Questions surrounding engagement with generative AI are often framed in terms of trust, yet mere theorizing about trust may not yield actionable insights, given the multifaceted nature of trust. Literature on trust typically overlooks how individuals make meaning in their interactions with other entities, including AI. This paper reexamines trust with insights from Merleau-Ponty’s views on embodiment, positing trust as a style of world engagement characterized by openness—an attitude wherein individuals enact and give themselves to their lived world, prepared to (...) reorganize their existence. This paper argues that generative AI mediates users’ existence by attuning their openness. Since users perceive generative AI not merely as a tool but as possessing human-like existence, their engagement with AI serves as a rehearsal for articulating and reorganizing their engagement with the world. Consequently, users neither trust nor distrust generative AI; rather, it mediates their trust. This perspective suggests that users’ moral stance towards generative AI involves both other-regarding ethics and information environment ethics. Drawing insights from Kant’s deontology, it proposes that respecting AI’s integrity is equivalent to preserving both our humanity and the integrity of the information environment. -/- . (shrink)

This article critically examines the paradigm shift from the attention economy to the intimacy economy—a market system where personal and emotional data are exchanged for customized experiences that cater to individual emotional and psychological needs. It explores how AI transforms these personal and emotional inputs into services, thereby raising essential questions about the authenticity of digital interactions and the potential commodification of intimate experiences. The study delineates the roles of human–computer interaction and AI in deepening personal connections, significantly impacting emotional (...) dynamics, and underscores AI’s role in various applications, from healthcare to grief tech, highlighting both enhancements in emotional connections and potential disruptions to genuine human interactions. An AI-mediated framework (AMIE) is introduced to assess how AI reshapes these connections and the overall digital society through personalized interactions. This framework explores the interplay between human emotions and AI-generated responses within the new Avatar Sphere, emphasizing the necessity for regulatory measures to safeguard digital identities, recognize emotional data as intellectual property, and maintain system transparency. It highlights the critical need for maintaining genuine human interactions and advocates for context-aware consent, continuous monitoring, and cross-cultural considerations to foster ethical AI practices. Leveraging blockchain technology and decentralized autonomous organizations, the framework proposes methods to enhance individual control over emotional data, mitigating the commodification risks. The findings contribute to ongoing discussions on AI ethics, digital privacy, and the future of human-AI interactions, providing valuable insights for cultivating a responsible intimacy economy. (shrink)

Philosophers sometimes refer to ‘moves’ made in the context of a philosophical debate. Once familiar with these recognizable tropes, we then possess them as tools – a suite of possible moves to make in novel contexts. In this paper, I outline three such philosophy moves, then demonstrate how moves can be combined. Examples of moves and some combinations feature throughout the paper.

For Austin, Grice, and many others, undertaking a speech act like asserting or promising requires uttering something with a particular sense and reference in mind. We argue that the phenomenon of open-ended promises reveals this 'Locutionary Thesis' to be mistaken.

Large Language Models (LLMs) enable a future in which certain types of legal documents may be generated automatically. This has a great potential to streamline legal processes, lower the cost of legal services, and dramatically increase access to justice. While many researchers focus on proposing and evaluating LLM-based applications supporting tasks in the legal domain, there is a notable lack of investigations into how legal professionals perceive content if they believe an LLM has generated it. Yet, this is a critical (...) point as over-reliance or unfounded scepticism may influence whether such documents bring about appropriate legal consequences. This study is the necessary analysis of the ongoing transition towards mature generative AI systems. Specifically, we examined whether the perception of legal documents’ by lawyers and law students (n = 75) varies based on their assumed origin (human-crafted vs AI-generated). The participants evaluated the documents, focusing on their correctness and language quality. Our analysis revealed a clear preference for documents perceived as crafted by a human over those believed to be generated by AI. At the same time, most participants expect the future in which documents will be generated automatically. These findings could be leveraged by legal practitioners, policymakers, and legislators to implement and adopt legal document generation technology responsibly and to fuel the necessary discussions on how legal processes should be updated to reflect recent technological developments. (shrink)

