Resumen Las tecnologías actuales no son neutrales. Reflejan las necesidades, perspectivas y experiencias de quienes las desarrollan. Estos sesgos han dado lugar a la creación de armas digitales como los deepfakes, una tecnología que, de manera desproporcionada, se utiliza en mujeres para crear contenido sexual. El presente estudio analiza el auge de aplicaciones deepfake en América Latina y el Caribe (ALAC), enfocándose en su disponibilidad, facilidad de uso y los riesgos que representan en contextos de desigualdad estructural y violencia digital (...) de género. Para ello, se realizó una recolección automatizada de datos mediante una API, identificando 105 aplicaciones deepfake disponibles a diciembre de 2024 en Google Play Store. Posteriormente, se llevó a cabo una evaluación fundamentada en dimensiones como año, alcance, diseño, accesibilidad, modelos de negocio y funcionalidades. Finalmente, se realizó un análisis crítico para comprender cómo estas herramientas configuran dinámicas de poder, perpetúan narrativas de cosificación y amplifican la violencia digital contra las mujeres. Los hallazgos evidencian un diseño intencionado que facilita la adopción de estas aplicaciones, eliminando barreras técnicas y normalizando la cosificación de los cuerpos de las mujeres, siendo el 89.5% de estas herramientas un potencial peligro para ellas. La investigación enfatiza la urgencia de cuestionar la supuesta neutralidad de estas tecnologías y la necesidad de repensar su desarrollo desde una perspectiva que contribuya a construir entornos digitales más seguros y respetuosos para todas las personas. Abstract Current technologies are not neutral; they reflect the needs, perspectives, and experiences of their developers. These biases have led to the creation of digital weapons like deepfakes, a technology that is disproportionately used against women to create sexual content. This study examines the rise of deepfake applications in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), focusing on their availability, ease of use, and the risks they pose in contexts of structural inequality and digital gender-based violence. To that end, an automated data collection was carried out using an API, identifying 105 deepfake applications available on the Google Play Store as of December 2024. Subsequently, an evaluation was conducted based on criteria such as year, scope, design, accessibility, business models, and functionalities. Finally, a critical analysis was performed to understand how these tools shape power dynamics, perpetuate objectification narratives, and amplify digital violence against women. The findings reveal an intentional design that facilitates the adoption of these applications, removing technical barriers and normalizing the objectification of women's bodies, with 89.5% of these tools posing a potential danger to them. The research emphasizes the urgency of questioning the supposed neutrality of these technologies and the need to rethink their development from a perspective that contributes to building safer and more respectful digital environments for everyone. (shrink)

In this study, we propose considering membership in the Ethics Officer Association (EOA) as a proxy for the firm''s commitment to ethical decision making, and we analyze the influence of firm- and CEO-specific characteristics on this commitment. While we observe a positive relationship between membership and firm size, we also document a negative relationship between EOA membership and the executive''s time in position and, to a more modest extent, accounting returns. Pursuing this further, we present evidence that firms with past (...) legal issues may seek EOA membership as a signal of their intention to be compliant in the future. (shrink)

Transhumanists seek to use biotechnology to overcome the limitations of the human body and ultimately evolve into a “posthuman” being. This issue considers the extent to which transhumanism may be reconciled with a Christian worldview. Several authors propose ways that human enhancement technology may be limitedly compatible with Christian anthropology. Nevertheless, all the authors of this issue argue that the philosophy behind transhumanism threatens to distort our understanding of human nature, basic goods, ways of thinking, hope, justice, and even heaven (...) itself. Thus, transhumanism presents an alternate culture to Christianity. This issue culminates in a reflection on Christian identity and our relationship to technology in the “age of the posthuman.” A uniquely Christian technology, typified in the Eucharist, infuses nature with human creativity in a vital act that directs us to God as our ultimate good. (shrink)

