This article explores Futurist technophilia and some more or less latent technophobia, in the period after 1918. Fuelled by the economic and industrial advancements of the so-called “Giolittian age,” as well as an extensive employment of war technology in the First World War, the Futurist technological imagination remains both robust and wide-ranging in the postwar period. Resonant of nineteenth-century French and Italian literary traditions, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's official position clusters round the powerful, if hackneyed, images of the steam train and (...) the motorcar. A number of fellow Futurists, however, explore technology in more original and, in some cases, more persuasive fashions. From the technology of flying employed first-hand by Fedele Azari to Enrico Prampolini's mechanical applications on the European stage, from Anton Giulio Bragaglia's experimental cinema to Ivo Pannaggi's and Vinicio Paladini's technological rebirth in marxian key, the Futurists' approach to technology is characterised throughout by a problematic counterpoint of modernity and tradition. If the Futurist officialdom ultimately relies on the latter, numerous alternative experiences testify to their vibrant strife towards the former. (shrink)

We often hear such casual accusations: you just believe that because you are a liberal, a Christian, an American, a woman… When such charges are made they are meant to sting—not just emotionally, but epistemically. But should they? It can be disturbing to learn that one's beliefs reflect the influence of such irrelevant factors. The pervasiveness of such influence has led some to worry that we are not justified in many of our beliefs. That same pervasiveness has led others to (...) doubt whether there is any worry here at all. I argue that evidence of irrelevant belief influence is sometimes, but not always, undermining. My proposal picks out ordinary, non-skeptical cases in which we get evidence of error. It says that, in those cases, evidence of irrelevant influence is epistemically significant. It shows how respecting evidence of error is compatible with the epistemic lives we see ourselves living. We are fallible creatures, yes, but we are also capable and intelligent ones. We can recognize and correct for our own error so as to improve our imperfect, yet nevertheless robust, epistemic lives. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments start with a premise about the influence of evolutionary forces on our evaluative beliefs, and conclude that we are not justified in those beliefs. The value realist holds that there are attitude-independent evaluative truths. But the debunker argues that we have no reason to think that the evolutionary forces that shaped human evaluative attitudes would track those truths. Worse yet, we seem to have a good reason to think that they wouldn’t: evolution selects for characteristics that increase (...) genetic fitness—not ones that correlate with the evaluative truth. Plausibly, the attitudes and judgments that increase a creature’s fitness come apart from the true evaluative beliefs. My aim in this paper is to show that no plausible evolutionary debunking argument can both have force against the value realist and not collapse into a more general skeptical argument. I conclude that there is little hope for evolutionary debunking arguments. This is bad news for the debunker who hoped that the cold, hard scientific facts about our origins would debunk our evaluative beliefs. And it is good news for the realist. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments move from a premise about the influence of evolutionary forces on our moral beliefs to a skeptical conclusion about those beliefs. My primary aim is to clarify this empirically grounded epistemological challenge. I begin by distinguishing among importantly different sorts of epistemological attacks. I then demonstrate that instances of each appear in the literature under the ‘evolutionary debunking’ title. Distinguishing them clears up some confusions and helps us better understand the structure and potential of evolutionary debunking arguments.

