In this chapter, I outline dynamic models of motivation and emotion. These turn out not to be autonomous subsystems, but, instead, are deeply integrated in the basic interactive dynamic character of living systems. Motivation is a crucial aspect of particular kinds of interactive systems -- systems for which representation is a sister aspect. Emotion is a special kind of partially reflective interaction process, and yields its own emergent motivational aspects. In addition, the overall model accounts for some of (...) the crucial properties of consciousness. (shrink)

We present a theoretical discussion of the sociological contribution concerning decisions in organizations. Two theories stand. The first, based on the decision process from a critical theory of the traditional linear multi rational by Lucien Sfez, argues that the decision is a process of interactions and treats it as an institutional process based on the freedom of the subject. The second theory based on self-referential systems by Niklas Luhmann, interprets organizations as systems-making, and understands the concept of decision as purely (...) epistemological specificity, abstracted from the decision of all the elements and organizational variables associated with it. Se expone un debate teórico sobre la aportación sociológica referente a las decisiones en las organizaciones. Sobresalen dos teorías de las decisiones. La primera, basada en el proceso de decisión a partir una teoría crítica de la multirracionalidad lineal elaborado por Lucien Sfez, al plantear que con la decisión se trata de un proceso de interacciones, al ser considerada como un proceso institucional fundamentado en la libertad del sujeto. La segunda fundamentada en la teoría de sistemas autorreferenciales, interpreta las organizaciones como sistemas de decisiones y entiende el concepto de decisión en su especificidad puramente epistemológica, al abstraer de la decisión de todos los elementos y variables organizacionales relacionados con ella (Niklas Luhmann). (shrink)

A symmetric monoidal category naturally arises as the mathematical structure that organizes physical systems, processes, and composition thereof, both sequentially and in parallel. This structure admits a purely graphical calculus. This paper is concerned with the encoding of a fixed causal structure within a symmetric monoidal category: causal dependencies will correspond to topological connectedness in the graphical language. We show that correlations, either classical or quantum, force terminality of the tensor unit. We also show that well-definedness of the concept of (...) a global state forces the monoidal product to be only partially defined, which in turn results in a relativistic covariance theorem. Except for these assumptions, at no stage do we assume anything more than purely compositional symmetric-monoidal categorical structure. We cast these two structural results in terms of a mathematical entity, which we call a causal category . We provide methods of constructing causal categories, and we study the consequences of these methods for the general framework of categorical quantum mechanics. (shrink)

In this essay, after first briefly reviewing the literature on experimental philosophy and how and why it is important especially for contemporary analytic philosophy, we focus on two earliest experimental research papers on free will intuitions. We also present psychological mechanisms that try to explain why both philosophers and ordinary people have incompatibilist and compatibilist intuitions and free will and moral responsibility. We then move on to another experimental research on moral intuitions and develop a dual process model based on (...) the model to explain moral intuitions. However, our dual interacting-process model is not intended for moral intuitions but free will intuitions. Finally, we critically examine other mechanism and briefly defend our model. (shrink)

The analysis of video-recorded interaction consists of various professionalized ways of seeing participant behavior through multimodal, co-operative, or intercorporeal lenses. While these perspectives are often adopted simultaneously, each creates a different view of the human body and interaction. Moreover, microanalysis is often produced through local practices of sense-making that involve the researchers’ bodies. It has not been fully elaborated by previous research how adopting these different ways of seeing human behavior influences both what is seen from a video and how (...) it is seen, as well as the way the interpretation of the data ultimately unfolds in the interaction between researchers. In this article, we provide a theoretical-methodological discussion of the microanalytic research process. We explore how it differs from “seeing” affect in interaction either as a co-operative and multimodal action or as an intercorporeal experience. First, we introduce the multimodal conversation analytic, co-operative, and intercorporeal approaches to microanalysis. Second, we apply and compare these practices to a video-recorded interaction of a romantic couple. Furthermore, we examine a video-recorded episode of us, the researchers, reflecting on our analytic observations about this interaction. We suggest that adopting a multimodal and co-operative perspective constructs affect as co-produced and displayed through observable action, while an intercorporeal perspective produces affect as an embodied and experienced phenomenon. While the former enables locating affect in a specific moment and identifiable body parts, the latter facilitates recognizing the experienced side of affect. These different modes of professional vision complement one another in capturing affect in interaction while being fundamentally used in local interactions between the researchers. (shrink)

