ABSTRACTThe pragmatist reform and opening-up in 1978 has revolutionised the way China communicates internally and engages with the outside world. Firmly embedded within this broader historical context, the interpreter-mediated and televised Premier-Meets-the-Press conferences are a high-profile institutional event in China. At this discursive event, the Chinese premier – ranked second in China’s political hierarchy – is put in the international media limelight, answering journalists’ questions on a range of topics. The section involving the interpreters’ rendering of journalists’ questions is (...) class='Hi'>triadic and dynamic and represents a particularly interesting site of ideological contestation, which can be conceptualised profitably using Bakhtin’s concept dialogised heteroglossia. Drawing on a corpus containing 20 years’ press conference data between 1998 and 2017, this CDA study interrogates the interpreters’ agency, particularly in constructing the Chinese government’s image when rendering journalists’ questions. Despite the commonplace assumptions of interpreters being impartial with little agency, the government-affiliated interpreters are found to actively engage in facework and image construction. This leads to a discursive pattern described in Van Dijk’s ideological square, which involves further emphasising and foregrounding the positive elements yet de-emphasising and mitigating the negative elements about Beijing. (shrink)

This article introduces Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar, an emerging field that seeks to connect the linguistic system with speaker-meaning. The stated purpose is thus to tackle a pervasive disconnect in both cognitive linguistics and construction grammar, whereby the linguistic system and speaker selections are separated in the belief that language is essentially a mental process associated with the brain, and hence, separated from bodily experience. I contend this view by introducing a triadic model of construction in (...) which form and function are inextricably bound up with agency. This is possible because language is tethered to senses of movement and balance that connect experiences with the physical world with the mental. A major insight of the paper is that argument structure constructions partake of both linguistic and non-linguistic signs, which provides speakers with a means to verbalize their thoughts and distribute agency in specific events. (shrink)

Coordinating different viewpoints is an essential part of human interaction. Languages have evolved conventional ways of supporting this process: many linguistic items are somehow involved in viewpoint management, ranging from morphological elements and lexical units to grammatical constructions and narrative patterns. In this paper we propose a conceptual model for analysing how particular instances of such linguistic items can be used to coordinate the viewpoints of signallers, addressees, and third parties involved in an interaction event. In essence, our model augments (...) Langacker’s “viewing arrangement” through the addition of a third dimension to the existing two. We discuss the details of our model using a range of examples from spoken discourse, newspaper articles, and literary fiction, and end by placing it in broader discussions on human social cognition. (shrink)

The article deals with semiosis and its dimensions as a theoretical construct to show some elementary differences between spheres of semiotic activity. In essence, one sign will be dissected into four categories of existence to show it may have different relations depending on the dimension it happens to be in. The general framework is that of human consciousness and its two distinct states: awake cognition and asleep dreaming with emphasis on the latter. From our point of view, the concepts of (...) ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ have two layers: the manifest form and the latent function, the seen and the unseen. These are used as parallels to support the central thesis of this article that human cognition has dreaming as its countepart.The main theoretical frame is drawn from the work of Greimas and Courtes with emphasis on the semiotic square. The concept of the sign is taken from Peirce, whereas ‘sign-ness’ is adopted from Pyatigorskij. By projecting the triadic sign onto the semiotic square and excluding the concept ‘sign system’ along with the syntactic aspect, the basic fourfold dimension of the sign as such will be brought to view based on the distinct sign-relations in each given dimension. In order to double the square, semiosis will be endowed with features of ‘being-able’, thus affording the initial expression of dominant modalities serving as basis for the structure(s) of the elementary function and mechanism in each of the four dimensions. This will also enable bringing into view some elementary restrictions on semiosis in each dimension. Lastly, some new terms are suggested in accordance with what has been presented.В статье рассматривается семиозис и его измерения как теоретическая конструкция, чтобы показать некоторые элементарные различия между сферами семиотического действия. По сути знак будет разделен на четыре категории существования, чтобы показать, что он может иметь разные отношения в зависимости от того, в каком измерении он находится. Основной рамкой, вместе с тем, является человеческое сознание в его двух состояниях: в состоянии бодрствования и сна со сновидениями, с акцентом на последнее. Несмотря на широкое использование универсальных понятий ‘природа’ и ‘культура’, статья не сосредоточивается на семиотических особенностях этих доменов. С нашей точки зрения ‘природа’ и ‘культура’ имеют два уровня, т.е. проявленную форму и скрытую функцию, видимое и невидимое. Они используются параллельно, поддерживая центральный тезис этой статьи о том, что человеческое познание имеет соответствие в виде сновидения.Теоретическая рамка взята из работы Греймаса и Курте с акцентом на семиотический квадрат. Понятие знака трактуется в духе Пирса, тогда как понятие ≪знаковости≫ дается по Пятигорскому. При проекции триадического знака на семиотический квадрат и исключении понятия ≪знаковой системы≫ вместе с синтаксическим аспектом, обнаруживается основное четырехкратное измерение знака, опирающаяся на определенные знаковые отношения в каждом данном измерении. Чтобы удвоить квадрат, семиозис будет наделен функцией ≪быть способным≫, таким образом обеспечивая начальное выражение доминирующих модальностей, служащих в каждом из четырых измерений основой для структуры (структур) элементарной функции и механизма. Это также даст возможность рассмотреть некоторые элементарные ограничения семиозиса в каждом из измерений. Наконец, предлагаются некоторые новые термины в соответствии с тем, что было представлено.Artikkel tegeleb semioosi ja selle mootmetega kui teoreetilise konstruktsiooniga, et demonstreerida moningaid elementaarseid erinevusi semiootilise tegevuse sfaarides. Sisuliselt lahatakse uks mark neljaks eksistentsikategooriaks, naitamaks, et sel voivad olla erinevad suhted olenevalt mootmest, milles see olema juhtub. Uldiseks raamiks on inimteadvus ja selle kaks eristuvat olekut: arkvelolek ja uni, rohuasetusega viimasel. Vaatamata universaalsete terminite nagu ‘loodus’ ja ‘kultuur’ ohtrale kasutamisele, ei tegele kaesolev artikkel nende valdkondade semiootiliste eriparadega. Meie seisukohast on ‘loodusel’ ja ‘kultuuril’ kaks kihti – manifestne vorm ja latentne funktsioon, nahtav ja nahtamatu. Neid vaadeldakse paralleelselt, et toetada kaesoleva artikli keskset teesi, et inimkognitsiooni vasteks on unenagemine.Peamine teoreetiline raam tuleneb Greimase ja Courtes’ toodest, rohuasetusega semiootilisele ruudule. Margi moiste voetakse Peirce’ilt ning “margilisus” Pjatigorskilt. Projitseerides triaadilist marki semiootilisele ruudule ning valistades ‘margisusteemi’ moiste koos suntaktilise aspektiga, tuuakse nahtavale margi neljakordne alusdimensioon, mis tugineb kindlatele margisuhetele igas antud mootmes. Et ruutu kahekordistada, antakse semioosile ‘suutlikkuse’ jooned, lubades domineerivate modaalsuste algset valjendumist, mis igas neljast dimensioonist toimivad elementaarse funktsiooni struktuuri(de) ja mehhanismi alusena. See voimaldab vaatluse alla tuua ka moned elementaarsed piirangud semioosile iga dimensioonis. Viimaks pakutakse valja moned uued terminid. (shrink)

