I argue that believing at will – i.e. believing for practical reasons – is in some sense possible and in some sense impossible. It is impossible insofar as we think of belief formation as a re-sult of our exercise of certain capacities (perception, memory, agency). But insofar as we think of belief formation as an action that might lead to such a result (i.e. a deliberation or an in-quiry), believing at will is possible. First I present and clarify the problem (...) and its philosophical relevance (section 1). I then argue that a belief formation as an immediate reaction to practical reasons is not necessarily equivalent to believing at will because the causal mechanism that leads to the formation might be deviant (section 2). Finally, I explain the difference between the two above mentioned meanings of “belief formation” in order to clarify the possibility and impossibility of believing at will (section 3). (shrink)

Since their public launch, a little over a year ago, large language models (LLMs) have inspired a flurry of analysis about what their implications might be for medical ethics, and for society more broadly. 1 Much of the recent debate has moved beyond categorical evaluations of the permissibility or impermissibility of LLM use in different general contexts (eg, at work or school), to more fine-grained discussions of the criteria that should govern their appropriate use in specific domains or towards certain (...) ends. 2 With each passing week, it seems more and more inevitable that LLMs will be a pervasive feature of many, if not most, of our lives. It would not be possible—and would not be desirable—to prohibit them across the board. We need to learn how to live with LLMs; to identify and mitigate the risks they pose to us, to our fellow creatures, and the... (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss whether it is ever morally permissible to diminish the cognitive abilities or capacities of some cognitively gifted offenders whose ability to commit their crimes successfully relies on them possessing these abilities or capacities. I suggest that, given such cognitive diminishments may prevent such offenders from re-offending and causing others considerable harm, this provides us with at least one good moral reason in favour of employing them. After setting out more clearly what cognitive diminishment may consist (...) of, I then critically discuss variations of four plausible arguments against a proposal of using them on cognitive gifted offenders related to autonomy, harm, narrative identity, and a right to mental self-determination. I argue that none of these concerns should have us reject the use of cognitive diminishments. (shrink)

This paper proposes the use of an argumentation framework with recursive attacks to address a trust model in a collaborative open multi-agent system. Our approach is focused on scenarios where agents share information about the credibility (informational trust) they have assigned to their peers. We will represent informants’ credibility through credibility objects which will include not only trust information but also the informant source. This leads to a recursive setting where the reliability of certain credibility information depends on the credibility (...) of other pieces of information that should be subject to the same analysis. Credibility objects are maintained in a credibility base which can have information in conflict. In this scenario, we will formally show that our proposal will produce a partially ordered credibility relation; such relation contains the information that can be justified by an argumentation process. (shrink)

I conceptualise the role of dualities in quantum gravity, in terms of their functions for theory construction. I distinguish between two functions of duality in physical practice: namely, discovering and describing ‘equivalent physics’, versus suggesting ‘new physics’. I dub these the ‘theoretical’ versus the ‘heuristic’ functions of dualities. The distinction seems to have gone largely unnoticed in the philosophical literature: and it exists both for dualities, and for the more general relation of theoretical equivalence. The paper develops the heuristic function (...) of dualities: illustrating how they can be used, if one has any luck, to find and formulate new theories. I also point to the different physical commitments about the theories in question that underlie these two functions. I show how a recently developed schema for dualities articulates the differences between the two functions. (shrink)

This contribution examines the media history of swarm research and the significance of swarming techniques to current socio-technological processes. It explores how the procedures of swarm intelligence should be understood in relation to the concept of cultural techniques. This brings the concept into proximity with recent debates in posthuman (media) theory, animal studies and software studies. Swarms are conceptualized as zootechnologies that resist methods of analytical investigation. Synthetic swarms first emerged as operational collective structures by means of the reciprocal computerization (...) of biology and biologization of computer science. In a recursive loop, swarms inspired agent-based modelling, which in turn provided biological researchers with enduring knowledge about dynamic collectives. This conglomerate led to the development of advanced, software-based ‘particle systems’. Swarm intelligence has become a fundamental cultural technique related to dynamic processes and an effective metaphor for the collaborative efforts of society. (shrink)

We argue that Wittgenstein’s philosophical perspective on Gödel’s most famous theorem is even more radical than has commonly been assumed. Wittgenstein shows in detail that there is no way that the Gödelian construct of a string of signs could be assigned a useful function within (ordinary) mathematics. — The focus is on Appendix III to Part I of Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. The present reading highlights the exceptional importance of this particular set of remarks and, more specifically, emphasises (...) its refined composition and rigorous internal structure. (shrink)

