Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

This book constitutes a critical intervention in the theoretical discussion over the political relationship between democracy and communism. Shedding light on the philosophical origins of the democracy debate, it draws a clear demarcation line between liberalism and republicanism, arguing that after rejecting the former and supporting the latter, the young Marx endorsed 'true democracy' as a prelude to his forthcoming theory of communism. To this end, while following the dynamics of the Marxian history of political ideas and pre-communist theory of (...) the state, the book takes into account the thought of a vast range of philosophers and political theorists, starting from the Ancient times, passing through the Age of Enlightenment, the German Idealist tradition the Young Hegelians’ Republicanism, and reaching our own times. It will be of interest to students and scholars interested in the history of political thought, theories of democracy, and Marxism. (shrink)

This reconsideration of Hume’s classic essay “Of Miracles” via the lens of American pragmatist ways of thinking about history and power shifts our attention from Hume’s epistemic concerns about the legitimacy of witnesses and testimony to his distaste for sacred history, his critical stance regarding the social force of revelation, and his disdain for religious authority. To view Hume’s essay both as an articulation of a critical philosophy of history and as an exercise in moral dynamism (social power or, authority, (...) is a result of epistemic transactions), is to intervene in both Hume studies and Contemporary Pragmatism. (shrink)

In this article I present two possible interpretations of Rawls’s assertion in A Theory of Justice that human beings have a desire to express their nature as free and rational. My reading hinges on different accounts of the Kantian conception of the person and of the Aristotelian principle and its companion effect. According to the first interpretation, this desire is a kind of natural predisposition inherent in all persons irrespective of the society in which they live. It has a universal (...) and ahistorical aspect. The second interpretation sees our free and rational nature as an ideal that we strive to fulfill. This ideal appeals only to citizens of modern liberal democracies and entails a more qualified universalism. I argue that there is strong textual support for both interpretations but the second one is more consistent with the methodological framework of justice as fairness. (shrink)

Michael and Niketas Choniates, significant figures of letters of the second half of the twelfth and the early thirteenth century, were closely related to the Belissariotai, a noble family of the Byzantine aristocracy. Thanks to both Choniatai brothers we are able to gather valuable information about the Belissariotai and to examine not only their role in the administration of the state during the last quarter of the twelfth century, but also their unbreakable bonds of friendship and kinship with the Choniatai. (...) This paper aims to present a thorough prosopographic study on the Belissariotai family through the examination of literary and sigillographic evidence and to challenge a series of long-established views regarding the different stages of their life and career. (shrink)

Under the lig ht of Being and Nothingness’s the o re t ical body – Sartre’s master piece –, it is intended to discuss the essential source of human reality as “n i h i l a t i o n” and ontological lack, as well as manifestations and cons e q u e nces from this primordial human passion to be transformed to coagulated transcendence, to be transformed in Being In-itself-For-itself: to be consciousness and, at the same t i (...) me, to be a complete and finished Being, with infinite de nsity and witho u t fissures. (shrink)

An examination of David Hume's philosophy of religion that situates his conception "true religion" within the context of his overall science of human nature, his rejection of popular religion, and his Ciceronian influence"--Provided by publisher.

