It is often assumed that the capability to make inferences requires language. Against this assumption, I claim that inferential abilities do not necessarily require a language. On the contrary, certain cartographic systems could be used to explain some forms of inferences, and they are capable of warranting rational relations between contents they represent. By arguing that certain maps, as well as sentences, are adequate for inferential processes, I do not mean to neglect that there are important differences between (...) maps and sentences. Instead, the purpose of this paper is to highlight interesting distinctions that might affect the way that cartographic thinking works. (shrink)

This paper examines the predominant systems used for the classification of print-based cartographic materials (primarily atlases and sheet maps). We present the results of a brief, widely distributed survey on the topic, followed by discussions of the distinctive characteristics of the classification systems used by survey respondents. The Library of Congress Classification and Dewey Decimal Classification systems were found to be widely used, with several other schemes also in use.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.3 (1999) 63-80 [Access article in PDF] The Transversality of Michel de Certeau: Foucault's Panoptic Discourse and the Cartographic Impulse Bryan Reynolds and Joseph Fitzpatrick Above all (and this is a corollary, but an important one), the phenomenological and praxiological analysis of cultural trajectories must allow to be grasped at once a composition of places and the innovation that modifies it by dint of moving and cutting (...) across them. --Michel de Certeau, Culture in the PluralThrough his rigorous examinations of the common, the quotidian, the personal, the plural practices that establish and continually transform societies, Michel de Certeau develops a conception of culture born of the perpetual transgression, however subtle or pronounced, of the boundaries imposed by all totalizing systems, whether theoretical or social. This view of culture as a "cutting across" of boundaries, which can be found in many forms throughout his work, achieves a special significance for the study of subjectification in his discussion of "Spatial Practices" that comprises the third section of The Practice of Everyday Life. In an important essay on Certeau's theory of space, Ian Buchanan argues that "our understanding of culture must commence with an understanding of the formation of the subject," and that the latter is addressed by Certeau through his essays on space [129-30]. Following this assertion, we want to argue that Certeau's analyses of spatial practices in Heterologies, "The Gaze: Nicholas of Cusa," and The Practice of Everyday Life [particularly the chapter "Walking in the City" 91-110], outline a theory that describes subjectivity as what amounts to, as Certeau puts it in Culture in the Plural, "a composition of places and the innovation that modifies it by dint of moving and cutting across them" [146]. Furthermore, by articulating the close relationship between Certeau's spatial theory and our own work on "transversal movement," we will attempt to show that the method of analysis Certeau uses in "Walking in the City" (and describes in several other works) is itself marked by the "transversal" tactics that his theory describes. 1 By focusing in particular on Certeau's methodological critique of Foucault in both The Practice of Everyday Life and Heterologies, we will demonstrate the various ways in which he moves beyond what Bryan Reynolds and James Intriligator have labeled the "dissective-cohesive mode" of analysis, an analytical [End Page 63] [Begin Page 65] approach (characteristic of most dialectical argumentation) that breaks its subject matter into constituent parts and examines those parts with the goal of reassembling them into a unified and accountable whole (such as, say, the city or the human subject in "Walking in the City"). 2 Postmodern Space: Certeau and Jameson In his essay "Heterophenomenology, or Certeau's Theory of Space," Ian Buchanan situates Certeau's writings on the production of space within the postmodern debate over the autonomy of the subject, opposing Certeau's view to Fredric Jameson's "assumption that the subject takes his or her psychic bearings from the built environment and only has certain existence so long as he or she can cognitively 'map' this environment" [Buchanan 114]. Citing the example of the Westin Bonaventure hotel in Los Angeles, Jameson argues that "this latest mutation in space--postmodern hyperspace--has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and cognitively to map its position in a mappable external world" [44]. The effect on cultural politics, according to Jameson, is that the subject "submerged" by this postmodern hyperspace is deprived of the "critical distance" that makes possible the "positioning of the cultural act outside of the massive Being of capital" [48]. Buchanan finds in "Walking in the City" the basis for a critique of this view though a conception of space stemming from "heterophe-nomenology," defined as "a phenomenology predicated by a heterogeneously constituted subject which does not take for granted the unity of the body" [112]. Focusing on Certeau's debt to Merleau-Ponty's theories of perception (which can best be seen in... (shrink)

The article analyses innovative ethno-geographical systems of the first century BC. During Hellenistic times, the science of geography made use of increasingly advanced mathematical and astronomical skills to ensure a scientific basis for the cartographical project; however, this geographical research apparently disregarded the natural and human environments. There is a paradigm change in the referred century. The Stoic Posidonius focuses on the concept of zones found in the early philosophers and finds a compromise between the ‘scientific’ and the ‘descriptive’ (...) geographies. Likewise, Vitruvius conveys a geographical system which associates climatic, somatic, and psychic features. (shrink)

