[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] Constructionists operationalize a powerful notion they share with constructivists: individual learning is facilitated by building models of specific ideas, concepts, methods, objects, environments, feelings, dreams, memories and sounds using the learner’s current stock of knowledge. Constructionists do this by building models or artifacts that can be externally manipulated, interrogated by their builder, and verbally shared with others. Constructionists believe that new knowledge is created during these discussions. Constructionism is rich with heuristic methods (...) for both finding and constructing artifacts and for discussing these artifacts privately and publicly. Constructionists argue that both constructing and discussing are necessary for deep sense-making. This paper describes one specific constructionist learning method: visual modeling. It illustrates one educator’s approach, developed in the classroom over a 40-year period. It references the relevant literature; describes its pedagogic approach, materials and outcomes; and it offers a step-by-step example of one student’s thinking process. Finally, it presents – in appropriate narrative form – 15 arguments why the visual component extends the constructionist project and should be integrated into more educational programs. (shrink)

The comment addresses central issues of a "theory theory" approach as exemplified in Gopnik' and Goldman's BBS-articles. Gopnik, on the one hand, tries to demonstrate that empirical evidence from developmental psychology supports the view of a "theory theory" in which common sense beliefs are constructed to explain ourselves and others. Focusing the informational processing routes possibly involved we would like to argue that his main thesis (e.g. idea of intentionality as a cognitive construct) lacks support at least for two reasons: (...) one methodological and one structural. On the other hand, Goldman raises an important question when he is asking how people ascribe mental states to themselves. Reasons why Goldman's attempt to understand common sense mental representations by using an analogy from visual perception is problematic are discussed. The role which is attributed to a phenomenology is evaluated. (shrink)

Both scientific realism and social constructionism offer unpromising and even destructive ways of trying to understand nature and human–nature relations. The reasons include what these apparent opponents share: a commitment to the (latterly) modernist division between subject/culture and object/nature that results from what is here called 'monist essentialism'. It is contrasted with 'relational pluralism', which provides the basis of a better alternative – ecopluralism – which, properly understood, is necessarily both ecocentric and pluralist.

Who Needs Stories if You Can Get the Data? ISPs in the Era of Big Number Crunching Content Type Journal Article Category Special Issue Pages 371-390 DOI 10.1007/s13347-011-0041-8 Authors Mireille Hildebrandt, Institute of Computer and Information Sciences (ICIS), Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, the Netherlands Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433 Journal Volume Volume 24 Journal Issue Volume 24, Number 4.

The central mission of cognitive science is to reveal the real nature of the mind, however familiar or foreign that nature may be to naive preconceptions. The existence of naive conceptions is also important, however. Prescientific thought and language contain concepts of the mental, and these concepts deserve attention from cognitive science. Just as scientific psychology studies folk physics (McCloskey 1983, Hayes 1985), viz., the common understanding (or misunderstanding) of physical phenomena, so it must study folk psychology, the common understanding (...) of mental states. This subfield of scientific psychology is what I mean by the phrase 'the psychology of folk psychology'. (shrink)

Plato’s work offers insights into the corrosive impact of eros, insights central for contemporary politics. The article combines an in-depth reading of Plato with a case study, arguing for the relevance of communism. This is because love also establishes a relationship of subordination to the object of desire, which can subjugate and entrap the lover in his or her feelings. Such instrumentalization of eros in communism was promoted by adherents being supposed to love the sufferers. The obligation that to understand (...) and help the sufferers one must become a sufferer turned suffering into an autopoietic system. The acceptance of such instrumentalization of love was rendered possible first by a sense of guilt due to the system of passionate interests (Tarde and Latour), connected to the rise of capitalism as a solution for the period of civil wars, and then by the liminal conditions that emerged, especially in eastern Europe, after two world wars; conditions that were purposefully perpetuated through staging a sacrificial system, paralysing social life. The character of such liminal leaders can be analysed through the figure of the trickster, developed by anthropologists, complementing Weber’s notion of charisma. While communism disappeared as a force, contemporary political life is increasingly reduced to a politics of victimhood and suffering, where the search for the good life is replaced by the double negation of eliminating all suffering from the world – an effort that only produces the opposite result, while public reality becomes torn apart by sex scandals, confirming Foucault’s insight about the investment of desire and enslavement to sexuality. (shrink)

