Este trabajo tiene como propósito aportar algunos elementos para una reflexión sobre los procesos de industrialización en la provincia de Catamarca - Argentina en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX. Para orientarnos en esta dirección partiremos del proyecto de una enciclopedia genética propuesta por el filósofo Gilbert Simondon cómo propuesta de abordaje. Luego analizaremos el espíritu enciclopédico presente en los escritos económicos de Federico Schickendantz y Samuel Lafone Quevedo estructurados como máquinas de enseñar. Por último, presentaremos la descripción de dos (...) objetos técnicos creados por el D. Mardoqueo Molina y Bazán elaborada en estos escritos. Consideramos que estos objetos técnico aportaron un paradigma de inteligibilidad para la construcción de ciertas imágenes del porvenir de la actividad industrial en la provincia de Catamarca en estos escritos. Desde nuestra perspectiva, la falta de una estado metaestable a nivel social, necesario para amplificar estas imágenes del provenir, impidieron el desarrollo de una mentalidad técnica. (shrink)

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the field of ‘art-science’ collaborations for their perceived capacity to develop new cultural understandings of technology and science. In this article, and through an engagement with the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, I argue that if art-science represents an important site for the formation of an alternate technical culture today, then it is because of the new technical mentalities that such practices might cultivate. Here, creating a new technical (...) class='Hi'>mentality is more than just a representational concern with enhancing ‘public awareness’ of technology, instead referring to more material transformations in our embodied capacities for perceiving and affectively engaging with technologies. I flesh this potential out through an encounter with work of Art Orienté objet, whose art-science collaborations challenge the anthropocentric and utilitarian mentalities of contemporary bioscience through explorations of the transindividual conditions of human embodiment and its material immersion within nonhuman ecologies. (shrink)

Although the “Introduction” to the DSM makes it clear that the presence of “clinical” distress or impairment is insufficient for a diagnosis of “mental disorder” , in practice the clinician is completely unshackled from the conceptual definition and is free to decide on a case-by-case basis if “enough” distress or impairment is present, regardless of circumstances, to judge that “mental disorder” can be diagnosed. It is argued that reference to a biological or psychological dysfunction cannot raise “mental disorder” from a (...) judgment quite like “This is pornography, not literature” to a technical–scientific term because “biological dysfunction” must be tied to an outcome that is itself less ambiguous than “mental disorder,” and “psychological dysfunction” erroneously assumes that how people are supposed to think, feel, and act, regardless of circumstances, can be as uncontentious as ideas about physical well being, and in addition erroneously assumes that human behavior can be causally explained. (shrink)

This paper describes the relationship between technics and desire in light of Bernard Stiegler’s new critique of political economy. The starting point for the analysis is Stiegler’s critique of the reinterpretation of Freud’s legacy by Herbert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization. The context of the analysis is the ongoing mutation of consumer capitalism into computational capitalism—one in which automated calculation systems are used to control all forms of mental and affective human activity. Digital automatization, I argue, encourages a different view (...) of what Marcuse called “the automatization of the superego.” It also requires us to rethink to what extent desire is conditioned techno-logically beyond the limits of Marcuse’s critique of Freud, capitalism and technology. The article pays special attention to Stiegler’s reinterpretation of the theory of sublimation in relation to contemporary capitalism and its technological infrastructure (from television to digital platforms). It is also an attempt to include the question concerning technology in psychoanalytic thinking. (shrink)

Mental fatigue is a psycho-biological state that impairs sports-related performances. Recently, it has been proved that MF can affect basketball performance. However, a systematic overview detailing the influences of MF on basketball performance is still lacking. This study aims to investigate the effects of MF on the physical, technical, tactical, and cognitive performance of basketball. We used the databases of PubMed, Web of Science, SPORTDiscus, Scopes, and CKNI for articles published up to 31 May 2021. The articles included in (...) this study were projected to test whether MF influences basketball athlete performance. Only experimental design studies were selected, and the control condition was without MF. Finally, seven articles fit the inclusion criteria. The results imply that MF impairs the technical aspects of basketball and the players' cognitive [take-the-first heuristics and decision-making] performance, which results in athletes not using their techniques skillfully and being unable to make practical decisions during critical points in the game. In addition to that, the influences of MF on physical and tactical performance have not been studied. Further studies should look into comprehensive research on the influences of MF on basketball performance, especially on a player's physical and tactical performance.Systematic Review Registration: [https://inplasy.com/] [INPLASY2021100017]. (shrink)

Social transmission is at the core of cultural evolutionary theory. It occurs when a demonstrator uses mental representations to produce some public displays which in turn allow a learner to acquire similar mental representations. Although cultural evolutionists do not dispute this view of social transmission, they typically abstract away from the multistep nature of the process when they speak of cultural variants at large, thereby referring both to variation and evolutionary change in mental representations as well as in their corresponding (...) public displays. This conflation suggests that differentiating each step of the transmission process is redundant. In this paper, I examine different forms of interplay between the multistep nature of social transmission and the metric spaces used by cultural evolutionists to measure cultural variation and to model cultural change. I offer a conceptual analysis of what assumptions seem to be at work when cultural evolutionists conflate the complex causal sequence of social transmission as a single space of variation in which populations evolve. To this aim, I use the framework of variation spaces, a formal framework commonly used in evolutionary biology, and I develop two theoretical concepts, ‘technique’ and ‘technical space’, for addressing cases where the complexity of social transmission defies the handy assumption of a single variation space for cultural change. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to understand the functional role of mental representations and intentionality in skilled actions from a systems related perspective. Therefore, we will evaluate the function of representation and then discuss the cognitive architecture of skilled actions in more depth. We are going to describe the building blocks and levels of the action system that enable us to control movements such as striking the tennis ball at the right time, or grasping tools in manual action. Based (...) on this theoretical understanding the measurement of mental representations and related research results concerning mental representation in skilled action are presented in an overview. This leads to the question how mental representations develop and change during learning. Finally, to consolidate the functional understanding of mental representation in skilled action and interaction, we provide examples how to use the measurement of mental representation in humans to inform technical systems. (shrink)

