The suggestion has been made that future advanced artificial intelligence (AI) that passes some consciousness-related criteria should be treated as having moral status, and therefore, humans would have an ethical obligation to consider its well-being. In this paper, the author discusses the extent to which software and robots already pass proposed criteria for consciousness; and argues against the moral status for AI on the grounds that human malware authors may design malware to fake consciousness. In fact, the article warns that (...) malware authors have stronger incentives than do authors of legitimate software to create code that passes some of the criteria. Thus, code that appears to be benign, but is in fact malware, might become the most common form of software to be treated as having moral status. (shrink)

Bernard Williams is a sceptic about the objectivity of moral value, embracing instead a qualified moral relativism—the ‘relativism of distance’. His attitude to blame too is in part sceptical. I will argue that the relativism of distance is unconvincing, even incoherent; but also that it is detachable from the rest of Williams's moral philosophy. I will then go on to propose an entirely localized thesis I call the relativism of blame, which says that when an agent's moral shortcomings by our (...) lights are a matter of their living according to the moral thinking of their day, judgements of blame are out of order. Finally, I will propose a form of moral judgement we may sometimes quite properly direct towards historically distant agents when blame is inappropriate—moral-epistemic disappointment. Together these two proposals may help release us from the grip of the idea that moral appraisal always involves the potential applicability of blame, and so from a key source of the relativist idea that moral appraisal is inappropriate over distance. (shrink)

Fricker shows that virtue epistemology provides a general epistemological idiom in which these issues can be forcefully discussed.

Careful examination of the arguments used in the De aeternitate mundi attributed to Boethius of Dacia shows that this is not a work of radical Aristotelianism, but a teaching text aimed at showing students how to approach the question of the eternity of the world in their disputations. A comparison of the text with some of the articles condemned in 1277 demonstrates that the articles do not originate from the text and that the work was not targeted by Tempier. What (...) is learned from the text about disputations on the eternity of the world is then used to show another way of reading these articles which is consistent with Tempier’s assertion that they were put forward by students during disputations and to some extent enables one to reconstruct the debates as they happened. This also shows how the students distorted the arguments of their masters for their own ends, which in turn suggests how the so-called ‘double truth’ may have been inspired by the De aeternitate mundi or a text like it. Finally, this helps explain the apparent reaction against the arguments used in the De aeternitate on the part of a number of philosophy teachers during the 1270s. (shrink)

Grounded in ideas about sense-making and whole-person care with a long intellectual heritage, the movement for Philosophical Health—with its specific conceptions of philosophical care and counselling—is a relatively recent addition to the ongoing debate about understanding better the perspectives of patients to improve health practice. This article locates the development of this movement within the context of broader discussions of person-centred care (PCC), arguing that the approach advocated by defenders of philosophical health can provide a straightforward method for implementing PCC (...) in actual cases. This claim is explained and defended with reference to the SMILE_PH method created by Luis de Miranda (Sense-Making Interviews Looking at Elements of Philosophical Health), an approach recently trialled convincingly with people living with traumatic spinal cord injury. (shrink)

When we hope to explain and perhaps vindicate a practice that is internally diverse, philosophy faces a methodological challenge. Such subject matters are likely to have explanatorily basic features that are not necessary conditions. This prompts a move away from analysis to some other kind of philosophical explanation. This paper proposes a paradigm based explanation of one such subject matter: blame. First, a paradigm form of blame is identified—‘Communicative Blame’—where this is understood as a candidate for an explanatorily basic form (...) of blame. Second, its point and purpose in our lives is investigated and found to reside in its power to increase the alignment of the blamer and the wrongdoer's moral understandings. Third, the hypothesis that Communicative Blame is an explanatorily basic form of blame is tested out by seeing how far other kinds of blame can reasonably be understood as derivative, especially in respect of blame's point and purpose. Finally, a new and quasi-political worry about blame is raised. (shrink)

