The problem of controlling an artificial general intelligence has fascinated both scientists and science-fiction writers for centuries. Today that problem is becoming more important because the time when we may have a superhuman intelligence among us is within the foreseeable future. Current average estimates place that moment to before 2060. Some estimates place it as early as 2040, which is quite soon. The arrival of the first AGI might lead to a series of events that we have not seen before: (...) rapid development of an even more powerful AGI developed by the AGIs themselves. This has wide-ranging implications to the society and therefore it is something that must be studied well before it happens. In this paper we will discuss the problem of limiting the risks posed by the advent of AGIs. In a thought experiment, we propose an AGI which has enough human-like properties to act in a democratic society, while still retaining its essential artificial general intelligence properties. We discuss ways of arranging the co-existence of humans and such AGIs using a democratic system of coordination and coexistence. If considered a success, such a system could be used to manage a society consisting of both AGIs and humans. The democratic system where each member of the society is represented in the highest level of decision-making guarantees that even minorities would be able to have their voices heard. The unpredictability of the AGI era makes it necessary to consider the possibility that a population of autonomous AGIs could make us humans into a minority. (shrink)

The first balanced and detailed study of the central methodological issues in the philosophy of language.

In this paper I draw on contemporary philosophy of emotion to illuminate the phenomenological structure of so-called oceanic feelings. I suggest that oceanic feelings come in two distinct forms: as transient episodes that consist in a feeling of dissolution of the psychological and sensory boundaries of the self, and as a relatively permanent feeling of unity, embracement, immanence, and openness that does not involve occurrent experiences of boundary dissolution. I argue that both forms of feeling are existential feelings, i.e. pre-intentional (...) bodily feelings that structure overall self-world experience. I re-conceptualize episodic oceanic feelings as shifts in existential feeling, and permanent oceanic feelings as stable existential orientations. On the whole, my analysis elucidates a class of feeling that is allegedly quite common, yet frequently misunderstood. It will also serve to enrich our understanding of the general phenomenological structure of our affective lives. (shrink)

Among one of the main inspirations for the research behind this Special Issue is Jussi Parikka’s 2010 book Insect Media: An Archeology of Animals and Technology. In this interview, the guest editors, Nina Mangalanayagam and Louise Wolthers, ask Professor Parikka to revisit some of the book’s core issues in relation to digital photography and the current media landscape in general. The conversation also revolves around artificial intelligence (AI), bugs, mimicry, contemporary art as well as scale and operational images, which (...) reflect Parikka’s recent research. (shrink)

The advances in biotechnology have given rise to a discussion concerning the strong emotional reaction expressed by the public towards biotechnological innovations. This reaction has been named the ‘Yuck-factor’ by several theorists of bioethics. Leon Kass, the former chairman of the President's council on bioethics, has appraised this public reaction as ‘an emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power fully to articulate it’.1 Similar arguments have been forwarded by the Catholic Church, several Protestant denominations and the Pro-Life movement. Several (...) bioethicists have, however, opposed the idea of a disgust-based morality.2Recent findings in cognitive science support the view that the strong negative emotions people often experience when faced with biotechnological ideas are not expressions of inner wisdom. The negative emotions may rather be the result of a cognitive violation the biotechnological innovations easily cause.Due to their evolutionary background, people have certain automatic and quick cognitive tendencies routinely used for categorizing and reasoning about nature, usually termed ‘folk biology’. Biotechnological processes like hybridisation and cloning clearly violate several of the cognitive rules people naturally apply for the explanation and categorization of their natural environment.As the cognitive tendencies routinely applied to the explanation of biological world are violated, an emotional response of fear, disgust and of something unnatural being underway is easily provoked. It is suggested in this paper that the reason behind the Yuck-factor is not a deep inner wisdom, but a violation of natural human cognitive tendencies concerning the biological world. (shrink)

