Bewildering features of modern physics, such as relativistic space-time structure and the peculiarities of so-called quantum statistics, challenge traditional ways of conceiving of objects in space and time. Interpreting Bodies brings together essays by leading philosophers and scientists to provide a unique overview of the implications of such physical theories for questions about the nature of objects. The collection combines classic articles by Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, Hans Reichenbach, and Erwin Schrodinger with recent contributions, including several papers that have never (...) before been published. -/- The book focuses on the microphysical objects that are at the heart of quantum physics and addresses issues central to both the "foundational" and the philosophical debates about objects. Contributors explore three subjects in particular: how to identify a physical object as an individual, the notion of invariance with respect to determining what objects are or could be, and how to relate objective and measurable properties to a physical entity. The papers cover traditional philosophical topics, common-sense questions, and technical matters in a consistently clear and rigorous fashion, illuminating some of the most perplexing problems in modern physics and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

The question whether AI systems have agency is gaining increasing importance in discussions of responsibility for AI behavior. This paper argues that an approach to artificial agency needs to be teleological, and consider the role of human goals in particular if it is to adequately address the issue of responsibility. I will defend the view that while AI systems can be viewed as autonomous in the sense of identifying or pursuing goals, they rely on human goals and other values incorporated (...) into their design, and are, as such, dependent on human agents. As a consequence, AI systems cannot be held morally responsible, and responsibility attributions should take into account normative and social aspects involved in the design and deployment of the said AI. My argument falls in line with approaches critical of attributing moral agency to artificial agents, but draws from the philosophy of action, highlighting further philosophical underpinnings of current debates on artificial agency. (shrink)

This article provides a conceptual account of causal understanding by connecting current psychological research on time and causality with philosophical debates on the causal asymmetry. I argue that causal relations are viewed as asymmetric because they are understood in temporal terms. I investigate evidence from causal learning and reasoning in both children and adults: causal perception, the temporal priority principle, and the use of temporal cues for causal inference. While this account does not suffice for correct inferences of causal structure, (...) I show it to serve as a preliminary understanding of causal concepts as asymmetric, that later incorporates other types of evidence. This approach supplies causal models with an asymmetric concept of causation that underlies hypotheses about causal structure, as I will illustrate from the framework of the knowledge-based causal induction model. I further argue for an integrating perspective, showing how the understanding of causes as preceding their effects underlies both psychological models and philosophical debates over time and the causal asymmetry, particularly regarding problem cases such as simultaneous causation or backwards causation, and the conceptual connection between causation and action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Varela and EmbodimentElena PasquinelliFrancisco Varela (1946-2001) studied biology in Chile and in the United States with neurobiologist Humberto Maturana, with whom he developed the theory of autopoiesis. According to this theory, the minimal form of autonomy that defines biological life is autopoiesis or self-production, which has the aspect of a reaction network, operationally closed and membrane bound. The theory of autopoiesis suggests that the nervous system cannot be considered (...) as an input-output information processing system. After some years spent in the United States, Varela moved to Paris, France, where he addressed two main directions of research: the experimental study of brain activity—in particular as regards the neuronal integration during the performance of cognitive tasks—and the phenomenological investigation of human consciousness. Within this second direction of philosophical studies, Varela developed an original and controversial approach to cognition.1This approach, which has came to be called the enactive view, is aimed at overcoming the mind/world dichotomy felt by many to be a hindrance to the development of a mature psychology. In Varela's enactive view, the world and the cognitive organism determine each other: the organism selects relevant properties of the physical world, and the world selects the structure of the organism, during their respective co-evolutionary history.An important tenet of the enactive approach is in fact that cognition is embodied. This claim represents a crucial step toward the development of a new trend of research in cognitive sciences, where the cognitive process is investigated without abstracting from the conditions in which it takes place. In fact, the statement that "the body matters" for cognition brings forth relevant consequences for the conception of the body and the mind and contains indications for research on the loop between perception, cognition, and action. The statement that "the body matters" for cognition is indeed quite widespread in circles that oppose the classical computationalist-representationalist approach to cognition. But in what way does the body play a constitutive role in cognition? And what should we mean by the term "body"?The claim about embodiment in cognition can be understood as a statement relative to the role played by the physical structure of the body in cognitive, perceptual, and motor performances and acquisitions. However, the conception of the body as simply a physical entity is only one step toward a [End Page 33] theory of the co-determination of the organism and the world that is proposed by Varela. As a medium of the interaction with the world, Varela conceives the body as a structured set of behavioral repertories, of motor and perceptual capabilities and activities. Embodiment goes beyond the physical structure of the organism since it is principally characterized by the sensorimotor structure of the animal: body-scaling, sensory-motor capacities. "The actions of an animal and the world in which it performs these actions are inseparably connected. Going through life as a small fly makes a cup of tea appear like an ocean of liquid; an elephant, however, will see the same amount of tea as an insignificant drop, tiny and barely noticeable. What is perceived appears inseparably connected with the actions and the way of life of an organism."2Sensorimotor capacities, or the activity of the animal, are then crucial in the mutual enactment of the world and mind. As the world selects the sensorimotor capacities of the animals that are valid for life and adaptation, animals select the properties of the world that are relevant for their structure: "the structure of the perceiving animal, understood as the kinds of self-organizing neuronal networks that couple sensory and motor surfaces, which determine both how the animal can be modulated by the environmental events and how sensory-motor activity participates in animal-environment codetermination." 3 As a consequence, "animals with different sensory-motor capacity would segment the world in different ways. As a corollary, we claim that the prespecified world we find... is actually the world as described in relation to the sensory-motor capacities of the higher primates."4The assertion of embodiment as relevant for the proper motor-perceptual activities of the organism is strictly connected to the idea that action and... (shrink)

