We can reach every point in the world but, more importantly, we can be reached from any point in the world. Privacy and its possibilities are abolished. Attention is under siege everywhere. Not silence but uninterrupted noise, not the red desert, but a cognitive space overcharged with nervous incentives to act: this is the alienation of our times....--from The Soul at WorkCapital has managed to overcome the dualism of body and soul by establishing a workforce in which everything we mean (...) by the Soul--language, creativity, affects--is mobilized for its own benefit. Industrial production put to work bodies, muscles, and arms. Now, in the sphere of digital technology and cyberculture, exploitation involves the mind, language, and emotions in order to generate value--while our bodies disappear in front of our computer screens.In this, his newest book, Franco "Bifo" Berardi--key member of the Italian Autonomist movement and a close associate of Félix Guattari--addresses these new forms of estrangement. In the philosophical landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, the Hegelian concept of alienation was used to define the harnessing of subjectivity. The estrangement of workers from their labor, the feeling of alienation they experienced, and their refusal to submit to it became the bases for a human community that remained autonomous from capital. But today a new condition of alienation has taken root in which workers commonly and voluntarily work overtime, the population is tethered to cell phones and Blackberries, debt has become a postmodern form of slavery, and antidepressants are commonly used to meet the unending pressure of production. As a result, the conditions for community have run aground and new philosophical categories are needed. The Soul at Work is a clarion call for a new collective effort to reclaim happiness.The Soul at Work is Bifo's long overdue introduction to English-speaking readers. This Semiotext edition is also the book's first appearance in any language. (shrink)

Big historians are attempting to construct a general holistic narrative of human origins enabling an approach to studying the emergence of complexity, the relation between evolutionary processes, and the modern context of human experience and actions. In this paper I attempt to explore the past and future of cosmic evolution within a big historical foundation characterized by physical, biological, and cultural eras of change. From this analysis I offer a model of the human future that includes an addition and/or reinterpretation (...) of technological singularity theory with a new theory of biocultural evolution focused on the potential birth of technological life: the theory of atechnogenesis. Furthermore, I explore the potential deep futures of technological life and extrapolate towards two hypothetical versions of an ‘Omega Civilization’: expansion and compression. (shrink)

The dominant forms of thought today exist as either deconstructive or metalinguistic structures. Here we attempt to situate dialectical thinking as a constructive meta-mediation of this opposition between deconstruction and metalanguage. Dialectical thinking offers us a way to think about the processual nature of reason itself as a force of thought mediating being. In this mode of understanding we attempt to think the possibility of articulating the meaning and importance of ‘metaontology’ defined as the ontology of epistemology. In a metaontology (...) we treat the structure of concepts not as reflecting external territory, nor as existing at a distance from external territory, but as having their own territory. We attempt to approach metaontology by reflectively observing the singularity of the author’s own internal territorial map, revealing a ‘quadratic twisted circularity’; and also the movement of the symbolic order itself, revealing a possible invariant unsymbolizable real. From these reflections we dive into the foundations of dialectical thinking, starting with Plato, and then exploring modifications introduced by Hegel and Lacan. Finally, we offer a dialectical structure of knowledge for the 21st century. This offering is meant only as an offer, a consideration, for how dialectics can be deployed at the location of key antagonisms in the contemporary field. The hope is that future dialecticians. (shrink)

To this circumstance is probably to be ascribed the little progress, which has hitherto been made in the PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN MIND ; a, science, ...