Nel 1956, in piena guerra fredda, una conferenza di scienziati al Dartmouth College negli Stati Uniti annunciò il lancio di un audace progetto scientifico, l’Intelligenza Artificiale (I.A.). Dopo l’iniziale fallimento degli sforzi della “Hard AI” di produrre un’intelligenza simile a quella umana, alla fine del XX secolo è emerso il movimento della “Soft AI”. Invece di essere orientato a imitare il comportamento umano in relazione a compiti specifici, ha preferito cercare modi alternativi di eseguire i compiti basati sulle particolari funzioni (...) e strutture della macchina. Il fattore decisivo è stata la combinazione della tecnologia di apprendimento automatico con le comunicazioni digitali online, l’incontro tra l’IA e Internet. Le applicazioni dell’IA “soft” sono quelle che vediamo nel mondo dei dispositivi automatici “intelligenti” che informano la nostra vita sociale digitale. Nel seguente articolo mi concentrerò su una particolare applicazione dell’IA per le discussioni online con utenti umani, ChatGPT, per mostrare le implicazioni della tecnologia digitale online nelle modalità storico-sociali dell’esistenza umana. ChatGPT è un’applicazione che combina l’IA con Internet, le possibilità della corrispondenza tra macchine e le potenzialità della tele-comunicazione umana. Il mio approccio si concentra sulle implicazioni fenomenologiche e storico-sociali della proliferazione della tecnologia AI per quanto riguarda la coscienza e la socialità umana. -/- Abstract (english) -/- In 1956, amidst the Cold War, a conference of scientists at Dartmouth College in the United States announced the launch of a bold, scientific project, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). After the initial failure of “Hard AI” efforts to produce a human-like intelligence, the “Soft AI” movement emerged in the late 20th century. Instead of being oriented towards imitating human behaviour concerning specific tasks, it preferred to seek alternative ways of performing tasks based on the particular functions and structures of the machine. The decisive factor was the combination of Machine Learning technology with Digital Online Communications, the meeting between AI and the Internet. The applications of “Soft” AI are those we see in the world of “smart”, “intelligent” automatic devices that inform our digital social life. In the following article, I will focus on a particular application of AI for online discussions with human users, ChatGPT, in order to show the implications of online digital technology in the social-historical modalities of human existence. ChatGPT is an application that combines AI with the Internet, the possibilities of Machine correspondence with the potentialities of human telecommunications. My approach focuses on the phenomenological and social-historical implications of the proliferation of AI technology as regards human consciousness and sociality. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Enguehard (Natural Language Semantics 29(4):527–578, 2021 ), who observes that presuppositions project in the same way from coordinations of declaratives and coordinations of polar questions, but existing mechanisms of projection from declaratives (e.g. Schlenker in Theoretical Linguistics 34(3):157–212, 2008, Semantics and Pragmatics 2:1–78, 2009 ) fail to scale to questions. His solution involves specifying a trivalent inquisitive semantics for (coordinations of) questions that bakes the various asymmetries of presupposition projection into the lexical entry of (...) conjunction/disjunction. However, we argue that such a move faces both theoretical and empirical issues. Instead, we show that the data can be handled without moving to such an asymmetric inquisitive denotation, by adapting the novel pragmatic theory of _Limited Symmetry_ (Kalomoiros in Proceedings of the 52nd annual meeting of the North East linguistic society, GLSA, Amherst, 2022 ) to an inquisitive framework in a way that leaves the underlying semantics for conjunction symmetric and bivalent, while deriving the projection data. (shrink)

Drawing on recent findings, this study examines whether valence concordant electromyography (EMG) responses can be explained as an unconditional effect of mere stimulus processing or as somatosensory simulation driven by task-dependent processing strategies. While facial EMG over the Corrugator supercilii and the Zygomaticus major was measured, each participant performed two tasks with pictures of album covers. One task was an affective evaluation task and the other was to attribute the album covers to one of five decades. The Embodied Emotion Account (...) predicts that valence concordant EMG is more likely to occur if the task necessitates a somatosensory simulation of the evaluative meaning of stimuli. Results support this prediction with regard to Corrugator supercilii in that valence concordant EMG activity was only present in the affective evaluation task but not in the non-evaluative task. Results for the Zygomaticus major were ambiguous. Our findings are in line with the view that EMG activity is an embodied part of the evaluation process and not a mere physical outcome. (shrink)

In this paper we secure the explanatory value of affordances by treating them as relational properties and as inherently linked to unintentional movements and possible intentional actions. We distinguish between Basic affordances, which are related to unintentional movements, and Complex affordances, which are subjective and executively controlled by individuals. The linkage between affordances and motor intentions allows for accounting for the infinite number of affordances that any given object potentially has. Appealing to objective systematic contingencies that provide the actor with (...) information about the effects of her actions, allows for accounting for perception of affordances and for securing their explanatory value. (shrink)

