Open peer commentary on the article “A Critique of Barbieri’s Code Biology” by Alexander V. Kravchenko.: Kravchenko encourages language science to approach languaging as “a species-specific semiotic activity that has a biological function.” Languaging as a form of social agency is broader than semiosis but not necessarily “above” it nor driven by biological function. By focusing on participation and becoming, the enactive approach to linguistic bodies offers conceptual resources to bridge human and non-human sense-making without resorting to codes.

The genetic code appeared on Earth with the first cells. The codes of cultural evolution arrived almost four billion years later. These are the only codes that are recognized by modern biology. In this book, however, Marcello Barbieri explains that there are many more organic codes in nature, and their appearance not only took place throughout the history of life but marked the major steps of that history. A code establishes a correspondence between two independent 'worlds', and the codemaker (...) is a third party between those 'worlds'. Therefore the cell can be thought of as a trinity of genotype, phenotype and ribotype. The ancestral ribotypes were the agents which gave rise to the first cells. The book goes on to explain how organic codes and organic memories can be used to shed new light on the problems encountered in cell signalling, epigenesis, embryonic development, and the evolution of language. (shrink)

This essay frames systemic patterns of mental abuse against women of color and Indigenous women on Turtle Island (North America) in terms of larger design-of-distribution strategies in settler colonial societies, as these societies use various forms of social power to distribute, reproduce, and automate social inequalities (including public health precarities and mortality disadvantages) that skew socio-economic gain continuously toward white settler populations and their descendants. It departs from traditional studies in gender-based violence research that frame mental abuses such as gaslighting--commonly (...) understood as mental manipulation through lying or deceit--stochastically, as chance-driven interpersonal phenomena. Building on structural analyses of knowledge in political epistemology (Dotson 2012, Berenstain 2016), political theory (Davis and Ernst 2017), and Indigenous social theory (Tuck and Yang 2012), I develop the notion of cultural gaslighting to refer to the social and historical infrastructural support mechanisms that disproportionately produce abusive mental ambients in settler colonial cultures in order to further the ends of cultural genocide and dispossession. I conclude by proposing a social epidemiological account of gaslighting that a) highlights the public health harms of abusive ambients for minority populations, b) illuminates the hidden rules of social structure in settler colonial societies, and c) amplifies the corresponding need for structural reparations. (shrink)

An important distinction lies between consciousness attributed to creatures, or subjects, (creature consciousness) and consciousness attributed to mental states (state consciousness). Most contemporary theories of consciousness aim at explaining what makes a mental state conscious, paying scant attention to the problem of creature consciousness. This attitude relies on a deeper, and generally overlooked, assumption that once an explanation of state consciousness is provided, one has also explained all the relevant features of creature consciousness. I call this the priority of state (...) consciousness thesis (PSC). In this paper, I want to explore how the renewed centrality bestowed to phenomenology in contemporary discussions on consciousness challenges PSC and, consequently, the standard way of framing the problem of consciousness. More precisely, I examine PSC in light of a view about the structure of phenomenal character that is paradigmatic of the approach above. This is subjectivism about phenomenal character (SUBJ), according to which a mental state is conscious when it acquires the property of for-me-ness. I argue that PSC and SUBJ are incompatible because the latter implies that creature consciousness is explanatorily prior to state consciousness. Consequently, if SUBJ is true, then PSC is false, and what constitutes the problem of consciousness is primarily a problem of explaining (a kind of) creature consciousness. I conclude by defending my claim from a pair of possible objections and drawing some implications for the discussion of for-me-ness and the debate on the explanation of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper we study the set of MV-algebras with given prime spectrum and we introduce the class of spectral MV-algebras. An MV-algebra is spectral if it is generated by the union of all its prime ideals (or proper ideals, or principal ideals, or maximal ideals). Among spectral MV-algebras, special attention is devoted to bipartite MV-algebras. An MV-algebra is bipartite if it admits an homomorphism onto the MV-algebra of two elements. We prove that both bipartite MV-algebras and spectral MV-algebras can (...) be finitely axiomatized in first order logic. We also prove that there is only, up to isomorphism, a set of MV-algebras with given prime spectrum. A further part of the paper is devoted to some relations between bipartite MV-algebras and their states. Recall that a state on an MV-algebra is a generalization of a probability measure on a Boolean algebra. Particular states are the states with Bayes’ property. We show that an MV-algebra admits a state with the Bayes’ property if and only if it is bipartite. (shrink)

