Biogenic approaches investigate cognition from the standpoint of evolutionary function, asking what cognition does for a living system and then looking for common principles and exhibitions of cognitive strategies in a vast array of living systems—non-neural to neural. One worry which arises for the biogenic approach is that it is overly permissive in terms of what it construes as cognition. In this paper I critically engage with a recent instance of this way of criticising biogenic (...) approaches in order to clarify their theoretical commitments and prospects. In his critique of the biogenic approach, Fred Adams uses the presence of intentional states with conceptual content as a criterion to demarcate cognition-driven behaviour from mere sensory response. In this paper I agree with Adams that intentionality is the mark of the cognitive, but simultaneously reject his overly restrictive conception of intentionality. I argue that understanding intentionality simpliciter as the mark of the mental is compatible with endorsing the biogenic approach. I argue that because cognitive science is not exclusively interested in behaviour driven by intentional states with the kind of content Adams demands, the biogenic approach’s status as an approach to cognition is not called into question. I then go on to propose a novel view of intentionality whereby it is seen to exist along a continuum which increases in the degree of representational complexity: how far into the future representational content can be directed and drive anticipatory behaviour. Understanding intentionality as existing along a continuum allows biogenic approaches and anthropogenic approaches to investigate the same overarching capacity of cognition as expressed in its different forms positioned along the continuum of intentionality. Even if all organisms engage in some behaviour that is driven by weak intentional dynamics, this does not suggest that every behaviour of all organisms is so driven. As such, the worry that the biogenic approach is overly permissive can be avoided. (shrink)

Dynamicism has provided cognitive science with important tools to understand some aspects of “how cognitive agents work” but the issue of “what makes something cognitive” has not been sufficiently addressed yet, and, we argue, the former will never be complete without the later. Behavioristic characterizations of cognitive properties are criticized in favor of an organizational approach focused on the internal dynamic relationships that constitute cognitive systems. A definition of cognition as adaptive-autonomy in the embodied and situated neurodynamic (...) domain is provided: the compensatory regulation of a web of stability dependencies between sensorimotor structures, is created and preserved during a historical/developmental process. We highlight the functional role of emotional embodiment: internal bioregulatory processes coupled to the formation and adaptive regulation of neurodynamic autonomy. Finally, we discuss a “minimally cognitive behavior program” in evolutionary simulation modelling suggesting that much is to be learned from a complementary “minimally cognitive organization program”. (shrink)

This work addresses a broad range of questions which belong to four fields: computation theory, general philosophy of science, philosophy of cognitive science, and philosophy of mind. Dynamical system theory provides the framework for a unified treatment of these questions. ;The main goal of this dissertation is to propose a new view of the aims and methods of cognitive science--the dynamical approach . According to this view, the object of cognitive science is a particular set of (...) class='Hi'>dynamical systems, which I call "cognitive systems". The goal of a cognitive study is to specify a dynamical model of a cognitive system, and then use this model to produce a detailed account of the specific cognitive abilities of that system. The dynamical approach does not limit a-priori the form of the dynamical models which cognitive science may consider. In particular, this approach is compatible with both computational and connectionist modeling, for both computational systems and connectionist networks are special types of dynamical systems. ;To substantiate these methodological claims about cognitive science, I deal first with two questions in two different fields: What is a computational system? What is a dynamical explanation of a deterministic process? ;Intuitively, a computational system is a deterministic system which evolves in discrete time steps, and which can be described in an effective way. In chapter 1, I give a formal definition of this concept which employs the notions of isomorphism between dynamical systems, and of Turing computable function. In chapter 2, I propose a more comprehensive analysis which is based on a natural generalization of the concept of Turing machine. ;The goal of chapter 3 is to develop a theory of the dynamical explanation of a deterministic process. By a "dynamical explanation" I mean the specification of a dynamical model of the system or process which we want to explain. I start from the analysis of a specific type of explanandum--dynamical phenomena--and I then use this analysis to shed light on the general form of a dynamical explanation. Finally, I analyze the structure of those theories which generate explanations of this form, namely dynamical theories. (shrink)

Our approach aims at accounting for causal claims in terms of how the physical states of the underlying dynamical system evolve with time. Causal claims assert connections between two sets of physicals states—their truth depends on whether the two sets in question are genuinely connected by time evolution such that physical states from one set evolve with time into the states of the other set. We demonstrate the virtues of our approach by showing how it is able (...) to account for typical causes, causally relevant factors, being ‘the’ cause, and cases of overdetermination and causation by absences. (shrink)

From his earliest work forward, phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty attempted to develop a new ontology of nature that would avoid the antinomies of realism and idealism by showing that nature has its own intrinsic sense which is prior to reflection. The key to this new ontology was the concept of form, which he appropriated from Gestalt psychology. However, Merleau-Ponty struggled to give a positive characterization of the phenomenon of form which would clarify its ontological status. Evan Thompson has recently taken up (...) Merleau-Ponty’s ontology as the basis for a new, “enactive” approach to cognitive science, synthesizing it with concepts from dynamic systems theory and Francisco Varela’s theory of autopoiesis. However, Thompson does not quite succeed in resolving the ambiguities in Merleau-Ponty’s account of form. This article builds on an indication from Thompson in order to propose a new account of form as asymmetry, and of the genesis of form in nature as symmetry-breaking. These concepts help us to escape the antinomies of Modern thought by showing how nature is the autoproduction of a sense which can only be known by an embodied perceiver. (shrink)

Clark and Chalmers (2002) advance two hypotheses that both cognition and the mind extend into the environment. Both hypotheses are grounded in active externalism about mental content and the Parity Principle. Active externalism proposes that the external features of the environment in the present directly influence our mental contents and behavior. The Parity Principle states that a process or state in the environment is cognitive if it is functionally equivalent to a comparable intracranial cognitive process. This paper reviews two (...) of the strongest replies to the hypotheses, namely that arguments for them commit the coupling-constitution fallacy and that the hypothesis of extended cognition is incompatible with any satisfactory criteria that distinguishes between cognitive and non-cognitive processes. This paper argues that a dynamical systems approach avoids both objections and offers a conceptual and methodological framework for an extended cognitive science. Lastly, an account of collective intentionality will be considered to show how groups of individuals can be the bearers of mental states. (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 paper takes a new look at an old question: what is the human self? It offers a proposal for theorizing the self from an enactive perspective as an autonomous system that is constituted through interpersonal relations. It addresses a prevalent issue in the philosophy of cognitive science: the body-social problem. Embodied and social approaches to cognitive identity are in mutual tension. On the one hand, embodied cognitive science risks a new form of methodological individualism, implying a dichotomy not between (...) the outside world of objects and the brain-bound individual but rather between body-bound individuals and the outside social world. On the other hand, approaches that emphasize the constitutive relevance of social interaction processes for cognitive identity run the risk of losing the individual in the interaction dynamics and of downplaying the role of embodiment. This paper adopts a middle way and outlines an enactive approach to individuation that is neither individualistic nor disembodied but integrates both approaches. Elaborating on Jonas’ notion of needful freedom it outlines an enactive proposal to understanding the self as co-generated in interactions and relations with others. I argue that the human self is a social existence that is organized in terms of a back and forth between social distinction and participation processes. On this view, the body, rather than being identical with the social self, becomes its mediator. (shrink)

In Section 1, I introduce three views that explain human cognitive development from different standpoints: Marcus’s neo-nativism, standard neuroconstructivism, and neo-neuroconstructivism. In Section 2, I assess Marcus’s attempt to reconcile nativism with developmental flexibility. In Section 3, I argue that in structurally reconfiguring nativism, Marcus ends up transforming it into an unrecognizable form, and I claim that his view could be accommodated within the more general framework provided by standard neuroconstructivism. In Section 4, I focus on recent empirical findings in (...) neuropsychology and cultural/social neuroscience, and propose a friendly revision to standard neuroconstructivism, thus developing the neo-neuroconstructivist view. I conclude the article in Section 5 by analysing the implications of the results discussed in Section 4 for both neo-nativism and standard neuroconstructivism. 1 Introduction2 Marcus’s Neo-nativism3 Is Marcus’s Neo-nativism Really a Form of Nativism?4 Neo-neuroconstructivism and Dynamic Enskillment5 Conclusion. (shrink)