Although these essays derive from much previously published material, the whole is greater than its parts. The collection allows a comparative view of a variety of local knowledge systems, from that of the medieval masons who built the cathedral of Chartres to early modern cartography, and from the complex navigation system of Micronesia to present‐day research on malaria and on turbulence. David Turnbull marshals local systems of knowledge to substantiate his thesis that “there is not just one universal (...) form of knowledge but a variety of knowledge” .Turnbull aims to show that knowledge is motley—that it is assembled out of heterogeneous components. It is a product of social labor. Its contents are pertinent to the locality in which it was produced. As such, contrary to the claims of modernist Western science, it is not rational, autonomous, and objective. Knowledge is performative and historically contingent. It is both various and able to be compared across diverse cultures. Against the claim of science to represent universal, objective knowledge, Turnbull points to the conclusions of philosophers such as Richard Rorty who have examined the indeterminacies of modern scientific and technical ways of knowing. Using an eclectic variety of studies in philosophy and the sociology of knowledge, Turnbull reiterates Wittgenstein's point that meaning consists of embodied performance and usage.For me the most illuminating part of this book is its comparison of the development of Western cartographic techniques in the “age of discovery” with the profoundly different navigational system that was developed in the Pacific by Polynesians. Turnbull shows the difficulties that early Europeans had in assembling the multitude of local knowledges about place and distance into a systematic cartographic knowledge in the interest of the state. He then discusses the profoundly different but also highly sophisticated navigational system of the Polynesians. They developed what he calls “a dynamic cognitive map,” a map based on a star compass and etak, a system of mental representation in which the canoe was conceived as stationary and a reference island as moving backward against the rising and setting points of the stars. It was a complex system of navigation that Polynesian navigators learned by long years of study from childhood; it allowed an accurate estimation of the distance traveled. Pacific oceanic navigation was based on this system of mapping and on a key, highly sophisticated technology, the seaworthy canoe. Turnbull here undermines the “great divide” between so‐called traditional knowledge systems and modern scientific ones. He effectively questions assumptions such as the one that contrasts deliberate European discoveries of the Americas with accidental Polynesian discoveries of the Pacific islands.He takes a similar approach in his discussion of the building of Gothic cathedrals, which he conceives as sites of experimental practice, as “laboratories.” He describes the cathedrals as sites of local knowledge, built with talk, tradition, and templates . Pointing to the evolution of the master mason into the architect in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, he suggests that thereby “theory became divorced from practice and skill became expertise” . Here Turnbull oversimplifies the later development. History itself becomes a template cut for the purposes of his own theoretical structure, rather than the complex, locally contingent, messy, and inherently interpretive entity that it is. Calling cathedrals “laboratories” and the process of their construction “technoscience” places modern categories onto the past in a procedure that can only create a distorting lens.This criticism can be directed at many social studies of science that use historical examples and is not meant to detract from the great value of this collection of interrelated studies. For modern science, Turnbull emphasizes both the motley assemblage and indeterminacy of scientific practices . Rather than modern science being superior to other knowledge systems, both are based on local practices. The question then becomes not how scientific methodology achieves universal, objective truth, but how technoscientific knowledge spaces achieves apparent universality and connectedness. Turnbull's answer includes technical devices and social strategies that treat various instances of knowledge/practice as equivalent and that make connections through ordering. He also shows the legitimacy and sophistication of knowledge systems that developed before or outside of modern technoscientific knowledge, and he creates a legitimizing space for both kinds, emphasizing the value of comparison and reciprocity. Rejecting the extremes of both the modern and the postmodern, he aims to create a middle ground that he calls the transmodern, a ground in that reciprocal dialogue between scientific and other kinds of knowledge systems can create both new insights and concrete human progress. This book is a valuable contribution toward such a goal. (shrink)

To make the case for non-conceptualism, Heck draws on an apparent dichotomy between linguistic and iconic representations. According to Heck, whereas linguistic representations have conceptual content, the content of iconic representations is non-conceptual. Based on the case of cartographic systems, the authors criticize Heck’s dichotomous distinction. They argue that maps are composed of semantically arbitrary elements that play different syntactic roles. Based on this, they claim that maps have a predicative structure and convey conceptual content. Finally, the authors (...) argue that, despite their differences, maps and sentences can logically interact with each other through heterogeneous inferences. These considerations not only challenge the view that conceptual content and inferential processes necessarily involve linguistic representations; furthermore, they provide a new perspective for thinking about maps, their semantics and syntax, and their interaction with linguistic systems. (shrink)

According to the predictive coding theory of cognition , brains are predictive machines that use perception and action to minimize prediction error, i.e. the discrepancy between bottom–up, externally-generated sensory signals and top–down, internally-generated sensory predictions. Many consider PCT to have an explanatory scope that is unparalleled in contemporary cognitive science and see in it a framework that could potentially provide us with a unified account of cognition. It is also commonly assumed that PCT is a representational theory of sorts, in (...) the sense that it postulates that our cognitive contact with the world is mediated by internal representations. However, the exact sense in which PCT is representational remains unclear; neither is it clear that it deserves such status—that is, whether it really invokes structures that are truly and nontrivially representational in nature. In the present article, I argue that the representational pretensions of PCT are completely justified. This is because the theory postulates cognitive structures—namely action-guiding, detachable, structural models that afford representational error detection—that play genuinely representational functions within the cognitive system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Caring for Landscapes of Justice in Perilous Settler EnvironmentsMishuana Goemanindians are the "singing remnants" or "graffiti," in the words of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson ("i am graffiti"). The forms this graffiti takes, our inscriptions on the landscape, are as numerous as our Nations, abundant as our ancestors who loved, lived, and passed down knowledge of our lands and histories. "You are the result of the love of thousands," writes Linda (...) Hogan, who beseeches us to listen to the environment surrounding us (159). Deborah Miranda (Coastal Esselen and Chumash) reminds us that we are also the result of violent histories, in her tribal memoir Bad Indians, a book that relishes the tales of her ancestors who resist and act out to survive. This harm, genocide, and settler mapping of worlds also must be attuned to in our surroundings and in "our bodies [that are] bridges over which our descendants cross, spanning unimaginable landscapes of loss" (Miranda 74). Visual cartographic mapping has been part and parcel of the erasure of California Indians, relegated to the small, contained, and past temporal space of a romanticized mission.This paper centers on the NDN Collective's work and the photography of Cara Romero's project Tongvaland and the works of Gabrielino Tongva artist Mercedes Dorame. The setting of these projects is in the sprawling landscape of Los Angeles, or the homelands of the Gabrielino Tongva people, who call it Tovaangar. I will examine the anti-colonial aesthetics and care practices mapped out in the work rather than presenting a "true" Indigenous map or alternative map. Mapping a history of the landscape by creating a "new" narrative or "true" narrative is not enough. As Maori scholar Linda Tuhwi Smith states, "[w]e believe that history is also about justice, that understanding history will enlighten our decisions about the future. Wrong. History is also about power. In fact, history is mostly about power. … [A] thousand accounts of the truth will not alter the fact that indigenous peoples are still marginal [End Page 50] and do not possess the power to transform history into justice" (34). The Gabrielino Tongva, who comprise an estimated 2,300 people, do not possess the population power and cannot access the form of voting or democracy to make the changes needed just by telling their truth. Across California, people know about the raw deal, the embezzlement, the genocide, and the so-called lost treaties. In fact, under Eisenhower, recompense was paid out in small amounts to Tongva families of the dispossessed. Instead, to continue with the words of Smith, "[i]t is also about reconciling and reprioritizing what is really important about the past with what is important about the present" (111). What Romero and the NDN Collective—made up of numerous tribal leaders, scholars, and other artists—did was relay and prioritize how they wanted to be seen in their homelands. These billboards invite us in, in a gift of sharing, or what tribal cultural leader Craig Torres related to me as a spirit of Maxxa, a sharing, gifting, or swapping of knowledge. Dorame's beautiful and critical installations in public art spaces reflect Maxxa—they invite the viewers to think through land from her curious arrangements. As artists, part of their practice is not that of a Western version of a tortured genius but instead is energized by pulling in community and creating a collective practice. They undo settler space together and with us. The cartographic practices of these California Indians' creative arts exemplify communities of care that must be considered when we think through the unmapping of settler terrains. This question requires an approach of radical care. As Hi'ilei Hobart and Tamara Kneese make clear, the notion of care is "inseparable from systemic inequalities and power systems" (Hobart and Kneese 1).The work of the NDN Collective and Dorame counters a settler-based, commercial map of Los Angeles. Indigenous people, relegated by the settler state as expendable and erasable graffiti, confront capitalist and state ordinances at various scales. Rather than understand this as a subjugated positionality, I posit that graffiti is the critique necessary and valuable to understanding interlocking structures of oppression. In the following words of Leanne... (shrink)

