Bilingualism has been shown to induce neuroplasticity in the brain, but conflicting evidence regarding its specific effects in grey matter continues to emerge, probably due to methodological differences between studies, as well as approaches that may miss the variability and dynamicity of bilingual experience. In our study, we devised a continuous score of bilingual experiences and we investigated their non-linear effects on regional GM volume in a sample of young healthy participants from an immersive and naturalistic bilingual environment. We focused (...) our analyses on cortical and subcortical regions that had been previously proposed as part of the bilingual speech pipeline and language control network. Our results showed a non-linear relationship between bilingualism score and grey matter volume of the inferior frontal gyrus. We also found linear increases in volumes of putamen and cerebellum as a function of bilingualism score. These results go in line with predictions for immersive and naturalistic bilingual environments with increased intensity and diversity of language use and provide further evidence supporting the dynamicity of bilingualism’s effects on brain structure. (shrink)

Overzicht van de fundamentele vraagstukken van de politieke filosofie, een overzicht van het betreffende gedachtegoed van grote denkers en van actuele vraagstukken op dit terrein.

Constitutions around the world have overwhelmingly been the creation of men, but this book asks how far constitutions have affirmed the equal citizenship status of women or failed to do so. Using a wealth of examples from around the world, Ruth Rubio-Marín considers constitutionalism from its inception to the present day and places current debates in their vital historical context. Rubio-Marín adopts an inclusive concept of gender and sexuality, and discusses the constitutional gender order as it has been shaped by (...) debates such those around same-sex marriage and the rights of trans persons. Covering a wide range of themes, from reproductive rights to political gender quotas and violence against women, this book offers a comprehensive feminist account of constitutional law. Truly international in scope and ambitious in subject matter, this is an invaluable resource for students and scholars working on gender within multiple disciplines. (shrink)

En este texto nos proponemos abordar la última clase del semanario de Deleuze sobre el poder en Foucault a partir de dos momentos. El primero tiene que ver con el concepto de imagen y la interpretación sobre el cine que ya venía siendo una constante —aunque marginalmente— en estas clases de Deleuze. Seguidamente, el segundo momento tiene que ver con la relación entre poder y resistencia que arroja como resultado una interpretación del pensamiento de Foucault por parte de Deleuze como (...) una obra viva y en constante construcción. Así, cumpliremos con la exigencia de una lectura que invita a pensar en los conceptos como herramientas de análisis integradas al desarrollo de situaciones donde el poder se presenta como noción central. (shrink)

El objetivo consiste en analizar qué se entiende por naturaleza en Epicuro y cómo se sortean los males que se le endilgan a una sensación tenida por contraria a la práctica de la virtud. En primer lugar, se enfatiza el modo como la percepción sensible trae consigo ciertas consecuencias éticas. Luego, se presenta la estructura sistemática de naturaleza-sensación-acción en el epicureísmo y una posición moderada entre determinismo causal y arbitrariedad ética. Finalmente, se defiende el nexo entre virtud y goce sobre (...) la base del atomismo. Las conclusiones vuelven sobre el concepto de naturaleza y su relación con la percepción sensible y placentera. (shrink)

In 1915, a student named Walter Benjamin published his first article, entitled “The life of students”. In this reflection on the condition of student life, Benjamin touched upon one of the most puzzling features of the university: its disconnection from the real world. Benjamin draws our attention to the “huge gulf between ideas and life”, which the university was supposed to bridge through its connection with the state. Benjamin claims, however, that there is no such bridge. On the one hand, (...) we have university life, which is all about living and breathing theory, about “the will to submit to a principle, to identify completely with an idea”, as Benjamin puts it. On the other, in the world, we have the unchangeable rites and practices, institutions, marriage, family, jobs, legal systems, and tacit rules of proper behaviour, a way of life to which everyone assents by dedicating their own life to it. Benjamin is saddened that the world remains the same no matter how many students pass through the university, where they engage in an intense theoretical life. The university stage of life ends abruptly, when the graduates are cast away, back to the other side of the gulf, on the shore of the old world, which cannot be changed by the abstract theories smuggled out from the university. (shrink)

Starting again of thesis that the value appear to us like value in self, transcendental, and value for somebody, this paper enlarging upon idea that the value is object of knowledge but different of any others objects of the reality. The knowledge of value involve a emotional constituent and other rational constituent. Advancing the judgement of value, the feeling of value is essential for detection and to converted the being of value into reality of life and culture. This part of (...) value feeling do not put in danger the unity and eternity of value and it is very important for the knowledge and the intercultural communication in the world. (shrink)

