The present paper illustrates an autobiographical writing experience carried out in a therapeutic day care center involving nine preadolescents and adolescents with moderate to severe mental distress. According to the literature, autobiographical writing is an useful tool to improve educational work with teenagers, because it can accommodate the need to express themselves that characterizes the adolescence and can prevent or reduce feelings of distress. Autobiographical practice is particularly suitable to work with teenagers because it is focused on the question “Who (...) am I?”, which is typical of adolescence. This question was the central theme of the autobiographical writing workshop. During the workshop, was proposed an introspective journey in search of one’s identity between past (who was I?), present (who am I?) and a possible future (who do I want to become?). This article will describe the themes and various stimuli that were proposed during the meetings and will present and discuss the results achieved. (shrink)

Envy is almost universally condemned. But is its reputation warranted? Sara Protasi argues envy is multifaceted and sometimes even virtuous.

Proponents of grounding often describe the notion as "metaphysical causation" involving determination and production relations similar to causation. This paper argues that the similarities between grounding and causation are merely superficial. I show that there are several sorts of causation that have no analogue in grounding; that the type of "bringing into existence" that both involve is extremely different; and that the synchronicity of ground and the diachronicity of causation make them too different to be explanatorily intertwined.

This paper gives a framework for understanding causal counterpossibles, counterfactuals imbued with causal content whose antecedents appeal to metaphysically impossible worlds. Such statements are generated by omissive causal claims that appeal to metaphysically impossible events, such as “If the mathematician had not failed to prove that 2+2=5, the math textbooks would not have remained intact.” After providing an account of impossible omissions, the paper argues for three claims: (i) impossible omissions play a causal role in the actual world, (ii) causal (...) counterpossibles have broad applications in philosophy, and (iii) the truth of causal counterpossibles provides evidence for the nonvacuity of counterpossibles more generally. (shrink)

The debate on love's reasons ignores unrequited love, which—I argue—can be as genuine and as valuable as reciprocated love. I start by showing that the relationship view of love cannot account for either the reasons or the value of unrequited love. I then present the simple property view, an alternative to the relationship view that is beset with its own problems. In order to solve these problems, I present a more sophisticated version of the property view that integrates ideas from (...) different property theorists in the love literature. However, even this more sophisticated property view falls short in accounting for unrequited love's reasons. In response, I develop a new version of the property view that I call the experiential view. On this view, we love a person not only in virtue of properties shaped by and experienced in a reciprocal loving relationship, but also in virtue of perspectival properties, whose value can be properly assessed also outside of a reciprocal loving relationship. The experiential view is the only view that can account not only for reciprocated love's reasons, but also for unrequited love's reasons. (shrink)

Should you take a pill that gives you all the health benefits of sleep and allows you to stay awake? I argue that you shouldn’t. I propose three reasons why sleeping, conceived of as a socially and culturally embedded human activity, is valuable. First, there is aesthetic value in the rituals that typically precede sleeping; second, there is interpersonal value in the intimacy that stems from sleeping with other people; third, there is ethical value in mere presence and in retreating (...) from consciousness. In order to fully support my argument, I situate it within a conception of goodness that embraces the fragility of the human condition and the limitations stemming from our corporeal nature. I conclude with some practical implications of my view. (shrink)

Where do values live in thought? A straightforward answer is that we (or our brains) make decisions using explicit value representations which are our values. Recent work applying reinforcement learning to decision-making and planning suggests that more specifically, we may represent both the instrumental expected value of actions as well as the intrinsic reward of outcomes. In this paper, I argue that identifying value with either of these representations is incomplete. For agents such as humans and other animals, there is (...) another place where reward can be located in thought: the division of the space of possibilities or ‘state space’. (shrink)

