1,720,965 research outputs found
Mindsets. Conceiving Cognition in Nature
No full textWhat is cognition? What is its place in nature? For about 60 years philosophers and scientists have been engaged in giving a naturalistic dress to the cognitive sciences arguing over the status of mental representations and computational processes. However, despite its great deal of success, the representational story is not the only game in town. Over the last decades, indeed, the idea that cognition should be described in terms of body-environment dynamics, rather than in terms of representations and computations, has gained an increasing consensus challenging a number of metaphysical and epistemological clichés. This book explains why and how we should find a place for cognition in nature. It offers a conceptual analysis of many subjects spanning philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and general epistemology, providing a comprehensive framework to understand one of the most exciting philosophical issues today
Extending the notion of affordance
No full textPost-Gibson attempts to set out a definition of affordance generally agree
that this notion can be understood as a property of the environment with salience for an organism’s behavior. According to this view, some scholars advocate the idea that affordances are dispositional properties of physical objects that, given suitable circumstances,
necessarily actualize related actions. This paper aims at assessing this
statement in light of a theory of affordance perception. After years of discontinuity
between strands of empirical and theoretical research, the time is ripe for addressing
the question of whether the dispositional interpretation of affordance is in accordance
with some recent evidence from cognitive science and neuroscience. Following this
line, I clarify that there are some cases of affordance-related effects that neither
require the actualization of an action, nor the presence of an action-related property
bearer in the environment, and that the identification of affordance with physical
properties provides only a partial explanation of the wide range of affordance-related effects. Accordingly, I argue in favor of a more general account of affordance
perception based on the ability to directly detect perceptual patterns in the environment
Cognizione incorporata
Full text linkL’idea che la cognizione sia una forma di elaborazione simbolica, indipendente rispetto alle proprietà del supporto materiale che la implementa, ha dominato lo sviluppo iniziale delle scienze cognitive. Oggi una parte della comunità scientifica e filosofica ritiene che questa prospettiva sia insufficiente o sbagliata, e che le caratteristiche morfologiche e dinamiche del corpo svolgano un ruolo peculiare nella genesi e nello sviluppo dei processi cognitivi. Da qui prendono le mosse una serie di proposte teoriche raccolte sotto la generale etichetta di Embodied Cognition. Scopo di questo contributo è delinearne un panorama
Framing Visual Perception in Terms of Sensorimotor Mapping
Full text linkTwo contrasting theories, or variants of them, are predominant in the current debate on visual cognition. The standard inferential theory sees perception as a process involving the role of memory, past experiences and semantic abilities, whereas the direct theory sees perception as a connection between the perceiver and the environment that does not recruit internal information processing. In particular, the direct theory has recently been invoked because it would be able to explain the sensorimotor coupling of perception and action in humans and animals without relying on controversial notions such as those of conceptualization and propositional information. This paper aims to show that even an inferential theory of perception has enough resources to account for sensorimotor processes without necessarily involving high level cognitive functions. My claim is that there are genuine instances of sensorimotor inferential processing that do not rely on conceptual structures and propositional knowledge. Several theoretical and empirical arguments are provided to support this statemen
Brain apparent diffusion coefficient decrease during correction of severe hypernatremic dehydration
No full textWe report on the brain diffusion MR imaging findings in a neonate with severe hypernatremic dehydration, which resulted in cerebral edema (osmotic edema) and in apparent diffusion coefficient decrease, despite a careful and slow rehydration. This report provides in vivo insight into nervous cell response to osmotic challenge
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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