Experts in Artificial Intelligence (AI) development predict that advances in the dvelopment of intelligent systems and agents will reshape vital areas in our society. Nevertheless, if such an advance isn't done with prudence, it can result in negative outcomes for humanity. For this reason, several researchers in the area are trying to develop a robust, beneficial, and safe concept of artificial intelligence. Currently, several of the open problems in the field of AI research arise from the difficulty of avoiding (...) unwanted behaviors of intelligent agents, and at the same time specifying what we want such systems to do. It is of utmost importance that artificial intelligent agents have their values aligned with human values, given the fact that we cannot expect an AI to develop our moral preferences simply because of its intelligence, as discussed in the Orthogonality Thesis. Perhaps this difficulty comes from the way we are addressing the problem of expressing objectives, values, and ends, using representational cognitive methods. A solution to this problem would be the dynamic cognitive approach proposed by Dreyfus, whose phenomenological philosophy defends that the human experience of being-in-the-world cannot be represented by the symbolic or connectionist cognitive methods. A possible approach to this problem would be to use theoretical models such as SED (situated embodied dynamics) to address the values learning problem in AI. (shrink)

Consciousness has been the bone of contention for philosophers throughout centuries. Indian philosophy largely adopted lived experience as the starting point for its explorations of consciousness. For this reason, from the very beginning, experience was an integral way of grasping consciousness, whose validity as a tool was considered self-evident. Thus, in Indian philosophy, the question was not to move from the brain to mind but to understand experience of an individual and how such an experience is determined through mental structures (...) (and secondarily, the preoccupation with the brain and its relation to the mind). In contrast, cognitive science (the study of mind and cognition through 1 interdisciplinary methods, with emphasis on computational methods) found its debates soaked in discussion which primarily involved the brain and mind. Experience was not considered a primary source of information and its validity had to be established to consider it a source of information of mind. With the rise of physicalism and realization that mental states are correlative to brain states, the body was virtually neglected from involvement in understanding the mind and the attempts to reduce mind to the brain were rampant. The inability to explain subjective experience of an individual through neuroscientific findings alone has urged philosophers to explore other ways of understanding the ontology of mind. Over the last few years, embodied cognition and enactive approach have brought back the body as a central participant in this debate, providing fertile grounds to explain the relation of brain, body and mind. This paper proposes that we understand the brain as a complex system from which the mind emerges. This emergence is marked by the development of novel property of self-consciousness in human beings. The mind is a process which is embedded throughout the body and thus, the body acts as an actualizing medium for the individual. Thus, the brain is a necessary condition for the mind to be while the mind is embedded throughout the body. The brain and mind are in reciprocal causal relationship with one another, as is the body and environment with one another. In this paper, embodied cognition is understood through principles of Merleau Ponty's idea of embodiment, than through Andy Clark and Francis Varela's alone. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The individual-community relationship has always been one of the most fundamental topics of social sciences. In sociology, this is known as the micro-macro relationship while in economics it refers to the processes, through which, individual actions lead to macroeconomic phenomena. Based on philosophical discourse and systems theory, many sociologists even use the term "emergence" in their understanding of micro-macro relationship, which refers to collective phenomena that are created by the cooperation of individuals, but cannot be reduced to individual (...) actions. "Emergence" theories attempt to explain the nature of society as a complex system by examining how individuals and their relationships lead to the creation of integrated and macro-social phenomena such as markets, educational systems, cultural beliefs, and shared social practices. As a prelude to activity, every researcher has to answer the question from the methodological point of view, how is it possible to study the behavior of social groups and how can we gain knowledge about the laws related to social groups? Anyone who deals with humanities and social sciences or any reality and phenomenon that affects human beings, inevitably deals with the reality that is emerging. In fact, emergence occurs when one level of reality emerges radically from another level. Examples of emergent levels of reality include how the mind emerges from the body; or the way society emerges from human beings. Therefore, when there is an emerging factor, different scientific disciplines should be used, because it is inevitable to talk about social affairs, psychology and neurobiology, as well as physical and even chemical. -/- INTRODUCTION Since its beginning in the 19th century, sociology has faced the fundamental question of what a social phenomena stands for? At a glance, sociologists deal with the study of social groups, collective behavior, institutions, social structures, social networks, and social dynamics, and ultimately all such phenomena are composed of individuals. Therefore, social phenomena seem to have no independent ontological status, and in this case, sociology is ultimately about reducible individuals. Different approaches about the micro-macro relationship, using the concept of "emergence", argue that although collective phenomena are created by individuals, they cannot be reduced to individual action. The term "emergence" is used to distinguish "emergent results" from " Procedural results". Results are called Procedural that can only be calculated by adding or subtracting the causes that act together. On the contrary, they are emergent outcomes that are qualitatively novel compared to the causes from which they originate. An example of such emergent results is mental characteristics that emerge from neural processes, but are not considered among the characteristics of neural processes of components - which are their origin. Philosophical debates about emergentism and reductionism focus on the mind-brain relationship, but as many philosophers have noted, they can be generalized to apply to any hierarchical set of features. The cognitive revolution reactivated a 19th century controversy between theorists of Identity and dualism. The theorists of Identity believe in reductionist materialism and elimination of metaphysics, according to which the mind is nothing more than the biological, while the dualists believe that the mind and the brain are distinct from each other. Emergence has been considered as a third way between the theories of Identity and dualism. -/- METHODOLOGY Interdisciplinarity Is fundamentally indicated by the dominance of open systems as well as social and emerging systems at different levels. Therefore, as long as we are facing a new emergentism, there will necessarily be different fields and an interdisciplinary method. The commonality of social sciences and cognitive sciences on the issue of emergence provides the possibility of interaction and exchange of concepts between these two for deeper research. Therefore, in this research, apart from the concepts of Subvenience and downward causation, we have used multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, which are used to explain the emerging concept in cognitive sciences, including neurobiology, psychology, and philosophy. For analytical and interdisciplinary approaches, after examining the concepts of subvenience, and wildly disjunctive, Individualistic and collectivist emergentism have been reviewed. And then their adequacy is criticized and evaluated in meeting strong emergence conditions. -/- FINDINGS Philosophers of the mind have been able to define the conditions of irreducibility and downward causation, which are essential for strong emergence, by using the principle of subvenience with the help of multiple realization and wildly disjunctive principles. Therefore, by definition, emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and emergentist collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the challenges facing the two methodological approaches of individualism and collectivism leads us to three unresolved issues about the emerging phenomenon, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. Despite the differences in the stances of these two approaches regarding the aforementioned triple problems, individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and some others are irreducible due to their complexity, the determination of which, depends on the case study of the mechanism of emergence of each social characteristic. -/- CONCLUSION An emergence that is consistent with reductionism is called a weak emergence. And strong emergence includes the principle of irreducibility and downward causality. According to strong emergence, the characteristics of social phenomena have downward causal power, which cannot be reduced to the causal forces. The principle of subvenience, together with multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, can provide the conditions of irreducibility and downward causality, which are essential conditions of strong emergence. Based on the philosophical analysis of two methodological approaches, individualist and collectivist, it can be concluded that emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and reification collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the problems faced by these two approaches leads us to three unresolved issues, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. individualist emergentists acknowledge the existence of emergent social characteristics, but despite this, they believe that these characteristics are not real but merely analytical constructs that require explanation based on individuals and their mutual actions. But collectivists argue that emergentism yields a categorical ontology and supports social realism. They accept the dependence of social characteristics on individuals, but claim that social entities and structures are ontologically independent. Individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and others are irreducible due to their complexity; and the only way to recognize this is to engage in empirical studies of the mechanisms and temporal processes of "emergence" that create social characteristics. -/- NOVELTY The newness of this compact article is as follows: a) Presenting an interdisciplinary approach using the analysis of philosophy of cognitive sciences, including the philosophy of mind, neurobiology and psychology to formulate the issue of social emergence; b) Criticizing individualist and collectivist methodological approaches to the issue of social emergence and explaining the sufficiency and shortcomings of both in providing weak and strong emerging conditions; c) Explaining and categorizing the challenges facing methodological approaches in explaining the phenomenon of social emergence, in three categories: realism, downward causality, and mechanism. BIBLIOGRAPHY Beckermann, A., Flohr, H., & Kim, J. (eds.) (1992). Emergence or reduction? Essays on the prospects of nonreductive physicalism. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Bhaskar, R. (1979). The possibility of Naturalism. New York: Routledge. Bhaskar, R., Danermark, B. & Price, L. (2018). Interdisciplinarity and wellbeing: A critical realist general theory of interdisciplinarity. London and New York: Routledge. Blau, P.M. (1981). Introduction: diverse views of social structure and their common denominator. In Blau, P.M. & Merton, R.K. (eds.), Continuity in Structural Inquiry (pp. 1–23). Beverly Hills: Sage. Blau, P.M. (1987). Microprocess and macrostructure. In K.S. Cook (ed.), Social Exchange Theory (pp. 83–100). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Brooks, R.A., & Maes, P. (eds). (1994). Artificial life IV; proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Coleman, J. S. (1987). Microfoundations and macrosocial behavior. In: J. C. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Munch, & Neil J. Smelser (Eds.). The Micro-Macro Link (pp. 153–73). Berkeley: University of California. Coleman, J. S. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Elster, J. (1985). Making sense of Marx. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fodor, J.A. (1974). Special sciences (Or: The disunity of science as a working hypothesis). Synthese, 28(2), 97–115. Fodor, J.A. (1989). Making mind matter more. Philosophical Topics, 17, 59-79. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hempel, C.G. (1965). Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays in the philosophy of science. New York: The Free Press. Horgan, T. (1993). From supervenience to superdupervenience: meeting the demands of a material world. Mind, 102, 555-586. Humphreys, P. (1997). How properties emerge”. Philosophy of Science, 64, 1-17. Kim, J. (1999). Making sense of emergence. Philosophical Studies, 95, 3–36. Kincaid, H. (1997). Individualism and the unity of science. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Lewis, D.K. (1986). The plurality of worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nigel, G., & Conte, R. (eds.) (1995). Artificial societies; The computer simulation of social life. London: UCL Press. O’Connor, T. (1994). Emergent properties. American Philosophical Quarterly, 31, 91-104. Popper, K.R. (1968). Conjectures and refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Harper & Row. Sawyer, R. K. (2001). Emergence in sociology: contemporary philosophy of mind and some implications for sociological theory. American Journal of Sociology, 107, 551-585. Sawyer, R. K. (2004). The mechanisms of emergence. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34, 260–282. Sawyer, R. K. (2005). Social emergence: societies as complex systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sawyer, R.K. (2003). Nonreductive individualism: Part 2, Social causation. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 33, 203–224. Winch, P. (1993). The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy‭ (SAMT, Trans.). Tehran, Iran: SAMT. (shrink)

