Digital contact tracing is used in different countries to help contain the COVID-19 pandemic. It raises challenging empirical and ethical questions due to its complexity and widespread effects calling for a broader approach in ethical evaluation. However, existing approaches often fail to include all relevant value perspectives or lack reference to empirical data on the artifact in question. In this paper, we describe the development of an interdisciplinary framework to analyze digital contact tracing from an empirical and ethical perspective. Starting (...) with an analysis of methodological tensions in the attempt to analyze digital contact tracing, we, firstly, set out three methodological premises regarding (a) a specific view of technology, (b) a fruitful normative perspective, and (c) ways to gather empirical knowledge about the object under investigation. Secondly, we inspect consequences of these premises to develop our research methodology. In doing so, we argue for a postphenomenological perspective on technology, solidarity as an important concept to guide the ethical perspective, and an empirical approach based on qualitative social science research and the concept of affordances. We illustrate these considerations by referring to our analysis of the German Corona-Warn-App as an instance of contact tracing based on the Exposure Notification Framework by Google and Apple. We then discuss the implications of using such a framework, including considerations concerning future developments of technologies similar to or inspired by the current concepts of contact tracing. (shrink)

Health technologies such as apps for digital contract tracing [DCT] played a crucial role in containing and combating infections during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their primary function was to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by consistently generating and disseminating information related to various events such as encounters, vaccinations or infections. While the functionality of DCT has been well researched, the necessity of transparency in the use of DCT and the consent to share sensitive information such as users’ health, vaccination and location (...) status remains unclear. On one hand, DCT enabled the continuous monitoring of various risk factors, including data-based calculations of infection probabilities. On the other hand, digital monitoring of health risks was closely associated with various uncertainties, such as the ambiguous storage of personal data and its potential future misuse, e.g., by tech companies or health authorities. Our contribution aims to retrospectively analyze the COVID-19 pandemic from a post-pandemic perspective and utilize it as a case study for the implementation of new technological measures. We argue that under the condition of voluntary use of DCT, transparency plays a key role in convincing individuals to install health technologies on their mobile devices, keep them activated and consent to the sharing of sensitive data. We support our argument with qualitative data from an expert survey conducted between 2020 and 2021 and analyzed according to the principles of Grounded Theory. (shrink)

L’essai vise à reconstruire dans l’ Estetica come scienza dell’espressione e linguistica generale de Croce de 1902 la relation complexe entre les concepts d’intuition, d’expression et de sensibilité. Pour Croce, l’activité esthétique semble toujours osciller entre une forme de connaissance et une productivité qui trouve dans la matérialité du médium expressif (en particulier l’art) sa propre façon d’apparaître au niveau sensible.

Bernard Berenson used to refer to Giovanni Morelli as «the founder of the Method». With these words, he meant that Morelli was the scholar who, first, transformed connoisseurship in a science, giving to the discipline a stringent method. Does Morelli’s theory of painting really deserve this praise? To answer this question, this paper examines in the first part the philosophical and scientific background of Morelli’s doctrine, showing how its original debt payed to romantic philosophy went replaced by a neat positivist (...) orientation. In the second part, the Method itself is discussed, asking in which measure it was anticipated by the intuitions of art experts such as Giulio Mancini or Luigi Crespi and discussing the nature and epistemological relevance of the so-called “morellian details”, that is the forms of the nails, of the ears, of the hair’s curls in paintings. Are these details really sufficient for the attribution of a painting to an artist? Which role play the documents in connoisseurship? And, more generally, how important is aesthetic value in the morellian “Method”? (shrink)

En este artículo se quiere trazar una teoría política de la insurrección en el pensamiento de Max Stirner, en tanto alternativa ética y política a la revolución. Se mostrará cómo, según el pensador alemán, la revolución es en última instancia una estrategia fallida de emancipación en tanto en cuanto no libera al individuo de las formas de subjetividad que lo mantienen dependiente del poder. Más en general, se enseñará como el orden liberal post-revolucionario, detrás del lenguaje secular de los derechos, (...) las libertades y la igualdad, engendra técnicas más sutiles de gobernabilidad del individuo. La insurrección, en cambio, puede ser vista como un rechazo de las identidades y de los roles que disciplinan al individuo. Al respecto, se prestará una atención especial al concepto stirneriano de Eigenheit, como estrategia ética de auto-determinación y liberación de las formas rígidas de la subjetividad. En última instancia, se querrá mostrar cómo todo el proyecto político de la insurrección stirneriana se basa en un anarquismo ontológico que rechaza la lógica teleocrática del racionalismo moderno y pone en entredicho la misma noción de realización. The aim of this article to outline a political theory of insurrection in Max Stirner’s thought as an ethical and political alternative to revolution. I will show that revolution is ultimately a failed strategy of emancipation as it does not free the individual from the forms of subjectivity that keep her dependent on power. Insurrection, on the other hand, can be seen as a rejection of the identities and roles that discipline the individual. In this regard, special attention will be paid to the Stirnerian concept of Eigenheit as an ethical strategy of self-determination and liberation from rigid forms of subjectivity. Ultimately, I will show how the whole political project of the Stirnerian insurrection is based on an ontological anarchism that rejects the teleocratic logic of modern rationalism and calls into question the very notion of realization. (shrink)