Theories of children's developing understanding of mind tend to emphasize either individualistic processes of theory formation, maturation, or introspection, or the process of enculturation. However, such theories must be able to account for the accumulating evidence of the role of social interaction in the development of social understanding. We propose an alternative account, according to which the development of children's social understanding occurs within triadic interaction involving the child's experience of the world as well as communicative interaction with others (...) about their experience and beliefs (Chapman 1991; 1999). It is through such triadic interaction that children gradually construct knowledge of the world as well as knowledge of other people. We contend that the extent and nature of the social interaction children experience will influence the development of children's social understanding. Increased opportunity to engage in cooperative social interaction and exposure to talk about mental states should facilitate the development of social understanding. We review evidence suggesting that children's understanding of mind develops gradually in the context of social interaction. Therefore, we need a theory of development in this area that accords a fundamental role to social interaction, yet does not assume that children simply adopt socially available knowledge but rather that children construct an understanding of mind within social interaction. Key Words: language; Piaget; social interaction; theories of mind; Vygotsky; Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Within the corporate social responsibility research field, the construct of organizational reputation has been extensively scrutinized as a crucial mediator between the firm CSR engagement and valuable organizational outcomes. Yet, the existing literature on organizational reputation suffers from substantive divergence between the studies in terms of defining the construct’s domain, dimensional structure, and the methodological operationalization. The current study aims to refine the organizational reputation construct by reconciling varying theoretical perspectives within the construct’s definitional landscape, suggesting a holistic but parsimonious (...) triadic view on the organizational reputation construct for customer stakeholders. Based on commonly used extant organizational reputation measures, we theoretically and empirically develop the customer-based triadic organizational reputation scale and position it as a superordinate multidimensional construct influencing three distinct first-order dimensions: product and service efficacy, societal ethicality, and market prominence. Results show that the proposed triadic conceptualization of organizational reputation is theoretically defensible, and the resulting scale is cross-culturally generalizable and performs well compared with existing, longer measures of organizational reputation. Together, the organizational reputation model developed here suggests that, for cognitive economy and functional efficiency, customers will access a second-order reflective model of organizational reputation as the default implicit attitude, which in turn will activate reflections of the implicit attitude in the form of first-order dimensions. (shrink)

Without introducing quantifiers, minimal axiomatic systems have already been constructed for Peirce's triadic logics. The present paper constructs a dual pair of axiomatic systems which can be used to introduce quantifiers into Peirce's preferred system of triadic logic. It is assumed (on the basis of textual evidence) that Peirce would prefer a system which rejects the absurd but tolerates the absolutely undecidable. The systems which are introduced are shown to be absolutely consistent, deductively complete, and minimal. These dual (...) axiomatic systems reveal an interesting elegance, independent of their historical motivation. (shrink)

This paper seeks to respond to some of the recent criticisms directed toward bioethics by offering a contribution to a “critical bioethics”. Here this concept is principally defined in terms of the three features of interdisciplinarity, self-reflexivity and the avoidance of uncritical complicity. In a partial reclamation of the ideas of V.R. Potter, it is argued that a critical bioethics requires a meaningful challenge to culture/nature dualism, expressed in bioethics as the distinction between medical ethics and ecological ethics. Such a (...) contesting of the “bio” in bioethics arrests its ethical bracketing of environmental and animal ethics. Taken together, the triadic definition of a critical bioethics offered here provides a potential framework with which to fend off critiques of commercial capture or of being “too close to science” commonly directed toward bioethics. (shrink)