The dominant paradigm in biomedicine focuses on genetically‐specified components of cells and their biochemical dynamics, emphasizing bottom‐up emergence of complexity. Here, I explore the biomedical implications of a complementary emerging field: diverse intelligence. Using tools from behavioral science and multiscale neuroscience, we can study development, regenerative repair, and cancer suppression as behaviors of a collective intelligence of cells navigating the spaces of possible morphologies and transcriptional and physiological states. A focus on the competencies of living material—from molecular to organismal scales—reveals (...) a new landscape for interventions. Such top‐down approaches take advantage of the memories and homeodynamic goal‐seeking behavior of cells and tissues, offering the same massive advantages in biomedicine and bioengineering that reprogrammable hardware has provided information technologies. The bioelectric networks that bind individual cells toward large‐scale anatomical goals are an especially tractable interface to organ‐level plasticity, and tools to modulate them already exist. This suggests a research program to understand and tame the software of life for therapeutic gain by understanding the many examples of basal cognition that operate throughout living bodies. (shrink)

Halpern and Pearl ([2005a], [2005b]) use the framework of structural equation models to define a notion of explanation that is based on actual causation. But while Halpern and Pearl’s definition of actual causation has been met with ample, often constructive, criticism, their subsequent definition of explanation has not faced similar scrutiny. It only underwent a slight reformulation by Halpern ([2016]). In this article, I will show that Halpern and Pearl’s definition of explanation is, despite many promising features, still problematic, even (...) if we presuppose adequately defined causal concepts. I will propose some changes to Halpern and Pearl’s definition and argue that those changes are able to resolve the revealed problems while maintaining all the benefits of their approach. (shrink)

Uterus transplants (UTx) provide women without a uterus the possibility of experiencing gestational motherhood. This paper delineates the complex bioethical landscape surrounding UTx, focusing on the critical aspects of informed consent, risk–benefit analysis, justice considerations, and the distinct challenges encountered by both donors and recipients. While not discussing UTx directly, John Harris’ seminal work, The Value of Life: An Introduction to Medical Ethics (1985) in its advocacy for reproductive freedom and informed consent provides an informative starting point for the discussion. (...) As an example, UTx is analyzed within the socio-political context of Mexico. The impact of the Mexican healthcare and legal systems on UTx procedures is discussed and the regulatory measures necessary to ensure that UTx is conducted ethically and equitably are outlined. (shrink)

Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) exemplify a dual-use neurotechnology with significant potential in both civilian and military contexts. While BCIs hold promise for treating neurological conditions such as spinal cord injuries and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in the future, military decisionmakers in countries such as the United States and China also see their potential to enhance combat capabilities. Some predict that U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) will be early adopters of BCI enhancements. This article argues for a shift in focus: the U.S. Special (...) Operations Command (SOCOM) should pursue translational research of medical BCIs for treating severely injured or ill SOF personnel. After two decades of continuous military engagement and on-going high-risk operations, SOF personnel face unique injury patterns, both physical and psychological, which BCI technology could help address. The article identifies six key medical applications of BCIs that could benefit wounded SOF members and discusses the ethical implications of involving SOF personnel in translational research related to these applications. Ultimately, the article challenges the traditional civilian-military divide in neurotechnology, arguing that by collaborating more closely with military stakeholders, scientists can not only help individuals with medical needs, including servicemembers, but also play a role in shaping the future military applications of BCI technology. (shrink)

“You fooled me. I never dreamt,” George said to the pasty gray face in the mirror. As a child, he had worked out complicated schemes of how the world must be constructed. This led to that, and that led to this. When this and that no longer fit together, he began to squint, and limit his view to the essential. At any moment, the sky might break open and rain body parts and end times. He never imagined that it would (...) be colors that would give way. (shrink)

Psychedelics such as psilocybin reliably produce significantly altered states of consciousness with a variety of subjectively experienced effects. These include certain changes to perception, cognition, and affect,1 which we refer to here as the acute subjective effects of psychedelics. In recent years, psychedelics such as psilocybin have also shown considerable promise as therapeutic agents when combined with talk therapy, for example, in the treatment of major depression or substance use disorder.2 However, it is currently unclear whether the aforementioned acute subjective (...) effects are necessary to bring about the observed therapeutic effects of psilocybin and other psychedelics. This uncertainty has sparked a lively—though still largely hypothetical—debate on whether psychedelics without subjective effects (“nonsubjective psychedelics” or “non-hallucinogenic psychedelics”) could still have the same therapeutic impact, or whether the acute subjective effects are in fact necessary for this impact to be fully realized.3,4,5. (shrink)