This paper develops the concept of ‘creative attention’. Against classical theories that understand attention as a spotlight that brings objects into focus, I will argue that attention is a complex phenomenon structured in different layers. The most basic layer is perceptual, passive and pre-predicative: at this level, attention is creative – and this is the central claim of this paper – because it institutes meanings and rules for our behaviour.

el presente artículo quiere investigar el papel de la mística en la teoría política de Gustav Landauer. La tesis que se defenderá es que la “conservación revolucionaria” que caracteriza la propuesta política landaueriana tiene que enmarcarse en una concepción mística del tiempo histórico, basada en una recuperación del pasado como instrumento de emancipación política. Para esta finalidad se analizará, en un primer párrafo, el contenido utópico a la vez que restaurador de la noción landauerianana de revolución, y, en un segundo (...) apartado, la propuesta acerca de una nueva comunidad socialista. Finalmente, se concluirá que el “romanticismo revolucionario” que entraña la teoría política del autor, y sus continuas referencias a la vida social y política de la Edad Media, puede ser entendido sólo a la luz de un anarquismo mesiánico donde una forma sui generis de espiritualidad y la recuperación del pasado juegan un rol determinante para un auténtico proyecto revolucionario. (shrink)

"Some patients find it difficult to be in the present because they are stuck in the past; others, by contrast, struggle to remain connected with the past and are suspended in a so-called present that is effectively atemporal, that is out of time”.1 For psychoanalysts, the most profound and ultimately ethical way that we can help individuals, is by helping them know themselves. This involves discovering how they were shaped by their past and how their ongoing self-experience cannot be understood (...) in isolation from its constitutive contexts. Psychoanalysts help patients explore foundational questions such as: ‘Who am I?’ ‘How did I get here?’ ‘How am I implicated in my own suffering?’ ‘How can I grow and flourish and truly engage with my life?’. The answers to these questions emerge from a detailed exploration of the persons lived relational history, their current social and relational context and the political systems within which they are embedded. It is via this expansion of self-awareness that individuals can access agency and true freedom of choice. The clinical approach presented by Notini et al 2 is grounded in a completely different, radically decontextualised understanding of human experience. Their conceptualisation of Phoenix’s gender identity is ahistorical and atemporal: it is indeed ‘out of time’. For these authors, gender identity is assumed to be an immutable core essence, much like Ehrensaft’s3 ‘true gender self….there from birth’. It simply ‘is’. This is a …. (shrink)

One of Heidegger’s most important descriptions of bodily existence can be found in his Nietzsche lectures. This paper aims to elucidate this “metaphysics of the body” both in relation to Heidegger’s Leibniz-interpretation in the later Marburg lectures as well as in the context of his later thought. Leibniz and Nietzsche are Heidegger’s points of departure in the attempt to think the difference between θεωρία and πραξις beyond Being and Time: It is only by understanding their relationship, through a radical re-thinking (...) of the problem of corporeality, no longer as a noun (der Leib) but as a verb (leiben), that one can possibly move beyond every traditional dualism, between theory and praxis but also and most notably between being and becoming. (shrink)

This article puts forward some observations about the literary form of Documentalità. The genre to which Documentalità belongs is undoubtedly the philosophical treatise. This is a novelty, because the philosophical treatise is not a popular literary form with contemporary philosophers. But it is a genre that proves to be functional in the project of philosophical reconstruction pursued by Ferraris, and that do not necessarily conflict with the Derridean roots from which Documentality moves.

1. Einleitung 2. Das Berühren im Buch Θ der Metaphysik 3. Berühren und praktisches Zu-tun-haben-mit 4. Der dreifache Sinn von Zeigen und die Wahrheit 5. Das Leiben. Anknüpfung zu dem späten Heidegger Bibliographie.

