This essay uses Freudian–Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to interpret Hassan Blasim’s short story “The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes”. Blasim’s story depicts the psychological struggles of an Iraqi emigrant relating to his embattled sense of belonging in a Dutch society due to the recurrent nightmares of his “traumatic” past. It challenges his assimilationist fantasies. I develop Lacan’s idea of ontological lack as a structural susceptibility that is exacerbated by actual experiences of trauma to underline how racialized refugees from the war-torn global South (...) are doubly vulnerable to experiencing subjective dehiscence between their efforts to forget past war traumas and the challenges of assimilating into (white) host nations. This essay uses Blasim’s story to illustrate a serious psychological issue experienced by racialized minority subjects in white/European host countries. (shrink)

Radical enactivism supports radical embodied cognition (REC), which is the idea that basic or fundamental cognition (perception and action) does not need to be understood in representational, contentful terms. REC departs from the idea that the mind can be naturalized through biological functions, but rejects the idea that mental content, which is understood as having a representational nature, can be naturalized. For REC, the natural origins of content (or NOC) is a program based on the following hypothesis: first, we depart (...) from basic cognitive processes that are target-based and guided by an Ur-intentionality or directedness toward the world, and then sociality enters in the picture when language appears into the scene, allowing for establishing full-blown semantic content in which that content is about worldly states of affairs. Here, I am going to focus on the phenomenon of directedness since there are blind spots in this picture: as many authors claim, REC takes Ur-intentionality as the starting point, but there is simply no explanation to date of how this directedness or Ur-intentionality is established. Therefore, how could we account for Ur-intentionality? How does this kind of intentionality emerge? We believe that we can answer this question if we invoke the best scientific evidence from ecological perceptual learning especially in regard to the role of the environment and the information for perceiving affordances in our learning processes. This allows us to offer an answer to the question of how the most basic form of cognition (Ur-intentionality or directedness) emerges in nature. (shrink)

Although declarations of the death of God seem to be provocations announcing the end of the era of theology, this announcement is actually central to the Christian revelation in its most classic forms, as well as to its reworkings in contemporary religious thought. Indeed provocative new possibilities for thinking theologically open up precisely in the wake of the death of God. Already Hegel envisaged a revolutionary new realization of divinity emerging in and with the secular world through its establishment of (...) a total order of immanence. However, in postmodern times this comprehensive order aspired to by modern secularism implodes or cracks open towards the wholly Other. A hitherto repressed demand for the absolute difference of the religious, or for “transcendence”, returns with a vengeance. Th is difference is what could not be stated in terms of the Hegelian System, for reasons that poststructuralist writers particularly have insisted on: all representations of God are indeed dead. Yet this does not mean that they cannot still be powerful, but only that they cannot assign God any stable identity. Nietzsche’s sense of foreboding concerning the death of God is coupled with his intimations of the demise of representation and “grammar” as epistemologically bankrupt, but also with his vision of a positive potential for creating value in the wake of this collapse of all linguistically articulated culture. He points the way towards the emergence of a post-secular religious thinking of what exceeds thought and representation. (shrink)

This essay brings psychoanalytic theory on trauma together with film and television criticism on rape narrative in an analysis of Michael Coel’s 2020 series I May Destroy You. Beyond the limited carceral framework of the police procedural, which dislocates the act of violence from the survivor’s history and context, Coel’s polyvalent, looping narrative metabolizes rape television’s forms and genres in order to stage and restage both trauma and genre again and anew. Contesting common conceptions of vulnerability and susceptibility that prefigure (...) a violent breach of autonomy, Coel’s series and her interviews about it invite an ethics of looking that embraces a curiosity in the unknowable and untreatable kernel of subjective experience and defies and resists a policing of the survivor’s thoughts and emotions. By emphasizing and exploring what psychoanalysis calls the “afterwardness” of trauma, Coel foregrounds her main character’s subjectivity prior to her victimization, widens the sphere of consequence beyond the victim and criminal justice system to the survivor’s larger community, and entreats that community to preserve a space for her to look and look again at everything, without judgment. (shrink)

This paper explores two routes along which a pragmatic philosophical approach can contribute to reflections on agnosticism. The first of these approaches is developed in dialogue with William James, and it is oriented towards the needs and obligations of individuals and the extent to which agnosticism affects our abilities to lead strenuous lives. The second is developed in dialogue with Richard Rorty. It is oriented towards how agnosticisms can be adopted within particular vocabularies vis-a-vis other vocabularies as a pragmatically helpful (...) strategy or skill. I discuss the extent to which these can contribute to philosophical reflection on agnosticism and propose that they show that the agnosticism debate would benefit from a broadened focus where epistemic and pragmatic considerations are better integrated than presently. This would enable us to discuss different types of agnosticism that come to the fore in various contexts and whether they prevent us or allow us to better handle concrete problems in our interactions with the world. (shrink)

This essay raises a challenge for the perceptual theory of emotion. According to the perceptual theory, emotions are perceptual states that represent values. But if emotions represent values, something should explain why. In virtue of what do emotions represent the values they do? A psychosemantics would answer this, and that’s what the perceptual theorist owes us. To date, however, the only perceptual theorist to attempt a psychosemantics for emotion is Jesse Prinz. And Prinz’s theory, I argue, faces an important difficulty: (...) It makes the pairing of any given emotion with its respective value entirely arbitrary. But that’s a problem. It seems—and this is a major contention of this essay—that an emotion, in virtue of how it feels, bears a natural or non-arbitrary link to the value it represents. And this datum makes it all the more difficult to provide a viable psychosemantics for the evaluative content of emotion. (shrink)

