Social robotics attempts to build robots able to interact with humans and other robots. Philosophical and scientific research in social cognition can provide social robotics research with models of social cognition to implement those models in mechanic agents. The aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, I present and defend a framework in social cognition known as mindshaping. According to it, human beings are biologically predisposed to learn and teach cultural and rational norms and complex cultural patterns of behavior that (...) enhance social cognition. Secondly, I will highlight how this framework can open new research perspectives in the area of social robotics. (shrink)

This book examines leadership strategies that allow administrators to be proactive, visionary, and flexible while increasing collaboration, open communication, and closely integrating theory and practice to ensure successful administration in higher education settings.

The concept of vulnerability is widely used in bioethics, particularly in research ethics and public health ethics. The traditional approach construes vulnerability as inherent in individuals or the groups to which they belong and views vulnerability as requiring special protections. Florencia Luna and other bioethicists continue to challenge traditional ways of conceptualizing and applying the term. Luna began proposing a layered approach to this concept and recently extended this proposal to offer two new concepts to analyze the concept of vulnerability, (...) namely understanding external conditions that trigger vulnerability and layers of vulnerability with cascading effects. Luna's conception of vulnerability is useful, which we demonstrate by applying her layered view and the new analyses in multiple contexts. We begin by outlining Luna's view and we use vignettes from healthcare involving transgender patients, the care of patients in psychiatric contexts, and research involving prisoners to illustrate how each part of Luna's concept elucidates important moral issues. (shrink)

Since the publication of Clark and Chalmers' Extended Mind paper, the central claims of that paper, viz. the thesis that cognitive processes and cognitive or mental states extend beyond the brain and body, have been vigorously debated within philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science. Both defenders and detractors of these claims have since marshalled an impressive battery of arguments for and against “active externalism.” However, despite the amount of philosophical energy expended, this debate remains far from settled. We (...) argue that this debate can be understood as answering two metaphysical questions. Yet prominent voices within the debate have assumed that there is a tight relationship between these two questions such that one question can be answered via the other. We defend an alternative ‘wide’ view, whereby mentality is understood as constituted by wide social and cultural factors. Our wide view entails that the two metaphysical questions are separate and should be kept distinct. This suggests that active externalism as understood by prominent voices within that debate requires dissolution, rather than solution. However, if the debate were instead understood as only focusing on the second of the two questions, then there could be a possible future for this debate. (shrink)

My purpose in this article is to provide a reconstruction of the mechanics of philosophical analysis that Wittgenstein carried out in “On Certainty”. I will show that this analysis is based, specifically, on an appeal to a wide propositional typology that serves to evaluate and diagnose Moore’s propositions. To this end, I shall first explain how common readings of the methodological issues in “On Certainty” fail. Secondly, I focus on the mechanics of analysis found in paragraphs 1-65, specifically the analysis (...) of three sentences: “There are physical objects”, “I know that there is a hand here” and “here the mistake is impossible”. Thirdly, I proceed to identify different stages of the method and justify in what sense the strategic core of such research is the table of propositional typologies. (shrink)

Muscle synergy analysis via surface electromyography is useful to study muscle coordination in motor learning, clinical diagnosis, and neurorehabilitation. However, current methods to extract muscle synergies in the upper limb suffer from two major issues. First, the necessary normalization of EMG signals is performed via maximum voluntary contraction, which requires maximal isometric force production in each muscle. However, some individuals with motor impairments have difficulties producing maximal effort in the MVC task. In addition, the MVC is known to be highly (...) unreliable, with widely different forces produced in repeated measures. Second, synergy extraction in the upper limb is typically performed with a multidirection reaching task. However, some participants with motor impairments cannot perform this task because it requires precise motor control. In this study, we proposed a new isometric rotating task that does not require precise motor control or large forces. In this task, participants maintain a cursor controlled by the arm end-point force on a target that rotates at a constant angular velocity at a designated force level. To relax constraints on motor control precision, the target is widened and blurred. To obtain a reference EMG value for normalization without requiring maximal effort, we estimated a linear relationship between joint torques and muscle activations. We assessed the reliability of joint torque normalization and synergy extraction in the rotating task in young neurotypical individuals. Compared with normalization with MVC, joint torque normalization allowed reliable EMG normalization at low force levels. In addition, the extraction of synergies was as reliable and more stable than with the multidirection reaching task. The proposed rotating task can, therefore, be used in future motor learning, clinical diagnosis, and neurorehabilitation studies. (shrink)

