I propose that neural cognition is supported by non-neural storage of a 3-D model of local space, used in the planning of movements. Information is stored in wave-like excitations which couple to neurons in the thalamus, with the wave-vectors of excitations representing spatial positions. This hybrid of neural and non-neural cognition may have fitness advantages over any purely neural mechanism -- in information capacity, geometric accuracy, and fast selective retrieval. The wave excitations may be sustained on a Bose-condensed state of (...) some excitation in the brain, by a mechanism like those investigated by Frohlich, Umezawa, Vitiello and others. These states, being frictionless, can store information indefinitely at low energy levels, insulated from thermal noise, so are an ideal substrate for memory. If a Bose-condensed state is a 3-D representation of local reality, it may be the basis of phenomenal consciousness . The resulting theory of consciousness is highly constrained, and agrees well with the main properties of conscious experience. In this account, consciousness arises from a very simple state of matter, rather than from complexity; and it evolved to meet one of the strongest selection pressures on the brain. (shrink)

L'Ora e l'attimo narra--attraverso il confronto di Vico con Platone e Kant, Hegel e Nietzsche, Gadamer e, infine, Benjamin - la storia discontinua di un passaggio epocale nella concezione del mondo storico: il passaggio dal primato dell'orizzonte universale eterno, l''Ora', in cui si inquadrano le diverse età della storia, al primato dell'attimo, in cui sono parimenti possibili sia l'inizio di una 'nuova Ora' che la fine della storia dell'uomo ad opera dell'uomo. In Vico questo 'passaggio,' variamente contrastato e sofferto, ma (...) alla fine vincente, assume la figura del transito dalla 'mathesis universalis' della storia alla visione morale del mondo umano--Back cover. (shrink)

In this paper we analyse the conditions for attributing to AI autonomous systems the ontological status of “artificial moral agents”, in the context of the “distributed responsibility” between humans and machines in Machine Ethics (ME). In order to address the fundamental issue in ME of the unavoidable “opacity” of their decisions with ethical/legal relevance, we start from the neuroethical evidence in cognitive science. In humans, the “transparency” and then the “ethical accountability” of their actions as responsible moral agents is not (...) in contradiction with the unavoidable “opacity” (unawareness) of the brain process by which they perform their moral judgements on the right action to execute. In fact, the moral accountability of our actions depends on what is immediately before and after our “moral judgements” on the right action to execute (formally, deontic first order logic (FOL) decisions). I.e., our moral accountability depends on the “ethical constraints” we imposed to our judgement before performing it in an opaque way. Anyway, our moral accountability depends overall on the “ethical assessment” or explicit “moral reasoning” after and over the moral judgement before executing our actions (deontic higher order logic (HOL) assessment). In this way, in the light of the AI “imitation game”, the consistent attribution of the status of ethically accountable artificial moral agents to autonomous AI systems depends on two similar conditions. Firstly, it depends on the presence of “ethical constraints” to be satisfied in their Machine Learning (ML) supervised optimization algorithm during its training phase, to give the system ethical skills (“competences”) in its decisions. Secondly – and definitely—, it depends on the presence in an AI autonomous system of a deontic HOL “ethical reasoner” to perform an automatic, and fully transparent assessment (metalogical deontic valuation) about the decisions taken by the ethically skilled ML algorithm about the right action to execute, before executing it. Finally, we show that the proper deontic FOL and HOL for this class of artificial moral agents is Kripke’s modal relational logic, in its algebraic topological formalization. This is naturally implemented in the dissipative QFT unsupervised deep learning of our brains, based on the “doubling of the degrees of freedom” (DDF), and then in the so-called “deep-belief” artificial neural networks for the statistical data pre-processing. This unsupervised learning procedure is also compliant with the usage of the “maximin fairness principle”, used as a balancing aggregation principle of the statistical variables in Sen’s formal theory of fairness. (shrink)

The human being can be divided into body and mind, two inextricably linked aspects influencing each other. From birth, the body is the site of emotional experiences thanks to cellular memory. The t...

We review the dissipative quantum model of the brain and present recent developments related to the role of entanglement, quantum noise and chaos in the model.

CHAPTER Structure and function In physical systems made by a large number of basic constituents one can observe collective properties which find their ...

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable (...) presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought--Augustine's Confessions." --Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University. (shrink)

The Moral Nexus develops and defends a new interpretation of morality—namely, as a set of requirements that connect agents normatively to other persons in a nexus of moral relations. According to this relational interpretation, moral demands are directed to other individuals, who have claims that the agent comply with these demands. Interpersonal morality, so conceived, is the domain of what we owe to each other, insofar as we are each persons with equal moral standing. The book offers an interpretative argument (...) for the relational approach. Specifically, it highlights neglected advantages of this way of understanding the moral domain; explores important theoretical and practical presuppositions of relational moral duties; and considers the normative implications of understanding morality in relational terms. The book features a novel defense of the relational approach to morality, which emphasizes the special significance that moral requirements have, both for agents who are deliberating about what to do and for those who stand to be affected by their actions. The book argues that relational moral requirements can be understood to link us to all individuals whose interests render them vulnerable to our agency, regardless of whether they stand in any prior relationship to us. It also offers fresh accounts of some of the moral phenomena that have seemed to resist treatment in relational terms, showing that the relational interpretation is a viable framework for understanding our specific moral obligations to other people. (shrink)

Amidst expanding interest in local food and agriculture, food banks and allied organizations across the United States have increasingly engaged in diverse gleaning, gardening, and farming activities. Some of these programs reinforce food banks’ traditional role in distributing surplus commodities, and most extend food banks’ reliance on middle class volunteers and charitable donations. But some gleaning and especially gardening and farming programs seek to build poor people’s and communities’ capacity to meet more of their own food needs, signaling new roles (...) for some food banks in promoting community food security and food justice. This article reports the results of a national survey and in-depth case studies of the ways in which food banks are engaging in and with local agriculture and how this influences food banks’ roles in community and regional food systems. The patterns it reveals reflect broader tensions in debates about hunger relief and food security. (shrink)

In her introduction to Adultery: Infidelity and the Law, Stanford Law Professor Deborah Rhode describes the absence of legal scholarship dealing with adultery although the topic is commonly treated...

