The article investigates the sociocultural implications of the changing modern workplace and of pharmacological cognitive enhancement as a potential adaptive tool from the viewpoint of social niche construction. We will attempt to elucidate some of the sociocultural and technological trends that drive and influence the characteristics of this specific niche, and especially to identify the kind of capabilities and adaptations that are being promoted, and to ascertain the capabilities and potentialities that might become diminished as a result. In this context, (...) we will examine what PCE is, and how and why it might be desirable as a tool for adaptation within the workplace. As human beings are, or at least should be allowed to be, more than merely productive, able-bodied and able-minded workers, we will further examine how adaptation to the workplace niche could result in problems in other domains of modern societal life that require the same or other cognitive capabilities. In this context we will also focus on the concept of responsibility and how it pertains to PCE and the modern workplace niche. This will shed some light on the kind of trends related to workplace niche construction, PCE and capability promotion that we can expect in the future, and on the contexts in which this might be either beneficial or detrimental to the individual as a well-rounded human being, and to other members of society. (shrink)

The article examines the role played by policy advice institutions in the governance of ethically controversial new and emerging science and technology in Europe. The empirical analysis, which aims to help close a gap in the literature, focuses on the evolution, role and functioning of national ethics advisory bodies (EABs) in Europe. EABs are expert bodies whose remit is to issue recommendations regarding ethical aspects of new and emerging science and technology. Negative experiences with the impacts of science and technology (...) in the past have resulted in calls for increased transparency and broader participation and pluralism in expert advice and policy decision-making. Do national EABs function as inclusive, anticipatory “hybrid forums”? Or do they resemble more “classical” expert-oriented bodies, inspired by technocratic or decisionist approaches? As part of the empirical analysis of the role and functioning of institutional ethical advisory structures in 32 European countries, an extensive analysis of EAB websites and the content of publicly available documents on such institutions has been carried out, supplemented by an online survey of representatives of the EABs. One major finding of the empirical analysis is the very uneven distribution of “hybrid forum” features of EABs across Europe. (shrink)

The article explores some of the issues that have arisen in the discourse on pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement (PCE), that is, the use of stimulant drugs such as methylphenidate, amphetamine and modafinil by healthy individuals of various populations with the aim of improving cognitive performance. Specifically, we explore the presumed sizes of existing PCE user populations and the policy actions that have been proposed regarding the trend of PCE. We begin with an introductory examination of the academic stances and philosophical issues (...) involved in defining PCE. We then focus on an examination of the population sizes of presumed current PCE users that have been listed in the academic literature on PCE, on presuppositions, which have been problematized by some authors as based on anecdotal or misinterpreted survey data. We follow this with an empirical examination of a potential PCE user population in a national context (students at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia). We then proceed to examine the regulatory options proposed in the academic literature to address PCE, finally comparing them with an empirical overview of the policy recommendations on PCE produced in the multinational context of several national ethics advisory bodies (EABs) in Europe. Our main conclusion is that there is still little debate among the national EABs on what type of public policy responses, if any, are needed to address PCE in European countries, and that the issues they do address are similar to those discussed and proposed in the academic articles on PCE. (shrink)

7 What Ss Counter- Enlightenment? Mark Cilia i. The critique of the modern age is as old as the age itself. Ever since men began seeking distinction by ...

