Are concepts stable entities, unchanged from context to context? Or rather are they context-dependent structures, created on the fly? We argue that this does not constitute a genuine dilemma. Our main thesis is that the more a pattern of features is general and shared, the more it qualifies as a concept. Contextualists have not shown that conceptual structures lack a stable, general core, acting as an attractor on idiosyncratic information. What they have done instead is to give a contribution to (...) the comprehension of how conceptual structure organized around such a stable core can produce contextually appropriate representations on demand. (shrink)

My main purpose here is to provide an account of context selection in utterance understanding in terms of the role played by schemata and goals in top-down processing. The general idea is that information is organized hierarchically, with items iteratively organized in chunks—here called “schemata”—at multiple levels, so that the activation of any items spreads to schemata that are the most accessible due to previous experience. The activation of a schema, in turn, activates its other components, so as to predict (...) a likely context for the original item. Since each input activates its own schemata, conflicting schemata compete with (and inhibit) each other, while multiple activations of a schema raise its likelihood to win the competition. There is therefore a double movement—with bottom-up activation of schemata enabling top-down prediction of other contextual components—triggered by multiple sources. Another claim of the paper is that goals are represented by schemata placed at the highest-levels of the executive hierarchy, in accordance with Fuster’s model of the brain as a hierarchically organized perception action cycle. This account can be considered, in part at least, a development of ideas contained in Relevance Theory, though it may imply that some other claims of the theory are in need of revision. Therefore, a secondary purpose of the paper is a contribution to the analysis of that theory. (shrink)

The role of conscious attention in language processing has been scarcely considered, despite the wide-spread assumption that verbal utterances manage to attract and manipulate the addressee’s attention. Here I claim that this assumption is to be understood not as a figure of speech but instead in terms of attentional processes proper. This hypothesis can explain a fact that has been noticed by supporters of Relevance Theory in pragmatics: the special role played by speaker-related information in utterance interpretation. I argue that (...) representation of the speaker in working memory reliably enhances the activation of speaker-related information and, consequently, the role it plays in determining the content of interpretations. (shrink)

The notion of schema has been given a major role by Recanati within his conception of primary pragmatic processes, conceived as a type of associative process. I intend to show that Recanati’s considerations on schemata may challenge the relevance theorist’s argument against associative explanations in pragmatics, and support an argument in favor of associative (versus inferential) explanations. More generally, associative relations can be shown to be schematic, that is, they have enough structure to license inferential effects without any appeal to (...) genuine inferential processes. Associative processes are thus able to explain a number of pragmatic and linguistic phenomena which have instead been thought to require specialized inferential processes. (shrink)

According to Grice's “Modified Occam's Razor”, in case of uncertainty between the implicature account and the polysemy account of word uses it is parsimonious to opt for the former. However, it is widely agreed that uses can be partially conventionalised by repetition. This fact, I argue, raises a serious problem for MOR as a methodological principle, but also for the substantial notion of implicature in lexical pragmatics. In order to overcome these problems, I propose to reinterpret implicatures in terms of (...) implicature-like effects delivered by non-inferential processes. (shrink)

: According to a traditional view, inferences are personal-level entities pertaining to the domain of reasons, and therefore they cannot be accounted for in causal terms – specifically, as mere associations. I intend to argue that this is at the very least a drastic simplification, for two reasons. First, the word “association” is polysemous, so we should specify in which of its possible senses an inference is not a mere association. Second, personal-level inferences based on formal rules are only the (...) extreme end of a complex developmental trajectory. As the last decades of research in the field have shown, we should refrain from identifying the entire domain of reasoning with that final stage, which is in fact mostly contingent upon extensive logical training. In this paper, I try to disentangle some major stages in the development of full-fledged inferences, and then to show that all of them – till the final one – can be considered associative in appropriate senses of the word. Keywords: Reasoning; Association; Consciousness; Inference; Development Un approccio associativo alle inferenze: l’evoluzione verso il prototipo Riassunto: Secondo una concezione tradizionale, le inferenze sono entità collocate al livello della persona e appartenenti al dominio delle ragioni, e pertanto non è possibile ridurle a un resoconto causale – più specificamente, a mere associazioni. Intendo sostenere che questa è quanto meno una drastica semplificazione, per due ragioni. Primo, la parola “associazione” è polisemica, quindi dovremmo precisare in quale senso un’inferenza non è una mera associazione. Secondo, inferenze al livello della persona e basate su regole formali sono solo il punto estremo di una complessa traiettoria di sviluppo. Come gli ultimi decenni di ricerca in questo campo hanno mostrato, dovremmo evitare di identificare l’intero dominio del ragionamento con questo stadio finale, che di fatto dipende da un esteso addestramento logico. In questo articolo, provo a discriminare alcuni stadi essenziali nello sviluppo delle inferenze in senso pieno, e quindi a mostrare che ciascuno di essi – incluso quello finale – possono essere considerati associativi in qualche opportuno senso della parola. Parole chiave: Ragionamento; Associazione; Coscienza; Inferenza; Sviluppo. (shrink)