We are at the dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterised by the interaction of so-called disruptive technologies (biotechnology, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, neurotechnology and artificial intelligence). We believe that the challenges posed by technoscience cannot be met by the three generations of human rights that already exist. The need to create a fourth generation of human rights is, therefore, explored in this article. For that purpose, the state of the art will be analysed from a scientific and ethical perspective. We (...) will consider the position of academic doctrines on the issues that a fourth generation of human rights should tackle. And, finally, in this fourth generation, we will propose the principles of identity and precaution as reference values, equivalent to the role played by freedom, equality and solidarity in the first three generations of human rights. (shrink)

The paper discusses ecological grief as a particular affective phenomenon. First, it offers an overview of several philosophical accounts of grief, acknowledging the heterogeneity and complexity of the experience that responds to particular personal points of importance, concern and one’s identity; the loss triggering grief represents a blow to these. I then argue that ecological grief is equally varied and personal: responding to what the grieving person understands as a loss severe enough to present intelligibly a degradation of her life (...) and the world, to their meaningfulness or even sustainability. More specifically, both personal and ecological grief may manifest in an eroded sense of the future as a space in which one would invest oneself with plans, projects, ideas, desires, and endeavours. On the other hand, personal grief is, in some cases, conceptualised as having embedded the inherent possibility to come to closure or “move on” (e.g., by marrying again), while with ecological grief, the intelligibility of overcoming (replacing) the loss may be, depending on its scale, severely limited. I argue that this erosion of the future need not take the shape of paralysing sadness but rather of a disruption of taking some options of projecting oneself into the future seriously or as real. (shrink)

This article investigates conceptions of morality within the framework of ressentimentful victimhood in the manosphere, while also exploring avenues for resistance among young individuals encountering the “hatred pipeline”. In Study 1, we use the emotional mechanism of ressentiment to examine how incels construct narratives of victimhood rooted in the notion of sexual entitlement that remains owed and unfulfilled, alongside its “black pill” variant emphasising moral and epistemic superiority. Through a linguistic corpus analysis and content examination of 4chan and Incel.is blog (...) posts, we find evidence of ressentiment morality permeating the language and communication within the incel community, characterised by blame directed at women, and the pervasive themes of victimhood, powerlessness, and injustice. In Study 2, we delve into young individuals’ reflections on incel morality and victimhood narratives as they engage with online networks of toxic masculinity in the manosphere. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with young participants who have accessed the manosphere, we explore their perceptions of risks, attribution of blame, and experiences of empathy towards individuals navigating the “hatred pipeline”. Our analysis underscores the significance of ressentiment in elucidating alternative conceptions of morality and victimhood, while shedding light on the potential for acceptance or resistance within online environments characterised by hatred. (shrink)

Agents and agent-based systems are becoming essential in the development of various fields, such as artificial intelligence, ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence, autonomous computing, and intelligent robotics. The concept of autonomous agents, inspired by the observed agency in living systems, is also central to current theories on the origin, development, and evolution of life. Therefore, it is crucial to develop an accurate understanding of agents and the concept of agency. This paper begins by discussing the role of agency in natural systems (...) as an inspiration and motivation for agential technologies and then introduces the idea of artificial agents. A systematic approach is presented for the classification of artificial agents. This classification aids in understanding the existing state of the artificial agents and projects their potential future roles in addressing specific types of problems with dedicated agent types. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) ethics is proposed as an emerging and interdisciplinary field concerned with addressing the ethical issues of AI, such as the issue of moral decision-making. The conflict between our intuitive moral judgments constitutes an inevitable obstacle to decision-making in AI ethics. This article outlines the Moral Relevance Approach, which could provide a considerable moral foundation for AI ethics. Taking moral relevance as the precondition of the consequentialist principles, the Moral Relevance Approach aims to plausibly consider individual moral claims. (...) It is not only the common ethical target shaping our moral consensus but also the inherent moral ability connecting others with us. (shrink)

As artificial intelligence (AI) integrates across social domains, prevailing technical paradigms often overlook human relational needs vital for cooperative resilience. Alternative pathways consciously supporting dignity and wisdom warrant consideration. Integrating seminal insights from virtue and care ethics, this article delineates the following four cardinal design principles prioritizing communal health: (1) affirming the sanctity of life; (2) nurturing healthy attachment; (3) facilitating communal wholeness; and (4) safeguarding societal resilience. Grounding my analysis in the rich traditions of moral philosophy, I argue that (...) these principles scaffold sustainable innovation trajectories that consciously center shared welfare advancement over detached technical capabilities or efficiency benchmarks alone. Elucidating connections with pioneering initiatives demonstrates fragments of this vision taking embryonic shape, yet pervasive adoption remains largely aspirational to date. Fulfilling dignity-based artificial intelligence demands ongoing collective commitment beyond firms’ profit motives or governance proceduralism. My conclusions urge technology policies and priorities directed toward empowering the vulnerability of people rather than controlling the optimization of systems. (shrink)

