Natural selection is commonly seen not just as an explanation for adaptive evolution, but as the inevitable consequence of “heritable variation in fitness among individuals”. Although it remains embedded in biological concepts, such a formalisation makes it tempting to explore whether this precondition may be met not only in life as we know it, but also in other physical systems. This would imply that these systems are subject to natural selection and may perhaps be investigated in a biological framework, where (...) properties are typically examined in light of their putative functions. Here we relate the major questions that were debated during a three-day workshop devoted to discussing whether natural selection may take place in non-living physical systems. We start this report with a brief overview of research fields dealing with “life-like” or “proto-biotic” systems, where mimicking evolution by natural selection in test tubes stands as a major objective. We contend the challenge may be as much conceptual as technical. Taking the problem from a physical angle, we then discuss the framework of dissipative structures. Although life is viewed in this context as a particular case within a larger ensemble of physical phenomena, this approach does not provide general principles from which natural selection can be derived. Turning back to evolutionary biology, we ask to what extent the most general formulations of the necessary conditions or signatures of natural selection may be applicable beyond biology. In our view, such a cross-disciplinary jump is impeded by reliance on individuality as a central yet implicit and loosely defined concept. Overall, these discussions thus lead us to conjecture that understanding, in physico-chemical terms, how individuality emerges and how it can be recognised, will be essential in the search for instances of evolution by natural selection outside of living systems. (shrink)

We aim to do two things in this article. On the positive end, our goal is to explain how some seemingly incompatible aspects of belief live together, by presenting distinct mechanistic explanations of each of them: in particular we want to show how belief can be discerning, credulous, rational, and irrational. After clarifying our positive view, we take aim at some competitor views in the second half of the paper, particularly offering critiques of epistemic vigilance and social marketplace accounts of (...) belief. We conclude by inviting proponents to provide an architecture for belief that can be tested against existing models. (shrink)

Taste as Experience puts the pleasure of food at the center of human experience. It shows how the sense of taste informs our preferences for and relationship to nature, pushes us toward ethical practices of consumption, and impresses upon us the importance of aesthetics. Eating is often dismissed as a necessary aspect of survival, and our personal enjoyment of food is considered a quirk. Nicola Perullo sees food as the only portion of the world we take in on a daily (...) basis, constituting our first and most significant encounter with the earth. Perullo has long observed people's food practices and has listened to their food experiences. He draws on years of research to explain the complex meanings behind our food choices and the thinking that accompanies our gustatory actions. He also considers our indifference toward food as a force influencing us as much as engagement. For Perullo, taste is value and wisdom. It cannot be reduced to mere chemical or cultural factors but embodies the quality and quantity of our earthly experience. (shrink)

La métaphore du réseau s'est imposée durant les années quatre vingt dix à l'occasion de ce qu'il est convenu d'appeler le « topical turn », pour décrire les logiques de développement de la vie culturelle et leur analyse en termes spatiaux plutôt que temporels. Simultanément, il arrive que la constitution de réseaux soit bel et bien déterminée historiquement notamment de manière générationnelle ou sociopolitique. Les contributeurs de cet ouvrage s'inspirent de cette réflexion pour traiter d'un phénomène de réverbération dans l'histoire (...) culturelle, en particulier d'expression allemande, des années vingt aux années soixante du XXe siècle. Au plan métacritique, la réception répétée de la philosophie de Frédéric Nietzsche, mais aussi d'Ernst Cassirer notamment chez Michel Foucault et Gilles Deleuze apparaît comme un lien constitutif de ce déploiement métaphorique. D'autres modèles explicatifs sont présentés tel celui des paradigmes en science ou celui d'un équilibrage pulsionnel, de type psychanalytique. Des études de cas précis illustrent également cette hésitation entre le modèle métaphorique et le modèle historique, concernant les modes d'affirmation de certaines avants-gardes, l'étude de la reprise poétique chez Heissenbüttel ou Rühmkorf, filmique chez Godard, ou théâtrale chez les héritiers d'Artaud. Die Metapher des Netzwerkes hat sich im Laufe der neunziger Jahre anlässlich des sogenannten «topical turn» zur Beschreibung der logischen Mechanismen in der Entwicklung des kulturellen Lebens und deren Analyse in eher räumlichen als zeitlichen Begriffen durchgesetzt. Der Aufbau von Netzwerken mag aber auch historisch bedingt sein, zum Beispiel durch Generationszugehörigkeit und sozial-politische Umstsozial-politische Umstände. Die Beiträger dieses Bandes gehen von dieser Überlegung aus, um sich dem Phänomen der Spiegelung in der Kulturgeschichte - insbesondere in der deutschsprachigen - von den zwanziger bis sechziger Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts auseinanderzusetzen. Auf metakritischer Ebene erscheint die wiederholte Rezeption der Philosophie Friedrich Nietzsches, aber auch Ernst Cassirers, insbesondere bei Michel Foucault und Gilles Deleuze als eine Verbindung, die wesentlich ist für die Entfaltung der räumlichen Metaphorik. Weitere Erklärungsmodelle werden vorgeschlagen, wie das paradigmatisch-wissenschaftliche oder das triebhaft-psychoanalytische. Fallstudien illustrieren zudem dieses Zögern zwischen metaphorischem und historischem Modell, was die Selbstbehauptung gewisser Avantgarden sowie die Untersuchung bestimmter Rezeptionsmomente betrifft, im poetischen Bereich bei Heissenbüttel oder Rühmkorf, im filmischen bei Godard, oder im dramatischen bei den Erben Artauds. (shrink)