The opposition between behaviour- and mind-reading accounts of data on infants and non-human primates could be less dramatic than has been thought up to now. In this paper, I argue for this thesis by analysing a possible neuro-computational explanation of early mind-reading, based on a mechanism of associative generalization which is apt to implement the notion of mental states as intervening variables proposed by Andrew Whiten. This account allows capturing important continuities between behaviour-reading and mind-reading, insofar as both are supposed (...) to be just different kinds of generalization from perceptual experience. Specifically, I will argue that the projection of inner experiences to others which is involved in early mind-reading does not imply a computational leap beyond associative generalization from perceptual experience. (shrink)

(2013). Distributed intentionality: A model of intentional behavior in humans. Philosophical Psychology: Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 267-290. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2011.641743.

It has been proposed that intentional actions are supplied by a generative system of the sort described by Chomsky for language. In this paper I aim to provide a closer analysis of this claim for the sake of conceptual clarification. To this end, I will first clarify what is involved in the thesis of a structural analogy between language and action, and then I will consider what kind of evidence there seems to be in favour of the thesis of a (...) neurobiological identity. On this basis, I will subsequently focus on two definitional issues. The first is whether, as the claim of a generative system for intentional action suggests, humans may perform an infinite number of possible actions. The second is whether, as the claim of a generative system for intentional action suggests, what is at issue is conscious planning of action and therefore controlled processing. (shrink)

In the philosophical and cognitive literature, the word ‘intention’ has been used with a variety of meanings which occasionally have been explicitly distinguished. I claim that an important cause of this polysemy is the fact that intentions are complex entities, endowed with an internal structure, and that sometimes different theories in the field are erroneously presented as if they were in conflict with each other, while they in fact just focus on different aspects of the phenomenon. The debate between Gallese’s (...) embodied simulation theory and Csibra and Gergely’s teleological stance hypothesis is discussed as a case in point, and some misunderstandings occurring in that debate are analyzed. The thesis that intentions are complex entities is argued for by shedding light on the following aspects of intentions: conscious control; perceptual (and not only motoric) representations of end-states; attributions of value to those representations; appreciation of the rational relationships between means and ends. (shrink)

The importance of intention reading for communication has already been emphasized many<br>years ago by Paul Grice. More recently, the rich debate on “theory of mind” has convinced many<br>that intention reading may in fact play a key role also in current, cognitively oriented theories of<br>pragmatics: Relevance Th eory is a case in point. On a close analysis, however, it is far from clear<br>that RT may really accommodate the idea that intention reading drives comprehension. Here<br>I examine RT’s diffi culties with that idea, (...) and propose a framework where intention reading is<br>actually assigned a signifi cant role. Th is framework is compatible with RT’s account of a unifi ed,<br>automatic mechanism of interpretation in lexical pragmatics, to the extent that the account<br>shares many features of associative and constraint-based explanations of other linguistic phenomena.<br>In fact, my suggestion is that our sensitivity to others’ intentions depends crucially on the<br>availability of specifi c patterns of intentional behaviour grounded in social regularities. In other<br>words, intention reading would be just a case, though a very special one, of pattern recognition. (shrink)

