The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has contributed to various image-generation techniques. These tools have had a significant effect on how we perceive contemporary communication. This study presents a broad overview of the challenges and consequences associated with the influence of AI on communication, and its findings are supported by thoughts collected from various books and academic publications. Nevertheless, incorporating AI into communication through synthetic imagery raises concerns about communication that require careful consideration. This study investigates various ethical (...) concerns and the significance of ethical guidelines and responsible practices in creating these applications. It intricately weaves together philosophical reflections, ethical deliberations, and societal responsibilities, shedding light on the complex interplay between ethics, technology, and human values within the context of machine development and broader societal realms. (shrink)

This introductory chapter integrates two different steps: a global consideration of the problems which the “signifier” limits is able to include and a detailed mapping of the reflective path which the following thirteen chapters effectively pursue.

ArgumentThis paper analyses a process of co-construction of knowledge and its multiple forms of communication in a country of the European periphery in the early twentieth century. It focuses on Lieutenant Manuel Soares de Melo e Simas, a politically engaged Portuguese astronomer, who moved from amateur to professional during the political transition from the monarchy to the republic. Melo e Simas paralleled his professional career in continuous activity of communicating science to the public in the context of republicanism in (...) a double way, by responding to the agenda of republicanism and by playing an active role in shaping it. He aimed at educating lay audiences in the various ways of astronomy, and he reached out to as many people as possible by exploring a multitude of communication channels, from lectures to articles in newspapers and journals. Voiced often within newly created republican institutions, the praxis and the ideas of Melo e Simas helped to mold the new republican scientific ethos. By going beyond mere emphasis on scientism and positivism, usually taken to be the defining characteristics of the new republican ethos, this paper argues that science and the specificities of its multiple forms of communication were central to the way Melo e Simas shaped the republican ideology. Furthermore, popularization of science was used to legitimize the status of professional scientists at the same time that it helped reinforce their institutional setting, still to be negotiated in the forthcoming decades through a complex process which deserves further historical analysis. (shrink)

Plural definite descriptions across many languages display two well-known properties. First, they can give rise to so-called non-maximal readings, in the sense that they ‘allow for exceptions’. Second, while they tend to have a quasi-universal quantificational force in affirmative sentences, they tend to be interpreted existentially in the scope of negation. Building on previous works, we offer a theory in which sentences containing plural definite expressions trigger a family of possible interpretations, and where general principles of language use account for (...) their interpretation in various contexts and syntactic environments. Our theory solves a number of problems that these previous works encounter, and has broader empirical coverage in that it offers a precise analysis for sentences that display complex interactions between plural definites, quantifiers and bound variables, as well as for cases involving non-distributive predicates. The resulting proposal is briefly compared with an alternative proposal by Križ, which has similar coverage but is based on a very different architecture and sometimes makes subtly different predictions. (shrink)

I first seriously contemplated writing a book on degree theory in 1976 while I was visiting the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. There was, at that time, some interest in ann-series book about degree theory, and through the encouragement of Bob Soare, I decided to make a proposal to write such a book. Degree theory had, at that time, matured to the point where the local structure results which had been the mainstay of the earlier papers in the area (...) were finding a steadily increasing number of applications to global degree theory. Michael Yates was the first to realize that the time had come for a systematic study of the interaction between local and global degree theory, and his papers had a considerable influence on the content of this book. During the time that the book was being written and rewritten, there was an explosion in the number of global theorems about the degrees which were proved as applications of local theorems. The global results, in turn, pointed the way to new local theorems which were needed in order to make further progress. I have tried to update the book continuously, in order to be able to present some of the more recent results. It is my hope to introduce the reader to some of the fascinat ing combinatorial methods of Recursion Theory while simultaneously showing how to use these methods to prove some beautiful global theorems about the degrees. (shrink)

Iconic gesture-speech integration is a relatively recent field of investigation with numerous researchers studying its various aspects. The results obtained are just as diverse. The definition of iconic gestures is often overlooked in the interpretations of results. Furthermore, while most behavioral studies have demonstrated an advantage of bimodal presentation, brain activity studies show a diversity of results regarding the brain regions involved in the processing of this integration. Clinical studies also yield mixed results, some suggesting parallel processing channels, others a (...) unique and integrated channel. This review aims to draw attention to the methodological variations in research on iconic gesture-speech integration and how they impact conclusions regarding the underlying phenomena. It will also attempt to draw together the findings from other relevant research and suggest potential areas for further investigation in order to better understand processes at play during speech integration process. (shrink)

