The paper is devoted to the study of humor as an important pragmatic phenomenon bearing on cognition, and, more specifically, as a cooperative mode of non-bona-fide communication. Several computational models of humor are presented in increasing order of complexity and shown to reveal important cognitive structures in jokes. On the basis of these limited implementations, the concept of a full-fledged computational model for the understanding and generation of humor is introduced and discussed in various aspects. The model draws upon the (...) authors ' General Theory of Verbal Humor, with its six knowledge resources informing a joke, and on SMEARR, a sophisticated semantic-network-based computational lexical environment. The relevance of the approach to the interpretation, generation, and cognitive structure of humor is discussed in the broader context of the nature of the cooperative non-bona-fide modes of communication. (shrink)

An evolutionary constructivist approach combining Donald Campbell's selection theory with constructivist theories is discussed as it pertains to four issues typically associated with humanistic approaches to psychology: embodiment, agency, human science, and becoming. Ways in which selection theory informs these four issues by adding a naturalistic approach to the usual humanities-oriented emphasis of humanistic psychology are presented. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

Context: The late Ernst von Glasersfeld humbly claimed that he was not a therapist and therefore had no comment on the relevance of his radical constructivism for psychotherapy. Problem: Because the constructivist view of psychotherapeutic change is often overlooked, this paper in von Glasersfeld’s memory uses his constructivist theory to conceptualize how such change occurs. Method: By briefly outlining the radical constructivist position and examining its theoretical implications for psychotherapy, the significance of von Glasersfeld’s theorizing for understanding therapeutic change is (...) articulated. Results: A constructivist view of psychotherapeutic change emphasizes relational factors rather than the rote steps of an empirically supported treatment approach. While client-therapist interactions never instruct clients how to change, the therapeutic relationship is the mechanism by which client systems are disrupted and compelled to reorganize in new ways. Implications: Von Glasersfeld’s constructivism implies that therapy is a structured way of generating client change. Because all clients are closed systems, therapy is different with every client. Von Glasersfeld’s theory provides a basis for conceptualizing therapy in relational, rather than empirically supported treatment, terms. (shrink)

The notion of essence in psychology is examined from a constructivist viewpoint. The constructivist position is summarized and differentiated from social constructionism, after which constructs are distinguished from concepts in order to position ontology and epistemology as modes of construing. After situating constructivism in relation to philosophical approaches to essences, the distinction between essences and kinds is examined and the presumed constructivist critique of essences in psychology outlined. It is argued that criticizing constructivism as an “anything goes” form of antirealism (...) fails to grasp how constructivist psychology, by emphasizing structure and viability, does indeed place limits on the constructions people may hold. In applying a constructivist understanding of essences in general to those fundamental to human psychology, people can be seen as having three essential psychological qualities: they are closed systems, active meaning-makers, and irreducibly social beings. Yet a constructivist view also maintains that these psychological essences only hold while operating within and committed to a constructivist perspective. In other words, what counts as an essence always depends on one's assumptions, or how one construes events. Finally, a personal construct theory model of essentialist and nonessentialist construing is introduced based on the assumption that everyone construes in both essentialist and nonessentialist ways at different times because doing so is pragmatically viable. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

on Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film by Carl Plantinga.

Open peer commentary on the target article “Who Conceives of Society?” by Ernst von Glasersfeld. Excerpt: Von Glasersfeld’s presupposition that all organisms are isolated subjective knowers can thus remain viable within a framework that sees the personal and social as mutually informing. Implying that isolated knowers coordinate the ways in which they “bump” into one another – and that this coordination impacts the kinds of perturbations that arise within them – constitutes a perfectly rational variation on von Glasersfeld’s theory of (...) rational knowing. (shrink)