It is argued that the theory of situated cognition together with dynamic systems theory can explain the core of artistic practice and aesthetic experience, and furthermore paves the way for an account of how artist and audience can meet via the artist's work. The production and consumption of art is an embodied practice, firmly based in perception and action, and supported by features of the local, agent-centered and global socio-cultural contexts. Artistic creativity and aesthetic experience equally result from (...) the dynamic interplay between agent and context, allowing for artist and viewer to relate to the artist's work in similar ways. (shrink)

This third paper locates the synthetic neurorobotics research reviewed in the second paper in terms of themes introduced in the first paper. It begins with biological non-reductionism as understood by Searle. It emphasizes the role of synthetic neurorobotics studies in accessing the dynamic structure essential to consciousness with a focus on system criticality and self, develops a distinction between simulated and formal consciousness based on this emphasis, reviews Tani and colleagues' work in light of this distinction, and ends by forecasting (...) the increasing importance of synthetic neurorobotics studies for cognitive science and philosophy of mind going forward, finally in regards to most- and myth-consciousness. (shrink)

Years ago, when I was an undergraduate math major at the University of Wyoming, I came across an interesting book in our library. It was a book of counterexamples t o propositions in real analysis (the mathematics of the real numbers). Mathematicians work more or less like the rest of us. They consider propositions. If one seems to them to be plausibly true, then they set about to prove it, to establish the proposition as a theorem. Instead o f setting (...) out to prove propositions, the psychologists, neuroscientists, and other empirical types among us, set out to show that a proposition is supported by the data, and that it is the best such proposition so supported. The philosophers among us, when they are not causing trouble by arguing that AI is a dead end or that cognitive science can get along without representations, work pretty much like the mathematicians: we set out to prove certain propositions true on the basis of logic, first principles, plausible assumptions, and others' data. But, back to the book of real analysis counterexamples. If some mathematician happened t o think that some proposition about continuity, say, was plausibly true, he or she would then set out to prove it. If the proposition was in fact not a theorem, then a lot of precious time would be wasted trying to prove it. Wouldn't it be great to have a book that listed plausibly true propositions that were in fact not true, and listed with each such proposition a counterexample to it? Of course it would. (shrink)

Traditionally, computational theory (CT) and dynamical systems theory (DST) have presented themselves as opposed and incompatible paradigms in cognitive science. There have been some efforts to reconcile these paradigms, mainly, by assimilating DST to CT at the expenses of its anti-representationalist commitments. In this paper, building on Piccinini’s mechanistic account of computation and the notion of functional closure, we explore an alternative conciliatory strategy. We try to assimilate CT to DST by dropping its representationalist commitments, and by inviting (...) CT to recognize the functionally closed nature of some computational systems. (shrink)

We have been left with a big challenge, to articulate consciousness and also to prove it in an artificial agent against a biological standard. After introducing Boltuc’s h-consciousness in the last paper, we briefly reviewed some salient neurology in order to sketch less of a standard than a series of targets for artificial consciousness, “most-consciousness” and “myth-consciousness.” With these targets on the horizon, we began reviewing the research program pursued by Jun Tani and colleagues in the isolation of the formal (...) dynamics essential to either. In this paper, we describe in detail Tani’s research program, in order to make the clearest case for artificial consciousness in these systems. In the next paper, the third in the series, we will return to Boltuc’s naturalistic non-reductionism in light of the neurorobotics models introduced (alongside some others), and evaluate them more completely. (shrink)

