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Volume 7
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Philosophies, Volume 7, Issue 6 (December 2022) – 26 articles

Cover Story (view full-size image): Artificial intelligence is often said to be within our grasp, if not already here, and the only remaining philosophical issues are ethical questions about killer robots and robot slaves. Yet, we have no agreed test for artificial intelligence. The most famous test to date—Alan Turing’s ‘criterion for “thinking”’ in machines—states that a computer thinks if it does well in a computer-imitates-human game. To assess Turing’s test, we must remember that he also claimed that the concept of intelligence is an ‘emotional’ concept. What are the implications of this claim for his ‘criterion’? For example, are judgements about thinking machines merely subjective? (Cover image by Michael Nitsch, September 2015.) View this paper
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16 pages, 17370 KiB  
Article
Hélène Cixous, Laida Lertxundi, and the Fruits of the Feminine
by Laura Staab
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 145; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060145 - 14 Dec 2022
Viewed by 2206
Abstract
In the fields of experimental writing and experimental filmmaking, respectively, Hélène Cixous and Laida Lertxundi gather images of fruits: apples, oranges and lemons. Although Cixous and Lertxundi are well-known for seeking something of the feminine for writing and filmmaking, in these texts and [...] Read more.
In the fields of experimental writing and experimental filmmaking, respectively, Hélène Cixous and Laida Lertxundi gather images of fruits: apples, oranges and lemons. Although Cixous and Lertxundi are well-known for seeking something of the feminine for writing and filmmaking, in these texts and these films, fruit is not equivalent to feminine anatomy and the juiciness of neither apple, nor orange, nor lemon is mere metaphor for feminine jouissance. While Cixous and Lertxundi recognise in art, literature and philosophy an historical relation of women to nature, an essentialist equation of one to the other is loosened as the texts and the films situate apples, oranges and lemons as organic things in the world. Neither Cixous nor Lertxundi, then, eradicate the distance between human and non-human on the ground of the feminine: fruit is not entwined with women—but women do look, from time to time, at fruit. As if photosynthetically towards the sun, both Cixous and Lertxundi turn from the self towards the world, taken by the beauty and the light of fruit. In an addition to recent ecofeminist philosophy (Donna Haraway, Luce Irigaray) and also to recent feminist film-philosophy on attention (by way of Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil), I refer throughout the article to Kaja Silverman’s philosophy of ‘world spectatorship’ (2000) as I outline the way Cixous and Lertxundi each post-deconstructively combine a language of desire—feminine appetite, curiosity and pleasure—with a language of things to affirm, with women’s eyes on a simple piece of fruit, the world anew. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thinking Cinema—With Plants)
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20 pages, 334 KiB  
Article
The Science of Emotion: Mind, Body, and Culture
by Cecilea Mun
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 144; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060144 - 13 Dec 2022
Viewed by 2921
Abstract
In this paper, I give readers an idea of what some scholars are interested in, what I found interesting, and what may be of future interest in the philosophy of emotion. I begin with a brief overview of the general topics of interests [...] Read more.
In this paper, I give readers an idea of what some scholars are interested in, what I found interesting, and what may be of future interest in the philosophy of emotion. I begin with a brief overview of the general topics of interests in the philosophy of emotion. I then discuss what I believe to be some of the most interesting topics in the contemporary discourse, including questions about how philosophy can inform the science of emotion, responses to aspects of the mind–body problem, and concerns about perception, cognition, and emotion, along with questions about the place of 4E approaches and meta-semantic pluraliste approaches in the embodied cognitive tradition. I also discuss the natural kind–social construction debate in the philosophy of emotion, the emerging field of cultural evolution, the import of a dual-inheritance theory in this emerging field, and I propose a possible way to integrate the frameworks of dual-inheritance theory and meta-semantic pluralisme to demonstrate at least one way in which the philosophy of emotion can contribute to the emerging field of cultural evolution. I conclude with a brief summary of this paper and note at least one significant implication of my proposal for the natural kind–social construction debate in the philosophy of emotion. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophical Aspect of Emotions)
20 pages, 16335 KiB  
Article
Paper Flowers: Jane Campion, Plant Life, and The Power of the Dog (2021)
by Sarah Cooper
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 143; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060143 - 13 Dec 2022
Viewed by 3918
Abstract
Taking as its point of departure the place of the vegetal realm within Jane Campion’s filmmaking, this article attends to both living and artificial plants, homing in on the exquisitely crafted paper flowers of The Power of the Dog to explore their entanglement [...] Read more.
