The proposed multilevel framework of discourse comprehension includes the surface code, the textbase, the situation model, the genre and rhetorical structure, and the pragmatic communication level. We describe these five levels when comprehension succeeds and also when there are communication misalignments and comprehension breakdowns. A computer tool has been developed, called Coh-Metrix, that scales discourse (oral or print) on dozens of measures associated with the first four discourse levels. The measurement of these levels with an automated (...) tool helps researchers track and better understand multilevel discourse comprehension. Two sets of analyses illustrate the utility of Coh-Metrix in discourse theory and educational practice. First, Coh-Metrix was used to measure the cohesion of the text base and situation model, as well as potential extraneous variables, in a sample of published studies that manipulated text cohesion. This analysis helped us better understand what was precisely manipulated in these studies and the implications for discourse comprehension mechanisms. Second, Coh-Metrix analyses are reported for samples of narrative and science texts in order to advance the argument that traditional text difficulty measures are limited because they fail to accommodate most of the levels of the multilevel discourse comprehension framework. (shrink)

Attempts to employ discourse ethics for assessing communication and information technologies have tended to focus on managerial and policy-oriented contexts. These initiatives presuppose institutional resources for organizing sophisticated consultation processes that elicit stakeholder input. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics, this paper supplements those initiatives by developing a more widely usable framework for moral inquiry and reflection on problematic cyberpractices. Given the highly idealized character of discourse ethics, a usable framework must answer two questions: How should those (...) who lack organizational power conduct their moral inquiry under non-ideal conditions of discourse? How ought they to understand the moral force of the judgments they reach under such conditions? In response, I develop the heuristic implications of Habermas’s principle of universalization. To render that principle usable for non-ideal discourse, I propose a modification that yields a scalar measure of “dialogically robust” judgments that are responsive to the actual state of discussion. To illustrate the use of these principles, I sketch two case studies, which examine the moral acceptability of violent video gaming and government cyber-surveillance. (shrink)

In past studies, the few quantitative approaches to discourse structure were mostly confined to the presentation of the frequency of discourse relations. However, quantitative approaches should take into account both hierarchical and relational layers in the discourse structure. This study considers these factors and addresses the issue of how discourse relations and discourse units are related. It draws upon the available corpora of discourse structure ) from a new perspective. Since an RST tree can (...) be converted into a syntactic dependency tree, the data extracted from the RST-DT can be useful for calculating the discourse distance in much the same way as syntactic dependency distance is calculated. Discourse distance is also applicable to measuring the depth of the human processing of discourse. Furthermore, the data derived from the RST-DT are also easily converted into network data. This study finds that discourse structure has its discourse distance minimum and each type of RST relations has its range of discourse distance. The frequency distribution of discourse data basically follows the power law on several levels, while a network approach reveals how discourse units are arranged spatially in regular patterns. The two methods are mutually complementary in revealing the interaction between discourse relations and discourse units in a comprehensive manner, as well as in revealing how people process and comprehend discourse dynamically. Accordingly, we propose merging the two methods so as to yield a computational model for assessing discourse complexity and comprehension. (shrink)

In this paper I introduce a formalism for natural language understandingbased on a computational implementation of Discourse RepresentationTheory. The formalism covers a wide variety of semantic phenomena(including scope and lexical ambiguities, anaphora and presupposition),is computationally attractive, and has a genuine inference component. Itcombines a well-established linguistic formalism (DRT) with advancedtechniques to deal with ambiguity (underspecification), and isinnovative in the use of first-order theorem proving techniques.The architecture of the formalism for natural language understandingthat I advocate consists of three levels of (...) processing:underspecification, resolution, andinference. Each of these levels has a distinct function andtherefore employs a different kind of semantic representation. Themappings between these different representations define the interfacesbetween the levels. (shrink)

Both Higher-Order Uni cation approaches to In linguistic theories on discourse coherence Kehler, discourse semantics Dalrymple et al., 1991; Shieber et.

Taking a Foucauldian framework as its point of departure, this paper discusses how transnational discourses of knowledge and learning operate in the profession of computer engineering and form a certain logic through which modes of being an engineer are regulated. Both the knowledge domain of computer engineering and its related labour market is heavily internationalised and characterised by a general focus on universalism and standardisation. Moreover, rapid shifts in technologies and institutional arrangements contribute to an embracement of more (...) wide-ranging discourses related to lifelong learning and the enterprising self. Thus, dominant discourses of knowledge and learning within this profession reflect processes of globalisation and take a transnational character. The paper discusses how the discourses in play constitute mechanisms of governmentality that present certain expectations to professionals and shape their energies, efforts and desires in certain directions. In order to be influential, however, the discourses depend on individuals who take up the subject positions offered and enact them in locally relevant and partially creative ways. Thus, careful analyses of the discourses in specific knowledge communities, as well as of their interrelated subject positions, may enhance our understanding of the more epistemic dimensions of globalisation and how these come to influence the imaginations of individuals as ‘citizens of the world.’. (shrink)

