This is an excerpt from the contentThe reasons that drive individuals to develop new technologies and to disseminate them in new products and processes, and the capacity to develop original solutions to technological problems, can be analysed with the concepts typical of individual and social cognitive psychology. Various aspects of cognitive activity address innovation. In particular, the capacity to grasp the latent questions and needs of the market that lies behind the possibility to identify opportunities for new products or services; (...) the means of generating solutions that can respond effectively to the realisation of these new opportunities; problem solving processes in the identification of new procedures that underpin process inventions and new manufacturing techniques; the risk of innovative behaviour and the contexts that can favour a greater or lesser propensity to develop innovative solutions. The best historical example of the two stages of the identification of the problem/opportunity and the generation of. (shrink)

The term Methodological Cognitivism was introduced in the late 90s when cognitivism was dominated by the information-processing psychology approach. The model of the mind was of the Cartesian type, and the analogy was that of the digital Turing machine. The MC program was, however, open to incorporate within it the developments of neurocognitive sciences and embodied cognition. A dimension of wide embodied cognition of action incorporates both the causal role of the body and the causal variables of the extended, embedded, (...) and enactive dimension of individual action. Ultimately, it is an Embodied Individualism that structurally includes the environmental and social dimensions in individual action. The concept of social affordances and the individual enaction towards them demonstrates how there is a horizontal relationship and recursive interaction between individual action and the social environment. The embedded dimension of the action in the sense of the situational context that shapes it is another concept that expresses the founding social dimension of the action. Finally, the extended dimension of cognition, which is not limited only to what is contained in the individual’s skull, but is present in all mnemonic supports and external computing devices of an artificial but also social human type. (shrink)

This symposium on Monique Deveaux’s Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements includes commentaries by Sally Matthews, Renante D. Pilapil, Violetta Igneski, and Wouter Peeters, with a reply from Deveaux. The book makes the case that normative thinking about poverty should engage closely with the aims, insights, and actions of poor-led organizations and social movements. Challenging conventional framings of poverty by moral philosophers, Deveaux argues that chronic poverty is centrally about the subordination and dispossession of the poor – not mere (...) needs scarcity. To exclude people living in poverty from shaping antipoverty solutions is therefore to perpetuate their social-political domination and epistemic oppression. Deveaux’s book explains what a political reframing of poverty looks like from the vantage point of several poor-led organizations and social movements, using concrete examples from across the globe, and argues for political responsibility for solidarity with those movements. (shrink)

Biological and Cultural Bases of Human Inference addresses the interface between social science and cognitive science. In this volume, Viale and colleagues explore which human social cognitive powers evolve naturally and which are influenced by culture. Updating the debate between innatism and culturalism regarding human cognitive abilities, this book represents a much-needed articulation of these diverse bases of cognition. Chapters throughout the book provide social science and philosophical reflections, in addition to the perspective of evolutionary theory and the central assumptions (...) of cognitive science. The overall approach of the text is based on three complementary levels: adult performance, cognitive development, and cultural history and prehistory. Scholars from several disciplines contribute to this volume, including researchers in cognitive, developmental, social and evolutionary psychology, neuropsychology, cognitive anthropology, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. This contemporary, important collection appeals to researchers in the fields of cognitive, social, developmental, and evolutionary psychology and will prove valuable to researchers in the decision sciences. (shrink)

We present several results relating the general theory of the stationary tower forcing developed by Woodin with forcing axioms. In particular we show that, in combination with class many Woodin cardinals, the forcing axiom MM++ makes the Π2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\Pi_2}$$\end{document}-fragment of the theory of Hℵ2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${H_{\aleph_2}}$$\end{document} invariant with respect to stationary set preserving forcings that preserve BMM. We argue that this is a promising generalization to (...) Hℵ2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${H_{\aleph_2}}$$\end{document} of Woodin’s absoluteness results for L\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${L}$$\end{document}. In due course of proving this, we shall give a new proof of some of these results of Woodin. Finally we relate our generic absoluteness results with the resurrection axioms introduced by Hamkins and Johnstone and with their unbounded versions introduced by Tsaprounis. (shrink)

