Technology policy needs to be receptive to different social needs and realities to ensure that innovations are both ethically developed and accessible. This article proposes a new method to integrate social controversies into foresight scenarios as a means to enhance the trustworthiness and inclusivity of policymaking around Artificial Intelligence. Foresight exercises are used to anticipate future tech challenges and to inform policy development. However, the integration of social controversies within these exercises remains an unexplored area. This article aims to bridge (...) this gap by providing insights and guidelines on why and how we should incorporate social controversies into designing foresight scenarios. We emphasize the importance of considering social controversies, as they allow to understand non-mainstream perspectives, re-balance power dynamics, de-black box technologies and have accountable policymaking processes that are open to listening different social needs. Building on empirical research, we present a step-by-step method that involves identifying the key policy challenges and relevant controversies related to an emerging technology, deconstructing the identified controversies, and mapping them onto future scenarios to test policy options and build policy road mapping. Furthermore, we discuss the importance of strategically engaging involved stakeholders, including affected communities, civil society organizations, and experts, to ensure a comprehensive and inclusive perspective. Finally, we showcase the application of the method to popAI, an EU-funded project on AI use in law enforcement. (shrink)

O objetivo do artigo é examinar os Primeiros Princípios Metafísicos da Ciência da Natureza de Kant, obra-chave para a interpretação das filosofias da natureza do idealismo alemão, no interior d’“A Arquitetônica da Razão Pura”, a saber, como uma metafísica aplicada da substância corporal. Para tanto será inicialmente discutida a distinção, feita no prefácio à obra, entre uma parte transcendental e outra metafísico-específica da metafísica da natureza, surgindo aqui a concepção de matéria enquanto movente no espaço como conceito empírico mínimo para (...) a constituição do objeto de uma metafísica da substância corporal. Na sequência, a oposição entre princípios transcendentais e princípios metafísicos será abordada como crucial para compreender como os princípios transcendentais da Crítica da Razão Pura se transformam nos princípios da física newtoniana. Por fim, analisa-se como a metafísica da natureza exemplifica a ideia de uma realização dos princípios transcendentais como passagem para a empiria. (shrink)

Este estudo pretende discutir as relações existentes entre mídia e educação, analisando as políticas públicas que influenciaram a criação da TV Pendrive, identificando a percepção dos professores acerca da mesma. Justifica-se pelo fato de que no ano de 2007 o governo federal criou o Programa Nacional de Tecnologia Educacional (ProInfo), com o objetivo de informatizar o ensino, buscando promover uma educação com maior qualidade. Nesse contexto, a Secretaria de Estado da Educação do Paraná, com vistas à inclusão e ao acesso (...) de alunos e professores da rede pública estadual às novas tecnologias, criou o projeto TV Pendrive. Para a concretização desse estudo, foram realizadas pesquisas e análises bibliográficas, bem como um levantamento com professores da educação básica pública estadual da cidade de Londrina/PR, visando a identificar a percepção dos mesmos em relação à TV Pendrive. Como resultado, constatou-se que as políticas públicas, especialmente as voltadas à educação, parecem ser implantadas pelo governo sem a anuência dos educadores. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate Nishida Kitarō’s way of philosophizing in the light of the concept of “transition” in order to deepen our understanding of both Nishida’s philosophy and our thinking about and in transitions, using the concept of “boundary” or “border” (Grenze) as a catalyst. For that purpose, we focus on Nishida’s essay “Place” (「場所」), passing through different parts of the text as if through successive gates on a path of transition between one place and the (...) next, until we reach the final place of “absolute nothingness.” Dwelling on this place, we turn our attention to its internal structure and try to depict it along the outlines of a boundary, following the movements taking place in Nishida’s essay. The second part proposes an interpretation of the place of nothingness as an interminable practice of boundary-crossing that doesn’t come to a halt in a final, all-encompassing place, but dynamically situates itself on countless intersecting planes. After a more or less abstract analysis of the concept of “boundary,” we will apply and concretize this approach by using the example of the skin. To this end, we expose five main features of the skin as boundary: permeability, enclosure, excessiveness, interstitiality and reciprocal self-formation. (shrink)