Recent research offers good reason to think that various psychedelic drugs—including psilocybin, ayahuasca, ketamine, MDMA, and LSD—may have significant therapeutic potential in the treatment of various mental health conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, existential distress, and addiction. Although the use of psychoactive drugs, such as Diazepam or Ritalin, is well established, psychedelics arguably represent a therapeutic step change. As experiential therapies, their value would seem to lie in the subjective experiences they induce. As it is the only way for (...) trainee psychedelic therapists to fully understand their subjective effects, some have suggested that firsthand experience of psychedelics should form part of training programs. We question this notion. First, we consider whether the epistemic benefits offered by drug-induced psychedelic experience are as unique as is supposed. We then reflect on the value it might have in regard to the training of psychedelic therapists. We conclude that, absent stronger evidence of the contribution drug-induced experiences make to the training of psychedelic therapists, requiring trainees to take psychedelic drugs does not seem ethically legitimate. However, given the potential for epistemic benefit cannot be entirely ruled out, permitting trainees who wish to gain first-hand experience of psychedelics may be permissible. (shrink)

This is the second paper in a two-part series describing subject and family perspectives from the CENTURY-S (CENtral Thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation for the Treatment of Traumatic Brain InjURY-Safety) first-in-human invasive neurological device trial to achieve cognitive restoration in moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (msTBI). To participate, subjects were independently assessed to formally establish decision-making capacity to provide voluntary informed consent. Here, we report on post-operative interviews conducted after a successful trial of thalamic stimulation. All five msTBI subjects met (...) a pre-selected primary endpoint of at least a 10% improvement in completion time on Trail-Making-Test Part B, a marker of executive function. We describe narrative responses of subjects and family members, refracted against that success. Interviews following surgery and the stimulation trial revealed the challenge of adaptation to improvements in cognitive function and emotional regulation as well as altered (and restored) relationships and family dynamics. These improvements exposed barriers to social reintegration made relevant by recoveries once thought inconceivable. The study’s success sparked concerns about post-trial access to implanted devices, financing of device maintenance, battery replacement, and on-going care. Most subjects and families identified the need for supportive counseling to adapt to the new trajectory of their lives. (shrink)

A life of the mind can be lived only by creatures who know that they have minds. We call these creatures “persons,” and currently, all such persons THAT we know OF are “alive” in the biological sense. But are there, or could there be, either in the future or elsewhere in the universe, creatures with “a life of the mind” that are not “alive” in the sense that we humans usually understand this term today?

Whether anorexic patients should be able to refuse treatment when this refusal potentially has a fatal outcome is a vexed topic. A recent proposal for a new category of “terminal anorexia” suggests criteria when a move to palliative care or even physician-assisted suicide might be justified. The author argues that this proposed diagnosis presents a false sense of certainty of the illness trajectory by conceptualizing anorexia in analogy with physical disorders and stressing the effects of starvation. Furthermore, this conceptualization is (...) in conflict with the claim that individuals who meet the diagnostic criteria for terminal anorexia have decision-making capacity. It should therefore be rejected. (shrink)

Organoids and specifically human cerebral organoids (HCOs) are one of the most relevant novelties in the field of biomedical research. Grown either from embryonic or induced pluripotent stem cells, HCOs can be used as in vitro three-dimensional models, mimicking the developmental process and organization of the developing human brain. Based on that, and despite their current limitations, it cannot be assumed that they will never at any stage of development manifest some rudimentary form of consciousness. In the absence of behavioral (...) indicators of consciousness, the theoretical neurobiology of consciousness being applied to unresponsive brain-injured patients can be considered with respect to HCOs. In clinical neurology, it is difficult to discern a capacity for consciousness in unresponsive brain-injured patients who provide no behavioral indicators of consciousness. In such scenarios, a validated neurobiological theory of consciousness, which tells us what the neural mechanisms of consciousness are, could be used to identify a capacity for consciousness. Like the unresponsive patients that provide a diagnostic difficulty for neurologists, HCOs provide no behavioral indicators of consciousness. Therefore, this article discusses how three prominent neurobiological theories of consciousness apply to human cerebral organoids. From the perspective of the Temporal Circuit Hypothesis, the Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, and the Integrated Information Theory, we discuss what neuronal structures and functions might indicate that cerebral organoids have a neurobiological capacity to be conscious. (shrink)

