The last 14 chapters of book 1 of Aristotle's "Prior Analytics" are concerned with the representation in the formal language of syllogistic of propositions and arguments expressed in more or less everyday Greek. In his commentary on those chapters, Alexander of Aphrodisias explains some of Aristotle's more opaque assertions and discusses post-Aristotelian ideas in semantics and the philosophy of language. In doing so he provides an unusual insight into the way in which these disciplines developed in the Hellenistic era. (...) He also shows a more sophisticated understanding of these fields than Aristotle himself, while remaining a staunch defender of Aristotle's emphasis on meaning as opposed to Stoics concern with verbal formulation. In his commentary on the final chapter of book 1 Alexander offers a thorough discussion of Aristotle's distinction between denying that something is, e.g., white and asserting that it is non-white. (shrink)

This paper develops a theory of analog representation. We first argue that the mark of the analog is to be found in the nature of a representational system’s interpretation function, rather than in its vehicles or contents alone. We then develop the rulebound structure theory of analog representation, according to which analog systems are those that use interpretive rules to map syntactic structural features onto semantic structural features. The theory involves three degree-theoretic measures that capture three independent ways in (...) which a system can be more or less analog. We explain how our theory improves upon prior accounts of analog representation, provides plausible diagnoses for novel challenge cases, extends to hybrid systems that are partially analog and partially symbolic, and accounts for some of the advantages and disadvantages of representing analogically versus symbolically. (shrink)

This paper is divided in two parts. In part I, I argue against two attempts to naturalise the notion of scientific representation, by reducing it to isomorphism and similarity. I distinguish between the means and the constituents of representation, and I argue that isomorphism and similarity are common means of representation; but that they are not constituents of scientific representation. I look at the prospects for weakened versions of these theories, and I argue that only those that abandon the (...) aim to naturalise scientific representation are likely to be successful. In part II of the paper, I present a deflationary conception of scientific representation, which minimally characterises it by means of two necessary conditions: representation is essentially intentional and it has the capacity to allow surrogate reasoning and inference. I then defend this conception by showing that it successfully meets the objections and difficulties that make its competitors, such as isomorphism and similarity, untenable. In addition the inferential conception explains the success of various means of representation in their appropriate domains, and it sheds light on the truth and accuracy of scientific representations. (shrink)

The "tangle" referred to in my title is a special set of problems that arise in understanding the evolution of mental representation. These are problems over and above those involved in reconstructing evolutionary histories in general, over and above those involved in dealing with human evolution, and even over and above those involved in tackling the evolution of other human psychological traits. I am talking about a peculiar and troublesome set of interactions and possibilities, linked to long-standing (...) debates about the status of folk psychology and the nature of semantic properties. (shrink)

This paper is divided in two parts. In part I, I argue against two attempts to naturalise the notion of scientific representation, by reducing it to isomorphism and similarity. I distinguish between the means and the constituents of representation, and I argue that isomorphism and similarity are common (although not universal) means of representation; but that they are not constituents of scientific representation. I look at the prospects for weakened versions of these theories, and I argue that only those (...) that abandon the aim to naturalise scientific representation are likely to be successful. In part II of the paper, I present a deflationary conception of scientific representation, which minimally characterises it by means of two necessary conditions: representation is essentially intentional and it has the capacity to allow surrogate reasoning and inference. I then defend this conception by showing that it successfully meets the objections and difficulties that make its competitors, such as isomorphism and similarity, untenable. In addition the inferential conception explains the success of various means of representation in their appropriate domains, and it sheds light on the truth and accuracy of scientific representations. (shrink)

This paper is divided in two parts. In part I, I argue against two attempts to naturalise the notion of scientific representation, by reducing it to isomorphism and similarity. I distinguish between the means and the constituents of representation, and I argue that isomorphism and similarity are common means of representation; but that they are not constituents of scientific representation. I look at the prospects for weakened versions of these theories, and I argue that only those that abandon the (...) aim to naturalise scientific representation are likely to be successful. In part II of the paper, I present a deflationary conception of scientific representation, which minimally characterises it by means of two necessary conditions: representation is essentially intentional and it has the capacity to allow surrogate reasoning and inference. I then defend this conception by showing that it successfully meets the objections and difficulties that make its competitors, such as isomorphism and similarity, untenable. In addition the inferential conception explains the success of various means of representation in their appropriate domains, and it sheds light on the truth and accuracy of scientific representations. (shrink)

Pictorial representation is one species of visual representation--but not the only one, I argue. There are three additional varieties or species of visual representation--namely 'structural', 'aspect' and 'integrative' representation--which together comprise a category of 'delineative' rather than depictive visual representation. I arrive at this result via consideration of previously neglected orientational factors that serve to distinguish the two categories. I conclude by arguing that pictures (unlike 'delineations') are not physical objects, and that their multiplicity and modal narrowness motivates a view (...) of them as instead being (one kind of) 'delineatively' represented content or subject matter, as represented by those objects that are (commonly but wrongly, in my view) assumed to be pictures. (shrink)

This dissertation defends the place of representation in music. Music’s status as a representational art has been hotly debated since the War of the Romantics, which pitted the Weimar progressives (Liszt, Wagner, &co.) against the Leipzig conservatives (the Schumanns, Brahms, &co.) in an intellectual struggle for what each side took to be the very future of music as an art. I side with the progressives, and argue that music can be and often is a representational medium. Correspondence (or resemblance) theories (...) of representation, such as the one I offer, have been much maligned in philosophy since the 1960s. Most theories assimilate representation under “meaning,” which has usually been thought to belong primarily to language. As a result, representational content has been taken to be purely conventional in the way that sentential meaning is. People want to know what music “means,” and these theories interpret this as “what does it refer to?” or “what propositions does it express?” I argue that propositional communication is only one (small) part of the issue. Once we overcome the bias of conceiving of musical works as essentially linguistic items, speech acts (performed) or sentence tokens (written), we can begin to take music on its own terms to discover how it represents—one way in which it “means.” The first step is to “naturalize” music’s representational content. Influenced by recent discussions in the philosophies of mind and science, I argue in Chapter 1 that composers represent extra-musical objects, events, and states of affairs through their works by exploiting antecedent relations (such as similarities in pitch, timbre, and structure) in order to secure reference to them. In Chapter 2, I survey and respond to the main challenges that those skeptical of music’s representational possibilities would raise against my theory of musical representation. In Chapter 3, I explore a number of ways through which music has been claimed to represent in order to show how my theory accounts for these diverse phenomena better than its conventionalist rivals, both in terms of the metaphysics and the epistemology. Chapter 4 extends this discussion by offering an account of how we perceive, understand, appreciate, and interpret sophisticated musical representations. I conclude by teasing out some of my theory’s implications and suggesting areas for further research. (shrink)