The following notes are a commentary on Luis J. Prieto’s text “A semiology: Problems and routes”, an English translation of “Une semiologie: problems et parcours”. The notes begin by introducing the different versions under which “A semiology…” was originally published, and then explain some problems faced when working on the English translation. After that, the introduction provides a historical and theoretical contextualization of the original text, focusing on Prieto’s disagreement with Cesare Luporini’s views on (scientific) knowledge from a materialist (Marxist-Leninist) (...) perspective. The notes then move on to Prieto’s own theory and examine the interrelations between knowledge, practice and subjectivity as they are treated in “A semiology…” and in related texts written by Prieto around the same time. Finally, the notes close with a brief observation of how Prieto’s theory could be developed and what its shortcomings are, especially regarding contemporary semiotic theory. (shrink)

Technology and its products “reveal us” to ourselves. Patients and practitioners alike come to understand human nature through the mediation of technological practices in the clinic. The articles in this issue provide novel considerations of clinical interventions that emerge throughout the human lifespan, focusing on topics such as assistive reproductive therapy, embryo research, abortion, diagnosis, and organ donation. The questions raised in this issue bring into sharp relief the tension between human nature and the artifacts used to represent it. Caring (...) for the human person in varied settings, as presented in this issue, requires one to stake a claim, albeit tacitly, in matters of philosophical anthropology. As technology enables new ways of interacting with and studying the human person, we are urged to consider what it means to be human and how we should engage with technology to manifest the goods that are proper to human nature. (shrink)

This interview with Silvana Rabinovich, a philosopher working at the crossroads of ethics, discourse analysis, decolonial thought and political theology, presents an overview of Rabinovich’s positions regarding the study of language and languages. It then proceeds to the philosophical problems of translating and observes the connections between translation and interreligious dialogue by looking at the case of Judeo-Arabic language. The conversation then moves on to explore Rabinovich’s idea, drawing on Levinas, of building a heteronomous relationship with language. In its closing (...) part, the interview presents an apt comment on how academics might contribute to the solving of social problems. (shrink)

Este trabajo tuvo como objetivo evaluar los resultados del proyecto educativo en estudiantes de enfermería de salud reproductiva de licenciatura en enfermería, periodo agosto 2021 enero 2022, se empleó una metodología mixta, participaron 66 estudiantes, 64 familias. el resultado fue que los estudiantes; brindaron charlas educativas, abordaron temas de prevención de cáncer cervical, prevención de cáncer mamario y prevención de enfermedades de trasmisión sexual, se sintieron en confianza, los integrantes de las familias realizaron diversas preguntas, solicitaron más temas de interés (...) personal y fue agradable su experiencia de enseñar y compartir información en el ámbito familiar. (shrink)

Wonder Woman's co‐creator William Marston believed that sexual bondage was key to achieving a peaceful society. Though Marston intended Wonder Woman to provide an alternative to the masculinity of the superheroes of his day, Marston's vision remains relevant today. The behavior and attitude of Marston's Wonder Woman anticipated contemporary feminist philosophers' contributions to the ethics of care. There is also an underlying ethics of care in Wonder Woman's role as what Marston calls a "Love Leader", and that combination of kink (...) and care is itself reflected in contemporary BDSM. Marston's stated goal in his academic writing was to promote "a new code of conduct, based on love supremacy". Marston's comic‐book creation, Wonder Woman, fit his depiction of an ideal Love Leader: a sexually alluring and powerful, yet loving, mistress whose feminine charms would make women and men submit to her authority. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to show how a possible theoretical articulation between Uexkull’s notion of Funktionskreis and the stratificational model of semiotic structures proposed by Louis Hjelmslev can be made. In order to bridge the gap between these two models, Luis Prieto’s model of cognition will be used. The advantage of Prieto’s model is that it retains the Hjelmslevian stratificational ideas (i.e. a semiotic structure is made up of an expression and a content plane, each one with (...) a dimension of form and substance), while it also pays attention to agency and practice. To put it briefly, according to Prieto the foundation of practice and knowledge is to be found on aisthesis. Hence, as in Uexküll, there is a way to merge action with perception, while retaining the semiotic structure that makes such a merging possible. The key point, however, is that Prieto’s model calls for an “ontological commitment” to the substance strata (both in expression and in content to some extent). Therefore, bridging Uexküll and Hjelmslev via Prieto suggests a possible way to provide a general structural model of semiosis which is closer to semiotic realism than to immanentism usually attributed to structuralism. (shrink)