The increasing application of network models to interpret biological systems raises a number of important methodological and epistemological questions. What novel insights can network analysis provide in biology? Are network approaches an extension of or in conflict with mechanistic research strategies? When and how can network and mechanistic approaches interact in productive ways? In this paper we address these questions by focusing on how biological networks are represented and analyzed in a diverse class of case studies. Our examples span from (...) the investigation of organizational properties of biological networks using tools from graph theory to the application of dynamical systems theory to understand the behavior of complex biological systems. We show how network approaches support and extend traditional mechanistic strategies but also offer novel strategies for dealing with biological complexity. (shrink)

This paper argues that several sorts of metaphysical and semantic indeterminacy afflict the causal relation. If, as it is plausible to hold, there is a relationship between causation and moral responsibility, then indeterminacy in the causal relation results in indeterminacy of moral responsibility more generally.

In "Changing the Past" (2010), Peter van Inwagen argues that a time traveler can change the past without paradox in a growing block universe. After erasing the portion of past existence that generates paradox, a new, non-paradox-generating block can be "grown" after the temporal relocation of the time traveler. -/- I articulate and explore the underlying mechanism of Van Inwagen's model: the time traveler's control over the location of the objective present. Van Inwagen's model is aimed at preventing paradox by (...) changing the past, but it achieves something broader than paradox avoidance: it gives tools for a new model of time travel. I use van Inwagen's tools to develop a new kind of time travel in which in which the location of the objective present is shifted by the time traveler. I call this type of time travel Movable Objective Present, or MOP. After defining MOP, I argue that it is compatible with any theory of time that accepts hypertime, including presentism and moving spotlight theory. (shrink)

Do we need a right to mental privacy? In an era of increasing sophistication in recording, interpreting, and directly intervening on our neural activity – not to mention efforts at combining neural...

In this paper, I ask whether there is a defensible philosophical view according to which everybody is beautiful. I review two purely aesthetical versions of this claim. The No Standards View claims that everybody is maximally and equally beautiful. The Multiple Standards View encourages us to widen our standards of beauty. I argue that both approaches are problematic. The former fails to be aspirational and empowering, while the latter fails to be sufficiently inclusive. I conclude by presenting a hybrid ethical–aesthetical (...) view according to which everybody is beautiful in the sense that everybody can be perceived through a loving gaze. I show that this view is inclusive, aspirational and empowering, and authentically aesthetical. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Marxist Buddhism may provide a novel approach to envy in society. It has been argued that envy arises in response to socio-political inequality, which is considered a problem given the social and moral harms associated with envy. Thus, achieving equality is expected to solve the problem of envy. However, anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests that is not the case, and that, in particular, societies inspired by Marxist ideals are not envy-free—if anything, the opposite seems (...) true. Buddhism has traditionally condemned envy. It shares with Marxism the idea that individual wellbeing can be obtained, paradoxically, only through lessening emphasis on individuality—Marxism by means of economic collectivism, Buddhism by means of a spiritual transformation. Both aim at shrinking the self and are keenly aware of how quickly an emphasis on one’s own desires leads to greed and exploitation of others. However, Marxist ideals have failed to yield successful large-scale flourishing communities, while Buddhism is a religion practiced by millions of people but has not advanced a politically progressive agenda in particular. Marxist Buddhism—argue—may perhaps bring together the best of the respective traditions to solve the problem of envy. However, I end by cautioning against such a radical reshaping of our psychological makeup, especially given the evidence that shows that there are morally and prudentially good types of envy, and sketch the profile of a Buddhist-friendly type of envy as an alternative to total eradication. (shrink)

We appreciate Chapman and colleagues’ (2025) advocacy for revising the Common Rule to address the downstream effects of data-centric research, particularly the potential for group harms such as sti...

Geometric theories are presented as contraction- and cut-free systems of sequent calculi with mathematical rules following a prescribed rule-scheme that extends the scheme given in Negri and von Plato. Examples include cut-free calculi for Robinson arithmetic and real closed fields. As an immediate consequence of cut elimination, it is shown that if a geometric implication is classically derivable from a geometric theory then it is intuitionistically derivable.

