Freiwilligkeit, personale Identität (im Sinne eines harmonisch verfassten und stabilen Selbst) und epistemische Gewissheit sind bei den meisten antiken Philosophieschulen untrennbar miteinander verbunden und garantieren im Rahmen einer als Lebenskunst verstandenen Philosophie das Glück. Im Anlehnung an Überlegungen bei Aristoteles und dem zeitgenössischen Philosophen Peter Bieri analysieren wir, wie Entscheidungen, die zum Zeitpunkt ihres Treffens als bedingt frei und selbstbestimmt wahrgenommen wurden, im Nachhinein vom Han-delnden aufgrund des damals fehlenden Wissens über die Handlungsumstände als unfrei wahrgenommen werden und zu Erfahrungen (...) der Selbstentfremdung führen können. Anknüpfend an Pamela Hieronymis Unterscheidung zwischen zwei Formen der Ausübung mentaler Freiheit zeigen wir anhand von fiktiven Fallbeispielen, wie die Protagonisten trotz epistemischer Ungewissheit zur Autorität über ihren Geist sowie zu einer funktionalen Selbstbeziehung zurückfinden können, und stellen dies in den Kontext einer zeitgenössischen Philosophie als Lebenskunst. (shrink)

Masked priming experiments occasionally revealed surprising effects: Participants responded slower for congruent compared to incongruent primes. This negative congruency effect was ascribed to inhibition of prime-induced activation [Eimer, M., & Schlaghecken, F. . Response faciliation and inhibition in subliminal priming. Biological Psychology, 64, 7–26.] that sets in if the prime activation is sufficiently strong. The current study tests this assumption by implementing manipulations designed to vary the amount of prime-induced activation in three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 3, NCEs were (...) observed despite reduced prime-induced activation. Experiment 2 revealed no NCE with at least similar prime strength. Thus, the amount of prime activation did not predict whether or not NCEs occurred. The findings are discussed with regard to the inhibition account and the recently proposed account of mask-induced activation [cf. Lleras, A., & Enns, J. T. . Negative compatibility or object updating? A cautionary tale of mask-dependent priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 475–493; Verleger, R., Jaskowski, P., Aydemir, A., van der Lubbe, R. H. J., & Groen, M. . Qualitative differences between conscious and nonconscious processing? On inverse priming induced by masked arrows. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 494–515]. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that subliminally presented stimuli accelerate or delay responses afforded by supraliminally presented stimuli. Our experiments extend these findings by showing that unconscious stimuli even affect free choices between responses. Thus, actions that are phenomenally experienced as freely chosen are influenced without the actor becoming aware of the manipulation. However, the unconscious influence is limited to a response bias, as participants chose the primed response only in up to 60% of the trials. LRP data in free choice (...) trials indicate that the prime was not ineffective in trials in which participants chose the non-primed response as then it delayed performance of the incongruently primed response. (shrink)

J. S. Mill and the Art of Compromise The word compromise means a kind of agreement and a concession to something harmful or wrong. I argue that particularly this second sense is quite relevant in the ethics of political action. John Stuart Mill focused upon this issue in his Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform 1859. I outline Mill's doctrine on compromise looking at the external and internal features of an acceptable measure of compromise. These features provide a set of conditions necessary (...) in order for compromise to take place, but they do not guarantee sufficient conditions. In order to assess Mill's political coherence and to draw a general distinction between strategic and ethical compromises the paper concludes by considering two compromise measures that Mill adopted while he was a Member of Parliament. (shrink)

The paper proposes (1.) a non-standard interpretation of the proverbial expression “deuteros plous” by giving a fresh look to Phaedo, 99c9-d1. Then (2.) it proceeds to the philosophical problem raised in this passage according to this interpretation, that is, the problem of the “hypothesis” or the “unproved principle”. It indicates finally (3.) the kernel of truth contained in the standard Interpretation and it concludes with some remarks on the “weakness of the logoi”.

