The concept of agency is of crucial importance in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and it is often used as an intuitive and rather uncontroversial term, in contrast to more abstract and theoretically heavy-weighted terms like “intentionality”, “rationality” or “mind”. However, most of the available definitions of agency are either too loose or unspecific to allow for a progressive scientific program. They implicitly and unproblematically assume the features that characterize agents, thus obscuring the full potential and challenge of modeling agency. (...) We identify three conditions that a system must meet in order to be considered as a genuine agent: a) a system must define its own individuality, b) it must be the active source of activity in its environment (interactionalasymmetry) and c) it must regulate this activity in relation to certain norms (normativity). We find that even minimal forms of proto-celular systems can already provide a paradigmatic example of genuine agency. By abstracting away some specific details of minimal models of living agency we define the kind of organization that is capable to meet the required conditions for agency (which is not restricted to living organisms). On this basis, we define agency as an autonomous organization that adaptively regulates its coupling with its environment and contributes to sustaining itself as a consequence. We find that spatiality and temporality are the two fundamental domains in which agency spans at different scales. We conclude by giving an outlook to the road that lies ahead in the pursuit to understand, model and synthesis agents. (shrink)

The concept of “autonomy”, once at the core of the original enactivist proposal in The Embodied Mind, is nowadays ignored or neglected by some of the most prominent contemporary enactivists approaches. Theories of autonomy, however, come to fill a theoretical gap that sensorimotor accounts of cognition cannot ignore: they provide a naturalized account of normativity and the resources to ground the identity of a cognitive subject in its specific mode of organization. There are, however, good reasons for the contemporary neglect (...) of autonomy as a relevant concept for enactivism. On the one hand, the concept of autonomy has too often been assimilated into autopoiesis and the implications are not always clear for a dynamical sensorimotor approach to cognitive science. On the other hand, the foundational enactivist proposal displays a metaphysical tension between the concept of operational closure, deployed as constitutive, and that of structural coupling ; making it hard to reconcile with the claim that experience is sensorimotorly constituted. This tension is particularly apparent when Varela et al. propose Bittorio as a model of the operational closure of the nervous system as it fails to satisfy the required conditions for a sensorimotor constitution of experience. It is, however, possible to solve these problems by re-considering autonomy at the level of sensorimotor neurodynamics. Two recent robotic simulation models are used for this task, illustrating the notion of strong sensorimotor dependency of neurodynamic patterns, and their networked intertwinement. The concept of habit is proposed as an enactivist building block for cognitive theorizing, re-conceptualizing mental life as a habit ecology, tied within an agent’s behaviour generating mechanism in coordination with its environment. Norms can be naturalized in terms of dynamic, interactively self-sustaining, coherentism. This conception of autonomous sensorimotor agency is put in contrast with those enactive approaches that reject autonomy or neglect the theoretical resources it has to offer for the project of naturalizing minds. (shrink)

The notion of information processing has dominated the study of the mind for over six decades. However, before the advent of cognitivism, one of the most prominent theoretical ideas was that of Habit. This is a concept with a rich and complex history, which is again starting to awaken interest, following recent embodied, enactive critiques of computationalist frameworks. We offer here a very brief history of the concept of habit in the form of a genealogical network-map. This serves to provide (...) an overview of the richness of this notion and as a guide for further re-appraisal. We identify 77 thinkers and their influences, and group them into seven schools of thought. Two major trends can be distinguished. One is the associationist trend, starting with the work of Locke and Hume, developed by Hartley, Bain, and Mill to be later absorbed into behaviorism through pioneering animal psychologists (Morgan and Thorndike). This tradition conceived of habits atomistically and as automatisms (a conception later debunked by cognitivism). Another historical trend we have called organicism inherits the legacy of Aristotle and develops along German idealism, French spiritualism, pragmatism, and phenomenology. It feeds into the work of continental psychologists in the early 20th century, influencing important figures such as Merleau-Ponty, Piaget, and Gibson. But it has not yet been taken up by mainstream cognitive neuroscience and psychology. Habits, in this tradition, are seen as ecological, self-organizing structures that relate to a web of predispositions and plastic dependencies both in the agent and in the environment. In addition, they are not conceptualized in opposition to rational, volitional processes, but as transversing a continuum from reflective to embodied intentionality. These are properties that make habit a particularly attractive idea for embodied, enactive perspectives, which can now re-evaluate it in light of dynamical systems theory and complexity research. (shrink)

