The aim of this study was to find out what interpretive repertoires young people use in the symbolic management of the pandemic. Qualitative research using several methods on a sample of 172 young people in three countries, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria, and the subsequent discursive analysis showed that young people symbolically coped during the Covid-19 pandemic with the help of widespread concepts such as cutting off, closing sci-fi and panic. The interpretations used by young people to symbolically deal (...) with the pandemic are close to those present in the public discourse—the discourses of threat, loss, emotion—but there was also a search for the concepts and language for use by experts and the general public in communicating about the pandemic. There were no significant differences in the interpretations of life during the Covid-19 pandemic in the three Central European countries. (shrink)

According to John Brough, we can use Husserl’s theory of image consciousness to explain the conflict between the actor and the character in cinematographic depictions in terms of an empirical conflict between the “image object” and the “physical thing.” I disagree with him and I shall show that the conflict between the actor and the character can only be explained in terms of a non-empirical conflict between two “image subjects.” The empirical conflict that concerns the subject is between how the (...) actor or the character appears in image consciousness and how it appears or would appear in perception, that is, between the “image subject” and the “subject as it appears in perception.”. (shrink)

Apresentação do Dossiês Psicologia, Saúde mental e Relações Étnicas.

Did you know that Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS? Or that Mike Pence called Michelle Obama “the most vulgar First Lady we’ve ever had”? No, you didn’t know these things. You couldn’t know them, because these claims are false.1 But many American voters believed them.One of the most distinctive features of the 2016 campaign was the rise of “fake news,” factually false claims circulated on social media, usually via channels of partisan camaraderie. Media analysts and social scientists are still (...) debating what role fake news played in Trump’s victory.2 But whether or not it drove the outcome, fake news certainly affected the choices of some individual voters.Why were people willing to believe easily... (shrink)

The evidential value of moral intuitions has been challenged by psychological work showing that the intuitions of ordinary people are affected by distorting factors. One reply to this challenge, the expertise defence, claims that training in philosophical thinking confers enhanced reliability on the intuitions of professional philosophers. This defence is often expressed through analogy: since we do not allow doubts about folk judgments in domains like mathematics or physics to undermine the plausibility of judgments by experts in these domains, we (...) also should not do so in philosophy. In this paper I clarify the logic of the analogy strategy, and defend it against recent challenges by Jesper Ryberg. The discussion exposes an interesting divide: while Ryberg’s challenges may weaken analogies between morality and domains like mathematics, they do not affect analogies to other domains, such as physics. I conclude that the expertise defence can be supported by analogical means, though care is required in selecting an appropriate analog. I discuss implications of this conclusion for the expertise defence debate and for study of the moral domain itself. (shrink)

For several decades, research on situated cognition and affectivity has neglected cases in which environmental features in the niche have a negative impact on agents’ cognitive and affective wellbeing. Recently, however, a new research cluster has emerged that explores how things, technologies, and organisational systems across corporate, healthcare, and educational sectors wrongfully harm certain kinds of agents. This article contributes to this research cluster by integrating work on negative niche construction, structural oppression, enculturation, and self-narration. It thereby offers a new (...) perspective on the negative, structurally oppressive impact of the socio-culturally shaped niche on enculturated self-narration. The main argument is that master plots, understood as narrative arrangements that dominate in the socio-culturally shaped niche, contribute to the structural oppression of enculturated self-narrators with systematically undermined socio-cultural identities. An analysis of the influence of pronatalist master plotting on enculturated self-narration serves to illustrate and strengthen the overall argument. (shrink)

Contemporary and emerging chatbots can be fine-tuned to imitate the style, tenor, and knowledge of a corpus, including the corpus of a particular individual. This makes it possible to build chatbots that imitate people who are no longer alive — deathbots. Such deathbots can be used in many ways, but one prominent way is to facilitate the process of grieving. In this paper, we present a framework that helps make sense of this process. In particular, we argue that deathbots can (...) serve as affective scaffolds, modulating and shaping the emotions of the bereaved. We contextualize this affective scaffolding by comparing it to earlier technologies that have also been used to scaffold the process of grieving, arguing that deathbots offer some interesting novelties that may transform the continuing bonds of intimacy that the bereaved can have with the dead. We conclude with some ethical reflections on the promises and perils of this new technology. (shrink)

