The era of sustainable transformation has witnessed an increase in corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure waves. Using Chinese A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2021 as a sample, this study adopted textual analysis and machine-learning techniques to analyze ESG reports and explore the imitation behavior of ESG disclosures in emerging Chinese markets for the first time. The results show imitation behavior exists in corporate ESG disclosures from the perspective of group association. Regarding the imitation object, (...) enterprises tend to choose the peer average level as a reference rather than the best enterprise in the same industry, which reveals the inherent law that enterprises' ESG disclosures are satisfied with compliance rather than championship. In terms of effects, the ESG-mimetic isomorphic pressure has no incremental information effect but has an efficiency optimization effect. Furthermore, the imitation intensity and impact effects of ESG disclosure behavior exhibit heterogeneity owing to differences in properties, sales growth rates, and external attention. This study expands the motivation for corporate ESG disclosure behavior and enriches the empirical evidence for institutional isomorphism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction I Peters on Ritual in Education II R. S. Peters on Ritual and Imitation: An Assessment Future Directions References.

Imitation research has focused on turn‐taking contexts in which one person acts and one person then copies that action. However, people also imitate when engaging in joint actions, where two or more people coordinate their actions in space and time in order to achieve a shared goal. We discuss how the various constraints imposed by joint action modulate imitation, and the close links between perception and action that form the basis of this phenomenon. We also explore how understanding (...) imitation in the context of joint action yields new insights into cultural phenomena such as teaching and innovation. (shrink)

What is the relationship between imitation and culture? This article charts how definitions of imitation have changed in the last century, distinguishes three senses of “culture” used by contemporary evolutionists (Culture1–Culture3), and summarises current disagreement about the relationship between imitation and culture. The disagreement arises from ambiguities in the distinction between imitation and emulation, and confusion between two explanatory projects—the anthropocentric project and the cultural selection project. I argue that imitation gives cultural evolution an inheritance (...) mechanism for communicative and gestural skills (but not technological skills), and cultural selection yields the cognitive mechanisms that make imitation possible. (shrink)

To the extent that language is conventional, non-verbal individuals, including human infants, must participate in conventions in order to learn to use even simple utterances of words. This raises the question of which varieties of learning could make this possible. In this paper I defend Tomasello’s (The cultural origins of human cognition. Harvard UP, Cambridge, 1999, Origins of human communication. MIT, Cambridge, 2008) claim that knowledge of linguistic conventions could be learned through imitation. This is possible because Lewisian accounts (...) of convention have overstated what one must know to participate in conventions; and because the required knowledge could be learned imitatively. The imitation claim that I defend is consistent with what we know about both the proliferation of conventional behaviours in human children, who are skilful imitators, and the comparative absence of such behaviours in non-human great apes, who are poor at imitative learning. (shrink)

Moral virtue is, for Aristotle, famously acquired through the practice of virtuous actions. But how should we understand the activity of Aristotle’s moral learner, and how does her activity result in the acquisition of virtue? I argue that by understanding Aristotle’s learner as engaged in the emulative imitation of a virtuous agent, we can best account for her development. Such activity crucially involves the adoption of the virtuous agent’s perspective, from which I argue the learner is positioned so as (...) to appreciate the value of virtuous action—its fineness—and what it would be to act finely herself. (shrink)

Imitation has been understood in different ways: as a cognitive adaptation subtended by genetically specified cognitive mechanisms; as an aspect of domain general human cognition. The second option has been advanced by Cecilia Heyes who treats imitation as an instance of associative learning. Her argument is part of a deflationary treatment of the “mirror neuron” phenomenon. I agree with Heyes about mirror neurons but argue that Kim Sterelny has provided the tools to provide a better account of the (...) nature and role of human imitation. What we call imitative learning is an instance of social learning. It has little to do with empathy, emotional contagion, or mind reading. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Agency and Access to the World Speaking and Seeing Imitation Some Resources of Narration The Varieties of Narrative Imitation.

A number of philosophers have recently held that the phenomenal aspect of experience cannot be adequately dealt with within a materialist account of the mind-body relation. A natural response for those who take both this objection and scientific considerations seriously is to adopt either a double-aspect theory of mind or a version of epiphenomenalism. In this paper I will examine such a view recently defended by Keith Campbell. Campbell calls his view a ‘new’ epiphenomenalism. I shall begin by considering Campbell's (...) conception of an imitation-man, a notion which has been elsewhere employed in arguments against materialism. I shall demonstrate that Campbell is thereby committed to entertaining seriously a suspect form of causation which I have labeled "sometime-causation". I shall then proceed to argue that for this and other reasons, Campbell's ‘new’ epiphenomenalism is not clearly superior to its traditional predecessor. (shrink)

