Projects
Basically, works of art are artifacts. This means that they have a two level structure: a material stratum acting as their bearer and a reified intentional stratum acting as their meaning. What distinguishes the work of arts from other kinds of artifacts is the highly sophisticated organization of the reified intentional stratum. We will approach the analysis of the works of art by two different but complementary viewpoints:
The Natural semiosis and the Ontology projects will provide a first concretization of these two viewpoints. The Documentation Center for Central European Culture will provide historical and documentation sources.
| Literature | Design | Movie | Painting |
| Architecture | Music | Drawing | Picture |
(V. Kandinsky)
1. Framework
2. Natural semiosis
3. Objectives
4. A Few Papers
For many decades, during the 20th Century, regarded as irrelevant to the science and/or philosophy of language was the endeavour to bring natural language back to its prelinguistic structure tied to perception and commonsense world, and even more so the attempt to relate it to neurobiological activity. Completely neglected was also the analysis of the morphogenesis and the complexity of the psychic operations, conceptualizations and procedures comprised in linguistic structures, and particularly in natural language.
In recent years, however, analysis from the cognitive sciences has influenced linguistics, logic and research into artificial intelligence. All of these disciplines require not only a calculus but also a model of the workings of the human mind.
In particular, one of the problems raised by research in the field AI is the complexity of commonsense reasoning and the understanding by machines of natural language, which has prompted new research into systems able to deal with it. Natural reasoning, in fact, involves phenomena such as the free variation of the imagination, creative connections, analogic reasoning, the meaningful use of metaphors, and so on; aspects of thought which have to date been eclipsed by interest in formal-logical reasoning.
A number of recent developments in the cognitive sciences, like the semantics of cognitive linguistics, have addressed the problem of the conceptual genesis of meaning on the basis of the structures of cognitive processes, and in particular on that of the structures of spatial perception.
An assumption underlying this type of semantics is the claimed continuity between lexicon, morphology and syntax, or rejection of the classical paradigm of the separation between syntax and semantics dominant in the 1900s. Another assumption consists in denying that meaning is the direct expression of ‘states of the world’, or that it is prevalently truth-functional (the hypothesis of the Tractatus), and contending instead that meaning is eminently subjective, dynamic, contextual and largely metaphorical, and that it arises primarily from emotions, sensations, kinaesthesia and the structures of imagery.
In other words, the general thesis underpinning this type of semantics is the assumption that conceptualization, in various ways, is the basis for the meaning expressed in natural language, and that it is realized through the multiple embedding of interconnected cognitive spaces.
This type of semantics therefore performs a role that goes beyond linguistics in the strict sense and raises philosophical issues of great importance, such as the concepts of scheme, mental image, direct and indirect reference, reasoning by analogy, counterfactual reasoning, and so on.
Meaning, for cognitive linguists, is a function of both content and cognitive operations relative to the various forms of mental presentation; it is not an objective or universal level of conceptual representation. From this point of view a cognitive linguistics, and more in general cognitive semantics, are intrinsically phenomenological as regards the problem of reference.
Accordingly, in its analysis of the structure of language, cognitive linguistics makes use of concepts drawn inter alia from Gestalt psychology. In other words, it analyses the emergence in the structures of natural language of perceptive fields against the ground of certain construal operations and cognitive distinctions like continuous/discrete, figure/background, closed/open, and so on, which fit well with a phenomenological theory of perceptive and/or cognitive continua.
All cognitive linguists share a geometrical conceptualization of language, their main assumption being that spatialization is a necessary condition for the representability of objects, both in conceptual and in semantic spaces.
However, notwithstanding the generic description of cognitive space, actually does not exist in the strict sense a scientific theory of cognitive space. Since the cognitive space of primary reference, in particular, is that tied to perceptive processes, which are intrinsecally dynamic, such a cognitive space has to concern the intensity, acceleration, simultaneity and action of the elementary features of perceptual wholes in the time presentness, and their renderings in conceptualization.
As to the concept of scheme – which in many respects wrought the cognitive revolution in semantics – it is embraced by all the proponents of cognitive semantics. Cognitive linguistists list part/whole, entity, spatial schemes and schemes relative to distance, as well as schemes relative to force dynamics.
In accordance with this type of semantics, and in support of the idea that there are primary conceptual schemes in conceptualization, the leading assumption of this project is that the invariants of the perceptive process constitute the connection among the forms of categorization which regulate the meaning of perceptive situations and the linguistic rendering of those same perceptions; in other words, that the invariants of the perceptive domain are transposed into conceptualization in accordance with the principles of gestaltic organization.
Consequently, the project intends to verify how and how far natural language is a cognitive activity connected to the structures of primary cognitive processes.
From a philosophical point of view, the thesis sustains the anti-reductionist idea of the actual perceptive presentation as the original cognitive space of reference; while from a semantic point of view it argues that, at least at a first level, we say things as we see them. Analysis of this types it implies the existence of a natural semiosis of meaning, at least as regards the primary level of the cognitive processes.
