Recent concerns about meditation-related adverse effects (MRAEs) have led to calls for more rigorous informed consent in mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). This paper examines whether consent procedures are warranted, and under what circumstances, and of what kind, across the diverse settings in which mindfulness is delivered. Drawing on bioethics and the informed consent literature, we argue that although MBIs may involve some risks, the evidence justifying the case for written, formalized informed consent is weak. In clinical medicine and psychotherapeutic practice, consent (...) practices vary according to risk, permanence, invasiveness and patient control, often relying on informal processes where risk is minimal. We propose a dose-sensitive model of informed consent that functions on a sliding scale, calibrating the intensity of mindfulness practices to the probability of risk, potential harm, and severity of adverse events. Our proportional approach avoids the harms of over-disclosure—including inefficiency, nocebo effects, and autonomy infringement—while still respecting individuals’ rights and mitigating risk. A context-sensitive, proportional consent model better aligns with ethical norms, individual autonomy, and the empirical evidence on risks of adverse effects from mindfulness practices. (shrink)

This book undertakes a systematic theoretical reconstruction of "Human-Centered AI" (HCAI), the dominant discourse in contemporary AI governance, advancing a central thesis: any architecture that sets the preference of a single species as the ultimate governing center of a technological system carries a structural tendency toward instability whenever it lacks constraint from a higher-level reference frame. This is not a simple denial of HCAI's real-world value—Section 0.5 systematically surveys the genuine crises, from algorithmic discrimination to privacy erosion to the ethical (...) dilemmas of medical AI and autonomous vehicles, that have earned HCAI its global consensus; Chapter One further distinguishes four schools within HCAI—design-centered, rights-centered, governance-centered, and alignment-centered—so as to avoid flattening a genuinely diverse international discussion into a single target of critique. -/- On this fair footing, the book draws on cybernetics, systems dynamics, and the author's original Sage Entropy toolkit, developed within the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology (LYGC)—the civilizational stability function Λ, whose phase-transition thresholds are specified here for the first time (Λ>1, self-correcting zone; Λ=1, critical point; Λ<1, entropy-explosion zone)—to diagnose how HCAI, absent external constraint, is captured layer by layer by the greedy positive-feedback structures of capital and state power (the 3L-GFM model). A dedicated chapter argues the specific mechanism by which AI systems "naturally amplify greed": AI does not manufacture new desires, but systematically lowers the marginal cost of fulfilling existing ones by reconstructing the cost function, the reward function, and the information-feedback loop—a derivation that gives the Desire Amplification Factor (DAF) an operationalizable technical foundation rather than leaving it at the level of metaphor. -/- The book's core methodological innovation lies in the cybernetic refinement of two comparative case studies: first, the trajectory of technological–power runaway from atomism through nuclear fission to nuclear weapons and the shadow of nuclear war; second, the digital recurrence from the early internet through smartphones to "3G addiction" (Girl, Game, Gambling) and on to the political, economic, and spiritual crises of 3L-DAF. The book argues that AI, as a "second-order agent," differs from traditional technologies such as the steam engine or the printing press—which merely amplify human capacity for action (DAF)—in that it directly intervenes in and reconstructs human cognition and self-correction capacity (CCF) itself. This is the key criterion by which Sage Entropy in the AI domain represents a qualitative, not merely quantitative, shift, and it is the core evidence with which this book answers the "proving too much" objection. -/- Building on sustained dialogue with international scholars—Bostrom, Tegmark, Floridi, Nissenbaum, Gebru, and Crawford among them—this book proposes Nature-Follows-Dao AI Governance as an independent theoretical framework: falsifiable, equipped with operationalizable diagnostic indicators and a pathway for institutional embedding—that is, the concrete unfolding, in the field of AI governance, of the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology Governance Model—rather than remaining a purely negative commentary on HCAI. The aim is to offer AI governance research an original theoretical contribution rooted in the Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology while remaining fully engaged with the international academic discourse. (shrink)

本书针对当代AI治理主流话语「人本智能」（Human-Centered AI, HCAI）展开系统性理论重构，提出一项核心论断：任何将单一物种偏好设定为技术系统终极治理中心的架构，若缺乏更高层级的参照系约束，均存在结构性失稳倾向。本书并非简单否定HCAI的现实价值——第零点五章即 系统梳理HCAI因算法歧视、隐私侵蚀、医疗与自动驾驶伦理困境等真实危机而获得全球共识的普遍性；第一章进一步区分HCAI内部设计中心、权利中心、治理中心、对齐中心四种流派，避免将多元化的国际讨论简化为单 一批判靶标。 -/- 在此公正前提下，本书借助控制论、系统动力学与著者原创的老-杨宇宙观（Lao-Yang Genesis Cosmology, LYGC）圣人熵理论工具——文明稳定性函数Λ（并首次明确其相变阈值：Λ>1自校正区、Λ=1临界点、Λ<1熵暴增区）——诊断HCAI在缺乏外部约束时如何被资本与国家权力的三层贪婪正反馈结构（ 3L-GFM）逐层俘获。本书新增专章论证AI系统「天然放大贪婪」的具体机制：AI并非制造新的欲望，而是通过重构成本函数、奖励函数与信息反馈回路，系统性降低欲望实现的边际成本——这一推导为DAF（欲望驱 动因子）概念提供了可操作化的技术基础，而非停留于隐喻层面。 -/- 本书核心方法论创新在于两组比较案例的控制论精细化：其一，从原子论、核裂变到核武器与核战争阴影的技术—权力失控轨迹；其二，从互联网、智能手机到「3G成瘾」（Girl、Game、Gambling）直至3L -DAF政治—经济—信仰战争的数字化复现。本书论证：AI作为「二阶代理人」，其危害不同于蒸汽机、印刷术等传统技术对人类行动能力（DAF）的单纯放大，而是直接介入并重构人类认知与自我校正机制（CCF）本 身——这是圣人熵在AI领域呈现质变而非量变的关键判据，也是本书回应「证明过多」诘难的核心论据。 -/- 在充分吸收Bostrom、Tegmark、Floridi、Nissenbaum、Gebru、Crawford等国际学者对话的基础上，本书提出道法自然AI治理（Nature-Follows-Dao AI Governance）作为一个具备可证伪性、可操作化诊断指标与制度嵌入路径的独立理论框架——即老-杨宇宙观治理模型在人工智能治理领域的具体展开，而非仅止于对HCAI的否定性评论，旨在为AI治理研究提供 源自老-杨宇宙观、同时充分对接国际学术话语体系的原创理论贡献。 .