The objects called cubes of opposition have been presented in the literature in discordant ways. The aim of the paper is to offer a survey of such various kinds of cubes and evaluate their relation with an object, here called “Aristotelian cube”, which consists of two Aristotelian squares and four squares which are semiaristotelian, i.e. are such that their vertices are linked by some so-called Aristotelian relation. Two paradigm cases of Aristotelian squares are provided by propositions written in the language (...) of the logic of consequential implication, whose distinctive feature is the validity of two formulas, A $$\rightarrow $$ → B $$\supset \lnot $$ ⊃ ¬ (A $$\rightarrow $$ → $$\lnot $$ ¬ B) and A $$\rightarrow $$ → B $$\supset \lnot $$ ⊃ ¬ ($$\lnot $$ ¬ A $$\rightarrow $$ → B), expressing two different forms of contrariety. Part of section 1 is devoted to define the notions of rotation and of r-Aristotelian square, i.e. a square resulting from some rotation of an Aristotelian square. In section 2 this notion is extended to the one of a r-Aristotelian cube, i.e. of a cube resulting from some rotation of some square of an Aristotelian cube. This notion is used in the sequel to analyze various cubes of oppositions which can be found in the literature: (1) the one used by W. Lenzen to reconstruct Caramuel’s Octagon; (2) the one used by D. Luzeaux to represent the implicative relation among S5-modalities; (3) the one introduced by D. Dubois to represent the relations between quantified propositions containing positive predicates and their negations; (4) the one called Moretti cube. None of such cubes is strictly speaking Aristotelian but each of them may be proved to be r-Aristotelian. Section 5 discusses the assertion that Dubois cube was anticipated in a paper published by Reichenbach in 1952. Actually Dubois’ construction was anticipated by the so-called Johnson–Keynes cube, while the Reichenbach cube, unlike Dubois cube, is an instance of an Aristotelian cube in the sense defined in this paper. The dominance of such notion is confirmed by J.F. Nilsson’s cube, representing relations between propositions with nested quantifiers, and also by a cube introduced by S. Read to treat quantifiers with existential import. A cube similar to Read’s cube, introduced by Chatti and Schang, is shown to be r-Aristotelian. In section 6 the author remarks that the logic of the formulas occurring in the cubes of Chatti–Schang and Read have the drawback of not satsfying the law of Identity. He then proposes a definition of non-standard quantifiers which satisfies Identity, are independent of existential assumptions and such that their interrelations are represented by an Aristotelian cube. (shrink)

We are fallible creatures, prone to making all sorts of mistakes. So, we should be open to evidence of error. But what constitutes such evidence? And what is it to rationally accommodate it? I approach these questions by considering an evolutionary debunking argument according to which (a) we have good, scientific, reason to think our moral beliefs are mistaken, and (b) rationally accommodating this requires revising our confidence in, or altogether abandoning the suspect beliefs. I present a dilemma for such (...) debunkers, which shows that either we have no reason to worry about our moral beliefs, or we do but we can self-correct. Either way, moral skepticism doesn’t follow. That the evolutionary debunking argument fails is important; also important, however, is what its failure reveals about rational belief revision. Specifically, it suggests that getting evidence of error is a non-trivial endeavor and that we cannot learn that we are likely to be mistaken about some matter from a neutral stance on that matter. (shrink)

The fact of moral disagreement when conjoined with Conciliationism, an independently attractive view about the epistemic significance disagreement, seems to entail moral skepticism. This worries those who like Conciliationism, the independently attractive view, but dislike moral skepticism. Others, equally inclined against moral skepticism, think this is a reductio of Conciliationism. I argue that they are both wrong. There is no reductio and nothing to worry about.

This paper reframes the issue of appropriation, extraction, and dispossession through AI—an assemblage of machine learning models trained on big data—in terms of enclosure and foreclosure. While enclosures are the product of a well-studied set of operations pertaining to both the constitution of the sovereign State and the primitive accumulation of capital, here, I want to recover an older form of the enclosure operation to then contrast it with foreclosure to better understand the effects of current algorithmic rationality. I argue (...) that the act of enclosing is to be understood as a set of fundamental operations that consist in producing structural distinctions between inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion—whether by drawing lines on a map, constructing border walls, or by algorithmically categorizing and (mis)recognizing people and things. Tracking the transformation of an enclosure-logic into one of foreclosure, I show how current AI perpetuates and at the same time expends forms of extraction, exclusion, and dispossession toward a totalizing horizon. For, while the outside is essential and constitutive to the logic of enclosure, foreclosure, by contrast, is characterized by the “totalizing desire” to not leave anything out of it. The totalizing desire to move beyond the logic of the enclosure forecloses that the enclosure has just gotten bigger and that the operations of exclusion have been masked and displaced, making them harder to contest. (shrink)

Should learning we disagree about p lead you to reduce confidence in p? Some who think so want to except beliefs in which you are rationally highly confident. I argue that this is wrong; we should reject accounts that rely on this intuitive thought. I then show that quite the opposite holds: factors that justify low confidence in p also make disagreement about p less significant. I examine two such factors: your antecedent expectations about your peers’ opinions and the difficulty (...) of evaluating your evidence. I close by proposing a different way of thinking about disagreement. (shrink)

