Embodied higher cognition: insights from Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of motor intentionality

This paper clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s original account of “higher-order” cognition as fundamentally embodied and enacted. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy inspired theories that deemphasize overlaps between conceptual knowledge and motor intentionality or, on the contrary, focus exclusively on abstract thought. In contrast, this paper explores the link between Merleau-Ponty’s account of motor intentionality and his interpretations of our capacity to understand and interact productively with cultural symbolic systems. I develop my interpretation based on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of two neuropathological modifications of motor intentionality, the case of the brain-injured war veteran Schneider, and a neurological disorder known as Gerstmann’s syndrome. Building on my analysis of Schneider’s sensorimotor compensatory performances in relation to his limitations in the domains of algebra, geometry, and language usage, I demonstrate a strong continuity between the sense of embodiment and enaction at all these levels. Based on Merleau-Ponty’s interpretations, I argue that “higher-order” cognition is impaired in Schneider insofar as his injury limits his sensorimotor capacity to dynamically produce comparatively more complex differentiations of any given phenomenal structure. I then show how Merleau-Ponty develops and specifies his interpretation of Schneider’s intellectual difficulties in relation to the ambiguous role of the body, and in particular the hand, in Gerstmann’s syndrome. I explain how Merleau-Ponty defends the idea that sensorimotor and quasi-representational cognition are mutually irreducible, while maintaining that symbol-based cognition is a fundamentally enactive and embodied process.

The field of European economic governance and austerity policies: Exploratory elements (2002–2012)

In this paper, we establish the theoretical topography of a sample of these actors, their dispositions and their resources to grasp the relational dynamics (including the dynamics of inertia and of change) at work in the translation of the economic, social and political inputs into policy choices. This way of doing seems to us a good means to contribute to the current debate on the unexpected resilience of austerity policies and the need for ‘structural reforms’ at the EU level. How to explain, indeed, that whereas many observers thought after the first Obama election that the end of 2000 would mark a ‘lasting paradigm change’ to neo-Keynesianism the advisability of pursuing a new policy was so rapidly shut down? How to sociologically contribute to explain the strong continuity of the former paradigm inside European institutions and simultaneously the rather marginal adjustments it underwent?

Popular Rewritings of the Orlando Furioso as Forms of Criticism

Editions, paratextual apparatuses, translations, theoretical treatises, and dialogues influenced the critical debate about Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, and rapidly became the main route to its canonization. However, immediately after its publication, the Furioso also catalysed the production of new literary texts, which aimed to offer rewritings of and critical insights into the poem. This chapter focuses on this specific form of creative reception, thus far neglected in scholarly studies of Ariosto. It aims to highlight some of the critical readings and interpretations of the Furioso that such popular pamphlets offered to a wide readership in early modern Italy. It reveals a strong continuity across critical commentaries and rewritings of the poem. Both interpretations and adaptations of the Furioso reveal a commitment to pursuing contemporary cultural debates, for instance about the nature of women, influenced by Ariosto and his words: there is a dialogue between popular rewritings and erudite readings of the poem.

Convex semigroups on $$L^p$$-like spaces

In this paper, we investigate convex semigroups on Banach lattices with order continuous norm, having $$L^p$$ L p -spaces in mind as a typical application. We show that the basic results from linear $$C_0$$ C 0 -semigroup theory extend to the convex case. We prove that the generator of a convex $$C_0$$ C 0 -semigroup is closed and uniquely determines the semigroup whenever the domain is dense. Moreover, the domain of the generator is invariant under the semigroup, a result that leads to the well-posedness of the related Cauchy problem. In a last step, we provide conditions for the existence and strong continuity of semigroup envelopes for families of $$C_0$$ C 0 -semigroups. The results are discussed in several examples such as semilinear heat equations and nonlinear integro-differential equations.

Examining the Continuity between Life and Mind: Is There a Continuity between Autopoietic Intentionality and Representationality?

A weak version of life-mind continuity thesis entails that every living system also has a basic mind (with a non-representational form of intentionality). The strong version entails that the same concepts that are sufficient to explain basic minds (with non-representational states) are also central to understanding non-basic minds (with representational states). We argue that recent work on the free energy principle supports the following claims with respect to the life-mind continuity thesis: (i) there is a strong continuity between life and mind; (ii) all living systems can be described as if they had representational states; (iii) the ’as-if representationality’ entailed by the free energy principle is central to understanding both basic forms of intentionality and intentionality in non-basic minds. In addition to this, we argue that the free energy principle also renders realism about computation and representation compatible with a strong life-mind continuity thesis (although the free energy principle does not entail computational and representational realism). In particular, we show how representationality proper can be grounded in ’as-if representationality’.

STRONG CONTINUITY OF FUNCTIONS FROM TWO VARIABLES

The concept of continuity in a strong sense for the case of functions with values in metric spaces is studied. The separate and joint properties of this concept are investigated, and several results by Russell are generalized. A function $f:X \times Y \to Z$ is strongly continuous with respect to $x$ /$y$/ at a point ${(x_0, y_0)\in X \times Y}$ provided for an arbitrary $\varepsilon> 0$ there are neighborhoods $U$ of $x_0$ in $X$ and $V$ of $y_0$ in $Y$ such that $d(f(x, y), f(x_0, y)) <\varepsilon$ /$d((x, y), f (x, y_0))<\varepsilon$/ for all $x \in U$ and $y \in V$. A function $f$ is said to be strongly continuous with respect to $x$ /$y$/ if it is so at every point $(x, y)\in X \times Y$. Note that, for a real function of two variables, the notion of continuity in the strong sense with respect to a given variable and the notion of strong continuity with respect to the same variable are equivalent. In 1998 Dzagnidze established that a real function of two variables is continuous over a set of variables if and only if it is continuous in the strong sense with respect to each of the variables. Here we transfer this result to the case of functions with values in a metric space: if $X$ and $Y$ are topological spaces, $Z$ a metric space and a function $f:X \times Y \to Z$ is strongly continuous with respect to $y$ at a point $(x_0, y_0) \in X \times Y$, then the function $f$ is jointly continuous if and only if $f_{y}$ is continuous for all $y\in Y$. It is obvious that every continuous function $f:X \times Y \to Z$ is strongly continuous with respect to $x$ and $y$, but not vice versa. On the other hand, the strong continuity of the function $f$ with respect to $x$ or $y$ implies the continuity of $f$ with respect to $x$ or $y$, respectively. Thus, strongly separately continuous functions are separately continuous. Also, it is established that for topological spaces $X$ and $Y$ and a metric space $Z$ a function $f:X \times Y \to Z$ is jointly continuous if and only if the function $f$ is strongly continuous with respect to $x$ and $y$.

Empirical Analysis of Duality Spaces Connecting Distinct Optical form Transforms

This paper presents a novel technique of construction a precise functional frame in presence of the new proposed constraints during the planning straightforward extension of excessive considerable dimensional generalizations using a empirical relationship of two absolutely distinct transforms having diverse kernels transform for the Laplace Stieltjes spaces consisting of analytical signals from two dimensions at any point heavily affecting the successful development for the view of the Gelfand Shilov techniques a subspace of a Schwartz space simple objective function along with their duals implies continuity having functional analyst approach under many classical conventional transforms arise naturally as Laplace Stieltjes transform of certain distributions extensively used in many applications like magnetic field theory follows from the belongings of strong continuity at origin lean heavily in constructing multidimensional S type spaces based on the testing function spaces upto some desired order for infinitely differentiable functions t, x with Gelfand Shilov concept under one umbrella.