The literature on deep brain stimulation (DBS) and adaptive DBS (aDBS) raises concerns that these technologies may affect personality, mood, and behavior. We conducted semi-structured interviews with researchers (n = 23) involved in developing next-generation DBS systems, exploring their perspectives on ethics and policy topics including whether DBS/aDBS can cause such changes. The majority of researchers reported being aware of personality, mood, or behavioral (PMB) changes in recipients of DBS/aDBS. Researchers offered varying estimates of the frequency of PMB changes. A (...) smaller majority reported changes in personality specifically. Some expressed reservations about the scientific status of the term ‘personality,’ while others used it freely. Most researchers discussed negative PMB changes, but a majority said that DBS/aDBS can also result in positive changes. Several researchers viewed positive PMB changes as part of the therapeutic goal in psychiatric applications of DBS/aDBS. Finally, several discussed potential causes of PMB changes other than the device itself. (shrink)

The expansion of research on deep brain stimulation (DBS) and adaptive DBS (aDBS) raises important neuroethics and policy questions related to data sharing. However, there has been little empirical research on the perspectives of experts developing these technologies. We conducted semi-structured, open-ended interviews with aDBS researchers regarding their data sharing practices and their perspectives on ethical and policy issues related to sharing. Researchers expressed support for and a commitment to sharing, with most saying that they were either sharing their data (...) or would share in the future and that doing so was important for advancing the field. However, those who are sharing reported a variety of sharing partners, suggesting heterogeneity in sharing practices and lack of the broad sharing that would reflect principles of open science. Researchers described several concerns and barriers related to sharing, including privacy and confidentiality, the usability of shared data by others, ownership and control of data (including potential commercialization), and limited resources for sharing. They also suggested potential solutions to these challenges, including additional safeguards to address privacy issues, standardization and transparency in analysis to address issues of data usability, professional norms and heightened cooperation to address issues of ownership and control, and streamlining of data transmission to address resource limitations. Researchers also offered a range of views on the sensitivity of neural activity data (NAD) and data related to mental health in the context of sharing. These findings are an important input to deliberations by researchers, policymakers, neuroethicists, and other stakeholders as they navigate ethics and policy questions related to aDBS research. (shrink)

Vocal bursts are non-linguistic affectively-laden sounds with a crucial function in human communication, yet their affective structure is still debated. Studies showed that ratings of valence and arousal follow a V-shaped relationship in several kinds of stimuli: high arousal ratings are more likely to go on a par with very negative or very positive valence. Across two studies, we asked participants to listen to 1,008 vocal bursts and judge both how they felt when listening to the sound (i.e. core affect (...) condition), and how the speaker felt when producing it (i.e. perception of affective quality condition). We show that a V-shaped fit outperforms a linear model in explaining the valence-arousal relationship across conditions and studies, even after equating the number of exemplars across emotion categories. Also, although subjective experience can be significantly predicted using affective quality ratings, core affect scores are significantly lower in arousal, less extreme in valence, more variable between individuals, and less reproducible between studies. Nonetheless, stimuli rated with opposite valence between conditions range from 11% (study 1) to 17% (study 2). Lastly, we demonstrate that ambiguity in valence (i.e. high between-participants variability) explains violations of the V-shape and relates to higher arousal. (shrink)

A conversation between the artist Mimmo Paladino, the philosopher and art critic Arthur C. Danto and the curator Demetrio Paparoni on topics such as beauty, icons, projectuality in art, history of art and its supposed end - the main thread being, obviously, Paladino’s entire corpus.

Arthur Danto è figura di spicco della critica d’arte contemporanea nordamericana. I suoi saggi, le opinioni espresse su The Nation (è dal 1984 che occupa le stesse colonne una volta affidate a Clement Greenberg) o su Artforum hanno una forte presa sulla scena artistica. Danto è una figura anomala nell’ambito della critica d’arte in quanto, pur essendo un filosofo, frequenta gli studi degli artisti e le gallerie, comprese quelle più radical. La filosofia e la critica d’arte utilizzano linguagg...

While walking within the installation, even though moving among its elements, the image cannot really be grasped in its entirety. Hence, Paladino deals with three distincdy contrasting concepts: the part refers to the whole; the part has totality in itself; the part refers only to itself (being unable to take in the totality of the image, the part can only be related to as an autonomous fragment). And the different positions are incompatible because many believe they can experience the whole (...) through the part, ruling out that the world is made up of autonomous fragments. In turn, the idea that reality is made up of fragments independent of one another is inconsistent with the idea that we can grasp the totality. Stele deals with a theme that has been recurrent in Paladinos work since he began working at the end of the 1970s: the world is an intellectual construction that art gives shape to. (shrink)

Un autore che esprime la propria visione del mondo attraverso immagini può essere considerato un filosofo? La filosofia è un dialogo tra quanti si confrontano entro gli orizzonti che il pensiero ha sedimentato nel tempo. Chi si esprime attraverso l’esclusivo esercizio delle arti visive o della musica non può essere considerato filosofo, questo nonostante l’artista esprima la propria visione del mondo al pari del filosofo. Ciò non impedisce a un autore che crei immagini o azioni o suoni di esp...

