Alan Turing, one of the fathers of computing, warned that Artificial Intelligence (AI) could one day pose an existential risk to humanity. Today, recent advancements in the field AI have been accompanied by a renewed set of existential warnings. But what exactly constitutes an existential risk? And how exactly does AI pose such a threat? In this chapter we aim to answer these questions. In particular, we will critically explore three commonly cited reasons for thinking that AI poses an existential (...) threat to humanity: the control problem, the possibility of global disruption from an AI race dynamic, and the weaponization of AI. (shrink)

Andy Clark and David Chalmers (1998) argue that certain mental states and processes can be partially constituted by objects located beyond one’s brain and body: this is their extended mind thesis (EM). But they maintain that consciousness relies on processing that is too high in speed and bandwidth to be realized outside the body (see Chalmers, 2008, and Clark, 2009). I evaluate Clark’s and Chalmers’ reason for denying that consciousness extends while still supporting unconscious state extension. I argue that their (...) reason is not well grounded and does not hold up against foreseeable advances in technology. I conclude that their current position needs re-evaluation. If their original parity argument works as a defence of EM, they have yet to identify a good reason why it does not also work as a defence of extended consciousness. I end by advancing a parity argument for extended consciousness and consider some possible replies. (shrink)

Political Insults proposes a theory of international insult that focuses on interrelations between social identity and power. The book analyses conflicts between the U.S. and North Korea, sovereignty contestations around islands in the Japanese sea, Pussy Riot in Russia, veterans in Ukraine, and Nagorno-Karabakh.

The extended mind thesis maintains that while minds may be centrally located in one’s brain-and-body, they are sometimes partly constituted by tools in our environment. Critics argue that we have no reason to move from the claim that cognition is embedded in the environment to the stronger claim that cognition can be constituted by the environment. I will argue that there are normative reasons, both scientific and ethical, for preferring the extended account of the mind to the rival embedded account.

Moral injury has primarily been studied from a clinical perspective to assess, diagnose and treat the outcomes of morally injurious experiences in healthcare and military settings. Little is known about the lived experiences of those who have had their moral values transgressed in business settings. Public scandals such as Enron suggest that moral injury may also occur in for-profit business settings. In this qualitative study, we examine the lived experiences of 16 employees in for-profit business organisations who identified as having (...) suffered moral injury. Using semi-structured narrative interviews, our findings offer insights into the values that employees feel are transgressed and the pathways between morally injurious experiences and the long-term outcomes. Based on our findings, we propose a conceptual pathway to moral injury, which suggests that experiencing moral transgressions has a profound impact on employees as they feel a threat to their “good-me” identity, however, employees employ various coping strategies to minimise the impact during the event. Employees exited the organisation and often changed career paths to protect themselves from further injury and to make up for moral failure. This study advances our understanding of the experience of moral injury in business settings and the pathway explaining how and why people react differently to moral transgressions. (shrink)

En este trabajo ofrezco una elucidación de la normatividad de lo mental en términos de la perspectiva de segunda persona, con la esperanza de abrir un horizonte conceptual que nos permita ir más allá de Donald Davidson. A tal efecto, el artículo tiene la siguiente estructura. En la primera parte presento su original respuesta al problema mente/cuerpo y reconstruyo su argumentación a favor de la tesis de la irreducibilidad de los conceptos mentales. En la segunda parte me ocupo del rasgo (...) que, en su sistema, porta la peculiaridad de lo mental, a saber: la normatividad. En la tercera sección exploro y evalúo el tratamiento davidsoniano de las perspectivas de primera, segunda y tercera persona con vistas a precisar, finalmente, mi propuesta. (shrink)

Gender, age, and culturally specific beliefs are often considered relevant to observed variation in social interactions. At present, however, the scientific literature is mixed with respect to the significance of these factors in guiding moral judgments. In this study, we explore the role of each of these factors in moral judgment by presenting the results of a web-based study of Eastern (i.e., Russia) and Western (i.e., USA, UK, Canada) subjects, male and female, and young and old. Participants ( n = (...) 659) responded to hypothetical moral scenarios describing situations where sacrificing one life resulted in saving five others. Though men and women from both types of cultures judged (1) harms caused by action as less permissible than harms caused by omission, (2) means-based harms as less permissible than side-effects, and (3) harms caused by contact as less permissible than by non-contact, men in both cultures delivered more utilitarian judgments (save the five, sacrifice one) than women. Moreover, men from Western cultures were more utilitarian than Russian men, with no differences observed for women. In both cultures, older participants delivered less utilitarian judgments than younger participants. These results suggest that certain core principles may mediate moral judgments across different societies, implying some degree of universality, while also allowing a limited range of variation due to sociocultural factors. (shrink)

