Drawing on recent findings, this study examines whether valence concordant electromyography (EMG) responses can be explained as an unconditional effect of mere stimulus processing or as somatosensory simulation driven by task-dependent processing strategies. While facial EMG over the Corrugator supercilii and the Zygomaticus major was measured, each participant performed two tasks with pictures of album covers. One task was an affective evaluation task and the other was to attribute the album covers to one of five decades. The Embodied Emotion Account (...) predicts that valence concordant EMG is more likely to occur if the task necessitates a somatosensory simulation of the evaluative meaning of stimuli. Results support this prediction with regard to Corrugator supercilii in that valence concordant EMG activity was only present in the affective evaluation task but not in the non-evaluative task. Results for the Zygomaticus major were ambiguous. Our findings are in line with the view that EMG activity is an embodied part of the evaluation process and not a mere physical outcome. (shrink)

The proposed European Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) is the first attempt to elaborate a general legal framework for AI carried out by any major global economy. As such, the AIA is likely to become a point of reference in the larger discourse on how AI systems can (and should) be regulated. In this article, we describe and discuss the two primary enforcement mechanisms proposed in the AIA: the _conformity assessments_ that providers of high-risk AI systems are expected to conduct, and (...) the _post-market monitoring plans_ that providers must establish to document the performance of high-risk AI systems throughout their lifetimes. We argue that the AIA can be interpreted as a proposal to establish a Europe-wide ecosystem for conducting AI auditing, albeit in other words. Our analysis offers two main contributions. First, by describing the enforcement mechanisms included in the AIA in terminology borrowed from existing literature on AI auditing, we help providers of AI systems understand how they can prove adherence to the requirements set out in the AIA in practice. Second, by examining the AIA from an auditing perspective, we seek to provide transferable lessons from previous research about how to refine further the regulatory approach outlined in the AIA. We conclude by highlighting seven aspects of the AIA where amendments (or simply clarifications) would be helpful. These include, above all, the need to translate vague concepts into verifiable criteria and to strengthen the institutional safeguards concerning conformity assessments based on internal checks. (shrink)

Organisations increasingly use automated decision-making systems (ADMS) to inform decisions that affect humans and their environment. While the use of ADMS can improve the accuracy and efficiency of decision-making processes, it is also coupled with ethical challenges. Unfortunately, the governance mechanisms currently used to oversee human decision-making often fail when applied to ADMS. In previous work, we proposed that ethics-based auditing (EBA)—that is, a structured process by which ADMS are assessed for consistency with relevant principles or norms—can (a) help organisations (...) verify claims about their ADMS and (b) provide decision-subjects with justifications for the outputs produced by ADMS. In this article, we outline the conditions under which EBA procedures can be feasible and effective in practice. First, we argue that EBA is best understood as a ‘soft’ yet ‘formal’ governance mechanism. This implies that the main responsibility of auditors should be to spark ethical deliberation at key intervention points throughout the software development process and ensure that there is sufficient documentation to respond to potential inquiries. Second, we frame AMDS as parts of larger sociotechnical systems to demonstrate that to be feasible and effective, EBA procedures must link to intervention points that span all levels of organisational governance and all phases of the software lifecycle. The main function of EBA should, therefore, be to inform, formalise, assess, and interlink existing governance structures. Finally, we discuss the policy implications of our findings. To support the emergence of feasible and effective EBA procedures, policymakers and regulators could provide standardised reporting formats, facilitate knowledge exchange, provide guidance on how to resolve normative tensions, and create an independent body to oversee EBA of ADMS. (shrink)

This paper presents a framework to understand the impact of scientific knowledge on the policy-making process, focusing on the conceptual impact. We note the continuing dissatisfaction with the quality and effects of science-policy interactions in both theory and practice. We critique the current literature’s emphasis on the efforts of scientists to generate policy impact, because it neglects the role of ‘user’ policymaking organisations. The framework offered in the paper develops an argument about the essential role of institutional conditions of policy (...) ‘users’ for scientific knowledge to achieve impact. The framework is informed by the reflexive institutionalist and the neo-institutionalist theoretical approaches. Its main contribution is in outlining the intra- and inter-organisational conditions of policymaking organisations, along with personal characteristics of individual policy officials that influence the likelihood of scientific knowledge to generate conceptual impact. We also offer an operationalisation of the framework. The wider relevance of the paper is in moving the focus from the activities of scientists and the incentive structure in scientific organisations to the policy user side. (shrink)

Collection of articles on medieval logic and semantics. Introduction by Sten Ebbesen and 24 contributions by scholars in the history of medieval theories of language. The papers in this volume treat several aspects of the history of theories of language from the 12th to the 14th century, aspects that have in a way or another been dealt with by Ebbesen himself.Festschrift in honor of Sten Ebessen in the occasion of his 65th birthday.