This book provides a collection of sources, many of them fragmentary and previously scattered and hard to access, for the development of Peripatetic philosophy in the later Hellenistic period and the early Roman Empire. It also supplies the background against which the first commentator on Aristotle from whom extensive material survives, Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. AD 200), developed his interpretations which continue to be influential even today. Many of the passages are here translated into English for the first time, (...) including the whole of the summary of Peripatetic ethics attributed to 'Arius Didymus'. (shrink)

With the recent expansion of child mental health research, more attention is being paid to the process of informed consent for research participation. For the consent to be truly informed, it is necessary that the relevant information be both disclosed and actually understood. Traditionally, much effort has gone to ensuring the comprehensiveness of consent/assent documents, which have progressively increased in length and complexity, whereas less attention has been paid to the comprehensibility of these documents. Available data indicate that many parent (...) and children have difficulties appreciating the research nature of treatment studies and that a higher level of formal education among the parents is associated with a greater degree of understanding. Promising approaches to achieving truly informed research participation have emerged, such as additional time for parents to meet with the researchers and using postexplanation questionnaires for identifying issues in need of further clarification. Research is needed to develop and test strategies for improving the effectiveness of the informed consent process in child mental health. (shrink)

In COVID’s immediate wake, the 2020 death toll from a different enemy of the public’s health — gun violence — ticked up by 15 percent in the United States from the previous year. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in Caniglia v. Strom that will allow people who have recently threatened suicide — with a gun — to keep unsecured guns in their home unless police take time to obtain a search warrant to remove them.

R.I.G. Hughes presents a series of eight philosophical essays on the theoretical practices of physics. The first two essays examine these practices as they appear in physicists' treatises (e.g. Newton's Principia and Opticks ) and journal articles (by Einstein, Bohm and Pines, Aharonov and Bohm). By treating these publications as texts, Hughes casts the philosopher of science in the role of critic. This premise guides the following 6 essays which deal with various concerns of philosophy of physics such as laws, (...) disunities, models and representation, computer simulation, explanation, and the discourse of physics. (shrink)

The topic of this essay is the work of the reflection. After having focused on the «rift» between reflection and its working in Valéry’s thought, Vitiello focuses on the process which Hegel described in The Phenomenology of Spirit, namely the process of the experience of the consciousness, which elevates itself to the consciousness of the experience. The conclusion is strongly critical: Hegel misses the aim at the very point in which he achieves it. Indeed, in the absolute knowledge, in (...) the complete and perfect view of itself, of the light which sees the light, the experience of the consciousness itself fails, its becoming, its «imperfection» fail. The critique of Hegel, passing through Nietzsche, expands to a critique of language, in particular of the language of «being» and of «is», and of the Heideggerian tautologies, such as «das Ereignis ereignet», «das Ding dingt», «die Welt weltet». An important passage of the text concerns the theatrical language, in which the word seems to regain the original bond between voice and gesture, which remains divided nevertheless, because the medium itself which connects them – i.e., the «color» of the word – is «outside» the word and «outside» the gesture. Only the word of the act, of the pragmata, remains. In such a word, doing exhibits its most appropriate modality, namely the immediacy of being-affected: the cry of pain; or the reflexive mediacy of the moral imperative: Handle! The two opposite «colours» of the things. (shrink)

Im Verlauf des 6. Jahrhunderts fanden unter den ostgotischen Königen die ersten päpstlich-kaiserlichen Treffen in Konstantinopel statt, die die religiösen Auseinandersetzungen und die politischen und diplomatischen Beziehungen zwischen Ostgoten und Byzanz klären sollten. Der erste Papst, der auf Befehl Theoderichs als Leiter einer Gesandtschaft in die östliche Hauptstadt reiste (Ende 525 oder Anfang 526), war Johannes I.; er sollte sich dort für die arianische Kirche einsetzen. Der ‚Anonymus Valesianus‘ berichtet, daß der Kaiser Justinos I. dem ankommenden Papst Johannes als Anführer (...) einer Delegation von Senatoren ita occurrit ac si beato Petro. Mit einem ähnlichen Ausdruck hatte der Anonymus auch die Beschreibung des adventus Theoderichs in Rom (Jahr 500) eingeführt: Der ostgotische König occurrit beato Petro devotissimus ac si catholicus. Im Falle von Justinos sind mit dieser Formulierung wahrscheinlich sämtliche Ehren gemeint, welche dem Papst erwiesen wurden. Diese werden in dem wesentlich detaillierteren Bericht des ‚Liber Pontificalis‘ geschildert: … occurrerunt beato Iohanni a miliario XV [XII] omnes civitas cum cereos et cruces in honore beatorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli. Qui veteres Grecorum hoc testificabantur dicentes a tempore Constantini Augusti a beato Silvestro episcopo sedis apostolicae, Iustini Augusti temporibus meruisse parte Greciarum beati Petri apostoli vicarium suscepisse cum gloria. Tunc Iustinus Augustus, dans honorem Deo, humiliavit se pronus et adoravit beatissimum Iohannem papam. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 2 Seiten: 785-787.

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 2 Seiten: 781-785.