AI is becoming increasingly prevalent in creative fields that were thought to be exclusively human. Thus, it is non-surprising that a negative bias toward AI-generated artwork has been proclaimed. However, results are mixed. Studies that have presented AI-generated and human-created images simultaneously have detected a bias, but most studies in which participants saw either AI-generated or human-created images have not. Therefore, we propose that the bias arises foremost in a competitive situation between AI and humans. In a sample of N (...) = 952 participants, we show that different evaluations emerge only when AI-generated and human-created pieces of art are presented simultaneously. Importantly, we demonstrate that AI art is not devalued, but rather, human art is upvalued, indicating the existence of a positive bias toward humans, rather than a negative bias. Further, we show that attitudes toward AI and empathy partially explain the different valuations of AI and human art in competitive situations. (shrink)

El artículo analiza algunos aspectos de la concepción de verdad moral que presenta el filósofo argentino Carlos Nino. En particular, intentaremos probar dos puntos. En primer lugar, buscaremos mostrar que las concepciones de verdad moral y de democracia deliberativa formuladas por Nino son incompatibles con un idealismo de corte platónico, a diferencia de lo que sostienen algunos análisis teóricos que aquí discutiremos. La postura constructivista que Nino sostiene es lo que impide pensarla desde puntos de vista trascendentes. En segundo lugar, (...) trataremos de mostrar las inconsistencias que conlleva otro aspecto del conocimiento moral que aparece en Nino: el acceso individual a la verdad moral. Para dar cuenta de esto nos ocuparemos de analizar la dimensión del conocimiento moral que nuestro autor presenta. (shrink)

Some philosophers believe that entities have essences. What are we to make of the view that essences are themselves entities? E.J. Lowe has put forward an infinite regress argument against it. In this paper I challenge that argument. First, drawing on work by J.W. Wieland, I give a general condition for the obtaining of a vicious infinite regress. I then argue that in Lowe’s case the condition is not met. In making my case, I mainly (but not exclusively) consider definitionalist (...) accounts of essence. I make a re￾quirement to which definitionalists such as Lowe are committed and which, I venture, should also be palatable to non-naïve modalists. I call it the Relevance Principle. The defence trades on it, as well as on the distinction, due to K. Fine, between mediate and immediate essence. (shrink)

Many of the most virulent and problematic eukaryotic pathogens have evolved from photosynthetic ancestors, such as apicomplexans, which are responsible for a wide range of diseases including malaria and toxoplasmosis. The primary barrier to understanding the early stages of evolution of these parasites has been the difficulty in finding parasites with closely related free‐living lineages with which to make comparisons. Parasites found throughout the florideophyte red algal lineage, however, provide a unique and powerful model to investigate the genetic origins of (...) a parasitic lifestyle. This is because they share a recent common ancestor with an extant free‐living red algal species and parasitism has independently arisen over 100 times within this group. Here, we synthesize the relevant hypotheses with respect to how these parasites have proliferated. We also place red algal research in the context of recent developments in understanding the genome evolution of other eukaryotic photosynthesizers turned parasites. (shrink)

El presente artículo trata de mostrar la presencia del pensamiento de Ireneo de Lyon en el sustrato del pensamiento de Gregorio de Nisa en una de sus obras cumbres: el Comentario al Cantar de los Cantares. Esta obra refleja la confluencia de una profunda reflexión a partir del texto bíblico y la filosofía de la época. El niseno se ubica en la tradición de los autores eclesiásticos que han comentado este bello poema de amor veterotestamentario. Si bien es cierto que (...) en la edición crítica de la obra no aparece nunca citado el lugdunense se pueden encontrar ciertos núcleos conceptuales y temáticos que ayudan a descubrir una recepción de Ireneo en el Comentario al Cantar de Gregorio. Esos elementos permiten poner de relevancia la relación existente entre estos dos autores patrísticos que se conectan para mostrar la realidad esponsal de la iglesia que posee un dinamismo pneumático-salvífico abierto a toda la humanidad. The purpose of this article is to show how Ireneus of Lyon´s thought was present in one of Gregory of Nyssa´s fundamental works: Commentary on The Song of Songs. This work reflects a convergence of deep biblical reflection and the philoshophy of the time. Gregory is among the ecclesiastical writers who have commented on this beautiful love poem in the Old Testament. Even though there is no mention of the Lugdunian in the critical edition of the work, some concepts and themes may be found which help identify an influence form Ireneus on Gregory´s Commentary on the Song of Songs. These elements allow us to give relevance to the relationship between these two patristic authors, who come into contact in order to show the church´s spousal reality, which has a pneumatological-salvific dynamics, open to all mankind. (shrink)

