Despite their potential for facilitating interaction between a user and computer, an embodied agent and voice command have not been examined enough for their matching effects. The current study proposes that an embodied agent and voice command generate positive evaluative outcomes, particularly when they are accompanied by each other. To test this prediction, we conducted a 2 (visual output: embodied agent vs. geometric figure) × 2 (input modality: voice command vs. remote controller) between-subjects experiment (N = 52), (...) and examined whether visual output and input modality jointly influence participants’ social attribution (i.e., anthropomorphism, animacy, likability, and perceived intelligence), social presence, and satisfaction. Results show that voice command does facilitate users’ social attribution and social presence, but only when an embodied agent was presented. Also, the effects of voice command on social presence and satisfaction were mediated by anthropomorphism and perceived intelligence respectively, but only when the interface displayed an embodied agent. The present study evidences the holistic nature of human-computer interaction, revealing the importance of matches in the input and output interface. (shrink)

Despite their potential for facilitating interaction between a user and computer, an embodied agent and voice command have not been examined enough for their matching effects. The current study proposes that an embodied agent and voice command generate positive evaluative outcomes, particularly when they are accompanied by each other. To test this prediction, we conducted a 2 (visual output: embodied agent vs. geometric figure) × 2 (input modality: voice command vs. remote controller) between-subjects experiment (N = 52), (...) and examined whether visual output and input modality jointly influence participants’ social attribution (i.e., anthropomorphism, animacy, likability, and perceived intelligence), social presence, and satisfaction. Results show that voice command does facilitate users’ social attribution and social presence, but only when an embodied agent was presented. Also, the effects of voice command on social presence and satisfaction were mediated by anthropomorphism and perceived intelligence respectively, but only when the interface displayed an embodied agent. The present study evidences the holistic nature of human-computer interaction, revealing the importance of matches in the input and output interface. (shrink)

In this paper I explore systematically the relationship between Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) and their human users from a phenomenological and cognitive perspective. First, I functionally decompose BCI systems and develop a typology in which I categorize BCI applications with similar functional properties into three categories, those with (1) motor, (2) virtual, and (3) linguistic applications. Second, developing and building on the notions of an embodied tool and cognitive tool, I analyze whether these distinct BCI applications can be seen (...) as bodily or cognitive extensions. Contrary to some recent philosophical claims, I will argue that, although BCI technology may have the potential to become bodily and cognitive extensions for skilled users, at this stage they are not. And while the electrodes may to a variable degree be transparent and incorporated in the body schema, the BCI system as a whole is not. Moreover, BCIs do not have a functional role characteristic for cognition and are therefore not cognitive extensions. Third, based on concepts from the distributed cognition framework, I give a number of suggestions to improve the interface design of linguistic applications, i.e. BCIs that allow its user to spell words by selecting letters on a screen. These suggestions may result in cognitive extension and would enhance the autonomy and quality of life of its users. In sum, in this paper I develop a typology, analysis and critique on the current philosophical debate on BCIs, thereby providing a richer conceptual understanding of BCI systems which allows me to offer some suggestions for improving the interface design of linguistic applications. (shrink)

Therapeutic strategies capable of inducing and enhancing prosthesis embodiment are a key point for better adaptation to and acceptance of prosthetic limbs. In this study, we developed a training protocol using an EMG-based human-machine interface that was applied in the preprosthetic rehabilitation phase of people with amputation. This is a case series with the objective of evaluating the induction and enhancement of the embodiment of a virtual prosthesis. Six men and a woman with unilateral transfemoral traumatic amputation without previous use (...) of prostheses participated in the study. Participants performed a training protocol with the EMG-based HMI, composed of six sessions held twice a week, each lasting 30 mins. This system consisted of myoelectric control of the movements of a virtual prosthesis immersed in a 3D virtual environment. Additionally, vibrotactile stimuli were provided on the participant’s back corresponding to the movements performed. Embodiment was investigated from the following set of measurements: skin conductance response, crossmodal congruency effect, ability to control the virtual prosthesis, and reports before and after the training. The increase in the skin conductance response in conditions where the virtual prosthesis was threatened, recalibration of the peripersonal space perception identified by the crossmodal congruency effect, ability to control the virtual prosthesis, and participant reports consistently showed the induction and enhancement of virtual prosthesis embodiment. Therefore, this protocol using EMG-based HMI was shown to be a viable option to achieve and enhance the embodiment of a virtual prosthetic limb. (shrink)

This paper presents a gamified motor imagery brain-computer interface (MI-BCI) training in immersive virtual reality. Aim of the proposed training method is to increase engagement, attention, and motivation in co-adaptive event-driven MI-BCI training. This was achieved using gamification, progressive increase of the training pace, and virtual reality design reinforcing the body ownership transfer (embodiment) into the avatar. From the 20 healthy participants performing 6 runs of 2-class MI-BCI training (left/right hand), 19 were trained for a basic level of MI-BCI operation, (...) with average peak accuracy in the session equal to 75.84\%. This confirms the proposed training method succeeded in improvement of the MI-BCI skills; moreover, participants were leaving the session in high positive affect. Although the performance was not directly correlated to the degree of embodiment, subjective magnitude of the body ownership transfer illusion correlated with the abilities to modulate the sensorimotor rhythm. (shrink)

Alongside existing research into the social, political and economic impacts of the Web, there is a need to study the Web from a cognitive and epistemic perspective. This is particularly so as new and emerging technologies alter the nature of our interactive engagements with the Web, transforming the extent to which our thoughts and actions are shaped by the online environment. Situated and ecological approaches to cognition are relevant to understanding the cognitive significance of the Web because of the emphasis (...) they place on forces and factors that reside at the level of agent–world interactions. In particular, by adopting a situated or ecological approach to cognition, we are able to assess the significance of the Web from the perspective of research into embodied, extended, embedded, social and collective cognition. The results of this analysis help to reshape the interdisciplinary configuration of Web Science, expanding its theoretical and empirical remit to include the disciplines of both cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