Presupposition, vagueness, and oddness can lead to some sentences failing to have a clear truth value. The homogeneity property of plural predication with definite descriptions may also create truth-value gaps: The books are written in Dutch is true if all relevant books are in Dutch, false if none of them are, and neither true nor false if, say, half of the books are written in Dutch. We study the projection property of homogeneity by deploying methods of general interest to identify (...) truth-value gaps. Method A consists in collecting both truth judgments and, independently, falsity judgments. The second method, employed in experiment series B and C, is based on one-shot ternary judgments: completely true vs. completely false vs. neither. After a calibration of these methods, we use them to demonstrate that homogeneity projects out of negation, the scope of universal sentences and the scope of non-monotonic quantifiers such as exactly two, to some extent. We assess our results in light of different theoretical approaches to homogeneity—approaches based on presuppositions, scalar implicatures, and something like supervaluations, respectively. We identify free parameters in these theories and assess various variants of them based on our results. Our experimental paradigms may be of broader significance insofar as they can be applied to other phenomena which result in the failure of a sentence to have a definite truth value. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a substantial amount of work in reverse mathematics concerning natural mathematical principles that are provable from RT, Ramsey's Theorem for Pairs. These principles tend to fall outside of the "big five" systems of reverse mathematics and a complicated picture of subsystems below RT has emerged. In this paper, we answer two open questions concerning these subsystems, specifically that ADS is not equivalent to CAC and that EM is not equivalent to RT.

The paper provides an opinionated survey of recent contributions – roughly, in the last decade – to our understanding of how names and other referring expressions work in fictional discourse and addresses well-known philosophical worries that they raise. Views about the semantics of referring expressions in fictional discourse are usually accompanied by metaphysical views on the ontology of fictional characters, so this will also come under our focus.

Este artigo refere-se ao conhecido episódio da famosa novela "Gargantua", de Rabelais, e a sua intenção é mostrar que naquelas singulares sociedade e arquitectura se apresentam ou prefigu­ram, em larga medida, as questões que mais tarde foram exploradas no pensamento utópico oci­dental sobre o tema de "Antiutopia". Em particular, há a intenção de mostrar as relações entre as "Sociedades Ideais" e as "Arquitecturas Ideais"... Como se mutuamente se implicassem. – E, claro, os hilariantes equívocos relacionados com tal...

This paper intends to investigate in Hannah Arendt's last work The Life of the Mind the relationship between thinking and action, which is in the origin of the conflict between philosophy and politics and has influenced the whole philosophical tradition. Arendt aims to show that these two activities are not by themselves incompatible with each other, as this tradition made efforts to establish, but they have become so through the "professional" philosophical use of thinking.Este artigo trata do relacionamento entre pensamento (...) e ação na obra final de Hannah Arendt, A vida do espírito, que se encontra, segundo ela, na origem do conflito entre filosofia e política e teve influência sobre toda a tradição filosófica. Arendt pretende mostrar que essas duas atividades não são por si próprias incompatíveis entre si, como a tradição se esforçou por fazer crer, mas apenas assim se tornaram pelo uso "profissional" que o filósofo faz do pensamento. (shrink)

This article examines the conditions of internet access and uses by children and young people from socially disadvantaged environments in Portugal. Adapting the EU Kids Online questionnaire, a sample of 279 participants in an intervention program on digital inclusion was interviewed in order to analyze their online experiences, bearing in mind the EU Kids Online results and the wider debate on digital inclusion. This issue was examined at two levels: access, and practices and uses. Although economic deprivation, parents’ low educational (...) attainment and children’s age and gender seem to matter in terms of access, reported uses were analogous to the average Portuguese and EU Kids Online data. However, with these children apparently being more oriented towards entertainment and having less informational skills, it is questionable if policies that merely assure access are entirely sufficient. Nevertheless, one cannot say straightforwardly that ‘social exclusion’ equates ‘digital exclusion’. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es evaluar si la estrategia populista conlleva oportunidades o peligros para la democracia y para ello se analizan los principales elementos del discurso populista a la luz de las intervenciones de dos líderes europeos, Pablo Iglesias y Marine Le Pen. Se sostiene que la estrategia populista no implica por sí misma un riesgo para la democracia sino que depende del tipo de demandas sociales que se articulen y de los valores hegemónicos que se quieran transmitir (...) a la opinión pública. La estructura del artículo es la siguiente: en primer lugar, se realiza una revisión crítica de la literatura sobre populismo; en segundo lugar, se analizan tanto la estructura formal como el carácter vacuo y disputado del discurso populista a partir de las intervenciones de Iglesias y Le Pen; por último, se presentan unas reflexiones finales. (shrink)

Context: Affordances are gaining momentum as a key object of study in the cognitive sciences and the philosophy of mind. In The Philosophy of Affordances I propose a new way to understand ….

La universidad vive inmersa en un proceso de cambio impulsado por la creación del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior. El objetivo principal de este proceso es hacer que la Universidad contribuya a hacer de Europa el Espacio Económico más competitivo del mundo. Se quiere hacer de la Universidad un pilar de la Europa del Conocimiento. Y la Sociedad del Conocimiento se interpreta fundamentalmente en clave económica mercantilista. En la sociedad postindustrial, la principal fuente de ventaja e..