From its Presocratic beginnings, Western philosophy concerned itself with a quest for unity both in terms of the systematization of knowledge and as a metaphysical search for a unity of being—two trends that can be regarded as converging and culminating in Hegel’s system of absolute idealism. Since Hegel, however, the philosophical quest for unity has become increasingly problematic. Jussi Backman returns to that question in this book, examining the place of the unity of being in the work of Heidegger. (...) Backman sketches a consistent picture of Heidegger as a thinker of unity who throughout his career in different ways attempted to come to terms with both Parmenides’s and Aristotle’s fundamental questions concerning the singularity or multiplicity of being—attempting to do so, however, in a “postmetaphysical” manner rooted in rather than above and beyond particular, situated beings. Through his analysis, Backman offers a new way of understanding the basic continuity of Heidegger’s philosophical project and the interconnectedness of such key Heideggerian concepts as ecstatic temporality, the ontological difference, the turn (Kehre), the event (Ereignis), the fourfold (Geviert), and the analysis of modern technology. (shrink)

This is a chapter on contractualism for Ethical Theory in Global Perspective, edited by Michael Hemmingsen (SUNY Press). The chapter (i) outlines contractualism as an ethical theory, (ii) explains how it differs from classical utilitarianism, (iii) explores the differences between ex post and ex ante contractualism, and (iv) finally looks at two traditional objections to the view.

Dieser Aufsatz, der sich den Interpretationen u. a. von Robert Bernasconi, Jacques Taminiaux und Franco Volpi anschließt, betrachtet Heideggers „Wiederholung“ der praktischen Philosophie des Aristoteles als eine Radikalisierung des aristotelischen Begriffs des Handelns (praxis). Die moderne „Not des Wohnens“ erweist sich als ein Ergebnis der Unterordnung der Endlichkeit und Zeitlichkeit des menschlichen Handelns in der abendländischen philosophischen Tradition unter die metaphysischen und theologischen Ideale, die aus dem anfänglichen Verständnis der Seiendheit als beständiger Anwesenheit (ousia) hervorgehen. Die Grundform dieser Unterordnung ist (...) die aristotelische Auslegung der reinen praxis als eine „übermenschlich“ selbstgenügsame Betrachtung ohne äußere Zwecke. Die Behandlung der praktischen „Besinnung“ (phronesis) in der Nikomachischen Ethik bietet jedoch eine Einsicht in die endliche und situationsbedingte Verfassung der eigentlich menschlichen Selbstverwirklichung. Die Lektüre der Nikomachischen Ethik in Heideggers Marburger Vorlesung über Platons Sophistes kann als der Ausgangspunkt für die Geschichte des tätigen Lebens in Hannah Arendts Vita activa angesehen werden. Gleichwohl gliedert Arendt die geschichtliche Entwicklung der praxis ausdrücklicher als Heidegger auf und bedenkt auch, was bei Heidegger weitgehend ungedacht bleibt: den politischen Charakter der ursprünglichen praxis und das apolitische Wesen der Philosophie. (shrink)

Matthew Ratcliffe has argued that existential feelings form a distinct class of bodily and non-conceptual feelings that pre-intentionally structure our intentional experience of others, the world, and ourselves. In this article, I will identify and discuss three interrelated areas of concern for Ratcliffe’s theory of existential feelings. First, the distinct senses in which existential feelings are felt as background bodily feelings and as spaces of possibility calls for further clarification. Second, the nature of the suggested bi-directional relationship between existential feelings (...) and intentional experience remains ambiguous. Third, viewed in light of existential guilt, the categorically non-conceptual nature of existential feelings may not be as definite as presumed. The aim of the article is to draw critical attention to aspects of the theory that would benefit from further development, and therefore, to advance the ongoing discussion about existential feelings. (shrink)

This article looks at the role of Hellenistic thought in the historical narratives of Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. To a certain extent, both see—with G. W. F. Hegel, J. G. Droysen, and Eduard Zeller—Hellenistic and Roman philosophy as a “modernity in antiquity,” but with important differences. Heidegger is generally dismissive of Hellenistic thought and comes to see it as a decisive historical turning point at which a protomodern element of subjective willing and domination is injected into the classical heritage (...) of Plato and Aristotle. Arendt, likewise, credits Stoic philosophy with the discovery of the will as an active faculty constituting a realm of subjective freedom and autonomy. While she considers Hellenistic philosophy as essentially apolitical and world-alienated—in contrast to the inherently political and practical Roman culture—it nonetheless holds for her an important but unexploited ethical and political potential. (shrink)