: This paper uses Extended Mind Theory to explore Brain-Computer Interfaces, demonstrating how this conceptual framework provides a wide-ranging interpretation of the potential integration of user and computer. After a preliminary analysis of first- and second-wave EMT arguments and other pragmatic criteria, I present BCI technology, addressing the issues that arise. Can BCIs extend our mental processes and to what degree? What EMT criteria should be applied to this technology? What is the role of the body in the process (...) of integrating user and computer? What are current limits to complete cognitive and bodily extension by BCIs? In line with this discussion, I suggest a pluralist approach to BCIs, allowing for specific and appropriate application of the various models and paradigms. I also advocate greater focus on the integration of body and tool, primarily for clinical purposes, but also for applications that will meet daily needs in the future. Keywords : Extended Mind; Brain-Computer Interface; Embodiment; Parity Principle; Cognitive Artefacts. Mente estesa e brain-computer interface. Un approccio pluralista all’integrazione uomo-macchina Riassunto: Il presente articolo fa uso della Extended Mind Theory per indagare le Brain-Computer Interfaces, dimostrando che questo framework concettuale offre un’interpretazione ad ampio raggio della potenziale integrazione tra utente e computer. Dopo un’analisi preliminare degli argomenti della EMT di prima e seconda generazione e altri criteri pragmatici, presenterò la tecnologia delle BCIs, affrontando alcune questioni a essa collegate. Le BCIs possono estendere i nostri processi mentali e fino a che punto? Quali criteri della EMT dovrebbero essere applicati a questa tecnologia? Qual è il ruolo del corpo nel processo di integrazione utente-computer? Quali sono gli attuali limiti per completare l’estensione cognitiva e corporea da parte delle BCIs? In linea con questa discussione, suggerirò un approccio pluralistico alle BCIs che permetta un’applicazione specifica e appropriata dei vari modelli e paradigmi. Sosterrò inoltre la necessità di una maggiore attenzione all’integrazione tra corpo e strumento, principalmente per scopi clinici ma anche per applicazioni future che soddisfino le esigenze quotidiane. Parole chiave: Mente estesa; Brain-Computer Interface ; Incorporamento; Principio di Parità; Artefatti cognitivi. (shrink)

The primary goal of this essay is to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of the various relations between material artifacts and the embodied mind. A secondary goal of this essay is to identify some of the trends in the design and use of artifacts. First, based on their functional properties, I identify four categories of artifacts co-opted by the embodied mind, namely (1) embodied artifacts, (2) perceptual artifacts, (3) cognitive artifacts, and (4) affective artifacts. These categories (...) can overlap and so some artifacts are members of more than one category. I also identify some of the techniques (or skills) we use when interacting with artifacts. Identifying these categories of artifacts and techniques allows us to map the landscape of relations between embodied minds and the artifactual world. Second, having identified categories of artifacts and techniques, this essay then outlines some of the trends in the design and use of artifacts, focussing on neuroprosthetics, brain-computer interfaces, and personalisation algorithms nudging their users towards particular epistemic paths of information consumption. (shrink)

We use speech shadowing to create situations wherein people converse in person with a human whose words are determined by a conversational agent computer program. Speech shadowing involves a person (the shadower) repeating vocal stimuli originating from a separate communication source in real-time. Humans shadowing for conversational agent sources (e.g., chat bots) become hybrid agents ("echoborgs") capable of face-to-face interlocution. We report three studies that investigated people’s experiences interacting with echoborgs and the extent to which echoborgs pass as autonomous humans. (...) First, participants in a Turing Test spoke with a chat bot via either a text interface or an echoborg. Human shadowing did not improve the chat bot’s chance of passing but did increase interrogators’ ratings of how human-like the chat bot seemed. In our second study, participants had to decide whether their interlocutor produced words generated by a chat bot or simply pretended to be one. Compared to those who engaged a text interface, participants who engaged an echoborg were more likely to perceive their interlocutor as pretending to be a chat bot. In our third study, participants were naïve to the fact that their interlocutor produced words generated by a chat bot. Unlike those who engaged a text interface, the vast majority of participants who engaged an echoborg neither sensed nor suspected a robotic interaction. These findings have implications for android science, the Turing Test paradigm, and human-computer interaction. The human body, as the delivery mechanism of communication, fundamentally alters the social psychological dynamics of interactions with machine intelligence. (shrink)

Emerging neurotechnologies, such as brain-computer interfaces, interact closely with a user’s body by enabling actions controlled with brain activity. This can have a profound impact on the user’s experience of movement, the sense of agency and other body-and action-related aspects. In this introduction to the special issue “Mechanized Brains, Embodied Technologies”, we reflect on the relationships between embodiment, movement and agency that are addressed in the collected papers.

The skin can be described as a niche structured by semiotic artefacts (tattoos) that work as symbolic–indexical devices (dicisigns). New biocompatible technologies responsive to organic and environmental variations change the role of the skin as a semiotic niche. New devices are transforming the skin into a niche of interactive interfaces. In this article we introduce a variety of techno-scientific artefacts, which are readily available, and their main characteristics. We are interested in the recent proliferation of devices based on biotechnologies (...) that can be coupled to the body, especially epithelial (superficial or invasive), and how they change what we know as ‘embodied communication’. (shrink)

Brain–machine interfaces combining visual, auditory, and tactile feedback have been previously used to generate embodiment experiences during spinal cord injury rehabilitation. It is not known if adding temperature to these modalities can result in discomfort with embodiment experiences. Here, comfort levels with the embodiment experiences were investigated in an intervention that required a chronic pain SCI patient to generate lower limb motor imagery commands in an immersive environment combining visual, auditory, tactile, and thermal feedback. Assessments were made pre-/ post-, (...) throughout the intervention, and at 7 weeks follow up. Overall, high levels of embodiment in the adapted three-domain scale of embodiment were found throughout the sessions. No significant adverse effects of VR were reported. Although sessions induced only a modest reduction in pain levels, an overall reduction occurred in all pain scales at follow up. A high degree of comfort in the comfort scale for the thermal-tactile sleeve, in both the thermal and tactile feedback components of the sleeve was reported. This study supports the feasibility of combining multimodal stimulation involving visual, auditory, tactile, and thermal feedback to generate embodiment experiences in neurorehabilitation programs. (shrink)