Slavoj Žižek is one of the most influential philosophers of our current age. His work as a whole largely draws from Platonic, Cartesian, Hegelian and Lacanian thought, and has been applied to the analysis of empirical sciences, political-economic theory, as well as contemporary spirituality and theology. Jordan Peterson is a well respected clinical psychologist and has recently become one of the most influential public intellectuals of our current age. His work as a whole largely draws from Christian, Nietzschean, Jungian and (...) Piagettian thought, and has been antagonistically situated in contemporary debates on the nature of gender identity, sexual expression, communist ideology, and the importance of responsibility for a meaningful life. During Peterson’s rise to global fame these two thinkers have often been symbolically positioned by those familiar with their work as figures in an oppositional determination : Žižek standing for the future of the progressive left and revolutionary communist values, and Peterson standing for the future of the conservative right and traditional patriarchal values. In this work it is argued that the difference internal to this antagonistic positioning can be put to a productive utility. Towards this end I first attempt to use Christianity, Postmodernism and Psychoanalysis as thematic structures to focus on their core differences. Secondly, I attempt to summarize the major points of agreement that emerged from their public debate/dialogue/discussion. These two goals are established to demonstrate the importance of higher order dialogue capable of reconciling opposed figures of consciousness. Such reconciliation would not represent a synthesis to erase all differences, but rather a reconciliation that would open new spaces of productive discourse capable of approaching the nature of psychology and society. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate Nishida Kitarō’s way of philosophizing in the light of the concept of “transition” in order to deepen our understanding of both Nishida’s philosophy and our thinking about and in transitions, using the concept of “boundary” or “border” (Grenze) as a catalyst. For that purpose, we focus on Nishida’s essay “Place” (「場所」), passing through different parts of the text as if through successive gates on a path of transition between one place and the (...) next, until we reach the final place of “absolute nothingness.” Dwelling on this place, we turn our attention to its internal structure and try to depict it along the outlines of a boundary, following the movements taking place in Nishida’s essay. The second part proposes an interpretation of the place of nothingness as an interminable practice of boundary-crossing that doesn’t come to a halt in a final, all-encompassing place, but dynamically situates itself on countless intersecting planes. After a more or less abstract analysis of the concept of “boundary,” we will apply and concretize this approach by using the example of the skin. To this end, we expose five main features of the skin as boundary: permeability, enclosure, excessiveness, interstitiality and reciprocal self-formation. (shrink)

In recent years, bioethical discourse around the topic of ‘genetic enhancement’ has become increasingly politicized. We fear there is too much focus on the semantic question of whether we should call particular practices and emerging bio-technologies such as CRISPR ‘eugenics’, rather than the more important question of how we should view them from the perspective of ethics and policy. Here, we address the question of whether ‘eugenics’ can be defended and how proponents and critics of enhancement should engage with each (...) other. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Metaphor has been considered as a cognitive process, independent of the verbal versus visual mode, through which an unknown conceptual domain is understood in terms of another known conceptual domain. Metaphor might instead be viewed as a cognitive process, dependent on the mode, which leads to genuinely new knowledge via ignorance. First, I argue that there are two main senses of ignorance at stake when we understand a metaphor: we ignore some existing properties of the known domain in the sense (...) that we disregard or neglect them; we ignore some “non-existing” properties of the known domain in the sense that they are not a piece of information belonging to the known domain, but emerge in metaphor interpretation. Secondly, I consider a metaphor as a reasoning device, guiding the interpreters along a path of inferences to a conclusion, which attributes to the target some properties of the source. In this path, interpreters might discover the ignored existing properties of the known domain and/or recover the “non-existing” properties, inferring or imagining the missing piece of information. Finally, I argue that, especially in visual metaphors, this process is guided by a “sentiment of rationality”, tracking a disruption of existing familiar conceptualisations of objects and/or actions and a recovery of ignored properties. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Rhetoric is widely regarded as the most important work of a theory of rhetoric produced in the 18th century. Campbell's work engages such themes in an attempt to formulate a universal theory of human communication. Campbell attempts to develop his theory by discovering deep principles in human nature that account for all instances and kinds of human communication. He seeks to derive all communication principles and processes empirically. In addition, all statements in discourse that have to do (...) with matters of fact and human affairs are likewise to be empirically derived. Thus, his theory of rhetoric is vastly wider than, and different from, such classical theories as those proposed by Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, whose theories focused on discourse related to civic affairs. By attempting to elaborate a general theory of rhetoric through empirical procedures, Campbell's project reveals the limitations of his method. He cannot ground all statements empirically and it is at this point that his theological position comes into play. Inspection of his religious views shows that God's design of human nature, and God's revelations to humankind, make moral and spiritual truths known and quite secure to human beings, although not empirically. (shrink)