This article praises the development of second order cybernetics by von Foerster, Maturana, and Varela as an important step in deepening our understanding of the bio-psychological foundation of the dynamics of information, cognition, and communication. Luhmann's development of the theory into the realm of social communication is seen as a necessary and important move. The triple autopoietic differentiation between biological, psychological, and social-communicative autopoiesis and the introduction of a technical concept of meaning is central. Finally, the paper shows that second (...) order cybernetics lacks explicit and ontological concepts of emotion, meaning, and a concept of signs. C. S. Peirce's theory is introduced for this purpose. It is then shown, through Varela's development of Spencer Brown's ‘Laws of Form’ from a dual to a dynamic triadic categorical structure, that both theories are triadic and second order, and therefore can be fruitfully fused to a Cybersemiotics. (shrink)

This paper explores the challenges posed by the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence specifically Large Language Models (LLMs). I show that traditional linguistic theories and corpus studies are being outpaced by LLMs’ computational sophistication and low perplexity levels. In order to address these challenges, I suggest a focus on language as a cognitive tool shaped by embodied-environmental imperatives in the context of Agentive Cognitive Construction Grammar. To that end, I introduce an Embodied Human Language Model (EHLM), inspired by Active (...) Inference research, as a promising alternative that integrates sensory input, embodied representations, and adaptive strategies for contextualized analysis and conceptual utility maximization. By incorporating Active Inference, which sees perception as inferring the world's state from sensory data, the findings reveal that the characterization of the English modal be able to, as a triadic construction encoding biological intelligent agency, introduces a more plausible theoretical basis for the positing of linguistic constructions. This emphasizes the crucial role of embodied human language models in the comprehension of how humans construct preferred futures through language. (shrink)

Since the beginning of signed language research, the linguistic units have been divided into conventional, standard and fixed signs, all of which were considered as the core of the language, and iconic and productive signs, put at the edge of language. In the present paper, we will review different models proposed by signed language researchers over the years to describe the signed lexicon, showing how to overcome the hierarchical division between standard and productive lexicon. Drawing from the semiotic insights of (...) Peirce we proposed to look at signs as a triadic construction built on symbolic, iconic, and indexical features. In our model, the different iconic, symbolic, and indexical features of signs are seen as the three sides of the same triangle, detectable in the single linguistic sign. The key aspect is that the dominance of the feature will determine the different use of the linguistic unit, as we will show with examples from different discourse types. (shrink)

This chapter examines María Lugones’s germane and insightful attempt to theorize “intermeshed oppressions,” which, she argues, have been (mis)represented in women of color feminisms by the concepts of “interlocking systems of oppression” and, more recently, “intersectionality.” The latter, intersectionality, introduced by Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw as a metaphor (1989) and as a “provisional concept” (1991), has become the predominant way of referencing the mutual constitution of what have been theorized as multiple systems of oppression, constructing the multiplicity (...) of social identities. But Lugones’s analysis, which maintains subtle but important distinctions among the concepts of “intermeshed,” “interlocking,” and “intersecting” oppressions, shows that intersectionality theory often conflates fragmentation with multiplicity, and—by reifying “intersectional identities”—reproduces social-ontological fragmentation at the political and perceptual-cognitive levels of representation. Intersectional accounts redeploy unitary categories (for instance, race, gender, class, sexuality, disability) that are defined to the exclusion of each other by privileging the identities of normative group members. Consequently, they remain within what Lugones calls the “logic of purity,” which erases “curdled,” impure, category-transgressive, border-dwelling, mestiza subjects. Although, according to Lugones, intersectionality enables us to discern how the logic of purity produces “women of color” as impossible beings, she argues that the liminal identities of subjects dwelling in categorial interstices can only be made visible by conceptualizing oppressions as fused or “intermeshed.” However, as I interpret her, Lugones is not merely criticizing intersectionality or seeking to transcend its conceptual limitations by proposing an alternate concept. Rather, the concepts of “intermeshed,” “interlocking,” and “intersecting” oppressions do significantly different work in her account and illuminate different aspects of the social ontology, phenomenology, and epistemology of resistance to oppression. First, I situate Lugones with respect to the current conjuncture in intersectionality studies, in which some scholars are calling for a post-intersectional turn. Then, I reconstruct Lugones’s complex account of intermeshed oppressions, interlocking oppressions, and intersectionality. Finally, I discuss the status of intersectionality in the shift in Lugones’s work from “women of color feminisms” to “decolonial feminism.” Intersectionality is now routinely invoked as a representational theory of multiple identities, but Lugones’s heterodox interpretation helps us to see that it is best understood as a critique of representations based on the logic of purity: specifically, of how categorial axes of oppression (mis)represent intermeshed oppressions. Lugones’s triadic distinction (intersecting/interlocking/intermeshed) points toward a provisional usage of intersectionality, namely, to diagnose the fragmentation of social experiences of multiplicity (which, I would argue, is more consistent with the concept’s original aims). In her visionary philosophy, which attempts to theorize resistance against the grain of fragmentation from a conceptual space outside of the “logic of purity,” we find “glimpses” of a non-fragmented account of oppression, and praxical possibilities for liberatory, decolonial feminist coalitions. (shrink)