This essay considers P. J. Ivanhoe's critical challenge to Slingerland's analysis of wuwei(‘effortless action’). While I agree with Ivanhoe that we should do more work to embody and understand the concept of wuwei, I will defend Slingerland's notion that wuwei involves paradox—particularly in the cases of Zhuangi and Laozi. The present essay is not a defense of the specifics of Slingerland's analysis. Nonetheless, this essay focuses on defending the notion of paradox. Ivanhoe offers an alternative view of wuwei, one that (...) sees the paradox as a riddle. I argue that this kind of formulation would frame the problem of wuwei in an unhelpful manner. I offer several novel ways of overcoming, or at least qualifying, the experience of paradox that seems to be at play in nondoing. (shrink)

Context: The majority of contemporary enactivist work is influenced by the philosophical biology of Hans Jonas. Jonas credits all living organisms with experience that involves particular “existential” structures: nascent forms of concern for self-preservation and desire for objects and outcomes that promote well-being. We argue that Jonas’s attitude towards living systems involves a problematic anthropomorphism that threatens to place enactivism at odds with cognitive science, and undermine its legitimate aims to become a new paradigm for scientific investigation and understanding of (...) the mind. Problem: Enactivism needs to address the tension between its Jonasian influences and its aspirations to become a new paradigm for cognitive science. By relying on Jonasian phenomenology, contemporary enactivism obscures alternative ways in which phenomenology can be more smoothly integrated with cognitive science. Method: We outline the historical relationship between enactivism and phenomenology, and explain why anthropomorphism is problematic for a research program that aspires to become a new paradigm for cognitive science. We examine the roots of Jonas’s existential interpretation of biological facts, and describe how and why Jonas himself understood his project as founded on an anthropomorphic assumption that is incompatible with a crucial methodological assumption of scientific enquiry: the prohibition of unexplained natural purposes. We describe the way in which phenomenology can be integrated into Maturana’s autopoietic theory, and use this as an example of how an alternative, non-anthropomorphic science of the biological roots of cognition might proceed. Results: Our analysis reveals a crucial tension between Jonas’s influence on enactivism and enactivism’s paradigmatic aspirations. This suggests the possibility of, and need to investigate, other ways of integrating phenomenology with cognitive science that do not succumb to this tension. Implications: In light of this, enactivists should either eliminate the Jonasian inference from properties of our human experience to properties of the experience of all living organisms, or articulate an alternative conception of scientific enquiry that can tolerate the anthropomorphism this inference entails. The Maturanian view we present in the article’s final section constitutes a possible framework within which enactivist tools and concepts can be used to understand cognition and phenomenology, and that does not involve a problematic anthropomorphism. Constructivist content: Any constructivist approach that aims for integration with current scientific practice must either avoid the type of anthropomorphic inference on which Jonas bases his work, or specify a new conception of scientific enquiry that renders anthropomorphism unproblematic. (shrink)

This book aims to contribute to the overall, integrated understanding of the processes of language contact and their evolution, be they the result of political or economic (dis)integrations or migrations or for technological reasons. Via an interdisciplinary, holistic approach, it also aims to aid the theoretical grounding of a unified, common sociolinguistic paradigm, based on an ecological and complexical perspective. This perspective is based on the fact that linguistic structures do not live in isolation from their social functions and must (...) be situated in relation to the sub- and supra-systems that determine their existence if we are to understand their fortunes. It is a contribution in understanding and promoting the processes of linguistic revitalization in the world, combining at the same time the maintenance and development of diversity while ensuring the intercommunication of human species. (shrink)

Human linguistic phenomenon is at one and the same time an individual, social, and political fact. As such, its study should bear in mind these complex interrelations, which are produced inside the framework of the sociocultural and historical ecosystem of each human community. Understanding this phenomenon is often no easy task, due to the range of elements involved and their interrelations. The absence of valid, clearly developed paradigms adds to the problem and means that the theoretical conclusions that emerge may (...) be unclear on certain points. It is true that in the last fifty years sociolinguistic studies have advanced considerably, and today we have access to an impressive set of data and a wide variety of theoretical reflections. But as a discipline sociolinguistics does not yet have unified, powerful theoretical models able to account rigorously and clearly for the phenomena it studies. Sociolinguistic studies are today a diverse set of contributions in which certain and theoretical schools and lines of research emerged; but as is to be expected in a relatively new field, there is not enough communication between the various schools and they cannot yet be said to be integrated in terms of their conceptual and theoretical postulates. Against this background, our work aims to contribute to the overall, integrated understanding of the processes of language contact. Via an interdisciplinary, eclectic approach, it also aims to aid the theoretical grounding and integration of a unified, common sociolinguistic paradigm. Our strategy will not be merely to combine the contributions from ongoing research lines, but to address the question from a more global viewpoint which, together with the more innovative contemporary scientific disciplines, permits a harmonious integration of the various sociolinguistic perspectives in a broad, deep and unitary approach to the reality. The materials used to construct this unified approach are taken from many sources: Theoretical physics, ecology, the philosophy of science and mind, anthropology, phenomenological and process sociology, cognitive sciences, political science, pragmatics, history, systems theory, approaches to complexity and obviously sociolinguistics, are all involved in a dialogue in this desire for integration. (shrink)