Several fields contributing to psychiatric advances, such as psychology, biology, and the humanities, have not yet met to produce a cohesive and integrated picture of human function and dysfunction, strength and vulnerability, etc., despite advances in their own areas. The failure may have its roots in a disagreement on what we mean by the human person and his or her relationship with the world, for which the incommensurate language of these disciplines may be partly to blame. Turns taken by western (...) philosophy over the past 400 years may help to explain this. Language is such an important tool for psychiatrists, that examination of it may afford an insight into the reasons for divisions in the field. This paper aims to examine and compare psychologies (and hence psychiatries) derived from modern western philosophy, with similar concepts in other cultures, through the study of developments in terminology, in terms of the simplest facts about what it means to be human. Terminology used in mental health in western cultures is examined, with particular consideration of the term “self” as it has come to be used in a technical sense. Analogous terms from non-English speaking European languages, and some non-western cultures are studied. Western philosophy and psychology have evolved a meaning for the term “self” which is quite different from equivalent terms in non-western cultures. It is a moot point whether or not the development in western psychiatry of what are now technical terms to describe normal human experience has become needlessly obscure and ambiguous. It is not evident that this “new” language represents a genuine advance in understanding; it distances mental health professionals from those who are not familiar with it; and it makes transcultural dialogue difficult. (shrink)

In general, in our ordinary life, we manage to make the difference between “strange” behavior and error or extravagant beliefs. The question is here to know how we do so, and against what background. There are also specialized contexts for evaluating whether certain types of behavior or discourse are normal or abnormal: courts of law and psychiatric hospitals are two examples. In these contexts, judgments are formed against a background of technical or scientific knowledge, but they also result from (...) epistemic means of evaluation that are similar to habitual ones. The paper seeks to highlight this similarity with respect to recognizing mental disturbance. Starting from Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, it attempts at extending it by drawing on notions of reciprocal perspectives and of judgments of incongruity. It documents its investigation by analyzing sequences from Malek Bensmail’s documentary, Aliénations, which examines the treatment of mental suffering in contemporary Algeria. (shrink)

In a long and many-sided career, William Hasledine Pepys contributed significantly to the advancement of the chemical and physical sciences during the first half of the nineteenth century. As an original investigator he determined, in collaboration with William Allen, the composition of carbon dioxide, and the density of ammonia, and elucidated the chemical phenomena of respiration in man, animals, and plants. The success of these researches was largely due to the use of ingenious apparatus of his own invention and design. (...) In the field of experimental physics, he investigated several aspects of the recently discovered Voltaic electricity: his 'Voltaic coil', consisting of only two plates, but of very large dimensions, was particularly suited for investigating electromagnetic phenomena and was so used in Davy's researches. Pepys was one of the co-founders of the Mineralogical and Geological Societies, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1808. As a prominent member of both the Royal and London Institutions, he held honorary office as Manager and Vice-President, contributing materially to the direction of the affairs of these bodies. Pepys was a friend of Humphry Davy and was acquainted with nearly all the leading scientists and medical men of the day. At the same time, he superintended a notable manufacture of surgical instruments in the City, and promoted by his active directorship the affairs of two public companies, both pioneers in their technological fields, namely the Imperial Continental Gas Association, which was active in introducing the new gas illumination to cities and towns across Europe, and the General Steam Navigation Company, which first maintained a regular passenger and cargo service to Continental ports by the exclusive use of steam-propelled vessels. Pepys' advice in scientific and technical matters was widely sought and freely given; he retained his mental powers to the end of his long life, fulfilling his professional commitments until a few days before his death. (shrink)

Philosophers after Leibniz used a technical idiom to classify and explain the nature of mental content. Substantive philosophical claims were formulated in terms of this vocabulary, including claims about the nature of mental representations, concepts, unconscious mental content, and consciousness. Despite its importance, the origin and development of this vocabulary is insufficiently well understood. More specifically, interpreters have failed to recognize the existence of two distinct and influential versions of the post-Leibnizian idiom. These competing formulations used the same (...) class='Hi'>technical terms and taxonomic relations but assigned different connotations to those terms and employed different criteria for their application. This paper explains the two most influential versions of the post-Leibnizian idiom. (shrink)

It is common to characterise phenomenal consciousness as _what it is like_ to be in a mental state. This paper argues that the ‘what-it’s-like’-phrase in this context has a technical meaning, i.e. a meaning for which the association to the relevant expression is peculiar to a theoretical community. The relevant theoretical community is philosophy and some parts of cognitive science, so on this view, only philosophers and cognitive scientists use the ‘what-it’s-like’-phrase in the way that is characteristic in the (...) literature on phenomenal consciousness. This claim has important consequences. Firstly, I argue that the phrase says nothing informative about phenomenal consciousness. Secondly, I argue that the fact that non-philosophers use the phrase is not compelling evidence that they believe in phenomenal consciousness. These claims have further consequences for debates about phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Employing Searle’s views, I begin by arguing that students of Mathematics behave similarly to machines that manage symbols using a set of rules. I then consider two types of Mathematics, which I call Cognitive Mathematics and Technical Mathematics respectively. The former type relates to concepts and meanings, logic and sense, whilst the latter relates to algorithms, heuristics, rules and application of various techniques. I claim that an upgrade in the school teaching of Cognitive Mathematics is necessary. The aim is (...) to change the current mentality of the stakeholders so as to compensate for the undue value presently attached to Technical Mathematics, due to advances in technology and its applications, and thus render the two sides of Mathematics equal. Furthermore, I suggest a reorganization/systematization of School Mathematics into a cognitive network to facilitate students’ understanding of the subject. The final goal is the transition from mechanical execution of rules to better understanding and in-depth knowledge of Mathematics. (shrink)

Medieval philosophy is often presented as the outcome of a large scale encounter between the Christian tradition and the Greek philosophical one. This picture, however, inappropriately tends to leave out the active role played by the medieval authors themselves and their institutional contexts. The theme of the mental language provides us with an interesting case study in such matters. The paper first introduces a few technical notions—'theme', 'tradition', 'textual chain' and 'textual borrowing'—, and then focuses on precise passages about (...) mental language from Anselm of Canterbury, Albert the Great and William of Ockham. All three authors in effect identify some relevant Augustinian idea (that of 'mental word', most saliently) with some traditional philosophical one (such as that of 'concept' or that of 'logos endiathetos'). But the gist of the operation widely varies along the line and the tradition encounter is staged in each case with specific goals and interests in view. The use of ancient authoritative texts with respect to mental language is thus shown to be radically transformed from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. (shrink)