Tanabe Hajime, another pole of the so-called Kyoto-School of Philosophy of modern Japan, attempts to construct a dialectical, triadic logic of genus, species and individual as a creative synthesis between Eastern and Western philosophy. Although the formal pattern of his method is influenced by the Hegelian dialectic, the way of his thinking is rather prevailed by Kantian dualism. This makes a sharp contrast to his mentor Nishida Kitaro, whose logic of Topos or Place qua Absolute Nothingness is criticized as (...) all-embracing and static in character by him. The difference between them might be parallel to that of Greek and Latin theology concerning the Trinity. Tanabe never presupposes any preexistent entity as the primordial One in the eternal dimension, but rather maintains the individuality as the free subjective agent in the field of history. The dichotomy between the universal and the individual is overcome in and through the mediation of the third term— the species — as the negatively self-realized, specific form of the genus. The species, however, turns out to be the self-estrangement, when it loses the perpetually negative mediation of the free subjective activity of the individual. (shrink)

Light metaphors occurring in Chinese philosophy and Stoicism are of special interest for the unique ways they channel potentialities of the self. In this paper I apply ideas from cognitive linguistics to examine selected structural features of these metaphors. I also build on these ideas by presenting a framework regarding affects to assist in disclosing what is at stake for differing Chinese and Stoic technologies of the self. The paper adopts a high-level perspective to see these broad philosophical implications, interleaving (...) discussions of Chinese philosophy (mainly views associated with Daoism), Stoicism (bringing into relief important differences from these views), and contemporary research on socially constructed affects. This “triadic” comparative approach aims to shed new light on some root assumptions built into the projects of self-cultivation that are at the core of Chinese and Stoic worldviews. (shrink)

Entrepreneurship education has a lot of research on influencing factors of entrepreneurial intention but rarely studies the influence mechanism of emotional competences on entrepreneurial intention from the perspective of social entrepreneurship. This article takes college students’ social entrepreneurs as research objects, drawing on Krueger’s model, theory of planned behavior, social cognitive theory, and triadic reciprocal determinism theory. This paper constructs a conceptual model with emotional ability, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial intention, to further study their relationship. The 312 students from (...) China College Students’ Social Entrepreneurship Project engaged in early entrepreneurship practice, conducted a questionnaire survey and used the empirical test of the structural equation model to analyze the relationship between college students’ emotional competences, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial intention. The result show: First, social–emotional competence had a positive effect on entrepreneurial intention, and the positive effect of personal affective competence on entrepreneurial intention was not supported or only partially supported. Second, all the dimensions of entrepreneurial self-efficacy were significantly and positively correlated with entrepreneurial intention. Third, emotional competence has a significant positive impact on entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Fourth, entrepreneurial self-efficacy mediated the relationship between emotional competence and entrepreneurial intention. (shrink)

Parallels between the mathematics of tiling, which describes geometries of visual space, and neo-Riemannian theory, which describes geometries of musical space, make it possible to show that certain paradoxes featured in the visual artworks of M. C. Escher also appear in the pitch space modelled by the neo-Riemannian Tonnetz . This article makes these paradoxes visually apparent by constructing an embodied model of triadic pitch space in accordance with principles drawn from the mathematics of tiling, on the one hand, (...) and from cognitive science, on the other – specifically, the notion that our experience of pitch relationships is governed in part by the metaphorical projection of patterns abstracted from embodied experience known as image schemas. These paradoxes are illustrated with reference to passages drawn from four compositions to whose expressive character such paradoxes contribute: the fifteenth-century motet 'Absalon fili mi'; the finale of Haydn's String Quartet in G major, Op. 76 No. 1; Brahms's Intermezzo in B minor, Op. 119 No. 1; and Wagner's Parsifal. (shrink)

This article investigates a multiparty interaction in an accounting office by applying a multimodal approach to discourse. This approach allows the incorporation of all relevant communicative modes and is based on the following three notions: 1) the notion of mediated action; 2) the notion of modal density; and 3) the notion of a foreground– background continuum of attention/awareness. The article illustrates that a social actor in a multiparty interaction simultaneously co-constructs several higher-level actions with the various participants on different levels (...) of their attention/awareness. On a theoretical level, the article argues that traditional approaches to discourse analysis, with their unconditional focus on language as the primary mode, misconstrue the multiple higher-level actions that a social actor is engaged in simultaneously as dyadic or triadic interactions in quick succession. (shrink)

Osteopathy is a person-centred healthcare discipline that emphasizes the body’s structure-function interrelationship—and its self-regulatory mechanisms—to inform a whole-person approach to health and wellbeing. This paper aims to provide a theoretical framework for developing an integrative hypothesis in osteopathy, which is based on the enactivist and active inference accounts. We propose that osteopathic care can be reconceptualised under active inference as a unifying framework. Active inference suggests that action-perception cycles operate to minimize uncertainty and optimize an individual’s internal model of the (...) lived world and, crucially, the consequences of their behaviour. We argue that active inference offers an integrative framework for osteopathy, which can evince the mechanisms underlying dyadic and triadic exchanges and osteopathic care outcomes. We propose that this theoretical framework can underpin osteopathic care across the lifespan, from preterm infants to the elderly and those with persistent pain and other physical symptoms. In situations of chronicity, as an ecological niche, the patient-practitioner dyad provides the osteopath and the patient with a set of affordances, i.e., possibilities for action provided by the environment, that through shared intentionally, can promote adaptations and restoration of productive agency. Through a dyadic therapeutic relationship, as they engage with their ecological niche’s affordances—a structured set of affordances shared by agents—osteopath and patient actively construct a shared sense-making narrative and realise a shared generative model of their relation to the niche. In general, touch plays a critical role in developing a robust therapeutic alliance, mental state alignment, and biobehavioural synchrony between patient and practitioner. However, its role is particularly crucial in the fields of neonatology and paediatrics, where it becomes central in regulating allostasis and restoring homeostasis. We argue that from an active inference standpoint, the dyadic shared ecological niche underwrites a robust therapeutic alliance, which is crucial to the effectiveness of osteopathic care. Considerations and implications of this model—to clinical practice and research, both within- and outside osteopathy—are critically discussed. (shrink)