Autoscopic phenomena are complex experiences that include the visual illusory reduplication of one’s own body. From a phenomenological point of view, we can distinguish three conditions: autoscopic hallucinations, heautoscopy, and out-of-body experiences. The dysfunctional pattern involves multisensory disintegration of personal and extrapersonal space perception. The etiology, generally either neurological or psychiatric, is different. Also, the hallucination of Self and own body image is present during dreams and differs according to sleep stage. Specifically, the representation of the Self in REM dreams (...) is frequently similar to the perception of Self in wakefulness, whereas in NREM dreams, a greater polymorphism of Self and own body representation is observed. The parallels between autoscopic phenomena in pathological cases and the Self-hallucination in dreams will be discussed to further the understanding of the particular states of self awareness, especially the complex integration of different memory sources in Self and body representation. (shrink)

I shall first briefly revisit the broad idea of ‘epistemic injustice’, explaining how it can take either distributive or discriminatory form, in order to put the concepts of ‘testimonial injustice’ and ‘hermeneutical injustice’ in place. In previous work I have explored how the wrong of both kinds of epistemic injustice has both an ethical and an epistemic significance—someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower. But my present aim is to show that this wrong can also have a political (...) significance in relation to non-domination, and so to freedom. While it is only the republican conception of political freedom that presents nondomination as constitutive of freedom, I shall argue that non-domination is best understood as a thoroughly generic liberal ideal of freedom to which even negative libertarians are implicitly committed, for non-domination is negative liberty as of right—secured non-interference. Crucially on this conception, non-domination requires that the citizen can contest interferences. Pettit specifies three conditions of contestation, each of which protects against a salient risk of the would-be contester not getting a ‘proper hearing’. But I shall argue that missing from this list is anything to protect against a fourth salient threat: the threat that either kind of epistemic injustice might disable contestation by way of an unjust deflation of either credibility or intelligibility. Thus we see that both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice can render a would-be contester dominated. Epistemic justice is thereby revealed as a constitutive condition of non-domination, and thus of a central liberal political ideal of freedom. (shrink)

Moral intensity theory is used to explain how characteristics of moral issues affect ethical decision-making. According to moral intensity theory, individuals and firms will make more ethical decisions when moral intensity is present, such as greater negative consequences, including harm to customers. However, evidence suggests this does not always happen in crisis situations. For example, Fisher Price waited until 30 babies died before recalling its Rock’n Play Sleeper in 2019. In this article, the concept of immoral entrenchment is introduced to (...) address how crises affect the expected firm responses to morally intense ethical issues. Immoral entrenchment suggests that firms experience threat-rigidity responses to crises that lead to collective moral disengagement. Immoral entrenchment results in firms’ denial of responsibility and unethical behavior, instead of ethical behavior, in the face of highly negative consequences. The study in this article tests immoral entrenchment in the context of the speed to recall 843 consumer products. Supplemental qualitative evidence illustrates the collective moral disengagement dimension of immoral entrenchment. Contributing to the literature on ethics and crisis, the findings demonstrate that crises can generate immoral entrenchment in firms, which reverses the expected ethical response of those firms to issues with high moral intensity. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to three commentaries on Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. In response to Alcoff, I primarily defend my conception of how an individual hearer might develop virtues of epistemic justice. I do this partly by drawing on empirical social psychological evidence supporting the possibility of reflective self-regulation for prejudice in our judgements. I also emphasize the fact that individual virtue is only part of the solution – structural mechanisms also have an essential role (...) in combating epistemic injustice. My response to Goldberg principally concerns my perceptual account of the epistemology of testimony, which I defend as being both well-motivated and best categorized as a species of non-inferentialism. I also explain its relation to the reductionism/non-reductionism contrast, and defend my resistance to casting it as any kind of default view. In response to Hookway, I contrast discriminatory with distributive forms of epistemic injustice, and defend the basic taxonomy I present in the book, which casts testimonial and hermeneutical injustice as the two fundamental discriminatory forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