The current study investigates the influence of variety among online providers and customers' access to knowledge on consumer networks, consumer engagement, and sustainable purchasing. Emphasis is on the underlying relationships among these constructs in the digital economy, which has evolved into a complex structure of multifarious nodes and linkages unfolding in the online environment. The underlying theoretical approaches are knowledge-attitude-behavior (KAB) and customer sovereignty. Against this backdrop, a questionnaire-based survey was given to 200 Millennials (i.e., generation Y) and gen Z (...) Italians—approached as empowered stakeholders requiring accurate information and sustainable solutions from online providers—in January 2023. The data was processed via the structural equation modeling technique PLS-SEM, based on SmartPLS 4. The findings indicated that sustainable purchasing is influenced to some extent by access to knowledge, consumer engagement, and consumer networks. The study endeavors to fill a research gap, as the relationships between variety among online providers and sustainable purchasing, as well as consumer engagement from the empowerment perspective are underexplored. The study provides new evidence of the relationships between consumer networks, consumers' access to knowledge, sustainable purchasing, and consumer engagement in the framework of online retail by inquiring respondents. (shrink)

One of the central methodological issues for contemporary practitioners of comparative ethics is how to conceptualize and relate to the "other" encountered in cross-cultural studies. A valuable resource for reflection on this problem is the work of the French historian and cultural theorist Michel de Certeau, whose diverse opus coheres around his notion of heterology--a "science of the other." In this article I explore perspectives on the cultural "other" emerging from Certeau's analyses of a series of "travel narratives" documenting the (...) European encounter with the peoples of the New World. Certeau's meditations on the metaphor of the voyage, the interplay of orality and literacy, the politics of ethnography, and the semiotics of the "return of the repressed" offer, I suggest, important insights for comparative ethicists. (shrink)

This article provides a conceptual account of causal understanding by connecting current psychological research on time and causality with philosophical debates on the causal asymmetry. I argue that causal relations are viewed as asymmetric because they are understood in temporal terms. I investigate evidence from causal learning and reasoning in both children and adults: causal perception, the temporal priority principle, and the use of temporal cues for causal inference. While this account does not suffice for correct inferences of causal structure, (...) I show it to serve as a preliminary understanding of causal concepts as asymmetric, that later incorporates other types of evidence. This approach supplies causal models with an asymmetric concept of causation that underlies hypotheses about causal structure, as I will illustrate from the framework of the knowledge-based causal induction model. I further argue for an integrating perspective, showing how the understanding of causes as preceding their effects underlies both psychological models and philosophical debates over time and the causal asymmetry, particularly regarding problem cases such as simultaneous causation or backwards causation, and the conceptual connection between causation and action. (shrink)

It is shown that information and meaning can be defined by operative procedures, and that we need to recognize them as new types of natural entities. They are not quantities (neither fundamental nor derived) because they cannot be measured, and they are not qualities because they are not subjective features. Here it is proposed to call them nominable entities, i.e., entities which can be specified only by naming their components in their natural order.