In this article, we propose some fundamental requirements for the appearance of adaptivity. We argue that a basic metabolic organization, taken in its minimal sense, may provide the conceptual framework for naturalizing the origin of teleology and normative functionality as it appears in living systems. However, adaptivity also requires the emergence of a regulatory subsystem, which implies a certain form of dynamic decoupling within a globally integrated, autonomous system. Thus, we analyze several forms of minimal adaptivity, including the special case (...) of motility. We go on to explain how an open-ended complexity growth of motility-based adaptive agency, namely, behavior, requires the appearance of the nervous system. Finally, we discuss some implications of these ideas for embodied robotics. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo destaca el lugar fundamental que Hegel da al concepto de Pietät en la conformación ética de la comunidad occidental y su influencia en el pensamiento social. Con base en la tesis hegeliana del origen artístico-religioso de la filosofía, el artículo ubica la Pietät en la lectura que Hegel hizo de la Antígona de Sófocles, y se guía por tres conceptos estructurantes: ley, revelación y conciliación, destacando el lugar radical de la mujer en la humanización de la comunidad, (...) por lo que se conforma en dos partes generales: la exposición preponderantemente masculina y el arribo al planteamiento femenino como intento de superación de la filosofía. Por ello, este trabajo se apoya en la interpretación que hacen algunos pensadores sociales de la lectura hegeliana de la Antígona y concluye que el concepto de Pietät constituye un marco fundamental para el pensamiento de Hegel para revelar el componente sustancial humano-comunitario de la civilización moderna.: This article highlights the fundamental place that Hegel gives to the concept of Pietät in the ethical conformation of the Western community and its influence on social thought. Based on the Hegelian thesis of the artistic-religious origin of philosophy, this work locates concept of Pietät in the reading that Hegel made of Sophocles’ Antigone. Which is why this article is guided by three structuring concepts: law, revelation, and conciliation, standing out the radical site of women in the humanization of civilization, so it is built on two general parts: the preponderantly male exposure and the arriving to a female approach as a try of overcome philosophy. It is why this writing leans on the interpretation some social researchers have made of Hegelian’s reading of Antigone and concludes that the concept of Pietät makes a fundamental framework to Hegel’s thought to reveal the substantial human-communitary component of modern civilization. (shrink)

Dynamicism has provided cognitive science with important tools to understand some aspects of “how cognitive agents work” but the issue of “what makes something cognitive” has not been sufficiently addressed yet, and, we argue, the former will never be complete without the later. Behavioristic characterizations of cognitive properties are criticized in favor of an organizational approach focused on the internal dynamic relationships that constitute cognitive systems. A definition of cognition as adaptive-autonomy in the embodied and situated neurodynamic domain is provided: (...) the compensatory regulation of a web of stability dependencies between sensorimotor structures, is created and preserved during a historical/developmental process. We highlight the functional role of emotional embodiment: internal bioregulatory processes coupled to the formation and adaptive regulation of neurodynamic autonomy. Finally, we discuss a “minimally cognitive behavior program” in evolutionary simulation modelling suggesting that much is to be learned from a complementary “minimally cognitive organization program”. (shrink)

Living agency is subject to a normative dimension (good-bad, adaptive-maladaptive) that is absent from other types of interaction. We review current and historical attempts to naturalize normativity from an organism-centered perspective, identifying two central problems and their solution: (1) How to define the topology of the viability space so as to include a sense of gradation that permits reversible failure, and (2) how to relate both the processes that establish norms and those that result in norm-following behavior. We present a (...) minimal metabolic system that is coupled to a gradient-climbing chemotactic mechanism. Studying the relationship between metabolic dynamics and environmental resource conditions, we identify an emergent viable region and a precarious region where the system tends to die unless environmental conditions change. We introduce the concept of normative field as the change of environmental conditions required to bring the system back to its viable region. Norm-following, or normative action, is defined as the course of behavior whose effect is positively correlated with the normative field. We close with a discussion of the limitations and extensions of our model and some final reflections on the nature of norms and teleology in agency. (shrink)