In this important essay, Joseph Mali argues that Vico's New Science must be interpreted according to Vico's own clues and rules of interpretation, principally his claim that the 'master-key' of his New Science is the discovery of myth. Following this lead Mali shows how Vico came to forge his new scientific theories about the mythopoeic constitution of consciousness, society, and history by reappraising, or 'rehabilitating' the ancient and primitive mythical traditions which still persist in modern times. He further relates Vico's (...) radical redefinition of these traditions as the 'true narrations' of all religious, social, and political practices in the 'civil world' to his unique historical depiction of Western civilisation as evolving in a-rational and cyclical motions. On this account, Mali elaborates the wider, distinctly 'revisionist', implications of Vico's New Science for the modern human sciences. He argues that inasmuch as the New Science exposed the linguistic and other cultural systems of the modern world as being essentially mythopoeic, it challenges not only the Christian and Enlightenment ideologies of progress in his time, but also the main cultural ideologies of our time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Reconciliation of Myth: Benjamin’s Homage to BachofenJoseph MaliIn the “Tiergarten,” the first chapter of his autobiographical work, Berlin Childhood Around Nineteen-Hundred, Benjamin recalls how, as a child, he experienced the paths, monuments, and people of the park as a “labyrinth” replete with all kinds of mythological figures. Entering the park like a second Theseus following his Ariadne along the thread of erotic sensations, he discovered therein the myth-realm (...) of the ancient gods as transfigured in the bourgeois decorations of the Second Reich, most visibly so in the aristocratic monuments of Friedrich Wilhelm and Queen Louise: “They towered up from their round pedestals among the flower beds as if spellbound by magic curves that a watercourse had inscribed before them in the sand.” 1 As he invoked these primal visions thirty years later, Benjamin realized that they prefigured “the features of what is to come,” that is, he recognized in his early experiential impressions the topical concerns that were to determine his life and works. He then understood that he had been finding signs of “the return of the ancient gods” everywhere:Under their sign the Old West of Berlin was transformed into the West of antiquity, whence the western winds come to the mariners, who navigate their boat with the Hesperidan apples slowly upward the Landwehrkanal, in order to cast anchor near the Herkules Bridge. And yet again, as in my childhood, the Hydra and the Nemean lion found a place in the wild bushes around the big star. 2This chapter may serve as the key to Benjamin’s entire life and works: it reveals what Benjamin himself would have called his “origins.” Benjamin conceived [End Page 165] of origin (Usprung) in genealogical rather than in biological terms, contending that it was not to be found in the moment of intuition but rather in that of recognition. “The term origin is not intended to describe the process by which the existent came into being, but rather to describe that which emerges from the process of becoming and disappearance. Origin is an eddy in the stream of becoming, and in its current it swallows the material involved in the process of genesis.” 3 It occurs, Benjamin continues, when “an idea will constantly confront the historical world, until it is revealed fulfilled, in the totality of its history.” 4 And if, according to Benjamin (quoting Karl Kraus), “origin is the goal” of all philosophical and historical inquiries, then, in Benjamin’s own case, the “origin” must be found in that singular idea by which he had sought to illuminate his historical world. This was an idea which should be “revealed fulfilled, in the totality of its history” in his entire work. In order to find that idea we must concentrate, as it were, on the “eddies” of his life; that is, we must discern his particular current in the intellectual trends of the time and find out how and with what he emerged from it. What, then, were Benjamin’s “origins”? When and where did he recognize what his experiential impressions in the Tiergarten really meant?In his memorial biography, Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship, Gershom Scholem recounts some of the most important of these moments. One of them occurred between 16 and 18 June 1916, while Scholem was visiting Benjamin’s house in Seeshaupt near Munich. Scholem recalls their last and most memorable conversation on that occasion:During a discussion of whether Hegel had wished to deduce the world, we turned to mathematics, philosophy, and myth. Benjamin accepted myth alone as “the world.” He said he was still not sure what the purpose of philosophy was, as there was no need to discover “the meaning of the world”: it was already present in myth. Myth was everything; all else, including mathematics and philosophy, was only an obscuration [Verdunkelung], a glimmer [Schein] that had arisen within it. 5Reflecting on these words, Scholem notes that “Benjamin’s decided turn to the philosophic penetration of myth, which occupied him for so many years, beginning with his study of Hölderlin and probably for the rest of his life, was manifested here for the first... (shrink)

The ArgumentDuring the last two decades the debate on the use and abuse of narrative in historiography has taken a new form: ideological instead of methodological. According to poststructuralist critics, the representation of past events and processes in the form of a coherent story turns history into mythology, which is (or serves) conservative ideology. This is so because the fabrication of organic continuity and unity between the past and the present (as well as the future) of society depicts its most (...) fundamental laws and institutions as divine-natural rather than human creations and thereby renders them impervious to any rational or historical refutation. The main aim of this essay is to reclaim some credibility for narrative history against its critics, both ancient and modern, and on both methodological and ideological grounds, by reappraising the role of myth in the constitution of all norms and forms of life. Setting out from the observation that the narratives and other symbolic interpretations of historical reality in which the people believe are as real as the conditions and events in which they actually live, the author calls upon historians not to eliminate, but to illuminate, myths in history, by showing their extension or configuration of historical reality. (shrink)

