After writing my response to the commentaries, I sat back and reflected on the fascination and frustration of work on this topic. There is the ancient fascination of trying to understand the nature of the sensory bridge linking us to the external world. Also, discussing the measurability of sensation brings to the surface concepts we use and take for granted when we are working in other areas of psychology; and it holds them before us for critical examination. The frustration lies (...) chiefly in the difficulty of formulating concepts clearly, in a way understood by all. At least when constructing the original Tower of Babel, workers hearing strange words knew that communication was not occurring. The psychophysical Tower of Babel sometimes has workers using the same words, but with different meanings. Much of my response is based on attempts to clarify concepts and clear up confusions. (shrink)

The ordinary understanding and ascription of mental states is a multiply complex subject. Widely discussed approaches to the subject, such as functionalism and the theory-theory (TT), have many variations and interpretations. No surprise, then, that there are misunderstandings and disagreements, which place many items on the agenda. Unfortunately, the multiplicity of issues raised by the commentators and the limitations of space make it impossible to give a full reply to everyone. My response is divided into five topics: (1) Which version(s) (...) of functionalism are candidates for an account of folk psychology, and is any such version satisfactory? (2) Where does TT stand in light of the two target articles and commentaries? (3) Does a phenomenological story provide a promising account of mental states, and is there special first-person authority about them? (4) What are suitable methodological assumptions for our subject matter? (5) How well does the simulation theory fare as an account of third-person mentalistic ascription? (shrink)

A key feature of the lambda model is the hypothesis of a local spring-like muscle-reflex system defined by a central control variable that has units of position. This is intriguing, especially for a study of postural stability in large-scale systems, but it has limited direct application to skilled everyday movements. If movement is considered as a goal-directed, neuro-optimization problem, however, theavailabilityof lambda-like peripheral models (vs. conventional musculoskeletal models) deserves exploration.

Humans and other animals are able not only to coordinate their actions with their current sensorimotor state, but also to imagine, plan and act in view of the future, and to realize distal goals. In this paper we discuss whether or not their future-oriented conducts imply (future-oriented) representations. We illustrate the role played by anticipatory mechanisms in natural and artificial agents, and we propose a notion of representation that is grounded in the agent’s predictive capabilities. Therefore, we argue that the (...) ability that characterizes and defines a true cognitive mind, as opposed to a merely adaptive system, is that of building representations of the non-existent, of what is not currently (yet) true or perceivable, of what is desired. A real mental activity begins when the organism is able to endogenously (i.e. not as the consequence of current perceptual stimuli) produce an internal representation of the world in order to select and guide its conduct goal-directed: the mind serves to coordinate with the future. (shrink)

Many frameworks exist that explain how people interact with avatars. Our core argument is that the primary theoretical mechanisms of a user-avatar bond rest with the way people engage avatars and, thereby, the broader digital environment. To understand and predict such engagement, we identify a person’s skill in handling/engaging the avatar in the digital environment as an ordering parameter. Accordingly, we define skill as a person’s ability to enact their agency successfully to achieve desired states. To explain how skill orders (...) experience, we ground our theorizing in ecological perception and systems theory. In our explication, we describe how stable action coupling enables a state of embeddedness in the digital environment. Then, we explain how embeddedness promotes motivational attunement and what the digital environment affords to users at different levels of skill. Throughout, we consider how our theoretical scaffolding generates tractable contentions regarding how skill influences UABs. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 13, Issue 4, Page 289-298, October 2021. This paper takes its cue from the recent interest in materiality and “things” in the field of Byzantine studies, to explore the role of objects in evoking being moved. First, it advances a new model to explain the relationship between being moved and affordances. Second, it focuses on a specific case study, that is Michael Psellos’ funeral oration for his daughter Styliane, who died of smallpox at the age of 9 (...) years old. The paper sheds light on how affective affordances of an object contribute to the evocation of being moved in literary texts, working within and affecting narrative patterns. While building on the experience of ethical and spiritual principles clearly recognizable by the audience, such affordances point toward the activation of broader core values. (shrink)

