Discusses the nature of choice in terms of discovering God's will, tells how to face the fear of choosing, and looks at the role of compromise.

Effective vaccines for COVID‐19 are already available to humankind. In Peru, 86 million doses were administered to cover the demand for 33 million Peruvian people. Hence, vaccination has been prioritized in groups: health personnel, subjects with pre‐existing health conditions and those over 65 years of age. However, given the social problems and the public health situation in Peru, this work defends that the priority of vaccination should be focused on the population living in extreme poverty. The method used was an (...) ethical argumentation on the distribution of scarce antiSARS‐CoV2 vaccine in Peru. This argument is based on the analysis of the Peruvian population living in extreme poverty, which presents different layers of vulnerability, and that, in the face of an eventual SARS‐CoV2 infection, these would be exacerbated one after the other, through a cascade effect. This scenario would give rise to new vulnerabilities to those already existing, causing greater damage. Vaccination efforts on this key population would give them the opportunity to continue to find ways to bring food to their homes, significantly reducing the risk of contagion in their environment and mitigating the devastating effect of the local diseases to which they are already exposed. Four objections related to this argument are raised with their corresponding responses. Priority access to the vaccine would significantly reduce the humanitarian harm to people living in extreme poverty, prevailing the principles of justice and equity. (shrink)

La humanidad ya dispone de vacunas eficaces contra el COVID‐19. En Perú se administraron 86 millones de dosis para cubrir la demanda de 33 millones de peruanos. Para ello, se ha priorizado la vacunación en grupos clave: personal de salud, sujetos con condiciones de salud preexistentes y mayores de 65 años. Sin embargo, dada la problemática social y la situación de la salud pública en Perú, este trabajo defiende que la prioridad de la vacunación debe centrarse en la población que (...) vive en extrema pobreza. El método utilizado fue una argumentación ética sobre la distribución de la vacuna contra el COVID‐19 en Perú. Esta argumentación se basa en el análisis de la población peruana que vive en extrema pobreza, la cual presenta diferentes estratos de vulnerabilidad, y que, ante una eventual infección por SARS‐CoV‐2, se irían agravando uno tras otro, a través de un efecto en cascada. Este escenario daría lugar a nuevas vulnerabilidades de las ya existentes, causando mayores daños. Los esfuerzos de vacunación en esta población clave les brindaría oportunidad de seguir encontrando formas de llevar alimentos a sus hogares, reduciendo significativamente el riesgo de contagio en su entorno y mitigando el efecto devastador de las enfermedades locales a las que ya está expuesta. Se plantean cuatro objeciones relacionadas con este argumento, con sus correspondientes respuestas. El acceso prioritario a la vacuna reduciría significativamente el daño a las personas que viven en la extrema pobreza, haciendo prevalecer los principios de justicia y equidad. (shrink)

Many pragmatist and non-representational approaches to cognition, such as the enactivist, have focused on the relations between actions, affectivity, and habits from an intersubjective perspective. For those adopting such approaches, all these aspects are inextricably connected; however, many questions remain open regarding the dynamics by which they unfold and shape each other over time. This paper addresses a specific topic that has not received much attention: the impact on future behavior of not fulfilling possibilities for social interaction even though their (...) fulfillment is desirable within a given context. Inspired by Gibson’s theory of affordances and Dewey’s account of habits, these situations will be characterized as events where an agent does not act upon an inviting affordance for social interaction due to a conflict which he or she experiences between given concerns, needs, and social norms. This conflict leads to a sense of unfulfillment that may eventually bring about a crisis and revision of habits. Through specific examples, this work presents the potential impact of the connection between affordances, habits, and affectivity on everyday situations. It therefore represents an exploration of the common ground between pragmatism and enactivism and an attempt to contribute to a process-based approach to social interaction. (shrink)