Interaction between drivers and pedestrians is often facilitated by informal communicative cues, like hand gestures, facial expressions, and eye contact. In the near future, however, when semi- and fully autonomous vehicles are introduced into the traffic system, drivers will gradually assume the role of mere passengers, who are casually engaged in non-driving-related activities and, therefore, unavailable to participate in traffic interaction. In this novel traffic environment, advanced communication interfaces will need to be developed that inform pedestrians of the current state (...) and future behavior of an autonomous vehicle, in order to maximize safety and efficiency for all road users. The aim of the present review is to provide a comprehensive account of empirical work in the field of external human–machine interfaces for autonomous vehicle-to- pedestrian communication. In the great majority of covered studies, participants clearly benefited from the presence of a communication interface when interacting with an autonomous vehicle. Nevertheless, standardized interface evaluation procedures and optimal interface specifications are still lacking. (shrink)

Setting out from the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, this article engages with post-Heideggerian thought on community, seeking to bring out and to enhance its political thrust for contemporary democracies. It shows how Jean-Luc Nancy, Roberto Esposito and Giorgio Agamben, ‘common the political’, that is, how they reconsider politics in light of a fundamental sense of co-existence which clears the ground for social openness, solidarity, plurality and autonomy. It then responds to a series of pertinent objections by further politicizing the post-Heideggerian (...) vision of the common. I set out to translate the ontologies of the common into more concrete political logics by relating them to actual political practices and by joining them to the political theory of hegemony and antagonism set out by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Their conjunction of the ‘common’ with the antagonistic politics of hegemony is tension-ridden, as they draw from conflicting understandings of ‘the political’, pitting plurality and horizontal relations against division and uneven power. To mitigate that conflict, these two approaches should be situated at different sites of political action, and the hegemonic framework should be recast so as to bring it more into line with horizontalist ‘common’ politics. (shrink)

Current corporate social responsibility approaches attempt to implement the vision of sustainable development at the corporate level. In fact, the term "corporate sustainability" may be a more accurate descriptive label for these attempts. Ambitious governmental, business and academic goals, and corresponding efforts have been established. Nonetheless, a truly satisfactory implementation of the broad CSR concept as well as the more specific challenges of corporate sustainability continue to be an elusive goal at the corporate management level. This article presents a description (...) of a new management tool, a systematic method for implementing CSR successfully on the basis of a triple bottom line approach to sustainability. It fills in many of the still missing gap on the corporate level. The method presented here offers a multi-purpose approach for the collection, systematization, quantification, and evaluation of all the relevant issues found within a corporate environment. It allows for specifying and systematizing appropriate areas of action, taking into account the continuum of economic, ecologic,1 and social dimensions. Accordingly, the article is best characterized as a treatment of complex CSR issues, developed against the normative anchor of sustainability as the conceptual background. (shrink)

We can locate the problematic of time within three philosophical questions, which respectively designate three central areas of philosophical reflection and contemplation. These are: 1) The ontological question, i.e. 'what is being?' 2) The epistemological question, i.e. 'what can we know with certainty?' 3) The existential question, i.e. 'what is the meaning of existence?' These three questions, which are philosophical, but also scientific and political, as they underline the political and moral question of truth and justice, arise from the phenomenon (...) of time, the irreversible constant flow of phenomena that undermines every claim to absolute knowledge. The purpose of this essay is to illuminate the importance of time for philosophical thought and, more generally, for human social and psychical life, in the context of the ontology of Cornelius Castoriadis. Castoriadis, who asserted that " being is time – and not in the horizon of time " , correlated history to society and being to temporality within the social-historical stratum, the ontological plane created by human existence, where " existence is signification ". Time is interpreted as the creation and destruction of forms in a magmatic, layered with a non-regular stratification, reality, where the social-historical manifests as the creation of collective human activity, in the manner of social imaginary significations. This notion of temporality is accompanied by a profound criticism of traditional rationalistic philosophy, to which Castoriadis assigns the name 'ensemblistic/identitary', that highlights the necessity of a new, magmatic ontology, based on the primacy of time. (shrink)

«Τι να κάνουμε;» [Что делать?], ήταν ο τίτλος ενός πολιτικού φυλλαδίου που έγραψε ο Β. Ι. Λένιν το 1901 και κυκλοφόρησε το 1902 στη Ρωσία. Παρόλο τον ερωτηματικό χαρακτήρα του τίτλου, η απάντηση του Λένιν που αναπτυσσόταν στις σελίδες του κειμένου, έμελλε να τεθεί προστακτικά στο επαναστατικό κίνημα.