The aim of this article is to describe the basic parameters of a value-oriented approach to assessing the education results as a possible basis for the methodology for assessment of the educational work in the general system of education. The key methods we used were content analysis of text sources, cross-reference analysis, comparative analysis, and humanitarian examination of juristic documents. The interpretation of education as a unity of teaching and upbringing for the state as a key subject of education, which (...) forms the requirements for the results and organization of the educational process, sets the task of assessing personal, subject and metasubject educational results. The philosophy of education faces a challenge regarding the determination of the expediency of assessing educational results, the conceptual basis of assessment, fixing the orientation of assessment on the conditions of educational organzations' activities, and on the results achieved by students. A practical managerial task is to develop an attitude towards using formalized procedures and methods for assessing educational results. The article proposes a value-oriented approach to assessing the educational work in the general education system of the Russian Federation based on an analysis of key regulatory documents of the Russian education system, the interpretation of upbringing as a process of forming value-semantic attitudes. The approach is based on identifying three main groups of value orientations to build a possible system of indicators that fix educational results: "Value orientations related to life, health and safety"; "Value orientations of social interaction"; "Value orientations of personal development". Values are an essential element in regulating human behavior, which guides the process of defining goals and choosing the means to achieve them. Values acquire a functional character in value orientations and can serve as indicators of education results at the level of students as a collective subject. It seems impossible to single out the contribution of individual actors to the output of education and to avoid contradictions between the value-semantic attitudes that exist in the space of modern culture. For the education system, the subject of assessing the quality of upbringing as a purposeful process can be both the quality of the organization of upbringing work and the outcomes of upbringing efforts. The results of education as a manifestation of value orientations in the activities of students can be considered based on quantitative and qualitative indicators, which is significant for making managerial decisions at different levels. (shrink)

Technological shifts within the video game industry have enabled many games to evolve into platforms for repeated expenditure, rather than a one-time purchase product. Monetising a game as a service is challenging, and there is concern that some monetisation strategies may constitute unfair or exploitative practices which are not adequately covered by existing law. We asked 1104 players of video games to describe a time when they had been exposed to transactions which were perceived to be misleading, aggressive or unfair. (...) We found 35 separate techniques over eight domains: game dynamics designed to drive spending, product not meeting expectations, monetisation of basic quality of life, predatory advertising, in-game currency, pay to win, general presence of microtransactions and other. Notably, several of these reported practices seem to not align with existing UK consumer protection regulations. We discuss this potential misalignment, as well as the implications of identifying what players believe to be problematic monetisation techniques. (shrink)