This thesis studies the enabling properties of ICT and their effects and potential for social change, and prepares the ground for a sustainability-oriented ethico-political assessment of this technology. It primarily builds on interdisciplinary scholarship to describe and explain the multifaceted co-evolution between the global deployment of ICTs and the emergence of the Information Society, understood as a socioeconomic restructuring of capitalism. Beyond the role of ICTs in this regime transition, the thesis delivers other philosophical insights about crucial aspects of ICT (...) development, applications and management. These include arguments about how we should conceptualize ICTs on the basis of their different roles in extending human communication and in performing or facilitating the remote control of humans and animals, machines and systems operations; about the entanglement between telecommunications, transport networks, urban development and work and organization; and about the relations between ICTs, culture and human values. Examples are offered to illustrate the potential that these empirical and philosophical lessons may hold for the construction of a framework for the ethico-political assessment of ICTs. (shrink)

Intermediate phenomena of reality present particular characteristics of systemic self-organization, multilevel interrelations, recursivity, emergence of new «objects» with properties different from those of the elements that form them, and evolutionary dynamics, that probably need the formulation of new theoretical concepts and different paradigm principles. The sciences or perspectives of complexity, or the «complex» thinking, try to respond adequately to this complexity of reality. This approach adopts a multidimensional, integrated and dynamic view of reality: the world is made up of overlapping (...) levels of different elements which produce new properties or new organizations at higher levels. If we conceive what we call languages as simple and decontextualized objects, we can understand some of the more mechanical aspects but we will ignore their conditions of existence, functionality, maintenance, variation, change and extinction. (shrink)

Intelligence in current AI research is measured according to designer-assigned tasks that lack any relevance for an agent itself. As such, tasks and their evaluation reveal a lot more about our intelligence than the possible intelligence of agents that we design and evaluate. As a possible first step in remedying this, this article introduces the notion of “self-concern,” a property of a complex system that describes its tendency to bring about states that are compatible with its continued self-maintenance. Self-concern, as (...) argued, is the foundation of the kind of basic intelligence found across all biological systems, because it reflects any such system's existential task of continued viability. This article aims to cautiously progress a few steps closer to a better understanding of some necessary organisational conditions that are central to self-concern in biological systems. By emulating these conditions in embodied AI, perhaps something like genuine self-concern can be implemented in machines, bringing AI one step closer to its original goal of emulating human-like intelligence. (shrink)

The concept of stage presence in performing arts is generally understood as the ability of the skilled performer to capture the attention of the audience, a prerogative of the talented actor, who occupies a position of power in respect to the audience. This work challenges the classic model of stage presence as an intrinsic quality of the performer and proposes instead a cognitive ecological ethnographic framework which considers the role played by various social actors — the public and the performers, (...) embedded in specific historical, cultural, and social environments — in shaping the performance event. Through an ethnographic and phenomenological analysis of the concept of stage presence in different performative contexts, this work proposes a cognitive ecological approach to the study of stage presence, suggesting possible methodological directions. (shrink)