While new generations of implantable brain computer interface devices are being developed, evidence in the literature about their impact on the patient experience is lagging. In this article, we address this knowledge gap by analysing data from the first-in-human clinical trial to study patients with implanted BCI advisory devices. We explored perceptions of self-change across six patients who volunteered to be implanted with artificially intelligent BCI devices. We used qualitative methodological tools grounded in phenomenology to conduct in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Results (...) show that, on the one hand, BCIs can positively increase a sense of the self and control; on the other hand, they can induce radical distress, feelings of loss of control, and a rupture of patient identity. We conclude by offering suggestions for the proactive creation of preparedness protocols specific to intelligent—predictive and advisory—BCI technologies essential to prevent potential iatrogenic harms. (shrink)

This concise volume addresses the question of whether or not language, and its structure in literary discourses, determines individuals' mental 'vision, ' employing an innovative cross-disciplinary approach using readers' drawings of their mental imagery during reading. The book engages in critical dialogue with the perceived wisdom in stylistics rooted in Roger Fowler's seminal work on deixis and point of view to test whether or not this theory can fully account for what readers see in their mind's eye and how they (...) see it. The work draws on findings from a study of English and Dutch across a range of literary texts, in which participants read literary text fragments and were then asked to immediately draw representations of what they had seen envisioned. Building on the work of Fowler and more recent theoretical and empirical language-based studies in the area, Klomberg, Schilhab and Burke argue that models from embodied cognitive science can help account for anomalies in evidence from readers' drawings, indicating new ways forward for interdisciplinary understandings of individual meaning construction in literary textual interfaces. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in stylistics, cognitive psychology, rhetoric, and philosophy, particularly those working in embodied cognition. (shrink)

This paper first re-examines Levinson’s notion of activity type, followed by a review of ethnographic, sociopsychological and ecological studies of the same phenomenon under varied names. The activity type is generally treated as a context in pragmatics. This paper departs from this thinking by proposing that it be treated as the primary object and unit of investigation per se. The role the activity type plays should be that of an interface bridging the langue-parole dichotomy, and the individual-society dichotomy. It is (...) further proposed that the activity type be studied as embodied activities at the token level. It is thus re-conceptualized in term of land-borne situated discourse. (shrink)

Today’s bodies are akin to ‘walking sensor platforms’. Bodies either host, or are the subjects of, an array of sensing devices that act to convert bodily movements, actions and dynamics into circulative data. This article proposes the notions of ‘disembodied exhaust’ and ‘embodied exhaustion’ to conceptualise processes of bodily sensorisation and datafication. As the material body interfaces with networked sensor technologies and sensing infrastructures, it emits disembodied exhaust: gaseous flows of personal information that establish a representational data-proxy. It (...) is this networked actant that progressively structures how embodied subjects experience their daily lives. The significance of this symbiont medium in determining the outcome of interplays between networked individuals and audiences necessitates that it is carefully contrived. The article explores the nature and function of the data-proxy, and its impact on social relations. Drawing on examples that depict individuals engaging with their data-proxies, the article suggests that managing a virtual presence is analogous to a work relation, demanding diligence and investment. But it also shows how the data-proxy operates as a mode of affect that challenges conventional distinctions made between organic and inorganic bodies, agency and actancy, mortality and immortality, presence and absence. (shrink)

The conceptual foundations, features, and scope of the notion of rationality are increasingly being affected by developments in embodied cognitive science. This article starts from the idea of embodied rationality, and aims to develop a frame in which a debate with the classical, possibly bounded, notion of rationality-as-consistency can take place. To this end, I develop a game theoretic description of a real time interaction setup in which participants' behaviors can be used to compare the enactive approach, which (...) underlies embodied rationality, with game theoretic approaches to human interaction. The Perceptual Crossing Paradigm is a minimal interaction interface where two participants each control an avatar on a shared virtual line, and are tasked with cooperatively finding each other among distractor objects. It is well known that the best performance on this task is obtained when both participants let their movements coordinate with the objects they encounter, which they do without any prior knowledge of efficient interaction strategies in the system. A game theoretic model of this paradigm shows that this task can be described as an Assurance game, which allows for comparing game theoretical approaches and the enactive approach on two main fronts. First, accounting for the ability of participants to interactively solve the Assurance game; second, accounting for the evolution of choice landscapes resulting from evolving normative realms in the task. Similarly to the series of paradoxes which have fueled debates in economics in the past century, this analysis aims to serve as an interpretation testbed which can fuel the current debate on rationality. (shrink)

In this paper I present a model of analysis of religion and science as forms of social construction of knowledge from the perspective of postmodern sociology. Numerous works have been recently published on the possible relations between religion and science. Most authors address this relationship from the perspectives of theology, philosophy, or selected disciplines of natural sciences . My goal is to add to that discussion a voice from the perspective of social sciences, specifically postmodern sociology. The model I propose (...) brings the religion‐science conversation down to earth, that is, to the level of people who “live” religion and science on a daily basis. The theoretical frame‐work for my analysis of religion and science and of their relationship is constructed on the basis of selected works of leading postmodern sociologists Zygmunt Bauman, Anthony Giddens, and Piotr Sztompka. I begin with a brief summary of the basic ontological and methodological presuppositions of the postmodern approach to reality. This summary is followed by a clarification of meanings of certain concepts that are crucial for the understanding of my model. Then, I present the model of analysis of religion and science and, finally, make some suggestions for sociology of religion and sociology of science that might open new opportunities and challenges for future research of the interface between religion and science in the postmodern culture. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show that human cognition cannot be characterised purely in mentalistic term. It has a bodily basis and cognition is thus the product of the interplay between mind, body, and brain. This is how the idea of embodiment and its importance is realised and gets its foothold in both philosophy and cognitive science. This brings a radical change introducing a new framework for philosophy and cognitive science. In this new change philosophy and cognitive science have a special (...) role to play which this paper seeks to explore. Philosophy in its capacity as a conceptual inquiry provides justification for human embodiment on a conceptual ground whereas cognitive science provides the same on an empirical and experimental ground. This brings the two disciplines closer resulting into a new field of inquiry which can be best described as the interface between philosophy and cognitive science. An important consequence that follows from this alignment is that the traditional epistemological distinction between the a priori and the empirical can no longer be rigidly maintained. (shrink)