Nonnaturalist realism is the view that normative properties are unique kind of stance-independent properties. It has been argued that such views fail to explain why two actions that are exactly alike otherwise must also have the same normative properties. Mark Schroeder and Knut Olav Skarsaune have recently suggested that nonnaturalist realists can respond to this supervenience challenge by taking the primary bearers of normative properties to be action kinds. This paper develops their response in two ways. First, it provides additional (...) motivation for the previous claim about the bearers of normative properties by drawing from the work of H. A. Prichard. Second, and more importantly, it formulates a plausible metaphysical framework based on the contemporary trope theory to explain why action kinds would have their second-order properties, including their normative properties, necessarily. (shrink)

In this article, I will defend the so-called buck-passing theory of value. According to this theory, claims about the value of an object refer to the reason-providing properties of the object. The concept of value can thus be analyzed in terms of reasons and the properties of objects that provide them for us. Reasons in this context are considerations that count in favour of certain attitudes. There are four other possibilities of how the connection between reasons and value might be (...) formulated. For example, we can claim that value is a property that provides us with reasons to choose an option that has this property. I argue that none of these four other options can ultimately be defended, and therefore the buck-passing account is the one we ought to accept as the correct one. The case for the buck-passing account becomes even stronger, when we examine the weak points of the most pressing criticism against this account thus far. (shrink)

According to contextualist theories in metaethics, when you use a moral term in a context, the context plays an ineliminable part in determining what natural property will be the semantic value of the term. Furthermore, on subjectivist and relativist versions of these views, it is either the speaker's own moral code or her moral community's moral code that constitutes the reference-fixing context. One standard objection to views of this type is that they fail to enable us to disagree in ordinary (...) conversations. In this chapter, I develop a new response to this objection on the basis of Kai von Fintel and Anthony Gillies' notion of proposition clouds. I argue that, because we live in a multicultural society, the conversational contexts we face will fail to disambiguate between all the things we could mean. This is why we can at best put into play proposition clouds when we make moral utterances. All the propositions in such clouds are then available for rejection and acceptance on the behalf of our audiences. The norms of conversation then guide us to make informative contributions to the conversation - accept and reject propositions in a way that leads to co-ordination of action and choice. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the connection between moral disagreement and moral relativism. Moral relativists, generally speaking, think both (i) that there is no unique objectively correct moral standard and (ii) that the rightness and wrongness of an action depends in some way on a moral standard accepted by some group or an individual. This chapter will first consider the metaphysical and epistemic arguments for moral relativism that begin from the premise that there is considerable amount of moral disagreement both within (...) individual societies and between them. The second half of the chapter, by contrast, focuses on the objection that moral relativism threatens to make us unable to have moral disagreements because it seems to make us speak past one another. This part of the chapter also evaluates relativist responses to this disagreement problem that rely on semantic opacity, disagreement in attitude, metalinguistic negotiations, and truth relativism. The chapter finally concludes by considering future directions of research in this area. (shrink)

This paper explores the so-called buck-passing accounts of value. These views attempt to use normative notions, such as reasons and ought to explain evaluative notions, such as goodness and value . Thus, according to Scanlon's well-known view, the property of being good is the formal, higher-order property of having some more basic properties that provide reasons to have certain kind of valuing attitudes towards the objects. I begin by tracing some of the long history of such accounts. I then describe (...) the arguments which are typically used to motivate these views. The rest of this article investigates how some of the central details of the buck-passing accounts should be specified, and what kind of problems these views face. (shrink)

Recently, it has been a part of the so-called consequentializing project to attempt to construct versions of consequentialism that can support agent-relative moral constraints. Mark Schroeder has argued that such views are bound to fail because they cannot make sense of the agent relative value on which they need to rely. In this paper, I provide a fitting-attitude account of both agent-relative and agent-neutral values that can together be used to consequentialize agent-relative constraints.