The purposes of this study are (a) to establish a measurement for evaluating conversational impressions of group discussions, and (b) to make an exploratory investigation on their interactional processes which may affect to form those impressions. The impression rating and factor analysis undertaken first give us four factors concerning conversational impressions of “focus group interviews (FGIs)”: conversational activeness, conversational sequencing, the attitudes of participants and the relationships of participants. In relation to the factors of conversational activeness and conversational sequencing in (...) particular, the microanalysis of four selected topical scenes from our database further shows that the behavior of the moderator and the interviewees is organized not independently but with reference to each other. The study thus emphasizes the importance of the integration of quantitative and qualitative approaches towards human interactions. (shrink)

Suvremena umjetnost izgubila je svoju likovnost, a ostala joj je samo vizualnost. S druge strane, prijelaz od likovne moderne ka nelikovnoj suvremenoj umjetnosti donio je i mnogo novosti; jedna od njih je tzv. ‘probijanje četvrtog zida’. Radi se o kazališnom terminu koji označava trenutak kada se gledatelj na neki način interaktivno uključuje u predstavu, a likovi pokazuju svijest da su likovi u predstavi. Upravo će suvremena umjetnost istraživati postupke brisanja granica između umjetničkog i svakodnevnog čina, sugerirajući kako »sve je umjetnost« (...) i »svaki čovjek je umjetnik«. Novo je doba donijelo otuđenost javnosti od znanosti i umjetnosti, ali i nova filozofska tumačenja medijskog krajolika i hiperrealnosti postmoderne. Hiperrealne postaju i digitalne igre, od kojih se neke temelje upravo na rušenju »četvrtog zida«. Zbunjene reakcije na tehniku rušenja »četvrtog zida« variraju u rasponu od verbalnih reakcija na performance, preko previše doslovnog shvaćanja filmova pa sve do tragičnih nesreća, čak i samoubojstava povezanih s određenim digitalnim igrama. To da stvarnost oponaša hiperstvarnost postalo je uobičajeno, ali otvorilo se i pitanje: može li suvremeni pojedinac s time izaći na kraj? Modern art has lost its artistic character; only its visual aspect remains. On the other hand, the transition from modern fine arts towards non visual contemporary art has brought a great deal of novelties; one of these is “breaking the fourth wall”. This is a theatre term referring to moments when viewers become interactively involved in a play, and the characters become aware that they are characters in a play. Modern art has explored processes by which the border between artistic acts and everyday acts is erased, suggesting that “everything is art” and “every man is an artist”. The new era has caused the public to become alienated from science and the arts, but has also provided new philosophical interpretations of media landscapes and the hypperealism of the post-modern. Digital games are also becoming hyperrealistic, and some of these are founded on demolishing the “fourth wall”. Confused reactions to techniques of breaking the “fourth wall” vary from verbal reactions to a performance and excessively literal perceptions of film to tragic accidents or even suicides connected with particular digital games. Hyperreality mimicking reality has become commonplace, however the question arises: can the modern individual deal with this? (shrink)

During the Nineties, the diffusion of information and communication technologies allowed a dramatic transformation in art practices. Radically new aesthetic experiences, such as tele-presence, immersivity, responsivity, hyper-mediacy and multimediality, emerge in the framework of the digital arts and call into question not only the traditional status of the work of art but also the fundamental relation with the beholder. The aim of this paper is to define a conceptual framework for the ontology of digital arts by identifying some ontological features (...) that are distinctive to digital idioms. Such an analysis tries to outline how aesthetic and technical innovations affect our cognitive and sensorial relationship with technological artifacts. In the first part, the relation between technogenesis and ontology, as well as the key topics of the ontology of digital arts are discussed. The second part deals with the notion of presence. Despite traditional understandings of digital arts, mainly focused on immateriality, simulation and mediation, my analysis demonstrate how the notion of presence can provide an original perspective in order to understand the ontological status of the mediatized artistic practices. In the last three decades the generalisation of information and telecommunication technologies has played a major role in the transformation of the arts, opening the field to important experiments in the domain of computer graphics, digital audio, robotics and motion capture systems… (Dixon 2007). Peculiar forms of aesthetic experience such as tele-presence, immersivity, responsivity, hyper-mediation and multimediality, progressively arise from digital arts and question not only the status of artwork but also, more generally, the foundational relationship between this latter and the recipient. (shrink)

