Human brain organoids (HBOs) are three-dimensional biological entities grown in the laboratory in order to recapitulate the structure and functions of the adult human brain. They can be taken to be novel living entities for their specific features and uses. As a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the use of HBOs, the authors identify three sets of reasons for moral concern. The first set of reasons regards the potential emergence of sentience/consciousness in HBOs that would endow them with a (...) moral status whose perimeter should be established. The second set of moral concerns has to do with an analogy with artificial womb technology. The technical realization of processes that are typically connected to the physiology of the human body can create a manipulatory and instrumental attitude that can undermine the protection of what is human. The third set concerns the new frontiers of biocomputing and the creation of chimeras. As far as the new frontier of organoid intelligence is concerned, it is the close relationship of humans with new interfaces having biological components capable of mimicking memory and cognition that raises ethical issues. As far as chimeras are concerned, it is the humanization of nonhuman animals that is worthy of close moral scrutiny. A detailed description of these ethical issues is provided to contribute to the construction of a regulative framework that can guide decisions when considering research in the field of HBOs. (shrink)

Christiansen & Chater (C&C) have taken the interactionist approach to linguistic universals to an extreme, adopting the metaphor of language as an organism. This metaphor adds no insights to five decades of analyzing language universals as the result of interaction of linguistically unique and general cognitive systems. This metaphor is also based on an outmoded view of classical Darwinian evolution and has no clear basis in biology or cognition.

While “meaning negotiation” has become an ubiquitous term, its use is often confusing. A negotiation problem implies not only a convenience to agree, but also diverging interest on what to agree upon. It implies agreement but also the possibility of disagreement. In this chapter, we look at meaning negotiation as the process through which agents starting from different preferred conceptual representations of an object, an event or a more complex entity, converge to an agreement through some communication medium. We shortly (...) sketch the outline of a geometric view of meaning negotiation, based on conceptual spaces. We show that such view can inherit important structural elements from game theoretic models of bargaining – in particular, in the case when the protagonists have overlapping negotiation regions, we emphasize a parallel to the Nash solution in cooperative game theory. When acceptable solution regions of the protagonists are disjoint, we present several types of processes: changes in the salience of dimensions, dimensional projections and metaphorical space transformations. None of the latter processes are motivated by normative or rationality considerations, but presented as argumentation tools that we believe are used in actual situations of conceptual disagreement. (shrink)

A conflict of interest is a situation in which a person has competing loyalties or interests that make it difficult to fulfil his or her duties impartially. Conflict of interest is not categorically improper in itself but requires proper management. A SCOPUS literature search was performed for publications on the efficacy/safety of Phospho-Di-Esterase Inhibitors for treating erectile dysfunction. A categorization tool was used to review and classify the publications as supportive/not-supportive for the discussed active ingredient and reporting or not reporting (...) a COI for that specific drug or for the remaining PDEIs. Multivariable binary logistic regression was performed. In the 419 selected records the prevalence of supportive opinions was higher when a COI for the index label was declared. The CoOpCaT showed good internal consistency, discriminative validity and intra/inter-rater agreement. The strongest predictor for a supportive opinion was the total number of financial COIs for the index label. A mild protective effect of the total number of financial COIs for any competitor label was noted. Financial COIs have frequently been associated with bias, and the measures currently adopted to restrain it lack effectiveness. Some evidence for monitoring and/or compensating this bias is reported here, but the ultimate solution remains distant. (shrink)

Human infants begin very early in life to take advantage of multisensory information by extracting the invariant amodal information that is conveyed redundantly by multiple senses. Here we addressed the question as to whether infants can bind multisensory moving stimuli, and whether this occurs even if the motion produced by the stimuli is only illusory. Three- to four-month-old infants were presented with two bimodal pairings: visuo-tactile and audio-visual. Visuo-tactile pairings consisted of apparently vertically moving bars (the Barber Pole illusion) moving (...) in either the same or opposite direction with a concurrent tactile stimulus consisting of strokes given on the infant’s back. Audio-visual pairings consisted of the Barber Pole illusion in its visual and auditory version, the latter giving the impression of a continuous rising or ascending pitch. We found that infants were able to discriminate congruently (same direction) vs. incongruently moving (opposite direction) pairs irrespective of modality (Experiment 1). Importantly, we also found that congruently moving visuo-tactile and audio-visual stimuli were preferred over incongruently moving bimodal stimuli (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest that very young infants are able to extract motion as amodal component and use it to match stimuli that only apparently move in the same direction. (shrink)

Le premier volume du Corpus of Mycenaean Inscriptions from Knossos est sorti de presse en 1986 ; le second sort cette année : trente-sept raccords de fragments ont été effectués dan· le premier volume depuis la fin de 1984 et le second contient soixante-dix raccords inédits ; le· auteurs les présentent et les commentent, comme ils l'avaient déjà fait pour les quarante-troi· raccords inédits de CoMIK I (BCH 110 [1986], p. 21-39).