The extrascientific factors in Darwin’s discovery of natural selection have often been sought in his relationship with political economy, particularly the works of Malthus. This chapter explores a possible alternative track: the relationship between the direct experience of colonial atrocities that Darwin witnessed in his journey through the Southern Hemisphere, and the making of his “long argument” about natural selection, preservation of favourite races, and recognition that, “no fact in the history of the world is so startling as the wide (...) and repeated exterminations of its inhabitants” (1845, p. 174). Expanding on existing literature on Darwinism and genocide, I analyse the uses of the lemma exterminat- in Darwin’s letters, manuscripts, and published work, from his Beagle voyage to the last years of his life and claim the centrality of this term for the making of evolutionary theory. While extinction is a metaphor heavily analysed by cultural theorists and evolutionary biologists alike, extermination, as a deliberate action of utter annihilation and depopulation, is less central to evolutionary debates. I argue that extermination appears in three features across Darwin’s writings: first, it entered Darwin’s language vis-à-vis the genocide of native populations in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego and Tasmania. Second, it became a general principle of life but was no longer applied explicitly to human society. Third, the idea of human extermination returned in private correspondence, mimicking or possibly anticipating an emerging eugenic language that he applies to himself or his own family. (shrink)

This article proposes that knowledge can be conceived as a process of inhabitation rather than construction. It motivates this shift by starting with a concrete pedagogical example: lower secondary school students subverting the logic of cheating by co-authoring a Manual for Cheating and Its Meaning, an act that reframes knowledge as a shared practice of solidarity. To interpret this example, the paper first critiques dominant Western epistemological framework that equates knowledge with individual possession—a logic materialised in standardised curricula and assessments. (...) Drawing on Michel Serres’ genealogical critique of possession and the phenomenology of Raffaele Laporta, the paper argues that construction-possession nexus produces subjectivities bound by symbolic debt rather than emancipated through learning. The article then articulates an alternative grounded in Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘use’ in relation to Gert Biesta’s notion of the ‘inappropriable’ and ‘dissensus’. Central to this alternative is the concept of porous pedagogy, which treats knowledge not as a something to be constructed and enclosed, but as an ‘inappropriable’ relational space—a constitutive void that makes encounter possible. Drawing on Ingold’s work on weaving and knotting, I argue that porous pedagogy operates through interstitial relationality rather than solid enclosures. The article concludes by examining the ethical implications of these two pedagogical orientations, asking what kinds of subjectivities—debtor or inhabitant, owner or guest—educators wish to foster. (shrink)

Contemporary academic life is increasingly mediated by digital platforms that promise visibility, connection, and faster circulation of research. This article argues that the affective exhaustion associated with these conditions should not be treated only as a problem of individual resilience or workload management. Drawing on Bernard Stiegler’s account of proletarianization, symbolic misery, and the pharmakon, it reads scholarly exhaustion as a symptom of the technological mediation of academic labour. Academic social networking sites, with ResearchGate as the main example, are examined (...) as infrastructures that convert recognition into metric feedback and thereby reorganize the conditions under which scholars understand their work. Digital narcissism is used here to describe a fragile dependence on algorithmic validation, rather than a simple problem of vanity or self-promotion. Such dependence can redirect sustained intellectual desire toward repeated acts of checking, comparison, and profile maintenance. On this basis, a pharmacological account of care shows how the same digital infrastructures that intensify metric culture can be reorganized through institutional resistance to reductive assessment and collective practices of scholarly solidarity. From Stiegler’s neganthropic perspective, this task involves preserving the conditions for attention, judgment, and collective knowledge. (shrink)

Rehabilitation care concerns not only the restoration of function but also how persons live through disruption. Injury and illness may bring loss, uncertainty, altered dependence, changed self-understanding, and a changed horizon of life. Concepts such as coping and resilience capture important aspects of adaptation but do not fully clarify the inner work involved in bearing and inhabiting such change. This paper argues that inner strength can provide a useful concept for clarifying that work. The paper develops a philosophical framework with (...) a preparatory layer and two related dimensions. Inner base names foundational exercises of attention, breath, and body awareness. Inner balance names the centering work of recollection and steadier judgment, while inner posture names the orienting work of finding a viable relation to limitation, vulnerability, and a wider horizon of meaning. Drawing on Pierre Hadot’s account of philosophy as a way of life, the paper interprets inner balance and inner posture through the complementary movements of concentration and expansion. It places this proposal in dialogue with rehabilitation research on inner posture and global meaning, and with literature on meaning-making, resilience, mindfulness, and existential care. The framework is conceptual rather than a validated intervention model. It offers a more differentiated vocabulary for grounding, centering, and orientation in rehabilitation care. (shrink)

Can Kant’s philosophy be helpful in the climate crisis? This question, raised by Zachary Vereb in Kant and Environmental Philosophy, requires some explanation itself. For why would we turn to Kant’...

