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

Dispositionalism, perhaps the most popular variant of non-Humean metaphysics, submits that dispositions, powers, or capacities, are part of the furniture of the world. In this book I advance an original approach to dispositionalism revolving around the notion of Dispositional Reality; the novelty lies in the fact that the account, unlike most alternatives on the market, does not require the reification of objects, facts, properties, nor their dispositional essences – and is in fact compatible with a far more deflationary approach to (...) dispositions, while still being true to the non-Humean spirit of the proposal. This power metaphysics without powers allows one to dispel several puzzles in recent literature, or recast them under a new light. Albeit with its own peculiarities, this proposal constitutes a variant of explanatory dispositionalism, according to which realism about dispositions ought not to be understood as an ontological inflation, but as an explanatory inversion within the nomic and modal family. Some of these explanations are hereby attempted, and a study of various types of non-causal explanation will be provided. (shrink)

Automatic identification system is a vessel tracking system, which since 2004 has become a global tool for the detection and analysis of seagoing traffic. In this article, we look at how this technology, initially designed as a collision avoidance system, has recently become involved in debates concerning migration across the Mediterranean Sea. In particular, after having briefly discussed its emergence and characteristics, we examine how through different practices of appropriation AIS, and the data it generate, have been seized upon, both (...) to contest and to sustain the exclusionary nature of borders, and the mass dying of migrants at sea to which it leads. We do so by referring to forms of data activism we have contributed to in the frame of our Forensic Oceanography project as well as to situations in which AIS has been mobilized by xenophobic groups to demand even stronger exclusionary measures. At the same time, we point to the multiplicity of actors who participate in the politics of migration through AIS in unexpected ways. We conclude by highlighting the irreducible ambivalence of practices of appropriation and call for persistent attention to one’s own positioning within the global datascape constituted by AIS and other data. (shrink)

Lam and Esfeld have argued that, within Bohmian mechanics, the wave function can be interpreted as a physical structure instantiated by the fundamental particles posited by the theory. Further, to characterize the nature of this structure, they appeal to the framework of Ontic Structural Realism, thereby proposing a structuralist interpretation of Bohmian mechanics. However, I shall point out that OSR denotes a family of distinct views, each of which maintains a different account about the relation between structures and objects, and (...) entails a different kind of ontology. Thus, in this paper I will show how to articulate the structuralist approach to Bohmian Mechanics accordingly to the different standard versions of OSR, and I will evaluate these alternatives. Moreover, I will propose a novel and _sui generis_ kind of structuralist interpretation of Bohmian Mechanics, based on the framework of metaphysical coherentism. (shrink)

According to the most common interpretation of the simulation argument, we are very likely to live in an ancestor simulation. It is interesting to ask if some families of simulations are more likely than others inside the space of all simulations. We argue that a natural probability measure is given by computational complexity: easier simulations are more likely to be run. Remarkably this allows us to extract experimental predictions from the fact that we live in a simulation. For instance we (...) show that it is very likely that humanity will not achieve interstellar travel and that humanity will not meet other intelligent species in the universe, in turn explaining the Fermi's Paradox. On the opposite side, experimental falsification of any of these predictions would constitute evidence against our reality being a simulation. (shrink)

What is street art? This paper offers a definition of street art as an art kind or art form based on its essential value: its subversiveness. It argues that street art is essentially subversive in virtue of using public space as a technical resource. By hijacking a portion of the urban landscape with its colourful forms and witty designs, street art challenges familiar ways of practising the city, while creating a ‘temporary autonomous zone’ of free expression. There, corporate control over (...) the city’s visible surfaces is ridiculed and people reclaim their right to use the city. In this sense, street art functions as a carnivalesque tactic of social resistance, favouring the emergence of alternative ways to imagine our urban life and our uses of public space. By considering its subversiveness, one can also explain how street art (i) significantly differs from official public art; (ii) includes graffiti as its original and most radical style. (shrink)