Existential phenomenologists hold that the two most basic forms of intelligent behavior, learning, and skillful action, can be described and explained without recourse to mind or brain representations. This claim is expressed in two central notions in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: the intentional arc and the tendency to achieve a maximal grip. The intentional arc names the tight connection between body and world, such that, as the active body acquires skills, those skills are stored, not as representations (...) in the mind, but as dispositions to respond to the solicitations of situations in the world. A phenomenology of skill acquisition confirms that, as one acquires expertise, the acquired know-how is experienced as finer and finer discriminations of situations paired with the appropriate response to each. Maximal grip names the body's tendency to refine its responses so as to bring the current situation closer to an optimal gestalt. Thus, successful learning and action do not require propositional mental representations. They do not require semantically interpretable brain representations either.Simulated neural networks exhibit crucial structural features of the intentional arc, and Walter Freeman's account of the brain dynamics underlying perception and action is structurally isomorphic with Merleau-Ponty's account of the way a skilled agent is led by the situation to move towards obtaining a maximal grip. (shrink)

Existential phenomenologists hold that the two most basic forms of intelligent behavior, learning, and skillful action, can be described and explained without recourse to mind or brain representations. This claim is expressed in two central notions in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: the intentional arc and the tendency to achieve a maximal grip. The intentional arc names the tight connection between body and world, such that, as the active body acquires skills, those skills are “stored”, not as representations (...) in the mind, but as dispositions to respond to the solicitations of situations in the world. A phenomenology of skill acquisition confirms that, as one acquires expertise, the acquired know-how is experienced as finer and finer discriminations of situations paired with the appropriate response to each. Maximal grip names the body's tendency to refine its responses so as to bring the current situation closer to an optimal gestalt. Thus, successful learning and action do not require propositional mental representations. They do not require semantically interpretable brain representations either.Simulated neural networks exhibit crucial structural features of the intentional arc, and Walter Freeman's account of the brain dynamics underlying perception and action is structurally isomorphic with Merleau-Ponty's account of the way a skilled agent is led by the situation to move towards obtaining a maximal grip. (shrink)

A number of recent studies have examined the effects of phonological variation on the perception of speech. These studies show that both the lexical representations of words and the mechanisms of lexical access are organized so that natural, systematic variation is tolerated by the perceptual system, while a general intolerance of random deviation is maintained. Lexical abstraction distinguishes between phonetic features that form the invariant core of a word and those that are susceptible to variation. Phonological inference relies (...) on the context of surface changes to retrieve the underlying phonological form. In this article we present a model of these processes in speech perception, based on connectionist learning techniques. A simple recurrent network was trained on the mapping from the variant surface form of speech to the underlying form. Once trained, the network exhibited features of both abstraction and inference in its processing of normal speech, and predicted that similar behavior will be found in the perception of nonsense words. This prediction was confirmed in subsequent research (Gaskell & Marslen-Wilson, 1994). (shrink)

Existential phenomenologists hold that the two most basic forms of intelligent behavior, learning, and skillful action, can be described and explained without recourse to mind or brain representations. This claim is expressed in two central notions in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: the intentional arc and the tendency to achieve a maximal grip. The intentional arc names the tight connection between body and world, such that, as the active body acquires skills, those skills are “stored”, not as representations (...) in the mind, but as dispositions to respond to the solicitations of situations in the world. A phenomenology of skill acquisition confirms that, as one acquires expertise, the acquired know-how is experienced as finer and finer discriminations of situations paired with the appropriate response to each. Maximal grip names the body's tendency to refine its responses so as to bring the current situation closer to an optimal gestalt. Thus, successful learning and action do not require propositional mental representations. They do not require semantically interpretable brain representations either.Simulated neural networks exhibit crucial structural features of the intentional arc, and Walter Freeman's account of the brain dynamics underlying perception and action is structurally isomorphic with Merleau-Ponty's account of the way a skilled agent is led by the situation to move towards obtaining a maximal grip. (shrink)

In this essay I shall examine the representation of aggression and its issues in the model animal, the Fruit Fly, Drosophila melanogaster. The Fruit Fly is the model animal for genetics and more recently neuroscience. On the basis of its behaviour conclusions are being drawn that will help in the development of new treatments for clinical entities like aggression and anxiety disorders—the author questions those findings and asks whether more should be done to focus on the actual biology and (...) behaviour—the Umwelt, instead of trying to bridge the gulf between invertebrate and human behaviours. (shrink)

In many computer applications we face the following situation: we are given set of objects which are characterized by means of some features like: temperature, height, weight etc., and we want to dene in terms of those features some concepts. For example we have a data le concerning patients suering from a certain disease. State of each patient is characterized by some symptoms like, for example: blood pressure, temperature etc. The question arises whether wa are able to dene this (...) disease in terms of avail- able symptoms. Notice that we identify here concept of a specic disease with a set of patients suering from this disease. Hence the denition of a disease depends upon specic example of a disease under consideration. This approach refers to inductive reasoning, when a concept is built upon the basis of a nite number of examples of this concept. More detailed discussion of problems considered here one { can nd in Pawlak , Pawlak and Or lowska and Pawlak. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Karl Schafer argues that Hume's theory of mental representation has two distinct components, unified by their shared feature of having accuracy conditions. As Schafer sees it, simple and complex ideas represent the intrinsic imagistic features of their objects whereas abstract ideas represent the relations or structures in which multiple objects stand. This distinction, however, is untenable for at least two related reasons. Firstly, complex ideas represent the relations or structures in which the impressions that are the (...) objects of their simple components stand. Secondly, abstract ideas are themselves instances of complex ideas. I draw two important conclusions from these facts. Firstly, contra Schafer and Garrett, the Copy Principle, properly emended, constitutes the entirety of Hume's theory of mental representation. Secondly, whereas paradigm examples of complex ideas, e.g. ideas of spatial and temporal complexes, are structured by relations of contiguity, abstract ideas are those complex ideas instead structured by relations of resemblance. As such, they represent their objects not as spatially or temporally contiguous but rather as resembling. (shrink)