Le désir d'imiter Dieu n'est pas nécessairement sous-tendu par un délire ou une dérisoire présomption. Il met plutôt en tension deux réalités irréductibles. D'un côté, la réalité d'une vocation de l'humain à répondre à plus haut que lui et à trouver la voie de son accomplissement dans la reconnaissance d'un don qui le transforme. De l'autre côté, l'irréductibilité du statut créaturel, et donc de la finitude qui implique une distance toujours maintenue, même si, par instants, certains spirituels sont convaincus de (...) vivre une union allant jusqu'à la coïncidence de l'âme et de Dieu même. C'est cette tension que ce livre explore en considérant spécialement le christianisme occidental sur la longue durée, mais en jetant également des coups de sonde du côté du platonisme et du néoplatonisme, du judaïsme et du christianisme oriental. À travers cette tension se joue toute la question de la relation entre le fini et l'infini"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In Mortal Imitations of Divine Life, Diamond offers an interpretation of De Anima, which explains how and why Aristotle places souls in a hierarchy of value. Aristotle’s central intention in De Anima is to discover the nature and essence of soul—the prin­ciple of living beings. He does so by identifying the common structures underlying every living activity, whether it be eating, perceiving, thinking, or moving through space. As Diamond demonstrates through close readings of De Anima, the nature of the soul (...) is most clearly seen in its divine life, while the embodied soul’s other activi­ties are progressively clearer approximations of this principle. This interpretation shows how Aristotle’s psychology and biology cannot be properly understood apart from his theological conception of God as life, and offers a new explanation of De Anima’s unity of purpose and structure. (shrink)

Various deficits in the cognitive functioning of people with autism have been documented in recent years but these provide only partial explanations for the condition. We focus instead on an imitative disturbance involving difficulties both in copying actions and in inhibiting more stereotyped mimicking, such as echolalia. A candidate for the neural basis of this disturbance may be found in a recently discovered class of neurons in frontal cortex, 'mirror neurons' (MNs). These neurons show activity in relation both to specific (...) actions performed by self and matching actions performed by others, providing a potential bridge between minds. MN systems exist in primates without imitative and ‘theory of mind’ abilities and we suggest that in order for them to have become utilized to perform social cognitive functions, sophisticated cortical neuronal systems have evolved in which MNs function as key elements. Early developmental failures of MN systems are likely to result in a consequent cascade of developmental impairments characterised by the clinical syndrome of autism. (shrink)

First published in 1999, this book brings together the extensive modern evidence for innate imitation in babies. Modern research has shown imitation to be a natural mechanism of learning and communication which deserves to be at centre stage in developmental psychology. Yet the very possibility of imitation in newborn humans has had a controversial history. Defining imitation has proved to be far from straightforward and scientific evidence for its existence in neonates is only now becoming accepted, (...) despite more than a century of enquiry. In this book, some of the world's foremost researchers on imitation and intellectual development review evidence for imitation in newborn babies. They discuss the development of imitation in infancy, in both normal and atypical populations and in comparison with other primate species, stressing the fundamental importance of imitation in human development, as a foundation of communication and a precursor to symbolic processes. (shrink)

What is the evolutionary significance of the various mechanisms of imitation, emulation and social learning found in humans and other animals? This paper presents an advance in the theoretical resources for addressing that question, in the light of which standard approaches from the cultural evolution literature should be refocused. The central question is whether humans have an imitationbased inheritance system—a mechanism that has the evolutionary function of transmitting behavioural phenotypes reliably down the generations. To have the evolutionary power of (...) an inheritance system, an imitiation-based mechanism must meet a range of demanding requirements. The paper goes on to review the evidence for and against the hypothesis that there is indeed an imitation-based inheritance system in humans. (shrink)

Over 35 years ago, Meltzoff and Moore (1977) published their famous article ‘Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates’. Their central conclusion, that neonates can imitate, was and continues to be controversial. Here we focus on an often neglected aspect of this debate, namely on neonatal spontaneous behaviors themselves. We present a case study of a paradigmatic orofacial ‘gesture’, namely tongue protrusion and retraction (TP/R). Against the background of new research on mammalian aerodigestive development, we ask: How (...) does the human aerodigestive system develop and what role does TP/R play in the neonate’s emerging system of aerodigestion? We show that mammalian aerodigestion develops in two phases: (1) from the onset of isolated orofacial movements in utero to the post-natal mastery of suckling at 4 months after birth, and; (2) thereafter, from preparation to the mastery of mastication and deglutition of solid foods. Like other orofacial stereotypies, TP/R emerges in the first phase and vanishes prior to the second. Based upon recent advances in activity-driven early neural development, we suggest a sequence of three developmental events in which TP/R might participate: the acquisition of tongue control, the integration of the central pattern generator for TP/R with other aerodigestive CPGs, and the formation of connections within the cortical maps of S1 and M1. If correct, orofacial stereotypies are crucial to the maturation of aerodigestion in the neonatal period but also unlikely to co-occur with imitative behavior. (shrink)

