In this paper, we show that it is not a conceptual truth about laws of nature that they are immutable (though we are happy to leave it as an open empirical question whether they do actually change once in a while). In order to do so, we survey three popular accounts of lawhood—(Armstrong-style) necessitarianism, (Bird-style) dispositionalism and (Lewis-style) ‘best system analysis’—and expose the extent, as well as the philosophical cost, of the amendments that should be enforced in order to leave (...) room for the possibility of changing laws. (shrink)

This is the first interdisciplinary exploration of the philosophical foundations of the Web, a new area of inquiry that has important implications across a range of domains. -/- Contains twelve essays that bridge the fields of philosophy, cognitive science, and phenomenology Tackles questions such as the impact of Google on intelligence and epistemology, the philosophical status of digital objects, ethics on the Web, semantic and ontological changes caused by the Web, and the potential of the Web to serve as a (...) genuine cognitive extension Brings together insightful new scholarship from well-known analytic and continental philosophers, such as Andy Clark and Bernard Stiegler, as well as rising scholars in "digital native" philosophy and engineering Includes an interview with Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web. (shrink)

Façamos uma lista dos dez filósofos que mais gostamos. Façamos o mesmo com os sociólogos, antropólogos ou da disciplina que queiramos. Aposto que o resultado desta lista será a notável evidência do colonialismo sedimentado em nossa cultura. Salvo exceções, nenhum destes nomes será um nome de origem latino-americana. Todos, se não a grande a maioria, serão personagens europeus que povoam os programas escolares e universitários e que tem conseguido sufocar o interesse e alimentado o desprezo pela produção latino-americana. Voltar a (...) olhar para as nossas próprias fontes foi a tarefa que, com ímpeto militante, definiu a trajetória de Enrique Dussel. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Recently, for spinless non-relativistic particles, Norsen and Norsen et al. show that in the de Broglie–Bohm interpretation it is possible to replace the wave function in the configuration space by single-particle wave functions in physical space. In this paper, we show that this replacment of the wave function in the configuration space by single-particle functions in the 3D-space is also possible for particles with spin, in particular for the particles of the EPR-B experiment, the Bohm version of the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen experiment.

Nombre de travaux ont fait ressortir les divergences entre Heidegger et Deleuze. Comment, à présent, faire converger leurs philosophies? Cette question nous occupe dans ce qui suit. Il s’agit d’abord de montrer que les pensées heideggérienne et deleuzienne se recoupent par leur volonté de mettre à bas les acceptions classiques du possible. Nous faisons voir, dans un second temps, que Heidegger et Deleuze se rejoignent aussi par leurs manières respectives de repenser le problème du possible. En troisième lieu, plongeant dans (...) les enjeux pratiques, nous nous demandons si le projet deleuzien n’est pas susceptible de venir compléter la philosophie heideggérienne. Notre objectif ne sera donc pas d’effacer de manière obtuse la distance entre Heidegger et Deleuze; il consistera, bien plutôt, à atténuer l’important écart qu’on voit d’ordinaire entre eux et à faire signe vers une certaine complémentarité, encore inaperçue jusqu’ici. (shrink)

Il faut attendre la fin du deuxième siècle pour voir Irénée faire le lien entre la fonction de « diacre » et le récit d’Actes 6 rapportant la création du groupe de Sept hellénistes. Pour le comprendre, on étudie la liaison entre le nombre Sept, la notion de diakonia, la fonction de glorification et surtout l’idée d’imitation par l’univers visible de l’univers invisible. Ces questions étaient au centre du débat entre Marc le Mage et Irénée. Elles se retrouvent dans les (...) spéculations de Clément d’Alexandrie autour du chandelier à 7 branches et des 7 « protoctistes » qui assurent la diaconie au ciel. Les structures ecclésiales sont ainsi conçues comme l’image des réalités célestes préexistantes. Le récit du martyre d’Étienne en Ac 6 contenait déjà quelques jalons qui ont permis à Irénée d’établir ce lien : si Étienne peut être dit « premier diacre » par Irénée, c’est parce que sa confession parfaite lui donne de voir s’ouvrir les cieux en contemplant la Gloire de Dieu. (shrink)

