This book investigates the unresolved issue of democratic legitimacy in contexts of pervasive disagreement and contributes to this debate by defending a relational version of political liberalism that rests on the ideal of co-authorship. According to this proposal, democratic legitimacy depends upon establishing appropriate interactions among citizens who ought to ascribe to one another the status of putative practical and epistemic authorities. To support this relational reading of political liberalism, the book proposes a revised account of the civic virtue of (...) reasonableness along with an investigation of the epistemic-specific dimension of political equality. By engaging with political epistemology and social theory, this book explores ways to address inherent tensions within the liberal paradigm, using the following strategies of addressing these tensions: first, it defends a twofold model of legitimacy that distinguishes the goals, methodologies, and justificatory tasks of both ideal and nonideal phases of the two-level justificatory framework; second, it contends that democratic legitimacy requires an engaged and contextual critical appraisal of the injustices that characterize our daily social lives, illustrating how structural forms of injustice represent a profound betrayal of the liberal ideal of democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

The ethical and community challenges that the current society poses to new generations are proving to be increasingly complex. Therefore, the role of schools in identifying effective proposals aimed at fostering the harmonious growth of students as individuals and as global citizens has become crucial. In line with this need, an educative and research project that focused on friendship as an ethical virtue was set up, aimed at promoting ethics for citizenship at a primary school. The project was conducted according (...) to the educative research approach, offering children good educational experiences and evaluating their effectiveness. The article, after a presentation of the project and its theoretical principles, discusses the results of the qualitative analysis of the data that emerged from two particular activities implemented. The results are discussed in light of the connections between ethics education for citizenship and Social and Emotional Learning, highlighting the implications for educational and teaching practice. (shrink)

The ethical monitoring of brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) is discussed in connection with the potential impact of BMIs on distinguishing traits of persons, changes of personal identity, and threats to personal autonomy. It is pointed out that philosophical analyses of personhood are conducive to isolating an initial thematic framework for this ethical monitoring problem, but a contextual refinement of this initial framework depends on applied ethics analyses of current BMI models and empirical case-studies. The personal autonomy-monitoring problem is approached by identifying (...) various ways in which the inclusion of a robotic controller in the motor pathway of an output BMI may limit or jeopardize personal autonomy. (shrink)

Scientific and philosophical literature on causality has become highly specialised. It is hard to find suitable access points for students, young researchers, or professionals outside this domain. This book provides a guide to the complex literature, explains the scientific problems of causality and the philosophical tools needed to address them.

This article defends a specific account of reasonableness as a virtue of liberal citizenship. I specify an account of reasonableness that I argue is more consistent with the phenomenology of intersubjective exchanges among citizens over political matters in contexts of deep disagreement. My reading requires reasonable citizens to undertake an attitude of epistemic modesty while deliberating public matters with agents who hold views different from theirs. In contrast with my view, I debate Martha Nussbaum’s and Steven Wall’s accounts of reasonableness (...) and specify why I believe that these proposals, although interesting, both require revisions. Distinguishing my account from theirs, I specify the normative relation between reasonableness and a general framework of political legitimacy that identifies citizens as ‘co-authors of democratic decisions’. Here, I argue that the liberal ideal of ascribing to each member of the constituency the status of putative epistemic authority can be properly fulfilled if coupled with a correct specification of the political ideal of mutual respect. I conclude claiming that opacity respect, a notion of respect according to which the recognition respect that is owed to individuals is expressed by the idea that we have to treat them as ‘opaque’, is the most adequate concept of political respect when dealing with interpersonal deliberations at political level in contexts of deep disagreement. (shrink)

Critical Data Studies explore the unique cultural, ethical, and critical challenges posed by Big Data. Rather than treat Big Data as only scientifically empirical and therefore largely neutral phenomena, CDS advocates the view that Big Data should be seen as always-already constituted within wider data assemblages. Assemblages is a concept that helps capture the multitude of ways that already-composed data structures inflect and interact with society, its organization and functioning, and the resulting impact on individuals’ daily lives. CDS questions the (...) many assumptions about Big Data that permeate contemporary literature on information and society by locating instances where Big Data may be naively taken to denote objective and transparent informational entities. In this introduction to the Big Data & Society CDS special theme, we briefly describe CDS work, its orientations, and principles. (shrink)