Despite the remarkable advances in behavioral and brain sciences over the last decades, the mind/body (brain) problem is still an open debate and one of the most intriguing questions for both cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind. Traditional approaches have conceived this problem in terms of a contrast between physicalist monism and Cartesian dualism. However, since the late sixties, the landscape of philosophical views on the problem has become more varied and complex. The Multiple Realization Thesis (MRT) claims that mental (...) properties can be (or are) realized, and mental processes can be (or are) implemented by neural correlates of different kinds. Thus, MRT challenges the psychoneural type-identity theory and the corresponding reductionism. Many philosophers have acknowledged the a priori plausibility of MRT. However, the existence of empirical evidence in favor of intraspecific, human multiple realizations of mental processes and properties is still controversial. Here we illustrate some cases that provide empirical evidence in support of MRT. Recently, it has been proposed that foveal agnosic vision, like peripheral vision, can be restored by increasing object parts’ spacing (Strappini et al., 2017a; Crutch and Warrington, 2007). Agnosic fovea and normal periphery are both limited by crowding, that impairs object recognition, and provides the signature of visual integration. Here we define a psychological property of restored object identification and we cross-reference the data of visually-impaired patients with different etiologies. In particular, we compare the data of two stroke patients, two patients with posterior cortical atrophy (PCA), six cases of strabismic amblyopia, and one case with restored sight. We also compare these patients with unimpaired subjects tested in the periphery. We show that integration (i.e. restored recognition) seems to describe quite accurately the visual performance in all these cases. While the patients have different etiologies and different neural correlates, the unimpaired subjects have no neural damage. Thus similarity in the psychological property given the differences in the neural substrate can be interpreted in relation to MRT and provide evidence in its support. Finally, we will frame our contribution within the current debate concerning MRT providing new and compelling empirical evidence. (shrink)

Criminal liability for acts committed by AI systems has recently become a hot legal topic. This paper includes three different contributions. The first contribution is an analysis of the extent to which an AI system can satisfy the requirements for criminal liability: accomplishing an actus reus, having the corresponding mens rea, possessing the cognitive capacities needed for responsibility. The second contribution is a discussion of criminal activity accomplished by an AI entity, with reference to a recent case involving an online (...) bot, the Random Darknet Shopper. This discussion will provide the context for the analysis of commonalities and differences between criminal activities by humans and by artificial systems. The third contribution concerns the evaluation of different ways of addressing criminal activities by AI systems in a regulatory perspective. (shrink)

What is a gene? Does it represent a natural kind, or is it just a tool for genomics? A clear answer to these questions has been challenged by postgenomic discoveries. In response, I will argue that the gene can be deemed a natural kind as it satisfies some requirements for genuine kindhood. Specifically, natural kinds are projectible categories in our best scientific theories, and they represent nodes in the causal network of the world (as in Khalidi. Natural Categories and Human (...) Kinds: Classification in the Natural and Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013; Khalidi. Synthese 195: 1379–1396, 2018; Khalidi. Are Sexes Natural Kinds, In: Dasgupta S, Weslake B (eds) Current Controversies in Philoso-phy of Science. Routledge, New York, 2020; Khalidi. Philos Sci 88:1–21, 2021). In Sect. 2, I will present a brief history of the gene and the controversy over its status. In Sect. 3, I will introduce the account of natural kinds considered in this paper. In Sect. 4, I will first present the relevant definition of genes and how they can be classified. Then, I will argue that the gene can be considered a natural kind as it satisfies the criteria for natural kindhood. Section 5 concludes. (shrink)