During the thirteenth century, Aristotelian hylomorphism became the cornerstone of scholastic natural philosophy. However, this theory was fragmented into a plurality of interpretations and reformulations, sparking a rich philosophical debate. This article focuses on Robert Grosseteste (d. 1253), one of the earliest Latin philosophers to directly engage with Aristotle’s natural philosophy. Specifically, it delves into Grosseteste’s perspective on hylomorphism, emphasizing two controversial doctrines that characterized British scholasticism in the late thirteenth century: universal hylomorphism and formal pluralism. The former claims that (...) all substances, whether bodily or spiritual, are hylomorphic compounds, that is, they are made of matter and form. Formal pluralism, in turn, maintains that hylomorphic substances possess more than one substantial form simultaneously. After a brief introduction, the paper proceeds, first, to examine the type of hylomorphism endorsed by Grosseteste, shedding light on an obscure passage that seems to suggest universal hylomorphism. Second, the examination expands on Grosseteste’s theory of bodily form and emphasizes the apparent contradiction of this theory with universal hylomorphism. The discussion then turns to Grosseteste’s endorsement of formal pluralism and the functionality he envisioned being expressed by the bodily form. Finally, the paper draws conclusions about Grosseteste’s revised hylomorphic account. (shrink)

The empirical study of belief is emerging at a rapid clip, uniting work from all corners of cognitive science. Reliance on belief in understanding and predicting behavior is widespread. Examples can be found, inter alia, in the placebo, attribution theory, theory of mind, and comparative psychological literatures. Research on belief also provides evidence for robust generalizations, including about how we fix, store, and change our beliefs. Evidence supports the existence of a Spinozan system of belief fixation: one that is automatic (...) and independent of belief rejection. Independent research supports the existence of a system of fragmented belief storage: one that relies on large numbers of causally isolated, context-sensitive stores of belief in memory. Finally, empirical and observational data support at least two systems of belief change. One system adheres, mostly, to epistemological norms of updating; the other, the psychological immune system, functions to guard our most centrally held beliefs from potential inconsistency with newly formed beliefs. Refining our under- standing of these systems can shed light on pressing real-world issues, such as how fake news, propaganda, and brainwashing exploit our psychology of belief, and how best to construct our modern informational world. (shrink)

With aims to both increase organ supply and better reflect individual donation preferences, many nations worldwide have shifted from ‘opt‐in’ to ‘opt‐out’ systems for post‐mortem organ donation (PMOD). In such countries, while a prospective donor's willingness to donate their organs/tissues for PMOD was previously ascertained—at least partially—by their having recorded positive donation preferences on an official register prior to death, this willingness is now presumed or inferred—at least partially—from their not having recorded an objection to PMOD—on an official organ donation (...) register. Using evidence regarding the presence and prevalence of selective donation preferences, and via exploration of how appeals to donation preferences are used to both motivate and legitimate shifts to opt‐out frameworks, this paper draws attention to a set of previously unexplored problems for opt‐out organ donation arising in contexts where: (a) individuals demonstrate selective post‐mortem organ/tissue donation preferences, (b) legislation provides prospective donors with the opportunity to selectively permit/refuse the donation of certain organs/tissues in line with these preferences. While selective preferences pose few problems for opt‐in systems where a selective occasion is built into the process of signing the donor register, this is not the case for opt‐out systems. The loss of this selective occasion can cause significant problems where appeals to preferences motivate/legitimate shifts to opt‐out but evidence regarding variable preferences does not feed into determinations regarding organ/tissue exclusions. The nature of these problems depends on how the authorization aspect of ‘opt‐out’ systems is framed (e.g. as presumed consent, deemed consent or, given the role of familial consent in many jurisdictions as consent in name only). (shrink)

What semantics should we attribute to mass expressions like "wisdom" and "love", which are derived from gradable expressions? We first examine how these expressions are used, then how they are interpreted in their various uses. We then propose a model to account for these data, in which derived mass nouns denote instances of properties.