In contemporary discourse, inclusion has evolved into a core value, with inclusive societies being lauded as progressive and inherently positive. Conversely, exclusion and excluding practices are typically deemed undesirable. However, this paper questions the prevailing assumption that inclusion is always synonymous with societal progress. Could it be that exclusion, in certain contexts, serves as a more effective tool for advancing societal development? Is there a more intricate interconnection between these phenomena than conventionally acknowledged? This paper advocates moving beyond a simplistic (...) inclusion/exclusion dichotomy and puts forth two theses. First, it posits that exclusion can, at times, be a superior metric for gauging progress. Second, it contends that inclusion and exclusion are thoroughly entwined, challenging the notion of a clear demarcation between them. The underlying premise is that, much like inclusion, there can be meaningful value associated with exclusion. Furthermore, applying a rigid inclusion/exclusion dichotomy oversimplifies the discourse on societal progress, providing an artificial representation of what constitutes advancement. Such oversimplification hampers both contemporary research in the humanities and broader political discourse. The primary objective of this paper is to introduce a fresh perspective to the discourse surrounding societal progress. By challenging the fundamental conceptual framework, it seeks to add nuance to the ongoing debate, fostering a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities inherent in measuring progress within society. (shrink)

I suggest here ecologies of the nascent state, posing the following general questions: what is this state and what is it to live, to fabricate modes of life, in its immanence? I believe populating this state is, by right, ‘ecological’, even if what I offer here is only a sketch or glimpse, playful as it is, of the possibility of such modes of life, of dwelling. As I develop it here, the nascent is in flight of being. It is populated (...) by lesser, minoritarian existences. If it is ‘ecological’, it is because these existences, or modes of becoming, are themselves, in their own right, ‘ecologies’, that is, modes of dwelling, of life, on the ‘other side of existence’, as Antonin Artaud put it once, in exile from Being. The power to return eternally to the nascent state is the power to live, to dwell, in the absolute forgetfulness of Being, in the interstice where philosophy supposedly ends, but where it nevertheless begins again, in oblivion itself, where being is never already the verticality of Being, its difference with beings, but always nascent, in the beginning, eternally so. (shrink)

Both bosons and fermions satisfy a strong version of Leibniz’s Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII), and so are ontologically on a par with respect to the PII. This holds for non-entangled, non-product states and for physically entangled states—as it has been established in previous work. In this paper, the Leibniz strategy is completed by including the (bosonic) symmetric product states. A new understanding of Pauli’s Exclusion Principle is provided, which distinguishes bosons from fermions in a peculiar ontological way. (...) Finally, the program as a whole is defended against substantial objections. (shrink)

Impostors, confidence artists, and artful deceivers seem to have achieved a strange kind of popularity and even prestige in our contemporary political landscape, for reasons that remain elusive, especially given how harmful and socially unwanted such behaviors ostensibly are. Herman Melville’s 1857 novel, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, helps us shift our perspective on this seemingly irrational phenomenon because it points out how being susceptible to dupery is linked to the enjoyment of fiction itself. This insight also highlights the importance of (...) epistemological failure in the recent “return to aesthetics” in literary studies, where the positive dimension of unconsciously “willing one’s dupery” directly links aesthetic form to politics. The logic that connects aesthetics to unconscious enjoyment is then elaborated in the work of psychoanalytic thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Helene Deutsch and others to raise particular questions about how and why the enjoyment of being duped has been associated with feminine sexuality. Reading Melville’s novel while considering psychoanalytic concepts such as the “as if” personality, imposture, and interpassivity illuminates how confidence games play upon the ruses of sexuality, which have profound implications for why the public remains in thrall to the workings of known deceivers. (shrink)

Why is contempt seen as potentially lacking in the respect for persons and therefore prima facie subject to negative moral evaluation? This paper starts by looking at a distinctive feature of contempt in the context of thick relationships, such as those of friendship, close professional collaboration, or romantic love: there is an irreversibility effect attached to the experience of contempt. Once contempt occurs in a thick relationship, it seems very difficult to return to non-contemptuous reactive attitudes. The second part argues (...) that the irreversibility effect is due to the fact that contempt is an affective attitude which tends to invisibilize the person who is the object of contempt. The tendency to invisibilize is inscribed in the intentional structure of contempt as well as in its motivational dimension. The final part explores some consequences of this hypothesis, and in particular argues that it also explains why contempt motivated by abject wrongdoing, as opposed to resentment, anger, or hatred, tends to block any process of forgiveness. (shrink)

The question of aesthetics in film-theoretical discourse today is split between, on the one hand, a film-phenomenological or “filmosophical” approach that values the putatively immanent relation between film and the mind and, on the other, the naturalizing epistemology of post-theory, which reduces the question of film aesthetics to one of poetics. What unites these otherwise disparate projects is the consideration of aesthetics divorced from the question of politics; in both cases, the social or political significance of the film–spectator relationship has (...) been summarily purged. In this article, I will offer an alternative account of film aesthetics that draws on Jacques Rancière’s theory concerning the mutually determining relationship between aesthetics and politics. In particular, I will consider the relevance of Rancière’s thesis concerning what he calls the distribution of sensible to current accounts, as well as taking up his novel consideration of aesthetic distance and the “emancipated” spectator. With respect to film phenomenology, I will examine how its film-theoretical program rests on the flawed concept of a de-politicized spectator enchained by the film image. With respect to post-theory, I will examine how its appropriation from cognitive science of the rational agent model of meaning making inappropriately limits the political potential of film aesthetics. (shrink)