Many scholars are ready to accept that first person thought involves a special way w such that, for any thinker x, only x can access the first person way w of thinking about x. Standard articulations of this Frege-inspired view involve a rejection of the strict shareability of first person thought. I argue that this rejection eventually forces us to renounce an intuitively plausible characterisation of communication, and specifically, disagreement. This result invites us to explore alternative articulations which, still within (...) an overall Fregean framework, may better explain how first person thoughts reach out into a public, shareable dimension. Here I shape this possibility in terms of perspectives, i.e. ways of thinking that do not individuate concepts or thoughts. Perspectives, I submit, can serve to unproblematically accommodate basic disagreement in indexical cases and to outline the dynamic character of first person thought. (shrink)

This essay argues that culpability and responsibility are independent notions, even though some of the same facts make us both responsible and culpable. Responsibility for one’s conduct is grounded in the strength of the agential connection between oneself and one’s conduct. Culpability for one’s conduct is the vices that give rise to that conduct. It then argues that responsibility and culpability for causing a threat are each grounds of liability to defensive harm independent of the other.

Background: Caregivers and administrators in long-term facilities have fragile moral work in caring for residents with dementia. Residents are susceptible to barriers and vulnerabilities associated with the most intimate aspects of their lives, including how they express themselves sexually. The conditions for sexual agency are directly affected by caregivers’ perceptions and attitudes, as well as facility policies. Objective: This article aims to clarify how to approach capacity determinations as it relates to sexual activity, propose how to theorize about patient autonomy (...) in this context, and suggest some considerations for finding an ethically responsible and practically feasible way to respect the sexual rights of this population. Research Design: The focus is on residents with early to moderate dementia in states of daily dependency on professional caregivers. The article critically examines existing empirical research on sexuality among persons with dementia, caregivers’ attitudes, and institutional roadblocks to enabling residents’ sexuality. A relational lens and insights from disability studies are used in the philosophical analysis. Participants and Research Context: No research participants were part of this analysis. Ethical Considerations: This article offers a conceptual analysis and normative framework only. Findings: The analysis highlights the delicate balance that capacity assessments for sexual activity have to strike; while caregivers should protect those who cannot give adequate consent, the denial of sexuality among residents can cause deep, long-ranging harms. Sexual agency features into an ongoing sense of self for many individuals with dementia, and the imposition of inappropriate standards and expectations for sexual autonomy can lead to unwarranted obstacles to sexual activity. Discussion: Recommendations include developing clear and inclusive institutional policies and practices of care, providing education for caregivers on how to discuss and document residents’ sexual preferences over time, and taking advantage of ethics consultation services. Conclusion: This analysis establishes the need for more research and discussion on this sensitive topic. Future research should investigate the specific responsibilities of caregivers in furthering the sexual interests of residents, how exactly to modify existing capacity instruments, and how best to support historically marginalized patients in their sexual identities. (shrink)

O objeto da discussão se propõe a buscar na origem do pensamento conservador do XIX e na sua relação com a teologia neoescolástica à chave interpretativa da renovação eclesial e teológica proporcionada pelo Concilio Vaticano II. A vinculação entre teologia e dogmática católica e sua relação com o pensamento conservador pretendem assegurar o retorno a um ideal da cristandade através de uma oposição cerrada com uma filosofia combativa e uma teologia dogmática “antimodernista”. Por um lado, o pensamento conservador alcança seu (...) declínio e permanece a margem diante do surgimento do novo proporcionado pelo Concilio e por outro lado, a desconexão da teologia de toda a cristandade, permite uma renovação da metodologia dogmática católica. (shrink)