En este artículo se analizan los conceptos hegelianos de infinito malo e infinito verdadero al hilo de una revisión de la noción de infinitud en la tradición filosófica alemana con la que discute. Puntualmente, abordaremos las formulaciones sobre la relación finitud-infinitud en la obra de Kant, Fichte y Schlegel antes de exponer la interpretación que hace Hegel de la manera en la que la filosofía trascendental y el romanticismo alemán se aproximaron a este asunto. Finalmente, presentamos la verdadera forma en (...) la que, según Hegel, hay que entender lo infinito. (shrink)

La déesse Hécate est une déesse intimement liée aux lieux de passage. Son caractère liminal, qui se traduit par un lien étroit avec les carrefours et les portes, se manifeste en une grande variété de formes cultuelles. Le présent article analyse cette relation à la lumière des témoignages littéraires qui attestent une série de rituels accomplis en son honneur aux carrefours : de l’offrande de nourriture durant la nuit de la nouvelle lune (les « repas d’Hécate ») jusqu’aux sacrifices de (...) chiens à la déesse, en passant par le dépôt des débris provenant de rites de purification. En outre, Hécate se situe souvent aux entrées : déesse apotropaïque, elle protège la maison de dangereuses influences provenant de l’extérieur. En résumé, cette contribution vise à offrir un parcours diachronique et exhaustif des sources littéraires attestant le lien de la déesse avec les lieux de passages. (shrink)

The causal view of categories assumes that categories are represented by features and their causal relations. To study the effect of causal knowledge on categorization, researchers have used Bayesian causal models. Within that framework, categorization may be viewed as dependent on a likelihood computation (i.e., the likelihood of an exemplar with a certain combination of features, given the category's causal model) or as a posterior computation (i.e., the probability that the exemplar belongs to the category, given its features). Across three (...) experiments, in combination with computational modeling, we offer evidence that categorization is better accounted for by assuming that people compute posteriors and not likelihoods, though both probabilities are closely related. This result contrasts with existing analyses of causal-based categorization, which assume that likelihood computations give a good approximation of human judgments. We also find that people are able to compute likelihoods in a closely related task that elicits judgments of consistency rather than category membership judgments. Our analyses show that people do use causal probabilistic information as prescribed by a Bayesian model but that they flexibly compute likelihoods or posteriors depending on the task. We discuss our results in relation to the relevant literature on the topic. (shrink)

The volume collects twenty-eight original essays by colleagues and friends of Michela Pereira offered on the occasion of her seventieth birthday. As a pioneer of the re-evaluation of fundamental areas of the Western philosophical and scientific tradition, starting with alchemy, Michela Pereira has dedicated important studies to Hildegard of Bingen, Roger Bacon, Ramon Llull, in addition to being one of the most authoritative interpreters of the feminist movement in the modern world. «Seeing in the shadow», the title of this volume, (...) recalls a suggestive image coined by Hildegard to establish a connection between the work of creation, human nature and prophetic knowledge, three contexts around which the interests of Michela Pereira turn. The essays of the volume interpret these topics in many thought-provoking ways. Covering a wide temporal arc, from late Antiquity to Early Modern Times, and ranging from alchemy and medicine to spirituality, prophecy and myth, from the body-soul relation to performative arts, such as theatre and music, they also include brief editions of unedited medieval texts and an updated bibliography of Michela Pereira’s publications. (shrink)

How might a human communication system be bootstrapped in the absence of conventional language? We argue that motivated signs play an important role (i.e., signs that are linked to meaning by structural resemblance or by natural association). An experimental study is then reported in which participants try to communicate a range of pre-specified items to a partner using repeated non-linguistic vocalization, repeated gesture, or repeated non-linguistic vocalization plus gesture (but without using their existing language system). Gesture proved more effective (measured (...) by communication success) and more efficient (measured by the time taken to communicate) than non-linguistic vocalization across a range of item categories (emotion, object, and action). Combining gesture and vocalization did not improve performance beyond gesture alone. We experimentally demonstrate that gesture is a more effective means of bootstrapping a human communication system. We argue that gesture outperforms non-linguistic vocalization because it lends itself more naturally to the production of motivated signs. (shrink)