The term “emotional practices” is gaining currency in the historical study of emotions. This essay discusses the theoretical and methodological implications of this concept. A definition of emotion informed by practice theory promises to bridge persistent dichotomies with which historians of emotion grapple, such as body and mind, structure and agency, as well as expression and experience. Practice theory emphasizes the importance of habituation and social context and is thus consistent with, and could enrich, psychological models of situated, distributed, and (...) embodied cognition and their approaches to the study of emotion.It is suggested here that practices not only generate emotions, but that emotions themselves can be viewed as a practical engagement with the world. Conceiving of emotions as practices means understanding them as emerging from bodily dispositions conditioned by a social context, which always has cultural and historical specificity. Emotion-as-practice is bound up with and dependent on “emotional practices,” defined here as practices involving the self , language, material artifacts, the environment, and other people. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus, the essay emphasizes that the body is not a static, timeless, universal foundation that produces ahistorical emotional arousal, but is itself socially situated, adaptive, trained, plastic, and thus historical. Four kinds of emotional practices that make use of the capacities of a body trained by specific social settings and power relations are sketched out—mobilizing, naming, communicating, and regulating emotion—as are consequences for method in historical research. (shrink)

Recent research on “causal cognition” in adults and infants shows that we can perceive singular causal relations not previously experienced. In particular, infants that are able to perceive causality seem to rely on innate beliefs and principles that allow a priori inference of a connection between cause and effect. Can causal cognition in infants justify the thesis of causal realism? On the one hand, it weakens the central pillar of the Humean arguments: the impossibility of a synthetic a priori causal (...) inference. On the other hand, if perception is the privileged way of justifying the reality of objects of the external world, that is valid in the case of causal relations as well. Moreover, the perception of causal relations, based on innate principles and beliefs, reflects the selective results of the interaction between the real constraints of the physical structure of the world and the evolution of the human mind. (shrink)

Xenotransplantation pits clinical research ethics against public health needs because recipients must undergo long-term, perhaps life-long, surveillance for infectious diseases. This surveillance requirement is effectively an abrogation of the right to withdraw from a clinical trial. Ulysses contracts, which are advance directives for future care, may be an ethical mechanism by which to balance public health needs against limitation of individual rights.

Xenotransplantation is defined as “any procedure that involves the transplantation, implantation, or infusion into a human recipient of either live cells, tissues, or organs from a nonhuman animal source, or human body fluids, cells, tissues or organs that have had ex vivo contact with live nonhuman animal cells, tissues, or organs.” Xenotransplantation has been viewed by desperate patients and their surgeons as a solution to the problem of the paucity of human organs available for transplantation. Foes of xenotransplantation argue that (...) the use of animal organs degrades the human race and should be avoided.In this paper, we briefly review the cultural context of xenotransplantation and explore the infectious disease risk of xenotransplantation. The United States Code of Federal Regulations requires life-long surveillance of a xenotransplantation recipient due to the largely unknown risk of novel infectious disease transmitted across species, known as xenogeneic infectious disease. We argue that despite being in the interest of protecting the public health, the imposition of lifelong surveillance requirements on xenotransplant recipients effectively abrogates the right to withdraw from a clinical trial after the transplantation has taken place. Moreover, we argue that a waiver of the right to withdraw should be made explicit in the interest of full disclosure, out of respect for the research subject’s right of self-determination. (shrink)

“Agent-centered” approaches to global poverty insist that effective arguments for poverty reduction must specify the concrete duties of particular duty-bearers. This article takes up a recent, influential, version of this view, Thomas Pogge’s human rights-based argument for global economic reforms to reduce chronic deprivation. While signaling a welcome shift from the diffuse allocation of responsibilities common to much philosophical writing on poverty, I argue that Pogge’s approach too readily assigns to powerful institutions in the global North the role of devising (...) and directing anti-poverty initiatives. In so doing, he overlooks the agency—actual and potential—of the poor themselves, as evidenced by poor-led political movements and poor-centered, participatory models of poverty reduction in development theory and practice. While agent-oriented approaches are right to focus our attention on structures that cause poverty, they ought not to assume that the powerful agents responsible for these are the only—or most appropriate—agents to lead the way to poverty reduction. Just as development organizations working in the global South have come to recognize that the participation of poor communities is critical to the success of development strategies, so should normative theorists writing about global injustice acknowledge the importance of the poor as active agents in poverty reduction efforts. (shrink)

