In this chapter I focus on the relationship between embodied intersubjective interactions and the kind of spaces that shape and are shaped by such interactions. After clarifying some of the theoretical background involved in questions about social cognition, I review several empirical studies that suggest that social interactions and social relations can change our perceptions of the reachable space around us, as well as the more distant space beyond our immediate reach. These perceptions operate within the framework of material culture (...) and impact our experience of space as it is organized by cultural artifacts and practices. In this respect, the analysis provided by Material Engagement Theory helps us understand the role of material arrangements as they define affordances for action and interaction, correlated to transformations from individual body-schematic processes to intercorporeal processes in joint action. These same processes can be carried over into discussions of space and place as experienced on the larger stages of social-cultural activities. (shrink)

The blog is an increasingly familiar newcomer to the panoply of academic genres, offering researchers the opportunity to disseminate their work to new and wider audiences of experts and interested lay people. This digital medium, however, also brings challenges to writers in the form of a relatively unpredictable readership and the potential for immediate, public and potentially hostile criticism. To understand how academics in the social sciences respond to this novel rhetorical situation, we explore how they discoursally recontextualize in blogs (...) the scientific information they have recently published in journal articles. Based on two corpora of 30 blog posts and 30 journal articles with the same authors and topics, we examine the ways researchers carefully reconstruct a different writer persona and relationship with their readers using stance and engagement model. In addition to supporting the view that the academic blog is a hybrid genre situated between academic and journalistic writing, we show how writers’ rhetorical choices help define different rhetorical contexts. (shrink)

Many consumers are motivated to attend Farmers’ Markets because of the opportunity to purchase fresh and local products. The subsequent interactions at FMs provide an important pathway for the direct exchange of information. While previous research suggests that people value local food and the FM shopping experience and that purchasing directly from producers can lead to transformative learning, little is known about exactly how the shopping experience at FMs can influence consumer purchasing behavior. This study examines the extent of and (...) mechanism for such “influencing.” Using data from surveys, observations, and interviews gathered at six FMs, we analyze the interactions between consumers and vendors, including the motivations and values of both parties. We explore the question, “How do farmers’ markets facilitate change in consumer purchasing behavior?” We propose that the dynamic of change in consumer purchasing behavior at FMs takes root in the exchange of information between consumers and vendors during interactions. Our results suggest that there are three specific characteristics shared by FM consumers and vendors that lead to these meaningful interactions at FMs: symmetry of motivations to attend FMs, shared values, and mutual dependence on interactions. Then, when a consumer learns new information from a FM vendor during an interaction, the consumer is more likely to make a change in their immediate purchase. Information about the products for sale and the modes of production of those items can especially impact consumers’ immediate purchases at FMs. We found that FM interactions can also impact long-term purchasing behavior, such as purchasing more organic or locally produced foods. Our results suggest that FM interactions may have significant implications for consumer health, local economies, and the environment. (shrink)

79. This study of the interaction between mechanics and differential geometry does not pretend to be exhaustive. In particular, there is probably more to be said about the mathematical side of the history from Darboux to Ricci and Levi Civita and beyond. Statistical mechanics may also be of interest and there is definitely more to be said about Hertz (I plan to continue in this direction) and about Poincaré's geometric and topological reasonings for example about the three body problem [Poincaré (...) 1890] (cf. also [Poincaré 1993], [Andersson 1994] and [Barrow-Green 1994]). Moreover, it would be interesting to find out how the 19th century ideas discussed here influenced the developments in the 20th century. Einstein himself is a hotly debated case. Yet, despite these shortcommings, I hope that this paper has shown that the interactions between mechanics and differential geometry is not a 20th century invention. Klein's view (see my Introduction) that Riemannian geometry grew out of mechanics, more specifically the principle of least action, cannot be maintained. On the other hand, when Riemannian geometry became known around 1870 it was immediately used in mechanics by Lipschitz. He began a continued tradition in this field, which had several elements in common with the new view of mechanics conceived by the physicists and explicitly carried out by Hertz. Before 1870 we found only scattered interactions between differential geometry and mechanics and only direct ones for systems of two or three degrees of freedom. For more degrees of freedom the geometrical ideas were in some interesting cases taken over by analogy, but these analogies did not lead to formal introduction of geometries of more than three dimensions. (shrink)

Si sorvola spesso sull’“inter” dell’interazione, come se fosse solamente il punto di contatto tra due entità preesistenti, come ad esempio il mittente e il destinatario, o l’utente e il computer. Cosa significherebbe predere sul serio l’“inter” come un campo generativo, che è precondizione di questi punti terminali? Invece di essere concepito come un luogo su cui sorvolare, il presente saggio considera tale “inter” come un “essere tra” che può essere coltivato tramite tecniche di relazione. Il saggio prende in esame diversi (...) esempi di performance collaborativa, produzione d’immagine e creazione di ricerca, inclusi alcuni progetti collaborativi in cui l’autrice è stata coinvolta. Il saggio propone l’idea che le tecniche di relazione, le quali siano tanto rigorose quanto frutto di improvvisazione e attraverso le quali dei nuclei di intensità possano emergere tra tutti gli elementi, rendono all’“essere tra” quanto gli è dovuto. Consentendo a tale relazionalità collaborativa di lunga durata di emergere, l’“essere tra” apre anche nuove modalità espressive per le pratiche artistiche. (shrink)

Peer interaction constitutes a focal site for understanding learning orientations and autonomous learning behaviors. Based on 10 h of video-recorded data collected from small-size conversation-for-learning classes, this study, through the lens of Conversation Analysis, analyzes instances in which L2 learners spontaneously exploit learning opportunities from the on-task public talk and make them relevant for private learning in sequential private peer interaction. The analysis of extended negation-for-meaning practices in peer interaction displays how L2 learners orient to public repair for their learning (...) opportunities in an immediate manner and in so doing, how different participation framework is being utilized to maximize their learning outcomes. As these extended repair practices are entirely managed by learners themselves, they yield both efficient and inefficient learning outcomes. Findings reveal that learners frequently resort to their peers to recycle the focal trouble words for learning opportunities, shifting their participating role from the on looking audience to active learners. By reporting the rather under-researched post-repair negotiation-for-meaning sequence in peer interactions, the study highlights the relevance between on-task classroom activities and private learning, contributing to understanding private learning behaviors in the language classroom and learning as a co-constructed activity locally situated in peer interaction. (shrink)

BackgroundChildhood abuse increases risk for high levels of distress in response to future stressors. Interpersonal social support is protective for health, particularly during stress, and may be particularly beneficial for individuals who experienced childhood abuse.ObjectiveInvestigate whether childhood abuse predicts levels of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and test whether the perceived availability of social companionship preceding the pandemic moderates this relationship.MethodsDuring Phase 1, adults (N= 120; AgeM[SD] = 19.4 [0.94]) completed a retrospective measure of childhood (...) adversity along with a measure of perceived availability of opportunities for social engagement immediately preceding the pandemic. Two weeks after the COVID-19 pandemic declaration, participants completed the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) with respect to the pandemic. Hierarchical linear regression analyses examined the interaction between childhood abuse and the perceived availability of social companionship preceding the pandemic as a predictor of PTSD symptoms.ResultsAdjusting for covariates, the interaction between childhood abuse and perceived availability of others to engage with before the onset of the pandemic was a significant predictor of IES-hyperarousal (β = −0.19,t= −2.06,p= 0.04, ΔR2= 0.032, CI: [−0.31 to −0.01]).ConclusionLevels of perceived opportunities for social companionship before the pandemic associates with levels of hyperarousal related to the pandemic, particularly for individuals who experienced high levels of childhood abuse. More research is needed to understand how to mitigate the higher levels of distress related to the pandemic for these individuals in order to reduce risk for future psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

While it is recognized that instruction between co-workers is a central component of everyday workplace interaction and learning, this study investigates the ways in which such instructional events are practically initiated in interaction. We analyse recordings of everyday work at a radio station, where journalists prepare and broadcast local news. In our data, a distinction can be made between two interactional contexts from which instructional interactions emerge: searches, where one party is looking for a suitable helper; and established interactions, where (...) the initiation of instruction is prefigured by immediate prior interaction. A further finding is that these two contexts are associated with two different ways of initiating instruction. Direct requests are used in established interactions. In searches, we instead find questions regarding the other person’s procedural knowledge – what we term know-how questions. We finally discuss the ways in which instructional configurations are assembled without reference to institutionally defined instructor/instructed roles. (shrink)