This paper aims to conceptualize the phenomenology of attentional experience as ‘embodied attention.’ Current psychological research, in describing attentional experiences, tends to apply the so-called spotlight metaphor, according to which attention is characterized as the illumination of certain surrounding objects or events. In this framework, attention is not seen as involving our bodily attitudes or modifying the way we experience those objects and events. It is primarily conceived as a purely mental and volitional activity of the cognizing subject. Against this (...) view, the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty shows that attention is a creative activity deeply linked with bodily movements. This paper clarifies and systematizes this view and brings it into dialogue with current empirical findings as well as with current theoretical research on embodied cognition. By doing this, I spell out three main claims about embodied attention: the transcendentalism of embodiment for attention, the bodily subjectivity of attention, and the creativity of embodied attention. (shrink)

The general topic of this book is the metaphysics of the subject in Kantian transcendental philosophy. A critical appreciation of Kant's achievements requires that we be able to view Kant's positions as transformations of pre-Kantian philosophy, and that we understand the ways in which contemporary philosophy changes the letter of Kantian thought in order to be true to its spirit in a new philosophical horizon. Descartes is important in two respects. One the one hand, he institutes a philosophical movement which (...) can be said to culminate in Kant; on the other hand, Descartes is one of the major opponents against whom Kant argues in establishing his own position. In either case, the Cartesian cogito is a central concern. Wilfred Sellars restates and transforms Kantian positions in the context of contemporary philosophy after the "linguistic turn", using the Platonic metaphor that thought is similar to discourse. (shrink)

In diesem Band deckt Diego D'Angelo semiotische Strukturen in der Husserl’schen Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung auf. Ist es der Phänomenologie darum zu tun, die Erfahrung von Dingen in unserer Umwelt zu beschreiben, so ist dabei der Begriff des Horizontes von zentraler Bedeutung: Was wir unmittelbar wahrnehmen, verweist immer schon auf anderes, was nur „mitgegeben“ ist. Wenn wir Dinge wahrnehmen, haben wir nur eine bestimmte Perspektive, d.h. wir sehen lediglich einen Aspekt. Aber wir nehmen immer ganze Gegenstände wahr (wir sehen Tische und (...) Stühle und andere Menschen). Jeder dieser Gegenstände erscheint in einem Feld weiterer Gegenstände, und es ist der Horizontbegriff, der es erlaubt, das Verhältnis zwischen Selbstgegebenheit und Mitgegebenheit zu explizieren. Dieses Buch stellt den ersten detaillierten Versuch dar, die Ursprünge solcher horizontaler Felder in semiotischen Strukturen zu suchen. Aus der Verbindung zwischen Husserls eigener Semiotik und seiner Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung ergibt sich, dass das wahrgenommene Phänomen als Zeichen verstanden werden muss. Das Zeichen wiederum bezeichnet etwas, was in leiblicher Bewegung eingeholt werden kann. Mit der Verbindung von Leiblichkeit, Semiotik und Wahrnehmung thematisiert diese Monographie das Verhältnis zwischen folgenden phänomenologischen Forschungsgebieten: • Husserls Semiotik der Wahrnehmung in den Logischen Untersuchungen • Phänomenologische Raumanalyse – kinästhetische Indikation • Horizont und Noema • Passive Anzeige • Zeichen und Leiblichkeit als Grundlagen der Fremderfahrung • Genetische Phänomenologie und Semiotik der Erfahrung • Protentionen und teleologische Semiose • Induktion und Ursprung des menschlichen Ichs Das Buch eröffnet die Möglichkeit, Husserls Phänomenologie jenseits einer Metaphysik der Präsenz zu verstehen. Zudem leisten D'Angelos Einzeluntersuchungen einen Beitrag zu aktuellen Diskussionen in der Philosophie der leiblichen Kognition. – Eine hilfreiche Leseempfehlung für • Interessierte Themenneulinge • Bachelor- und Masterstudenten der Geisteswissenschaften • Hochschulabsolventen sowie Forschungswissenschaftler. (shrink)

Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library is a philosophical and historical analysis of how the rise of consumerism has led to the decline of the original mission of public libraries to sustain and promote democracy through civic education. Through a reading of historical figures such as Plato, Helvetius, Rousseau, and John Stuart Mill, the book shows how democracy and even capitalism were originally believed to depend upon the moral and political education that public libraries (and other institutions of (...) rational public discourse) could provide. But as capitalism developed in the 20th century it evolved into a postmodern consumerism that replaced democracy with consumerism and education with entertainment. Public libraries have mistakenly tried to remain relevant by shadowing the rise of consumerism, but have instead contributed to the rise of a new barbarism and the decline of democracy. (shrink)