Aristoteles' (384-322 f.Kr.) mange filosofisk-videnskabelige værker er blevet studeret og kommenteret i over 2.000 år, men aldrig så intensivt som i tiden mellem 1100 og 1600, hvor de var rygraden i den såkaldt "skolastiske" lærdomskultur, der skabte det europæiske universitetssystem. Der forskes stadig i Aristoteles verden over, men moderne fortolkere drager kun sjældent nytte af den rige ældre tradition. Denne bog beskriver og sammenligner fortolkningsmetoder og publikationsstrategier hos skolastikerne og nutidens aristotelikere. Der argumenteres for, at dele af den gamle metodik (...) med fordel kunne genoptages, og det vises, at der i konkrete tilfælde kan findes værdifulde fortolkningsforslag, som ikke ses i den nyere litteratur. (shrink)

Acknowledgments I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Jakob Amstutz for his continual feedback during my writing of this work. ...

Die ltesten philosophischen Ideen Europas liegen im Dunkel - nicht nur, weil die Werke ihrer Vertreter verloren sind, sondern auch, weil die antike berlieferung durch die besondere Interpretation dominiert ist, der diese fr hesten Konzepte im 4. Jh. v. Chr. durch Aristoteles unterzogen wurden. Diese Interpretation und einen ihrer antiken Rezeptionszweige n her zu beleuchten, ist das Ziel des Buches von Maria Marcinkowska-Ros l. Analysiert und ausf hrlich erl utert werden 120 Textzeugnisse zu den 'Prinzipienlehren' des Thales, Anaximander und (...) Anaximenes bei Aristoteles (Physik, ber den Himmel, ber Werden und Vergehen, ber die Seele, Metaphysik) und seinen Kommentatoren vom 2. bis zum 14. Jh. (Alexander von Aphrodisias, Themistios, Syrianos, Johannes Philoponos, Simplikios, Asklepios von Tralleis, Michael Psellos, Georgios Pachymeres, Sophonias und - in den lateinischen bersetzungen des Michael Scotus und Jakob Mantino - Averroes). Die durchgef hrten Analysen ergeben ein oft berraschendes Bild der vielf ltigen Umdeutungen der milesischen Ideen und deren immer weiter fortschreitender Assimilierung an den konzeptuellen Rahmen des Aristoteles und seiner antiken und mittelalterlichen Kommentatoren. (shrink)

Many accounts in environmental ethics converge on relationality as the catalyst of humans' responsibility towards other-than-human beings. But what exactly is relationality and how can the amorphous notion be specified? In search of a conceptual basis for human-animal relations, I show how questions about the nature of intersubjectivity are entwined with questions about the nature of reality. In my approach to answering these questions, I connect empirical results, insights from Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and from Jakob von Uexküll's theory of (...) _Umwelten_. Based on this synthesis, I explain how beings endowed with radically different subjective experiences–what I call organisms' respective realities–are nevertheless capable of meaningfully relating to one another and have their minds "merge" in intersubjective encounters. I conclude that relationality is a "real" possibility for mediating ethical action. (shrink)

Luca M. Possati, Jean Grondin, Paul Ricoeur ; Aurore Dumont, François Dosse et Catherine Goldenstein, Paul Ricoeur: penser la mémoire ; Paul-Gabriel Sandu, Gert-Jan van der Heiden, The Truth of Language. Heidegger, Ricoeur and Derrida on Disclosure and Displacement ; Paul Marinescu, Marc-Antoine Vallée, Gadamer et Ricoeur. La conception herméneutiquedu langage ; Witold Płotka, Saulius Geniusas, Th e Origins of the Horizon in Husserl’s Phenomenology ; Delia Popa, Annabelle Dufourcq, La dimension imaginaire du réel dans la philosophie de Husserl ; (...) Maria GyemantDenis Seron, Ce que voir veut dire. Essai sur la perception ; Christian Ferencz-Flatz, Hans Friesen, Christian Lotz, Jakob Meier, Markus Wolf, Ding und Verdinglichung. Technik- und Sozialphilosophie nach Heidegger und der Kritischen Th eorie ; Bogdan MincăLarisa Cercel, John Stanley, Unterwegs zu einer hermeneutischen Übersetzungswissenschaft. Radegundis Stolze zu ihrem 60. Geburtstag ; Denisa Butnaru Johann Michel, Sociologie du soi. Essai d’herméneutique appliquée ; Ovidiu Stanciu, Jan Patočka, Aristote, ses devanciers, ses successeurs. Trad. fr. Erika Abrams ; Mădălina Diaconu, Emmanuel Alloa, Das durchscheinende Bild. Konturen einer medialen, Phänomenologie. (shrink)