This paper explores the connection between two philosophical debates concerning the nature of properties. The first metaethical debate is about whether normative properties are ordinary natural properties or some unique kind of non-natural properties. The second metaphysical debate is about whether properties are sets of objects, transcendent or immanent universals, or sets of tropes. I argue that nominalism, transcendent realism, and immanent realism are not neutral frameworks for the metaethical debate but instead lead to either metaethical naturalism or non-naturalism. We (...) can therefore investigate the metaethical question on its own terms only within the framework of trope theory. (shrink)

Brad Hooker’s rule-consequentialism and T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism have been some of the most debated ethical theories in normative ethics during the last twenty years or so. This article suggests that these theories can be compared at two levels. Firstly, what are the deep, structural differences between the rule-consequentialist and contractualist frameworks in which Hooker and Scanlon formulate their views? Secondly, what are the more superficial differences between Hooker’s and Scanlon’s formulations of these theories? Based on exploring these questions and several (...) purported differences between Hooker’s and Scanlon’s views, this article argues that, at the structural level, the two theories are more similar than previous recognised. It suggests that there is only one candidate for a deeper difference and even it may not be that significant. This insight sheds new light on both contractualism and rule-consequentialism, and it will also help us to formulate better versions of the views. (shrink)

Moral philosophy is one of the core areas of philosophy. It is a fruitful research project in which ethicists investigate a range of different kinds of questions from the abstract metaethical puzzles concerning the meaning of moral language to the concrete ethical problems such as how much we should do to help other people. Yet, even if different answers to all these questions are intensively debated in moral philosophy, there is surprising little explicit reflection of what the appropriate ways of (...) doing moral philosophy are. -/- What are we entitled to assume as the starting-points of our ethical inquiry? What is the role of empirical sciences in ethics? Is there just one general method for doing moral philosophy or should different questions in moral philosophy be answered in different ways? Are there argumentative structures and strategies that we should be encouraged to use or common problematic argumentative patterns that we should avoid? -/- This volume brings together leading moral philosophers to consider these questions systematically. The chapters investigate the prospects of empirical ethics, outline new methods of ethics, evaluate recent methodological advances, and explore whether different areas of moral philosophy are methodologically continuous or independent of one another. (shrink)

Following the influential thought experiments by Hilary Putnam and others, philosophers of language have for the most part adopted semantic externalism concerning natural kind terms. In this article, we present results from three experiments on the reference of natural kind terms. Our results confirm some standard externalist assumptions, but are in conflict with others: Ordinary speakers take both appearance and underlying nature to be central in their categorization judgments. Moreover, our results indicate that speakers’ categorization judgments are gradual, and proportional (...) to the degree of similarity between new samples and familiar, “standard” samples. These findings pose problems for traditional theories, both externalist and internalist. (shrink)

The contemporary brain disorders debate echoes a century-long conflict between two different approaches to mental suffering: one that relies on natural sciences and another drawing from the arts and humanities. We review contemporary neuroimaging studies and find that neither side has won. The study of mental differences needsboththe sciences and the arts and humanities. To help develop an approach mindful of both, we turn to physician-writer Anton Chekhov’s story “A Nervous Breakdown.” We review the value of the arts and humanities (...) as a coequal partner with natural sciences in the creation of a robust mental health humanities. (shrink)

This chapter presents a new argument for thinking of traditional ethical theories as methods that can be used in first-order ethics - as a kind of deliberation procedures rather than as criteria of right and wrong. It begins from outlining how ethical theories, such as consequentialism and contractualism, are flexible frameworks in which different versions of these theories can be formulated to correspond to different first-order ethical views. The chapter then argues that, as a result, the traditional ethical theories cannot (...) be evaluated in terms of their truth or correctness. Instead, I will suggest that these theories should be understood as providing different kind of ways of thinking about difficult moral problems. I then recommend a certain form of pragmatic pluralism - it may well be that different moral problems are better approached through different ethical theories. (shrink)