This paper presents ongoing research towards understanding the discourse and workspace in computer-mediated interactions. We present a series of methods developed to study non-collocated computer-mediated interactions. These methods were developed originally to study interactions involving teams composed of architecture, engineering, and construction management students as part of the AEC Global Teamwork course offered at Stanford University in collaboration with universities worldwide since 1993. The methods stress the value of using ethnographic approaches, particularly the role that both (...) class='Hi'>discourse and workspace have in developing the communication processes involved in the interactions. We used the AEC Global Teamwork course as a testbed and focused on issues regarding the nature of the communication act in building design projects when mediated by computers. We successfully tested these new methods and present the preliminary results. (shrink)

The relevance of the study is determined by the need to rethink musical art as a value orientation in the period of postmodernity. The purpose of the study is to determine the features of the textual dimension of musical discourse as a feature of the postmodern value perception of musical art in combination with the information and computerization of society. The purpose of the article is to show the basic context of the textual dimension of musical discourse. This (...) research shows a holistic analysis of musical art in the context of discourse analysis and innovative modeling, which in the future is a prospect for creating new ideas for the interpretation of musical works. The study highlights the main components of textual analysis of a musical work, as well as the perception of musical discourse as a manifestation of today’s information of social development. For a comprehensive analysis of musical art it is necessary to understand the basic theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of this concept. Therefore, the principal theoretical approaches of scientists concerning musical discourse in the context of the textual dimension were studied, and theoretical problems in musical discourse analysis were developed. Beneficial to study the complex modeling of the textual dimension of musical art, the methods of analysis and synthesis, research method and discourse analysis method were used. This study provided a basis for determining the effectiveness of computer simulation technology in the context of the musical dimension. (shrink)

Social science research on the anthropomorphisms of computers and robots has been devoted to studying intellectual anthropomorphism, emotional anthropomorphism, bodily anthropomorphism, and the limits of computer and robot anthropomorphism. Although these represent important patterns for studying the anthropomorphisms of computers and robots, there are other important patterns. The limitation of anthropomorphism is one of these patterns. The limitation of anthropomorphism is a discursive practice which places limits on anthropomorphism. Discursive practices are interactional and practical activities for making sense of (...) who and what we encounter. In this article, I analyze the limitation of anthropomorphism as another important activity to investigate. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a robotics research group, I show the importance of the limitation of anthropomorphism by documenting how it contributes to research group identity. In the final section, I describe some implications for future studies of the anthropomorphisms of computers and robots. (shrink)

This paper presents a study of the effect of working memory load on the interpretation of pronouns in different discourse contexts: stories with and without a topic shift. We discuss a computational model (in ACT-R, Anderson, 2007) to explain how referring expressions are acquired and used. On the basis of simulations of this model, it is predicted that WM constraints only affect adults' pronoun resolution in stories with a topic shift, but not in stories without a topic shift. This (...) latter prediction was tested in an experiment. The results of this experiment confirm that WM load reduces adults' sensitivity to discourse cues signaling a topic shift, thus influencing their interpretation of subsequent pronouns. (shrink)

This paper presents a study of the effect of working memory load on the interpretation of pronouns in different discourse contexts: stories with and without a topic shift. We discuss a computational model (in ACT‐R, Anderson, 2007) to explain how referring expressions are acquired and used. On the basis of simulations of this model, it is predicted that WM constraints only affect adults' pronoun resolution in stories with a topic shift, but not in stories without a topic shift. This (...) latter prediction was tested in an experiment. The results of this experiment confirm that WM load reduces adults' sensitivity to discourse cues signaling a topic shift, thus influencing their interpretation of subsequent pronouns. (shrink)

Understanding Computers and Cognition presents an important and controversial new approach to understanding what computers do and how their functioning is related to human language, thought, and action. While it is a book about computers, Understanding Computers and Cognition goes beyond the specific issues of what computers can or can't do. It is a broad-ranging discussion exploring the background of understanding in which the discourse about computers and technology takes place. Understanding Computers and Cognition is written for a wide (...) audience, not just those professionals involved in computer design or artificial intelligence. It represents an important contribution to the ongoing discussion about what it means to be a machine, and what it means to be human. Book jacket. (shrink)

Covid-19 has occasioned ongoing shifts in discourse as language changes to reflect and shape new stages of the global pandemic and different voices weigh in on topics, such as infectious diseases and vaccine efficacy. This study looks at an instance of this that relates to the ‘global education industry’, where cancellation of the International Baccalaureate’s May 2020 high stakes examination instigated a wide-ranging discussion about the organisation. This was triggered by the publication of IB results for 174,355 students in (...) 146 countries, many of which showed large discrepancies between predicted and final grades. Using computer-assisted discourse analysis and a corpus of tweets containing the hashtag #ibscandal, patterns of language use are analysed, providing valuable new insights into the impact on students in different national contexts. (shrink)