A strange dialectical reversal characterizes the oppositions which psychoanalysis posits against philosophy and neuroscience: what psychoanalysis intervenes with as a unique and missing quality of these subjects, reveals itself upon enquiry as already having been a feature of said subjects. This article first discusses the failed intervention of psychoanalysis within the perceived totalities and absolutes of German idealism. Psychoanalysis, founded on an ontological division and internal inconsistency with a retroactive logic, finds this internal contradiction already reflected within the supposed totalities (...) of Schelling and Hegel. Schelling’s “blind act,” a decision with no prior foundation that grounds an abstract identity-in-itself, appears as the counterpart to what Badiou calls the strictly “analytic act.” Hegel’s Science of Logic, in which the inconclusive interpenetration of being and nothing presupposes its own conclusion in the transitions to essence, and in which an internal incompleteness and contradiction are retroactively constitutive of the concept, similarly nullifies the intervention of psychoanalysis. Finally, precisely such a reversal is presented in neuroscience, where the constitutive contradiction of contingently functional neuronal formations in the adaptive “multiple demand” model of executive functioning repeats the contingent and self-contradicting psychoanalytic subject as being its own deference within linguistic, discursive formations. (shrink)

De la identidad literaria salvadoreña como exilio, se examina la obra clásica de nueve autores. Al aplicar una perspectiva psicoanalítica, el ensayo toma como punto de partida una tarjeta que Roque Dalton envió desde Cuba a una amante lejana en El Salvador. La escritura establece la deuda y la memoria como principios rectores para recuperar el pasado. Un compromiso subjetivo con el objeto del amor perdido la patria y la amante dicta el movimiento de la inscripción poética. Esta ausencia del (...) cuerpo a recuperar se aplica en seguida, en primer lugar, a Francisco Gavidia, que funda el indigenismo salvadoreño, utilizando técnicas literarias europeas, con lo cual ignora las lenguas indígenas, luego a Alberto Masferrer, que se retrata sufriendo las tribulaciones y la pasión de Cristo en el exilio, antes de construir un proyecto político de país. En tercer lugar, Arturo Ambrogi percibe en el campesino salvadoreño al poeta medieval localizado en un locus amoenus, encantado por la belleza del campo. Francisco Miranda Ruano inaugura una visión más trágica, ya que su salida de la ciudad para recrear el esplendor del campo concluye con su regreso a los suburbios pobres, antes de suicidarse. En quinto lugar, Salarrué mezcla fantasía y realismo para retratar sus diversas máscaras o personajes, así como para disimular la violencia sexual y racial. Según el proverbio español “el hábito hace al monje”, el ser y los actos se juzgan siempre por la apariencia. Claudia Lars prescribe un movimiento dual, primero para sustituir su nombre real, Carmen Brannon, por su seudónimo literario, y luego para recuperar su infancia de sus habilidades adultas, que ella desarrolla, gracias al legado poético de su padre extranjero. Los hermanos Alfred y Miguel Ángel Espino proponen un patrimonio complejo. Si el primero idealiza el campo en una recuperación nostálgica del vientre materno cuya contrapartida nombra al amante imposible que lo inclina al suicidio, el segundo apunta a restituir una educación verdaderamente americana, sin revitalización alguna de las lenguas indígenas ni de su tierra ancestral confiscada. José Napoleón Rodríguez Ruiz estipula cómo solo un recuerdo lejano recupera un relato testimonial del pasado. Al vaticinar un tema de actualidad -el acoso sexual y la migración, su personaje campesino narra cómo el exilio reinventa su identidad rural. Finalmente, en un retorno sinodal, desde lejos, Dalton replica la nostalgia de Rubén Darío por ser alguien más de lo que es a la hora de recrear sus años de formación como poeta. En resumen, este bosquejo de nueve autores del siglo XX delinea no solo cómo una idea de exilio anticipa la diáspora actual. El ensayo también sugiere cómo los estudios culturales continúan una nostálgica recuperación de la memoria por una revolución sinódica, y reclama la actualidad de aquellos autores consagrados en un canon literario monolingüe. (shrink)

Emotional information captures attention due to privileged processing. Consequently, performance in cognitive tasks declines. Therefore, shielding current goals fro...

