Quando se fala em assédio sexual de rua, é comum a sua confusão com o flerte. Há também a dificuldade de se distinguir entre cordialidade e assédio no caso de cumprimentos ou pretensos elogios entre desconhecidos no espaço público. Diante dessas questões de sentido, este artigo se apoia na teoria semiótica das interações de E. Landowski (2014) para buscar compreender a diferença entre as interações pautadas no assédio e as interações amorosas. As análises mostram tipos de amor que correspondem aos (...) regimes de acidente (amor à primeira vista), de manipulação (amor estratégico) e de ajustamento (amor confluente). Já o assédio parece constituir uma interação programada que, do ponto de vista do assediador, é baseada no papel temático determinado pela masculinidade hegemônica, não podendo ser confundida com o amor. (shrink)

By playing a crucial role in settling open issues in the philosophical debate about logical consequence, logical evidence has become the holy grail of inquirers investigating the domain of logic. However, despite its indispensable role in this endeavor, logical evidence has retained an aura of mystery. Indeed, there seems to be a great disharmony in conceiving the correct nature and scope of logical evidence among philosophers. In this paper, I examine four widespread conceptions of logical evidence to argue that all (...) should be reconsidered. First, I argue that logical apriorists are more tolerant of logical evidence than empiricists. Second, I argue that evidence for logic should not be read out of natural language. Third, I argue that if logical intuitions are to count as logical evidence, then their evidential content must not be propositional. Finally, I argue that the empiricist proposal of treating experts' judgments as evidence suffers from the same problems as the rationalist conception. (shrink)

The article argues in favour of a pragmatist enactive interpretation of the emergence of the symbolic and contentful mind from a basic form of social communicative interaction in which basic cognitive capacities are involved. Through a critical overview of Radical Enactivists (RECers)’ view about language, the article focuses on Mead’s pragmatist behavioural theory of meaning that refers to the gestural conversation as the origin of the evolution of linguistic conversation. The article develops as follows. After exposing the main elements of (...) REC’s theory of cognition and language that involve the construction of a theory of natural signs (teleosemiotics) and basic directionality (Ur-intentionality), some critical points of Hutto and Myin’s proposal will be highlighted. To foster a continuist perspective of language, the behavioural theory of meaning and language that Mead develops from the notion of gesture will be analysed. His theory is akin to REC and could augment the bare bones of REC’s sketched perspective, helping to include Ur-intentionality in a broader non-dualistic phylogenetic and ontogenetic theory of symbolic language from gestural communication, thus helping to overcome the distinction between a content-less intentionality and a content-involving intentionality, i.e., a semantic propositional intentionality. Furthermore, a recent revival of Mead’s theory testifies to its up-to-date relevance to explain the innate social dimension of human and non-human animals, and the human communicative capacity through the conditioning of bio-social canons and structures. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to outline several valuable elements of Mead’s pragmatist theory of perception in action developed in his The Philosophy of the Act, in order to strengthen the pragmatist legacy of the enactivist approach. In particular, Mead’s theory of perception in action turns out to be a forerunner of sensorimotor enactivist theory. Unlike the latter, however, Mead explicitly refers to imagery as an essential capacity for agency. Nonetheless, the article argues that the ways in which Mead (...) refers to this capacity do not necessarily place it in opposition to enactivist non-representationalism. On the contrary, as a synthetic process of re-presenting of present and past sensorimotor elements, imagery can be seen as the hallmark of a pragmatically inspired sensorimotor enactivist approach that bypasses the opposition between representationalists and non-representationalists. (shrink)