A chemical substance is instantiated in the material world by a number of quantities of such substance, placed in different locations. A change of location implies a change in the net of relationships entertained by the QCS with the region wherein it is found. This fact entails changes of the ontological status of the CS, as this is not fully determined by the inherent features of the CS and includes a relevant relational contribution. In order to demonstrate this thesis, we (...) have chosen to analyse the status of quantities of a same CS that are synchronically located in different spacetime regions: a synthetic lab, a lab where the QCS is turned into a material, an industrial plant, the market where the QCS gets a price and a dump waste where the QCS is discarded, respectively: Chemical substance Open image in new window material Open image in new window product Open image in new window goods Open image in new window wasteThe use of first-order predicate logic, mereology and locative logic allows carrying out a regimentation process that highlights the ontological commitments implied by the formal expressions through which each element of the aforementioned series can be described. The presence of relational properties discloses the systemic nature of the CS instantiated within a spacetime region. The implications of such an aspect are discussed. (shrink)

Review of Marta Dyczok, Oxana Gaman-Golutvina (eds.), Media, Democracy and Freedom. The Post-Communist Experience, (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009).

This paper presents the development of the US political realism from the period between the two World Wars to the Cold War era included. It underlines how the US realist international theory developed, in opposition to the liberal thought, from the pessimistic anthropological premises rooted in the European classical political thought. Then the paper analyzes the theoretical impact of the nuclear threat on the US realist reflection about human nature in order to inquire tentative developments of this tradition of thought.

Ganeri's [2018] discussion of mental time travel and the self focuses on remembering the past, but has less to say with respect to the status of future-oriented mental time travel. This paper aims to disambiguate the relation between prospection and the self from the framework of Ganeri's interpretation of three Buddhist views—by Buddhaghosa, Vasubandhu, and Dignaga. Is the scope of Ganeri's discussion confined to the past, or is there a stronger assumption that future thought always entails self-representation? I argue that (...) if mental time travel towards the past and towards the future are continuous, both past and future thought should be possible independently of self-representation. An assumption of discontinuity however would enable the employment of the self as one of the defining differences between remembering the past and imagining the future. The two options can be further contrasted on the basis of distinct ways of constructing past/future scenarios (field vs. observer perspective), modes of experiencing time (known vs. lived), and the origin of mental time travel (episodic vs. semantic memory). I further assess the compatibility of future-oriented thought with the three Buddhist views on the basis of these coordinates. (shrink)

This paper discusses von Wright's theory of causation from Explanation and Understanding and Causality and Determinism in contemporary context. I argue that there are two important common points that von Wright's view shares with the version of manipulability currently supported by Woodward: the analysis of causal relations in a system modelled on controlled experiments, and the explanation of manipulability through counterfactuals - with focus on the counterfactual account of unmanipulable causes. These points also mark von Wright's departure from previous action-based (...) theories of causation. Owing to these two features, I argue that, upon classifying different versions of manipulability theories, von Wright's view should be placed closer to the interventionist approach than to the agency theory, where it currently stands. Furthermore, given its relevance in contemporary context, which this paper aims to establish, I claim that von Wright's theory can be employed to solve present problems connected to manipulability approaches to causation. (shrink)

This is the final draft of Chapter 4 of the Volume 'The Birth of String Theory' edited by A. Cappelli, E. Castellani, F. Colomo, and P. Di Vecchia, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

This article examines how specific realist and projectivist versions of manipulability theories of causation deal with the problem of objectivity. Does an agent-dependent concept of manipulability imply that conflicting causal claims made by agents with different capacities can come out as true? In defence of the projectivist stance taken by the agency view, I argue that if the agent’s perspective is shown to be uniform across different agents, then the truth-values of causal claims do not vary arbitrarily and, thus, reach (...) a satisfactory level of objectivity. My argument connects Price’s considerations on the situation of deliberation, whose structure, common to all agents, is the same with respect to both decision making and causal claims on a concept inspired by Douglas’s classification of objectivity of thought processes: the perspective of the detached agent. I further argue that, despite his agent-independent concept of intervention, Woodward’s claim of a stronger objectivity standard cannot be achieved, as the relativity of causal concepts to a variable set brings about the issue of the agent’s choice of variables. Consequently, a more permissive objectivity standard applies to both views. (shrink)

