Carmelo Calì

The present paper aims to validate our research on human–humanoid interaction (HHI) using the minimalist humanoid robot Telenoid. We conducted the human–robot interaction test with 142 young people who had no prior interaction experience with this robot. The main goal is the analysis of the two social dimensions (‘‘Perception’’ and ‘‘Believability’’) useful for increasing the natural behaviour between users and Telenoid.Weadministered our custom questionnaire to human subjects in association with a well defined experimental setting (‘‘ordinary and goal-guided task’’). A thorough analysis of the questionnaires has been carried out and reliability and internal consistency in correlation between the multiple items has been calculated. Our experimental results show that the perceptual behaviour and believability, as implicit social competences, could improve the meaningfulness and the natural-like sense of human–humanoid interaction in everyday life task-driven activities. Telenoid is perceived as an autonomous cooperative agent for a shared environment by human beings.

Attempts to introduce Gestalt theory into the realm of visual neuroscience are discussed on both theoretical and experimental grounds. To define the framework in which these proposals can be defended, this paper outlines the characteristics of a standard model, which qualifies as a received view in the visual neurosciences, and of the research into natural images statistics. The objections to the standard model and the main questions of the natural images research are presented. On these grounds, this paper defends the view that Gestalt psychology and experimental phenomenology provide a contribution to the research into perception by the construction of phenomenological models for an ecologically meaningful interpretation of the empirical evidence and the hypothetical constructs of the natural image research within the visual neuroscience. A formal framework for the phenomenological models is proposed, wherein Gestalt theoretical principles and empirical evidence are represented in terms of topological properties and relationships, which account for the order and structures that make the environment accessible to observers at a relevant behavioural level. It is finally argued that these models allow us to evaluate the principles and the empirical evidence of various natures which are integrated from different fields into the research into perception, and in particular into visual neurosciences.

Questo articolo si concentra sul problema del rapporto tra fenomenologia e psicologia della percezione. Nella prima parte presenterò alcuni assunti di fondo che qualificano le ricerche sulla percezione nel campo della fenomenologia teorica e in quella della cosiddetta fenomenologia sperimentale. Successivamente intendo approfondire l’analisi, considerando il concetto specifico di percezione impiegato da Husserl nella sua fenomenologia e un concetto più lasco di percezione compatibile con la prospettiva psicologica per gettar luce sulla possibilità di un approccio integrato, mirante a unificare le analisi fenomenologiche e psicologiche nel pieno rispetto delle loro proprie specificità. Nella parte finale del testo cercherò di presentare alcuni elementi che accomunano l’analisi husserliana della percezione e le ricerche sulla percezione sviluppate da una prospettiva psicologica da Paolo Bozzi e Cesare Musatti.

In this paper the relationship between phenomenology of perception and synthetic phenomenology is discussed. Synthetic phenomenology is presented on the basis of the issues in A.I. and Robotics that required to address the question of what enables artificial agents to have phenomenal access to the environment. Phenomenology of perception is construed as a theory with autonomous structure and domain, which can be embedded in a philosophical as well as a scientific theory. Two attempts at specifying the phenomenal content of artificial agents are discussed. Concepts and experimental evidence on the independence of perception and the coordination of motion and appearances are set out to submit that phenomenology of perception makes a contribution to synthetic phenomenology.

This volume intends to contribute to the study of Husserl's phenomenology from an aesthetic point of view. It focuses on little-known texts which have appeared only in the Husserliana series, as well as on manuscripts from the Husserl Archive, which complement the analysis Husserl proposes in his better-known works. The main goal of this study is to articulate a comprehensive theory based on that material. For this reason, the volume examines not only the phenomenological literature but also the literature of the English-speaking world that deals with the same issues, in order to foreground the range and contemporary relevance of phenomenology. The volume, which opens with an introductory chapter on the terminology and methodology of phenomenology, is divided into three parts. The first part deals with physical images. The analysis focuses on the specific structure that distinguishes them from perceptive illusions, symbols or diagrams, and on the difference between a reference performed through images and perception. The second part discusses the images of the imagination, the so-called mental images. These images do not bear the same relation with the visual field that both perception and physical images do. Mental images are different from physical ones, even though they are neither objects of a special sort nor a mere epiphenomenon of cognitive activity. The third part of the volume foregrounds the more specifically aesthetic aspects of this study. It analyzes the meaning a physical image takes on when it becomes the core of an artwork, as well as the differences between the aesthetic stance and the ordinary way of reference through images. The analysis of the aesthetic reference and of the connected feeling reveals that the aesthetic object constitutes an objectivity of a higher degree than that of the material object that exemplify it. This explains the possibility of an aesthetic approach toward natural objects. The results of this study lead to the formulation of different criteria of identity for artistic and material objects, by analysing the phenomenological form of the artistic object and the relation that it bears with the material objects that exemplify it.

In this theoretical paper, the claim is defended that phenomenology of perception can be integrated into vision science. Different versions of theoretical and experimental phenomenology are presented to specify a minimal set of commitments. It is claimed that the phenomenological research into perception, be it delivered in the form of conceptual analysis or of experimental research, satisfies the epistemological and methodological substantive features of these commitments. As an empirical case for the contribution that the integration of phenomenology into vision science could bring about, the paper presents a received view in the visual neurosciences and the objections against its elementarwise and reductionist stance. The relationships among models and mechanisms are discussed. It is argued that models endowed with linking propositions with phenomenological contents can provide the conceptual case for the integration of phenomenology into vision science to be carried out.

The research Lucia Pizzo Russo carried out all over her academic and scientific career is focussed on a the following idea: human mind and behaviour make up a cognitive device from whose complexity stems an evolutionary advantage. Hence, the psychological study of mind should take into account all those cognitive functions that underlie man’s ability of perceiving structures and affordances in the visual world as much as of solving problems, where perception and thought deeply interact, and of giving shape to representations, be they artistic forms or scientific theories. But for an adequate psychological account to obtain that complexity must be traded off against the assumption that mind and behaviour are a psychophysical unity. That means that cognition does imply a neurobiological basis, and at the same time that a phenomenological stance is required just as that instanced by Gestalt psychology. In this interview a picture of a piece of life is meant to be given as it goes along with a research whose reference are issues in psychology, psychology of arts and such figures as Brandi, Piaget, Gombrich, Arnheim, Bozzi.

The research Lucia Pizzo Russo carried out all over her academic and scientific career is focussed on a the following idea: human mind and behaviour make up a cognitive device from whose complexity stems an evolutionary advantage. Hence, the psychological study of mind should take into account all those cognitive functions that underlie man’s ability of perceiving structures and affordances in the visual world as much as of solving problems, where perception and thought deeply interact, and of giving shape to representations, be they artistic forms or scientific theories. But for an adequate psychological account to obtain that complexity must be traded off against the assumption that mind and behaviour are a psychophysical unity. That means that cognition does imply a neurobiological basis, and at the same time that a phenomenological stance is required just as that instanced by Gestalt psychology. In this interview a picture of a piece of life is meant to be given as it goes along with a research whose reference are issues in psychology, psychology of arts and such figures as Brandi, Piaget, Gombrich, Arnheim, Bozzi.