In a short article in the May 2004 edition of Wired magazine (revealingly subtitled “Fear and Loathing on the Human‐Machine Frontier”) the futurist and science fiction writer Bruce Sterling sounds an increasingly familiar alarm. After warning us of the imminent dangers of “brain augmentation” he adds: Another troubling frontier is physical, as opposed to mental, augmentation. Japan has a rapidly growing elderly population and a serious shortage of caretakers. So Japanese roboticists … envision walking wheelchairs and mobile arms that manipulate (...) and fetch. But there's ethical hell at the interfaces, The peripherals may be dizzyingly clever gizmos but the CPU is a human being: old, weak, vulnerable, pitifully limited, possibly senile. (Sterling 2004: 116). (shrink)

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are an emerging and converging technology that translates the brain activity of its user into command signals for external devices, ranging from motorized wheelchairs, robotic hands, environmental control systems, and computer applications. In this paper I functionally decompose BCI systems and categorize BCI applications with similar functional properties into three categories, those with (1) motor, (2) virtual, and (3) linguistic applications. I then analyse the relationship between these distinct BCI applications and their users from an epistemological (...) and phenomenological perspective. Specifically, I analyse functional properties of BCIs in relation to the abilities (particularly motor behaviour and communication) of their human users, asking how they may or may not extend these abilities. This includes a phenomenological analysis of whether BCIs are experienced as transparent extensions. Contrary to some recent philosophical claims, I conclude that, although BCIs have the potential to become bodily as well as cognitive extensions for skilled users, at this stage they are not. And while the electrodes and signal processor may to a variable degree be transparent and incorporated, the BCI system as a whole is not. Contemporary BCIs are difficult to use. Most systems only work in highly controlled laboratory settings, require a high amount of training and concentration, have very limited control options, have low and variable information transfer rates, and effector motions are often slow, clumsy and sometimes unsuccessful. These drawbacks considerably limit their possibilities for transparency and incorporation into either the body schema or cognitive system which is essential for bodily and cognitive extension. Current BCIs can therefore only be seen as a weak or metaphorical extension of the human central nervous system. To increase their potential for cognitive extension, I give suggestions for improving the interface design of what I refer to as linguistic applications. (shrink)

Our use of artefacts has at different moments been characterised as either replacing or impoverishing our natural human capacities, or a key part of our humanity. This article critically evaluates the conception of the natural invoked by both accounts, and highlights the degree to which engagement with material features of the environment is fundamental to all living things, the closeness of this engagement making any account that seeks to draw a clear boundary between body and artefact problematic. By doing this (...) I seek to clarify the nature of our embodied relationship with various kinds of artefacts; moving from tools to machines to digital interfaces, I consider their differing potentials to be gathered into the body schema, and thus change our embodied horizons of perception and action. While much research currently seeks to facilitate a more ‘natural’ mode of interacting with technology, I argue that such a mode of interaction does not exist outside the particularity of our relationships with specific objects. As a result, rather than trying to cater to supposedly more natural modes of action and perception, future technologies should aim to enrich our experience with new modes, inviting novel relationships that produce new kinds of sensory and other experience. (shrink)

Although requests constitute a type of action that have been widely discussed within conversation analysis-oriented work, they have only recently begun to be explored in relation to the situated and multimodal dimensions in which they occur. The contribution of this paper resides in the integration of bodily-visual conduct (gaze and facial expression, gesture and locomotion, object manipulation) into a more grammatical account of requesting. Drawing on video recordings collected in two different hair salons located in the French-speaking part of Switzerland (...) and in France (23 h in total), this paper analyzes clients’ negative requests by exploring how they interface with the participants’ embodied conducts. Contrary to what the literature describes for positively formulated requests, with negative requests clients challenge an expectable next action (or ongoing action) by the hairdresser. One linguistic format constitutes the focus of this article, roughly glossable as ‘You don’t do [action X] too much (huh)’. Our analysis of a consistent collection of such formatted turns will show that clients present them (and hairdressers tend to treat them) in different ways, depending on how they relate to embodied conduct: When these turns are used by the client as instructions, they are accompanied by manipulations of the client’s own hair and tend to occur toward the initial phase of the encounter, at a stage when hairdressers and clients collaboratively negotiate the service in prospect. When uttered as directives, these turns are not accompanied by any touching practices from the client and are typically observable in subsequent phases of the encounter, making relevant an immediate linguistic or/and bodily response from the professional, as shown by the client who is actively pursuing mutual gaze with him/her. Therefore, an action cannot be distinguished from another on the basis of the turn format alone: Its sequential placement and the participants’ co-occurring embodied conduct contribute to its situated and shared understanding. By analyzing the clients’ use of a specific linguistic format conjointly with the deployment of specific embodied resources, this study will advance our understanding of how verbal resources and embodiment operate in concert with each other in the formation and understanding of actions, thereby feeding into new areas of research on the grammar-body interface. (shrink)