Christianity has a long presence in the Maghreb, dating back to Roman imperial times. Eventually it became a mostly Muslim region, but in the late nineteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church embarked on a vast mission of church building, in part to assist the French colonial endeavor. In Tunisia, political independence in 1956 was accompanied by a further reinvigoration of Christianity, and, over the last twenty years, conversion to Christianity has been on the rise. Beginning in 2003, workers and students (...) from sub-Saharan Africa have contributed to the growth of both Catholic and Protestant churches in Tunis. This article analyzes the ways in which various Christian groups organize and articulate their religious practice and proselytization in ritual spaces that are sparse and must be shared in contemporary Tunisia. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage se penche sur la question des transformations à l’œuvre dans les traditions rituelles des religions méditerranéennes antiques, avec une attention particulière portée aux acteurs à l’origine de ces changements ainsi qu’aux émotions suscitées. Plusieurs contributions sont issues de communications présentées dans le panel « agency » du colloque « Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual », organisé à Heidelberg en 2008. Je résume ici les contributions portant sur le monde grec. L’an...

L’ouvrage de P. Ismard (P.I.) cherche à comprendre « le poids de l’événement que représente le procès de Socrate dans la mémoire occidentale » (p. 11). Cet objectif repose sur trois angles d’approche : il s’agit de saisir les enjeux du procès comme tel, d’utiliser cet « événement » comme clé d’analyse des institutions athéniennes contemporaines du procès, et d’étudier la réception du procès aux époques ultérieures. L’analyse est structurée autour de neuf chapitres, dans un langage fluide et a...

Derrière un titre assez sobre, la structure de l’ouvrage de R. Gagné (R.G.) permet d’entrevoir son originalité. Loin de se contenter d’une brève circonscription du concept de faute ancestrale dans l’introduction, l’A. consacre les deux premiers chapitres à la réception et à la réinterprétation de cette notion après l’Antiquité. Il cherche ainsi à montrer par quels filtres successifs a transité la notion avant d’arriver jusqu’à nous. Ce n’est qu’après un exposé assez érudit sur les nombreux au...

The continuous inclusion of new technologies in organizations challenges business ethics and creates new problematics in work life. Managers in particular are challenged insofar as they must learn how to adapt general technological hardware to local organizational needs and work habits. Based on new empirical research conducted in Danish health care organizations, it investigates how managers experience technologies and how these experiences affect their professional ethics; it asks: a) What kinds of ethics do managers consider when using new technologies? b) (...) How are these ethics negotiated? Using a techno-human practice approach—which takes into account both human and non-human entities as the basis of moral judgment—the new technologically-induced ethical dilemmas faced by managers are discussed. A typology of techno-ethics is introduced, which presents situated ways of engaging with technologies in businesses. By employing multiple ethics connected to the use of technologies in organizations might make managers more ethically responsible in decisions concerning technologies. (shrink)

O objetivo central neste artigo é o de explicar o que é testemunho e como ele produz conhecimento e justificação. Conforme essa concepção, o testemunho é uma importante e habitual fonte de conhecimento e de justificação, bem como um conceito relevante em epistemologia social, comunicação e psicologia da aquisição de crença. Apesar de o testemunho, nessa concepção, não ser considerado uma fonte básica de conhecimento e justificação, é alegado que ele é uma fonte de conhecimento básico pois crenças básicas não (...) precisariam derivar de uma fonte básica. Assim, novas crenças podem ser geradas a partir do testemunho, mas novo conhecimento não pode ser produzido a não ser a partir de conhecimento anterior. Apesar disso, a posição defendida neste artigo considera que, mesmo que a justificação com base no testemunho seja, em última instância, dependente de outras fontes de justificação, o testemunho constitui uma fonte essencial tanto de conhecimento como de justificação. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to develop the concept of the dignified death of children in Brazilian pediatric intensive care units (PICUs). The Hybrid Model for Concept Development was used to develop a conceptual structure of dignified death in PICUs in an attempt to define the concept. The fieldwork study was carried out by means of in-depth interviews with nine nurses and seven physicians working in PICUs. Not unexpectedly, the concept of dignified death was found to be a complex (...) phenomenon involving aspects related to decisions made by the multidisciplinary team as well as those related to care of the child and the family. Knowledge of the concept’s dimensions can promote reflection on the part of healthcare professionals regarding the values and beliefs underlying their conduct in end-of-life situations. Our hope is that this study may contribute to theoretic and methodological development in the area of end-of-life care. (shrink)