Research in social robotics is commonly focused on designing robots that imitate human behavior. While this might increase a user’s satisfaction and acceptance of robots at first glance, it does not automatically aid a non-expert user in naturally interacting with robots, and might hurt their ability to correctly anticipate a robot’s capabilities. We argue that a faulty mental model, that the user has of the robot, is one of the main sources of confusion. In this work, we investigate how communicating (...) technical concepts of robotic systems to users affect their mental models, and how this can increase the quality of human-robot interaction. We conducted an online study and investigated possible ways of improving users’ mental models. Our results underline that communicating technical concepts can form an improved mental model. Consequently, we show the importance of consciously designing robots that express their capabilities and limitations. (shrink)

During the last years, there has been an important discussion on the concept of mental disorder. Several accounts of such a concept have been offered by theorists, although neither of these accounts seems to have successfully answered both the question of what it means for a certain mental condition to be a disorder and the question of what it means for a certain disorder to be mental. In this paper, I propose an account of the concept of mental disorder that, (...) if I am right, provides satisfactory answers to both of these questions. Furthermore, this account (unlike other accounts presented in the literature on the subject) meets the requirements for achieving a crucial goal underlying the project of sorting out the concept of mental disorder, namely the goal of allowing the existence of a dialogue between mental health professionals of different theoretical orientations. To achieve this goal, the account herein proposed is not based in any particular theoretical framework, but in both ordinary and technical theory-neutral concepts. In the last part of the paper, I argue that it follows from most accounts of the concept of mental disorder that the disciplines concerned with explaining some mental disorders are not branches of medicine, and that the treatment of some mental disorders is not a matter of medical intervention. (shrink)

Neuroscientists have long sought to study the dynamic activity of the human brain—what's happening in the brain, that is, while people are thinking, feeling, and acting. Ideally, an inside look at brain function would simultaneously and continuously measure the biochemical state of every cell in the central nervous system. While such a miraculous method is science fiction, a century of progress in neuroimaging technologies has made such simultaneous and continuous measurement a plausible fiction. Despite this progress, practitioners of modern neuroimaging (...) struggle with two kinds of limitations: those that attend the particular neuroimaging methods we have today and those that would limit any method of imaging neural activity, no matter how powerful.In this essay, I consider the liabilities and potential of techniques that measure human brain activity. I am concerned here only with methods that measure relevant physiologic states of the central nervous system and relate those measures to particular mental states. I will consider in particular the preeminent method of functional neuroimaging: BOLD fMRI. While there are several practical limits on the biological information that current technologies can measure, these limits—as important as they are—are minor in comparison to the fundamental logical restraints on the conclusions that can be drawn from brain imaging studies. (shrink)

This paper presents a series of meta-analyses of the validity of general mental ability (GMA) for predicting five occupational criteria, including supervisory ratings of job performance, production records, work sample tests, instructor ratings, and grades. The meta-analyses were conducted with a large database of 467 technical reports of the validity of the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) which included 630 independent samples. GMA showed to be a consistent predictor of the five criteria, but the magnitude of the operational validity (...) was not the same across the five criteria. Results also showed that job complexity is a moderator of the GMA validity for the performance criteria. We also found that the GMA validity estimates are slightly smaller than the previous ones obtained by Hunter (1983a; Hunter & Hunter, 1984). Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for the research and practice of personnel selection. (shrink)

Clinical assessments of mental capacity have long been guided by four basic cognitive criteria (understanding, appreciation, ability to reason, communication of decision), distilled directly from widespread legal precedent in common law cases of informed consent and refusal. This article will challenge the sufficiency of these legal criteria at the bedside on the assertion that clinicians and bioethicists who evaluate decisional capacity face questions far deeper than the mere presence or absence of a patient’s informed consent. It will then present an (...) additional standard beyond the existing cognitive criteria – to be called the Narrative Coherence Standard – that may begin to bridge the gap between the existing legal standards and higher-order bioethical priorities. This standard will be treated with a philosophical argument for its use, as well as a detailed exploration of its technical components and conceptual underpinnings. (shrink)

Mixture modeling technics are not the one and only to perform person-centered analyses, but they do offer the possibility of integrating latent profiles into models of some complexity that include antecedents and results. When analyzing the contribution of socioemotional resources to the preservation of mental health, it is the variable-centered approaches that are the most often performed, with few examples using a person-centered approach. Moreover, if the focus is on the Arab adolescent population, to our knowledge, there is an absence (...) of such studies. This study aims to extend the research about socioemotional resources by examining: if distinguishable profiles can be identified based on scores about perceptions of different emotional abilities and levels of social support from different sources ; if the identified profiles relate to mental health indicators, such as depression levels and health-related quality of life ; and to acknowledge if sociodemographic variables such as age or gender and positive self-views ascertain the probability of pertaining to the identified profiles. The study was carried out on a large sample of Moroccan adolescents. We adopted a person-centered approach using latent profile analysis to establish whether different socioemotional resources profiles are present in Moroccan adolescents. Furthermore, we investigated the role of sociodemographic variables and self-esteem as antecedents of these profiles and the association of these profiles with mental health. Results from LPA revealed three patterns of socioemotional resources : “High socioemotional resources” ; “Moderate socioemotional resources” ; and “Low socioemotional resources”. Analyses showed that Moroccan adolescents differed significantly in depression and HRQoL depending on the profile membership. Profiles with higher levels of resources contributed positively to preserving mental health. Finally, the results show that self-esteem boosted the probability of pertaining to the profiles related to better mental health. Thus, this study extends previous research about socioemotional resources, highlighting that researchers and health professionals should consider empirically identified profiles of adolescents when explaining mental health outcomes. Therefore, the psychological intervention should be focused on enhancing the self-esteem of adolescents, to favor a high socioemotional resource profile, which results in better mental health. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Anorexia and the MacCAT-T Test for Mental Competence:Validity, Value, and EmotionLouis C. Charland (bio)Keywordsmental competence, decisional capacity, anorexia, value, emotionValidity of the MacCAT-THow does one scientifically verify a psychometric instrument designed to assess the mental competence of medical patients who are asked to consent to medical treatment? Aside from satisfying technical requirements like statistical reliability, results yielded by such a test must conform to at least some accepted (...) pretheoretical desiderata; for example, determinations of competence, as measured by the test, must capture a minimal core of accepted basic intuitions about what competence means and what a theory of competence is supposed to do. The concepts of "face validity" and "content validity" are both important here. Face validity "indicates that an instrument appears to test what it is supposed to and that it is a plausible method for doing so" (Portney and Watkins 2000, 82). Content validity "means that the test contains all the elements that reflect the variable being studied" (Portney and Watkins 2000, 83). An adequate instrument for measuring mental competence must at minimum satisfy both of these requirements.What Tan and her colleagues (2006) have shown is that the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool—Treatment (MacCAT-T) test for mental competence may not be an empirically valid measure of mental competence for some cases of anorexia. The data they report show that "competence," as measured by the MacCAT-T, does not conform sufficiently well with what is wanted of a clinical medical theory of competence. More specifically, the MacCAT-T is deficient in both face and content validity. This result is extremely significant; previous challenges to the validity of the MacCAT-T have often been largely theoretical in nature. My own objection that the MacCAT is inadequate because it omits the influence of emotion is based on a combination of empirical theory (Charland 1998a) and philosophical argument (Charland 1998b). However, it is entirely theoretical in nature. So is my argument that in ignoring emotion the MacCAT misses a crucial contributing ingredient in competence, namely, value (Charland 2001, see especially 136 note 2). Tan's study provides valuable empirical evidence for the second of these challenges, which deals more specifically with value. On the one hand, the study clearly demonstrates that patients sometimes do [End Page 283] base their treatment decisions on reasons derived from values. And on the other hand, it also nicely illustrates the centrality of values—"utilities" or "preferences"—in the decision-making process generally; a basic assumption of standard decision theory for which, paradoxically, there appears to be no satisfactory counterpart in the MacCAT-T model of reasoning and decision making.Thus, values figure among the reasons that patients actually use in reasoning when they weigh the risks and benefits of proposed treatment options. The MacCAT-T must be amended to incorporate this fact if it is to be a satisfactory clinical medical tool. Without such a correction, the concept of mental competence it measures is empirically invalid. At the root of the problem is a clash of intuitions. Tan's data provide convincing evidence that some of the patients who are deemed to be mentally competent by MacCAT-T standards should not in fact be considered competent. Note that the language in which this clash is expressed—"should not in fact"—involves a combination of descriptive and prescriptive elements, reminding us that the concept of competence is dual in nature: it is both prescriptive and descriptive (Freedman 1981). These problems underscore the need for greater clarity about what pretheoretically we want a clinical theory and test of competence to capture. It is of course reasonable to say that such a test must be consistent with major tenets of the relevant case law (Appelbaum 1998). But a legally valid concept of competence of this sort is too thin and arbitrary a foundation on which to build a clinical medical theory of competence. An empirically valid theory and test of the latter sort must incorporate the role of values if it is be truly helpful in medical practice.Value and the MacCAT-TI agree with Tan and her colleagues that some notion of "pathological value" needs to be... (shrink)