Representation is integral to the functioning and legitimacy of modern government. Yet political theorists have often been reluctant to engage directly with questions of representation, and empirical political scientists have closed down such questions by making representation synonymous with congruence. Conceptually unproblematic and normatively inert for some, representation has been deemed impossible to pin down analytically and to defend normatively by others. But this is changing. Political theorists are now turning to political representation as a subject worthy of theoretical investigation (...) in its own right. In their effort to rework the theory of political representation, they are also hoping to impact how representation is assessed and studied empirically. This volume gathers together chapters by key contributors to what amounts to a "representative turn" in political theory. Their approaches and emphases are diverse, but taken together they represent a compelling and original attempt at re-conceptualizing political representation and critically assessing the main theoretical and political implications following from this, namely for how we conceive and assess representative democracy. Each contributor is invited to look back and ahead on the transformations to democratic self-government introduced by the theory and practice of political representation. Representation and democracy: outright conflict, uneasy cohabitation, or reciprocal constitutiveness? For those who think democracy would be better without representation, this volume is a must-read: it will question their assumptions, while also exploring some of the reasons for their discomfort. Reclaiming Representation is essential reading for scholars and graduate researchers committed to staying on top of new developments in the field. (shrink)

according to hume’s theory of general representation, we represent generalities by associating certain ideas with certain words. On one prominent understanding of this theory, calling things by one name or another does not represent any real qualities of those things or any real relations between them. This interpretation runs into difficulty when we turn our attention to Hume’s own use of such general terms throughout the Treatise. It would seem that Hume’s own distinctions—such as the impression-idea distinction and simple-complex (...) distinction—require that the items so.. (shrink)

One of the central debates in cognitive science is the dispute over the role of representation in cognition: on computational/representational accounts, representations are theoretically central; on dynamic systems approaches in which cognition is investigated as a particular sort of physical process, representations play either no role, or, at best, a derivative one. But these two perspectives lead to a deeply unsatisfying theoretical divide: accounts situated in the representational camp are plagued by the inscrutable problem of intentionality, while (...) class='Hi'>those hedging towards anti-representationalism seem incapable of saying anything theoretically interesting about high-level cognition. This unhelpful polarization is due in part, at least, to a muddy debate; while some take representationalism to be a commitment to the necessity of conceptual representations for cognition, representations the having of which require certain conceptual capacities, others do not. Recently, there has been a surge of work on non-conceptual representation. This article aims to add to this movement by suggesting a particular cognitive mechanism for non-conceptual representations, one that plays a pivotal role in making conceptual representations possible. One of the central consequences of this new view of representation is the possibility of a non-question-begging naturalistic account of intentionality. (shrink)

Image-making is a nearly universal human behavior, yet the visual strategies and conventions to represent things in pictures vary greatly over time and space. In particular, pictorial styles can differ in their degree of figurativeness, varying from intersubjectively recognizable representations of things to very stylized and abstract forms. Are there any patterns to this variability, and what might its ecological causes be? Experimental studies have shown that demography and the structure of interaction of cultural groups can play a key (...) role: the greater the degree of contact with other groups, the more recognizable and less abstract are the representations. Here we test this hypothesis on a real-world dataset for the first time. We constructed a balanced database of Indigenous Australian rock art motifs from both isolated and contact Aboriginal groups (those often in contact with other groups). We then ran a survey asking participants to judge the recognizability of the motifs and to provide interpretations. Results show that motifs from contact Aboriginal groups were more likely to be judged as inter-subjectively recognizable and also elicited more convergent descriptions than motifs from isolated groups. This is consistent with the idea that intergroup contact is likely to be an important factor in the cultural evolution of pictorial representation. We discuss the implications of these findings for the archaeology and anthropology of art, and the parallels with language evolution. (shrink)

Fazekas and Overgaard () present a novel, multidimensional model that explains different ways in which conscious representations can be degraded. Moreover, the authors discuss possible mechanisms that underlie different kinds of degradation, primarily those related to attentional processing. In this letter, we argue that the proposed mechanisms are not sufficient. We propose that attentional mechanisms work differently at various processing stages; and factors that are independent of attentional ones, such as expectation, previous experience, and context, should be accounted (...) for if we are aiming to construct a comprehensive model of conscious visual perception. (shrink)

For at least two centuries, democratic representation has been at the center of debate. Should elected representatives express the views of the majority, or do they have the discretion to interpret their constituents' interests? How can representatives balance the desires of their parties and their electors? What should be done to strengthen the representation of groups that have been excluded from the political system? Representative democracy itself remains frequently contested, regarded as incapable of reflecting the will of the masses, or (...) inadequate for today's global governance. Recently, however, this view of democratic representation has been under attack for its failure to capture the performative and constructive elements of the process of representation, and a new literature more attentive to these aspects of the relationship between representatives and the represented has arisen. In Creating Political Presence, a diverse and international group of scholars explores the implications of such a turn. Two broad, overlapping perspectives emerge. In the first section, the contributions investigate how political representation relates to empowerment, either facilitating or interfering with the capacity of citizens to develop autonomous judgment in collective decision making. Contributions in the second section look at representation from the perspective of inclusion, focusing on how representative relationships and claims articulate the demands of those who are excluded or have no voice. The final section examines political representation from a more systemic perspective, exploring its broader environmental conditions and the way it acquires democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

What mental states are required for an agent to know-how to perform an action? This question fuels one of the hottest debates in the current literature on philosophy of action. Answering this question means facing what we call here The Challenge of Format Dualism, which consists in establishing which is the format of the mental representations involved in practical knowledge and, in case they are given in more than one format, explaining how these different formats can interlock. This challenge (...) has generated two parallel debates: the debate between Intellectualism and Anti-Intellectualism on the one hand, and the debate on the Interface Problem on the other. While the former is about whether practical knowledge can be considered a species of propositional knowledge, the latter investigates how motoric and propositional states can be related. Here we offer a unified account capable of explicitly analyzing those two problems within the same philosophical framework. Our account suggests a new way for solving the Interface Problem that paves the way for addressing the debate between Intellectualism and Anti-Intellectualism. (shrink)

