Firstly, this paper aims to analyze how verbal and visual modes contribute to build two basic components of cartoons: the referenced situation and the fictional situation. Secondly, it aims to unravel the semiotics of this discursive genre by offering a fine-grained picture of modal variations and continuities of the rhetorical resources deployed, by means of which the fictional situation is displayed. The corpus is composed of 50 multimodal cartoons chosen by cartoonists of 22 nationalities as the most representative of their (...) work in the frame of a wide questionnaire. Category analysis and non-parametric statistics were applied. We identified and fleshed out four different types of modal functioning of resources: visual preference, verbal preference, modal flexibility, and genuine multimodal functioning. Even if visual and multimodal metaphor were often in charge of transferring meaning from fiction to the referenced situation, results show that other resources such as antithesis, irony, and syllepsis can become the key resources of cartoons. Findings highlight the multilayered functioning of cartoons, among which plastic features can play a significant role, and provide further evidence in favor of the hyperdetermination of humor hypothesis proposed by Attardo. (shrink)

Scheuer guides us through the moral and conceptual heart of the liberal education ideal.

Learning to argue in a computer-mediated and structured fashion is investigated in this research. A study was conducted to compare dyads that were scripted in their computer-mediated collaboration with dyads that were not scripted. A process analysis of the chats of the dyads showed that the scripted experimental group used significantly more words, engaged in significantly more broadening and deepening of the discussion, and appeared to engage in more critical and objective argumentation than the non-scripted control group.

The term “critical thinking” is barely a century old; and it is controversial, fraught with ambiguity, and often treated as an academic orphan, condemned to the margins of scholarly culture. Despite its “royal” ancestry, as the embodiment of rationality inherited from Ancient Greece, it has come to represent an isolated and sectarian field of inquiry. But philosophers would be wise to take due credit for their offspring rather than shun or disavow critical thinking; and other scholars should recognize it as (...) their shared legacy from philosophy, and the embodiment of intellectual rigor. (shrink)

Structural gaslighting arises when conceptual work functions to obscure the non-accidental connections between structures of oppression and the patterns of harm they produce and license. This paper examines the role that structural gaslighting plays in white feminist methodology and epistemology using Fricker’s (2007) discussion of hermeneutical injustice as an illustration. Fricker’s work produces structural gaslighting through several methods: i) the outright denial of the role that structural oppression plays in producing interpretive harm, ii) the use of single-axis conceptual resources to (...) understand intersectional oppression, and iii) the failure to recognize the legacy of women of color’s epistemic resistance work surrounding the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. I argue that Fricker’s whitewashed discussion of epistemic resistance to sexual harassment in the United States is a form of structural gaslighting that fails to treat women of color as knowers and exemplifies the strategic forgetting that is a central methodological tactic of white feminism. (shrink)

Książka zawiera wybrane teksty najważniejszych myślicieli zaliczanych do dwóch najbardziej znaczących kierunków neokantowskich, a mianowicie do szkoły badeńskiej i szkoły marburskiej. Szkoły te wyłoniły się w konsekwencji podziałów, jakie dokonywały się w ramach neokantyzmu, niezwykle złożonego kierunku filozoficznego drugiej połowy XIX wieku i początków wieku XX. Mówienie o neokantyzmie jest złożone, gdyż nie można podać ani daty jego powstania, ani też daty zakończenia, co przysparza wielu kłopotów z jego historycznym określeniem. Pomijając wszelkie trudności klasyfikacyjne, antologia ogranicza się do zaprezentowania poglądów (...) dwóch najważniejszych szkół. Poglądy szkoły badeńskiej ukazują teksty Wilhelma Windelbanda i Heinricha Rickerta, Emila Laska i Brunona Baucha. Natomiast poglądy szkoły marburskiej prezentują teksty Hermanna Cohena i Paula Natorpa oraz ich najwybitniejszych uczniów, tzn. Ernsta Cassirera i Nicolaia Hartmanna. Autorzy żywią przekonanie, że zamieszczone teksty są najbardziej reprezentatywne dla neokantyzmu prezentowanych szkół. (shrink)

: Computer-mediated environments provide an arena for learning to argue. We investigate to what extent student dyads’ online argumentation can be facilitated with collaboration scripts that prompt learners to prepare individually, create conflict, and encourage productive collaboration and argumentation. A process analysis of the chats of the dyads showed that the scripted treatment group used significantly more words and broadened and deepened their discussions significantly more than the unscripted group. Qualitative analysis indicates that scripted learners engaged in more critical and (...) objective argumentation than non-scripted learners. (shrink)

