Recensione di M. Tomasello, Le origini della comunicazione umana

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Internal perception: some facets of an open problem

The term ‘internal perception’ typically indicates the experience humans have of what happens inside their bodies, i.e., their bodily states and changes. In the literature, these were mostly considered as parts of two main body monitoring systems, known as the interoceptive and proprioceptive systems. This paper explores the concept of internal perception and suggests that for the purposes of philosophical research, it can be considered as the product of a unified propriosensitive system that provides a constant, dynamic mapping of internal states and their changes. The study examines some positions contending that bodily signals do not constitute a proper form of perception and argues that, on the contrary, proprioceptivity is entirely analogous to exteroception in all significant aspects. This involves identifying criteria to establish under what conditions something can be defined as a form of perception and whether internal perception meets these criteria. The underlying idea of this essay is that internal perception plays a fundamental role in understanding human cognition, although it has traditionally been neglected by philosophy and – more generally – by cognitive research which have predominantly focused on exteroception, and particularly on vision, as the privileged sensory modality for knowledge acquisition. Lastly, the paper calls for a more rigorous examination of the propriosensitive system, suggesting that internal perception represents a largely untapped field in philosophical inquiry, with potential to reshape our understanding of the epistemological role of the body in knowledge acquisition.Il termine ‘percezione interna’ tipicamente indica l’esperienza che gli esseri umani hanno di ciò che accade all'interno dei loro corpi, ovvero dei loro stati e cambiamenti corporei. In letteratura questi sono considerati principalmente alla stregua dei prodotti di due sistemi di monitoraggio noti come sistema interocettivo e propriocettivo. Questo articolo esplora il concetto di percezione interna e suggerisce che, ai fini della ricerca filosofica, essa può essere considerata come il prodotto di un sistema propriosensitivo unificato che fornisce una mappatura costante e dinamica degli stati interni e dei loro cambiamenti. Lo studio esamina alcune posizioni che sostengono che i segnali corporei non costituiscono una forma di percezione in senso proprio. Esso mostra che, al contrario, la propriosensitività è del tutto analoga all'esterocezione in tutti gli aspetti significativi. Per avvalorare questa tesi l’articolo individua dei criteri per stabilire in quali condizioni qualcosa può essere definito come una forma di percezione e discute come/perché la percezione interna soddisfa questi criteri. L'idea di fondo di questo saggio è che la percezione interna gioca un ruolo fondamentale nella comprensione della cognizione umana, sebbene sia stata tradizionalmente trascurata dalla filosofia e, più in generale, dalla ricerca cognitiva che si è prevalentemente concentrata sull'esterocezione e, in particolare, sulla visione come la modalità sensoriale privilegiata per l'acquisizione della conoscenza. Infine l'articolo sostiene che la percezione interna rappresenta un campo in gran parte inesplorato nell'indagine filosofica e suggerisce che il sistema propriosensitivo meriti di essere oggetto sistematico di attenzione da parte della filosofia: una sua migliore comprensione potrebbe aiutarci a riconfigurare il ruolo epistemologico attribuibile al corpo nell'acquisizione di conoscenza

What future for cognitive science(s)?

Abstract: In this introduction to the thematic issue on the future of the cognitive science(s), we examine how challenges and uncertainties surrounding the past and present of this discipline make it difficult to chart its future. We focus on two main questions. The first is whether cognitive science is a single unified field or inherently pluralistic. This question can be asked at various levels: First, with respect to the disciplines that should be included in the cognitive hexagon and their reciprocal relationships: should we speak of cognitive science or of the cognitive sciences? Second, with regard to the conceptual and methodological changes (turns or revolutions) that have taken place within the cognitive project from its inception to the present day. Third, it pertains to cognitive psychology as a discipline. Before the emergence of cognitive science psychology was a fragmented discipline characterized by different traditions and approaches: has cognitive science been able to stem this fragmentation? Finally, we can question the unity of the cognitive architecture itself: is cognition produced by homogeneous or heterogenous mechanisms for information processing? We show that the issue of unity is addressed by several of the papers included in this thematic issue. In the second part of this introduction, we query the role that each component discipline should play in the cognitive project and in particular which should lead the project going forward, and why. Again, we show how this issue has been tackled by several articles featured in this collection.Keywords: Future of Cognitive Science; Cognitive Psychology; Pluralism and Cognitive Science; Philosophy and Cognitive Science; Fragmentation of Psychology Quale futuro per la scienza cognitiva?Riassunto: In questa introduzione al fascicolo tematico dedicato al futuro della scienza cognitiva prendiamo in considerazione sfide e incertezze che caratterizzano il passato e il presente di questa disciplina, rendendo difficile prevedere il suo futuro. Due le questioni principali su cui concentriamo l’attenzione. La prima: la scienza cognitiva è un ambito unitario o intrinsecamente pluralistico? Questo problema si manifesta a diversi livelli. In primo luogo, riguarda le discipline che dovrebbero comporre l’esagono cognitivo e le loro relazioni reciproche: dovremmo parlare di scienza cognitiva o di scienze cognitive? In secondo luogo, riguarda le trasformazioni (svolte o rivoluzioni) concettuali e metodologiche avvenute all’interno di questo progetto dalla sua nascita fino ai giorni nostri. In terzo luogo, riguarda la psicologia cognitiva. Prima della nascita della scienza cognitiva la psicologia era una disciplina frammentaria caratterizzata da diverse tradizioni e approcci: possiamo dire che la scienza cognitiva abbia posto rimedio a tale frammentazione? Infine, il problema dell’unità sorge anche in relazione all’architettura cognitiva stessa, considerando che la cognizione potrebbe o potrebbe non essere prodotta da meccanismi omogenei di elaborazione delle informazioni. Nella presentazione che segue si cerca di mostrare come l’unità, in tutte queste varianti, sia una questione affrontata da diversi articoli presenti in questo fascicolo tematico. Nella seconda parte di questa introduzione prendiamo in considerazione il problema del ruolo che ciascuna disciplina componente dovrebbe svolgere nel progetto cognitivo e, in particolare, quale dovrebbe guidare il progetto e perché, ponendo in evidenza come anche questa sia una questione centrale, tematizzata da diversi lavori presentati in questo fascicolo.Parole chiave: Futuro della scienza cognitiva; Psicologia cognitiva; Pluralismo e scienza cognitiva; Filosofia e scienza cognitiva; Frammentazione della psicologi

