This article builds on the hypothesis that theoretical approaches to philosophy of technology are currently stuck in a false alternative: either embrace the “empirical turn” or jump back into the determinism, pessimism, and general ignorance towards specific technologies that characterized the “humanities philosophy of technology.” A third path is however possible, which consists of articulating an empirical point of view with an interest in the symbolic dimension in which technologies and technological mediations are always already embedded. Bourdieu’s sociology of the (...) symbolic forms represents an important and mostly unexplored resource in this respect. In this article, we introduce the notion of technological capital and its tree states—objectified, institutionalized, and embodied. In the first section, we briefly account of the empirical turn in philosophy of technology. Specific attention is then devoted to postphenomenology. We depict three perspectives in postphenomenology: standard postphenomenology, in which one single human-technology-world relation at a time is considered; the attempt of some technological mediation theorists to articulate postphenomenology and actor-network theory ; the original effort in Ihde, which is currently practiced by a minority of postphenomenologists, to combine an interest for the empirical dimension of technological mediations with an attention to the social and cultural conditions of possibility in which these mediations are embedded. In the second section, we consider some recent critiques of the limits of the empirical turn in philosophy of technology, especially related to postphenomenology. Furthermore, we argue that Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology may benefit the philosophy of technology. One might say that according to a Bourdieusian perspective, technologies are, in their invention, implementation, and use, embedded in symbolically organized interactions among social actors or groups. The notion of technological capital is introduced. A specific attention is given to its embodied state, which is related to the habitus. Such concept suggests that, to rephrase the famous sentence by Heidegger, “the essence of technology is not totally technological.” In the conclusion, we consider three risks related to a Bourdieusian approach to technology: transparency, determinism, and absolutism. (shrink)

In this contribution, the author contends that the way in which Pieter Lemmens interprets the transcendental of technology, particularly through the work of Bernard Stiegler, is only one of the possible ways of understanding the transcendental of technology. His thesis is that there are many other transcendentals of technology besides technology itself. The task of a philosophy of technology beyond the empirical turn could precisely consist in exploring these multiple transcendentals of technology, along with their multiple relations. In the first (...) section, the author considers and criticizes the “empirical transcendentality” that characterizes most of the current philosophical approaches to technology, in particular when it comes to ethical issues. In the second section, he proposes to include Lemmens’ perspective in a more general theory about the transcendentals of technology. The transcendentals of technology include social symbolic forms, culture, language, media, and many other dimensions that philosophy of technology has not systematically explored yet. (shrink)

This introduction accounts for three main elements characterizing digital media and the recent history of their interpretation and understanding. The authors label these three elements: “interaction”; “recording”; and “autonomy.” First, digital media somehow subvert the traditional notion of mass media. In digital media, the masses do not passively receive information; rather, they contribute to its creation and diffusion. Second, digital media involve a complete overlapping between communication, on the one hand, and recording, registration and keeping track, on the other. For (...) sure, information production and communication remain important aspects of digital media. And yet, for a few years now, recording, registration and keeping track have taken the upper hand. The third element characterizing digital media is that a crucial role is assigned to software, which is not only able to transmit and store information, but also to manipulate it. Digital media do not limit themselves to help our minds or to interconnect us with other human subjects. In digital media, recording often involves the autonomous manipulation, combination, and recombination of what is recorded. (shrink)

This is the first monograph to develop a hermeneutic approach to the digital--as both a technological milieu and a cultural phenomenon. While philosophical in its orientation, the book covers a wide body of literature across science and technology studies, media studies, digital humanities, digital sociology, cognitive science, and the study of artificial intelligence. In the first part of the book, the author formulates an epistemological thesis according to which the "virtual never ended." Although the frontiers between the real and the (...) virtual are certainly more porous today, they still exist and endure. In the book's second part, the author offers an ontological reflection on emerging digital technologies as "imaginative machines." He introduces the concept of emagination, arguing that human schematizations are always externalized into technologies, and that human imagination has its analog in the digital dynamics of articulation between databases and algorithms. The author takes an ethical and political stance in the concluding chapter. He resorts to the notion of "digital habitus" for claiming that within the digital we are repeatedly being reconducted to an oversimplified image and understanding of ourselves. Digital Hermeneutics will be of interest to scholars across a wide range of disciplines, including those working on philosophy of technology, hermeneutics, science and technology studies, media studies, and the digital humanities. (shrink)