In this short note we argue that, even if, as sometimes remarked, a Lorentzian manifold does not model correctly the structure of the continuum of physical events as it is, yet a Lorentzian manifold should describe its macroscopic structure as we experience it. More precisely, theoretically motivated by von Weizsäcker’s chronological relative frequency interpretation of probability, and taking the Diaconis–Mosteller principle (also called the law of truly large numbers) as an empirical evidence in the macroscopic world, we argue that large (...) collections of physical events appear in a composition of two fundamentally different formations, termed as progression and sample here, suggesting, in this framework, to use a Lorentzian-type metric on a manifold to describe matter-filled macroscopic regions of the physical continuum. (shrink)

El trabajo muestra un acercamiento del humor, como la capacidad de reír del humano, desde una perspectiva epistemológica. Se considera el humor como un elemento humano indispensable para el acercamiento al mundo; dicha reflexión implica una mención de elementos como el lenguaje, la razón y la configuración del mundo y su relación con el humor como parte fundamental de la constitución humana. El humor, como elemento de entendimiento del otro, pero también de lo paradójico y de lo absurdo del mundo (...) humano, permite una comprensión del mismo, pero también una aceptación de una realidad o una posibilidad de realidad inevitable y propia del ser humano. Se concluye que el humor, siendo propio del humano para el humano, es una forma de entretenimiento y también una manera de conocimiento del mundo configurado con paradojas y contradicciones inherentes al ser humano. (shrink)

Balancing a hermeneutic of trust with a hermeneutic of suspicion, this article develops a phenomenological description of imagination that highlights its alethic ambiguity. Imagination is an act of disclosure, without which the world of fiction and pure possibility cannot be constituted. Imagination is also an act of self-indulgence and narcissism, the source of much concealment and untruth. It is not the one or the other, but both at the same time, essentially ambiguous because of its phenomenological constitution. In this article, (...) I will take some steps towards clarifying this essential ambiguity of the imagination by drawing on the insights of Husserl and Sartre. Beginning with Husserl’s parallel treatment of imagination and perception as intuitive, objectifying acts, I will argue, drawing on insights from Sartre, that there is an important discrepancy between them with respect to the role of desire. While the constitution of perceptual presence is inseparable from a desire for truth, the desire involved in the constitution of imaginary presence has an ambiguous character, both alethic and magical. This duplicity of desire partly accounts for the ambiguity of imagination, which is all the more pronounced the more the imagination demands the full emotional involvement of the imagining subject. (shrink)

Alexithymia is associated with a lack of flexibility at several stages of emotion regulation. Additionally, previous studies associated higher alexithymia with particularities in emotional facial expression perception, and with lower executive performance. The objective of the study was to explore the cognitive factors that may underlie the lack of flexibility associated with emotion regulation in alexithymia. One hundred and twenty-six non-clinical adults underwent Go/no-Go tasks with neutral and emotional material (positive and negative emotional facial expressions of low vs. high arousal (...) levels). The results first show that emotional stimuli had an effect on inhibition that was differentiated according to both valence and arousal levels. Alexithymia scores were never associated with executive performance in neutral blocks but moderated the effect of emotional stimuli depending on the valence and arousal combination in emotional blocks. Most of the moderation effects led to higher performances: higher alexithymia scores moderated the effect of emotional stimuli on inhibitory and perceptual performances, but direction of effects, facets and emotional stimuli involved are not consistent. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of emotional salience effects on cognition and their potential role in alexithymia. (shrink)

This paper (VII_004) formulates falsifiable experimental protocols to test the emergence of spacetime, wavefunction condensation, and mass ontology established in Series VII. We present three concrete, empirical handles: (1) Mesoscopic matter-wave interference testing intrinsic Kuramoto phase-locking thresholds (Nc) via square-root cliff drops in visibility; (2) High-precision optical cavities and cross-correlation interferometers detecting UFI-driven holographic metric noise; and (3) Non-Hermitian superconducting qubit arrays driven through Exceptional Points (EPs) to observe in-silico entanglement condensation and geometric distance generation. This work bridges background-independent quantum (...) information theory with cutting-edge experimental physics. (shrink)

In the realm of natural theology, the question of what constitutes a successful argument has intrigued scholars for centuries. This paper delves into this inquiry by analyzing three prominent criteria: persuasion, acceptance of premises, and cumulative case. Our findings reveal that none of these criteria, when considered individually, suffices for a truly successful argument. Instead, we propose a novel approach—a process-oriented model—that conceptualizes religious beliefs as dynamic outcomes emerging from multifaceted interactions. This perspective highlights several key points: First, selecting a (...) single criterion for all arguments or attempting to classify diverse arguments based on a uniform standard is challenging due to the lack of consensus on the goals, methods, sources, and scope of natural theology. Second, it is more beneficial to focus on the collective advantages and strengths of these criteria. Third, we should avoid perceiving the criterion for a successful argument as one-dimensional; instead, we view it as an ongoing process that allows each criterion to consider the merits of others despite its own limitations. Fourth, by adopting this process-oriented approach, we can explore the interplay and contextual relevance of these three criteria across different argument types and stages. By embracing a holistic process perspective, we unlock deeper insights into natural theology. (shrink)

