During interaction with computer-based 3-D simulations like virtual reality, users may experience a sense of involvement called presence. Presence is commonly defined as the subjective feeling of "being there". We discuss the state of the art in this inno vative research area and introduce a situated cognition perspective on presence. We argue that presence depends on the proper integration of aspects relevant to an agent's movement and perception, to her actions, and to her conception of the overall situ a tion (...) in which she finds herself, as well as on how these aspects mesh with the possibilities for action afforded in the interaction with the artifact. We also aim at showing that studies of presence offer a test-bed for different theories of situated co gnition.›. (shrink)

We argue that the locomotion of organisms is better understood as a form of interaction with a subjective environment, rather than as a set of behaviors allegedly amenable to objective descriptions. An organism's interactions with its subjective environment are in turn understandable in terms of its cognitive architecture. We propose a large-scale classification of the possible types of cognitive architectures, giving a sketch of the subjective structure that each of them superimposes on space and of the relevant consequences on locomotion. (...) The classification comprises a main division between nonrepresentational and representational architectures and further subdivisions. (shrink)

Presence is commonly defined as the subjective feeling of "being there". It has been mainly conceived of as deriving from immersion, interaction, and social and narrative involvement with suitable technology. We argue that presence depends on a suitable integration of aspects relevant to an agent's movement and perception, to her actions, and to her conception of the overall situation in which she finds herself, as well as on how these aspects mesh with the possibilities for action afforded in the interaction (...) with the virtual environment. (shrink)

When they interact in everyday situations, people constantly create new fragments of social reality: they do so when they make promises or agreements, but also when they submit requests or answer questions, when they greet each other or express gratitude. This type of social reality ‘in the small,’ that we call interpersonal reality, is deontic in nature as all other kinds of social reality; what makes it somewhat special is that its deontology applies to the very same persons who create (...) it through a process of intentional collaboration. Aim of this paper is to show that interpersonal reality can be accounted for in terms of a suitable concept of interpersonal responsibility. To this purpose we first discuss the deontology that is constitutive of interpersonal reality; then we show how such deontology can be entailed by relationships of interpersonal responsibility; and finally we argue that these relationships are created by executing suitable communicative acts, understood as actions performed with a reflexive communicative intention. (shrink)

We understand interpersonal reality as consisting of those social facts that are informally created by people for themselves in everyday interactions, and involve the collective acceptance of positive and negative deontic powers. We submit that, in the case of interpersonal reality, Gilbert’s concept of a joint commitment is a suitable view of what collective acceptance amounts to. We then argue that creating interpersonal reality, even in common everyday-life situations, typically requires conversational exchanges involving several layers of joint commitments, and in (...) particular joint commitments to projects, joint meaning, and the joint commitments that are constitutive of conversations. (shrink)

We focus on Karmiloff-Smith's Representational redescription model, arguing that it poses some problems concerning the architecture of a redescribing system. To discuss the topic, we consider the implicit/explicit dichotomy and the relations between natur al language and the language of thought. We argue that the model regards how knowledge is employed rather than how it is represented in the system.

We compare a number of influential approaches to human communication with the aim of understanding what it means for interpersonal communication to be a form of social action. In particular, we discuss the large-scale social normativity advocated by speech act theory, the view of communication as small-scale social interaction proper of Gricean approaches, and the intimate connection between communication and cooperation defended by Tomasello. We then argue in favor of a small-scale view of communication capable of accounting for the normative (...) effects of communicative acts; to this purpose, we introduce the concept of interpersonal normativity and analyze its relationship with communicative intentions. (shrink)