Literature on maternal exposures and the risk of epigenetic changes or diseases in the offspring is growing. Paternal contributions are often not considered. However, some animal and epidemiologic studies on various contaminants, nutrition, and lifestyle‐related conditions suggest a paternal influence on the offspring's future health. The phenotypic outcomes may have been attributed to DNA damage or mutations, but increasing evidence shows that the inheritance of environmentally induced functional changes of the genome, and related disorders, are (also) driven by epigenetic components. (...) In this essay we suggest the existence of epigenetic windows of susceptibility to environmental insults during sperm development. Changes in DNA methylation, histone modification, and non‐coding RNAs are viable mechanistic candidates for a non‐genetic transfer of paternal environmental information, from maturing germ cell to zygote. Inclusion of paternal factors in future research will ultimately improve the understanding of transgenerational epigenetic plasticity and health‐related effects in future generations. (shrink)

In this text Hasse presents a new, inclusive, posthuman learning theory, designed to keep up with the transformations of human learning resulting from new technological experiences, as well as considering the expanding role of cyborg devices and robots in learning. This ground-breaking book draws on research from across psychology, education, and anthropology to present a truly interdisciplinary examination of the relationship between technology, learning and humanity. Posthumanism questions the self-evident status of human beings by exploring how technology is changing what (...) can be categorised as "human". In this book, the author applies a posthumanist lens to traditional learning theory, challenging conventional understanding of what a human learner is, and considering how technological advances are changing how we think about this question. Throughout the book Hasse uses vignettes of her own research and that of other prominent academics to exemplify what technology can tell us about how we learn and how this can be observed in real-life settings. Posthumanist Learning is essential reading for students and researchers of posthumanism and learning theory from a variety of backgrounds, including psychology, education, anthropology, robotics and philosophy. (shrink)

Understanding the spread of national public policies to increase the percentage of women on boards is often presented using different types of institutional theory logic. However, the importance of the political games influencing these decisions has not received the same attention. In this article, we look beyond the institutional setting by focusing on the role of actors. We explore processes that include who the critical actors that drive and determine these policies are, and what motivates them to push for change. (...) We employ a processual design approach using a longitudinal country-comparative case study exploring the case of Norway, England, Germany and Italy. We map the political games, both inside and outside legislative areas, including the micro-politics among various actors and groups of actors in the selected countries. Data are collected through participation observations, interviews and text analyses. The study contributes by filling important gaps in the literature by embedding the discussion about women on boards in politicking and national public policies and by introducing dynamic perspectives. Finally, by using a processual design approach, we capture the reality of the women on board debates at different points of time and in different actor and motivational contexts. The study has consequences for how policy-makers and businesses may follow up and act, based on the debates. (shrink)

Drawing on a finance professional’s reflections on his ethical education as an economics undergraduate, Chartered Financial Analyst, and top-tier MBA graduate, this article considers the framing of, and need for philosophy in, ethical training for finance professionals. Role-playing is emphasized as helpful for developing a mature ethical approach, and theory is seen as desirable after the fact, to plan improved future action. The article problematizes an orientation in professional programs that primarily gears the teaching of ethics toward those students perceived (...) to be least ethical. This orientation seems to underlie both the education the financial professional received and current public interest in ‘more ethics’ in professional programming. As an alternative, the article reframes finance students and professionals as ethical actors whose primary dilemma concerns not how to avoid ethical transgressions, but how to better optimize the duty to self in... (shrink)

Business ethics education aims to enable students to become conscious of their own values and develop the capacity to voice such values and make value-consistent decisions. However, a student’s personal values and the capacity to act on them tend to change after graduation. In this study, we discuss how moral learning is different in real work life compared to a business school setting, and we explain why graduates may downplay or abandon their values after graduation. We launch the concept of (...) dynamic moral capacity (DMC), defined as the metacognitive routines for processing moral decision outcomes, motivated by humility goals. We suggest that future courses in business ethics develop DMC to avoid value drift and negative moral learning over time after graduation. Finally, we discuss how DMC can be included in the instructional framework of giving voice to values and thus increase its impact on moral learning after graduation. (shrink)