Contra el "sentido ordinario" de que la justicia implica, entre otras cosas, dar a cada quien lo que se merece, en su teoría de la justicia como equidad John Rawls adopta una perspectiva normativa radicalmente anti-meritocrática al considerar que nadie merece su lugar inicial en la sociedad y, por lo tanto, los factores contingentes no pueden tener incidencia distributiva. Desde el comunitarismo, se argumenta que la concepción rawlsiana del sujeto –despojado de casi toda particularidad– impide abordar la cuestión del mérito (...) en tanto bien social propio de la esfera del reconocimiento. El libertarismo de derecha nozickeano, en tanto, recusa las pretensiones rawlsianas ya que desconoce la validez de la regla contractual que impide sacar provecho total de los atributos moralmente arbitrarios. Desde el igualitarismo relacional, Thomas Scanlon procura una rehabilitación limitada del mérito, en la medida en que sea o bien institucionalmente dependiente o merecimiento puro. Así, en lo que sigue, examinaremos la propuesta rawlsiana y la de sus críticos, para mostrar que, en definitiva, la anti-meritocracia de Rawls sale airosa de los embates más radicales y, en cierta medida, puede alojar la posición de Scanlon pero al precio de volverse menos exigente. ARK: ark:/s18537960/thqx/xirg. (shrink)

We offer a critical review of the concept of neural information, as received within mainstream neuroscience from Artificial Intelligence. This conception of information is constructed as a conditional probability of a stimulus given a certain neural activation, a correlation that cannot be accessed by the organism and fails to explain its causal organization. We reconstruct an alternative conception of neural information: a pattern of signals that is selected by the organism (as an autonomous system) to contribute to its self-maintenance in (...) virtue of its correlation with external conditions, a correlation that might further be evaluated by the very system. (shrink)

En la obra de William Shakespeare, es posible identificar, según Terry Eagleton, al menos dos visiones del comunismo. Por un lado, como un mundo de abundancia absoluta, tal como es descripto por Gonzalo en La tempestad; y por otro, como un sistema donde cada quien recibe sólo lo suficiente, en un escenario de recursos escasos, según se desprende de El rey Lear. La concepción del comunismo de la abundancia coincide con la interpretación elaborada por Gerald A. Cohen, quien compara al (...) comunismo marxiano con una banda de jazz en la cual —dada una plena abundancia material— cada individuo persigue sus fines auto-referentes y sin obligación de asistir a los demás. Esta interpretación va a contracorriente de las escuetas anticipaciones marxianas sobre el comunismo, ya que dibuja un mundo social dominado por afanes individuales y no por la presencia de lazos comunitarios. En este artículo, analizaremos las dos visiones shakespearianas para luego establecer algunas relaciones con la posición de Cohen. Argumentaremos que la perspectiva más deseable y acaso posible —y más ajustada a la visión marxiana— es aquella que se sitúa en un punto medio entre la indolente plenitud sin normas de la utopía de Gonzalo y el comunismo inexorable que se vislumbra en El rey Lear. En segundo término, examinaremos los límites de la metáfora jazzística, enfatizando que la indiferencia mutua y el individualismo —con un trasfondo de plenitud material ilimitada— no son rasgos congruentes con el espíritu del comunismo marxiano. Tras los pasos de Cohen, sostendremos, por último, que el comunismo requiere comunidad —o clemencia shakespeariana— para templar los bordes más filosos de la justicia igualitaria de las instituciones. (shrink)

Texto corresponde a la memoria de pruba para optar al grado de doctor en pedagogía Universdad Católica de Lovaina.

When Susan Sontag addresses the problem of pornography and relates it to Hegel, she is not merely describing a path in European philosophy aimed to construct a new language, but she is also committing this aim to the importance of re-reading culture. The fashion in which pornography describes reality is meaningful when we are trying to approach Hegel in his aim to construct a post-religious language that finally will make ready-to-hand life as life. Politics, and society, being two essential elements (...) to understand reality, become singularly interesting when analyzed through the gaze of Sontag in combination of Hegel’s philosophy. The conservative morals that reign over what we understand as pornography, and the cultural moment of Europe since the most progressive moments of the 19 th century, describe a fatalist landscape for the future of society and politics. Yet, the learnings from Hegel remain meaningful. In this paper I examine how a post-religious philosophy, aimed long ago by Hegel’s contribution to philosophy, can serve to the understanding of a post-pornographic society: a society that is able to learn from the contributions of Frankfurt’s school with regards to an efficient cultural tissue, and defeat the old religious morals that are inserted in the backbone of politics and philosophy still today. (shrink)

