Heyes does well to argue that some of the apparently innate human capabilities for cultural learning can be considered in terms of more general-purpose mechanisms. In the application of this to language, she overlooks some of its most interesting properties. I review three, and then illustrate how mindreading can come from general-purpose mechanism via language.

A significant body of literature has identified how narrative provides a basis for perceiving and understanding human experience. In the target article, the authors arrive at the need for a form of narrative-based reasoning due to constraints that render probabilistic-based reasoning ineffective. This commentary attempts to bridge this gap and identify links between the proposed and existing theories.

Recognizing limitations of the “syntactocentric” perspective, Jackendoff proposes a model in which phonology, syntax, and conceptual systems are each independently combinatorial. We can ask, however, whether he has taken this issue to its logical conclusion. The fundamental question that is not fully addressed is whether the combinatorial aspect of syntax originated in, and derives from, the indeed “far richer” conceptual system, a question to be discussed.

As there is in the neuroscience of individuals engaged in dynamic interactions, similar dark matter is present in the domain of interaction between humans and cognitive robots. Progress in second-person neuroscience will contribute to the development of robotic cognitive systems, and such developed robotic systems will be used to test the validity of the underlying theories.

The development of reasoning systems exploiting expert knowledge from interactions with humans is a non-trivial problem, particularly when considering how the information can be coded in the knowledge representation. For example, in human development, the acquisition of knowledge at one level requires the consolidation of knowledge from lower levels. How is the accumulated experience structured to allow the individual to apply knowledge to new situations, allowing reasoning and adaptation? We investigate how this can be done automatically by an iCub that (...) interacts with humans to acquire knowledge via demonstration. Once consolidated, this knowledge is used in further acquisitions of experience concerning preconditions and consequences of actions. Finally, this knowledge is translated into rules that allow reasoning and planning for novel problem solving, including a Tower of Hanoi scenario. We thus demonstrate proof of concept for an interaction system that uses knowledge acquired from human interactions to reason about new situations. (shrink)

In robotics research with language-based interaction, simplifications are made, such that a given event can be described in a unique manner, where there is a direct mapping between event representations and sentences that can describe these events. However, common experience tells us that the same physical event can be described in multiple ways, depending on the perspective of the speaker. The current research develops methods for representing events from multiple perspectives, and for choosing the perspective that will be used for (...) generating a linguistic construal, based on attentional processes in the system. The multiple perspectives are based on the principle that events can be considered in terms of the force driving the event, and the result obtained from the event, based on the theory of Gärdenfors. In addition, within these perspectives a further refinement can be made with respect to the agent, object, and recipient perspectives. We develop a system for generating appropriate construals of meaning, and demonstrate how this can be used in a realistic dialogic interaction between a behaving robot and a human interlocutor. (shrink)

How do people learn to talk about the causal and temporal relations between events, and the motivation behind why people do what they do? The narrative practice hypothesis of Hutto and Gallagher holds that children are exposed to narratives that provide training for understanding and expressing reasons for why people behave as they do. In this context, we have recently developed a model of narrative processing where a structured model of the developing situation is built up from experienced events, and (...) enriched by sentences in a narrative that describe event meanings. The main interest is to develop a proof of concept for how narrative can be used to structure, organize and describe experience. Narrative sentences describe events, and they also define temporal and causal relations between events. These relations are specified by a class of narrative function words, including “because, before, after, first, finally.” The current research develops a proof of concept that by observing how people describe social events, a developmental robotic system can begin to acquire early knowledge of how to explain the reasons for events. We collect data from naïve subjects who use narrative function words to describe simple scenes of human-robot interaction, and then employ algorithms for extracting the statistical structure of how narrative function words link events in the situation model. By using these statistical regularities, the robot can thus learn from human experience about how to properly employ in question-answering dialogues with the human, and in generating canonical narratives for new experiences. The behavior of the system is demonstrated over several behavioral interactions, and associated narrative interaction sessions, while a more formal extended evaluation and user study will be the subject of future research. Clearly this is far removed from the power of the full blown narrative practice capability, but it provides a first step in the development of an experimental infrastructure for the study of socially situated narrative practice in human-robot interaction. (shrink)

