This paper discusses the relation between the human security paradigm and the cosmopolitan democracy scenario as models for humanizing and changing the current international system and transforming it in a global security and development system centered on the individual rather than on the nation state. The main idea for which I argue is that the human security paradigm and the changes it determined in international relations (especially through the responsibility to protect principle) are compatible with the cosmopolitan democracy scenario for (...) changing and transforming the current international system. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

Tiberiu Popa - Aristotle on Teleology - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.2 323-324 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Tiberiu Popa Butler University Monte Ransome Johnson. Aristotle on Teleology. Oxford Aristotle Studies. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Pp. xi + 339 pp. Cloth, $74.00. Teleology is one of the most extensively studied topics in Aristotle's philosophy. It is all the more impressive that Monte Ransome Johnson has been able (...) to put together such a comprehensive, lucid, and often original account of what we would call Aristotle's teleology, or final causation, and what the Stagirite would have called simply "that for the sake of which." Johnson starts.. (shrink)

Slurring is a kind of hate speech that has various effects. Notable among these is variable offence. Slurs vary in offence across words, uses, and the reactions of audience members. Patterns of offence aren’t adequately explained by current theories. We propose an explanation based on the unjust power imbalance that a slur seeks to achieve. Our starting observation is that in discourse participants take on discourse roles. These are typically inherited from social roles, but only exist during a discourse. A (...) slurring act is a speech-act that alters the discourse roles of the target and speaker. By assigning discourse roles the speaker unjustly changes the power balance in the dialogue. This has a variety of effects on the target and audience. We show how these notions explain all three types of offence variation. We also briefly sketch how a role and power theory can help explain silencing and appropriation. Explanatory power lies in the fact that offence is correlated with the perceived unjustness of the power imbalance created. (shrink)

Drawing on Husserlian resources and existentialist and hermeneutical approaches, this book argues that critique is largely a question of method. It shows that phenomenological discussions of social and political problems draw from a tradition of radically critical investigations in epistemology, social ontology, political theory, and ethics.

This article examines the controversial issue of blasphemy in literature from the viewpoint of reception inside and outside the academia. The thesis of the article is that blasphemy in literature, though inherently related to religion and language, has a plurality of connotations and interpretations (dissidence, intertextuality, critique of colonialism, discursive strategy, alterity/Otherness, ethnicity, subversive text). Consequently, blasphemy in literature is an incentive for fruitful discussions regarding tolerance, freedom of expression, and the re-situation of the (post)modern self in today’s world, dominated (...) by an uncanny admixture of secular and religious values. (shrink)

Reclamation is the phenomenon of an oppressed group repurposing language to its own ends. A case study is reclamation of slur words. Popa-Wyatt and Wyatt (2018) argued that a slurring utterance is a speech act which performs a discourse role assignment. It assigns a subordinate role to the target, while the speaker assumes a dominant role. This pair of role assignments is used to oppress the target. Here I focus on how reclamation works and under what conditions its benefits (...) can stabilise. I start by reviewing the data and describing preconditions and motivations for reclamation. Can reclamation be explained in the same basic framework as regular slurring utterances? I argue that it can. I also identify some features that must be a prediction of any theory of reclamation. I conclude that reclamation is an instance of a much broader class of acts we do with words to change the distribution of power: it begets power, but it also requires it. (shrink)

Regression testing is applied whenever a code changes, ensuring that the modifications fixed the fault and no other faults are introduced. Due to a large number of test cases to be run, test case prioritization is one of the strategies that allows to run the test cases with the highest fault rate first. The aim of the paper is to present an optimized test case prioritization method inspired by ant colony optimization, test case prioritization–ANT. The criteria used by the optimization (...) algorithm are the number of faults not covered yet by the selected test cases and the sum of severity of the faults. The cost, i.e. time execution, for test cases is considered in the computation of the pheromone deposited on the graph’s edges. The average percentage of fault detected metric, as best selection criterion, is used to uncover maximum faults with the highest severity, and reducing the regression testing time. Several experiments are considered, detailed and discussed, comparing various algorithm parameter’s alternatives. A benchmark project is also used to validate the proposed approach. The obtained results are encouraging, being a cornerstone for new perspectives to be considered. (shrink)