Diez, M.A. Discurso ... -- Urdaneta, A. Contestación ...

Essays by some of the world's leading educators provide a revolutionary portrait of new ideas and developments in education that can influence the possibility of social and political change. The authors take into account such diverse terrain as feminism, ecology, media, and individual liberty in their pursuit of new ideas that can inform the fundamental practice of education and promote a more humane civil society. The book consolidates recent thinking just as it reflects on emerging new lines of critical theory.

Has philosophy paid sufficient attention to love? It is evident that the thinkers of the past expended a large part of their intellectual energies on talking about feelings, passions, emotions or affections, to mention just some of the terms under which, one way or another, love has tended to be subsumed. By doing so they undoubtedly granted it a philosophical importance, but not necessarily the kind that should be its due. Because love is much more than a philosophical subject with (...) the same rank as the most important ones: in the end it is, to put it rather abruptly, what makes philosophy itself possible. Why not consider love as we traditionally consider the experience of astonishment, that is, as foundational, as prephilosophical, in the same sense that we commonly talk of the prepolitical? To dispute just for a moment with the authority which has held the monopoly of the prephilosophical for so long: if we are astonished it is because we love to know. Only someone who already loves wisdom is in a position to be astonished. (shrink)

In seiner Dissertano de arte combinatoria entwickelt G. W. Leibniz eine Methode, um Prädikate von einem Subjekt und Subjekte zu einem Prädikat zu finden, und er stellt eine Formel auf, um deren Anzahl zu berechnen. Ich möchte im Folgenden erläutern, wie diese Methode funktioniert und warum sie sowohl einen Teil der, wie Leibniz es nennt, logica inventiva als auch eine direkte Folge seiner Variationslehre bildet, die den zentralen Teil seiner Dissertano ausmacht. Im letzten Abschnitt dieses Beitrages werde ich auf einige (...) theoretische und historische Zusammenhänge zwischen der logica inventiva und der aristotelischen Logik eingehen. Insbesondere werde ich erläutern, in welcher Weise Leibniz' Methode mit einigen traditionellen Versuchen in Verbindung steht, die tota minora eines gegebenen Terms zu bestimmen, und ob die aristotelische Theorie der kategorischen Propositionen in der Lage war, Leibniz' Methode zum Auffinden von Subjekten und Prädikaten innerhalb der logica inventiva zu begründen. (shrink)

El artículo revisa los límites teóricos que unen y separan la lógica de Aristóteles de la lógica aristotélica y la lógica de primer orden. Considera las razones para sostener la actualidad de la lógica de Aristóteles y se pregunta por la unidad de la disciplina, destacando la importancia de la noción de ciencia en la definición de lógica. The article deals with the theoretical limits which unify Aristotle's logic with Aristotelian logic and First Order Logic, and it realizes their differences (...) too. It examines the reasons to maintain the presence and actuality of Aristotle's logic and discovers the importance of the notion of science in defining the nature of logic. (shrink)

The past few years have seen the opening of several antitrust investigations against some of the most dominant and powerful companies in the world—e.g., the U.S. Department of Justice, numerous states, and the Federal Trade Commission have sued Google, Facebook, and Amazon, and the E.U. has launched additional proceedings against Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. This paper looks at the latest trends and developments in the E.U. and the USA and analyzes the different regulatory approaches taken from a distinct business (...) ethics, that is, ordoliberal perspective. The paper aims to derive ordoliberal-inspired antitrust principles and apply them to the current antitrust proceedings and investigations, thereby assessing their strengths and weaknesses. It also aims at developing ordoliberal-inspired reform proposals which might help to strengthen and “harden” modern-day antitrust regimes. (shrink)

In the light of several ongoing antitrust investigations in the E.U. and the U.S., the following research paper analyzes whether ‘big tech’ – same as the big banks – need special regulatory (and economic -political) attention and if so, how an updated form of regulatory policy for the digital era could look like. It does so by utilizing – and reviving – the normative and business -ethical ideals of German ‘neoliberalism’, also known as (classical) ordoliberalism. Especially, Walter Eucken’s work has (...) the potential to inform and enrich the current debate concerning the regulation of big tech. The main goal of the paper is to outline a potentially new regulatory framework – one that combines (and revises) Eucken’s ordoliberalism with the competition policy of the European Union. (shrink)

