Central figures in the phenomenological tradition, such as Aron Gurwitsch, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, drew extensively on gestalt psychology in their writings. The dialogue between phenomenology and psychology they began continues today in the field of embodied cognitive science. We take up this conversation starting from Aron Gurwitsch’s rich phenomenological analysis of the perception of the cultural world. Gurwitsch’s phenomenological descriptions of the perception of the cultural world bear a striking resemblance to work in embodied cognitive science that takes (...) its inspiration from Gibson’s ecological psychology. Gibson coined the term “affordance” to refer to the possibilities for action that can be directly perceived by persons [Gibson 1979]. However, Gibson from his earliest writings made a distinction between a universal, strictly individual and nonsocial form of perception and a perception of the world that was subject to social and cultural influences. We use Gurwitsch to argue against Gibson’s individualist understanding of direct perception. Each affordance that can be selected as an object of perception refers to a wider sociocultural context, which Gurwitsch called an “order of existence”. We end our paper by taking up the question of the relation of phenomenological description of the perceptual world and explanations of perceptual experience provided by embodied cognitive science. (shrink)

This article tests the waters concerning a possible integration of Gurwitsch’s theory of consciousness into 4E research. More specifically, it is suggested that radical embodied approaches can bene...

Central figures in the phenomenological tradition, such as Aron Gurwitsch, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, drew extensively on gestalt psychology in their writings. The dialogue between phenomenology and psychology they began continues today in the field of embodied cognitive science. We take up this conversation starting from Aron Gurwitsch’s rich phenomenological analysis of the perception of the cultural world. Gurwitsch’s phenomenological descriptions of the perception of the cultural world bear a striking resemblance to work in embodied cognitive science that takes (...) its inspiration from Gibson’s ecological psychology. Gibson coined the term “affordance” to refer to the possibilities for action that can be directly perceived by persons [Gibson 1979]. However, Gibson from his earliest writings made a distinction between a universal, strictly individual and nonsocial form of perception and a perception of the world that was subject to social and cultural influences. We use Gurwitsch to argue against Gibson’s individualist understanding of direct perception. Each affordance that can be selected as an object of perception refers to a wider sociocultural context, which Gurwitsch called an “order of existence”. We end our paper by taking up the question of the relation of phenomenological description of the perceptual world and explanations of perceptual experience provided by embodied cognitive science. (shrink)

Our paper is concerned with theories of direct perception in ecological psychology that first emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. Ecological psychology continues to be influential among philosophers and cognitive scientists today who defend a 4E (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive) approach to the scientific study of cognition. Ecological psychologists have experimentally investigated how animals are able to directly perceive their surrounding environment and what it affords to them. We pursue questions about direct perception through a discussion of (...) the ecological psychologist’s concept of affordances. In recent years, psychologists and philosophers have begun to mark out two explanatory roles for the affordance concept. In one role, affordances are cast as belonging to a shared, publicly available environment, and existing independent of the experience of any perceiving and acting animal. In a second role, affordances are described in phenomenological terms, in relation to an experiencing animal that has its own peculiar needs, interests and personal history. Our aim in this paper is to argue for a single phenomenological or experiential understanding of the affordance concept. We make our argument, first of all, based on William James’ concept of pure experience developed in his later, radical empiricist writings. James thought of pure experience as having a field structure that is organized by the selective interest and needs of the perceiver. We will argue however that James did not emphasize sufficiently the social and intersubjective character of the field of experience. Drawing on the phenomenologist Aron Gurwitsch, we will argue that psychological factors like individual needs and attention must be thought of as already confronted with a social reality. On the phenomenological reading of affordances we develop, direct perception of affordances is understood as taking place within an intersubjective world structured by human social and cultural life. (shrink)

This volume assembles supporters and critics of situated cognition research to evaluate the intricacies, prerequisites, possibilities, and scope of a 4E methodology. The contributions are divided into three categories. The first category entails papers dealing with a 4E methodology from the perspective of epistemology and philosophy of science. It discusses whether to support explanatory pluralism or explanatory unification and focuses on possible compromises between ecological psychology and enactivism. The second category addresses ontological questions regarding the synchronic and diachronic constitution of (...) cognitive phenomena, the localization of cognitive processes, and the theoretical issue of mutual manipulability. The third category analyzes how the theoretical and practical commitments of 4E approaches lead to empirically supported investigations of different phenomena, such as research on affordances and (chronic) pain. The book renews attention to the possible adverse consequences coming along with methodical fragmentation, as found among 4E positions. It provides an overdue first step towards a systematic and positive answer to methodological concerns in situated cognition research. Without this and further steps in the future, the growth of 4E ́s significance for the scientific study of the mind might stall or even decrease. With such steps, situated cognition research could realize its frequently highlighted but so far not comprehensively accessed potential to change radically the modalities of how cognitive phenomena are studied. This volume is of interest to scholars of the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