Taking as its point of departure the place of the vegetal realm within Jane Campion’s filmmaking, this article attends to both living and artificial plants, homing in on the exquisitely crafted paper flowers of The Power of the Dog to explore their entanglement with human power relations. Manmade flowers are clearly distinct from the flowers of the garden or the prairie, but in this Western, they form part of a broader floral aesthetic with their living kin. Drawing upon thought that stems from actual plants (Deleuze and Guattari’s arboreal-rhizomatic thinking) and vegetal philosophy (Marder, Coccia), as well as parallel botany’s attention to the artificial (Lionni), I follow the fate of one paper flower as it intersects with the gendered history of artificial flower making and floral sexual symbolism. Thinking with this paper flower, I engage with theories that variously question binary power relations (Cixous, Barthes, Steinbock), reading these alongside scholarship on sex, gender, and masculinity in the Western (Neale, Mulvey, Bruzzi), and broaching the hierarchies of settler colonialism. The film’s floral aesthetic, I argue, challenges the either/or logic of male or female, masculine or feminine, and even though it cannot fully break away from the binaries it critiques, it is indebted to registering the importance of the nuance (Barthes) in the unthreading of power. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thinking Cinema—With Plants)
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17 pages, 333 KiB  
Essay
The Lack of Philosophical Knowledge in Che Guevara’s Pedagogy: Fetishizing Love for Justice and Rage against Imperialism at the Expense of Logos
by Khaled Al-Kassimi
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 142; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060142 - 13 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3638
Abstract
Most research on Ernesto “Che” Guevara has been concerned with emphasizing his ideological Marxist commitments and anti-imperial material objectives. These scholarly concerns usually constellate recycled subjective themes highlighting the revolutionary leader hating injustice, and loving justice, in tandem with the objective of eliminating [...] Read more.
Most research on Ernesto “Che” Guevara has been concerned with emphasizing his ideological Marxist commitments and anti-imperial material objectives. These scholarly concerns usually constellate recycled subjective themes highlighting the revolutionary leader hating injustice, and loving justice, in tandem with the objective of eliminating imperialism and advancing a Third World project. In 2012, Che’s Apuntes filósoficos (Eng. Philosophical Notes) were published and highlighted that his exposure to philosophy regrettably occurred late in his life, and surprisingly, the difficulty he had in reading Marx and Hegel. The objective, therefore, of this multidisciplinary research navigating law, theology, philosophy, and politics is threefold. First, it alludes to and critiques the familiar pedagogy of Guevara emphasizing the importance of developing a “theory in action”, “learning through action”, being a “humanist”, and “leading by example”. Secondly, it considers the consequences of Che reifying emotion (eros) over reason (logos) thereby providing a possible answer to his “failed revolutionary story” in the Congo and Bolivia with his pedagogy involving an unstable compound mixing the emotion of compassion with rage thus clouding his reason. Finally, the third section highlights that we should not relegate emotion away from the sphere of political discourse, but rather harmonize it with reason to avoid chaotic and unpredictable errors based on subjective truths. Emphasizing the former at the expense of the latter—as maintained by a realist approach to International Relations and positivist jurisprudence accenting International Law—risks undermining scholarship challenging the immoral consequences arising from a naturalized assumption separating reason and revelation thus decriminalizing colonial practices characterizing the North and South. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Virtues)
13 pages, 239 KiB  
Article
Gödel, Turing and the Iconic/Performative Axis
by Juliette Cara Kennedy
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 141; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060141 - 12 Dec 2022
Viewed by 1748
Abstract
1936 was a watershed year for computability. Debates among Gödel, Church and others over the correct analysis of the intuitive concept “human effectively computable”, an analysis at the heart of the Incompleteness Theorems, the Entscheidungsproblem, the question of what a finite computation is, [...] Read more.
1936 was a watershed year for computability. Debates among Gödel, Church and others over the correct analysis of the intuitive concept “human effectively computable”, an analysis at the heart of the Incompleteness Theorems, the Entscheidungsproblem, the question of what a finite computation is, and most urgently—for Gödel—the generality of the Incompleteness Theorems, were definitively set to rest with the appearance, in that year, of the Turing Machine. The question I explore here is, do the mathematical facts exhaust what is to be said about the thinking behind the “confluence of ideas in 1936”? I will argue for a cultural role in Gödel’s, and, by extension, the larger logical community’s absorption of Turing’s 1936 model. As scaffolding I employ a conceptual framework due to the critic Leo Marx of the technological sublime; I also make use of the distinction within the technological sublime due to Caroline Jones, between its iconic and performative modes—a distinction operating within the conceptual art of the 1960s, but serving the history of computability equally well. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Turing the Philosopher: Established Debates and New Developments)
17 pages, 301 KiB  
Article
The Illusions of Time Passage: Why Time Passage Is Real
by Carlos Montemayor and Marc Wittmann
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 140; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060140 - 10 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 5067
Abstract
The passage of time pertains to the dynamic happening of anticipated future events merging into a present actuality and subsequently becoming the past. Philosophers and scientists alike often endorse the view that the passage of time is an illusion. Here we instead account [...] Read more.