Les vocations sont des chemins que la mémoire trace après-coup pour donner sens au parcours singulier qui nous mène de l'enfance à l'âge adulte. Aux lisières de l'adolescence, je me voyais chauffeur de train ou de taxi, même si je rêvais surtout de devenir journaliste. Je voulais écrire pour raconter ce que je voyais, pour rendre compte d'événements dont j'étais le témoin. L'essentiel était de prendre la route, d'explorer quelque chose qui n'avait été qu'entrevu ou d'en parler d'une manière originale. (...) La recherche en philosophie et l'enseignement de cette discipline devinrent mon métier. Sartre a raison de dire qu'on rate toujours sa vie, qu'on ne devient jamais celui ou celle qu'on aspirait à devenir. Les points d'arrivée ne sont pas forcément des points d'aboutissement. On croit achever quelque chose alors qu'on a creusé une brèche dans son devenir. Les crises, existentielles ou intellectuelles, peuvent avoir du bon. Elles réveillent le sens de la révolte, elles aiguisent l'envie d'un nouveau départ, elles invitent à d'autres commencements. Ce livre est le récit d'une tentative pour inaugurer dans ma quelque chose de neuf en la racontant. Un écrivain n'est pas quelqu'un qui vit de son écriture. Ce n'est qu'un nom, utile pour désigner celui qui ne sait pas ce qu'il est mais aspire seulement à exprimer quelque chose de lui-même"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Any attempt to evaluate a naturalistic feminist philosophy of cognition and knowledge must acknowledge that there are two distinct core approaches to naturalism (one more radical and well-interpreted by Quine, while the other more moderate and well-interpreted by Goldman). Classical feminist naturalizations of epistemology have drawn inspiration from the Quinean naturalization, they have inherited its defects – the major one: being compelled to renounce doing real epistemology in favor of a merely scientific enterprise.Notwithstanding, the merits of these feminist naturalizations are (...) more than one: they embrace the idea that epistemology needs contributions and help from the sciences, they raise serious doubts about the best science to involve in feminist epistemologies, they contrast (even if implicit) our “local feminist philosophy” (that is, mostly Italian one) not only in its scorn for every science and its technological applications, but also in its conviction that there are essential differences between female/women and male/men about knowledge and cognition.I wish to propose a naturalized feminist epistemology which draws inspiration from the more moderate Goldmanian approach. Much work would be needed in order to combine those feminist approaches which believe in the individualism of the knowing subject with those that are anti–individualist. But, at least, taking inspiration from Goldman and his reliabilism, we may achieve a type of naturalism in feminist epistemologies, in which it would be feasible to understand the reliability of the cognitive faculties of the knowing subject and to understand scientifically whether or not there are differences between female and male faculties – avoiding any essentialist temptations. (shrink)

Many natural languages include plural terms, i.e., terms which denote many individuals at once. Are there also superplural terms, i.e., terms which denote many pluralities of individuals at once? Some philosophers say ‘Yes’, citing a range of sentence-types which apparently can’t be analyzed in a first-order plural logic, but which can be analyzed in a superplural one. We argue that all the data presented in favor of the superplural can, in fact, be analyzed using only first-order resources. The key is (...) to add to ordinary plural logic a new notion of a generalized cover. A generalized cover reflects how interlocutors in a conversation may divide a salient plurality into many subpluralities, which can then be involved in reference and predication. With generalized covers in place, all the apparently troublesome sentences can be easily handled. Our approach can also be extended to account, not only for linguistic data which seem to favor the superplural, but also for other phenomena involving plurals. The result is a unified approach to natural language plurals on which superplurals are analyzed away. (shrink)

Four studies explore the role of perceptual fluency in attenuating bullshit receptivity, or the tendency for individuals to rate otherwise meaningless statements as “profound”. Across four studies, we presented participants with a sample of pseudoprofound bullshit statements in either a fluent or disfluent font and found that overall, disfluency attenuated bullshit receptivity while also finding little evidence that this effect was moderated by cognitive thinking style. In all studies, we measured participants’ cognitive reflection, need for cognition, faith in intuition, and (...) superstitious beliefs. Superstition strongly predicted bullshit receptivity regardless of fluency. Inconclusive results were found for the remaining scales. Potential links for the role of perceptual disfluency in promoting analytic thinking are discussed. (shrink)

Cento anni dopo il volume di E. Ciaceri, Culti e miti nella storia dell’antica Sicilia (Catania, 1911), l’opera di Roberta Rizzo si presenta come un utile strumento di studio per chi voglia conoscere il versante siciliano della mitologia antica. Più di trecento lemmi, disposti in ordine alfabetico e divisi in capitoli per ciascuna lettera dell’alfabeto, trattano di divinità ed eroi che in qualche modo — più o meno direttamente — sono connessi alla mitologia ed ai culti documentati nella grand...