Grice in pragmatics and Levelt in psycholinguistics have proposed models of human communication where the starting point of communicative action is an individual intention. This assumption, though, has to face serious objections with regard to the alleged existence of explicit representations of the communicative goals to be pursued. Here evidence is surveyed which shows that in fact speaking may ordinarily be a quite automatic activity prompted by contextual cues and driven by behavioural schemata abstracted away from social regularities. On the (...) one hand, this means that there could exist no intentions in the sense of explicit representations of communicative goals, following from deliberate reasoning and triggering the communicative action. On the other hand, however, there are reasons to allow for a weaker notion of intention than this, according to which communication is an intentional affair, after all. Communicative action is said to be intentional in this weaker sense to the extent that it is subject to a double mechanism of control, with respect both to present-directed and future-directed intentions. (shrink)

How do we construct ad hoc concepts, especially those characterised by emergent properties? A reasonable hypothesis, suggested both in psychology and in pragmatics , is that some sort of inferential processing must be involved. I argue that this inferential processing can be accounted for in associative terms. My argument is based on the notion of inference as associative pattern completion based on schemata, with schemata being conceived in turn as patterns of concepts and their relationships. The possible role of conscious (...) attention in inferential processes of this sort is also addressed. (shrink)

Austin's theory of performatives has recently inspired much literature on political correctness, based on the idea that they can be essential for the individuals' identity construction, but also for oppression and offence. In this paper I intend to analyze the power but also the limitations of performatives: we should refrain from attributing them magical efficacy, insofar as their power is actually constrained by objective conditions. This invites a revision of post-modern theories according to which any speech creates its own «regime (...) of truth», without any chance for an objective analysis of ideology. (shrink)

Neural plasticity has been invoked as a powerful argument against nativism. However, there is a line of argument, which is well exemplified by Pinker and more recently by Laurence and Margolis The conceptual mind: new directions in the study of concepts, MIT, Cambridge, 2015) with respect to concept nativism, according to which even extreme cases of plasticity show important innate constraints, so that one should rather speak of “constrained plasticity”. According to this view, cortical areas are not really equipotential, they (...) perform instead different kinds of computation, follow essentially different learning rules, or have a fixed internal structure acting as a filter for specific categories of inputs. We intend to analyze this argument, in the light of a review of current neuroscientific literature on plasticity. Our conclusion is that Laurence and Margolis are right in their appeal to innate constraints on connectivity—a thesis that is nowadays welcome to both nativists and non-nativists —but there is little support for their claim of further innate differentiation between and within cortical areas. As we will show, there is instead strong evidence that the cortex is characterized by the indefinite repetition of substantially identical computational units, giving rise in any of its portions to Hebbian, input-dependent plasticity. Although this is entirely compatible with the existence of innate constraints on the brain’s connectivity, the cerebral cortex architecture based on a multiplicity of maps correlating with one another has important computational consequences, a point that has been underestimated by traditional connectionist approaches. (shrink)

In two recent papers, Dan Sperber and Peter Carruthers have addressed the issue of cognitive flexibility, giving us different but somehow complementary accounts of it. Here I intend to focus on another cognitive mechanism which plays some role in allowing flexibility, and has been given little emphasis in their accounts. This mechanism is sensory imagination. In so doing, I have to confront with the assumption, which is widespread in the philosophical domain, that perceptual representations cannot convey any thought process. In (...) the first place, I argue that this assumption rests more on the notion of accessibility than on that of systematicity. In the second place, I argue that – as an argument from the frame problem seems to show – accessibility of propositional representation has been largely overestimated; besides, there are reasons to think that systematicity and accessibility of perceptual representations have been largely underestimated. Those arguments are held to support the conclusion that people, and nonhuman animals too, can make use of sensory imagination as a cognitive strategy to confront with novel state of affairs. This conclusion fits well with a large amount of research in comparative psychology, and converges with current models of controlled thought processes which are based on the notion of a mental global workspace. The differences with the accounts of Carruthers and Sperber are briefly investigated. (shrink)

