Edmundo Balsemão Pires

The Automated Self explores meta-theoretical issues in the philosophy of artificial intelligence, combining it with themes from philosophy of science and technology, media and communication studies, and ethics. Balsemão-Pires provides an integrated view of contemporary problems of AI including the theoretical premises and discussions on the meaning, functioning and social uses of cognitive machines, the recent ethical and legal challenges on privacy, interpretability, and data ownership, passing through a careful discussion of the media embedment of the new technologies, and the uses of algorithms in the production and consumption of art.

A definition of virtual or virtuality is not an easy task. Both words are of recent application in Philosophy, even if the concept of virtual comes from a respectable Latin tradition. Today’s meaning brings together the notions of potentiality, latency, imaginary representations, VR, and the forms of communication in digital media. This contagious, and spontaneous synonymy fails to identify a common vein and erases memory as a central notion. In the present essay, I’ll try to explain essential features of the concept of virtual, taking the investigation of memory troubles in Pierre Janet’s work as an exemplification. Pierre Janet’s work represents a rare combination of medical observation and description of symptoms of mental illnesses, therapeutic guidance in hypnosis and philosophical writing about the main psychological themes of an epoch in transition from a Metaphysics of the Soul to the modern Experimental Psychology. Pierre Janet’s intellectual evolution since the 1880s until the end of his life is dominated by the philosophical project of a theory of the psychic system supported by three basic pillars: a concept of personality, a theory of memory and a sketch of a general theory of conduct. Such complex endeavour cannot be abstracted from the initial connections with Jean-Martin Charcot’s school at La Salpêtrière which meant a turning point in the tradition of the “animal magnetism” concerning the treatment of epileptic-hysterical symptoms along with the contributions of Hyppolite Bernheim’s “Nancy School” of hypnotism. J.-M. Charcot’s or H. Bernheim’s theorising about the organic and psychological aspects of the hypnotic treatment of the hysterical symptoms was already aware of the difficulty in dealing with the extent of the dissimulation of the patients regarding the symptoms of the illness, under hypnotic suggestion, even if Charcot insisted in the identification and cataloguing of the organic expressions, such as contractures or the posture of the body in arc during the attacks. The precise location of the “great hysteria” in the organic-psychic corridor was itself a riddle. If a symptom is a special type of sign, in the case of the “great hysteria” nobody knew for sure what it stood for. The clinical symptom of the attack stood for an organic trouble with cerebral causes, a psychological interruption of the normal sensorial and muscular movements or a disguise of the female desire? Pierre Janet described many hysterical patients, somnambulism and multiple personality since his articles in La Revue Philosophique de la France et l’ Étranger, a Journal founded by the philosopher, experimental psychologist and his intellectual predecessor Théodule-Armand Ribot. The description of the case of the “great hysterical” Lucie, treated by him, is an example of a theoretical hypothesising on multiple personality and discontinuity of memories fragments. There are more cases revealing the same relation between hysteria, somnambulism, personality dissociation and “alternating memory”. Decisively inspired by and corroborating P. Janet’s ideas, S. Freud conceived also the essential of the hysterical sicknesses as disorders of memory. The theme of memory came even more to the foreground in the dissertation L’Automatisme Psychologique. Here, the strange world of somnambulism was scrutinised along with hysterical contractures and convulsions, anaesthesia, the compulsion to repetition, obsessions, “automatic writing” in hysterical patients, multiple personality and “alternating memories”. In the depicted cases memory could not be taken as a homogenous series of remembrances or as a stock of disposable information but as a variable of the depth of the personalities’ inner formation. The so-called “seconde existence” of some somnambulists referred not only unconscious representations and unconscious thoughts but complete or inceptive latent personalities provided with multiple virtual existences and multiple memories. Hypnosis was the privileged technique to access to such multiple memories ignored by the official personality. Later and after the writing of his M.D. Dissertation, Contribution à l’ Étude des Accidents Mentaux chez les Hystériques, P. Janet addressed again the themes of memory and alternating memories in a series of lectures at the Collège de France but now according to the larger framework of a general theory of conduct which included a description of the social actions participating in the narrative construction of personal memories, and the role of social memory.

O presente trabalho pretende responder aos diferentes problemas referentes ao conceito de temporalidade que se colocam nas obras de Levinas. O artigo faz uma perspectivação das diferentes dimensões da alteridade pessoal, em correlação com diferentes contetidos do tempo. O trabalho pretende demonstrar a novidade da articulação entre tempo e alteridade pessoal em Levinas, face a conceitos de tempo que reduzem a "dia-cronia" ao plano existentitativo, quer dizer frente a perspectivas que vivem de um conceito ontológico de tempo. /// Ce travail prétend répondre à quelques problèmes qui se posent à propos du concept de temporalité chez Levinas. L'article fait une perspectivation des différentes dimensions de l'altérité personnelle en face des différents contenus du temps. Le travail prétend démontrer la nouveauté de l'articulation entre temps et altérité chez Levinas. Les positions de Levinas sur la temporalité semblent s'opposer à une vision ontologique traditionnel. /// This paper intends to answer to the problems connected with the concept of temporality, present in the work of Levinas. It perspectivates the different dimensions of personnal alterity correlated with different time contents. The paper also demonstrates the originality of time and alterity relations against objective time and ontology.

Open peer commentary on the article “The Circular Conditions of Second-order Science Sporadically Illustrated with Agent-based Experiments at the Roots of Observation” by Manfred Füllsack. Upshot: I address Füllsack’s main conclusions in his article regarding the meaning of second-order observations. Especially envisaged are the epistemological and ontological difficulties raised by his scrutiny of the merging between systemic-internal conditions of second-order reflexivity and the thematic-theoretical accounts of selection, intentionality and purposiveness in evolutionary systems.

