Vivemos num mundo marcado por divisões de ordem religiosa, política, geográfica, cultural, de gênero, social e de outras naturezas inúmeras. A vida humana se dá nesse universo dividido. O ecumenismo consiste numa disposição de aproximação e caminhada conjunta entre diferentes Igrejas a fim de que diferenças não tenham que ser sinônimo de divisão, mas de pluralidade e fonte de riqueza para quem se dispõe a construir a Unidade. Palavras-chave: Ecumenismo; Cristianismo; Diálogo; Unidade; Pluralidade; Igrejas. ABSTRACT We live in a world (...) marked by divisions of a religious, political, geographical, cultural, gender and social order, to mention a few. Human life takes place in this divided universe. Ecumenism consists of a willingness of various Faiths to approach each other and march together so that differences do not mean division, but plurality and a source of richness to those who wish to construct Unity. Key words: Ecumenism; Christianity; Dialogue; Unity; Plurality; Churches. (shrink)

The essay attempts to delineate how Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception can be applied to theories of sign processes, and how it reworks the framework of the phenomenalist conception of communication. His later philosophy involved a reformulation of subjectivity and a resolution of the subject/object dualism. My claim is that this non-reductionist theory of perception reveals a different view of nature as we experience it in an expressive and meaningful interaction. The perspective that another living being has and communicates entails (...) a form of depth, the invisible dimension of the visible or audible. These two aspects of perception and dialogue are intertwined in a dialectic of presence and absence, so that sense arises in the perceptual field rather than in subjectivity. This, I argue, is the most fundamental result of his theory. The origination of meaning in the workings of the chiasm of visible and invisible in perception opens up an objective sense of intersubjective nature. The essay also deals with the role of the phenomenological reduction; a suspension of beliefs and existence claims in experience. The reduction enables us to take a step back and look more closely at our understanding of nature in light of the historical and cultural influence on our thinking. (shrink)

In this paper I present a problem for the Marxist idea of false consciousness, namely how it is vulnerable to accusations of dogmatism. I will argue that the concept must be further developed if it is to provide a plausible tool for systematic social analysis. In the second half of the paper I will show how this could be done if the account of false consciousness incorporates Shaun Gallagher’s theory of the socially extended mind. This is a theory that explores (...) how the mind expands towards external objects and systems. I will conclude that it helps to reinstate false consciousness as a reliable tool for the analysis of cognitive dynamics within power structures. (shrink)

The Game of Thrones Tapestry is a hand-woven and hand-embroidered tapestry which depicts key moments from the HBO TV series Game of Thrones in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry. By analysing particular aspects of its imagery and materiality, the article states that the Game of Thrones Tapestry confirms the way that the Middle Ages are also depicted in the TV series as a time of brutality, barbarism and permeable grotesque bodies, or in short, as the contrast to Modernity. With (...) reference to Art historian Hans Belting’s image theory, it is suggested that one way in which the tapestry confirms this idea of the Middle Ages is through the properties of its medium because as a symbolic body it resembles the Grotesque Body by being permeable and transformable. Because of the tapestry’s ability to mediate the conception of the Middle Ages that characterises the fictional world of Game of Thrones in general, the article proposes that the tapestry can be regarded as a very suitable medium for the images of Game of Thrones which may also explain why this tapestry was created. (shrink)

According to the classical quantificational analysis of modals, an agent has the ability to perform an act iff relevant facts about the agent and her environment are compatible with her performing the act. The analysis faces a number of problems, many of which can be traced to the fact that it takes even accidental performance of an act as proof of the relevant ability. I argue that ability statements are systematically ambiguous: on one reading, accidental performance really is enough; on (...) another, more is required. The stronger notion of ability plays a central role in normative contexts. Both readings, I argue, can be captured within the classical quantificational framework, provided we allow conversational context to impose restrictions not just on the “accessible worlds”, but also on what counts as a performance of the relevant act among these worlds. (shrink)