Reduced forms such as the pronoun he provide little information about their intended meaning compared to more elaborate descriptions such as the lead singer of Coldplay. Listeners must therefore use contextual information to recover their meaning. Across languages, there appears to be a trade‐off between the informativity of a form and the prominence of its referent. For example, Italian adults generally interpret informationally empty null pronouns as in the sentence Corre (meaning “He/She/It runs”) as referring to the most prominent referent (...) in the discourse, and more informative overt pronouns (e.g., lui in Lui corre, “He runs”) as referring to less prominent referents. Although children acquiring Italian are known to experience difficulties interpreting pronouns, it is unclear how they acquire this division of pragmatic labor between null and overt subject pronouns, and how this relates to the development of their cognitive capacities. Here we show that cognitive development can account for the general interpretation patterns displayed by Italian‐speaking children and adults. Using experimental studies and computational simulations in a framework modeling bounded‐rational behavior, we argue that null pronoun interpretation is influenced by working memory capacity and thus appears to depend on discourse context, whereas overt pronoun interpretation is influenced by processing speed, suggesting that listeners must reason about the speaker's choices. Our results demonstrate that cognitive capacities may constrain the acquisition of linguistic forms and their meanings in various ways. The novel predictions generated by the computational simulations point out several directions for future research. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus attention on the role of computer system complexity in ascribing responsibility. We begin by introducing the notion of technological moral action (TMA). TMA is carried out by the combination of a computer system user, a system designer (developers, programmers, and testers), and a computer system (hardware and software). We discuss three sometimes overlapping types of responsibility: causal responsibility, moral responsibility, and role responsibility. Our analysis is informed by the well-known accounts provided by (...) Hart and Hart and Honoré. While these accounts are helpful, they have misled philosophers and others by presupposing that responsibility can be ascribed in all cases of action simply by paying attention to the free and intended actions of human beings. Such accounts neglect the part played by technology in ascriptions of responsibility in cases of moral action with technology. For both moral and role responsibility, we argue that ascriptions of both causal and role responsibility depend on seeing action as complex in the sense described by TMA. We conclude by showing how our analysis enriches moral discourse about responsibility for TMA. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, researchers have made great advances in the area of computational methods for extracting meaning from text. This research has to a large extent been spurred by the development of latent semantic analysis (LSA), a method for extracting and representing the meaning of words using statistical computations applied to large corpora of text. Since the advent of LSA, researchers have developed and tested alternative statistical methods designed to detect and analyze meaning in text corpora. This research (...) exemplifies how statistical models of semantics play an important role in our understanding of cognition and contribute to the field of cognitive science. Importantly, these models afford large-scale representations of human knowledge and allow researchers to explore various questions regarding knowledge, discourse processing, text comprehension, and language. This topic includes the latest progress by the leading researchers in the endeavor to go beyond LSA. (shrink)

Our technological lifeworld has become an info-computational media populated by data and algorithms, an artificial environment for life and shared experiences. In this chapter, I tried to sketch three new assumptions for bioethics – it is hardly possible to substantiate ethical guidelines or an idea of normativity in an aprioristic manner; moral status is a function of data entities, not something solely human; agency is plural and thus is shared or sometimes delegated – in order to chart a proposal for (...) a posthuman bioethics. Posthuman is perhaps not the best expression available, but it covers the idea of a shift from a world centered on self-contained and exclusively human agency to a more comprehensive and relational way of thinking. The “posthuman” label should be understood as a rebuttal of biocentrism and anthropocentrism by moving closer to conceptions we encounter in population ethics or in discourse about biosocial and technical systems. Posthuman bioethics is “environmentalist” without losing the humanistic stance. The question regarding how suitable an infocentric bioethics is in practice remains to be settled. The moral principles in bioethics could be reconceived as relying on these new assumptions, in a postindividualistic manner that accepts formal primacy of causal digital artifacts in affording actions in a world of ambient algorithmic intelligence. (shrink)