For quite some time, cognitive science has offered philosophy an opportunity to address central problems with an arsenal of relevant theories and empirical data. However, even among those naturalistically inclined, it has been hard to find a universally accepted way to do so. In this article, we offer a case study of how cognitive-science input can elucidate an epistemological issue that has caused extensive debate. We explore Jason Stanley’s idea of the practical grasp of a propositional truth and present naturalistic (...) arguments against his reductive approach to knowledge. We argue that a plausible interpretation of cognitive-science input concerning knowledge—even if one accepts that knowledge how is partly propositional—must involve an element of knowing how to act correctly upon the proposition; and this element of knowing how to act correctly cannot itself be propositional. (shrink)

El texto de Oscar Robledo nos transporta hacia un París muy distinto de aquel de las postales, donde convive la miseria del mundo con la opulencia de los “exitosos”. Una ciudad hermosa y brillante, donde polulan también los cuerpos semiproletarizados de los estudiantes latinoamericanos y tantos otros inmigrantes; los mismos que viven en 12 metros cuadrados y que combaten la soledad, el hambre y la precariedad mediante el calor de sus cuerpos y los encuentros sexuales casi frenéticos. Más allá de (...) los lugares comunes y los estereotipos, la descripción de la vida de estos seres insertos en una de las ciudades más ricas del mundo, es una crónica del subdesarrollo en el corazón del país que inventó el lujo. Es la historia de tantos soñadores ávidos de una cultura que apenas los recibe con la indiferencia de quien se siente parte de una civilización “superior”. (shrink)

El propósito de este trabajo es ofrecer un análisis de la discusión sobre el canibalismo y los sacrificios humanos de los indígenas en el contexto de la controversia entre Las Casas y Sepúlveda. Dicho análisis es muy relevante, en tanto que permite observar las raíces más remotas del actual derecho de intervención y de la doctrina de los derechos humanos. Para tal fin, el autor empieza con una rápida descripción de los motivos que condujeron a la disputa de Valladolid, al (...) tiempo que enuncia los cuatro puntos en discusión. En segundo lugar, realiza una descripción más o menos detallada del cuarto argumento de la controversia, que trata en concreto sobre los sacrificios humanos y el canibalismo indígena. Y concluye mostrando que, al justificar estas prácticas, Las Casas busca ante todo la integración de las culturas indígenas en el marco general del conocimiento histórico universal. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate about the value of virtual friendship. In contrast to previous authorships, this paper argues that virtual friendship can have independent value. It is argued that within an Aristotelian framework, some friendships that are perhaps impossible offline can exist online, i.e., some offline unequals can be online equals and thus form online friendships of independent value.

In this article I propose that a postphenomenological approach to science and technology can open new analytical understandings of how material artifacts, embodiment and social agency co-produce learned perceptions of objects. In particle physics, physicists work in huge groups of scientists from many cultural backgrounds. Communication to some extent depends on material hermeneutics of flowcharts, models and other visual presentations. As it appears in an examination of physicists’ scrutiny of visual renderings of different parts of a detector, perceptions vary in (...) relation to social and bodily experiences. Vision in physics has seemingly allowed an objective perception at a convenient distance of the body. This article challenges this view and proposes that the variations can be analysed as cultural at two echelons with the help of a postphenomenological approach combined with cultural psychological theory of artifacts. A third echelon presumably constitutes the phenomenological limit to culture in science. Even this last resort of subjectivity can be embraced by a postphenomenological approach. The process of culturalization in physics can be defined as a process of situating knowledge in a body whose continuous learning of micro-and macro perceptions makes scientific renderings unstable. Taken together postphenomenology, following the distinctions between body one and body two, and combined with cultural psychological learning theory, enables new insight into what constitutes culture in science. (shrink)

En este artículo se plantea que la noción filosófica de Emmanuel Levinas la idea de Dios ofrece una respuesta a la discusión sobre la relación entre Levinas y el judaísmo. Para ello se presentan algunos planteamientos de comentadores e intérpretes, se exponen datos biográficos del autor y de sus lecturas formativas —bíblicas, literarias y filosóficas—, y se alude a algunos términos filosóficos que clarifican la ética como filosofía primera, para indicar la idea de Dios como trascendencia que protege la separación (...) entre el Mismo y el Otro. (shrink)