Interactomics aims to characterize all interactions formed between molecules that comprise our body. Although it emerged from quantitative biophysics, it has devolved into a predominantly qualitative field of science over the past decades. Due to technical limitations at its onset, almost all tools in interactomics are qualitative, which persists in defining the discipline. Here, we argue that interactomics needs to return to a quantitative direction because the technical achievements of the last decade have overcome the original limitations that forced its (...) current path. In contrast to qualitative interactomics which is constrained to charting lists of observed interactions, quantitative interactomics can also uncover answers to key questions such as the strength of interactions or how many of certain complexes can form in cells, thus providing researchers with more immediate proxies for understanding and predicting biological processes. (shrink)

The primary means for psychotherapy interaction is language. Since talk-in-interaction is accomplished and rendered interpretable by the systematic use of linguistic resources, this study focuses on one of the central issues in psychotherapy, namely agency, and the ways in which linguistic resources, person references in particular, are used for constructing different types of agency in psychotherapy interaction. The study investigates therapists' responses to turns where the client complains about a third party. It focuses on the way therapists' responses distribute experience (...) and agency between the therapist and the client by comparing responses formulated with the zero-person to responses formulated with a second person singular pronoun that refers to the client. The study thus approaches agency as situated, dynamic and interactional: an agent is a social unit whose elements are distributed in the therapist-client interaction. The data consist of 70 audio-recorded sessions of cognitive psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, and the method of analysis is conversation analysis and interactional linguistics. The main findings are that therapists use the zero-person for two types of responses: affiliating and empathetic responses that distribute the emotional experience between the client and the therapist, and responses that invite clients to interpret their own experiences, thereby distributing control and responsibility to the clients. In contrast, the second person references are used for re-constructing the client's past history. The conclusion is that therapists use the zero-person for both immediate emotional work and interpretative co-work on the client's experiences. The study suggests that therapists' use of the zero-person does not necessarily attribute “weak agency” to the client but instead might strengthen the clients' agency in the sense of control and responsibility in the long term. (shrink)

Background: Heart rate variability (HRV) has been considered as a measure of heart-brain interaction and autonomic modulation, and it is modified by cognitive and attentional tasks. In cognitive tasks, HRV was reduced in participants who achieved worse results. This could indicate the possibility of HRV predicting cognitive performance, but this association is still unclear in a high cognitive load sport such as chess Objective: To analyse modifications on HRV and subjective perception of stress, difficulty and complexity in different chess problem (...) tasks. Design: HRV was assessed at baseline. During the chess problems, HRV was also monitored, and immediately after chess problems the subjective stress, difficulty and complexity were also registered. Method: A total of 16 male chess players, age: 35.19 (13.44) and ELO: 1927.69 (167.78) were analysed while six chess problem solving tasks with different level of difficulty were conducted (two low level, two medium level and two high level chess problems). Participants were classified according to their results into two groups: high performance or low performance. Results: Friedman test showed a significant effect of tasks in HRV indexes and perceived difficulty, stress and complexity in both high and low performance groups. A decrease in HRV was observed in both groups when chess problems difficulty increased. In addition, HRV was significantly higher in the high performance group than in the low performance group during chess problems. Conclusions: An increase in autonomic modulation was observed to meet the cognitive demands of the problems, being higher while the difficulty of the tasks increased. Non-linear HRV indexes seem to be more reactive to tasks difficulty, being an interesting and useful tool in chess training. (shrink)

In this article, the methodological meaning of listening will be explored as an ethical-existential heeding. Grounded in an understanding of listening as a matter of heeding, I present a framework founded on Martin Buber’s dialogical philosophy entitled Calling and Responding, in which human being’s relation to the world is conceptualised as a process of paying heed to a summons from the Other – followed by a responsible response to that summons – and in turn calling the Other. Such an understanding (...) of the interactions in-between self and the Other is based on the premise that one has an auditory disposition when perceiving and dealing with the world. I elaborate the Buberian foundation of the concepts comprising the framework, clarify the method of philosophical conceptualisation, and present practical examples from the context of pedagogical relations. (shrink)

The experienced qualities of memories of factual and fictional events have been little researched previously. The few studies that exist find no or few differences. However, one reason to expect differences in memory qualities is that processing of fact and fiction seem to involve activation of different brain areas. The present study expands earlier research by including a wider range of memory qualities, using positive and negative events, and three time-points: immediately after, after a ten-minute delay and after a five-week (...) delay. Participants (N = 52) read four short stories in English, labelled either fact or fiction, and rated memory qualities on 7-point scales. Results show no differences; however, an interaction was found between fictionality and story emotional valence, in that memories of negative fictional stories are rated as more clear. The higher clarity can be explained by previous findings that negative events from stories are in general remembered in more detail, in combination with the idea that fiction entails simulation to a higher degree than fact. The conclusion is that although a difference in memory qualities between fact and fiction was found in one case, memory qualities seem not to play an operative role when the memory system distinguishes fact from fiction. (shrink)

The present study sought to clarify the impact of executive and social functioning on challenging behavior and the downstream influence of challenging behavior on quality of life and functioning in a large transdiagnostic sample. Understanding these relationships is crucial for developing and designing tailored intervention strategies. In a cross-sectional study, parent informants of 2,004 children completed measures of executive and social functioning, challenging behavior, child and family quality of life, and reported on functional impacts of challenging behavior. Using structural (path) (...) modeling, analyses evaluated the associations between executive and social functioning, including emotion regulation and risk avoidance, with overall and specific types of challenging behavior. Structural models also examined the influence of challenging behavior on child and family quality of life, including measures of the immediate and extended environment, and functional impacts on the parent/child as well as interactions with the medical/legal systems. Finally, mediational models explored the direct and indirect effects of executive and social functioning on quality of life and impact measures via challenging behavior. Results indicated that executive functioning accounts for substantial variance (R2 = 0.47) in challenging behavior. In turn, challenging behavior accounts for substantial variance in child and family quality of life (R2 = 0.36) and parent/child impacts (R2 = 0.31). Exploratory mediational models identified direct effects from executive and social functioning measures on quality of life and functional impacts and indirect effects for executive functioning via challenging behavior. These findings support the development of new intervention strategies and suggest the need to measure executive functioning when assessing and tailoring the treatment of challenging behavior in clinical practice. (shrink)

Interactive social cognition theory and approaches of developmental psychology widely agree that central aspects of emotional and social experience arise in the unfolding of processes of embodied social interaction. Bi-directional dynamical couplings of bodily displays such as facial expressions, gestures, and vocalizations have repeatedly been described in terms of coordination, synchrony, mimesis, or attunement. In this paper, I propose conceptualizing such dynamics rather as processes of affective resonance. Starting from the immediate phenomenal experience of being immersed in interaction, I develop (...) the philosophical notion of affective resonance to refer to a dynamic entanglement of moving and being-moved in relation. The concept of affective resonance makes visible that the interaction dynamic itself creates an affective experience rather than transmitting internal feeling states between pre-existent individuals. This leads to a philosophical framework in which relationality and ontogeny are primary over separate individuals, and in which the naturalistic distinction of a fundamental physical level versus an emerging level of social processes has to be given up. (shrink)

The city of Manado and province of North Sulawesi have built a public identity based on religious harmony, claiming to successfully model tolerance and inter-religious relations for the rest of Indonesia. Yet, in discourses and practices relevant to everyday interactions in schools and political debates in the public sphere, two primary contested frames for belonging emerge in tension with one another. On the one hand, "aspirational coexistence" recognizes a common goal of working toward religious harmony and inclusive belonging. On the (...) other hand, "majoritarian coexistence," in which the legitimacy of religious minorities is understood as guaranteed exclusively by the goodwill of the Protestant majority, also emerges in discourses and practices of coexistence. These two agonistic frames of coexistence stem from both a real pride at having staved off ethno-religious violence that plagued surrounding regions at the turn of the twenty-first century, as well as a concern about whether the area will maintain a Christian majority in the future. Based on ethnographic research in Manado, North Sulawesi, a Protestant-majority region of Indonesia, Ethics of Belonging investigates the dynamics of ethical deliberation about religious coexistence. In this analysis, schools are understood as central sites for exchange about the ethics and politics of belonging in the nation. The author draws on in-depth fieldwork at three secondary schools (a public high school, private Catholic boarding school, and public madrasah), an inter-religious "exchange" program among university students, and societal debates about religion and belonging. Each of the schools promotes a distinct method to addressing diversity and a particular understanding of the relationship between religious and civic values. Larson's research demonstrates how ethical frameworks for approaching religious difference are channeled and negotiated through educational institutions, linking up with their broader political context and debates in the community. This resource argues for a consideration of ethical reflection as a fundamentally pedagogical process, with important ramifications beyond the immediate environment. The focus on educational institutions provides a critical connection between interpersonal and public ethical deliberation, elucidating the entanglements of ethics and politics and their manifestation across different societal scales. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to shed light on the threats that young people living in refugee camps face in their use of Facebook. While social media enable a participatory process of communication (Russo et al., 2008), which is based on the agency of the communicator and defined by their own cultural and moral goals (Lee et al., 2023), these platforms can at times be inappropriately pursued if the communicator lacks relevant skills. The outcome of such a pursuit can also inadvertently (...) damage social cohesion in the camp and lead to conflict. Design/methodology/approach A total of 17 semi-structured interviews were carried out in 2023 with young people between the ages of 20 and 29 living in Kakuma refugee camp. The young refugees were asked questions related to their own behaviour and practices on Facebook and to those of their peers. The focus was specifically on the context of the interactions with other youth in Kakuma and on the camp’s Facebook groups or pages. Findings Findings reveal that limited knowledge, understanding and awareness of the functioning and affordances of social media platforms such as Facebook are leading young refugees towards multiple risks involved in public online interactions. This has significant negative impacts not only on the lives of the youth who are active on social media in the camp but also on the relationships with their peers and overall community harmony. Originality/value A number of studies have identified some of the dangers arising for refugees operating in online spaces, and particularly on social media platforms (see, for example, Tech Transparency Project, 2022; Dekker et al., 2018). Yet, there is a lack of research on the outcomes that young refugees face in their immediate virtual and physical environment as a result of their online behaviour. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to bring to light the nature of the interactions and the dynamics that young, encamped refugees engage in on Facebook and to offer useful reflections that can inform digital literacy efforts carried out by development agencies. (shrink)