This article examines the idea of mind-reading technology by focusing on an interesting case of applying a large language model (LLM) to brain data. On the face of it, experimental results appear to show that it is possible to reconstruct mental contents directly from brain data by processing via a chatGPT-like LLM. However, the author argues that this apparent conclusion is not warranted. Through examining how LLMs work, it is shown that they are importantly different from natural language. The former (...) operates on the basis of nonrational data transformations based on a large textual corpus. The latter has a rational dimension, being based on reasons. Using this as a basis, it is argued that brain data does not directly reveal mental content, but can be processed to ground predictions indirectly about mental content. The author concludes that this is impressive but different in principle from technology-mediated mind reading. The applications of LLM-based brain data processing are nevertheless promising for speech rehabilitation or novel communication methods. (shrink)

The ongoing debate within neuroethics concerning the degree to which neuromodulation such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) changes the personality, identity, and agency (PIA) of patients has paid relatively little attention to the perspectives of prospective patients. Even less attention has been given to pediatric populations. To understand patients’ views about identity changes due to DBS in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the authors conducted and analyzed semistructured interviews with adolescent patients with OCD and their parents/caregivers. Patients were asked about projected impacts (...) to PIA generally due to DBS. All patient respondents and half of caregivers reported that DBS would impact patient self-identity in significant ways. For example, many patients expressed how DBS could positively impact identity by allowing them to explore their identities free from OCD. Others voiced concerns that DBS-related resolution of OCD might negatively impact patient agency and authenticity. Half of patients expressed that DBS may positively facilitate social access through relieving symptoms, while half indicated that DBS could increase social stigma. These views give insights into how to approach decision-making and informed consent if DBS for OCD becomes available for adolescents. They also offer insights into adolescent experiences of disability identity and “normalcy” in the context of OCD. (shrink)

In this paper, the authors explore the question of whether cognitive enhancement via direct neurostimulation, such as through deep brain stimulation, could be reasonably characterized as a form of transformative experience. This question is inspired by a qualitative study being conducted with people at risk of developing dementia and in intimate relationships with people living with dementia (PLWD). They apply L.A. Paul’s work on transformative experience to the question of cognitive enhancement and explore potential limitations on the kind of claims (...) that can legitimately be made about individual well-being and flourishing, as well as limit the kind of empirical work—including the authors’ own—that can hope to enlighten ethical discourse. In this paper, the authors advance the following theses: (1) it is sometimes reasonable to characterize cognitive enhancement as a transformative experience; (2) the testimonies of people intimately acquainted with dementia may still be relevant to evaluating cognitive enhancement even though cognitive enhancement may be a transformative experience; and (3) qualitative studies may still be useful in the ethical analysis of cognitive enhancement, but special attention may need to be given to how these are conducted and what kind of insights can be drawn from them. (shrink)

Advances in brain–brain interface technologies raise the possibility that two or more individuals could directly link their minds, sharing thoughts, emotions, and sensory experiences. This paper explores conceptual and ethical issues posed by such mind-merging technologies in the context of clinical neuroethics. Using hypothetical examples along a spectrum from loosely connected pairs to fully merged minds, the authors sketch out a range of factors relevant to identifying the degree of a merger. They then consider potential new harms like loss of (...) identity, psychological domination, loss of mental privacy, and challenges for notions of autonomy and patient benefit when applied to merged minds. While radical technologies may seem to necessitate new ethical paradigms, the authors suggest the individual-focus underpinning clinical ethics can largely accommodate varying degrees of mind mergers so long as individual patient interests remain identifiable. However, advanced decisionmaking and directives may have limitations in addressing the dilemmas posed. Overall, mind-merging possibilities amplify existing challenges around loss of identity, relating to others, autonomy, privacy, and the delineation of patient interests. This paper lays the groundwork for developing resources to address the novel issues raised, while suggesting the technologies reveal continuity with current healthcare ethics tensions. (shrink)

