Visuo-motor adaptation to optical prisms displacing the visual scene (prism adaptation, PA) is a method used for investigating visuomotor plasticity in healthy individuals and, in clinical settings, for the rehabilitation of unilateral spatial neglect. In the standard paradigm, the adaptation phase involves repeated pointings to visual targets, while wearing optical prisms displacing the visual scene laterally. Here we explored differences in PA, and its aftereffects (AEs), as related to the sensory modality of the target. Visual, auditory, and multisensory - audio-visual (...) - targets in the adaptation phase were used, while participants wore prisms displacing the visual field rightwards by 10◦. Proprioceptive, visual, visual-proprioceptive, auditory-proprioceptive straight-ahead shifts were measured. Pointing to auditory and to audio-visual targets in the adaptation phase produces proprioceptive, visual-proprioceptive, and auditory-proprioceptive AEs, as the typical visual targets did. This finding reveals that cross-modal plasticity effects involve both the auditory and the visual modality, and their interactions (Experiment 1). Even a shortened PA phase, requiring only 24 pointings to visual and audio-visual targets (Experiment 2), is sufficient to bring about AEs, as compared to the standard 92-pointings procedure. Finally, pointings to auditory targets cause AEs, although PA with a reduced number of pointings (24) to auditory targets brings about smaller AEs, as compared to the 92-pointings procedure (Experiment 3). Together, results from the three experiments extend to the auditory modality the sensorimotor plasticity underlying the typical AEs produced by PA to visual targets. Importantly, PA to auditory targets appears characterized by less accurate pointings and error correction, suggesting that the auditory component of the PA process may be less central to the building up of the AEs, than the sensorimotor pointing activity per se. These findings highlight both the effectiveness of a reduced number of pointings for bringing about AEs, and the possibility of inducing PA with auditory targets, which may be used as a compensatory route in patients with visual deficits. (shrink)

The Critical Naturalism Manifesto is a common platform put forward as a basis for broad discussions around the problems faced by critical theory today. We are living in a time, e.g. a pandemic time, when present-day challenges exert immense pressure on social critique. This means that models of social critique should not be discussed from the point of view of their normative justification or political effects alone, but also with reference to their ability to tackle contemporary problematic issues (like the (...) dismantlement of the welfare state, the environmental catastrophe, and the sanitary crisis). With this manifesto, we invite varying practices of philosophical, artistic and scientific social critique to take seriously the enormous challenges our societies face with regard to inner and outer nature. We first identity eleven theses of critical naturalism which contemporary critical theory should take into consideration. We then identify the historical crises and catastrophes that critical naturalism seeks to respond to, dispelling the prejudices against naturalism in contemporary critical thought, and considering alternative answers to these questions such as social constructivism, accelerationism, xenofeminism, flat ontologism, and monist world ecology. By sketching the notions of nature and naturalism, we anchor critical naturalism in the history of materialism and critical theory, understood initially as that of the Frankfurt School, but expanded and enriched by other approaches to social critique. Finally, we sketch models and projects of critical naturalism, which are exemplary fragments of varying ways to practice naturalist social critique. (shrink)

Humans have attained an unparalleled level of sophistication when engaging in collaborative and cooperative activities. Remarkably, the skills and motivation to engage in complex forms of collaboration and cooperation seem to emerge early on during infancy and childhood. In this paper, I extensively review the literature on the evolution and development of human cooperation, emphasizing important aspects of inter-cultural variation in collaborative and cooperative behaviour. This will not only allow us to confront the different evolutionary scenarios in which cooperation may (...) have emerged, but will especially provide the reader with a first orientation in the abundant literature on human cooperation. (shrink)

Mobile applications are increasingly regarded as important tools for an integrated strategy of infection containment in post-lockdown societies around the globe. This paper discusses a number of questions that should be addressed when assessing the ethical challenges of mobile applications for digital contact-tracing of COVID-19: Which safeguards should be designed in the technology? Who should access data? What is a legitimate role for “Big Tech” companies in the development and implementation of these systems? How should cultural and behavioural issues be (...) accounted for in the design of these apps? Should use of these apps be compulsory? What does transparency and ethical oversight mean in this context? We demonstrate that responses to these questions are complex and contingent and argue that if digital contract-tracing is used, then it should be clear that this is on a trial basis and its use should be subject to independent monitoring and evaluation. (shrink)