Principles of constructivism are used here to explore how organisms develop tools, subagents, scaffolds, signs, and adaptations. Here I discuss reasons why organisms have composite nature and include diverse subagents that interact in partially cooperating and partially conflicting ways. Such modularity is necessary for efficient and robust functionality, including mutual construction and adaptability at various time scales. Subagents interact via material and semiotic relations, some of which force or prescribe actions of partners. Other interactions, which I call “guiding”, do not (...) have immediate effects and do not disrupt the evolution and learning capacity of partner agents. However, they modify the extent of learning and evolutionary possibilities of partners via establishment of scaffolds and constraints. As a result, subagents construct reciprocal scaffolding for each other to rebalance their communal evolution and learning. As an example, I discuss guiding interactions between the body and mind of animals, where the pain system adjusts mind-based learning to the physical and physiological constraints of the body. Reciprocal effects of mind and behaviors on the development and evolution of the body includes the effects of Lamarck and Baldwin. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Distant Encounters:The Prometheus and Phaethon Episodes in the Argonautica of Apollonius RhodiusCalvin S. ByreOn several occasions in Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica, the Argonauts casually encounter figures from other myths or from the divine world. These incidents do not affect the further development of the plot, and there is typically no communication or interaction between the two parties of the encounter.1 Thematic and structural parallels suggest that two of these encounters (...) form a pair. Both concern the punishments inflicted upon a mythological figure by Zeus, and by their placement they serve as a sort of frame around the Colchian portion of the poem. The first occurs in 2.124659, when the Argonauts sail within view of the crags of the Caucasus as they draw near to Colchis. There, they catch sight of the eagle that torments Prometheus, and they hear the Titan's cries of agony. The second occurs in 4.596626, shortly after Jason and Medea, in possession of the Golden Fleece, have killed her brother Apsyrtus in order to free the Argonauts from pursuit by him. Sailing on the river Eridanus, the Argonauts come near the place where nauseous vapors emanate from the smoldering body of Phaethon, who had been blasted from the chariot of Helios by a thunderbolt and had fallen into the outfall of a nearby lake.Guido Paduano has recently sought to explain the rather haunting effect of the Prometheus and Phaethon episodes as the result of the suspension of the fixed regularity of the temporal framework within which most of the events of the Argonautic expedition take place: the Argonauts confront a distant, mythic past that impinges upon the present, and experience something of the perdurability of the mythic figures' pain and suffering ("Apparenze" 166-69). But Paduano does not take into account the poet's handling of point of view in these episodes: the systematic contrasts between the information that the narrator gives his audience about the scenes and what the Argonauts themselves perceive and know about them. These contrasts, I believe, are central to our understanding of the effect of the two episodes. [End Page 275]The Prometheus episode, as Hermann Fränkel observed (Noten 318), is presented from two alternating points of view. In the more precise terms of contemporary narratology, there are alternating "focalizers" in the episode.2 Lines 124647 are a case of what de Jong (Narrators 102-18) would call "explicit embedded focalization": the narrator tells us that the Argonauts themselves see the inmost part of the Black Sea and the steep crags of the Caucasus come into view. Lines 124850 are focalized by the narrator: in an authorial comment apropos of the Caucasus, he tells how Prometheus, bound there with bronze fetters, feeds an eagle with his liver. Lines 125153 are again focalized by the Argonauts, telling how they see () the eagle flying above the ship, near the clouds, making the sails flap by its passage. Lines 125455 are, in Fränkel's analysis, focalized by the narrator, who attempts to explain the fact that the eagle, high aloft, is able to move the sails of the ship; while lines 125659 return to focalization by the Argonauts, telling how they soon afterwards hear () the groans and lamentations of Prometheus as his liver is plucked, until they again perceive () the eagle returning from the mountain by the same way.There is nothing in the text to suggest that the Argonauts see Prometheus himself, nor that they can connect the cries and the eagle with him. Of the reactions of the Argonauts to what they see and hear we are told nothing. It may be, however, that lines 125455 do contain a hint of the thoughts and feelings aroused in the Argonauts: "for it did not have the nature of a bird of the air, but it moved the quillfeathers of its wings like wellpolished oars" ( [End Page 276] ).3 In the immediate context of the narrator's explicit report of the Argonauts' visual perceptions of the eagle in 125153, the comparison of the bird to a ship may be read as a case of what de Jong calls "assimilated" focalization; that is, the narrator may be... (shrink)

In this paper I draw apart two different contexts of Freirean pedagogical practice that I label interactional and institutional. The interactional refers to the immediate learning environment with relation to the interaction between the students and the teacher. In contrast, the institutional refers to how the institutions of education are managed, constructed, and organised and how they relate to the individuals those institutions are composed of. I begin by presenting a brief overview of Freire’s argument in favour of a revolutionary (...) pedagogy. I then highlight how this project is represented at both interactional and institutional levels with a particular focus upon the practice of the revolutionary leaders and their role in the development of the humanisation of the oppressed. In presenting the interactional and institutional elements of Freire’s pedagogy separately the tension between the individual and the state is made plain and the limitations of his politico-educational project are drawn out. I argue that due to an inconsistent application of the relationship between means and ends in Freire’s politico-educational project an incoherence between the interactional and institutional levels of education is highlighted. In responding to this limitation of Freire’s politico-educational project with a thoroughly interconnected relationship of means and ends I show that there remains a necessary conflict between the interests of the individual and the state. As a result of this a door is opened for the development of an argument in favour of the disestablishment of education and state from a Freirean perspective. (shrink)

In the postmodern era, European political philosophy has introduced several concepts. These concepts have ideologically prepared Western countries for decentralization reform. Being still “in process”, reflection on the proper structure of postmodern society is marked by ambiguous and often contradictory ideas. The very view on the state as a de-hierarchical, rhizomorphic and horizontal phenomenon presupposes numerous ways of reforming it. Throughout their histories, European countries have shifted from confrontations, hostilities and rivalries towards new mechanisms of fruitful relationships between civil society (...) and state institutions. Nowadays, many aspects are influencing the elaboration and implementation of strategies on civil society development in different countries. These aspects include the following: different starting conditions; the presence or absence of basic principles of public space development; the possibility of fulfilling civic practices’ potential; the level of political participation. West European countries have managed to create a viable structure to support the development of civil society, as well as maintain a stable dialogue between it and the state. However, the process is still on: effective practices of interaction between them are being developed; conditions for more effective cooperation are being improved; new financial instruments are being created and implemented. All Central and East European countries have a common understanding of civil society as one of the most important actors in developing cooperation with the government. At the same time, they should be able to solve existing essential problems, such as low awareness about global development problems and the population’s unreadiness to meet the immediate objectives of civil society development. (shrink)

According to the neo-Kantian and cultural anthropologist Ernst Cassirer, man always interacts with nature. This assumption forms the basis for his philosophical approach to the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms of 1929. It is based on the thesis that we do not conceive nature as objects (‘Ding-Wahrnehmung’), but immediately feel and suffer nature through the so-called ‘perception of expression’ (‘Ausdrucks-Wahrnehmung’). Thus, our understanding of the world is based on interaction with nature, because feeling and suffering depend on something we feel and (...) suffer about. In conclusion, Cassirer developed already a theory of Enaktivismus, embodiment, and respectively to modern film theories of immersion. The thesis of the following paper is based on these findings of Cassirer and states that that there is no dichotomy between nature and man. (shrink)