While this book is primarily devoted to the topic of registration, recording, and keeping track in the digital age, this chapter must be seen as a coda, in which the author intends to lead the reader towards a series of reflections on imagination or, as he calls it, emagination. For him, emagination does not contradict registration. It can rather be seen as an emerging property of the latter, just as registration can be seen as an emerging property of information and (...) communication. (shrink)

This article builds on the hypothesis that theoretical approaches to philosophy of technology are currently stuck in a false alternative: either embrace the “empirical turn” or jump back into the determinism, pessimism, and general ignorance towards specific technologies that characterized the “humanities philosophy of technology.” A third path is however possible, which consists of articulating an empirical point of view with an interest in the symbolic dimension in which technologies and technological mediations are always already embedded. Bourdieu’s sociology of the (...) symbolic forms represents an important and mostly unexplored resource in this respect. In this article, we introduce the notion of technological capital and its tree states—objectified, institutionalized, and embodied. In the first section, we briefly account of the empirical turn in philosophy of technology. Specific attention is then devoted to postphenomenology. We depict three perspectives in postphenomenology: standard postphenomenology, in which one single human-technology-world relation at a time is considered; the attempt of some technological mediation theorists to articulate postphenomenology and actor-network theory ; the original effort in Ihde, which is currently practiced by a minority of postphenomenologists, to combine an interest for the empirical dimension of technological mediations with an attention to the social and cultural conditions of possibility in which these mediations are embedded. In the second section, we consider some recent critiques of the limits of the empirical turn in philosophy of technology, especially related to postphenomenology. Furthermore, we argue that Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology may benefit the philosophy of technology. One might say that according to a Bourdieusian perspective, technologies are, in their invention, implementation, and use, embedded in symbolically organized interactions among social actors or groups. The notion of technological capital is introduced. A specific attention is given to its embodied state, which is related to the habitus. Such concept suggests that, to rephrase the famous sentence by Heidegger, “the essence of technology is not totally technological.” In the conclusion, we consider three risks related to a Bourdieusian approach to technology: transparency, determinism, and absolutism. (shrink)

Today, there is an emerging interest for the potential role of hermeneutics in reflecting on the practices related to digital technologies and their consequences. Nonetheless, such an interest has neither given rise to a unitary approach nor to a shared debate. The primary goal of this paper is to map and synthetize the different existing perspectives to pave the way for an open discussion on the topic. The article is developed in two steps. In the first section, the authors analyze (...) digital hermeneutics “in theory” by confronting and systematizing the existing literature. In particular, they stress three main distinctions among the approaches: between “methodological” and “ontological” digital hermeneutics; between data- and text-oriented digital hermeneutics; and between “quantitative” and “qualitative” credos in digital hermeneutics. In the second section, they consider digital hermeneutics “in action”, by critically analyzing the uses of digital data for studying a classical object such as the political opinion. In the conclusion, we will pave the way to an ontological turn in digital hermeneutics. Most of this article is devoted to the methodological issue of interpreting with digital machines. The main task of an ontological digital hermeneutics would consist instead in wondering if it is legitimate, and eventually to which extent, to speak of digital technologies, or at least of some of them, as interpretational machines. (shrink)

