The “A-not-B” error is consistent with an old memory principle, Jost's Law. Quantitative properties of the effect can be explained by a dynamic model for habituation that is also consistent with Jost. Piaget was well aware of the resemblance between adult memory errors and the “A-not-B” effect and, contrary to their assertions, Thelen et al.'s analysis of the object concept is much the same as his, though couched in different language.

Although the model proposed by Thelen and co-authors provides a detailed explanation for the processes underlying reaching, many aspects of it are highly speculative. One of the reasons for this is our lack of knowledge about transformation of a hand movement plan into joint movements. The leading joint hypothesis (LJH) allows us to partially fill in this gap. The LJH offers a possible explanation for the formation of movement and how it may be represented in memory. Our explanation converges (...) with the dynamic model described in the target article. (shrink)

In this commentary, we question (1) how embodied Thelen et al.'s model is relative to their aims, and (2) how embodied the behavior of children is in particular response systems, relative to how much dynamic systems theory emphasizes this idea. We close with corrections to mischaracterizations of an alternative, neural network perspective on infant behavior.

The overall goal of this target article is to demonstrate a mechanism for an embodied cognition. The particular vehicle is a much-studied, but still widely debated phenomenon seen in 7–12 month-old-infants. In Piaget's classic “A-not-B error,” infants who have successfully uncovered a toy at location “A” continue to reach to that location even after they watch the toy hidden in a nearby location “B.” Here, we question the traditional explanations of the error as an indicator of infants' concepts of objects (...) or other static mental structures. Instead, we demonstrate that the A-not-B error and its previously puzzling contextual variations can be understood by the coupled dynamics of the ordinary processes of goal-directed actions: looking, planning, reaching, and remembering. We offer a formal dynamic theory and model based on cognitive embodiment that both simulates the known A-not-B effects and offers novel predictions that match new experimental results. The demonstration supports an embodied view by casting the mental events involved in perception, planning, deciding, and remembering in the same analogic dynamic language as that used to describe bodily movement, so that they may be continuously meshed. We maintain that this mesh is a pre-eminently cognitive act of “knowing” not only in infancy but also in everyday activities throughout the life span. Key Words: cognitive development; dynamical systems theory; embodied cognition; infant development; motor control; motor planning; perception and action. (shrink)

This article explores the changing nature of twenty-first-century capitalism with an emphasis on illuminating the political coalitions and institutional conditions that support and sustain it. Most of the existing literature attributes the changing nature of the firm to developments in markets and technology. By contrast, this article emphasizes the political forces that have driven the transformation of the twentieth-century consolidated firm through the firm as a “network of contracts” and toward the platform firm. Moreover, situating the United States in a (...) comparative perspective highlights the distinctive ways US political-economic institutions have facilitated that transformation and exacerbated the associated inequalities. (shrink)

We examine the embodiment of one foundational aspect of human cognition, language, through its bodily association with the gestures that accompany its expression in speech. Gesture is a universal feature of human communication. Gestures are produced by all speakers in every culture . They are tightly timed with speech . Gestures convey important communicative information to the listener, but even blind speakers gesture while talking to blind listeners , so the mutual co-occurrence of speech and gesture reflects a deep association (...) between the two modes that transcends the intentions of the speaker to communicate. Indeed, we believe that this linkage of the vocal expression of language and the arm movements produced with it are a manifestation of the embodiment of thought: that human mental activities arise through bodily interactions with the world and remain linked with them throughout the lifespan. In particular, we propose that speech and gesture have their developmental origins in early hand-mouth linkages, such that as oral activities become gradually used for meaningful speech, these linkages are maintained and strengthened. Both hand and mouth are tightly coupled in the mutual cognitive activity of language. In short, it is the initial sensorimotor linkages of these systems that form the bases for their later cognitive interdependence. (shrink)

The French and German political economies have been significantly reconfigured over the past two decades. Although the changes have often been more piecemeal than revolutionary, their cumulative effects are profound. The authors characterize the changes that have taken place as involving the institutionalization of new forms of dualism and argue that what gives contemporary developments a different character from the past is that dualism is now explicitly underwritten by state policy. They see this outcome as the culmination of a sequence (...) of developments, beginning in the field of industrial relations, moving into labor market dynamics, and finally finding institutional expression in welfare state reforms. Contrary to theoretical accounts that suggest that institutional complementarities support stability and institutional reproduction, the authors argue that the linkages across these realms have helped to translate employer strategies that originated in the realm of industrial relations into a stable, new, and less egalitarian model with state support. (shrink)

A number of authors now invoke the opposition between political philosophy and social philosophy, whether to account for the specific nature of Marx’s relation to philosophy or to reactualize the project of a critical theory of society. What, the article asks, is the meaning of this distinction? Can it fulfill the requisite conditions that will enable philosophers to address in a pertinent manner the social and political challenges of our time? These are the questions addressed here by Catherine Colliot-Thélène, whose (...) fear is that the distinction in question may lose sight of the crucial question of power, and by Franck Fischbach, who emphasizes the materialist orientation of an approach that seeks to address the political from the perspective of the social. (shrink)