Jules Michelet: Vico and the origins of nationalism -- James Joyce: Vico and the origins of modernism -- Erich Auerbach: Vico and the origins of historism -- Isaiah Berlin: Vico and the origins of pluralism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Focusing on The Experience:Exploring Alternative Paths for ResearchEleanor Stubley, Anneli Arho, Päivi Järviö, and Tuomas MaliWriting and speaking are essential means of understanding, studying, and sharing music in the Western art music tradition. As a group of researchers, our story begins with the gap that seemingly exists between theoretical definitions or accounts of music and our experience of it as music makers—that is to say as composers, performers, conductors, (...) and teachers. Poignantly sensitive to the ways in which our musical experience and knowledge is embodied, we found ourselves one day four years ago sitting around an electrically-charged dinner table where ideas, questions, and the joy of having found someone like-minded seemed to be the main entrée. Since then, we have been working as a group, [End Page 39] experimenting with different ways of collaborating, using writing as a means of exploring and sharing our experiences across long distances. At first, the goal was simply to find a common ground, a platform for developing an extended dialogue that would draw on our unique backgrounds and divergent ways of our thinking. But, in the absence of a common language, both linguistic and theoretical, there were problems. We had, for example, to come to understand what each of us meant by the word experience and the role it could play as the ground of research, not as a series of defining moments or events but as the largely invisible flow of human life. We also had to deal with the inter-wovenness of mind and body, individual, and culture, not to mention our individual musical sensitivity and artistry. Confronted by these larger issues, our differences soon became the means to explore gaps or openings that could be entered to reveal the continuous becoming of music and language, the places where they intersect and diverge, and our own being in relationship to both.The papers presented in this symposium were the outgrowth of our dialogue during the summer of 2004. Each of us worked independently, yet each of us was also aware of the direction, the themes, and the ways of the others. The result is kaleidoscopic, each author starting from a different place, but seemingly working from the same palette of colors.Eleanor Stubley writes as a philosopher and conductor. Her work here is part of a larger on-going study that examines the way in which the body fills both language and our experience of music, with a particular focus on the way in which an interest in the body renews our understanding of music, language, and thought. Through a series of inter-connecting meditations inspired by the letter A, she challenges the practice of grounding research and practice in definitions of music as "organized sound." Her writing makes visible the habitual of a variety of educational practices, asking us to think anew about instructional technologies such as the alphabet, scale, and taxonomies of musical form, and to find in what we have traditionally thought of as practices of the mind, the omnipresence of the body. It also offers a new perspective on the hand, not as a tool or muscle to be trained as a skill, but as the very ground from which to develop an aesthetics of music that combines and recognizes the multiple ways in which we know and encounter music, through sight, sound, movement, and touch.Anneli Arho writes as a composer, educator, and philosopher/researcher. She explores the power of working from within the factical situation of a musician making music, focusing in particular on the embodiedness of music, questions of meaningfulness, and the ways in which phenomenological reflection on her own musical experiences has allowed her to move beyond traditional research discourses. Her writing asks us as educators to re-think curricular definitions of [End Page 40] composition, not simply as a collection of skills to be acquired or languages to be learned, but rather as embodied ways of living in and through sound. Using notation as an example, she argues that composing generates its own practical and existential questions distinct from those of listener, performer, and researcher, and which can never be totally shared with others... (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 3, May 2020, Page 362-364.