In recent years, bioethical discourse around the topic of ‘genetic enhancement’ has become increasingly politicized. We fear there is too much focus on the semantic question of whether we should call particular practices and emerging bio-technologies such as CRISPR ‘eugenics’, rather than the more important question of how we should view them from the perspective of ethics and policy. Here, we address the question of whether ‘eugenics’ can be defended and how proponents and critics of enhancement should engage with each (...) other. (shrink)

Metaphor has been considered as a cognitive process, independent of the verbal versus visual mode, through which an unknown conceptual domain is understood in terms of another known conceptual domain. Metaphor might instead be viewed as a cognitive process, dependent on the mode, which leads to genuinely new knowledge via ignorance. First, I argue that there are two main senses of ignorance at stake when we understand a metaphor: we ignore some existing properties of the known domain in the sense (...) that we disregard or neglect them; we ignore some “non-existing” properties of the known domain in the sense that they are not a piece of information belonging to the known domain, but emerge in metaphor interpretation. Secondly, I consider a metaphor as a reasoning device, guiding the interpreters along a path of inferences to a conclusion, which attributes to the target some properties of the source. In this path, interpreters might discover the ignored existing properties of the known domain and/or recover the “non-existing” properties, inferring or imagining the missing piece of information. Finally, I argue that, especially in visual metaphors, this process is guided by a “sentiment of rationality”, tracking a disruption of existing familiar conceptualisations of objects and/or actions and a recovery of ignored properties. (shrink)

Despite the remarkable advances in behavioral and brain sciences over the last decades, the mind/body (brain) problem is still an open debate and one of the most intriguing questions for both cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind. Traditional approaches have conceived this problem in terms of a contrast between physicalist monism and Cartesian dualism. However, since the late sixties, the landscape of philosophical views on the problem has become more varied and complex. The Multiple Realization Thesis (MRT) claims that mental (...) properties can be (or are) realized, and mental processes can be (or are) implemented by neural correlates of different kinds. Thus, MRT challenges the psychoneural type-identity theory and the corresponding reductionism. Many philosophers have acknowledged the a priori plausibility of MRT. However, the existence of empirical evidence in favor of intraspecific, human multiple realizations of mental processes and properties is still controversial. Here we illustrate some cases that provide empirical evidence in support of MRT. Recently, it has been proposed that foveal agnosic vision, like peripheral vision, can be restored by increasing object parts’ spacing (Strappini et al., 2017a; Crutch and Warrington, 2007). Agnosic fovea and normal periphery are both limited by crowding, that impairs object recognition, and provides the signature of visual integration. Here we define a psychological property of restored object identification and we cross-reference the data of visually-impaired patients with different etiologies. In particular, we compare the data of two stroke patients, two patients with posterior cortical atrophy (PCA), six cases of strabismic amblyopia, and one case with restored sight. We also compare these patients with unimpaired subjects tested in the periphery. We show that integration (i.e. restored recognition) seems to describe quite accurately the visual performance in all these cases. While the patients have different etiologies and different neural correlates, the unimpaired subjects have no neural damage. Thus similarity in the psychological property given the differences in the neural substrate can be interpreted in relation to MRT and provide evidence in its support. Finally, we will frame our contribution within the current debate concerning MRT providing new and compelling empirical evidence. (shrink)

What is a gene? Does it represent a natural kind, or is it just a tool for genomics? A clear answer to these questions has been challenged by postgenomic discoveries. In response, I will argue that the gene can be deemed a natural kind as it satisfies some requirements for genuine kindhood. Specifically, natural kinds are projectible categories in our best scientific theories, and they represent nodes in the causal network of the world (as in Khalidi. Natural Categories and Human (...) Kinds: Classification in the Natural and Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013; Khalidi. Synthese 195: 1379–1396, 2018; Khalidi. Are Sexes Natural Kinds, In: Dasgupta S, Weslake B (eds) Current Controversies in Philoso-phy of Science. Routledge, New York, 2020; Khalidi. Philos Sci 88:1–21, 2021). In Sect. 2, I will present a brief history of the gene and the controversy over its status. In Sect. 3, I will introduce the account of natural kinds considered in this paper. In Sect. 4, I will first present the relevant definition of genes and how they can be classified. Then, I will argue that the gene can be considered a natural kind as it satisfies the criteria for natural kindhood. Section 5 concludes. (shrink)