Compositionality has been a central concept in linguistics and philosophy for decades, and it is increasingly prominent in many other areas of cognitive science. Its status, however, remains contentious. Here, I reassess the nature and scope of the principle of compositionality (Partee, 1995) from the perspective of psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience. First, I review classic arguments for compositionality and conclude that they fail to establish compositionality as a property of human language. Next, I state a new competence argument, acknowledging the (...) fact that any competent user of a language L can assign to most expressions in L at least one meaning which is a functiononlyof the meanings of the expression's parts and of its syntactic structure. I then discuss selected results from cognitive neuroscience, indicating that the human brain possesses the processing capacities presupposed by the competence argument. Finally, I outline a language processing architecture consistent with the neuroscience results, where semantic representations may be generated by a syntax‐driven streamandby an “asyntactic” processing stream, jointly or independently. Compositionality is viewed as a constraint on computation in the former stream only. (shrink)

Compositionality remains effective as an explanation of cases in which processing complexity increases due to syntactic factors only. It falls short of accounting for situations in which complexity arises from interactions with the sentence or discourse context, perceptual cues, and stored knowledge. The idea of compositionality as a methodological principle is appealing, but imputing the complexity to one component of the grammar or another, instead of enriching the notion of composition, is not always an innocuous move, leading to fully equivalent (...) theories. Compositionality sets an upper bound on the degree of informational encapsulation that can be posited by modular or component-based theories of language: simple composition ties in with a strongly modular take on meaning assembly, which is seen as sealed off from information streams other than the lexicon and the syntax. (shrink)

: The article outlines some similarities between the perspectives adopted by Shaun Gallagher and William James. In particular, assuming that the issue of representation in cognitive systems provides a valuable starting point and testing ground for verifying James’ possible contribution to enactivism, we argue that there is a considerable degree of similarity between Gallagher’s and James’ non-representational models of direct perception. Furthermore, we propose that by combining James’s theory of time and spatial perception with Gallagher’s Husserlian-inspired theory of retentional-protentional structure, (...) we can strengthen the theoretical assumptions of enactivism, integrating elements taken from phenomenology and aspects of Jamesian pragmatics. Understood in this way, James’ enactive theory of action and perceptual causality provides a promising opportunity for an innovative and coherent enactivist research program. Keywords: Enactivism; Pragmatism; 4E Cognition; William James; Shaun Gallagher Rendere l’enattivismo ancora più pragmatico: l’eredità jamesiana nell’approccio enattivista alla cognizione di Shaun Gallagher Riassunto: In questo lavoro si pongono in evidenza alcune somiglianze tra la prospettiva enattivista di Shaun Gallagher e la psicologia di William James. In particolare, assumendo che il tema della rappresentazione nei sistemi cognitivi fornisca un valido punto di partenza e un terreno di prova per verificare il possibile contributo di James all’enattivismo, ritengo che esista una notevole assonanza tra l’anti-rappresentazionalismo di Gallagher e la teoria della percezione diretta di James. Sostengo inoltre che attraverso una combinazione della teoria del tempo e della percezione spaziale di James con la teoria di Gallagher della struttura ritentivo-protensiva di ispirazione husserliana sia possibile rafforzare i presupposti teorici dell’enattivismo, integrando elementi tratti dalla fenomenologia con aspetti pragmatisti. La teoria jamesiana dell’azione e della causalità percettiva sembra fornire una promettente opportunità per un innovativo programma di ricerca in ambito enattivista. Parole chiave: Enattivismo; Pragmatismo; 4E Cognition; William James; Shaun Gallagher. (shrink)

We sketch four applications of Marr's levels-of-analysis methodology to the relations between logic and experimental data in the cognitive neuroscience of language and reasoning. The first part of the paper illustrates the explanatory power of computational level theories based on logic. We show that a Bayesian treatment of the suppression task in reasoning with conditionals is ruled out by EEG data, supporting instead an analysis based on defeasible logic. Further, we describe how results from an EEG study on temporal prepositions (...) can be reanalyzed using formal semantics, addressing a potential confound. The second part of the article demonstrates the predictive power of logical theories drawing on EEG data on processing progressive constructions and on behavioral data on conditional reasoning in people with autism. Logical theories can constrain processing hypotheses all the way down to neurophysiology, and conversely neuroscience data can guide the selection of alternative computational level models of cognition. (shrink)