In “Risk Based Passenger Screening in Aviation Security: Implications and Variants of a New Paradigm”, Sebastian Weydner-Volkmann describes the current paradigm shift from ‘traditional’ forms of screening to ‘risk based passenger screening’ (RBS) in aviation security. This paradigm shift is put in the context of the wider historical development of risk management approaches. Through a discussion of Michel Foucault, Herfried Münkler and Ulrich Beck, Weydner-Volkmann analyses the shortcomings of such approaches in public security policies, which become especially evident in (...) the aviation security context. As he shows, the turn towards methods of RBS can be seen as an attempt to address a trade-off ‘trilemma’ between the effective provision of security, the implied costs for industry and passengers, and the ethical, legal and societal implications of the screening procedures. In order to analyse foreseeable outcomes of embracing RBS, he differentiates three prototypical variants of the new paradigm on the basis of their main referent and rationale. For each variant, he then subsequently assesses the implications for the ‘trilemma’, after having unveiled the criteria of analysis that will necessarily have to be followed within a serious appraisal of RBS methods. (shrink)

This article explores Nietzsche’s philosophical aestheticism—the conception of art and the aesthetic as playing a necessary, internal, privileged role in the task of philosophy. It begins with an overview of the discussions of art and the aesthetic in Nietzsche’s writings, focusing on his early theory of tragedy. It then shows how Nietzsche’s position allows itself to be reconstructed as a distinctive and coherent form of philosophical aestheticism. The great importance Nietzsche gives to the aesthetic state is not matched by extensive (...) treatment of art. Instead, he associates the aesthetic state with his own philosophical ideas of will to power and eternal recurrence. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the relationship between critique and theory constitutive for Critical Theory. Based on Max Horkheimer’s 1937 program, the first part shows that “critical behaviour” must, on the one hand, seek proximity to social practice. On the other hand, such behaviour is dependent on the distance from its object that all “theoretical work” entails. Since the inception of a genuinely critical theory in the early works of Karl Marx, the proximity to practice goes hand in hand with the demand (...) to work towards its change, implying a proximity to political movements. The second part shows that, for historical reasons, Horkheimer’s program distances itself from such movements. The third part interprets this dialectical attitude towards social practice as conditioning the peculiar – ideology-critical – capacity of Critical Theory. In conclusion, the fourth part problematises two current tendencies towards dissolving said dialectics: a return to what Horkheimer calls traditional theory on the one hand, and the abandonment of the demanding social-theoretical program in favour of political positioning on the other. (shrink)

The shift from state-led import-substitution industrialization to more market-oriented economic models often has the result of shrinking and demobilizing the labor movement. Yet, evidence from Argentina suggests that a subsequent resurgence of even a downsized labor movement may occur and furthermore that a type of “segmented neocorporatism” may be established in the new economic context. We argue that the establishment of this new form of interest intermediation is driven by economic and political factors that are both immediate and longer term. (...) In addition to the short-term condition of the labor market and the political strategy of the government in power, of longer-term importance are structural and institutional conditions that derive from the earlier process of market reform, specifically the nature of sectoral shifts in the economy and the degree of labor law deregulation affecting the “associational power” of unions. (shrink)

Es reconocido desde hace tiempo por la crítica que en su estructura y contenido el libro de los signos comparte cierta semejanza con las secciones iniciales de los tres primeros evangelios. También sus matices teológicos propios han sido resaltados, así como sus fuentes. Este encuentro y diferencia entre el cuarto evangelio y los sinópticos ha divido a los estudiosos respecto al análisis de sus fuentes y sus rasgos teológicos, como lo son el uso de sus fuentes, los relatos de milagros, (...) su escatología y cristología. Este artículo pretende dar una mirada de conjunto a las líneas de investigación más relevantes en estos puntos. (shrink)

Fractal fluctuations are a core concept for inquiries into human behavior and cognition from a dynamic systems perspective. Here, we present a generalized variance method for multivariate detrended fluctuation analysis (mvDFA). The advantage of this extension is that it can be applied to multivariate time series and considers intercorrelation between these time series when estimating fractal properties. First, we briefly describe how fractal fluctuations have advanced a dynamic system understanding of cognition. Then, we describe mvDFA in detail and highlight some (...) of the advantages of the approach for simulated data. Furthermore, we show how mvDFA can be used to investigate empirical multivariate data using electroencephalographic recordings during a time-estimation task. We discuss this methodological development within the framework of interaction-dominant dynamics. Moreover, we outline how the availability of multivariate analyses can inform theoretical developments in the area of dynamic systems in human behavior. (shrink)

Review of Nicola Möβner’s 'Visual Representations in Science. Concept and Epistemology'. Forthcoming in Grazer Philosophische Studien.