La pena natural es una situación paradójica que se puede presentar cuando el autor de un delito, al cometerlo o a causa de éste, ha sufrido un daño igual o mayor al que padecería si el juez de la causa le aplicara la pena estatal prevista para tal conducta. Se da con frecuencia al juzgar ciertos accidentes viales, cuando el acusado ya carga el peso de ser quien, por imprudencia, mató a su pareja o familiar cercano, por ejemplo. Pero ¿en (...) qué situaciones y cómo cabe recurrir a la pena natural? En esta investigación, Manuel Serrano explora las diversas aristas y posturas en pugna que atraviesan este tema, donde se cruzan cuestiones como la idea de la “culpa compensada”, la prohibición de aplicar castigo doble por un mismo hecho (non bis in idem) y la clemencia judicial. El autor desmonta la estructura conceptual de la pena natural, estudia jurisprudencia argentina y recorre producciones teóricas de juristas que se han preocupado por este asunto complejo, profundo y poco abordado del derecho penal. (shrink)

The paper presents a renewed Habermasian view on transnational multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) and assesses the institutional characteristics of the Equator Principles Association (EPA) from a deliberative democracy perspective. Habermas’ work has been widely adopted in the academic literature on the political responsibilities of (multinational) corporations (i.e., political corporate social responsibility), and also in assessing the democratic qualities of MSIs. Commentators, however, have noted that Habermas’ approach relies very much on ‘nation-state democracy’ and may not be applicable to democracy in MSIs—in (...) which nation-states are virtually absent. We argue that Habermas’ detailed conceptualization of the institutionalization of deliberative democracy can be applied to transnational MSIs if these initiatives can be said to have their own ‘dèmoi’ that can be represented in associational decision-making. Therefore, we develop a definition of the dèmos of an MSI based on the notion of collective agency. Subsequently, we explain how Habermas’ approach to democracy can be applied to MSIs and show that it has more to offer than hitherto has been uncovered. Our illustrative analysis of the EPA confirms the criticisms regarding this MSI which have recently been articulated by researchers and practitioners, but also yields new findings and possible avenues for the further development of the EPA: That is, although our assessment suggests that the EPA in its current state is still far from being a democratic MSI, the possibility of a sensible analysis of its democratic character indicates that transnational MSIs can, in principle, help to fill governance gaps in a democratic way. (shrink)

El artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación sobre la violencia política en Perú y su actual incidencia en la crisis de legitimidad de las instituciones políticas democráticas. La metodología empleada supone la revisión documental y el tratamiento de otras fuentes sobre las múltiples maneras como el conflicto armado debilitó la credibilidad en los mecanismos y estamentos democráticos. Se presentan elementos concluyentes sobre la continuidad, durante y después del conflicto, de la desigualdad, la frustración en la búsqueda de la verdad (...) y justicia ante la violación de los derechos humanos como causas de la crisis e inestabilidad política en Perú. El artículo permitirá concluir con la grave crisis de gobernabilidad que atraviesa el país, que se traduce en prácticas corruptas que paralizan su desarrollo económico, marcando el paso de una crisis económica a una crisis política: un puente que une los años 1992 a 2018 y que deja como saldo una pérdida generalizada de confianza en la clase política y en las instituciones del poder público en Perú. (shrink)

The paper argues against a commitment to metaphysical necessity, semantic modalities are enough. The best approaches to elucidate the semantic modalities are (still) versions of lingustic ersatzism and fictionalism, even if only developed in parts. Within these necessary properties and the difference between natural and semantic laws can be accounted for. The proper background theory for this is an updated version of Logical Empiricism, which is congenial to recent trends in Structural Realism. The anti-metaphysical attitude of Logical Empiricism deserves revitalization. (...) Another target besides metaphysical necessity are substantial forms of iterated modalities, as used, for instance, in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Rationality and reasonableness can be illustrated as Janus-faced concepts, not only in a descriptive diagnosis but also in a normative construction of adjudication, and in the analysis of its practical and rhetorical effects. Considering such an illustration, the present reflection returns to the discussion on the relevance of rationality and reasonableness in legal interpretation, aiming at distinguishing and/or connecting principles and criteria, beyond formally logical and/or procedurally argumentative decision-making, and, thus, within a normatively practical adjudication. Such an approach will be (...) presented in two main steps. In a first step, the rationality/reasonableness dichotomy will be discussed within a constitutive connection between principles and criteria in adjudication, and understanding legal principles as normatively substantial foundations to legal criteria—the former as axiological references filtered into the juridical system and the latter as their concretizations, and whose practical adequacy is rhetorically assigned by the interpretive communities involved in/by adjudication, and normatively referred both to their practical accordance to the axiological normativity of the principles they shall presuppose and to their suitability as practical operators to the problematic relevance of the sub judice cases. In a second step, and consequently, encompassing the projection of legal interpretation, in semiotic and in practical-normative perspectives, in order to discuss their constituting practical relevance in adjudication, the rationality/reasonableness dichotomy will be experimented within formal-logical procedures and within practical-dialectical connections between juridical problem and juridical system—therefore stating a discussion on the foundations, the intentionality and the consequences of adjudication, amongst deduction and analogy. (shrink)