El siguiente texto intenta abordar la relación existente entre los procesos de globalización-mundialización y ciertas concepciones de historia que le son solidarias. Para lo anterior apela a las reflexiones realizadas por Marc Abélès en Política de la supervivencia y Michael Hardt y Antonio Negri en Imperio. En ambos análisis se puede percibir la importancia que tiene la historia como soporte de los procesos globales que entremezclan lo político, lo económico y lo cultural, procesos que parecen avanzar, según el curso (...) de la historia, y que permiten además dar referencia de sentido a los sujetos en sus procesos identitarios y de individuación. The following text tries to approach the relation between the globalization-mondialisation process and certain conceptions of history witch are solidary with them. For the previous thing, it appeals to the reflections realized by Marc Abélès in Politics of the survival and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire. In both analyses it is possible to perceive the importance that takes the history as a support of the global processes that intermingle the politics, the economy and culture, processes that seem to advance according to the course that history has, and they allow to give in addition reference of sense to the subjects in his processes of identity and of individuation. (shrink)

Our ability to acknowledge and recognise our own identity - our 'self' - is a characteristic doubtless unique to humans. Where does this feeling come from? How does the combination of neurophysiological processes coupled with our interaction with the outside world construct this coherent identity? We know that our social interactions contribute via the eyes, ears etc. However, our self is not only influenced by our senses. It is also influenced by the actions we perform and those we see others (...) perform. Our brain anticipates the effects of our own actions and simulates the actions of others. In this way, we become able to understand ourselves and to understand the actions and emotions of others. -/- This book is the first to describe the new field of 'Motor Cognition' - one to which the author's contribution has been seminal. Though motor actions have long been studied by neuroscientists and physiologists, it is only recently that scientists have considered the role of actions in building the self. How consciousness of action is part of self-consciousness, how one's own actions determine the sense of being an agent, how actions performed by others impact on ourselves for understanding others, differentiating ourselves from them and learning from them: these questions are raised and discussed throughout the book, drawing on experimental, clinical, and theoretical bases. -/- The advent of new neuroscience techniques, like neuroimaging and direct electrical brain stimulation, together with a renewal of behavioral methods in cognitive psychology, provide new insights into this area. Mental imagery of action, self-recognition, consciousness of actions, imitation can be objectively studied using these new tools. The results of these investigations shed light on clinical disorders in neurology, psychiatry and in neuro-development. -/- This is a major new work that will lay down the foundations for the field of motor cognition. (shrink)

This paper concerns how motor actions are neurally represented and coded. Action planning and motor preparation can be studied using a specific type of representational activity, motor imagery. A close functional equivalence between motor imagery and motor preparation is suggested by the positive effects of imagining movements on motor learning, the similarity between the neural structures involved, and the similar physiological correlates observed in both imaging and preparing. The content of motor representations can be inferred from motor images at a (...) macroscopic level, based on global aspects of the action and the motor rules and constraints which predict the spatial path and kinematics of movements. A more microscopic neural account calls for a representation of object-oriented action. Object attributes are processed in different neural pathways depending on the kind of task the subject is performing. During object-oriented action, a pragmatic representation is activated in which object affordances are transformed into specific motor schemas. Animal as well as human clinical data implicate the posterior parietal and premotor cortical areas in schema instantiation. A mechanism is proposed that is able to encode the desired goal of the action and is applicable to different levels of representational organization. (shrink)

Sam Harris (2010) argues that, given our neurology, we can experience well-being, and that seeking to maximize this state lets us distinguish the good from the bad. He takes our ability to compare degrees of well-being as his starting point, but I think that the analysis can be pushed further, since there is a (non-religious) reason why well-being is desirable, namely the finite life of an individual organism. It is because death is a constant possibility that things can be assessed (...) as “for” or “against” one (Champagne 2011a; Smith 2000). Such an account lets us objectively adjudicate moral questions, as Harris desires. However, by anchoring itself in the mortal body as a whole and not just the brain, such an account dampens the claim that neuroscience would have all the answers. Moreover, it pivots on an affirmation of one’s life that can seem mysterious by regular scientific standards. This chapter thus explains why the trade-off is worthwhile. (shrink)