What is the relation between material hermeneutics, bodies, perception and materials? In this article, I shall argue cultural learning processes tie them together. Three aspects of learning can be identified in cultural learning processes. First, all learning is tied to cultural practices. Second, all learning in cultural practice entangle humans’ ability to recognize a material world conceptually, and finally the boundaries of objects, the object we perceive, are set by shifting material-conceptual entanglements. All these aspects are important for material hermeneutics (...) in a technoculture. Postphenomenology has expanded the connection between hermeneutics and phenomenology by focusing on studies of how perception, bodies, materials, the sensual realm and hermeneutics are entwined when we perceive the world through technologies. Following Don Ihde, hermeneutics expands beyond interpretation of texts in the humanities. We can interpret materials as for instance animal bones to make new sense of the Bible. New technologies have expanded material hermeneutics, when we can ‘look’ into bodies and ‘perceive’ below surfaces. Interpretation via such tools in a technoculture, both limit and extend our hermeneutic horizons in the humanities as well as in the natural sciences. Furthermore, from the perspective of cultural learning processes, material hermeneutics in the human and natural sciences depend on more than mediating instruments. Material hermeneutics also involve the material cultural environments of scientific apparatuses and the scientists’ processes of learning in cultural practice. This changes the focus from relations in postphenomenology to processes of relations. (shrink)

This paper discusses the conditions for legitimate expert arrangements within a democratic order and from a deliberative systems approach. It is argued that standard objections against the political role of experts are flawed or ill-conceived. The problem that confronts us instead is primarily one of truth-sensitive institutional design: Which mechanisms can contribute to ensuring that experts are really experts and that they use their competencies in the right way? The paper outlines a set of such mechanisms. However, the challenge exceeds (...) that of producing epistemically optimal expert deliberations because a deliberative political system must also fulfil the ethical and democratic requirements of respect and inclusion. Yet, epistemic concerns justify expertise arrangements in the first place, and measures taken to make the use of expertise compatible with these requirements have to balance the potential rewards from expertise against potential deliberative costs. In the final part of the paper, the regulatory framework of a best practice expert advice system is tentatively analysed to illustrate the applicability and critical potential of our approach. (shrink)

Epistemic democrats are rightly concerned with the quality of outcomes and judge democratic procedures in terms of their ability to ‘track the truth’. However, their impetus to assess ‘rule by experts’ and ‘rule by the people’ as mutually exclusive has led to a meagre treatment of the role of expert knowledge in democracy. Expertise is often presented as a threat to democracy but is also crucial for enlightened political processes. Contemporary political philosophy has so far paid little attention to our (...) reliance on experts and has not sufficiently addressed the question of how expertise can be used to improve the epistemic quality of democratic decision making. We believe this lack of interest is spurred by a too hasty acceptance of arguments dismissive of the political role of experts. The article examines a series of often-cited epistemic objections and concludes that several of them are overstated or misconceived, yet they all reflect real difficulties that need to be addressed. On this background, we tentatively outline a set of mechanisms that can contribute to alleviating the irreducible problem of epistemic asymmetries and ensuring that experts really are experts and use their expertise in the right way. (shrink)

The decisive epistemological and methodological moment of feminist analysis and critique is the moment of intervention. An intervention does not require a standpoint; instead, it displaces the locus of critique from the standpoint to the effects or consequences of critique. Intervention requires no new information or hitherto concealed facts about the object being interfered with. The critical effects of an intervention are the results of what is called a ‘sexing-up’ strategy. Different epistemological and methodological aspects of this strategy are discussed (...) and a connection established between feminist interventions in science and politics, and the strategy of sexing-up. (shrink)

