Critics have raised many moral and legal concerns about posthumous digital avatars. Here my focus instead falls on whether they are likely to enable the bonds with the dead that users apparently yearn for. I conclude that though posthumous avatars can have short-term therapeutic benefits in replicating “habits of intimacy” with the dead, users’ expectations for sustaining long-term bonds with the deceased via posthumous avatars are unlikely to be fulfilled. Posthumous avatars are (...) unlikely to foster the construction of valued memories of the deceased and could in fact impede this process. Furthermore, bonds that develop with posthumous avatars are likely to disappoint users’ expectations for relationships that echo relationships among the living in being temporally dynamic, open-ended, authentic, and mutually shaping. Simply put, users will struggle to sustain living relationships with dead people. Posthumous avatars are therefore likely to prove ill-suited to continue the bonds that the living have with the dead in either of these two forms, especially if a ‘digital afterlife industry’ emerges to commercialize these. (shrink)

Les études dites de réception se trouvent aujourd’hui dans une situation paradoxale. Au premier regard le tableau paraît souriant. Anciens ou modernes, les textes sont aujourd’hui communément abordés sous l’angle de leurs lectures immédiates (réception médiatique notamment) et, surtout, de leurs aménagements posthumes (avatars éditoriaux, propositions herméneutiques, usages sociaux). La multiplication de pareils travaux manifeste un engouement qui ne semble pas près de se démentir. Spectaculaire si l’on considère le nombre de thèses et de colloques qui entretiennent cette vague, (...) pareil essor ne suffit pourtant pas à lever tous les doutes. Loin de faire l’unanimité, les études dites de réception suscitent toujours une certaine méfiance. Ne seraient-elles pas le Cheval de Troie d’un relativisme conduisant à niveler toutes les formes de critiques et d’interprétations? Outre la crainte d’une dangereuse indifférenciation, un soupçon plus radical remet en cause leur bien-fondé : s’intéresser à l’histoire des gestes critiques et des modes de lecture, n’est-ce pas un indice d’épuisement pour des champs disciplinaires n’ayant d’autre objet que leur propre histoire? Ce dossier fait le pari inverse. Il doit son impulsion à la conviction qu’un regard patient et informé sur les actes de lecture de nos prédécesseurs éclaire, en retour, nos propres pratiques. Accuser réception : ce titre voudrait suggérer, par-delà les procès en illégitimité, la nécessité de prendre en compte la vie longue des textes pour mieux comprendre ce que nous faisons quand, après tant d’autres et parfois dans leur ombre, nous lisons les textes du passé. Rassemblant les contributions de spécialistes venus d’horizons divers comme l’histoire de la philosophie occidentale, celles de la poésie chinoise, des littératures médiévales et modernes ou encore de l’herméneutique biblique, ce dossier, qui mêle études monographiques et réflexions transversales, analyse la constitution de certains paradigmes critiques, mais également celle de territoires disciplinaires fondés sur des traditions interprétatives parfois oubliées. Il espère montrer que la question des réceptions n’est pas réductible à la somme figée des commentaires formulés sur un texte, un auteur ou une période. Posée de manière dynamique, elle donne à voir la production des héritages qui nous ont été transmis et permet ainsi d’arpenter autrement les paysages qui sont devenus les nôtres. Textes réunis par Stéphane Zékian et Thierry Roger et mis en ligne avec le soutien de l'Université de Lausanne. (shrink)

Enhancement of human abilities can be accomplished in several ways, and need not require modification of the person's biological body. Avatars in virtual worlds are a contemporary example, and in future teleoperation of personal robots or entirely fresh alternatives may become popular.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political CultureCynthia DamonHarriet I. Flower. The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture. Studies in the History of Greece and Rome. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xxiv + 400 pp. 75 black-and-white ills. 1 map. Cloth. $59.95.Despite its title, this book is not really about forgetting. Forgetting, as Tacitus knew to his cost, (...) cannot be done to order, whether the order be one's own or another's. Erasure, rather. Indeed erasures of a wide variety, from official memory sanctions mandating the removal of names from inscriptions and imagines from funerals, to spontaneous erasures on or of monuments associated with the disgraced, to literary attacks targeting posthumous reputations. The emphasis is on the first category; the book is structured around a chronological survey of official memory sanctions and the physical traces thereof from the early Republic [End Page 599] up to the first year of the principate of Antoninus Pius, but the other types are well integrated into the discussion. The Art of Forgetting is a fascinating study of the battle between the living and the dead or disgraced for prime turf in the memory space of the Roman elite.As with so much of Roman history as we can know it, the "memory wars" and "memory games" treated in this book are an elite phenomenon. The erasures discussed (and, happily, often pictured) here are most accessible to us when they are accomplished in the same enduring media to which the Roman elite entrusted its public record and reputation. The title of Flower's first chapter, "Clementis' Hat," alluding to the chance survival of a photographic testimonial for Czech politician Vladimir Clementis, captures Flower's early assertion that we can only know the incompletely successful erasures (12), but this seems to me to collapse an essential distinction, preserved elsewhere in the book, including its subtitle, between memory and reputation. The senate-mandated erasure of the man accused of Germanicus' murder is accomplished both by chiseling his name out of the dedication of a statue of Germanicus and by chiseling it into the empire-wide inscriptions on which the senate's verdict in his trial was recorded. The former deprives him of prime memory space; the latter assigns him space on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. Both oblivion and disgrace are weapons in the memory wars, and their relative salience varies.The chronological survey of the Roman evidence is preceded by a contextualizing chapter on memory sanctions in the Greek world, particularly in the Hellenistic world, in which Rome's elite saw first hand the battles over what went into the monumental record that followed (or even preceded) battles for territory. Early-attested sanctions such as the razing of a disgraced person's house seem to combine practical and symbolic ends: displacement of the individual and his immediate family and erasure of an avatar. The record of sanctions in democratic Athens, which adds to house-razing the expulsion of remains and the erection of stelai publicizing the names and crimes of offenders against the demos, already shows the complementary effects of oblivion and disgrace later exploited at Rome. A helpful distinction is drawn between amnesties such as that of 403 B.C.E. Athens, in which "a new start was made by promising not to use the past as a political weapon" (23), and the kind of memory politics manifested in sanctions. The discussion of the Hellenistic world establishes the connection, later relevant to the treatment of Rome's imperial women, between extravagant honors and harsh penalties in the symbolic realm: in the rhetoric of relations between cities and kings, for example, a ruler in favor is honored as a god, while a ruler out of favor may find his cult appropriated, his record erased, and his memory cursed.Rome had its own long-standing traditions of memory sanctions. Or at least by the Augustan age it felt it had. Chapter 3 tries to get back beyond the triumviral phase of Roman memory sanctions, citing fifth- and fourth-century house-razings for "citizen traitors" (45... (shrink)