The passage of time pertains to the dynamic happening of anticipated future events merging into a present actuality and subsequently becoming the past. Philosophers and scientists alike often endorse the view that the passage of time is an illusion. Here we instead account for the phenomenology of time passage as a real psycho-biological phenomenon. We argue that the experience of time passage has a real and measurable basis as it arises from an internal generative model for anticipating upcoming events. The experience of passage is not merely a representation by a passive recipient of sensory stimulation but is generated by predictive processes of the brain and proactive sensorimotor activity of the whole body. Although some philosophical approaches to time consider some psycho-biological evidence, the biological basis of the passage of time has not been examined in detail from a thorough scientific perspective. This paper proposes to remedy this omission. Full article
21 pages, 1253 KiB  
Article
Clocks, Automata and the Mechanization of Nature (1300–1600)
by Sylvain Roudaut
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 139; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060139 - 9 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3413
Abstract
This paper aims at tracking down, by looking at late medieval and early modern discussions over the ontological status of artifacts, the main steps of the process through which nature became theorized on a mechanistic model in the early 17th century. The adopted [...] Read more.
This paper aims at tracking down, by looking at late medieval and early modern discussions over the ontological status of artifacts, the main steps of the process through which nature became theorized on a mechanistic model in the early 17th century. The adopted methodology consists in examining how inventions such as mechanical clocks and automata forced philosophers to modify traditional criteria based on an intrinsic principle of motion and rest for defining natural beings. The paper studies different strategies designed in the transitional period 1300–1600 for making these inventions compatible with classical definitions of nature and artifacts. In the first part of the paper, it is shown that, even if virtually all medieval philosophers acknowledged an ontological distinction between artifacts and natural beings, these different strategies demonstrate a growing concern about the consistency of the art/nature distinction. The next part of the paper studies how mechanical clocks, even before the Scientific Revolution, served as theoretical models for applying mechanistic views to different objects (be they cosmological, physical or biological). The epistemological function of clocks appears to stem from different factors (like the specific manufacturing of late medieval clocks as well as the evolution of 16th-century mechanics) that are listed in this second part of the paper. These factors, combined with the definitional issues raised by automata, explain that clocks became the symbol of a new approach to natural philosophy, characterized by the collapse of the art/nature distinction and the “mechanization of nature”. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art vs Nature: The Ontology of Artifacts in the Long Middle Ages)
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14 pages, 7748 KiB  
Article
Animist Phytofilm: Plants in Amazonian Indigenous Filmmaking
by Patrícia Isabel Lontro Vieira
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 138; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060138 - 8 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2386
Abstract
Early films about plants offer a glimpse into the behavior of vegetal life, which had hitherto remained hidden from humans. Critics have praised this animistic capacity of cinema, allowing audiences to see the movement of beings that appeared to be inert and lifeless. [...] Read more.
Early films about plants offer a glimpse into the behavior of vegetal life, which had hitherto remained hidden from humans. Critics have praised this animistic capacity of cinema, allowing audiences to see the movement of beings that appeared to be inert and lifeless. With these reflections as a starting point, this article examines the notion of animist cinema. I argue that early movies still remained beholden to the goal of showing the multiple ways in which plants resemble humans, a tendency we often still find today in work on critical plant studies. I discuss the concept of animism in the context of Amazonian Indigenous societies as a springboard into an analysis of movies by Indigenous filmmakers from the region that highlight the plantness of human beings. I end the essay with an analysis of Ika Muru Huni Kuin’s film Shuku Shukuwe as an example of animist phytocinema. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thinking Cinema—With Plants)
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16 pages, 263 KiB  
Article
Tracing the Influence of Simone de Beauvoir in Judith Butler’s Work
by Deniz Durmuş
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 137; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060137 - 5 Dec 2022
Viewed by 8169
Abstract
Beauvoir’s existentialist ethics relates to and informs eminently contemporary accounts of feminist ethics in the Western continental feminist canon. To date only a few scholars have emphasized this connection. In this work, I show the centrality of Beauvoirian philosophy to contemporary philosophical discussions [...] Read more.
Beauvoir’s existentialist ethics relates to and informs eminently contemporary accounts of feminist ethics in the Western continental feminist canon. To date only a few scholars have emphasized this connection. In this work, I show the centrality of Beauvoirian philosophy to contemporary philosophical discussions by elucidating the influence of Beauvoir’s existentialist ethics on Judith Butler’s feminist philosophy. While I acknowledge other possible influences, especially by French philosophers, on Butler’s work, I find it important to emphasize Beauvoir’s contributions as they have not received the attention they deserve. My paper shows how Beauvoir’s account of agency as an ambiguous becoming reverberates in Butler’s theory of gender performativity developed in her early writings. I consider Butler’s theory of gender performativity to have existentialist roots based on the existentialist perception of the subject as a becoming that never coincides with itself. I also discuss how Butler takes on some basic ethical questions which Beauvoir already accentuates in her writings. I focus on three main points of intersection between the two philosophers, which are vulnerability and interconnectedness, violence and inevitability of ethical failure, and finally the ambiguity and opaqueness that come with situated ethics. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Current French Philosophy in Difficult Times)
11 pages, 210 KiB  
Article
Revitalizing Human Values in an Age of Technology
by Sreetama Misra
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 136; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060136 - 1 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3902
Abstract
Technology does change human lives, but my query is: does it change human selves too? On a closer look, it is observed that technology and the trail of human beings towards an authentic life (the highest desire) are central and pivotal to human [...] Read more.