Ever since the hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1996, 1995) first entered the scene in the debate over consciousness many have taken it to show the limitations of a scientific or naturalist explanation of consciousness. The hard problem is the problem of explaining why there is any experience associated with certain physical processes, that is, why there is anything it is like associated with such physical processes? The character of one’s experience doesn’t seem to be entailed by physical processes and (...) so an explanation which can overcome such a worry must (1) explain how physical processes give rise to experience (explain the entailment), (2) give an explanation which doesn’t rely on such physical processes, or (3) show why the hard problem is misguided in some sense. Recently, a rather ambitious and novel theory of consciousness has entered the scene – Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of Consciousness (Oizumi et al., 2014; Tononi, 2008; Tononi et al., 2016) – and proposes that consciousness is the result of a specific type of information processing, what those developing the theory call integrated information. The central aim of this dissertation is to philosophically investigate IIT and see whether it has the ability to overcome the hard problem and related worries. I then aim to use this philosophical investigation to answer a set of related questions which guide this dissertation, which are the following: Is it possible to give an information-theoretic explanation of consciousness? What would the nature of such an explanation be and would it result in a novel metaphysics of consciousness? In this dissertation, I begin in chapter one by first setting up the hard problem and related arguments against the backdrop of IIT (Mindt, 2017). I show that given a certain understanding of structural and dynamical properties IIT fails to overcome the hard problem of consciousness. I go on in chapter two to argue that a deflationary account of causation is the best view for IIT to overcome the causal exclusion problem (Baxendale and Mindt, 2018). In chapter three, I explain IIT’s account of how the qualitative character of our experience arises (qualia) and what view of intentionality (the directedness of our mental states) IIT advocates. I then move on in chapter four to show why the hard problem mischaracterizes structural and dynamical properties and misses important nuances that may shed light on giving a naturalized explanation of consciousness. In the last and fifth chapter, I outline a sketch of a novel metaphysics of consciousness that takes the conjunction of Neutral Monism and Information-Theoretic Structural Realism to give what I call Information-Theoretic Neutral-Structuralism. (shrink)

In today’s society of humans and machines, automation, animation, and ecosystems are terms of concern. Categories of life and technology have become mixed in governmental policies and drive economic exploitation and the pathologies of everyday life. This book both curiously and critically advances the term that underlies these new developments: machine.

Three special issues of Entropy journal have been dedicated to the topics of “InformationProcessing and Embodied, Embedded, Enactive Cognition”. They addressed morphological computing, cognitive agency, and the evolution of cognition. The contributions show the diversity of views present in the research community on the topic of computation and its relation to cognition. This paper is an attempt to elucidate current debates on computation that are central to cognitive science. It is written in the form of a dialog between two authors (...) representing two opposed positions regarding the issue of what computation is and could be, and how it can be related to cognition. Given the different backgrounds of the two researchers, which span physics, philosophy of computing and information, cognitive science, and philosophy, we found the discussions in the form of Socratic dialogue appropriate for this multidisciplinary/cross-disciplinary conceptual analysis. We proceed as follows. First, the proponent (GDC) introduces the info-computational framework as a naturalistic model of embodied, embedded, and enacted cognition. Next, objections are raised by the critic (MM) from the point of view of the new mechanistic approach to explanation. Subsequently, the proponent and the critic provide their replies. The conclusion is that there is a fundamental role for computation, understood as information processing, in the understanding of embodied cognition. (shrink)

Neste artigo, interrogamos os funcionamentos do conceito de platô em "Mil Platôs" (1980), a obra-prima de Deleuze e Guattari. Essa pesquisa esclarece, de forma concreta, duas linhas de pensamento, que são a epistemológica, por um lado, e a ética, por outro, enfocando os parágrafos nos quais Deleuze e Guattari usam efetivamente esse conceito. Do ponto de vista epistemológico, o conceito de platô permite praticar uma maneira de escrita rizomática e a explicação antiteleológica. Do ponto de vista ético, esse conceito, tirado (...) de Gregory Bateson, nos convida a formar a alegria contínua e global, ou a gaieté em termos espinosistas. In this paper, we question the workings of the concept of plateau in "A Thousand Plateaus" (1980), Deleuze and Guattari's chef-d'oeuvre. This research specifically clarifies two lines of thought, which are epistemological on the one hand, and ethics on the other hand, focusing on the paragraphs where Deleuze and Guattari actually employ this concept. From the epistemological point of view, the concept of plateau allows practicing a way of rhizomatic writing and anti-teleological explanation. From the point of view of ethics, this concept borrowed from Gregory Bateson invites us to form the continuous and global joy, or gaiety in Spinoza's terms. (shrink)