This paper takes a critical stance on Tallis’s separation of causation and agency. While his critique of the causal theory of action and the assumptions about causation underlying different versions of determinism, including the one based on neuroscience is right, his rejection of causation (of all sorts) has implausible consequences. Denying the link between action and causation amounts to overlooking the role action plays in causal inference and in the origin of causal concepts. I suggest that a weaker version of (...) Tallis’ claim, compatible with causation understood as agency, would work better. (shrink)

This is the first of two papers concerned with the philosophical significance of dualities as applied in recent fundamental physics. The general idea is that, for its peculiarity, this ‘new’ ingredient in theory construction can open unexpected perspectives in the current philosophical reflection on contemporary physics. In particular, today’s physical dualities represent an unusual type of intertheory relation, the meaning of which deserves to be investigated. The aim is to show how discussing this point brings into play, at the same (...) time, what is intended by a 'theory’ and in which sense dualities are to be considered 'symmetries'. This paper is introductory and focusses on the first form of duality explicitly applied in twentieth century physics, that is electromagnetic duality as discussed in Dirac’s theory of magnetic poles. The extension of electromagnetic duality in the context of quantum field theory and string theory is explored in a forthcoming companion paper. (shrink)

Thomas Sebeok and Noam Chomsky are the acknowledged founding fathers of two research fields which are known respectively as Biosemiotics and Biolinguistics and which have been developed in parallel during the past 50 years. Both fields claim that language has biological roots and must be studied as a natural phenomenon, thus bringing to an end the old divide between nature and culture. In addition to this common goal, there are many other important similarities between them. Their definitions of language, for (...) example, have much in common, despite the use of different terminologies. They both regard language as a faculty, or a modelling system, that appeared rapidly in the history of life and probably evolved as an exaptation from previous animal systems. Both accept that the fundamental characteristic of language is recursion, the ability to generate an unlimited number of structures from a finite set of elements (the property of ‘discrete infinity’). Both accept that human beings are born with a predisposition to acquire language in a few years and without apparent efforts (the innate component of language). In addition to similarities, however, there are also substantial differences between the two fields, and it is an historical fact that Sebeok and Chomsky made no attempt at resolving them. Biosemiotics and Biolinguistics have become two separate disciplines, and yet in the case of language they are studying the same phenomenon, so it should be possible to bring them together. Here it is shown that this is indeed the case. A convergence of the two fields does require a few basic readjustments in each of them, but leads to a unified framework that keeps the best of both disciplines and is in agreement with the experimental evidence. What is particularly important is that such a framework suggests immediately a new approach to the origin of language. More precisely, it suggests that the brain wiring processes that take place in all phases of human ontogenesis (embryonic, foetal, infant and child development) are based on organic codes, and it is the step-by-step appearance of these brain-wiring codes, in a condition that is referred to as cerebra bifida, that holds the key to the origin of language. (shrink)

The existence of different types of semiosis has been recognized, so far, in two ways. It has been pointed out that different semiotic features exist in different taxa and this has led to the distinction between zoosemiosis, phytosemiosis, mycosemiosis, bacterial semiosis and the like. Another type of diversity is due to the existence of different types of signs and has led to the distinction between iconic, indexical and symbolic semiosis. In all these cases, however, semiosis has been defined by the (...) Peirce model, i.e., by the idea that the basic structure is a triad of ‘sign, object and interpretant’, and that interpretation is an essential component of semiosis. This model is undoubtedly applicable to animals, since it was precisely the discovery that animals are capable of interpretation that allowed Thomas Sebeok to conclude that they are also capable of semiosis. Unfortunately, however, it is not clear how far the Peirce model can be extended beyond the animal kingdom, and we already know that we cannot apply it to the cell. The rules of the genetic code have been virtually the same in all living systems and in all environments ever since the origin of life, which clearly shows that they do not depend on interpretation. Luckily, it has been pointed out that semiosis is not necessarily based on interpretation and can be defined exclusively in terms of coding. According to the ‘code model’, a semiotic system is made of signs, meanings and coding rules, all produced by the same codemaker, and in this form it is immediately applicable to the cell. The code model, furthermore, allows us to recognize the existence of many organic codes in living systems, and to divide them into two main types that here are referred to as manufacturing semiosis and signalling semiosis. The genetic code and the splicing codes, for example, take part in processes that actually manufacture biological objects, whereas signal transduction codes and compartment codes organize existing objects into functioning supramolecular structures. The organic codes of single cells appeared in the first three billion years of the history of life and were involved either in manufacturing semiosis or in signalling semiosis. With the origin of animals, however, a third type of semiosis came into being, a type that can be referred to as interpretive semiosis because it became closely involved with interpretation. We realize in this way that the contribution of semiosis to life was far greater than that predicted by the Peirce model, where semiosis is always a means of interpreting the world. Life is essentially about three things: (1) it is about manufacturing objects, (2) it is about organizing objects into functioning systems, and (3) it is about interpreting the world. The idea that these are all semiotic processes, tells us that life depends on semiosis much more deeply and extensively than we thought. We realize in this way that there are three distinct types of semiosis in Nature, and that they gave very different contributions to the origin and the evolution of life. (shrink)