Social media is full of dead people. Untold millions of dead users haunt the online world where we increasingly live our lives. What do we do with all these digital souls? Can we simply delete them, or do they have a right to persist? Philosophers have been almost entirely silent on the topic, despite their perennial focus on death as a unique dimension of human existence. Until now. -/- Drawing on ongoing philosophical debates, Digital Souls claims that the digital dead (...) are objects that should be treated with loving regard and that we have a moral duty towards. Modern technology helps them to persist in various ways, while also making them vulnerable to new forms of exploitation and abuse. This provocative book explores a range of questions about the nature of death, identity, grief, the moral status of digital remains and the threat posed by AI-driven avatars of dead people. In the digital era, it seems we must all re-learn how to live with the dead. (shrink)

F.W.J. Schelling (1775-1854), le plus precoce de philosophes puis l'un des plus ages, a pati, de son vivant comme apres sa mort, de la proximite de Fichte et surtout de Hegel qui l'a supplante dans le jugement de la posterite. Mais il est en passe de combler son retard grace en particulier a l'impulsion donnee depuis un demi-siecle aux recherches sur l'idealisme allemand. Le premier volume de cet ouvrage se propose de presenter le devenir de Schelling sous le signe du (...) systeme vivant. La derniere philosophie de Schelling est analysee dans le second tome. Elle est presque tout entiere posthume, a l'exception de la Preface a Cousin (1834) et de quelques autres textes brefs. La dualite philosophique, enseignee a Berlin, est l'ultime avatar de ce qui etait de facon latente une philosophie en deux. L'auteur s'attache ici a expliquer en detail les motifs et les problemes de cette dichotomie tardive, mais fondee. (shrink)

This article describes research to build an embodied conversational agent as an interface to a question-and-answer system about a National Science Foundation program. We call this ECA the LifeLike Avatar, and it can interact with its users in spoken natural language to answer general as well as specific questions about specific topics. In an idealized case, the LifeLike Avatar could conceivably provide a user with a level of interaction such that he or she would not be certain as to whether (...) he or she is talking to the actual person via video teleconference. This could be considered a extended version of the seminal Turing test. Although passing such a test is still far off, our work moves the science in that direction. The Uncanny Valley notwithstanding, applications of such lifelike interfaces could include those where specific instructors/caregivers could be represented as stand-ins for the actual person in situations where personal representation is important. Possible areas that come to mind that might benefit from these lifelike ECAs include health-care support for elderly/disabled patients in extended home care, education/training, and knowledge preservation. Another more personal application would be to posthumously preserve elements of the persona of a loved one by family members. We apply this approach to a Q/a system for knowledge preservation and dissemination, where the specific individual who had this knowledge was to retire from the US National Science Foundation. The system is described in detail, and evaluations were performed to determine how well the system was perceived by users. (shrink)

La fin des années 1810 est souvent considérée comme le moment d’une liquidation posthume de l’Idéologie par ses adversaires, en particulier les tenants de la réaction catholique. Triomphe de l’homme moral sur l’homme physique, cet ultime avatar de la « guerre des deux écoles » aurait tendu à éluder toute étude scientifique de l’homme, rendu à des seuls déterminants sociaux ou spirituels. Partant de postulats opposés, se réclamant de traditions philosophiques inconciliables, déployant des méthodes intellectuelles antithétiques pour servir deux visions (...) antagonistes du politique, n’assiste-t-on pas malgré tout, de part et d’autre, à une tentative d’expliquer l’humanité, de lui réassigner une place dans le cosmos, de la ré-humaniser par ce travail de redéfinition? Dès lors peut-être apercevrait-on l’instantané d’un tableau plus vaste ; celui d’un essai bifide, témoin d’enjeux épistémologiques nouveaux, de constituer les bases de ce qu’on commence alors à peine à appeler une anthropologie. (shrink)

