The work defines the sigh as a type of breath expressing or communicating specific physical or mental internal states. To investigate the meanings of the sigh, the paper presents analyses of written and oral corpora, finding out that it may express different emotions like boredom or frustration, but also positive meanings like self-encouragement; then it focuses on the use of sighs in political debates. Finally a perception study shows participants’ agreement on the meanings of sighs in terms of valence and (...) arousal. These results lay the bases for future studies to set a clearer distinction between sighs and other vocalisations as well as other effects on its meaning caused by the combination with other body signals like rolling eyes or shaking head. (shrink)

The Monster Objection has often been considered one of the main reasons to explore non-standard mereological views, such as hylomorphism. Still, it has been rarely discussed and then only in a cursory fashion. This paper fills this gap by offering the first thorough assessment of the objection. It argues that different metaphysical stances, such as presentism and three- and four-dimensionalism, provide different ways of undermining the objection.

Within social psychology, group identification refers to a mental process that leads an individual to conceive of herself as a group member. This phenomenon has recently attracted a great deal of attention in the debate about shared agency. In this debate, group identification is appealing to many because it appears to explain important forms of intentionally shared actions in a cognitively unsophisticated way. This paper argues that, unless important issues about group identification are not illuminated, the heuristic function ascribed to (...) this notion for an understanding of shared agency remains dubious at best and unfulfilled at worst. This paper offers such a clarification by distinguishing and describing two different mental processes that constitute group identification: adoption of the group perspective and transformation in self-understanding. It is claimed that the latter process consists in the production of what Ruth Millikan labels “Pushmi-Pullyu representations” and that it is developmentally prior with respect to the ability of adopting the group perspective. (shrink)

When you and I share an experience, each of us lives through a we-experience. The paper claims that we-experiences have unique phenomenality and structure. First, we-experiences’ phenomenality is characterised by the fact that they feel like ours to their subject. This specific phenomenality is contended to derive from the way these experiences self-represent: a we-experience exemplifies us-ness or togetherness because it self-represents as mine qua ours. Second, living through a we-experience together with somebody else is not to have this experience (...) in parallel with the experience of the other. Rather, the paper argues that a we-experience is partly co-constituted by the experience of the other. After offering an account of the phenomenality and constitution of we-experiences, which traces these two elements back to the subject’s self-understanding as a group member, the paper argues for the claim that an experience’s for-us-ness is committal to this experience being co-constituted by another we-experience. (shrink)

Based on a qualitative study about expert musicianship, this paper distinguishes three ways of interacting by putting them in relation to the sense of agency. Following Pacherie, it highlights that the phenomenology of shared agency undergoes a drastic transformation when musicians establish a sense of we-agency. In particular, the musicians conceive of the performance as one single action towards which they experience an epistemic privileged access. The implications of these results for a theory of collective intentionality are discussed by addressing (...) two general questions: When several individuals share an intention, does this fact secure plural self-knowledge? And is it possible to have non-observational knowledge about a collective action? It is claimed that the results drawn from the study about expert musicianship supports negative answers to both questions. (shrink)

Within emotion theory, envy is generally portrayed as an antisocial emotion because the relation between the envier and the rival is thought to be purely antagonistic. This paper resists this view by arguing that envy presupposes a sense of us. First, we claim that hostile envy is triggered by the envier's sense of impotence combined with her perception that an equality principle has been violated. Second, we introduce the notion of â hetero-induced self-conscious emotionsâ by focusing on the paradigmatic cases (...) of being ashamed or proud of somebody else. We describe envy as a hetero-induced self-conscious emotion by arguing that the impotence felt by the subject grounds the emotion's self-reflexivity and that the rival impacts the subject's self-assessment because the rival is framed by the subject as an in-group member. Finally, we elaborate on the asset at stake in envy. We contend that this is esteem recognition: The envier covets the esteem that her reference group accords to the rival. Because, in envy, the subject conceives of herself as member of a group to which the other is also understood to belong, we conclude that envy is a social emotion insofar as it presupposes a sense of us. (shrink)

