This essay critiques the standard characterization of mindfulness as present-centred non-judgmental awareness, arguing that this account misses some of the central features of mindfulness as described by classical Buddhist accounts, which present mindfulness as being relevant to the past as well as to the present. I show that for these sources the central feature of mindfulness is not its present focus but its capacity to hold its object and thus allow for sustained attention, regardless of whether the object is present (...) or not. I further show that for these sources mindfulness can be explicitly evaluative, thus demonstrating the degree to which classical Buddhist accounts differ from the modern description of mindfulness as non-judgmental. I conclude that although this modern description may be useful as an operational definition intended for practical instruction, it does not provide an adequate basis for a theoretical analysis of mindfulness, for it fails to emphasize its retentive nature to privilege its alleged nonconceptuality. (shrink)

Context: A central motivation behind various embodied, extended, and enactive (4E) approaches to cognition is to ground our understanding of minds and cognition within the biological structures that give rise to life. Because of this, their advocates often claim a natural kinship with dynamical and developmental systems theories. However, these accounts also explicitly or implicitly privilege individual organisms in ways that contrast with many of the insights of systems and developmental systems approaches to biology. Problem: The prioritization of individual organisms (...) within 4E approaches to cognition contrasts with the default entangled structure of biological systems associated with cognitive agency. We provide means for 4E cognitive science to move beyond an individual-centred view of cognitive agency. Method: We first identify and problematize individual-centredness within various predominant 4E approaches by comparison with biological research and developmental systems theory. Subsequently, we offer conceptual resources from the field of ecological research for understanding cognitive agency beyond the predominant focus on individual organisms. Results: Cognitive agency may be understood without privileging individual organisms by reading nonequilibrium maintenance in terms of a dynamic differentiation instead of individual organismic autonomy. This form of organizational structure corresponds to the notion of sympoiesis from ecological research. Implications: Approaching cognitive agency without privileging individual organisms should be invaluable to advocates of 4E cognition seeking to ground notions of cognition and mind within contemporary biological research. Constructivist content: We seek to expand upon existing constructivist perspectives on the organizing principles of cognitive agency, such as sensorimotor embodiment and autopoiesis, arguing that meta-organismic cognitive agents (including humans) embody distributed relations beyond the privileging of individual organisms. Key words: 4E cognition, autopoiesis, cognitive agency, developmental systems theory, enactivism, extended mind thesis, holobionts, sympoeisis. (shrink)

The aim of this analysis was to examine the concept of time to rejuvenate and extend existing narratives of time within the nursing literature. In particular, we hope to promote a new trajectory in nursing research and practice which focuses on time and person‐centred care, specifically of older people with cognitive impairment hospitalized in the acute care setting. We consider the explanatory power of concepts such as clock time, process time, fast care, slow care and time debt for elucidating (...) the relationship between ‘good care’ and ‘time use’. We conclude by offering two additional concepts of time, plurotemporality and person‐centred time (PCT) which we propose will help advance of nursing knowledge and practice. Nurse clinicians and researchers can use these alternative concepts of time to explore and describe different temporal structures that honour the patient's values and preferences using experiential, observation‐based nursing research approaches. (shrink)

In this article, we sought reconciliation between the “body‐as‐representation” and the “body‐as‐experience,” that is, how the body is represented in discourse and how the body of older people with cognitive impairment is experienced. We identified four contemporary “technologies” and gave examples of these to show how they influence how older people with cognitive impairment are often represented in acute care settings. We argued that these technologies may be mediated further by discourses of ageism and ableism which can potentiate (...) either the repressive or productive tendencies of these technologies resulting in either positive or negative care experiences for the older person and/or their carer, including nurses. We then provided examples from research of embodied experiences of older people with dementia and of how nurses and other professionals utilized their inter‐bodily experiences to inform acts of caring. The specificity and individuality of these experiences were more conducive to positive care experiences. We conclude the article by proposing that the act of caring is one way nurses seek to reconcile the “body‐as‐representation” with the “body‐as‐experience” to mitigate the repressive effects of negative ageism and ableism. The act of caring, we argue, is the essence of caring enacted through the provision of person‐centred care which evokes nurses to respond appropriately to the older person's “otherness,” their “variation of being” while enabling them to enact a continuation of themselves and their own version of normality. (shrink)

Key commentators on person‐centred care have described it as a “new ethic of care” which they link inextricably to notions of individual autonomy, action, change and improvement. Two key points are addressed in this article. The first is that few discussions about ethics and person‐centred are underscored by any particular ethical theory. The second point is that despite the espoused benefits of person‐centred care, delivery within the acute care setting remains largely aspirational. Choices nurses make about their practice tend to (...) comply more often with prevailing norms than those championed by person‐centred care. We draw on elements of work by moral philosopher Løgstrup and Foucault to provide insight into nurses’ ethical conduct and ask why nurses would want to act otherwise, when what they think and do is viewed as normal, or think and act otherwise if doing so is seen within the organization as transgressive? To address these more specific questions, we discuss them in relation to the following constructs: the ethical demand, sovereign expressions of life and parrhêsia. We conclude by arguing that a ethical theoretical framework enables nurses to increase their perceptibility and appreciation of the ethical demand particularly those emanating from incommensurability between organizational norms and the norms invoked by person‐centred care. We argue that nurses’ responses to the ethical demand by way of parrhêsia can be an important feature of intra‐organizational reflexivity and its transformation towards the delivery care that is more person‐centred, particularly for older people with cognitive impairment. We conclude the article by highlighting the implications of this for nursing education and research. (shrink)