In this article, I show why it is necessary to abolish the use of predictive algorithms in the US criminal justice system at sentencing. After presenting the functioning of these algorithms in their context of emergence, I offer three arguments to demonstrate why their abolition is imperative. First, I show that sentencing based on predictive algorithms induces a process of rewriting the temporality of the judged individual, flattening their life into a present inescapably doomed by its past. Second, I demonstrate (...) that recursive processes, comprising predictive algorithms and the decisions based on their predictions, systematically suppress outliers and progressively transform reality to match predictions. In my third and final argument, I show that decisions made on the basis of predictive algorithms actively perform a biopolitical understanding of justice as management and modulation of risks. In such a framework, justice becomes a means to maintain a perverse social homeostasis that systematically exposes disenfranchised Black and Brown populations to risk. (shrink)

Can citizens impact the broader discourse about an organization and its legitimacy? While social media have empowered citizens to publicly question firms through large volumes of online evaluations, the high heterogeneity of their evaluations dilutes their impact. Our empirical study applying a threshold vector autoregressive model (TVAR) analysis of 2.5 million tweets and 1,786 news media articles tests the condition by which the heterogeneity of online evaluations converges and influences the broader media discourse. Although social media evaluations do not initially (...) influence media legitimacy, they become influential after reaching a tipping point of refracted attention, which is created by high volume and convergence of individual evaluations around few aggregative frames. Thus, social media storms may influence the broader discourse about an organization when this discourse converges and reaches a tipping point, rather than merely through the massive participation of citizens. (shrink)

Asumiendo que existe una fecunda relación histórica entre teología y fenomenología, este trabajo se propone señalar la especificidad y novedad de la fenomenología francesa actual, destacando la diferencia entre el modelo teológico del que esta última se nutre respecto del tipo de teología con el que dialoga la fenomenología histórica. En primer lugar, abordaremos la relación entre fenome-nología y teología ofrecida por Edmund Husserl, sosteniendo allí la presencia de una teología positiva, pues Dios es nombrado bajo términos tales como ἐντελέχεια, (...) “idea” y “substancia absoluta”. En segundo lugar, mostraremos el vínculo entre fenomenología y teología propuesto por Jean-Luc Marion a partir de su interpretación del pensamiento de Dionisio Areopagita como “teología pragmática de la ausencia”, tal como aparece en De surcroît. Finalmente, estableceremos un diálogo entre ambas propuestas. Sostendremos que puede hallarse una diferencia fundamental entre ellas. Por un lado, Husserl apela a una teología positiva, pues Dios irrumpe aquí en el horizonte de los Grenzprobleme de la fenomenología. Por el otro lado, afir-maremos que en Marion puede hallarse una apelación a la teología mística como búsqueda de un lenguaje que permita expresar el exceso. (shrink)

This paper reframes the issue of appropriation, extraction, and dispossession through AI—an assemblage of machine learning models trained on big data—in terms of enclosure and foreclosure. While enclosures are the product of a well-studied set of operations pertaining to both the constitution of the sovereign State and the primitive accumulation of capital, here, I want to recover an older form of the enclosure operation to then contrast it with foreclosure to better understand the effects of current algorithmic rationality. I argue (...) that the act of enclosing is to be understood as a set of fundamental operations that consist in producing structural distinctions between inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion—whether by drawing lines on a map, constructing border walls, or by algorithmically categorizing and (mis)recognizing people and things. Tracking the transformation of an enclosure-logic into one of foreclosure, I show how current AI perpetuates and at the same time expends forms of extraction, exclusion, and dispossession toward a totalizing horizon. For, while the outside is essential and constitutive to the logic of enclosure, foreclosure, by contrast, is characterized by the “totalizing desire” to not leave anything out of it. The totalizing desire to move beyond the logic of the enclosure forecloses that the enclosure has just gotten bigger and that the operations of exclusion have been masked and displaced, making them harder to contest. (shrink)

