The power of love: The spiritual foundations of chaplaincy in Catholic universities – A framework for discussion

This article delineates the foundational theological principles upon which a Catholic Higher Education chaplaincy devoted to the spiritual development of staff and students might rest. We claim that this is a key dimension of chaplaincy work. In a (post)modern culture where staff and students exhibit a range of beliefs or none, we offer a broad definition of spirituality not necessarily tied to religion and construct a framework which might appeal to a wide cross section of people attending Catholic Universities. It examines how the insights and guidance of two French Catholic writers, the 16th century priest St. Francis de Sales and the contemporary philosopher Jean-Luc Marion, offer a basis for understanding what constitutes a spiritual approach to life. We suggest that their emphases on the power of love, the heart, God’s glory, imago Dei and gift constitute a ground of hope and stable base from which spiritual progress might take place. We also outline how this template challenges the emphasis on autonomous agency at the centre of much educational discourse at the present time.

The Documentality of “SMONG” as Social Control for Disaster Risk Reduction in Simeulue Island

Aim – This study aims to analyze nandong smong as an oral tradition with the documentality approach by Frohmann. Design/Methodology/Approach – This study analyzes nandong smong using qualitative method, especially case study research. The data collected in this study used secondary data obtained from literature sources or journal documents and previous research related to nandong smong. In this research, data analysis document analysis. Finding – Nandong smong is one of the oral traditions that has become a disaster mitigation tool for the people of Simeulue. According to Frohmann's concept of documentality, Nandong Smong has four aspects of documentality, as follows functionality, historicity, social complexity, and autonomous agency. Nandong smong as an oral document still survives and has a role for the people of Simeulue to this day. As an oral document, nandong smong has a certain social function for the people of Simeulue which is different from other regions. Nandong smong has the power to affect the emotions of the Simeulue community so that it can become a disaster mitigation tool when a tsunami occurs. This was proven when there was a tsunami in 2004, Nandong Smong was able to save them from a tsunami

Towards an effective transnational regulation of AI

Law and the legal system through which law is effected are very powerful, yet the power of the law has always been limited by the laws of nature, upon which the law has now direct grip. Human law now faces an unprecedented challenge, the emergence of a second limit on its grip, a new “species” of intelligent agents (AI machines) that can perform cognitive tasks that until recently only humans could. What happens, as a matter of law, when another species interacts with us, can be integrated into human minds and bodies, makes “real-world” decisions—not through human proxies, but directly—and does all this “intelligently”, with what one could call autonomous agency or even a “mind” of its own? The article starts from the clear premise that control cannot be exercised directly on AI machines through human law. That control can only be effected through laws that apply to humans. This has several regulatory implications. The article’s first discusses what, in any attempt to regulate AI machines, the law can achieve. Having identified what the law can do, the article then canvases what the law should aim to achieve overall. The article encapsulate its analysis in a list of both doctrinal and normative principles that should underpin any regulation aimed at AI machines. Finally, the article compares three transnational options to implement the proposed regulatory approach.

Traversing Anthropocentric Horizons With Her: Trans-Corporeal Surrogacy, Enchantment, and Disenchantment in Human-Machine Assemblage

This article aims to shed light on the intricacies that overturn McLuhan's vision of technologies as extensions or prosthetics of human capabilities when applied to human-machine communication (HMC). Human and nonhuman entities co-evolve on an equal agential footing, immersed in mediatized assemblages. Building on the concepts of Deleuze and Guattari, Bennett, and others, it theorizes HMC as a cycle of sonic enchantment, culminating in trans-corporeal surrogacy, disrupted by disenchantment, and started again through re-enchantment. A new materialist framework helps explain the process of posthuman HMC. It provides a close-textual and visual analysis of Spike Jonze's film Her (2013), in which a human develops a romantic relationship with his AI assistant. The aspects of vulnerability, neediness, authenticity, trust, and intimacy surpass the lure of real-time personalized audio communication. The paper argues that artificial intelligence acquires autonomous agency through the processes of enchantment and mutual surrogacy that decenter humans in mediatized assemblages.

The kantian notion of freedom and autonomy of artificial agency

The objective of this paper is to provide critical analysis of the Kantian notion of freedom (especially the problem of the third antinomy and its resolution in the critique of pure reason); its significance in the contemporary debate on free-will and determinism, and the possibility of autonomy of artificial agency in the Kantian paradigm of autonomy. Kant's resolution of the third antinomy by positing the ground in the noumenal self resolves the problem of antinomies; however, it invites an explanatory gap between phenomenality and the noumenal self; even if he has successfully established the compatibility of natural causality and non-natural causality through his transcendental argument. This paper is also devoted to establishing the plausibility of the knowledge claim that Kantian reduction of phenomenality has served half of the purpose of the AI scientists on the possibility of Artificial Autonomous Agency.