Technology does change human lives, but my query is: does it change human selves too? On a closer look, it is observed that technology and the trail of human beings towards an authentic life (the highest desire) are central and pivotal to human living. However, most of us think of them as separate and unrelated. Technology is technical, the job of technicians, whereas queries of ‘authenticity’ are primarily philosophical, the job of the philosophers. But why do philosophers really bother about technology? This paper aims at a search for human authenticity even in the age of technology since humans are constantly in the process of becoming and they will continue to be so both socially and historically. The first segment of the paper focuses on how technology has depersonalized human persons, with respect to the views of many philosophers; in the second part, the concept of authenticity is understood in connection to our philosophical discourses. Finally, the unseparated relationship between technology and authenticity is explicated. My prime effort here is to understand authenticity from a value-based paradigm and as a therapy from the consumerist-driven materialistic life but not segregated from the prospects of a technocratic world. Full article
13 pages, 239 KiB  
Article
A Study on Two Conditions for the Realization of Artificial Empathy and Its Cognitive Foundation
by Zhongliang Cui and Jing Liu
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 135; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060135 - 29 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2462
Abstract
The realization of artificial empathy is conditional on the following: on the one hand, human emotions can be recognized by AI and, on the other hand, the emotions presented by artificial intelligence are consistent with human emotions. Faced with these two conditions, what [...] Read more.
The realization of artificial empathy is conditional on the following: on the one hand, human emotions can be recognized by AI and, on the other hand, the emotions presented by artificial intelligence are consistent with human emotions. Faced with these two conditions, what we explored is how to identify emotions, and how to prove that AI has the ability to reflect on emotional consciousness in the process of cognitive processing, In order to explain the first question, this paper argues that emotion identification mainly includes the following three processes: emotional perception, emotional cognition and emotional reflection. It proposes that emotional display mainly includes the following three dimensions: basic emotions, secondary emotions and abstract emotions. On this basis, the paper proposes that the realization of artificial empathy needs to meet the following three cognitive processing capabilities: the integral processing ability of external emotions, the integral processing ability of proprioceptive emotions and the processing ability of integrating internal and external emotions. We are open to whether the second difficulty can be addressed. In order to gain the reflective ability of emotional consciousness for AI, the paper proposes that artificial intelligence should include consistency on identification of external emotions and emotional expression, processing of ontological emotions and external emotions, integration of internal and external emotions and generation of proprioceptive emotions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from Artificial Intelligence Philosophy Frontiers Forum 2022)
18 pages, 1441 KiB  
Review
Prismal View of Ethics
by Sarah Isufi, Kristijan Poje, Igor Vukobratovic and Mario Brcic
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 134; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060134 - 25 Nov 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2762
Abstract
We shall have a hard look at ethics and try to extract insights in the form of abstract properties that might become tools. We want to connect ethics to games, talk about the performance of ethics, introduce curiosity into the interplay between competing [...] Read more.
We shall have a hard look at ethics and try to extract insights in the form of abstract properties that might become tools. We want to connect ethics to games, talk about the performance of ethics, introduce curiosity into the interplay between competing and coordinating in well-performing ethics, and offer a view of possible developments that could unify increasing aggregates of entities. All this is under a long shadow cast by computational complexity that is quite negative about games. This analysis is the first step toward finding modeling aspects that might be used in AI ethics for integrating modern AI systems into human society. Full article
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9 pages, 274 KiB  
Article
Suárez’ Minimal Realism of Artifacts
by Erik Åkerlund
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 133; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060133 - 25 Nov 2022
Viewed by 2171
Abstract
The article places Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) and his position on the ontological status of artifacts against the Medieval philosophical background. It is concluded that Suárez is an artifact realist. However, Suárez’ realism concerning artifacts is of a minimalist kind. Inscribing himself into the [...] Read more.