Sob o título Relations of the Self reúnem-se neste volume textos de grande qualidade, escritos para dar uma expressão mais exata às intervenções orais no Congresso Internacional ocorrido na Universidade de Coimbra em Março de 2009, promovido pelo grupo de investigação “A Individuação da Sociedade Moderna” da unidade de investigação em Filosofia da Universidade (L. I. F. – “Linguagem, Interpretação e Filosofia”) em colaboração com o projeto de investigação Bezüge des Selbst da Universidade de Potsdam. O propósito foi o de examinar o tema da auto-referência mediante um conjunto variado de pesquisas sectoriais que vão desde as análises histórico-filosóficas, aos estudos sistemáticos nas áreas de Estética, Antropologia, Filosofia da Mente, Filosofia Social e Política, integrando ainda investigações teóricas sobre o significado da auto-referência na Cibernética, nos mais recentes progressos sobre a Inteligência Artificial e sobre os Sistemas Sociais. O carácter multi-disciplinar do livro final é manifesto. Do ponto de vista formal, um dos aspetos atraentes da obra reside no equilíbrio entre as abordagens sectorial e sinótica, sobretudo porque raras são as circunstâncias em que nestes trabalhos o rigor analítico deu lugar a apressadas “visões de conjunto”. O leitor julgará por si. This volume brings together high-quality texts from the international conference that took place in the University of Coimbra in March 2009, organized by the research group “Individuation in Modern Society” of the Philosophy Research unit of that university (L. I. F. – “Language, Interpretation and Philosophy”) in collaboration with the research project Bezüge des Selbst at the University of Potsdam. The purpose was to examine the subject of self-reference using a varied cluster of sectorial studies ranging from historical-philosophical analyses to systematic studies in the areas of Aesthetics, Anthropology, Philosophy of the Mind, Social and Political Philosophy. It also included theoretical investigations into the significance of self-reference in Cybernetics, in the most recent progress about Artificial Intelligence and Social Systems. The final book is manifestly multidisciplinary in character. From the formal perspective, one of the most attractive aspects of the work lies in the balance between the sectorial and synoptic perspectives, particularly because of the rarity of the circumstances in which these works of analytical rigour gave way to hurried “overviews”. The reader will judge for him/herself.

O conhecimento está limitado a representações de sistemas psíquicos e às suas contrapartes linguísticas? O significado deve ser restrito aos conteúdos proposicionais? "Sequencialidade doSentido e Formas Cognitivas" desafia os pressupostos tradicionais em redor das respostas a estas questões. No presente trabalho caracterizam-se os sistemas que recorrem a formas cognitivas, a partir dos seus elementos e dos tipos de operações que concretizam. Estes sistemas são Sistemas baseados no Sentido nos seus elementos e nas operações que articulam tais elementos. Trata-se de sistemas psíquicos e sociais. Assim se restringe a noção de sentido às concretizações psíquicas e sociais do processamento interpretativo de sinais, apenas para o propósito de identificar o objeto teórico do presente trabalho. Há todo um processamento de sinais na realidade físico-biológica, e cognição correspondente, que não adquire valor interpretativo para sistemas psíquicos ou sociais. O conhecimento e as formas cognitivas são mais vastos que o processamento interpretativo de sinais, mesmo que se admita que é na consciência e nos atos comunicativos que a cognição adquire um estatuto proposicional pleno e se pode, assim, tornar um objeto para a avaliação lógica. O conhecimento foi entendido de dois modos: i) como um processo de que resulta a forma cognitiva, tradicionalmente chamada representação, devido a ter sido exemplificada e escrutinada em sistemas psíquicos formados por elementos da consciência (representações); ii) à luz de operações com múltipla instanciação, por isso não limitadas à consciência humana.

This book integrates studies on the thought of Bernard de Mandeville and other philosophers and historians of Modern Thought. The chapters reflect a rethinking of Mandeville’s legacy and, together, present a comprehensive approach to Mandeville’s work. The book is published on the occasion of the 300 years that have passed since the publication of the Fable of the Bees. Bernard de Mandeville disassembled the dichotomies of traditional moral thinking to show that the outcomes of the social action emerge as new, non-intentional effects from the combination of moral opposites, vice and virtue, in such a form that they lose their moral significance. The work of this great writer, philosopher and physician is interwoven with an awareness of the paradoxical nature of modern society and the challenges that this recognition brings to an adequate perspective on the historical world of modernity.

Luxury entails a public differentiating use of objects and commodities, which is grounded on the overlapping of the spending with commodities and the ostentation of perceptible signs stimulating social imitation. In the eighteenth century, the debates on luxury emphasized the importance of the scrutiny of the power of imagination as intimately related to the contagious and mimetic character of the use of luxury objects. Thus, “luxury” represents a conceptual and, more generally, a semantic momentum in the evolution of the description of the society grounded on the influence of imitation. The several textual testimonies of the luxury debates in the eighteenth century, including Bernard de Mandeville’s contribution, attest the epistemological perplexity regarding the status of the psychic side of the definition of commodities, or economic goods, as utilities responding to specific human needs: the escalade of the emulation in the acquisition of luxury objects seems to deny any relevant connection of luxury to basic needs. This justifies the reference to imagination as the psychic source of the needs connected to luxury consumption and the absence of a direct correspondence between luxury goods and needs. B. Mandeville’s views on the theme of luxury and overconsumption in his Fable of the Bees and other writings are a privileged starting point for the explanation of these aspects of the evolution of the modern commercial society. Keywords Luxury • Commercial society • Imitation • Consumption • Utility.