This paper argues that the AI ethics has generally neglected the issues related to the science communication of AI. In particular, the article focuses on visual communication about AI and, more specifically, on the use of certain stock images in science communication about AI — in particular, those characterized by an excessive use of blue color and recurrent subjects, such as androgyne faces, half-flesh and half-circuit brains, and variations on Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam. In the first section, the author (...) refers to a “referentialist” ethics of science communication for an ethical assessment of these images. From this perspective, these images are unethical. While the ethics of science communication generally promotes virtues like modesty and humility, similar images are arrogant and overconfident. In the second section, the author uses French philosopher Jacques Rancière’s concepts of “distribution of the sensible,” “disagreement,” and “pensive image.” Rancière’s thought paves the way to a deeper critique of these images of AI. The problem with similar images is not their lack of reference to the “things themselves.” It rather lies in the way they stifle any possible forms of disagreement about AI. However, the author argues that stock images and other popular images of AI are not a problem per se, and they can also be a resource. This depends on the real possibility for these images to support forms of pensiveness. In the conclusion, the question is asked whether the kind of ethics or politics of AI images proposed in this article can be applied to AI ethics tout court. (shrink)

Most of the existing studies on Bourdieu and the digital regards the social and class distinctions in the use of digital technologies, thus presupposing a certain transparency of technologies themselves. Our proposal is to refer to this attitude as “Bourdieu outside the digital.” Yet in this paper, another perspective called “Bourdieu inside the digital” is developed, which moves the focus on the effects of some emerging technologies on social distinctions and discrimination. The main hypothesis is that algorithms of machine learning (...) are producers and reproducers of habitus. Although their results present a greater granularity with respect to the standard techniques of the past, these algorithms still reduce individuals to categories, general trends, classes, and behaviors. Such a reduction has flattening effects on the individuals’ self-understanding, especially in terms of identity and interaction with the social world. This is the phenomenon described in the article as the “personalization without personality,” whose consequences are both existential and social-political. This idea will be illustrated through qualitative and comparative analysis between the correspondence analysis and the multiple correspondence analysis used by Bourdieu in his works and some of those techniques that are performed today in big data analytics. (shrink)

In philosophy of emerging media, several scholars have insisted on the fact that the “new” of new technologies does not have much to do with communication, but rather with the exponential growth of recording. In this paper, instead, the thesis advanced is that digital technologies do not concern memory, but imagination, and more precisely, what philosophers from Kant onwards have called productive imagination. In this paper, however, the main reference will not be Kant, but Paul Ricoeur, who explicitly refers to (...) the Kantian productive imagination in his works, but also offered an externalized, semioticized, and historicized interpretation of it. The article is developed in three steps. In the first section, it deals with Ricoeur’s theory of narrative, based on the notions of mimesis and mythos. In the second section, it is first argued that human imagination is always-already extended. Second, it will be shown how mimesis and mythos are precisely the way software works. In the third section, the specificity of big data is introduced. Big data is the promise of giving our actions and existences a meaning that we are incapable of perceiving, for lack of sensibility and understanding. Scholars have used the Foucauldian concepts of panopticon and confession for describing the human condition in the digital age. In the conclusion, it is argued that big data makes any form of disclosure unnecessary. Big data is an ensemble of technological artifacts, methods, techniques, practices, institutions, and forms of knowledge aiming at taking over the way someone narratively accounts for himself or herself before the others. Hence, another Foucauldian notion is representative of this age: the parrhesia, to speak candidly, and to take a risk in speaking the truth, insofar as such a possibility is anesthetized. (shrink)