The uncertainty associated with paradigmatic families has been shown to correlate with their phonetic characteristics in speech, suggesting that representations of complex sublexical relations between words are part of speaker knowledge. To better understand this, recent studies have used two-layer neural network models to examine the way paradigmatic uncertainty emerges in learning. However, to date this work has largely ignored the way choices about the representation of inflectional and grammatical functions in models strongly influence what they subsequently learn. To (...) explore the consequences of this, we investigate how representations of IFS in the input-output structures of learning models affect the capacity of uncertainty estimates derived from them to account for phonetic variability in speech. Specifically, we examine whether IFS are best represented as outputs to neural networks or as inputs by building models that embody both choices and examining their capacity to account for uncertainty effects in the formant trajectories of word final [ɐ], which in German discriminates around sixty different IFS. Overall, we find that formants are enhanced as the uncertainty associated with IFS decreases. This result dovetails with a growing number of studies of morphological and inflectional families that have shown that enhancement is associated with lower uncertainty in context. Importantly, we also find that in models where IFS serve as inputs—as our theoretical analysis suggests they ought to—its uncertainty measures provide better fits to the empirical variance observed in [ɐ] formants than models where IFS serve as outputs. This supports our suggestion that IFS serve as cognitive cues during speech production, and should be treated as such in modeling. It is also consistent with the idea that when IFS serve as inputs to a learning network. This maintains the distinction between those parts of the network that represent message and those that represent signal. We conclude by describing how maintaining a “signal-message-uncertainty distinction” can allow us to reconcile a range of apparently contradictory findings about the relationship between articulation and uncertainty in context. (shrink)

Nel 1956, in piena guerra fredda, una conferenza di scienziati al Dartmouth College negli Stati Uniti annunciò il lancio di un audace progetto scientifico, l’Intelligenza Artificiale (I.A.). Dopo l’iniziale fallimento degli sforzi della “Hard AI” di produrre un’intelligenza simile a quella umana, alla fine del XX secolo è emerso il movimento della “Soft AI”. Invece di essere orientato a imitare il comportamento umano in relazione a compiti specifici, ha preferito cercare modi alternativi di eseguire i compiti basati sulle particolari funzioni (...) e strutture della macchina. Il fattore decisivo è stata la combinazione della tecnologia di apprendimento automatico con le comunicazioni digitali online, l’incontro tra l’IA e Internet. Le applicazioni dell’IA “soft” sono quelle che vediamo nel mondo dei dispositivi automatici “intelligenti” che informano la nostra vita sociale digitale. Nel seguente articolo mi concentrerò su una particolare applicazione dell’IA per le discussioni online con utenti umani, ChatGPT, per mostrare le implicazioni della tecnologia digitale online nelle modalità storico-sociali dell’esistenza umana. ChatGPT è un’applicazione che combina l’IA con Internet, le possibilità della corrispondenza tra macchine e le potenzialità della tele-comunicazione umana. Il mio approccio si concentra sulle implicazioni fenomenologiche e storico-sociali della proliferazione della tecnologia AI per quanto riguarda la coscienza e la socialità umana. -/- Abstract (english) -/- In 1956, amidst the Cold War, a conference of scientists at Dartmouth College in the United States announced the launch of a bold, scientific project, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). After the initial failure of “Hard AI” efforts to produce a human-like intelligence, the “Soft AI” movement emerged in the late 20th century. Instead of being oriented towards imitating human behaviour concerning specific tasks, it preferred to seek alternative ways of performing tasks based on the particular functions and structures of the machine. The decisive factor was the combination of Machine Learning technology with Digital Online Communications, the meeting between AI and the Internet. The applications of “Soft” AI are those we see in the world of “smart”, “intelligent” automatic devices that inform our digital social life. In the following article, I will focus on a particular application of AI for online discussions with human users, ChatGPT, in order to show the implications of online digital technology in the social-historical modalities of human existence. ChatGPT is an application that combines AI with the Internet, the possibilities of Machine correspondence with the potentialities of human telecommunications. My approach focuses on the phenomenological and social-historical implications of the proliferation of AI technology as regards human consciousness and sociality. (shrink)

How do people learn multisensory, or amodal, representations, and what consequences do these representations have for perceptual performance? We address this question by performing a rational analysis of the problem of learning multisensory representations. This analysis makes use of a Bayesian nonparametric model that acquires latent multisensory features that optimally explain the unisensory features arising in individual sensory modalities. The model qualitatively accounts for several important aspects of multisensory perception: (a) it integrates information from multiple sensory sources (...) in such a way that it leads to superior performances in, for example, categorization tasks; (b) its performances suggest that multisensory training leads to better learning than unisensory training, even when testing is conducted in unisensory conditions; (c) its multisensory representations are modality invariant; and (d) it predicts ‘‘missing” sensory representations in modalities when the input to those modalities is absent. Our rational analysis indicates that all of these aspects emerge as part of the optimal solution to the problem of learning to represent complex multisensory environments. (shrink)

