Empirical evidence suggests a broad impact of communication mode on cognition at large, beyond language processing. Using a sign language since infancy might shape the representation of words and other linguistic stimuli – for example, incorporating in it the movements and signs used to express them. Once integrated into linguistic representations, this visuo-motor content can affect deaf signers’ linguistic and cognitive processing.

: This work focuses on emotional concepts. We define concepts as patterns of neural activation that re-enact a given external or internal experience, for example the interoceptive experience related to fear. Concepts are mediated and expressed through words. In the following, we will use “words” to refer to word meanings, assuming that words mediate underlying concepts. Since emotional concepts and the words that mediate them are less related to the physical environment than concrete ones, at first sight they might be (...) depicted as abstract concepts. Evidence coming from several studies shows, instead, that the issue is more complex. In this work, we will briefly outline the debate and illustrate results from recent studies on comprehension of concrete, emotional and abstract words in children and adults. We will argue that emotional words can be accounted for from a grounded perspective and will contend that emotional words represent a particular set of words that differs from both the concrete and purely abstract ones. Keywords: Embodied and Grounded Cognition; Abstract Concepts; Emotional Words; Language Acquisition; Language Processing La peculiarità delle parole emotive: un approccio basato sulla grounded cognition Riassunto: Questo lavoro si incentra sui concetti emotivi. Intendiamo qui per concetti i pattern di attivazioni neurali che riattivano un’esperienza interna o esterna, per esempio le esperienze interocettive collegate alla paura. I concetti sono mediati ed espressi dalle parole. Di seguito, useremo “parole” in riferimento al significato delle parole, assumendo le parole come veicolo dei concetti. I concetti emotivi e le parole che li esprimono, dal momento che sono meno legati all’ambiente fisico rispetto a quelli concreti, potrebbero essere a tutta prima classificati come concetti astratti. Molti studi invece mostrano come la questione sia più complessa. In questo lavoro illustreremo brevemente il dibattito e i risultati di recenti studi sulla comprensione di parole astratte, concrete ed emotive in bambini e adulti, per mostrare come una prospettiva grounded possa rendere conto delle parole emotive, sostenendo che queste rappresentano un insieme particolare di parole, diverse sia da quelle concrete che da quelle puramente astratte. Parole chiave: Embodied and Grounded Cognition; Concetti astratti; Parole emotive; Acquisizione del linguaggio; Processamento del linguaggio. (shrink)

We consider the ways humans engage in social epistemic actions, to guide each other's attention, prediction, and learning processes towards salient information, at the timescale of online social interaction and joint action. This parallels the active guidance of other's attention, prediction, and learning processes at the longer timescale of niche construction and cultural practices, as discussed in the target article.

The role played by language in our cognitive lives is a topic at the centre of contemporary debates in cognitive (neuro)science. In this paper we illustrate and compare two theories that offer embodied explanations of this role: the WAT (words as social tools) and the LENS (language is an embodied neuroenhancement and scaffold) theories. WAT and LENS differ from other current proposals, because they connect the impact of the neurologically realized language system on our cognition to the ways in which (...) language shapes our interaction with the physical and social environment. Examining these theories together, their tenets and supporting evidence, sharpens our understanding of each, but also contributes to a better understanding of the contribution that language might make to the acquisition, representation and use of abstract concepts. Here we focus on how language provides a source of inner grounding, especially metacognition and inner speech, and supports the flexibility of our thought. Overall, the paper outlines a promising research program focused on the importance of language to abstract concepts within the context of a flexible, multimodal, and multilevel conception of embodied cognition. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between structural explanation and the New Mechanistic account of explanation. The aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, to argue that some phenomena in the domain of fundamental physics, although mechanically brute, are structurally explained; and secondly, by elaborating on the contrast between SE and mechanistic explanation to better clarify some features of SE. Finally, this paper will argue that, notwithstanding their apparently antithetical character, SE and ME can be reconciled within a unified account of (...) general scientific explanation. (shrink)