The historical origins of the Kyoto School of Philosophy of modern Japan, represented by Kitaro Nishida and Hajime Tanabe, may be derived from both the ancient Chinese idea of Change and the ancient Indian Upanishadic idea of the mutual identity of Brahman and Atman. The ancient Chinese idea of Change signifies change as well as non-change, and even their dialectical unification. Both origins are structured by the self-identity of the opposed in logic, and these historical prototypes have been developed into (...) the various forms of Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist philosophy. The notion of Nothingness or Emptiness rather than Being has been set up as the fundamental principle. The principle of Nothingness as ultimate reality has been connected with the logic of self-identity of theopposed, and this is evident in Nishida’s concept of the self-identity in absolute contradistinction that is equivalent to the Place of Absolute Nothingness. Even though Nishida’s idea of Place is directly and explicitly influenced by the ancient Greek idea of Topos, it has indirectly and implicitly been affected by the traditional agricultural society as well, in which the land is regarded as the self-identical substratum despite the cyclic time of the four-seasons change. The ancient Chinese idea of Change also reflects the agricultural society in which the cyclic time plays an important role on the basis of the unchanging self-identical land as the underlying substratum. Nishida succeeds in establishing the new logical expression of Eastern traditional thought, deeply hidden in consciousness, in relation toWestern philosophy. The uniqueness of Nishida’s idea of Place may have its main source in the traditional agricultural background, and in this sense his way of thinking may be rural in character. On the other hand, Tanabe, though following Nishida at first, turns to making criticism of the mentor with the establishment of the triadic logic of species as the dialectic, which is characterized by the perpetual self-negating conversion in action. In contrast to Nishida, Tanabe represents the urban type of thinking, which is in pursuit of transforming in life. While Nishida’s idea of Absolute Nothingness has an affinity with the ancient Chinese philosopher Laotzu’s idea of Nothingness from and into which every entity comes and goes, Tanabe’s concept of Absolute Nothingness as the principle ofconversion is more closed to the Buddhist idea of sunyata, i.e., Emptiness, which is devoid of any substance in itself. As regards evil, the difference between them is obvious in that for Nishida evil and time or history disappear into the ultimate horizon or place of Nothingness with the tendency toward a kind of monism of goodness, whereas for Tanabe evil copes with goodness and retains its own status throughout, never being reduced to the opposed. Even if so, both of them, however, fail to construct a philosophy of history from the epochal or durational viewpoint, compared to Heidegger and Jaspers. (shrink)

The chapter first formulates the problems of information and analyzes why they are hard to solve. Then it critically reviews two classes of prevailing theories in information studies arguing that they cannot attain success because the assumptions behind them are too limited. In recent years, some semioticians have rediscovered the theory of information developed by Peirce. Deeply embodied in semiotics, the theory treats information as the communication of form in semiosis, which should be interpreted in terms of triadic relation (...) in the semiotic relational process between representamen, object and interpretant. As a contemporary development of Peircean theory, cybersemiotics further constructs a conceptual framework through integrating it with Luhmann’s social system theory. In particular, the transdisciplinary framework cybersemiotics shows a promising way to explain superficially incompatible aspects of information with the aid of the principle of complementarity. (shrink)

Carpendale & Lewis (C&L) propose that social knowledge is constructed from triadic interactions. This account generates testable predictions concerning social knowledge in infancy. Current evidence is not entirely consistent with these predictions. Infants possess action knowledge before they engage in triadic interactions, and triadic use of an action does not always precede knowledge about the action.

Robert Rosen’s relational biology and biosemiotics share the claim that life cannot be explained by the laws that apply to the inanimate world alone. In this paper, an integrated account of Rosen’s relational biology and Peirce’s semiosis is proposed. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the construction of a unified framework for the definition and study of life. The relational concepts of component and mapping, and the semiotic concepts of sign and triadic relation are discussed and compared, (...) and a representation of semiotic relations with mappings is proposed. The role of the final cause in two theories that account for what differentiates living beings, natural selection and relational biology, is analyzed. Then the presence of the final cause in Peirce’s semiosis is discussed and, with it, the similarities and differences between the theories of Rosen and Peirce are deepened. Then, a definition of a semiotic relation in an organism is proposed, and Short’s definition of interpretation is applied. Finally, a method to identify and analyze semiotic actions in an organism is proposed. (shrink)

It’s natural to assume that the bearers of virtues are individual agents, which would make virtues monadic dispositional properties. I argue instead that the most attractive theory of virtue treats a virtue as a triadic relation among the agent, the social milieu, and the asocial environment. A given person may or may not be disposed to behave in virtuous ways depending on how her social milieu speaks to and of her, what they expect of her, and how they monitor (...) her. Likewise, asocial environmental factors such as mood elevators, mood depressors, ambient sounds, and ambient smells mediate morally important behavioral dispositions. Many commentators have responded to such intrusions from outside the agent by arguing for the rarity of virtue understood as a monadic property. In contrast, I claim that we need to rethink the very nature of virtue, which would entail that cultivating virtue can be accomplished not only by habituation and other such interventions on the individual agent but also by selecting, modifying, and reinterpreting the social and asocial aspects of the environment. (shrink)