This paper is about even in downward entailing contexts. Karttunen and Peters (1979) have shown that there are two different sets of implicatures of even in such contexts. They argue that the two sets of implicatures are derived by allowing even to take scope either higher or lower than a negative polarity licenser. Rooth (1985) argues that even is lexically ambiguous, that is, there is a negative polarity even. I argue against Rooth's ambiguity theory and show that within Rooth's theory (...) of focus, a scope theory of even has better empirical coverage. I also answer objections to the scope theory raised by Rooth (1985) and Karttunen and Karttunen (1977). (shrink)

Vehicle externalism maintains that the vehicles of our mental representations can be located outside of the head, that is, they need not be instantiated by neurons located inside the brain of the cogniser. But some disagree, insisting that ‘non-derived’, or ‘original’, content is the mark of the cognitive and that only biologically instantiated representational vehicles can have non-derived content, while the contents of all extra-neural representational vehicles are derived and thus lie outside the scope of the cognitive. In this paper (...) we develop one aspect of Menary’s vehicle externalist theory of cognitive integration—the process of enculturation—to respond to this longstanding objection. We offer examples of how expert mathematicians introduce new symbols to represent new mathematical possibilities that are not yet understood, and we argue that these new symbols have genuine non-derived content, that is, content that is not dependent on an act of interpretation by a cognitive agent and that does not derive from conventional associations, as many linguistic representations do. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis maintains that while minds may be centrally located in one?s brain-and-body, they are sometimes partly constituted by tools in our environment. Critics argue that we have no reason to move from the claim that cognition is embedded in the environment to the stronger claim that cognition can be constituted by the environment. I will argue that there are normative reasons, both scientific and ethical, for preferring the extended account of the mind to the rival embedded account. (...) nema. (shrink)

Technological advances are bringing new light to privacy issues and changing the reasons for why privacy is important. These advances have changed not only the kind of personal data that is available to be collected, but also how that personal data can be used by those who have access to it. We are particularly concerned with how information about personal attributes inferred from collected data (such as online behaviour), can be used to tailor messages and services to specific individuals or (...) groups. This kind of ‘personalised targeting’ has the potential to influence individuals’ perceptions, attitudes, and choices in unprecedented ways. In this paper, we argue that because it is becoming easier for companies to use collected data for influence, threats to privacy are increasingly also threats to personal autonomy—an individual’s ability to reflect on and decide freely about their values, actions, and behaviour, and to act on those choices.4 While increasing attention is directed to the ethics of how personal data is collected, we make the case that a new ethics of privacy needs to also think more rigorously about how personal data may be used, and its potential impact on personal autonomy. (shrink)

El propósito de este artículo es poner de manifiesto cómo la ciencia y la filosofía reflexiva son insuficientes para Merleau-Ponty, fenomenólogo que pretende dar con lo que el mundo vivido es. La ciencia no sirve a sus fines porque ha olvidado su raigambre en el universo experimentado por un sujeto y ha construido un supra-mundo susceptible de un conocimiento cierto y evidente. Por su parte, la filosofía reflexiva tampoco le resulta apropiada porque también ha olvidado su cuna en el mundo (...) vivido y, para obtener un conocimiento verdadero de aquello que estudia, se ha centrado únicamente en un "mundo-representación" depurado de cualquier elemento contaminante que imponga limites a un saber plenamente racional. Merleau-Ponty deja de lado ambos procederes y busca un método que le permita contactar con el mundo tal cusí es, en toda su riqueza y esplendor. (shrink)

Hoerl & McCormack argue that children are incapable of reasoning about time until age 5. However, their dual timing perspective does not address non-symbolic timing, or timing in the absence of symbols/language. Given substantial evidence that infants and children are capable of non-symbolic timing, I argue that infants and children are well-tuned timers prior to age 5.