Increasing privacy concerns are arising from expanding use of aggregated personal information in health practices. Conversely, in light of the promising benefits of data driven healthcare, privacy...

We show that the Proper Forcing Axiom implies the Singular Cardinal Hypothesis. The proof uses the reflection principle MRP introduced by Moore in [11].

The mind-society problem deals with the relations between mental and social phenomena. The problem is crucial in the main methodologies of social sciences. The thesis of hermeneutics is that we can only understand but not explain the relationship between beliefs and social action because mental and social events are not natural events. The thesis of social holism is that social phenomena are emergent and irreducible to mental phenomena. The thesis of rational choice theory is that social phenomena are reducible to (...) mental phenomena and this reduction is explained by unrealistic a priori principles of rationality. These theses depend on their different solutions to the following fundamental philosophical issues: the mind-body identity; the causal nature of social explanation; the realistic goal of science. A positive answer to these issues implies support of a different solution to the mind-society problem: social phenomena are conventional concepts and they can be reduced and explained in terms of realistic concepts describing the causal mechanisms of individual reasoning and decision-making. Cognitive psychology seems to supply us some initial tentative models to explain social action, but research into neuropsychology might be able to generate the proper causal representations of the relation between mind and action. (shrink)

We often use the term “attachment” to describe our emotional connectedness to objects in the world. We become attached to our careers, to our homes, to certain ideas, and perhaps most importantly, to other people. Interestingly, despite its import and ubiquity in our everyday lives, the topic of attachment per se has been largely ignored in the philosophy literature. I address this lacuna by identifying attachment as a rich “mode of mattering” that can help to inform certain aspects of agency (...) and emotion. First, drawing on insights from Ancient stoicism and developmental and clinical psychology, I suggest that the relevant form of attachment involves a felt need for its object and a particular relationship between the object and the attached agent’s sense of security. I then argue that these features serve to distinguish the attitude from the more philosophically familiar notion of caring. Finally, I show that recognizing this form of attachment as a distinct mode of mattering has important implications for understanding grief. (shrink)

It is not uncommon for philosophers to name disinterestedness, or some like feature, as an essential characteristic of love. Such theorists claim that in genuine love, one’s concern for her beloved must be non-instrumental, non-egocentric, or even selfless. These views prompt the question, “What, if any, positive role might self-interestedness play in genuine love?” In this paper, I argue that attachment, an attitude marked primarily by self-focused emotions and emotional predispositions, helps constitute the meaning and import of at least some (...) kinds of adult reciprocal love. In this way, attachment represents a type of self-interestedness that not only contributes positively to such relationships but is also essential to them. (shrink)

This book offers a persuasive new argument for reconciling the tensions that arise when liberal democratic states try to protect two important kinds of equality: sexual equality and cultural equality.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 2, Page 474-488, March 2022.

: This essay examines the citizen's apparent agelessness that is foundational to liberal democratic theories. By engaging the notion of citizenship rights, Lanoix challenges this assumed perpetual adulthood and argues for a new way of conceptualizing the citizen. The broader notion of citizen as cohabitant allows for the changing relationship a citizen will have with her citizenship rights and accommodates individuals who are not self-governing but who, nonetheless, share a democratic space.