For decades, the field of system safety has designed safe systems by reducing the risk of physical harm to humans, property and the environment to an acceptable level. Recently, this definition of safety has come under scrutiny by governments and researchers who argue that the narrow focus on reducing physical harm, whilst necessary, is not sufficient to secure the safety of AI systems. There is growing pressure to expand the scope of safety in the context of AI to address emerging (...) harms, with particular emphasis being placed on the ways AI systems can reinforce and reproduce systemic harms. In this paper, we advocate for expanding the scope of conventional safety to include non-physical harms in the context of AI. However, we caution against broadening the scope to address systemic harms, as doing so presents intractable practical challenges for current safety methodologies. Instead, we propose that the scope of safety-related harms should be expanded to include psychological harms. Our proposal is partly motivated by the debates and evidence on social media, which fundamentally reshaped how harm is understood and addressed in the digital age, prompting new regulatory frameworks which aimed to protect users from the psychological risks of the technology. We draw on this precedent to motivate the inclusion of psychological harms in AI safety assessments. By expanding the scope of AI safety to include psychological harms, we take a critical step toward evolving the discipline of system safety into one that is better tuned and equipped to protect users against the complex and emerging harms propagated by AI systems. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role that the distinction between principle and constructive theories have in the question of the explanatory power of Special Relativity. We show how the distinction breaks down at the explanatory level. We assess Harvey Brown’s (2005) claim that, as a principle theory, Special Relativity lacks of explanatory power and criticize it, as, we argue, based upon an unrealistic picture of the kind of explanations provided by principle (and constructive) theories. Finally, we (...) claim that the structural account of explanation (Hughes 1989b) captures the explanatory success of Special Relativity. (shrink)

This paper articulates two constraints on an acceptable account of meaning: (i) accessibility: sameness of meaning affords an immediate appearance of de jure co-reference, (ii) flexibility: sameness of meaning tolerates open-ended variation in speakers' substantive understanding of the reference. Traditional accounts of meaning have trouble simultaneously satisfying both constraints. I suggest that relationally individuated meanings provide a promising way of avoiding this tension. On relational accounts, we bootstrap our way to de jure co-reference: the subjective appearance of de jure co-reference (...) helps make it the case that two token representations really do co-refer. (shrink)

This paper explores the question of what makes an action morally worthy. I start with a popular theory of moral worth which roughly states that a right action is morally praiseworthy if and only if it is performed in response to the reasons which make the action right. While I think the account provides promising foundations for determining praiseworthiness, I argue that the view lacks the resources to adequately satisfy important desiderata associated with theories of moral worth. Firstly, the view (...) does not adequately capture the degree to which an action has moral worth, and secondly, the view does not identify if right actions produced from overdetermined motives have moral worth. However, all is not lost; I also argue that the account can satisfy the desiderata when it attends to the agent’s counterfactual motives in addition to their actual motives. By considering counterfactual motives, we can measure the robustness of the actual praiseworthy motive, and attending to motivational robustness allows the new proposal to fully satisfy the two desiderata. At the end of this paper, I respond to some criticisms typically brought against a counterfactual view of moral worth. (shrink)

Which standards should we employ to evaluate the global order? Should they be standards of justice or standards of legitimacy? In this article, I argue that liberal political theorists need not face this dilemma, because liberal justice and legitimacy are not distinct values. Rather, they indicate what the same value, i.e. equal respect for persons, demands of institutions under different sets of circumstances. I suggest that under real-world circumstances – characterized by conflicts and disagreements – equal respect demands basic-rights protection (...) and democratic participation, which I here call ‘political justice’. I conclude the article by considering three possible configurations of the global order – the ‘democratic world-state’, ‘independent democratic states’, and ‘mixed’ models – and argue that a commitment to political justice speaks in favour of the latter. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which Axiomatic Reconstructions of Quantum Theory in terms of Information-Theoretic principles can contribute to explaining and understanding quantum phenomena, as well as to study their explanatory limitations. This is achieved in part by offering an account of the kind of explanation that axiomatic reconstructions of Quantum Theory provide, and re-evaluating the epistemic status of the program in light of this explanation. As illustrative case studies, I take Clifton's, Bub's and (...) Halvorson's characterization theorem and Popescu's and Rohrlich's toy models, and their explanatory contribution with respect to quantum nonlocality. On the one hand, I argue that ARQITs can aspire to provide genuine explanations of quantum nonlocality. On the other hand, I argue that such explanations cannot rule out a mechanical quantum theory. (shrink)

