AI-based technologies are increasingly pervasive in a number of contexts. Our affective and emotional life makes no exception. In this article, we analyze one way in which AI-based technologies can affect them. In particular, our investigation will focus on affective artificial agents, namely AI-powered software or robotic agents designed to interact with us in affectively salient ways. We build upon the existing literature on affective artifacts with the aim of providing an original analysis of affective artificial agents and their distinctive (...) features. We argue that, unlike comparatively low-tech affective artifacts, affective artificial agents display a specific form of agency, which prevents them from being perceived by their users as extensions of their selves. In addition to this, we claim that their functioning crucially depends on the simulation of human-like emotion-driven behavior and requires a distinctive form of transparency—we call it emotional transparency—that might give rise to ethical and normative tensions. (shrink)

This article presents and discusses one of the most prominent inferential strategies currently employed in cognitive neuropsychology, namely, reverse inference. Simply put, this is the practice of inferring, in the context of experimental tasks, the engagement of cognitive processes from locations or patterns of neural activation. This technique is notoriously controversial because, critics argue, it presupposes the problematic assumption that neural areas are functionally selective. We proceed as follows. We begin by introducing the basic structure of traditional “location-based” reverse inference (...) and discuss the influential lack of selectivity objection. Next, we rehearse various ways of responding to this challenge and provide some reasons for cautious optimism. The second part of the essay presents a more recent development: “pattern-decoding reverse inference”. This inferential strategy, we maintain, provides an even more convincing response to the lack of selectivity charge. Due to this and other methodological advantages, it is now a prominent component in the toolbox of cognitive neuropsychology. Finally, we conclude by drawing some implications for philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

We applied a technique borrowed from the field of bioethics to test whether justice-related factors influence laypersons’ decisions concerning business ethics. In the first experiment, participants judged the acceptability of remuneration policies and in the second that of executive bonuses. In each study, participants judged a set of 36 situations. To create the scenarios, we varied retributive justice—the amount of remuneration; procedural justice—the clarity of the procedure that determined the remuneration; distributive justice—the extent of the distribution of bonus payments amongst (...) employees; and restorative justice—a special compensation for hazardous working conditions or accidents at work. K-means clustering of all 36 judgments revealed four different personal positions in both experiments. One group of people readily accepted all situations. The other three groups’ judgments were mainly a function of distributive justice modulated in different ways by the context determined by the other variables. Furthermore, people conceive of distributive justice as categorical: Acceptability judgments only increase if companies give bonuses to all employees. Granting bonuses to a subset does not increase acceptability. Our results are useful for policy makers and provide business ethics researchers with a novel technique. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to compare three alternative formal reconstructions of van Inwagen’s famous argument for incompatibilism. In the first part of my paper, I examine van Inwagen’s own reconstruction within a propositional modal logic. I point out that, due to the expressive limitations of his propositional modal logic, van Inwagen is unable to argue directly (that is, within his formal framework) for incompatibilism. In the second part of my paper, I suggest to reconstruct van Inwagen’s argument within (...) a first-order predicate logic. I show, however, that even though this reconstruction is not susceptible to the same objection, this reconstruction can be shown to be inconsistent (given van Inwagen’s own assumptions). At the end of my paper, I suggest to reconstruct van Inwagen’s argument within a quantified counterfactual logic with propositional quantifiers. I show that within this formal framework van Inwagen would not only be able to argue directly for incompatibilism, he would also be able to argue for crucial assumptions of his argument. (shrink)

In this contribution, I explore the possibility of characterizing the emergence of time in causal set theory (CST) in terms of the growing block universe (GBU) metaphysics. I show that although GBU seems to be the most intuitive time metaphysics for CST, it leaves us with a number of interpretation problems, independently of which dynamics we choose to favor for the theory —here I shall consider the Classical Sequential Growth and the Covariant model. Discrete general covariance of the CSG dynamics (...) does not allow us to individuate a single history of the universe (defined by a causal history of different causal sets), thereby making the claim that ‘the past exists’ at best problematic. In addition, because the evolution of the universe in CSG dynamics leads to an outward branching causal tree, it becomes impossible to determine a proper ‘line of becoming’, thereby blurring the presentists’ claim that only the present exists. Similarly, the covariant approach runs into the same, if not even more severe problems, since each configuration of the universe would amount to a set of possible causal sets, thereby making the individuation of a single configuration of the universe —and thus the physical interpretation of the theory— implausible. (shrink)

We investigate the major mathematical theories of space from a modal standpoint: topology, affine geometry, metric geometry, and vector algebra. This allows us to see new fine-structure in spatial patterns which suggests analogies across these mathematical theories in terms of modal, temporal, and conditional logics. Throughout the modal walk through space, expressive power is analyzed in terms of language design, bisimulations, and correspondence phenomena. The result is both unification across the areas visited, and the uncovering of interesting new questions.