As to the idea of cognitive spaces, in particular, the thesis refers to the Aristotelian concept of continua, and considers those aspects of phenomenal experience which are preliminary to a theory of perceptual space. The Aristotelian conception of physics, in fact, is based on primitives and conceptual categories different from those described by modern physics; primitives and categories which also differ from those employed to develop the formalisms available to us today. For example, movement plays a prime role in the Aristotelian conception of perceptive continua, but this is not the objective movement of the laws of classical physics but rather the real perceptive phenomenon of movement as it appears in the various perceptual fields, in the change of place by objects, or even in cases of apparent movements.
Shortly, the leading assumptions of the project are:
It considers the source domain to be the structures of phenomenal perception
It emphasises the importance of the dynamic nature of the actual presentation (time of presentness), of which it singles out certain distinctive features providing experimental evidence in their regard.
Finally, the project refers to and is based on experimental studies that have characterized the psychological research who established classical Gestaltpsychologie, and whose ideas are today of great interest to numerous scientists engaged in the analysis of vision.
The initial objectives of the project are primarily theoretical in nature. Once the theoretical framework for analysis of the mechanisms that construct cognitive schemes has been established, work may begin on modelling the results obtained.
In analytical terms, the objectives of the project are as follows:
To identify the features and primitives of cognitive space, their nature, and their dynamics.
To classify the schemes with which cognitive knowledge is organized (figure/ground, perspective (directionality, orientation, vantage point) explicit (or otherwise) mention of structures, elaboration relative to the background, granularity or embeddedness of schematic sub-structures, salience of sub-structures, changes in the focus of attention, force dynamics, scanning.
To plot the connections between conceptual schemes and their linguistic expression (prepositions, active/passive construction, linguistic cases, etc.).
To analyse the geometric mechanisms underpinning conceptualization.
To construct the semantic fields of terms, and to analyse small-scale cognitive constructions of limited hierarchical embeddedness.
The project will concern itself with the following:
The cognitive structure of base conceptual schemes (figure-ground, path, scanning, force-dynamics, etc.).
Analysis of the structure of individual conceptual schemes (e.g.: start, transition phase and point of arrival of the path scheme, its variations (obstacle, interruption, etc.) and its equivalents in linguistic expression (e.g., paraphrase, interpolation, ellipsis, synecdoche, etc.).
Analysis of Gestalt laws (good form, continuation, common destiny, etc.) and their equivalents in linguistic expression (pregnancy, expressiveness of linguistic utterances and propositions, etc.).
Analysis of linguistic phenomena relative to schemes (e.g. the use of nominalization for the linguistic representation of the additional scanning scheme and of the present participle or the gerund for sequential scanning, etc.), and the structures of Gestalt organization (subject/predicate, non-independent and independent parts, metaphorical transposition of conceptual domains, etc.).
Analysis of specific conceptual modules (e.g., the conceptual diversity underlying the positional prepositions ‘on’, ‘in’, ‘at’ in various languages).
Semantic fields of domain (e.g. colours, days of the week, etc.).
Analysis of the inner structure of verbs (e.g. for ‘give’, the distinction between ‘giver’, ‘receiver’ and ‘object given’).
Analysis of the methods used to teach natural language and tools for conceptually adequate translation.
Albertazzi, L. 1997. "Continua, adjectives and tertiary qualities", Axiomathes 8: 7-30.
Albertazzi, L. 1998. "The aesthetics of particulars: A case of intuitive mechanics", Axiomathes 1-2, 169-196.
Albertazzi, L. 1998. "Perceptual saliences and nuclei of meaning”, in R. Poli (ed.), The Brentano Puzzle, Aldershot: Ashgate, 113-138.
Albertazzi, L. 1999. "The time of presentness. A chapter in positivistic and descriptive psychology", Axiomathes 10, 49-74.
Albertazzi, L. 2000. "Direction and perspective points in spatial perception", in L. Albertazzi (ed.) Meaning and cognition. A multidisciplinary approach, Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam, 122-143.
Albertazzi, L. 2000. "Which semantics?", in L. Albertazzi (ed.) Meaning and cognition. A multidisciplinary approach, Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam, 1-24.
Albertazzi, L. 2000. "The primitives of presentation. Parts, wholes and psychophysics", in L. Albertazzi (ed.). The dawn of cognitive science. Early European Contributors, Kluwer: Dordrecht, 29-60.
Albertazzi, L. 2002. "Continua", Introduction to L. Albertazzi (ed.), Unfolding Perceptual Continua, Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam (Forthcoming).
Albertazzi, L. 2002. "Towards a neo-Aristotelian theory of continua: Elements of an empirical geometry", in L. Albertazzi (ed.), Unfolding Perceptual Continua, Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam (Forthcoming).
Albertazzi, L. 2002. "Kinetic structures and causatives", Axiomathes 1 (Forthcoming).
Albertazzi, L. 2002. "Natural semiosis. The identity of perceptual objects", Versus (Forthcoming).
The characteristics of perceptual space are very similar to those of pictorial space, given that they are characterized by a sort of extendedness which unfolds dynamically, and which shows a close analogy between the performance of an act of cognition and of an act of design.