Both biosemiotics and evolutionary epistemology are concerned with how knowledge evolves. (Applied) Evolutionary Epistemology thereby focuses on identifying the units, levels, and mechanisms or processes that underlie the evolutionary development of knowing and knowledge, while biosemiotics places emphasis on the study of how signs underlie the development of meaning. We compare the two schools of thought and analyze how in delineating their research program, biosemiotics runs into several problems that are overcome by evolutionary epistemologists. For one, by emphasizing signs, biosemiotics (...) needs to delineate a semiotic threshold, which is a problem not encountered by evolutionary epistemologists. Instead, the latter recognizes that all organisms are knowers that evolve knowledge, which they recognize to extend toward phenomena produced by organisms such as behavior, cognition, language, culture, science, and technology. Secondly, biosemiotics attempts at continuing adaptationist notions on how organisms relate to their environment, while especially Applied Evolutionary Epistemology comes to redefine the nature of the organism–environment relationship in such a way that it recognizes the spatiotemporal boundedness of existence, which in turn makes adaptationist accounts obsolete. (shrink)

Sam Harris (2010) argues that, given our neurology, we can experience well-being, and that seeking to maximize this state lets us distinguish the good from the bad. He takes our ability to compare degrees of well-being as his starting point, but I think that the analysis can be pushed further, since there is a (non-religious) reason why well-being is desirable, namely the finite life of an individual organism. It is because death is a constant possibility that things can be assessed (...) as “for” or “against” one (Champagne 2011a; Smith 2000). Such an account lets us objectively adjudicate moral questions, as Harris desires. However, by anchoring itself in the mortal body as a whole and not just the brain, such an account dampens the claim that neuroscience would have all the answers. Moreover, it pivots on an affirmation of one’s life that can seem mysterious by regular scientific standards. This chapter thus explains why the trade-off is worthwhile. (shrink)

Historical processes exert an influence on the current state and evolution of situations of language contact, brought to bear from different domains, the economic and the political, the ideological and group identities, geo-demographics, and the habits of inter-group use. Clearly, this kind of phenomenon requires study from a complexical and holistic perspective in order to accommodate the variety of factors that belong to different levels and that interrelate with one another in the evolving dynamic of human languaging. Therefore, there is (...) a need for the restricted and general complexity approaches to come to a meeting of the minds, and take steps toward a mutual integration based on the acceptance of the shortcomings of each approach, achieving progress through a non-contradictory complementarity of perspectives. It must be conceded that the practical and methodological applications of basic complexical ideas need to be developed much farther in order to apply them to specific research. At the same time, the limits of complex adaptive systems as computational strategies must be accepted in the pursuit of a better understanding of the dynamic and evolutionary processes typical of human beings. New tools for the conception, apprehension and treatment of the data will need to be devised to complement existing ones and to enable us to make headway toward practices that better fit complexical perspectives. It seems obvious that human complexics must be seen as multi-methodological, insofar as necessary combining quantitative-computation methodologies and more qualitative methodologies aimed at understanding the historical mental and emotional world of people. (shrink)

In accordance with the contemporary state of the natural sciences, Wolfgang Sohst here presents an extended ontological model where the process is the first cosmological category, not objects. Her starts with very few primordial categories of becoming that even precede the fundamental concepts of physics and mathematics. Since Democritus, ie. for about 2,400 years, all cultures of European descent rest mainly on the presupposition that substances and their properties provide the inventory of our world. This, however, contradicts the formerly and (...) still today lively intuition (intellectually up to Heraclitus, again in Aristotle and only then resurgent with Hegel) that objects are not the dominating aspect of what we are living in. Rather, the basis of our cosmos is a world process as the result of the complementary relationship of particular objects and their mutual efficiencies. (shrink)

Human communication is often thought about in terms of transmitted messages in a conventional code like a language. But communication requires a specialized interactive intelligence. Senders have to be able to perform recipient design, while receivers need to be able to do intention recognition, knowing that recipient design has taken place. To study this interactive intelligence in the lab, we developed a new task that taps directly into the underlying abilities to communicate in the absence of a conventional code. We (...) show that subjects are remarkably successful communicators under these conditions, especially when senders get feedback from receivers. Signaling is accomplished by the manner in which an instrumental action is performed, such that instrumentally dysfunctional components of an action are used to convey communicative intentions. The findings have important implications for the nature of the human communicative infrastructure, and the task opens up a line of experimentation on human communication. (shrink)

