What role does habit formation play in the development of sport skills? We argue that motor habits are both necessary for and constitutive of sensorimotor skill as they support an automatic, yet inherently intelligent and flexible, form of action control. Intellectualists about skills generally assume that what makes action intelligent and flexible is its intentionality, and that intentionality must be necessarily cognitive in nature to allow for both deliberation and explicit goal-representation. Against Intellectualism we argue that the habitual behaviours that (...) compose skilful action are accompanied by their specific, non-cognitive form of intentionality: this is motor intentionality, which is purposive and adaptive while involving no explicit deliberation or goal representation. Our account of habit based on Motor Intentionality explains why the formation of motor habits can sometimes act as the sole basis of skilful acquisition: Motor Intentionality is inherently purposeful because it is an embodied source of sensorimotor anticipation, pre-reflective motivation, and pragmatic know-how. Skill development through exercise always builds on a motor intentional component even when it is guided by Deliberate Practice to the point that, pace Intellectualism, Deliberate Practice is disclosed, not constrained, by habit formation. As suggested by the fact that repetitive exercises can play a major role in the development of flexible and intelligent sport skills, automatism is not a drawback for strategic control and improvisation but rather their pragmatic foundation. (shrink)

This article intends to summarise the content of my book Insurgent Universality: An Alternative Legacy of Modernity and expand the meaning of the term ‘universality’. Universality is not defined in abstract legal terms or by juxtaposition vis-à-vis a common enemy. Instead, I clarify the meaning of a more concrete and open practice of universality through historical examples and theories that I excavate from social practices.

This article examines how minimal genome research mobilizes philosophical concepts such as minimality and essentiality. Following a historical approach the article aims to uncover what function this terminology plays and which problems are raised by them. Specifically, four historical moments are examined, linked to the work of Harold J. Morowitz, Mitsuhiro Itaya, Eugene Koonin and Arcady Mushegian, and J. Craig Venter. What this survey shows is a historical shift away from historical questions about life or descriptive questions about specific organisms (...) towards questions that explore biological possibilities: what are possible forms of minimal genomes, regardless of whether they exist in nature? Moreover, it highlights a fundamental ambiguity at work in minimal genome research between a universality claim and a standardization claim: does a minimal genome refer to the minimal gene set for any organism whatsoever? Or does it refer rather to a gene set that will provide stable, robust and predictable behaviour, suited for biotechnological applications? Two diagnoses are proposed for this ambiguity: a philosophical diagnosis of how minimal genome research either misunderstands the ontology of biological entities or philosophically misarticulates scientific practice. Secondly, a historical diagnosis that suggests that this ambiguity is part of a broader shift towards technoscience. (shrink)

In order to uphold the claim that referential intuitions are a reliable source of evidence for theories of reference, Machery et al. conducted an empirical research by testing truth-value judgments. First, we discuss a conceptual limitation of Machery et al. ’s experiment on truth-value judgments. Then, we present the data of an empirical survey that shows that people’s truth-value judgments are not congruent with their use of proper names. We explain why the results of our empirical research refute the conclusions (...) of Machery et al. ’s experiment on truth-value judgments. We conclude that referential intuitions are still problematic. (shrink)

I argue that the contextualist account of the referential/attributive interpretation of definite descriptions, presented by Recanati and Bezuidehnout and based on the idea that definite descriptions are semantically underdetermined and in need of completion through optional top-down pragmatic processes, suffers from an explanatory gap. I defend the contextualist view but hold that the determination of the content of definite descriptions is a mandatory, linguistically driven process based on saturation rather than on optional pragmatic processes.

I.One of the main undertakings of the embodied approach to cognition is to spell out effectively the intuition that our body shapes what our mind can do . This endeavor is motivated—among other things – by the deep sense of awe that cognitive scientists experience in front of the sophistication, flexibility, and variability that can be reached by the motor abilities of well-trained humans. In particular, excellence in sporting skills inspires embodied cognition by exhibiting tangible evidence that the details of (...) our bodily constitution are not accidental to our mental powers, but define them in various inherent ways: not only because the informational processes that realize our intelligent functions are specifically regulated, distributed, filtered, or scaffolded by the physical and biological compound that implements them ; but also because the modes and the efficacy of our practical intelligence primarily depend on the o .. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that the challenge of the formalization of functions not merely consists of analyzing and formalizing yet another concept; the challenge may also consist of formalizing a con...

