This article examines the complex intertwinements of feminism, anti-colonial Marxism and imperialism in the work of the recent Literature Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, particularly in her writings on colonial Africa and the travelogue African Laughter. The article outlines the implications of these intersections for the representation of Zimbabwe against some political, aesthetic and epistemological developments in Lessing's oeuvre. Through a reading of African Laughter, the article argues that a crucial tension is at stake between Lessing's political project of giving (...) voice to black Zimbabweans and the western female protagonist as the authoritative subject of this project. The aim is to render an innovative perspective of Doris Lessing's status as a feminist icon, which she gained in the wake of her acclaimed novel The Golden Notebook, by proceeding from postcolonial feminist scholarship. (shrink)

Du fait de sa programmabilité, l’ordinateur est souvent qualifié de machine universelle. Si la machine classique est la représentation d’un programme unique et spécifique, l’ordinateur est un mécanisme qui représente physiquement n’importe quel programme installé comme une procédure d’exploitation parmi d’autres possibles. En raison de cette versatilité et de cette flexibilité..

One of the founders of modern hermeneutics, German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) confronted the question of how modern, postmetaphysical human beings can cope with the ambivalence, contingency, and finitude that fundamentally characterize their lives. This book offers a reevaluation and fresh analysis of Dilthey's hermeneutics of life against the background of the development of philosophy during the past two centuries. Jos de Mul relates Dilthey's work to other philosophers who influenced or were influenced by him, including Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Comte, (...) Mill, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida. Weaving together systematic analysis and historical investigation, de Mul begins the book with an account of the horizon on which Dilthey developed his unfinished masterwork, Critique of Historical Reason. The author then elaborates a systematic reconstruction of Dilthey's ontology of life, relates the ontology to the work of other twentieth-century philosophers, and positions Dilthey's thought within current philosophical debate. (shrink)

The emergence of the hominids, more than five million years ago, marked the start of the human odyssey through space and time. This book deals with the last stage of this fascinating journey: the exploration of cyberspace and cybertime. Through the rapid global implementation of information and communication technologies, a new realm for human experience and imagination has been disclosed. Reversely, these postgeographical and posthistorical technologies have started to colonize our bodies and minds. Taking Homer's Odyssey and Kubrick's 2001: A (...) Space Odyssey as his starting point, the author investigates the 'informatization of the worldview', focusing on its implications for our culture-arts, religion, and science-and, ultimately, our form of life. Moving across a wide range of disciplines, varying from philosophical anthropology and palaeontology to information theory, and from astrophysics to literary, film and new media studies, the author discusses our 'cyberspace odyssey' from a reflective position beyond euphoria and nostalgia. His analysis is as profound as nuanced and deals with issues that will be high on the agenda for many decades to come. In 2003 a Dutch Edition of Cyberspace Odyssey received the Socrates Prize for the best philosophy book published in Dutch. (shrink)

Helmuth Plessner’s Levels of Organic Life and the Human [Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, 1928] is one of the founding texts of twentieth century philosophical anthropology. It is argued that Plessner’s work demonstrates the fundamental indispensability of the qualitative humanities vis-à-vis the natural-scientific study of man. Plessner’s non-reductionist, emergentist naturalism allots complementary roles to the causal and functional investigations of the life sciences and the phenomenological and hermeneutic interpretation of the phenomenon of life in its successive levels and (...) stages. Within this context, human agency can be understood as a higher-order property of organic life, which act by the selective activation of lower-level psychophysical powers. Plessner’s three ‘anthropological laws’ are used to situate the notion of practical self-understanding in between two extremes: deterministic views that deny human freedom and responsibility and views that ascribe an unrealistic amount of autonomy to human beings. (shrink)

Helmut Plessner was one of the founders of philosophical anthropology, and his book _The Stages of the Organic and Man_, first published in 1928, has inspired generations of philosophers, biologists, social scientists, and humanities scholars. This volume offers the first substantial introduction to Plessner’s philosophical anthropology in English, not only setting it in context with such familiar figures as Bergson, Cassirer, and Merleau-Ponty, but also showing Plessner’s relevance to contemporary discussions in a wide variety of fields in the humanities and (...) sciences. (shrink)

The author argues that the reductionist illusions of the Modern Synthesis, which Noble criticizes in his target article, are to a large extent resulting from a mere syntactical notion of biological information, neglecting the pragmatic and semantic dimension of information. Although the syntactical notion, introduced by Shannon, has been applied with much success in information theory and computer technologies, it is too narrow to understand biological reality. Biosemiotics can help to clarify the problems identified by Noble, and offers a more (...) adequate biological information concept, which not only may help to overcome these problems in the life sciences, but may also serve to integrate natural-scientific and humanities approaches to life. (shrink)

Cultuurfilosofische beschouwingen over het romantische verlangen naar eenheid tussen beleving en inhoud, ook in de hedendaagse cultuur.