The dominant conception of delusion in psychiatry (in textbooks, research papers, diagnostic manuals, etc.) is predominantly epistemic. Delusions are almost always characterized in terms of their epistemic defects, i.e., defects with respect to evidence, reasoning, judgment, etc. However, there is an individualistic bias in the epistemic conception; the alleged epistemic defects and abnormalities in delusions relate to individualistic epistemic processes rather than social epistemic processes. We endorse the social epistemological turn in recent philosophical epistemology, and claim that a corresponding turn (...) is needed in the study of delusions. It is a turn from the (purely) individualistic conception, which characterizes delusions only by individualistic epistemic defects and abnormalities, to the (partially) social epistemic conception, which characterizes delusions by individualistic as well as social epistemic defects and abnormalities. This paper is intended as an initial step toward such a social epistemological turn. In particular, we will develop a new model of the development of delusions according to which testimonial abnormalities, including testimonial isolation and testimonial discount, are a causal factor in the development of delusions. (shrink)

For patients with multiple sclerosis, deficits in gait significantly reduce the quality of life. Using the concept of muscle synergies, this study investigated the modular organization of motor control during level and inclined walking in MS patients compared with healthy participants to identify the potential demand-specific adjustments in motor control in MSP. We hypothesized a widening of the time-dependent activation patterns in MSP to increase the overlap of temporally-adjacent muscle synergies, especially during inclined walking, as a strategy to increase the (...) robustness of motor control, thus compensating pathology-related deficits. We analyzed temporal gait parameters and muscle synergies from myoelectric signals of 13 ipsilateral leg muscles using non-negative matrix factorization. Compared with HP, MSP demonstrated a widening in the time-dependent coefficients, as well as altered relative muscle contribution, in certain synergies during level and inclined walking. Moreover, inclined walking revealed a demand-specific adjustment in the modular organization in MSP, resulting in an extra synergy compared with HP. This further increased the overlap of temporally-adjacent muscle synergies to provide sufficient robustness in motor control to accomplish the more demanding motor task while coping with pathology-related motor deficits during walking. (shrink)

The paper offers a systematic reconstruction of the relations that, in Husserl’s work, bind together our shared social world (“the spiritual world”) with shared intentionality. It is claimed that, by sharing experiences, persons create social reasons and that these reasons impose a normative structure on the social world. Because there are two ways in which persons can share experiences (depending on whether these experiences rest on mutual communication or on group’s identity), social normativity comes in two kinds. It is either (...) directed (it has an addressee) or it is collective or absolute (it applies to all group members). Social normativity should be distinguished from axiological normativity: The first is grounded in shared intentionality, the second in values. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

How is it possible, for those who were not “under that sky of blood”, to speak about the Shoah without outraging again, even involuntarily, millions of victims?What are we speaking of, when we mention the Shoah? Starting from these two questions, the paper approaches Treblinka, the biggest factory of “pure” death set up by the Aktion Reinhard, with the purpose of understanding, through the words of Yitzhak Arad, a survivor who became a historian, and those of other witnesses, dead or (...) alive, interviewed by Claude Lanzmann, the reality of the concentration camps. (shrink)

- Biological and cognitive systems have the capa- bility of developing new goals during phylogenesis of species or during ontogenesis of single individuals. On the other hand, current artificial cognitive systems focus on how achieving a given fixed set of hard-wired goals. They search an optimal solution of a problem, given a set of goals and a set of optimiza- tion criteria. They look for “how” to achieve a given goal. Natural agents develop new goals in order to cope with (...) par- tially unknown and ever changing environment. They must find “what” they want to achieve and not only “how”. The development of new goals on the basis of the interaction with the environment is here defined the “what” problem. The de- velopment of a collection of goals permits to redefine the con- cept of Umwelt in what could be considered the teleological Umwelt of an agent. The objective of this paper is twofold: i) to outline the “what” problem and ii) to describe a robotic archi- tecture capable of addressing it. (shrink)