The main notion of this article is that the blurring of the limits between offline and online dimensions of knowledge and experience, in addition to the manipulation of genes, neurons, atoms and bits, is dissolving the distinction between subjectivism (i.e. idealism) and materialism (i.e. objectivism and realism). As a consequence, in the moistmedia (from Ascott) ecology in which we are increasingly immersed, a radical kind of experience of matter, time, space and self is emerging. In this form of experience, the (...) blending of subjectivist and materialist approaches help in overcoming the classical Cartesian polarity: we feel part of an extended reality, and we feel this extended reality in ourselves by combining bodies, points of view and multiple senses with digital layers of everything. The article proposes these research questions: Which are the main factors that shape the change toward a moistmedia ecology resulting from the impact of the manipulation of genes, neurons, bits and atoms? Which transformation is being shaped in relation to the previous model of experience? What are the features of the new forms of materiality, sensitivity and action? How artists are putting themselves at risk in the moistmedia ecology? The hypothesis is that a hybrid kind of interval is opening between different layers of reality: analogue versus digital; nature versus culture; here versus there; past versus future; I versus others; and human versus non-human. In this recombination process, a third dimension of reality – that I call ‘radical reality’ – emerges in the moistmedia ecology. This article will analyse the radical experience (Wilson) in moistmedia environments by crossing the five dimensions (matter, space, time, identity and action) with the practices of manipulation of genes, atoms and bits using examples from art and design. This crossing shows the basic dimensions and sub-dimensions of the ‘Model of Radical Experience’ to reveal the nature of this third dimension between subjectivism and materialism, which is explored by artists who put themselves at risk in the turbulent zone between the physical and the digital. (shrink)

What is hospitality? Who is it addressed to? Hospitality aims at welcoming those who arrive; it demands giving space and time and sharing our own resources with others. In view of the current global migration crisis and in the midst of the social debates and a critique of the failure of affluent countries and Western democracies to respond in solidarity to those in need, this article attempts to re-consider the space for hospitality drawing from the ethical and the political as (...) the two fundamental pillars of social architecture. In an effort to discuss collective grassroots reactions to this general lack of hospitality, I address the Catalan social platform Volem Acollir in their request to the state to open up the borders for the reception of a larger number of migrants. Far from being an individual choice, or an optional political decision, hospitality confronts us with the moral dilemma of the human response to our cultural others. (shrink)

The concept of ‘the Canadian identity’ is a topic which has received much attention in recent decades, stimulating discussions on the topic of what makes a Canadian a Canadian? Today, being Canadian might suggest a love of hockey and poutine. However, a century ago, being “Canadian” was an emphasis on adapting or conforming to British norms. This paper will focus on one important theme in debates around ‘Canadianization’, specifically its reflection over time in the domestic structure of the early Ukrainian (...) settlers. Canadian identity studies can especially benefit from this trace of identity formation, by its application to a broader, multi-ethnical context. (shrink)

Esta lectura propone abordar lo que hemos denominado espacio sagrado, entendiéndolo como la representación literaria de las creencias religiosas y sus manifestaciones rituales presentes en las obras Cherrufe de Ruth Fuentealba Millaguir y Um defeito de cor [2006] de Ana Maria Gonçalves. Planteamos que este espacio hace emerger dentro de la narrativa afrobrasileña y mapuche una sujeto femenina que en su relación con el sistema simbólico de su comunidad entreteje las marcas de género, raza y sexualidad en la constitución subjetiva. (...) Afirmamos también que mediante el vínculo entre la mujeres y lo sagrado la subjetividad que emerge en las obras analizadas se presenta como presevadora y reproductora de la cultura y sus saberes más preciados, imprescindibles para la supervivencia individual y colectiva de sus pueblos. (shrink)