The article places Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) and his position on the ontological status of artifacts against the Medieval philosophical background. It is concluded that Suárez is an artifact realist. However, Suárez’ realism concerning artifacts is of a minimalist kind. Inscribing himself into the realist tradition, Suárez affirms that an artifact has an “artificial form”, a ‘forma artificialis’. However, this form is not a thing in its own right, but rather has the status of a mode. Further, the artificial form is not a mode of substance, but rather of quantity. Hence, Suárez can rightly be called a minimal realist concerning artifacts. In an additional section, the role of the exemplar in the production of an artifact is explored. Suárez counts the exemplar among the efficient causes, and so, the exemplar in the mind of the artisan is one of many efficient causes that together produce and determine the artifact. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Art vs Nature: The Ontology of Artifacts in the Long Middle Ages)
17 pages, 916 KiB  
Article
Abduction in Art Appreciation
by Akinori Abe
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 132; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060132 - 20 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1819
Abstract
Individuals usually go to art museums to enjoy artworks. Generally, in order to appreciate the art in museums, a brief summary of certain information is provided as a caption. Viewers usually read these descriptions to aid their understanding. To provide broader technical support [...] Read more.
Individuals usually go to art museums to enjoy artworks. Generally, in order to appreciate the art in museums, a brief summary of certain information is provided as a caption. Viewers usually read these descriptions to aid their understanding. To provide broader technical support for this activity, several researchers have proposed a protocol for art appreciation. For instance, Leder et al. proposed a stage model for aesthetic processing, which combines aspects of understanding and cognitive mastering with affective and emotional processing. We have also conducted several experiments in order to determine the effect of information during art appreciation. For instance, we conducted an experiment where information about a piece of art was offered gradually and incrementally. In the experiment, the participants seemed to be able to gradually understand the artwork according to the obtained information. Our observations indicate that they tried to create stories for the artworks in order to explain the obtained information. In addition, for the abstract artworks, if they saw the title, they understood the artworks within their own explanation in the context of the title. Our research framework suggests that we can consider this observed framework as a process of abduction, where the incremental presentation of details about art helps a user form a hypothesis about the piece of art. In this paper, we will analyze artwork appreciation and understanding with this framework from the viewpoint of abduction. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Abductive Cognition and Machine Learning: Philosophical Implications)
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12 pages, 269 KiB  
Article
Pathway to Sustainability through Pragmatic Wisdom
by Wai Kian Tan
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 131; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060131 - 19 Nov 2022
Viewed by 2165
Abstract
In this era of rapid modernization, technology has changed people’s everyday lives globally but at a heavy price, as evidenced, for example, by the earth’s deteriorating environments. Environmental contamination has induced the adverse impacts of climate change, manifested as natural disasters. According to [...] Read more.
In this era of rapid modernization, technology has changed people’s everyday lives globally but at a heavy price, as evidenced, for example, by the earth’s deteriorating environments. Environmental contamination has induced the adverse impacts of climate change, manifested as natural disasters. According to scientific predictions, if climate change continues at the current rate, irreversible damage to the planet’s ability to sustain life could occur by 2100. This disturbing scenario has prompted a wake-up call for promoting sustainability and initiatives, such as the Sustainable Development Goals formulated by the United Nations, which are aimed at influencing and penetrating every aspect of life. This article discusses the importance of pragmatic wisdom for our earth’s restoration through the achievement of sustainability, which requires a revolution in education. A new educational model, particular within higher education, which extends beyond most of the current educational models for acquiring knowledge, is required to promote pragmatic wisdom. Apart from the acquisition of scientific knowledge, philosophical thinking and critical thinking skills are essential for promoting pragmatic wisdom. In this context, an education that couples liberal arts with natural sciences could be one of the solutions for facilitating the transformation of knowledge into pragmatic wisdom, which can potentially foster sustainability. Full article
14 pages, 315 KiB  
Article
Feminism and Vegetal Freedom in Agnès Varda’s Le Bonheur (1965) and Vagabond (1985)
by Graig Uhlin
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 130; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060130 - 16 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3133
Abstract
This essay examines French filmmaker Agnès Varda’s Le Bonheur (1965) and Vagabond (1985) for their critical invocation of the persistent and patriarchal association of women with plants. Both women and plants are thought within the metaphysical tradition to have a deficient or negative [...] Read more.
This essay examines French filmmaker Agnès Varda’s Le Bonheur (1965) and Vagabond (1985) for their critical invocation of the persistent and patriarchal association of women with plants. Both women and plants are thought within the metaphysical tradition to have a deficient or negative relation to freedom. Varda’s films, however, link the liberation of women in postwar France to the liberation of vegetal being; her female protagonists pursue their liberation by accessing the vegetal freedom that subtends human freedom. In Le Bonheur, Varda uses visual irony to critique the processes of idealization that turn both women and flowers into signifiers of ideal beauty in thrall to the enchantments of happiness. In Vagabond, the enigmatic female drifter at the center of the film enacts a plant-like refusal of self-preservation. In both films, female liberation takes vegetal shape, as their protagonists embody a vegetal silence or vegetal indifference in defiance of the patriarchal situations they encounter. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thinking Cinema—With Plants)
8 pages, 218 KiB  
Article
Consent Strategies: Cultural and Civilizational Paradigms for Communicative Rationality and Axiological Identity
by Aidana Yerzhanova, Zhanyl Madalieva, Bakittizhamal Imanmoldayeva and Gulnara Rakhimova
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 129; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060129 - 16 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1674
Abstract
Modern societies are increasingly becoming multinational and multi-religious. In such a situation, reaching public consensus in modern societies is critical for understanding the further development of the state and society, in particular, in multinational Kazakhstan. The research is aimed at identifying and interpreting [...] Read more.