In two separate experiments, we examined 17-month-olds’ imitation in a third-party context. The aim was to explore how seeing another person responding to a model’s novel action influenced infant imitation. The infants watched while a reliable model demonstrated a novel action with a familiar (Experiment 1) or an unfamiliar (Experiment 2) object to a second actor. The second actor either imitated or did not imitate the novel action of the model. Fewer infants imitated the model’s novel behavior in (...) the non-imitation condition than in the imitation condition in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, infants’ likelihood of imitating was not influenced by whether they had watched the second actor imitating the model’s novel action with the unfamiliar object. The findings indicate that infants take into account a second adult’s actions in a third party context when infants receive information that contradicts their existing knowledge and when it corresponds with their own experiences. If infants do not have prior knowledge about how to handle a certain object, then the second adult’s actions do not seem to matter. (shrink)

In this book, first published in 1984, Joel Weinsheimer advocates revitalizing the practice of imitating literature as a mode appropriate for literary critics as well as artists. The book is not only about imitation; it is itself an imitation, specifically of Samuel Johnson. As both the focus and mode of presentation, imitation is presented not merely as a kind of poetry that once flourished in the eighteenth century but also as a kind of criticism particularly relevant today. (...) Applying arguments from philosophy of science, deconstruction, psycho-analysis, literary theory, semiotics and hermeneutics, Weinsheimer shows that the three main currents of thought responsible for forcing imitation underground were empiricism, originalism and historicism. The three central chapters of the book concentrate on their representatives: John Locke, Edward Young and Thomas Warton. The author then applies Johnsonian arguments – supported by those of Gadamer Peirce – to challenge those objections and re-establish imitation as an intellectually defensible mode of writing. (shrink)

Pretense is generally thought to constitutively involve imagination. We argue that this is a mistake. Although pretense often involves imagination, it need not; nor is it a kind of imagination. The core nature of pretense is closer to imitation than it is to imagination, and likely shares some of its motivation with the former. Three main strands of argument are presented. One is from the best explanation of cross‐cultural data. Another is from task‐analysis of instances of pretend play. And (...) the third concerns the different ways in which pretense (especially childhood pretense) and imagination impact one's evaluative/affective systems. (shrink)

Imitation and mirroring processes are necessary but not sufficient conditions for children to develop human sociality. Human sociality entails more than the equivalence and connectedness of perceptual experiences. It corresponds to the sense of a shared world made of shared values. It originates from complex ‘open’ systems of reciprocation and negotiation, not just imitation and mirroring processes that are by definition ‘closed’ systems. From this premise, we argue that if imitation and mirror processes are important foundations for (...) sociality, human inter-subjectivity develops primarily in reciprocation, not just imitation. Imitation provides a basic sense of social connectedness and mutual acknowledgment of existing with others that are ‘like me.’ However, it does not allow for the co-construction of meanings with others. For human sociality to develop, imitation and mirroring processes need to be supplemented by an open system of reciprocation. Developmental research shows that from the second month, mirroring, imitative, and other contagious emotional responses are by-passed. Imitation gives way to first signs of reciprocation (primary intersubjectivity), joint attention to objects (secondary intersubjectivity), the emergence of values that are jointly represented and negotiated with others (tertiary intersubjectivity), and eventually the development of an ethical stance accompanying theories of mind by 4 years of age. We review this development and propose that if mirroring processes enable individuals to bridge their subjective experiences, human inter-subjectivity proper develops from reciprocal social exchanges that lead to value negotiation and mutual recognition, both cardinal trademarks of human sociality. (shrink)

L'imitation est-elle l'apanage de l'espèce humaine? Dans quelle mesure l'imitation, abondamment mentionnée dans le discours colonial, est-elle révélatrice des ambiguïtés de la situation coloniale? Comment rendre intelligible l'adoption délibérée par des individus tant de comportements que de gestes imitatifs? Qu'il s'agisse des rapports entre les colons français et les "indigènes" , de la constitution de Tahiti en paradis touristique , des différences entre hip-hop français et américain , ou encore des liens entre les dimensions biologique, psychologique et culturelle (...) de l'imitation , tous les textes réunis ici révèlent l'importance du rôle joué par l'imitation dans le phénomène de la culture. (shrink)