It is well known that Charles S. Peirce's first attempt to construct a theory of metaphysical categories, already displaying the triadic pattern that would later become the keystone of his philosophy, directed itself towards the three English personal pronouns: I, IT, THOU.2 As many scholars have already noted, these three spheres of the phenomenal world identified by the young Peirce prelude to the 1867 "New List" (Quality, Relation and Representation) as well as to the later categories of Firstness, Secondness (...) and Thirdness.But apart from their documentary significance as the seed of Peircean metaphysics, the writings on I, IT and THOU also have a philosophical interest in their own right, one which deserves to.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Advances in Peircean Mathematics: The Colombian School ed. by Fernando ZalameaGianluca CaterinaFernando Zalamea (Ed.) Advances in Peircean Mathematics: The Colombian School Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2022. 212 pp. (incl. index).The volume Advances in Peircean Mathematics is an important, very much needed contribution towards a deeper understanding of the impact of Peirce's work especially in the fields of mathematics, logic, and semiotic. It fills a gap in the current (...) literature by recasting some of [End Page 373] Peirce's profound mathematical insights into a formal framework. This is a finely edited editorial project, which summarizes the work of more than two decades done by a group of scholars—the Colombian School—lead by Fernando Zalamea, a pioneer of Peirce studies, and pragmatism in general, in Latin America.The structure of the volume unfolds in three dense chapters, each corresponding to a specific mathematical context connected to various aspects of Peirce's work. Broadly speaking, in the first chapter, Gustavo Arengas proposes the theory of higher category theory as a natural framework to represent the main traits of Peirce's semiotic; in the second chapter, Francisco Vargas develops a thorough set-theoretical model of Peirce's continuum; in the third chapter, Arnold Oostra, in a truly Peircean spirit, formalizes the notion of Intuitionistic Existential Graphs, emphasizing the idea that intuitionistic logic is the most natural context to represent and understand Peirce's diagrammatic logic. The fourth and last chapter, penned by Zalamea, provides the reader with a solid summary of the main results presented in the volume along with a robust road map to navigate through the technical details of the text.Mathematics, as implied by the title of the volume, is at the core of this project, and the authors do not shy away from the complexity, details, and depth of it in order to shed light on some of the most fundamental and groundbreaking nature of Peirce's ideas. That level of rigor and formal soundness is certainly one of the strengths of the volume, although readers who may not be acquainted with at least some basic notions of category theory or with the mathematics of Peirce's work, may find some of the text a bit terse—this is not a casual reading and it does require a certain level of commitment in order to appreciate the depth of the provided insights. On the other hand, all the background material is clearly laid out, making the volume a self-contained work which can be thoroughly enjoyed by a general audience.The real upshot of recasting some of Peirce's intuitions within the fabric of formal mathematics is not only that of providing the instruments to clarify those ideas, but also that of highlighting the role that Peirce's work has been playing in the development of modern mathematics in many relevant aspects, from the very genesis of category theory—which today is widely regarded as a necessary and unifying language in several fields of the mathematical and physical sciences—to the development of non-standard analysis, just to mention a few of them.An elegant instance of such perspective is offered by Gustavo Arengas in the first chapter, where it is argued that ∞-categories can be used to model the natural order of hierarchies implicit in Peirce's conception of the basic triadic relation between sign, object, and interpreter. What, at first glance, may seem just a simple analogy, unfolds onto a methodical and enlightening analysis of Peirce's semiotic, as the author builds [End Page 374] the connections with the relevant categorical constructions in a precise manner. Most of the rest of the chapter focuses on Peirce's notions of the pragmatic and pragmaticist maxim, and the use of basic structures such as monads, limits, presheaves and sheaves as the natural environment to better convey their meaning, both from a mathematical and a philosophical perspective. The reader will find it interesting to realize that, by delving deeper into the understanding of the relational nature of category theory, a great chunk of Peirce's work can be seen as fundamentally intertwined with the apparatus and the language of modern mathematics... (shrink)

By performing an abduction of Bateson and Peirce, we come to understand the logic of the sacred as a semiotic and phenomenological communicative phenomenon. First, I compare and contrast their ideas concerning ontology, epistemology, and logic. Next, I articulate how both theorists construct their epistemologies within a triadic frame of relations that successfully accounts for a communicative logic that activates the integration of body and Mind. Finally, I bring Bateson’s triadic relations of aesthetics,consciousness (mental process), and the sacred (...) in line with Peirce’s existential semiotic categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. We discover the sacred is constituted within a communicative logic that is abductive. As such, I argue that Bateson’s epistemology of the sacred becomes more accessible as a postmodern philosophy when viewed as a condition of phenomenological semiosis. (shrink)