New words have found their way into the public sphere: we now commonly talk about “confinement”, “barrier-gesture” or “distancing”. The very idea of public space has been transformed: with restrictions on movement and interaction in public; with the reintegration of lives (certain lives) into the home (if there is one) and private space; with the publicization of private space through internet relationships; with the cities’ space occupied, during confinement, by so-called “essential” workers; with the restriction of gatherings and political demonstrations (...) in public space. With these and other recent changes, it is imperative to revisit the concept of public space, which continues to be used as if it were self-evident, despite its profound transformation over the past few decades, in a process of realization and “literalization”. No longer just a comfortable metaphor for reasonable debates, public space has become a concrete reality in the 21th century. This transformation in the various phenomena, such as the occupation of squares and public spaces; the demand for spaces of conversation and expression for those without a voice; the transition of private matters into the public realm through verbal expression; and the expression and circulation of public issues within popular cultures. As a result, the question of public space is increasingly intertwined with that of private spaces, such as the home or individual subjectivities, forming an internal, logical relationship. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to systematically reconstruct Theodor Adorno’s account of the relationship between the processes of authoritarian subject formation and the processes of political formation of the democratic common will. Undertaking a reading that brings Adorno into dialogue with contemporary philosophical perspectives, the paper asks the question of whether it is possible to think of a “democratic We” in nihilistic times. In order to achieve this aim, I will analyze in reverse the modifications that the concept of narcissism (...) has undergone, from Adorno’s use of it to account for the symbolic obstacles to the formation of democratic subjectivities after the Holocaust, to the initial formulations of Freudian psychoanalysis. Finally, I will attempt to outline an affirmative answer to the initial question, formulating the potentials and merits of what I will call a politics of negativity. (shrink)

This article examines motifs of falling, recoiling, and turning across Chester Himes’ oeuvre as figurations of Black susceptibility to racial violence. These images reference and reconstruct an event from Himes’ early adulthood: his catastrophic fall down an elevator shaft. Taking a psychoanalytically oriented approach, I analyze the metonymic connections between these motifs, rather than reading them in their chronological order, using Jean Laplanche’s theory of après-coup. I argue that the recursive quality of these images in Himes’ work is not merely (...) an unconscious repetition or conscious working through of a traumatic biographical event but part of an endeavor to imagine different ways to inhabit and survive the structural trauma of Jim Crow America. (shrink)

In this paper, I would like to tackle first Schmitt’s defence of the role of exclusion in political reasoning and his attendant rejection of extreme political pluralism. I shall then move on to explain not only why there is nothing Nazi—or even antisemitic—about Schmitt’s concept of the political, but rather the other way around: Schmitt’s concept of the political not only must have been used against National Socialism but it did not fail to have his fair share of Jewish, or (...) at the very least Zionist, enthusiasts. (shrink)

The present paper argues that, despite appearance to the contrary, Kierkegaard’s writings offer promising argumentational resources for addressing the problem of evil. According to Kierkegaard, however, in order to make use of these resources at all, one must necessarily be willing to shift the battleground, so to speak: from a third- to a genuine first-person perspective, namely the perspective of what Climacus dubs Religiousness A. All (yet also only) those who seek deliberate self-annihilation before God—a God in relation to whom (...) they perceive themselves always in the wrong—shall discover the ideal that an unwavering and in fact unconditional thankfulness (namely, for being forgiven) is to be considered the only appropriate attitude towards God and as such both necessary and sufficient for coming to terms with evil and suffering, at least in the life of someone making that discovery. I will argue that Kierkegaard’s (non-)pseudonymous writings provide reasons, at times unwittingly, for adopting the perspective of Religiousness A; however, I will also and ultimately argue that the principle of infinite thankfulness as a corollary of that perspective flounders when it comes to making sense of (the eschatological implications of) the suffering of others. (shrink)

I will briefly discuss the history of research-related projects that Mark Burgin and I worked on together. I will then discuss our joint research related to the circle of sense and nonsense. One paper was entitled In a search for deeper meanings: navigating the circle of Sense and Nonsense and in turn articulating logical varieties as knowledge illuminators and the second was entitled In the Circle of Sense and Nonsense, Including A Mathematic Model of Meaning. This research represents a bridge (...) between the media arts and sciences (my artwork) as a means of embodying ideas exploring a particular approach to meaning production and related computation, as well as Burgin’s concepts related to logical varieties and mathematical models of meaning. I will refer to the full papers and links because they present a very robust and full articulation of the concepts discussed here. In this paper, I will briefly touch on the areas of research, supply short definitions, and refer to the relevant historical publications. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to propose an outline of a new respiratory animal philosophy. Based on an analysis of the forgetting of breath in Western philosophy, it aims to gesture towards a future, breathful and compassionate world of co-sharing and co-breathing. In the first part, the basic features of forgetting of breath are explained based on David Abram’s work in respiratory ecophilosophy. This part also introduces an important contribution to modern philosophy by Ludwig Klages. The second part is dedicated (...) to reflections on what I understand as an unfortunate transition from soul and pneuma to spirit and Geist. Based on these analyses, I proceed towards an idiosyncratic thought on the nocturnal mystery of pneuma, with references to ancient Upanishadic and 20th-century phenomenological Levinasian thought. Based on these teachings, I argue that, at the bottom of her existence, the subject is a lung partaking in an immense external lung (Merleau-Ponty). In the fourth part of the essay, I extend my reflections toward comparative animal respiratory phenomenology and argue for the immense compassion for all our fellow breathing beings. Finally, in the concluding, fifth part of this essay, I am arguing for a future biocentric and breathful environment, signifying and bringing a new compassionate-respiratory alliance into the world. (shrink)