ORCA.IT, a new online test of online research and comprehension was developed for the Italian population. A group of 183 students attending various types of upper secondary schools in Northern Italy were tested with the new tool and underwent further cognitive and neuropsychological assessment. The different school types involved in the study are representative of the school population in the Italian system, but can also be easily compared with the educational systems of other countries. The new test turned out to (...) have good psychometric properties after accurate item construction and final selection. In particular, Version 1 showed better characteristics than Version 2. Subsequently, comparison with one-way ANOVAs were performed to test whether differences exist between different school types, between groups with and without reading difficulties, and between males and females. Such differences are sometimes reported in the literature, but many remain controversial. Further, Pearson’s bivariate correlations were calculated to analyze associations between scores on the ORCA.IT and cognitive/neuropsychological variables. Finally, a stepwise regression analysis was performed on aggregated scores to identify the predictors of performance on each of the two versions, The test, especially in the most complete version (Version 1), appears to accurately and reliably capture students’ web searching abilities and online reading comprehension. The tool could highlight differences in online search and comprehension ability between students with and without reading difficulties, not penalizing overall performance but allowing very specific weaknesses to be pointed out. Further, it seems to be able to capture differences due to both educational pathways (different school types) and social attitudes (differences between males and females). Most interesting, it shows to be clearly resting on specific cognitive and neuropsychological abilities, including language, memory and attentional skills, which explain a large portion of the total variance. Offline text reading comprehension is a crucial predictor of online reading performance, while decoding ability is not. Prior knowledge also influences the results, as expected. The new tool turns out to be rather independent from previous internet experience and to measure more cognitively grounded processes related to information gathering, processing and communicating. (shrink)

Automation and information technology have transformed the organization of labor to such an extent that the processes of exploitation have moved beyond the labor class and now work upon society as a whole. If this displacement has destroyed the political primacy of the labor class, it has not, however, eliminated exploitation; rather, it has broadened it, implanting it within the given conditions of the most diverse spheres of society. -- from The Winter Is Over In late 1995, in opposition to (...) the conservative agenda of Jacques Chirac and his prime minister Alain Juppé and their proposed widespread welfare cuts, French students rose up against their government; public sector workers, together with all the major trade unions, went on strike. When railway workers and Paris Metro personnel joined in the protests, France's public transportation system came to a halt. These extensive social upheavals, the likes of which had not been seen in France since 1968, found widespread public support and fuelled the creation of many political organizations. Chirac backed down from restructuring the public retirement system. Antonio Negri's _T_he Winter is Over comes out of the glimmer of optimism created by the events of 1995, when the long, cold season of neoliberalism, Thatcherism, Reaganomics, reaction, and counterrevolution appeared to have run its course. Published in Italian in 1996, _The Winter is Over_ brings together a series of articles, speeches, and other documents written by Negri between 1989 and 1995 at the threshold of this thaw. It offers a revealing and wide-reaching account of those years of change and brink-of-change, focusing on such topics as the networks of social production, the decline of "limp thought," the end of applied socialism, the Gulf War, and, finally, Italy's transition to its so-called "Second Republic," as seen by an exile. (shrink)

There is a phrase by Paul Klee that insists and repeats itself in Deleuze's writing: "We are missing this last force. We are missing a people". However, the contemporary world is defined precisely by the fullness and the becoming population of peoples. This is why the concept of people constitutes an amphibology that is revealed in Deleuze's work as an appearance between people and thought. In this sense, the relationship between both concepts shows a set of aesthetic, political, and ontological (...) consequences that these notes attempt to address in Deleuze's thought and beyond. Hay una frase de Paul Klee que insiste y se repite en la mano de Deleuze: “Nos falta esta última fuerza. Nos falta un pueblo”. Sin embargo, el mundo contemporáneo se define justamente por el lleno y el devenir población de los pueblos. Es por esto que el concepto de pueblo constituye una anfibología que se revela en el trabajo de Deleuze como una comparecencia entre pueblo y pensamiento. En este sentido, la relación entre ambas categorías muestran un conjunto de consecuencias estéticas, políticas y ontológicas que estas notan intentan abordar en el pensamiento de Deleuze y más allá de éste. (shrink)

Many of the computing systems programmed using Machine Learning are opaque: it is difficult to know why they do what they do or how they work. Explainable Artificial Intelligence aims to develop analytic techniques that render opaque computing systems transparent, but lacks a normative framework with which to evaluate these techniques’ explanatory successes. The aim of the present discussion is to develop such a framework, paying particular attention to different stakeholders’ distinct explanatory requirements. Building on an analysis of “opacity” from (...) philosophy of science, this framework is modeled after accounts of explanation in cognitive science. The framework distinguishes between the explanation-seeking questions that are likely to be asked by different stakeholders, and specifies the general ways in which these questions should be answered so as to allow these stakeholders to perform their roles in the Machine Learning ecosystem. By applying the normative framework to recently developed techniques such as input heatmapping, feature-detector visualization, and diagnostic classification, it is possible to determine whether and to what extent techniques from Explainable Artificial Intelligence can be used to render opaque computing systems transparent and, thus, whether they can be used to solve the Black Box Problem. (shrink)