In the xvii century, William Molyneux asked John Locke whether a newly-sighted person could reliably identify a cube from a sphere without aid from their touch. While this might seem an easily testable question, answering it is not so straightforward. In this paper, I illustrate this question and claim that some distinctions regarding the concept of consciousness are important for an empirical solution. First, I will describe Molyneux’s question as it was proposed by Molyneux himself, and I’ll briefly say something (...) about its early debates. Second, I will go over some empirical attempts to solve this question, including recent experiments coming from neuroscience. Third, I will introduce some distinctions with regards to consciousness, and in the following section I will apply them to the Molyneux case. Finally, I will shortly consider some consequences of this approach. I conclude by suggesting researchers pay attention to different senses in which Molyneux’s question might be posed for empirical purposes. (shrink)

This paper provides evidence for a radically enactive, embodied account of remembering. By looking closely at highly context-dependent instances of memorizing and recalling dance material, I aim at shedding light on the workings of memory. Challenging the view that cognition fundamentally entails contentful mental representation, the examples I discuss attest the existence of non-representational instances of memory, accommodating episodic memory. That being so, this paper also makes room for content-involving forms of remembering. As a result, it supports the duplex vision (...) of mentality advanced by the REC framework. Building on research on the enactive imagination, I suggest that contentless forms of remembering act below content-involving forms. In addition, contentless and contentful forms of remembering a movement are revealed as the product of culturally scaffolded engagements with others and the environment, in which direct perception and mirroring play a fundamental role. It is argued that many of the practices of remembering a movement are best explained as enactments or re-enactments of such direct ecological perceptions. In the process, the dance studio proves to be a paradigm of the extensive mind. This paper is also intended as an invitation to the REC framework to extend the family and explicitly embrace research on sociocultural practices as an equal partner, including dance studies. Given the fundamental role that sociocultural practices play in REC’s understanding of cognition, it is only natural that further radicalization goes along those lines. (shrink)

In this work, starting from the social practice theory, we identified two kinds of creativity. A \textit{situational creativity} that takes place when a social practice is performed and a \textit{creativity of habit} that concerns the agents’ capacity of evoking different practices from habit. To test this hypothesis the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (Verbal Form A) was analyzed in the light of praxeology.

In this paper, I use the comparison between human beings and intelligent machines to shed light on the concept of teleology. What characterizes human beings and distinguishes them from a robot capable of achieving complex objectives? In the first place, by stipulating that what characterizes human beings are mental states, I consider the mark of the mental. A smart robot probably has no consciousness but we might have reason for doubt while interacting with it. And a smart robot shows intentionality. (...) I focus on the type of naturalized intentionality that is at stake here. Then I go back to the traditional idea of teleology, and to the scientific criticism of it, through the question of the kind of purposes that artificial intelligence (AI) may set itself. Husserl's basic idea of teleology therefore serves to have an authoritative term of comparison and to introduce the intuitive difference between human beings and intelligent machines based on the homo pictor thought experiment proposed by Jonas. My conclusion is that a specific finalism, understood in a non-criterial sense, is what qualifies the human being and differentiates the latter (for now) from smart robots. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore how children learn to form new relationships with nature. It draws on a longitudinal case study of children participating in a stewardship project involving the conservation of salamanders during the school day in Stockholm, Sweden. The qualitative method includes two waves of data collection: when a group of 10-year-old children participated in the project (2015) and two years after they participated (2017). We conducted 49 interviews with children as well as using participant (...) observations and questionnaires. We found indications that children developed sympathy for salamanders and increased concern and care for nature, and that such relationships persisted two years after participation. Our rich qualitative data suggest that whole situations of sufficient unpredictability triggering free exploration of the area, direct sensory contact and significant experiences of interacting with a species were important for children’s development of affective relationships with the salamander species and with nature in an open-ended sense. Saving the lives of trapped animals enabled direct sensory interaction, feedback, increased understanding, and development of new skills for dynamically exploring further ways of saving species in an interactive process experienced as deeply meaningful, enjoyable and connecting. The behavioural setting instilled a sense of pride and commitment, and the high degree of responsibility given to the children while exploring the habitat during authentic situations enriched children’s enjoyment. The study has implications for the design of education programmes that aim to connect children with nature and for a child-sensitive urban policy that supports authentic nature situations in close spatial proximity to preschools and schools. (shrink)