This study uses a Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies methodology to provide the first systematic analysis of how trust is discursively constructed in crypto-drug markets. The data come from two purpose-built corpora. One comprises all the forum messages posted on the flag ship crypto-drug market Silk Road during the years in which it traded on the hidden net. The other corpus comprises all the reports published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime during the same period. Our analysis of (...) trust focuses on the identities of those buying and selling drugs. The findings reveal that the Silk Road community members regularly discussed vendors’ identities alongside a continuum of trust–risk calculation, explicitly identifying both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ practices and hence engaging in self-regulatory discourses, and mainly constructed drug users’ identities in relation to values of expertise, integrity and benevolence. The findings also suggest that hard law enforcement activity, such as crypto-drug market closure, may encourage technological innovation within these markets. Moreover, our results show a disconnect between the discursive reality of the policy-making documents we examined and the very crypto-drug markets that they seek to legislate. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic account of Kant’s view on ‘phenomenal substance’. Several studies have recently analysed Kant’s notion of substance. However, I submit that more needs to be said about how this notion is reconceptualized within the critical framework to vindicate a genuine and legitimate sense of substance in the phenomenal realm. More specifically, I show that Kant’s transcendental idealism does not commit him to a rejection of substantiality in phenomena. Rather, Kant isolates a general notion of (...) substance (as ultimate subject) and argues that (i) the relationality of phenomena is compatible with this notion; and that (ii) matter and all its parts are the ultimate subjects of everything existing in space (as what is independently movable in space). I suggest that vindicating a genuine and legitimate notion of phenomenal substance has far-ranging consequences for the interpretation of Kant’s empirical realism. (shrink)

The “origins” of (geometric) space is examined from the perspective of the so-called “conceptual space” or “semantic space”. Semantic space is characterized by its fundamental “locality” that generates an “implicit” mode of geometrizing. This view is examined from within three perspectives. First, the role that various diagrammatic entities play in the everyday life and pragmatic activities of selected ethnic groups is illustrated. Secondly, it is shown how conceptual spaces are fundamentally linked to the meaning effects of particular natural languages and (...) these are very different from the global and universal aspects of Euclidean spaces. Thirdly, it is contended that these modes of creating body and culture-based spatial frameworks and related cosmogonies and cosmologies can be described as forms of “latent geometry” that initially appear unexplainable in any rational way. Nonetheless, and thanks to the deep mathematical reflections provided by René Thom, it is illustrated how the various ways of generating space can be further analyzed as distortions of mainstream spatialization furnished by Euclidean geometry that established the dominant universality of the ideas of space (and time). (shrink)

In Part I of this paper, we identified and compared various schemes for trivalent truth conditions for indicative conditionals, most notably the proposals by de Finetti and Reichenbach on the one hand, and by Cooper and Cantwell on the other. Here we provide the proof theory for the resulting logics DF/TT and CC/TT, using tableau calculi and sequent calculi, and proving soundness and completeness results. Then we turn to the algebraic semantics, where both logics have substantive limitations: DF/TT allows for (...) algebraic completeness, but not for the construction of a canonical model, while CC/TT fails the construction of a Lindenbaum-Tarski algebra. With these results in mind, we draw up the balance and sketch future research projects. (shrink)

Gebharter has proposed using one of the best known Bayesian network causal discovery algorithms, PC, to identify the constitutive dependencies underwriting mechanistic explanations. His proposal assumes that mechanistic constitution behaves like deterministic direct causation, such that PC is directly applicable to mixed variable sets featuring both causal and constitutive dependencies. Gebharter claims that such mixed sets, under certain restrictions, comply with PC’s background assumptions. The aim of this article is to show that Gebharter’s proposal incurs severe problems, ultimately rooted in (...) the widespread non-compliance of mechanistic systems with PC’s assumptions. This casts severe doubts on the attempt to implicitly define constitution as a form of deterministic direct causation complying with PC’s assumptions. (shrink)