In his essay ‘The Idea of Europe’ George Steiner claims that European culture derives from “a primordial duality, the twofold inheritance of Athens and Jerusalem.” For Steiner, the relationship between Greek rationalism and Jewish religion, which is at once conflictual and syncretic, has engaged the entire history of European philosophy, morality, and politics. However, given this definition, at present the United States of America seem to be more European than ‘the old Europe’ itself. Against Steiner, it will be argued that (...) in order to fathom the distinctive characteristic of European culture, we have to take a third European tradition into account, which is inextricably bound up with Athens: the tradition of Greek tragedy. If we may call Europe a tragic continent, it is not only because its history is characterised by an abundance of real political tragedies, but also because it embodies, as an idea and an ideal, a tragic awareness of the fragility of human life. Instead of reducing the ‘idea of Europe’ to a financial and economic issue, Europe should remain faithful to this idea and ideal. (shrink)

An analysis of contemporay technological society through the lens of Greek tragedy"--Provided by publisher.

In spite of the popularity of computer ethics, ICTs appear to undermine our moral autonomy in several ways. This article focuses on the ‘delegation’ of our moral agency to machines. Three stages of delegation are distinguished: implementation of moral values and norms in the design of artefacts, delegation of moral means to machines, and delegation of both moral means and goals to machines. Second, it is argued that the ‘outsourcing’ of moral agency does not necessarily lead to the undermining of (...) our moral autonomy, but might enhance it as well. (shrink)

In spite of the popularity of computer ethics, ICTs appear to undermine our moral autonomy in several ways. This article focuses on the ‘delegation’ of our moral agency to machines. Three stages of delegation are distinguished: implementation of moral values and norms in the design of artefacts, delegation of moral means to machines, and delegation of both moral means and goals to machines. Second, it is argued that the ‘outsourcing’ of moral agency does not necessarily lead to the undermining of (...) our moral autonomy, but might enhance it as well. (shrink)

In spite of the popularity of computer ethics, ICTs appear to undermine our moral autonomy in several ways. This article focuses on the ‘delegation’ of our moral agency to machines. Three stages of delegation are distinguished: implementation of moral values and norms in the design of artefacts, delegation of moral means to machines, and delegation of both moral means and goals to machines. Second, it is argued that the ‘outsourcing’ of moral agency does not necessarily lead to the undermining of (...) our moral autonomy, but might enhance it as well. (shrink)

Digital storytelling has become a popular method for curating community, organisational, and individual narratives. Since its beginnings over 20 years ago, projects have sprung up across the globe, where authentic voice is found in the narration of lived experiences. Contributing to a Collective Intelligence for the Common Good, the authors of this paper ask how shared stories can bring impetus to community groups to help identify what they seek to change, and how digital storytelling can be effectively implemented in community (...) partnership projects to enable authentic voices to be carried to other stakeholders in society. The Community Digital Storytelling method is introduced as a means for addressing community-of-place issues. There are five stages to this method: preparation, story telling, story digitisation, digital story sense-making, and digital story sharing. Additionally, a Storytelling Cycle of Trust framework is proposed. We identify four trust dimensions as being imperative foundations in implementing community digital media interventions for the common good: legitimacy, authenticity, synergy, and commons. This framework is concerned with increasing the impact that everyday stories can have on society; it is an engine driving prolonged storytelling. From this perspective, we consider the ability to scale up the scope and benefit of stories in civic contexts. To illustrate this framework, we use experiences from the CDST workshop in northern Britain and compare this with a social innovation project in the southern Netherlands. (shrink)