Multi-user online environments involve millions of participants world-wide. In these online communities participants can use their online personas – avatars – to chat, fight, make friends, have sex, kill monsters and even get married. Unfortunately participants can also use their avatars to stalk, kill, sexually assault, steal from and torture each other. Despite attempts to minimise the likelihood of interpersonal virtual harm, programmers cannot remove all possibility of online deviant behaviour. Participants are often greatly distressed when their (...) class='Hi'>avatars are harmed by other participants’ malicious actions, yet there is a tendency in the literature on this topic to dismiss such distress as evidence of too great an involvement in and identification with the online character. In this paper I argue that this dismissal of virtual harm is based on a set of false assumptions about the nature of avatar attachment and its relation to genuine moral harm. I argue that we cannot dismiss avatar attachment as morally insignificant without being forced to also dismiss other, more acceptable, forms of attachment such as attachment to possessions, people and cultural objects and communities. Arguments against according moral significance to virtual harm fail because they do not reflect participants’ and programmers’ experiences and expectations of virtual communities and they have the unintended consequence of failing to grant significance to attachments that we take for granted, morally speaking. Avatar attachment is expressive of identity and self-conception and should therefore be accorded the moral significance we give to real-life attachments that play a similar role. (shrink)

"Avatar" and "Princess Mononoke" as representative of radically different positions in environmental ethics.

Critics have argued that human-controlled avatar interactions fail to facilitate the kinds of expressivity and social understanding afforded by our physical bodies. We identify three claims meant to justify the supposed expressive limits of avatar interactions compared to our physical interactions. First, “The Limited Expressivity Claim”: avatars have a more limited expressive range than our physical bodies. Second, “The Inputted Expressivity Claim”: any expressive avatarial behaviour must be deliberately inputted by the user. Third, “The Decoding Claim”: users must infer (...) or figure out the expressive meaning of human-controlled avatars’ behaviour through cognitively onerous processes. With the aim of critically assessing all three claims, we analyze data collected through observations of and interviews with expert players of the avatar-based video game League of Legends. Focusing on Daniel Stern’s (2010) notion of vitality, we analyze the participants’ descriptions of seeing and interacting with other avatars during performance. Our analysis shows that the informants experience human-based avatarial interactions as qualitatively different than interactions with bots, that the informants see the movements of other players’ avatars as having different expressive styles, and that the informants actively use and manipulate this avatarial expressivity during performance. The results of our analysis, we argue, provide reasons for loosening or resisting the three claims concerning the limits of avatarial expressivity. (shrink)

Can posthumous love be rationally comprehensible for us to talk about? In this research article, I look into some Renaissance writings on Christian ethics that talk about posthumous love as if there are some virtues in it that deserve to be praised. I try to show that the most notable virtues that can be seen in posthumous love are honesty in love as well as the intention to keep a promise to cherish the eternal love in married (...) couples even after their death. If it is accepted that posthumous love is considered a morally rational virtue for these Renaissance Christian writers, there will still be a question, namely, on what criterion it should be based for us to talk about that promise. In this article, I show that the reverence of true love and faithfulness in love can be found in medieval Christian and Renaissance philosophy throughout Christian theological writings, especially in Robert Grosseteste’s notion of caritas. Next, I argue, based on Nicholas Rescher’s definition of rationality as human resource and Huw Price’s anthropological explanative power of concepts, that keeping a promise of posthumous love is a rational virtue. My argument is based on an idea that rationality is durable. This is because, as I will also argue, love is invincible. durability thesis of rationality reflected in the invincibility-of-love thesis through Rescher’s erotetic principle in metaphysical questioning strengthened with Price’s respond-dependence. (shrink)

Avatars will represent us online, in virtual worlds, and in technologically supported hybrid environments. We and our avatars will stand not in an identity relation but in a proxy relation, an arrangement that is significant not least because our proxies’ actions can be counted as our own. However, this proxy relation between humans and avatars is not well understood and its consequences under-explored. In this paper I explore the relation and its potential ethical consequences.

What is an avatar -- More than just another pretty face : the avatar effect -- Interview with the virtual cannibal -- Virtual presence -- X-reality, a conclusion.

Posthumous Fragments: Spring–Autumn 1881 [Excerpts].