The famous dispute between Protagoras and Euathlus concerning Protagoras’s tuition fee reportedly owed to him by Euathlus is solved on the basis of practical argumentation concerning actions. The dispute is widely viewed as a kind of a logical paradox, and I show that such treating arises due to the double confusion in the dispute narrative. The linguistic expressions used to refer to Protagoras’s, Euathlus’s and the jurors’ actions are confused with these actions themselves. The other confusion is the collision between (...) the pairs of incompatible actions ambiguously expressed by two different pairs of sentences, one of which is a propositionally consistent pair whereas the other is an inconsistent one. The actional paradox solution aims to clear up these confusions by means of two core borderlines, propositional and expressive, drawn between the actions and the propositions. The propositional distinction says that actions are empirical facts and they lack truth values unlike propositions, which are mental entities and are often employed for referring to the actions. This distinction helps to avoid the confusion between the empirical incompatibility of actions and the truth-functional inconsistency of propositions. The expressive distinction claims that although the same linguistic sentences can be used to refer both to actions and propositions, two empirically incompatible actions can be expressed both by a pair of inconsistent propositions as well as by a pair of consistent ones. Therefore, the action of Protagoras’s being paid may be linguistically symbolized in four different ways: Protagoras gets paid due to the verdict, Protagoras gets paid due to the contract that amount to Protagoras does not get paid by the contract and Protagoras does not get paid by the verdict respectively, and likewise for Euathlus’s actions. The two distinctions are used for classifying the two groups of paradox solutions, legal and logical, proposed so far depending on which of the two confusions they purport to escape from. The actional reconstruction of the paradox suggests that there is only one single agent in the dispute, Protagoras, while the other named Euathlus is a ‘phantom,’ which most probably was invented by Protagoras himself for the sake of creating this challenging sophism. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 45, Issue 11, November 2021.

Modern biology has not yet come to terms with the presence of many organic codes in Nature, despite the fact that we can prove their existence. As a result, it has not yet accepted the idea that the great events of macroevolution were associated with the origin of new organic codes, despite the fact that this is the most parsimonious and logical explanation of those events. This is probably due to the fact that the existence of organic codes in all (...) fundamental processes of life, and in all major transitions in the history of life, has enormous theoretical implications. It requires nothing less than a new theoretical framework, and that kind of change is inevitably slow. There are too many facts to reconsider, too many bits of history to weave together in a new mosaic. But this is what science is about, and the purpose of the present paper is to show that it can be done. More precisely, it is shown that the whole natural history of the brain can be revisited in the light of the organic codes. What is described here is only a bird’s-eye view of brain macroevolution, but it is hoped that the extraordinary potential of the organic codes can nevertheless come through. The paper contains also another message. The organic codes prove that life is based on semiosis, and are in fact the components of organic semiosis, the first and the most diffused form of semiosis on Earth, but not the only one. It will be shown that the evolution of the brain was accompanied by the development of two new types of sign processes. More precisely, it gave origin first to interpretive semiosis, mostly in vertebrates, and then to cultural semiosis, in our species. (shrink)

In cammino con l'ermeneutica -- Il tempo e la poetica della narratività -- Ermeneutica della temporalità e narrazione -- Ermeneutica della storicità e etica della narratività.

