Lady Lovelace’s notes on Babbage’s Analytical Engine never refer to the concept of surprise. Having some pretension to ‘originate’ something—unlike the Analytical Engine—is neither necessary nor sufficient to being able to surprise someone. Turing nevertheless translates Lovelace’s ‘this machine is incapable of originating something’ in terms of a hypothetical ‘computers cannot take us by surprise’ objection to the idea that machines may be deemed capable of thinking. To understand the contemporary significance of what is missed in Turing’s ‘surprise’ translation of (...) Lovelace’s insight, one needs to distinguish between trivial surprises and those events, propositions or encounters that lead us to question our understanding of ourselves or what surrounds us. Only some of these non-trivial surprises are the product of originality endeavours. Not only is it uncommon for surprises to track such endeavours, the type of autonomy that would be required on the part of ‘digital computers’ for originality and surprise to intersect in that way goes far beyond the operational autonomy that can be achieved by ‘learning machines’. This paper argues that a salient translation of Lovelace’s originality insight—for contemporary and future ‘learning machines’—is an upside-down version of Turing’s surprise question: can computers be surprised by us in a non-trivial, ‘co-produced’ way? (shrink)

One of the central aspects of contemporary epistemology lies in the difference between abstraction and idealization. While the former consists of the generalization of empirical facts, with the latter, those factors deemed secondary are neglected in order to operationalize instead those factors deemed essential. In the early years of the twentieth century, authors such as Cassirer and Husserl acutely pointed out the limitations of abstraction, reevaluating instead the idealizing character of scientific concepts. This distinction was also the subject of an (...) important epistemological work published in 1980, namely The Structure of Idealization by Polish philosopher of science Leszek Nowak. At this point a question arises. In what does the originality of Leszek Nowak’s reflection consist of? It could be said that Nowak’s importance here is twofold: terminological and systematic. From the terminological point of view Nowak made a very clear distinction between abstraction and idealization, which instead in authors such as Cassirer and Husserl are much more blurred or veiled. From the systematic point of view Nowak has extensively analyzed the way mature science works. In other words, Nowak highlighted the limits – but also the values – of contemporary epistemology by comparing the latter with the idealizational approach to science. (shrink)

This paper explores possible reasons for the comparatively low estimation of the potential philosophical significance of Byzantine theological thought, which, in contemporary studies, is frequently viewed as lacking philosophical depth and originality. The ultimate question here, though, is whether we should grant that theology may, in fact, contain original and valuable philosophy. In order to subject the issues involved to scrutiny, I undertake an analysis of the important case of the legacy of John of Damascus, which, in my opinion, (...) actually furnishes some answers to these questions. (shrink)

What might it mean to think of philosophy as being in the condition of modernism -- in which its relation to its own past, and hence its sense of its own future, has become an undismissable problem? If philosophy's hitherto-defining conventions can neither be taken for granted nor rejected, they must be put in question -- which menans re-evealuating the relation between the form and content of philosophical writing, rethinking the demands that such writing must place on its readers, and (...) reconceiving the nature of philosophy itself. Inheritance and Originality argues that the writings of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard are best understood as responsive (each in their own way) to such questions, and as driven in consequence to strikingly similar reconceptions of language, reason, and understanding, doubt and scepticism, morality, and the structure of selfhood. Through detailed re-readings of these authors' most influential texts, as attentive to their specificity as to their family resemblances, Stephen Mulhall reorients our sense of the philosophical work each text aims to accomplish, to engender a critical dialogue betweeen them from which the elements of a new conception of philosophy might emerge, and to uncover that conception's indebtedness to certain fundamental theological preoccupations. (shrink)

Science is fundamentally devoted to generating original knowledge, and therefore concepts of scientific originality are keys to understanding its very essence. Scientific originality has long been thought of as discovery, but new studies of the humanities and social sciences have shown that other, discipline-specific concepts of originality are used in these fields of study. Does this finding also hold for disciplines in the natural science, medicine, and engineering? Are concepts of originality scientifically grounded or do they (...) instead reflect extrascientific modes of originality? These questions lie at the heart of research proposals responding to an initiative explicitly calling for original scientific projects. The proposals undergo a two-step analysis based on grounded theory[Per style, reference citation is not allowed in abstract section. Hence, we have deleted Charmaz, 2006. Please approve.]. First, three empirically identified modes of scientific originality are described: temporal, partially different, and revolutionary. The three modes of originality are consistent with extrascientific ones such as those in art and fashion. Second, six disciplines—two each in the natural science, medical, and engineering—are analyzed for ways the three modes of originality are used and for their associated disciplinary characteristics in order to identify discipline-specific concepts of originality. (shrink)