BackgroundFollowing several landmark rulings and increasing public support for physician-assisted death, in 2016, Canada became one of a handful of countries legalising medical assistance in dying (MAiD) with Bill C-14. However, the revised Bill C-7 proposes the specific exclusion of MAiD where a mental disorder is the sole underlying medical condition (MAiD MD-SUMC).AimThis review explores how some persons with serious and persistent mental illness (SPMI) could meet sensible and just criteria for MAiD under the Canadian legislative framework.MethodsWe review the proposed (...) Bill C-7 criteria (capacity, voluntariness, irremediability and suffering) as well as the nuances involved in separating a well-reasoned request for assisted suicide from what might be solely a manifestation of a SPMI.FindingsIn this paper, we argue against the absolute exclusion of patients with SPMIs from accessing MAiD. Instead, we propose that in some circumstances, MAiD MD-SUMC may be justifiable while remaining the last resort. Conducting MAiD eligibility assessments removes the need to introduce diagnosis-specific language into MAiD legislation. Competent psychiatric patients who request MAiD should not be treated any differently from other eligible candidates. Many individuals with psychiatric disorders will be incapable of consenting to MAiD. The only ethical option is to assess eligibility for MAiD on an individual basis and include as legitimate candidates those who suffer solely from psychiatric illness who have the decisional capacity to consent to MAiD. (shrink)

Consists of a description of a multitude of imagery techniques that have been loosely grouped into four major categories: hypno-behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic/humanistic and humanistic/transpersonal.

Data-intensive science comes with increased risks concerning quality and reliability of data, and while trust in science has traditionally been framed as a matter of scientists being expected to adhere to certain technical and moral norms for behaviour, emerging discourses of open science present openness and transparency as substitutes for established trust mechanisms. By ensuring access to all available information, quality becomes a matter of informed judgement by the users, and trust no longer seems necessary. This strategy does not, however, (...) take into consideration the networks of professionals already enabling data-intensive science by providing high-quality data. In the life sciences, biological data- and knowledge bases managed by expert biocurators have become crucial for data-intensive research. In this paper, I will use the case of biocurators to argue that openness and transparency will not diminish the need for trust in data-intensive science. On the contrary, data-intensive science requires a reconfiguration of existing trust mechanisms in order to include those who take care of and manage scientific data after its production. (shrink)

Roberto Schwarz’s 1966 reading reveals the social content of a famously elusive text by Franz Kafka, and hints at its hidden affinities with both the historical moment of Schwarz’s reading and with our own present.

Intelligence on mass media audiences was founded on representative statistical samples, analysed by statisticians at the market departments of media corporations. The techniques for aggregating user data in the age of pervasive and ubiquitous personal media build on large aggregates of information analysed by algorithms that transform data into commodities. While the former technologies were built on socio-economic variables such as age, gender, ethnicity, education, media preferences, Big Data technologies register consumer choice, geographical position, web movement, and behavioural information in (...) technologically complex ways that for most lay people are too abstract to appreciate the full consequences of. The data mined for pattern recognition privileges relational rather than demographic qualities. We argue that the agency of interpretation at the bottom of market decisions within media companies nevertheless introduces a ‘heuristics of the algorithm’, where the data inevitably becomes translated into social categories. In the paper we argue that although the promise of algorithmically generated data is often implemented in automated systems where human agency gets increasingly distanced from the data collected, one can observe a felt need among media users and among industry actors to ‘translate back’ the algorithmically produced relational statistics into ‘traditional’ social parameters. The tenacious social structures within the advertising industries work against the techno-economically driven tendencies within the Big Data economy. (shrink)

Rational agents are supposed to maximize expected utility. But what are the options from which they choose? I outline some constraints on an adequate representation of an agent’s options. The options should, for example, contain no information of which the agent is unsure. But they should be sufficiently rich to distinguish all available acts from one another. These demands often come into conflict, so that there seems to be no adequate representation of the options at all. After reviewing existing proposals (...) for how to construe decision-theoretic options and finding them all wanting, I suggest that our model of rational agents should include a special domain of ‘virtual’ option propositions to serve as formal objects of deliberation and choice. (shrink)