Modern societies are increasingly becoming multinational and multi-religious. In such a situation, reaching public consensus in modern societies is critical for understanding the further development of the state and society, in particular, in multinational Kazakhstan. The research is aimed at identifying and interpreting approaches to understanding the idea of social consensus in the Western and Eastern traditional philosophical paradigms, represented by some of most influential philosophers. The study also identifies the role and place of traditional Kazakh philosophical thought and the possibility of its application in modern social relations. The strategies of harmony within the philosophical paradigms of the conditional mega-regions of the East and West are determined by a narrow segmentation of philosophical texts. In the course of the study, it is proposed to single out two basic consensus strategies, rational–pragmatic and spiritual–moral, or, in other words: communicative rationality and axiological identity. Full article
18 pages, 267 KiB  
Article
On the Understanding of the Unity of Organic and Inorganic Nature in Terms of Hegelian Dialectics
by Cihan Cinemre
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 128; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060128 - 13 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2043
Abstract
The understanding of nature and its motion through Hegelian dialectics brings the notion of the organism that is intertwined with its inorganic nature. This notion is crucial first and foremost to comprehend life in its wholeness, as becoming that is in constant movement. [...] Read more.
The understanding of nature and its motion through Hegelian dialectics brings the notion of the organism that is intertwined with its inorganic nature. This notion is crucial first and foremost to comprehend life in its wholeness, as becoming that is in constant movement. To attain this comprehension, it is necessary to treat beings as entities invariably determining each other in their reciprocal relatedness. In this way, it becomes possible to set both the organism and its environment free of their fixity and quiescence. Within the work, to derive this mode of reasoning, the sciences and the dialectics are asserted in their unity. The relationship between the organism and its inorganic nature is one of tension. The organism in its finitude is in opposition to its inorganic nature; it is compelled to act to sublate the latter’s independence, indifference, and exteriority for its self-preservation. This is called the melting of the non-organic into fluidity that renders the organism infinite. The relationship, as tension, elicits the notion of freedom; it signifies that freedom is not merely a matter of free will, it rather pertains to the organism’s penetration into its exteriority, in which it can determine ever-changing goals for itself. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Nature of Structure and the Structure of Nature)
13 pages, 1069 KiB  
Article
Art Definition and Accelerated Experience: Temporal Dimension of AI Artworks
by Wei Liu and Feng Tao
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 127; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060127 - 9 Nov 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 5204
Abstract
Time is a necessary element in understanding AI art. Firstly, time reveals the historical process by which art-theoretical predicates move from the unmarked to the marked, which can thus be utilized as a defense for arguing the legitimacy of AI art as art. [...] Read more.
Time is a necessary element in understanding AI art. Firstly, time reveals the historical process by which art-theoretical predicates move from the unmarked to the marked, which can thus be utilized as a defense for arguing the legitimacy of AI art as art. Furthermore, AI art should be seen as a “new” art that is temporally ahead of the descriptive forms of art theory. Secondly, time provides a unique interpretation of AI artworks’ characteristics and aesthetic experience. The absence of experience, the de-depth of AI artworks, and the “short experience/short memory” aesthetic mode of the masses are closely linked to the scarcity of time in an age of acceleration. Finally, time reflects the loss of “aura” and the new end of art that AI art may bring about. Time provides a defense and explanation of AI art, as well as a perspective for reflecting on the development of art in contemporary times. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from Artificial Intelligence Philosophy Frontiers Forum 2022)
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21 pages, 363 KiB  
Article
Hypoiconicity as Intentionality
by Horst Ruthrof
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 126; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060126 - 9 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2098
Abstract
The paper analyses Peirce’s hypoiconicity through the lens of Husserlian intentionality. Peirce’s triple structure of hypoiconicity as resemblance relation, diagrammatical reasoning and metaphoric displacement is shown to require intentional acts in its production and interpretation. Regarding hypoiconicity as a semiotic schematization of Vorstellung [...] Read more.
