The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to assess whether the construct of neural representations plays an explanatory role under the variational free-energy principle and its corollary process theory, active inference; and (2) if so, to assess which philosophical stance - in relation to the ontological and epistemological status of representations - is most appropriate. We focus on non-realist (deflationary and fictionalist-instrumentalist) approaches. We consider a deflationary account of mental representation, according to which the explanatorily relevant contents of neural (...) representations are mathematical, rather than cognitive, and a fictionalist or instrumentalist account, according to which representations are scientifically useful fictions that serve explanatory (and other) aims. After reviewing the free-energy principle and active inference, we argue that the model of adaptive phenotypes under the free-energy principle can be used to furnish a formal semantics, enabling us to assign semantic content to specific phenotypic states (the internal states of a Markovian system that exists far from equilibrium). We propose a modified fictionalist account: an organism-centered fictionalism or instrumentalism. We argue that, under the free-energy principle, pursuing even a deflationary account of the content of neural representations licenses the appeal to the kind of semantic content involved in the aboutness or intentionality of cognitive systems; our position is thus coherent with, but rests on distinct assumptions from, the realist position. We argue that the free-energy principle thereby explains the aboutness or intentionality in living systems and hence their capacity to parse their sensory stream using an ontology or set of semantic factors. (shrink)

Based on the theoretical reconstruction of neglected post-WWI writings and political action of W. E. B. Du Bois, this volume offers a normative account of transnational cosmopolitanism. Pointing out the limitations of Kant's cosmopolitanism through a novel contextual account of Perpetual Peace, Transnational Cosmopolitanism shows how these limits remain in neo-Kantian scholarship. Inés Valdez's framework overcomes these limitations in a methodologically unique way, taking Du Bois's writings and his coalitional political action both as text that should inform our theorization (...) and normative insights. The cosmopolitanism proposed in this work is an original contribution that questions the contemporary currency of Kant's canonical approach and enlists overlooked resources to radicalize, democratize, and transnationalize cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

This edited book deepens the engagement between 21st century philosophy of mind and the emerging technologies which are transforming our environment. Many new technologies appear to have important implications for the human mind, the nature of our cognition, our sense of identity and even perhaps what we think human beings are. They prompt questions such as: Would an uploaded mind be 'me'? Does our reliance on smart phones, or wearable gadgets enhance or diminish the human mind? and: How does our (...) deep reliance upon ambient artificial intelligence change the shape of the human mind? Readers will discover the best philosophical analysis of what current and near future 21st technology means for the metaphysics of mind. Important questions are addressed on matters relating to the extended mind and the distributed self. Expert authors explore the role that the ubiquitous smart phone might have in creating new forms of self-knowledge. They consider machine consciousness, brain enhancement and smart ambient technology, and what they can tell us about phenomenal consciousness. While ideas of artificial general intelligence, cognitive enhancements and the smart environment are widely commented on, serious analysis of their philosophical implications is only getting started. These contributions from top scholars are therefore very timely, and are of particular relevance to students and scholars of the philosophy of mind, philosophy of technology, computer science and psychology. (shrink)

Admiration and adoration have been considered as emotions with the power to change people, yet our knowledge of the specific nature and function of these emotions is quite limited. From an interdisciplinary perspective, we present a prototype approach to admiration and what has variously been labelled adoration, worship, or reverence. Both admiration and adoration contribute to the formation of personal and collective ideals, values, and identities, but their workings differ. We offer a detailed theoretical account of commonalities and differences in (...) the appraisal patterns and action tendencies associated with the two emotions. This analysis reveals that admiration motivates the internalisation and emulation of ideals embodied by an outstanding role model. Adoration motivates adherence to the teachings and expectations of a meaning maker and benefactor perceived as superhuman or sacred. Thus, the primary function of admiration is to promote individual learning and change, whereas adoration primarily serves to bind communities together. (shrink)

One of the criteria to a strong principle in natural sciences is simplicity. This paper claims that the Free Energy Principle (FEP), by virtue of unifying particles with mind, is the simplest. Motivated by Hilbert’s 24th problem of simplicity, the argument is made that the FEP takes a seemingly mathematical complex domain and reduces it to something simple. More specifically, it is attempted to show that every ‘thing’, from particles to mind, can be partitioned into systemic states by virtue of (...) self-organising symmetry break, i.e. self-entropy in terms of the balance between risk and ambiguity to achieve epistemic gain. By virtue of its explanatory reach, the FEP becomes the simplest principle under quantum, statistical and classical mechanics conditions. (shrink)