There is wide support in logic, philosophy, and psychology for the hypothesis that the probability of the indicative conditional of natural language, P(if A then B), is the conditional probability of B given A, P(B|A). We identify a conditional which is such that P(if A then B)=P(B|A) with de Finetti's conditional event, B|A. An objection to making this identification in the past was that it appeared unclear how to form compounds and iterations of conditional events. In this paper, we illustrate (...) how to overcome this objection with a probabilistic analysis, based on coherence, of these compounds and iterations. We interpret the compounds and iterations as conditional random quantities which, given some logical dependencies, may reduce to conditional events. We show how the inference to B|A from A and B can be extended to compounds and iterations of both conditional events and biconditional events. Moreover, we determine the respective uncertainty propagation rules. Finally, we make some comments on extending our analysis to counterfactuals. (shrink)

We analyze selected iterated conditionals in the framework of conditional random quantities. We point out that it is instructive to examine Lewis's triviality result, which shows the conditions a conditional must satisfy for its probability to be the conditional probability. In our approach, however, we avoid triviality because the import-export principle is invalid. We then analyze an example of reasoning under partial knowledge where, given a conditional if A then Cas information, the probability of A should intuitively increase. We explain (...) this intuition by making some implicit background information explicit. We consider several iterated conditionals, which allow us to formalize different kinds of latent information. We verify that for these iterated conditionals the prevision is greater than or equal to the probability of A. We also investigate the lower and upper bounds of the Affirmation of the Consequent inference. We conclude our study with some remarks on the supposed "independence" of two conditionals, and we interpret this property as uncorrelation between two random quantities. 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Modus ponens (from A and “if A then C” infer C) is one of the most basic inference rules. The probabilistic modus ponens allows for managing uncertainty by transmitting assigned uncertainties from the premises to the conclusion (i.e., from P(A) and P(C|A) infer P(C)). In this paper, we generalize the probabilistic modus ponens by replacing A by the conditional event A|H. The resulting inference rule involves iterated conditionals (formalized by conditional random quantities) and propagates previsions from the premises to the (...) conclusion. Interestingly, the propagation rules for the lower and the upper bounds on the conclusion of the generalized probabilistic modus ponens coincide with the respective bounds on the conclusion for the (non-nested) probabilistic modus ponens. (shrink)

This paper proposes a critical analysis of that interpretation of the Nāgārjunian doctrine of the two truths as summarized—by both Mark Siderits and Jay L. Garfield—in the formula: “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth”. This ‘semantic reading’ of Nāgārjuna’s theory, despite its importance as a criticism of the ‘metaphysical interpretations’, would in itself be defective and improbable. Indeed, firstly, semantic interpretation presents a formal defect: it fails to clearly and explicitly express that which it contains logically; (...) the previously mentioned formula must necessarily be completed by: “the conventional truth is that nothing is conventional truth”. Secondly, after having recognized what Siderits’ and Garfield’s analyses contain implicitly, other logical and philological defects in their position emerge: the existence of the ‘conventional’ would appear—despite the efforts of semantic interpreters to demonstrate quite the contrary—definitively inconceivable without the presupposition of something ‘real’; moreover, the number of verses in Nāgārjuna that are in opposition to the semantic interpretation (even if we grant semantic interpreters that these verses do not justify a metaphysical reconstruction of Nagarjuna’s doctrine) would seem too great and significant to be ignored. (shrink)

This article considers the function and value of the mythos in Plato's Statesman. As first, I recall the context of the story and its function within the framework of diairetic inquiry about the definition of the real politician. Secondly, I point out that the formulation of the myth is based on a series of traditional stories to which a historical-reconstructive method is applied. I then highlight the ways of reasoning used by the characters in order to reconstruct a rational and (...) plausible account from the mythical tradition. Finally, I try to show that the story, even though it cannot reach the truth of the most stable objects of knowledge, displays a certain degree of plausibility, based on the internal coherence, on the respect of a series of principles admitted as true and, eventually, on its correspondence with the mythical tradition. (shrink)

Focused sequent calculi are a refinement of sequent calculi, where additional side-conditions on the applicability of inference rules force the implementation of a proof search strategy. Focused cut-free proofs exhibit a special normal form that is used for defining identity of sequent calculi proofs. We introduce a novel focused display calculus fD.LG and a fully polarized algebraic semantics FP.LG\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbb {FP.LG}$$\end{document} for Lambek–Grishin logic by generalizing the theory of multi-type calculi and their (...) algebraic semantics with heterogenous consequence relations. The calculus fD.LG has strong focalization and it is sound and complete w.r.t. FP.LG\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbb {FP.LG}$$\end{document}. This completeness result is in a sense stronger than completeness with respect to standard polarized algebraic semantics, insofar as we do not need to quotient over proofs with consecutive applications of shifts over the same formula. We also show a number of additional results. fD.LG is sound and complete w.r.t. LG-algebras: this amounts to a semantic proof of the so-called completeness of focusing, given that the standard (display) sequent calculus for Lambek–Grishin logic is complete w.r.t. LG-algebras. fD.LG and the focused calculus fLG of Moortgat and Moot are equivalent with respect to proofs, indeed there is an effective translation from fLG-derivations to fD.LG-derivations and vice versa: this provides the link with operational semantics, given that every fLG-derivation is in a Curry–Howard correspondence with a directional λ¯μμ~\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\overline{\lambda }\mu \widetilde{\mu }$$\end{document}-term. (shrink)

In the present paper, we endow semi De Morgan logic and a family of its axiomatic extensions with proper multi-type display calculi which are sound, complete, conservative, and enjoy cut elimination and subformula property. Our proposal builds on an algebraic analysis of the variety of semi De Morgan algebras, and applies the guidelines of the multi-type methodology in the design of display calculi.