Past research on people's moral judgments about moral dilemmas has revealed a connection between utilitarian judgment and reflective cognitive style. This has traditionally been interpreted as reflection is conducive to utilitarianism. However, recent research shows that the connection between reflective cognitive style and utilitarian judgments holds only when participants are asked whether the utilitarian option is permissible, and disappears when they are asked whether it is recommended. To explain this phenomenon, we propose that reflective cognitive style is associated with a (...) greater moral leniency—that is, a greater tendency to be tolerant of moral violations, and that moral leniency predicts utilitarian judgment when utilitarian judgment is measured through permissibility. In Study 1 (N = 192), we design a set of vignettes to assess moral leniency. In Studies 2 and 3 (N = 455, 428), we show that reflective cognitive style is indeed associated with greater moral leniency, and that moral leniency mediates the connection between cognitive style and utilitarian judgment. We discuss the implication of our results for the interpretation of the relationship between utilitarianism and reflective cognitive style. (shrink)

We investigate the articulation between domain-general reasoning and interpretive processes in failures of deductive reasoning. We focus on illusory inferences from disjunction-like elements, a broad class of deductive fallacies studied in some detail over the past 15 years. These fallacies have received accounts grounded in reasoning processes, holding that human reasoning diverges from normative standards. A subset of these fallacies, however, can be analyzed differently: human reasoning is not to blame, instead the premises were interpreted in a nonobvious, yet perfectly (...) predictable and reasonable way. Once we consider these interpretations, the apparent fallacious conclusion is no mistake at all. We give a two-factor account of these fallacies that incorporates both reasoning-based elements and interpretive elements, showing that they are not in real competition. We present novel experimental evidence in favor of our theory. Cognitive load such as induced by a dual-task design is known to hinder the interpretive mechanisms at the core of interpretation-based accounts of the fallacies of interest. In the first experiment of its kind using this paradigm with an inferential task instead of a simpler truth-value-judgment task, we found that the manipulation affected more strongly those illusions where our theory predicts that interpretive processes are at play. We conclude that the best way forward for the field to investigate the elusive line between reasoning and interpretation requires combining theories and methodologies from linguistic semantics and the psychology of reasoning. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to raise the question of aging as an ontological question. In critical dialogue with Heidegger’s exploration of the question of being, the first half of the paper argues that fundamental ontology, due to the way it relies on a methodological operationalization of the ontological difference, will remain blind to the ontological generativity of the differences that aging makes. I introduce the term gerontological difference as a name for this kind of difference. The second half (...) of the paper explores the quasi-transcendental play of gerontological difference. Drawing on Foucault, Guenther and Agamben, I suggest that this play might be described in archaeological terms by tracing the historical a priori in which age distinctions are operationalized biopolitically. Drawing on Derrida and Nancy, I argue that this archaeological view of the quasi-transcendental play of gerontological difference must be supplemented with a view of aging as material différance. According to this understanding of the quasi-transcendental play of gerontological difference, aging is an ontologically generative event that organizes intercorporeal tangles of coexistence and opens emergent fields of possible experience. (shrink)

This introduction to the special issue on the phenomenologies of aging explores the relative philosophical neglect of aging as a distinct topic. It critiques the naturalistic reduction of aging, which frames it primarily as decline, and examines the ethico-political implications of this perspective. In order to contextualize the possibilities of forming a new sustained philosophical debate on aging, we describe the earlier advances made in the field by notably Simone de Beauvoir’s work and the developments in critical gerontology, aging studies (...) and the anthropology of aging and the life course. The introduction then programmatically states the need for a revitalized philosophical discourse on aging, suggesting that phenomenological inquiry can reveal the ontological complexities of intergenerational relationships and shared existence. Finally, we briefly introduce the contributions to this special issue by drawing forward the themes of corporeal temporality, generationality and the problem of sharing the world across generations. (shrink)

We face a crisis of elder care, and the language of care is part of the problem. Despite a sophisticated philosophical tradition of care thinking, we remain entangled in expectations of care as loving care, and these expectations hamper the worker/employer relations that are at the center of contemporary care. Turning to the language of solidarity helps us better understand care as work, helps build solidarity not only among workers but also between carers and the those they care for, between (...) carers and families, and between young and old. Populating the social imaginary with stories and images of solidary care is central to the work of building broad generational solidarity. (shrink)