In the context of astrophysical modeling at the solar system scale, we investigate the modalities implied by taking into account different levels of detail at which phenomena can be considered. In particular, by framing the analysis in terms of the how-possibly/how-actually distinction, we address the debated question as to whether the degree of plausibility is tightly linked to the degree of detail. On the grounds of concrete examples, we argue that, also in the astrophysical context examined, this is not necessarily (...) the case. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are notable similarities between Collingwood’s method of investigating absolute presuppositions and contemporary strands of pragmatism, focusing on two areas - the critique of realism and causation. It is first argued that there are methodological similarities between Collingwood’s argument against realism and his Kantian-inspired critique of metaphysics, and Putnam’s critique of externalism. Regarding causation, it is argued that Collingwood’s view and Price’s pragmatist approach have a common method – investigating causation in the context of specific human (...) practices. Both authors place causation in the framework of scientific inquiry as opposed to making it the subject of the inquiry itself. Thus, Collingwood’s work proves to be in line with current metaphilosophical debates, particularly in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

¿Qué significa "fracasar" para un naturalista metodológico? ¿Está éste abocado al escepticismo, y es este un fracaso? Para responder a estas preguntas, realizaré (1) un análisis de lo que se considera "naturalismo" en Hume, desde el que analizaré (2) la crisis escéptica narrada en la conclusión del Libro I del Tratado. Allí defenderé que la metafórica utilizada, engarzada con el concepto de fracaso, permite dos lecturas: una que une necesariamente naturalismo metodológico y escepticismo mitigado, y otra que no. No obstante, (...) concluiré que en ambos casos se dibuja una misma experiencia de límite que permite construir ciencia y filosofía no-excepcionalistas. (shrink)

This paper investigates how an introductory philosophy course influences the moral and political development of undergraduate students in a Liberal Arts university in Central Asia. Within a context of rapid changes characteristic of transitional societies—reflected in the organization of higher education—philosophy provides students with the means to reason about moral and political values in a way that overcomes the old ideological tenets as well as contemporary reluctance to theoretical inquiry. Studying philosophy provides a remedy for deficiencies in both secondary and (...) higher education, by improving general reading and reasoning skills, that enable the development of moral reasoning. Furthermore, familiarity with major works of moral and political philosophy can help students comprehend the patterns of social change, as well as surmount the issue of unsatisfactory theoretical foundations for social science. (shrink)

After briefly reconstructing how and when anthropogenic climate change awareness and nature conservation emerged in Western societies (section “Introduction. The Discovery of Climate Change and the Beginning of Nature Conservation”), a comparison between “old” and today’s conservationism is offered (section “Old and New Conservationism”), and two cases of nature conservation motivated by climate change are presented: nature-based solutions, and the “Global Deal for Nature” (section “Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change”). Then, the End of Nature claim is discussed, and the main (...) features of nature – and nature conservation – in the Anthropocene are sketched (section “The End of Nature as We Know It”). Finally, some remarks concerning what remains of pristine nature and preservationism are offered (section “Conclusion. What Remains of Preservationism”). (shrink)

The article analyzes the interdisciplinary methodology of city research within the philosophical and cultural approach. The authors argue that at present, besides sociological and economic approaches to the interpretation of the city, the cultural and philosophical examination of city is of special interest. It combines both theoretical issues and the practical aspects. The authors present the philosophical and cultural analysis of the city as well as the general concept of chronotopia. The concept of chronotope, proposed by M. M. Bakhtin and (...) his followers, is most often used as a tool for the analysis of fiction. According to the authors, the spatio-temporal diagnostics of the city also has significant theoretical and practical potential. The authors discuss various literary and philosophical texts analyzing the feautures and evolution of the “soul of the city” (written by Russians N.P. Antsiferov, I.M. Grevs, Y.M. Lotman, M.S. Kagan, I.I. Mitin as well as by foreign scholars Y. Slezkine, K. Schlogel, exploring the chronotope of Soviet cities). The article presents other modern Russian and foreign researchers who directly collaborated with the authors of this research in joint urban projects: M. Golovanivskaya (“syntax” of urban squares), “Ural matrix” (A. Ivanov, I. Lisovets, E. Trubina), chronotope of a small Israeli city (E. Rimon), Stanford chronotopes (J. Bender, D.E. Wellbery). Since the city, like any cultural phenomenon, manifests itself within a set of spatio-temporal coordinates, the chronotope can be considered as the basic tool for its philosophical and cultural interpretation. The article substantiates the practical aspects of applying chronotopia to the analysis of the city: chronotopes of the past and everyday life in cities of certain types, strategic opportunities and boundaries of the chronotopes of a given city. The authors concludes that the chro-notopia of city is a transdisciplinary field in the cultural and philosophical studies of the city. (shrink)