Recently, priming effects of unconscious stimuli that were never presented as targets have been taken as evidence for the processing of the stimuli’s semantic categories. The present study explored the necessary conditions for a transfer of priming to novel primes. Stimuli were digits and letters which were presented in various viewer-related orientations . The transfer of priming to novel stimulus orientations and identities was remarkably limited: in Experiment 1, in which all conscious targets stood upright, no transfer to unconscious primes (...) in a non-target orientation was found. Experiment 2, in which primes were presented without masks, ruled out the possibility that primes were presented too short to allow congruency effects. In Experiments 3 and 4, in which all targets were presented upside down, priming transferred to upright stimuli with target identities but neither to horizontal stimuli nor to stimuli with novel identities. We suggest that whether a transfer of priming to unpracticed stimuli occurs or not depends on observers’ expectations of specific stimulus exemplars. (shrink)

Using an explicit task cuing paradigm, we tested whether masked cues can trigger task-set activation, which would suggest that unconsciously presented stimuli can impact cognitive control processes. Based on a critical assessment of previous findings on the priming of task-set activation, we present two experiments with a new method to approach this subject. Instead of using a prime, we varied the visibility of the cue. These cues either directly signaled particular tasks in Experiment 1, or certain task transitions in Experiment (...) 2. While both masked task and transition cues affected task choice, only task cues affected the speed of task performance. This observation suggests that task-specific stimulus–response rules can be activated only by masked cues that are uniquely associated with a particular task. Taken together, these results demonstrate that unconsciously presented stimuli have the power to activate corresponding task sets. (shrink)

Intentional binding describes the phenomenon that actions and their effects are perceived to be temporally approximated. We introduced a new method of duration estimation to the research field, the method of constant stimuli. Participants freely chose to press one of two keys or experienced passive key presses. After an interval of 250 ms or 600 ms a visual effect occurred. In Experiment 1, each key produced an effect after a specific interval. In Experiment 2, both keys produced an effect after (...) the same interval that varied between sessions. Participants compared the duration of the action–effect interval with a tone of varying duration. To assess intentional binding, we compared the perceived duration of the action–effect interval between the active and passive condition. We showed intentional binding for 600 ms, but not for 250 ms action–effect intervals in both experiments. Thus, the method of constant stimuli is suitable to assess intentional binding. (shrink)

Recent research suggests that processing of irrelevant information can be modulated in a rapid online fashion by contextual information in the task environment depending on the usefulness of that information in different contexts. Congruency effects evoked by irrelevant stimulus attributes are smaller in contexts with high proportions of incongruent trials and larger in contexts with high proportions of congruent trials . The present study investigates these context-adaptation effects in a masked-priming paradigm. Context-specific adaptation effects transfer to stimulus identities that are (...) equiprobale in all contexts – an observation that renders explanations in terms of event-learning processes unlikely. Yet, context-specific effects vanished when the irrelevant information remained unconscious. The results suggest that context-specific adaptation of congruency effects reflect cognitive control operations that alter the processing of irrelevant information depending on the experienced utility of that information for action control. (shrink)

This paper presents an experience in developing professional ethics by an approach that integrates knowledge, teaching methodologies and assessment coherently. It has been implemented for students in both the Software Engineering and Computer Engineering degree programs of the Technical University of Madrid, in which professional ethics is studied as a part of a required course. Our contribution of this paper is a model for formative assessment that clarifies the learning goals, enhances the results, simplifies the scoring and can be replicated (...) in other contexts. A quasi-experimental study that involves many of the students of the required course has been developed. To test the effectiveness of the teaching process, the analysis of ethical dilemmas and the use of deontological codes have been integrated, and a scoring rubric has been designed. Currently, this model is also being used to develop skills related to social responsibility and sustainability for undergraduate and postgraduate students of diverse academic context. (shrink)