This aim of this paper is two-fold: it critically analyses and rejects accounts blending active inference as theory of mind and enactivism; and it advances an enactivist-dynamic understanding of social cognition that is compatible with active inference. While some social cognition theories seemingly take an enactive perspective on social cognition, they explain it as the attribution of mental states to other people, by assuming representational structures, in line with the classic Theory of Mind. Holding both enactivism and ToM, we argue, (...) entails contradiction and confusion due to two ToM assumptions widely known to be rejected by enactivism: that social cognition reduces to mental representation and social cognition is a hardwired contentful ‘toolkit’ or ‘starter pack’ that fuels the model-like theorising supposed in. The paper offers a positive alternative, one that avoids contradictions or confusion. After rejecting ToM-inspired theories of social cognition and clarifying the profile of social cognition under enactivism, that is without assumptions and, the last section advances an enactivist-dynamic model of cognition as dynamic, real-time, fluid, contextual social action, where we use the formalisms of dynamical systems theory to explain the origins of socio-cognitive novelty in developmental change and active inference as a tool to demonstrate social understanding as generalised synchronisation. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a pragmatic approach to the evolution of language based on analysis of a particular element of human communication: discourse coherence. We show that coherence is essential for effective communication. Through analysis of a collection of neuropsychological and neurolinguistic studies, we maintain that the proper functioning of executive processes responsible for planning and executing actions plays a key role in the construction of coherent discourses. Studies that tested the discursive and conversational abilities of bonobos have showed (...) that apes are unable to construct a flow of discourse governed by coherence, and therefore, apes’ conversational interactions are quite different from those of humans. We then propose that the emergence of coherence in communication occurred after the split between great apes’ and humans’ lines of descendants and that this emergence might have been the result of a specific gradual development in the course of hominin evolution of the executive functions. (shrink)

This article explores the distinctions among European peoples’ character established in Kant’s anthropology and their connection with his politics. These aspects are neglected relative to the analysis of race between Europeans and non-Europeans, but Kant’s anthropological works portray the people of Mediterranean Europe as not capable of civilization because of the dominance of passion in their faculty of desire, which he ties to ‘Oriental’ influences in blood or government. Kant then superimposes this racialized anthropology over the historical geopolitics of Europe, (...) obscuring the indebtedness of Northern European trade dominance to Mediterranean historical tactics and financial wealth. By relegating the Mediterranean to the margins and dismissing contentious commercial exchange in the region as mere violence spearheaded by North African corsairs, Kant gives us an elitist cosmopolitanism unable to cope with hierarchy and inequality, diminishing its potential for egalitarian global projects today. (shrink)

Advancing a radically enactive account of cognition, we provide arguments in favour of the possibility that cultural factors permeate rather than penetrate cognition, such that cognition extensively and transactionally incorporates cultural factors rather than there being any question of cultural factors having to break into the restricted confines of cognition. The paper reviews the limitations of two classical cognitivist, modularist accounts of cognition and a revisionary, new order variant of cognitivism – a Predictive Processing account of Cognition, or PPC. It (...) argues that the cognitivist interpretation of PPC is conservatively and problematically attached to the idea of inner models and stored knowledge. In abandoning that way of understanding PPC, it offers a radically enactive alternative account of how cultural factors matter to cognition – one that abandons all vestiges of the idea that cultural factors might contentfully communicate with basic forms of cognition. In place of that idea, the possibility that culture permeates cognition is promoted. (shrink)

In European science and technology policy, various styles have been developed and institutionalised to govern the ethical challenges of science and technology innovations. In this paper, we give an account of the most dominant styles of the past 30 years, particularly in Europe, seeking to show their specific merits and problems. We focus on three styles of governance: a technocratic style, an applied ethics style, and a public participation style. We discuss their merits and deficits, and use this analysis to (...) assess the potential of the recently established governance approach of ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’. Based on this analysis, we reflect on the current shaping of RRI in terms of ‘doing governance’. (shrink)