Este trabajo tuvo como objetivo evaluar los resultados del proyecto educativo en estudiantes de enfermería de salud reproductiva de licenciatura en enfermería, periodo agosto 2021 enero 2022, se empleó una metodología mixta, participaron 66 estudiantes, 64 familias. el resultado fue que los estudiantes; brindaron charlas educativas, abordaron temas de prevención de cáncer cervical, prevención de cáncer mamario y prevención de enfermedades de trasmisión sexual, se sintieron en confianza, los integrantes de las familias realizaron diversas preguntas, solicitaron más temas de interés (...) personal y fue agradable su experiencia de enseñar y compartir información en el ámbito familiar. (shrink)

Resumen El concepto de amor historicamente ha ruborizado a la filosofia, pues se mantiene totalmente ajeno a las exigencias de dar una explication critica de si mismo. El amor ha respondido con resistencia muda a los interrogatorios del pensamiento critico. De hecho, parece existir un consenso respecto de que el amor se situa en un territorio mas alla de lo pensable y en la doxa romantica se ha establecido que el amor es un tipo de intensidad que no puede reducirse (...) a ningun principio regulador. Como senala Alain Badiou, es "lo que se sustrae de la teoria". En este ensayo me opongo a una postura tan antifilosofica y exploro el parentesco del amor con el pensamiento y la verdad. Basado principalmente en la obra de Jean-Luc Nancy y Alain Badiou, sondeo la relation entre amor y pensamiento, pues ello constituye una ocasion para que nos percatemos de la "connivencia intima entre el amor y el pensar", en palabras de Nancy. En un momento en que el amor se ve amenazado por acusaciones de no ser nada mas que un "optimismo cruel", sugiero que Nancy y Badiou hacen una defensa filosofica del amor al subrayar su parentesco con el pensamiento y la verdad.The concept of love has historically been somewhat of an embarrassment for Philosophy because it remains relentlessly oblivious to the demands for it to present a critical account of itself. Against the interrogations of critical thought, it has only responded with mute resistance. indeed, the consensus seems to be that love dwells in the domain beyond the thinkable, and it is ensconced in the Romantic doxa that it is a form of intensity that is not subject to any organizing principle. As Alain Badiou observes, it is "what is subtracted from theory". In this essay, I oppose such an "anti-philosophical" position, and offer an exploration of love's kinship with thought and truth. Drawing primarily from the work of Jean-Luc Nancy and Alain Badiou, I explore the relationship oflove and thought, for it is an occasion that obligates one to realize the "intimate connivance between love and thinking," to use the words of Nancy. At a time when love is threatened by accusations ofbeing nothing more than a "cruel optimism", I suggest that Nancy and Badiou offer a philosophical defense of love by underscoring its kinship to thought and to truth. (shrink)

The establishment of Mexico's National Bioethics Commission (Comisión Nacional de Bioética), in 1992, was conceived within the context of a global movement aimed at raising awareness of the ethical implications of technological and scientific development, especially in biomedicine. In 2005, a new decree put the commission under the scope of the Secretariat of Health and granted it technical and operational autonomy, allowing it to become a regulatory agency aimed at promoting a culture of bioethics, encouraging reflection on human health, and (...) developing guidelines for health care, research, and education, through a global, secular, and democratic perspective. The commission became the leading actor in the strategy for institutionalizing bioethics in Mexico after reforms to the country's General Health Act in 2011, which required that public, social assistance, or private health care facilities establish a hospital bioethics committee to address bioethical dilemmas or issues and, when relevant, a research ethics committee to address research with human subjects. This assignment has shifted the focus of the activities and goals of the National Bioethics Commission toward establishing these committees in line with current regulations and developing mechanisms to ensure that they operate with the highest standards of ethical conduct, performance, and accountability. (shrink)