Democratic legitimacy is often grounded in proceduralist terms, referring to the ideal of political equality that should be mirrored by fair procedures of decision-making. The paper argues (§1) that the normative commitments embedded in a non-minimalist account of procedural legitimacy are well expressed by the ideal of co-authorship. Against this background, the main goal of the paper is to argue that structural forms of epistemic injustice are detrimental to the overall legitimacy of democratic systems. In §2 I analyse Young’s notion (...) of political powerlessness and claim that in structurally unjust social contexts members of powerless groups often are not properly acknowledged as functioning members of the polity, hence being jeopardized in their ability to develop part of their personal identity. In §III, I define gerrymandering as an example of political disempowerment that involves an epistemic harm for oppressed citizens, namely, to be prejudicially excluded from the community of epistemic trust. My thesis is that being epistemically disempowered has a negative impact on the way in which citizens understand themselves as political actors, since they suffer a lack of social recognition that may impede a proper development of their reflexive agency. In §IV, I discuss the proposal of granting epistemic privilege to members of oppressed groups, given their specific experience of social injustices. I introduce two concerns about this proposal, one morally grounded and one pragmatically oriented. Finally, in §V, I briefly sketch some institutional remedies that can be employed in order to politically fight systemic forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

This paper addresses a problem that has so far been neglected by scholars investigating the ethics of Big Data and policy makers: that is the ethical implications of Big Data initiatives’ environmental impact. Building on literature in environmental studies, cultural studies and Science and Technology Studies, the article draws attention to the physical presence of data, the material configuration of digital service, and the space occupied by data. It then explains how this material and situated character of data raises questions (...) concerning the ethics of the increasingly fashionable Big Data discourses. It argues that attention should be paid to the vocabulary currently used when discussing the governance of data initiatives; the internal tension between current data initiatives and environmental policies; issues of fair distribution. The article explains how taking into account these aspects would allow for a more responsible behaviour in the context of data storage and production. (shrink)

The entwinement of affects and the public dimension seems an enigma. We cannot resolve this problem if we continue to refer to the Freudian analysis that deals with the classic dualisms opposing violence to order, love to death, and the body to social order. A feminist analysis, reworking psychoanalytical knowledge, offers another thesis. Taking the concept of `affects' – defined as one's corporeal drives in their sociocultural expression – a different analysis and new political practices emerge. This concerns recognizing a (...) necessary tension between an irreducible singularity and the `being-together' dimension, which is beyond the classic dualism opposing the body to the Law. (shrink)

Cet article propose de penser la question du genre à l’époque des Indépendances dans l’Amérique espagnole à la lumière de la question de la race. En raison de la forte relation entre race et genre à cette époque, souvent témoignée par les contemporains eux-mêmes, on s’appuiera sur les travaux récents sur les descendants des Africains pour montrer les moyens utilisés par les femmes pour réclamer leurs droits et transformer leur position dans la société. Si les femmes étaient en principe exclues (...) des droits de citoyenneté en raison de leur dépendance vis-à-vis du pater familias, elles utilisèrent cependant les nouveaux principes constitutionnels et les espaces de manœuvre laissés par les systèmes juridiques pour entamer des actions et revendiquer leurs droits. (shrink)

Mobile health is rapidly being implemented and changing our ways of doing, understanding and organising healthcare. mHealth includes wearable devices as well as apps that track fitness, offer wellness programmes or provide tools to manage chronic conditions. According to industry and policy makers, these systems offer efficient and cost-effective solutions for disease prevention and self-management. While this development raises many ethically relevant questions, so far mHealth has received only little attention in medical ethics. This paper provides an overview of bioethical (...) issues raised by mHealth and aims to draw scholarly attention to the ethical significance of its promises and challenges. We show that the overly positive promises of mHealth need to be nuanced and their desirability critically assessed. Finally, we offer suggestions to bioethicists to engage with this emerging trend in healthcare to develop mHealth to its best potential in a morally sound way. (shrink)