In this manuscript, we introduce a theoretical model of climate radicalization that integrates social psychological theories of perceived unfairness with historical insights on radicalization to contribute to the knowledge of individuals’ processes of radicalization and non-radicalization in relation to climate change. We define climate radicalization as a process of growing willingness to pursue and/or support radical changes in society that are in conflict with or could pose a threat to the status quo or democratic legal order to reach climate goals. (...) We describe how perceptions of unfairness can play a pivotal role in processes of climate change related radicalization. Without taking any position or judgment regarding climate concerns and associated actions, we suggest that although these behaviors drive many people to participate in peaceful climate protest, they may also lead others to radicalize into breaking the law to achieve their climate goals, possibly in violent ways. This process of climate radicalization, we argue, can be driven by people perceiving certain situations to be blatantly unfair. Specifically, we discuss how radical attitudes and behaviors can be products of perceived unfairness stemming from the past, the future, the immediate social environments of perceivers, as well as those that are spatially distant from them. We further argue that because radicalization processes are shaped by an interaction between individuals and movements, on the one hand, and societal actors and developments, on the other, they tend to develop in non-linear and dynamic ways. We therefore propose that climate radicalization is a dynamic, contingent, and non-linear process, often of an escalating kind, that develops over time, through various interactions between individuals and their contexts, and in which people and groups move back and forth from peaceful protest, through disobedient and unlawful methods, to violent actions. Implications, strengths, and limitations of our model are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17.1 (2003) 73-75 [Access article in PDF] Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics. Sonia Kruks. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001. Pp. xii + 200. $35.00 h.c. 0-8014-3387-8; $16.95 pbk. 0-8014-8417-0. Sonia Kruks' latest book, Retrieving Experience, is a valuable contribution to ongoing debates about the relevance of feminist philosophy in a period of relative political quietism. It also offers timely (...) reminders of historical continuities between phenomenological and postmodern conceptions of subjectivity and political engagement. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Fanon, and the later Sartre, Kruks proposes to "explore women's embodied experiences" and to "ask whether they might not offer some means to help build affective bonds among women who are in many ways radically different from one another" (6). The book approaches this task by means of two secondary issues. First, should feminist thought be oriented by phenomenological or postmodernist theoretical strategies? Second, can women's embodied experience be the conceptual basis for political and epistemological practices that avoid the pitfalls of "identity politics" or an "epistemology of provenance"? The answer to both questions comes through the notion of praxis developed in Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason. By thinking of embodiment as praxis or work, a strategy implicit in Beauvoir's idea that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." Kruks seeks to resolve the ethical affront of finding one's individuality reduced to the "generality" of a collective—the ethical affront to which feminists of various generations and theoretical persuasions must respond.Retrieving Experience explores the significance of recognition as a political norm. Identifying Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew as a pivotal work in the history of identitarian theorizing, she situates recent appeals for race- and gender-based political mobilization in the United States with respect to the dialectical relationship between the Look, shame, and recognition existentialists observed in situations of anti-Semitic and colonial domination during and immediately after the Second World War. Legitimating knowledge gained under oppressive conditions formed an important element of African, Southeast Asian, and ultimately African-American and feminist resistance to cultural imperialism. However, Kruks warns, discourses of "recognition" risk placing the blame for group domination on individuals' face-to-face interactions while concealing the role of state and economic institutions in enabling social disdain to systematically damage a group's quality of life. Moreover, they suggest that the experience of subjugation alone justifies knowledge claims or counts, without further elaboration, as an act of political engagement. Kruks argues that knowers and actors need to identify conceptual and practical mediations enabling individual interactions, experiences, and strategies to prompt the recognition and transformation of [End Page 73] group situations. Sartre's notion of praxis, she suggests, explains how an individual can participate in a collectivity while acting autonomously or acquiescing to subjection.The most important passages in Retrieving Experience examine the affective aspects of the decision to take up a political identity or engage in political action. Going beyond Sartre's account of mediations, Kruks suggests that the sensory and emotional qualities of embodiment are themselves mediators, the products of praxis as well as its vehicles. Since any act of social knowledge involves the emotions, affect plays an important role in the process whereby individuals from different cultural, economic, and bodily situations learn about and shape one another's' environment through the act of knowledge. Individuals, then, may have a moral responsibility to learn about others in a way that gives them "sympathetic bodies." Drawing on Maria Lugones' social epistemology, Kruks argues that "world-traveling" or existing simultaneously in several communities or sets of power relations is a bodily act, but also a fully cultural, ethical act rather than a natural way of being. One is not born, but becomes, an embodied knower. Understanding female embodiment as a kind of work or "world-traveling" praxis enables feminist solidarity—"respectful recognition" to replace a historically implausible "sisterhood" or a distinct epistemological perspective as a regulative ideal for feminist politics.But how far can the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 491-533 [Access article in PDF] Worthy Constraints in Albertus Magnus's Theory of Action Colleen McCluskey Many medieval accounts of action focus upon the interaction between intellect and will in order to explain how human action comes about. What moves agents to act are their desires for certain goals, their deliberations about their goals, and what it will take to accomplish those (...) goals and satisfy their desires. Thus, many medieval philosophers explain human action by referring to the operations of intellect or reason, which accounts for the deliberative aspect, and the will, which accounts for the desiderative aspect. This is not to say that medieval accounts ignored other influences on action such as passions or sensory desires, but that they tended to focus on the intellect and the will. The account of action developed by Albert the Great early in his career is a notable variation on this basic model. 1 Albert examined the nature of action in a number of texts written over the course of his long career, including De homine, De anima, and his commentaries on the Sentences and Nicomachean Ethics. In De homine, which is an early work, he agrees that intellect and will play important roles in the execution of action, but he argues that both the performance of an action and its freedom involve a third capacity that he calls "liberum arbitrium." Albert modified his views of action significantly in his later works, but I shall argue that this early view retains something of philosophical interest and importance.In the medieval philosophical tradition of the Latin West, beginning with Augustine in the fourth and fifth centuries and continuing well into the thirteenth century, philosophers used the term "liberum arbitrium," often translated [End Page 491] as "free choice" or "free decision," as a technical term for that power or capacity in virtue of which human beings act freely. 2 In the first half of the thirteenth century, many philosophers identified liberum arbitrium either with the will, or with both intellect and will. In De homine, Albert insists that it is a separate capacity. According to his account, liberum arbitrium is the human capacity for choice and also helps to explain the freedom of those choices. Although Albert ultimately characterizes an act of choosing as an inclination in favor of a particular course of action, a certain cognitive ability plays an important role in his account. Part of what makes human freedom possible is the ability to judge secundum rationem honesti. Literally this phrase means "in accordance with the concept of what has worth." I shall argue that this capacity consists of the ability to evaluate choices in light of one's immediate, intermediate, or ultimate objectives and to forgo lesser goods for the sake of a greater good. It would appear that an ability of this sort is a function of the intellect, since judgments about how to accomplish one's goals and which goods are the better ones require the exercise of certain abstract cognitive skills. But Albert holds that the intellect is determined and concludes that while the intellect is a necessary condition for free action, the constraints placed upon it prevent it from contributing substantially to the freedom of an action. Since the ability to judge secundum rationem honesti plays an integral role in bringing about a free action, Albert cannot argue that this ability is a function of the intellect. Although the will has the requisite freedom, it is an appetitive capacity, not a cognitive one. Therefore, it too is unable to fulfill this role. Given these commitments, it would seem natural for Albert to locate this ability in an independent power.As natural as it may appear, this position is bound to strike many philosophers as implausible and unnecessary. One could argue that the constraints placed upon the intellect need not restrict it in any significant way. I do not plan to defend Albert's account against this objection. Rather, first, I shall [End Page 492] examine Albert's view of... (shrink)