An action-oriented perspective changes the role of an individual from a passive observer to an actively engaged agent interacting in a closed loop with the world as well as with others. Cognition exists to serve action within a landscape that contains both. This chapter surveys this landscape and addresses the status of the pragmatic turn. Its potential influence on science and the study of cognition are considered (including perception, social cognition, social interaction, sensorimotor entrainment, and language acquisition) and its impact (...) on how neuroscience is studied is also investigated (with the notion that brains do not passively build models, but instead support the guidance of action). A review of its implications in robotics and engineering includes a discussion of the application of enactive control principles to couple action and perception in robotics as well as the conceptualization of system design in a more holistic, less modular manner. Practical applications that can impact the human condition are reviewed (e.g., educational applications, treatment possibilities for developmental and psychopathological disorders, the development of neural prostheses). All of this foreshadows the potential societal implications of the pragmatic turn. The chapter concludes that an action-oriented approach emphasizes a continuum of interaction between technical aspects of cognitive systems and robotics, biology, psychology, the social sciences, and the humanities, where the individual is part of a grounded cultural system. (shrink)

Neural organization achieves its stated goal to “show how theory and experiment can supplement each other in an integrated, evolving account of structure, function, and dynamics” (p. ix), showing in a variety of contexts – from olfactory processing to spatial navigation, motor learning and more – how function may be realized in the neural tissue, with explanatory and predictive neural network models providing a cornerstone in this approach.

Phrasal semantics is concerned with how the meaning of a sentence is composed both from the meaning of the constituent words, and from extra meaning contained within the structural organization of the sentence itself. In this context, grammatical constructions correspond to form-meaning mappings that essentially capture this “extra” meaning and allow its representation. The current research examines how a computational model of language processing based on a construction grammar approach can account for aspects of descriptive, referential and information content of (...) phrasal semantics. (shrink)

In Carruthers’ formulation, cross-domain thinking requires translation of domain specific data into a common format, and linguistic LF thus plays the role of the common medium of exchange. Alternatively, I propose a process-oriented characterization, in which there is no common representation and cross-domain thinking is rather the process of establishing mappings across domains, as in the process of analogical reasoning.

Flexible categorization clearly requires an adaptive component, but at what level of representation? We have investigated categorization in sequence learning that requires the extraction of abstract rules, but no modification of sensory primitives. This motivates the need to make explicit the distinction between sensory-level “atomic” features as opposed to concept-level “abstract” features, and the proposal that flexible categorization probably relies on learning at the abstract feature level.

Deictic pointers allow the nervous system to exploit information in a frame that is centered on the object of interest. This processing may take place in visual or haptic space, but the information processing advantages of deictic pointing can also be applied in abstract spaces, providing the basis for analogical transfer. Simulation and behavioral results illustrating this progression from embodiment to abstraction are discussed.

Grodzinsky's characterization of the syntactic function of Broca's area is convincing, but his argument that this transformation processing capability is specific to language is less so. Based on predictions from simulation studies of sequence learning, we report a correlation between agrammatic patients' impairments in (a) syntactic comprehension, and (b) nonlinguistic sequence transformation processing, indicating the existence of a nonlinguistic correlate of agrammatic aphasia.

In the context of Hurford's claim that “some feature of language structure maps onto a feature of primitive mental representations,” I will argue that Hurford's focus on 1-place predicates as the basis of the “mental representations of situations in the world” is problematic, particularly with respect to spatiotemporal events. A solution is proposed.

Analogical transfer in sequence learning is presented as an example of how the type-2 problem of learning an unbounded number of isomorphic sequences is reduced to the type-1 problem of learning a small finite set of sequences. The commentary illustrates how the difficult problem of appropriate analogical filter creation and selection is addressed while avoiding the trap of strong nativism, and it provides theoretical and experimental evidence for the existence of dissociable mechanisms for type-1 learning and type-2 recoding.

