In this paper we propose a conceptualization of ‘posthumous social status’ as a performative reality accomplished through collective actions that are materially and symbolically legitimated. We question the classical definitions of social status that lead to oversocialized theoretical models, and we argue for the necessity to reconsider the relation between social status and social roles in order to gain insight into the reality of a social presence after death. On this account, we claim that the prestige attached to one's position (...) in society is a social phenomenon produced through autopoietic systems of social influence rather than a pre-existent and stable feature embedded in hierarchical structures and actions. Therefore, we clarify the link between social status and systems of influence through a case study in which we discuss how the Christian-Orthodox tradition is socially organized as a powerful realm of doing posthumous social status. (shrink)

We study smoking-cessation apps in order to formulate a framework for ethical evaluation, analyzing apps as ‘medium’, ‘market’, and ‘genre’. We center on the value of user autonomy through truthfulness and self-understanding. Smoking-cessation apps usually communicate in an anonymous ‘app voice’, with little presence of professional or other identified voices. Because of the fast-and-frugal communication, truthfulness is problematic. Messages in the ‘quantification’ modules may be read as deceitfully accurate. The app voice frames smoking as a useless, damaging habit indicative of (...) weakness of will, in a ‘cold-turkey’ frame of individual mind-over-body heroism. Thus apps contribute to a stigmatization of smokers and culpabilization of relapses. The potential to support user autonomy through diverse meaningful voices and personalized communication remains yet unused. (shrink)

Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) devoted more than 10 years of his life to developing a science of plants and vegetation, a project in which observation (often at the microscopic level) and experimentation played a prominent role. Grew started by composing a natural history of plants that was concerned with their anatomical structure and functioning, but, as I suggest, he also aimed to use observations and experiments to develop an experimental science that investigated the causes and principles of vegetation. Apart from studying (...) the structure of plants, Grew also treated them as instruments in which different chemical operations took place (such as filtration, digestion, fermentation, and the separation of particles of matter). At a methodological level, the science of plants and vegetation is a project based on experimental comparisons, variations, and extensions that, in some cases, led Grew to revise his explicative hypothesis. (shrink)

This article examines influential recent arguments in science studies which stress the interactive and mutually transformative nature of human-animal relations in scientific research, as part of a broader ontological proposal for science as material engagement with the world, rather than epistemic detachment from it. Such arguments are examined in the light of ethnography and interviews with field biologists who work with meerkats under conditions of habituation. Where philosophers of science stress the mutually modifying aspect of scientific interspecies relationality, these researchers (...) present habituation as a way to study meerkats ‘in the wild’, and to access their putatively natural, undisturbed, behaviour. Building on this contrast, I will argue that the logic of scientific habituation remains difficult to grasp as long as we think of it exclusively in terms of human-animal relations. The seeming ‘paradox’ of habituation – the idea that it transforms precisely that which it aims to hold stable, namely the ‘wildness’ of animals – is an artefact of a frame of analysis which takes animals to be the object of the science of animal behaviour. Habituation ceases to look paradoxical, however, if we remain faithful to these researchers’ own interests, for whom the scientific object does not coincide with the animal as a whole, but is rather only a selected subset of its behaviour. In conclusion I suggest that this account of habituation sheds a new light on the articulations and disjunctions between diverse practices and commitments in social anthropology, philosophy and biological science. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relation between Gabriel Plattes’ (c. 1600–1644) cosmology and theory of matter, on the one hand, and his method of experimentation, on the other. In my view Plattes based his cosmology and theory of matter on specific “principles of nature” expressed as alchemical qualitative relations between bodies, and these principles formed the theoretical framework for his experimental method and technologies. I also claim that Plattes’ method of experimentation has heuristic purposes, acting as a tool to instantiate and (...) illustrate these natural principles. By quantifiable manipulations of matter (expressed in terms of proportions and numbers), Plattes made use of experimentation to provide technologies whose immediate purpose was to ameliorate or improve the material world. (shrink)

This book presents a unique rethinking of G. W. F. Hegel's philosophy from unusual and controversial perspectives in order to liberate new energies from his philosophy. The role Hegel ascribes to women in the shaping of society and family, the reconstruction of his anthropological and psychological perspective, his approach to human nature, the relationship between mental illness and social disease, the role of the unconscious, and the relevance of intercultural and interreligious pathways: All these themes reveal new and inspiring aspects (...) of Hegel’s thought for our time. (shrink)

The history of modern modal logic is too often presented as an American success story that started with the work of the Harvard philosopher C. I. Lewis, while prewar modal logic research in Europe is passed off as a side-show of well-intended failures. As a contribute towards correcting this picture, we carefully analyze and reconsider Oskar Becker’s pioneering work On the Logic of Modalities (1930), highlighting its influence on the early development of modal logic in the decade 1930 - 1940.