The debate between proponents and opponents of a role for empirical psychology in ethical theory seems to be deadlocked. This paper aims to clarify the terms of that debate, and to defend a principled middle position. I argue against extreme views, which see empirical psychology either as irrelevant to, or as wholly displacing, reflective moral inquiry. Instead, I argue that moral theorists of all stripes are committed to a certain conception of moral thought—as aimed at abstracting away from individual inclinations (...) and toward interpersonal norms—and that this conception tells against both extremes. Since we cannot always know introspectively whether our particular moral judgments achieve this interpersonal standard, we must seek the sort of self-knowledge offered by empirical psychology. Yet reflective assessment of this new information remains a matter of substantive normative theorizing, rather than an immediate consequence of empirical findings themselves. (shrink)

Mental capacities, philosophers of mind and cognition have recently argued, are not exclusively realised in brain, but depend upon the rest of the body and the local environment. In this context, the concept of ‘scaffolding’ has been employed to specify the relationship between embodied organisms and their local environment. The core idea is that at least some cognitive and affective capacities are causally dependent upon environmental resources. However, in-depth examinations of specific examples of scaffolding as test cases for current theorising (...) about scaffolding have remained scarce. The aim of the current paper is to help close this gap. To this end, I will offer a characterisation of key aspects of ‘scaffolding’ that can help specify scaffolding relations. In a second step, I will analyse fictional textual narrative as a test case for accounts of cognitive and affective scaffolding. The key claim of this paper will be that fictional textual narrative can be considered as a scaffold that transforms our capacities in social understanding and empathising in the course of ontogeny. (shrink)

Major depression is a prevalent mental disorder that leads to persistent negative mood and tremendous suffering in affected individuals. However, the biological realization of this disorder and associated symptom clusters remain poorly understood. Recently, phenomenological accounts of major depressive disorder and contributions to the emerging predictive processing account have provided valuable insights into the phenomenological and neuro-functional components that lead to manifestations of major depressive episodes. The purpose of this paper is to weave together these different strands of research to (...) develop a predictive processing account of major depressive disorder. In doing so, I will relate personal-level descriptions of associated phenomenal experiences to a sub-personal-level predictive processing account of the functional realization of major depression. I will argue that pervasive symptoms of the disorder, which include a diminished sense of agency, fatigue, social withdrawal, and rumination, are integrated by existential feelings of loss and impossibility. These phenomenal experiences, I will argue, are associated with dysfunctional processes of prediction error minimization, which are characterized by an overall decrease of the causal contributions of active inference and by distorted precision estimates. The emerging account promises to contribute to a better understanding of the complex processes that give rise to depressive experiences. (shrink)

Slips of the tongue, unwitting favoritism and stereotyped assumptions are just some examples of microaggression. Nearly all of us commit microaggressions at some point, even if we don’t intend to. Yet over time a pattern of microaggression can cause considerable harm by reminding members of marginalized groups of their precarious position. The Ethics of Microaggression is a much needed and clearly written exploration of this pervasive yet complex problem. What is microaggression and how do we know when it is occurring? (...) Can we be held responsible for microaggressions and if so, how? How has social media affected the problem? What role can philosophy play in understanding microaggression? Regina Rini explores these highly topical and controversial questions in an engaging and fair-minded way, arguing that an event is a microaggression precisely because it causes a marginalized person to experience an ambiguous encounter with oppression. She illustrates her argument with compelling examples from media, politics and psychology and explains the significance of essential concepts, such as media representation, reparative renaming, and safe spaces. The Ethics of Microaggression explains what microaggression is and offers strategies for combating it. Assuming no prior knowledge of the topic or philosophy, it demystifies a controversial and extremely important topic in clear language. It is ideal for anyone coming to the topic for the first time and for students in philosophy, gender studies, race theory, disability theory and social and political philosophy. (shrink)