On the basis of diverse areas of expertise – comprising mathematics, philosophy, experimental philosophy and computer engineering, the project intends to analyse certain structures of the dynamic of the visual percept. More specifically, it will examine how the field of visual tensions undergoes changes in relation to perturbations due to the observer’s presence and movement analogously to what happens in the ideation and creation of a work of art, whether a painting, a sculpture or an artefact. From this point of view, analysis of the artistic theories of Kandinsky, Klee, Arnheim, etc., is an integral part of the project, for these theories consider the perceiver (also in the sense of the drawer, the sculptor, etc.) to be part of the field itself of forces and of the process of segmenting the field into figure/ground, texture segmentation, according to the type and direction of the conceptual project that informs the creative action.
Starting with the architecture of the cortical mechanisms that reconstruct visible surfaces from retinal signals, the project seeks to find elements in favour of (or against) the medial axis, extreme curvature and multiscale structural hierarchy.
The unity and the variety of the world is the outcome of the complex interweaving of dependence connections and forms of independence among the many items of which it is composed. One shall seek to explain the features of this multiplicity by beginning with an apparently trivial question: what is there in the world?
We may say that there are material things, plants and animals, as well as the products of the talents and activities of animals and humans in the world. This first almost trivial list already indicates that the world comprises not only things, animate or inanimate, but also activities and processes and the products that derive from them.
It is likewise difficult to deny that there are thoughts, sensations and decisions, and the entire spectrum of mental activities. Just as one is compelled to admit that there are laws and rules, languages, societies and customs.
We can set about organizing this list of objects by saying that there are independent items that may be real (mountains, flowers, animals, and tables), or ideal (sets, propositions, values), and dependent items which in turn may be real (colours, kisses, handshakes and falls) or ideal (formal properties and relations).
All these are in various respects items of the world. Some of them are actually exemplified in the world in which we live; others have been exemplified in the past; and yet others will possibly be exemplified in the future.
Descriptive ontology concerns the collection of such prima facie information either in some specific domain of analysis or in general. Formal ontology distills, filters, codifies and organizes the results of descriptive ontology (in either its local or global setting). According to this interpretation, formal ontology is formal in the sense used by Husserl in his Logical Investigations. Being formal in such a sense therefore means dealing with categories like thing, process, matter, form, whole, and part. These are pure categories that characterize aspects or types of reality and still have nothing to do with the use of any specific formalism.
Formal codification in the strict sense is undertaken at the third level of theory construction: namely that of formalized ontology. The task here is to find the proper formal codification for the constructs descriptively acquired and formally purified in the way just indicated. The level of formalized constructions also relates to evaluation of the adequacy (expressive, computational, cognitive) of the various formalisms, and to the problem of their reciprocal translations.
The close similarity between the terms formal and formalized is somewhat unfortunate. One way to avoid the clash is to use categorical instead of formal.
Most contemporary theory recognizes only two levels of work and often merges the level of the formal categories either with that of descriptive or with that of formalized analysis. As a consequence, the specific relevance of categorical analyses is too often neglected.
The three levels of ontology are different but not separate. In many respects they affect each other. Descriptive findings may bear on formal categories; formalized outcomes may bear on their twin levels, etc. To set out the differences and the connections between the various ontological facets precisely is a most delicate task.
The reaserch project in ontology developed at Mitteleuropa Foundation will address the following problems:
The "Causality and Motivation" (CM) research group is one of the three interest areas of the SophiaEuropa project. The CM group is composed by
These five institution are respectively represented by Roberto Poli, Jean-Michel Roy, Johanna Seibt, Antonio Clericuzio and Gianfranco Coffele. Poli acts as the co-ordinator of the whole group and maintains connections with the other two interest areas composing SophiaEuropa (“Nature, Intentionality and Finality” co-ordinated by Antonio Russo and “Culture, Technology and Religion” co-ordinated by Eamonn Conway). SophiaEuropa is a project of Metanexus Institute in conjunction with leading universities in Europe, made possible by the support of the John Templeton Foundation (USA).
The belief is widely held that the physical world is causally-driven. The world is one because a tangled web of causally-driven processes keeps it together. The actual world is the way it is, because it is the causally-driven outcome of its previous states. However, both the psychological and the social worlds cannot be articulated in causal terms only. Hereby, “motivation” is used as the most general term referring to whatever keeps (synchronically) together and provides (diachronic) reasons explaining the behavior of psychological and social systems.
Biology does not fit easily with either picture. Organisms are part and parcel of nature but they cannot be reduced to a complex web of physical causes, causes that can merely explain the “mechanical” side of such organisms. No serious scholars deny that organisms contain and are based on many mechanisms. However, it cannot be argued that organisms are nothing else than (collections of) mechanisms. Something more is needed. At the same time, motivation does not work for organisms. Again, something else is needed.
This section of the project will address basic category issues. The aim is to sketch at least some fragment of the conceptual framework needed for understanding the various types of realities populating the world and their interrelations.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
The CM group meets regularly twice a year, according to the following tentative schedule:
The first workshop in Bolzano will pave the way for establishing a shared categorial framework. Subsequent events will specifically address selected aspects of the main problems, namely anticipation, levels of reality, emergence, space and time.
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