There is an abundance of enthusiasm and optimism about how governments at all levels can make use of big data, algorithms and artificial intelligence. There is also growing concern about the risks that come with these new systems. This article makes the case for greater government transparency and accountability about uses of big data through a Government of Canada qualitative research case study. Adapting a method from critical cartographers, I employ counter-mapping to map government big data practices and internal (...) discussions of risk and challenge. I do so by drawing on interviews and freedom of information requests. The analysis reveals that there are more concerns and risks than often publicly discussed and that there are significant areas of silence that need greater attention. The article underlines the need for our democratic systems to respond to our new datafied contexts by ensuring that our institutions make changes to better protect citizen rights, uphold democratic principles and ensure means for citizen intervention. (shrink)

A growing number of people are relying on technologies like Google Maps not only to navigate and locate themselves in cartographic space but also to search, discover and evaluate urban places. While the spatial data that underlies such technology frequently appears as a combination of Google-created maps and locational information passively collected from mobile (GPS-enabled) devices, in this article we argue that for such systems to function as both useful tools for exploration for users and sources of revenue, (...) users must actively produce massive quantities of granular spatial data that would otherwise be significantly more difficult and expensive to collect. The production of this qualitative information about places constitutes significant unremunerated affective labour. In this article, we build on the tradition of feminist geographies, especially feminist and critical Geographic Information Systems (GIS), to examine how the labour done by gendered, raced and often classed members of a local community is alienated by Google (i.e. Alphabet, Inc.) to produce commodified spatial data/media in the Local Guides platform. We analyse how Google’s presentation of the platform hails women as care labourers—sharing their thoughts, feelings and knowledge of place for free in the name of supporting and caring for a community, however vaguely it may be constituted. At the same time, we argue that digital labour that produces the Local Guides platform draws from and reproduces specific gendering of spaces. We draw on a case study of a commercial corridor in the US city of Worcester, Massachusetts to show how the dialectic between affective digital labour and urban space has material effects on the production of raced, classed and gendered spaces and places. The article concludes with a call to maintain critical, feminist engagements with these types of platforms in order to further develop forms of digital praxis towards more just cities. (shrink)

Dutch science flourished in the late sixteenth and in the seventeenth century thanks to the immigration of cartographers, botanists, mathematicians, astronomers and the like from the Southern Netherlands after the Spanish army had captured the city of Antwerp in 1585, and thanks to the religious and the socio‐economic situation of the country. A strong impulse for practical scientific activities started from the Reformation, mainly thanks to its anti‐traditional attitude, which had an anti‐rationalistic tendency. Therefore, in the Northern Netherlands there was (...) no ‘warfare’ between science and religion and the biblical arguments leading to Galileo's condemnation were not used.Although the growth of the exact sciences and of technology in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries in Protestant cirles may be partly attributed to the expansion of trade, industry, navigation and so on, this does not explain why there was also at the same time a great interest in subjects as botany and zoology, which had no immediate economic utility. There were discussions about Copernicanism and Cartesianism. So a number of astronomers and theologians rejected the earth's movement on scientific and religious grounds, but there were also those who did not reject the Copernican system on biblical grounds. In the seventeenth century there was much discussion between science and religion in the Northern Netherlands, but that discussion was not followed by censure by the Church of the State. In the Republic there was a large amount of intellectual freedom in the study of the natural sciences, thanks to practical and ideological considerations. In the eighteenth century the seventheenth century tension between science and religion changed into a physicotheological natural science. It was believed that investigations into the workings of nature should lead to a better understanding of its Creator. So Bernard Nieuwentijt in his well‐known book: The right use of‐world views for the conviction of atheists and unbelievers (1715) intended to prove the existence of God on the basis of teleological arguments. (shrink)

This article might be interpreted as a theoretical journey in the realm of geographical investigation aimed at specifying the kinds of entities that such an investigation presupposes. Indeed, the purpose of these pages is to sketch what could be included in a geographical universal catalogue of all geographical entities there were, there are and (maybe) there will be. The starting point is Marcello Tanca’s thesis that geography presumes a hybrid ontology, grounded – at least – on three different joints of (...) the geographical investigation: things, representations and practices. Speaking about geographical things, we discuss the famous distinction between bona fide and fiat boundaries, proposed by Barry Smith. When we apply such a dichotomy to the (corresponding) bounded entities, we see that the distinction shows some ambiguities, which could make us question the existence of proper bona fide entities. Then, the topic of geographical representation is taken by the horns. Firstly, we introduce the notion of cartographical entity, which subsumes everything that could be portrayed on maps. Secondly, we address the possibility of a cartographical catalogue, suitable for including all cartographical entities. Thirdly, we apply the first two steps to the notions of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and geo-ontological entity. Finally, in the conclusion, we consider whether and how these (cartographical, GIS and geo-ontological) catalogues could enrich our geographical universal catalogue. (shrink)