Considering the overwhelming amount of media products that we are subjected to in the 21stcentury and the way in which those inevitably influence our perception of reality, this research pays specific attention to the role of the media in the construction and enhancement of stereotypes in everyday life, via the language or, more specifically, specialized languages. In particular, this paper aims to investigate an American legal TV series in order to analyze the way in which legal English is used (...) in dialogues. The major research questions are: to what extent such a kind of specialized discourse may be really understood by the greater audience? How does legal drama participate in the shaping of stereotypes relating to the legal environment in the country where it is produced, and cross-culturally, bearing in mind the prominence of “made in the USA” products in the television programming across the world? Ultimately, in the light of the previous questions, should the growing field of research in audiovisual translation extend its investigation into the area of legal English? Taking into consideration the seminal work of Pedersen and Diaz Cintas in the field of Audiovisual Translation, the study will examine the subtitling techniques employed for this atypical genre. Through the analysis of a corpus comprising several dialogues from a collection of episodes of the legal show Reckless, the paper will mostly focus on gender representations and their most common linguistically enhanced stereotypes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Anchors of Democracy: A New Division of Powers, Representation, Sense of Limits by Rocco PezzimentiAdam CarringtonPEZZIMENTI, Rocco. The Anchors of Democracy: A New Division of Powers, Representation, Sense of Limits. Herefordshire, U.K.: Gracewing, 2021. 207 pp. Paper, $22.00Rocco Pezzimenti's The Anchors of Democracy: A New Division of Powers, Representation, Sense of Limits is an ambitious book. A professor at LUMSA, Rome, he seeks to consider anew the (...) nature, structure, and purposes of democracy as well as the society in which this form of government best operates. He sees this task as needed because, he argues, contemporary democracies face new challenges that threaten their legitimacy and their capacity to fulfill their just and needed purposes. He notes that democracies are not "infallible," either morally or in their ability to maintain themselves, and thus need conscious understanding and prudent maintenance.The subtitle establishes the three main themes by which he diagnoses and addresses democracy's trials. Pezzimenti orders his argument most through the lens of limits. While present in all spheres and regimes, popular government in particular partakes of limitation, since "mutual limitation... is the basis of our democracies." Limits for Pezzimenti stem from distinct elements of a society competing for finite power ordered toward action. Many of our political and social problems, both past and present, stem from denying limitations or misordering their interactions. The presentism that tempts democracy must be tempered by the limits the past places on it. Institutions are one helpful means for this interaction, which helps guard against a "utopianism which wants to solve everything immediately, deceiving itself that it can perform miracles." Law itself involves limits, placing boundaries on the action of private persons and public entities. So does pluralism and "polyarchy," whereby we recognize the limits particular persons and communities place on politics' universalism as well as how politics restrains these other elements from descending into intolerant, selfish particularity. Important to this point is Pezzimenti's discussion of sovereignty, which must not be reduced to a mere question of who rules and where but to the question of rightly pursuing a common good respectful of individual rights. True freedom inheres in the proper cohering of these elements.Pezzimenti turns to the distribution of powers within a community as part of the discussion of limits. He argues that "the traditional tripartition, theorized by Polybius and on to Montesquieu, today appears certainly insufficient." To define all political power as legislative, executive, and judicial, then to distribute them among competing institutions, does not fully account for the contemporary political landscape. Moreover, those [End Page 361] "classic" powers themselves need to be rethought to meet today's concerns. Legislative power must account for claims that its representative systems either are oligarchic in practice or lead to crass populism, and that they fail to account for group identities as opposed to class ones. The executive must evolve in pursuit of a better "efficiency and efficacy"—including speed of response to problems—that requires a better relationship with the modern bureaucracy, which he describes as "the other face of the executive." The judicial power must focus on a renewed impartiality, especially in relation to the additional powers Pezzimenti thinks need to be named and then tamed. The new powers that he says we must recognize include the press, mass media, technology, and more. Here, Pezzimenti categorizes as powers the functions of government (making, enforcing, and adjudication of the law) alongside avenues or means for exercising political influence, if not outright control. These other forces have distorted democracy's needed limits partly because law and custom have not adequately accounted for their evolving role in power.These issues lead to the last challenge, that of representation. The problem of representation threatens democracy's legitimacy, since this form of government is grounded more than any other in the idea that "power must be the expression of the community." Yet even here the issue of limits orders the discussion. The unaccounted-for new powers described above remove too many limitations either on crass populism or encroaching rule of elites. The former can abuse individual rights, which he says "are not negotiable," based on oppressive whims... (shrink)

The purpose of this research is to examine how a national minority, in our case Israeli Arabs, perceives its representations in the media during a global pandemic. The importance of this research is in gaining a better understanding of the perceptions of such minorities during global crises so that it can serve as a framework for various similar studies. Israeli Arabs were perceived as those who did not obey the instructions of the Ministry of Health and the government (...) of Israel during the pandemic. Therefore, this study asks: “How and in what ways do Israeli Arabs perceive their representations in the media during the COVID-19 pandemic?” Semi-structured in-depth interviews were used to answer this question. The findings show that the interviewees believe that the media did not represent them properly but in a stereotypical way, and that the government and media should have adjusted health instructions in a way that is compatible with their culture. The research concludes that the media have the responsibility of ensuring an overall representation of minorities that is adequate and positive. (shrink)

This paper proposes that pictures are functional objects which figure in norm‐governed practices of usage yet whose specific function is to present the world as it looks to acculturated perceivers. Pictorial content presents the way the world looks to a subject's acculturated perceptual grasp. Hence, pictorial content needs to be explained in terms of a theory of perceptual content, but a novel theory which departs from the two‐stage sensation‐based approach to perception and the polarization between naturalism and conventionalism that it (...) engenders. Following a diagnosis of this polarization, I invoke a novel theory of perception that explains perceptual content as conceptually articulated and determinate in character. I show that (1) pictures present content of the same distinctive determinate type as perceptual content; and that (2) pictures do so by invoking perceptual experience and perceptual processes that are of the same kind as those invoked by actual scenes. This perceptualist approach considers and explains the role of norms as well as of the nature of our visual processes, allowing us to allocate the insights of both conventionalism and naturalism to their proper theoretical roles. (shrink)

The mental models theory rejects that sentences are linked to logical forms. From its perspective, their most relevant aspect refers to the semantic possibilities that correspond to them. In this way, the theory has analyzed in detail the real semantic role that the traditional connectives in logic can play in reasoning. However, given that logical forms are not important in its framework, in this paper, it is argued that those connectives are not the only operators that the mental models (...) theory should review, and that there are other connectives present in most of the languages in general that can be interesting for it as well. That is the case of ‘but’ in English, which is addressed from the approach of the aforementioned theory here. (shrink)

Private governance raises important questions about democratic representation. Rule making is rarely based on electoral authorisation by those in whose name rules are made—typically a requirement for democratic legitimacy. This requires revisiting the role of representation in input legitimacy in transnational governance, which remains underdeveloped. Focussing on private labour governance, we contrast two approaches to the transnational representation of worker interests in global supply chains: non-governmental organisations providing representative claims versus trade unions providing representative structures. Studying the Bangladesh Accord (...) for Fire and Building Safety, we examine their interaction along three dimensions of democratic representation: 1) creating presence, 2) authorisation, and 3) accountability to affected constituents. We develop a framework that explains when representative claims and structures become complementary but also how the politics of input legitimacy shapewhoseinterests get represented. We conclude by deriving theoretical and normative implications for transnational representation and input legitimacy in global governance. (shrink)