In recent years, the philosophical focus of the modeling literature has shifted from descriptions of general properties of models to an interest in different model functions. It has been argued that the diversity of models and their correspondingly different epistemic goals are important for developing intelligible scientific theories. However, more knowledge is needed on how a combination of different epistemic means can generate and stabilize new entities in science. This paper will draw on Rheinberger’s practice-oriented account of knowledge production. The (...) conceptual repertoire of Rheinberger’s historical epistemology offers important insights for an analysis of the modelling practice. I illustrate this with a case study on network modeling in systems biology where engineering approaches are applied to the study of biological systems. I shall argue that the use of multiple means of representations is an essential part of the dynamic of knowledge generation. It is because of – rather than in spite of – the diversity of constraints of different models that the interlocking use of different epistemic means creates a potential for knowledge production. (shrink)

This is a comment on a translation of Franz von Kutschera's paper ‘Ein verallgemeinerter Widerlegungsbegriff für Gentzenkalküle’, which was published in German in 1969. The paper is an important predecessor of what is nowadays called ‘proof-theoretic semantics’, which describes the view that the meaning of logical connectives is determined by the rules governing their use in a proof system. Von Kutschera adopts this view in this paper, and more specifically, a bilateralist view on this subject in that his aim is (...) to give a general framework that provides generalized rule schemata for arbitrary connectives both for proving and refuting and to use this as a reference to prove completeness of certain systems of operators purely proof-theoretically. The main logical system in focus here has been shown to be equivalent to N4, Nelson's constructive logic with strong negation. In order to understand the translated paper better, a contextualizing comment is offered referring and relating it to a preceding paper by von Kutschera. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical analysis of program evaluation in contemporary urban agriculture. Drawing on data from an exploratory study designed at the request of and in collaboration with urban agriculture practitioners in Massachusetts, it describes both their critiques of extant practices of program evaluation and their visions for alternative ways of telling the story of their work. Related, it explores practitioners’ interest in building capacity for policy advocacy, working collectively to create transformative social change, and, related, establishing new kinds (...) of relationships with state and philanthropic funders. Building on scholarship that has observed that urban agriculture is characterized by an internal contradiction—i.e., its simultaneous orientation to “neoliberal” and “radical” agendas —this analysis calls attention, especially, to the complex role of metrics, which may not only entrench neoliberalism in UA organizations, but also provide a mechanism for challenging its assumptions and advancing the radical project of food justice. (shrink)

Life scientists increasingly rely upon abstraction-based modeling and reasoning strategies for understanding biological phenomena. We introduce the notion of constraint-based reasoning as a fruitful tool for conceptualizing some of these developments. One important role of mathematical abstractions is to impose formal constraints on a search space for possible hypotheses and thereby guide the search for plausible causal models. Formal constraints are, however, not only tools for biological explanations but can be explanatory by virtue of clarifying general dependency-relations and patterning between (...) functions and structures. We describe such situations as constraint-based explanations and argue that these differ from mechanistic strategies in important respects. While mechanistic explanations emphasize change-relating causal features, constraint-based explanations emphasize formal dependencies and generic organizational features that are relatively independent of lower-level changes in causal details. Our distinction between mechanistic and constraint-based explanations is pragmatically motivated by the wish to understand scientific practice. We contend that delineating the affordances and assumptions of different explanatory questions and strategies helps to clarify tensions between diverging scientific practices and the innovative potentials in their combination. Moreover, we show how constraint-based explanation integrates several features shared by otherwise different philosophical accounts of abstract explanatory strategies in biology. (shrink)

