Review of Fuller’s New Sociological Imagination.

Neoliberalism advocates for the construction of free markets, which are to be used for solutions to economic and social problems rather than state solutions to those problems. Though Neoliberal reforms in Japan have affected its science and technology, STS literature has not focused on responses to neoliberalism through the lens of a country. Japan has a discrete STS history and Japan makes a good case study to the influence of neoliberalism on STS. In August 2010, at Tokyo’s Social Studies of (...) Science (4S) meetings, there were several sessions on neoliberalism and STS. At these sessions, Kunio Goto, Yasumoto Fujita, Hidetoshi Kihara, Hideto Nakajima, Steve Fuller, David Hess, Francis Remedios presented different responses to neoliberalism and STS. This special issue explores two themes. The first theme is Goto's and Fujita's call for a revitalization of Marxist STS as an alternative to the influence of neoliberalism on STS in Japan. The second theme is Kihara's and Nakajima's call for a revitalization of a critical function of STS in Japan. Hess examines STS as a field and its response to neoliberalism in Europe and Anglophone countries. (shrink)

A special edition of the journal Social Epistemology on Fuller’s Thomas Kuhn.

This is a review symposium on Fuller”s Knowledge: A Philosophical Quest in History.

Remedios’s and Dusek’s response to Lynch’s review is that Lynch misreads Fuller on knowledge and misdirects his criticism of Fuller’s turn to agency.

An analysis of Steve Fuller’s social epistemology and epistemic agency.

This book examines Fuller’s pioneering vision of social epistemology. It focuses specifically on his work post-2000, which is founded in the changing conception of humanity and project into a ‘post-‘ or ‘trans-‘ human future. Chapters treat especially Fuller’s provocative response to the changing boundary conditions of the knower due to anticipated changes in humanity coming from the nanosciences, neuroscience, synthetic biology and computer technology and end on an interview with Fuller himself. While Fuller’s turn in this direction has invited at (...) least as much criticism as his earlier work, to him the result is an extended sense of the knower, or ‘humanity 2.0’, which Fuller himself identifies with transhumanism. The authors assess Fuller’s work on the following issues: Science and Technology Studies (STS), the university and intellectual life, neo-liberal political economy, intelligent design, Cosmism, Gnosticism, agent-oriented epistemology, proactionary vs precautionary principles and Welfare State 2.0. (shrink)

Francis Remedios provides important criticisms of Fuller's position and Fuller's responses to philosophical debates, as well as reconstructions of Fuller's arguments. The result is a carefully argued, in-depth analysis of the work of a very important philosopher of science."--Jacket.

Fullerand Rouse are both political social epistemologists concerned with the cognitive authority of science, though both disagree on what role it should play in science. Fullerar gues that political factors such as knowledge policy and a constitution play a primary role in the global legitimation of scientific knowledge, while Rouse holds that politics play a role on the local (practices) level but not on the global (metascientific) level of legitimation. While Fullerpr ovides a political response to the legitimation project, Rouse (...) rejects the legitimation project because he holds that it involves the need forglobal legitimation of the place of scientific knowledge in our culture. Key Words: legitimation project • social epistemology • epistemic sovereignty • metascience • scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Comparison of Steve Fuller's and Alvin Goldman's social epistemologies.

Critics and author, Alvin Goldman’s response to Knowledge in the Social World.