Some have suggested that images can be arguments. Images can certainly bolster the acceptability of individual premises. We worry, though, that the static nature of images prevents them from ever playing a genuinely argumentative role. To show this, we call attention to a dilemma. The conclusion of a visual argument will either be explicit or implicit. If a visual argument includes its conclusion, then that conclusion must be demarcated from the premise or otherwise the argument will beg the question. If (...) a visual argument does not include its conclusion, then the premises on display must license that specific conclusion and not its opposite, in accordance with some demonstrable rationale. We show how major examples from the literature fail to escape this dilemma. Drawing inspiration from the graphical logic of C. S. Peirce, we suggest instead that images can be manipulated in a way that overcomes the dilemma. Diagrammatic reasoning can take one stepwise from an initial visual layout to a conclusion—thereby providing a principled rationale that bars opposite conclusions—and the visual inscription of this correct conclusion can come afterward in time—thereby distinguishing the conclusion from the premises. Even though this practical application of Peirce’s logical ideas to informal contexts requires that one make adjustments, we believe it points to a dynamic conception of visual argumentation that will prove more fertile in the long run. (shrink)

Historians occasionally use timelines, but many seem to regard such signs merely as ways of visually summarizing results that are presumably better expressed in prose. Challenging this language-centered view, I suggest that timelines might assist the generation of novel historical insights. To show this, I begin by looking at studies confirming the cognitive benefits of diagrams like timelines. I then try to survey the remarkable diversity of timelines by analyzing actual examples. Finally, having conveyed this (mostly untapped) potential, I argue (...) that neglecting timelines might mean neglecting significant aspects of reality that are revealed only by those signs. My overall message is that once we accept that relations are as important for the mind as what they relate, we have to pay closer attention to any semiotic device that enables or facilitates the discernment of new relations. (shrink)

According to the two visual systems model, the visual processing of objects divides into semantic and pragmatic processing. We provide various criteria for this distinction. Further, we argue that both the semantic and pragmatic processing of visual information about objects should be divided into low-level processing and high-level processing. Finally, we re-evaluate the contribution of the human parietal lobe to the concious visual perception of spatial relations among objects.

Deleuze's readings of Hume, Spinoza, Bergson and Nietzsche respond to philosophical critiques of classical and modern empiricism. However, Deleuze's arguments against those critiques - by Kant, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger - consolidate the philosophy of immanence that can be called 'transcendental empiricism'. Marc Rolli offers us a detailed examination of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of transcendental empiricism. He demonstrates that Deleuze takes up and radicalises the empiricist school of thought developing a systematic alternative to the mainstreams of modern continental philosophy.

Sober 2011 argues that, contrary to Hume, some causal statements can be known a priori to be true—notably, some ‘would promote’ statements figuring in causal models of natural selection. We find Sober's argument unconvincing. We regard the Humean thesis as denying that causal explanations contain any a priori knowable statements specifying certain features of events to be causally relevant. We argue that not every ‘would promote’ statement is genuinely causal, and we suggest that Sober has not shown that his examples (...) of ‘would promote’ statements manage to achieve a priori status without sacrificing their causal character. (shrink)

Jordan Peterson has attracted a high level of attention. Controversies may bring people into contact with Peterson's work, but ideas are arguably what keep them there. Focusing on those ideas, this book explores Peterson’s answers to perennial questions. What is common to all humans, regardless of their background? Is complete knowledge ever possible? What would constitute a meaningful life? Why have humans evolved the capacity for intelligence? Should one treat others as individuals or as members of a group? Is a (...) single person powerless in the face of evil? What is the relation between speech, thought, and action? Why have religious myths and narratives figured so prominently in human history? Are the hierarchies we find in society good or bad? After devoting a chapter to each of these questions, Champagne unites the different strands of Peterson’s thinking in a handy summary. Champagne then spends the remaining third of the book articulating his main critical concerns. He argues that while building on tradition is inevitable and indeed desirable, Peterson’s individualist project is hindered by the non-revisable character and self-sacrificial content of religious belief. This engaging multidisciplinary study is ideal for those who know little about Peterson’s views, or for those who are familiar but want to see more clearly how Peterson’s views hang together. The debates spearheaded by Peterson are in full swing, so Myth, Meaning, and Antifragile Individualism should become a reference point for any serious engagement with Peterson’s ideas. (shrink)