The book offers an up-to-date introduction to the essential phenomena, issues, and theoretical approaches of linguistic semantics. It covers the key aspects of word and sentence semantics. In his step-by-step development of the theme, the author puts great stock in the consistency, coherence, and understandability of the scientific approach. The new edition has been extensively revised, expanded, and updated.

Gegenwärtig werden häufig politisch-moralische Ansprüche an die Kunst gerichtet. Dieser Aufsatz tritt ihnen unter Verweis auf ihren grundsätzlichen Konflikt mit ästhetischen Ansprüchen entgegen. Anhand von Oscar Wildes ästhetisch-theoretischen.

La presencia gnóstica denunciada por Voegelin a finales del siglo pasado y que ha visto su expresión más fiel en las ideologías contemporáneas, ha ido mutando a diversas manifestaciones denunciadas por teóricos contemporáneos, no solo por su naturaleza inmanente, sino por su misma inconsistencia gnoseológica. Así, el presente artículo tiene por objeto profundizar en torno a las propiedades o características fundamentales del gnosticismo moderno y contemporáneo, así como en sus antecedentes gnoseológicos. Para llevar a cabo esta labor nos centraremos en (...) un análisis crítico, primero en las características del pensamiento gnóstico, fundamentalmente a partir de las ideas de Voegelin, para luego analizar sus antecedentes ubicados en el pensamiento teológico de Joaquín de Fiore y del nominalismo de Guillermo de Occam. (shrink)

This article examines the connecting lines between the Chilean Project Cybersyn’s interface design, the German Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm and its cybernetically inspired approaches towards information design, and later developments in interaction design and the emerging field of Human–Computer Interaction in the USA. In particular, it first examines how early works of designers Tomàs Maldonado and Gui Bonsiepe on operative communication, that is, language-independent pictogram systems and visual grammars for computational systems, were intertwined with attempts to ground industrial design in (...) a scientific methodology, to address an era of computing machines, and to develop the concept of the interface as a heuristic for a renovated design thinking. It thereby also reconstructs further historical vanishing lines—e.g. the pictorial grammar of Otto Neurath’s ISOTYPE—of the development of the ‘ulm model’ of design. Second, the article explores how an apprehension of first-order cybernetics in West Germany—e.g. represented by hfg ulm staff like Max Bense or Abraham Moles, merged with Cybersyn’s second-order cybernetics ideas, as represented by Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model. And third, it asks about a further conceptual turn regarding an understanding of design which resulted in a focus on communicative interaction, e.g. in the later works of Fernando Flores and Terry Winograd on HCI, or in Beer’s Team Syntegrity approach. As an effect, the text will explore a specific and international network of cybernetic thinking between Latin America, Europe, and North America which emerged around Project Cybersyn, and which was occupied with questions of HCI, a democratization of design, and intelligence amplification. (shrink)

Review of: Toward the Critique of Violence: A Critical Edition, Walter Benjamin, Peter Fenves (ed.) and Julia Ng (ed.) (2021) Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 368 pp., ISBN 978-0-80474-952-7, h/bk, $25.00.

Entrepreneurship has been highlighted as one of the major forces in addressing significant economic, social, and environmental challenges. These challenges have raised new ethical questions, leading to an explosive growth of research at the intersection of ethics and entrepreneurship. This study provides an overview of the evolution of the scientific literature on the interplay between ethics and entrepreneurship to propose a research proposition with standardized protocols and a broad time limit. Specifically, in a hybrid literature review, 516 articles from peer-reviewed (...) journals indexed in Scopus were analyzed. The review revealed that the field mainly comprises six themes. Through the analysis of each theme, gaps are identified and structured and used to build theoretical proposals for future research agendas applied to current societal challenges. Understanding the link between entrepreneurship and ethics guides practices improves decisions, addresses challenges, promotes sustainability, enhances academia, and builds trust, fostering a responsible, beneficial entrepreneurial environment for society and the economy. (shrink)