Conflicts between our best philosophical theories (BPTs) and our common beliefs are widespread. For example, if eliminativism is our BPT, then our BPT conflicts with common beliefs about the existence of middle-sized composite artifacts. “Compatibilism” is the name usually given to a theoretical attitude, according to which, in the case of a conflict between BPT and a common belief P, we should try to find a reconciliation. The two major variants of compatibilism are “semantic compatibilism” (SC) and “cognitive compatibilism” (CC). (...) According to SC, to be reconciled with BPT is the “real” version of the content of our ordinary assertions; according to CC, to be reconciled with BPT is the mental state we are “really” in while thinking P. In this paper, we present a new kind of compatibilism, epistemic compatibilism (EC). According to EC, to be reconciled with BPT is the explanation of why we believe that P. After presenting EC, we will argue that it fares better than SC and CC for at least two related reasons: EC does not rely on any form of what we call semantic or cognitive “recarving”; thus, EC avoids some sceptical problems that aect the other two versions of compatibilism. (shrink)

Once one of the main protagonists of history of science, the historiography on quantum theory has recently gone through a process of reconfiguration of methods, research questions and epistemological framework. In this paper, I review the recent developments and propose some reflections on its future evolution.

This article examines the benefits and challenges of integrating decolonisation into philosophy. Its thesis is that a decolonial approach must address not only what decolonisation entails but also how to implement it methodologically. While the analysis of ethnocentrism in philosophy is crucial, it is insufficient if it remains confined to internal criticism without leading to a methodological introjection of the unfamiliar and the foreign. A solid methodology is essential to prevent superficial approaches to diversity and inclusion that fail to challenge (...) disciplinary practices. This methodology, however, is not an end but a means to encourage ongoing conversations beyond comparative and cross‐cultural philosophy. Thus, this article proposes methodological syncretism as a critical approach that embraces a variety of methodologies. The aim is to mitigate the risk of neutralizing the active force of decolonisation by reducing it to a mere theoretical abstraction, which could ultimately lead to a reproduction of colonial appropriation. (shrink)

There is a widespread view that well-learned skills are automated, and that attention to the performance of these skills is damaging because it disrupts the automatic processes involved in their execution. This idea serves as the basis for an account of choking in high pressure situations. On this view, choking is the result of self-focused attention induced by anxiety. Recent research in sports psychology has produced a significant body of experimental evidence widely interpreted as supporting this account of choking in (...) certain kinds of complex sensorimotor skills. We argue against this interpretation, pointing to problems with both the empirical evidence and the underlying theory. The experimental research fails to provide direct support for the central claims of the self-focus approach, contains inconsistencies, and suffers from problems of ecological validity. In addition, qualitative studies of choking have yielded contrary results. We further argue that in their current forms the self-focus and rival distraction approaches both lack the theoretical resources to provide a good theory of choking, and we argue for an expanded approach. Some of the elements that should be in an expanded approach include accounts of the features of pressure situations that influence the psychological response, the processes of situation appraisal, and the ways that attentional control can be overwhelmed, leading to distraction in some cases, and in others, perhaps, to damaging attention to skill execution. We also suggest that choking may sometimes involve performance-impairing mechanisms other than distraction or self-focus. (shrink)

