Open peer commentary on the article “The Autopoiesis of Social Systems and its Criticisms” by Hugo Cadenas & Marcelo Arnold. Upshot: Cadenas and Arnold contribute towards a better understanding of what is at stake in the long debate concerning the applicability of Maturana’s autopoiesis concept to social systems. However, their target article has two shortcomings: it does not provide a deeper understanding of the reasons why Luhmann’s adoption of the autopoiesis concept has proved to be sterile after decades of (...) debate; and their historic account does not integrate recent developments that need to be highlighted to improve interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Social Autopoiesis?” by Hugo Urrestarazu. Upshot: I argue that it is possible to conceptualise the social system as autopoietic if we derive the social from the most important feature of a living being on which his relationship to the environment is based - from consciousness. This approach also allows us to solve Husserl’s problem of intersubjectivity.

Open peer commentary on the article “Social Autopoiesis?” by Hugo Urrestarazu. Upshot: Social autopoiesis does not operate in physical space and cannot be understood by analyzing cause-effect relationships. Social systems are observing systems operating in the space of meaning. Therefore a validation procedure guided by the classic rules for determining autopoietic systems is misleading. However, the target article clarifies a point of great importance for sociological research: the difference between autopoiesis and autonomy (closure.

Open peer commentary on the article “Social Autopoiesis?” by Hugo Urrestarazu. Upshot: The dynamics of expectations in inter-human communications can be modelled as “autopoiesis.” Consciousness and communications couple not only structurally (Maturana), but also penetrate each other reflexively (Luhmann. Reflexivity opens and enriches the model of autopoiesis for further exploration.

Open peer commentary on the article “Social Autopoiesis?” by Hugo Urrestarazu. Upshot: It is argued that to define social systems as non-biological is to deny their intrinsic biological groundedness, which affects their complex system dynamics. In the case of human social systems, the ecological phenomenon of human society should not be confused with human social organizations as cultural artifacts.

Open peer commentary on the article “Social Autopoiesis?” by Hugo Urrestarazu. Upshot: Urrestarazu’s presentation of social autopoiesis is compromised because he fails to take into account that social systems are meaning-constituting systems. The paper briefly comments on Luhmann’s theory of autopoiesis in communication systems, but does not refer extensively to Luhmann’s work. The possibility to establish bridges is thus impaired.

Open peer commentary on the article “Social Autopoiesis?” by Hugo Urrestarazu. Upshot: We agree on the need to explore a concept of social autopoiesis that goes beyond a strictly human-centered concept of social systems as autopoietic communicative systems. But both Hugo Urrestarazu and Niklas Luhmann neglect the importance of semiosis in understanding communication, and this has important implications for the question of a more general approach to social systems.

Open peer commentary on the article “Social Autopoiesis?” by Hugo Urrestarazu. Upshot: Although accepting Urrestarazu’s view of how autopoietic dynamics can be sought in the domain of the non-living, we see no reason to trace the social to autonomy. Rather, we stress that social systems happen all the time: they arise as people coordinate while also using the peculiarities of human languaging.

Open peer commentary on the article “Social Autopoiesis?” by Hugo Urrestarazu. Upshot: Hugo Urrestarazu’s social theoretical concept is reduced to the material reality. These suggestions exclude the essential constructivist character of the social and thereby important social phenomena by definition. The systems theoretical approach by Niklas Luhmann offers an adequate alternative.

Open peer commentary on the article “Social Autopoiesis?” by Hugo Urrestarazu. Upshot: Urrestarazu, basing himself on Maturana and Varela, argues that human society is not autopoietic. This commentary presents a counter-argument, the main point being that freedom is not to be confused with an absence of constraints.

Open peer commentary on the article “Social Autopoiesis?” by Hugo Urrestarazu. Upshot: It is not possible to conceive of social systems as autopoietic systems if one departs from actions. But Luhmann’s theory opts for communication as the basic unit of social systems. The autopoiesis of social systems emerges from communication, triggering further communication.

Open peer commentary on the article “Social Autopoiesis?” by Hugo Urrestarazu. Upshot: In my commentary I reflect on conceptual and epistemological questions. In particular, I challenge the idea of trying to define social systems. I also wonder whether in many cases autopoiesis is carelessly used as a mere synonym for self-organization.