The relations between life and cogntion have been addressed through different perspectives [Stewart 1996, Boden 2001, Bourgine and Stewart 2004, van Duijn & all 2006, Di Paolo 2009]. We would like here to address that subject by relating life to cognition through a process of meaning generation. Life emerged on earth as a far from thermodynamic equilibrium performance that had to maintain herself. Life is charactertized by a ‘stay alive’ constraint that has to be satisfied (such constraint can be (...) included in the constraint of being able to maintain far from equilibrium thermodynamic conditions [Bickhard 2011]). The local ‘stay alive‘ constraint has to be satisfied in an environment containing elements potentially supportive or harmfull. A key activity for the living entity is to characterize these elements in terms of meaningfulness relatively to the ‘stay alive’ constraint. This process can be modeled with an existing tool where a system submitted to an internal constraint generates meaningful information characterizing elements of the environment: the Meaning Generator System (MGS) [Menant, 2003, 2014 a]. In a few words: when a system submitted to an internal constraint receives from the environment an information that has a connection with the constraint it generates a meaning usable for the implementation of an action satisfying the constraint.The generated meaning is the connection existing between the received information and the constraint. The MGS models this process and interfaces to the action implementation for constraint satisfaction The meaning is generated by and for the system. The MGS grounds meaning generation in constraint satisfaction and links the living entity to her environment in a relational process. A simple example is with a paramecium close to a drop of acid. The paramecium which is submitted to a ‘stay alive’ constraint will move away from the acid area. The received information ‘presence of acid’ generates the meaning ‘acid not compatible with the ‘stay alive’ constraint‘ which triggers the moving away action (that example is close to Varela’s bacteria swimming up a sugar gradient. What the MGS brings in addition is a modeling of the significance of the chemical gradient for the organism). The action implemented to satisfy the constraint modifies the environment and the received information, establishing an interactive process linking the living entity to her environment. During its evolution animal life has elaborated new constraints (like ‘live group life’) and new functions enriching meaning generation and action scenarios. As a result the build up of meaningful representations has improved the constraint satisfaction processes of animals, embedding them in their environments in relational and interactive terms [Menant, 2011]. Cognition can be defined by proposing that ‘a system is cognitive if and only if sensory inputs serve to trigger actions in a specific way, so as to satisfy a viability constraint’ [Bourgine, Stewart 2004]. Cognition can also be considered as exemplifying a ‘vital criterion of responsiveness’ [Boden, 2001 ]. Consequently the MGS can be positioned as an elementary and generic version of animal cognition. For animal life, meaning generation for internal constraint satisfaction links life and cognition in a relational and interactive process. Cognition for human life is more complex as new performances have to be taken into account like self-consciousness and free-will. Meaning generation at human level is a challenging subject as human constraints are not clearly understood [Menant, 2011]. Many research activities are in process looking for some understanding of human mind [Philpapers]. One area of investigation is an evolutionary approach to self-consciousness using meaning generation where anxiety limitation comes up as a generic human constraint [Menant, 2014 b]. Assuming that we can have clear enough an understanding of some human constraints, we can look at the MGS for partly extending to humans the link between life and cognition that has been established for animals. So overall, we can consider that the MGS approach makes available an evolutionary link between life and cognition for animals, and partly for humans. A characteristic of the proposed system approach to meaning generation is the possibility to use it for any type of agent, be it organic (with intrinsic constraints ) or artificial (with derived constraints). Such characterization of agents through meaning generation can be used to discriminate artificial itelligence from human intelligence (see the MGS usage to support Searle’s chinese room argument [Menant, 2013]). On a more general basis, the proposed system approach can positions the MGS as a simple model for an internal source of normativity. It’s usage as a simple building block allows a bottom-up modeling for normativity in the sensorimotor approach. The ‘stay alive’ constraint could also be taken as a starting point for an evolutionary grounding of sensorimotor norms ‘in the biological normativity of the agent as a whole’ [Di Paolo & all 2014]. The proposed presentation will develop the points summarized here above and position them relatively to the autopoietic and enactive approaches. Several possible continuations will also be highlighted. (shrink)

With the advent of computers in the experimental labs, dynamic systems have become a new tool for research on problem solving and decision making. A short review of this research is given and the main features of these systems (connectivity and dynamics) are illustrated. To allow systematic approaches to the influential variables in this area, two formal frameworks (linear structural equations and finite state automata) are presented. Besides the formal background, the article sets out how the task demands (...) of system identification and system control can be realised in these environments, and how psychometrically acceptable dependent variables can be derived. (shrink)

The notions of information, representation and enaction entertain historical and complex relations with cognition. Historical relations because representational structures belong to the central hypothesis of cognitive sciences. Complex relations because cognitive sciences apply the notion of representation to animals, humans and robots, and also because the enactive approach tends to disregard the GOFAI type of representations. In this wide horizon of relations, we propose to look at a systemic approach that could bring up a common denominator for (...) information and representations in the build up of cognition, and also keep a link with the enactive approach. Our purpose is to show that systems submitted to constraints can generate meaningful information to maintain their natures, and consequently build up meaningful representations that have some compatibility with the enactive approach. Such a systemic approach to the notion of meaningful information could then make available a link between enaction and meaningful representations. The first part of the presentation is about reminding that cognition does not exist per se, but is related to the system that builds it. We look at cognition as constituted by dynamic meaningful representations built up by systems that have constraints to satisfy in their environments. Cognition is considered here at the level of the system that builds it and uses it in order to maintain its nature in its environment. Such a systemic approach fits with evolution. Organisms build representations to cope with survival constraints (frogs build representations of moving black dots in order to satisfy food constraints). Humans build representations and cognition to satisfy constraints that are conscious and unconscious. Artificial systems can use representations and cognition to run activities related to constraints implemented by the designers or coming from the environment (a goal to reach being considered as a constraint to satisfy). In the second part of the presentation we define what are a meaningful information and a representation for a system submitted to a constraint in its environment, and we link these to the enactive approach. We define a meaningful information (a meaning) as an information generated by a system submitted to a constraint when it receives an external information that has a connection with the constraint. The meaning is precisely that connection. The meaning belongs to the interactions that link the system to its environment. The function of the meaning is to participate to the determination of an action that will be implemented in order to satisfy the constraint. (Menant, 2003). The satisfaction of the constraint goes with maintaining the nature of the system in its environment. A Meaning Generator System (MGS) is defined correspondingly. It is a building block for higher level systems. We present some characteristics of the MGS (groundings of a meaning, domain of efficiency and transfer of meanings, networking of meanings, evolutionary usage). The MGS approach is close to a simplified version of the Peircean triadic theory of signs (Menant, 2003, 2005 ). We define the representation of an item for a system as being the dynamic set of meaningful information corresponding to the item for the system in its environments (an elementary representation being made of a single meaningful information). These representations link the system to its environment by their meaningful components related to the nature of the system. These representations are different from the GOFAI ones. The possibilities for linking these notions of meaning and representation with the enactive approach come from the structure of the MGS: the need for an action is the cause of the meaning generation by and for the system. The action on the environment is for the system to maintain its nature (its identity). The MGS links together the generation of meaningful representations, the nature of the system, and the interactions with the environment. This can be considered as close to enacting a world by meaning generation (Di Paolo and all 2007), and to the enactive concept of sense making (De Jaegher, Di Paolo 2007). We propose that basing the definition of a representation on the notion of meaningful information generated by a system submitted to a constraint can open a way for making the notion of representation compatible with the enactive approach. In the third part of the presentation, we consider some cases of meaningful information and representations for organisms and for robots. Regarding organisms, the MGS can be used in an evolutionary context by looking at the evolution of the systems and of the constraints. Purpose is to modelize the generation of meanings and of representations in order to make available a tool usable for different levels of evolution, as evolution has a place in cognitive sciences (Proust, 2007). Constraints for basic life are survival constraints (individual and species). Group life constraints are also to be considered. Reaching the level of humans in evolution brings in new constraints that cannot be clearly identified as they have to take into account human consciousness which is today a mystery (the “hard problem”). On an evolutionary standpoint, human constraints come in addition to the ones existing for non human organisms. We can make some hypothesis on the nature of human constraints (Maslow pyramid based constraints, anxiety limitation…). For robots, the MGS is initially based on the design of the robot. The meaning generated within a robot is initially derived from the constraints implemented by the designer and from the environment. But some non calculable or non predictable evolutions of the robot can introduce meanings that look proper to the robot. This last point can be linked to the notion of autonomy in robots. In such examples, the dynamic management of meanings thru the MGSs in their environments keeps the link with the enactive approach. We finish the presentation by summarising the points addressed and by proposing several continuations. (shrink)

The new kid on the block in cognitive science these days is dynamic systems. This way of thinking about the mind is, as usual, radically opposed to computationalism - - the hypothesis that thinking is computing. The use of dynamic systems is just the latest in a series of attempts, from Searle's Chinese Room Argument, through the weirdnesses of postmodernism, to overthrown computationalism, which as we all know is a perfectly nice hypothesis about the mind that never hurt (...) anyone. (shrink)