Starting from the current trend to digitise the university, this thesis aims to clarify the specific relation between university thinking and its use of media. This thesis is an investigation concerning the sensorial and medial conditions which enable the event of thinking to emerge at the university, i.e. conditions which do not make thinking necessary, but possible. Thinking is approached as an event which can happen while studying at the university, not as an outcome, nor a disposition or skill. The (...) ambition of this thesis is theory development and of making a contribution in the field of philosophy of education. The theoretical framework discussed in chapters one and two will allow first, an analysis of the university sensorium inspired by the work of Ivan Illich who, through a history of the senses, pioneered this kind of research applied to medieval reading practices. Secondly, the work of media philosopher Vilém Flusser is used to operationalize the analysis of media at the university; this thesis will use the Flusserian concepts of code, modes of consciousness, transcoding, gestures, intellectual field, dialogue and apparatus. The methodology consists of a novel approach inspired by Flusser’s phenomenology of gestures: in order to find traces of thinking, this investigation looks for gestures (with media) occurring in university practices, gestures which seem to imply some form of coding or transcoding. The first chapter critically discusses Ivan Illich’s historical hypothesis of the mediatic specificity of the university thinking. Illich works with a particular conception of the history of the senses through which he shows how the invention of the optical text and its way of reading gave rise to a new way of thinking which was later fostered by the university. The text emerges as an instrumental way of using the book for studying and thinking, a profanation and suspension of the book. This move is taken to be the signature move of the university which enables a particular way of thinking: abstract and non-visual thinking, which is made present through the event of reading. The second chapter introduces the media-theoretical framework of Flusser by discussing his particular take on codes and the modes of consciousness enabled by the dominant codes. Provisionally, transcoding is taken to be an indication of the event of thinking. The threshold introduces the approach of a phenomenology of gestures which will be used in the following two chapters. The third chapter examines the practice of university lecturing from a sensorial and gestural perspective by using several direct observations of lectures and historical reports of lectures. It was found that the lecture does not promote any particular sense, hence no particular mode of consciousness, and that the media in the lecture suffers a continuous transcoding. Thinking in the lecture was described as a thinking which suddenly makes itself present for all those attending the lecture. The fourth chapter examines MOOCs which are taken to be the digital counterpart of the university course. The specific media usage enabled by MOOCs is described starting from two case studies: an xMOOC and the bMOOC (designed by KU Leuven and LUCA researchers). Using interviews and an autoethnographic account, this chapter finds indications of what could be digital gestures in the MOOC and concludes that thinking in the MOOC occurs as a collective construction of a techno-image. The fifth and final chapter outlines the theoretical contributions of this thesis. The kind of thinking made possible by university practices is described as a form of collective thinking, non-productive and anti-apparatus. The ways in which this thinking is made possible are theorised by introducing the notion of mediatic displacement, a specific event in which the particular logic of media is suspended in such a way as to make room for a thinking which is not determined by any mediality. The notion of intellectual askesis is proposed for the collective enactment of attention, as the sensorial condition which makes possible the mediatic displacement. In light of these findings, the thesis proposes to understand the promise of the digital university as still a utopian project to come, because it cannot yet enable the sensorial and collective attention techniques which the classical university managed to enact through its study practices. (shrink)

This article explores the norms that govern regular users’ acts of sharing content on social networking sites. Many debates on how to counteract misinformation on Social Networking Sites focus on the epistemic norms of testimony, implicitly assuming that the users’ acts of sharing should fall under the same norms as those for posting original content. I challenge this assumption by proposing a non-epistemic interpretation of (mis) information sharing on social networking sites which I construe as infrastructures for forms of life (...) found online. Misinformation sharing belongs more in the realm of rumour spreading and gossiping rather than in the information-giving language games. However, the norms for sharing cannot be fixed in advance, as these emerge at the interaction between the platforms’ explicit rules, local norms established by user practices, and a meta-norm of sociality. This unpredictability does not leave us with a normative void as an important user responsibility still remains, namely that of making the context of the sharing gesture explicit. If users will clarify how their gestures of sharing are meant to be interpreted by others, they will implicitly assume responsibility for possible misunderstandings based on omissions, and the harms of shared misinformation can be diminished. (shrink)