This essay brings together political theories of empire and racial capitalism to clarify the entanglements between socialist and imperial discourse at the turn of the twentieth century. I show that white labor activists and intellectuals in the United States and the British settler colonies borrowed from imperial scripts to mark non-white workers as a threat. This discourse was thus both imperial and popular, because it absorbed the white working class into settler projects and enlisted its support in defense of imperial (...) logics of labor control. While white workers’ demands of enfranchisement were part of a transnational imagination that was both imperial and narrowly emancipatory, this discourse reemerged as one of popular sovereignty and found channels and paths to institutionalization through national states. These institutional formations arose out of the encounter between capitalists interested in facilitating mobility of racialized laboring subjects around the globe, elite projects invested in sheltering settler spaces, and white workers concerned with protecting their own labor from competition by excluding exploitable non-white workers. White labor’s embrace of racial prejudice and the exclusion of workers of color created segregated labor spaces that fit neatly with both capitalist goals of labor control and the protection of the settler status of emerging polities. Bringing to the forefront the imperial genealogy of popular sovereignty and immigration control disrupts liberal political theory frameworks that condemn restrictions as well as those that find migration restrictions permissible. The analysis also illuminates contemporary immigration politics. (shrink)

When someone masters a skill, their performance looks to us like second nature: it looks as if their actions are smoothly performed without explicit, knowledge-driven, online monitoring of their performance. Contemporary computational models in motor control theory, however, are instructionist: that is, they cast skillful performance as a knowledge-driven process. Optimal motor control theory, as representative par excellence of such approaches, casts skillful performance as an instruction, instantiated in the brain, that needs to be executed—a motor command. This paper aims (...) to show the limitations of such instructionist approaches to skillful performance. We specifically address the question of whether the assumption of control-theoretic models is warranted. The first section of this paper examines the instructionist assumption, according to which skillful performance consists of the execution of theoretical instructions harnessed in motor representations. The second and third sections characterize the implementation of motor representations as motor commands, with a special focus on formulations from OMCT. The final sections of this paper examine predictive coding and active inference—behavioral modeling frameworks that descend, but are distinct, from OMCT—and argue that the instructionist, control-theoretic assumptions are ill-motivated in light of new developments in active inference. (shrink)

The adoption of Big Data analytics in insurance has proved controversial but there has been little analysis specifying how insurance practices are changing. Is insurance passively subject to the forces of disruptive innovation, moving away from the pooling of risk towards its personalisation or individualisation, and what might that mean in practice? This special theme situates disruptive innovations, particularly the experimental practices of behaviour-based personalisation, in the context of the practice and regulation of contemporary insurance. Our contributors argue that behaviour-based (...) personalisation in insurance has different and broader implications than have yet been appreciated. BDAs are changing how insurance governs risk; how it knows, classifies, manages, prices and sells it, in ways that are more opaque and more extensive than the black boxes of in-car telematics. (shrink)

Este trabajo demuestra la presencia e influencia del canon literario en la enseñanza del Francés como Lengua Extranjera (FLE), condicionando las obras literarias en los manuales españoles para tal fin. Para ello, hemos seguido un itinerario que parte del análisis teórico del canon literario y de la inclusión de lo cultural en FLE para, a continuación, mostrar cómo este ha sido determinante en la enseñanza civilizacional. Todo ello se sustenta a través del estudio concreto de la literatura en torno a (...) la cultura vitivinícola. La conclusión es que, a través de este ejemplo, constatamos cómo se funden canon literario y literatura para el aula de FLE. (shrink)

Através de uma leitura densa das fontes hagiográficas jesuítas que celebraram a vida de um jesuíta napolitano, Marcelo Mastrilli (1603-1637), procuro mostrar que as visões e narrativas proféticas foram importantes lugares de comunicação social, memória colectiva e mobilização política. O reposicionamento profético foi uma linguagem específica da tecnologia do eu, a partir da qual o sujeito fabricava a sua própria identidade, dentro e contra os limites externos da autoridade e das instituições. Marcelo Mastrilli – que viajou pela Itália, Espanha, Portugal, (...) Goa, Malaca, Filipinas e Japão – construiu a sua própria subjectividade e acção através de uma visão profética de São Francisco Xavier. Logo que a sua experiência pessoal foi impressa, atingindo um público mais vasto, mobilizou outros actores a imitá-lo, citá-lo, ou a fazer uso dele nos seus percursos individuais e sociais. O que se podia transportar de um continente para outro não eram, claro, visões pessoais mas a sua corporização numa série de textos e imagens materiais. E a verdade é que mesmo depois da sua morte, em 1637, as suas visões foram retomadas pelo padre António Vieira e integradas no seu discurso legitimador da dinastia de Bragança e do papel que os jesuítas aí desempenhavam. (shrink)