This article examines ‘collective feelings’ by considering how ‘others’ create impressions on the surfaces of bodies. Rather than considering ‘collective feeling’ as ‘fellow feeling’ or in terms of feeling ‘for’ the collective, the article suggests that how we respond to others in intercorporeal encounters creates the impression of a collective body. In other words, how we feel about others is what aligns us with a collective, which paradoxically ‘takes shape’ only as an effect of such alignments. The article considers different (...) examples of racism in which a particular other is held in place by being aligned with other others. The ‘moment of contact’ is shaped by past histories of contact, which allows the proximity of a racial other to be perceived as threatening, at the same time as it re-shapes the bodies in the contact zone of the encounter. Feelings rehearse associations that are already in place, in the way in which they ‘read’ the proximity of others, at the same time as they establish the ‘truth’ of the reading. The article extends its analysis by showing that bodily proximity is not required to create the impressions of others, and offers an analysis of ‘collective feelings’ within virtual communities of global nomads. Proximity does not require physical co-presence: the collective can ‘surface’ through giving up on local attachments (where the screen becomes a substitute for the skin). The article concludes that collective feelings are not feelings that the collective ‘has’, as if the collective was a subject. Rather the collective is an effect of the impressions left by others on the surfaces of skins. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 2, February 2025, Page 87-90.

Just as we may ask whether, and under what conditions, a collection of objects composes a single object, we may ask whether, and under what conditions, a collection of actions composes a single action. In the material objects literature, this question is known as the "special composition question," and I take it that there is a similar question to be asked of collections of actions. I will call that question the "special composition question in action," and argue that the correct (...) answer to this question depends on a particular kind of consequence produced by the individual constituent actions. (shrink)

With the emergence of systems biology the notion of organizing principles is being highlighted as a key research aim. Researchers attempt to ‘reverse engineer’ the functional organization of biological systems using methodologies from mathematics, engineering and computer science while taking advantage of data produced by new experimental techniques. While systems biology is a relatively new approach, the quest for general principles of biological organization dates back to systems theoretic approaches in early and mid-20th century. The aim of this paper is (...) to draw on this historical background in order to increase the understanding of the motivation behind the systems theoretic approach and to clarify different epistemic aims within systems biology. We pinpoint key aspects of earlier approaches that also underlie the current practice. These are i) the focus on relational and system-level properties, ii) the inherent critique of reductionism and fragmentation of knowledge resulting from overspecialization, and iii) the insight that the ideal of formulating abstract organizing principles is complementary to, rather than conflicting with, the aim of formulating detailed explanations of biological mechanisms. We argue that looking back not only helps us understand the current practice but also points to possible future directions for systems biology. (shrink)

The aim of this volume is to offer an updated account of the transcendental character of phenomenology. The main question concerns the sense and relevance of transcendental philosophy today: What can such philosophy contribute to contemporary inquiries and debates after the many reasoned attacks against its idealistic, aprioristic, absolutist and universalistic tendencies—voiced most vigorously by late 20th century postmodern thinkers—as well as attacks against its apparently circular arguments and suspicious metaphysics launched by many analytic philosophers? Contributors also aim to clarify (...) the relations of transcendental phenomenology to other post-Kantian philosophies, most importantly to pragmatism and Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations. Finally, the volume offers a set of reflections on the meaning of post-transcendental phenomenology. (shrink)

Philosophers who have written on modesty have largely agreed that it is a virtue, and that it therefore has an important psychological component. Mere modest behavior, it is often argued, is actually false modesty if it is generated by the wrong kind of mental state. The philosophical debate about modesty has largely focused on the question of which kind of mental state—cognitive, motivational, or evaluative—best captures the virtue of modesty. We therefore conducted a series of experiments to see which philosophical (...) account matches the folk concept of modesty. Surprisingly, we found that the folk concept is primarily behavioral. This leads us to argue that modesty may not be a virtue, but that if it is none of the extant philosophical accounts have properly explained why. (shrink)