When Emanuel Ringelblum was born on November 21, 1900, in Buczacz, the small, multilingual and multi-ethnic Galician town was to be found on the far northeastern part of the Austrian Empire. As a mail stamp on a Correspondenz-Karte or Karta korrespondencyja of 1890 shows, the place was officially spelled in accordance with its Polish orthography. However, it was called Butschtasch in German, Bichuch in Yiddish, and still differently in Ukranian. After World War I, it was for a short while part (...) of Ukrania, and subsequently became Polish, then Soviet, and Ukranian again in the aftermath of the end of the Soviet Union. Ringelblum's cousin, Shmuel Josef Agnon, was also born in Buczacz. But their lives were to diverge in most respects. Agnon is remembered as one of the leading authors of modern Hebrew belles-lettres who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1966. And one remembers Ringelblum as the one who, with utmost and relentless courage, organized the underground archive Oyneg Shabes in the Warsaw ghetto. Samuel D. Kassow, the expert on the history of Oyneg Shabes and the author of a brilliant monograph on this subject, asserts that “more than anyone else it was Emanuel Ringelblum who encouraged individuals to write, who organized and conceptualized the archive, and who transformed it into a powerful center of civil resistance”. (shrink)

Intuition, duration, and critique of the possible are the great concepts and theses that define the heart of Bergsonian thought. Despite their keenness to uncover the implications of Bergson’s theses in various fields (such as epistemology, neuroscience, metaphysics, and physics), many commentators fail to address what is most pressing about them : the arguments which support them and the facts which corroborate them. In this paper, we reverse this tendency and try to establish, in turn, whether the intuitive method is (...) sound, whether the characteristics of duration are accurate, and finally, whether the critique of the possible might not itself deserve a critique. However, our general aim is not to refute the Bergsonian doctrine but to focus on those dimensions of it that remain to be placed on firmer ground. (shrink)

Résumé Face à la mésentente disqualifiante autour de l’autochtonie des peuples, il faut reconsidérer fondamentalement les raisons de la revendication autochtone. En effet, être autochtone, ce n’est pas tant appartenir à un lieu qu’offrir la pensée d’une expérimentation de manières d’agir autrement dans le monde en partant des positions hétéroclites de l’écart et de la séparation. Ces positions, initialement comprises dans l’extériorité cosmologique des Peuples Autochtones, leur permettent ainsi de résister, en se revendiquant d’eux-mêmes, aux hégémonies des modes d’administration des (...) populations. (shrink)

O presente trabalho reflete sobre a significativa e desigual morte de jovens negros no País. Para tanto, a produção traz uma discussão sobre o teórico martinicano Frantz Fanon que, com suas ideias sobre racismo e colonialismo, nos ajuda a reconhecer o racismo brasileiro e a condição em que vivem os jovens negros do Brasil. Apesar de Fanon afirmar que suas considerações se referem apenas ao momento histórico em que escreve e aos estudos de colonialismo, acreditamos ser fácil fazer um paralelo (...) entre sua obra e o momento histórico brasileiro quanto à morte de jovens negros. Analisamos as três formas de violência trazidas pelo teórico: psicológica, estrutural, e física, dentro das quais vivem e morrem tais jovens. Buscamos, ainda, refletir sobre a construção das identidades e juventudes negras para compreender, onde e de que forma, estão inseridas na sociedade brasileira. Para tanto, acreditamos ser necessário analisar de que modo se dá o racismo brasileiro e conhecer o que denominamos de falso mito da igualdade racial, contra o qual lutamos constantemente, em busca de reconhecimento do problema, para que possamos buscar soluções. O trabalho aborda a Lei n. 10.639/2003 que versa sobre a obrigatoriedade de se trabalhar na escola a cultura africana e afro-brasileira. Consideramos a lei uma importante política pública na promoção de igualdade racial, através da valorização da cultura vinda do continente africano. Acreditamos que a implementação efetiva dessa lei apoia a construção de identidades negro-positivas tanto para negros quanto para não negros e que essa valorização das identidades serve como importante ferramenta na luta contra a significativa morte de jovens negros no País. (shrink)

Both, bioconservatives and bioliberals, should seek a discussion about ideas of human perfection, making explicit their underlying assumptions about what makes for a good human life. This is relevant, because these basic, and often implicit ideas, inform and influence judgements and choices about human enhancement interventions. Both neglect, and polemical but inconsistent use of the complex ideas of perfection are leading to confusion within the ethical debate about human enhancement interventions, that can be avoided by tackling the notion of perfection (...) directly. In the recent debates, bioconservatives have prominently argued against the ‘pursuit of perfection’ by biotechnological means. In the first part of this paper, we show that—paradoxically—bioconservatives themselves explicitly embrace specific conceptions of human perfection and perfectionist assumptions about the good human life in order to argue against the use of enhancement technologies. Yet, we argue that the bioconservative position contains an untenable ambiguity between criticising and endorsing ideas of human perfection. Hence, they stand in need of clarifying their stance on human perfection. In the second part of the paper, we ask whether bioliberals in fact (implicitly) advocate a particular conception of perfection, or whether they are right in holding that they do not, and that discussing perfection is obsolete anyway. We show that bioliberals also rely on a specific idea of human perfection, based on the idea of autonomy. Hence, their denial of the relevance of perfection in the debate is unconvincing and has to be revised. (shrink)