Richard Wollheim published helpful works on Bradley and Freud some years ago when both thinkers were unpopular in his analytical ranks. Throughout The Thread of Life, Wollheim provokes his readers with an unusually worded question: “What is it to lead the life of a person?”. In his opening chapter he rejects psychological and corporeal theories of personal identity, since he holds that they fail to answer this question. The terms “the person’s leading his life,” “the process,” “the way in which (...) lives are led” strike Wollheim as more promising than some current philosophical phrases. He seeks enlightenment from such varied writers as Kierkegaard, Freud, and Dostoyevsky; Ovid, Proust, and Sartre. (shrink)

“Lo terrorífico del animal de ojos duros es que ve todo el tiempo”. No extraña que la pregunta por el fin de la intimidad se active en una época de conexión permanente, ojos-pantalla y sobreexposición generalizada. Si las subjetividades modernas se construyeron mirando a un lugar interior, hoy se deriva hacia la “exteriorización del yo”. Como efecto, las personalidades tienden a mercantilizarse y lo privado no se representa, se expone. En la cultura-red los clásicos ámbitos de relación se diluyen en (...) una esfera público-privada hipervisible, reduciendo a su menor expresión los tiempos de intimidad y como ciudadanos. Sin embargo, entre las amenazas para el sujeto humanista la alianza feminista se ve reforzada por este escenario donde lo personal político puede ser público y compartido. Las lecturas críticas señalan una discontinuidad histórica y cultural en el control sobre la visibilización del ámbito más personal y privado que oscila entre la voluntad propia de publicar lo íntimo y la presión del tecnoliberalismo por gestionarla, por dominar el párpado. (shrink)

Francis Bacon, lawyer, statesman, and philosopher, remains one of the most effectual thinkers in European intellectual history. We can trace his influence from Kant in the 1700s to Darwin a century later. The Advancement of Learning , first published in 1605, contains an unprecedented and thorough systematization of the whole range of human knowledge. Bacon’s argument that the sciences should move away from divine philosophy and embrace empirical observation would forever change the way philosophers and natural scientists interpret their (...) world. (shrink)

Psychiatry is rapidly adopting digital phenotyping and artificial intelligence/machine learning tools to study mental illness based on tracking participants’ locations, online activity, phone and text message usage, heart rate, sleep, physical activity, and more. Existing ethical frameworks for return of individual research results (IRRs) are inadequate to guide researchers for when, if, and how to return this unprecedented number of potentially sensitive results about each participant’s real-world behavior. To address this gap, we convened an interdisciplinary expert working group, supported by (...) a National Institute of Mental Health grant. Building on established guidelines and the emerging norm of returning results in participant-centered research, we present a novel framework specific to the ethical, legal, and social implications of returning IRRs in digital phenotyping research. Our framework offers researchers, clinicians, and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) urgently needed guidance, and the principles developed here in the context of psychiatry will be readily adaptable to other therapeutic areas. (shrink)

[Omslag] Was is Sprache? Vom Wort als Laut und Gedanke bis zur Verwirklichung der Sprache als bedeutungsgeladenes Schweigen. Das Thema der Sprache kann und wird von verschiedenen Blickwinkeln behandelt: Sprache als Grammatik, als Baustein der Gedanken, als Kommunikationsmittel, als Kunst, als Ausdruck einer Kultur, einer Weltansicht... Aber was ist Sprache in ihrem wahren Sein? Ist Sprache wirklich bloß Wort? Oder ist Sprache doch ein komplexes, dynamisches Phänomen, welches sich auf mehreren Ebenen ereignet: Ebenen, die sich gegenseitig bedingen, voraussetzen und wesenhaft (...) erst definieren? Liegt die wesenhafte Verwirklichung der Sprache vielleicht in einem scheinbaren Paradox: in einem bedeutungsgeladenen Schweigen? Der vorliegende Versuch einer Sprachontologie befasst sich mit diesen Fragen und untersucht Augustinus, Martin Heidegger und Hans-Georg Gadamer auf ihr Verständnis des Seins der Sprache. (shrink)

El siguiente trabajo estudia las emociones trágicas en Schopenhauer y se ocupa especialmente de la compasión, reivindicando el valor positivo de esta última. En primer lugar, se refiere a la teoría de la tragedia de Aristóteles con el fin de clarificar la posición de Schopenhauer. En segundo lugar, intenta mostrar que la compasión posee en este autor una triple vertiente o función: estética, ética y ontológica. Finalmente, se examina una serie de cuestiones que dan idea de la novedad y originalidad (...) de la reflexión filosófica de Schopenhauer con especial mención de la función educativa del arte. (shrink)