This paper investigates Descartes’s understanding of the imago Dei, that it is above all in virtue of the will that we bear the image and likeness of God. I challenge the key assumption of arguments that hold that Descartes’s comparison between the human will and the divine will is problematic—that in his conception of the imago Dei Descartes is alluding to Scholastic conceptions of analogy available to him at the time, which would place particular constraints on the legitimacy of the (...) comparison. I argue instead that Descartes is evoking a different tradition regarding the nature of image and imitation, stemming from Augustine and Aquinas, and thus, that those constraints do not apply. I then argue that Descartes thinks the likeness between the human will and God’s will is that both are infinite in “extent.” This means that human will can “extend itself” not only to things that can be the object of some other will, but to things that can be the object of God’s will. This is notable because Descartes famously thinks that absolutely anything can be the object of God’s will. I explain why this interpretation is not implausible, contrary to first appearances. (shrink)

This article focuses on the consequences of a little-known work by Giacinto Scelsi, Rotativa (1930), for the concepts of imitation and expression in music. Critical of the mechanization of art peculiar to the Futurism of his time, the Italian composer allows us to think, against the pseudo-photographic reproduction of objects by sound forms, the limits of musical imitation by revealing, from the historicity of his own piece, the inauthenticity of a certain modernism.

In the past 20 years or so, the psychological research on imitation has flourished. However, our working definition of imitation has not adequately adapted in order to reflect this research. The closest that we've come to a revamped conception of imitation comes from the work of Michael Tomasello. Despite its numerous virtues, Tomasello's definition is in need of at least two significant amendments, if it is to reflect the current state of knowledge. Accordingly, it is our goal (...) in this paper to reformulate Tomasello's definition of imitation in order to account for both the latest empirical findings and the conceptual considerations that follow from them. Specifically, we argue that a satisfactory definition of imitation ought to be formulated as follows: imitation is the reproduction of an observed behavior where the agent imitating recognizes the behavior of the demonstrator as goal-directed and has some particular interest in or concern for replicating the precise technique performed by the aut.. (shrink)

Imitation, the replication of observed behaviors, has been proposed as the crucial social learning mechanism for the generation of humanlike cultural complexity. To date, the single published experimental microsociety study that tested this hypothesis found no advantage for imitation. In contrast, the current paper reports data in support of the imitation hypothesis. Participants in “microsociety” groups built weight-bearing devices from reed and clay. Each group was assigned to one of four conditions: three social learning conditions and one (...) asocial learning control condition. Groups able to observe other participants building their devices, in contrast to groups that saw only completed devices, show evidence of successive improvement. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that imitation is required for cumulative cultural evolution. This study adds crucial data for understanding why imitation is needed for cultural accumulation, a central defining feature of our species. (shrink)

IMITATION is a matter of such familiarity to us all that it goes usually unattended to: so much so that professed psychologists have left it largely undiscussed. Whether it be one of the more ultimate facts or not, suppose we assume it to be so; let us then see what we can explain by it, and where we may be able to trace its influence in the developed mind.

Showing remarkable insight into the relationship between language and thought, Alan Turing in 1950 proposed the Imitation Game as a proxy for the question “Can machines think?” and its meaning and practicality have been debated hotly ever since. The Imitation Game has come under criticism within the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence communities with leading scientists proposing alternatives, revisions, or even that the Game be abandoned entirely. Yet Turing’s imagined conversational fragments between human and machine are rich with (...) complex instances of inference of implied information, reasoning from generalizations, and meta-reasoning, challenges AI practitioners have wrestled with since at least 1980 and continue to study. We argue that the very fact the Imitation Game is so difficult may be the very reason it shouldn’t be changed or abandoned. The semi-decidability of the game at this point hints at the possibility of a hard limit to the powers of technology. (shrink)

Automatic imitation or “imitative compatibility” is thought to be mediated by the mirror neuron system and to be a laboratory model of the motor mimicry that occurs spontaneously in naturalistic social interaction. Imitative compatibility and spatial compatibility effects are known to depend on different stimulus dimensions—body movement topography and relative spatial position. However, it is not yet clear whether these two types of stimulus–response compatibility effect are mediated by the same or different cognitive processes. We present an interactive activation (...) model of imitative and spatial compatibility, based on a dual-route architecture, which substantiates the view they are mediated by processes of the same kind. The model, which is in many ways a standard application of the interactive activation approach, simulates all key results of a recent study by Catmur and Heyes (2011). Specifically, it captures the difference in the relative size of imitative and spatial compatibility effects; the lack of interaction when the imperative and irrelevant stimuli are presented simultaneously; the relative speed of responses in a quintile analysis when the imperative and irrelevant stimuli are presented simultaneously; and the different time courses of the compatibility effects when the imperative and irrelevant stimuli are presented asynchronously. (shrink)