This is the first English translation of Ibn Sīnā's (Avicenna) Commentary on Chapters 6-10 of Aristotle's Metaphysics Λ. It is significant as it is one of only a small number of surviving commentaries by Ibn Sīnā and offers crucial insights into not only his attitudes towards his predecessors, but also his own philosophical positions — especially with regard to the human intellect's connections to God and the cosmos — and his attempt to develop a distinctive mode of commentary.

This paper investigates Negative Concord, arguing that it results from a systematic lexical ambiguity: the items that participate in Negative Concord ("n-words" in Laka's 1990 terminology) are ambiguous between negative polarity items and their genuinely negative counterparts. I try to show that on empirical grounds the proposed account compares favorably with other analyses that shy away from ambiguity. I furthermore suggest that the ambiguity is not implausible conceptually because it can be viewed as reflecting an intermediate stage of the Jespersen (...) Cycle. Negative Concord can be observed in many languages. The data discussed here are taken from Romance, primarily Spanish. (shrink)

Since March 2020, many countries throughout the world have been in lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Italy, the quarantine began on March 9, 2020, and containment measures were partially reduced only on May 4, 2020. The quarantine experience has a significant psychological impact at all ages but can have it above all on adolescents who cannot go to school, play sports, and meet friends. In this scenario, this study aimed to provide a general overview of the perceived (...) risk related to COVID-19 and the psychological experience of quarantine in a large sample of Italian adolescents. 978 adolescents (males = 339; females = 639) living in 13 Italian regions and attending upper secondary school (age range: 13–20, M = 16.57, SD = 1.20), responded to an internet-based questionnaire about perceived health risk related to COVID-19, knowledge and information on measures to control the pandemic, beliefs and opinions on stage two of the quarantine, and psychological experiences related to quarantine. 31.1% of the participants lived in "red zones," which are places where the government has imposed stricter measures of containment due to exponential and uncontrolled growth in contagion cases compared to other areas in Italy. According to our results, Italian adolescents had a low perception of risk of COVID-19. Perceived comparative susceptibility and perceived seriousness were also very low. However, they were aware of the restriction measures necessary to contain the spread of the virus, and they agreed with the limitations imposed by the government. Females and adolescents living in a “red zone” showed more significant psychological negative feelings about the quarantine experience. However, no significant differences were found about the regions where the teenagers of our sample live and the other variables related to the COVID-19 experience. This is very interesting data, leading us to hypothesize that the participants' negative feelings may be more related to the adolescent period than to the pandemic itself. (shrink)

The discovery of the genetic code has shown that the origin of life has also been the origin of semiosis, and the discovery of many other organic codes has indicated that organic semiosis has been the sole form of semiosis present on Earth in the first three thousand million years of evolution. With the origin of animals and the evolution of the brain, however, a new type of semiosis came into existence, a semiosis that is based on interpretation and is (...) commonly referred to as interpretive, or Peircean semiosis. This suggests that there are two distinct types of semiosis in Nature, one based on coding and one based on interpretation, and all the experimental evidence that we have does support this conclusion. Both in principle and in practice, therefore, there is no conflict between organic semiosis and Peircean semiosis, and yet they have been the object of a fierce controversy because it has been claimed that semiosis is always based on interpretation, even at the cellular level. Such a claim has recently been reproposed in a number of papers and it has become necessary therefore to reexamine it in the light of the proposed arguments. (shrink)

Biosemiotics is the synthesis of biology and semiotics, and its main purpose is to show that semiosis is a fundamental component of life, i.e., that signs and meaning exist in all living systems. This idea started circulating in the 1960s and was proposed independently from enquires taking place at both ends of the Scala Naturae. At the molecular end it was expressed by Howard Pattee’s analysis of the genetic code, whereas at the human end it took the form of Thomas (...) Sebeok’s investigation into the biological roots of culture. Other proposals appeared in the years that followed and gave origin to different theoretical frameworks, or different schools, of biosemiotics. They are: (1) the physical biosemiotics of Howard Pattee and its extension in Darwinian biosemiotics by Howard Pattee and by Terrence Deacon, (2) the zoosemiotics proposed by Thomas Sebeok and its extension in sign biosemiotics developed by Thomas Sebeok and by Jesper Hoffmeyer, (3) the code biosemiotics of Marcello Barbieri and (4) the hermeneutic biosemiotics of Anton Markoš. The differences that exist between the schools are a consequence of their different models of semiosis, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. In reality they go much deeper and concern the very nature of the new discipline. Is biosemiotics only a new way of looking at the known facts of biology or does it predict new facts? Does biosemiotics consist of testable hypotheses? Does it add anything to the history of life and to our understanding of evolution? These are the major issues of the young discipline, and the purpose of the present paper is to illustrate them by describing the origin and the historical development of its main schools. (shrink)