We argue that the health sciences make causal claims on the basis of evidence both of physical mechanisms, and of probabilistic dependencies. Consequently, an analysis of causality solely in terms of physical mechanisms or solely in terms of probabilistic relationships, does not do justice to the causal claims of these sciences. Yet there seems to be a single relation of cause in these sciences - pluralism about causality will not do either. Instead, we maintain, the health sciences require a theory (...) of causality that unifies its mechanistic and probabilistic aspects. We argue that the epistemic theory of causality provides the required unification. (shrink)

The present piece, first presented on 19 November 2016 at the Centre Léon Robin (CNRS-Univ. Paris-Sorbonne-ENS Ulm) as part of the“Présocratiques” Seminar, is an investigation of the relationship between Empedocles and Freud. The analysis is divided into three parts: the first section examines the nature of Freud’s engagement with Empedocles; next, consideration is given to the similarities between their doctrines, based on the extant fragments of the Empedoclean corpus; finally, I offer a series of observations about Empedocles’ poetic style, which (...) shares strong affinities with the spoken word in a manner typical of the oral tradition and is freighted with corporeal and emotional significance. It is here that we see the emergence of one of the key concepts of psychoanalysis: the relationship between logos and alogon, between that which can be rationally analysed and that which can be intuited but which eludes the domain of logos. (shrink)

Proceduralists hold that democracy has a non-instrumental value consisting in the ideal of equality incorporated by fair procedures. Yet, proceduralism does not imply that every outcome of a democratic procedure is fair per se. In the non-ideal setting of constitutional democracies, government and legislative decisions may result from factional conflicts, or depend on majoritarian dictatorships. In these circumstances, Supreme Courts provide a guardianship against contested outcomes by enacting mechanisms of checks and balances, constitutional interpretation and judicial review. Yet, in virtue (...) of this role, Supreme Courts exercise a form of epistocratic power, which rests at odds with the ideal of political equality. We analyse this dilemma and propose a solution, arguing that Supreme Courts do not run unrestrained decisions; rather their decisional power is bound to the protective function of fundamental rights, in which their constitutional mandate ultimately consists. (shrink)

Democratic legitimacy is often grounded in proceduralist terms, referring to the ideal of political equality that should be mirrored by fair procedures of decision-making. The paper argues (§1) that the normative commitments embedded in a non-minimalist account of procedural legitimacy are well expressed by the ideal of co-authorship. Against this background, the main goal of the paper is to argue that structural forms of epistemic injustice are detrimental to the overall legitimacy of democratic systems. In §2 I analyse Young’s notion (...) of political powerlessness and claim that in structurally unjust social contexts members of powerless groups often are not properly acknowledged as functioning members of the polity, hence being jeopardized in their ability to develop part of their personal identity. In §III, I define gerrymandering as an example of political disempowerment that involves an epistemic harm for oppressed citizens, namely, to be prejudicially excluded from the community of epistemic trust. My thesis is that being epistemically disempowered has a negative impact on the way in which citizens understand themselves as political actors, since they suffer a lack of social recognition that may impede a proper development of their reflexive agency. In §IV, I discuss the proposal of granting epistemic privilege to members of oppressed groups, given their specific experience of social injustices. I introduce two concerns about this proposal, one morally grounded and one pragmatically oriented. Finally, in §V, I briefly sketch some institutional remedies that can be employed in order to politically fight systemic forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Testimony spreads information. It is also commonly agreed that it can transfer knowledge. Whether it can work as an epistemic source of understanding is a matter of dispute. However, testimony certainly plays a pivotal role in the proliferation of understanding in the epistemic community. But how exactly do we learn, and how do we make advancements in understanding on the basis of one another’s words? And what can we do to maximize the probability that the process of acquiring understanding from (...) one another succeeds? These are very important questions in our current epistemological landscape, especially in light of the attention that has been paid to understanding as an epistemic achievement of purely epistemic value. Somewhat surprisingly, the recent literature in social epistemology does not offer much on the topic. The overarching aim of this paper is to provide a tentative model of understanding that goes in-depth enough to safely address the question of how understanding and testimony are related to one another. The hope is to contribute, in some measure, to the effort to understand understanding, and to explain two facts about our epistemic practices: the fact that knowledge and understanding relate differently to testimony, and the fact that some pieces of testimonial information are better than others for the sake of providing one with understanding and of yielding advancements in one’s epistemic standing. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged in the literature in social epistemology that knowledge has a social dimension: we are epistemically dependent upon one another for most of what we know. Our knowledge can be, and very often is, grounded on the epistemic achievement of somebody else. But what about epistemic aims other than knowledge? What about understanding? Prominent authors argue that understanding is not social in the same way in which knowledge is. Others can put us in the position to understand, (...) but when we understand something, this accomplishment is to be credited mainly if not entirely to us, as it is due to the successful exercise of our own cognitive abilities. In this paper, I show that the social dimension of understanding closely resembles the social dimension of knowledge. I distinguish between three different ways in which a subject can depend upon another subject for (either the acquisition or the possession of) a certain epistemic good. I then argue that all these kinds of epistemic dependence apply to knowledge and understanding alike. If I am right, understanding is not (always) an achievement to be (mainly) credited to the single epistemic agent who understands. (shrink)