This article argues that William James's thinking in The Varieties and elsewhere contains the view that social institutions, such as religious congregations and schools, are mediators between the private and public spheres of life, and are necessary for transforming personal feelings, ideals and beliefs into moral action. The Exercises of St Ignatius and the Just Community moral education approach serve as examples. Criticisms of the more commonly held view that James recognised only individual personal experiences as valid religious expressions are (...) marshalled. Furthermore, we argue that moral action or saintliness, the ultimate expression of religious faith according to James, is fundamentally social. The commonalities that the phenomenologies of moral action of St Ignatius and Lawrence Kohlberg have with William James's view are used to support the argument. (shrink)

We live in an age when the dominant technologically utilitarian worldview is undergoing a transformation. To increase our awareness of this change, Turning Toward Technology introduces readers to the possibility of an alternative technological worldview by examining foundational concepts to Asian thought. The early Eastern philosophical treatment of technology was not ethical, but ontological, exhibiting sensitivity to how human existence was defined and determined in its relation to technology and to reality as a whole. Within the Eastern cultural orientation, technological (...) development was guided by a singular aesthetic sensibility to the useful, the good, the beautiful, the true, and the holy. Instead of controlling the shape of future technology by systems of rational management, George Teschner and Alessandro Tomasi recommend a view of technology that arises from questioning fundamental assumptions within Western culture about knowledge, reality, and human nature. Turning Toward Technology aims to stimulate awareness of an alternative technological paradigm, and thus a different mode of social action that can establish an optimistic future for global civilization. (shrink)

In a recent series of important papers, Søren Overgaard has defended a disjunctivist reading of Edmund Husserl’s theory of perception. According to Overgaard, Husserl commits to disjunctivism when arguing that hallucination intrinsically differs from perception because only experiences of the latter kind carry singular content and, thereby, pick out individuals. This paper rejects that interpretation by invoking the theory of intentionality developed by Husserl in the Logical Investigations. It is claimed that this theory not only lacks the notion of singular (...) content, but it also entails the idea that perceptions and hallucinations belong to the same kind of experience. If that is correct, a commitment to conjuctivism on Husserl’s end follows, pace Overgaard. (shrink)

An important thesis discussed in the literature on shared agency is that group identification motivates pre-school children to act together. This paper aims at further illuminating this thesis by clarifying what triggers the process of group identification in young children. It is argued that joint attention, among other functions in supporting joint actions, can reveal to the co-attenders that they share some preferences. Since sharing preferences has been established by the literature to be a reliable motivation of group identification and (...) since joint attention has an early emergence in development, one can consider joint attention to be a putative trigger of group identification in pre-school children. If this is on the right track, group identification, joint attention, and preferences identify a cluster of minimal pre-conditions for joint actions. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractWe can, for example, understand intimately how the human endocrine systems works, and likewise the chemical nature of compounds present in our environment; but the result of the interaction cannot be deduced from any simple combination of the two knowledge sets: it's not the interacting entities that we should be studying, but the process that creates the phenomena that we witness as a result of this interaction. This is the “biodynamic interface” to which Manish Arora, Alessandro Giuliani and (...) Paul Curtin refer in their article in this issue, and it is a conceptual structure that comes into being upon interaction of entities: a new way to study interactions in complex systems and better understand emergent phenomena. (shrink)

Este texto pretende acompanhar os principais movimentos apresentados pelo filósofo Gilles Deleuze para propor uma estrutura do sentido, de acordo com a Lógica do sentido (1969). Para tanto, tentando nos alçar ao estruturalismo muito particular de Deleuze, seguiremos especialmente alguns argumentos estabelecidos entre a quarta (Das dualidades) e a oitava (Da estrutura) séries desse livro, bem como pontos do artigo Em que se pode reconhecer o estruturalismo? (1972).

The parallel distributed processing (PDP) perspective brings forward the important point that all semantic phenomena are based on analog underlying mechanisms, involving the weighted summation of multiple inputs by individual neurons. It falls short of indicating, however, how the essentially discrete nature of semantic processing may emerge at the cognitive level. Bridging this gap probably requires attractor networks.