Epistemic exploitation occurs when privileged persons compel marginalized persons to educate them about the nature of their oppression. I argue that epistemic exploitation is marked by unrecognized, uncompensated, emotionally taxing, coerced epistemic labor. The coercive and exploitative aspects of the phenomenon are exemplified by the unpaid nature of the educational labor and its associated opportunity costs, the double bind that marginalized persons must navigate when faced with the demand to educate, and the need for additional labor created by the default (...) skepticism of the privileged. I explore the connections between epistemic exploitation and the two varieties of epistemic injustice that Fricker (2007) identifies, testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. I situate epistemic exploitation within Dotson’s (2012; 2014) framework of epistemic oppression, and I address the role that epistemic exploitation plays in maintaining active ignorance and upholding dominant epistemic frameworks. (shrink)

In _Sprachphilosophie in der islamischen Rechtstheorie_ untersucht Nora Kalbarczyk, wie Faḫr ad-dīn ar-Rāzī auf der Grundlage von Ibn Sīnās Klassifikation der Bezeichnung ein hermeneutisches Instrumentarium entwickelt, das im Kontext der islamischen Rechtstheorie fruchtbar gemacht wird. In _Sprachphilosophie in der islamischen Rechtstheorie_ Nora Kalbarczyk examines how Faḫr ad-dīn ar-Rāzī develops – on the basis of Ibn Sīnā’s theory of signification – a hermeneutic toolbox which is also useful in the context of Islamic legal theory.

There is good reason to believe that scientific realism requires a commitment to the objective modal structure of the physical world. Causality, equilibrium, laws of nature, and probability all feature prominently in scientific theory and explanation, and each one is a modal notion. If we are committed to the content of our best scientific theories, we must accept the modal nature of the physical world. But what does the scientific realist’s commitment to physical modality require? We consider whether scientific realism (...) is compatible with Humeanism about the laws of nature, and we conclude that it is not. We specifically identify three major problems for the best-systems account of lawhood: its central concept of strength cannot be formulated non-circularly, it cannot offer a satisfactory account of the laws of the special sciences, and it can offer no explanation of the success of inductive inference. In addition, Humeanism fails to be naturalistically motivated. For these reasons, we conclude that the scientific realist must embrace natural necessity. (shrink)

Causal structuralism is the view that, for each natural, non-mathematical, non-Cambridge property, there is a causal profile that exhausts its individual essence. On this view, having a property’s causal profile is both necessary and sufficient for being that property. It is generally contrasted with the Humean or quidditistic view of properties, which states that having a property’s causal profile is neither necessary nor sufficient for being that property, and with the double-aspect view, which states that causal profile is necessary but (...) not sufficient. Shoemaker’s (1998) and Hawthorne’s (2001) arguments in favor of causal structuralism primarily focus on problematic consequences of the other two views. I argue, however, that causation does not provide an appropriate framework within which to characterize all physical properties for two main reasons. First, there are physical properties that do not have causal profiles and properties whose causal profiles do not exhaust their essences. Second, there is no unified notion of causation across the sciences. After distinguishing between the causal and the nomological, I suggest that what is needed is a structuralist view of properties that is not merely causal but that incorporates a physical property’s higher-order mathematical and nomological properties into its identity conditions. Such a view retains the naturalistic motivations for causal structuralism while avoiding the problems it faces. (shrink)

Structures of oppression and administrative systems in white supremacist settler colonial societies rely on epistemological foundations to orient them toward their goals of containment and land dispossession. Structural gaslighting refers to the justifying stories and mythologies produced in these societies to normalize, obscure, and uphold structures of oppression. Such epistemic legwork often works by naturalizing socially produced inequalities through positing biological or cultural deficiencies in the target populations. This paper develops the concept of structural gaslighting introduced in Berenstain (2020) as (...) “any conceptual work that functions to obscure the non-accidental connections between structures of oppression and the patterns of harm that they produce and license” and explores its relationship to scientific and philosophical knowledge production. Case studies including historical and contemporary forms of scientific racism, philosophical justifications for ableist violence, and the link between disableization and dispossession for the purpose of settler colonial land theft are considered. (shrink)

While the pursuitworthiness of philosophical ideas has changed over time, philosophical practice and methodology have not kept pace. The worthiness of a philosophical pursuit includes not only the ideas and objectives one pursues but also the methods with which one pursues them. In this paper, we articulate how empirical approaches benefit philosophy of science, particularly advocating for the use of qualitative methods for understanding the social and normative aspects of scientific inquiry. After situating qualitative methods within empirical philosophy of science, (...) we discuss how to adapt these traditionally sociological methods to empirically inform philosophical questions. Our aim is to normalize and legitimize qualitative methods for philosophical purposes and discuss how they can elucidate descriptive and normative components of scientific practice in a more generalizable non-idealized manner. We contend that qualitative methods are particularly well suited to philosophical interest in the social norms of science, their achievability, and their mutability. Furthermore, unlike more historical case studies in philosophy, qualitative methods enable more confidence in generalizability, albeit limited, from a concrete sample to a larger class. We conclude by addressing anxieties about the distinctness of empirical philosophy of science from social epistemology and from sociology of science. (shrink)