In recent years, several authors have argued that the desirability of novel technologies should be assessed early, when they are still emerging. Such an ethical assessment of emerging technologies is by definition focused on an elusive object. Usually promises, expectations, and visions of the technology are taken as a starting point. As Nordmann and Rip have pointed out in a recent article, however, ethicists should not take for granted the plausibility of such expectations and visions. In this paper, we explore (...) how the quality of expectations on emerging technologies might be assessed when engaging in a reflection on the desirability of emerging technologies. We propose that an assessment of expectations’ plausibility should focus on statements on technological feasibility, societal usability, and desirability of the expected technology. Whereas the feasibility statement and, to a lesser extent, the usability statements are frequently quite futuristic, the claims on desirability, by contrast, often display a conservative stance towards the future. Assessing the quality of expectations and visions on behalf of emerging technologies requires, then, a careful and well-directed use of both skepticism and imagination. We conclude with a brief overview of the tools and methods ethicists could use to assess claims made on behalf of emerging technologies and improve the ethical reflection on them. (shrink)

In both scientific and popular circles it is often said that we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction. Although the urgency of our present environmental crises is not in doubt, such claims of a present mass extinction are highly controversial scientifically. Our aims are, first, to get to the bottom of this scientific debate by shedding philosophical light on the many conceptual and methodological challenges involved in answering this scientific question, and, second, to offer new philosophical perspectives (...) on what the value of asking this question has been — and whether that value persists today. We show that the conceptual challenges in defining ‘mass extinction’, uncertainties in past and present diversity assessments, and data incommensurabilities undermine a straightforward answer to the question of whether we are in, or entering, a sixth mass extinction today. More broadly we argue that an excessive focus on the mass extinction framing can be misleading for present conservation efforts and may lead us to miss out on the many other valuable insights that Earth’s deep time can offer in guiding our future. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article critically discusses Rahel Jaeggi’s recent philosophical contribution to a critical theory of capitalism. The first part reconstructs Jaeggi’s account of Lebensform, life-form, that builds up the main ontological framework for addressing and problematizing capitalism intended not as an economic system but as a social whole. The second part focuses on the three different theoretical strategies that Jaeggi puts forward to detect and deal with capitalism’s immanent flaws. The third and last part problematizes the metaphysical assumptions and implications (...) of Jaeggi’s understanding of life-form and outlines a more dialectical, or “transactional” notion of form of life, which is inspired by Dewey’s non-reductionist naturalist method of inquiry. The overall aim is to strengthen the philosophical critique of the capitalist form of life. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the possibility of adopting a representational approach for technoscience, in which representation is considered as a situated process of dynamic “intra-action” (Barad 2007 ). Re-elaborating the recent critiques of representationalism (Thrift 2008 ), my analysis begins by analysing Hayles’s situated model of representation from an early essay where she explains her definition of constrained constructivism (Hayles [ 1991 ] 1997). The essay then discusses the notions of figuration and diffraction and the way they are employed by (...) Haraway in many of her writings for her critique of technoscience (Haraway 1991 , 1997 ). Finally, after considering diffraction through Barad’s reading of this practice in the context of her theory of agential realism ( 2007 ), it shows the links that relate constrained constructivism, situated knowledge and agential realism, and the way all of them work at “diffract[ing] the rays of technoscience” (Haraway 1997 : 16) through an alternative representational practice. (shrink)

