The goal of synthetic biology is to create artificial organisms. To achieve this it is essential to understand what life is. Metabolism-replacement systems, or (M, R)-systems, constitute a theory of life developed by Robert Rosen, characterized in the statement that organisms are closed to efficient causation, which means that they must themselves produce all the catalysts they need. This theory overlaps in part with other current theories, including autopoiesis, the chemoton, and autocatalytic sets, all of them invoking some idea of (...) closure. A simple model of an (M, R)-system has been implemented in the computer, and behaves in ways that may shed light on the requirements for a prebiotic self-organizing system. In addition to a trivial steady state in which nothing happens, it can establish a non-trivial steady state in which all intermediates have finite concentrations, with their rates of degradation balanced by their rates of synthesis. The system can be regenerated from the set of food components plus a single intermediate, and maintain itself in that state indefinitely, despite continuous degradation. At the very low compartment volumes that may have existed in prebiotic conditions, for example in cavities in minerals, or in micelles formed by simple amphiphiles, statistical fluctuations in the numbers of molecules need to be taken into account. With the stochastic approach there is no non-trivial steady state in strict mathematical terms, because the system will always collapse to the trivial state after sufficient time. However, the average time before collapse is so long for volumes greater than $10^{-19}\;{\textsc{l}}$ (much smaller than the volume of the order of $10^{-15}\;{\textsc{l}}$ for a typical bacterial cell) that for practical purposes the self-maintaining state of non-null concentrations becomes significant, recalling the situation of bistability that is observed in deterministic analysis. In turn, there exists a minimum size below which the self-organizing system cannot maintain itself on chemically relevant time scales. The value of the critical volume depends on the particular concentrations and rate constants assumed, but the principle could apply generally. (shrink)

This paper reviews the different meanings of vulnerability in the AI Act (AIA). We show that the AIA follows a rather established tradition of looking at vulnerability as a trait or a state of certain individuals and groups. It also includes a promising account of vulnerability as a relation but does not clarify if and how AI changes this relation. We spot the missing piece of the AIA: the lack of recognition that vulnerability is an inherent feature of all human-AI (...) interactions, varying in degree based on design choices and modes of interaction. Finally, we show how such a meaning of vulnerability may be incorporated into the AIA by interpreting the concept of “specific social situation” in Article 5 (b). (shrink)

Inspired by Aristotle, Franz Brentano revived the concept of intentionality to characterize the domain of mental phenomena studied by descriptive psychology. Edmund Husserl, while discarding much of Brentano?s conceptual framework and presuppositions, located intentionality at the core of his science of pure consciousness (phenomenology). Martin Heidegger, Husserl?s assistant from 1919 to 1923, dropped all reference to intentionality and consciousness in Being and Time (1927), and so appeared to break sharply with his avowed mentors, Brentano and Husserl. Some recent commentators have (...) sided with Heidegger and have endorsed his critique of Husserl and Brentano as still caught up in epistemological, representationalist approaches to intentionality. I argue that Heidegger is developing Husserl, focusing in particular on the ontological dimension of intentionality, not reversing or abandoning his account. Heidegger?s criticisms of representationalism merely repeat Husserl?s. Furthermore, I argue that Husserl?s account of cognitive intentionality, which recognizes the importance of the disinterested theoretical attitude for scientific knowledge, has been underestimated and misunderstood by Heidegger, who treats scientific cognition as a deficient form of practice. In short, Heidegger is more dependent on Husserl than he ever publicly acknowledged. (shrink)

Gurwitsch is the philosopher of consciousness par excellence. This paper presents a systematic exposition of Aron Gurwitsch’s main contribution to phenomenology, namely his theory of the ‘field of consciousness’ with its a priori structure of theme, thematic field, margin. I present Gurwitsch as an orthodox defender of Husserlian descriptive phenomenology, albeit one who rejected Husserl’s reduction to the transcendental ego and Husserl’s overt idealism. He maintained with Husserl the priority of consciousness as the source of all meaning and validity but (...) he rejected Husserl’s transcendental idealism in favour of a ‘levels of existence’ approach. Gurwitsch’s project was to show the continuity between Gestalt psychology and Husserlian eidetics. I explain his concepts of theme, thematic field, margin and horizon as a consistent development of Husserlian thought. I conclude by claiming that neither Gurwitsch nor Husserl fully appreciate how the horizons of an entity can support radical novelty and the application of entirely new contexts. (shrink)

Creativity plus ethics anticipated a greater common good -- Gadget controllers -- Body shapers -- Emotion tuners -- Self definers -- Social connectors.