In the present paper I analyse the modularity thesis and, more specifically, the thesis of domain-specificity of processing. I argue that this thesis is not trivial only under the assumption of a variety of processes which differ from each other at the implementation level; otherwise, the variety of cognitive processes can only be explained as emergent on the basic mechanism of associative activation in that it operates on domain-specific representations, which is something that no one would deny. But that assumption (...) is untenable: there are no other processes than associative activation (and inhibition) at the implementation level. Any claim to the contrary is the result of a conceptual confusion between two senses of “associative”: a behavioural one, relative to which there are cognitive processes that exceed the ability to code elementary spatio-temporal contingencies, and one that lies instead at the implementation level. Since the assumption of a plurality of processes at the implementation level is untenable, the only viable interpretation of modularism (as far as domain-specificity is concerned) is a trivial one. By this I do not mean that the thesis is devoid of any content. However, its content is scarcely debatable, and far less thrilling than the debate has suggested so far. (shrink)

Riassunto: Le immagini mentali sono parte delle intenzioni comunicative veicolate negli scambi verbali, e dunque del significato inteso dal parlante? Questioni simili sono state dibattute con riferimento al paradigma dell’ embodiment. Qui intendiamo muoverci su un terreno differente: il dominio dei gesti, con particolare riferimento a quelli rappresentativi, caratterizzati dallo stretto rapporto con le rappresentazioni senso-motorie delle azioni. La linea argomentativa sarà dunque bipartita. Innanzitutto, intendiamo mostrare che i gesti contribuiscono a determinare l’intenzione comunicativa, come è evidente in casi nei (...) quali il parlante si impegna in modo manifesto a renderli salienti – ma qui sarà anche importante l’osservazione che l’intenzione comunicativa non va identificata con una preliminare pianificazione cosciente. In secondo luogo, argomenteremo che il contributo dei gesti all’intenzione comunicativa è genuinamente imagistic, non proposizionale. In particolare, esamineremo due argomenti solitamente presentati come a favore dell’ipotesi proposizionale: che le immagini non possono essere parte dell’intenzione comunicativa, rispettivamente, perché non portano un contenuto giudicabile in termini di vero/falso, e perché non consentono di effettuare inferenze. Vedremo che entrambe le argomentazioni sono discutibili. Parole chiave: Intenzione comunicativa; Gesti rappresentativi; Imagery; Significato del parlante Co-verbal Gestures and Mental Images: The Borders of Communicative Intentions: Do mental images form part of a speaker’s communicative intention? This and similar questions have usually been addressed within the framework of embodied cognition. Here, instead, we want to address the question from a different point of view, examining representational gestures, which are characterised by their strong relationship to sensory-motor representations. For this reason, our argument takes two directions. First, we show that representational gestures can form part of a speaker’s communicative intention as, for example, when the speaker overtly makes them salient. However, it is important to point out that being part of a communicative intention is not equivalent to being consciously planned. Secondly, we will argue that the meaning carried by gestures is actually imagistic, and not propositional. To this end, we provide a detailed discussion of two arguments favouring the propositional hypothesis: that images cannot be part of the speaker’s communicative intention because their content is not truth-conditional and because they do not allow us to make inferences. We will show that both these arguments are debatable. Keywords: Communicative Intentions; Representational Gestures; Imagery; Speaker’s Meaning. (shrink)

Since Austin and Searle, performatives are taken to be crucial for the construction of social reality. More recently, performatives have been proposed to be essential for the construction of personal identities, too. I intend to analyze the postmodern assumption according to which this identity construction is in the power of individuals, an assumption which presupposes a view of performatives as endowed with unconstrained power – that is, with a power that is not subject to objective constraints. I will consider some (...) reasons to reject this view. The first is rooted in Judith Butler’s idea that – since normative approaches to political correctness undesirably reduce freedom of speech in the name of equality – we should seriously consider how offensive performatives may fail, due to objective constraints on their felicity. A second reason to reject the postmodern view of performatives lies in the consideration of narcissism as an individual and political issue. Narcissism in the political sphere can be described as a transformation of the “passion for equality” in an individualistic appetite, deaf to everything else, and especially to social constraints and responsibilities. A different – less narcissistic and more social – model of the self is provided. (shrink)

Huang & Bargh’s (H&B’s) general picture might underestimate the role played by conscious self and overestimate the behavioral inconsistencies at the personal level. This follows from how they delimit the goals under consideration: Their theses that goals are not consciously selected and that the conscious self is involved just in post hoc rationalization should also be tested against concrete and long-term goals.