The distinction between abstract and concrete concepts is fundamental to cognitive linguistics and cognitive science. This distinction is commonly operationalized through concreteness ratings based on the aggregated judgments of many people. What is often overlooked in experimental studies using this operationalization is that ratings are attributed to words, not to concepts directly. In this paper we explore the relationship between the linguistic properties of English words and conceptual abstractness/concreteness. Based on hypotheses stated in the existing linguistic literature we select a (...) set of variables and verify whether they are statistically associated with concreteness ratings. We show that English nouns are rated as more concrete compared to other parts of speech, but mass nouns are rated as less concrete than count nouns. Furthermore, a more complex morphological structure is associated with abstractness, and as for etymology, French- and Latin-derived words are more abstract than words of other origin. This shows that linguistic properties of words are indeed associated with the degree of concreteness that we attribute to the underlying concepts, and we discuss the implications that these findings have for linguistic theory and for empirical investigations in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

The paper describes a highly specific Italian action research experience, connected with the trade unions, going through different phases from the 1970s to the present day. The journey is not only a journey through time but also through different approaches. It ranges from the initial experience focusing on health and safety problems at the workplace involving the workers as co-designers of new working environments to today’s search conference experience. For each phase there is a full description and comment on the (...) methods utilised by the research group. The main methodological shift described in the paper is the one from discussion groups, based on Bion’s thinking, to the search conferences, based on Emery’s line of thinking. Both are oriented to the subjectivity of the people involved, although in the discussion group experience the research groups considered the subjectivity of the people involved as the subject of the observation. The researchers’ aim of was to acquire a reliable knowledge of what was at stake and to pass it on to the union that organised the research in order to promote actions. Hence, the action-research circuit is based upon different actors and the process is integrated only from the point of view of the union. In the search conference experience the researchers are involved in a co-design process and so the action-research circuit is really integrated from the researchers’ perspective; there are, of course, multiple perspectives in this case and this opens up epistemological problems that are not discussed in the paper. (shrink)

I quattro Studi qui raccolti trattano alcuni temi significativi della filosofia settecentesca: il rapporto anima-corpo in Swedenborg, la presenza o meno di un livello di ragione nell' Homme naturel di Rousseau, la convergenza o meno di radicalismo politico e dimensione religiosa in Mably e in Morelly, la fondazione della scienza economica in Genovesi. Sono saggi molto diversi che sottendono interessi differenziati e stili di pensiero non collimanti; essi, tuttavia, sono accomunati da un'ottica squisitamente storiografica, che, pur nella consapevolezza di una (...) tensione tra presente e passato, tende a cogliere l'autonomia di quest'ultimo, la sua resistenza ad ogni schematizzazione, il suo sfuggire ad ogni tentativo di irrigidimento in immagini definitive. Il quadro del Settecento che emerge da questo volume da un lato mette in luce le diverse articolazioni che la filosofia settecentesca assume nei diversi contesti "nazionali" europei, dall'altro ne sottolinea slanci ma anche ambiguità e incoerenze, confermando quella grande complessità culturale dell' "età dei lumi" delineata dalla storiografia più recente. (shrink)

_Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice_ presents the latest research on Islamic occult sciences from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, namely intellectual history, manuscript studies and material culture.

Ivancovsky et al. argue that the neurocognitive mechanisms of creativity and curiosity both rely on the interplay among brain networks. Research to date demonstrates that such inter-network dynamics are further complicated by functional fractionation within networks. Investigating how networks subdivide and reconfigure in service of a task offers insights about the precise anatomy that underpins creative and curious behaviour.

The purpose of this cross-sectional investigation was to examine the item characteristics, factor structure, reliability, convergent validity, and construct validity of the Psychobiosocial States in Physical Education (PBS-SPE) scale. In Study 1, a sample of 1,030 students (582 girls and 448 boys, 10 to 19-year-olds), drawn from middle or high schools, rated the intensity of the 20 items version of the PBS-SPE scale thinking about the feelings they had usually experienced in physical education classes. In Study 2, an additional sample (...) of 1,025 students (578 girls, 447 boys, 10 to 19-year-olds), rated the 16 items of the final version of the scale. Two subsamples also completed an affective-related measure (i.e., the Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale) and two motivation scales often used in the physical education domain (i.e., the Teacher-Initiated Motivational Climate in Physical Education Questionnaire and the Situational Motivation Scale). Exploratory structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analyses of the data showed that a two-factor, 16-item solution (i.e., 8 pleasant/functional items and 8 unpleasant/dysfunctional items) of the PBS-SPE scale reached satisfactory fit indices. Multi-group comparisons provided support for measurement and structural invariance across samples, gender, and age. Convergent and construct validity was also upheld. Overall, the findings offer support for the use of a new instrument in the assessment of psychobiosocial states in physical education settings. (shrink)