According to Michael Smith, there is so much metaethical disagreement because it is difficult to explain both the objectivity and the practicality of moral judgments in the framework provided by the Humean picture of human Psychology. Smith himself hoped to solve this problem by analysing the content of our moral judgments in terms of what our fully rational versions would want us to do. This paper first explains why this solution to the moral problem remains problematic and why we therefore (...) are no closer to solving the problem. It then outlines how the moral problem could perhaps be dissolved instead. The second half of the paper thus first reconstructs the moral problem in the framework of dispositionalism about belief. It then suggests that, if we think of moral beliefs in dispositionalist terms and take ‘believe’ to be a vague predicate, we can come to see why many of the most fundamental metaethical questions cannot be answered. The last section of the paper then extends this method of dissolving metaethical questions to other popular views about belief. (shrink)

Art museums are built to elicit a wide variety of feelings, emotions, and moods from their visitors. While these effects are primarily achieved through the artworks on display, museums commonly deploy numerous other affect-inducing resources as well, including architectural solutions, audio guides, lighting fixtures, and informational texts. Art museums can thus be regarded as spaces that are designed to influence affective experiencing through multiple structures and mechanisms. At face value, this may seem like a somewhat self-evident and trivial statement to (...) make. However, in this article, I argue that niche construction theory enables us to make several illuminating observations about the ways in which art museums are engineered to influence our feelings. To expound on this claim, I single out for discussion the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which for its entire lifespan (1939–52)—and prior to its evolution into the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum—was expressly organized to kindle in its visitors a special, spiritual form of aesthetic experience: a liberating feeling of cosmic rhythm and order, no less. -/- The argument will proceed as follows: In Part 1, I introduce the basics of niche construction theory and specify the sense in which I apply it to museums and aesthetic affective experiencing. In Part 2, I outline the origins and ethos of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, after which I pin down the type of affective experience it fostered by drawing from visitors’ self-reported reactions to the artworks on display. Then, in Part 3, I use niche construction theory to explain how the Museum consciously fashioned itself, by means of various mutually supportive resources and technologies, into a fertile setting for the specified feelings. Finally, in Part 4, I extend beyond the discussed case to assess the implications of niche construction theory for a broader understanding of how art museums make us feel. In other words, by tracing the early steps of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting towards the present-day Guggenheim, I call attention to the general variation in affective niches as regards their structure, technologies, and affective aims. Overall, the article elucidates the functioning of art museums as affective niches and furthers the conceptual development of niche construction theory in aesthetics. (shrink)

This paper compares two influential but conflicting contemporary models of politics as an activity: those of Hannah Arendt and Alain Badiou. It discovers the fundamental difference between their approaches to politics in their opposing evaluations of the contemporary political significance of the legacy of Plato, Platonism, and the Platonic Idea. Karl Popper’s and Arendt’s analyses of the inherently ideological nature of totalitarianism are contrasted with Badiou’s vindication of an ideological “politics of the Idea.” Arendt and Badiou are shown to share (...) an understanding of politics as a realm for the human deployment of novelty and world-transformation. Their key disagreement concerns the form of activity that accomplishes this deployment. For Arendt, political activity has the basic form of noninstrumental and nonteleological action (praxis), devalued by the Platonic tradition of political philosophy. Badiou, by contrast, follows Plato in regarding politics essentially as a process of production (poiēsis) oriented to an ideal end. (shrink)