This paper proposes an interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of the two truths that considers saṃvṛti and paramārtha-satya two visions of reality on which the Buddhas, for soteriological and pedagogical reasons, build teachings of two types: respectively in agreement with (for example, the teaching of the Four Noble Truths) or in contrast to (for example, the teaching of emptiness) the category of svabhāva. The early sections of the article show to what extent the various current interpretations of the Nāgārjunian doctrine of (...) the dve satye—despite their sometimes even macroscopic differences—have a common tendency to consider the notion of śūnyatā as a teaching not based on, but equivalent to supreme truth. This equivalence—philologically questionable—leads to interpretative paths that prove inevitably aporetic: indeed, according to whether the interpretation of śūnyatā is ‘metaphysical’ or ‘anti-metaphysical’, it gives rise to readings of Nāgārjuna’s thought incompatible, respectively, with anti-metaphysical and realistic types of verses traceable in the works of the author of the Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā (MMK). On the contrary, by giving more emphasis to the expression samupāśritya (“based on”), which recurs in MMK.24.8, and therefore, by epistemologically separating the notion of śūnyatā from the notion of paramārtha-satya (and of some of its conceptual equivalents such as nirvāṇa, tattva and dharmatā), we may obtain an interpretation—at once realistic and anti-metaphysical—of the theory of the two truths compatible with the vast majority (or even totality) of Nāgārjuna’s verses. (shrink)

This paper supports the thesis that nihilistic interpretations of Madhyamaka philosophy derive from generally antirealistic and/or metaphysical approaches to Nāgārjuna’s thought. However, the arguments and many images by way of which the author of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and his Indian commentators defend themselves from the charge of nihilism show limits in these approaches, and rather confirm that Nāgārjuna’s philosophy should be read as a theoretical proposal that is at once realistic and antimetaphysical. The epistemology inherent to the soteriological dimension of the (...) Buddha’s teaching, of which Nāgārjuna presents himself as a faithful continuer, assesses on the one hand the accomplishment of a ‘cognitive revolution’ consisting in the achievement of a new vision of reality and on the other the avoidance of any metaphysical description of the same vision. Comprehension of the Madhyamaka philosophical enterprise through a realistic-antimetaphysical lens seems to hinder and prevent the possibility of any nihilistic interpretation of Nāgārjuna. (shrink)

This paper supports the thesis that nihilistic interpretations of Madhyamaka philosophy derive from generally antirealistic and/or metaphysical approaches to Nāgārjuna’s thought. However, the arguments and many images by way of which the author of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and his Indian commentators defend themselves from the charge of nihilism show limits in these approaches, and rather confirm that Nāgārjuna’s philosophy should be read as a theoretical proposal that is at once realistic and antimetaphysical. The epistemology inherent to the soteriological dimension of the (...) Buddha’s teaching, of which Nāgārjuna presents himself as a faithful continuer, assesses on the one hand the accomplishment of a ‘cognitive revolution’ consisting in the achievement of a new vision of reality and on the other the avoidance of any metaphysical description of the same vision. Comprehension of the Madhyamaka philosophical enterprise through a realistic-antimetaphysical lens seems to hinder and prevent the possibility of any nihilistic interpretation of Nāgārjuna. (shrink)

The paper addresses the epistemological and theoretical assumptions that underpin the concept of Work and Organizational Psychology as idiographic, situated, and transformative social science. Positioning the connection between uniqueness and generalization inside the debate around organization studies as applied approaches, the contribution highlights the ontological, gnoseological, and methodological implications at stake. The use of practical instead of scientific rationality is explored, through the perspective of a hermeneutic lens, underlining the main features connected to the adoption of an epistemology of practice. (...) Specifically, the contribution depicts the configuration of the applied research as a relational practice, embedded in the unfolding process of generating knowledge dealing with concrete social contexts and particular social objects. The discussion of a case study regarding a field research project allows one to point out challenges and constraints connected to the enactment of the research process as a social accomplishment. (shrink)

This article claims that the study of irregular migration may be a strategic research material for the development of an adequate understanding of contemporary society. The field, however, suffers not only from a lack of reliable empirical data, but also from endemic undertheorizing. The article shows how the attempt to develop an understanding of irregular migration from within a general theory of modern society has positive consequences both for the clarification of the problems and for the design of research programs (...) able to deal adequately with the phenomena. Particularly, it is argued that a theory of modern society centered on its form of differentiation may help to clarify both the political dimension of contemporary international mobility, the variety of irregular statuses existing in the foreign population of receiving countries, and the condition of inclusion and exclusion of irregular migrants. (shrink)