This paper investigates how the distribution of negative polarity items can inform our understanding of the underlying semantic representation of constituent questions. It argues that the distribution of NPIs in questions is governed by the same logical properties that govern their distribution in declarative constructions. Building on an observation due to Guerzoni and Sharvit that strength of exhaustivity in questions correlates with the acceptability of NPIs, I propose a revision of the semantics of questions that can explain this link in (...) terms already familiar from the literature of negative polarity, namely the availability of a local downward entailing environment. I argue for a new theory of questions that takes strength of exhaustivity to be encoded internal to the question nucleus rather than in different answer-hood operators. This switch, while conceptually a simple move, has far-reaching consequences in the domain of questions. I also show how this new analysis can account for a host of issues related to NPIs, such as the subject–object asymmetry noted by Han and Siegel, the interaction between NPIs and high versus low wh-adjuncts, the varying acceptability of NPIs in the restrictor of which-phrases, and the contrast between weak and strong NPIs. (shrink)

Husserl’s extensive analyses of image consciousness (Bildbewusstsein) and of the imagination (Phantasie) offer insightful and detailed structural explications. However, despite this careful work, Husserl’s discussions fail to overcome the need to rely on a most problematic concept: mental images. The epistemological conundrums triggered by the conceptual framework of mental images are well known—we have only to remember the questions regarding knowledge acquisition that plagued British empiricism. Beyond these problems, however, a plethora of important questions arise from claiming that mental images (...) are structural moments of imaging and imagining. Any attempt to clarify the structure and conditions for the possibility of aesthetic experience must first provide an unambiguous account of pictorial depiction—a task unattainable through the mental images discourse. Similarly, exposing the import of the imagination for theoretical scientific inquiries (be they positive or eidetic) requires an initial explication of the structure of this consciousness; this explication, however, must address our ability to imagine non-spatially determined objects—something the conceptual framework of mental images utterly fails to accomplish. In this paper I argue against Husserl’s reliance on mental images in his phenomenological analyses of imaging and imagining and propose an alternative structural account for both. This account is free of this reliance and able to steer clear of its insidious implications for epistemology, aesthetics, and methodological reflections. By closely following the development of Husserl’s account I suggest alternative descriptions while building on Husserl’s important work. (shrink)

In Yesterday's Self, Andreea Ritivoi explores the philosophical and historical dimensions of nostalgia in the lives of immigrants, forging a connection between current trends in the philosophy of identity and intercultural studies. The book considers such questions as, Does attachment to one's native culture preclude or merely influence adaptation into a new culture? Do we fashion our identity in interdependence with others, or do we shape it in a non-contingent frame? Is it possible to assimilate in an unfamiliar world (...) without risking self-alienation? Ritivoi's response: nostalgia is both the poison and the cure in such situations. (shrink)

Many have deemed ineluctable the tension between Husserl’s transcendental eidetics and his Crisis method of historical reflection. In this paper, I argue that this tension is an apparent one. I contend that dissolving this tension and showing not only the possibility, but also the necessity of the successful collaboration between these two apparently irreconcilable methods guarantees the very freedom of inquiry Husserl so emphatically stressed. To make this case, I draw from Husserl’s synthetic analyses of type and concept constitution as (...) well as his later work on sedimentation and streaming-in and develop a richer modal taxonomy than the one Husserl proposed. I employ this taxonomy in an examination of the structures and conditions for the possibility of transcendental eidetic variation in order to show this method’s reliance on historically sedimented epistemic and normative resources. This reliance brings to light the necessity for a methodological critique, which is precisely what I take to be the work of teleological–historical reflection as Husserl comes to conceive it in the Crisis. (shrink)