El “Guernica” de Picasso ganó su estatuto de icono, es decir, de objeto aurático, gracias a una reproducción industrial que, de acuerdo con Walter Benjamin, debería quebrar el aura del arte moderno. En la historia de su recepción un sistema de metáforas religiosas cubre precisamente los traslados mecánicos para conferirles una carga simbólica. Los relatos respectivos acerca del desplazamiento del mural (o hacia el mural) se distinguen claramente de un modelo narrativo basado en el reemplazo, como propone El otro árbol (...) de Guernica de Luis de Castresana, y también de un discurso franquista centrado en la continuidad de los iconos. Finalmente, incluso un robo de cine (en la película El robo más grande jamás contado de Daniel Monzón) y un robo real (la escultura desaparecida de Richard Serra) en tanto que traslados ilegítimos, intervienen como para revelar la dialéctica del aura descrita por Benjamin. (shrink)

The text approaches the phenomenon of transnational migration movements in the globalized world as a question related to the specific borders and mobilities of philosophy. The circulation of philosophical ideas and subjectivities between different countries and languages is challenged as a form of transnational citizenship. This main thesis will be examined in the light of the building process of the concept of belonging in the political theory of Hannah Arendt in relation to her German and US-American audiences. I will first (...) explain the approach of the transnational circulation of ideas as well as its presumption, the consideration of philosophy as a specific social practice. I will then explore the mutations of Arendt’s thinking on belonging along a close reading and a contextualization of some of her German and English texts. The contradictions in Arendt’s conceptualizations of the idea of belonging will be finally reexamined as practices of constructing transnational social and intellectual frames. (shrink)

This paper investigates the Baconian roots of Maupertuis’s Lettre XIX. Sur le Progrès des Sciences. The Letter was published almost a decade after Maupertuis had accepted Frederick II’s invitation to move from Paris to Berlin and become the new President of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Contrary to the secondary literature that identifies a distinction between Maupertuis’s Parisian and Berliner phases, this paper argues that there is in fact greater continuity between the two. Based on a reading that empha­sizes the (...) programmatic and methodological commonalities between Bacon’s project in De augmentis scientiarum and Maupertuis’s Lettre XIX, this paper argues that, in a Baconian fashion, Maupertuis combines the roles of the “scientist” and the “natural philosopher” into an integrated plan of action with both intellectual an institutional aims. One of Maupertuis’s aims was to highlight the importance of observation and experiment not only in the development of natural philosophy but also for some aspects of speculative philosophy, while another of his aims was to reinvigorate the structure of the Berlin Academy and to model it the fashion of other similar European intellectual projects of that time. (shrink)

We describe a first experiment on whether product complexity affects competition and consumers in retail markets. We are unable to detect a significant effect of product complexity on prices, except insofar as the demand elasticity for complex products is higher. However, there is qualified evidence that complex products have the potential to induce consumers to buy more than they would otherwise. In this sense, consumer exploitability in quantities cannot be ruled out. We also find evidence for shaping effects: consumers’ preferences (...) are shaped by past experience with prices, and firms may in principle exploit this to sell more. (shrink)

Quantification is particularly seductive in times of global uncertainty. Not surprisingly, numbers, indicators, categorizations, and comparisons are central to governmental and popular response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This essay draws insights from critical data studies, sociology of quantification and decolonial thinking, with occasional excursion into the biomedical domain, to investigate the role and social consequences of counting broadly defined as a way of knowing about the virus. It takes a critical look at two domains of human activity that play a (...) central role in the fight against the virus outbreak, namely medical sciences and technological innovation. It analyzes their efforts to craft solutions for their user base and explores the unwanted social costs of these operations. The essay argues that the over-reliance of biomedical research on “whiteness” for lab testing and the techno-solutionism of the consumer infrastructure devised to curb the social costs of the pandemic are rooted in a distorted idea of a “standard human” based on a partial and exclusive vision of society and its components, which tends to overlook alterity and inequality. It contends that to design our way out of the pandemic, we ought to make space for distinct ways of being and knowing, acknowledging plurality and thinking in terms of social relations, alterity, and interdependence. (shrink)

This volume will be of particular interest to researchers working in the history, and in the philosophy, of logic and mathematics, and more generally, to ...