"Charles Marville is widely acknowledged as one of the most talented photographers of the nineteenth century. Accompanying a major retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in honor of Marville's bicentennial, Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris surveys the artist's entire career. This beautiful book, which begins with the city scenes and architectural views Marville made throughout France and Germany in the 1850s, also explores his portraits and landscapes s before turning to his photographs of Paris made both before and (...) after the city's dramatic modernization in the 1850s and 1860s. Commissioned to record the city in transition, Marville created one of the earliest and most powerful photographic series documenting urban transformation on a grand scale. Despite the importance of his work, Marville has long been an enigma in the history of photography, in part because many of the documents about his life were thought to have been lost in a fire that destroyed Paris's city hall in 1871. Based on meticulous research, this volume reveals many new insights into Marville's personal and professional biography, including the central fact that he was born Charles-Franðcois Bossu. He shed this name and adoptedthe pseudonym Marville when he began his career as an illustrator in the 1830s. With five essays by respected scholars, this book offers the first comprehensive examination of Marville's life and career and delivers the much-awaited public recognition his photographs so richly deserve"--. (shrink)

This paper discusses the principles of predictivity and falsifiability applied to semantic analysis and proposes an inductive approach based on parameters involved in the unfolding of meaning. It claims that linguistic meaning emerges out of ‘enunciative’ elaborations at every level of linguistic analysis. These elaborations proceed from unlimited development, induced by four sources of diversification: syntagms, paradigms, reformulations and paraphrases. A characterization of the utterance (seen as the French “énoncé”) is proposed here, based on the articulation between the reference to (...) be and the referential value it elaborates. Some parameters involved in the construction of meaning are discussed: what is described as “schematic forms” characterizing the identity of any lexical unity, but also the different modalities of articulation between referent and referential value, as well as inter-subjective positioning processes, which are bound to be involved in any construction of identity. (shrink)

Constitution d’un grand corpus d’écrits émergents et novices : principes et méthodes Cette contribution propose une réflexion sur la construction d’un vaste corpus d’écrits qui permet d’approfondir notre compréhension des processus en jeu dans l’accès à la littératie dans sa diversité, au travers de la pluralité des genres et des types discursifs qui la constituent et chez des apprenants de profils divers : enfants/adultes, langue 1 / langue 2, entendants/sourds. La réflexion sur la mise en place de ce corpus s’inscrit (...) dans une perspective fonctionnaliste et énonciative et fait fond sur deux ensembles théoriques complémentaires. Du point de vue de l’acquisition des langues, nous souscrivons à la conception selon laquelle les productions d’apprenants ne constituent pas une déviance par rapport à la norme mais sont des manifestations (idiolectales) de systèmes linguistiques per se dont il s’agit de dégager les normes propres. Du point de vue de la littératie, nous nous inscrivons dans la tradition des travaux, d’inspiration bakhtinienne, qui considèrent l’hétérogénéité comme constitutive de toute production verbale. Ainsi, nous expliquons et justifions nos choix en matière de profils d’apprenants et de tâches rédactionnelles, en relation avec la perspective théorique adoptée, ainsi que les options retenues en matière d’outillage du corpus. (shrink)

In this article, we suggest that attending to the roles of heritage and territory could help reshape local food systems in the US: first, by incorporating more producer voices and visions into the conversation; and second, by considering more deeply the characteristics of the places where food is produced. Using the Wisconsin artisanal cheese network as a case study, we have traced how artisanal producers frame their collective heritage and links to their territory. They describe a heritage that includes a (...) cultivation of embedded, “situated” agricultural knowledge and a commitment to specific quality practices as well as a connection to terroir—the specific ecologies and social contexts of their farm or region. We argue that their articulation of this heritage and terroir is both an emergent, ongoing process of adapting to changing market, cultural, and geographic conditions and an effort to recover valued traditions and practices and connect to specific places. (shrink)

Starting from the often-used metaphor of the “horizon of experience” this article discusses three different types of intercultural hermeneutics, which respectively conceive hermeneutic interpretation as a _widening_ of horizons, a _fusion_ of horizons, and a _dissemination_ of horizons. It is argued that these subsequent stages in the history of hermeneutics have their origin in—but are not fully restricted to—respectively premodern, modern and postmodern stages of globalization. Taking some striking moments of the encounter between Western and Chinese language and philosophy as (...) example, the particular merits and flaws of these three types of hermeneutics are being discussed. The claim defended is that although these different types of hermeneutics are mutually exclusive from a theoretical point of view, as interpreting beings in the current era we depend on each of these distinct hermeneutic practices and cannot avoid living them simultaneously. (shrink)