Haspelmath argues that linguists who conduct comparative research and try to explain patterns that are general across languages can only consider two sources of these patterns: convergent cultural evolution of languages, which provides functional explanations of these phenomena, or innate building blocks for syntactic structure, specified in the human cognitive system. This paper claims that convergent cultural evolution and functional-adaptive explanations are not sufficient to explain the existence of certain crosslinguistic phenomena. The argument is based on comparative evidence of generalizations (...) based on Rizzi and Cinque's theories of cartographic syntax, which imply the existence of finely ordered and complex innate categories. I argue that these patterns cannot be explained in functional-adaptive terms alone. (shrink)

The species problem is one of the oldest controversies in natural history. Its persistence suggests that it is something more than a problem of fact or definition. Considerable light is shed on the species problem when it is viewed as a problem in the representation of the natural system (sensu Griffiths, 1974, Acta Biotheor. 23: 85–131; de Queiroz, 1998, Philos. Sci. 55: 238–259). Just as maps are representations of the earth, and are subject to what is called cartographic generalization, (...) so diagrams of the natural system (evolutionary trees) are representations of the evolutionary chronicle, and are subject to a temporal version of cartographic generalization which may be termed systematic generalization. Cartographic generalization is based on judgements of geographical importance, and systematic generalization is based on judgements of historical importance, judgements expressed in narrative sentences (sensu Danto, 1985, Narration and knowledge, Columbia Univ. Press, New York). At higher systematic levels these narrative sentences are conventional and retrospective, but near the "species" level they become prospective, that is, dependent upon expectations of the future. The truth of prospective narrative sentences is logically indeterminable in the present, and since all the common species concepts depend upon prospective narration, it is impossible for any of them to be applied with precision. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cartography: The Ideal and Its History by Matthew H. EdneyAlex ZukasCartography: The Ideal and Its History BY MATTHEW H. EDNEY Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019As Matthew Edney notes in the introduction, “This book is the product of my entire career as a map historian (so far);” it does, indeed, represent the culmination of more than thirty years of his research in the history of maps and mapping (...) that began in graduate school (ix). From the outset of his career, Edney has followed and advocated a postmodern or poststructural approach to map studies. This book follows that theoretical approach, which is both a strength and a weakness. Adopting another theoretical approach would have enabled his desired critique of cartography without being self-refuting, as his poststructuralism turns out to be when he makes a positive case for studying mapping processes rather than cartography and “maps.”1Edney is a major and respected figure in the history of mapping. Along with Brian Harley, Denis Wood, Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin, Chris Perkins, and John Pickles, he has helped reshape the field over the past thirty-plus years in the direction of “critical cartography” or “critical map studies.” He has directed the History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 2005, and co-edited the fourth volume in that series, Cartography in the European Enlightenment (2019). He notes that co-editing that volume tested and tempered many of his ideas (ix). Since 2007 he has held the Osher Chair in the History of Cartography at the University of Southern Maine. [End Page 111]A provocative and complex polemic, the beautifully illustrated book is, as indicated by its title, divided into two main thematic sections: a philosophical deconstruction of the cartographic ideal and a retelling of the ideal’s historical development. It contains four content chapters with a brief introduction and conclusion. While the second historical half has much to recommend it (chapters 4 and 5), the first poststructurally-informed philosophical part (chapters 2 and 3) critiques propositions that he deploys to make his historical narrative work. Edney’s central argument in the book is that “cartography” is a prescriptive model that “exists only as an idealization produced by modern culture and that it cannot provide a valid conception of mapping in the past, present, or future. Cartography is not an endeavor common to all societies and cultures. Rather, it is very much a creation of the modern West and is permeated by many of the myths that Westerners tell themselves about their rationality and superiority” in which “the ideal of cartography is the entire belief system, while cartography is the fiction generated by the ideal” (8, 1). We will see that, in less sweeping form, there is value to these claims historically. However, key aspects of Edney’s philosophical position undermine his historical argument by undercutting its foundations. In fact, the polemics come mainly in the philosophical section whose tone is prescriptive, reproving, insistent, and absolute, which is ironic given his arguments against universality. His tone detracts from the value of the first section of the book and makes it a challenging read. Edney divides his book into philosophical and historical halves because he believes that “A true critique of cartography requires, first and foremost, the delineation of the ideal’s multiple tenets and all of their flaws” (26). However, he makes no specific argument on behalf of this sweeping, absolute, and universal premise, especially regarding its claims that it is a “true critique” and other critiques are “misguided and misleading” (26). If the book is supposed to provide the evidence for his premise and these claims, then the argument is circular.The introduction (chapter 1) lays out the ideal and the book’s structure. Chapter 2 examines sociocultural critiques of the ideal that emerged over the past thirty-five years and Edney’s recommended “processual approach” to mapping, which he claims “provides an intellectual framework to pursue map studies without running into the ideal’s flaws [End Page 112] and preconceptions” because “it encourages scholars to address issues about why and how maps are produced and consumed... in an explicit and empirically founded manner... (shrink)

The research is focused on the problems of transforming a complex heterogeneous spatial system, urban agglomeration with a unique natural complex. The paper touches upon the following issues: restrictions on spatial development, zoning of territories, transformation of the settlement framework, social transformations, and integration of the most significant city-forming objects. To predict transformations in such a system, a complex multilevel model is considered — “the biosphere core vs. urban environment”. Forming such a model to analyze the prospective development of the (...) territory involves updating the methodology aimed at the systemic socio-ecological-economic analysis of developing heterogeneous spatial systems, integration of cartographic and digital information, adaptation of IT visualization technologies, including the “neogeography” toolkit. In the study the authors analyze the main prospects for the spatial territory development as exemplified by developing the urban environment of the Chelyabinsk agglomeration with a unique “green zone” (Chelyabinsk urban forest), complex multi-level socio-economic system. The main research results create the prerequisites for a significant expansion of the possibilities for analyzing the prospects for sustainable socio-ecological-economic development of complex spatial systems with unique natural objects and effective management of regional development. (shrink)