Whatever ethical stance one takes in the debate regarding the ethics of human enhancement, one or more reference points are required to assess its morality. Some have suggested looking at the bioethical notions of safety, justice, and/or autonomy to find such reference points. Others, arguing that those notions are limited with respect to assessing the morality of human enhancement, have turned to human nature, human authenticity, or human dignity as reference points, thereby introducing some perfectionist assumptions into the debate. In (...) this article, we ask which perfectionist assumptions should be used in this debate. After a critique of views that are problematic, we take a positive approach, suggesting some perfectionist elements that can lend guidance to the practice of human enhancement, based on the work of Martha Nussbaum's Capability Approach. We suggest that the central capabilities can be used to define the human aspect of human enhancement and thereby allow a moral evaluation of enhancement interventions. These central capabilities can be maximized harmoniously to postulate what an ideal human would look like. Ultimately, the aim of this article is twofold. First, it seeks to make explicit the perfectionist assumptions found in the debate and eliminate those that are problematic. Second, the paper clarifies an element that is often neglected in the debate about human enhancement, the view of the ideal human towards which human enhancement should strive. Here, we suggest that some central capabilities that are essential for an ideal human being can be maximized harmoniously and can therefore serve as possible reference points to guide human enhancement. (shrink)

Nas últimas décadas, discussões sobre interculturalidade efetivaram-se no cenário intelectual latino-americano, relacionando os temas mais diversos a partir de diferentes interlocutores e pensadores. Muitos desses fizeram emergir a realidade latino-americana denunciando o parasitismo colonial (Manoel Bonfim), anunciando que a Nuestra America pode libertar-se da dominação Ibérica (José Marti) quando os princípios universais como a justiça, o reconhecimento do outro e a comunicação forem porta-vozes de mudanças (Raul Fornet-Betancourt; Ricardo Salas). A educação possui papel fundamental nesse processo (Catherine Walsh; Fidel Tubino). (...) Por isso, neste artigo fruto de aulas, leituras, pesquisas e dedicação ao curso oferecido pela PUC Minas, na disciplina: Educação, Interculturalidade e Espiritualidade, temos como objetivo identificar os principais pressupostos para se pensar e desenvolver uma educação escolar, de víeis Intercultural Latino-Americana, a partir de uma metodologia qualitativa, documental e pesquisa bibliográfica desenvolvida com base em material publicado como livros, artigos periódicos e entrevistas. De que maneira este diálogo e pressupostos contribuem para a educação escolar? Nestes tempos, em que se discute novos paradigmas para educação escolar, acredita-se que a interculturalidade crítica coopera para desvelar os projetos hegemônicos. (shrink)

Is it necessary to have an ideal of perfection in mind to identify and evaluate true biotechnological human “enhancements”, or can one do without? To answer this question we suggest employing the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory, found in the debate in political philosophy about theories of justice: the distinctive views about whether one needs an idea of a perfectly just society or not when it comes to assessing the current situation and recommending steps to increase justice. In this (...) paper we argue that evaluating human enhancements from a non-ideal perspective has some serious shortcomings, which can be avoided when endorsing an ideal approach. Our argument starts from a definition of human enhancement as improvement, which can be understood in two ways. The first approach is backward-looking and assesses improvements with regard to a status quo ante. The second, a forward-looking approach, evaluates improvements with regard to their proximity to a goal or according to an ideal. After outlining the limitations of an exclusively backward-looking view, we answer possible objections against a forward-looking view. Ultimately, we argue that the human enhancement debate would lack some important moral insights if a forward-looking view of improvement is not taken into consideration. (shrink)

The ethics of human enhancement has been a hotly debated topic in the last 15 years. In this debate, some advocate examining science fiction stories to elucidate the ethical issues regarding the current phenomenon of human enhancement. Stories from science fiction seem well suited to analyze biomedical advances, providing some possible case studies. Of particular interest is the work of screenwriter Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, S1m0ne, In Time, and Good Kill), which often focuses on ethical questions raised by the use of (...) new technologies. Examining the movie In Time (2011), the aim of this paper is to show how science fiction can contribute to the ethical debate of human enhancement. In Time provides an interesting case study to explore what could be some of the consequences of radical life-extension technologies. In this paper, we will show how arguments regarding radical life-extension portrayed in this particular movie differ from what is found in the scientific literature. We will see how In Time gives flesh to arguments defending or rejecting radical life-extension. It articulates feelings of unease, alienation and boredom associated with this possibility. Finally, this article will conclude that science fiction movies in general, and In Time in particular, are a valuable resource for a broad and comprehensive debate about our coming future. (shrink)

Cette préface présente le contexte politique et culturel du fameux discours de Helmholtz prononcé à Heidelberg le 22 novembre 1862, où il défend une certaine idée de l’université et des relations entre les différentes disciplines qu’elle enseigne. L’idée de pluridisciplinarité, tant invoquée aujourd’hui, est au cœur de son propos, ainsi que celle d’une conciliation possible entre philosophie et sciences de la nature, mais en partant du point de vue de ces dernières.