This paper presents three experimental studies investigating the processing of presupposed content. The first two experiments employ the German additive particle auch ‘too’, and the third uses English also. In experiment 1, participants were given a questionnaire containing biclausal, ambiguous sentences containing auch. The presupposition introduced by auch was only satisfied on one of the two readings, which corresponded to a syntactically dispreferred parse of the sentence. The prospect of having the auch presupposition satisfied made participants choose this syntactically dispreferred (...) reading more frequently than in a control condition. Experiment 2 used the self-paced reading paradigm and compared the reading times on clauses containing auch, which differed in whether the presupposition of auch was satisfied or not. Participants read the clause more slowly when the presupposition was not satisfied. Experiment 3 followed up a number of issues that arose from experiment 2 and confirmed the results found there. These studies show that presuppositions play an important role in online sentence comprehension and affect the choice of syntactic analysis. Some theoretical implications of these findings for the semantic analysis of auch / also and dynamic accounts of presuppositions as well as for theories of semantic processing are discussed. (shrink)

Diese Festgabe zum 60. Geburtstag Seiner Exzellenz Bischof Dr. Alois Schwarz ist Zeichen dankbarer Ruckschau, wachsamen Innehaltens in der Gegenwart und fundierte Reflexion uber die brennenden Erfordernisse der Zukunft. Die Zusammenstellung der Beitrage spiegelt die Themen der unter anderem ausgehend vom Bildungshaus Stift St. Georgen am Langsee in den letzten zehn Jahren gesetzten Initiativen wider. Im Zentrum steht die Auseinandersetzung mit den Rahmenbedingungen fur ethisches Wirtschaften, eine wertorientierte Unternehmensfuhrung und eine der Realwirtschaft dienende Finanzwirtschaft. Die von software-systems.at Finanzdatenservice und (...) SEFO initiierten Congressreihen Finance & Ethics und Finance & Science wurden vom Jubilar von Beginn an mitgetragen. Der Auftrag fur die Zukunft liegt in der Entwicklung adaquater Bildungsmoglichkeiten. Mit dem vorliegenden Band beginnt eine neue Forschungsreihe, die 2010 mit der Buchreihe Finance & Ethics begonnen wurde.". (shrink)

For more than sixty years, surgeons have used bioethical strategies to promote patient self‐determination, many of these now collectively described as “informed consent.” Yet the core framework—understanding, risks, benefits, and alternatives—fails to support patients in deliberation about treatment. We find that surgeons translate this framework into an overly complicated technical explanation of disease and treatment and an overly simplified narrative that surgery will “fix” the problem. They omit critical information about the goals and downsides of surgery and present untenable options (...) as a matter of patient choice. We propose a novel framework called “better conversations.” Herein, surgeons provide context about clinical norms, establish the goals of surgery, and comprehensively delineate the downsides of surgery to generate a deliberative space for patients to consider whether surgery is right for them. This paradigm shift meets the standards for informed consent, supports deliberation, and allows patients to anticipate and prepare for the experience of treatment. (shrink)

Some cognitive processes appear to have “phenomenal” properties that are directly revealed to the subject and not determined by physical properties. I suggest that the source of this appearance is the method by which our brain processes sensory information. The appearance is an illusion. Nonetheless, we are not mistaken when we judge that people sometimes fee lpain.

Our senses provide us with information about the world, but what exactly do they tell us? I argue that in order to optimally respond to sensory stimulations, an agent’s doxastic space may have an extra, “imaginary” dimension of possibility; perceptual experiences confer certainty on propositions in this dimension. To some extent, the resulting picture vindicates the old-fashioned empiricist idea that all empirical knowledge is based on a solid foundation of sense-datum propositions, but it avoids most of the problems traditionally associated (...) with that idea. The proposal might also explain why experiences appear to have a non-physical phenomenal character, even if the world is entirely physical. (shrink)

There is a growing recognition that victims of injustice may have privileged access to knowledge about the injustices they experience, and that injustices are perpetuated through silencing victims by taking them to be less credible, and through denying them the platform and capacity to speak. However, these are not ideas that political philosophers tend to engage with in a sustained manner, to the extent that they alter methodological approaches to be systematically attentive to victim testimony. In this article, I provide (...) two arguments in favour of political philosophers attending to victim testimony, one moral, one epistemic, and demonstrate that the moral case has little purchase, but that the epistemic case is more successful. Then, I present the strongest case against including victim testimony in political philosophy, and I argue that it does not hold up to scrutiny. In so doing, I demonstrate how methodological practices in political philosophy could be improved through drawing on feminist social epistemology; attending to victim testimony can enrich political philosophy in epistemically acceptable ways, and it also corrects for a range of potential biases. (shrink)