L’Italia rappresenta un luogo del tutto peculiare per gli sviluppi del pragmatismo, fin dai suoi albori. A partire dalla fondazione del Leonardo nel 1903, Giovanni Papini, Giuseppe Prezzolini, Giovanni Vailati, Mario Calderoni (e molti altri) contribuirono a riprendere e a diffondere in Europa le principali istanze dei pragmatisti d’oltreoceano. Come è noto, questi filosofi non si limitarono ad essere vivaci interpreti del pensiero di Charles Sanders Peirce e William James, ma elaborarono anc...

Guido Baggio & Marta Caravà: As a leading enactivist philosopher, on several occasions you have emphasized that pragmatism and neo-pragmatism can offer a fruitful contribution to situated approaches to cognitive science/the philosophy of mind. These contributions include – among others – the theoretical support that the pragmatist approach can give to both the enactive and the extended approach to cognition thanks to its integrative and dynamical view of cognition. This conversation will focu...

En partant de la théorie des émotions développée par Mead et Dewey dans les années 1890, les aspects centraux de la théorie gestuelle de Mead, qui sous-tend sa théorie de l’émergence de la signification, du langage et de la cognition humaine, seront mis en évidence. L’article souligne, en outre, comment la théorie de Mead s’inscrit dans une perspective sociobiologique sur la naturalisation du langage qui gagne en intérêt aujourd’hui, notamment dans le domaine des théories évolutionnistes du langage et parmi les (...) neuroscientifiques. (shrink)

Emergence is a pivotal concept for interpreting the reality of natural and social human life in all its processual complexity. The recently renewed debate about this concept and the different forms of emergentism is particularly varied, widely referring to biology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind (Kim 1999, 2005, 2006a,b; Cunningham 2001; Pihlström 2002; El-Hani 2002; El-Hani & Pihlström 2002; Chalmers 2006; Bedau & Humphreys 2008; Corradini & O’Connor 2010; Okasha 2012; Humphreys 2016; Sarte...

We sketch four applications of Marr's levels‐of‐analysis methodology to the relations between logic and experimental data in the cognitive neuroscience of language and reasoning. The first part of the paper illustrates the explanatory power of computational level theories based on logic. We show that a Bayesian treatment of the suppression task in reasoning with conditionals is ruled out by EEG data, supporting instead an analysis based on defeasible logic. Further, we describe how results from an EEG study on temporal prepositions (...) can be reanalyzed using formal semantics, addressing a potential confound. The second part of the article demonstrates the predictive power of logical theories drawing on EEG data on processing progressive constructions and on behavioral data on conditional reasoning in people with autism. Logical theories can constrain processing hypotheses all the way down to neurophysiology, and conversely neuroscience data can guide the selection of alternative computational level models of cognition. (shrink)

The article highlights George Herbert Mead’s and Wilfrid Sellars’ reliance on a behaviourally-grounded conception of meaning as strictly related to the possibility of distinguishing mental from non-mental phenomena as both related to the semantic dimension. Mead’s position is in fact akin to Wilfrid Sellars’ argument that the concepts of ‘inner events’ are essentially inter-subjective. Thoughts are displayed as consisting of related linguistic acts linked inferentially through intra-linguistic moves that respond to a particular ‘language practice’ governed by norms. Introspection is an (...) ‘inner conversation’, namely an ‘inner’ speaking analogous to linguistic activity that does not involve actual equivalents of the words in the mind. (shrink)

