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The aim of this narrow-focused text is to argue against the claim that the appresentation of unperceived features of objects that is implied in perceptual intentionality presupposes a reference to ...

Alva Noe’s strategy to solve the puzzle of perceptual presence entirely relies on the principle of presence as access. Unaccessed or unattended parts or details of objects are perceptually present insofar as they are accessible, and they are accessible insofar as one possesses sensorimotor skills that can secure their access. In this paper, I consider several arguments that can be opposed to this claim and that are chiefly related to the modal status of action, i.e. the fact that the action that would secure access to the absent aspects is a possibility, something that can (or maybe could) be done. The main difficulty Noe’s account must face is –as several situations demonstrate– that the action that should be performed for the absent aspects to be actually accessed does not have to be itself available for these aspects to be perceptually present. What matters for the absent aspects to be present is not their de facto (i.e. effective) accessibility, but their de jure accessibility. To overcome those difficulties, I propose to rely on a ternary model of the role of action possibilities in perceptual awareness. This model builds on Husserl’s analysis of the role of perceptual circumstances in perception and connection between sense (Sinn) registering and horizontal intentionality.

Philosophical engineering : Toward a Philosophy of the Web. The Web is commonly considered the most significant computational phenomenon to date. However, the Web itself has received scant attention from philosophy, being best regarded as a mere engineering artifact. Furthermore, the efforts to evolve the Web into the Semantic Web are viewed with suspicion by most philosophers as a return to Cartesian artificial intelligence. I argue that these widely held viewpoints are incorrect, and that the Web succeeds because of its design principles that distinguish it from both previous hypertext systems and knowledge representation systems in classical AI. Furthermore, the Web embodies the logical conclusion of Clark''s Extended Mind thesis since it allows multiple individuals to access and manipulate the same representation, so offering the ultimate in cognitive scaffolding. This undermines the notion of individual intelligence at the heart of Cartesian artificial intelligence and presents a challenge to the role of representations as given in the recent wave of neo-Heideggerian focus on embodiment. Taking the Web seriously moves the primary focus of philosophy away from the role, or lack thereof, of internal representations to external representations. The Web is then properly understood as the creation and evolution of external representations in a universal information space. Berners-Lee calls this “ philosophical engineering,” and it has surprising connections to neo-Fregeanism, antirealism, and other long-standing philosophical debates., Bien qu’il soit généralement considéré comme le système computationnel le plus important à l’heure actuelle, le Web n’a suscité qu’une attention limitée de la philosophie, qui tend à ne voir en lui qu’un produit de l’ingénierie. Les initiatives pour faire évoluer le Web vers un Web sémantique sont également perçues avec méfiance par la plupart des philosophes, qui suspectent en elles une régression vers l’Intelligence Artificielle (IA) cartésienne. Dans cet article, je soutiens que ce point de vue largement répandu est erroné, et que le Web a le succès qu’on lui connait parce qu’il est conçu suivant des principes qui le distinguent radicalement à la fois des systèmes hypertextuels qui l’ont précédé et des systèmes de représentation des connaissances de l’IA classique. Parce qu’il permet à différents individus d’accéder et de manipuler la même représentation, le Web incarne par ailleurs les principes de la Thèse de l’Esprit Étendu de Clark, dont il représente l’ultime étape en termes d’étayage cognitif. Cette particularité va à l’encontre du modèle cartésien de l’intelligence qui en fait une vertu individuelle, et elle constitue un défi pour le courant néo-heideggérien de l’embodiment, qui assume une forme d’antireprésentationnalisme. Prendre le Web au sérieux conduit à s’interroger sur le rôle (ou l’absence de rôle) non plus des représentations internes, mais des représentations externes. Correctement compris, le Web correspond à la création et l’évolution de représentations externes dans un espace informationnel universel. Ce processus, qui relève de ce que Berners-Lee appelle «l’ingénierie philosophique » , soulève des problèmes déjà discutés par les néo-frégéens et les antiréalistes, et rejoint d’autres débats animant de longue date la philosophie., Halpin Harry, Declerck Gunnar. Ingénierie philosophique. Vers une philosophie du Web. In: Intellectica. Revue de l'Association pour la Recherche Cognitive, n°61, 2014/1. Philosophie du Web et Ingénierie des Connaissances. pp. 41-57.