This article conceptually investigates a type of gender murder, “romantic femicide.” I understand this as the extreme form of violence that occurs as a result of men's incapacity to cope with their partners’ autonomy and power. The incapacity is not merely an individual pathology but is rather rooted in the dynamic of recognition characterizing love under structural conditions of gender dichotomy. After having sketched out the current discussion about femicide and its shortcomings, I argue for the hypothesis in three steps. (...) First, I draw on a feminist theory of recognition in order to outline a nonviolent form of love. Lovers of this sort would depend on their partners and, at the same time, try to affirm their independence of them. Second, I show how such an interdependence bond would entail a dynamic of mutual empowerment. Third, I argue that love becomes a relation of domination as result of gender dichotomy. The dichotomization of two gender identities, “man” and “woman,” splits the interdependence bond in a way that allows only man's unilateral exercise of power and makes mutual empowerment impossible. Violence might be required for maintaining the dynamic of dominance; finally, romantic femicide may result from the unsustainability of such a structure. (shrink)

In this article, we take the case of racism in contemporary Italy as a starting point for a discussion about moral responsibility for racism in cases where ignorance is involved. We focus on the issue of the normalization of racism and its contribution to different forms of ignorance to assess the extent to which these might potentially mitigate judgments of responsibility for racism, thereby grounding an Exculpatory Stance. After illustrating the phenomenon of the normalization of racism and offering an outline (...) of how the normalization of racism contributes to ignorance, we argue against the Exculpatory Stance by appealing to a socially situated variety of capacitarian approach to the epistemic condition of moral responsibility. This approach provides us with the tools to claim that the moral ignorance favored by the normalization of racism does not mitigate judgments of individual responsibility. Finally, we point out that the interdependence of individual responsibility and the social environment is such that, in addition to backward-looking individual responsibilities for racism, there are also forward-looking, both individual and shared, responsibilities to counter racism in its various manifestations and the increased risk of moral ignorance connected to its normalization. (shrink)

Can we transmit understanding via testimony in more or less the same way in which we transmit knowledge? The standard view in social epistemology has a straightforward answer: no, we cannot. Three arguments supporting the standard view have been formulated so far. The first appeals to the claim that gaining understanding requires a greater cognitive effort than acquiring testimonial knowledge does. The second appeals to a certain type of epistemic trust that is supposedly characteristic of knowledge transmission (and maybe of (...) the transmission of epistemic goods in general) and that is allegedly incompatible with understanding. The third aims to show that there is a certain aspect of understanding (what epistemologists these days like to call “grasping”) that cannot be passed on to another person via testimony alone. In this article, I show that all of these arguments can be resisted. Thus, there seem to be no compelling reasons to embrace the standard view. (shrink)

This article conceptually investigates a type of gender murder, “romantic femicide.” I understand this as the extreme form of violence that occurs as a result of men's incapacity to cope with their partners’ autonomy and power. The incapacity is not merely an individual pathology but is rather rooted in the dynamic of recognition characterizing love under structural conditions of gender dichotomy. After having sketched out the current discussion about femicide and its shortcomings, I argue for the hypothesis in three steps. (...) First, I draw on a feminist theory of recognition in order to outline a nonviolent form of love. Lovers of this sort would depend on their partners and, at the same time, try to affirm their independence of them. Second, I show how such an interdependence bond would entail a dynamic of mutual empowerment. Third, I argue that love becomes a relation of domination as result of gender dichotomy. The dichotomization of two gender identities, “man” and “woman,” splits the interdependence bond in a way that allows only man's unilateral exercise of power and makes mutual empowerment impossible. Violence might be required for maintaining the dynamic of dominance; finally, romantic femicide may result from the unsustainability of such a structure. (shrink)