For Revolt: Rancière, Abstract Space and Emancipation presents an interpretation of Rancière's uncompromising view of emancipation, drawing on its invariably rational and Kantian-moralist basis. Tracing a logic of abstract or empty space in all of Rancière's work, it contrasts the prevailing tendencies to emphasise Rancière's sensitivity to evolving historical forms and changing regimes of sensibility. Overturning the meaning of Rancière's interest in the sensible enables the capture of the object of his thought as a revolt against the reality accorded to (...) ordered temporalities and forms of appearance as such. In making its argument, For Revolt reconstructs Rancière's relations to some of the crucial, yet unexplored, politico-historical frameworks of his thought, such as the Cultural-Revolutionary Maoism and the French Revolution, offering a fresh perspective to these revolutionary paradigms. In contrast to dominating views, the book makes a case for a fundamentally positive influence of Louis Althusser's philosophy on Rancière's thought. It develops an immanent critique of Rancière through a discussion of his relation to Marx, spanning its coverage to Rancière's hitherto undiscussed early student work. It distils elements in Rancière's thought which resist its own defining orientation, opening ways to alternative developments. Through a critical discussion of Rancière in relation to other contemporary accounts of revolt and resistance, the book addresses the present predicament of emancipatory politics, its emphasis on the actualities of here and now and its difficulties to envisage programmatic realisations of radically alternative futures. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas is widely known for his polemical stance towards art. Especially in his earlier writings in the 1940s, he famously calls into question its ethical potential. In this article, I analyse some of Levinas’s early writings in order to answer the following questions: How does Levinas understand the nature of art, and how does this understanding allow him to criticise it, often in harsh terms? I turn to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s concept of aesthetic consciousness, which I argue shares similarities with (...) Levinas’s stance on art. I argue that re evaluating Levinas’s stance allows one to tackle topical issues of aesthetics from the viewpoint of his ethical philosophy. Through showing how Levinas’s aesthetic consciousness hinges on a problematic relationship between conceptual truth and art, and through emphasising the role of criticism, I suggest that Levinas’s thought can be utilised in approaching contemporary questions of the autonomy of art and aesthetics. (shrink)

Cultural historical research has deliberately challenged “historical realism,” the view that history is comprised entirely of observable actions that actually occurred, and instead has emphasized the historical significance of thoughts, emotions, and representations; it has also focused on the invisible, the momentary, and the perishable. These latter elements introduce the notion of the possible in history. This article examines the ways in which cultural history has approached the notion of the possible, as well as the methodological and theoretical implications of (...) this approach. Its chief claim is that the idea of possibility is fundamental for the concept of culture and ineliminable from its historical study.The question of possibility is present in multiple ways in the study of history; it is important to distinguish among different levels of possibility. The possible may mean, for instance, what it is possible for historians to know about the past, or the possibilities open to historical agents themselves, or, indeed, the possibilities they perceived themselves as having even if these seem impossible from the point of view of the historian. The article starts with the first aspect and moves on toward the possibilities that existed in the past world either in fact or in the minds of those in the past.The article argues that the study of past cultures always entails the mapping of past possibilities. The first strand of the essay builds on the metaphor of the black hole and intends to solve one of the central problems faced by cultural historians, namely, how to access the horizon of the people of the past, their experience of their own time, especially when the sources remain silent. The second, more speculative strand builds on the notion of plenitude and is designed to open up avenues for further discussion about the concept of culture in particular. (shrink)

Many believe that, if true, reason-statements of the form ‘that X is F is a reason to φ’ describe a ‘favouring-relation’ between the fact that X is F and the act of φing. This favouring-relation has been assumed to share many features of other, more concrete relations. This combination of views leads to immediate problems. Firstly, unlike statements about many other relations, reason-statements can be true even when the relata do not exist, i.e., when the relevant facts do not obtain (...) and the relevant acts are not done. Secondly, the previous combination of views also makes it very difficult to draw the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons. I argue that we should think that the predicate ‘is a reason to’ creates non-extensional contexts in the statements in which it is used. This would both solve the previous problems and avoid the awkward consequences of the so-called slingshot argument. (shrink)

This paper begins by applying a version of Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument to normative properties. This argument suggests that there must be at least some unknowable normative facts in normative Sorites sequences, or otherwise we get a contradiction given certain plausible assumptions concerning safety requirements on knowledge and our doxastic dispositions. This paper then focuses on the question of how the defenders of different forms of metaethical anti-realism (namely, error theorists, subjectivists, relativists, contextualists, expressivists, response dependence theorists, and constructivists) could (...) respond to the explanatory challenge created by the previous argument. It argues that, with two exceptions, the metaethical anti-realists need not challenge the argument itself, but rather they can find ways to explain how the unknowable normative facts can obtain. These explanations are based on the idea that our own attitudes on which the normative facts are grounded need not be transparent to us either. Reaching this conclusion also illuminates how metaethical anti-realists can make sense of instances of normative vagueness more generally. (shrink)

