{"title":"ProAna Worlds: Affectivity and Echo Chambers Online.","authors":"Lucy Osler, Joel Krueger","doi":"10.1007/s11245-021-09785-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09785-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder characterised by self-starvation. Accounts of AN typically frame the disorder in individualistic terms: e.g., genetic predisposition, perceptual disturbances of body size and shape, experiential bodily disturbances. Without disputing the role these factors may play in <i>developing</i> AN, we instead draw attention to the way disordered eating practices in AN are <i>actively supported</i> by others. Specifically, we consider how Pro-Anorexia (ProAna) websites-which provide support and solidarity, tips, motivational content, a sense of community, and understanding to individuals with AN-help drive and maintain AN practices. We use C. Thi Nguyen's work on epistemic \"echo chambers\", along with Maria Lugones' work on \"worlds\" and \"ease\", to explore the dynamics of these processes. Adopting this broader temporal and intersubjective perspective, we argue, not only helps to further illuminate the experiential character of AN but also has important clinical and therapeutic significance.</p>","PeriodicalId":47039,"journal":{"name":"TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"41 5","pages":"883-893"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8666100/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10439075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What is So Special About Contemporary CG Faces? Semiotics of MetaHumans.","authors":"Gianmarco Thierry Giuliana","doi":"10.1007/s11245-022-09814-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09814-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper analyses the features of the 2021 software for the creation of ultrarealistic digital characters \"MetaHuman Creator\" and reflects on the causes of such perceived effect of realism to understand if the faces produced with such software represent an actual novelty from an academic standpoint. Such realism is first of all defined as the result of semio-cognitive processes which trigger interpretative habits specifically related to faces. These habits are then related to the main properties of any realistic face: being face-looking, face-meaning and face-acting. These properties, in turn, are put in relation with our interactions with faces in terms of face detection, face recognition, face reading and face agency. Within this theoretical framework, we relate the characteristics of these artificial faces with such interpretative habits. To do so, we first of all make an examination of the technological features behind both the software and the digital faces it produces. This analysis highlights four main points of interest: the mathematical accuracy, the scanned database, the high level of details and the transformative capacities of these artificial faces. We then relate these characteristics with the cultural and cognitive aspects involved in recognizing and granting meaning to faces. This reveals how metahuman faces differs from previous artificial faces in terms of indexicality, intersubjectivity, informativity and irreducibility. But it also reveals some limits of such effect of reality in terms of intentionality and historical context. This examination consequently brings us to conclude that metahuman faces are qualitatively different from previous artificial faces and, in the light of their potentials and limits, to highlight four main lines of future research based on our findings.</p>","PeriodicalId":47039,"journal":{"name":"TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"41 4","pages":"821-834"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9403949/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33446823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Enacted Ethics of Self-injury.","authors":"Zsuzsanna Chappell","doi":"10.1007/s11245-022-09796-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09796-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Enactivism has much to offer to moral, social and political philosophy through giving a new perspective on existing ethical problems and improving our understanding of morally ambiguous behaviours. I illustrate this through the case of self-injury, a common problematic behaviour which has so far received little philosophical attention. My aim in this paper has been to use ideas from enactivism in order to explore self-injury without assuming a priori that it is morally or socially wrong under all circumstances, seeking to establish a less implicitly value-laden analysis. Enactivism can help us in making this behaviour more intelligible and contextualising it through examining the relations of individual embodied action and social practices with the help of enactivist theories of habits and affordances.</p>","PeriodicalId":47039,"journal":{"name":"TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"41 2","pages":"383-394"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8831164/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39820519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Health and Illness as Enacted Phenomena.","authors":"Fredrik Svenaeus","doi":"10.1007/s11245-021-09747-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09747-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this paper I explore health and illness through the lens of enactivism, which is understood and developed as a bodily-based worldly-engaged phenomenology. Various health theories - biomedical, ability-based, biopsychosocial - are introduced and scrutinized from the point of view of enactivism and phenomenology. Health is ultimately argued to consist in a central world-disclosing aspect of what is called existential feelings, experienced by way of transparency and ease in carrying out important life projects. Health, in such a phenomenologically enacted understanding, is an important and in many cases necessary part of leading a good life. Illness, on the other hand, by such a phenomenological view, consist in finding oneself at mercy of unhomelike existential feelings, such as bodily pains, nausea, extreme unmotivated tiredness, depression, chronic anxiety and delusion, which make it harder and, in some cases, impossible to flourish. In illness suffering the lived body hurts, resists, or, in other ways, alienates the activities of the ill person.</p>","PeriodicalId":47039,"journal":{"name":"TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"41 2","pages":"373-382"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s11245-021-09747-0","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39008595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Elite and Liberal Democracy: A New <i>Equilibrium</i>?","authors":"Antonio Campati","doi":"10.1007/s11245-021-09762-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09762-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In contemporary democracies, the balance between the <i>minority principle</i> and <i>democratic principles</i>, one of the components underlying the relationship between liberalism and democracy, is being broken. This paper offers a reflection on this theme - crucial for the future of representative government - in relation to the importance of the theory of elites. The article is divided into three parts: the first part briefly traces the main phases of the theory of elites from the late nineteenth century to the present, indicating, for each, the salient features; the second part focuses on the elements characterizing the alliance between the minority principle and democratic principles, which forms the basis of liberal representative democracy, with specific consideration paid to the geometric architecture of democracy, comprising a horizontal dimension and a vertical dimension; finally, the third part argues the need for strengthening the <i>logic of distance</i> to consolidate the connection between the theory of elites and liberal representative democracy.