Crutchfield and Redinger argue that consciousness-altering chemical restraints are less “liberty-intrusive” (or as we will sometimes put it, just less “intrusive”) than physical restraints. Physica...

The paper presents and discusses the Hubble tension with respect to recent results in cosmology. I shall argue that the measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope and TRGB stars calibrations allow us to infer that the estimates of H0 with late universe methods are robust. Building on from robustness analysis, I conclude that the resolution of the tension cannot be expected to come from new systematics, but rather from new physics.

Computational models of meaning trained on naturally occurring text successfully model human performance on tasks involving simple similarity measures, but they characterize meaning in terms of undifferentiated bags of words or topical dimensions. This has led some to question their psychological plausibility (Murphy, 2002;Schunn, 1999). We present here a fully automatic method for extracting a structured and comprehensive set of concept descriptions directly from an English part‐of‐speech‐tagged corpus. Concepts are characterized by weighted properties, enriched with concept–property types that approximate classical (...) relations such as hypernymy and function. Our model outperforms comparable algorithms in cognitive tasks pertaining not only to concept‐internal structures (discovering properties of concepts, grouping properties by property type) but also to inter‐concept relations (clustering into superordinates), suggesting the empirical validity of the property‐based approach. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to show that Kripke’s proposed solution to the problem of negative existentials fails. I try to show that Kripke’s proposal fails because it entails that anybody who has good reasons to believe that there are no propositions has also good reasons to believe that he or she does not exist. However, there were philosophers who had good reasons to believe that there are no propositions even though they didn’t have good reasons to believe that they (...) do not exist. I conclude that Kripke’s proposed solution to the problem of negative existentials fails. (shrink)

Computational models of meaning trained on naturally occurring text successfully model human performance on tasks involving simple similarity measures, but they characterize meaning in terms of undifferentiated bags of words or topical dimensions. This has led some to question their psychological plausibility (Murphy, 2002;Schunn, 1999). We present here a fully automatic method for extracting a structured and comprehensive set of concept descriptions directly from an English part‐of‐speech‐tagged corpus. Concepts are characterized by weighted properties, enriched with concept–property types that approximate classical (...) relations such as hypernymy and function. Our model outperforms comparable algorithms in cognitive tasks pertaining not only to concept‐internal structures (discovering properties of concepts, grouping properties by property type) but also to inter‐concept relations (clustering into superordinates), suggesting the empirical validity of the property‐based approach. (shrink)

Narratives are ever-present in medicine and care: patients, relatives, doctors, nurses and pastoral workers tell quite different stories. The present volume examines the question of the significance of narratives for the ethical judgement in medicine and care and illustrates what theological reflection can contribute to the current discussion about the ethics of medicine and care. The focus of the volume is on the theological discussion on the ethical issues of medicine and care which is enriched by contributions from literary studies, (...) philosophy, nursing science and the ethics of medicine and care. (shrink)

This article provides a contribution to the concept of a peace ethics which understands human peacemaking as a churchly practice accepting and joining in God's reconciling works. From a pacifist stance, the author argues that ecclesial ethics allows a forceful reframing of the just war tradition as it is developed in the largely unknown Reformed confessions of the l61 h century. A theological exploration of the peace church's pathos drives the author towards a rediscovery of the church's central worshiping practices, (...) such as eucharist, as distinctively peacemaking practices. Following John Calvin's and Karl Barth's ethical account, the mode of peacemaking is defined as a hastening that waits. (shrink)

In this event-related potential study a masking technique that prevents conscious perception of words and non-words through attentional distraction was used to reveal the temporal dynamics of word processing under non-conscious and conscious conditions. In the non-conscious condition, ERP responses differed between masked words and non-words from 112 to 160 ms after stimulus-onset over posterior brain areas. The early onset of the word–non-word differences was compatible with previous studies that reported non-conscious access to orthographic information within this time period. Moreover, (...) source localisations provided evidence for automatic activation of prelexical phonological information, whereas no evidence for non-conscious semantic processing was found. When subjects were informed about the masking technique, lexical differences occurred at later time intervals, suggesting conscious access to additional word related information. These results indicate that early visual word processing does not depend entirely on attentional resources, but that non-conscious processing probably is restricted to rather lower-level linguistic information. (shrink)