When an agent undergoes fission, how should the beliefs of the fission results relate to the pre-fission beliefs? This question is important for the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics, but it is of independent philosophical interest. Among other things, fission scenarios demonstrate that ‘self-locating’ information can affect the probability of uncentred propositions even if an agent has no essentially self-locating uncertainty. I present a general update rule for centred beliefs that gives sensible verdicts in cases of fission, without relying on (...) controversial metaphysical or linguistic assumptions. The rule is supported by the same considerations that support standard conditioning in the traditional framework of uncentred propositions. (shrink)

In recent years, there have been an increasing number of attempts by analytic philosophers to engage with key insights of Critical Theory. While this has had some success within feminist philosophy, and in epistemology, with the emergence of political epistemology as a significant and productive subfield, analytic political philosophers have generally not explored what lessons can be learnt from attempting to bridge the disciplinary divide. In this chapter, I provide what I take to be the clearest explanation for this, namely (...) the dominance of Rawlsianism within analytic political philosophy. Moreover, I argue that in its refusal to engage with core tenets of Critical Theory, Rawlsian political philosophy can be exploited as the mouthpiece of dominant ideologies. However, this is not a charge against analytic political philosophy in general, insofar as analytic political philosophers are willing to engage with Critical Theory, at the cost of dismissing Rawlsianism. -/- . (shrink)

EMBARGOED - expected end date 20.05.2024.

Systematic killing has long been associated with some of the darkest episodes in human history. Increasingly, however, it is framed as a desirable outcome in war, particularly in the context of military AI and lethal autonomy. Autonomous weapons systems, defenders argue, will surpass humans not only militarily but also morally, enabling a more precise and dispassionate mode of violence, free of the emotion and uncertainty that too often weaken compliance with the rules and standards of war. We contest this framing. (...) Drawing on the history of systematic killing, we argue that lethal autonomous weapons systems reproduce, and in some cases intensify, the moral challenges of the past. Autonomous violence incentivizes a moral devaluation of those targeted and erodes the moral agency of those who kill. Both outcomes imperil essential restraints on the use of military force. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence as a buzzword and a technological development is presently cast as the ultimate ‘game changer’ for economy and society; a technology of which we cannot be the master, but which nonetheless will have a pervasive influence on human life. The fast pace with which the multi-billion dollar AI industry advances toward the creation of human-level intelligence is accompanied by an increasingly exaggerated chorus of the ‘incredible miracle’, or the ‘incredible horror’, intelligent machines will constitute for humanity, as the (...) human is gradually replaced by a technologically superior proxy, destined to be configured as a functional component at best, a relic at worst. More than half a century ago, Günther Anders sketched out this path toward technological obsolescence, and his work on ‘Promethean shame’ and ‘Promethean discrepancy’ provides an invaluable means with which to recognise and understand the relationship of the modern human to his/her technological products. In this article, I draw on Anders’s writings to unpack and unsettle contemporary narratives of our relation to AI, with a view toward refocusing attention on the responsibilities we bear in producing such immersive technologies. With Anders, I suggest that we must exercise and develop moral imagination so that the human capacity for moral responsibility does not atrophy in our technologically mediated future. (shrink)

Here is a prima facie plausible view: since the metaethical error theory says that all positive moral claims are false, it makes no sense for error theorists to engage in normative ethics. After all, normative ethics tries to identify what is right or wrong (and why), but the error theory implies that nothing is ever right or wrong. One way for error theorists to push back is to argue for “concept preservationism,” that is, the view that even though our ordinary (...) moral discourse is deeply flawed, we should nevertheless continue to engage in moral thought and talk. However, in this article, I pursue a different strategy. I argue that even if we completely abandon moral discourse, thus endorsing “concept abolitionism,” the discipline of normative ethics survives. While traditional normative ethics uses as its “starting points” moral claims and beliefs, instead, concept abolitionists can make use of alternative utterances and attitudes that share salient characteristics with moral claims and beliefs, allowing for a kind of theorizing that is practically oriented, impartial, involves the traditional subject matters and methods of normative ethics, and allows engagement with the arguments of traditional moral philosophers. (shrink)