The anti-causal prophecies of last century have been disproved. Causality is neither a ‘relic of a bygone’ nor ‘another fetish of modern science’; it still occupies a large part of the current debate in philosophy and the sciences. This investigation into causal modelling presents the rationale of causality, i.e. the notion that guides causal reasoning in causal modelling. It is argued that causal models are regimented by a rationale of variation, nor of regularity neither invariance, thus breaking down the dominant (...) Human paradigm. The notion of variation is shown to be embedded in the scheme of reasoning behind various causal models: e.g. Rubin’s model, contingency tables, and multilevel analysis. It is also shown to be latent – yet fundamental – in many philosophical accounts. Moreover, it has significant consequences for methodological issues: the warranty of the causal interpretation of causal models, the levels of causation, the characterisation of mechanisms, and the interpretation of probability. This book offers a novel philosophical and methodological approach to causal reasoning in causal modelling and provides the reader with the tools to be up to date about various issues causality rises in social science. (shrink)

The ethical monitoring of brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) is discussed in connection with the potential impact of BMIs on distinguishing traits of persons, changes of personal identity, and threats to personal autonomy. It is pointed out that philosophical analyses of personhood are conducive to isolating an initial thematic framework for this ethical monitoring problem, but a contextual refinement of this initial framework depends on applied ethics analyses of current BMI models and empirical case-studies. The personal autonomy-monitoring problem is approached by identifying (...) various ways in which the inclusion of a robotic controller in the motor pathway of an output BMI may limit or jeopardize personal autonomy. (shrink)

This book systematically addresses the issue of assessing the normative nature of visions of emerging technologies in an epistemologically robust way. In the context of democratic governance of emerging technologies, not only it is important to reflect on technologies' moral significance, but also to address their emerging and future oriented character. The book proposes an original approach to deal with the issue of "plausible" ethical evaluation of new technologies. Taking its start from current debates about Technology Assessment, the proposed solution (...) emerges as a combination of theoretical and methodological insights from the fields of Philosophy of Technology, Science and Technology Studies and a normative justification based on pragmatist ethics. The book's main contribution is to engage a diverse and interdisciplinary audience (ethicists, philosophers, social scientists, technology assessment researchers and practitioners) in a reflection concerning the epistemological challenges that are associated to the endeavour of appraising the moral significance of emerging technologies in the attempt of democratically governing them. It brings together concepts and methodologies from different disciplines and shows their synergy in applying them to two specific case studies of emerging biomedical technologies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article critically discusses Rahel Jaeggi’s recent philosophical contribution to a critical theory of capitalism. The first part reconstructs Jaeggi’s account of Lebensform, life-form, that builds up the main ontological framework for addressing and problematizing capitalism intended not as an economic system but as a social whole. The second part focuses on the three different theoretical strategies that Jaeggi puts forward to detect and deal with capitalism’s immanent flaws. The third and last part problematizes the metaphysical assumptions and implications (...) of Jaeggi’s understanding of life-form and outlines a more dialectical, or “transactional” notion of form of life, which is inspired by Dewey’s non-reductionist naturalist method of inquiry. The overall aim is to strengthen the philosophical critique of the capitalist form of life. (shrink)

This article defends a specific account of reasonableness as a virtue of liberal citizenship. I specify an account of reasonableness that I argue is more consistent with the phenomenology of intersubjective exchanges among citizens over political matters in contexts of deep disagreement. My reading requires reasonable citizens to undertake an attitude of epistemic modesty while deliberating public matters with agents who hold views different from theirs. In contrast with my view, I debate Martha Nussbaum’s and Steven Wall’s accounts of reasonableness (...) and specify why I believe that these proposals, although interesting, both require revisions. Distinguishing my account from theirs, I specify the normative relation between reasonableness and a general framework of political legitimacy that identifies citizens as ‘co-authors of democratic decisions’. Here, I argue that the liberal ideal of ascribing to each member of the constituency the status of putative epistemic authority can be properly fulfilled if coupled with a correct specification of the political ideal of mutual respect. I conclude claiming that opacity respect, a notion of respect according to which the recognition respect that is owed to individuals is expressed by the idea that we have to treat them as ‘opaque’, is the most adequate concept of political respect when dealing with interpersonal deliberations at political level in contexts of deep disagreement. (shrink)