Il lavoro esamina criticamente i presupposti di cinque differenti approcci alla Scienza Cognitiva, (simbolico, connessionista, dinamico, della cognizione incarnata e della vita artificiale) e sostiene che tutti e cinque condividono tacitamente un’ipotesi metodologica molto generale. Tale ipotesi, che propongo di chiamare simulazionismo , postula che i fenomeni cognitivi di un qualunque sistema reale possono essere adeguatamente spiegati sulla base di opportuni modelli di simulazione del sistema stesso. Tuttavia, a causa della loro costituzione, i modelli di simulazione hanno forti limitazioni, sia (...) al livello descrittivo che esplicativo. Il limite descrittivo sta nel fatto che la corrispondenza fra i risultati di una simulazione e i dati relativi al fenomeno reale non è diretta e intrinseca ma, al più, indiretta e estrinseca. Il limite esplicativo consiste nel fatto che le spiegazioni supportate dal modello non sono mai compiute e realistiche ma, piuttosto, solo in linea di principio e romanzesche. Queste difficoltà potrebbero essere superate ricorrendo ai modelli Galileiani , costituiti da sistemi dinamici in cui ciascuna componente ha un’interpretazione precisa e definita, in quanto essa corrisponde ad una proprietà misurabile (grandezza) del fenomeno reale che il modello descrive. (shrink)

Recognition of the plasticity of development — from gene expression to neuroplasticity — is increasingly undermining the traditional distinction between structure and function, or anatomy and behavior. At the same time, dynamic systems theory — a set of tools and concepts drawn from the physical sciences — has emerged as a way of describing what Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls the “dynamic anatomy” of the living organism. This article surveys and synthesizes dynamic systems models of development from biology, neuroscience, and (...) psychology in order to propose an integrated account of growth, learning, and behavior. Key to this account is the concept of self-differentiation or symmetry-breaking. I argue that development can be understood as a cascade of symmetry-breaking events brought about by the ongoing interactions of multiple, nested, nonlinear dynamic systems whose self-organizing behaviors gradually alter their own anatomical conditions. I begin by introducing the concept of symmetry-breaking as a way of understanding anatomical development. I then extend this approach to motor development by arguing that the organism’s behavior grows along with its body, like a new organ. Finally, I argue that the organism’s behavior and its world grow together dialectically, each driving the other to become more complex and asymmetrical through its own increasing asymmetry. Thus development turns out to be a form of cognition or sense-making, and cognition a form of development. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question whether we can conceive of music cognition in ecosemiotic terms. It claims that music knowledge must be generated as a tool for adaptation to the sonic world and calls forth a shift from a structural description of music as an artifact to a process-like approach to dealing with music. As listeners, we are observers who construct and organize our knowledge and bring with us our observational tools. What matters is not merely the sonic (...) world in its objective qualities, but the world as perceived. In order to make these claims operational we can rely on the ecological concept of coping with the sonic world and the cybernetic concepts of artificial and adaptive devices. Listeners, on this view, are able to change their semantic relations with the sonic world through functional adaptations at the level of sensing, acting and coordinating between action and perception. This allows us to understand music in functional terms of what it affords to us and not merely in terms of its acoustic qualities. There are, however, degrees of freedom and constraints which shape the semiotization of the sonic world. As such we must consider the role of event perception and cognitive economy: listeners do not perceive the acoustical environment in terms of phenomenological descriptions but as ecological events. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that looking at the concept of neural function through the lens of cognition alone risks cognitive myopia: it leads neuroscientists to focus only on mechanisms with cognitive functions that process behaviorally relevant information when conceptualizing “neural function”. Cognitive myopia tempts researchers to neglect neural mechanisms with noncognitive functions which do not process behaviorally relevant information but maintain and repair neural and other systems of the body. Cognitive myopia similarly affects philosophy of neuroscience because (...) scholars overlook noncognitive functions when analyzing issues surrounding e.g., functional decomposition or the multifunctionality of neural structures. I argue that we can overcome cognitive myopia by adopting a patchwork approach that articulates cognitive and noncognitive “patches” of the concept of neural function. Cognitive patches describe mechanisms with causally specific effects on cognition and behavior which are likely operative in transforming sensory or other inputs into motor outputs. Noncognitive patches describe mechanisms that lack such specific effects; these mechanisms are enabling conditions for cognitive functions to occur. I use these distinctions to characterize two noncognitive functions at the mesoscale of neural circuits: subsistence functions like breathing are implemented by central pattern generators and are necessary to maintain the life of the organism. Infrastructural functions like gain control are implemented by canonical microcircuits and prevent neural system damage while cognitive processing occurs. By adding conceptual patches that describe these functions, a patchwork approach can overcome cognitive myopia and help us explain how the brain’s capacities as an information processing device are constrained by its ability to maintain and repair itself as a physiological apparatus. (shrink)

We describe a new approach to understanding the functioning of the nervous system, unifying previous ideas of Josephson and Hauser, Baas, and Brooks. Its basis consists in analysing the total developmental process into basic components of development, whose corresponding mechanisms (skill constructors) are organised together into a coherent total system.

Organisms live not as discrete entities on which an independent environment acts, but as members of a reproductive lineage in an ongoing series of interactions between that lineage and a dynamic ecological niche. These interactions continuously shape both systems in a reciprocal manner, resulting in the emergence of reliably co-occurring configurations within and between both systems. The enactive approach to cognition describes this relationship as the structural coupling between an organism and its environment; similarly, Developmental (...) class='Hi'>Systems Theory emphasizes the reciprocal nature of structurally coupled systems in its analysis of organisms as developmental processes embedded within a developmental system. Through an enactive-developmental systems framing, this paper identifies the organizational features of cognizing systems in order to motivate a picture of how organism and environment co-determine and co-construct one another. I argue that organisms can be characterized as self-organizing, operationally closed, plastic systems ecologically embedded within a developmental system. In virtue of this organizational makeup, organisms actively engage in the modulation and assessment of their coupling with their environment: cognitive strategies that entail contextualized responses to variations across the web of interactions that comprises the developmental system. (shrink)

Efforts to bridge emotion theory with neurobiology can be facilitated by dynamic systems (DS) modeling. DS principles stipulate higher-order wholes emerging from lower-order constituents through bidirectional causal processes cognition relations. I then present a psychological model based on this reconceptualization, identifying trigger, self-amplification, and self-stabilization phases of emotion-appraisal states, leading to consolidating traits. The article goes on to describe neural structures and functions involved in appraisal and emotion, as well as DS mechanisms of integration by which they interact. (...) These mechanisms include nested feedback interactions, global effects of neuromodulation, vertical integration, action-monitoring, and synaptic plasticity, and they are modeled in terms of both functional integration and temporal synchronization. I end by elaborating the psychological model of emotion–appraisal states with reference to neural processes. (shrink)

Economies are complicated systems encompassing micro behaviors, interaction patterns, and global regularities. Whether partial or general in scope, studies of economic systems must consider how to handle difficult real-world aspects such as asymmetric information, imperfect competition, strategic interaction, collective learning, and the possibility of multiple equilibria. Recent advances in analytical and computational tools are permitting new approaches to the quantitative study of these aspects. One such approach is Agent-based Computational Economics (ACE), the computational study of economic processes (...) modeled as dynamic systems of interacting agents. This chapter explores the potential advantages and disadvantages of ACE for the study of economic systems. General points are concretely illustrated using an ACE model of a two-sector decentralized market economy. Six issues are highlighted: Constructive understanding of production, pricing, and trade processes; the essential primacy of survival; strategic rivalry and market power; behavioral uncertainty and learning; the role of conventions and organizations; and the complex interactions among structural attributes, institutional arrangements, and behavioral dispositions. (shrink)

