5,447 research outputs found
Intentional minds: A philosophical analysis of intention tested through fMRI experiments involving people with schizophrenia, people with autism, and healthy individuals.
No full textIn this paper we show how we empirically tested one of the most relevant topics in philosophy of mind through a series of fMRI experiments: the classification of different types of intention. To this aim, firstly we trace a theoretical distinction among private, prospective and communicative intentions. Second, we propose a set of predictions concerning the recognition of these three types of intention in healthy individuals, and we report the experimental results corroborating our theoretical model of intention. Third, we derive from our model predictions relevant for the domain of psychopathological functioning. In particular, we treat the cases of both hyper-intentionality (as in paranoid schizophrenia) and hypo-intentionality (as in autistic spectrum disorders). Our conclusion is that the theoretical model of intention we propose contributes to enlarge our knowledge on the neurobiological bases of intention processing, in both healthy people and in people with impairments to the neurocognitive system that underlies intention recognition
Book Review Cognitive Pragmatics. The Mental Processes of Communication
No full textIn Cognitive Pragmatics. The Mental Processes of Communication, published by the MIT Press in 2010 and translated from Italian into English by John Douthwaite, Bruno Bara takes a cognitive perspective, investigating communication through different viewpoints (neuroscience, anthropology, pragmatics, psychology, philosophy, theory of games) in the six chapters constituting the book. In his preface, Bara defines communication as a conscious, deliberate and cooperative activity, in which two or more agents together construct meaning. Every communicative encounter is an activity and an enterprise: successes and failures are equally distributed among the participants. In the first chapter, Not Just Language: A Taxonomy of Communication, Bara translates Paul Grice's philosophy (Grice, 1989) into his own theory: As Grice wrote, "if A wishes to say something by means of a given behaviour, A must have the intention of bringing about a given effect in her interlocutor, an effect that is realized at least in part thanks to the fact that the hearer recognises that the speaker intends to convey something to him" (p. 16). He concludes that we can speak of communication when there is mutual wilfulness. Communication is a process (not a product) and communicating involves two different ways of processing data: the same input may be analyzed from a linguistic and from an extralinguistic standpoint. Specifically, linguistic communication is compositional and systematic: it enables an infinite productivity of lexical meanings and the possibility of spatial-temporal displacement thanks to particular indicators of reference. On the contrary, † Theories and Methodologies of e-Learning and Media Education, University of Padua, Italy
Introducing “La fabrique du droit”. A Conversation with Bruno Latour
Get PDFBruno Latour talks with Paolo Landri about his book on the Conseil d'Etat (La Fabrique du droit). The conversation was held in 2006 at the time of the Italian translation of the book and illustrates the research project and the difficulties the author had in the field. At the same time, it clarifies the trajectories of Bruno Latour's work and theoretical framework of his program of study with respect to sociology, anthropology, and philosophy of law. The conversation helps to understand the open-ended character of Bruno Latour's research and reflection including STS as well as sociological, anthropological and philosophical themes
Ideella krafter måste vara en del av staden – inte bara i broschyrer
No full textDebattDet är dags att Göteborg bestämmer sig. Vill staden vara i bak- eller framkant vad gäller hållbarhet inte bara på papper utan också i handling? Låt oss skapa ett framgångsrikt exempel på hur ideellt föreningsliv också kan ha rum i centrala delar av staden, som Masthuggskajen, skriver bland annat Bruno Chies, Solidariskt Kylskåp och Carl Thorshag, Cykelköket Göteborg
The second-agent effect: communicative gestures increase the likelihood of perceiving a second agent.
Get PDFBACKGROUND: Beyond providing cues about an agent's intention, communicative actions convey information about the presence of a second agent towards whom the action is directed (second-agent information). In two psychophysical studies we investigated whether the perceptual system makes use of this information to infer the presence of a second agent when dealing with impoverished and/or noisy sensory input. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Participants observed point-light displays of two agents (A and B) performing separate actions. In the Communicative condition, agent B's action was performed in response to a communicative gesture by agent A. In the Individual condition, agent A's communicative action was replaced with a non-communicative action. Participants performed a simultaneous masking yes-no task, in which they were asked to detect the presence of agent B. In Experiment 1, we investigated whether criterion c was lowered in the Communicative condition compared to the Individual condition, thus reflecting a variation in perceptual expectations. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the congruence between A's communicative gesture and B's response, to ascertain whether the lowering of c in the Communicative condition reflected a truly perceptual effect. Results demonstrate that information extracted from communicative gestures influences the concurrent processing of biological motion by prompting perception of a second agent (second-agent effect). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We propose that this finding is best explained within a Bayesian framework, which gives a powerful rationale for the pervasive role of prior expectations in visual perception
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