This paper addresses the critiques based on trade-offs and normativity presented in response to our target article proposing the Public Health Emergency Risk and Crisis Communication (PHERCC) framework. These critiques highlight the ethical dilemmas in crisis communication, particularly the balance between promoting public autonomy through transparent information and the potential stigmatization of specific population groups, as illustrated by the discussion of the mpox outbreak among men who have sex with men. This critique underscores the inherent tension between communication effectiveness and (...) autonomy versus fairness and equity. In response, our paper reiterates the adaptability of the PHERCC framework, emphasizing its capacity to tailor messages to diverse audiences, thereby reducing potential stigmatization and misinformation. Through community engagement and feedback integration, the PHERCC framework aims to optimize the effectiveness of communication strategies while addressing ethical concerns. Furthermore, by involving affected communities in the communication strategy from the onset, the framework seeks to minimize ethical trade-offs and enhance the acceptance and effectiveness of public health messages. (shrink)

Educating the Virtues David Carr Routledge, 1991. Pp. 304. ISBN 0?415?05746?9. £35. The Philosophical Theology of St Thomas Aquinas By Leo J. Elders E. J. Brill, 1990. Pp. 332. ISBN 0?04?09156?4. $74.36. The State and Justice: An Essay in Political Theory By Milton Fisk Cambridge University Press, 1990. Pp. x + 391. ISBN 0?521?38966?6. £10.95 pbk. Perspectives on Language and Thought: Interrelations in Development Edited by S. A. Gelman and J. P. Byrnes Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xii + 524. (...) ISBN 0?521?37497?9. £50. Aristotle's First Principles By T. H. Irwin Oxford University Press, 1989. Pp. xviii + 702. ISBN 0?198?24717?6. £17.50 Pbk. Truth and Eros: Foucault, Lacan, and the Question of Ethics By John Rajchman Routledge, 1991. Pp. 155. ISBN 0?415?90380?7. £10.99. Logical Forms By Mark Sainsbury Blackwell, 1991. Pp. 408. ISBN 0?631?17777?9. £11.95. Form and Transformation. A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus By Frederic M. Schroeder McGill?Queen's University Press, 1992. Pp. xiv + 136. ISBN 0?7735?1016?8. £34.95. Did The Greeks Believe Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination By Paul Veyne, translated by Paula Wissing The University of Chicago Press, 1988. Pp. 161. ISBN 0?226?85434?5. £8.75 Pbk. What is Philosophy? By Dietrich von Hildebrand Routledge, 1991. Pp. lvii + 242. ISBN 0?415?02584?2. £12.99. (shrink)

This paper investigates the ethical implications of applying open science (OS) practices on disruptive technologies, such as generative AIs. Disruptive technologies, characterized by their scalability and paradigm-shifting nature, have the potential to generate significant global impact, and carry a risk of dual use. The tension arises between the moral duty of OS to promote societal benefit by democratizing knowledge and the risks associated with open dissemination of disruptive technologies. Van Rennselaer Potter's ‘third bioethics’ serves as the founding horizon for an (...) ethical framework to govern these tensions. Through theoretical analysis and concrete examples, this paper explores how OS can contribute to a better future or pose threats. Finally, we provide an ethical framework for the intersection between OS and disruptive technologies that tries to go beyond the simple ‘as open as possible’ tenet, considering openness as an instrumental value for the pursuit of other ethical values rather than as a principle with prima facie moral significance. (shrink)

Models of deliberative dialogue are fundamental for developing autonomous systems that support human practical reasoning. The question discussed in this paper is whether existing models are able to...