The main focus of this article is to present the practical aspect of the code rules of variation and the search for a second set of genomic rules, including comparison of sequences to understand how to preserve compatible organisms in danger of extinction and how to generate biodiversity. Three new rules of variation are introduced: 1) homologous recombination, 2) a healthy fertile offspring, and 3) comparison of compatible genomes. The novel search in the natural world for fully compatible genomes capable (...) of homologous recombination is explored by using examples of human polymorphisms and by the production of fertile offspring by crossbreeding. By a rational control of: natural crossbreeding of organisms with compatible genomes (something already happening in nature), the current work focuses on the generation of new varieties after a careful plan. This study is presented within the context of biosemiotics, which studies the processing of information, signalling and signs by living systems. I define a group of organisms having compatible genomes as a single theme: the genomic species or population, able to speak the same molecular language through different accents, with each variety within a theme being a different version of the same book. These studies have a molecular, compatible genetics context. Population and ecosystem biosemiotics will be exemplified by a possible genetic damage capable of causing mutations by breaking the rules of variation through the coordinated patterns of atoms present in the 9/11 World Trade Center contaminated dust (U, Ba, La, Ce, Sr, Rb, K, Mn, Mg, etc.), combination that may be able to overload the molecular quality control mechanisms of the human body. I introduce here the balance of codons in the circular genetic code: 2[1(1)+1(3)+1(4)+4(2)]=2[2(2)+3(4)]. (shrink)

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited.Both governments and the private sector urgently require better estimates of the likely incidence of extreme weather events, their impacts on food crop production and the potential consequent social and economic losses. Current assessments of climate change impacts on agriculture mostly focus on average crop yield vulnerability to climate and adaptation scenarios. Also, although new-generation climate models have improved and there has been an exponential increase in available data, the uncertainties in their projections over years and (...) decades, and at regional and local scale, have not decreased. We need to understand and quantify the non-stationary, annual and decadal climate impacts using simple and communicable risk metrics that will help public and private stakeholders manage the hazards to food security. Here we present an 'end-to-end' methodological construct based on weather indices and machine learning that integrates current understanding of the various interacting systems of climate, crops and the economy to determine short- to long-term risk estimates of crop production loss, in different climate and adaptation scenarios. For provinces north and south of the Yangtze River in China, we have found that risk profiles for crop yields that translate climate into economic variability follow marked regional patterns, shaped by drivers of continental-scale climate. We conclude that to be cost-effective, region-specific policies have to be tailored to optimally combine different categories of risk management instruments. (shrink)

Cinema and Machine Vision unfolds the aesthetic, epistemic, and ideological dimensions of machine-seeing films and television using computers. With its critical-technical approach, this book presents to the reader key new problems that arise as AI becomes integral to visual culture. The book theorises machine vision through a selection of aesthetics, film theory, and applied machine learning research, dispelling widely held assumptions about computer systems designed to watch and make images on our behalf. At its heart, Cinema and Machine Vision is (...) an invitation for film and media scholars to critically engage with AI at a technical level, a prompt for scientists and engineers working with images and cultural data to critically reflect on where their assumptions about vision come from, and a joint recognition of the fruitful problems of working together to understand the algorithmic governance of the visual. (shrink)

En este trabajo, revisamos la literatura clásica en modularidad cognitiva. Ofrecemos una descripción cognitiva neuronal de la modularidad, que incluye: patrones de disfunción específicos, la doble disociación, una actividad cerebral asociada, y un proceso de especialización funcional. Posteriormente, analizamos un módulo de cognición social, i.e., el módulo de detección de tramposos. Compilamos las objeciones clásicas a este módulo, y ofrecemos algunas nuevas, para posteriormente contrastarlas con las primeras. En la última parte, ofrecemos algunas implicaciones y direcciones futuras para los estudios (...) actuales sobre cognición social. (shrink)