Massimiliano Simons provides the first systematic study of Serres' work in the context of late 20th-century French philosophy of science. By proposing new readings of Serres' philosophy, Simons creates a synthesis between his predecessors, Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, and Louis Althusser as well as contemporary Francophone philosophers of science such as Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers. Simons situates Serres' unique contribution through his notion of the quasi-object, a concept, he argues, organizes great parts of Serres' work into a promising (...) philosophy of science as well as a challenge to the narrower field of French epistemology, to which it has often been limited. Simons highlights how the concept encompasses Serres' commitment to positive relations between science and culture and his rejection of pleas to purify the scientific self from imaginative and cultural elements. It helps to situate Serres between the distinct traditions of Bachelard and Latour as well as progressing the innovative aspects of Serres' philosophy for current debates in the philosophy, history, and sociology of science. Showing how Serres' philosophy can serve as a normative approach to science and technology, Michel Serres and French Philosophy of Science takes in themes of materiality, religiosity, modernity and ecology to advance a timely alternative to philosophy of science for contemporary life. (shrink)

The goal of the paper is to analyse some specific features of a very central concept for top-level ontologies for information systems: i.e. the concept of artefact. Specifically, we analyse the relation to be a copy of that is strongly linked to the notion of artefact and—as we will demonstrate—could be useful to distinguish artefacts from objects of other kinds. Firstly, we outline some intuitive and commonsensical reasons for the need of a clarification of the notion of artefact in ontologies (...) for information systems, and we analyse some characterisations of the notion given by two top-level ontologies (Cyc and Wordnet). Secondly, we introduce and critically analyse Tzouvaras’ notion of copy. Thirdly, we try to complete an analysis of copy by distinguishing three kinds of copies: replicas (Tzouvaras’ notion of copy), rigid copies, and functional copies. With the help of these three notions we outline a first and preliminary distinction between artefacts, objects of art and natural objects. (shrink)

This is an excerpt from the contentIn the introduction to part I of the symposium we stated that a rational agent could be thought of as an agent who has good reasons for its actions. In formal analyses of economic, medical, political, military and forensic decisions rationality, that is the “goodness” of those reasons, is inextricably intertwined with probability. Typically, those analyses concern decisions in a particular class of uncertain situations, namely “risky” situations, where all the relevant available alternative actions (...) are known, each or most actions are non-deterministic , and the probability of each outcome is known to some degree of approximation. As yet, formal analyses have only begun to scratch the surface of the subtleties implicated in uncertain, but not risky, situations, where the available courses of actions, and/or their possible outcomes, and/or the probabilities of those outcomes, are not all. (shrink)

Studies in economics and humanities generally have intrinsic problems that this work illustrates, along with innovations for overcoming them. The main limitations and weak-points of orthodox theory necessitate the use in their stead of other multi-disciplinary approaches, like complexity science, agent-based simulations and artificial life simulations. An example of an artificial life simulation applied in the economics field concerning the exchange process shows the benefits of such new conceptual and methodological instruments.

The first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. This landmark work is the first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists that considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. With twenty-six chapters by leading researchers, the book connects and integrates findings from fields that range from philosophy of mind to sociology of sports. The chapters show not only that (...) sports can tell scientists how the human mind works but also that the scientific study of the human mind can help athletes succeed. Sports psychology research has always focused on the themes, notions, and models of embodied cognition; embodied cognition, in turn, has found striking confirmation of its theoretical claims in the psychological accounts of sports performance and athletic skill. Athletic skill is a legitimate form of intelligence, involving cognitive faculties no less sophisticated and complex than those required by mathematical problem solving. After presenting the key concepts necessary for applying embodied cognition to sports psychology, the book discusses skill disruption ; sensorimotor skill acquisition and how training correlates to the development of cognitive faculties; the intersubjective and social dimension of sports skills, seen in team sports; sports practice in cultural and societal contexts; the notion of “affordance” and its significance for ecological psychology and embodied cognition theory; and the mind's predictive capabilities, which enable anticipation, creativity, improvisation, and imagination in sports performance. Contributors Ana Maria Abreu, Kenneth Aggerholm, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza, Duarte Araújo, Jürgen Beckmann, Kath Bicknell, Geoffrey P. Bingham, Jens E. Birch, Gunnar Breivik, Noel E. Brick, Massimiliano L. Cappuccio, Thomas H. Carr, Alberto Cei, Anthony Chemero, Wayne Christensen, Lincoln J. Colling, Cassie Comley, Keith Davids, Matt Dicks, Caren Diehl, Karl Erickson, Anna Esposito, Pedro Tiago Esteves, Mirko Farina, Giolo Fele, Denis Francesconi, Shaun Gallagher, Gowrishankar Ganesh, Raúl Sánchez-García, Rob Gray, Denise M. Hill, Daniel D. Hutto, Tsuyoshi Ikegami, Geir Jordet, Adam Kiefer, Michael Kirchhoff, Kevin Krein, Kenneth Liberman, Tadhg E. MacIntyre, Nelson Mauro Maldonato, David L. Mann, Richard S. W. Masters, Patrick McGivern, Doris McIlwain, Michele Merritt, Christopher Mesagno, Vegard Fusche Moe, Barbara Gail Montero, Aidan P. Moran, David Moreau, Hiroki Nakamoto, Alberto Oliverio, David Papineau, Gert-Jan Pepping, Miriam Reiner, Ian Renshaw, Michael A. Riley, Zuzanna Rucinska, Lawrence Shapiro, Paula Silva, Shannon Spaulding, John Sutton, Phillip D. Tomporowski, John Toner, Andrew D. Wilson, Audrey Yap, Qin Zhu, Christopher Madan. (shrink)