The current technoscientific progress has led to a sectorization in the philosophy of science. Today the philosophy of science isn't is informal interested in studying old problems about the general characteristics of scientific practice. The interest of the philosopher of science is the study of concepts, problems and riddles of particular disciplines. Then, within this progress of philosophy of science, neuroscientific research stands out, because it invades issues traditionally addressed by the humanities, such as the nature of consciousness, action, knowledge, (...) normativity, etc. As a result, the new area of interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy arises: neurophilosophy. This emerging area applies neuroscientific concepts to traditional philosophical questions, limiting their responses to neuroscientific revelations about nervous systems. Neurophilosophy research focuses on problems related to the indirect nature of mind and brain, computational or representative analysis of brain process, relationships between psychological and neuroscientific research, adequate adaptations of physical and philosophical concepts in neuroscience and the place of cognitive functions. Now, the temporal representation of conscious experience and the types of the neural architecture to represent objects in time have aroused scientific interest. Under these interests, we focus on the studies on the temporary triadic structure of phenomenological consciousness in Dan Lloyd and Rick Grush. From Grush’s studies, the importance of Kantian ideas for cognitive neuroscience emerges, due to the active way in which Kant conceived space and time as forms of intuition, within which the mind interprets its experience. Under this perspective, the theoretical arguments of Dennett-Kinsbourne and Eagleman-Sejnowski represent winks in the direction of Kant-Husserl within the neuroscientific goal while considering that the contents provided by the mind included space, objects and perception of causal relationships. Then, theories of cognitive neuroscience are beginning to suggest that these elements are also, as Kant argued, interpretative elaborations provided by mind / brain, and not only content received from outside. In other words, current cognitive neuroscientific theories try to pass from its Humean phase to a Kantian phase. So, the challenge has been to explain that these elements are provided by the mind and the world itself, and how they have the content they have come from. These are lacking in current studies. Filling this gap helps to involve the analysis of the scientist’s experience in his theoretical attitude. In this sense, an investigation under the Kantian-Husserlian approach that involves pure intuitions a priori with the experience of the scientific and neuroscientific concepts represents a ground-breaking. At present, a neurophilosophical study about this does not exist. In this sense, one feasible proposal for research would be based on the application of neuroscientific results of Moser-Britt to philosophical problems of foundational notions in relativistic physics: space, time, space-time, field, etc., under the Kantian-Husserlian approach, which allows to demonstrate the multidisciplinary link between neurophilosophy and physics. This represents a ground-breaking area in current interests in scientific research, with a positive impact in the field of neuroscience, and contributing to the study of abstraction emphasizing the importance of Kant’s Copernican turn and Husserl’s phenomenological ideas in the construction of physical theories. -/- . (shrink)

Clarence I. Lewis (1883-1964) delineated the structure of mind based on his “conceptual pragmatism.” Human mind grounds itself on the ongoing dynamic interaction of relational processes, which is essentially mediated and structural. Lewis’s pragmatism anchors itself on the theory of knowledge that has the triadic structure of the given or immediate data, interpretation, and the concept. Lewis takes the a priori given as a starting point of meaningful experience. The interpretative work of mind is the mediator of the a (...) priori given and the concepts. The a priori given is the principle that determines the application of concepts in our interpretative process. Our mind interprets the given in relating to other possible experience. In other words, the meaning of the a priori given is determined by mind, the subject of interpretative process, which performs constructive and legislative activity, and allows room for the existence of alternatives. Lewis’s theory of knowledge calls for pragmatic justification of value experience. In his ethical theory, Lewis pursues to find answers for how to build up the objectivity of value experience regarding the work of mind as conceptual apparatus. For Lewis, knowledge is a claim about valuation and normativity. In our value experience, the normative significance of our empirical assessments for action comprises objective significance for future experience. Mind is “principle- content apparatus” composed of imperatives as the a priori given principles and the contents of experience as a whole.Imperatives are the result of lessons accumulated from the past and function as rules for the future. Individuals start their experience from imperatives and organize their own experience by doing based on the inferential process, which is directional from the past to the future. (shrink)

Cross-shareholding is a new type of strategic means for capital operation and is an important component of corporate governance. With the increasing complexity of business motivation, the structure of a cross-shareholding network is becoming more intricate, and it exposes various important local patterns with different economic functions. The goal of this paper is to uncover investment mechanisms and economic functions implied in cross-shareholding networks by analyzing the local characteristic patterns of company interactions. In this paper, we construct the CSNs of (...) listed companies and extract the directed triadic motifs to reveal the evolutionary characteristics of local investment patterns at the company and industry levels. On the company level, we find that companies tend to form V-shaped structures with other companies, but bidirectional shareholding patterns and circular relationships in the triads are scarce. On the industry level, we identify the characteristic linking patterns of some industries with a role analysis of the industries. Furthermore, we detect the evolutionary characteristics of industry interrelationships in three implied patterns. Such a motif evolution analysis may provide valuable information for investors and supervisory departments that make decisions about investment portfolios and policy. Meanwhile, this study is also helpful for exploring the implied information in other empirical networks. (shrink)

Through structural analysis of 8-year tag networks from online knowledge-sharing platforms, this study finds that, with the scale of tag networks growing quickly, the growth trend of number edges indicates that tag network follows densification law. The clustering coefficient and the average shortest path of the network show that the rapid growth of network size does not bring about the compartmentalization of the knowledge network, and the degree distribution of tag networks shows a truncated power-law distribution. According to the structural (...) characteristics of the tag network, this study proposes a tag network model based on the BA model. Based on the preference attachment, the triadic closure mechanism is employed to construct the edges between the old nodes, which revises the limitation that the BA model only connects edges between old and new nodes. The results show that the simulation model matches the actual tag network structure well. The generation mechanism of the tag network model provides a reference for understanding the knowledge construction process of the online knowledge-sharing platform to a certain extent. (shrink)