The nature of well-being is one of the most enduring and elusive subjects of human inquiry. Well-Being draws upon the latest scientific research to transform our understanding of this ancient question. With contributions from leading authorities in psychology, social psychology, and neuroscience, this volume presents the definitive account of current scientific efforts to understand human pleasure and pain, contentment and despair. The distinguished contributors to this volume combine a rigorous analysis of human sensations, emotions, and moods with a broad assessment (...) of the many factors, from heredity to nationality, that bear on our well-being. Using the tools of experimental science, the contributors confront the puzzles of human likes and dislikes. Why do we grow accustomed and desensitized to changes in our lives, both good and bad? Does our happiness reflect the circumstances of our lives or is it determined by our temperament and personality? Why do humans acquire tastes for sensations that are initially painful or unpleasant? By examining the roots of our everyday likes and dislikes, the book also sheds light on some of the more extreme examples of attraction and aversion, such as addiction and depression. Among its wide ranging inquiries, Well-Being examines systematic differences in moods and behaviors between genders, explaining why women suffer higher rates of depression and anxiety than men, but are also more inclined to express positive emotions. The book also makes international comparisons, finding that some countries' populations report higher levels of happiness than others. The contributors deploy an array of methods, from the surveys and questionnaires of social science to psychological and physiological experiments, to develop a comprehensive new approach to the study of well-being. They show how the sensory pleasures of the body can tells us something about the higher pleasures of the mind and even how the effectiveness of our immune system can depend upon the health of our social relationships. (shrink)

Lucia Schwarz urges a reconsideration of the implications of species egalitarianism, which is an essential element of the position in environmental ethics that Paul Taylor calls “respect for nature.” Species egalitarianism’s claim that every living thing has equal inherent worth appears to lead to counterintuitive conclusions, such as that killing a human being is no worse than killing a dandelion. Species egalitarians have generally responded by explaining that species egalitarianism is compatible with recognizing moral differences between killing different types (...) of living things, and that some killing is morally permissible. Schwarz raises doubts about whether this deflationary defensive strategy is philosophically justified, and suggests that taking seriously the supposedly repugnant implications of species egalitarianism may have a salutary effect on the overall debate. (shrink)

Our contemporary condition is deeply infused with scientific-technological rationales. These influence and shape our ethical reasoning on war, including the moral status of civilians and the moral choices available to us. In this article, I discuss how technology shapes and directs the moral choices available to us by setting parameters for moral deliberation. I argue that technology has moral significance for just war thinking, yet this is often overlooked in attempts to assess who is liable to harm in war and (...) to what extent. This omission produces an undue deference to technological authority, reducing combatants, civilians and scenarios to data points. If we are to develop a maximally restrictive framework for harming civilians in war, which in my view should be a goal of just war thinking, then it is imperative that the scientific-technological dimension of contemporary war is given due attention. (shrink)

Distinguished contributors take up eminent scholar Daniel R. Schwarz’s reading of modern fiction and poetry as mediating between human desire and human action. The essayists follow Schwarz’s advice, “always the text, always historicize,” thus making this book relevant to current debates about the relationships between literature, ethics, aesthetics, and historical contexts.

It is often proposed that the unacceptability of a semantically interpretable sentence can be rooted in its meaning. Elaborating on Oshima New frontiers in artificial intelligence, Springer, Berlin, 2007), we argue that the meaning-driven unacceptability of factive islands must make reference to felicity conditions, and cannot be reduced to the triviality of propositional content. We also observe, again elaborating on Oshima, that the triviality of factive islands need not be logical, but can be relative to a listener’s background assumptions. These (...) findings call for a revision of a prevalent view about meaning-driven unacceptability, according to which unacceptability results from triviality that is both propositional and logical. (shrink)