segundo momento, exponemos las consideraciones al problema de la religión, acudiendo al pensamiento sobre lo absoluto desde una aproximación fenomenológica que salve a la relación religiosa de cualquier forma de sentimiento de consuelo o encubrimiento del mal. Como resultado de esto, señalamos las dificultades para asumir (...) la analogía entre relación con Dios y relación interpersonal o empatía, como instrumento idóneo para explicar la relación religiosa. En un cuarto momento, intentamos la articulación de la experiencia matriz-ontológica y las experiencias culminantes ética y filosófica con la mística española. Con estos factores de transición, ofrecemos algunas conclusiones de la dialéctica de la vida y su sentido hacia la mística. Quedan así establecidas las bases antropológicas de la mística. (shrink)

RESUMEN En el libro X de la Metafísica se trazan las líneas generales de una henología. La reconstrucción de la argumentación debe hacerse desde dos pilares fundamentales: (a) la guía de problemas o aporías que proporciona el libro iii y (b) el proyecto ontológico anunciado en el libro iv, donde se señala la relación entre ontología y henología. El rasgo fundamental de dicha henología sería su subordinación a la ontología. El artículo argumenta que para Aristóteles el rol de la henología (...) es ante todo destructivo, pues con dicha doctrina se pretende establecer -ante todo- la imposibilidad de considerar al "uno" (τὸ ἓν) como principio de los entes. ABSTRACT In the Metaphysics, especially in Book X, are drawn the general lines of a henology. For the proper understanding of this doctrine it is necessary to reconstruct its argumentation from two fundamental basis: (a) the guide of puzzles or aporias that book iii provides and (b) the ontological project announced in book IV where the relationship between ontology and henology is indicated. Once the explanations of Book X are framed a theory about unity (τὸ ἓν) can be systematically assembled, whose fundamental feature would be the following: henology as a science is a subordinate part of ontology. The role of henology is for Aristotle primarily destructive, that is, with this doctrine it is intended to establish the impossibility of considering the 'one' (τὸ ἓν) as a principle of the entities. (shrink)

Kant and the Unity of Reason is a comprehensive reconstruction and a detailed analysis of Kant's Critique of Judgment. In the light of the third Critique, the book offers a final inter­pretation of the critical project as a whole. It proposes a new reading of Kant's notion of human experience in which domains, as different as knowledge, morality, and the experience of beauty and life, are finally viewed in a unified perspective. The book proposes a reading of Kant's critical project (...) as one of the most sophisticated attempts in the history of philosophy to articulate a complex notion of human "sensi­bility" as an alternative to both eighteenth-century empiricism and rationalism. The fun­damental contribution of rationality to human experience cannot be fully appreciated if the sensuous component of experience is not adequately taken into account. For Kant, "sensibility" includes functions as different as sensation, intuition, perception, emotion, passion, drive, moral feeling, and feeling of pleasure and displeasure. Kant's idea of "reflective" judgment is the peculiar discovery of the third Critique. Re­flective judgment articulates the interplay between sensibility and rationality, the world of nature and the human mind, in order to constitute human experience and the sphere of human intersubjective relationships. In the act of reflection, Kant's philosophy fi­nally comes to reflect upon itself and the meaning of its critical endeavor. (shrink)

Bayesian methods have become among the most popular methods in phylogenetics, but theoretical opposition to this methodology remains. After providing an introduction to Bayesian theory in this context, I attempt to tackle the problem mentioned most often in the literature: the “problem of the priors”—how to assign prior probabilities to tree hypotheses. I first argue that a recent objection—that an appropriate assignment of priors is impossible—is based on a misunderstanding of what ignorance and bias are. I then consider different methods (...) of assigning prior probabilities to trees. I argue that priors need to be derived from an understanding of how distinct taxa have evolved and that the appropriate evolutionary model is captured by the Yule birth–death process. This process leads to a well-known statistical distribution over trees. Though further modifications may be necessary to model more complex aspects of the branching process, they must be modifications to parameters in an underlying Yule model. Ignoring these Yule priors commits a fallacy leading to mistaken inferences both about the trees themselves and about macroevolutionary processes more generally. (shrink)

