Microsoft Teams: https://go.um.edu.mo/ptupr7d5   Abstract Is there such a thing as a French philosophy of technology? What drew Bernard Stiegler’s attention to the question of technics, viz., its constitutive role to human beings? What prompted him, in the first volume of Technics and Time, to engage a domain that had long remained repressed, unexplored, or even unthinkable in the history of philosophy? In this presentation, I will trace the concept of technics as memory in Stiegler’s thought through his appropriation of German philosophy, especially Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, in dialogue with Plato and the French archaeologist and paleoanthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan. From there, I analyze how the technical aporia provides a dual foundation for Stiegler’s philosophical architecture. Finally, this presentation […]

Microsoft Teams: https://go.um.edu.mo/ptupr7d5   Abstract Face is often treated either as a static cultural trait of Chinese society or as a minor sociological concept describing politeness and reputation. This dissertation argues that such views fail to explain how Face changes across historical conditions and why it remains existentially significant in contemporary life. The study examines how Face operates across shifting regimes of recognition. Using Hans Georg Moeller and Paul D’Ambrosio’s distinction between sincerity, authenticity, and profilicity, the dissertation traces how Face is reconfigured as identity moves from Confucian role based orders, through modern authenticity discourse, to contemporary profilic conditions. Under sincerity, Face validates role commitment; under authenticity, it becomes a site of tension rather than disappearance; under profilicity, Face is […]

Microsoft Teams: https://go.um.edu.mo/7mnk1eav   Abstract There has been a longstanding debate in the bioethics literature (often referred to as the then-self/now-self debate) over how to respond in cases where dementia patients’ current wishes conflict with their prior advance directives. Recently, there has been a rise in discussions over what are called “digital doppelgangers” and personalized patient preference predictors (LLMs that use patients’ emails, text messages, blog posts, social media posts, voice notes, and similar information to create an LLM that can simulate their way of thinking, speaking, and in the context of medical decision-making, accurately represent their values and preferences). The concept of digital doppelgangers and personalized preference predictors adds a whole new dimension to the then-self/now-self debate. In this […]