Adopting an ecological perspective on children’s functioning and psychological well-being, we investigated the association between agency and life satisfaction, and its bearing on trauma symptoms and negative emotions in a group of Bedouin children living in the occupied Palestinian territories. Specifically, we hypothesized that the more children were agentic, the more they would be satisfied with their lives; and that greater life satisfaction would be associated with reduced trauma symptoms. A sample of 286 Bedouin children attending primary schools in four (...) different villages in the Jordan Valley completed the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (MSLSS), Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scale for Children (PANAS-C), Children’s Impact of Event Scale (CRIES-13), and the Children’s Hope Scale (CHS). Structural equation modelling was performed to evaluate the cumulative network of direct and indirect effects between children’s agency, life satisfaction, and trauma symptoms. The findings confirmed the key role of life satisfaction in mitigating traumatic reactions. Higher levels of life satisfaction were associated with reduced negative emotions and trauma symptoms, suggesting that agency may be viewed as a pre-determining factor with the potential to protect children from trauma symptoms. We discuss the implications for research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Negli ultimi anni, un dibattito sempre più intenso si è sviluppato attorno alla nozione di intenzionalità collettiva o intenzionalità del noi. In questo dibattito, che coinvolge non soltanto la filosofia, ma anche molte discipline empiriche, emergono domande quali la possibilità di condividere attitudini cognitive (credenze, atti di accettazione…) o di natura conativa (intenzioni, desideri…) da parte di una pluralità di individui. Eppure, solo di recente l'interesse si è rivolto verso la condivisione di emozioni, tema peraltro già caro a buona parte (...) della tradizione fenomenologica.Posto però che una molteplicità di individui sia in grado di condividere emozioni, qual è il significato da assegnare al termine di “condivisione”? Deve intendersi letteralmente nel senso che, quando una molteplicità di individui condivide una emozione, tutti i soggetti coinvolti provano una (numericamente, una) emozione? O si tratta di una molteplicità di emozioni di cui i vari soggetti sono mutualmente a conoscenza? O ancora, si tratta forse di una molteplicità di emozioni che stanno in una relazione di interdipendenza fra di loro?In questo articolo si descrivono brevemente alcuni degli approcci sviluppati in materia nella letteratura. Pur mantenendo una posizione neutrale su quale approccio sia il più promettente, si sottolinea che la possibilità di condividere emozioni è di importanza fondamentale per il nostro vivere sociale in quanto potrebbe stare alla base di forme più complesse di intenzionalità collettiva. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to mine, reconstruct, and evaluate the phenomenological notion of practical intentionality. It is claimed that the phenomenologists of the Munich and Göttingen Circles substantially modify the idea of practical intentionality originally developed by Franz Brentano. This development, it is further contended, anticipates the switch that occurred within contemporary theory of action from a belief-desire to a belief-desire-intention model of deliberation. While Brentanoâ s position can be interpreted as a variant of the BD model, early (...) phenomenologists propose a general theory of deliberation that, in line with the BDI account, puts the notion of intention at the very core of practical intentionality. On their understanding, the concept of intention points to a primitive kind of mental state that cannot be reduced to a combination of beliefs and desires. (shrink)

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

Sin duda el ensayo escrito en forma epistolar no es una propuesta original en el escenario de la literatura contemporánea: fue difundido en época romana, se consolidó a inicios del siglo xx con Rainer María Rilke y más recientemente lo han vuelto a proponer Mario Vargas Llosa, Maurice Béjart, Edward O. Wilson. Sin embargo, Cartas a una joven ensayista de Efrén Giraldo, que se dirige específicamente a una ensayista inexperta, resulta pionero en su género.

En los Estados constitucionales modernos, se encuentra un conspicuo set de derechos, principios y valores éticos. En el presente trabajo se insiste en la necesidad de tener muy presente las investigaciones relativas a la racionalidad, el conflicto y los valores. Precisamente, porque los derechos se ..