Research on the role of values in science and objectivity has typically approached trust through its epistemic aspects. Yet, recent work on public trust in science has emphasized the role of non-epistemic values in building and maintaining trust. This paper will use a concept of trust that adds concerns about justice to epistemic conditions to investigate this problem in relation to public health. I will argue that trust-conducive values, particularly justice, are relevant in deciding which value influences are legitimate in (...) scientific decision-making. Drawing on public health ethics, I will provide a consequentialist justification for employing trust-conducive values. While several concepts of justice have been explored in the context of public health, I will further draw on public health ethics, focusing on a view that brings together both distributive and procedural aspects. For illustration, I will use the case of cardiovascular disease prevention, particularly how concerns about justice apply when choosing between population-based and individual-based approaches. (shrink)

The question whether AI systems have agency is gaining increasing importance in discussions of responsibility for AI behavior. This paper argues that an approach to artificial agency needs to be teleological, and consider the role of human goals in particular if it is to adequately address the issue of responsibility. I will defend the view that while AI systems can be viewed as autonomous in the sense of identifying or pursuing goals, they rely on human goals and other values incorporated (...) into their design, and are, as such, dependent on human agents. As a consequence, AI systems cannot be held morally responsible, and responsibility attributions should take into account normative and social aspects involved in the design and deployment of the said AI. My argument falls in line with approaches critical of attributing moral agency to artificial agents, but draws from the philosophy of action, highlighting further philosophical underpinnings of current debates on artificial agency. (shrink)

The paper contends that abstraction lies at the core of the philosophical and methodological rupture that occurred between Husserl and his mentor Franz Brentano. To accomplish this, it explores the notion of abstraction at work in these two thinkers’ methodological discussions through their respective claims regarding the structure of consciousness, and shows that how Husserl and Brentano analyze the structure of consciousness conditions and strictly delineates the nature and reach of their methods of inquiry. The paper pays close attention to (...) intentionality, founding (Fundierung), and qualitative modification (qualitative Modifikation) understood as principles of consciousness. While intentionality has been the topic of numerous discussions surrounding these two thinkers’ work, founding and qualitative modification have slipped under the radar despite the fact that they hold—as I intend to show—the key to shedding new light on their respective methods of inquiry. More specifically, the paper explicates the ways in which Brentano’s notion of founding (understood as a relationship between whole acts) and his failure to identify radical-qualitative modification as a principle of consciousness preclude him from offering a successful model for philosophical universalizing thought. It is my hope to show that Husserl’s rethinking of founding as a relationship between certain structural moments of acts along with his novel notion of qualitative modification ground his attempt to carve a new method of philosophical inquiry—albeit jejune and ambiguous at the time of the Investigations, yet nevertheless able to successfully negotiate the problems faced by his predecessor. (shrink)

Phenomenological critique attempts to retrieve the lived experience of a human community alienated from its truthful condition and immersed in historical crises brought by processes of objectification and estrangement. This introductory article challenges two methodological assumptions that are largely shared in North American Critical Phenomenology: the definition of phenomenology as a first person approach of experience and the rejection of transcendental eidetics. While reflecting on the importance of otherness and community for phenomenology’s critical orientation, we reconsider the importance of eidetics (...) from the standpoint of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, highlighting its historical and contingent character. Contrary to the received view of Husserl’s classical phenomenology as an idealistic and rigid undertaking, we show that his genetic phenomenology is interested in the material formation of meaning (Sinnbildung), offering resources for a phenomenological approach to a materialist social theory. Keywords: critical phenomenology, critical theory, genetic phenomenology, community, normativity. (shrink)

A body of work proposes that social-norm change can be explained in terms of game theory. These game theoretic models, however, don't fully account for how and why utterances are used to change social norms. This paper describes the problem and some of the solution elements. There are three existing, relevant, game-based models. The first is a game theoretic model of social norm change (Bicchieri, 2005, 2016). This accounts for how individuals make decisions to adhere to or violate norms, based (...) on empirical expectations of how others will behave. The second is the idea of a conversational game (Lewis, 1979) and its extensions. This posits that speech acts are accommodated in a conversation to make what is said correct play. This feature can explain how some speech acts, such as slurring utterances, change the dynamics of a conversation. The third is a theory of pragmatic inference, known as Rational Speech Act theory (Goodman and Frank, 2016). This is a computational theory of pragmatics, of how listeners interpret utterances and how speakers construct utterances that can be understood. This paper proposes, without setting out the full formal model, that elements of these three theories need to be incorporated together into a game theoretic model of how utterances change long-term social norms. (shrink)