An inclusive vision of mathematics-- its beauty, its humanity, and its power to build virtues that help us all flourish. For mathematician Francis Su, a society without mathematical affection is like a city without museums. To miss out on mathematics is to live without experiencing some of humanity's most beautiful ideas. In this profound book, written for a diverse audience but especially for those disenchanted by their past experiences, an award-winning mathematician and educator weaves personal reflections, puzzles, and stories (...) to show how mathematics meets basic human desires and cultivates virtues essential for human flourishing. Readers will explore mathematical concepts-- and see how mathematical thinking can even fulfill such longings as for love, play, freedom, justice, and community. Some lessons come from those who have struggled, including philosopher Simone Weil, whose own mathematical contributions were overshadowed by her brother's, and Christopher Jackson, who discovered mathematics as an inmate in a federal prison. Christopher Jackson's letters to the author appear throughout the book and show how this intellectual pursuit can-- and must-- be open to all. (shrink)

Pascal, in his Pensées, applies philosophy to a theological problem: reconciling (a) Christianity’s demand for absolute faith with both (b) the motives of credibility’s inability to justify absolute faith on their own and (c) the moral obligation to avoid superstition. This reconciliation hinges upon distinguishing two cognitive faculties: reason, and the heart. I will first discuss Pascal’s view of the difference between reason and the heart, and specifically how they each relate to evidence and certainty: reason discursively and probabilistically, the (...) heart holistically and with certitude. Then I turn to Pascal’s view of the role which the heart plays in religious faith, and apply this view to the problem of basing absolute assent on limited evidence. Finally, I will examine Pascal’s view of reason’s important supporting role in faith, and apply it to the obligation to avoid superstitious belief. (shrink)

La migración internacional es parte de la globalización, todos los países desarrollados han recibido un gran número de inmigrantes. España también ha recibido a alta cantidad de nómadas. La población española era emigrante y ahora ella tiene que hacer frente a este nuevo fenómeno, las sociedades desarrolladas van a tener que adaptarse a las grandes afluencias de extranjeros. La migración ha sido a menudo una fuente de tensiones entre culturas e incluso entre movimientos racistas y xenófobos. Un problema político fundamental (...) en España es la situación que hay en la frontera del sur, por donde mucha gente intenta entrar en la UE desde África, arriesgando su vida y perdiéndola a menudo.International migration is part of globalization, all developed countries have received significant numbers of migrants. Spain have also received a high amount of migrants. Spanish people were traditionally emigrants and now they have to face this new phenomena, developed societies are going to have to face larger inflows of migrants. Migration has often been a source of tensions among cultures and even racist and xenophobic movements. A prominent political problem in Spain is the situation on the Southern border, where many people try to enter the EU from Africa, risking their life and often losing. (shrink)

Most recent texts in moral philosophy have either concentrated on practical moral issues or else, if theoretical, have tended toward one-sided presentations of recent, fashionable views. Discussions of applied ethics cannot go very far without revealing underlying philosophical assumptions about how deeper, more general issues are treated. Similarly, recent approaches to ethics are difficult to understand without a knowledge of the context of the historical views against which these approaches are reacting. The Nature of Moral Thinking will satisfy the intellectually (...) curious student, providing a solid and fair discussion of the classical philosophical questions about our moral thinking, surveying the main types of meta-ethical and normative ethical theories, while not excluding the more recent discussions of moral realism, of anti-realism, and of virtue morality. Francis Snare demonstrates that glib intellectualistic thinking about morality, especially in regard to relativism andsubjectivism, is seriously flawed. He also focuses attention on the question of whether particular theories of the origins of morality (for example, those of Nietzsche and Marx) undermine morality. All students and teachers of ethics and philosophy will find this book one of the most complete and detailed introductory-level surveys of the foundations of ethics with emphasis on the problems of the subjectivity, the relativity, and the origins of morality. (shrink)