It’s intuitive to think that (a) the more sure you are of something, the harder it’ll be to change your mind about it, and (b) you can’t be open-minded about something if you’re very sure about it. If these thoughts are right, then, with minimal assumptions, it follows that you can’t be in a good position to both escape echo chambers and be rationally resistant to fake news: the former requires open-mindedness, but the latter is inimical to it. I argue (...) that neither thought is true and that believing them will get us all mixed up. I show that you can be open-minded and have confidently held beliefs, and that beliefs in which you are less sure are not, thereby, more fragile. I close with some reflections on the nature of rational belief change and open-mindedness and a brief sketch about what might actually help us in the fight against misinformation and belief polarization …. [please read below the rest of the article]. (shrink)

Zhuangzi purports to follow a particular method of viewing human emotion and suggests freeing oneself from worldly emotions—this is called “doctrine of non-emotion” (wuqing shuo 無情說). This article attempts to show that the idea of non-emotion in Zhuangzi does not in any way conflict with the expression of emotion in poetry, and moreover, it provides a foundation for the poet to express his emotions naturally and freely. We will use the Chinese poetry of the Wei-Jin Period—a period that is strongly (...) influenced by the philosophy of Zhuangzi, yet at the same time emphasizes the expression of the poet's emotion in poetry—as an example to show how fruitful it indeed is when Zhuangzi's philosophy becomes applied to Chinese poetry. (shrink)

In the late 1990s, computational technology had advanced sufficiently that astrophysicists were able to construct reasonably high resolution computer simulations of the Local Group of galaxies. These simulations indicated there should be around 250 small satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way and Andromeda. In the real Local Group, however, only around 40 satellites had been observed, and only twenty or so more have been discovered since then. Despite this discrepancy in numbers, claims have been made in recent years that the (...) ‘missing satellites problem’ has been solved. Using the examples of the constructed luminosity curve, and hydrodynamic simulations, this paper explores how simulations are used in conjunction with observation to ‘solve’ the missing satellites problem. It is suggested that the simulated universes have sufficient complexity to be understood as worlds in their own right, ones that can be measured and observed. By demonstrating that these virtual worlds are sufficiently ‘realistic’ with respect to observations, astrophysicists are able to make a robust argument for the existence of ‘dark’, non-observable astrophysical objects. Observational and simulated data are combined to demonstrate the plausibility—a term that develops more ontologically meaningful connotations—of both the existence and the maintenance of dark satellites. It is thus through the conflation of the real and virtual worlds, the blending of simulation data with empirical data, that the missing satellites problem is ‘solved’. (shrink)

This paper explores the sustainability reporting practices of listed small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the context of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Utilizing institutional theory as a framework, this study employs dynamic panel data and logistic regressions to investigate how these SMEs respond to isomorphic pressures. The findings reveal a significant presence of mimetic isomorphism, where these companies tend to imitate the sustainability reporting behaviours of all listed companies, not just those of their direct SME competitors. Interestingly, the (...) study also finds that geographical factors do not significantly influence the sustainability reporting practices of these SMEs. This research makes a notable contribution to the ongoing discussion about mandatory sustainability reporting in Europe, being one of the first in-depth analyses of how European-listed SMEs are adapting to new sustainability reporting regulations. (shrink)

In Psychology, the issue of language usage as a means of action in psychological life requires that we question the relations between the forms of language expression and their psychological functions. The current paper contributes to an understanding of this question. The relation between form and function is examined here, with particular focus on a discursive and dialogic method employed in the Activity Clinic approach to elicit controversy as a means of developing dialogical thinking. We argue that the interfunctionality of (...) levels of dialogue serves developmental processes, promoting thought and the possibilities for its elaboration. We describe these developmental processes on the basis of an empirical analysis of a sequence from an intervention conducted with Roman Catholic Priests on preaching in homily. Our methodological frameworks have the function of vivifying dialogical thinking about work, by making use of the interfunctionality of levels of dialogue and the vital function of social relations in the psychological life of the subjects. (shrink)