Generative artificial intelligence systems based on transformers, including both text-generators like GPT-4 and image generators like DALL-E 3, have recently entered the popular consciousness. These tools, while impressive, are liable to reproduce, exacerbate, and reinforce extant human social biases, such as gender and racial biases. In this paper, we systematically review the extent to which DALL-E Mini suffers from this problem. In line with the Model Card published alongside DALL-E Mini by its creators, we find that the images it produces (...) tend to represent dozens of different occupations as populated either solely by men (e.g., pilot, builder, plumber) or solely by women (e.g., hairdresser, receptionist, dietitian). In addition, the images DALL-E Mini produces tend to represent most occupations as populated primarily or solely by White people (e.g., farmer, painter, prison officer, software engineer) and very few by non-White people (e.g., pastor, rapper). These findings suggest that exciting new AI technologies should be critically scrutinized and perhaps regulated before they are unleashed on society. (shrink)

Funding is an important mechanism for exercising influence over ever more parts of academic systems. In order to do so, funding agencies attempt to export their functional and normative prerequisites for financing to new fields. One essential requirement for fundees is then to construct research processes in the form of a project beforehand, one that is limited in time, scope and content. This article demonstrates how the public funding of doctoral programs expands this model of project research from experienced academics (...) to the socialization process for the new academic generation. This process of “projectification” underlies funding-driven institutional changes in doctoral training. A multi-level comparative study of German policies, funding mechanisms and organizational frameworks for doctoral training demonstrates the emergence of a specific model of predefined PhD projects. The investigation of doctoral training practices reveals that socio-epistemic preconditions regulate whether research fields adopted or rejected this demanding model. This result contradicts widespread claims about a radical change in doctoral training and suggests focusing on the actual practices of field-specific doctoral research. (shrink)

Our model integrates the nativist assumption of prespecified neural structures underpinning basic emotions with the constructionist view that emotions are assembled from psychological constituents. From a dynamic systems perspective, the nervous system self-organizes in different ways at different time scales, in relation to functions served by emotions. At the evolutionary scale, brain parts and their connections are specified by selective pressures. At the scale of development, connectivity is revised through synaptic shaping. At the scale of real time, temporary networks of (...) synchronized activity mediate responses to situations. To the degree that humans share common emotional functions, neural structuration is similar across scales, giving rise to “basic” emotions. However, unique developmental and situational factors select for neural configurations mediating emotional variants. (shrink)

C. S. Peirce introduced the term “icon” for sign-vehicles that signify their objects in virtue of some shared quality. This qualitative kinship, however, threatens to collapse the relata of the sign into one and the same thing. Accordingly, the late medieval philosopher of signs John Poinsot held that, “no matter how perfect, a concept [...] always retains a distinction, therefore, between the thing signified and itself signifying.” Poinsot is touted by his present-day advocates as a realist, but I believe that, (...) judged by realist standards, his requirement of minimal dissimilarity backfires. Poinsot thinks that, in analyzing the sign, we should stop before a full merger between sign-vehicle and object is reached. Peirce, by contrast, saw good reason to push the analysis all the way down to one isolated quality. Because such a qualitative merger can lend support to realism, I favour Peirce’s stance. (shrink)

Jordan Peterson gave a series of lectures on the Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories. His first lecture lasted two hours. In that time, Peterson managed to cover only a single line from the Bible. This lopsided gloss-to-text ratio, I argue, entails that the rational explanations actually do all the work while the Bible is dispensable.

In Natural propositions (2014), Stjernfelt contends that the interpretation of a proposition or dicisign requires the joint action of two kinds of signs. A proposition must contain a sign that conveys a general quality. This function can be served by a similarity-based icon or code-based symbol. In addition, a proposition must situate or apply this general quality, so that the predication can become liable of being true or false. This function is served by an index. Stjernfelt rightly considers the co-localization (...) of these two parts to be a primitive phenomenon. Although this primitive character would seem to bar any further analysis, I endeavor to clarify the degree of proximity sufficient to enable co-localization. Siding with Pietarinen (2014), who argues that the whole issue should not be construed in metric terms, I conclude that one cannot make sense of propositional co-localization without appealing to some form of first-person perspective. (shrink)