What is the difference between a researcher in philosophy and a philosopher? There are two kinds of answer that we can give to this question. We can say that the difference lies in a sort of internal quality; or, as the authors of this paper do, we can argue that a philosopher would not be a philosopher without the intervention of an ensemble of social actors such as universities, departments, funding, colleagues, editors, journals, media, and so on. In the first (...) section, referring to actor-network theory (ANT), the authors define the philosopher as a Leviathan, i.e. a macro-actor that became macro- not thanks to his/her essence, but because he/she succeeded in translating the interests of other actors. In the second section, it is introduced the notion of digital traces, and the homology between ANT and the image of the social reality we can obtain from a process of extraction, treatment, and (visual) restitution of digital traces. In particular, the authors stress the potential of a digital traces-based scientometric for studying actor-networks related to the academic world, but also its limit. In the third section, the specific case of the actor-networks related to philosopher Paul Ricoeur is considered. First, on the basis of a scientometric analysis of the digital traces contained in the bibliographic database Scopus, and secondly by extending the exploration to digital traces available on the Web via web mapping. In the conclusion, the authors affirm that the merit of their digital hermeneutics consists in bringing forward a «world of the text» which is probably less romantic, but certainly more authentic that the «world of the text» to which Ricoeur has often referred to. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In this article, the author deals with the status of the self and personal identity in the digital milieu. In the first section, he presents his general approach to digital media and technologies, which he has called “digital hermeneutics.” He distinguishes between three perspectives in digital hermeneutics, namely the deconstructive, epistemological, and ontological approaches. In the second part, he focuses on digital hermeneutics as hermeneutics of the self. He compares Paul Ricoeur’s narrative identity to Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus. His first (...) thesis is that the habitus can be seen as a concept of subjectivation that neglects an important part of the subject. Narrative identity offers, in this sense, a remedy to such negligence. His second thesis is that today’s digital media and technologies are closer to the Bourdieusian habitus than to the Ricoeurian narrative identity. In other words, digital machines and technologies are “habitus machines” both in their structure and in their effects. (shrink)

This article builds on Gadamer’s rehabilitation of the Augustinian concept of inner word. Unlike most interpretations, the thesis is that the Augustinian inner word does not show the potentialities, but rather the ineffectiveness of ontological hermeneutics. In the first section, it is argued that for the later Augustine, the verbum in corde is the consequence of a Word- and Truth- event. In the second section, the author suggests that Gadamer has properly understood the verbum in corde as a matter of (...) faith. In the third section, it is shown that Gadamer has found in the notion a paradigm for his philosophical and theological insights. Concerning the former, he has always been fascinated by the evenemential character of the ‘second’ Heidegger’s thought. Concerning the latter, Gadamer has explicitly accused Bultmann’s demythologization of being ‘human, all too human’, and he has implicitly praised Barth’s dialectical theology. (shrink)

This book uses the conceptual tools of philosophy to shed light on digital media and on the way in which they bear upon our existence. At the turn of the century, the rise of digital media significantly changed our world. The digitizing of traditional media has extraordinarily increased the circulation of texts, sound, and images. Digital media have also widened our horizons and altered our relationship with others and with ourselves. Information production and communication are still undoubtedly significant aspects of (...) digital media and life. Recently, however, recording, registration and keeping track have taken the upper hand in both online practices and the imaginaries related to them. The essays in this book therefore focus primarily on the idea that digital media involve a significant overlapping between communication and recording. (shrink)

In philosophy of emerging media, several scholars have insisted on the fact that the “new” of new technologies does not have much to do with communication, but rather with the exponential growth of recording. In this paper, instead, the thesis advanced is that digital technologies do not concern memory, but imagination, and more precisely, what philosophers from Kant onwards have called productive imagination. In this paper, however, the main reference will not be Kant, but Paul Ricoeur, who explicitly refers to (...) the Kantian productive imagination in his works, but also offered an externalized, semioticized, and historicized interpretation of it. The article is developed in three steps. In the first section, it deals with Ricoeur’s theory of narrative, based on the notions of mimesis and mythos. In the second section, it is first argued that human imagination is always-already extended. Second, it will be shown how mimesis and mythos are precisely the way software works. In the third section, the specificity of big data is introduced. Big data is the promise of giving our actions and existences a meaning that we are incapable of perceiving, for lack of sensibility (i.e., data) and understanding (i.e., algorithms). Scholars have used the Foucauldian concepts of panopticon and confession for describing the human condition in the digital age. In the conclusion, it is argued that big data makes any form of disclosure unnecessary. Big data is an ensemble of technological artifacts, methods, techniques, practices, institutions, and forms of knowledge aiming at taking over the way someone narratively accounts for himself or herself before the others. Hence, another Foucauldian notion is representative of this age: the parrhesia, to speak candidly, and to take a risk in speaking the truth, insofar as such a possibility is anesthetized. (shrink)