We argue that the health sciences make causal claims on the basis of evidence both of physical mechanisms, and of probabilistic dependencies. Consequently, an analysis of causality solely in terms of physical mechanisms or solely in terms of probabilistic relationships, does not do justice to the causal claims of these sciences. Yet there seems to be a single relation of cause in these sciences - pluralism about causality will not do either. Instead, we maintain, the health sciences require a theory (...) of causality that unifies its mechanistic and probabilistic aspects. We argue that the epistemic theory of causality provides the required unification. (shrink)

The need for fair and just AI is often related to the possibility of understanding AI itself, in other words, of turning an opaque box into a glass box, as inspectable as possible. Transparency and explainability, however, pertain to the technical domain and to philosophy of science, thus leaving the ethics and epistemology of AI largely disconnected. To remedy this, we propose an integrated approach premised on the idea that a glass-box epistemology should explicitly consider how to incorporate values and (...) other normative considerations, such as intersectoral vulnerabilities, at critical stages of the whole process from design and implementation to use and assessment. To connect ethics and epistemology of AI, we perform a double shift of focus. First, we move from trusting the output of an AI system to trusting the process that leads to the outcome. Second, we move from expert assessment to more inclusive assessment strategies, aiming to facilitate expert and non-expert assessment. Together, these two moves yield a framework usable for experts and non-experts when they inquire into relevant epistemological and ethical aspects of AI systems. We dub our framework ‘epistemology-cum-ethics’ to signal the equal importance of both aspects. We develop it from the vantage point of the designers: how to create the conditions to internalize values into the whole process of design, implementation, use, and assessment of an AI system, in which values (epistemic and non-epistemic) are explicitly considered at each stage and inspectable by every salient actor involved at any moment. (shrink)

Humans have attained an unparalleled level of sophistication when engaging in collaborative and cooperative activities. Remarkably, the skills and motivation to engage in complex forms of collaboration and cooperation seem to emerge early on during infancy and childhood. In this paper, I extensively review the literature on the evolution and development of human cooperation, emphasizing important aspects of inter-cultural variation in collaborative and cooperative behaviour. This will not only allow us to confront the different evolutionary scenarios in which cooperation may (...) have emerged, but will especially provide the reader with a first orientation in the abundant literature on human cooperation. (shrink)

Traditions of thought remain vital and vivid if their borders are porous; they remain able to convey useful insights to understand our present, its roots in the past and its hints at new future perspectives if contaminations with other traditions are taken as a fruitful challenge and as a possibility of enrichment, not of jeopardy. Traditions of thought might be able to attract new followers if their models, criteria and methods are capable of transformation and amelioration. This view of traditions (...) is certainly inspired by John Dewey’s own understanding of philosophical and scientific processes of knowledge.1 His own thought can be indeed described as “open, unfixed, unreified”, entailing... (shrink)

This book engages directly in close readings of technical texts and computer code in order to show how software works. It offers an analysis of the cultural, political, and philosophical implications of software technologies that demonstrates the significance of software for the relationship between technology, philosophy, culture, and society.

In both scientific and popular circles it is often said that we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction. Although the urgency of our present environmental crises is not in doubt, such claims of a present mass extinction are highly controversial scientifically. Our aims are, first, to get to the bottom of this scientific debate by shedding philosophical light on the many conceptual and methodological challenges involved in answering this scientific question, and, second, to offer new philosophical perspectives (...) on what the value of asking this question has been — and whether that value persists today. We show that the conceptual challenges in defining ‘mass extinction’, uncertainties in past and present diversity assessments, and data incommensurabilities undermine a straightforward answer to the question of whether we are in, or entering, a sixth mass extinction today. More broadly we argue that an excessive focus on the mass extinction framing can be misleading for present conservation efforts and may lead us to miss out on the many other valuable insights that Earth’s deep time can offer in guiding our future. (shrink)