This book starts with the proposition that digital media invite play and indeed need to be played by their everyday users. Play is probably one of the most visible and powerful ways to appropriate the digital world. The diverse, emerging practices of digital media appear to be essentially playful: Users are involved and active, produce form and content, spread, exchange and consume it, take risks, are conscious of their own goals and the possibilities of achieving them, are skilled and know (...) how to acquire more skills. They share a perspective of can-do, a curiosity of what happens next? Play can be observed in social, economic, political, artistic, educational and criminal contexts and endeavours. It is employed as a strategy, for tacit or open resistance, as a method and productive practice, and something people do for fun. The book aims to define a particular contemporary attitude, a playful approach to media. It identifies some common ground and key principles in this novel terrain. Instead of looking at play and how it branches into different disciplines like business and education, the phenomenon of play in digital media is approached unconstrained by disciplinary boundaries. The contributions in this book provide a glimpse of a playful technological revolution that is a joyful celebration of possibilities that new media afford. This book is not a practical guide on how to hack a system or to pirate music, but provides critical insights into the unintended, artistic, fun, subversive, and sometimes dodgy applications of digital media. Contributions from Chris Crawford, Mathias Fuchs, Rilla Khaled, Sybille Lammes, Eva and Franco Mattes, Florian 'Floyd' Mueller, Michael Nitsche, Julian Oliver, and others cover and address topics such as reflective game design, identity and people's engagement in online media, conflicts and challenging opportunities for play, playing with cartographical interfaces, player-emergent production practices, the re-purposing of data, game creation as an educational approach, the ludification of society, the creation of meaning within and without play, the internalisation and subversion of roles through play, and the boundaries of play. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fiction and Theory of MindBrian BoydWhy We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, by Lisa Zunshine; 198 pp. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006. $59.95Lisa Zunshine's Why We Read Fiction aims "to put the cognitive-evolutionary concept of the Theory of Mind on the map of contemporary literary studies" (p. 84). Any literary critic who has stumbled upon this active research program in recent clinical, cognitive, comparative, developmental (...) and evolutionary psychology will have realized that Theory of Mind (ToM)—our intuitive systems for understanding the minds of others—must be relevant to literature. As someone who has long deplored its neglect in literary studies (often on the very pages of this journal) I regret to report that as a cartographer of this new terrain Zunshine has an unsteady hand.As its title suggests, her book makes a large claim: that we read fiction in order to give ourselves a cognitive workout, to exercise our capacity for ToM. We normally understand readily four levels of embedded intentionality (you doubt that Brian accepts that Lisa knows what Robin says), but we find it rapidly more difficult to handle further levels. Fiction often pushes "our ability to process embedded intentionalities beyond our cognitive zone of comfort" (p. 130). Why We Read Fiction also makes a second, implicit but no less central, claim: that analyzing fiction in terms of ToM offers criticism greater explanatory power, precision, and clarity. [End Page 590]Zunshine's explicit claim seems unlikely. All peoples tell and attend to fictions, but as Zunshine sometimes concedes not all these fictions push the boundaries of ToM. Many individuals and groups, perhaps most, especially enjoy fiction that does not involve high-level ToM, such as myth, fairy tale, and action adventure stories from epics to Westerns or martial arts movies. Children already engage in pretend play and enjoy stories compulsively long before they attain a uniquely human, yet still imperfectly developed, level of ToM in their fifth year. How can fiction be explained in terms of setting stiff challenges to our capacity for ToM, when so many children and adults enjoy fiction that makes no exceptional demands?Fiction can experiment with ToM, with, for instance, multiple levels of embedded intentionality. Barth's virtuoso exercise "Menelaiad" (1968) involves seven degrees of embedding, but the story feels, and is meant to feel, comically overloaded. Less flamboyant but more searching experiment with our capacity to comprehend minds, like Tolstoy's in Anna Karenina, may involve at its most original only one, two or three levels of intentionality: Stiva's thoughts alone, brilliantly evoked in the opening chapter, or his thoughts about Dolly's feelings or his own thoughts, or his thoughts about Dolly's thoughts about his feelings.Zunshine acknowledges that fiction places varied emphases on ToM, but dwells only on examples that support her case, and ignores many kinds of fiction that do not. More damaging still, the examples she does draw on fail to provide the support she thinks they do, thus undermining both her first claim, that fiction provides an intense ToM workout, and her second, that analyzing fiction through ToM sharpens and strengthens criticism. Interpreting fiction with an explicit awareness of ToM can have this effect, but Zunshine inadvertently reveals dangers rather than opportunities.Since texts are the hard evidence in literary study, we need to see in detail how Zunshine handles them. Her first display example comes from Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. She cites:And Miss Brush [Lady Bruton's secretary] went out, came back; laid papers on the table; and Hugh produced his fountain pen; his silver fountain pen, which had done twenty years' service, he said, unscrewing the cap. It was still in perfect order; he had shown it to the makers; there was no reason, they said, why it should ever wear out; which was somehow to Hugh's credit, and to the credit of the sentiments which his pen expressed (so Richard Dalloway felt) as Hugh began carefully writing capital letters with rings [End Page 591] around them in the margin, and thus marvelously reduced Lady Bruton's tangles to sense, to grammar such as the editor of the Times... (shrink)

Finishing this essay exactly one year after the official arrival of the SARS-COV-2 virus in Belgium and the Netherlands—where the cartographers of this essay are currently located—it is safe to say that the COVID-19 pandemic has immensely impacted our day-to-day lives. The pandemic has not only forced us to question various taken-for-granted existential certainties and luxuries provided by a capitalist system out to destroy the earth but has also re-spotlighted post-Enlightenment critiques of the human subject. If these pandemic times are (...) indeed more-than-human, then the clock is ticking for the discipline of philosophical anthropology to face these post-anthropological facts and receive what feminist science studies scholar Donna J. Haraway has aptly called a thorough dose of “epistemological electroshock therapy” (1988, p. 578). Taking Haraway’s foregoing call and the idea of thinking-with the (end of the) Anthropocene seriously, we construct a critical cartography of Emmanuel Levinas’ take on philosophical anthropology in dialogue with other major philosophical anthropologists and feminist new materialists while arguing for a post-anthropology for the Chthulucene. (shrink)