Human-Machine Collaboration Approaches to Build a Dialogue Dataset for Hate Speech Countering

Fighting online hate speech is a challenge that is usually addressed using Natural Language Processing via automatic detection and removal of hate content. Besides this approach, counter narratives have emerged as an effective tool employed by NGOs to respond to online hate on social media platforms. For this reason, Natural Language Generation is currently being studied as a way to automatize counter narrative writing. However, the existing resources necessary to train NLG models are limited to 2-turn interactions (a hate speech and a counter narrative as response), while in real life, interactions can consist of multiple turns. In this paper, we present a hybrid approach for dialogical data collection, which combines the intervention of human expert annotators over machine generated dialogues obtained using 19 different configurations. The result of this work is DIALOCONAN, the first dataset comprising over 3000 fictitious multi-turn dialogues between a hater and an NGO operator, covering 6 targets of hate.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (long paper

Alterità e convivenza tra pregiudizio e nuove forme di consapevolezza

Editors' Not

A scientometric review of alexithymia: Mapping thematic and disciplinary shifts in half a century of research

The term “alexithymia” was introduced in the lexicon of psychiatry in the early ‘70s by Sifneos to outline the difficulties manifested by some patients in identifying and describing their own emotions. Since then, the construct has been broadened and partially modified. Today this describes a condition characterized by an altered emotional awareness which leads to difficulties in recognizing your own and others’ emotions. In half a century, the volume of scientific products focusing on alexithymia has exceeded 5,000. Such an expansive knowledge domain poses a difficulty for those willing to understand how alexithymia research has developed. Scientometrics embodies a solution to this issue, employing computational, and visual analytic methods to uncover meaningful patterns within large bibliographical corpora. In this study, we used the CiteSpace software to examine a corpus of 4,930 publications on alexithymia ranging from 1980 to 2020 and their 100,251 references included in Web of Science. Document co-citation analysis was performed to highlight pivotal publications and major research areas on alexithymia, whereas journal co-citation analysis was conducted to find the related editorial venues and disciplinary communities. The analyses suggest that the construct of alexithymia experienced a gradual thematic and disciplinary shift. Although the first conceptualization of alexithymia came from psychoanalysis and psychosomatics, empirical research was pushed by the operationalization of the construct formulated at the end of the ‘80s. Specifically, the development of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, currently the most used self-report instrument, seems to have encouraged both the entrance of new disciplines in the study of alexithymia (i.e., cognitive science and neuroscience) and an implicit redefinition of its conceptual nucleus. Overall, we discuss opportunities and limitations in the application of this bottom-up approach, which highlights trends in alexithymia research that were previously identified only through a qualitative, theory-driven approach

Clarifying the relationship between alexithymia and subjective interoception

The long-standing hypothesis that emotions rely on bodily states is back in the spotlight. This has led some researchers to suggest that alexithymia, a personality construct characterized by altered emotional awareness, reflects a general deficit in interoception. However, tests of this hypothesis have relied on heterogeneous assessment methods, leading to inconsistent results. To shed some light on this issue, we administered a battery of selfreport questionnaires of interoception and alexithymia to three samples from Italy, the U.S., and Singapore (N = 814). Correlation and machine learning analyses showed that alexithymia was associated with deficits in both subjective interoceptive accuracy and attention. Alexithymics’ interoceptive deficits were primarily related to difficulty identifying and describing feelings. Interoception showed a weaker association with externally-oriented thinking as operationalized by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and no association with the affective dimension of alexithymia later introduced by the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ). We discuss our results with reference to the theoretical and psychometric differences between these two measures of alexithymia and their shortcomings. Overall, our results support the view that interoceptive deficits are a core component of alexithymia, although the latter cannot be reduced to the former

Cognizioni, affetti, giudizi: un resoconto problematico

What role do affective states play in cognition? In this work, we use contemporary cognitive research to address this question. We first define emotions with respect to the much wider class of affective states, showing how each of them can affect our judgement. We then describe a poorly investigated subclass of affective states called “epistemic feelings”, which make a particularly strong impact on our thinking processes. We then turn to consider a subclinical condition, “alexithymia”, characterized by an inability to perceive real emotions. Alexithymics have normal intelligence, however they have impaired awareness of their own emotions. By analyzing the skills alexithymics preserve and the difficulties they face, we show that numerous fundamental social skills – for understanding, evaluating and judging human behavior – rely deeply on emotions

Le culture epistemiche. A proposito di status e funzione di un concetto epistemologico

Cultures of Knowledge. On Status and Function of an Epistemological Concept – This article illustrates the concept of “cultures of knowledge”. This is used in the fields of epistemology, philosophy of culture and of sociology of knowledge to indicate the contextual and the relational character of human knowledge, which is always determined by cultural and social factors. The expression “cultures of knowledge” is related mainly to the processes through which knowledge is developed and justified. This work will be focused primarily on the description of the structural characteristics of this notion and of the sources through which this has been developed in the literature. Furthermore, the paper will show that the idea of “cultures of knowledge” produces an intrinsically relational and contextual view of human knowledge