Providing meaningful and actionable explanations for end-users is a situated problem requiring the intersection of multiple disciplines to address social, operational, and technical challenges. However, the explainable artificial intelligence community has not commonly adopted or created tangible design tools that allow interdisciplinary work to develop reliable AI-powered solutions. This paper proposes a formative architecture that defines the explanation space from a user-inspired perspective. The architecture comprises five intertwined components to outline explanation requirements for a task: (1) the end-users’ mental (...) models, (2) the end-users’ cognitive process, (3) the user interface, (4) the Human-Explainer Agent, and (5) the agent process. We first define each component of the architecture. Then, we present the Abstracted Explanation Space, a modeling tool that aggregates the architecture’s components to support designers in systematically aligning explanations with end-users’ work practices, needs, and goals. It guides the specifications of what needs to be explained (content: end-users’ mental model), why this explanation is necessary (context: end-users’ cognitive process), to delimit how to explain it (format: Human-Explainer Agent and user interface), and when the explanations should be given. We then exemplify the tool’s use in an ongoing case study in the aircraft maintenance domain. Finally, we discuss possible contributions of the tool, known limitations or areas for improvement, and future work to be done. (shrink)

D.P. It will technically be possible to get rid of all suffering within a century or two. Its abolition would be practical only if it were agreed in the sense of something like the moon program or the human genome project – if there was a degree of social consensus. There are certainly technological obstacles, but they are dwarfed by the ethical-ideological ones. Many people’s negative reaction to the idea of a world without suffering comes from a fear that someone (...) is going to be manipulating and controlling them. Partly, too, the abolition of suffering seems to make a mockery of one’s life projects. Most of us spend the greater part of our lives seeking happiness for ourself and others we care about. But we do so in extremely inefficient and in many cases self-defeating ways. This is a problem with existing human society. Even though we have made extraordinary progress technologically and medically, we aren’t any happier than our ancestors. Even if we could arrange society in the most utopian way imaginable, there would be some people who would still be depressed and anxious. There would be some people who would be consumed by jealousy or unhappy love affairs. No amount of environmental reform or manipulation is going to get rid of suffering. Only biotechnology can eradicate its neural substrates. (shrink)

In research involving patients with implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs), there is a regulatory gap concerning post-trial responsibilities and duties of sponsors and investigators towards implanted patients. In this article, we analyse the case of patient R, who underwent non-voluntary explantation of an implanted BCI, causing a discontinuation in her sense of agency and self. To clarify the post-trial duties and responsibilities involved in this case, we first define the ontological status of the BCI using both externalist (EXT) and internalist (INT) (...) theories of cognition. We then give particular focus to the theories of extended and embedded cognition, hence considering the BCI either as a constitutive component of the patient’s mind or as a causal supporter of her brain-based cognitive capacities. We argue that patient R can legitimately be considered both as an embedded and extended cognitive agent. Then, we analyse whether the non-voluntary explantation violated patient R’s (neuro)rights to cognitive liberty, mental integrity, psychological continuity and mental privacy. We analyse whether and how different mental ontologies may imply morally relevant differences in interpreting these prima facie neurorights violations and the correlational duties of sponsors and investigators. We conclude that both mental ontologies support the identification of emerging neurorights of the patient and give rise to post-trial obligations of sponsors and investigators to provide for continuous technical maintenance of implanted BCIs that play a significant role in patients’ agency and sense of self. However, we suggest that externalist mental ontologies better capture patient R’s self-conception and support the identification of a more granular form of mental harm and associated neurorights violation, thus eliciting stricter post-trial obligations. (shrink)

In 2014 the Essex Autonomy Project undertook a six month project, funded by the AHRC, to provide technical advice to the UK Ministry of Justice on the question of whether the Mental Capacity Act is compliant with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Over the course of the project, the EAP research team organised a series of public policy roundtables, hosted by the Ministry of Justice, and which brought together leading experts to discuss and (...) debate the issues. A one-day public conference was held at the Institute for Government in July. In September 2014, the EAP research team submitted its findings to the Ministry of Justice. (shrink)