Everybody knows that Superman is Clark Kent. Nobody knows that Superman is Clark Kent. Located between these two absolute statements is the epistemological limit that separates the superhero fictitious universe from our universe of causal reality. The superheroic double identity is a secret shared by the superhero and the reader of the comic or the viewer of the movie, and quite often the superhero winks at the outside world, thus breaking the 4th wall and establishing this collusive relationship. However, in (...) our hypothesis, we are interested in Superman not as a fictitious archetype, but rather as a fictitious metaphor. We are not interested in his double identity as the matrix of superheroic attributes and narratives, but rather as the differential limit between superhuman and human within the fictional universe. Because, the reader or the viewer may share the secret identity with Superman and also with Spiderman or Batman or any other superhuman, but the secret equivalence of Superman and Clark Kent contains another hidden antithesis. (shrink)

Its preoccupation with ontology presents radical democracy with a thorny dilemma: how to combine commitment and affirmation with a distinctive emphasis on contingency and contestability. The article addresses this dilemma by engaging with three different perspectives. Ernesto Laclau’s work shows the intrinsic constraints of ontology and the inadequacy of a simple distinction between ontology and ethico-political decision. Simon Critchley opposes tying radical politics to ontological prefiguration and argues for a particular ethico-political orientation. But ethics and politics come entwined with ontological (...) assumptions, and the ethical direction of politics can be as restrictive as its ontological framing. William Connolly weds ontology and ethics to a sharp awareness of their contestability. But his approach does not reach deep enough. It is not alive to the contestability of the very recognition of contestability. To enhance openness and reflexivity, projects of radical democracy should combine a dimension of substantive, detailed accounts with a reflexive commitment to contestability, which disrupts, questions and renews the thicker descriptions in the name of democracy and truth. (shrink)

The concept of time-travel is a modern idea which combines the imaginary signification of rational domination, the imaginary signification of technological omnipotence, the imaginary concept of eternity and the imaginary desire for immortality. It is a synthesis of central conceptual schemata of techno-science, such as the linearity and homogeneity of time, the radical separation of subjectivity from the world, the radical separation of the individual from his/her social-historical environment. The emergence of this idea, its spread during the 20th century as (...) a major theme of science fiction literature alongside its dissemination as a scientific hypothesis, its popularity with both the public and the scientific community, are indications of the religious role of techno-science. It is my opinion, finally, that, as a chimera, time-travel is non-feasible and impossible. In order to support my claims, I will briefly outline the origins of the time-travel concept and its epistemological and metaphysical/ontological conditions. If these conditions prove to be absurd, the logical impossibility of time-travel will have been demonstrated. (shrink)

Cogitation described as calculation, the living being described as a machine, cognitive functions considered as algorithmic sequences and the ‘mechanization’ of the subjective were the theoretical elements that late heideggerian anti–humanism, especially in France was able to utilize[1], even more so, after the second cybernetics or post-cybernetics movement of the late ‘60s introduced the concepts of the autopoietic and the allopoietic automata[2]. Recently, neurologists pose claims on the traditional epistemological field of philosophy, proceeding from this ontological decision, the equation of (...) human cognition to cybernetic systems. -/- The emergence of the world-wide-web in the 1990s and the global expansion of the internet during the first decades of the 21st century indicate the fallacies of the cybernetics programme to mechanize the mind. We stand witnesses to a semantic colonization of the cybernetic system, a social imaginary creation and expansion within the digital ensemblistic – identitarian organization that cannot be described by mechanical or cybernetic terms. Paradoxically, cyberspace, as a new being, a form of alterity, seems to both exacerbate and capsize the polarization between the operational and the symbolic. The creation of the internet might be more than an epistemological revolution, to use the terminology of Thomas Kuhn. It might be an ontological revolution. -/- I will try to demonstrate that the emergence of the Internet refutes any such claims, since its context and utility can only be described by means of a social epistemology based on the understanding of social significances as continuous creations of an anonymous social imaginary proposed by Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997). I will try to explore some social-semantic aspects of the cyberspace as a nexus of social representations of the individual identity that forms a new sphere of being, where the subjective and the objective merge in a virtual subjective objectivity with unique epistemological attributes and possibilities. (shrink)

Alexandros Kioupkiolis re-conceptualises the common in tandem with the political. By engaging with key thinkers of community and the commons, including Nancy, Ostrom, Hardt and Negri, together with poststructuralist conceptions of agonism and hegemony from Mouffe and Laclau, he remedies problematic issues of power relations and division.