As crianças participam de corpo inteiro nos seus mundos de vida, visibilizando a natureza incorporada da ação humana. A partir de uma pesquisa etnográfica com crianças em nível de doutorado, sua empiria e bases teóricas, vimos que o corpo das crianças está na base de toda sua experiência social, mediador das relações, das práticas, dos discursos, das apropriações do Outro e do mundo. Tal ideia precisa ser considerada nas práticas pedagógicas, para que vençamos os fortes mecanismos de controle e dominação (...) que instituem e orientam um ordenamento social normativo do modelo ideal de corpo disciplinado e obediente, que marginaliza e exclui o corpo da criança ávido por descobrir e descobrir-se na sua relação novidável e embrionária com o mundo. As crianças como atores sociais de corpo inteiro têm na sua ação incorporada uma de suas formas de participar dos contextos coletivos de educação pela qual expressam seus pontos de vista. Palavras-chaves: Corpo. Criança. Educação Infantil. Direitos. Direitos de participação. (shrink)

The author analyzes the complex intimate relations between human rights and globalization, and the consequences of this debate in the reconfiguration of public space and in the composition of virtual space. Globalization is explained through a critical reading of the political phenomenon of the pri..

En "tiempos" de una profunda crisis de los espacios públicos, principalmente, la crisis de soberanía, identidad colectiva, pertenencia y radicalismos; Europa quiere ser un bastión de "resistencia a la globalización" y, en su conjunto, un espacio para la afirmación y la garantía de los Derechos que ..

Todas as teorias fundacionistas assumem que algumas crenças justificadas são básicas porque sua justificação não se deve ao fato de terem sido inferidas de outras crenças justificadas, interrompendo assim o regresso epistêmico. A versão internalista do fundacionismo sustenta que uma crença só pode ser justificada quando o fator justificador está cognitivamente disponível ao sujeito que crê com base nele. Tendo em vista esta dupla exigência – dar por encerrado o regresso epistêmico em crenças que são justificadas de modo não inferencial, (...) e assegurar a consciência do item que contribui para a justificação de tais crenças básicas epistemicamente independentes – alguns críticos levantaram objeções contra o fundacionismo internalista. Neste artigo me ocupo de uma dessas objeções, tendo em vista especificamente a teoria proposta por Laurence BonJour: o dilema apresentado por Michael Bergmann. (shrink)

How can the visual and textual data about an image – the image of a work of art – on recto and verso of a picture be interpreted? An analogical-art-documentary photograph represents a palimpsest to be considered layer by layer. The examples discussed in this article, which refer to both Aby Warburg himself and the first nucleus of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection, contribute to effectively outline elements of the debate around the question of the photographic reproduction of the work (...) of art as well as of the position of photography in relation to the perception of the work of art. (shrink)

La filosofía práctica abre paso a diferentes temas. Se trata de entender el papel de la filosofía misma y, además, señalar sus implicaciones con la formación de las ideas. El caso de Alemania es especialmente significativo, donde la filosofía experimenta una especie de tensión entre la continuidad o la renovación. Esa tensión puede ser identificada también en América Latina o en Brasil, de modo especial por sus patrones foráneos y exógenos. Además del positivismo francés, hubo también una especie de Eugenia (...) racial. Lo que hoy se conoce de Brasil supone una trayectoria histórica que la filosofía intercultural exige reconstruir para entender la diversidad de sus matices y las características de su gente. The practical philosophy opens the way to different subjects. It treats to understand the role of the philosophy itself and, besides, to indicate its implication with the ideas formation. The German example is especial expressive, where the philosophy tries a kind of tension between the continuation and the renewal. This tension can be to found in Latin America or Brazil, specially by their foreign and external patterns. Besides the French positivism, there was a kind of racial Eugenie in Brazil. What we know about Brazil today supposes a historical course. The intercultural philosophy demands to reconstruct this course, so the diversity of nuances and the characteristic of people can be understood. (shrink)