Since the early 1980’s, with the clinical advent of in vitro fertilization resulting in so-called “test tube babies,” a wide array of ethical considerations and concerns regarding artificial womb technology (AWT) have been described. Recent breakthroughs in the development of extracorporeal neonatal life support by means of AWT have reinitiated ethical interest about this topic with a sense of urgency. Most of the recent ethical literature on the topic, however, pertains not to the more imminent scenario of a physiologically improved (...) method of neonatal care through AWT, but instead to the remote scenario of “complete ectogenesis” that imagines human gestation occurring entirely outside of the womb. This scoping review of the ethical literature on AWT spans from more abstract concerns about complete ectogenesis to more immediate concerns about the soon-to-be-expected clinical life support of what we term the fetal neonate or fetonate. Within an organizing framework of different stages of human gestational development, from conception to the viable premature infant, we discuss both already identified and newly emerging ethical considerations and concerns regarding AWT and the care of the fetonate. (shrink)

How are “interesting” research problems identified and made durable by academic researchers, particularly in situations defined by multiple evaluation principles? Building on two case studies of research groups working on rare diseases in academic biomedicine, we explore how group leaders arrange their groups to encompass research problems that latch onto distinct evaluation principles by dividing and combining work into “basic-oriented” and “clinical-oriented” spheres of inquiry. Following recent developments in the sociology of valuation comparing academics to capitalist entrepreneurs in pursuit of (...) varying kinds of worth, we argue that the metaphor of the portfolio is helpful in analyzing how group leaders manage these different research lines as “alternative investment options” from which they were variously hoping to capitalize. We argue portfolio development is a useful concept for exploring how group leaders fashion “entrepreneurial” practices to manage and exploit tensions between multiple matrices of valuation and conclude with suggestions for how this vocabulary can further extend analysis of epistemic capitalism within science and technology studies. (shrink)

The study of reciprocal altruism, or the exchange of goods and services between individuals, requires attention to both evolutionary explanations and proximate mechanisms. Evolutionary explanations have been debated at length, but far less is known about the proximate mechanisms of reciprocity. Our own research has focused on the immediate causes and contingencies underlying services such as food sharing, grooming, and cooperation in brown capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees. Employing both observational and experimental techniques, we have come to distinguish three types of (...) reciprocity. Symmetry-based reciprocity is cognitively the least complex form, based on symmetries inherent in dyadic relationships (e.g., mutual association, kinship). Attitudinal reciprocity, which is more cognitively complex, is based on the mirroring of social attitudes between partners and is exhibited by both capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees. Finally, calculated reciprocity, the most cognitively advanced form, is based on mental scorekeeping and is found only in humans and possibly chimpanzees. (shrink)

Parents play an important part in adolescents’ life and significantly contribute to youngsters’ academic success. However, parents’ and students’ perceptions regarding parental involvement may diff...

The United Kingdom is the first and so far only country to pass explicit legislation allowing for the licensed use of the new reproductive technology known as mitochondrial replacement therapy. The techniques used in this technology may prevent the transmission of mitochondrial DNA diseases, but they are controversial because they involve the manipulation of oocytes or embryos and the transfer of genetic material. Some commentators have even suggested that MRT constitutes germline genome modification. All eyes were on the United Kingdom (...) as the most likely location for the first MRT birth, so it was a shock when, on September 27, 2016, an announcement went out that the first baby to result from use of the intervention had already been born. In New York City, United States-based scientist John Zhang used maternal spindle transfer to generate five embryos for a woman carrying oocytes with deleterious mutations of the mitochondrial DNA. Zhang then shipped the only euploid embryo to Mexico, where it was transferred to the mother's uterus. Zhang's team's travel across international borders to carry out experimental procedures represents a form of scientific tourism that has not been properly ethically explored; it can, however, have seriously detrimental effects for developing countries. (shrink)