La región de Pulmarí, en el Departamento Aluminé, en el sur de la Argentina (Provincia de Neuquén) se caracteriza por una destacada presencia del pueblo indígena Mapuche, que ha protagonizado intensas movilizaciones desde la década de 1990 por su territorio ancestral y frente al avance de diferentes agentes estatales y privados. En contraste con la tendencia que afecta a otras poblaciones, en la región se vienen dando procesos de “territorialización” de estas familias indígenas y desaceleración de las históricas migraciones rural (...) – urbanas, lo que conlleva profundas redefiniciones y reconfiguraciones de estos ámbitos rurales -tendencias explicables a partir de la aplicación de diferentes políticas y planes sociales-. El objetivo principal es analizar la dinámica de las fuentes de ingresos de estos pequeños productores rurales Mapuche, atendiendo a estas particularidades y vinculándolas con el contexto de conflictividad y disputas entre los diferentes sectores que caracteriza a la región desde hace años. (shrink)

Research into the potential associations between tinnitus and cognition has investigated specific cognitive domains in laboratory settings despite adults with tinnitus reporting broad cognitive difficulties in every-day life. To address this limitation, the present study compared performance and perceived exertion on a visual office-like task in 38 adults with tinnitus and 38 adults without tinnitus matched for age, sex and educational background. All participants were also assessed for hearing, anxiety and depression, and participants with tinnitus were also assessed for tinnitus (...) handicap. No associations were found between presence of tinnitus and cognitive performance and perceived exertion on the visual office-like task when corrected for standard and extended high frequency hearing thresholds, anxiety, and depression. The correction for extended high frequency average hearing threshold was significant for performance but not perceived exertion on the visual office-like task. Overall, the results showed extended high frequency hearing, but not tinnitus, was associated with every-day cognitive performance. This indicates clinical testing of hearing thresholds above 8 kHz could support clinicians’ identification and management of cognitive difficulties. One management method suggested by the current findings would include provision of auditory stimulation at frequencies exceeding the frequency response of many current hearing aids. (shrink)

How do we truly live well? Can philosophy actually tell us how to be happy? Constantly under attack in today's day and age, the Church's philosophy of what it means to be human and how to act serves as the logical consequence and culmination of all the truths of her theology and holy religion. But if we do not understand why we should act well according to the light of natural reason, it will be all the more difficult to explain (...) why we should act in a certain way according to the light of supernatural revelation. In short, the Church's philosophical system of ethics may well be the most important thing to learn today and so forms the culmination of our Foundations of Wisdom series. Ethics covers the teachings of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, showing how living a life according to the Church's perennial philosophy not only is not contrary to reason, but also leads to the culmination of what reason was made for: the perfection of the human person, serving as a vehicle for beatitude. In this fourth and final volume of The Foundations of Wisdom, you will understand the Church's teaching that the human person should act according to the light of natural reason by delving into the teachings of St. Thomas and seeing how natural reason harmonizes with the ethics of Holy Mother Church. Deepen your understanding of our very selves, learning how God made us to come to know Him and see His mark in every aspect of creation. Finally, understand the journey to happiness that God through His Church has provided for us to reach our ultimate end: eternal beatitude by union with God. (shrink)

The 'late' Foucault and his purported 'return to the subject' is a much discussed issue. Over the past twenty years, various suggestions have been made as to how to integrate Foucault's ethics into his oeuvre as a whole. This paper holds that there is a 'conceptual continuity', rather than a break, between Foucault's earlier works on normalizing power, and his later works on ethical self-constitution. On the basis of a conceptual framework, which is developed in Section II, a reading of (...) two themes concerning certain practices of the self is offered in the following sections (namely, dietetics and spiritual guidance). The material, drawn from the recently published lecture series L'herméneutique du sujet as well as from other published works, is related back to Foucault's ideas on the process of 'subjectivation', in order to support the claim that 'fabrication' and 'self-constitution' are but two aspects of subjectivation. Keywords: late Foucault, ethics, practices of the self, self-constitution, discipline, power, surveillance, spiritual guidance, meditation, parrhesia, dietetics, art of living, aesthetics of existence, return of the subject, subjectivation, relation to self. (shrink)

Si la teoría del derecho persigue suministrar herramientas a los operadores jurídicos para gestionar los problemas de la práctica, resulta necesario disminuir la actual separación entre la actividad teórico-jurídica y la práctica del derecho. De ahí que, este trabajo persigue contribuir a reducir dicha distancia mediante el análisis de las principales propuestas en materia de ontología de las normas. Esta revisión se realiza a la luz de un extendido problema de los ordenamientos jurídicos contemporáneos: la identificación del derecho y sus (...) limitaciones conceptuales. El examen explicita cierta concomitancia entre las propuestas teóricas y presenta una serie de consideraciones necesarias para identificar el derecho y, en concreto, contribuir a la solución del citado problema. De esta manera, se sugiere girar la discusión sobre la ontología de las normas hacia la identificación de ellas y evaluar las discusiones teórico-jurídicas con base en las exigencias de la práctica normativa. (shrink)

We conducted a scoping review to map and critically examine the knowledge, perceptions and utilization of generics and biosimilars, among physicians, pharmacists, patients, the general population, and other stakeholders from LAC.