In his recent book Bananaworld. Quantum mechanics for primates, Jeff Bub revives and provides a mature version of his influential information-theoretic interpretation of Quantum Theory (QT). In this paper, I test Bub’s conjecture that QT should be interpreted as a theory about information, by examining whether his information-theoretic interpretation has the resources to explain (or explain away) quantum conundrums. The discussion of Bub’s theses will also serve to investigate, more in general, whether other approaches succeed in defending the claim that (...) QT is about quantum information. First of all, I argue that Bub’s interpretation of QT as a principle theory fails to fully explain quantum non-locality. Secondly, I argue that a constructive interpretation, where the quantum state is interpreted ontically as information, also fails at providing a full explanation of quantum correlations. Finally, while epistemic interpretations might succeed in this respect, I argue that such a success comes at the price of rejecting some in between the most basic scientific standards of physical theories. (shrink)

When people describe motion events, their path expressions are biased toward inclusion of goal paths (e.g., into the house) and omission of source paths (e.g., out of the house). In this paper, we explored whether this asymmetry has its origins in people’s non-linguistic representations of events. In three experiments, 4-year-old children and adults described or remembered manner of motion events that represented animate/intentional and physical events. The results suggest that the linguistic asymmetry between goals and sources is not fully rooted (...) in non-linguistic event representations: linguistic descriptions showed the goal bias for both kinds of events, whereas non-linguistic memory for events showed the goal bias only for events involving animate, goal-directed motion. The findings are discussed in terms of the mapping between non-linguistic representations of goals and sources in language, focusing on the role that linguistic principles play in producing a more absolute goal bias from more gradient non-linguistic representations of paths. (shrink)

Within the current mainstream research in the foundations of physics, much attention has been turned to the program of Axiomatic Reconstruction of Quantum Theory in terms of Information-Theoretic principles (ARQIT). ARQIT aims at finding a few general information-theoretic principles from which, once translated into mathematical terms, one can formally derive the structure of quantum theory. This chapter explores the role of mechanistic explanations and mathematical explanations (in particular, structural explanations) within ARQIT. With such considerations as a point of departure, we (...) investigate how ARQIT contributes to the explanation of quantum phenomena, and the possible prospects for explanations provided by mechanical interpretations of quantum theory. (shrink)

Much contemporary political philosophy claims to be Kant-inspired, but its aims and method differ from Kant's own. In his recent book, Force and Freedom, Arthur Ripstein advocates a more orthodox Kantian outlook, presenting it as superior to dominant (Kant-inspired) views. The most striking feature of this outlook is its attempt to ground the whole of political morality in one right: the right to freedom, understood as the right to be independent of others’ choices. Is Ripstein's Kantian project successful? In this (...) research note I argue that it is not. First, I suggest that Ripstein's notion of freedom is viciously circular. It is meant to ground all rights, but in fact it presupposes an account of those rights. Second, I show that—independently of its inability to ground a whole political morality—such a moralized understanding of freedom is normatively unappealing. (shrink)

In recent years, discussion around memory modification interventions has gained attention. However, discussion around the use of memory interventions in the criminal justice system has been mostly absent. In this paper we start by highlighting the importance memory has for human well-being and personal identity, as well as its role within the criminal forensic setting; in particular, for claiming and accepting legal responsibility, for moral learning, and for retribution. We provide examples of memory interventions that are currently available for medical (...) purposes, but that in the future could be used in the forensic setting to modify criminal offenders’ memories. In this section we contrast the cases of dampening and enhancing memories of criminal offenders. We then present from a pragmatic approach some pressing ethical issues associated with these types of memory interventions. The paper ends up highlighting how these pragmatic considerations can help establish ethically justified criteria regarding the possibility of interventions aimed at modifying criminal offenders’ memories. (shrink)