This article makes the case that Greece has witnessed a transition from a ‘post-democratic’ condition in the ’90 s and the early 21st century to a regime of ‘post-political biopower’ in 2010–12 that can bid democracy farewell. To adequately theorize this modality of power in a way pertinent to contemporary Greece, the paper takes its bearings from Agamben’s take on biopower, the homo sacer and the endless state of exception. But the analysis fills in Agamben’s theoretical skeleton by drawing on (...) Naomi Klein’s account of the ‘Shock Doctrine’, which captures a particular technique of biopower deployed by neoliberal hegemony, Deleuze’s insights about the ‘society of control’ and Lazzarato’s elaborations of these insights with reference to the ‘indebted man’, which can shed light on the political implications of the Greek debt crisis. Yet popular responses, initiatives and electoral politics, as well as the intricacies of dominant power relations, upset any monolithic and quasi-totalitarian account of sovereign rule, disclosing cracks, imbalances and dispersion in its edifice. (shrink)

La découverte sur l'Acropole d'un nouveau fragment de la tête Akr. 2381, qui a déjà fait l'objet de tant de discussions, et était attribuée ordinairement à diverses figures féminines du fronton Est du Parthénon, permet enfin de comprendre et d'interpréter la tête. Le nouveau fragment, qui appartient à la partie gauche de la tête, nous permet d'établir quel était le mouvement de la tête et nous aide à définir le sexe de la figure. Les conclusions que l'on tire d'un examen (...) général de la tête nous permettent une critique des différentes positions des recherches anciennes et récentes pour l'attribution de celle-ci aux différentes figures du fronton Est. (shrink)

La reconstitution de la 11e métope Sud du Parthenon est un exemple caractéristique de la démarche suivie par la recherche archéologique pour reconstituer les métopes détruites par l'explosion de 1687. En utilisant comme guide les très précieux dessins de Carrey, et en sachant que les métopes Sud sont les seules dont les reliefs n'ont pas été abattus par les Chrétiens, on peut identifier les divers fragments et les attribuer aux métopes auxquelles ils appartiennent. On ajoute deux nouveaux fragments à ceux (...) qui avaient été attribués jusqu'à présent à la métope S11 par divers archéologues, ce qui permet de confirmer l'attribution déjà proposée pour un autre et d'enrichir notre connaissance de la métope. (shrink)

Many philosophers claimed that there might be fertile ground for collaboration between IBE and the objective end of the Bayesian methodology. Recent literature is investigated in this chapter, to highlight the latest developments about the possibility of such a collaboration. The merits of the convergence of the two methods are presented. It is argued that arriving on this end is not an easy goal as there are four ways by which subjective considerations may overshadow the objective picture. The existence of (...) subjective virtues, the vagueness of the mapping, the absence of an accurate weighting, and the existence of partial virtues allow the generation of infinitely many different initializations of priors and likelihoods, thus keeping the explanationist away from the objective extreme. Hence, either the explanationist successfully faces up with each one of the four problems so as to converge to the objective end or she ends up in a semi-objective position, whereby the explanatory restrictions allow a bunch of equally good probability distributions. (shrink)

We investigate experimentally the relationship between risk and incentives in a principal–agent setting. In contrast to the existing empirical literature that describes such relationship as ‘tenuous’ or inconclusive, we find a clear negative relationship—supporting the prediction of the standard theoretical model. Specifically, we find that principals reduce the size of the offered piece rates with an increase in risk and instead provide positive fixed wages. Furthermore, we find no relationship between the variance in the performance and the effort choice of (...) the agent, and a strong positive relationship between the effort choice of the agents and the offered piece rates as well as fixed wage, suggesting positive reciprocity. Finally, we find evidence of social projection by the principals regarding the agents’ degree of risk aversion. (shrink)