Logical realism is the metaphysical view asserting that the facts of logic exist and are mind-and-language independent. McSweeney argues that if logical realism is true, we encounter a dilemma. Either we cannot determine which of the two logically equivalent theories holds a fundamental status, or neither theory can be considered fundamental. These two conclusions together constitute what is known as the _Unfamiliarity Dilemma_, which poses significant challenges to our understanding of the epistemological and metaphysical features of logic. In this article, (...) I present two strategies to address McSweeney’s dilemma. If these arguments prove effective, they would demonstrate that our knowledge of logic is not susceptible to the skeptical concerns raised by McSweeney’s hypothesis. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe paper compares Mead’s and Quine’s behaviouristic theories of meaning and language, focusing in particular on Mead’s notion of sympathy and Quine’s notion of empathy. On the one hand, Quine seems to resort to an explanation similar to Mead’s notion of sympathy, referring to ‘empathy’ in order to justify the human ability to project ourselves into the witness’s position; on the other hand, Quine’s reference to the notion of empathy paves the way to a more insightful comparison between Mead’s behaviourism (...) and an explanation of the emergence of the linguistic from pre-linguistic communication based on empathic identification processes. However, Mead is less ambiguous than Quine in his use of the notion of sympathy finds a fecund parallel in the current neuroscientific and neuro-phenomenological hypothesis on ‘empathy’. The article contends that the ambiguity in Quine’s account of empathy is due to the exigency of trying to elucidate the link between the rules of language in a cultural context and... (shrink)

In this paper we present a semantic analysis of the imperfective paradox based on the Event Calculus, a planning formalism characterizing a class of models which can be computed by connectionist networks. We report the results of a questionnaire that support the semantic theory and suggest that different aspectual classes of VPs in the progressive give rise to different entailment patterns. Further, a processing model is outlined, combining the semantic analysis with the psycholinguistic principle of immediacy in the framework of (...) recurrent networks. The model is used to derive predictions concerning the electrophysiological correlates of the computations described by the Event Calculus. (shrink)

Since the end of the twentieth century, cognitive science has been witnessing what is called a pragmatic turn, a change of perspective that considers pragmatists to be basically right about the nature of knowledge and experience (Engel et al., 2016; Madzia & Jung, 2016; Madzia, Santarelli, 2017; Schulkin, 2015). Generally speaking, the pragmatic turn paradigm suggests that cognition is fundamentally grounded in action; that is, fundamentally action-bound, “subserving the planning, selection, anticipation, and performance of actions” (Engel et al., 2013, p. (...) 206). The essays collected in this special issue on Pragmatism and Enactivism seek to determine the extent to which the encounter between pragmatism and enactivism can provide an opportunity to reflect upon the genesis and nature, limits, and potentialities of cognition, as well as the issue of how mind and world, nature and culture, experience and language coexist. (shrink)

In this paper we present a semantic analysis of the imperfective paradox based on the Event Calculus, a planning formalism characterizing a class of models which can be computed by connectionist networks. We report the results of a questionnaire that support the semantic theory and suggest that different aspectual classes of VPs in the progressive give rise to different entailment patterns. Further, a processing model is outlined, combining the semantic analysis with the psycholinguistic principle of immediacy in the framework of (...) recurrent networks. The model is used to derive predictions concerning the electrophysiological correlates of the computations described by the Event Calculus. (shrink)

The article aims to make a contribution to the contemporary debate on emergence by focusing on Conwy Lloyd Morgan’s and George Herbert Mead’s theories of emergence. Both authors, in fact, first elaborated a theory that tried to synthesize the biological, the psycho-physiological and the social dimensions of emergent processes. Since Morgan’s emergentism and Mead’s processual ontology were conditioned by the reflections that the two thinkers had developed over the years and traces back their roots to the early 1890s, the article (...) will be developed as follows. A brief description of Morgan’s conception of organic and mental evolution as elaborated in the 1890s and summarised in his Lowell Lectures will be outlined. Then Mead’s early writings on psychophysics and comparative psychology, pointing out a similarity between Mead and Morgan’s ideas on organic and mental evolution at that time will be introduced. Finally, their theories of emergence from the 1920s, pointing out more interesting similarities and dissimilarities will be examined. (shrink)