There are many religions in the human world, and people manifest their religiousness in many different ways. The main problem this paper addresses concerns the possibility of sorting out this complex world of human religiousness by showing that it can be phenomenologically reduced to a few very basic existential attitudes. These attitudes express the main types of ways in which a human being relates to his or herself and the world, independently of the worldview or religion professed by the individual. (...) I use Kierkegaard’s theories of the stages of existence and subjective truth as a model. The theory of the stages of existence provides five basic existential attitudes on the basis of which religious attitudes can develop: spiritlessness, the aesthetic, the ethical, religiousness A, and religiousness B. The theory of subjective truth shows how the concept of truth functions in an ethical and existential sense as the personal truth of an individual engaged in building their religious identity. In turn, I discuss the problem of the relation of Kierkegaard’s philosophy to phenomenology, briefly introduce his concept of subjective truth and the stages of existence, and show how existential attitudes can be transformed into religious ones. I also consider the problem of the demonic as the inverted order of this anthropological and existential model. Finally, I argue that the model developed herein may be useful for further research into the phenomenology of religious attitudes. (shrink)

The relationship between philosophy and science has always been complementary. Today, while science moves increasingly fast and philosophy shows some problems in catching up with it, it is not always possible to ignore such relationships, especially in some disciplines such as philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and neuroscience. However, the methodological procedures used to analyze these data are based on principles and assumptions that require a profound dialogue between philosophy and science. Following these ideas, this work aims to raise the (...) problems that a classical connectionist theory can cause and problematize them in a cognitive framework, considering both philosophy and cognitive sciences but also the disciplines that are near to them, such as AI, computer sciences, and linguistics. For this reason, we embarked on an analysis of both the computational and theoretical problems that connectionism currently has. The second aim of this work is to advocate for collaboration between neuroscience and philosophy of mind because the promotion of deeper multidisciplinarity seems necessary in order to solve connectionism’s problems. In fact, we believe that the problems that we detected can be solved by a thorough investigation at both a theoretical and an empirical level, and they do not represent an impasse but rather a starting point from which connectionism should learn and be updated while keeping its original and profoundly convincing core. (shrink)

This article presents a case that former President of the United States Donald Trump was a tyrant-like leader in the mold of the tyrant in Plato’s Republic. While he does not perfectly embody the tyrant as presented in the Republic, he captures its core feature. Like the tyrant, Trump is driven by unregulated desires that reflect what Plato describes as an extreme freedom that underlies and threatens democratic regimes. Extreme freedom is manifested in Trump’s disregard for social and legal norms, (...) which mirrors the lawlessness of the tyrant. The people, in turn, interpret that posture as a mark of authenticity. Understanding Trump’s appeal in the United States helps alert friends of democracy to the possible rise of tyrant-like figures. In closing, and as a way of remedying the harm done by the tyrannical soul, the article recommends that society help temper tyrant-like passions in the people through a rededication to civic equality. (shrink)

Religion-based AI chatbots serve religious practitioners by bringing them godly wisdom through technology. These bots reply to spiritual and worldly questions by drawing insights or citing verses from the Quran, the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Torah, or other holy books. They answer religious and theological queries by claiming to offer historical contexts and providing guidance and counseling to their users. A criticism of these bots is that they may give inaccurate answers and proliferate bias by propagating homogenized versions of (...) the religions they represent. These “embodied spiritual machines” may likewise bear bias against women, their gender, and their societal roles. This paper crafts a concept intended to address this GPT issue by reimagining, modifying, and implementing a feminist approach to these chatbots. It examines the concepts and designs of these bots and how they address women-related questions. Along with the challenge of bringing gender and diversity-sensitive religious wisdom closer to the people through technology, the paper proposes a re-engineered model of a fair religion-based AI chatbot. (shrink)

A recent book by Romaric Jannel on the work of the 20th Century Japanese philosopher Yamauchi Tokuryū is reviewed as a prolegomenon in this journal to more detailed studies of Oriental philosophy. Emphasis is placed on the similarities and overlaps of Eastern and Western thought.

Existing predominant approaches within virtue ethics (VE) assume humans as the typical agent and virtues as dispositions that pertain primarily to human–human interpersonal relationships. Similarly, the main accounts in the more specific area of environmental virtue ethics (EVE) tend to support weak anthropocentric positions, in which virtues are understood as excellent dispositions of human agents. In addition, however, several EVE authors have also considered virtues that benefit non-human beings and entities (e.g., environmental or ecological virtues). The latter correspond to excellent (...) character dispositions that would extend moral consideration and care for the benefit of non-human beings, entities, or entire ecosystems. In this direction, a few authors have argued that EVE could be considered non-anthropocentric insofar as it could: (a) promote non-human ends, well-being, and the flourishing of non-human beings and entities; (b) involve significant relations to non-humans. Drawing from different traditions, including ecofeminism and care ethics, we argue for a broader notion of self and a decentered notion of virtues. The broader notion of selfhood corresponds to the “ecological self”, one that can be enacted by both human and non-human beings, is embedded in a network of relations, and recognizes the more-than-human world as fundamental and yet indispensable otherness. We suggest that this broader notion of agency allows for an expansive understanding of virtues that includes a-moral functional ecological virtues, which can be exercised not only by humans but also by certain non-human beings. This alternative understanding of selfhood and ecological virtues within EVE could have several theoretical and practical implications, some of which may enable different types of agencies and transform collective action. (shrink)