Recent work on enculturation suggests that our cognitive capacities are significantly transformed in the course of the scaffolded acquisition of cognitive practices such as reading and writing. Phylogenetically, enculturation is the result of the co-evolution of human organisms and their socio-culturally structured cognitive niche. It is rendered possible by evolved cerebral and extra-cerebral bodily learning mechanisms that make human organisms apt to acquire culturally inherited cognitive practices. In addition, cultural learning allows for the intergenerational transmission of relevant knowledge and skills. (...) Ontogenetically, enculturation is associated with neural plasticity and the development of new motor routines and action schemas. It relies on scaffolded learning that structures novice-teacher interactions. The acquisition of reading and writing are paradigm examples of enculturation. Based on an empirically informed analysis of the components of enculturation, I will apply the emerging account of enculturated cognition to narrative practices. To date, research on the impact of narratives on the constitution of the self and our understanding of folk psychology has not paid much attention to the question how narratives are influenced by cumulative cultural evolution and our capacity to acquire reading and writing during ontogeny. I will argue that textual narratives, above and beyond oral narratives, provide genuinely new ways of narration. Therefore, the enculturated interaction with textual narratives has the potential to contribute to a better understanding of ourselves and other cognitive agents. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Giubilini and Minerva argue for the moral permissibility of what they call ‘after-birth abortion’, or infanticide. Here I suggest that they actually employ a confusion of two distinct arguments: one relying on the purportedly identical moral status of a fetus and a newborn, and the second giving an independent argument for the denial of moral personhood to infants (independent of whatever one might say about fetuses). After distinguishing these arguments, I suggest that neither one is capable (...) of supporting Giubilini and Minerva's conclusion. The first argument is at best neutral between permitting infanticide and prohibiting abortion, and may in fact more strongly support the latter. The second argument, I suggest, contains an ambiguity in its key premise, and can be shown to fail on either resolution of that ambiguity. Hence, I conclude that Giubilini and Minerva have not demonstrated the permissibility of infanticide, or even great moral similarity between abortion and infanticide. (shrink)

This article offers a new reading of Pankrates’ poem on Hadrian’s and Antinoos’ hunt of a lion in 130 AD, examining both its intertextual dialogue with Homer and its evocation of Egyptian imagery. I first show how the raging lion, which emerges directly out of a Homeric simile, has been transformed fromcomparatumtocomparandum: he no longer serves to illustrate a warrior’s force, but has himself become part of the main narrative and the subject of analogy. Contemplating theaitionin which the text culminated (...) I argue that the Antinoeian lotus, which grew out of the lion’s blood, ought to be read against the backdrop of Egyptian mythology and iconography as an emblem of rebirth. Both Pankrates’ allusions to Homer, which subtly evoke Achilles’ loss of Patroklos, and the symbolic function of the lotus strongly suggest that the poem was composed in the aftermath of Antinoos’ death and conceived as a celebration of the youth’s apotheosis. (shrink)

Deepfakes are algorithmically modified video and audio recordings that project one person’s appearance on to that of another, creating an apparent recording of an event that never took place. Many scholars and journalists have begun attending to the political risks of deepfake deception. Here we investigate other ways in which deepfakes have the potential to cause deeper harms than have been appreciated. First, we consider a form of objectification that occurs in deepfaked ‘frankenporn’ that digitally fuses the parts of different (...) women to create pliable characters incapable of giving consent to their depiction. Next, we develop the idea of ‘illocutionary wronging’, in which an individual is forced to engage in speech acts they would prefer to avoid in order to deny or correct the misleading evidence of a publicized deepfake. Finally, we consider the risk that deepfakes may facilitate campaigns of ‘panoptic gaslighting’, where many systematically altered recordings of a single person's life undermine their memory, eroding their sense of self and ability to engage with others. Taken together, these harms illustrate the roles that social epistemology and technological vulnerabilities play in human ethical life. (shrink)