Relationships are central to enacting person‐centred care of the older person with cognitive impairment. A fuller understanding of relationships and the role they play facilitating wellness and preserving personhood is critical if we are to unleash the productive potential of nursing research and person‐centred care. In this article, we target the acute care setting because much of the work about relationships and older people with cognitive impairment has tended to focus on relationships in long‐term care. The acute care (...) setting is characterized by archetypal constraints which differentiate it from long‐term care, in terms of acuity and haste, task‐orientated work patterns and influence from “the rule of medicine,” all of which can privilege particular types of relating. In this article, we drew on existing conceptualizations of relationships from theory and practice by tapping in to the intellectual resources provided by nurse researchers, the philosophy of Martin Buber and ANT scholars. This involved recounting two examples of dyadic and networked relationships which were re‐interpreted using two complementary theoretical approaches to provide deeper and more comprehensive conceptualizations of these relationships. By re‐presenting key tenets from the work of key scholars on the topic relationships, we hope to hasten socialization of these ideas into nursing into the acute care setting. First, by enabling nurses to reflect on how they might work toward cultivating relationships that are more salutogenic and consistent with the preservation of personhood. Second, by stimulating two distinct but related lines of research enquiry which focus on dyadic and networked relationships with the older person with cognitive impairment in the acute care setting. We also hope to reconcile the schism that has emerged in the literature between preferred approaches to care of the older person with cognitive impairment, that is person‐centred care versus relationship‐centred care by arguing that these are complementary rather than mutually exclusive and can be brought together in one theoretical framework acknowledging personhood as relational in essence. (shrink)

Although a large body of literature exists propounding the importance of space in aged care and care of the older person with dementia, there is, however, only limited exploration of the ‘acute care space’ as a particular type of space with archetypal constraints that maybe unfavourable to older people with cognitive impairment and nurses wanting to provide care that is person‐centred. In this article, we explore concepts of space and examine the implications of these for the delivery of care (...) to older people who are cognitively impaired. Our exploration is grounded in theorisations of space offered by key geographers and phenomenologists, but also draws on how space has been constructed within the nursing literature that refers specifically to acute care. We argue that space, once created, can be created and that nursing has a significant role to play in the process of its recreation in the pursuit of care that is person‐centred. We conclude by introducing an alternative logic of space aimed at promoting the creation of more salutogenic spaces that invokes a sense of sanctuary, safeness, and inclusion, all of which are essential if the care provided to the older person with cognitive impairment is apposite to their needs. The concept of ‘person‐centred space’ helps to crystallize the relationship between space and person‐centred care and implies more intentional manipulation of space that is more conducive to caring and healing. Significantly, it marks a return to Nightingale's wisdom, that is, to put the person in the best possible conditions for nature to act upon them. (shrink)

Person‐centred care is a relatively new orthodoxy being implemented by modern hospitals across developed nations. Research demonstrating the merits of this style of care for improving patient outcomes, staff morale and organizational efficiency is only just beginning to emerge. In contrast, a significant body of literature exists showing that attainment of person‐centred care in the acute care sector particularly, remains largely aspirational, especially for older people with cognitive impairment. In previous articles, we argued that nurses work constantly to reconcile (...) prevailing constructions of time, space, relationships, the body and ethics, to meet expectations that the care they provide is person‐centred. In this article, we explore key concepts of neo‐liberal thought which forms an important back‐story to the articles. Economic concepts, “efficiency” and “freedom” are examined to illustrate how nurses work to reconcile both the repressive and productive effects of economic power. We conclude the article by proposing a new research agenda aimed at building a more nuanced understanding of the messy actualities of nursing practice under the influences of neo‐liberalism, that illuminates the compromises and adaptations nurses have had to make in response to economic power. (shrink)

Background: There is a growing interest in using cognitive behavioural therapy with people who have Asperger Syndrome and comorbid mental health problems. Aims: To examine whether modified group CBT for clinically significant anxiety in an AS population is feasible and likely to be efficacious. Method: Using a randomised assessor-blind trial, 52 individuals with AS were randomised into a treatment arm or a waiting-list control arm. After 24 weeks, those in the waiting-list control arm received treatment, while those initially randomised (...) to treatment were followed-up for 24 weeks. Results: The conversion rate for this trial was high, while attrition was 13%. After 24 weeks, there was no significant difference between those randomised to the treatment arm compared to those randomised to the waiting-list control arm on the primary outcome measure, the Hamilton Rating Scale for Anxiety. Conclusions: Trials of psychological therapies with this population are feasible. Larger definitive trials are now needed. Declaration of Interest: None Trial Registration: ISRCTN 30265294, UKCRN 8370. (shrink)