Αν υπάρχει κάτι ιδιαίτερο στη σχέση μεταξύ της Χάνα Άρεντ και του Μάρτιν Χάιντεγκερ, κάτι το σκανδαλώδες, είναι ακριβώς η σύζευξη, συμπλοκή και σύγκρουση δύο διαφορετικών χρονικών πεδίων: του δημόσιου χρόνου των δύο στοχαστών και του ερωτικού χρόνου των δύο εραστών. Μια σχέση που καθορίζεται από την απόφαση του Χάιντεγκερ να υποστηρίξει το ναζιστικό κόμμα. Μια απόφαση που τους χωρίζει και συνάμα τους ενώνει σε διαφορετικές όχθες της ίδιας τραγωδίας. Hannah Arendt: Ο ΜΑΡΤΙΝ ΧΑΙΝΤΕΓΚΕΡ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΟΓΔΟΝΤΑ ΧΡΟΝΩΝ Εκδότης: ΕΡΜΑ Χρονολογία (...) Έκδοσης Ιούνιος 2019 Αριθμός σελίδων 64 Διαστάσεις 18x13 Μετάφραση ΡΟΖΑΝΗΣ ΣΤΕΦΑΝΟΣ. (shrink)

Ο σύγχρονος φιλοσοφικός στοχασμός δεν μπορεί να αποφύγει την αναμέτρηση με τη σκέψη του Μάρτιν Χάιντεγκερ και το πρόβλημα της στράτευσής του στον εθνικοσοσιαλισμό. Η πρόκληση που θέτει η επιλογή του διάσημου φιλοσόφου και η μετέπειτα σιωπή του σε σχέση με το σκάνδαλο αφορά, πέρα από τους στενούς κύκλους της πολιτικής και της φιλοσοφίας, και το ευρύτερο πεδίο της κοινωνικο-ιστορικής συνύπαρξης και ευθύνης. Είναι μία πρόκληση που δεν μπορούμε απλώς να παραβλέψουμε ή να προσπεράσουμε, ενώ το φάσμα της ακροδεξιάς δεν (...) έχει πάψει να συσκοτίζει το παρόν μας. Η στροφή του Κορνήλιου Καστοριάδη προς την ανθρώπινη ψυχή και την οντολογία του φαντασιακού, η κριτική του στην τεχνοεπιστήμη, η ενασχόλησή του με τη χρονικότητα και η ρήξη του με την παραδοσιακή λογική, τον φέρνουν σε πεδία όπου πέφτει βαριά η σκιά του Χάιντεγκερ. Ο τόμος Καστοριάδης εναντίον Χάιντεγκερ: Χρόνος και Ύπαρξη, που κυκλοφόρησε το 2020 από τις εκδόσεις Αυτολεξεί, ήταν μια συνοπτική παρουσίαση της αντιπαράθεσης της Χαϊντεγκεριανής σκέψης και της Καστοριαδικής φιλοσοφίας. -/- Η παρούσα εμπλουτισμένη και αναθεωρημένη έκδοση περιλαμ- βάνει, πέρα από την εκδίπλωση και ανάπτυξη των κεντρικών επι- χειρημάτων της προηγούμενης, και μία πιο λεπτομερή έκθεση των βασικών φιλοσοφικών θέσεων του Καστοριάδη σε σχέση με τον χρόνο, την ετερότητα και τα μάγματα, όπως και μία ενδεικτική εξέταση νέων διαστάσεων του κοινωνικο-ιστορικού, πάνω στις τρεις όψεις της ιστορικότητας, το παρελθόν, το παρόν και το μέλλον. Χρονολογία Έκδοσης Απρίλιος 2024 Αριθμός σελίδων 440 Διαστάσεις 21x14 ISBN: 978-618-84851-8-1. (shrink)