</p>","PeriodicalId":47039,"journal":{"name":"TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"41 1","pages":"15-22"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8503395/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39525126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Celebrity Politics and Democratic Elitism.","authors":"Alfred Archer, Amanda Cawston","doi":"10.1007/s11245-021-09763-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09763-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Is there good reason to worry about celebrity involvement in democratic politics? The rise of celebrity politicians such as Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky has led political theorists and commentators to worry that the role of expertise in democratic politics has been undermined. According to one recent critique (Archer et al. 2020), celebrities possess a significant degree of epistemic power (the power to influence what people believe) that is unconnected to appropriate expertise. This presents a problem both for deliberative and epistemic theories of democratic legitimacy, which ignore this form of power, and for real existing democracies attempting to meet the standards of legitimacy set out by these theories. But do these critiques apply to democratic elitism? In this paper, we argue that recognition of celebrity epistemic power in fact represents a valuable resource for supporting the legitimacy and practice of democratic elitism, though these benefits do come with certain risks to which elite theories are particularly vulnerable.</p>","PeriodicalId":47039,"journal":{"name":"TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"41 1","pages":"33-43"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8503715/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39525128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Epistemic Value of Affective Disruptability.","authors":"Imke von Maur","doi":"10.1007/s11245-021-09788-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09788-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In order to explore how emotions contribute positively or negatively to understanding the meaning of complex socio-culturally specific phenomena, I argue that we must take into account the habitual dimension of emotions - i.e., the emotion repertoire that a feeling person acquires in the course of their affective biography. This brings to light a certain form of alignment in relation to affective intentionality that is key to comprehending why humans understand situations in the way they do and why it so often is especially hard to understand things <i>differently</i>. A crucial epistemic problem is that subjects often do not even enter a process of understanding, i.e., they do not even start to consider a specific object, theory, circumstance, other being, etc. in different ways than the familiar one. The epistemic problem at issue thus lies in an unquestioned faith in things being right the way they are taken to be. By acknowledging the habitual dimension of affective intentionality, I analyze reasons for this inability and suggest that being affectively disruptable and cultivating a pluralistic emotion repertoire are crucial abilities to overcome this epistemic problem.</p>","PeriodicalId":47039,"journal":{"name":"TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"41 5","pages":"859-869"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8669631/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10379799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Artifacting Identity. How <i>Grillz</i>, Ball Gags and Gas Masks Expand the Face.","authors":"Cristina Voto, Elsa Soro","doi":"10.1007/s11245-022-09819-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09819-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>By questioning the attribution of a primary role to the eyes as bearers of identity within traditional Western culture, this paper will problematize the agentivity performed by the lower mereology of the face, identified with the mouth-nose assemblage. In particular, the study will focus on the manipulation of such facial spatiality through the intervention of three \"lower face\" artifacts: the grill, the ball gag and the gas mask. This piece of work will examine their plastic and figurative dimensions in the technological interaction with the facial organs. Furthermore, we will take into consideration the sociocultural context of wearability performed by the different bearers with the aim of grasping the identity shift that the artifacts trigger. The study, therefore, will organize the corpus as a sequence that starts inside the oral cavity where the grill is worn; then moves to a progressive exteriority with the ball gag that emerges from the mouth through the straps fastened around the head; eventually dealing with the exterior projection operated by the gas mask which by means of its filters portends beyond the anatomical face. Ultimately the three artifacts are presented as a threefold articulation of a liminal agency towards an expanded form of humanity including animality embedded within and without the space of meaning represented by the face.</p>","PeriodicalId":47039,"journal":{"name":"TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":" ","pages":"771-783"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9617965/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40663019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Faces in disguise. Masks, concealment, and deceit.","authors":"Remo Gramigna","doi":"10.1007/s11245-022-09806-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09806-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The present study investigates and thematizes the interrelation between face masking, concealment, and deceit. It starts from the premise that the significance of disguise and deceit in the history of ideas should be reversed as these methods of the management of human appearance are not only regarded as coercive methods to manipulate and exert power over others but also as tactics skillfully used by the weak in order to outmaneuver those who are in a position of power. The study traces the matrix of simulation and dissimulation as forming the structure of deceit, it reviews some of the main theories of disguise within the field of semiotics, and it singles out two main dimensions of disguise, one geared upon dynamism and the other based on the static features of the face. This study suggests that classifications of masks elaborated in semiotic theory hitherto are useful but insufficient to encompass the full scope of such phenomenon. For this reason, the study provides a new typology of masks.</p>","PeriodicalId":47039,"journal":{"name":"TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":" ","pages":"741-753"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9204366/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40165266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Disagreement, Certainties, Relativism.","authors":"Martin Kusch","doi":"10.1007/s11245-018-9567-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9567-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper seeks to widen the dialogue between the \"epistemology of peer disagreement\" and the epistemology informed by Wittgenstein's last notebooks, later edited as On Certainty. The paper defends the following theses: (i) not all certainties are groundless; many of them are beliefs; and they do not have a common essence. (ii) An epistemic peer need not share all of my certainties. (iii) Which response (steadfast, conciliationist etc.) to a disagreement over a certainty is called for, depends on the type of certainty in question. Sometimes a form of relativism is the right response. (iv) Reasonable, mutually recognized peer disagreement over a certainty is possible.-The paper thus addresses both interpretative and systematic issues. It uses Wittgenstein as a resource for thinking about peer disagreement over certainties.</p>","PeriodicalId":47039,"journal":{"name":"TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"40 5","pages":"1097-1105"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s11245-018-9567-z","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39702857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}