The so-called ‘cognitive revolution’ (Gardner, 1985) in American psychology owed much to developments in adjacent disciplines, especially theoretical linguistics and computer science. Indeed, the cognitive revolution brought forth, not only a change in the conception of psychology, but also an inter-disciplinary approach to understanding the mind, involving philosophy, anthropology and neuroscience along with computer science, linguistics and psychology. Many commentators agree in dating the conception of this inter-disciplinary approach, cognitive science, to 11 September 1956, the second day (...) of a symposium on information theory held at MIT (Miller, 2003). Over the next twenty years or so, cognitive science developed an institutional presence through research centres, conferences, journals, and a substantial infusion of funds from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. (shrink)

Non-cognitivists claim to be able to represent normative judgment, and especially moral judgment, as an expression of a non-cognitive attitude. There is some reason to worry whether their treatment can incorporate agent centred theories, including much of common sense morality. In this paper I investigate the prospects for a non-cognitivist explanation of what is going on when we subscribe to agent centred theories or norms. The first section frames the issue by focusing on a particularly simple and clear agent (...) centred theory, egoism. The second section poses the difficulty faced by non-cognitivist analyses of such theories and norms, and runs briefly through a couple of abortive attempts to solve it. The third section offers a solution and explains it. The fourth section uses the account developed in the third section to show in what way agent centred judgments are universalizable and in what way they are not. (shrink)

Proponents of the predictive processing (PP) framework often claim that one of the framework’s significant virtues is its unificatory power. What is supposedly unified are predictive processes in the mind, and these are explained in virtue of a common prediction error-minimisation (PEM) schema. In this paper, I argue against the claim that PP currently converges towards a unified explanation of cognitive processes. Although the notion of PEM systematically relates a set of posits such as ‘efficiency’ and ‘hierarchical coding’ into (...) a unified conceptual schema, neither the frameworks’ algorithmic specifications nor its hypotheses about their implementations in the brain are clearly unified. I propose a novel way to understand the fruitfulness of the research program in light of a set of research heuristics that are partly shared with those common to Bayesian reverse engineering. An interesting consequence of this proposal is that pluralism is at least as important as unification to promote the positive development of the predictive mind. (shrink)

What cognitive goods do children plausibly have a right to in an education? In attempting to answer this question, I begin with a puzzle centred around Feinberg’s observation that a denial of certain cognitive goods can violate a child’s right to an open future. I show that propositionalist, dispositionalist and objectualist characterisations of the kinds of cognitive goods children have a right to run in to problems. A promising alternative is then proposed and defended, one that is (...) inspired in the main by Wittgenstein’s ‘hinge’ epistemology as developed in his posthumous On Certainty. (shrink)

What cognitive goods do children plausibly have a right to in an education? In attempting to answer this question, I begin with a puzzle centred around Joel Feinberg's observation that a denial of certain cognitive goods can violate a child's right to an open future. I show that propositionalist, dispositionalist and objectualist characterisations of the kinds of cognitive goods children have a right to, run in to problems. A promising alternative is then proposed and defended, one that (...) is inspired in the main by Wittgenstein's ‘hinge’ epistemology as developed in his posthumous On Certainty. (shrink)

Les noms centre et milieu sont des Noms de Localisation Interne pouvant se combiner avec la préposition à, et construire de la sorte des locutions prépositionnelles locatives NP0 au milieu de NP1 et NP0 au centre de NP1. Dans un cadre référentialiste, leur caractérisation s’appuie sur une représentation géométrique du sens de centre et de milieu. L’objectif de cet article est de remettre en question ce point de vue en montrant que la distinction entre au milieu de et au centre (...) de tient dans deux paramètres sémantiques : le caractère délimité ou non de NP1 et la signification fonctionnelle de NP0 par rapport à NP1. A l’aide de ces deux critères nous rendrons compte de données qui vont du domaine concret au domaine abstrait. L’étude de ces deux locutions est en outre un bon prétexte pour proposer une approche de la localisation qui s’inscrit dans un arrière-plan philosophique inhabituel, celui de la phénoménologie. Nous développerons l’idée que les effets de perspectives induits par les locutions au centre / milieu de ne se rapportent pas à une réalité commune, et que ce qui est localisé par une locution ne coïncide jamais avec ce qui est localisé par l’autre, même dans les cas d’apparente synonymie. Pour cela, nous reprendrons l’opposition gestaltiste figure / fond, et nous montrerons que au centre de établit une relation fonctionnelle avec un tout délimité, tandis que au milieu de établit un rapport de coïncidence avec un fond dont la délimitation n’est pas spécifiée. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Beyond Individual-Centred 4E Cognition: Systems Biology and Sympoiesis” by Mads Julian Dengsø & Michael David Kirchhoff. Abstract: A move to sympoiesis entails a conceptual overhaul of autopoiesis, a key facet of the enactive approach to cognition. In this commentary, I invite more systematic thinking about the concept of autopoiesis and enactivist commitments to it, given the inconsistencies regarding individuality raised in the target article.