I propose a dynamic causal approach to characterizing the notion of a mechanism. Levy and Bechtel, among others, have pointed out several critical limitations of the new mechanical philosophy, and pointed in a new direction to extend this philosophy. Nevertheless, they have not fully fleshed out what that extended philosophy would look like. Based on a closer look at neuroscientific practice, I propose that a mechanism is a dynamic causal system that involves various components interacting, typically nonlinearly, with one (...) another to produce a phenomenon of interest. (shrink)

Paper type: Conceptual perspective. Background(s): Physics, biology, epistemology Perspectives: Theory of autopoietic systems, Popperian evolutionary epistemology and the biology of cognition. Context: This paper is a contribution to developing the theories of hierarchically complex living systems and the natures of knowledge in such systems. Problem: Dissonance between the literatures of knowledge management and organization theory and my observations of the living organization led to consideration of foundation questions: What does it mean to be alive? What is (...) knowledge? How are life and knowledge related? Method: The approach is synthetic and multidisciplinary. The concept of autopoiesis (as defined by Maturana) as a definition for life, and knowledge as a product of autopoiesis are developed from first principles regarding the behavior of dynamical systems in time. Results: Autopoiesis and the construction of knowledge are inseparable aspects of physical phenomena scalable to many levels of organization (e.g., cells, multicellular organisms, organizations, social systems, etc.). The result unifies theories of epistemology, physical dynamics, life, biological evolution, knowledge and social systems. Implications: Results highlight the importance to understand autopoiesis as first defined by Maturana and Varela – as a complex physical phenomenon persisting over time. Autopoietic “self-observation” is not paradoxical. As dynamic physical processes, any internal/external activities relating to “observations” are displaced in time. The worlds living systems act on are not those observed. “Circularly closed” systems are actually open spirals along the axis of time. (shrink)

Perception, Action, and Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dynamics and Two Visual Systems is a state-of-the-art collection whose main goal is to explore, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the relationship between action and perception. A second goal of the volume is to investigate how perception and action interact specifically in the production of phenomenal awareness. In presenting and contrasting the major perspectives on the field, this volume marks a good sign of the progress being made on the nature of phenomenally conscious visual experience. (...) By combining theoretical and empirical approaches it also contributes to the debate in key domains of the cognitive sciences .The book contains a useful editorial introduction written by the Editors and six sections further divided into fifteen chapters. In the first part of this review I briefly summarize the content of each section. Having offered an outline of the volume, I then turn my attention to the main theme of the collection, which is the dichotomy between action-oriented theories of perception and the two visual systems hypothesis and look at the dialectic underlying this debate. (shrink)

This paper is about knowledge construction in music listening. It argues for an experiential approach to music cognition, stressing the dynamic-vectorial field of meaning rather than the symbolic field. Starting from the conceptual framework of deixis and indexical devices, it elaborates on the concept of pointing as a heuristic guide for sense-making which allows the listener to conceive of perceptual elements in terms of salience, valence and semantical weight. As such, the act of (mental) pointing can be predicative, (...) either in a nominalistic or processual way, giving a description of the temporal evolution of a situation as against episodic nominalizations that refer to just one single instance of the process. The latter, especially, are characterized by distancing and polarization between the listener and the music, allowing him/her to deal with the music also at a level of mental imagery and to construct a mental or cognitive map of its unfolding. (shrink)

The article considers the problem of the system model of family counseling, in particular, the analysis of the family as a social system, as a complex of elements and their properties, which are in dynamic connections and relationships. The analysis of the theory of systems and the description of the principles of family counseling is carried out. Particular attention is paid to highlighting the main provisions of the individual (“adlerian”) psychology in counseling the family. -/- Currently among specialists there (...) is a high interest in the provision of psychological assistance to a family in crisis. This is largely due to the fact that over the past decades, the institution of the family in this country is experiencing an increase in destructive tendencies. This is evidenced by an increase in the number of appeals to school psychologists, psychological counseling, psychological services and centers from both the individual members of the family and families in general. -/- The psychological help to the family is positioned as a relatively new field of practice for a psychologist. The practice of counseling, including family, is largely determined by the theoretical skills of the counselor, primarily as (s)he understands the personality, determination of behavior, the source of family problems, and the possibility of change. Today, practitioners prefer the integrative method, which is a system approach. -/- The purpose of this article is to analyze the theory of systems as the basis of family counseling. The system model of family counseling is considered to be one of the youngest and most widespread models that received their recognition at the end of the twentieth century. (shrink)

A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition (...) of others’ experiences as distinct from one’s own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception–action and motion–emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer. (shrink)

Considerable variation exists not only in the kinds of transposable elements (TEs) occurring within the genomes of different species, but also in their abundance and distribution. Noting a similarity to the assortment of organisms among ecosystems, some researchers have called for an ecological approach to the study of transposon dynamics. However, there are several ways to adopt such an approach, and it is sometimes unclear what an ecological perspective will add to the existing co-evolutionary framework for explaining transposon-host (...) interactions. This review aims to clarify the conceptual foundations of transposon ecology in order to evaluate its explanatory prospects. We begin by identifying three unanswered questions regarding the abundance and distribution of TEs that potentially call for an ecological explanation. We then offer an operational distinction between evolutionary and ecological approaches to these questions. By determining the amount of variance in transposon abundance and distribution that is explained by ecological and evolutionary factors, respectively, it is possible empirically to assess the prospects for each of these explanatory frameworks. To illustrate how this methodology applies to a concrete example, we analyzed whole-genome data for one set of distantly related mammals and another more closely related group of arthropods. Our expectation was that ecological factors are most informative for explaining differences among individual TE lineages, rather than TE families, and for explaining their distribution among closely related as opposed to distantly related host genomes. We found that, in these data sets, ecological factors do in fact explain most of the variation in TE abundance and distribution among TE lineages across less distantly related host organisms. Evolutionary factors were not significant at these levels. However, the explanatory roles of evolution and ecology become inverted at the level of TE families or among more distantly related genomes. Not only does this example demonstrate the utility of our distinction between ecological and evolutionary perspectives, it further suggests an appropriate explanatory domain for the burgeoning discipline of transposon ecology. The fact that ecological processes appear to be impacting TE lineages over relatively short time scales further raises the possibility that transposons might serve as useful model systems for testing more general hypotheses in ecology. (shrink)

This chapter introduces a research-based conceptual framework for the study of the inner psychosocial reality of business enterprises. It is called the Inner Organizational Ecosystem Approach (IOEA). This model is systemic in nature, and it defines the basic features of small and medium-size enterprises, such as elements, structures, borders, social actors, organizational climate, processes and resources. Further, it also covers the dynamics of psychosocial reality, processes, emergent qualities and the higher-order subsystems of the overall organizational ecosystem, including the global (...) business environment, which is understood as a macro-system where all the individual organizational ecosystems co-exist. In the applied part of the chapter, cognitive changes emerging within systemic leadership training are defined. Participation in systemic training causes changes in the cognitive processing of reality, more specifically improvements in layer-based framing, relativistic contextual orientation, temporality drift and meaning generation. All of these changes are components of the systemic mind, which is a concept newly proposed and defined by the present study. The systemic mind is a living matrix that is extremely open to acquiring new skills and new patterns of thinking, analyzing and meaning generation. It is processual and it can be considered as an ongoing process of continuous absorption of new cognitive patterns. Both the Inner Organizational Ecosystem Approach and the concept of the systemic mind provide a new theoretical background for empirical investigation in the fields of systemic and systems psychology, complexity psychology, organizational psychology, economic anthropology and the social anthropology of work. (shrink)

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (VST) has been increasingly utilised as an effective framework to account for the role of emotions in learning and development. Yet, within VST, emotion has neither been systemically theorised nor investigated. This paper contributes to the literature by offering a theoretical discussion of Vygotsky’s perspective on emotion and its relation to cognition. Employing a content analysis approach, three of Vygotsky’s key texts on emotions were closely read and analysed with emerging themes grouped into a system (...) of interrelated theoretical tenets. The insights gained from this paper benefit scholars who are interested in understanding and researching emotions from a VST perspective as well as provide important implications for educational practices. (shrink)