This article will look closely at the performance of tomboy identity in Joan Anim-Addo's collection of poetry Janie, Cricketing Lady, written as a tribute to her mother Jane Joseph, and Margaret Cezair-Thompson's novel The Pirate's Daughter, a fiction about Errol Flynn's ‘outside’ Jamaican daughter, May. It will argue that the ongoing affects of colonialism and patriarchy in the islands of Grenada and Jamaica, respectively, shape the life narratives of Janie and May who express their anger, shame, fear, frustration and desire (...) through their ambiguous gender identity and through their determination to intervene in masculinist traditions, such as cricket, piracy and adventure, traditions that underpin Caribbean his/tories. To understand the way in which affect can be expressed through tomboyism in Caribbean societies, it is necessary to look at colour and class alongside gender in the context of Caribbean creolisation. (shrink)

Little is known empirically about the role of supervisor listening and the emotional conditions that listening facilitates. Having the opportunity to speak is only one part of the communication process between employees and supervisors. Employees also react to whether they perceive the supervisor as actively listening. In two studies, this paper examines three important outcomes of employee perceptions of supervisor listening. Furthermore, positive and negative affect are investigated as distinct mediating mechanisms. Results from Study 1 revealed that employee perceptions of (...) supervisor listening reflected supervisors’ self-ratings of how they listen to their employees and these perceptions were associated with the three work outcomes. Study 2 replicated the findings in a larger sample and found evidence for two explanatory mechanisms. Positive affect mediated the effects of perceived supervisor listening on organizational citizenship behavior and turnover intention, whereas negative affect mediated listening effects on emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. Implications for organizational research and managerial practice concerning workforce sustainability are discussed. (shrink)

Ethics regulation for human-subject research has been established for about 20 years in Brazil. However, compliance with this regulation is controversial for non-biomedical sciences, particularly for human and social sciences, the source of a recent debate at the National Commission for Research Ethics. We hypothesized that for these fields, formal requirements for compliance with HSR regulation in graduate programs, responsible for the greatest share of Brazilian science, would be small in number. We analyzed institutional documents from 171 graduate programs at (...) six prestigious Brazilian universities in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the states that fund most of the science conducted in Brazil. Among these programs, 149 were in HSS. The results suggest that non-compliance with standard regulation seems to be the rule in most of these programs. The data may reflect not only a resistance from scientists in these fields to comply with standard regulations for ethics in HSR but also a disciplinary tradition that seems prevalent when it comes to research ethics in HSR. However, recent encounters between Brazilian biomedical and non-biomedical scientists for debates over ethics in HSR point to a changing culture in the approach to research ethics in the country. (shrink)

Este artículo estudia los números de la Revista de Psicoanálisis publicados entre 1946 y 1955 en Argentina. En particular, analiza los artículos escritos por los psicoanalistas argentinos que allí aparecen y las notas e informaciones que se incluyen en las últimas páginas de la revista. Se propone, por un lado, rastrear qué es el psicoanálisis en esos años, pensando este saber como un objeto discursivo, y, por el otro, indagar sobre el modo en que se construye la comunidad discursiva psicoanalítica (...) de la APA. Este recorrido ha evidenciado, por un lado, que el psicoanálisis es entendido, en ese entonces, como una teoría científica y una práctica contigua a la práctica médica, limitado al tratamiento individual. Por el otro, ha identificado que la revista, además de constituir un medio de comunicación privilegiado para la institución, contribuye a la consolidación de la comunidad discursiva psicoanalítica. (shrink)

El propósito de este estudio es determinar las características y cantidad de publicaciones biomédicas retractadas sobre la covid-19, a través de la revisión de las bases de datos PubMed y Retraction Watch, para determinar autores, título, revista, fecha de publicación, fecha de retractación y motivo de la retractación. La literatura sobre la covid-19 ya alcanza más de 280.000 artículos, de los cuales 63 ya han sido retractados. Se observan rápidos procesos editoriales tanto para la publicación como para la retractación. Se (...) destacan 25 artículos donde no se proporciona el motivo de la retractación. Dentro de los que sí lo señalan se encuentran publicaciones duplicadas, plagios, falta de aprobación del comité de ética, problemas de datos y metodológicos. (shrink)