As of March 2012, students with concealed carry permits attending public colleges and universities in the state of Colorado may carry their weapons on campus. Colorado is one of six states with legal provisions permitting guns on public campuses. An additional twenty-two states leave it up to the governing bodies of individual colleges and universities to determine their institution's gun policy, while twenty-two states ban concealed weapons on campuses. The NRA often asserts that "an armed society is a polite society." (...) They and those who favorably quote them take this as a positive result of an armed citizenry. People won't be rude. They won't argue. They won't say anything offensive, for fear of being shot. And that may be right. But we do not want a polite campus. If an armed campus is a polite campus, then students at such campuses will miss a fundamentally important aspect of their college experience. Students ought to be able to voice their opinions, to argue with others, and to test new ideas without fear. The threat of violence that guns create challenges the most fundamental liberty we have: the freedom of speech. (shrink)

This article endeavors to interpret certain facets of Dewey’s philosophy in light of an underinvestigated research program in contemporary situated cognition, namely, plant cognition. I argue that Dewey’s views on situated cognition go substantially further than most philosophers of embodied mind are ready to admit. Building on the background of current research in plant cognition, and adding conceptual help of Dewey, I contend that plants can be seen as full-blown cognitive organisms, although they do not have what one would normally (...) call “a body.” Through this line of inquiry, I identify what are among the most pressing problems in current theories of the embodied mind and subsequently try to overcome them by means of Dewey’s metaphysics of the psychical. (shrink)

Common sense is on the one hand a certain set of processes of natural cognition – of speaking, reasoning, seeing, and so on. On the other hand common sense is a system of beliefs (of folk physics, folk psychology and so on). Over against both of these is the world of common sense, the world of objects to which the processes of natural cognition and the corresponding belief-contents standardly relate. What are the structures of this world? How does the scientific (...) treatment of this world relate to traditional and contemporary metaphysics and formal ontology? Can we embrace a thesis of common-sense realism to the effect that the world of common sense exists uniquely? Or must we adopt instead a position of cultural relativism which would assign distinct worlds of common sense to each group and epoch? The present paper draws on recent work in computer science (especially in the fields of naive and qualitative physics), in perceptual and developmental psychology, and in cognitive anthropology, in order to consider in a new light these and related questions and to draw conclusions for the methodology and philosophical foundations of the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

John Kinsella’s twentieth volume of poetry is laden with a poetics of attention to time, water and heat. Climate inheres in simplified topographical sketches, surveys and encounters with animals; water is ambiguous: a solid presence that is also fluid, subject to evaporation and often modelled as multi-dimensional motion; universalised western seasons are used rhetorically and symbolically to bring into relief little seasons within seasons, the more spatially and temporally localised markers of change. All these speak directly to the function of (...) the image and terrestrial matter,and how poetry is alert to such conditions. Kinsella has conceived of this as a “clash between linguistic anomaly and environmental exactness.”. (shrink)

It is well known that common objects in the environment can evoke possibilities of action, but what about their bi-dimensional representation? Do pictures or paintings that represent action-related objects evoke the same possibilities of actions of the objects that they represent? In contemporary cognitive science, there are two contrasting views on this issue. On the one hand, the ecological-dispositional approach to perception supports the idea that viewing depicted objects as endowed with the potential for action is nothing but an illusion. (...) On the other hand, recent findings show that our motor system is activated by the perception of both real and depicted action-related objects, and this activation plays a functional role in planning motor acts. A broad analysis reveals that the activation of the motor system during perceptual tasks plays a crucial rule in processing the practical meaning of the concrete objects and of the abstract representations of them. This evidence has consequences to our understanding of the way we experience pictures and paintings. (shrink)

It is widely believed that neural elements interact by communicating messages. Neurons, or groups of neurons, are supposed to send packages of data with informational content to other neurons or to the body. Thus, behavior is traditionally taken to consist in the execution of commands or instructions sent by the nervous system. As a consequence, neural elements and their organization are conceived as literally embodying and transmitting representations that other elements must in some way read and conform to. In opposition (...) to this conception, growing approaches such as enactivism and ecological psychology hold that neurons are not in the business of representing. However, by insisting that neural causation is not of a representational kind, these anti-representationalist approaches seem to be left with only one rather implausible alternative, viz. that behavior is the result of nothing but basic physical causation such as push-pull forces. In this paper it is argued that a third form of causation—termed “modulation”—exists and is at work in the coordination of animal behavior. Modulation is the quasi-direct guidance of dynamical systems through specific yet emerging trajectories. By setting the constraints that coordinate the free interaction of multi-element systems, modulation influences without forcing nor representing goal states. The basic properties of modulatory causation are analyzed and shown to be present in some fundamental aspects of neural and bodily interaction. (shrink)