An increasingly popular solution to the anti-scientific climate rising on social media platforms has been the appeal to more critical thinking from the user's side. In this paper, we zoom in on the ideal of critical thinking and unpack it in order to see, specifically, whether it can provide enough epistemic agency so that users endowed with it can break free from enclosed communities on social media (so called epistemic bubbles). We criticise some assumptions embedded in the ideal of critical (...) thinking online and, instead, we propose that a better way to understand the virtuous behaviour at hand is as critical engagement, namely a mutual cultivation of critical skills among the members of an epistemic bubble. This mutual cultivation allows members within an epistemic bubble (in contrast, as we will show, with the authority-based models of epistemic echo chambers) to become more autonomous critical thinkers by cultivating self-trust. We use the model of relational autonomy as well as resources from work on epistemic self-trust and epistemic interdependence to develop an explanatory framework, which in turn may ground rules for identifying and creating virtuous epistemic bubbles within the environments of social media platforms. (shrink)

În studiul Laviniei Marin, Universitatea şi problema proprietăţii intelectuale, este discutată problema actuală a tipului de universitate pe care îl presupune noua economie a cunoaşterii. Pornind de la interesul pentru cuantificarea performanţelor universităţilor şi stabilirea de ierarhii, autoarea ajunge la unele teme epistemologice privind reportul dintre cunoaşterea teoretică şi cunoaşterea practică şi cel dintre cunoaşterea explicită şi cunoaşterea tacită într-o societate în care însăşi cunoaşterea devine un capital, iar inovarea este modul în care se realizează performanţă.

Is the leibnizian'doctrine of science laying on a doctrine of knowledge? This book demonstrates that there is not such a dependence in Leibniz'searlier writings in which the theory of science is established, independently of any doctrine of understanting.

This paper proposes three principles for the ethical design of online social environments aiming to minimise the unintended harms caused by users while interacting online, specifically by enhancing the users’ awareness of the moral load of their interactions. Such principles would need to account for the strong mediation of the digital environment and the particular nature of user interactions: disembodied, asynchronous, and ambiguous intent about the target audience. I argue that, by contrast to face to face interactions, additional factors make (...) it more difficult for users to exercise moral sensitivity in an online environment. An ethics for social media user interactions is ultimately an ethics of human relations mediated by a particular environment; hence I look towards an enactive inspired ethics in formulating principles for human interactions online to enhance or at least do not hinder a user’s moral sensitivity. This enactive take on social media ethics supplements classical moral frameworks by asking us to focus on the relations established through the interactions and the environment created by those interactions. (shrink)

There is a dimension of rationality, known as structural rationality, according to which a paradigmatic example of what it means to be rational is not to be akratic. Although some philosophers claim that aesthetics falls within the scope of rationality, a non-akrasia constraint prohibiting certain combinations of attitudes is yet to be developed in this domain. This essay is concerned with the question of whether such a requirement is plausible and, if so, whether it is an actual requirement of aesthetic (...) rationality. Ultimately, this paper defends the view that aesthetics is no different from other domains in that it requires coherence between a subject’s mental states (in the aesthetic case, between what is judged and what is aesthetically liked). (shrink)

Al abordar el tratamiento orteguiano de Vico nos encontramos en lo que a la letra se refiere con dos hechos: por un lado, Ortega habla poco de Vico; por otro lado, Ortega habla mal de Vico. Este "hablar mal" hay que entenderlo tanto en sentido subjetivo como objetivo. Pero es así que en lo referido al espíritu la confluencia orteguiana con Vico afecta a la médula del pensamiento de Ortega. Con lo cual se plantea que la recepción orteguiana de Vico (...) fue injusta. (shrink)

Sommes-nous tous malades? La médecine, ses approches de l'humain, son vocabulaire ont pénétré dans notre univers quotidien. Une telle médicalisation de notre existence n'est pas sans effet. Les problèmes du corps et de l'âme se voient systématiquement redéfinis en pathologies et les différentes phases de la vie accompagnées de l'aide technique médicale. Celle-ci esquisse la figure d'un homme amélioré par les biotechnologies, débarrassé des aléas des passions, maîtrisant ses colères et ses pulsions: un homme sans fièvre. Ainsi paradoxalement, à mesure (...) que la médecine identifie toujours plus de maladies, les hommes rèvent de parfaite guérison et en font à la fois une exigence personnelle et un idéal social. Guérir la société de ses blessures, nous défaire de notre vulnérabilité; telle est la manière dont est interprétée trop rapidement l'idée d'une société du soin proposée par de nouvelles philosophies. Pourtant, soigner n'est pas un geste anodin, guérir ne se fait pas sans souffrance et généraliser le modèle médical, c'est aussi prendre le risque de banaliser sa violence spécifique. (shrink)