There has been an increasing interest into how to build Artificial Moral Agents (AMAs) that make moral decisions on the basis of causation rather than mere correction. One promising avenue for achieving this is to use a causal modelling approach. This paper explores an open and important problem with such an approach; namely, the problem of what makes a causal model an appropriate model. I explore why we need to establish criteria for what makes a model appropriate, and offer-up such (...) criteria which appeals to normative considerations. (shrink)

Seven essays explore issues of scientific methodology in various episodes of science from Newtonian physics of the 17th and 18th century to quantum mechanics in the 20th. Addressed to scholars of the history and philosophy of science, but also accessible to general readers. Annotation copyright Book.

In this chapter, I focus on the faculties by which we gain knowledge, namely, sensibility and the understanding, as well as on the methodological framework within which Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz examines them. I stress the importance that the author gives to sensibility and the physiological apparatus that grounds and explains sensation.With respect to her conception of understanding, I will show that it is both the sign of man’s filiation with God and a faculty that displays deficiencies and (...) limitations with respect to the difficult task of attaining knowledge.Finally, I examine Sor Juana’s criticism both of the Neoplatonic method, which looks for a vision of the universe as a whole, as well as of the deductive method of the Aristotelian- Scholastic tradition, which attempts to reduce the unmanageable diversity of beings to some specific characteristics and laws.My conclusion is that Sor Juana shares with modern philosophers the critical attitude against tradition; she holds that traditional methods do not enable us to reach knowledge about either the remotest causes or the closest effects. On my view, Sor Juana takes an epistemological approach to philosophy, as do Bacon and Descartes, but she does not propose a new method; this is not because of some radical skepticism on her part, but because of the enormity of the task of the human mind achieving complete knowledge. (shrink)

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to consider some of the philosophical and bioethical issues raised by the creation of the draft social values framework developed to facilitate data collection and country-specific presentations at the inaugural workshop on "Social values and health priority setting" held in February 2011. -/- DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Conceptual analysis is used to analyse the term "social values", as employed in the framework, and its relationship to related ideas such as moral values. The structure of the framework (...) (process and content values) is considered in light of current debate in philosophy and bioethics about the political and moral aims served by these kinds of values, and the extent to which they are either suited to, or sufficient for, the policy context. -/- FINDINGS: There is much to be gained by engaging with the arguments presented in the philosophical literature in order to further refine the framework. The framework should remain neutral in respect of the importance of procedural values in different contexts and should be as inclusive as possible in respect of the principles it includes. Further development would be best served by taking a multidisciplinary approach. The framework could provide a valuable space in which future debates about procedural/substantive values can be considered. -/- ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The paper brings philosophical and bioethics perspectives to bear on a new framework proposed for the analysis of social values in health priority setting. It identifies how such a practical, policy-focused framework might be informed by engagement with deeper, and often unresolved, questions or principle around resource allocation in health. (shrink)

Through case studies that highlight the type of information that is seldom reported in the news, Faces of Environmental Racism exposes the type and magnitude of environmental racism, both domestic and international. The essays explore the justice of current environmental practices, asking such questions as whether cost-benefit analysis is an appropriate analytic technique and whether there are alternate routes to sustainable development in the South.