In Science and the Akashic Field, philosopher and systems theorist Ervin Laszlo (2004) makes the case that science is finally in a position to produce a theory of everything (ToE). Drawing on anomalies and advances in cosmology, quantum physics, biology, and consciousness studies, he shows how the discovery in physics of the zero point energy field (ZPE) is also the discovery of a universal information field. This article explores Ervin Laszlo's Akashic Field theory in light of the relationship between information, (...) consciousness, energy, and meaning. (shrink)

It is time that we in organization sciencesdevelop and implement a new mental model forcause and effect relationships. The dominantmodel in research dates at least to the 1700sand no longer serves the full purposes of thesocial science research problems of the21st century. Traditionally, research is``essentially concerned with two-variableproblems, linear causal trains, one cause andone effect, or with few variables at the most''(von Bertalanffy, 1968, p. 12). However, theliterature is replete with examples ofphenomena in which the traditional cause andeffect construct does (...) not allow for greaterunderstanding and insight into the phenomena. Different conceptions of cause and effectrelationships have been developed includingproducer/product relationships (Ackoff 1981),design causality (Argyris and Schon, 1996), andfour classes of causal models (Schwartz andOgilvy, 1979). Of interest here is thepossibility of mutual causality, ``theassumption that the relationship between two(or more) phenomena is heavily influenced bythe presence of feedback loops that areinstantaneous, or nearly so'' (Dent, 1999). Maturana's (1998, Maturana and Varela, 1987)work on a new epistemology and ontologyprovides a foundation for the alternative modelof cause and effect proposed here. Thisinteraction model includes the dynamics of thetraditional X and Y, but adds the structure ofX (A), the structure of Y (B), the environment(E), and time (T). (shrink)

At the heart of evolutionary theory lays the notion of replication. Unfortunately, this notion is far less exact than the weight of its importance. In this paper, it is argued that replication always involves coding. Furthermore, when a theory of evolution is built on replication based on coding, a unifying and coherent picture arises that sheds new light on some of the controversies and open questions in contemporary biology, such as what are the roles of phylogeny and ontogeny in evolution, (...) and how to characterize and explain the increase of biological complexity. (shrink)

Diagnostics of a mental disorder completely bases on an estimation of patient’s behaviour, verbal behaviour being the most important. The behaviour, in turn, is ruled by a situation expressed as a system of signs. Perception of a situation could be seen as a function, which depends on the context resulting from the previous situations, structuring personal world. So the world is not given — it is being formed while the person is in action. We argue that distinctive features of behaviour, (...) including its abnormal variants, can be explained not in categories of characters and diseases but in terms of situations taking place in individual worlds. The situation in which a person perceives himself is not simply a site in a three-dimensional space at a certain moment, but a part of the world and an episode of his life. Like a text composed of words, individual world is composed of situations. Each of them needs certain context to cope with ambiguity. This context is induced by the world as a whole. And the world, in turn, is presented as a chain of situations. If the context cannot help to interpret a situation adequately, uncertainty can be eliminated by actions clarifying a situation, which is changed in a predictable way. Thus, purposeful activity, skills to make predictions and corrections of one’s own actions are crucial. Weakness of any of them inevitably leads to the distortion of the presentation of the world, to wrongevaluation of situations and, as a result, to inadequate actions that finally reduce the activity as being ineffective. Thus, the lack of activity becomes the key factor in the development of disorder, being simultaneously its cause and effect. In periods of insufficient activity conditions for violated (and violating) sign processing arise. Possible variants of sign malfunction are: oligosemia (reduction of the number of perceivable signs), hyposemia (decrease of significance of signs), hypersemia (increase of significance of some signs at the expense of others), ambisemia (uncertainty of sign, when situation remains unclear), cryptosemia (recognition of signs not obvious for other observers), and parasemia (perverted interpretation of signs influenced by a false context). (shrink)

This paper investigates the reciprocal implications between aesthetics and technics, to show how technicity, as a cultural and symbolic attitude, is constitutively rooted in the aesthetic dimension of human experience. The analysis conducted aims to bring into focus the originarity of technicity in the development of the living body, understood in its inseparable connection with the mind, as junction between the sensible and the symbolic, the organic and the cultural, the perceptive and the expressive. I address this question through a (...) parallel analysis of Simondon’s groundbreaking reflection on technics and the less explored account of technics in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. If the latter inscribes our attitude towards technics in the motricity and symbolism inherent to the living body, the former ascribes to aesthetics a form of thinking, thus playing a fundamental role in our relationship to the technical dimension. Despite the differences in their approach to technics, I combine their theoretical perspectives to encompass their internal limits and to outline possible convergences. (shrink)