Recent philosophical developments on personal indexicals reveal a disagreement between those who defend and those who deny the existence of a distinctive class of second person thoughts. In this piece, I tackle this controversy by highlighting two crucial constraints based on paradigmatic felicitous singular uses of the second person pronoun. On the one hand, the Addressing Constraint is brought out by the awareness and action capabilities displayed in successfully addressing another. On the other hand, the Merging Constraint arises, among other (...) things, from the fact that ‘I’/‘you’-exchanges ground intersubjective disagreement. Once these constraints are fully in view, I go on to show that they pose a challenging dilemma for any account of the second person and that the chasm between friends and foes of the distinctness of second person thought is better seen as endorsements of one of the horns of the dilemma. In reaction to this, I outline a way of accommodating both constraints in terms of ‘perspectives’, i.e. ways of thinking of a reference that do not individuate a thought. On the recommended approach, the second person perspective is cognitively distinctive but does not itself signal the existence of a distinctive second person type of thought. By contrast, a single type of thought about selves expressible with personal indexicals—the self-thought type—can be shown to comprise the third, the second and, perhaps surprisingly, the first person perspective. Unlike other perspectival approaches, the here proposed analysis relies on an elucidation of perspectives in terms of specific information on which a thinker draws made available by a concept-individuating reference rule. (shrink)

This article defends the right that Palestinians have to return to the territory governed by Israel. However, it does not defend the duty on Israel to permit return. Whether there is such a duty depends on whether the economic, social and security costs override that right. In order to defend the right of return, it is shown both that the current generation of Palestinians retain a significant interest in return, and that insofar as their interests are diminished, their rights are (...) not diminished proportionally. The interests of Jewish Israelis in excluding the Palestinians are then considered. Their rights of self-determination, it is argued, do not powerfully favour excluding the Palestinians. The economic, social and security costs may do so. Overall, I conclude that either the Israel should grant return to the Palestinians or it should properly acknowledge the right of return and respond appropriately through a powerful effort to compensate and resettle them. (shrink)

This is a response to the four essays on Wrongs and Crimes.

Recent philosophical developments on personal indexicals reveal a disagreement between those who defend and those who deny the existence of a distinctive class of second person thoughts. In this piece, I tackle this controversy by highlighting two crucial constraints based on paradigmatic felicitous singular uses of the second person pronoun. On the one hand, the Addressing Constraint is brought out by the awareness and action capabilities displayed in successfully addressing another. On the other hand, the Merging Constraint arises, among other (...) things, from the fact that ‘I’/‘you’-exchanges ground intersubjective disagreement. Once these constraints are fully in view, I go on to show that they pose a challenging dilemma for any account of the second person and that the chasm between friends and foes of the distinctness of second person thought is better seen as endorsements of one of the horns of the dilemma. In reaction to this, I outline a way of accommodating both constraints in terms of ‘perspectives’, i.e. ways of thinking of a reference that do not individuate a thought. On the recommended approach, the second person perspective is cognitively distinctive but does not itself signal the existence of a distinctive second person type of thought. By contrast, a single type of thought about selves expressible with personal indexicals—the self-thought type—can be shown to comprise the third, the second and, perhaps surprisingly, the first person perspective. Unlike other perspectival approaches, the here proposed analysis relies on an elucidation of perspectives in terms of specific information on which a thinker draws made available by a concept-individuating reference rule. (shrink)

Der Wiener Kreis war Ausgangspunkt fA1/4r eine internationale philosophische Bewegung, die eine Erneuerung und Reformierung der Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts zur Folge hatte. Der Neopositivismus dieser Gruppe ist die wohl wichtigste philosophische Erscheinung der Zwischenkriegszeit. Da gerade im deutschsprachigen Raum diese Philosophie Ablehnung erfahren hat, ihre ReprAsentanten von den faschistischen Machthabern verfolgt und vertrieben wurden, ist die Bedeutung dieser Gesamtdarstellung A1/4ber den Wiener Kreis von Victor Kraft, die erstmals 1946 publiziert wurde, kaum zu ermessen. Kraft, selbst GrA1/4ndungsmitglied des Zirkels, (...) geht nicht nur auf die Positionen seiner verschiedenen Vertreter ein, sondern erarbeitet ausfA1/4hrlich den metaphysikkritischen Ansatz des logischen Empirismus, die Wechselwirkungen und VerAnderungen, die dieses Denken durch den EinfluA Wittgensteins und spAter dann durch die Kritik Poppers erhalten hat. (shrink)