The paper analyses Peirce’s hypoiconicity through the lens of Husserlian intentionality. Peirce’s triple structure of hypoiconicity as resemblance relation, diagrammatical reasoning and metaphoric displacement is shown to require intentional acts in its production and interpretation. Regarding hypoiconicity as a semiotic schematization of Vorstellung, the paper places it in the context of Husserl’s conception of intentionality in which iconicity appears as a stepping-stone towards the skeletonization of resemblance in diagrammatical abstraction and as schematic displacement in metaphor. As such, hypoiconic intentionality is argued to play a role also in Peirce’s community conception of language. The paper’s core claim is that intentionality provides an avenue for revealing hypoiconicity as a major, critical concept of semiotics, functioning as paradigm case for investigating the convergence of semiotics and phenomenology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Semiotics and Phenomenology: New Perspectives)
6 pages, 235 KiB  
Article
Scarcity as an Alibi: On the False Ethical Discussions about the War on COVID-19
by Renato Janine Ribeiro
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 125; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060125 - 7 Nov 2022
Viewed by 1563
Abstract
Occasionally, doctors and health providers have to choose whom they save from death and this is an extremely hard decision to take. Here, I work on what I deem to be a crucial caveat: scarcity of resources should never be used as an [...] Read more.
Occasionally, doctors and health providers have to choose whom they save from death and this is an extremely hard decision to take. Here, I work on what I deem to be a crucial caveat: scarcity of resources should never be used as an alibi for bad, and sometimes wicked, public policies. In other words, if scarcity is somewhat produced or at least induced, it should never serve as a pretext to put the blame or the responsibility on medical doctors, nurses and other people who are at the front of the war against COVID-19. During the COVID-19 pandemic, an ethical question was often raised: if resources are scarce (and they often have been), whom should you prioritize? Should we protect first of all those who are young and can then have a long life before them? Or should we rather prioritize those who have rendered important services to health, or broadly to mankind, and could, therefore, bring other good results to society? This discussion is of course important, but it leaves aside something more fundamental: the fact that resources are not simply scarce, they have been made scarce in the last years by a series of public policies nourished by an economic view that sacrificed social welfare on behalf of neoliberal beliefs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Rationing of Health Resources in Emergency Conditions and Decision Making under Scarcity)
15 pages, 293 KiB  
Article
An Analysis of Turing’s Criterion for ‘Thinking’
by Diane Proudfoot
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 124; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060124 - 3 Nov 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3281
Abstract
In this paper I argue that Turing proposed a new approach to the concept of thinking, based on his claim that intelligence is an ‘emotional concept’; and that the response-dependence interpretation of Turing’s ‘criterion for “thinking”’ is a better fit with his writings [...] Read more.
In this paper I argue that Turing proposed a new approach to the concept of thinking, based on his claim that intelligence is an ‘emotional concept’; and that the response-dependence interpretation of Turing’s ‘criterion for “thinking”’ is a better fit with his writings than orthodox interpretations. The aim of this paper is to clarify the response-dependence interpretation, by addressing such questions as: What did Turing mean by the expression ‘emotional’? Is Turing’s criterion subjective? Are ‘emotional’ judgements decided by social consensus? Turing’s take on these issues impacts current philosophical debates on response-dependent concepts and on the nature of artificial intelligence. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Turing the Philosopher: Established Debates and New Developments)
16 pages, 476 KiB  
Article
Criteria for Ethical Allocation of Scarce Healthcare Resources: Rationing vs. Rationalizing in the Treatment for the Elderly
by Maria do Céu Patrão Neves
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 123; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060123 - 3 Nov 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 4396
Abstract
This paper stems from the current global worsening of the scarcity of resources for healthcare, which will deepen even more in future public emergencies. This justifies strengthening the reflection on the allocation of resources which, in addition to considering technical issues, should also [...] Read more.
This paper stems from the current global worsening of the scarcity of resources for healthcare, which will deepen even more in future public emergencies. This justifies strengthening the reflection on the allocation of resources which, in addition to considering technical issues, should also involve ethical concerns. The two plans in which the allocation of resources develops—macro and micro—are then systematized, both requiring the identification of ethical criteria for the respective complex decision-making. Then, we describe how the complexity at the macro level focuses on the joint consideration of the rectitude of the principles, the goodness of the ends, and the integrity—respectively the deontological, teleological, and procedural perspectives; and at the micro level, it focuses in prioritizing people, which can result in the exclusion of some, as happened with the elderly during peaks of COVID-19. The main objective of this article is to show that, in public health emergency situations, in which the daily criteria for prioritizing access to health care are not efficient, it is possible not only to ration the available means but also to rationalize them. We argue that rationing and rationalization are different concepts, entail different consequences, have different ethical foundations, and draw different guidelines for patient care. We apply them to the distribution of intensive care and vaccines to the elderly thus demonstrating the ethically legitimate domain of implementation of each of these two prioritization criteria. We conclude that rationalization respects more strictly the core ethical principles of our common morality. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Rationing of Health Resources in Emergency Conditions and Decision Making under Scarcity)
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18 pages, 1814 KiB  
Article
Permacinema
by Anat Pick and Chris Dymond
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 122; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060122 - 27 Oct 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3132
Abstract
This article charts the contiguity of farming and film, blending permaculture and cinema to advance a modality of sustainable film theory and practice we call “permacinema.” As an alternative approach to looking and labour, permaculture exhibits a suite of cinematic concerns, and offers [...] Read more.
