In this article, Adriana Cavarero and Nidesh Lawtoo resume a dialogue on mimetic inclinations in view of furthering a relational, embodied and affective conception of subjectivity that challenges homo erectus from the immanent perspective of homo mimeticus. If a dominant philosophical tradition tends to restrict mimesis to an illusory representation of reality, Plato was the first to know that mimesis also operates as an affective force, or pathos, that dispossesses the subject. While Plato tended to emphasize the pathological implications (...) of mimesis, Cavarero and Lawtoo agree that both mimesis and inclinations go beyond good and evil and can be put to both pathological and democratic use. Picking up a dialogue started during a walk in New York City, Cavarero and Lawtoo, take their shared interests in Joseph Conrad's relating narratives as an occasion to discuss good and bad mimetic inclinations in contemporary politics and ethics. Joined in conclusion by the Gendered Mimesis team (Willow Verkerk, Isabelle Dahms and Giulia Rignano), topics addressed include new fascism, surging democracy, ethical responsibility for vulnerable others, hypermaternity and public happiness in a precarious world. (shrink)

_Relating Narratives_ is a major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. First published in Italian to widespread acclaim, _Relating Narratives_ is a fascinating and challenging new account of the relationship between selfhood and narration. Drawing a diverse array of thinkers from both the philosophical and the literary tradition, from Sophocles and Homer to Hannah Arendt, Karen Blixen, Walter Benjamin and Borges, Adriana Cadarero's theory of the `narratable self' shows how narrative models in philosophy and (...) literature can open new ways of thinking about formation of human identities. By showing how each human being has a unique story that can be told about them, Adriana Cavarero inaugurates an important shift in thinking about subjectivity and identity which relies not upon categorical or discursive norms, but rather seeks to account for `who' each one of us uniquely is. (shrink)

This essay answers two questions that continue to drive debate in moral and legal philosophy; namely, ‘Is a risk of harm a wrong?’ and ‘Is a risk of harm a harm?’. The essay’s central claim is that to risk harm can be both to wrong and to harm. This stands in contrast to the respective positions of Heidi Hurd and Stephen Perry, whose views represent prominent extremes in this debate about risks. The essay shows that there is at least one (...) category of risks – intentional impositions of risk on unconsenting agents – which can be both wrongful and harmful. The wrongfulness of these risks can be established when, on the balance of reasons, one ought not to impose them. The harmfulness of these risks can be established when the risks are shown to set back legitimate interests. In those cases where risks constitute a denial of the moral status of agents, risks set back agents’ interest in dignity. In these ways, the essay shows that there are instances when a risk can constitute both a wrong and a harm. (shrink)

Relating Narratives is a major new work by the philosopher and feminist thinker Adriana Cavarero. First published in Italian to widespread acclaim, Relating Narratives is a fascinating and challenging new account of the relationship between selfhood and narration. Drawing a diverse array of thinkers from both the philosophical and the literary tradition, from Sophocles and Homer to Hannah Arendt, Karen Blixen, Walter Benjamin and Borges, Adriana Cadarero's theory of the `narratable self' shows how narrative models in philosophy and (...) literature can open new ways of thinking about formation of human identities. By showing how each human being has a unique story that can be told about them, Adriana Cavarero inaugurates an important shift in thinking about subjectivity and identity which relies not upon categorical or discursive norms, but rather seeks to account for `who' each one of us uniquely is. (shrink)