Even after the demise of the influential Uno School in the 1980s, Japanese economists have been continuously engaged in the categorial reconstruction of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy, especially the theory of value and money. Writing in the 1980s–2000s, authors of the ‘post-Uno School’, such as Ebitsuka Akira, Mukai Kimitoshi, Kataoka Kōji etc., broadened the value-theoretical views of Uno School orthodoxy to include, among others, the Neue Marx-Lektüre (predominantly H.-G. Backhaus and M. Heinrich) and the French economists C. Benetti and (...) J. Cartelier. This paper will confront the ‘post-Uno School’s’ reading of Marx’s theory of value, which poses the theories of value and money as unreconcilable, leading them to discard the theory of value in favour of a ‘monetary approach’. We show that the dismissal of value theory leads to an introduction of Baileyan and neoclassical elements into Marx’s theory, which we believe to be both theoretically and practically precarious. (shrink)

This study explores the use of deictic gestures, vocalizations and words compared to content-loaded, or representational gestures and words in children’s early one- and two-element utterances. We analyze the spontaneous production of four children, observed longitudinally from 10–12 to 24–25 months of age, focusing on the components of children’s utterances, the information encoded, and the temporal relationship between gestures and vocalizations or words that were produced in combination. Results indicate that while the gestural and vocal modalities are meaningfully and temporally (...) integrated form the earliest stages, deictic and representational elements are unevenly distributed in the gestural vs. the vocal modality, and in one vs. two-element utterances. The findings suggest that while gestural deixis plays a primary role in allowing children to define and articulate their vocal productions, representational skills appear to be markedly more constrained in the gestural as compared to the vocal modality. (shrink)

Initially conceived as an interview with the hybrid media artist Brian Goeltzenleuchter, this text gradually took the form of a conversation on various issues regarding olfactory art and the aesthetic significance of smell. Framing the artistic uses of odours in the context of contemporary art, the paper discloses some of its foundational traits, variations, and underlying impulses. By commenting on Goeltzenleuchter’s olfactory artworks through a philosophical perspective, this contribution covers a number of subjects including the notion of atmosphere, the socio-cultural (...) values and narratives conveyed by scents, the suggestive relationship between spaces and aromas, and the phenomenology of smells as compared to the experience of sounds. Consistent with how smell perception unfolds, the dialogue flows in a form that is not rigidly structured but airy, ephemeral, and fluid, developing a sequence of insights whose aim is, rather than scrutinising a specific topic, to evoke the essence of olfactory poetics as a whole. (shrink)

Introduction. The technical art of cinematography is traditionally regarded as a synthetic unity of scientific and technological progress and creativity. The possibility of unlimited copying of movie plots makes it possible to extend the authority of cinema to broad areas of public attention and forms a mass man. At the same time, the fact that cinema is, first of all, an experiment with time, organized by technical means, remains behind the scenes. The purpose of the study. If the core issues (...) of humanity are centered on the problem of life and death, on the problem of mastering and overcoming time, then cinema clearly shows that humanity has a ready-made embodied model of its desire. Methods. The authors use a phenomenological method that allows one to see the temporal fabric behind the “opaque body” of cinema. The eidetic reduction to the foundations of the constructed film plot temporal reality is complemented by the structuralist method of analyzing technical devices and technological methods of the film industry. Scientific novelty of the research. The ontology of the technical art of cinema goes beyond rationality and pragmatics. By launching a special kind of experiment with time, cinema technologies allow the viewer to be present in the bifurcation moments of temporal metamorphoses that connect different temporal modes. The temporal fabric is subject to the plot logic. Results. In cinema, time is constructed by technical means. The nature of this construction allows us to see the layered structure of time, the intersections of time flows, influxes, reverse time orders and stops in time. The cinema technique clearly shows that time barriers are conditional. Conclusions. Cinema dissolves any empirical density, creating gaps in it and transitions to other worlds. The connection between the worlds is carried out by constructed time. Time is taken out of objects and, obeying the course of the narrative, expands the reality of the world. (shrink)