In the decision-making and rationality research field, rational decision theory (RDT) has always been the main framework, thanks to the elegance and complexity of its mathematical tools. Unfortunately, the formal refinement of the theory is not accompanied by a satisfying predictive accuracy, thus there is a big gap between what is predicted by the theory and the behaviour of real subjects. Here we propose a new foundation of the RDT, which has to be based on a cognitive architecture for reason-based (...) agents, acting on the basis of their beliefs in order to achieve their goals. The decision process is a cognitive evaluation of conflicting goals, based on different beliefs and values, but also on emotions and desires. We refer to a cognitive analysis of emotions and we integrate them in this more general RDT. (shrink)

A cavallo tra i due concili di Costanza e Basilea, che hanno fortemente influito sul giudizio della Chiesa in relazione alle donne visionarie, si staglia la figura di Francesca Bussa dei Ponziani. Le visioni politiche di Francesca rappresentano un fulgido esempio di come i modelli brigidini e cateriniani siano stati ripresi e rimodellati su un nuovo, mutato contesto storico. La sua consolidata autorità le consentì di ammonire a più riprese papa Eugenio IV riguardo alla sua partecipazione al concilio (...) di Basilea, intervenendo attivamente nello scenario religioso e politico romano. (shrink)

In this paper I examine one well-known attempt to justify the claim that thoughts are intrinsically structured, Evans’s justification of the Generality Constraint. I compare this with a rival account, proposed by Peaocke. I end by suggesting that a naïve, Aristotelian realist has no difficulty at all in providing a justification of the Generality Constraint, which is therefore a view that deserves serious consideration.

Beginning with the meeting between Joseph Beuys and representatives of the American Women’s Liberation Movement, the article compares their respective political and aesthetic practices. Against the backdrop of an increased appeal to the politicity of art and the celebration of Joseph Beuys as one of its great pioneers, the text argues that Beuys’s notion of democracy and his attempts to form a social movement were far less radical and plastic (in his own sense) than those of the feminists and highlights (...) various areas in which the feminist movement was politically and aesthetically effective and innovative. Beuys’s social sculpture, the thesis goes, unfolds its stronger political effect where it does not act politically, but artistically. (shrink)

Extensive and critical review of Perception and Reality in Kant, Husserl and McDowell, written by van Mazijk, Corijn focussing on his discussion of McDowell.

In Poggiolesi we have introduced a rigorous definition of the notion of complete and immediate formal grounding; in the present paper our aim is to construct a logic for the notion of complete and immediate formal grounding based on that definition. Our logic will have the form of a calculus of natural deduction, will be proved to be sound and complete and will allow us to have fine-grained grounding principles.

At Columbia University in 1906, William James gave a highly confrontational speech to the American Philosophical Association (APA). He ignored the technical philosophical questions the audience had gathered to discuss and instead addressed the topic of human energy. Tramping on the rules of academic decorum, James invoked the work of amateurs, read testimonials on the benefits of yoga and alcohol, and concluded by urging his listeners to take up this psychological and physiological problem. What was the goal of this unusual (...) speech? Rather than an oddity, Francesca Bordogna asserts that the APA address was emblematic—it was just one of many gestures that James employed as he plowed through the barriers between academic, popular, and pseudoscience, as well as the newly emergent borders between the study of philosophy, psychology, and the “science of man.” Bordogna reveals that James’s trespassing of boundaries was an essential element of a broader intellectual and social project. By crisscrossing divides, she argues, James imagined a new social configuration of knowledge, a better society, and a new vision of the human self. As the academy moves toward an increasingly interdisciplinary future, William James at the Boundaries reintroduces readers to a seminal influence on the way knowledge is pursued. (shrink)

An introduction to philosophy of language since Frege, focusing on the 20th century.