_Death, Posthumous Harm, and Bioethics_ offers a highly distinctive and original approach to the metaphysics of death and applies this approach to contemporary debates in bioethics that address end-of-life and post-mortem issues. Taylor defends the controversial Epicurean view that death is not a harm to the person who dies and the neo-Epicurean thesis that persons cannot be affected by events that occur after their deaths, and hence that posthumous harms are impossible. He then extends this argument by asserting (...) that the dead cannot be wronged, finally presenting a defence of revisionary views concerning posthumous organ procurement. (shrink)

Are you prepared, either as an atheist or a religious believer, to have your ideas of God, the self, other people, the body, the soul, spirituality, and faith challenged in an unexpected and original way? Here is a book that moves out from under and away from the received notions of those ponderous topics, whether or not you believe in the divine. The author is a confessed atheist but one who rejects the approach of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Michel Onfray (...) and the rest when they depart from their justifiable criticisms of the historical record of the established creeds and endeavour to rubbish what faith could actually be. The book takes its origin from an exploration of the idea of an avatar; the writing of it was stimulated by seeing the Cameron film, though it subjects that film itself to an assessment of its hidden assumptions. The book finally arrives at specific recommendations for our time, ones to which the argument of the book has been directed throughout. (shrink)

James Cameron’s critically acclaimed movie Avatar was nominated for nine Academy Awards and received countless accolades for its breath-taking visuals and use of 3D technology. But beyond its cinematic splendour, can Avatar also offer us insights into business ethics, empathy, disability, and the relationship between mind and body? Can getting to know the Na’vi, an alien species, enlarge our vision and help us to “see” both our world and ourselves in new ways? Avatar and Philosophy is a revealing journey through (...) the world of Pandora and the huge range of philosophical themes raised by James Cameron’s groundbreaking film Explores philosophical issues such as religion, morality, aesthetics, empathy, identity, the relationship of mind and body, environmental and business ethics, technology, and just war theory Examines a wide range of topics from the blockbuster movie, including attitudes toward nature, our responsibilities to nonhuman species, colonialism, disability, and communitarian ethics Written by an esteemed group of philosophers who are avid fans of Avatar themselves Explains philosophical concepts in an enjoyable and accessible manner that will appeal to all levels of readers With a new trilogy of sequels now announced, this is the ideal entry point for understanding the world of Pandora for fans and newcomers alike. (shrink)

Can posthumous love be rationally comprehensible for us to talk about? In this research article, I look into some Renaissance writings on Christian ethics that talk about posthumous love as if there are some virtues in it that deserve to be praised. I try to show that the most notable virtues that can be seen in posthumous love are honesty in love as well as the intention to keep a promise to cherish the eternal love in married (...) couples even after their death. If it is accepted that posthumous love is considered a morally rational virtue for these Renaissance Christian writers, there will still be a question, namely, on what criterion it should be based for us to talk about that promise. In this article, I show that the reverence of true love and faithfulness in love can be found in medieval Christian and Renaissance philosophy throughout Christian theological writings, especially in Robert Grosseteste’s notion of caritas. Next, I argue, based on Nicholas Rescher’s definition of rationality as human resource and Huw Price’s anthropological explanative power of concepts, that keeping a promise of posthumous love is a rational virtue. My argument is based on an idea that rationality is durable. This is because, as I will also argue, love is invincible. durability thesis of rationality reflected in the invincibility-of-love thesis through Rescher’s erotetic principle in metaphysical questioning strengthened with Price’s respond-dependence. (shrink)

This chapter examines colonialism, how it functions, and what philosophers mean when they argue that a form of colonialism persists to this day. Franz Fanon discusses the most familiar and visible element of colonialism: direct military control of lands, resources, and peoples. For Fanon, the colonial world is split into two, one half being occupied by the colonized, the other by the colonizers. Avatar portrays this aspect of colonialism well, as Selfridge never engages with the Na'vi himself, preferring instead to (...) send Quaritch and his SecOp forces. Avatar's narrative shows the Na'vi as incapable of saving themselves: it takes Jake's knowledge, ingenuity, and bravery to convince them to form an effective plan of attack against the colonizing forces on Pandora. Despite the many negative characteristics of colonialism that Avatar helps us to identify and critique, by the end of the movie the specter of colonialism unfortunately still remains. (shrink)

Patient-derived xenografts are currently promoted as new translational models in precision oncology. PDXs are immunodeficient mice with human tumors that are used as surrogate models to represent specific types of cancer. By accounting for the genetic heterogeneity of cancer tumors, PDXs are hoped to provide more clinically relevant results in preclinical research. Further, in the function of so-called “mouse avatars”, PDXs are hoped to allow for patient-specific drug testing in real-time. This paper examines the circulation of knowledge and bodily (...) material across the species boundary of human and personalized mouse model, historically as well as in contemporary practices. PDXs raise interesting questions about the relation between animal model and human patient, and about the capacity of hybrid or interspecies models to close existing translational gaps. We highlight that the translational potential of PDXs not only depends on representational matching of model and target, but also on temporal alignment between model development and practical uses. Aside from the importance of ensuring temporal stability of human tumors in a murine body, the mouse avatar concept rests on the possibility of aligning the temporal horizons of the clinic and the lab. We examine strategies to address temporal challenges, including cryopreservation and biobanking, as well as attempts to speed up translation through modification and use of faster developing organisms. We discuss how featured model virtues change with precision oncology, and contend that temporality is a model feature that deserves more philosophical attention. (shrink)