The volume starts with the paper of Lynn Maurice Ferguson Arnold, former Premier of South Australia and former Minister of Education of Australia, concerning the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life) that was held from 25 May to 25 November 1937 in Paris, France. The organization of the world exhibition had placed the Nazi German and the Soviet pavilions directly across from each other. Many papers are devoted (...) to the interpretation of this opposition. Arnold’s paper considers the differences in the two totalitarian states’ architectural and design discourse styles. Although each of them communicated a totalitarian language of purposes, permissions, and boundaries, they essentially differed in the styles of discourse represented by the architecture and design of their respective pavilions. They were opposites of each other and the liberal ideals they contested. The internationalist viewpoint reflecting the multi-ethnic mix of the USSR is contrasted to the ein Volk homogeneity represented in the German pavilion. The Soviet pavilion opted for a utopian future to be arrived at by “benign” leadership, whereas the German pavilion anchored itself in the myth of Teutonic history with the nostalgic pride protected by the swastika-bearing eagle. Jean-Yves Béziau is best known as a logician and founder of Universal Logic. However, in this paper, he poses a new philosophical question: why philosophical discourse does not use images? The paper begins with a general analysis of different types of philosophical discourses. Then, he focuses on why images have been and are still rejected in philosophical discourse. He explains various ways to use images in a fruitful way to develop philosophical thinking and discourse and illustrates his view by providing several examples. He concludes with a promising programmatic declaration about founding a new journal entitled World Journal of Pictorial Philosophy to stimulate the usage of images for developing philosophical thinking. Although complaints about the obscurity of many philosophers’ discourse are widespread, Tatiana Denisova, ex-professor of the Surgut University and a research associate of the University of the Aegean undertakes a positive attitude to this problem. She explains that the reasons for the obscurity of philosophical texts, the subsequent complexity in communicating philosophers’ meanings and their eventual incomplete understanding is not a sign of their inferiority. On the contrary, it is a sign of the fruitfulness of philosophical discourse, which can generate new meanings. Thus, the darkness of philosophical discourse is like the life-giving chaos, and the obscurity that it inevitably contains can be the keeper of implicit meanings and even their generator. Katarzyna Gan-Krzywoszyńska and Piotr Leśniewski, authors of a monograph on Polish philosopher Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890 – 1963), make a comparative analysis of his educational style with that of Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (1921 – 1997). The authors highlight that these scholars have distinctly different backgrounds. The former was an educator, philosopher and a leading advocate of critical pedagogy connected with the dialogical Latin-American tradition. The latter was a philosopher and logician, a notable representative of the Lwów–Warsaw school of logic with significant contributions to semantics, model theory and the philosophy of science. Despite their apparent difference, the authors identify some striking similarities regarding their attitudes towards education; notably, their approaches are essentially dialogical. Gilah Yelin Hirsch is a multidisciplinary artist who works as a painter, writer, curator, educator, and filmmaker. In her experiential paper, he explains how and why she uses four channels of communication in her creative expression: writing, painting, filmmaking, and teaching, as dialogic inquiry. She considers that these channels compose a continuum of discourse styles, each reaching a different facet of kaleidoscopic consciousness. She claims that her choice of medium is prompted by a need to communicate her insights profoundly. Thus, for instance, she created painted allegories to express narratives based on dreams and visions emerging from her subconscious. Art and healing is another Tibetan-rooted type of discourse practised by the author. Creating and observing a healing image produces a positive psychophysiological change in both the artist and the viewer. The discourse here is tripartite between creator, image, and viewer. Filmmaking is another type of discourse she practices between the filmmaker/artist as shaman or healer and the viewer as respondent or participant. These films are meant to be experienced frame by frame, physically and emotionally in both the body and mind. Jocelyn Ireson-Paine is a cartoonist and programmer. His paper offers an original attempt to use category theory in cartooning. Category theory is a branch of mathematics that provides concepts and methods to describe general abstract structures in terms of a labelled directed graph called category, whose nodes are called objects, and whose labelled directed edges are called arrows (or morphisms or transformations or mappings). The author explores different ways to define “style” in art using category theory and a relational view of art. Moreover, he examines how “translation” (transformation) between styles could be defined and reveals the difficulties of how it could be implemented in a computer using special software. Jens Lemanski is a philosopher who has revived research in Arthur Schopenhauer’s legacy by exploring his work on mathematical evidence, logic diagrams, and problems of semantics. In this paper, he advances a new approach to eristic as an art of protecting oneself from the one who deliberately violates norms of discourse ethics to win an argument. The author attributes the origins of this view to Schopenhauer, suggesting a new reading of his work. According to the author, eristic is a prohibitive technique that takes effect when the norms of discourse ethics are transgressed and violated. Thus, eristic is viewed as a discipline of Enlightenment philosophy and a correlate of discourse ethics. Roshdi Rashed is an authority on the history of Arabic mathematical sciences. Proceeding from Gilles-Gaston Granger’s definition of mathematical style, he studies the question of whether a mathematical work can be characterized by a single style or by a multitude of styles. This question is explored within the style of a single work, namely Menelaus’s Sphaerica, and through the study of the development of a single problem over time, namely the isoperimetric problem. He indicates Menelaus’s divergence from the Euclidean style of (plane and stereometric) geometry caused by the drop of the Parallel Postulate, which associated it with hyperbolic geometry. Hence, the author concludes that Menelaus’s Sphaerica incorporates the well-known Euclidean style with a variation of the non-Euclidean one. On the other hand, examining the isoperimetric problem reveals another interesting historical picture. A succession of different styles (cosmological, geometric, infinitesimalistic, style of the calculus of variations, of synthetic geometry) can be observed due to the transformation of the research object over time. Boris Shalyutin, a Russian social philosopher, and Ombudsman for Human Rights in the Kurgan Region, explores the origins of discourse in combination with the birth of society and law. He claims that legal discourse marks the historical emergence of discourse in general. Homo Juridicus generated Homo Sapiens, which have created new spheres of discourse, notably moral discourse and further philosophical, political, and scientific discourse. Petros Stefaneas, a logician, computer scientist and novelist, suggests an alternative to the traditional narratology approach for studying (interactive) social media discourse. He claims that style describes how the parts of a narrative are blended into a whole. The author relies upon Goguen’s and Harrel’s concept of style as a choice of blending principles and transfers to the study of the social media narratives elements from the methodology of studying Web-based collaborative search for mathematical proofs like those implemented within the Polymath project. The last paper belongs to Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, a linguist, language revivalist, and proponent of a model of the emergence of Israeli Hebrew, according to which Hebrew and Yiddish were the primary sources of Modern Hebrew. This paper explores the fascinating and multifaceted Yiddish language and its survival in Israeli. Yiddish is characterized by a unique style that embeds psycho-ostensive expressions throughout its discourse. The author highlights the cross-fertilization between Hebrew and Yiddish as it manifests itself in any aspect of the Israeli language. He claims that Yiddish survives beneath Israeli phonetics, phonology, discourse, syntax, semantics, lexis, and even morphology, although traditional and institutional linguists have been most reluctant to admit it. (shrink)