Contemporary fundamental physics and classical theistic metaphysics appear to exert opposing pressures on our conception of ultimate reality. Microphysical fundamentalism holds that the structure of the physical world is grounded in microphysical entities and their properties, whereas classical theism is committed to a single, unified ultimate ground that is explanatorily prior to all finite reality. Although not formally inconsistent, these commitments generate a substantive metaphysical tension once questions of categorical underwriting are made explicit. Existing theologically sympathetic responses address this tension (...) only at a cost: micropsychist panpsychism preserves microphysical fundamentality but fragments ultimate grounding in a way that sits uneasily with monotheism, while cosmopsychism secures metaphysical unity at the expense of the bottom-up motivations of microphysical fundamentalism. This paper develops a third option, Unified Categorical Basis Panpsychism (UCBP), which preserves the fundamentality of microphysical entities with respect to physical structure and composition while locating ultimate unity at the level of categorical grounding. The view openly posits a novel primitive: a single, irreducibly mental, internally differentiated categorical basis—identified with God—in virtue of which physical properties have the dispositional profiles they have and conscious experience is metaphysically possible. The paper argues that this posit is theoretically motivated, internally coherent, and explanatorily principled, and that UCBP thereby avoids both the combination problem facing micropsychism and the decomposition problem facing cosmopsychism. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly promoted as a tool to enhance clinical decision-making and thus improve the quality of healthcare. While much of the emerging scholarship on AI and healthcare in Africa has focused broadly on opportunities and systemic challenges, what remains underexplored is the specific application of AI to clinical decision-making. This paper contributes to addressing this gap by offering a conceptual and critical analysis of AI-based clinical decision support systems (AI-CDSS) in African contexts. Drawing on philosophical accounts of (...) medical reasoning and relational moral frameworks such as Ubuntu, the paper draws on the moral ecology of care and shows that algorithmic systems can reconfigure epistemic authority, redistribute responsibility, and risk marginalising context-sensitive and relational dimensions of care. The paper further argues that AI systems are better understood as socio-technical mirrors that reflect and amplify existing human values, institutional arrangements, and power asymmetries. Moving beyond the algorithm, it proposes a shift toward relational and context-sensitive AI governance, including the development of relational impact assessments, the redistribution of responsibility across the AI lifecycle, and the co-production of knowledge with local stakeholders. While focusing on African clinical contexts, the analysis offers broader insights for global debates on AI ethics and clinical decision-making. (shrink)

In this paper, we report the results of two experiments that attempt to elicit social image effects. The first experiment ( $$N = 1,252$$ ) provides little evidence that individuals behave in more ‘prosocial’ ways when their choices are disclosed to other participants. If anything, imposing observability appears to make the participants slightly less prosocial, although this effect is not statistically significant. The second experiment ( $$N = 750$$ ) generates similar results and further suggests that our results are not (...) dependent on the omission (or inclusion) of ranking information. We discuss why our experiments fail to generate the results that we had expected and why our results differ from those in the published literature. (shrink)

How ought we conceive of Marx today? As a philosopher, or critic of philosophy? Political economist, or critic of political economy? Idealist or materialist? A thinker of the theoretical or the practical? Or, perhaps more importantly, how are we to conceive of the relationship between theoretical analysis and practical commitments? Must theory be shown to be of practical applicability? Such questions are brought to light in Christoph Schuringa's Karl Marx and the Actualization of Philosophy through the question of whether, and (...) if so, how, Marx ‘actualises’ philosophy. Schuringa reads Marx as a philosopher in his own right, illuminating a number of ongoing problems internal to Marxism and with respect to the German philosophical tradition. Schuringa restages the false dispute between ‘materialism’ and ‘idealism’, identifying how Marx joins and goes beyond Hegel in overcoming this false choice. Further, with the aid of psychoanalytic theory, one sees how this deadlock is itself productive for delineating a ‘true materialism’ which actualises philosophy. Extending the ‘philosophy of praxis’ attributed to the early Marx and the Frankfurt School, this commitment undergirds Marx's oeuvre as a presuppositionless science necessary for satisfying the ‘demands of reason’ of not only classical German philosophy, but contemporary critical socio-political analysis. (shrink)

Honneth’s book, Freedom’s Right, is an ambitious attempt to give a critical Hegelian analysis of contemporary Western society. One of the key concepts that the book uses is social pathology. The concept has come under criticism, and this paper is concerned with clarifying the meaning of social pathology and engaging with its criticisms. My thesis is that the concept, as presented in Freedom’s Right, is coherent and valuable, but that it is lacking a robust causal account of how social pathologies (...) arise. I develop such a causal account based on the category of “concept limitations", which is already present in Honneth’s book. I argue for my thesis by first clarifying the concept of social pathology beyond, but consistent with, what Honneth offers. I then develop the concept further in response to two prominent objections in the literature. The result is both a clearer and more defensible account of social pathology. (shrink)