Criminal liability for acts committed by AI systems has recently become a hot legal topic. This paper includes three different contributions. The first contribution is an analysis of the extent to which an AI system can satisfy the requirements for criminal liability: accomplishing an actus reus, having the corresponding mens rea, possessing the cognitive capacities needed for responsibility. The second contribution is a discussion of criminal activity accomplished by an AI entity, with reference to a recent case involving an online (...) bot, the Random Darknet Shopper. This discussion will provide the context for the analysis of commonalities and differences between criminal activities by humans and by artificial systems. The third contribution concerns the evaluation of different ways of addressing criminal activities by AI systems in a regulatory perspective. (shrink)

Grammar as a discipline devoted to the study of language was greatly advanced by the Alexandrian philologists, and especially by Aristarchus, as demonstrated by Stephanos Matthaios. In order to edit Homer and other literary authors, whose texts were often written in archaic Greek and presented many linguistic problems, the Alexandrians had to recognize linguistic grammatical categories and declensional patterns. In particular, to determine the correct orthography or accentuation of debated morphological forms they often employed analogy, which is generally defined as (...) the doctrine that grammatical forms must follow strict rules of declension. Modern scholars have often opposed the Alexandrian doctrine of analogy to the Pergamene doctrine of ‘anomaly’, which favoured spoken usage to determine debated forms. Detlev Fehling and David Blank, however, have shown that this strong opposition never really existed and it is mostly due to Varro. More correctly, ancient grammarians identified inflectional rules as well as forms derived from spoken usage or otherwise aberrant forms—however, respect for spoken usage in the latter case was not labelled ‘anomaly’, which was never a technical term of ancient grammar. Rather, and especially in the Roman period, grammarians used the term ‘pathology’ to account for and explain irregular forms. (shrink)

This paper presents a brief contribution to the study of the historical sources of Kant’s practical philosophy, discussing the Kantian project of a metaphysics of morals as a doctrine of duties in the context of German natural law of the 17th and 18th centuries. At first, Christian Thomasius’ distinction between internal and external obligation is exposed as the basis for the differentiation between legal duties and ethical duties. Then the Kantian opposition between a doctrine of right and a doctrine of (...) virtue is discussed against the background of Alexander Baumgarten’s and Gottfried Achenwall’s reception of Thomasius. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como foco uma análise do texto “A mulher e a arte” (sem data), da escritora carioca Júlia Lopes de Almeida (1862-1934). Este escrito, recém-publicado na íntegra pela primeira vez, em revista acadêmica, constitui uma conferência da autora na qual ela expõe suas opiniões sobre o tema da arte de autoria feminina, tecendo uma série de críticas de cunho feminista à desigualdade entre os gêneros no espaço da criação artística. Em seu texto, a literata cita diversos nomes de (...) artistas e intelectuais mulheres, de modo a sustentar seu argumento em defesa da potência criativa feminina e assinalar a importância da transformação da cultura patriarcal. Assim, a partir do olhar historiográfico e embasados pela epistemologia feminista, buscamos ressaltar a conferência como fundamental para o estudo da escrita de autoria feminina e feminista no Brasil entre os séculos XIX e XX.Palavras-chave: Júlia Lopes de Almeida. Literatura. Feminismo. AbstractThis article focuses on an analysis of the text “The woman and the art” (undated), by the writer Júlia Lopes de Almeida (1862-1934), from Rio de Janeiro. This writing, recently published in full for the first time, constitutes a conference in which the author exposes her opinions on the theme of art of female authorship, weaving a series of feminist criticisms of the inequality between genders in the space of artistic creation. In her text, Júlia lists several names of artists and women intellectuals, in order to support her argument in defense of the feminine creative power and point out the importance of the transformation of patriarchal culture. Thus, from the historiographic perspective and based on feminist epistemology, we seek to emphasize the conference as fundamental for the study of female and feminist writing feminists in Brazil between the 19th and 20th centuries.Keywords: Júlia Lopes de Almeida. Literature. Feminism. (shrink)