Autonomy has been central to moral and political philosophy for millenia, and has been positioned as a critical aspect of both justice and wellbeing. Research in psychology supports this position, providing empirical evidence that autonomy is critical to motivation, personal growth and psychological wellness. Responsible AI will require an understanding of, and ability to effectively design for, human autonomy (rather than just machine autonomy) if it is to genuinely benefit humanity. Yet the effects on human autonomy of digital experiences are (...) neither straightforward nor consistent, and are complicated by commercial interests and tensions around compulsive overuse. This multi-layered reality requires an analysis that is itself multidimensional and that takes into account human experience at various levels of resolution. We borrow from HCI and psychological research to apply a model (“METUX”) that identifies six distinct spheres of technology experience. We demonstrate the value of the model for understanding human autonomy in a technology ethics context at multiple levels by applying it to the real-world case study of an AI-enhanced video recommender system. In the process we argue for the following three claims: 1) There are autonomy-related consequences to algorithms representing the interests of third parties, and they are not impartial and rational extensions of the self, as is often perceived; 2) Designing for autonomy is an ethical imperative critical to the future design of responsible AI; and 3) Autonomy-support must be analysed from at least six spheres of experience in order to approriately capture contradictory and downstream effects. (shrink)

A recent issue of Topics in Cognitive Science featured 11 thoughtful commentaries responding to our article “What happened to cognitive science?” (Núñez et al., 2019). Here, we identify several themes that arose in those commentaries and respond to each. Crucial to understanding our original article is the fundamental distinction between multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary endeavors: Cognitive science began (and has stayed) as multidisciplinary but has failed to move on to form a cohesive interdisciplinary field. We clarify and elaborate our original argument (...) and reiterate the importance of a data‐driven evaluation of the current status of the field, which exhibits a marked disciplinary imbalance, a lack of a coherent conceptual core, and a striking absence of a consistent curriculum in the institutions that grant degrees in this domain. Half a century after the creation of cognitive science, it may now be a good time to revisit goals and visions for how to best approach the ever‐fascinating scientific study of the mind(s). (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo consiste em analisar como Nietzsche, baseado na filosofia schopenhauriana, resolveu o problema do surgimento da tragédia grega através da elevação dos elementos Apolo e Dionísio a um estatuto ontológico, e como os gregos fizeram isso em seu tempo através da Música, além de revelar como, em Nietzsche, o pensamento de Sócrates surge como o “perverso algoz da arte”.O estudo foi realizado através de uma pesquisa bibliográfica com base nas seguintes obras do filósofo: A visão Dionisíaca de (...) Mundo e O nascimento da tragédia no espírito da Música. Na segunda parte, sugere-se como Nietzsche faz esse resgate do trágico em sua época e qual a recepção no século XIX de seu trabalho. (shrink)

Corporations perform actions that can inflict harm with different levels of intensity, from death to material loss, to both companies’ internal and external stakeholders. Research has analysed corporate harm using the notions of corporate social irresponsibility and corporate crime. Critical management studies have been subjecting management and organizational practices and knowledge to critical analysis, and corporate harm has been one of the main concerns of CMS. However, CMS has rarely been deployed to analyse CSIR and corporate crime. Thus, the aim (...) of this paper is to critically analyse the perspectives of CSIR and corporate crimes on corporate harm via CMS in general and postcolonial studies in particular. The paper contributes by arguing that research on CSIR and corporate crime could be perceived as producing research that does not challenge the essence of contemporary corporation profit-seeking activities that ultimately produces corporate harm. We argue that CSIR and corporate crime are ideologies that assist in disguising the contradiction between producing shareholder value and the social good that is at the heart of the modern corporation system and the current economic system. Furthermore, the postcolonial view of CSIR and corporate crime highlights how they are based on a Western-centric view of corporate harm that ignores the realities and perspectives of the Global South, especially in situations where corporate harm leads to death in the Global South. (shrink)