This article presents research on assemblages among humans and computational systems in which physical and virtual autonomous processes occur in order to create artworks allowing the emergence of mixed sensory set-ups. It begins with triadic relationships computer, physical objects and participants aimed at co-relations among bands of bots (virtual and physical) with groups of humans (interactors). The bots have a representation of the virtual world: physical bots live on a flat surface (Abbot 1991), a projection of the 3D environment (...) where the virtual bots live. The artwork also explores the metaphor of higher dimensions being understood through their projections in lower dimensions. Its goal is to weave interaction and autonomous processes, looking for poetic results integrating art, science and technology; results with aesthetic, poetic and functional qualities; and results exploring emergency and agency for design, construction and set-up of expressive systems. For these symbioses to happen the assemblage of environments with aesthetic and poetic appeal leads one to think about mixed cognitive processes that provoke emergent behaviours. I am interested in the behaviours emerged in such inter-relationships. Therefore, to achieve this goal, I have created a Java framework that allows me to program interfaces weaving such behaviors1 and also I have programmed a set of sketches using Processing2 to test the hypothesis. The main inquiries of such research are as follows: What kind of artwork could mix people with autonomous computational processes without becoming invasive? and Is such a dichotomy possible? To answer these questions, I came up with the idea of playing with swarms and flock algorithms mixing virtual and physical domains. Will this create the mixed behaviour I am looking for? Will the participants contribute with their actions, emotions and affects while the computer develops its own autonomous processes? (shrink)

This article presents the first results of a research on visual models for the classifications of semiotic processes. The main issue discussed is how a graphic design methodology, associated with computer graphics resources, may contribute to the construction of interactive models, that can be used as tools for the investigation of C. S. Peirce theory of signs. Two models are presented: the first is an interactive 3-D model of Peirce's 3-trichotomic classification; the second is a computer program that builds (...) diagrams for any n-trichotomic classification of signs, and facilitates the analysis and comparison of different hypothesis regarding their structures. (shrink)

Our conception of logical space is the set of distinctions we use to navigate the world. Agustn Rayo argues that this is shaped by acceptance or rejection of 'just is'-statements: e.g. 'to be composed of water just is to be composed of H2O'. He offers a novel conception of metaphysical possibility, and a new trivialist philosophy of mathematics.

Social constructionist claims are surprising and interesting when they entail that presumably natural kinds are in fact socially constructed. The claims are interesting because of their theoretical and political importance. Authors like Díaz-León argue that constitutive social construction is more relevant for achieving social justice than causal social construction. This paper challenges this claim. Assuming there are socially salient groups that are discriminated against, the paper presents a dilemma: if there were no constitutively constructed social kinds, the causes (...) of the discrimination of existing social groups would have to be addressed, and understanding causal social construction would be relevant to achieve social justice. On the other hand, not all possible constitutively socially constructed kinds are actual social kinds. If an existing social group is constitutively constructed as a social kind K, the fact that it actually exists as a K has social causes. Again, causal social construction is relevant. The paper argues that (i) for any actual social kind X, if X is constitutively socially constructed as K, then it is also causally socially constructed; and (ii) causal social construction is at least as relevant as constitutive social construction for concerns of social justice. For illustration, I draw upon two phenomena that are presumed to contribute towards the discrimination of women: (i) the poor performance effects of stereotype threat, and (ii) the silencing effects of gendered language use. (shrink)

Jesse Prinz argues that recent work in philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology supports two radical hypotheses about the nature of morality: moral values are based on emotional responses, and these emotional responses are inculcated by culture, not hard-wired through natural selection. In the first half of the book, Jesse Prinz defends the hypothesis that morality has an emotional foundation. Evidence from brain imaging, social psychology, and psychopathology suggest that, when we judge something to be right or wrong, we are merely expressing (...) our emotions. Prinz argues that these emotions do not track objective features of reality; rather, the rightness and wrongness of an act consists in the fact that people are disposed to have certain emotions towards it. In the second half of the book, he turns to a defense of moral relativism. Moral facts depend on emotional responses, and emotional responses vary from culture to culture. Prinz surveys the anthropological record to establish moral variation, and he draws on cultural history to show how attitudes toward practices such as cannibalism and marriage change over time. He also criticizes evidence from animal behavior and child development that has been taken to support the claim that moral attitudes are hard-wired by natural selection. Prinz concludes that there is no single true morality, but he also argues that some moral values are better than others; moral progress is possible. Throughout the book, Prinz relates his views to contemporary and historical work in philosophical ethics. His views echo themes in the writings of David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche, but Prinz supports, extends, and revises these classic theories using the resources of cutting-edge cognitive science. The Emotional Construction of Morals will stimulate and challenge anyone who is curious about the nature and origin of moral values. (shrink)

One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, (...) how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors. (shrink)

This book, originally published in 1987, considers how the science of linguistics creates its own objects of study. It argues that language is the one essential tool in the ¿social construction of reality¿ ¿ the way in which our environment as we perceive and respond to it is actually created by the cultural constructs we bring to bear on it ¿ and that it is also the means by which this reality, once constructed, is preserved and transmitted from person (...) to person and from generation to generation. Hence it is entirely appropriate to refer to the linguistic construction of reality. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to make headway on a metaphysics of social construction. In recent work, I’ve argued that social construction should be understood in terms of metaphysical grounding. However, I agree with grounding skeptics like Wilson that bare claims about what grounds what are insufficient for capturing, with fine enough grain, metaphysical dependence structures. To that end, I develop a view on which the social construction of human social kinds is a kind of realization (...) relation. Social kinds, I argue, are multiply realizable kinds. I depart from the Wilson by further arguing that an appeal to grounding is not otiose when it comes to social construction. Social construction, I claim, belongs to the “big-G” Grounding genus, but it is the specific “small-g” relation of realization at work in cases of human kind social construction. (shrink)