Pandemics are faced with uncertain scenarios, environmental, economic and/or social crises, generating negative impacts on society, which are further aggravated in a context of social vulnerability. This text aims to present and reflect on the transformation of a pandemic into a syndemic in Brazil due to the consequences of social vulnerability. How and why can a pandemic turn into a syndemic given the consequences of social vulnerability that plague Brazil? Understanding the factors and effects of social vulnerability, as well as (...) the consequences of social vulnerability in Brazil, lead to the search for new sustainable dynamics in the face of crises and uncertainties through global action and an education aimed at dealing with the challenges of vulnerability. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis maintains that the functional contributions of tools and artefacts can become so essential for our cognition that they can be constitutive parts of our minds. In other words, our tools can be on a par with our brains: our minds and cognitive processes can literally ‘extend’ into the tools. Several extended mind theorists have argued that this ‘extended’ view of the mind offers unique insights into how we understand, assess, and treat certain cognitive conditions. In this (...) chapter we suggest that using AI extenders, i.e., tightly coupled cognitive extenders that are imbued with machine learning and other ‘artificially intelligent’ tools, presents both new ethical challenges and opportunities for mental health. We focus on several mental health conditions that can develop differently by the use of AI extenders for people with cognitive disorders and then discuss some of the related opportunities and challenges. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis prompted philosophers to think about the different shapes our minds can take as they reach beyond our brains and stretch into new technologies. Some of us rely heavily on the environment to scaffold our cognition, reorganizing our homes into rich cognitive niches, for example, or using our smartphones as swiss-army knives for cognition. But the thesis also prompts us to think about other varieties of minds and the unique forms they take. What are we to make (...) of the exotic distributed nervous systems we see in octopuses, for example, or the complex collectives of bees? In this paper, I will argue for a robust version of the extended mind thesis that includes the possibility of extended consciousness. This thesis will open up new ways of understanding the different forms that conscious minds can take, whether human or nonhuman. The thesis will also challenge the popular belief that consciousness exists exclusively in the brain. Furthermore, despite the attention that the extended mind thesis has received, there has been relatively less written about the possibility of extended consciousness. A number of prominent defenders of the extended mind thesis have even called the idea of extended consciousness implausible. I will argue, however, that extended consciousness is a viable theory and it follows from the same ‘parity argument’ that Clark and Chalmers first advanced to support the extended mind thesis. What is more, it may even provide us with a valuable paradigm for how we understand some otherwise puzzling behaviors in certain neurologically abnormal patients as well as in some nonhuman animals. (shrink)

This paper proposes a theoretical approach to discuss the relations among reality, chemists’ interactions with it, and the resulting interpretation and representation of the acquired scientific knowledge. Taking into account that such relations are of semiotic nature, this paper aims at discussing in the light of Peirce’s theory of signs different descriptions of chemical activity and chemical education proposed by Alex Johnstone and elaborated by other science educators. In order to discuss the contributions and limitations of the proposed theoretical framework, (...) and considering its potential interest for chemical education, an example on the communication strategies for the content ‘vapour pressure’ found in twentieth-century general chemistry university textbooks is also presented. (shrink)

JUSTIÇA RESTAURATIVA: UMA ANÁLISE SOCIOLÓGICA DOS FINS QUE OS MEIOS PUNITIVOS NÃO ALCANÇAM.

Your smartphone is much more than just a phone. It can tell a more intimate story about you than your best friend. No other piece of hardware in history, not even your brain, contains the quality or quantity of information held on your phone: it ‘knows’ whom you speak to, when you speak to them, what you said, where you have been, your purchases, photos, biometric data, even your notes to yourself – and all this dating back years. In this (...) piece I ask whether, given the role they play in our lives, our devices deserve the same legal protections as our brains and bodies? (shrink)

A série Moças Quitandeiras (2019 - ) nasce do meu desejo de homenagear aquelas que foram umas das primeiras confeiteiras em solo brasileiro, mulheres negras escravizadas e libertas que vendiam doces e outros alimentos em seus tabuleiros durante o período colonial.