In this article, I respond to important questions raised by Gallagher and Jacobson in the field of cognitive science about face-to-face interactions in Heidegger’s account of ‘intersubjectivity’ in Being and Time. They have criticized his account for a lack of attention to primary intersubjectivity, or immediate, face-to-face interactions; he favours, they argue, embodied interactions via objects. I argue that the same assumption underlies their argument as did earlier critiques of a lack of an account of the body in Heidegger ; (...) namely that because the body is not explicitly discussed in Being and Time, embodiment, rather than stressing the immediacy of experience, is insufficiently acknowledged in his emphasis on ‘being-in-the-world’. Through placing Gallagher and Jacobson’s accounts of intersubjectivity and the body alongside Heidegger’s accounts of Mitsein and Leib, this article shows Heidegger’s radical position on the body as immersed in a holistic environment, and its reverberations on his account of intersubjectivity. I argue that Dasein’s embodied engagement in the world is always one of immediacy and that the body of the other is perceived as ‘tied into’ its context, as well. In so doing, I offer an Heideggerian account of ecstatic involvement which moves away from the distinction between primary and secondary intersubjectivity toward an immediate engagement with objects and people always already ‘tied into’ a context; an account that, through the concept of Fürsorge, includes shifts of attention between objects and people that allow for the ethical distinctions Gallagher and Jacobson are looking for. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 59-79 [Access article in PDF] Money and Sovereignty in Early Modern France Jotham Parsons [The mint official] must above all seek integrity in the moneys, on which our features are imprinted and on which the general good depends. For what would be safe if our image were offended, and if that which a subject ought to venerate in his heart were (...) immediately violated by a sacrilegious hand? 1Early modern French commentators on money and monetary policy were fond of quoting this very late antique chancery formula; 2 it even appears in the epigraph to one unpublished commonplace book on the subject from the early seventeenth century. 3 Its popularity was no doubt due partly to the fact that classical literature contained few other theoretical statements on the practicalities of issuing money. 4 It also showed how deeply classical humanism had shaped economic thought, as it had done to all of French political culture. This was apparent as early as 1514 in Guillaume Budé's scholarly classic, De Asse et partibus ejus. 5 By 1600 these influences had ensconced themselves so firmly that economic writers found it nearly impossible to talk about money without a [End Page 59] full panoply of classical erudition. 6 In France the second half of the sixteenth century saw the rise of a specialized, expert, and increasingly systematic tradition of monetary thought. Despite its classical vocabulary, this economic literature was in many ways "modern" in its methods, ambitions, and subject. While developing an account which aspired to a scientific explanation of commercial society and of how government and money interacted, the French commentators came to a partial realization of how radically their own society differed from those which had gone before. In this respect the prevailing climate of thought about money influenced even a writer as non-technical as Michel de Montaigne.Traditionally, scholarly treatment of early modern French economic texts has focused on a relatively small range of issues and authors. One such issue, the origins of the "quantity theory of money" (with Jean Bodin as its hero), is notable for its sterility, since that concept was not and could not have been meaningful to contemporaries. 7 The origin and development of "mercantilism" or, more broadly, of "political economy" in general, has proven a more fruitful subject of inquiry. 8 Undeniably, the changing relationships among governments, merchants, and the economy were a major public issue and, in the seventeenth century, a major site of theoretical reflection on the nature of political power generally. Even so, an excessive concentration on mercantilism is dangerous, for however one defines it, it was not the first, and for a long time not the most significant, economic discourse in France. Rather, from the 1560s well into the seventeenth century, French discussions of economic issues centered on very concrete problems brought about by the government's obligation to issue and maintain a stable currency. 9 While one would search this literature in vain for the specific doctrines of modern economics, I argue that it did represent a real achievement in the early modern understanding of commerce and the state. Though they have not received their due from scholars, the writers who took part in these debates formed a large and influential school with close ties to the actual institutions of government. 10 The French monetary theorists did an enormous amount [End Page 60] to set the stage for the mercantilist era. They developed a detailed notion of monetary economics as a specialized discipline, and above all they placed money and economic policy in the context of a multi-national system of commercial states. In so doing, they sought to comprehend and control not just money but the modern state itself.Early modern money was perched uncomfortably between commodity and fiat. Bewildering varieties of coins circulated, composed of all sorts of alloys. The government assigned a face value for each coin which it authorized to circulate in the abstract accounting unit called the "money of account." 11 This value was almost always greater than... (shrink)

How does understanding occur in encounters of living beings? What is experienced by the interaction partners and what happens in the ‘In-Between’? And how can this be captured? In this paper an enactive approach to interaction is proposed with the focus on reciprocal inter-corporeal attunement and co-creation of meaning in a specific environment. As alternative framework this approach is applied to the interaction of d/Deaf persons and animals. In the interaction with an animal, verbal communication – which is challenging for (...) d/Deaf persons – is of secondary importance, so this frame is well suited to focus on intercorporeal attunement. In the interaction discourse regarding d/Deaf persons as well as Human-Animal-Interaction the assessment of the interaction process as such and embodied research methodologies are scarcely to be found. With the enactive approach new perspectives on the mechanisms of interaction and the influencing conditions can be opened as well as new approaches to respective research options. (shrink)

Alexithymia, psychological distress, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are highly related constructs. The ongoing debate about the nature and relationship between these constructs is perpetuated by an overreliance on cross-sectional research. We examined the longitudinal interactive relationship between alexithymia, psychological distress, and PTSD. We hypothesised that there is an interactive relationship between the three constructs. Military personnel (N = 1871) completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, the Kessler 10 and a PTSD Checklist (PCL-C) at pre-deployment, post-deployment, and at 3–4 years following (...) the post-deployment assessment. We initially tested whether psychological distress is either a moderator or mediator in the relationship between alexithymia and PTSD across the time points. General psychological distress was a partial mediator of total PTSD severity and hyperarousal symptomology at all three time points. Psychological distress fully mediated re-experiencing and avoidance symptomology at all three time points. Our results suggest that those with alexithymia are at longitudinal risk of developing more severe PTSD symptomology and experiencing hyperarousal irrespective of temporal proximity to traumatic exposure. Further, vulnerability to the emergence of re-experiencing and avoidance symptomology for those with alexithymia is increased when one experiences greater distress. Our results show that alexithymia is a persistent risk factor for PTSD symptomology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy by Tobias HoffmannNicholas OgleFree Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy by Tobias Hoffmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), xiv + 292 pp.Modern readers are often perplexed by the frequency and rigor with which angels are discussed in medieval philosophical texts. To the untrained eye, it may seem as if debates concerning the various properties and abilities of (...) purely spiritual beings are the epitome of Scholastic extravagance, which can be safely disregarded—if not outright ridiculed—as a fanciful diversion from more essential philosophical concerns. The truth, of course, is that angelological reflection gave rise to some of the most original philosophical ideas of the Middle Ages, from Anselm's two affectiones of the will to Aquinas's "real distinction" between essence and existence. Far from being an idiosyncratic theological addendum to an already complete philosophical system, consideration of the angelic nature was in fact a central component of medieval philosophy, without which certain crucial metaphysical and psychological insights might not have occurred. This often-neglected truth is given detailed expression in Tobias Hoffmann's Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy, which explores how philosophical investigation into the fall of the angels—that is, the hypothesis of an evil choice made by rational beings under optimal psychological conditions—helped bring about significant advances in medieval debates about free will. Focusing on the century immediately following the reception of Aristotle's action theory in the Latin West (from roughly the 1220s to the 1320s), Hoffmann examines how theological claims regarding angelic sin influenced medieval thinkers as they sought to reconcile the intellectualism of Aristotelian moral psychology with their understanding of free will as the power to choose between alternatives.This period is particularly deserving of study, Hoffmann argues, because it was then that the existence of free will first began to be "investigated within a philosophical account of action," rather than merely asserted on theological grounds as a necessary corollary of the doctrines of grace and sin (1). Consequently, theological anthropology took what Hoffmann calls a "psychological turn," with theologians newly determined to explain rational agency in terms of the interaction between different powers of the soul. In Hoffmann's estimation, the subsequent debates over the respective roles of intellect and will in the process of decision-making, as well as the relation between faulty cognition and voluntary wrongdoing, gave rise to some of the most innovative theories of free will in the later Middle Ages—including not only those of celebrated thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, but also those of lesser-known luminaries such as [End Page 388] John of Pouilly and Peter Auriol. Although the concerns that motivated these debates were primarily anthropological, having to do with specifically human psychological processes, Hoffmann's study foregrounds the role that the angels played in the unfolding of various controversies. Comparing medieval angelological discussion to the thought experiments commonly employed by contemporary philosophers, Hoffmann argues that angels proved significant because they provided a subject matter in which rational freedom could be considered in a pure and ideal form, abstracted from any material constraints (3). While the angelic nature was certainly regarded as worthy of study in its own right, it was also often viewed as an opportunity to explore the nature of cognition and volition simpliciter, in relation to which the distinctiveness of human psychology could be better understood.The book is divided into three parts, each of which traces the historical development of a distinct topic related to the free will debate. In the first part, Hoffmann presents a lucid account of the various ways that medieval thinkers employed Aristotelian ideas—including not only the essentials of his action theory, but also metaphysical doctrines such as the distinction between active and passive powers—as they sought to explain the psychological origins of free will. Comprising over half the text, these chapters provide a comprehensive overview of the free will debate from its origins in the writings of Anselm of Canterbury to its culmination in the proto-modern theorizing of William of Ockham, including a thorough discussion of the controversies... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introduction:Spiritual Friends in a Multifaith and Multisuffering WorldKyeongil JungAnanda said to the Buddha. “Master, spiritual friendship is half of the spiritual life.” The Buddha told him. “Not so, Ananda. It’s the whole of the spiritual life.”—Samyutta Nikaya, Volume 1If one friend suffers, all the friends suffer together with her; if one friend is honoured, all rejoice together with him.—1 Corinthians 12:26This year’s Buddhist-Christian Studies includes selected articles presented at (...) the International Buddhist-Christian Conference titled “Enlightenment and Liberation: Engaged Buddhists and Liberation Theologians in Dialogue,” which took place at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York April 17–20, 2013. The conference was a historic gathering of socially engaged Buddhists and liberationist Christians from many corners of the world.There have been many Buddhist-Christian dialogues during the last century. Yet there have not been many dialogues between socially engaged Buddhists and liberationist Christians. Although many Buddhist and Christian activists and scholars have responded to the reality of social suffering, which is a universal experience across religions, cultures, and countries, most of them have not, because of the sheer fact of physical and geographical separation, had the opportunity to met each other and spend time together. This is precisely what happened at this Union conference. And it was amazing to see how quickly strangers became friends, almost as if they had long known one another. Such bonds of friendship grew spontaneously out of the one essential thing they all had in common: a selfless love and compassion for the poor and oppressed. All of them loved their suffering neighbors as they loved their own selves. Thus, engaged Buddhists and liberationist Christians immediately recognized one another as friends working for the same goal: liberation. In this way, the conference [End Page 3] confirmed that their spiritual friendship transcended religious boundaries in the face of social and political suffering. In a multifaith and multisuffering world, being friends cannot and should not be limited by the boundaries of a faith tradition.As the title of the conference indicates, the conferees shared their experiences of spiritual and social engagement in a multifaith and multisuffering world. For four days they exchanged their ideas and experiences of responding to the five faces of eco-human suffering in today’s world: economic injustice, war and violence, sexism, racism, and ecological crisis. These five issues were discussed comparatively and interreligiously. In each session, two participants, one Buddhist and one Christian, presented their ideas followed by discussion among their fellow participants. Along with those five topics, there was also a special session on spirituality and liberation in which Buddhist and Christian participants talked about how their spirituality supported and strengthened their social action for liberation. Every night there was a public presentation in which distinguished scholars and activists from the two spiritual traditions spoke about listening to the world and to the heart. In addition, the conference offered various smaller workshops, seminars, and informal conversations between the conferees and with general participants, such as “Buddhist and Christian Grassroots Organizing,” “Socially Engaged Buddhism: East-West Dialogue,” “Occupy Society and Religion: A Buddhist-Christian Conversation,” and “Buddhist and Christian Nuns Compare Notes.” In all this, dialoguers spoke to and listened to one another as openly and accurately as they could.Another mutually enlightening and empowering experience at the conference was that it created an interspiritual space. Every morning during the conference two conferees, one Buddhist and one Christian, co-celebrated interfaith meditation. It was initially designed as a spiritual exchange between Buddhism and Christianity. Yet, interestingly, that exchange took place not between but within each of the participants. In other words, it was not a Buddhist and Christian practice, but rather a Buddhist-Christian practice. In addition, the conference offered various opportunities for interspiritual interaction, such as “Ecological Worship Service,” “Compassion Meditation for Social Activists,” “Question-and-Answer Dharma Talk,” and “Buddhist-Christian Communion,” in which Buddhist and Christian participants shared their spiritual practices and techniques respectfully and mindfully. Such spiritual components of the conference proved that silence could be a wide door through which Buddhists and Christians can meet one another deeply and perceptively. Paraphrasing interreligiously the... (shrink)