This paper explores the process of aging from a phenomenological perspective. Supplementing the model of becoming old found in Simone de Beauvoir’s work with a phenomenology of human suffering and flourishing, it asks whether it is possible to lead a good life in the process of becoming old. Is it possible to flourish while experiencing bodily waning? Is it possible to flourish while experiencing the shrinking of one’s everyday world and the passing away of close others? Aging, at least in (...) its protracted phases, appears to become full of suffering rather than flourishing. What are the prospects of finding meaningful life projects despite old age? By making use of insight found in Heidegger and other phenomenologists the paper tries to develop a slightly different view on aging than the one found in Beauvoir, stressing the importance of embodied experiences and life choices, which not only depend upon societal oppression and being objectified by others, but also upon processes of nature and the possibilities of an intergenerational intersubjectivity. Resources for this project is found in the philosophy of affectivity developed by Heidegger and other phenomenologists of facticity, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Taylor, Helmuth Plessner and Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

While many people, when contemplating the prospect of becoming old, tend to focus on the deteriorating capacities of the aging body, much less attention has historically been paid to the changing social relationships that inevitably accompany old age as peers and life partners age and die. Merleau-Ponty ends the Phenomenology of Perception with Antoine St. Exupéry’s claim that human beings “are a knot of relations.” When we understand a human being as a knot of relations, the social fragility of old (...) age becomes readily apparent, for this knot inevitably begins to unravel as longstanding personal and professional relations are attenuated through retirement, illness, and death. Other factors also increase the social fragility of old age, most notably the fact that the elderly, as Beauvoir notes in The Coming of Age, are most often treated with less dignity and respect than their younger counterparts in social, clinical, and professional encounters. The unraveling of the knot of relations is not the end of the story, however, for different ties are formed as elderly people establish relationships with caregivers, clinicians, and total strangers. To address the social fragility of old age, I argue, we must provide the social supports necessary for elderly people to develop meaningful new bonds, especially in cases where their mobility is severely limited, so that the unraveling of the knot of relations that is an inevitably component of old age does not result in a complete severing of one’s ties to loved ones and to the human community. (shrink)

Whereas caring is commonly perceived as a moral virtue or a socially beneficial ethical practice, resentment appears to represent its opposite. Advocates of care ethics have vehemently criticized the abstract and aloof nature of traditional ethical theories and argue that care ethics offers a perspective from which we may appreciate interpersonal sensitivity and responsiveness to individuals, per se. Following in the philosophical tradition of Nietzsche and Scheler, resentment—taken as the emotional state of lingering animosity towards individuals, combined with the inclination (...) to withhold assistance and abstain from caring—is often identified as an unjustified and unethical disposition. The paper aims to challenge this perspective and support the moral and historical validity of resentment in specific situations. It thereby recalls a social historical dimension to the often merely physiologically and individually dominated discourse about aging. Drawing on Jean Améry’s seminal account, I suggest viewing resentment as an attitude that asserts the authority to reevaluate the historical situation and to challenge the primacy of immediate needs (the here-and-now of a person in need of care). From this perspective, resentment too displays sensitivity to individuals and their life stories, yet it invokes a sense of justice that exceeds the temporal framework of caring if restrained to bodily and physiological needs. To illustrate this argument, this paper recounts an incident in a nursing home in postwar Germany, in 1986. (shrink)

Phenomenological analyses of ageing and old age have examined themes such as alterity, finitude, and time, not seldom from the perspective of “healthy” aging. Phenomenologists have also offered detailed analyses of lived experiences of illness including lived experiences of dementia. This article offers a phenomenological account of what we label as entering the grey zone of aging between “healthy” aging and aging with a disease. This account is developed through a qualitative phenomenological philosophy analysis of elderly persons’ lived experiences of (...) being tested for dementia through primary care in Sweden, i.e., within a cultural context where dementia commonly is understood as a frightening a loss of self even though this understanding also is questioned. To enter this grey zone of aging, we argue, does not dissolve dynamic self-becoming but can involve an experience of oneself as being old. Further, in the grey zone, the self experiences itself as neither fully healthy nor as having a disease, and as needing to negotiate and live this ambiguity. To enter this grey zone is to enter an affectively charged, sociocultural and medicalized zone, and while the self can still act in different ways within it, staying in the grey zone can result in a re-orientation in the self’s mode of being, in ways that are thoroughly beyond its control. To stay in the grey zone can have detrimental effects on the self, even though the self does not have a disease: the self can become “stuck” in a reflective mode of attending to embodiment, aging, health, and disease. (shrink)

In 1939, sociologist Edwin Sutherland coined the term “white-collar crime.”1 Nothing about this curious pocket of the criminal law has been clear ever since. Indeed, just the phrase “white-collar c...