Learning from a text–picture multimedia document is particularly effective if learners can link information within the text and across the verbal and the pictorial representations. The ability to create a mental model successfully and include those implicit links is related to the ability to generate inferences. Text processing research has found that text cohesion facilitates the generation of inferences, and thus text comprehension for learners with poor prior knowledge or reading abilities, but is detrimental for learners with good (...) prior knowledge or reading abilities. Moreover, multimedia research has found a positive effect from adding visual representations to text information, particularly when implementing signaling, which consists of verbal or visual cues designed to guide attention to the pictorial representation of relevant information. We expected that, as with text-only documents, struggling readers would benefit from high text cohesion and that signaling would foster inference generation as well. Further, we hypothesized that better learning outcomes would be observed when text cohesion was low and signaling was present. Our first experimental study investigated the effect of those two factors on three levels of comprehension. Participants were adolescents in prevocational schools, where some of the students are struggling readers. The results showed a trend in favor of high cohesion, but with no significant effect, a significant positive effect of cross-representational signaling on comprehension from local inferences, and no interaction effect. A second experiment focused on signaling only and attention toward the picture, with collection of eye-tracking data in addition to measures of offline comprehension. As this study was conducted with university students, who are expected to have higher reading abilities and thus are less likely to benefit from high cohesion, the material was presented in its low cohesive version. The results showed no effect of conditions on comprehension performances but confirmed differences in processing behaviors. Participants allocated more attention to the pictorial representation in the CRS condition than in the no signaling condition. (shrink)

According to Uriah Kriegel’s self-representational theory of consciousness, mental state M is conscious just in case it is a complex with suitably integrated proper parts, M 1 and M 2, such that M 1 is a higher-order representation of lower-order representation M 2. Kriegel claims that M thereby “indirectly” represents itself, and he attempts to motivate this claim by appealing to what he regards as intuitive cases of indirect perceptual and pictorial representation. For example, Kriegel claims that it’s natural to (...) say that in directly perceiving the front surface of an apple one thereby perceives the apple itself. Cases such as this are supposed to provide intuitive support for the principle that if X represents Y, and Y is highly integrated into complex object Z, then X indirectly represents Z. In this paper I provide counterexamples to Kriegel’s principle of indirect representation, before going on to argue that we can explain what is going on in those cases in which the subject seems to represent a complex whole by representing one its parts without positing indirect representations anyway. I then argue that my alternative approach is superior to Kriegel’s in a number of ways, thereby rendering his theory of consciousness implausible. (shrink)

William Ramsey’s Representation Reconsidered is a superb, insightful analysis of the notion of mental representation in cognitive science. The book presents an original argument for a bold conclusion: partial eliminativism about mental representation in scientific psychology. According to Ramsey, once we examine the conditions that need to be satisfied for something to qualify as a representation, we can see those conditions are not fulfilled by the ‘representations’ posited by much of modern psychology. Cognitive science—or at least large swathes (...) of it—has no warrant for positing representations. The structure of Ramsey’s argument repeats a familiar eliminativist strategy (c.f. Churchland (1981); Stich (1983)).1 First step: argue that in order for something to be an X, it must satisfy a certain description D (say, beliefs must satisfy the description given in folk psychology). Second step: argue that to the best of our knowledge, nothing satisfies description D (e.g. folk psychology is false). Third step: conclude that since nothing satisfies description D, there are no Xs (no beliefs). Here is how the strategy is played out in the book. First, Ramsey argues for certain minimal conditions that a representation must satisfy (what he calls the ‘job description’). Second (this takes the bulk of the book), he considers the ways in which our best psychological theories use the notion of representation. Ramsey argues that none of these uses satisfy the job description associated with a genuine representation. (A wrinkle is that some representations—those posited by the classical computational theory of cognition—do qualify as true representations. But, Ramsey claims, classical theories are in a minority in cognitive science, and their hold on the field is shrinking.) Therefore, Ramsey concludes, in most of cognitive science, there are no mental representations. (shrink)

The thesis concerns itself with the selection constraints governing the basic distributional patterns of five complement constructions in English--the bare clause, the that-clause, the interrogative, the concealed question construction and the exclamative complement--across a wide array of knowledge, belief and communication predicates. The relevant distributional phenomena--which predicates are capable of embedding which complement types--have traditionally been captured by stipulative grammatical markings such as subcategorization frames, semantic selection frames and case-theoretic lexical markings. These theoretical tools, even to the extent that they (...) successfully reduplicate the observed phenomena, are of no explanatory value, as they do not derive the different behavioral patterns from some independently established properties of the embedding predicates or their complements. In the thesis, I present an epistemically-based theory, which attempts to derive the relevant distributional phenomena, including those traditionally assumed to reflect hard-core syntactic idiosyncrasies, from a linguistic-epistemic theory of knowledge, belief and communication. ;The theory is based on a lexical-semantic analysis of the embedding predicates, according to which they denote ternary relations between agents, objects of attitude and objects of representation. Thus, to give an example, the predicate think denotes a ternary relation between a thinker, a thought mentally represented by the thinker, and a proposition expressed by the thought and believed by the thinker to be true. This analysis, developed on linguistic grounds for linguistic purposes, echoes some of the recent insights in the philosophy of mind, especially Crimmins . Coupled with a theory of the meanings of the different complement types--partially based on the formal semantic insights of Karttunen , Groenedijk and Stokhof and Ginzburg --this account derives the distributional patterns from simple considerations of semantic compatibility: those predicates which are capable of embedding a certain complement type are exactly those whose lexical semantics is compatible with the semantics of the complement. ;Some of the distributional patterns discussed in the thesis, especially the one involving concealed questions, have traditionally been taken to provide empirical support for the hypothesis of the autonomy of syntactic representations . The analysis presented in this thesis reveals the dramatic extent to which the semantics and the syntax of lexical selection are transparent to each other, and thus implies, at least with respect to the core domain of lexical selection, that the autonomy hypothesis is empirically unjustified. (shrink)