In order to move towards an Ethic of Accounting, one must start by defining the function and role of the accountant. This in turn depends to a great extent on the identity of the client or whatever party the Accountant owes his loyal agency to. The issue is one of cardinal importance, and it is perceived as such by the accountants themselves. Loeb for instance says that the client-identity issue is overriding importance now, and will become even more crucial in (...) the immediate years ahead. The question of what constitutes ethical behaviour on the part of the accountant will depend then upon the relation within which such ethical behaviour will have to be deployed.The main question raised in this paper will therefore be, is the accountant primarily engaged by one client (whether an individual or a corporation) to act as their agent, deal with their problems by loyally advancing their interests to the best of his professional competence, although within the limits imposed by law and morality? Or is the public sector to be considered the principal target of the accountant's resolute professionalism and unswerving loyalty? (shrink)

Research ethics consultation is increasingly recognized as a potentially valuable mechanism for addressing the depth and breadth of ethical issues that arise in research related to human health and well-being. However, fundamental questions remain, including: What is “research ethics consultation”? And what is its justification beyond the purposes already served by existing entities? We examine how a research ethics consultation service may differ from or complement the role of an institutional review board by offering a definition of research ethics consultation (...) and by exploring the potential scope of a consultation service in terms of types of clients served, questions addressed, and advice provided at various stages of the research process. We then consider the relationship between research ethics consultation services and IRBs, as well as the issues that may arise between them, including possible conflicts of interest. (shrink)

Late in life, Foucault identified with “the critical tradition of Kant,” encouraging us to read both thinkers in new ways. Kant’s “Copernican” strategy of grounding knowledge in the limits of human reason proved to stabilize political, social-scientific, and medical expertise as well as philosophical discourse. These inevitable limits were made concrete in historical structures such as the asylum, the prison, and the sexual or racial human body. Such institutions built upon and shaped the aesthetic judgment of those considered “normal.” Following (...) Kant through all of Foucault’s major works, this book shows how bodies functioned as “problematic objects” in which the limits of post-Enlightenment European power and discourse were imaginatively figured and unified. It suggests ways that readers in a neoliberal political order can detach from the imaginative schemes vested in their bodies and experiment normatively with their own security needs. (shrink)

We surveyed IRB chairs' perspectives on offering individual genetic research results to participants and families, including family members of deceased participants, and the IRB's role in addressing these issues. Given a particular hypothetical scenario, respondents favored offering results to participants but not family members, giving choices at the time of initial consent, and honoring elicited choices. They felt IRBs should have authority regarding the process issues, but a more limited role in medical and scientific issues.

The essay examines contemporary Arab films that express the body's forces. One strategy, common with other world cinemas, is that films carry out different operations at the molar and molecular levels, which correspond to different levels of embodiment and body politics. Another, more unique to Arab cinema, is to cultivate strategies of protecting and enfolding bodies, similar to what Foucault termed ars erotica. Third, they enlist the audience in a struggle to attain what Spinoza called ‘adequate ideas’, ideas that arise (...) immanently from the body's capacities. (shrink)

Significant amounts of wealth have been exchanged as part of marriage settlements throughout history. Although various models have been proposed for interpreting these practices, their development over time has not been investigated systematically. In this paper we use a Bayesian MCMC phylogenetic comparative approach to reconstruct the evolution of two forms of wealth transfers at marriage, dowry and bridewealth, for 51 Indo-European cultural groups. Results indicate that dowry is more likely to have been the ancestral practice, and that a minimum (...) of four changes to bridewealth is necessary to explain the observed distribution of the two states across the cultural groups. (shrink)

An inaccessible cardinal κ is supercompact when (κ, λ)-ITP holds for all λ ≥ κ. We prove that if there is a model of ZFC with two supercompact cardinals, then there is a model of ZFC where simultaneously \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${(\aleph_2, \mu)}$$\end{document} -ITP and \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${(\aleph_3, \mu')}$$\end{document} -ITP hold, for all \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mu\geq \aleph_2}$$\end{document} and \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} (...) \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mu'\geq \aleph_3}$$\end{document}. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists have frequently criticized ancient Greek philosophy as anti-environmental for a view of philosophy that is counterproductive to environmental ethics and a view of the world that puts nature at the disposal of people. This provocative collection of original essays reexamines the views of nature and ecology found in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Plotinus. Recognizing that these thinkers were not confronted with the environmental degradation that threatens contemporary philosophers, the contributors to this book find that (...) the Greeks nevertheless provide an excellent foundation for a sound theory of environmentalism. (shrink)