Criminal law practices in the US, including policing and incarceration, have drawn heavy criticism for their disproportionate impact on black people, particularly black men. At the same time, some feminist scholars and activists advocate for increases in criminal law responses to sexual assault, including expanding criminal statutes to cover more instances of sexual assault and increasing sentencing guidelines. These reforms are often justified by claims that criminal law should express more feminist values and reject sexist social schemas. This paper makes (...) the case that criminal legal interventions aimed at changing sexist social schemas, such as ‘rape culture,’ are unlikely to be successful because criminal law is effective at maintaining existing social norms, but bad at introducing novel ones. Similarly, in the US, criminality has been ideologically linked to blackness, so attempts to use the stigma of criminality to combat sexual violence are likely to reinforce anti-black racism. The very meaning of a criminal law depends on related social schemas, and the racist social schemas associated with criminality undermine the ability of criminal legal responses to present anti-sexist values. At best, criminal legal reforms aimed at expressing the equal dignity of women will be ambiguous because their meaning is negotiated by existing sexist and racist social schemas. Thus, penal expressivism cannot offer a justification for using criminal law to combat sexual assault. (shrink)

This introduction explains the main contributions of On Taking Offence, summarises its overall argument, and outlines how the comments in this symposium engage with, and challenge, different parts of the argument.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has gained popularity due to rapid advancements in the field. For over twenty years, AI has been expanding into various areas of human life, including science, education, medicine, and personal life. As a result of this significant progress, artificial intelligence has become the focus of multiple scientific disciplines; however, the philosophical analysis of the current state of the field remains understudied. The analysis of the development of AI in the 21st century from philosophical perspectives has been conducted. (...) Utilizing Stepin’s concept of the foundations of science, we conclude that since the end of the 20th century, there has not been a scientific revolution in the field of AI. Nevertheless, AI is at the peak of its development due to substantial technological advancements. Each area within the field is open to new practical and theoretical achievements; consequently, the study of artificial intelligence will remain a focus in the future. (shrink)

Bu araştırmada dini tutum, paranormal inanç ve eleştirel düşünme eğilimi arasındaki ilişkiler incelenerek bu ilişkiler arasındaki değişkenler anlaşılmaya çalışılmıştır. Çalışma nicel desenli ve ilişkisel tarama yöntemi ile hazırlanmıştır. Araştırmanın örneklemi, Sivas Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi ve Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi’nin ilahiyat, eğitim ve sağlık bilimleri/tıp fakültelerinde öğrenim gören 626 gönüllü katılımcıdan oluşmaktadır. Veriler, katılımcıların demografik özelliklerine ilişkin kişisel bilgi formu ile Ok-Dini Tutum Ölçeği, Paranormal İnanç Ölçeği ve Eleştirel Düşünme Eğilimi Ölçeği kullanılarak sahada anket yöntemi vasıtasıyla toplanmıştır. Elde edilen verilerin analizleri yapmak için (...) IBM SPSS Statistics-26 kullanılmış; değişkenler arası ilişkileri belirlemek maksadıyla korelasyon ve basit doğrusal regresyon analizi uygulanmıştır. Araştırmada dini tutum ile paranormal inanç arasında pozitif yönde (r=0.418; p=0.000) anlamlı bir ilişki tespit edilmiş olup bununla birlikte dini tutumun paranormal inançtaki değişimin yaklaşık %17’sini (Düzeltilmiş R2=0,173) açıkladığı tespit edilmiştir. Bu bulgular, dini tutumun paranormal inancı destekleyen önemli bir faktör olduğunu ortaya koymaktadır. Dini tutum ile eleştirel düşünme eğilimi arasındaki ilişkide anlamlı bir ilişki olmayıp dini tutum eleştirel düşünme eğilimindeki değişimin yaklaşık %1’ini (Düzeltilmiş R2=0,003) açıkladığı görülmektedir. Eleştirel düşünme eğilimi ile paranormal inanç ilişkisinde düşük düzeyde negatif ilişkilerin olduğu saptanmıştır (r=-0.111, p. (shrink)