The discourse concerning computer ethics qualifies as a reference discourse for ethics-related IS research. Theories, topics and approaches of computer ethics are reflected in IS. The paper argues that there is currently a broader development in the area of research governance, which is referred to as 'responsible research and innovation'. RRI applied to information and communication technology addresses some of the limitations of computer ethics and points toward a broader approach to the governance of science, (...) technology and innovation. Taking this development into account will help IS increase its relevance and make optimal use of its established strengths. 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Computational modeling is now ubiquitous in psychology, and researchers who are not modelers may find it increasingly difficult to follow the theoretical developments in their field. This book presents an integrated framework for the development and application of models in psychology and related disciplines. Researchers and students are given the knowledge and tools to interpret models published in their area, as well as to develop, fit, and test their own models. Both the development of models and key features of any (...) model are covered, as are the applications of models in a variety of domains across the behavioural sciences. A number of chapters are devoted to fitting models using maximum likelihood and Bayesian estimation, including fitting hierarchical and mixture models. Model comparison is described as a core philosophy of scientific inference, and the use of models to understand theories and advance scientific discourse is explained. (shrink)

Miscommunication phenomena such as repair in dialogue are important indicators of the quality of communication. Automatic detection is therefore a key step toward tools that can characterize communication quality and thus help in applications from call center management to mental health monitoring. However, most existing computational linguistic approaches to these phenomena are unsuitable for general use in this way, and particularly for analyzing human–human dialogue: Although models of other-repair are common in human-computer dialogue systems, they tend to focus on (...) specific phenomena, missing the range of repair and repair initiation forms used by humans; and while self-repair models for speech recognition and understanding are advanced, they tend to focus on removal of “disfluent” material important for full understanding of the discourse contribution, and/or rely on domain-specific knowledge. We explain the requirements for more satisfactory models, including incrementality of processing and robustness to sparsity. We then describe models for self- and other-repair detection that meet these requirements and investigate how they perform on datasets from a range of dialogue genres and domains, with promising results. (shrink)

We present a computer-supported approach for the logical analysis and conceptual explicitation of argumentative discourse. Computational hermeneutics harnesses recent progresses in automated reasoning for higher-order logics and aims at formalizing natural-language argumentative discourse using flexible combinations of expressive non-classical logics. In doing so, it allows us to render explicit the tacit conceptualizations implicit in argumentative discursive practices. Our approach operates on networks of structured arguments and is iterative and two-layered. At one layer we search for logically correct (...) formalizations for each of the individual arguments. At the next layer we select among those correct formalizations the ones which honor the argument’s dialectic role, i.e. attacking or supporting other arguments as intended. We operate at these two layers in parallel and continuously rate sentences’ formalizations by using, primarily, inferential adequacy criteria. An interpretive, logical theory will thus gradually evolve. This theory is composed of meaning postulates serving as explications for concepts playing a role in the analyzed arguments. Such a recursive, iterative approach to interpretation does justice to the inherent circularity of understanding: the whole is understood compositionally on the basis of its parts, while each part is understood only in the context of the whole. We summarily discuss previous work on exemplary applications of human-in-the-loop computational hermeneutics in metaphysical discourse. We also discuss some of the main challenges involved in fully-automating our approach. By sketching some design ideas and reviewing relevant technologies, we argue for the technological feasibility of a highly-automated computational hermeneutics. (shrink)

Every pregroup grammar is shown to be strongly equivalent to one which uses basic types and left and right adjoints of basic types only. Therefore, a semantical interpretation is independent of the order of the associated logic. Lexical entries are read as expressions in a two sorted predicate logic with ∈ and functional symbols. The parsing of a sentence defines a substitution that combines the expressions associated to the individual words. The resulting variable free formula is the translation of the (...) sentence. It can be computed in time proportional to the parsing structure. Non-logical axioms are associated to certain words (relative pronouns, indefinite article, comparative determiners). Sample sentences are used to derive the characterizing formula of the DRS corresponding to the translation. (shrink)

Narrative passages told from a character's perspective convey the character's thoughts and perceptions. We present a discourse process that recognizes characters'.