Since Machery et al. _Cognition_ 92, B1-B12 ( 2004 ) attacked Kripke’s refutation of classical descriptivism, their experiment has been repeated several times, in its original version or in some revised ones, by theorists with contrasting intents. Some repeated the experiment for confirming its results, others for proving them unreliable. One striking characteristic of those surveys is that they mostly replicated the data collected in Machery et al.’s _Cognition_ 92, B1-B12, 2004 experiment: less than 60% of Westerners showed preference for (...) the causal-historical response. We side with the critics of Machery et al.’s experiment. In this paper, we present the results of a survey that tests some hypotheses for explaining that percentage of Westerners’ preferences without taking it as evidence that more than 40% of Westerners have descriptivist intuitions on semantic reference. The aim of our paper is not merely to question the reliability of Machery et al.’s experiment. In sections 4 and 5 we assess the impact of our survey on the current debate in experimental semantics. We provide a novel account of the nature of the epistemic ambiguity that affects experiments in theory of reference and explain the consequences that our account of the epistemic ambiguity has for subsequent works trying to avoid ambiguities. (shrink)

The present paper is devoted to present two pragmatic logics and their corresponding intended interpretations according to which an illocutionary act of hypothesis-making is justified by a scintilla of evidence. The paper first introduces a general pragmatic frame for assertions, expanded to hypotheses, ${\mathsf{AH}}$ and a hypothetical pragmatic logic for evidence ${\mathsf{HLP}}$. Both ${\mathsf{AH}}$ and ${\mathsf{HLP}}$ are extensions of the Logic for Pragmatics, $\mathcal{L}^P$. We compare ${\mathsf{AH}}$ and $\mathsf{HLP}$. Then, we underline the expressive and inferential richness of both systems in (...) dealing with hypothetical judgements, especially when based on different, sometimes conflicting, evidence. (shrink)

European Journal of Political Theory, Ahead of Print. What is the practice and the role of the historian? What does it mean to dig into marginalized and silenced histories? What does it mean to reactivate the contents of past insurgent moments? And who has the power to do it? These are some of the important questions that my generous interlocutors raise in their comments regarding the methodology, and the historiographical and political approach of my book. Indeed, Insurgent Universality outlines an (...) alternative historiography capable of reactivating the histories of the struggling oppressed by putting their past attempts of liberation at the service of political and social alternatives to the present. The task of my historiography is to present the past as a battlefield, which begins from the very political assumptions that often operate behind the historian's back, and to provide a new viewpoint from which other political trajectories of modernity can be disclosed. (shrink)

On a Dreyfusian account performers choke when they reflect upon and interfere with established routines of purely embodied expertise. This basic explanation of choking remains popular even today and apparently enjoys empirical support. Its driving insight can be understood through the lens of diverse philosophical visions of the embodied basis of expertise. These range from accounts of embodied cognition that are ultra conservative with respect to representational theories of cognition to those that are more radically embodied. This paper provides an (...) account of the acquisition of embodied expertise, and explanation of the choking effect, from the most radically enactive, embodied perspective, spelling out some of its practical implications and addressing some possible philosophical challenges. Specifically, we propose: an explanation of how skills can be acquired on the basis of ecological dynamics; and a non-linear pedagogy that takes into account how contentful representations might scaffold skill acquisition from a radically enactive perspective. (shrink)