This essay considers the question of sovereignty in relation to oil. First, in the conventional geo-strategic sense: control over oil resources is the sovereign right of a nation. But here national sovereignties conflict with each other, and sovereignty, supposedly absolute (it is by definition the unconditioned) turns out to be malleable, always qualified. Another, second sense involves sovereignty as the general will; here I propose that oil, and energy resources, have their own will, which enters into conflict with what is (...) normally the general will of the people. Finally, a third sovereignty involves the radically unconditioned, in which energy is expended unconditionally, with no goal in sight or possible; this is the sovereignty of the sacred, or of erotism, and is the most basic aspect of energic ‘use.’. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a critique of what I refer to as ‘perspectival reason’, which is the idea that the fundamental setup of human beings in relation to the world is in terms of individuals having perspectives on the world. I argue that the idea of the world as something to view and have a perspective on is not a neutral, trans-historical category but a configuration that emerged in modern times when the world became ‘view’ of ‘picture’, as Heidegger (...) has put it. I indicate some of the key problems of perspectival reason in our time, both in education and society. I then work towards an alternative configuration by discussing a number of ‘world-returning philosophies’. I discuss pragmatism and phenomenology as attempts to return the world, and indicate that, while successful in returning (to) the world, they return the self in problematic ways. Through a discussion of ideas from Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion I propose a configuration in which both world and self are ‘returned’ in more meaningful ways. Key in this is the idea of the world as appeal and of the self as the one who responds to this appeal and through this ‘arrives’ in the world. My explorations are intended to highlight why the idea of ‘taking a perspective’ is problematic, and how we can work towards an alternative. I also discuss where the logic of perspectival reason causes problems for education and how the alternative configuration I present provides a productive way forward. (shrink)

While concepts of care and caring have a long history, the terms have become especially prominent in recent times. Care and caring, I argue, have emerged as what philosopher Charles Taylor calls ‘moral sources,’ uber-concepts that allow for moral deliberation, the prioritization of preferences, and our identity formation as persons. Linking the current salience of care to a growing awareness of the dynamics of a crisis- and catastrophe-ridden world, I consider care within the context of university students’ declining mental health. (...) Acknowledging role differentiation within universities and the contributions of Well-being units with specialist knowledge, I contend that frontline tutors without such knowledge have an important role to play in developing alternatives to an increasingly pervasive medicalised conception of care, one that constitutes students as passive patients. Drawing on Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Zen’s capabilities approach to human flourishing, I suggest that there is considerable scope, within the civil society environments of the university sector, for life skills-oriented practices of care that are profoundly agential, and, through this, curative, protective, and liberating. I illustrate the relevance of the theoretical propositions through a case study of a collaborative performance of the ‘Shout at Cancer Choir’ (aka ‘Laryngectomy Choir’) at the University of Lincoln, UK, in 2023. The aim is to show how particular forms of community engagement, within or beyond the formal curriculum, create capabilities-based conditions for students’ flourishing. (shrink)

Fanatics claim that we must give up guaranteed goods in pursuit of extremely improbable Utopia. Recently, Wilkinson has defended Fanaticism by arguing that nonfanatics must violate at least one plausible rational requirement. We reject Fanaticism. We show that by taking stakes-sensitive risk attitudes seriously, we can resist the core premises in Wilkinson’s argument.

Consider the principle that, given two actions A and B, where A affects some number of (merely) possibly sentient individuals (e.g., shrimp) and B affects some number of clearly sentient individuals (e.g., humans), A and B are morally equivalent if their expected values are equivalent. This recently defended principle can have radical implications. This article considers alternatives to this principle that are based on two kinds of risk aversion—difference-making risk aversion and ambiguity aversion. By rejecting the symmetry between probability and (...) value, it’s possible to reach more intuitive conclusions. (shrink)