This article discusses the encounter between virtue ethics and environmental ethics and the ways in which environmental virtue ethics confronts nonhuman axiology and the controversial theme of moral anthropocentrism. It provides a reasoned review of the relevant literature and a historical–conceptual rendition of how environmental and virtue ethics came to converge as well as the ways in which they diverge. It explains that contrary to important worries voiced by some non-anthropocentric environmental ethicists, environmental virtue ethics enables and requires a rich (...) and nuanced engagement with nonhuman values of all sorts—intrinsic as well as extrinsic, moral as well as nonmoral, anthropocentric as well as non-anthropocentric—and neither presupposes nor implies moral anthropocentrism in its normativity. Finally, the article considers the fortunes of, and some challenges for, environmental virtue ethics in its application to the ethics of climate change, an increasingly central topic in environmental ethics. This article proceeds as follows: the first section introduces virtue ethics; the second section looks at axiological and normative themes in environmental ethics; the third section discusses environmental virtue ethics; and the fourth section considers its application to climate change. The fifth section draws some conclusions. (shrink)

Professionalized nursing and anarchism could not be more at odds. And yet, if nursing wishes to have a future in the precarious times in which we live and die, the discipline must take on the lessons that anarchism has on offer. Part love note to a problematic profession we love and hate, part fever dream of what could be, we set out to think about what nursing and care might look like after it all falls down, because it is all (...) falling down. Drawing on alternate histories, alternate visions of nursing history, we imagine what nursing values would look like, embracing anarchist principles. We consider examples of community survival, mutual aid, and militant joy as strategies to achieve what nursing could be if nurses put an end to their cop shit, shrugging off their shroud of white cisheteropatriarchal femininity that manifests as professionalism and civility. We conclude with a call to action and a plan for skill-building because this can all be different. (shrink)

Many defenders of the possibility of time travel into the past also hold that such time travel places no restrictions on what said time travelers can do. Some hold that it places at least a few restrictions on what time travelers can do. In attempting to resolve this dispute, I reached a contrary conclusion. Time travelers to the past cannot do other than what they in fact do. Using a very weak notion of can, I shall argue that the correspondingly (...) strong cannot do otherwise applies in the case of backwards time travel. I defend this result from objections. (shrink)

A recent trend in bioethics has highlighted the decisive role that solidarity plays in global health. However, given the impact and extent of the effects of climate change, which reach beyond present generations, it is important to consider whether this concept can be applied intergenerationally. Does it make sense to talk about solidarity with future generations? The objective of this article is to explore ‘amplified solidarity’, a new concept of solidarity that explains our obligations towards the health and quality of (...) life of future generations. The analysis of this concept is structured as follows: I first establish the moral relevance of future people and then investigate the traits of amplified solidarity, its challenges, and its relationship with other key principles. I propose that amplified solidarity needs both a critical imagination to be projected towards the future and an institutional framework to correct health injustices across an intergenerational timescale. Solidarity forms a potent triangular constellation with responsibility and justice to fight against global and intergenerational injustices. (shrink)

This article examines how a non-anthropocentric virtue ethics can truly avoid an anthropocentric bias in the ethical evaluation of a situation where the environment is at stake. It argues that a non-anthropocentric virtue ethics capable of avoiding the pitfall of an anthropocentric bias can only conceive of the ultimate good—from which virtues are defined—in reference to an ecological self. Such a self implies that the natural environment is not simply a condition for human flourishing, or something that complements it by (...) adding the proper good of animals, organisms or ecosystems. Fulfilment is not that of a human self, but that of an ecological self: the natural environment or nature is not an external but an internal good. Therefore, the virtues or character traits that such an ecological self must nurture and develop leads us ultimately to distinguish—without opposing them—three different forms of virtue ethics applied to the environment, depending on whether it is anthropocentric or non-anthropocentric and whether nature is considered extrinsically or intrinsically. Such distinctions are also crucial to determine how we conceive of the political community and the collective goals that virtuous citizens assign to it (for instance, to preserve biodiversity, to tackle climate change, and so on). (shrink)

Appeals to the moral value of nature and naturalness are commonly used in debates about technology and the environment and to inform our approach to the ethics of technology and the environment more generally. In this paper, I will argue, firstly, that arguments from nature, as they are used in debates about new technologies and about the environment, are misinterpreted when they are understood as attempting to put forward categorical objections to certain human activities and, consequently, their real significance is (...) often overlooked. Secondly, arguments from nature, particularly as they are used in the context of debates over the use of new technologies, can be understood as appealing to human nature as a way to determine human limitations. Thirdly, arguments from nature can inform our discussion of what it is to be a human being or a person, and this kind of discussion can, in turn, inform our ethical deliberations in such areas of bioethics as euthanasia, abortion, etc. Finally, I conclude that a proper understanding of these arguments can help in establishing which virtues and which vices relate to our relationship with the non-human world—that is, which character dispositions are relevant to an environmental virtue ethics, with human nature as its foundation. A proper understanding of the argument from nature provides the basis for a ‘virtuously anthropocentric’ environmental ethics. (shrink)