Τι είναι τα Κίτρινα Γιλέκα; Δεν μπορούμε εμείς, ως συντακτική της Βαβυλωνίας να μιλήσουμε εκ μέρους κάποιου κινήματος ενόσω ακόμη κινείται. Ούτε, βέβαια, μπορούμε να το αγνοήσουμε και να μην μιλήσουμε γι' αυτό. Χρειάζεται να αναστοχαστούμε αυτά τα κινήματα, να δούμε ποια είναι η σύνδεσή τους και η σημασία τους για εμάς. Σκοπός του παρόντος τόμου είναι να θέσει τη βάση αυτού του αναστοχασμού σε έναν διάλογο με τα κείμενα των ανθρώπων που ζουν αυτό το κίνημα, που μετέχουν σε αυτό, (...) που βιώνουν τη συλλογική πράξη που το αναδημιουργεί σε κάθε βήμα. Οι εξεγέρσεις του 21ου αιώνα δεν δίνουν απαντήσεις, αντίθετα φέρνουν στο φως τα πραγματικά ερωτήματα. Παρακολουθούμε τα Κίτρινα Γιλέκα όχι σαν θεατές ενός αγώνα από την κερκίδα, αλλά ως ενεργοί συνένοχοι στην προσπάθεια της κοινωνίας να απεγκλωβιστεί από το κράτος και το κεφάλαιο, να σπάσει τα δεσμά της. Συζητώντας για τα Κίτρινα Γιλέκα συζητάμε για το παρόν και το μέλλον μας. Και πριν μιλήσουμε, αυτή τη φορά, είναι σωστό πρώτα να ακούσουμε. (shrink)

English summary: Marc Andre Wiegand analyzes the neo-Kantian premises of Gustav Radbruch's legal philosophy.

There is a deluge of AI-assisted decision-making systems, where our data serve as proxy to our actions, suggested by AI. The closer we investigate our data (raw input, or their learned representations, or the suggested actions), we begin to discover “bugs”. Outside of their test, controlled environments, AI systems may encounter situations investigated primarily by those in other disciplines, but experts in those fields are typically excluded from the design process and are only invited to attest to the ethical features (...) of the resulting system or to comment on demonstrations of intelligence and aspects of craftmanship after the fact. This communicative impasse must be overcome. Our idea is that philosophical and engineering considerations interact and can be fruitfully combined in the AI design process from the very beginning. We embody this idea in the role of a philosopher engineer. We discuss the role of philosopher engineers in the three main design stages of an AI system: deployment management (what is the system’s intended use, in what environment?); objective setting (what should the system be trained to do, and how?); and training (what model should be used, and why?). We then exemplify the need for philosopher engineers with an illustrative example, investigating how the future decisions of an AI-based hiring system can be fairer than those contained in the biased input data on which it is trained; and we briefly sketch the kind of interdisciplinary education that we envision will help to bring about better AI. (shrink)

Straddling the divide between universalism and relativism, agonistic reason as construed by Foucault and Castoriadis dismisses universal foundations without becoming context-bound or inescapably subjectivist. It is propelled by a strong commitment to freedom and it draws flexibly on available resources and its creative potentials in order to vindicate its conditional claims. This provides a hyper-critical and liberating mode of critical reason which delves into the underlying norms of agency in order to open them up to question and to enhance free (...) self-direction. The argument that is put forward, then, is threefold. Firstly, Castoriadis’ accent on ontological reflection, the imaginative disclosure of new figures and the global intent of critique contrasts with Foucault’s account of agonistic reason and yields a more robust version of critical rationality. Secondly, this form of reflective agonism can effectively address fundamental challenges and reason across contexts, tackling moral and other issues that arise from cultural innovation and exchange. Lastly, agonistic reason need not, and should not, call upon absolute principles on any level in order to uphold its own values and do justice to its radical others. (shrink)

This paper advances the thesis that democratic populism and the commons can and should complement each other in counter-hegemonic interventions promoting egalitarian and ecological democracy in our times. After elucidating its key terms, the article makes, first, a theoretical case for the combination of egalitarian, inclusionary populism and the commons by debunking arguments which highlight the conflicts between them and by explaining the political significance of their conjugation. Subsequently, discussion builds an empirical argument for the real possibility and the democratic (...) promises of such a convergence by considering three ways in which populist politics and the commons merge and recompose each other in contemporary social movements, from the Spanish 15M and new municipalism to Occupy and other collective contestation in the Americas over the last two decades. These cases will illustrate how late social activism has effectively blended populist mobilization with the spirit of the commons, engendering a hybrid figure of ‘common populism’ that fosters grassroots processes of democratization. (shrink)