Many fields of study have shown that group discussion generally improves reasoning performance for a wide range of tasks. This article shows that most of the population, including specialists, does not expect group discussion to be as beneficial as it is. Six studies asked participants to solve a standard reasoning problem—the Wason selection task—and to estimate the performance of individuals working alone and in groups. We tested samples of U.S., Indian, and Japanese participants, European managers, and psychologists of reasoning. Every (...) sample underestimated the improvement yielded by group discussion. They did so even after they had been explained the correct answer, or after they had had to solve the problem in groups. These mistaken intuitions could prevent individuals from making the best of institutions that rely on group discussion, from collaborative learning and work teams to deliberative assemblies. (shrink)

Because reasoning allows us to justify our beliefs and evaluate these justifications it is central to folk epistemology. Following Sperber, and contrary to classical views, it will be argued that reasoning evolved not to complement individual cognition but as an argumentative device. This hypothesis is more consistent with the prevalence of the confirmation and disconfirmation biases. It will be suggested that these biases render the individual use of reasoning hazardous, but that when reasoning is used in its natural, argumentative, context (...) they can represent a smart way to divide labor without loosing epistemic value. (shrink)

Coherence plays an important role in psychology. In this article, I suggest that coherence takes two main forms in humans’ cognitive system. The first belong to ‘system 1’. It relies on the degree of coherence between different representations to regulate them, without coherence being represented. By contrast other mechanisms, belonging to system 2, allow humans to represent the degree of coherence between different representations and to draw inferences from it. It is suggested that the mechanisms of explicit coherence evaluation have (...) social functions. They are used as means of epistemic vigilance—to evaluate what other people tell us. They can also be turned inwards to examine the coherence of our own beliefs. Their function is then to minimize the chances that we are perceived as being incoherent. Evidence from different domains of psychology is briefly reviewed in support of these hypotheses. (shrink)

Peng and Nisbett put forward an influential theory of the influence of culture on the resolution of contradiction. They suggested that Easterners deal with contradiction in a dialectical manner, trying to reconcile opposite points of view and seeking a middle-way. Westerners, by contrast, would follow the law of excluded middle, judging one side of the contradiction to be right and the other to be wrong. However, their work has already been questioned, both in terms of replicability and external validity. Here (...) we test alternative interpretations of two of Peng and Nisbett’s experiments and conduct a new test of their theory in a third experiment. Overall, the Eastern and Western participants behaved similarly, failing to exhibit the cross-cultural differences observed by Peng and Nisbett. Several interpretations of these failed replications and this failed new test are suggested. Together with previous failed replications, the present results raise questions about the breadth of Peng and Nisbett’s interpretation of cross-cultural differences in dealing with contradiction. (shrink)

Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence (...) in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. Poor performance in standard reasoning tasks is explained by the lack of argumentative context. When the same problems are placed in a proper argumentative setting, people turn out to be skilled arguers. Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views. This explains the notorious confirmation bias. This bias is apparent not only when people are actually arguing, but also when they are reasoning proactively from the perspective of having to defend their opinions. Reasoning so motivated can distort evaluations and attitudes and allow erroneous beliefs to persist. Proactively used reasoning also favors decisions that are easy to justify but not necessarily better. In all these instances traditionally described as failures or flaws, reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found. (shrink)

In studying how lay people evaluate arguments, psychologists have typically focused on logical form and content. This emphasis has masked an important yet underappreciated aspect of everyday argument evaluation: social cues to argument strength. Here we focus on the ways in which observers evaluate arguments by the reaction they evoke in an audience. This type of evaluation is likely to occur either when people are not privy to the content of the arguments or when they are not expert enough to (...) appropriately evaluate it. Four experiments explore cues that participants might take into account in evaluating arguments from the reaction of the audience. They demonstrate that participants can use audience motivation, expertise, and size as clues to argument quality. By contrast we find no evidence that participants take audience diversity into account. (shrink)

Das über das Bekanntmachen der von David Friedrich Strauss verfassten Glyptotheksepigramme hinauswachsende Buch schildert die Zeitumstände um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts in Süddeutschland und insbesondere in dem unter Ludwig I. aufblühenden München. Es veranschaulicht in exemplarischer Weise das über das eigentliche Fach des Verfassers, die Klassische Archäologie, hinausgehende breite Spektrum seines Schaffens.