Projectual abduction is the inference drawing the means to achieve an end. Planning a course of action is an inferential task and we claim that the relevant inference is abduction. We distinguish projectual abduction from epistemic abduction. While epistemic abduction aims to determine an explanatory relation, projectual abduction aims to determine a teleological relation. It is important to remind in any case that abduction does not stand by itself: as is true for epistemic abduction, projectual abduction has to be developed (...) and evaluated by subsequent deduction and induction. After defining projectual abduction in section 1, we focus on the relations between projectual abduction, normativity and truth in section 2. Then we sketch how projectual abduction works in artistic creativity , in evolutionary and teleological processes and finally in social processes. (shrink)

This paper draws on the notion of the ‘project,’ as developed in the existential philosophy of Heidegger and Sartre, to articulate an understanding of the existential structure of engagement with virtual worlds. By this philosophical understanding, the individual’s orientation towards a project structures a mechanism of self-determination, meaning that the project is understood essentially as the project to make oneself into a certain kind of being. Drawing on existing research from an existential-philosophical perspective on subjectivity in digital game environments, the (...) notion of a ‘virtual subjectivity’ is proposed to refer to the subjective sense of being-in-the-virtual-world. The paper proposes an understanding of virtual subjectivity as standing in a nested relation to the individual’s subjectivity in the actual world, and argues that it is this relation that allows virtual world experience to gain significance in the light of the individual’s projectual existence. The arguments advanced in this paper pave the way for a comprehensive understanding of the transformative, self-transformative, and therapeutic possibilities and advantages afforded by virtual worlds. (shrink)

This book explores what it means to exist in virtual worlds. Chiefly drawing on the philosophical traditions of existentialism, it articulates the idea that — by means of our technical equipment and coordinated practices — human beings disclose contexts or worlds in which they can perceive, feel, act, and think. More specifically, this book discusses how virtual worlds allow human beings to take new perspectives on their values and beliefs, and explore previously unexperienced ways of being. Virtual Existentialism will be (...) useful for scholars working in the fields of philosophy, anthropology, media studies, and digital game studies. (shrink)

We owe our first graphic experiences to Neanderthal Man, who introduced to the cultural baggage of the genus Homo two metaphorical behaviors that are fundamental in terms of their innovation: one concerns the preservation of the bodies of the dead through burial, the other is the making of signs, which in this stage of evolution do not yet represent recognizable subjects but only lines. This attests to the creation of a graphical tool that materializes and makes visible that which exists (...) in the mind, something that is other than itself, thus providing signs of a communication that unfortunately today we cannot define semantically. We cannot say whether these linear marks are a sort of «brand» or if they are carriers of meanings, however, we can observe that, with the Neanderthals, a conceptual, projectual plan exists that enables the measurement of space and the configuration of a regular rhythm, creating an original condition of movement and an association of potentially dynamic lines. (shrink)

A conversation between the artist Mimmo Paladino, the philosopher and art critic Arthur C. Danto and the curator Demetrio Paparoni on topics such as beauty, icons, projectuality in art, history of art and its supposed end - the main thread being, obviously, Paladino’s entire corpus.

A conversation between the artist Mimmo Paladino, the philosopher and art critic Arthur C. Danto and the curator Demetrio Paparoni on topics such as beauty, icons, projectuality in art, history of art and its supposed end - the main thread being, obviously, Paladino’s entire corpus.

El presente estudio constituye un examen crítico de las posibles aporías e inconsistencias teóricas en las que incurre el pensamiento hermenéutico de Vattimo cuando extrae las consecuencias práctico-políticas implícitas en sus postulados de carácter ontológico. En particular, se trata de mostrar en qué medida el propio modo en el cual la ontología hermenéutica justifica sus posiciones antirrealistas y antidescriptivas implica, en la esfera de lo público, la adopción de una encubierta óptica descriptiva que busca en último término la legitimación de (...) una opción práctico-política objetiva diferente a aquella que supuestamente derivaría del realismo metafísico. (shrink)