Grammar as a discipline devoted to the study of language was greatly advanced by the Alexandrian philologists, and especially by Aristarchus, as demonstrated by Stephanos Matthaios. In order to edit Homer and other literary authors, whose texts were often written in archaic Greek and presented many linguistic problems, the Alexandrians had to recognize linguistic grammatical categories and declensional patterns. In particular, to determine the correct orthography or accentuation of debated morphological forms they often employed analogy, which is generally defined as (...) the doctrine that grammatical forms must follow strict rules of declension. Modern scholars have often opposed the Alexandrian doctrine of analogy to the Pergamene doctrine of ‘anomaly’, which favoured spoken usage to determine debated forms. Detlev Fehling and David Blank, however, have shown that this strong opposition never really existed and it is mostly due to Varro. More correctly, ancient grammarians identified inflectional rules as well as forms derived from spoken usage or otherwise aberrant forms—however, respect for spoken usage in the latter case was not labelled ‘anomaly’, which was never a technical term of ancient grammar. Rather, and especially in the Roman period, grammarians used the term ‘pathology’ to account for and explain irregular forms. (shrink)

Neofregeanism and structuralism are among the most promising recent approaches to the philosophy of mathematics. Yet both have serious costs. We develop a view, structuralist neologicism, which retains the central advantages of each while avoiding their more serious costs. The key to our approach is using arbitrary reference to explicate how mathematical terms, introduced by abstraction principles, refer. Focusing on numerical terms, this allows us to treat abstraction principles as implicit definitions determining all properties of the numbers, achieving a key (...) neofregean advantage, while preserving the key structuralist advantage, which objects play the number role does not matter. (shrink)

Sociopolitical attitudes are often the root cause of conflicts between individuals, groups, and even nations, but little is known about the origin of individual differences in sociopolitical orientation. We test a combination of economic and evolutionary ideas about the degree to which the mating market, sex, age, and income affect sociopolitical orientation. We collected data online through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk from 1108 US participants who were between 18 and 60, fluent in English, and single. While ostensibly testing a new online (...) dating website, participants created an online dating profile and described people they would like to date. We manipulated the participants’ popularity in the mating market and the size of the market and then measured participants’ sociopolitical attitudes. The sociopolitical attitudes were reduced to five dimensions via Principal Components Analysis. Both manipulations affected attitudes toward wealth redistribution but were largely not significant predictors of the other dimensions. Men reported more unrestricted sociosexual attitudes, and more support for benevolent sexism and traditional family values, than women did, and women supported wealth redistribution more than men did. There was no sex difference in accepting nonconforming behaviors. Younger people and people with lower incomes were more liberal than older people and people with higher incomes, respectively, regardless of sex. Overall, effects were largely not interactive, suggesting that individual differences in sociopolitical orientation may reflect strategic self-interest and be more straightforward than previously predicted. (shrink)

Frege's definition of the real numbers, as envisaged in the second volume of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, is fatally flawed by the inconsistency of Frege's ill-fated Basic Law V. We restate Frege's definition in a consistent logical framework and investigate whether it can provide a logical foundation of real analysis. Our conclusion will deem it doubtful that such a foundation along the lines of Frege's own indications is possible at all.

The global spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) has led to the imposition of severely restrictive measures by governments in the Western hemisphere. We feel a contrast between these measures and our freedom. This contrast, we argue, is a false perception. It only appears to us because we look at the issue through our contemporary moral philosophy of utilitarianism and an understanding of freedom as absence of constraints. Both these views can be (...) substituted with more sophisticated alternatives, namely an ethics of virtue and a notion of freedom of the will. These offer a fuller picture of morality and enable us to cooperate with the current restrictions by consciously choosing to adhere to them instead of perceiving them as draconian and immoral. We ask whether we should collaborate with the restrictions and argue that considerations of virtue will lead to an affirmative answer. More broadly, virtue ethics permits to deal with the practical concerns about how an individual should behave during this pandemic, given the current lockdown measures or lack thereof. -/- In section 1, we present how utilitarianism and a notion of freedom as negative liberty support the opposition to restrictive measures. In section 2, we outline an alternative based on an ethics of virtue and a more elaborated notion of free will. In the concluding section 3, we argue that considerations of virtue should guide the individual and public response to the emergency. (shrink)

