A reconsideration of the crucial historical role of slavery in the consolidation of the global regime of capital accumulation provides a vital source of Marxian critique for our postcolonial present. The Atlantic slave trade literally transformed African men and women into human commodities. The reduction of human beings into human commodities, or ‘human capital’ – indeed, into labour and nothing but labour – which was the very essence of modern slavery, served as a necessary prerequisite for the consolidation and perfecting (...) of what Marx called ‘labour in the abstract’, and requires us to re-situate enslaved labour as the defining and constitutive limit for how we comprehend labour as such under capitalism. The production of labour in the abstract, or labour ‘in general’, depended nonetheless upon concrete productions of sociopolitical difference, particularly the branding of race. The term ‘Black’, which was devised to literally and figuratively brand the flesh of enslaved people, was also contrived to signify their particular sociopolitical condition of brutal degradation as the ultimate limit for the subjugation of labour. Blackness names that limit. Thus, Blackness is in fact necessary for apprehending labour as such under capitalism. Marx’s scathing critique of wage labour is always haunted by the long shadow of slavery as its limit figure. If we comprehend labour to be the antithesis of capital, then to the extent that Blackness names the ultimate condition of labour’s subordination and subjection to capital, we need to recognise the tendency for all labour under capital to be pressed toward a sociopolitical condition of Blackness (or approximating Blackness), where Blackness does not name any kind of essential identity but the racialised sociopolitical condition of that subordination/subjection. Consequently, the labour theory of value – which has always been in fact, more accurately, a value theory of labour – must be complemented with what we might posit to be a racial theory of labour. Such an ostensibly historical perspective on the foundational role of slavery in the genesis of capitalism is no mere scholastic exercise in the historiography of ‘primitive accumulation’, however, but rather must be re-purposed toward the ends of elaborating what has remained an as-yet underdeveloped Marxian theory of migrant labour. Extrapolating key insights from Marx’s corpus for the formulation of a racial theory of labour, this essay is ultimately concerned with the ways that slavery supplies capitalism with a defining horizon for all labour, and thus how this insight might instructively serve to comprehend the racialised subordination of migrant labour within our global/postcolonial sociopolitical order. (shrink)

The most resounding expression of the truly unprecedented mobilizations of migrants throughout the United States in 2006 was a mass proclamation of collective defiance: ¡Aquí Estamos, y No Nos Vamos! [Here we are, and we're not leaving!]. This same slogan was commonly accompanied by a still more forcefully incorrigible rejoinder: ¡Y Si Nos Sacan, Nos Regresamos! [... and if they throw us out, we'll come right back!]. It is quite striking and, as this essay contends, not merely provocative but genuinely (...) productive to note the affinity between the crucial articulation of this radically open-ended politics of migrant presence with the similarly abject and profoundly destabilizing politics of queer presence. In a manner remarkably analogous to the slogan, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!", the dynamic enunciation of these phrases in the context of the mass mobilizations of migrants asserted an irreducible spirit of irreverence and disaffection for state power. Both gestures unreservedly and unapologetically assert not only their irreversible presence, furthermore, but also uphold the intractable challenge of their own intrinsic incorrigibility. (shrink)

The publication of scientific papers has become increasingly problematic in the last decades. Even if we agree that a renewed model is needed for peer-reviewed scientific publication, we think the problem does not essentially lie in professional publishing—with economic incentives—but in the publish-or-perish culture that dominates the lives of researchers and academics.

The publication of scientific papers has become increasingly problematic in the last decades. Even if we agree that a renewed model is needed for peer-reviewed scientific publication, we think the problem does not essentially lie in professional publishing—with economic incentives—but in the publish-or-perish culture that dominates the lives of researchers and academics.