Imitation recognition provides a viable platform from which advanced social cognitive skills may develop. Despite evidence that non-human primates are capable of imitation recognition, how this ability is related to social cognitive skills is unknown. In this study, we compared imitation recognition performance, as indicated by the production of testing behaviors, with performance on a series of tasks that assess social and physical cognition in 49 chimpanzees. In the initial analyses, we found that males were more responsive (...) than females to being imitated and engaged in significantly greater behavior repetitions and testing sequences. We also found that subjects who consistently recognized being imitated performed better on social but not physical cognitive tasks, as measured by the Primate Cognitive Test Battery. These findings suggest that the neural constructs underlying imitation recognition are likely associated with or among those underlying more general socio-communicative abilities in chimpanzees. Implications regarding how imitation recognition may facilitate other social cognitive processes, such as mirror self-recognition, are discussed. (shrink)

In Spinoza’s philosophy affects illustrate the way human beings interact with each other and the world, where the necessary meetings with other particular things define their being and its expressions. Most human beings don’t know themselves, are not conscious of their affects and, even less, do they know what the affects of others are. Although, they are by their definition as particular things obliged to exist in society and create a minimum of consensus. According to Spinoza, this consensus is built (...) upon the biological substrate defined by human body’s physiology, through the mechanism of imitation and is supported by empathy. Leading researchers in affective neuroscience argue for a theory of embodied cognition and recent research in neurosciences attributes human capacity for empathy to mirror neurons, recognising in Spinoza’s texts the philosophical roots of current scientific thinking on body, mind and feeling. Keeping in mind the debate concerning how different levels of explanation can be related to each other or how different disciplines can form the context for interpreting neuroscience’s data, we attempt to promote an implicit dialogue between Spinoza’s psychological theory and the neuroscientific findings, supporting that is legitimate and necessary to examine these questions from the point of view of philosophy and formulate new research questions that can promote further theoretical and empirical study of the complex phenomena concerning human nature and society. (shrink)

In IVP50S, Spinoza claims that “one who is moved to aid others neither by reason nor by pity is rightly called inhuman. For (by IIIP27) he seems to be unlike a man” (IVP50S). At first blush, the claim seems implausible, as it relies on the dubious assumption that beings will necessarily imitate the affects of conspecifics. In the first two sections of this paper, I explain why Spinoza accepts this thesis and show how this claim can be made compatible with (...) his account of representation. In the third and final section I offer an auxiliary defense of the thesis, showing that, according to Spinoza, to be human is to sociable, and sociability depends on the imitation of the affects. (shrink)

Turing’s Imitation Game is often viewed as a test for theorised machines that could ‘think’ and/or demonstrate ‘intelligence’. However, contrary to Turing’s apparent intent, it can be shown that Turing’s Test is essentially a test for humans only. Such a test does not provide for theorised artificial intellects with human-like, but not human-exact, intellectual capabilities. As an attempt to bypass this limitation, I explore the notion of shifting the goal posts of the Turing Test, and related tests such as (...) the Total Turing Test, away from the exact imitation of human capabilities, and towards communication with humans instead. While the continued philosophical relevance of such tests is open to debate, the outcome is a different class of tests which are, unlike the Turing Test, immune to failure by means of sub-cognitive questioning techniques. I suggest that attempting to instantiate such tests could potentially be more scientifically and pragmatically relevant to some Artificial Intelligence researchers, than instantiating a Turing Test, due to the focus on producing a variety of goal directed outcomes through communicative methods, as opposed to the Turing Test’s emphasis on ‘fooling’ an Examiner. (shrink)

For acquired behaviour to count as cultural, two conditions must be met: it must propagate in a social group, and it must remain stable across generations in the process of propagation. It is commonly assumed that imitation is the mechanism that explains both the spread of animal culture and its stability. We review the literature on transmission chain studies in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and other animals, and we use a formal model to argue that imitation, which may well (...) play a major role in the propagation of animal culture, cannot be considered faithful enough to explain its stability. We consider the contribution that other psychological and ecological factors might make to the stability of animal culture observed in the wild. (shrink)

The influence of film's compelling images, characters and storylines has polarized perspectives on cinema and the moral imagination. Does film stimulate the audience's imagination and foster imitation in morally dangerous ways, or elicit ethical insight and empathy? Might the presentation of images on screen denude the capacity to conjure images in the mind's eye, or cultivate the imaginative capacity for moral vision as spectators attend to the plight of protagonists? Using Imitation of Life to interrogate paradoxical perspectives on (...) the cinematic imagination, this article develops an account of the moral imagination focusing on sensory, emotional and empathic aspects of the audience's imaginative relationship with screen characters and their innermost thoughts and feelings. (shrink)

