•  7
    In this paper, we demonstrate how the language and reasonings that academics, developers, consumers, marketers, and journalists deploy to accept or reject AI as authentic intelligence has far-reaching bearing on how we understand our human intelligence and condition. The discourse on AI is part of what we call the “authenticity negotiation process” through which AI’s “intelligence” is given a particular meaning and value. This has implications for scientific theory, research directions, ethical …Read more
  •  17
    Empowerment: Freud, Canguilhem and Lacan on the ideal of health promotion
    Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 26 (3): 301-311. 2023.
    Empowerment is a prominent ideal in health promotion. However, the exact meaning of this ideal is often not made explicit. In this paper, we outline an account of empowerment grounded in the human capacity to adapt and adjust to environmental and societal norms without being completely determined by those norms. Our account reveals a tension at the heart of empowerment between (a) the ability of self-governance and (b) the need to adapt and adjust to environmental and societal norms. We address …Read more
  •  2
    This book investigates how we should form ourselves in a world saturated with technologies that are profoundly intruding in the very fabric of our selfhood. How do we recognize that smart technological environments, imaging technologies and smart drugs increasingly shape who and what we are and influence who we ought to be? Tackling this issue requires going beyond the persistent and stubborn inside-outside dualism and recognizing that what we consider our "inside" self is to a great extent shap…Read more
  •  22
    Negotiating Authenticity in Technological Environments
    with Siri Beerends
    Philosophy and Technology 34 (4): 1665-1685. 2021.
    Essentialists understand authenticity as an inherent quality of a person, object, artifact, or place, whereas constructionists consider authenticity as a social creation without any pre-given essence, factuality, or reality. In this paper, we move beyond the essentialist-constructionist dichotomy. Rather than focusing on the question whether authenticity can be found or needs to be constructed, we hook into the idea that authenticity is an interactive, culturally informed process of negotiation.…Read more
  •  9
    A pós-fenomenologia é um enfoque na filosofia da tecnologia que investiga como as tecnologias influenciam e moldam o mundo e o ego. Embora a pós-fenomenologia tenha expressado desde o início a ambição de oferecer uma estrutura não-essencialista e não-fundacionista, o desenvolvimento estrutural desse aspecto está virtualmente ausente. O pragmatismo peirciano, como será proposto, pode fornecer essa estrutura, bem como os blocos de construção para o desenvolvimento da visão da autoformação em termo…Read more
  •  19
    On Freedom and Responsibility: Discovering the Human as a Transcendent Being
    Religion, State and Society 41 (2): 88-102. 2013.
    This paper takes as a starting point the letter of Cardinal Angelo Sodano which is used as a preface in the various publications and translations of the Catholic Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. In this letter Sodano highlights an aspect that he believes deserves special attention: ‘men and women are invited above all to discover themselves as transcendent beings, in every dimension of their lives, including those related to social, economic and political contexts’. In my philoso…Read more
  •  20
    Nietzsche’s notion of “active forgetting” is employed to better understand the disruptive and destructive influence of collective trauma on cultural identity. Throughout the article genocide is taken as a cause of extreme trauma and used to illustrate this impact. Active forgetting in this context should not be confused with memories fading away; it is rather a positive and active force, a capacity which an individual, a society, or a culture needs to prosper. This notion provides guidance on ho…Read more
  •  53
    After several technological revolutions in which technologies became ever more present in our daily lives, the digital technologies that are currently being developed are actually fading away from sight. Information and Communication Technologies are not only embedded in devices that we explicitly “use” but increasingly become an intrinsic part of the material environment in which we live. How to conceptualize the role of these new technological environments in human existence? And how to antici…Read more
  •  64
    Transcendence in Technology
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 19 (3): 291-313. 2015.
    According to Max Weber, the “fate of our times” is characterized by a “disenchantment of the world.” The scientific ambition of rationalization and intellectualization, as well as the attempt to master nature through technology, will greatly limit experiences of and openness for the transcendent, i.e. that which is beyond our control. Insofar as transcendence is a central aspect of virtually every religion and all religious experiences, the development of science and technology will, according t…Read more
  •  19
    Brain imaging technologies are increasingly used to find networks and brain regions that are specific to the functional realization of particular aspects of the self. In this paper, we aim to show how neuroscientific research and techniques could be used in the context of self-formation without treating them as representations of an inner realm. To do so, we show first how a Cartesian framework underlies the interpretation and usage of brain imaging technologies as functional evidence. To illust…Read more
  • Nietzsche on reality as an organized strife of wills to power
    Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 67 (2): 207-243. 2005.
  •  12
    De betekenis Van Wolfgang Müller-lauters Nietzsche-interpretatie
    Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 64 (4). 2002.
    Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, the author of one of the most important Nietzsche books, if not the most important one of the last four decades, died on the 9th August, 2001. His book Nietzsche. Seine Philosophie der Gegensätze und die Gegensätze seiner Phibsophie (1971) and his many articles have been of decisive significance for international Nietzsche research. In his last two years, these articles were brought together by him in three volumes called Nietzsche-Interpretationen. On the basis of a crit…Read more
  •  19
    Peirce offers us a perspective on identity that is less problematic than the Aristotelian, essentialist approach, which still latently, but deeply influences a lot of contemporary, analytic views on identity. The problem of the essentialist view is that it precludes the possibility of real novelty, and fails to account for the dynamic connectedness of the world. Peirce's account of identity does more justice to these elements. His view will be elaborated on the basis of his phenomenological cate…Read more
  • De velegezichten van de fenomenologie
    Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 69 (4): 776-777. 2007.
  •  70
    The Posthuman as Hollow Idol: A Nietzschean Critique of Human Enhancement
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 42 (3): 304-327. 2017.
    In this paper, the author aims to show that transhumanists are confused about their own conception of the posthuman: transhumanists anticipate radical transformation of the human through technology and at the same time assume that the criteria to determine what is “normal” and what is “enhanced” are univocal, both in our present time and in the future. Inspired by Nietzsche’s notion of the Overhuman, the author argues that the slightest “historical and phenomenological sense” discloses copious v…Read more
  •  15
    In virtue of what do things have an identity? This question still lands us in great difficulties and confusion. Against the traditional Aristotelian view of reality, which clings to firmness and stability in the world, Nietzsche postulates his conception of reality as becoming. Nietzsche's alternative conception of the world is characterized as an organized strife of wills to power. The continuous change that we experience on the one hand, and the durability that we seem to perceive in the world…Read more
  •  144
    This paper explains why Clark’s Extended Mind thesis is not capable of sufficiently grasping how and in what sense external objects and technical artifacts can become part of our human cognition. According to the author, this is because a pivotal distinction between inside and outside is preserved in the Extended Mind theorist’s account of the relation between the human organism and the world of external objects and artifacts, a distinction which they proclaim to have overcome. Inspired by Charl…Read more
  • Erny, N., Konkrete Vernunftigkeit
    Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 70 (1): 147. 2008.
  • Zijn en worden
    Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 67 (1): 164-166. 2005.