Puhuttaessa Ukrainan sotaan kärjistyneen Venäjän geopoliittisen ja ideologisen ajattelun filosofis-teoreettisista taustavoimista nousee toistuvasti esiin ”putinismin pääideologiksi” ja ”maailman vaarallisimmaksi filosofiksi” maalaillun Aleksandr Duginin nimi. Kuka Dugin on, millaista on hänen vaarallinen ajattelunsa ja mikä on sen yhteys suurvallan aggressioon ja hyökkäyssotaan? Seuraavassa luodaan tiivis yleiskatsaus Duginin ajattelun kahteen keskeisimpään ideologiseen elementtiin: geopoliittiseen Euraasia-ideologiaan ja Duginin radikaalikonservatiiviseen ”neljänteen poliittiseen teoriaan”. Vaikka Duginin suora vaikutusvalta on rajallinen, hänen ajattelunsa heijastelee Venäjän poliittisen eliitin ajatusmaailmaa laajemminkin.

Why do painters paint? Obviously, there are numerous possible reasons. They paint to create images for others’ enjoyment, to solve visual problems, to convey ideas, and to contribute to a rich artistic tradition. This book argues that there is yet another, crucially important but often overlooked reason. -/- Painters paint to feel. -/- They paint because it enables them to experience special feelings, such as being absorbed in creative play and connected to something vitally significant. Painting may even transform the (...) painter’s whole sense of being. Thus, painting is not only about producing art, communicating content, and so on, but also about setting up and inhabiting an experiential space wherein highly valued feelings are interactively enabled and supported. This book investigates how and why this happens by combining psychoanalytical theorization on creativity with philosophical thinking on affectivity. It focuses on creative experience itself, and illuminates the psychological mechanisms and dynamics that underlie the affects at stake. Painters’ own descriptions of how they feel at work are used throughout to give an accurate, true-to-life portrayal of the experience of painting. -/- The strength of the book lies in its open-minded yet critical integration of contemporary psychoanalytic and philosophical thinking, and in its truthfulness to painters’ experiential descriptions of the painterly process. On the whole, it enriches our understanding of artistic creativity and sheds more light on how and why we come to feel the things we do. As such, the book will appeal to philosophers, psychoanalysts, and art researchers alike. (shrink)

Some experimental studies have recently claimed to undermine semantic externalism about natural kind terms. However, it is unclear how philosophical accounts of reference can be experimentally tested. We present two externalistic adaptations of psychological placeholder essentialism, a strict externalist and a hybrid externalist view, which are experimentally testable. We examine Braisby’s et al. (1996) study which claims to undermine externalism, and argue that the study fails in its aims. We conducted two experiments, the results of which undermine internalism and the (...) hybrid theory, and support strict externalism. Ourconclusion is that lay speakers’ natural kind concepts involve a belief in an external category essence, which determines reference. (shrink)

In many countries, including patients are legally entitled to request copies of their clinical notes. However, this process remains time-consuming and burdensome, and it remains unclear how much of the medical record must be made available. Online access to notes offers a way to overcome these challenges and in around 10 countries worldwide, via secure web-based portals, many patients are now able to read at least some of the narrative reports written by clinicians (‘open notes’). However, even in countries that (...) have implemented the practice many clinicians have resisted the idea remaining doubtful of the value of opening notes, and anticipating patients will be confused or anxious by what they read. Against this scepticism, a growing body of qualitative and quantitative research reveals that patients derive multiple benefits from reading their notes. We address the contrasting perceptions of this practice innovation, and claim that the divergent views of patients and clinicians can be explained as a case of epistemic injustice. Using a range of evidence, we argue that patients are vulnerable to (oftentimes, non-intentional) epistemic injustice. Nonetheless, we conclude that the marginalisation of patients’ access to their health information exemplifies a form of epistemic exclusion, one with practical and ethical consequences including for patient safety. (shrink)