This paper proposes an account of neurocognitive activity without leveraging the notion of neural representation. Neural representation is a concept that results from assuming that the properties of the models used in computational cognitive neuroscience must literally exist the system being modelled. Computational models are important tools to test a theory about how the collected data has been generated. While the usefulness of computational models is unquestionable, it does not follow that neurocognitive activity should literally entail the properties construed in (...) the model. While this is an assumption present in computationalist accounts, it is not held across the board in neuroscience. In the last section, the paper offers a dynamical account of neurocognitive activity with Dynamical Causal Modelling that combines dynamical systems theory mathematical formalisms with the theoretical contextualisation provided by Embodied and Enactive Cognitive Science. (shrink)

In this article we propose that executive functions play a key role in the origin of language. Our proposal is based on the methodological assumption that some of the cognitive systems involved in language functioning are also involved in its phylogenetic origin. In this regard, we demonstrate that a key property of language functioning is discourse coherence. Such property is not dependent on grammatical elements but rather is processed by cognitive systems that are not specific for language, namely the executive (...) functions systems of action planning, control and organization. Data from cognitive archaeology on the making of stone tools show that the processes requested to produce Prehistoric tools imply action organization operations similar to those involved in the processing of coherence. Based on these considerations, we propose that executive functions represent the link between stone tool making and language origins and suggest that they allowed our ancestors to develop forms of proto-discourse governed by coherence. (shrink)

La relación de la matemática con la realidad es una cuestión que ha interesado desde siempre a los matemáticos y a los profesores de matemáticas, unas veces se establece esta relación desde la historia, otras para motivar a los alumnos (y responder a la famosa cuestión "para qué sirven las matemáticas") o para situar la construcción de conceptos matemáticos y sus significado en experiencias concretas y en conexión con otras disciplinas y, otras veces, a través de los estudios internacionales comparativos (...) de evaluación. (shrink)

En estos últimos años es reconocida la influencia de la dimensión emocional en el desarrollo del aprendizaje en el aula. Sin embargo, parece necesario un mayor desarrollo de los descriptores básicos: actitudes, emociones, creencias y valores en disciplinas concretas. El artículo aborda el tema de los valores y actitudes de las Matemáticas y de forma específica el valor de la belleza. Se argumenta sobre la importancia del juicio estético como una componente importante en el buen resolutor de problemas, explicitando sus (...) implicaciones para la educación matemática de los estudiantes. (shrink)

Jusqu’à Blaise Pascal, le hasard désigne ce qui se produit en dehors de tout dessein humain ou divin et de tout ordre stable. Après lui, on cherche à préciser de façon constructive ces trois types d’exclusion, ce qui amène à définir les événements merveilleux, les événements aléatoires et les événements accidentels. Chacune de ces trois démarches a ses avantages et ses inconvénients. La première rend compte de tout ce qui étonne, mais écarte la liberté et le miracle et ne permet (...) ni vérification, ni prévision, ni décision. La seconde permet des prévisions et des vérifications expérimentales, mais son emploi ne peut se généraliser sans entrer en conflit avec le déterminisme, qui la considère comme une illusion. La troisième explique beaucoup de choses par la rencontre de séries causales indépendantes, mais ce faisant elle exclut toute finalité. Il faut faire très attention à ne pas les confondre. Until Blaise Pascal, chance meant what happens outside any human or divine design or any stable order. Attempts are made, ever since, to set down in a constructive fashion those three types of exclusion : what it is that leads to define marvellous events, chance events and accidental events. Each of those three endeavours has its advantages and its drawbacks. The first accounts for everything that amazes, but it sets aside freedom and miracle, and does not allow any verification, prevision, or decision. The second permits previsions and experimental verifications, but its use cannot be generalized without entering into conflict with determinism, which considers it an illusion. The third explains a number of things through the encounter of independent causal series, but, while so doing, it excludes all finality. One must be very cautious not to confuse the three. (shrink)