Adaptationism has for decades been the topic of sophisticated debates in philosophy of biology but methodological adaptationism has not received as much attention as the empirical and explanatory issues. In addition, adaptationism has mainly been discussed in the context of evolutionary biology and not in fields such as zoophysiology and systems biology where this heuristic is also used in design analyses of physiological traits and molecular structures. This paper draws on case studies from these fields to discuss the productive and (...) problematic aspects of this heuristic in different research practices, in functional as well as evolutionary studies on different levels of biological organization. Gould and Lewontin’s Spandrels-paper famously criticized adaptationist methodology for implying the risk of generating ‘blind spots’ with respect to non-selective effects on evolution. Some have claimed that this bias can be accommodated through the testing of evolutionary hypotheses. Although this is an important aspect of overcoming naïve adaptationism, I argue that the issue of methodological biases is broader than the question of testability. I demonstrate the productivity of adaptationist heuristics but also discuss the deeper problematic aspects associated with the methodological imperialism that is part of the strong adaptationist position. (shrink)

This far-ranging collection of essays represents a conference of the same name held at Emory University in conjunction with a meeting of the “Rethinking Plato’s Parmenides” seminar sponsored by the Society of Biblical Literature.In embracing authors as diverse as Plato himself, Epictetus, Ralph Cudworth, Yeats, and Levinas, to name a few of the Platonists identified herein, the volume clearly and deliberately stretches the meaning of this rubric to its outer limits. This review will reprise some of the articles from each (...) of the book’s sections—Ancient, Late Antique, Renaissance and Modern, and Post-modern Platonisms—in an effort to help readers gauge the argument of the book, which may or may not be endorsed by each of the individual contributors. The editors, at least in compiling this anthology, do so in the belief that Platonism might better be considered “as an inexhaustible mine of possible trajectories each of which helps us to see the richness of Platonic texts,” rather than “as a series of determinate doctrines” .Thomas Slezak opens the volume with a rehearsal of his programmatic way of reading Plato’s dialogues, involving two possibly competing claims: what Plato means by philosophy is not contained within the. (shrink)

Reflections on moral discourse and its contexts are provided and the authors discuss the nature and tasks of moral philosophy. The collection creates a dialogue between different philosophical views.

This paper argues that the parallel that Husserl draws in The Crisis between the phenomenological epoché and religious conversions is not just a rhetorical device but involves a crucial methodological idea. By pointing to the depth-dimension of living consciousness and its possibilities of transformation, the parallel sheds light upon the ultimate task of the phenomenological- transcendental reduction. To argue for this this claim, the paper first explicates the two principal epoch.

Explores the complex nature of truth in Wittgenstein’s philosophy.