This article discusses the value of gift exchange in online social media. In the first part, the authors show how most of the commentators have considered online gifting as an alternative to the classical market economy. Yet the recent territorialization of the web challenges this perspective. As a consequence, the internet can no longer be considered a reply to capitalism. In the second part, the authors argue that in anthropology and social philosophy the term ‘gift’ has often been used improperly, (...) and that gift exchange has nothing to do with goods exchange, but with mutual recognition. In the third part, they use this definition to stress the importance of gift circulation through Facebook’s ‘Like’ button and the Twitter feature called ‘Mention’. In conclusion, the authors deal with the ‘Like economy’, i.e. the interference between gift exchange and market economy which is daily at work online. (shrink)

Paul Ricœur has been one of the most influential and intellectually challenging philosophers of the last century, and his work has contributed to a vast array of fields: studies of language, of history, of ethics and politics. However, he has up until recently only had a minor impact on the philosophy of technology. Interpreting Technology aims to put Ricœur’s work at the centre of contemporary philosophical thinking concerning technology. It investigates his project of critical hermeneutics for rethinking established theories of (...) technology, the growing ethical and political impacts of technologies on the modern lifeworld, and ways of analysing global sociotechnical systems such as the Internet. Ricœur’s philosophy allows us to approach questions such as: how could narrative theory enhance our understanding of technological mediation? How can our technical practices be informed by the ethical aim of living the good life, with and for others, in just institutions? And how does the emerging global media landscape shape our sense of self, and our understanding of history? These questions are more timely than ever, considering the enormous impact technologies have on daily life in the 21st century: on how we shape ourselves with health apps, how we engage with one-another through social media, and how we act politically through digital platforms. (shrink)

In this article, the author deals with the status of the self and personal identity in the digital milieu. In the first section, he presents his general approach to digital media and technologies, which he has called “digital hermeneutics”. He distinguishes between three perspectives in digital hermeneutics, namely the deconstructive, epistemological, and ontological approaches. In the second part, he focuses on digital hermeneutics as hermeneutics of the self. He compares Paul Ricoeur’s narrative identity to Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus. His first thesis (...) is that the habitus can be seen as a concept of subjectivation that neglects an important part of the subject. Narrative identity offers, in this sense, a remedy to such negligence. His second thesis is that today’s digital media and technologies are closer to the Bourdieusian habitus than to the Ricoeurian narrative identity. In other words, digital machines and technologies are “habitus machines” both in their structure and in their effects. In the conclusion, the author accounts for three potential responses to the habituation of our selves online. He also introduces the concepts of “digital agency” and “digital citizenship”. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE The following paper takes on a double hypothesis: that the concept of narrative identity, as developed by Ricoeur, is a strong candidate to account for the consequences of the “emplotment ” of our identities on social networking sites; and that social networking sites can be useful to reconsider some of the assumptions at the basis of the Ricoeurian concept of narrative identity. The analysis is (...) developed in three sections: Ricoeur’s “temperate” notion is compared to the “savage” post-modern concept of performative identity; part of the literature about identity on social networking sites is criticized in the light of the Ricoeurian concept; and the paper considers the impact of such a “detour” through social networking sites on Ricoeur’s still monomediatic and monolinear notion. Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE. (shrink)

L’ouvrage de Johann Michel part du constat d’un schisme au XXe siècle, notamment en France, entre philosophie, histoire et sociologie. Le but du livre est alors avant tout de dresser de nouveaux ponts entre ces disciplines, d’autant plus que l’on trouve aujourd’hui « quelques signes de naissance de nouveaux dialogues », un double mouvement des sciences sociales et historiques vers la philosophie et vice-versa. Cela est le cas dans la socio-phénoménologie d’Alfred Schütz (déjà ancienne) et, pl...