Personal genetic information services (PGI) or direct-to-consumer genomics (DTC) presents a convergence of web 2.0 platforms with consumer-oriented genetics that brings together issues of policy and design. The rise of networking over DNA profile and biodata (bionetworking) challenges the common design and HCI notions of interaction, social networking and user needs. It confronts design thinking and HCI with various biopolitical and biosocial issues discussed in STS studies. These interfaces intensify the troubled relationship between what is social and biological, collective (...) and individual, public and private, natural and political, material (embodied) and based on data or discourses. At the same time, this fast evolving convergence of biosciences with social networking transforms scientific practices in a way which demonstrates the importance of design in discussing issues of STS and policy. The notion of cosmopolitics as "collective experimentation" and "progressive composition of the common world" (Bruno Latour) offers a framework for understanding this connection between philosophy, policy and design. Bionetworking interfaces in this sense serve as probes for testing future collectives which transform the notions of human subjects, community and politics. (shrink)

Sign-based semantics and embodied semantics are argued to be mutually beneficial to one another. However, while the body does shape our cognitive activities to a great extent, this does not entail that cognition can be reduced to sensorimotor simulation, i.e that the mind can be reduced to the body. Language itself bears testimony to this, as the mind is construed in ordinary discourse as having the incredible capacity of being free to travel beyond the limits of present time and (...) current spatial location. Nagel has argued famously that mind is a fundamental datum of nature that the materialist version of evolutionary biology is unable to account for, as consciousness has an essentially subjective character to it, a ‘what it is like for the conscious organism itself’ aspect, that cannot be reduced to the matter of which the organism is constituted. Two modern scientific developments refute the contention that the human mind can be explained as a purely material machine: quantum theory in physics and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem in mathematics. Just because the mind works through the body does not entail that the mind can be reduced to the body. (shrink)

In a recent contribution to this journal, Andrew Fenton and Sheri Alpert have argued that the so-called “extended mind hypothesis” allows us to understand why Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) have the potential to change the self of patients suffering from Locked-in syndrome (LIS) by extending their minds beyond their bodies. I deny that this can shed any light on the theoretical, or philosophical, underpinnings of BCIs as a tool for enabling communication with, or bodily action by, patients with LIS: (...) BCIs are not a case of cognitive extension. I argue that Fenton and Alpert’s claim to the contrary is the result of a widespread confusion about some related, but significantly different, approaches to cognition that all fall under the heading of “situated cognition.” I first provide a short taxonomy of various situated approaches to cognition, highlighting (some of) their important commonalities and differences, which should dissolve some of the confusions surrounding them. Then I show why the extended mind hypothesis is unsuitable as a model of BCI enhancements of LIS patients’ capacity to interact with their surroundings, and I argue that the situated approach with obvious bearings on the sort of questions that were driving Fenton and Alpert is not the idea that cognition is extended , but the idea that cognition is enacted. (shrink)

Recent advances in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience open up new vistas for human enhancement. Central to much of this work is the idea of new human-machine interfaces (in general) and new brain-machine interfaces (in particular). But despite the increasing prominence of such ideas, the very idea of such an interface remains surprisingly under-explored. In particular, the notion of human enhancement suggests an image of the embodied and reasoning agent as literally extended or augmented, rather than the (...) more conservative image of a standard (non-enhanced) agent using a tool via some new interface. In this essay, I explore this difference, and attempt to lay out some of the conditions under which the more radical reading (positing brand new integrated agents or systemic wholes) becomes justified. I adduce some empirical evidence suggesting that the radical result is well within our scientific reach. The main reason why this is so has less to do with the advancement of our science (though that certainly helps) than with our native biological plasticity. We humans, I shall try to show, are biologically disposed towards literal (and repeated) episodes of sensory re-calibration, of bodily re-configuration and of mental extension. Such potential for literal and repeated re-configuration is the mark of what I shall call "profoundly embodied agency," contrasting it with a variety of weaker (less philosophically and scientifically interesting) understandings of the nature and importance of embodiment for minds and persons. The article ends by relating the image of profound embodiment to some questions (and fears) concerning converging technologies for improving human performance. (shrink)

Many upper limb amputees experience an incessant, post-amputation “phantom limb pain” and report that their missing limbs feel paralyzed in an uncomfortable posture. One hypothesis is that efferent commands no longer generate expected afferent signals, such as proprioceptive feedback from changes in limb configuration, and that the mismatch of motor commands and visual feedback is interpreted as pain. Non-invasive therapeutic techniques for treating phantom limb pain, such as mirror visual feedback (MVF), rely on visualizations of postural changes. Advances in neural (...) interfaces for artificial sensory feedback now make it possible to combine MVF with a high-tech “rubber hand” illusion, in which subjects develop a sense of embodiment with a fake hand when subjected to congruent visual and somatosensory feedback. We discuss clinical benefits that could arise from the confluence of known concepts such as MVF and the rubber hand illusion, and new technologies such as neural interfaces for sensory feedback and highly sensorized robot hand testbeds, such as the “BairClaw” presented here. Our multi-articulating, anthropomorphic robot testbed can be used to study proprioceptive and tactile sensory stimuli during physical finger-object interactions. Conceived for artificial grasp, manipulation, and haptic exploration, the BairClaw could also be used for future studies on the neurorehabilitation of somatosensory disorders due to upper limb impairment or loss. A remote actuation system enables the modular control of tendon-driven hands. The artificial proprioception system enables direct measurement of joint angles and tendon tensions while temperature, vibration, and skin deformation are provided by a multimodal tactile sensor. The provision of multimodal sensory feedback that is spatiotemporally consistent with commanded actions could lead to benefits such as reduced phantom limb pain, and increased prosthesis use due to improved functionality and reduced cognitive burden. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Investigating Extended Embodiment Using a Computational Model and Human Experimentation” by Yuki Sato, Hiroyuki Iizuka & Takashi Ikegami. Upshot: First, we comment on a potential weakness highlighted by the use of self-reporting in the human-coupled windmill experiment as described in the target article. Second, we suggest that the authors treat their windmill models as soft-assembled dynamical systems. This would allow them to investigate extended body schemes by looking for 1/f noise in the interface between (...) the agent and the windmills. (shrink)