This article examines the issue of nonsexual relationships between psychologists and their former therapy clients. What little research is available concerning nonsexual relationships with former clients suggests that psychologists have clear reservations about some of these relationships, especially personal ones and intentional social interactions. Relationships immediately following termination are seen as particularly suspect. Drawing on the literature dealing with multiple relationships in general, and sexual relationships with former clients in particular, a number of arguments are made outlining why psychologists should (...) avoid significant nonsexual relationships with former clients for at least some period of time following termination. (shrink)

Because emotion regulation processes operate over time, they potentially change the context in which subsequent ER processes occur. To test this proposal, fifty-two healthy participants completed the ER choice task. Thirty standardized low- and high-intensity negative images were used to generate different emotional contexts in which participants selected between distraction or reappraisal strategies to decrease the intensity of their negative emotion. Participants then implemented their selected strategy and rated their negative emotion. Using a dynamic perspective, we examined as predictors of (...) ER strategy choice, in addition to current stimulus intensity, several contextual factors from the immediately preceding trial: preceding stimulus intensity and strategy choice, and the intensity of negative affect following the previous strategy implementation and thus preceding the current trial. Results replicated earlier findings that participants are more likely to choose distraction for high-intensity images. Extending earlier findings, selecting reappraisal in the preceding trial and greater negative affect preceding the current trial were associated with lower odds of choosing distraction. The lack of significant interactions among the current and preceding trial factors suggests that these effects on ER choice were direct and not through moderating the effect of current stimulus intensity. These findings support dynamic theories of ER. (shrink)

Most philosophers appear to have ignored the distinction between the broad concept of Virtual Machine Functionalism (VMF) described in Sloman&Chrisley (2003) and the better known version of functionalism referred to there as Atomic State Functionalism (ASF), which is often given as an explanation of what Functionalism is, e.g. in Block (1995). -/- One of the main differences is that ASF encourages talk of supervenience of states and properties, whereas VMF requires supervenience of machines that are arbitrarily complex networks of causally (...) interacting (virtual, but real) processes, possibly operating on different time-scales, examples of which include many different procesess usually running concurrently on a modern computer performing various tasks concerned with handling interfaces to physical devices, managing the file system, dealing with security, providing tools, entertainments, and games, and possibly processing research data. Another example of VMF would be the kind of functionalism involved in a large collection of possibly changing socio-economic structures and processes interacting in a complex community, and yet another is illustrated by the kind of virtual machinery involved in the many levels of visual processing of information about spatial structures, processes, and relationships (including percepts of moving shadows, reflections, highlights, optical-flow patterns and changing affordances) as you walk through a crowded car-park on a sunny day: generating a whole zoo of interacting qualia. (Forget solitary red patches, or experiences thereof.) -/- Perhaps VMF should be re-labelled "Virtual MachinERY Functionalism" because the word 'machinery' more readily suggests something complex with interacting parts. VMF is concerned with virtual machines that are made up of interacting concurrently active (but not necessarily synchronised) chunks of virtual machinery which not only interact with one another and with their physical substrates (which may be partly shared, and also frequently modified by garbage collection, metabolism, or whatever) but can also concurrently interact with and refer to various things in the immediate and remote environment (via sensory/motor channels, and possible future technologies also). I.e. virtual machinery can include mechanisms that create and manipulate semantic content, not only syntactic structures or bit patterns as digital virtual machines do. -/- Please note: Click on the title above or the link below to read the paper. I prefer to keep all my papers freely accessible on my web site so that I can correct mistakes and add improvements. -/- http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/vm-functionalism.html -/- This is now part of the Meta-Morphogenesis project: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/meta-morphogenesis.html. (shrink)

Transdisciplinarity includes the assumption that within new institutional settings, scientific research becomes more closely responsive to practical problems and user needs and is therefore often subject to considerable application pressure. This raises the question whether transdisciplinarity affects the epistemic standards and the fruitfulness of research. Case studies show how user-orientation and epistemic innovativeness can be combined. While the modeling involved in all cases under consideration was local and focused primarily on features of immediate practical relevance, it was informed by theoretical (...) insights from basic research. Conversely, industrial research turns out sometimes to produce theoretical understanding. These findings highlight an interactive relationship between science and technology (moderate emergentism), which is distinct from the traditional view of a one-sided dependence of technology on science (cascade model) and from the newly received independence account (emergentism). (shrink)

This article considers how two different question designs as positive polar questions and wh-questions occurring in different interactional contexts set up a sequence in which a direct complaint is produced in third position as the result of an interactional achievement. Positive polar questions are employed to establish immediately a common ground of understandability between caller and call-taker. Wh-questions are used as challenges and speakers subsequently provide explicit grounds for the challenges in third turns, due to the interpretation of the question (...) given by their recipients. (shrink)

The present article reports several applied experiments in the generation of aesthetic forms from algorithms and data. In these experiments algorithms and data are the driving morphogenetic force to such an extent that the role of the human creator must be reexamined case-by-case. Artists that program the graphics or sound generating algorithms may in turn be said to be programmed perceptually by the resulting artworks, in the sense that they must adapt their perception in a conscious or involuntary effort to (...) detect or project meaning in their form. While forms generated by algorithms or data are to a large extent unpredictable, an intimate relationship between programmer, performer/listener/viewer and the piece is created through instinctive, empirical familiarity with the tools and the creative process, which is afforded by the immediate and highly interactive nature of the frameworks employed. A simple iterative algorithm that produces a novel kind of chaotic geometric shapes is presented. Examples of an application of Paul Klee’s principles of visual form in programming interactive audio-visual dance performance are given. These principles are directly derived from the language-based metaphor of active, medial and passive voice. Finally, ongoing experiments in letting language structures emerge from data derived from a sound database are presented. (shrink)