The goal of this article is twofold. First, it aims at sketching the outlines of material hermeneutics as a three-level analysis of technological artefacts. In the first section, we introduce Erwin Panofsky’s three levels of interpretation of an artwork, and we propose to import this approach in the field of philosophy of technology. Second, the rest of the article focuses on the third level, with a specific attention towards big data and algorithms of artificial intelligence. The thesis is that these (...) new technologies are not only radically transforming our interactions with the world, or our modes of production and consumption, but also our worldview. In the second section, we rely on Panofsky’s Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism to describe the Scholastic “mental habit” or worldview and its principles. In the third section, we confront this worldview with the mechanistic and informationistic worldviews. Our contribution consists in arguing that (1) despite the differences, the Scholastic, mechanistic, and informationistic worldviews are part of the same logical and causal order that dominated Western epistemology, and (2) today we are facing the appearance of a new worldview that we call “data worldview”. Examples from design, architecture, and visualization of knowledge will be set all along the article. (shrink)

The purpose of this chapter is to offer the grounds for a double rehabilitation: that of hermeneutics on the one hand, and of the virtual, a concept that became popular especially between the 1980s and 1990, on the other hand. More precisely, hermeneutics will be used to lay foundations for the hypothesis according to which the virtual never ended. The argument will follow three steps. In the first section, the author accounts for theories on the end of the virtual, distinguishing (...) between those who think that the real has invaded the virtual and those who say that it is rather the opposite. The second section, entitled “The Virtual Never Ended”, is a tribute to Philip K. Dick and his crazy idea that the Roman Empire never came to an end. The digital works through representational distanciation and performative appropriation, and it is precisely this process that makes the virtual a valid concept that still gives rise to thought, and which allows hermeneutics to be used in the context of digitality. Finally, in the concluding section, the author will briefly present the epistemological and ontological advantages of such a perspective. (shrink)

Digital media and technologies have significantly transformed the ways we relate to the world, in the triple sense of Selbstwelt, Mitwelt, and Umwelt. Think of the quantification of the self, the number of followers and likes on social media, or using Google maps and similar tools to orient ourselves in a city, to find and choose a good restaurant, and so on. One might say that digital media and technologies have actually transformed our interpretation, understanding, and access to the world. (...) Now, if hermeneutics is the philosophy of interpretation, then we might suppose that hermeneutics should pay attention to these transformations. For us, digital hermeneutics is the study of the ways digital media and technologies mediate between humans and the world. It is also the study of the ways digital media and technologies are embedded in non-technological relations between humans and the world – psychological, social, cultural, and so on. (shrink)

The English translation of the Weiny Romele introduction to the Martini-Ricoeur interview.

Introduction à l'Entretien réalisé par Giuseppe Martini avec Paul Ricoeur, en 2003.

Présentation du septième numéro de Études Ricœuriennes/Ricœur Studies dédié à “la crise du soi: fragilité, vulnérabilité et souffrance.“.

The English introduction to Volume 4, no. 2.