There is interest in more and better interaction between civil society and actors developing nanotechnologies, nano-materials and nano-enabled products: government agencies but also branch organizations in the chemical sector position civil society organizations (CSOs) as ‘voices of civil society’, and invite CSOs to participate in multistakeholder events. In such events, CSOs are expected to articulate societal needs, issues and values so that these can be taken up by actors with institutional roles and mandates to develop and embed newly emerging nanosciences (...) and nanotechnologies (NEST). This article argues that such a division of moral labor between CSOs and nanotechnology actors is not productive to address NEST and its emerging societal issues. There is an assumption that societal issues are ‘out there’ and can be recognized by CSOs, while in fact, societal issues might co-evolve with new development trajectories and thus have to be discovered and articulated. More productive deliberation requires, ideally, overcoming the traditional division of moral labor between these two groups of actors: technology developers should also inquire into and articulate emerging societal issues, and CSOs should inquire into and reflect on actual development trajectories. In order to explore issues and repercussions that arise in such a repositioning, this article will discuss a bottom up experiment of such an interaction between a nanotechnology developer (DuPont) and a CSO (Environmental Defense Fund). Based on the empirical analysis of this bottom up experiment, tentative requirements will be developed for how joint inquiries between technology developers and CSOs can be realized on a larger scale in our society. (shrink)

The paper proposes a process-based model for an ontology that encompasses the emergence of process systems generated by increasingly complex levels of organization. Starting with a division of processes into those that are persistent and those that are fleeting, the model builds through a series of exclusive and exhaustive disjunctions. The crucial distinction is between those persistent and cohesive systems that are energy wells, and those that are far-from-equilibrium. The latter are necessarily open; they can persist only by interaction with (...) their environments. Further distinctions, developed by means of the notions of self-maintenance and error detection, lead to the identification of complex biological organisms that are flexible learners, some of which are self-conscious and form themselves into social institutions. This model provides a non-reductive model for understanding human beings as both embodied and yet emergent. In particular, it provides a way of characterizing action as ‘metaphysically deep’, not an ontological embarrassment within an otherwise physicalist world. (shrink)

This article explicates the interaction between implicit and explicit processes in skill learning, in contrast to the tendency of researchers to study each type in isolation. It highlights various effects of the interaction on learning (including synergy effects). The authors argue for an integrated model of skill learning that takes into account both implicit and explicit processes. Moreover, they argue for a bottom-up approach (first learning implicit knowledge and then explicit knowledge) in the integrated model. A variety of qualitative data (...) can be accounted for by the approach. A computational model, CLARION, is then used to simulate a range of quantitative data. The results demonstrate the plausibility of the model, which provides a new perspective on skill learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

A closer look at the three areas of action in communication permits us to conclude that the discipline faces a serious crisis. First, an epistemological review shows a fragmented body of theories. Secondly, there is a plurality of separate traditions within academia. Third, the professional field is technology-centered and lacks expertise since there is little connection between theory and practice. Our goal is to analyze the three-fold state of the discipline and to propose a conciliatory model. The Interactive Communication (...) Process is based on an interactive process in which a human subsystem, conditioned by his or her psychological and social and cultural state, interacts with another communicative subsystem to elaborate or process a message conveyed through some space in a certain time. (shrink)

Concerning any object of philosophical analysis, we can ask several questions, including the two posed in the title of this paper. Despite difficulties in formulating a precise criterion to distinguish causal processes from pseudoprocesses, and causal interactions from mere spatiotemporal intersections, I argue that Salmon answered the first of these questions with extraordinary clarity. The second question, by contrast, has received very little attention. I will present two problems: in the first, it seems that Salmon has provided exactly the conceptual (...) resources needed to solve the problem; in the second, it is difficult to see how causal processes and interactions may be used to shed any light. In general, the way to carry Salmon's program forward will be to demonstrate that these resources can be made to do real philosophical work. (shrink)

The present study investigates whether quantifier scope is computed incrementally during online sentence processing. We exploited the free word order in German to manipulate whether the verbal predicate preceded or followed the second quantifier in doubly quantified sentences that required the computation of inverse scope. A possessive pronoun in the first quantifier that had to be bound by the second quantifier was used to enforce scope inversion. We tested whether scope inversion causes difficulty and whether this difficulty emerges even (...) at a point before comprehenders have encountered the main verb. We report three pretests and two reading time experiments. The first two pretests were offline tests that established (1) that the sentences exhibited the assumed scope preferences and (2) that variable binding forced scope inversion. The third pretest employed self-paced reading to show that interpreting a bound variable is not difficult per se and that difficulty in the critical construction must thus be due to inverting scope. Incremental processing of quantifier scope was investigated in a self-paced reading experiment. We observed difficulty right after the second quantifier, but only if it appeared after the main verb, that is, after the predication was complete. Further evidence for late scope inversion comes from an eyetracking experiment. Again, a scope inversion effect could only be observed at the end of the sentence. Taken together, our study demonstrates that in German inverse scope is only computed at the sentence boundary. (shrink)