LS Penrose was the first to propose a measure of voting power (which later came to be known as ‘the [absolute] Banzhaf index’). His limit theorem – which is implicit in Penrose (1952) and for which he gave no rigorous proof – says that, in simple weighted voting games, if the number of voters increases indefinitely while the quota is pegged at half the total weight, then – under certain conditions – the ratio between the voting powers (as measured by (...) him) of any two voters converges to the ratio between their weights. We conjecture that the theorem holds, under rather general conditions, for large classes of variously defined weighted voting games, other values of the quota, and other measures of voting power. We provide proofs for some special cases. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose an account of metaphor identification on the basis of contextual coherence. In doing so, we build on previous work by Nicholas Asher and Alex Lascarides that appeals to rhetorical relations in order to explain discourse structure and the constraints on the interpretation of metaphor that follow from it. Applying this general idea to our problem, we will show that rhetorical relations are sometimes insufficient and sometimes inadequate for deciding whether a given utterance is a case (...) of metaphor. They are insufficient, since rhetorical relations fall short at times of providing a basis for disambiguating between literal and metaphorical interpretations. In such cases, contextual information other than previous discourse needs to enter the picture. To this effect, we bring the idea of external consistency into play. Beyond that, though, we will argue that rhetorical relations are sometimes inadequate to account for coherence, if conceived as relations among sentences only. The reason is that extra-linguistic elements of the situation in which the sentence is uttered may be crucial for getting at the preferred interpretation. To account for these cases, we allow rhetorical relations to connect both with previous discourse and with extra-linguistic situations. In our final refinement of the notion of contextual coherence, we forfeit any appeal to rhetorical relations in favour of Questions Under Discussion (QUD). We defend the view that this account does not only explain the same sort of cases. What is more, it solves the issue of metaphor identification in impoverished contexts. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is possible to embrace the predictive processing framework (PP) without reducing affordances to inferential perception. The cognitivist account of PP contends that it can capture relational perception, such as affordances. The rationale for this claim is that over time, sensory data becomes highly-weighted. This paper, however, will show the inconsistency of this claim in the face of the cognitivist premise that ‘encapsulated’ models can throw away ‘the body, the world, or other people’ [Hohwy 2016: 265]. (...) It is then showed how it is possible to embrace a non-cognitivist reading of PP—one that does not need to reduce affordances to representational content. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to analyze the reasons behind users’ selection of news results on the news aggregator website, Google News, and the role that news factors play in this selection. We assume that user’s cognitive elaboration of users influences their news selection. In this study, a multi-method approach is used to obtain a complete picture of the users’ news selection reasoning: an open survey, a closed survey, and a content analysis of screen recording data. The results were (...) determined from online news selection of 90 news results from 47 users on Google News. Different news values could be identified as relevant for selection: time-referenced news factors and news factors of social significance were shown to be more important than the news factors of deviance. News cues (presence of a picture, position of a news result, source) were identified as selection reasons regardless of the level of cognitive elaboration during the online browsing process. (shrink)

This study investigates the integration of the interactive whiteboard into Science teaching during the primary educational cycle and teachers’ perceptions about the use of the information and communication technology in the school subject Science. An online questionnaire was distributed to Croatian schools in 2015/2016. A total of 104 teachers expressed their perceptions, 65 of them were from schools without an IWB, while the remaining 39 responded to our online questionnaire from schools with an implemented IWB. The results indicate the higher (...) usage of ICT in schools with an IWB compared to schools without an IWB. Teachers use IWBs and computers mostly once or twice per week and DVDs once per week. Additional results pointed to the positive teachers’ perceptions on technology in linking student motivation to outcome levels in science. The findings reveal the constant education focused on IWB integration, and internet and technical support as a starting point for an innovative practice in science. Future studies are directed to the investigation of the use of technology in all schools in the Republic of Croatia. U radu se prikazuju rezultati istraživanja o korištenju pametne ploče u nastavi Prirode i društva te stavova učitelja o uporabi informacijske i komunikacijske tehnologije u podučavanju tih nastavnih sadržaja. Istraživanje je provedeno putem online upitnika koji je bio poslan u škole u Hrvatskoj tijekom školske godine 2015/2016. Ukupno 104 učitelja iskazalo je svoje stavove: 65 učitelja iz škola bez pametne ploče, a 39 iz škola u kojima koriste pametnu ploču. Rezultati ukazuju na češću uporabu IKT u školama s pametnom pločom u usporedbi sa školama bez nje. Učitelji pametnu ploču i računala najčešće koriste jednom do dva puta tjedno, a DVD jednom tjedno. Rezultati također pokazuju pozitivne stavove učitelja o uporabi tehnologije za povećanje motivacije učenika i njihovih postignuća. Nalazi istraživanja ukazuju na kontinuiranu edukaciju usmjerenu na rad s pametnom pločom te tehničku podršku kao ključne za inovativnu nastavu. Buduća istraživanja trebala bi analizirati korištenje tehnologije u svim školama u Republici Hrvatskoj. (shrink)