Resumo: Como uma heresia confucionista, Mozi inicialmente chamou a atenção do missionário inglês Joseph Edkins, em 1858. Posteriormente, o missionário holandês Johann Jakob Maria de Groot traduziu a Doutrina Funerária de Mozi, que tem fortes tonalidades religiosas. Joseph e Groot, que representavam os missionários do protestantismo, interpretaram Mozi em uma variedade de narrativas teológicas. Os dois missionários, que procuravam conexões entre Mozi e o cristianismo, consideravam Mozi um cânone teológico, contendo doutrina cristã. Eles também atacaram o confucionismo, a (...) antítese do cristianismo, apontando que Mozi era um herege, na tradição confuciana. Através dessa imaginação religiosa sobre Mozi, mais missionários e sinologistas se juntaram à tradução de Mozi, e a jornada da transmissão do cânone para o Ocidente começou. (shrink)

IN THE LAST PART of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith puts his theory in a class with those of his contemporaries Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, namely, the systems that make sentiments the principle of approbation. Despite recognizing important differences with both of them, he thinks that since he has placed the origin of moral sentiments in sympathy, and in particular the fact that we are able to enter into the motives of the agent and get pleasure from (...) finding them appropriate to their cause, sentiments are the foundation of his theory of morals. Many of Smith’s commentators, in fact almost all of the most important studies over the last few years, reaffirm the author’s self-description. However, my aim in this paper is to challenge this view by showing that Smith’s system can also be plausibly seen as a theory of practical reasoning, and in some important aspects very similar to Aristotelian ethics. Surprisingly few scholars have seen this parallel. Laurence Berns, Samuel Fleischacker, Charles Griswold, and Gloria Vivenza are the latest exceptions, identifying several points of coincidence between Adam Smith and Aristotle’s ethics. None of them, however, has tied all these similarities under a unified interpretation, such as the one I propose here: The basic analogy between these theories, and the source of those particular coincidences, is the operation of practical reason. Moreover, and besides the common elements with Aristotle’s ethics, Smith’s reconstruction of practical reason simultaneously announces some of the main features of modern accounts of ethics, such as impartiality and universality as preconditions of moral judgment. The integration of these ancient and modern elements in a single coherent theory allows Smith’s TMS to overcome the insufficiencies and paradoxes of both these traditions, and it constitutes one of the most interesting and challenging proposals of modern ethics. (shrink)

The death of Bal Keshav Thackeray, in November 2012, has led several Indian journalists and intellectuals to think over the legacy of the supreme leader of the Shiv Sena to the Indian society. The present article means to identify the reasons which have let the Indian journalists describe the bequest of Thackeray to the Indian society in terms of a legacy of fear. The article deals with Thackeray's use of fear as a tool to arise consent around his social, cultural (...) and political thinking first and, secondly, to legitimize and justify the existence and the modus operandi of the Shiv Sena. The author dwells on the way Thackeray has been able to arise and feed social and cultural fear in order to give a meaning and a sense to his political enterprise. The article argues that the most scaring aspect of Thackeray's political discourse doesn't lie in the aims pursued and in the ways they have been pursued but in the idea of social and cultural identity it is based on. (shrink)