This issue of the Kybernetes journal is concerned with the philosophical question- Can a Machine Think? Famously, in his 1950 paper `Computing Machinery andIntelligence' [9], the British mathematician Alan Turing suggested replacing this question - which he found \too meaningless to deserve discussion" - with a simple -behavioural - test based on an imagined `Victorianesque' pastime he entitled the`imitation game'. In this special issue of Kybernetes a selection of authors with a special interest in Turing's work (including those who (...) participated in the 2008 AISB Turing Symposium) have been invited to explore and clarify issues arising from Turing's 1950 paper on the Imitation Game; now more widely known as the Turing test. (shrink)

Many studies have shown that using robot platforms can be effective for teaching children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The aim of this study was to compare performance on an imitation task, as well as focus attention levels and the presence of social behaviours of children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children during an imitation task under two different conditions, with robots and human demonstrators. The results suggested that TD children did not imitate more than children with (...) ASD. Children with ASD did not imitate the robot more than they imitated a person, but they showed more focused attention to robots and expressed more social behaviours in interaction with the robots. Behaviours that were significantly more present in ASD children than in TD children included touching the robot in the robot demonstrator condition and focusing on the robot in the person demonstrator condition. This implies a possible preference of children with ASD towards robots rather than towards people. (shrink)

Social robots are designed to perform intelligent, emotional, and autonomous behavior in order to establish intimate relationships with humans, for instance, in the context of elderly care. However, the imitation of qualities usually assumed to be necessary for human reciprocal interaction may impact our understanding of social interaction. Against this background, we compare the technical operations based on which social robots imitate human-like behavior with the concepts of emotionality, intelligence, and autonomy as usually attached to humans. In doing so, (...) we aim at making a conceptual contribution to the intuition that the technical imitation of emotional, intelligent, and autonomous behavior differs qualitatively from human forms of emotionality, intelligence, and autonomy. We conclude that the increasing tendency of social robots to imitate human characteristics and the thus increased human tendency of anthropomorphizing technical systems put forth new forms of human–machine interactions (HMI) that call for a critical examination. Thus, the emerging forms of interaction may lead, for instance, to false, reinforced, and perplexing assumptions regarding reciprocity. Therefore, studies are needed that critically examine the potential consequences and psychological effects that may be associated with the use of social robots, especially with regard to vulnerable groups such as children or the elderly. (shrink)

On the classical instrumental view, practical reason is an all-things-considered enterprise, concerned not merely with identifying and evaluating appropriate means to the realization of ends construed as uncriticizable, but also with coordinating achievement of their sum. The concept of a totality of ranked concerns is the cornerstone of the theory of utility. This paper discusses some of the ways that practical reasoning, on the ground, is not instrumental in this sense. The paper will demonstrate that some of what goes on (...) by way of practical reasoning on the ground involves a certain simple inference schema—to be called “imitative reasoning”—that involves mobilization of what has been alternately referred to as archetypes, scripts, stereotypes and schemas including most importantly self-schemas or self-concepts. Imitative reasoning, as the paper will argue, is especially hostile to deliberations that involve the sorts of tradeoffs that applications of utility theory routinely advise. It is therefore no expression or realization, however imperfect, of the notion of maximization. What is more, this framework routinely evokes as authoritative the norms of privilege, however removed from or irrelevant to the matter at hand, which might be as simple as where to go for dinner. For it is the basis of—among other things—class and race consciousness. Furthermore, it is highly subject to manipulation by the unscrupulous; such as, for example, by those who market consumer goods, especially to children. For this form of reasoning is employed so as to protect or enhance self-concepts: imitative reasoning is a form of motivated reasoning. Laying it out in schema form will shed light on the sort of reasoning processes that transpire in many cases of cognitive dissonance reduction. (shrink)

To investigate the cognitive processes underlying creative inspiration, we tested the extent to which viewing or copying prior examples impacted creative output in art. In Experiment 1, undergraduates made drawings under three conditions: copying an artist's drawing, then producing an original drawing; producing an original drawing without having seen another's work; and copying another artist's work, then reproducing that artist's style independently. We discovered that through copying unfamiliar abstract drawings, participants were able to produce creative drawings qualitatively different from the (...) model drawings. Process analyses suggested that participants' cognitive constraints became relaxed, and new perspectives were formed from copying another's artwork. Experiment 2 showed that exposure to styles of artwork considered unfamiliar facilitated creativity in drawing, while styles considered familiar did not do so. Experiment 3 showed that both copying and thoroughly viewing artwork executed using an unfamiliar style facilitated creativity in drawing, whereas merely thinking about alternative styles of artistic representation did not do so. These experiments revealed that deep encounters with unfamiliar artworks—whether through copying or prolonged observation—change people's cognitive representations of the act of drawing to produce novel artwork. (shrink)