RESUMO O presente artigo discute o papel de Christian Thomasius como pioneiro da Aufklärung, bem como a especificidade desta no contexto mais amplo do Iluminismo. A partir de uma discussão sobre os recentes estudos acerca do Iluminismo, será extraída uma diretriz interpretativa para avaliar a peculiaridade política e filosófica da Aufklärung. ABSTRACT This paper discusses the role of Christian Thomasius as a pioneer of the Aufklärung and the specific position of the latter in the broader context of the Enlightenment. Departing (...) from a review of recent studies on the Enlightenment, this paper will draw an interpretative guideline to assess the political and philosophical peculiarity of the Aufklärung. (shrink)

Neofregeanism and structuralism are among the most promising recent approaches to the philosophy of mathematics. Yet both have serious costs. We develop a view, structuralist neologicism, which retains the central advantages of each while avoiding their more serious costs. The key to our approach is using arbitrary reference to explicate how mathematical terms, introduced by abstraction principles, refer. Focusing on numerical terms, this allows us to treat abstraction principles as implicit definitions determining all properties of the numbers, achieving a key (...) neofregean advantage, while preserving the key structuralist advantage, which objects play the number role does not matter. (shrink)

Sociopolitical attitudes are often the root cause of conflicts between individuals, groups, and even nations, but little is known about the origin of individual differences in sociopolitical orientation. We test a combination of economic and evolutionary ideas about the degree to which the mating market, sex, age, and income affect sociopolitical orientation. We collected data online through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk from 1108 US participants who were between 18 and 60, fluent in English, and single. While ostensibly testing a new online (...) dating website, participants created an online dating profile and described people they would like to date. We manipulated the participants’ popularity in the mating market and the size of the market and then measured participants’ sociopolitical attitudes. The sociopolitical attitudes were reduced to five dimensions via Principal Components Analysis. Both manipulations affected attitudes toward wealth redistribution but were largely not significant predictors of the other dimensions. Men reported more unrestricted sociosexual attitudes, and more support for benevolent sexism and traditional family values, than women did, and women supported wealth redistribution more than men did. There was no sex difference in accepting nonconforming behaviors. Younger people and people with lower incomes were more liberal than older people and people with higher incomes, respectively, regardless of sex. Overall, effects were largely not interactive, suggesting that individual differences in sociopolitical orientation may reflect strategic self-interest and be more straightforward than previously predicted. (shrink)

Frege's definition of the real numbers, as envisaged in the second volume of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, is fatally flawed by the inconsistency of Frege's ill-fated Basic Law V. We restate Frege's definition in a consistent logical framework and investigate whether it can provide a logical foundation of real analysis. Our conclusion will deem it doubtful that such a foundation along the lines of Frege's own indications is possible at all.

The global spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) has led to the imposition of severely restrictive measures by governments in the Western hemisphere. We feel a contrast between these measures and our freedom. This contrast, we argue, is a false perception. It only appears to us because we look at the issue through our contemporary moral philosophy of utilitarianism and an understanding of freedom as absence of constraints. Both these views can be (...) substituted with more sophisticated alternatives, namely an ethics of virtue and a notion of freedom of the will. These offer a fuller picture of morality and enable us to cooperate with the current restrictions by consciously choosing to adhere to them instead of perceiving them as draconian and immoral. We ask whether we should collaborate with the restrictions and argue that considerations of virtue will lead to an affirmative answer. More broadly, virtue ethics permits to deal with the practical concerns about how an individual should behave during this pandemic, given the current lockdown measures or lack thereof. -/- In section 1, we present how utilitarianism and a notion of freedom as negative liberty support the opposition to restrictive measures. In section 2, we outline an alternative based on an ethics of virtue and a more elaborated notion of free will. In the concluding section 3, we argue that considerations of virtue should guide the individual and public response to the emergency. (shrink)