En este trabajo propongo realizar un recorrido acerca de la utilización del concepto de mito en la obra de Carlos Astrada. En primer lugar analizaré sus obras tempranas en donde el filósofo encuentra en la Revolución Rusa la expresión del mito de la humanidad que ha emergido para llevar a ésta hacia su plenitud. Luego tomaré en consideración su obra El Mito Gaucho, la cual constituye una interpretación del Martín Fierro como expresión del mito de los argentinos. Seguidamente me referiré (...) a las obras en donde Astrada amplía su proyección hacia toda Latinoamérica buscando las raíces mitológicas en las culturas arcaicas de nuestro continente. Finalmente daré cuenta de la relación que establece entre mito y utopía en sus últimos escritos. In this work I propose to show the utilization of the concept of myth in the Carlos Astrada´s work. First, I will analyze his early works where the philosopher finds in the Russian Revolution the expression of the humanity´s myth. Later, I will take in consideration his work El Mito Gaucho, which constitutes an interpretation of Martín Fierro as expression of the argentinien´s myth. Continuously, I will refer to the works in where Astrada extends his projection towards the whole Latin America looking for the mythological roots in the archaic cultures of our continent. Finally I will show the relation that he establishes between myth and Utopia in his last writings. (shrink)

Global Health involves, among many things the intensified travelling of people, resources, technologies, knowledge, standards, and ideas. This book describes what happens when innovations are transferred to new settings: What work is needed to make them work, but also how they change the setting into which they are introduced.

Zsfassung in dt. und engl. Sprache. - Dt. Zsfassung u.d.T.: Fragen und Perspektiven des Transzendentalismus.

For too long, a majority of economic stories speak of perfectly informed, fully rational optimisation within a purely materialistic world – leaving a lack of evidence and explanation regarding human decision makers and entrepreneurs revolutionising the decision space. Strands like game theory and institutional economics have already adopted a more practical view. Evolutionary and behavioural economics were finally able to establish the necessary links to other disciplines – like psychology and informational science. This paper recaps selected parts of the literature (...) that favour a conceptional view of computational agents. Firstly, we invite economic modellers to question the microfoundation of their assumptions with regard to the individual or to an aggregate level of human behaviour that they truly refer to. Secondly, we illustrate the potential, as well as the limitations, that computational agents exhibit – with regard to the incorporation of creativity as the main source of innovative behaviour. Thirdly, this rather superficial collection of ideas serves as a position paper for future approaches. (shrink)

Based on brain imaging findings, we present a model according to which addiction emerges as an imbalance in the information processing and integration among various brain circuits and functions. The dysfunctions reflect (a) decreased sensitivity of reward circuits, (b) enhanced sensitivity of memory circuits to conditioned expectations to drugs and drug cues, stress reactivity, and (c) negative mood, and a weakened control circuit. Although initial experimentation with a drug of abuse is largely a voluntary behavior, continued drug use can eventually (...) impair neuronal circuits in the brain that are involved in free will, turning drug use into an automatic compulsive behavior. The ability of addictive drugs to co‐opt neurotransmitter signals between neurons (including dopamine, glutamate, and GABA) modifies the function of different neuronal circuits, which begin to falter at different stages of an addiction trajectory. Upon exposure to the drug, drug cues or stress this results in unrestrained hyperactivation of the motivation/drive circuit that results in the compulsive drug intake that characterizes addiction. (shrink)

Progress in neurotechnology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) provides unprecedented insights into the human brain. There are increasing possibilities to influence and measure brain activity. These developments raise multifaceted ethical and legal questions. The proponents of neurorights argue in favour of introducing new human rights to protect mental processes and brain data. This article discusses the necessity and advantages of introducing new human rights focusing on the proposed new human right to mental self-determination and the right to freedom of thought as (...) enshrined in Art.18 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Art. 9 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). I argue that the right to freedom of thought can be coherently interpreted as providing comprehensive protection of mental processes and brain data, thus offering a normative basis regarding the use of neurotechnologies. Besides, I claim that an evolving interpretation of the right to freedom of thought is more convincing than introducing a new human right to mental self-determination. (shrink)