U radu se prikazuju rezultati istraživanja o korištenju pametne ploče u nastavi Prirode i društva te stavova učitelja o uporabi informacijske i komunikacijske tehnologije u podučavanju tih nastavnih sadržaja. Istraživanje je provedeno putem online upitnika koji je bio poslan u škole u Hrvatskoj tijekom školske godine 2015/2016. Ukupno 104 učitelja iskazalo je svoje stavove: 65 učitelja iz škola bez pametne ploče, a 39 iz škola u kojima koriste pametnu ploču. Rezultati ukazuju na češću uporabu IKT u školama s pametnom pločom (...) u usporedbi sa školama bez nje. Učitelji pametnu ploču i računala najčešće koriste jednom do dva puta tjedno, a DVD jednom tjedno. Rezultati također pokazuju pozitivne stavove učitelja o uporabi tehnologije za povećanje motivacije učenika i njihovih postignuća. Nalazi istraživanja ukazuju na kontinuiranu edukaciju usmjerenu na rad s pametnom pločom te tehničku podršku kao ključne za inovativnu nastavu. Buduća istraživanja trebala bi analizirati korištenje tehnologije u svim školama u Republici Hrvatskoj. (shrink)

Background: The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the deficiencies that characterize the functioning of the Italian national health system. Prisons have always mirrored the most radical expressions of these weaknesses. During the early stages of the pandemic, prison facilities across Italy underwent a series of changes dictated by the need to ensure the safety of the prisoners and staff. The adoption of these rules contributed to a total or partial redefinition of many central facets of life in prison, such as (...) intake procedures for new arrivals and the ways prisoners were allowed to communicate with their families.Objectives: The aim of this qualitative study was to analyze the testimony of penitentiary healthcare workers in prisons throughout Italy to determine the impact of COVID-19 on their professional and personal lives.Participants: Thirty-eight participants were contacted and 20 decided to participate in the interview. The sample was made up of 10 women and 10 men. All the participants were members of the healthcare staff of a penitentiary facility. All were recruited through an Italian association whose mission is the development, promotion, and implementation of social solidarity projects including prisoners' social and health care. This study was facilitated through representatives serving in nine different regions of Italy. The participants were divided according to their professional roles in prisons.Method: In-depth interviews were conducted by telephone or online using telecommunication platforms. The transcribed texts underwent thematic analysis using the Atlas.ti software to identify patterns of meaning across the dataset.Results: Four main themes emerged from the analysis: Interpersonal difficulties, management and operational difficulties, the personal distress and bereavement of healthcare workers, and the distress of inmates. The importance of relationship management skills when interacting with prisoners emerged as a key topic in many interviews, and the participants highlighted the need for adequate training. The increase in prisoners' anxiety made communication more difficult.Conclusions: The findings suggest that healthcare workers in jails need emergency-oriented training. Participants described their feeling of loneliness and quasi-abandonment when carrying out their duties during the pandemic. In particular, they underscored the need for psychological guidance to better manage altered reactions with prisoners and colleagues as a result of heightened death anxiety and isolation. (shrink)

Many sentences can be interpreted both as a metaphor and as a literal claim, depending on the context. The aim of this paper is to show that there are discourse-based systematic constraints on the identification of an utterance as metaphorical, literal, or both (as in the case of twice-apt metaphors), from a normative point of view. We claim that the key is contextual coherence. In order to substantiate this claim, we introduce a novel notion of context as a rich and (...) heterogeneous body of information, including previous discourse, elements coming from the surroundings of the utterance, background information, and Questions Under Discussion (QUD) issued from these three sources. We then define contextual coherence as a relation between what we call the minimal paraphrase of the metaphor and the context, and argue that for an interpretation to be coherent two conditions must be met. First, the minimal paraphrase must address some question in the QUD stack. Second, it must be externally consistent, i.e. consistent with the available contextual information. Finally, we argue that an approach based on contextual coherence is better suited to deal with twice-true and twice-apt metaphors than traditional approaches based on semantic deviance or pragmatic lack of fit. (shrink)