In this article, we show how postphenomenology can be used to analyze the Affinity Map: a data visualization that reveals the hidden dynamics that exist between individuals within large organizations. We make use of the Affinity Map to expand the classic postphenomenology that privileges a ‘linear’ understanding of technological mediations and introduce the notions of ‘iterativity’ and ‘collectivity.’ In the first section of the paper, we discuss both classic and more recent descriptions of human-technology-world relations in order to transcendentally approach (...) the discipline of data visualization. In the second section, we use the Affinity Map case study to consider three elements: 1) the collection of data and the design process; 2) the visual grammar of the data visualization, and 3) the process of self-recognition for the map ‘reader.’ In the third section, we introduce the hermeneutic circle of data visualization. Finally, we suggest that the Affinity Map, because of its ethical and political multistability, might be seen as a material encounter between postphenomenology, actor-network theory (ANT), and hermeneutics. (shrink)

Le texte édité par Bernard Stiegler occupe une place tout à fait importante dans le panorama de la philosophie de la technique contemporaine, dans la mesure où il dépasse d’emblée une double alternative qui traverse l’histoire de cette discipline relativement jeune. Premièrement, toutes les interventions se situent au-delà de l’alternative entre une attitude utopiste et une attitude dystopiste à l’égard de la technique, i.e. entre le techno-enthousiasme et la techno-phobie. Comme l’observait...

Bookreview of, Alberto Romele, L’expérience du verbum in corde , ou l’impuissance de l’herméneutique , 260 pp. Compte rendu de l'ouvrage d'Alberto Romele, , L’expérience du verbum in corde , ou l’impuissance de l’herméneutique , 260 pp.

Cultural evolution studies are characterized by the notion that culture evolves accordingly to broadly Darwinian principles. Yet how far the analogy between cultural and genetic evolution should be pushed is open to debate. Here, we examine a recent disagreement that concerns the extent to which cultural transmission should be considered a preservative mechanism allowing selection among different variants, or a transformative process in which individuals recreate variants each time they are transmitted. The latter is associated with the notion of “cultural (...) attraction”. This issue has generated much misunderstanding and confusion. We first clarify the respective positions, noting that there is in fact no substantive incompatibility between cultural attraction and standard cultural evolution approaches, beyond a difference in focus. Whether cultural transmission should be considered a preservative or reconstructive process is ultimately an empirical question, and we examine how both preservative and reconstructive cultural transmission has been studied in recent experimental research in cultural evolution. Finally, we discuss how the relative importance of preservative and reconstructive processes may depend on the granularity of analysis and the domain being studied. (shrink)

We study the computability-theoretic complexity and proof-theoretic strength of the following statements: (1) "If X is a well-ordering, then so is ε X ", and (2) "If X is a well-ordering, then so is φ(α, X)", where α is a fixed computable ordinal and φ represents the two-placed Veblen function. For the former statement, we show that ω iterations of the Turing jump are necessary in the proof and that the statement is equivalent to ${\mathrm{A}\mathrm{C}\mathrm{A}}_{0}^{+}$ over RCA₀. To prove the (...) latter statement we need to use ω α iterations of the Turing jump, and we show that the statement is equivalent to ${\mathrm{\Pi }}_{{\mathrm{\omega }}^{\mathrm{\alpha }}}^{0}{-\mathrm{C}\mathrm{A}}_{0}$ . Our proofs are purely computability-theoretic. We also give a new proof of a result of Friedman: the statement "if x is a well-ordering, then so is φ(x, 0)" is equivalent to ATR₀ over RCA₀. (shrink)

In Ockhamist branching-time logic [Prior 67], formulas are meant to be evaluated on a specified branch, or history, passing through the moment at hand. The linguistic counterpart of the manifoldness of future is a possibility operator which is read as `at some branch, or history (passing through the moment at hand)'. Both the bundled-trees semantics [Burgess 79] and the $\langle moment, history\rangle$ semantics [Thomason 84] for the possibility operator involve a quantification over sets of moments. The Ockhamist frames are (3-modal) (...) Kripke structures in which this second-order quantification is represented by a first-order quantification. The aim of the present paper is to investigate the notions of modal definability, validity, and axiomatizability concerning 3-modal frames which can be viewed as generalizations of Ockhamist frames. (shrink)