This book critically examines what role, if any, should the notion of perfection play in the debate regarding the ethics of human enhancement. It defends that the concept of -human perfection- needs to be central when morally assessing human enhancements.".

This collection of six essays centers on Professor Koyre;'s great theme: the relative importance of metaphysics and observation, with controlled experiment a kind of marriage between the two. Professor Koyre;'s thesis might be summed up as a claim that when one is seeking to explain the scientific revolution, attention must be concentrated on the philosophical outlook of the scientist and away from speculative theories. At the time of his death, Alexandre Koyre; was a professor at the Ecole Pratique des (...) Hautes Études (Sorbonne) and a memeber of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. (shrink)

Using emotional film clips is one of the most popular and effective methods of emotion elicitation. The main goal of the present study was to develop and test the effectiveness of a new and comprehensive set of emotional film excerpts. Fifty film experts were asked to remember specific film scenes that elicited fear, anger, sadness, disgust, amusement, tenderness, as well as emotionally neutral scenes. For each emotion, the 10 most frequently mentioned scenes were selected and cut into film clips. Next, (...) 364 participants viewed the film clips in individual laboratory sessions and rated each film on multiple dimensions. Results showed that the film clips were effective with regard to several criteria such as emotional discreteness, arousal, positive and negative affect. Finally, ranking scores were computed for 24 classification criteria: Subjective arousal, positive and negative affect (derived from the PANAS; Watson & Tellegen, 1988), a positive and a negative affect scores derived from the Differential Emotions Scale (DES; Izard et al., 1974), six emotional discreteness scores (for anger, disgust, sadness, fear, amusement and tenderness), and 15 “mixed feelings” scores assessing the effectiveness of each film excerpt to produce blends of specific emotions. In addition, a number of emotionally neutral film clips were also validated. The database and editing instructions to construct the film clips have been made freely available in a website. (shrink)

In a previous article on cosmological arguments, I have put forward a few examples of complete infinite and circular explanations, and argued that complete non-wellfounded explanations such as these might explain the present state of the world better than their well-founded theistic counterparts (Billon, 2021). Although my aim was broader, the examples I gave there implied merely causal explanations. In this article, I would like to do three things: • Specify some general informative conditions for complete and incomplete non-wellfounded causal (...) explanations that can be used to assess candidate explanations and to generate new examples of complete non-wellfounded explanations. • Show that these conditions, which concern chains of causal explanations, easily generalize to chains of metaphysical, grounding explanations and even to chains involving other “determination relations” such as supervenience. • Apply these general conditions to the recent debates against the existence of nonwellfounded chains of grounds and show, with a couple of precise examples, that the latter can be complete, and that just like in the case of causal explanations, non-wellfoundedness can in fact be an aset rather than a liability. (shrink)

Patients suffering from the Cotard syndrome can deny being alive, having guts, thinking or even existing. They can also complain that the world or time have ceased to exist. In this article, I argue that even though the leading neurocognitive accounts have difficulties meeting that task, we should, and we can, make sense of these bizarre delusions. To that effect, I draw on the close connection between the Cotard syndrome and a more common condition known as depersonalisation. Even though they (...) are not delusional, depersonalised patients seem to have experiences that are quite similar to those of Cotard patients. I argue that these experiences are essentially characterised by a lack of subjective character and of two other structural features of experience, which I call ‘the present character’ and ‘the actual character’. Cotard's nihilistic delusions simply consist in taking these anomalous experiences at face value. (shrink)

Speech in the publication of A.P. Ogurtsov talks about the contemporary understanding of culture by M. Heidegger, which testifies to the spiritual fall of the world and the replacement of the concept of “spirit” with the concept of “culture” in a specific meaning — as a value, which Heidegger considers “the highest sacrilege”, because God appears among the values. This understanding of culture is associated with “the secularization of thought and the oblivion of being; value thinking is rooted in the (...) will to power”. It is significant that in our time it is not uncommon to understand culture as a value. (shrink)