Words like "terrorism" and "war" no longer encompass the scope of contemporary violence. With this explosive book, Adriana Cavarero, one of the world's most provocative feminist theorists and political philosophers, effectively renders such terms obsolete. She introduces a new word—"horrorism"—to capture the experience of violence. Unlike terror, horrorism is a form of violation grounded in the offense of disfiguration and massacre. Numerous outbursts of violence fall within Cavarero's category of horrorism, especially when the phenomenology of violence is considered from (...) the perspective of the victim rather than that of the warrior. Cavarero locates horrorism in the philosophical, political, literary, and artistic representations of defenseless and vulnerable victims. She considers both terror and horror on the battlefields of the _Iliad_, in the decapitation of Medusa, and in the murder of Medea's children. In the modern arena, she forges a link between horror, extermination, and massacre, especially the Nazi death camps, and revisits the work of Primo Levi, Hannah Arendt's thesis on totalitarianism, and Arendt's debate with Georges Bataille on the estheticization of violence and cruelty. In applying the horroristic paradigm to the current phenomena of suicide bombers, torturers, and hypertechnological warfare, Cavarero integrates Susan Sontag's views on photography and the eroticization of horror, as well as ideas on violence and the state advanced by Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt. Through her searing analysis, Caverero proves that violence against the helpless claims a specific vocabulary, one that has been known for millennia, and not just to the Western tradition. Where common language fails to form a picture of atrocity, horrorism paints a brilliant portrait of its vivid reality. (shrink)

Adriana Novoa and Alex Levine offer here a history and interpretation of the reception of Darwinism in Argentina, illuminating the ways culture shapes ...

The human voice does not deceive. The one who is speaking is inevitably revealed by the singular sound of her voice, no matter “what” she says. We take this fact for granted—for example, every time someone asks, over the telephone, “Who is speaking?” and receives as a reply the familiar utterance, “It’s me.” Starting from the given uniqueness of every voice, Cavarero rereads the history of philosophy through its peculiar evasion of this embodied uniqueness. She shows how this history—along with (...) the fields it comprehends, such as linguistics, musicology, political theory, and studies in orality—might be grasped as the “devocalization of Logos,” as the invariable privileging of semantike over phone, mind over body. Female figures—from the Sirens to the Muses, from Echo to opera singers—provide a crucial counterhistory, one in which the embodied voice triumphs over the immaterial semantic. Reconstructing this counterhistory, Cavarero proposes a “politics of the voice” wherein the ancient bond between Logos and politics is reconfigured, and wherein what matters is not the communicative content of a given discourse, but rather who is speaking. (shrink)

This paper presents a series of 4 single subject experiments aimed to investigate whether children with autism show more social engagement when interacting with the Nao robot, compared to a human partner in a motor imitation task. The Nao robot imitates gross arm movements of the child in real-time. Different behavioral criteria (i.e. eye gaze, gaze shifting, free initiations and prompted initiations of arm movements, and smile/laughter) were analyzed based on the video data of the interaction. The results are mixed (...) and suggest a high variability in reactions to the Nao robot. The results are as follows: For Child2 and Child3, the results indicate no effect of the Nao robot in any of the target variables. Child1 and Child4 showed more eye gaze and smile/laughter in the interaction with the Nao robot compared to the human partner and Child1 showed a higher frequency of motor initiations in the interaction with the Nao robot compared to the baselines, but not with respect to the human-interaction. The robot proved to be a better facilitator of shared attention only for Child1. Keywords: human-robot interaction; assistive robotics; autism. (shrink)

What does a truly democratic experience of political action look like today? In this provocative new work, Adriana Cavarero weighs in on contemporary debates about the relationship between democracy, happiness, and dissent. Drawing upon Arendt's understanding of politics as a participatory experience, but also discussing texts by Émile Zola, Elias Canetti, Boris Pasternak, and Roland Barthes, along with engaging Judith Butler, Cavarero proposes a new view of democracy, based not on violence, but rather on the spontaneous experience of a (...) plurality of bodies coming together in public. Expanding upon the themes explored in previous works, Cavarero offers a timely intervention into current thinking about the nature of democracy, suggesting that its emergence thrives on the nonviolent creativity of a widespread, participatory, and relational power that is shared horizontally rather than vertically. From digital democracy to selfies to contemporary protest movements, Cavarero argues that we need to rethink our focus on individual happiness and turn toward rediscovering the joyful emotions of birth through plural interaction. Yes, let us be happy, she urges, but let us do so publicly, politically, together. (shrink)

Barnett Newman : Adam's line -- Kant and the newborn -- Virginia Woolf and the shadow of the "I" -- Plato erectus sed -- Men and trees -- We are not monkeys : on erect posture -- Hobbes and the macroanthropos -- Elias Canetti : upright before the dead -- Artemisia : the allegory of inclination -- Leonardo and maternal inclination -- Hannah Arendt : "a child has been born unto us" -- Schemata for a postural ethics -- Coda : (...) adieu to Lévinas. (shrink)

Adriana Ayers studies the evolution of kotex advertising, focusing specifically on the way in which African American women were figured into changing advertisers’ conceptions of womanhood. The article analyzes images featured in various women’s magazines to examine how ideas surrounding menstruation were packaged and sold to women.