[Sebastian Gardner] German idealism has been pictured as an unwarranted deviation from the central epistemological orientation of modern philosophy, and its close historical association with German romanticism is adduced in support of this verdict. This paper proposes an interpretation of German idealism which seeks to grant key importance to its connection with romanticism without thereby undermining its philosophical rationality. I suggest that the fundamental motivation of German idealism is axiological, and that its augment of Kant's idealism is intelligible in terms (...) of its combined aim of consolidating the transcendental turn and legitimating the kind of relation to value articulated in German romanticism. /// [Paul Franks] German idealists regard Spinozism as both the realism that outflanks Kant's idealism and the source of the conception of systematicity with which to fortify idealism. But they offer little argument for this view. To fill the gap, I reconstruct arguments that could underlie Jacobi's and Pistorius's tentative but influential suggestions that Kant is or should be a Spinozist. Kant is indeed a monist about phenomena, but, unlike Spinoza, a pluralist about noumena. Nevertheless, it is arguable that the Third Antinomy can be solved by a more thoroughgoing Spinozistic monism. The resulting Spinozism outflanks Kant by acknowledging Jacobi's charge that philosophy annihilates immediacy and individuality, whereas Kant's commitment to things in themselves can seem a half-hearted attempt to avoid the charge. However, the German idealist contention is that only a synthesis of such a Spinozism with Kantian idealism can retrieve immediacy and individuality, thus overcoming nihilism. (shrink)

What is considered to be fair depends on context-dependent expectations. Using a modified version of the Ultimatum Game, we demonstrate that both fair behavior and perceptions of fairness depend upon beliefs about what one ought to do in a situation—that is, upon normative expectations. We manipulate such expectations by creating informational asymmetries about the offer choices available to the Proposer, and find that behavior varies accordingly. Proposers and Responders show a remarkable degree of agreement in their beliefs about which choices (...) are considered fair. We discuss how these results fit into a theory of social norms. (shrink)

Using an economic bargaining game, we tested for the existence of two phenomena related to social norms, namely norm manipulation – the selection of an interpretation of the norm that best suits an individual – and norm evasion – the deliberate, private violation of a social norm. We found that the manipulation of a norm of fairness was characterized by a self-serving bias in beliefs about what constituted normatively acceptable behaviour, so that an individual who made an uneven bargaining offer (...) not only genuinely believed it was fair, but also believed that recipients found it fair, even though recipients of the offer considered it to be unfair. In contrast, norm evasion operated as a highly explicit process. When they could do so without the recipient's knowledge, individuals made uneven offers despite knowing that their behaviour was unfair. (shrink)

Short overview of the From Small Beginnings Project and its relevance for resisting eugenics in contemporary society.

What is attention? How does attention shape consciousness? In an approach that engages with foundational topics in the philosophy of mind, the theory of action, psychology, and the neurosciences this book provides a unified and comprehensive answer to both questions. Sebastian Watzl shows that attention is a central structural feature of the mind. The first half of the book provides an account of the nature of attention. Attention is prioritizing, it consists in regulating priority structures. Attention is not another element (...) of the mind, but constituted by structures that organize, integrate, and coordinate the parts of our mind. Attention thus integrates the perceptual and intellectual, the cognitive and motivational, and the epistemic and practical. The second half of the book concerns the relationship between attention and consciousness. Watzl argues that attentional structure shapes consciousness into what is central and what is peripheral. The center-periphery structure of consciousness cannot be reduced to the structure of how the world appears to the subject. What it is like for us thus goes beyond the way the world appears to us. On this basis, a new view of consciousness is offered. In each conscious experience we actively take a stance on the world we appear to encounter. It is in this sense that our conscious experience is our subjective perspective. (shrink)

Yes, Roya, a 2016 graphic novel written by C. Spike Trotman and illustrated by Emilee Denich, depicts Roya, a woman of color who writes and illustrates a comic strip; Joe, a white man who gave up his career after meeting Roya, who now publishes under his name; and Wylie, a young white man starting in the profession. Roya completely dominates Joe’s career, making it hers. She also partly dominates Wylie’s, acting as his mentor. Roya dominates Joe and Wylie personally too. (...) She is their sexual dominant, and they are her submissives. Professionally and personally, moreover, Joe and Wylie each submit to Roya consensually. Further, though Roya both writes and illustrates her comic strip, often writer and illustrator differ. The former, creating the story, dominates the latter, illustrating the story after the fact – as Trotman and Denich themselves did consensually via a contract when creating their graphic novel. Hence Yes, Roya highlights domination and submission in comics creation and in sex. More than that, the graphic novel also presents both kinds of domination and submission as ethical. Because Aristotle, Kant, and Mill are the most influential ethicists in the Western tradition, this chapter investigates how each could accommodate such professional and personal dominant/submissive relationships in their philosophy. (shrink)