Concepts for sustainable bioeconomy systems are gradually replacing the ones on linear product chains. The reason is that continuously expanding linear chain activities are considered to contribute to climate change, reduced biodiversity, over-exploitation of resources, food insecurity, and the double burden of disease. Are sustainable bioeconomy systems a guarantee for a healthy planet? If yes, why, when, and how? In literature, different sustainability indicators have been presented to shed light on this complicated question. Due to high degrees of complexity and (...) interactions of actors in bioeconomy systems, trade-offs and non-linear outcomes became apparent. This fueled the debates about the normative dimensions of the bioeconomy. In particular, the behavior of actors and the utilization of products do not seem to be harmonized according to the environmental, social, and economic pillars of sustainability. Potential conflicts require a new conceptual framework that is here introduced. It consists of a ‘sustainability’ cylinder captured between an inner-cylinder, representing order, and an outer-cylinder for chaos, based on the laws of physics and complex adaptive systems. Such a framework permits (bioeconomy) systems to propagate in the sustainability zone only if they follow helical pathways serving as the new norms. Helices are a combination of two sinusoidal patterns. The first represents here the sustainable behavior of interacting actors and the second the balanced usage of resources and products. The latter counteracts current growth discourses. The applicability of the conceptual cylinder framework is positively verified via 9 cases in Europe, which encompass social-organizational and product-technological innovations. –. (shrink)

This paper assesses the claim that an agonistic model of democracy could foster greater accommodation of citizens' social, cultural and ethical differences than mainstream liberal theories. I address arguments in favor of agonistic conceptions of politics by a diverse group of democratic theorists, ranging from republican theorists - Hannah Arendt and Benjamin Barber - to postmodern democrats concerned with questions of identity and difference, such as William Connolly and Bonnie Honig. Neither Arendt's democratic agonism nor Barber's republican-inflected account of strong (...) democracy purports to include citizens' group-based cultural identities, and so cannot further the claim that agonistic politics is more inclusive of cultural and social differences. Postmodern agonistic democrats such as Connolly and Honig rely upon Arendt's account of the relationship between agonism and pluralism, and wrongly assume that her view of politics is compatible with formal respect and recognition for citizens' cultural group identities. While agonistic democracy helpfully directs us to attend to the importance of moral and political disagreement, I argue that the stronger claim that an agonistic model of democracy could more readily include culturally diverse citizens is simply unfounded. By contrast, recent liberal variants of agonistic democracy that conceive of legal and political institutions as tools for recognizing and mediating citizens' moral and cultural differences may suggest ways to deepen our democratic practices in plural societies. Key Words: agonism • agonistic democracy • Hannah Arendt • citizenship • cultural minorities • pluralism • republican theory. (shrink)

Despite the recent explosion of philosophical literature on forgiveness, relatively few theorists have addressed the possibility of un-forgiving someone for a moral violation. And among those who have addressed the question, “Can we un-forgive?” we find little consensus. In this paper, I consider whether and in what sense forgiveness is rescindable, retractable, or otherwise reversible. In other words, I consider what it might mean to say that a victim who forgave her offender for a particular act of wrongdoing later un-forgave (...) that individual for the very same act. Examining the possibility of un-forgiving positions us to gain richer understandings of both forgiveness and the complexity of navigating moral relationships more broadly. (shrink)

The article is centered in The Way's point: Do you really want to be a saint? Carry out the little duty of each moment: do what you ought and concentrate on what you are doing (nº 815) and specially be in the things you do. Whoever truthfully is in everything and entirely in all the things he or she does will do everything right, with passion and personal style. It is difficult to devote our mind and heart entirely to the (...) things we are dealing with. We want to be somewhere else, in a different place, sorrounded by other circumstances. This is the wishful misticism (mística ojalatera): an insidious and subtle enemy for these who seek for sanctity in everyday life. (shrink)