Four detailed cases of delusions of misidentification (DM) are presented: two cases of misidentification of the reflected self, one of reverse intermetamorphosis, and one of reduplicative paramnesia. The cases are discussed in the context of three levels of interpretation: neurological, cognitive and phenomenological. The findings are compared to previous work with DM patients, particularly the work of Ellis and Young (1990; Young, 1998) who found that loss of the normal affective response to familiar faces was a contributing factor in the (...) Capgras delusion. The four cases presented suggest that this particular deficit is not a critical factor in the development of other forms of DM. (shrink)

Traditionally, empiricism has relied on the specialness of human observation, yet science is rife with sophisticated instrumentation and techniques. The present article advances a conception of empirical evidence applicable to actual scientific practice. I argue that this conception elucidates how the results of scientific research can be repurposed across diverse epistemic contexts: it helps to make sense of how evidence accumulates across theory change, how different evidence can be amalgamated and used jointly, and how the same evidence can be used (...) to constrain competing theories in the service of breaking local underdetermination. (shrink)

Virtual reality is all too often considered as antithetical to reality, the former being an entity fully separated from the latter. Since there has been historically no consensus among philosophers as to what constitutes reality, this article seeks to contribute to the debate on i crucial issue. It argues that reality should be considered as including non-tangible properties and that, from the first-person point of view, virtual reality is part of the reality of each and every one of us. Furthermore, (...) grey zones between reality and virtual reality, that is to say environments in which reality blends with fantasy and highly personal perception of our surroundings are much more common than often assumed. The article claims that architecture is the most powerful foundation for virtual reality and therefore creator of grey zones. Real spaces (such as cafés or streets, and moreover cities) offer experiences more intense than any typical virtual environment and cause the blurring of awareness in which world we are. Virtual reality is an impoverished reality, and attempts to realize it have led to disastrous outcomes. On the contrary, grey zones, partially anchored on the materiality, actually enrich reality with non-tangible qualities, without threatening its authority in our souls and minds. (shrink)

Artikkelen undersøker hvordan NIPT ble vedtatt implementert i det norske fosterdiagnostiske systemet gjennom en fagligpolitisk prosess mellom 2012 og 2017. Prosessen innebar at Nasjonalt kunnskapssenter for helsetjenesten, Helsedirektoratet, Bioteknologirådet og Helse- og Omsorgsdepartementet ga sine vurderinger av testen og sine råd omkring en eventuell innføring. Artikkelen viser at det i denne prosessen foregikk en forsiktig tilnærming eller sammensmelting mellom de tradisjonelt helt ulike måtene å forstå og å ramme inn fosterdiagnostikk på i Norge, dvs. i en ‘autonomi/ behandlingsramme’ og en (...) ‘sorteringsramme’. Artikkelen argumenterer videre for at denne tilnærmingen eller konvergensen var mulig fordi prosessen ble holdt innenfor de fagligpolitiske byråkratiene, og de ulike etatene var innstilt på å ‘samarbeide’ om å inkludere både kunnskap og verdier fra begge rammene i sine tilrådninger. Politikk for fosterdiagnostikk er imidlertid et svært politisk betent område i Norge, og denne konvergensen var et skjørt byggverk. Den sprakk da også opp i løpet av tre uker i mai 2020, da Fremskrittspartiet plutselig inngikk et ‘bioteknologiforlik’ med Arbeiderpartiet og SV etter at de hadde gått ut av Solbergregjeringen. Dermed endte spørsmålet om implementeringen av NIPT i Stortinget, hvor konvergensen i den fagpolitiske prosessen ble erstattet av de tradisjonelle frontene, og de gamle innrammingene igjen ble ‘satt i arbeid’. Artikkelen diskuterer avslutningsvis kort de bortimot uløselige dilemmaene disse innrammingene både representerer og produserer. Nøkkelord: NIPT, fosterdiagnostikk, humanmedisinsk bioteknologi, regulering English Title: Fetal diagnostics between medicine and ethics: Implementation of Prenatal Invasive Testing in a turbulent policy area: The article examines how the decision to implement Prenatal Invasive Testing in the Norwegian Fetal Diagnostic System was reached through a professional policy process between 2012 and 2017. The process involved the Norwegian Research Centre for Health Services, the Norwegian Directorate of Health, the Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board and the Ministry of Health and Care Services, which provided their individual assessments and advice regarding the potential implementation of the test. The article finds that a careful convergence took place between traditionally opposing ways to understand and frame fetal diagnostics in Norway – either as a ‘treatment frame’ or a ‘sorting frame’. The article further argues that this convergence was possible because the process was kept within these bureaucracies, and that the different agencies were willing to collaborate to include knowledge and values from both frames in their recommendations. However, policy for fetal diagnostics is a very turbulent political area in Norway, and this convergence was a fragile construction. During three weeks in May 2020, the convergence collapsed when the Norwegian Progress Party suddenly entered a “biotechnology settlement” with the Labour Party and the Socialist Left Party after exiting the conservative Government coalition. Hence, the question of implementing NIPT ended up in the Norwegian Parliament, where the convergence from the professional policy process was replaced by the traditional fronts, and the old framings were again set in motion. Lastly, the article briefly discusses the almost unsolvable dilemmas these framings both produce and represent. Keywords: NIPT, non-invasive prenatal testing, fetal diagnostics, medical biotechnology, regulation. (shrink)