Lakatos is considered to be a Popperian who adapted his Hegelian-Marxist training to critical philosophy. I claim this is too narrow and misses Lakatos' goal of understanding scientific inquiry as heuristic inquiry—something he did not find in Popper, but found in Polanyi. Archival material shows that his ‘new method' struggled to overcome what he saw as the Popperian handicap, by using Polanyi.

This comment on Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's article, “Zeno and the Art of Anthropology,” considers his definition of what it means to “take seriously” the world of the other, which he regards as the quintessential anthropological move. It means leaving the other's world in a state of suspended possibility, avoiding either belief or disbelief, assent or dissent. Candea's piece draws out the logic of the complementary and inverse move that grounds Viveiros de Castro's stance: “not taking seriously” the world of (...) the “same,” in this case, that of Western intellectuals such as Richard Rorty or Gilles Deleuze. Here “not taking seriously” involves (somewhat counterintuitively) argument, agreement and disagreement, rejection or adoption, of different visions. Candea identifies this controlled asymmetry between treatments of “us” and “them” as the major distinction between Viveiros de Castro's position and an older relativism, a difference that shields the former from the classic “self-refutation charge.” But this controlled asymmetry in turn raises the question of how we are to identify which visions we as anthropologists ought to take seriously and which we ought not to: where, in other words, do we draw the line, procedurally, between “us” and “them”? Candea argues that keeping this problematic and perhaps irresolvable question in view is the specific role of an “endo-anthropology” (the impossible figure of an “anthropology at home”), which is the necessary counterpart of Viveiros de Castro's “exo-anthropology.”. (shrink)

Two hundred years ago Bernard Bolzano published a booklet on the philosophy of mathematics that is the first major step forward in this area since Pascal’s De l’esprit géométrique. Following Aristotelian lines Bolzano distinguishes in his opusculum two kinds of proofs, those that simply show that something is the case, and those that explain why something is the case. In his Wissenschaftslehre this contrast reappears as that between derivability and consecutivity . Husserl takes up some of Bolzano’s key concepts in (...) his Prolegomena to Pure Logic. In this paper I discuss, among other things, the question whether consecutivity can be regarded as a special case of derivability, as Husserl seems to think, and I contrast Bolzano’s rejection of any appeal to self-evidence with Husserl’s reliance on this notion.Genau vor zweihundert Jahren erschienen Bernard Bolzano Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik. Dieses Büchlein ist der erste Meilenstein in der Geschichte der Philosophie der Mathematik seit Pascals De l’esprit géométrique. Im Anschluss an Aristoteles unterscheidet Bolzano in seinem Opusculum zwei Arten von Beweisen: solche, die nur dartun, dass etwas der Fall ist, und solche, die erklären warum etwas der Fall ist. Im seiner Wissenschaftslehre erscheint dieser Kontrast als der zwischen Ableitbarkeit und Abfolge. Husserl übernimmt einige von Bolzanos Grundbegriffen in seinen Prolegomena zur reinen Logik. In diesem Aufsatz diskutiere ich u.a. die Frage, ob Abfolge ein Spezialfall von Ableitbarkeit ist, wie Husserl anzunehmen scheint, und ich kontrastiere Bolzanos Ablehnung jeder Berufung auf Evidenz mit Husserls Einstellung. (shrink)

The chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi was one of the first twentieth-century scientists to propose a program to resolve the internal conflict of the modern Enlightenment: scientific detachment and moral nihilism with humanist values. Stefania Jha’s intellectual biography places Polanyi in the context of his time and culture, analyzes his key philosophical ideas, and explicates the application—and at times misappropriation—of his work. Polanyi’s method was not laid out in his published works, and his vocabulary tends to make his writings difficult (...) to understand. By exposing the structure of his theory of tacit knowing, and by tracing the growth of his thinking, Jha shows how the various elements of his thought are integrated. Through examination of his philosophical roots in Kant and the complexity of his evolving thought, she counteracts the popular notion that Polanyi’s philosophy stands apart from the western philosophic tradition. Jha’s deep analysis makes Polanyi’s shift of focus from science to philosophy more intelligible, his philosophy more approachable, and the causes he championed—such as the freedom of science and cultural freedom—more understandable. Applying his notion of tacit knowing in practical directions, Jha seeks to bring the study of Polanyi’s philosophy out of the specialists’ enclave and into such fields as ethics and clinical medicine. (shrink)

Four studies show that observers and readers imagine different alternatives to reality. When participants read a story about a protagonist who chose the more difficult of two tasks and failed, their counterfactual thoughts focused on the easier, unchosen task. But when they observed the performance of an individual who chose and failed the more difficult task, participants' counterfactual thoughts focused on alternative ways to solve the chosen task, as did the thoughts of individuals who acted out the event. We conclude (...) that these role effects may occur because participants' attention is engaged when they experience or observe an event more than when they read about it. (shrink)