Since its introduction, multivariate pattern analysis, or ‘neural decoding’, has transformed the field of cognitive neuroscience. Underlying its influence is a crucial inference, which we call the decoder’s dictum: if information can be decoded from patterns of neural activity, then this provides strong evidence about what information those patterns represent. Although the dictum is a widely held and well-motivated principle in decoding research, it has received scant philosophical attention. We critically evaluate the dictum, arguing that it is false: decodability (...) is a poor guide for revealing the content of neural representations. However, we also suggest how the dictum can be improved on, in order to better justify inferences about neural representation using MVPA. 1Introduction 2A Brief Primer on Neural Decoding: Methods, Application, and Interpretation 2.1What is multivariate pattern analysis? 2.2The informational benefits of multivariate pattern analysis 3Why the Decoder’s Dictum Is False 3.1We don’t know what information is decoded 3.2The theoretical basis for the dictum 3.3Undermining the theoretical basis 4Objections and Replies 4.1Does anyone really believe the dictum? 4.2Good decoding is not enough 4.3Predicting behaviour is not enough 5Moving beyond the Dictum 6Conclusion. (shrink)

Analytical expressions for the matrices and an explicit algorithm for computing Clebsch-Gordan coupling coefficients are given forsu(4) in au(3)-coupled basis as an example of the construction for anysu(n) in au(n−1) basis. The results areinduced from the known results foru(3) by means of the vector-coherent-state (VCS) theory of induced representations. The important recent result that makes this possible is the discovery that a complete set of shift tensors for the finitedimensional representations of reductive Lie algebras can be induced, by (...) VCS methods, from those of suitably defined subalgebras. (shrink)

Berkeley’s likeness principle states that only an idea can be like an idea. In this paper, I argue that the principle should be read as a premise only in a metaphysical argument showing that matter cannot instantiate anything like the sensory properties we perceive. It goes against those interpretations that take it to serve also, if not primarily, an epistemological purpose, featuring in Berkeley’s alleged Representation Argument to the effect that we cannot reach beyond the veil of our ideas. (...) First, in section 1, I raise some concerns about the traditional narrative concerning the likeness principle’s role in Berkeley’s argumentation. In section 2, I delineate an alternative narrative, arguing that there is no ‘missing premise’ in his alleged Representation Argument we need to explain simply because he advances no argument like that in the first place. In section 3–4, I provide a close reading of the relevant passages—first from the _Principles_, then the _Dialogues_—and their contexts, supporting textually a purely metaphysical interpretation of the likeness principle arguments. In section 5, I address some possible objections, based on the phrasing of the likeness principle passages and some related texts. (shrink)

b>: In this article I outline, apply, and defend a theory of natural representation. The main consequences of this theory are: i) representational status is a matter of how physical entities are used, and specifically is not a matter of causation, nomic relations with the intentional object, or information; ii) there are genuine (brain-)internal representations; iii) such representations are really representations, and not just farcical pseudo-representations, such as attractors, principal components, state-space partitions, or what-have-you;and iv) the (...) theory allows us to sharply distinguish those complex behaviors which are genuinely cognitive from those which are merely complex and adaptive. (shrink)

Theories of the representation of specific kinetic and spatiotem-poral features of movement range from the explicit assertion that temporal aspects of movement are not represented to the idea that they are represented and that they have neurophysiological correlates. Jeannerod's thesis is that mental and visual images have common mechanisms and that there is a link between the image to move and the mechanisms involved with movement. The target article takes the position that certain parameters are coded in motor representations (...) but that the duration of an action is not one of them. This position is based on the work of Gottlieb et al. and of Decety et al.. Both these studies are worth considering in detail. In Note 1, Jeannerod suggests that: “in time-constrained tasks subjects control the amplitude parameter of force impulses, whereas in spatially constrained tasks the duration of the force impulse is affected by accuracy demands.” This is not exactly correct. Excitation pulse intensity is modulated both in tasks that require spatial and those that require temporal accuracy. Excitation pulse duration is modulated for changes in movement distance and inertial load. If subjects are required to be very accurate spatially, they will move at less than maximum speed for a given distance and this is achieved by lower levels of excitation intensity. (shrink)

Since its introduction, multivariate pattern analysis, or ‘neural decoding’, has transformed the field of cognitive neuroscience. Underlying its influence is a crucial inference, which we call the decoder’s dictum: if information can be decoded from patterns of neural activity, then this provides strong evidence about what information those patterns represent. Although the dictum is a widely held and well-motivated principle in decoding research, it has received scant philosophical attention. We critically evaluate the dictum, arguing that it is false: decodability (...) is a poor guide for revealing the content of neural representations. However, we also suggest how the dictum can be improved on, in order to better justify inferences about neural representation using MVPA. (shrink)