This study examined the relationship between the perceived fairness of the assessment process and the intention of participants to appeal the process, while taking into consideration the influence of two personality traits. Specifically, two of the Big Five traits, neuroticism and agreeableness, were included in the model, based on their special importance in predicting “anger-like” reactions similar to that triggered by unfairness. This study builds on the theoretical integration of the two dominant frameworks of organizational justice, and on two separate (...) empirical studies that use different methodologies : a personnel selection simulation and a study of an academic examination process. The pattern of results was similar in both studies. Neuroticism was not detected as a moderator based on the significance of the interaction term, but conditional effect analysis identified the specific area of scores where neuroticism was found to have a buffer effect on intention to appeal. Agreeableness weakens the relationship between perceived fairness and intention to appeal. However, contrary to our expectation, high agreeableness does not decrease but rather increases the probability of appealing the assessment process when it is perceived as unfair, thus providing evidence for the Pollyanna myth, i.e., that highly agreeable individuals are more likely to react to and appeal unfairness. (shrink)

The paper contends that transcendental phenomenology is a form of radical immanent critique able to explicate the necessary structures of meaning-constitution as well as evaluate our present situation through the historically traditionalized layers of concrete, lived experience. In order to make this case, the paper examines the critical dimension of phenomenology through the lens of one of its core conditions for possibility: the imagination. Building on—yet also departing from—Husserl’s own analyses, the paper contends that the imagination is both self- and (...) lifeworld-constituting. The imagination is anchored in our everyday senses of self and world as well as able to distance itself from being naively moored in normalized and deeply sedimented commitments. It is precisely this ‘anchored distance,’ rather than a sweeping doxic and ontic neutrality and negative freedom, that reveals the critical dimension of the imagination. (shrink)

This paper argues that we need to re-think the semantics/pragmatics distinction in the light of new evidence from embedding of irony. This raises a new version of the old problem of ‘embedded implicatures’. I argue that embedded irony isn’t fully explained by solutions proposed for other embedded implicatures. I first consider two strategies: weak pragmatics and strong pragmatics. These explain embedded irony as truth-conditional content. However, by trying to shoehorn irony into said-content, they raise problems of their own. I conclude (...) by considering how a modified Gricean model can explain that irony embeds qua implicature. This leads us to prefer a local implicature model. This has important consequences for how we draw the semantics/pragmatics distinction. (shrink)

Two rival accounts of irony claim, respectively, that pretence and echo are independently sufficient to explain central cases. After highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of these accounts, I argue that an account in which both pretence and echo play an essential role better explains these cases and serves to explain peripheral cases as well. I distinguish between “weak” and “strong” hybrid theories, and advocate an “integrated strong hybrid” account in which elements of both pretence and echo are seen as complementary (...) in a unified mechanism. I argue that the allegedly mutually exclusive elements of pretence and echo are in fact complementary aspects enriching a core structure as follows: by pretending to have a perspective/thought F, an ironic speaker U echoes a perspective/thought G. F is merely pretended, perhaps caricaturised or exaggerated, while G is real/possible. (shrink)

This commentary addresses the proposal and argumentative line presented in the paper ‘Whole Body Gestational Donation’ (WBGD) by Anna Smajdor (2023), published as an intended ‘outrageous argument’ in a dedicated special issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. We believe that the paper is fatally flawed due to its lack of engagement with relevant approaches in ethics and essential sources in health sciences as well as its insufficient, superficial, and rash argumentation. Its critical weaknesses include, among others, that it does not (...) take any explicit ethical stance, it does not consider the societal impacts of its premise, and it hastily assumes a large degree of equivalency between WBGD and the usual organ donations. These scholarly flaws are made worse by the fact that the paper is not merely an academic thought experiment but contains important policy change proposals. As a consequence, the paper feeds into more general and systemic worries about the suitability of philosophy for public policy. (shrink)