Waged in 2016, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has claimed over 20,000 lives according to human rights groups. The Duterte administration’s own count is significantly lower: around 6,000. The huge discrepancy between the government’s official count and that of arguably more impartial organizations about something as concretely material as body count is symptomatic of how disinformation is central to the Duterte administration and how it can sustain the approval of the majority of the Philippine electorate. We suggest that (...) Duterte’s populist politics generates what Boler and Davis call “affective feedback loops,” which create emotional and informational ecosystems that facilitate smooth algorithmic governance. We turn to Patron Saints of Nothing, a recently published novel by Randy Ribay about a Filipino-American who goes back to the Philippines to uncover the truth behind the death of his cousin. Jay’s journey into the “heart of darkness” as a “hyphenated” individual allows him access to locally networked subjectivities but not its affective entanglements. Throughout the novel, he encounters numerous versions of the circumstances of Jun’s demise and the truth remains elusive at the end of the novel. We argue that despite the constant distortion of fact and fiction in the novel, what remains relatively stable or “sticky” throughout the novel are the letters from Jun Reguero that Jay carries with him back to the Philippines. We suggest that these letters can potentially serve as a form of “dissensus” that challenges the constant redistribution of the sensible in the novel. (shrink)

Sebastian Luft presents and defends the philosophy of culture championed by the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism. Following a historical trajectory from Hermann Cohen to Paul Natorp and through to Ernst Cassirer, this book makes a systematic case for the viability and attractiveness of a philosophical culture in a transcendental vein, in the manner in which the Marburgers intended to broaden Kant's approach.

Sebastian Schmidt (Zürich) fragt in seinem Beitrag »Wie vernünftig sind Verschwörungstheoretiker?«, wie es um die Vernunft derjenigen steht, die einer Verschwörungstheorie über die Corona-Pandemie anhängen. Im Umgang mit Corona scheint sich zu bestätigen, was die Psychologie seit Jahrzehnten lehrt: Menschen unterliegen in ihrem Denken kognitiven Fehlern und Verzerrungen. Doch ist verschwörungstheoretisches Denken, das solche Fehler ebenfalls begeht, deshalb irrational? Schmidt warnt davor, einander zu leichtfertig als irrational zu betrachten, und verweist auf die wichtige Rolle, die intellektuelles Vertrauen in Wissensgemeinschaften spielt. (...) Am Beispiel des sogenannten Bestätigungsfehlers führt er aus, dass Menschen, die ihre Überzeugungen nicht fortwährend kritisch prüfen, in diesem Verhalten durchaus rational sein können. (shrink)

In a reconstruction of the theories of Freud and Klein, Sebastian Gardner asks: what causes irrationality, what must the mind be like for it to be irrational, to what extent does irrationality involve self-awareness, and what is the point of irrationality? Arguing that psychoanalytic theory provides the most penetrating answers to these questions, he rejects the widespread view of the unconscious as a 'second mind', in favour of a view of it as a source of inherently irrational desires seeking expression (...) through wish-fulfilment and phantasy. He meets scepticism about psychoanalytic explanation by exhibiting its continuity with everyday psychology. (shrink)

Part 1. Husserl: the outlines of the transcendental-phenomenological system -- 1. Husserl's phenomenological discovery of the natural attitude -- 2. Husserl's theory of the phenomenological reduction: between lifeworld and Cartesianism -- 3. Some methodological problems arising in Husserl's late reflections on the phenomenological reduction -- 4. Facticity and historicity as constituents of the lifeworld in Husserl's late philosophy -- 5. Husserl's concept of the "transcendental person": another look at the Husserl-Heidegger relationship -- 6. Dialectics of the absolute: the systematics of (...) the phenomenological system in Husserl's last period -- Part 2. Husserl, Kant, and neo-Kantianism: from subjectivity to lifeworld as a world of culture -- 7. From being to givenness and back: some remarks on the meaning of transcendental idealism in Kant and Husserl -- 8. Reconstruction and reduction: Natorp and Husserl on method and the question of subjectivity -- 9. A hermeneutic phenomenology of subjective and objective spirit: Husserl, Natorp, and Cassirer -- 10. Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms: between reason and relativism: a critical appraisal -- Part 3. Toward a Husserlian hermeneutics -- 11. The subjectivity of effective history and the suppressed husserlian elements in Gadamer's hermeneutics -- 12. Husserl's "hermeneutical phenomenology" as a philosophy of culture. (shrink)