Michael Ayers’s Knowing and Seeing: Groundwork for a New Empiricism is a rich and detailed development of two ideas. The first is that perception presents reality to us directly in a perspicuous way. We thus acquire primary knowledge of the world: “knowledge gained by being evidently, self-consciously, in direct cognitive contact with the object of the knowledge.” (Ayers 2019, 63) The second idea is that concepts are not needed in perception. In this article, the author examines Ayers’s view. The author (...) proceeds as follows: In the first section, he identifies the target of Ayers’s attacks, conceptualism. He then describes why many philosophers have felt this conceptualist view to be attractive. In the next section, he discusses Ayers’s criticisms of conceptualism in an attempt to disentangle these criticisms from the statement of his positive view, which the author discusses in the following section. He ends by describing some problems for Ayers’s positive position that are, so he argues, the result of his vehement opposition to conceptualism. (shrink)

After preliminarily pointing to the undeniable differences between Jonas’ philosophical biology and Schelling’s philosophy of nature, I contend that, besides their divergencies, the two philosophers agree on several important points. I then show to what extent, based on these elements of convergence, their two approaches could even be taken as complementary. In the core of my paper I lay emphasis on what I believe to be the main ground for the complementarity of the two philosophical inquiries, that is to say, (...) their common radicalization and superseding of Kant’s principle of self-organization. In this respect – all differences considered – they both can be said to delineate a philosophy of the organic that can fruitfully contribute, even better than Kant’s input, to the currently widely discussed topic of biological autonomy. (shrink)

This book offers a reconstruction of the debate on non-Euclidean geometry in neo-Kantianism between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. Kant famously characterized space and time as a priori forms of intuitions, which lie at the foundation of mathematical knowledge. The success of his philosophical account of space was due not least to the fact that Euclidean geometry was widely considered to be a model of certainty at his time. However, such (...) later scientific developments as non-Euclidean geometries and Einstein’s general theory of relativity called into question the certainty of Euclidean geometry and posed the problem of reconsidering space as an open question for empirical research. The transformation of the concept of space from a source of knowledge to an object of research can be traced back to a tradition, which includes such mathematicians as Carl Friedrich Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, Richard Dedekind, Felix Klein, and Henri Poincaré, and which finds one of its clearest expressions in Hermann von Helmholtz’s epistemological works. Although Helmholtz formulated compelling objections to Kant, the author reconsiders different strategies for a philosophical account of the same transformation from a neo-Kantian perspective, and especially Hermann Cohen’s account of the aprioricity of mathematics in terms of applicability and Ernst Cassirer’s reformulation of the a priori of space in terms of a system of hypotheses. This book is ideal for students, scholars and researchers who wish to broaden their knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry or neo-Kantianism. (shrink)

Sociopolitical attitudes are often the root cause of conflicts between individuals, groups, and even nations, but little is known about the origin of individual differences in sociopolitical orientation. We test a combination of economic and evolutionary ideas about the degree to which the mating market, sex, age, and income affect sociopolitical orientation. We collected data online through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk from 1108 US participants who were between 18 and 60, fluent in English, and single. While ostensibly testing a new online (...) dating website, participants created an online dating profile and described people they would like to date. We manipulated the participants’ popularity in the mating market and the size of the market and then measured participants’ sociopolitical attitudes. The sociopolitical attitudes were reduced to five dimensions via Principal Components Analysis. Both manipulations affected attitudes toward wealth redistribution but were largely not significant predictors of the other dimensions. Men reported more unrestricted sociosexual attitudes, and more support for benevolent sexism and traditional family values, than women did, and women supported wealth redistribution more than men did. There was no sex difference in accepting nonconforming behaviors. Younger people and people with lower incomes were more liberal than older people and people with higher incomes, respectively, regardless of sex. Overall, effects were largely not interactive, suggesting that individual differences in sociopolitical orientation may reflect strategic self-interest and be more straightforward than previously predicted. (shrink)

Francesca Y. Albertini (1974‐2011) compares Maimonides’ idea of peace, as developed in MT Sefer shofetim (Book of Judges), with Kant’s work on the notion of “eternal peace” ( Zum ewigen Frieden ). Both authors develop a historical vision pointed against the use of force and war in light of a framework not limited by historical time (messianic age, eternity). Despite all differences in method and historical context, the authors agree on the notion that universal ethics provides the basis of (...) a determination of right grounded in the will. Maimonides’ universal messianism as well as Kant’s universal history emphasize the pivotal role and decisive responsibility of the human being in realizing, through reason, the reign of peace and prosperity on earth first envisioned by the biblical prophets. These utopias continue to challenge us, especially in this day and age. (shrink)

An inquiry drawing on the presence of Hellenistic philosophy in Philo provides a better knowledge of the diffusion of Hellenistic philosophy since the late ...

The aim of this paper is to provide a definition of the the notion of complete and immediate formal grounding through the concepts of derivability and complexity. It will be shown that this definition yields a subtle and precise analysis of the concept of grounding in several paradigmatic cases.