What semantics should we attribute to nouns like "wisdom" and "generosity", which are derived from gradable adjectives? We show that, from a morphosyntactic standpoint, these nouns are mass nouns. This leads us to consider and answer the following questions. How are these nouns interpreted in their various uses? What formal representations may one associate with their interpretations? How do these depend on the semantics of the adjective? And where lies the semantic unity of nouns like wisdom and generosity with the (...) more familiar concrete mass nouns, like wine and furniture? (shrink)

Malebranche's Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion is in many ways the best introduction to his thought, and provides the most systematic exposition of his philosophy as a whole. In it, he presents clear and comprehensive statements of his two best-known contributions to metaphysics and epistemology, namely, the doctrines of occasionalism and vision in God; he also states his views on such central issues as self-knowledge, the existence of the external world and the problem of theodicy. His skilful handling of (...) the dialogue form enables the reader to see how he responds to objections made to his earlier work The Search after Truth. This edition presents a translation of the text which is clear, readable and more accurate than any of its predecessors, together with an introduction that analyses Malebranche's central teachings and explains the importance of the Dialogues in the context of seventeenth-century philosophy. (shrink)

Nicolas Weill propose une lecture stimulante de ces textes qui constituent une des découvertes philosophiques les plus importantes de ces dernières années. La publication des "Cahiers" redonne une actualité brûlante à la question qui divise épigones et détracteurs du penseur allemand : comment continuer à philosopher avec Heidegger sans tenir compte d'une éventuelle contamination de cette philosophie par l'idéologie nazie? Par une analyse sans concession des "Cahiers", en se concentrant sur les Réflexions (tenues par Heidegger de 1931 à 1941) (...) mais tout en cherchant à en dégager les éléments proprement philosophiques, cet ouvrage invite à une approche équilibrée, quitte à "penser avec Heidegger, contre Heidegger", comme le suggérait Jürgen Habermas dès le début des années 1950. Il montre notamment comment l'auteur d'Etre et temps, en inventant une nouvelle forme de philosopher, a poursuivi et prolongé dans ces carnets la critique de la modernité telle qu'elle a été formulée par la "révolution conservatrice" allemande et par Oswald Spengler, le théoricien du déclin de l'Occident. (shrink)

Dieu est Amour. Il est le Tout-Puissant, et l'homme, sa créature de prédilection, son enfant, se débat contre les forces du mal. Tel est le mystère! Le mal ne tourmente pas seulement la chair et le cœur de l'homme, il met en question sa confiance en Dieu et sa foi. Ce livre ne vise pas à donner à l'esprit une solution claire et suffisante, qui répondrait à ses questions. On ne résout pas un mystère. La tentation de se révolter contre (...) Dieu, à cause du mal qu'il permet, est fallacieuse, car la révolte n'a pas de sens en dehors de la Foi en ce Dieu qu'elle conteste; mais elle n'en a pas davantage à l'intérieur de cette Foi qui Le reconnaît comme infiniment bon et compatissant. Dieu est Amour et il est le Tout-Puissant : mais si son amour même introduisait au cœur de sa puissance une dimension de respect envers sa créature, qui se manifesterait en ce monde par une sorte d'impuissance? Si cette mystérieuse impuissance du Tout-Puissant était la condition nécessaire pour que l'Amour agisse en ce monde par la croix? Amère et incompréhensible ici-bas, la croix apparaîtra un jour comme elle est : instrument de victoire sur la mort, semence de vie et de joie dans la paix éternelle. C'est de cette « impuissance de Dieu » au sein de sa Toute-Puissance et au service de son Amour que l'auteur a osé traiter. (shrink)

What semantics should we attribute to nouns like "wisdom" and "generosity", which are derived from gradable adjectives? We show that, from a morphosyntactic standpoint, these nouns are mass nouns. This leads us to consider and answer the following questions. How are these nouns interpreted in their various uses? What formal representations may one associate with their interpretations? How do these depend on the semantics of the adjective? And where lies the semantic unity of nouns like "wisdom" and "generosity" with the (...) more familiar concrete mass nouns, like "wine" and "furniture"? (shrink)