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and social phobia (SP) are major anxiety disorders identified by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV). They are comorbid, overlap in symptoms, yet present with distinct features (worry in GAD and fear of embarrassment in SP). Both have also been explained in terms of conditioning-based models. However, there is little reasoning currently to believe that GAD in adulthood reflects heightened conditionability or heightened threat processing—though patients with SP may show heightened processing (...) of social threat stimuli. Moreover, the computational architectures that maintain these disorders in adulthood are different. For GAD this may reflect the development of an inefficient “worrying” strategy of emotional regulation. For SP this appears to reflect the atypical processing of self-referential information. (shrink)

A Geografia da Religião configura-se no cenário acadêmico da Geografia Cultural como um subcampo dotado de potencialidades profícuas à apreensão do fenômeno religioso. Espacializar o rito, a prática cotidiana que se espraia em redes de informações fluídicas, repletas de subjetividades capazes de construir territórios e demarcar identidades é o objetivo principal deste campo do saber. É no tempo e no espaço que o sagrado se manifesta e semiografa indelevelmente como um mapa permanente as fronteiras entre o eu e o outro. (...) Esse fluxo humano contínuo que se reconfigura através de novas releituras e assimilações feitas pelos grupos estudados, releva ao espaço mudanças e permanências como um elemento chave, um conceito passível de ser analisado frente à relevância que ele apresenta como receptáculo dessas marcas físicas oriundas dos grupos religiosos que demarcam seus centros de cosmologia nos espaços escolhidos. Para um estudo mais aprofundado, busca-se na Filosofia husserliana o substrato teórico capaz de justificar o novo olhar geográfico ao subconsciente na conjunção do homem com o Criador. Portanto, leva-se a cabo uma detalhada revisão conceitual do termo fenomenologia e sua aplicabilidade á ciência geográfica. (shrink)

In this introduction the coordinators of the First Congress of Postcolonial Studies (Buenos Aires, 5th, 6th, 7th December 2012) review some of the main questions and guidelines which characterized the workshops. Starting from a heated debate on the categories and the epistemological proposals developed by postcolonial studies and decolonial feminism, the Congress accepted the challenge of producing a South/South dialogue through the consolidation of a space of interdisciplinary discussion in the different theorical fields inquiring post-colonial experience.

This work promotes the thesis that humans are naturally transhuman. In order to achieve this, we present in the first two sections some examples of technological devices assembled to human beings, and we critically review the assumptions and dichotomies on which the idea of human enhancement is based according to the ordinary transhumanist vision. Thirdly, we present the thesis of the Extended Mind to support our intuition. Fourthly, we dismantle the most relevant philosophical dichotomies that structure the transhumanist position. Finally, (...) we recapitulate the reasons why we should wake up from the transhumanist dream. (shrink)

La crisis sanitaria ocasionada por la expansión del Covid-19 pone en evidencia las consecuencias que tiene sobre la vida común la mercantilización de lo público y el mercado como eje regulador de la vida y de las relaciones humanas. El contexto actual demostró la cadena de inequidades que enfrentan las mujeres en la región, pudiendo identificarse al menos tres dimensiones en las que se expresa esta desigualdad: los cuidados, el trabajo y la violencia. Es menester de este artículo realizar un (...) estudio del impacto de la pandemia en estas tres dimensiones, buscando aportar a la reflexión para la acción que permita repensar un mundo pospandemia, donde la perspectiva de género no se constituya como una agenda coyuntural de los gobiernos, sino como un elemento fundamental en la transformación de nuestras sociedades. Este artículo es fundamentalmente descriptivo, utilizando para su análisis la información de datos secundarios, principalmente cuantitativos, de diferentes fuentes de información; por tanto se trata de datos recolectados, procesados, analizados y publicados con propósito diferente a los objetivos de este artículo. Las principales fuentes de información han sido ONU, OIT, CEPAL, ONU MUJERES, UNESCO y ACNUR. (shrink)

En el artículo se presentan los avances de un proyecto de investigación doctoral en ciencias sociales en la Universidad de Buenos Aires. A partir de una metodología cualitativa se exploraron espacios, clubes y centros culturales en la ciudad de Buenos Aires, desde el retorno de la democracia hasta los efectos de la crisis del 2001. De igual manera, se focalizó en la relevancia de la producción colectiva, es decir, en un proceso desencadenado por los cruces y anudamientos deseantes entre miembros (...) singulares. En tales coordenadas se encontró que el matiz lúdico habita los encuentros, ya que se trata de un espacio de sociabilidad en el que se improvisa con otros en las relaciones de intercambio que se establecen en un determinado grupo, cuya motivación pauta, incluso, los ritmos lógicos de su desarrollo. (shrink)