The purpose of this randomized controlled study was to investigate the impact of a 12-week physical education program on the self-efficacy of overweight schoolgirls. We randomly assigned 60 overweight schoolgirls to either an experimental moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise group or a control group that received non-specific regular PE lessons with activities chosen by the curricular teacher mainly focused on team games and sports skills that aimed to achieve general psycho-physical wellness. To assess the starting level of students and significant (...) changes reached, at baseline and after training, a battery of standardized assessment motor tests and a psychometric scale were administered. At the end of the intervention, the experimental group reported a considerable decrease in body mass index and a large improvement in self-efficacy. No significant changes were found in the CG. The results suggested that the 12-week moderate to a vigorous aerobic exercise program is an effective weight loss intervention and a vehicle to promote a range of outcomes important to the qualitative growth of adolescents. In fact, it could provide a positive and significant impact on the self-efficacy of overweight schoolgirls. (shrink)

This paper is a critical response to Andreas Bartels’ sophisticated defense of a structural account of scientific representation. We show that, contrary to Bartels’ claim, homomorphism fails to account for the phenomenon of misrepresentation. Bartels claims that homomorphism is adequate in two respects. First, it is conceptually adequate, in the sense that it shows how representation differs from misrepresentation and non-representation. Second, if properly weakened, homomorphism is formally adequate to accommodate misrepresentation. We question both claims. First, we show that homomorphism (...) is not the right condition to distinguish representation from misrepresentation and non-representation: a “representational mechanism” actually does all the work, and it is independent of homomorphism – as of any structural condition. Second, we test the claim of formal adequacy against three typical kinds of inaccurate representation in science which, by reference to a discussion of the notorious billiard ball model, we define as abstraction, pretence, and simulation. We first point out that Bartels equivocates between homomorphism and the stronger condition of epimorphism, and that the weakened form of homomorphism that Bartels puts forward is not a morphism at all. After providing a formal setting for abstraction, pretence and simulation, we show that for each morphism there is at least one form of inaccurate representation which is not accommodated. We conclude that Bartels’ theory – while logically laying down the weakest structural requirements – is nonetheless formally inadequate in its own terms. This should shed serious doubts on the plausibility of any structural account of representation more generally. (shrink)

Cryonics—also known as cryopreservation or cryosuspension—is the preservation of legally dead individuals at ultra-low temperatures. Those who undergo this procedure hope that future technology will not only succeed in reviving them, but also cure them of the condition that led to their demise. In this sense, some hope that cryopreservation will allow people to continue living indefinitely. This book discusses the moral concerns of cryonics, both as a medical procedure and as an intermediate step toward life extension. In particular, Minerva (...) analyses the moral issues surrounding cryonics-related techniques by focusing on how they might impact the individuals who undergo cryosuspension, as well as society at large. (shrink)

O trabalho aborda questões bastante discutidas na contemporaneidade, buscando uma maior compreensão do pensamento filosófico na educação. Na tentativa de propor um entendimento da problemática em que se voltou a Filosofia da Educação, o estudo analisa as discussões controversas entre analíticos e continentais, reconhecendo em Habermas e Rorty a possibilidade de abandonar o pensamento idealista e subjetivo da tradição filosófica. O objetivo é refletir sobre as abordagens teóricas e metodológicas utilizadas nessas discussões, identificando as contribuições que a hermenêutica, o pragmatismo (...) e a filosofia da linguagem podem viabilizar à educação, assinalando a necessidade de desenvolver mudanças nos modos de se pensar e gerir a formação. Em defesa de uma produção semântica para o estudo filosófico no processo de formação de professores, o texto demarca algumas críticas à filosofia da educação por estar voltada apenas para a filosofia continental (antes da virada lingüística), relatando a pretensão de redescobrir o sujeito educativo na linguagem. O estudo, voltado às discussões filosóficas mais atuais do mundo ocidental, pretende incitar a concretização das propostas de grandes aportes teóricos do pensamento, possibilitando repensar o modelo da pedagogia tradicional à luz de novos critérios de avaliação, desenvolvendo através da linguagem, um novo espírito para o estudo da filosofia da educação. Essa reabertura, permite repensar a imagem da filosofia contemporânea e suas implicações educacionais, facilitando a ultrapassagem dos limites conceituais das teorias filosóficas dogmáticas, presas ao historicismo, reconstruindo o cenário teórico baseado no entendimento pragmático e hermenêutico da situação atual. (shrink)