The purpose of this randomized controlled study was to investigate the impact of a 12-week physical education program on the self-efficacy of overweight schoolgirls. We randomly assigned 60 overweight schoolgirls to either an experimental moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise group or a control group that received non-specific regular PE lessons with activities chosen by the curricular teacher mainly focused on team games and sports skills that aimed to achieve general psycho-physical wellness. To assess the starting level of students and significant (...) changes reached, at baseline and after training, a battery of standardized assessment motor tests and a psychometric scale were administered. At the end of the intervention, the experimental group reported a considerable decrease in body mass index and a large improvement in self-efficacy. No significant changes were found in the CG. The results suggested that the 12-week moderate to a vigorous aerobic exercise program is an effective weight loss intervention and a vehicle to promote a range of outcomes important to the qualitative growth of adolescents. In fact, it could provide a positive and significant impact on the self-efficacy of overweight schoolgirls. (shrink)

This paper is a critical response to Andreas Bartels’ sophisticated defense of a structural account of scientific representation. We show that, contrary to Bartels’ claim, homomorphism fails to account for the phenomenon of misrepresentation. Bartels claims that homomorphism is adequate in two respects. First, it is conceptually adequate, in the sense that it shows how representation differs from misrepresentation and non-representation. Second, if properly weakened, homomorphism is formally adequate to accommodate misrepresentation. We question both claims. First, we show that homomorphism (...) is not the right condition to distinguish representation from misrepresentation and non-representation: a “representational mechanism” actually does all the work, and it is independent of homomorphism – as of any structural condition. Second, we test the claim of formal adequacy against three typical kinds of inaccurate representation in science which, by reference to a discussion of the notorious billiard ball model, we define as abstraction, pretence, and simulation. We first point out that Bartels equivocates between homomorphism and the stronger condition of epimorphism, and that the weakened form of homomorphism that Bartels puts forward is not a morphism at all. After providing a formal setting for abstraction, pretence and simulation, we show that for each morphism there is at least one form of inaccurate representation which is not accommodated. We conclude that Bartels’ theory – while logically laying down the weakest structural requirements – is nonetheless formally inadequate in its own terms. This should shed serious doubts on the plausibility of any structural account of representation more generally. (shrink)

Cryonics—also known as cryopreservation or cryosuspension—is the preservation of legally dead individuals at ultra-low temperatures. Those who undergo this procedure hope that future technology will not only succeed in reviving them, but also cure them of the condition that led to their demise. In this sense, some hope that cryopreservation will allow people to continue living indefinitely. This book discusses the moral concerns of cryonics, both as a medical procedure and as an intermediate step toward life extension. In particular, Minerva (...) analyses the moral issues surrounding cryonics-related techniques by focusing on how they might impact the individuals who undergo cryosuspension, as well as society at large. (shrink)

I put forward four these concerning phenomenologically clarifying criteria to characterise social entities. The first thesis maintains that social entities have a sui generis ontological status: unlike natural and ideal entities, social entities depend existentially on individuals’ intentionality and are specifically normative entities. The second thesis claims that social entities existentially depend on heterotropic intentionality – i.e. on intentionality that involves at least two individuals –, and not on solitary intentionality. The third thesis identifies at least three different types of (...) heterotropic intentionality: collective, social and intersubjective intentionality. The fourth thesis states that all three types of heterotropic intentionality are effective: they create social entities, even if each of them creates social entities of different kinds. (shrink)

After preliminarily pointing to the undeniable differences between Jonas’ philosophical biology and Schelling’s philosophy of nature, I contend that, besides their divergencies, the two philosophers agree on several important points. I then show to what extent, based on these elements of convergence, their two approaches could even be taken as complementary. In the core of my paper I lay emphasis on what I believe to be the main ground for the complementarity of the two philosophical inquiries, that is to say, (...) their common radicalization and superseding of Kant’s principle of self-organization. In this respect – all differences considered – they both can be said to delineate a philosophy of the organic that can fruitfully contribute, even better than Kant’s input, to the currently widely discussed topic of biological autonomy. (shrink)