The posthumous -- Fragments -- Toward a memory of the future: cinema, memory, history -- The image and the "trait" -- Postscript: l'arrêt de mort.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to CyberspaceJay David BolterJames J. O'Donnell. Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. xiv + 210 pp. 1 ill. Cloth, $24.95.The last chapter of James O'Donnell's thoughtful and highly readable book is entitled "Cassiodorus: Or, The Life of the Mind in Cyberspace." The subtitle made me think of the cyberenthusiast John Perry Barlow's claim (...) that cyberspace is in fact the new home of Mind. In a brief tract published on the Internet a few years ago, "A Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace," Barlow claimed that cyberspace is a new world, freed from the prejudices and traditions of the cultures of our physical world. Barlow is in many ways O'Donnell's opposite number. Where Barlow, like so many other proponents of cyberspace, rejects the relevance of history for our electronic future, O'Donnell anchors every step of his analysis in the history of writing. Where Barlow is frenetic, O'Donnell is calm. O'Donnell considers electronic writing as the latest in a series of technologies of writing, each responding to and shaped by its contemporary culture. The main lines of O'Donnell's argument--his comparison of contemporary literate culture to earlier cultures of the papyrus roll, the codex, and the printed book--are familiar from other sources. But O'Donnell's profound and easy learning enables him to add fresh insights and examples on every issue.O'Donnell's strategy is to explain the meaning of electronic writing today through a series of historical resonances. Early chapters examine the passage from orality to literacy as represented by the contrasting philosophical presences of Socrates and Plato; the changing nature of the library from the Alexandrian through Cassiodorus and the medieval monastic library and on to the hopes for today's "virtual" library; and the techniques of reading and reference [End Page 334] afforded by various technologies from the papyrus roll to the codex to the homepage. In later chapters O'Donnell explores the nature of teaching and of the university today and speculates on their future, as electronic technologies become more important to the curriculum. His specialist's knowledge of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages permits him to concentrate on this crucial period, which witnessed the shift from papyrus roll to codex. The historian of the book Roger Chartier has also argued that this transfer from roll to codex is the most appropriate comparison for the current move from printed book to electronic text. O'Donnell devotes relatively little space to discussing the latest avatar, electronic technology itself; he concentrates instead on establishing the historical parallels.In short, what is usually lacking in discussions of electronic writing, an informed historical sense, is in ample supply in Avatars of the Word. O'Donnell is in general optimistic about the future of literate culture. His optimism seems to come precisely from his long historical view, which mitigates any feeling of panic over the current changes in the forms and practices of literacy. In this respect we might compare his cautious optimism with the less informed pessimism of Sven Birkerts in his Gutenberg Elegies (1994). O'Donnell is also sanguine about the role that electronic technology can play in education--not by replacing teachers, but rather by allowing instruction to become more individual.On the other hand, the historical sophistication of Avatars of the Word both defines and limits its audience. Enthusiasts like John Perry Barlow count their readers in the hundreds of thousands, precisely because they offer a high-energy narrative of the future that does not trouble itself about the past. The leisurely and reflective pace of O'Donnell's book will seem luxurious to most of the new media world. O'Donnell says that his audience are "those who read books and use computers and wonder about the relationship" (ix). But the audience is perhaps narrower: those who, like the readers of this journal, are steeped in literate culture. Even within that group, O'Donnell is really speaking to those who are not intimidated by or disdainful of computer technology.In addition to being a professor of... (shrink)

What kind of relationship do we have with artificial beings (avatars, puppets, robots, etc.)? What does it mean to mirror ourselves in them, to perform them or to play trial identity games with them? Actor & Avatar addresses these questions from artistic and scholarly angles. Contributions on the making of »technical others« and philosophical reflections on artificial alterity are flanked by neuroscientific studies on different ways of perceiving living persons and artificial counterparts. The contributors have achieved a successful artistic-scientific (...) collaboration with extensive visual material. (shrink)

Marxism has been for a long time the reference of the European Worker's Movement. It took the form of a millenarist faith and was embodied in large organizations. Orthodox marxism had no more reason for existence when the working class was integrated in the modern society.Communism gave a new inspiration but at the expense of an intellectual degeneration. When it became a state religion, marxism stopped to be creative and became a Gnosis. The varied forms of leftisms which emerged in (...) the sixties are the last avatar of marxism in the developped countries. But they have only a remote relationship with Marx's doctrine. The same process took place in the Third World where the marxist-leninist vulgate was absorbed by nationalism. (shrink)

Des premiers jeux vidéo aux jeux actuels, les interfaces numériques tout autant que les genres de jeux vidéo se sont diversifiés, multipliant les modalités d’identification du joueur et de manipulation des personnages . Intermédiaire entre le monde du joueur et le monde du jeu, l’avatar est devenu un dispositif complexe et hybride : les limites entre le joueur et le personnage tendent à s’atténuer. Afin de mettre en évidence les lignes directrices de cette évolution des avatars dans les jeux (...) vidéo, cette contribution, s’appuie sur un état de la recherche des travaux portant sur l’avatar et l’identification du joueur, et propose une typologie des avatars sous l’angle des moda- lités d’identification du joueur à son personnage : l’avatar-marionnette, l’avatar-masque et l’avatar-mouvement.Since the first video games, digital interfaces as well as video game genres have become greatly diversified, with many different methods for identifying with and manipulating game characters . The avatar, the intermediary between the world of the gamer and the world of the game itself, has become a complex, hybrid figure where the boundaries between player and character are increasingly blurred. To highlight the main trends in the changing figure of the avatar in video games, this paper draws on cur- rent research on avatars and player identification to put for- ward a typology based on different means used by players to identify with their characters: puppet avatars, mask avatars and motion-based avatars. (shrink)

