Within the interactivist, process approach to metaphysics, Bickhard (Social life and social knowledge: toward a process account of development. Lawrence Erlbaum, New York, 2008a; Topoi 27: 139–149, 2008b; New Ideas Psychol, in press) has developed a social ontology of persons that avoids many well-known philosophical difficulties concerning the genesis, development, and application of the rational and moral capabilities and responsibilities that characterize persons. Interactivism positions developing persons inside sets of social conventions within which they participate in their own constitution as (...) rational and moral agents who constantly transform themselves and their world. Following a description of Bickhard’s social ontology and an evaluation of its philosophical merits, two suggestions are offered with the intention of extending the explanatory reach of an interactivist ontology of persons. One of these suggestions concerns a recommended shift from processes of interaction and constructivism to processes of coordination and constitutionism. A second, related recommendation concerns the need for a more precise detailing of processes of coordinated constitution that explain the developing person’s embodied and enactive transformation from a social to a psychological being. (shrink)

The paper proposes a process-based model for an ontology that encompasses the emergence of process systems generated by increasingly complex levels of organization. Starting with a division of processes into those that are persistent and those that are fleeting, the model builds through a series of exclusive and exhaustive disjunctions. The crucial distinction is between those persistent and cohesive systems that are energy wells, and those that are far-from-equilibrium. The latter are necessarily open; they can persist only by interaction with (...) their environments. Further distinctions, developed by means of the notions of self-maintenance and error detection, lead to the identification of complex biological organisms that are flexible learners, some of which are self-conscious and form themselves into social institutions. This model provides a non-reductive model for understanding human beings as both embodied and yet emergent. In particular, it provides a way of characterizing action as ‘metaphysically deep’, not an ontological embarrassment within an otherwise physicalist world. (shrink)

The interactivist model has explored a number of consequences of process metaphysics. These include reversals of some fundamental metaphysical assumptions dominant since the ancient Greeks, and multiple further consequences throughout the metaphysics of the world, minds, and persons. This article surveys some of these consequences, ranging from issues regarding entities and supervenience to the emergence of normative phenomena such as representation, rationality, persons, and ethics.

The multiplicity of definitions and conceptions of self-regulation that typifies contemporary research on self-regulation in psychology and educational psychology is examined. This examination is followed by critical analyses of theory and research in educational psychology that reveal not only conceptual confusions, but misunderstandings of conceptual versus empirical issues, individualistic biases to the detriment of an adequate consideration of social and cultural contexts, and a tendency to reify psychological states and processes as ontologically foundational to self-regulation. The essay concludes with a (...) consideration of educational research and intervention in the area of students’ self-regulated learning in terms of the scientific and professional interests of psychologists and educators, and the disguised manipulation of student self-surveillance in the service of the institutional mandates of schools. (shrink)

The Aristotle-Kant tradition requires that autonomous activity must originate within the self and points toward a new type of causation (different from natural efficient causation) associated with teleology. Notoriously, it has so far proven impossible to uncover a workable model of causation satisfying these requirements without an increasingly unsatisfying appeal to extra-physical elements tailor-made for the purpose. In this paper we first provide the essential reason why the standard linear model of efficient causation cannot support the required model of agency: (...) its causal thread model of efficient causation cannot support the core requirement that an action is determined by, and thus an expression of, the agent’s nature. We then provide a model that corrects these deficiencies, constructed naturalistically from within contemporary biology, and argue that it provides an appropriate foundation for all the features of genuine agency. Further, we provide general characterisations of freedom and reason suitable to this bio-context (but that also capture the core classical conceptions) and show how this model reconciles them. (shrink)

This paper attempts to establish a systems-semiotic framework explaining creativity in the design process, where the design process is considered to have as its basis the cognitive process. The design process is considered as the interaction between two or more cognitive systems resulting in a purposeful and ongoing transformation of their already complex representational structures and the production of newer ones, in order to fulfill an ill-defined goal. Creativity is considered as the result of an emergence of organizational complexity in (...) each cognitive system participating in the design process, while it is trying to purposefully incorporate new constraints in its meaning structures. The meanings generated in each system are identified as the contingent and anticipatory content of its representations, and where self-organization is the dominant process in which they are continuously involved. Furthermore, Peircean semiotic processes appear to provide the functionality needed by the emergent representational structures in order to complete the cycle of a creative design process. Creativity originates in the abductive stage of the semiotic process, the fallible nature of which is maintained in the proposed framework by the fact that the respective emergent representations can be misfits. The nodal points of the framework are identified and analyzed showing that a cognitive system needs the whole interactive anticipatory cycle in order to engage in a creative design process. (shrink)

There is a famous passage in chapter six of James’ Principles of Psychology whose import, many believe, deals a devastating blow to the explanatory aspirations of panpsychism. In the present paper I take a close look at James’ argument, as well as at the claim that it underlies a powerful critique of panpsychism. Apart from the fact that the argument was never aimed at panpsychism as such, I show that it rests on highly problematic assumptions which, if followed to their (...) logical consequences, are just as inedible to contemporary critics of panpsychism as they are to its present-day supporters. Hence, a naïve employment of the argument, as a critique leveled by physicalists against panpsychism, is counterproductive and even self-defeating. After examining the metaphysical shortcomings undermining James’ position , I conclude with some reflections on what needs to be done in order to obtain a better perspective regarding the explanatory prospects of panpsychism as an alternative approach to mainstream physicalism in the study of conscious phenomena. (shrink)