This book examines how democratic education is conceptualised by exploring understandings of emotions in learning. The authors argue that emotion is both an embodiment and enhancement of democratic education: that rationality and emotion are not separate entities, but exist on a continuum. While democratic education would not exist if it were incommensurate with reason, making judgements about the human condition could not happen without invoking emotion. Synthesising Muslim scholarship with the perspectives of the Western world, the book draws on scholars (...) such as Ibn al-Arabi, Ibn Sina and Fazlur Rahman to offer an enriched and expanded notion of democratic education. This engaging and reflective work will be of interest and value to students and scholars of educational philosophy and cultural studies. (shrink)

The attempt to appropriate Heidegger’s thinking in order to found environmental ethics continues to pose challenges both for understanding the premise of an ethic, and, conversely, for unfolding the importance of his thought in the effort to displace the anthropocentric focus of modern philosophy. These challenges must be taken up on a methodological as well as a thematic level, in order to show how a claim of being can implicate a reciprocal guidance pertaining to our treatment of the earth, nature, (...) and animals. An appeal to the ethos of situated dwelling is not sufficient to ground a transhuman ethic; rather, a precursory step must be taken to uncover a common space of embodiment, thereby marking a jointure whereby habitats fostering the potential for animals to “flourish” can be cultivated in concert with our own capacity to dwell. When viewed through this prism of our “incarnality,” the stewardship that we practice in dwelling on the earth can also “formally indicate” a sense of proportionality, e.g., a “measure,” counter balancing the interests of animals with humans. Conversely, the search for a trans-human ethic calls for a further transformation of phenomenology through its interface with hermeneutics. (shrink)

In a recent remarkable article, Froese (2023) presents his Irruption Theory to explain how motivations can make a behavioral difference in motivated activity. In this opinion article, we review the main tenets of Froese’s theory, and highlight its difficulty in overcoming the randomness challenge it supposedly solves, that is, the issue of how adaptive behavior can arise in the face of material underdetermination. To advance our understanding of motivated behavior in line with Froese’s approach, we recommend that future work should (...) endorse a multilevel pluralistic approach to causation and explanation in which motivations could genuinely play an irreducible role. Additionally, in line with the life-mind continuity thesis, we suggest that the best place to look for the interplay between motivations and nonmotivational physical, biological, and dynamical factors, may be at the level of the continuous feeling of being an embodied, living organism. (shrink)

In Being and Nothingness (1943) Sartre includes a grounding-breaking chapter on ‘the body’ which treats of the body under three headings: ‘the body as being for-itself: facticity’, ‘the body-for-others’, and ‘the third ontological dimension of the body’. Sartre’s phenomenology of the body has, in general, been neglected. In this essay, I want to revisit Sartre’s conception of embodiment. I shall argue that Sartre, even more than Merleau-Ponty, is the phenomenologist par excellence of the flesh (la chair) and of intersubjective intercorporeity (...) while emphasising that touching oneself is a merely contingent feature and not ‘the foundation for a study of corporeality’. (shrink)

This paper aims to show how recent cinematic representations reveal a far more pessimistic and essentialised vision of Human/Cyborg hybridity in comparison with the more enunciative and optimistic ones seen at the end of the twentieth century. Donna Haraway’s still influential 1985 essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” saw the combination of the organic and the technological as offering new and exciting ways beyond the normalised culturally constructed categories of gender and identity formation. However, more recently critics see her later writings as (...) embodying a Faustian deal between the individual and hegemony, where technology does not enhance but merely returns the subject to a level of normalisation. As such cybernetics is only configured as a form of prosthetic rehabilitation, to ‘re’-able the ‘dis’-abled, that ultimately re-establishes earlier essentialised subject positions through that same evolutionary process. The Six Million Dollar Man, which ran from 1974 to 1978, exampled a symbiosis between the organic and the technological where the broken human body is not just re-made via mechanical prosthesis but through a process of Cyborg hybridity which actually makes it better, faster, stronger than before. In contrast, contemporary films such as Avatar (Cameron 2009), Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen (Bay 2009) and Iron Man II (Faveraeu 2010) portray an inherent anxiety toward the cyborg body disavowing of any human/cyborg interaction beyond re-establishing their own discrete and separate subject positions. Although human/cyborg symbiosis constructs the possibility for potentialised bodies beyond those previously imagined, contemporary, popular, film represents them as separated and essentialised. This article looks at what cultural anxieties might produce such an about turn in such representations how this positions human identity in a time of increasing technology and, as a result, asks “whatever happened to The Six Million Dollar Man?”. (shrink)

Embodied interface agents are designed to ease the use of technology. Furthermore, they present one possible solution for future interaction scenarios beyond the desktop metaphor. Trust and believability play an important role in the relationship between user and the virtual counterpart. In order to reach this goal, a high degree of anthropomorphism in appearance and behavior of the artifact is pursued. According to the notion of the Uncanny Valley, however, this actually may have quite the opposite effect. This article (...) provides an analysis of the Uncanny Valley effect from a cultural and gender studies perspective. It invites readers to take a closer look at the narratives that influence the production of anthropomorphic artifacts. The article starts with a short introduction of the idea of the Uncanny Valley and gives a brief overview of current artifacts. Following this, a semiotic view on computer science is proposed, which in a further step serves as an epistemological grounding for a gender-critical rereading of the Turing test. This perspective will be supported by analyzing a classic story of user and artifact—E.T.A. Hoffmann’s narration of Olimpia. Finally, the special character of anthropomorphic artifacts is discussed by taking Freud’s concept of “Das Unheimliche”, as well as theories of identity formation into consideration, closing with a plea for a more diverse artifact production. (shrink)