Bare conditionals, I argue, exhibit Conditional Duality in that when they appear in downward entailing environments they differ from bare conditionals elsewhere in having existential rather than universal force. Two recalcitrant phenomena are shown to find a new explanation under this thesis: bare conditionals under only, and bare conditionals in the scope of negative nominal quantifiers, or what has come to be known as Higginbotham’s puzzle. I also consider how bare conditionals behave when embedded under negation, arguing that such conditionals (...) often involve denial negation. One important conclusion that emerges from the discussion is that an account of bare conditionals that validates Conditional Excluded Middle is not warranted. By limiting the scope of the strict analysis Conditional Duality is also a way of maintaining such an account. (shrink)

Systems Biology and the Modern Synthesis are recent versions of two classical biological paradigms that are known as structuralism and functionalism, or internalism and externalism. According to functionalism (or externalism), living matter is a fundamentally passive entity that owes its organization to external forces (functions that shape organs) or to an external organizing agent (natural selection). Structuralism (or internalism), is the view that living matter is an intrinsically active entity that is capable of organizing itself from within, with purely internal (...) processes that are based on mathematical principles and physical laws. At the molecular level, the basic mechanism of the Modern Synthesis is molecular copying, the process that leads in the short run to heredity and in the long run to natural selection. The basic mechanism of Systems Biology, instead, is self-assembly, the process by which many supramolecular structures are formed by the spontaneous aggregation of their components. In addition to molecular copying and self-assembly, however, molecular biology has uncovered also a third great mechanism at the heart of life. The existence of the genetic code and of many other organic codes in Nature tells us that molecular coding is a biological reality and we need therefore a framework that accounts for it. This framework is Code biology, the study of the codes of life, a new field of research that brings to light an entirely new dimension of the living world and gives us a completely new understanding of the origin and the evolution of life. (shrink)

Emotional facial expression are an important communication channel between artificial characters and their users. Humans are trained to perceive emotions. Robots and virtual agents can use them to make their inner states transparent. Literature reported that some emotional types, such as anger, are perceived as being more intense than others. Other studies indicated that gender influences the perception. Our study shows that once the individual differences amongst participants are included in the statistical analysis, then the emotion type has no further (...) explanatory power. Artificial characters therefore should adapt to their specific users. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between Italian teachers’ well-being, socio-demographic characteristics and professional background. Using data from the 2015 wave of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) we considered information collected by the questionnaire completed by a total of 6,491 teachers in the sampled schools. Moving from existing literature on teachers’ well-being, we investigate several aspects related to the teachers’ working environment, career motivation and investment, and job satisfaction. We assess the variability in the observed outcomes attributable (...) to school factors and heterogeneity between disciplines. Measurement models are combined in a multilevel setting in order to define teachers’ well-being on a broad perspective while accounting for the multiple sources of heterogeneity due to several factors (e.g., discipline, teacher professional background, and individual differences) occurring at different levels of the data structure. In general, results show that the teachers’ positive perception of the working environment in terms of availability of adequate human and physical resources, and professional development opportunities, provide a substantial state of well-being at work, and are related to teachers’ job satisfaction. Moreover, results highlight the key role of transformational leadership in defining a teacher’s well-being. Findings and implications are discussed. (shrink)