Context: Most constructivist discourse is situated at the philosophical-conceptual level, where arguments appeal to the intuition of the reader, while formal-computational models have only been taken into account to a very limited degree so far. Problem: Two types of problems need to be addressed: Synthetically, can constructivist concepts be turned into actual computational implementations? Can these be further conceptual developments in constructivist theory as such, or are they just an application thereof? Conceptually, does the notion of computation square with (...) constructivist approaches at all? Method: Paradigmatically, we discuss the meaning of “computational” in cognitive agents that comply with constructivist concepts. Also, we summarize the contributions. Results: From a constructivist point of view, the concept of “computational model” is ambiguous and depends on whether it is used in the sense of the computational(ist) theory of mind or simply as a tool. Implications: The insights presented in the contributions to this special issue point in the direction of a computational extension of constructivist approaches as well as a constructivist extension to computational approaches. However, while many of the questions we posed were discussed in the contributions and open peer commentaries, some of them were largely neglected and thus are subject to further discussion. (shrink)

The computer is a threat to the intellectual and moral education of students. It reduces words to their most abstract meaning, thereby objectifying meaning. Moreover, the computer promotes logical thought at the expense of dialectical thinking. The computer is behind the proliferation of random information, all of which is at the disposal of the individual user. This fosters a cynical worldview that information is random and exists to be exploited. Finally, the computer turns us into consumers (...) of information that fragments the personality and makes moral responsibility increasingly difficult. It allows for anonymous discourse and substitutes information for judgment. Teachers should resist the use of the mass media—especially the computer and television—as much as possible. (shrink)

Mapping a public discourse with the tools of computational text analysis comes with many contingencies in the areas of corpus curation, data processing and analysis, and visualisation. However, the complexity of algorithmic assemblies and the beauty of resulting images give the impression of ‘objectivity’. Instead of concealing uncertainties and artefacts in order to tell a coherent and all-encompassing story, retaining the variety of alternative assemblies may actually strengthen the method. By utilising the mobility of digital devices, we could create (...) mutable mobiles that allow access to our laboratories and enable challenging rearrangements and interpretations. (shrink)

Artificial general intelligence is a greatly anticipated technology with non-trivial existential risks, defined as machine intelligence with competence as great/greater than humans. To date, social scientists have dedicated little effort to the ethics of AGI or AGI researchers. This paper employs inductive discourse analysis of the academic literature of two intellectual groups writing on the ethics of AGI—applied and/or ‘basic’ scientific disciplines henceforth referred to as technicians (e.g., computer science, electrical engineering, physics), and philosophy-adjacent disciplines henceforth referred to (...) as PADs (e.g., philosophy, theology, anthropology). These groups agree that AGI ethics is fundamentally about mitigating existential risk. They highlight our moral obligation to future generations, demonstrate the ethical importance of better understanding consciousness, and endorse a hybrid of deontological/utilitarian normative ethics. Technicians favor technocratic AGI governance, embrace the project of ‘solving’ moral realism, and are more deontologically inclined than PADs. PADs support a democratic approach to AGI governance, are more skeptical of deontology, consider current AGI predictions as fundamentally imprecise, and are wary of using AGI for moral fact-finding. (shrink)

In face-to-face interaction, speakers make multimodal contributions that exploit both the linguistic resources of spoken language and the visual and spatial affordances of gesture. In this paper, we argue that, in formulating and understanding such multimodal contributions, interlocutors apply the same principles of coherence that characterize the interpretation of natural language discourse. In particular, we use a close analysis of a series of naturally-occurring embodied discourses to argue for two key generalizations. First, communicators and their audiences draw on coherence (...) relations to establish interpretive connections between successive gestures and between gestures and speech. Second, coherence relations facilitate meaning-making by resolving the underspecified meaning of each communicative act through constrained inference over entities, propositions, and spatial frames made salient in the prior discourse. Our approach to gesture interpretation improves on previous work in better accounting for its flexibility, in capturing its constraints, and in laying the groundwork for formal and computational models. At the same time, it shows that gesture provides an important source of evidence to sharpen the theory of coherence relations and contextual resolution. (shrink)