Pickering & Garrod (P&G) describe a mechanism by which the situation models of dialog participants become progressively aligned via priming at different levels. This commentary attempts to characterize how alignment and routinization can be extended into the language acquisition domain by establishing links between alignment and joint attention, and between routinization and grammatical construction learning.

In arguing for a rules-similarity continuum, Pothos should demonstrate that a single process or mechanism (a neural network model, for example) can handle the entire continuum. Pothos deliberately avoids this exercise as beyond the scope of the current research. In this context, I will present simulation, neuropsychological, neurophysiological, and experimental psychological results, arguing against the continuity hypothesis.

IntroductionSymptoms of schizophrenia are closely related to aberrant language comprehension and production. Macroscopic brain changes seen in some patients with schizophrenia are suspected to relate to impaired language production, but this is yet to be reliably characterized. Since heterogeneity in language dysfunctions, as well as brain structure, is suspected in schizophrenia, we aimed to first seek patient subgroups with different neurobiological signatures and then quantify linguistic indices that capture the symptoms of “negative formal thought disorder”.MethodsAtlas-based cortical thickness values of 66 (...) patients with first-episode psychosis and 36 healthy controls were analyzed with hierarchical clustering algorithms to produce neuroanatomical subtypes. We then examined the generated subtypes and investigated the quantitative differences in MRS-based glutamate levels [in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex ] as well as in three aspects of language production features: fluency, syntactic complexity, and lexical cohesion.ResultsTwo neuroanatomical subtypes among patients were observed, one with near-normal cortical thickness patterns while the other with widespread cortical thinning. Compared to the subgroup of patients with relatively normal cortical thickness patterns, the subgroup with widespread cortical thinning was older, with higher glutamate concentration in dACC and produced speech with reduced mean length of T-units and lower repeats of content words, despite being equally fluent.ConclusionWe characterized a patient subgroup with thinner cortex in first-episode psychosis. This subgroup, identifiable through macroscopic changes, is also distinguishable in terms of neurochemistry and language behavior. This study supports the hypothesis that glutamate-mediated cortical thinning may contribute to a phenotype that is detectable using the tools of computational linguistics in schizophrenia. (shrink)

We are in the midst of an unprecedented, human-caused, environmental crisis.

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

This commentary analyzes the target article to determine whether shared-intention development could be implemented and tested in robotic systems. The analysis indicates that such an implementation should be feasible and will likely rely on a construction-based approach similar to that employed in the construction grammar framework.

While capitalism has proven to be one of the most efficient economic engines in modern history, the goal of simply pursuing profit has, according to many, left some of society’s needs unmet if not further challenged. In 2006, Porter and Kramer developed the notion that corporations could and should pursue a higher goal of capitalism including “creating shared value” as a means to improve performance and bridging the gap that developed between corporations and society. The concept was welcomed within both (...) academia and the corporate world for the amount of energy it has generated, its potential to improve capitalism and repair what Brigley referred to as the “fractured contract”. However, it is being equally critiqued for lacking in definitional clarity causing inconsistent strategy, and lacking in originality vis-a-vis existing concepts such as Corporate Social Responsibility. This paper proposes corporate virtue as a form of CSV, by identifying two theories which demonstrate how corporate virtue meets the definitional requirements of CSV and helps both the corporation and society fulfil unmet needs. (shrink)

Public education is not just a way to organise and fund education. It is also the expression of a particular ideal about education and of a particular way to conceive of the relationship between education and society. The ideal of public education sees education as an important dimension of the common good and as an important institution in securing the common good. The common good is never what individuals or particular groups want or desire, but always reaches beyond such particular (...) desires towards that which societies as a whole should consider as desirable. This does, of course, put the common good in tension with the desires of individuals and groups. Neo-liberal modes of governance have, over the past decades, put this particular educational set up under pressure and have, according to some, eroded the very idea of the common good. This set of contributions reflects on this state of affairs, partly through an exploration of the idea of publicness itself – how it can be rearticulated and regained – and partly through reflections on the current state of education in the ‘north’ and the ‘south.’. (shrink)

This wide-ranging conversation explores the potential of comedy to effect social change; the connections and disconnections between comedy and tragedy; the problem of laughter, humor, and ridicule; and the power of feminist humor.