The received view of dynamical explanation is that dynamical cognitive science seeks to provide covering law explanations of cognitive phenomena. By analyzing three prominent examples of dynamicist research, I show that the received view is misleading: some dynamical explanations are mechanistic explanations, and in this way resemble computational and connectionist explanations. Interestingly, these dynamical explanations invoke the mathematical framework of dynamical systems theory to describe mechanisms far more complex and distributed than the ones typically considered by philosophers. Therefore, contemporary dynamicist (...) research reveals the need for a more sophisticated account of mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

Models developed using machine learning are increasingly prevalent in scientific research. At the same time, these models are notoriously opaque. Explainable AI aims to mitigate the impact of opacity by rendering opaque models transparent. More than being just the solution to a problem, however, Explainable AI can also play an invaluable role in scientific exploration. This paper describes how post-hoc analytic techniques from Explainable AI can be used to refine target phenomena in medical science, to identify starting points for future (...) investigations of causal relationships, and to generate possible explanations of target phenomena in cognitive science. In this way, this paper describes how Explainable AI—over and above machine learning itself—contributes to the efficiency and scope of data-driven scientific research. (shrink)

In a context of pervasive digitalization of the social world, both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the field of education has undergone major changes with the development of digital practices and settings. However, the physical presence of the subjects and the body remain something primordial and irreplaceable in traditional educational processes. Thus, it is often assumed that virtuality is opposed to the corporeal reality of the subjects involved in teaching, learning and studying. In this paper we aim to critically (...) challenge this assumption by addressing the phenomenon of virtuality in a more original sense: as a fundamental dimension of corporeality itself. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological insights, we argue that the experience of the virtual is inherently embodied and fully real. We understand corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena. At the same time, this leads us to rethink the digital as only one possible medium in which virtuality can appear as inherent to embodied experience. We develop our phenomenological approach in three instances. First, we question and bracket two common assumptions about corporeality. From our critical perspective, assumptions about a disembodied digitality and a devirtualized corporeality represent extremes within which educational discourses currently move. Second, we address the inherent virtuality of embodied experience. We outline the heuristic concept of the virtual body to describe corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena that encompass extension, intercorporeality and intermediality. Finally, we make some remarks on the relationships of corporeality and virtuality considering the challenges of digital education. (shrink)

Bayesian reverse-engineering is a research strategy for developing three-level explanations of behavior and cognition. Starting from a computational-level analysis of behavior and cognition as optimal probabilistic inference, Bayesian reverse-engineers apply numerous tweaks and heuristics to formulate testable hypotheses at the algorithmic and implementational levels. In so doing, they exploit recent technological advances in Bayesian artificial intelligence, machine learning, and statistics, but also consider established principles from cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Although these tweaks and heuristics are highly pragmatic in character and (...) are often deployed unsystematically, Bayesian reverse-engineering avoids several important worries that have been raised about the explanatory credentials of Bayesian cognitive science: the worry that the lower levels of analysis are being ignored altogether; the challenge that the mathematical models being developed are unfalsifiable; and the charge that the terms ‘optimal’ and ‘rational’ have lost their customary normative force. But while Bayesian reverse-engineering is therefore a viable and productive research strategy, it is also no fool-proof recipe for explanatory success. (shrink)

The philosophical conception of mechanistic explanation is grounded on a limited number of canonical examples. These examples provide an overly narrow view of contemporary scientific practice, because they do not reflect the extent to which the heuristic strategies and descriptive practices that contribute to mechanistic explanation have evolved beyond the well-known methods of decomposition, localization, and pictorial representation. Recent examples from evolutionary robotics and network approaches to biology and neuroscience demonstrate the increasingly important role played by computer simulations and mathematical (...) representations in the epistemic practices of mechanism discovery and mechanism description. These examples also indicate that the scope of mechanistic explanation must be re-examined: With new and increasingly powerful methods of discovery and description comes the possibility of describing mechanisms far more complex than traditionally assumed. (shrink)