The purpose of this communication is to present some recent advances on the consequences that forcing axioms and large cardinals have on the combinatorics of singular cardinals. I will introduce a few examples of problems in singular cardinal combinatorics which can be fruitfully attacked using ideas and techniques coming from the theory of forcing axioms and then translate the results so obtained in suitable large cardinals properties.The first example I will treat is the proof that the proper forcing axiom PFA (...) implies the singular cardinal hypothesis SCH, this will easily lead to a new proof of Solovay's theorem that SCH holds above a strongly compact cardinal. I will also outline how some of the ideas involved in these proofs can be used as means to evaluate the “saturation” properties of models of strong forcing axioms like MM or PFA.The second example aims to show that the transfer principle ↠ fails assuming Martin's Maximum MM. Also in this case the result can be translated in a large cardinal property, however this requires a familiarity with a rather large fragment of Shelah's pcf-theory.Only sketchy arguments will be given, the reader is referred to the forthcoming [25] and [38] for a thorough analysis of these problems and for detailed proofs. (shrink)

La traduction scientifique et technique et la terminologie relèvent d'un régime empirique comparable. Examinées au prisme de la doctrine linguistique de vérité logique, elles se différencient à partir de la ligne de démarcation langue naturelle / langage formel. Après avoir analysé les rapports respectifs des théories de la traduction et de la terminologie à la philosophie du langage issue de l'empirisme logique, on cherchera à clarifier les rapports réciproques entre ces théories chez les auteurs les plus représentatifs du modèle logico-ontologique. (...) On s'intéressera enfin à l'évolution du modèle dans un cadre fonctionnaliste et on s'interrogera sur les limites de la rupture épistémologique entrevue depuis les années 1980. L'engouement pour la traduction des terminologies servira d'exemple à charge. L'alternative pourrait venir de la sémantique textuelle.The scientific and technical translation and terminology are of a comparable empirical regime. Examined through the prism of linguistic doctrine of logical truth, they differ from the line natural language / formal language. After analyzing the reports of the respective theories of translation and terminology in the philosophy of language following the logical empiricism, we seek to clarify the interrelationship between these theories in the most representative authors logico-ontological model. Finally we will look at the evolution of the model in a functionalist and we will question the limits of epistemological rupture interview since 1980. The craze for the translation of terminologies used as an example to load. The alternative could have come from textual semantics. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 9, Page 14-15, September 2011.

(2013). Introduction. Journal of Global Ethics: Vol. 9, Critical Approaches to Global Justice: At the Frontier, pp. 111-114. doi: 10.1080/17449626.2013.818467.

The works of the Anglo-Indian artist Anish Kapoor challenge the intangibility of the real and the reality of the objects, the surrounding space, even the spectator himself. They make it appear as an illusion and point to an invisible reality located beyond or beneath, or even at the very heart of the visible. This essay explores the nature of this hidden realm, which the works allow us to see or at least to foresee. It interrogates also the phenomenological mechanisms at (...) play in the works, which induce the spectator into putting the real in doubt, to confront him or herself to the invisible and to name it. (shrink)

How should liberal democratic states respond to cultural practices and arrangements that run afoul of liberal norms and laws? This article argues for a reframing of the challenges posed by traditional or nonliberal cultural minorities. The author suggests that viewed from up close, such dilemmas are revealed to be primarily intracultural rather than intercultural conflicts, and reflect the political and practical interests of factions of communities much more than deep moral differences. Using the example of the reform of customary marriage (...) laws in post-apartheid South Africa, this article makes the case for a more pragmatic, politically focused approach to resolving conflicts of culture that it is argued is both more democratic and effective than alternatives recently advanced by liberals and deliberative democracy theorists. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar la existencia de un aspecto durkheimiano en la filosofía de la religión de William James, aspecto habitualmente inadvertido en las interpretaciones corrientes de su obra. Para ello mostraré cómo subyace en Las variedades de la experiencia religiosa la prototípica distinción durkheimiana entre lo sagrado y lo profano como rasgo esencial de la religión. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the existence of a Durkheimian aspect in William James' philosophy of religion, an (...) aspect that has gone unnoticed in the usual interpretations of his work. To this effect, the article shows how Durkheim's prototypical distinction between sacred and profane underlies The Varieties of Religious Experience as an essential feature of religion. (shrink)

In The American Evasion of Philosophy Cornell West makes a comparison between the developments of European and classical American philosophies. Within West's analogy, however, two important American figures are missing: Josiah Royce and George H. Mead. In the context of this framework, this article ..