Angelica Nuzzo offers a comprehensive reconstruction of Kant's theory of sensibility in his three Critiques. By introducing the notion of "transcendental embodiment," Nuzzo proposes a new understanding of Kant's views on science, nature, morality, and art. She shows that the issue of human embodiment is coherently addressed and key to comprehending vexing issues in Kant's work as a whole. In this penetrating book, Nuzzo enters new terrain and takes on questions Kant struggled with: How does a body that feels pleasure (...) and pain, desire, anger, and fear understand and experience reason and strive toward knowledge? What grounds the body's experience of art and beauty? What kind of feeling is the feeling of being alive? As she comes to grips with answers, Nuzzo goes beyond Kant to revise our view of embodiment and the essential conditions that make human experience possible. (shrink)

Mind blanking is a mental state in which attention does not bring any perceptual input into conscious awareness. As this state is still largely unexplored, we suggest that a comprehensive understanding of mind blanking can be achieved through a multifaceted approach combining self-assessment methods, neuroimaging, and neuromodulation. In this article, we explain how EEG and TMS could be combined to help determine whether mind blanking is associated with a lack of mental content or a lack of linguistically or conceptually determinable (...) mental content. We also question whether mind blanking occurs spontaneously or intentionally and whether these two forms are instantiated by the same or different neural correlates. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer an account of affective experiences within Predictive Processing, a novel framework that considers the brain to be a dynamical, hierarchical, Bayesian hypothesis-testing mechanism. We begin by outlining a set of common features of affective experiences that a PP-theory should aim to explain: feelings are conscious, they have valence, they motivate behaviour, and they are intentional states with particular and formal objects. We then review existing theories of affective experiences within Predictive Processing and delineate two families (...) of theories: Interoceptive Inference Theories and Error Dynamics Theories. We highlight the strengths and shortcomings of each family of theories and develop a synthesis: the Affective Inference Theory. Affective Inference Theory claims that valence corresponds to the expected rate of prediction error reduction. In turn, the particular object of a feeling is the object predicted to be the most likely cause of expected changes in prediction error rate, and the formal object of a feeling is a predictive model of the expected changes in prediction error rate caused by a given particular object. Finally, our theory shows how affective experiences bias action selection, directing the organism towards allostasis and towards optimal levels of uncertainty in order to minimise prediction error over time. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the argument of Kritik der Urteilskraft §§76 –77 by placing it in the context of the “Critique of Teleological Judgment”. What role does the problematic and historically so successful figure of the intuitive understanding play in the antinomy of teleological judgment? The answer is considered indispensable to address the issue of the reception of §§76 – 77. The claim is that these sections institute the “closure” of transcendental philosophy—a closure fundamentally misunderstood by the post Kantians. On the (...) series of distinctions drawn to characterize the “peculiarity” of our human understanding and, by contrast, that of a non-human mind hinges the specific transcendental character of Kant’s philosophy. Once the condition that sustains those distinctions is abandoned transcendental philosophy is abandoned as well. (shrink)

There is a remarkable gap in the academic literature when it comes to group navigation, and procedural metacognition in group navigation is an important but virtually unexplored topic. The present paper aims to fill this gap by providing an account of how metacognitive feelings evaluate and regulate group navigational processes. The paper reviews animal studies and ethnographic work to elucidate three exiting processes in human group navigation: many-wrongs, leadership and emergent sensing. This is followed by an analysis of the role (...) of procedural metacognition in the navigational processes involved in each of these three processes. This analysis shows that procedural metacognition serves to regulate and evaluate group navigation in a flexible, process-specific way. When performance issues arise during group navigation, the emergence of negative affective states makes the navigational process conspicuous, prompting a modulation of said process. (shrink)

An unprecedented reading of Hegel’s Logic that sets this difficult work in a dialogue with literary texts. In this book, Angelica Nuzzo proposes a reading of Hegel’s Logic as “logic of transformation” and “logic of action,” and supports this thesis by looking to works of literature and history as exemplary of Hegel’s argument and method. By examining Melville’s Billy Budd, Molière’s Tartuffe, Beckett’s Endgame, Elizabeth Bishop’s and Giacomo Leopardi’s late poetry along with Thucydides’ History in this way, Nuzzo finds an (...) unprecedented and productive way to render Hegel’s Logic alive and engaging. She argues that Melville’s Billy Budd is the most successful embodiment of the abstract movement of thinking presented in Hegel’s Logic, connecting Billy Budd’s stutter to the puzzlingly inarticulate beginning of Hegel’s Logic, “Being, pure Being,” identical with “Nothing,” and argues that the Logic serves as an especially appropriate tool for understanding the sudden violent action that strikes Claggart dead. Through these and other readings, Nuzzo finds a fresh way to address interpretive issues that have remained unresolved for almost two centuries in Hegel scholarship, and also presents well-known works of literature in an entirely new light. This account of Hegel’s Logic is framed by the need for an interpretive tool able to orient our understanding of the contemporary world as mired in an unprecedented global crisis. How can the story of our historical present—the tragedy or the comedy we all play parts in—be told? What is the inner logic of our changing world? “Angelica Nuzzo presents an original interpretation of Hegel’s Logic by representing it as a logic of action. This novel approach is supported by insightful readings of the literary texts she covers in the book.” — Andrew Cutrofello, author of All for Nothing: Hamlet’s Negativity. (shrink)