This article discusses the concept of strategy and how contemporary military thinking can contribute to strategy from below. First it discusses the military lineages of the term ‘strategy’. Second, the evolution of its meaning and its entry into the labour movement. Third, the relationship with ‘tactics’. Fourth, it analyses the concept of ‘operational art’ and explores how it can be used outside the military field. Fifth, it reviews some key debates on contemporary military strategy to enrich the understanding of strategy. (...) Sixth, it explores new military analogies based on the concepts of asymmetric, unrestricted and hybrid warfare. Finally, it considers the term ‘grand strategy’ to assess its value for strategy from below. (shrink)

Stasis amidst crisis defines the present conjuncture, while the left seems trapped in a fractured sequence between short-lived and fundamentally constrained uprisings and electoral bids. This essay attempts to define the terrain of contemporary struggles in reference to their impasses, especially as these relate to transformations in capitalist nation-states. Tracing the limits of opposed strategic poles – a strong ‘protective’ state and ‘prolonged’ forms of dual power – it situates their common turn to social reproduction struggles and criticises their common (...) presupposition: that states have abandoned core aspects of social reproduction, opening new paths for resistance. Instead we have ‘organised abandonment’: the developing, if still contradictory, integration of state capacities and international capital, extending into new modalities of social reproduction. State capacities have come to be structured in ways that impose impasses on traditional aims of working-class autonomy. In this light, the key strategic question is how we can conceive of an ascending sequence of struggles. (shrink)

While abolition and revolution might appear complementary, it is not always easy to see how they can relate with each other as part of a coherent conception of emancipatory struggle, nor how such complementarity might inform political strategy. In response to this problem, the objective of this paper is to contribute to a critical reappraisal of the revolutionary heritage of abolitionist thought by drawing attention to what Joy James called ‘the revolutionary era’ of abolitionist politics of the late 1960s and (...) early 1970s USA, focusing on the organisational politics of George Jackson who I consider to be one of the period’s most original thinkers. The claim I would like the reader to consider is that the type of vanguardism once presented by revolutionary abolitionists like George Jackson can help us to re-evaluate the political and ideological basis upon which a greater socialisation of struggles can be built today in view of the constitution of potential counter-hegemonic blocks capable of contesting the demands that capital makes on the planet and our lives. To put it in broader terms, the paper hopes to contribute to a widening of the conversation on how the question of abolition can help us rethink revolutionary politics in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Patient registry data are increasingly used to generate real-world evidence (RWE) for medicines decision-making. This study aimed to identify stakeholders’ views on registries’ ethics practices and to explore potential differences across stakeholder groups. European regulators, Health Technology Assessors (HTA), payers, patients, academia, industry, and healthcare professionals (HCPs) were invited to complete an online survey (Dec 2024 – Jan 2025). It included questions regarding the importance of information on six ethics aspects of registries (5-point Likert scales), acceptability of industry funding for (...) registries (visual analogue scale: 0-100%), and preferences on informed consent (opt-in versus opt-out), data identifiability (anonymous collection/processing; identifiable collection/pseudonymized processing; identifiable collection/processing) and data sharing (federated analyses; transfer of anonymous data; transfer of pseudonymous data; open access anonymous data). Results are reported as frequencies, means (M), and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Stakeholder group differences were tested using Fisher’s exact, Kruskal-Wallis, and pairwise Dunn’s tests. There were 370 participants (129 regulators, 30 HTA/payers, 44 industry representatives, 39 patients, 128 academics/HCPs/others) from 31 countries, 56% were women, and on average 48 years old. Of the six ethics aspects, a registry’s use-and-access policy was considered most important (M: 4.2; 95% CI: 4.1-4.3) and information on funding sources least important (M: 3.9; 95% CI: 3.8-4.0). Among the stakeholder groups, industry representatives considered the highest proportion of registry funding from the pharmaceutical industry acceptable (65%), while HTA/payers provided the lowest proportion (41%). Participants preferred patient opt-out over opt-in consent for data collection and processing by registries (51%) and for data processing by external parties (61%). Compared to all other stakeholder groups, patients more often preferred opt-in consent for both types of data processing (76% and 73%, respectively). Collecting identifiable data and processing pseudonymized data was most preferred overall (65%), while regulators and patients more often favored anonymization than other stakeholders (respectively 34% and 35% versus ≤18%). Overall, anonymization was preferred for data sharing with external parties (34%). Participants generally viewed information on patient registries’ ethics aspects as important. There was a preference for pseudonymization of data used by registries and anonymization of data shared with external parties. Across stakeholder groups, preferences diverged most notably regarding industry funding and consent models. These differences will have to be addressed to work towards a multi-stakeholder consensus on patient registries’ best practices. (shrink)

Cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) are widely recognized as vehicles for addressing societal challenges. Yet, their potential to generate harm to communities, the environment, and broader societal systems remains underexamined. Evidence is fragmented and context-dependent, obscuring broader patterns. Moreover, attribution challenges hinder efforts to trace observed harms to CSPs, particularly in the absence of well-specified mechanisms. To address this gap, we adopt an intervention perspective that centers on CSPs’ interactions with focal societal issues and conduct a qualitative meta-analysis of case-based evidence. This (...) analysis identifies recurring patterns of societal harm, intervention flaws, and partnership-related antecedents. We integrate these insights into the HIDE framework (societal Harm, Intervention flaws, Design antecedents, and Evaluative challenges). The framework conceptualizes societal harm as multifaceted, helps identify pathways through which CSP design antecedents are associated with observed societal effects via intervention flaws, and provides a structured lens for reflecting on the assessment of societal harm. (shrink)