In The Ethics of Food, Gregory E. Pence brings together a collection of voices who share the view that the ethics of genetically modified food is among the most pressing societal questions of our time. This comprehensive collection addresses a broad range of subjects, including the meaning of food, moral analyses of vegetarianism and starvation, the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food, issues of global food politics and the food industry, and the relationships among food, evolution, and human (...) history. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This paper, like many before it, aims to solve the “species problem” by declaring it a non-problem. It borrows its title from an earlier article by Jeff Lawrence and its philosophical concepts from Marc Ereshefsky, John Dupré, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Ken Waters, and Jody Hey. The emphasis is on bacteria, but my pragmatic species anti-realist conclusion may be a general one.

Ford, Norman There has been some confusion in the media over what Pope Benedict XVI meant by his comments on the use of condoms. He was discussing acts of sexual intercourse performed by male prostitutes in relation to HIV (human immune deficiency virus) infection in reply to a question put to him during an interview with Peter Seewald. The Vatican spokesman Fr Lombardi SJ said the Pope 'had confirmed to him that the example was valid in the case (...) of all prostitutes. The point of the example, he said, "was not the sex of the prostitute but the process of growing awareness of the risk [to] the life of the other person".' He was not referring to married couples nor contraception but the prevention of HIV infection from acts of prostitution. (shrink)

Through an educational reading of Édouard Glissant and Peter Sloterdijk, this article draws out and develops latent pedagogical philosophies that bear distinct relationships to colonialism and struggles against and beyond colonialism. In particular, it identifies two related educational philosophies that propel colonization and, in turn, proposes a theory of errant learning that might undergird decolonization. It focuses on Glissant’s minor remarks about different conceptions of understanding in order to identify the grasping drive as the educational foundation of the colonizing (...) apparatus. After articulating the other form of understanding he offers, giving-on-and-with, I point to a potential contradiction in this division as it relates to his overall project. By freeing grasping from the grasping drive, I reconfigure the relationship between grasping and giving-on-and-with in a way that allows for certain kinds of enclosures. This introduces the question of pedagogical form, a question explored in Sloterdijk’s sphereological investigations. Reading the colonizing phase of globalization through Sloterdijk’s notion of lordly imagining—which I link with the grasping drive—the article draws out how different educational processes produce different kinds of spheres. Finally, it articulates errant learning as a pneumatic process of grasping and giving-on-and-with that values opacity over transparency to produce foam formations with attention to the history of inequality and injury through immune deprivation. (shrink)

EM Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” from 1909 is widely reread and discussed again for some ten years as it portrays a science-fiction world resting on similar technological advancements as today in the digital era. Also management literature reviewed the short story with regard to centralized decision making, rationality and totalitarianism. I argue instead, that the main theme of the short story is – in Forster’s own words – the closing of a civilization in times of transition and facing (...) major challenges. I built the argument by original quotes from Forster and by portraying the years 1906–9, when Forster developed the short story. This era before the Great War starting in 1914 was characterized by euphoric ‘futurism’ based on groundbreaking innovations like ‘long distance messaging’, ‘penny post’, ‘animated films’, Ford’s assembly line, ‘Olivetti typewriter’, ‘feature film’, ‘large ships’ and ‘air transportation’ – the ingredients of the short story as I argue. At the same time these acquitted years were characterized by increasing disintegration, instability, rebellions and a financial crisis with bailout programs. Based on the analogy and as part of speculative philosophy I reconstruct the current great challenges with Forster’ shadow of fatalism and arrive at the urgency to put more effort in addressing and researching pathways out of the crisis and towards stabilization of business and society. (shrink)