This article deals with a modern disease of academic science that consists of an enormous increase in the number of scientific publications without a corresponding advance of knowledge. Findings are sliced as thin as salami and submitted to different journals to produce more papers. If we consider academic papers as a kind of scientific ‘currency’ that is backed by gold bullion in the central bank of ‘true’ science, then we are witnessing an article-inflation phenomenon, a scientometric bubble that is most (...) harmful for science and promotes an unethical and antiscientific culture among researchers. The main problem behind the scenes is that the impact factor is used as a proxy for quality. Therefore, not only for convenience, but also based on ethical principles of scientific research, we adhere to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment when it emphasizes “the need to eliminate the use of journal-based metrics in funding, appointment and promotion considerations; and the need to assess research on its own merits rather on the journal in which the research is published”. Our message is mainly addressed to the funding agencies and universities that award tenures or grants and manage research programmes, especially in developing countries. The message is also addressed to well-established scientists who have the power to change things when they participate in committees for grants and jobs. (shrink)

This article examines dominant socio-political questions regarding migration, ‘multiculturalism’, and ‘integration’, as a politics of citizenship (and race) in contemporary (post-colonial) Europe. The argument unfolds through a critique of the nationalist complacencies and racial complicities in Jürgen Habermas’s remarks on ‘multiculturalism’ during the 1990s. With recourse to ‘underclass’ discourse, Habermas’s reflections were themselves a trans-Atlantic metastasis of a distinctly US ‘American’ hegemonic sociological commonsense with regard to, but actively disregarding, the fact of white supremacy. Habermas’s thoughts are critically situated alongside (...) their subsequent metastasis, back across the Atlantic, into Francis Fukuyama’s recent invocations of ‘terrorism’ and his advocacy of the ‘American melting pot’ model as a trans-Atlantic prescription for Europe’s ailments. Treating ‘immigrants’ as a kind of societal illness, both are preoccupied by the same ‘problem’ — non-Europeans (as disaffected ‘minorities’). Thus, these discourses of ‘immigration’ manifest a distinctly post-colonial cancer coursing restlessly through the larger social formation of ‘the West’. (shrink)

This study has two goals. The first is to identify three desiderata required for a successful defense of a version of nonreductive physicalism: semantic externalism, token‐identity between mental and physical events, and nonrelational type‐individuation of physical states. In this context, the paper also presents a refutation of recent challenges to content‐externalism by those who attempt to resuscitate internalism by focusing on narrow content associated with the fundamental phenomenology, rather than the intentionality, of mental states. The second goal is to defend (...) the token‐identity thesis from Tyler Burge's argument to the effect that token‐identity is incompatible with semantic externalism. An account is also offered as to why Burge's argument, albeit fallacious, might seem persuasive under a certain interpretation of possible worlds. (shrink)

Recently, commentators such as Kenny and Hacker have disagreed about whether Wittgenstein's early picture theory of meaning is at all compatible with his later theory of “meaning‐as‐use”. Arguing in favor of their compatibility, Kenny finds that meaning‐as‐use supplements, rather than rivals the earlier conception of meaning.

The digital transfer of the mind to a computer system requires representing the mind as a finite sequence of bits. The classic “stored-program computer” paradigm, in turn, implies the equivalence between program and data, so that the sequence of bits themselves can be interpreted as a program, which will be algorithmically executed in the receiving device. Now, according to a previous proof, on which this paper is based, a computational or algorithmic machine, however complex, cannot be free. Consequently, a finite (...) sequence of bits cannot adequately represent a free mind and, therefore, a free mind cannot be digitally transferred, quod erat demonstrandum. The impossibility of making this transfer, as demonstrated here, should be a concern especially for those who wish to achieve it. Since we intend this to be a rigorous demonstration, we must give precise definitions and conditions of validity. The most important part of the paper is devoted to explaining the meaning and reasonableness of these definitions and conditions. Special attention is paid, also, to the philosophical implications of the demonstration. Finally, this thesis is distinguished from other closely related issues. (shrink)

In this paper we present the authors’ experience of teaching a course in Ethics for Engineers, which has been delivered four times in three different universities in Spain and Chile. We begin by presenting the material context of the course, and especially the intellectual background of the participating students, in terms of their previous understanding of philosophy in general, and of ethics in particular. Next we set out the objectives of the course and the main topics addressed, as well as (...) the methodology and teaching resources employed to have students achieve a genuine philosophical reflection on the ethical aspects of the profession, starting from their own mindset as engineers. Finally we offer some results based on opinion surveys of the students, as well as a more personal assessment by the authors, recapitulating the most significant achievements of the course and indicating its underlying Socratic structure. (shrink)