Angelica Nuzzo - Kant and Herder on Baumgarten's Aesthetica - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 577-597 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Kant and Herder on Baumgarten's Aesthetica Angelica Nuzzo While philosophers since antiquity have offered reflections and theories on subjects such as the beautiful, the sublime, art, and its appreciation, "aesthetics" as a discipline in its own right dates back only to the second half of the eighteenth-century. We owe to (...) Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten the introduction of 'aesthetics' into philosophical discourse. At the moment of its inception, however, this discipline had little to do with art and was not primarily concerned with the beautiful. It was instead a theory of the cognitive value of human sensibility—a doctrine of "sensible cognition." A general historical and systematic question presents itself at this point: How shall human sensibility be conceived in order for aesthetics as a theory of sensibility to gain an independence of its own in philosophical discourse? And accordingly: How shall the human being be conceived in order for our aesthetic experience to claim a philosophical value of its own? In this essay, I elaborate the results of the hypothesis that I submit in response to these questions. My claim is that the mind/body dualism dominating the rationalist tradition of modern philosophy is the principal obstacle.. (shrink)

Many phylogenetic systematists have criticized the Biological Species Concept (BSC) because it distorts evolutionary history. While defenses against this particular criticism have been attempted, I argue that these responses are unsuccessful. In addition, I argue that the source of this problem leads to previously unappreciated, and deeper, fatal objections. These objections to the BSC also straightforwardly apply to other species concepts that are not defined by genealogical history. What is missing from many previous discussions is the fact that the Tree (...) of Life, which represents phylogenetic history, is independent of our choice of species concept. Some species concepts are consistent with species having unique positions on the Tree while others, including the BSC, are not. Since representing history is of primary importance in evolutionary biology, these problems lead to the conclusion that the BSC, along with many other species concepts, are unacceptable. If species are to be taxa used in phylogenetic inferences, we need a history-based species concept. (shrink)

El martes 26 de abril de 2016 en la Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana de Medellín, en el curso “De la analítica a los acto de habla” del Doctorado en Filosofía, tuvimos la oportunidad de compartir y hacer una conversatorio con el filósofo mexicano Dr. Alejandro Tomasini Bassols, investigador del Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas y profesor de filosofía en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la UNAM. El profesor Tomasini es uno de los investigadores más reconocidos en la obra del Filósofo (...) austriaco Ludwig Wittgenstein, además de haber desarrollado una importante obra alrededor de la tradición analítica y de algunos problemas actuales como la discusión sobre la pena capital. También el profesor Tomasini en su visita a Colombia, inicialmente participó en Medellín con una conferencia titulada “Derecho y objetividad”, en la Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana y luego en la Feria del Libro de Bogotá –FILBO- realizó la presentación y conferencia del libro Hacer mundos: el nombrar y la significatividad. Previo a su viaje a Bogotá, interactuó con el curso doctoral en filosofía y de este encuentro académico presentamos el siguiente diálogo. (shrink)

A phylogeny that allows for lateral gene transfer (LGT) can be thought of as a strictly branching tree (all of whose branches are vertical) to which lateral branches have been added. Given that the goal of phylogenetics is to depict evolutionary history, we should look for the best supported phylogenetic network and not restrict ourselves to considering trees. However, the obvious extensions of popular tree-based methods such as maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood face a serious problem—if we judge networks by (...) fit to data alone, networks that have lateral branches will always fit the data at least as well as any network that restricts itself to vertical branches. This is analogous to the well-studied problem of overfitting data in the curve-fitting problem. Analogous problems often have analogous solutions and we propose to treat network inference as a case of model selection and use the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). Strictly tree-like networks are more parsimonious than those that postulate lateral as well as vertical branches. This leads to the conclusion that we should not always infer LGT events whenever it would improve our fit-to-data, but should do so only when the improved fit is larger than the penalty for adding extra lateral branches. (shrink)

GIMENO PRESA, María Concepción: ¿Qué es juzgar con perspectiva de género?