English summary: Antonio Pellizzari (1747-1845) completed his Italian translation of Francis Bacons De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum in hopes that it would prove useful for Italian youth. It would remain unpublished for two centuries, partly because Bacons work had been place on the Churchs Index of prohibited books. The present edition offers a reproduction of the original manuscript as well as a thorough historical analysis of the translator in his chronological and intellectual context. Italian description: La prima traduzione italiana (...) del De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (1623) di Francis Bacon e rimasta inedita per due secoli: il traduttore, il canonico trevigiano Antonio Pellizzari (1747-1845), aveva gia dato alle stampe la prima versione italiana del Novum organum (1788) e, ammiratore del filosofo inglese, si era deciso all' impresa di tradurre la piu vasta opera baconiana, con il titolo di Della dignita e degli aumenti delle scienze, convinto che quest' opera avrebbe giovato pur qualche poco la gioventu italiana. Il manoscritto della traduzione, completo di note ed indici, pronto per la stampa, rimase inedito per le lungaggini dovute alla necessaria richiesta dell'imprimatur al S. Uffizio: l' opera infatti era stata messa all' Indice dalla Sacra Congregazione (nel 1669) con la formula donec corrigatur; l' autorizzazione giunse, firmata dal Prefetto dell' Indice Angelo Maj, nel 1847, due anni dopo la morte del pur longevo Antonio Pellizzari. In questo volume si pubblica una trascrizione annotata del manoscritto 1408 del Della dignita e degli aumenti delle scienze conservato nella Biblioteca Comunale di Treviso, corredata, sulla base di carteggi inediti e di fondi manoscritti talora considerati perduti, di una ricostruzione storica della figura del traduttore, inserito nel piu ampio contesto della cultura veneta fra Settecento e Ottocento, segmento significativo per la storia della diffusione della filosofia moderna. (shrink)

Este trabalho compõe-se de algumas reflexões sobre o ensino de filosofia na educação básica brasileira. Especificamente, analisar-se-ão dois pontos relativos à atividade filosófica na educação básica, a saber: 1) o ensino de filosofia concebido como exercício de pensamento, de modo a reivindicar, a partir da prática filosófica, um filosofar na educação; 2) as contribuições que a filosofia pode oferecer para a formação do aluno do ensino médio, sobretudo no que diz respeito ao exercício da cidadania. Esses dois pontos serão analisados (...) na perspectiva de reforçar a importância da filosofia como componente curricular obrigatório e como instrumento imprescindível para que sejam alcançados os objetivos do ensino médio, última etapa da educação básica, entendida esta como instrumento que prepara o indivíduo para exercer o seu papel de cidadão. (shrink)

La " philosophie politique " est le singulier croisement, effectué par Aristote, de deux produits de l'histoire grecque. Depuis lors, toute la pensée politique (de Machiavel à Marx, de Montesquieu à H. Arendt) se nourrit de celle d'Aristote. Il convenait d'analyser les livres fondateurs de cette pensée fondatrice pour en livrer à tous l'intention singulière et le sens universel. Les problèmes des cités où vécut Aristote ne sont sans doute pas ceux de nos Etats. Et pourtant les réflexions philosophiques d'Aristote (...) sur ces problèmes peuvent toujours éclairer nos questions. Tous les pouvoirs sont-ils du même type? Est-il naturel d'obéir? Qui doit commander? Quel est le meilleur régime? Qu'est-ce que la justice en politique? Qu'est-ce que la démocratie? Ceux-là mêmes qui ne veulent pas en entendre parler pourraient entendre quelles inquiétudes cache ce mot de " politique " " pourquoi vivre ensemble? " et " comment vivre ensemble? ". (shrink)