This paper defends and develops the structuring account of conscious attention: attention is the conscious mental process of structuring one’s stream of consciousness so that some parts of it are more central than others. In the first part of the paper, I motivate the structuring account. Drawing on a variety of resources I argue that the phenomenology of attention cannot be fully captured in terms of how the world appears to the subject, as well as against an atomistic conception of (...) attention. In the second part of the paper, I show how the structuring account can be made precise: attention causes and causally sustains phenomenal relations to hold between the parts of the stream of consciousness; most importantly the relation of one part being peripheral to another. I end by pointing out consequences for both the scientific study of attention as well as for several areas of central philosophical interest. (shrink)

The latter half of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable resurgence of interest in Kant’s philosophy in Continental Europe, the effects of which are still being felt today. _The Neo-Kantian Reader_ is the first anthology to collect the most important primary sources in Neo-Kantian philosophy, with many being published here in English for the first time. It includes extracts on a rich and diverse number of subjects, including logic, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, (...) and transcendental idealism. Sebastian Luft, together with other scholars, provides clear introductions to each of the following sections (to the authors as well as to each text), placing them in historical and philosophical context: the beginnings of Neo-Kantianism: including the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, Otto Liebman, Friedrich Lange, and Hermann Lotze the Marburg School: including Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, and Ernst Cassirer the Southwest School: including Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, Emil Lask, and Hans Vaihinger responses and critiques: including Moritz Schlick, Edmund Husserl; Rudolf Carnap, and the 'Davos dispute' between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer. The Neo-Kantian Reader is essential reading for all students of Kant, nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and phenomenology, as well as to those studying important philosophical movements such as logical positivism and analytic philosophy and its history. (shrink)

This book argues that Adorno's writings allow us to address what is arguably the central challenge of modern philosophy: how to picture a world beyond suffering and injustice without betraying its vital impulse. By re-appraising his writings on politics, philosophy, and art, Sebastian Truskolaski reconstructs Adorno's overall project from a radically new perspective. Taking his 'standpoint of redemption' at its starting point, whilst also dealing with his recurrent reference to the Old Testament ban on images, this book brings Adorno's central (...) concerns to bear on debates about Utopia that have come to define political visions across the political spectrum. (shrink)

What is attention? Attention is often seen as a subject matter for the hard sciences of cognitive and brain processes, and is understood in terms of sub-personal mechanisms and processes. Correspondingly, there still is a stark contrast between the central role attention plays for the empirical investigation of the mind in psychology and the neurosciences, and its relative neglect in philosophy. Yet, over the past years, several philosophers have challenged the standard conception. A number of interesting philosophical questions concerning the (...) nature of attention arise. This article provides an introduction to contemporary debates concerning these questions. In particular, it discusses the question of how the pre-theoretic conception of attention might be reconciled with a scientific conception, arguments that provide support for an anti-reductivist theory of attention, and sketches several recent anti-reductivist theories and their inter-relations. (shrink)

I defend the Received View on scientific theories as developed by Carnap, Hempel, and Feigl against a number of criticisms based on misconceptions. First, I dispute the claim that the Received View demands axiomatizations in first order logic, and the further claim that these axiomatizations must include axioms for the mathematics used in the scientific theories. Next, I contend that models are important according to the Received View. Finally, I argue against the claim that the Received View is intended to (...) make the concept of a theory more precise. Rather, it is meant as a generalizable framework for explicating specific theories. (shrink)