We introduce a deductive system Bal which models the logic of balance of opposing forces or of balance between conflicting evidence or influences. ‘‘Truth values’’ are interpreted as deviations from a state of equilibrium, so in this sense, the theorems of Bal are to be interpreted as balanced statements, for which reason there is only one distinguished truth value, namely the one that represents equilibrium. The main results are that the system Bal is algebraizable in the sense of [5] and (...) its equivalent algebraic semantics BAL is definitionally equivalent to the variety of abelian lattice ordered groups, that is, the categories of the algebras in BAL and of ℓ–groups are isomorphic (see [10], Ch.4, 4). We also prove the deduction theorem for Bal and we study different kinds of semantic consequence associated to Bal. Finally, we prove the co-NP-completeness of the tautology problem of Bal. (shrink)

In his unpublished 1979 Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind, Saul Kripke offers a knowledge argument against materialism focusing on deaf people who lack knowledge of auditory experience. Kripke's argument is a precursor of Frank Jackson's better‐known knowledge argument against materialism (1982). The paper sets out Kripke's argument, brings out its interest and philosophical importance, and explores some similarities and differences between Kripke's knowledge argument and Jackson's.

This article discusses three major dilemmas embedded in women's labor migration by focusing on undocumented Latina migrants in Israel. The first is that to break the cycle of blocked mobility in their homelands, migrant women must take jobs that they would have never taken in their countries of origin, despite uncertainty about possible economic outcomes. The second dilemma is that the search for economic betterment leads Latina migrants to risk living and working illegally in the host country, forcing them to (...) remain on the margins of society. The third dilemma relates to the role of mothers who, to secure a better future for their children, are forced to leave them behind, thus subverting the traditional definition of motherhood. The absence of an egalitarian notion and the practice of citizenship for non-Jews leave undocumented labor migrants in Israel without prospects for incorporation into the society. (shrink)

In On Nature and Language Noam Chomsky develops his thinking on the relation between language, mind and brain, integrating current research in linguistics into the burgeoning field of neuroscience. This 2002 volume begins with a lucid introduction by the editors Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi. This is followed by some of Chomsky's writings on these themes, together with a penetrating interview in which Chomsky provides the clearest and most elegant introduction to current theory available. It should make his Minimalist (...) Program accessible to all. The volume concludes with an essay on the role of intellectuals in society and government. Nature and Language is a significant landmark in the development of linguistic theory. It will be welcomed by students and researchers in theoretical linguistics, neurolinguistics, cognitive science and politics, as well as anyone interested in the development of Chomsky's thought. (shrink)

In this chapter we will try to show how the introduction of Darwinian evolutionary theory transformed metaphysics, and in particular, the philosophical understanding of the temporality of being. In the interests of brevity, we will focus on two particularly significant aspects of the impact of Darwinism on Latin America. We will consider, first, how the new evolutionary thought transformed past notions of temporality. Second, we will discuss the ways in which the ideas of regression and extinction, viewed as essential components (...) of the evolutionary process, problematized the nature of progress and civilization. We trace these developments in the work of three central figures of Latin American thought: José Martí, José Rodó, and Euclides da Cunha. All three of these men were extraordinarily versatile thinkers, and each has been the subject of voluminous secondary literature. But the first two, unlike some other influential figures—such as, famously, Domingo Sarmiento of Argentina—were hardly self-professed Darwinians. Still, we have chosen to discuss them because of this last fact, and not despite it. As for da Cunha, though he accepted the basic canons of the new evolutionary theory, he remained ambivalent about its application. All three struggled, each in his own way, to come to terms with the Darwinian legacy, and each found his thinking profoundly shaped by this struggle; they offer us three different, unique perspectives on the impact of Darwinism. The magnitude of the new evolutionism can only be understood if we consider the wide range of discussion it triggered in consequence of its profound philosophical impact. (shrink)