What is meaning-making? How do new domains of meanings emerge in the course of child’s development? What is the role of consciousness in this process? What is the difference between making sense of pointing, pantomime and language utterances? Are great apes capable of meaning-making? What about dogs? Parrots? Can we, in any way, relate their functioning and behavior to a child’s? Are artificial systems capable of meaning-making? The above questions motivated the emergence of cognitive semiotics as a discipline devoted (...) to theoretical and empirical studies of meaning-making processes. As a transdisciplinary approach to meaning and meaning-making, cognitive semiotics necessarily draws on a different disciplines: starting with philosophy of mind, via semiotics and linguistics, cognitive science(s), neuroanthropology, developmental and evolutionary psychology, comparative studies, and ending with robotics. The book presents extensively this discipline. It is a very eclectic story: highly abstract problems of philosophy of mind are discussed and, simultaneously, results of very specific experiments on picture recognition are presented. On the one hand, intentional acts involved in semiotic activity are elaborated; on the other, a computational system capable of a limited interpretation of excerpts from Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass is described. Specifically, the two roads to cognitive semiotics are explored in the book: phenomenological-enactive path developed by the so-called Lund school and author’s own proposal: a functional-cognitivist path. (shrink)

Information is a central notion for cognitive sciences and neurosciences, but there is no agreement on what it means for a cognitive system to acquire information about its surroundings. In this paper, we approximate three influential views on information: the one at play in ecological psychology, which is sometimes called information for action; the notion of information as covariance as developed by some enactivists, and the idea of information as minimization of uncertainty as presented by Shannon. Our main thesis is (...) that information for action can be construed as covariant information, and that learning to perceive covariant information is a matter of minimizing uncertainty through skilled performance. We argue that the agent’s cognitive system conveys information for acting in an environment by minimizing uncertainty about how to achieve her intended goals in that environment. We conclude by reviewing empirical findings that support our view and by showing how direct learning, seen as instance of ecological rationality at work, is how mere possibilities for action are turned into embodied know-how. Finally, we indicate the affinity between direct learning and sense-making activity. (shrink)

A Kuhnian reformulation of the recent debate in psychiatric nosography suggested that the current psychiatric classification system (the DSM) is in crisis and that a sort of paradigm shift is awaited (Aragona, 2009). Among possible revolutionary alternatives, the proposed fi ve-axes etiopathogenetic taxonomy (Charney et al., 2002) emphasizes the primacy of the genotype over the phenomenological level as the relevant basis for psychiatric nosography. Such a position is along the lines of the micro-reductionist perspective of E. Kandel (1998, 1999), which (...) sees mental disorders reducible to explanations at a fundamental epistemic level of genes and neurotransmitters. This form of micro-reductionism has been criticized as a form of genetic-molecular fundamentalism (e.g. Murphy, 2006) and a multi-level approach, in the form of the burgeoning Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, was proposed. This article focuses on multi-level mechanistic explanations, coming from Cognitive Science, as a possible alternative etiopathogenetic basis for psychiatric classification. The idea of a mechanistic approach to psychiatric taxonomy is here defended on the basis of a better conception of levels and causality. Nevertheless some critical remarks of Mechanism as a psychiatric general view are also offered. (shrink)

We explain metacognition as a management of cognitive resources that does not necessitate algorithmic strategies or metarepresentation. When pragmatic, world-directed actions cannot reduce the distance to the goal, agents engage in epistemic action directed at cognition. Such actions often are physical and involve other people, and so are open to observation. Taking a dynamic systems approach to development, we suggest that implicit and perceptual metacognition emerges from dyadic reciprocal interaction. Early intersubjectivity allows infants to internalize and construct (...) rudimentary strategies for monitoring and control of their own and others’ cognitions by emotion and attention. The functions of initiating, maintaining, and achieving turns make proto-conversation a productive platform for developing metacognition. It enables caregiver and infant to create shared routines for epistemic actions that permit training of metacognitive skills. The adult is of double epistemic use to the infant – as a teacher that comments on and corrects the infant’s efforts, and as the infant’s cognitive resource in its own right. (shrink)

Philosophy begins and ends in disagreement. Philosophers disagree among themselves in innumerable ways, and this pervasive and permanent dissent is a sign of their inability to solve philosophical problems and establish substantive truths. This raises the question: What should I do with my philosophical beliefs in light of philosophy's epistemic failure? In this open-access book, János Tozsér develops four possible answers into comprehensive metaphilosophical visions and argues that we cannot find peace either by committing ourselves to one of these visions (...) or by abandoning our philosophical beliefs. Tozsér calls this disheartening insight "the experience of breakdown", making the case that philosophy's truth-seeking and justificatory tools are unsuitable for establishing truths. Shedding light on the epistemic status of our philosophical beliefs, Tozsér adopts a broad approach to assess the metaphilosophical visions used by philosophers to interpret their own activity and determine their epistemic self-esteem. Open access was funded by the Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungary. (shrink)