This dissertation explores philosophical issues in autism and defends a new version of the enactive approach to autism and social cognition. The discussion in this dissertation centres around the question “why do autistics encounter social interaction problems?”, addressing this question in ways that raise broader philosophical issues. Within the philosophy of mind, these include the problem of other minds, the nature of emotions, and narratives and their role in understanding the self. Beyond cognition, such issues are intertwined with questions (...) in metaphysics, philosophy of science, sociopolitical and moral philosophy, and disability studies. In responding to the question “why do autistics encounter social interaction problems?”, I argue that autistic social interaction problems result from the sensorimotor differences between autistics and non-autistics. This contrasts with the response to this question given by widely-endorsed views that emphasize instead the cognitive deficits that autistic people have. Such cognitivist views, such as the theory theory and simulation theory, are the focus of my first two critical chapters. I go on to offer a critique of two approaches that go beyond the focus on mindreading in appealing to sensorimotor problems as lying at the heart of the problem. These views, interaction theory and the original enactive approach, are the focus of the next two chapters. I then turn to defend a novel form of the enactive approach in the last part of the dissertation by emphasizing the role of emotions as the capacity for us to make sense of the world and to construct the sense of self from narratives. My new approach shifts the explanatory focus from perception and motion to emotion. This maintains the advantage of the original enactive approach, while avoiding its behaviouristically limited descriptions. My account thus expands the theory’s capacity to describe and explain internal states important to self-understanding and self-expression. This allows one to approach autistic social difficulties by attending to the first-person perspective, cohering with my reliance on first-person autistic narratives as a major source of evidence that supplements traditional scientific research on autism. (shrink)

The concept of cognition has undergone considerable extension, first, by intensive empirical study of representational systems and their role for the possession and application of cognitive capacities and second, by the turn to practical knowledge. By these two developments, the field of research on cognition has been opening with respect to which all eager attempts of demarcation between the humanities and the sciences seem to be outdated. This brings about institutional changes in the scientific landscape as can be seen (...) in the current tendency to find interdisciplinary centres for the investigation of cognitive phenomena all over the world. (shrink)

Observing averted eye gaze results in the automatic allocation of attention to the gazed-at location. The role of the orientation of the face that produces the gaze cue was investigated. The eyes in the face could look left or right in a head-centred frame, but the face itself could be oriented 90 degrees clockwise or anticlockwise such that the eyes were gazing up or down. Significant cueing effects to targets presented to the left or right of the screen were found (...) in these head orientation conditions. This suggests that attention was directed to the side to which the eyes would have been looking towards, had the face been presented upright. This finding provides evidence that head orientation can affect gaze following, even when the head orientation alone is not a social cue. It also shows that the mechanism responsible for the allocation of attention following a gaze cue can be influenced by intrinsic object-based (i.e. head-centred) properties of the task-irrelevant cue. (shrink)

In recent years, social cognition approaches to human evolution and Material Engagement Theory have offered new theoretical resources to advance our understanding of the prehistoric hominin mind. To date, however, these two approaches have developed largely in isolation from one another. I argue that there is a gap between social- and material-centred approaches, and that this is precisely the sociomateriality of the appearance of ancestral hominin bodies, which evolved under selective pressure to develop increasingly complex, cooperative sociality. To get this (...) sociomaterial body in focus, I develop an esthesiological framework, appropriated from Merleau-Ponty (2003), for interpreting the expressive body in an evolutionary and comparative context. The guiding hypothesis of esthesiology is that before being rationality (social or material), “humanity is another corporeity” (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 208). Esthesiology studies the appearance of the body and its sense organs as an intertwining locus of a sensing power (the ability to see, to touch, etc.) and a sensible character (the visible, touchable body). It is this dual-aspect character of the body that facilitates the most basic affective and sensorimotor modes of sociality. Examining these features from a comparative perspective, we find that the human body is distinctively suited to prosocial communication and cooperation: a more cooperative eye, an exposed and communicative skin. I thus propose a cooperative body hypothesis, by analogy with the cooperative eye hypothesis (Tomasello et al., 2007). Esthesiology provides a framework for integrating and interpreting a wide range of otherwise disconnected facts concerning human and nonhuman animal bodies, forms of life, cognition, and evolution, thereby bridging the gap between social cognition and material engagement perspectives. In doing so, however, it not only solves problems and proposes new directions of investigation, but also demands theoretical revisions from each. (shrink)

Take part... and you will bear witness to the semiotic nature of human animals. This event, commented by Charbel Niño El-Hani (Federal University of Bahia) and chaired by Elma Berisha (Lyceum Institute), is part of the activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the (...) Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project. *** Jamin Pelkey is Associate Professor and Program Director in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Ryerson University, Toronto, where he is also an active faculty member in the Ryerson-York graduate program in Communication & Culture. He serves as Co-Editor of Semiotica, Vice President of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics, and executive board member for the International Cognitive Linguistics Association, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, and the Semiotic Society of America. Jamin’s research explores semiotic dimensions of language evolution and embodied cognition. He is the recipient of the 2017 Mouton d’Or Award for best article in Semiotica and has edited or co-edited twelve collections in linguistics, anthropology, and semiotics, including Tropological Thought and Action (2022), Cognitive Semiotics (2019), Applied Brand Semiotics (2018), Archaeology of Concepts (2018), Sociohistorical Linguistics in Southeast Asia (2017), Virtual Identities (2016), and The Semiotics of Paradox (2015). His authored books include Dialectology as Dialectic (2011) and The Semiotics of X (2017). He is currently editing Bloomsbury Semiotics, a major reference work in four volumes. *** Charbel N. El-Hani is full professor in the Institute of Biology, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. Coordinator of the LEFHBio - History, Philosophy, and Biology Teaching Lab and the INCT IN-TREE - National Institute of Science and Technology in Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies in Ecology and Evolution. Between January 2020 and July 2021, he was visiting researcher at the CES - Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He works in the areas of philosophy of biology, ecology, ethnobiology and science education research. *** Homepage: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/io2s Auditorium: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/io2s/auditorium *** Technical support assured by Robert Junqueira. The cover image for the video was designed by Zahra Soltani. (shrink)