The phenomenological method, characterized by the suspension of judgment (epoché), has helped analyzing the subjective experience of patients affected by mental disorders. Psychiatry, dealing with the human being itself in its complexity and unicity, is placed between the biological positivistic attempt, for which the symptoms of mental illness are a mere consequence of brain dysfunctions and the phenomenological-existential approach, inclined to consider the symptoms as meaningful phenomena of the person’s subjective experience. Eugène Minkowski, Ludwig Binswanger, Arthur Tatossian, Kimura Bin, Henri (...) Maldiney and Hubertus Tellenbach are fundamental authors in the phenomenological psychopathology of depression; they described the alterations of the lived time, space, body and others experienced by the depressed. Starting from the main theoretical contributions of the authors, we will focus on the psychopathology and discuss the key themes of clinical depression: guilt, poverty and hypochondriasis. Finally we will focus on the typus melancholicus construct. (shrink)

The present collection of essays honours John Woods on the occasion of his eightieth birthday from contributors who wish to pay homage to this remarkable researcher whom they see not only as a scholar of prodigious energy and insight, but as a friend, colleague, collaborator, or former teacher. All of the essays touch upon topics Woods has taken a direct or indirect interest in, ranging from technical problems of mathematical logic and applications of formal methods through philosophical logic, philosophy of (...) language, epistemology and history of ancient and modern logic. The sections themselves of the book cover relevance, paradoxes, inconsistency, fallacies, abduction, fictions, logic naturalized, law, argumentation and narratives, and many other topics: and represent the main research areas which have profited from Woods' reflections. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant often remarks that phenomena consist only in relations. This is a highly puzzling thesis that is not easily reconcilable with the explanation of natural processes. More specifically, it is not clear whether and how a network of mere relations (such as ‘being higher than’, ‘being next to’, etc.) can give rise to genuine changes in nature. I call this the problem of global relationality. In this paper, I suggest a solution to this problem (...) by showing that Kant’s specific sense of relationality is ultimately grounded in the spatiality of phenomena and differs from the one usually assumed in the contemporary debate. I argue that a subset of empirical properties can be regarded as ‘comparatively intrinsic’ since they preserve a genuine sense of intrinsicness while being fully relational in space. As a result, real changes can take place in the phenomenal realm if they concern comparatively intrinsic properties of empirical objects. (shrink)

Complementarity tells us we cannot know precisely the values of all the properties of a quantum object at the same time: the precise determination of one property implies that the value of some other (complementary) property is undefined. E.g. the precise knowledge of the position of a particle implies that its momentum is undefined. Here we show that a Schrödinger cat has a well defined value of a property that is complementary to its “being dead or alive” property. Then, thanks (...) to complementarity, it has an undefined value of the property “being dead or alive”. In other words, the cat paradox is explained through quantum complementarity: of its many complementary properties, any quantum system, such as a cat, can have a well defined value only of one at a time. Schrödinger’s cat has a definite value of a property which is complementary to “being dead or alive”, so it is neither dead nor alive. Figuratively one can say it is both dead and alive. While this interpretation only uses textbook concepts (the Copenhagen interpretation), apparently it has never explicitly appeared in the literature. We detail how to build an Arduino based simulation of Schrödinger’s experiment based on these concepts for science outreach events. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that functional and dispositional properties are not identical to their physical base, but that there is some kind of asymmetrical ontological dependence between them. In this regard, a popular idea is that the former are realized by the latter, which, under the non-identity assumption, is generally understood to be a non-causal, constitutive relation. In this paper we examine two of the most widely accepted approaches to realization, the so-called ‘flat view’ and the ‘dimensioned view’, and we (...) analyze their explanatory relevance in the light of a number of examples from the life sciences, paying special attention to developmental phenomena. Our conclusion is that the emphasis placed by modern-day biology on such properties as variability, evolvability, and a whole collection of phenomena like modularity, robustness, and developmental constraint or developmental bias requires the adoption of a much more dynamic perspective than traditional realization frameworks are able to capture. (shrink)

