Social factors have so far been neglected in embodied theories of perception despite the wealth of phenomenological insights and empirical evidence indicating their importance. I examine evidence from developmental psychology and neuroscience and attempt an initial classification according to whether social factors play a contextual, enabling, or constitutive role in the ability to perceive objects in a detached manner, i.e. beyond their immediate instrumental use. While evidence of cross-cultural variations in perceptual styles and the influence of social cues on visual (...) attention could not be said to play more than a contextual role, other factors such as the intricate developmental links between dyadic and triadic interactions in infancy, as well as episodes of peer-learning in children, play enabling roles. A common element in these factors is the presence and resolution of interpersonal conflict. Detached object perception could not develop without these social factors. I argue, in addition, that social skills such as managing partial social acts which are addressed to and completed by others, linguistic mediation, makebelieve play, and the ability to control perspectival switches are constitutive -- i.e. are of the essence -- of the ability to see objects as present with a detached attitude. I discuss the prospects of incorporating such social elements into dynamical interpretations of the sensorimotor approach through the enactive notion of participatory sense-making. (shrink)

Knowing is an activity through which agents and world produce themselves. This is often expressed by the enactive claim that agents bring forth a world. I analyse this idea for different modes of agent–environment engagement: interactional, transactional, and constitutional. Something is produced in each case. Bringing forth a world is not only an epistemic but an ontological claim. Acts in their fine structure result from a process of fact production, or f/acts. F/acts co-emerge with their 'preconditions', e.g.intentions, affordances, across the (...) subject/object divide. F/acts define their inner temporality and affectivity, comprising both event and experience. A plurality of worlds is admitted in this enactive view, without entailing antirealism. We cannot bring forth just any world. World resistance organizes action and experience. I touch on the implications for objectivity and free will and discuss the primordiality of activity, community, and relationality. From a notion of groundlessness in early enactive work, I suggest that a participatory universe is better conceived as a meshwork of groundless grounds. (shrink)

This review article offers an examination of some of the major recent writings (2007-2011), that bring the empirical sciences of mind into relationship with phenomenological investigations. It considers works and papers by Evan Thompson, Shaun Gallagher, Dan Zahavi and Alva Noë.

The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly to show the partial agreement between two ap-proaches to capitalism, considered as will of power and perverse metamorphosis of desire: Magatti’s conception of ‘techno-nihlist capitalism’ and the idea of ‘libidinal economy’, proposed by Deleuze&Guattari and Lyotard. Secondly, to evaluate the difference be-tween Magatti and Deleuze, in the light of the impact of financial crisis, understood as contraction of will of power and crisis of desire. From this clinical point of view, what is (...) at stake is reconceptualizing the nature of desire as a generative power, against the deleuzian concept of desire as nomad and anonyme flux: the key question is the possibility to think the will of power as a desire to shape social bonds, beyond its perverse temptation to kill the Other. (shrink)

This paper will critically examine two solutions to Frege’s puzzle: the Millian-Russellian solution proposed by Salmon and Braun, which invokes non-semantic modes of presentation (guises, ways of believing or the like); and Fine’s relationalist solution, which appeals to semantic coordination. Special attention will be devoted to discussing the conception of modes of presentation as mental files and to elucidating the nature of coordination. A third solution to Frege’s puzzle will be explored which, like Salmon’s and Braun’s, adopts the Millian-Russellian semantics (...) but, like Fine’s, involves coordination instead of modes of presentation; however, coordination will not be conceived as a semantic relation but as a cognitive and subjective relation, which provides no contribution to semantic content. This novel Millian-Russellian account involving cognitive coordination will be labelled cognitive relationism. (shrink)

This paper deals with the relation between freedom and norm in the practical philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, taking into account especially the “Little Ethics” that covers Studies VII, VIII, IX of Oneself as Another. Although Ricoeur states the priority of ethics over moral, playing the quest for good and happiness off against deontological morality of duty, it soon appears clear that the norm is necessarily implied by the development of ethics itself. No actual freedom can exist without norm; but, on (...) the other and, no normative system is absolute, because the quest for good, in which freedom consists, cannot be fulfilled by any norm. This is the reason why it is always possible, and in some cases necessary, to act not following the established rules, but by improvisational conducts that can answer to the needs of the given situations. Aim of the article is to show the relevance of creativity for Ricoeur’s theory of action, but also to highlight the fact that creativity is not grounded on itself, but is linked to an infinite ethical ambition that give sense to improvisation. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper aims to show the connection between space, place and subjectivity. According to how we conceive space, place and their relations, it is possible to affirm a certain understanding of what has been called “the subject” in the framework of Cartesian, Kantian and Husserlian legacies. Quantitative geography takes the transcendental subject—characterized by a methodical detachment from its environment, constituted as an opposite object—for granted. Many and various reactions to this subject-object model can be traced within the social sciences (and (...) within human geography in particular) in the last four decades. In this paper I propose an overview of these reactions and then provide a new conceptual articulation for them, based on the kind of subjectivity they assume. I have identified three overarching patterns, or meta-theories: one ontological, one critical and one phenomenological. (shrink)

In this essay we will specify two issues particularly significant not only with regard to the personal life of Tommaso Campanella, but also with respect to his thought: 1) the revolutionary prophec...