The article presents preliminary results of the conceptual analysis of the mechanistic profile of the computer metaphor. Mechanic reductionism is a special direction of computer metaphor rooted in various historical forms of word usage. Here we trace the stages of formation of the principles of transferring the properties of a mechanical computer to the properties of the human body and mind. We are also trying to identify the basic principles of semantic transfer, which have survived to this (...) day in the discourse of modern computationalism. The reasons are analyzed due to which the metaphor «Human (body) is machine», traditional for the Modern Age, was transformed into a more complex version of «Mind is machine». What happened to the concepts of «mind» and «machine»? How have ideas about the properties of computational procedures changed? What keeps the counterintuitive computer metaphor viable today? The answers to this series of questions and theoretical ways of solving these problems are contained in this paper. (shrink)

The term Sustainable Computing is used to transfer the political concept of sustainability to computer systems, including material components (hardware) as well as informational ones (software), development as well as consumption processes. Six dimensions of Sustainable Computing are being distinguished. Empirical discourses, initiatives and social movements within the IT industry are assigned to these dimensions. The introduced Sustainable Computing Concept serves as a classification system to better understand different discourses or debates within the IT world, partly historical, partly current. (...) It allows to synthesize these discourses by emphasizing what they have in common: the aim to balance economic, social and ecological interests. (shrink)

Could it be that Deleuze's most lasting legacy will lie in his ‘Postscript on Control Societies’, a mere 2,300-word essay from 1990? While he discussed computers and new media infrequently, Deleuze admittedly made contributions to the contemporary discourse on computing, cybernetics and networks, particularly in his late work. From the concepts of the rhizome and the virtual, to his occasional interjections on the digital versus the analogue, there is a case to be made that the late Deleuze has not (...) only influenced today's discourse on new media but also proposes an original set of arguments about society and politics at the turn of the new millennium. Focusing on the ‘Postscript on Control Societies’ and a handful of texts that surround it, we will reconstruct an image of what it means to live in the information age. This will have consequences for how we define the digital and the analogue, what the computer means, and ultimately provide some insight into one of the more elusive terms in all of Deleuze, the superfold. (shrink)

This study applies a computer-mediated discourse analysis to the study of discourse structures and functions of ‘419’ emails — the Nigerian term for online/financial fraud. The hoax mails are in the form of online lottery winning announcements, and email ‘business proposals’ involving money transfers/claims of dormant bank accounts overseas. Data comprise 68 email samples collected from the researcher’s inboxes and colleagues’ and students’ mail boxes between January 2008 and March 2009 in Ota, Nigeria. The study reveals that (...) the writers of the mails apply discourse/pragmatic strategies such as socio-cultural greeting formulas, self-identification, reassurance/confidence building, narrativity and action prompting strategies to sustain the interest of the receivers. The study also shows that this genre of computer-mediated communication has become a regular part of our internet experience, and is not likely to be extinct in the near future as previous studies of email hoaxes have predicted. It is believed that as the global economy witnesses a recession, chances are that more creative and complex ways of combating the situation will arise. Economic hardship has been blamed for fraud/online scams, inadvertently prompting youths to engage in various anti-social activities. (shrink)

Where should computer simulations be located on the ‘usual methodological map’ which distinguishes experiment from theory? Specifically, do simulations ultimately qualify as experiments or as thought experiments? Ever since Galison raised that question, a passionate debate has developed, pushing many issues to the forefront of discussions concerning the epistemology and methodology of computer simulation. This review article illuminates the positions in that debate, evaluates the discourse and gives an outlook on questions that have not yet been addressed.

We provide a description and informal analysis of the commonalities in moral discourse concerning issues in the field of information and communications technology, present a logic model (DEAL) of this type of moral discourse that makes use of recent research in deontic, epistemic, and action logic, and indicate – drawing upon recent research in computer implementations of modal logic – how information systems may be developed that implement the proposed formalization.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe some of the methodological challenges of investigating privacy and ubiquitous computing in the home, particularly among the healthy elderly.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on focus groups with 60 senior citizens either living independently or in an assisted living facility. Prototypes of home‐based ubiquitous computing devices were created and deployed in a home‐like living lab setting; elders were brought to the lab to interact with the prototypes, then brought together in focus groups to discuss (...) their insights and concerns.FindingsInitial analyses suggest that extant metaphors of privacy may be inadequate for understanding pervasive computing in the home. Concepts of data, affective concerns, and the creation of appropriate prototypes for eliciting privacy are considered. Considerations for future studies of the elderly and privacy are made.Research limitations/implicationsThe homogeneity of the study population in terms of socioeconomic status, location, and community networks suggests that the study needs to be repeated with wider populations.Originality/valueAlthough a number of projects and studies have examined the usability of home‐based ubiquitous computing and design for aging, there has been little integration of privacy and ethical concerns into general research discourse. (shrink)