Dans le § 8 de la 1ère recherche logique Husserl explique qu'est-ce que c'est l'expression, par opposition à un autre type de signe: l'indice. Ce qu'est en jeu, c'est la spécificité de l'expression, entendue par Husserl comme une sorte de signe qui présente un caractère clair. Mais afin de determiner l'expression Husserl effectue une opération interpretée par Derrida comme un premier type de réduction: réduction du langage a une forme du soliloque. En d'autres termes, au moment où Husserl doit expliquer (...) ce qu'est un signe linguistique, met entre parenthèses précisément la fonction symbolique des expressions.Je tiens à souligner dans cet article les raisons qui conduisent Husserl à ce surprenant geste de mettre entre parenthèses l'une des fonctions les plus essentielles des actes significatifs, la fonction comunicative de contenus intentionnels au moyen de signes dans un contexte intersubjectif. Je montrerai après ce que conduit Husserl à examiner à nouveau cette décision et à la critiquer dans les textes de 1913-1914 lors de la préparation de la deuxième édition des Recherches logiques et publiés aujourd'hui dans le volume XX/2 de Husserliana.En el § 8 de la 1ª Investigación lógica Husserl explica qué es la expresión por oposición a otro tipo de signo: el índice. Lo que se halla en juego es la especificidad de la expresión, entendida por Husserl como un tipo de signo que presenta un carácter intencional. Pero, con el fin de perfilar la expresión, Husserl realiza una operación interpretada por Derrida como un primer tipo de reducción: la reducción del lenguaje a la forma del soliloquio. En otras palabras, en el momento en el que Husserl debe explicar lo que es un signo lingüístico, pone entre paréntesis precisamente la función simbólica de las expresiones.Me gustaría poner de relieve en este artículo las razones que llevan a Husserl a este sorprendente gesto de poner entre paréntesis una de las más esenciales funciones de los actos significativos, la función de comunicar contenidos intencionales a través de signos en un context intersubjetivo. Mostraré más tarde qué lleva a Husserl revisar esta decisión y criticarla en los textos de 1913-1914 cuando preparaba la segunda edición de las Investigaciones lógi-cas y hoy publicados en el volumen XX/2 de Husserliana. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza los aspectos centrales de la concepción del Estado en El Anti-Edipo. Capitalismo y esquizofrenia, en particular los desarrollos ofrecidos en el capítulo tercero: "Salvajes, Bárbaros, Civilizados". La innovadora figura del Estado surge de un juego polifónico, abigarrado, discontinuo y elíptico con Karl Marx a partir de la noción de Modo de producción asiático; con Friedrich Nietzsche considerando la noción de origen y domesticación; y con Sigmund Freud siguiendo la noción de latencia. Los rasgos centrales para su conceptualización (...) se sintetizan en: 1) El Estado despótico como momento paradigmático de todo Estado y 2) el Estado es entendido como máquina social, en su doble articulación: social y libidinal. The article analyzes the key aspects of the conception of the State in The Anti-Oedipus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, in particular the developments offered in chapter three: "Savages, Barbarians, Civilized". The innovative idea of the State arises from a game polyphonic from the notion of Asian Production Mode, from the concept of origin and domestication, and from the notion of latency. The central features for conceptualization are summarized as follows: 1) The Despotic State as paradigmatic moment of every State and 2) the State is understood as a social machine, in its double articulation: social and libidinal. (shrink)

The early modern play Sir Thomas More, written by Anthony Munday, Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, and William Shakespeare, takes an ecumenical viewpoint of the play's Catholic hero in order to conform to the expectations of the Master of the Revels and to appeal to a cross-confessional audience. The playwrights carefully construct the play within the confines of censorship by centering the play's action around More's dynamic personality instead of giving a full exposition of historical plot. More's personality and (...) famous wit function together as a means for diverting attention away from the controversy surrounding More's silent opposition to Henrician policy while subtly validating his martyrdom. The argument of this article examines the adaptation of the play's ideologically diverse source material, the playwrights’ use of martyrological conventions, and the subtle traces of Erasmian allusion and recusant rhetoric in its reading of the play. (shrink)

FollowingBerwick and Chomsky (2011), parameters are degrees of freedom open at the externalization (EXT) of syntactico-semantic structures (SEM) by sensorimotor systems (PHON) (Section 1). Within this framework, inSection 2I focus on a case study concerning Northern Italian subject clitics, also raising the well-known question how to reconcile observable microvariation with the desideratum of a reduced number of (macro)parameters.Sections 3reviews recent relevant models of parameterization, the Rethinking Comparative Syntax model (ReCoS,Biberauer et al. 2014) and the Parameters & Schemata model (Longobardi 2005,2017).Sections (...) 4–5return to the case study, taking the reductionist view that parameters may be just categorial cuts, such as the 1/2P vs 3P split, interacting with externalization and other general principles of grammar. (shrink)

En el Santiago del siglo XVIII, los ajustes urbanísticos y sociales emanados de las autoridades se tradujeron en prácticas y representaciones, institucionales y de las otras, que involucraron a todos los habitantes de la ciudad. La actuación decidida de algunos alcaldes, como los de Aguas y los de Barrio, implicó el acomodo de voluntades e intereses, y también el enfrentamiento violento de cuerpos y de subjetividades, los que han quedado registrados en los pleitos por injuria seguidos en tribunales de primera (...) y de última instancia. El análisis comparado de dos casos puntuales, con el auxilio de preguntas y miradas propias de las ciencias sociales, enriquece el conocimiento de la dinámica vida cotidiana en la capital del reino durante el último siglo colonial. (shrink)