Artikkeli tarkastelee aluksi Hannah Arendtin analyysiä totalitarismin pohjimmiltaan ideologisesta luonteesta ja ideologisen ”idean” olemuksesta. Tätä analyysiä verrataan Alain Badioun yritykseen herättää henkiin ideologinen ”idean politiikka”. Artikkelin perusväitteen mukaan sekä Arendt että Badiou näkevät politiikan alueena, jolla uutuus ja ihmisen kyky ryhtyä maailmaa muuttaviin hankkeisiin voivat toteutua. He ymmärtävät kuitenkin poliittisen aktiviteetin muodon olennaisesti eri tavoin: Arendtille politiikka on perusluonteeltaan toimintaa, praksista, Badioulle se on pohjimmiltaan idean tuottamista, poiesista. Tällä on keskeisiä seurauksia heidän politiikkakäsityksilleen. Lopuksi osoitetaan, että Badioun ”ideologinen” ymmärrys politiikasta (...) jää alttiiksi Arendtin peruskritiikille, jonka mukaan politiikan välineellinen ymmärtäminen keinojen ja päämäärien viitekehyksessä on viime kädessä kyvytön sulkemaan pois poliittisen terrorin mahdollisuutta. (shrink)

The paper discusses Heidegger's early notion of the “movedness of life” (Lebensbewegtheit) and its intimate connection with Aristotle's concept of movement (kinēsis). Heidegger's aim in the period of Being and Time was to “overcome” the Greek ideal of being as ousia – constant and complete presence and availability – by showing that the background for all meaningful presence is Dasein, the ecstatically temporal context of human being. Life as the event of finitude is characterized by an essential lack and incompleteness, (...) and the living present therefore gains meaning only in relation to a horizon of un-presence and un-availability. Whereas the “theological” culmination of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics finds the supreme fulfillment of human life in the semi-divine self-immanence and self-sufficiency of the bios theōrētikos, a radical Heideggerian interpretation of kinēsis may permit us to find in Aristotle the fundamental structures of mortal living as self-transcendent movement. (shrink)

Media archaeological methods for extending the lifetime of new media into ‘old media’ have experienced a revival during the past years. In recent media theory, a new context for a debate surrounding media archaeology is emerging. So far media archaeology has been articulated together with such a heterogeneous bunch of theorists as Erkki Huhtamo, Siegfried Zielinski, Thomas Elsaesser and to a certain extent Friedrich Kittler. However, debates surrounding media archaeology as a method seem to be taking it forward not only (...) as a subdiscipline of (media) history, but increasingly into what will be introduced as materialist media diagrammatics. This article maps some recent media archaeological waves in German media theory. The text addresses Wolfgang Ernst’s mode of media archaeology and his provocative accounts on how to rethink media archaeology as a fresh way of looking into the use and remediation of media history as a material monument instead of a historical narrative and as a recent media theoretical wave from Germany that seems to not only replicate Kittler’s huge impact in the field of materialist media studies but develop that in novel directions. However, as will be argued towards the end, Ernst’s provocative take that hopes to distinguish itself as a Berlin brand of media theory in its hardware materiality and time-critical focus resonates strongly with some of the recent new directions coming from US media studies, namely in software and platform studies. (shrink)

This chapter is an overview of Giorgio Agamben's engagement, in the Homo Sacer series (1995–2014), with Aristotelian philosophy. It specifically studies Agamben's attempt to deconstruct two Aristotelian conceptual oppositions fundamental for the Western tradition of political thought: (1) that between the bare fact of being alive and "qualified" living (associated by Agamben with an alleged distinction between zōē and bios) and (2) that between potentiality (dynamis) and actuality (energeia). Agamben's concept of form-of-life (forma-di-vita), a life that is never "bare" but (...) always in the process of qualifying itself, is designed to deactivate and overcome these distinctions. In the final volume of the series, The Use of Bodies (2014), this is done with the help of the Aristotelian concepts of use (chrēsis) and habit (hexis). (shrink)