Deepfake technology uses machine learning to fabricate video and audio recordings that represent people doing and saying things they've never done. In coming years, malicious actors will likely use this technology in attempts to manipulate public discourse. This paper prepares for that danger by explicating the unappreciated way in which recordings have so far provided an epistemic backstop to our testimonial practices. Our reasonable trust in the testimony of others depends, to a surprising extent, on the regulative effects of the (...) ever-present possibility of recordings of the events they testify about. As deepfakes erode the epistemic value of recordings, we may then face an even more consequential challenge to the reliability of our testimonial practices themselves. (shrink)

Theories of skill acquisition have made radically different predictions about the role of general problem‐solving methods in acquiring rules that promote effective transfer to new problems. Under one view, methods that focus on reaching specific goals, such as means‐ends analysis, are assumed to provide the basis for efficient knowledge compilation (Anderson, 1987), whereas under an alternative view such methods are believed to disrupt rule induction (Sweller, 1988). We suggest that the role of general methods in learning varies with both the (...) specificity of the problem solver's goal and the systematicity of the strategies used for testing hypotheses about rules. In the absence of a specific goal people are more likely to use a rule‐induction learning strategy, whereas provision of a specific goal fosters use of difference reduction, which tends to be a non‐rule‐induction strategy. We performed two experiments to investigate the impact of goal specificity and systematicity of rule‐induction strategies in learning and transfer within a complex dynamic system. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that during free exploration of a problem space, greater learning occurred if participants adopted more systematic strategies for rule induction, and that participants come to favor such strategies. Experiment 2 revealed that participants who were provided with a specific goal performed well on the initial problem but were impaired on a transfer test using a similar problem with a different goal. Instruction on a systematic rule‐induction strategy facilitated solution for both the initial and transfer problems, but participants' use of this strategy declined if they had a specific goal. Our results support Sweller's (1988) proposal that general problemsolving methods applied to a specific goal foster acquisition of knowledge about an isolated solution path but do not provide an effective way of learning the overall structure of a problem space. We interpret these results in terms of dualspace theories of search through problem space. (shrink)

This paper presents a regress challenge to the selective psychological debunking of moral judgments. A selective psychological debunking argument conjoins an empirical claim about the psychological origins of certain moral judgments to a theoretical claim that these psychological origins cannot track moral truth, leading to the conclusion that the moral judgments are unreliable. I argue that psychological debunking arguments are vulnerable to a regress challenge, because the theoretical claim that ‘such-and-such psychological process is not moral-truth-tracking’ relies upon moral judgments. We (...) must then ask about the psychological origins of these judgments, and then make a further evaluative judgment about these psychological origins… and so on. This chain of empirical and evaluative claims may continue indefinitely and, I will argue, proponents of the debunking argument are in a dialectical position where they may not simply call a halt to the process. Hence, their argument cannot terminate, and its debunking conclusion cannot be upheld. (shrink)

According to Thomas Metzinger, many human cognitive processes in the waking state are spontaneous and are deprived of the experience of epistemic agency. He considers mind wandering as a paradigm example of our recurring loss of epistemic agency. I will enrich this view by extending the scope of the concept of epistemic agency to include cases of depressive rumination and creative cognition, which are additional types of spontaneous cognition. Like mind wandering, they are characterized by unique phenomenal and functional properties (...) that give rise to varying degrees of epistemic agency. The main claim of this paper will be that the experience of being an epistemic agent within a certain time frame is a relational phenomenon that emerges from the organism’s capacity to interact with its cognitive niche. To explore this relation, I develop a new framework that integrates phenomenological considerations on epistemic agency with a functional account of the reciprocal coupling of the embodied organism with its cognitive niche. This account rests upon dynamical accounts of strong embodied and embedded cognition and recent work on cognitive niche construction. Importantly, epistemic agency and organism-niche coupling are gradual phenomena ranging from weak to strong realizations. The emerging framework will be employed to analyze mind wandering, depressive rumination, and creative cognition as well as their commonalities and differences. Mind wandering and depressive rumination are cases of weak epistemic agency and organism-niche coupling. However, there are also important phenomenological, functional, and neuronal differences. In contrast, creative cognition is a case of strong epistemic agency and organism-niche coupling. By providing a phenomenological and functional analysis of these distinct types of spontaneous cognition, we can gain a better understanding of the importance of organism-niche interaction for the realization of epistemic agency. (shrink)