Introduction

The cluster of problems around freedom, determinism, and moral responsibility is one of those themes in philosophy that are fascinating in both their complexity and their seemingly direct relevance to human life. Historians of ideas often assume that in Western philosophy this cluster of problems was the subject of an ongoing discourse from antiquity to the present day. This is, however, an illusion. Much of my research on ancient theories of determinism and freedom is devoted to showing that what commonly counts as this problem cluster today (often labelled as ‘the problem of free will and determinism’) is noticeably distinct from the issues that the ancients discussed—at least prior to the second century CE. It is true that one main component of the ancient discussion concerned the question of how moral accountability can be consistently combined with certain causal factors that impact human behaviour. However, it is not true that the ancient problems involved the questions of the compatibility of causal determinism with either our ability to do otherwise or a human faculty of a free will. Instead, we encounter questions about human autonomous agency and its compatibility with preceding causes, external or internal; with external impediments; with divine predetermination and theological questions; with physical theories like atomism and continuum theory, and with sciences more generally; with elements that determine character development from childhood—nature and nurture; with epistemic features such as ignorance of circumstances; with necessity and modal theories generally; with folk theories of fatalism; and also with questions of how human autonomous agency is related to moral development, to virtue and wisdom, to blame and praise. All these questions were discussed without reference to freedom to do otherwise or a faculty of the will—at least in Classical and Hellenistic philosophy. This volume of essays considers all of these questions to some extent....

Determinism, Freedom, and Moral Responsibility

This volume assembles nine of the author’s essays on determinism, freedom, and moral responsibility in Western antiquity, ranging from Aristotle via the Epicureans and Stoics to the third century. It is representative of the author’s overall scholarship on the topic, much of which emphasizes that what commonly counts as ‘the problem of free will and determinism’ is noticeably distinct from the issues the ancients discussed. It is true that one main component of the ancient discourse concerned the question how moral accountability can be consistently combined with certain causal factors that impact human behaviour. However, it is not true that the ancient problems involved the questions of the compatibility of causal determinism with our ability to do otherwise or with free will. Instead, we encounter questions about human rational and autonomous agency and their compatibility with preceding causes, external or internal; with external impediments; with divine predetermination and theological questions; with physical theories like atomism and continuum theory, and with sciences more generally; with elements that determine character development from childhood, such as nature and nurture; with epistemic features such as ignorance of circumstances; with necessity and modal theories generally; with folk theories of fatalism; and also with questions of how human autonomous agency is related to moral development, to virtue and wisdom, to blame and praise. In Classical and Hellenistic philosophy, these questions were all debated without reference to freedom to do otherwise or free will—. This volume considers all of these questions to some extent.

Transbordering assemblages: Power, agency and autonomy (re)producing health infrastructures in the South East of England

This paper discusses how intersecting identities, stigma and health-based infrastructures are spatially affiliated and territorialised in the South East of England through the findings of three research projects aimed at understanding health inequalities among urban Black, Asian and Ethnic Minorities including Gypsies and Travellers (BAME and GT) groups. It problematises Wacquant’s approach to territorial stigma by explaining how Butler’s notion of vulnerability and Castoriadis’ notion of autonomous agency help to expand our understanding of the interplay between stigma and health infrastructures. Moreover, it suggests that such interplay requires an intersectional approach to identity as performative and embodied practice using illustrative examples. We propose that these health settings and infrastructures can be characterised as ‘transbordering assemblages’, following Irazábal who describes its embedded notions of pluri-locality (here and there: ‘[T]Here’), pluri-identity and practices of bordering (being in or out/in and out/in between) when experiencing health needs.

Human Rights and the Vulnerability of Rights-bearers

I seek to understand the relationship between human vulnerability and human rights as something more than a problem that respect for human rights solves. After characterizing vulnerability and noting that human rights are generally regarded as entitlements that respect the dignity of persons by securing their autonomous agency, I draw out the implications of these premises. I argue that human vulnerabilities are constitutive of the capacity for autonomous agency and therefore that the circumstances of respect for persons must include persons’ vulnerability to many sorts of harms. Given that the opportunity to lead one’s life in one’s own way—that is, the opportunity to exercise autonomous agency—is indispensable to human dignity, respect for persons entails respect for the vulnerability that underwrites autonomous agency. If so, rights-bearers are necessarily vulnerable subjects. I further defend this conception of rights-bearers by arguing that it comports with three types of human rights theory: agency-centered, needs-centered, and practice-based accounts of human rights.

Meaningful affordances

It has been argued that affordances are not meaningful and are thus not useful to be applied in contexts where specifically meaningfulness of experience is at stake (e.g. clinical contexts or discussions of autonomous agency). This paper aims to reconceptualize affordances such as to make them relevant and applicable in such contexts. It starts by investigating the ‘ambiguity’ of (possibilities for) action. In both philosophy of action and affordance research, this ambiguity is typically resolved by adhering to the agents intentions and concerns. I discuss some recent accounts of affordances that highlight these concerns but argue that they tend to adopt an ‘atomistic’ approach where there is no acknowledgement of how these concerns are embedded in the agents wider concerns, values, projects and commitments. An holistic approach that does acknowledge this can be found in psychological research on agents having a sense of what they’re doing. I will discuss this research in the second part of the paper and argue that agents can analogously have a sense of what is afforded. This is deemed the entry point for understanding the meaningfulness of affordances. In the final part of the paper I apply this analysis to recent attempts which seek to make sense of authentic and autonomous agency in terms of affordances.