Ecology of the Brain: The Phenomenology and Biology of the Embodied Mind joins a growing body of writings which presents a serious and compelling challenge to the neuro-centrism and physicalist reductionism that has been predominant in recent philosophy of mind and in the human sciences. This volume will not only be relevant to researchers interested in the philosophy of mind and the role to be played by the human sciences in this domain, but it will also be a valuable addition (...) to any psychiatric training program. It complements the pioneering work of Karl Jaspers and offers a much needed antidote to the explicit or implicit Cartesianism and physicalist reductionism that still persists in many psychiatric writings, research programs and approaches to clinical practice. As Fuchs alerts, the failure to appreciate the organism’s or individual’s embeddedness in an environment, in a world, has stymied efforts to advance psychiatric theory and practice and we can also say this failure has contributed to the current crisis in legitimacy of psychiatry (Daly and Gallagher, 2019). Despite hopes and ambitions that neuroscience might rescue psychiatry from this crisis, it is increasingly clear that it cannot deliver on this promise as long as researchers and clinicians ignore the life-world (das Umwelt) and neglect the concept of life itself as Fuchs proposes. An ecological approach to understanding the brain is thus crucial so as to address these deficiencies. Fuchs acknowledges the previous articulation of a compatible view in the work of Gregory Bateson’s, Steps to an Ecology of the Mind (1972). While Bateson draws on anthropology and evolutionary theory, Fuchs draws on the resources of phenomenology and neurobiology. Fuchs offers integrated analyses of ideas not only from Bateson, but also from the classic phenomenological sources of Husserl, Jaspers and Merleau-Ponty, and brings these ideas into engagement with current neuroscience, psychological medicine, psychiatric theory and practice. (shrink)

This paper proposes a limitation to epistemological claims to theory building prevalent in critical realist research. While accepting the basic ontological and epistemological positions of the perspective as developed by Roy Bhaskar, it is argued that application in social science has relied on sociological concepts to explain the underlying generative mechanisms, and that in many cases this has been subject to the effects of an anthropocentric constraint. A novel contribution to critical realist research comes from the work and ideas of (...) Gregory Bateson. This is in service of two central goals of critical realism, namely an abductive route to theory building and a commitment to interdisciplinarity. Five aspects of Bateson’s epistemology are introduced: difference, logical levels of abstraction, recursive causal loops, the logic of metaphor, and Bateson’s theory of mind. The comparison between Bateson and Bhaskar’s ideas is seen as a form of double description, illustrative of the point being raised. The paper concludes with an appeal to critical realists to start exploring the writing and outlook of Bateson himself. (shrink)

Lifelong learning is something which one does for oneself that no one else can do for one: it is a public and personal human activity, rather than private or individualistic. One of the features of the education system is the paucity of a language for learning as process and participative experience. Personalised learning requires a sense of the worth-whileness of 'being a learner' - a virtue in the 21st century. A sense of one's own worth as a person is essential (...) to understanding one's identity as a learner. Research suggests the human capacity to learn can be understood as a form of consciousness which is characterised by particular values, attitudes and dispositions, with a lateral and a temporal connectivity. This 'consciousness' has several dimensions which are all related to becoming a person, with a learning identity. They also enable the learner to become aware of and appropriate what is of worth and map onto the sorts of core values that learning communities espouse. Awareness of self and of one's own worth as a person is a necessary condition for 'becoming a learner' and for identifying and engaging with 'what is of worth'. Furthermore, a sense of self as a learner is formed in relationship, and understood as one learns to tell one's own story, as a participant in the conversation of the learning community. Character is the way in which we refer to that quality of personhood in which there is rooted the capacity to change and learn over time. (shrink)

Gregory Bateson is well known for defining information by stating “In fact what we mean by information – the elementary unit of information – is a difference which makes a difference…” This conceptual perspective has the merit of simplicity and generality. Simplicity, in addressing the complexity of information. Generality, in seeking applicability to any and every field of human experience. The purpose of this paper is to focus the applicability of this conceptual approach by Bateson and use it to perform (...) a calculation of taking the difference between two grey-level digital images that are shifted one relative to the other. The digital images take the place of the field of view that a human being would have access through her sense of vision at two different spatial/temporal instances. The results show that it is possible to highlight the edges of the objects under scrutiny, as well as to highlight other differences within the object. Bateson’s “difference that makes a difference” would seem to provide a first step in the elusive meaning making process of humans. (shrink)