This article charts the contiguity of farming and film, blending permaculture and cinema to advance a modality of sustainable film theory and practice we call “permacinema.” As an alternative approach to looking and labour, permaculture exhibits a suite of cinematic concerns, and offers a model for cinematic creativity that is environmentally accountable and sensitive to multispecies entanglements. Through the peaceable gestures of cultivation and restraint, permacinema proposes an ecologically attentive philosophy of moving images in accordance with permaculture’s three ethics: care of earth, care of people, and fair share. We focus on work by Indigenous artists in which plants are encountered not only as raw material or as aesthetic resource but as ingenious agents and insightful teachers whose pedagogical and creative inputs are welcomed into the filmmaking process. By integrating Indigenous epistemologies and cosmologies we hope to situate permacinema in the wider project of cinema’s decolonization and rewilding. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thinking Cinema—With Plants)
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84 pages, 6996 KiB  
Article
The Philosophy of Nature of the Natural Realism. The Operator Algebra from Physics to Logic
by Gianfranco Basti
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 121; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060121 - 26 Oct 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3606
Abstract
This contribution is an essay of formal philosophy—and more specifically of formal ontology and formal epistemology—applied, respectively, to the philosophy of nature and to the philosophy of sciences, interpreted the former as the ontology and the latter as the epistemology of the modern [...] Read more.
This contribution is an essay of formal philosophy—and more specifically of formal ontology and formal epistemology—applied, respectively, to the philosophy of nature and to the philosophy of sciences, interpreted the former as the ontology and the latter as the epistemology of the modern mathematical, natural, and artificial sciences, the theoretical computer science included. I present the formal philosophy in the framework of the category theory (CT) as an axiomatic metalanguage—in many senses “wider” than set theory (ST)—of mathematics and logic, both of the “extensional” logics of the pure and applied mathematical sciences (=mathematical logic), and the “intensional” modal logics of the philosophical disciplines (=philosophical logic). It is particularly significant in this categorical framework the possibility of extending the operator algebra formalism from (quantum and classical) physics to logic, via the so-called “Boolean algebras with operators” (BAOs), with this extension being the core of our formal ontology. In this context, I discuss the relevance of the algebraic Hopf coproduct and colimit operations, and then of the category of coalgebras in the computations over lattices of quantum numbers in the quantum field theory (QFT), interpreted as the fundamental physics. This coalgebraic formalism is particularly relevant for modeling the notion of the “quantum vacuum foliation” in QFT of dissipative systems, as a foundation of the notion of “complexity” in physics, and “memory” in biological and neural systems, using the powerful “colimit” operators. Finally, I suggest that in the CT logic, the relational semantics of BAOs, applied to the modal coalgebraic relational logic of the “possible worlds” in Kripke’s model theory, is the proper logic of the formal ontology and epistemology of the natural realism, as a formalized philosophy of nature and sciences. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Contemporary Natural Philosophy and Philosophies - Part 3)
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18 pages, 655 KiB  
Article
Husserl and Heidegger on Modernity and the Perils of Sign Use
by Johan Blomberg
Philosophies 2022, 7(6), 120; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies7060120 - 25 Oct 2022
Viewed by 2219
Abstract
In his late writings Husserl emphasizes how the semiotic properties of writing, and of mathematical formulae and diagrams, are crucial for the historical, cross-generational survivability of meaning and specifically indispensable to the operation of scientific knowledge. However, the demand for objectivity, exactitude, and [...] Read more.
In his late writings Husserl emphasizes how the semiotic properties of writing, and of mathematical formulae and diagrams, are crucial for the historical, cross-generational survivability of meaning and specifically indispensable to the operation of scientific knowledge. However, the demand for objectivity, exactitude, and repeatability insidiously interferes with the meaning that such signs seek to express. This leads to a duality of objectivity encapsulated in the notion “the sedimentation of meaning”. On this view, the transmission of objectivity established in an original sense-constituting act cannot survive unless being deposited in some external form, which at the same time risks the original sense being irrevocably lost in a web of signification that amounts to nothing more than empty and meaningless symbol manipulation. I discuss Husserl’s analysis and propose that it is limited by its one-sided focus on the negative impact of modernity. I compare Husserl’s account with Heidegger’s even more radical critique of modern society as one where a so-called “technological” mode of “revealing” reigns supreme at the expense of eradicating other, and more authentic ways to apprehend the world. I critically reconstruct the respective position of both thinkers and show how they point not only to a criticism of the instrumentalization and formalization of knowledge in modern society, but that they are just as importantly highlighting essential semiotic properties of signs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Semiotics and Phenomenology: New Perspectives)
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