Testimony spreads information. It is also commonly agreed that it can transfer knowledge. Whether it can work as an epistemic source of understanding is a matter of dispute. However, testimony certainly plays a pivotal role in the proliferation of understanding in the epistemic community. But how exactly do we learn, and how do we make advancements in understanding on the basis of one another’s words? And what can we do to maximize the probability that the process of acquiring understanding from (...) one another succeeds? These are very important questions in our current epistemological landscape, especially in light of the attention that has been paid to understanding as an epistemic achievement of purely epistemic value. Somewhat surprisingly, the recent literature in social epistemology does not offer much on the topic. The overarching aim of this paper is to provide a tentative model of understanding that goes in-depth enough to safely address the question of how understanding and testimony are related to one another. The hope is to contribute, in some measure, to the effort to understand understanding, and to explain two facts about our epistemic practices: the fact that knowledge and understanding relate differently to testimony, and the fact that some pieces of testimonial information are better than others for the sake of providing one with understanding and of yielding advancements in one’s epistemic standing. (shrink)

Can we transmit understanding via testimony in more or less the same way in which we transmit knowledge? The standard view in social epistemology has a straightforward answer: no, we cannot. Three arguments supporting the standard view have been formulated so far. The first appeals to the claim that gaining understanding requires a greater cognitive effort than acquiring testimonial knowledge does. The second appeals to a certain type of epistemic trust that is supposedly characteristic of knowledge transmission (and maybe of (...) the transmission of epistemic goods in general) and that is allegedly incompatible with understanding. The third aims to show that there is a certain aspect of understanding (what epistemologists these days like to call “grasping”) that cannot be passed on to another person via testimony alone. In this article, I show that all of these arguments can be resisted. Thus, there seem to be no compelling reasons to embrace the standard view. (shrink)

A shared problem across the sciences is to make sense of correlational data coming from observations and/or from experiments. Arguably, this means establishing when correlations are causal and when they are not. This is an old problem in philosophy. This paper, narrowing down the scope to quantitative causal analysis in social science, reformulates the problem in terms of the validity of statistical models. Two strategies to make sense of correlational data are presented: first, a 'structural strategy', the goal of which (...) is to model and test causal structures that explain correlational data; second, a 'manipulationist or interventionist strategy', that hinges upon the notion of invariance under intervention. It is argued that while the former can offer a solution the latter cannot. (shrink)

A great part of human genetics research is carried out collecting data and building large databases of biological samples that are in a non-anonymous format. These constitute a valuable resource for future research. The construction of such databases and tissue banks facilitates important scientific progress. However, biobanks have been recognized as ethically problematic because they contain thousands of data that could expose individuals and populations to discrimination, stigmatization and psychological stress if misused. Informed consent is regarded as a cornerstone in (...) the protection of personal autonomy in research involving human subjects. Yet in recent years this fundamental concept has been overwhelmed by the genomic revolution. From a general overview of international literature, it seems evident that informed consent issues have come into sharp focus, in particular in relation to the twin issues of time extension (blanket versus specific/repeated consent) and personal extension (group consent). After an introduction on obtaining informed consent in the context of genetic research, this paper addresses the apparent lack of a single, universal model of obtaining informed consent among populations involved in genetic research and it argues for the need to develop an ethical framework tailored to the specific features of each project. In order to support this theory of contextualizing, the case of a private biotechnology company, SharDNA is presented. The present paper explores the management of its biobank, developed from a genetic research project carried out on isolated populations living on the Italian island of Sardinia. In particular, the paper highlights how the company is tackling the problem of informed consent and other ethical requirements for genetic research, such as the respect of individual privacy, the population approach and the existing Italian legal regulatory framework. (shrink)

The Herodotean passage (8. 73. 3), where the historian describes the people dwelling in the Peloponnese and their ethnicity, raises a textual problem: the ethnic Ὀρνεῆται is inconsistent with the passage and modern scholars have suggested several solutions either for an emendation of the text or for an alternative exegesis of the term. This paper discusses the previous proposals and offers a new emendation based on a passage from Pausanias.