Resumen: Esta lectura propone abordar lo que hemos denominado espacio sagrado, entendiéndolo como la representación literaria de las creencias religiosas y sus manifestaciones rituales presentes en las obras Cherrufe (2008) de Ruth Fuentealba Millaguir y Um defeito de cor [2006] (2009) de Ana María Gonçalves. Planteamos que este espacio hace emerger dentro de la narrativa afrobrasileña y mapuche una sujeto femenina que en su relación con el sistema simbólico de su comunidad entreteje las marcas de género, raza y sexualidad en (...) la constitución subjetiva. Afirmamos también que mediante el vínculo entre la mujeres y lo sagrado la subjetividad que emerge en las obras analizadas se presenta como presevadora y reproductora de la cultura y sus saberes más preciados, imprescindibles para la supervivencia individual y colectiva de sus pueblos. Abstract: This reading suggests to deal with what has been denominated as holy space, understanding it as the literary representation of beliefs and and its ritual manifestations present in the works of Ruth Fuentealba Millaguir, Cherrufe (2008) and Ana Maria Gonçalves Um defeito de cor [2006] (2009). We propose that this space emerges within the Afro-Brazilian and Mapuche narrative a female individual that related with symbolic system of its community interweave the traces of genre, race and sexuality in the subjective constitution. In addition, we claim that through the link between women and the sacred, the subjectivity that emerges in the works analyzed is presented as preserving and reproducing the culture and their most precious knowledge, indispensable for the individual and collective survival of their peoples. (shrink)

This article presents the thesis the weak thinking and nihilistic vocation of Gianni Vattimo's hermeneutics, unlike the criticisms and misunderstandings underwent, does not necessarily imply the assumption, defense and proposal of a philosophical and hermeneutical irrationality. Based on a hermeneutics of the Italian philosopher texts, it is evident the criticisms of irrationalism are contested by the author, however, like all philosophy, it is necessary to deepen and reflect on the implications this philosophy has for modern philosophy and hodiernal hermeneutics. The (...) concepts of thought and hermeneutic rationality are the axes upon which Gianni Vattimo's philosophy is analyzed and philosophically reflected in this article. (shrink)

This article examines the efforts of the Obama administration and many other actors-ranging from non-governmental organizations, municipalities, and state governments to some Congressional representatives-to put the United States back on track towards international climate leadership. Efforts to shift policy direction, however, still face many hurdles. Over the course of the better part of a decade or more, climate skeptics and policy change opponents were able to seed doubt about the urgency of the issue in the public’s mind, establish new organizations (...) and strategies to fight against climate action, and institutionalize serious obstacles to meaningful policy change. (shrink)

The current literature on the value of knowledge is marred by two unwarranted presumptions, which together distort the debate and conceal what is perhaps the most basic value of knowledge, as distinct from mere true belief. These presumptions are the Synchronic Presumption, which confines philosophical attention to the present snapshot in time; and the Analytical Presumption, which has people look for the value of knowledge in some kind of warrant. Together these presumptions conceal that the value of knowledge might inhere (...) not in a necessary condition, but simply in a property that most knowledge possesses; and, in particular, that it might inhere, as I argue it does, in a certain property of 'resilience': the tendency to survive misleading counter-evidence over time owing to the subject's being in a position to weight it against evidence already possessed. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the different styles of moral relativism. The history of moral relativist thinking features different branches to the family tree, each representing a different impetus to relativism, and so producing a different style of moral relativist thought. At the root, however, is a broadly subjectivist parent idea that morality is at least in part the upshot of a shared way of life, and shared ways of life tend to vary markedly from culture to culture. The discussions cover (...) the branches of moral historicism, moral reasons, moral truth, and moral plurality. (shrink)

The dual aim of this article is to reveal and explain a certain phenomenon of epistemic injustice as manifested in testimonial practice, and to arrive at a characterisation of the anti–prejudicial intellectual virtue that is such as to counteract it. This sort of injustice occurs when prejudice on the part of the hearer leads to the speaker receiving less credibility than he or she deserves. It is suggested that where this phenomenon is systematic it constitutes an important form of oppression. (...) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

Through several historical case studies from the last 300 years, Luis de Miranda shows how the phrase 'esprit de corps' acts as a combat concept with a clear societal impact. He also reveals how interconnected, yet distinct, French, English and American modern intellectual and political thought is.