A ideia de uma “arqueologia” no plano do pensamento, proposta por Michel Foucault (1926-1984), gerou e continua a gerar confusões e polêmicas. Assim tem sido desde os primeiros debates em torno do seu clássico As palavras e as coisas (1966), como vemos, por exemplo, na resposta dada por Sartre e outros marxistas ao livro. As leituras destes consistiram basicamente em denunciar ali uma recusa da história, o que acarretaria prejuízos para a ação política. Além desta polêmica, permanece uma confusão do (...) empreendimento arqueológico com um esforço para indicar comportamentos ou mentalidades que estariam na base dos saberes, apenas inspirando discursos e práticas. O objetivo deste artigo é, nesse sentido, duplo: por um lado, reforçar a ideia de arqueologia do saber como avessa a uma história de ideias (mentalidades ou comportamentos); por outro, mostrar que uma de suas consequências é justamente o contrário do que se pôde pensar. Trata-se de ampliar o campo de ação política. (shrink)

In legal academia it is highly controversial how to ‘be original’ in legal research. This article will try to maintain an attitude of tolerance in not promoting or discrediting one particular methodology. Instead, it will identify four different ways of ‘being original’. Perhaps the most common approach is to deal with ‘micro-legal questions’. Many legal academics also pursue research in ‘macro-legal questions’. Less common but growing is the importance of ‘scientific legal research’ and research in ‘non-legal topics’.

The article shows the description of intcrtextual present in late S. Lems novels. It might be called ‘auto-inter-textualitation’. Three modern novels of Lem ("Local vision”, "Fiasco” and “Peace on the Earth") contains the references to his previous pieces of work. The heroes from the previous novels and their sentences or even fragments, which had been selected from the previous stories, are now beeing appeared in the other context with new meanings (sometimes totally different than before).

Inheritance and Originality is an innovative study of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard which argues that they find themselves unable simply to inherit the prevailing conventions definitive of philosophy. By placing these conventions in question, they reconceive the form of philosophical writing, and of philosophy itself, together with prevailing notions of language, scepticism, morality, and the self; and in so doing, they confront certain fundamentally theological preoccupations.

Studies in originality, authorship, and intertextuality in the contexts of the South Asian and Tibetan Buddhist literature are indispensible for uncovering the direct and indirect referential connections and the diverse modes of their production in an extensive mosaic of Buddhist texts. They also highlight the multifarious functions of textual reuses and re-workings in cultural productions and religious and literary reinvigorations. Moreover, a reintegration of explicit and silent citations and creative paraphrases and a recirculation of narrative adaptations, which have been (...) often sidelined in the study of Buddhist literature, have been shown to be integral to the formation of a textual authority and to the restructuring of cultural and doctrinal meanings. (shrink)

This article examines the institutional, technical, and ontological consequences of plagiarism detection platforms on contemporary academic writing. It argues that services like Turnitin and Grammarly do not simply detect plagiarism but actively reconfigure what counts as authorship, originality, and intellectual integrity. Drawing on historical and media-theoretical perspectives, the article traces plagiarism’s emergence as a culturally contingent offense, showing how its definition has shifted from oral cultures all the way to algorithmically processed patterns. In this transformation, plagiarism detection becomes less (...) a neutral evaluative tool than a form of infrastructural governance that translates interpretive judgment into machinic legibility. Drawing on theorists such as Foucault, Chun, Kittler, Flusser, and Byung-Chul Han, the article situates plagiarism detection within a broader shift from expressive authorship to operational formatting. The article argues that plagiarism detection tools function as psychopolitical instruments, reshaping academic labor through anticipatory compliance and rendering originality as machinic compatibility. (shrink)