Theory suggests that stimulus evaluations automatically evoke approach–avoidance behavior. However, the extent to which approach–avoidance behavior is triggered automatically is not yet clear. Furthermore, the nature of automatically triggered approach–avoidance behavior is controversial. We review research on two views on the type of approach–avoidance behavior that is triggered automatically (arm flexion/extension, distance change). Present evidence supports the distance-change view and corroborates the notion of an automatic pathway from evaluation to distance-change behavior. We discuss underlying mechanisms (direct stimulus–response links, outcome anticipations, (...) goals) as well as implications regarding the flexibility of the evaluation–behavior link. (shrink)

Since at least 2016, many have worried that social media enables authoritarians to meddle in democratic politics. The concern is that trolls and bots amplify deceptive content. In this chapter I argue that these tactics have a more insidious anti-democratic purpose. Lies implanted in democratic discourse by authoritarians are often intended to be caught. Their primary goal is not to successfully deceive, but rather to undermine the democratic value of testimony. In well-functioning democracies, our mutual reliance on testimony also generates (...) a distinctively democratic value: decentralized testimonial networks evade control by the state or powerful actors. The deliberate exposure of deception in democratic testimonial networks undermines this value by implicating citizens in their own epistemic corruption, weakening the resilience of democratic society against authoritarian pressure. In this chapter I illustrate that danger through a close reading of recent Russian social media interference operations, showing both their epistemic underpinnings and their ongoing political threat. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Jakob Hohwy argues that the emerging predictive processing perspective on cognition requires us to explain cognitive functioning in purely internalistic and neurocentric terms. The purpose of the present paper is to challenge the view that PP entails a wholesale rejection of positions that are interested in the embodied, embedded, extended, or enactive dimensions of cognitive processes. I will argue that Hohwy’s argument from analogy, which forces an evidentiary boundary into the picture, lacks the argumentative resources to (...) make a convincing case for the conceptual necessity to interpret PP in solely internalistic terms. For this reason, I will reconsider the postulation and explanatory role of the evidentiary boundary. I will arrive at an account of prediction error minimization and its foundation on the free energy principle that is fully consistent with approaches to cognition that emphasize the embodied and interactive properties of cognitive processes. This gives rise to the suggestion that explanatory pluralism about the application of PP is to be preferred over Hohwy’s explanatory monism that follows from his internalistic and neurocentric view of predictive cognitive systems. (shrink)

Este estudo se dispõe a reflexão sobre a relação entre o Direito Tributário e a proteção ambiental, pela análise das normas regulatórias tributárias, atuando como agente desestimulador de condutas degradantes ao meio ambiente. Normas tributárias podem ser utilizadas como instrumentos estimuladores do desenvolvimento sustentável e desestimuladores de condutas degradantes ambientais. A Constituição Federal estabeleceu as premissas do desenvolvimento econômico. A empresa deve atender a critérios, como desenvolver-se promovendo redução de desigualdades sociais, atendendo às relações de consumo e preservação ambiental. Neste (...) artigo se demonstra a importância das normas tributárias extrafiscais na regulação e contenção de danos ambientais. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl has famously declared that “Without an image, there is no fine art.” The aim of the article is to find out whether conceptual art can be experienced as image as well. It will be shown that Joseph Kosuth’s conceptual artwork One and Three Chairs (1965) perfectly illustrates Husserl’s theory of image consciousness and the concept of “image.” Thus, Husserl’s theory makes a valuable contribution in understanding conceptual (and contemporary) art.