Resumen:Mediante el concepto general de heterotecnia, este artículo aborda el pensamiento de André Gorz en tres apartados. En el primero se resume el origen de la obra de este autor austro-francés, en el segundo el origen y desarrollo del concepto de heterotecnia y en el tercero se exponen notas conclusivas y críticas a esa teoría, en particular, a su lectura errática de Marx. De la exposición de la obra de Gorz es posible extraer algunos comentarios críticos puntuales al desarrollo tecnológico (...) alcanzado hasta ahora ligado al capital, que se vinculan a la ecología, a una ética humanista-subjetivista, y al pensamiento dogmático y enajenado que incluye a la heterodoxia marxista contemporánea como la “autonomista”.Palabras clave: André Gorz; heterotecnia; ética; desarrollo tecnológico; trabajo inmaterial. (shrink)

A partir de las críticas que el igualitarismo fraternal lanzó contra el igualitarismo de la suerte, G. A. Cohen propuso un compromiso a través del denominado modelo de campamento. Puesto que dicho trade-off no quedó formalizado, en este artículo se intenta aportar algunos elementos en tal dirección. En concreto, se argumenta: a) que Cohen tiende un primer puente hacia el igualitarismo fraternal al distinguir los aspectos de equidad y legitimidad en una concepción de lo justo, conjuntamente con la afirmación de (...) que la suerte en las opciones nunca preserva la justicia; b) que los principios igualitario y comunitario, que Cohen postula como deseables para el socialismo, operan sobre la base de la distinción equidad-legitimidad, de modo que las desigualdades generadas por elecciones genuinas y mala suerte en las opciones son justas en tanto resultan legítimas pero no son justas en términos de equidad y, en consecuencia, las desigualdades que rasgan el tejido social son causalmente fundamentales mientras que el principio comunitario es normativamente fundamental; y c) que los elementos comunitarios que impulsan el compromiso de Cohen ya están presentes en sus nociones de igualdad voluntaria, ethos igualitario, lectura estricta del Principio de Diferencia rawlsiano y comunidad justificatoria. (shrink)

El equilibro reflexivo ideado por John Rawls ha sido utilizado con frecuencia en la investigación ética a partir de textos literarios. En este trabajo ponemos a prueba el método rawlsiano en la lectura de la utopía socialista de Edward Bellamy, expresada en Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888) e Equality (1897), sin desconocer la existencia de enfoques alternativos como el equilibrio perceptivo. En primer lugar, mostramos la operación del equilibrio estrecho y del equilibrio amplio en el itinerario del protagonista: Julian West. Segundo, (...) tras presentar el mecanismo rawlsiano para el desarrollo institucional, examinamos cómo en la etapa judicial –ejemplificada por la escena del juicio en El Mercader de Venecia– se verifican las tres formas del equilibro reflexivo. Por último, analizamos cómo Bellamy emplea esta misma escena para ilustrar los principios básicos de la sociedad igualitaria y su correspondencia con las formas de equilibrio reflexivo. (shrink)

Contemporary political theories have made significant progress toward identifying the principles for an egalitarian society. From this perspective, Edward Bellamy's radical and pluralistic egalitarianism can be read not only as a relevant precedent but as a source of sophisticated arguments capable of enriching current debates. Although unfairly overlooked as theoretical works, Bellamy's utopias can be read today as offering insights that bring together and combine key modern ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Therefore, this article argues that Bellamy's conception of (...) equality involves several dimensions and functions as a background condition for effective freedoms; that these liberties are not at odds with voluntary equality; and that fraternity—understood in Rawlsian terms—makes sense in a free and equal soci- ety, as it is guaranteed both by institutional means and by personal decisions. (shrink)

En el marco de los debates contemporáneos sobre la justicia social, en este artículo se discute la visión ralwsiana sobre el comunismo como una sociedad más allá de la justicia, en la cual las personas han perdido el sentido de lo justo y de la obligación moral. Sostenemos que John Rawls no acierta a explicar convincentemente la evanescencia del sentido de la justicia ni la súbita abrogación de las leyes que rigen la psicología moral de las personas. Asimismo, demostramos que, (...) según los propios postulados generales rawlsianos sobre la psicología moral, el comunismo marxiano no puede estar habitado sino por personas que adhieren a instituciones inspiradas en principios igualitarios y fraternos. En la sociedad comunista, entonces, rigen también la justicia y la moral, hay un esquema institucional justo -tal como lo admite Rawls-, y existe una comprensión compartida y un reconocimiento público de la justicia de las instituciones. (shrink)