In ‘Logical Consequence (Slight Return)’, Gillian Russell asks ‘What is logical consequence?’, a question which has vexed logicians since at least the twelfth century, when people first began to wonder what it meant for one sentence (or proposition) to follow from another sentence (or proposition, or set of sentences, or set of propositions), or whether it was possible to put down rules determining when the relation of ‘follows from’ (or ‘is antecedent to’) holds. Her aim is threefold: (1) to explain (...) what an answer to the question ‘What is logical consequence?’ would need to be able to do in order to be a satisfying answer; (2) to identify previous answers to the question; and (3) to demonstrate why these previous answers are inadequate to do what the answer needs to be able to do, and to offer a new answer. In the present paper, I respond to these aims in two ways. The first is to say something about where Russell’s central question even comes from, because this is not a topic that is often discussed by twentieth- and twenty-first-century logicians, and even historians of logic tend to not have had much to say about when—and why—this question even comes about in the first place. The second is to evaluate the accounts proposed and discussed by Russell, including her new proposal. In the end, I will argue that she has reached the right account of the nature of logical consequence, but not necessarily for the right reasons. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Whiteness and the General WillDiversity Work as Willful WorkSara AhmedIn this essay I explore whiteness in relation to the general will. My starting point is that the idea of “the general will” offers us a vocabulary for thinking through the materiality of race. In his keynote address to the 40th Annual Philosophy Symposium in 2010, Charles Mills argues that race is material: it becomes part of the living human (...) body. Mills draws on recent theories of whiteness as habit, including the work of Linda Alcoff (2006) and Shannon Sullivan (2006). Quoting from Sullivan, he suggests that whiteness is in “the nose that smells, the back, neck and other muscles that imperceptibly tighten with anxiety, and the eyes that see some but not all physical differences as significant” (Sullivan 2006, 188). Whiteness is embodied; it is in bodily matter as well as affecting how bodies matter. Mills then suggests that the materiality of whiteness is its “resistance to will.” One definition of materiality could be this: resistance to will.This essay takes up the theme of the materiality of race by thinking of whiteness in relation to the will. There are clearly risks in such an undertaking: after all, the idea of whiteness as willed might seem to imply that whiteness is volitional: and can be simply “willed away.”1 I want to suggest that if whiteness is resistant to will, as that which cannot be simply willed away, then whiteness can also be understood as willed: in other words, what cannot be willed away is a willing way. Edward Said’s definition of Orientalism as “willed human work,” which as a definition has yet to be rigorously understood, could be considered an important precedent to my argument (1978, 140). The suggestion is not [End Page 1] simply that the Orient is brought into existence, or made to exist over time, but that the very labor of creating the Orient, the land of the stranger, the land far away, is what establishes a direction. Once the Orient has come to exist, there is a willing of its existence; to keep going that way is to keep that way going. Willed work is work that in willing that way creates a way that can be willed. It is not as the old English cliché says—where there’s a will there’s a way—but rather to will is to way. I think it is useful to think of whiteness in this way, as a willing way, which is of course only one way of thinking about whiteness.I pose the generality of the will as a way of reflecting on “institutional whiteness.” Whiteness becomes “the material” of an institutional body, whether that body is the nation, an organization, a neighborhood, or a street. We can consider an institution as a body with parts: it too has noses, mouths, muscles that register anxiety, as well as ears and eyes. Just think of how Neighborhood Watch, as a national or even global technology, uses the injunction that citizens should become the “eyes and ears of the police.” A good citizen is the one who accepts this injunction: the one who is willing to watch out for strangers, those who are loitering, who seem suspicious, or out of place. Institutions have “detection systems”: they have parts that register the approach of strangers. A collective body in registering those who are out of place, both creates strangers and establishes a direction toward them, as those who threaten the place of the “in place,” as those who generate anxiety.A key event in my own life was of becoming a stranger in a white neighborhood in Adelaide, Australia, in a place I called home. I was fourteen years old. I was stopped by two policemen in a car who asked me, “Are you Aboriginal?” It turned out that there had been some burglaries in the area. It was an extremely hostile address, and it was an unsettling experience at the time. It was an experience of being made into a stranger, the one who is recognized as “out of place,” as the one who does not belong, whose proximity is registered... (shrink)

Revered as the ‘Queen of Qawwali’ and ‘Queen of Sufi music’, sixty-seven-year-old Abida Parveen is a spiritual phenomenon who transcends gender while performing. She is known for her signature fashion style of buttoned-up masculine-cut kurta with matching shalwar and an ajrak shawl. Her aesthetic circulates within transnational and national fashion media and popular cultural spaces through descriptors such as androgynous, masculine, modest, indigenous and sacred. As a highly respected figure with widely circulating performances on both the national and international stages, (...) as well through multiple media circuits, including television, social/digital media and broadcast concerts, Parveen's undeniable fame and her transgressive entry into an otherwise male-dominated music genre raises important questions about gender, embodiment, spirituality and the sacred. In analysing Parveen's body and dress in performance, I centre her sartorial style as sites of spirituality and affect to ask: what does it mean for Parveen to transcend gender through a performance of androgynous Sufism and mobilise it as an entry way into spiritual iconism? What imaginations around spirituality and the sacred become available through Parveen's sartorial practices? How does Parveen's style offer an alternative route to Muslim spirituality? Taking up Parveen's embodied coagulation between fashion and the sacred reveals an absence in feminist fashion studies on which subjects and styles are viewed as important, relevant, resistant or transgressive and thus worthy of theorisation. As a feminist scholar interested in the relationship between gender, power and self/representation, I see Parveen as a key global cultural and spiritual figure who necessitates transnational feminist analysis. This article is situated at the intersections of fashion and cultural studies, feminist, queer and trans spiritualities and South Asia studies. (shrink)