Few phenomena have found such divergent descriptions in sociological lit­ erature as have social inconsistencies. They were studied by George Herbert Mead as eruptive "natural" events constituting a social temporality. Alfred SchUtz described them as "explosions" of the individual actor's anticipatory action patterns. Talcott Parsons attempted to grasp social inconsistencies into his frame of "pattern variables," while Erving Goffman dealt with them as disruptions of "fostered impressions of reality" maintained by one or the other dominant team. The present study traces (...) these divergent approaches back to various un­ checked assumptions concerning the structure and the constitution of social types. Thus, to further clarify the relationship between social types and the relevance structure of interactional situations has been my first objective. This initially rather limited intention widened when the role of social incon­ sistencies for analysing the differences between play, game, and social action proper in the immediate context of social interaction became apparent. The structure of social inconsistencies seems to hold a key to unifying the theo­ ries of play and social,action. (shrink)

IntroductionThe assisted reproductive technology field deals with consistent and predictable gaps in knowledge. Expressing lack of knowledge with a sentence like “I don’t know” can be challenging for doctors. This study examined physicians’ negative epistemic disclaimer “non lo so” in Italian ART doctor-couple interactions. In particular, it aimed to reveal specific features of “non lo so”: function, topic, temporality, responsibility, and interactional aspects.MethodsThis was a video-based observational study. We used microanalysis of face-to-face dialogue to analyze 20 purposively selected triadic consultations (...) from a corpus of 85. This inductive analysis focused on the function, the content and some selected interactional aspects of the “non lo so”, quantifying and capturing the interaction between these qualitative features.ResultsWe found 82 doctors’ “non lo so” in the corpus. We discovered three main functions of this expression: propositional, relational, discursive. The most frequent topics raising doctors’ “non lo so” were costs, treatment-related aspects, and timing issues. In more than half of the cases, present issues emerged. The majority of “non lo so” was framed using the “I,” with doctors’ taking personal responsibility. Patients played a role in these expressions from doctors: Patients initiated more than one third of them, and in one fourth of the cases, patients followed up immediately.ConclusionOur findings may be related to characteristics of the specific field of ART. Doctors in this setting must frequently express a direct lack of knowledge to their patients, and when they do, they mean it literally. Patients contribute to such disclosures, and their responses suggest that they find them acceptable, showing that they may expect limitations in their potential to conceive. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:VIOLENT MEMES AND SUSPICIOUS MINDS: GIRARD'S SCAPEGOAT MECHANISM IN THE LIGHT OF EVOLUTION AND MEMETICS Guömundur Ingi Markússon Reykjavik, Iceland The present article is an attempt to bring mimetic theory into dialogue with certain evolutionary approaches to human culture, i.e., evolutionarypsychology and memetics. That which immediately suggests a consonance between these approaches is a shared concern for the fundamental aspects ofhuman culture, or "fundamental anthropology." My discussion aims at (...) reconsidering Girard's startling insight concerning the significance of scapegoating in the formation of human culture, ritual and myth—or, in short, his concept of the scapegoat mechanism. Two alternative approaches will be explored: (1) On the basis of evolutionary psychology, scapegoating is considered as a cognitive side-effect; (2) with reference to memetics, it is suggested that the scapegoat mechanism is a memetic parasite. The former account is an interpretation ofPascal Boyer's ideas about group mentality and fundamentalist violence in his recent book ReligionExplained(2001). The latter consideration is inspired byTerrence W. Deacon's concept of language evolution and symbolic reference in his book The Symbolic Species (1997). It should be emphasized at the outset that neither Boyer nor Deacon are concerned with scapegoating and, needless to say, the application and interpretation oftheir ideas is entirely my own. 1. The Scapegoat Mechanism as a Cognitive Side Effect The following is an attempt to formulate a cognitive account of scapegoating based on Pascal Boyer's ideas about fundamentalism (2001, 292ff). Guömundur Ingi Markússon89 1.1. The Coalitional Reasoning ofthe Social Mind Boyer's theory of religion is firmly rooted in evolutionary psychology (2001, 118, passim)} A key concept in evolutionary psychology is the environment ofevolutionary adapteäness (EEA) which is centered around the claim that our cognitive apparatus evolved in response to ecological problems faced by our ancestors in the Pleistocene period (which lasted from ca. 2 million-10,000 years ago). In other words, the cognition of modern humans is geared to the ancestral environments of our huntergatherer past. The key issue in evolutionary psychology is to gain insight into the adaptive problems faced by our ancestors, and figure out the necessary cognitive capabilities needed to solve them. The resulting models of how the mind works can then be tested experimentally. Evolutionary psychologists also emphasize the áomain specificity of our psychological mechanisms, i.e., in simple terms, that our mind is a collection of specialized mechanisms wrought by natural selection to deal with specific features of our environment, such as detecting predators, keeping track of social relations, etc. In Boyer's account, the mixed stock of our evolutionary heritage includes a complex array of psychological mechanisms for keeping track ofa wide spectrum ofsocial relations, the social mina (2001, 122). An essential aspect of our social intelligence is "intuitive psychology" or a "theory of mind," i.e., seeing others as intentional agents, realizing what they are up to, what their beliefs and desires are, being able to predict their behavior, etc. According to evolutionary psychologists we are adapted for social exchange. We easily calculate the costs and benefits of our interactions with others. Experiments have shown that logical problems are much more transparent to people when presented as social exchange problems. In such cases, the logical rule in question is restated as a "check for cheaters" rule, i.e., the problem is to figure out whether people respect social conventions or not. Evolutionary psychologists interpretthese results to the effect that our cognition is geared to evaluate social exchange, and we have evolved a disposition to check for cheaters in social exchange situations (2001, 124f; Cosmides 1989; Cosmides & Tooby 1992).2 1 On evolutionary psychology, see Barkow et al. and Laland and Brown (ch. 5). 2 Cosmides, one of the pioneers of evolutionary psychology, characterizes "check for cheaters" thus: "cheating can be defined as the violation of a rule established, explicitly or implicitly, by acceptance ofa social contract. A social contract relatesperceived benefits to 90Violent Mêmes and Suspicious Minds Evaluation oftrust is essential to human interaction: "That humans depend on cooperation creates strategic problems, where the value (the expected benefit) of a particular move depends on whether someone else makes a particular move...." (2001, 125... (shrink)

This paper is a preliminary study focused on the astronomical manuscript Marcianus latinus VIII.31 (2614) and its socio-historical context of use and production, the Venetian colony of Crete in the 15th century. It is a relevant source for the study of scientific interactions in colonial, multilinguistic, and interreligious contexts in the Eastern Mediterranean for at least two reasons: (a) it contains an unpublished translation into Latin of a popular Byzantine handbook on how to use a set of astronomical tables stemming (...) from Islamic sources, namely the so-called Paradosis of the Persian Tables, a work extensively copied and annotated by very significant Byzantine and Jewish scholars active in Constantinople; and (b) it provides evidence of a Byzantine product being the object of exchange in the interactions between Christians and Jews in the Cretan territory under Venetian rule. (shrink)

In The Media and Modernity, Thompson develops an interactional theory of communication media that distinguishes between three basic types of interaction: face-to-face interaction, mediated interaction, and mediated quasi-interaction. In the light of the digital revolution and the growth of the internet, this paper introduces a fourth type: mediated online interaction. Drawing on Goffman’s distinction between front regions and back regions, Thompson shows how mediated quasi-interaction and mediated online interaction create new opportunities for the leakage of information and symbolic content from (...) back regions into front regions, with consequences that can be embarrassing, damaging and, on occasion, hugely disruptive. The growing role of mediated quasi-interaction and mediated online interaction has reconstituted the political field so that political life now unfolds in an information environment that is much more difficult to control, creating a permanently unstable arena in which leaks, revelations and disclosures are always capable of disrupting the most well-laid plans. (shrink)