Attention is often dichotomized into controlled vs. automatic processing, where controlled processing is slow, flexible, and intentional, and automatic processing is fast, inflexible, and unintentional. In contrast to this strict dichotomy, there is mounting evidence for context-specific processes that are engaged rapidly yet are also flexible. In the present study we extend this idea to the domain of implicit learning to examine whether flexibility in automatic processes can be implemented through the reliance on contextual features. Across three experiments we show (...) that participants can learn implicitly two complementary sequences that are associated with distinct contexts, and that transfer of learning when the two contexts are randomly intermixed depends on the distinctiveness of the two contexts. Our results point to the role of context-specific processes in the acquisition and expression of implicit sequence knowledge, and also suggest that episodic details can be represented in sequence knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Movements of the Mind. A Theory of Attention, Intention and Action by Wayne WuDiego D’AngeloWU, Wayne. Movements of the Mind. A Theory of Attention, Intention and Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. 257 pp. Cloth, $80.00Wayne Wu presented a theory of attention as selection-for-action in 2014. According to this theory, given a behavioral space in which the agent has multiple inputs and outputs to choose from, attention involves (...) the selection of a particular course of action, that is, of certain outputs based on certain inputs. In the present work Wu puts to use the selection-for-action theory to shed light on the broader topic of the “movements of the mind”: intentionality and action. Action and movement are mostly not intended as bodily movement: By focusing on mental actions Wu aims to simplify philosophical explanations. His overall theoretical approach remains consistent with his work on attention, which involves a quest to develop rigorous philosophical concepts while incorporating insights from the empirical sciences. Interestingly, biology takes precedence over cognitive sciences and psychology for him; he says, “I aspire to a biology of agency” in which philosophical analysis must respond to “empirical friction.” In this framework, this book puts forth four main claims. The first concerns the general structure of action—action arises from solving a selection problem. Second, intentional actions can be differentiated from unintentional actions using the concepts of automaticity and control. Third, Wu argues that attention is a necessary aspect of every theory of action. Fourth, he claims that intention is practical memory for action. These four are woven throughout the different chapters of his book.The first part analyzes the structure of action along three axes: how the agent “takes things to be” as the basis for selection, the agent’s response to those things, and the biases that explain the link between perceptions and responses. In the second part, Wu presents a theory of intention as practical memory. The theory is surprising, as Wu himself acknowledges when he says, “The approach to intention will, I think, jar many readers.” And indeed, it does, but Wu provides strong arguments, and future work will determine if the theory is feasible. The third part of the book explores the implications of his theory of action for specific forms and aspects of action; the first chapter in this section deals with automaticity and biases, [End Page 734] the second deals with deductive reasoning, and the third deals with introspection.According to Wu’s theory, action involves a complex combination of elements. The agent is faced with many inputs and potential outputs within a behavioral space. She takes inputs in a certain way: The way she sees things is influenced by myriad aspects, such as intentions and biases of various forms. Action and intending to act are solutions to the problem of selecting appropriate inputs and outputs. Wu thematizes the role of attention in this process of selection. Attention comes in three different forms. It can be an action itself (“attending,” for example, in searching for something); it can mean “vigilance” as readiness to act; and most importantly, attention is “mental guidance.” Every action is guided by attention insofar as a selection problem must be solved: Attention is guiding when perceptual input “plays a functional role of guiding.” Attention also shapes the agent’s actions through remembering, and remembering in turn is nothing else then attending to remembered content. This attended content provides the agent with biases and reasons to select a particular course of action. Therefore, intending to act is nothing else than practical memory, that is, memory put to work in the choice of actions.One particular type of action that is crucially important for philosophical research is introspection. According to Wu, introspection, like every kind of mental action, is not entirely reliable—as some theories would have it—or entirely unreliable but, instead, depends on context. Like any other action, introspection follows the same guiding principle, attention, specifically, perceptual attention. Therefore, introspection is a particular type of perceptual experience where attention is focused on one’s own mental states. In this way, Wu establishes criteria for veridical introspective reports, such... (shrink)

Traditionally the doping debate has been dominated by those who want to see doping forbidden (the prohibitionist view) and those who want to see it permitted (the ban abolitionist view). In this article, the authors analyse a third position starting from the assertion that doping use is a symptom of the paradigm of highly competitive elite sports, in the same way as addictions reflect current social paradigms in wider society. Based upon a conceptual distinction between occasional use, habitual use and (...) addiction, and focusing on the physical and/or mental dependency caused by the addictive use of a certain drug, we argue that marihuana, stimulants and anabolic steroid abuse—the most frequently detected substances in doping tests—satisfies at least one, often both, of these conditions. A conclusion to be drawn from the authors' arguments is that the prohibitionist view is inappropriate for dealing with doping, as the severe sanctions attached to it will cut the doper off her/his social and professional environment, thereby risking reinforcing her/his addictive conduct. But the ban abolitionist view seems inappropriate as well. At first sight, it seems neither rational nor humane not to intervene when confronted with conduct which is highly harmful for the individual and upon which she has reduced or no control whatsoever. Instead the authors' proposal will be to contextualise dopers' conduct within sport healthcare and see it strictly in relation to each athlete's personal background. Developing preventive programmes—implemented through person-tailored counselling and eventually treatment, rather than severe sanctions or the mere lifting of the ban—seems to be a more reasonable, and probably more efficient, way of conducting ‘the war against doping’. (shrink)

Kevin Liggieri, »Anthropotechnik«. Zur Geschichte eines umstrittenen Begriffs, Konstanz: Konstanz University Press 2020.