Nous proposons, dans cet article, une analyse communicationnelle des différentes postures de traitement muséal de controverses socioscientifiques pour interroger leur signification en termes d’évolution des modèles mobilisés d’éducation scientifique et d’empowerment des citoyens. Plusieurs travaux montrent que certains centres de sciences privilégient une posture d’externalité en confinant les controverses à leurs dimensions scientifiques. Nous mettons ici l’accent sur des approches alternatives qui intègrent des problématiques controversées. Que ce soit en se positionnant explicitement comme acteur, comme organisateur ou comme témoin (...) du débat public, les centres de sciences traduisent une tendance forte de médiation qui prend acte des reconfigurations contemporaines de la gouvernance des sciences en société. Il nous semble que les expériences dont nous rendons compte intègrent l’évolution des rapports de légitimité entendus en termes de choix scientifiques et techniques et inscrivent une prise de distance vis-à-vis du projet originel de valorisation des sciences.In this article, we offer a communicational analysis of the different stances taken by museums in their treatment of socio-scientific controversies, in order to explore their significance in terms of changing patterns in scientific education and citizens’ empowerment. Several studies have shown that some science centres tend to adopt a distanced stance by confining controversies to their scientific dimensions. Here, we discuss alternative approaches in which the controversial issues are included. Whether explicitly taking up their stance as protagonists, organisers or witnesses to a public debate, science centres display a strong tendency towards mediation, thereby acknowledging contemporary reconfigurations in the governance of science in society. We believe that the experiences reported on here reflect awareness of a change in the balance of legitimating powers in terms of scientific and technical choices, and have effectively distanced themselves from the original idea of highlighting the value of science. (shrink)

The collection of papers addresses the perennial problem of the relation between language and meaning. It proposes various theoretical approaches to the issue ranging from a synergetic theory of meaning merging the cognitive and the socio-historical perspectives, through holistic, evolutionary models and a revision of some of the assumptions of Cognitive Metaphor Theory to the discussion of the role of pragmatic competence in meaning construction. A number of papers make recourse to corpus based studies and psycholinguistic experiments. The (...) topics of specific linguistic investigations cover such diverse issues as idiom processing, emotion words in Chinese, valuation of abstract nouns, the preposition <I>at and scalar adjectives. Several papers explore the application of the reflections on the nature of meaning to lexicography and translation. One, self-reflective article investigates the consequences of the unformulated assumptions about meaning for the coherence of proposed linguistic theories. The volume firmly places the study of meaning in the centre of the linguistic research by showing its significance for linguistic theory and its applications. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Beyond Individual-Centred 4E Cognition: Systems Biology and Sympoiesis” by Mads Julian Dengsø & Michael David Kirchhoff. Abstract: Dengsø and Kirchhoff’s inspiring proposal to drop the individual-centeredness of autopoiesis in favor of a view based on sympoiesis and developmental systems theory (DST) has two problems: (a) It is not clear that the points they raise as arguments against individual-centered 4E cognition are incompatible with those views and many of them are already included in Ezequiel Di (...) Paolo’s account of enaction. (b) They give no clear account of how 4E cognition will account for agency as purposive behavior once it discards its current, individual-centered, accounts of it. (shrink)

In this paper, I am concerned with certain phenomenological contributions to person-centred practices in healthcare. I propose a meaning-centred phenomenological approach to illness and contrast it with certain body-centred and feeling-centred accounts. I suggest that the proposed approach complements, rather than competes with, these other accounts in the area of phenomenology of illness. This is illustrated, for example, by the way the proposed meaning-centred approach tackles certain general challenges to the phenomenology of illness. I pursue this approach to develop an (...) account of illness as involving a loss of meaning. However, I point out that at the heart of illness lies the possibility of resilience. Resilience is existentially understood as enacting a reconstruction of meaning. I point out that resilience and certain related cognitive mechanisms make well-being possible. Here, to be well is existentially understood as being able to find meaning in life. The phenomenological analysis of existential resilience and well-being I offer in this paper indicates that resilient ways of being which enable well-being can be learned; the analysis thus brings to light deep motivations for supporting resilient learning through healthcare practices and policies. (shrink)

Placing the future centre stage as a way of understanding cognition is gaining attention in psychology. The general modern label for this is “prospection” which refers to the process of representing and thinking about possible future states of the world. Several theorists have claimed that episodic and prospective memory, as well as hypothetical thinking (mental simulation) and conditional reasoning are necessary cognitive faculties that enable prospection. Given the limitations in current empirical efforts connecting these faculties to prospection, the aim (...) of this mini review is to argue that the findings show that they are sufficient, but not necessary for prospection. As a result, the short concluding section gives an outline of an alternative conceptualisation of prospection. The proposal is that the critical characteristics of prospection are the discovery of, and maintenance of goals via causal learning. (shrink)

Editorial: Folk Epistemology. The Cognitive Bases of Epistemic Evaluation Content Type Journal Article Pages 477-482 DOI 10.1007/s13164-010-0046-8 Authors Christophe Heintz, Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary Dario Taraborelli, Centre for Research in Social Simulation, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK Journal Review of Philosophy and Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158 Journal Volume Volume 1 Journal Issue Volume 1, Number 4.