According to the motor simulation theory, the knowledge we possess of what we can do is based on simulation mechanisms triggered by an off-line activation of the brain areas involved in motor control. Action capabilities memory does not work by storing some content, but consists in the capacity, rooted in sensory-motor systems, to reenact off-line action sequences exhibiting the range of our powers. In this paper, I present several arguments from cognitive neuropsychology, but also first-person analysis of experience, against this hypothesis. The claim that perceptual access to affordances is mediated by motor simulation processes rests on a misunderstanding of what affordances are, and comes up against a computational reality principle. Motor simulation cannot provide access to affordances because (i) the affordances we are aware of at each moment are too many for their realization to be simulated by the brain and (ii) affordances are not equivalent to currently or personally feasible actions. The explanatory significance of the simulation theory must then be revised downwards compared to what is claimed by most of its advocates. One additional challenge is to determine the prerequisite, in terms of cognitive processing, for the motor simulation mechanisms to work. To overcome the limitations of the simulation theory, I propose a new approach: the direct content specification hypothesis. This hypothesis states that, at least for the most basic actions of our behavioral repertoire, the action possibilities we are aware of through perception are directly specified by perceptual variables characterizing the content of our experience. The cognitive system responsible for the perception of action possibilities is consequently far more direct, in terms of cognitive processing, than what is stated by the simulation theory. To support this hypothesis I review evidence from current neuropsychological research, in particular data suggesting a phenomenon of ‘fossilization’ of affordances. Fossilization can be defined as a gap between the capacities that are treated as available by the cognitive system and the capacities this system really has at its disposal. These considerations do not mean that motor simulation cannot contribute to explain how we gain perceptual knowledge of what we can do based on the memory of our past performances. However, when precisely motor simulation plays a role and what it is for exactly currently remain largely unknown. Keywords: cognitive neuropsychology; phenomenology; action memory; motor simulation; mental imagery; affordance; action possibility (Published: 26 October 2015) Responsible Editor: Mathieu Hainselin, Universite de Picardie Jules Verne, France. Citation: Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology 2015, 5 : 24807 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/snp.v5.24807

Why naïve semantics cannot be formalized and why this is (almost) of no consequence for ontology engineering. The project of representing the semantics of human concepts using formal languages is not new, but it currently knows a renewed interest with computational ontologies. The main objective of these representation systems, which constitute one essential component of the semantic Web, is to provide machines with “ awareness” of the meaning of the data being processed. Formal languages have always been criticized and their use in ontology engineering is no exception. Various authors denounce this attempt to subject our naive semantics to logical formalisms, which are too strict and too mechanical to capture its expressiveness and adaptability, and propose alternative approaches and models, supposedly closer to “ natural” humanconceptualization and representation mechanisms. The purpose of the present article is to demonstrate that those criticisms are mostly ill-founded, and in any case irrelevant, in the sense that they assume the subordination of ontologies to epistemic requirements (to model faithfully a referent) rather than operational requirements (to be efficient and fulfil needs). They become inappropriate from the moment that one considers that the function of ontologies is not (i) to represent faithfully the furniture and the constituent structures of the reality (realism) or how the mind represents that reality (conceptualism), but (ii) to improve the capacity of categorization, access to information and manipulation of data and documents, and (iii) to standardize practices of categorization and encoding. Based on this conception, a new epistemological approach to computational ontologies can be proposed : instrumentalism., Le projet de représenter la sémantique des termes et concepts humains à l’aide de langages formels ne date pas d’hier, mais il connait aujourd’hui un regain d’intérêt avec le développement des ontologies computationnelles. Fer de lance du Web sémantique, la principale ambition de ces systèmes de représentation est de permettre aux machines d’accéder au «sens » des données qu’elles manipulent. Les langages formels ont toujours eu leurs détracteurs et l’usage qui en est fait en ingénierie ontologique ne fait pas exception. Différents auteurs dénoncent le projet de soumettre notre sémantique naïve à des formalismes logiques, trop rigides et trop mécaniques pour en capter la mobilité et l’adaptabilité, et proposent de leur substituer des approches et modèles alternatifs, censés être plus proches des mécanismes de conceptualisation et de représentation «naturels » de l’humain. L’objet de cet article est de montrer que ces critiques sont pour la plupart infondées, et en tout cas hors sujet, en ce qu’elles présupposent la subordination des ontologies à une exigence épistémique (modéliser de manière fidèle un référent) plutôt qu’opérationnelle (fonctionner et rendre service). Elles perdent leur raison d’être dès lors que l’on considère que la fonction des ontologies n’est pas (i) de représenter de manière fidèle le mobilier et les structures constitutives de la réalité (réalisme) ou la manière dont l’esprit se représente cette réalité (conceptualisme), mais (ii) d’augmenter les capacités de catégorisation, d’accès à l’information et de manipulation de données et documents, et (iii) de normaliser les pratiques de catégorisation et d’encodage. Considérer les ontologies computationnelles dans la perspective de l’augmentation cognitive et de l’instrumentation des pratiques exige un nouveau cadre épistémologique pour leur conception. Nous en décrivons ici les principes de base et proposons de qualifier cette nouvelle approche d’instrumentaliste., Declerck Gunnar, Charlet Jean. Pourquoi notre sémantique naïve n’est pas formalisable et pourquoi c’est (presque) sans conséquence sur l’ingénierie ontologique. In: Intellectica. Revue de l'Association pour la Recherche Cognitive, n°61, 2014/1. Philosophie du Web et Ingénierie des Connaissances. pp. 143-188.