In 2014 the Essex Autonomy Project undertook a six month project, funded by the AHRC, to provide technical advice to the UK Ministry of Justice on the question of whether the Mental Capacity Act is compliant with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Over the course of the project, the EAP research team organised a series of public policy roundtables, hosted by the Ministry of Justice, and which brought together leading experts to discuss and (...) debate the issues. A one-day public conference was held at the Institute for Government in July. In September 2014, the EAP research team submitted its findings to the Ministry of Justice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Close Enemies: The Relationship of Psychiatry and Psychology in the Assessment of Mental DisordersPhilippe Le Moigne, PhDAs Peter Zachar rightly points out in his comment, the assessment of mental disorders underwent new developments with the release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-V in 2013 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Whereas in 1980, the manual had been thought of in a rigorously categorical way, on the basis of (...) distinct and closed syndromic entities, this new version advocated the development of a radically dimensionalist approach, with the diagnosis aiming this time to restore the whole symptomatological picture of the patient on a spectrum of ratings are supposed to cover the entirety of psychiatric semiology (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).For its part, my article aimed to show how standardized assessment, guided by the return of psychiatry’s authority and the assertion of its legitimacy in the diagnostic field, gave the ascendancy in the 1980s to the classificatory tradition and thus to the categorical model, to the detriment of personality approach and test psychology which offered a competing solution here. This perspective, historically dated, may have led the reader to think that there is an antagonism that cannot be overcome here. Rather, it should be seen as a form of structuring opposition, or even a “complementarity inscribed in rivalry,” between psychiatry and psychology, which is naturally susceptible to change over time.Indeed, the reversal operated by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-V is not total because it cannot be total. The defense of the dimensionalist approach, dear to the psychological testing tradition, was intended here to allow the identification of co-morbidities, present in most patients but poorly apprehended by the categorical approach, and to open up diagnosis to prevention by screening for minor manifestations of psychopathology when they suggest the [End Page 259] development of a manifest episode of the disease in the more or less long term. The risk here is that we end up with overdiagnosis and thus an over-representation of false positives (Wakefield, 2015). In other words, this type of approach does not escape the obligation to determine threshold scores, likely to indicate the lower limit of the disorder, and thus to resort to a categorical approach. There is a first affinity between the two perspectives which obeys, beyond the divergences in principle, a technical requirement.But the two approaches have even more in common when we look at their epistemological background: they share the idea that the representation and the intervention on mental disorder, to use Ian Hacking’s expression (1983), must be based on the model proposed by the physical and natural sciences. And as Greta Kaluzeviciute aptly points out in her comment, this orientation leads to the idea of measuring mental disorder in particular to conduct elaborate quantification operations to determine, for example, whether two entities are statistically distinct or whether a drug has a significant effect on the evolution of a pathology.This is in fact an old question that can be formulated as follows, to use the expression of the psychometrician Joel Michell (1999): are psychological dimensions metric? In other words, if we want to apply the language of numbers to mental disorders, they must share its properties, two of which seem essential: it must be possible to establish that each mental disorder, in the same way as qualities attributable to length for example, has a zero and can be divided by means of gradients (or degrees of intensity) whose interval is constant (Le Moigne, 2018; Michell, 1999). For lack of space, let us only address the second condition. This one has already been denied by many, starting with Bergson at the end of the nineteenth century (1889). He does not believe in the quantification of psychological expressions, starting with sensations. What is the common point, he wrote, between the feeling of a mild pain, as one feels a stiffness, and the sensation of a needle being hammered into your flesh? For him, one and the other of these intensities are incomparable, so that they do not belong to a similar register of sensations that one could stage from a 0 toward a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 87-94 [Access article in PDF] Talk and the Nature of Delusions:Defending Sociocultural Perspectives on Mental Illness Eugenie Georgaca Keywords discourse, social constructionism, delusions, psychosis, mental illness, context It is very pleasing to see writers from philosophy, psychiatry and psychology, the three disciplines represented by this journal, debating the issue of delusions. The majority of the papers in this volume set out to determine (...) the underlying mechanisms responsible for delusions. As such, they offer themselves as discussions of the etiological factors of the formation and maintenance of delusions. My paper analyzes the interactional presentation and negotiation of statements that would be considered as delusional. This led some commentators (Ghaemi 2004; Sass 2004) to argue that the analysis of talk about delusions is useful, but cannot be extended to claims about the nature of delusions. In the following section, I discuss the ways in which analyzing interactions can be useful in clinical research and practice. Subsequently, I identify and critically discuss the assumptions about the nature of delusions that underlie these criticisms and the majority of the papers in this volume. The Usefulness of the Study of Interaction My paper can be seen as part of a growing body of studies that attempt to elucidate the role of interactional and discursive processes in the identification and management of disorders (Barrett 1988; Coulter 1975; Hak 1989; Pollner 1975; Smith 1978; Soyland 1994). Microsociological and ethnographic studies look at the properties of client-professional interaction with the aim of clarifying the tacit skills and knowledges used in such encounters. Palmer (2000), for example, argues that the recognition of disorder is a social and interactional issue both in the sense that the judgment of disorder is based on social criteria and in the sense that diagnosis is an interpersonal process with its own inherent social order. The aim, therefore, of analyzing professional-client interactions would be to articulate the properties of this implicit social order. Other researchers argue that diagnosis is not a process of identification or recognition of disorder, but rather a process of active construction of disorder and of transforming the person to a mental patient. Barrett's (1988) analysis of the transformation of a [End Page 87] person to a "person suffering from schizophrenia" and subsequently a "schizophrenic" through interviewing and report writing is an excellent example of this kind of work.The application of this approach to the field of delusions would attempt to address the issue of how delusions are diagnosed and managed through the interactions between the delusional patient and the clinician. In this paper and in previous work (Georgaca 1996, 2000) I showed that statements that have been diagnosed as delusional are presented and argued through using appropriate conversational strategies, drawing on socially meaningful systems of knowledge and applying appropriate rules of evidence. Moreover, I argued that there was no way in which these disagreements over competing versions of reality could be definitely settled conversationally, and that instances of breakdown in communication were due not to the delusional version being proven wrong, but to lack of explanatory frameworks within which the competing versions could be negotiated. At least in the exchanges analyzed, the criteria of implausibility, conviction, and incorrigibility were shown not to apply.Clinicians do not customarily investigate the truth of patient claims against empirical data (Maher 1992), which means that they have to judge claims on the basis of the patient's presentation in the diagnostic interview. Because there are no technical guidelines for the assessment of truth and falsity, plausibility and implausibility, rationality and irrationality, clinicians have to rely on personal judgment. The question then is on what grounds the clinician's personal judgment is granted the status of determining the truth of someone else's claim and in what capacity clinicians are called to make such decisions. I will not pursue this argument any further here. The point I want to make is that the analysis of professional-client interactions foregrounds the active role of professionals in clinical decisions and questions the criteria upon which decisions are... (shrink)