This paper describes how bodily positions and gestures were used to teach argument diagramming to a student who cannot see. After listening to short argumentative passages with a screen reader, the student had to state the conclusion while touching his belly button. When stating a premise, he had to touch one of his shoulders. Premises lending independent support to a conclusion were thus diagrammed by a V-shaped gesture, each shoulder proposition going straight to the conclusion. Premises lending dependent support were (...) diagrammed by a T-shaped gesture, the shoulder premises meeting at the collar bone before moving down to the belly button. Arguments involving two pairs of entailments were diagrammed by an I-shaped gesture, going from the collar bone to a mid-way conclusion above the abdomen before travelling to the final conclusion at the belly button. The student’s strong performance suggests that placing propositions at different locations on the body and uniting them with gestures can help one discern correct argumentative structures. (shrink)

Counterfactuals all the way down? Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9437-9 Authors Jim Woodward, History and Philosophy of Science, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA Barry Loewer, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA John W. Carroll, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8103, USA Marc Lange, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB#3125—Caldwell Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3125, USA Journal Metascience (...) Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796 Journal Volume Volume 20 Journal Issue Volume 20, Number 1. (shrink)

Teleological Theories of mental representation are probably the most promising naturalistic accounts of intentionality. However, it is widely known that these theories suffer from a major objection: the Indeterminacy Problem. The most common reply to this problem employs the Target of Selection Argument, which is based on Sober’s distinction between selection for and selection of . Unfortunately, some years ago the Target of Selection Argument came into serious attack in a famous paper by Goode and Griffiths. Since then, the question (...) of the validity of the Target of Selection Argument in the context of the Indeterminacy Problem has remained largely untouched. In this essay, I argue that both the Target of Selection Argument and Goode and Griffiths’ criticisms to it misuse Sober’s analysis in important respects. (shrink)

C. S. Peirce is often credited as a forerunner of the verificationist theory of meaning. In his early pragmatist papers, Peirce did say that if we want to make our ideas clear(er), then we should look downstream to their actual and future effects. For many who work in philosophy of mind, this is enough to endorse functionalism and dismiss the whole topic of qualia. It complexifies matters, however, to consider that the term qualia was introduced by the founder of pragmatism (...) himself. Peirce was adamant that only triadic relations can support language and cognition. Even so, he insisted on purely logical grounds that, when we analyze triadic signs all the way, we are left with a qualitative residue he called Firstness. Such an isolated relatum could never be studied experimentally. Yet, given that this primitive state can be confirmed by means of a formal or prescissive distinction, I believe the Peircean account can do justice to many of the intuitions that generate the so-called hard problem of consciousness. My goal, then, is to show that Peirce's semiotic commitment to qualia is compatible with his foundational statements about pragmatism. (shrink)

Throughout his mature writings, Berkeley speaks of minds as substances that underlie or support ideas. After initially flirting with a Humean account, according to which minds are nothing but ‘congeries of Perceptions’, Berkeley went on to claim that a mind is a ‘perceiving, active being … entirely distinct’ from its ideas. Despite his immaterialism, Berkeley retains the traditional category of substance and gives it pride of place in his ontology. Ideas, by contrast, are ‘fleeting and dependent beings’ that must be (...) supported by a mental substance. There is no doubt that Berkeley's conception of the relationship between minds and ideas is non-traditional, but that fact does not undercut his commitment to the traditional conception of substance. (shrink)

Deliberation is often seen as the site of human freedom, but the binding power of rationality seems to imply that deliberation is, in its own way, a deterministic process. If one knows the starting preferences and circumstances of an agent, then, assuming that the agent is rational and that those preferences and circumstances don’t change, one should be in a position to predict what the agent will decide. However, given that an agent could conceivably confront equally attractive alternatives, it is (...) an open question whether rational choice theory can ever eliminate indeterminacy. The clearest support for such a limitation comes from the “Buridan’s ass” scenario, where an agent is confronted with two (or more) equally attractive/unattractive options. Does rationality by itself have the resources needed to prevent such paralysis of action? Those who cannot accept the idea of decisional impotence devise various ways to avoid it: postulating a neutral valence, tipping the utilities, positing sub-personal influences, and bunching the options. I argue that each of these responses is either unwarranted or flawed. All parties to the debate agree that, factually, paralysis of action is not a pervasive phenomenon. This is either because (i) the utilities one assigns to two or more options can never be balanced or because (ii) thanks to some non-rational faculty (say, the will), we would not be stuck even if those utilities were perfectly counterpoised. By looking critically at four untenable responses, I aim to show that (i) is often just a dogma and (ii) is by no means a silly position. (shrink)