The article probes into tensions following in the wake of feminism’s mappings of itself as a landscape that ‘is not there’, so to speak, but which is constituted and reconstituted discursively and affectively. The author discusses these tensions in relation to the notion of feminist genealogy. The discussion is elaborated with reference to a concrete, past and perhaps disturbing political and theoretical landscape: the official, state-sanctioned ‘women’s studies’ in the GDR during the Cold War. The author argues that efforts at (...) mappings and fillings of historical gaps in the production of women’s studies knowledge with reference to inclusion and recognition of ‘women’s experiences’ and ‘women’s voices’ may render feminists unable to trace and question the political operations that have produced and reproduce ‘woman’ and ‘women’ as the significant subject of feminism. The first part of the article illustrates the challenging complexity of feminist projects of inclusion and recognition by discussing some of the feminist critiques of the so-called ‘women’s studies’ in the GDR during the Cold War. The second part locates this complexity within feminist political and theoretical landscapes and cartographies by discussing it in relation to feminist genealogy. (shrink)

Will robots ever be able to learn like humans? To answer that question, one first needs to ask: what is learning? Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus had a point when they claimed that computers and robots would never be able to learn like humans because human learning, after an initial phase of rule-based learning, is uncertain, context sensitive and intuitive under contract F49620-C-0063 with the University of California) Berkeley, February 1980.. Washington, DC: Storming Media. https://www.stormingmedia.us/15/1554/A155480.html. Accessed 10 Oct 2017, 1980). I (...) would add that learning also builds on prior learning, and that from the outset, human learning is a socio-cultural materially grounded collective epistemology. This posthuman acknowledgement shifts the focus from the individual learner to learning within collective phenomena. Dreyfus and Dreyfus do not seem to emphasise the essentially social and cultural nature of the human condition. Learning theory, new materialism and postphenomenology have emphasised in different ways the materially based socio-cultural nature of human learning. They thereby point towards a ‘posthuman’ learning that is far from the machine-like or enhanced creature envisioned by singularists. Until robots are essentially social and ground their epistemologies in socio-cultural materiality, I suggest that human-like AI is not possible. (shrink)

Robots are simultaneously real machines and technical images that challenge our sense of self. I discuss the movie Ex Machina by director Alex Garland. The robot Ava, played by Alicia Vikander, is a rare portrait of what could be interpreted as a feminist robot. Though she apparently is created as the dream of the ‘perfect woman’, sexy and beautiful, she also develops and urges to free herself from the slavery of her creator, Nathan Bateman. She is a robot created along (...) the perfect dimensions as a Vitruvian robot but is also a creature which could be interpreted as a human being. However, the point I want to raise is not whether Ava’s reaction to robot slavery is justified or not but how her portrait raises questions about the blurred lines between reality and fiction when we discuss our robotic future. A real version of Ava would not last long in a human world because she is basically a solipsist, who does not really care about humans. She cannot co-create the line humans walk along. The robots created as ‘perfect women’ today are very far from the ideal image of Ava. They are sexist, primitively normative and clearly ‘wax-doll machines’. So though Ava’s dimensions are perfect she, like the Vitruvian Man, remains a fiction. In real life, however, we may have to deal with an increasing solipsism stemming from people engaging with machines like sex robots. In this case, it is human and not robotic solipsism we need to worry about. (shrink)

A central question in human development is how young children gain knowledge so fast. We propose that analogical generalization drives much of this early learning and allows children to generate new abstractions from experience. In this paper, we review evidence for analogical generalization in both children and adults. We discuss how analogical processes interact with the child's changing knowledge base to predict the course of learning, from conservative to domain-general understanding. This line of research leads to challenges to existing assumptions (...) about learning. It shows that it is not enough to consider the distribution of examples given to learners; one must consider the processes learners are applying; contrary to the general assumption, maximizing variability is not always the best route for maximizing generalization and transfer. (shrink)

In the Letter of Humanism, Heidegger reinterprets the Greek notion of ethos as designating the way in which human beings dwell in the world through a “unifying” language. Through various down strokes in the autobiographical and psychopathological literature on schizophrenia as well as in literary texts and literary criticism, this paper, experimental in its effort, argues that the language productions of schizophrenia and poetry, each in its own way, seem to fall outside this unification of a language in common. Furthermore, (...) it argues that this “falling outside” is related to radical experiences of “alienation” and “otherness,” which call for an alteration of conventional language. However, whereas poetry appears to open new linguistic possibilities, schizophrenia runs the risk of reducing language to the silence of incomprehensible “nonsense.” The paper ends with the suggestion that a poetic employment of language may hold a double potential with regard to the understanding and possible treatment of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. (shrink)