According to a regnant criterion of physical equivalence for quantum theories, a quantum field theory (QFT) typically admits continuously many physically inequivalent realizations. This, the second of a two-part introduction to topics in the philosophy of QFT, continues the investigation of this alarming circumstance. It begins with a brief catalog of quantum field theoretic examples of this non-uniqueness, then presents the basics of the algebraic approach to quantum theories, which discloses a structure common even to ‘physically inequivalent’ realizations of a (...) QFT. Finally, it introduces and evaluates a handful of strategies for interpreting quantum theories in the face of the non-uniqueness of their Hilbert space representations. (shrink)

This is the first of a two-part introduction to some interpretive questions that arise in connection with quantum field theories (QFTs). Some of these questions are continuous with those familiar from the discussion of ordinary non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM). For example, questions about locality can be rigorously posed and fruitfully pursued within the framework of QFT. A stark disanalogy between QFTs and ordinary QM – the former, but not the latter, typically admit infinitely many putatively physically inequivalent realizations – prompts (...) relatively novel questions, questions about how to understand and adjudicate different strategies for equipping quantum theories with content. Part I sketches the fate of locality and related notions in QFT, then documents the non-uniqueness unprecedented in ordinary QM but rampant in QFT. Part II presents foundations issues raised by non-uniqueness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments WEISKEL'S SUBLIME AND THE IMPASSE OF KNOWLEDGE by Laura Quinney Since the publication of Thomas Weiskel's The Romantic Sublime in 1976, scholars of the sublime, in America at any rate, have taken their cue from the demystifying character ofWeiskel's analysis.1 Before Weiskel the most ambitious twentieth-century account of the sublime was Samuel Monk's largely descriptive work The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories inEighteenth-CenturyEngland.2 With (...) the advent ofsemiotic and psychoanalytic approaches in the late sixties and early seventies, studies of the sublime shifted into a more critical mode. Neil Hertz had taken a skeptical tack in his early essay "A Reading of Longinus," but it was with Weiskel's book that the possibilities of demystifying die sublime were first explored fully.3 Weiskel's treatment is comprehensive, covering all the English Romantic poets as well as Burke and Kant. His thinking is sophisticated, incisive, and often inspired; though The Romantic Sublime was published nearly twenty years ago, it remains an admirable and influential work. In some respects it has never been superseded. Most major American scholars of the sublime—de Man, Knapp, and de Bolla, among others—have adopted the skeptical mode of Weiskel and Hertz.4 But die demystifying approach Weiskel's book helped to pioneer, while it has led to powerful argument, has certain limitations. Weiskel's precocious effort to "desublimate" the sublime shows diese limitations clearly, and it is die purpose of this essay to explore them. In die course of exposing the sublime as a mystified notion, and separating the naive believers from the canny skeptics, Weiskel also Philosophy and Literature, © 1994, 18: 309-319 310Philosophy and Literature separates intellectual insight from aesthetic capacity, and thus he uncritically reiterates die old Romantic dialectic of knowledge and power. The figure of Wordsworth plays a central role in establishing these oppositions. Weiskel portrays Wordsworth as the most successful poet of the sublime—the most successful, and tiierefore the most beguiled. In his remarkable concluding chapter, Weiskel locates the source of Wordsworth's powerful "liminal sublime" in a kind of intellectual regression. Wordswortii refuses the whole Symbolic order, the ghastly product of the Oedipus complex, for that order spells die deatii or disappearance of the signified, and die end of an imaginatively fruitful narcissism. Wordswortii retreats from the Symbolic to the Imaginary radier than endure tiiis threat to poetic life. And he is well rewarded for his dodge, since as a consequence the images of his memory thrill with the fascination of the ineffable. The Prelude gains its momentum from the project of memory; but the rich opacity and mysterious beckoning of memory's images are in a sense contrived. They spring out of a sublimation, the images colored widi the intensity of the signification Wordswortii has repudiated. Wordswortii sacrifices insight and intellectual progress for imaginative power. This is a strictly ambivalent exchange, as Weiskel makes clear in his conclusion; Wordsworth's rejection of the Oedipus complex and of the descent into the Symbolic Order, is "purely illusory, a fiction," but "the fiction is a necessary and saving one; it founds die self and secures the possibility—the chance for a self-conviction—of originality" (p. 203). Wordswortii's poetic success arises from his acceptance of an illusion, a "saving fiction" both enviable and degraded. This selfdelusion is essential to the poetic flourishing of the sublime, and only Wordsworth had the odd insensitivity to maintain it. Weiskel contrasts faith in the efficacy and excellence of sublimation with skeptical insight into its origin and end—its origin in mystification, and its end in alienation from the phenomenal world. The faith of Wordswortii's egotistical sublime is that imaginative perception provides die highest and paradoxically truest form of perception. It is easy enough to see how such a faith could provide hope and energy, and tiius could be compromised by wish-fulfillment in its generation, and direatened by extinction in its analysis. But what lies behind Weiskel's opposition of faith and insight is the old dichotomy—or series of interrelated dichotomies—that date back at least to Romanticism. Weiskel admits that his opposition of fruitful illusion and dessicating realism... (shrink)