This paper explores the relation between rational authority and social power, proceeding by way of a philosophical genealogy derived from Edward Craig's Knowledge and the State of Nature. The position advocated avoids the errors both of the 'traditionalist' (who regards the socio-political as irrelevant to epistemology) and of the 'reductivist' (who regards reason as just another form of social power). The argument is that a norm of credibility governs epistemic practice in the state of nature, which, when socially manifested, is (...) likely to imitate the structures of social power. A phenomenon of epistemic injustice is explained, and the politicizing implication for epistemology educed. (shrink)

We gain information from collective, often institutional bodies all the time—from the publications of committees, news teams, or research groups, from web sites such as Wikipedia, and so on—but do these bodies ever function as genuine group testifiers as opposed to mere group sources of information? In putting the question this way I invoke a distinction made, if briefly, by Edward Craig, which I believe to be of deep significance in thinking about the distinctiveness of the speech act of testimony. (...) The distinction is that between somebody’s functioning as a ‘good informant’ and their functioning merely as a ‘source of information’. The difference between these has, as he remarks, a crucial ethical aspect: What I have in mind is the special flavour of situations in which human beings treat each other as subjects with a common purpose, rather than as objects from which services, in this case true belief, can be extracted. In this paper I shall try to bring out the distinctive nature of the role of good informant in a way that helps to clarify what is at stake in asking whether there can be group testimony in the sense of genuinely collective testimony—that is to say, where the group testifier is a collective and not merely a sum of individuals testifying in one or another form of aggregated chorus. (shrink)

The Edinburgh History of Distributed Cognition (Series Editor(s): Miranda Anderson, Douglas Cairns) -/- Questions the barriers between the humanities and the cognitive sciences. -/- Cognitive science is finding increasing evidence that cognition is distributed across brain, body and world. This series calls for a reappraisal of historical concepts of cognition in light of these findings. It engages with recent debates about the various strong or weak models of distributed cognition and brings them into discourse with research in the humanities. (...) Together, the books in this series give a wide-ranging examination of the parallels (and divergences) from these models in cultural, philosophical and scientific works, from antiquity to the mid-20th century. -/- Key Features: * Opens up our reading of Western European works in the fields of history of ideas, history of science, material culture and literary studies by bringing recent insights in cognitive science to bear on the distributed nature of cognition * Explores how sociocultural and environmental contexts lead to the manifestation of particular forms of cognitive paradigms or to their suppression * Traces the interconnections between and particular divergences across Western European history among the various concepts of distributed cognition -/- . (shrink)

Are you philosophically healthy? Do your actions reflect your thoughts, do your words mirror your values, or do you live in contradiction? This first introduction to the new field of philosophical health, written by its forerunner, Luis de Miranda, explores the 6 elements of the discipline, including the senses of body, self, belonging, possibility, purpose, and the philosophical sense. Each chapter will be placed in conversation with a modern philosopher: Bergson for embodied intuition, Descartes for self-honesty, Spinoza for well-belonging, (...) in order to make existential stances explicit, thus more relevant and actionable in practice. (shrink)

Reinvigorates our understanding of Victorian and modernist works and society Offers a wide-ranging application of theories of distributed cognition to Victorian culture and Modernism Explores the distinctive nature and expression of notions of distributed cognition in Victorian culture and Modernism and considers their relation to current notions Reinvigorates our understanding of Western European works – including Wordsworth, T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf – and society by bringing to bear recent insights on the distributed nature of cognition Includes essays by (...) international specialists in Victorian culture and Modernist literature, history, technology, science, philosophy and art including Andrew Michael Roberts, Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei and Melba Cuddy-Keane Includes essays on literature, history, technology, science, philosophy and art This book brings together 11 essays by international specialists in Victorian culture and modernism and provides a general and period-specific introduction to distributed cognition and the cognitive humanities. Together, they revitalise our reading of Victorian and modernist works in the fields of history of technology, science and medicine, material culture, philosophy, art and literary studies by bringing to bear recent insights in cognitive science and philosophy of mind on the ways in which cognition is distributed across brain, body and world. (shrink)