There is a widespread agreement that Nietzsche has developed a kind of position or doctrine called ‘perspectivism’. Scholars go on and develop metaphysical, semantic, epistemic, and psychobiological interpretations of the supposed Nietzschean perspectivism or even ‘perspectivisms’. They engage in debates about whether this perspectivism is relativistic, realistic, or anti-realistic and what the tenets of perspectivism are. In this paper, I suggest putting an end to this practice. I examine Nietzsche’s explicit mentions of the term ‘perspectivism’, the problems associated with the (...) misunderstanding of this term as a label, attempts to reconstruct perspectivism based on explicit mentions of ‘perspective’ and related vocabulary, and doctrinal assumptions scholars try to connect with this terminology. (shrink)

We explore the value of the subjunctive mood as a template for understanding ethical action and the theological ontology that undergirds it. We do this by examining the use of a strange but very precisely used word in the writing of a theologian and minister and poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "silly." We do so in the name of exploring the value of contingency, accidentality and abjection to a general theory of ecological thought.

When looking for an account that explains how pain changes consciousness, one finds that most studies in the phenomenology of pain focus either on the outcome of the change, or on how it affects the self, as a conscious object, and the self’s experiences in the world of objects. This paper focuses on the mechanism of consciousness, exploring the nature of the change that pain creates in consciousness and how exactly that change occurs. The paper provides a systematic, phenomenological inquiry (...) in three phases: one identifies three essential attributes of consciousness, another identifies three essential attributes of pain, and a third analyses the outcome of the integration between both sets of attributes. The paper demonstrates how the change wrought by pain on the self, as a conscious object, allows the self to breach its boundaries as an object, and experience being a non-object, even if only in part and temporarily. (shrink)

Patient-and-family-centered care (PFCC) is critical in end-of-life (EOL) settings. PFCC serves to develop and implement patient care plans within the context of unique family situations. Key components of PFCC include collaboration and communication among patients, family members and healthcare professionals (HCP). Ethical challenges arise when the burdens (e.g., economic, psychosocial, physical) of family members and significant others do not align with patients’ wishes. This study aims to describe the concept of vulnerability and the ethical challenges faced by HCPs in these (...) circumstances. Further, it assesses the contribution of clinical ethics consultation (CEC) in assisting HCPs to face these difficult ethical conundrums. Two clinical cases are analyzed using the Circle Method of CEC. The first regards the difficulty faced by the doctor in justifying treatments previously agreed upon between the patient and his/her friends. The second regards the patient’s concern about being a burden on their family. Family burdens in EOL settings challenge PFCC in that patient autonomy may be disregarded. This compromises shared decision-making between the patient, family and HCPs as a core component of PFCC. In their ability to promote a collaborative approach, CECs may assist in the successful implementation of PFCC. (shrink)

Ubuntu has been defined as a moral quality of human beings, as a philosophy or an ethic, as African humanism, and as a worldview. This paper explores these definitions as conceptual tools for understanding the cultural, educational, and philosophical landscape of post-apartheid South Africa. Key to this understanding is the Althusserian concept of state apparatus. Louis Althusser divides the state apparatus into two forces: the repressive state apparatus (RSA); and the ideological state apparatus (ISA). RSAs curtail the working classes, predominately (...) through direct violence or the threat of violence, whereas ISAs function primarily by ideology, including forms of organised religion, the education system, family units, legal systems, trade unions, political parties, and media. This paper discusses the link between increasing inequality in post-apartheid South Africa and education, with specific reference to Althusser’s ISAs and the abuse of Ubuntu as a subterfuge for socio-economic inequality. (shrink)

This editorial complements the editorial opening Philosophies eight years ago. The success of the original vision of the journal has been confirmed by the high quality of published works and its institutional recognition. The journal Philosophies evolves, but this evolution is an adaptation to the conditions of better realization of its original mission to promote the reintegration of fragmented by specialization knowledge guided by philosophy. In contrast to the editorial published at the time of the opening of the journal presenting (...) general philosophical principles guiding its early development which are equally valid today as eight years ago, the present editorial focuses on philosophical but also more practical aspects of its operation and its role in the academic community together with an extensive clarification of their misunderstanding in decisions regarding submission of contributions. (shrink)

Academic social networks and social media have revolutionised the way individuals gather information and express themselves, particularly in academia, science, and research. Through the lens of academics, this study aims to investigate the epistemological and psychosocial aspects of these knowledge sources. The epistemological attitude model presented a framework to delve into and reflect upon the existence of knowledge sources, comprising subjective, interactional, and knowledge dimensions. One hundred and twenty-six university academics participated in this study, including lecturers and researchers from different (...) higher education institutions in Latvia. The study employed two methods: the Epistemological Attitudes towards Sources of Knowledge Questionnaire and the Epistemological Attitudes towards Sources of Knowledge Semantic Questionnaire. The data analysis involved several procedures, including exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, and test statistics. By implementing these methods, the study gained valuable insights into the sources of knowledge, examining them from two perspectives. The first perspective brought attention to the differences in academics’ appraisals by discussing their understanding, approach, use, and valuations of these sources. By scrutinising the constructs of meanings, the second perspective sheds light on the anticipated knowledge which is deemed ideal, the concrete knowledge that is both social and objective, and the subjectively valuable nature of academic social networks and social media. The findings underscore the specialised knowledge and qualities that academics rely on for producing knowledge. In terms of epistemology, methodology, social science, and education, the study holds theoretical and practical implications, especially in comprehending knowledge and its sources. (shrink)