Two centuries ago Bernard Bolzano published his Contributions to a more well-founded presentation of mathematics which Goethe praised as “an opusculum of very high value”. Bolzano still seems to accept the traditional principle that that intension and extension of a concept stand in an inverse relation . In particular he claims that the concept of a genus proximum is always a component of the concept of the species which are subordinated to it. However, this does not harmonize with his simultaneous (...) assumption that there are simple species-concepts. In section 1 of this paper I shall try to bring to light this tension in Bolzanos Contributions. In section 2 I shall try to reconstruct Bolzano ’s arguments to the effect that the properties an object must have if it is to fall under a certain concept are not always components of that concept. In section 3 I shall try to reconstructs his arguments against the Canon in his Theory of Science .In seinen vor zwei Jahrhunderten erschienenen Beyträgen zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik, die Goethe als „ein Werkchen von besonderem Werte“ pries, scheint Bernard Bolzano den traditionellen Lehrsatz der Reziprozität noch zu akzeptieren, demzufolge Inhalt und Umfang eines Begriffs in inversem Verhältnis stehen. Insbesondere akzeptiert er die traditionelle These, dass der Begriff eines genus proximum immer ein Bestandteil der Begriffe der Spezies dieses Genus ist. Diese Annahme schient aber im Gegensatz zu seiner gleichzeitigen Akzeptanz der These zu stehen, dass es einfache Spezies-Begriffe gibt. Im Paragraphen 1 bespreche ich diese Frage. Im Paragraphen 2 versuche ich, einige der Argumente zu rekonstruieren, die Bolzano in seiner Wissenschaftslehre zur Widerlegung der These verwendet, dass die Begriffe der Beschaffenheiten, die ein Gegenstand haben muss, um unter einen bestimmten Begriff zu fallen, immer Teile dieses Begriffs sind. Im Paragraphen 3 präsentiere ich die wichtigsten Argumente Bolzanos, die in der Wissenschaftslehre dafür verwendet werden, um den Kanon Allgemeingültigkeit abzusprechen. (shrink)

This article approaches the paradigm shift of datafication from the perspective of civil society. Looking at how individuals and groups engage with datafication, it complements the notion of “data politics” by exploring what we call the “contentious politics of data”. By contentious politics of data we indicate the bottom-up, transformative initiatives interfering with and/or hijacking dominant processes of datafication, contesting existing power relations or re-appropriating data practices and infrastructure for purposes distinct from the intended. Said contentious politics of data is (...) articulated in an array of practices of data activism taking a critical stance towards datafication. In data activism, data as mediators take a central role, both as part of an action repertoire or as objects of struggle in their own right. Leveraging social movement studies and science and technology studies, this theoretical essay argues that data activism can be mapped along two analytical dimensions: “data as stakes” vs. “data as repertoires”, and “individual practice vs. collective action”. Mapping action repertoires and tactics along these axes allows us to chart the potential emergence of a political data subject at the intersection of these two dimensions. This furthers our understanding of people’s engagement with data in relation to other forms of activism and existing work in social movement studies. It also helps us interpreting potential trajectories of contemporary social movements, as they increasingly interface with data, devices and platforms. (shrink)

In his earlyContributions to a Better-Grounded Presentation of Mathematics Bernard Bolzano tries to characterizerigorous proofs.Rigorousis,prima facie, any proof that indicates the grounds for its conclusion. Bolzano lists a number of methodological constraints all rigorous proofs should comply with, and tests them systematically against a specific collection of elementary inference schemata that, according to him, are evidently of ground-consequence-kind. This paper intends to give a detailed and critical account of the fragmentary logic of theContributions, and to point out as well some (...) difficulties Bolzano’s attempt runs into, notably as to his methodological ban on ‘kind crossing’. (shrink)