This anthology aims to present the fundamental philosophical issues and tools required by the reflection within and upon geography and Geographic Information Systems. It is an introduction to the philosophy for GIScience from an analytical perspective, which looks at GIS with a specific focus on its fundamental and most general concepts and distinctions. The first part of the book is devoted to explore some of the main philosophical questions arising from GIS and GIScience, which include, among others, investigations in (...) ontology, epistemology, linguistics and geometrical modeling. The second part concerns issues related to spatial and cartographical representations of the geographical world. The third part is focused on the ontology of geography, specifically in terms of geographical entities, objects and boundaries. Finally, in the fourth part, the topic of GIS constitutes a starting point for exploring themes such as quantum geography and disorientation, and for defining professional profiles for geographers with competences in GIS environment. This book on a new and unexplored field of research could be a fundamental point of reference for professional philosophers and geographers interested in the theoretical reflection about the foundational concepts of GIScience. It is also interesting reading material for students in philosophy, geography, applied ontology, GIScience, geomatics and computer science. (shrink)

This text is part of an on going research. It deals with the relationship between the production and experience of the places on the edge of the Trans-Amazon Highway (BR 230), which cuts the North and a Northeast portion in the East-West direction. Considering its programmatic sense of occupation of the territory, as opposed to the explanation already accepted, which expresses the road as an engineering system, therefore, means to flow, is that I propose to think the road as an (...) everyday living space, emphasizing the educational dimension to understand the existence of places. My purpose is to analyze the spatial imagination underlying the external understanding to the Trans-Amazon, in the educational plan, regarding the unique geographicity produced by local groups living near the road. Methodologically, I seek a dialogue between a phenomenological design and the existentialism, developing field of research procedures, literature review that supports the concepts of spatial imaginations, place and field education, critical reading of official documents in the MEC sites imagery record in dialogue with the representation of those that live on the edge of “Strip”. As an indication of preliminary findings point out: 1. The denial of places as a geopolitical strategy which is materialized in the educational process and planning politics; 2. The inescapable geographicity of groups that self recognize and are related contradictorily to the Trans-Amazon Highway; 3. The Countryside Education as opening or denial of the place, both for those who live it, and for those who do not live it, which can be ignorance widespread factor in terms of knowledge of the Amazon spatiality or coping and creation of a new geographic and cartographic knowledge about the places cut by “Strip”. (shrink)

Using advanced GIS technology and accepted scholarly methods, this multi-disciplinary project intends to create a layered history of Rome by updating Forma Urbis Romae, the cartographic masterpiece of ancient Roman topography published in 1901 by archeologist Rodolfo Lanciani. This extremely accurate map measures 25 by 17 ft and uses an innovative graphic system that represents Rome’s historic urban fabric as a series of transparent layers from ancient to modern. The map remains the standard archeological reference for Rome even though (...) it does not incorporate archeological discoveries uncovered since its original publication 100 years ago. We plan to critically examine, update and eventually republish the map as an interactive website that will also serve as a dynamic geo-database for scholars and others. Our project team will bring its considerable experience in web-based design in the study of the humanities to ensure a highly intuitive product that is accessible, interactive and expandable. (shrink)

In recent years there has been great attention paid to the so-called Italian theory in the field of political philosophy. This definition has brought to the fore Italian thinking, but at the same time also covers many reflections of the past several decades, by creating a category easily disclosable but also restricted to a few authors and topics. To this regard, I want to highlight the philosophical work of Ubaldo Fadini, professor of philosophy at the University of Florence, who for (...) many years has been dedicated to the German and French philosophical tradition, crossing different disciplines and combining aesthetic and ethical issues to frame the subjectivity and the institutions into the post-Fordist era. -/- Since his work is multi-faceted and broad, I would suggest first reading Il desiderio in America (The desire in America) for his ‘achipelago-politics’. Fadini addresses the issue of desire in Deleuze with an approach that escapes the opportunity and claim to be an interpretive key from which to see everything systemically. His work wisely touches on several authors and issues, from Kafka to Melville, Spinoza and Nietzsche, and many others, addressing the dynamics of a desire, debt, conscience, responsibility and law. These are, therefore, multiple inputs to desiring, which does not hide the dotted plurality of the brothers in the world, beyond the tight grip of the Oedipal triangle, i.e. the father-mother-child relationship. It follows a not only a psychological issue but also a political one, thus it regards the delineation of a field of forces in which ‘who’ acts – and speaks – is not only the person (a term which in Latin refers to theatrical mask, but well-defined identity fictitious necessary to enter the scene and carry on a story), but the scene itself, produced by relations not illuminated by the light of the show. The plural world of the brothers is the American one, in which the Oedipal relationship with the father-homeland is cut in the name of equality, contrary to colonial subjection (of which Fanon has also shown the psychic character revealing the mechanism of the colonized that internalized the oedipal function of the dominus. Fanon, in fact, has linked the production of subjectivity employee with the apparatus of colonial subordination). -/- To this aside to Deleuzian thought, Fadini adds another, but productively connects to the first: from the cut with the father was not born the son (as in Hegelian-Lacanian interpretation or dialectical-psychoanalytic who wants the definition of the son from by the conflict with his father), but the brothers, the concrete manifold in which the father is not necessary but is placed from time to time in the decision-making function of the uncertainty, in the mobile uncertainty of the brothers in their organization. That this is happening is not a scandal. That this would represent a danger, as Fadini states, is a necessary point to be aware. Maybe, the problem arises when this function is preached the need: no, the fathers are not necessary. And even mothers. We reiterate: it is a political issue around which affirms or denies the legal capacity of the many in favor of the one. The one may be different persons: those who came before, the old, the wise, the priest who runs the border between the world and underworld with the rules applied on the swinging from one place to another, the legislature, the owner. The reason why the scope of the one is so problematic is mainly related to the mechanism he establishes so to ex-istere. It is a mechanism for fault-liability-debt, such as a pyramid which is based on a ‘primary’ concept, namely that of the absence. The paternal function certainly sums up everything in a person: the father is the legislator, he was there before, is older, closer to the world of the dead, but even in that of the living, owns the world, provides rules – even interpretation – to be applied to the fluctuations of life. A really great invention, no doubt about it, higher than that of basileus-priest, more functional, yes, more functional. -/- As in The Wizard of Oz, a narrative that is served in an American election campaign and, as Graeber reminds us, explains the necessity of the idea of debt so to found the new relationship between money and gold, the legislator is microscopic compared to the effects of the conviction that is produced on a large scale, not only on his community but also on the foreigners who come to him in search of completeness. The vacuum is once again an instrument of domination, nothing else. Lack of confidence, of course. Lack of confidence in the ability of the brothers. In the story of The Wizard of Oz, the wizard was well-intentioned and therefore the trick is revealed, however, he reaffirms his role by giving foreigners a certificate of completion that settles the existential debt. Lack of confidence and perhaps even the reading of fairy tales. We don’t need ‘real’ narrations but concrete tales, and, as Fadini says, archipelagos and pirates and cartographers. (shrink)