International audience; Différentes théories psychologiques de la perception soutiennent aujourd'hui que le possible est quelque chose que nous percevons. Pour l'approche écologique par exemple, la perception fournit un accès direct aux possibilités d'action potentialisées par les structures de l'environnement. Cette idée est-elle légitime ? Peut-on réellement percevoir le possible ? Si la perception nous branche sur le réel, ne faut-il pas justement se libérer de la perception pour accéder au possible ? Dès lors, le possible n'est-il pas plutôt pensé que perçu, l'objet d'un savoir et non pas d'un voir ? Répondre à ces questions nécessite d'examiner si la thèse que le possible est perçu est en cohérence avec : (a) la structure phénoménologique de l'objet perçu ; (b) nos modèles du fonctionnement de la perception, en particulier le modèle causal standard. Cet examen permet de montrer que si, dans un sens phénoménologique strict, le possible n'est pas quelque chose qui apparaît sur le mode de l'objectité perçue, il contribue néanmoins à déterminer l'organisation et la sémantique de l'environnement perçu. Le possible comme tel n'est pas perçu, mais il confère structure, forme et sens au monde qui apparaît dans la perception.

International audience; For Husserl, kinaesthetic capability is a key piece of the perception process. By ensuring the junction between the actual and the potential, it allows the exhibition of an object that is always more than what appears. Kinaesthetic capability preserves the transcendence of the object by preventing the phenomenon from being confined to pure actuality. This idea, however, poses significant challenges when one questions the nature of the possibilities that are at stake here. Especially, the perceived seems to enjoy a kind of emancipation from these capabilities as they actually are. How can one justify that the structures of the perceived world are the intentional correlate of the kinaesthetic skills of the subject, if such structures continue to regulate the sense of the appearing objects when those skills are neutralized? We will see that only a genetic perspective, assuming the intrinsically historical character of the subject, provides a satisfactory answer to this question, and that this perspective leads to question the actualist position that Husserl sometimes tends to adopt.

International audience; The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of possibility, and not merely that of actuality, for an inquiry into the bodily constitution of experience. The paper will study how the possibilities of action that may (or may not) be available to the subject help to shape the meaning attributed to perceived objects and to the situation occupied by the subject within her environment. This view will be supported by reference to empirical evidence provided by recent and current research on the perceptual estimation of distances and the effects brought about by the use of a tool on the organisation of our perceived immediate space.