Constraints and dependencies among the elements of embodied cognition form patterns or microstrategies of interactive behavior. Hard constraints determine which microstrategies are possible. Soft constraints determine which of the possible microstrategies are most likely to be selected. When selection is non‐deliberate or automatic the least effort microstrategy is chosen. In calculating the effort required to execute a microstrategy each of the three types of operations, memory retrieval, perception, and action, are given equal weight; that is, perceptual‐motor activity does not (...) have a privileged status with respect to memory. Soft constraints can work contrary to the designer's intentions by making the access of perfect knowledge in‐the‐world more effortful than the access of imperfect knowledge in‐the‐head. These implications of soft constraints are tested in two experiments. In experiment 1 we varied the perceptual‐motor effort of accessing knowledge in‐the‐world as well as the effort of retrieving items from memory. In experiment 2 we replicated one of the experiment 1 conditions to collect eye movement data. The results suggest that milliseconds matter. Soft constraints lead to a reliance on knowledge in‐the‐head even when the absolute difference in perceptual‐motor versus memory retrieval effort is small, and even when relying on memory leads to a higher error rate and lower performance. We discuss the implications of soft constraints for routine interactive behavior, accounts of embodied cognition, and tool and interface design. (shrink)

Phenomenological accounts of technology, mediation, and embodiment are beginning to problematize traditional distinctions between subject (human) and object (machine). This shift is often attributed to a material or post-human turn since it is usually associated with an interest in the non-human actors and objects that make media interfaces possible. This article contends that these tendencies should also be considered part of a deeper lineage of dialectical thought in critical theory. Using videogames as an example, I argue that academic debates (...) related to the player/game relationship can be read through the lens of Adorno’s aesthetic theory. Developing Adorno’s concept of mimesis, I argue that the interface is often treated as a dialectical question of how the space between subject and object should be traversed. I reflect on the possible advantages of focusing on this contested space through a discussion of game controllers and the Aristotelian concept of techne. (shrink)

Phenomenological accounts of technology, mediation, and embodiment are beginning to problematize traditional distinctions between subject (human) and object (machine). This shift is often attributed to a material or post-human turn since it is usually associated with an interest in the non-human actors and objects that make media interfaces possible. This article contends that these tendencies should also be considered part of a deeper lineage of dialectical thought in critical theory. Using videogames as an example, I argue that academic debates (...) related to the player/game relationship can be read through the lens of Adorno’s aesthetic theory. Developing Adorno’s concept of mimesis, I argue that the interface is often treated as a dialectical question of how the space between subject and object should be traversed. I reflect on the possible advantages of focusing on this contested space through a discussion of game controllers and the Aristotelian concept of techne. (shrink)

In sociology, there has been a controversy about whether there is any essential difference between a human being and a tool, or if the tool–user relationship can be defined by co-actor symmetry. This issue becomes more complex when we consider examples of AI and robots, and even more so following progress in the development of various bio-machine hybrid technologies, such as robots that include organic parts, human brain implants, and adaptive prosthetics. It is argued that a concept of autonomous agency (...) based on organismic embodiment helps to clarify the situation. On this view, agency consists of an asymmetrical relationship between an organism and its environment, because the continuous metabolic and regulatory activity of the organism gives rise to its own existence, and hence its specific behavioral domain. Accordingly, most of current technologies are excluded from the class of autonomous agents. Instead, they are better conceptualized as interfaces that mediate our interactions with the world. This has important implications for design: Rather than trying to help humans to achieve their goals by duplicating their agency in artificial systems, it would be better to empower humans directly by enhancing their existing agency and lived experience with technological interfaces that can be incorporated into their embodiment. This incorporation might be especially facilitated by bio-machine hybrid technology that is designed according the principles of biological autonomy and multi-agent coordination dynamics. (shrink)

Constraints and dependencies among the elements of embodied cognition form patterns or microstrategies of interactive behavior. Hard constraints determine which microstrategies are possible. Soft constraints determine which of the possible microstrategies are most likely to be selected. When selection is non-deliberate or automatic the least effort microstrategy is chosen. In calculating the effort required to execute a microstrategy each of the three types of operations, memory retrieval, perception, and action, are given equal weight; that is, perceptual-motor activity does not (...) have a privileged status with respect to memory. Soft constraints can work contrary to the designer's intentions by making the access of perfect knowledge in-the-world more effortful than the access of imperfect knowledge in-the-head. These implications of soft constraints are tested in two experiments. In experiment 1 we varied the perceptual-motor effort of accessing knowledge in-the-world as well as the effort of retrieving items from memory. In experiment 2 we replicated one of the experiment 1 conditions to collect eye movement data. The results suggest that milliseconds matter. Soft constraints lead to a reliance on knowledge in-the-head even when the absolute difference in perceptual-motor versus memory retrieval effort is small, and even when relying on memory leads to a higher error rate and lower performance. We discuss the implications of soft constraints for routine interactive behavior, accounts of embodied cognition, and tool and interface design. (shrink)

Scaffolded Minds offers a novel account of cognitive scaffolding and its significance for understanding mental disorders. The book is part of the growing philosophical engagement with empirically informed philosophy of mind, which studies the interfaces between philosophy and cognitive science. It draws on two recent shifts within empirically informed philosophy of mind: the first, toward an intensified study of the embodied mind; and the second, toward a study of the disordered mind that acknowledges the convergence of the explanatory (...) concerns of psychiatry and interdisciplinary inquiries into the mind. The book sets out to accomplish a dual task: theoretical mapping of cognitive scaffolding; and the application/calibration of fine-grained philosophical distinctions to empirical research. It introduces the notion of actively scaffolded cognition (ASC) and offers a taxonomy that distinguishes between intrasomatic and extrasomatic scaffolding. It then shows that ASC offers a productive framework for considering certain characteristic features of mental disorders, focusing on altered bodily experience and social cognition deficits. (shrink)