Connected devices, such as smartphones and tablets, are exposed to a large variety of attacks. Their protection is often challenged by their resource constraints in terms of CPU, memory and energy. Security chains, composed of security functions such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems and data leakage prevention mechanisms, offer new perspectives to protect these devices using software-defined networking and network function virtualization. However, the complexity and dynamics of these chains require new automation techniques to orchestrate them. This chapter describes an (...) automated orchestration methodology for security chains in order to secure connected devices and their applications. This methodology exploits process learning to establish behavioral models and infer security constraints represented as logical predicates. It then generates and merges a set of chains of security functions on the basis of these predicates. These chains are finally compiled into low-level configuration rules and deployed into the network, optimizing for the underlying topology. The benefits and limits of such a methodology combining machine learning and verification techniques are evaluated by a set of experimental results. (shrink)

An examination of the ways human movement can be represented as a formal language and how this language can be mediated technologically. In Motion and Representation, Nicolás Salazar Sutil considers the representation of human motion through languages of movement and technological mediation. He argues that technology transforms the representation of movement and that representation in turn transforms the way we move and what we understand to be movement. Humans communicate through movement, physically and mentally. To record and capture integrated movement (...) (both bodily and mental), by means of formal language and technological media, produces a material record and cultural expression of our evolving kinetic minds and identities. Salazar Sutil considers three forms of movement inscription: a written record (notation), a visual record (animation), and a computational record (motion capture). He focuses on what he calls kinetic formalism—formalized movement in such pursuits as dance, sports, live animation, and kinetic art, as well as abstract definitions of movement in mathematics and computer science. He explores the representation of kinetic space and spatiotemporality; the representation of mental plans of movement; movement notation, including stave notation (Labanotation) and such contemporary forms of notation as Choreographic Language Agent; and the impact of digital technology on contemporary representations of movement—in particular motion capture technology and Internet transfer protocols. Motion and Representation offers a unique cultural theory of movement and of the ever-changing ways of representing movement. (shrink)

Pour yourself glass of Three Wizard's Chardonnay, Winkle's Old Peculiar, or Soggy Mountain Dew, pull up a three-legged chair, and for Om's sake, stay out of the bathtub! Keep and eye open for the octarine flashes that would indicate magic is trying to escape from the pages and be ready to grab something made of copper in order to ground uncontrolled magic without harmful incident (Some would Consider the Copper Safeguard Unnecessary) You are now ready to dive into Discworld and (...) Philosophy and join a group of philosophical Discworld fans as they explore truth, history, death, luck, morality, and reality in the magical inverse of the Disc. (shrink)

World food production is facing exorbitant challenges like climate change, use of resources, population growth, and dietary changes. These, in turn, raise major ethical and political questions, such as how to uphold the right to adequate nutrition, or the right to enact a gastronomic culture and to preserve the conditions to do so. Proposals for utopic solutions vary from vertical farming and lab meat to diets filled with the most fanciful insects and seaweeds. Common to all proposals is a polarized (...) understanding of food and diets, famously captured by Warren Belasco in the contraposition between technological fixes and anthropological fixes. According to the first, technology will deliver clean, just, pleasurable, affordable food; future generations will not need to adjust much of their dietary cultures. According to the second, future generations should dramatically change their dietary habits (what they eat and how they eat it) to achieve a sustainable diet. The two fixes found remarkably distinct perspectives over dietary politics and the ethics of food production and consumption. In this paper we argue that such polarized thinking rests on a misrepresentation of the ontological status of food, which in turn affects the underlying ethical and political issues. Food is a socially constructed object that draws in specific ways on habits, norms, traditions, geographical, and climatic conditions. Although this thesis seems somewhat obvious, its consequences on the ethical and political perspectives on the future of food have not been derived properly. After introducing the issue at stake (¤1), we point out the polarities that characterize food utopias (¤2) and their ontological faults (¤3). We hence suggest that a socio-ontological analysis of food can better deliver the principles for a foundation of food utopias (¤4). (shrink)

This paper demonstrates the central role of the Socratic elenchus in the Sophist. In the first part, I defend the position that the Stranger describes the Socratic elenchus in the sixth division of the Sophist. In the second part, I show that the Socratic elenchus is actually used when the Stranger scrutinizes the accounts of being put forward by his predecessors. In the final part, I explain the function of the Socratic elenchus in the argument of the dialogue. By contrast (...) with standard scholarly interpretations, this way of reading the text provides all the puzzles about being (241c4–251a4) with a definite function in the dialogue. It also reveals that Plato’s methodology includes a plurality of method and is more continuous than what is often believed. (shrink)