Our attitudes to wrongdoers, and what social and institutional practices we apply to them or engage them in, depend on whether (in our eyes) they are responsible for their wrongdoing. They also depend on whether we see them as fully or partially responsible agents more generally. Very crudely, we hold to account agents who are responsible for their conduct to account, where we treat the non-responsible. This chapter explores the relationship between treatment and accountability by critically engaging with P F (...) Strawson’s influential views on the issue. It argues that the appropriate distinction between treatment and accountability is based primarily on the content of interpersonal exploration of wrongdoing rather than the attitudes and practices that are involved in these practices. (shrink)

We argue that we have obligations to future people that are similar in kind to obligations we have to current people. Modifying Michael Bratman’s account, we argue that as planning agents we must plan for the future to act practically in the present. Because our autonomy and selfhood are relational by nature, those plans will involve building affiliative bonds and caring for others. We conclude by grounding responsibility to future others by the way we plan through our social institutions. Our (...) account fills out the story of responsibility to future generations by referring only to ourselves, our practical identities, and practical reason. (shrink)

In Sparing Civilians, Seth Lazar claims that in war, with rare exceptions, killing noncombatants is worse than killing combatants. This paper raises some doubts about whether this is an important principle – at least, once we understand Lazar’s clarifications. It also suggests that however it is clarified, it seems false. And it suggests a related principle that more plausible. This related principle applies only to those with just aims, and it applies only to intentional killing rather than to all forms (...) of killing. (shrink)

Times of Existential Discomfort are these, where man is still seeking for a spiritual path, between sacred and profane. What's the role of philosophy in this search, does she require some means that are in others hands? In th hands of powered people, between economic powershi and aesthetic extravaganza?

to be, being and belonging, some point of departure categories to arrive to the conclusion that happyness is connecte to a feeling of possession, the Havinng. I revisit some ideaas of my PhD Text.

Violence is somehow equivalent to Be Right? How can I be fair and non-violent? It depends on the receptor, in terms of social comunication.

It’s a great honour to respond to these marvellous papers. I wish my interlocutors were worse!

In multiple essays, CLR James lays out what a theory of subjectivity must account for to resolve issues stemming from reducing subjectivity to a singular identity. Most proposals for a theory of subjectivity do so by making the subject the object of another’s propositions or claims about the world. I argue that this is an identity claim. The converse of this process is also true, that the subject who claims another as the object of their proposition must also be the (...) object of a proposition themselves, leaving the capacity to form these expressions untouched. In Black Cultural studies, there has been a lot of attention paid to the capacity for one to become the object of their own propositions due to the conception that Black identity overdetermines Black subjects’ expressions prior to their articulation. Our reorientation to the study of subjectivity posits an entity whose operation functions to mobilise as well as implement identity claims. Subjectivity is a capacity while identity becomes the object of that capacity, an object shared between subjects that are known by becoming the object of propositions regarding the world, including their own. This essay attempts to resolve the conflicts that arise once the mistake of conflating subjectivity with identity claims is made and proposes a model whereby the concept of Black subjectivity can be explained. (shrink)

how's going human civilizat5ion: preparing to leave earth behind?

A logic path between moral principles of social organization of religious rules and the economiy of belief in industrial societies. I argue that some lifes may be like currency, a Good and a Bad Side, due to the dilema betwee profit and spiritual reasons.

This chapter is a response to Derek Baker’s careful and subtle reading of, and critical engagement with, both my paper, and P F Strawson’s ‘Freedom and Resentment’.

Saturation, intoxication to the medias of realization and porsuit of happyness.