This article contributes to the emerging literature about ungrading within Higher Education across disciplines in the anglosphere. The piece offers a critical take on the apparent originality of ungrading practices. Such practices appear on a spectrum, from minor adjustments to summative grades by alternating the numerical with the alphabetized form or vice versa, to replacing grades on a module via oral and/or written feedback. Whilst ungrading may prima facie appear original, contrary to the claims of many of its contemporary (...) proponents, this critical discussion argues that it does not involve sufficient reflection upon the telic aims of the university apparatus; namely, in the awarding of a classified degree or Grade Point Average, nor upon the implicated role of the educator, in a manner befitting genuinely transgressive practice. To supplement the growing research on ungrading, this article argues that adopting game theory may help sharpen future ungrading practices to be more critically reflective, and perhaps original. (shrink)

This study aims to describe doctoral students’ experiences with human-AI collaborative writing (HAICW) and to examine their perceptions of ethics and authenticity in both AI-supported scientific writing practices and their professional domains. Using a narrative inquiry design, this study involved four doctoral students majoring in English Language Education, who met several inclusion criteria. We conducted interviews to collect the data, which were then analyzed using a deductive thematic analysis. We applied member checking to make the analysis results more rigorous and (...) reliable. This study found that all participants agreed that HAICW has reshaped academic authorship into a collaborative space where human cognition and artificial intelligence interact through ethically grounded practices. They also emphasized that ethics and authenticity of scientific writing in the AI era should be repositioned, moving from textual originality to cognitive transparency, moral practices, and intellectual ownership, echoing a moral compass and a professional identity marker that sustains credibility, public trust, and scholarly integrity in an AI-mediated academic world. These findings are expected to be a reference for higher education to foster ethical, transparent, and authentic AI-integrated authorship beyond the rigid technicalities. (shrink)

Tyler Burge presents an original study of the most primitive ways in which individuals represent the physical world. By reflecting on the science of perception and related psychological and biological sciences, he gives an account of constitutive conditions for perceiving the physical world, and thus aims to locate origins of representational mind.

That the palliatae of Plautus and Terence, besides purporting to depict Greek life, were in general adaptations of Greek plays has always been known. Statements in the prologues of the Latin plays and by other ancient authors left no room for doubt about this, while allowing the possibility of some exceptions. The question of the relationship of the Latin plays to their Greek models was first seriously addressed in the nineteenth century, mainly by German scholars, under the stimulus of Romantic (...) criticism which attached paramount importance to originality in art. Since then the question has been constantly debated, often with acrimony, and to this day very different answers to it continue to be given. Yet the question is obviously important, both for those who would measure the artistic achievement of the Latin dramatists and for those who would use the plays to document aspects of Greek or Roman life. It is not disputed that Plautus' plays contain many Roman allusions and Latin puns which cannot have been derived from any Greek model and must be attributed to the Roman adapter. What is disputed is whether this overt Romanization is merely a superficial veneer overlaid on fundamentally Greek structures or whether Plautus made more radical changes to the structure as well as the spirit of his models. (shrink)

O texto busca compreender e avaliar as influências das filosofias políticas de Rousseau e Kant no pensamento habermasiano. Ele se atém sobretudo à ideia fundamental de Direito e democracia, segundo a qual há uma cooriginariedade lógica entre direitos humanos, interpretados como direitos fundamentais de liberdade individual, e a soberania popular, interpretada como direitos políticos de participação e comunicação, no processo de formação pública da opinião e vontade. Defende-se que a crítica habermasiana a Rousseau e a Kant se deve ao projeto (...) de radicalização da democracia, para o qual as contribuições dos dois filósofos apresentam ainda alguns obstáculos. Porém, ao mesmo tempo, pode-se dizer que, segundo Habermas, a contribuição de um serve para sanar os problemas presentes na contribuição do outro. This text analyzes and evaluates the influence of the political philosophies of Rousseau and Kant in Habermasian thought. It stresses the fundamental idea of Faktizität und Geltung, according to which there is a logical co-originality of human rights, interpreted as fundamental rights of individual liberty, and popular sovereignty, understood as political rights of participation and communication in the process of public formation opinion and will. It is argued that Habermas' critique of Rousseau and Kant is due to Habermas' project of the radicalization of democracy, to which the contributions of the two philosophers present some obstacles. Nevertheless, it may be said that, according to Habermas, the contribution of each one serves to solve the problems in the contribution of the other. (shrink)