Posthumous publication of Ayn Rand's novella Ideal and her play The Unconquered provides an opportunity to assess her early work. The Unconquered is an unfortunate theatrical dramatization of her novel We the Living. Ideal, which was written first as a novella and then as a play, is the inadequate presentation of a provocative idea. Editorial packaging of The Unconquered is extensive and informative; of Ideal, slight and confused. Especially regrettable is the theory of genres presented in place of editorial (...) commentary on Ideal. (shrink)

Roxanne Kurtz has argued that the "virtual rape" of a character in a computer-generated world (an avatar) shares many (though obviously not all) of the wrong-making features of physical rape in the real world. I agree in part, but argue that, due to the typical features of virtual worlds, its wrongfulness is dominated by the harm it does to the avatar user's capacity for social interaction and self-representation. In the course of the argument I hope to shed more light upon (...) the nature of avatars, and their relationship to "offline" avatars in, e.g., role-playing and children's games. (shrink)

In recent years, progress in cancer treatment has greatly increased the chances of recovery. Yet, treatment may have irreversible effects on patients’ fertility. In order to protect future fertility, preservation of ovarian tissue may be offered today even to very young girls, involving a surgical procedure that may be performed by minimally invasive laparoscopy, under general anesthesia. However, in the tragic event of a girl’s death, questions may arise regarding the possible use of the preserved ovarian tissue by her parents. (...) Should posthumous reproductive use of ovarian tissue without the girl’s prior consent (due to her young age) be considered a violation of her rights? On the other hand, can it be argued that it is in the interest of a child who died young to leave a genetic trace through posthumous reproduction, because genetic continuity is in the interest of every human being? After presenting the relevant clinical facts, we explore the ethical dimensions of this possible practice through an analysis of the interests of the deceased, her parents, and the child that may be born posthumously. (shrink)

Posthumous Life launches critical life studies: a mode of inquiry that neither endorses nor dismisses a wave of recent "turns" toward life, matter, vitality, inhumanity, animality, and the real. Questioning the nature and limits of life in the natural sciences, the essays in this volume examine the boundaries and significance of the human and the humanities in the wake of various redefinitions of what counts as life. They explore the possibility of theorizing life without assuming it to be either (...) a simple substrate or an always-mediated effect of culture and difference. Posthumous Life provides new ways of thinking about animals, plants, humans, difference, sexuality, race, gender, identity, the earth, and the future. (shrink)

Contemporary cultural and media studies have been increasingly interested in redefining the relations between religion and culture (and particularly popular culture). The present study approaches a series of theories on the manner in which religious aspects emerge and are integrated in contemporary cultural manifestations, focusing on the persistence/resurrection of religious patterns into secularized cultural contents. Thus, the analysis departs from the concept of implicit religion, coined and developed by Bailey and the theories following it, as well as other associated concepts, (...) influential for the evolution of debates in the recent period, such as invisible religion , as approached by Luckmann, civil religion , by Bellah, folk religion, residual religion , by Davies or ‘wild’ religion, by Borg. In order to discuss the relations between religion and popular culture in contemporary U.S. and particularly the presence of certain religious patterns in popular culture messages, symbolism and rituals, the study uses an interdisciplinary approach, based on approaches currently used in media studies, film studies, cultural studies, visual culture perspectives, religious studies, and sociology. The article discusses, through different theories (and in its second part, a case study on James Cameron’s cliché masterpiece Avatar) the manner in which contemporary popular culture (and cinema in particular) recycles, integrates and reinterprets religious patterns, symbols and behaviours. (shrink)

The desire-satisfactionist defense of the existence of posthumous harm faces the problem of changing desires. The problem is that, in some cases where desires change before the time of their objects, the principle underlying the desire-satisfactionist defense of posthumous harm yields implausible results. In his prominent desire-satisfactionist defense of posthumous harm, David Boonin proposes a solution to this problem. First, I argue that there are two relevantly different versions of the problem of changing desires, and that Boonin's (...) proposed solution addresses only one of them. Second, I argue that modifying the underlying principle is a better approach to overcoming the problem of changing desires since it addresses both versions of the problem. I defend this approach against objections by showing that the problems raised are problems for the principle as a general theory of harm, not for the principle as part of the desire-satisfactionist defense of posthumous harm. (shrink)

In an Israeli qualitative study with adolescent cancer survivors and parents who had considered fertility preservation, practically all participants could not recall any discussions with healthcare providers about plans for cryopreserved biological materials in the case of death. This finding is surprising given recent court struggles in Israel over the posthumous use of cryopreserved sperm. In interviews with these adolescent survivors and their parents, intended future use of cryopreserved biological materials is directed for affected individuals’ reproductive purposes later in (...) life, with hardly any consideration of others' use of these materials for posthumous reproduction. To avoid future ethical and legal quagmires, healthcare professionals should have frank discussions with adolescents and their parents about what to do with such materials in the case of death. This paper discusses the socio-cultural and legal Israeli context and considers the ethical implications of using minors’ biological materials for posthumous assisted reproduction in Israel. (shrink)

