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253Parts and places: The structures of spatial representationPhilosophical Review 110 (3): 479-481. 2001.The purpose of Parts and Places, say Casati and Varzi in their introduction, is to construct “a theory of our spatial competence,” a theory that will lay bare how we conceive of space and the things that lie within it. Its purpose, then, is psychological, not metaphysical. Its object of study is not space. It is not the things that lie within it. Rather its object of study is us. In this regard, Parts and Places is at best a mixed success.
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89Trust, secrecy and accuracy in voting systems: the case for transparency (review)Mind and Society 9 (1): 19-23. 2010.If voting systems are to be trusted, they not only need to preserve both secrecy (if requested) and accuracy, but the mechanisms that preserve these features should be transparent, in the sense of being both cognitively understandable and accessible. Electronic voting systems, much as they promise accuracy in counting, and on top of being criticized for their insufficient protection of secrecy, violate the transparency requirement.
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5I defend a cognitive theory of pictures, according to which the central paradigm of our concept of a picture is the representational picture, i.e., the one which induces recognitional abilities in the perceiver. I show how to classify different pictorial styles in terms of their distance from the paradigm, and I criticize alternative accounts.
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442False beliefs and naive beliefs: They can be good for youBehavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6): 512-513. 2009.Naive physics beliefs can be systematically mistaken. They provide a useful test-bed because they are common, and also because their existence must rely on some adaptive advantage, within a given context. In the second part of the commentary we also ask questions about when a whole family of misbeliefs should be considered together as a single phenomenon.
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141Cognitive aspects of gerrymanderingTopoi 20 (2): 203-212. 2001.Some philosochical and cognitive aspects of political gerrymandering are investigated. The basic assumption of gerrymandering practices is that regions be connected. This assumption is questioned, as it seems to result for a cognitive bias for connectedness (a preference for unitary objects).
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182Un altro mondo?Rivista di Estetica 19 (1): 131-159. 2002.Alexandre Koyré wrote that Newton and the science that followed led to a splitting of the world: on the one hand is the “world of qualities and of sensible perceptions”, on the other is the “world of quantities and of reified geometry”. A comparison between facts held true by common sense and false by the scientific image of the world (or vice versa) seems to confirm this view. But is the dichotomy a real one? Is the world of common sense really “another world” relative to the world of the natur…Read more
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1A vision based taxonomy of early shadow depictions.
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4Minor entities : surfaces, holes, and shadowsIn Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew & Ross P. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics, Routledge. 2009.
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64Introduction. The interdisciplinary study of drawingRivista di Estetica 47 3-7. 2011.Drawing — and I speak here of outline drawing that uses just lines: monochrome, with no particular concern for what fills the spaces left between the lines — is a human artifact as ancient as it is mysterious. Even a simple enumeration of facts about it is bound to arouse interest and theoretical curiosity. Here are a few. Drawings are just as old as the oldest human representations known to us. The painted animals in the caves of Lascaux and Chauvet are surrounded by thick lines that have a...
Areas of Specialization
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| Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
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| Metaphilosophy |
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