One of the most important concepts in Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialist and phenomenological ethics is the concept of freedom. In this article, I would like to argue that Beauvoir’s concept of freedom is problematic in being strongly constrained by its essentially active character. This constraint contradicts some of Beauvoir’s major ideas, such as the one that considers the body as a situation, as a source of activity and of freedom in itself, as well as the idea of eroticism as one (...) of the most important expressions of authenticity. I will show that Beauvoir’s concept of freedom can appear to be less constrained by the necessity to be inherently active if we look at it through the ‘crack’ provided by her conception of the erotic body as already embodying freedom. Using this ‘crack’, I will attempt to shed new light on the aspects of Beauvoir’s idea of the erotic that are productive for her conceptions of ethics and of freedom. (shrink)

In this article, I examine racial narratives of passing and their relationship to discourses of hybridity. Rather than defining passing as inherently transgressive, or as one side of identity politics or the other, I suggest that passing must be understood in relationship to forms of social antagonism. I ask the following questions: how are differences that threaten the system recuperated? How do ambiguous or hybrid bodies get read in a way which further supports the enunciative power of those who are (...) telling the difference? In what ways is `passing' implicated in the very discourse around tellable differences? Although to some extent all identities involve passing - insofar as the subject never `is' what it `images' itself to be - we still need to theorize the differences between passing as white and passing as black. I argue that passing as black as a white subject can function as a technique of knowledge which assumes `blackness' to be imageable and hence beable. However, for black subjects to refuse to pass as white - that is, for black subjects to pass as black - can make visible the violent histories concealed by the invisibility of the mark of passing. Such a process of passing as black subjects is tied to a politics of the collective - a coming together through the recognition of the lack that engenders passing in the first place. (shrink)

The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau’s Social Contract richly rewards the reader even as it requires a close familiarity with the text. The volume is not a general introduction to Rousseau or an art...

This article addresses the issue of attributing phenomenal consciousness to Artificial Intelligence (AI), a mistake that can lead to ethically dangerous consequences and that is becoming widespread due to the advances of Large Language Models such as ChatGPT. We juxtapose advancements in AI with the notion of inner experience as it is present in humans. The study draws from various disciplines, including philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, and theological texts such as "The Inner Castle" by Saint Theresa of Ávila and (...) "Confessions" by Saint Augustine. Firstly, it reviews the current state of the relationship between phenomenal consciousness and AI, followed by a critique of the idea that advanced language models, like ChatGPT, can achieve an inner experience in the same sense we use the term to describe the human inner experience. A common objection is raised, suggesting that AI can become conscious by increasing its complexity. This is countered by presenting theoretical and empirical evidence on the independence of computational intelligence and phenomenal consciousness. The study concludes that, despite AI's notable cognitive abilities, it lacks the inner experience that characterizes human experience. Then, our second main contribution is an analogy of the dwellings of the Inner Castle to the range of different subjective experiences that are available to human beings, together with actions associated to them, which can be useful to understand where the machine can perform tasks that are similar to the human and where subjective experience is key. We are now in a pivotal moment where it is essential to understand the limitations of AI for deploying it ethically. (shrink)

This paper examines processes of translation through which molecular genetic technologies and practices are incorporated into environmental health research and regulation. Specifically, it considers how scientists, risk assessors, and regulators have used genetically modified mouse models to translate across scientific disciplines, articulate emergent molecular forms, standards, and practices with the extant? gold standard,? and establish roles for molecular knowledge in risk assessment and regulation. Noting variation both within and between regulatory agencies in responses to data from these models, the article (...) describes also the role of public-private networks and their effects on professional and institutional imperatives which shape regulators? responses to the potential applications of these models. The conclusions address the importance of translation for understanding the wider implications of the molecularization of environmental health science. (shrink)