Tekst nastoji ponuditi drugačiju paradigmu razumijevanja identiteta genealoškim čitanjem figure guvernante u Engleskoj XIX. stoljeća. Pokazujući da je ovu figuru nemoguće razumjeti ukoliko se uklone iz vida klasne pretpostavke njenog rodnog identiteta, i specifične pozicije koju je zauzimala na tržištu rada i u proizvodnji drugih žena, tekst nastoji dovesti u pitanje kontekst patrijarhata kao kontekst koji omogućava definiranje identiteta žene. Umjesto tog okvira, tekst pokušava uvesti drugačiji okvir koji se razrađuje kao sustav privatnog i javnog.

We reconstruct “the classical transformational theory” of Chomsky, and fit it into the structuralist theory of science. We describe both the formal and the empirical features of this classical account, so that one basic hypothesis of this theory – where central notions are used – can be formulated, and in which Chomsky’s “classical” distinction between surface structure and deep structure is clarified. In the empirical claim of this theory are words, sentences and high-structured entities in an inseparable way intertwined. We (...) claim that the formal structure of a natural language is not approximately the same as that of an empirical theory in general. We clarify two special points which affect the structure of the notion of an empirical theory, namely: the delineation of intended applications and the fit between data and models. We hold that the concept of the empirical claim for a linguistic theory should be generalized in comparison with the “standard” structuralist approach. (shrink)

The main purpose of this study is the scientific practice of Edgard Roquette-Pinto at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro during the 1910’s and 1920’s in the XXth Century. The article examines the relationship between laboratory science and nation building. Driven by Physicians-Anthropologists like Edgard Roquette-Pinto among others, the investigations performed at the Anthropology Laboratory there reveal the dynamic of the borders between Laboratory and Field Sciences, and the new biological parameters adopted at that time. The investigative agenda involved (...) plants, animals and human bodies, and it was related to the current Anthropology concept aligned with the debate of Nation construction. The physiological studies amplified the scientific exchange with different institutions, emphasizing cultural exchange between Brazil and Paraguay, and the role played by Edgard Roquette-Pinto there as he inaugurated the Physiological course at Faculty of Medicine at University of Asunción. (shrink)

This short contribution is written on the occasion of the book discussion of Sophie Loidolt’s Phenomenology of Plurality: Hannah Arendt on Political Intersubjectivity at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. It presents an attempt to read the two key notions Loidolt elaborates in her book – spaces of meaning and spaces of the public and private – from a critical perspective offered by Judith Butler’s taking up of Arendt’s work. Offering Butler’s conception of social ontology through several major points (...) of contestation with Arendt, I argue against an all too simple reduction of her understanding of the political and normativity to poststructuralist ones. (shrink)

This paper analyses how the Cold War influenced the discourses on basic research and on Science and Technology Policies of some leaders of the Argentine research community. It explores two key intersections to study the Cold War: the first between politics and policies; the second between the global and the regional/national. The basic assumption is that, just as there was no one Cold War, specific regional and national traits lent specific meanings to basic research. In dialogue with the literature on (...) Latin American history of STPs, on Cold War and on the conceptual history of science, the paper identifies three discursive configurations around S&T: the first refers to the semi-peripheral scientific context; the second is associated with the ‘democracy-totalitarianism’ dichotomy, and the third is linked to the ‘development-dependence’ dichotomy. Finally, the paper also traces some connections between these discourses and the institutional models proposed by different key actors of the research community to implement STPs. (shrink)