Here I briefly discuss some comparative data on social play behaviour in hope of broadening the array of species in which researchers attempt to study animal morality. I am specifically concerned with the notion of ‘behaving fairly'. In the term ‘behaving fairly’ I use as a working guide the notion that animals often have social expectations when they engage in various sorts of social encounters the violation of which constitutes being treated unfairly because of a lapse in social etiquette. I (...) will cash this out below in my discussion of social play behaviour. (shrink)

I have two concerns about Pugh et al ’s case that vaccine requirements without a natural immunity exception are unjustified.1 First, the scientific question they suggest must be answered to justify the policy is in my view the wrong one, or at least not the only relevant one. Second, the authors set up a standard for public health regulation that will be often unattainable, risking paralysis of public health authorities. Pugh et al suggest two legitimate bases for vaccine mandates: ‘the (...) prevention of severe outcomes from COVID-19 and the reduction of viral transmission.’ Governments and employers have a legitimate interest in protecting the health of their citizens and workers, respectively. To maximally accomplish these goals, the relevant scientific question for whether people with prior infection should be subject to a vaccine mandate is: in persons who have been previously infected, does vaccination enhances protection against severe disease and/or infection and transmission? The relevant comparison, if one is trying to maximise protection in the population, is not vaccination vs prior infection, but vs prior infection alone. I am unaware of a systematic review of this question, but the answer in two recent studies appears to be that the combination is more protective.2,3 The comparison the authors propose, in contrast, seems to be one based on an unstated conception of fairness and adequacy: if vaccination alone provides some level of protection, and prior infection can’t be shown to provide an inferior level, then prior infection should be an acceptable alternative to vaccination to satisfy mandates. No argument is given to support the greater relevance of the comparison the authors emphasise. A second and independent concern is that the authors’ proposal …. (shrink)

Ayn Rand and Immanuel Kant had profound disagreements, not just about the possible scope of knowledge, but (more importantly) about the possible scope of philosophy, especially metaphysics. This paper explores those disagreements, steel-manning both sides. My conclusion is that 1) both thinkers have worthwhile points to make, yet 2) Rand is guilty of poor scholarship while 3) Kant is guilty of appeal to ignorance. Despite the fallacious nature of (3), I stress that ignorance is not by itself something that philosophers (...) committed to objectivity should panic about. (shrink)

In Bayes or Bust?, John Earman attempts to express in Bayesian terms a sense of "projectibility" in which it is logically impossible for "All emeralds are green" and "All emeralds are grue" simultaneously to be projectible. I argue that Earman overlooks an important sense in which these two hypotheses cannot both be projectible. This sense is important because it allows projectibility to be connected to lawlikeness, as Goodman intended. Whether this connection suggests a way to resolve Goodman's famous riddle remains (...) unsettled, awaiting an account of lawlikeness. I explore one line of thought that might prove illuminating. (shrink)

In his 1927 Analysis of Matter and elsewhere, Russell argued that we can successfully infer the structure of the external world from that of our explanatory schemes. While nothing guarantees that the intrinsic qualities of experiences are shared by their objects, he held that the relations tying together those relata perforce mirror relations that actually obtain (these being expressible in the formal idiom of the Principia Mathematica). This claim was subsequently criticized by the Cambridge mathematician Max Newman as true but (...) trivial, insofar as from a closed body of observations (or “Ramsey sentence”) one can always generate other equally-satisfactory networks of relations, provided they respect the original set’s cardinality. Since any model thus generated will be empirically adequate, “[t]he defence is therefore driven back from the fairly safe fictitious-real classification to the much less tenable ‘trivial’ and ‘important’” (Newman 1928). Given the definitional rigour afforded by the initial appeal to isomorphism (via one-to-one correspondences in extension), the received assessment, shared by Russell himself, is that retreating to a pragmatic adjudication would betoken a fatal blow. However, I suggest that reliance on “importance” can be avoided if we incorporate an impersonal criterion of diachronic precedence. When collecting observations, an ordinality emerges alongside the cardinality which gives that underived structure an irrevocable epistemological privilege. Hence, I argue that, all other things being equal, any construct parasitic on an antecedent theory ought to be regarded as inferior/dispensable, since it was generated by an algorithm lacking the world-involving pedigree of its host structure. (shrink)