In avatar, Jake Sully struggles with his sense of self at a variety of levels, including the metaphysical. In Plato's and Aristotle's book Philosophy in the Flesh, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson call this shared conjecture the “folk theory of essences.” In Avatar, the presuppositions about personal identity that ground the linkage process between human beings and avatar bodies seems to follow Locke's insights quite faithfully. This way of talking about the essential self challenges the bodyswapping scenarios of John Locke (...) and Avatar, urging us to attend not to far‐fetched thought experiments but instead to our first‐person experience of how mind and body actually interact, our ordinary sense of “what it's like” to be embodied. This approach, known as “existential phenomenology,” offers an alternative to perspectives like Locke's – perspectives. In many ways, the existential phenomenology coincides with Na'vi wisdom. (shrink)

This article delves into the legal developments, bioethical nuances, and societal perspectives surrounding posthumous sperm use, particularly in the context of soldiers falling during their service. It analyzes the Israeli example during The Swords of Iron War, where the bioethical dilemma is decided based on national solidarity, beyond the “clean” bioethical-legal discussion.

Bassan’s article on the posthumous use of sperm presents a complicated picture of Israeli law.1 On the one hand, as previous reviews show,2 Israel is unique in terms of the extent of this phenomenon. The number of applications to the courts to approve the use of sperm posthumously is substantial and has been increasing since the outbreak of the war on October 7. On the other hand, there is no clear legal policy in this area. In other words, Bassan’s (...) article shows that the rights of relevant parties in this context are not adequately regulated. This, as elaborated below, is the result of a lack of primary legislation, together with disagreement among relevant policymakers. The outcome is feelings of frustration, confusion, and even anger among the deceased’s close relatives.3. (shrink)

The question of whether individuals retain interests or can be harmed after death is highly contentious, particularly within the context of deceased organ retrieval, retention and use. This paper argues that posthumous interests and/or harms can and do exist in the Konkomba traditional setting through the concept of ancestorship, a reputational concept of immense cultural and existential significance in this setting. I adopt Joel Feinberg’s account of harms as a setback to interests. The paper argues that a socio-culturally sensitive (...) regulatory framework does not necessarily exclude the donation of human biomaterials for transplant and science research. Indeed, when customary values are explored with open-mindedness and sensitivity it may be shown that such donation can form part of the important customs of some communities in this jurisdiction. Accordingly, a context-appropriate governance framework could utilise the cultural value of ancestorship as an incentive to encourage organ donation in the Ghanaian traditional setting. (shrink)

The deceased's prior consent to posthumous reproduction is a common requirement in many common law jurisdictions. This paper critically evaluates four arguments advanced to justify the presumption against consent. It is argued that, in situations where death is caused by sudden trauma, not only is there inadequate justification for the presumption against consent, but there are good reasons to reverse the presumption. The article concludes that the precondition of prior consent may be inappropriate in these situations.

La dernière philosophie de Pareyson, pour l'essentiel condensée dans le volume posthume Ontologie de la liberté, composée de fragments articulés entre eux, est une philsophie et même une métaphysique de la liberté, mais officiellement elle se présente comme une herméneutique de l'expérience chrétienne et accessoirement comme une pensée tragique.

I argue that the possibility of posthumous harm ought to be rejected. My argument centers on a kind of repugnancy case involving posthumous harm. Supposing the existence of posthumous harm, a person whose wellbeing was extremely high while she was alive could incur small posthumous harms over a long enough period such that it is true of that person that she had a life not worth living. I respond to various objections and in the end conclude (...) that rejecting posthumous harm is preferable to all other options. (shrink)

This article argues that personal medical data should be made available for scientific research, by enabling and encouraging individuals to donate their medical records once deceased, similar to the way in which they can already donate organs or bodies. This research is part of a project on posthumous medical data donation developed by the Digital Ethics Lab at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. Ten arguments are provided to support the need to foster posthumous medical (...) data donation. Two major risks are also identified—harm to others, and lack of control over the use of data—which could follow from unregulated donation of medical data. The argument that record-based medical research should proceed without the need to secure informed consent is rejected, and instead a voluntary and participatory approach to using personal medical data should be followed. The analysis concludes by stressing the need to develop an ethical code for data donation to minimise the risks, and offers five foundational principles for ethical medical data donation suggested as a draft code. (shrink)

The Avatar: The Last Airbender ( ATLA ) series as a whole portrays Aang's journey from being a scared boy, who ran from his training, to becoming Avatar Aang, who is able to face Fire Lord Ozai. ATLA similarly emphasizes such connections in its portrait of Aang's quest, for his journey toward maturity draws on the work and play he shares with many others before the series comes to its conclusion. Ogyen Trinley Dorje expresses a similar awareness of the weight (...) of an exalted title in his experience as the Karmapa. Aang grows in the community, illustrating the Karmapa's words about the importance of relying on others. Dorje highlights the Buddhist teaching that competition creates the illusion that life is a zero‐sum game and that it undermines our happiness. As the Karmapa emphasizes, interconnectedness does not negate individuality. (shrink)