In Kafka's work, Benjamin detects a gesture of shame, which he characterizes as historico-philosophic (geschichtsphilosophisch). He considers Kafka's gesture of shame to be philosophic in its opposition to myth, which is closure concerning history. In its elaboration of Kafka's gesture, moreover, Benjamin's analysis itself becomes a gesture of shame and thus somehow “literary.” This does not detract from the notion that the gesture—in Kafka's work and in Benjamin's criticism—remains philosophic. Kafka's literary work is philosophic in shaming mythic interpretations of it; (...) Benjamin's philosophic criticism continues this gesture by advancing shame about mythic tendencies either in the work or in its reception. Without pathos, Kafka presents astonished shame at mythic human order and is attentive to exceptions to, deviations from, such order. Benjamin's criticism continues the latter attentiveness, but the attentiveness, the philosophic element in Kafka's literature, is also betrayed by Benjamin in some respects. (shrink)

In this paper, I will analyze how the conceptualization of the term ‘Basqueness’, and the meaning of ‘being Basque’, have been instrumental in determining the way in which citizens of the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) have chosen to identify themselves. What it means to be Basque has experienced a significant evolution from its ethnic and linguistic origins to being a matter of feeling and doing; however, the way Basque citizens felt about Basqueness, and what actions participated in Basqueness, was substantially (...) influenced by the climate of political polarization, the appropriation by nationalism of Basque symbols and features and the violence of terrorist organization ETA, as well as the justification of its crimes. Working from the semantic theory of Brandomian inferentialism, I want to show how these factors functioned as inferential relations that constituted the meaning of Basqueness. As these inferences changed with the dissolution of ETA and the easing of political polarization, what it means to be Basque has subsequently changed its meaning, which might contribute to explaining why in recent years an increasing number of people in the BAC have incorporated Basqueness into their mixed or liminal identities. (shrink)

In "Evangelium Vitae" Pope John Paul II calls for a renewal of culture to combat the culture of death. He criticizes various aspects of a pluralistic, liberal society--a type of society that he claims is based on moral relativism and a view of democracy that becomes a substitute for moral law. He maintains that such a view trivializes moral choice. In this essay I argue that John Rawls's notion of a liberal society as an overlapping consensus of comprehensive doctrines can (...) avoid relativism while allowing for reasonable debate among opposed positions. While Rawls maintains that comprehensive doctrines, including religions, should employ a form of public reason that is not a unique feature of any one comprehensive doctrine, I argue that this requirement is too strong. One is often justified in appealing to features of comprehensive doctrines other than one's own, features that are unique to the doctrines themselves. Such an appeal does not pretend to be neutral as public reason would seem to be. In the final section of the paper I discuss some suggestions made by the Pope regarding actions in civil society that are independent of debates about legal change and suggest some ways in which they might contribute to desired cultural transformation. (shrink)

The importance of negotiation has increased in the last years as a relevant interaction to solve conflicts in multi-agent systems. Although there are many different scenarios, a typical negotiating...

In this paper11This is a version of a paper originally presented at ArgMAS 2014. we address some limitations with proposals concerning an argumentation scheme for practical reasoning grounded on ac...

This paper will study the Hanian critique of technology and dataism, as well as its implications. For this purpose, we will investigate the Heideggerian bases on which his thought is based, which show the modern essence of technology as a current stage of the metaphysics of presence. It will then be shown how the Hanian thesis accepts these premises in order to present dataism as an intervening agent in our horizons of understanding, as well as an element of contemporary systems (...) of control. Despite the value of this contribution, which challenges the alleged neutrality of technology, its adherence to the Heideggerian thesis prevents us from conceiving of other modes of uncovering and unfolding the poietic facet of technique. (shrink)