Las reiteradas menciones que, tanto en estudios doctrinales como en el derecho positivo, se realizan del principio de jerarquía normativa parecen presuponer que "existe" una ordenación jerárquica de las diferentes fuentes y normas del ordenamiento. Frente a esto, nuestro ordenamiento jurídico no establece de una manera clara la relación entre las diferentes formas de producción normativa (si es jerárquica o de otro tipo) ni, en el primer caso, qué fuente o norma es superior a cual otra. El objeto de las (...) páginas que siguen es determinar cuándo (fuera de aquellos casos en los que las normas jurídicas establecen dicha relación) puede decirse que hay una relación de jerarquía. Para ello analizaré separadamente los diferentes criterios que la doctrina ha empleado para inferir dicha relación, como son: 1) el criterio de la fundamentación de la validez, 2) el deber de acatamiento por parte de los órganos productores de la norma inferior, 3) el criterio general-individual, 4) el órgano, 5) la forma de las fuentes, 6) la complejidad procedimental, y 7) la capacidad modificadora y derogatoria. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false PT-BR X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabela normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Na última década venho desenvolvendo a ética argumentativa (de fato a ética tout court) com base no uso, dentre outros instrumentos, do operador lógico que chamo de “condicional” (e que Jean Piaget tinha chamado (...) de “condicional inverso” mas sem interpretá-lo em linguagem natural da mesma forma que eu o faço). No presente trabalho mostramos um problema do operador de “implicaçáo material” que também foi chamado de “condicional” mas é diferente do nosso, e reafirmamos a pertinência do nosso operador (em especial de cara à fundamentaçáo última da ética, que serve, dentre outras coisas, para alicerçar a educaçáo ambiental). Normal 0 21 false false false PT-BR X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabela normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 21 false false false PT-BR X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabela normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}. (shrink)

Despite the enormous importance and widespread use of the term, it is unclear exactly what a phylogeny represents. It is important to define phylogeny precisely since other central terms like “clade” and “monophyletic” are often defined relative to phylogenetic trees and on some views in taxonomy, taxa must be clades. Edwards presents the common picture in contemporary systematics as depending on the existence of a “species tree” in which phylogeny “records the branching pattern of evolving lineages through time”. But what, (...) precisely, does this mean? (shrink)

The project of this paper is to understand what a phylogenetic tree represents and to discuss some of the implications that this has for the practice of systematics. At least the first part of this task, if not both parts, might appear trivial—or perhaps better suited for a single page in a textbook rather than a scholarly research paper. But this would be a mistake. While the task of interpreting phylogenetic trees is often treated in a trivial way, their interpretation (...) is tied to foundational conceptual questions at the heart of systematics—questions whose answers are hotly disputed. I have previously argued that widely shared ideas about the meaning and interpretation of phylogenetic trees are inconsistent with species concepts other than some genealogical version of a phylogenetic species concept (Velasco 2008). Here I rely on a similar approach and concentrate on the implications of the necessary conditions underlying the inferences that we make using phylogenetic trees. I argue that common practices for the interpretation and use of trees are in conflict and that unacceptable principles about species as units of phylogeny must be given up. According to the view that I will develop, all phylogenetic trees depict the history of populations. The branches on trees represent collections of population lineages through time and the splits represent population lineage splits. This is true regardless of whether the tips of the trees are themselves populations, or are species or higher taxa. Although this conclusion might be paired naturally with a view that species must be monophyletic groups, this population-centric view of trees is independent of that view of species. If we still want to have species that are paraphyletic groups of populations, this is permissible as long as we also do not treat species as the units of phylogeny. This population-centric view opposes a species-centric view of phylogeny and might be called a “rank-free” approach since it entails that we do not need to determine which groups are species (which is partly a ranking question) in order to build a tree. This conclusion and the argument for it are meant to be consistent with, but not require, acceptance of the conclusions of Velasco (2008) regarding species. (shrink)

In the current context of widespread environmental collapse, ecological grief—the sense of loss that arises from experiencing environmental destruction—has become a burgeoning topic of inquiry across psychology, geography, and anthropology. The central challenge in the study of ecological grief is that its theoretical foundations remain underdeveloped. Recent discussions in philosophy of emotions elucidate that a central element in this theoretical challenge is determining what the object of ecological grief is. In turn, our understanding of the object of ecological grief goes (...) hand in hand with our understanding of the nature of ecological grief. This paper develops a phenomenological analysis of cross‐cultural subjective reports that identifies crucial themes in the experience of ecological grief. This phenomenological analysis reveals the object of ecological grief as the loss of the life possibilities that are sustained by dwelling. The resulting view is that ecological grief corresponds to a crisis in dwelling—a disturbance in the very way we inhabit our home environment. (shrink)