It has been a long-standing puzzle that Negative Polarity Items appear to split into two subvarieties when their effect on the interpretation of questions is taken into account: while questions with any and ever can be used as unbiased requests of information, questions with so-called `minimizers', i.e. idioms like lift a finger and the faintest idea, are always biased towards a negative answer (cf. Ladusaw 1979). Focusing on yes/no questions, this paper presents a solution to this puzzle. Specifically it is (...) shown that in virtue of containing even (cf. Heim 1984), minimizers, unlike any, trigger a presupposition, which reduces the set of the possible answers to a question to the singleton containing the negative answer. (shrink)

The New World of the Organic CodesThe genetic code appeared on Earth at the origin of life, and the codes of culture arrived almost 4 billion years later, at the end of life’s history. Today it is widely assumed that these are the only codes that exist in Nature, and if this were true we would have to conclude that codes are extraordinary exceptions because they appeared only at the beginning and at the end of evolution. In reality, various other (...) organic codes have been discovered in the past few decades.In 1975, the American biochemist Gordon Tomkins published a paper entitled The Metabolic Code. Biological symbolism and the origin of intercellular communication . That was the very first announcement of a new organic code after the discovery of the genetic code, but tragically Tomkins died that very year and his new world of organic symbolism remained unexplored. Some 10 years later, Edward Trifonov started a life-long campaign in favour .. (shrink)

Coding characteristics have been discovered not only in protein synthesis, but also in various other natural processes, thus showing that the genetic code is not an isolated case in the organic world. Other examples are the sequence codes, the adhesion code, the signal transduction codes, the splicing codes, the sugar code, the histone code, and probably more. These discoveries however have not had a significant impact because of the widespread belief that organic codes are not real but metaphorical entities. They (...) are supposed to lack arbitrariness and codemakers, the two qualifying features of real codes. Here it is shown that the arbitrariness issue can be solved on an experimental basis, while the codemaker issue is dependent on our theoretical description of the cell and can only be solved by a new concept. In order to appreciate the reality of the organic codes, in short, it is necessary to have not only a more critical evaluation of the experimental data but also a new theory of the living system. (shrink)

The Congress for Cultural Freedom is remembered as a paramount example of the “cultural cold wars.” In this paper, I discuss the ways in which this powerful transnational organization sought to promote “science studies” as a distinct – and politically relevant – area of expertise, and part of the CCF broader agenda to offer a renewed framework for liberalism. By means of its Study Groups, international conferences and its periodicals, such as Minerva, the Congress developed into an influential forum for (...) examining the ways Big Science impacted the relations between science, society, and politics, thus constituting a semi-institutional niche for Science Studies before its professionalization within academia during the 1970s. I argue that the Congress contributed to the construction of public space in which the relations between science, society and politics were debated, and science was reconceptualized as a social activity. The vision of “science studies” the CCF-associated intellectuals promulgated was different from the science studies we know today. Yet, this alternative vision, in which the issues of science politics appeared inseparable from those of science policy, science organization, and science governance, constituted the “pre-history” of science studies today. (shrink)

While separate pieces of research found parents offer toddlers cues to express that they are joking and pretending, and that toddlers and preschoolers understand intentions to joke and pretend, it is not yet clear whether parents and toddlers consider joking and pretending to be distinct concepts. This is important as distinguishing these two forms of non-literal acts could open a gateway to understanding the complexities of the non-literal world, as well as the complexities of intentions in general. Two studies found (...) parents offer explicit cues to help 16- to 24-month-olds distinguish pretending and joking. Across an action play study and a verbal play study parents showed more disbelief and less belief through their actions and language when joking versus pretending. Similarly, toddlers showed less belief through their actions, and older toddlers showed less belief through their language. Toddlers' disbelief could be accounted for by their response to parents' language and actions. Thus, these studies reveal a mechanism by which toddlers learn to distinguish joking and pretending. Parents offer explicit cues to distinguish these intentions, and toddlers use these cues to guide their own behaviors, which in turn allows toddlers to distinguish these intentional contexts. (shrink)