This chapter argues that Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception should be understood, not as a theory of perception in the usual sense, but as belonging squarely to transcendental philosophy. Contra the interpretation of Phenomenology of Perception as essentially a work in the philosophy of psychology, and the associated naturalistic construal of his ideas, it is suggested that Merleau-Ponty must be seen in the light of the history of transcendental philosophy and that an original form of idealism lies at the heart of (...) his philosophical project. The transcendental turn is presupposed by Merleau-Ponty’s claims regarding perception, and his key notion of ambiguity is a transcendental descendant of Kant’s strategy of establishing idealism by way of antinomy. (shrink)

Im Alltag äußern wir nicht nur Aussagen darüber, wie die Welt tatsächlich beschaffen ist, sondern auch darüber, was notwendigerweise oder möglicherweise der Fall ist. Doch worin ist die Wahrheit solcher sogenannten Modalaussagen fundiert? Auf diese Frage gibt Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz bereits in der Frühen Neuzeit eine höchst interessante Antwort: Für ihn sind modale Wahrheiten im Intellekt Gottes fundiert. Diese Modalitätskonzeption analysiert Sebastian Bender in der vorliegenden Studie auf systematisch informierte Weise. Dabei kommt er zu folgenden Ergebnissen: Erstens vertritt Leibniz, anders (...) als häufig angenommen, eine nicht-reduktionistische Metaphysik der Modalität– Modales wird von ihm also nicht auf etwas Nicht-Modales reduziert. Zweitens ist Leibniz' Theorie der Modalität kombinatorisch geprägt. Drittens repräsentieren mögliche Welten für Leibniz nicht alles metaphysisch Mögliche. Gott kann im Prinzip auch Ansammlungen von Substanzen erschaffen, die keine Welten konstituieren. Viertens schließlich ist das für Leibniz zentrale Prinzip des zureichenden Grundes kontingent und nicht, wie häufig vorausgesetzt, notwendig. Auf diese Weise gelingt es Leibniz, seinen Rationalismus mit seinem Theismus zu verbinden. (shrink)

What is the philosophical significance of attention? The present article provides an overview of recent debates surrounding the connections between attention and other topics of philosophical interest. In particular, it discusses the interplay between attention and consciousness, attention and agency, and attention and reference. The article outlines the questions and contemporary positions concerning how attention shapes the phenomenal character of experience, whether it is necessary or sufficient for consciousness, and whether it plays a special role in the best philosophical theories (...) of action or conceptual reference. Various interdependencies between the answers to these questions are indicated, as well as how these answers might depend on the metaphysics of attention. Together with its companion piece this article serves as an introduction to the philosophy of attention. (shrink)

on points that remain especially crucial, i.e., the concept of the natural attitude, the ways into the reduction (and their systematics), and finally the question of the “meaning of the reduction.” Indeed, in the reading attempted here, this final question leads to two, not necessarily related, focal points: a Cartesian and a Life-world tendency. It is my claim that in following these two paths, Husserl was consistent in pursuing two evident leads in his philosophical enterprise; however, he was at the (...) same time unable to systematically unify these two strands. Thus, I am offering an interpretation which might be called a modified “departure from Cartesianism” reading that Landgrebe pro-. (shrink)

By Dermot Moran and Joseph Cohen Continuum, 2012. Pp. vi + 376. ISBN 978-1-8470-6463-9. £18.99 (pbk). Dermot Moran and Joseph Cohen, both from University College Dublin, have co-written a dictionar...

Syntactic approaches in the philosophy of science, which are based on formalizations in predicate logic, are often considered in principle inferior to semantic approaches, which are based on formalizations with the help of structures. To compare the two kinds of approach, I identify some ambiguities in common semantic accounts and explicate the concept of a structure in a way that avoids hidden references to a specific vocabulary. From there, I argue that contrary to common opinion (i) unintended models do not (...) pose a significant problem for syntactic approaches to scientific theories, (ii) syntactic approaches can be at least as language-independent as semantic ones, and (iii) in syntactic approaches, scientific theories can be as well connected to the world as in semantic ones. Based on these results, I argue that syntactic and semantic approaches fare equally well when it comes to (iv) ease of application, (v) accommodating the use of models in the sciences, and (vi) capturing the theory-observation relation. (shrink)