O presente estudo objetivou analisar introdutoriamente a pós-graduação em Educação Física quanto à produção de conhecimento, desenvolvimento da inovação e seus impactos na prática pedagógica na escola. Abordando o tema descritivamente e criticamente, analisando dados do crescimento quantitativo e qualitativo da PGEF no Brasil, se discute inovação e aplicação de conhecimento na escola. Verifica-se o crescimento significativo tanto em número de programas, mestres e doutores bem como de artigos publicados em periódicos nacionais e internacionais. Embora o crescimento da PGEF esteja (...) ocorrendo, observam-se dificuldades na produção de inovação e de aplicação de conhecimento na escola. (shrink)

Η δυνατότητα αναθεώρησης των πεποιθήσεων ενός τυπικού ή μη γνώστη καθώς επίσης και η περιγραφή του πλαισίου στο οποίο αυτό συμβαίνει, είναι από τα σημαντικότερα προβλήματα που απασχολούν την σύγχρονη φιλοσοφική έρευνα. Στον γόνιμο διάλογο που έχει αναπτυχθεί τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες, ο Κουτούγκος συνεισφέρει με την περιγραφή του μοντέλου της μερικής συμφωνίας. Στην απλούστερη μορφή του αφορά την μονόδρομη επικοινωνία μεταξύ ενός ακροατή και ενός ομιλητή σχετικά με κάποιο δεδομένο για το οποίο δεν υπάρχει ταύτιση απόψεων. Βασικοί του στόχοι είναι (...) αφενός να διερευνηθούν οι παράγοντες που επηρεάζουν τη δυνατότητα η τελική γνώμη του ακροατή να συγκλινει προς την αντίστοιχη του ομιλητή και αφετέρου να περιγραφεί ένα ποσοτικό μοντέλο που θα που θα καθιστά την σύγκλιση μετρήσιμη. Προκειμένου να αναδειχθεί η φιλοσοφική συμβολή του, στην εισαγωγή σκιαγραφούμε τα δυο πιο διαδεδομένα μοντέλα αναθεώρησης πεποιθήσεων, το Μπεϋζιανό και το AGM. Στην συνέχεια περιγράφεται το φιλοσοφικό υπόβαθρο και τα τυπικά χαρακτηριστικά του μοντέλου μερικής συμφωνίας. Ακολουθεί η συνοπτική σύγκρισή του με το Μπεϋζιανό και το AGM και η κριτική αποτίμηση του στο πλαίσιο του ευρύτερου διαλόγου περί αναθεώρησης πεποιθήσεων. Τέλος, παρουσιάζονται τα συμεράσματα και σκιαγραφούνται οι νέες ερευνητικές κατευθύνσεις που φαίνεται να διανοίγει το παρών μοντέλο. -/- . (shrink)

Changes in the abundance of protein and RNA molecules can impair the formation of complexes in the cell leading to toxicity and death. Here we exploit the information contained in protein, RNA and DNA interaction networks to provide a comprehensive view of the regulation layers controlling the concentration‐dependent formation of assemblies in the cell. We present the emerging concept that RNAs can act as scaffolds to promote the formation ribonucleoprotein complexes and coordinate the post‐transcriptional layer of gene regulation. We describe (...) the structural and interaction network properties that characterize the ability of protein and RNA molecules to interact and phase separate in liquid‐like compartments. Finally, we show that presence of structurally disordered regions in proteins correlate with the propensity to undergo liquid‐to‐solid phase transitions and cause human diseases. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/kfpqibsNfS0. (shrink)

The last decades have witnessed the emergence of a burgeoning literature on freedom that has set out to reconfigure this idea in response to the critique of the autonomous subject. The paper has three main objectives. It engages critically with this new field of theory by exploring two divergent strands of thought: a recast form of liberal autonomy and agonistic freedom as envisioned by M. Foucault, C. Castoriadis and certain other authors. Second, it seeks to bring out the merits of (...) the agonistic view by situating it in the problematic of freedom that developed after the critique. Agonistic freedom attends more fully to social inhibitions and unconscious determinations; it grapples more effectively with internalized limits; and it gives more play to the creative powers of action, which carry liberating effects. The argument offers, finally, a reply to the much-iterated polemic against agonistic self-invention, which charges it with amoral and antidemocratic implications. In effect, this ethos of freedom displays virtues that can facilitate democratic interaction and reinforce commitment to democratic egalitarianism. The entire discussion ties in with debates around agonistic democracy and helps to construe democratic freedom in a way that enables social contestation, pluralization, and solidarity. (shrink)