Every two years Rene Stettler, owner and director of the Neue Galerie in Luzerne, organizes and hosts the Swiss Biennial on Science, Technics + Aesthetics, an international gathering of scientists, philosophers, and artists for the purpose of discussing their views on a topic of general interest. Stettler has done this since 1995, with each conference centred on a thought-provoking topic. The topic of this year's conference focused on consciousness and teleportation. The conference publicity material posited some interesting discussion points: Are (...) there connections between brain functions, mental phenomena, and quantum physics? What does quantum entanglement tell us about ourselves? What role does consciousness play in the universe (or the universe in consciousness)? Will it ever be possible to teleport human bodies over distance? (shrink)

What happens to professional and technical work when it is computerized? Exploratory analysis of case studies indicates that when expert systems are used to enhance the work of professionals, some tasks of medium- and low-skilled support personnel are integrated into the work of highly skilled experts. Technical workers are thus at risk of having their jobs automated as part of the computer enhancement of professionals. When computerization replaces expertise, job opportunities for medium-skilled personnel shrink and barriers to upward (...) mobility through on-the-job experience are reduced Entry-level professionals or even technicians with computers can perform tasks formerly done by experienced professionals. But working conditions do not promote the development of expertise and professional judgment among these workers. Thus it appears that routinization, deskilling, and automation are not only the problems of manual laborers in the information age; professional workers are also at risk, in complex ways. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article aims to elucidate a philosophical foundation of a post-labor paradigm through the transindividual technical-psychic-collective culture based on Gilbert Simondon and Bernard Stiegler. Simondon predicts that the problem of the alienation of labor due to mechanical industrialization can be overcome through the spread of post-industrial technical culture based on both technical mentality and information technology. In contrast, Stiegler claims that, along with information networks, hyper-industrialization rather than post-industrialization has arrived and that, in order to (...) recover human values in a machine empire devoid of caring, the strengthening of the ability for non-automation based on automaticity is necessary. However, Simondon’s technical culture beyond labor implies a posthumanistic vision in that it assumes the capacity of technology to mediate between the preindividual and the transindividual beyond technical instrumentalism, which is anthropocentric, and opens up transductive relationships among humans and non-humans. I will argue that Stiegler’s urgent proposal that seeks to save human life from the control of a techno-capital system, such as the reinvention of work transcending employment, must be concretized within the Simondonian posthumanistic project. RESUMO O objetivo deste artigo é elucidar a base filosófica do paradigma pós-laboral por meio da cultura técnica-psiquica-coletiva transindividual de Gilbert Simondon e Bernard Stiegler. Simondon prediz que o problema da alienação laboral surgido da industrialização mecânica pode ser vencido mediante a expansão da cultura técnica pós-industrial baseada tanto na mentalidade técnica quanto na tecnologia da informação. Em contraste, Stiegler afirma que, além das redes de informação, a hiper-industrialização se estabeleceu para além da pós-industrialização e que, para recuperar valores humanos em um império das máquinas sem carinho, é necessário o fortalecimento da capacidade de não automação baseada em automatismo. Entretanto, a cultura técnica além do trabalho de Simondon implica uma visão pós-humanista em que se presume a capacidade da tecnologia em mediar entre o pré-individual e o transindividual, que é antropocêntrico, e inaugura relações transdutivas entre humanos e não humanos. Defendo que a proposta urgente de Stiegler busca salvar a vida humana do controle de um sistema de tecno-capital, como a reinvenção do trabalho transcendendo o emprego deve ser concretizada dentro do projeto pós-humanista simondoniano. (shrink)

Religion and technique constitute two components of each culture. They occupy various positions in it and play various roles. The development of particular sciences, especially the natural sciences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, had brought about revolutionary changes in the domain of technique, including techniques of communication and intervention in the human organism. As a result of the strict relationship between science and technique and the achievements of science, the scientific-technical mentality was developed. Some cultural processes related (...) to it (epistemological monism, pragmatism, consumerism) lead to the re-evaluation of the very foundations of culture: in the sphere of knowledge (truth), good (morality), and art (beauty). The narrowing of the concept of science, the domination of technique (technocracy) will contribute to inappropriate relations between religion and culture. Thereby they are threats to the humankind of man and the appropriate function of culture. (shrink)

What is algorithmic thought? It is not possible to address this question without first reflecting on how the Universal Turing Machine transformed symbolic logic and brought to a halt the universality of mathematical formalism and the biocentric speciation of thought. The article draws on Sylvia Wynter’s discussion of the sociogenic principle to argue that both neurocognitive and formal models of automated cognition constitute the epistemological explanations of the origin of the human and of human sapience. Wynter’s argument will be related (...) to Gilbert Simondon’s reflections on ‘technical mentality’ to consider how socio-techno-genic assemblages can challenge the biocentricism and the formalism of modern epistemology. This article turns to ludic logic as one possible example of techno-semiotic languages as a speculative overturning of sociogenic programming. Algorithmic rules become technique-signs coinciding not with classic formalism but with interactive localities without re-originating the universality of colonial and patriarchal cosmogony. (shrink)

Abstract“Patient-centred care” is the recent response to the malaise produced in the field of health care from the point of view both of a technical mentality and the paternalistic model. The interest in the story-telling approach shown by both the humanities and the social sciences has favoured a “narrative turn” in medicine too, where the new ethics of therapeutic relationship consider the hermeneutic method a means by which to integrate evidence and subjectivity, scientific data and patient experience. The (...) aim of this paper is to show how Ricoeur’s theory of “threefold mimesis” makes a conceptual contribution to the use of narrative interviews in nursing and also be successfully transferred into and applied in the field of healthcare in general. First, the paper examines how this narrative approach might open up new possibilities for the acquisition of in-depth knowledge of patients’ life experiences, a condition indispensable for the improvement of the quality of care. Secondly, it highlights how this Ricoeurian method seems capable of provide an opportunity for healthcare professionals to review their own understanding of the caregiver-patient therapeutic relationship, beginning with their confrontation with the patient’s world as revealed by the narrative they provide. (shrink)