Privileged-perspective realism (PPR) is a version of metaphysical realism that takes certain irreducibly perspectival facts to be partly constitutive of reality. PPR asserts that there is a single metaphysically privileged standpoint from which these perspectival facts obtain. This chapter discusses several views that fall under the category of privileged-perspective realism. These include presentism, which is PPR about tensed facts, and non-multiverse interpretations of quantum mechanics, which the chapter argues, constitute PPR about world-indexed facts. Using the framework of the bird perspective (...) and the frog perspective, it argues that PPR views methodologically treat the frog perspective as metaphysically primary. This chapter considers case studies of metaphysical interpretations of special relativity and quantum mechanics in order to demonstrate that such motivations for PPR are non-naturalistic. Further, it considers psychological factors that motivate the appeal of PPR views and offers naturalistic explanations of why we should not expect them to produce an adequate metaphysics of science. (shrink)

Epistemologies have power. They have the power not only to transform worlds, but to create them. And the worlds that they create can be better or worse. For many people, the worlds they create are predictably and reliably deadly. Epistemologies can turn sacred land into ‘resources’ to be bought, sold, exploited, and exhausted. They can turn people into ‘labor’ in much the same way. They can not only disappear acts of violence but render them unnamable and unrecognizable within their conceptual (...) architectures. Settler systems of epistemic and conceptual resources and the relations among them are constructed to preclude certain forms of knowledge. This is not an accident; it is a central goal of colonial violence. Colonization and land dispossession would not be possible without the violent disruption of Indigenous knowledge systems and ongoing organized attempts to disrupt their survival. Violently disrupting the relationships of people to land is as much an epistemic project as it is a material one, and these two projects are inherently linked. The task of theorizing epistemic oppression is not only about epistemic oppression. Epistemic oppression is a story that gives language to a phenomenon in order to get past it, to carry on with the maintaining and reviving the forms of Indigenous and diasporic knowledge that colonialism has worked tirelessly to corrupt and silence. (shrink)

The article discusses two bioart projects that bring the symbolically core human substances of blood, sweat and tears into technologically mediated relationships with plants and fungi to explore human kinship with other species: Tarah Rhoda’s BS&T (short for ‘blood, sweat and tears’) and OurGlass, and Saša Spačal’s MycoMythologies: Patterning. The article analyses the art projects through the lens of the molecular gaze and different perspectives on kinning, bringing anthropological conceptualizations of kinship together with Haraway’s pathways to connect with other species. (...) How can bioart use technologies to explore interspecies kinship through a molecular gaze? And may such artworks contribute to the toning down of human exceptionality in the face of a precarious future? We find that artworks providing a molecular gaze on interspecies biological processes may risk a decontextualized approach to complex relational processes but may also create new visions of filiation even with biological organisms imagined to be genetically distant from humans, thus spurring awareness of the fragile interrelationships among species. (shrink)

In 2023, online search engine provider Microsoft integrated a language model that provides direct answers to search queries into its search engine Bing. Shortly afterwards, Google also introduced a similar feature to its search engine with the launch of Google Gemini. This introduction of direct answers to search queries signals an important and significant change in online search. This article explores the implications of this new search paradigm. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s theory of _Situated Knowledges_ and Rainer Mühlhoff’s concept of (...) _Sealed Surfaces_, I introduce the term _Sealed Knowledges_ to draw attention to the increasingly difficult access to the plurality of potential answers to search queries through the output of a singular, authoritative, and plausible text paragraph. I argue that the integration of language models for the provision of direct answers into search engines is based on a de-situated and disembodied understanding of knowledge and affects the subjectivities of its users. At the same time, the _sealing of knowledges_ can lead to an increasing spread of misinformation and may make marginalized knowledge increasingly difficult to find. The paper concludes with an outlook on how to resist the increasing _sealing of knowledges_ in online search. (shrink)