Cristian Ducu

La finalul lui 2019, Editura Art a publicat jurnalul inedit al lui Mihail Radu Solcan (1953-2013). Dacă nu știți cine a fost Mihail Radu Solcan, nu trebuie să vă speriați. Înşiși editorii recunosc faptul că fostul profesor universitar nu era cunoscut în afara unui cerc destul de restrîns de prieteni, colegi și studenți de la Facultatea de Filozofie a Universității din București. De altfel, în portretul pe care cei doi editori, Mircea Flonta și Constantin Vică, îl fac lui Solcan în preambulul paginilor de jurnal, ei se străduiesc destul de mult să dea o însemnătate specială persoanei și operei regretatului profesor; ei simt nevoia să îi confere un loc în spațiul cultural românesc contemporan.

A bicentennial international conference dedicated to J.S. Mill was organized at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest on November 3‐4, 2006. The papers presented covered a great variety of topics of Mill’s work, from logic and philosophy of language to moral and political philosophy. Important European and American philosophers and Mill specialists participated to this conference – from the University of Oxford (J.R. Lucas, Christopher Kirwan), St. Andrews University (John Skorupski), Tufts University (Rob Devigne), Tulsa University (Eldon Eisenach), and the University of Bucharest (Adrian‐Paul Iliescu, Radu‐Mihail Solcan, Valentin Mureșan, Sorin Costreie, Drăgan Stoianovici, Cristian Ducu, Emanuel Socaciu, Constantin Stoenescu). Some of the main moral and political works of John Stuart Mill were recently translated into Romanian. His philosophy of language, but especially his moral and political philosophy are taught in the frame of various courses at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest. A comprehensive commentary to Mill’s Utilitarism was recently published by Professor Valentin Mureșan. A special remark deserves the enthusiastic participation of students to the Conference, both with papers and as volunteers in the organization staff. This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the Conference. All references within these papers have been unified according to the standard abbreviations.

Many modern commentators think that the way we understand EN I.7, especially the socalled “Function Argument”, determines greatly the Aristotelian perspective over human happiness. But, although starting from the same point, they hold diverging opinions with regard to what this human happiness consist in (the two traditional interpretation of eudaimonia). This paper argues that most commentators have misunderstood the role of the Function Argument within the economy of the Nicomachean Ethics by taking it out of its context and by making it say too much for a preparatory step. Therefore, a special attention is paid to the concept of function (ergon) both in the Aristotelian Ethics and Psychology and the manner the Stagirite builds his case in this section of the 1st Book. The conclusion of the analysis deployed here is that the Function Argument in I.7 cannot be taken to send us to a comprehensive or an intellectualist position.

Neuromarketing is one of those emerging fields that promise a lot, but are also surrounded in controversy. It promises to offer a privileged access to the most intimate emotions and unconscious thoughts, which should serve as an undisputed background for effective marketing practices. It promises to be successful where traditional market research techniques and tools failed. But this does not come cheap: a lot of public figures, philosophers and neuroscientists expressed multiple concerns regarding the ethical and legal implications of the neuromarketing research and applications. The aim of this study is to map these ethical concerns and provide a series of elements which can help both researchers and practitioners clarify the ethical limits of their work. The chapter contains two major sections and some brief closing remarks. The first one contains two major distinctions which will serve as basis for the entire ethical discussion in the next section: neuromarketing as both a field of research and applications and neuromarketing ethics as research ethics and as ethics of brain research. The second section is dedicated to a quasi-comprehensive presentation of the ethical challenges of neuromarketing. These topoi are divided in three categories: ethics of neuromarketing research (overclaiming; research conduct—informed consent, protection of vulnerable research participants, paying participants; data practices—research design and scientific validity, confidentiality, research dual use; publication practices—authorship, cherry-picking and salami-slicing, research transparency); ethics of neuromarketing technologies (no harm; privacy; incidental findings); and ethics of neuromarketing applications (manipulative and deceptive marketing practices; exacerbating the emotional factor).

This book addresses the emerging field of neuromarketing, which, at its core, aims to better understand the impact of marketing stimuli by observing and interpreting human emotions. It includes contributions from leading researchers and practitioners, venturing beyond the tactics and strategies of neuromarketing to consider the ethical implications of applying powerful tools for data collection. The rationale behind neuromarketing is that human decision-making is not primarily a conscious process. Instead, there is increasing evidence that the willingness to buy products and services is an emotional process where the brain uses short cuts to accelerate the decision-making process. At the intersection of economics, neuroscience, consumer behavior, and cognitive psychology, neuromarketing focuses on which emotions are relevant in human decision-making, and uses this knowledge to make marketing more effective. The knowledge is applied in product design; enhancing promotions and advertising, pricing, professional services, and store design; and improving the consumer experience as a whole. The foundation for all of this activity is data gathering and analysis. Like many new processes and innovations, much of neuromarketing is operating far ahead of current governmental compliance and regulation and thus current practices are raising ethical issues. For example, facial recognition software, used to monitor and detect a wide range of micro-expressions, has been tested at several airports—under the guise of security and counterterrorism. To what extent is it acceptable to screen the entire population using these powerful and intrusive techniques without getting passengers’ consent? Citing numerous examples from the public and private sectors, the editors and contributing authors argue that while the United States has catalyzed technological advancements, European companies and governments are more progressive when it comes to defining ethical parameters and developing policies. This book details many of those efforts, and offers rational, constructive approaches to laying an ethical foundation for neuromarketing efforts.