The anti-causal prophecies of last century have been disproved. Causality is neither a ‘relic of a bygone’ nor ‘another fetish of modern science’; it still occupies a large part of the current debate in philosophy and the sciences. This investigation into causal modelling presents the rationale of causality, i.e. the notion that guides causal reasoning in causal modelling. It is argued that causal models are regimented by a rationale of variation, nor of regularity neither invariance, thus breaking down the dominant (...) Human paradigm. The notion of variation is shown to be embedded in the scheme of reasoning behind various causal models: e.g. Rubin’s model, contingency tables, and multilevel analysis. It is also shown to be latent – yet fundamental – in many philosophical accounts. Moreover, it has significant consequences for methodological issues: the warranty of the causal interpretation of causal models, the levels of causation, the characterisation of mechanisms, and the interpretation of probability. This book offers a novel philosophical and methodological approach to causal reasoning in causal modelling and provides the reader with the tools to be up to date about various issues causality rises in social science. (shrink)

Causal analysis in the social sciences takes advantage of a variety of methods and of a multi-fold source of information and evidence. This pluralistic methodology and source of information raises the question of whether we should accordingly have a pluralistic metaphysics and epistemology. This paper focuses on epistemology and argues that a pluralistic methodology and evidence don’t entail a pluralistic epistemology. It will be shown that causal models employ a single rationale of testing, based on the notion of variation. Further, (...) I shall argue that this monistic epistemology is also involved in alternative philosophical theories of causation. (shrink)

The need for fair and just AI is often related to the possibility of understanding AI itself, in other words, of turning an opaque box into a glass box, as inspectable as possible. Transparency and explainability, however, pertain to the technical domain and to philosophy of science, thus leaving the ethics and epistemology of AI largely disconnected. To remedy this, we propose an integrated approach premised on the idea that a glass-box epistemology should explicitly consider how to incorporate values and (...) other normative considerations, such as intersectoral vulnerabilities, at critical stages of the whole process from design and implementation to use and assessment. To connect ethics and epistemology of AI, we perform a double shift of focus. First, we move from trusting the output of an AI system to trusting the process that leads to the outcome. Second, we move from expert assessment to more inclusive assessment strategies, aiming to facilitate expert and non-expert assessment. Together, these two moves yield a framework usable for experts and non-experts when they inquire into relevant epistemological and ethical aspects of AI systems. We dub our framework ‘epistemology-cum-ethics’ to signal the equal importance of both aspects. We develop it from the vantage point of the designers: how to create the conditions to internalize values into the whole process of design, implementation, use, and assessment of an AI system, in which values (epistemic and non-epistemic) are explicitly considered at each stage and inspectable by every salient actor involved at any moment. (shrink)

Beatrice Erskine Lane Suzuki (1878–1939) is mainly known for being the wife of D.T. Suzuki鈴木大拙 (1870–1966), the Japanese religious studies scholar and intellectual who promoted the popularization of Buddhism in the Western world. However, she was also an active researcher and prolific writer in the same field, boasting deep theoretical and practical knowledge of the subject and an original, brilliant interpretative style. Her research led her to appreciate and assimilate cultural values quite different from those of her Scottish and American (...) background influenced by Catholicism. The fact that she left her homeland to research an entirely different culture was what she had in common with Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), her contemporary and eclectic intellectual and philosopher who left Alsace to engage in religious and anthropological studies in Africa. Although she dedicated numerous enthusiastic reflections to Schweitzer in her writings, those refuting Schweitzer's theories assume great relevance. In his comparison between Western and Eastern spirituality, Schweitzer fiercely attacked the latter, expressing the absolute superiority of the Christian doctrine, which he fervently supported. Lane, on the contrary, was strongly fascinated by Buddhism, and found in it a source of faith and a creed to live by. This article aims to retrace the analysis made by both authors to outline their different perspectives, despite their shared cultural background. (shrink)

Causal claims in biomedical contexts are ubiquitous albeit they are not always made explicit. This paper addresses the question of what causal claims mean in the context of disease. It is argued that in medical contexts causality ought to be interpreted according to the epistemic theory. The epistemic theory offers an alternative to traditional accounts that cash out causation either in terms of “difference-making” relations or in terms of mechanisms. According to the epistemic approach, causal claims tell us about which (...) inferences (e.g., diagnoses and prognoses) are appropriate, rather than about the presence of some physical causal relation analogous to distance or gravitational attraction. It is shown that the epistemic theory has important consequences for medical practice, in particular with regard to evidence-based causal assessment. (shrink)