Despite the expansion of the regulatory state, we continue to witness widespread unethical practices across society. This paper addresses these challenges of ethical failure, misalignment, and dissonance by developing a conceptual framework that provides an explicit basis for understanding virtuousness and the common good directed toward the goal of eudaimonia or human flourishing. While much of the literature on virtuousness has focused on the organization, this paper uses a more comprehensive understanding that also incorporates the agent and the economy examined (...) through their relational order. The common good provides direction for guiding behavior of all the various stakeholders and the context for understanding virtuousness, while it is through virtuousness that the common good is effectively realized. Virtuousness and the common good are therefore in effect ‘two sides of the same coin.’ This paper develops a virtuousness–common good conceptual framework which explores the basis for harmonizing the goals of the individual, organization, and the economy. (shrink)

IntroductionCardiology is characterized by its state-of-the-art biomedical technology and the predominance of Evidence-Based Medicine. This predominance makes it difficult for healthcare professionals to deal with the ethical dilemmas that emerge in this subspecialty. This paper is a first endeavor to empirically investigate the axiological foundations of the healthcare professionals in a cardiology hospital. Our pilot study selected, as the target population, cardiology personnel not only because of their difficult ethical deliberations but also because of the stringent conditions in which they (...) have to make them. Therefore, there is an urgent need to reconsider clinical ethics and Value-Based Medicine. This study proposes a qualitative analysis of the values and the virtues of healthcare professionals in a cardiology hospital in order to establish how the former impact upon the medical and ethical decisions made by the latter.ResultsWe point out the need for strengthening the roles of healthcare personnel as educators and guidance counselors in order to meet the ends of medicine, as well as the need for an ethical discernment that is compatible with our results, namely, that the ethical values developed by healthcare professionals stem from their life history as well as their professional education.ConclusionWe establish the kind of actions, communication skills and empathy that are required to build a stronger patient-healthcare professional relationship, which at the same time improves prognosis, treatment efficiency and therapeutic adhesion. (shrink)

With his talk of the ”death of God“, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche presented a diagnosis of the future that is both problematic and highly topical. Although this had been the subject of exhaustive discussion in connection with the resulting practical problem of the loss of values, its relevance for the status and selfunderstanding of the theoretical sciences has not been broached. 17 contributions from well-known scholars approach the subject by highlighting the connection between the specific nature of modern science and (...) the non-involvement of theology. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay shows how certain limit-points of Lacan's psychoanalytic discourse in his 1955–56 seminar on The Psychoses tangentially brush up against Maurice Blanchot's writing on the neuter, as presented in The Space of Literature from 1955. The effort is to strike up a conversation between Lacan's “clinical discourse” and Blanchot's “critical writing” on the topics of language, writing, authority, and madness. In this regard, the essay approaches an infinite point of approximation between the procedure of psychosis and the procedure (...) of literary writing by questioning whether, at some point in these different ways of proceeding, they may share a certain experience of language. Namely, this is an experience of a language that, as stated by both Jacques Lacan and Maurice Blanchot, “speaks all by itself” and does so incessantly and with a certain furious neutrality. (shrink)

Cardiology is characterized by its state-of-the-art biomedical technology and the predominance of Evidence-Based Medicine. This predominance makes it difficult for healthcare professionals to deal with the ethical dilemmas that emerge in this subspecialty. This paper is a first endeavor to empirically investigate the axiological foundations of the healthcare professionals in a cardiology hospital. Our pilot study selected, as the target population, cardiology personnel not only because of their difficult ethical deliberations but also because of the stringent conditions in which they (...) have to make them. Therefore, there is an urgent need to reconsider clinical ethics and Value-Based Medicine. This study proposes a qualitative analysis of the values and the virtues of healthcare professionals in a cardiology hospital in order to establish how the former impact upon the medical and ethical decisions made by the latter. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 52, Issue 4, Page 473-490, Winter 2021.