This chapter subsumes David Marr’s levels of analysis account of explanation in cognitive science under the framework of mechanistic explanation: Answering the questions that define each one of Marr’s three levels is tantamount to describing the component parts and operations of mechanisms, as well as their organization, behavior, and environmental context. By explicating these questions and showing how they are answered in several different cognitive science research programs, this chapter resolves some of the ambiguities that remain in Marr’s account, and (...) shows that many different areas and traditions of cognitive scientific research can be unified under the mechanistic framework. (shrink)

'Usos de Memórias' é uma coletânea de textos sobre os vários aspectos da memória, isto é, pedagógica, simbólica, histórica, política e social. O livro traz os seguintes capítulos - Política, memória e esquecimento; Re(vi)vendo o ontem no tempo e no espaço'dos de hoje'; Memória, educação e velhice; A memória como elemento educativo; Memória e identidade.

Esta obra ofrece un panorama completo de los problemas fundamentales de la Metafísica, bien presentado, ordenado y estructurado, concediendo a cada tema su propia categoría dentro de la escala de importancia que hoy día le corresponde. Aborda por ello cuestiones de gran actualidad e interés para el hombre de nuestro tiempo, que invitan a una reflexión serena siguiendo siempre el acertado criterio orientador y cristiano que inspira su excelente desarrollo. La obra, por tanto, quiere prestar un gran servicio tanto en (...) los centros superiores de la Iglesia como en los de la universidad civil. (shrink)

Whereas most branches of neuroscience are thought to provide mechanistic explanations, systems neuroscience is not. Two reasons are traditionally cited in support of this conclusion. First, systems neuroscientists rarely, if ever, rely on the dual strategies of decomposition and localization. Second, they typically emphasize organizational properties over the properties of individual components. In this paper, I argue that neither reason is conclusive: researchers might rely on alternative strategies for mechanism discovery, and focusing on organization is often appropriate and consistent with (...) the norms of mechanistic explanation. Thus, many explanations in systems neuroscience can also be viewed as mechanistic explanations. (shrink)

This paper considers the way mathematical and computational models are used in network neuroscience to deliver mechanistic explanations. Two case studies are considered: Recent work on klinotaxis by Caenorhabditis elegans, and a longstanding research effort on the network basis of schizophrenia in humans. These case studies illustrate the various ways in which network, simulation and dynamical models contribute to the aim of representing and understanding network mechanisms in the brain, and thus, of delivering mechanistic explanations. After outlining this mechanistic construal (...) of network neuroscience, two concerns are addressed. In response to the concern that functional network models are non-explanatory, it is argued that functional network models are in fact explanatory mechanism sketches. In response to the concern that models which emphasize a network’s organization over its composition do not explain mechanistically, it is argued that this emphasis is both appropriate and consistent with the principles of mechanistic explanation. What emerges is an improved understanding of the ways in which mathematical and computational models are deployed in network neuroscience, as well as an improved conception of mechanistic explanation in general. (shrink)

This article discusses the relation between empirical and normative approaches in bioethics. The issue of dwarf tossing, while admittedly unusual, is chosen as a point of departure because it challenges the reader to look with fresh eyes upon several central bioethical themes, including human dignity, autonomy, and the protection of vulnerable people. After an overview of current approaches to the integration of empirical and normative ethics, we consider five ways that the empirical and normative can be brought together to speak (...) to the problem of dwarf tossing: prescriptive applied ethics, theoretical ethics, critical applied ethics, particularist ethics and integrated empirical ethics. We defend a position of critical applied ethics that allows for a two-way relation between empirical and normative theories. Against efforts fully to integrate the normative and the empirical into one synthesis, we propose that the two should stand in tension and relation to one another. The approach we endorse acknowledges that a social practice can and should be judged both by the gathering of empirical data and by normative ethics. Critical applied ethics uses a five stage process that includes: (a) determination of the problem, (b) description of the problem, (c) empirical study of effects and alternatives, (d) normative weighing and (e) evaluation of the effects of a decision. In each stage, we explore the perspective from both the empirical (sociological) and the normative ethical point of view. We conclude by applying our five-stage critical applied ethics to the example of dwarf tossing. (shrink)