El objetivo de este dossier es reflexionar, desde una perspectiva histórica, sobre los valores y significados que el municipalismo ha adquirido para los iberoamericanos en la época actual. La elección de este tema se debe a dos razones principales: por un lado, al papel que esta institución desempeña hoy en día en los regímenes democráticos de América latina, tanto en su dimensión social como política y territorial; por el otro, al hecho que el municipio tiene una herencia histórica muy larga (...) y compleja que va desde la Antigüedad, la Edad Media y Moderna hasta nuestros días. (shrink)

The secure release of identity attributes is a key enabler for electronic business interactions. Users should have the maximum control possible over the release of their identity attributes and should state under which conditions these attributes can be disclosed. Moreover, users should disclose only the identity attributes that are actually required for the transactions at hand. In this paper we present an approach for the controlled release of identity attributes that addresses such requirements. The approach is based on the integration (...) of trust negotiation and minimal credential disclosure techniques. Trust negotiation supports selective and incremental disclosure of identity attributes, while minimal credential disclosure guarantees that only the attributes necessary to complete the on-line interactions are disclosed. (shrink)

Can we gain understanding from testifiers who themselves fail to understand? At first glance, this looks counterintuitive. How could a hearer who has no understanding or very poor understanding of a certain subject matter non-accidentally extract items of information relevant to understanding from a speaker’s testimony if the speaker does not understand what she is talking about? This paper shows that, when there are theories or representational devices working as mediators, speakers can intentionally generate understanding in their hearers by engaging (...) in relevant speech acts without understanding the topic of these speech acts themselves. More specifically, I argue that testifiers can intentionally elicit understanding of empirical phenomena in their hearers even if they themselves lack such understanding – granted that they properly understood the epistemic mediators involved. (shrink)

In this paper, we comment and discuss the fifteen replies that interpret, solicit, problematize, and further develop our Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto (Krisis 42(1)), that have been published in Krisis 43(1). In the paper, we address four overarching topics that we see emerging from the replies: Histories and traditions of criticial naturalism; the relation between theory and praxis; the question of what is critical about critical naturalism; and finally the question of utopia. Additionally, we discuss three general types of attitudes (...) that our critics take to the Manifesto. (shrink)

Mobile applications are increasingly regarded as important tools for an integrated strategy of infection containment in post-lockdown societies around the globe. This paper discusses a number of questions that should be addressed when assessing the ethical challenges of mobile applications for digital contact-tracing of COVID-19: Which safeguards should be designed in the technology? Who should access data? What is a legitimate role for “Big Tech” companies in the development and implementation of these systems? How should cultural and behavioural issues be (...) accounted for in the design of these apps? Should use of these apps be compulsory? What does transparency and ethical oversight mean in this context? We demonstrate that responses to these questions are complex and contingent and argue that if digital contract-tracing is used, then it should be clear that this is on a trial basis and its use should be subject to independent monitoring and evaluation. (shrink)

We discuss the social-epistemic aspects of Catherine Elgin’s theory of reflective equilibrium and understanding and argue that it yields an argument for the view that a crucial social-epistemic function of epistemic authorities is to foster understanding in their communities. We explore the competences that enable epistemic authorities to fulfil this role and argue that among them is an epistemic virtue we call “epistemic empathy”.

The paper sketches out an account of ambiguous and agonistic love by drawing on the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Axel Honneth and Hannah Arendt. To begin with, I reconstruct the ambiguity of love within the conceptual framework of a paradigm of recognition. I argue further that the social relation of love, understood as an intertwine between dependence and independence, entails a power dynamic. Insofar as the dynamic actualises as “power in concert” or “power with”, namely as mutual empowerment, love (...) unfolds as free love. Finally, I show how agonistic love is damaged by turning into violent domination. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, I address a highly controversial question of feminist philosophy, namely, the so-called sex/gender distinction, from a Deweyan perspective. I argue that Dewey's naturalism provides useful insights for dealing with and solving the problems concerning this particular type of dualism. My argumentation unfolds in three steps. First, after having briefly introduced the meanings of the two terms, I outline two different, both unsuccessful strategies for overcoming the sex/gender distinction, namely, what I call the radical social constructionist and (...) the nondialectical naturalist strategies. Second, I draw on Dewey's version of naturalism with the aim of conceiving of human beings as simultaneously naturally and socially constructed. Third, I sketch out the hypothesis that Dewey's way of overcoming the pernicious dichotomy between nature and society may be useful for outlining a critical metaphysics of gender. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to investigate the epistemic dimension of reasonableness. In the last decades, the concept of reasonableness has been deeply analysed, and yet, I maintain that a strictly epistemic analysis of reasonableness is still lacking. The goal of this article is to clarify which epistemic features characterize reasonableness as one of the fundamental virtues in the political domain. In order to justify political liberalism through a public justification that averts the risk of falling into a dilemma, (...) it is important to establish in advance which are the epistemic constraints that should be respected. My proposal is that a moderate approach in moral epistemology expresses the best scheme available to us – as moral agents constrained by the limit of our rationality – for establishing a normatively binding, and yet realistic, procedure of justification for political institutions and practices. (shrink)