The essay starts from the singularization and temporalization of political concepts, that originate a self-representation of modernity as hierarchically superior to pre-modernity. Such self-representation, in Massimiliano Tomba’s words, must be now pluralized not only in relationship with the many extra-European temporalities, but also with the multiple temporal layers of European history. The author’s proposal of working on «time differentials», i.e. on the trajectories that turn from the dominant course of modern history, founded on Western emancipation, individual rights and modern (...) property relations, underlies that, in order to reconfigure the concept of modernity, it is necessary to reconfigure the concept of history itself. (shrink)

Aim of the paper is to revise Boolos’ reinterpretation of second-order monadic logic in terms of plural quantification ([4], [5]) and expand it to full second order logic. Introducing the idealization of plural acts of choice, performed by a suitable team of agents, we will develop a notion of plural reference . Plural quantification will be then explained in terms of plural reference. As an application, we will sketch a structuralist reconstruction of second-order arithmetic based on the axiom of infinite (...) à la Dedekind, as the unique non-logical axiom. We will also sketch a virtual interpretation of the classical continuum involving no other infinite than a countable plurality of individuals. (shrink)

This paper investigates the question of how we manage to single out the natural number structure as the intended interpretation of our arithmetical language. Horsten submits that the reference of our arithmetical vocabulary is determined by our knowledge of some principles of arithmetic on the one hand, and by our computational abilities on the other. We argue against such a view and we submit an alternative answer. We single out the structure of natural numbers through our intuition of the absolute (...) notion of finiteness. (shrink)

The Collectio Avellana, a collection of late antique documents which has been thoroughly investigated, above all by ancient historians and historians of Roman law, provides a wealth of historical, political-religious and legal information for the period between the middle of the 4th and the middle of the 6th century AD. This contribution, limited to the years of the pontificate of Pope Damasus, seeks to understand whether these texts can also represent a source of topographical information for the city of Rome.

Il saggio si sofferma su un momento posto all’inizio della parabola storica delineata dalla tecnologia della scrittura musicale nella cultura occidentale: l’introduzione, verso l’inizio del ix secolo, delle prime notazioni neumatiche, il cui principale scopo consistette nel registrare il repertorio di canti liturgici noto come canto gregoriano. Partendo dal presupposto che nella cultura medioevale la scrittura costituisse una tecnologia della memoria, il saggio tenta di interpretare in quest’ottica sia le caratteristiche della notazione neumatica, sia alcune caratteristiche formali dei canti liturgici (...) trasmessi mediante essa.Si propone una nuova interpretazione della tipica costruzione formulaica del canto gregoriano, intesa come conseguenza di un uso sofisticato della memoria improntato al modello concettuale della scrittura. L’analisi di alcuni brani melismatici tramandati in notazione neumatica, a volte accompagnati da testi composti ex novo , mostra come la scrittura neumatica corrisponda a strategie di analisi e creazione fondate sulla memorizzazione. Un’idea che emerge al termine dalla trattazione riguarda il nesso tra la tecnologia della memoria e la concezione sostanzialmente aperta dei canti liturgici – e in particolar modo dei tropi liturgici –, il fatto cioè che questi non fossero pensati come unità autonome e conchiuse, ma piuttosto come differenti configurazioni di un certo numero di elementi fissi che caratterizzano un vasto complesso di brani differenti. The essay focuses on a historical moment placed at the beginning of the parable outlined by the technology of music writing in Western culture: the introduction, at the beginning of the ninth century, of the first neumatic notations, whose main aim consisted in recording the repertoire of liturgical songs known as Gregorian chant. Assuming that writing in medieval culture constituted a technology of memory, the essay tries to interpret in this light the characteristics of neumatic notation, as well as some formal characteristics of liturgical chants transmitted through it.A new interpretation of the typical formulaic construction of Gregorian chant is suggested: formularity is understood as a result of a sophisticated use of memory based on the conceptual model of writing. The analysis of some pieces handed down in melismatic neumatic notation, sometimes accompanied by texts composed ex novo , shows how neumatic writing corresponds to analytical and creative strategies based on memorization. An idea that emerges at the end of the discussion concerns the link between the technology of memory and the essentially open vision of the liturgical chants – especially the liturgical tropes – namely the fact that they were not conceived as autonomous and concluded units, but rather as different configurations of a number of fixed elements that feature a wide range of different songs. (shrink)