This major publication is a history of the semantic tradition in philosophy from the early nineteenth century through its incarnation in the work of the Vienna Circle, the group of logical positivists that emerged in the years 1925-1935 in Vienna who were characterised by a strong commitment to empiricism, a high regard for science, and a conviction that modern logic is the primary tool of analytic philosophy. In the first part of the book, Alberto Coffa traces the roots of (...) logical positivism in a semantic tradition that arose in opposition to Kant's theory that a priori knowledge is based on pure intuition and the constitutive powers of the mind. In Part II, Coffa chronicles the development of this tradition by members and associates of the Vienna Circle. Much of Coffa's analysis draws on the unpublished notes and correspondence of many philosophers. The book, however, is not merely a history of the semantic tradition from Kant 'to the Vienna Station'. Coffa also critically reassesses the role of semantic notions in understanding the ground of a priori knowledge and its relation to empirical knowledge and questions the turn the tradition has taken since Vienna. (shrink)

Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion (...) is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled. (shrink)

This open access book discusses individual, collective, and institutional responsibilities with regard to vaccination from the perspective of philosophy and public health ethics. It addresses the issue of what it means for a collective to be morally responsible for the realisation of herd immunity and what the implications of collective responsibility are for individual and institutional responsibilities. The first chapter introduces some key concepts in the vaccination debate, such as ‘herd immunity’, ‘public goods’, and ‘vaccine refusal’; and explains why failure (...) to vaccinate raises certain ethical issues. The second chapter analyses, from a philosophical perspective, the relationship between individual, collective, and institutional responsibilities with regard to the realisation of herd immunity. The third chapter is about the principle of least restrictive alternative in public health ethics and its implications for vaccination policies. Finally, the fourth chapter presents an ethical argument for unqualified compulsory vaccination, i.e. for compulsory vaccination that does not allow for any conscientious objection. The book will appeal to philosophers interested in public health ethics and the general public interested in the philosophical underpinning of different arguments about our moral obligations with regard to vaccination. (shrink)

A completeness theorem is established for logics with congruence endowed with general semantics (in the style of general frames). As a corollary, completeness is shown to be preserved by fibring logics with congruence provided that congruence is retained in the resulting logic. The class of logics with equivalence is shown to be closed under fibring and to be included in the class of logics with congruence. Thus, completeness is shown to be preserved by fibring logics with equivalence and general semantics. (...) An example is provided showing that completeness is not always preserved by fibring ligics endowed with standard (non general) semantics. A categorial characterization of fibring is provided using coproducts and cocartesian liftings. (shrink)

In just the last decade, many conference proceedings have been published on Plato’s Timaeus and its influence on the history of philosophy. The present vo­lume, which is the result of a symposium held at Seoul National University in September 2011, testifies to the enduring and widespread interest the Platonic dia­logue is able to elicit. The nine studies here collected by Euree Song center on the figure of the demiurge as maker of the world and they all deal with authors who, (...) while having di... (shrink)

I argue that there are significant moral reasons in addition to harm prevention for making vaccination against certain common infectious diseases compulsory. My argument is based on an analogy between vaccine refusal and tax evasion. First, I discuss some of the arguments for compulsory vaccination that are based on considerations of the risk of harm that the non‐vaccinated would pose on others; I will suggest that the strength of such arguments is contingent upon circumstances and that in order to provide (...) the strongest defence possible of compulsory vaccination, such arguments need to be supplemented by additional arguments. I will then offer my additional argument for compulsory vaccination: I will argue that in both cases of vaccine refusal and of tax evasion individuals fail to make their fair contribution to important social and public goods, regardless of whether each individual contribution ‘makes a difference’. While fairness considerations have sometimes been used to support a moral duty to vaccinate, they have not been appealed to in order to argue for a legal duty to vaccinate. I will suggest that this is due, among other things, to a misapplication of the principle of the least restrictive alternative in public health. Finally, I will address nine possible objections to my argument. (shrink)