The organism-in-its-environment is recognized as the basic unit of analysis when dealing with living beings. This paper seeks to define the fundamental implications of the concept of the organism-in-its-environment in terms of the biosemiotic concept of human distributed cognition. Human distributed cognition in a biosemiotic context is defined as the ability of a self-referencing organism-in-its-environment to interact with its environment to satisfy its physiological and social needs to survive and sustain itself. The ontogenetic development of the organism-in-its-environment serves as the (...) backdrop to discover the implications of distributed cognition that have general applicability in organisms, but in this paper, are made relevant to human beings. (shrink)

The goal of this work is to explain a novel information paradigm claiming that all information results from a process, intrinsic to living beings, of self-production; a sensory commensurable, self-referential feedback process immanent to Bateson’s difference that makes a difference. To highlight and illustrate this fundamental process, a simulation based on one-parameter feedback is presented. It simulates a homeorhetic process, innate to organisms, illustrating a self-referenced, autonomous system. The illustrated recursive process is sufficiently generic to be the only basis for (...) information in nature: from the single cell, to multi-cellular organisms, to consideration of all types of natural and non-natural phenomena, including tools and artificial constructions. (shrink)

In order to develop a collaborative experience of reflexive writing, this article explores the ethnographic process through two communication devices used by the authors in their respective fieldwork: tarot readings and evolutionary astrology. Reflecting on their distinct (if not opposing) backgrounds, the authors explore and interpret how their different backgrounds and conversational devices shape their ethnographic experience as a process of revealing the unknown, following the not-knowing approach (Anderson, 1997). The dialogic exchange also reveals how the not-knowing approach affects the (...) collaborative aspect of the reflexive writing experience. (shrink)

This article’s main thesis is that aesthetic communication has evolved from animal social play to forms of extraordinary complexity such as traditional arts, helping to preserve and transfer survival oriented information in a preverbal, or embodied form. Following this line of argument, aesthetic communication provides the basis for an adaptive modeling of reality wherein the agents engaged simulate potential exchanges and outcomes with factual or fictive entities, further enhancing – by proxy – their ability to predict and adapt to natural (...) and intentional contingencies. By means of aesthetic communication human cognition has become distributed, i.e. off-loaded in the practices, customs and emotional templates readily available in culture. In this light, the decline of traditional societies and the isolation of art practices that results from it, are to be considered subjects of scientific concern in addressing the societal and ecological crisis we confront today. (shrink)

Tschacher and Haken have recently applied a systems-based approach to modeling psychotherapy process in terms of potentially beneficial tendencies toward deterministic as well as chaotic forms of change in the client’s behavioral, cognitive and affective experience during the course of therapy. A chaotic change process refers to a greater exploration of the states that a client can be in, and it may have a potential positive role to play in their development. A distinction is made between on the one hand, (...) specific instances of instability which are due to techniques employed by the therapist, and on the other, a more general instability which is due to the therapeutic relationship, and a key, necessary result of a successful therapeutic alliance. Drawing on Friston’s systems-based model of free energy minimization and predictive coding, it is proposed here that the increase in the instability of a client’s functioning due to therapy can be conceptualized as a reduction in the precisions with which the client’s prior beliefs about themselves and their world, are held. It is shown how a good therapeutic alliance results in the emergence of a new hierarchical level in the client’s generative model of themselves and their relationship with the world. The emergence of this new level of functioning permits the reduction of the precisions of the client’s priors, which allows the client to ‘open up’: to experience thoughts, emotions and experiences they did not have before. It is proposed that this process is a necessary precursor to change due to psychotherapy. A good consilience can be found between this approach to understanding the role of the therapeutic alliance, and the role of epistemic trust in psychotherapy as described by Fonagy and Allison. It is suggested that beneficial forms of instability in clients are an underappreciated influence on psychotherapy process, and thoughts about the implications, as well as situations in which instability may not be beneficial for therapy, are considered. (shrink)

The implications of Warren McCulloch's 1945 concept of heterarchy are analyzed in terms of human value and motivational systems. The results demonstrate the near-impossibility of predicting behavior on the basis of any hierarchical scheme, or even which among a set of hierarchical schemes will be selected as the basis of a behavioral choice. Thus, for example, people regularly say one thing and do another.