Can we sensibly attribute some of the happenings in our world to the agency of some of the things around us? We do this all the time, but there are conceptual challenges purporting to show that attributable agency, and specifically one of its most important subspecies, human free agency, is incoherent. We address these challenges in a novel way: rather than merely rebutting specific arguments, we discuss a concrete model that we claim positively illustrates attributable agency in an indeterministic setting. (...) The model, recently introduced by one of the authors in the context of artificial intelligence, shows that an agent with a sufficiently complex memory organization can employ indeterministic happenings in a meaningful way. We claim that these considerations successfully counter arguments against the coherence of libertarian free will. (shrink)

Dass "Wahrnehmung" sich historisch verändert, ist in den gegenwärtigen Debatten ebenso präsent wie die Einsicht, dass "Geschichte" selbst hochgradig wahrnehmungsabhängig ist. Die Autoren dieses Bandes erörtern die wechselseitigen Beziehungen von Wahrnehmung und Geschichte nicht allein theoretisch, sondern vorrangig materialbezogen - mit Blick auf konkrete Fallbeispiele. Das Spektrum der Beiträge reicht von der Erörterung der historischen Vermittlungsfunktion technischer Medien und verschiedener Künste bis zur Frage, welcher Logik Wahrnehmung und Vergessen der jüngsten und eigenen Geschichte unterliegen. Michel Foucault und Marshall McLuhan werden (...) als Vordenker einer solchen Aisthesis materialis, zu der hier "Markierungen" geliefert werden, begriffen. Beide kommen mit einem programmatischen Text auch selbst zu Wort. (shrink)

In 1956 Jacques Lacan proposed as interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's "Purloined Letter" that at once challenged literary theorists and revealed a radically new conception of psychoanalysis. Lacan's far-reaching claims about language and truth provoked a vigorous critique by Jacques Derrida, whose essay in turn has spawned further responses from Barbara Johnson, Jane Gallop, Irene Harvey, Norman Holland, and others. The Purloined Poe brings Poe's story together with these readings to provide, in the words of the editors, "a structured exercuse (...) in the elaboration of textual interpretation. The Purloined Poe reprints the full text of Poe's story, followed by Lacan's "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter,'" along with extensive commentary by the editors. Marie Bonaparte's and Shoshana Felman's discussions of traditional and contemporary approaches to "psychoanalysing" texts precede Alan Bass's new translation of Derrida's "Purveyor of Truth." The subsequent essays join the Lacan-Derrida debate and offer alternative readings by literary theorists, philosophers, psychologists, and psychoanalysts. The Purloined Poe convenes much of the most important current scholarship on "The Purloined Letter" and presents a rich sampling of poststructuralist discourse. (shrink)

The mind as a whole escapes objective studies because belief in mind- independent reality is self-contradictory and by definition excludes subjective experience (awareness, 'consciousness') from reality. The mind's center therefore vanishes in studies which imply exclusive objectivism or empiricism. This conceptual difficulty can be counteracted by acknowledging that all mental and world structures arise within an unstructured origin- and-matrix for knowledge-structures and beliefs. The mind's structure is thus at the center of reality. Use of such a zero-structure reference can also (...) help to clarify some related conceptual difficulties and to bridge the gap between the 'two cultures'. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to establish that free agency, which is a capacity of many animals including human beings, is compatible with indeterminism: an indeterministic world allows for the existence of free agency. The question of the compatibility of free agency and indeterminism is less discussed than its mirror image, the question of the compatibility of free agency and determinism. It is, however, of great importance for our self-conception as free agents in our (arguably) indeterministic world. We begin (...) by explicating the notions of indeterminism and free agency and by clarifying the interrelation of free agency and the human-specific notion of free will. We then situate our claim of the compatibility of free agency and indeterminism precisely in the landscape of the current debate on freedom and determinism, exposing an unhappy asymmetry in that debate. Then we proceed to make our case by describing the mathematically precise, physically motivated model of projective simulation, which employs indeterminism as a central resource for agency modeling. We argue that an indeterministic process of deliberation modeled by the dynamics of projective simulation can exemplify free agency under indeterminism, thereby establishing our compatibility claim: Free agency can develop and thrive in an indeterministic world. (shrink)

End of April 2021, the European Commission published its study on New Genomic Techniques (NGTs). The study involved a consultation of Member States and stakeholders. This study reveals a split on whether current legislation should be maintained or adapted to take account of scientific progress and the risk level of NGT products. This split was predictable. New technological developments challenge both ethical viewpoints and regulatory institutions; and contribute to the growing divide between science and society that value ‘technological innovations’ differently. (...) Such controversies are often characterized as ‘unstructured’ because of nearly unbridgeable positions on entangled scientific and value-laden issues. Initiatives for stakeholder involvement, such as consultation or participation, often focus on reaching a ‘shared vision’ without exploring the diverse societal concerns and values behind these positions. To resolve the EU stalemate in NGT regulation, we advocate to bring back politics in the EU decision-making process instead of hiding it under the veil of science, the need for regulatory change and public support. A more productive and justified use of genuine stakeholder participation is possible, if participants and deliberation design meet the criteria of what we call _participation ethics_. Drawing from our applied experience exploring the ethics of genetic modification, we believe that this approach can lead to more robust political decision-making and restore societal confidence in the governance of contested issues such as NGTs. (shrink)