During 'cyclic' historical periods it would be correct to interpret religious processes in terms of interaction of two essentially different, but substantially, structurally and functionally comparative types of integrating cultural complexes that, in historical perspective, compete with each other on the effect on individuals and society in general. Such complexes represent secular and religious culture. Contemporary socio-cultural situation can be defined as an asymmetric representativeness of both secular and religious cultures. In a modern secular society, dominance of a secular culture (...) over a religious one can be manifested in three basic dimensions: substantial, regulative and subjective ones. Secular culture is adopted during the primary socialization process. However, religious culture is still adopted through conscious, voluntary selection in younger or more mature age. It may be possible to determine two basic attitudes of the contemporary man towards religion. The first attitude may be called 'reversive' and the other one 'conversive'. Za 'ciklicne' istorijske periode ispravna je interpretacija religijskih procesa u terminu uzajamnog dejstva dva sustinski razlicita ali sadrzajno, strukturalno i funkcionalno komparativna tipa integrisucih kulturnih kompleksa koji u istorijskoj perspektivi jedan drugom konkurisu u uticaju na pojedinca i drustvo. Takvi kompleksi su svetovna i religiozna kultura. Savremena sociokulturna situacija se moze definisati kao asimetrija reprezentativnosti svetovne i religiozne kulture. Dominacija svetovne nad religioznom kulturom u savremenom sekularizovnom drustvu manifestuje se u tri osnovne dimenzije: predmetnoj, regulativnoj i subjektivnoj. Svetovna kultrura se masovno usvaja u procesu primarne socijalizacije. Religiozna kultura se pak, usvaja samosvesnim, voljnim izborom u mladjem ili starijem uzrastu. Moguce je izdvojiti dva osnovna nacina obracanja savremenog 'sekularizovanog') coveka religiji. Prvi nacin mozemo nazvati 'reverzivnim' a drugi 'konverzivnim'. (shrink)

General Process Theory (GPT) is a new (non-Whiteheadian) process ontology. According to GPT the domains of scientific inquiry and everyday practice consist of configurations of ‘goings-on’ or ‘dynamics’ that can be technically defined as concrete, dynamic, non-particular individuals called general processes. The paper offers a brief introduction to GPT in order to provide ontological foundations for research programs such as interactivism that centrally rely on the notions of ‘process,’ ‘interaction,’ and ‘emergence.’ I begin with an analysis of our common sense (...) concept of activities, which plays a crucial heuristic role in the development of the notion of a general process. General processes are not individuated in terms of their location but in terms of ‘what they do,’ i.e., in terms of their dynamic relationships in the basic sense of one process being part of another. The formal framework of GPT is thus an extensional mereology, albeit a non-classical theory with a non-transitive part-relation. After a brief sketch of basic notions and strategies of the GPT-framework I show how the latter may be applied to distinguish between causal, mechanistic, functional, self-maintaining, and recursively self-maintaining interactions, all of which involve ‘emergent phenomena’ in various senses of the term. (shrink)

Second language listening is a common challenge for language learners. It remains largely unknown how bilinguals process L2 listening. The literature has suggested an interactive model of L2 listening processing. However, few studies have examined the model from an experimental approach. The current study tried to provide empirical evidence for the interactive model of L2 listening processing in bilinguals by exploring the relationships among English spoken word segmentation, cognitive inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and L2 listening proficiency. The (...) results showed positive associations among SWS, cognitive inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and L2 listening proficiency. Mediation analysis suggested that SWS might have a positive influence on L2 listening proficiency both directly and indirectly through cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility, respectively. These results imply that both bottom-up and top-down processes are engaged in bilinguals’ L2 listening processing. (shrink)