Businesses interface with the natural world through rights to property. The shape of these rights and the responsibilities we assign to managers are important determinants of both patterns of resource use and pollutant levels. Consequently, conflicts have arisen between regulating bodies, indigenous groups, and corporations over the entitlements of businesses in the use of their property when that property is ecologically sensitive or significant. In this paper I develop an account of the ethical responsibilities of managers regarding their treatment of (...) the environment and their use of natural resources. This account is based on a philosophical examination of the nature of property rights. After a tour of traditional arguments employed to defend the institution of private property, I develop a new conception of property rights over objects that have a high natural resource component. I show that in today’s world, ethical concerns that motivated John Locke will yield property rights that are insufficiently strong to override a democratic say in overall use patterns and must be sensitive to factors such as need, scarcity, and the interests of stakeholders. I show a similar result for utilitarian arguments for property. On this foundation I develop a conception of property in key environmental resources that includes a stewardship element. To embody this, I suggest a set of ethical responsibilities for managers over certain natural resources that springs from it. I argue for obligations restricting harmful use patterns as a way of including the other goals (eg public participation, sustainability) that we care about, in a manner which clashes least with the liberty of owners and the efficiency of production. The outcome is a set of rights and responsibilities that take global environmental interests into account, but preserve the thrust of what is good about the institution of private property: that it rewards labour and facilitates a stable and efficient free exchange system. As a version of private property, it retains many of the advantages of global capitalism while attaching responsibilities to business decision makers. (shrink)

In a recent book, Secular Translations: Nation State, Modern State and Calculative Reason, Talal Asad is concerned with how the language of calculation and abstraction, inaugurated by modernity and accelerated by our current algorithmic reality, erodes the language of cultivated embodiment typical of religious worldviews and the virtues that such embodiment seeks to develop. These languages are predicated upon and cultivate different types of selves that are fundamentally at variance with each other. It is not that that one cannot cultivate (...) the worshipful, virtuous self in our algorithmic reality, but Asad’s pessimistic conclusion is that the conditions for such cultivation are being made increasingly difficult as we seemingly hasten towards a posthuman future. Asad here echoes thinkers such as Leon Kass and Michael Sandel who have also expressed disquiet about the loss of cultivated embodiment in such a future, but in an important meta sense, he goes beyond them by interrogating the underlying language we use to frame our discussions in this area. The purpose of this article is to bring an awareness to this Asadian argument, which, I believe, should at the very least give us some pause for thought as technology plunges us into new and unknowing horizons.Contribution: Despite the many laudable accomplishments of modernity in the techno-scientific sphere, vital questions remain about its ability to bring about overall human flourishing. Among others, the thought of Talal Asad provides a way to think about why the promised potential of modernity in this regard has not been realised and, concomitantly, why traditional, embodied teachings of religion continue to be critical in thinking about the future. (shrink)

In a future world of ubiquitous computing, in which humans interact with computerized technologies even more frequently and in even more situations than today, interface design will have increased importance. One feature of interface that I argue will be especially relevant is what I call abstract relational strategies. This refers to an approach (in both a bodily and conceptual sense) toward the use of a technology, an approach that is general enough to be applied in many different concrete scenarios. Such (...) an abstract manner of approach is relevant, for example, when an interface design for a device to which users are already accustomed is applied to an entirely different device (such as a device used for a completely different purpose). To articulate this idea, I explore the history of keyboards, and consider how the habits of interface with one kind (e.g., piano keyboards) have historically enabled some users to approach other technologies fitted with similar keyboard interface (e.g., typewriters, electronic instrumentation). I conclude by brainstorming ways that abstract relational strategies, applicable to a variety of different devices, will have increased importance in a future world in which computing is even more ubiquitous than today. (shrink)

The construction of embodied conversational agents - robots as well as avatars - seem to be a new challenge in the field of both cognitive AI and human-computer-interface development. On the one hand, one aims at gaining new insights in the development of cognition and communication by constructing intelligent, physical instantiated artefacts. On the other hand people are driven by the idea, that humanlike mechanical dialog-partners will have a positive effect on human-machine-communication. In this contribution I put for discussion (...) whether the visions of scientist in this field are plausible and which problems might arise by the realization of such projects. (shrink)

This book reports on the results of the third edition of the premier conference in the field of philosophy of artificial intelligence, PT-AI 2017, held on November 4 - 5, 2017 at the University of Leeds, UK. It covers: advanced knowledge on key AI concepts, including complexity, computation, creativity, embodiment, representation and superintelligence; cutting-edge ethical issues, such as the AI impact on human dignity and society, responsibilities and rights of machines, as well as AI threats to humanity and AI safety; (...) and cutting-edge developments in techniques to achieve AI, including machine learning, neural networks, dynamical systems. The book also discusses important applications of AI, including big data analytics, expert systems, cognitive architectures, and robotics. It offers a timely, yet very comprehensive snapshot of what is going on in the field of AI, especially at the interfaces between philosophy, cognitive science, ethics and computing. (shrink)

The Radical Enactive/embodied view of Cognition, or REC, claims that all cognition is a matter of skilled performance. Yet REC also makes a distinction between basic and content-involving cognition, arguing that the development of basic to content-involving cognition involves a kink. It might seem that this distinction leads to problematic gaps in REC’s story. We address two such alleged gaps in this paper. First, we identify and reply to the concern that REC leads to an “interface problem”, according to (...) which REC has to account for the interaction of two minds co-present in the same cognitive activity. We emphasise how REC’s view of content-involving cognition in terms of activities that require particular sociocultural practices can resolve these interface concerns. The second potential problematic gap is that REC creates an unjustified difference in kind between animal and human cognition. In response, we clarify and further explicate REC’s notion of content, and argue that this notion allows REC to justifiably mark the distinction between basic and content-involving cognition as a difference in kind. We conclude by pointing out in what sense basic and content-involving cognitive activities are the same, yet different. They are the same because they are all forms of skilled performance, yet different as some forms of skilled performance are genuinely different from other forms. (shrink)