What is critical theory – and what is it not? This essay attempts a new answer to this old question and examines which normative convictions immanent to social reality can be used to describe, analyse and criticise contemporary, global forms of domination that form blockades of social and political participation. The analysis proceeds in a double step, referring both to the critique of society and to the critique of theory that describes society. The basis of this parallel swing is an (...) analysis in which the author makes revisions to Jürgen Habermas’s colonisation thesis and uses the example of housing to show how these revisions which refer to the global perspective, the demarcation between system and lifeworld, the language of critique and, finally, the theoretical mode of an inherent dialectical critique make possible an analysis of the financial and economic sectors as well as everyday interactions. Reading Habermas more dialectically than he probably would himself also allows the identification of potentials for transforming relations of oppression. (shrink)

A agricultura industrial usa muitos xenobióticos que afetam o microbioma humano, desencadeia disbiose e compromete o desenvolvimento neurológico e neuropsiquiátrico. Em contrapartida, hábitos alimentares ancestrais indicam que a diversificação alimentar, incluindo vegetais e proteínas, isentos de agroquímicos, promovem a saúde mental e física além que viabilizar o equilíbrio no meio ambiente. Como solução deve-se unir o saber ancestral com a Agroecologia para resgatar a saúde humana.

A deliberative model of politics has recently been criticized for not being very well equipped to conceptualize public spheres in world society. A first critique is that this model assumes a conception of public spheres that is too idealistic, because it presupposes counterfactual conditions of communication in public discourse that do not meet empirical real word conditions. Secondly, it assumes an antiquated notion of a shared “we” of political actors. Because of this it does not take into consideration the “digital (...) turn” and the ego-centering and depersonalizing effects of social media like Facebook, twitter, and blogs, which have led to a rapid decline of the public sphere. And a third critique states that the deliberative model ignores the fact that politics, and especially protests and revolutions, are not seminar-like debates but spontaneous, chaotic and sometimes violent expressions. So it is not just unreceptive for the “digital space” but also for gathering and protesting in real public places surrounded by military troops. I will argue that all of these critiques fall short. A deliberative model of politics allows us to address the tension between the ideal and the real, the “old media” and the so-called digitalization of public spheres as well as peaceful discourse and violent uprisings. Especially the concept of communicative power, a notion also used by Hannah Arendt, reveals the potential for future participation in digital spaces and public places. (shrink)

Este artigo é parte do projeto de pesquisa "Formação médica na construção de competência e cidadania'', que se propõe averiguar em que medida as demandas exigidas pelas transformações macro sociais em relação à instauração de competências estão sendo incorporadas pelo processo de formação desenvolvido na Faculdade de Medicina da PUCRS, contribuindo para o fortalecimento da cidadania.

Ainda que pouco conhecido e estudado em nossa época, o filósofo neokantiano russo, de origem greco-alemã, Afrikan Spir, produziu uma obra original que teve repercussões importantes em seu tempo. Nascido um pouco antes de Nietzsche, em 1837, Spir será citado por ele, sobretudo, no que se refere às questões que envolvem o caráter transcendental do conhecimento. Afinal, como Kant, Spir defende que o mundo nos aparece mediado por nossa sensibilidade; mediado e organizado pelas estruturas “a priori” do conhecimento, ou seja, (...) do mundo recebemos apenas impressões sensoriais, qualidades sensíveis, cabendo ao sujeito cognoscente ordená-las a partir de suas intuições. No entanto, na intitulada filosofia crítica de Spir, o único e o verdadeiro, à priori, é o “princípio de identidade”, que seria o responsável pela síntese do conhecimento, seja de nós mesmos, seja dos objetos do mundo. Em poucas palavras, segundo Spir, e contestando o senso comum e o próprio objetivismo científico, não existe nada que seja estável e absoluto fora de nós. Todo o absoluto diz respeito ao pensamento. Mesmo o “eu” nada mais é do que uma síntese operada pela consciência. (shrink)

Recent empirical work appears to suggest that the moral intuitions of professional philosophers are just as vulnerable to distorting psychological factors as are those of ordinary people. This paper assesses these recent tests of the ‘expertise defense’ of philosophical intuition. I argue that the use of familiar cases and principles constitutes a methodological problem. Since these items are familiar to philosophers, but not ordinary people, the two subject groups do not confront identical cognitive tasks. Reflection on this point shows that (...) these findings do not threaten philosophical expertise—though we can draw lessons for more effective empirical tests. (shrink)