Vagueness is pervasive in social reality yet neglected in social ontology. This neglect stems from a widespread assumption: social kinds have mind-dependent membership conditions fixed by collective attitudes, entailing epistemic transparency—infallible access to the nature and extension of social kinds. I argue that epistemic transparency is incompatible with any interpretation of vagueness, and consequently that anti-realist frameworks cannot accommodate vague social kinds. Realists, however, are better equipped to handle vagueness by relying on theories of kinds as clusters. Anti-realists must drop (...) mind-dependent membership conditions and epistemic transparency entirely, a deeply unsatisfactory solution for a priori projects in social ontology. (shrink)

Models are used in a variety of arguments such as explanatory, critical, and policy arguments. However, there does not seem to be a framework within which to analyze their diverse argumentative uses. This article focuses on the argumentative uses of economic models and proposes a four-layered framework (from scientific model to policy argument) to analyze the role of such models as argumentative devices, and to make explicit the gap between model results and real-world policy claims. The case in focus is (...) the supply and demand model and its role in explanatory and policy arguments during the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

By prioritising certain kinds of evidence and devaluing or excluding other kinds of evidence, orthodox evidence-based evaluation practice perpetuates epistemic injustice, we argue. In contrast, by advocating a more inclusive approach to evidence, Evidential Pluralism can avoid these epistemic injustices. This motivates the adoption of Evidential Pluralism as a new methodology for evaluation. These arguments are supported by case studies concerning Covid-19 public face-mask mandates and global value chains for development. Consideration of epistemic injustice introduces a moral dimension to the (...) debate concerning the epistemic virtues and limitations of the orthodox approach and Evidential Pluralism. (shrink)

Christoph Schuringa’s Social History of Analytic Philosophy is a lesser but worthy sequel to Gyorgy Lukacs’s comprehensive ideology critique of twentieth century philosophy in The Destruction of Reason. Like Lukacs, Schuringa identifies analytic philosophy’s weak critical sensibility with its bourgeois liberalism, which impedes its ability to address adequately class, gender, and race discrimination. Schuringa is most interesting when he turns to the revival of metaphysics within the analytic tradition, especially modality, which is pivotal for the political imagination, given its focus (...) on what can and ought to be. Saul Kripke is the focal figure, whose relationship to deconstruction and artificial intelligence is probed. (shrink)

This article analyses the concept of “survival” and its uses in the philosophy of history of R.G. Collingwood (An Autobiography, The Idea of History). Indeed, if we can find occurrences of this notion in the work of British philosophers from the second half of the 20th century, like G.E.M. Anscombe and A. MacIntyre, it seems that Collingwood is the first philosopher who introduces this concept in the philosophical method, extracting it from its anthropological background. When a concept, or practice, is (...) described as survival, it is to manifest a lack of rationality, and the logical way of treating a survival concept would be to suppress it, or to refuse to use it anymore. However, in Collingwood’s philosophy of history, the concept of survival is crucial because it is a necessary condition for our understanding of the past. Thus, this concept, which is often neglected in Collingwood’s studies, is nevertheless important in his method of approaching philosophical problems. (shrink)

In their recent article Hopster, Rueda and Hillenbrink argue that debate on technomoral change would benefit from reflections on second order conceptual change and the role of institutions. This commentary builds on some issues that are only briefly mentioned in their paper, by connecting the literature on technomoral change to the literature on forms of life in critical theory, which allows to explore the complex relationship between concepts and institutions and how they influence moral change. In particular, the phenomenon of (...) crises induced by so called “socially disruptive technologies” will be used to alert us to the possibility of critique aimed at existing institutions that may force change in the forms of life that dominate. (shrink)

Mitigating climate change requires staying within safe greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions levels. International climate treaties, such as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2014 Paris Agreement, are intended to distribute emissions entitlements and mitigation burdens among different countries. But before we can decide how much countries are left to emit or which countries should reduce GHG emissions and by how much, we need to know who emitted how much. The most prominent carbon emissions accounting mechanisms are production-based (PBEA), and consumption-based (...) emissions accounting (CBEA). PBEA assigns emissions based on the production of goods and services while CBEA assigns emissions based on the consumption of those goods and services. One way of deciding between emissions accounting mechanisms is based on fairness considerations. We call this ‘fair emissions accounting’. In this paper we present a common approach to fair emissions accounting (Common Approach) and argue that it is misguided. Instead, we offer our Moral Responsibility Approach as an alternative. We argue that the primary consideration for choosing an emissions accounting mechanism from a fairness perspective ought to be who ought to take moral responsibility for emissions. We provide some criteria for moral responsibility in the context of climate change and present a moderate defense of CBEA as the mechanism that, on balance, best meets these criteria. (shrink)

Geographic definitions of constituency—the set of voters eligible to vote for a representative—have been criticized by theorists and reformers as undermining democratic values. I argue, in response, that there is no categorical (or even generally applicable) reason sounding in political equality to reject geographic districts. Geographic districting systems are typically flexible enough that, when properly designed, and matched with an appropriate electoral system, they can satisfy the requirements of political equality. More generally, I argue that it is a mistake to (...) evaluate the egalitarian character of constituency definitions in isolation from the political decision-making process as a whole. While it is conceptually important that we can detach constituency definition from other features of electoral systems, when it comes to normative and evaluative judgment, we ought to judge holistically. When we do so, we will rarely find general reasons to prefer one type of constituency definition to another. Geographic districts may offer benefits of logistical convenience and information circulation, even given the existence of advanced information technology. The best reason to reject geographic districts is their liability to anti-democratic abuse. Their defensibility in any given polity thus depends on how feasible it is to protect against such abuses while retaining a geographic districting system. (shrink)