Recent research on infant and animal imitation and on mirror neuron systems has
brought imitation back in focus in psychology and cognitive science. This topic has
always been important for philosophical hermeneutics as well, focusing on theory and
method of understanding. Unfortunately, relations between the scientific and the
hermeneutic approaches to imitation and understanding have scarcely been investigated,
to the loss of both disciplines. In contrast to the cognitive scientific emphasis on
sharing and convergence of representations, the hermeneutic analysis emphasizes the
indeterminacy and openness (...) of action understanding due to preunderstanding, action
configuration, and the processual nature of understanding. This article discusses empirical
evidence in support of these aspects and concludes that hermeneutics can
contribute to the scientific investigation of imitation and understanding. Since, conversely,
some grounding—and constraining—aspects of hermeneutics may be derived
from cognitive science, both should be integrated in a multilevel explanation of
imitation and understanding. This holds also for explanations that are largely based on
mirror neuron systems, since these appear to be sensitive to developmental and
experiential factors, too. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 3, March 2022.

A number of philosophers have recently held that the phenomenal aspect of experience cannot be adequately dealt with within a materialist account of the mind-body relation. A natural response for those who take both this objection and scientific considerations seriously is to adopt either a double-aspect theory of mind or a version of epiphenomenalism. In this paper I will examine such a view recently defended by Keith Campbell. Campbell calls his view a ‘new’ epiphenomenalism. I shall begin by considering Campbell's (...) conception of an imitation-man, a notion which has been elsewhere employed in arguments against materialism. I shall demonstrate that Campbell is thereby committed to entertaining seriously a suspect form of causation which I have labeled "sometime-causation". I shall then proceed to argue that for this and other reasons, Campbell's ‘new’ epiphenomenalism is not clearly superior to its traditional predecessor. (shrink)

To be human is to imitate. This is a strong claim, and a contentious one. It implies that the turning point in hominid evolution was when our ancestors first began to copy each other’s sounds and actions, and that this new ability was responsible for transforming an ordinary ape into one with a big brain, language, a curious penchant for music and art, and complex cumulative culture. The argument, briefly, is this. All evolutionary processes depend on information being copied with (...) variation and selection. Most living things on earth are the product of evolution based on the copying, varying and selection of genes. However, once humans began to imitate they provided a new kind of copying and so let loose an evolutionary process based on the copying, varying and selection of memes. This new evolutionary system co-evolved with the old to turn us into more than gene machines. We, alone on this planet, are also meme machines. We are selective imitation devices in an evolutionary arms race with a new replicator. This is why we are so different from other creatures; this is why we alone have big brains, language and complex culture. There are many contentious issues here; the nature and status of memes, the validity of the concept of a replicator, the difference between this and other theories of gene-culture co-evolution, and whether memetics really is necessary, as I believe it is, to explain human nature. I shall outline the basic principles of memetics, show how memes could have driven human evolution, and consider some of these questions along the way. (shrink)

Byrne & Russon rightly draw attention to complex and neglected aspects of ape imitation. However, program-level imitation as a single, absolute category may mislead us in understanding abstractions involved in imitation. Designing the right experiments will offer clarity. One recent experiment has shown imitation of sequential structure: What is needed to test other components of what the authors propose?

This paper explores the potential and relevance of an innovative sociological research method known as the Imitation Game for research in health care. Whilst this method and its potential have until recently only been explored within sociology, there are many interesting and promising facets that may render this approach fruitful within the health care field, most notably to questions about the experiential knowledge or ‘expertise’ of chronically ill patients. The Imitation Game can be especially useful because it provides (...) a way to map this experiential knowledge more systematically, without falling in the dual trap of either over-relying on in-depth, but highly specific phenomenological ‘insider’-approaches that are hard to generalize, or, alternatively, problematically reducing the rich life-worlds of patients to a set of indicators in a questionnaire. The main focus of this paper is theoretical and conceptual: explaining the Imitation Game method, discussing its usefulness in the health care domain, and exploring the ways in which the approach can be utilized for chronic illness care. The paper presents both a conceptual and empirical exploration of how the Imitation Game method and its underlying theoretical concepts of ‘contributory expertise’ and ‘interactional expertise’ can be transferred from the sociological realm to the field of health care, what kinds of insights can be gained from the method, which methodological issues it may raise, and what potentially fruitful research routes can be explored. I argue that the Imitation Game can be thought of as a ‘social learning experiment’ that simultaneously enables the participants to learn from each other’s perspectives, allows researchers to explore exciting new possibilities, and also offers the tools to intervene in the practice that is being studied. (shrink)