This book explores the relationship between schizophrenia and common sense. It approaches this theme from a multidisciplinary perspective. Coverage features contributions from phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, psychology, and social cognition. -/- The contributors address the following questions: How relevant is the loss of common sense in schizophrenia? How can the study of schizophrenia contribute to the study of common sense? How to understand and explain this loss of common sense? -/- They also consider: What is the relationship of (...) practical reasoning and logical formal reasoning with schizophrenia? What is the relationship between the person with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and social values? -/- Chapters examine such issues as rationality, emotions, self, and delusion. In addition, one looks at brain structure and neurotransmission. Others explore phenomenological and Wittgensteinian theories. The book features papers from the Schizophrenia and Common Sense International Workshop, held at New University of Lisbon, November 2015. It offers new insights into this topic and will appeal to researchers, students, as well as interested general readers. (shrink)

Life story methods in Europe commonly belong to the field of biographical sociology. This paper points out that biographical sociology is missing from American sociology and describes in-depth two well-known methods in this field in Europe, the narrative interview and objective hermeneutics. The absence of biographical sociology from U.S. sociology should be remedied, it is argued, for the following reasons: First, an analysis of biographical patterns could counteract the heavy emphasis on social structure in American sociology and enrich certain subfields (...) within it. For example, some of the concepts used in European biographical sociology, such as the concept of the “trajectory” can be related to conceptions of agency set forth by American and British sociologists and thus enrich sociology overall. Second, biographical sociology can help counteract the heavy orientation towards quantitative research in American sociology without falling into the pitfalls of purely interpretive methodologies. And third, biographical sociology can significantly enrich the still missing link between culture and cognition. (shrink)

There are two fundamental models to understanding the phenomenon of natural life. One is thecomputational model, which is based on the symbolic thinking paradigm. The other is the biologicalorganism model. The common difficulty attributed to these paradigms is that their reductive tools allowthe phenomenological aspects of experience to remain hidden behind yes/no responses (behavioraltests), or brain ‘pictures’ (neuroimaging). Hence, one of the problems regards how to overcome meth-odological difficulties towards a non-reductive investigation of conscious experience. It is our aim in (...) thispaper to show how cooperation between Eastern and Western traditions may shed light for a non-reductive study of mind and life. This study focuses on the first-person experience associated withcognitive and mental events. We studied phenomenal data as a crucial fact for the domain of livingbeings, which, we expect, can provide the ground for a subsequent third-person study. The interventionwith Jhana meditation, and its qualitative assessment, provided us with experiential profiles based uponsubjects' evaluations of their own conscious experiences. The overall results should move towards anintegrated or global perspective on mind where neither experience nor external mechanisms have thefinal word. (shrink)

Diante de uma crise sanitária mundial, a pandemia do COVID-19, iniciada em 2020, fez com a humanidade se reorganizasse, entrando em uma nova era. Os órgãos de saúde competentes, juntamente com as nações, expuseram suas preocupações, editando decretos e normativas a serem seguidas, com medidas rigorosas de isolamento social. E a Educação foi uma das áreas mais afetadas, por ser um dos pilares mais importante na sociedade moderna. A rotina que antes era totalmente presencial, passou a ser a distância, novas (...) ferramentas foram ganhando palco, as tecnologias entraram em cena, as mídias sociais passam a ser recursos, estratégias para novas abordagens, metodologias passaram a ser repensadas, reorganizadas, para oferecer uma educação de qualidade, mesmo em tempos de crise. E partindo dessa ideia, o presente trabalho visa discutir e compreender se toda essa mudança, essa troca de cenário de forma abrupta, e as estratégias conseguiram alcançar os objetivos propostos no processo de ensino-aprendizagem. A análise ocorreu em uma escola pública municipal da região norte de Cuiabá- MT, no período letivo de 2020 e 2021, sendo observadas o curso das disciplinas Arte e Educação Física, com um público de alunos variados, da pré-escola ao 3° ano do Ensino Fundamental I. (shrink)