Gilles Routhier | Résumé : En 1996, dressant un panorama de l’évolution des formes du discours chrétien, Christoph Theobald observait qu’avec Vatican II, l’Église catholique passait à une nouvelle étape, l’encyclique Humani generis (1950) marquant « la fin d’une époque de dogmatisation fondamentale ». Cinquante ans après Vatican II, on peut se demander si cette lecture, qui est tributaire d’une compréhension de la réception de Vatican II, tient toujours. En effet, on peut aujourd’hui observer des résurgences de formes anciennes du (...) discours chrétien montrant que les apprentissages proposés à l’Église catholique ne sont pas tous accomplis. Cet article, s’appuyant sur les analyses de Christoph Theobald, après avoir exposé les déplacements importants réalisés au moment de Vatican II et indiqué le « changement d’ordre » qu’il implique, montre que les évolutions proposées par le Concile n’ont pas toutes été reçues et que le modernisme connaît des avatars, au moins au jugement des dissidents intégristes, et que la crise moderniste continue en partie à définir la situation présente. Cela conduit l’auteur à conclure que la théologie doit reprendre ses travaux sur la tradition. |: In 1996, in a panorama of the evolution of forms of Christian discourse, Christoph Theobald observed that Vatican II opened a new era for the Catholic discourse, the encyclical Humani Generis (1950) marking “the end of a fundamental dogmatization time.” Fifty years after Vatican II, one may wonder if this interpretation, which is dependent on an understanding of the reception of Vatican II, still stands. Indeed, we can now see the resurgence of ancient forms of Christian discourse showing that what was proposed by the Council to the Catholic Church is far from being realised. The present article, based on the works of Christoph Theobald, describes the major shifts made at Vatican II and shows that the “change of order” introduced by the Council have not all been received and the modernist crisis continues partly to define the present situation. This leads to conclude that theology must resume his work on the tradition. (shrink)

The notion of authorship has been widely discussed since the proclamation of the Death of the Author in mid 20th century. Authors are still writing, but a variety of new forms of authorship and new kinds of relations between authors, texts and readers have emerged. Many new forms of authorship are enabled by the use of digital media, which provide a new layer of hypertextual and interactive software in between the ‘author’ as a representation of the human creator and the (...) author as an indexical reference to a text. The paper present a number of these forms which are based on the use of ‘avatars’ as intermediaries between the human individuals and the stories told. It is argued that the use of digital media opens for new trajectories in the development of authorship forms, and that such new trajectories calls for new sorts of research questions and development of new methods. (shrink)

According to Epicurus (1966a,b), neither death, nor anything that occurs later, can harm those who die, because people who die are not made to suffer as a result of either. In response, many philosophers (e.g., Nagel 1970, Feinberg 1984, and Pitcher 1984) have argued that Epicurus is wrong on both counts. They have defended the mortem thesis: death may harm those who die. They have also defended the post-mortem thesis: posthumous events may harm people who die. Their arguments for (...) this joint view are by now quite familiar, and there is no need to rehearse them here (for a summary, see Luper 2002). Instead, our topic is a third position, which carves out intermediate ground between the other two. The intermediate view takes the mortem thesis for granted, like the critics of Epicurus, but rejects the post-mortem thesis, like Epicurus himself. For Epicurus’ project—the attainment of ataraxia, or equanimity—the intermediate view is almost useless (we are not tranquil if we regard death as a tragedy whose peculiarity is that it frees us from the possibility of any further misfortune); however, it is far more plausible than Epicurus’ own position since it avoids his absurd claim that death cannot harm us, while retaining his view that events occurring while we are dead and gone cannot harm us. According to the proponent of the intermediate view, when we understand the harm death inflicts, we must reject the idea that events following death can be bad for us. The damage death itself does is so severe that people are not subject to harm by any subsequent events. Thus the intermediate view rests on the mortem thesis together with the immunity thesis: death leaves its victims immune from posthumous harm. (shrink)

This book takes an interdisciplinary, transnational and cross-cultural approach to reflect on, critically examine, and challenge the surprisingly robust practice of making art after death in an artist's name, through the lenses of scholars from the fields of art history, economics and law, as well as practicing artists. Works of art conceived as multiples, such as sculptures, etchings, prints, photographs and conceptual art, can be - and often are - remade from original models and plans long after the artist has (...) passed. Recent sales have suggested a growing market embrace of posthumous works, contemporaneous with questioning on the part of art history. Legal norms seem unready for this surge in posthumous production and are beset by conflict across jurisdictions. Non-Western approaches to posthumous art, from Chinese emulations of non-living artists to Native American performances, take into account rituals of generational passage and emotional aspects foreign to Western ideas. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, the art market, art law, art management, museum studies, and economics. (shrink)

Avatar, le film de James Cameron (2009), aura ete un succes commercial d'une ampleur exceptionnelle, a considerer davantage comme le symptome d'une certaine societe en crise spirituelle, que comme l'expression personnelle d'un createur, fut-il exceptionnel. Sur cette base, Frank Pierobon, au terme d'une deconstruction tres poussee, en extrait l'embleme de notre postmodernite finissante: un Deus ex Fantasma, soit une derisoire redemption par le reve, faute de tout autre salut.

Los avatares de Antoniana Margarita y el Endecálogo de Francisco de Sosa.