It has been suggested that iconic graphical signs evolve into symbolic graphical signs through repeated usage. This article reports a series of interactive graphical communication experiments using a ‘pictionary’ task to establish the conditions under which the evolution might occur. Experiment 1 rules out a simple repetition based account in favor of an account that requires feedback and interaction between communicators. Experiment 2 shows how the degree of interaction affects the evolution of signs according to a process of grounding. Experiment (...) 3 confirms the prediction that those not involved directly in the interaction have trouble interpreting the graphical signs produced in Experiment 1. On the basis of these results, this article argues that icons evolve into symbols as a consequence of the systematic shift in the locus of information from the sign to the users' memory of the sign's usage supported by an interactive grounding process. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to present and defend a thesis according to which conceptual representations of some types of mental states are encoded in the same neural structures that underlie the first-personal experience of those states. To support this proposal here, I will put forth a novel account of the cognitive function played by ‘shared representations’ of emotions and bodily sensations, i.e. neural structures that are active when one experiences a mental state of a (...) certain type as well as when one observes someone else experiencing a state of the same type. I will argue that shared representations in fact constitute vehicles of certain mental state concepts (more precisely, concepts of specific types of emotions and somatosensory states). The main line of arguing for this will consist in showing that shared representations exhibit specific, ‘conceptual’ functional properties:(1) causal effect on forming metacognitive judgments, (2) cognitive penetrability, (3) diversity of input types. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 (2002) 399-424 [Access article in PDF] Representation and the Body of Power in French Academic Painting Amy M. Schmitter [Figures] Reputation of power, is Power... Hobbes, Leviathan, Bk. I, ch. x Introduction It seems natural, even obvious, to distinguish between representations and what they are representations of. A picture of a dog is no more a dog than the word (...) "dog" is a furry, tail-wagging mammal. Nor are properties belonging to the object of a representation necessarily properties of the representation: a picture of a big dog need not be big, a picture of a dog that resembles Fido need not resemble Fido; even a picture of brown Fido need not be brown. And no number of pictures of Fido will sympathetically induce changes in Fido or any other dog. But however clear-cut this distinction may be when what is in question are pictorial references to ordinary, middle-sized material particulars such as dogs, it is much less clear in other cases. It is no violation of common-sense to consider "representations" of such things as gender norms or national identities or selves as non-neutral in the face of what they represent. The representations of gender norms, for example, can extend and enforce them, can change or undermine them, and may well lend a hand in constituting them in the first place.My theme here is a form of pictorial representation, one found in the theory and practice of that strain of French Academic painting under Louis XIV associated with Charles LeBrun. LeBrun held the titles of First Painter to the King and Director of the French Royal Academy of Painting, and the works I will examine were devoted to the royal power. That one effect of royal power is the ability to command resources and to cause the proliferation of representations, especially flattering representations, is no surprise. But I intend to suggest something stronger: not only did these Academic representations present an expenditure [End Page 399] of royal power, they were meant to embody and therefore extend royal power—even to constitute royal power. The view under examination does not simply collapse the common-sense distinction between signifying properties and what is signified; indeed those relations play an important role in one concept of representation modeled on language and written texts. But to this the academicians added another, more robust concept, one that does not distinguish clearly between the representation and its object.Implausible as this view may seem at first blush, I think it can prove genuinely explanatory: explanatory for thinking about pictorial representation, about how it can operate (on both its object and its viewer), and about its relation to power. But to see its explanatory value demands considering the nature and needs of state power. For unlike middle-sized material particulars, state power requires recognition to exist. Although that recognition need not be explicit, conscious, or voluntary, it must be widespread, and pictorial representations can be a powerful device for eliciting such recognition. Yet state power in general— or at least the particular form in question here—may demand that the constitutive role of recognition be disguised. Indeed many of the views and concepts of pictorial representation developed by the Academy reverse the dependence of power on recognition; they function in an ideology of representation. Nonetheless, I think that certain "formal," or structural, features of LeBrun's works can be explained in terms of how they elicit recognition and constitute this particular form of royal power. I make no claim that LeBrun's works must be explained so: for one, the royal power represented by LeBrun's works is long gone, and his representations do not now have any miraculous power to raise the dead. For any representations actually to operate as I suggest requires the support of a whole complex of institutions and activities committed to the care and feeding of state power. It is only because such a complex did exist that LeBrun's representations could have a recognizable object, i... (shrink)

Visual space can be distinguished from physical space. The first is found in visual experience, while the second is defined independently of perception. Theorists have wondered about the relation between the two. Some investigators have concluded that visual space is non-Euclidean, and that it does not have a single metric structure. Here it is argued that visual space exhibits contraction in all three dimensions with increasing distance from the observer, that experienced features of this contraction are not the same as (...) would be the experience of a perspective projection onto a fronto-parallel plane, and that such contraction is consistent with size constancy. These properties of visual space are different from those that would be predicted if spatial perception resulted from the successful solution of the inverse problem. They are consistent with the notion that optical constraints have been internalized. More generally, they are also consistent with the notion that visual spatial structures bear a resemblance relation to physical spatial structures. This notion supports a type of representational relation that is distinct from mere causal correspondence. The reticence of some philosophers and psychologists to discuss the structure of phenomenal space is diagnosed in terms of the simple materialism and the functionalism of the 1970s and 1980s. (shrink)

Summary The investigation and representation of insects in the seventeenth century posed huge problems: on the one hand, their size and texture required optical tools and fixation techniques to disentangle and identify their tiny parts; on the other, the esoteric nature of those parts required readers to make sense of images alien to their daily experiences. Naturalists and anatomists developed sophisticated techniques of investigation and representation, involving tacit and unusual conventions that even twentieth-century readers found at times baffling. This (...) essay develops a comparative approach based on seven pairs of investigations involving Francesco Stelluti, Francesco Redi, Giovanni Battista Hodierna, Robert Hooke, Marcello Malpighi, and Jan Swammerdam. Seen together, they document an extraordinary time in the study of insects and reconstruct a number of iconographic dialogues shedding light on the conventions and styles adopted. (shrink)

This paper evaluates Stalnaker’s recent attempt to outline a realist interpretation of possible worlds semantics that lacks substantive metaphysical commitments. The limitations of his approach are used to draw some more general lessons about the non-representational artefacts of formal representations. Three key conclusions are drawn. Stalnaker’s account of possible worlds semantics’ non-representational artefacts does not cohere with his modal metaphysics. Invariance-based analyses of non-representational artefacts cannot capture a certain kind of artefact. Stalnaker must treat instrumentally those aspects of (...) possible worlds formalism governing the interaction between quantification and modality, under any analysis whatsoever of non-representational artefacts. (shrink)

The squared paper or graphs are grid-based design representations used in engineering, industrial and craft design practices wherein designs are drawn over symmetrical grids. This paper reports grid-processing strategies undertaken by actors in a native craft practice, viz. Kashmiri carpet-weaving having three task contexts: (1) _design_, wherein designs are drawn on graph sheets and color scheme given by assigning practice-specific symbolic codes to the motifs by designers; (2) _coding_, wherein a cryptic script, called _talim_, is generated from these encoded (...) graphs by talim-writers; and (3) _weaving_, wherein this script is read, decoded and communicated in an equally cryptic trade-language by weavers among their teams. 32 video-recorded think-aloud sessions were conducted with talim-writers to understand their graph-processing and resultant coding strategies. The observations and qualitative analysis of transcripts revealed highly _situated_ strategies undertaken by experts keen on imbibing visuality of design embedded in the grids, in contrast to _embodied_ strategies undertaken by less-experienced coders keen on processing grids’ structural features and getting overwhelmed by grid-clutter in the process. In this landscape, the findings revealed a negotiated nature of errors instead of being deviations from the underlying grid and thereby objectively assessable. The paper makes recommendations for CAD systems to include more of those grid features exploited by experts during their graph processing to facilitate designers. (shrink)

Whilst feminist commentators have long critiqued surrogacy as a practice of commodification, surrogacy as a mode of family formation continues to grow in popularity. In this paper we explore public representations of surrogacy through a discourse analytic reading of submissions made in Australia to an Inquiry regarding surrogacy legislation. The findings suggest that many submissions relied upon normative understandings of surrogates as either ‘good women’ or ‘bad mothers’. This is of concern given that such public representations may shape (...) the views of those who utilize surrogacy services in ways that limit attention to the ethics of surrogacy. (shrink)