(OPEN ACCESS) In this paper, I criticize two views on how political equality is related to equally distributed political power, and I offer a novel, pluralist account of political equality to address their shortcomings—in particular, concerning their implications for affirmative action in the political domain, political representation, and the situation of permanent minorities. The Equal Power View holds that political equality requires equally distributed political power. It considers affirmative action—e.g., racial or gender electoral quotas—, representation, and more-than-equal power to permanent (...) minorities pro tanto objectionable. The Equal Status View, in contrast, holds that political equality concerns equal relations and status, and it is only contingently related to equally distributed power. I argue that while the Equal Status View is right that equal power can be insufficient for—or even objectionable from the viewpoint of—political equality, it is wrong to conclude that equal power has no independent significance in an account of political equality. My pluralist account shows that political equality entails not only status-based requirements but also independent egalitarian requirements to distribute political power equally. This account provides a finer-grained understanding of affirmative action in the political domain. It justifies affirmative action but holds that it should only be used to realize equal political status until thorough-going social reform allows us to maintain both equal political status and equally distributed political power at the same time. Similarly, representation should be amended with power-balancing institutions, and permanent minorities should enjoy equal status with minimal compromise to power equality. (shrink)

In 1970, Stewart advocated disenfranchising everyone reaching retirement age or age 70, whichever was earlier. The question of whether senior citizens should be disenfranchised has recently come to the fore due to votes on issues such as Brexit and climate change. Indeed, there is a growing literature which argues that we should increase the voting power of non-senior citizens relative to senior citizens, for reasons having to do with intergenerational justice. Thus, it seems that there are reasons of justice to (...) disenfranchise senior citizens, or at least to grant them a lower voting weight than non-senior citizens. In this paper, we investigate whether there are democratic reasons to do so. To answer this question, we turn to the boundary problem in democratic theory, i.e., the question of who should be included in democratic decision-making. Two prominent solutions, and a more recent one, are particularly relevant: the all-affected principle, the all-subjected principle, and the relational egalitarian principle. When it comes to the all-affected principle and the all-subjected principle, we argue that there is reason to grant most senior citizens a lower voting weight than most non-senior citizens in most decisions. Whether that is the case on the relational egalitarian principle depends on how people relate to each other in society. Indeed, it is sometimes in accordance with the relational egalitarian view to grant senior citizens a greater voting weight than non-senior citizens. (shrink)

Democracy is the form of government in which citizens have an equal say in political decision-making. But what does this mean precisely? Having an equal say is often defined either in terms of equal power to influence political decision-making or in terms of appropriate consideration, i.e., as a matter of attributing appropriate deliberative weight to citizens’ judgement in political decision-making. In this paper I argue that both accounts are incomplete. I offer an alternative view according to which having an equal (...) say is having a say as an equal. That is, having an equal say is to be defined in terms of citizens’ occupying a role of political decision-makers, i.e., the political office of the democratic co-ruler of the polity, such that no citizen is a secondary or auxiliary decision-maker; they rule together as equals. This view aligns with the traditional understanding of democracy as rule by the people while providing a coherent conceptual framework for specifying what it means for democratic citizens to have an equal say which incorporates the strengths of alternative accounts and overcomes some of their challenges. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of global competition for academic talent and cross-border research influence, global city strategic positioning has become a critical upstream driver shaping the competitiveness of local international higher education. As China’s capital with the designated “Four Centers” positioning, Beijing owns unique political, technological, cultural and diplomatic agglomeration advantages that distinguish it from other domestic metropolises. Existing research mostly separates urban planning research and university internationalisation analysis, lacking quantitative empirical tests on the transmission mechanism linking multi-dimensional city positioning to (...) educational competitiveness. This study constructs a structural equation model based on Friedmann’s World City Hypothesis and resource agglomeration theory. Taking Beijing’s 34 Double First-Class universities as the research object, it collects mixed questionnaire and 2020–2025 archival data to test the direct effects of four urban functional positioning dimensions and the mediating role of higher education resource agglomeration. The results show that political-diplomatic positioning exerts the strongest positive direct impact, followed by sci-tech, cultural and talent exchange positioning; higher education resource agglomeration presents universal partial mediation across all paths, and obvious heterogeneity exists among different university types. This paper enriches non-Western global city educational research and provides differentiated urban-education coordination strategies for Beijing’s municipal authorities and institutional administrators. (shrink)

This paper examines the centrality that artificial intelligence has acquired within governmentality. Starting from a Deleuzian hypothesis—that machines do not determine social formations but rather express them—it seeks to identify the political, sociocultural, and economic foundations of this speculative turn. It thus interrogates the current imperative to adopt algorithmic systems, which blurs the boundaries between research, development, and commercial deployment, while simultaneously reconfiguring professional practices and regimes of validation. Through the methodological prism of governmentality, the article identifies semiotic, normative, and (...) ethical shifts characteristic of a form of capitalism intensified by the algorithmic, referred to as the “speculative turn.” Within this framework, artificial intelligences—especially in their “first wave”—operate as devices for ordering and hierarchizing massive datasets, promoted as indispensable tools for dealing with complexity and uncertainty. The analysis shows how the convergence of digital and ecological transitions reflects a renewed faith in technical capacities to manage contingency, configuring a rationality that oscillates between ideology and belief. (shrink)