This article examines how British philosophers of the 1930s grappled with the relationship between reason, emotion, and democratic citizenship in the context of a perceived “crisis of democracy” in Europe. Focusing especially on Bertrand Russell, Susan Stebbing, and John Macmurray, it argues that philosophers working from diverse philosophical perspectives shared a sense that the crisis of democracy was simultaneously a crisis of reason and one of emotion. They tended to frame this crisis in terms of three interrelated concerns: first, as (...) a problem of balancing or integrating reason and emotion; second, as a problem of the relationship between emotions and democratic citizenship; and third, as a problem of how to properly train or educate the emotions. Significantly, British philosophers addressed these issues most directly in writings for a non-professional audience, as they sought to translate their professional expertise into popular works that might rejuvenate democratic citizenship. This historical episode is a reminder of how philosophers were deeply engaged in the cultural politics of the interwar period and is a telling example of how personalist concerns were central to philosophy even as the “analytic revolution” was gathering steam. (shrink)

Western modernity was born with a revolution of limits. Western man, who has become the creator of his own destiny, has identified freedom with a conscious and systematic violation of the given conditions, with a future that constantly transcends the present. This modern condition is thus characterised by the fact that it is limited by boundaries that are mobile and can change. From this observation arises the paradoxical situation that growth today is inconceivable if it is not linked to a (...) scenario of scarcity, in contrast to premodern theological views based instead on the abundance of creation, the original richness of the world. Inspired by this vision of a sustainable world, ecological thinking today is immediately associated with a language of finitude. Degrowth, self-limitation, and resource efficiency, these are all terms associated with a universalist model of progress that seems to know no limits. This article argues that the world is doomed to its own inevitable end if sustainability is understood from the perspective of an economically sustainable future defined by the limits of capitalist management. If, on the other hand, we step out of this impoverished and economic perspective of the concept of limit and the condition of finitude, then we open ourselves to an ecocosmic perspective that understands the world as part of a cosmic diversity that cannot be contained within a more or less extended totality of resources. In this article, being finite is understood ecologically as being a non-self-sufficient part of the interrelated possibilities of worldmaking, not as an element of a set of individuals or things. (shrink)

Machine learning (ML) trains itself by discovering patterns of correlations that can be applied to new inputs. That is a very powerful form of generalization, but it is also very different from the sort of generalization that the west has valorized as the highest form of truth, such as universal laws in some of the sciences, or ethical principles and frameworks in moral reasoning. Machine learning’s generalizations synthesize the general and the particular in a new way, creating a multidimensional model (...) that often retains more of the complex differentiating patterns it has uncovered in the training process than the human mind can grasp. Particulars speak louder in these models than they do in traditional generalizing frameworks. This creates an odd analogy with recent movements in moral philosophy, particularly the feminist ethics of care which rejects the application of general moral frameworks in favor of caring responses to the particular needs and interests of those affected by a moral decision. This paper suggests that our current wide-spread and justified worries about ML’s inexplicability—primarily arising from its reliance on staggeringly complex patterns of particulars—may be preparing our culture more broadly for a valorizing of particulars as at least as determinative as generalizations, and that this might help further advance the importance of particulars in ideas such as those put forward by the ethics of care. (shrink)

The advent of intelligent technologies, notably Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs), has introduced novel privacy dilemmas. Ensuring judicious privacy transfer is imperative for the application of BCI technology and pivotal for fostering economic and technological progress. This study adopts privacy transfer as the research perspective and employs an ethical matrix as the research method. It establishes BCI users as the central core interests, with marketers, developers, and medical personnel as stakeholders. Departing from the binary opposition of public and private in traditional privacy (...) theory, this article proposes ethical principles such as maximizing benefits, minimizing harm, and respecting independent decision-making power. It constructs a judgment matrix for the privacy transfer of BCIs, utilizing this matrix to identify ethical risks like privacy disclosure and hijacking. This study analyzes the reasons for risks, aiming to overcome dilemmas and construct an ethical matrix to explore privacy transfer boundary division methods suitable for BCI technology and tailored to different stakeholders. (shrink)

In the era of generative AI and specifically large language models (LLMs), exemplified by ChatGPT, the intersection of artificial intelligence and human reasoning has become a focal point of global attention. Unlike conventional search engines, LLMs go beyond mere information retrieval, entering into the realm of discourse culture. Their outputs mimic well-considered, independent opinions or statements of facts, presenting a pretense of wisdom. This paper explores the potential transformative impact of LLMs on democratic societies. It delves into the concerns regarding (...) the difficulty in distinguishing ChatGPT-generated texts from human output. The discussion emphasizes the essence of authorship, rooted in the unique human capacity for reason—a quality indispensable for democratic discourse and successful collaboration within free societies. Highlighting the potential threats to democracy, this paper presents three arguments: the Substitution argument, the Authenticity argument, and the Facts argument. These arguments highlight the potential risks that are associated with an overreliance on LLMs. The central thesis posits that widespread deployment of LLMs may adversely affect the fabric of a democracy if not comprehended and addressed proactively and properly. In proposing a solution, we advocate for an emphasis on education as a means to mitigate risks. We suggest cultivating thinking skills in children, fostering coherent thought formulation, and distinguishing between machine-generated output and genuine, i.e., human, reasoning. The focus should be on the responsible development and usage of LLMs, with the goal of augmenting human capacities in thinking, deliberating and decision-making rather than substituting them. (shrink)