Many adolescents use their electronic devices to send each other sexually explicit texts, photos, and videos of themselves—commonly known as sexting. This can be fun and is not usually problematic. However, if the intended recipient decides to share these sexts with a broader audience, the consequences for the depicted can be detrimental. The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of sext-sharing among Dutch adolescents and explore the characteristics of those who do, to gain a better understanding of (...) factors involved in dissemination. We used data from “Sex under the age of 25,” a representative national survey on sexual health among a sample of 20,834 Dutch 12–24-year-olds. The prevalence of sext-sharing was estimated using Complex Samples. Logistic regressions were used to assess associations between demographics, school-based sexting education, sexual- and online behavior, and mental health and sext-sharing. About 4% of the adolescents reported having shared someone else's sext in the last six months. Being male, aged 12–14 years, frequent social media usage, watching online porn, sexual experience, and being subjected to sext-sharing themselves associated most strongly with sext-sharing. Our findings show that the likelihood of sext-sharing is lower in older adolescents and that it associates with the extent of adolescents' sexual curiosity and online activity. The overlap between sharing sexts of others and having one's own sext shared suggests that dissemination of personal sexual content might be normalized or used as an act of retribution. Further research could be helpful to explain the mechanisms underlying this overlap. The results of this study illustrate the importance of exposing adolescents to evidence based preventive educational interventions on sexting from 12 years onwards and not just within the context of traditional school-based sex education, but also as a part of the media-literacy curriculum. (shrink)

Human communication is often thought about in terms of transmitted messages in a conventional code like a language. But communication requires a specialized interactive intelligence. Senders have to be able to perform recipient design, while receivers need to be able to do intention recognition, knowing that recipient design has taken place. To study this interactive intelligence in the lab, we developed a new task that taps directly into the underlying abilities to communicate in the absence of a conventional code. We (...) show that subjects are remarkably successful communicators under these conditions, especially when senders get feedback from receivers. Signaling is accomplished by the manner in which an instrumental action is performed, such that instrumentally dysfunctional components of an action are used to convey communicative intentions. The findings have important implications for the nature of the human communicative infrastructure, and the task opens up a line of experimentation on human communication. (shrink)

Dans un monde global accéléré et violent, l’anthropologie du contemporain se donne les avenirs pour objet : pour tâcher de rendre ce monde plus intelligible, en tant que les avenirs – socialement situés, pluriels, conflictuels – font pleinement partie de ce qui le compose et de ce avec quoi nous le fabriquons. Il s’agit de regarder, dans le cadre d’une anthropologie politique pragmatique des espaces, comment les gens fabriquent ou contestent des espaces – pour faire des choses ensemble ou guerroyer. (...) Or, pour fabriquer des espaces, les gens mobilisent des temporalités qui sont elles-mêmes spatialisées. Pour faire un quartier, un pays, pour annexer une région, les gens mobilisent des passés pas passés ou pleinement disponibles et/ou des avenirs spatialisés, qui souvent se font écho. Les manières d’ancrer spatialement les temporalités sont prises dans des rapports de pouvoir, et sont des prises de position politique.Cet article se consacre donc aux moyens de décrire les politiques des spatialisations des temporalités avec lesquelles les gens fabriquent ou contestent des espaces dans le contexte russe : comment dresser la topographie plurielle, conflictuelle, des temporalités mobilisées dans la fabrique des espaces? Sa politique est de ne pas dessiner de frontières conceptuelles ou analytiques, ni de se contenter du pire-qui-est-toujours-probable, mais de laisser leur place à des descriptions ouvertes, et à des pratiques contre-hégémoniques de spatialisations de l’avenir : à d’autres possibles. (shrink)

Starting from the often-used metaphor of the “horizon of experience” this article discusses three different types of intercultural hermeneutics, which respectively conceive hermeneutic interpretation as a widening of horizons, a fusion of horizons, and a dissemination of horizons. It is argued that these subsequent stages in the history of hermeneutics have their origin in—but are not fully restricted to—respectively premodern, modern and postmodern stages of globalization. Taking some striking moments of the encounter between Western and Chinese language and philosophy as (...) example, the particular merits and flaws of these three types of hermeneutics are being discussed. The claim defended is that although these different types of hermeneutics are mutually exclusive from a theoretical point of view, as interpreting beings in the current era we depend on each of these distinct hermeneutic practices and cannot avoid living them simultaneously. (shrink)

Human communication is often thought about in terms of transmitted messages in a conventional code like a language. But communication requires a specialized interactive intelligence. Senders have to be able to perform recipient design, while receivers need to be able to do intention recognition, knowing that recipient design has taken place. To study this interactive intelligence in the lab, we developed a new task that taps directly into the underlying abilities to communicate in the absence of a conventional code. We (...) show that subjects are remarkably successful communicators under these conditions, especially when senders get feedback from receivers. Signaling is accomplished by the manner in which an instrumental action is performed, such that instrumentally dysfunctional components of an action are used to convey communicative intentions. The findings have important implications for the nature of the human communicative infrastructure, and the task opens up a line of experimentation on human communication. (shrink)