It’s natural for hyperbole to mix with metaphor and irony, and other figures of speech. How do they mix together and what kind of compound, if any, arises out of the mixing? In tackling this question, I shall argue that thinking of hyperbolic figures along the lines familiar from ironic metaphor compounds is a temptation we should resist. Looking in particular at hyperbolic metaphor and hyperbolic irony, I argue, they don’t yield a new encompassing compound figure with one figure building (...) on another. Instead, what we have is one dominant figure colored with hyperbolic tinges. So what does hyperbole bring to the mixing pot? I suggest we should think of hyperbole in hyperbolic figures as being an interpretive effect, modulating the working of the partner figure and thus rendering more emphatic. (shrink)

Slurs are typically defined as conveying contempt based on group-membership. However, here I argue that they are not a unitary group. First, I describe two dimensions of variation among derogatives: how targets are identified, and how offensive the term is. This supports the typical definition of slurs as opposed to other derogatives. I then highlight problems with this definition, mainly caused by variable offence across slur words. In the process I discuss how major theories of slurs can account for variable (...) offence, and conclude that contempt based on group-membership doesn’t cover all the data. I finish by noting that the most offensive slurs are those that target oppressed groups. I claim it is oppression that underpins most offence, and that beyond this offensive property, some slurs are actively used to oppress. (shrink)

In artificial intelligence literature, “delusions” are characterized as the generation of unfaithful output from reliable source content. There is an extensive literature on computer-generated delusions, ranging from visual hallucinations, like the production of nonsensical images in Computer Vision, to nonsensical text generated by (natural) language models, but this literature is predominantly taxonomic. In a recent research paper, however, a group of scientists from DeepMind successfully presented a formal treatment of an entire class of delusions in generative AI models (i.e., models (...) based on a transformer architecture, both with and without RLHF—reinforcement learning with human feedback, such as BERT, GPT-3 or the more recent GPT-3.5), referred to as auto-suggestive delusions. Auto-suggestive delusions are not mere unfaithful output, but are self-induced by the transformer models themselves. Typically, these delusions have been subsumed under the concept of exposure bias, but exposure bias alone does not elucidate their nature. In order to address their nature, I will introduce a formal framework that clarifies the probabilistic delusions capable of explaining exposure bias in a broad manner. This will serve as the foundation for exploring auto-suggestive delusions in language models. Next, an examination of self- or auto-suggestive delusions will be undertaken, by drawing an analogy with the rule-following problematic from the philosophy of mind and language. Finally, I will argue that this comprehensive approach leads to the suggestion that transformers, large language models in particular, may develop in a manner that touches upon solipsism and the emergence of a private language, in a weak sense. (shrink)

This article brings to light the role and importance of Descartes' concept of freedom for his ethics of belief. For Descartes, I argue, correctly assigning epistemic praise/blame means tracking authentic freedoms: ascertaining whether an act of assent is spontaneous or perverse both before and after eliciting the act of will. Authentic spontaneity ensures that the agent receives praise for his epistemic accomplishment, which includes the right results as well as the right order of steps. Authentic perversity leads to the agent (...) being blamed for not accepting the truth while fully aware of the gravity of the gesture. (shrink)