Nearly 30 years after the first edition of Speculum, Irigaray's present work can be read from a different position. Accordingly, the main political and civil concerns of the author are examined in their relation to a theory of sexual difference. A new insight can emerge, as women realize that their own position is also made by Irigaray's work. This produces new configurations between politics and theory, embodied experiences and relations and their formalization, in a move that is both a rooting (...) in and a departure from Irigaray's work. (shrink)

To deal with the question about the ethic monitoring of the Brain Interfaces Machine this article analyses the potential impact of BMI on the conditions which guarantee a status of personal identity, by re-discussing some crucial points of the philosophical debate about the human being related to the ways of improving these BMI systems. It is under discussion the matter of the autonomy of human beings related to mutual control between humans and machines in BMI systems.

Die traditionelle Erkenntnistheorie beschäftigte sich vor allem mit drei großen Fragen. (i) Was ist Wissen? (ii) Ist Wissen möglich und in welchen Bereichen und in welchem Umfang können wir es, wenn überhaupt, erwerben? (iii) Was sind die Quellen des Wissens, und spielen womöglich einige von ihnen (etwa Wahrnehmung oder Introspektion) eine besondere Rolle für die Fundierung epistemischer Systeme? Neben der Einbeziehung sozialer Wissensquellen in die Behandlung von Frage (iii) ist in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten auch ein weiteres Thema in den (...) Fokus erkenntnistheoretischer Debatten gerückt. Wir streben nach Wissen und versuchen, es zu erhalten und zu vermehren. Wenn wir einer Person Wissen zuschreiben, so schwingen außerdem oft Anerkennung, gar Lob oder Bewunderung mit, Einstellungen, die wir Überzeugungen, die kein Wissen sind, vielfach versagen. Nicht zuletzt die anhaltende Beschäftigung der Philosophie selbst seit Platon mit den Fragen (i) bis (iii) scheint zu zeigen, dass wir Wissen als ein wertvolles Gut betrachten. Eine weitere wichtige epistemologische Frage lautet daher (iv): Worin liegt der besondere Wert des Wissens? (shrink)

Girls Laughters Solar Eclipse Output Solar Eclipse The programmatic ontology of our contemporary technical-information age is marked by a complicity with algorithmic architectures : new models of information processing evolving with the entropically-hiden complexities and open-ended contingencies of material evolution. Algorithms are abstractly-coordinated entities of “soft thought” sui generis. In fusing generative concreteness with abstract modelling – i. e. matter with information – - Galerie sonore – Nouvel article.

L’intento del lavoro è di problematizzare alcuni aspetti, generalmente ritenuti emblematici, della relazione tra i litterati medievali e il libro – nelle sue declinazioni di Testo sacro, Libro della natura e auctoritates . L’impiego, come strumenti di lavoro, di concetti di recente elaborazione e di osservazioni di pensatori contemporanei sull’argomento, non è finalizzato ad attualizzare tale relazione, quanto piuttosto ad ampliare i punti di vista su di essa e a metterne alla prova la capacità di offrire originali spunti di riflessione. (...) Le proposte teoriche di Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault e Roland Barthes sono qui adoperate come esemplificazioni di un’interpretazione che ha storicamente reso quasi paradigmatico il modo di leggere dei docti , specialmente altomedievali. Tuttavia, alcune definizioni della Scrittura – il libro per eccellenza – proposte da questi ultimi, nonché la teorizzazione del suo quadruplice senso sembrano smussare la radicalità di queste osservazioni. Concetti quali “funzione-autore” di Foucault e “testo” di Barthes sono invece adottati per considerare all’interno di una diversa cornice teorica il confronto dei doctores , in particolare bassomedievali, con le cosiddette auctoritates . Nella visione ordinaria la reverenza nei confronti dell’autore, divino o umano, la ricerca e la riproposizione fedele di un significato univoco dell’opera aldilà dei segni, naturali o culturali, che lo veicolano costituiscono tratti tipici dell’atteggiamento dei lettori medievali. A fronte di questi aspetti, tuttavia, è possibile sottolinearne altri eterodossi e perlopiù trascurati, quali la rilevanza attribuita all’interpretazione, prassi ineludibile e da disciplinare, al ruolo del lettore e alla sua fruizione attiva e produttiva dei testi. The aim of the work is to problematize some aspects generally considered representative of the relationship between medieval savants and the book - in its variations of Bible, Book of Nature and so-called auctoritates . The use, as tools, of newly developed concepts and observations of contemporary thinkers on this subject, is not aimed at updating this relationship, but rather at expanding the points of view on it and testing its ability to adduce original food for thought. The theoretical suggestions of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes are used here as examples of an interpretation that has historically made almost paradigmatic the way of reading of early medieval writers. However, some definitions of Scripture - the book by definition - proposed by them and the theory of its fourfold sense seem to blunt these drastic observations. Concepts such as Foucault’s "author-function" or Barthes’ "text" are used to consider in a different theoretical context the relation between late medieval thinkers and the so-called auctoritates . In ordinary vision the reverence for the divine or human author, the research and the revival of a true single meaning of his work beyond its natural or cultural signs are typical features of the attitude of medieval readers. In relation to these aspects, however, it is possible to highlight other heterodox and less considered ones, such as the importance given to the interpretation, inescapable practice that has to be regulated, to the reader’s role and to his active and productive use of texts. (shrink)