Mental maps and historical consciousness, which describe the spatial and temporal dimensions of worldviews, are not, as commonly stated, twentieth century concepts. Historical consciousness was coined simultaneously by several German scholars in the mid-1800s. Mental maps, used in English since the 1820s, had a prominent role in US geography education from the 1880s. Since then, the concepts have traveled between practical-technical, educational, and academic vocabularies, cross fertilizing fields and contributing to the formation of new research questions. However, when these (...) initial periods of reflection gave way to empirical investigation, strict intra-disciplinary definitions of the concepts have strengthened disciplinary borders by excluding the interpretations of the same concepts in other fields. (shrink)

“Realization” is a technical term that is used by metaphysicians, philosophers of mind, and philosophers of science to denote some dependence relation that is thought to obtain between higher-level properties and lower-level properties. It is said that mental properties are realized by physical properties; functional and computational properties are realized by first-order properties that occupy certain causal/functional roles; dispositional properties are realized by categorical properties; so on and so forth. Given this wide usage of the term “realization”, it would (...) be right to think that there might be different dependence relations that this term denotes in different cases. Any relation that is aptly picked out by this term can be taken to be a realization relation. The aim of this state-of-the-field article is to introduce the central questions about the concept of realization, and provide formulations of a number of realization relations. In doing so, I identify some theoretical roles realization relations should play, and discuss some theories of realization in relation to these theoretical roles. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary research area Cognitive Interaction Technology (CIT) aims to understand and support interactions between human users and other elements of socio-technical systems. Important reasons for the new interest in understanding CIT in sport psychology are the impressive development of cognitive robotics and advanced technologies such as virtual or augmented reality systems, cognitive glasses or neurotechnology settings. The present article outlines this area of research, addresses ethical issues, and presents an empirical study in the context of a new measurement (...) and assessment system for training in karate. Recent advances in the field of cognitive assistance systems enabled largely automatized assessments of individual mental representation structures for action sequences, such as choreographed movement patterns in dance or martial arts. Empirical investigations with karate practitioners of different skill levels demonstrate that advanced software-based survey and algorithmic analysis procedures based on cognitive models generate individualized performance predictions for a movement sequence from theKanku-dai kata(a pre-defined karate movement sequence), which correlated significantly not only with formal expertise (kyu/danrank) but also with the actual likelihood of mistakes in action execution. This information could prospectively be used to define individual training goals for deliberate practice and incorporated into cognitive interaction technology to provide appropriate feedback. We argue that the development of cognitive interaction systems for sport should explicitly take ethical issues into consideration and present a particular developed engineering approach. The potential benefits of such an assistance system for intermediate and advanced practitioners include more effective and flexible practice, as well as supportive effects, and more flexible training schedules. Furthermore, we argue that researchers from the field of sport psychology can benefit from advances in technological systems that enhance the understanding of mental and motor control in skilled voluntary action. (shrink)

The author continues the philosophical study of manipulative influence on the mass consciousness, which is the basic component of the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. The article is devoted to the identification of miscalculations that have been admitted by technologists of this manipulative effect. It was revealed that the mistakes amount to unqualified approach in forming the image of the key person of mythology. It was established that classics of cultural studies, religious studies and philosophy studied in detail (...) the stages of formation of the person of a cultural hero in the epic of different peoples. These stages, in general similar, are traced to all ethnic groups and provide a compulsory and invariable algorithm for transforming an ordinary person and turning it into a Hero. Also, the classics of science insist that mythology is the basis of any cultural activity of a modern human being - it is its background. In addition, they point to the danger of unskilled myth-making. The author of the article has established that Russian technologies of manipulation by consciousness have neglected all the advice of scientists and ignored the basic stages of the formation of the Hero in political myth-making. Therefore, the author of the article makes a number of conclusions about the possible imminent collapse of the negativism of the people of Russia in relation to its unsuccessfully mythologized President - with all the resulting political consequences. Also, the article reveals other miscalculations of manipulators, which concern mistaken assessments of the Ukrainian mentality and technical miscalculations. (shrink)

Psychological characteristics of athletes play a key role in sport performance and may moderate and mediate the influence of technical, tactical, and physical abilities athletes show. Different authors have emphasized the special attention such psychological characteristics should receive considering the extent they can influence athletes’ behavior either in training or in competition. This paper is aimed at describing the psychological profiles of two cycling sports: triathlon and road cycling. One hundred and twenty-nine male and female professional and amateur cycling (...) athletes (35.74 years old average age ±12.79; 14.94 average number of years practicing cycling ±11.20) were assessed on different psychological characteristics. For that purpose, the Psychological Characteristics related to the Sport Performance (CPRD) Questionnaire and the Psychological Skills Inventory for Sports (PSIS) was used. Results showed significant differences among triathlon and road cyclists (Stress control = t 116 =-3.711, p = 0.000, d = 0.48 ; Influence of Performance Evaluation = t 115 =-3-115, p = 0.002, d = 0.49; Motivation = t 124 =-5.520, p = 0.000, d = 0.82; Mental Skills = t 119 =-4.985, p = 0.000, d = 1.02). There were no significant differences between men and women though there were differences among pros and amateur athletes. Triathlon professional, compared to amateurs, showed higher scores in all the psychological dimensions assessed (Stress control = t 85 = 3.005, p = 0.003, d = 1.07; Influence of Performance Evaluation = t 83 = 2.858, p = 0.005, 0.77; Motivation = t 91 = 2.721, p = 0.008, d = 0.26; Mental Skills = t 87 = 2.556, p = 0.012, d = 0.77). The results of this descriptive study contribute to establishing a model of optimal psychological profiling applied to the different cycling groups that can be used by sport psychologist, trainers, and coaches in order to promote peak performance of these athletes. (shrink)

Although ‘intentionality’ is a technical term in philosophy, it stands for something familiar to us all: a characteristic feature of our mental states and experiences, especially evident in what we commonly call being “conscious” or “aware”. As conscious beings, or persons, we are not merely affected by the things in our environment; we are also conscious of these things – of physical objects and events, of our own selves and other persons, of abstract objects such as numbers and propositions, (...) and of anything else we bring before our minds. Many, perhaps most, of the events that make up our mental life – our perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, hopes, fears, and so on – have this characteristic feature of being “of” or “about” something and so giving us a sense of something in our world. When I see a tree, for example, my perception is a perception of a tree; when I think that 3 + 2 = 5, I am thinking of or about certain numbers and a relation among them; when I hope that nuclear war will never take place, my hope is about a possible future state of the world; and so on. Each such mental state or experience is in this way a representation of something other than itself and so gives one a sense of something. This representational character of mind or consciousness – its being “of” or “about” something – is “intentionality”. (shrink)