This work shows that two problems—the reference class and the mental state of the agent—undermine the plausibility of the ‘blameworthiness tracks risk thesis’ (BTRT), which states, prima facie, an agent is more blameworthy for imposing a greater rather than smaller risk. The article first outlines core concepts. It then shows how the two problems undermine BTRT; namely, (1) no blame attribution based on risk imposition is unequivocal; (2) when the materialization of risk is subject to chance, an agent’s decision can (...) ground an equal degree of blameworthiness regardless of whether the risk is greater or lesser. (shrink)

This essay focuses on anthropomorphism as both a form of hype and fallacy. As a form of hype, anthropomorphism is shown to exaggerate AI capabilities and performance by attributing human-like traits to systems that do not possess them. As a fallacy, anthropomorphism is shown to distort moral judgments about AI, such as those concerning its moral character and status, as well as judgments of responsibility and trust. By focusing on these two dimensions of anthropomorphism in AI, the essay highlights negative (...) ethical consequences of the phenomenon in this field. (shrink)

Artykuł dotyczy zagadnienia znanego pod nazwą „problemu prostych umysłów” tak, jak klaruje się ono w zestawieniu czterech doniosłych głosów w debacie na temat możliwości przypisywania zwierzętom życia mentalnego bez przypisywania im zdolności do posługiwania się językiem. Głosy te należą do: Donalda Davidsona, Johna McDowella, Petera Carruthersa oraz Jose L. Bermúdeza. Dwaj pierwsi autorzy bronią przekonaniowo-pragnieniowego modelu myślenia, w którym decydującą rolę pełni zdolność do posługiwania się językiem. Dwaj pozostali akceptację modelu przekonaniowo-pragnieniowego łączą z argumentem przeciwko wiązaniu myśli z językiem. Analizując (...) szczegółowo argumenty obu stanowisk przychylam się do rozwiązania proponowanego w ramach podejścia sformułowanego w oparciu o ustalenia Carruthersa i Bermúdeza. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“A Child Has Been Born unto Us”Arendt on BirthAdriana CavareroTranslated by Silvia Guslandi and Cosette BruhnsIn The Human Condition, at the end of the dense chapter on action, Hannah Arendt reiterates that action, that is, the political faculty for excellence, “is ontologically rooted” in the fact of natality, “like an ever-present reminder that men, though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to (...) begin” (Arendt 1998, 246).1 To reinforce this argument, Arendt compares action to miracles, and makes an interesting and, as we will see, somewhat perplexing reference to the Bible:[The miracle] is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. Only the full experience of this capacity can bestow upon human affairs faith and hope, those two essential characteristics of human existence which Greek antiquity ignored altogether.…It is this faith in and hope for the world that found perhaps its most glorious and most succinct expression in the few words with which the Gospels announced their “glad tidings”: “A child has been born unto us.”(HC, 247)The citation is suggestive, but incorrect. In the Gospels, which do announce with true joy the birth of the child, the phrase as it is quoted here does not exist. It appears instead in Isaiah (9:6), translated into English both as “For to us a child is borne,” and, in the version of the King James Bible from which Arendt is plausibly drawing, as “For unto us a child is born.” The error, if indeed it is an error, is thus twofold (see Young-Ah Gottlieb 2003, 136ff.), since [End Page 12] both the passage referenced and the words cited are incorrect. That Arendt frequently cites from memory, and that the citations tend to be bibliographically incorrect, is known to her interpreters, but in this case the error ends up being quite significant. As is well known, the prophetic text carries a strong Messianic burden, and such a burden would trouble significantly the thesis that Arendt is here illustrating; the Gospels’ message creates instead fewer obstacles to her strategy of framing the meaning of birth within the mundane horizon that in her vocabulary takes the names of “world” or “worldliness.” Since “‘to live’ and to ‘be among men’” mean the same thing (HC, 7), the child, every newborn, that is, every human being that makes its entrance in the world, is not, according to the Arendtian vision, born to us, coming from elsewhere, but appears among us here. The scenario of birth, like that of action, whatever be the holy text that mentions or exemplarily validates them, is, for Arendt, a radically mundane scenario that does not call into question any transcendence or religious instance of salvation.Jewish, secular, and classically trained in Greek and Latin, Arendt, who had little familiarity with the Jewish language and tradition, met Christian thought primarily through Saint Augustine, to whom she dedicated her doctoral thesis (Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin, published in Berlin in 1929 and then in English in 1996 as Love and Saint Augustine), and who remained a constant point of reference throughout her work. A phrase from Augustine—initium ut esset homo creatus est—present in the thesis, appears, in fact, in Arendt’s later texts, including The Human Condition, indeed with obsessive repetitiveness in reference to the category of birth.2 In her monumental work The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, a full seven years prior to The Human Condition, Arendt already writes: “Beginning, before it becomes a historical event, is the supreme capacity of man; politically, it is identical with man’s freedom. Initium ut esset homo creatus est, ‘that a beginning be made, man was created’, said Augustine. This beginning is guaranteed by each new birth; it is indeed every man” (Arendt 1973, 479). On the philosophically anomalous theme of birth, the contributions of the Christian tradition that Arendt does appreciate are predominantly two: the “glad tidings” that herald the coming of the child, and Augustine’s comments on the narrative of Creation.Natality, Birth, and the Human Condition of... (shrink)