The article presents a model of understanding that takes into account interaction, cultural knowledge, and the constraints of organizations and institutions. It analyzes discourse and cognition in high school biology classes and clinical consultations involving discussions of genetics. The analytical lenses of constraint satisfaction, coherence-based reasoning, and collective cognition reveal multilayered social, cultural, and interactional components of authority and agency that influence understanding. The analysis reveals similarities across settings in discourse structure and the ways that participants relate to local constraints. (...) In both types of settings, participants attempt to develop process narratives that present a sequential or causal relationship between information and lead to remembered understandings of concepts. However, the absence of certain process information that links terms or concepts functions like a missing plot point in a story, hindering the development of process narratives and understandings. In order to cover such information gaps, students and patients construct and display grey boxes. In addition to talk and text, these consist of various actions and resources specific to a local discourse framework such as pointing at graphics, tabular information, and symbols. Grey boxes satisfy the organizational constraints of time, resources, and task structure that affect interaction related to understanding concepts and procedures, but their connection to a particular discourse framework restricts the transfer of knowledge between settings. The power of medical practitioners and teachers to enhance or restrict understandings relates to the ways that they accommodate the use of grey boxes during interactions with clients and students. Professional frames of reference that teachers or practitioners apply to task interactions may constrain the ways students or clients apply grey boxes and process narratives. Awareness of the functions of process narratives and grey boxes presents opportunities to modify local discourse frameworks and increase understandings of concepts, medical conditions, and treatment options. (shrink)

This study documents and characterizes a phenomenon in naturally‐occurring conversation which I have termed interactional reconstruction. Interactional reconstruction involves retroactive reinterpretation of an earlier utterance (or set of utterances) on the basis of a more recent utterance (or set of utterances). This work is meant to serve two functions: first, to enrich our theories of human communication; and second, to explore directions and implications for theories of meaning and discourse modeling within cognitive science.

Wesley Salmon has developed a theory of causation which makes use of the concepts of a "causal process" and a "causal interaction." Roughly, a causal process is a process which transmits its own structure, and a causal interaction is an intersection of processes which transforms the character of these processes. The cause-effect relation is analyzed as a causal interaction followed by a causal process which terminates in a further causal interaction. In this paper I present a series of problem cases (...) which run "counter" to Salmon's account. (shrink)

Wesley Salmon in Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World offers a causal account of scientific explanation (Salmon 1984). In this context he develops an analysis of the concept of causality, an analysis which marks a break with various contemporary theories of causation including the Neo-Humean view, counterfactual theory, and manipulability theory. His analysis also goes well beyond the confines of probabilistic accounts such as that developed by Suppes. Salmon attempts to explicate the concept of causation by way (...) of two concepts, that of a causal process and that of a causal interaction, which, he defines with some precision and care. In this paper I will present a series of problem cases which run contrary to Salmon’s line of analysis.In developing his analysis of causation Salmon makes use of the notion of a “process”. (shrink)

This work has two objectives. The first is to begin a mathematical formalism appropriate to treating particles which only interact with each otherindirectly due to hypothesized memory effects in a stochastic medium. More specifically we treat a situation in which a sequence of particles consecutively passes through a region (e.g., a measuring apparatus) in such a way that one particle leaves the region before the next one enters. We want to study a situation in which a particle may interact with (...) other particles that previously passed through the system via disturbances made in the region by these previous particles.Second, we apply the type of stochastic process appearing in this context to the stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics to obtain a modified version of this interpretation. This version is free of many of the criticisms made against the stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Speech comprehension across languages depends on encoding the pitch variations in frequency-modulated sweeps at different timescales and frequency ranges. While timescale and spectral contour of FM sweeps play important roles in differentiating acoustic speech units, relatively little work has been done to understand the interaction between the two acoustic dimensions at early cortical processing. An auditory oddball paradigm was employed to examine the interaction of timescale and pitch contour at pre-attentive processing of FM sweeps. Event-related potentials to frequency (...) sweeps that vary in linguistically relevant pitch contour and timescale in Mandarin Chinese were recorded. Mismatch negativities were elicited by all types of sweep deviants. For local timescale, FM sweeps with F0 contours yielded larger MMN amplitudes than F1 contours. A reversed MMN amplitude pattern was obtained with respect to F0/F1 contours for global timescale stimuli. An interhemispheric asymmetry of MMN topography was observed corresponding to local and global-timescale contours. Falling but not rising frequency difference waveforms sweep contours elicited right hemispheric dominance. Results showed that timescale and pitch contour interacts with each other in pre-attentive auditory processing of FM sweeps. Findings suggest that FM sweeps, a type of non-speech signal, is processed at an early stage with reference to its linguistic function. That the dynamic interaction between timescale and spectral pattern is processed during early cortical processing of non-speech frequency sweep signal may be critical to facilitate speech encoding at a later stage. (shrink)