Previous research indicates that individuals with depressive disorders have aberrant resting state functional connectivity and may experience memory dysfunction. While resting state functional connectivity may be affected by experiences preceding the resting state scan, little is known about this relationship in individuals with DD. Our study examined this question in the context of object memory. 52 individuals with DD and 45 healthy controls completed clinical interviews, and a memory encoding task followed by a forced-choice recognition test. A 5-min resting state (...) fMRI scan was administered immediately after the forced-choice task. Resting state networks were identified using group Independent Component Analysis across all participants. A network modeling analysis conducted on 22 networks using FSLNets examined the interaction effect of diagnostic status and memory accuracy on the between-network connectivity. We found that this interaction significantly affected the relationship between the network comprised of the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and hippocampal formation and the network comprised of the inferior temporal, parietal, and prefrontal cortices. A stronger positive correlation between these two networks was observed in individuals with DD who showed higher memory accuracy, while a stronger negative correlation was observed in individuals with DD who showed lower memory accuracy prior to resting state. No such effect was observed for HC. The former network cross-correlated with the default mode network, and the latter cross-correlated with the dorsal attention network. Considering that the DMN and DAN typically anticorrelate, we hypothesize that our findings indicate aberrant reactivation and consolidation processes that occur after the task is completed. Such aberrant processes may lead to continuous “replay” of previously learned, but currently irrelevant, information and underlie rumination in depression. (shrink)

SNAREs (soluble N‐ethylmaleimide‐sensitive factor attachment protein receptors) are a large family of proteins that are present on all organelles involved in intracellular vesicle trafficking and secretion. The interaction of complementary SNAREs found on opposing membranes presents an attractive lock‐and‐key mechanism, which may underlie the specificity of vesicle trafficking. Moreover, formation of the tight complex between a vesicle membrane SNARE and corresponding target membrane SNAREs could drive membrane fusion. In synapses, this tight complex, also referred to as the synaptic core complex, (...) is essential for neurotransmitter release. However, recent observations in knockout mice lacking major synaptic SNAREs challenge the prevailing notion on the executive role of these proteins in fusion and open up several questions about their exact role(s) in neurotransmitter release. Persistence of a form of regulated neurotransmitter release in these mutant mice also raises the possibility that other cognate or non‐cognate SNAREs may partially compensate for the loss of a particular SNARE. Future analysis of SNARE function in central synapses will also have implications for the role of these molecules in other vesicle trafficking events such as endocytosis and vesicle replenishment. Such analysis can provide a molecular basis for synaptic processes including certain forms of short‐term synaptic plasticity. BioEssays 24:926–936, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

We explored the frequency with which typical adults make Theory of Mind attributions, and under what circumstances these attributions occur. We used an experience sampling method to query 30 typical adults about their everyday thoughts. Participants carried a Personal Data Assistant that prompted them to categorize their thoughts as Action, Mental State, or Miscellaneous at approximately 30 pseudo-random times during a continuous 10-h period. Additionally, participants noted the direction of their thought and degree of socializing at the time of inquiry. (...) We were interested in the relative frequency of ToM and how prominent they were in immediate social exchanges. Analyses of multiple choice answers suggest that typical adults: spend more time thinking about actions than mental states and miscellaneous things, exhibit a higher degree of own- versus other-directed thought when alone, and make mental state attributions more frequently when not interacting than while interacting with others . A significant 3-way interaction between thought type, direction of thought, and socializing emerged because action but not mental state thoughts about others occurred more frequently when participants were interacting with people versus when alone; whereas there was an increase in the frequency of both action and mental state attributions about the self when participants were alone as opposed to socializing. A secondary analysis of coded free text responses supports findings 1–3. The results of this study help to create a more naturalistic picture of ToM use in everyday life and the method shows promise for future study of typical and atypical thought processes. (shrink)

Short-term or working memory provides temporary storage of information in the brain after an experience and is associated with conscious awareness. Neurons sensitive to the multiple stimulus attributes comprising an experience are distributed within many brain regions. Such distributed cell assemblies, activated by an event, are the most plausible system to represent the WM of that event. Studies with a variety of imaging technologies have implicated widespread brain regions in the mediation of WM for different categories of information. Each kind (...) of WM may thus be expected to involve many brain regions rather than a local, uniquely dedicated set of cells. Neurons in a distributed “cell assembly” may be self-selected by their temporally coherent activations. The process by which this fragmented representation of the recent past is reassembled to accomplish essentially automatic and reliable recognition of a recurrent event constitutes an important problem. One plausible mechanism to achieve the identification of past with previous events would require that the representational system mediating WM must coexist in spatial extent and somehow overlap in temporal activation with cell ensembles registering input from subsequent events. The detection of such a postulated mechanism required an experimental approach which would focus upon spatial patterns of coherent activation while information about different events was stored in WM and retrieved, rather than focusing upon the temporal sequences of activation in localized regions of interest. For this purpose, the familiar delayed matching from sample task was modified. A series of information-free flashes, or “noncontingent probes,” was presented before an initial series of visual information items, the Priming Sample, which were to be held in WM during a Delay Period. A second series of visual information items were then presented, the Matching Sample. The task required detection of any item in the second series which had beenabsentfrom the initial series. Thirty such trials with a particular category of visual information constituted a single task. Several DMS tasks with this standardized design, but with different categories of visual information, were presented within each test session. The information categories included letters of the alphabet, single digit numbers, or faces from a school yearbook. Event-related potentials , were computed from 21 standardized electrode placements, separately for information-free probes and for information items in each interval of the trials within a task. Because each electrode is particularly sensitive to coherent activation of neurons in the immediately underlying brain regions, topographic maps were constructed and interpolated across the surface of the scalp. The momentary fluctuations of the resulting voltage “landscapes” throughout the task were then subjected to quantitative analysis. Distinctive landscapes sometimes persisted for prolonged periods, implying sustained engagement of very large populations of neurons. “Difference landscapes” were constructed by subtraction of topographic maps evoked by noncontingent probes during the Delay Period from maps of probe ERPs before the presentation of the initial information in the Priming Sample. Such probe difference landscapes displayed recurrent high similarity to momentary landscapes elicited during subsequent presentation of the information items in the Matching Sample. It seemed as if the distributed cell assembly continuously engaged by mediation of WM of the diverse attributes of the initial stimuli was being dynamically compared to the ensembles engaged by registration of the subsequent stimuli. Spatial Principal Component Analysis was applied to the sequences of momentary voltage landscapes observed throughout trials of each task. This method sought a small number of spatial patterns with which these large sets of inhomogeneous spatial distributions of voltage could be reconstructed. This is the spatial analog of the reconstruction of local ERPs by temporal principal components, as often described previously. Five Spatial Principal Components were found which accounted for about 90% of the total variance of voltage across the surface of the scalp throughout every task. Theloadings,or distinguishing topographic features, of these SPCs, were highly similar during every cognitive task for every subject. However,factor scores,or relative average contribution to the overall voltage distributions, of the different SPCs varied substantially among subjects between the tasks and momentarily within successive intervals of each task. These five SPCs may reflect coherent activation of huge distributed ensembles of neurons which comprise independent but interacting functional brain subsystems. These subsystems may correspond to basic resources available to individuals for allocation to mediate conscious evaluation of information during cognitive activity, providing a filter to bind together fractionated representations of the past to evaluate the present. (shrink)

Community group-buying platforms are increasingly relying on the interaction between the group-buying leader and consumers, thereby achieving the customer lock-in. In view of this, it is crucial to understand how the group-buying leader to establish a long-term transaction relationship with consumers. In this study, we construct a model based on the role theory and trust transfer theory, and identify two types of interactions of the group-buying leader and two types of consumer trust. Then, the mechanism that how different role interactions (...) of the group-buying leader can be transformed into the lock-in purchasing intention of consumers is further clarified. By interviewing 430 consumers with community group-buying experience in the community through offline questionnaire, the research model has been proven to be effective. To be specific, both role interactions of the merchant and friend can impose a positive impact on interpersonal trust, which will also lead to the trust in community group-buying, and thus enhance the lock-in purchasing intension of consumers from a fixed leader. Overall, this study has made certain contributions to the study of customer relationship. In theory, this study further explains the explanation mechanism of the “acquaintance marketing” phenomenon. Moreover, this study adopts the role theory to analyze the differences of different role interactions of the group-buying leader in relationship quality and purchase decision making, and employs the trust transfer theory to expand the trust transfer effect from the interpersonal trust of the group-buying leader to the trust in community group-buying. In practice, this study provides a new perspective and practical reference for community group-buying enterprises and the group-buying leader on how to better manage customers and maintain a long-term and stable customer relationship. (shrink)

Pessoa et al. (1998a) summarize a wide body of data suggesting that perceptual filling-in phenomena can be attributed to neural filling-in processes. However, they reject, on philosophical grounds, the hypothesis that filled-in representations in the brain are the immediate substrate of visual percepts. It is proposed in this commentary that resonant binding between distributed cortical areas may instead be the crucial ingredient for conscious visual percepts, and that filling-in processes may facilitate the interactions between behaving organisms and object surfaces. These (...) suggestions circumvent some of the philosophical problems associated with the idea of localized visual representations. (shrink)