In recent years much research has been undertaken regarding the feasibility of the human uterine transplant as a treatment for absolute uterine factor infertility. Should it reach clinical application this procedure would allow such individuals what is often a much-desired opportunity to become not only social mothers, or genetic and social mothers but mothers in a social, genetic and gestational sense. Like many experimental transplantation procedures such as face, hand, corneal and larynx transplants, UTx as a therapeutic option falls firmly (...) into the camp of the quality of life transplant, undertaken with the aim, not to save a life, but to enrich one. However, unlike most of these novel procedures – where one would be unlikely to find a willing living donor or an ethics committee that would sanction such a donation – the organs to be transplanted in UTx are potentially available from both living and deceased donors. In this article, in the light of the recent nine-case research trial in Sweden which used uteri obtained from living donors, and the assertions on the part of a number of other research teams currently preparing trials that they will only be using deceased donors, I explore the question of whether, in the case of UTx, there exist compelling moral reasons to prefer the use of deceased donors despite the benefits that may be associated with the use of organs obtained from the living. (shrink)

Has the time come to put to bed the concept of a harm threshold when discussing the ethics of reproductive decision making and the legal limits that should be placed upon it? In this commentary, we defend the claim that there exist good moral reasons, despite the conclusions of the non-identity problem, based on the interests of those we might create, to refrain from bringing to birth individuals whose lives are often described in the philosophical literature as ‘less than worth (...) living’. (shrink)

When attempting to determine which of our acts affect future generations and which affect the identities of those who make up such generations, accounts of personal identity that privilege psychological features and person affecting accounts of morality, whilst highly useful when discussing the rights and wrongs of acts relating to extant persons, seem to come up short. On such approaches it is often held that the intuition that future persons can be harmed by decisions made prior to their existence is (...) mistaken as identity is a most fragile thing with even the smallest differences in the conditions under which we procreate affecting not the interests of distinct future persons, but the identities of those who will come to exist in the future. Within this paper I reject this view, holding that a subscription to these two accounts need not result in the conclusion that virtually all acts relating to possible persons are permitted. Further, I argue that such accounts may in fact allow a great deal more scope for the determination of prenatal harms than accounts of personal identity that privilege physical features. Finally, by interpreting claims regarding causal identity such as Parfit’s Time Dependence Claim in terms of Counterpart Theory I suggest that a solution to the non-identity problem can be found in the acceptance of, as relevant in prenatal cases, three kinds of objective similarity relations: Biological, Environmental and Decisional counterpart relations. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that moral deliberation requires that the alternatives available in a choice situation are evaluatively comparable. This comparability assumption is threatened by claims of incomparability, which is often established by means of the small improvement argument (SIA). In this paper I argue that SIA does not establish incomparability in a stricter sense. The reason is that it fails to distinguish incomparability from a kind of evaluative indeterminacy which may arise due to the vagueness of the evaluative comparatives (...) ‘better than,’ ‘worse than,’ and ‘equally as good as.’. (shrink)

Political communication in modern democratic societies often requires the speaker to address multiple audiences with heterogeneous values, interests and agendas. This creates an incentive for communication strategies that allow politicians to send, along with the explicit content of their speech, concealed messages that seek to secure the approval of certain groups without alienating the rest of the electorate. These strategies have been labeled dogwhistling in recent literature. In this article, we provide an analysis of overt intentional dogwhistling. We recognize two (...) main stages within the OIDs’ way of conveying a concealed message: the expression of a perspective together with the transmission of an accompanying positioning message vis-à-vis the OID targeted sub-audience, and the inferential extraction of a set of cognitive and non-cognitive contents inferred on the basis of the former stage. Furthermore, we identify three linguistic mechanisms whereby these contents may be transmitted: conventional meaning, conversational implicature and perlocutionary inferencing. Hence, on our view OIDs are not a uniform category, as they may differ as to what extent the concealed content is speaker-meant, and thus actually communicated by the speaker. (shrink)

During the Covid-19 pandemic, a considerable amount of people seem to have been lured into believing in conspiracy theories. These people deliberately disregard expert advice by virologists and physicians concerning social behaviour that is aimed at reducing the number of new infections. Disregarding traditional experts and their advice is just one example of what, in the philosophy of science, is referred to as a crisis of expertise – the phenomenon whereby people seem to have lost their trust in traditional expert (...) advice and are looking for alternatives. In the following paper, the trend to use Internet technology as an epistemic alternative will be analysed in detail by investigating the question of whether the Internet really allows people to become epistemically more autonomous. The focus will be on the epistemic and moral vulnerability of people resorting to new media tools instead of relying on traditional expert opinion. It will be shown that some important presuppositions about the Internet and, in particular, social media tools as alternative ways to collect information and find emotional support in a group of like-minded people cannot be maintained. (shrink)