Building on dissatisfaction with current approaches that entail a superficial conception of the firm’s moral agency, this article has two broad theoretical underpinnings. First, it refers to the Catholic Social Thought’s view of the enterprise as a community of work, which leads to place stress on the possibility of creating ‘organizational humanizing cultures’ that revolve around the principles of human dignity and the common good and allow organizational members to flourish. Second, the article draws on the perspective of the sociologist (...) Philip Selznick to emphasize the key role of ‘institutional leadership’ in the formation and maintenance of a moral organizational character, also suggesting that these processes involve an influence on the development of employees’ moral identity conceived as a driver of moral agency. On these theoretical grounds, the article’s central argument is articulated by claiming that human resource management can provide essential support for the development of organizational humanizing cultures. In particular, it is highlighted how human resource management professionals may operate as institutional leaders who contribute to the embedding of moral identities in the organizational context. (shrink)

En este trabajo consideramos los discursos políticos y económicos actuales proponiendo el fenómeno start-up como el síntoma de un cambio profundo en la gubernamentalidad neoliberal y un nuevo episodio en la larga historia de las prácticas de organización de la fuerza de trabajo, de su gobierno y movilización. Nos basamos en los textos de Michel Foucault y en la literatura neomanagerial actual para analizar las recientes transformaciones de la racionalidad neoliberal. Con este punto de partida, proponemos que el emprendedor neoliberal (...) del yo, el empresario de sí mismo, tal y como lo concibió Foucault, se está transformando, además, en una especie de inversor de sí mismo administrando permanentemente sus activos personales y buscando constantemente la autoevaluación y la autovalorización en la lógica del rendimiento.In this paper we consider the political and economic discourses hyping the «start-up phenomenon» as the symptom of a deep change in neoliberal governmentality and a new episode in the long history of the practices of workforce government and mobilisation. After pointing out the recent transformations of neoliberal rationality of government, we concentrate on the forms of subjectification implied by what could be defined as the start-up subject: the typically neoliberal entrepreneur of the self is thus transforming into a sort of investor of the self permanently managing his personal assets and incessantly searching for self-evaluation and self-valorisation. (shrink)

In this brief paper I attempt to focus our attention on some of the main thematic lines concerning Karol Wojtyła’s meditation both on man’s personhood and man’s life. I especially wish to investigate the meaning of the term «life», such as it is used in the thought and the teachings of the man who became John Paul II.

Although Michel Foucault is often discussed as a political philosopher, his work can also be place within the tradition of French historical epistemology. However, in contrast to Gaston Bachelard or Georges Canguilhem, his work has been more open to the critique of relativism. The question that will be raised here is in what way one can understand his seemingly relativist conclusions about science, while being part of a science admiring tradition. Different models will be proposed, ranging from a total break, (...) a total identification, to a radicalization of historical epistemology by Foucault. (shrink)

In the first half of the 18th century in India, the trading companies of Holland, England and France were the protagonists of a political and economic expansion. In this paper, the Author aims to highlight the colonial experience of the French governor Joseph-François Dupleix’s in Bengal in the 1730s. In particular, the Author wants to refer to the shift in the balance of power relations between Europeans and Indians, and He wants to highlight a slow and progressive shift of the (...) balance towards European players. In fact after the 1730s, progressively, the use of force becomes, thanks to the fear it generates, a normal modus operandi on the part of the European Companies in India. (shrink)