The Fodorian central objections to Inferential Role Semantics can be taken to include an ‘Analyticity Challenge’ and a ‘Circularity Challenge’, which are ultimately challenges to IRS explanations of concept possession. In this paper I present inferential role theories, critically examine these challenges and point out two misunderstandings to which they are exposed. I then state in detail a rationalist version of IRS and argue that this version meets head on the Fodorian challenges. If sound, these considerations show that there is (...) no problem of principle in the consideration of IRS as a good candidate for a theory of concepts. (shrink)

Absorb or replicate em terms of social relacions and even intercourse? Reflect, with reflection, it may be silly, but it works, on several levels of human experience.

Etnofiction essay, between anthropology and philosophy.

Vacuity, vanity, proposal of a elapsed time fadeaway, an essay in portuguese language, soon on english.

Fear. Cerimonial Fear, as the Judge could be God, wich represents, some way, the entire society, dead or alive.

Scale (gross domestic product), composition (goods and services), and technology (impacts per unit of goods and services) in combination are the proximate determinants in an economy of the resources used, wastes generated, and land transformed. In this article, we examine relationships among these determinants to understand better the contribution that changes in each have made in the past, and might in the future, to reduce the burden placed on the environment by the economy. Using the IPAT equation we assess quantitatively (...) historical changes in scale, composition, and technology in Canada and their respective contributions to changes in environmental impact. The Kaya equation provides a similar framework for a more in-depth consideration of the changes in scale, composition, and technology required to achieve a substantial reduction in global emissions of carbon dioxide. We conclude that it is essential to address scale as part of the solution. (shrink)

Cet article se propose de lire la poésie de Vallejo comme une tentative de penser ce qu’Alain Badiou nomme « l’événement ». Vallejo, en tant qu’auteur marxiste, s’appuie sur l’écriture poétique afin de penser une interruption révolutionnaire dont signification échappe aux catégories conceptuelles existantes. Il développe cette pensée de trois façons. Premièrement, en annonçant l’événement. Vallejo met en lumière la manière dont le sujet fait l’expérience de l’événement comme d’une « vérité ». Deuxièmement, en constatant l’événement, c’est-à-dire en examinant comment (...) il conduit à la formation d’un nouveau genre de communauté auquel correspond une nouvelle éthique. Troisièmement, en posant en même temps l’événement comme une « cause perdue », c’est-à-dire comme une cause qui engage la fidélité du sujet qui la porte, indépendamment de son succès ou de son échec. Sur la base de cette interprétation, je soutiens que la poésie de Vallejo se détache du strict contexte de sa constitution pour contribuer à la pensée universelle de la politique révolutionnaire. (shrink)

Abstract:How might reading fiction allow a victim of the deadly sin of pride to escape? Your fictive imagination uses the transworld exemplification of performance props playing the somaesthetic role of your avatar, a character whom you are not simply acting or identifying with but "being." You avoid the epistemic glitch of a point of view from nowhere. You play the fictive role of your avatar either in the make-believe world of sport and art without time past or in the rhetorical (...) activity of communication learning about history in that fictional world complete with moral judgment and the judgment of taste. (shrink)

Розглянуто проблеми соціальної адаптації в сучасному українському суспільстві, виявлено семіотичні виміри комунікативної взаємодії, що дає можливість окреслити рівень конвенціональності на всіх рівнях суспільних відносин. Обґрунтовано пов’язаність соціальної адаптації в українському соціумі з пошуками взаємоузгодження та взаєморозуміння. Обумовлено необхідність дослідження концептуальних засад становлення та формування громадянського суспільства, зокрема переосмислення традиційної конвенціональності.

A ideia de sublime é necessária à reflexão filosófica contemporânea?

to be or not to be ethically neutral, in a world of decieve and calculation.

a forma como o autor insere na filosofia o trabalho de campo etnográfico, que passa a ser uma das metodologias da filosofia.

resumed version of a Philosophycal Anthropology, a PhD Thesis.

correlação filosófico da escrita, linguagem e discurso, entre a prática, praxis, nos termos filosófico e antropológico, fazendo a ponte.