RESUMO A série Black Mirror, transmitida entre 2011 e 2023 pela Netflix, tornou-se um fenômeno de mídia e seus episódios mostraram formas de interação homem-máquina (terminologia também referida como humano-computador). O nome da série se refere ao fato de que, quando uma tela é desligada, ela se torna um espelho negro que reflete a imagem do usuário. Este artigo1 tem como objetivo analisar os efeitos da interação homem-máquina nas organizações produtivas apresentadas em Black Mirror. Esta pesquisa utilizou a análise do (...) discurso, principalmente a partir das contribuições de Mikhail Bakhtin. O método consistiu em três etapas que contaram com a colaboração de estudantes de graduação e pós-graduação em Engenharia de Produção, integrando ensino e pesquisa e desenvolvendo o senso crítico dos pesquisadores-iniciantes. Os resultados indicam que, nas organizações apresentadas na série Black Mirror, há uma transição do conceito de fatores humanos para fatores ciborgues, bem como o uso da interação homem-máquina para promover o controle social. (shrink)

Through our work to examine mathematical and computational learning in authentic and convivial contexts that requires creativity, imagination, reasoning, and discourse, we have theorized an experiential learning cycle that attends to the development of voice, agency, and identity needed in young people for an earned insurgency—the right to demand change. Our work underscores how the current situation that many students face in classrooms amounts to a type of cognitive segregation that denies these students access to authentic and empowering intellectual (...) agency. By facilitating a process whereby students, using their own creative and imaginative means, intentionally develop a type of ownership over the exploration and application of the mathematical concepts they are being taught, we help students move from simple surface level, syntactic understandings, to deeper semantic learning that is more personally significant and meaningful. (shrink)

The computer engineers who refer to the education of computers do not have a definite idea of education and do not bother to justify the fuzzy ones to which they allude. Hence, they logically cannot specify the features a computer must have in order to be educable. This paper puts forth a non-standard, but not arbitrary, concept of education that determines such traits. The proposed concept is derived from the idea of education embedded in modern standard-English discourse. (...) Because the standard concept entails that an educable entity must be capable of consciousness and voluntary action, it cannot apply to computers. If, therefore, one is to have an idea of educable computers, one must drop the feature of consciousness and omit or modify that of voluntariness. The advanced concept leaves out consciousness, alters the ordinary notion of voluntariness, but keeps in tact the other criteria of the standard idea. Thereby, it provides continuity between those who talk about education in modern ordinary English and those who talk about it in the world of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The essential difficulty about Computer Ethics' (CE) philosophical status is a methodological problem: standard ethical theories cannot easily be adapted to deal with CE-problems, which appear to strain their conceptual resources, and CE requires a conceptual foundation as an ethical theory. Information Ethics (IE), the philosophical foundational counterpart of CE, can be seen as a particular case of environmental ethics or ethics of the infosphere. What is good for an information entity and the infosphere in general? This is the (...) ethical question asked by IE. The answer is provided by a minimalist theory of deseerts: IE argues that there is something more elementary and fundamental than life and pain, namely being, understood as information, and entropy, and that any information entity is to be recognised as the centre of a minimal moral claim, which deserves recognition and should help to regulate the implementation of any information process involving it. IE can provide a valuable perspective from which to approach, with insight and adequate discernment, not only moral problems in CE, but also the whole range of conceptual and moral phenomena that form the ethical discourse. (shrink)

This present book explores recent advances in modeling discourse processes, in particular, new approaches aimed at understanding pathological language behavior specific to schizophrenia. The contributors examine the modeling paradigm of formal semantics, which falls within the scope of both linguistics and logic while providing overlapping links with other fields such as philosophy of language and cognitive psychology. This book is based on results presented during the series of workshops on Coherence and Discourse organized by SLAM, a project developed (...) to systemize the study of pathological language processing by taking an overarching interdisciplinary approach combining psychology, linguistics, computer science and philosophy. The principle focus is on conversations produced by people with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. The contributions come from young and experienced researchers, and invited speakers. The book appeals to likeminded students and researchers. (shrink)

Interpretation is the process whereby a hearer reasons to an interpretation of a speaker's discourse. The hearer normally adopts a credulous attitude to the discourse, at least for the purposes of interpreting it. That is to say the hearer tries to accommodate the truth of all the speaker's utterances in deriving an intended model. We present a nonmonotonic logical model of this process which defines unique minimal preferred models and efficiently simulates a kind of closed-world reasoning of particular (...) interest for human cognition. Byrne's “suppression” data (Byrne, 1989) are used to illustrate how variants on this logic can capture and motivate subtly different interpretative stances which different subjects adopt, thus indicating where more fine-grained empirical data are required to understand what subjects are doing in this task. We then show that this logical competence model can be implemented in spreading activation network models. A one pass process interprets the textual input by constructing a network which then computes minimal preferred models for (3-valued) valuations of the set of propositions of the text. The neural implementation distinguishes easy forward reasoning from more complex backward reasoning in a way that may be useful in explaining directionality in human reasoning. (shrink)