Un nouvel intérêt se manifeste en France pour l'œuvre de Max Weber. Des traductions récentes rendent enfin accessibles au public français des textes majeurs jusqu'alors ignorés, tandis que les questions qui traversent cette œuvre, celle des formes de domination, des logiques d'individualisation et de socialisation, des conflits de valeur, imposent leur actualité à une époque où l'expansion planétaire de certains types de rationalité d'origine occidentale va de pair avec la remise en question irréversible des représentations eurocentriques du sens. Le moment (...) est venu d'une lecture philosophique, puisant aux textes et à leur commentaire érudit les moyens d'une reconstitution du programme scientifique wébérien, en le dégageant des mythes d'hier (la " sociologie compréhensive ") comme des distorsions d'aujourd'hui (la " crise de la modernité "), également incapables de renoncer aux postulats téléologiques que Weber n'a cessé de critiquer. Au fil de ses études, Catherine Colliot-Thélène s'y emploie en passant de la question des rationalités à celle des conditions historiques et à la genèse des systèmes juridiques. Instituant les confrontations nécessaires (Marx, Gierke, Schmitt, Elias, Wittgenstein, Habermas, Foucault), elle centre son alternative aux récupérations idéalistes de Weber sur trois concepts : contingence, conduites de vie, puissances de socialisation, dont l'ensemble fait de Weber le pionnier d'un nouvel universalisme sans fondation ni mission. (shrink)

"Human relations? Discovery learning? Community involvement? What would education be like if it were based on what we know about man, and the operation of society? In a major step toward bridging the gap between what we profess philosophically and what we do technically to advance the child's quest for knowledge, Herbert Thelen presents four learning experiences that he believes a child must have to become educated--personal inquiry, group investigation, reflective action, and skill development. He explores the ways in (...) which these experiences can be made educative--can do more, as Thelen says, than housebreak the child or make him clever. Upon publication of the clothbound edition in 1960, Education and the Human Quest was selected by the American Library Association as one of the most significant books of the year"--Cover. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

“Reality” is not a category listed in Hegel’s Logic. Hegel is distrustful of the ordinary uses of this term, linked to the empiricist presupposition of a dependence of thought on the given of sensi...

Dans les « Concepts fondamentaux de sociologie » (1920), Max Weber distingue entre Vergemeinschaftung (« communautisation ») et Vergesellschaftung (« sociétisation »). Cette terminologie, bien qu’elle évoque l’opposition célèbre de Ferdinand Tönnies entre communauté et société, signale le caractère original de l’approche wébérienne des phénomènes collectifs. Plutôt que de figer des types de collectifs structurellement distincts les uns des autres, Weber analyse des logiques de formation qui se retrouvent et se combinent, à des degrés divers, dans tous les collectifs humains. (...) Un ensemble de manuscrits plus anciens (1910-1914), première mouture d’Économie et société, est consacré pourtant à l’étude de différentes variétés de communautés (domestiques, ethniques, nationales, de marché, etc.). S’appuyant sur ces manuscrits (dont la traduction française est parue en 2019), on confronte ici la compréhension wébérienne des phénomènes communautaires avec divers usages, anciens ou récents, de la notion de « communauté » ou du « commun ». (shrink)

Cette édition numérique a été réalisée à partir d'un support physique, parfois ancien, conservé au sein du dépôt légal de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, conformément à la loi n° 2012-287 du 1er mars 2012 relative à l'exploitation des Livres indisponibles du XXe siècle. Pages de début Introduction Aux sources de la méthodologie wébérienne : la polémique contre l'Ecole historique allemande Max Weber et le marxisme Rationalisation et désenchantement du monde La logique du comprendre Conclusion Textes extraits des œuvres de (...) Max Weber Quelques donnéesbiographiques et bibliographiques Glossaire Pages de fin. (shrink)

"Human relations? Discovery learning? Community involvement? What would education be like if it were based on what we know about man, and the operation of society? In a major step toward bridging the gap between what we profess philosophically and what we do technically to advance the child's quest for knowledge, Herbert Thelen presents four learning experiences that he believes a child must have to become educated--personal inquiry, group investigation, reflective action, and skill development. He explores the ways in (...) which these experiences can be made educative--can do more, as Thelen says, than housebreak the child or make him clever. Upon publication of the clothbound edition in 1960, Education and the Human Quest was selected by the American Library Association as one of the most significant books of the year"--Cover. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Examination of infant spontaneous and goal-directed arm movements supports Feldman and Levin's hypothesis of a functional hierarchy. Early infant movements are dominated by biomechanical and dynamic factors without external frames of reference. Development involves not only learning to generate these frames of reference, but also protecting the higher-level goal of the movement from internal and external perturbations.

We argue that mentalistic constructs like the “object concept” are not substitutes for process explanations of cognition, and that it is impossible to prove the existence of such constructs with behavioral tasks. We defend the field theory as an appropriate level for modeling embodiment. Finally, we discuss the model's biological plausibility and its extensions to other tasks and other species.

A large literature on urban politics documents the connection between metropolitan fragmentation and inequality. This article situates the United States comparatively to explore the structural features of local governance that underpin this connection. Examining five metropolitan areas in North America and Europe, the article identifies two distinct dimensions of fragmentation: fragmentation through jurisdictional proliferation and fragmentation through resource hoarding. This research reveals how distinctive the United States is in the ways it combines institutional arrangements that facilitate metropolitan fragmentation and those (...) that reward such fragmentation. Non-US cases furnish examples of policies that reduce jurisdictional proliferation or remove resource-hoarding opportunities. Mitigating the inequality-inducing effects of fragmentation is possible, but policies must be designed with an identification of the specific aspects of local governance structures that fuel inequality in the first place. (shrink)

The evolutionary scenario described in this target article parallels developmental patterns observed in human infants. Early vocalizations are largely expressive, manual control develops more rapidly than intentional vocal articulation, and vocal and manual activity are linked. In ontogenetic development, language is strongly rooted in bodily action and gesture.