According to Bird’s Naïve Dispositional Monism, all properties are powers, and are individuated by their manifestations. Lowe has famously challenged the position with an individuation regress or circularity argument. Bird has then offered a structuralist side-step in the form of Structuralist Dispositional Monism, according to which powers are individuated through the unique position they occupy in an asymmetric power-structure. However, Structuralist Dispositional Monism has been argued to be just as problematic as Naïve Dispositional Monism, if not more so.I argue that (...) the debate is severely flawed to the extent that it relies on Lowe’s standard characterization of metaphysical individuation as a binary relation between objects. I will argue against this characterization in favor of a different one, either as a standard or sui generis explanatory relation of individuality facts. In the former case, Naïve Dispositional Monism is clear of all charges previously raised against it; whereas in the latter case, Structuralist Dispositional Monism works just fine; Structuralist Dispositional Monism may ultimately be argued to the be the superior option. Either way, the status of Dispositional Monism, vis à vis individuation circularities, is not as compromised as some have claimed—and Lowe’s intended way out (viz., allow for some non-power to eventually break the circularity) loses much of its appeal. (shrink)

Firstly, this contribution proposes to address synthographies – images generated through Text-to-image technologies – by deepening the epistemological shift related to the possibility of transposing the image-creation process from the analogue arts to the notational ones (or, by drawing on Nelson Goodman's terminology, from the “autographic” to the “allographic” forms of art). Secondly, the paper highlights how synthographies can be considered partly autographic and partly allographic, since the linguistic prompts constitute only the notational aspect of the generated images. Furthermore, this (...) contribution argues that the recent critiques around such images, which referenced aspects related to the absence of authorial presence and mechanicality, characterised the history of photography since its beginning. Finally, the contribution explores how the possibility to create synthographies that are almost indistinguishable from photographies easily might further separate the interaction between the detective and the depictive functions to the advantage of the latter, erasing what remains of the visual reliability and documental value of images. (shrink)

Firstly, this contribution proposes to address synthographies – images generated through Text-to-image technologies – by deepening the epistemological shift related to the possibility of transposing the image-creation process from the analogue arts to the notational ones (or, by drawing on Nelson Goodman's terminology, from the “autographic” to the “allographic” forms of art). Secondly, the paper highlights how synthographies can be considered partly autographic and partly allographic, since the linguistic prompts constitute only the notational aspect of the generated images. Furthermore, this (...) contribution argues that the recent critiques around such images, which referenced aspects related to the absence of authorial presence and mechanicality, characterised the history of photography since its beginning. Finally, the contribution explores how the possibility to create synthographies that are almost indistinguishable from photographies easily might further separate the interaction between the detective and the depictive functions to the advantage of the latter, erasing what remains of the visual reliability and documental value of images. (shrink)

I argue for an inferentialist account of the meaning of causal claims, which draws on the writings of Sellars and Brandom. The account is meant to be widely applicable. In this work, it is motivated and defended with reference to complex systems sciences, i.e., sciences that study the behaviour of systems with many components interacting at various levels of organisation (e.g. cells, brain, social groups). Here are three, seemingly-uncontroversial platitudes about causality. (1) Causal relations are objective, mind-independent relations and, as (...) such, analysable in objective, mind-independent terms. (2) There is a tight connection between our practice of predicting, explaining and controlling phenomena, and the use of causal notions. (3) The second platitude should be explained in terms of the first. Contrary to this widely-held stance, I suggest that we reverse the order of analysis, by taking our activities of agents as the raw material in terms of which to account for the obtaining of causal relations. To this end, I propose and defend an inferentialist account of causality. Causality is a ‘category’ that the knowing subject employs to ‘mediate’ between himself and the world. In inferentialist terms, this mediation is the result of the concept of cause figuring in a network of inferences, used in our practice of gathering evidence and using it to explain, predict and intervene. Complexity only makes the mediation more difficult, thereby rendering the meaning of causality more evident. (shrink)