La presente investigación tiene como objetivo comprender el proceso sociocultural que enfrentan las parteras tradicionales de San Felipe del Progreso, en el que estructuras y prácticas distintas entre sí —como son el sistema tradicional y el moderno de salud— se encuentran y permiten la aparición de nuevas interpretaciones, prácticas y objetos en la atención del embarazo, el parto y el puerperio. Para ello resulta necesario dividir la investigación en diferentes apartados. En un primer momento, se ahonda en el concepto de (...) modernidad y cómo es vista en Latinoamérica; de igual forma se menciona la manera en que se manifiesta en México, comprendida como la sucesión de diversos procesos de modernización suscitados en el ámbito económico, social, político y cultural. Una vez comprendido lo anterior, es posible discutir el concepto de lo híbrido, retomando la premisa de que dichos procesos de modernización se establecen en un espacio que contaba con formas distintas de mirar y construir la realidad, visión que se refleja en los procesos salud/enfermedad/atención. En un segundo momento, se observa el fenómeno en una comunidad concreta, a saber, San Felipe del Progreso, que da cuenta, desde su contexto, del encuentro entre estas dos formas de mirar el proceso salud-enfermedad-atención, que por un lado están caracterizados por los modelos, llamémosles, más tradicionales de cuidado (configurados a partir de la tradición prehispánica), en comunicación con los procesos modernizadores. Partiendo de tal planteamiento, la presente investigación retoma, temporalmente, eventos que influyen en la configuración de dichos procesos modernizadores desde 1808 hasta 2016, pero la atención se centra en la observación de tal encuentro (modelo tradicional y modelo moderno) en el presente. En el tercer apartado, se retoma la categoría de lo híbrido como una herramienta de análisis o recurso de explicación. A partir de los fragmentos de las historias de vida obtenidos vía las parteras, descritas en el cuarto apartado, es posible reconocer los procesos de comunicación y práctica “híbrida” utilizados por estos especialistas médicos. En el quinto apartado, se exponen los resultados de la investigación, haciendo énfasis en lo híbrido visto desde la formación y capacitación de las parteras, y los conocimientos adquiridos, así como los materiales y las técnicas de apoyo. Concluimos la presente investigación generando una serie de argumentos que nos permiten sostener por qué lo híbrido puede ser un medio de explicación para el encuentro entre formas (ancestral y moderna) de atención del embarazo, el parto y el puerperio, vía las parteras de la comunidad. (shrink)

Insight into animal biology and development provided by classical genetic analysis of the model organism Drosophila melanogaster was an incentive to develop advanced genetic tools for this insect. But genetic systems for the over one million other known insect species are largely undeveloped. With increasing information about insect genomes resulting from next generation sequencing, RNA interference is now the method of choice for reverse genetics, although it is constrained by the means of delivery of interfering RNA. A recent advance to (...) ensure sustained delivery with minimal experimental intervention or trauma to the insect is to exploit commensal bacteria for symbiont‐mediated RNA interference. This technology not only offers an efficient means for RNA interference in insects in laboratory conditions, but also has potential for use in the control of human disease vectors, agricultural pests and pathogens of beneficial insects. (shrink)

The thirteen specially-commissioned essays in this volume are written by philosophers at the forefront of feminist scholarship, and are designed to provide an accessible and stimulating guide to a philosophical literature that has seen massive expansion in recent years. Ranging from history of philosophy through metaphysics to philosophy of science, they encompass all the core subject areas commonly taught in anglophone undergraduate and graduate philosophy courses, offering both an overview of and a contribution to the relevant debates. Together they testify (...) to the intellectual value of feminism as a radicalizing energy internal to philosophical inquiry. This volume will be essential reading for any student or teacher of philosophy who is curious about the place of feminism in their subject. (shrink)