Tarski, Carnap and Quine spent the academic year 1940?1941 together at Harvard. In their autobiographies, both Carnap and Quine highlight the importance of the conversations that took place among them during the year. These conversations centred around semantical issues related to the analytic/synthetic distinction and on the project of a finitist/nominalist construction of mathematics and science. Carnap's Nachlaß in Pittsburgh contains a set of detailed notes, amounting to more than 80 typescripted pages, taken by Carnap while these discussions were taking (...) place. In my article, I present a survey of these notes with special emphasis on Tarski's rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, the passage from typed languages to first-order languages, Tarski's finitism/nominalism, and the construction of a finitist language for mathematics and science. (shrink)

An algebraization of the notion of topology has been proposed more than 70 years ago in a classical paper by McKinsey and Tarski, leading to an area of research still active today, with connections to algebra, geometry, logic and many applications, in particular, to modal logics. In McKinsey and Tarski’s setting the model theoretical notion of homomorphism does not correspond to the notion of continuity. We notice that the two notions correspond if instead we consider a preorder relation \( \sqsubseteq (...) \) defined by \(a \sqsubseteq b\) if _a_ is contained in the topological closure of _b_, for _a_, _b_ subsets of some topological space. A _specialization poset_ is a partially ordered set endowed with a further coarser preorder relation \( \sqsubseteq \). We show that every specialization poset can be embedded in the specialization poset naturally associated to some topological space, where the order relation corresponds to set-theoretical inclusion. Specialization semilattices are defined in an analogous way and the corresponding embedding theorem is proved. Specialization semilattices have the amalgamation property. Some basic topological facts and notions are recovered in this apparently very weak setting. The interest of these structures arises from the fact that they also occur in many rather disparate contexts, even far removed from topology. (shrink)

Some modal expressions in language—for example, "can" and "able'"—describe what is possible in light of someone's abilities. Ability modals are obviously related to other modalities in language, such as epistemic or deontic modality, but also give rise to anomalies that make them unique. This paper develops a general theory of ability modals that is broadly compatible with standard modal semantics, while predicting their peculiar behavior. The central idea is that ability modals include reference to a notion of dependence. At the (...) level of truth conditions, "S is able to A" simply says that there is a circumstantially accessible world where S As. On top of this, a not-at-issue element requires that whether S As depends, in part, on intrinsic features of S. Differently from most analyses, this account divorces ability modals from a notion of agency. (shrink)

Suppose that, yesterday at noon, Maria considered flipping a fair coin, but didn't. What probability do you assign to "If Maria had flipped the coin, the coin would have landed heads"? Now suppose that, contrary to fact, Maria did indeed flip the coin. In that counterfactual scenario, what is the probability of "The coin will land tails"? The two questions sound strikingly similar. I argue that they sound similar because they are equivalent. The chance of a counterfactual "If A, would (...) C" equals the chance of C, in the counterfactual scenario that A (and a similar principle holds for credence). This principle does better than similar principles that have been defended (like Skyrms' Thesis), avoids triviality, and gives us important clues for a semantics for counterfactuals. (shrink)

After giving a brief overview of the renewal of interest in logic and the foundations of mathematics in Göttingen in the period 1914-1921, I give a detailed presentation of the approach to the foundations of mathematics found in Behmann's doctoral dissertation of 1918, Die Antinomie der transfiniten Zahl und ihre Auflösung durch die Theorie von Russell und Whitehead. The dissertation was written under the guidance of David Hilbert and was primarily intended to give a clear exposition of the solution to (...) the antinomies as found in Principia Mathematica. In the process of explaining the theory of Principia, Behmann also presented an original approach to the foundations of mathematics which saw in sense perception of concrete individuals the Archimedean point for a secure foundation of mathematical knowledge. The last part of the paper points out an important numbers of connections between Behmann's work and Hilbert's foundational thought. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to reconstruct a hypothetical genealogy of the U.S. national motto “in God we Trust” by comparing the juridical and theological concept of “depositum”. According to Philo of Alexandria, the deposit was the most sacred institutional act of ancient social life, because it had both a religious and a sociological function. According to the Epistulae to Timothy the term ‘deposit’ defined the legacy of the Christian faith of which the disciple of St. Paul was entrusted. (...) His task was to manage this legacy and to spread it among the others. Hence the deposit defined at the same time a contract based upon good faith and a symbolic space of “security”, namely a container that protected an unchangeable content: the oral knowledge transmitted by Christ to the Apostoles and, indirectly, to St. Paul. The depositum was also the procedure through which the word of Christ would acquire all its potential. On the other hand, the contract defined as “depositum” by Roman law was characterized by a centrality of the so-called bona fides and by the distinction between regular and irregular deposit. This means that the principle of good faith should lead the conducts of the manager whose task is exactly to look after an object called Christian faith. How can we interpret the word ‘trust’ according to the juridico-political remarks? The purpose of this chapter is to explain all these related issues. (shrink)

Epidemiology relies upon a broad interpretation of determinism. This paper discusses analogies with the evolution of the concept of cause in physics, and analyzes the classical nine criteria proposed by Sir Austin Bradford Hill for causal assessment. Such criteria fall into the categories of enumerative induction, eliminative induction, deduction and analogy. All of these four categories are necessary for causal assessment and there is no natural hierarchy among them, although a deductive analysis of the study design is preliminary to any (...) assessment. (shrink)