Background Ethics is a fundamental component of nursing education to increase students’ moral competence and moral reasoning abilities. However, the core ethics content that should be included in undergraduate education has not been established to date at the international level. Aim To identify the core contents required in formal undergraduate education to ensure morally competent nurses. Research Design An international workshop-research study design in 2023 reported here according to the COnsolidated criteria for REporting Qualitative research. Participants and Research Context Five (...) countries in the context of Promoting a Morally Competent Nurse project participated. In each country, two workshops took place, one with nurse professionals and one with patients’ representatives for a total of 58 individuals (32 and 26, respectively). After being translated into English language, data were categorized deductively. The Dublin Learning Outcomes Descriptors and the blueprint methodology were applied. Ethical Considerations The research protocol was ethically approved in every country where the study was performed. Results A total of 59 core content elements emerged, with ‘ethics of individualized/tailored/patient-centred care’ ( n = 8) and ‘empathy’ ( n = 6) as the most suggested. Nearly half ( n = 26) of the core content items suggested were reported only once (e.g. ‘priority setting’) while overall several referred to ‘communication skills’ ( n = 17). A diverse richness across countries emerged, with some suggesting a few items, and others providing several. Similarly, professionals and patients in most countries agreed that some contents of individualized care, empathy and responsibility should be taught in nursing education, but several core contents were mentioned by only one group of participants and in one country. Conclusion The lack of convergence on core content to be taught suggests that different views are still present. Merging these perspectives may stimulate a reciprocal understanding between professionals and patients, as well as across countries, and support the identification of commonalities and differences to further harmonize undergraduate education in the field. (shrink)

Rêves, nymphes, démons, fantômes, conversations avec les animaux et les montagnes, enseignements transmis par les plantes : l’enchantement a disparu de nos vies. Quiconque ose l’évoquer viole les canons épistémologiques les plus élémentaires qui régissent notre monde et est immédiatement disqualifié comme ignorant ou fou. Il est toutefois suspect que le tabou de l’enchantement entre en action précisément lorsque le processus historique de la modernité commence à produire des spectres et des cauchemars à une échelle industrielle : le monde est (...) peuplé de fantômes et personne ne peut plus en parler. Contre le récit triomphant de la modernité et les fables noires du complotisme dark, l’article propose de repartir de l’efficacité symbolique de Lévi-Strauss pour repenser notre rapport à l’enchantement sous le signe de la sensibilité, de la multiplicité et de l’autonomie. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss a view of the Machine Learning technique called Explanation-Based Learning (EBL) or Explanation-Based Generalization (EBG) as a process for the interpretation of vague concepts in logic-based models of law.The open-textured nature of legal terms is a well-known open problem in the building of knowledge-based legal systems. EBG is a technique which creates generalizations of given examples on the basis of background domain knowledge. We relate these two topics by considering EBG''s domain knowledge as corresponding to (...) statute law rules, and EBG''s training example as corresponding to a precedent case. (shrink)

This paper proposes a political understanding of human rights which allows not to dissolve the contradiction between the positive and the normative aspect entailed in the idea and the institution of human rights, but rather to keep them together dialectically. I discuss the relationality of human rights through Hannah Arendt’s idea of the right to have rights and I develop it further through Jacques Rancière’s concept of subjectivity. This allows me to explain the dialectic of the human rights as a (...) conflict between existing positive rights, which assign specific subjects or groups to specific territories and legal spheres, and a universal claim of human equality and freedom, which is challenged from excluded, unclassified social groups and which is performed in situations of protests. I further explain the radical democratic potential of human rights on the paradigmatic case of struggles for a right to global movement and to political belonging. In order to grasp the complexity of those subjectivity practices, I distinguish four different dimensions of subjectivity: a legal and political one, an affective one, an epistemic one and finally an ethical transcultural one. (shrink)

L’articolo intende evidenziare attraverso l’analisi di alcune opere specifiche di Paul Ricoeur -quelle che indagano i rapporti tra storia e verità, identità e oblio-la relazione in cui l’autore pone la costruzione dell’identità individuale in quanto processo metaforico e performativo e quella dell’identità collettiva in quanto espressione drammatica, con i processi narrativi, che riguardano le percezioni individuali e le raffigurazioni sociali. Ne consegue una teoria della rappresentazione dell’alterità, della costruzione identitaria e della narrazione della sovranità che impiega le categorie ermeneutiche ed (...) euristiche di una fenomenologia in trasformazione dinamica. In questa prospettiva, si rinviene la posizione funzionale di concetti in definizione quali la memoria, il ricordo, l’oblio, in relazione al rapporto tra l’individuo e la sua storia, così come di una comunità col proprio racconto. Ne emerge una concezione della sovranità quale metafora di identità in bilico che Ricoeur considera stabilizzarsi solo nell’equilibrio delle alterità e nello scambio delle narrazioni. Ne consegue la necessità di una riorganizzazione filosofica, politica, ma anche storiografica quale urgenza di ridefinizione continua e permanente del mito narrativo, in un confronto incessante e vitale con le narrazioni individuali e collettive degli altri. Lo stesso monito etico e politico che Ricoeur ci lascia nei suoi ultimi scritti. (shrink)