This contribution explores in detail the presence and the context of two quotations of the philosopher and theologian Abū Ḥāmid al-Ġazālī (Algazel for the Latin world) in Albert the Great’s late Summa theologiae sive de mirabili scientia Dei. The two quotations, which concern the notion of the soul as “abridged letter” or “copy” [nusḫa muḫtaṣara, chartula brevis] on which all pieces of knowledge are potentially transcribed, occur in two significant textual points of Albert’s Summa. Two different aspects of al-Ġazālī’s simile (...) are addressed in the article: the consideration of the soul as a book, which has extremely wide biblical and literary echoes, and the consideration of the soul as a place, also with regard to the already Aristotelian, and then Albertinian notion of locus intelligibilium. The feature the two passages by Albert share is the acknowledgment of Algazel as a source of primary importance, capable of corroborating with his authority both a Christian theological doctrine and the littera itself of Aristotle’s De anima, in a culturally momentous philosophical-theological, and Islamic-Christian, cooperation. Thanks to a focused analysis on further contexts of reception of the same Ġazālīan image, which bear witness to its peculiar memorability and its differentiated usages, the article argues in conclusion in favour of a more attentive and in-depth study of philosophical similes such as the one here discussed. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The (...) book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

Enactive approaches to cognition argue that cognition, including pretense, comes about through the dynamical interaction of agent and environment. Applied to cognition, these approaches cast cognition as an activity an agent _performs_ interacting in specific ways with her environment. This view is now under significant pressure: in a series of recent publications, Peter Langland-Hassan has proposed a number of arguments which purportedly should lead us to conclude that enactive approaches are unable to account for pretense without paying a way too (...) severe theoretical price. In this paper, we will defend enactive approaches to pretense, arguing that they can in fact explain pretense without incurring in the negative theoretical consequences Peter Langland-Hassan fears. To this effect, we start by exposing Langland-Hassan’s challenge (§2), to then highlight its core assumptions and demonstrate their falsity (§3). Having done so, we argue that none of the theoretical consequences Langland-Hassan fears follow (§4), and in fact enactive approaches to cognition may be explanatorily superior to the one Langland-Hassan favors (§5). A brief conclusion will then follow (§6). (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak has seen people in many countries asked to radically modify their way of life in compliance with sweeping safety measures. During the current crisis, technology is turning out to be key, in that it allows practitioners to deliver psychological services to people who would otherwise be unreachable. However, professionals cannot solely rely on their traditional modes of practice, in that different methods are required to bring to light the needs of those affected by the emergency. People are (...) being overwhelmed by a cascade of unusual and unexpected events that are putting a strain on their everyday routines and usual meaning-making systems; ongoing challenges to their employment and financial status will likely divert personal resources away from psychological well-being. We therefore argue that psychologists should also consider the needs of the general population. Among those who may require help – aside from the main targets of psychological intervention, such as healthcare personnel and COVID-19 patients and their relatives – specific attention should be paid to those who are not at the center of the crisis. We suggest that this large segment of potential users may benefit from a non-medical approach focused on the promotion of meaning-making processes. Indeed, the disruptive nature of the current situation hinders sense-making and threatens to undermine psychological balance and well-being, at an individual as well as at a societal level. The present article proposes a methodological perspective based on the reconstruction of meaning-making processes (sense of coherence, predictability, metaphors, narratives). Specifically, psychological interventions should promote personal and collective resources with a view to: “normalizing” current distressful experiences (i.e., acknowledging that such reactions are normal in light of the present situation); widening the observational field, taking relational contexts into account, and promoting an understanding of distressful experiences as coping strategies; fostering meaning-making/reconstruction processes through the use of appropriate metaphors and narratives; promoting a sense of coherence. We present two clinical vignettes to illustrate how these principles might be applied in practice. In conclusion, the exceptional psychological challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic require practitioners to adopt a broad and flexible perspective on clinical intervention. (shrink)

O autor investiga as várias referencias de Heidegger à concepção poética de Hölderlin para mostrar como ela é decisiva para determinar o conjunto da compreensão de filosofia e de linguagem heideggerianas.