This article aims to clarify the sharp contrast between the “short path” of Heideggerian ontology and the “long path” adopted by Ricoeur as a representation of the many necessary mediations in the constitution of his philosophical anthropology. Heidegger breaks into contemporary thought with the publication of his treatise “Being and Time” (1927) as a kind of direct settlement in the field of ontology. In contrast, Ricoeur is seen - and sees himself - as a thinker of conceptual mediations in his (...) long itinerary, since adherence to Husserlian phenomenology and subsequent hermeneutic inflection, passing through confrontations with Freudian psychoanalysis, structuralism and analytical philosophy, to the creation of the book “Oneself as Another” (1990). However, the two philosophers built their works on the common horizon of hermeneutics; therefore, are there possible points of convergence between them? And how could we interpret the relevance of this possible interlocution? These questions cannot be answered without a thorough comparative reading. This text does not intend to answer them, but only to suggest elements for further investigations. (shrink)

The so-called “intentional object” occupies a central position in the debates about intentionality in Brentano and the Brentano School. How does it relate to the correlate, the content, or the intended, possibly external, transcendent object? Does it perhaps even coincide with one of these? There was no clear consensus on this neither in Brentano’s time nor today. In order to develop a new perspective on the problem of the intentional object, I would like to introduce a deliberately radical interpretation and (...) related terminological change: what if we were to avoid any talk of “object” in this context altogether? Perhaps this could help avoid the ambiguities and misunderstandings associated with talk of “intentional objects.” In my contribution I would like to sketch such an interpretation and consider whether this attempt could be useful to reframe the debate. (shrink)

The concept of dignity is notoriously vague. In this paper it is argued that the reason for this is that there are three versions of dignity that are often confused. First we will take a short look at the history of the concept of dignity in order to demonstrate how already from Roman Antiquity two versions of dignity can be distinguished. Subsequently, the third version will be introduced and it will be argued that although the three versions of dignity hang (...) together, they should also be clearly distinguished in order to avoid confusion. The reason for distinguishing the three versions is because all three of them are only partially effective. This will be demonstrated by taking the discussion about voluntary ‘dying with dignity’ as an example. Inspired by both Paul Ricoeur’s concept of ethics and the ethics of care a proposition will be done as to how the three versions of dignity may sustain each other and help achieve what neither one of the versions can do on its own. (shrink)

This chapter provides an overview of the basic research strategies and analytic techniques deployed in computational cognitive neuroscience. On the one hand, “top-down” strategies are used to infer, from formal characterizations of behavior and cognition, the computational properties of underlying neural mechanisms. On the other hand, “bottom-up” research strategies are used to identify neural mechanisms and to reconstruct their computational capacities. Both of these strategies rely on experimental techniques familiar from other branches of neuroscience, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, single-cell (...) recording, and electroencephalography. What sets computational cognitive neuroscience apart, however, is the explanatory role of analytic techniques from disciplines as varied as computer science, statistics, machine learning, and mathematical physics. These techniques serve to describe neural mechanisms computationally, but also to drive the process of scientific discovery by influencing which kinds of mechanisms are most likely to be identified. For this reason, understanding the nature and unique appeal of computational cognitive neuroscience requires not just an understanding of the basic research strategies that are involved, but also of the formal methods and tools that are being deployed, including those of probability theory, dynamical systems theory, and graph theory. (shrink)

This volume is a broad anthology addressing many if not most major topics in phenomenology and philosophy in general: from foundational and methodological ...

The article elaborates an exegetical study of the figure of “Hell” present in the work of the martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. This trope is thought of as a core element of the narrative of Black Skin, White Masks that is linked to reflections on racist alienation, the epidermis, the gaze, and the zone of non-being. Exploring the different modulations of “Hell”, the article makes a displacement that seeks to argue how the infernal of Fanon’s story, more than a metaphor, accounts (...) for the “real-lived” of the colonial world. Consequently, the racialized body and its lived experience offer a reading about “Hell” in an anaphoric and existential key that strains the modern-hegemonic grammars about the identities. From this starting point, the work discusses the problem of temporality linked to the critical tenor that at various moments in Black Skin... assumes the infernal architecture of colonialism narrated by Fanon. (shrink)

In the article Husserl’s view of the infinite around 1890 is analysed. I give a survey of his mathematical background and other important influences (especially Bolzano). The article contains a short exposition on Husserl's distinction between proper and symbolic presentations in the "Philosophie der Arithmetik" and between finite and infinite symbolic collections. Subsequently Husserl’s conception of surrogate presentations in his treatise "Zur Logik der Zeichen (Semiotik)" is discussed. In this text Husserl gives a detailed account of infinity, using surrogate presentations. (...) The conclusion is that with surrogates we can only operate according to blind psychological rules. (shrink)