Imitation, deliberation, and mindreading are characteristically human sociocognitive skills. Research on imitation and its role in social cognition is flourishing across various disciplines. Imitation is surveyed in this target article under headings of behavior, subpersonal mechanisms, and functions of imitation. A model is then advanced within which many of the developments surveyed can be located and explained. The shared circuits model (SCM) explains how imitation, deliberation, and mindreading can be enabled by subpersonal mechanisms of control, (...) mirroring, and simulation. It is cast at a middle, functional level of description, that is, between the level of neural implementation and the level of conscious perceptions and intentional actions. The SCM connects shared informational dynamics for perception and action with shared informational dynamics for self and other, while also showing how the action/perception, self/other, and actual/possible distinctions can be overlaid on these shared informational dynamics. It avoids the common conception of perception and action as separate and peripheral to central cognition. Rather, it contributes to the situated cognition movement by showing how mechanisms for perceiving action can be built on those for active perception.;>;>The SCM is developed heuristically, in five layers that can be combined in various ways to frame specific ontogenetic or phylogenetic hypotheses. The starting point is dynamic online motor control, whereby an organism is closely attuned to its embedding environment through sensorimotor feedback. Onto this are layered functions of prediction and simulation of feedback, mirroring, simulation of mirroring, monitored inhibition of motor output, and monitored simulation of input. Finally, monitored simulation of input specifying possible actions plus inhibited mirroring of such possible actions can generate information about the possible as opposed to actual instrumental actions of others, and the possible causes and effects of such possible actions, thereby enabling strategic social deliberation. Multiple instances of such shared circuits structures could be linked into a network permitting decomposition and recombination of elements, enabling flexible control, imitative learning, understanding of other agents, and instrumental and strategic deliberation. While more advanced forms of social cognition, which require tracking multiple others and their multiple possible actions, may depend on interpretative theorizing or language, the SCM shows how layered mechanisms of control, mirroring, and simulation can enable distinctively human cognitive capacities for imitation, deliberation, and mindreading. (shrink)

Imitation, deliberation, and mindreading are characteristically human sociocognitive skills. Research on imitation and its role in social cognition is flourishing across various disciplines; it is here surveyed under headings of behavior, subpersonal mechanisms, and functions of imitation. A model is then advanced within which many of the developments surveyed can be located and explained. The shared circuits model explains how imitation, deliberation, and mindreading can be enabled by subpersonal mechanisms of control, mirroring and simulation. It is (...) cast at a middle, functional level of description, between the level of neural implementation and the level of conscious perceptions and intentional actions. The shared circuits model connects shared informational dynamics for perception and action with shared informational dynamics for self and other, while also showing how the action/perception, self/other and actual/possible distinctions can be overlaid on these shared informational dynamics. It avoids the common conception of perception and action as separate and peripheral to central cognition. Rather, it contributes to the situated cognition movement by showing how mechanisms for perceiving action can be built on those for active perception. (shrink)

To explain social learning without invoking the cognitively complex concept of imitation, many learning mechanisms have been proposed. Borrowing an idea used routinely in cognitive psychology, we argue that most of these alternatives can be subsumed under a single process, priming, in which input increases the activation of stored internal representations. Imitation itself has generally been seen as a This has diverted much research towards the all-or-none question of whether an animal can imitate, with disappointingly inconclusive results. In (...) the great apes, however, voluntary, learned behaviour is organized hierarchically. This means that imitation can occur at various levels, of which we single out two clearly distinct ones: the a rather detailed and linear specification of sequential acts, and the a broader description of subroutine structure and the hierarchical layout of a behavioural Program level imitation is a high-level, constructive mechanism, adapted for the efficient learning of complex skills and thus not evident in the simple manipulations used to test for imitation in the laboratory. As examples, we describe the food-preparation techniques of wild mountain gorillas and the imitative behaviour of orangutans undergoing to the wild. Representing and manipulating relations between objects seems to be one basic building block in their hierarchical programs. There is evidence that great apes suffer from a stricter capacity limit than humans in the hierarchical depth of planning. We re-interpret some chimpanzee behaviour previously described as and suggest that all great apes may be able to imitate at the program level. Action level imitation is seldom observed in great ape skill learning, and may have a largely social role, even in humans. (shrink)