In 1992, the much acclaimed prolific American writer Joyce Carol Oates publishes Black Water – a very harsh and condensed literary reenactment of a gruesome event having taken place more than twenty years before and known as the “Chappaquiddick incident”. Another twenty years later, through her 2012 novel Mudwoman, the author seems to revisit the topic that had haunted her for decades. This paper aims at establishing a certain narrative pattern connecting the two novels not only thematically, but also phantasmatically: (...) the sudden “resurrection” of Joyce Carol Oates’s character in the 2012 novel is, as we see it, far from being “incidental”. By “textual anastomosis”, we understand a subjective association of narratives in order to show how the disembodied consciousness “travels” from one character’s fictional body to another’s, triggering a whole bunch of personal memories which also resurrect in this other character’s fictional biography. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt, Herbert Marcuse, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Edward Said each steered major intellectual and political schools of thought in American political discourse after World War II, yet none of them was American, which proved crucial to their ways of arguing and reasoning both in and out of the American context. In an effort to convince their audiences they were American enough, these thinkers deployed deft rhetorical strategies that made their cosmopolitanism feel acceptable, inspiring radical new approaches to longstanding problems in (...) American politics. Speaking like natives, they also exploited their foreignness to entice listeners to embrace alternative modes of thought. _Intimate Strangers_ unpacks this "stranger ethos," a blend of detachment and involvement that manifested in the persona of a prophet for Solzhenitsyn, an impartial observer for Arendt, a mentor for Marcuse, and a victim for Said. Yet despite its many successes, the stranger ethos did alienate many audiences, and critics continue to dismiss these thinkers not for their positions but because of their foreign point of view. This book encourages readers to reject this kind of critical xenophobia, throwing support behind a political discourse that accounts for the ideals of citizens and noncitizens alike. (shrink)

The Vagrant scholar -- Doxa -- Practical reasoning -- Epideictic -- The polis.

This paper takes a critical stance on Tallis’s separation of causation and agency. While his critique of the causal theory of action and the assumptions about causation underlying different versions of determinism, including the one based on neuroscience is right, his rejection of causation (of all sorts) has implausible consequences. Denying the link between action and causation amounts to overlooking the role action plays in causal inference and in the origin of causal concepts. I suggest that a weaker version of (...) Tallis’ claim, compatible with causation understood as agency, would work better. (shrink)

The paper examines Husserl’s notion of teleology through the lens of necessity and argues that there are two senses of teleology—historical and transcendental—at work in the task of phenomenology, especially as Husserl comes to conceive it in theCrisis. To understand not only how these two senses are related but also how their relationship shapes Husserl’s notions of normativity, reason, and progress, I argue that we must look closely at phenomenology as a distinctive form of critique, namely critique ‘from within’. What (...) emerges is a philosophical stance that is fundamentally ambiguous: at once historical and transcendental-eidetic. This productive notion of ambiguity, I contend, differentiates Husserl’s conceptions of normativity, reason and progress from their Enlightenment guises. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to conflict are oriented towards establishing (or re-establishing) consensus, either in the form of a resolution of the conflict or in the form of an ‘agree-to-disagree’ standstill between the stakeholders. In this paper, we criticize these traditional approaches, each for specific reasons, and we propose and develop the agonistic approach to conflict. Based on Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democratic theory, the agonistic approach to conflict is more welcoming of dissensus, replacing discussion stoppers with discussion starters and replacing standstills with (...) contestation. We illustrate such replacements and develop this approach, we analyse technological conflicts in a concrete R&D setting: the global hydrogen economy. From this context, we focus on the conflict between the proponents of blue hydrogen (drawn from fossil fuels) and those of green hydrogen (created through electrolysis). We conclude by highlighting the advantage of the agonistic approach but also drawing attention to its own specific risk, namely, antagonism. (shrink)

Hyperbole is traditionally understood as exaggeration. Instead, in this paper, we shall define it not just in terms of its form, but in terms of its effects and its purpose. Specifically, we characterize its form as a shift of magnitude along a scale of measurement. In terms of its effect, it uses this magnitude shift to make the target property more salient. The purpose of hyperbole is to express with colour and force that the target property is either greater or (...) lesser than expected or desired. This purpose is well suited to hyperbolic expression. This because hyperbole naturally draws a contrast between two points: how things are versus how they were expected to be. We also consider compound figures involving hyperbole. When it combines with other figures hyperbole operates by magnifying the specific effects of the figure it operates on. We shall see that sometimes hyperbole works as an input for irony; and at other times it builds on a metaphor to increase the effects of that metaphor. (shrink)