The precompetitive, competitive, and postcompetitive mental states of athletes are currently not sufficiently researched. Long-term exposure to stressors contributes to the formation of mental blocks and leads to various health problems. One of the factors that can explain the variability of athletes' reactions to stress is their personality. This study is the first to examine competitive anxiety, and guilt and shame proneness in the context of the reaction of football players to distress in sports. The study consists of 112 male (...) football players aged 16–24 who were divided into type D and non-type D football players according to scoring on the Denollet Scale. Football players also filled out the Sport Anxiety Scale and the Guilt and Shame Proneness Scale. The taxonomic approach was conducted to test and to examine differences in stressor intensity as a function of type D personality. A correlation, multivariate analysis of variance, and regression analysis were performed in the study. We found that type D football players were more afraid of failures in sports, felt more often autonomous excitement concentrated in the stomach and muscles, and showed more frequent concentration disruption than did non-type D football players. We also found that although type D football players were more likely to rate their behavior as negative and inappropriate, they showed a much greater effort to correct it than did non-type D football players. Negative affectivity and social inhibition of type D football players were positively correlated with competitive anxiety. In addition, we noted lower levels of somatic anxiety and lower concentration disruption for football players who used escape strategies to manage stress. The shame proneness subscale monitoring negative self-evaluation was also closely related to the concentration disruption of football players. We found that the examination of athletes by type D personality is necessary due to the fact that negative affectivity and social inhibition are significant predictors of competitive anxiety of football players, which explains their worries at 24.0%, somatic anxiety at 8.2%, and concentration disruption at 10.6%. (shrink)

The Article traces recent trends in the management and distribution of citizenship within the Israeli context of the 1990s, as they have evolved in the wake of new modes of migration that are neither Jewish nor Palestinian and that stem from liberalized market policies. The Article focuses on administrative and policy initiatives taken since September 2003 that deal with the naturalization of the children of undocumented labor migrants. The vulnerable situation of these migrants in lacking resident status and being eligible (...) for deportation, as well as the predominant Jewish ethno-national character of the Israeli state, make these initiatives and policy measures particularly surprising. However, these measures also reveal the boundaries of liberalizing reforms, as they become part of general trends in the nation-state towards deeming membership manageable without upsetting its national politics of identity. Indeed, it will be argued that, though this liberalizing legal reform is part of a larger context of demystification of national citizenship taking place in Israel following the adoption of socioeconomic liberal policies, it is also indicative of the adaptability of the nation-state as it seeks to reprioritize ethno-national definitions of citizenship in the face of new challenges. (shrink)

The paper discusses the problem of naturalistic theories of mind-body relation. It displays knotting lines of arguments, which are presented by two influential philosophers: O. Flanagan and C. McGinn. The former author claims that the mind-body problem can easy be resolved by showing that mind and body are two somehow similar concepts. The latter is strongly convinced that because of human epistemic limitations we cant in principle to formulate solution of psychophysical problem. I go on to argue that we can (...) prepare good empirical hypotheses but I see no way to answer the philosophical question: how it is possible that subjective phenomenal states like pain, tickle etc. "are made" from physical staff? (shrink)