The present chapter sketches the adoption of logic in late nineteenth and early twentieth century China. Addressing both conceptual and institutional aspects of this process, it contextualizes the raising interest in the discipline among Qing scholars and Republican intellectuals. Arranged largely chronologically, it delineates the successive periods in the reception of major works of and intellectual trends in the field. It introduces the most influential scholars promoting a public discourse on logic in the final years of the empire, but also (...) the ever more professional agents who participated in the ensuing establishment of a modern institutional framework for studies in logic like universities, departments of logic, academic societies, journals etc. While at the beginning, these people were mostly no trained logicians, progress in the establishment of academic logic in the 1930s provided the conditions for the formation of the first Chinese specialists in the field who were often internationally trained and soon to engage in cutting-edge research. In some contrast, academic discourse on logic well into the 1930s was dominated by exaggerated social and political expectations, not least due to the successive influence on intellectuals of inductionist scientism in the first decades of the twentieth century, of an inflated pragmatist notion of logic in the 1920s, and of an overly simplistic “antiformalist” notion of logic propagated by (vulgar-)Marxist historical dialecticians in the 1930s. The arrival of scientific logic also went in tandem with a renewed interest in studies in the traditional Buddhist “science of reasons” (yinming, hetuvidyā, “Buddhist logic”) and spurred the search for contributions to the field of logic in the record of inherited Chinese literature, a development which soon led to the common acceptance of the existence of genuinely Chinese traditions of logic. It is eventually a peculiarity of the Chinese reception of logic that since around 1920, less than two decades after the first modern translations of textbooks on traditional syllogistics, the visit of Bertrand Russell – one of the fathers of mathematical logic – fueled the spread of this new approach to logic which has eventually changed its face for good. Designed as a historical survey, this chapter is a general account on the major contributions to the field by Chinese scholars of the time and has to forego detailed discussions. (shrink)

This article offers a new reading of Heidegger's thesis of the animal in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. Framing Heidegger's text through a brief analysis of Protagoras' genetic story of nature and of man's nature in Plato's eponymous dialogue, our reading brings out three key elements common to both texts: living nature as a normative rather than a physical order, the poverty of man's world in relation to the animal, and the attempted redemption of the latter through the acquisition of (...) Weltbildung. Staying with the way Heidegger brings out man's poverty in world in the text allows us (i) to undo once for all the oft-repeated charge of Heidegger's anthropocentric interpretation of the animal, (ii) to stage the hypothesis that philosophy and the life sciences of his day draw upon a common basic experience of the autonomy of life in relation to everything human, all-too-human, and (iii) to demonstrate the normativity and poverty of life. (shrink)

Current suggestions for capacities that should be targeted for moral enhancement has centered on traits like empathy, fairness or aggression. The literature, however, lacks a proper model for understanding the interplay and complexity of moral capacities, which limits the practicability of proposed interventions. In this paper, I integrate some existing knowledge on the nature of human moral behavior and present a formal model of prosocial motivation. The model provides two important results regarding the most friction-free route to moral enhancement. First, (...) we should consider decreasing self-interested motivation rather than increasing prosociality directly. Second, this should be complemented with cognitive enhancement. These suggestions are tested against existing and emerging evidence on cognitive capacity, mindfulness meditation and the effects of psychedelic drugs and are found to have sufficient grounding for further theoretical and empirical exploration. Furthermore, moral effects of the latter two are hypothesized to result from a diminished sense of self with subsequent reductions in self-interest. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to address some of the questions on the notion of agent and agency in relation to property and personhood. I argue that following the Kantian criticism of Aristotelian metaphysics, contemporary biotechnology and information and communication technologies bring about a new challenge—this time, with regard to the Kantian moral subject understood in the subject’s unique metaphysical qualities of dignity and autonomy. The concept of human dignity underlies the foundation of many democratic systems, particularly in Europe (...) as well as of international treaties, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Digital agents, artificial organisms as well as new capabilities of the human agents related to their embeddedness in digital and biotechnological environments bring about an important transformation of the human self-appraisal. A critical comparative reflection of this transformation is important because of its ethical implications. I deal first with the concept of agent within the framework of Aristotelian philosophy, which is the basis for further theories in accordance with and/or in opposition to it, particularly since modernity. In the second part of this paper, I deal with the concept of personhood in Kantian philosophy, which supersedes the Aristotelian metaphysics of substance and builds the basis of a metaphysics of the moral human subject. In the third part, I discuss the question of artificial agents arising from modern biology and ICT. Blurring the difference between the human and the natural and/or artificial opens a “new space” for philosophical reflection as well as for debate in law and practical policy. (shrink)