El artículo examina la concepción hegeliana del arte moderno a la luz de las consideraciones sobre el teatro en las Lecciones de estética. Dicha concepción se modifica respecto a la época clásica y la antigüedad con la irrupción del principio de la subjetividad en el arte. Se descubren así las dimensiones histórica, reflexiva y comprensiva del arte que anticipan una hermenéutica del arte bajo la consigna de un “arte para nosotros”: un arte que deja de estar anclado en las representaciones (...) del pasado para situarse más bien de cara a las exigencias del presente. (shrink)

Embora a reflexão de Kant sobre a especificidade do juízo estético seja tomada pelos intérpretes de sua obra como não tendo o propósito de constituir uma nova possibilidade de pensar a arte e o fazer artístico, não se pode, todavia, negar sua contribuição, particularmente para o reconhecimento da estética como disciplina filosófica. Filósofos aparentemente tão diversos como Hegel, Schelling e Schopenhauer, bem como críticos de literatura e de arte, como os irmãos românticos August e Friedrich Schlegel são unânimes quando se (...) trata de identificar em Kant o primeiro ponto de partida para uma consideração verdadeiramente filosófica da arte. Neste artigo pretendo justamente lançar alguns apontamentos sobre esse lugar atribuído a Kant no horizonte da reflexão estética “sistemática”, que teve início com Baumgarten em 1750 e culminou com o sistema estético de Hegel na terceira década do século XIX. The place of Kant in the fundation of aesthetic as a philosophical disciplinePhilosophers so much different as Hegel, Schelling and Schopenhauer, as well as critics of literature and art, as the romantics brothers August and Friedrich Schlegel, are unanimous in identifying in Kant the starting point for a true philosophical appreciation of art. This paper analyzes the place attributed to Kant on the horizon of the "systematical" aesthetic reflexion, that begun with Baumgarten in 1750 and culminated in the aesthetic system of Hegel in the third decade of the 19 th century. (shrink)

El artículo ofrece un estudio del Wilhelm Meister de Goethe, en especial, de Los años de aprendizaje, en cuanto paradigma del género que el romanticismo definió como “novela de formación” (Bildungsroman). También se toma en consideración la versión inicial de la novela, titulada La misión teatral. El tema fundamental es el de la formación por el teatro; éste es mucho más que un simple ideal artístico, por cuanto implica la identificación de teatro y vida, lo que determina el trabajo de (...) la formación en función de la libertad. (shrink)

Probabilistic theories are a natural framework to investigate the foundations of quantum theory and possible alternative or deeper theories. In a generic probabilistic theory, states of a physical system are represented as vectors of outcomes probabilities and state spaces are convex cones. In this picture the physics of a given theory is related to the geometric shape of the cone of states. In quantum theory, for instance, the shape of the cone of states corresponds to a projective space over complex (...) numbers. In this paper we investigate geometric constraints on the state space of a generic theory imposed by the following information theoretic requirements: every non completely mixed state of a system is perfectly distinguishable from some other state in a single shot measurement; information capacity of physical systems is conserved under making mixtures of states. These assumptions guarantee that a generic physical system satisfies a natural principle asserting that the more a state of the system is mixed the less information can be stored in the system using that state as logical value. We show that all theories satisfying the above assumptions are such that the shape of their cones of states is that of a projective space over a generic field of numbers. Remarkably, these theories constitute generalizations of quantum theory where superposition principle holds with coefficients pertaining to a generic field of numbers in place of complex numbers. If the field of numbers is trivial and contains only one element we obtain classical theory. This result tells that superposition principle is quite common among probabilistic theories while its absence gives evidence of either classical theory or an implausible theory. (shrink)

Si consideramos la declaración de la Ética Eudemia I 8, Aristóteles parece estar lejos de la metafísica pues, habiendo adoptado una tesis sobre la dispersión originaria del ser en las diferentes categorías, no tenía cómo pensar una ciencia única del ser, ya que, según parece, aún no había aplicado al ser una noción de unidad focal de la significación, que fue concebida, justamente en la EE, para explicar el fenómeno de la amistad. Cuando el pros hen legesthai sea aplicado al (...) ser entonces será posible una metafísica o ciencia única del ser por fuera del diapasón platónico. Hasta ese momento, sin embargo, Aristóteles se encuentra sin metafísica. En este artículo, procuro investigar a qué se parece tal período de desencanto metafísico de Aristóteles y qué huellas nos dejó eventualmente, de esta época. (shrink)

Este artigo pretende examinar questões centrais no particularismo moral de Jonathan Dancy a partir de uma comparação de suas principais teses com a ética aristotélica. Embora Dancy não reivindique uma linhagem aristotélica, será argumentado que tal comparação pode ser esclarecedora para o particularismo moral, bem com o para a ética aristotélica, especialmente no que concerne às regras que parecem não admitir qualquer exceção, como a proibição moral de agir com crueldade, ou o assassinato.