A common view is that species occupy a unique position on the Tree of Life. Evaluating this claim requires an understanding of what the Tree of Life represents. The Tree represents history, but there are at least three biological levels that are often said to have genealogies: species, organisms, and genes. Here I focus on defending the plausibility of a gene-based account of the Tree. This leads to an account of species that are determined by gene genealogies. On this view, (...) an exclusive group is a group of organisms that forms a clade for a higher proportion of the genome than any conflicting clade. Taxa occupy a unique position in what can be called the ‘primary concordance tree’. But each gene has its own historical ‘Tree of Life’. I conclude by arguing that both organismal pedigrees with their corresponding Tree as well as gene genealogies and their trees are objectively real and play important, but different, roles in biological practice. (shrink)

Autobiographical–episodic memory is the conjunction of subjective time, autonoetic consciousness and the experiencing self. Understanding the neural correlates of autobiographical–episodic memory might therefore be essential for shedding light on the neurobiology underlying the experience of being an autonoetic self. In this contribution we illustrate the intimate relationship between autobiographical–episodic memory and self by reviewing the clinical and neuropsychological features and brain functional imaging correlates of psychogenic amnesia – a condition that is usually characterized by severely impaired retrograde memory functioning, in (...) absence of structural brain damage as detected by standard imaging. We demonstrate that in this disorder the autobiographical–episodic memory deficits do not exist in isolation, but occur with impairments of the autonoetic self-consciousness, emotional processing, and theory of mind or executive functions. Furthermore functional and metabolic brain alterations involving regions that are agreed upon to exert crucial roles in memory processes were frequently found to accompany the psychogenic memory “loss”. (shrink)

This paper investigates ontological dimensions of the blockchain by asking what kind of socio-technical object bitcoin is. It discusses both blockchain's political qualities and the political forms enabled by its emergence. It first observes recent approaches to the ontology of money and the political qualities of the ledgers used by the current fractional reserve banking model. It then directs the same questions at blockchain technology. The paper discusses an ontology proposed by Ole Bjerg and argues in favour of a mixed-ontology (...) approach to blockchains. It then questions the political qualities of the distributed ledger as a digital object and highlights the apparent absence of authority figures in the model. Finally, it argues that the political ontology of the blockchain can be framed as the displacement of authority from institutional actors into instrumental control of trust, in a dynamically distributed environment. (shrink)

The Animal Research Declaration is committed to establishing cohesive and rigorous ethical standards to safeguard the welfare of nonhuman primates, NHPs, engaged in neuroscience research (Petkov et al., 2022 this issue). As part of this mission, there is an expanding dialogue amongst neuroscientists, philosophers and policymakers, that is centred on diverse aspects of animal welfare and scientific practice. This paper emphasises the necessity of integrating the assessment of animal sentience into the declaration. Animal sentience, in this context, refers to the (...) recognised capacity that animals have for various kinds of subjective experience, with an associated positive or negative valence (Browning and Birch, 2022). Accordingly, NHP neuroscience researchers should work toward instituting a standardised approach for evaluating what can be termed "individual sentience profiles," representing the unique manner in which an individual NHP experiences specific events or environments. The adoption of this novel parameter would serve a triad of indispensable purposes: enhancing NHP welfare throughout research involvement, elevating the quality of life for NHPs in captivity, and refining the calibre of research outcomes. (shrink)

The present paper explores the phenomenology of disorientation and its relationship with self-consciousness. Section 1 discusses previous literature on the links between self-location and self-consciousness and proposes a distinction between minimal self-location and integrated self-location. The double aim of the paper is to use this distinction to deepen our understanding of spatial disorientation, and to use the phenomenology of disorientation to elucidate the role that integrated self-location plays in shaping self-consciousness. Section 2 starts by looking at the experience of being (...) “turned around”, which is a common experience of disorientation. This analysis leads to the conclusion that integrated self-location is transmodal and depends on all three egocentric axes, and that disorientation destabilizes this integrated self-location. Section 3 explores a corpus of reports of disorientation episodes and highlights four key characteristics of these experiences and their links to self-consciousness, focusing on the transformations in both the lived body and the experience of space. The central thesis of this paper is that during disorientation a destabilization of integrated self-location results in a diminished form of self-consciousness. (shrink)