The book reviewed here is another publication devoted to the Golden Period of Polish philosophy, which is the first half of the twentieth century. Undoubtedly, logical investigations conducted by P...

Para este trabajo, seleccionamos los programas Bailando por un sueño, Intratables y El show de la mañana, y retomamos algunas expresiones de los sujetos que participaron en grupos de discusión durante los meses de octubre, noviembre y diciembre de 2016 en Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Rosario y Córdoba.Estos programas televisivos, en tiempos de una “democracia mediatizada”, son centrales en la modelización de lo político en un sentido muy distinto a lo que definía el concepto de “videopolítica” en los 90. (...) Uno de los cambios a considerar remite al impacto del desarrollo de internet y a los dispositivos asociados para un tipo de “participación mediatizada” en vivo, que transforma sustantivamente el lugar y la posición que tenía el espectador de los viejos medios masivos de comunicación. Con relación al “objeto” de estos programas, es posible identificar y reconstruir una modelización recurrente en el qué se dice y cómo; construcción ideológica que encuentra en la macro forma compartida del panel, por ejemplo, una manera de presentar “diversidad de voces”, en tanto expresión resultante del proceso de trabajo que vincula estética y política en la construcción de una “verdad” sobre el contexto político actual.La estrategia expositiva y argumentativa es la siguiente: 1) Presentamos y caracterizamos estructuralmente a los programas seleccionados y los vinculamos con expresiones rescatadas de los grupos de discusión. 2) Seleccionamos ejes de comparación que posibilitan la precisión de recurrencias entre ellos. 3) Finalmente, con los resultados del recorrido descriptivo y analítico, exponemos rasgos y dinámicas de las novedosas formas de estetización de lo político —en el sentido benjaminiano— como proceso orientado a que las masas —en nuestro caso, los individuos— expresen sus demandas. (shrink)

Diese Aufsatzsammlung ist der erste ausführliche Versuch, eine Verbindung zwischen dem Denken der klassischen deutschen Philosophie und Husserls Phänomenologie herzustellen. Vorliegender Band versammelt eine Reihe neuer kritischer Artikel sowohl von etablierten Forschern wie jüngeren Philosophen aus beiden Traditionen, um diese Forschungslücke, als welche sie von beiderlei Forschungsrichtungen anerkannt ist, zu schließen. Dieser Band wirft neues Licht auf beide Traditionen und hebt ihre Bedeutung für die Philosophie der Gegenwart hervor, sowohl in historischer wie systematischer Hinsicht. Die in diesem Band behandelten Hauptthemen (...) sind Erkenntnistheorie, Moralphilosophie und die Geschichte der Philosophie, wobei diese Themen auf der Basis von mehreren Subthemen (Objekt, Idealismus/Realismus, Subjektivität/Intersubjektivität, Ethik, Geschichte, Kultur) diskutiert werden. Hierdurch wird das grundsätzliche Koordinatensystem für einen spekulativen Vergleich zwischen Husserl und der klassischen deutschen Philosophie präsentiert, indem die wichtigsten Deutungslinien verfolgt werden, um sowohl die Kontinuität wie auch die Diskontinuität beider Traditionen wertschätzen zu können. Eine Sektion des Bandes ist insbesondere der Rezeption der Husserl’schen Phänomenologie und der klassischen deutschen Philosophie gewidmet. Die Aufsätze dieses Bandes sind für eine generelle philosophische Leserschaft intendiert mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Forschern in den Gebieten der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), des Neukantianismus und der phänomenologischen Tradition (insbesondere Husserl, aber ebenso andere wichtige Vertreter derselben).​. (shrink)

El presente artículo dialoga con la perspectiva del profesor de la Universidad de Stanford, John Searle en su perspectiva acerca de la conciencia, los actos de habla en lo que tiene que ver con la creación de hechos institucionales y su tesis emergentista. Esto con la idea de proponer la lectura del filósofo estadounidense en base a una pragmática de la expresión, que identifica al agente como centro de la creación y transformación social, y por tanto de movilización política, al (...) ser el reconocimiento colectivo quien mantiene el orden institucional. Por lo tanto, esa pragmática de la expresión identifica a los agentes como puntos esenciales de la creación del mundo social, desde el punto de vista del libre albedrio y la creación de mundos sociales posibles. (shrink)