Scientific collaboration can only be understood along the epistemic and cognitive grounding of scientific disciplines. New scientific discoveries in astrophysics led to a major restructuring of the elite network of astrophysics. To study the interplay of the epistemic grounding and the social network structure of a discipline, a mixed-methods approach is necessary. It combines scientometrics, quantitative network analysis and visualization tools with a qualitative network analysis approach. The centre of the international collaboration network of astrophysics is demarcated by identifying (...) the 225 most productive astrophysicists. For the years 1998–1999 and 2001–2006 four co-authorship networks are constructed comprehending each a two year period. A visualization of the longitudinal network data gives first hints on the structural development of the network. The network of 2005–2006 is analyzed in depth. Based on cohesion analysis tools for network analysis, two main cores and three smaller ones are identified. Scientists in each core and additionally in structurally interesting positions are identified and 17 qualitative expert interviews are conducted with them. The visualization of the network of 2005–2006 is used in the interviews as a stimulus for the interviewees. An analysis of the three most often used keywords of the 225 astrophysicists is included and combined with the other data. The triangulation of these approaches shows that major epistemic changes in astrophysics, e.g. the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe, together with technical and organizational innovations, leads to a restructuring of the network of the discipline. The importance of a combination of qualitative and quantitative network analysis tools for the understanding of the interplay of cognitive and social structure in the sociology of science is substantiated. (shrink)

This paper develops a formal framework to model a process in which the formation of individual opinions is embedded in a deliberative exchange with others. The paper opts for a low-resolution modeling approach and abstracts away from most of the details of the social-epistemic process. Taking a bird's eye view allows us to analyze the chances for the truth to be found and broadly accepted under conditions of cognitive division of labour combined with a social exchange process. Cognitive (...) division of labour means that only some individuals are active truth seekers, possibly with different capacities. Both mathematical tools and computer simulations are used to investigate the model. As an analytical result, the Funnel Theorem states that under rather weak conditions on the social process, a consensus on the truth will be reached if all individuals possess an arbitrarily small capacity to go for the truth. The Leading the pack Theorem states that under certain conditions even a single truth seeker may lead all individuals to the truth. Systematic simulations analyze how close agents can get to the truth depending upon the frequency of truth seekers, their capacities as truth seekers, the position of the truth (more to the extreme or more in the centre of an opinion space), and the willingness to take into account the opinions of others when exchanging and updating opinions. (shrink)

This paper develops a formal framework to model a process in which the formation of individual opinions is embedded in a deliberative exchange with others. The paper opts for a low-resolution modeling approach and abstracts away from most of the details of the social-epistemic process. Taking a bird's eye view allows us to analyze the chances for the truth to be found and broadly accepted under conditions of cognitive division of labour combined with a social exchange process. Cognitive (...) division of labour means that only some individuals are active truth seekers, possibly with different capacities. Both mathematical tools and computer simulations are used to investigate the model. As an analytical result, the Funnel Theorem states that under rather weak conditions on the social process, a consensus on the truth will be reached if all individuals possess an arbitrarily small capacity to go for the truth. The Leading the pack Theorem states that under certain conditions even a single truth seeker may lead all individuals to the truth. Systematic simulations analyze how close agents can get to the truth depending upon the frequency of truth seekers, their capacities as truth seekers, the position of the truth (more to the extreme or more in the centre of an opinion space), and the willingness to take into account the opinions of others when exchanging and updating opinions. (shrink)

How do scientists generate knowledge in groups, and how have they done so in the past? How do epistemically motivated social interactions influence or even drive this process? These questions speak to core interests of both history and philosophy of science. Idealised models and formal arguments have been suggested to illuminate the social epistemology of science, but their conclusions are not directly applicable to scientific practice. This paper uses one of these models as a lens and historiographical tool in the (...) examination of actual scientific collectives. It centres on the analysis of two episodes from the history of photosynthesis research of the late nineteenth- to mid-twentieth centuries, which display a wide and coordinated intellectual diversity similar to Kitcher’s “division of cognitive labour”. The concept, I argue, captures important aspects of the photosynthesis research communities, but the underlying process unfolded in ways that differ from the model’s assumption in interesting ways. The paper unravels how the self-organised interplay of cooperation and competition, and the dynamics of individual and collective goals within scientific communities were influential factors in the generation of knowledge. From there, some thoughts are developed on how historical and philosophical approaches in the analysis of science can productively interact. (shrink)

The monograph tells a different story on the history of modern philosophy: the narrative is no longer centred on the question whether knowledge results from experience or reason, but whether experience and reason are in fact possible without language.