Now that the usage and meaning of urban spaces have been dramatically challenged by the global pandemic, several debates and reflections are going on around the manner in which cities – both as concerns the public and the private spaces – have been designed. The article observes how “urban-human face” representations have served different models of urbanity across times and cultures. Using a framework deriving from semiotics of culture, according to which the city represents a model of the world, the (...) article attempts to interpret how portraits of faces have been modelling the city through different urban faciality mechanisms. The focus is on a sample of what we call ‘urban-human faces’, ranging from Soviet propaganda posters to the digital #selfiecity project. The expression refers to series of representations that bring together the city and the face. It can be argued that both the city and the face, produced at a specific historical and cultural moment, with their figurative and plastic elements, deploy the struggle for the city ownership and authorship. Nonetheless, the commensurability of the city and the face can be just based on the fact that both semiotic configurations represent an excess with the help of cartographic reproduction (the city) and the portrait (the face), respectively. A city can be represented by a face to the extent to which it is also multifaceted as a polylogue. On the basis of such instable commensurability, the article will ultimately attempt to bring together the semiotics of the face and the semiotics of the city. (shrink)

According to C. S. Peirce, resemblance or similarity is the basis for the relationship of iconic signs to their dynamical objects. But what is the basis of resemblance or similarity itself and how is the phenomenon of iconicity generated? How does it function in cultural practices and processes by which various forms of signs are generated (say, for example, the cartographical procedures by which maps are drawn, more generally, the diagrammatic ones by which networks of relationships are iconically represented)? To (...) what extent are they themselves performances (maps are always both the result of mappings andthe impetus for re-mappings)? With examples from texts by Virginia Woolf, W. G. Sebald and Reif Larsen, I will argue that literary texts provide us with uniqueresources for exploring, among other matters, the performative dimension of iconicity in the complex interaction among icon, index and metaphor as aprerequisite for semiosis, the generation of signs. (shrink)

Argues for a category of “cognitive feelings”, which are representationally significant, but are not part of the content of the states they accompany. The feeling of pastness in episodic memory, of familiarity (missing in Capgras syndrome), and of motivation (that accompanies desire) are examples. The feeling of presence that accompanies normal visual states is due to such a cognitive feeling; the “two visual systems” are partially responsible for this feeling.

The complex systems approach (CSA) to characterizing cognitive function is purported to underlie a conceptual and methodological revolution by its proponents. I examine one central claim from each of the contributed papers and argue that the provided examples do not justify calls for radical change in how we do cognitive science. Instead, I note how currently available approaches in ‘‘standard’’ cognitive science are adequate (or even more appropriate) for understanding the CSA provided examples.

Pure Type Systems, PTSs, were introduced as a generalization of the type systems of Barendregt's lambda cube and were designed to provide a foundation for actual proof assistants which will verify proofs. Systems of illative combinatory logic or lambda calculus, ICLs, were introduced by Curry and Church as a foundation for logic and mathematics. In an earlier paper we considered two changes to the rules of the PTSs which made these rules more like ICL rules. This led (...) to four kinds of PTSs. Most importantly PTSs are about statements of the form M:A, where M is a term and A a type. In ICLs there are no explicit types and the statements are terms. In this paper we show that for each of the four forms of PTS there is an equivalent form of ICL, sometimes if certain conditions hold. (shrink)

Transition systems can be viewed either as process diagrams or as Kripke structures. The rst perspective is that of process theory, the second that of modal logic. This paper shows how various formalisms of modal logic can be brought to bear on processes. Notions of bisimulation can not only be motivated by operations on transition systems, but they can also be suggested by investigations of modal formalisms. To show that the equational view of processes from process algebra is (...) closely related to modal logic, we consider various ways of looking at the relation between the calculus of basic process algebra and propositional dynamic logic. More concretely, the paper contains preservation results for various bisimulation notions, a result on the expressive power of propositional dynamic logic, and a de nition of bisimulation which is the proper notion of invariance for concurrent propositional dynamic logic. (shrink)

This article presents the first, systematic analysis of the ethical challenges posed by recommender systems through a literature review. The article identifies six areas of concern, and maps them onto a proposed taxonomy of different kinds of ethical impact. The analysis uncovers a gap in the literature: currently user-centred approaches do not consider the interests of a variety of other stakeholders—as opposed to just the receivers of a recommendation—in assessing the ethical impacts of a recommender system.

A partition $\{C_i\}_{i\in I}$ of a Boolean algebra $\cS$ in a probability measure space $(\cS,p)$ is called a Reichenbachian common cause system for the correlated pair $A,B$ of events in $\cS$ if any two elements in the partition behave like a Reichenbachian common cause and its complement, the cardinality of the index set $I$ is called the size of the common cause system. It is shown that given any correlation in $(\cS,p)$, and given any finite size $n>2$, the probability space (...) $(\cS,p)$ can be embedded into a larger probability space in such a manner that the larger space contains a Reichenbachian common cause system of size $n$ for the correlation. It also is shown that every totally ordered subset in the partially ordered set of all partitions of \cS$ contains only one Reichenbachian common cause system. Some open problems concerning Reichenbachian common cause systems are formulated. (shrink)

“The primary purpose of this book has been to provide a single source of containing the basic information about systematic and theoretical psychology which any student of psychology should have. It is mainly directed at the senior undergraduate major and the beginning of the graduate student.”-Publisher.