El propósito de este artículo es considerar el acto de lectura desde la perspectiva de la fenomenología de la hospitalidad de Jean-Louis Chrétien, quien reconoce como fuente el pensamiento de San Agustín. La exposición se desarrollará en tres partes: primero, la fenomenología de la hospitalidad en el horizonte del llamado y la respuesta; segundo, la fenomenología de la palabra, como voz visible, que abarca la dimensión estética de la belleza y la dimensión ética de la responsividad; tercero, la fenomenología de (...) la lectura y la hospitalidad del poema. (shrink)

This article pursues a twofold objective. First, it analyzes the shortcomings of R. Dipert’s classification of technical objects. Specifically, I will focus on explicating the way artificiality is detected, the problem of the polyvalence of the notion of ‘property,’ and the question of how types of artefactual communicativity are classified. This approach aims to show that the category of ‘tool’ is unnecessary, since it is impossible to find a tool that is not already an artifact. As a second objective, I (...) seek to propose a cautious stratification of the various levels of communicativity that appear intertwined in Dipert’s proposal. (shrink)

En el siguiente trabajo nos proponemos dar cuenta de las bases comprensivas y alcances de los estudios histórico políticos sobre la inteligencia artificial y la técnica en la obra de Sadin, en el marco de los respectivos antecedentes más relevantes en la filosofía política contemporánea. Mediante un recorrido analítico-crítico, distinguiremos algunos antecedentes vinculados a los recientes estudios filosóficos de la técnica que se hallan imbricados en sus diferentes desarrollos. En segundo lugar, analizaremos su caracterización política actual y la respectiva propuesta (...) genealógico-histórica de la inteligencia artificial, en especial, poniendo de manifiesto los discursos y prácticas que le son correlativos. Desde allí abordaremos sus constataciones del impacto respectivo en nuestra condición humana y social contemporánea. Finalmente, buscaremos puntualizar algunas de sus propuestas articuladas en lo que aquí identificamos como una perspectiva metódica y estratégica de la acción. En este marco buscaremos argumentar en torno a la siguiente interpretación: es posible identificar ciertas tensiones entre los principios humanistas que subyacen a su enfoque y la prospectiva que propone. En general, el objeto de este recorrido es contribuir con un debate histórico fructífero sobre nuevas formas de pensar y abordar políticamente las consecuencias del impacto del desarrollo tecnocientífico en nuestras sociedades. (shrink)

Este artículo sostiene que Blaise Pascal no cumple en la obra de Jean-Luc Marion una función meramente crítica ni histórica, sino estructural para la formulación de su fenomenología de la donación. A partir del análisis de tres ejes conceptuales —la jerarquía de los tres órdenes, la relación entre evidencia y caridad, y la distinción entre ego y moi— se muestra cómo Pascal provee las condiciones para una reconfiguración de la fenomenicidad más allá de los límites de la metafísica. En lugar (...) de anular la tradición fenomenológica precedente, Marion la reinscribe desde un horizonte pascaliano en el que la donación se convierte en el principio originario del aparecer. Así, el pensamiento de Pascal permite tanto reinterpretar las figuras clásicas de la subjetividad (yo trascendental, Dasein) como establecer una variación hermenéutica que articula el pasaje entre objetos y acontecimientos. (shrink)

In this article, I will carry out a comparative analysis of the conceptions of meaning of Frege and Husserl, considering three fundamental dimensions: 1) the rejection of psychologism; 2) the distinction between sense and reference; 3) the identity criteria at the level of propositions. I intend to show that this last comparative dimension is of central importance, even though it has not been sufficiently studied and analyzed by scholars. Regarding the first two points of comparison, I will argue that certain (...) common elements between the approaches of these authors have motivated interpretations that tend to underestimate their differences or analyze them from the wrong perspective. (shrink)

The philosophical literature on personal relationships is focused on dyads: close relationships between just two people. This paper aims to characterise the value of looser and larger relational networks, particularly from the perspective of liberal political theory. We focus on relational networks' value vis-a-vis the important good of felt security. We begin by characterising felt security and analysing how felt security is produced within dyads. We highlight the ambivalent nature of dyadic relationships as a source of felt security. We then (...) theorise relational networks, explaining how they too can provide felt security. We explore three unappreciated benefits that arise when felt security is garnered from a network, rather than from a dyad. These benefits take liberal political theory as their starting point. We close by considering the implications - for both individual action and institutional design - of using relational networks as a source of felt security. (shrink)

Aristotle names two emotions that prepare a learner for virtue, which become less critical in the virtuous person. The first is emulation, which incites a learner to imitate the excellences of another. The second is shame. Shame is a means by which someone learns the actions she ought not perform and is motivated to not perform them. This article has two objectives. It examines the role these emotions play in virtue development, as emotional ‘training wheels’ for virtue, and explores how (...) these emotions appear differently in virtuous agent. Next it proposes two additional virtue developmental aids—empathy and guilt. Empathy inclines us to perform good actions, but there are reasons to question how well it supports virtue long-term. Guilt likewise motivates good actions but is an unsuitable motivation for virtue. (shrink)