Lavinia Marin draws from phenomenology to lay bare another aspect of the ubiquitous presence of social media. By taking the phenomenology of attention as a starting-point, she show that attention is – rather than only a scare resource as analysts departing from the perspective of the attention economy would have it – foundational for our moral relations to other beings. She argues that there is a distinctive form of other-oriented attention that enables us to perceive other beings as living (...) beings that are worthy of care. This mode of attention presupposes a form of affectivity and involves the recognition of the other as a moral being capable of forming judgments, as well as someone having certain vulnerabilities. Her analysis shows that by prioritizing homogenous interactions and standardization, social media platforms hinder us from engaging in this mode of attention, thereby undermining our capacity of recognizing to others as surprising, changing, and fallible beings. (shrink)

In this article, we suggest that the study of social interactions and the development of a “sense of agency” in joint action can help determine the content of relevant explanations to be implemented in artificial systems to make them “explainable.” The introduction of automated systems, and more broadly of Artificial Intelligence, into many domains has profoundly changed the nature of human activity, as well as the subjective experience that agents have of their own actions and their consequences – an experience (...) that is commonly referred to as sense of agency. We propose to examine the empirical evidence supporting this impact of automation on individuals’ sense of agency, and hence on measures as diverse as operator performance, system explicability and acceptability. Because of some of its key characteristics, AI occupies a special status in the artificial systems landscape. We suggest that this status prompts us to reconsider human–AI interactions in the light of human–human relations. We approach the study of joint actions in human social interactions to deduce what key features are necessary for the development of a reliable sense of agency in a social context and suggest that such framework can help define what constitutes a good explanation. Finally, we propose possible directions to improve human–AI interactions and, in particular, to restore the sense of agency of human operators, improve their confidence in the decisions made by artificial agents, and increase the acceptability of such agents. (shrink)

Lecturing is the only educational form inherited from the universities of the middle ages that is still in use today. However, it seems that lecturing is under threat, as recent calls to do away with lecturing in favour of more dynamic settings, such as the flipped classroom or pre-recorded talks, have found many adherents. In line with the post-critical approach of this book, this chapter argues that there is something in the university lecture that needs to be affirmed: at its (...) best, the university lecture functions as a technique for thinking together or for making collective thinking happen in a lecture hall. The lecture offers the set-up, both technological and architectural, to forge a common experience that binds together the listeners and the speakers; that experience can be characterised as visualising ideas or seeing things as if they had taken on a ‘bodily form’. By looking at several examples of lecturing moments experienced by Gadamer as a student and later recounted in his autobiography, we can better understand the paradigmatic experience that characterises the lecture – as an ideal to be sought, even if, perhaps, not always actualised in everyday lectures. (shrink)

Cet article a déjà paru dans les Cahiers philosophiques, 2/2012, n° 129, p. 43-56. Nous remercions Claire Marin et les Cahiers philosophiques de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. On le trouvera également en ligne sur CAIRN. Résumé : Dans la mosaïque des textes ravaissoniens, il semble que la notion de rythme permette une lecture transversale. En effet, de l'analyse des rythmes naturels, du corps ou de la vie à celle des rythmes créés par l'homme pour domestiquer ce (...) corps par l'habitude ou (...) - Philosophie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

This article brings forth a new perspective concerning the relation between stupidity and thinking by proposing to conceptualise the state of non-thinking in two different ways, situated at the opposite ends of the spectrum of thinking. Two conceptualisations of stupidity are discussed, one critical which follows a French line of continental thinkers, and the other one which will be called educational or ascetic, following the work of Agamben. The critical approach is conceptualised in terms of seriality of thinking, or thinking (...) captured by an apparatus, whereas the ascetic-educational approach is discussed by tracing the links between studying and stupidity. Both accounts assume that stupidity as non-thinking is a condition for thinking, either placed before thinking emerges or as an after-thought. However, the political implications concerning the role of philosophy in the public realm are divergent: for the critical approach, the task of the philosopher is to criticise the world, whereas for the ascetic approach, the task is to work on one’s own self and hope that the world will be changed through thinking. The wider aim of this article is to contribute to the debate concerning the public role of the intellectual starting from the assumption that there is a duty to think publicly and then clarifying what this duty entails in relation to the self and the others. (shrink)

This essay present shortly the differential character of the concepts of knowledge, epistemology and paradigm has in the development of the degree work or thesis. It begins with the discussion of these concepts, and then establishes the relation between those and the degree work.