En su teoría de la justicia como equidad, John Rawls sostiene que la estructura básica es el objeto primario de la justicia y que, por ende, quedan excluidas las decisiones personales. Esta posición sufre un giro insospechado en la visión rawlsiana sobre la justicia en el comunismo. En sus tres lecciones sobre Marx, Rawls presenta una doble valoración: por un lado, sostiene que el comunismo es justo en virtud de su distribución igualitaria; por otro, afirma que la ausencia de un (...) sentido de lo justo y de la obligación moral en la vida cotidiana hace que ésta sea una sociedad más allá de la justicia. La justicia ya no depende sólo de la operación de los primeros principios en la estructura básica, sino también de las actitudes personales. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo destaca el término Pietät en la obra de Hegel como concepto fundamental para una filosofía que abre varios campos para la teoría social, confrontado de manera inexorable al positivismo o “materialismo naturalista” desde el que se le hacen reconocidas críticas a Hegel en las ciencias sociales. Mediante este término Hegel describe una evolución social buscando la sustancia de cada una de las etapas que la comprenden, en particular, en occidente. Primero, se expone el lugar en la obra (...) de Hegel en que aparece el término Pietät como inicio de esa evolución histórico-social. Luego, se expone el destino de esa evolución como completud de la subjetividad-humana. Finalmente, se resumen los campos de investigación que abre el estudio de este término de Pietät, que se torna concepto en Hegel.: This article stresses the term Pietät in Hegel's work as a fundamental concept to a philosophy that open several fields on social theory facing inexorably positivism or “naturalistic materialism” from which have been made renown critics to Hegel on social science. Through this term, Hegel describes a social evolution looking for the substance of each one of the stages that comprise it, particularly in the West. This paper first exposes the place in the Hegel’s work where the term Pietät appears as the beginning of that social evolution. Then it is exposed the destiny of that evolution as completeness of human-subjectivity. Finally, is specified the fields of research open by the study of the term Pietät, that in Hegel is turned to concept. (shrink)

El presente documento aborda el tema enunciado en el título de manera general; ofrece los principios de un tratado más externo, que habrá de hacerse estudiando mejor las aportaciones de las Escrituras y de la tradición cristiana. Sin embargo, más que un estudio abstracto, lo importante es el estudio de la vida, del compromiso de amor y gracia, en el Espíritu de Cristo.

DISCOURSE, INTERACTION, AND COMMUNICATION Co-organized by the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science and the Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language, and Infonnation (ILCLI) both from the University of the Basque Country, tlle Fourth International Colloquium on Cognitive Science (ICCS-95) gathered at Donostia - San Sebastian ti'om May 3 to 6, 1995, with the following as its main topics: 1. Social Action and Cooperation. 2. Cognitive Approaches in Discourse Processing: Grammatical and Semantical Aspects. 3. Models of Infonnation in Communication Systems. (...) 4. Cognitive Simulation: Scope and Limits. More tllan one hundred researchers from all over the world exchanged their most recent contributions to Cognitive Science in an exceptionally fruitful annosphere. In this volume we include a small though representative sample of tlle main papers. They all were invited papers except the one by Peter Juel Henrichsen, a contributed paper tllat merited tlle IBERDROLA - Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia: Best Paper Award, set up in ICCS-95 for the first time. (shrink)

We are currently witnessing the emergence of new forms of collective identities and a redefinition of the old ones through networked digital interactions, and these can be explicitly measured and analyzed. We distinguish between three major trends on the development of the concept of identity in the social realm: (1) an essentialist sense (based on conditions and properties shared by members of a group), (2) a representational or ideational sense (based on the application of categories by oneself or others), and (...) (3) a relational and interactional sense (based on interaction processes between actors and their environments). The interactional approach aligns with current empirical and methodological progress in social network analysis. Moreover, it has been argued that, within the network society, the notion of collective identity (Melucci, 1995) in the political field must be rethought as technologically mediated and interactive. We suggest that collective identities should be understood as recurrent, cohesive, and coordinated communicative interaction networks. We here propose that such identities can be depicted by: (a) mapping and filtering a relevant interaction network, (b) delimiting a set of communities, (c) determining the strongly connected component(s) of such communities (the core identity) in a directed graph, and (d) defining the identity audiences and sources within the community. This technical graph–theoretical characterization is explained and justified in... (shrink)

Una comunidad de aprendizaje es un proyecto de transformación social y cultural de un centro educativo y de su entorno, para conseguir una sociedad de la información para todas las personas, basada en el aprendizaje dialógico, mediante la educación participativa de la comunidad que se concreta en todos sus espacios, incluida el aula.