Humans have attained an unparalleled level of sophistication when engaging in collaborative and cooperative activities. Remarkably, the skills and motivation to engage in complex forms of collaboration and cooperation seem to emerge early on during infancy and childhood. In this paper, I extensively review the literature on the evolution and development of human cooperation, emphasizing important aspects of inter-cultural variation in collaborative and cooperative behaviour. This will not only allow us to confront the different evolutionary scenarios in which cooperation may (...) have emerged, but will especially provide the reader with a first orientation in the abundant literature on human cooperation. (shrink)

Mobile health is rapidly being implemented and changing our ways of doing, understanding and organising healthcare. mHealth includes wearable devices as well as apps that track fitness, offer wellness programmes or provide tools to manage chronic conditions. According to industry and policy makers, these systems offer efficient and cost-effective solutions for disease prevention and self-management. While this development raises many ethically relevant questions, so far mHealth has received only little attention in medical ethics. This paper provides an overview of bioethical (...) issues raised by mHealth and aims to draw scholarly attention to the ethical significance of its promises and challenges. We show that the overly positive promises of mHealth need to be nuanced and their desirability critically assessed. Finally, we offer suggestions to bioethicists to engage with this emerging trend in healthcare to develop mHealth to its best potential in a morally sound way. (shrink)

Large part of contemporary science is in fact technoscience, in the sense that it crucially depends on several technologies for the generation, collection, and analysis of data. This prompts a re-examination of the relations between science and technologies. In this essay, I advance the view that we’d better move beyond the ‘subordination view’ and the ‘instrumental’ view. The first aims to establish the primacy of science over technology, and the second uses technology instrumentally to support a realist position about theoretical (...) entities. I suggest that we should instead concentrate on how science and technology interact. This will reveal that technology has a poietic character, namely it actively partakes in the production of knowledge. But this poietic character can only be understood within the cognitive activity of scientific communities. Current research in molecular epidemiology, notably the projects funded within the ‘European exposome initiative’, serves as a motivation for such discussion and as an illustration of the claims made. (shrink)

One of the most controversial questions in feminist philosophy, and maybe the most controversial of all, concerns our determination as sexual or gendered human beings: Is it nature or is it our culture, or society, that makes us what we are—women, men, other? And if it is both, to what extent and in which sense is it nature, and to what extent and in which sense is it social life? Whatever the answer may be, one widespread and allegedly useful modality (...) to cast the question consists in naming “sex” the biological aspects and “gender” the cultural or social aspects of this dimension of our living. The distinction, however, has raised a number of issues; the attempts to overcome the distinction, which is... (shrink)

Eye-tracking studies have revealed a specific visual exploration style characterizing individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of stimulus type (static vs. dynamic) on visual exploration in children with ASD. Twenty-eight children with ASD, 28 children matched for developmental communication age and 28 children matched for chronological age watched a video and a series of photos involving the same joint attention scene. For each stimulus, Areas of Interest (AOI) were determined based (...) on Voronoi diagrams, which were defined around participants’ fixation densities, defined by the mean shift algorithm. To analyze the eye-tracking data on visual exploration, we used a method for creat-ing AOI a posteriori, based on participants’ actual fixations. The results showed the value of both kinds of stimuli. The photos allowed for the identification of more precise AOI, and show similarities in exploration between ASD and typical children. On the other hand, in video, among ASD children only, there are few differences in the way they look at the target depend-ing on the deictic cue used. This raises questions regarding their understanding of a joint atten-tion bid recorded on a video. Finally, whatever the stimulus, pointing seems to be the most im-portant element for children to look at the target. (shrink)