From sensorimotor dependencies to perceptual practices: making enactivism social

Proponents of enactivism should be interested in exploring what notion of action best captures the type of action-perception link that the view proposes, such that it covers all the aspects in which our doings constitute and are constituted by our perceiving. This article proposes and defends the thesis that the notion of sensorimotor dependencies is insufficient to account for the reality of human perception, and that the central enactive notion should be that of perceptual practices. Sensorimotor enactivism is insufficient because it has no traction on socially dependent perceptions, which are essential to the role and significance of perception in our lives. Since the social dimension is a central desideratum in a theory of human perception, enactivism needs a notion that accounts for such an aspect. This article sketches the main features of the Wittgenstein-inspired notion of perceptual practices as the central notion to understand perception. Perception, I claim, is properly understood as woven into a type of social practices that includes food, dance, dress, music, etc. More specifically, perceptual practices are the enactment of culturally structured, normatively rich techniques of commerce of meaningful multi- and inter-modal perceptible material. I argue that perceptual practices explain three central features of socially dependent perception: attentional focus, aspects’ saliency, and modal-specific harmony-like relations

Antiresonances as precursors of decoherence

We show that, in presence of a complex spectrum, antiresonances act as a precursor for dephasing enabling the crossover to a fully decoherent transport even within a unitary Hamiltonian description. This general scenario is illustrated here by focusing on a quantum dot coupled to a chaotic cavity containing a finite, but large, number of states using a Hamiltonian formulation. For weak coupling to a chaotic cavity with a sufficiently dense spectrum, the ensuing complex structure of resonances and antiresonances leads to phase randomization under coarse graining in energy. Such phase instabilities and coarse graining are the ingredients for a mechanism producing decoherence and thus irreversibility. For the present simple model one finds a conductance that coincides with the one obtained by adding a ficticious voltage probe within the Landauer-Buettiker picture. This sheds new light on how the microscopic mechanisms that produce phase fluctuations induce decoherence.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Europhys. Let

Intrinsic switching field distribution of arrays of Ni80Fe20 nanowires probed by in situ\mathit{in\, situ} magnetic force microscopy

The progress of magnetization reversal of weakly packed ferromagnetic Ni80Fe20 nanowire arrays of different diameters (40, 50, 70 and 100 nm) electrodeposited in polycarbonate membranes was studied by magnetic force microscopy (MFM). For such a low packing density of nanomagnets, the dipolar interactions between neighbouring wires can be neglected. The intrinsic switching field distribution has been extracted from in situ MFM images and its width was found to be considerably smaller than for densely packed nanowire arrays.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. To appear in Journal of Superconductivity and Novel Magnetis

Chromatography-Olfactometry Study of the Aroma of Fino Sherry Wines

The aroma of Fino sherry wines produced by industrial biological aging for 0, 1.5, 2.5, 4.5, and 6 years in the Montilla-Moriles region (southern Spain) was studied by gas chromatography-olfactometry. The aroma sensations detected by 3 trained sniffers were classified according to their odor descriptors into 8 odorant series (fruity, empyreumatic, chemical, fatty, balsamic, vegetable, floral, and spicy), describing the aroma profile of the studied wines. The results showed 47 detected odors in the unaged wines, 50 in the 1.5-years-old wines and 59, 61 and 69 in the wines aged 2.5, 4.5, and 6 years, respectively. According to the frequency of the perceived aromas, the fruity and empyreumatic series were the most characteristic odorant series. By exception of chemical, floral and balsamic series without changes during aging of the wines, the remainder series increased their participation during the aging, mainly the fruity, empyreumatic, and fatty series