In the last decades videogames have become very popular. In this article I argue that they establish a new relationship between bodies and identities. In videogames, the storylines are based on a mixture of other types of media fiction, where women's bodies are overrepresented and stereotypical, because of the market logic underlying these new media productions, which target a wide audience. Nevertheless, videogames' interactivity shapes new experiences of acting through other bodies. The erotic gaze on virtual bodies is shaped by (...) the elements of exoticism and the grotesque. The virtual spaces and actions are characterized by exoticism (the recurrent presence of death, fear, surprise, thrills) and the realism necessary to involve the user's senses. I also argue that interaction in games is a process of imagination and action. The game user acts through another body, which he/she controls. This process opens possibilities for a resisting oppositional gaze and subversive practices, beyond the commercial aims of the games' designers. Of course, there are oppressive aspects of the virtual bodies; a female body becomes a mathematical series of polygons, out of space and time, and, only as such, the object of desire of invisible cyberteenagers. Nevertheless, as gendered subjects, to have a virtual body to play with is a liberating appropriation of a space not designed for us. (shrink)

This is the first of two papers reviewing and analysing the approach to locality and to mind-body dualism proposed in Everett interpreta- tions of quantum mechanics. The planned companion paper will focus on the contemporary decoherence-based approaches to Everett. This paper instead treats the explicitly mentalistic Many Minds Interpreta- tion proposed by David Albert and Barry Loewer (Albert and Loewer 1988). In particular, we investigate what kind of supervenience of the mind on the body is implied by Albert and Loewer’s (...) Many Minds In- terpretation, and how the interpretation of the related ‘mindless hulks’ problem affects the issue of locality within this interpretation. (shrink)

Recent work in animal ethics has advanced principles that are too individualistic to be compatible with a holistic environmental ethic such as the land ethic proposed by Aldo Leopold. J. Baird Callicott, on the other hand, has attempted to reconcile the two ethics by suggesting that sympathy, natural among humanity, as he claims on Humean grounds, does not necessarily terminate at the species barrier. His argument shows minimally that it is not necessary that we abandon ecological ethics in order to (...) view nonhuman animals as morally considerable. I argue instead that it is not sympathy, but hostility/indifference that manifests the reality of life in wild nature, and as such forms a better basis for an all-encompassing ethic. If one accepts that the factual realm suggests the limits of norms and establishes the background and context of normative judgments in this context (as Holmes Roiston, III, for instance, does), then a different line of argument can be developed. I argue that intraspecies and interspecies ethics ought to be different for us because behavior in the wild is different within and without a species. Further, I argue that hostility/indifference coupled with respect form the basis of an approach which embraces a holistic environmental ethic as weil as one concemed with nonhuman animals. (shrink)