All normal human beings alive in the last fifty thousand years appear to have possessed, in Mark Turner's phrase, 'impressively atful minds'. Cognitively modern minds produced a staggering list of behavioural singularities - science, religion, mathematics, language, advanced tool use, decorative dress, dance, culture, art - that seems to indicate a mysterious and unexplained discontinuity between us and all other living things. This brute fact gives rise to some tantalizing questions: How did the artful mind emerge? What are the basic (...) mental operations that make art possible for us now, and how do they operate? These are the questions that occupy the distinguished contributors to this book, which emerged from a year-long Getty-funded research project hosted by the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford. (shrink)

Recent theorists suggest that our capacity to respond affectively to fictions depends on our ability to engage in simulation: either simulating a character in the fiction, or simulating someone reading or watching the fiction as though it were fact. We argue that such accounts are quite successful at accounting for many of the basic explananda of our affective engagements in fiction. Nonetheless, we argue further that simulationist accounts ultimately fail, for simulation involves an ineliminably ego-centred element that is atypical of (...) our experience of fiction. We then draw on recent work in philosophical psychology to articulate a more psychologically plausible account of our emotional engagement with fiction. (shrink)

The introduction of nurse‐led telephone helplines for patients to have access to information and advice has led to the development of a new kind of practise for nurses. This study focuses on the ways NHS Direct (NHSD) nurses construct a nursing identity and shape their work in a call‐centre environment. The empirical findings are drawn from a study investigating the impact of NHSD on professional nursing issues that was part of a wider evaluation of the service in South Wales, UK. (...) Data were gathered from responses to free text questions included in a questionnaire sent to nurses in three NHSD sites. Further data were collected from focus groups held with NHSD nurses. The nurses defend their identity as nurses rather than call‐centre workers. The discourses of the nurses show a strong alignment with the traditional values of nursing, encompassing holistic and empathetic practise that has moved with the nurses across locales. We argue that the nurses frame a nursing identity in NHSD around the importance of previous experience and claim to practise holistic nursing. However, the development of new skills and adaptation of old skills in response to the demand of NHSD work challenges normative notions of traditional ‘hands‐on’ models of practise and indicates a possible movement towards a cognitive model of nursing based upon knowledge, analytical and communication skills that reflects the transformative and dynamic nature of professional identity and boundaries. (shrink)

The paper offers a new model of genre. The model employs Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of plane of immanence, chaos, and, in particular, concepts and approaches of cognitive science. Genre in general and the film genre in particular are modelled as a multidimensional space with a network of vector sequences, as a plane of immanence with individual works in the role of concepts, as a cluster category without a centre. That genre model provides more explanatory power than the recent (...) semantic-syntactical one. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Beyond Individual-Centred 4E Cognition: Systems Biology and Sympoiesis” by Mads Julian Dengsø & Michael David Kirchhoff. Abstract: I examine the authors’ concept of relational cognition, showing that it has two possible readings, both more “cartesian” than the authors suppose. Whence the authors’ “anti-cartesianism,” then? I suggest it is due to an understanding of cognition that allows cognition to operate at very long timescales, and provide an argument to resist such an understanding.

To view language as a cultural tool challenges much of what claims to be linguistic science while opening up a new people-centred linguistics. On this view, how we speak, think and act depends on, not just brains, but also cultural traditions. Yet, Everett is conservative: like others trained in distributional analysis, he reifies ‘words’. Though rejecting inner languages and grammatical universals, he ascribes mental reality to a lexicon. Reliant as he is on transcriptions, he takes the cognitivist view that brains (...) represent word-forms. By contrast, in radical embodied cognitive theory, bodily dynamics themselves act as cues to meaning. Linguistic exostructures resemble tools that constrain how people concert acting-perceiving bodies. The result is unending renewal of verbal structures: like artefacts and institutions, they function to sustain a species-specific cultural ecology. As Ross argues, ecological extensions make human cognition hypersocial. When we link verbal patterns with lived experience, we communicate and cognise by fitting action/perception to cultural practices that anchor human meaning making. (shrink)

Reappraisal is an adaptive emotion regulation strategy associated with favourable mental health outcomes. It is unclear whether the adaptive outcomes of habitual reappraisal are associated with better implementation of reappraisal when faced with negative affective situations. The current study aimed to examine whether habitual reappraisal predicts the implementation of instructed reappraisal and to evaluate the potential moderating effects of situational factors, namely – emotional intensity and reappraisal affordance. To address this question, 100 participants reported their habitual reappraisal tendency and were (...) asked to imagine themselves in different hypothetical interpersonal situations. Participants rated emotional intensity levels and reappraisal affordance for each situation, followed by instructions to implement reappraisal. Implementation success was measured by self-reported affect pre-and-post-implementation. Results indicated that habitual reappraisal was associated with greater reappraisal implementation success. While higher intensity scores predicted greater reappraisal implementation success, intensity did not moderate the association between habitual reappraisal and reappraisal implementation success. Reappraisal affordance did not predict reappraisal implementation success, nor did it moderate the association between habitual reappraisal and reappraisal implementation success. Our findings suggest that individual-centred factors play a significant role in reappraisal implementation success, while the effects of situation-centred factors demand further investigation. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of ‘integrative medicine’ as an ideal of medical progress on the grounds that it fails to realise the cognitive value of alternative medicine. After a brief account of the cognitive value of alternative medicine, I outline the form of ‘integrative medicine’ defended by the late Stephen Straus, former director of the US National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Straus’ account is then considered in the light of Zuzana Parusnikova’s recent criticism of ‘integrative (...) medicine’ and her distinction between ‘cognitive’ and ‘opportunistic’ engagement with alternative medicine. Parusnikova warns that the medical establishment is guilty of ‘dogmatism’ and proposes that one can usefully invoke Karl Popper’s ‘critical rationalism’ as an antidote. Using the example of Straus, I argue that an appeal to Popper is insufficient, on the grounds that ‘integrative medicine’ can class as a form of cognitively-productive, critical engagement. I suggest that Parusnikova’s appeal to Popper should be augmented with Paul Feyerabend’s emphasis upon the role of ‘radical alternatives’ in maximising criticism. ‘Integrative medicine’ fails to maximise criticism because it ‘translates’ alternative medicine into the theories and terminology of allopathic medicine and so erodes its capacity to provide cognitively-valuable ‘radical alternatives’. These claims are then illustrated with a discussion of ‘traditional’ and ‘medical’ acupuncture. I conclude that ‘integrative medicine’ fails to exploit the cognitive value of alternative medicine and so should be rejected as an ideal of medical progress. (shrink)