In this essay we argue that the notion of machine necessarily includes its being designed for a purpose. Therefore, being a mechanical system is not enough for being a machine. Since the experimental scientific method excludes any consideration of finality on methodological grounds, it is then also insufficient to fully understand what machines are. Instead in order to understand a machine it is first required to understand its purpose, along with its structure, in clear parallel with Aristotle’s final and formal (...) causes. Obviously, purpose and structure are not machine components that can physically interact with other components; nonetheless they are essential to understanding their operation. This casts an interesting light on the relationship between mind and body: for just as an artifact’s finality and structure explain its operation, so also consciousness is the explanation—not the efficient cause—of specifically human behavior. What machines and human beings have in common is that, in order to understand them, it is necessary to appeal to the principle of finality. Yet while finality is given and extrinsic in the case of machines, we human beings are characterized by the ability to self-propose our own ends. Since the principle of finality is essential to understanding the production of machines, the traditional view in modern Western philosophy that finality lies beyond the scope of objective/scientific knowledge should be rectified to allow for a genuine science of the artificial. We think a correct understanding of final causality will overcome current resistance to this principle. (shrink)

An engineer who becomes an educator in a school of software engineering has the mission to teach how to design and construct software systems, therein applying his or her knowledge and expertise. However, due to their engineering background, engineers may forget that educating a person is not the same as designing a machine, since a machine has a well-defined goal, whilst a person is capable to self-propose his or her own objectives. The ethical implications are clear: educating a free person (...) must leave space for creativity and self-determination in his or her own discovery of the way towards personal and professional fulfillment, which cannot consist only in achieving goals selected by others. We present here an argument that is applicable to most fields of engineering. However, the dis-analogy between educating students and programming robots may have a particular appeal to software engineers and computer scientists. We think the consideration of three different stages in the educational process may be useful to engineers when they act as educators. We claim that the three stages are essential to engineering education. In particular, education is incomplete if the third stage is not reached. Moreover, mentoring is incompatible with an educational assessment framework that considers the goals of the engineer are always given by others. In our view, then, an integral education is not only beyond programming the behavior of students, but also beyond having them reach those given goals. (shrink)

Is ethics a computable function? Can machines learn ethics like humans do? If teaching consists in no more than programming, training, indoctrinating… and if ethics is merely following a code of conduct, then yes, we can teach ethics to algorithmic machines. But if ethics is not merely about following a code of conduct or about imitating the behavior of others, then an approach based on computing outcomes, and on the reduction of ethics to the compilation and application of a set (...) of rules, either a priori or learned, misses the point. Our intention is not to solve the technical problem of machine ethics, but to learn something about human ethics, and its rationality, by reflecting on the ethics that can and should be implemented in machines. Any machine ethics implementation will have to face a number of fundamental or conceptual problems, which in the end refer to philosophical questions, such as: what is a human being (or more generally, what is a worthy being); what is human intentional acting; and how are intentional actions and their consequences morally evaluated. We are convinced that a proper understanding of ethical issues in AI can teach us something valuable about ourselves, and what it means to lead a free and responsible ethical life, that is, being good people beyond merely “following a moral code”. In the end we believe that rationality must be seen to involve more than just computing, and that value rationality is beyond numbers. Such an understanding is a required step to recovering a renewed rationality of ethics, one that is urgently needed in our highly technified society. (shrink)

This article analyzes the migrant caravans as a strategy of resistance to the war against migrants in transit to the United States, exacerbated during the pandemic. This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted with Honduran journalist Inmer Gerardo Chevez, correspondent of Radio Progreso. Having travelled the Central American and Mexican routes accompanying on foot the transit of thousands of migrants since 2018, Chevez is a notable eyewitness and expert in situ of the Caravans. The interview confirms that the (...) caravan has become one of the premier forms in which Latin American migrants, including agricultural workers, struggle and their spatial dispute with the heterogeneous border control regime of the Americas are materialized. The text also reflects on the role that photography and critical journalism can play in the face of the contemporary anti-migrant policy turn. We conclude with an interpretation of the effects that the militarized violence against Latin American migrants in transit to the United States is having across the region. (shrink)