The aim of the study is to determine the association between Behavioral Lifestyles and longevity in the elderly. A search strategy was conducted in the PsycInfo, Medline, PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases. The primary outcome was mortality/survival. Four variables were analyzed to evaluate the role of potential moderators. Ninety-three articles, totaling more than 2,800,000 people, were included in the meta-analysis. We found that the lifestyles analyzed predict greater survival. Specifically, doing regular physical activity, engaging in leisure activities, sleeping (...) 7–8 h a day, and staying outside the BMI ranges considered as underweight or obesity are habits that each separately has a greater probability associated with survival after a period of several years. (shrink)

As a field of scientific expertise, semiotics has the interesting property of being a relevant tool for understanding how scientists represent any domain of research, including the semiotic domain itself. This feature is particularly expressive in the case of biology, as it appears to be the case that a certain range of biological phenomena are of a semiotic character. However, it is not consensual the extent to which semiotics pervades biology. This paper deals with this issue for the particular case (...) of developmental biology, stressing the role of semiotics-as-a-discipline in delimiting the extent of semiotics-as-a-natural-phenomenon and, specifically, in disentangling semiotic mechanisms from semiotic metaphors aimed at clarifying non-semiotic developmental mechanisms. (shrink)

This Handbook offers the first comprehensive reference guide to the interdisciplinary field of abductive cognition, providing readers with extensive information on the process of reasoning to hypotheses in humans, animals, and in computational machines. It highlights the role of abduction in both theory practice: in generating and testing hypotheses and explanatory functions for various purposes and as an educational device. It merges logical, cognitive, epistemological and philosophical perspectives with more practical needs relating to the application of abduction across various disciplines (...) and practices, such as in diagnosis, creative reasoning, scientific discovery, diagrammatic and ignorance-based cognition, and adversarial strategies. It also discusses the inferential role of models in hypothetical reasoning, abduction and creativity, including the process of development, implementation and manipulation for different scientific and technological purposes. Written by a group of internationally renowned experts in philosophy, logic, general epistemology, mathematics, cognitive, and computer science, as well as life sciences, engineering, architecture, and economics, the Handbook of Abductive Cognition offers a unique reference guide for readers approaching the process of reasoning to hypotheses from different perspectives and for various theoretical and practical purposes. Numerous diagrams, schemes and other visual representations are included to promote a better understanding of the relevant concepts and to make concepts highly accessible to an audience of scholars and students with different scientific backgrounds. (shrink)

This book investigates the problem of patriarchy in modern social contract theories by analyzing the concept of "sexual contract" from Thomas Hobbes to Immanuel Kant. It sheds light on both the genesis and the logic of patriarchal relations in modern culture.

Ecological developmental biology considers the phenotype as actively produced through an environmentally informed process of individual development, rather than predetermined by the genotype. Accordingly, the genotype is viewed as one among many interactants that contribute formative elements; it is understood to do so no differently from the way other organism-internal and environmental resources do. Although the EcoDevo approach is evidently particularly apt to inform approaches to human development, which mostly takes shape in rich cultural environments, it is remarkable that, at (...) least within some highly influential circles of the linguistic sciences, the study of many distinctive human cognitive traits including language remains strongly anchored to a preformationist stance. This article brings an EcoDevo approach to the biologically focused study of language to argue that an aspect of language design commonly assumed to be “blueprinted,” namely, the lexicon-syntax interface, may instead be explained as a plastic effect of ongoing developmental processes in the mind of the child, in which designated aspects of the environment fulfill a key constructive role. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 97 Heft: 1 Seiten: 295-299.

Lessons in the study of habits by Walter L. Sheldon. This book is a reproduction of the original book published in 1903 and may have some imperfections such as marks or hand-written notes.