In various philosophical explanations of perceptual experiences two ideas are usually invoked: the idea of intrinsic quality of experience (perceptual quale) and the idea of representation. I argue that the former may be eliminated and replaced by the latter. While discussing the traditional position known as "the sense-data theory" I emphasize the tension between the environment-dependent content of visual experience and its inner or narrow content. I conclude that one cannot find adequate support for the claim that perceptual qualia exist. (...) One should rather admit that perceptual experiences can be fully accounted for in terms of mental representations of apparent features of external objects. (shrink)

Em vez de considerarem o problema da distinção entre Natureza e Paisagem, posição típica das teorias de Georg Simmel e de Joachim Ritter, os debates contemporâneos incidem sobretudo na questão da naturalidade do natural, e em particular na possibilidade de restituir à paisagem a naturalidade perdida.

It appears at least intuitively appropriate to claim that we owe it to victims to punish those who have wronged them. It also seems plausible to state that we owe it to society to punish those who have violated its norms. However, do we also owe punishment to perpetrators themselves? In other words, do those who commit crimes have a moral right to be punished? This work examines the sustainability of the right to be punished from the standpoint of the (...) two main theories of rights—the will and the interest conceptions. The right to be punished is shown to be largely indefensible on both accounts: on the will theory, the right to be punished conflicts with autonomy, and it can neither be claimed nor waived by a perpetrator; on the interest theory, a perpetrator’s interest in punishment, inasmuch as it exists, is not sufficient to ground a duty on the part of the state. (shrink)

This paper presents a series of 4 single subject experiments aimed to investigate whether children with autism show more social engagement when interacting with the Nao robot, compared to a human partner in a motor imitation task. The Nao robot imitates gross arm movements of the child in real-time. Different behavioral criteria were analyzed based on the video data of the interaction. The results are mixed and suggest a high variability in reactions to the Nao robot. The results are as (...) follows: For Child2 and Child3, the results indicate no effect of the Nao robot in any of the target variables. Child1 and Child4 showed more eye gaze and smile/laughter in the interaction with the Nao robot compared to the human partner and Child1 showed a higher frequency of motor initiations in the interaction with the Nao robot compared to the baselines, but not with respect to the human-interaction. The robot proved to be a better facilitator of shared attention only for Child1. Keywords: human-robot interaction; assistive robotics; autism. (shrink)

This pathbreaking work pursues two interwoven themes. Firstly, it engages in a deconstruction of Ancient philosopher's texts--mainly from Plato, but also from Homer and Parmenides--in order to free four Greek female figures from the patriarchal discourse which for centuries had imprisoned them in a particular role. Secondly, it attempts to construct a symbolic female order, reinterpreting these figures from a new perspective. Building on the theory of sexual difference, Cavarero shows that death is the central category on which the whole (...) edifice of traditional philosophy is based. By contrast, the category of birth provides the thread with which new concepts of feminist criticism can be woven together to establish a fresh way of thinking. Cavarero develops a philosophical narrative which, by re-interpreting each of the four figures of ancient thought, uncovers several images of the female desire for self-representation. Plato himself had not forseen that one day female subjectivity would assert its autonomy, plundering and throwing into confusion the patriarchal text in order to tell another story. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to offer a reading of Judith Butler’s understanding of the precarious, the notion which gives rise to her particular understanding of precarity. The first part of the article discusses the transition from the theory of performativity to the theory of precarity and claims that the body provides the link between a performative act and a precarious life. The second part scrutinizes the idea of the precarious as it appears in conjunction with life. Precariousness and (...) precarity are related to dispossessability and dispossession, and to a politically induced inequality. The article concludes with a claim that the notion of the precarious offers itself as a possible point of departure for an entirely different conceptualization of equality, and as a strong basis for coalitional action or collective struggle. The specific positioning of the body and the political desire for radical equality in Butler’s thought makes theories of performativity and precarity interrelated. (shrink)