In this work we study dimensional theoretical properties of some a±ne dynamical systems. By dimensional theoretical properties we mean Hausdor® dimension and box- counting dimension of invariant sets and ergodic measures on theses sets. Especially we are interested in two problems. First we ask whether the Hausdor® and box- counting dimension of invariant sets coincide. Second we ask whether there exists an ergodic measure of full Hausdor® dimension on these invariant sets. If this is not the case we (...) ask the question, whether at least the variational principle for Haus- dor® dimension holds, which means that there is a sequence of ergodic measures such that their Hausdor® dimension approximates the Hausdor® dimension of the invariant set. It seems to be well accepted by experts that these questions are of great importance in developing a dimension theory of dynamical systems (see the book of Pesin about dimension theory of dynamical systems [PE2]). Dimensional theoretical properties of conformal dynamical systems are fairly well understood today. For example there are general theorems about conformal repellers and hyperbolic sets for conformal di®eomorphisms (see chapter 7 of [PE2]). On the other hand the existence of two di®erent rates of expansion or contraction forces problems that are not captured by a general theory this days. At this stage of de- velopment of the dimension theory of dynamical systems it seems natural to study non conformal examples. This is the ¯rst step to understand the mechanisms that determine dimensional theoretical properties of non conformal dynamical systems. A±ne dynamical systems represent simple examples of non conformal systems. They are easy to de¯ne, but studying their dimensional theoretical properties does never- theless provide challenging mathematical problems and exemplify interesting phe- nomena. We consider here a special class of self-a±ne repellers in dimension two, depending on four parameters (see 2.1.). Furthermore we study a class of attractors of piecewise a±ne maps in dimension three depending on four parameters as well. The last object of our work are projections of these maps that are known as gener- alized Baker's transformations (see 2.2.). The contents of our work is the following: In chapter two we give an overview about some main results in the area of di- mension theory of a±ne dynamical systems and de¯ne the systems we study in this work. We will explain, what is known about the dimensional theoretical properties of these systems and describe what our new results are. In chapter three we then apply symbolic dynamics to our systems. We will introduce explicit shift codings 4 and ¯nd representations of all ergodic measures for our systems using these codings. From chapter four to chapter eight we study dimensional theoretical properties, which our systems generally or generically have. In chapter four we will prove a formula for the box-counting dimension of the repellers and the attractors (see the- orem 4.1.). Then in chapter ¯ve we apply general dimensional theoretical results for ergodic measures found by Ledrappier and Young [LY] and Barreira, Schmeling and Pesin [BPS] to our systems. These results relate the dimension of ergodic measures to metric entropy and Lyapunov exponents. Using this approach we will be able to reduce questions about the dimension of ergodic measures in our context to ques- tions about certain overlapping and especially overlapping self-similar measures on the line. These overlapping self-similar measures are studied in chapter six. Our main theorem extends a result of Peres and Solomyak [PS2] concerning the absolute continuity resp. singularity of symmetric self-similar measures to asymmetric ones (see theorem 6.1.3.). In chapter seven we bring our results together. We prove that we generically (in the sense of Lebesgue measure on a part of the parameter space) have the iden- tity of box-counting and Hausdor® dimension for the repellers and the attractors. (see theorem 7.1.1. and corollary 7.1.2.). This result suggest that one can expect that the identity of box-counting dimension and Hausdor® dimension holds at least generically in some natural classes of non conformal dynamical systems. Furthermore we will see in chapter seven that there generically exists an ergodic measure of full Hausdor® dimension for the repellers. On the other hand the vari- ational principle for Hausdor® dimension is not generic for the attractors. It holds only if we assume a certain symmetry (see theorem 7.1.1.). For generalized Baker's transformations we will ¯nd a part of the parameter space where there generically is an ergodic measure of full dimension and a part where the variational principle for Hausdor® dimension does not hold (see theorem 7.1.3.). Roughly speaking the reason why the variational principle does not hold here is, that if there exists both a stable and an unstable direction one can not generically maximize the dimension in the stable and in the unstable direction at the same time. In an other setting this phenomenon was observed before by Manning and McCluskey [MM]. In chapter eight we extend some results of the last section to invariant sets that correspond to special Markov chains instead of full shifts (see theorem 8.1.1.). In the last two chapters of our work we are interested in number theoretical excep- tions to our generic results. The starting point of our considerations in section nine are results of ErdÄos [ER1] and Alexander and Yorke [AY] that establish singularity and a decrease of dimension for in¯nite convolved Bernoulli measures under special conditions. Using a generalized notion of the Garsia entropy ([GA1/2]) we are able 5 to understand the consequences of number theoretical peculiarities in broader class of overlapping measures (see theorem 9.1.1.). In chapter ten we then analyze number theoretical peculiarities in the context of our dynamical systems. We restrict our attention to a symmetric situation where we generically have the existence of a Bernoulli measure of full dimension and the identity of Hausdor® and box-counting dimension for all of our systems. In the ¯rst section of chapter ten we ¯nd parameter values such that the variational principle for Hausdor® dimension does not hold for the attractors and for the Fat Baker's transformations (see theorem 10.1.1.). These are the ¯rst known examples of dynamical systems for which the variational principle for Hausdor® dimension does not hold because of number theoretical peculiarities of parameter values. For the repellers we have been able to show that under certain number theoretical conditions there is at least no Bernoulli measure of full Hausdor® dimension; the question if the variational principle for Hausdor® dimension holds remains open in this situation. In the second section of chapter ten we will show that the identity for Hausdor® and box-counting dimension can drops because there are number theoretical pecu- liarities. In the context of Weierstrass-like functions this phenomenon was observed by Przytycki and Urbanski [PU]. Our theorem extends this result to a larger class of sets, invariant under dynamical systems (see theorem 10.2.1). At the end of this work the reader will ¯nd two appendices, a list of notations and the list of references. In appendix A we introduce the notions of dimension we use in this work and collect some general facts in dimension theory. In appendix B we state the facts about Pisot-Vijayarghavan number, we need in our analysis of number theoretical peculiarities. The list of notations contains general notations and a table with a summary of notations we use to describe the dynamical systems that we study. Acknowledgments I wish to thank my supervisor JÄorg Schmeling for a lot of valuable discussion and all his help. Also thanks to Luis Barreira for his great hospitality in Lisboa and many interesting comments. This work was done while I was supported by "Promotionstipendium gem. NaFÄoG der Freien UniversitÄat Berlin". (shrink)

The paper explains why the de Broglie-Bohm theory reduces to Newtonian mechanics in the macroscopic classical limit. The quantum-to-classical transition is based on three steps: (i) interaction with the environment produces effectively factorized states, leading to the formation of effective wave functions and hence decoherence; (ii) the effective wave functions selected by the environment–the pointer states of decoherence theory–will be well-localized wave packets, typically Gaussian states; (iii) the quantum potential of a Gaussian state becomes negligible under standard classicality conditions; therefore, (...) the effective wave function will move according to Newtonian mechanics in the correct classical limit. As a result, a Bohmian system in interaction with the environment will be described by an effective Gaussian state and–when the system is macroscopic–it will move according to Newtonian mechanics. (shrink)

The paper explains why the de Broglie–Bohm theory reduces to Newtonian mechanics in the macroscopic classical limit. The quantum-to-classical transition is based on three steps: (i) interaction with the environment produces effectively factorized states, leading to the formation of _effective wave functions_ and hence _decoherence_; (ii) the effective wave functions selected by the environment—the pointer states of decoherence theory—will be well-localized wave packets, typically Gaussian states; (iii) the quantum potential of a Gaussian state becomes negligible under standard classicality conditions; therefore, (...) the effective wave function will move according to Newtonian mechanics in the correct classical limit. As a result, a Bohmian system in interaction with the environment will be described by an effective Gaussian state and—when the system is macroscopic—it will move according to Newtonian mechanics. (shrink)

This article argues for a task-based approach to identifying and individuating cognitive systems. The agent-based extended cognition approach faces a problem of cognitive bloat and has difficulty accommodating both sub-individual cognitive systems ("scaling down") and some supra-individual cognitive systems ("scaling up"). The standard distributed cognition approach can accommodate a wider variety of supra-individual systems but likewise has difficulties with sub-individual systems and faces the problem of cognitive bloat. We develop a (...) task-based variant of distributed cognition designed to scale up and down smoothly while providing a principled means of avoiding cognitive bloat. The advantages of the task-based approach are illustrated by means of two parallel case studies: re-representation in the human visual system and in a biomedical engineering laboratory. (shrink)

This special issue on affordances bases on the thesis, that all natural and artificial things inhere affordances that appeal to our cognitive system, and thus invite us to look at them, perceive them, think about them, interpret them, and use them. The concept roots in the studies of the American psychologist James J. Gibson from the 1960s. According to him, "things" offer a certain range of possible activities depending on their form, time patterns, and material qualities, thus becoming part of (...) human-thing-interactions. However, affordances can also be culturally trained. This aspect has been intensively discussed subsequently within different disciplines (e.g., Social Sciences, Design Studies). But only recently has the concept received attention in the field of Visual Culture Studies particularly through archaeological scholarship. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest that several problems in the study of emotion depend on a lack of adequate analytical tools, in particular on the tendency of viewing the organism as a modular and hierarchical system whose activity is mainly constituted by strictly sequential causal events. I argue that theories and models based on this view are inadequate to account for the complex reciprocal influences of the many ingredients that constitute emotions. Cognitive processes, feelings and bodily states are so subtly (...) intertwined that it is not possible to determine which one "comes first" in a causal chain. The dynamical systems approach in cognitive science, I suggest, provides a more appropriate framework for the study of emotion. In particular, the notion of circular causation and collective action help depict the organism as a self-organising system in which emotion emerges as a function of its global activity. Among others, this dynamical perspective allows revising the popular notion of appraisal in a way that can dissolve some of the questions that have taunted emotion theorists thus far. (shrink)

In this paper, we theoretically address the relevance of unintentional and inconsistent interactional elements in human–robot interactions. We argue that elements failing, or poorly succeeding, to reproduce a humanlike interaction create significant consequences in human–robot relational patterns and may affect human–human relations. When considering social interactions as systems, the absence of a precise interactional element produces a general reshaping of the interactional pattern, eventually generating new types of interactional settings. As an instance of this dynamic, we study the absence (...) of metacommunicative abilities in social artifacts. Then, we analyze the pragmatic consequences of the aforementioned absence through the lens of Paul Watzlawick’s interactionist theory. We suggest that a fixed complementary interactional setting may be produced because of the asymmetric understanding, between robots and humans, of metacommunication. We highlight the psychological implications of this interactional asymmetry within Jessica Benjamin’s concept of “mutual recognition”. Finally, we point out the possible shift of dysfunctional interactional patterns from human–robot interactions to human–human ones. (shrink)