Among the various contemporary schools of moral thinking, consequence-based ethics, as opposed to rule-based, seems to have a good acceptance among professionals such as software engineers. But naïve consequentialism is intellectually too weak to serve as a practical guide in the profession. Besides, the complexity of software systems makes it very hard to know in advance the consequences that will derive from professional activities in the production of software. Therefore, following the spirit of well-known codes of ethics such as the (...) ACM/IEEE’s, we advocate for a more solid position in the ethical education of software engineers, which we call ‘moderate deontologism’, that takes into account both rules and consequences to assess the goodness of actions, and at the same time pays an adequate consideration to the absolute values of human dignity. In order to educate responsible professionals, however, this position should be complemented with a pedagogical approach to virtue ethics. (shrink)

La inteligencia artificial ha llegado para quedarse, nos rodea y se hace presente en nuestros trabajos, nuestros hogares y en nuestras relaciones personales. El futuro de la humanidad va a ser modelado por las tecnologías emergentes, entre las cuales la IA es un punto de convergencia privilegiado de todos los desafíos que la tecnología de nuestro mundo le presenta a la teología. Una teóloga que ha aceptado este desafío es Anne Foerst. Ella ha planteado la cuestión de si en algún (...) momento los robots podrían llegar a ser considerados personas y formar parte de nuestras comunidades. Aunque su punto de vista no sea compartido debemos reconocerle su importante contribución a una teología de frontera. Una teología encarnada en las fronteras tecnológicas necesita ser valiente, necesita aceptar el marco que ofrecen la ciencia y la tecnología para explorar nuevos lenguajes. (shrink)

La teología de Ilia Delio se acerca valientemente hasta las últimas fronteras de la ciencia y la tecnología en nuestro mundo del siglo XXI. Estas fronteras incluyen de modo especial a la mecánica cuántica y al cíborg, y muy cerca de ellas también a la inteligencia artificial y al transhumanismo. Ella insiste en la necesidad de superar lo que denomina el complejo helénico, el marco de comprensión de una metafísica y una cosmología pertenecientes a otra época que no pueden ya (...) por más tiempo servir a la transmisión de la fe. Delio se define a sí misma como una cristiana cíborg y trabaja en una teología nueva para un tiempo nuevo, aunque algunas de sus conclusiones puedan ser rechazadas, su impulso es importante para desarrollar una teología que realmente sea significativa en nuestro mundo. (shrink)

This is an analysis of Peirce's theory of the three types of reasoning as explained in his 1877 essay "Deduction, Induction, and Hypothesis", which is representative of his earlier views on this subject. Hypothesis -which l-ter would become his abduction or retroduction- and induction are considered variants of probable syllogisms of the second and third figures. Specific attention is devoted to similarities and differences between induction and hypothesis.

A long tradition, which starts with the metaphor of the wax tablet presented in the Theaetetus of Plato, leads us to think that the relationship between mental representation and the represented reality is in a certain way mechanical or automatic. But the truth is that the conventional aspects of signification make it impossible to understand it as a physical- mechanical process. The computer sciences, contrary to a superficial vision, do not support but rather disprove this mechanistic conception of rationality, confirming (...) that semiosis can only occur in free subjects, that is to say, not completely subject to the laws of matter. (shrink)

The relative indifference to Kant's interpretation of aesthetics and teleology can no doubt be accounted for in several ways. Partly, it is simply that the natural approach to Kant is to begin with the Prolegomena, and then depending on one's interests, to move directly to Kant's treatment of the problem of knowledge or ethical action--thereby leaving Kant's independent analysis of judgment for last, if at all. Moreover, it is impossible to grasp the complexity of the problem of judgment without a (...) substantial understanding of Kant's first two inquiries. (shrink)

Wittgenstein: A Way of Seeing examines two related and neglected aspects of Wittgenstein's work: his conception of philosophy and his search for a style to embody his revolutionary practice. The landscapes of Wittgenstein's texts are surrealistically flat--no theories, arguments, or conclusions, nor chapter headings, notes, or narrative structures. Genova explores Wittgenstein's early style of logical poetics with its emphasis on elucidation and critique and his later rhetoric of grammatical reminders with its turn to therapy. She shows how Wittgenstein appropriated (...) Kant and then Freud to present distinctive visions of the nature of philosophy, namely as clarification in the Tractatus and as performance in the I nvestigations , and how Wittgenstein shows how language, logic and the world take care of themselves. _. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).