According to a mainstream position in contemporary cognitive science and philosophy, the use of abstract compositional concepts is amongst the most characteristic indicators of meaningful deliberative thought in an organism or agent. In this article, we show how the ability to develop and utilise abstract conceptual structures can be achieved by a particular kind of learning agent. More specifically, we provide and motivate a concrete operational definition of what it means for these agents to be in possession of abstract concepts, (...) before presenting an explicit example of a minimal architecture that supports this capability. We then proceed to demonstrate how the existence of abstract conceptual structures can be operationally useful in the process of employing previously acquired knowledge in the face of new experiences, thereby vindicating the natural conjecture that the cognitive functions of abstraction and generalisation are closely related. (shrink)

This article tracks the wider politics of emotion that run through the work of Günther Anders. It conceptualises the emergence of “anaesthetic violence”, a feel-good, or even unsensed form of power that configures around user-friendly devices. Anders’ mapping of the sense of inferiority, obsolescence and humiliating dependency our devices can invoke in us is gaining scholarly traction, but his work also exposes anaesthetic structures of feeling that merit further consideration. To open this perspective, the first part develops the quasi-Socratic formula (...) “I feel that I feel nothing” through a detailed reading of the politics of emotion in Anders’ work. This provides the pretext for an outlook on the anaesthetic dimension of human-machine interaction in the context of digital technologies. (shrink)

Something about the Western mind loves a dichotomy. Descartes’s distinction between res cogitans and res extensa shaped natural science and modern analytical philosophy. The existentialists could not escape this inclination, either. Sartre dichotomized the world, beginning his philosophical inquiry by distinguishing being from nothingness, the in-itself from the for-itself. It is, ultimately, the consequences of the Cartesian wounding of both thought and self that Erik Craig recognizes in his penetrating essay. He argues persuasively that, in working therapeutically with patients, we (...) need to go beyond the description of a pathological ontic state to its ontological structure. This.. (shrink)

Background Genuine uncertainty on superiority of one intervention over the other is called equipoise. Physician-investigators in randomized controlled trials need equipoise at least in studies with more than minimal risks. Ideally, this equipoise is also present in patient-participants. In pediatrics, data on equipoise are lacking. We hypothesize that 1) lack of equipoise at enrolment among parents may reduce recruitment; 2) lack of equipoise during participation may reduce retention in patients assigned to a less favoured treatment-strategy. Methods We compared preferences of (...) parents/patients at enrolment, documented by a questionnaire, with preferences developed during follow-up by an interview-study to investigate equipoise of child-participants and parents in the BeSt-for-Kids-study. This trial in new-onset Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis-patients consists of three strategies. One strategy comprises initial treatment with a biological disease-modifying-antirheumatic-drug, currently not standard-of-care. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 parents and 7 patients, median 11 months after enrolment. Results Initially most parents and children were not in equipoise. Parents/patients who refused participation, regularly declined due to specific preferences. Many participating families preferred the biological-first-strategy. They participated to have a chance for this initial treatment, and would even consider stopping trial-participation when not randomized for it. Their conviction of superiority of the biological-first strategy was based on knowledge from internet and close relations. According to four parents, the physician-investigator preferred the biological-first-strategy, but the majority stated that she had no preferred strategy. In phase 2, preferences tended to change to the treatment actually received. Conclusions Lack of equipoise during enrolment did not reduce study recruitment, mainly due to the fact that preferred treatment was only available within the study. Still, when developing a trial it is important to evaluate whether the physicians’ research question is in line with preferences of the patient-group. By exploring so-called ‘informed patient-group’-equipoise, successful recruitment may be enhanced and bias avoided. In our study, lack of equipoise during trial-participation did not reduce retention in those assigned to a less favoured option. We observed a change for preference towards treatment actually received, possibly explained by comparable outcomes in all three arms. (shrink)

In Alberts zweiten Kommentar zur Nikomachischen Ethik findet sich vor der Kommentierung des Aristoteles-Textes ein eigenständiger Traktat zum allgemeinen Begriff des Guten, der im Rahmen des Artikels erstmals in kritischer Edition zugänglich gemacht wird. In doktrinaler Sicht handelt es sich um einen Text von fundamentaler Bedeutung, insofern Albert verschiedene Definitionen und Bestimmungen des Guten in ihrer inhaltlichen Vereinbarkeit und Konvergenz aufweist. In nuce entwickelt Albert hier die für sein ganzes Werk maßgebliche Metaphysik des Guten, in welche sowohl die Transzendentalienlehre als (...) auch die Grundmotive einer teleologischen Strebensethik aristotelischen Zuschnitts integriert werden. Der ethisch relevante Begriff des Guten findet dadurch seine ontotheologische Fundierung im höchsten Guten, also in Gott. Der vorliegende Artikel rekonstruiert im Anschluss an die kritische Edition die zentralen Argumente des Traktats und verortet diese durch Abgleich mit anderen Schriften in Alberts gesamten Oeuvre und Denken.Albert‘s second commentary on Aristotle‘s Nicomachean Ethics is preceded by an independent treatise dealing with the general concept of the good, which is made accessible in a critical edition in this article for the first time. Regarding its doctrinal contents this treatise proves to be of fundamental importance because Albert demonstrates the compatibility and even the convergence of several different definitions and descriptions of the good, e.g. by Aristotle, Avicenna, Ps.-Dionysius and Boethius. Albert develops in a nutshell his metaphysics of goodness which is of overarching importance for his whole work and which integrates the theory of the transcendentals as well as the basic ideas of an ethical teleology in an Aristotelian vein. Thereby, the concept of the moral good finds its ultimate foundation in the highest good, i.e. in God. Drawing on the text of the presented critical edition the article retraces the central arguments of this treatise and compares them with other writings in order to show their place in Albert’s complete work and thought. (shrink)