This article focuses on ancient and contemporary accounts of selfhood and on their ontological background. Among ancient theories, the main focus are Plato’s and Plotinus’ accounts of soul and selfhood. Their ontological framework now appears outdated but, somewhat paradoxically, it also explains why Plato’s and Plotinus’ analyses are closer to a naturalised metaphysics of the self than those of the Cartesian tradition. Accordingly, human beings are not simple subjects essentially characterised by consciousness; consciousness and mental life are not co-extensive; our (...) selfhood entails a striving towards the unity of various layers. These insights come up again in recent debates, but they are now re-shaped within a framework in which philosophy of mind and behavioural sciences are combined in an effort to develop a notion of the self which is realist, yet does not entail any metaphysically grounded dualism. (shrink)

This chapter examines the real status of the scientific theory of evolution and what people mean by intelligent design. More generally, it explores the proper relationship between science and religion, not to mention politics, in early 21st century America. These concepts are examined through the inquiring minds and sharp tongues of Jon Stewart, Lewis Black of the “Evolution, Schmevolution” series, and former Daily Show “correspondent” Ed Helms.

ABSTRACT: After World War Two a gigantic effort was made in order to build a viable and stable international order, beginning with the Bretton Woods agreement that was aimed to stabilize the international monetary system, and with the United Nations, that were intended to restore legality in interstate affairs and somehow initiate a cosmopolitan conversation among Nation States. This order is now slowly crumbling down, paradoxically through globalization, and a triumphant neoliberalism. A new, but indeed quite old narrative, rather a (...) myth, of what a national identity means is again getting the upper hand.KEYWORDS: international relations, international law, European Union, globalization, national identity. (shrink)

The paper addresses two issues that have been recently debated in the literature on free will, moral responsibility, and the theory of punishment. The first issue concerns the descriptive project, the second both the substantive and the prescriptive project. On theoretical, historical and empirical grounds, we claim that there is no rationale for fearing that the spread of neurocognitive findings will undermine the ordinary practice of responsibility attributions. We hypothetically advocate two opposite views: that such findings would cause the collapse (...) of all punitive practices; that, on the contrary, such findings would open the way to more humane forms of punishment, which would be justified on purely utilitarian grounds. We argue that these views are both wrong, since whereas a sound punitive system can be justified without any reference to moral responsibility, it will certainly not improve the humaneness of punishment. (shrink)

If evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him. His Tales of the Rational defines an intellectual space as far removed as hardcore religious fundamentalism from mainstream thinking--but it may be coming closer as scientists and skeptics launch more aggressive attacks on pseudoscience and fuzzy thinking. Pigliucci, a rising star on the evolution-creationism debate circuit, pulls out all the stops in his work, not content merely to defend science against its detractors, but eagerly undermining (...) belief in religion and the existence of any gods at all. Using writing that is strong if rarely eloquent, he defines his terms precisely, makes short work of creationists William Lane Craig and Duane Gish, challenges religious preconceptions, and even ventures to hose down the flames of pseudoscience spouting from chaos theory. Readers with any sympathy for spirituality will run face-first into statements like "I do not see what science has to gain from being reconciled with a system of superstitious beliefs that stands for the exact opposite of free inquiry.". (shrink)

This article links to the Symposium on Causation in War by Carolina Sartorio, Helen Beebee and Alex Kaiserman, and Lars Christie.

We respond to useful comments by Luciana Ceri, Eugenio Lecaldano and Filippo Magni on our new translation of Moore's Principia Ethica with the unpublished 1922 Preface.

What Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini got wrong about Darwin and evolution.

Why Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini are wrong about Darwin and evolution.

The discourse on CRS began late in Spain. Its permeation into political institutions also began later than in many Western countries. The Spanish government neither contributed nor reacted to the green paper Corporate social responsibility. A business contribution sustainable development, published by the European Commission in 2002. However, the publication of this document gave the definitive impulse for the start of the Spanish debate on CSR. After this initial impulse, the debate rapidly developed into a consolidated field of discourse. This (...) field is the object of the present paper. Here, we seek to elaborate on a concept of corporate social citizenship viewed as a "field of discourse", which is being produced by an epistemic community, at Spanish yet also at a global level. Thus, we seek to depict the contours of the Spanish discourse on CSR, researching its evolution over the last 5 years. We focus on its main actors, the central topics on its agendas, the conflicts that are appearing, and how they are being dealt with. In order to in to achieve these objectives, we focus primarily on the transcription of 61 speeches made by different stakeholders at the Spanish Parliament during 2005. This initiative of the Spanish Parliament is unique of its kind. A special sub-commission was created to discuss the role that Spanish public institutions should play regarding corporate social responsibility. Sixty-one experts from different areas (academia, business, trade unions, and NGOs) were invited to present their views on CSR. Members of the sub-commission had the opportunity to discuss with these experts the nature, limits, results and evolution of CSR, seeking with special interest their opinions on the role that the Spanish Government should play in the consolidation of CSR in Spain. The thesis of this paper is that through an exhaustive analysis of the transcriptions of these interventions at the Spanish Parliament, we can identify who constitutes the Spanish epistemic community on CSR. We can also trace the main contours of this field of discourse, to identify the main actors in its development (particularly, of course, on the binding point between CRS and government) and the main issues discussed, as well as the "hot topics". The presentation will also locate the uniqueness of this debate generated in parliament within the context of the wider Spanish debate on CSR. (shrink)