Abstract.Cognitive science and religion provides perspectives on human cognition and spirituality. Emergent systems theory captures the subatomic, physical, biological, psychological, cultural, and transcendent relationships that constitute the human person. C. S. Peirce's metaphysical categories and existential graphs enrich traditional cognitive science modeling tools to capture emergent phenomena. From this richer perspective, one can reinterpret the traditional doctrine of soul as form of the body in terms of information as the constellation of constitutive relationships that enables real possibility.

Complete deductive systems are constructed for the non-valid (refutable) formulae and sequents of some propositional modal logics. Thus, complete syntactic characterizations in the sense of Lukasiewicz are established for these logics and, in particular, purely syntactic decision procedures for them are obtained. The paper also contains some historical remarks and a general discussion on refutation systems.

In this reply to James H. Fetzer’s “Minds and Machines: Limits to Simulations of Thought and Action”, I argue that computationalism should not be the view that (human) cognition is computation, but that it should be the view that cognition (simpliciter) is computable. It follows that computationalism can be true even if (human) cognition is not the result of computations in the brain. I also argue that, if semiotic systems are systems that interpret signs, then both humans and (...) computers are semiotic systems. Finally, I suggest that minds can be considered as virtual machines implemented in certain semiotic systems, primarily the brain, but also AI computers. In doing so, I take issue with Fetzer’s arguments to the contrary. (shrink)

Humean reductionism about laws of nature appears to leave a central aspect of scientific practice unmotivated: If the world’s fundamental structure is exhausted by the actual distribution of non-modal properties and the laws of nature are merely efficient summaries of this distribution, then why does science posit laws that cover a wide range of non-actual circumstances? In this paper, we develop a new version of the Humean best systems account of laws based on the idea that laws need to (...) organize information in a way that maximizes their cognitive usefulness for creature like us. We argue that this account motivates scientific practice because the laws’ applicability to non-actual circumstances falls right out of their cognitive usefulness. (shrink)

Minimizing the costs that others impose upon oneself and upon those in whom one has a fitness stake, such as kin and allies, is a key adaptive problem for many organisms. Our ancestors regularly faced such adaptive problems (including homicide, bodily harm, theft, mate poaching, cuckoldry, reputational damage, sexual aggression, and the infliction of these costs on one's offspring, mates, coalition partners, or friends). One solution to this problem is to impose retaliatory costs on an aggressor so that the aggressor (...) and other observers will lower their estimates of the net benefits to be gained from exploiting the retaliator in the future. We posit that humans have an evolved cognitive system that implements this strategy – deterrence – which we conceptualize as a revenge system. The revenge system produces a second adaptive problem: losing downstream gains from the individual on whom retaliatory costs have been imposed. We posit, consequently, a subsidiary computational system designed to restore particular relationships after cost-imposing interactions by inhibiting revenge and motivating behaviors that signal benevolence for the harmdoer. The operation of these systems depends on estimating the risk of future exploitation by the harmdoer and the expected future value of the relationship with the harmdoer. We review empirical evidence regarding the operation of these systems, discuss the causes of cultural and individual differences in their outputs, and sketch their computational architecture. (shrink)

This four-volume collection covers the organization, financing and regulation of health care systems in four distinct contexts: financing and delivering health care, reforming health care systems, new forms of health system, and rethinking health care systems. A general introduction provides a review of the collection as a whole, and individual introductions set the context for each volume, providing a unique and valuable resource for student and scholar alike.

This article reviews recent work aimed at developing a new framework, based on signal detection theory, for understanding the relationship between explicit (e.g., recognition) and implicit (e.g., priming) memory. Within this framework, different assumptions about sources of memorial evidence can be framed. Application to experimental results provides robust evidence for a single-system model in preference to multiple-systems models. This evidence comes from several sources including studies of the effects of amnesia and ageing on explicit and implicit memory. The framework (...) allows a range of concepts in current memory research, such as familiarity, recollection, fluency, and source memory, to be linked to implicit memory. More generally, this work emphasizes the value of modern computational modelling techniques in the study of learning and memory. (shrink)

We will study several weak axiom systems that use the Subtraction and Division primitives (rather than Addition and Multiplication) to formally encode the theorems of Arithmetic. Provided such axiom systems do not recognize Multiplication as a total function, we will show that it is feasible for them to verify their Semantic Tableaux, Herbrand, and Cut-Free consistencies. If our axiom systems additionally do not recognize Addition as a total function, they will be capable of recognizing the consistency of (...) their Hilbert-style deductive proofs. Our axiom systems will not be strong enough to recognize their Canonical Reflection principle, but they will be capable of recognizing an approximation of it, called the "Tangibility Reflection Principle". We will also prove some new versions of the Second Incompleteness Theorem stating essentially that it is not possible to extend our exceptions to the Incompleteness Theorem much further. (shrink)

The increasing application of network models to interpret biological systems raises a number of important methodological and epistemological questions. What novel insights can network analysis provide in biology? Are network approaches an extension of or in conflict with mechanistic research strategies? When and how can network and mechanistic approaches interact in productive ways? In this paper we address these questions by focusing on how biological networks are represented and analyzed in a diverse class of case studies. Our examples span (...) from the investigation of organizational properties of biological networks using tools from graph theory to the application of dynamical systems theory to understand the behavior of complex biological systems. We show how network approaches support and extend traditional mechanistic strategies but also offer novel strategies for dealing with biological complexity. (shrink)

This paper is mainly concerned with proof-theoretic analysis of some second-order systems of explicit mathematics with a non-constructive minimum operator. By introducing axioms for variable types we extend our first-order theory BON to the elementary explicit type theory EET and add several forms of induction as well as axioms for μ. The principal results then state: EET plus set induction is proof-theoretically equivalent to Peano arithmetic PA <0).