Synthetic biology is rather a new field of science and technology. Societal, regulatory, legal, ethical, safety and security aspects of this field have already been analysed in much detail and discussed very widely in recent years. There is, however, a dearth of empirical studies on the points of view of relevant stakeholders in countries where SB is still in the process of emergence. Slovenia is one of them, and accordingly, the article analyses the situation of SB in this small country, (...) focusing on the points of view of various stakeholder groups concerning three aspects of SB: the policy framework, the ethical-legal discourse and the issues of biosafety and biosecurity. It is argued that Slovenia has missed many opportunities to foster the domestic development of the field; in particular, considering that at an early stage, young Slovenian researchers participated very successfully in the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition. (shrink)

The ArgumentScience consists in progress by innovation. Scientists, however, are committed to all kinds of traditions that persist or recur in society regardless of intellectual and institutional changes. Merton's thesis about the origins of the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century England offers a sociohistorical confirmation of this revisionist view: the emergence of a highly rational scientific method out of the religious-ethical sentiments of the English Puritans implies that scientific knowledge does indeed grow out of – and not really against – customary (...) modes of thought.In tracing the intellectual origins of this view back to the religious controversy between Protestants and Catholics, the essay demonstrates that the essential conflict between them with regard to natural science stemmed from their antagonistic conceptions of tradition and its function in the production of genuineknowledge– of religious as well as of natural affairs. Whereas the Protestants believed only in those truths that are immediately revealed by God to each man through his reason, the Catholics adhered to truths that are related to men or “made” by them through culture and history. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Theological Convictions Philosophical Assumptions Philological Interpretations Historiographical Implications References Further Reading.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 14.1 (2006) 77-88 [Access article in PDF] Revealing the Habitual: The Teachings of Unconventional Piano-Playing Tuomas Mali Vantaa, Finland Playing Experiences as a Source of Knowledge As a pianist, I know piano-playing from the inside as something I am accustomed to doing. For me, as for every serious pianist, playing is an everyday activity that has become so habitual as to be inseparable from (...) myself. As I am absorbed in piano-playing, I become musical in a way that more or less makes me forget myself. In the tumult of playing there is no objectifying gaze, no clear distinction between subject and object, performer and music; there is just skilful coping with musical tasks and concerns.1 For an experienced pianist the centrality of the lived body is a commonplace: to know piano-playing is to know one's own body in and through playing as one cultivates a "pianistic" way of existing. This calls for daily training.2 Although it is not always this obvious, the lived body is important to all knowing. Through regular practicing and performing I know piano-playing in the same direct way as we all know the world in and through living "in" it as human bodies, in and through our everyday coping, our "dealings" in the world.3 Juha Varto, the Finnish phenomenologist, uses the word "inspective" to describe this way of knowing, in a sense that emphasizes active bodily being-in-the-world.4 [End Page 77]To reflect on piano-playing, in contrast, requires one to distance oneself from playing, to adopt a perspective that is not present in the playing itself. The relationship between the knower and the world is now different. Here, Varto uses the word "perspective" as an adjective to designate this way of knowing. He illuminates the difference between "inspective" and "perspective" knowing with the image of a burning stake: the spectators certainly know that the stake is hot and that it kills, but the smell of one's own burning flesh makes it clear and certain in a radically different way without intermediary thought.5 Reflection makes it possible to "observe" piano-playing, to see it "in perspective," as part of a larger, ordered, cultural reality, as part of a considered "view" or "theory." When devoting oneself to reflection, it is typical to characterize the activity of playing as objective, as something that lies outside the lived experience of the body. But—and this is often deliberately ignored—a view or a theory arrived at through observation is also irrevocably bound to the embodied existence of the observer, even if the view often seems to be more or less a product of thought alone.While the distinction between concerned coping ("inspective" knowing) and reflective viewing ("perspective" knowing) is important, it should be kept in mind that in human life they are always interwoven. There is no way to eliminate one of them, no way to choose only one or the other. Rather, we are constantly negotiating between the "inspective" and "perspective," dealing on the one hand with our situated bodily experience and on the other hand with our recognition of a larger cultural perspective.Historically, valued knowledge about music-making has often been framed around a conception of reflection as detached, disinterested inquiry which as pure contemplation, has nothing to do with the lived body of the knower. A particular discourse or a quest for definition has often served as starting points for research—starting points that seemingly rule out the relevance of bodily experiences. However, it seems to me that there is no way to cut the link between knowing and experiencing; differences on the level of the lived body are often crucial for knowledge. For example, the difference in the experiential basis often results in a gap between the knowledge of a "maker" and that of a "viewer." When music is known mostly through making it, knowledge gained through observation often seems to miss what is essential, to distort and misinterpret the musical practice. This gap, and... (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 3-4, May - June 2019, Page 462-464.