Mental Images: Towards a Media History of the Psyche around 1900. Presupposing that visual practices are inherent to the social constitution of knowledge, this article suggests juxtaposing photographs and films produced in a psychiatric environment to popular films run in theaters around 1900, thus identifying cinema’s particular “Denkstil” (Fleck). Rejecting science’s dominating paradigm of visual objectivity (Daston/Galison), the visual apparatus [dispositif] of early cinema facilitates subjective experience of unreason and irrationality and thus initiates a different epistemological approach to knowledge as (...) self‐knowledge of a modern, self‐reflexive subject. This is particularly evident in early cinema’s depiction of the psyche, which does not solely focus on the physical manifestation of the ‘mad’, ‘insane’ body, but also visualizes the subject’s inner life: technical means like montage, multiple exposure or stop motion can be employed to illustrate subjective visions, fantasies or dreams. Thus, the invisible mind becomes visible as the “unthinkable within thinking” (Deleuze), while the subject is invited to participate in cinema’s “gay science” (Nietzsche). (shrink)

Technical terms to be used in this book are introduced – substance, property, event, material object, mental property, physical property. Three views on the mind/body problem are distinguished – hard materialism, soft materialism, and substance dualism. Inductive principles to be used in the book are introduced – the principles of credulity, of testimony, and of simplicity.

The Emotion Ontology is an ontology covering all aspects of emotional and affective mental functioning. It is being developed following the principles of the OBO Foundry and Ontological Realism. This means that in compiling the ontology, we emphasize the importance of the nature of the entities in reality that the ontology is describing. One of the ways in which realism-based ontologies are being successfully used within biomedical science is in the annotation of scientific research results in publicly available databases. Such (...) annotation enables several objectives, including searching, browsing and cross-database data integration. A key benefit conferred by realismbased ontology is that suitably annotated research results are able to be aggregated and compared in a fashion that is based on the underlying reality that the science is studying. This has the potential of increasing the power of statistical analysis and meta-analysis in data-driven science. This aspect has been fruitfully exploited in the investigation of the functions of genes in molecular biology. Cognitive neuroscience uses functional neuroimaging to investigate the brain correlates of areas of mental functioning such as memory, planning and emotion. The use of functional neuroimaging to study affective phenomena such as the emotions is called ‘affective neuroscience’. BrainMap is the largest curated database of coordinates and metadata for studies in cognitive neuroscience, including affective neuroscience (Laird et al., 2005). BrainMap data is already classified and indexed using a terminology for classification, called the ‘Cognitive Paradigm Ontology’ (CogPO), that has been developed to facilitate searching and browsing. However, CogPO has been developed specifically for the BrainMap database, and the data are thus far not annotated to a realism-based ontology which would allow the discovery of interrelationships between research results across different databases on the basis of what the research is about. In this contribution, we describe ongoing work that aims to annotate affective neuroscience data, starting with the BrainMap database, using the Emotion Ontology. We describe our objectives and technical approach to the annotation, and mention some of the challenges. (shrink)

Mental spacesare conceptual structures for meaning representation and interpretation in discourse. They are pervasive in everyday language as an important aspect of ongoing language processing and meaning construction (Hamawand 2016). The application ofMental Space Theory(MST) to the analysis of real, attested examples of discourse (e.g. Conversation Analysis) has been undertaken through productive exchanges (seeHougaard 2004,2005,Oakley & Hougaard 2008,Oakley 2009). The integration links external, observable language behaviors to internal, conceptual mental operations (Williams 2008), revealing that the cognitive dimensions of discursive approaches (...) are essential to the analysis of talk-in-interaction. This study focuses on the technical aspects of Conversation Analysis in interactive academic talk and shows how MST can provide a subsequent framework for making plausible accounts of the meaning construction process underlying typical conversational moves in this unique talk setting. The data analyses show that the accessibility and selectivity of cognitive mappings contribute to shaping the structurality of meaning representation, transmission, and interpretation. The findings have implications for understanding and characterizing how co-constructed meaning enters into individual and collective conceptualization in higher education communication. (shrink)

Kant’s distinction between intuitions and concepts attracts perennial interpretive interest. To the extent that they discuss the imagination at all, most Kant scholars maintain that the imagination’s primary role is to generate intuitions. This dissertation argues that “image” (Bild, Einbildung) is an overlooked technical term in Kant’s work and that images—and not intuitions—are products of the imagination. The project explains how, for Kant, the imagination (as image-maker) and the senses (as intuition-maker) make distinct but essential contributions to cognition and (...) perception. I begin by showing that “image” is a terminologically marked notion in Kant, and that the imagination is responsible for generating images (chapter 1). I call these claims the Image Thesis. I then show that for Kant, intuitions are representations that depend only on the senses for their essential features (chapter 2). I call this the Strong Independence Thesis. -/- How should we understand Kant’s ubiquitous references to the imagination, then? I argue that we should understand the imagination’s activities as image-producing activities (chapter 3). I argue that images and intuitions are fundamentally distinct representations, which I label the Distinctness Thesis. Though intuitions and images are had by both rational and non-rational beings, the capacity for consciousness or apperception found in rational beings makes a difference in the structure of images but not the structure of intuitions (chapter 4). I call this the penetration view of the imagination. With this account of images in hand, I indicate why images are a necessary ingredient in theoretical cognition for Kant (chapter 5). I call this the Image-Centric Cognition Thesis. The result is a novel account of sensibility—the counterpart of the understanding—that recognizes Kant’s systematic discussion of mental imagery. (shrink)

In this article, we advocate the use of “epistemic” ontologies, i.e., systems of categories representing our knowledge of the world, rather than the world directly. We first expose a metaphysical framework based on a dual mental and physical realism, which underpins the development of these epistemic ontologies. To this end, we refer to the theories of intentionality and representation established within the school of Franz Brentano at the turn of the 20th century and choose to rehabilitate the notion of a (...) ‘representation object’, as theorized by Kasimir Twardowski. We therefore propose that the categories of epistemic ontologies correspond to ‘general representation objects’. Secondly, we apply these proposals to the treatment of technical artefacts, material qualities of objects and events (notably as a continuation of our previous work on events). This leads us to sketch out a foundational epistemic ontology. (shrink)