El presente ensayo pretende analizar algunas categorías políticas desarrolladas por Norberto Bobbio, tales como: democracia, derechos humanos, libertad y paz. Para este autor la democracia como sistema de reglas dirigidas a eliminar el uso de la violencia concilia la relación entre poder y derecho. La democracia no se funda sobre la primacía del poder sobre el derecho, ni viceversa, además, permite la proximidad más cercana de las necesidades morales a aquellas políticas. La democracia es la luz mientras que la autocracia (...) es la oscuridad: esta, la democracia, juega su rol en el inseparable trinomio libertad-paz-derechos humanos. La constante tensión, a través del conflicto, hacia la racionalidad y la libertad parece moverse en la dirección de una sociedad universalmente entendida que coordine las necesidades y garantice la paz entre todos los Estados. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is not to provide an overall picture of care ethics, but, rather, to reflect upon the concept of care, which has gained significance in particular scientific contexts. Undoubtedly, the importance of the subject of care represents a challenge on the level of fundamental philosophical positions and a diversified look into the occurring forms of the psychological and social suffering, dependency, and vulnerability. I will shed light on tenets that are considered central to the care ethics (...) and that have led to the setting up of the relationship between care and democracy. By introducing the basic aspects of Carol Gilligan’s and Joan Tronto’s theories, I will emphasize their vocation to be politically relevant. A discussion on the relationship between care and justice on the one hand, and needs and rights on the other, will follow. Can hearing voices of care make democracy more just? How can care ethics provide a concrete support for democracy? On the political level, care ethics builds on the assumptions of the necessary relatedness and equality between individuals who are decisive in the light of the welfare state perspective. Upon closer examination, one may see that the setting up of these relationships is not new to the liberal perspective. Liberalism is historically rooted in the fundamental interconnection between freedom and equality. Virtues such as care and meekness can be formulated in the language of politics, but they still remain unpolitical. On the one hand, engaging in a critical reflection upon such virtues might be an indispensable measuring instrument for distinguishing a good democracy from a bad one. On the other hand, care ethics does not prove to be a real alternative to the ethics of justice. In this regard, care ethics seems to show its feet of clay. (shrink)

A number of companies allocate ownership rights to stakeholders different from shareholders, despite the fact that the law attributes these rights to the equity holders. This article contributes to an understanding of this evidence by developing a contingency model for the allocation of ownership rights. The model sheds light on why companies, despite pressures from the law, vary in their allocation of ownership rights. The model is based on the assumption that corporations increase their chance to survive and prosper if (...) the stakeholders supplying “critical contributions” receive the ownership rights. According to the model, “critical” contributions involve (1) contractual problems due to specific investments, long-term relationships, and low measurability; (2) the assumption of the uncertainty resting on the company; and (3) the supply of scarce and valuable resources. The model is dynamic because it also provides a basis for understanding why the allocation of ownership rights changes with time. Finally, the article presents the strategies companies can use to realize an efficient distribution of ownership rights among their stakeholders. (shrink)

No comprehensive theory of development is available yet. Traditionally, we regard the development of animals as a sequence of changes through which an adult multicellular animal is produced, starting from a single cell which is usually a fertilized egg, through increasingly complex stages. However, many phenomena that would not qualify as developmental according to these criteria would nevertheless qualify as developmental in that they imply nontrivial (e.g., non degenerative) changes of form, and/or substantial changes in gene expression. A broad, comparative (...) approach is badly needed. In the Cnidaria, for example, even the boundary between generations is problematic. Describing their life cycle in terms of metagenesis (alternation between polyp generation and medusa generation) or in terms of metamorphosis (polyp as larva or juvenile) are matters of semantics more than biology. The life cycle of other metazoans, described in textbooks in terms of larva-to-adult metamorphosis, is hardly different from a typical metagenetic life cycle of cnidarians. This applies to holometabolous insects and to marine invertebrates like sea urchins, where most of the larval cells are discarded at metamorphosis. The uncertain temporal and spatial boundaries of individual development are also shown by the widespread lack of a strict correspondence between adult and mature. A comprehensive theory of development should start with a zero principle of “developmental inertia,” corresponding to an indeterminate local self-perpetuation of cell-level dynamics. Indeterminate growth, scale-invariance, segmentation, and regeneration provide examples of developmental dynamics close to that. (shrink)