Anna Donise

This chapter aims to clarify the transformative effects on the concept of personal autonomy resulting from extending the notion to Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, particularly in the defense domain. The complexity of this task is increased by the fact that philosophers have offered a wide range of competing accounts of the autonomous agent’s special relation to their own desires and values. I will draw on the concept of autonomy implied in John Martin Fisher and Mark Ravizza’s control theory, which, while explaining the theory and practice of autonomy, also identifies two conditions that cannot be appropriately satisfied by autonomous systems, but only by persons who interact and communicate with one another. Despite the superficial sameness between personal autonomy and autonomous systems, control theory allows us to pinpoint an important distance in their underlying features. The seeming similarity masks indeed a profound conceptual divergence between autonomy as a condition of moral agency and autonomy understood as the characterization of a system’s operational capacities. This supports, at least in principle, the moral argument that entrusting machines with authority over human life and death is ethically wrong, regardless of how advanced the technology might be.

This book explores one of the most pressing questions of our time: what becomes of human autonomy when algorithms and artificial intelligence systems are no longer just tools but rather actors in medicine, care, education, mobility, and even warfare? By confronting the philosophical, ethical, and practical implications of so-called “autonomous” machines, it opens a critical space to rethink what autonomy means for humans today. Rather than framing the encounter with artificial agents in oppositional terms, humans versus machines, the volume advances a dialogical and co-evolutionary approach. Contributors from moral philosophy, gender studies, phenomenology, philosophy of technology, and medical humanities investigate how AI refracts our understanding of freedom, self-determination, and responsibility. Covering a variety of AI applications, including recommender systems, autonomous vehicles, avatars, predictive medicine, and algorithmic decision-making, the essays address the risks of manipulation and dependency as well as the transformative opportunities for reshaping autonomy as a relational, situated, and dynamic process. With special attention to relational autonomy and feminist theory, the volume challenges the reductionist view of autonomy as an individual possession, emphasizing instead its negotiation within networks of care, technology, and power. Aimed at scholars, researchers, and advanced students in philosophy, ethics, AI studies, and the medical humanities, as well as policymakers, engineers, and healthcare professionals concerned with the ethical design and governance of intelligent systems, this book provides the conceptual tools to navigate the ethical challenges of intelligent systems. It is an essential resource for anyone concerned with the future of human freedom in an age increasingly defined by algorithms.

Within a general approach that implies the closely related survey of neurosciences and philosophical thought, the essays collected in the volume develop two main lines of research. The first one, thanks to the contributions of scientists and psychologists , psychoanalysists and bioengineers , allows to fix the attention on the neurobiological, psychological, psychoanalytical and physical remembering. The second one, more specifically philosophical, is declined in three different approaches. the first - with essays by Stefania Achella, Giuseppe D'Anna and Rosario Diana - points to the anlysis of the role played by the rememberance and the prefiguration in the processes of identity construction. The second - with contributions from Fiorella Battaglia, Anna Donise, Sabine Marienberg and Sara Fortuna - focuses on the role of remembering in anthropology and linguistics, as well as the identification of certain diseases of memory. The third, finally - with contributions from Gabriella Baptist, Chiara de Luzenberger and Marco Boninu - tends to define the regulatory function of memory

The chapter, after outlining the role Lipps attributes to gestures, bodily movement, and expressions, aims to show in what sense Lippsian theory is able to enhance the immediate and instinctive dimension of our relationship with the other. His reflection on gesture makes it possible to restore theoretical relevance to a type of relationship that precedes and grounds the cognitive and conscious one, in which the self and the you are fully distinct and separate. The instinctive and immediate dimension is, in fact, essential not only for understanding the characteristics of intersubjectivity, but also for rethinking-in comparison with Husserlian phenomenology -the role of others in the constitution of individual identity. Lippsian philosophy is proposed in the following pages as a true philosophy of gesture capable of delineating a reversal in the usual point of view: in order to talk about the self and the relation to the other, it is necessary to look closely at the potentially fusional and vague dimension set in motion by the mimesis and gesture of the other.

Contemporary reflection on the concept of value oscillates between positions that advocate absolutist realism and positions that propose total relativism. The present paper aims to distance itself from these two ways of reading the topic, rejecting any monolithic conception, and proposing a stratified theory of value. Beginning with an analysis of values that differentiates them from both “goods” and “valuations,” the author outlines an understanding of value that must be investigated in its multiple, interconnected layers. The stratification starts from the role of the emotional sphere and comes down to a formal and absolute conception of the concept. The goal of the paper is to outline the different levels of validity of each proposed layer, which must be recognized and differentiated, with the aim of also capturing the difficulties and ambiguities that characterize the transition from one level to another.

This essay aims to explore the notion that the preventive measures and restrictions imposed during the pandemic exposed a significant aspect of our vulnerability. The pressure to maintain distance from objects and people and recognize their potential threat compelled us to adopt the behaviors of those afflicted with delusions, such as end-of-the-world hallucinations. With the virus being invisible, we have been required to act as though it was always present, in a way akin to a collective delusion. Consequently, this shift in our everyday actions has caused collective psychological distress and evident existential anguish: mimicking madness leads to pathological experiences. While recognizing the importance of preventive measures, this paper argues for the necessity of raising cultural awareness to comprehend the source of these distressing experiences and incorporate them into a more comprehensive concept of community. In conclusion, the paper advocates for the acquisition of cultural understanding to enhance our ability to respond to crises in a way that considers the well-being of all members of our community.

The present essay analyses Jasper’s concept of “Gehäuse”. The Gehäuse, “cases” or “shells”, are the forms that define subjectivity, which we work very hard to construct. When the subject experiences change or development, though, the “shell” can become too rigid and suffocating, so the subject feels the need to get out of that form, at the risk of ending up like “an oyster without the shell”. In Jaspers’ perspective these “casings” are unavoidable and their dismissal is a question of “metamorphosis” rather than veritable “destruction”: as soon as one form is rejected, another one is constructed. This paper intends to show the positive value of the Gehäuse: they shape us and reveal us to ourselves and others. I will rethink one of the established categorical antinomies of existentialism: that between “authentic” and “inauthentic”. In particular, I will question the implicit axiology that comes with it.