La tesi che si intende discutere è che il progetto sia l’intima essenza dell’uomo. I primi argomenti a suo favore non vanno tuttavia ricercati nella riflessione antropologica, in quanto il “discorso dell’uomo sull’uomo” presume il suo stesso oggetto di ricerca, rischiando di “avvitarsi” in un circolo vizioso senza uscita. Non è casuale che, in tal senso, le intuizioni più illuminanti siano state espresse attraverso il linguaggio mito-poietico. Già nel Protagora Platone, con le figure di Prometeo e di Epimeteo, mette in (...) scena il dramma di una condizione umana che si presenta quale strutturale privazione di qualità specifiche, che la sola “capacità anticipante” del Titano può risarcire, facendosi portatrice della tecnica come istanza di sopravvivenza in ambiente ostile. Da questo momento in avanti, l’avventura del progetto diventa metonimica protensione verso le cose a venire (ad-ventura); condizione necessaria, ancorché non sufficiente, per orientarsi in un mondo inteso come stato di indeterminazione dal quale emanciparsi. Tali premesse paiono oggi indicare una possibile via di uscita alla crisi di valori generata dal capitalismo finanziariario, che ci costringe a vivere in un rinnovato stato di incertezza, all’interno di un desolante paesaggio di rovine. La rigenerazione della città, in tale scenario, costituisce pertanto la ripresa di un cammino, destinato a incontrare difficoltà e resistenze, anche politiche. Un viatico necessario alla riproposizione tentativa di futuri possibili: nella consapevolezza che essi si fondino sulla capacità di formulare ipotesi sul passato – divenuto “criticamente” il nuovo ambiente in cui operare – sempre sospesi tra il “non più” del mondo alle nostre spalle e il “non ancora” di quello che auspichiamo a venire. A partire dalla fondamentale distinzione tra Umwelt e Welt, introdotta dall’etologo Jakob von Uexküll, i percorsi della filosofia fenomenologico-esistenziale si intrecciano con quelli dell’Antropologia filosofica, confermando il senso dell’avventura del progetto e il suo problematico intrecciarsi con i destini dell’uomo. Max Scheler, Helmuth Plessner, Arnold Gehlen, Martin Heidegger, Gunter Anders, e Hannah Arendt, nutrono la consapevolezza che il carattere aporeticamente sfuggente dell’essenza umana derivi dalla costante riformulazione del rapporto “uomo”/“mondo”, di cui il progetto risulta il paradossale fondamento “effimero”. Ciò impone che la cultura del progetto sia la prima a doversi mettere in gioco, ponendosi come continua interrogazione sui propri principi, metodi, regole ed esiti, da sottoporre a un incessante processo di verifica e confutazione. L’avventura del progetto diventa pertanto espressione architettonica dell’esistenza – intesa come fuoriuscita dal ciclico riproporsi di uno stato di incertezza – che nel suo divenire costruisce la realtà sociale quale unico mondo abitabile dall’uomo, sempre uguale per quanto mai identico. (shrink)

In Study 1, we examined the moderating impact of alexithymia (i.e., a difficulty identifying and describing feelings to other people and an externally oriented cognitive style) on the automatic processing of affective information. The affective priming paradigm was used, and lower priming effects for high alexithymia scorers were observed when congruent (incongruent) pairs involving nonverbal primes (angry face) and verbal target were presented. The results held after controlling for participants' negative affectivity. The same effects were replicated in Studies 2 and (...) 3, with trait anxiety and depression entered as additional covariates. In Study 3, no moderating impact of alexithymia was found for verbal-facial pairs suggesting that the results cannot be merely explained in terms of transcoding limitations for high alexithymia scorers. Overall, the present results suggest that alexithymia could be related to a difficulty in processing and automatically using high arousal emotional information to respond to concomittant behavioural demands. (shrink)

El presente texto busca desarrollar una reflexión filosófica respecto de las posibles relaciones entre la noción de identidad y las formas de gobierno contemporáneas. A partir de un breve análisis sobre los principales desarrollos de la noción, se busca tensionar el campo de comprensión habitual y plantear un determinado modo en que esta puede pensarse como un engranaje epistemológico-ético respecto de los modos en que los individuos son llamados a nombrarse y reconocerse dentro de los límites impuestos por una cartografía (...) política. La tesis que sostiene este escrito dice relación con que la categoría de individuo moderno no es sostenible sin una adscripción a un orden de los nombres que tiende al autogobierno en base a la apelación de un ideal ético de correspondencia consigo mismo. (shrink)