The concept of “predatory” publishing, despite many studies of the phenomenon, continues to be unclear. This paper visualizes this topic through an epistemological perspective, claiming that these limitations emerge from an impressionism of idealization, the entrapment of cause and effect induced by a journalology-based perspective, and entrenched fantasized extraction, imagination and divination of what constitutes the truth, in essence, a path never followed by an _epistēmōn_. Reality, proof, verification, recorded observations and their interpretations have been pivoted to fit the theoretical (...) flavor of the day, an entity one day being predatory, the next not. Perhaps ephemeral judgements of predatory have been built on boundless disregard for common sense. Yet, these have led to scientists’ apotheosis, almost oblivious of the intangibility of “valid”, or the infinitesimal continuum of “predatory”. Perhaps their fault-ridden authoritarian argumentative disabilities is at fault. (shrink)

Vida y obra de cuatro ilustres pensadores norteños: Hildebrando Castro Pozo, Mariano Iberico Rodríguez, Antenor Orrego Espinoza y Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre. Con énfasis en el pensamiento filosófico, sociológico y político de cada uno.

My topic is authenticity in or perhaps as painting, not the authenticity of paintings; I know next to nothing about the problem of verifying claims of authorship. I am interested in another kind of genuineness and fraudulence, the kind at issue when we say of a person that he or she is false, not genuine, inauthentic, lacks integrity, and, especially when we say he or she is playing to the crowd, playing for effect, or is a poseur. These are not (...) quite moral distinctions (no one has a duty to be authentic), but they are robustly normative appraisals, applicable even when such falseness is not a case of straight hypocrisy but of lack of self-knowledge or of self-deceit. (A person can be quite sincere and not realize the extent of her submission to the other’s expectations and demands.) This sort of appraisal also has a long history in post-Rousseauist reflections on the dangers of uniquely modern forms of social dependence, and they are prominent worries in the modern novel. (shrink)

A conversation between the artist Mimmo Paladino, the philosopher and art critic Arthur C. Danto and the curator Demetrio Paparoni on topics such as beauty, icons, projectuality in art, history of art and its supposed end - the main thread being, obviously, Paladino’s entire corpus.

O conceito moderno de ‘estilo’ – dο qual deriva o de ‘estilística’, disciplina que foi testemunha da querela entre a Linguística e os estudos literários no século XX – herdou da Retórica antiga o seu conteúdo e foi largamente usado como tradução direta do conceito latino ‘elocutio’, e como tradução de conceitos gregos, como ἑρμηνεία, λέξις e φράσις. Há ainda outros conceitos que parecem intimamente ligados ao de estilo, como os de ‘ornatum’ e ‘decorum’. Compreendendo que as referências clássicas do (...) conceito de ‘estilo’ se mostram essenciais para a escrita da história deste conceito moderno, este artigo buscará apresentar um catálogo de conceitos antigos que encontraram no ‘estilo’ a sua tradição tradutória, além de tentar construir uma breve história de cada um desses percursos tradutórios. (shrink)

Abbozzando nel Fedro una indagine genealogica sull’origine dell’arte, Platone coglie un tratto fondamentale. Si tratta del legame assai profondo che unisce l’arte alla regina delle proprietà estetiche, la bellezza. L’arte è portata a ricercare costantemente la bellezza, questa la tesi, poiché alla sua origine vi sarebbe una tensione erotica che trova nella bellezza, insieme, una via privilegiata di espressione e un elemento di attrazione. Una seconda e non meno autorevole genealogia dell’orig...

This article critiques the theological and moral foundations that undergird the approach of the document For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church to the question of the Church's role in the public sphere. The article's focus is essentially two-fold. First, it strives to clarify For the Life of the World's hermeneutical method through a consideration of its frequent appeals to the authority of the Orthodox tradition. Second, the article seeks to understand the document's (...) tacit reliance upon a Eucharistic model of ecclesiology and its connection to the recurring theme of the ‘transfiguring of the world’. (shrink)

La pobreza tiene una base material, la penuria de recursos. Pero su naturaleza es moral, consiste en el reconocimiento de que ciertas situaciones son acreedoras de acciones preventivas o remediadoras. Las sociedades vienen colocando tradicionalmente el umbral de pobreza en el punto por debajo del cual esta en peligro la subsistencia. Pero la conciencia reformista del mundo occidental ha llegado a servirse de la idea de pobreza para señalar los fallos de su compromiso de igualdad social. No se trata tanto (...) de una benévola elevación del baremo, como de una reconceptualización acorde con la ideología política dominante. (shrink)

El trabajo tiene por objeto reflexionar críticamente sobre el retribucionismo como fin de la pena en el Estado constitucional de Derecho. Tomando como punto de partida el idealismo alemán, se analizan las reformulaciones más recientes de esta corriente de pensamiento aparentemente superada. Se propone una distinción metodológica entre los términos retribución, reprobación y venganza, en orden a la defensa de una teoría de la pena secularizada.

This article is an investigation into the field of neurotheology, a controversial field which has attracted criticism from both the scientific and religious community and which is often quite divided among its own practitioners. Regretfully, but not too unexpectedly, science has gotten entangled with ideology, as we shall see, with proponents on all sides of the spectrum using findings from the laboratory in support of their own philosophical positions. We will begin by exploring some definitions of the field and then (...) move on to examine the claims made by the different scientists working in this area, before examining what conclusions we can draw for spirituality. (shrink)