Selectional preferences have a long history in both generative and computational linguistics. However, since the publication of Resnik's dissertation in 1993, a new approach has surfaced in the computational linguistics community. This new line of research combines knowledge represented in a pre‐defined semantic class hierarchy with statistical tools including information theory, statistical modeling, and Bayesian inference. These tools are used to learn selectional preferences from examples in a corpus. Instead of simple sets of semantic classes, selectional preferences are viewed as (...) probability distributions over various entities. We survey research that extends Resnik's initial work, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, and show how they together form a cohesive line of research. (shrink)

Freedom and compassion in the anthropocene -- Can science save animals? -- Who we eat -- Fat rats and lab cats -- Charismatic, caged, and occasionally crazy: zooed animals -- Captive and companion -- Born to be wild? -- Coexistence in the anthropocene and beyond: compassion and justice for all.

The human relationship to nature is a deeply ambiguous one. Human animals are both a part of nature and distinct from it. They are part of nature in the sense that, like other forms of life, they were brought into existence by natural processes, and, like other forms of life, they are dependent on their environment for survival and success. Yet humans are also reflective animals with sophisticated cultural systems. Because of their immense power and their ability to wield it (...) intentionally, humans have duties and responsibilities that other animals do not. (shrink)

Although I reject neuronormativity -- an idea central to the Brain Disease Model of Addiction -- Henden and Gjelsvik argue that the disease definition might refer to normativity in nonneural domains. They profess that a cognitive dysfunction, or a mismatch of evolutionary intentions, could also qualify as norm violations, thus legitimizing the disease label. The need for dividing lines is questioned as well. I rebut these criticisms in turn, but I must admit they are thought provoking.

Wakefield doesn't mind my focus on parallels between addiction and love. But love can fall outside the bounds of what evolution intended. So, he claims, comparing addiction with love does not preclude a naturally defined "disorder." I counter with the argument that evolution handed us such highly general response systems, the bounds of normality cannot be defined.

In an effort to carve a distinct place for social facts without lapsing into a holistic ontology, John Greenwood has sought to define social phenomena solely in terms of the attitudes held by the actor in question. I argue that his proposal allows for the possibility of a “lone collectivity” that is unpalatable in its own right and incompatible with the claim that sociology is autonomous from psychology. As such, I conclude that the relevant beliefs need to be held by (...) more than one person. (shrink)

The article « La Défenestration » by Belgian philosopher Marc Richir has been translated into Russian for the first time for this issue of the “Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology.” In his early work “The Defenestration” Richir raises the question of relation between the subject and conceivable world. Here, a philosopher is pictured contemplating the world through the window of his tower. In such detachment from the world the thinker finds himself according to all Modern philosophies of consciousness. Husserl’s phenomenology (...) inherits this detachment, since Husserl imposes the structure of transcendental ego as external to the world. Richir abolishes the concept of transcendental ego with the help of heideggerian Dasein, but analyzing Heidegger’s ontology he comes to the conclusion that the latter remains fixated on beings. Believing a person to live in the fundamental openness of Being, Heidegger places such a person in the secondary world of “truth.” In order to overcome the remains of traditional philosophy in Heidegger’s ontology Richir turns to Merleau-Ponty’ “cosmology of the visible.” The author takes the Merleau-Ponty’s thesis that everything visible has something fundamentally invisible in it. This allows him to discover the universe of “nothing”, which includes both the visible and what is “behind” it. As a result Richir overcomes the classical dualism of the sensual and the intelligible. The concept of defenestration places the subject and the world in the same universe. (shrink)