Various notions of plausibility are used in cognitive science to argue for or against the “goodness of theories.” However, plausibility remains poorly understood and difcult to analyze. We review debates in the philosophy of science on uses of plausibility in the assessment of novel scientifc theories as well as recent attempts to formalize, reform, or eliminate specifc notions of plausibility. Although these discussions highlight important concerns behind plausibility claims, they fail to identify viable notions of plausibility that are sufciently diferent (...) from other criteria of “good theory,” such as prior probability or external coherence. We survey uses of plausibility in linguistics and cognitive science, confrming that plausibility is often a proxy for other criteria of good theory. We argue that the need remains for concepts of plausibility that can be employed to assess the quality of proposals at the early stages of theory development when other criteria are not yet applicable. We identify two such notions: one relating to formal constraints on theories and another capturing initial epistemic consensus, if not necessarily convergence on the truth, about the target system in a community of inquiry. We briefy assess the specifcity and added value of these notions of plausibility relative to other criteria for good theory. (shrink)

The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead is a significant contribution to the recent “Mead renaissance.” It gathers some contributions first presented at the conference celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of George Herbert Mead held in April 2013 at the University of Chicago and organized by Hans Joas, Andrew Abbott, Daniel Huebner, and Christopher Takacs. The volume brings scholarship on G. H. Mead up to date highlighting Mead’s relevance for areas of research completely ignored by p...

The paper seeks to show the potentialities of a wider perspective concerning human economic behavior and decision-making processes intertwining Mead’s and Sen’s ideas on self-identity and social context. Emerging developments of my findings strengthen, at once, the principled commitment to freedom of choice, revealing from a “Mead-Sen” perspective the instrumental role of social behavioral patterns and socio-cultural environment (social group, community, nationality, race, sex, and now social media) in the orientation of persons’ (economic) behaviors. In particular, a Mead-Sen approach would (...) help clarify how people develop their attitudes and dispositions to think and behave, namely examining the habits at the basis of everyday processes of evaluation and choice as manifestations of practical judgment. (shrink)

In the following pages I shall sketch some thoughts on Veblen’s implicit and explicit references to pragmatism and functional psychology, arguing that, besides Peirce and James, the functionalist theories and psychological experiments of the research group led by Dewey and Mead at the University of Chicago set the scene for Veblen’s intellectual revolution. More precisely, whilst Veblen did not mention it explicitly, it is possible to find in his writings of the years 1896-1900 references to Dewey’s notion of the “organic (...) circuit” and to Dewey’s and Mead’s theory of emotion.* This paper has three parts and three aims. In the first part, I outline Veblen’s criticism of economic science and his proposal for a new evolutionary economics, paying particular attention to Veblen’s implicit reference to Peirce’s logic. In the second part, I single out Veblen’s reference to Dewey’s and Mead’s works on functional psychology. In the third part, I will compare Mead’s hypothesis of the genesis of social interests in emotions with the evolutionary economic theory sketched by Veblen.* Tilman (1996: Ch 3) argued over pragmatic influences upon Veblen’s ideas concerning the human mind. James and Dewey’s functional psychology offered a psychological basis for his social theory. In my opinion, however, Veblen has been influenced by the Chicago School of functionalism more than by James’ functionalism, in particular by Dewey’s and Mead’s ideas. Moreover, even if Tilman (1998) points out Dewey’s intellectual debt to Veblen’s idea, his references consist normally in a period later than that considered here. (shrink)

This paper examines the asymmetrical aspect of causal relation, confronting it to Humean and Neo-Humean's view. Following Hausman and Ehring, we favor a situational approach to causal asymmetry. We explore the Hausman's analysis of flagpole's example, clearing the connexions between causation and explanation. Our general diagnosis is that the Neo-humean tradition wrongly supposes that nomic relations, with the exception of minor details, exhaust the causal relations.