Introduction. The article analyzes the paradox of modern philosophy and worldview, in which the stated “death of God”, “death of man”, “of author”, “of nature” does not cancel their obvious existence, but in other modes. Topos and functions of classical concepts that define human nature are replaced by objects of information technology activity. The author believes that the technical phenomenon penetrates into modern living processes and partly replaces them. The idea of death and crisis of the transcendental, divine, human and (...) natural is accompanied by their replacement by technical processes, their specific “revival”. In this regard, human nature itself undergoes certain semantic and material transformations due to necessity. The work describes and analyzes these transformations. The purpose of the work is a specific analysis of human nature in modern scientific and technical doctrine. The author proves that the loss of his ontological status by a person, the reduction of a person to the level of things or biological principles lead to strengthening the foundations of biopower, biopolitics and other forms and methods of influencing a person against his free will in the world. Methods. The author uses critical analysis of philosophical theses and ideological statements. The work uses hermeneutic, phenomenological humanitarian techniques and procedures, as well as the method of comparative analysis and historical reconstruction of scientific facts. Scientific novelty. The scientific novelty of the work consists in an attempt to turn the science about man to its foundations, namely, to the foundation of a free, choosing and born in a natural context personality. The novelty of scientific achievements, progressive technologies, technical inventions and new social dispositions does not negate the question of the human nature essence, which is still new and relevant at the present time. (shrink)

The problem of the legal person is a central issue in legal philosophy and the theory of law. In this article I examine the semantic meaning of the concept of the person in Russian philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century, considered to be the "Golden Age" of Russian legal thought. This provides an overview of the conception of the personality in the context of different legal approaches (theory of natural law, legal positivism, the psychological legal doctrine, and the (...) sociological school of law). I indicate a polemic among the theories of the person and attempts to create an integral concept of the legal subject. In addition I present an analysis of the relation between the concepts of the legal subject and the moral person, which personify fundamental features of law and morality. In order to demarcate the notions of individual and the legal subject, I focus on doctrines of the artificial person or the juridical person. (shrink)

The re-emergence of a diffuse need for community in the context of the global age compels us to rethink the concept of "community" in the light of the changes and transformations that are unfolding today. The community cannot be considered as a residual phenomenon of resistance to the processes of modernization, but must be recognized as a new phenomenon which accompanies the processes of globalization. The following contribution investigates the fundamental sources of the need for community in the world today, (...) and identifies principally two: 1) community as a response to the pathologies of individualism (insecurity, loss of meaning, atomism, loss of solidarity); 2) community as a response to the dynamics of exclusion that affect societies that are ever more multicultural in character. Also if community largely tends today to assume pathological forms that harbour the potential for conflict and violence, the need for community is legitimate insofar as it expresses a need for belonging and solidarity, a need for the affirmation of identities and a demand for recognition. In my view, the global era offers the bases for sharing in this sense insofar as it gives rise to the idea of the community of the human kind, a community united by interdependence of processes and events, brought together by its shared vulnerability in the face of the new risks and challenges that are produced by globalization. (shrink)

Disease-related challenges are often associated with perceived uncertainties in individuals, triggering attempts to cope with the situation. Our study aims to understand patients’ coping strategies regarding health information-seeking behaviors (HISBs). It is guided by the Uncertainty Management Theory, and seeks to grant insights into multi-channel HISB by describing how uses of interpersonal and media channels interact to cope with uncertainties, and how trust influences the process of multi-channel HISB. Patients diagnosed with osteoarthrosis (N = 34) participated in qualitative semi-structured interviews, (...) from which five patterns of multi-channel HISB, ranging from a focus on the physician to a focus on the internet, were identified. These patterns are distinguished by underlying functions of trust – including trust serving as an additional coping strategy, and as an important influencing factor for perceiving information as meaningful – and by whether information needs remain and patients turn to multiple sources. These findings form the basis for further theory development considering the iterative nature of HISB and the role of trust. (shrink)