This paper addresses the tactical question of how we ought to proceed in teachingbusiness ethics, taking as a starting point that business ethics should be concerned with cooperative,mutually beneficial outcomes, and in particular with fostering behavior that contributes to thoseoutcomes. This paper suggests that focus on moral reasoning as a tactical outcome—as a way ofachieving behavior in support of cooperative outcomes—is misplaced. Instead, we ought to focuson cultivating empathetic experiences. Intuitively, the problem we need to address in business ethicsis not (...) that our students (and that we ourselves) sometimes reason poorly, or that moral decisionmakingis subject to characteristic kinds of errors. The problem is that our students (and—again—we ourselves) do not always care enough, we do not modify our behavior consistently enough. (shrink)

Joseph Heath states that our paper “misinterpret[s]” and so misrepresents his account. The present Commentary corrects the record. Our paper (Cohen and Peterson 2019) outlined Heath’s account on his own terms; it explained that Heath distances himself from consequentialism. But then we argued that Heath is mistaken and so offered a repaired version of the market failures approach. Our central concern, in the original paper and in this short Commentary, is showing that the economic argument for markets is at the (...) same time ethical, and then being more precise about the ethical consideration that does the work. (shrink)

The risks associated with the techniques of medically assisted procreation (MAP) rapidly became well-known, and in such a short space of time that no biomedical domain remained untouched by the great deal of thinking and the expression of a multitude of opinions it provoked. MAP is evolving between two poles: quality/misuse (even violation) and evidence/fantasy. The ethics will be evoked in the clinical reality from which they spring and where their justification lies. The three objects common to these ethics, the (...) oocyte, the embryo and the child, are illustrated in this context. MAP has as its corollary access to the oocyte, the fertilization of which will take place in vitro. Access to the embryo, on the other hand, enables the clinician, for the purposes of diagnosis [preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), predictive medicine], or even soon for therapeutic purposes (gene therapy) to draw close to a boundary, to trespass beyond which may be seen by humanity to threaten its very origins and integrity: the alienation of the human genome. For the infertile couple, the missing child may take on a dimension of which they would have been unaware, had they not been forced to express their desire. The burden of the imaginary child may, in this way, become a heavier load to bear when, after such desire, he comes into being. MAP puts the goal of normalisation within reach and, in doing so, accentuates the risk of the burden of the attributed representation of the child. On the one hand, MAP offers a tremendous diagnostic and therapeutic potential, while on the other it opens the door to excess and delirium. In this melting pot, ethics, catalysed by this new source of problematics, has discovered a favourite area in which to define and redefine itself. We propose the intervention of ethics on three different levels. Before the elaboration of the law: on first reflection, ethics may influence the responsibilities of the legislator, by taking care that the law does not obscure the biomedical and socioeconomic contexts of MAP and, thereby, also include other related and complementary aspects dealing with the same subject. The secondary discussion of ethics should influence the application of legal protection, by taking into account the rapid technological and social development of MAP, there too, by discussing the whole, rather than the details which will obscure the object. The ethical reflection of the clinician, who is aware of these difficulties, is guided by elements that are specific to his position as a doctor. The cohesion of the team around the clinician and the ethics specialist enables us to develop consensual clinical ethics that are transmissible and therefore teachable. This complex role can, in our view, only be acted out directly in the clinical situation, where the constant, direct relationship with the object of the reflection and the treatment allows ethics to take into account the contingencies of medical practice: we invite the ethics specialist to take part in our clinical activity on a daily basis. (shrink)

Social media has become a basis for helping us maintain human contact, especially as our alienation from our phenomenological experiences of ‘being human’ is becoming apparent due to the pandemic. I argue for how existentialist philosophy is crucial, more than ever, to interrogate our social media usage, which is a ‘necessary evil’ in our daily lives. Firstly, Kierkegaard’s critiques of the crowd and of the press are equally applicable to social media, which plays both roles: enabling an anonymous mass of (...) public opinion and doubling-up as an information source, reducing responsibility on the individual. Secondly, social media leads to an intrinsic pressure to objectify one's self (as portrayed) due to the possibility of an omnipresent Other, based on the technological design of networks. I will link my arguments on social media to other existential ideals and will conclude by suggesting changes that may promote existential ideals in one’s social media portrayal and engagement. (shrink)