In this work, I analyze our concept of cause in the face of criticism of Bertrand Russell in his article “On the Notion of Cause”. For Russell, there is an estrangement between the notion of cause and mature science of physics. The word cause (and its correlates) would not be used in physics, thus eliminating the main justification of philosophy for his job—the foundation of science. Thus, the various causal notions and the principle of causality should be abandoned by philosophers (...) as something outdated. The aim of this study is to assess the extent to which our notion of cause, with its asymmetric nature, can be explained by physics and investigate the question of the existence of causes in our world. (shrink)

Resumen: Tanto en Platón como en Aristóteles el eros es cuestionado como forma de relación con el otro que conduzca a una vida virtuosa y que permita además pensar la vida en común. En la perspectiva de Platón, tal cuestionamiento se daría en favor de una búsqueda de la Belleza que proveería un determinado modelo de philia −el de la philosofía−. En el planteamiento de Aristóteles, el cuestionamiento del eros por particulares se daría en favor de un modelo de philia (...) −la philia virtuosa− prácticamente limitado a un plano ideal −por cuanto los hombres virtuosos son muy raros de encontrar−. En ambos casos, sin embargo, la forma en que se está pensando la philia proveería, en cierto sentido, un modelo ideal de comunidad.: Both in Plato and Aristotle, eros is questioned as a form of relationship with the other that brings us to a virtuous life and enable us to think about life in community. In Plato’s view, such a questioning would be in favor of a search for the Beauty that would offer a particular model of philia −that of philo-sofia−. In Aristotle’s view, the questioning of eros by individuals would be in favor of a model of philia −the virtuous philia− virtually restricted to an ideal level −because it is rare to find virtuous men−. In both cases, however, the way philia is being thought would, in a sense, provide an ideal model of community. (shrink)

O presente trabalho tem como intuito estabelecer um diálogo entre as críticas traçadas por Gottlob Frege e Charles Sanders Peirce ao psicologismo. Trata-se de um estudo que visa contribuir para a compreensão de temas caros para a filosofia da linguagem, como a natureza do pensamento e a construção do significado. Para tanto, apresentaremos, de maneira geral, o conceito de psicologismo e alguns argumentos levantados a seu favor. Feito isso, elencaremos duas críticas ditas antipsicologistas: começaremos, na segunda seção, com o posicionamento (...) de Frege tomado no todo de sua obra no intuito de pensar seus reflexos no texto Sobre o sentido e a referência. Na terceira seção, abordaremos, na filosofia de Peirce, como o antipsicologismo está pressuposto desde seus escritos iniciais até o desenvolvimento de sua semiótica. (shrink)

Il progetto comune dei pragmatisti (Calcaterra 2024) raccoglie una selezione di saggi del periodo di produzione di Rosa Calcaterra che va dal 2003 al 2016, rivisti o integrati in vista di questa nuova edizione. Il volume offre uno sguardo d’insieme del percorso teoretico di Calcaterra, focalizzandosi sugli autori pragmatisti che più hanno segnato il suo pensiero, segnatamente C.S. Peirce, W. James, J. Dewey, G.H. Mead, C.I. Lewis, H. Putnam e R. Rorty. Come hanno notato Michela Bella, Giovann...

Interdisciplinarity plays a major role in the multifaceted thought of John Dewey. His theoretical interests cross the traditional academic boundaries in the name of improved research and teaching, and his works could be seen cumulatively as a systematic approach consisting of different interdisciplinary perspectives each intertwined with the next. On this issue, the essays gathered in Il pensiero di John Dewey tra psicologia, filosofia, pedagogia. Prospettive interdisciplinari, edited by Elis...

The publication of G. H. Mead’s Mind Self & Society. The Definitive Edition has been long awaited by scholars and historians of the thought of the philosopher and pragmatist social psychologist. The editorial project of the University of Chicago Press followed this Definitive Edition with the publication of The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead (2016), a collection of the proceedings of the international conference held in April 2013 at the University of Chicago, also edited by Hans Joas and...