Techno-Scientific Practices analyzes and helps readers to understand the role of instruments and technologies in the practice of science, and their partnership with human agents in producing knowledge about the world.

In a Mental Imagery Brain-Computer Interface the user has to perform a specific mental task that generates electroencephalography components, which can be translated in commands to control a BCI system. The development of a high-performance MI-BCI requires a long training, lasting several weeks or months, in order to improve the ability of the user to manage his/her mental tasks. This works aims to present the design of a MI-BCI combining mental imaginary and cognitive tasks for a severely motor impaired user, (...) involved in the BCI race of the Cybathlon event, a competition of people with severe motor disability. In the BCI-race, the user becomes a pilot in a virtual race game against up to three other pilots, in which each pilot has to control his/her virtual car by his/her mental tasks. We present all the procedures followed to realize an effective MI-BCI, from the user's first contact with a BCI technology to actually controlling a video-game through her EEG. We defined a multi-stage user-centered training protocol in order to successfully control a BCI, even in a stressful situation, such as that of a competition. We put a specific focus on the human aspects that influenced the long training phase of the system and the participation to the competition. (shrink)

The Thing about Thugs a novel by Tabish Khair set between London and the Indian region of Bihar, the end of 1830’s and contemporary age, reflects on the relationship regarding the transmission of knowledge and the construction of the colonial criminal. I investigate how Khair, in his neo-Victorian and postcolonial novel, recalls canonical works of Victorian Literature in which thugs, together with other spectral, haunting figures, enter British territory to tell a different version of the official stories, to change the (...) course of the events and uncover truths regarding things happened overseas, during British colonial adventures. Starting from Meadows Taylor’s “Confessions of a Thug”, to which the novel is strictly connected, it will be interesting to follow Khair’s itinerary across the different narratives of the Thug’s symbolic, political and social meanings in mid- and late Victorian times, from Dickens’s "The Mystery of Edwin Drood” to Wilkie Collins’s “The Moonstone” and Conan Doyle’s “The Sign of Four” and “The Mystery of Cloomber”. (shrink)

Can we gain understanding from testifiers who themselves fail to understand? At first glance, this looks counterintuitive. How could a hearer who has no understanding or very poor understanding of a certain subject matter non-accidentally extract items of information relevant to understanding from a speaker’s testimony if the speaker does not understand what she is talking about? This paper shows that, when there are theories or representational devices working as mediators, speakers can intentionally generate understanding in their hearers by engaging (...) in relevant speech acts without understanding the topic of these speech acts themselves. More specifically, I argue that testifiers can intentionally elicit understanding of empirical phenomena in their hearers even if they themselves lack such understanding – granted that they properly understood the epistemic mediators involved. (shrink)