What follows is a discussion of three sets of experimental results that deal with various aspects of universal biological understanding among American and Maya children and adults. The first set of experiments shows that by the age of four-to-five years urban American and Yukatek Maya children employ a concept of innate species potential, or underlying essence, as an inferential framework for understanding the affiliation of an organism to a biological species, and for projecting known and unknown biological properties to organisms (...) in the face of uncertainty. The second set of experiments shows that the youngest Maya children do not have an anthropocentric understanding of the biological world. Children do not initially need to reason about non-human living kinds by analogy to human kinds. The third set of results show that the same taxonomic rank is cognitively preferred for biological induction in two diverse populations: people raised in the Mid-western USA and Itza' Maya of the Lowland Meso-american rainforest. This is the generic species  the level of oak and robin. These findings cannot be explained by domain-general models of similarity because such models cannot account for why both cultures prefer species-like groups in making inferences about the biological world, although Americans have relatively little actual knowledge or experience at this level. The implication from these experiments is that folk biology may well represent an evolutionary design: universal taxonomic structures, centred on essence-based generic species, are arguably routine products of our ‘habits of mind,' which may be in part naturally selected to grasp relevant and recurrent ‘habits of the world.' The science of biology is built upon these domain-specific cognitive universals: folk biology sets initial cognitive constraints on the development of any possible macro-biological theory, including the initial development of evolutionary theory. Nevertheless, the conditions of relevance under which science operates diverge from those pertinent to folk biology. For natural science, the motivating idea is to understand nature as it is ‘in itself,' independently of the human observer. From this standpoint, the species-concept, like taxonomy and teleology, may arguably be allowed to survive in science as a regulative principle that enables the mind to readily establish stable contact with the surrounding environment, rather than as an epistemic concept that guides the search for truth. (shrink)

Are humans rational? Various experiments performed over the last several decades have been interpreted as showing that humans are irrational we make significant and consistent errors in logical reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, similarity judgements, and risk-assessment, to name a few areas. But can these experiments establish human irrationality, or is it a conceptual truth that humans must be rational, as various philosophers have argued? In this book, Edward Stein offers a clear critical account of this debate about rationality in philosophy and (...) cognitive science. He discusses concepts of rationality - the pictures of rationality that the debate centres on - and assesses the empirical evidence used to argue that humans are irrational. He concludes that the question of human rationality must be answered not conceptually but empirically, using the full resources of an advanced cognitive science. Furthermore, he extends this conclusion to argue that empirical considerations are also relevant to the theory of knowedge - in other words, that epistemology should be naturalized. from the reviews: 'Stein has done a great service in bringing together all of the important arguments in the human rationality debate and providing a measured critical assessment of them.... This will be an important book and is essential reading for epistemologists, philosophers of mind, and cognitive and evolutionary psychologists.' Choice 'very considerable value... for professionals' Times Higher Education Supplement. (shrink)

Media reporting of science has consequences for public debates on the ethics of research. Accordingly, it is crucial to understand how the sciences of the brain and the mind are covered in the media, and how coverage is received and negotiated. The authors report here their sociological findings from a case study of media coverage and associated reader comments of an article from Annals of Neurology. The media attention attracted by the article was high for cognitive science; further, as (...) associates/members of the Centre where it was produced, the authors of the research reported here had rare insight into how the scientists responsible for the Annals of Neurology article interacted with the media. The data corpus included 37 news items and 228 readers’ comments, examined via qualitative thematic analysis. Media coverage of the article was largely accurate, without merely copying the press release. Analysis of reader comments showed these to be an important resource for considering issues of import to neuroethics scholars, as well as to scientists themselves. In particular, the findings demonstrate how personal experiences were vital in shaping readers’ accounts of their agreements with the scientific article. Furthermore, the data show how scientific research can catalyse political discussions in ways likely unanticipated by scientists. The analysis indicates the importance of dialogue between journalists, laboratory scientists and social scientists in order to support the communication of the messages researchers intend. (shrink)