RESUMO:É notório que, em sua discussão da questão da verdade, Hegel distingue dois termos técnicos, correção (Richtigkeit) e verdade (Wahrheit). É notório também que, entre os dois conceitos, Hegel considera o conceito de verdade como aquele filosoficamente mais relevante. Por este motivo, diferentemente do conceito de verdade, tem sido objeto dedebate se Hegel teria considerado o conceito de correção como possuindo alguma função teórica positiva no contexto do seu pensamento maduro. Neste artigo defenderei a tese segundo a qual Hegel teria (...) formulado uma série de reflexões coerentes acerca do conceito de correção que resultam relevantes no contexto do seu pensamento maduro, mesmo concedendo que tais reflexões não tenham sido desenvolvidas na forma de umateoria explícita, autônoma e separada da teoria da verdade. O meu objetivo é tentar resgatar a significação positiva das considerações hegelianas acerca da correção sem superestimar seu alcance e seu estatuto teórico. Abstract:It is known that, in his discussion of the question about truth, Hegel distinguishes between two technical terms: correctness (Richtigkeit) and truth (Wahrheit). It is also known that Hegel considers the concept of truth as being philosophically more relevant than the concept of correctness. For this reason, scholars have asked themselves whether or not Hegel considered his concept of correctness as having any theoretical value within the context of his mature system. In this paper I will claim that Hegel puts forward a series of coherent views about correctness thatare relevant for his mature thinking, even though he did not develop these views as an explicit, autonomous theory of correctness which is separated from his theory of truth. My aim is to try to highlight the positive meaning of Hegel’s reflections about correctness without overestimating its reach. (shrink)

Understanding the meaning of history is central both to Husserl’s Crisis project and to his mature conception of transcendental phenomenology as a description of full concrete living in plurality. In this paper I examine the mature Husserl’s conception of history (variously: Historie, Geschichte) including his account of the development of Western (i.e. “European” – as in the very title of the Crisis itself) culture, which focuses specifically on the emergence of theoretical reflecti...

Résumé Dans cet article, j’explore l’idéalisme d’Érigène selon ses propres termes et conditions, en tentant de saisir la nature spécifique de son application théologique, métaphysique et épistémologique de la relation entre être et non-être. Je suggère que les idéalistes allemands ont raison de considérer Érigène comme l’un des leurs pour sa reconnaissance de l’univers comme un processus d’articulation de soi et de compréhension de soi de l’esprit divin. L’explication d’Érigène de la nature de toutes les existences comme essentiellement immatérielles, son (...) classement ontologique du monde apparemment physique, matériel et sensible sous le niveau de l’esprit et dans un sens spécifique, dépendant de l’esprit, et sa compréhension de toutes choses comme contenues dans l’esprit divin (et par extension dans l’esprit humain comme imago dei ) doivent être considérés non seulement comme constituant un système philosophique original à part entière, mais aussi comme un idéalisme dynamique et intellectualiste. La nature infinie d’Érigène implique l’interaction dialectique du caché et de la manifestation, du néant et de l’être, de l’esprit inconnu de lui-même qui en vient à la connaissance de soi dans un savoir et un non-savoir infinis. (shrink)

Authority and Estrangement addresses a set of questions about self-knowledge and seeks to answer them in the context of the broader differences between the first-person and third-person perspectives on oneself. Attention to these broader differences takes the discussion from epistemology to moral psychology, and seeks to relate some of the issues of contemporary philosophy of mind to the concerns with self-consciousness in post-Kantian thought.

A partir de un abordaje plural a los temas del sujeto, la modernidad y la decolonización, este volumen ofrece una imprescindible reflexión sobre aspectos pujantes de nuestro tiempo: ¿cómo redefinir la noción de sujeto de cara a los procesos de globalización, que incluyen dinámicas migratorias, flujos fantasmáticos de capitales reales y simbólicos y proliferación de mundos virtuales? ¿A partir de qué principios se negocia la relación entre contingencia y universalidad, ética y política, cultura y mercado? ¿Qué alcances tienen los proyectos (...) decolonizadores en un mundo marcado por la desaparición de la utopía? ¿A qué formas inéditas de hegemonía y subalteridad nos enfrenta el nuevo (des)orden global? Finalmente, ¿cuál es el lugar de América Latina en el espacio post o trans-nacional? Reconocidos pensadores entregan en este libro elaboraciones fundamentales para la comprensión de estas cuestiones, en las que se resume buena parte del pensamiento filosófico de nuestro tiempo. (shrink)