In Responsible Brains, Hirstein, Sifferd and Fagan apply the language of cognitive neuroscience to dominant understandings of criminal responsibility in criminal law theory. The Authors make a compelling case that, under such dominant understandings, criminal responsibility eventually ‘translates’ into a minimal working set of executive functions that are primarily mediated by the frontal lobes of the brain. In so arguing, the Authors seem to unquestioningly accept the law’s view of the “responsible person” as a mixture of cognitive capacities and mechanisms—thereby (...) leaving aside other fundamental aspects of individuals’ human agency. This commentary article offers a critique of the Authors’ rationalist and individualist approach. The critique can be summarized through the following claim: We humans, as responsible beings, are more than our executive functions. This claim articulates through four main points of discussion: role of emotions in moral judgments and behavior; executive functions and normative criteria for legal insanity; impact of adverse situational factors on executive functions; Authors’ account of punishment and, especially, rehabilitation. (shrink)

Proceduralists hold that democracy has a non-instrumental value consisting in the ideal of equality incorporated by fair procedures. Yet, proceduralism does not imply that every outcome of a democratic procedure is fair per se. In the non-ideal setting of constitutional democracies, government and legislative decisions may result from factional conflicts, or depend on majoritarian dictatorships. In these circumstances, Supreme Courts provide a guardianship against contested outcomes by enacting mechanisms of checks and balances, constitutional interpretation and judicial review. Yet, in virtue (...) of this role, Supreme Courts exercise a form of epistocratic power, which rests at odds with the ideal of political equality. We analyse this dilemma and propose a solution, arguing that Supreme Courts do not run unrestrained decisions; rather their decisional power is bound to the protective function of fundamental rights, in which their constitutional mandate ultimately consists. (shrink)

This book investigates the unresolved issue of democratic legitimacy in contexts of pervasive disagreement and contributes to this debate by defending a relational version of political liberalism that rests on the ideal of co-authorship. According to this proposal, democratic legitimacy depends upon establishing appropriate interactions among citizens who ought to ascribe to one another the status of putative practical and epistemic authorities. To support this relational reading of political liberalism, the book proposes a revised account of the civic virtue of (...) reasonableness along with an investigation of the epistemic-specific dimension of political equality. By engaging with political epistemology and social theory, this book explores ways to address inherent tensions within the liberal paradigm, using the following strategies of addressing these tensions: first, it defends a twofold model of legitimacy that distinguishes the goals, methodologies, and justificatory tasks of both ideal and nonideal phases of the two-level justificatory framework; second, it contends that democratic legitimacy requires an engaged and contextual critical appraisal of the injustices that characterize our daily social lives, illustrating how structural forms of injustice represent a profound betrayal of the liberal ideal of democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

Background Community involvement in research has been advocated by researchers, communities, regulatory agencies, and funders with the aim of reinforcing subjects’ protection and improving research efficiency. Community involvement also has the potential to improve dissemination, uptake, and implementation of research findings. The fields of community based participatory research conducted with indigenous populations and of participatory action research offer a large base of experience in community involvement in research. Rules on involving the population affected when conducting research have been established in (...) these fields. But what is the role of community engagement in clinical research and observational studies conducted in biomedical research outside of these specific areas? Main body of the abstract More than 20 years ago, in the field of HIV medicine, regulatory bodies and funding agencies recommended the constitution of a formal organism, the Community Advisory Board, as part of the study requirements for HIV trials. More recently, CABs have been adopted and used in other fields of medical research, such as malaria. CABs are not without limitations, however, and there is little research on the effectiveness of their use in achieving community protection and participation. Nevertheless, CABs could be a model to import into clinical trials and observational research where no alternative model of community representation is currently being used. Conclusions Allocating more resources to training and shifting more power to community representatives could be part of the solution to current CAB limitations. However, for researchers to be able to apply these recommendations on community involvement, certain conditions need to be met. In particular, funding agencies need to recognize the human and financial resources required for serious community involvement, and the academic environment needs to take community involvement into account when appraising, mentoring, and training researchers. (shrink)